Harry Potter still flies in Georgia

I have read for several years of people objecting to the inclusion of the Harry Potter Stories in the school systems. There have been lawsuits and attempts to ban the book from school libraries – so much for academic freedom. The suits have typically claimed that the books encourage witchcraft, violating prohibition of schools providing religious texts. I don’t get it and sometimes wonder if the objecting parents have even read the books, but there you are.

Score one for the home team in Gwinnett County, Georgia. A state court judge rules that the popular books by British author J K Rowling stay on the shelves of school libraries in Georgia. The complaining mother of 4 who brought the action has pursued her complaint through the school, the school board and the state courts. She is now considering filing another suit in federal court.

My source: http://www.11alive.com/news/article_news.aspx?storyid=97763

Gwinnett Mom Can't Stop Harry Potter

Web Editor: Jon Shirek

Last Modified: 5/30/2007 10:12:49 AM

A judge in Gwinnett County denied, on Tuesday, a Loganville woman's request to remove the Harry Potter books from the Gwinnett County Public Schools. Laura Mallory argued, during the hearing that preceded the ruling, that the books are harmful to children and unconstitutionally promote a religion. Worse, she said, is that when school children read the books as part of class work, she can provide examples that the books often encourage children, as early as in the Second Grade, to practice witchcraft and convert to the Wicca religion. "This violates our rights of freedom of religion," Mallory told reporters after the judge ruled against her, because, she said, Judeo Christian religions are banned from the classroom and "because this other religion is being, you know, spoon-fed to our children." For an hour, Mallory -- the mother of four, school-age children -- tried to convince Gwinnett County Superior Court Judge Ronnie Batchelor to overturn a 2006 ruling by the Georgia Board of Education that supported the Gwinnett County School Board's decision to keep the Harry Potter books in the schools. She read several passages aloud in court to illustrate her argument that the books are too intense for young children, and serve as a recruiting tool by followers of Wicca and others who engage in the sort of "dark arts" described in the books. "The level of violence in here is like no other. You don't find it in The Wizard of Oz, you don't find it in Sleeping Beauty. These books have unprecedented amounts of witchcraft and occult practices and, she said, they are marketed to our children because sorcery sells. The money that's made off of these books is enormous. It's astronomical. And it's not right. It's at our children's expense," said Mallory. One of the passages Mallory read was from page 247 of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (by J. K. Rowling, Copyright 1999 by J. K. Rowling, published by Scholastic Press, a division of Scholastic, Inc.). "They call it the Dementor's Kiss," Mallory read, verbatim, "it's what dementors do to those they wish to destroy utterly... suck out his soul. There's no chance at all of recovery. You'll just –- exist. As an empty shell. And your soul is gone forever... lost." She looked up from the book and told Judge Batchelor, "That's just one example, Your Honor, of the violent, spiritual filth that our children are reading" in the Gwinnett County public school classrooms. "In these books, it's cool to cast spells and it's cool to do wrong and if you’re not a witch, you're not cool." Mallory said, "We don't want our children to grow up to be murderers, but we can't teach them that in our schools anymore. 'Thou Shalt Not Kill' was thrown out... I have a dream that God would be welcomed back in our schools again. I think we need Him." Teachers and parents have praised the Harry Potter books for encouraging children's interest in reading. Mallory disagreed by saying, "Just because children are reading, instead of playing video games, because of Harry Potter, that doesn't justify the end... I'm sure there are many teenagers fascinated by pornography, but that doesn’t make it right." The attorney for the Gwinnett County School Board, Victoria Sweeny, told the judge that Mallory was reading passages out of context, and that Mallory had not proven any ties to Wicca recruitment. Sweeny argued that the Harry Potter books do not promote any religion, but do portray worthwhile themes such as Triumph of Good Over Evil, and Behavior Has Consequences. "This case is a very simple one," Sweeny said, accusing Mallory of trying "to censor materials that are rightfully in the public libraries of this county." Sweeny said this is a First Amendment case, and a case of local control of schools -- allowing parents and teachers in each public school to decide which books and ideas to permit in that school. Mallory has lost at the school level, the school system level, and at the state level. "And we urge the court to heed the words of Thomas Jefferson, who admonished that freedom of speech cannot be limited without being lost." Judge Batchelor ruled right away, agreeing with the State Board of Education that Gwinnett County's decision to allow the books in the Gwinnett County public schools was made properly. After the hearing, Gwinnett County Public Schools Spokeswoman Sloan Roach told reporters, "We are pleased, but not surprised…. This was not just an issue about one book. This was actually a First Amendment issue... These books have been in our public school libraries, and will continue to be in our public school libraries" and used as a teaching tool in reading classes if that's what the teachers and parents in each school want. Mallory said she is not sure what she will do next, but she may take her fight to federal court. Mallory's crusade against the Harry Potter books began in August, 2005. She objected, at first, to teachers in her children's classrooms including the books in classroom work such reading exercises. She did not, initially, oppose the books being in the public school libraries as long as parents could tell the schools not to allow their own children access to the books. She had put her children's names on a list of students not allowed to check out the Harry Potter books from the school library. She wasn't sure that system worked. She told her son to see if he could check out a Harry Potter book, and he was able to do so, despite being on the list of children not allowed to check them out. The American Library Association has said that the Harry Potter books are the most challenged texts, so far, since the year 2000.

Bad Science made worse by Bad Politics

The allegations of global warming have created a lot of (forgive the obvious pun) hot air which, unfortunately, will continue as political pollution inundates us with the worst kind of acid rain – the written word – through this extended slugfest that we call the election season. Despite the headlines and the media barrage, I happen to believe that the alleged threat is non-existent and irrelevant. The crisis is generated by pseudo science and headline writers. While I usually consider movie stars, celebrities and politicians like Mr. Gore to be a charming diversion and entertaining in a silly science sort of way, there is a real threat to the pandering to the global warming non-crisis. We may be tempted to divert funding from real problems where we can have a significant impact in our generation to the illusory concerns of a problem which, if it exists at all, may be beyond our control. Certainly the fabulously expensive remedies recommended by the faithful have not been shown to have any positive impact on the alleged problem. When so-called science depends upon inaccurate computer models, selective and incomplete data, intentional slanting of results and exclusion of opposing viewpoints and data the results will be unreliable. Virtually none of the promised calamities have been verified or have occurred when predicted to date. These are the same people who proclaim that the current administration should not be believed on foreign policy because they have been wrong so many times. There is a delicious irony here. When was the last time that the fear mongers predicting scientific doom and gloom got it right. We live on a planet with finite resources and it is the only place we have left to stand on. Proper stewardship of the planet and its environment is implicit in our position of power in the world. I welcome projects of conservation, efficient use of natural beauty and resources and concern for industrial pollution. But global climate is not well understood and there is a tendency to accept local annectdotal observations as proof of a more global pattern where the conclusion is not supported by the data. For example, discussions of receding glaciers ignore the deepening and expansion of other glaciers in other areas. Further discussions of glaciers in the Northern Hemisphere ignore the fact that the overwhelming majority of the Earth’s glacial ice is located in the Southern Hemisphere. And the predictions of sea level rise from diminishing glacial ice fields are not credible and have not been observed anywhere in the world. Michael Crichton has been a favorite author of mine for years. His books are fictional novels, but he researches his subject matter and writes his stories around a solid skeleton of fact and detail. In his recent (2004) book “State of Fear”, Crichton presents an entertaining story of an environmental organization’s attempts to load the dice in their favor by creating natural disasters to correlate with their agenda on sudden climate change. Following the narrative of the story, Crichton discusses some of his own personal opinions on the subjects which provide the vivid backdrop for his novel. (Including the enjoyable comment. “Everyone has an agenda – except me”.) What follows is an excerpt from “State of Fear” – from the author’s commentary outside of the narrative – in which he addresses the danger of political agenda, research funded by groups with an agenda and the acceptance of bad science as scientific truth. My source: http://www.crichton-official.com/fear/ Why Politicized Science is Dangerous (Excerpted from State of Fear) Imagine that there is a new scientific theory that warns of an impending crisis, and points to a way out. This theory quickly draws support from leading scientists, politicians and celebrities around the world. Research is funded by distinguished philanthropies, and carried out at prestigious universities. The crisis is reported frequently in the media. The science is taught in college and high school classrooms. I don't mean global warming. I'm talking about another theory, which rose to prominence a century ago. Its supporters included Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Winston Churchill. It was approved by Supreme Court justices Oliver Wendell Holmes and Louis Brandeis, who ruled in its favor. The famous names who supported it included Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone; activist Margaret Sanger; botanist Luther Burbank; Leland Stanford, founder of Stanford University; the novelist H. G. Wells; the playwright George Bernard Shaw; and hundreds of others. Nobel Prize winners gave support. Research was backed by the Carnegie and Rockefeller Foundations. The Cold Springs Harbor Institute was built to carry out this research, but important work was also done at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford and Johns Hopkins. Legislation to address the crisis was passed in states from New York to California. These efforts had the support of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Medical Association, and the National Research Council. It was said that if Jesus were alive, he would have supported this effort. All in all, the research, legislation and molding of public opinion surrounding the theory went on for almost half a century. Those who opposed the theory were shouted down and called reactionary, blind to reality, or just plain ignorant. But in hindsight, what is surprising is that so few people objected. Today, we know that this famous theory that gained so much support was actually pseudoscience. The crisis it claimed was nonexistent. And the actions taken in the name of theory were morally and criminally wrong. Ultimately, they led to the deaths of millions of people. The theory was eugenics, and its history is so dreadful --- and, to those who were caught up in it, so embarrassing --- that it is now rarely discussed. But it is a story that should be well know to every citizen, so that its horrors are not repeated. The theory of eugenics postulated a crisis of the gene pool leading to the deterioration of the human race. The best human beings were not breeding as rapidly as the inferior ones --- the foreigners, immigrants, Jews, degenerates, the unfit, and the "feeble minded." Francis Galton, a respected British scientist, first speculated about this area, but his ideas were taken far beyond anything he intended. They were adopted by science-minded Americans, as well as those who had no interest in science but who were worried about the immigration of inferior races early in the twentieth century --- "dangerous human pests" who represented "the rising tide of imbeciles" and who were polluting the best of the human race. The eugenicists and the immigrationists joined forces to put a stop to this. The plan was to identify individuals who were feeble-minded --- Jews were agreed to be largely feeble-minded, but so were many foreigners, as well as blacks --- and stop them from breeding by isolation in institutions or by sterilization. As Margaret Sanger said, "Fostering the good-for-nothing at the expense of the good is an extreme cruelty … there is not greater curse to posterity than that of bequeathing them an increasing population of imbeciles." She spoke of the burden of caring for "this dead weight of human waste." Such views were widely shared. H.G. Wells spoke against "ill-trained swarms of inferior citizens." Theodore Roosevelt said that "Society has no business to permit degenerates to reproduce their kind." Luther Burbank" "Stop permitting criminals and weaklings to reproduce." George Bernard Shaw said that only eugenics could save mankind. There was overt racism in this movement, exemplified by texts such as "The Rising Tide of Color Against White World Supremacy" by American author Lothrop Stoddard. But, at the time, racism was considered an unremarkable aspect of the effort to attain a marvelous goal --- the improvement of humankind in the future. It was this avant-garde notion that attracted the most liberal and progressive minds of a generation. California was one of twenty-nine American states to pass laws allowing sterilization, but it proved the most-forward-looking and enthusiastic --- more sterilizations were carried out in California than anywhere else in America. Eugenics research was funded by the Carnegie Foundation, and later by the Rockefeller Foundation. The latter was so enthusiastic that even after the center of the eugenics effort moved to Germany, and involved the gassing of individuals from mental institutions, the Rockefeller Foundation continued to finance German researchers at a very high level. (The foundation was quiet about it, but they were still funding research in 1939, only months before the onset of World War II.) Since the 1920s, American eugenicists had been jealous because the Germans had taken leadership of the movement away from them. The Germans were admirably progressive. They set up ordinary-looking houses where "mental defectives" were brought and interviewed one at a time, before being led into a back room, which was, in fact, a gas chamber. There, they were gassed with carbon monoxide, and their bodies disposed of in a crematorium located on the property. Eventually, this program was expanded into a vast network of concentration camps located near railroad lines, enabling the efficient transport and of killing ten million undesirables. After World War II, nobody was a eugenicist, and nobody had ever been a eugenicist. Biographers of the celebrated and the powerful did not dwell on the attractions of this philosophy to their subjects, and sometimes did not mention it at all. Eugenics ceased to be a subject for college classrooms, although some argue that its ideas continue to have currency in disguised form. But in retrospect, three points stand out. First, despite the construction of Cold Springs Harbor Laboratory, despite the efforts of universities and the pleadings of lawyers, there was no scientific basis for eugenics. In fact, nobody at that time knew what a gene really was. The movement was able to proceed because it employed vague terms never rigorously defined. "Feeble-mindedness" could mean anything from poverty to illiteracy to epilepsy. Similarly, there was no clear definition of "degenerate" or "unfit." Second, the eugenics movement was really a social program masquerading as a scientific one. What drove it was concern about immigration and racism and undesirable people moving into one's neighborhood or country. Once again, vague terminology helped conceal what was really going on. Third, and most distressing, the scientific establishment in both the United States and Germany did not mount any sustained protest. Quite the contrary. In Germany scientists quickly fell into line with the program. Modern German researchers have gone back to review Nazi documents from the 1930s. They expected to find directives telling scientists what research should be done. But none were necessary. In the words of Ute Deichman, "Scientists, including those who were not members of the [Nazi] party, helped to get funding for their work through their modified behavior and direct cooperation with the state." Deichman speaks of the "active role of scientists themselves in regard to Nazi race policy … where [research] was aimed at confirming the racial doctrine … no external pressure can be documented." German scientists adjusted their research interests to the new policies. And those few who did not adjust disappeared. A second example of politicized science is quite different in character, but it exemplifies the hazard of government ideology controlling the work of science, and of uncritical media promoting false concepts. Trofim Denisovich Lysenko was a self-promoting peasant who, it was said, "solved the problem of fertilizing the fields without fertilizers and minerals." In 1928 he claimed to have invented a procedure called vernalization, by which seeds were moistened and chilled to enhance the later growth of crops. Lysenko's methods never faced a rigorous test, but his claim that his treated seeds passed on their characteristics to the next generation represented a revival of Lamarckian ideas at a time when the rest of the world was embracing Mendelian genetics. Josef Stalin was drawn to Lamarckian ideas, which implied a future unbounded by hereditary constraints; he also wanted improved agricultural production. Lysenko promised both, and became the darling of a Soviet media that was on the lookout for stories about clever peasants who had developed revolutionary procedures. Lysenko was portrayed as a genius, and he milked his celebrity for all it was worth. He was especially skillful at denouncing this opponents. He used questionnaires from farmers to prove that vernalization increased crop yields, and thus avoided any direct tests. Carried on a wave of state-sponsored enthusiasm, his rise was rapid. By 1937, he was a member of the Supreme Soviet. By then, Lysenko and his theories dominated Russian biology. The result was famines that killed millions, and purges that sent hundreds of dissenting Soviet scientists to the gulags or the firing squads. Lysenko was aggressive in attacking genetics, which was finally banned as "bourgeois pseudoscience" in 1948. There was never any basis for Lysenko's ideas, yet he controlled Soviet research for thirty years. Lysenkoism ended in the 1960s, but Russian biology still has not entirely recovered from that era. Now we are engaged in a great new theory that once again has drawn the support of politicians, scientists, and celebrities around the world. Once again, the theory is promoted by major foundations. Once again, the research is carried out at prestigious universities. Once again, legislation is passed and social programs are urged in its name. Once again, critics are few and harshly dealt with. Once again, the measures being urged have little basis in fact or science. Once again, groups with other agendas are hiding behind a movement that appears high-minded. Once again, claims of moral superiority are used to justify extreme actions. Once again, the fact that some people are hurt is shrugged off because an abstract cause is said to be greater than any human consequences. Once again, vague terms like sustainability and generational justice --- terms that have no agreed definition --- are employed in the service of a new crisis. I am not arguing that global warming is the same as eugenics. But the similarities are not superficial. And I do claim that open and frank discussion of the data, and of the issues, is being suppressed. Leading scientific journals have taken strong editorial positions of the side of global warming, which, I argue, they have no business doing. Under the circumstances, any scientist who has doubts understands clearly that they will be wise to mute their expression. One proof of this suppression is the fact that so many of the outspoken critics of global warming are retired professors. These individuals are not longer seeking grants, and no longer have to face colleagues whose grant applications and career advancement may be jeopardized by their criticisms. In science, the old men are usually wrong. But in politics, the old men are wise, counsel caution, and in the end are often right. The past history of human belief is a cautionary tale. We have killed thousands of our fellow human beings because we believed they had signed a contract with the devil, and had become witches. We still kill more than a thousand people each year for witchcraft. In my view, there is only one hope for humankind to emerge from what Carl Sagan called "the demon-haunted world" of our past. That hope is science. But as Alston Chase put it, "when the search for truth is confused with political advocacy, the pursuit of knowledge is reduced to the quest for power." That is the danger we now face. And this is why the intermixing of science and politics is a bad combination, with a bad history. We must remember the history, and be certain that what we present to the world as knowledge is disinterested and honest.

Damning with Faint Praise

I usually enjoy reading a wide collection of authors (mostly conservative, I admit) on a daily basis. But a series of articles recently have made me feel very uncomfortable with the rumblings of public debate in the Presidential sweepstakes. I find it unconscionable that allegations about the religious faith of a candidate should become an issue in 21^st century America. I frequently find much to agree with in Michael Medved’s writings – but he is just plain wrong with the following article about the Mormon Church and its relevance to the current Republican candidates for the party nomination for President. He is a conservative author – but also a religious activist – and I am afraid his bias seems to be showing in today’s piece, in my opinion. (see below)

I can remember similar articles against John Kennedy in 1960 who was a candidate for President who happened to be Catholic. I thought we were past that sort of attack here. But here we are with stories of the history of the Mormon Church taking up the editorial space that should be used to examine the political beliefs and policies of the candidate. We have a mainstream candidate with a record of political action as, among other things, Governor of New England state not known for Republican office holders. Mitt Romney, who happens to be a Mormon, is a serious candidate and these should be serious times. I hope we can judge Mr. Romney’s qualifications by examining his stands on issues and his record of performance – not the history of his Church. Incidently, Mr. Romney recently visited Polk County (Lakeland), Florida for a speaking appearance.

I am reproducing a recent article, of which I do not approve, by Michael Medved so that we can see how bias and prejudice can creep into the mainstream political dialogue. His conclusion seems harmless enough – but if that is what he believes, the rest of the article should not have made it out of the word processor to the printed page. My source: http://www.townhall.com/columnists/MichaelMedved/2007/05/30/should_mormonism_disqualify_a_candidate

Should Mormonism Disqualify a Candidate? By Michael Medved Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Mitt Romney’s increasingly credible Presidential campaign raises urgent but uncomfortable questions about his Mormon faith. Does the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints constitute a benevolent, mainstream religion or a dangerous cult with a deranged and bloody past? Polls suggest that as many as one-third of voters rule out supporting a Mormon candidate due to negative impressions of his religious faith and one Florida televangelist (Bill Keller) has already declared to his audience of more than two million that “A vote for Romney is a vote for Satan!” In more temperate terms, one of my prominent talk radio colleagues, Mike Gallagher, also announced that he could not in conscience vote to elect a Mormon president. Meanwhile, an upcoming Hollywood film with a few veteran stars (Jon Voight, Terrence Stamp, Lolita Davidovich) focuses on one of the darkest episodes of early Mormon history: the so-called “Mountain Meadows Massacre” on September 11, 1857. The movie “September Dawn” pointedly ignores all exculpatory evidence and holds Mormon prophet Brigham Young directly responsible for the murder of 120 innocent members of an Arkansas wagon train. The film (scheduled for national release on June 22) portrays the entire Mormon Church as a demented, cruel, utterly corrupt conspiracy while quoting Young wildly out of context to make the Utah pioneer come across like a nightmarish combination of Jim Jones and Osama bin Laden. Some of Governor Romney’s political allies insist that attacks on Mormonism bear no relevance to his Presidential candidacy: my friend and colleague Hugh Hewitt, for instance, argues in his fascinating book “A Mormon in the White House?” that it’s illegitimate to evaluate any candidate based on the theological particulars of his (or her) faith. This worthwhile principle does not suggest, however, that all religious traditions deserve equal respect. Recent news items, for example, focused on a sect in Kenya known as the “Mungiki…a shadowy religious group with ties to the Mau Mau independence uprising against the British…. The group comprises snuff-taking, dreadlocked youths who champion old traditions like female genital cutting and oath-taking.” Kenyan officials blamed the Mungiki “for the recent beheadings of four people, whose bodies were chopped up and strewn in bushes in central Kenya.” Obviously, a Presidential candidate who proudly proclaimed membership in the Mungiki faith ought to be ruled out of consideration – regardless of his personal charisma or record of governmental achievement. By the same token, a contender for high office who espoused the radical Islamist ideology associated with al Qaeda, or Hamas, or Hezbollah, deserves determined opposition based solely on his religious ideology. What Governor Romney’s defenders need to acknowledge is that the most strident and harsh among anti-Mormon activists believe that the LDS church represents a denomination as menacing as fanatical Islamism and as demented as Kenya’s Mungiki. If they are correct about Mormonism, then there’s reason to support the tens of millions of Americans who currently claim they will never consider voting for a Mormon candidate. To put the charges against Mormonism (or any other religious faith) in proper perspective I would suggest three rules to determine whether a denomination counts as decent or dangerous: 1-Forget about theology – to outsiders, all religious beliefs look weird and irrational. Most of the anti-Mormon arguments emphasize the alleged absurdity of LDS doctrine, or purportedly preposterous historical accounts in the Book of Mormon, to question the intelligence or even the sanity of anyone who chooses to embrace that faith. The easiest way to discredit or at least discount these arguments would be to consider the recent work of outspoken atheist Christopher Hitchens: in his latest book, “God is Not Great,” he rips into mainstream Christianity (and Judaism and Islam and all Eastern faiths) with the same gleeful ferocity with which many Christians attack Mormonism. For instance, Catholic (and many Protestant) believers may revere the practice of Holy Communion, but non-believers have always ridiculed the cannibalistic notion that eating the body and blood of your “dead god” represents some sort of inspiring or sacred activity. By the same token, critics of Judaism deride the thought that we take our helpless sons at the age of eight days and cut away a natural part of their tiny, intimate equipment, while the entire community celebrates. In other words, every religious faith contains elements of ritual or ideology that look illogical, even embarrassing to outsiders. The only fair basis for judging a faith community involves the way its adherents put its distinctive ideas into practice –and to determine whether those beliefs damage or benefit the world at large. 2-Don’t judge a religion’s present impact and influence based upon the excesses or abominations of its past. Whenever some sane observer notes the murderous cruelty of today’s Islamo-Nazi terrorists, Muslim apologists and various moral relativists love to bring up Christian misdeeds during the period of the Crusades and the Inquisition. This pathetic rhetorical trick (or tic, actually) represents an inane attempt to equate the homicide bombings of 2007 with the dreadful persecutions of a thousand years ago. Yes, it’s true that Jewish tradition teaches that King Saul bore an obligation to exterminate every soul among the Amalekites he conquered more than 3,000 years ago, but that ancient history bears no meaningful connection to the murderous Hamas drive-out-the-Jews policy of the 21st Century. Muslim fanatics proudly affirm their intention to replicate the aggressive conquests of their Seventh Century predecessors, but today’s Christians readily acknowledge their vast differences from their Medieval predecessors, just as modern-day Jews recognize that today’s Israel bears very limited functional resemblance to ancient Judea. In this regard, it’s profoundly unfair to judge Mormons of the moment based on long-ago episodes of early Mormon history like the Mountain Meadows Massacre. It’s true that the most embarrassing elements of the LDS past occurred far more recently than the comparably controversial episodes of Christianity or Judaism, but the Mormon Church represents a vastly more recent religious tradition – chartered for the first time on April 6, 1830. The savagery of Mountain Meadows, in other words, occurred just 27 years after the religion’s origination and in the course of the succeeding 150 years it’s hardly been repeated. By the same token, it’s fascinating to read of Brigham Young’s 51 wives and to debate the old Mormon practice of polygamy, but the church officially repudiated “plural wives” in 1890 and shortly thereafter began excommunicating those who persisted in the practice. In other words, for two thirds of the total history of the LDS faith, the church has sanctioned only monogamous marriage—so trying to tar modern Mormons like Romney with the multiple wives of his long-dead ancestors represents a shamelessly unfair smear tactic. One might as well criticize contemporary Catholics (or Protestants, or Eastern Orthodox, for that matter) for past slaughter of various heretics and unbelievers (including fellow Christians, of course)– since such butchery took up a much higher percentage of the total, 2,000 year history of Christianity than did polygamy of the 177 year history of Mormonism. 3-The only basis for evaluating a religion is the constructive or destructive behavior of its adherents: do their attempts to live their faith make the world around them better or worse? A quick trip to Utah (with its 70% LDS population) should disabuse even the most embittered anti-Mormon fanatic of the notion that this faith amounts to a malevolent cult. Sure, you’ll find irritating elements of Salt Lake City (or of Provo, for that matter, where I faced profound challenges in securing a desperately needed cup of Mormon-banned coffee during my visit to Brigham Young University) but the statistics about the Beehive State don’t lie: in terms of health, longevity, family life, crime, productivity, and general livability, this Mormon “Promised Land” compares very favorably with its neighbors in the inter-mountain West. Many “gentiles” (non-Mormons) look with admiration at the LDS practice of sending their young people on missionary assignments as part of the maturation process, or reserving one night a week for families to spend time together at home. Recounting stories of the “Mormon Wars” in which early followers of Joseph Smith battled with their often hostile, violent neighbors in Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois, shouldn’t distract attention from the educational, cultural, charitable and business institutions which Mormons have established with indefatigable energy. Even the scurrilous (and often hilarious) TV cartoon show “South Park,” concluded a 2003 episode ridiculing the story of Joseph Smith and his golden tablets, by acknowledging that today’s Mormons make famously good neighbors, displaying niceness and kindness to an occasionally cloying extent. While it makes perfect sense to condemn Islamo-Nazis for blowing themselves up to slaughter innocent women and children, or to decry the Mungiki for random beheadings and mutilations of females, there’s no similar basis for attacking Mormons because they send eighteen-year-olds on bicycles in skinny ties to witness to people about the descendants of Nephi. In short, while certain contemporary religious communities richly deserve harsh judgment and even condemnation, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints hardly qualifies as a current danger or a spur to criminal, destructive behavior. You may well disagree with the church’s ban on premarital sex, or social drinking, or showing all R-rated movies (including “Schindler’s List”) on premises it controls (like Brigham Young University), but such disagreements might constitute grounds for leaving the church, not assaulting it from outside. All religions have not been created equal (whether you believe that God, or man, created them) but in a pluralistic nation like the USA, candidates of any faith that exemplifies good citizenship and neighborliness (as the LDS church most emphatically does) deserve equal respect from prospective voters.

The answer is not always "C" (particularly on true/false questions)

No further comment necessary… my source: http://www.collegehumor.com/article:1730017

Check out this exam my friend took the other week. 

100 question True/False Communications Final

His professor sent him an e-mail the following day:

Dear Michael,
   
Every year I attempt to boost my students' final grades by giving them this relatively simple exam consisting of 100 True/False questions from only 3 chapters of material.  For the past 20 years that I have taught Intro Communications 101 at this institution I have never once seen someone score below a 65 on this exam. Consequently, your score of a zero is the first in history and ultimately brought the entire class average down a whole 8 points. 

There were two possible answer choices: A (True) and B (False). You chose C for all 100 questions in an obvious attempt to get lucky with a least a quarter of the answers. It's as if you didn't look at a single question. Unfortunately, this brings your final grade in this class to failing. See you next year!

May God have mercy on your soul.

Sincerely,
Professor William Turner

P.S. If all else fails, go with B from now on.
        B is the new C

Just thought you would like to know

It is remarkable to me that the Democrat Congressional majority, razor thin though it may be, is viewed by the media as a fundamental shift in public opinion. Further, the slippage in a few districts in 2006 was achieved by moderate Democrat candidates. So why is it that the leadership positions have been filled by the most extreme, far left members of the party. It does produce great theater from time to time. So I enjoy reading that Ms Pelosi has had a hard week.

The following article by Rich Gaylen is from Mullings.com at: http://mullings.com/

Mullings

An American Cyber-Column

Pelosi’s Problems

Friday, May 25, 2007

· Nancy Pelosi has had a tough week.

- She has had to agree to pretty much an unconditional surrender on the Iraq funding bill …

SIDEBAR

In a new low for the category: “Demonstrating Political Leadership,” Pelosi has announced that she probably will not vote for the bill she negotiated thereby leaving many of her Democratic colleagues to feel the full wrath of MoveOn.Org and its allies on the Far Left.

END SIDEBAR

- She had to oversee a vote which made a total lie of the pre-election promises to clean up the lobbying and earmarking activities which has led to dozens of Justice Department investigations of Members of Congress;

- She had to deny on a nationally televised Sunday morning show that she had known anything about the bellowing and finger pointing on the House Floor by her former mentor and current ally, the under- or mis-medicated John Murtha of Pennsylvania, and;

- She had to allow a vote to reprimand said John Murtha for that fairly serious violation of House Rules – a vote which was “tabled” as a procedural mechanism to avoid having Democrats have to vote a THIRD time in a week on an issue many of them hated.

· Murtha, who is chairman of the Defense Appropriations subcommittee, exploded over Republican threats to block a $23 million piece of pork that Murtha wants for his district. He said to Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich) – a former FBI Special Agent – that Rogers would never get an earmark into a Defense Appropriations Bill “not now, not ever.”

· I think I am safe in saying this not the first time the chairman of an appropriations subcommittee has threatened a colleague – it is not for nothing they are known as the “Cardinals” – but it generally happens in a hallway or a hideaway office, not on the Floor in full view of television cameras and the rest of the House.

· On the earmarking front, the Dems have come up with not one, but TWO end-runs according to a front-pager in the Washington Post by John Solomon and Jeff Birnbaum.

· On the Energy Appropriations bill, Members were not permitted to attach earmarks – explicit instructions that a Department or Agency purchase specific good or services (usually from a company owned by a constituent, a donor, or both) – so they have taken to calling the Department of Energy and telling them what a great idea it would be if the DoE would spend money – money which is already appropriated although not by name – on this or that.

· According to the WashPost piece this is happening often enough that it has a name: Phonemarking.

· As to the regular old-fashioned Pay-Off-Your-Highest-Fundraising-Lobbyist Earmarks which Democrats promised to reduce from an open fire hydrant to a dribble, Solomon and Birnbaum wrote that House Approps Chairman David Obey (D-Wis) said he would keep earmarks out of the spending bills “for now” but,

“Obey said the committee will deal with them at the end of the appropriations process in the closed-door meetings between House and Senate negotiators known as conference committees.”

· Ohhhh. I see. Democrats’ definition of a “reform” is: Keep special spending amendments out of the public eye but promise they will be slipped in during the secret conference negotiations.

· For those who – again – slept through the “How a Bill Becomes a Law” class, the House and Senate versions of a bill – any bill – must be identical. The House passes a version, the Senate passes its version then both Chambers send representatives to a “Conference Committee” to produce one identical bill.

· The resulting bill is not subject to amendment on the floor of the House or Senate. Each Chamber can accept it, reject it, or send to back “with instructions.”

· Here’s the secret: The actual bill text which will be sent to the President is usually accompanied by what is known as a “Conference Report” often containing instructions to an Agency or Department that they would do well to buy something even though it is not in the official bill.

· Conference Report language does not have the force of law, but Agencies and Departments know from whence the butter comes for their daily bread and so they are quite likely to accede to these requests from the Hill.

· It was for this sort of thing that the Republicans got fired last November and one can only hope that “non-partisan” groups like Common Cause are closely tracking the efficacy – if not the actual existence – of the promised Democratic reforms.

· So, Madam Speaker. Ain’t as easy as it looked, is it. Welcome to the NFL.

More Clinton Dirty Laundry

Dick Morris is always an entertaining read, and his perspective on the Clinton political machine is based upon years of personal experience. 

My Source for this article is www.vote.com at the following link:
http://www.vote.com/magazine/columns/dickmorris/column60509083.phtml

Bill's Ugly Buddy: Payments From Scandal-Tied Firm

By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN This is a more detailed version of a column that was published in The New York Post on May 24, 2007. Since he left office in 2001, former president Bill Clinton has been paid by InfoUSA, an Omaha, Nebraska company that has been identified as a key provider of specially designed databases that are sold to criminals who use the detailed information to defraud the unsuspecting elderly. Because Senate financial disclosure rules do not require Hillary Clinton to reveal exactly how much -- or for what -- the company has paid her husband  over the past five years, we don't know all the details. But we do know this: former presidents - especially Bill Clinton - don't come cheap. And, just months after he left the presidency, Bill Clinton was paid $200,000 for a speech given to InfoUSA in Omaha. Since then, he has been paid an undisclosed amount each year, listed only as "more than $1000" for 'non-employee compensation" on Senator Clinton's Senate financial disclosure form. According to the The New York Times, InfoUSA compiled and sold lists that disclosed the names of elderly men and women who would be likely to respond to unscrupulous scams. The lists left no doubt about the vulnerability of the elderly targets. The Times reported, for example, that InfoUSA advertised lists of  "Elderly Opportunity Seekers," 3.3 million older people "looking for ways to make money," and "Suffering Seniors," 4.7 million people with cancer or Alzheimer's disease. "Oldies but Goodies" contained 500,000 gamblers over 55 years old, for 8.5 cents apiece. One list said: "These people are gullible. They want to believe that their luck can change." InfoUSA sold lists to companies that were under investigation or closed down by courts because of their criminal activity. The company's internal emails show that employees were aware that the investigation for elderly fraud involved their customers, but sold the lists anyway. The Times profiled one unfortunate 92 year old man who entered a sweepstake sponsored by InfoUSA. The information that he innocently provided was then sold to the predator marketers. After responding to their telemarketing calls seeking financial information, his entire life savings was stolen from his bank account at Wachovia Bank. These practices, using lists supplied by InfoUSA were repeated all over the country. Last week, Hillary Clinton sought and obtained an extension of time to file her presidential candidate financial disclosure statement.  Unlike the information required of Senators, this filing requires her to list not just the sources of Bill's income but exactly how much they paid him.  While Senator Clinton offered no reason for the postponement, one cannot help wondering if a desire to conceal InfoUSA's payments to her husband while the company is under fire.   The relationship between Bill Clinton and Vinod "Vin" Gupta, the CEO and Chairman of InfoUSA is both long-standing and deep.  A frequent Clinton donor, he has stayed in the Lincoln Bedroom, admitted to donating $1,000,000 to the Clinton Library and told the press that he'd consider an additional donation. Again, since  the Clintons refuse to disclose who donated money to the library,  we don't know the total that he actually gave. In late 1999, Gupta gave $2,000,000 for Hillary Clinton's Millennium New Year's Eve bash. (They party cost $16 million and was closed to the press!) The links between Gupta and the Clintons are extensive: *    Gutpa raised over $200,000 for Hillary's Senate campaigns and contributed thousands to the DNC and Democratic House and Senate campaigns. *     InfoUSA was one of the sponsors of the Aspen Festival of Ideas last summer where Bill and Hillary Clinton both spoke. *    Gupta built the Bill Clinton Science & Technology Center  and the Hillary Clinton Mass Communications Center in his hometown of Rampur, India *     Bill and Gutpa traveled to India together *    Gupta reportedly paid for a golf outing for Bill at a legendary Scottish course *     InfoUSA appointed Terry McAuliffe, the  Clinton's longtime money man to the Board of Directors of its subsidiary company videoyellowpagesusa.com *     Clinton appointed Gupta to the Kennedy Center Board of Trustees only a few days before he left office *    Clinton also nominated Gupta as Consul General of Bermuda and U.S. Ambassador to Fiji, but Gupta was never confirmed *     Gupta's company co-sponsored the 2006 Clinton Global Initiative *    Gupta sent a $7000 treadmill to Chappaqua days after the Clintons left the White House. After the NY Post disclosed the gift, the Clintons returned the gift. Gupta's generosity to the Clintons is only matched by his generosity to himself. InfoUSA has lately been attacked by some of its  shareholders, particularly by the Greenwich, Connecticut company Cardinal Capital that went after Conrad Black. Lord Black is now on trial in Chicago for corporate fraud. Cardinal Capital objected to Gupta's purchase of a $600,000 skybox at the University of Nebraska, his family's charges of $13.5 million in private jet charges, and $2.5 million for the long term lease of a yacht - all with corporate funds. In addition to his 2001 visit to the company's headquarters, Bill Clinton was back there to speak at a conference on privacy issues in September 2006. Senator Clinton's disclosure statement for that period has not been publicly released, so we don't know how much he was paid. This connection between the Clintons and InfoUSA only underscores the necessity of full disclosure of income sources and amounts by all the presidential candidates and the release of their income tax returns, a step Mrs. Clinton has, thus far, refused to take.

 

Mr. Thompson of Tennessee

Sounds like Mr. Thompson of Tennessee is working on the “vision thing”.  I like it.  As long as he can get speech writers on a par with the script writers on Law & Order, he will be a welcome addition to the Republican Presidential Sweepstakes and Beauty Pageant.  Now if we can just get Newt into the race…

Source for this article is Townhall.com at the following link:
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/FredThompson/2007/05/25/i_remember

I Remember
By Fred Thompson
Friday, May 25, 2007

 

I remember when I was a kid; one thing was clear to me. The more I learned about the rest of the world, the luckier I felt just having been born in America. The more I learned about America, the more I appreciated what those who came before us built; and how exceptional they were. Not that there aren't other great places to live, but America is unique. It's not just that we are the freest and most prosperous country the world has ever seen. America has also freed more people than any other nation in history. A lot of people have done their part to see that we are blessed with the advantages we enjoy -- from hardworking pioneer mothers to the Framers of the Constitution. Memorial Day is coming up, though, and I'm thinking more about American soldiers who have made the ultimate sacrifice -- those who died to protect our way of life and make the world safe for democracy. There are some people, though, who don't think that's such a good idea. Some people even want to use Memorial Day to protest our military's presence in Iraq. The irony is that their right to protest was paid for by people willing to risk everything to keep the forces of tyranny at bay -- here as well as Japan, Germany, France, Italy, Korea, Burma, Vietnam, the Philippines and dozens of other countries. Over the years, a lot of people have tried to talk us out of feeling about America the way we do. Instead of pride in what America has done, they want us to feel guilty -- generally because we have so much more than rest of the world. Of course, it wouldn't help the rest of the world one whit if we had less -- either of freedom or of prosperity. On the contrary, it’s our liberties that have made us prosperous and there's no reason the rest of the world couldn't be just as well-off -- if they embraced freedom as well. Almost always, when I talk to people who see America as the problem, their arguments are based on ignorance or an outright tangling of history. What they thought they knew about America and the world came second- and third-hand through people with axes to grind. That's why I was troubled recently when I came across a report by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. The report's conclusion was that American colleges and universities are failing to increase their students' knowledge of America's history and institutions. Students polled in a wide range of colleges and universities showed no real improvement in their historical knowledge. Some actually forgot part of what they'd learned in high school by the time they graduated -- and I'm talking about some of our best-known Ivy League schools. Less than half of college seniors knew that, "We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal" is from the Declaration of Independence. Less than half knew basic facts about the First Amendment. Half didn't know that the Federalist Papers were written in support of the Constitution's ratification. Only a quarter of seniors knew the purpose of the Monroe Doctrine. This is our quandary. Memorial Day is about remembering. It’s about remembering those who died for our country; but it's also about remembering why they believed it was worth dying for. Too many Americans, though, have never been taught our own history and heritage. How can you remember something that you’ve never learned?

Fred Thompson is an actor and former Senator. His radio commentary airs on the ABC Radio Network and be blogs on The Fred Thompson Report.

Memorial Day 2007

The blog entry for 5/26/2007 for the Active Rain Real Estate Network contains a collection of You-Tube video presentations honoring our military forces and our fallen troops on this Memorial Day 2007. I recommend you take a moment and visit the site and view a couple of the collected items.

You do not need to join or be a member of Active Rain to reach this site – and we are all members of the community they honor with these presentations.

http://activerain.com/blogs/activerain

Weekend Entertainment

As a matter of interest to those with bizarre tastes in movies like mine, a particular favorite of mine was finally released to DVD last week.

“Becket” is a history piece dealing with 12th century England.  The primary characters, Thomas Becket and King Henry II are played by Richard Burton and Peter O’Toole.  The story deals with the relationship between King Henry and Thomas Becket, who, as Archbishop of Canterbury, is murdered in 1170.  The movie was made in 1964 and is just seeing the light of day on DVD for the first time. 

Interestingly, Peter O’Toole played Henry II again in the brilliant 1968 movie, “The Lion in Winter”.  Both O’Toole and Henry are older in this story and Henry’s wife and Queen is played by the magnificent Katherine Hepburn.  The Queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine, is a throw away role in “Becket”, but is shown in “The lion in Winter” as the towering historic figure that she was. While the specific events at Chinon in 1183 shown in the movie are fictionalized, the historic context and the relationships and events between the characters is accurate. 

If you enjoy well written and cast historical dramas, as I do, I recommend both.

Have a safe holiday weekend.

Politics as Usual

With hardly a wimper, the Iraq war is funded without holdbacks or limititations. Inspired leadership by the President? No – just politics as usual.

The Democrat majorities in congress are paper thin and accomplished by a very small shift in seats in the 2006 elections. A very small shift back in 2008 changes many things. It is interesting that the Dems took their good fortune in the last election as an license to place the far left fringe of the party into leadership positions. These people do not have the strength of their convictions and will cave in rather than take responsibility for their actions.

My source for this article is Townhall.com at the following link:

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/PatrickJBuchanan/2007/05/25/why_congress_caved_to_bush

Why Congress Caved to Bush By Patrick J. Buchanan Friday, May 25, 2007

The antiwar Democrats are crying betrayal -- and justifiably so. For a Democratic Congress is now voting to fully fund the war in Iraq, as demanded by President Bush, and without any timetable for a U.S. troop withdrawal. Bush got his $100 billion, then magnanimously agreed to let Democrats keep the $20 billion in pork they stuffed into the bill -- to soothe the pain of their sellout of the party base. Remarkable. If the Republican rout of 2006 said anything, it was that America had lost faith in the Bush-Rumsfeld conduct of the war and wanted Democrats to lead the country out. Yet, today, there are more U.S. troops in Iraq than when the Democrats won. More are on the way. And with the surge and retention of troops in Iraq beyond normal tours, there should be a record number of U.S. troops in country by year's end. Why did the Democrats capitulate? Because they lack the courage of their convictions. Because they fear the consequences if they put their antiwar beliefs into practice. Because they are afraid if they defund the war and force President Bush to withdraw U.S. troops, the calamity he predicts will come to pass and they will be held accountable for losing Iraq and the strategic disaster that might well ensue. Democrats are an intimidated party. The reasons are historical. They were shredded by Nixon and Joe McCarthy for FDR's surrenders to Stalin at Tehran and Yalta, for losing China to Mao's hordes, for the "no-win war" in Korea, for being "soft on communism." The best and the brightest -- JFK's New Frontiersmen -- were held responsible for plunging us into Vietnam and proving incapable of winning the war. A Democratic Congress cut off aid to Saigon in 1975, ceding Southeast Asia to Hanoi and bringing on the genocide of Pol Pot. Democrats know they are distrusted on national security. They fear that if they defund this war and bring on a Saigon ending in the Green Zone, it will be a generation before they are trusted with national power. And power is what the party is all about. Yet, not only does the situation in Iraq appear increasingly grim, with rising U.S. and Iraqi casualties, other shoes are about to drop that will reverberate throughout the region. Support for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, with his war in Lebanon a debacle and his leadership denounced by a commission he appointed, is in single digits. Waiting in the wings is Likud super-hawk "Bibi" Netanyahu, the most popular politician in Israel, who compares today to Munich 1938 and equates Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with Hitler. If and when Bibi comes to power, he will use every stratagem to provoke us into attacking "Hitler." Also drumming for war on Iran are the floundering neocons and the Israeli lobby. Under orders from the lobby, Nancy Pelosi stripped from a House bill a stipulation that Bush must come to Congress for authorization before launching an attack on Iran. With Democratic contenders reciting the mantra, "All options are on the table," and Iran defying U.N. sanctions, pursuing nuclear enrichment and detaining U.S. citizens, Bush has a blank check to launch a third war. Lebanon is ablaze. Gaza is ablaze. The Afghan war is not going well. The Taliban have a privileged sanctuary. The NATO allies grow weary. In Pakistan, the most dangerous country on earth -- one bullet away from an Islamic republic with atom bombs -- our erstwhile ally, President Musharraf, is caught in a political crisis over his ouster of the chief justice. Presidents Musharraf in Islamabad, Kharzi in Kabul and Siniora in Beirut, and Prime Minister Maliki in Baghdad, sit on shaky thrones. No one knows what follows their fall. But it is hard to see how it would not be crippling for America's position. With such volatility in this crucial region of the world, with such uncertainty, it is easy to see why Democrats prefer to be the "dummy" at the bridge table and let Bush play the hand. The congressional Democrats are cynical, but they are not stupid. If the surge works and U.S. troops are being withdrawn by fall 2008, they do not want it said of them that they "cut and ran" when the going got tough, that they played Chamberlain to Bush's Churchill. And if the war is going badly in 2008, they know that the American people, in repudiating the party of Bush and Cheney, have no other choice than the party of Hillary and Pelosi and Harry Reid. That is why congressional Democrats are surely saying privately of the angry antiwar left what has often been said by the Beltway Republican elite of the right: "Don't worry about them. They have nowhere else to go And that is why the antiwar left was thrown under the bus.

Opportunities Lost

Those who know me recall that Charles Krauthammer is one of my favorite columnists. He is insightful, articulate and usually right in his views.

My source for the following article is Townhall.com at the following link:

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/CharlesKrauthammer/2007/05/25/immigration_bill_not_ready_for_prime_time

Immigration bill not ready for prime time By Charles Krauthammer Friday, May 25, 2007

WASHINGTON -- As the most attractive land for would-be immigrants, America has the equivalent of the first 100 picks in the NBA draft. Yet through lax border control and sheer inertia, it allows those slots to be filled by (with apologies to Bill Buckley) the first 100 names in the San Salvador phone book. The immigration compromise now being debated in Congress does improve our criteria for selecting legal immigrants. Unfortunately, its inadequacies in dealing with illegal immigration -- specifically, ensuring that 10 years from now we will not have a new cohort of 12 million demanding amnesty -- completely swamp the good done on legal immigration. Today, preference for legal immigration is given not to the best and the brightest waiting on long lists everywhere on Earth to get into America, but to family members of those already here. Given that America has the pick of the world's energetic and entrepreneurial, this is a stunning competitive advantage, stunningly squandered. The current reform would establish a point system for legal immigrants in which brains and enterprise count. This is a significant advance. However, before we get too ecstatic about finally doing the blindingly obvious, note two caveats: (a) This new point system doesn't go into effect for eight years -- eight years of a new flood of immigrants chosen not for aptitude but bloodline. And who knows if a different Congress eight years from now will keep the current bargain. (b) It's not enough to just create a point system in which credit is given for education, skills and English competence. These points can be outweighed by points given for -- you guessed it -- family ties, which are already built into the proposed new point system. There are already amendments on the Senate floor to magnify the value of being a niece rather than a nurse. (Barack Obama is proposing to abolish the point system entirely in five years.) A point system can be manipulated to give far more weight to family than skills -- until it becomes nothing but a cover for the old chain-migration system. As for the bill's provisions about illegal immigration, let's not quibble: It grants the essentials of amnesty. True, there is a $5,000 fine (for a family of five!) attached to registering for legal status in the U.S. But the truly significant penalty for illegal immigration is deportation -- which undoes everything the immigrant has built in America. When the feds raid a sweatshop, the fear is not that the agent will grab you and yell, ``We are here to collect a fine.'' The fear is that he will yell, ``We are here to deport you back to the subsistence and misery you fled in China.'' From the moment this bill is signed, every illegal alien who does not have a criminal record can register with the U.S. government for temporary legal status. Moreover, as soon as the president certifies that certain border enforcement triggers have been met, this cohort of 12 million becomes eligible for the new Z-visa -- renewable until death -- which allows them to stay and work and travel and re-enter. This is amnesty -- and I would be all in favor of it if I believed in the border enforcement mechanisms in this bill. If these are indeed the last illegal immigrants to come in, let us generously and humanely take them out of the shadows. But if we don't close the border, that generous and humane gesture will be an announcement to the world that the smart way to come to America is illegally. In this bill, unfortunately, enforcement at the border is all bureaucratic inputs and fancy gadgets: principally, a doubling of the border patrol to 28,000, lots of high-tech sensors and four unmanned aerial vehicles. And 370 miles of fence -- half of what Congress had mandated last year. Does anyone imagine these will stop the flood? Four UAVs? And how does 370 miles of fence close a border of 2,100 miles? And if fences work (of course they do: look at the San Diego fence), why not build one all the way? The amnesty is triggered upon presidential certification that these bureaucratic benchmarks are met -- regardless of what is actually happening at the border. What vacuous nonsense. The trigger must be something real. I propose a single amendment, short and very concrete: ``The amnesty shall be declared the morning after the president has certified (citing disinterested studies) that illegal immigration across the southern border has been reduced by 90 percent.'' That single provision would guarantee passage of this comprehensive reform because most Americans would be glad to grant a generous amnesty -- if they can be assured it would be the last.