Saturday, December 24, 2011
One of the real travesties is that, while Ilario Pantano has been twice exonerated (once in a military proceeding, and more recently via an exhumation of the remains of the two Iraqi Islamic radicals and a scientific forensic study) the local North Carolina media still hold the story hostage, perpetuating a lie by the sin of omission. I called a Pat Gannon, who covers this beat for the Star-News, and asked him why this major story has not been reported. He said he was holding it for use closer to the election. Why? This is not about politics. It's about truth and honor. It is pure yellow journalism.and cruel in the extreme. Pat is an honorable man. Who is pressuring him to do this? He should ashamed. Verne Strickland.
Friday, December 23, 2011
New policy will allow hijabs, turbans in JROTC. Oh, and gold lapel pins with the Cross of Jesus would be nice too.
Verne Strickland Blogmaster / December 23, 2011
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has announced that the Department of Defense (DOD) will begin allowing Muslim and Sikh to wear an Islamic head scarf (hijab) or a turban as they participate in the Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps (JROTC).
In October, the Washington-based Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization wrote to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta after a 14-year-old Muslim student at Ravenwood High School in Brentwood, Tenn., was forced to transfer out of a JROTC class when her commanding officers told her she could not wear hijab while marching in the September homecoming parade.
SEE: JROTC's Head Scarf Rule Keeps Tenn. Girl from Parade
http://tinyurl.com/3ckva3x
JROTC Examines Rules After Headscarf Complaint
http://tinyurl.com/6msmfsf
Video: Tenn. Muslim Student Not Allowed to Wear Hijab in JROTC (CAIR)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3PTFCBUf1k
CAIR requested constitutionally-protected religious accommodations for the girl and for future Muslim JROTC participants.
SEE: CAIR Letter to DOD
http://tinyurl.com/lettertodod
In a December 19 letter sent to CAIR, Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army Larry Stubblefield wrote:
"I have been asked to respond on behalf of the Secretary of Defense Leon E. Panetta to your October 13, 2011 letter concerning Miss Demin Zawity's request to wear a religious head covering (hijab) while participating in an Army Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC) event at Ravenwood High School.
"Based on your concerns, the Army has reviewed its JROTC uniform policy and will develop appropriate procedures to provide Cadets the opportunity to request the wear of religious head dress, such as the turban and hijab. This change will allow Miss Zawity and other students the chance to fully participate in the JROTC program.
Additionally, a representative from the U.S. Army Cadet Command will contact Miss Zawity and provide her the opportunity to rejoin the Ravenwood High School JROTC unit.
"The Army prides itself in being a diverse organization, comprised of individuals from many faiths and religions. We appreciate you bringing this matter to our attention."
"We welcome the fact that Muslim and Sikh students nationwide will now be able to participate fully in JROTC leadership activities while maintaining their religious beliefs and practices," said CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad.
CAIR press release, 22 December 2011
In October, the Washington-based Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization wrote to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta after a 14-year-old Muslim student at Ravenwood High School in Brentwood, Tenn., was forced to transfer out of a JROTC class when her commanding officers told her she could not wear hijab while marching in the September homecoming parade.SEE: JROTC's Head Scarf Rule Keeps Tenn. Girl from Parade
http://tinyurl.com/3ckva3x
JROTC Examines Rules After Headscarf Complaint
http://tinyurl.com/6msmfsf
Video: Tenn. Muslim Student Not Allowed to Wear Hijab in JROTC (CAIR)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3PTFCBUf1k
CAIR requested constitutionally-protected religious accommodations for the girl and for future Muslim JROTC participants.
SEE: CAIR Letter to DOD
http://tinyurl.com/lettertodod
In a December 19 letter sent to CAIR, Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army Larry Stubblefield wrote:
"I have been asked to respond on behalf of the Secretary of Defense Leon E. Panetta to your October 13, 2011 letter concerning Miss Demin Zawity's request to wear a religious head covering (hijab) while participating in an Army Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC) event at Ravenwood High School.
"Based on your concerns, the Army has reviewed its JROTC uniform policy and will develop appropriate procedures to provide Cadets the opportunity to request the wear of religious head dress, such as the turban and hijab. This change will allow Miss Zawity and other students the chance to fully participate in the JROTC program.
Additionally, a representative from the U.S. Army Cadet Command will contact Miss Zawity and provide her the opportunity to rejoin the Ravenwood High School JROTC unit.
"The Army prides itself in being a diverse organization, comprised of individuals from many faiths and religions. We appreciate you bringing this matter to our attention."
"We welcome the fact that Muslim and Sikh students nationwide will now be able to participate fully in JROTC leadership activities while maintaining their religious beliefs and practices," said CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad.
CAIR press release, 22 December 2011
Poverty scandal -- NC 10th poorest state. Robeson poorest county in state. This is McIntyre country.
Verne Strickland Blogmaster / December 23, 2011
The other troubling news was that median income per household nationwide was an inflation-adjusted $49,445. This is about the same as in 1989 and down 2.3% from 2009. Economists fear that Americans are not consumers. It is easy to tell why when their real income has been frozen in place for more than two decades.
The problems of poverty and low income are as much local as national. The poverty rate is 21% in Mississippi. The state also has the lowest median income at $36,850. Mississippi is among the states with the worst education systems, highest obesity levels, highest unemployment, and lowest rates of health insurance coverage.
The state is an economic black hole, and it shows in the way people suffer there. And, as is true with black holes, it is nearly impossible for the residents of Mississippi to escape their difficult financial situations. There is a dearth of federal programs that target specific states and cities based on local economic need.
24/7 Wall St. reviewed census data from all 50 states on median income, poverty rates, unemployment, and lack of health insurance. We then identified the ten states that have the lowest median income. We also looked at why low-income households are concentrated in these states and what, in some cases, has been done to reverse the difficult situations.
These are the poorest states in America, according to 24/7 Wall St.:
Poverty rate: 16.1% (tied for 9th highest)
Without health insurance: 16.7% (13th highest)
Unemployment: 10.1% (9th highest)
North Carolina has one of the lowest median incomes in the country. It does not perform much better on other metrics related to poverty. There have been a number of programs implemented to help combat poverty in the state recently. One example is the No Kid Hungry program which aims to end childhood hunger in North Carolina by 2015. According to information from the program, "more than 1 in 4 children in North Carolina do not get sufficient food."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/15/americas-poorest-states-_n_964058.html?icid=maing-grid7|maing6|dl1|sec1_lnk3|96106
The five poorest counties in North Carolina are (by poverty rate):
BROKE? HUNGRY? JOBLESS? WONDERING WHERE TO TURN? GO HERE FIRST:
www.MikeWorksforMe.com
And as your Seventh District NC Congressman, he has been working for you since 1997, give or take a few evictions, foreclosures, crop failures, and trips to the local soup kitchen. Do you hope the day will come soon when he's not working for you anymore?
STARTLING STATS: NC 1Oth POOREST STATE, ROBESON POOREST COUNTY. MIKE WORKS FOR YOU.
First Posted: 9/15/11 02:24 PM ET Updated: 9/15/11 02:47 PM ET
The national poverty rate last year was 15.1%. That is up from 11.3% in 2000 and is the highest it has been since 1993. Over 46 million people lived below the poverty line in 2010. The cut-off for that line is households of four people who made under $22,314.
The other troubling news was that median income per household nationwide was an inflation-adjusted $49,445. This is about the same as in 1989 and down 2.3% from 2009. Economists fear that Americans are not consumers. It is easy to tell why when their real income has been frozen in place for more than two decades.
The problems of poverty and low income are as much local as national. The poverty rate is 21% in Mississippi. The state also has the lowest median income at $36,850. Mississippi is among the states with the worst education systems, highest obesity levels, highest unemployment, and lowest rates of health insurance coverage.
The state is an economic black hole, and it shows in the way people suffer there. And, as is true with black holes, it is nearly impossible for the residents of Mississippi to escape their difficult financial situations. There is a dearth of federal programs that target specific states and cities based on local economic need.
24/7 Wall St. reviewed census data from all 50 states on median income, poverty rates, unemployment, and lack of health insurance. We then identified the ten states that have the lowest median income. We also looked at why low-income households are concentrated in these states and what, in some cases, has been done to reverse the difficult situations.
These are the poorest states in America, according to 24/7 Wall St.:
Poverty rate: 16.1% (tied for 9th highest)
Without health insurance: 16.7% (13th highest)
Unemployment: 10.1% (9th highest)
North Carolina has one of the lowest median incomes in the country. It does not perform much better on other metrics related to poverty. There have been a number of programs implemented to help combat poverty in the state recently. One example is the No Kid Hungry program which aims to end childhood hunger in North Carolina by 2015. According to information from the program, "more than 1 in 4 children in North Carolina do not get sufficient food."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/15/americas-poorest-states-_n_964058.html?icid=maing-grid7|maing6|dl1|sec1_lnk3|96106
Answer:
- Robeson (23.8%)
- Tyrrell (23.5%)
- Halifax (23.2%)
- Warren (21.8%)
- Edgecombe (21.5%)
BROKE? HUNGRY? JOBLESS? WONDERING WHERE TO TURN? GO HERE FIRST:
www.MikeWorksforMe.com
And as your Seventh District NC Congressman, he has been working for you since 1997, give or take a few evictions, foreclosures, crop failures, and trips to the local soup kitchen. Do you hope the day will come soon when he's not working for you anymore?
Mike McIntyre
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Mike McIntyre | |||
|---|---|---|---|
 | |||
| Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from North Carolina's 7th district | |||
| Incumbent | |||
| Assumed office January 3, 1997 | |||
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
A smear that lingered for far too long: Liberal media won't let Ilario Pantano off the hook. That's criminal.
Verne Strickland Blogmaster/ December 22, 2011
** NOTE: Thanks for conservative activist Jude Eden for bringing this story to my attention.
Last Updated: 10:57 PM, December 19, 2011
Posted: 10:43 PM, December 19, 2011
Print
Arthur HermanA dogged NCIS investigator has proven that Pantano, then a Marine lieutenant, should never have been put up on war-crimes charges back in 2004-5. But that doesn’t wipe away the endless smears thrown at him since.
Maybe the media and the bloggers hated him so much because he lived the classic American success story.
Born to a poor family in Hell’s Kitchen, Pantano showed the smarts to get a half-scholarship to the elite Horace Mann School — then put off college to join the Marines in the first Gulf War.
Pantano: Now fully vindicated by NCIS.
In April 2004, 2nd Lt. Pantano was leading his squad in Iraq’s deadly Sunni Triangle when they stopped two Iraqis fleeing in a car from what turned out to be an insurgent ammo dump. Pantano ordered the pair to search their own vehicle to make sure it wasn’t booby-trapped.
When they charged at him instead, he opened fire. But one Marine, a disgruntled sergeant Pantano had disciplined more than once, claimed the two men had been kneeling and that Pantano shot them from behind.
All other testimony contradicted him, yet that was the witness the Judge Advocate General’s investigating officer chose to believe when he charged Pantano with murder.
Since the witness kept changing his story and no evidence backed him up, the charges were dismissed in May 2005. But Pantano’s career as a Marine was over — and his nightmare was just beginning.
It was the crazy season after Abu Ghraib — a time when Rep. Jack Murtha was accusing Marines of murder in Haditha and Sen. Dick Durbin was comparing military personnel at Gitmo to Nazis and Pol Pot.
For the media, it was the charge against Pantano, not the verdict, that mattered. New York Magazine pilloried him on its May 21, 2005 cover — sneering at his rags-to-riches story and using his “post 9/11 fervor” to portray him as a trigger-happy nut. Pantano received death threats from a jihadist Web site, and two retired Marines felt obliged to maintain a security watch around Pantano’s house.
Eventually, it all helped with his decision to leave New York. But he still wanted to serve his country. Last year, he won the endorsement of Tea Party groups to run for Congress in North Carolina. Liberal bloggers immediately went into high gear. Slate’s Matt Yglesias said it proved that “Love of violence and brutality is deeply engrained in the conservative world view.” Other bloggers labeled him a Jack Bauer Republican, implying that he was a ruthless renegade who believes that the end justifies the means.
Pantano lost in the general election, and might have faded into oblivion — except for William Rodriguez of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, who’d always been bothered by the “lynch mob” atmosphere, as he put it, surrounding Pantano’s trial, as well as the fact that there’d been no autopsy of the two Iraqis.
After five years of trying, Rodriguez finally convinced the Marines to exhume the bodies, and this last month proved that the two men had indeed been shot from the front, not the behind.
Five years too late, Ilario Pantano has finally found justice — as have those Marines accused in the Haditha case, who had the charges against them dropped over time, as well.
But two nagging questions remain. When will the media quit treating every war incident involving Americans as if it were My Lai? And when will our military justice system stop second-guessing our troops on the battlefield and let them do their job?
Arthur Herman is an American Enterprise Institute visiting scholar.
Have a comment on this PostOpinion column? Send it in to LETTERS@NYPOST.COM!
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Mike McIntyre blasted in NRCC robocalls on tax vote. He sure needs the publicity.
Posted: Dec 21, 2011 9:03 AM EST Updated: Dec 21, 2011 9:03 AM EST
WASHINGTON, D.C. (WECT) - Politico is reporting Wednesday morning that Congressman Mike McIntyre (D-NC) is one of thirteen Democratic incumbents being criticized in robocalls from the National Republican Congressional Committee over his vote on the payroll tax.
McIntyre sent out a statement Tuesday, explaining why he voted in support of the plan to extend the tax breaks two months. House Republicans were in the majority in rejecting the proposal. They want the cuts to extend for a full year.
"Raising taxes on American families is simply the wrong thing to do," the extremely incumbent Democrat said. "That's why I voted for the bi-partisan bill which has already passed the Senate with 89% of the vote. This bill will extend the payroll tax cut to help working families, ensure Medicare patients can still see their doctor, help those who are unemployed, protect our hospitals, and provide a quick decision on the Keystone pipeline that will help with energy independence and job creation.
"This is a bill that is fully paid for, and will not add to the deficit. It is time for the bickering and finger pointing to stop – the American people are demanding it and our nation needs it," Congressman Mike McIntyre said in an emailed statement."
Politico reports that McIntyre, along with Jason Altmire (PA-4), Lois Capps (CA-24), Ben Chandler (KY-6), Jim Costa (CA-21), Mark Critz (PA-12), John Garamendi (CA-3), Larry Kissell (NC-8), Jerry McNerney (CA-9), Brad Miller (NC-13), Collin Peterson (MN-7), Heath Shuler (NC-11) and Betty Sutton (OH-13), will be the subject of targeted messages to voters.
This is the proposed script released to Politico:
"Hello, I'm calling from the National Republican Congressional Committee with an important alert. If you're as fed up with Congress as everyone else is, wait til you hear what your (Congressman's name) did. Not only did (Congressman's name) vote last week pave the way for a tax increase for you and every other American middle class family, but he/she is now stubbornly standing by his/her position that could raise your taxes by over a thousand dollars starting on January 1st.
Even House Republicans and President Obama agree that we should find an immediate long-term solution for middle class Americans. Why doesn't (Congressman's name) want to give American families the same stability over the holidays?
Call (Congressman's name) at (office number). Ask him/her to stop being the typical Washington politician and for once, try to work in a bipartisan manner to help lower taxes for middle class families struggling with a harsh economy."
Copyright 2011 WECT. All rights reserved.
Ancient document sheds new light on The Three Wise Men. Very inspiring.
Verne Strickland Blogmaster / December 21, 2011
First Posted: 21/12/11 11:32 GMT Updated: 21/12/11 20:39 GMT
Now, an ancient document found in the Vatican has revealed a different and more in depth version of the Magi's journey.
The mysterious 'Revelation of the Magi' document has been held at the Vatican for 250 years and has only now been translated from ancient Syriac by a university professor.
Brent Landau - an expert in religious studies from the University of Oklahoma - spent two years poring over the frail pages of the 8th-century manuscript. The document itsself is merely a copy of a text first written down almost half a millennium earlier.
The additional details and differences from the traditional story of the Three Wise Men based on the Gospel of Matthew are:
- Rather than being Persians, the travelers came from the semi-mythical land of Shir which is now associated with ancient China - making their journey even longer.
- The document claims there were 'scores' of Magi rather than just three, suggesting that several men visited baby Jesus. The Gospel of Matthew doesn't specify an amount - the idea that it was three men arose from the number of gifts they are supposed to have delivered.
- The wise men are described a descendants of Seth, the third son of Adam.
- They belong to a sect that believed in silent prayer.
- Professor Landau told The Times: "Somebody was really fascinated by the wise men to have created this big, long story and tell it from their perspective. A great deal of thought and imagination has gone into it.
- "There are many details of strange rituals, praying and silence. There is a description of a sacred mountain and purification at a sacred spring.
- "The detail is so great I wonder if it is the community's actual practices that are being described. Nobody knows where Matthew got the story from so along with Matthew's Gospel this is as close as you can get to the Magi."
- The Revelation of the Magi by Brent Landau is published by HarperOne.
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