Goncalves said, "I believe it was the Holy Spirit of God that really made me want to tell him about Jesus," Goncalves told ABCNews.com.
"I would never be able to do that myself. I would never think that God could use me the way that he did," she said. "[God] impressed me."
Sincerely,
Zack Space
Member of Congress
Obama Nation: Can the “Hope & Change” Promise Make A Positive Difference?
Have you ever wondered how Barack Hussein Obama became president? Being the first African American is a great accomplishment. He served three terms in the senate from 1992 to 2005 until he decided to run for the presidency. He graduated Columbia University and Harvard Law School and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004. In 2000 he lost a bid for a seat in the House of Representatives. A debatable subject is his birth. Records show he was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, but others believe that Kenya is his real birth location. We do know that his mother Stanley Ann Dunham got remarried to Lolo Soetoro from Kenya after Barack Obama Sr. died. Obama Jr. from age six to ten went to schools such as Besuki Public School and St. Francis of Assisi School while living in Jakarta. Then in 1971 he moved to live with his grandparents Madelyn and Stanley Armour Dunham. From the fifth grade until his high school graduation in 1979 he attended Punahou School. This opened the doors for him to attend Occidental College. His first public speech was about disinvestment from South Africa due to the Apartheid. Then in 1981 he transferred to Columbia University in New York City. His major was political science with specialties in international relations. For a year he worked at the Business International Corporation and then the New York Public Interest Research Group.
Later, he moved back to Chicago and was hired as the director of the Developing Communities Project (DCP) from June 1985 to May 1988. This is a church-based organization with eight Catholic parishes in Greater Roseland. While there, he set up a job training program, college prep tutoring, and tenants’ rights in Altgeld Gardens. Plus, he worked as a consultant and instructor for the Gamaliel Foundation. While Obama was at Harvard Law School he was selected as the editor of the Harvard Law Review during his first year and president the second year. Each summer he went back to Chicago and worked as a summer associate for law firms Sidley Austin in 1898 and Hopkins & Sutter in 1990. He graduated with honors from Harvard in 1991 receiving a Juris Doctor (J.D.) magna cum laude. Then he really made headlines as the first black president of the Harvard Law review which opened the doors to a publishing contract for a book on race relations. This in turn became his manuscript for a personal memoir called “Dreams from My Father.” Also in 1991, he took a two-year job as Visiting Law and Government Fellow at the University of Chicago Law School while working on his first book.
For the next twelve years, he was a Lecturer from 1992 to 1996 and then a Senior Lecturer from 1996 to 2004 at the University of Chicago Law School teaching constitutional law. Also during some of this time from April to October 1992, he directed Illinois’s Project Vote. They registered 150,000 of the 400,000 unregistered African Americans in the state. Crain’s Chicago Business Obama in 1993 listed him as “40 under Forty” powers to be. Law firm Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland hired him as an associate for three years in 1993 to 1996 and then counsel from 1996 to 2004. His law license became inactive in 2002. I have to stop here for a moment and ask this question: How can a man that loses his law license still remain in law? It is a question a lot of Americans are asking. Obama then served on the board of directors for the Woods Fund of Chicago and Chicago Annenberg Challenge. Now let’s look at his time while he was in the Senate.
Obama in 1996 succeeded State Senator Alice Palmer in the Illinois 13th District. He sponsored tax credits for low-income workers, welfare reform, and increased subsides for childcare. In 2001 he was the co-chairman of the bipartisan Join Committee on Administrative Rules. Then he was reelected to the Illinois Senate in 1998 and again in 2002. But in 2000 he lost a Democratic primary run for the U.S. House of Representatives to Bobby Rush.
As chairman of the Illinois Senate’s Health and Human Services Committee, he sponsored a monitor of racial profiling to require police to record the race of drivers they detained. Then during his 2004 campaign for the U.S. Senate he was active with police in enacting death penalty reforms. Obama’s March 2004 win in primary election into the U.S. Senate, made him popular. The Democratic Party was excited by his endeavors and this led to Obama reissuing his memoir, Dream from My Father. In the November 2004 general election, he won 70% of the vote.
When Obama was senator in 2005 he was the only Senate member of the Congressional Black Caucus. CQ Weekly said he was a “loyal Democrat” from the findings of the analysis of all Senate votes in 2005-2007. He was ranked the “most liberal” senator from 2005 through 2007 by the National Journal. His approval in Illinois was 72% during the time of him holding the senate office. While as a senator, Obama accomplished much. Such as the cosponsored Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act and the two laws with his name: Lugar-Obama, it increased the Nunn-Lugar cooperative threat reduction for weapons, and the Coburn-Obama Transparency Act, which created the USAspending.gov that showed federal spending.
Then Senator Obama teamed up with Thomas R. Carper, Tom Coburn, and John McCain to create the Strengthening Transparency and Accountability in Federal Spending Act of 2008. He also voted for the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005 and the FISA Amendments Act of 2008. President Bush signed into law the Democratic Republic of the Congo Relief, Security, and Democracy Promotion Act, which was the first federal legislation to pass with Obama being the sponsor. The Honest Leadership and Open Government Act were passed into law September 2007 when Obama worked with Senator Feingold to help corporate jet provision.
Two laws that he couldn’t get passed were the Deceptive Practices and Voter Intimidation Prevention Act, which would criminalize deceptive practices in federal elections. It makes me wonder how “ACORN, SEIU, Van Jones, and the other Czars”, have slipped through the cracks for so long. It’s because total power corrupts and the socialist institution known as the Democratic Party is getting worse in covering up their mistakes. The second bill that didn’t pass was the Iraq War De-Escalation Act of 2007. After being in the war of Iraq for over ten years you would think we would be ahead, but we are still fighting a war that is needed, but not supported enough.
In 2008, his amendment to the Defense Authorization Act helped personality disorder military discharges. The Iran Sanctions Enabling Act didn’t pass due to fear of nuclear terrorism. The Senate amendment of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program brought protection to family members assisting soldiers with combat-related injuries.
Obama also held various Senate Committees for Foreign Relations, Environment and Public Works and Veteran’s Affairs. Then he left the Environment and Public Works to work with Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. While as the Chairman of the Senate’s subcommittee on European Affairs, he met with Mahmoud Abbas and gave a speech at the University of Nairobi condemning corruption of the Kenyan government. It was on November 13, 2008 he announced his resignation in the Senate to run for the office of the President.
The “Hope and Change” mentioned during Obama’s campaign for presidency brought many people together believing that the future would be bright and filled with great expectations. His ideas were ending the Iraq War, creating a better energy independence and universal health care. He also wanted Guantanamo Bay’s detention camp closed “as soon as practicable as and no later than” January 2010. He also promised to reduce the secrecy to presidential records and changed procedures with the Freedom of Information Act. Then to further change things he reversed Bush’s ban on federal funding to foreign establishment that allow abortions and the limited funding of embryonic stem cell research. Then he changed the interrogation techniques by requiring the use of the Army Field Manual. One of his executive orders was “Ethics Commitments by Executive Branch Personnel.” Followed by two Presidential Memoranda’s about energy independence and ended the Mexico City Policy which banned grants for abortions or counseling and he also signed the bill raising taxes to 62 cents a pack for cigarettes. His greatest accomplishment was being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize October 2009 for “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.” But was his reward given to early? I believe so because he hasn’t been president long enough to make real change in foreign policy.
Obama’s policy changes started from the beginning. He made transparency more available with executive order 13233 being revoked and by using Whitehouse.gov and YouTube to show a weekly address. The only problem with this statement of transparency was that he failed to show debates over the health care reform on C-Span all the time. Then Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) said “The Obama administration has now taken exactly the same position as the Bush administration… I don’t see how you can keep people from knowing who visits the White House and adhere to a policy of openness and transparency.” So on June 16, 2009 the lawsuit was made. Also on this same date, MSNBC said that the visitor logs since January 20th inauguration was denied. The White House had a rebuttal and on January 29, 2010 they began to release names of the visitor records only after visiting the White House. All names can be found online at the official White House website.
From the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to the Cash for Clunkers, Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010, our country is being taken over by allowing small and large businesses to lose their power by the government’s hands. Then you have to take into effect people like Bill Ayers, Van Jones, being associates and Czars for the president having ties to communism and terrorism. The Weather Underground bombed the U.S. and made a declaration to destroy America as we see it today. They believe a totalarian government is the only way to go. As long as we continue this direction, America’s future will become a socialist’s wet dream.
With friends like these who needs enemies? Obama suggests in Dreams is revealing: “To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk rock performance poets. We smoked cigarettes and wore leather jackets. At night, in the dorms, we discussed neocolonialism, Frantz Franon, Eurocentrism and patriarchy.” Franz Franon advocated “revolutionary violence.” Next is Barbara Ransby, who was on the panel “Intellectuals in Times of Crisis Experiences and applications of intellectual work in urgent situations” along with Obama and Bill Ayers. We all know that Bill Ayers is the founder of the Weather Underground. Ransby helped create the Black Radical Congress. Trevor Loudon said this in June 1998, “It seemed to us the idea of bringing together the varied sections of the Black radical tradition- Socialists and Communists, revolutionary nationalists, and radical Black feminists and womanists— was long overdue. We began talking with others about the idea and possibilities for such a gathering. . . . Those who gathered reflected a broad spectrum of the radical tradition. Participants came as individuals but represented connections to groups ranging from the New Afrikan People’s Organization, Black Workers for Justice, The Labor Party, The Communist Party, The Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, African American Agenda 2000, The Chicago Ida B. Wells Forum and the Committees of Correspondence.” So would it be to no surprise when Obama said, ”Whatever we once were, we are no longer just a Christian nation; we are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers” during his speech for the Call of Renewal Conference on June 28, 2006. I do agree with him that this is somewhat true, but what is his reasoning behind it? The answer to that becomes clear after looking at a few more of his associates. Take Saul Alinsky, who Obama never met but was influenced by his fundamental teachings. David Horowitz a “radical-turned conservative” states that Alinsky a “Communist/Marxist fellow-traveler who helped establish the dual political tactics of confrontation and infiltration that characterized the 1960’s and have remained central to all subsequent revolutionary movements in the United States.” It was a Alinsky follower by the name of Gregry Galluzzo who taught Obama “to embrace the organizing theories of Chicago radical Saul Alinksy, putting his pre-convictions on hold and conducting scores of interviews –‘one-on-ones’—with local residents and community leaders in an attempt to find areas in which their self-interests converged and could be harnessed to create power and to drive communal action.” This brought on what would later be known as the New Party.
The New Party was a creation from University of Wisconsin’s professor Joel Rogers and Sandy Pope. Rogers started the Apollo Alliance which later helped Obama’s 2009 Stimulus Bill Cap and Trade. The party had members from the Democratic Socialists for America (DSA) that worked with ACORN—the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. Their agenda was “that the social, economic, and political progress of the United States requires a democratic revolution in America—the return of power to the people. Democracy in America does not work today.” Each member was held accountable to the following principles: “The establishment, defense, and facilitation of worker, consumer, shareholder, and taxpayer rights to democratic self-organization. The creation of a sustainable economy based on the responsible and reverent use of our earth’s resources—taking no more than we need, replacing and reusing all that we can. A society in which we all take seriously our responsibilities as parents, workers, and citizens. The democratization of our banking and financial system—including popular election of those charged with public stewardship of our banking system, worker-owner control over their pension assets, community-controlled alternative financial institutions. A Bill of Rights for America’s Children, guaranteeing true equality of opportunity, providing equal education for all students, and achieving an adequate standard of health care, nutrition, housing, and safety. Community-control equitable funding of our schools, within which we seek true excellence in public education along with equal opportunity to achieve it. Full employment, a shorter work week, and a guaranteed minimum income for all adults; a universal ‘social wage’ to include such basic benefits as health care, child care, vacation time, and lifelong access to education and training; a systematic phase-in of comparable worth and like programs to ensure gender equity. A progressive tax system based on the ability to pay. A reduction of national military spending to that necessary to the defense of the United States and an end to unilateral military interventions. Trade among nations consistent with mutual improvement in living standards, reduced cross-national inequalities, and sustainable development. In all aspects of our economy and social life, an absolute bar to discrimination based on race, gender, age, country of origin, and sexual orientation, and absolute security in reproductive rights, fundamental liberties, and privacy.” The New Zeal blog found the Spring 1996 newspaper New Party News stating, “New Party members won three other primaries this Spring in Chicago: Barack Obama (State Senate).” Obama said that, “these victories prove that small‘d’ democracy can work.”
Another New Party member, Manning Marable said, “Obama is not a Marxist or a socialist—he is a progressive liberal.” Now I have to again stop here and say what is the definition of a “progressive”? It is a reform against what is already established. But from what I have seen Obama is clearly not a liberal but a strong progressive liberal leaning towards socialism. But if I had to define him with one word it would be “socialist.” I could go on with Van Jones who was removed from his office after people showed the truth of his socialism and terrorist connections and other Czars that have shown progressive socialism history, but I will hold that off for another essay. Now that I have defined Obama, how could such a person win the presidency in 2012?
For Obama to win in 2012 he will have to make some drastic changes. The unemployment rate would have to drop below 8% and a cut in taxes should help accomplish this. Then the war in Iraq and Afghanistan would have to end or remove troops and just bomb it, then pull out. Next on the list would have to remove the Czars and risky people he has in office or associated with. Israel must been shown more support and the fight against Iran, North Korea should be delegated carefully. For those concerned with his origin of birth, he should release most of his records. I personally have a history in the military with a Top Secret clearance so I know his records are hidden to protect him from blackmail. Then the lack of transparency must be address by releasing more of the government records to public knowledge. Ron Paul is correct by wanting the Federal Reserve audited, so Obama must do this as well. Obama’s lack of integrity and responsibility towards admitting and taking ownership of the White House Presidency and quit blaming Bush, this should be followed up by a public apology to the American people.
The Lincoln style socialism of Obama can be turned around only if the free will of Barack Hussein Obama makes true change in his personal life. Time will tell from the elections of the Senate and House in November, to what he does in the next two years. From what I see and have heard, he seems to be a man of extremes so this balance must come if he is to ever remain in politics with a positive light. For when the truth is exposed it sets you free. I pray that Obama listens to the people.
Works Cited
Barack Obama, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama
Obamas Hope and Change http://obamashopeandchange.com/
Barack Obama, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance Three Rivers Press, 1995
Barack Obama, Call to Renewal Conference, Soujourners, June 28, 2006,
http://www.factcheck.org/askfactcheck/did_obama_say_we_no_longer.html
Trevor Loudon, “Black Radicals for Obama,” RBO, October 12, 2008 http://therealbarackobama.wordpress.com/2008/20/04/loudon-black-radicals-for-obama
Van Jones & Bill Ayers Have In Common http://therealbarackobama.wordpress.com/2010/07/17/what-do-bill-ayers-and-van-jones-have-in-common-stormy-weather-of-course/
PlentyMag.com, “Coal and clear skies: Obama’s balancing act. An investigative report of presidential hopeful Barack Obama’s environmental philosophy,” Mother Nature Network, April 8, 2009: http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/politics/stories/coal-and-clear-skies-obama's-balancing-act
“The New Party Principles,” ThirdWorldTraveler.com, undated, http://thirdworldtraveler.com/Political/NewParty_Principles.html
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A group of kids with hearts of gold is paying it forward to other kids. Today the five Jacques kids threw an "unbirthday" party for 29 homeless kids who live at the Freedom House.
"There were just a lot of people on the streets who were sleeping on park benches," says Marisa Jacques. For her and her four siblings seeing the realities of poverty sparked their passion to help.
"I wanna get out there and do stuff and really help the world," says 13 year-old Nico Jacques. And so the idea of a day where homeless kids could forget their worries and just be kids, was born.
"If we had a birthday party we have too many toys so we thought that we could give them to the homeless so that they could have them too," explains nine-year-old Natalie Jacques.
With a little help from mom and dad, they invited 400 of their friends and kids from the freedom house to come and celebrate with a day of presents, swimming and cake.
Freedom House kids actually get a chance to have fun today and they can do anything they want," adds Gabriela Jacques, who is 7 years old.
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
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Click to read original story from Yahoo News
From The Business Insider
Editor's note: Michael Snyder is editor of theeconomiccollapseblog.com
The 22 statistics detailed here prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the middle class is being systematically wiped out of existence in America.
The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer at a staggering rate. Once upon a time, the United States had the largest and most prosperous middle class in the history of the world, but now that is changing at a blinding pace.
So why are we witnessing such fundamental changes? Well, the globalism and "free trade" that our politicians and business leaders insisted would be so good for us have had some rather nasty side effects. It turns out that they didn't tell us that the "global economy" would mean that middle class American workers would eventually have to directly compete for jobs with people on the other side of the world where there is no minimum wage and very few regulations. The big global corporations have greatly benefited by exploiting third world labor pools over the last several decades, but middle class American workers have increasingly found things to be very tough.
Here are the statistics to prove it:
• 83 percent of all U.S. stocks are in the hands of 1 percent of the people.
• 61 percent of Americans "always or usually" live paycheck to paycheck, which was up from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007.
• 66 percent of the income growth between 2001 and 2007 went to the top 1% of all Americans.
• 36 percent of Americans say that they don't contribute anything to retirement savings.
• A staggering 43 percent of Americans have less than $10,000 saved up for retirement.
• 24 percent of American workers say that they have postponed their planned retirement age in the past year.
• Over 1.4 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009, which represented a 32 percent increase over 2008.
• Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975.
• For the first time in U.S. history, banks own a greater share of residential housing net worth in the United States than all individual Americans put together.
• In 1950, the ratio of the average executive's paycheck to the average worker's paycheck was about 30 to 1. Since the year 2000, that ratio has exploded to between 300 to 500 to one.
• As of 2007, the bottom 80 percent of American households held about 7% of the liquid financial assets.
• The bottom 50 percent of income earners in the United States now collectively own less than 1 percent of the nation’s wealth.
• Average Wall Street bonuses for 2009 were up 17 percent when compared with 2008.
• In the United States, the average federal worker now earns 60% MORE than the average worker in the private sector.
• The top 1 percent of U.S. households own nearly twice as much of America's corporate wealth as they did just 15 years ago.
• In America today, the average time needed to find a job has risen to a record 35.2 weeks.
• More than 40 percent of Americans who actually are employed are now working in service jobs, which are often very low paying.
• or the first time in U.S. history, more than 40 million Americans are on food stamps, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture projects that number will go up to 43 million Americans in 2011.
• This is what American workers now must compete against: in China a garment worker makes approximately 86 cents an hour and in Cambodia a garment worker makes approximately 22 cents an hour.
• Approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States are living below the poverty line in 2010 - the highest rate in 20 years.
• Despite the financial crisis, the number of millionaires in the United States rose a whopping 16 percent to 7.8 million in 2009.
• The top 10 percent of Americans now earn around 50 percent of our national income.
Giant Sucking Sound
The reality is that no matter how smart, how strong, how educated or how hard working American workers are, they just cannot compete with people who are desperate to put in 10 to 12 hour days at less than a dollar an hour on the other side of the world. After all, what corporation in their right mind is going to pay an American worker 10 times more (plus benefits) to do the same job? The world is fundamentally changing. Wealth and power are rapidly becoming concentrated at the top and the big global corporations are making massive amounts of money. Meanwhile, the American middle class is being systematically wiped out of existence as U.S. workers are slowly being merged into the new "global" labor pool.
What do most Americans have to offer in the marketplace other than their labor? Not much. The truth is that most Americans are absolutely dependent on someone else giving them a job. But today, U.S. workers are "less attractive" than ever. Compared to the rest of the world, American workers are extremely expensive, and the government keeps passing more rules and regulations seemingly on a monthly basis that makes it even more difficult to conduct business in the United States.
So corporations are moving operations out of the U.S. at breathtaking speed. Since the U.S. government does not penalize them for doing so, there really is no incentive for them to stay.
What has developed is a situation where the people at the top are doing quite well, while most Americans are finding it increasingly difficult to make it. There are now about six unemployed Americans for every new job opening in the United States, and the number of "chronically unemployed" is absolutely soaring. There simply are not nearly enough jobs for everyone.
Many of those who are able to get jobs are finding that they are making less money than they used to. In fact, an increasingly large percentage of Americans are working at low wage retail and service jobs.
But you can't raise a family on what you make flipping burgers at McDonald's or on what you bring in from greeting customers down at the local Wal-Mart.
The truth is that the middle class in America is dying -- and once it is gone it will be incredibly difficult to rebuild.
Tada, who founded Joni and Friends in 1979 to accelerate Christian ministry in the disability community, was diagnosed with cancer early last week and was informed last Tuesday that the cancer was malignant.
Though the 60-year-old ministry leader confessed that news of the cancer was “alarming,” she and her husband said they affirmed their faith in God and said doctors had assured them by noting how more advancements have been made in the last five years in treating breast cancer then in the last 150 years.
“[A]lthough cancer is something new, I am content to receive from God whatever He deems fit for me," said Tada, who has been a quadriplegic for more than 40 years.
According to Mazza, Tada’s family physician, Dr. Geoffrey Drew, was with the disability advocate all day at Los Robles Medical Center and Hospital in Thousand Oaks, Calif., standing by as the oncology surgeon, Dr. David Chi, performed the procedure.
Drew, following the surgery, said Tada’s cancer was determined to be in Stage 2.
“[A]nd while some lymph nodes were affected and Joni will need chemotherapy to follow up this surgery, this is a highly survivable cancer and we anticipate a positive prognosis,” he reported.
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MONTICELLO, Iowa
Flooding from the Maquoketa River after the Lake Delhi dam failed has damaged dozens of homes and businesses, causing millions of dollars in damage in Monticello, officials said Sunday.
The Lake Delhi dam in eastern Iowa failed Saturday as rising floodwater from the Maquoketa River ate a 30-foot-wide hole in it. Areas below the dam, including in Hopkinton and Monticello were evacuated.
"It is simply unbelievable. This is unprecedented. We've had floods before and we've always been able to contain the situation and minimize the damage, but with Mother Nature's fury ... there was no way to do anything about it," said Mike Willey, president of the board of directors at the Lake Delhi Recreation Association. "There was simply too much water."
The river crested upstream of the dam at Manchester early Saturday afternoon at 24.53 feet — more than 10 feet above flood stage and well above its 2004 record of 21.66 feet — before it began to slowly recede.
About 50 homes and 20 businesses had major flood damage and the city's sewer plant had been flooded and shut down about 7 p.m. Saturday, said Monticello Public Works Director Dana Edwards.
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Arizona school children are told they can't pray in front of the Supreme Court building ... Two University of Texas Arlington employees are fired for praying over a co-worker's cubicle after work hours ... In Cranston, R.I., a high school banner causes controversy when a parent complains it contains a prayer and demands that it be removed.
There are more legal challenges to prayer in the United States than ever before, says Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-founder of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, an atheist organization whose business is booming as Americans increasingly tackle church vs. state issues.
"We've never had more complaints about government prayer," Gaylor says. "We have just hired a second staff attorney in July. It's turned into a cottage industry for our attorneys."
The foundation has had a huge volume of complaints about prayer in the public sector, including numerous issues involving civic and government meetings where sessions have traditionally begun with a prayer or moment of silence.
In Augusta, Ga., the city's law department just issued a legal opinion defending the city's practice of a pre-meeting prayer, saying it does not violate federal law. The statement was in response to the Freedom From Religion Foundation's letter to the mayor's office urging him to stop the invocations at the start of meetings. The foundation sent similar letters to three cities in South Carolina.
"These are flagrant violations of the laws," Gaylor says.
Not so, says Nate Kellum, an attorney with the Alliance Defense Fund, which is representing the Arizona school children and their teacher, Maureen Rigo, who say they were told they couldn't pray on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington.
"Religious liberties are under attack across the country," Kellum says. "My sense is that there's some type of knee-jerk reaction, almost an allergic reaction, if someone sees the expression of religion," he says.
And the bulk of the complaints are directed at Christians, he says.
"There's an overreaching presumption that there's something wrong," he says.
But Gaylor says there's no country in the world where religion flourishes as much as in the United States, and she says conflicts over public expression are going to increase.
"Fifteen percent of the people are not religious," she says. "There's an increasing plurality of faiths. It's inevitable there's going to be this clash with more people being offended."
Kelly Shackelford, president of the Liberty Institute, represents the two University of Texas employees who were fired for praying over a co-worker's desk after hours. The co-worker was not there at the time and didn't know until months later why the employees were fired.
The university, in legal documents, said it the employee's prayer had been deemed harassment. Judge Terry Means of the U.S. Federal District Court in Ft. Worth rejected that argument.
"One of the women just said 'amen' while the other prayed," Shackelford said. "So she was fired for just saying 'amen.'"
"It's just so crazy!" he said. "There's a hostility, and there are folks who want to change this country and want to engage in some kind of religious cleansing."
"A public university student shouldn’t be threatened with expulsion for being a Christian and refusing to publicly renounce her faith, but that’s exactly what’s happening here," said David French, senior counsel with the Alliance Defense Fund. "Simply put, the university is imposing thought reform."
Jennifer Keeton, 24, has been enrolled in the College of Education's School Counselor masters degree program since fall 2009. She has expressed her Christian beliefs in class discussions and written assignments, but it was her views regarding gender and sexuality that irked faculty.
According to the filed complaint, "She has stated that she believes sexual behavior is the result of accountable personal choice rather than an inevitability deriving from deterministic forces. She also has affirmed binary male-female gender, with one or the other being fixed in each person at their creation, and not a social construct or individual choice subject to alteration by the person so created. Further, she has expressed her view that homosexuality is a 'lifestyle,' not a 'state of being.'"
In May, Keeton was notified that she would be asked to participate in a remediation plan. Mary Jane Anderson-Wiley, an associate professor who also oversees student education and discipline, explained that the faculty wanted to see Keeton's writing skills improve and that they are concerned with some of her beliefs and views pertaining to GLBT (Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender) issues.
Several faculty members later met with the student and told her that they considered her to be failing to conform to certain professional standards. In a written Remediation Plan, the faculty said her speech on GLBT matters violated the codes of ethics that counselors and those in training are required to adhere to.
Keeton's views "depart from what 'the psychological research about GLBTQ (gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer/questioning) populations asserts' that that 'sexual orientation is not a lifestyle or choice, but a state of being,'" faculty members said.
The Remediation Plan required that Keeton attend workshops on diversity sensitivity training toward working with GLBTQ populations, work to increase exposure and interaction with gay populations by attending such events as the Gay Pride Parade in Augusta, and read more on the topic to improve counseling effectiveness with GLBTQ populations.
Failure to complete all elements of the remediation plan will result in dismissal from the Counselor Education Program, according to the plan.
Keeton told faculty members, "I can’t alter my biblical beliefs, and I will not affirm the morality of those behaviors in a counseling situation."
But she stressed, "I understand the need to reflect clients’ goals and to allow them to work toward their own solutions, and I know I can do that."
Click to read full story from CNN
United Nations (CNN) -- U.N. officials are pleading for immediate economic assistance for four African countries where people are facing malnutrition in the wake of a drought last year.
The coming weeks ahead will be the toughest for these countries in the Sahel -- the stretch of African countries including Niger, Chad, Mali and Mauritania -- as they make their way into the rainy season and scrape by with the little food they have since last year's harvest, officials said.
Humanitarian agencies and relief organizations pushed for continued economic support from the international community on behalf of the drought-ridden African countries at the United Nations on Tuesday.
"The levels of food insecurity have begun to spiral out of control and affect a number of countries across the region," U.N. Under-Secretary-General John Holmes said.
"Niger is the center of this crisis, it is a country by far the worst affected, some 7 million people are suffering from severe or moderate food insecurity and that's almost fifty percent of the country's population," Holmes said.
Over 10 million people in the Sahel are at risk for food shortages, according to the U.N., and their situation is unlikely to improve until the coming harvest in October.
"We're in the long stretch between last year's harvest and the one coming up," said Josette Sheeran, executive director of the World Food Programme, via telephone from Niger. "We have now six weeks until it is agreed we will be out of the severe danger zone and the ramp-up has to happen not in a few weeks but now, before this very difficult time," Sheeran said.
Click to read full story from CNN
(CNN) -- Kosovo's declaration of independence from Serbia in February 2008 was legal, the International Court of Justice ruled in a 10-4 vote Thursday.
There were celebrations in Pristina, with fireworks being set off in the capital of Kosovo after the finding was announced, journalist Vlora Rrustemi told CNN.
But Serbia's Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic expressed disappointment, saying Belgrade had hoped for a "peaceful compromise solution" that did not create "dangerous secessionist precedents" elsewhere in the world.
The U.N. General Assembly asked the court to clarify the legality of Kosovo's declaration of independence, based on a request from Serbia, and the court held hearings last December.
Serbia maintains Kosovo's move for independence was illegal and that it remains a part of the Serbian republic.
U.S. Vice President Joe Biden called the president of Serbia before the court made its announcement, the White House said.
Biden told Boris Tadic that Washington fully supports "a democratic and multi-ethnic Kosovo, and he reiterated the United States' unwavering commitment to Kosovo's sovereignty and territorial integrity," the administration said.
He urged Serbia to work with Kosovo to resolve their problems, and also "affirmed the strong and deep ties between the United States and Serbia."
Thursday's verdict was not legally binding. It's an advisory opinion, not a judgment, a court spokeswoman said. The United Nations General Assembly therefore remains free to decide what action to take.
Such opinions still carry great legal weight, however, and Thursday's verdict could set the tone for Kosovo's relations with other countries.
The court considered written statements from 36 U.N. member states, including Serbia, along with Kosovo.
Since the declaration of independence, many countries, including the United States and United Kingdom, have recognized Kosovo as an independent state. Many countries -- such as Russia, China, neighboring Bosnia, and the European nations of Spain and Greece -- have not, however.
Click to read full story from CNN
Washington(CNN) -- A bill that restores unemployment benefits to 2.5 million jobless Americans passed the Senate and goes to the House on Thursday. It is expected to pass there are well.
The bill pushes back the deadline to file for extended unemployment benefits until the end of November.
The Senate on Wednesday voted 59 to 39 to restore the benefits, ending a seven-week stalemate.
After the Senate vote, President Obama urged the House to act swiftly and pledged to sign the bill soon afterward.
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JMC Ministries Response
After this bill was passed our Local Ohio News posted about this on their facebook. The comments that people left about Unemployment being extended were absolutely horrible. One woman commented saying, "Great lazy people get more vacation time."
Our County here in Ohio has an unemployment rate at around 13% and other Counties in Ohio are at or over 15%. Most people are NOT lazy, there really are not enough jobs to go around in our County, and State.
After applying for hundreds of jobs from retail to management trying to take anything he could get and even going to Job and Family Services. Jeremy was told by a Social Worker "there are no jobs in this area, if you can go back to college and get your degree I advice you to do that." So that is just what Jeremy did he took his GI Bill and has now been in college for 2 Semesters to get his Associates Degree in Computer Science. Not having unemployment benefits any longer is ok with us. We have money through Jeremy's GI Bill which gives us a monthly housing allowance, he also has received a pell grant which he receives every semester plus all his schooling is covered through the GI Bill.
We hope that once he has his degree and prayerfully the economy turns around a little more. Jeremy will be able to find a job much more easily than before. But for those who don't have the options we have been given and are still looking for work to no avail. They are completely dependent upon their unemployment benefits until they can find a job. Benefits that will provide them to be able to feed their children and keep their homes.
It breaks my heart to read comments like the one that this woman posted on our Ohio News Stations Facebook. It seems human kindness is non-existent at times. No compassion for others, these people are not out of work because they want to be. If they were they would not have received unemployment. Americans have lost their jobs because we are in the biggest recession since the great depression. But still people want to place the blame upon them saying they are lazy and just want a free ride.
America needs to come together and help one another just as we did when September 11th happened. It has only been 9 years and our country has gone from a country united to a country divided. God we ask that men and women be softened and start to show compassion and love to one another again. Let them remember how you loved us and show your love to all.
Click to read original Story from Fox News/Associated Press
BEIJING (AP) — China National Petroleum Corp. said Thursday a vital pipeline has resumed operations after an explosion caused the country's largest reported oil spill.
Cleanup efforts — marred by the drowning death of a worker, his body coated in crude — continued over 165 square mile (430 square kilometer) stretch of water blanketed in thick, dark oil Thursday, after an official warned the spill posed a severe threat to sea life and water quality. The slick emptied beaches as its size doubled Wednesday.
It remained unclear exactly how much oil has escaped the pipeline six days after it exploded for reasons unknown at a busy northeastern port. State media has said no more oil is leaking into the Yellow Sea.
China Central Television earlier reported an estimate of 1,500 tons of oil has spilled. That would amount roughly to 400,000 gallons (1,500,000 liters) — as compared with 94 million to 184 million gallons in the BP oil spill off the U.S. coast.
CNPC, which owns the pipeline at the port of Dalian, said more than 400 tons of oil had been cleaned up by 9 a.m. Wednesday, according to a report posted on its website Thursday.
The company, Asia's biggest oil-and-gas producer by volume, also said the pipeline was repaired and resumed operations Monday, now pumping 45,000 tons of crude oil a day. The blast had reduced oil shipments from part of China's strategic oil reserves to the rest of the country.
Greenpeace China released photos Wednesday of inky beaches and of straw mats about 2 square meters (21 square feet) in size scattered on the sea, meant to absorb the oil.
Fishing in the waters around Dalian has been banned through the end of August, the state-run Xinhua News Agency reported.
"The oil spill will pose a severe threat to marine animals, and water quality, and the sea birds," Huang Yong, deputy bureau chief for the city's Maritime Safety Administration, told Dragon TV.
Officials, oil company workers and volunteers were turning out by the hundreds to clean blackened beaches, but questions were raised about the effectiveness of the efforts.
"We don't have proper oil cleanup materials, so our workers are wearing rubber gloves and using chopsticks," an official with the Jinshitan Golden Beach Administration Committee told the Beijing Youth Daily newspaper, in apparent exasperation.
"This kind of inefficiency means the oil will keep coming to shore ... This stretch of oil is really difficult to clean up in the short term."
But 40 oil-skimming boats and about 800 fishing boats were also deployed to clean up the spill, and Xinhua said more than 9 miles (15 kilometers) of oil barriers had been set up to keep the slick from spreading.
The cause of the explosion that started the spill was still not clear. Friday's images of 100-foot-high (30-meter-high) flames at China's second largest port for crude oil imports drew the immediate attention of President Hu Jintao and other top leaders.
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JMC Ministries Response
This is now oil spill number 3 that has happened this year so far around the world. The first and worst of all has been the BP oil spill in the Gulf Of Mexico. But there was also a oil spill that was NOT talked very much that happened in the Red Sea near Cairo Egypt, and now the worst recorded oil spill in the history of China.
Plus, with a tropical storm looming in the Gulf Clean up efforts are going to be possibly halted this weekend. Why this year are there all of a sudden all these oil spill happening all over the world? It can't just be a coincident....can it?
Click to read Article About Egypt's Oil Spill
Click to read full story from Fox News
ON THE GULF OF MEXICO
Crew members aboard dozens of ships in the Gulf of Mexico prepared Thursday to evacuate as a tropical rainstorm brewing in the Caribbean brought the deep-sea effort to plug BP's ruptured oil well to a near standstill.
Though the rough weather was hundreds of miles from the spill site and wouldn't enter the Gulf for at least a few more days, officials ordered technicians trying to plug BP's well to stand down because they needed several days to clear the area, where about 65 ships are tending to the spill.
"It's a controlled chaos out there," Lt. Patrick Montgomery told an Associated Press reporter aboard the Coast Guard cutter Decisive heading to the spill site from Pascagoula, Miss.
The cutter, with a 75-member crew, is the Coast Guard's primary search and rescue vessel and would be the last ship to leave in the event of an evacuation. It was within a few miles of the well site Thursday morning.
Just days before the expected completion of a relief well designed to permanently throttle the free-flowing crude, the government's spill chief said Wednesday that work was suspended.
Worse yet, retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen said foul weather could require reopening the cap that has contained the oil for nearly a week, allowing oil to gush into the sea again for days while engineers wait out the storm.
"This is necessarily going to be a judgment call," said Allen, who was waiting to see how the storm developed before deciding whether to order any of the ships and crews stationed some 50 miles out in the Gulf of Mexico to head for safety.
The cluster of thunderstorms passed over Haiti and the Dominican Republic on Wednesday, and forecasters said the system would probably move into the Gulf over the weekend. They gave it a 40 percent chance of becoming a tropical depression or a tropical storm by Friday.
"Uncertainty as to whether a market for our VeriMed system will develop and whether we will be able to generate more than a nominal level of revenue from this business;"
Silverman told FT he’s expecting controversy if the FDA ever gives it a green light:"… Silverman is still wary that any new implantable products could arouse fears of Big Brother. “I’ve been around a long time, and I know if we ultimately get some type of federal approval or FDA approval for the implantable glucose chip, I’m sure some people will raise their head again — but for now, we’re focused on delivering products.”
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JMC Ministries Response:
Christians around the world can now breathe some fresh air and rejoice that Positive ID has stopped this form of the implantable chip. God's word is clear when it says that we as humankind will have a chance to stop the final end time scenario. I pray that God continues to work on the hearts of Positive ID and bring them to Christ and STOP this VeriChip Corp once and for all.
 U.S. Supreme Court |
A Christian private-school teacher is urging the U.S. Supreme Court to allow constitutionally protected prayer outside the court building after her class was "abruptly" ordered to stop praying on the grounds.
Maureen Rigo, a teacher at Wickenburg Christian Academy in Arizona, took her class to the Supreme Court complex May 5 for an educational tour.
The students stood off to the side at the bottom steps of the Oval Plaza, bowed their heads and quietly prayed amongst themselves, according to the Alliance Defense Fund, a legal team Rigo contacted after the incident.
"Even though they were not obstructing traffic, not demonstrating and praying quietly in a conversational tone so as to not attract attention, a court police officer approached the group and told them to stop praying in that public area immediately," ADF reported. "The prayer was stopped based on a statute, 40 U.S.C. §6135, which bars parades and processions on Supreme Court grounds."
That statute reads as follows:
It is unlawful to parade, stand, or move in processions or assemblages in the Supreme Court Building or grounds, or to display in the Building and grounds a flag, banner, or device designed or adapted to bring into public notice a party, organization, or movement.
According to the Sonoran News, the police tapped Rigo on the shoulder and said, "Ma'am, I'm not going to tell you that you can't pray, but you can't do it here. Please go somewhere else."
A message left by WND at Wickenburg Christian Academy hadn't been returned at the time of this report.
ADF sent a letter to U.S. Supreme Court officials today, imploring them to stop their police officers from barring people from quietly praying outside the court.
"Mrs. Rigo was not engaging in a parade, procession or assembly. She was speaking in a conversational level to those around her with her head bowed," a letter signed by ADF attorney Nathan Kellum explains. "There is no reason to silence Mrs. Rigo's activities since these activities do not attract attention, create a crowd or give off the appearance of impartiality. The ban on public prayers cannot hope to survive First Amendment scrutiny."
ADF argues that the wording of the statute cited by the police officer does not apply.
"The wording of the statute does not seemingly contemplate quiet prayers like Mrs. Rigo's," Kellum states. "Such prayers are 'not designed or adopted to bring' Mrs. Rigo 'into public notice.' Indeed, Mrs. Rigo's prayers were not communicated to anyone outside of God and her very small group."
The group noted that the prayers are akin to routine conversations that take place during Supreme Court tours every day and that Rigo's class was not engaging in a parade, procession or assembly.
"The only logical explanation for prohibiting Mrs. Rigo's activities, while allowing other conversations, pertains to the viewpoint of Mrs. Rigo's expression," Kellum argued. "[T]he Supreme Court police have not targeted a subject matter or class of expression, but targeted a particular viewpoint for censorship. They have singled out and censored religious prayer as the only form of conversation to be silenced."
The letter states that the prayer ban "exemplifies viewpoint discrimination" in which "the government targets not subject matter, but particular views taken by speakers" in violation of the First Amendment.
In the letter, the ADF demanded that court officials allow Rigo to return and "engage in conversation-level prayers directed to her nearby companions and God."
Police have three weeks to respond. If they don't, ADF has threatened legal action to protect Rigo's constitutional rights.
"Christians shouldn't be silenced for exercising their beliefs through quiet prayer on public property," ADF senior counsel Nate Kellum said in a statement. "The last place you'd expect this kind of obvious disregard for the First Amendment would be on the grounds of the U.S. Supreme Court itself, but that's what happened."
Click to read full story from CNN
Washington (CNN) -- More U.S. soldiers killed themselves last month than in recent Army history, according to Army statistics released Thursday, confounding officials trying to reverse the grim trend.
The statistics show that 32 soldiers killed themselves in June, the highest number in a single month since the Vietnam era. Twenty-one of them were on active duty, while 11 were in the National Guard or Army Reserve in an inactive status.
Seven of those soldiers killed themselves while serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to the Army numbers.
The spike comes after the monthly suicide numbers had dropped following a January high of 28, and Army officials admit they still haven't answered the question of why troops are committing suicide at a record rate.
"There were no trends to any one unit, camp, post or station," said Col. Chris Philbrick, head of the Army's suicide prevention task force. "I have no silver bullet to answer the question why."
He said he could offer only what he has said before: "Continued stress on the force and the opportunities we have been facing in terms of the challenges in the Army continue to cause these events to take place."
Including the June numbers, 145 soldiers have killed themselves this year, more than half of the total number for all of 2009, according to Army statistics.
In 2009, a record-breaking year for suicides in the service, 245 soldiers killed themselves.
In another attempt to put a halt to the trend, the Army released a suicide prevention video, a follow-up to one released last year. The updated video is designed to "hit home" with soldiers and instill the importance of getting help, Philbrick said.
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JMC Ministries Response
written by Miranda Caverley
The thing that disturbed me most about this article was not just the article its' self, but the comments that people left at the bottom the the article. They were uncaring and unsympathetic that these Military Men/Women took their own lives.
One person who went by the screenname jesussucks said, "Too many wimps in the Military today makes me sick to think these guys think they could stand with the Best when in reality they nothing but a bunch cry babies"
n0n1m0us3 said,"I'm sure soldiers kill themselves for the same reasons as civilians, hopelessness and depression."
