TSA Abuses another Disabled Child “Terrorist” Suspect

Like autumn leaves in a forest the TSA abuses of innocent American children and their hapless families keep piling up one outrageous case after another in the specious guise of national homeland security.

My last post described what happened recently to a four-year-old toddler and her family after the little girl antagonized the TSA thugs because she hugged her grandma on the wrong side of the security zone. The assault was merciless upon the terrified crying baby suspected unreasonably of trying to smuggle an imaginary hand gun on the aircraft passed to her from grandma.

The more she cried to worse it got for her from the unrelenting goons. And mother wasn’t allowed to comfort her baby.

“TSA has reviewed the incident and determined that our officers followed proper current screening procedures in conducting a modified pat-down on the child,” claimed the statist agency.

Before that incident was my post about a three-year-old disabled and wheelchair bound suspected “terrorist” toddler on his way to Disney World with mom, dad and young siblings. That poor little baby endured his own horrific terror experience at the hands of TSA Chicago Midway International Airport security goons when he was manhandled, searched, frisked, patted down, swabbed and groped like a common criminal while his mortified family looked upon the assault and battery helplessly.

They also weren’t allowed to comfort the little boy during his terrifying ordeal.

“TSA has reviewed the incident and determined that our officers followed proper current screening procedures in conducting a modified pat-down on the child,” claimed the statist agency.

The latest incident last Monday involves the unreasonably aggressive screening of Dina Frank, a 7-year-old girl with cerebral palsy, at the hands of TSA thugs at JFK International Airport which caused her family to miss their flight to Florida.

This little child is unable to pass through airport metal detectors without setting off alarms because she walks with metal leg braces and crutches. The condition puts her at the mercy of the TSA thugs who insist without reason or exception that she must undergo their patented pat-down assault and battery on a baby procedure.

Dina also suffers a developmental disorder, making the pat down and frisking procedure especially frightening if not done with special care. She was born prematurely suffering from bleeding on the brain and has struggled for years to get around, even enduring a double hip replacement to assist in her recovery.

Only recently, she successfully underwent Botox and phenol injections which have helped her to gain some control of her legs, enough to take several unassisted steps.

Her family politely asked the TSA agents on duty to introduce themselves gently to the little girl in order make her feel more comfortable, but instead the thugs ignored the request and proceeded aggressively anyway with the child. The ordeal was especially traumatic and the family ended up missing their flight.

“They make our lives completely difficult,” said her dad, Dr. Joshua Frank, a Long Island pediatrician. “She’s not a threat to national security.” “They’re harassing people. This is totally misguided policy,” he added. “Yes, I understand that TSA is in charge of national security and there’s all these threats. [But] for her to be singled out, it’s crazy.”

Frank taped the encounter, which they thought had ended when a supervisor inspected the child’s crutches and let them pass. But then more agents followed up insisting upon doing a full assault and battery pat down inspection of the frightened disabled little girl. Ultimately, the family missed their flight.

“TSA has reviewed the incident and determined that our officers followed proper screening procedures in conducting a modified pat-down on the child,” the TSA agency said once again in its usual scripted statement defending their outrageous conduct upon a helpless innocent child.

If this kind of misguided abuse is happening regularly with innocent little children and toddlers at all of our nation’s airports, one can easily imagine what is routinely occurring unreported to typical American innocent adult travelers, especially older disabled and wheelchair bound people, at the hands of these insensitive and brutish TSA agents.  

Congress must act now to stop this abuse. If this can happen at airports it can eventually happen anywhere. It’s not reasonable. It’s outrageous. It’s contemptible.

Americans deserve better than this.

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TSA Assaults and Mugs another “Terrorist” Toddler at Airport

Last month it was a three-year-old disabled wheel chair bound terror suspect on his way to Disney World with his Mommy, Daddy, and young siblings, assaulted and battered by TSA airport goons. The poor child was manhandled, searched, frisked, patted down, swabbed, and groped like a prison inmate on his way to a parole hearing.  

Needless to say, that kid was terrified beyond the pale as heartless TSA uniformed thugs laid their filthy statist hands on him in the guise of “just doing their jobs.” All the while his parents had to stand back helplessly, unable to console their frightened son; unable to hug him or even hold his hand as the thugs had their way with him.

It was purely a law school text book variety assault and battery of an innocent child wholly without reasonable suspicion or probable cause. In the United States of America today everyone, even little babies, are suspected potential terrorists. We’re all a bunch of cowering sheep that might have a bomb up our ass as far as the TSA are concerned.

Now the latest child victim is little four-year-old Isabella Brademeyer, of Missoula, Montana, on her way home with family after attending her uncle’s wedding, mercilessly set upon, targeted, mugged, manhandled and terrorized this week by a gang of uniformed gun toting TSA goons in Kansas at Wichita Mid-Continent Airport while her frightened and cowering typical American family looked on.

The facts are that this tiny toddler had already cleared a security checkpoint along with mom and dad, and was breezily and innocently on her way to the airplane, when she spotted her grandma on other side of the “twilight zone.”

Being the child she is, the youngster ran excitedly over the line to give her grandma a hug, apparently setting off an alarm which triggered the TSA goons on duty into a state of statist re-screening mode apoplexy.

TSA officers began yelling at the little girl, demanding that she sit down and undergo a full body pat-down. “It was implied, several times, that my mother, in their brief two-second embrace, had passed a handgun to my daughter,” recalls the toddler’s mother. Her baby was terrified.

Spread your arms and legs, little girl.

“They told her she had to come to them, alone, and spread her arms and legs,” remembers mom. “No, I don’t want to,” screamed the traumatized baby. “That is when a TSO told me they would shut down the entire airport; cancel all flights, if my daughter was not restrained,” says mom. “It was then they declared my daughter a ‘high-security threat.’”

Mom tried to pick up and comfort her but the TSA ordered her to stop. They were eventually escorted to a private room where, according to mom, the child was treated like a terrorist. “I will never forget the look of pure terror on her face,” she continued. “A TSO began repeating that in the past she had ‘seen a gun in a teddy bear.’ The TSO seemed utterly convinced my child was concealing a weapon, as if there was no question about it.”

When the baby started crying again the officers became enraged. They ordered her to stop weeping and when she refused, called for backup, saying: “The suspect is not cooperating.” Eventually, a TSA manager showed up and stopped the madness, clearing the family through security and on to their flight.

Not surprisingly the TSA remains steadfast that they did absolutely nothing wrong.

“TSA has recently implemented modified screening procedures of children 12 and under that will further reduce the need for a physical pat-down for children,” says a TSA spokesperson. “These new screening procedures include permitting multiple passes through the metal detector and advanced imaging technology to clear any alarms as well as the greater use of explosives trace detection. These changes in protocol will ultimately reduce – though not eliminate – pat downs of children.”

“In this case, however, the child had completed screening but had contact with another member of her family who had not completed the screening process,” he concluded.

So instead of calmly assessing and dealing with the situation with a bit of courtesy and common sense, the TSA goons yelled without mercy at a frightened little child, who’s only “crime” was to hug her grandma, chased her down and forced her to do their will as though this was a high security threat to the United States of America – as though she were a hardened criminal.  

“Something is clearly very wrong if TSA’s protocol forced them to harass a four-year-old girl until she cried,” outraged Montana congressman, Denny Rehberg told reporters. “I intend to sit down with the TSA immediately and demand some answers.”

“TSA has reviewed the incident and determined that our officers followed proper current screening procedures in conducting a modified pat-down on the child,” insists a TSA apologist at the TSA Office of Public Affairs. “TSA officers did not suspect or suggest the child was carrying a firearm,” he said.

Well, what was all the fuss about then?

If granny didn’t give baby a gun or a bomb to be smuggled on to the airplane by this typical American family at a typical American airport, and that was as obvious as day to those TSA monsters, why in the name of reason did they feel the need to terrorize this little baby and her family?  

The congressman will get answers all right, but they won’t be satisfactory answers and nothing will be done about this never-ending Gestapoesque madness until every congressman and senator in the United States rises up in mutual disgust to put a stake through the heart of the TSA once and for all.

There must be no more assaults and muggings of Americans at our airports without reasonable suspicion and probable cause.  

Mitt Romney: George Bush III?

There is no doubt in my mind that if George W. Bush had been a responsible president, instead of spending the nation into an economic meltdown beginning in 2007, Barack Obama would not be president today and the United States of America would not be $16 trillion in the red.

This nation is in grave financial trouble today for many reasons, but mostly because of the outrageous military spending adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan initiated by George W. Bush. Barack Obama has made the situation worse, and if reelected, will certainly not solve the problem.

All government spending today is out of control, but military spending in particular amounts to more than that of all the other nation’s of the world military spending combined, yet dollar for dollar is still the least beneficial to the people stuck with the bill.

This nation has realized nothing from the war in Iraq; nothing from the war in Afghanistan; and nothing from the unending war on terrorism. We are not more secure today than we were before September 11, 2001. We are, in fact, less secure because of the enormous $16 trillion of debt.

There is a decent chance that Mitt Romney will be the next president of the United States. Will he solve the nation’s debt problem or will he turn out to be George Bush III?

Mitt Romney has promised to cut federal spending but he has also promised to increase military spending. He wants budget increases for the military above even those sought by the most ardent conservative GOP military hawks.

It will be guns over butter if Mitt Romney has his way. That means essentially that the average U.S. citizen is screwed if Mitt Romney becomes president and gives even more money to the Pentagon.

Romney wants to cut domestic spending, and that’s fine; there’s plenty of room for cuts in domestic spending. But there are simply no good reasons to increase military spending. There is no return on military spending beyond that which is necessary to defend the country.

He pledges to bring total government spending down to 20 percent of the U.S. economy by the end of hia first term in 2016, which is about where it was during George W. Bush's presidency. That’s not nearly enough. It is not enough to simply spend like Geode W. Bush. That wild spending is what got us into this financial mess.

Current government spending is at $3.6 trillion, about 23.5 percent of the gross domestic product this year.  So Mitt Romney aims to bring it down a trifling 3.5 percent while at the same time increasing military spending. That’s exactly what George W. Bush did. One fifth of the entire U.S. economy amounts to out of control government spending.

The goal should be to cut spending to 15 percent of GDP within the next ten years, with the ultimate goal of paring it down to the neighborhood of 10 percent or less, i.e. about half of what the government spends right now.

That would mean eliminating some nonessential Cabinet level departments, turning many domestic programs over to the states, and gutting the government gravy train for the parasites in agencies like the GSA.

There’s a lot of fat to start with in programs like health research; NASA; transportation; homeland security; education; farm subsidies, food inspection; housing and heating subsidies for the poor; food aid for pregnant women; the FBI; grants to local governments; national parks; and veterans' health care.

The national parks, for example, should be leased to private operators who can find ways to run them at a profit from visitors who pay for the privilege of visiting them. Agencies like the GSA should be eliminated altogether and private businesses hired to manage the governments vast property holdings far more efficiently than the parasites doing the job now.

The entire federal work force could be cut by at least 20 percent. Family planning money grants, food stamps, school lunches, crop subsidies and similar programs should be scrapped. The Amtrak rail system should be entirely privatized.  

Maybe Mitt Romney will step up to the plate and be the business man who turned enterprises around and made them profitable. That’s exactly the kind of thing this nation needs right now.

Or maybe he’ll step up to the plate and strike out miserably like George Bush III.

Ted Nugent’s Excellent First Amendment Adventure

Ted Nugent, aka Motor City Madman, that washed up old rocker dude from the 1970’s, gonzo gun enthusiast, and certified all American Yahoo, enjoyed an interview with President Obama’s Secret Service goons this week after babbling some incoherent but seemingly “threatening” nonsense at the annual meeting of the National Rifle Association (NRA), in St. Louis, Missouri recently.

I reserve the word Yahoo for those special types of American’s who make me ashamed to be one – guys like Nugent who prefers to wear his custom made camouflage motif cowboy hat in the shower because he doesn’t ever want to take it off, and who sleeps every night in bed with his beloved guns, a prized .357 magnum pistol under his pillow, and his leg folded lovingly under the covers over his high powered American made military style assault rifle.

Nugent compared Obama and his administration to coyotes that needed to be shot, and bellowed that we must "ride into that battlefield and chop their heads off in November." "If Barack Obama becomes the president in November again, I will either be dead or in jail by this time next year," Nugent hollered at the crowd as shown in a video that the NRA posted on YouTube. "If you can't go home and get everybody in your lives to clean house in this vile, evil, America-hating administration, I don't even know what you're made out of."

Huh?

Now please don’t get me wrong; though I’ve never owned, and probably never will own a gun, I’m still a supporter of the Second Amendment constitutional right of Americans to bear arms. Ted Nugent has a right to his guns, a right to be in love with them, and I’m the last person who would attempt to take that right away from him.

But people like Nugent who believe that the best and only way to solve the many problems of this world is by the use of force just creep me out. They have a barbarian mentality.

A U.S. official said Wednesday that Secret Service policy is to acknowledge every Americans right to free speech while still determining an individuals intent. And in this case the Secret Service predictably found that the Motor City Madman was just bellowing his standard line of bullshit at the NRA conference.  

"The issue has been resolved" and the agency" does not anticipate any further action," a Secret Service spokesman explained.

"I met with two fine, professional Secret Service agents in OK today," said Nugent on Thursday. It was a "good, solid, professional meeting concluding that I have never made any threats of violence towards anyone. The meeting could not have gone better. I thanked them for their service; we shook hands and went about our business. God bless the good federal agents wherever they may be."

The bluster and bravado was all gone by the time the Secret Service arrived and that meekly ended Ted Nugent’s excellent First Amendment Adventure.

Abortion Statists Keep Chipping Away

There are still some people in the United States of America who believe that public school segregation between the white and colored races should be legally permitted in this country as it was after the Civil War right up until the U.S. Supreme Court ruled segregation unconstitutional in the famous 1954 case of Brown v. Board of Education.

Segregation, they explained in that landmark case amounts to a denial of equal protection of the laws under the Fourteenth Amendment.

Brown settled the constitutionality question of public school segregation once and for all. So any racial bigots today who might attempt to chip away at that decision by introducing new laws permitting public school segregation in one form or another will be thwarted by the overriding mandate of Brown.

Racial segregation in American public schools is unconstitutional – period.

The impact of Brown means that every single aspect of public education must be equally available to all without exception. So a law recognizing equality in the classroom may not provide for segregated bathrooms, or football teams, or senior proms.

Such laws would be unconstitutional – period.

Likewise, there are still some people in the United States of America who believe that women should have no right to decide whether to terminate an unwanted pregnancy, even though the U.S. Supreme Court in the landmark 1973 case of Roe v Wade held that laws which deny women that right prior to the viability of the fetus are unconstitutional.

Anti-abortion laws, the court explained, amount to a denial of a woman’s right to privacy under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution.

Did Roe v Wade settle the constitutionality question of anti-abortion laws once and for all?

Are anti-abortion laws unconstitutional – period?

An awful lot of anti-abortion zealots don’t think so. They keep chipping away and chipping away at the decision, hoping that one day an anti-abortion majority on the Supreme Court will turn back the clock on women’s rights.

If they can do that with Roe v Wade, others can do it with Brown. Statists can do it with every one of the constitutional rights we freedom lovers hold dear.

Late last year, Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., an ardent anti-abortion rights politician, introduced the Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act which would ban abortions done on the basis of gender or race. "It would simply say that you cannot discriminate against the unborn by subjecting them to an abortion based on their race or sex," says Franks.

Looks like he’s trying to wed Roe v. Wade to Brown – Clever!

He claims "...the abortion rate for black women is almost five times that for white women," and believes that sex-selection abortions are on the rise in the U.S., which according to a Zogby poll, found 86 percent of those surveyed believed gender-based abortion choices should be illegal.

But wait a minute! If black women are seeking abortions, it’s certainly not because the fetus is black. So race has nothing to do with it. Sex has nothing to do with it. And even if it did; so what? No woman can be forced to give a reason why she’s decided to terminate her pregnancy.

Doctors who perform abortions done solely for sex- or race-selection purposes would face fines and up to five years in prison if this politician has his way, but the woman seeking the gender or race based abortion would go Scott free. That’s because women who find themselves with an unintended pregnancy are "victims" who need help in the midst of a crisis, not punishment, he says.

Yes, the woman needs help alright. She needs to terminate her unwanted pregnancy. She needs her doctor to help her, and it’s really none of the congressman’s business.

Mississippi lawmakers, not satisfied with the rejection of their recent “personhood” anti-abortion law which crashed and burned with voters, passed a new bill recently that would require any physician performing abortions in the state to be a board-certified obstetrician-gynecologist and to have admitting privileges at an area hospital..

The law "should effectively close the only abortion clinic in Mississippi," crowed Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves. "This is a strong bill that will effectively end abortion in Mississippi." If the state's only abortion facility, Jackson Women's Health Organization, closes, Mississippi women seeking abortions would have to leave the state.

Republican Gov. Phil Bryant wants Mississippi to become "abortion-free." "This legislation is an important step in strengthening abortion regulations and protecting the health and safety of women," he said.

But how does making the state of Mississippi "abortion-free" protect the health and safety of women? There is simply no medical reason to require that physicians performing abortions be board-certified OB/GYNs or that they have hospital admitting privileges.

The aim of this law is clearly to impose restrictions on abortion providers that are not imposed on other medical providers offering similar care."It's not about medicine," says Jordon Goldberg, state advocacy counsel for the Center for Reproductive Rights, “It's just about politics."

Meanwhile, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer last Thursday signed legislation making Arizona the latest state that generally bans abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy regardless of whether the fetus is viable. This law effectively strips women and their doctors of the ability to decide how to handle situations of fetal abnormalities that are often discovered later in pregnancy.

Rep. Debbie Lesko, R-Glendale, said her vote for the bill came down to one question: "Is the baby inside a woman's body a human?" "My answer, I believe, is yes. It is unacceptable to end the life of a human."

In other words: To Hell with Roe v. Wade! -- To Hell with any woman’s constitutional right to an abortion.

Current Arizona law, in recognition of Roe v Wade, allows abortions up until the point of viability, when a fetus could reasonably survive on its own outside the womb. That's considered by many medical experts and abortion clinics to be from 22 to 24 weeks. The law allows abortions beyond that to protect the "life or health of the woman" but doesn't define health.

So if a woman and her doctor discover a devastating fetal abnormality which will render the offspring a vegetable if allowed to develop further, that’s just tough rocks according to Gov. Jan Brewer and her gang of Arizona anti-abortion hacks.

They just keep chipping – chipping away.

Stupid Americans: The New National Security Threat

Move over terrorism, recreational drugs, and sex outside of marriage; it appears that the latest mortal threat to the fundamental national security of the United States of America is our stupid kids, the byproducts of hopelessly incompetent government schools.

A new report sponsored by The Council on Foreign Relations finds that the United States' failing education system is putting the country's national security at risk. The statists are worried sick because K-12 school systems across the country are failing to adequately prepare kids to grow up and protect the U.S.

You see, the folks who oversee education in this country are not the least bit concerned about education as the means for individuals to secure their rights, to benefit their lives, and to make them individually free.

No; the purpose of Johnny’s education in their minds is for Johnny and all his classmates to grow up to be obedient servants of the government. Johnny is but a cog in the wheel, a pawn for the interests of the state, a defacto slave.

"For starters, we don't have nearly enough people who are capable in the STEM fields: science, technology, engineering and math," said former Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, a member of the council's task force that wrote the report, titled "U.S. Education Reform and National Security."

"When we think about the modern world of defense," Spellings explained, "the fact that we don't have people who are capable to do this work is scary."

I guess she means that Johnny and his mates today are almost too stupid to become cannon fodder like their elders who fought in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. They’re too stupid now to “defend” the U.S. in unnecessary wars.

In addition to skills needed to defend ourselves in war, the study found American schools fail to teach students skills needed to avoid conflicts. "We don't have people who know and understand foreign languages and other cultures," said Spelling, pointing out that U.S. children are ranked No. 17 in the world for language skills. "On any given day, there are hundreds of (job) vacancies for people who speak Pashtu and Arabic, and Mandarin and on and on."

Instead of teaching them Pashtu, Arabic, and Mandarin, maybe we should be teaching them how to say “No!” in English to federal, state, and local politicians – you know, the ones who are causing all the problems for us.

The Council on Foreign Relations report was chaired by former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and former New York City Department of Education Chancellor Joel Klein, both of them dyed in the wool statists.

It states that America's educational failures pose five distinct threats to national security: 1) Threats to economic growth and competitiveness; 2) U.S. physical safety; 3) Intellectual property; 4) U.S. global awareness; and 5) U.S. unity and cohesion.

"A massively undereducated country is not going to be competitive. It's not going to be cohesive," said Klein. "This sense that your kids lives won't be better than your lives; that, to me will erode America's confidence. That will make us more divided."

He actually thinks that America’s confidence is at stake – that a collective can have confidence rather than individuals – a common deception in conscious thinking. It’s the nation that’s important, not the individuals, in their deluded minds.

"Disadvantaged kids are the most impacted. But even at the high end, we are sort of fat, dumb and happy," Spellings said. "Some new data out suggests that even in Beverly Hills and Princeton and Scarsdale, any affluent community you can think of, those kids don't perform very well compared to their peers around the world, either."

So, our kids are 17^th among 195 or so nations on the planet and these statists are worried about national security.  What to do? What to do?

My solution is simple. I’ve said it many times before: Education: We Need Wal-Mart. All we really need to do is turn the matter of education over to the private sector entirely where, unlike with government, the people who provide it are responsible for the results. That’s the quickest way possible for American individuals to become #1.

It should come as no surprise, however, that the statists don’t see it that way. They aren’t concerned with individuals, only the collective. They want the bulk of education in America to remain firmly in government hands. Even private schools they want subject to government oversight and control.

Their report recommends these three main concepts:

1). Expanding state standards to offer more lessons necessary for safeguarding national security, like science and language. (I thought that George W. Bush tried that with his “No Child Left Behind” boondoggle and it failed miserably.) They’re focusing on the wrong purpose.

2). Provide parents and students school choice. (This sounds good but they’re still talking about choice between government controlled education systems which are always prone to fail because it isn’t focused on individuals.

3). Conduct "national security readiness audits" of all schools and hold them accountable if they’re not meeting standards. (Since when have government controlled education systems EVER been held accountable?) That’s simply not going to happen.

Klein and Spellings are urging Americans, whether they have kids or not, to discuss education issues with their local legislators. "Don't talk about tax abatement. Don't talk about pollution. Talk first and foremost about transforming education," says Klein. "That's the only way I know to make the political processes change."

Don’t talk about what is important to individuals, they stress. Talk about what is important to their collective.

As long as they do that we will remain: stupid Americans.

New Monkey Bill Passes in Tennessee

Is there anyone out there who believes there ought to be a law on the books to protect teachers who allow students to question whether 2 + 2 = 4?

How about the question of whether the planet Earth is older than 6,000 years? Should there be a statute protecting teachers who allow students to criticize that scientific fact in Earth science classes anywhere?

Or what about the burning question concerning whether English bull dogs appeared on planet Earth for the very first time in a puff of smoke 250 years ago on the streets of Manchester UK?

Should state legislators be dreaming up new laws to protect teachers who allow their students to entertain such utter and complete nonsense?

Yes! Yes, of course, say the lawmakers and governor of the great state of Tennessee. They are the proud authors of a new law protecting school teachers who allow students to criticize evolution and other scientific theories in the classrooms of public schools.

Yes indeed, because "good legislation should bring clarity and not confusion," explains Tennessee Republican Gov. Bill Haslam, who let the measure become law without his signature.

"My concern is that this bill has not met this objective," he admitted. But he declined to veto the bill because he doesn't think it changes scientific standards currently taught in Tennessee schools, nor does it accomplish anything that isn't already acceptable in schools.

In other words this law, far from bringing clarity to the classroom, was a complete waste of time and effort by all concerned. It’s a nullity designed solely to appeal to the Bible thumper constituency in Tennessee – the people who firmly believe in creationism while rejecting the science of evolution.

That’s why this absurd legislation received strong bipartisan support, passing the Tennessee House and Senate by a three-to-one margin. It supposedly encourages “critical thinking” by protecting teachers from discipline if they help students critique "scientific weaknesses."

Evolution is a “scientific weakness” in the state of Tennessee.

The legislation is the first Haslam has let become law without his signature.

You see, there is a very large segment of the population in the state of Tennessee who ardently believe that there is an invisible man living in the sky who created the cosmos, including planet Earth, and all the plants and animals on it in the space of six days about 6,000 years ago. It’s the story of creation in the Book of Genesis in the Holy Bible, and they want it taught in public school science classes.

They don’t want the science of evolution taught to their kids in biology class because that conflicts with their fantasy, but if they can’t have their way about that, at least they want evolution to be taught as a controversy and not an established science.

Now their lawmakers have said yes.  

But real scientists in Tennessee and everywhere else, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science, say evolution is established science that shouldn't be taught as a controversy.

It’s like 2 + 2 = 4 and no one can make a legitimate argument in a classroom about that. Planet Earth is older than 6,000 years and there is no legitimate controversy about it. English bull dogs are the decedents of a long line of canines stretching back millions of years. There is simply no legitimate controversy.

This law was designed to undermine science education in Tennessee public schools, while at the same time staying within bounds of the United States Constitution First Amendment Establishment Clause. It’s a simple as that. It allows students and teachers to finesse non-scientific fantasies, i.e. creationism and intelligent design into the science curriculum of public schools.

"The new law is effectively a permission slip for teachers to violate the First Amendment by allowing them to dress up their religious beliefs on the origin of life as pseudo-science," explains Hedy Weinberg, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee.

House sponsor, Knoxville Republican, Bill Dunn said he's just pleased the bill will soon become law. "I think the governor looks at it and realizes that it goes right along with what we're trying to do in our classrooms, which is just to produce students who can think critically."

His idea of students thinking critically is accepting the Book of Genesis fantasy while dismissing the science of evolution with teacher’s approval.

Indeed, critics are deriding the legislation as the "monkey bill" for once again attacking evolution. The famous Scopes "monkey trial" was conducted in 1925 in Dayton Tennessee. Public school teacher, John Scopes, was convicted of violating a state statute by teaching evolution in biology class. He was fined $100.

Tennessee's anti-evolution law was eventually revoked in 1967.

Apparently that has not set too well with the state’s evangelicals who just now got their new monkey law.

 

American Lawmaking: A Collection of Carnival Sideshows

"There are a lot of sideshows at the General Assembly ... and all walks of life, and you just have to determine which one's you're going to go into," admitted Indiana State House Speaker Brian Bosma, unwittingly, while handing out Girl Scout cookies on the floor of the Indiana General Assembly recently.

I really couldn’t have said it better myself.

Law making on both the state and federal level; in the 50 state houses and the United States Congress, is mostly a collection of carnival like sideshows featuring legislators shamelessly vying for attention to this or that imaginary problem.

In this instance, the Speaker was responding in his own bizarre way to an imaginary “problem” posed by his Republican colleague over what to do about the national centennial anniversary of the Girl Scouts of America -- should they recognize and celebrate it or not?

Why should state lawmakers be concerned with the national centennial anniversary of the Girl Scouts of America? What possible relevance does it have to the people’s business in the State of Indiana?

None; there is no relevance at all. Yet here we have a bunch of clowns drawing attention to themselves and their imaginary “problem” as if it matters to anyone other than themselves.

What’s the problem?

The Girl Scouts of America "sexualizes" young girls, promotes homosexuality, homosexual lifestyles, and is a tactical arm of Planned Parenthood, cries Indiana State Rep. Bob Morris in a letter sent to members of the Republican Caucus in opposition to celebrating the centennial.

"As members of the Indiana House of Representatives, we must be wise before we use the credibility and respect of the 'Peoples' House' to extend legitimacy to a radicalized organization," he said, warning them not "to endorse a group that has been subverted in the name of liberal progressive politics and the destruction of traditional American family values."

This clown is lobbying his fellow clowns to oppose a nonbinding resolution celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Girl Scouts, and he’s the only member not to sign the measure. It’s a sideshow all about nothing. The resolution is about nothing and his opposition to it is about nothing. That’s what lawmakers do most of the time in America – nothing.

Just like so many other ultra religious right wing social conservative nut cases, this clown is obsessed up to his eyeballs with prepubescent sex. After doing a "small amount" of research on the Internet, Morris said, he and his wife came to the conclusion that the Girl Scouts have become a tactical arm of Planned Parenthood and are part of an agenda that includes "sexualizing" young girls.

He pulled his own two daughters from the Girl Scouts and put them into the American Heritage Girls Little Flowers organization -- a group that "will not confuse their conservative Hoosier upbringing," says he, despite his acknowledgement that "99.9% of Girl Scout troops in this country" are run by good leaders. He’s concerned about where the money goes on the national level.

I have a daughter, and as far as I know, she was sexualized at conception. That’s when she was assigned her sex. So by the time she got involved with Brownies and Girl Scouts at six or seven years-old, she had already been sexualized all her life, and therefore sexuality was a non-existent problem for her – she already knew she was a girl and just wanted to have fun with her little friends.

Homosexuality is a non-existent imaginary problem for most people, except sanctimonious lawmakers like Rep. Morris who are obsessed with other people’s sexuality.

His pandering to the ultra religious right amounts to just another American lawmaking carnival sideshow.

Parasite Party Time at GSA

While the American private sector peon class, me included, have been suffering the terrible effects of the 2007 economic meltdown, the same meltdown that persists to this day, federal government parasites within the Bush and Obama Administrations were spending taxpayer money like there was no tomorrow.

The latest appalling revelation represents only the tip of a huge wasteful government spending iceberg – just one subdivision of a single government agency among hundreds of federal government agencies. It’s the 2010 biennial conference hosted by the General Service Administration’s (GSA) western outposts, a four day extravaganza where government agency parasites go every two years for parties and fun at lavish locations funded by the taxpayers.

Recent conferences were held in New Orleans, Oklahoma City, San Antonio and Lake Tahoe, where the Caesars hotel provided lakefront views, a lagoon-style indoor swimming pool and a 24-hour casino. The latest GSA “Western Regions” conference was held during October 2010 at the luxury M Resort Spa Casino off the Las Vegas strip.

Three hundred employees from the agency’s Public Buildings Service gathered for the event billed as a “Showcase of World-Class Talent,” where the top agency parasites stayed in two-story, 2,400-square-foot loft suites with wet bars and multiple HD televisions. For the rest of the group there were after-hours parties, a $7,000 sushi reception, $44-per-head-breakfasts, a $3,200 mind reader, a clown, and $130,000 spent just on pre-conference scouting trips alone.

All in all, more than $840,000 was spent on the affair, which works out to about $2,800 per person over just four days.

Organizers held an “awards ceremony” on the last day, complete with a “Red Carpet” show and a “Talent Award Showcase” that recognized musical performance among the employees, who were told that the event was called an “awards ceremony” so federal money could be spent on food. It was “a running joke” among employees.

The event’s main organizer, Jeffrey E. Neely, acting administrator for the GSA Pacific Rim region, told his staff to make the conference “over the top” and “bigger and better” than previous conferences. Employees who suggested this was a bad idea were ignored.

Mr. Neely reportedly hosted an in-room “party” on the evening of the closing dinner. A relative of his who was not a GSA employee helped select food for the party, co-hosted the event, and contacted the event planner to add more food, commenting, “Knowing we have a bit more money in the budget helps.”

The Obama administration, which has known about this fiasco all along, but did nothing about it until the press got wind of it, is now deflecting some of the flack to the former Bush administration, and rightly so. They point out that the cost of the Western Regional Conference increased sharply under the Bush White House -- from $93,000 in 2004 to $323,855 in 2006 to $655,025 in 2008, then $840,616 in 2010 under Obama.

“At least we have taken, bold, swift forceful action to hold those responsible accountable and put in place protections to make sure this never happened again,” said a White House spokesman.

They’ve ordered the resignation of GSA administrator Martha Johnson and fired two of her top deputies. The new acting administrator has told employees that he was canceling conferences similar to the Las Vegas blowout, ones held exclusively for “internal staff.”

Rep. John L. Mica (R-Fla.), chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, will investigate the misuse of federal money. “The Las Vegas fiasco is just the tip of the iceberg,” Mica said during a recent news conference, where he also complained about vacant or underused government buildings.

Meanwhile a video has surfaced showing GSA employees and officials singing and joking about the agency's excessive spending at the 2010 conference. House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) circulated the video showing employees rapping to the tune of Travie McCoy's pop hit "Billionaire."

Titled "Federal Worker ‘American Idle,” the video was part of the talent competition at the 2010 Las Vegas conference. A GSA employee mocks other federal agencies for not being able to afford flat screen televisions and new cars and brags about avoiding investigation into the spending. At another point, Deputy Commissioner of the Public Building Service David Foley jokes about a party in a hotel suite.

In the lyrics, the employee sings: "Donate my vacation, love to the nation; I'll never be under OIG investigation." He was given an award at the conference, and named "commissioner for a day."

In the award speech, Foley joked that “there’s just a couple of small matters." "The hotel would like to talk to you about paying for the party that was held in the commissioner's suite last night," he said, to uproarious laughter from the crowd.

Republicans on the House transportation committee wrote a letter last week to the GSA inspector general asking for information about an incentive program they claim handed out "$200,000 worth of taxpayer funded iPods, electronics and gift cards for questionable reasons at best."

Separately, the nonprofit advocacy group Cause of Action wrote to other federal departments asking them to disclose spending on "commemorative" items -- after the GSA was accused of spending more than $6,000 on commemorative coins at the conference.

All this is the kind of stuff which has resulted in the United States of America sliding into more than $15 trillion in debt during the Bush and Obama presidential administrations. This is just one of thousands of examples of how the government parasites are sucking the blood out of the American people.

Republican parasites – Democrat parasites – they’re all the same. They are killing us slowly and getting away with it.

Every one of those 300 government parasites should have their share of the cost of that conference deducted from their future paychecks. That’s how these people should be punished. The same goes for every government employee in every agency who has partied, or is thinking about partying on the taxpayer’s dime.

That might properly make them think twice in the future about parasite party time at GSA.