Today Michael Moore issued a rather long and rude challenge to Fred Thompson to debate Cuba’s health care system with him.

By noon today Thompson had filmed his response to Mr. Moore:

Fred 1, Michael 0

Jerry Falwell, the pastor of Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, VA, and Chancellor of Liberty University has died at the age of 73. In addition he built Christian elementary schools, homes for unwed mothers and a home for alcoholics.

He had been found unconscious in his office earlier today and efforts to resuscitate him were unsuccessful.

We send our condolences to his entire family, knowing they are secure in the knowledge he is now in the presence of the Savior he served for so many years.

Forget what you thought about his politics, and think of his ministry. God has taken one of His warriors to be home for eternity and even though his friends and loved ones will be sad that he’s no longer here, they can shout for joy that he is in the presence of his Lord and Savior.

May he rest in peace.

I have always been skeptical of polls but this particular one caught my eye primarily because I was hoping for more from our newly elected Congressional members.

Congress Approval Down to 29%; Bush Approval Steady at 33%

PRINCETON, NJ — A new Gallup Poll finds continued low levels of public support for both Congress and President George W. Bush. Twenty-nine percent of Americans approve of Congress, down slightly from last month’s reading (33%) and this year’s high point of 37%, while Bush’s approval rating is holding steady at 33%. Both the ratings of Congress and the president are slightly lower than their respective 2007 averages. Approval ratings of Congress are higher among Democrats than Republicans, while Bush’s ratings are much higher among Republicans.

We were bombarded prior to and during the 2006 mid-terms with information on how this would be the most ethical congress and one which would produce meaningful legislation immediately upon taking office. I must say after the failure of the Republicans to maintain even one of the Houses, I was willing to give the Democrats a fair chance.

What these numbers tell me is that the endless hearings, finger pointing and posturing will serve neither party or the American people very well.

The President will be leaving office in less than two years, however, many Congressional leaders will hold their seats for the remainder of their life. Perhaps we have become complacent as a people and choose to accept mediocrity or maybe partisanship is so thick that it will take a disaster of major proportions in this country to wake Washington up.

These Congressional numbers would rise tomorrow if the troops were funded (and not with a bill laced with conditions and pork), immigration was taken seriously and problematic domestic issues were addressed.

I do not care who gets “credit” for good legislation just please get something accomplished. I don’t want to hear adults whine about the other side, I want to see them do what we teach our children..be honest and “play fair.” It’s not about the pat on the back.. it is about the hard work you do to prove you have earned it.

Love him or hate him the Rev. Jerry Falwell has been found unconscious and another report says unresponsive today in his office after missing an appointment.

The Rev. Jerry Falwell was found unconscious in his office Tuesday and taken to the hospital, a Liberty University executive told a newspaper.

Ron Godwin, the executive vice president of the school, told The News & Advance of Lynchburg that Falwell was found unconscious after missing an appointment Tuesday morning. Falwell arrived at Lynchburg General Hospital around noon, the newspaper reported on its Web site.

When contacted by The Associated Press, Godwin said he couldn’t talk at that time.

We pray for God’s will to be done, whatever it is as Rev. Falwell would also say.

Sister Toldjah has a horrific story of a double murder committed in January of this year in Knoxville, TN.

Why haven’t we heard about this all over the news? Was the news of Anna Nicole Smith’s death a month later more worthy of the days and weeks of coverage?

If five white people had killed anyone of any other race like this would we have read about it for days and weeks?

We’ll never know because the victims were white and their alleged murderers and torturers were black.

Why didn’t Al Sharpton have something to say about this crime? And, no, I’m not a racist, but read the story and see if your blood boils as mine did.

I’m tired of politics. I’m tired of pointing fingers and name-calling by either side.

Our country has urgent business for Congress to attend to and until there is some news on that front I’m not going to repeat myself anymore.

I’m not going to question any politician’s sanity and for today I’m not going to talk politics.

Instead I’m going to direct you to this Chicago Tribune article which talks about used cars possibly not having either working or any air bags.

The used car you have your eye on has a freshly painted fender.

That tells you it’s been in an accident, but not whether the air bags deployed. Or whether the bags were replaced with new ones designed to work in this car. Or whether they were replaced at all.

With replacement bags running from several hundred to a couple of thousand dollars, some low-life repair shops cheat consumers and insurance companies by pocketing the payment for new ones and installing those that are stolen or salvaged from wrecks.

“Even worse, someone could have stuffed socks into the steering wheel hub so it looks like there’s an air bag inside. We’ve seen empty cigarette packs and even rags stuffed inside, too,” said Larry Gamache, spokesman for Carfax, a provider of vehicle history reports.

To help unsuspecting consumers, who typically buy three times more used than new vehicles annually, Carfax has initiated a free service to tell whether the vehicle has been in an accident that included air-bag deployment.

Carfax uses information from state and federal agencies, police and insurers to compile service and repair information, number of owners, mileage at each sale, and flood or accident information on used vehicles. It sells the data to dealers and consumers.

The air bag service is free and available at www.carfax.com/airbag. Enter the car’s 17-digit vehicle identification number to learn whether the bags have deployed.

Consider this to be my contribution to the safety of our people. Beware when you buy a used car and go to that website to check whether or not the bags have been deployed.

Then get your mechanic to check it visually and electronically to see if it actually works. Your life could depend on it.

About 8 years ago I had surgery to remove torn cartilage from my left knee. About 3 years ago I had surgery on the same knee to remove even more torn cartilage.

This has given me an arthritic knee to go along with the other one I’m babying.

I found this article to be extremely interesting to me because my husband and I have faced the same problems.

The first time I had my knee operated on it was very difficult to get into the tub to take a shower. I just couldn’t stand on that leg long enough to get it in the tub or to pull the other leg in behind it.

We also have a two-story house with our bedrooms all on the second story.

Neither of us wants to burden our children with caring for us so we built an extra room where our deck was.

We added a shower that is as large as a tub but is a step-in shower with a seat in it. I can’t tell you what a difference that made when I had my second knee operation or when I had a hysterectomy.

Our doors to the outside are already levers so we don’t have to worry about that.

We have also installed new toilets in the house that are higher than the normal toilet. I call them turbo-toilets because they make a big “swoosh” sound when they are flushed, but even though they have the smaller tank capacity, they flush the first time, every time.

The side benefit is they are higher toilets. I also found out during knee surgery and the hysterectomy how difficult it is to get down on a regular toilet seat, but these work fine for someone getting older, and we are doing that every day.

The new room is kind of a family room right now, but there is a closet and bathroom right there and plenty of room for a king size bed so we can use that for our bedroom if necessary.

My preference would be to get some sort of lift or elevator so climbing the stairs wouldn’t be such a chore and we could continue to live life as we have in this house for almost 30 years.

From the article it doesn’t appear the changes are all that expensive, and if you intend to stay where you are until the Lord takes you home, you might consider altering your earthly home a bit.

I was extremely disturbed to read this report in the Opinion Journal.

A recent Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll shows 6 in 10 Americans think the Democratic Congress “hasn’t brought much change.” Eager to change this impression, the Democrats are frantically trying to pass legislation before Memorial Day. First on the agenda is a bill restricting lobbying, which is heading for the House floor with lightning speed. The House Judiciary Committee is expected to pass it tomorrow, sending it to the full House for a final vote next Tuesday or Wednesday.

When a bill moves that quickly, you can bet someone will try to make some last-minute mischief. Hardly anyone objects to the legislation’s requirement that former lawmakers wait two years instead of one before lobbying Congress. Ditto with bans on lobbying by congressional spouses and restrictions on sitting members of Congress negotiating contracts with private entities for future employment.

But the legislation may be amended on the floor to restrict grassroots groups that encourage citizens to contact members of Congress. The amendment, pushed by Rep. Marty Meehan of Massachusetts, would require groups that organize such grassroots campaigns to register as “lobbyists” and file detailed quarterly reports on their donors and activities. The law would apply to any group that took in at least $100,000 in any given quarter for “paid communications campaigns” aimed at mobilizing the public.

The same groups that backed the McCain-Feingold law, limiting political speech in advance of an election, are behind this latest effort to curb political speech. Common Cause and Democracy 21 say special-interest entities hide behind current law to conceal the identities of their donors, whom they would have to reveal if they were lobbying Congress directly. “These Astroturf campaigns are just direct lobbying by another name,” says Rep. Meehan, who is resigning from the House this summer and views his bill as his last hurrah in Congress.

But the First Amendment specifically prohibits Congress from abridging “the right of the people . . . to petition the Government for redress of grievances.” The Supreme Court twice ruled in the 1950s that grassroots communication isn’t “lobbying activity,” and is fully protected by the First Amendment. Among the groups that believe the Meehan proposal would trample on the First Amendment are the National Right to Life Committee and the American Civil Liberties Union. The idea goes too far even for Sen. John McCain, who voted to strip a similar provision from a Senate lobbying reform bill last January.

Some of us made a fuss over McCain-Feingold as we felt it violated our first amendment rights to free speech. Some of the bill has been struck down by the SCOTUS if memory serves me, but there was a poison pill in there that if some of it was unconstitutional the bill could still stand even after taking out what was challenged and won in the courts.

Quick legislation is bad legislation. If Congress is embarrassed by not having any bills signed into law other than naming post offices they are going to rush anything through so they can claim some sort of accomplishment.

At what price to the right of freedom of speech is this bill going to be passed?

The rich will be able to get around it just as they got around McCain-Feingold with their 527 organizations.

If we continue to allow Congress to chip away at our rights we will suddenly realize one day we gave it all away and to quote T.S. Eliot, Not with a bang but a whimper.”