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Archive for July 4th, 2007

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.

To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

— John Hancock

New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts:
John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut:
Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New York:
William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

New Jersey:
Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware:
Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

Maryland:
Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia:
George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina:
William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Georgia:
Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

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I’m not a scientist and don’t pretend to be so I’m not saying this is global warming or anything else.
I only posted this because it’s interesting.

Scientists in Chile have blamed climate change for the sudden disappearance of a lake in the south of the country.
Park rangers who patrolled the area in the Magallanes region in March reported that the two-hectare (five-acre) glacial lake was its normal size.

But two months later they found a huge dry crater and stranded chunks of ice that previously floated on the water.

Experts now say melting glaciers put pressure on an ice wall that acted as a dam, causing it to give way.

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OUCH!

A fisherman looking to catch a catfish for dinner instead reeled in a fish that flashed its teeth and bit his knife.

Jerry Melton, 46, was fishing in the Catawba River last week when he caught what state wildlife officials later identified as a piranha, a South American carnivorous fish that lives in freshwater.

“When I got it on the bank I didn’t really know what it was; I hadn’t seen anything like it before,” Melton said.

When Melton opened the fish’s mouth with a pocket knife, he said the fish bit down and left an impression on the blade.

Wildlife officials told Melton on Saturday that he caught a 1 pound, 4 ounce piranha that was probably dumped in the river. Officials said the fish was likely put there by someone who kept it as a pet and later dumped it into local waters.

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This man was truly a wonderful person.

Read the newly published “The Reagan Diaries” if you want a true insight into the mind of the nation’s 40th president.

The diaries — written daily from 1981 until President Ronald Reagan left office in 1989 — reveal him to be much more involved in the nitty gritty of national and world affairs than many White House reporters thought. He had often been portrayed as a detached, “chairman of the board” kind of president.

The diaries show that Reagan had something to say about everything and everybody; his thoughts were often summarized in one handwritten sentence. His notations mixed the profound with the trivial.
Historian Douglas Brinkley, who edited the publication of the diaries, had to toss out chunks to boil the entries down to a 696-page memoir. But no one is shortchanged.

Reagan comes across as deeper, funnier, more religious and more humble than he seemed when he was striding across the world stage. He is true to his public persona — foe of communism, tax increases, organized labor and, often, the news media.

The diaries are replete with his devotion to his wife, Nancy, and his despair at being lonely when she was not around.

On July 6, 1983, Reagan said: “Nancy’s birthday! Life would be miserable if there wasn’t a Nancy’s birthday. What if she’d never been born? I don’t want to think about it.”

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Homer, Alaska, may be the one place on Earth where bald eagles rule, and some humans are beginning to feel endangered.

It is a place where the majestic symbol of America can be found on movie theaters, cars, and light posts; there are dozens at a time on rooftops. They sometimes collide with traffic and are accused of stealing pets out of yards.

Unlike the rest of the country, where the bald eagle nearly went extinct until recently (they’ve since been removed from the government’s Endangered Species Act), they have always been abundant in Alaska.

But it’s so bad in this coastal town, 110 miles from Anchorage, that some people have resorted to shooting bald eagles. “Yes, some people are doing it,” retired federal biologist Ed Bailey told ABC’s Neil Karlinsky.

Bailey said the eagle has become a town menace, but it’s an opinion 82-year-old Jean Keene, known around here as the “eagle lady,” does not share.

She feeds the nearly 15-pound birds raw fish every day during the winter and has seen the population grow from about five 20 years ago to a daily average of 150, sometimes hundreds more.

The eagles come to see her, and despite her town’s grievance with overcrowding she thinks it’s fine to encourage their arrival.

“If they’re fed in a safe place and the right kind of food, I see nothing wrong with it,” Keane said.

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Here is something that I just don’t understand. When I was young the Jewish people were considered by the Christians as Killers of Christ. What happened? I like most non-Christian people just can’t seem to figure this one out.
This post isn’t meant to be anti Christian or Jewish its just something that has been bothering me for a long time so please don’t come back with nasty comments about how I hate Jews and Christians. It’s just something I would like to know.

There were plenty of surprises at “A Night to Honor Israel” at Phoenix Symphony Hall on Sunday, June 24.

More than 1,600 people attended the $18-a-ticket event, sponsored by Christians United for Israel (CUFI), yet fewer than a dozen silent anti-Israel protesters stood outside the venue. Estimates are that between 300 and 400 of the attendees were Jewish, including Rabbi Arthur Lavinsky of Beth El Congregation, who sounded a shofar and chanted the benediction for the evening. The entire audience stood to sing “Hatikvah,” Israel’s national anthem. When the audience was asked to give money to support the Israeli communities of Kiryat Malachi and Hof Ashkelon, $50,000 was collected and presented to the Jewish Federation of Greater Phoenix.

The Christian band Wild Branches sang “Hinei Ma Tov” and “Heveinu Shalom” while at least 50 members of the audience danced the hora around the auditorium. Former President Jimmy Carter was booed during a presentation of a short film about U.S. presidents’ support for Israel, produced by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee

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Why Not? These men were doing their jobs. They should be pardoned without delay.

U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., who launched his bid for the Republican nomination for president after he announced no one else was addressing the issue of border security adequately, is calling on President Bush to pardon two former U.S. Border Patrol agents jailed for pursuing and shooting at a fleeing drug smuggler.

Tancredo noted the presidential commutation this week of the 30-month prison term given to former vice presidential aide “Scooter” Libby, who was convicted of making false statements about the release of the name of an undercover CIA operative.

“I believe the president should take it a step further and fully pardon Border Patrol Agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean,” Tancredo said. “The 11 and 12 year sentences they received were grossly unfair and a result of an overzealous prosecutor.”

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I guess the Republicans are in for long time out of power. What happened?

Campaign contributors to the 2008 presidential candidates heavily favored Democrats in the three-month period that ended Saturday, giving three dollars to the party’s leading contenders for every two dollars they gave to the top Republican candidates.

Democratic Sen. Barack Obama’s 258,000 contributors since January exceed the combined number of donors of former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), according to estimates provided by the campaigns.

Romney announced yesterday that he has lent his campaign $6.5 million from his personal fortune to supplement the $14 million he raised from April through June. Giuliani’s campaign said it raised about $15 million during the quarter. Last week, McCain announced a dramatic staff shake-up after raising only $11 million, leaving him with just $2 million in the bank.

During the quarter, Obama (Ill.) raised $32.5 million, $31 million of which can be used in the primaries. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) raised $21 million for the primaries and a total of about $27 million in the same period.

The fundraising results continued a striking reversal of fortunes for Democratic presidential hopefuls, who have often labored with less money than their Republican counterparts.

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Maybe everyone should get a fine and probation for a obstruction of justice and perjury. You tell me.

In commuting I. Lewis Libby Jr.’s 30-month prison sentence on Monday, President Bush drew on the same array of arguments about the federal sentencing system often made by defense lawyers — and routinely and strenuously opposed by his own Justice Department.

Critics of the system have a long list of complaints. Sentences, they say, are too harsh. Judges are allowed to take account of facts not proven to the jury. The defendant’s positive contributions are ignored, as is the collateral damage that imprisonment causes the families involved.

On Monday, Mr. Bush made use of every element of that critique in a detailed statement setting out his reasons for commuting Mr. Libby’s sentence — handing an unexpected gift to defense lawyers around the country, who scrambled to make use of the president’s arguments in their own cases.

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This sums it up. It might please a few but it angers many.

President Bush commuted the sentence of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby yesterday, sparing Vice President Cheney’s former chief of staff 2 1/2 years in prison after a federal appeals court had refused to let Libby remain free while he appeals his conviction for lying to federal investigators.

Bush, who for months had sidestepped calls from conservatives to come to Libby’s aid, broke his silence early yesterday evening, touching off an immediate uproar from Democrats who accused the White House of circumventing the rule of law to protect one of its own.

The president announced his decision in a written statement that laid out the factors he had weighed. Bush said he decided to “respect” the jury’s verdict that Libby was guilty of four felonies for lying about his role in the leak of a covert CIA officer’s identity. But the president said Libby’s “exceptional public service” and prior lack of a criminal record led him to conclude that the 30-month sentence handed down by a judge last month was “excessive.”

The president noted that he had promised before not to intervene until Libby had exhausted his appeals. But he stepped in short of that point. “With the denial of bail being upheld and incarceration imminent,” Bush said, “I believe it is now important to react to that decision.”

Although he eliminated Libby’s prison term, Bush did not grant him a full pardon, which was sought by some conservatives and would have erased his conviction. As a consequence, Libby will still have to pay a $250,000 fine and will remain on probation for two years. The president said Libby’s punishment remained “harsh,” in part because his professional reputation “is forever damaged.”

Bush commuted the sentence hours after a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit rejected Libby’s request to postpone his prison term while he pursued appeals. The panel concluded that his grounds for appeal were unlikely to be strong enough to prevail in higher courts.

The appellate judges’ unanimous opinion upheld an identical ruling slightly more than two weeks ago by U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton, the trial judge in Libby’s case. After a month-long trial that forced presidential aides and prominent journalists onto the witness stand, Libby was found guilty of two counts of perjury and one count each of lying to FBI agents and obstructing a federal investigation into whether administration officials illegally disclosed the name of CIA officer Valerie Plame.

Bush has granted far fewer pardons and commutations than any of his predecessors, dating to John F. Kennedy. He commuted three previous prison terms during his 6 1/2 years in office.

At a time when his popularity is as low as any president’s in modern history, Bush’s action also defied public opinion. Shortly after Libby was convicted in March, three national public opinion polls found that seven in 10 Americans said they would oppose a pardon of Libby.

Still, the president appeared to calculate that he would antagonize his conservative base too severely if he did not provide Libby some form of reprieve, according to people close to the White House

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