I was hoping he would go to trial and get what he really deserves.

A lawyer for Michael Vick said Monday the NFL star will plead guilty to federal dogfighting conspiracy charges, putting the Atlanta Falcons quarterback’s career in jeopardy and leaving him subject to a possible prison term.

The offense is punishable by up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine, although federal sentencing guidelines likely would call for less.

“After consulting with his family over the weekend, Michael Vick asked that I announce today that he has reached an agreement with federal prosecutors regarding the charges pending against him,” lead defense attorney Billy Martin of Washington, D.C., said in a statement.
“Mr. Vick has agreed to enter a plea of guilty to those charges and to accept full responsibility for his actions and the mistakes he has made. Michael wishes to apologize again to everyone who has been hurt by this matter.”

Surry County Commonwealth’s attorney Gerald G. Poindexter said, “I didn’t see many options for him,” when he heard Vick planned to plead guilty to the dogfighting conspiracy charge.

He also said local charges are likely, but he didn’t say against whom.

“Crimes have been committed, and the people of Surry County and the Commonwealth Virginia have a right to be vindicated,” Poindexter said. “I don’t see any overlapping between what has been pled to in the federal system and what happend here in the county.”

He said he’s not sure what charges he would pursue. All the physical evidence is in the hands of the federal prosecutors, he said.

Story

While I admit that I am conflicted when it come to the death penalty, there are times when I feel it is completely appropriate.

When three college students were gunned down in cold blood in Newark, New Jersey, my hope was that their killers would be apprehended and brought to justice. It seems as though law enforcement has completed the first step of that process.

A 24-year-old man believed to be the ringleader in the startling, execution-style killings of three college students in Newark will be arraigned today in Prince George’s County District Court.

Rodolfo Godinez was arrested early Saturday in Oxon Hill after a fervent and extensive search by Newark and federal authorities that led to the arrest of his 16-year-old half brother later that day in Woodbridge. Early yesterday, Newark police arrested an 18-year-old man in Elizabeth, N.J.

Here is just a glimpse of this horrendous crime.

On Aug. 4, siblings Natasha Aeriel, 19, and Terrance Aeriel, 18, and friends Dashon Harvey and Iofemi Hightower, both 20, were forced to kneel against a wall behind an elementary school and shot in the head. Natasha Aeriel survived. She, her brother and Harvey were students at Delaware State University, and Hightower planned to enroll there this fall.

For any person who shows such disregard for the life of another or the life of agony facing the families of these young individuals, I have absolutely no compassion.

Hopefully justice will be swift and if proven guilty I pray the punishment will fit the crime.

Read More

A very interesting editorial written by Arnold Trebach of the Washington Times. Enjoy.

A recent article in The Washington Times by Sara A. Carter show the frightening importance of the alliance between Arabic terrorists and Mexican drug cartels. It documents how well known this dangerous situation has been for several years, for which no effective action had been taken by the Department of Homeland Security or local officials.

As an old drug-policy hand, I thought I had heard everything about it. But parts of the story were news to me and terribly disturbing. One example was the report that “approximately 20 Arab persons a week were utilizing the Travis County Court in Austin to change their names and driver’s licenses from Arabic to Hispanic surnames.” I do not claim that this horrendous problem is easy to deal with; it is not.

However, I do claim that some obvious first steps come to mind. In the short and medium term, there must be greater legal controls on name changes and also more border agents and border fences. To the expected objections by the Mexican government and by our own group of the usual fuzzy-minded critics, my reply would be, cleaned up a bit: “Terribly sorry you feel that way.”

In the longer run, our government must start taking even more courageous actions that account for the dynamics underlying this lethal alliance. That alliance is based on the fact that American drug laws and strategies have managed the majestic alchemy of converting relatively worthless plants into substances often worth more, ounce for ounce, than gold and diamonds. If we assume that the Arabs are jihadists planning to harm this country, then it follows that they have no interest in the drugs but rather in the great treasure to be made and the access to our cities and nuclear plants to be gained by associating with the Mexican gangs.

But is there a way to make the plants cheap again? There is of course an obvious but politically unpopular answer: It is to treat the plants and the derivative powders as legal articles of commerce. If, say, marijuana and cocaine were worth roughly as much as alcohol and tobacco, there would be no Mexican gangs involved with these legal substances and thus no such gangs to form an alliance with the jihadists who want to destroy America and its people, except for those who accept Islam.

To those who say that we will all be destroyed by drugs if we make drugs legal articles of commerce, I have several responses. For starters, I won’t be destroyed by them because the very thought of using them bores me. Moreover, based upon research, I estimate that perhaps 95 percent of the American people feel the same way. We are not a nation of suicidal fools. Millions of American recently drastically reduced their consumption of readily available red meat, alcohol and tobacco for reasons of personal health.

Editorial

Our pets have been killed or sickened by ingredients in their food made in China, our kids are at risk from bibs and toys filled with lead made in China, the head of the Chinese pharmaceutical oversight department was hanged for defective drugs that killed people.

Now a Chinese plane exploded on landing in Japan. It’s a Boeing 737, but I’m sure the maintenance is done in China.

From now on, every single tag on every single item will be checked an re-checked to see if a clothing item is made in China. Every toy we buy for our grandchildren will be checked and re-checked to see if it’s even partially made in China. Every bit of food we buy will be checked to see if any ingredients came from China.

This household is boycotting anything made in China. If it costs us triple or more we will still consider it a bargain because you can’t put a figure on a life.

This is a very interesting article that will definitely give you something to think about.

The twilight of the idols has been postponed. For more than two centuries, from the American and French Revolutions to the collapse of Soviet Communism, world politics revolved around eminently political problems. War and revolution, class and social justice, race and national identity — these were the questions that divided us. Today, we have progressed to the point where our problems again resemble those of the 16th century, as we find ourselves entangled in conflicts over competing revelations, dogmatic purity and divine duty. We in the West are disturbed and confused. Though we have our own fundamentalists, we find it incomprehensible that theological ideas still stir up messianic passions, leaving societies in ruin. We had assumed this was no longer possible, that human beings had learned to separate religious questions from political ones, that fanaticism was dead. We were wrong.

An example: In May of last year, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran sent an open letter to President George W. Bush that was translated and published in newspapers around the world. Its theme was contemporary politics and its language that of divine revelation. After rehearsing a litany of grievances against American foreign policies, real and imagined, Ahmadinejad wrote, “If Prophet Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Ishmael, Joseph or Jesus Christ (peace be upon him) were with us today, how would they have judged such behavior?” This was not a rhetorical question. “I have been told that Your Excellency follows the teachings of Jesus (peace be upon him) and believes in the divine promise of the rule of the righteous on Earth,” Ahmadinejad continued, reminding his fellow believer that “according to divine verses, we have all been called upon to worship one God and follow the teachings of divine Prophets.” There follows a kind of altar call, in which the American president is invited to bring his actions into line with these verses. And then comes a threatening prophecy: “Liberalism and Western-style democracy have not been able to help realize the ideals of humanity. Today, these two concepts have failed. Those with insight can already hear the sounds of the shattering and fall of the ideology and thoughts of the liberal democratic systems. . . . Whether we like it or not, the world is gravitating towards faith in the Almighty and justice and the will of God will prevail over all things.”

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In today’s world we often have both parents working and a lot of grandparents watching the grandchildren.

Sue and my husband and I are just such grandparents. I can tell you, and I’m sure Sue can affirm, that watching our grandchildren grow and learn is one of life’s most wonderful experiences.

To see a little one notice and chase a butterfly for the first time is beyond belief. To see a little one notice flowers, even dandelions, and want you to put them in a vase of water is such sweet innocence.

To watch a small one want to feed the birds and try to touch them is like being a child all over again.

I was reading this story that talks about what our young people want most.

It’s not money or the car keys or permission to go out and party wildly. They want quality time with their parents and families.

Take the time to sit down with your children and go over their day with them. Find out what interests them and show a real interest in their interests because once they get older you’ll turn around and wonder where the time went.

Yes, you’re tired after a day’s work, but put off that trip to the gym for a time with the children. You can work in your pleasures on a different schedule, but time lost with your children can never be recovered.

Teach your little one to tie his or her shoes, even if it is a frustrating task, and don’t show your frustration.

Let your child know you love him or her no matter what, and mean it.

Saturday my daughter and I had a disagreement over the ingredients I like in pizza. She was picking it up and I said I wanted anchovies on mine. She didn’t want to stink up her car with the smell of anchovies so she didn’t order them.

When I started to eat the pizza I noticed it and called her on her cell to tell her if she couldn’t get it the way I wanted it not to offer to get it for me again.

She called me after she got home and an argument ensued. It covered anchovies on pizza to other items and I told her to stick to the topic.

Sunday morning she called me to apologize for the way she spoke to me the previous evening. I had already forgotten it. I told her it was no problem and even when we say angry words to each other I would never put her out of my life even for an hour because of it. I told her I love her all the time—even when she doesn’t get the anchovies on my pizza.

When I grew up, hearing “I love you” was something I hardly experienced. I determined when I became pregnant with my son that my children would hear that every day, and they have, even when they aggravate me to no end as adults.

Cherish your children. As quickly as God loaned them to you He can take them back. Never forget that.

Not in my back yard.

As high-profile Republicans increasingly join Democrats and civil rights groups in denouncing the U.S. holding of alleged terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, a proposal to move detainees to this historic Army post in the geographic heart of America is gaining widespread political support.

Under the plan, several hundred foreign detainees could be transported from the U.S. detention facility in Cuba, a prison that has evoked worldwide outrage amid allegations of strong-arm interrogation tactics, to the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks here, the Department of Defense’s only maximum-security prison on U.S. soil.

The plan has drawn criticism from many residents around Ft. Leavenworth.

While many of the detainees have yet to be formally charged, those who could be moved to the military prison, in the center of a small base just outside Kansas City, stand accused of crimes ranging from helping plan the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, to working to establish Al Qaeda networks around the world.

The move, supporters say, could quell criticism that the United States is using the isolated Guantanamo prison to hold detainees in substandard conditions and to use torture to obtain information. And although experts caution the transfer of these prisoners may do little to change the legal rights they are currently afforded, the proposal is reviving debate about how much — if any — constitutional protection these prisoners should have while in U.S. custody.

In addition, the potential detainee transfer has led many to question whether housing such prisoners in a section of the nation where there is little defense of key infrastructure would expose small Midwestern towns as easy targets for terrorists.

“The prison holds some of the world’s most dangerous terrorists from around the globe,” said Rep. Sam Graves (R-Mo.), whose district sits across the Missouri River from the Ft. Leavenworth prison. “They have threatened Americans and in some instances they have killed Americans. Having terrorists held so close to Americans would pose a significant risk if they were to escape or if the prison were to become a target for other terrorists.”

Proposals to move prisoners to Ft. Leavenworth initially garnered wide support among Democrats and civil and constitutional rights groups. Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.) summed up their argument: “Since the time that captured ‘enemy combatants’ were first brought to Guantanamo Bay in 2002, the detainment facility has undermined America’s image as the model of justice and protector of human rights around the world.”

But now an expanding cadre of high-profile Republicans has urged that Guantanamo be shuttered, making it increasingly likely that the Leavenworth prison could be used.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates testified to Congress that he has been pushing to close Guantanamo and that any war crimes trials held there would lack international credibility because of the facility’s “taint.” Former Secretary of State Colin Powell urges a shutdown; presidential candidate Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) backs proposals to shift detainees to Ft. Leavenworth; and even President Bush, according to White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe, has “long expressed a desire” to close Guantanamo.

Janet Wray, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks, said prison officials were not commenting on the potential move. Yet a look at the prison by the numbers illustrates that an influx of the estimated 360 detainees in Guantanamo would require a shifting of some of Ft. Leavenworth’s current inmates to other federal facilities. Members of Congress recently estimated that the prison has space to take on 80 or so more prisoners right now.

Leavenworth, Kan., the community that sits just outside the gates of the Army base that shares its name, has for decades been synonymous with prisons. In addition to the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks, the town is home to a federal penitentiary and a holding facility for prisoners of the U.S. Marshals Service. Just outside the city limits is a maximum-security Kansas penitentiary. Residents say they remember as children learning to distinguish between different types of warning sirens: one for fires, one for tornadoes, one for prison breaks.

You need to register to read the rest. I would love to post the whole thing but I have been informed that I can’t and I always do as I am told

Story

I guess being a politician is becoming a less desirable position to hold, in this country.

Mississippi Republican Rep. Charles W. “Chip” Pickering Jr. announced Thursday that he will not seek re-election in 2008, making him the latest veteran House Republican to call it quits since the August recess began.

Pickering disclosed his decision not to seek a seventh House term in Mississippi’s 3rd District hours after Rep. Deborah Pryce, R-Ohio, said she would not seek re-election in 2008. Former Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., was set to make a similar announcement Friday.

Pickering, who helped write the 1996 telecommunications law as an aide to Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., was first elected to the House that year, succeeding veteran conservative Democratic Rep. G.V. “Sonny” Montgomery (1967-97). Pickering never faced a close race in his strongly conservative-leaning district; he did not even face Democratic opposition in the 2006 election.

Pickering established himself as a player on the Energy and Commerce Committee on telecommunications and other issues, earning appointment as vice chairman of the panel.

Pickering will be leaving the House as a young man — he turned 44 years old last week. Long considered a likely successor to Lott in the Senate, Pickering hinted strongly that his political career is not over. Pickering is considered a strong bet to go for a Senate seat when either Lott or Republican Thad Cochran retires.

“After eighteen years in public service, starting in 1989 in the first Bush administration, then on Senator Lott’s staff, and most recently as a member of the House, it is time for me to gain new experiences in the private arena,” Pickering said in a statement. “I am not saying a final farewell, but hopefully, simply taking a leave of absence.”

Pickering said he would hold a news conference Friday at the Mississippi Republican Party’s headquarters in Jackson.

Mississippi’s 3rd District, which includes a large swath of the state from towns on the Alabama border to Natchez in the southwestern part of the state has a significant Republican tilt after a controversial redistricting plan in 2002 combined Pickering’s district with that of then-Democratic Rep. Ronnie Shows (1999-2003).

Pickering, whose father was a leading figure in the state GOP before becoming a federal judge, trounced Shows by nearly 30 percentage points.

Story

Faith is a wonderful thing.

Great Spirit, God, Creator of All

I welcome You into my heart, mind, body and soul

There is always room for You here.

Grant me the wisdom to heed my inner voice

And the strength to stay grounded while I sing my sacred song.

Guide me down my chosen path and give me the courage to pursue

what is available to me.

I am thankful for the lessons and grateful for my struggles;

I have not forgotten what has brought me to where I am today.

Open my heart to the healing wholeness of nature;

We are all related, and through this I will find serenity.

Great Spirit, God, Creator of All

Cleanse my spirit and wash my soul.

There is always room for You here.

-Laurel Singing Water Cat

A Mexican woman who has already been deported to Mexico once, made it back here and took sanctuary in a church in Chicago.

Now, she decided to speak out against the injustices of our immigration system and got herself caught by ICE after speaking at 3 Los Angeles churches and on her way to a fourth.

Elvira Arrellano, a Mexican woman who sought sanctuary from deportation in a Chicago church was arrested Sunday in Los Angeles.

A spokesperson from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency would not confirm Arrellano was taken in by ICE agents on Olvera Street, near La Placita Church, in the Los Angeles Civic Center area at about 3 p.m.

Arellano and her son Saul, 8, who is a U.S. citizen, were in Los Angeles seeking immigration reform and were staying at La Placita Church.

She visited three area churches to speak about immigration, but was arrested before she could go to a fourth church.

Arellano defied a deportation order to report to the Department of Homeland Security on Aug. 15, 2006. Instead, she sought refuge in the Adalberto United Methodist Church in the Humboldt Park area of Chicago.

…

Arellano claims she seeks to remain in the United States so her American-born son can get medical care for his attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.

A legal guardian says her son, Saul, is taking his mother’s arrest better than expected.

She has two choices. Take her American-born son with ADHD with her to Mexico or leave him here in the care of a guardian while she goes back to Mexico.

I’m sure when I was a kid many people had what is now called ADHD or ADD or whatever. We just called them bad kids and their parents dealt with them at home. They usually adjusted and without meds.

Update and temporary bump: She’s now in Tijuana, which is just across the border to San Diego. Her son remains in the U.S. with his legal guardian.

The Democrats came into office promising things that they couldn’t deliver on. Now it’s time to pay the price.
This post isn’t meant to be for or against the war. I only posted it because I am tickled that congressmens feet are being held to the fire. It’s about time.

Anti-war groups knew U.S. Rep. Timothy Murphy was going home to Pittsburgh for this month’s congressional recess, so they baked him a cake.

“Rep. Murphy Welcome Home Bring Them Home,” was the Iraq troop withdrawal message written in green icing that greeted the conservative Republican at his district office on August 8.

For the 535 members of the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate, the August break traditionally is a time for family vacations, foreign travel, campaign fund-raising and meeting with voters.

For Democrats and lobbying groups working to end a war now in its fifth year, August has been a chance to challenge supporters of President George W. Bush’s war policy on their home turf and in the run-up to Congress’ war funding debate next month.

Congress is catching up with public sentiment against the war and Democrats have several times won approval of troop withdrawal plans only for them to be vetoed by Bush or tripped up by Republican opposition. Still, there is a bipartisan realization that tens of thousands of U.S. troops are likely to stay in Iraq for many years.

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You talk about double whammy.

Two years ago, William Stout lost his home in Allentown, Pa., to foreclosure when he could no longer make the payments on his $106,000 mortgage. Wells Fargo offered the two-bedroom house for sale on the courthouse steps. No bidders came forward. So Wells Fargo bought it for $1, county records show.

Despite the setback, Mr. Stout was relieved that his debt was wiped clean and he could make a new start. He married and moved in with his wife, Denise.

But on July 9, they received a bill from the Internal Revenue Service for $34,603 in back taxes. The letter explained that the debt canceled by Wells Fargo upon foreclosure was subject to income taxes, as well as penalties and late fees. The couple had a month to challenge the charges.

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Is he the worst? I don’t know. One thing you have to realize is that this article is from the nation and even I as a Democrat know it’s a liberal publication. It does make for an interesting read.

Dennis Hastert, who served eight years as the most lamentable Speaker of the House in the chamber’s history, began a slow exit from the Congress Friday. It was on that day that the former wrestling coach, who attained the speakership not on the basis of any political skills or policy expertise but because he was willing to front for the unpalatable Tom DeLay, announced his decision not to seek reelection from the Illinois district that has elected him since 1986.

Among the fifty men and one woman who have held the speakership since a German-born pastor named Frederick Augustus Conrad Muhlenberg filled the position for the First Congress, there have been more than a few disappointments. Aside from the indicted, the disgraced and the disreputable, there have been the indefensible — like Howell Cobb, who used his pre-Civil War speakership to promote the extension of slavery. Cobb would eventually find his true calling as the speaker of the Provisional Confederate Congress and the acting president of the southern states that seceded from the U.S. in treasonous defense of human bondage.

Could the shambling, ineffectual and frequently inarticulate Hastert really have been a worse Speaker of the House than a crude proponent of slavery, or a crook like Jim Wright or a conniving partisan like Newt Gingrich? Absolutely.

Story

This story definitely speaks for itself.

– Israel closed the door Sunday on a surge of asylum-seekers from Sudan’s Darfur region and from other African countries, the largest influx of non-Jewish refugees in the modern history of the Jewish state.

Authorities announced that they had expelled 48 of more than 2,000 African refugees who have entered illegally from Egypt in recent weeks. Officials said they would allow 500 Darfurians among them to remain, but would deport everyone else back to Egypt and accept no more illegal migrants from Darfur or other places.

Story

It’s a little late to shape anyone’s opinion about Congress. We know what you’re all about and I hope you pay the price in every district in every state. I’m talking about Democrats and Republicans.

Democrats and Republicans are mounting a fierce battle to shape voter impressions of Congress during August’s political lull, convinced that they must define the story line of the 2008 congressional election before voters are swamped by the presidential campaign.

The opening salvo of television and radio advertisements, automated calls and fundraising appeals is unusually intense this early in the election cycle, and it comes just seven months after the Democrats took control of Congress.

But lawmakers, pollsters and Congress watchers say it is not clear whether the Democrats have convinced the public that they can do the job an angry electorate handed them in November — or whether, once again, all incumbents will be vulnerable next year, regardless of party.