by Tom Sears
So what it all boils down to is that Gore and his environmentally wacko friends simply want to control the way you and I live our lives.
He said in his skit to Congress that he really didn’t have anything against
nuclear energy. It simply took too long and was too expensive an investment.
That’s right Al, and the only reason it takes 20 or more years to construct a nuclear power plant is because of the blocking tactics you and your environmental leftists create to prevent any progress being made.
Would all you negative people stop your whining and do something productive? You know full well that the path to a clean environment is nuclear and wind energy. Why don’t you be leaders of that movement? If you can’t do something constructive, go live in the woods and leave us alone.
You people out there with a degree of common sense, the facts are on our side. Tune out the imbalanced individuals and stay strong. I want you all to sit back and enjoy all the nasty vitriol about to be spewed my way.
Duke Profs Lack Respect for Athletes
Well, well, well. The three Duke lacrosse players are innocent of all charges.
How could so many forces seem to relish the attack on these three college students?
A lot of people now have egg on their faces, and they should be pursued with equal savagery.
This so-called district attorney, Mike Nifong, should at a minimum be disbarred, and the parents of the players should initiate a civil law suit as soon as possible. This unethical person should be ruined both financially and reputation-wise.
The police that were involved in the case and exhibited unprofessional behavior should be sued and removed from the force at once.
I am talking specifically about the officer(s) who made attempts to intimidate witnesses.
An African American cab driver who signed a sworn affidavit clearing Reade Seligmann was subsequently arrested on a shoplifting charge that occurred more than two years ago.
He wasn’t even the shoplifter but was simply accused of driving the shoplifters in his cab. As soon as he said to the police that he had nothing new to say about the lacrosse case, he was taken straight to court.
How about the accusing liar, Crystal Gail Mangum? Quite a model mother, right? It turns out that there was no DNA evidence found on her from the three Duke students, but there was evidence of at least five other males in her.
At a minimum, the child should be taken from her; she should go to jail and the proceeds from any future book or movie deal she subsequently makes should go to offset the legal expenses of the students’ families.
Most disturbing of all, to me at least, was the behavior of the Duke faculty. I am referring to the “Group of 88” who, through a signed statement published in the Duke Chronicle, accused, tried and convicted these three young men without any evidence.
Weren’t they supposed to be constantly seeking truth in an intellectual, scholarly manner? Give me a break. These individuals are anything but intellectuals. They were simply a lynch mob, stirring the pot and encouraging protests. Now, they cowardly hide behind their right to free speech.
Would you really want these pseudo-intellectuals teaching your child? Dennis Miller said it best when he referred to Duke and other similar colleges as “the last bastion of aging hippies and their radical, leftist agendas. The ‘elite’ universities are the repositories of the worst of these kinds.”
Now, what about targeting and stereotyping student-athletes? Have you ever seen the names of these three students referred to without reference to lacrosse players in general?
I have been asking some student-athletes, male and female, their opinions on this situation, and some have referred to athletes being held to a higher standard than other students.
They also feel that they are looked down upon and even resented in some cases. There is still the “dumb jock” mentality among some professors whose opinion can’t be changed.
Why the resentment? Student-athletes are young men and women who have a gift and a talent for a sport and simply want to pursue it beyond high school, nothing more. They put in hundreds of grueling hours to improve themselves and to represent the college in a distinguished fashion.
Still, their cumulative averages exceed that of the college as a whole. Their coaches are underpaid and put in countless selfless hours themselves, helping these individuals become all they are capable of. They are every bit as responsible for an individual’s academic maturation as the professor and should be considered as important.
In the case of the Duke athletes, some members of the faculty described them using the words elitist, wealthy, pampered, spoiled and coming from wealthy families. Is this jealousy and resentment speaking? I wonder how they think their salaries are going to be paid unless it is by those who can afford Duke’s $50,000 annual costs.
I can only speak from my experience. The Division I students I have had in my classes have been some of the most disciplined, dedicated, respectful, and hardworking individuals I have ever taught.
Many of the Division I and III student-athletes are among my highest achievers, and all, without exception, have worked their hardest to achieve.
They are also fortunate to have dedicated coaches, all of whom I greatly respect. The coaches have backed me 100 percent whenever I came to them with an issue. The students are fortunate to have them as mentors.
My final observation is this: If you show these young men and women respect for all they do on behalf of the college, they will respect you back.
Gun Right’s Shouldn’t Be Protested
I’ve often wondered how protesters keep their days and their specific protests in order. There seem to be so many different protests going on all the time. Anti-war, global warming, many environmental issues, President Bush, anti-partial-birth abortion bans, anti-nuclear energy, anti-wind turbines, starving polar bears, and on and on. How do these people get involved in so many issues and still lead productive lives? It must be miserable to be against just about everything.
The latest attempt to exploit a tragedy, and another protest, the Virginia Tech shootings, was the stirring of the gun control movement and their members.
Fortunately, there was no traction, and their protests fizzled before they even began. Simply put, it was a horrifically evil event caused by an evil person. Guns had nothing to do with this other than the fact that they were the weapon of choice to carry out this pre-meditated murderous act.
Students at the college began to worry about this person and reported him to their professors. His professors were also concerned and referred him to school counselors. Even though anti-social behavior was noticed and reported as far back as 2005, no one did anything about it. Had the Blacksburg mental health clinic ordered him hospitalized, which the police had wanted at the time, none of this would have happened.
Virginia gun law said that involuntary hospitalization denies the committed individual the right to later buy any firearms. You are not going to be able to legislate out of existence evil people. We do not need more laws
Instead of blaming everyone up the line who had some responsibility for not doing enough, who does the gun control group look to blame? You got it, the National Rifle Association.
This “evil organization,” with over 4 million members, has the nerve to offer programs that teach Americans, young and old, about gun safety, education and responsibilities.
What a dangerous organization. Yes, it is a very powerful organization, a very effective gun rights lobbying group, and this probably drives the gun control groups crazy.
Tough. The right of all individuals to bear arms is fully entrenched in our Bill of Rights. I wonder why it was listed as second out of ten.
It simply states, “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” This was the second of the first ten amendments to the Constitution which contained guarantees of essential individual right
s and liberties that were originally omitted in the creation of the original document.
Many different organizations, especially the ACLU, have repeatedly tried to re- interpret what our founding fathers meant.
The ACLU claims that the Second Amendment applies only to the right of states to maintain a militia. The ACLU’s claim is that there is no right for an individual to bear
arms. It also doesn’t believe that there is a prohibition against reasonable regulations of gun ownership. At the same time, the ACLU declares itself neutral on the issue of gun control. How about some quotes by people who were close to the issue:
“No freeman shall ever be debarred the use of arms,” Thomas Jefferson, 1776.
Maybe the ACLU was confused about the term debarred.
“The Constitution preserves the advantage of being armed, which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation…..where the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms,” James Madison, The Federalist Papers, No. 46.
One more of many, many other quotes: This one comes from a Richard Henry Lee, The Pennsylvania Gazette, February 20, 1788: “Whereas, to preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them…..”
People will argue that gun owners shouldn’t worry about reasonable regulations against gun ownership. Gun-rights advocates shouldn’t worry about regulations that take only a few rights away, leading to a total ban on guns.
These people are probably the same ones who yelled and screamed about the chipping away of abortion “rights” when aspects of partial birth abortion ban was declared unconstitutional.
I can easily find the right to bear arms in our Constitution, but I am having trouble finding the part about abortion rights - especially the right to drill a hole in a baby’s head and suck out it’s brains as it exits the mother’s birth canal.
Back to my original paragraph about protesters and their numerous protests. I was especially pleased with an article in The Daily Star a month or two ago about a bus trip to take protesters to a war protest rally in Washington D.C.
It was cancelled “because not enough people signed up.” Maybe even the
protesters are tired of being negative about so many things.
People Here Illegally Don’t Deserve Help
May 1 has come and gone and the much anticipated pro-illegal-immigration demonstrations were a giant bust.
In 2006, Los Angeles, Chicago and Atlanta had demonstration numbers of 650,000, 400,000 and 50,000 respectively. This year the numbers were 25,000 in L.A., 150,000 in Chicago, and there weren’t any rallies even planned for Atlanta.
You know what reasons were given for the huge reduction in numbers? Promoters said that illegal aliens were afraid that if they protested they would be picked up and deported.
That might have been a part of it. Why shouldn’t it be? The last I knew, people committing illegal acts were supposed to be arrested and punished in some way. Maybe that is why we don’t have murderers, thieves, rapists, child and spouse abusers and others protesting and demonstrating.
I think the real reason is that the average American is fed up with the arrogance displayed in last year’s marches, and these demonstrations hurt the protesters’ causes rather than helped.
Who wanted to see a repeat of illegals demanding all the rights of an American citizen, Mexican flags waving, American flags being burned, and comparing our immigration laws to those of Hitler’s against the Jewish population? They even had the nerve to tell us “Anglos” to go back to Europe.
So let’s ignore the sob stories promoted by The New York Times and other mainstream media sources. They love for us to see some poor “hard working” illegal being ripped away from his job, his family, begging for compassion and mercy. The fact is this person knowingly committed a crime by coming here illegally and should have to face the consequences when caught. It doesn’t matter one iota that he or she has been in the country for 20 years. It just means he or she has been able to bleed our economy for a long time.
The fact is America is not responsible for the conditions of people living in other countries. That is the responsibility of their own government. Mexico has plenty of oil revenues to provide a better life for its own citizens.
Now consider part of America’s citizenship oath: “I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state or sovereignty….”
The Coalition Against Illegal Immigration asks some pretty good questions such as: During these demonstrations, do you hear anyone shouting any of the following: “I love this country and want to become a part of her. Becoming an American has been a lifelong dream for me. America is a great country and I would defend and support her. Becoming an American would give me the chance to pay this great country back.” Maybe I just missed these statements being made.
These people have absolutely no desire to assimilate into our culture. They simply want to take and take and give nothing back. In 2006, illegal immigrants sent back $23 billion to family members living in Mexico. No wonder the Mexican government acts indignantly when we try to get tough on immigration enforcement. These payments coming into Mexico are a major source of foreign currency, second only to oil exports.
On the other side of the ledger, what are they taking from us? In a study done by the Center for Immigration Studies, it was estimated that if legalization took place, the net cost to the Federal Government would be from $6,000 to $8,000 per household per year.
Considering there are approximately 12 million illegal aliens in our country, it is easy to see that the cost to the U.S. taxpayer would be substantial.
Finally, don’t buy into the argument that these illegal aliens are only doing the jobs that Americans won’t do. This is just another false assumption.
More than 65 percent of illegals have less than a high school education and another 20 percent have only a high school education.
There are millions of Americans with the same educational background doing exactly the same kind of jobs. The facts show that employers will hire illegal aliens simply because they will work for much less than Americans, and American workers simply can’t compete.
The median weekly wage for American high school dropouts who work full- time is $350, compared to the full-time Mexican worker with a similar educational background who makes $326.
So let’s get serious about border security and illegal alien deportations. Get the fence up as rapidly as possible. Deny illegal aliens and their families access to our health care, education and welfare programs. Severely punish those employers who hire illegal aliens.
The strategy is simple if you have the resolve to accomplish it. To those who say deportations can’t work because of the numbers involved, I say it can be done….one illegal at a time.
Immigration Reform Could Ruin Our Lives
My last column turned out to be quite timely. Three days later the Senate came up with the “Senate’s Secure Borders, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Reform Act of 2007.” This bill is truly a watershed moment in all of our lives. Significant changes, all mostly terribly negative, will happen in our society if this bill passes.
Innocent sounding bill isn’t it? It almost brings tears of compassion as you read through it. Secure Borders? No way. This was a key provision that was put in to garner support but was already enacted last year with the requirement to build 700 miles of fence along our southern border with Mexico. As a matter of fact, the last time we passed an amnesty bill, in 1986, affecting 3 million illegal aliens, we were promised that this act, along with strong border control, would take care of the problem. Well, we now have between 12 and 20 million illegals here. Oh yes, a whole 2 miles of that 700 mile promised fence has actually been completed.
Economic Opportunity? For whom? Certainly there won’t be any for middle and low-income individuals who have only a high school education or less. Mil
lions of low education level taxpaying AMERICANS will be denied the only types of jobs that they can hope to get. Proponents of the bill say that these will be jobs that Americans won’t take. Nonsense. The job area where most illegal immigrant labor is found is in agriculture. Even here, only 24 percent of the total labor force is made up of illegal immigrants. If this is the case, who makes up the other 76 percent? Construction jobs, service jobs and other opportunities are taken away from American citizens and legal immigrants simply because the illegals will work for far less.
What about middle-class Americans? Maybe they aren’t losing jobs to these illegals, but they sure are subsidizing their “economic opportunities.” Robert Rector and Christine Kim of the Heritage Foundation, recently wrote an article titled “The Fiscal Cost of Low-Skill Immigrants To The U.S. Taxpayer.” Their findings, using conservative figures of 11 million illegal immigrants in the U.S., found that 9.3 million were adults and 60 percent of these adults lacked a high school education. In 2004, these individuals received government benefits totaling $30,160 per household (direct benefits, means- tested benefits, education, and population-based services in 2004, each defined in the article).
On the other side, these households paid only $10,573 per household in federal, state and local taxes. This imbalance totaled $19,587 per household or a total cost to American taxpayers of 89.1 billion dollars per year. Do you think these figures will go up or down as more illegals enter the country?
Lastly, the “Immigration Reform” section of the act. This can be interpreted as amnesty no matter how much our lying politicians deny it. You don’t have to believe me about this statement, just read Title VI of the above mentioned act. The entire bunch of illegals, with the issuance of a “Z” visa, converts them immediately into legals as soon as the bill is signed. All they have to do is present two documents proving they were in the country prior to January 1 of this year (there’s a toughie) and pay between $3,000 and $5,000 per household in the form of a “fine.” This section also allows only one day for the government to do a background check to determine whether the individual is a criminal or a terrorist. ONE DAY!