I read this post by Darren in Right on the Left Coast: Views From a Conservative Teacher about the Christian Peacemaking Team that was kidnapped by the terrorists in Iraq. Here’s a news story about it.

 

 

I can describe the team in one word: stupid. 

 

Required viewing for anyone contemplating “peacemaking” trips into a war zone where terrorists are active would be a video of the terrorists slowing sawing off an American civilian’s head with a dull knife as the civilian’s initial screams of terror and pain are literally cut off, and then the terrorists taking the severed head - holding it up gleefully by the hair and then setting it down on the side of the headless body lying on the ground. 

 

Terrorists don’t care who you are or why you’re there. They don’t care if you’re a Democrat or Republican. They don’t care if you’re a warmonger or a peacemaker. They just want to kill you and as many others as possible. 

 

They laugh at your stupidity. 

 

 

I HAD to share this link. Click and see what you learn about yourself.

http://www.paulsadowski.com/birthday.asp

So yesterday I took the afternoon off work (1/2 day personal leave) to go with PawPaw to look at some land he is buying. We met with a builder and talked about building sites. It’s gorgeous land - beautiful views and several good building sites. I got my daily exercise hiking up and down the hills. We talked about building a house and having sites available if the kids ever want to build homes there, too. A family compound sort of thing.

Afterwards, PawPaw and I went out to eat, and it hit both of us! It had been TOO long since we’d seen Sweet Stuff and Sunshine. We needed a grandparent fix. I got on the cell phone and called Stinkeroo. (Yes, I talked on the cell phone in the restaurant. Obnoxious, huh?)

TMS: Hi! Where are you?

Stinkeroo: Just pulled into the garage with the kids. Sunshine won’t get out of the car. (In the background, “Sunshine, Grandma Carol is on the phone. Want to talk to her?” “No!” Sunshine is like that… sigh!)

TMS: Your dad and I have been missing the girls. (And I was quick to add) And you and SD, too, of course!

Stinkeroo: Come on over for awhile.

TMS: I promise we won’t stay long. (I won’t be the kind of grandmother/mother-in-law/mother that imposes.) Just long enough to play with them for a few minutes. You sure you don’t mind.

Stinkeroo: Of course not. The girls will love it. (In the background. “Sunshine, Grandma Carol and PawPaw are coming over. Let’s get out of the car so we can visit with them!” “No!” (I have a feeling Sunshine might be in the time-out chair by the time we get there.)

TMS: Good. We’ll be there in a few minutes.

And we were. Sunshine was not in the time-out chair. Both girls were thrilled to see us, and we had a perfectly delightful 20-30 minutes talking to and playing with the girls. We left with big smiles on our faces. And, I might add, the girls and their parents also had big smiles on their faces. Sweet Stuff called me Grandma Carol. Sunshine continued to call me simply “Cawol.” I answered happily to both.

Just finished reading Dr. Sanity’s latest post - “Textbook Examples of Displacement.”

Here’s an exerpt, although you really should go read the whole thing:

By blaming Bush and America, one does not have to take either the moral or physical responsibility for dealing with the real evil that has been unleashed upon the world.

Standing up against those who kidnap and behead innocents; blow themselves and others up in the name of God; and have openly and without a lick of shame discussed the annihilation of millions–now that would require real moral courage.

I just read Michelle Malkin’s post about moveon.org and how they actually doctored photos in order to make the photo fit their anti-American, anti-Bush agenda. The sad thing is that the left will continue to believe the lies that moveon.org spews despite evidence to the contrary.

Please check out Charmaine’s post on Reasoned Audacity about Gianna Jessen. It provides a face to go along with a post I wrote earlier about “Pro-Choice” advocates and their denial of the reality of what an abortion really is.

For more on this and related topics, you can also check out http://www.prolifeblogs.com.

For another take on the issue, I go to Don, who posts to an email list I read regularly. He doesn’t have a blog - so I have no link to provide. However, he made a post to the email list on this topic. I asked and he gave me permission to post his email here. What do you think?

I have been trying to figure out why Roe is so freaking important to so many people for years. To me, it was one issue, not all issues.This article made things more clear for me.The author of this article is Roger Pilon. He is vice president for legal affairs at the CatoInstitute…
the statute at issue in Roe was designed precisely to protect rights, the putative rights of the unborn. And so the basic substantive question was clear: When does the right to life begin? On that question, the Constitution is indeed silent — mostly. Here’s why. We would all agree, I hope, that if a doctor took the life of a baby one day after birth, it would be infanticide — murder. Thus, states that protected older babies but not younger ones would doubtless be subject to equal protection challenges, at least, and would probably lose. But if taking the life of a baby one day after birth is murder, what is the difference if the act is performed one day before birth? It strains credulity to suppose there is any real difference. Well, what of two days before birth — and so on down the line? It’s impossible to draw a principled line at which to say, precisely, that this is where the right to life begins. The court’s trimester taxonomy in Roe was its own invention, entitled to no more constitutional support than anyone else’s opinion on the matter. And so we come to the jurisdictional question: Who decides? And on that the Constitution is not silent. Whether we believe that the right to life begins at conception or at some point over the next 270 days, we all believe, I hope, that it begins at some point along that line. We all agree, that is, that there is some point at which abortion amounts to murder. We just can’t agree about where that point is. And so we’re faced with a classic line-drawing problem, not unknown in other areas of the law, but here involving the criminal law and, therefore, the general police power — the power that belongs, under the Constitution, to states. We come, then, to the heart of the matter. Just as states draw lines differently between murder and manslaughter, so too they should be expected to do so here. In fact, they were doing so when Roe was decided 32 years ago. If ever there were a case in which the court should have let the political process unfold naturally, this was it. Were the court to have done so, we would not have had over three decades of endless political and legal turmoil over this one decision, turmoil that has skewed and even poisoned every confirmation battle since. Indeed, no less than Ruth Bader Ginsburg made a similar point in her 1993 Madison Lecture at the New York University School of Law, two months before she was nominated for the high court. A more”measured” opinion, she said, might have spared the nation this pain. It would not be the end of the world, therefore, if the court were one day to overturn Roe, for the issue would simply return to the states. A conservative state like Utah might prohibit most abortions, but next door in Nevada we might see a liberal regime. On an issue about which reasonable people can have reasonable differences, that result should not surprise.
* * * So the issue is not abortion, Roe is a subversion of the Constitution- that things not mentioned in the Constitution are reserved to theStates. I think I have got it.

Check out this week’s Carnival of Education. Yours truly has a post that’s mentioned. There are lots of good education-related posts featured this week.

I wondered what a “Blue Star Family” was, and I asked Beth at Merry Christmas. She posted this reply. Good information!

OK - I’m too pooped to write anything tonight. So I’ll just refer you to my brother’s blog which has a couple of great posts recently about children’s books. Terrell is a 4th grade teacher in Georgia and shares my love of reading. Here is his post on Harry Potter & other children’s books, and here is one on The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. Enjoy!

Alarm rings. Hit the snooze alarm. Start thinking about my blog. Can’t go back to sleep. Turn off the alarm and come upstairs to check for email and to check my blog. Read email. Check blog for new comments. Check links to see if anyone new has linked to my blog. Check TTLB ranking to see if it has changed. Check site meter to see what my totals are. Check referrals on my site meter, the locations and every other possible aspect of the site meter.

Read my mother’s blog, my sister’s blog, my other sister’s blog, my brother’s blog, my niece’s blog, my other niece’s blog, my other niece’s husband’s blog, my cousin’s blog. Look at list of favorite blogs to see which ones have been recently updated. Read new posts on my favorite political blogs and my favorite education blogs. Check my other blog. Reading the blogs reminds me of something I MUST write about. Start a new post. Write. Re-Write. Re-Read. Proofread. Post. Read. See glaring mistakes. Edit. Re-post.

Glance at the clock. OMG How did it get so late! How could so much time have passed?! Will have to skip washing my hair. Slacks will cover unshaved legs. Must rush like a mad woman to make it to work on time. But first check site meter again. Check blogroll again - someone COULD have linked to me since the last time I checked. Scan AOL news. See another item or two I want to write about. Talk to self - TURN OFF THE COMPUTER, YOU MANIAC! YOU HAVE TO GO TO WORK!

Hurry downstairs. Shower, dress, do hair and make-up. Grab a Diet Coke on the way out the door. Begin the 40-minute drive to school. Use the Diet Coke to down my daily handful of vitamins and assorted medications. Possibly stop by McDonald’s on the way for a half-cappuchino/half-coffee and maybe a biscuit. Get to school and head to the gym for my daily bus duty. My day has begun.