Owner Clarksville Online, frequent letter writer in the Clarksville Leaf Chronicle, Politically and socially active, member of the Friends of Dunbar Cave, an associate of the Clarksville Free Thinkers for Peace and Civil Liberties, former Republican.
Campfield: Quixotic attempt to mandate curricular limitations shows anti-gay bias
* Re-posted from my web site Clarksville, TN Online
Stacey Campfield (R, Knoxville), a self-described Christian and one of the more colorful members of the Tennessee House of Representatives, recently introduced what many have viewed as an extremely confusing bill regarding that which he most eloquently describes in his blog as "what should not be taught in our schools." This bill, HB2997, requests the amendment of the Tennessee State Code to prohibit "any instruction or materials discussing sexual orientation other than heterosexuality" in elementary and middle schools.
An army wife speaks out about the surge of suicides in those serving in the military and about what is currently going on at the Fort Campbell, KY base because of the suicide scares...
Also includes comments by Polly Coe, a Clarksville, TN based mental health therapist who works with the troops.
Even as Ms. Boen was preparing this article, the issue of soldier suicide exploded on the news front again with these statistics:
Five soldiers attempt suicide everyday
2100 soldiers attempted suicide in 2007, up from 350 in 2002 [before Iraq War] — CNN 2.3.08
Verdicts are in on the two day mock trial, U.S. vs. Bush held by Austin Peay State University. President Bush was found guilty on the charges relating to illegal and unauthorized domestic surveillance and wiretapping of American citizens and violating the Separation of Powers and FISA by ordering a secret Executive Order authorizing such action. Bush was acquitted on the other charges.
Fox News has censored the Center for Constitutional Rights free speech by declining to run an advertisement by them titled "Rescue the Constitution" which has actor Danny Glover saying, "The Bush administration is destroying the Constitution" by the use of renditions, torture, and other tactics. Fox News offered this explanation as justification for their decision:
We cannot approve the spot with it being Danny Glover’s opinion that the Bush Administration is destroying the Constitution. If you have documentation that it is indeed being destroyed, we can look at that. Sorry about that,
So you want to buy American as you check off that Christmas toy list? You can, though it may seem as if everything on the shelves was manufactured somewhere else.
Business as usual will not be the norm over the next 48 hours as Secretaries of State in all fifty states will each receive subpoenas in the National Clean Election lawsuit, according to an announcement made Monday night by activist Bernie Ellis at premier of "Uncounted" at the Belcourt Theatre in Nashville. There is still time, Ellis said, to require a paper trail for the 2008 election.
With the recent commutation of Scooter Libby's prison sentence by George Bush, there is a golden opportunity for Patrick Fitzgerald to resume his investigation of the leaking of the identity of Valerie Plame. If Scooter went to prison there would have been nothing else that the special counsel could have done to compel him to spill the beans on the source of the leak, at least until he was released 30 months from now. With the commutation, all Patrick Fitzgerald has to do is to continue the investigation where he left off. Re-interview Scooter, give him the chance to tell the truth again. If again he lies or obstructs, then Scooter has committed new crimes, and can be prosecuted for them. It's that simple. By doing so it forces Bush to show his contempt of the rule of law once again.
J Royale, great minds think alike :) I didn't see your diary before I posted this one.
To the Democrats who were recently elected, you have been given 2 years to prove to America that you can lead this nation, and solve some of the problems we face. We expect intense oversight of the Executive Branch to prevent the abuses that went unchecked with the Republican rubber stamp Congress.
The Iraqi Government has "decided" to release the verdict from the Saddam Hussein "trial" on November 5th just two days before the United States General Election. It's a move clearly intended to give the Bush Administration's political party a boost in the polls as the corporate "news" media goes into a feeding frenzy of over exaggerated coverage.
While it cannot definitively be said that the reason the senior Iraqi court in charge of Saddam Hussein's trial postponed its verdict in the case until two days before the November elections so that it would influence the midterms, the postponement suggests several obvious questions, including, most importantly: Given the Bush administration's history of timing national security-related actions to the political calendar, has the date for the verdict's release been set to provide maximum political benefit for the administration and congressional Republicans? - Media Matters
Some tasty quotes, "lock-stepping with the liberal press", "The anti-American crowd", "fools", "Typical liberal lies and drivel". They have been drinking the Republican's kool-aid for too long. Of course, I felt the need to respond. So here goes...
From the Texas GOP's 2006 party platform comes this gem.
5. We believe that traditional marriage is a legal and moral commitment between a natural man and a natural woman. We recognize that the family is the foundational unit of a healthy society and consists of those related by blood, marriage, or adoption. The family is responsible for its own welfare, education, moral training, conduct, and property.
No where has marriage ever been defined with the words natural, it's a very recent, very Republican addition.
What constitutes a natural man or woman. How does a intersexed individual, who is not strictly male or female as we generally understand them, get classified. I think it's clear that this modification to the definition of marriage is aimed at transsexual individuals.
