July 4 Hunger Strike Targeting End Of War — CodePink Austin Will Join Cindy Sheehan, Willie Nelson, Susan Sarandon, Texas Activist Diane Wilson, and Hundreds More In A Hunger Strike to End the War In Iraq
CodePink Austin Will Join Cindy Sheehan, Willie Nelson, Susan Sarandon, Texas Activist Diane Wilson, and Hundreds More In A Hunger Strike to End the War In Iraq AUSTIN
Letters To The Editor
To The Editor: My heart is breaking, our America is gone. “Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the roar of its many waters.”
By Dawn
By Dawn
Unspoken Injustice — Washington Post Columnist Breaks The Silence
Washington Post Columnist Breaks The Silence
On June 11, longtime Washington Post Writers Group columnist Neal Peirce keyed an article titled “Violent Sex Crimes: Free the Children.” The subject of this article is none other than Christopher Largen, co-founder of Building BLOCK and a key interview subject in LSI‘s series. Since Peirce is syndicated through The Post, dozens of national newspapers have played host to this outspoken advocate’s cause, and to great effect.
“Now a recovered and spirited man in his mid-30s,” wrote Peirce, “Largen is crusading for toughened police, prosecutor and judicial action to arrest, sentence and hold child molesters. And not for vengeance, but because ‘American children are being molested, raped, tortured, even murdered.'”
LSI contacted Peirce as soon as his contribution to Building BLOCK became public. Within mere hours he had responded, and thanked LSI for initiating media coverage of the group. “[This is] an amazing story,” he wrote. “[Of] how very widespread the phenomenon of sexual abuse is in the United States, how many haphazard police departments and prosecutors are in apprehending and holding dangerous offenders.” Included in LSI‘s correspondence with Peirce were several emails he received in response to his column.
One respondent, identifying himself as a member of Bikers Against Child Abuse, wrote, “Despite what our name says, we are not big burly bikers out to stamp out child abusers
Betsy Ross Would Be So Proud
Betsy Ross Would Be So Proud You can always tell when the President
Angry? Don
Angry? Don
The Serendipitous Sinclair Lewis
The Serendipitous Sinclair Lewis Man it
Eisenhower
Eisenhower
Burned-Out Adventurer Takes Own Life
Burned-Out Adventurer Takes Own Life Dazed, depressed, and at the end of his rope, Samuel W. Jordan wandered the streets of New Orleans on June 22, 1841, looking for a place to die. Like many volunteers who arrived too late to fight for Lone Star independence, Jordan found life in the peacetime military too tame for his tastes. Resigning his commission as a captain in the Texas Army, he took part in the Rio Grande campaign which gave birth to the short-lived republic of the same name. Federalist leader Antonio Canales appealed to Texans in 1839 to join the struggle to liberate the northern provinces of Mexico from the dictatorial rule of the centralists, the same enemy they had defeated three years earlier at San Jacinto. To sweeten the deal, Canales offered the Anglo-Americans a fair share of the spoils, $25 a month and a half league of land. A hundred and twenty-eight Texans under the command of Samuel Jordan and Reuben Ross answered the call. They crossed the border north of Reynosa, linked up with 400 federalists and on Oct. 3, 1839, routed the overconfident centralists at the Battle of Alcantro. Eager to sever the compromising connection with his foreign friends, Canales furloughed the Texans, who went home in a huff. He created the Republic of the Rio Grande in January 1840 only to be driven into exile two months later by a centralist counterattack. With the exception of Reuben Ross, who had died in a December duel, the Texas troops rallied around the charismatic Canales. Three hundred Mexicans, 80 Indians, and 140 Anglos led by Jordan mustered at San Patricio in June. In a matter of weeks, the Republic force numbered nearly 1,900 men. Mariano Arista, the centralist general that had crushed Canales in March, slipped across the Rio Grande in late August with 1,100 seasoned soldiers and four artillery pieces. Worried about his unprotected rear, he doubled back to Matamoros to await the federalist advance. Meanwhile, Canales sent Jordan and 90 Texans on a risky reconnaissance behind enemy lines. Soon after entering Mexican territory, Jordan received revised orders directing him deep into the dangerous interior. The mysterious way Juan N. Molano materialized with the change of plans aroused the suspicion of the rank and file but not the trusting commander. At Molano
Well, I Do Declare, King George
Well, I Do Declare, King George It was 230 years ago this date, adopted by Congress on July 4, 1776, a singular document notating the birth of what was to become the greatest Nation this orb would ever host. The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America The Declaration of Independence One hell of a document. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Right there, in the very opening sentence, our Nation
The Supreme Court Meets The Cowboy Clowns
The Supreme Court Meets The Cowboy Clowns As Uncle Hugh used to say, “There
An Answer From The Heart
An Answer From The Heart Sometimes people water down what they really believe in order to be polite. I did so a couple of weeks ago and regret it. This occurred when Melinda Pillsbury-Foster interviewed me for her Spiritual Politician radio show in California and asked about my take on how George W. Bush has conducted himself since being elected President. I answered that I was “disappointed.” I was trying to be nice. It was an answer from the head, not the heart. Looking back, I wish I had listened to my heart and let it speak, since our country has gone beyond “being nice.” The answer should have been, “I am outraged.” Our cover story in this week
Lend Support To
Lend Support To
ACLU Of Texas Files Lawsuit Over Restrictions On Protesters Outside President’s Ranch — Plaintiffs Include Cindy Sheehan, Daniel Ellsberg, Ann Wright
Plaintiffs Include Cindy Sheehan, Daniel Ellsberg, Ann Wright
WACO The American Civil Liberties Union of Texas last week asked a district judge to block McLennan County officials from enforcing orders aimed at restricting anti-war protesters outside President Bush’s ranch in Crawford, saying the orders violate free speech rights and exceed the officials’ authority.
“This suit is not about the president or politics. It is not even about the war,” said Will Harrell, Executive Director of the ACLU of Texas. “It is about the County Commissioners’ decision to overstep their own authority in an effort to unlawfully restrict the protected activities of a group of protesters and the media by limiting their access to space, restroom facilities, and shelter from the elements.”
The ACLU is representing Cindy Sheehan, whose son Casey was killed in Iraq on April 4, 2004, and became a leading voice against the war after going to Crawford last summer in the hopes of meeting with President Bush. She was joined by thousand of activists from across the country at “Camp Casey I,” including plaintiff Daniel Ellsberg, author of the Pentagon Papers, and plaintiff Ann Wright, a Colonel with the U.S. Army Reserve and former Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan, who resigned from the State Department in protest of the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
The challenged orders are aimed at shutting down Camp Casey I. The orders specifically prohibit stopping and parking vehicles on specific roads in McLennan County, and “residing, erecting shelters or erecting sewage receptacles on the right of way of public roads.” The effect of the orders, the ACLU said, was to force protesters to stand in direct sun at all times in a location where temperatures in August regularly top 100 degrees, and drive or walk 10 roundtrip miles each time they needed to use the bathroom, or face arrest and possible criminal charges.
“The County Commissioners do not have any legal authority to restrict access to roads beyond that delegated to them by the state, but that is exactly what they did here. The Commissioners also created a criminal penalty for a violation of a state civil law, which is an action only the legislature can take,” said David Broiles, a cooperating attorney and state board member of the ACLU of Texas. “In its zeal to shut down the protests, the county simply ignored the statutory restrictions on its authority and the relevant legal definitions in the Texas Transportation and Natural Resources Codes.”
Lisa Graybill, Legal Director of the ACLU of Texas, added: “As recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions confirm, no governmental body be it local, state, or federal is entitled to simply ignore the limits on its own authority. And when it does so in order to squelch a message it doesn’t agree with, as the county did in this case, it violates the most fundamental promise of the First Amendment.”
McLennan County Commissioners passed the two ordinances last September, prohibiting parking within four miles of President Bush’s property and restricted the erection of portable restrooms and camping activities alongside the county roads.
The county has taken the position that the ordinances do not restrict free speech and the local Sheriff’s office has made 26 arrests related to the ordinances, some in November 2005 and some in April 2006.<
19 Scientists Give Gore
WASHINGTON
Corrie
NEW YORK CITY
Prim Named To Dean
NACOGDOCHES
