MARICOPA COUNTY
REPUBLICAN BRIEFS
RepComm@cox.net
May 31, 2010
Whose SWAT Teams Went To ALL Gulf Of Mexico Oil Rigs & What The Hell Are They Doing? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkTyRPm7ZOg&feature=related
There is an errant version of “The Origin of Taps” floating around the Internet. Two alert Vets forwarded these links that give an accurate accounting of Taps: http://www.tapsbugler.com/ or http://www.usmemorialday.org/taps There is a myth about the origin of Taps that is circulating about the Internet. The true story is that in July 1862, after the Seven Days battles at Harrison’s Landing (near Richmond), Virginia, the wounded Commander of the 3rd Brigade, 1st Division, V Army Corps, Army of the Potomac, General Daniel Butterfield reworked, with his bugler Oliver Wilcox Norton, another bugle call, “Scott Tattoo,” to create Taps. He thought that the regular call for Lights Out was too formal. Taps was adopted throughout the Army of the Potomac and finally confirmed by orders. Soon other Union units began using Taps, and even a few Confederate units began using it as well. After the war, Taps became an official bugle call. Col. James A. Moss, in his Officer’s Manual first published in 1911, gives an account of the initial use of Taps at a military funeral: “During the Peninsular Campaign in 1862, a soldier of Tidball’s Battery A of the 2nd Artillery was buried at a time when the battery occupied an advanced position concealed in the woods. It was unsafe to fire the customary three volleys over the grave, on account of the proximity of the enemy, and it occurred to Capt. Tidball that the sounding of Taps would be the most appropriate ceremony that could be substituted.” More about the true history of Taps can be found at: 24 Notes That Tap Deep Emotions and at the official Military Funeral Honors History of Taps page.
We Are Americans: It’s Time to Give Thanks. http://www.nragive.com/ringoffreedom/index.html
50% Say Memorial Day Nation’s Most Important Holiday http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/lifestyle/holidays/may_2010/50_say_memorial_day_nation_s_most_important_holiday
Cardinal Roger Mahony had a simple and supportive message for the tens of thousands of demonstrators in Los Angeles who were protesting against Arizona’s attempt to crackdown on illegal immigrants: “Everyone in God’s eyes is legal.”
I should use that line the next time I get stopped by a cop for speeding. “Hello officer, good day, I’m totally legal in God’s eyes.”
I got ticketed twice this year for speeding in exactly the same spot on the way to D.C. The cop sits a few miles south of Breezewood on I-70 on this nice downhill straightaway, just a few minutes after you get off the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
The goofy part, aside from being a slow learner, is that I was heading for Washington to tell the government crooks to get out of my wallet and they got me twice more, for $270, before I was even half way there.
Mahony, head of the Los Angeles Roman Catholic archdiocese, the largest archdiocese in the United States, offered this non-infallible explanation about why Arizona’s new law on illegal immigration is wrong: “The tragedy of the law is its totally flawed reasoning: that immigrants come to our country to rob, plunder and consume public resources. That is not only false, the premise is nonsense.”
by Gary Wood
Utah Senator Bob Bennett did not receive the delegate votes necessary to appear on the ballot. Instead delegates supported two new senatorial candidates, Mike Lee and Tim Bridgewater, who are now campaigning to win the upcoming Republican primary. Since the Republican State Convention, May 8th, there have been numerous reports stating Sen. Bennett was a victim or a casualty of the anti-incumbent fever sweeping the nation.
Sometimes the reports blame Bennett’s loss on anti-government tea partiers. Still other reports have linked delegates voting Bennett out to anti-establishment groups who simply want change. No matter what the reason given the claims are focused on Bennett being the victim.
Fly Your Flag Today
Memorial Day is a United States federal holiday observed on the last Monday of May (May 31 in 2010). Formerly known as Decoration Day, it commemorates U.S. men and women who died while in the military service. First enacted to honor Union soldiers of the American Civil War (it is celebrated near the day of reunification after the Civil War), it was expanded after World War I.
Taken from the latest edition of PJM Political, Ed Driscoll interviews Zev Chafets, the New York Times journalist and author of the new biography, Rush Limbaugh, An Army of One.
Taken from this week’s edition of PJM Political, Ed Driscoll interviews New York Times journalist Zev Chafets about his new book, Rush Limbaugh: An Army of One.
What makes a former disk jockey who single-handedly invented talk radio, and arguably (as El Rushbo believes) the Fox News channel tick? Who were some of his influences? What led to his period of prescription-drug dependency? Will the 2010 election be a referendum on Rush’s worldview? Driscoll and Chafets discuss these and many more topics in a 19-minute long interview.
Click below to listen:
After the media and the democrats getting the entire country whipped into a frenzy over SB 1070, AZ AG Terry Goddard (Democratic candidate for Governor) now has the following to say as reported today by Howie Fischer:
Goddard said he told federal prosecutors that the law, at least on its face, is constitutional, and even if it is flawed – which he does not concede - there is no need for the Obama administration to jump in since there are already five lawsuits filed in federal court.
The worm has turned. Hey! Where’s the racism? Where’s the profiling?
That is now, this was then:
Goddard was openly critical of SB 1070 while it was being considered by the Legislature, saying it does nothing to solve the problem of illegal immigration and calling it “troubling” because it might have “civil-rights implications.”
….but now…
On Friday (5/28), though, he promised to fight “vigorously” against any legal challenge to the statute, whether by individuals or the Department of Justice.
I think what Goddard meant was I’m a candidate for governor and this law is widely supported by the people I need to vote for me in November and I really thought that Jan Brewer was the easy pick-off but by gosh, her poll numbers have really soared because of this law and oh, gosh please everyone just look the other way, we’re fine here in Arizona, nothing to see here, note to self: we’ve really misplayed this racism card.
The Justice Department is asking the Supreme Court to strike down a state immigration-enforcement law Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano signed as governor of Arizona.
In a filing Friday afternoon, Acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal asked the court to hear a challenge brought by employers and immigrant-rights groups to the employer-sanctions statute Napolitano signed in 2007.
“Those provisions disrupt a careful balance that Congress struck nearly 25 years ago between two interests of the highest importance: ensuring that employers do not undermine enforcement of immigration laws by hiring unauthorized workers, while also ensuring that employers not discriminate against racial and ethnic minorities legally in the country,” Katyal and other government attorneys wrote. “There is no reason to believe that Congress intended a result that would subvert the purpose and operation of its general prohibition on state sanctions.”
The Arizona law, which Napolitano did not actively campaign for and signed after protracted deliberations, seeks to exploit a purported gap in a federal statute which generally bars states from regulating issues related to employment of foreigners, including illegal aliens. The law allows states to control business “licensing and similar laws.” The Arizona law targets employers found to hire illegals, and could revoke business licenses of repeat violators.
The Supreme Court takes liberty lightly
Last week the Supreme Court ruled in United States v. Comstock et al. that Congress has the constitutional authority to empower federal district courts to civilly commit dangerous sex offenders who had completed their sentences. In effect, the courts can mandate indefinite confinement of such federal prisoners. The controversial power derives from Section 4248 of the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006.
Civil commitment generally refers to the involuntary confinement in a mental institution of a person deemed dangerous to themselves or to others. In 1949 the federal government assumed the power to detain federal prisoners in treatment facilities past their sentences if they were judged insane. The new decision expands this power in significant ways. Moreover, given the aggressiveness with which the law and public opinion focuses on sex offenders, use of the new civil commitment power is likely to become widespread.
The decision also invites state involvement in federal civil commitment. The ruling declares that “‘all reasonable efforts’ must be made to cause the State where tried person was tried, or the State where he is domiciled, to ‘assume responsibility for his custody, care, and treatment.’” Only if both states refuse will the federal government accept responsibility for the prisoner. Currently, 20 states have their own civil commitment programs that include sex offenders. Presumably, all states will now be expected to establish policy on this issue.
MARICOPA COUNTY
REPUBLICAN BRIEFS
RepComm@cox.net
May 30, 2010
MEMORIAL DAY – 2010
If it weren’t for the United States military, there’d be No United States of America
Freedom Is Not Free
I watched the flag pass by one day
It fluttered in the breeze.
A young Seabee
Standing tall saluted it,
And then he stood at ease.
I looked at him in uniform
So young, so handsome, so proud,
He’d stand out in any crowd.
I thought how many men like him
Had fallen through the years.
How many died on foreign soil?
How many mothers’ tears?
How many pilots’ planes shot down?
How many died at sea?
How many foxholes were soldiers’ graves?
No, freedom isn’t free.
I heard the sound of TAPS one night,
When everything was still
I listened to the bugler play
And felt a sudden chill.
I wondered just how many times
That TAPS had meant “Amen,”
When a flag had draped a coffin
Of a brother or a friend.
I thought of all the children,
Of the mothers and the wives,
Of fathers, sons and husbands
With interrupted lives.
I thought about a graveyard
At the bottom of the sea
Of unmarked graves in Arlington.
No, freedom isn’t free
- Author unknown
