TRAMPLING CIVIL RIGHTS

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Last night, I watched Laura Ingraham interview Rep. Lashawn Ford (D) of Illinois. Rep. Ford was calling for the National Guard to be deployed to fight out-of-control crime in the city of Chicago.

At one point during the interview, Ingraham tossed out the question, “Do you also think the National Guard should be sent to protect our southern border?” Ford, without missing a beat, replied, “No. That would be trampling civil rights.”

Now let me see if I understand this. Placing Chicago under martial law would NOT be trampling civil rights, but deploying the military on the border to keep out foreign nationals IS trampling civil rights? Uh-huh. Sure. Would someone please explain to me how foreign nationals who are trying to enter our country illegally have more civil rights than American citizens living in Chicago?

Rep. Ford sounded like a brainwashed automaton, spouting the politically correct (albeit completely irrational) response to every question. I don’t believe he ever paused to consider how completely irrational he sounded.

That’s why it’s so difficult to try to discuss any issue with a liberal. Liberals seem to have put their brains in neutral. They don’t bother to consider any issue in a rational manner or to place it in context; they simply spout the party line, no matter how ridiculous it may sound.

© 2010 by Libbi Adams. All rights reserved.

COUNTING YOUR CHICKENS

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Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell prepared a state budget which included toll revenue from I-80 — even though tolling that interstate had not yet been approved by the federal government — and the legislature passed the budget. Subsequently, the request to make I-80 a toll road was turned down and now the governor and legislator are scrambling to find ways to “make up the shortfall”.

That’s not a “shortfall”, you idiots! It’s called spending money you don’t have!

Don’t any of you bright lawmakers remember your parents telling you, “Don’t count your chickens before they hatch”? It’s as basic as that, folks. You should never spend money you don’t have.

I have a suggestion for Harrisburg: Instead of trying to find ways to replace revenue you never had to begin with, why don’t you consider cutting out of the budget the inflated expenditures which relied on that nonexistent revenue?

Yeah. . . I thought that might be too simple a solution for you.

© 2010 by Libbi Adams. All rights reserved.

ARIZONA

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Arizona, land of the Grand Canyon, Painted Desert and Petrified Forest — and an estimated 5 million illegals from Mexico and points south.

The federal government, which for decades has been busily regulating and legislating areas into which it is NOT constitutionally permitted to intrude, has been completely remiss in one of its primary duties: to secure the borders.

As a result of this failure, millions of illegals from all parts of the world have been streaming across our southern border for decades. This influx of illegal immigrants has strained the capacity of our educational system, nearly bankrupted many of our hospitals, bloated our welfare roles, and overburdened local law enforcement agencies, especially in those states nearest the border.

However, the impact is not limited to border states. Illegals may enter the country at the Mexican border, but from there, they spread across the entire nation. Carloads of illegals have been arrested crossing Pennsylvania on I-80. And drug trafficking by illegals has become a law enforcement problem even in rural areas.

A few years ago, I met an illegal from Peru names Juan. Juan was living in eastern Pennsylvania and attending Kutztown University. He once regaled me with a blow-by-blow account of his border crossing.

Juan had been a teacher in Peru, but he wanted to make more money than his meager teacher’s salary would allow, so he saved up his money, traveled alone to Mexico (leaving the wife and kids behind in Peru) and paid a coyote to take him across the border. Juan’s group waited until dark to make their crossing at the Texas border. In the event that they were stopped by police or border guards, they were instructed by their coyote to tell the officers they were Mexican. Juan voiced his concern that most of them didn’t have Mexican accents. The coyote told them not to worry, that Yankees can’t tell one Hispanic accent from another. Juan was told that If he revealed his true nationality to the police, he would be returned to Peru and would have to make that journey again. However, if he told the officer he was from Mexico, he would simply be sent across the border into Mexico and could make another border crossing attempt the next night.

As it turned out, Juan’s group was caught, the illegals were sent across the border to Mexico, and they made a successful crossing the very next night.

Another illegal of my acquaintance had a different story to tell. Jesús had been brought across the border from Mexico as a child, grew up in Laredo, Texas, and didn’t even know he was illegal until he applied for admission to the University of Texas, where his illegal status was discovered. When I met him, Jesús was living in Virginia and working for the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

Both Juan and Jesús were granted amnesty under Ronald Reagan. However, granting citizenship to persons living in this country illegally does nothing whatsoever to secure our borders or resolve our massive illegal immigration problem and, in fact, encourages even more illegal immigration.

The latest wave of illegal immigration brought into our country violent gangs like MS-13, major drug trafficking rings, even incursions of units of the Mexican army. What has the federal government done about the increased menace resulting from illegal immigration? Absolutely nothing.

Citizens of our border states face increasing violence in their towns and cities. Ranchers face destruction of their land, crops and wildlife — even the loss of their own lives. What is Washington’s answer to these problems. Silence.

And so, in the face of the federal government’s failure to secure our borders and guarantee the safety of United States citizens who live in border states, the Arizona legislature has passed a bill requiring state and local law enforcement officers to enforce the federal immigration laws.

What is the left’s response to this law? They’re screaming that it’s illegal, unconstitutional and racist. Al Sharpton is making pious pronouncements about the law infringing on the rights of citizens, even though the law is specifically aimed at those who are here illegally and, thus, have no rights under our Constitution.

Why is it that the typical liberal response to any legislature designed to protect the republic and uphold the Constitution is to shout foul?? Do these people not want to protect and defend our borders? Are they opposed to the right of U.S. citizens to live in peace and security on their own land? If not, then why all the fuss??

It strikes me that liberals oppose any attempt to reduce fraud and increase security, from opposition to the simple requirement to show a photo ID at the voting booth to the requirement that anyone wanting to enter the United States do so legally.

I think it’s high time the federal government stop its cavalier plundering of the American private sector, stop trampling the rights of the American people, stop its unconstitutional squandering of our tax money, and apply itself, instead, to one of its primary responsibilities: securing our national borders.

© 2010 by Libbi Adams. All rights reserved.

THE RUSSIAN ORPHAN

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I find it incredible that the media are beating up on the adoptive mother and including the kid's claim that she was "bad" and pulled his hair — while completely ignoring the kid's claim that he was beaten with a broomstick while at the Russian orphanage. Does no one care about THAT accusation? Apparently not.

We have been given virtually no information about events and/or negotiations that transpired before the boy was put on the plane. Was the Tennessee woman in touch with Russian officials or orphanage administrators about the problems she was having with the boy? I suspect she was and that she was at her wit's end because those officials, relieved to have finally pawned the boy off on an unsuspecting American, had washed their hands of the problem and refused to consider any sort of resolution.

The adoptive mom didn't "send the boy back to Russia alone"; her mother turned the boy over to a stewardess. That is not unusual; many children travel this way. And the woman went to the trouble to arrange for someone to meet the plane in Russia and escort the boy to the proper authorities.

In an effort to make the adoptive mother appear neglectful, the press reported that the boy "wasn't even going to school" but, once again, they provide no details. The kid spoke Russian, for pete's sake. Before he could attend school, before the teachers at the school would even be in a position to deal with the kid, he'd need a crash course in English.

The Tennessee woman made it perfectly clear why she no longer wanted to deal with the boy. She said she feared for her life and safety. The kid was a badass. You could see that in the photo of him being escorted from some Russian agency or other. He'd threatened bodily harm. He constantly threatened to set the house on fire. What was she supposed to do?! Yes, the kid needed counseling! And he SHOULD have been evaluated (and most probably was) while still at the orphanage!!! Yet Russian authorities tried to pass the kid off as stable and normal.

I notice that the Russians are screaming loudest of all about the boy's return, and that's understandable. The louder they scream, the more attention they direct toward the "bad mom" and away from their own shortcomings and responsibility in the matter.

© 2010 by Libbi Adams. All rights reserved.

BIG BEN

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I have been a Steelers fan since the days of the Steel Curtain. The Steelers are a good team, a team of which a fan could be proud. In the days when the Cowboys were not much more than a band of criminals, the Steelers were principled and disciplined. When the Vikings were condemned for their licentious cruise, the Steelers held their heads high above the fray.

And then along came Ben.

Ben Roethlisberger is, at best, an inconsistent quarterback. But at least he was trying, we thought. After all, he led the team to two Super Bowl victories, didn't he?

But Ben defied his coaches order and his fellow teammates' advice and continued to ride his motorcycle without a helmet. When Terry Bradshaw told him to "park the bike", Bradshaw reports that Ben "got pissed off". As a result of his insolence, Ben was involved in an accident that nearly ended his career.

And then there was that business in Vegas. But the woman was unstable, so there was a likelihood that she was lying in order to maneuver the Super Bowl star into paying her a nice monetary settlement just to get her off his back. So we gave Ben a pass on that one.

Now, there's Georgia. This time, there are more details, more witnesses. Ben was bar-hopping with friends and they kept running into a group of sorority girls. Ben bought them a round of shots, then had one willing girl escorted to a bathroom by one of his bodyguards. He followed and apparently had sex with her while his bodyguards blocked the hallway. Sheesh, Ben, are you that hard up for sex that you have to hump a woman in a public restroom?!

Now the girl in question is 20 years old — too young to drink in Georgia — so why was she being served? The press isn't interested in that one, are they?

The DA milks the incident for all it's worth, trying to stretch out his 15 minutes of fame, and finally announces that he will not file charges because he can't prove that what happened in the bathroom was rape. But he gave us enough details of the events leading up to the bathroom incident to make us wonder if Ben is an order of fries short of a Happy Meal — or, in Ben's case, one can short of a six-pack.

The guy's 30 years old — certainly old enough to KNOW better than to behave like this! He has a responsibility to his coaches, his teammates, his fans and the league to behave in a manner becoming a Super Bowl star. But nobody can tell Ben anything. Ben will do whatever he damn well pleases, thank you very much. And so he stood before the press in an ill-fitting bright red shirt, with his hair in an overgrown Mohawk tied into a pony tail, to tell us that he was sorry. Yeah, right. . .

Today was dress-down day at the office and I grabbed a Steelers T-shirt — and then tossed it aside and wore a plain blue shirt, instead. For the first time in my life, I find it embarrassing to be a Steelers fan.

© 2010 by Libbi Adams. All rights reserved.

COCKEYED ENVIRONMENTALISM

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Help!!! Where's Al Gore when we need him??! A volcano in Iceland is melting a glacier, resulting in massive flooding, and is polluting the atmosphere on a massive scale!!

"A massive cloud of volcanic ash lingers over Europe today," began the ABC Radio News at 1:00 PM today. The ash being spewed out by the volcano has halted all air traffic from Heathrow and throughout northern Europe.

The pollution from that one volcanic eruption alone is greater than the pollution caused by all the cars ever manufactured, yet mankind had nothing whatsoever to do with it. We couldn't have stopped it had we tried. That, more than anything else, is proof positive that we are NOT in charge here, no matter how much the left wants to believe otherwise.

The volcanic eruption is a natural occurrence, as is the resulting glacial melting and atmospheric pollution.

Have you ever wondered who has deemed himself wise enough to know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that a certain circumstance in, say, a national park or a small wetlands area, should remain static and not be allowed to naturally evolve?

I have lived on the same small parcel of land for 20 years. At the bottom of my lot is a small area that the government has declared a wetland, because during and after heavy rain, water collects in several low areas. I have observed that area over the years and have been amazed by the continual change.

When I first moved here, there were a lot of stinging nettles, which I pruned away from a path that my children used to cross the area to get to the creek. The nettles slowly gave way to dame's rocket, a lovely magenta and white wildflower. The dame's rocket gradually gave way to tall, gorgeous, ferny stalks of poison hemlock. How I looked forward to spring and the growth of the beautiful hemlock stalks that towered over me! And how disappointed I was when the hemlock gave way to garlic mustard, a rather blah plant with tiny white flowers. A few years ago, there mysteriously appeared a patch of wild narcissus, which I've dubbed "God's daffodils". The clump of daffodils grows a little larger each year and this spring, they were so beautiful in their perfection that I took a half-dozen photos of them!

Now, my question is this: Which of these natural phases would a rabid environmentalist decide is THE perfect state for my little wetland and should be forever "preserved"? At what point should we have forced a halt to this natural growth and change of my small patch of wetlands. What criteria would be used to arrive at such a decision? And who could possibly be wise enough to know better than God how that patch of land should progress or what plant and animal life it should host?? You see how completely irrational is the average environmentalist mind?

Which brings us back to the Icelandic volcano. The volcanic eruption has impacted the environment in a manner and to an extent impossible for man to emulate. According to current faddish environmentalist thought, shouldn't we rush to halt the eruption before it causes even more pollution and damage? And how would these wise fools suggest we do that?

Some people walk through life with blinders on, seeing only that small area on which they are directly focused and unable to see, appreciate or process the larger picture. Environmentalists belong to that unfortunate group.

It's time to take the blinders off, folks, and look at what REALLY happens in a natural environment. Nature is NOT static. To force it into an artificial stasis is more unnatural and more harmful than almost anything else mankind could do.

© 2010 by Libbi Adams. All rights reserved.