Where Did It All Go?

Indeed…      

    

The Underwear Bomber, whose lawyer wanted the judge to go soft on and who is part of the reason why people are groped at the airport, has been sentenced to life in prison:

A federal judge on Thursday sentenced a Nigerian man to life in prison for trying to blow up a U.S. airliner bound for Detroit on Christmas Day in 2009 with a bomb hidden in his underwear.

"This was an act of terrorism that cannot be quibbled with," said U.S. District Judge Nancy Edmunds, who imposed the maximum sentence allowed.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 25, showed no emotion when Edmunds pronounced the sentence, sitting with his hands clasped under his chin, elbows resting on the arms of his chair at the defense table.

The bomb caused a fire but failed to explode on a Delta Airlines flight from Amsterdam carrying 289 people on December 25. He was quickly subdued by passengers and crew and the fire extinguished.

Since then, U.S. officials have sought to bolster airport security, deploying full-body scanners to try to detect explosives.

School-provided chicken nuggets are apparently healthier than a turkey and cheese sandwich and a banana:

Notice in the story that the child was not "forced" to consume the State-provided meal, whether in addition to or in replacement of her lunch from home.  She was, however, compelled to accept it.  It did not matter that her mother had provided a perfectly wholesome meal for her daughter.  The State said the lunch from home was insufficient.  The girl was only four years old.  Imagine, if you can, the fearsome and imposing intimidation an adult can have over the psyche of a tiny child.  Imagine, then, that this authority figure has told you that the lunch given to you by your mother was not good enough; and, that you must eat what the school (i.e. government) gives you.  Let that sink in for a moment.  The State, at least in this one case, is already establishing its supra-paternal power of authority over a child that in all respects should be at home with the care and protection of her mother.  The State is asserting its authority over the child in defiance of parental rights.  Furthermore, the premise of the debate has been falsely framed by the State.  What if the child had a lunch of dry toast and a slice of cheese?  Is the next step in this process a visit to this girl's home by the Division of Child and Family Services for a broad-based audit of her living conditions?  That we willingly allow the State to be the final determining authority of our children's diet has alarming implications that far exceed nutritional concerns.  In the case of this young girl in the Hoke County public schools, we are witnessing a purposeful usurpation of the State over the parent in the raising of children.

No one wants children to go hungry or to consume day-after-day sugary/salty/fatty/greasy foods while playing with i-PODs their single mothers told the welfarists they were too poor to buy but this nutritional brow-beating is the tip of the iceberg. First, children are going hungry so we must empty our pockets of coffee money to feed them, even if the entire thing is a scam, a packed lunch is more affordable than one thinks, isn’t that healthy or is actually a way out for the most idle. Now, only the state can determine what is suitable to go into a packed lunch and what isn’t, whether one likes it or not. Short-term unsustainable solutions to hunger without the discovery and resolution of root problems have allowed the state one further reach and that is the ultimate decision of what goes in a kid’s stomach. Lazy parents might feed their kids a bag of potato chips and that’s not an ideal meal. That might not even be typical of a how a household is run if the meddler-in-chief fails to investigate (should it come to that and it usually does). Then again, for every meddling bureaucrat dressed in the finery of good intentions, there is a road or bridge in need of repair. You know- the things the state should be working on instead of trying to be a de facto parent. 

I’ve seen it and it’s no surprise:

Western schoolchildren are up to three years behind those in China's Shanghai and success in Asian education is not just the product of pushy "tiger" parents, an Australian report released Friday said.

The study by independent think-tank The Grattan Institute said East Asia was the centre of high performance in schools with four of the world's top systems in the region -- Hong Kong, South Korea, Shanghai and Singapore.

"In Shanghai, the average 15-year-old mathematics student is performing at a level two to three years above his or her counterpart in Australia, the USA and Europe," Grattan's school education programme director Ben Jensen said.

"That has profound consequences. As economic power is shifting from West to East, high performance in education is too."

Students in South Korea were a year ahead of those in the US and European Union in reading and seven months ahead of Australian pupils, said the report, using data from the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment.

Say whatever you want but education and hard work are not prized in North America just as innovation is scarce in Asia. Continue treating Western students like unique little snowflakes- just like everyone else- while Asian students are the shovel that pushes them out of the way.

What this guy said:

I believe liberals adopt their beliefs not because they actually believe them but because it makes dad mad. Patriarchs are an easy villain and antagonizing them has become a political doctrine in itself. The left’s entire raison d’être is nothing more than a teenager puffing his chest out and saying to his father, “Oh yeah?” 

Scratch a liberal/leftist, find some guy who wants to fry his dad. Oedipal.

Star-spangled communism vs. the Church? Hhhmmmm…

In short, American communists and the radical left generally have long targeted the Roman Catholic Church.  They know their enemy, one that is both spiritual and eternal.  They have long attempted to pit Protestants and Catholics against each other.  It's an old art, really, that's today totally forgotten.

And so, is this tactic being resurrected right now under Barack Obama?  Is this more of the "fundamental transformation" we were promised -- elected by oblivious Americans in November 2008?

If Obama can frame his mandate as a matter of contraceptive freedom -- rather than an obvious constitutional affront on religious liberty -- he may be able to successfully pit large numbers of Protestants and even many Catholics against the institutional Catholic Church.  It would be the kind of religious agitation that would make the Marxists of the last century -- particularly Obama's mentor -- very proud.  How's that for "hope" and "change"?

Let’s just say this wouldn’t surprise me.

What Zilla said. Really.

As long as they are banning Christmas, everything is coming up roses:

We can’t even question religion being practiced in public schools.

That’s the message the majority of Ottawa-Carleton Public School Board trustees sent out earlier this week when they voted on a motion put before them.

Pam FitzGerald is Zone 5 College Ward trustee for the board.

She put forward the following motion at the Feb. 14 meeting

“THAT staff be directed to prepare a report for the May 2012 Strategic Planning and Priorities Committee meeting detailing policy and procedure(s) currently in place which addresses the subject of religious services within schools, during school hours and ensure all schools adhere to applicable law.”

The motion failed 8-4.

But at a previous meeting the majority of trustees seemed to be behind it.

FitzGerald believes they were persuaded by people attending the meeting to change their tune.

“There was one woman who told me that God is mad at me,” said FitzGerald.

If that’s the rhetoric being tossed around, it’s not hard to imagine some people would change their vote.

Read that motion carefully. It’s asking that the school board make sure they comply with the law. And trustees opted against that?

“The law says there is not supposed to be religious services during the school day. We need to respect the law.”

FitzGerald wants to officially record what’s happening in our schools.

“I just want to find out what’s going on in the schools.”

The parents in her ward have been asking her to do this for a while, she’s received such calls for more than five years.

She cites one particular incident as alarming.

At Bell High School there was an all-student assembly. Several community leaders were in attendance, including a local imam. Despite the fact it wasn’t a religious gathering, the imam delivered a prayer in Arabic to the entire student body.

“When I spoke to the principal a couple days later, he first saw nothing wrong with the situation.”

If he doesn’t see anything wrong with that, I imagine most of the parents at his school would see something wrong with him.

So it was sown, so it will be reaped.

Related: in the province where not supporting Francophone language and culture is a crime, it is mandatory to leave your kids in “ethics classes”- whether you like it or not:

Canada's top court on Friday rejected an appeal from parents in Quebec who sought the right to keep their children out of an ethics and religious culture program taught in the province's schools.

The program, which was introduced in 2008 to elementary and high schools by the provincial Education Ministry, replaced religion classes with a curriculum covering all major faiths found in Quebec culture, including Catholic, Protestant, Jewish and aboriginal beliefs.

"Exposing children to a comprehensive presentation of various religions without forcing the children to join them does not constitute an indoctrination of students that would infringe the freedom of religion of L and J [the appellants]," Madam Justice Marie Deschamps wrote in the main ruling.

"Furthermore, the early exposure of children to realities that differ from those in their immediate family environment is a fact of life in society. The suggestion that exposing children to a variety of religious facts in itself infringes their religious freedom or that of their parents amounts to a rejection of the multicultural reality of Canadian society and ignores the Quebec government’s obligations with regard to public education."

The top court said that the appellants had not proven that the ethics and religion course infringed their freedom of religion, nor that the refusal of the school board to exempt their children had violated their constitutional rights.

Imagine the case was for Catholic classes and watch the fur fly.

Why do we need activist judges?

 

And now, Bart Simpson and his chalkboard.