Opinion
By: Barbara Hollingsworth
Last Friday, the House passed onerous cap-and-trade legislation to halt man-made global warming which a majority of House members apparently still believe will devastate the planet. The very next day, the London Telegraph reported that Canadian polar bear expert Dr. Mitchell Taylor was barred from a meeting of the Polar Bear Specialty Group in Copenhagen because his views on global warming are "extremely unhelpful." The real reason Dr. Taylor was told to stay home was his signing of "the Manhattan Declaration – a statement by 500 scientists that the causes of climate change are not CO2 but natural, such as changes in the radiation of the sun and ocean currents – was "inconsistent with the position taken by the PBSG". Dr. Taylor also says polar bears are actually doing just fine and, contrary to Al Gore, are not on the verge of extinction. But what does he know? He's only studied the critters for 30 years. It's not like he won a Nobel Prize or anything. "Meanwhile, the average temperature [of the Arctic] at midsummer is still below zero," the Telegraph reports, "the latest date that this has happened in 50 years of record-keeping." Brrrrrrr. Here's the...By: Barbara Hollingsworth
The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) is in legislative limbo and that’s just fine with him, Rep. John Kline, R-MN, senior Republican on the House Education and Labor Committee, told reporters during a media conference call today. There are more than enough co-sponsors of EFCA to pass it in the House, but many House Democrats who signed on to the bill don’t really want to vote for it, so they are waiting for the Senate to do something first. And since the bill’s backers don’t have 60 votes in the Senate, the Democratic leadership won’t bring it to the floor there either. “Democrats know this [legislation] is very unpopular with voters,” Kline said. “It’s stuck right now...and I’m happy to see it stuck,” he said, warning that “this certainly doesn’t mean it’s over.” Just a handful of Senate Democrats – including Diane Feinstein, D-CA, Blanche Lincoln, D-AR, Arlen Specter, D-PA, and Jim Webb, D-VA – are all that’s standing in the way, and they may be looking for a small change in the language as an excuse to get on board. "But there really isn’t a compromise position,” Kline said, and opponents of EFCA “should be very careful not to offer such a compromise.” However, legislative limbo is a far cry from what even Kline himself predicted last...By: Barbara Hollingsworth
TSA Statement: At TSA, our people are our highest priority. TSA will continue to work with unions to educate them on our standards and look forward to an exchange of information in the best interests of our employees. The union statements and figures recently released are inaccurate and we will work with them to correct false information. During the PASS 2009 performance period, TSA transitioned away from contractors conducting assessments to TSA employees conducting them. This was in direct response to a recommendation made by TSA’s employee advisory board, the National Advisory Council, last year. The assessments are now being conducted by people who know the screening procedures the best. All evaluators completed a rigorous training course in which they learned how to objectively and consistently evaluate an officer’s performance. The evaluators have been given the necessary tools to ensure fair and consistent evaluations are being conducted at all airports nationwide. The purpose of these evaluations is to ensure that officers have the necessary skills to protect the traveling public. We continue to implement new and innovative ways to train, test and motivate our workforce to perform at a high level. Under the Aviation and Transportation Security Act (ATSA) of 2001, TSA is required to conduct an annual proficiency review of security officers to...By: Barbara Hollingsworth
Email from a retired USAir captain and former Air Force officer: “I applied several times to work for the FAA for various positions that I qualified for but I was turned down for various reasons. “There was a law that was concocted many years ago that stated if you were over the military rank of Major and or Lt Commander you would not be allowed to use your Veteran’s disability Preference points for job consideration. The DOT, OPM and DOL conveniently left off the last paragraph stating that if you were a retired Reservist this rule did not apply.... With the aid of two DOL vets...we were able to find out that the OPM/DOL were intentionally keeping me from being considered for ANY US Government positions that I applied for - and I mean any!! “The story even gets better. I applied for various FAA air carrier inspector positions...at various bases and was turned down... The former Adjutant General of the National Guard warned me that I needed to apply months in advance for any FAA position in this area... the FAA Administrator would not even hire him and that he had to get a job at [another state] office instead. “...I personally know that the FAA office is run by incompetent inspectors who are extremely weak Civil Service employees that have no clue what they are doing. Personally I think that my military and airline resume should have put...By: Barbara Hollingsworth
Half of the Transportation Security Administration workers at BWI and an eye-popping 80 percent at Dulles International have failed mandatory tests that certify them to screen passengers, the agency reported. And while less than half of the TSA screeners at BWI flunked the baggage section of the test, a whopping 90 percent didn’t make the grade at Dulles. TSA employees believe that many of them are being intentionally failed on the Practical Skills Evaluation recertification test so that the agency doesn’t have to give them raises and bonuses. A letter send by the American Federation of Government Employees to Homeland Security Sec. Janet Napolitano and House Homeland Security chairman Bennie Thompson calls for a nationwide investigation into test standards and the training of TSA screeners. One screener reportedly failed the body pat-down section of the test in Houston - even though she found all the items that would have triggered a security alarm – but passed after retaking the test and doing the same thing at BWI the next day. "If I failed because they do things differently at other airports, that's not right. Everybody needs to be doing the same thing," she said. Agreed. But the U.S. government has been at war with terrorists for eight years now. Shouldn’t we be far beyond such bureaucratic bungling by...By: Barbara Hollingsworth
Seven-year-old Gabriel Myers was found hanged in the bathroom of his foster home in Margate, FL. He had been taking Symbyax, an anti-psychotic medication. Here's the link: http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20090602/COLUMNIST/906021041/2127?Title=In-another-tragic-death-another-lesson-for-DCF Florida Department of Children and Families Secretary George Sheldon confirmed that the agency had no parental or court permission to put Gabriel on this highly potent psychotropic drug, as the law requires. DCF didn't have any record of the boy's prescription, even though the drug's side effects include "increased risk of suicidal thinking and behavior in children, adolescents and young adults." Sheldon's subsequent investigation revealed that more than 2,600 foster children in Florida are being doped up - with one in six lacking the legally required consent forms. Children trapped in these state-run "child welfare" programs are being doped up to keep them docile and easy to manage while the adults in charge thumb their noses at the law and cash the checks. This is beyond disgusting. It's criminal....By: Chris Stirewalt
Remarks of Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele today at National Harbor: Once again, welcome to Maryland. Welcome to Prince George’s County, Maryland. This is my birthplace, the place where I raised my family and the place of my first leadership position in the Republican Party. It was a tough job – and the pay wasn’t very good. Most of my time was spent walking neighborhoods, licking envelopes, and making phone calls for the County Republican Party. You don’t know lonely until you announce: “Hi, I’m from the Prince George’s County Republican Party.” But, I learned a great deal; and it served as a foundation on my journey to becoming County Chairman, State Chairman and the first African American elected statewide. You are in the place where this incredible journey began; a place that is very special to me. Many of you may know this story, so forgive me for re-telling it, but it speaks to who I am and why I am particularly honored that you have chosen me to serve as your chairman. I was born about 20 minutes from here at Andrews Air Force Base and raised in our nation’s capital. I was adopted by my mother and father, a father who suffered from his addictions and his temper and who died when I was 4 years old. So, my mother Maebell raised me on the salary of laundry worker, having earned no more...By: Barbara Hollingsworth
Not only does Al Gore stand to profit from a swine flu pandemic www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/SharpSticks/Al-Gores-strange-link-to-swine-flu-44006757.html, It may have been spliced together in a government lab. Acting Centers for Disease Control head Richard Besser says that the number of confirmed cases of swine flu is now up to 896 in 41 states. http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.4292ad3a1989e9a21136c0c51cdca897.881&show_article=1&catnum=0 Four years ago, the CDC admitted it recreated the 1918 “Spanish flu” bug. In an Oct. 5, 2005 press release, CDC announced that using reverse genetics, they had “successfully reconstructed the influenza strain responsible for the 1918 pandemic...[and] determined the set of genes in the 1918 virus that made it so harmful.” http://www.cdc.gov/od/oc/media/pressrel/r051005.htm And ecactly which flu strain would that be? A (H1N1) – the same one that’s now threatening to become a global pandemic, according to CDC and the World Health Organization. In reconstructing the Spanish flu virus, CDC collaborated with the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, and Southeast Poultry Research Laboratory. Researchers said at the time that “the probability of the 1918 virus re-emerging from a natural source appears to be remote......By: Barbara Hollingsworth
Is swine flu some sort of genetically modified bioweapon? Before you totally dismiss the idea as some sort of crazy wacko conspiracy theory, consider the following: 1. Three vials of highly dangerous pathogens can’t be accounted for at the nation’s top biodefense lab, and some virus samples recently found there had not been inventoried. Fort Detrick disease samples may be missing --Frederick News Post, April 26, 2009 Fort Detrick is the site of the Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, which couldn’t keep tabs on the anthrax that killed five people in 2001. FNP reports that criminal investigators from Fort Meade are “investigating the possibility of missing virus samples.... In February, USAMRIID halted all its research into these and other diseases, known as 'select agents’ following the discovery of virus samples that weren't listed in its inventory,” 2. “The Swine Influenza A/H1N1 viruses characterized in this outbreak have not been previously detected in pigs or humans.The viruses so far characterized have been sensitive to oseltamivir, but resistant to both amantadine and rimantadine." --World Health Organization’s Epidemic and Pandemic Alert and Response Report, April 24, 2009 3. Outbreaks of the “same [never been seen in nature before] virus” occurred almost simultaneously in...By: Barbara Hollingsworth
Here’s an excerpt from Future of Freedom Foundation president Jacob G. Hornberger’s unsettling essay entitled: “How Hitler became a dictator” " For their part, the German people quickly accepted the new order of things. Keep in mind that the average non-Jewish German was pretty much unaffected by the new laws and decrees. As long as a German citizen kept his head down, worked hard, took care of his family, sent his children to the public schools and the Hitler Youth organization, and, most important, didn’t involve himself in political dissent against the government, a visit by the Gestapo was very unlikely. Keep in mind also that, while the Nazis established concentration camps in the 1930s, the number of inmates ranged in the thousands. It wouldn’t be until the 1940s that the death camps and the gas chambers that killed millions would be implemented. Describing how the average German adapted to the new order, [William] Shirer [author of “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich”] writes: “...The overwhelming majority of Germans did not seem to mind that their personal freedom had been taken away, that so much of culture had been destroyed and replaced with a mindless barbarism, or that their life and work had become regimented to a...By: Barbara Hollingsworth
Hat tip to Richard Wexler, executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform, for sending this article about long-time foster parents in Oregon who were paid $90,000 a year tax free - and kept children in cages in a filthy, darkened room they called “the dungeon.” But they won’t be prosecuted and the caseworkers who claimed to have visited the home 39 times won’t lose their jobs, either, even though documentation for the alleged visits somehow got “lost”. In fact, the only people who will be punished are these severely damaged kids, who will require care for the rest of their lives and, of course, Oregon taxpayers. From the SUNDAY OREGONIAN, PORTLAND, OR, April 5, 2009 Foster kids abused despite DHS checks | Twins in a Gresham home were allegedly kept in a bedroom By Aimee Green The Oregon Department of Human Services has agreed to pay $2 million into a fund for the future care of twins who were allegedly abused by their foster parents --the largest such settlement in the agency's history. According to the civil rights suit filed in December 2007 in U.S. District Court, Kaylie and Jordan Collins were kept in makeshift cages --cribs covered with chicken wire secured by duct tape --in a darkened bedroom known as "the dungeon." The brother and sister often went without food, water or human touch,...By: Barbara Hollingsworth
Pro-life leaders and activists will gather at noon today in Lafayette Park – right across the street from the White House - to denounce Notre Dame’s decision to invite President Barack Obama to speak at the university’s May 17 commencement. Similar protests are being held simultaneously in Dallas, Los Angeles, and Fort Wayne. The Notre Dame invitation has sparked a surprisingly strong backlash both on the nominally Catholic campus and off, galvanizing opposition to the Obama administration’s aggressive abortion agenda. In less than three months, Obama has: - Abandoned the Mexico City policy, which forbade non-profits receiving government funding from supporting abortion efforts in other countries; - - Ordered the Department of Health and Human Services to rescind the “conscience clause” that protects medical personnel who refuse to refer or participate in abortions, or dispense abortion-inducing drugs, from legal retaliation; - - Lifted the Bush administration’s ban on embryonic stem cell research, despite a scientific breakthrough that makes such research unnecessary. - - Nominated Dawn Johnsen, a woman who called mothers “fetal containers” in an amicus brief as head of the White House Office of Legal Counsel. Last December, one pro-life leader told me that the Obama...By: Barbara Hollingsworth
Do as we say,,,not as we do in the world's largest insane aslymum aka California: From the Sacramento Bee: “Dozens in CPS have criminal records,” March 22 “Drug possession, domestic violence, repeatedly driving drunk, assault with a deadly weapon – any one of these charges or convictions could lead child protective services workers to remove children from a home or force a parent into counseling. “But all of those crimes and many others appear in the backgrounds of employees of Sacramento County's Child Protective Services, a Bee investigation has found....” Link: http://www.sacbee.com/topstories/story/1719235.html And these lunatics are making life-atlering decisions about children?...By: Barbara Hollingsworth
A hearing challenging the constitutionality of the Dulles Rail tax district and another Fairfax County transportation tax will be held at 2 p.m. today before Judge Jane Marum Roush in Courtroom 5B of the Fairfax Circuit Court, 4110 Chain Bridge Road, Fairfax. I personally can’t wait to hear how Judge Roush creatively evades and ignores the law again this...By: Barbara Hollingsworth
Tomorrow, (April 3) General Counsel PC attorney James Markels will appear before Fairfax Circuit Court Judge Jane Marum Roush to challenge the constitutionality of the special tax district created to fund Fairfax County’s share of the Dulles Rail boondoggle. It should be quite a show. Markels will argue that not only does the special tax district violate the Virginia Constitution, but so does Fairfax County’s general transportation tax because both taxes are being imposed on commercial and industrial properties, but not residential property as well. Under the state constitution, all real property must be uniformly taxed except for very specific exceptions spelled out by the General Assembly. Which obviously didn’t happen this time. Besides the constitutional argument, case law in Virginia is clear, Markels told me. If the purpose behind imposing a particular tax benefits everybody - as transportation improvements clearly do - everybody must contribute, not just a particular subset of taxpayers. So requiring businesses, but not homeowners, to chip in for Dulles Rail and other transportation improvements in Fairfax County is unfair, he claims. On behalf of his client, a landowner in Tysons Corner, Markels will ask Judge Roush to order the county to stop collecting both taxes and refund what it’s already collected to taxpayers, including about $110...By: Barbara Hollingsworth
After a foster care surge in New York City, guess what happened? Homicides of children known to the system went up 50 percent! Read the details and...By: Barbara Hollingsworth
That’s how Media Research Center (mrc.org) president L. Brent Bozell III summed up both candidates, their respective political parties and the “thousands and thousands of putrid nonsense” that passed for media coverage of last year’s presidential election at his group’s 2009 DisHonors Awards dinner held at the Washington Hyatt Thursday night. This was no self-congratulatory repast, but a curmudgeon’s smorgasbord that nourished the soul as well as the body. Four top media darlings – Chris Matthews, Bill Weir, Bill Maher and Ted Turner – were carved up and eaten alive. (Hat tip to Turner for his winning cannibal imagery.) If Bozell deftly kebabed the mainstream media for their “collective man-crush” on Barack Obama (“Including Bush-Cheney-Halliburton in a story about pedophile home-schoolers makes them happy, but when covering the Messiah, they levitate.”) radio talk show host Monica Crowley gleefully barbequed Obama himself, as well as the big-time reporters who cover him, over the hot coals of her derision: On Obama: “This man’s got teleprompters everywhere. It’s a non-stop ‘ich bin ein’ cue card...Messiahs don’t need teleprompters. And when covering national politics, reporters oughtn’t to need kneepads.” On MSNBC’s Chris Matthews:...By: Barbara Hollingsworth
This from Dr. Richard Cordero, whose Judicial Reform Website (http://judicial-discipline-reform.org) deals with many of the issues raised by Virginia’s Pitchfork Rebellion, particularly the almost total unaccountability of federal judges and their immunity from punishment even when they flagrantly violate the rules of judicial conduct: “Will the next meeting of the Judicial Conference of the U.S. on March 17, 2009, at the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C. deal with the issue of judicial unaccountability and self-exemption from discipline resulting from the judges' concerted circumvention of the Judicial Conduct and Disability Act and its Rules of application? “De facto guaranteed immunity from accountability and discipline for the exercise of judicial power over people's property, liberty, and even lives, as shown by the official statistics on the judges' disposition of complaints against them, has given rise to institutionalized coordinated wrongdoing in the federal judiciary.” According to Dr. Cordero, “Judicial wrongdoing tolerated in one instance gives rise to the mentality of judicial impunity that triggers generalized wrongdoing and weaves relationships among the judges of multilateral interdependency of survival where any subsequent unlawful act is allowed and must...By: Barbara Hollingsworth
There’s a controversial pilot program now running in Montgomery County to eliminate the popular gifted and talented program. Today (March 16) there will be a presentation by the MCCPTA Gifted Child Committee at Carver auditorium, 850 Hungerford, Rockville, at 7:30 p.m. Below is a copy of a letter sent by a parents’ group, the Gifted and Talented Association of Montgomery County, to the principals of the two schools running the pilot - Burning Tree Elementary Principal Nancy Erdrich and Georgian Forest Elementary Principal Aara Davis-Jones - as well as Kay Williams, director of MCPS Department of Accelerated and Enriched Instruction, asking a number of pertinent questions. It will be interesting to see how they answer them. Ms. Erdrich, Davis-Jones and Williams: As you know, the global screening and gifted and talented (GT) identification process has assumed an outsized importance in the debate regarding gifted and talented education, as it is currently focused through the revision of Policy IOA. Your schools are seen as tests of the efficacy of GT identification, and of GT instruction generally. Therefore, we look forward to your presentations Monday, March 16, We hope that you will reflect on the pluses and minuses of dispensing with GT identification, and inform us of the gifted and talented programming that continues at your schools...By: Barbara Hollingsworth
Tuesday's special election in Fairfax County's Braddock District to fill the seat of newly elected Board Chairwoman Sharon Bulova is a contest between Harvard-educated School Board member Ilyrong Moon and King's Park Civic Association president John Cook. Even the WaPo has endorsed Cook, an attorney (GW Law) who has spent the last few years fighting lax zoning enforcement and helping to close numerous illegal boarding houses in his suburban neighborhood made possible by former Chairman Gerry Connolly's refusal to do anything about illegal immigration - with Bulova's silent acquiesence. Now that home values have plummeted, foreclosures are destroying what little equity remains for responsible homeowners who have their life's savings invested in their property. So what has Fairfax County done to help them? Nothing! Worse, the county spent millions of dollars to buy a large apartment complex in Annandale and turned it into a massive public housing project using these same taxpayers' money. Moon was one of the School Board members who decided that spending more than $100 million for an administrative building in Merrifield was a good idea. In a recession. When commercial property values are tanking. When thousands of kids still attend classes in shabby Connellyville trailers. Cook also wants the Police Dept. to start reporting crime stats by neighborhood, eliminate the...By: Barbara Hollingsworth
According to Virginian Lawyers Weekly: “The Northern Virginia delegation had asked the House and Senate Courts of Justice committees to withhold certification of [Fairfax Circuit Court Judge Gaylord] Finch for reappointment until it can give further consideration to his performance.” Chairman Del. Dave Albo said Tuesday that no vote on Judge Finch’s reappointment is currently scheduled. In Fairfax County’s clubby legal circles, this is pretty astounding news. Most members of the General Assembly are lawyers who don’t want to jeopardize their livelihoods by voting against a judge they might have to appear before in the future. Unless there’s some sort of egregious misconduct involved – or a public outcry – the vast majority of judges are rubber-stamped back onto the bench year after year.By: Barbara Hollingsworth
Regarding my Jan. 19 column, “Fairfax School Board’s Gateway drug,” this from an ESOL teacher in Fairfax County: "You should see the Gatehouse 1 building. I was there the other day for a class and it is so luxurious it made my head spin!! It even has this state- of-the-art parking lot that indicates the location of available parking spots. Unbelievable. “Meanwhile, at my school I can't even get a relacement printer cartridge. This coming, of course, after the e-mail from [Supt. Jack] Dale to all employees saying how wonderful we all were to support the no pay raise! Huh?? I guess he forgot to ask anyone I know. “People in the FCPS administration are so, so detached from the realities of the classroom it is pathetic.” And some corrections and clarifications to my column from eagle-eyed Examiner readers: 1. Graham Road Elementary was supposed to be renovated with a 2005 bond referendum that was approved by voters, but the Fairfax County School Board subsequently decided to renovate the Devonshire Center and move the Graham Road kids there instead. This reversal angered many Graham Road parents, who have filed a lawsuit against the School Board. 2. Instead of spending $73 million on extensive renovations to Gatehouse II that include a health spa and an indoor/outdoor cafeteria for Dale and his staff, it will only be $65.8 million....
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