Category — News

Wife convicted in preacher’s death - Yahoo! News

I’m happy it was voluntary manslaughter versus 1st degree murder, but still, it is a horrible mess. 

Bitch Ph.D.

If one was conspiracy-minded, one would think that the decision was meant to be covered up by the shooting at Virginia Tech on Monday.

But whatever one’s views on abortion, legislating against a medical procedure commonly used to save lives (the mother) or to safely deliver a already dead or nonviable fetus (not a baby), is shoving one’s beliefs down the throat of America.

Abortion is legal, though in the interest of controlling women’s reproduction, many narrow-minded folks are eroding away at the freedom to choose. If they are so dang worried about unwanted pregnancies, how about going after the men who got the women pregnant in the first place? How about making it easier to obtain Plan B and birth control pills, instead of making women feel like sluts just because they aren’t prepared to have a baby, or was raped?

Also read the links Bitch gathered for information about the so-called “partial birth abortion”.

ETA: check out this link to Slate: Father Knows Best and also this post by The Rude Pundit (where I got the slate link): The Carhart Decision: Keeping Women Moral.

Making Light: Dealing with guns

Really good points, especially the ones made by Old Jarhead. Guns are tools and having one doesn’t necessarily mean one is protected and/or safe.

It started making the rounds by Tuesday morning (I’m being generous and assuming that some people had the decency to not say anything re: guns until Tuesday), that perhaps allowing students and instructors/professors to carry weapons on campus and other comments re: gun control (tightening laws, etc.)

Um no. This is not the Wild West. We are supposed to be civilized, not hooligans brandishing weapons. The gunman at Virginia Tech bought his weaponry legally. He followed the law in buying his guns (for all anybody knew, he could have wanted to learn how to shoot.)

Of course the enlightened legislators in Nashville want to allow handguns onto public property except schools. I think that’s stupid too.

What’s even more idiotic that 33 people are dead because somebody couldn’t get the help he needed.

So, I’ve heard Rumsfield resigned, and Gates, former CIA Director under Bush I will be the new Secretary of Defense. I reckon Daddy Dearest is helping GWB out a bit.
81% of Tennesseans approved a constitutional amendment defining marriage. Do you really think allowing gay people to marry which nowadays isn’t a way to ensure children are legitimate and can inherit actually threatens your marriage? Deceit, debt, infidelity and many other things threaten marriage, not gay people, who want to be seen as people just the same as straight people. The only difference? Who they have sex with, which is none of our public business and shouldn’t be a defining characteristic of people-hood, or a requirement to having your basic civil rights recognized.

Corker became a Senator, based on the fact that he put some nasty ads making comments about Ford, Jr’s sexual habits, his family and insinuating racial differences, when he was mayor in Chattanooga, which helped enrich his pockets, and had no problem hiring illegal immigrants to work in his construction projects while promising to kick them all out of the country. Good luck there.

EDIT_TO_ADD

Oh finally-Dems get majority in both houses-51 in the Senate, and 230 in the House with 10 races still being counted. (according to Race Overview by TPMCafe.)

WFMU’s Beware of the Blog: Tokyo Rose (aka Orphan Ann) Dies at 90

In spite of Iva’s commitment to her American citizenship and the help she offered Allied POWs while employed by Radio Tokyo, Toguri was to be only person ever tried or sent to prison for Japanese WWII broadcasts. Her trial, based wholly upon perjured evidence that U.S. authorities fabricated by threatening two NHK workers, was the most expensive trial in American history up until that time. All of this for being an entirely mythical non-existent figure, for neither she nor anyone else had ever broadcast for the Japanese under the name “Tokyo Rose”, although tales of such a “Tokyo Rose” that arose from the imaginations of Allied soldiers in the Pacific resulted in Iva Toguri paying the price as a scapegoat

In my 8th grade American History book she was a mere blurb in the massive chapter devoted to WW2.  I didn’t know until they had her obituary on the news that she had been pardoned by President Ford and that she had done the broadcasts under duress or that she was a scapegoat.  

powered by performancing firefox

DOGS - DOGS CAN SNIFF OUT PIRATED DVD’S — BUT THERE’S A HITCH

Buh? Brain-break loves. The MPAA apparently trained dogs to sniff out pirated DVDS. But they’ve also smelt out legimate DVDs as well.

Alrighty, then obviously some people are WAYYY too paranoid about piracy.

Somebody needs some sense shaken into them (not that I’m advocating physical violence).

powered by performancing firefox

A train derailed near Sweetwater this morning around 3 AM. Here in Monroe County, a lot of people live close to the railroad, so whenever something like this happens, its a big mess. Quite a few people had to be evacuated to Sweetwater High School and they may not go back home till tommorrow, depending on if they get the mess cleaned up in time. For additional info:

Monroe County Advocate Democrat

powered by performancing firefox
Update: WVLT used Google Maps to show where the wreck occurred during their coverage of the wreck. Really neat, I think. (I live close to the area but wasn't evacuated since I'm only about 5 miles or so away from the area)

ABC News: One Dead, 2 Hurt in Tenn. School Shooting

Another school shooting, rather close to me. Most likely, the Knoxville News Sentinel will have the shooting on its front page in the morning and more people will be calling for either banning of violent video games, guns or more metal detectors at school. School shouldn't be that way with armed guards and metal detectors almost like a prison in itself. When I was a freshman, I attended high school in Alamogordo, NM about 2 hours from the border. In a 2000 student school, there were 18 gangs, all with different colors and codes. Yet the most serious thing that happened was when they would have fights across the street in a vacant lot. Of course it may have changed since then. Sophomore year brought me to Monroe County and it was more about drinking and pot and sex than guns.

Banning guns or installing metal detectors or the latest fad, blaming violent video games isn't going to work. The parents need to take more responsibility for raising their kids rather than expecting the schools to do it for them. The schools should concentrate on educating the kids so they can have better jobs. Guns, that is a sticky wicket. Guns are useful for hunting and defending oneself, but what does one have to defend against at school?

Adults, that is responsible adults, should have the right to bear arms, yet you don't need to carry them in public unless you are on your way to the hunting range. My point is that guns are tools, and dangerous tools and should be treated as so, rather than a political talking point to garner votes.

Video games aren't the cause of shooting sprees. They may be a factor, but if a kid thinks that one can just shoot a person like in a video game and there won't be consequences needs a reality check as real life isn't a game where you can hit the reset button or reload a saved game. They are just bits and bytes with pretty pictures.

NA dnow, an assistant principal is dead and two others are injured, all because a kid was stupid enough to bring a gun and shoot somebody for whatever reason.