DelMarVa's Premier Source for News, Opinion, Analysis, and Human Interest Contact Publisher Joe Albero at alberobutzo@wmconnect.com or 410-430-5349
Rescuers were searching for a missing 25-year-old man Monday night after he and another person fell off a 16-foot skiff into the Magothy River in Anne Arundel County, near Dobbins Island.
The second victim was rescued with no reported injuries, according to Coast Guard Petty Officer Brandyn Hill, who described the missing man as a white male with blond hair. He was wearing a blue shirt and black pants. The man was not wearing a life jacket, Hill said.
The entire world was at war. No place was safe. This war wasn't being fought by 500,000 soldiers like today.
Millions of men and women volunteered or were drafted, trained to fight, trained to win.
There was no political correctness - you fought and killed, or died, for freedom and your way of life.
This army was supported by the will of the people. Civilians worked long hours for little pay to support the troops.
Civilians bought war bonds, contributed cooking pots for metal, wasted nothing, everything went to the war effort.
The war was a reality every day, not a TV show that you watched on the 6 o'clock news.
~ These were our parents or grand-parents ~
What in God's name have we let happen ?
Political correctness (or "re-education") happened,
Lack of God's name happened,
Lack of personal responsibility happened,
Lack of personal integrity and honesty happened,
Lack of respect and loyalty to our country happened,
Lack of being an American happened.
Did all of these things die along with common sense ?!?~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I for one am still proud to be an American!
Submitted by a Reader. – Ed.
AGENDA
WORCESTER COUNTY COMMISSIONERS
July 5, 2011
09:00 AM – Meet in Commissioners’ Conference Room – Room 1103 Government Center, One West Market Street, Snow Hill, MD – Vote to Meet In Closed Session
09:01 AM – Closed Session: Discussion regarding filling critical vacant positions including Director of Economic Development, Mediation Director / Victim and Witness Coordinator, and Office Assistant III in the State’s Attorney’s Office; considering appointments to various County Boards and Commissions; considering acquisition of real property for public purposes; receiving legal advice from Counsel and performing administrative functions.
10:00 AM – Call to Order, Prayer, Pledge of Allegiance
10:01 AM – Report on Closed Session; Review and Approval of Minutes
10:05 AM – Presentation of Proclamation recognizing July as Parks and Recreation Month
Presentation of Commendations to Several Retiring County Employees
10:20 AM – Chief Administrative Officer: Administrative Matters
12:00 PM – Questions from the Press
Lunch
1:30 PM – Chief Administrative Officer: Administrative Matters (continued – see above)
In case you were wondering, we’re doing a lot of history posts today. After all, today we celebrate one of (if not) the most important days in the history of the world’s greatest nation.
Brian Schoeneman of Bearing Drift has some interesting historical accuracies to ruin our concept of “Independence Day”. It doesn’t matter. No one at SBYnews is arguing that we should cover up the facts just to tell a good story:
It was oppressively hot that 4th of July 1776, when the Founding Fathers gathered in Independence Hall, Philadelphia. The titans of the day, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, John Hancock, Sam Adams, Benjamin Franklin and the two dozen other leading founders finally voted unanimously to sever all ties with Great Britain, one by one filing up to sign the Declaration of Independence, written with divine inspiration by Jefferson himself. Bells rang, people rejoiced in the streets and the American republic was proclaimed.
Not exactly.
Most of what we Americans “know” about the Fourth of July is wrong.
Roger Clemens' tenacious pursuit of victory on the pitching mound is re-emerging as he enters federal court this week to fight charges he lied about using drugs.
Clemens is charged with perjury, false statements and obstruction of Congress for telling a House committee under oath that he never used performance-enhancing drugs. The record-setting pitcher who once seemed destined for the Hall of Fame now could face prison if 12 jurors agree that he lied.
The trial is scheduled to begin Wednesday and last 4-6 weeks.
Clemens' defense strategy is to try to discredit his former trainer Brian McNamee, who says he injected Clemens with steroids and human growth hormone. McNamee says he kept the needles, which will be evidence at trial. Clemens' attorneys say McNamee is a "serial liar."
Do You Believe That the United States
is the Greatest Nation on Earth?
Defendants convicted of child pornography offenses will be required to pay restitution to their victims under a newly amended Virginia law.
The provision, which the General Assembly added during its last session, requires an unspecified amount of mandatory restitution to be paid to the victims portrayed in the still images and videos that a defendant created, possessed or distributed. The language modified in HB 1995 went into effect on Friday.
“It’s a victory for victims,” said Louisa County Deputy Commonwealth’s Attorney Rusty McGuire.
McGuire, along with Louisa Commonwealth’s Attorney and state Senate hopeful Tom Garrett, came forward a year ago to support victim notification and mandatory restitution. At the time, a few victims of widely distributed child pornography had begun seeking restitution in federal courts across the country.
Camille Cooper, director of legislative affairs for the child protection lobby PROTECT, worked with the prosecutors on the bill. She said she hopes that financial sanctions will deter people from using child pornography.
THE DECLARATION of Independence announced to the world the birth of a new nation. Every birth “excites our interest,’’ President Calvin Coolidge said on the Declaration’s 150th anniversary, but that is not why July 4, 1776, “has come to be regarded as one of the greatest days in history.’’
Since ancient times there had been many revolutions, after all; new nations had broken away from old empires before. What makes America’s founding extraordinary, observed the 30th president, is that it was the first to be based not on blood or soil but on a set of philosophical ideas about “the nature of mankind and therefore of government.’’ Other nations have their deepest roots in ethnicity, tribal loyalty, or military conquest. America, uniquely, was dedicated to a proposition - to the fundamental, self-evident truth “that all men are created equal’’ and the political ideas that flow from that truth.
The doctrine that human beings are by nature equal is one that Americans of the Founders’ era had learned from both philosophy and religion.
In 1690, in his influential “Second Treatise of Government,’’ the English philosopher John Locke had written that the “state all men are naturally in’’ is one of “perfect freedom to order their actions and dispose of their possessions . . . as they see fit,’’ as well as one “of equality, wherein all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal . . . without subordination or subjection.’’ Even older, and no less influential, was the biblical teaching that because all human beings are made in the image of God, all are born with the same God-given right to equality and freedom.
Two longtime residents of the Carriage Run community near New Castle say they are lucky to be alive after a propane tank exploded and set their home on fire Saturday.
Firefighters were able to contain the flames before anybody was hurt or any other homes were damaged.
Mary and Robert Gadsden of the first block of Skyline Drive were preparing to grill in their backyard when Robert Gadsden saw flames spurting from the propane tank.
He quickly tried to close the tank's gas flow to the grill, but the flames made it impossible to get near the tank. The flames quickly grew and started to climb up the back of their home, he said.
"Then all of a sudden, it just banged," Mary Gadsden said of the tank exploding. "There were so much flames coming out of it. I knew it was going to blow."
When Andrew Jackson made the island now known as Fort Wool into his summer White House, there was no question where he'd spend the Fourth of July.
Steaming across the channel to Fort Monroe, the hero of the War of 1812 reviewed the troops after a 24-gun salute honoring the states of the Union. Then he joined the excited crowd from the Hygeia Hotel and across Hampton Roads to listen to the Army band and watch a fireworks display that one observer described as "certainly magnificent and of the first order."
So widely admired were the patriotic observances at Old Point Comfort that — over the years — they also attracted such figures as Southern firebrand Edmund Ruffin, who noted the fireworks and crowds in his diary just two years before firing the first shot at Fort Sumter.
Thousands of Union troops joined the celebration only a few months after that attack, adding giant bonfires to a fiery display designed to be seen by rebel forces watching from the Peninsula and Norfolk.
President Rutherford B. Hayes came here, too, drawn by the brilliance of the fireworks and the patriotic setting. But his 1879 visit was just another milestone in a long Army tradition that will come to an end today with the Sept. 15 closing of the historic post.
The integrity of American elections ought to be above reproach. Unfortunately, recent history suggests that when candidates are desperate, serious hanky-panky is not out of the question.
The 2000 Florida Presidential election was severely marred by Al Gore's botched election robbery. The massive vote fraud in Palm Beach County stands as immutable proof of the extent that crooked Democrats will go to steal an election. After botching the robbery in "ballot box boiler rooms," the Democrats resorted to stall tactics, the courts, and endless recounts to steal the election for Gore. The only mistake the voter frauds made is that they did not destroy enough valid votes.
Only in Palm Beach
Robert Cook emailed me during and after the 2000 Florida recounts. I remember that Robert lived in Georgia at the time and he and I were certain of voter fraud in Florida and that the media were actively covering it up. Robert ran the election numbers and sent them to me. At the time I forwarded the information to every single member of the Florida House and Senate in a push for fraud-proof electronic voting. What Robert mathematically deduced was that Florida was the victim of a massive vote fraud scheme in Palm Beach County. Robert recounted his analysis and sent it to Michael Reagan. This short report is required reading for anyone who really wants to understand what actually happened in the 2000 Florida Presidential election.
The people who founded this nation aren't moldy mannequins in history's closet — they're inspirational figures for modern America as we celebrate the Fourth of July holiday. Former Gov. Rod Blagojevich recently said he had a "man crush" on Alexander Hamilton, and Sarah Palin got into a debate about Paul Revere. So here's to life, liberty and the pursuit of historical trivia:
The state of Nevada now has a little bit of Delaware inside it. So does California. And Utah. And Iowa and Wisconsin and Florida.
In fact, thanks to the Capriotti's sandwich chain, there are now officially more lovers of meaty, massive, Delaware-style subs and steaks outside of the state of Delaware than inside.
The story of that startling reality is a tale that began 35 years ago this summer with the modest ambitions of a young Delaware woman and her brother, and which now continues in the hands of a young Las Vegas entrepreneur who aims to bring Capriotti's to an even broader national prominence in the coming years.
Looking back, it's easy to call it a success story, but like many, it's one that nearly had an early ending.
The Hispanic population in Virginia has almost doubled during the past decade, and that has caught the attention of the political class.
Though there are no Hispanics currently in the General Assembly, at least seven Hispanic candidates are running for seats in the legislature, and that number might increase by the nominating deadline of Aug. 23.
Although Hispanics still make up only about 7 percent of Virginia's voting-age population, there are larger concentrations in Northern Virginia, where most of the Latino candidates are running.
As of April 2010, when the census was taken, Virginia had about 8 million residents and 631,825 were Hispanic, said Susan Clapp, demographer for the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service at the University of Virginia.
People of Hispanic origin now make up 20.3 percent of the population in Prince William County, 15.6 percent in Fairfax County and 15.1 percent in Arlington County, according to census figures.
These were the five (5) best, or most important, posts for July 3rd, as judged by the editors of Salisbury News.
These were the most popular posts for July 3rd, judged by the most approved comments.
Since Virginia began awarding scholarships in 2005 to residents who were denied an education by the state's policy of Massive Resistance to court-ordered public school desegregation, more than 70 people have received state aid to further their education.
A handful of those granted scholarships by the Brown v. Board of Education Scholarship Program are white, and the state wants to make sure that all eligible Virginians know the scholarships are available, said Brenda H. Edwards, who manages the program for the state's Legislative Services Division.
"The law simply states if you meet the criteria, the scholarship is awarded without regard to race or gender," she said.
Edwards estimates that the number of white recipients is fewer than 10. She doesn't have an exact tally of the number of Caucasians given scholarships because applicants are not asked their race.
"That's not high on the committee's list — to determine the race of the applicant. They understand Virginia's history — believe me they do," she said. "But yet when it comes down to looking at the application, they scrutinize the application vis-à-vis the state law."
The scholarships are designed for students whose educations were interrupted during the period in the 1950s and'60s and are awarded to residents of Virginia who were students in public schools of Arlington County, Charlottesville, Norfolk, Prince Edward County or Warren County when their schools closed. Applicants must meet certain criteria, such as relocating during school closings or being ineligible to attend a private academy.
National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman John Cornyn was open Sunday to a short-term deal to raise the debt ceiling and reduce the deficit, while saying it wouldn’t be the ideal way to break the impasse on the issues.
“The problem with a mini-deal is we have a maxi-problem,” the Texas Republican said on “Fox News Sunday.” “And the big problems aren’t going to go away if you cut a mini-deal. All it does is delay the moment of truth, so I’d think better now than then [to come to a long-term agreement], but if we can’t, then we’ll take the savings we can get now and we will relitigate this as we get closer to the election.”
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) dismissed the possibility of a short-term deal on June 21, only to withdraw from negotiations led by Vice President Joseph Biden two days later. Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) also withdrew, leaving no Republicans at the table and pushing the negotiations up the ladder to President Barack Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio). But Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told CBS’ “Face the Nation” on June 19 that he would be open to moving “a very short-term” bill if it would provide enough time for negotiators to complete a long-term deal.
Virginia Jefferson spent the past 65 years putting her customers in the dark. As the proprietor of an old Baltimore awning company, it was her role to spread the shade on the hottest of summer afternoons.
About to turn 89, she is retiring and selling a business founded by her father in 1917. This week, she will leave an office that has never seen a computer and the desk where she has worked since 1946.
She'll surrender her electric typewriter, carbon paper and ledger books filled with the names of the 500 people who have relied on her to screen their homes under one of her tentlike, custom-tailored enclosures supported by pipes and lashed with ropes.
"She made a beautiful awning. You could always tell a Jefferson," said Bryan Loane, who owns a competing business and is acquiring hers. "It had a distinctive scallop edge, which was almost proprietary. They hung perfectly straight and were evenly balanced."
Governor Jack Markell (D) concluded the 2011 legislative session early Friday morning by signing the state budget into law. It bought the curtain down on a year that the governor says delivered progress on multiple fronts. Much of the agenda Markell rolled out in his January State of the State address and budget proposal—and later tweaked when additional revenue became available—has been enacted.
“This session we really had a chance and a choice,” said Markell in an interview with DFM News. “Our chance was to really focus intently on jobs and on schools and on public safety and we have done that. Our choice was to do it in a way that was respectful. We worked and did it in a way that engaged the General Assembly as opposed to demonizing each other as has happened in other states.”
Sen. Rand Paul plans to filibuster “until we talk about the debt ceiling” in the Senate, he told C-SPAN’s “Newsmakers,” as conservative Republican freshmen raise their voices in an attempt to influence their party.
In an interview posted to C-SPAN on Sunday, the Kentucky Republican said he and a group of other conservatives would support raising the debt ceiling if the chamber passes a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution.
“I’m part of the freshman group in the Senate that’s saying no more. ... So [this] week, we will filibuster until we talk about the debt ceiling, until we talk about proposals,” he said.
“And many of us in the conservative wing are going to present our own proposal [this] week, and that is to raise the debt ceiling. We will actually vote in favor of raising the debt ceiling [this] week if we can, but it’ll be contingent upon passing a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution.”
Likely Iowa Republican caucus goers are a highly educated bunch who are not wildly out of step with the rest of America in their religious profile.
That’s the stereotype-bucking picture that emerges of those who will get the nation’s first crack at narrowing the Republican presidential field early next year, based on demographic statistics gleaned from a Des Moines Register Iowa Poll taken June 19 to 22 and four Iowa Polls from the 2008 caucus cycle.
Here’s what you might not know about this group:
- About half have a college degree or higher. That’s more than Iowa adults or Americans in general.
- The proportion who consider themselves born-again Christians hits in the high-40 percent range, slightly above the range for the nation.
- Mirroring the national picture, they’re more likely to be male, evidence of the classic gender gap between Republican and Democratic voters.
Montgomery County police say a 28-year-old man was beaten to death at a family gathering in Gaithersburg.
Police have arrested a suspect, who’s described as an acquaintance of the victim.
Police say officers responded to the home shortly before 11 p.m. Saturday, where they found Justin Carter lying on the ground. Carter was taken to a hospital, where he died.
The suspect has been identified as 24-year-old Brandon Dashiell of Germantown. Police say Dashiell and Carter started fighting on the rear deck of the house, and the brawl moved into the yard. Police say Dashiell struck Carter several times about the head. An autopsy revealed that Carter died of blunt force trauma.
Dashiell has been charged with second-degree murder.
Two hundred thirty five (235) years ago a small group of leaders, meeting in Philadelphia, approved a document that severed our ties with our British masters – and explained why:
The Unanimous Declaration
of the Thirteen United States of America
When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
Take Our Declaration of Independence Quiz and Test Your Knowledge of America's Great Freedom Document
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.
He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.
He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature.
He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:
For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing taxes on us without our consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:
For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:
For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies:
For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:
For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.
We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.
New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton
Massachusetts: John Hancock, Samual Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry
Rhode Island: Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery
Connecticut: Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott
New York: William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris
New Jersey: Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark
Pennsylvania: Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross
Delaware: Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean
Maryland: Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton
Virginia: George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton
North Carolina: William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn
South Carolina: Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton
Georgia: Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton
*****************************************
It would be more than five years before the war was over. However, the words of this declaration explained to the world WHY America deserved to be free adnd how a rag tag army was able to defeat the might of the world’s greatest empire.
