"Wax On, Wax Off Daniel-san"---Goodbye Mr. Miyagi

Pat Morita passed away on Thursday at age 73.

He is well-remembered for his role as Mr. Miyagi in "The Karate Kid" movie series and the unintelligible waiter at Arnold's Drive-In in "Happy Days."

Farewell Mr. Miyagi.

Government Considering Taxing Hybrid Cars to Pay For the Pork in Their Highway Bill

All pork projects contained in the highway bill must be terminated immediately.

The reason that I say this is because the government can no longer afford them. Congress and the Administration have gone TOO FAR with the pork.

The proof is the fact that the Department of Transportation is projecting that they will be out of money before the bill expires. They are proposing a tax on all hybrid cars to keep the agency afloat until a new transportation bill is passed next year.

Unacceptable!

Get rid of all the pork in the current highway bill (that President Bush signed four months ago) immediately! And don't stop with the Bridges to Nowhere project in Alaska either.

And if any member of Congress threatens to resign over the pork cuts, LET THEM! Good riddance.

Taxpayers should not be made to pay twice to support the pork in this bill!

Here's a story on the pork itself.
Here's the story on the hybrid tax.

Oink!! Oink!!

Disgraceful! Shoppers Who Participated in Stampede Should Be Ashamed!

This is disgraceful! A senior citizen was knocked down and trampled by a mob attempting to get into a South Florida mall, and others were pushed around and down, as seen in this photo.

The current way that stores open needs to be changed for this one day. Instead of closing down the night before and opening the doors up at 5am the next morning, they should instead stay open and have their stock people bring stuff out gradually throughout the early morning hours.

For that matter, the way that discounts are done should change as well. If retailers are serious about keeping people safe, then they should have enough stock on hand to eliminate the rush for people to grab whatever they see before everything is gone.

Retailers are to blame for the violence. They create the environment that allows the violence to take place, therefore they are the only ones who can change the rules of the game.

First-come, first serve should be abolished, as well as long lines in the winter cold that feed into peoples' tempers and impatience.

Those who read this post who did a "Jingle All the Way" this morning ought to be ashamed of themselves.

Unbelievable: Communist Thug Provides Discounted Oil to American Poor When Our Own Oil Companies Refuse to Do So

What the??!

Venezuela is providing discounted oil to poor families in Massachusetts that will be 40% below market price when American oil companies are refusing to do the same thing.

This is unbelievable!

It's an amazing propaganda victory for the communist Venezuelan government and a huge slap at both the U.S. government and the American oil industry.

At a time when most Americans are going to get bit hard because the oil industry is refusing to help lower the price of heating oil, our political enemies are doing exactly that!

This is disgraceful!

Innocent Man May Have Been Executed: Witness Recants, Prosecutor Expresses Regrets

Evidence has recently surfaced that a man who was executed by the state of Texas a dozen years ago was innocent.

Reuben Cantu was arrested for capital murder and attempted murder, charged, found guilty and executed. Others said he wasn't present at the crime scene.

The survivor recently recanted his story, saying that Cantu didn't shoot him and that he was pressured by authorities to finger Cantu. The prosecutor then expressed regrets at going for a death penalty conviction based on the weak evidence.

Cantu's co-defendent also filed an affidavit that said he allowed his friend to be accused, though he had nothing to do with the crime.

Cantu had previously been accused of hurting a police officer. Those charges had been dropped for lack of evidence.

There was enough reasonable doubt that the death penalty should not have been applied in this case. Prosecutors erred badly.

This was no saint that they executed, but based on the retractions and new statements, they killed a man who didn't do the crime he had been convicted of.

Why do we tolerate a faulty system that imposes the ultimate penalty on the wrong people? Why do we tolerate even the remote possibility of something like this happening? Has justice been served?

Here's the story.

UK Telegraph Report on Gun-Toting Cowboys with AK-47s is Exaggerated

The UK daily newspaper Telegraph is running a story on their web site that cowboys with AK-47s are patrolling the U.S./Mexican border.

They show a landowner with an AK-47 patrolling his property in southern Arizona and talk about the recent vigilante Minuteman Project, where thousands of volunteers headed to the border to record and detain illegals coming across from Mexico.

"Welcome to the Wild West 2005, where modern-day cowboys still guard their land from interlopers - but using AK47s and four-wheel drives instead of Winchester rifles and horses." What other types of guns are they using?

While it's certain that some people are using upgraded weapons to fight the gangs coming across, not all of them are.

The story does a good job of stereotyping landowners in the Southwest as gun-toting maniacs, when it's a minority of landowners who have thus armed themselves.

Here's the story.

Having said that, the report was absolutely correct in saying that gangs coming across the border will fire on anyone that gets in their way and that lawlessness is on the rise along the border. It needs to be dealt with.

Winter Weather is Here: SLOW DOWN

Snow and ice arrived in Michigan yesterday and the fools were out in force, going 80mph on the ice and spinning out or going into the ditch.

Remember:

• Don't go faster. Go slower. It saves on gas too.
• Don't tailgate. Multiple accidents yesterday because people were following the car in front of them too closely. Space is our best friend in winter.
  
• 4-wheel drive does not mean 4-wheel stopping when you're on ice.
• Remember to dress warmly in case you have to abandon your car and go for help.
• Take your cell phone, but don't use it when you're driving. BAD!!
  
• Slow down on exit ramps. They can get icy too. On the way home last night, I saw seveal cars that went too fast around the corner and went off the road.

I mentioned the tips above because those were common sense sorts of things that I saw other drivers involved in. Police and towing companies were very busy last night.

Here's a complete list of tips.

U.S. Will Keep Control of Internet: That's the Best Possible Outcome

A proposal to place the Internet domain name system under United Nations control was recently thrown out at the U.N. World Summit on the Information Society. The United States will retain control of that particular aspect of the Internet for the immediate future.

The EU and other nations have been throwing this idea around for some time, but today's decision is the best one that the Summit could have made.

The U.N. would have created a monster bureaucracy to regulate the Internet and this would not have been a good thing.

Many do not have faith in the U.N. system of governance to trust it with so much control over a free speech medium. Remember, the U.N. treats communist nations, Islamic thug states and democracies as if they were equals when they clearly are are not.

Does anyone see a single Bill of Rights in any Islamic state, or in any communist state? Castro and Chavez do not tolerate dissent in their nations; North Korea executes political prisoners, and many less-than-democratic states imprison bloggers and reporters for expressing their opinions about the unfairness of their governments.

So, NO to U.N. control over any aspect of the Internet. Here's the story.

U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela Tells Venezuelan President Chavez to Shut Up and Grow Up

Well, not exactly, but it amounted to the same thing.

The U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela, William Brownfield, told reporters in a press conference that President Chavez ought to quit the blame game that he's been playing.

In recent months, he's accused Washington of plotting to invade Venezuela to overthrow him, or to kill him, or take away Venezuela's oil fields, and to frighten Venezuelan children with U.S. Halloween traditions. Each time he makes a new accusation, he refuses to give proof of his claims.

There are now at least a dozen Chavez accusations floating around out there, each one more bombastic and ludicrous than the prior one.

So it's about time that someone from the U.S. government responded. Here's the story.

WWE Wrestler Eddie Guerrero Passes Away: Wrestling World in State of Shock

The wrestling world is in mourning and shock as one of it's best and brightest talents passed away unexpectedly.

Former WWE champion Eddie Guerrero died in his hotel room prior to the taping of WWE Raw and WWE Smackdown! from the Metrodome in Minneapolis yesterday.

It's unthinkable that so many professional wrestlers die so young. Eddie was 38 and left behind his wife and three children.

Too young, too soon. Rest in Peace, Eddie.

Those Who Think that the Next Phase of the War on Terror Won't Be on our Own Streets Have Their Heads Up Their Butts

You read that right.

Those who think that pulling out of Iraq now will prevent terrorists from coming over here are seriously mistaken.

And yes, if we leave before the job is done, we may as well put armed troops into our own streets because that's where al-Qaeda will show up next. Once American and foreign troops are gone from Iraq, the war will shift to Europe and North America and those parts of the world where Westerners have a presence.

The peaceniks can go bury their heads in the sand if they want, but the problem will NOT go away that easily. Bin-Laden has said that he wants four million dead Americans before he will even consider stopping his jihad. Where, pray tell, might he find four million Americans? Not in Iraq. Not in Jordan or Indonesia. Not anywhere else in the world, but here in our own country. Duh!!

So for those stupid enough to believe that ending the Iraq War will appease bin-Laden, or any of his followers into not launching suicide attacks on the United States, think again. Get your heads out of your butts!

Bush and Limbaugh Engage in Reading into the Constitution

It's very discouraging to see two leading proponents (President Bush and Rush Limbaugh) of stopping judicial activism and "reading into the Constitution" (by liberal judges) engage in reading into the Constitution themselves in the name of national security. The President has no more authority to do this than activist judges who do it for their own activist causes.

Bush is sending the message that he doesn't mean what he says when he says that strict interpretation of the Constitution is the way to go. He means that he wants others to have the strict Constitution while he bypasses it and assumes powers that he is not authorized to possess.

If Bush and company was serious about strict interpretation of the Constitution, he'd stop the military tribunals and Rush Limbaugh would be praising his decision to do so.

But instead, everyone who disagrees with President Bush's current course of action is labeled a Bush hater or a liberal. That's very unfortunate.

He can stop shooting himself in the foot anytime he wants. We'll keep waiting.

Supreme Court to Hear Detainee Case: Military Tribunals Should Be Stopped Until Court Decides the Issue

Osama bin-Laden's former driver, now a detainee at Guantanamo Bay, has succeeded in getting his case heard by the U.S. Supreme Court.

At issue is whether the U.S. military can conduct military tribunals for captured enemy fighters.

It's really bad when on of bin-Laden's associates correctly points out that the tribunals are against our own laws that spring from the Constitution and from our own Declaration of Independence.

It should be pointed out that President Bush has the right as Commander-in-Chief to send American troops into battle and to wage war with the consent of Congress.

However, he does NOT have the right to order the military to try foreign nationals unless they harm U.S. troops. Under international law, he is required to hand over terrorists to the governments whose territory or people were harmed, or to turn over suspects who harm foreign nationals to the nations that the victims are from. That very precedent allowed Pakistan to turn over Daniel Pearl's killer to U.S. authorities.

President Bush has chosen not to do that. Instead, he has the U.S. military conduct secret tribunals in the name of not only U.S. nationals who have been harmed by the terrorists overseas, but also Iraqi, British, Polish, Italian, Spanish and other coalition nations whose soldiers have died in Iraq or Afghanistan.

This is in spite of the fact that these nations would rather try the suspects themselves, or would rather have these suspects turned over to an international tribunal, thereby avoiding possible U.S. death penalties, which they also oppose.

The fact is that President Bush has exceeded his Constitutional authority -again- and now the Court has to remind him where the line is.

By establishing his own court system and bypassing the civilian court system, the President is indeed violating the separation of powers clause of the Constitution. It is Congress's Constitutional duty to establish courts that are inferior to the Supreme Court, not the President's.

Limbaugh is avoiding this topic by saying that this argument is a liberal attempt to weaken the President's ability to wage war against terrorists when it actually isn't.

It's an attempt to reinforce parts of the Constitution that are being assaulted by the current Administration.

One Country, Many Criminal Justice Systems: They Do Not Treat All Americans Equally

More proof that that celebrities and politicians have a different criminal justice system than the average American have surfaced yet again. This time it's a presidential aide accused of lying under oath.

Many are of the opinion that what's happening to Lewis "Scooter" Libby should have happened to President Clinton too.

Consider: Two politicians were accused of lying to federal grand juries six years apart; one openly admitted to doing so, while the other claims to have forgotten information accidentally and that there was no intent to omit any information.

The one who admitted to criminal wrongdoing suffered great embarassment and subsequently walked away. He served no jail time, even after he left office. People at the time thought his status and political connections were keeping him out of jail (they did) and if it were an average joe who had lied under oath, that poor fool would be clapped in irons.

The one who claims to have forgotten information accidentally was indicted for lying under oath and resigned as Vice-President Cheney's chief of staff.

Huh??!

One gets caught, admits his guilt and gets away with it, while one maintains his innocence and is charged with a crime??!

Lying under oath is lying under oath. That is the crime that should be punished here until Libby is charged with revealing the name of a CIA employee.

It didn't matter if the entire Clinton-Lewinsky case was all about sex between two consenting adults. He took the oath to tell the truth and didn't. But HE wasn't indicted.

So, now it's been established that the President of the United States is exempt from criminal justice while the President's aides and the common joe clearly are not.

Has anyone ever heard of justice being applied equally and fairly? It used to mean something.