The Blue Bus Is Callin' Us

Sat, 06 Jan 2007 07:44:46 GMT

Ignorance In My City

Thu, 04 Jan 2007 01:26:16 GMT

The war on Christmas, and Christ, is real

Tim Heffron

Heffron lives in Roanoke.

The war is plainly evident when stores block their employees from wishing Merry Christmas rather than allow the smallest possibility that shoppers be reminded the meaning of this season.

The American holiday is not St. Nicholas or Santa Claus day; it's not the Kwanzaa season; it's not the Official Celebration of Winterfest; it is not the End of Year Shopping Extravaganza Sale Season! It is in fact the celebration of the birth of the savior of the world, Jesus Christ, true God and true man.

We celebrate the birth of the Messiah, the Emanuel, the promised one of God, the King of Kings! That is the meaning of the season. Only a bigot would decry the well-wishes of Christians who want to herald his coming and include all men and women in their joy at his birth and the fulfillment of the promise of God.

It is not insensitive to wish Merry Christmas any more than it is harmful and insensitive to wish someone a good day. It is wishing them happiness and a share in the joy of the season. Denying the right to say "Merry Christmas" is bigoted. I don't think it is harmful or insensitive if a Jewish person wishes me Happy Hanukkah, or a Muslim wishes happy Ramadan, or an atheist wishes me a good day. All are positive greetings and wishes.

The war on Christians has not ceased since the appearance of Christ at his birth, and so you should feel you are doing nothing worse than Herod or the Pharisees did in persecuting Christ and his church. But at the same time, that is not what humanity is called to, is it?

If you want to truly be progressive and open-minded, you should welcome the sharing of all cultures. In the great melting pot that America is supposed to be, it seems only radical liberals want to silence viewpoints. They claim openness, but their hypocrisy is astounding.

You may not feel called to visit a church this Christmastime, but you should feel welcome to do so if you like. Similarly, I would hope you would feel open to share your deeply held beliefs with anyone around you. Denying that to others is truly a shameful act, and I would hope you might change your tone regarding Christians who love their faith and want to share their joy.

Do not take it as an assault (though I know some zealous people do present it that way). Pope John Paul II used to say that "the Church proposes, it does not mandate." Faith to be true must be held in the heart. It is not something that can be forced upon someone the way communism is.

Love is a decision and a response to the love we received from God through creation and through human beings. It is not the irresponsible acceptance of perversions of the human condition. So your viewpoints should be open to be presented. However, in love it is not anyone's responsibility to accept your viewpoints as worthwhile or as good.

Discrimination is good, while prejudice is bad. It seems discriminating between good and bad is to liberals the gravest of sins. I guess for the godless it is the presentation and proof of truth and goodness which most infuriate them. I don't know their reasoning, but it seems the denial of all that is good and wholesome is the only road for those who deny God.

Anything else would point them inevitably toward God, who is the source of all goodness, and since they hate him because they can't be him, they can only choose to be his opposite.

Go figure.
http://www.roanoke.com/editorials/commentary/wb/wb/xp-98232

Christmas is as much about Jesus as my dog is a cat. Please do not wait until the day of Christmas to wish me a happy holiday season. I do not know which is worse, Christian fundamentalists, or those trying to be politically correct and failing miserably.

Pick of Destiny

Sun, 19 Nov 2006 18:51:04 GMT

Election Day

Tue, 07 Nov 2006 23:13:55 GMT

I hope everyone went out and voted today!

Why I Have Always Loved Rosie

Wed, 20 Sep 2006 23:55:55 GMT

“Radical Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam in a country like America where we have separation of church and state.” -Rosie O Donnell

And there is a big conservative fuss over this statement why?

King of Burger King Veggie Burgers

Sat, 17 Jun 2006 17:00:36 GMT

Some Of My Fav Movies :-D

Sat, 27 May 2006 19:24:50 GMT

Wed, 12 Apr 2006 18:29:05 GMT

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Wed, 22 Mar 2006 19:11:26 GMT

You are a
Social Liberal
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Economic Liberal
(8% permissive)

You are best described as a:

Socialist

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Also: The OkCupid Dating Persona Test

Mon, 09 Jan 2006 09:49:55 GMT

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We Have No Privacy

Sat, 17 Dec 2005 10:14:11 GMT

Months after the September 11, 2001 terror attacks, President Bush signed an order giving the National Security Agency authorization to eavesdrop on Americans and other people in the United States to look for evidence of potential terrorist activity without first obtaining search warrants.

According to a New York Times report, the presidential order, signed in 2002, has given the agency the right to monitor international phone calls and international e-mails of hundreds, maybe even thousands of people inside the United States in a search for ties to "dirty numbers" potentially linked to the al Qaeda terror network. The targets included U.S. citizens, permanent legal residents, tourists and other foreigners, raising serious concerns within the administration — and from the few members of Congress who knew about it — over whether the order crossed legal boundaries and trampled civil liberties.

Speaking to almost a dozen current and former administration officials who requested anonymity because of the classified nature of the program, the report describes how the NSA eavesdropped on as many as 500 people inside the U.S. at any given time without warrants and monitored as many as 7,000 people suspected of terrorist ties overseas at one time. The program grew out of concerns after the September 11 attacks that the nation's intelligence-gathering agencies were not equipped to effectively deal with the al Qaeda threat because of legal and bureaucratic restrictions, leading President Bush to sign an executive order relaxing some of those restrictions.

Prior to this program, the NSA — the nation's largest and most secretive intelligence agency, nicknamed "No Such Agency" — typically obtained court orders for its domestic surveillance, which was mostly limited to foreign embassies and missions. In the past, the NSA's mission was normally to break codes and maintain listening posts around the world to spy on foreign governments, diplomats, drug lords and terrorists, but not within U.S. borders.

While some government officials said the program uncovered several planned terrorist plots — such as the one by Iyman Faris, an Ohio trucker who pleaded guilty in 2003 to supporting al Qaeda by planning to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge — there were some NSA officials who were so concerned about whether the operation crossed constitutional limits on legal searches that they would not participate, according to the Times. The agency also reportedly uncovered what appeared to be an al Qaeda plot to attack British pubs and train stations with fertilizer bombs, but officials said most people targeted by the program have never been charged with a crime.

The administration views the operation as necessary in order to allow the NSA to move quickly to monitor communications that may have information about threats to the U.S.

"This is really a sea change," a former senior official who specializes in national security law told the paper. "It's almost a mainstay of this country that the NSA only does foreign searches." Among those expressing concern were Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, the West Virginia Democrat who is the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and a judge presiding over a secret court that oversees intelligence matters.

Concerns over the legality of the program led the administration to temporarily suspend it last year and impose tighter restrictions on who could be surveilled. Administration officials said they are confident that the safeguards in the system are sufficient to protect the privacy and the civil liberties of Americans and that, in some cases, the Justice Department eventually seeks a warrant if it wants to expand the eavesdropping to include communications that occur only within the U.S.

The revelation comes just days after an "NBC Nightly News" report that the Pentagon has been compiling a secret database of 1,500 "suspicious incidents" across the U.S. over a 10-month period that included four dozen anti-war meetings and protests (see "If You Oppose The War, The Pentagon May Already Have Your Number").

The White House — which has been stung by a series of major leaks about secret intelligence programs, including a recent Washington Post expose about secret overseas CIA jails (see "Report Of 'Covert' CIA Jail Sparks Human-Rights Investigation") — asked the Times not to publish the article, saying that it could jeopardize ongoing investigations and alert would-be terrorists that they might be under scrutiny. After meeting with senior administration officials, the paper said it agreed to delay publication of the piece for a year to conduct additional reporting.

Widespread abuses of warrantless eavesdropping in the past, such as the surveillance of Vietnam War protesters and civil-rights activists that became public in the 1970s, led to passage of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which imposes strict limits on intelligence gathering on American soil. Among its provisions is one requiring search warrants for wiretaps in national security cases.

— Gil Kaufman

I'm a Commie ;-)

Fri, 02 Dec 2005 07:23:27 GMT

I am:
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Are You A Republican?

Cute

Sat, 12 Nov 2005 12:28:45 GMT

Fri, 07 Oct 2005 19:32:21 GMT

You are Kip Dynamite and you love technology.

Which Napoleon Dynamite character are you?
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This Really Cracked Me Up!

Fri, 07 Oct 2005 19:26:29 GMT

You're Soroity Slut Barbie! You're easy and you're
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If You Were A Barbie, Which Messed Up Version Would You Be?
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Thu, 06 Oct 2005 16:25:48 GMT

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Which Sesame Street Muppet Are You?