Alan Mollohan Still Under Investigation

http://nlpc.org/category/people/alan-mollohan

This is a link to an article pasted below from the National Legal and Policy Center.

According to a confidential House Ethics Committee report produced in July, and described in the Washington Post today:
The Justice Department has told the ethics panel to suspend a probe of Rep. Alan B. Mollohan (D-W. Va.), whose personal finances federal investigators began reviewing in early 2006 after complaints from a conservative group that he was not fully revealing his real estate holdings. There has been no public action on that inquiry for several years. But the department's request in early July to the committee suggests that the case continues to draw the attention of federal investigators, who often ask that the House and Senate ethics panels refrain from taking action against members whom the department is already investigating. (emphasis ours)

Please Bring Back Halloween and Other Holidays

This is a note to schools. Give our kids back their holidays and their fun.

What happened to the schools I used to attend from the 1970s through the 1990s? The elementary schools kids had a great time. They dressed up for Halloween, got candy, and paraded up and down the street. It was a wonderful break because kids do work hard in school and deserve fun.

Kids could hear the Thanksgiving story about the Pilgrims without some left wing guilt trip about the Indians.

Kids celebrated Christmas with a nice party that featured cookies, Kool Aid, and giving the teacher some decent but inexpensive gift. Santa Claus, lights, and Merry Christmas signs were everywhere.

St. Valentines Day meant that the children exchanged little Valentine cards with most folks and big ones with their close friends. No one considered whether or not celebrating in this manner gave Catholicism an undue influence over children. No one cared that some sensitive kid might get his or her feelings hurt if they didn't get the big card from some other kid.

Schools needed these releases for both teachers and students. A few days of fun per year do not detract from instructional time that much. If they do, who cares? They are children after all. Schools have become places where adults force society's strange hangups on kids, mostly forcing them to abandon the idea of fun.

Please bring back holidays. let the kids have some fun, especially on Halloween.

"Playful" Mocking of Christianity?

It's time to admit that the letter written by Mr. Long in a recent edition of the Cumberland Times News is absolutely true. Christianity is under assault by elites in the world of media and the arts.

Just this year we saw the president himself ordering the covering of Christian symbols as he spoke in a Georgetown University chapel. This facility has many venues if Obama finds religions other than his own offensive. He did not have to offend Roman Catholics by covering their symbols.

Most recently HBO aired a program called Curb Your Enthusiasm, created by and starring Seinfeld creator Larry David. For some reason, he found it humorous to urinate on a picture of Jesus Christ.

Larry David happens to be Jewish, but I get the feeling that his irreverence would prevent him from showing much outrage over similar treatment meted out to a representation of Moses, David, or any other important figure of his faith. Why? I doubt he has a faithful bone in his body.

Here is the "God's honest truth." David can mock Christian and Jewish figures to his heart's content in the Western world. The same fools that watch his crap (and I have seen this show. Not funny or interesting) will still watch his crap. If he even produced a representation of Mohammed, HBO would refuse to air the show and very likely some terrorist would threaten to kill him. Incidentally, I have old history textbooks in my office that contain Arab produced portraits of Mohammed. I am not sure how the prohibition against his picture ever came about.

Anyway, the usual end to this kind of story is to call for some boycott taht will never materialize. David will never feel market repercussions and HBO will keep airing its show until it gets even less funny than it is right now. Our only recourse is to find ways to hold up the cultural elite and make them look ridiculous. Create an image of the snooty, prissy liberal cultural icon and keep blasting away at the image with humor and satire. David would likely be completely lost on a farm, a back road, or a real job. All these people have is the mean sort of wit that tears down as opposed to real artisitc, or any other kind of positive skills.

Save the Males

When is the last time you saw a masculine character beat down or at least put some fear into the bad guy in an action movie, a la John Wayne, Randolph Scott, Bruce Willis, Sean Connery, or Harrison Ford?

Likely it was either Denzel Washington or an octogenarian Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino. Other than that, masculinity is dead in Hollywood, at least as far as good old fashioned good guy versus bad guy flicks are concerned.

You'll still see the idea of masculinity mocked. George Clooney does it subtly and Will Farrell does it much more crudely. They make the message clear that strong male types are outdated, foolish, and relatively useless. They join the stereotypical bungling father of situation comedies over the past fifteen years. Patriarchal symbols of wisdom such as Bill Cosby disappeared, replaced by men who could not outwit their more enlightened children.

Some see this as an attempt to create balance between the sexes in media culture. Men dominated power roles for so long, why not have women shown as powerful for once? I agree that there is nothing wrong with powerful women in strong roles, beating bad guys, protecting their families, or the country depending on the movie. But that does not mean that they must be accompanied so often by weak and/or incompetent men. The James Bond series has changed with the times most effectively. Bond preserved his womanizing and ability to win his fights, but was accompanied more and more often by capable female sidekicks.

What do the movies matter? The problem is that the assault on masculinity goes beyond culture. A child received an initially draconian sentence of forty five days in a dangerous alternative school. The young boy simply liked using a Swiss Army knife with his packed lunch. He was treated like a psychopathic killer. Boys playing war with guns used to be commonplace. Now it is seen as inciting violent tendencies. Even active boys in school often get misdiagnosed as ADHD simply for being boys.

Some of this actually comes from the memory of the Bush presidency. Bush was seen and described as an alpha male type leader, which he probably would not have disputed. Liberals don't care for John Wayne anyway, but presidents such as Reagan and GWB convinced many that powerful males in leadership roles led to nothing positive.

Males as they grow from boys to men play rough, wrestle, fight, and occasionally accidentally break things as they learn about the world. Some when they become men take risks, take on challenges, and dare to do great things. We should not discourage boys from being boys and men from being men. We should certainly fight the liberal media and culture that tries to impose its own anti male stereotypes.

Your honor, Bill Stewart, and other notes

Charleston mayor Danny Jones has endorsed Democratic State Chair Nick Casey for a federal judgeship appointment. Jones allegedly is a Republican, but generally lives off the ideological reservation. Most recently he advocated putting cameras on most of Charleston's street corners. Most Republicans oppose such a measure for the cost alone, much less the civil liberties questions.

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Senator John D. Rockefeller sent a strong message to the Obama Adminiostration concerning the revoking of a mining permit in Southern West Virginia. Apparently the EPA now believes that a mine operation should guarantee that a stream is precisely the same after mining is completed as before. This is unprecedented and demonstrates the state of siege American mining is finding itself in. Senator Rockefeller used to oppose all strip mining. Either he wants to keep union votes, or he understands that this is a "food on the table" issue for his constituents."

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Fed up union members, according to the Charleston Daily Mail are switching their registration to the GOP. It's time for the RNC to have a national level sit down with organized labor. After all, we all want to save American manufacturing and only the Republican Party has shown any interest in doing that.

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Congratulations to Bill Stewart. The win over UConn, a motivated and tough team, demonstrates how far this staff and team have come. They made great adjustments to beat Randy Edsell's Huskies. Edsell is the best coach you have never heard of and always brings a great game plan, if not the greatest talent. Jarrett Brown layed an outstanding game, making great decisions and big plays to keep WVU in it until game breaker Noel Devine put the Mountaineers up in the waning minutes of the contest.

Great job Bill Stewart. Great job assistant coaches. Great job WVU players!

Reps. Capito and Driehaus Announce Bipartisan Ohio River Basin Caucus

WASHINGTON - Representatives Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., and Steve Driehaus, D-Ohio, today announced the establishment of the bipartisan Ohio River Basin Congressional Caucus. The caucus is dedicated to addressing critical economic, infrastructure, agricultural, environmental, and community issues within the entire Ohio River Basin and watershed. Reps. Capito and Driehaus will serve as caucus co-chairs.

“The Ohio River Valley has long-been a critical economic pipeline that connects manufacturers, farmers and other businesses to markets across our nation and around the world,” said Capito. “And I’m pleased to work with my colleague from Ohio in a joint effort to support the entire Ohio Valley region. The river’s impact is great, and it’s our hope that this important caucus will help support the region’s interests for years to come.”

“The Ohio River is not only central to the history and economy of greater Cincinnati, but it’s critical to commerce, agriculture, and transportation for a huge part of the United States. I’m proud to join with Representative Capito so that we can work to promote and protect the Ohio River Basin and the millions of people whose lives are impacted by the Ohio River,” said Rep. Driehaus.

The Ohio River Valley Sanitation Commission (ORSANCO) recognized Reps. Capito and Driehaus as “Ohio River Champions” in recognition of their leadership in establishing the Ohio River Basin Caucus.

The Ohio River Basin includes 55 Congressional districts in 14 states. The Ohio River Watershed covers 203,940 square miles and is populated by more than 25 million people.

Gary Howell to guest on Joe Danger's Show (to be reschudeled)

Gary Howell will be a guest on Joe Danger's, Talk of the Town on WDNE to be rescheduled. The topic will be Israel, the United States and Iran's nuclear program.

Tennessee Revives Committees of Correspondence and Begs the Question "Do We Have States Or Colonies?"

In a move that was probably unthinkable as too radical as little as a decade ago, the Governor of Tennessee issued an invitation for other states to join in a "working group" to discuss ways to resist federal government encroachment on state sovereignty.

This represents the next logical step for states, among which include Alaska and West Virginia, that have passed resolutions asserting their rights under the Tenth Amendment. Texas set off fireworks with its governor's offhand suggestion that his state could choose to secede at some point.

Issues include unfunded mandates, unnecessary regulation, and the federal government's explosion of possible new taxes and restrictions. A Georgia gubernatorial candidate has threatened that under his administration, the State Police will arrest any federal authority that attempts to confiscate a firearm. Montana and Ohio are looking into ways to protect firearms fully manufactured in and sold within their state boundaries from federal laws based upon the Interstate Commerce Clause of the Constitution.

Not in recent memory has the state sovereignty movement acted with such vigor. The federal government had never acted with such sweeping force before either. The Constitution protects states through the Tenth Amendment, but Congress uses an expanded interpretation of the Interstate Commerce Clause and threats of suspended highway funding to enforce their will on state government.

Tennessee's invitation does not specifically mention the phrase "committees of correspondence," but it is the same principle. These were set up in the early 1770s to coordinate colonial authorities' against draconian British legislation. Such committees served as the foundation for the Continental Congress that launched the American Revolution.