Having lived in Everett, I can not act surprised.  My kids attended Everett School District schools and always ran into this kind of foolishness.

Hat tip to Stop the ACLU:

Talk about religious hostility and political correctness gone too far! This song doesn’t even have lyrics! It is an instrumental piece for crying out loud! Why do our schools keep catering to the oversensitive PC crowd while spitting on freedom of speech?

Via The Rutherford Institute who are appealing the case:

A federal district court has dismissed a lawsuit over a school’s decision to forbid a student woodwind ensemble’s performance of the instrumental piece “Ave Maria” at a high school graduation ceremony. Attorneys for The Rutherford Institute had filed suit against the Everett School District, charging that the school’s actions violated student Kathryn Nurre’s right to freedom of speech and to be free from hostility to religion.

Gateway Pundit has been my main source of info and links on this ongoing example of the cruelty that man is capable of in the pursuit of power over his fellow man.

His latest post quotes Vaclav Havel:

In the coming days - perhaps even hours - the destiny of Burma (also known as Myanmar), and the fates of over 50 million Burmese, will be decided. Today’s crisis has been brewing for many years. But nobody knew with any precision just when open revolt against Burma’s military dictatorship would erupt.

I fear that, with only a few exceptions, most countries have been surprised and caught off guard - once again - by the rapid course that events have taken in Burma. So they seem to be completely unprepared for the crisis and thus at a loss as to what to do.

Could this be the real cause of global warming?

Watch it all the way through…

I saw this on several blogs today and at first I was of the same mind as the others, but as the day has gone on, I think there is an unanswered question.

The situation is that David Shuster was interviewing Rep Marsha Blackburn, and he decided to sandbag her on the air by demanding if she knew the name of the last GI killed from her distract. 

She didn't, and gleefully, he trotted out the name to shame her:

SHUSTER: Let's talk about the public trust. You represent of course a district in western Tennessee. What was the name of the last soldier from your district who was killed in Iraq?

MARSHA BLACKBURN: The name of the last soldier killed in Iraq from my district? I do not know.

SHUSTER: OK, his name was Jeremy Bohannon. He was killed August the ninth, 2007. How come you didn't know the name?

By overzealous Democrats.  In a press release dated tomorrow and already picked up on by the AP, Dino Rossi has stepped down as leader of Forward Washington Foundation because fundraising for the foundation is going down due to the Democrat PDC investigation.  As the man said, "I said when the Foundation was formed that I want it to remain active regardless of what happens in my life. As such, the best thing I can do right now is to remove myself as President."

Moreover, Forward Washington also said:

"The Governor's political agents filed a baseless complaint with the Public Disclosure Foundation (PDC) against our non-partisan Foundation. It is baseless because we were informed, in writing, by the PDC that as long as the Foundation did not expend funds to lobby or influence elections we would not be subject to PDC regulation - and we have never engaged in those activities," said [Forward Washington Executive Director Ted] Dahlstrom.

The battle between reason and hysteria continues unabated.  I hear daily the same tired misrepresentations, emotional appeals and useless calls for change.

The fact is that the truth has not really slowed the Man caused Global Warming Alarmists as much as it has caused the skeptics to fight a little harder for rationality before we spiral into a morass of knee jerk policies.

In gravely narrated special on TV yesterday the fact that China has passed us as the leading CO2 producer, and India is not long in joining them was mentioned.

You may recall that India and China were exempted from the Kyoto Treaty, and it was their exemption that caused Al Gore to note that the treaty was useless without their inclusion.

And now we see the result of that exemption, they have continued unabated to become the worlds leading befoulers.

Today’s “Founder’s Quote Daily” from the PatriotPost.US is presented below:

“The State governments possess inherent advantages, which will ever give them an influence and ascendancy over the National Government, and will for ever preclude the possibility of federal encroachments. That their liberties, indeed, can be subverted by the federal head, is repugnant to every rule of political calculation.”

– Alexander Hamilton (speech to the New York Ratifying Convention, 17 June 1788)

What’s truly a shame is that Mr. Hamilton was wrong. It’s a pretty fair bet that he didn’t expect the states to abdicate their responsibilities under the Constitution. I think it’s safe to assume that he thought that the state legislatures would take their responsibility to select senators seriously.

Unfortunately for us they didn’t. Several states failed to select senators, and their legislatures ultimately abdicated their responsibility to the popular vote of the people. Eventually this resulted in the drafting, and ultimate ratification of the 17th amendment to the Constitution.

If the long headline is a problem, apologies.

Just go HERE to see why the headline.

Sobering thought, eh?

Here you go - truly apolgetic about the delay.

Again, only LSU, Playin' Possum, PerriNelson and I posted so here goes:

• Leaning Straight Up: Contrast: How Liberals and Conservatives chose to commemorate 9/11 - a bloody shame this is necessary
• Playin' Possum: THE ROOTS OF 9/11: AN EXAMPLE (his blog has moved here for all practical purposes) has a rare intelligent moment
• PerriNelson: Wednesday Hero - Staff Sgt. Richard P. Ramey - the quintessential 9/12 hero.
• I'll skip me since I was so late and mostly cross-posted from my primary blog here for the week.

Best wishes and happy blogging!

As in the Evergreen Freedom Foundation's Amber Gunn when she wrote about the GASB 45 'Big One' coming back on 5 Sept.  Now, the state of Washington's public pension crisis has just hit a big bump.  From today's Olympian - hat-tip Orbusmax:

. . .

The Pension Funding Council should move down the expected rate of return on the pension fund to 7.75 percent per year, State Actuary Matt Smith suggested Tuesday.

The switch would require an extra $87 million in payroll contributions from public employees in the next two-year budget.

It also would require an extra $259 million in contributions to the pension fund from the state and local governments.

That's because lower expected returns on the investments in stocks, bonds, real estate and other holdings means more money must be put in now to pay for future retirements.