HOPE Isn't Hiring

Certified Teacher to be Investigated

A family in Bakersfield had finally reached the breaking point with the public school and decided to withdraw their child. Thinking it was going to be an easy process, because everyone knows homeschooling is legal, the mother went to the school office to fill out the proper paperwork to withdraw.

The mother was advised that her child would not be dropped from the school rolls until the attendance officer had completed an investigation as to whether or not she was qualified to homeschool. As a new member, the mother called HSLDA’s Legal Department. We advised her that the public school had no authority to conduct such an investigation and guided her through drafting a withdrawal letter and filing her private school affidavit.

When the mother shared with us that she was a California certified teacher, we said “Maybe the attendance officer didn’t know you were a teacher” (not that it would have been appropriate to investigate any parent, teacher or not). Mom said, “Oh no, I was wearing my teacher ID.

This is the establishment that is educating the future generation. If it had worked for this family, they would have completed the school year. Bakersfield got it wrong. The only authority the public school has over private schools/homeschools is to verify that a particular child is enrolled in school somewhere or is being tutored by a certified teacher. They have no authority to investigate the competence of private school teachers, or approve or disapprove any private school or course.

If you ever are approached by an attendance officer requesting information beyond your private school affidavit or private school satellite program, get their contact information or business card and contact HSLDA immediately.

Bourque Industries, Inc. Announces Successful Live-Fire Demonstration of New Kryron Ballistics Helmet

Bourque Industries, Inc. (“Bourque”) is pleased to announce that the live-fire demonstration of its new Kryron ballistics helmet was a complete success-no penetration when shot with an AK-47 from approximately 10 ft. John Bourque, who conducted the test, indicated that to the best of his knowledge this was the first successful test where a helmet was struck by a rifle bullet and had no penetration. The helmet is a proof of concept prototype and further improvements are already planned that the Company anticipates will lead to a production model(s)
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Arizona Company Develops New Metal Super Alloy

No Geolocation

"It is the season for the Perfect Storm, and it is starting to rain."
-- J. McCauley
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I just finished mine which is Firefox.
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How to Disable Geolocation in Specific Programs

Geolocation is a rather secret feature of some browsers and toolbars. It allows the creator of that program to get a fix on the location of your computer to within a few meters of where you actually live. For the potential dangers read the article from BBC News entitled 'Web attack knows where you live' here.

The question is therefore how to effectively disable this feature. At this moment this site offers solutions for Apple Safari, Firefox, Flock, Google Chrome, Google Toolbar, Opera and Twitter."

The Obama Transparency Award+ :)

Via The Bonnie Blue Blog

The Daily Show - Victory Lapse - Obama Transparency Award
Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

SAF FILES FEDERAL LAWSUIT AGAINST BLOOMBERG OVER GUN PERMIT FEES

"A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." BELLEVUE, WA - The Second Amendment Foundation today filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg that alleges New York City's $340 fee for a permit to keep a handgun in the home is "excessive andimpermissibly burdens the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms." SAF is joined in the lawsuit by the New York State Rifle & Pistol Association and five individual New York City residents. Also named as a defendant in the lawsuit is New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. "Under state law," said SAF Executive Vice President Alan Gottlieb, "the maximum fee for issuing a New York State handgun license is $10, but the law exempts citizens living in New York City. That exemption allows the city to charge an exorbitant fee for the license, which discourages city residents from exercising their civil rights while violating the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. "For decades the City has charged its residents exorbitant license fees that far exceed the fees charged by other states and cities that impose them," said attorney David Jensen, who is representing the plaintiffs. "The effect of this is to force a punitive tax on New York City citizens who choose to own firearms in compliance with the law. But people have a constitutional right to keep and bear arms, and the City cannot simply impose fees for the sake of burdening law-abiding gun owners." "The New York State Rifle & Pistol Association was founded 141 years ago in New York City and we are proud to participate in an action to help restore the Second Amendment rights of all New York City residents," said NYSRPA President Tom King. In its lawsuit, SAF notes that the $340 fee is not used to defray administrative costs, so there appears to be no purpose for it other than to discourage people from applying for a permit. The excessive fee, according to Gottlieb, puts the exercise of a constitutional right solely within the financial reach of the wealthy class, essentially turning a civil right into a privilege for the rich and well-connected. "New York is one of only two states that require a permit just to keep a handgun in one's own home," Gottlieb said. "Citizens in the other 48 states would consider that an outrage. The city's residence premises' handgun license amounts to a charge of more than $100 annually to keep a handgun in one's home, which is ridiculous. Mayor Bloomberg is essentially taxing the fundamental right to defend one's self in his or her own home. We cannot think of anything more egregious than perpetuating a fee structure that puts a financial obstacle in the way of citizens who want to protect their homes and families. "We believe the only recourse is to take this issue to the federal court," he concluded. "Billionaires like Mayor Bloomberg can be cavalier about a citizen's rights, but we can't, and we won't."

Kingdom of Lies

I am a subject in a kingdom of lies. At 57, I have grown up with decades of untruth — advanced for the purposes of purported social unity, the noble aim of egalitarianism, and the advancement of a cognitive elite in government, journalism, the arts, and the universities.

Alger Hiss really was a communist operative, albeit an elegant and snooty sort of one. The Rosenbergs were tag-team spies. Noble Laureate Rigoberta Menchu did not really write her own memoir. I admire the lives of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, even as I sensed there were large areas of their biographies that simply could not be disclosed and that the censorship was apparently for our own good. I know that if I did what Eliot Spitzer did I would not be hosting a TV show.

I did not quite know how “witch hunt” characterized the often disreputable tactics of Joe McCarthy — cruel and obnoxious were the better adjectives. You see, there were really communists in Hollywood at a time of a dangerous global cold war against communism, in a way there were never any witches at all in Salem.

But then for some reason I sensed that a murderous, camouflaged Fidel Castro killed more innocents than a murderous, gold-braided Augusto Pinochet. I accepted that we were to be silent about the former’s crimes since his ends were said to be good, while the latter’s crimes were for the bad — though economists of no particular political affiliations have shown that Chileans escaped poverty and dictatorship while Cubans were, and are still, plagued by both.

Via Mike

Stone Mountain 10th National Confederate Memorial Day Service - April 9

The 10th National Confederate Memorial Day Service will be held Saturday April 9, 2011 on the lawn in front of the World's largest Confederate Memorial at Stone Mountain Memorial Park. This service is to honor the Confederate Soldiers who served their country during the War Between the States. Re-enactors will fire rifle and cannon salutes in their honor.

The service will start at 12 noon, rain or shine. The public is invited.

For additional information please contact David Denard at 770/441-1645 or David Floyd at 770/979-2637.

Rep. Pete King says Holder should resign

"The philosophy of gun control: Teenagers are roaring through town at 90MPH, where the speed limit is 25. Your solution is to lower the speed limit to 20."
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A key House Republican on Friday said that Attorney General Eric Holder "doesn't deserve" to keep his job because of his handling of the failed Times Square bombing attempt.House Homeland Security Committee ranking Republican Pete King (N.Y.) said that Holder's refusal to say that radical Islam motivated the alleged attacker, Faisal Shahzad, makes him an incapable attorney general.

"An attorney general who eight and a half years after Sept. 11 does not realize our enemy is radical Islam is either so politically correct or so out of touch that he doesn't deserve to be attorney general," King said on Fox News. "I mean, this is why he wants to have the terror trials of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in Lower Manhattan — he just doesn't get it."

What should our new (Muslim) policy be?

"We should have as little to do with Muslim countries as possible. At home, we should focus on the political and legal terrain with an eye toward:

(a) distinguishing between our allies in the American Muslim community (i.e., those who do not want to impose sharia on public life) and those who seek to undermine our constitutional system, so we can marginalize the latter;

(b) excluding from the United States aliens who would support supplanting the U.S. Constitution with a sharia system (i.e., revisiting the hash Congress and the courts have made regarding the reliance on anti-American ideology — not just ties to violence — as a basis for keeping non-Americans out of our country); and

(c) cutting off immigration from, and sharply reducing contacts with, Muslim countries until they take it on themselves to reform — on separation of mosque and state, freedom of conscience, equality, interfaith tolerance, individual liberty, and unambiguous rejection of terrorism."

The Path to Prosperity: America's two futures, visualized

Rebuttal.

GOA Alert

April 5, 2011

Gun Owners of America

Senate to Consider Bill Allowing Obama-Packing Scheme Shortly, the U.S. Senate will consider legislation to take a number of key gun-related offices in the Department of Justice and remove them from the requirement of Senate confirmation. The legislation is sponsored by anti-gun zealot Charles Schumer (D-NY) and weak-kneed Republican Lamar Alexander (R-TN). S. 679 would give Barack Obama the ability to fill major gun-related Department of Justice slots with anti-gun partisans, without the pesky inconvenience of having to comply with the Constitution's requirements for Senate confirmation. Consider the following: Barack Obama has not hesitated to load up his administration with anti-gun crazies like Regulatory Czar Cass Sunstein (who thinks hunters should be sued in court because of the pain and suffering they inflict upon animals) and Andrew Traver (the nominee to head the ATF who never met a gun control proposal he didn't like). If he has been willing to pack his administration with anti-gun extremists -- many of whom had to pass Senate confirmation -- imagine what kind of lunatics Obama could nominate if the Schumer-Alexander legislation exempted major positions from constitutional advise-and-consent requirements. To take posts like the official who composes statistics for the Justice Department (the Director of the Bureau of Justice Statistics) and the person who represents the Justice Department before Congress (Assistant Attorney General, Legislative Affairs) and turn them into "Political hack" positions is unacceptable. ACTION: Contact your Senators. Urge them to filibuster S. 679, the Schumer-Alexander bill to exempt Justice Department gun-related posts from the Constitution's advise-and-consent requirements. Click here to contact your Senators. Click here to read this important alert

Suppose

NINE-YEAR-OLD REPLY TO LADY WHO DIDN’T GET IT IS EVEN MORE RELEVANT TODAY

A few days before Memorial Day in 2002, a Sons of Confederate
Veterans camp received the following e-mail from a lady who apparently had
been receiving the camp’s newsletters. Her post was eventually forwarded
to Roger McCredie, who had not yet joined the staff of the Southern Legal
Resource Center but was the SCV’s immediate past Chief of Heritage
Defense, and McCredie answered on his own initiative. His reply is
particularly relevant now, almost a decade later, as the runaway train of
political correctness that already characterizes the nation’s
sesquicentennial observance of the War Between the States threatens to
overrun Confederate history and heritage. Here is the lady’s original
e-mail …......

I am on your mailing list by default I think, but read with interest the
various letters that cross my desk from you who love the South and
all it stood for, and still does in your hearts. As a fellow American, I
am saddened by the loss of each and every life that was lost fighting
for their beliefs during the civil war, regardless of the side they fought
on.

Each soldier, parent and child who gave so much for this country is
saluted and prayed for. I never know whether you folks are really talking
like this because it keeps the fervor going for your re-enactments or
because you actually are still so angry, after all these years. Whichever
way you feel, my prayer is that you will come together this memorial Day
and give honor to each and every life that was lost for US, no matter the
side, color or creed in the fights that have and are still taking place so
that we may live in this glorious UNITED STATES of AMERICA!!!.|My great
grandfather was one who was held prisoner in your Andersonville prison. He
died a terrible death at the hand of the enemy of that time. I feel no
bitterness or anger towards anyone from the South because of this. It was
WAR. It was part of the terrible cost of WAR. He's buried now and rests in
peace. It's over in my heart and mind. May you all find peace and live in peace in this
great country. God Bless America, and all it's children.

With love,
Prudence Kinley-Ruth


… and here is McCredie’s reply:

Dear Ms. Kinley-Ruth:

You appear to be a genuinely decent and thoughtful person, and your post
is doubtless well intentioned. One of your remarks deserves to be
addressed in some detail. You say, "I never know whether you folks are
really talking like this because it keeps the fervor going for your
re-enactments or because you are still so angry, after all these years."
Because you do seem to be an empathetic person, let me try a little
role-reversal on you.

Suppose that you had been born and raised in a place whose history,
culture, traditions, mindset and values set it as much apart from the rest
of the "United States" as Switzerland is from France, or Ireland from
England.

Suppose you loved this place, its people and your own place in it very
deeply; suppose, in fact, that you were so much a part of it that it was
hard to tell where you stopped and it started.

Suppose this place you cherished had once found itself at odds with other
members of the Union it had helped to found; had attempted peaceably and
in good faith to leave that Union, in accordance with the provisions of
that Union’s very own constitution; and had instead been invaded and
obliged to fight a horrific war against overwhelming odds, during which
its cities were looted and destroyed, its countryside ravaged, and its
civilian population robbed and brutalized. Suppose that having lost that
war, your homeland was further crippled by a dozen years of corrupt and
vindictive military occupation called, with supreme irony,
"Reconstruction."

Suppose that this place you love subsequently became the repository for
all of America's frustrations, the object of its ridicule and cynical
exploitation, and the whipping boy for its national racial guilt trip.
Suppose you had to listen to a daily litany of how your homeland was a
dark and backward place populated by incestuous mongoloids. Suppose you
were ridiculed for your accent, and for your unabashed love of God, place
and family.

Suppose you found your history turned inside out and your heroes vilified
in order to appease the professionally offended. Suppose your children
were expelled from school, ostracized and even beaten for displaying the
symbol their great-great-grandfathers fought under. Suppose that some
municipalities where your brave dead were buried, far from home, refused
to allow their graves to be decorated, even for a few hours, with the flag
they died for. And suppose that when, as an American, you objected to this
very un-American treatment, you were told to sit down and shut up, or be
branded a racist, a white supremacist, or even un-American yourself.

That's a great deal of supposing, I know, but try to manage it, if only
for a second. Now consider your original remark in light of it. Our
experience as Americans has been painfully different from yours in some
respects. On the day known as Memorial Day, this difference is
particularly poignant for us, when our Confederate dead are systematically
excluded from national mourning. We have -- or try to have -- our own
Confederate Memorial Days, state by state, but often these are given no
official sanction. And you ask if we are angry.

Suppose you were us.

Roger McCredie
Past Chief of Heritage Defense
Sons of Confederate Veterans
==========
Suppose

'Fast and Furious' White House Gun Control

"Since the very first days of this president's administration, the drug-fueled cartel violence in Mexico has provided a stalking horse for the gun control agenda. Early on, both Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Attorney General Eric Holder cited Mexican violence as a reason to renew the Bill Clinton gun ban of 1994. After those trial balloons were shot down, the ball was passed to Mexican President Felipe Calderon, who repeatedly has blamed American gun rights for Mexican violence. And more recently, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives cited cartel mayhem as justification for an attempt to mandate the reporting of all multiple long gun sales in border states. This regulation would force dealers to report all purchases of more than one long gun if the guns are magazine-fed and larger than .22 caliber -- effectively creating a registry.

But now, shocking revelations that grow bigger every day completely undercut the argument for additional restrictions. In fact, they illuminate bureaucratic arrogance, recklessness and hypocrisy of the highest order in the hallways of the Obama administration -- including the spreading stench of a massive cover-up."

The 101st Airborne Takes On the Taliban in Afghanistan

"On a freezing Afghan mountaintop, with Pakistan close enough to touch, No Slack battalion, the 101st Airborne, began it's descent.

The Taliban were waiting in their safe haven -- a narrow mountain valley called Barawala Kalet. No foreign troops had ever dared to go there. With a five-hour barrage the Taliban were determined to convince the Americans to never come back.

Even though they were surrounded by gunfire, No Slack didn't budge. They gave back as good as they got, killing more than 100 of their enemy. But ammo was running low, and a tense voice on a field radio announced the cost of approaching the enemy.

No more corn in the crib......no more meat in the smokehouse

"Strive to be the greatest man in your country, and you may be disappointed. Strive to be the best and you may succeed: he may well win the race that runs by himself."
--Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack, 1747
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Before government intervention by well-intentioned bureaucrats and far-away social crusaders who knew nothing about those they claimed to assist, people helped each other.

Bernhard Thuersam, Director
Cape Fear Historical Institute
www.cfhi.net
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Helping Those in Need:

“During the Depression my parents befriended an old Negro woman who didn’t have a husband but a house full of children. We had a smokehouse down here where we’d keep the meat, corncribs, potato bins, produce of the farm. And the woman’s family was fed out of that for several years. She was too old to do much work, but she was competent and she did what she could in gratitude and out of knowing that she’d been provided for.

Well, she brought along some little boys. There were Billy and Charlie and Lester and Matt and James. We’d play outside, ride the marsh ponies, hook up the old mule and ride him, go out and gather wood, get in fights, kill snakes, go fishing. I didn’t know that we were especially conscious of any strain.

We knew that on Sunday they went to their church and we would go to ours. We had three or four Negro servants in the house in those days – a housekeeper, a cook, a washerwoman, a gardener. Most of them were people who desperately needed food and shelter in the Depression.

When those boys I used to play with got to be teenagers, I went away to college. And we grew apart. I’ve seen then through the years, and once in a while we’ll stop and talk. I’ll ask them how they’re getting along. They don’t have any interest in talking to me. I don’t think there’s any resentment or hurt, but it’s hard to relate to them today as individuals the way we did back then. It’s part of the times.

One of them left these parts. He’s a bartender in Camp Lejeune over in Jacksonville. He makes more money than I make. I know he owns a better home than I have; he drives a new automobile. He certainly isn’t impressed. The fact is, he doesn’t need me anymore. His family does not need my family. We helped when he did need help, and I think maybe that’s appreciated. But there’s no more corn in the crib. There’s no more meat in the smokehouse.”

(William Dallas Herring: Rose Hill, Reed M. Wolcott, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1976, pp. 32-33)
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"You Can't Play With Johnny Anymore"