Friday, February 3, 2012

My birthday excursion........

......to see my grandfather's words which were recently inscribed upon the back of the monument.

Whitehall Memorial Park Dedication Service 2008

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February 3, 2012



Dennis Brock was a member of the SCV's Mechanized Cavalry
which were in attendance at the 2008 dedication above. He was killed in a motorcycle accident shortly thereafter.

Front of monument. Enlarge to see the remarkable history of this stone.

Back of the monument with my grandfather's words at the bottom.
Confederate Memorial Day-May 10, 1911 (My Grandfather & Mother)

Dixie with Dan Boyette who is the SCV's NC Division Chief of Staff. This was part of his property and he deeded it to the SCV, so that it would be taken care of forever, hopefully.

Dan said he recently installed a light in front of the monument which eerily shone upon it. The first night his neighbor called and asked him if he had put a light there and Dan told him no and inquired why he was asking. When his friend described the light, Dan said to him "Why don't you go down and check it out?" His friend quickly responded "Oh, no, I'm not going down there."
;)



8 sons who served the Confederacy which beats my 7.:)

"The Seven Blackbirds" (My Graveyard)


Dan's house is almost a museum of the Confederacy!

Tallmadge Amendment Origins of the Conflict

The perpetuation of African slavery in North American was the result of the New England slave trade, which saw Providence, Rhode Island surpass Liverpool in 1750 for transatlantic slavers outfitted for the Gulf of Benin, and Massachusetts inventor Eli Whitney’s cotton gin. And without the profitable textile mills of New England and the Manhattan banks which provided credit to Southern planters who expanded plantations to send more raw cotton northward, the institution would have perished much sooner.

Bernhard Thuersam, Chairman
North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial Commission
www.ncwbts150.com
"The Official Website of the North Carolina WBTS Sesquicentennial"

“In 1812 the Territory of Orleans became the State of Louisiana, but meantime the District of Louisiana had been repeatedly reorganized [and by 1819]…the population of Missouri closely approximated sixty thousand which, according to precedents set in the Old Northwest, made a territory eligible for Statehood. Successive Missouri legislatures petitioned Congress on the subject, and in 1819 the House Committee on Territories reported favorably a bill enabling Missouri….to draw up a constitution and make ready for Statehood.

It was at this juncture that Representative James Tallmadge of New York raised the question of setting limits to the expansion of slavery in the Louisiana Purchase. He proposed to amend the bill reported from committee by providing that the further introduction of slavery into Missouri should be forbidden, and that all children born of slave parents after the admission of the State should be free upon reaching the age of twenty-five years.

Until the introduction of the Tallmadge amendment, the slavery question had played little part in national politics. The problem of how slaves should be counted when apportioning representatives in Congress or assessing direct taxes on the States had been satisfactorily settled in the federal convention by the three-fifths compromise. Also, an earlier Congress had exercised its constitutional authority to pass a fugitive slave act, and the administration of this measure had so far provoked little criticism.

Moreover, slavery had long been regarded as a dying institution. The founders of the American nation had almost unanimously so considered it, Southerners no less than Northerners. Many of them were eager to speed the day when slavery should cease to exist throughout the whole country. Washington emancipated his slaves by his will; Alexander Hamilton and Benjamin Franklin were prominent in the work of emancipation societies; Thomas Jefferson’s anti-slavery views were written into the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. Almost by common consent the slave trade was forbidden in 1808, the earliest possible date under the Constitution.

Hostility to slavery during these early days of the republic was firmly grounded on the fact that the institution had ceased to be economically profitable. For this reason, even before the American Revolution, many of the colonies would have taken some anti slavery action had not the British government been so insistent on protecting the profits of British merchants engaged in the slave trade. As soon as independence became a fact, one State after another took action against slavery…[but] the chief obstacle to abolition in the South, where slaves were far more numerous than in the North, was the perplexity felt about what to do with the freed slaves, but Southern emancipation societies were deeply concerned about this problem and were hopeful of finding a solution.

The discovery that cotton could be grown profitably by means of slave labor [with the cotton gin of Massachusetts inventor Eli Whitney] served to revive the institution of slavery just at the time when it had seemed destined to disappear.

(The Federal Union, History of the United States to 1865, John D. Hicks, Houghton Mifflin, 1948, pp. 354-356)


Tallmadge Amendment Origins of the Conflict

Global Warming Alert: Snow falls in Rome for the first time in 26 years as -36 celsius temperatures across eastern Europe send death toll to 150

Via Survival

  • Capital of Italy usually has moderate temperatures but Colosseum is closed over ice fears

  • Military on alert in the UK as temperatures drop and heavy snow fall is predicted

  • Over 11,000 villagers in Serbia remain trapped by heavy snow and blizzards

  • Temperatures across eastern Europe plummet to -30c amid fears of more deaths

  • Death toll in Ukraine now stands at 101, with 38 people being killed by cold last night

PICTURES&MORE

If The Economy Is Improving…......

Via III Percent Patriots

.......then why did new home sales in the United States hit a brand new all-time record low during 2011?

If the economy is getting better, then why are there 6 million less jobs in America today than there were before the recession started?

If the economy is getting better, then why is the average duration of unemployment in this country close to an all-time record high?

If the economy is getting better, then why has the number of homeless female veterans more than doubled?

If the economy is getting better, then why has the number of Americans on food stamps increased by 3 million since this time last year and by more than 14 million since Barack Obama entered the White House?

If the economy is getting better, then why has the number of children living in poverty in America risen for four years in a row?

If the economy is getting better, then why is the percentage of Americans living in "extreme poverty" at an all-time high?

If the economy is getting better, then why is the Federal Housing Administration on the verge of a financial collapse?

If the economy is getting better, then why do only 23 percent of American companies plan to hire more employees in 2012?

If the economy is getting better, then why has the number of self-employed Americans fallen by more than 2 million since 2006?

If the economy is getting better, then why did an all-time record low percentage of U.S. teens have a job last summer?

If the economy is getting better, then why does median household income keep declining? Overall, median household income in the United States has declined by a total of 6.8% since December 2007 once you account for inflation.

If the economy is getting better, then why has the number of Americans living below the poverty line increased by 10 million since 2006?

If the economy is getting better, then why is the average age of a vehicle in America now sitting at an all-time high?

If the economy is getting better, then why are 18 percent of all homes in the state of Florida currently sitting vacant?

If the economy is getting better, then why are 19 percent of all American men between the ages of 25 and 34 living with their parents?

If the economy is getting better, then why does the number of "long-term unemployed workers" stay so high? When Barack Obama first took office, the number of "long-term unemployed workers" in the United States was approximately 2.6 million. Today, that number is sitting at 5.6 million.

Black History Month Spotlight -- Vice Presidential Candidate James W. Ford

James W. Ford: First Black American On a Presidential Ticket

James W. Ford (1893-1957) was born in Pratt City, Alabama on December 22, 1893, the son of Lymon Forsch, the son later Anglicizing the name. He was educated at the Fisk University (as was WEB DuBois) where he excelled at athletics and became active in campus politics. He served in the American military in France during World War One, returning to a federal job in the Chicago Post Office. It was here he became radicalized after joining the Postal Workers Union, and then joined the American Communist Party (CPUSA).

Ford rose quickly through Party ranks as the Soviets placed great emphasis on recruiting blacks to their ranks to exploit racial division in this country, and as a means to destroy capitalism and what they saw as American imperialism abroad. In 1926, Ford joined the communist-front American Negro Congress (ANC) and in a meteoric rise after visiting the Soviet Union in August, 1928 to represent the American Communist Party at the 6th World Congress of the Comintern (Communist International), and being elected to the Comintern’s Negro Commission, he was selected to head the International Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers in 1929. He also served as editor of the latter’s propaganda journal, The Negro Worker.

In 1930, Ford returned to the US and was appointed to lead the Negro Department of the Trade Union Unity League; and assumed the role as vice president of the League of Struggle for Negro Rights. These communist-dominated labor and agitation fronts would form the basis for the so-called civil rights movement of the 1950’s and 1960’s, using mass public disruption tactics to force appeasement and then government recognition and protection.

To attract the black vote to the CPUSA, Ford was selected as the vice presidential candidate on William Z. Foster’s presidential ticket in 1932 and became the first African American to be nominated for this office. In 1936 and 1940, Ford ran alongside CPUSA presidential candidate Earl Browder. The Party’s reasoning was that “The placing of a black man near the top of the CPUSA ticket was symbolic of the Party’s self-declared commitment to racial equality.” When asked about the chances for the Party’s black candidates, Ford replied “The Communist Party is not stupid; we know that better than 4 million Negroes in this country…[could vote the CPUSA ticket].” While polling a large number of votes, Franklin Roosevelt’s move to the extreme left of politics and appointment of communist labor organizers like Sidney Hillman blunted the impact of the CPUSA, and drew the social and much of the communist vote to the Democratic party after 1935. By 1940, little distinguished the Democrat platform from the CPUSA’s list of demands.

After the 1932 election, Ford was sent by the Party to Harlem as a section organizer where he ousted black communists Cyril Briggs and Richard Moore who were promoting a “race-conscious revolutionary nationalism” similar to Marcus Garvey’s black nationalism. He would reestablish and consolidate CPUSA Central Committee authority in Harlem, and became instrumental in forming the National Negro Congress in 1936 as another front to organize black communists and bring votes to the Party. As an indication of his stature in the Party, the CPUSA sent Ford to the Soviet Union in the summer of 1935 as a delegate to the 7th World Congress of the Comintern.

In early January 1936 Ford travelled to North Carolina where he spoke at mass church meetings in Greensboro, Durham and Charlotte, explaining that the CPUSA opposed Mussolini in his seizure of Ethiopia, and urging that church members support the Party. Many black churches enthusiastically received Ford and allowed the Party “to make dozens of speeches before their congregations.” Ford pressed the Party message that claimed America was heading toward fascism if it continued to allow big capitalists to dominate the nation. “Fascism is capitalism without democracy, he declared, “Communism is democracy without capitalism.”

In October Ford toured the nation in support of CPUSA candidates and encouraged blacks to vote the CPUSA ticket. On October 25th he was in Durham where local black communist organizers claimed the mayor had planned to ban Ford from speaking---not true, but the propaganda value was used to heighten interest in Ford’s tour. That afternoon he was interviewed on a half-hour radio program, and in the evening spoke to about 500 supporters, 80 percent black.

Ford and North Carolina CPUSA leaders approved of Soviet Ambassador A.A. Troyansky speaking on the University of North Carolina (UNC) campus then, and contacted Leon Trotsky to speak at UNC on “Lenin and the Revolutionary Struggle.” Secretary of State Cordell Hull would not grant a visa for Trotsky. Ford caused a major incident when he dined with UNC professor E.E. Ericson as the latter had been identified as a past supporter of Norman Thomas’s Socialist Party, and leftist UNC President Frank Porter Graham was known to harbor communist sympathies and faculty members. While in North Carolina, Ford would have met Burlington CPUSA organizer Don West who formed the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee, a communist labor training camp. Highlander would later be a agiprop training ground for Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King.

The CPUSA sent Ford to Spain in 1937 during the Spanish Civil War as a show of solidarity with the American leftists serving with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, and as encouragement for American blacks to volunteer as Republican (Communist) soldiers fighting against Franco.

The North Carolina Peace Committee (NCPC), the State organ of the communist-led American Peace Movement, held a rally on the UNC campus in May, 1940, encouraged by UNC President Graham. The Charlotte Observer editorialized that the NCPC and CPUSA were traitors and hid their real goal, the overthrow of the American republican form of government, under the veil of pacifism and free speech.

Also, Ford spoke along with New York black communist Benjamin J. Davis on the campus of historically-black Shaw University in Raleigh, where they advised non-intervention in Europe now that the Soviets had allied with Hitler, and “reiterated communist demands that State and federal governments do more to help all Americans suffering from the Depression.” Party leaders like Ford insisted that “the workers of North Carolina receive relief benefits because they produce so much wealth for the State and the industrial powers than control it, demanded a State pension for the elderly, abolish fees for public school books, adequate school buses, free hot lunches, a State health care plan for all, and equalizing white and black schools.”

Ford’s running mate Earl Browder dissolved the CPUSA in 1944 and replaced it with the “Communist Political Association,” Ford being chosen as vice president of this new organization. In May, 1945, Moscow expressed its displeasure at Browder’s and Ford’s independent action by demoting them both---expelling Browder---Ford would be replaced as “America’s Leading Black Communist” by Benjamin J. Davis of New York. Probably for reasons of attracting black communist votes to the Democratic party in 1948, Ford was not prosecuted by the US Justice Department for his role in the leadership of the CPUSA. Ford died in relative obscurity in 1957.

Sources:

Communists in Harlem During the Depression, Mark Naison, University of Illinois Press, 1983

The Cry Was Unity, Communists and African Americans, University of Mississippi Press, 1998

The History of the North Carolina Communist Party, Gregory S. Taylor, USC Press, 2009

Wikipedia online

Black History Month Spotlight -- Rosa Parks

Rosa Parks: Seamstress and Community Activist

Rosa (1913-2005) and husband Raymond Parks were both active in the Montgomery Chapter of the NAACP and while working as a seamstress, Rosa served as chapter secretary, and for a time, advisor to the NAACP Youth Council. Though Parks is often described as an innocent seamstress on her way to work on a public bus, author John Edgerton in “Speak Now Against the Day” writes that Mrs. Parks was in fact an alumna of "an institution in Monteagle, Tennessee known as the Highlander Folk School, usually and not inaccurately described as a communist training school.”

Edgerton writes that: “Highlander was founded by a gentleman named Myles Horton who was never actually a member of the Communist Party [USA, the CPUSA], but he told a veteran Red pal that he didn’t join so he could avoid having the label pinned on him. For all practical purposes, Horton was a communist." Mr. Egerton continues, “Highlander had started summer workshops on school desegregation in 1954, right after the Supreme Court’s Brown vs Board of Education decision.” His book contains a photograph of Mrs. Parks with Myles Horton at the school in 1957, but her first training session took place only a few months before she sat down in the front of the bus in December, 1955. In 1957, a photograph was taken of an audience at the school that showed Martin L. King sitting in the front row. Right next to him was Abner Berry, the correspondent of the Communist Party’s official newspaper, the Daily Worker.

The Montgomery NAACP chose Parks to attend a desegregation workshop at the Highlander Folk School to absorb mass public disruption strategies as well as the communist ideology taught there. “Reflecting on that experience, Mrs. Parks recalled, “At Highlander I found out for the first time in my adult life that this could be a unified society…I gained there the strength to persevere in my work for freedom not just for blacks, but for all oppressed people.” On the evening of December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks was arrested for disobeying an Alabama law requiring black passengers to relinquish seats to white passengers when the bus was full. On the eve of her defiance of Montgomery law, there were only 500 members of the local NAACP chapter and no activist, public civil rights movement that masses of people participated in. Parks actions on behalf of the NAACP changed that with the 1955 mass bus boycott in Montgomery. Montgomery black leadership until then was dominated by conservative black leaders who encouraged hard work and self reliance.

In 1979, Parks received the NAACP’s Spingarn Medal, a virtual Who’s Who listing of black CPUSA members in the United States, and for her important contributions to the world, she received the Rosa Parks Peace Prize (Stockholm, 1994) and the US Medal of Freedom (1996) from President Clinton. In addition, Parks has been awarded two dozen honorary doctorates from universities around the world.

For a synopsis of the political revolution Parks was working to realize, the following is helpful:

“Increasingly the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) came to believe that the struggle of American Negroes for equal rights and for changes in the predominantly agrarian structure of the South would bring them into such basic conflict with monopoly capital that they would constitute a powerful ally of the white working class. Strategically then, the issue of democratic rights for the Negro became a central ingredient in the overturn of capitalism….as Harry Haywood, one of the original architects of the concept put it, “The full unleashing of the struggle for Negro liberation” meant “bringing up the strategic reserve of democracy and socialism” and striking at the “Achilles heel of American imperialism.” The communists had won adherents because they had championed immediate, simple and practical issues comprehensible to the Negro at a time when few other political forces paid him any attention.”

Also, black socialist A. Phillip Randolph and contemporary of Rosa Parks encouraged Negroes to look "toward their conversion to revolutionary radicalism…[and be] committed to the principles of the Soviet government of Russia and to the proposition of organizing Negroes for the class struggle"

Sources:

Quiet Strength, Rosa Parks and Gregory Reed, 1994, Zondervan Publishers

Speak Now Against the Day, John Edgerton, 1995

Wikipedia online

Michelle Malkin Jim Moran, racist pig

Congressman Jim Moran is an old white Democrat from Virginia who thinks he can judge whether we minority conservatives are acting sufficiently non-white enough. Moran's an inveterate bully, a brawler, a crook and a bigot. And not one of his civility-preaching liberal colleagues has the courage to call him out.

Responding on cable news to GOP Rep. Allen West's blunt criticisms of President Obama this week, Moran derided the retired U.S. Army colonel, who is black, as "not representative of the African-American community." Moran then launched into the kind of tired race-traitor tirade I've heard from progressives of pallor for more than 20 years.

How dare we "people of color" stray from the left's ideological plantation? If we choose personal responsibility over entitlement, capitalism over statism or self-determination over identity politics, presumptuous white liberals appoint themselves spokespeople for our forefathers and deciders of our true destinies.

Is This Iowa High School Teaching Students Communism Is Better Than Capitalism? See the Flyer

This curious flyer was handed out to students studying the history of the Cold War at Roosevelt High School in Des Moines, Iowa.

What do you think the lesson was supposed to be?

MORE

Hatch: Obama Is No Jesus Christ

Many have noted that President Barack Obama seems to have a bit of a messianic complex.

Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said in a speech on the Senate floor Thursday that Obama has taken it too far and must remember that he’s not Jesus Christ, The Hill reports.

"In 2008, the president declared that his nomination was the world historical moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal," Hatch said. "Someone needs to remind the president that there was only one person who walked on water, and he did not occupy the Oval Office."

Nullification X 2

NDAA Nullification Tennessee
Bills under consideration would provide for "kidnapping charges" for federal agents who attempt detain a U.S. citizen in Tennessee under the NDAA.
More states considering various versions of NDAA Nullification bills - Washington (info here) and Virginia (report here)


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Arizona: Nullification of Obamacare
Arizona Health Care Nullification Act up for consideration - makes "it a criminal offense for any Arizona state or federal official, agent or employee to attempt to enforce any provision of the federal health care act in the Grand Canyon State."

Got On Bus & Started Beating People + 6 charged with killing HS freshman

Via Tom Stedman

Rider: Teens ‘Got On The Bus And Started Beating On People’.


"...has released the 911 tapes from a horrifying attack this month, in which four teenagers disabled a CTA bus and beat and robbed a passenger.

The teens – two of them 17 years old and two of them 13 – got on the bus in the 600 block of East 71st Street around 7 p.m. Jan. 21.

They disabled the engine by hitting a switch on the side of the bus, then began beating and punching the passenger, a Chicago Transit Authority spokesman told CBS 2.

In a 911 call, a woman on the bus is frantic.

A group of guys, they… oh my God… they got on the bus and started beating on people, trying to rob everybody on the bus,” the woman said.

MORE

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Six charged with killing Norcross High freshman

Nicholas Jackson II, 15, was shot Thursday night during a home invasion at his family’s house...

“It seems so senseless,” his sister said. “I don’t know why they did it. They just broke in and went straight to his room.”

Employment Report: Blatant, Outrageous Lies & Drop out nation

More news about the drop in the labor participation rate, via Zero Hedge (emphasis in original):

A month ago, we joked when we said that for Obama to get the unemployment rate to negative by election time, all he has to do is to crush the labor force participation rate to about 55%. Looks like the good folks at the BLS heard us: it appears that the people not in the labor force exploded by an unprecedented record 1.2 million. No, that’s not a typo: 1.2 million people dropped out of the labor force in one month! So as the labor force increased from 153.9 million to 154.4 million, the non institutional population increased by 242.3 million meaning, those not in the labor force surged from 86.7 million to 87.9 million. Which means that the civilian labor force tumbled to a fresh 30 year low of 63.7% as the BLS is seriously planning on eliminating nearly half of the available labor pool from the unemployment calculation.

MORE@LegalInsurrection

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Employment Report: Blatant And Outrageous Lies

There are times when one questions a report as possibly being wrong or in error, and then there are times when one has to raise a flag and say "This is an intentionally false picture being presented by a government agency."

I'm in the latter camp with this one, and it is rare for me to brand something as not possibly wrong and in error, but intentionally fraudulent.

MORE@TheMarketTicker

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How about 9.04%?


Va Senate Helped VMFA remove permanent sign and ANV Flags from Chapel

Via SHNV

Please call and email as private citizens giving home address. Each Senator's Secretary will ask what the bill does? Tell them:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Senator: Please vote for the SB-675 as a revised substitute (I can send word document), by having one of the Senators who voted to PBI, make a motion before the beginning of the Senate General Laws Committee meeting to reconsider the last question.
SB-675, if adopted by the General Laws Committee as a revised substitute, would establish the Pelham Chapel, found in § 57-5 of the Code of Virginia, as an official State war memorial to help bring tourist attention to the historic Soldiers Home site. The revised substitute provides that the Lessee shall supply and display Virginia Flags and removes those requirements as a burden on the Governor and the Commonwealth, to encourage tourism when the war memorial is open to the public to increase out-of-state visitor's Tax-Relief for Virginia citizens.
Senator, I do not understand why you would oppose allowing a two-sided sign that describes the building as a Confederate War Memorial and lists the times when this memorial is open to the public. This would encourage repeat visits from out-of-state visitors.
Tourism is Virginia's second largest industry that creates new jobs! The tour guide at the Pelham Chapel is one of those jobs paid for without cost to the Commonwealth as a requirement of the Lessee.
This State memorial is dedicated to the war dead of volunteer soldiers and conscripted civilians who were ordered into battle by the Virginia General Assembly.
Therefore, it is the responsibility of the Virginia General Assembly to see that it is included as a visible tourist destination for the benefit of all those who are memorialized with honor and all out-of state visitors who want to travel to visit this historic site. Because of the removal of the Memorial's permanent signage, our State misses an opportunity for a repeat visit because visitors are unaware it is a war memorial and that the building is open for tours.
I strongly urge Republican Senators to reconsider the PBI vote by asking the Chairman of the Committee to call a meeting at his desk to reconsider the last question as soon as possible.
Please give Chairman Ruff notice of your intent to support the attached SB-675 revised amendment as a substitute and ask him to call a meeting of the Committee on General Laws at his desk.
I sincerely appreciate your kindness in voting for this bill's revised amendments after voting to reconsider the last question to PBI. This revised bill's amendment in the nature of a substitute can provide a needed boost to tourist tax revenue during the Sesquicentennial to bring balance to Commonwealth's budget. This bill increases tourism tax revenue, to provide citizens a needed source of out-of-state tax relief.
Sincerely,
Name:
Home Address:
-------------------------
Copy above type starting at the words (Senator Please) and paste it to your email with your home address:
The Senators will vote with the Majority of the people who call and email. They have a record of calls and emails on their computer for each bill. Then, if the yeas have more calls and emails, the Senator decides to vote yes, even if they do not like what they are voting for. Senators vote for bills that have a large volume of calls and emails, regardless of where they live. So call Republican Senators on the General Laws Committee, and mass email all the Republicans.
See their email addresses below.
Do not believe those aides and secretaries that tell you that this Bill is dead when the rules of the Senate state that the Committee has the option to reconsider the last question. This Bill was the last bill on the docket and as such is eligible under Robert Rules of Order to be reconsidered, amended and reported to the Senate floor for a vote of the Senate.
Senator Chairman Frank Ruff, Jr.(R) Clarksville, Danville, Pittsylvania, Campbell, Halifax, Charlotte, Mecklenburg, Lunenburg, Brunswick, Dinwiddie, Nottoway, Prince George, 804-698-7515 email: district15@senate.virginia.gov

Senator Richard Black(R) Loudon, Manassas, Fairfax, 804-698-7513 email: district13@senate.virginia.gov
Senator Tom Garrett,Jr(R) Amherst, Appomattox, Pr-Edward, Buck, Cumber, Fluv, Gooch 804-698-7522 email: district22@senate.virginia.gov

Senator Stephen Martin(R) Chesterfield, Amelia 804-698-7511 email: district11@senate.virginia.gov
Senator Bryce Reeves(R) Charlottesville, Albemarle, Louisa, Spotsylvania, Orange, Culpeper, Fredericksburg 804-698-7517
email: district17@senate.virginia.gov
Senator Walter Stosch(R) Glen Allen, Western Henrico, Hanover 804-698-7512 email: district12@senate.virginia.gov
Senator Richard Stuart(R) Montross, Spotsylvania, Stafford, Prince William, King George, Westmorland, 804-698-7528 email: district28@senate.virginia.gov
Majority Whip Senator Jill Vogel(R) Winchester, Fredrick, Clark, Loudoun, Fauquier, Culpeper, Stafford, 804-698-7527
email: district27@senate.virginia.gov
end of Republicans on the Committee on General Laws. -----------------------------------
Majority Leader Senator Thomas K. Norment, Jr. (R) Williamsburg, (804) 698-7503 email: district03@senate.virginia.gov

TSA agent arrested for allegedly stealing $5,000 from passenger's jacket

A Transportation Security Administration agent stole $5,000 in cash from a passenger's jacket as he was going through security at John F. Kennedy International Airport, authorities said Thursday, the latest in a string of thefts that has embarrassed the agency.

Alexandra Schmid took the cash from a Bangladeshi passenger's jacket as it went along an X-ray conveyor belt Wednesday night in Terminal 4, said Al Della Fave, spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey's police force.

MORE

Mr. Drone and the $199 CombatPilot

IF there is anyone on this earth that has a claim to the title of Mr. Drone, it's Chris Anderson (the only other contender is one of my favorite writers/biologists: E.O. Wilson).

This is one of those increasingly common cases where a person's hobby (expert amateur) becomes much more important than the work they get paid for (which in most cases is typically dull and fits within the category of: we do what we must so we can do what we want...).

In contrast, his love for drone technology in combination with his prodigious skills as a media front man, has radically accelerated the emergence and the democratization of autonomous drone technology.

For example: The ArduPlane. A conversion kit that, in the language of the promotion, can:

MORE

CLOSE-QUARTERS COMBAT MARKSMANSHIP: A SUGGESTED POI, PART TWO

(the following is a continuation of yesterday's article, and the follow-up lessons I utilize when teaching novice gunfighters the tricks of the trade. I've taught this program with each training session lasting several hours, and I've taught the entire program in a two-day block. Assuming a qualified instructor with a solid grasp on the principles of adult teaching methods, who can effectively utilize the crawl-walk-run method of instruction, and the explain-demonstrate-practice method of teaching, it can be done. Nevertheless, this POI is generally taught over a span of as long as three weeks, with 5-10 times more dry-fire practice, to master the fundamentals, than actual live-fire practice. --J.M.)



Training Session Two: Slow Aimed with the Carbine



While this course is predicated on a practiced grasp of the fundamentals of basic rifle marksmanship (BRM), the reality is that BRM as normally taught in the military and in the civilian rifle world generally does not teach fighting with the carbine from a standing, CQC posture. Therefore, this session should focus on the basics of fighting with the carbine: proper stance, firing grip, sight alignment and sight picture, breathing control under stress, trigger control, follow-through, and recovery.



During CQC, the fighter will generally find it necessary to make a majority of his shots from the standing position, despite the fact that the standing position is the least stable firing position available.

Gang rape began as a robbery attempt, police documents say

Via Tom Stedham

A magistrate judge on Thursday set a $1 million bond for the man arrested Wednesday in the kidnapping and gang rape of a home health nurse in a rundown fourplex on the edge of Central City last week. Police, meanwhile, released an incident report a week after the attack. An application for an arrest warrant filed in Orleans Parish criminal court shed more light on the crime, which police said little about until the arrest Wednesday of Brian Beasley, 21.

Yet another Dem: NC’s Heath Shuler won’t seek re-election to House

U.S. Rep. Heath Shuler of North Carolina announced Thursday he won't seek re-election in what's become another blow to conservative Democrats on Capitol Hill and the party's state congressional delegation.

Shuler, a former professional football player and conservative who challenged House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi for her post following the November 2010 elections, announced in a statement that he will not seek a fourth House term representing far western North Carolina.

Shuler said he discussed running for North Carolina governor with his family but decided against it earlier this week.

"I spent time with the family and realized I have to be at home more, spend some more time with them." Shuler and his wife have two children ages 10 and 7.

MORE


Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/02/02/2980008/ncs-heath-shuler-wont-seek-re.html#storylink=cpy