Paul Harvey "this is the rest of the story"

[spywizard]

By Paul Harvey - Conveniently Forgotten Facts

Back in 1969 a group of Black Panthers decided that a
fellow Black Panther named Alex Rackley needed to die.
Rackley was suspected of disloyalty.

Rackley was first tied to a chair. Once safely immobilized,
his friends tortured him for hours by, among other things,
pouring boiling water on him.

When they got tired of torturing Rackley, Black Panther
member, Warren Kimbo, took Rackley outside and put a bullet
in his head. Rackley's body was later found floating in a
river about 25 miles north of New Haven, Conn.

Perhaps at this point, you're curious about what happened
to these Black Panthers. In 1977, eight years later, only
one of the killers was still in jail.

The shooter, Warren Kimbro, managed to get a scholarship to
Harvard, and became good friends with none other than Al Gore.
He later became an assistant dean at an Eastern Connecticut
State College. Isn't that something? As a '60s radical you
can pump a bullet into someone's head, and a few years later,
in the same state, you can become an assistant college dean!
Only in America!

Erica Huggins was the lady who served the Panthers by boiling
the water for Mr. Rackley's torture. Some years later Ms.
Huggins was elected to a California School Board.

How in the world do you think these killers got off so easy?
Maybe it was in some part due to the efforts of two people
who came to the defense of the Panthers. These two people
actually went so far as to shut down Yale University with
demonstrations in defense of the accused Black Panthers
during their trial.

One of these people was none other than Bill Lan Lee. Mr. Lee,
or Mr. Lan Lee, as the case may be, isn't a college dean. He
isn't a member of a California School Board. He is now head
of the US Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, appointed
by none other than Bill Clinton.

O.K., so who was the other Panther defender? Is this other
notable Panther defender now a school board member? Is this
other Panther apologist now an assistant college dean?

No, neither! The other Panther defender was, like Lee, a radical
law student at Yale University at the time. She is now known as
the "smartest woman in the world." She is none other than the
Democratic senator from the state of New York----our former
First Lady, the incredible Hillary Rodham Clinton.

And now, as Paul Harvey said, "You know the rest of the story."

I didn't write it, but i did post..

[motoxxxguy]

I swear that woman is the devil himself, and I'm not wrong very often. That doesn't really surprise me, but is interesting. I don't really know what else I can say about that, with starting a huge political argument.

I'll just say I am a Republican.

-moto

[Roadkill]

Republicans > Democrats.

[bigol'legs]

dang... If thats true... she can still be prosectuted.

[Rod Farva]

http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/outrage/panthers.htm

Claim: Hillary Clinton played a significant role in defending Black Panthers accused of torturing and murdering Alex Rackley.
Status: False.

Example: [Collected on the Internet, 1999]


Scream, America, When You've Had Enough
Back in 1969 a group of Black Panthers decided that a Black man named Alex Rackley needed to die. Rackley was a fellow Panther suspected of disloyalty.

Rackley was first tied to a chair. Safely immobilized his "friends" tortured him for hours by, among other things, pouring boiling water on him.

When they got tired of torturing Rackley Black Panther member Warren Kimbro took Mr. Rackley's outside and put a bullet in his head. Rackley's body was found floating in a river about 25 miles north of New Haven, Conn.

Maybe at this point you're curious as to what happened to these Black Panthers. Well, in 1977, that's only eight years later, only one of the killers was still in jail. The shooter, Warren Kimbro, managed to get a scholarship to Harvard. He later became an assistant dean at Eastern Connecticut State College.

Isn't that something? As a 60's radical you can pump a bullet into someone's head, and years later, in the same State, you can be an assistant college dean! Only in America!

Ericka Huggins was the lady who served the Panthers by boiling the water for Mr. Rackley's torture. Some years later Ms. Huggins was elected to a California school board.

How in the world do you think that these killers got off so easy? Well, maybe it was in some part due to the efforts of two people who came to the defense of the Panthers. These two people actually went so far as to shut down Yale University with demonstrations in defense of the accused Black Panthers during their trial. One of those people was none other than Bill Lan Lee. Mr. Lee, or Mr. Lan Lee as the case may be, isn't a college dean. He isn't a member of a California school board. He is the head of the U.S. Justice Departments Civil Rights Division. Lee is serving in that capacity, illegally, by the way, but that's another story — another part of the Clinton saga of ignoring the rule of law.

O.K., so who was the other Panther defender? Is this other notable Panther defender now a school board member? Is this other Panther apologist now an assistant college dean?

Nope, neither. The other Panther defender was, like Lee, a radical law student at Yale University at that time. She is now known as The Smartest Woman in the World. She is none other than the unofficial Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate from the State of New York — our lovely First Lady, the incredible Hillary Rodham Clinton.




Origins: It's
difficult for those who weren't around to experience the 1960s first-hand to fully understand the controversy that swirled around "radical" parties such as the Black Panthers. Certainly to many Americans they represented the very worst of that era's political movements: a group of hate-filled militants who felt their disaffection with the existing social and political systems justified anything required to achieve their aim of "revolution by any means necessary" (such as smuggling guns into a Marin County courtroom in an attempt to free Panther George Jackson, resulting in a shoot-out that killed a judge, two inmates, and Jackson's brother). To others, however, they were the only political group that truly represented a downtrodden and marginalized group of people who had been enslaved, discriminated against, and denied civil rights protections for hundreds of years; that sought to improve the condition of the poor by operating schools, opening medical clinics, and providing free breakfasts for ghetto children; and that had the courage to stand up to the brutality visited upon them by law enforcement acting in the service of a government and a society that sought to "keep them in their place."

In May of 1969, Black Panther founder and national chairman Bobby Seale (who had already been indicted for his alleged participation in demonstrations at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August 1968) made a trip from Oakland to New Haven, Connecticut, to speak at Yale University. The Black Panthers were by then nationally known, a focus of media attention, and under the active surveillance of the FBI. (J. Edgar Hoover had publicly declared several months earlier that he considered the Panthers "the greatest threat to the internal security of the country.") Rumors of police informants and government spies having infiltrated the party were rampant, and a man named Alex Rackley, a member of the Panthers' New York chapter, fell under suspicion. Rackley was taken to the home of Warren Kimbro (a "community organizer and aspiring Panther") where he was held captive for 24 hours, beaten, and scalded with boiling water in an effort to force him to confess. Rackley was then taken to a marsh in Middlefield by Kimbro, George Sams (Panther field marshall and, according to some, himself a police informant), and Lonnie McLucas (a Panther member from Bridgeport), where Sams ordered Kimbro and McLucas to kill the suspected informant. (Who did the actual killing has always been disputed; McLucas reportedly fired the first shot, but Kimbro admittedly delivered the bullet to the head that killed Rackley.) Rackley's body was discovered the next day by fishermen, and fourteen Black Panthers were arrested and charged with murder, kidnapping, and conspiracy.

That several Black Panthers directly took part in the torture and murder of Alex Rackey is beyond dispute, and to those of us who believe that torture and murder are always wrong, no matter what the cause, their actions were morally reprehensible. But this piece isn't really about outrage over what the Black Panthers did thirty years ago; it's a political tract whose purpose is to discredit the Clintons by associating them with the Black Panthers. Of the hundreds of people who played part in the Black Panthers' New Haven trial three decades ago, the only ones named here are Hillary Clinton (currently our First Lady and a candidate for a U.S. Senate seat in New York), and Bill Lann Lee (acting head of the Justice Department's civil rights division, whose appointment by President Clinton remains controversial because of Lee's support for affirmative action programs).

So, exactly what connection do Ms. Clinton and Mr. Lee have to the Black Panthers? The piece quoted above claims:


How in the world do you think that these killers got off so easy? Well, maybe it was in some part due to the efforts of two people who came to the defense of the Panthers. These two people actually went so far as to shut down Yale University with demonstrations in defense of the accused Black Panthers during their trial.
We'll begin with the last part, and it's simply ludicrous. Yale University was not "shut down" during the trial. Classes were made optional when 12,000 Panther supporters swarmed the campus in protest, and the president of Yale University himself, Kingman Brewster Jr., announced: "I personally want to say that I'm appalled and ashamed that things should have come to such a pass that I am skeptical of the ability of Black revolutionaries to achieve a fair trial anywhere in the U.S." To lay the entire responsibility for this massive, widespread protest on the shoulders of two Yale students is just silly, all the more so because nobody has offered evidence that either one of them led, or even participated in, any student demonstrations or protests in support of the Black Panthers. Nevertheless, even if they didn't actually lead or take part in any demonstrations they're still guilty by association, we're told, because they "defended" the Black Panthers.
One of the elements often employed in political screeds such as this one is the ambiguity of the word "defend." It can be used in the sense of providing legal aid to a person accused of a crime, or in the sense of supplying moral justification for a person's actions. Sometimes these two concepts go hand in hand; but often they don't. We often find it necessary, in order to preserve and protect our rights, to defend (in a legal sense) those whose actions we consider morally wrong, and to defend (in a moral sense) those who actions we find legally wrong. We sometimes let criminals go free because constitutional safeguards were violated in the process of bringing them to justice. That doesn't mean we condone their crimes; it means we're willing to "defend" their rights in order to preserve a higher moral principle (i.e., the rights that protect all of us).

What has been overlooked (or deliberately ignored) in the piece quoted here is that even though fourteen Black Panthers were arrested and charged with murder, kidnapping, and conspiracy in connection with the murder of Alex Rackley, only two of them were put on trial (the others plead to lesser charges, or the charges against them were dropped): Bobby Seale and Erika Huggins. Why only these two? Seale wasn't present at either the torture or murder of Alex Rackley; he maintained that he knew nothing about any plans to kill Rackley and wasn't even aware that Rackley was suspected of being a police informant. (Panther George Sams did claim he had told Seale about suspicions Rackley was an informant, however.) Erika Huggins wasn't present when Rackley was killed, either. She was accused of having taken part in the "interrogation" of Rackley, boiling the water used to scald him and kicking him while he was tied to a chair. Certainly her actions were both criminally wrong and morally reprehensible, but several other Panthers took a far more active hand in the torture and murder of Rackley (such as those who actually poured the boiling water onto him, beat him, and shot him in the head). Why were only these two people put on trial while the other Panthers were allowed to plead out or weren't even prosecuted at all?

Many people genuinely believed, at the time, that the government was deliberately prosecuting for murder people whom it knew full well were not guilty of murder in order to discredit a group it perceived as a threat, and that perhaps the government had deliberately sacrificed Rackley by planting him in the Panthers' midst and then leaking his cover in order to provoke a showdown. (The fact that neither of the accused was ever convicted is taken by some as proof of the correctness of this theory; others dismiss it as irrelevant and maintain that the case was far too politically controversial to allow for a fair verdict.) If Bobby Seale, the head of the Black Panther party, could be convicted and sent to prison for murder, the Black Panthers would lose a great deal of public support and credibility and be disarmed as a threat to the government. This, it was widely held, was the government's real motivation for prosecuting only Seale and Huggins while other Panthers who were more directly involved in Rackley's murder went free or were allowed to plead to lesser charges (in exchange for turning state's evidence against Seale and Huggins).

The key point here is not whether this notion was ultimately right or wrong. The key point is that many people believed it to be true at the time, and they therefore "supported" the Black Panthers during the subsequent trial (in a legal sense) — not necessarily because they condoned the (alleged) actions of the two people on trial (or the Black Panthers in general), but because they felt it was morally wrong for the government to prosecute murder charges against only two people, neither of whom was directly involved in the murder of Alex Rackley, all for political purposes. So, one cannot simply tar everyone who "defended" the Panthers with the same brush of moral outrage; many found the Panthers and their actions odious but still "defended" them because they honestly believed the government's attempts to prosecute only a select two of questionable guilt (while letting confessed torturers and murderers off with a comparative slap on the wrist) to be the far greater injustice.

So, what exactly did Mr. Lee and Ms. Clinton do to "defend" the Panthers in a legal sense? In Mr. Lee's case, he did absolutely nothing. He wasn't a lawyer, or even a law student; he was simply another Yale undergraduate who had nothing to do with the Black Panthers' trial. Ms. Clinton wasn't a lawyer then, either; she was a Yale law student. The sum total of her involvement in the trial was that she assisted the American Civil Liberties Union in monitoring the trial for civil rights violations. That a law student's tangential participation in one of the most controversial, politically and racially charged trials of her time (one that took place right on her doorstep) to help ensure it remained free of civil rights abuses is now offered as "proof" of her moral reprehensibility demonstrates that McCarthyism is alive and well — some of us apparently believe in rights but don't believe everyone has the right to have rights.

Of course, neither Mr. Lee nor Ms. Clinton had anything to do with "defending" the other twelve Panthers, who never even stood trial because the government declined to prosecute them or allowed them to turn state's evidence. The flimsy "evidence" typically mustered as "proof" of their "support" for the Black Panthers is that Hillary Clinton was co-editor of the Yale Review when it printed a derogatory cartoon depicting police as decapitated pigs, even though no one has demonstrated that she approved (or even knew) of it, and that in order to join a student group, Bill Lee once "acquiesced when pressed to write a statement expressing solidarity with the Panthers who were on trial." (If Mr. Lee was such a wholehearted supporter of the Panthers, one has to wonder why he had to be "pressed" into making such a statement.)

In a woefully bad piece of "journalism," Insight magazine writer John Elvin tried his best, despite his lack of any real evidence, to huff and puff and assert as true the claim that Hillary Rodham was leading campus protests in support of the Black Panthers. His conclusion was a model of disingenuousness:


Can there be any doubt, based on the foregoing facts, that Rodham and Lee indeed were student leaders during the Panther protests at Yale? The correct answer is no.
Sure, the answer is "no," because the wrong question has been asked. That Hillary Rodman could fairly have been described as a "student leader" is something no one would dispute. The question being asked here is "Was Hillary Clinton leading campus protests in support of the Black Panthers?" -- a question Elvin dishonestly avoids answering because he can't demonstrate the answer to be "yes." The "foregoing facts" he refers to can be summarized thusly:

The person who started this rumor says it's true.

Hillary Rodham associated with people I don't like.

A bunch of books I don't name say she was a campus activist.
The first two items have no probative value, and the third is carefully worded to conceal the fact that the writer is really stating nothing more than an obvious point no one would dispute, while trying hard to create the misleading impression the point that he can't prove (i.e., that Hillary Rodham actually led campus protests in support of the Black Panthers) is true:


Insight reviewed biographies of Hillary Clinton by Milton, Brock and Roger Morris for this story and lengthy selections from such other biographies as Barbara Olson's Hell to Pay. Together, relying on primary and other firsthand sources, they unquestionably back Horowitz's contention that Hillary was a campus leader during the Panther protests. She was, by standards of those chaotic and violent times, a moderate voice compared with such fanatics as Yippie leader Jerry Rubin, who exhorted Yale students to "kill your parents," but she played a prominent activist role.
Yes, Hillary Rodham was a "campus leader" and played an "activist role" in her university days. So what? The same could be said of thousands of other people who protested the Vietnam War, or campaigned to get 18-year-olds the vote, or supported equal rights for women. None of that demonstrates anything about Hillary Rodham's alleged support of the Black Panthers. Elvin himself admits that she was "a moderate voice," and it's significant that he doesn't quote from, synopsize, or even identify by title any of the "reviewed biographies" he alludes to, because none of them supports the impression he's trying to create. Not a single one of these biographies quotes anyone who actually saw Hillary Rodham taking part in campus protests for the Panthers, but nearly all of them quote people who knew her back then as saying that radical protest politics simply weren't her style, and that she preferred getting two sides together for reconciliation rather than confrontation. For example, in The Seduction of Hillary Rodham Clinton by David Brock, we find:

. . . Hillary took her moral bearings from the radicals while favoring establishment tactics . . . This enabled her to work within the mainstream and to retain the respect and admiration of those in power. "She was always careful not to stray," said Robert Borosage. "For example, the yippies erected an air balloon tent on campus and lived in it. She wasn't a part of that. She probably had a sense that that was a politics that wouldn't work."
[ . . .]

By the end of her first year at Yale, it was clear that Hillary abjured the in-your-face political tactics of Jerry Rubin as well as the exhibitionistic and hedonistic side of the 1960s. She was practical, pragmatic, and mainstream in her strategies, tactics, and presentation.

Stripped of all the invective and blatant political ranting, the case here against Mr. Lee and Ms. Clinton comes down to nothing more than "We don't like their politics" and "They were there," so they must be as morally guilty as the Panthers themselves. As a junior senator from Wisconsin once demonstrated, if you can't defeat your political opponents at the ballot box, and you can't point to anything specific they've done wrong, simply declare them guilty for once having been associated (no matter how tenuous the association) with a group now reviled. "Vilification by association" tactics that worked for McCarthyites in the 1950s apparently still have their adherents today.
Scream, America, when you've had enough.

Update: Versions of the e-mailed denunciation headed "Paul Harvey's 'The rest of the story'" began circulating on the Internet in June 2000. This header plus a comment at the end of the text ("And now, as Paul Harvey says, you know the rest of the story") caused some to believe Paul Harvey had read this piece (or a shorter version of it) on air. Paul Harvey's people confirm he has never broadcast the Panthers and Hillary Clinton story.

[Tock]

dang... If thats true... she can still be prosectuted.

=========

Yah, IF that's true.
My guess is that there's a bit more to the story than what ol' Paul has presented.

Funny thing is that while he's dissin' the democrats, he ain't said nothin' about famous 'publicans who did crazy stuff like illegally selling arms to Iranians so they could get $$$ to finance other crazy idiots in South America, and lied to Congress about it . . . Some got prison sentences, some were granted presidential pardons, and ended up with popular radio talk shows, and I think one of 'em is working for the present pres Bush.
My guess is that he's not about to do a program on THIS "rest of the story" 'cause he ain't exactly what you'd call an impartial journalist . . . he's more like Rush Limbaugh, who admittedly bills himself and his program as "entertainment."
Hah . . . let's see a "Rest of the Story" on Rush's opinions on drug abusers, before he was caught with his illegal stash, and after . . . We'll see John Ashcroft handing out 50 ml jugs of Test cyp to high school jocks before we see this . . .

Oh yah, another reason to doubt the complete veracity of what you hear in the news media . . . keep in mind that 80+% of all the news you hear comes from just six multi-national multi-billion $$$ corporations who are bound by law to pursue profits for their shareholders, and those idealist executives who pursue truth over profits get to work for those who bring home more bacon for the owners . . .
It's all about the money, mes amis . . . it's all only about the money.

[Tock]

http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/outrage/panthers.htm
Paul Harvey's people confirm he has never broadcast the Panthers and Hillary Clinton story.

================

Geez, I wrote that last post and here it turns out (I shoulda read the whole thing) it WAS a bunch of bs . . .

Kinda reminds me of the Madelyn Murray vs the FCC story that's been circulating for the past 30 years or so. Someone was afraid Madelyn Murray O'Hair was going to get the FCC to take all religious programs off the air so they started circulating a petition against it. Well, Madelyn had no intention to do any such thing, and there was no truth to the fears, but the FCC has had to keep a staff of 30-something people for no other reason than to answer the people who keep sending these crazy petitions in. And they've been doing this for a few decades now . . . at taxpayer expense . . . . http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/consumerfacts/Religious.html
Since ol' crazy Madelyn died in 1995, maybe the petitions have stopped rolling in . . . then again, maybe not . ..

Anyway, as I mentioned before, ya gotta take these kind of unsubstantiated allegations with a grain of salt, else you can end up in someone else's conspiracy delusion . . .

[Rod Farva]

Snopes.com is the king of debunking urban myths.

They had this to say about that chick you mentioned:

http://www.snopes.com/politics/religion/wtccross.asp

[powerlifter]

Doesn't surprise me in the least - She is pure evil - just my .02

[Tock]

Evil? Madelyn?
She was bright, aggressive, assertive, foul-mouthed, ahead of her time, independant, impatient, and gangly . . . but evil?
She didn't put up with BS; had no problem tearing into idiots, but from what I got to see of her, she also had a fragile, sensitive side. And was hardly "Evil."
She championed the cause of those who wanted the government to stay out of their religious life, spoke out against Christian groups who managed to get the government to pay their bills with taxpayer $$$, pressured the government to make churches who bought businesses (like gas stations, hotels, parking lots) pay taxes on their profits just like any other business.

All this seems perfectly reasonable to me.

Now there's a controversy over whether Christian symbols should be erected on public land? I don't see why there should be a controversy . . .
I have no problems if religious organizations want to put up a thousand blazing crosses on their own property, or if a person wants to put one up on their own property. But if it ain't their own, tough luck! It's not like public property was made just so any church can put up a cross anywhere they want.
-Tock

[lloyd_cannon]

What is so wrong about a cross, it's so generalized it only provokes a small group of people. The people offended by it should quit being so narrow minded and look at the good in the situation. They didn't put up the cross to say Jesus Christ has been here, they put it up as a symbol of hope. If the majority of people want it there then stick it up.

**** I should have never typed this
Rule #1 Never cross swords with a liberal. It's like trying to beat some sense into a battle ship with a with a wet noodle.

[symatech]

**** I should have never typed this
Rule #1 Never cross swords with a liberal. It's like trying to beat some sense into a battle ship with a with a wet noodle.

it goes the same for republicans. democrats are no better than republicans. each group is full of ****. they both just think theirs smells sweeter than the others.

[spywizard]

LMFAO



this is a 6 week old post..........

dam_n.......

get a hobby.................


hahahahahahaha

[symatech]

6 weeks aint bad. ive seen worse.

[Tock]

1)What is so wrong about a cross, it's so generalized it only provokes a small group of people.

2) The people offended by it should quit being so narrow minded and look at the good in the situation.

3) They didn't put up the cross to say Jesus Christ has been here, they put it up as a symbol of hope.

4) If the majority of people want it there then stick it up.

5) Rule #1 Never cross swords with a liberal. It's like trying to beat some sense into a battle ship with a with a wet noodle.

=====================
1) What is so wrong with a cross . . .
Well, it's not the cross itself. It's a matter of law.
Um, it used to be in the old days that the secular government taxed the homes and other property that people lived in to pay preacher's salaries, church bills, and costs of converting the infidels. When the folks who wrote the US constitution took into consideration the effect that sort of intermingling of secular and religious authority had on the general populace, they came up the the idea to keep both institutions seperate. That gave churches the responsibility to pay thier own bills, and removed the privelage of taxing private property and intimidating those who did not attend every Sunday. Ever since then, churches have tried to find ways to get tax money to pay their bills or to get the government to provide free stuff to get their message out. Used to be (up until 1963) that public schools required kids to recite the Lord's Prayer (if they refused, they could be expelled). Now, it's not a requirement, but students can pray all they want so long as (a) there is not a school representative leading them or (b) as long as it doesn't disrupt the class (a kid can't avoid taking a test because they want to pray instead). It used to be that state and local governments could (and did) tax property to support churches, but that was ruled unconstitutional back in 1835
Yah, that's how it used to be. Now, the laws have been clarified by the Supreme Court so that, according the the 1st Amdndment, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . ." so that your local church cannot have the gov't confiscate your home if you don't pay the church tax, and so that if you have a Jewish kid (or whatever) the local school can't require him to say a Christian prayer.
What's the big deal? It's just a few measly $$$, or just a stupid prayer? Tsk tsk . . . it's more than that . . . it's your right NOT to be involved in religion, especially if it's someone else's religion. Your basic Constitutional rights are involved here.
As far as the problem with letting "just a measly little cross" goes, again, it's a question of Constitutional rights. Suppose some group of people wants to use Public Property to place their religion's symbols in a prominent place, like in front of the county courthouse, or in front of every post office or school. Well, they shouldn't assume that they are free to use public property to display anything they like, because Public Property does NOT belong to them, it belongs to citizens.
If they wanted to rent space from local businesses and put their stuff up there, that would be fine. If they want to put their displays on their own property, that's fine. But they're asking too much when they ask to put their Christian symbol on public property that belongs as much to Jews, Musims, Buddists, Taoists, Shintoists, Atheists, Skeptics, Freethinkers, Scoffers, Blasphemers, Schismatics, Rationalists, Objectivists, Scientologists, etc. Should a government agency approve such a request, that would be considered by the US Supreme Court as an "establishment of a religion."

It's a simple point to understand. For the folks who say, "It's just a measly little insignifacant cross," if it's truly "insignifcant" then then they won't mind taking it and putting it in their own church yard. If it's NOT so measly or insignificant, then they probably see it as an opportunity to use the prominant piece of real estate as an opportunity to "advertise" the religion they subscribe to. That's something they can't do on public property.

It's not rocket science . . . folks with religious beleifs can't use government property or $$$ to push their beliefs.


2) "The people offended by it should quit being so narrow minded and look at the good in the situation."

Again, it's less a question of being offended than one of abiding by the US Constitution. Either we do, or we don't. Personally, I prefer the rule of law over the whims of politicians.


3) "They didn't put up the cross to say Jesus Christ has been here, they put it up as a symbol of hope."

Many people do not see the cross as a symbol of hope. I for one do not. I see it as a symbol of intolerance and oppression. Since the gov't makes non-Christians like me pay taxes, our tax $$$ cannot be used to maintain property used for displays of religious ideals.

Its probably beside the point, but why Christians decided to use the means of Christ's death as a symbol of their religion is beyond me . . . had he been executed by lethal injection, they'd be wearing hypodermic needles around thier necks instead of crosses. And in Catholic churches, you'd see a guy with a needle in his arm above the altar . . .



4) "If the majority of people want it there then stick it up."

Sure, and if the majority of people want to bring back slavery, we can do that too.
No, that's not quite the way things work. Yes, if Congress and 39 of the 50 states voted in favor of bringing back slavery, it could happen. The same requirement applies concerning state supported displays of religious symbols. Until that happens, the gov't is obliged to comply with the US Constitition.



5) "Rule #1 Never cross swords with a liberal. It's like trying to beat some sense into a battle ship with a with a wet noodle."

I don't know that I'd qualify as "liberal" on this issue. Conservatives typically try to preserve what's in the Constitution, Liberals try to broaden its meaning and application to fit changes in society. Since I'm very pro-Constitution on this issue, on this I'm as conservative as they come.



So . . . there's no reason to have religious symbols on the property the 9/11 terrorists destroyed. That's not to say there can't be a meaningful memorial. Take a gander at the Vietnam Memorial; there's no religious symbol on it, and it's as moving a memorial as they come. The Kennedy Memorial in Dallas has no religious stuff on it, and it does what it needs to do.
The folks who protest when they're religious stuff isn't included in stuff the public pays for are just upset because they expected a bit of free religious advertising, and they didn't get any. Tough toenails for them. Talk whoever owns the new towers and pay them to put up a cross there. Don't expect the government to do it for you.

That's it for today's rant . . . there will be a test on Friday . . .
--Tock