“What I want to know is, what is he trying to hide?”
– Rep. Ann Marie Buerkle (R-NY), before a House committee vote to hold U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress for refusing to divulge documents in the botched “Fast and Furious” gun operation.
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One of the nearly 400 statues, or moai, on Easter Island guards a hilltop beneath a nocturnal South Pacific sky. Scientists are still trying to understand how the residents of Easter Island managed to erect these massive structures, which on average, are 15’ to 20’ in height and weigh upwards of 10 tons. The largest statue is 70’ tall (about 5 stories) and weighs 270 tons. That humans even made it to Easter Island is amazing unto itself. Barely 63 square miles, Easter is the most remote spot of land on Earth; some 2,150 miles west of Chile and some 1,300 miles east of Polynesia’s Pitcairn Islands. The island’s indigenous people, the Rapanui, like to say the statues walked by themselves to their present positions. But, without draft animals or some kind of wheel mechanism, it’s more likely they just used brute strength. Check out Jared Diamond’s Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, which features a chapter dedicated to Easter Island’s plethora of mysteries. Photograph by Randy Olson, National Geographic.
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1958
Today, my parents mark their 53rd wedding anniversary. It’s a completely different world now from when they got married. In this day, when some people treat marriage like shoes – they change them at will – it’s nice to know there are others who take it seriously. My folks have had their usual mix of good and bad times, as in any relationship. But ultimately, they never gave up on one another. They’re both almost 80 now, and I don’t know how much longer I’ll have them, so this simple gesture is for them.
1996
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This is for all my dark-complexioned Hispanic friends and relatives who speak better English than most people from Arizona or Great Britain and break their backs working hard and paying taxes.
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This 14×48-foot billboard looms over busy Interstate 30 east of Highway 360 in Arlington, TX, and was placed by the Freedom From Religion Foundation. It will be up for a month. It’s aimed at the Roman Catholic Church, but it could easily be directed towards any religious entity that feels it has the right to tell people what to do with their bodies and their health.
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“It used to be you had real friends on the other side of the aisle. It’s not like that anymore. Society has changed. The public is to blame as well. I think the people have gotten dumber.”
– Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-NY), in an exit interview about changes in Congress.
I don’t think the people have gotten dumber. The politicians have gotten meaner and ruder. The voters aren’t left with much when they head to the polls.
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This is a distressing development. Looks like some members of the Hopi community are starting to give into the state of Arizona’s demands.
Story to appear this week in the Navajo-Hopi Observer…
Hopi Council shockingly approves Little Colorado settlement
Chairman Shingoitewa breaks 7 to 7 tie vote
story by Rosanda Suetopka Thayer
In a move that was predicted since last Friday, June 15th at the public council meeting at the Village of Hotevilla by Hopi community members, Hopi traditional leadership and Hopi village board representatives after Hopi Chairman LeRoy Shingoitewa made the open public statement that “Its not over. I plan on bringing this settlement issue back up in council and I do plan on getting approval.”
Hopi Chairman LeRoy Shingoitewa and his Water and Energy Team Chairman George Mase, brought their own separate, opposing action item No. H-073-2012 to the Council floor on Thursday morning at the Hopi Council chambers on June 21st for a vote that has now approved and will endorse the proposed water rights agreement to the Little Colorado…
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“Those are cases [involving rape and incest] we really have to stop and think about what’s best for the women and what’s best for the unborn child. And many times the abortion, we have been told, can be more traumatic to the woman emotionally than the actual rape.”
– Joe Pojman, Texas Alliance for Life executive director, explaining why anti-choice activists might seek to revise Texas law to force women to carry to term pregnancies resulting from rape and incest.
Gosh, I’m so glad an expert finally made a distinction between the traumas of rape and abortion. I’ve wondered about that for years!
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“If liberty and equality, as is thought by some are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in the government to the utmost.”
– Aristotle
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Breaking News: Jerry Sandusky is on the threshold of suicide. Let us pray he makes it through.
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