The Commemoration of My Life

This past weekend my family and I traveled back to my home in Indiana to celebrate the life of my great aunt. My aunt is dying of leukemia and though we will honor her in her death, it was a very joyous occasion to honor her in life. See, my aunt is part of a large family and has amassed a vast number of friends and we’ve all been blessed and honored to have been a part of her life and her, a part of ours.

During the gathering on Saturday, among the 450+ people that attended, I was fortunate to overhear many wonderful stories about how my aunt has touched the lives of so many. Listening to all of the stories made me begin to think about how my life will be remembered.

I’ve made many mistakes in life. Some were huge and some weren’t so big, but they all taught me something and helped to shape me into the man I am today. Many periods in my life I wish were easier to travel through, but character isn’t achieved during the times that are peaches and cream. I’m thankful for every dumb thing I have ever done, because those things are the ones that have been the biggest factors in making me, well, me.

When your time comes, what will people remember most about you? For me, I hope people always remember me as someone who spent his life in the service of others. I want to be remembered as someone who cared deeply about the needs of others and who worked to ease the burden of those I encountered. I am never happier than when I can do for others, that which they cannot do for themselves.

Mahatma Gandhi said, “I shall pass through this world but once. Any good therefore that I can do or any kindness that I can show to any human being, let me do it now. Let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.” What an excellent tenet to govern you life.

No one expects his or her lives to be cut short. My aunt never thought that her time would draw near at such a great age. What about you? Are you living your life in a manner reflective of how you want to be remembered? Even in the valley of the shadow of death my aunt inspires me. What an amazing person she is.

Ron Paul: Secession is American

Finally, I agree with something Ron Paul says. I'm seriously thinking secession. I have never been more ashamed of my government and the people of America who elected them. The positive is that Obama's popularity numbers are in decline and I predict he'll be out after the first term.

Resident's of New Orleans Should Reimburse U.S.

When I read the following headline on Fox News I was dumbfounded. Trial Starts Monday in Suit Against Army Corps of Engineers for Katrina Flooding. I think the Corps should receive a medal for keeping the residents of a "disaster waiting to happen" city safe for as long as they have. This isn't rocket science people, when you build a metropolitan area below sea level in the middle of the swamp it is eventually going to flood, no matter what you do to prevent it. Those people who are rebuilding in this location are complete idiots!

The article quotes residents arguing "the corps' poor maintenance of the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet, a shipping channel dug in the 1960s as a short-cut between the Gulf of Mexico and New Orleans, led to the wipeout of St. Bernard Parish and the city's Lower Ninth Ward when Katrina struck in August 2005." Come on, seriously? What do you think is going to happen when you’re an Oceanside city built below sea level surrounded by swamp?

"It's really something the people of St. Bernard and the Lower 9th Ward, and New Orleans East, everybody in that area, have needed for a long time. What happened there should not happen in the United States of America," said plaintiffs' attorney John Andry. "It's the largest preventable catastrophe in American history." Yeah, because the United States of America is exempt from the wrath of Mother Nature and the laws of physics. The only way this catastrophe could have been prevented, is if the city had never been located there to begin with. You can't cheat the odds and the odds were, are, and always will be that New Orleans is going to flood for reasons already mentioned in this blog.

I was all about getting them the immediate help they needed to survive, but I am not sympathetic to their claims of victimization. The blame for the loss of life, the damage to property and the lack of preparation lie squarely on the shoulders of the people dumb enough to live there to begin with.

Christian's Must Start Defending Their Rights and LIberties

I'm thrilled to read that two college students are defending their right to practice their religion and rally against the oppression and attack of a morally deficient and corrupt nation. We’ve allowed the liberal and godless minority to become louder than we who should be publicly living our faith and reaching out to a dying world.

As Christians, we should seek out peace and forgiveness, but we must balance that with the advancement of the cross. Apathy is the enemy and simply doing nothing in defense of our faith is corrupting our world. Beyond our God given right to practice our religion, it is also our constitutional right. If three people want to pray privately, how can that be a violation of any institutions policies?

The case detailed in the following article is a testament to two incredibly brave college students in one of the most amoral and sinful cities in our nation. I pray that God’s vengeance will reign down on this college and a precedence of protection for a Christian’s rights will be set. Please join me in praying on behalf of these two brave Christian’s and for Christianity in this nation.

San Fransico Chronicle - Two students who were threatened with suspension at the College of Alameda after one of them prayed with an ailing teacher in a faculty office can sue the community college district for allegedly violating their freedom of speech, a federal judge has ruled.

The students, Kandy Kyriacou and Ojoma Omaga, said college officials at first told them they were being suspended for "disruptive behavior," then held disciplinary hearings and sent them letters warning that they would be punished if they prayed in a teacher's office again.

The women sued, and U.S. District Judge Susan Illston ruled in San Francisco that their case could proceed, saying a college student has the right to pray in private outside the classroom.

Although a public college, like other government agencies, must refrain from endorsing religion, Illston said in her March 31 ruling that an objective observer probably wouldn't have thought that the Alameda community college was making any such endorsement just because the teacher bowed her head while the student was praying.

The case dates from the fall of 2007, when Kyriacou and Omaga were studying fashion design and merchandising at the two-year college and took breaks from class to pray with each other and other students on a balcony, according to their suit.

Kyriacou prayed with the teacher, Sharon Bell, at an office Bell shared with other teachers, on two occasions in November and December 2007. The second time, a day when Bell was feeling ill, another teacher entered the office and told Kyriacou, "You can't be doing that in here," and the student stopped praying and left, the suit said.

Kyriacou and Omaga received suspension notices 10 days later. Omaga was accused of praying disruptively in class, Illston said, citing testimony at the students' disciplinary hearings.

The students' suit seeks an acknowledgment of their rights, an apology and removal of all disciplinary action, but no damages apart from attorneys' fees, said Steven Wood, one of the lawyers.

In seeking dismissal of the suit, lawyers for the Peralta Community College District argued that the school was entitled to designate faculty offices as "places for teaching and learning and working," and not for "protests, demonstrations, prayer or other activities" that would be disruptive.

The students countered that they were being punished for the content of their speech, not its disruptiveness.

Illston said the students could try to prove that the school treated religious expression more harshly than other speech.

Brad Dacus, president of the Pacific Justice Institute, which is representing the students, said, "It is alarming that a publicly funded college would seek to suspend and expel students for praying on campus, then dig in its heels to defend an untenable, unconstitutional position."

Jeff Heyman, a spokesman for the college district, said its leaders "respect freedom of speech and the First Amendment," but would not comment on a pending case.

Obama Administration Caught In Another Lie on Mexican Gun Statistics

Recently, there has been much dialogue on the drug violence in Mexico knocking on the U.S. door. Obama’s administration has tried, as it always does, to place the blame for this violence on the American gun laws. They’ve put out, on various occasions, that 90% of the guns used in the violence in Mexico are purchased in the U.S. Hillary, California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, William Hoover, assistant director for field operations at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and others have made this proclamation.

The problem??? Well, it’s just not true. In fact, it’s not even close. In fact, it’s a blatant lie, fabricated to purposely mislead the American public.

Here is the truth, because I know you won’t get it from the government. Only 17% of the weapons recovered at Mexican crime scenes have been traced back to America. In other words, 83 percent of the guns found at crime scenes in Mexico could not be traced to the U.S.

Fox News, reported today that Ed Head, a firearms instructor in Arizona who spent 24 years with the U.S. Border Patrol, recently displayed an array of weapons considered "assault rifles" that are similar to those recovered in Mexico, but are unavailable for sale in the U.S.

"These kinds of guns -- the auto versions of these guns -- they are not coming from El Paso," he said. "They are coming from other sources. They are brought in from Guatemala. They are brought in from places like China. They are being diverted from the military. But you don't get these guns from the U.S."

Some guns, he said, "are legitimately shipped to the government of Mexico, by Colt, for example, in the United States. They are approved by the U.S. government for use by the Mexican military service. The guns end up in Mexico that way -- the fully auto versions -- they are not smuggled in across the river."

Many of the fully automatic weapons that have been seized in Mexico cannot be found in the U.S., but they are not uncommon in the Third World.

The Mexican government said it has seized 2,239 grenades in the last two years -- but those grenades and the rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) are unavailable in U.S. gun shops. The ones used in an attack on the U.S. Consulate in Monterrey in October and a TV station in January were made in South Korea. Almost 70 similar grenades were seized in February in the bottom of a truck entering Mexico from Guatemala.

"Most of these weapons are being smuggled from Central American countries or by sea, eluding U.S. and Mexican monitors who are focused on the smuggling of semi-automatic and conventional weapons purchased from dealers in the U.S. border states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California," according to a report in the Los Angeles Times.

It’s terrible that our government leaders would bold face lie to us in order to advance their agenda; an agenda that is clearly at odds with our nation’s constitution.