Yes — 40%
No — 46%
Not Sure — 14%

So only 40% of the people in Mississippi think that an interracial couple should be allowed to marry! Would it be possible to let the confederacy leave the Union?

“But restoring the American dream requires more than restoring a sound, productive economy, vitally important as that is. It requires a return to spiritual and moral values, values so deeply held by those who came here to build a new life. We need to restore those values in our daily life, in our neighborhoods and in our government’s dealings with the other nations of the world…. These are the values inspiring those brave workers in Poland. The values that have inspired other dissidents under Communist domination who’ve been willing to go into the gulag and suffer the torture of imprisonment because of their dissidence. They remind us that where free unions and collective bargaining are forbidden, freedom is lost. They remind us that freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.”

At Jackson State College in Jackson, Mississippi students were protesting the war and against the racism that students had to endure from motorists who passed through the center of the campus. National Guardsmen were sent to the campus when reports of rioting were called in to the police. The Guardsmen were issued weapons but no ammunition. However, 75 city and state policemen armed with carbines, sub machine guns, shotguns, service revolvers and some personal weapons, were also called to the campus.

At some point the police opened fire into the the campus dormitory firing at least 460 shots over a period of at least 30 seconds. One student, Phillip Lafayette Gibbs, 21, a junior pre-law major and father of an 18-month-old son, was killed. Also, James Earl Green, 17, a high school senior who had stopped to watch what was happening and was standing behind the line of police officers was also killed. Twelve other Jackson State students were wounded but no ambulances were called until the police removed their shell casings and then left the scene.

Although police claimed they had been fired upon, no evidence was found to support this allegation. None of the police who fired into the crowd were ever arrested or charged with a crime.

Tin soldiers and Nixon’s comin’.
We’re finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drummin’.
Four dead in Ohio.
— Neil Young

Today is the 40th anniversary of the killings at Kent State. National guardsmen fired 67 rounds over a period of 13 seconds, killing four students and wounding nine others, one of whom suffered permanent paralysis. No one was ever prosecuted for the shootings.

The victims were:

* Jeffrey Glenn Miller; 20, shot through the mouth – killed instantly
* Allison B. Krause; 19, fatal left chest wound – died later that day
* William Knox Schroeder; 19, fatal chest wound – died almost an hour later in hospital while waiting for surgery
* Sandra Lee Scheuer; 20, fatal neck wound – died a few minutes later from loss of blood

Jeffrey Miller was from my home town of Plainview, NY. A memorial was erected at Beth’s high school in his memory. The picture above shows Mary Ann Vecchio, a fourteen-year-old runaway, kneeling over the body of Jeffrey Miller after he was shot dead by the Ohio National Guard.

You can read all about the murders here.
And even more information is available here.

Meanwhile, Rush Limbaugh used the word on his radio show. “Our political correct society is acting like some giant insults taken place by calling a bunch of people who are retards, retards… I think the big news is he [Emanuel] is out there calling Obama’s number one supporters f’ing retards. So now there’s going to be a meeting. There’s going to be a retard summit at the White House.” Sarah Palin’s response was that this was satire and was OK. And over in the Texas gubernatorial race, a consultant for the Republican governor Rick Perry admitted that he repeatedly used the word in a conference call. Palin’s response was to have a spokesman say that it was disrespectful. But there was no call for the consultant to be fired. So it appears that in Sarah Palin’s world it’s OK to refer to people using the R-Word as long as you are a Republican. In other words, she is using something that we are all fighting to stop for her own political gain.

So among the people who have used the word in public, only Mr. Emanuel has taken the vow to stop using the word and has promised to help the Special Olympics fight against the word, but he is the only one who Sarah Palin has publicly spoken out against and demand be fired. But that isn’t the end…

The show Family Guy on Sunday night featured the character Chris Griffin dating a young lady with Down syndrome. Palin was in an uproar insisting that the show made fun of her son. But in the show, the young lady is the tough one. She is fully empowered and bossy. She acts like a regular person not the stereotype of a person with a disability. Chris drops the young lady after she bosses him around. “I used to hear that people with Down syndrome were different from the rest of us but you’re not. You’re not different at all. You’re just a bunch of [bleep] like everyone else.” Yep, just like everyone else.

By the way, the young lady with Down syndrome, was voiced by Andrea Fay Friedman, an actress who has Down syndrome.

The Obama administration is putting liberal special interests before the safety and security of the American people. The possibility that Khalid Sheik Mohammed and his co-conspirators could be found ‘not guilty’ due to some legal technicality just blocks from Ground Zero should give every American pause. This decision is further evidence that the White House is reverting to a dangerous pre-9/11 mentality – treating terrorism as a law enforcement issue.

Congressman, this is a law enforcement issue. The men who did this are criminals. They are not soldiers in some war against the US any more than Timothy McVeigh and his friends were soldiers against us. They are criminals and should be treated as criminals. They should be tried, their crimes exposed for all the world to see, and then punished according to our laws. No one should be able to say that we are punishing innocent men. As to these men being released on some “legal technicality,” have no fear. The United States criminal system doesn’t release mass murderers on legal technicalities. Yes, their defense lawyers will throw out every possible defense they can think of but in the end if these men are guilty, they will either be sent to the supermax prison in Colorado to rot with the criminals who bombed the World Trade Center in 1993 or they will be sent to death row.

And don’t be afraid that this will somehow make New York City a target of terrorist attacks. In case you haven’t noticed, New York City already is a target of terrorist attacks. New Yorkers face the threat of terrorist attacks every day. But they are not afraid. As the Star-Ledger said, “New York survived the trials of Ramzi Yousef and Omar Abdel-Rahman. It will survive this one, too.” America is the land of the free and the home of the brave. So I say to you congressman, be not afraid.

“My goodness. What a coincidence,” said Schwarzenegger spokesman Aaron McLear. “I suppose when you do so many vetoes, something like this is bound to happen.”

So all those who think this wasn’t done on purpose, raise your hand. Anyone? Bueller?

h/t to the Associated Press.

Update: A statistician on CNN stated that the odds of this being a coincidence were somewhere around 3 trillion to one.

A thuggish dictator crushing democracy — Washington Post, February 16, 2009
Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez won a referendum Sunday to eliminate term limits, paving the way for him to rule far into the 21st century to carry out his socialist transformation of this oil-rich country.

A stalwart reformer devoted to democratic values — CSM, September 2, 2009
Colombian lawmakers voted Tuesday to call a referendum on whether conservative President Álvaro Uribe – a key US ally in a region now dominated by leftist leaders – should be allowed to seek a third straight term in office. . . .But the vote, which has been dogged by allegations of irregularities, has angered critics and even some of Uribe’s staunchest allies. They worry that if Uribe wins a third term, it could endanger Colombian democracy in the same way that many of the region’s leftist leaders have done in recent years.

Democracy in action — Bloomberg, last year
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said he would seek re-election next year and is working with the City Council to amend a 15-year-old law limiting elected officials to two terms, as the Wall Street slump imperils the city’s economy. . . .Bloomberg, the billionaire founder and majority owner of Bloomberg News parent Bloomberg LP, ran for mayor in 2001 and 2005 as a Republican, after having been a lifelong Democrat, spending about $158 million on both races combined.

h/t: Wall Street Journal