PRAY UPDATE

There will be no more holes drilled in the Crandall Canyon Mine. With the sixth hole showing no sign of life, or the oxygen levels to sustain life, this is the last attempt and papers have been filed to permanently seal the mine.

Meanwhile, seven people died in a coal mine gas explosion in Northern China. This too, like the Crandall mine, was in a marginal dig that should not have been excavated.

181 people are still waiting for rescue,after a week, in a flooded mine in eastern China.


My religious preferences tend toward the agnostic, but I think it is appropriate to send out, in some shape or form to whatever god/desses exist , an angry wish for vengeance on the greedy bastards who run these mines and kill off workers like old rust parts. And send sorrow and hope for the families in their grief.

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CHEERS FOR THE GRIM REAPER

John Couey, the killer who raped and buried alive 9-year-old Jessica Lunsford in 2005, has received the death penalty. He will die by lethal injection.

I suppose, if you have read my posts on this blog before, you might think I am a bleeding heart liberal. Ordinarily, I would have my doubts about the effectiveness of the death penalty and not advise that it continue. In this case, where the perp raped the girl and then buried her alive until she suffocated in the grave, I think there has to be justice. Sometimes, evil cannot be rid of without final measures like the death penalty. I see in such a case as the Lunsford murder, the perp is no longer human when he killed an innocent child in such a horrible manner. He does not deserve any sympathy as a human since he did not act in a human(e) manner to a child.

Technorati Tags: Jessica Lunsford,death penalty

PRAY

In the event of something happening to me,
there is something I would like you all to see.
It's just a photograph of someone that I knew...

New York Mining Disaster 1941
The BeeGees


Three mine rescue workers, at the Crandall Canyon Mine in Utah, died in a cave-in. Six rescue workers were injured. There is no word about the six men who have been trapped in the mine for nine days.

The mine company, Murray Energy Corporation, according to news reports, was running a
marginal operation where, to eck out the last scab of coal, they used a dangerous mining practice known as "retreat mining". This type of mining is dangerous because the workers use coal as shaft props and remove these supports through mining of the coal pillars as they retreat out of the mine. Despite these concerns, the Mine Safety and Health Administration signed off on the Crandall Canyon mine's safety.

In another mining story, three construction workers were killed at an Indiana coal mine on August 10

Technorati Tags: Crandall County Mine

In the event of something happening to me,
there is something I would like you all to see.
It's just a photograph of someone that I knew...

New York Mining Disaster 1941
The BeeGees


Three mine rescue workers, at the Crandall Canyon Mine in Utah, died in a cave-in. There is no word about the six men who have been trapped in the mine for nine days.

Technorati Tags: mining

WHOOPS, I SPOKE TOO SOON

Well, I said I wouldn't do it,but this is too delicious. Deborah Jeane Palfrey's 'phone records are on-line. Have fun.

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Hokay...so sometimes blogs bring out the most, um, interesting characters. And fascinating references. Stuff I would never know otherwise. But it is nice,I guess, to know that your readers respond. Just a little background on the Noel Pemberton-Billing case.

LOCK UP YOUR DAUGHTERS AND SONS UPDATE

More charges have been set against Kevin Alfred Strom. The white supremacist is now indicted for trying to sexually coerce one or more young girls. Mr. Strom has a June 20 jury trial in federal court.

Technorati Tags: kevin alfred strom ,ku klux klan,white supremacist movement

THE NRA CAN'T HEAR YOU WHEN YOU SCREAM PART II

A woman and three children were found shot to death in a van outside of Chicago. A man is in custody.

Meanwhile, in an update to the Delavan Wisconsin story, the police have ruled the shootings as a murder suicide. Ambrosio Analco killed himself and five other people including his twin sons. He wounded his one-year-old daughter who is still in critical condition.

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THE NRA CAN'T HEAR YOU WHEN YOU SCREAM

Six people were shot to death in a Delavan,Wisconsin home. Four adults, and twin baby boys. The survivor is a one-year-old girl who was shot in the chest and is in critical condition.
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GIGGLE, GIGGLE...NO DICE UPDATE JUNE 11,2007

"God does not play dice with the universe."

-- Albert Einstein

As I reported earlier, there is a creation science museum in Petersburg, Kentucky. Their Adam is in trouble. The creationist museum had a video with the Biblical portrayal of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Unfortunately the actor, Eric Linden, who portrayed Adam was the owner of a pornographic website called Bedroom Acrobat and is current a model for a website that sells t-shirts with explicit messages. The creation museum, very red-faced, pulled the video. God should do better background checks.

Technorati Tags:creationism,evolution,religious right

GODDESS BLESS CONGRATULATIONS HAPPY BIRTHDAY

Hurrah for the British Columbian Anglicans! They recently approved same-sex church blessings. I've always had a soft spot
in my Humanist /Pagan/Whatever heart for Anglicans ever since they ordained a gay bishop, the Right Reverend V. Gene Robinson (who is celebrating his own marriage in the middle of 2008),and ordained a female bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori. God does not discriminate. Congratulations to Rev.Gene Robinson and his partner, Mark Andrews.

Congratulations also to Mary Cheney and her partner Heather Poe for little Samuel David Cheney born on May 23, 2007. The bundle of lesbian joy was 8 pounds, 6 ounces. The Religious Right is having a hissy fit about the birth with the accusation that the parents are sinful but Mary Cheney is no Karla Homolka, the serial killer, who had a baby boy too. Leave the Cheney-Poes alone with their kid. Let them muddle, like all new parents muddle, through the sleepless nights, disappointments and joys without the religious guilt trip.

Technorati Tags:gene robinson,mary cheney,religious right

GONE TO GLORY UPDATE

Mark D. Uhl appeared in federal court with the charges of having illegal explosives. The Liberty University student planned to use the bombs against the Westboro Baptist Church when they protested at the funeral of televangelist Jerry Falwell.

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LOCK UP YOUR DAUGHTERS AND SONS UPDATE 05/30/07

Kevin Alfred Strom, 50, is set to go on trial in U.S District Court in Charlottesville, North Carolina next month for charges that he possessed child pornography, enticed a 9-year-old girl for sex, and then repeatedly stalked and harassed the child.

As I previously reported, Strom is also charged with using the Internet for the purpose of obtaining sex from a ten-year-old girl. and witness tampering due to physical and mental intimidation of a witness.

This just in, 05/30/07: More evidence against Kevin Strom has been found on a computer hard drive. Prosecutors are asking for more time to prepare for the trial.

Technorati Tags: kevin alfred strom ,ku klux klan,white supremacist movement

WHERE IT HURTS

Another Fort Lewis soldier was killed in Iraq this month, bringing the total of sixteen soldiers from the Tacoma fort killed this month. Spc. Matthew P. LaForest of Austin, Texas died during small arms enemy fire in Taji, Iraq. He was a soldier in C Company, 4th Battalion, 9th Infantry, 4th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division --- a Stryker combat team.

So far this month, there have been 104 American casualties, 3 United Kingdom, and 3 of other countries.

But it never hurts as much as when it is this close to home.

Technorati Tags: iraq,washington state

IN MEMORIAM

Norm Maleng on May 24, 2007 at age 68.

King County Prosecutor Norm Maleng was one of the last of fading species. He was a Republican but he was fair and even-handed in his application of the law. As a Washingtonian who was raised on a Whatcom county dairy farm, Norm Maleng served his state with honesty and integrity. He headed the first state task force to create a sex offender law, created a special unit in the prosecutor's office to address the needs of those affected by domestic violence and child abuse, worked towards sentence reform, anti-drug legislation, and laws dealing with runaway youths.

Major cases under his astute overview were the Wah Mee murders where 13 victims were massacred for gambling money, the Green River Killer Gary Ridgeway (NOTE: Do not read this if you a sensitive person or subject to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder --- these articles are very graphic), and the Goldmark slayings where right-wing and Christian Identity extremist David Rice murdered a civil-rights attorney and his family.

Norm Maleng will be sorely missed in Washington.


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SEND IN THE PERPS

Ted Klaudt, a former GOP legislator in South Dakota, has been charged with eight counts of second-degree rape, one count of sexual contact with a child younger than sixteen,two counts of sexual exploitation of a minor, two counts of witness tampering for saying to one of his victims that he would send her to juvenile detention if she did not recant the rape accusations, and one count of stalking.

Klaudt molested his victims by saying that the girls could make $20,000 as egg donors and that he was ascertaining their eligibility by sexually abusing them with fondling and using speculums to invade their bodies.

Ted Klaudt was an anti-abortion, anti- gay Republican who promoted legislation to toughen laws against sex offenders. Several of Klaudt's victims were his foster children.

Now, is it me or are there more sexual perverts on the political right than on the political left? Let's take a walk down (recent) memory lane: Mark Foley, the Republican senator from Florida, who harassed underage aides with sexual explicit e-mails,Craig Schelske a former candidate for Congress whose marriage ended among allegations of adultery and exposing his children to pornography,Cary Lee Cramer who molested a little girl that he used in an anti-John Kerry ad,Phil Giordano former Mayor of Waterbury Connecticut sentenced to 37 years for child sexual abuse...if I missed anyone it is not through lack of material.

Technorati Tags: child abuse,republicans

HANG 'EM HIGH

The Louisiana Supreme Court has upheld the death penalty for child rape. The case in question is that of Patrick Kennedy, 42, who raped an 8-year-old relative as the girl sorted Girl Scout cookies in the basement of her New Orleans home. Kennedy later bragged about the rape to an acquaintance, saying that the innocent girl had "become a lady today".
The case now goes to the national Supreme Court.

I think it is appropriate for this perpetrator to get the death penalty. Rape is a lifelong devastation to the child victim. The death penalty for rape is the only acceptable closure for this malicious deed. None of this weeny New Age schlock about "forgiving the evildoer in one's heart so I can get on with my life" or, horrors of horrors, reconciliation with the perp and forgiveness. The death penalty is a very straightforward action and consequences discipline for the wrongdoing. Like many people, I've become tired of the pop psych nonsense promoted by far-left liberals. I am a rational moderate who abhors the touchy-feely fluff and emotionalistic idiocy that characterizes edge of the spectrum lefties. Sexual offenders usually aren't salvageable as human beings and one less rapist to worry about will make the world a better place.

Technorati Tags: child abuse,death penalty

YOU DID IT YOURSELF

A Galveston man was arrested for burning his baby in a motel microwave. Joshua Mauldin is charged with felony child injury for harming his two-month-old daughter by punching her in the groin, placing her in a refrigerator, then a safe, and then setting her in the microwave. His wife, Eva Marie Mauldin, has blamed Satan, citing the Devil's desire to thwart her husband's ambitions to be a Christian minister for the man's abuse of the baby.

Eva Marie Mauldin

Mrs. Mauldin has set up a web site on MySpace (ew...) to defend her husband.* Texas child protection officials plan to sever the parents' custody.

I think that "the Devil made me do it". is a lousy excuse. Satan doesn't exist. If the two-month-old were my child and someone had injured her, I'd be first in line to deball the perp. It is obvious that Christianity has given licence for the most horrible of crimes against children and yet the religion still continues to flourish. There is something pathologically wrong with a society that allows this injurious mythology to continue at the expense of innocent lives. It is a religion that does not promote personal responsibility and accountability.The Texas child protection services should cut parents' rights without any other consideration.

*NOTE: I went to MySpace (reporters do the dirty work so you don't have to, eecchh...) and searched for the Joshua Maudlin site but only found the wife's personal site, not the site to defend her husband.


Technorati Tags:child abuse,religious right,satan

GONE TO GLORY

"Kill them all. God will know his own"

Arnaud Amaury,Abbot of Cîteaux

The Reverend Jerry Falwell was buried today in Lynchburg,Virgina. It was a to-do that the White House ignored and that sparked more controversy after his death.

Despite the large turnout of 10,000 people at the Thomas Road Baptist Church, the White House sent only a mid-level aide to the funeral. I guess that is the Bush administration's opinion of its evangelical supporters.

The funeral goers faced the heckles of only a half-dozen Westboro Baptist Church members who considered Falwell soft on gay issues. Obvious in the poor turnout for the protest, the Westborians couldn't gather enough evidence that a fundie minister was going to hell. Virginia police roped off an area for the protesters and Christian bikers blocked the Westborians from funeral view.

In an exciting note, a Liberty University student planned to napalm the Westborians during their protest of the Falwell funeral. Mark D. Uhl, a 19-year-old student at LU had multiple gas and detergent bombs in his car that he planned to use on those who would disrupt the services for Falwell. Law enforcement officers are seeking three other suspects.

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GONER

Paul Wolfowitz will leave his post from the World Bank following charges that he engaged in nepotism to favour his companion, Shaha Riza.


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NO DICE

"God does not play dice with the universe."

-- Albert Einstein

In Petersburg, Kentucky evangelical Christians are prepared to open a creation science history centre, the Answers in Genesis Creation Museum. No self-respecting Muse would find herself in such a place, especially Clio. The girlfriend, Muse of history and poetry, liked to hang with Herodotus the father of history and Anna Comnena the first woman historian. The Greeks, with their inquiry into knowledge, would be appalled that this sham could be called a museum. Certainly, this gnat of a religious centre, could never make the revered claims of being of intellectual descent from the first museum, the Library at Alexandria established by Ptolemy I Soter (Savior). There is not the spirit of scientific quest or honesty that characterizes a good museum in the Answers in Genesis theme park. It is a waste of 27 million dollars to create a theme park that has no basis in facts and that supports an outdated and dangerous belief system.

Creationists, being the muddleheads that they are, believe that the world is 6,000 years old. In geographic dating of rocks, the nearest estimate is 4.54 billion years old. They think that the Grand Canyon was created with a flood such as that in the Bible, or in the Christian's borrowed theology from the stories of Ziusudra,Xisuthros,Atrahasis and Utnapishtim. In reality, slow erosion from wind, rain, and the Colorado River (what is left of this waterway with pollution, drought, and overuse) form the Grand Canyon.

In the biological sciences, the evangelicals do not fare much better. The Answers in Creation Science centre displays dinosaurs coexisting with humans but the dinosaurs, with the exception of their evolved descendants the birds, died out 65 million years ago. The centre also portrays Tyrannosaurus rex as a vegetarian although he was one of the nastiest meat-eaters around at the time. Anthropological evidence of humans show our species to be only 3 million years young (Note: George W. Bush no doubt considers Queen Elizabeth II of the same era...).

This evangelical ignorance of the sciences not only lacks factual basis but endangers human life. By promoting creationism the evangelicals disregard that, for example, bats and humans have a common ancestor. It is very critical to public health to have only evolution taught in schools because with a common ancestor, as mammals, bats are vectors for human diseases through rabies, Ebola, Marburg, Nipah and Hendra and SARS viruses. Creationists imperil human lives with their superstition and stubborn idiocy.

Hopefully, the Answer in Genesis Creation Museum will close its doors soon after its opening. Human life depends on science like evolution being taught to the public, not the charlatan trickery of creationism.

Technorati Tags:creationism ,evolution,religious right