March 3, 2011

• Obama’s Paregoric Energy Policy
• Bernanke’s Mad Magazine-like Views.
• Supreme Affirms Westboro’s Free Speech Right
• Sex-symbol Jane Russell Dies at 89.
• Last WWI Doughboy Dies
• Sats Catch Syrian In Nuke Business
• $228,055 Per Obama Job.
• Canadian Minister Stokes UFO Hoax
• Seattle Says College Degrees “Racist”
• Another Obama Gaff On Lybia: Alarms Allies and POs Sarkozy
• RFK Killer Gets 14^th Parole Hearing
• Tennessee To OK Law Against Shariah Law.

With gas prices spiraling ever higher, former GOP presidential candidate and Forbes Magazine Publisher Steve Forbes slammed Obama’s reluctance to drill for oil on Wednesday, accusing him of having “anti-energy policies.”

Forbes said Congress should rake administration officials “over the coals” on the oil-exploration issue.

Republicans have been increasingly critical in recent weeks that the need to drill safely in Gulf of Mexico waters must be balanced with America’s economic and energy needs - an issue that grows more salient with each hike in gasoline prices at the pump.

“The Interior secretary is blocking these things, not allowing the permits to go forward,” Forbes said Wednesday morning on Fox News. “So even though the [drilling] moratorium since that terrible spill last summer has been removed, the fact of the matter is permits have been frozen.

“So in effect the moratorium is continuing. That’s an administration decision. And when [Interior] Secretary [Ken] Salazar goes before Congress in testimony, I hope the Congress rakes him over the coals on it, and asks him, ‘What in the world do you think you’re doing?’”

Also today, Forbes said in an Op-Ed piece for Politico that, “By freezing U.S. energy assets in the Gulf and keeping 97 percent of our offshore oil and gas off limits, our government, willing or not, is fueling an energy crisis that could bring this nation to its knees. Continued inaction in the Gulf threatens to force us to import an extra 88 million barrels of oil per year by 2016, at a cost of $8 billion.”

Cato Institute economist and tax policy expert Chris Edwards supports Forbes’ push for more domestic oil exploration. He tells Newsmax that a more vigorous oil-exploration effort would benefit the U.S. economy, although it wouldn’t necessarily decrease the price of gasoline at the pump.

“Drilling would be good for the U.S. economy, because it would be an efficient use of resources. There is a lot of oil and gas here. The companies want to drill here, if it weren’t for all the regulations.

“It would be good for our GDP and production,” Edwards tells Newsmax. “But it wouldn’t affect the price of gasoline. The mistake the Republicans and Democrats make is the price of gasoline is set on world markets, so even if our consumption was fully supplied 100 percent by domestic consumption, the price would still be set on world markets.”

Drilling proponents also say more permits would help get unemployed energy workers back on the job, which is especially important in economically depressed areas of Texas and Louisiana.

On Monday, the Obama administration announced that it had granted its first permit for deepwater drilling since the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Salazar testified Wednesday morning before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Subcommittee, but he apparently decided the best defense was a good offense.

Salazar criticized a string of decisions from a Louisiana federal judge critical of the Energy Department’s burdensome regulatory restrictions, saying those rulings represent an inappropriate infringement on Interior Department prerogatives.

On Feb. 17, Judge Martin Feldman gave Salazar 30 days to rule on five pending requests for drilling permits.

“The judge in this particular case, in my view, is wrong and we will argue the case, because I don’t believe that the court has the jurisdiction to basically tell the Department of Interior what my administrative responsibilities are, so that will be argued in the court at the right time,” Salazar told the Senate committee.

Forbes told Fox News Wednesday: “We need to get this administration to back off on its anti-energy policies.”

Obama’s willingness to risk American’s future for his ideology regardless of how much it cost them or this nation has been endemic in two years of failed policies, and economic experimentation. How long or hopefully how soon Americans will take to repudiate Obama’s paregoric prescriptions.

Being in politics is like being a football coach. You have to be smart enough to understand the game, and dumb enough to think it’s important. Former Presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy (1916 - 2005)

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s testimony to the House of Representatives Financial Services Committee on Wednesday on the  central bank’s semi-annual report on U.S. monetary policy was an Afred E.Neuman-like moment when he said ” What me worry” when asked about consequences of skyrocketing gasoline prices pulling the U. S. economy back into a double dip recession recession. Few have much confidence in either Bernanke nor the Mad Magazine character.

Donald Trump made  much more sense on Wednesday’s Regis and Kelly TV program when he sketched the truth of unemployment nearing 20% despite Bureau of Labor Statistics much more optimistic 10% figure and worldwide dierespect for Obama’s chaotic Rodney King-like foreign policy (See Obama Gaff story later).

Donald Trump said Wednesday he will decide on a White House run by June. He is in a “statistical dead heat with Obama” topping the list of all opponents.

In an 8-1 ruling, the U. S. Supreme Court justices said that few handsfuls of members of Westboro Baptist Church has a right to promote what they call a broad-based message on public matters such as wars. The father of a fallen Marine had sued the small church, saying those protests amounted to targeted harassment and an intentional infliction of emotional distress.

 ”Speech is powerful. It can stir people to action, move them to tears of both joy and sorrow, and — as it did here — inflict great pain. On the facts before us, we cannot react to that pain by punishing the speaker,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority.

At issue was a delicate test between the privacy rights of grieving families and the free speech rights of demonstrators, however disturbing and provocative their message. Several states have attempted to impose specific limits on when and where the church members can protest.

 The church, led by pastor Fred Phelps, believes God is punishing the United States for “the sin of homosexuality” through events including soldiers’ deaths. Members have traveled the country shouting at grieving families at funerals and displaying such signs as “Thank God for dead soldiers,” “God blew up the troops” and “AIDS cures fags.”

 35.1% of Americans consider themselves to be Republicans. The number calling themselves Democrats was 34.3%.

In January 2009, the month of Obama’s inauguration, 33% considered themselves Republicans, while 41% identified themselves as Democrats. 

JANE RUSSELL, a Hollywood sex symbol of the 1940s and 1950s, has died in Santa Maria, California at the age of 89.

Russell was best known for comic turns in such pictures as The Paleface (1948) and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) and for offending moral campaigners with her busty performance in Howard Hughes’s The Outlaw (1943).

Bob Hope introduced her  as “the two and only Jane Russell.” Soldiers in the Korean War named a statuesque pair of Alaskan mountain peaks in her honor. And later in life, she became the “face” of a Playtex brassière which, she earnestly told TV viewers, was: “good news for us full-figure gals.” Russell pulchritude peaked at 39D-26 1/2-37 ½ in a 1953 Photoplay magazine pinup.

She was a devout Christian and campaigned actively for the Republican Party including her daughter-in-laws failed California Assembly bid in 2008..

Born in Minnesota, the daughter of an army officer, she moved with her family to California in her teens and became involved with a local drama group. Reportedly discovered while working as a receptionist, Russell became a minor obsession of Hughes.

The Outlaw , a western, fell foul of the Hayes Office, the government  body concerned with moral decency, for its prominent display of Russell’s ample bust. The surrounding furore made her a star and the poster became an iconic image.

It seems the much-repeated anecdote about Hughes, originally an engineer, designing a bra for the star is only half true.

“Yes, Howard Hughes invented a bra for me,” she said. “Or, he tried to, and one of the seamless ones like they have now. He was ahead of his time, but I never wore it in The Outlaw and he never knew. He wasn’t going to take my clothes off to check if I had.”

Like other prominent poster idols, Russell was more famous for her image than for the relatively modest quality of her films. In The Paleface, a comic western, she proved an excellent foil for Bob Hope’s able patter.

Performing alongside Marilyn Monroe in Howard Hawks’s Gentlemen Prefer Blondes , she was at least as beguiling as her supernova of a co-star. There are, sadly, few classics elsewhere in her CV.

Nonetheless, Russell, an intelligent woman with sharp quips, remained a star throughout her long life. Having recorded gospel music as early as 1954, she put together a nightclub act in the late 1950s that played successfully at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas. Several moderately successful record albums followed.

Russell had three husbands. Her first, Bob Waterfield, a successful NFL football player, with whom she formed a production company, remained married to her from 1943 until 1968. A brief marriage to actor Roger Barrett ended with his early death in the same year as her divorce from Waterfield. Real estate broker John Calvin Peoples, her last husband, died in 1999.

Russell, who was unable to conceive following a back-street abortion, founded and eagerly campaigned for World Adoption International Fund, a body devoted to assisting the adoption of babies from overseas.

She is survived by three children, six grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren.When I last saw her last July 4^th she was in good health and surrounded by friends and admirers.

The price of gas here was up to $4.50. When I started pumping, it was only $3.85. - Leno

At a Monday meeting of U.S. governors at the White House, Obama turned  to lecturing the governors that public employees should not be “denigrated or vilified.” His latest rant was all about the politics of budget busting public employee benefits in Wisconsin and elsewhere. Ironically Obama failed to mention that Federal employees are already eliminated from just such labor negotiating limitatios that Wisconsin and other states are seeking. The event continues Obama’s reputation as “lecturer-in-chief” that has overtaken his job approval in a so-called :Leadership Gap.

Obama’s Rodney King Foreign Policy failure is costing Americans billions of dollar a day as gasoline prices are skyrosketing. For evey penyy increase Americans shell out $1.2 billion more for motor fuel. Right behind those cost are increasing priced for food a staples pushed by higher delivery costs..

 Frank Buckles the last World War I Doughboy died last weekend at his home in Chalestown West Virginia, He volunteered at age 15 lied that he was 18 years-old. While working in the Philippines he was captured by the Japanese in 1941 and was imprisoned to 1944. In recent years he served as honorary chairman for the World War I memorial in Washington DC which has fallen into disrepair. He was 110 year-old.

A copyrighted WSBN TV article by Atlanta’s Channel 2 Action News investigatiors has has blown the lid off of a harebrained scheme by Hilary Clinton’s State Department’s  to  send hundreds of millions of dollars  to “save” mosques in Egypt.and other Islamic countries. The expose calls it this an “investment” that has received criticism as the United States makes an effort to slash nearly $4 trillion in Federal spending.

Plenty of outrage has followed the announcement made last Thursday afternoon by a government commission that suggested huge cuts to the budget, including eliminating the interest deduction for home mortgages. This juxtaposed with United States spending millions to refurbish mosquesin Arab countries as a good-will effort in Muslim countries has upset many beleaguered taxpayer groups.

The Channel 2 Action News investigation found a 1,300-year-old Egyptian mosque that was almost flooded by contaminated sewer water that is one of many ancient Cairo mosques that were saved from destruction by the U.S. taxpayers without their knowledge or approval but with their money. This is part of a $770 million program to rebuild Cairo’s sewer system, paid for by the U.S. State Department’s USAID program.

 ”We are spending money we don’t have. This is all on a gigantic credit card right now,” said Jared Thomas, a taxpayer advocate.

Millions more dollars have been sent to places like Cyprus. The State Department displays before and after pictures of mosques refurbished with U.S. tax dollars.

 ”I think it is very hard to explain to the American taxpayer right now whose having an extraordinary time paying bills and making ends meet that this is why we took this out of your paycheck, so we can fund this,” said Thomas.

The State Department declined a Channel 2 Action News request for an interview. We wanted to ask why are we using tax dollars to refurbish religious buildings overseas. The State Department did send Channel Two Action News an e-mail saying that they are fighting Islamic extremism by building relationships with Islamic leaders.

Egyptian-American human rights activist Nonie Darwish told Channel 2 Action News anchor Justin Farmer that trying to buy respect in the Middle East only shows weakness.

“This part of the world has a lot of respect for power and America is not showing its power the U. S. is showing its appeasement. They are laughing all the way to the bank,” said Darwish.

 Darwish was born in Egypt and is now a former Muslim. Darwish told Farmer that she moved to America and has written several books critical of radical Islam. Darwish said that most of the mosques in Egypt are run by extremists who have ordered former Muslims like herself to be killed.

“We are rebuilding mosques to support the radicals, not to support the moderates. We are building mosques to issue fatwas of death against people like me,” said Darwish.

Your tax dollars also fund computers and mosques in places like Tajikistan and Mali. At an ancient mud brick mosque in Mali, the State Department has provided Internet service and computer equipment to local imams reflecting and amplifying accusation that U. S. taxpayers has been duped into underwriting radical Islam by unwitting or perhaps complicate “progressive” bureaucrats.

Taxpayer watchdogs wonder how the State Department can explain paying for Internet service while Americans struggle through the worst recession in decades.

“To the average person who has probably seen their paycheck shrink and not grow, this could be an insult to them,” said Pete Sepp, President of the National Taxpayers Association. A further bitter irony is the emerging idea of eliminating or greatly reducing charitable contributions even to churches and synagogues often in desperate need themselves of  restoration funds while shoveling tens of millions often to support some of our most bitter enemies.

With radical websites inciting violence and extremism worldwide, there are concerns that the taxpayer-funded Internet service are being misused.

“That is not the job of the U.S. because giving them Internet access to imams and Muslim preachers who hate America,” said Darwish.

Critics say that it is time to review funding for all federal programs that do not directly benefit taxpayers.

 ”We are spending money we don’t have and certainly we can cut items like this,” said Thomas.

The Deficit Commission announced it would look at slowing the growth of foreign aid with many calling for complete elimination of all aid to Arabs nations.. Channel 2 Action News is not aware if there will be cuts in this particular U.S Aid program.

Uber swindler Barnie Madoff is the kettle calling the government pot black saying government is a ponzi scheme.

Satellite images have confirmed a uranium conversion plant in Syria that was intended to provide fuel for the nuclear program Israel reportedly bombed in 2007, according to a U.S.-based research institute.

 This is part of the much rumored Iraqi WMD material smuggled into the Bakaa Valley in the closing hours of the Hussein Regime and it has been supplemented by Iran.

 Syria maintains that the Dair Alzour site bombed by Israel was not a nuclear facility, while continuing to bar United Nations scientists from inspecting the site.

American intelligence reports have stated it was a North Korean-designed reactor designed to produce fuel for nuclear weapons.

 Speculation has been that the site was infiltrated by Mossad Agents that blew it up from the inside.

Now Washington’s Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) has reported that the satellite images reveal a site in Syria to be a “small uranium conversion facility” that was “functionally related” to the bombed Syrian reactor at al Kibar.

 The site was intended for “processing uranium yellowcake into uranium tetraflouride,” according to Wednesday’s report cited by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. Uranium tetraploride is step toward highly enriching Uranium.

“This facility could have been related to the process of making fuel for the planned al Kibar reactor.”

 ISIS also claimed the images showed that Syria was attempting to conceal evidence of their nuclear efforts.

Obama has found his boogie man belatedly attacking Lybia’s Qaddafi as a way to deflect blames for his own inept policy. Qadaffi is a convenient horses patoot to demonize. Will Americans fall for the ruse is an open question. A gallon of gasoline at the Mobil station at Mission Street and 101 near my Santa Barbara home was $4.05 per gallon speculators predict $5 per gallon by Memorial Day.

The jobs that were created and saved by Obama’s economic stimulus scheme that cost at least $228,055 each, according to new data from the Congressional Budget Office.

 In a report released on Wednesday, the CBO said it now estimates the stimulus bill costs $821 billion, up from its original estimate of $787 billion.

 The CBO also estimated that in the fourth quarter of 2010, between 1.3 and 3.5 million people were employed who would not have a job if the stimulus had not been enacted.

The CBO also estimated that between 1.4 and 3.6 million were employed as a result of the stimulus bill during the third quarter of 2010.

The figures take into account not only the new jobs believed to have been created, but also the existing jobs that were saved that would otherwise have been lost.

 So the $821 billion cost of the stimulus, divided by the maximum of 3.6 million jobs the CBO believes were saved or created, equals $228,055 for each job, according to CNS News.

 Taking the 1.4 million figure for jobs created or saved means each job cost $586,428.

Footnote: When President Obama signed the stimulus bill, the national unemployment rate was 8.2 percent. In January 2011, it was 9 percent. A Depression are song went,

 ”Ain’t it lucky, ain’t it swell

I ran all the way home to tell

I’m so happy it’s just like ringing a bell-Papa’s got a job!”

THOSE Depression lyrics from the musical Sing for Your Supper were first presented to the public in 1939 by the Works Progress Administration. At the same time, that agency was covering the country with highways, bridges, sidewalks, sewers and dams, giving free piano lessons to housewives and eventually providing jobs for 8.5 million Americans who otherwise would have been unemployed. Its activities have suddenly become of considerably more than antiquarian interest. It was the Nixon Administration has sneered that Democrats pushing public employment programs to relieve current joblessness are only “rediscovering the WPA” although at least one Administration official has suggested that it create something like the WPA itself.

Between 1935 and 1943, the WPA built or improved enough roads to girdle the globe 24 times, enough bridges to connect New Orleans with Havana, plus 125,110 public buildings, 8,192 parks and 853 airports. The WPA companion agency, the Public Works Administration, gave posterity Hoover Dam, Chicago’s sewer system and the aircraft carriers Yorktown and Enterprise. In all, the two agencies disbursed $9.8 billion.

More than half of the money went for construction. But since WPA Administrator Harry Hopkins believed that man did not live by concrete alone, WPA gave work to thousands of writers, artists, musicians and actors. In addition to Sing for Your Supper, the agency’s Federal Theater Project spread the works of Shakespeare, Marlowe and Eugene O’Neill. The Federal Writers’ Project published about 1,000 books and pamphlets; its famous American Guide Series is still a mainstay. For good or ill, the Federal Art Project revived mural painting, largely to decorate public buildings. The Federal Music Project sent jobless musicians out hunting up forgotten folk songs and presenting concerts.

The WPA generally paid better than relief, but not as well as private industry. Unskilled laborers earned as little as $19 a month; professional and technical workers not much more than $94 a month. Fortunately, some WPA families were also eligible for relief payments. By law, nine out of ten WPA recruits had to pass a means test, and Congress did not want them to have too much money left for luxuries.

The WPA was violently controversial. Labor leaders denounced it as a plot to drive down wages in industry. Republicans charged that it was a plot by the Roosevelt Administration to buy votes. Most of all, the agency was damned as a gigantic boondoggle; in fact, that word, which until then referred to leather handicrafts made by Boy Scouts, was turned into a pejorative word by WPA critics in 1935.

It seems that an entirely new word for waste and deception should be coined to describe the Obama scheme but we should recall the history of his stimulus spending scheme, it was .

FDR Secretary of Treasury Morgenthau’s May 9, 1939. appearance in Washington before the House Ways and Means Committee.said, “”We are spending more money than we have ever spent before and it does not work. I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. We have never made good on our promises. I say after eight years of this administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started and an enormous debt to boot.”

The price of gas is getting so high that a Beverly Hills gas station is selling it by the gram.  Leno

A former deputy prime minister of Canada and the longest serving current member — ahead of Prince Philip — of the Queen’s Privy Council, a select group that advises the monrach says he believes some UFOs are interplanetary vehicles carrying visitors to Eart, and that the U. S. Knows it and is covering it up.

87 year-old Paul Hellyer this week, he’s presenting his views on UFOs at the International UFO Congress in Scottsdale, Ariz.a sympathetic audience always seeking validation.

Hellyer believes — as many people do — in an ongoing cover-up of UFO information, there are those of equal or higher credentials who say otherwise. Case in point: retired Army Col. John Alexander — another speaker at this week’s International UFO Congress — who acknowledges the reality of UFOs but says there has never been a cover-up of the facts and that UFO disclosure has already taken place over many decades.

Hellyer was asked were he Canada’s minister of defense today, would he be as up-front with his UFO beliefs?

“I would probably be open-mouthed about it and I might get fired for it,” he replied. “I’ve always been pretty open and direct, so unless there was some reason which I can’t conceive of, I wouldn’t try to hide the existence of the extraterrestrials and their presence.”

Hellyer stoked the fires of Ufologists reigniting the “little green men” debate

Lindsay Lohan is back in court. She has been there so many times, they’ve renamed her case “California vs. You Again?” - Leno

The City of Seattle has stopped enforcing some laws allegedly because they are racists including job requirements requiring college educations. Extensively because there are “barriers” to non-whites being college educated. So denying them the position is, iun the city attorney’s opinion, is racist.

The City Attorney also says he will seek less jail time when minorities and illegals are involved, in some traffic offences because he says they are enforced at a higher level because racistm is involved.

A police officers wrote on his blog about the policies “Just shut up and be a good socialists” and could be disciplined.for exposing the whole phoney brouhaha.

It is little wonder that a thing called the Puget Sound anarchist are openly attacking America and Americanism calling for revolt and rtot. There’s definmitely something in the water up that way.

Randy and Evi Quaid skipped yet another court appearance in Santa Barbara Monday Evi is a Canadien citizen granted because her Dad was and she is sponsoring Randy, and they are both banking on asylum  The Quaid’s say they must be granted sanctuary so they are not killed by the Quaid’s imaginary “star whackers.” .

Turkey has offered to spearhead a NATO effort to overthrow the regime of Col. Moammar Gadhafi by invading Libya, but with strings attached.

Diplomatic sources said Minister Recep Erdogan relayed a plan in which the Turkish Navy would send ships and troops to Libya. They said the plan called for the European Union to immediately accept Turkey as a member after the downfall of Gadhafi, Middle East Newsline reported.

“It was not clear if Turkey could actually do the job, but Erdogan did make this offer,” a Western diplomat said.

The sources said the United States, particularly P Obama, supported the Turkish proposal, believed to have also been endorsed by Saudi Arabia. Obama, regarded as a close ally of Erdogan, said Ankara deserves membership in the EU.

But Brussels appeared cold to the Turkish plan. The sources said French President Nicolas Sarkozy opposed the Erdogan proposal despite U.S. pressure.

“What Sarkozy said is unprintable, but basically that the United States is not a member of the EU and cannot dictate who should be a member,” the diplomat said.

Ankara has used its Navy to help evacuate many of the 30,000-member Turkish community in Libya. Turkey has been a major investor in the North African country, particularly in the construction and infrastructure fields.

So far, neither the European Union nor the United States appears ready for a military operation against Gadhafi. On Feb. 28, however, the U.S. Defense Department said it would move troops and military assets near Libya as part of contingency plans against Gadhafi.

The sources said Sarkozy and other EU leaders regarded Erdogan’s plan as a means to exploit the revolt in Libya. They said Sarkozy and others have become intractable opponents of Turkish membership in the EU, particularly given Ankara’s pro-Islamic policies and support for Iran.

“The feeling is that Turkey is looking to become the Ottoman Empire, and most of Europe does not want to go through that history again,” the diplomat said. Many say Obama’s reaction is yet another example of U.S. confusion. And dangerous foreign policy disarray.

An Oregon man is in jail after being stopped for driving 118 MPH and having a videotape discovered by an arresting officer showing a speed of 140 MPH during  a 50 MPH windstorm with debris blowing across the interstate. He had planned to post the video on You Tube. Don’t look for it since it was confiscated as evidence. This was the most recent of several traffic arrest.

Sirhan Sirhan, 68, who is serving a 99-year sentence for the 1968 murder of Senator Robert F.Kennedy  in an LA Hotel gor his 14^th parole hearing last week. The Paletinian originally said he murdered because of mistreatment of Palestine.

Sirhn is imprisoned at Pleasant Valley State Prison in Coalinga, California, and that is where the hearing was held.

Sirhan was wrestled to the ground with a gun in his hand after Kennedy was shot on June 4, 1968, at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, the night Kennedy won the California Democratic presidential primary.

Sirhan, who immigrated with his family to the United States as a child, was initially sentenced to death for the assassination of the senator, brother to slain President John F. Kennedy.

But Sirhan’s death sentence was commuted to life in prison in 1972, after the California Supreme Court declared the death penalty unconstitutional.

At a 2003 hearing where he was denied parole for the 12th time, a state Board of Prison Terms panel found Sirhan’s anger and ability to cope had worsened, and that he would pose a risk to society if released. He was again denied parole in 2006.

William F. Pepper is an attorney for Sirhan. Pepper previously represented James Earl Ray, the convicted assassin of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. Ray died of liver failure in 1999 while in custody serving a 99-year sentence for King’s murder.

Pepper has suggested Sirhan was brainwashed to target Kennedy. “There is no question he was hypno-programed,” Pepper told ABCNews.com this week.

But at his trial, Sirhan declared that he killed Kennedy “with 20 years of malice aforethought.” His motive is said to have been anger about U.S. policy in the Middle East. Critics point out that each such hearing, and taxpayers paid lawyers for both sides costs many tens of thousands of dollars.

In 2009, the Ambassador Hotel in L. A. where Kennedy was shot was turned into a school named after the senator from New York.

The Middle East has their own Charlie Sheen right now: Moammar Gadhafi.-Conan

Tennessee is considering making it a felony to follow some versions of the Islamic code known as Shariah, the most severe measure yet put forth by a national movement whose members believe extremist Muslims want Shariah to supersede the Constitution.

The bill’s sponsor, Republican Sen. Bill Ketron of Murfreesboro, said the proposal exempts the peaceful practice of Islam but seeks to condemn those “who take Shariah law to the other extreme.” He said it would give state and local law enforcement officials “a powerful counterterrorism tool.”

Ketron, who has successfully pushed through bills tightening restrictions on illegal immigrants, said he expects the Shariah measure will become law.