Prayer opens council meeting?

Read this interesting story in the Findlay (Ohio) Courier on Wednesday 1/21/2004:

Prayer opens council meeting
By DENISE GRANT
STAFF WRITER

Findlay City Council, operating under new rules of order, opened its council meeting on Tuesday with an invocation led by the Rev. Ben Borsay of Gateway Church.

Council agreed earlier this month, when it adopted its new procedures for the year, to give the council president authority to invite members of the clergy and community to open its sessions with prayer.

Council members had debated the issue of adding formal prayer to council meetings in 2002, but there was enough opposition among members then that the issue was dropped.

At the time, council members Robert Nichols, Marcia Barkey and John Sausser all expressed concerns about opening council meetings with prayer. Sausser and Barkey said religion is a private, not public, matter. Nichols was concerned about fairness. All three ended their terms on council on Dec. 31.

Click here to read full story

I found the story interesting because the council, which spends time debating the importance of replacing the Bolton St. bridge after it had been closed for several years, which debated the need of the Hancock Rec Center in a city that doesn’t have enough community space as it is, and which finds a serious issue in the strength of recently installed street lights, would not only vote to allow the council president the authority to hold a prayer before the meetings but also not entertain any public input on the issue. Spending tax dollars for it as well.

I understand that religion is important to most of the community and seems to be very important to council president Schuck that he would be so adamant in getting the sole authority to decide who gives the prayer, BUT Findlay City Council has no business mixing religion and government.

As former council members Marcia Barkey and John Sausser said in 2002 as quoted in the story, religion is a personal private matter. The government can’t and shouldn’t get involved in your religious beliefs and for the life of me I can’t imagine why educated elected officials of our government would want their religion involved with their governing.

It’s like if the majority of council voted to sing the University of Michigan fight song before council meetings. Most people would agree that it wouldn’t be a proper use of council’s time and would insult those members of the community who don’t support the school up north. And I’m sure there would heated public debates about it.

I find it highly insulting to the Founders of this great country, who knew enough to keep church and state separate, that council president Schuck thinks that only prayers from different denominations or a moment of silence would be permitted. What is his qualifications to decide which religious beliefs would be allowed to lead the prayer? Is that in the job description of council president?

If Mr. Schuck is adamant about having a prayer before council meetings then he and his majority are free to meet around the flag pole in Dorney Plaza and pray. They can all then move to council chambers, call the meeting to order, and do the job they were elected to do.

Originally posted on the blog “Hancock County Politics Unfiltered”

Happy Birthday Diane Lane

Today is the 39th birthday of one of my favorite actors, Diane Lane.

I had huge crush on her after seeing “A Little Romance” in 1979 and fell for her hard in her role of Ellen Aim in the underrated film “Streets of Fire” in 1984.

She is an actress on par with Meryl Streep, in that she chooses quality projects and gives great performances. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a bad movie with Lane as the star – yes that includes “The Cotton Club” (which I thought was great).

Read her resume and bio

Kerry wins round one in Campaign 2004

The Iowa Caucuses have come to a close and Sen. John Kerry was the top vote getter with 38%. Sen. John Edwards surprised me by finishing in the top 3 and Gov. Howard Dean surprised me by coming in 3rd.

I think Dean let Iowa slip a bit. That and he didn’t do as well in the debate the week before.

Edwards surprised me because he hasn’t been getting a lot of press so his showing is the result of a lot of meet and greets – getting his message out the old fashion way.

Early reports have Gebhardt dropping out.

I expect the “media” to start focusing on Kerry as the new front runner even though the primary season is just starting. Lest we forget that President Clinton was beaten by Paul Tsongas in New Hampshire in 1992 and the political pundits thought Clinton was finished.

Dean has work to do to correct his slip if he is going to get win the nomination.

Edwards is going to be the wild card going into New Hampshire.

President Bush did everything to get us a war in Iraq

President Bush and company explained to the American people that Saddam Hussein was an evildoer and we needed to strike a blow against terrorism when he ordered US forces to invade and occupy Iraq in March 2003.

We were told among other things that Saddam had a large cache of weapons of mass distruction just waiting to be used on America or American interests or sold to terrorists who would then use them on us. The administration even has tried to link Saddam with the terrorist attacks on 9/11.

I remember reading an article on the CBSnews.com website where it quoted Sec. of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on 9/11 telling his staff he KNEW Saddam was beind the attacks and they should work on plans to invade Iraq to remove him from power.

Here is an excerpt from that article:

Plans For Iraq Attack Began On 9/11

posted 9/4/2002

(CBS) CBS News has learned that barely five hours after American Airlines Flight 77 plowed into the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was telling his aides to come up with plans for striking Iraq � even though there was no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the attacks.

“One guy is associate of Cole bomber,” the notes say, a reference to the October 2000 suicide boat attack on the USS Cole in Yemen, which had also been the work of bin Laden.

With the intelligence all pointing toward bin Laden, Rumsfeld ordered the military to begin working on strike plans. And at 2:40 p.m., the notes quote Rumsfeld as saying he wanted “best info fast. Judge whether good enough hit S.H.” � meaning Saddam Hussein � “at same time. Not only UBL” � the initials used to identify Osama bin Laden.

Now, nearly one year later, there is still very little evidence Iraq was involved in the Sept. 11 attacks. But if these notes are accurate, that didn’t matter to Rumsfeld. 

<http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/09/04/september11/main520830.shtml>

Little hay was made of this revelation. No one in the media investigated it further. At the time it was seen as being un-patriotic to question the Bush administration.

Then in June 2003, current Presidential canidate Wesley Clark, a former General, made a startling statement on “Meet the Press”. Here are the details:

Media Silent on Clark’s 9/11 Comments:
Gen. says White House pushed Saddam link without evidence

June 20, 2003

Sunday morning talk shows like ABC’s This Week or Fox News Sunday often make news for days afterward. Since prominent government officials dominate the guest lists of the programs, it is not unusual for the Monday editions of major newspapers to report on interviews done by the Sunday chat shows.

But the June 15 edition of NBC’s Meet the Press was unusual for the buzz that it didn’t generate. Former General Wesley Clark told anchor Tim Russert that Bush administration officials had engaged in a campaign to implicate Saddam Hussein in the September 11 attacks– starting that very day. Clark said that he’d been called on September 11 and urged to link Baghdad to the terror attacks, but declined to do so because of a lack of evidence.

Here is a transcript of the exchange:

——————————————————————————–

CLARK: “There was a concerted effort during the fall of 2001, starting immediately after 9/11, to pin 9/11 and the terrorism problem on Saddam Hussein.”

RUSSERT: “By who? Who did that?”

CLARK: “Well, it came from the White House, it came from people around the White House. It came from all over. I got a call on 9/11. I was on CNN, and I got a call at my home saying, ‘You got to say this is connected. This is state-sponsored terrorism. This has to be connected to Saddam Hussein.’ I said, ‘But–I’m willing to say it, but what’s your evidence?’ And I never got any evidence.”

——————————————————————————–

Clark’s assertion corroborates a little-noted CBS Evening News story that aired on September 4, 2002. As correspondent David Martin reported: “Barely five hours after American Airlines Flight 77 plowed into the Pentagon, the secretary of defense was telling his aides to start thinking about striking Iraq, even though there was no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the attacks.” According to CBS, a Pentagon aide’s notes from that day quote Rumsfeld asking for the “best info fast” to “judge whether good enough to hit SH at the same time, not only UBL.” (The initials SH and UBL stand for Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.) The notes then quote Rumsfeld as demanding, ominously, that the administration’s response “go massive…sweep it all up, things related and not.”

Despite its implications, Martin’s report was greeted largely with silence when it aired. Now, nine months later, media are covering damaging revelations about the Bush administration’s intelligence on Iraq, yet still seem strangely reluctant to pursue stories suggesting that the flawed intelligence– and therefore the war– may have been a result of deliberate deception, rather than incompetence. The public deserves a fuller accounting of this story.

<http://www.fair.org/press-releases/clark-iraq.html>

The media shrugged – again.

Then this week, in a 60 Minutes interview, former Treasury secretary Paul O’Neill added another corroboration to the story that the Bush administration had planned all along to take out Saddam and were looking for an excuse to do so.

And what happened at President Bush’s very first National Security Council meeting is one of O’Neill’s most startling revelations.

“From the very beginning, there was a conviction, that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go,” says O�Neill, who adds that going after Saddam was topic “A” 10 days after the inauguration – eight months before Sept. 11.

“From the very first instance, it was about Iraq. It was about what we can do to change this regime,� says Suskind. “Day one, these things were laid and sealed.”

As treasury secretary, O’Neill was a permanent member of the National Security Council. He says in the book he was surprised at the meeting that questions such as “Why Saddam?” and “Why now?” were never asked.

“It was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it. The president saying ‘Go find me a way to do this,'” says O�Neill. “For me, the notion of pre-emption, that the U.S. has the unilateral right to do whatever we decide to do, is a really huge leap.”

And that came up at this first meeting, says O�Neill, who adds that the discussion of Iraq continued at the next National Security Council meeting two days later.

He got briefing materials under this cover sheet. “There are memos. One of them marked, secret, says, ‘Plan for post-Saddam Iraq,'” adds Suskind, who says that they discussed an occupation of Iraq in January and February of 2001. Based on his interviews with O’Neill and several other officials at the meetings, Suskind writes that the planning envisioned peacekeeping troops, war crimes tribunals, and even divvying up Iraq’s oil wealth.

He obtained one Pentagon document, dated March 5, 2001, and entitled “Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield contracts,” which includes a map of potential areas for exploration.

“It talks about contractors around the world from, you know, 30-40 countries. And which ones have what intentions,” says Suskind. “On oil in Iraq.”

During the campaign, candidate Bush had criticized the Clinton-Gore Administration for being too interventionist: “If we don’t stop extending our troops all around the world in nation-building missions, then we’re going to have a serious problem coming down the road. And I’m going to prevent that.”

“The thing that’s most surprising, I think, is how emphatically, from the very first, the administration had said ‘X’ during the campaign, but from the first day was often doing ‘Y,'” says Suskind. “Not just saying ‘Y,’ but actively moving toward the opposite of what they had said during the election.”

<http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/01/09/60minutes/main592330.shtml>

The reaction from the White House to conservative talk radio was shift and expected. O�Neill, they said, is prone to putting his foot in his mouth, he’s crazy, no one really liked him etc… The Treasury Department is going to investigate how the alleged secret documents used in the 60 Minutes interview and the book were made public. The inference is that O�Neill stole them.

Some conservative commentators have gone so far as to claim that Bush was only continuing what the previous Clinton administration was planning. “When you can’t deny something then blame it on Clinton” seems to be the mantra in the GOP.

The point is clear. The war on Iraq was fulfilling a political “to-do list” from day one of the administration and they mislead the American people and pissed off our allies to do it.

Jeffrey Record, a professor at the US War College, wrote in a report on the Iraq war that the invasion of Iraq [was] “an unnecessary war of choice” and a “detour”.

Record says that by lumping together a host of threats – from the destruction of the al-Qaeda network to stopping the spread of weapons of mass destruction – the administration has set goals in the war which are unsustainable.

“The United States may be able to defeat al-Qaeda, but it cannot rid the world of terrorism, much less evil,” he says in the report.

Record adds: “[The war] against a deterred Iraq has created a new front in the Middle East for Islamic terrorism and diverted attention and resources away from the security of the American homeland against further assault by an undeterrable al-Qaeda.”

<http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3391583.stm>

When is a lie a lie?

The Republicans wet themselves to impeach President Clinton for lying about sex yet they see nothing wrong about President Bush’s lies about Iraq. We need a new administration to get us away from these dangerous people running the country.