ALLIANCE DEFENSE FUND NEWS RELEASE
June 24, 2008 – FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT ADF MEDIA RELATIONS: (480) 444-0020 or www.telladf.org/pressroom
ADF advises officials in Ohio, Wisconsin regarding constitutionality of invocations
GREENFIELD, Ohio, and MADISON, Wis. — Alliance Defense Fund attorneys sent letters to public officials in two states Friday, advising leaders of both bodies regarding the constitutionality of allowing public meetings to open with prayer. Both the Greenfield City Council and the Wisconsin State Assembly have received legal threats from anti-religious organizations.

“A prayer before public meetings is one of our oldest and most cherished American traditions, and it is sad that some radical secularist groups are trying to eliminate the practice,” said ADF Senior Legal Counsel Mike Johnson. “The First Amendment allows public officials, and not the ACLU and its allies, to decide what is appropriate for acknowledging our nation’s religious history and heritage.”

Greenfield officials received a letter from the American Civil Liberties Union threatening legal action if their opening invocations are not censored or prohibited, while Wisconsin officials received a similar demand from the Freedom from Religion Foundation.

In 2007, ADF launched a nationwide effort to advise public bodies of their constitutional right to open meetings with an invocation, mailing thousands of informational letters to local governments (www.telladf.org/news/story.aspx?cid=4195). Since then, ADF attorneys have received numerous requests for assistance from state legislatures and many county and city governments.

Copies of the model prayer policies sent to the Greenfield City Council and to the Wisconsin State Assembly are available at www.telladf.org/UserDocs/GreenfieldPolicy.pdf and at www.telladf.org/UserDocs/WisconsinPolicy.pdf. The accompanying legal memos sent to Greenfield City Council Chairman Harvey Everhart and Wisconsin State Assembly Speaker Michael Huebsch may be read at www.telladf.org/UserDocs/HuebschLetter.pdf and at www.telladf.org/UserDocs/EverhartLetter.pdf.

ADF is a legal alliance of Christian attorneys and like-minded organizations defending the right of people to freely live out their faith. Launched in 1994, ADF employs a unique combination of strategy, training, funding, and litigation to protect and preserve religious liberty, the sanctity of life, marriage, and the family.

www.telladf.org

After paying $65.00 to put 14 gallons of gas in my car the other day, I came home and sat down to watch “The O’Reiley Factor” on Fox News. I no longer watch the arrogant Bill O’Reiley now; that was the last straw.

First out on his program was his “Talking Points” in which he discussed the reason for the high cost of gas today. It has become painfully apparent that O’Reiley’s understanding of the issues behind the cost of gas is as pathetic as his understanding of the reasons for our invasion of Iraq. It’s not about oil company greed, Bill, and it wasn’t solely about Saddam’s WMDs. O’Reiley has been hanging around with too many leftists in the media.

In O’Reiley’s view, the high price of gas today is due solely to “oil company greed.” I thought Mr. O’Reiley was smarter than that, but this is the knee jerk reaction of an ignorant and uninformed simpleton, consumed by the propaganda of the left. For a guy who calls his program “the no spin zone,” O’Reiley has been emerged in liberal spin and doesn’t even know it.

I switched off O’Reiley and went over to CNN to see what was going on there. What I saw was even more misleading than what O’Reiley was spewing, but we expect that from CNN. What I didn’t expect was the report that aired shortly after I changed channels. You can see it here.

Wolf Blitzer turned the segment over to CNN’s Ali Velshi with the topic “who is responsible for today’s gas prices?” Repeating Democrat rhetoric that oil companies have 70 million acres for drilling that are not being used, Blitzer asks “where is all of this untapped oil?”

Velshi, standing in front of a graphic showing both east and west coasts of the U.S. riveted with no drilling zones due to environmental concerns, then focused on the Gulf of Mexico. The graphic then showed a grid-work confined to the northwest corner of the gulf which represented the areas that oil drilling is permitted. Velshi points out that although there are about 4000 wells currently working, there are many of these grid sectors that do not have wells.

Nowhere in the segment does Blitzer of Velshi mention that an oil company lease on a sector does not guarantee oil exists in that sector. Neither one of them, apparently, paid any attention to the oil company executives’ testimony before Congress, where they explained their methods of locating underground or undersea oil and why they don’t put up expensive oil rigs where they know there is no oil.

Also, today’s deep water oil rigs are capable of sinking multiple wells from one rig which can angle out to reach pockets of oil that are not below the rig, otherwise known as “slant drilling.” The don’t need an oil rig on every acre. Then too, the further you go offshore, the deeper the water gets, and the more it costs to drill.

The question posed by Blitzer was then why do oil companies want to open up coastal offshore areas for drilling when they have all this untapped oil in the gulf? If Blitzer and Velshi’s premise was right - that all the grid sectors in the gulf had oil - then there would be no need for oil companies to want to secure leases for coastal offshore drilling, but they don‘t.

The fact is that few locations authorized by Congress for drilling actually contain oil, and the oil companies know this. Their high tech equipment and ground penetrating radar satellites allows them to know where the oil is and isn’t without the need of erecting expensive oil rigs.

To make a long story short, Blitzer asks why oil companies are not drilling in these sectors. The answer, as explained by Velshi in the rest of the segment, is that the oil companies are doing just fine the way things are, and that it’s all about oil company profits.

Velshi tries to explain oil company motives through his own liberal lens, ignoring that mining more oil will create the need for more refineries to process it into gasoline, which Congress has yet to approve. They give no clue to the viewers that over 50% of wells drilled in the U.S. have come up dry, or that areas in the gulf not being drilled contain no pockets of oil. They attempt to leave the viewing audience with the impression that the Gulf of Mexico is filled with oil, not water.

On Saturday, an article appeared on the CNN website entitled: Oil Production lagging - U.S. official which had the subtitle: “Energy secretary says that United States and other nations must conserve more. Speculators not to blame for high prices, he adds. In fact, Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman didn’t say that in his statements at the conference. What he did say was:

“First, all nations must change the way we use energy . . . and I put my own country, the United States, at the top of the list.  We have a lot of work to do.  Increasing the energy efficiency of our economies is an absolute necessity.”

That was as close as he ever came in talking about oil “conservation.” Bodman called for more “efficiency,” but the bulk of his comments focused on increased oil production and “transparency” in oil speculating, which were ignored in the CNN article. He said oil speculating was only a part of the overall problem.

He also focused on how we got into this mess with 30 years of bans on additional oil production. Bodman’s comments can be found here at the DOE website.

Let’s review the facts on today’s gas prices. There are five basic issues contributing to the high cost of gas:

1. Due to 30 years of government restrictions and regulations, U.S. oil production has not been allowed to expand to keep up with growing demands, forcing us to depend on foreign oil from sources like OPEC. We have no control over world oil market prices.

2. Growing economies and industry in countries like China and India have drastically increased the demand for world oil supplies driving the demand up and the supply down. It’s a matter of supply and demand.

3. Big investors like George Soros have bought up huge supplies of oil on the commodities market and bid the price up over the past few years through oil price speculations. We wouldn’t be in this mess today if speculators hadn’t been playing poker with our fuel supplies.

4. Democrat politicians beholding to liberal environmentalist groups and Al Gore’s global warming agenda want oil to cost as much as their “alternative energy” technology to make them economically feasible. Only when gasoline is as expensive to produce as ethanol, windmills, and solar panels, will people invest in them and use them.

5. At a mere 4%, oil company profits are not a factor in today’s price of gas. With gas at $4.50 a gallon, the oil company makes an 18c profit, while the federal government is making 18.4c in taxes per gallon. State governments then add on their taxes which average 28.6c per gallon according to Wikipedia. (These numbers reflect a revision/correction to numbers published in my previous articles.)

The 18 cents the oil company makes, is then distributed to millions of stockholders. There is no one sitting in the board room getting rich from oil company profits at your expense. The remaining $4.03 pays for crude oil purchases, exploration and drilling, and refining costs. The huge profits reported in oil companies’ quarterly reports are a result of extremely high volume sales, not high profit margins.

When you consider that government is making more money from a gallon of gas than the oil companies are, and if we accept the claim that oil companies are making excessive profits, then we must also conclude that politicians are charging excessive taxes on gas.

Democrats have absolutely no interest in doing anything that would bring down the price of gas. They need it to go even higher to achieve their new “progressive” socialist society that runs without oil, or a free market, or personal liberty, or profit.

CNN is a willing partner at best, and a co-conspirator at worst, of the Democrat party for which CNN is in the role of public relations for the DNC. This is obvious to anyone with a fair mind while watching any of CNN’s political coverage. But when CNN allows their political agenda to get in the way of reporting truthfully on something as important as our current energy crisis, that is bordering on treason and betrayal of our country.

CNN’s broadcast license, issued to serve the public interest, should be evaluated, and investigated by Congress instead of them wasting time with their ongoing investigation into who outed Valerie Plame, as they are now still doing.

How are Americans supposed to be accurately informed on important issue when we can’t trust the television news media to report fair and unbiased truths - when we have a media that focuses their reports on the tiniest detail of an issue that fits their left wing template, and ignores or spins the real substance of the issue to hide it from the public?

The answer is, we can’t. It’s not just CNN, but the entire television news media that conspires in this deception, some, like NBC and CBS are even worse. It’s no wonder that America today is so screwed up after being subverted for decades by this cabal of propagandists.

The only way that we are going to separate the spin from the facts is to listen to conservative talk radio or read “new media” websites on the Internet. It is unfortunate that in today’s world, Americans who want to know the truth have to go looking for it on the Internet, rather than trusting your evening news to report accurately on it.

 

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JR Dieckmann is Editor, Publisher, Writer, and Webmaster of GreatAmericanJournal.com. He also works as an electrician in Los Angeles, Ca. He has been writing and publishing articles on the web since 2000. His articles appear on other publications such as: The Conservative Voice; Real Clear Politics; New Media Journal; Mich News; Daley Times-Post; Renew America, The Reality Check, and other conservative websites. JR can be contacted at http://www.greatamericanjournal.com/contact.htm.

-By Warner Todd Huston

Remember last month when the “amazing” photos of the “lost Indian tribe” in the Brazilian jungle were making the rounds? Remember how every single news agency in the world jumped on this “astounding” report? They were a “lost tribe,” they were an “uncontacted” people, they were shooting arrows at the “big bird” and dressed in war paint. All manner of claims were made about these people, but many reports seemed to claim that these photos were intended to “prove” they exist and that the photographs were the result of a chance encounter.

Turns out that there was no “chance” to it and no one seriously doubted these people existed at all. Further, the man who took the photos knew almost exactly where to go to get those pictures, so “lost tribe” is hardly the correct terminology bywhich to describe these people.

What we have with this story is a perfect example of the media jumping on a story without bothering to clarify all the facts. In fact, the newest news of the incident is going to the other extreme and calling the whole incident a “hoax.” But the revelations made by the photographer do not really reveal an outright hoax as much as evidence that the original story was only a little misleading.

To clarify, the original story made it seem as if Indigenous tribes expert, José Carlos Meirelles came across this tribe by accident as he flew above them and that his important photos revealed “proof” that they existed. Now, however, we are told by Mr. Meirelles that he had previous information, coordinates and maps that he followed to “accidentally” find the little settlement and that he had known of these people’s existence previously, as did others.

So, this week we are told it was a “hoax.”

THE man behind photos of warriors from an “undiscovered” Amazon tribe that were beamed around the world has admitted it was a hoax.

Survival International, the organisation that released the pictures along with Funai, conceded yesterday that Funai had known about this nomadic tribe for around two decades.

The “accidental” find wasn’t so accidental it turns out.

According to his account, the Brazilian state of Acre offered him the use of an aircraft for three days.

“I had years of GPS co-ordinates,” he said.

Mr Meirelles had another clue to the tribe’s precise location.

“A friend of mine sent me some Google Earth co-ordinates and maps that showed a strange clearing in the middle of the forest and asked me what that was,”he said.

So, while he did not find them by accident, and they weren’t a “lost tribe” he did not perpetrate an outright hoax because these people do, indeed, exist and are a basically uncontacted people whose habitat might be endangered by modern encroachment.

What we end up with, though, is the news misreporting this story twice. It’s just a sad example of how one really shouldn’t trust anything in the media!

But, let’s look at some of the new quotes by this supposed Indigenous tribes expert, Meirelles.

Meirelles said when he saw the grass huts he found them using his maps and coordinates previously recorded. He also made the interesting statement about how his flight was received by the natives.

“When the women hear the plane above, they run into the forest, thinking it’s a big bird,’ he said. ‘This is such a remote area, planes don’t fly over it.’

He knows this how? If they are uncontacted, how do we know that the women think the plane is a giant bird about to swoop down and eat them? How do we know what they think about planes?

Then Meirelles makes another claim about these people.

“Because painted red means they are ready for war, which to me says they are happy and healthy defending their territory.”

First of all, if he only flew over these people once as he claims, how did the men have the time to get “ready for war” and get their bodies all smeared with the red war paint? Secondly, and once again remembering these are supposed to be uncontacted people, how do we even know red painted bodies means they are “ready for war”? If no one has contacted these people and observed their rituals and conventions, how do we have any idea what the red paint might represent?

Also how does anyone know these people don’t want to be contacted? How are we sure leaving them in some prehistoric condition is really the right thing to do?

We don’t actually. All the assumptions that José Carlos Meirelles has of these people is born out of his own arrogance of being a so-called “indigenous tribes expert” not on reality. After all, if all the tribes are contacted and modernized, then there would be no need for José Carlos Meirelles’ services!

One thing is sure, there can be no doubt that these people live short and brutal lives. They are sure to have little by way of emergency health care and it is possible that their women lead harsh, oppressed lives. To be sure, I am not advocating we immediately bring them McDonald’s, TV and tetanus shots, but to assume we know what is best for them in any way at all is arrogance on our part. My guess is, that if they wanted to be contacted, they know where to find us!

So, the real hoax is that we as modern humans know what is best for these people better than they do.

In my local syndicated newspaper the other day, there was an article featuring a forum hosted by a nearby university for black high school seniors in the region. The annual event was calculated to inform and inspire the students regarding their options in the area of colleges and universities. It will become apparent how desperately such offerings are needed.

One of the talking points of the piece was outlined by the forum’s director, who was quoted as saying that due to cultural factors and because they frequently don’t have role models or parents directing them, black high school seniors are often unmotivated to go to college and aren’t even aware of the wide variety of fulfilling choices open to them.

Big surprise there.

No surprise either was rap mogul Russell Simmons’ endorsement of Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama. Simmons, the Robert Mugabe of the music business (in that he enriches himself via the exploitation of blacks, but given the perverse paradigm of justice proffered by the far Left that Americans have agreed to swallow, this is acceptable because Simmons too is black), endorsed the candidate in March and has since been making the rounds of media venues explaining why Obama’s “the man.”

Simmons has been one of the most politically-active black figures in the entertainment business for some years. While reluctant to endorse candidates (until now), his social campaigns have always been thinly-veiled, left-leaning, shallow pop-culture extravaganzae. Founder of the Hip-Hop Summit Action Network (HSAN), itself an afrocentric far Left activist vehicle, Simmons has partnered with Rock the Vote (whose stated mission is “to engage and build the political power of young people in order to achieve progressive change in our country”) since 2000.

Simmons’ endorsement of Obama reeks of hypocrisy. As of early last year, he had hinted at favoring other Democrat candidates. This was likely a subtle but savvy message to Obama that if he wanted the support of young blacks (whom Simmons reckons he now represents), he’d better be black enough, afrocentric enough, and far Left enough for Simmons – something which, for all practical purposes, the candidate has proven in spades.

About a week ago, it was also revealed that Ayham al-Samurai, a former Iraqi exile (now an American citizen) who had hidden out in the U.S. for 20 years, called for support of the terrorist insurgency against U.S. forces in Iraq, has contributed $2,300 to Obama’s campaign (the maximum amount allowed for an individual under the law), and is allegedly back in the Middle East raising more cash for the candidate. The former dissident – whose most recent U.S. residence was Chicago – also had dealings with Antoin Rezko, the Syrian-American who supported Obama both politically and personally, and who was recently convicted of fraud in a federal court.

Nice.

So it appears that it matters little whether Sen. Obama’s endorsers are ostensibly “upstanding citizens” like Al Gore, far Left hate machines such as MoveOn.org, turncoat black “conservatives” who hint that they’re willing to sacrifice their principles for a candidate just because he’s black, anti-U.S. supporters of terrorism or terrorist organizations (such as Hamas) themselves. The candidate can claim that he has no control over who likes him, the response is framed by the establishment media as plausible, and sedated America nods numbly in agreement.

Back to the high school students mentioned earlier. The question of how viable a nation we shall have if Sen. Obama is elected – which could obviously impact the students’ lives in many ways – aside, their future appears dubious at best. In addition to the wholesale social and economic oppression likely to ensue if Obama wins, he also represents a party and an ideology that have done everything they can to ensure that as many blacks as possible remain as ignorant and impoverished as possible.

Barack Obama may see to it that yet more billions are carelessly thrown at the cause of furthering black education – but what will it matter if his buddies in politics and the news and entertainment media continue to sell pimp culture (immorality, self-indulgence and the cult of victimization) to black youth?

With Obama in office, it will be easier for far Left and black activists to blame the past actions of evil, faceless whites for blacks’ social ills than ever before. How long that song will play, with resentment festering on the part of both whites and blacks, before widespread social unrest rears its head will be anyone’s guess.

Barack Obama will stand blameless, of course: He can’t control anyone else’s actions.

Though it may be a losing battle, all such folks as this columnist can do is transmit these facts and pray that the weight of truth, in the aggregate, carries enough force to smash this candidate’s façade prior to the November election.

I wondered how long it would take to come to this. We have had calls for the firing of scientists and other disbelievers of the religion of the day; can the inquisition and McCarthy-style hearings be far behind? I can hear it now - “Are you now or ever have been a denier of global warming caused by mankind?”

The first shot across the bow, so to speak, has been fired in England. Here is a report appearing in the British paper, The Guardian:

“Put oil firm chiefs on trial, says leading climate change scientist· Testimony to US Congress will also criticise lobbyists · ‘Revolutionary’ policies needed to tackle crisis Ed Pilkington in New York The Guardian, Monday June 23, 2008. James Hansen, one of the world’s leading climate scientists, will today call for the chief executives of large fossil fuel companies to be put on trial for high crimes against humanity and nature, accusing them of actively spreading doubt about global warming in the same way that tobacco companies blurred the links between smoking and cancer.”

Hansen heads NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York.

Imagine, global warming deniers are being accused of “crimes against humanity”; isn’t that what Nazi perpetrators were charged with at the Nuremberg trials over the holocaust when six million Jews and others were killed?

To members of the cult-like religion spawned by Al Gore, failing to agree with their dogma is akin to committing one of the worst crimes in human history. Not only is disagreement sufficient to lose your job and be ostracized in your professional community, you should go to jail, or perhaps a gulag, for it.

So-called climate expert, Hansen, was “among the first to sound the alarm over the reality of global warming - to argue that radical steps need to be taken immediately if the ‘perfect storm’ of irreversible climate change is not to become inevitable.” For reasons only the majority of Democrats in congress can explain, Hansen has been invited to the House to speak and “to accuse the chief executive officers of companies such as Exxon Mobil and Peabody Energy of being fully aware of the disinformation about climate change they are spreading.”

The “climate expert” told the Guardian, a newspaper in England, “When you are in that kind of position, as the CEO of one the primary players who have been putting out misinformation even via organisations that affect what gets into school textbooks, then I think that’s a crime.”

To show how serious Hanson is, he is also talking about making personal charges before the November elections against selected members of Congress who he thinks have a poor track record on climate change. In fact, Hansen offered to campaign against them so they will be defeated at the polls. When most scientists were still hesitant to speak out in support of his dogma, Hansen said the evidence of the greenhouse gas effect was 99% certain, adding “it is time to stop waffling”.

Hansen will share his views on Capitol Hill. He will tell the House select committee on energy independence and global warming that he is now 99% certain that the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has already risen beyond the safe level. According to him, the CO2 concentration currently at 385 parts per million is rising by 2 ppm a year. The NASA head of a special project on global warming will tell Congress 2009 will be a crucial year and the new US president should follow the Kyoto agreement; with our choice for the job being limited to two global warming worshipers, it is more than likely we all will be expected to accept the inevitable greatest intrusion on the rights of Americans in history.

As part of his plan to place global warming ahead of common sense, Hansen will tell congress a moratorium should be put on new coal-fired power plants and creation of a huge grid of low-loss electric power lines should be buried under ground and spread across America, “in order to give wind and solar power a chance of competing.” “The new US president would have to take the initiative analogous to Kennedy’s decision to go to the moon.”

His sharpest words are reserved for the special interests he blames for public confusion about the nature of the global warming threat. “The problem is not political will; it’s the alligator shoes - the lobbyists. It’s the fact that money talks in Washington, and that democracy is not working the way it’s intended to work.”

To increase pressure on international leaders, a new organization, called “350.org” is starting a campaign with full-page advertisements in papers such as the New York Times and the Swedish Falukuriren calling for the target level of CO2 to be lowered to 350 ppm. In 2009 which they say will be a crucial year. Anticipating a less hostile president coming into office, the ad will feature how to follow the Kyoto agreement. To emphasize “wide support” for this position, the ad will include 150 signatories, including Hansen. No mention will be made in the advertisement and by the news media coverage about the 19,000 scientists (among them 9,000 PhD’s signing on to labeling Kyoto and its offspring’s a hoax).

Hansen and others blindly supporting the global warming scam put the blame for this heresy of public confusion about the nature of the global warming threat on “special interests”. “The problem is not political will; it’s the alligator shoes - the lobbyists. It’s the fact that money talks in Washington, and that democracy is not working the way it’s intended to work.”

This accusation is especially amazing because recent polls in England report over 60% of the British public believe global warming is total “balderdash” (my word, not theirs, I use it to be politically correct by British standards). But in any language global warming caused by man is utter nonsense.

Vincent Gioia is a retired patent attorney living in Palm Desert, California. His articles may be read at www.vincentgioia.com and he may be contacted at gioia@gte.net.