Stanley Tool Works is holding a new vote on whether to reincorporate in Bermuda to avoid U.S. taxes. I was watching this on CNN the other night, and the senator who represents the district that Stanley is now located in says that Stanley would have an address in Bermuda, but a legal residence in Barbados, avoiding pretty much all U.S. corporate taxes while taking advantage of what we have to offer. More details here. Thanks to Bizquick for the link.

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If you oppose legislation criminalizing cloning research, you should go sign this petition. There's more background from Virginia Postrel over at her site; the petition is her project. I signed it yesterday. Apologies to Glenn Reynolds. I had meant to post this yesterday and it slipped my mind. So I just kind of copied and pasted your text.

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Ben Sheriff reminds us just how futile a lawsuit can be. I recall when this all started last year. About a dozen people tried to enter the United States illegally from Mexico and died in the heat after running out of water. Now their families are suing the U.S. Government for not putting water in the desert for them. Ben, you make a great point that it's a desert, surely you shouldn't try to cross it in the first place, however that is not what will get the case dismissed for the government. The fact is that the people who died were BREAKING THE LAW.



One of the smugglers for the deceased named in the claim, Jose Lopez-Ramos, received a 16-year sentence for his role in the deaths earlier this year.
Lopez-Ramos was one of three guides working for a smuggling ring that led a group of about 30 illegal immigrants from Sonoita, Mexico, into the United States on May 19.
Each immigrant paid the smugglers $1,400 for the illegal crossing. They were told the trip would take two days and that they would walk at night to avoid detection and the searing desert sun.



They've obviously convicted the guy that brought them across the border. He, if anyone, should be held civilly liable. The Mexicans paid him, not the U.S. Government to enter the country.



UPDATE: I knew I saw something locally about this - Check here as well.

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My parents told me about this stuff. Everyone was in fear of a Communist takeover of the United States. However, I figured it had all been made public knowledge. Guess I was wrong. A report has been released alleging Communist activities on the University of Colorado campus. This report has been sealed in a vault for almost 50 years. The one living terminated faculty member lives near me. Maybe I should drop in on him some time and ask him what he thinks of all this. He's probably sick of talking to reporters already. Personally, I think they were waiting for him to pass away before releasing the report. The regents may have made themselves look really foolish in this matter.



The Daily Camera newspaper in Boulder and its columnist Clint Talbott pursued the matter in court after having three open records requests seeking a copy of the report denied. The report has been sealed in a bank vault since 1953 at the request of the regents.



University attorneys and a majority of regents fought the document's release -- until Friday.



CU President Elizabeth Hoffman said she agreed the document should be made public.



"I think it's the right thing to do," she said.



Why did the regents cover it up? Had any of them been serving back in the 1950's? Or maybe political cronies or relatives of theirs? Also, once a lawsuit was filed, regent Norwood Robb still opposed releasing the documents. Why? The actions of the regents were apparently illegal as they denied open records requests. Unless they could not show just cause, those records should have been available under the Freedom of Information Act or its Colorado equivalent.

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We've all been asked the question, "Who is buried in Grant's Tomb?" at one time or another. This Slate article tries to give us some insight behind the man who really IS buried there. There's a PBS special (part two airs Sunday at 6:00 PDT, check your local listings) that may shed some light on the subject as well.

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A civics revival? Why not? Students need to know more about how government works, which is the whole idea behind those types of classes, however, the opposition behind it is bunk.



The subject is potentially controversial. Some conservatives will oppose any form of a federal mandate to schools. Some liberals will be wary of government efforts that could be seen as encouraging obedience to authority or support for the current administration. But the notion of citizenship education has support from a broad range of Democrats and Republicans.



High school graduates 50 years ago knew as much about government and politics as college graduates do today. (My mother can vouch for that. She says that they were drilled on civics when she was in high school back in the 1950s). And, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, 75 percent of school-age Americans lack proficiency in civic knowledge.



The key is that today's youth get a basic understanding of the inner workings of the government so if they disagree with it in the future, they know where to start if they want to change it. This appears to have bipartisan support and I'm all for it.

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More Israeli civilians getting in on the action. The government sets such a good example over there. Apparently Arafat's not the only one who is setting a poor example for his people.

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Kudos to the Chicago Tribune for balanced reporting of the Middle East conflict. In the May 11 online issue, there is a message from the editor noting that although they showed the Palestinian viewpoint last Sunday, they also did the same with the Israeli viewpoint a month ago. Naturally, they provided a link to both.

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Yet another 80's TV show is being made into a movie-for-ratings. This time, NBC is trying to resurrect L.A. Law. Big deal. I guess it could be a chance to resurrect my childhood fantasy with Susan Dey. I'll be watching the X-Files over on Fox anyhow.

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From InstaPundit comes an excellent piece on blogs.

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From the latest reports, it seems that students don't know squat about American history.


Nearly six in 10 of the nation's high school seniors lack even a basic knowledge of U.S. history, a situation that is virtually unchanged after seven years of concerted effort to bolster history instruction, test results released yesterday by the Department of Education show.



Scores posted by fourth- and eighth-graders on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) showed modest gains. But even with their improvement, just 67 percent of fourth-graders and 64 percent of eighth-graders demonstrated basic understanding of the subject and fewer than one in five students in each grade were deemed proficient.



I'm no math whiz, but this story seems to dictate that fourth-graders know more about history than high-school seniors. In other words, knowledge of history deteriorates as time goes on.



Only 29 percent of 12th-graders, for example, knew that the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution gave President Lyndon B. Johnson authority to expand the Vietnam War. Just 39 percent of eighth-graders knew that the biggest factor leading colonists to form the First Continental Congress was their frustration with laws passed by the British Parliament. And just 57 percent of fourth-graders knew that a major cause of the Civil War was the split between the North and South over slavery.



This is MTV at work. These statistics are a perfect example of how today's youth is oversaturated with meaningless drivel to the point of how they just don't care about what is going on around them. A parent or relative may have been involved in the Vietnam War, and they may not have been had Johnson not had that authority. Wouldn't they want to know why, or have the youth of today become that apathetic? I'm not really surprised that less than half of eighth-graders knew whad led colonists to form the First Continental Congress. I grew up in New England, and was surrounded by history. My wife reminds me of this all the time when I shudder at statistics. Even though I live now in the Southwest, where there are many people who are not from this country, that's no excuse. The U.S. Citizenship test requires you to pass a basic history test. How do I know this? Because a friend of mine just passed the thing. She came from India via Canada. It took her 18 years to become an American citizen, but she did it legally. However, I digress. I did have one final point, and it is a technicality. I'm sure that a fourth-grader would have thought that the split between the North and the South was over slavery - because the textbooks said so. However, history has shown that it was more of a political and economic war. Slavery, indeed was an issue.

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Via Andrew Sullivan, here's a headline that will make you think.

Joanne Jacobs, who is linked from this page, also can be read at FoxNews.com.

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Bob Owen tipped me off to this detail in the ending to the Church of the Nativity standoff. I watched what Israel called the "13 senior terrorists" leave the church in an orderly fashion, and then the second group of 26 that was sent to Gaza on CNN between 10:00 and 11:00 PDT last night. I assumed the rest would go quickly, and went to bed. Apparently there was a glitch later on, as this AP article pointed out.



The 10 activists, who had slipped into the church last week in solidarity with the Palestinians who took refuge there, refused to come out Friday, insisting they be accompanied by a lawyer. Their refusal held up Israel's planned troop withdrawal from Bethlehem.

Much of my rhetoric has been in favor of the Palestinians, however, these activists need to get a clue. First, all the Palestinains went, some into exile, never to see their homes and families again. Second, the Israelis have guns. Considering the way tempers flare over there, these activists are really pushing their luck. Take what you can get and run with it. If you want a lawyer, get your tail out of the church and find one. Oh yeah, and I'm not a big fan of lawyers...

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I've changed my byline from a pseudonym to my real name. Since I comment under my real name on other people's blogs, and answer others comments under my real name as well, it's only fair and decent that I not hide behind a name - unless I could come up with a good one.

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The standoff at the Church of the Nativity is finally over. I am watching it right now as it happens on CNN. Praise be to God.

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So only Palestinians are capable of violence against civilians. Guess not. I just wonder if they are using American-made or financed weapons to accomplish their ends. Damian Penny was my source on that story.

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The Iraqi government is holding a referendum on the presidency later this year. Expecting to see a drastic change in the government? Me neither. Thanks to Steven den Beste for the link.

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And to prove that everything can kill you, the enviro-nazis want to put warning labels on chocolate. Thanks to Joanne Jacobs for finding that one.

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Maybe CalTrans should consider hiring this guy.



What Ankrom did was put the word 'north' over an emblem for Interstate 5. The sign is two miles before the exit, plenty of time for motorists to plan their transition from the Harbor Freeway to the correct lanes of I-5. The article also goes on to say that he made the changes last August, but nobody noticed until the press leaked it last month.

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Lileks actually read the UN account of the latest condemnation of Israel. I particularly was fond of this quote from Elfatih Mohamed Ahmed Erwa, the Sudanese delegate:



“Israel, during the past two months, had persisted in its attempts to destroy the Palestinian Authority, by committing atrocious war crimes and laying siege to the Church of the Nativity, the birthplace of Christianity.”



Like Sudan cares about Christianity.

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Popular thought says that Arafat started this whole problem by walking away from the table at Camp David. These three articles show that he may have done so because he simply because he was offered a raw deal.

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According to the Justice Department, the Second Amendment protects an individual right to bear arms. They submitted a brief to the Supreme Court to that extent. I doubt that it will have any problem passing Supreme Court muster, considering that most Court members, as well as the administration, already share that opinion.



"In its brief to the court of appeals, the government argued that the Second Amendment protects only such acts of firearm possession as are reasonably related to the preservation or efficiency of the militia. The current position of the United States, however, is that the Second Amendment more broadly protects the rights of individuals, including persons who are not members of any militia or engaged in active military service or training, to possess and bear their own firearms, subject to reasonable restrictions designed to prevent possession by unfit persons or to restrict the possession of types of firearms that are particularly suited to criminal misuse."

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Here's a Palestinian-American's spin on the Middle East situation. He thinks that U.S. corporations could be the ultimate victim:



Millions of U.S. corporate and citizen tax dollars spent on building the Palestinian economy were lost in this latest Israeli offensive against the Palestinian civil and national infrastructure. It would be negligent for corporate America to remain silent while its government recommits yet more tax dollars to the region without addressing the source of the conflict. Ending Israeli occupation is the only solution that will put the region back on track.

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Arab logic gives me a good laugh sometimes. Scary thing is, if you think it through, it actually could make sense, whether you agree with it or not. By the way, Arab News is a good source of information if you want to know how the other side is thinking.

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From Daily Pundit comes this tidbit alleging that Saudi Arabia aided Palestinian suicide bombers in their attacks on Israeli citizens. He bases his reasoning on a Newsday article. The Newsday article left out some key points as seen in this article in the Los Angeles Times. The key quote that was missing from the Newsday story (but found in the Times) was the following:



"By day's end, Israel hadn't provided the State Department with copies of its claims about the Saudi aid--leading U.S. officials to discreetly suggest that the report was in part a public relations ploy."




In other words, they knew the government wouldn't buy it at face value, since most of it is propaganda. However, by releasing it to the press first, their thirst for knowledge and rush to be first to publish and be on the air played right into their hands. According to a CNN report I saw yesterday, the White House wasn't really thinking much of the report either.

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