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When guns are banned in schools, only the students and the crazed in the community carry them for nefarious purposes. Violence throughout the planet is increasing.  School violence is escalating.  Assaults on teachers are commonplace.  Boys are bolder, girls are growing more aggressive.  Angry students in their rage concoct lethal schemes to carry out deplorable plots.

The Sword of Damocles dangles over the heads of unsuspecting students. Meanwhile, school administrators and teachers are armed with verbal skills, “Why don’t we all just get along.”  Education courses teach them in matters of class disruption, to acquiesce, understand, write up what happened, describe the atmosphere in the classroom, what they could have done to prevent the violence, and what they plan to do in the future to prevent its reoccurrence.

Education gurus have backed teachers into the corner and put a dunce cap on their heads in front of the students.  They have been put at the mercy of the most belligerent and whatever happens, “it’s their fault.”

The next step in school anarchy will be a “step up” in violence.  Guns and knives will become weapons of choice.  Assault rifles and shot guns will suffice for the more sophisticated shooters.

We've all heard about the possibility of the federal government getting involved in controlling the airwaves and dictating exactly what kind of speech can be broadcast and to exactly what degree, by way of the Fairness Doctrine.  To the greatest degree, most of the press has been given to this movement's efforts to regulate the airwaves on television and the radio to ensure that 'equal time' is given to 'both sides' of every issue.

But, as is pointed out by Jeff Poor of The Business & Media Institute, those efforts to dictate content could even go so far as controlling the messages embodied within websites of various causes, as well!

There’s a huge concern among conservative talk radio hosts that reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine would all-but destroy the industry due to equal time constraints. But speech limits might not stop at radio. They could even be extended to include the Internet and “government dictating content policy.”

FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell raised that as a possibility after talking with bloggers at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C. McDowell spoke about a recent FCC vote to bar Comcast from engaging in certain Internet practices – expanding the federal agency’s oversight of Internet networks.

At a time when the noon-day prayer at the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis is threatened by radical organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU,) religious freedom for American military chaplains is also threatened, especially those chaplains who pray in the name of Jesus.

Throughout the centuries-old history of the United States Naval Academy, prayer has been allowed before the noon meal in the midshipmen's dining hall.  Now the ACLU is threatening that tradition by bullying the naval academy into stopping those prayers and threatening a lawsuit against the academy if such prayers are not stopped.

At the same time, other atheists are continuing to try to snuff out the religious freedom of military chaplains who pray in the name of Jesus Christ.  Congressman Walter Jones, R-NC, with the help of two other religious freedom champions, Congressman Chris Smith, R-NJ, and Congressman Ron Paul, R-TX, are pushing Congressman Jones' bill, H.R. 6514, to ensure the constitutional rights of military chaplains to be able to pray--  however they want -- including in the name of Jesus. 

A column was published last month by a former "New York Times" reporter named Stuart Taylor debunking his former newspaper's claim that the United States Supreme Court is conservative.  Nothing can be further from the truth.  Justice Anthony Kennedy, the swing vote on the court, swings mostly to the left.  Mr. Taylor is basically calling the court a centrist court because of some of the major opinions it has issued.  He challenges "The New York Times'" assertion that the Supreme Court was "teetering on the brink" of "far-right disaster in the just-ended term."
 
Mr. Taylor argues that several of the so-called "far-right" decisions about which "The New York Times" was worried, were either written by or joined by some of the extreme left-wing Justices on the Court (i.e. Souter, Stevens, Breyer.)   He wrote:  "While it's certainly true that the Court has drifted right of 'The New York Times,' the nation's law faculty, and the typical elite cocktail party, the dirty little secret is that the Court is decidedly centrist when compared to the American people.  The hysteria about the Court's 'right wing assault' on abortion, desegregation, and the separation of church and state has obscured the fact that large majorities of the public oppose partial-birth abortion and racial preferences and favor some role for religion in the public sphere."

Bill Clinton, following the worst two years of his life, was able to intimidate a Republican Senate with the help of his bull-dog Democrat friends in the United States Senate, and get 15 of his very important, and liberal, U.S. Court of Appeals nominees confirmed in the 1999-2000 Congress. The federal appeals court is the level of judges right below the U.S. Supreme Court.

On the other hand, with only a handful of in-session weeks left on the Senate's calendar, President George W. Bush has managed to get a net total of only 8 of his conservative appeals court nominees confirmed, including one liberal (a relative of the Democrat Chairman of the Armed Services Committee) and 9 conservative nominees. SCORE: 15 Clinton liberals vs. 8 Bush conservatives.

Even with the Republican failure to fight hard for the confirmation of appeals court nominees, the Democrat-controlled Senate (with a 9% approval rating) continues to fail to fulfill its constitutional obligations and provide a vote on President George W. Bush's judicial nominations, especially those nominated to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. In fact, some have been waiting for years to get a vote after being nominated by President Bush.

Christian Coalition of America had a great victory this week when President George W. Bush's Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Kevin Martin, voted with the majority (3-2) on the commission saying that it is wrong for Internet providers to discriminate against certain kinds of online traffic. 

Christian Coalition of America (CCA) has led the effort for a number of years on the issue of net neutrality amongst pro-family and conservative groups.  CCA also has allies from the liberal side of the political spectrum such as Common Cause.  Indeed, in a recent column, the President of Common Cause, Chellie Pingree said:  "...I joined a coalition of groups ranging from the Christian Coalition to Consumers Union, and we went to Congress with over a million signatures asking that Net Neutrality be made law.... without this week's FCC decision, there would have been nothing protecting American consumers from big telecoms who wanted to create a pay-to-play environment...."  

On the other hand the duopolies (cable and phone corporations) complain that groups such as the Christian Coalition of America, Gunowners of America, National Religious Broadcasters, and others, are for government regulation.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Christian Coalition is against monopolies and duopolies and insists that the Internet remain equal for all citizens as it has been since its founding decades ago. 

A school district in Hudson, New Hampshire is under the threat of a federal lawsuit for refusing to allow the distribution of a church's Vacation Bible School flyer to one of the schools in the district.

According to a report in OneNewsNow, church member Patricia Regan is taking action against the district, considering that she has been aware that the school has always allowed organizations in the community to distribute literature to promote events to the school's students.  But, now they are refusing to allow her church's event information to be distributed to these children, as well.

From CyberCast News Service, we find this report that tells us about the ongoing work to ensure the next president of the United States maintains a focus on broadening religious freedoms for Christians throughout the world.

Angela C. Wu, International Law Director for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, states that,

“Freedom of religion and the freedom to speak openly about ideas and beliefs here and abroad should be a high priority for the next president of the United States."

A poll that was cited should be quite telling to either of the two main presidential candidates as to the importance of this issue to the voting public.

File this under "doing the right thing for a change":

From Chesapeake, Virginia we have this story from OneNewsNow, detailing the facts regarding this denial of religious freedom and our rights to free speech.

Take note of those quotes attributed to the city officials about the cross; that it is "offensive", "way out there", and "blatantly Christian"? How do Christians even try get an understanding of that mentality to debate this mindset?