I am posting this here for access by viewers from ccfws.org.

Teacher's Salary Schedule . 

It is hard to believe that a whole year has gone by since I began writing on this blog. You can check the archives on your left, and see that on February 20th, 2005, I wrote my first real article, so I am marking today as the anniversiary of one year of blogging.

I have strayed from the original purpose of writing political commentary, and opinion in recent months to help out a worthy cause as you have read since September 1st, 2005. I do not regret for a minute the space and time devoted to that effort. Helping Trinity Church and Hurricane Katrina relief has been the most rewarding expierence I have had in recent years.

In the last few months, I have had the pleasure of introducing some other people and organizations to this new medium of disseminating news and opinion, and (Read the rest of the story below the fold...)

(Luke 2:1-11 KJV)

Why do I call this the True Gift of Love? I think it is quite obvious that as we look at the world around us, we can see that man can pretty much screw things up all on his own. Man, being left to his own devices will always choose according to the dictates of his nature. The nature of man is sin. That is the legacy that we have inherited from our father Adam. From the beginning of time since Adam ate of the forbidden fruit, we have all inherited his sinful nature.

What is sin? Sin is disobedience to God. Adam was forbidden to eat the fruit of one particular tree, but he disobeyed God’s command and was cast out of the Garden of Eden. Because of that one act of disobedience, he plunged all his posterity into separation (Read the rest of the story below the fold...)

I want to personally thank every Veteran and their families of the Armed Forces of the United States for their unwavering courage, their sacrifices, their honor, and their valor in keeping this country safe. Many have made the ultimate sacrifice, and I want to thank their families in their stead.

Our Veterans have stood their post, have fought for freedom, have maintained our defence, and have provided the security that we sleep so soundly under each night since the time of our Independence, and for that we are grateful.

I want you to know how proud I am, especially for those men and women who have served and who are continuing to serve in Iraq and Afghanistan. With your blood, you have paved the way for freedom in those nations.

May God protect and keep you until you return home.

Please remeber to thank a Veteran today!

This is a house keeping announcement for those who have been reading this blog regularly for these past few months.

Up to this point, I have written each article using the second person voice, or as it is more commonly known, the “editorial we”. As of today, I am switching voice to first person. I have been taught that by using the second person when writing, makes what you have written sound a little more authoritative. Such may very well be the case, but most of the editorial writers that I read on a daily basis, use the first person when writing their articles for publication, so why shouldn’t I? After all, what is written here aside from contributed messages written to call attention to the relief efforts for hurricane Katrina, are my own opinions.

Whether my opinions are authoritative or not are left to the reader to determine. Writing style will not change that! Only the passage of time and sustained readership will prove whether or not, what I have written will stand the test of time.

So from today onward into the future, the change in writing style will be in effect.

New Orleans may have escaped the direct hit of Hurricane Katrina, but it may not have escaped the storm surge from Lake Pontchatrain.

Unfortunately the area just North and Northeast of New Orleans is being hammered and flooded at this hour and is expected to experience more high winds and torrential rains for several more hours.

For an immediate forecast, and current NWS updates and local radar, Fox Affilate WVUE TV in New Orleans has the latest local news. The local weather is here.

Our thoughts and prayers are with all those in the path of this storm.

Today marks the thirtieth anniversiary of the day when God by His Grace reached out and saved a rebellious sinner and set him on a new path for His glory. If you don’t know what that means or would like to know, you may read here, which relates the story of John Newton, who authored “Amazing Grace”.

We are thankful for God’s grace, and mercy that He should save a sinner like me.

As Prime Minister Tony Blair spoke for all of Great Britain today, he echoed the sentiments of the British people, and we join with them in their determination. The following is part of his speech:

“It is important that those engaged in terrorism realise that our determination to defend our values and our way of life is greater than their determination to cause death and destruction to innocent people in a desire to impose extremism on the world. Whatever they do, it is our determination that they will never succeed in destroying what we hold dear in this country and in other civilised nations throughout the world.”

The speech above reminds me of another British Prime Minister who was equally steeled to the task at hand. This is a portion of the Dunkirk Speech of Sir Winston Churchill:

“We shall defend our island whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender.”

May God keep and guide you on this terrible day.

For those interested, Red State Rant is sponsoring a Dixie Blog Festival in Atlanta, the weekend of July 9th, 2005. The details are here, and this is what it says:

The DIXIE BLOGFEST is still on for the weekend of July 9th! Spread the word - a bunch of us will be getting together in Atlanta, and we want to make this as big as possible! Lance has been working on finding hotel accomodations for those of us traveling there. Please leave a comment here or email Lance, or contact me (Beth) at my blog.

We wish them well, and wish we could join them, but other obligations prohibit us from attending.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, has issued an action alert concerning a possible attempt to sneak in a last minute amendment during the sub-committee on Commerce, Science, and Justice meeting today, and again to the full committee on Thursday, to re-animate the MPAA’s broadcast flag and burn it into law.

What does the broadcast flag do?

“The Broadcast Flag cripples any device capable of receiving over-the-air digital broadcasts. It gives Hollywood movie studios a permanent veto over how members of the American public use our televisions. It forces American innovators to beg the FCC for permission before adding new features to TV. “

There are less than 48 hours left to see that the amendment is opposed. You can join in with the EFF, and take action by clicking here.

Or you may contact your Senator directly using the information below.

SUB-COMMITTEE AND FULL COMMITTEE MEMBERS

ALABAMA (Read the rest of the story below the fold...)

The problem with absurdity is that at some point people will no longer believe what you have to say.

For instance, in this article entitled, Clear skies end global dimming, the writer tells us that because of major steps taken in the last two decades, our skies have cleared up immensely. More sunlight is reaching the earth’s surface now than it was in 1980.

The article then hypothesizes the following:

“Researchers will now focus on working out the long-term effects of clearer air. One thing they do know is that black particulate matter in the air has been contributing a cooling effect to the ground. “It is clear that the greenhouse effect has been partly masked in the past by air pollution,” says Andreas Macke, a meteorologist at the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences in Kiel, Germany. “

So now what are we to think? We have been told for the last thirty years to decrease pollution in the air because it causes global warming and the green-house effect. Now we are told we have done our job, and have cleaned up the air immensely, and that causes global warming as well.

We wonder just how much “science” people have the gullibility to swallow. The most fascinating thing is that they do.

We want to thank our readers for their patience in our not publishing an article since last Saturday, April 30th.

We have been in the process of moving our site to a public hosting service provided by our Sponsor, Computers & Things, Inc. and their web hosting division, C & T Free BSD Web Hosting Services.

We also want to thank WordPress, who develops one of the finest blogging software packages in existence. Their programmers along with the Open Source Community manufacture, and maintain the software which results in what you see before you.

WordPress also has a community of developers who make themes for use with WordPress. The theme you see now is called Journalized-Sand, and is programmed by Mike Little, and a big thanks go to him as well.

C & T Web Hosting Services employs a sub-contractor from time to time to perform tasks they need assistance with. Travis Owens of Linux MD’s, is one of those sub-contractors. Travis has been invaluable with his help exporting the old MySql data, and importing it into the new. Travis also helped with the modifications to the Journalized-Sand theme.

We want to end this post, by thanking you for your continued reading and encouragement as we strive to make a difference in our government, and our society.

We will resume our regular publishing later this afternoon, or tomorrow morning.

John Paul II, has passed into eternity. He will long be remembered for keeping the teachings of the Catholic Church focused on life, care for the downtrodden, and opposition to communism. Even if one is not a Catholic, we can pause to recognize this man’s untiring work for good in the world.

Red State has a beautiful write-up of the Pope’s life and mission entitled, No man lived more fully. Here is a small excerpt:

“Karol Wojtyla was a man of salt and light, who took the Gospel message throughout the world, even to nations that opposed his very existence. He fought against the culture of death as an eloquent spokesman for the unique value of every human life. He was a suffering servant for Mankind, with his eyes always on heaven and earth at the same time.”

Hugh Hewitt wrote the following today:

“Such an outpouring of deep sorrow I don’t think the world will have seen since Churchill died.

With Reagan and Solzhenitsyn, John Paul II represents the three forces of opposition to communism that shattered the evil empire, the Soviet Union –the American-led West, the Eastern European resistance, and the Russian dissident movement. They also represented the three spheres of opposition: political, artistic and spiritual. Each man came into the field of his greatness later in life, and each has endured hard circumstances in their later years. I hope Solzhenitisyn is able to and inclined to write about his colleagues in the struggle that triumphed.”

Mr. Hewitt’s post can be found here.

We join with the Catholic Faithful of the world in commemorating his life and his passing.

Red State, offers a A RedState Public Service Message today, written by Erick, that offers some very good advice. In his article he has some links for a Living Will, and a Durable Health Care Power of Attorney in the State of Georgia. The article is well worth your time to read. Here is just an excerpt:

“I have done many living wills for doctors and all of them direct through their living wills that, should they be in a vegetative state, they want food withheld, but never water. All have told me that you’ll die without food, but withholding water, as is being done in the Schiavo case, is gruesome to see.”

For those wanting to use the links to documents for Georgia, click on the title above. Included here is a link to a Durable Health Care Power of Attorney for the State of Missouri.

It is everyone’s plan to make some arrangement for their future, but few follow through on the plan.

Unfortunately, the same is true of the plan for where to spend eternity.

We received an e-mail from the former Horse Race Blogger, Jay Cost today letting us know that he is returning to the blogosphere since closing down his old blog after the 2004 election.

If you have never read his political analysis, or followed his blog during the election last year, you missed a great time. Jay had the best polling data, analysis, commentary, and data collection on the net.

We were amazed on election night 2004, as we watched, around 1:00 AM, Susan Estrich gloating on Fox News Channel about how “President Bush’s 130,000 vote lead would evaporate once they began counting the heavily democratic precints in Kyoga County” in Ohio. After checking Jay’s blog, there was nothing to fear, because Jay’s prediction, coming in almost real time, was that Bush’s lead would be maintained, and it did.

Jay is a graduate student working towards his degree in American politics at the University of Chicago, and will be writing on a collaborative blog at Red State.

You can find more information about his return here. We will be linking to Red State, and putting it alongside all the other great political blogs we have there.

Welcome back Jay, and we wish you great success.

Mel Gibson’s movie of last year, The Passion Of The Christ, has been recut, taking out some of the most violent scenes and released a second time for a few weeks during this Easter Season.

If you have not seen this movie, forget what the critics or detractors have said, and by all means, go see it for yourself. This movie will some day be counted among the other great biblical movies that have ever been produced. It will certainly have a greater impact, if seen on the big screen in the movie theatre.

You never know, perhaps your life might be changed as well. See our previous post, When Lives Are Changed

Well here goes.

I am going to try out the editing features listed here for text and other things, and see how the editing features work in WordPress which is the software I am using for my blog.

Everything is simply a test to get my feet wet, and see how it looks on the site itself. As I get better, and as the software gets to be 1.5 actual release I hope to be prepared to start actually going live with the blog.

I am also running the blogging software, on a very premature Distro of Linux that I am helping to beta test. I think the distro is running quite well, and has allowed me to set all of this up and get it running.