Ashley Smith’s testimony is incredibly touching. Video is here.

While held hostage for those seven hours, she read Purpose Driven Life to Brian Nichols. She asked him about his purpose in life, what talents he had been given to use and discussed life with him.

Amazing story. Amazing testimony.

Ashley’s a real hero.

Others reacting.

Chasing the Wind
Talk Left
Espresso Roast
Michelle Malkin
News Hounds
Airborne Combat Engineer
Kevin

According to a quote in this Associated Press story, it’s because:

“There’s not much else to do.” [other than go to the Eat ‘n Park].

I suggest they sue the restaurant.

From News.com.au:

Casino security personnel became suspicious of the then 59-year-old gambler constantly tapping his right foot under a roulette table.

Police found a Maxwell Smart-style microcomputer hidden in the heel and sole of his scuffed elevated dress shoe.

With a tap of a toe, a microcomputer in the shoe transmitted a voice-synthesised message to a wireless micro-earpiece telling the user of roulette wheel’s speed. This could help calculate the next number that would appear.

Thrown Back transcribes a pdf received from Cheryl Ford and RN in Tampa.

In her research, Ms. Ford found a document titled “Exit Protocol” in Terri’s file. The document is on Hospice of the Florida Suncoast “Patient Care Notes” stationery, and is dated April 19, 2001. This document lays out, in clinical detail, the procedures to be followed in bringing about Terri’s death by starvation and dehydration.

Read it. It’s gruesome.

(via After Abortion)

If you haven’t seen this interview with the managing editor of the Washington Post, Philip Bennet, in the Chinese People’s Daily Online, check it out:

Yong Tang: In such sense, do you think America should be the leader of the world?

Bennett: No, I don’t think US should be the leader of the world. My job is helping my readers trying to understand what is happening now. What is happening now is very difficult to understand. The world is very complex. There are various complex forces occurring in it. I don’t think you can imagine a world where one country or one group of people could lead everybody else. I can’t imagine that could happen. I also think it is unhealthy to have one country as the leader of the world. People in other countries don’t want to be led by foreign countries. They may want to have good relations with it or they may want to share with what is good in that country.

That is also a sort of colonial question. The world has gone through colonialism and imperialism. We have seen the danger and shortcomings of those systems. If we are heading into another period of imperialism where the US thinks itself as the leader of the area and its interest should prevail over all other interests of its neighbors and others, then I think the world will be in an unhappy period.

… and …

Bennett: … I don’t think there is much evidence that promoting democracy is what the US is doing. It is what it says it is doing…

Spinbad has a good deconstruction of this interview. The National Ledger has more. Michelle Malkin pointed out on Friday that there is a chance that nuances were lost in translation.

Via tuaw.com, check out the AIM (AOL’s Instant Messenger) Terms of Services:

”Although you or the owner of the Content retain ownership of all right, title and interest in Content that you post to any AIM Product, AOL owns all right, title and interest in any compilation, collective work or other derivative work created by AOL using or incorporating this Content. In addition, by posting Content on an AIM Product, you grant AOL, its parent, affiliates, subsidiaries, assigns, agents and licensees the irrevocable, perpetual, worldwide right to reproduce, display, perform, distribute, adapt and promote this Content in any medium. You waive any right to privacy. You waive any right to inspect or approve uses of the Content or to be compensated for any such uses.”

More at Random Access 3.0 and Thrashing Through Cyberspace.

If you Googled to get here and are looking to buy Mark Levin’s new book, Men in Black, you can do so here.

I have not read it yet, but MoLWL is recommending it, and makes note of some of the disparaging comments being posted on the Amazon site.

For more thoughts on judicial activism, check out Taste of Liberty’s comments here.

And Tusk and Talon thinks it’s time to start the impeachment process for Anthony Kennedy.

Article I vests ALL legislative power in the Congress. Article II gives treaty-making authority to the president and the senate. Article IV guarantees “to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government”. I think that’s where the federalism comes in. The Tenth amendment also has something to say about limiting the federal government’s power over state laws, and I think the Eleventh suggests the court should not base US law on what other countries do.

So why, with all the dismay over this decision, is no one demanding that something be done about it?

N.Z., who runs the TTLB ecosystem blog ranking, is getting married and wants your advice on … titanium rings?

Yep. So if you’ve got any advice on titanium rings, or marriage in general, send it his way. :-)

I’ve not done any blogging on the bankruptcy bill because, frankly, I haven’t taken the time to research it, and didn’t have anything informative to add to the debate. If you haven’t noticed it, there has been a strong movement against the bill among the grassroots conservative blogs.

Yesterday, Instapundit ‘lanched a Dave Ramsey video at Jackson’s Junction where he takes the bill to task. Check out the video here, and the quote Glenn highlights here. I don’t get much of a chance to listen to Mr. Ramsey, but when I do I enjoy his show and pretty much agree with him on most things.

Dave Ramsey said: “No one except for me and Ted Kennedy are standing up for the consumer. I can’t believe we’re on the same side.”

Maybe it’s time I pay attention to this and do a bit of homework.

The Realitygram says:

Credit card companies that invested $24 million in political campaigns will reap a windfall with passage of new bankruptcy legislation.

…

Not to worry, the assets of the rich are protected and the federal courts will collect the monies owed on 28 percent financing charges by the poor and middle class.

And also:

WINNERS: Large credit card companies, MBNA, Ctitigroup, J.P. Morgan Chase, Bank of America, American Express, owners of shopping malls.

LOSERS: Small businesses, elderly, families with children.

Paul Krugman (via Bark Bark Woof Woof):

The bankruptcy bill was written by and for credit card companies, and the industry’s political muscle is the reason it seems unstoppable.

…

The credit card companies say this is needed because people have been abusing the bankruptcy law, borrowing irresponsibly and walking away from debts. The facts say otherwise.

A vast majority of personal bankruptcies in the United States are the result of severe misfortune. One recent study found that more than half of bankruptcies are the result of medical emergencies. The rest are overwhelmingly the result either of job loss or of divorce.

Distance has some harsh words:

The Bankruptcy Bill Pay off your debts, don’t use credit cards. You can no longer escape peonage if you have these things. The Devil is loose in the form of the marriage between big business and the Republican party and about half of our Democrats in the US Senate. Credit card companies now have their way. They have “donated” money to candidates and now they have been repaid with the bankruptcy bill.

If you have some medical catastrophe, there will be no escaping debt. Your wages will be sucked away. They are creating a permanent class of peons through credit cards.

This is an utter financial disaster.

Rick Edwards wonders how this relates to the stalling of Social Security Reform.

I would be curious to know if the recent - and highly unfortunate - senate passage of the bankruptcy reform bill is contributing to the public’s increasing negativity toward Social Security reform. Could the public, perceiving an elimination of the financial safety net for some of the most unfortunate via bankruptcy reform, become increasingly skittish about any kind of serious tinkering with Social Security?

LaShawn has some interesting comments on diversity within the blogosphere.

Whites are still the majority in America, and the Internet tends to be dominated by whites. It follows that the majority of bloggers will be white. I have no grand theories, at least none I’d care to discuss today, why white men in particular dominate the top bloggers.

At the risk of sounding like a liberal, I do wish more blacks and women were invited to these blogger conferences and called for TV spots and radio interviews. I won’t complain too much, though. I’ll just continue blogging about what interests me and hope you find something on the blog that interests you.

I remain hopeful that “affirmative action” will keep its ugly hands out of the pot. We will rise or fall on pure blogging. And some high-profile linkage

There are also a LOT of blogs which do not have a picture posted, have a generic name and from a brief read you would have no idea the gender or the race of the author, and so I think it is also fascinating to consider our perceptions of who (or what race or gender) the person behind a non-descript blog (like this one) is.

Newsweek’s Steven Levy thinks there’s something more sinister going on.

So why, when millions of blogs are written by all sorts of people, does the top rung look so homogeneous? It appears that some clubbiness is involved. Suitt puts it more bluntly: “It’s white people linking to other white people!” (A link from a popular blog is this medium’s equivalent to a Super Bowl ad.) Suitt attributes her own high status in the blogging world to her conscious decision to “promote myself among those on the A list.”

Captain Ed’s response:

In an endeavor where everyone works for themselves — no hiring barriers, no potentially discriminatory prerequisites — this has to be one of the dumbest premises I’ve yet read about the blogosphere. Anyone with access to the Internet, including the local library, can start a blog, for free. The value of the blog gets determined by two governing mechanisms, neither of which has anything to do with race or gender. Primarily, the quality and timeliness of the writing gives most of the value, and what’s left can generally be chalked up to marketing.

::::

And speaking of race, Marcus Epstein has some interesting thoughts on race and the Condi ‘08 movement.

In this context, two further observations about CPAC that are worth noting:

- The growing “Draft Condoleezza” movement. Eighteen percent of the CPAC attendees said Secretary Rice was their top choice for the GOP ticket in 2008. This was only one percentage point below Rudolph Giuliani. A huge number of attendants were wearing “Condi in 2008″ buttons. Since then, I have noted an array of blogs and websites supporting her candidacy.

I find this absolutely baffling. Besides the fact that Rice has never served in elected office, we have no clue what her political views are. The only time she bothered to state an independent opinion besides echoing the President’s Iraq war stance was to support affirmative action before the Grutter and Gratz decisions.

Rice may be very conservative. But I don’t think that all the people sporting the “Condi in 2008″ buttons at CPAC knew anything that I didn’t know. What they did know is that Condoleezza Rice is black and a female. And, in their dream world, this will mean that they will be free from accusations of racism and sexism from the Left.

This idiotic rainbow Republicanism is a recipe for electoral failure. Besides the fact the choice most likely will alienate their white male base, it is unlikely to gain them any brownie points among blacks or females.

Just ask Pat Buchanan—and whomever it was who persuaded him to pick Ezola Foster as his running mate in 2000.

And continuing this Condi tangent, OTB links to Steven Taylor and the AP, pointing out that Condi says she won’t run.

“I will not run for president of the United States.” “I won’t run,” she told ABC’s “This Week.” “I won’t. How’s that? Is that categorical enough?”

Pirate Ballerina has the latest in the Ward Churchill saga. She has some documents supposedly from an ex-wife but she disclaimers it with “we can’t vouch for their authenticity.” (Learning from Dan Rather I guess.) One commenter at PB’s site points out about a dozen spelling errors in this document that is supposedly written by this PhD. I’m skeptical here.

Also, related to the new accusations of plagiarism, the negotiations between WC and UofC have stalled.

Via Michelle Malkin.

Marines driven out of UAW lot:

… the UAW International will no longer allow members of the 1st Battalion 24th Marines to park at Solidarity House if they are driving foreign cars or displaying pro-President Bush bumper stickers

And the story concludes with this quote by Lt. Col. Joe Rutledge who has a great point.

“I don’t know what a foreign car is today anyway. BMWs are made in South Carolina now.”

UPDATE: This situation has apparently been worked out. (Black five via Michelle)

Check out what Inmarsat Group, Ltd. is trying to do:

The launch is part of a $1.5 billion investment Inmarsat is making in building an Internet-based wireless network that is expected to be used primarily by governments, military, relief organizations and news agencies operating in remote areas of the globe.

The first satellite will provide data services up to 432KB per second to Asia, Africa and Europe. The second, scheduled for launch later this year, will serve North America, and the third satellite has been designated as a ground spare. It could, however, be launched in 2006, if the company finds that it’s needed to handle network traffic.