Lamentations 4 & 5 (excerpts)

How dark the gold has become,
How the pure gold has changed!
The sacred stones are poured out
At the corner of every street.

Even Jackals offer the breast,
They nurse their young;
But the daughter of my people has become cruel
Like ostriches in the wilderness.

The tongue of the infant cleaves
To the roof of its mouth because of thirst;
The little ones ask for bread,
But no one breaks it for them.

Those who ate delicacies
Are desolate in the streets;
Those reared in purple
Embrace ash pits.

Their appearance is blacker than soot,
They are not recognized in the streets;
Their skin is shriveled on their bones,
It is withered, it has become like wood.

Better are those slain with the sword
Than those slain with hunger;
For they pine away, being stricken
For lack of the fruits of the field.

The hands of compassionate women
Boiled their own children;
They became food for them
Because of the destruction of the daughter of my people.

Remember, O Lord, what has befallen us;
Look, and see our reproach.

…“Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did not do it to one of the least of these,
you did not do it to me. These will go away into eternal punishment,
but the righteous to eternal life.” Jesus, the Christ (Matthew 25: 45, 46)

May God have mercy on our land as judges order the starvation of the helpless.

Eric adds: LaShawn too is distressed.

Interesting approach out of Utah. Here’s the bill in pdf and here is another copy.

Utah’s governor signed a bill on Monday that would require Internet providers to block Web sites deemed pornographic and could also target e-mail providers and search engines.

The controversial legislation will create an official list of Web sites with publicly available material deemed “harmful to minors.” Internet providers in Utah must provide their customers with a way to disable access to sites on the list or face felony charges.

Technology companies had urged Republican Gov. Jon Huntsman not to sign the bill (click for PDF), saying it was constitutionally suspect and worded so vaguely its full impact is still unclear.

The measure, SB 260, says: “Upon request by a consumer, a service provider may not transmit material from a content provider site listed on the adult content registry.” A service provider is defined as any person or company who “provides an Internet access service to a consumer,” which could include everything from cable companies to universities, coffeeshops, and homes with open 802.11 wireless connections.

This is obviously an attempt to allow parents to have some additional peace of mind regarding the content available to their children online, and since it is impossible to regulate every website (read: international, etc), they are trying to regulate it on the ISP end. While this may be a nice idea, it is simply not going to work.

First of all, the burden on the ISP’s is too great, unless the government provides some sort of list of what web sites are harmful, and that is not an idea that has much merit at all. Second, including “homes with open 802.11 wireless connections” in the definition of service providers dooms this bill to failure. I would venture to guess that the vast majority of people with wireless internet connections have no idea whether their network is open and how to secure it.

Once again, we’re back to the issue of parental responsibility. If a parent doesn’t want their kid to see bad stuff online, they need to monitor their activities. There are lots of ways to do this, ranging from high tech keystroke loggers (yes, you can do this in your home, they’re your kids using your internet connection), to low tech “put the computer in the living room” and the even lower tech and more extreme “don’t let them online when you’re not with them.”

It is a parent’s job to ensure that their children are not harmed while in their home. It is not the job of the State. While I applaud the effort of the State of Utah to protect minors from harmful materials such as pornography, does anyone really think that a parent who does not manage their kids’ web usage will bother to ask the ISP to block the bad stuff?

Eric Goldman’s deconstruction:

The basic structure of the bill is that the Attorney General is responsible for preparing a database of sites that do not restrict minor access to material that is harmful to minors. It’s unclear if the AG is supposed to go on a witchhunt or just wait for people to call the AG’s attention to a site. Then, IAP subscribers can ask their IAPs to block their access to harmful to minor materials and any websites in the AG’s database. The IAP can comply with this request by using network-level filtering software or by giving filtering software to the consumer (the IAP can’t charge requesting consumers more for the service/software, though they can raise prices generally). I use the term “IAP,” but the law also refers to “Internet service providers,” and this could be interpreted to include websites, email service providers, etc.

No True Bill says:

If you live in Utah and have a wireless home network, you are now required by law to block all pornography from entering your home. And installing Net Nanny on your computer won’t cut it. You have to make sure the smut never even reaches your router.

Paul Chenoweth has some comments on the digital divide between parents and children, and children and their respective representatives.

The Nazi.com postings of Jeff Weise, shooter in the school massacre in Red Lake, Minnesota, can be seen at the Google cached version here.

Via Michelle and Wes Roth

Over a five-month period between March and August 2004, someone identifying himself as Weise posted numerous messages on a talkboard hosted by Nazi.org, the website of the Libertarian National Socialist Green party. The party promotes a Nazi philosophy of racial purity.

In March 2004, a chatroom participant tagged Todesengel (”angel of death”) began a thread titled “Native American Nationalist?” and introduced himself as “Jeff Weise, a Native American from the Red Lake ‘Indian’ reservation in Minnesota”. Todesengel expressed interest in joining the party and said he had done a great deal of research on Hitler, a man he much admired. Later in the thread, Todesengel changed his tag to NativeNazi.

UPDATE: More here.

The clues are sprinkled along a long trail the troubled 16-year-old boy left on Internet websites, blogs and postings where he weighed in on everything from Hitler and Bigfoot to suicide attempts and school shootings.

Well ABC and the rest of the leftist media are out there misrepresenting the Schiavo case and creating a fraudulent poll to promote their ideology of death.

After Dan Rather, is it any surprise that fraud would be the mainstay of information the leftist media presents?

And now the media is out there trumpeting how wonderful it is to starve to death and die from dehydration… more fraud. Maybe we could conduct another one of those free research projects where, along with Elisabeth Bumiller from the N.Y. Times, we invite members of the media to go through the process of starvation and dehydration for just a week… no food, no liquid. If it’s so blissful I would think almost getting there would be a real high. And the media sure likes a good high.

Here’s the breaking news from AP…

A federal judge on Tuesday refused to order the reinsertion of Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube, denying an emergency request from the brain-damaged woman’s parents that had been debated in Congress and backed by the White House.

It sure seems like this judge had made up his mind before the case even got to him. Otherwise don’t you think he would have ordered the tube reinserted or at least allowed someone to try and feed her orally while he reviewed the case?

Convicted murderers have it better than Terri Schiavo.

It’s time to do something about the judiciary in this country. Will the U.S. Senate be on board?

More here and here.

Remember this? Michelle Zipp “outed herself” as a Republican.

Well, it seems she has now been stripped of her duties as the Playgirl Editor-in-Chief as a result.

“Hello Drudge,

“After your coverage of my article about coming out and voting Republican, I did receive many letters of support from fellow Republican voters, but it was not without repercussions. Criticism from the liberal left ensued. A few days after the onslaught of liberal backlash, I was released from my duties at Playgirl magazine.

“After underlings expressed their disinterest of working for an outed Republican editor, I have a strong suspicion that my position was no longer valued by Playgirl executives. I also received a phone call from a leading official from Playgirl magazine, in which he stated with a laugh, “I wouldn’t have hired you if I knew you were a Republican.

“I just wanted to let you know of the fear the liberal left has about a woman with power possessing Republican views.”

Uncorrelated notes, as does VodkaPundit, that Ward Churchill still has his job.
Kevin thinks the timing is strange.

INCREDIBLE!

Here are first hand accounts describing the efforts Michael Schiavo went to in order to kill his wife, Terri Schiavo.

From one nurse…

“I learned, as part of my training, that there was a family dispute and that the husband, as guardian, wanted no rehabilitation for Terri,” Johnson explained. “Once, I wanted to put a cloth in Terri’s hand to keep her hand from closing in on itself, but I was not permitted to do this, as Michael Schiavo considered that to be a form of rehabilitation.”

From another…

“Michael [Schiavo] would say, ‘When is she going to die? Has she died yet?’ and ‘When is that bitch going to die?’” Iyer charged. “Other statements which I recall him making include, ‘Can’t anything be done to accelerate her death, won’t she ever die?’ When she wouldn’t die, Michael [Schiavo] would be furious.”

And another…

“I know that Terri did not receive routine physical therapy or any other kind of therapy. I was personally aware of orders for rehabilitation that were not being carried out,” Law alleged in her affidavit. “Even though they were ordered, Michael [Schiavo] would stop them. Michael [Schiavo] ordered that Terri receive no rehabilitation or range of motion therapy.”

And yet another…

“Terri spoke on a regular basis while in my presence, saying such things as ‘mommy’ and ‘help me,’” Iyer recalled. “‘Help me’ was, in fact, one of her most frequent utterances. I heard her say it hundreds of times.”

These are all from affidavits filed with the case. Read the full article here.

We don’t treat dogs like this. Even convicted murderers get a stay of execution while their case is reviewed.

If Terri dies, America will have reached a new low.