A Duty To Die?

Thomas Sowell is a great columnist. Check out his view of the death culture among our modern American intelligentsia. READ MORE

How Free Markets Help The Poor

Walter Williams, as usual, applies common sense to our understanding of free market capitalism. READ MORE.

Look Out Grandma, Big Brother Has Got His Eye On You

"And though the past had it's share of injustice,
fine was the spirit in many a way,
but it's protectors and friends have been sleeping --
now it's a monster and will not obey."
-- from the song The Monster by Steppenwolf

Here is another example of what happens when we allow the federal government to "help" us, and it proves the old adage that "Whoever pays the piper calls the tune."

Senior citizens dining at the Ed Young Senior Citizens Center in Port Wentworth, Georgia have offered a prayer of thanks before their meals for as long as anyone can remember. Now these elderly Americans, members of the greatest generation who sacrificed so much of their young lives to fight for our freedoms, are being told they can no longer pray together before their meals.

Federal regulations have graciously allowed them a moment of silence for private prayer - at least for now.

An outift called Senior Citizens Inc. has been contracted by the city of Port Wentworth to provide meals at the Senior Citizens Center, at a cost of about $6 per meal. The seniors pay only 55 cents for the meal, and the federal government makes up the difference.

So now, prayers before the meals are an issue - a violation, in the all-seeing eyes of our Big Brother in Washington, of the separation of church and state.

The rationale is that since the federal government is paying for the meals, federal guidelines must be followed in all areas related to the meal service.

First the kids couldn't pray in school. Now senior citizens can't pray aloud over their government-subsidized meals.

I wonder -- if you are eating food at home that was purchased with food stamps, will the government someday decide that your private meal-time activities must conform to federal regulations? You may laugh, and say that is ridiculous. But how ridiculous is censoring the prayers of senior citizens?

When we keep giving more money (which means more power) to the federal government, and keep inviting the federal government to get ever more deeply involved in every facet of our daily lives, we encourage the government to dictate the conduct of everything we do.

Should we be surprised that the government now tells senior citizens they can't pray aloud before a meal? Isn't this just the kind of power that liberals love to lord over us, the unwashed masses?

The bigger our government grows, the more of this we can expect. It is an irrrefutable lesson of history that power corrupts. We have created a monster, and as it grows more powerful, it will only become more corrupt and arbitrary in it's use of power.

How far will they push us before we push back? Just another reason to "Remember in November." The coming 2010 election will decide if we can reverse this tyrannical tide of government control, or continue to march towards the "brave new world" of the nanny state.

Check out the full news report at http://www.wsbtv.com/news/23495797/detail.html

Tales from the Airport Men's Room

Let's face it: men are pigs.

We can't help it. We try to be civilized, but it just doesn't come naturally to us. Case in point: the condition of the average men's public restroom.

While en route home this week from a trip to Florida, the call of nature compelled me to visit the men's facilities in terminal 3 of the Fort Lauderdale airport.

Apparently a jumbo-jet full of men afflicted with incontinence, who had just finished an in-flight watermelon-eating contest, landed at the terminal right before I got to the restroom.

Oh, the inhumanity!

Various areas of the floor around the urinals were puddled with what I could only assume was something I really didn't want being tracked around on the bottom of my shoes. Guys were lined up three deep for the urinals. The stalls were filled.

I was in a hurry. I had a plane to catch.

Then I spotted the one empty stall in the corner. It was the extra-large stall marked for handicapped use.

There were no handicapped men in sight. It seemed a shame to let this valuable bit of real estate go to waste when there was a roomful of men in such dire need.

I calculated that even if someone in a wheelchair was heading that direction, I would be in and out before they could get there. Worst case scenario: I would have to abandon the mission mid-stream, so to speak, if a handicapped man in desperate straits began pounding on the door.

There are moments in a man's life when he is forced to make a split-second decision, and move forward regardless of the consequences.

I had made up my mind. I was going in.

So it was that I found myself in a clean, spacious stall, with its own private sink. It was an oasis of tranquility amidst the sloshing bedlam in the rest of the men's room. I suddenly wished I had a newspaper and a cup of coffee, and did not have to rush out to catch a plane.

It didn't take long for my idyllic repose to be interrupted by some crude fool pounding at the stall door. I could see his feet under the partition. He was no more handicapped than me, and he could just wait his turn like everyone else.

"Just a minute!" I shouted.

A few moments later, some joker about 6'6" was peeking over the partition at me. I looked up at him and he quickly turned away. Is there no respect for privacy these days?

When I was ready to leave, I washed my hands in my private sink, and made my way out through the wading pool in the middle of the room. An overworked custodian had arrived with a mop. He would have a long afternoon ahead of him trying to keep up with this mob.

I elbowed my way through the crowd, and just as I made it out the door, I noticed a young father (who was apparently traveling alone with his daughter) leading a bewildered-looking 4-year-old girl into the men's room that I had just escaped. This might get ugly, I thought to myself.

I could only hope that father and daughter had thick rubber-soled shoes, and that they were fortunate enough to find the corner stall with the private sink.