Lost and Starving courtesy of Judith McGrane of Springfield.
4 Newtown Officials Face Charges
(From correspondent Pattie Price)
Criminal charges were filed Monday, May 9, against two Newtown Township employees and two township elected officials. All four are facing charges of theft by unlawful taking and theft of services in connection with the Federal Express investigation.
Newtown Supervisor George Wood, 68, of the 4000 block of Goshen Road; Newtown tax collector Marie Richards, 58, of the 300 block of Pomona Avenue; Newtown assistant to the township manager George Clement; and secretary Gwen Toyzer are charged with using the township Federal Express account of their personal business.
According to the affidavits filed by CID Detective Robert Lythgoe, an investigation of the alleged fraud revealed $1209.99 was paid to Federal Express for personal business.
Mrs. Toyzer sent seven packages totaling $1,086.57; Wood sent two packages totaling $21.45; Mrs. Richards sent two packages totaling $32.66; and Clement sent four packages totaling $90.76.
The affidavit also states that when the four were confronted with the allegations they all admitted the illegal use of the township’s Federal Express account and all made restitution.
A hearing scheduled May 26 in Newtown District Court will most likely be transferred to another District Court.
N.J. Asks Your Papers, Please
N.J. Asks Your Papers, Please — What some have come to enduringly take for granted others find to be a revelation.
A discussion the other day with some friends from New Jersey unveiled to me what they must go through to renew their drivers license, namely a series of identification documents identity one which may be the old drivers license with others being birth certificates or passports.
It’s almost like one was running for president.
Just kidding.
My friends told me further that if one used a birth certificate the name must perfectly match what was one drivers license records, which could cause headaches if a woman began using her husband’s name or one stopped using a middle initial.
Then one also had to provide proof of address such as a utility bill or property tax statement.
Contrast this with Pennsylvania where one merely takes the card PennDOT sends you to a drivers license center and one gets a new photo snapped.
New Jersey, of course, is not alone in its paranoia but as Benjamin Franklin said “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
The Garden State certainly seems ignorant about the directions as to how one catches a wild pig.
N.J. Asks Your Papers, Please
Stupidity, Death And Eric Holder
A shameful scandal concerning the death of a Border Patrol agent is starting to creep into the public consciousness.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) began a program in 2005 called Project Gunrunner in which American dealers knowingly sold guns to straw buyers for transfer to criminals in Mexico to set them up for arrest.
By early 2009, it had resulted in charges being filed against 1,400 persons.
In October of that year, the ATF decided to stomp on the accelerator with a Project Gunrunner operation they named “Fast and Furious”.
This plan was objected to by agents on the ground and by the gun dealers as well, but arms were twisted to get them in line and it went into effect. Within 15 months almost 1,800 weapons, most of which were AK-47 semi-automatic rifles, went over the border. The Mexican government was never told. These guns were used in the commission of a host of crimes including the murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry on Dec. 14, 2010.
Terry’s murder led to ATF agent John Dodson going public with the travesty.
And this has led to congressional hearings.
Attorney General Eric Holder, who oversees the ATF and under whose watch Fast and Furious happened, had this heated exchange Tuesday, May 3, with Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA49) during a hearing before the House’s Judiciary Committee.
Stupidity, Death And Eric Holder
Inky Circ Gets Uptick But . . .
The Philadelphia Inquirer’s average daily circulation for the six-months ending in March 2011 was 343,710 making it the nation’s 13th largest daily while its Sunday circulation was 488,287 putting it in 12th place in that category.
This is an increase of 1,349 daily and 10,701 Sundays from the period ending in September.
There is a caveat regarding any celebration because the Audit Bureau of Circulations which tracks these things changed its main metric from “paid circulation” to “total average circulation” which allows for inclusion of digital products and “branded editions” which means different nameplates with different content, which in the Inky’s case would be the Philadelphia Daily News.
The Inky actually has been taking advantage of the “branded edition” policy for a year, and, in fact, fell a few places in this tally because other newspaper companies are starting to do the same thing.
For this tally, the Daily News readers inflates the Inquirer daily circulation by 71,128.
A Joke For May 3, 2011
Courtesy of Judith McGrane
We Didn’t Forget Osama
We Didn’t Forget Osama — About the time of the 8th inning of last night’s Phillies-Mets game broadcast on ESPN the crowd at Citizens Bank Park broke into a chant of USA USA USA puzzling the players on the field and the umpires who had no smart phone access to the internet and hence did not realize that the mass murderer Osama Bin Laden had been brought to the justice he deserved.
Kudos to our military and intelligence services.
And we can finally accept that the answer to Darryl Worely’s question asked a year and a half after 9/11 is a resounding no.
We Didn’t Forget Osama
President Obama Releases Hawaiian Certificate
President Obama Releases Hawaiian Certificate — President Obama, today, released his Hawaiian certificate of live birth which he had been refraining from doing since concerns were aired in the summer of 2008 regarding his eligibility to hold the office of the Presidency as per Article II of the Constitution.
And the document shows that he was born in Hawaii and hence eligible as he always claimed.
So, Mr. President, why the delay?
Regardless, thank you Mr. President and now we can begin addressing the big issues like $5 per gallon gasoline, the real unemployment rate which as of February was 22 percent, your military goals in Libya and Afghanistan; and our $14 TRILLION debt.
Donald Trump is now demanding that you release your college records, and in the name of leadership, you should probably do that.
I do agree with you, however, that that is not one of the big issues.
Believe me.
Every time I fill up at the pump what I’m thinking about you has nothing to do with your college records.
President Obama Releases Hawaiian Certificate
Natural-Born Bill Would Likely Let O On Ballot
Natural-Born Bill Would Likely Let O On Ballot — A bill requiring presidential candidates to present proof of natural born citizenship — and other constitutional requirements — in order to be on the Pennsylvania ballot would likely not keep Barack Obama off it.
HB 1350, introduced to the State House of Representatives, April 20, by Daryl Metcalfe (R-12) and 23 others would require candidates for president and vice president of the United States to file with their nomination papers an affidavit attesting that they meet the requirements for the office set forth in section 1 of Article II of the Constitution of the United State and attach documents providing proof.
The constitutional requirements for one to hold the office of president or vice president are that one be a natural born citizen, that one be 35 years of age and that one have lived in the United States for at least 14 years.
Natural born citizen means “a person born within the jurisdiction of a national government”. The certification of live birth that President Obama’s supporters have been touting as proof that he meets this requirement would likely fulfill the requirements of the proposed bill.
And in a sane world it would. The problem is that when prominent Pennsylvania Democrat Philip J. Berg, who had served as a state Deputy Attorney General, filed suit on Aug. 21, 2008 accusing then Sen. Obama of not being eligible to hold the office of president, Obama cited privacy rights and fought tooth-and-nail to prevent what should have been simple corroborating documentation from seeing the light of day.
And so what we have is close to 40 percent of Americans believing that he is a imposter president.
So much for uniting us.
What if Obama had simply shrugged and waived all privacy rights? This, by the way, is what President Bush did regarding claims he had received special treatment for joining the Texas Air National Guard to fulfill service requirements during the Vietnam War.
Presumably, the corroboration would have been found and there would be no controversy. Or perhaps, the original documentation would have been discovered lost which would have still left the vast majority of Americans in acceptance of what was available, since Obama would not have appeared to be hiding something.
As it is now, however, a lot of sane people not inclined to conspiracy theories are starting to wonder.
HB1350, is a nice, safe, vanilla law, which should not be controversial and would probably make government a little better if it were passed but would have no profound impact on anything.
What would be interesting, though, would be for the state to pass a law requiring presidential candidates — heck, make it all candidates for public office — to waive all privacy privileges.
All birth records; all all college transcripts; all employer reviews; all military records (hear that John Kerry?) would be subject to public scrutiny.
Obviously things sealed in cooperation with other parties such as divorce proceedings would remain private, which would make for a bit of irony.
Natural-Born Bill Would Likely Let O On Ballot
Christos Voskrese
Christos voskrese, which means Christ has Risen, is the Easter greeting in Church Slavonic which brings the response Voistinu voskrese or Indeed, He has risen.
Easter, of course, celebrates the Resurrection of the Lord Jesus and the salvation of Man.
The date for Easter is the Sunday following the first full moon after the spring equinox, which is always reckoned, regardless of astronomical observations, to be March 21 as per the Western churches that use the Gregorian calendar, so Easter always falls between March 22 and April 25 so the holiday is a late one this year.
The dating for Easter correlates with the means the Jews use to set the date for Passover, which correlates with Scripture since Scripture indicates that the Crucifixion of the Lord occurred as the lambs were being slaughtered for the celebration of that holiday.
In fact, in most Western languages the the name for the day is a cognate of the Pesach which is the Hebrew name for Passover. In Latin it would be Pascha so Paschal lamb would be Passover lamb.
In English and German, the word comes from Eostre month, which was basically April, and which the pagans who spoke Germanic languages had named for the goddess Eostre.
In Slavic, the holiday is called “Great Night” (Velikonoce in Slovak) or “Great Day” (Velikden in Ukrainian).
There are some caveats regarding the date. The Eastern churches that use the Julian calendar set the equinox is set at April 3, and, of course, the spring equinox is based on that of the Northern Hemisphere.
So, Christos Voskrese.
