Boeing Guards Guns Stolen

Pinkerton Government Services, which is responsible for providing security at the Boeing helicopter plant in Ridley Township, Pa., reported to township police yesterday that someone stole their guns.

Missing are six .40 caliber semiautomatic handguns and eight .38-caliber revolvers. They had been in a storage locker.
The plant manufactures the CH-47 Chinook and most of the V-22 Osprey.

Ho Ho, Hey Hey Do Away With The TSA

Daniel Rubin in the Feb. 8 edition of the  Philadelphia Inquirer exposed another egregious example of a prominent federal agency’s  absence  of common decency and sense.


This involved a businesswoman who wound up facing felony charges after a dispute stemming from her objections as to how screeners for the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) handled her underwear during a private baggage screening at Philadelphia International Airport. She was acquitted of all charges.

Last month, Rubin wrote about how a TSA screener brought a 22-year-old female college student to tears after he had joked he had found a container of white powder in her luggage.

And this is on top of incidents such as the one where Newark Airport was thrown into massive turmoil after a TSA guard left his post allowing a student to sneak into a passengers’ only area to give his girlfriend a goodbye smooch or the one where a noted war correspondent was handcuffed by TSA officers after he refused to divulge his income.

The TSA is the federalization of baggage screeners that occurred after 9/11. It was not wanted by the Bush Administration nor recommended by security experts but was insisted upon by leading Democrats solely, some thought,  to increase the federal workforce which is one of that party’s important constituencies.

Bush had to concede to the demand or the Democrats who controlled the Senate at the time would not have allowed other more critical security measures to be addressed.

It is time to return responsibility for baggage screening back to the airlines who want neither their planes to be blown up nor customers abused.

Snarlin’ Arlen Gets Party Endorsement

Arlen Specter is the party-endorsed candidate in the May 18 primary election for U.S. senator.  The Democratic State Committee gave the Republican turncoat its official blessing after a meeting yesterday in Lancaster, picking him over true-blue, ultra-liberal Congressman Joe Sestak (D-Pa7).

Congressman Murtha Has Died

Congressman John Murtha (D-Pa12) died today at Virginia Hospital Center in Arlington. He was 77 and had represented his district since 1974.


Murtha’s  gallbladder was removed  Jan. 28 in what was considered a routine laparoscopic procedure at Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland. An infection developed, however, and on Feb. 1 he was moved to the intensive care unit at the Virginia Hospital Center.


Murtha, the first Vietnam veteran to be elected to congress, was Pennsylvania longest serving congressman and was seeking to win a 20th term this November. He chaired the House Subcommittee on Defense.

His district is the only one in the nation that voted for Republican presidential candidate  Sen. John McCain and for Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry.

Gov. Rendell is expected to call a special election to fill the seat. Murtha had challengers —Ron Mackell Jr. and  34-year-old Ryan Bucchianeri — in the May 18 Democratic Primary.

The leading contender for the GOP nomination is Bill Russell, who was Murtha’s opposition in 2008. He faces GOP activist Dave Battaglia  and businessman Tim Burns.

Hello, Amber Murphy

Brian and Holly Murphy are the proud parents of a new baby girl with the lovely name of Amber. If I understood Brian correctly she was born Saturday on the day of the snowstorm.

Congratulations Brian and Holly.
Brian is one of the good guys who helped clear out the neighborhood with his snowblower, along with Andrew and a fellow I couldn’t identify. Granted, Brian did his service on Sunday but he did appear to have a commitment on the day of the blizzard.

February Blizzard 2010

February Blizzard 2010

The community Souper Bowl Of Caring Food Drive being held in Springfield Pa. is going to have to wait for a day other than Super Bowl Saturday. The blizzard that is still rocking the Philadelphia region and much of the East Coast is expected to continue until early this evening.

It may wind up being compared to the Blizzard of ’93.
February Blizzard 2010

Snarlin’ Arlen’s Low Blow Against Admiral Joe

I think I might change my bet and put it on Admiral Joe “I Believe The World Is Burning To The Ground” Sestak as to who is going to be the Democratic nominee in this year’s Pennsylvania senate race. 

During last night’s Democratic candidate’s forum in Lancaster, incumbent Arlen “I Believe The World Is Burning To The Ground Too” Specter compared missed votes by the 7th District’s congressman to going AWOL in the Navy. It turned out that a lot of the votes Sestak missed were due to his spending time with his dying father who passed away in September. 
And Sestak, of course, had been hammering away throughout the night on the votes that Specter didn’t miss as a Republican in support of the Bush agenda which was not making Arlen a darlin’ with the Dems paying attention to the face-off.
Specter’s statement is akin to the bone-headed claim made by GOP incumbent Curt Weldon in the 2006 congressional race that Sestak should have been sending his four-year-old daughter to a Philadelphia-area hospital to treat her brain tumor. It was about then I thought Weldon might actually lose the race.
Still, to seal the deal Sestak did require a very strange last minute raid by federal agents on the homes and businesses of friends and relatives of Weldon — a raid which, btw, has yet to lead to any charges against the principals or serious charges against anybody. 
Maybe, I won’t change my bet.
If Sestak should wind up being the Dems’ pick, however, almost sure-bet GOP-nominee Pat Toomey  must keep in mind that Sestak is basically a nice guy. He doesn’t seem to hate anybody. He’s not sneaky. He’s not a liar. He’s not a thief. He’s not lazy. He’s not irresponsible, well perhaps intellectually but not in terms of keeping commitments and such.
What Sestak is, however, is an outspoken, staunch, true-blue believer in things that will make our lives much, much harder if they should ever be instituted. He is actually much worse than Arlen Specter whose constituency is first and perhaps only Arlen Specter.
If Toomey sticks to the issues, he’s going to win easily against either candidate.


Murtha Condition Is Stable

Matthew Mazonkey, a spokesman for Congressman John Murtha (D-Pa12), told the Washington Post yesterday that the congressman’s condition remains stable.

Murtha was placed in the intensive care unit at the Virginia Hospital Center in Arlington, Va., Feb. 1, after complications from gall bladder surgery.

PSU’s Findings ‘Untrue On Variety Of Levels’ Says ClimateAudit

Steve McIntyre’s ClimateAudit.Org, the website that has been leading the way in exposing the global warming travesty, has chimed in on Penn State’s attempt to make go away the controversy of its involvement with the distortions in data that politicians throughout the world — well, OK, not China, Russia or India — are using to make lives harder.

He says PSU’s conclusions are “untrue on a variety of levels”.
Dr. Michael Mann, who heads PSU’s Earth System Science Center, is creator of the notorious “hockey stick” graph shown to tens of millions of school children — and the thousands of Al Gore movie fans — that shows the earth to be catastrophically warming.
It has been made clear in the last few months that Mann purposely left out information in making that graph that showed, well, the Earth isn’t warming so much.
The board Penn State created to investigate the matter in response to a public outcry declared that wasn’t such a big deal.
Mann’s name was prominent in the emails leaked last November from the University of East Anglia’s Hadley Climatic Research Centre in the United Kingdom that blew the lid off the scandal.
Below is Mann’s infamous hockey stick graph that has scared children and convinced many that we must destroy our economy to appease angry earth spirits.

Did Obama Leave Before Tebow’s Closing Prayer?

Tim Tebow, the Florida Gator’s Heisman-trophy winning quarterback, gave the closing prayer at yesterday’s National Prayer Breakfast.

The event began in 1953 and is traditionally attended by national leaders including the president.
President Obama was no exception yesterday although he apparently left before Tebow’s prayer.
Tebow has become a controversial figure due to his slated appearance in a pro-life ad during the Super Bowl, Sunday.