by David Almasi

On the occasion of "Juneteenth," the oldest and most recognized annual commemoration of the end of slavery in the United States, members of the Project 21 black leadership network suggest the civil rights-themed holiday be used to celebrate freedoms that have been won and as a warning of how easily freedom can be threatened by an overbearing government.

Project 21 members have called attention to the Juneteenth since 1999, urging black Americans to use Juneteenth to embrace their inherent talents and strengthen their ties with family and community.

Now, when the Obama Administration and Congress are increasing government intervention into the lives of all Americans, Project 21 members suggest that people reflect upon how this expansion of power can reduce the threaten individual freedom.

"The liberties we enjoy today came at a tremendous cost and after a lot of suffering," said Project 21 fellow Deneen Borelli. "Today historically marks the day of the opening of the door to opportunity for blacks to seek 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.' We should take advantage of this liberty to strive to improve our lives and build upon the sacrifices of those who fought for freedom."

"It's important to remember that Juneteenth is rooted in our achieving our freedom. It is the growth of an activist government intent on regulating most - if not all - aspects of our lives that is now threatening that freedom," said Project 21 member Bishop Council Nedd II. "There's a lot at risk should politics be allowed to take precedence over the protection of individual rights. Environmental regulations, for instance, already substantially affect private property rights and the ability for many to conduct legitimate business. Just think of what might happen to our independence if we are forced to rely on a partisan government for health care, to determine if we can buy a car or how we can worship without offending perceived sensibilities? This is something we need to consider as we mark Juneteenth this year."

Project 21 member Ak'bar Shabazz added: "As our nation advances rapidly away from embracing personal responsibility towards government protection and oversight, we should keep in mind that these freed slaves wanted only the opportunity to be free and control their own destinies. Their attitudes towards freedom contrasts greatly from today, as many people look for more government control over their lives."

Juneteenth commemorates the anniversary of the June 19, 1865 arrival of Union soldiers in Galveston, Texas. The soldiers carried the news that the Civil War was over and that President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation had abolished slavery two-and-a-half years earlier.

The annual commemoration became known as Juneteenth and quickly became a stabilizing as well as motivating presence in the lives of black Americans in Texas, who faced many uncertainties associated with newly-acquired freedom. The observance quickly spread from Texas to be recognized across the United States.

Juneteenth is celebrated in many ways, but education and self-improvement have been consistent themes at commemorative community gatherings and picnics in recent years. In 1980, Juneteenth was made an official holiday in Texas. According to the National Juneteenth Holiday Campaign, 25 states currently recognize Juneteenth as a state holiday.

by David Almasi

The U.S. Senate resolution apologizing for slavery and segregation will be used as a lobbying tool to acquire reparations payments, say members of the black leadership network Project 21. The group urges the Senate to "move on," saying the apology will do little to heal perceived racial gaps.

On June 18, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed a resolution apologizing for slavery and segregation in the United States. While the resolution was written with the intention that it could not be used to support claims for monetary reparations, reparations activists Randall Robinson told the Washington Post the legislation constitutes a "confession" that will aid the process of acquiring reparations.  Harvard professor Charles Ogletree said the resolution should not be a substitute for reparations, saying "That battle will be prolonged."

Project 21 members voicing skepticism about the politics behind the resolution and the need for it include:

Jerry Brooks (Auburn, WA): "I'll accept the Senate's apology, but let's move on already. This apology is something that might have been more appropriate long ago, and now it's likely going to be misused by those with a political axe to grind. In particular and despite its intention to the contrary, it is already being used to promote reparations. Not only is this an idea without merit, but an extremely foolish one to be clinging to while our nation is trying to recover from its current economic distress."

Brooks continued, "I also take offense to the ignorant partisan attacks involved in this debate. In trying to infer Republicans are responsible for slavery is downright silly considering that the party came about as part of the movement to abolish slavery."

Jimmie L. Hollis (Millville, NJ): "As an American of African ancestry, I think this apology is ridiculous and useless. It is just another 'feel good' action. If we are to start apologizing for every injustice and wrong done in the past, we will spend the next few decades just apologizing. Let's move on."

Bob Parks (Athol, MA): "Why the need to do this now? Are we attempting to keep the First Lady proud of her country?"

Parks added, "The problem is that, when you apologize, it's important that the recipient knows the reason for the apology and who is giving it.  It wasn't the entire Senate whose former party slogan was 'the White Man's Party' or fostered the Ku Klux Klan or resisted black civil rights efforts until it was realized just how the black voting bloc could be used for political advantage. But why the entire Senate is apologizing for evil past doings, once supported by the Democrat Party, is a mystery to me."

by AV Web

Eminent domain has been invoked to secure some 500 acres of in Somerset Country, Pa., from seven owners, for a memorial to United Airlines Flight 93, a Boeing 757 that crashed there September 11, 2001, after passengers heeded the call "Let's roll" and attempted to retake the flight from its hijackers. The memorial for the 40 passengers and crew will encompass 1,400 acres, and the Department of Justice has a paperwork deadline at the end of the month. Flight 93 Federal Advisory Commission members, Somerset County Commissioner Pamela Tokar-Ickes and Stonycreek Township Supervisor Gregory Walker, have stepped down in protest of the land grab. Replacements are being sought from a pool of area residents. The National Park Service, which will own the land and could have negotiated for its purchase, was defended by the U.S. Department of Interior. Associate director Steve Whitesell told a local news station "we're at the deadline. We need to start proceeding with construction" to make an opening date of September 11, 2011. Vocal property owners are stating that they were willing to make a less forceful transfer of ownership, but were never engaged in negotiations for the land.

Among those who will lose property is a man whose father had purchased land there during the great depression and a pastor who owns a cottage there where he planned to retire. Landowner Randall Musser told the Associated Press he served on the committee that helped establish the memorial's boundaries and said that back in 2002 landowners were promised that eminent domain wouldn't be used. A spokesman for the park service said of the latest plans, "It's just fitting and right that we get this done in time for the 10th anniversary." Eminent domain eliminates the potential for title challenges, liens and other claims that could delay the project.

Related: http://www.wjactv.com/news/19490778/detail.html

 by Jeffrey Kuhner

The disastrous path on which America is currently embarked was tried in another country. A fact not well known is that Argentina, prior to World War II, was an economic powerhouse. Beginning in the 1880s and continuing through the 1920s and 1930s, it was regarded as one of the most prosperous and advanced nations in the world. Then Juan Peron and his wife Eva took control in the 1940s until a coup in 1955 ousted them from power.

Fellow Americans, please know: I am black; I grew up in the segregated South.  I did not vote for Barack Obama; I wrote in Ron Paul's name as my choice for president.  Most importantly, I am not race conscious.  I do not require a black president to know that I am a person of worth, and that life is worth living.  I do not require a black president to love the ideal of  America.

I cannot join you in your celebration.  I feel no elation.  There is no smile on my face.  I am not jumping with joy.  There are no tears of triumph in my eyes.  For such emotions and behavior to come from me, I would have to deny all that I know about the requirements of human flourishing and survival - all that I know about the history of the  United States of America , all that I know about American race relations, and all that I know about Barack Obama as a politician.   I would have to deny the nature of the "change" that Obama asserts has come to  America .  Most importantly, I would have to abnegate my certain understanding that you have chosen to sprint down the road to serfdom that we have been on for over a century.  I would have to pretend that individual liberty has no value for the success of a human life.  I would have to evade your rejection of the slender reed of capitalism on which your success and mine depend.  I would have to think it somehow rational that 94 percent of the 12 million blacks in this country voted for a man because he looks like them (that blacks are permitted to play the race card), and that they were joined by self-declared "progressive" whites who voted for him because he doesn't look like them.  I would have to wipe my mind clean of all that I know about the kind of people who have advised and taught Barack Obama and will fill posts in his administration - political intellectuals like my former colleagues at the  Harvard  University 's Kennedy School of Government.

I would have to believe that "fairness" is the equivalent of justice.  I would have to believe that man who asks me to "go forward in a new spirit of service, in a new service of sacrifice" is speaking in my interest.  I would have to accept the premise of a man that economic prosperity comes from the "bottom up," and who arrogantly believes that he can will it into existence by the use of government force.  I would have to admire a man who thinks the standard of living of the masses can be improved by destroying the most productive and the generators of wealth.
 
Finally, Americans, I would have to erase from my consciousness the scene of 125,000 screaming, crying, cheering people in Grant Park,  Chicago irrationally chanting "Yes We Can!"  Finally, I would have to wipe all memory of all the times I have heard politicians, pundits, journalists, editorialists, bloggers and intellectuals declare that capitalism is dead - and no one, including especially Alan Greenspan, objected to their assumption that the particular version of the anti-capitalistic mentality that they want to replace with their own version of anti-capitalism is anything remotely equivalent to capitalism.
 
So you have made history, Americans.  You and your children have elected a black man to the office of the president of the  United States , the wounded giant of the world.  The battle between John Wayne and Jane Fonda is over - and that Fonda won.  Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern must be very happy men.  Jimmie Carter, too.  And the Kennedys have at last gotten their Kennedy look-a-like.  

The self-righteous welfare statists in the suburbs can feel warm moments of satisfaction for having elected a black person.  So, toast yourselves: 60s countercultural radicals, 80s yuppies and 90s bourgeois bohemians.  Toast yourselves, Black America.  Shout your glee Harvard,  Princeton , Yale, Duke, Stanford, and Berkeley.  You have elected not an individual who is qualified to be president, but a black man who, like the pragmatist Franklin Roosevelt, promises to - Do Something!  You now have someone who has picked up the baton of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society.  But you have also foolishly traded your freedom and mine - what little there is left - for the chance to feel good. 

There is nothing in me that can share your happy obliviousness.

{The Kansas governor has been less than forthright in her responses on paying deliquent taxes or her relationship with the infamous abortionist, Dr. George Tiller in the confirmation hearings. The media has largely avoided reporting on the same issues. These events and relationships are well documented at the Kansas Meadowlark and on Operation Rescue - Ed.}

By Michael Steele, RNC Chairman

Significant questions remain about Gov. Kathleen Sebelius' evolving relationship with a late-term abortion doctor as well as about her position on the practice of late-term abortions. The Senate should not vote, nor should Gov. Sebelius be confirmed, until these questions are answered fully and completely.

Gov. Sebelius has not been forthcoming about her relationship with Dr. Tiller, a late-term abortion doctor who is currently under investigation. She admitted the full extent of the political contributions she received from Dr. Tiller only after press reports contradicted her previous financial statements.

Gov. Sebelius must also make her position on the extremist and heinous practice of late-term abortions known to the American people. The vast majority of Americans do not support the concept of late-term abortions. They deserve to know whether President Obama's choice to be the nation's top health official supports these indefensible procedures.

Until Gov. Sebelius provides the American people with clear and complete answers to these questions, the U.S. Senate should not vote to confirm her nomination. If Gov. Sebelius and the Obama Administration are unwilling to answer these questions, President Obama should withdraw her nomination.

{The current financial crisis has its roots in the Presidency of Democrat William Jefferson Clinton who pressured both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to ease restrictions on loan qualifications as reported by the New York Times in Sept of 1999. Steven Holme's article is available for members in the NYT archives  or in the PDF link below. The change in Fannie Mae lending practices is either a clever scheme to develop the Democrat voting base at the expense of taxpayers or enrich International lenders at the equal expense of the American taxpayer - Ed}

by Steven A. Holmes

In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities and low income consumers, The Fannie Mae Corporation is easing the credit requirements on loans that it will purchse from banks and other lenders.

The action, which will begin as a pilot program, involving 24 banks in 15 markets- including the New York metropolitcan region- will encourage those banks to extend home mortgages to individuals whose credit is generally not good enough to qualify for conventional loans.  Fannie Mae officials say they hope to make it a nationwide program by next spring.

Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits.

Continued here: NYTimes1999.pdf

by Iain Martin

Why couldn't President Obama have put on more of a show for his British guests? He looked like he simply couldn't be bothered. Number 10 may be content that they just about got away with the visit to the Oval Office yesterday, as Andrew Porter reports from Washington.

But on this side of the Atlantic the whole business looked pretty demeaning. The morning papers and TV last night featured plenty of comment focused on the White House's very odd and, frankly, exceptionally rude treatment of a British PM. Squeezing in a meeting, denying him a full press conference with flags etc. The British press corps, left outside for an hour in the cold, can take it and their privations are of limited concern to the public.

But Obama's merely warmish words (one of our closest allies, said with little sincerity or passion) left a bitter taste with this Atlanticist. Especially after his team had made Number 10 beg for a mini press conference and then not even offered the PM lunch. We get the point, sunshine: we're just one of many allies and you want fancy new friends.

Well, the next time you need something doing, something which impinges on your national security, then try calling the French, or the Japanese, or best of all the Germans. The French will be able to offer you first rate support from their catering corps but beyond that you'll be on your own.

When it comes to men, munitions and commitment you'll soon find out why it pays to at least treat the Brits with some manners.