IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen United States of America

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

— John Hancock

New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton
Massachusetts:
John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry
Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery
Connecticut:
Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott
New York:
William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris
New Jersey:
Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark
Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross
Delaware:
Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean
Maryland:
Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton
Virginia:
George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton
North Carolina:
William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn
South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton
Georgia:
Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

FOX NEWS RECORDS UNPRECEDENTED TOP 10 OUT OF 10 PROGRAMS IN CABLE NEWS FOR 2ND QUARTER… ON PACE TO BE NETWORK’S BEST YEAR EVER…

THE O’REILLY FACTOR 3,191,000
HANNITY 2,345,000
GLENN BECK 2,053,000
ON THE RECORD W/GRETA 1,950,000
SPECIAL REPORT W/BRET BAIER 1,889,000
FOX REPORT/SHEP SMITH 1,783,000
THE O’REILLY FACTOR (RPT) 1,579,000
AMERICA’S NEWSROOM BILL HEMMER & MEGYN KELLY 1,399,000
YOUR WORLD W/NEIL CAVUTO 1,389,000
STUDIO B W/SHEP SMITH 1,169,000

http://www.drudgereport.com

Adding insult to injury, a number of Gay groups have sided with his attackers.

Mario Lavandeira, the mean-spirited impresario behind the celebrity- obsessed mega-Web site PerezHilton.com, was left scratching his pink-tinged pompadour last week, wondering aloud in a campy cry-baby YouTube classic why, after being physically assaulted in public, he is now universally scorned and widely considered the villain of an incident that left him appropriately “black eyed.”

Aside from the basic rules of karma, here’s why: The calculus of political correctness is like roshambo, the “rock-paper-scissors” game. Different identity groups hold specific levels of power over others when their battles play out in the media. To wit: Black beats white. Gay beats white. Black beats gay.

Even though it is obviously worse to punch someone in the face than to hurl an inartful slur, Mr. Lavandeira made the fatal mistake of choosing to verbally berate a man with darker skin than he. By the next day, the event was publicized around the world and Will.I.Am and Mr. Molina were being universally treated as heroes.

Which leads us to the greater story that is not being told: “Perez Hilton” is suffering the delayed effects of what he did last month to former Miss California USA Carrie Prejean.

While Mr. Lavandeira was busy plotting and executing the Christian beauty contestant’s downfall, much of America was silently taking account of the beauty contest judge’s relentlessness in destroying a woman whose crime was politely expressing the same opinion on gay marriage held by the president for whom Mr. Lavandeira campaigned.

Mr. Lavandeira was not satisfied with simply making sure Miss Prejean lost the Miss USA pageant. He needed to humiliate and destroy her publicly. He not only called her a term used to describe a female dog but also used a word that, by comparison, is akin to a nuclear attack. Yet no media outrage followed.

Mr. Lavandeira has used his sexual orientation as a shield to deflect criticism. But in the process he has hurt the cause of gay rights. That is why the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation took the Black Eyed Peas’ side. When GLAAD is at the forefront of a movement that actively scorns “hate” - or, as the bumper stickers call it, H8 - it’s impossible to defend the behavior of a gay activist who so actively practices it.

If as a society we are to continue making strides towards tolerance of all people, GLAAD has taken an admirable step in condemning hate’s most avid practitioner of hateful speech. While the Black Eyed Peas showed us that we can fight fire with fire, “Perez Hilton” has exposed the paradox of the activist left’s tolerance movement: You can’t fight H8 with H8.

Couldn’t happen to a nastier guy… ehr… gal?  gay?  Whatever…

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jun/29/15-minutes-of-h8-the-rise-and-fall-of-perez-hilton/?feat=home_headlines

Philadelphia Judge Willis W. Berry Jr. broke the law by running a real estate business out of his court office for more than a decade, a state disciplinary tribunal ruled yesterday.

The finding that Berry committed theft of services was the strongest criticism in a harsh report that concluded that the veteran criminal court judge had put the judiciary in “disrepute.”

The Court of Judicial Discipline said Berry had operated a string of North Philadelphia apartments “with absolutely no overhead” by using court computers, telephones, fax machines, envelopes, postage, file cabinets, and the labor of his secretary - and sticking taxpayers with the tab.

To make matters worse, the panel said, the Common Pleas Court judge was a kind of slumlord, pocketing rent from derelict apartments marred by scores of code and safety violations that went uncorrected for years. Those problems were first described in an Inquirer investigation in 2007.

Berry’s behavior amounted to “a flagrant, open disregard for the dignity of judicial office,” the court found.

The judge’s misuse of court resources was brazen, it said. “The misappropriation is broad, bold, and impossible to overlook,” the panel found.

Berry, 66, a Democrat, was first elected to the court in 1995. He ran unsuccessfully for the state Supreme Court in 2007. He is paid $161,850 annually.

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20090626_Phila__judge_broke_the_law__panel_rules.html

CHICAGO—A federal appeals court has denied Gary political power broker Jewell Harris Sr.‘s appeal of his 6-year prison sentence for fraud.

A three-judge panel of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that an error in calculating Harris’ prison term on six counts of fraud and money laundering was balanced by a second, unrelated error.

The court also found that federal corrections officials had correctly figured the amount Harris bilked from the city.

Harris, a former state legislator who became a political adviser to numerous Gary politicians as well as Lake County and East Chicago officials, also made millions through a trucking company that enjoyed a near-monopoly

In 2001, prosecutors say Harris billed both a construction company and the city for hauling work for the U.S. Steel Yard baseball stadium in Gary.

The final price for the stadium was double the $22 million proposal passed by the City Council, and Harris improperly collected $1.5 million from the double-billing.

Of course, the news source somehow failed to mention that Harris was a democrat power-player in Gary/Chicago politics.

INDIANA ELECTION COMMISSION JANUARY 24, 2002 MINUTES
Democratic Party); Mr. Jewell G. Harris, Sr.,

http://www.post-trib.com/news/1640163,jewell.article

U.S. District Judge Avern Cohn said, “The defendant now stands convicted.”

The one count of conspiring to commit bribery is punishable by up to five years in prison.

No sentencing date has been set.

In court, Conyers’ combative demeanor was gone, replaced by soft-spoken resignation as the judge and his staff several times asked her to speak up.

Conyers, the wife of powerful Democratic congressman U.S. Rep. John Conyers, appeared before Cohn to answer charges in connection with the wide-ranging probe of wrongdoing at Detroit city hall.

http://www.freep.com/article/20090626/NEWS01/90626024/Conyers+pleads+guilty+to+conspiracy

Now it appears that Frank is once again not going to be responsible for meddling with federal mortgage backers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

(Reuters) - Two U.S. Democratic lawmakers want Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to relax recently tightened standards for mortgages on new condominiums, saying they could threaten the viability of some developments and slow the housing-market recovery, the Wall Street Journal said.

In March, Fannie Mae (FNM.N)(FNM.P) said it would no longer guarantee mortgages on condos in buildings where fewer than 70 percent of the units have been sold, up from 51 percent, the paper said. Freddie Mac (FRE.P)(FRE.N) is due to implement similar policies next month, the paper said.

In a letter to the CEO’s of both companies, Representatives Barney Frank, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, and Anthony Weiner warned that a 70 percent sales threshold “may be too onerous” and could lead condo buyers to shun new developments, according to the paper.

The legislators asked the companies to “make appropriate adjustments” to their underwriting standards for condos, the paper added.

In keeping with the new mood in Washington, I already declare him Not Going To Be Responsible.

http://www.reuters.com/article/GCA-Housing/idUSTRE55L39120090622

“Physically, President Obama has done what previous presidents have done for a long time, which is bow down,” said Debra Burlingame, co-founder of 9/11 Families for a Safe and Strong America.

Seems that President Obama - who may or may not have bowed to a Saudi Royal Prince - is continuing a long-standing White House tradition; protecting the Saudi royal family from any real scrutiny on their role in funding Al Queda or the events of 9/11.

Family members of the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks say they have been blindsided by the Obama administration’s opposition to their lawsuit seeking damages from top members of the Saudi Arabian government over suspected financial links to the 9/11 attackers.

A series of closed-door meetings between the relatives’ groups and Justice Department officials, arranged as an update on Mr. Obama’s plan to close the detention facility at the U.S. Naval Base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, turned instead into a sharp clash over the Saudi legal action, The Washington Times has learned.

Readers may recall that President Bush was repeatedly bashed by the left and conspiracy-theorists for shielding the Saudi royal house.

The relatives of the victims have signed onto a lawsuit seeking damages from four Saudi princes, saying they have been financing al Qaeda and thus are responsible in large part for the attacks that killed their loved ones.

The family members demanded to be be heard on the White House’s stance during a series of closed-door meetings at the State Department and the Justice Department last week.

Surely our new President - who promised a new transparency - will explain his odd reluctance to pursue this matter.  In the meantime, I am not  holding my breath.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jun/23/administrations-saudi-suit-stance-irks-911-familie/

My dad rose to become an award-winning Pastry Chef, but he remained a laborer all his life. He was never educated, but his wisdom was profound. He was gentle, patient and loving, and he knew right from wrong.

To the day he died, my dad loved this country deeply and often said that his proudest achievment was becoming a United States citizen.

He detested Fidel Castro and the so-called revolution, and refused innumerable invitations from family to return home for a visit.

When people asked him why he never taught me spanish, his answer was blunt. “We are Americans and we speak english.”

He was a democrat most of his life, back when democrats really put country above party. He became a republican to vote for Ronald Regan and remained a republican for the rest of his life.

What I realize about my dad today is that he was a genuine patriot, a true American and he passed that gift to me.

Today is his day. I miss him still and am honored to be his son.