What famous American was born on this day in 1946 and made these statements?

America stands for liberty, for the pursuit of happiness and for the unalienable right for life. This right to life cannot be granted or denied by government because it does not come from government, it comes from the Creator of life.

Use power to help people. For we are given power not to advance our own purposes nor to make a great show in the world, nor a name. There is but one just use of power and it is to serve people.
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I just read about this Christian young man from India who is imprisoned in Saudi Arabia for “spreading Christianity.” He has been in prison in Riyadh since March 25th without a trial or even any formal charges filed against him.

You can read more about this case here at Compass Direct. Here’s an excerpt from their article about what happened to O’Connor after he was kidnapped from a public street:

O?Connor was then dragged to a mosque with an adjacent muttawa office just behind his home. There, O?Connor later told friends who visited him in prison, his legs were chained and he was hung upside down. For the next seven hours, his muttawa captors alternately kicked and beat him in the chest and ribs.

After some time, one of his tormentors told him that he would not be harmed any further if he just ?told the truth.? When questioned, O?Connor declared that he did preach the Bible, but he denied converting Muslims to Christianity. A few minutes later, the beatings resumed, along with painful squeezing of his face.

I don’t like to read about this kind of stuff anymore than anyone else does. I get that sort of helpless feeling: what can I do? Especially I get that feeling when I go to the website for Compass Direct (Compass Direct is a Christian news service dedicated to providing exclusive news, penetrating reports, moving interviews and insightful analyses of situations and events facing Christians persecuted for their faith.) and see all the other reports of Christians being persecuted and imprisoned and tortured for their faith around the world. However, I am going to write a letter or two and try to to do something to help this one brother today. And I will pray. This blogger, Being or Nothingness, lists lots of addresses to write to protest this egregious violation of human rights.

I got this from WORLD magazine’s blog:
“The President has ordered that the flags flying at half-staff, in mourning for the death of Ronald Reagan, be raised today. That would be two days earlier than is customary. President Reagan died on June 5, so normally the flag would be at half-staff until July 5. But the White House decided that it would honor the memory of President Reagan to have the flags flying high on Independence Day.”

It seems approppriate to raise the flag high for Independence Day. I think Ronald Reagan would approve.

Wow, how beautiful! And how long can anyone continue to maintain that abortions only remove a piece of “tissue” from the mother’s womb? If an eighteen week old baby can open its eyes, when will American pro-abortionists open theirs? God is using technology to force them to see.

I got this little piece of information from Norma Bruce’s blog, Collecting My Thoughts:

?Fahrenheit 9/11 will be shown at ALA in the Auditorium at the Convention Center, Sunday night, June 27, at 10 pm, two days after it opens nationwide. There will be a $10 donation that will go to ALA’s efforts in the areas of the First Amendment, Intellectual Freedom, and the struggle against the USA PATRIOT Act.?

And now you know why I never joined the American Library Association when I was a librarian (in another life). Also it was too expensive.

I love it. Actually, some of us carnivores wish we liked vegetables. I’m sure it would be good for me, but my tastes run to meat potatoes, and sugar.

FromOpinion Journal:

WHERE’S THE BEEF? That was the question asked by Jad Carson, a student at the Quaker-run George School outside Philadelphia, where he says that being a Republican and a carnivore made him something of an outcast. He and a fellow student responded to their plight earlier this year by founding MEAT (Mammals Eating Animals Today). According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the group recently raised $500 by selling red T-shirts bearing the words: “Cow: The world’s tastiest renewable resource.” The money was donated to Heifer Project International, which provides dairy cows for poor families around the world.

Boston Globe, April 20, 2004:
The latest inside account of the Bush administration has provided fresh fodder for John F. Kerry’s campaign, with the presumptive Democratic nominee yesterday condemning the president for reportedly allowing the Saudis to maintain high gasoline prices until just before the fall election, when they would be cut to boost the US economy.
Washington Post, May 19, 2004:
Sen. John F. Kerry attacked President Bush on Tuesday for failing to take action to prevent a steep rise in gasoline prices, which hit an average of $2 a gallon this week, and for supporting policies that have enhanced corporations and wealthy Americans at the expense of middle-class families.

Let me see if I understand this. If gasoline prices go down before the election in November, it will be because Bush cut a deal with his Saudi friends in order to win the election. If prices remain high, it’s Bush’s fault because he wants to make his oil business friends even richer. So either way, Bush is the bad guy, and Kerry would propose, what?
Kerry outlined several steps that he said would help hold down gasoline prices, including diverting oil going into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and said the president has failed to do anything serious to stem the price rise.

Of course, we should deplete our emergency supplies of oil because the world is now a safe place, and we don’t need those old “strategic reserves” anyway–or rather, we need them now to bring down gasoline priices for the summer. And Kerry wants me to vote for him for president?

Susan B. Anthony: “Guilty? Yes, no matter what the motive, love of ease, or a desire to save from suffering the unborn innocent, the woman is awfully guilty who commits the deed. It will burden her conscience in life, it will burden her soul in death; but oh! Thrice guilty is he who, for selfish gratification, heedless of her prayers, indifferent to her fate, drove her to the desperation which impels her to the crime.”
Elizabeth Cady Stanton: “When we consider that women have been treated as property it is degrading to women that we should treat our children as property to be disposed of as we see fit.”
Victoria Woodhull: “Every woman knows that if she were free, she would never bear an unwished-for child, nor think of murdering one before its birth.”

Jared, one of the Thinklings, has this to say about the horrors being reported out of Iraq. He said it. I agree.

David Brooks:
Whose bright idea was it to keep Saddam’s gulag open as a U.S. prison, anyway?
Senator John McCain:
I have seen a lot of people die. I’ve seen a lot of terrible things in my life. But to see it done by Americans to human beings is what’s so appalling. It’s so outrageous, I can’t describe it.
Spc. Joe Roche:
I’m at a place right now where there are thousands of U.S. soldiers. I went to breakfast and dinner at the KBR dining hall here. It is huge, hundreds of soldiers gathered to eat. Around us are large-screen tvs, and yes, the news was mostly about the prison abuse. Everyone is so angry. I mean, angry! It is as if those soldiers hurt us more than the enemies here in Iraq have. I don’t think that if that RPG last week had hit and killed us in my hummwv, there would have been any of the damage done to our cause here that those soldiers have done.
Charles Krauthammer:
the pictures of American women soldiers mocking, humiliating and dominating naked and abused Arab men. One could not have designed a more symbolic representation of the Islamist warning about where Western freedom ultimately leads than Thursday’s Washington Post photo of a uniformed American woman holding a naked Arab man on a leash.
Me:
Those who did these things and those who allowed them to happen should be punished. They should also be educated to know that what they did will probably cause the deaths and torture and the humiliation of many other American soldiers and and Middle Easterners and will most likely prolong the hatred and violence indefinitely. All because they wanted “to have some fun.”