The incident could spark calls for increased regulation, said Kevin Book, managing director of ClearView Energy Partners, a consulting firm. The American Petroleum Institute, the industry's main trade group, put out a statement Wednesday standing by its safety record.
Transocean spokesman Greg Panagos dismissed such concerns. He said the company is a "very safety conscious organization. It's the top priority in the company."
Our National Near-Death Experience
6 hours ago
Friday, May 28, 2010
Monday, May 24, 2010
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Tea Party Coalition opens convention: Attendees say that Gatlinburg event's an opportunity to learn
By Mike Blackerby
Originally published 02:02 p.m., May 22, 2010
Updated 05:55 p.m., May 22, 2010
GATLINBURG - Attendees at Saturday morning's opening session of the Tennessee Tea Party Coalition's inaugural statewide convention vowed to fight for and promulgate their conservative beliefs.
And they drew kudos for standing by their convictions from one of the guest speakers, Pamela Geller, whose presentation titled "The Threat of Islam" has come under fire by a national Muslim-rights group that considers her anti-Islamic.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations had pushed for Geller - who heads a group called Stop Islamization of America - to be dropped from the convention's lineup of speakers.
"Thank you for having the guts to have me speak," said Geller, whose comment received a standing ovation and enthusiastic applause from an overflow crowd of about 300 at the Gatlinburg Convention Center meeting room.
"You think you're in a little room in Gatlinburg, but this is a battlefield in the information war," said Geller, who labeled CAIR's attempt to censor her as just another example of the Islamization of America.
"They try to shut up everybody who speaks against them. How dare they attack one human thought while they try and impose shariah law in America? They smear all of us so nobody will hear what we say. I am warning you that freedom of speech is the line in the sand."
Anthony Shreeve, one of the convention organizers, said the Tennessee Tea Party Coalition has received overwhelming support for its decision to retain Geller as a speaker.
"We've had about 1,000 e-mails pour in, and 800 were positive for Pam," said Shreeve, who lives in Dandridge.
"The other 200 said we were a bunch of racists and slimebags - we've heard it all before."
Geller was just one of many guest speakers at the convention, which wraps up today.
Shreeve said 1,000 advance tickets had been sold by Friday and he expects upwards of 2,000 to attend the convention, which also features workshops, discussions and educational instruction on topics such as Constitutional law.
There are 43 state Tea Party groups, which have 18,000 members.
"I'd like to see people get educated and come away from this by getting involved and being proactive - whether that means talking to your neighbor about the Constitution or getting involved in a campaign," Shreeve said.
About 15 members of the Lawrence County Tea Party made the five-hour drive from Middle Tennessee to attend the convention.
Lawrence County group members Mike and Ruth Gibson said there's a need for the Tea Parties to up the ante in the fight to advance the conservative cause of Constitutionally limited and less-intrusive government.
Both also said the Tea Party movement is unfairly portrayed by the media.
"We're here to educate ourselves about the Constitution and learn how to back up the Constitution as it's written," Mike Gibson said.
"Some people say that we're radical and that we're hurtful, but we are not terrorists," said Ruth Gibson. "What we need to do is grow our grassroots movement. We will get our country back."
Cheryl Mills, who is active in several Tea Party groups in the Tri-Cities area, said she got involved in the movement because of her children.
"I don't want them to say, 'Hey, where were you when this was going on?' " said Mills, who had her oldest daughter with her.
"Government has no respect for the Constitution of the United States. They walk on it come hell or high water."
Mike Blackerby is a freelance contributor to the News Sentinel.
Friday, May 21, 2010
Thursday, May 20, 2010
The Progressive Era
by William L. Anderson
by William L. Anderson
The Myth and the Reality
One of the most enduring set of myths from U.S. history comes from the political and social developments in what is called the “Progressive Era,” a period lasting from the late 1800s to the end of World War I. (Of course, one could argue, convincingly, that the Progressive Era never has ended.) The prevailing story told in textbooks, the editorial pages of the New York Times, and the typical classroom holds that this was the time when people began to use the mechanism of government to create the conditions for a better life for all and to begin the arduous process of reining in the excesses of capitalism.
According to the pundits, by the late 1800s many businesses in the United States had grown to gigantic proportions, monopolizing much of the economy. In response to this growing emergency, the government adopted new and “progressive” policies of regulatory agencies and antitrust laws.
Besides regulating business activity, Progressives, through coalitions of intellectuals, political figures, and activists, saw to it that government also began the process of regulating the extraction of natural resources through executive action. (Progressives considered the legislative procedure to be a waste of time that needed to be replaced with a mechanism that permitted the executive branch of government to seek “needed” shortcuts around the give-and-take that accompanied the legislature at work.)
Through Progressive prodding, Congress passed the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, which created the Food and Drug Administration and expanded government regulation of food and the workplace. Progressives also secured the right of women to vote and ended the state legislatures’ stranglehold on the national electoral process by mandating the direct election of U.S. senators (which until 1913 were chosen by state legislatures).
Socially, the Progressives were humanitarians who sought to better the lives of ordinary people, with their greatest “triumph” being passage of the Eighteenth Amendment, which ushered in the era of Prohibition. (Most modern Progressives are not particularly proud of this “achievement” by their forbears, but the prohibitionist spirit is much more alive than they would like to admit. Today, Progressive lawyers have been busy suing tobacco companies and the liquor industry and attempting to ban products such as silicon breast implants that feminists and other modern Progressives think are not proper things for people to have.)
Last, the Progressive Era trumpeted science and the “enlightened” Social Gospel, which became the religion of choice for religious skeptics who questioned the core doctrines of the Christian faith. From the implementation of “scientific” principles to govern politics, business, and social relationships, Progressivism helped to create a rational basis for modern society. From the creation of the Federal Reserve System to the Sixteenth Amendment that brought about the national income tax, Progressives were able to do away with the impediments created by the U.S. Constitution, which according to them stood in the way of progress.
If there was a downside to the Progressive Era, its modern supporters say, it was that Progressives were not able to do enough before “reactionary” post–World War I forces set in. “Reforms” such as the banning of child labor, minimum wages, the welfare state, further regulation of business, and a completion of the process of transferring legislative power from the Congress to the executive branch would have to wait until the Great Depression, when the nation had supposedly had its fill of laissez faire. Also, in spite of the best efforts of the Progressives, segregation laws institutionalized racism, which worsened strife between whites and blacks.
While Progressivism has captured the hearts and minds of modern intellectuals and others, there is another story to tell about this era, a much darker tale than what generally is told. In fact, it is not an exaggeration to say that Progressivism helped to destroy, not preserve, the constitutional order. Far from ushering in the social peace, justice, and prosperity that Progressives promised, Progressivism helped to create the conditions for the Great Depression and helped plunge the country into one war after another. Perhaps the only positive thing we can say about the Progressive Era was that it did not do all of the damage that it could have done.
In taking this look at the Progressive Era, I will be examining a number of social and economic initiatives that took place during that time. I begin with the social policies and laws that came about during that era and dissect Progressivism’s long and sorry legacy.
Early U.S. Progressives.........MORE
"How soon we forget history. Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master."
Within The Symbol
WITHIN THE SYMBOL OF THE THIRTEEN STAR FLAG lies the meaning we seek to convey -- that ours was once a Republic born of ingenious political philosophy and a natural hunger for liberty. The greatest statesmen our nation has produced, before or since, dedicated their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to the establishment of a new kind of government. They formed for posterity a system which, if preserved, would have done more to secure the happiness and prosperity of its citizens than any in the modern world. They correctly perceived that the attendant rights of liberty are reposed not in governments but in individuals -- that individuals are so endowed by their Creator. The proper role of government is not to grant that which it can never possess, but to protect that which it has so often tread upon. Our founders knew well that a government of men would not, in fact could not, exercise an enduring self restraint. Further -- they recognized what has been aptly termed the internal hydraulic pressure within governments to expand the boundaries of their own power. Restraint, they therefore expressly imposed. But such restraints are effective only so long as we adhere to their design. Increasingly, we fail to do so, and our Republic wanes as if by a wasting disease.
The Threat of Progressivism
The greatest threat to the American Republic is currently the muddled mass of confused and foreign-born ideologies operating under the rubric of progressivism. These are the acolytes of Environmentalism, Marxism, Globalism, and the like. They favor the redistribution of wealth; out from the hands that produce it, into the gaping mouths that cry the loudest. They view with contempt not only the Republic as it stands, but the Republic as it was and the memory of men that spent treasure and blood to establish it. These are the adherents of the philosophy of the "Other," first enunciated by the German philosopher Hegel -- demonstrably the greatest fraud in the history of philosophy. They loudly proclaim that America's success is the sum total of a series of racist genocides, thefts and other high crimes, without the victims of which the Republic could not stand. Our greatest flaw, they tell us, is the small-minded, myopic and violent way we choose to view the rest of the world -- their exalted Other. We hate the Other, they tell us, because the feeble-minded fear what they do not understand. We have failed to embrace the Other because, blinded by our wanton pursuit of self-interested greed, we have failed to bathe in their enlightened radiance. We have failed to see the obvious truths they espouse.
We reject these views in their entirety. Further, we consider them anathema. We agree with the founders that the property rights of individuals are sacrosanct and well worth the bloodied soil by which they were purchased. We neither hate nor fear the progressive's Other. We simply believe axiomatically that to such Other we owe nothing. For far longer than our Republic has existed there have been those among us that have the capacity to accurately judge the character of their fellows by looking them in the eye. In the eye of this Other we have seen one undeniable fact -- the Other intends to feed his own children. He does not intend to feed ours. For this he is not to be much condemned, but neither is he the proper object of our guilt, our charity, or our productive efforts. In our eyes, worship at the temple of the Other amounts to little more than national self-loathing. To sacrifice at the altar of the Other is to burn offerings, not for some amorphous greater good, but for The Abyss itself. And The Abyss can never be sated. In such folly we will not participate.
Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.
-George Washington
That is not to say, respecting government, that one form is equal to the next. Some are surely more dangerous than others. Our Founding Fathers knew well the dangers posed to free men by government. Their every effort was to limit that threat by withholding from government all but the most necessary of public powers. They sought to further limit those dangers by the express enumeration of sectors of liberty into which government may not tread. These limitations are evinced most clearly, though not solely, by the language and structure of The Constitution of the United States. For this reason we have made copies of it available to our customers. Whether it be ours or any other proper copy -- please do read and re-read it.
Sadly, despite our Fathers' worthy effort, our Republic's current political apparatus seems to us a wholly inadequate means by which to meet the waxing threat of progressivism and socialist ideologies that seek to redefine the very foundation of the American Citizen. The current GOP seems an anemic remedy to the mounting damage being done by the incumbent DNC. Our future, whatsoever form it will take, may yet be determined by our own action. For our part, we advocate turning back to our American roots -- back to our traditions, our heritage, our culture, and faith in Our Creator. There may we find a cure for what ails us all.
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Wahi: the Supernatural Basis of Islam
By Dr. Koenraad ELST
1. The yogic view of the Quranic trance
In discussing Islam, most non-Muslims and ex-Muslims tend to focus on the negative achievements of Islam, such as Islamic mistreatment of women and unbelievers. However, we should realize that in its essence, Islam is only secondarily an ethical system with a characteristic record of conduct. In the first place it is a belief system, a truth claim. The Islamic religion stands or falls with the truth or untruth of two assertions: (1) there is no God but Allah, the Creator of the universe; and (2) Mohammed is the final spokesman of Allah, who through him passed on to mankind a series of messages assembled in the Quran. This Quranic communication is understood to have been a constant process of "revelation" from AD 610, when Mohammed was 40, until his death in AD 632.
The first belief is a theological claim which Islam has in common with some other monotheistic religions, and which, if subjected to cunning interpretation, could even be reconciled with some schools of polymorphous-theistic Hinduism ("the wise call the one True One by many names"). The second belief, by contrast, is the truly defining truth claim of Islam, setting it apart from every other religion: the prophethood of Mohammed.
In this essay, originally published as a series of articles in the on-line monthly Kashmir Herald in autumn-winter 2002-2003, we will discuss some non-Islamic views of this core assertion of Islam. The present chapter will focus on the Hindu view of Mohammed's prophethood.
Before the colonial age, there was hardly any Hindu evaluation of Mohammed's prophetic claims, nor even of Islamic doctrine in general. The first detailed criticism of Islam, and in particular of the Quran, was written by Swami Dayananda Saraswati, founder of the Vedic reform...........MORE/FROM
Saturday, May 15, 2010
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Friday, May 7, 2010
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