Where Are Our Freedoms Going? or Is This STILL the United States of America?

(thank you to Enola Gay at Paratus Familia for making us aware of this)

No people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffused and Virtue is preserved. On the Contrary, when People are universally ignorant, and debauched in their Manners, they will sink under their own weight without the Aid of foreign Invaders.

Samual Adams

Liberty Alert
Reader Terry from FL, alerted me to a handout produced by the FBI for Surplus stores.  Apparently, our illustrious Federal Bureau of Investigations has determined that patrons of Army/Navy surplus stores are a potential terrorist threat.  They have directed surplus store owners and employees to report suspicious activity such as:

• Buying items in bulk
• Purchasing waterproof ammunition and match cases
• Buying Meals Ready to Eat (MRE's)
• Purchasing gas masks, night flashlights etc.

The FBI has also encouraged surplus stores to:

• Require valid ID for all new customers
• Keep track of purchases
• Make note of suspicious people/vehicles

They close their "Communities against Terrorism" flyer with:

Preventing terrorism is a community effort. By learning what to look for, you can make a positive contribution in the fight against terrorism. The partnership between the community and law enforcement is essential to the success of anti -terrorism efforts.

Some of the activities, taken individually, could be innocent and must be examined by law enforcement professionals in a larger context to  determine whether there is a basis to investigate. The activities outlined on this handout are by no means all-inclusive but have been compiled from a review of terrorist events over several years.

So in other words, you might not be smart enough to determine evil intent, but "they" are! This is a Liberty Alert if I have ever seen one.  It smacks of theFusion Centers springing up in communities all over America.  If you would like to read the FBI flyer in it's entirety go to OathKeepers - they are watching out for the Constitution and the people.  Thank you for the link Terry!

Follow up to Jailed Christian in Afghanistan...May God be PRAISED!!!

JAILED CHRISTIAN CONVERT IN AFGHANISTAN FREED

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — 

An Afghan man who was jailed for nine months for converting to Christianity has been released after an intense campaign by international diplomatic missions and Christian activists, an official said Friday.

Sayed Mussa, a 46-year-old father of six, left a Kabul jail earlier this week and was taken to see Afghan prosecutors, who did not have enough evidence to charge him, said Gen. Abdul Qayum Safi, director of the detention center.

Aidan Clay, regional manager for the International Christian Concern, cheered Mussa’s release but said another convert, Shoaib Assadullah, was still in detention in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif. Assadullah was arrested in October after allegedly giving a copy of a Bible to a friend.

“It has been encouraging to see the international community, including churches, reporters and government officials in Europe and North America work together for the common goal of freeing Sayed,” he said. “Many sleepless nights, prayers and tears have paid off, however, the battle has not yet been won. Shoaib is still imprisoned in northern Afghanistan and fears the death penalty.”

In a Feb. 13 letter, disclosed by International Christian Concern, Mussa said representatives of the U.S. and Italian embassies in Kabul visited him in the detention center and offered him asylum. Mussa wrote that after the foreigners left the room, three Afghan officials told him he would be released within 24 hours if he signed a statement saying he regretted his conversion to Christianity. Mussa refused.

“I laughed and replied ‘I can’t deny my savior’s name,’” Mussa wrote in the letter. “I am 100 percent ready to die.”

The Christian group said they received a call from a U.S. official in Kabul on Monday, confirming that Mussa had been released and was safely out of Afghanistan.

The U.S. Embassy in Kabul had no immediate comment on Mussa’s release.

Mussa, a slight man with salt-and-pepper hair and beard, was arrested in late May after an Afghan television station broadcast images of alleged Christian baptisms in Kabul. Proselytizing is illegal in Afghanistan.

A number of Afghan Christians fled the country after the broadcast, but Mussa was arrested before he could get away. His case made it into the news after a group of international Christian activists pressed their governments to push Afghan President Hamid Karzai to release Mussa and the other convert.

Afghanistan is an Islamic state but the country’s constitution is unclear on whether Christian converts are breaking the law. The document says freedom of religion should be protected, but it also states that the ultimate authority in legal matters is the Muslim holy book, the Quran, which condemns conversion.

Mussa recounted his conversion in an interview with The Associated Press earlier this month at the detention center. He was wearing a brown zip-up sweater, gray shalwar kameez and plastic yellow sandals and had a prosthesis on his left leg – the result of a mine explosion 23 years ago when he was a young army officer in southern Afghanistan.

Mussa said his move to Christianity began during the Afghan civil war when the house of his neighbor, a porter with eight children, was bombed.

He saw two foreign women arrive in a white vehicle who were not afraid to search through the rubble despite the presence of armed men nearby.

“Many tried to hide, but the women didn’t,” said Mussa.

He was curious about the women, who were able to find one person alive in the rubble. He later learned they were Christian aid workers who helped Afghans in a clinic.

That prompted Mussa to learn more about the Christian faith. He met a man named Mohammad Hussein, who had recently returned from Iran and was a Christian convert. Mussa pressed him for religious books and other information about Christianity.

In the interview, Mussa said that if he was freed, he would rejoin his wife and children, who are living with a brother in Pakistan.

“I want to have a normal life again,” he said. “Of course I love all my children. And I’d like to see them.”

“I will stay here in Afghanistan and will ask my family to come home,” he said.

—Associated Press writer Deb Riechmann contributed to this report.

The Federal Fat Police: Bill Would Require Government to Track Body Mass of American Children

"A bill introduced this month in Congress would put the federal and state governments in the business of tracking how fat, or skinny, American children are."

When are they going to quit. This is the United States of America. It is none of their business how fat or skinny ANYONE is. They need to stick to protecting our country.

To read the article in its entirety go here.

Happy 4th of July

We spent the 4th of July BBQing, playing Bocce, listening to Patriotic music and watching a documentary on the Revolutionary War.

Christopher watching Dad throw his first Bocce.

Christopher and Dad trying to figure out the scoring.It is Christopher's turn to throw, watch that south paw throw.

OK, who scored and who didn't?

It is Hannah's turn to throw.
OK, Alicia can you throw it close enough to keep Hannah from scoring?

Daddy and Hannah measuring to see who gets points.

Well, I guess I will try to my hand at this too.

We really had a great time together as a family. Ralph bbq'd some wonderful steaks, the girls and I made macaroni salad and banana cream pie and later on we had blizzards. We are so thankful for having this day to remember how we gained our freedom and for the men who wrote our Declaration of Independence and Constituition and for how they were led by God to do the work to begin this country.

The Declaration of Independence

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