6/22/2006

Denigration of personal responsibility

Currently in the United States we are seeing a trend of personal responsibility being passed from an individual to society as a whole. Victims are never at fault, and money can always be gain. One example is the lawsuit filed against MySpace.com for $30 million dollars for an alleged sexual assault in Travis County, Texas. For some reason beyond my comprehension MySpace is totally at fault because a 14-year-old girl was contacted by a 19-year-old man, she gave him her cell phone number, and of her own free will and accord she went on a date with him. After dinner and a movie in the back seat of his car he allegedly raped her. And because of that, MySpace owes her money. Where were her parents in all of this, were they monitoring her internet usage? Obviously not. And why did she give him her cellphone number? It sounds like she knew her parents would not approve, and she felt like she needed to hide it.
This is almost as injudicious as a fat person suing McDonalds because their double cheeseburgers made them fat. What did they think it was made of, fruits and vegetables?
I think America needs to wakeup to common sense and have parents monitor internet usage and properly educate children to the dangers of the world, instead of having them walk around hood-wicked to society.

6/21/2006

Chemical weapons in Iraq

Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) and Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.) announced Wednesday the finding of over 500 munitions or weapons of mass destruction, specifically “sarin- and mustard-filled projectiles,” in Iraq.

Reading from unclassified portions of a document developed by the U.S. intelligence community, Santorum said, “Since 2003, coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent. Despite many efforts to locate and destroy Iraq’s pre-Gulf War chemical munitions, filled and unfilled pre-Gulf War chemical munitions are assessed to still exist.”

According to Santorum, “That means in addition to the 500, there are filled and unfilled munitions still believed to exist within the country.”

Reading from the document, Santorum added, “Pre-Gulf War Iraqi chemical weapons could be sold on the Black Market. Use of these weapons by terrorist or insurgent groups would have implications for coalition forces in Iraq. The possibility of use outside of Iraq cannot be ruled out. The most likely munitions remaining are sarin- and mustard-filled projectiles. And I underscore filled.”

Santorum said the “purity of the agents inside the munitions depends on many factors, including the manufacturing process, potential additives and environmental storage conditions.”
While acknowledging that the agents “degrade over time,” the document said that the chemicals “remain hazardous and lethal.”

The media has reported that “insurgents and Iraqi groups” want to “acquire and use chemical weapons,” Santorum noted.

The idea that, as my colleagues have repeatedly said in this debate on the other side of the aisle, that there are no weapons of mass destruction is in fact false,” Santorum said. “We have found over 500 weapons of mass destruction and in fact have found that there are additional chemical weapons still in the country. Hopefully a few of these munitions will find its into the front yard of Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Maybe then Canada will get off it's ass and help.