Fries With That?
Dividing the Undivided
“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
These are the 31 words of our Pledge of Allegiance. We all memorized them growing up, or when we became a citizen of this country. It's a pledge with ideals that people died protecting. It's a pledge that defines what America was. It's a pledge that we do not adhere to today.
Margo Lucero, guidance counselor at Everitt Middle School, was leading the Pledge of Allegiance over the loudspeaker at school one day. When arriving at “one nation under God” she decided it would be better to say “one nation under your belief system.”
"Given the anniversary of Columbine, it was a spur-of-the- moment choice that I made, intended to acknowledge differences that lie in our society," Lucero said. What differences are those, Margo? The difference between people and murderers? I'm confused.
God is not a belief system. Why would you interchange the two?
Whether or not you believe in God, “under God” are still words in our pledge.
And tell me exactly how we're supposed to be “indivisible” if we're all divided in our belief systems? The only way our country can be “indivisible” is if we acknowledge the fact that we are under God, and we do something about it.
Unfortunately the pledge Margo said is more true than the pledge we have.
Hey Tony
Tony Blair - Prime Minister of Britain; America's main supporter in the war on terror – won Britain's elections last week. This is the first time the Labor party has won three elections in a row with over a century in existence.
The Labor party did, however, lose many seats in their parliamentary government.
Oil-For-Food
The oil-for-food saga continues with some incriminating evidence against UN secretary general, Kofi Annan. Robert Parton, UN investigator of the oil-for-food program, followed a subpoena by the US Congress that his boss, Paul Volcker, had pleaded against. Volcker had earlier led an investigation that cleared Annan's name. Annan was the one who appointed Volcker for that job.
Politics are lovely, aren't they?
Hanging Around
A teacher at Pennypacker Elementary found one of her students hanging, unconscious, from a hanger in the school's coat room last week. Originally thought to have been an “accident” experts now confirm Dominic Jones was only trying to obtain the title of “Ultimate Jokester.” His plan was to make his friends think he died, and then come back as a ghost to scare them.
Jones lives with his Grandparents. Susan Alba, Dominic's grandmother, said she's not going to punish him. “He has already been through enough.”
Church Politics
Pastor of Baptist church in East Waynesville N.C. threw nine members out of the church while preaching his Sunday Sermon.
Or did the church vote to have them removed from membership for an unstated reason?
They removed themselves because they were tired of political messages?
They were removed from membership, by the pastor, for voting for John Kerry. Except for the lady that voted for Bush – she was removed because...uhh...
I'm not really sure what happened. All of the news stories conflict so it's kinda hard to tell. Oh well.
AO
Small-time Internet magazine, “AbsoluteOpinion,” had their first pod cast last weekend. Topic of discussion was the movie “Hotel Rwanda.” One of AO's writers, Chris Gable, wrote three opinion articles on African politics, including the war in Rwanda and the liberal ideas that started it.
AbsoluteOpinion hopes to expand it's readership soon.