Although the headline at Fox News (story by Associated [De]Press[ed]) is U.N. Summit Lets U.S. Keep Control of Internet Domain Names (emphasis mine).

As if the U.N. Summit can give us permission or something…

A U.N. technology summit opened Wednesday after an 11th-hour agreement that leaves the United States with ultimate oversight of the main computers that direct the Internet’s flow of information, commerce and dissent.

…

“If the Internet had been developed in Australia, I don’t think we would have had so much heat on this discussion,” ICANN chief Paul Twomey, an Australian, remarked of the tension surrounding the U.S. control of the Internet.

The U.S. not only invented the internet, it performs its oversight duties exceedingly well.

It’s snowing here in Northern Illinois. A little more than flurries really, not much, but it is snowing. I don’t think we’ll get any real coverage, but the Shih Tzu leaves tiny pawprints in what’s sticking to the porch. The Siberian, on the other hand, is in his element.

Found this through Lady Jane at A Lady’s Ruminations.

Elvish

To which race of Middle Earth do you belong?
brought to you by Quizilla

The Elves were always my favorites.

Read Who Is Lying About Iraq.

Among the many distortions, misrepresentations, and outright falsifications that have emerged from the debate over Iraq, one in particular stands out above all others. This is the charge that George W. Bush misled us into an immoral and/or unnecessary war in Iraq by telling a series of lies that have now been definitively exposed.

What makes this charge so special is the amazing success it has enjoyed in getting itself established as a self-evident truth even though it has been refuted and discredited over and over again by evidence and argument alike. In this it resembles nothing so much as those animated cartoon characters who, after being flattened, blown up, or pushed over a cliff, always spring back to life with their bodies perfectly intact. Perhaps, like those cartoon characters, this allegation simply cannot be killed off, no matter what.

Go read the rest.

Happy Veterans Day!

Last year, I linked to this post by Chris Lynch at A Large Regular. It’s worth a read again.

To all who have served and all who are now serving our country in America’s Armed Forces:

Thank you for your service.

LaShawn Barber has a great Roundup of Veteran’s Day Posts!

Jeff has a Canadian Remembrance Day post just above.

Here’s my Dad circa 1954:

Florida Senate Bill 522 (.pdf here) will mandate Spanish language instruction for all kindergartners through second graders. Let’s take a look at the bill:

Districtwide Spanish instruction in K through 2; requirements; funding.

The above sentence just describes what is to follow.

–By the 2007-2008 school year, each school district shall implement a districtwide foreign language program to provide students in kindergarten through grade 2 with instruction in the Spanish language which is designed to result in the student’s communicating competently in Spanish at his or her grade level.

Senator Miller does state this is a foreign language. He wants 5- to 7-year-olds to be communicating competently in Spanish at his or her grade level. What about requiring students to communicate competently in English?

Each student in the program must be provided with a minimum of 20 to 45 minutes of instruction, 5 days a week, from a certified Spanish-language specialist.

A minimum of 20 minutes and a maximum of 45 minutes? This isn’t really very clear. A minimum is the smallest acceptable. Senator Miller has specified a range. Also, this is a five day a week program. We need to mandate a five day a week program when subjects such as physical education (much more important to the physical well-being of a child) have been cut back to two or three days a week? Ah, here’s the real reason… Jobs. The bill calls for a certified Spanish-language instructor. Let’s just bloat the system fuller than it already is.

The Spanish instructor and the classroom teacher must collaborate during the periods of instruction.

Who will be “in charge”? The regular classroom teacher or the certified Spanish-language instructor? Will the regular lesson be incorporated into the Spanish lesson, or will the regular lesson just be shunted aside?

The school district may use grant funds or private funds, as well as state funding, to support the program.

In other words, you figure out how to fund this mandate.

I understand that there are quite a few Spanish speakers in Florida. I understand that some children have parents/others in their household who speak only Spanish or speak only minimal English. But how does teaching all children Spanish help this? What about immigrants from Japan, Germany, France, Romania, India, etc? Why should Spanish be the mandated language in a country where most people speak English?

This reminds me of the woman at Kindergarten screening who, when asked if she wanted a bilingual aide, said, “We speak English. We are from Romania.”

Amazing. I first learned of this from Lady Jane at A Lady’s Ruminations. She got it from Drudge. They both quote this from NBC-2. I found two more articles pertaining to this as well as the above quoted bill text.

Article one from the Tampa Tribune quotes Dorothy Carregal, superintendent of foreign languages for Hillsborough schools as saying, “And even if they give us the money, finding the teachers would be very difficult”.

An editorial in the Lakeland Ledger asks: “But where’s the money?”

I decided to wash some down pillows today.

In the course of washing the pillows the washer went off balance, big time. The switch that gets pushed by the pin in the lid broke.

I called the repairman to come by. He was able to come tonight.

While he was here, I asked if he could look at the dryer, because I thought I had smelled that “burnt belt” kind of smell.

He tried to start the dryer, but it wouldn’t turn on. It had worked earlier in the day.

He looked around the back and this is what he found:

here’s another shot:

Praise the Lord that I decided to wash pillows today and the washer broke. If it hadn’t, I might not have called the repairman. If I hadn’t called the repairman, he wouldn’t have found that.

The circuit breaker did not trip. He removed the circuit breaker and capped the wires. He’ll be back on Saturday with a new switch for the washer, a new breaker, new wiring, a new plug and a new outlet.

Praise the Lord our house did not burn down as a result of this.

Praise the Lord!

Trying out Treo blogging. Does it work?

Transcribed from Special Report with Brit Hume (Video) Harry Reid says:

The manipulation of intelligence to sell the war in Iraq, Vice President Cheney’s involved in that. The White House energy policy, that puts big oil ahead of the American consumer, Vice President Cheney is behind that. Leaking classified information, to discredit White House critics, the Vice President’s behind that.

Harry seems to be channeling Howard Dean, who said that Karl Rove was responsible for the Plame lead no less than three separate times during an interview with Alan Colmes of Hannity and Colmes. (see Howard Dean – Alito, Libby and Cheney)

1. “Secondly, we still wonder when the President’s going to ask Karl Rove to resign since he’s now been identified by the special prosecutor as the person who leaked the name.”
2. “Karl Rove has now been shown to have leaked, even though he wasn’t charged with a crime.”
3. “Karl Rove has no business having a security clearance having now been established as a leaker by the special prosecutor.”

Then he went on to accuse Vice President Cheney of the exact same thing.

Alan Colmes: Are you calling for a broader investigation of the Vice President?

Howard Dean: Well, I’m not so sure about that although if there is such a thing, it’ll be in the Vice President’s office. And I do think there needs to be more investigation in the Vice President’s office. One of the things established by the special prosecutor in the indictment is that Vice President Cheney was the source of Scooter Libbity’s, Libby’s knowledge about who the CIA agent was.

Lewis Carroll once said, “What I tell you three times is true.” This is based on the old adage that “Once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, but three times makes it true.”

The dems seem to think that if they just repeat something often enough, it will be true. They are aided in this by the media, who give them camera time and lap it all up.

If the White House continues to let these assertations remain unchallenged, people will start to believe them. Fight back! Fight back on a daily basis!

Via DhimmiWatch comes a story from the Times Online edition:

Christmas lights fail to shine in equality zone

A COUNCIL is planning to scrap grants for festive lights because Christmas does not fit in with its “core values of equality and diversity”.

A report drawn up by the council in Suffolk concedes that the move could lead to officials being accused of “not supporting the spirit of Christmas”.

The move is the latest in a string of decisions by organisations to downplay the celebration of the birth of Christ — ostensibly to prevent offence being caused to non-Christian religions. Last week it emerged that Lambeth council in south London had insisted on renaming its Christmas lighting displays as “winter” or “celebrity” lights.

The latest is Conservative-controlled Waveney council in Lowestoft which provides grants totalling £10,000 for festive lights. Its report states that because Christmas focuses only on the Christian faith, continuing the funding would “not fit well with the council’s core values of equality and diversity”.

Officials are proposing to cut the lights grants to £5,000 next year and to stop them altogether by 2007. The report is due to go before councillors on Thursday.

Now, they say that it is an economic decision. The money usually granted for “festive” lights could be better used elsewhere. The chairman of the lights committee, Sue Allen, said: “It will just mean that we will have to work harder to raise funds for the Christmas lights in the future.”

I still would like to know how the celebration of the birth of Christ, by Christians, causes offense to those of non Christian religions. Eid, Channukah, and Diwali do not offend me.

Here’s another story I just found at BBC:

Row as Christmas lights renamed

A decision to call Christmas lights “Winter Lights” in south London has been condemned as showing a “total lack of respect” for Christians.

Advertisements for the switch-on of the lights in multi-cultural Lambeth have renamed them, apparently for fear of offending other faiths.

Tory councillor Bernard Gentry told the BBC: “Christmas appears to have been cancelled in our borough”.

A spokesman said it was an error by a junior official and not council policy.

In three of Lambeth’s main town centres, the lights were referred to as “Winter Lights”, while in a fourth they were called “Celebrity Lights”.

The council spokeswoman said an official was concerned about people from other religions.

She said: “It was a junior-level decision and it happened to go into print which was an error basically.

“I think it was certainly not a council policy that we should call the lights winter lights.”

But it has led to a series of headlines such as “Christmas is banned” and “The PC [politically correct] lights show” and led some members of other faiths to call it “ridiculous”.

And Mr Gentry, a Conservative member of the joint Lib Dem-Tory controlled borough, told the BBC it went against efforts to promote respect for all faiths.

“It just seems totally against everything that we as members of the council have said, when officers try to airbrush out one of the main festivals of what is still the biggest religion in Lambeth.”

“The idea that, in some way, the religious festival of Christmas is offensive to others is just daft – I have never heard a single person who’s said that.”

The advert appeared in Lambeth Life – a newspaper distributed by the council – and on posters.

I started to put my Christmas lights up last Friday, but they were broken so I had to buy new ones. I put them up yesterday. I’ll plug them in on Thanksgiving.

For me, Christmas lights make a silent Joyful Noise unto the Lord.

Some people Shout: (see UglyChristmasLights.com for more)

Others are more subtle:

Previous stories:
Free Piglet
Now It’s Piggy Banks
And Now The Three Little Pigs Too
Peppermint Pigs for Christmas!
“Holiday Tree” Too Inclusive

Welcome A Lady’s Ruminations and Anchoress readers!