Yesterday afternoon I took my almost five-year-old son in for preschool screening. It was set up in the gym at a local elementary school. Near the door was the check-in table, then there were several stations set up for testing communication skills, cognitive skills and motor skills. Each child was sent through with an aide. Mom or Dad just waited. My area has a large Hispanic population and bilingual classes, so there were plenty of bilingual aides available.

There were three parents and children ahead of me in line. The first needed a bilingual aide. The second was asked if she needed a bilingual aide. She said that they spoke English, but her child also spoke Spanish at home. She was given a bilingual aide anyway (I don’t think she was really happy with that, but accepted it).

This is where the story gets good:

The lady at the desk, hearing an accent from mother number 3, asked if she needed a bilingual aide.

Mom said, “We speak English. We are from Romania.”

Our area also has a good sized population of Former Soviet Bloc and Indian immigrants too. There aren’t any bilingual aides for those immigrants.

I just think it’s telling.

Oh, by the way, the little guy did extremely well with his testing. The expected scores were 10, 12 and 12. I’m not sure which score went with each test though. His scores were 18, 23 and 22. They told me that he’s “more than ready” for school. He’s gifted and there’s no gifted programs in the district.

The cut-off date for kindergarden is September 1st (you have to be five by that date). His birthday is in November. He can’t go to kindergarden until next school year. Now what do I do?

I posted this late last night and I have some more thoughts about it now.

Right after 9/11, shots of the World Trade Center, shot before the attacks, were deleted from many movies. The one that comes to mind immediately was a scene, shown in the original trailer, from Spiderman. The scene showed a helicopter caught in a giant web strung between the Towers. This scene was deleted from the movie. I thought, perhaps, they’d include it as a deleted scene on the DVD, but they didn’t. Wikipedia has a list of movies and and some TV shows that were affected by 9/11 here.

In some movies the Towers were digitally removed from scenes.

This has always bothered me. Why remove them? The Towers stood until a group of religious zealots, out to take over the world, destroyed them and thousands of people inside. Removing the Towers from the films made it seem as if they had never existed. That just wasn’t right.

That was why I was so glad to see the Towers in the Lost Episode.

How do you feel about this? Please leave comments, I’m really very interested in other’s opinions on this subject.

Cindy Sheehan has signed up with a speaker’s bureau to get speaker’s fees. She sure needs the money. She lost her job because she was spending too much time away from it. She told Cybercast News Service the other day:

‘cause Casey’s insurance money’s going to run out pretty soon.

Not only is this woman denigrating her adult son’s memory and service to this country (which is worth fighting for by the way) she’s using the proceeds from his very sacrifice to do it.

Mrs. Sheehan, I’m sorry for your loss.

I’m so glad you are not my mother.

See Angry in the Great White North and The Anchoress for more.

It was yesterday. One year blogging. I started this out on my own, then February 11th Jeff joined me here. So we have another blogiversary coming up…

One Year, over 50,000 visitors. Large Mammal in the TTLB Ecosystem.

Thanks to Chris at A Large Regular (owner of blogshares in this blog), Lorie at PoliPundit and Byrd Droppings, Betsy Newmark, Michelle Malkin, Rusty Shackleford at The Jawa Report, Ideazione (The Right Nation), The Anchoress, Jeanette and Newton at Oh How I Love Jesus, Matt Margolis at Blogs for Bush, Lady Jane at A Lady’s Ruminations, Laura Lee at The Wide Awake Cafe, Hugh Hewitt, LaShawn Barber, Mover Mike, and all the others who have linked to us.

Notice anything about this picture?

It’s a screen shot from tonight’s episode of Lost. Just a few seconds, but there.

Yes, that’s the World Trade Center you can see out of the window.

This is a flashback scene that takes place prior to 9/11/01.

Thank you Lost.

Welcome Byrd Droppings Readers! Thanks Lorie.

More thoughts here.

Via Ankle Biting Pundits

The International Freedom Center has been ousted from the 9/11 Memorial site.

Governor Pataki said:

“Freedom should unify us. This center has not,” Pataki said. “Today there remains too much opposition, too much controversy over the programming of the IFC and we must move forward with our first priority, the creation of an inspiring memorial to pay tribute to our lost loved ones and tell their stories to the world.”

Pataki said the Freedom Center could not occupy space in a cultural building located near the proposed trade center memorial, but left open the possibility that the center could find a home elsewhere on the 16-acre site.

The governor said he would direct the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. — the agency he created to rebuild the site — to explore alternate locations for the center.

The Freedom Center said:

“We are deeply disappointed that the will could not be found to continue the development of the International Freedom Center at this hallowed site,” the Freedom Center said in a statement. “We do not believe there is a viable alternative place for the IFC at the World Trade Center site.”

“We consider our work, therefore, to have been brought to an end.”

Translation: If we can’t play with the toys we want, we don’t want to play at all.

Congratulations to Debra Burlingame and the Take Back The Memorial Foundation!

Welcome PoliPundit and Anchoress Readers! Please look around if you haven’t already…

has a new look...

I like it, I like it.

Stop the ACLU is starting a new Carnival of True Civil Liberties

Here’s the ground rules.

• #1. Post must be original material, no crosspost copy and paste stuff. It must be anti-ACLU in nature, or having to do with our civil liberties that are being stripped away via judicial activism.

• #2. All posts must be submitted. You submit the URL of your post, the trackback URL, the name of your blog, and the title of your post. You can submit them by emailing them to carnival.submissions@stoptheaclu.com or using Conservative Cat’s Submission Form.

• #3. All submissions will be due on Friday by 9 p.m. and the carnival will be hosted on Mondays each week.

• #4. The usual, no profanity or invocation of violence. All submissions will be subject to the discretion of the hosting blog.

• #5. It is highly encouraged for the blogs that participate to make a post pointing to the host of the carnival on the day of the carnival.

Submit something or just peruse…

There’s a town in New Mexico that has crosses in their logo. A federal lawsuit has been filed to get the crosses removed from the logo because, “The crosses serve no purpose other than to disenfranchise and discredit non-Christian citizens.”

From Merriam-Webster Dictionary:

Main Entry: dis·fran·chise
Pronunciation: (“)dis-‘fran-“chIz
Function: transitive verb
: to deprive of a franchise, of a legal right, or of some privilege or immunity; especially : to deprive of the right to vote

Main Entry: ¹dis·cred·it
Pronunciation: (“)dis-‘kre-d&t
Function: transitive verb
1 : to refuse to accept as true or accurate : DISBELIEVE
2 : to cause disbelief in the accuracy or authority of
3 : to deprive of good repute : DISGRACE

Yep, those crosses serve no purpose other than to disenfranchise and discredit non-Christians…

The lawsuit alleges city officials are violating the First Amendment by placing religious symbols on public property and by spending public money to promote religion.

The lawsuit also accuses the city of violating the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by requiring prospective employees to sign job applications that include a religious symbol.

Weinbaum and Boyd accuse the city of invading the privacy of their homes with government-sponsored proselytizing.

Weinbaum and Boyd said they have been made to feel excluded from public participation in government activities.

“This symbol serves no governmental purpose other than to be divisive, to alienate, and disenfranchise Weinbaum, his minor daughter and Boyd,” the lawsuit says.

The name of the town is Las Cruces. The Crosses.

The city of Las Cruces is going to fight this, and rightly so.

Why is it that just the sight of a cross is so offensive to the non-religious? Non-religious is the right term here, not non-believers. I grew up in a town that was mostly Christian and Jewish. The Jews were not offended by any Christian religious symbols and the Christians were not offended by any Jewish religious symbols. In the public school system we all sang both Channukah and Christmas songs. That two week break encompassing Christmas and New Year’s was called Christmas break and there wasn’t any big to-do over changing it to Channukah break. The high school’s auditorium was often used to hold Yom Kippur and Rosh HaShanah services. Those days, the Jewish kids got off and the Christian kids didn’t. Oh well. Big deal.

People of faith, any faith, are secure in their faith. The sight of a religious symbol of another faith doesn’t cause them to lose their faith.

People of no faith, on the other hand, seem to be insecure in their non-faith. This makes every religious symbol (especially a Christian religious symbol) a threat to that non-faith.

Main Entry: pros·e·ly·tize
Pronunciation: ‘prä-s(&-)l&-“tIz
Function: verb
Inflected Form(s): -tized; -tiz·ing
intransitive senses
1 : to induce someone to convert to one’s faith
2 : to recruit someone to join one’s party, institution, or cause
transitive senses : to recruit or convert especially to a new faith, institution, or cause

Now, how exactly is a cross an inducement to convert to one’s faith? Only if you are so insecure in your non-faith that the presence of a relgious symbol poses a threat.

Welcome Carnival Readers. Please take a look around while you’re here.

when a Hurricane hits on your “big day”…

Angry has more today… Cindy Sheehan: Taken to the Woodshed.

Cindy’s been crying about the coverage of Hurricane Rita, seems it’s taking away her coverage…

And the Daily Kos’ers have been telling her off…