Ronald Reagan, as the Republican candidate for governor of California in 1966, shakes hands at a shopping center in a Los Angeles suburb for a campaign rally. The former radio announcer and movie actor burst onto the political scene after a rousing television speech for Barry Goldwater on the eve of the 1964 election. Reagan was elected governor of California by a landslide in 1966 and was reelected in 1970
My NCAA tournament bracket is not looking good since I had Louisville winning the national championship and they lost in the first round when Morehead State beat them by 1 with a 3 point shot at the buzzer.
Yeah, right, Clark Clifford. Ronald Reagan only performed successfully in six different careers: radio sportscaster, movie actor, trade union president, corporate spokesman, two-term governor and two-term president of the United States. Lucky for him he wasn’t hampered by Jimmy Carter’s intelligence!
Edmund Morris was the authorized biographer of Ronald Reagan. In addition to “Dutch,” his life of the 40th president, he has published a trilogy about Theodore Roosevelt.
Doug Mills / Associated Press
No. 23: No. 15 Richmond makes history
East Regional opener, March 14, 1991 — Four No. 15 seeds have won NCAA tournament games, but the Spiders were the first, pulling an improbable 73-69 win against second-seeded Syracuse. Even better, it was the first year CBS had broadcast rights to the opening round, allowing a prime-time audience to watch some history.
The Bible maintains several characteristics that prove it is from God. One of those is the fact that the Bible is accurate in every one of its details. The field of archaeology brings to light this amazing accuracy.(Part 3 of 5 video series on Bible and Archaeology, Taylor Prism)
My friend Perry emailed me and said he really enjoyed the film series on Archaeology and the Bible, so I am putting up another segment of it tonight and I will do another one tomorrow.
Gene Lyons has let be known on many ocasions concerning his distain for biblical fundamentalism. However, I am one of those. John Brummett and Max Brantley have mocked at biblical fundamentalists too. They all believe that the Bible contains historical errors.
Biblical Cities Attested Archaeologically. In addition to Jericho, places such as Haran, Hazor, Dan, Megiddo, Shechem, Samaria, Shiloh, Gezer, Gibeah, Beth Shemesh, Beth Shean, Beersheba, Lachish, and many other urban sites have been excavated, quite apart from such larger and obvious locations as Jerusalem or Babylon. Such geographical markers are extremely significant in demonstrating that fact, not fantasy, is intended in the Old Testament historical narratives; otherwise, the specificity regarding these urban sites would have been replaced by “Once upon a time” narratives with only hazy geographical parameters, if any.
Israel’s enemies in the Hebrew Bible likewise are not contrived but solidly historical. Among the most dangerous of these were the Philistines, the people after whom Palestine itself would be named. Their earliest depiction is on the Temple of Rameses III at Thebes, c. 1150 BC, as “peoples of the sea” who invaded the Delta area and later the coastal plain of Canaan. The Pentapolis (five cities) they established — namely Ashkelon, Ashdod, Gaza, Gath, and Ekron — have all been excavated, at least in part, and some remain cities to this day. Such precise urban evidence measures favorably when compared with the geographical sites claimed in the holy books of other religious systems, which often have no basis whatever in reality.10
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Graphic on the aftermath of Friday’s tsunami on towns along Japan’s northeastern coastline.
In December 1967, an angry Gov. Reagan called upon San Francisco State College officials to take “whatever action is necessary” to maintain law and order during a sit-in on the campus, which was then a hotbed of political activism and the scene of sometimes violent confrontations between student demonstrators and California law enforcement officials.
Kentucky Wildcats beat Princeton by 2 and Louisville loses to Morehead State by one in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.
On the contrary, Reagan was a “practical Christian,” that being the name of a mainly Midwestern, social-work-oriented movement when he was growing up. At 11, young Dutch had an epiphany, prompted by the sight of his alcoholic father lying dead drunk on the front porch of the family house in Dixon, Ill. In a moving passage of autobiography, Reagan wrote: “Seeing his arms spread out as if he were crucified – as indeed he was – his hair soaked with melting snow, snoring as he breathed, I could feel no resentment against him.” It was the season of Lent, and his mother, a devotee of the Disciples of Christ, put a comforting novel in his hand: “That Printer of Udell’s” by Harold Bell Wright. Dutch read it and told her, “I want to declare my faith and be baptized.” He was, by total immersion, on June 21, 1922.
I read a speckled copy of that book in the Library of Congress. Almost creepily, it tells the story of a handsome Midwestern boy who makes good for the sins of his father by becoming a practical Christian and a spellbinding orator. He develops a penchant for brown suits and welfare reform, marries a wide-eyed girl (who listens adoringly to his speeches) and wins election to public office in Washington.
Shy about his faith as an adult, Reagan was capable of conventional pieties like all American politicians. He attended few church services as president. But on occasion, before critical meetings, you would see him draw aside and mumble prayers.
Jim Mone / Associated Press
No. 24: Duke’s monster rally
Final Four, March 31, 2001 — No lead is safe. The Blue Devils trailed ACC rival Maryland 39-17 with just under seven minutes remaining in the first half, but staged a comeback that you had to see to believe. Behind a flurry of 3-pointers and defensive pressure, the Devils trailed by two just minutes into the second half. They closed on a 19-7 run and claimed a 95-84 win. Yes, that’s 78 points in roughly 27 minutes. Loyola Marymount, eat your heart out.
n pictures: Japan earthquake and tsunami
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Even though California was itself in the path of the tsunami, these firefighters in Los Angeles were preparing equipment ready to deploy to Japan and help in the rescue effort.
Carrying this Pig Trail Gerrymander in his briefcase, notably, is an eastern Arkansas farmer Democrat, Rep. Clark Hall of Marvell in Phillips County. He only so happens to be well-positioned as chairman of the House State Agencies Committee, which will consider these plans and which has a membership of 12 Democrats and eight Republicans.
He was grinning the other day when I accosted him in the Capitol corridor on this gerrymander.
“It’s not cherry-picking,” he said. “It makes sense when you think about it.”
If you are so desperate in regard to your region’s historic partisanship that you are willing to defy logic and draw defiantly nutty districts that are transparently designed to give yourself a wildly contrived fighting chance, then, yes, it makes perfect sense.
The Senate State Agencies Committee, which will consider these same issues, has four Democrats and four Republicans. One of the Democrats, Sue Madison of Fayetteville, has been hearing from her hometown constituents that they detest this grotesque gerrymander.
That prominent Democrat who asserted the 2-to-2 “feel” of the state also told me that, after considerable drama, maybe even into a later special session, the Legislature probably would be forced to accept some logical tinker with the status quo.
That would mean Boone or White to the 1st, thus another evolutionary step in the Republicanization of Arkansas.
Arkansas Democrats can run only so far from both the truth and the people.
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I bet Sue Madison gets such an ear full from the people back home that she has to reject this plan. It is my view that it is okay to gerrymander to some degree, but to not get carried away. Max Brantley of the Arkansas Times has a different view:
The Republican talking point that it is a perverse gerrymander to run a peninsula up to Washington County to capture Fayetteville for the Fourth District. That map would look a little strange, yes.
But to assert there is a “natural” way for existing congressional districts to grow is a fallacy based on nothing. Why should the 1st “naturally” grow further north into the hills? It would be far more “natural,” if some sort of geoconsistency were the measure, for the 1st Disttrict to grow from its western border in Lonoke County right up to the end of the Delta at Ozark Point in Little Rock, capturing all the final bits of flat land (and many thousands of black voters) in Pulaski County.
Congressional redistricting is and always has been political in every state.
Some want Fayetteville to join the mostly southern Arkansas Fourth, which, if you can picture that in your mind’s eye, will require some very creative map-drawing.
The easiest way is just to slide Fort Smith out of the Third and into the Fourth, but the city seems to be resisting that idea.
I think it would benefit Fort Smith to make the move. Even though it is the largest city in the 3rd District, it geographically is off to itself a little bit. The power belongs to the mass of humanity stretching from Fayetteville to the Missouri border. Moving to the 4th would make Fort Smith the big dog of the district.
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I do think it would be very stretched to put Fayetteville in the 4th district. Brawner thinks it is hard to map out too.
The Bible maintains several characteristics that prove it is from God. One of those is the fact that the Bible is accurate in every one of its details. The field of archaeology brings to light this amazing accuracy. (Part 2 of 5 in video series on Bible and Archaeology, name of David pops up in 1993, Hezekiah’s tunnel, Taylor Prism)
The value of the Bible in scholarly instruction is as literature, not as history.
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I remember reading all these amazing stories in the Old Testament and thinking they were strange. However, I knew that they were true because everytime I researched the facts, I found the Bible was true after all. Here is a perfect example below.
This beautifully preserved six-sided hexagonal prism of baked clay, commonly known as the Taylor Prism, was discovered among the ruins of Nineveh, the ancient capital of the Assyrian Empire.
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It contains the victories of Sennacherib himself, the Assyrian king who had besieged Jerusalem in 701 BC during the reign of king Hezekiah, it never mentions any defeats. On the prism Sennacherib boasts that he shut up “Hezekiah the Judahite” within Jerusalem his own royal city “like a caged bird.” This prism is among the three accounts discovered so far which have been left by the Assyrian king Sennacherib of his campaign against Israel and Judah. British Museum. The Taylor Prism discovery remains one of the most important discoveries in Biblical Archaeology.
Interesting note: Egyptian sources make mention of Sennacherib’s defeat in the conflict with Judah, but gives the credit for the victory to an Egyptian god who sent field mice into the camp of the Assyrians to eat their bowstrings and thus they fled from battle.
(See 2 Kings 19; 2 Chronicles 32 and Isaiah 37)
“Therefore thus says the LORD concerning the king of Assyria: ‘He shall not come into this city, Nor shoot an arrow there, Nor come before it with shield, Nor build a siege mound against it. By the way that he came, By the same shall he return; And he shall not come into this city,’ Says the LORD. ‘For I will defend this city, to save it For My own sake and for My servant David’s sake.'” Then the angel of the LORD went out, and killed in the camp of the Assyrians one hundred and eighty-five thousand; and when people arose early in the morning, there were the corpses–all dead. So Sennacherib king of Assyria departed and went away, returned home, and remained at Nineveh.” Isaiah 37:33-38
Material – Baked Clay
Neo Assyrian (Reign of Sennacherib)
Language: Akkadian (Cuneiform)
Text: Records the first 8 campaigns of King Sennacherib
Date: 691 BC
Dates of Sennacherib’s reign: 701–681 BC
Height: 38.5 cm
Width: 16.5 cm (max.)
Width: 8.57 cm (faces)
Depth:
Nineveh, northern Iraq
Excavated at Nebi Yunus
It was acquired by Colonel Taylor and Sold to the British Museum in 1855
Location: British Museum, London
Item: ANE 91032
Room: 69a, Temporary Displays
Recording the first 8 campaigns of King Sennacherib (704-681 BC)
This six-sided baked clay document (or prism) was discovered at the Assyrian capital Nineveh, in an area known today as Nebi Yunus. It was acquired by Colonel R. Taylor, British Consul General at Baghdad, in 1830, after whom it is named. The British Museum purchased it from Taylor’s widow in 1855.
As one of the first major Assyrian documents found, this document played an important part in the decipherment of the cuneiform script.
The prism is a foundation record, intended to preserve King Sennacherib’s achievements for posterity and the gods. The record of his account of his third campaign (701 BC) is particularly interesting to scholars. It involved the destruction of forty-six cities of the state of Judah and the deportation of 200,150 people. Hezekiah, king of Judah, is said to have sent tribute to Sennacherib. This event is described from another point of view in the Old Testament books of 2 Kings and Isaiah. Interestingly, the text on the prism makes no mention of the siege of Lachish which took place during the same campaign and is illustrated in a series of panels from Sennacherib’s palace at Nineveh.
The British Museum
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March 16, 2011. Two search and rescue teams from the U.S. and a team from the U.K. with combined numbers of around 220 personnel searched the town for survivors Wednesday to help in the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami.
NCAA Championship game, March 19, 1966 — This moment’s stature has only grown with time. Texas Western (now UTEP) started five black players against Kentucky, which started five white players. Texas Western’s 72-65 victory was a win for the school and the Civil Rights Movement. Years later, Texas Western point guard Bobby Joe Hill said the win “was the thing that opened doors in the ACC, the SEC. … Everybody started recruiting blacks after that.”
Dr. Pat Robertson reads George Washington’s Thanksgiving Proclamation… The Christian Broadcasting Network CBN
In the next few days I will post portions of the speech (which really was just a newspaper article) and today’s section deals with Washington’s philosophy concerning federal debt. This is provided by David Barton of Wallbuilders.
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As a very important source of strength and security, cherish public credit. One method of preserving it is to use it as sparingly as possible, avoiding occasions of expense by cultivating peace, but remembering also that timely disbursements to prepare for danger frequently prevent much greater disbursements to repel it; avoiding likewise the accumulation of debt, not only by shunning occasions of expense, but by vigorous exertions in times of peace to discharge the debts which unavoidable wars have occasioned, not ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burden which we ourselves ought to bear. The execution of these maxims belongs to your representatives; but it is necessary that public opinion should cooperate. To facilitate to them the performance of their duty it is essential that you should practically bear in mind that towards the payment of debts there must be revenue; that to have revenue there must be taxes; that no taxes can be devised which are not more or less inconvenient and unpleasant; that the intrinsic embarrassment inseparable from the selection of the proper objects (which is always a choice of difficulties), ought to be a decisive motive for a candid construction of the conduct of the Government in making it, and for a spirit of acquiescence in the measures for obtaining revenue which the public exigencies may at any time dictate.
Rand Paul is the senator from Kentucky and I like him a lot. I think his philosophy is much more like our founding fathers on debt. He has proposed eliminated 1/3 of the federal deficit in one year. Below is a story on him and you can see either people love him or hate him.
One day after President Obama called for a rewrite of U-S Education policy, Secretary Duncan defended the Department of Education’s role in making American schools globally competitive.
“We all have to work together to give them a better education,” Duncan said, “and if you are decimating that, you’re going the wrong direction. That does grave harm not just to children but to families, to communities and ultimately to our country.”
Paul argues – however – that educational performance has decreased as U-S education funding has increased.
“When the federal government spends money,” Paul’s overview of the plan explains, “those are resources that are drained from the state, diluted by way of large Washington bureaucracy, and sent back to the school districts with red tape and strings attached.”
“Washington provides at best, eight, nine, ten percent of money,” Duncan countered, “The vast majority of funding comes at the state and the local level, about 90 percent, and that is as it should be. What we all need to do is not invest in the status quo, but invest in this very different vision.”
Meanwhile – WHAS11 viewers are sounding off about Paul’s spending cuts plan.
“I want you to know that I think Rand Paul is a nut,” said one caller to a comment line.
“Apparently, he sends his kids to private schools and so forth, and that’s why he wants a tax cut in education,” another caller said.
“I’m strongly in favor of Rand Paul’s decision,” countered one caller, “I think he’s going to get us going in the right direction.”
“I think Rand Paul is spot on,” said another, “We need to cut the waste and eliminate the bull crap in the government and get things back on track.”
—The 4th District across southern Arkansas must pick up territory and people, as must the 1st in eastern Arkansas (which is to say the Democratic areas are declining), while the exploding 3rd District in Northwest Arkansas must give up territory and a little more than 100,000 inhabitants (which is to say the Republican areas are growing).
—Any continuation of the redistricting patterns of recent decades, which is to say any logical adaptation of the status quo, would have the 1st District continuing to spread from its eastern Arkansas base across the northern hills.
—A decade ago the 1st was extended by that pattern all the way to Mountain Home and Baxter County. The natural extension this time would be to move further west and higher up the hill to pick up Harrison and Boone County, now in the 3rd District and famously conservative and Republican.
—The only other natural option would be for the 1st District to pick up White County from the 2nd District of Central Arkansas. Home to Harding University, White County also has gone Republican, as has most of Little Rock’s surrounding and growing suburban area.
—When something is happening naturally, the only way to stop or slow it is to act unnaturally. Thus we behold the Pig Trail Gerrymander, which would rid the 3rd District of population in a way that would save the 1st District from having to pick up Harrison.
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I think there are no good alternatives for Democrats because there are 125,000 extra Republicans that are getting moved out of NW Ark and they will make the other districts more Republican.
I also think this effort by the Democrats in Arkansas will become a national story. In the end, I think the Democrats will back down and change their mind about this plan. Probably for the same reasons that Max Brantley thought it was a rumor at first and he totally dismissed it as laughable.
Broken Road
Photograph by Franck Robichon, EPA
A lone vehicle passes a train overpass mangled by the recent earthquake in Fukushima Prefecture, Japan, on March 12.
NCAA Championship game, March 28, 1977 — The New York City native found success at Marquette, a Jesuit school in Milwaukee, Wis., by building a program filled with NYC kids and area players. A great coach and even better quote, McGuire’s Warriors needed a last-second shot off a full-court pass to get by UNC Charlotte in the Final Four before upending Dean Smith’s Tar Heels in the final. McGuire walked into the sunset a champ.
A prominent Democrat was explaining to me the other day that Arkansas is neither still a Democratic state nor newly a Republican one. As regards our four congressional districts, he asserted, Arkansas “feels like 2-and-2.”
That sense aside, the state currently goes 3-to-1 for Republicans.
Beyond that, any logical or obvious redrawing of the four congressional districts under the new Census seems to strengthen or preserve the Republican inclinations of three of the four, all but the 4th across southern Arkansas, which now has the only Democratic representative, Mike Ross.
That, then, is the point of the Pig Trail Gerrymander.
That is my name for this absurdly still-viable notion to extend the 4th District northward along a squiggly line from some wilderness area out between Ozark and Alma and run it up narrowly to carve the Democratic-leaning city of Fayetteville out of the otherwise overwhelmingly Republican 3rd District and attach it to the 4th.
This intergalactic idea sprang from a back room all the way across the state from Fayetteville, in eastern Arkansas.
It was not concocted for any reason having to do with either of the affected districts, the 4th or 3rd. Instead it was contrived wholly to try to protect against any further Republicanization of the eastern region’s 1st District, which went Republican last year for the first time since Reconstruction.
Democrats think they can take it back, thus forging the 2-to-2 split they assert as some kind of natural-seeming order.
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Brummett is right when he asserts, “Instead it was contrived wholly to try to protect against any further Republicanization of the eastern region’s 1st District.”
The Republicanization of Arkansas on the federal level has happened at the same time it is happening on the State government level. The way things are going for the Democrats, they will be lucky to keep 40% of the State Reps and Senators in office in 2012. Look around at the states around us. Mississippi has a Democratic controlled House and a Republican Controlled Senate, but every other state (TX, TN, LA, MO, OK) have Republican control. After 2022 the Republicans will have rigged it where we will never have another Democratic Congressman from Arkansas. Every district will have 60% Republicans in it. Look at what length the Democrats are having to go to keep one district competitive (Putting Fayetteville in the South).
Wave of Destruction
Photograph by Mainichi Shimbun, Reuters
A tsunami wave crashes over a street in Miyako City, Iwate Prefecture, in northeastern Japan on March 11.
The Bible maintains several characteristics that prove it is from God. One of those is the fact that the Bible is accurate in every one of its details. The field of archaeology brings to light this amazing accuracy. (Video Series on Biblical Archaeology, Part 1 of 5)
It is that Altes said he wanted the Bible taught as history because it is the most accurate book ever written, which — if I may dare to say so in ready anticipation of hate mail — is a debatable assertion.
At the very least, can we agree that you cannot behold the Bible as wholly accurate without faith?
The value of the Bible in scholarly instruction is as literature, not as history.
To be sure, there are some things in the Bible which will never be confirmed through archaeology. For example, archaeology has not found any evidence that Abraham lived — but, of course, that’s exactly what you would expect, since in terms of the politics of his day, Abraham was not exactly the most important historical figure. And because they don’t exist, archaeologists are obviously not going to dig up tapes and transcripts of Abraham having a conversation with Sarah, or for that matter with anyone else. All we can legitimately expect form archaeology in matters like this is to show that the events described in the Bible make sense in context. And that, of course, has been done in a very spectacular manner.
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I wonder if skeptics are open to looking at the facts when it comes to what archaeology has to say about the Bible’s accuracy.
Hezekiah’s Siloam Tunnel Inscription. King Hezekiah of Judah ruled from 721 to 686 BC. Fearing a siege by the Assyrian king, Sennacherib, Hezekiah preserved Jerusalem’s water supply by cutting a tunnel through 1,750 feet of solid rock from the Gihon Spring to the Pool of Siloam inside the city walls (2 Kings 20; 2 Chron. 32). At the Siloam end of the tunnel, an inscription, presently in the archaeological museum at Istanbul, Turkey, celebrates this remarkable accomplishment. The tunnel is probably the only biblical site that has not changed its appearance in 2,700 years.
Inside Hezekiah’s Tunnel-B
Inside “Hezekiah’s tunnel,” the 8th century water channel cut through bedrock right under the City of David. The channel brought water from the Gihon spring (on the north-eastern slope of the hill) to the Siloam pool at the southern tip of the city. King Hezekiah ordered construction of this water system to secure a water source inside the city walls in the face of the approaching Assyrian army. When the channel was finished, the entrance to the spring was covered over with rubble to prevent the Assyrians from using (or tampering with) the water.
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An aerial picture shows the devastated city of Minamisanriku, in Miyagi Prefecture, northeast Japan. Radiation levels fell Tuesday at a quake-hit Japanesenuclear power plant after an earlier sharp rise, the chief government spokesman said
The Daily Hatch 