Archive for Viewpoints

A solution for our parks problem?

Erv Ulbrich

By Erv Ulbrich

When I moved here 50-plus years ago, Whittier was building out as a bedroom community serving the industrial enterprises all over Los Angeles and Orange counties.

It had some parks, lots of trees, and many ranch houses. The CCNRs where I bought a house in Mar Vista Heights specified ranch houses only. As time went on, there were some parks added, most notably Palm Park, Leffingwell Park and Hellman Park. Many of the parks were improved, especially Parnell Park.

The population, however, expanded rapidly from about 60.000 to 100,000 people, and today, many of the parks can be seen to be quite crowded. On a holiday, Michigan Park has so many cars that they overflow into the local neighborhoods. A parking limitation has been set up for Hellman Park, etc.

In the longer run, there is not much room in Whittier for more parks and some of the new construction of three-story townhouses even has been relieved of the requirement to put up money for more parks because there is no local land. This is obviously one of the sticking points in the ongoing Nelles negotiations where the most recent plan is for more or less 10 residences per acre with no real parks for soccer or tennis or picnics.

As luck would have it, in the early 1990’s various oil fields next to the city became available and were purchased by the city using county park funds known as Proposition A funds. A committee was organized by the Parks Department in 1993 to figure out how to manage the park.

Quite a few thousand acres were ultimately involved, and the committee came up with a management plan for the park’s use by hikers, horses (not overnight), and mountain bikes. Some moneys became available and the Park, renamed a Preserve, started to operate. In about 2007, it was decided by the city to lease some of the park to an oil company for a proposed 60 oil wells.

This set off a fracas among the citizens and resulted in several lawsuits that ultimately resulted in preventing the oil drilling in perpetuity. Meanwhile, the Puente Hills Landfill closed which impacted the operation of the Preserve. It is hard is get the latest data but as many as 300,000 people a year are reportedly using some part of the Preserve for recreation. It is convenient to approximately 500,000 people.

As things have come out in the last few years, the move by OPEC to manipulate the oil market intended to drive out the frackers and retain OPEC’s market share is working and they say they will continue it for eight more years. Earlier estimates are that the oil wells in the Preserve would have been in tertiary production producing oil at $70 per barrel in the face of the current market prices of $45 per barrel.

The royalty-based deal that the city had with the driller would have been worthless and the driller besides would have had to invest big money in the wells.

So it would seem that the solution to the problem of too few parks is at hand: use some or all of the Preserve for a city of Whittier or L.A. County park. In some more distant time, the Preserve could become part of the slowly happening San Gabriel Mountain National Forest / Monument / Park.

But for now, there is a need for more recreational areas for Whittier. These areas need not interfere very much with the wildlife in the Preserve who think nothing of leaving the Preserve. Deer, raccoons and coyotes are seen all over Whittier already.

There are seven gates to the Preserve and a sensible place to start would be those gates that have an area internal to the Preserve that offers parking that will not bother neighbors. Hellman Park is probably a candidate. Another one is the top of Turnbull Canyon Road where at one time a cemetery was planned. Probably the most developed is the entrance at the Catalina Gate where the oil trucks were to go.

There is a good space there for picnics and access under Colima to the Preserve east of Colima. Another place that might work is the Savage Canyon which is currently the dump but which someday will be full.

In general, access is better on the Whittier side than on the Hacienda Heights side but many of the streets that end at the Preserve cannot support parking inside the Preserve. At one time, the oil field roads were to be converted to trails but the old roads were kept in consideration of oil drilling. Now they might be considered to be like the roads in Griffith Park which are getting an international reputation.

When the original committee was done with the management plan, we were all allowed to take our cars onto the existing roads in the Preserve for one afternoon. Some of these were quite steep and dangerous requiring good redesign for park use.
In the long run, those areas near a well-designed system of parks should greatly build up the real estate values in the neighborhoods nearby just as the Los Feliz area has been built up by Griffith Park.

Careful design must be done to avoid some of the problems of traffic in Griffith Park like Christmas light shows, miniature railroads, the planetarium, the zoo, etc..
If the park is to be useful, there must be shade especially as global warming continues.

This indicates trees and in the original plans these trees would have been Valley Oaks and California Sycamores. As the ambient temperatures rise, other trees may have to be considered. One that is naturally thriving is the Modesto Ash. Areas of sagebrush might be nice.

There must be some form of irrigation for the trees but gray water may be a solution. Obviously there will need to be labor from the Park Department, perhaps not for the expert grooming that they do to the current parks. In addition, fire protection for the city should be paramount.

I was here the last time it burned and it was scary. The adobe, hot water deposits and rocks underlying areas of the park may also offer problems.

So, what should be done? The existing city management has not done much for the last 20 years when they were handed a management plan by the citizen’s committee. The current parks budget is probably quite limited. It would seem reasonable for another citizen’s committee to re-examine the problem.

Is there really a need? Is there really too little parking? Where should we start? Who should own the park, the city or the county? What should be the interface to the Preserve? How long will the park be open each day? How will it be patrolled? Will Hacienda Heights and other involved cities have a say? What will we name the park? Will other parks follow?

We cannot move on all the possibilities, however, there may be enough money in the city budget to start one park. Maybe some developer could be the source of some funds as part of a future development. ($5 million was excused as I remember for the Gables development.)

Perhaps the county parks department could suggest a county park as nice as the one in La Mirada (but no golf course). The best part of our situation is that the land is already purchased by the city using county funds.

The future of Whittier is at stake. Will it be a bedroom town with trees and parks and space or will we allow apartment buildings like the Mosaic Gardens to be built right to the sidewalk in the manner of Hong Kong. Will we line the streets with three-story townhouses that are 20 percent stairs in the name of getting 100 people to live on one acre so as to maximize rent?

If the city and the county will not move, maybe it is time for the citizens to organize the effort and then get some management who can get the job done.

If anybody would like to talk more about this, I am available most of the time at 562-696-4886 or eulbrich2@verizon.net. I have enjoyed parks since 1937 starting in the local parks and then the Forest Preserves surrounding Chicago.

I have used the city parks here almost daily since 1963 and I have seen them get more crowded. I am a member of the Audubon Society, the Arbor Day Society, the California State Park Association, the National Park Association, and sometimes the Whittier Conservancy (for parks more than keeping old houses).

I could pursue the suggested committee but my age and health indicate that a younger person will have a better chance to get things done. I read that there are now 75 million people in the millennial generation; maybe they could do it.

The first citizen’s committee was managed by the Whittier Parks Department. They should be interested because most in places that is part of their job description. Their success on the Greenway Trail should point the way.

Irv Ulbrich is a 50-plus-year resident of Whittier and a founding member of Whittier Hills Oil Watch.

 

The ‘real’ Watergate scandal

From staff reports
In a mostly unknown side of Watergate, former Whittier College alumnus Geoff Shepard (’66) will present a case against President Richard Nixon’s prosecutors through his recently published book, “The Real Watergate Scandal: Collusion, Conspiracy and the Plot that Brought Nixon Down” at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2015 in the Wardman Library at Whittier College. A reception is slated at 5:30 p.m.

Geoff Shepard will rebuke prosecutors in the Nixon Watergate scandal at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2015 at the Wardman Library at Whittier College.

Shepard was one of the transcribers of the White House tapes that eventually led to Nixon’s resignation in 1974.

More than four decades have passed since Watergate, one of the greatest presidential scandals in American politics, which continues to cause great debate and discussion. Richard M. Nixon ’34 resigned from his post as president of the United States, becoming the only presidential resignation in our nation’s history. But does the American public know what happened behind the scenes?

“My book focuses on the judicial and prosecutorial abuse in the Watergate trials and unearths astounding elements of collusion between the trial judge and the special prosecutors,” said Shepard, who served as the principal deputy to the president’s lead defense lawyer, J. Fred Buzhardt.
Shepard said he has uncovered evidence behind a comprehensive plan to remove the 37th president from office. Shepard shares in his second book about the Nixon administration his findings from his research.
“Going through 200 to 300 memos from the prosecution was like going through the playbook of the opposing team’s coach for the championship my team lost,” Shepard said.
Shepard’s career had an explosive growth in a short amount of time. A standout undergraduate, he earned a scholarship to attend Harvard Law which catapulted him to the Nixon White House as a White House Fellow in 1969. He was assigned to the Treasury Department and following his fellowship year, Shepard joined the Domestic Council staff at the White House, where he served for five years.
Shepard, who later on had a 35-year career in the insurance industry, shares several parallels of his life with President Nixon besides working at the White House and having the same alma mater.
As a first-year student, the Santa Barbara native took the required English course taught by long-time Professor Albert Upton. Upton’s teachings, based on his ground-breaking book, “Design for Thinking,” transformed generations of students’ way of analyzing, classifying, and communicating, including Shepard’s.
“As one of the youngest lawyers working in the White House, I wrote many memos on policy issues for the Domestic Council,” Shepard said. “President Nixon liked my approach and I suspect he could perceive Upton’s influence in them, since he also had Upton as his professor at Whittier way back in the 1930s.”
Shepard was a political science major and always knew he wanted to become a lawyer. He later became the first recipient of the Nixon Scholarship.
“I attended the student scholarship luncheon put on by the Republican Women’s Club of Whittier and Richard Nixon sat next to me,” said Shepard. “I wasn’t expecting him to be there.”
At this point, Nixon had been vice president of the United States, ran unsuccessfully for governor of California, and had dropped out of politics and relocated to New York to practice law.
“In his luncheon speech, Nixon compared the student government issues in his own campaign as student body president, with those of my own,” Shepard said. “I was very impressed.”
Young Shepard must’ve made quite the impression on Nixon because he later found out that the former vice president had doubled the amount of his scholarship.
Since 2010, Shepard has helped produce a series of Nixon Legacy Forums focusing on President Nixon’s various public policy initiatives. The forums are co-sponsored by the Richard Nixon Foundation and the National Archives, and have been broadcast on C-SPAN’s American History channel. More than 30 such forums have been produced to date.

Personal Privacy Protection Act key to children’s freedoms

Brad Dacus, president of the Pacific Justice Institute

By Brad Dacus

President, Pacific Justice Institute

Since many of us have been traveling and wrapping up summer vacations the last few weeks, I wanted to make sure that you don’t miss out on our new, big push to protect privacy for all Californians.

If you have already signed the official petition for the Personal Privacy Protection Act, thank you! We are excited about this launch and what it will mean for our children’s future.

If you haven’t yet had an opportunity to sign and return the petition, please take just a few minutes to print off the single signature petition from our website, PJI.org. (Multiple-signature petitions are available by contacting our coalition partners at PrivacyForAll.com.)

This initiative effort may be our last, best opportunity to take back our privacy from politicians and pass on this inalienable right to our children.

Many of you worked tirelessly on our previous referendum campaign to overturn AB 1266, the notorious co-ed school bathroom bill. So what’s different this time?

• The new initiative goes further and preserves even more rights than were possible by just overturning AB 1266.

• The new, significantly lower number of signatures required for this initiative makes it much more likely to get on the ballot. If we are able to gather the same number of valid signatures we submitted for the AB 1266 referendum, this initiative will easily qualify for the ballot!

• Unlike Prop. 8, this initiative includes a provision allowing us to defend it in court when our state politicians will not.

• In the meantime, we have not given up on the AB 1266 referendum—our attorneys continue to fight in court for those signatures to be counted.
Politicians are counting on you, the silent majority, to stay silent as they take away your privacy rights. You can send them a strong message that you are not giving away your rights, just by signing and returning the official petition on our website.

Our goals for gathering signatures and enacting the Personal Privacy Protection Act are very achieveable. But we need to get off to a strong start, and we need your help to make this happen!

I don’t ask this very often, but can I also ask you to forward this e-mail to 10 friends? Let’s awaken the silent majority and change our children’s future!

Running the race …

Professor’s final exam gets re-‘buff’ed

Brad Dacus, president of the Pacific Justice Institute

By Brad Dacus

President, Pacific Justice Institute

What would you do if your college-age daughter told you that her professor was making his students literally get naked for their final exam?

We learned this week that this scenario actually confronted a mom whose daughter attends UC-San Diego. The daughter is in a visual arts class. The professor even confirmed to local news outlets that yes, his final exam included a requirement that this and other students get naked and perform an “erotic gesture” in a candlelit room. Perhaps even more disturbingly, the professor noted that he would be taking off his clothes as well!

Why am I telling you this story? Friends … the future of our children is at stake. It’s easy sometimes to get bogged down in the rhetoric of the “culture wars” and lose sight of what we’re fighting for.

Make no mistake—if we surrender on issues like marriage, parental rights in education, and student privacy, it will get worse. Those who today are pushing radical sexualized education will not be satisfied until our children are forced to participate.

This is why PJI continues to fight for families and our young people. It’s why we continue to battle in court over the “co-ed bathroom bill,” AB 1266. It’s why we are a very active participant in the Privacy for All coalition. It’s why we developed a privacy opt-out form for K-12 schools.

Please continue to stand with us against those who (like this professor) do not have our children’s best interests at heart. I wish this young college student (who chose to remain anonymous) had reached out to Pacific Justice Institute so we could have confronted this outrage on her behalf. But I hope you will help spread the word about PJI to your family and friends so that other families who may encounter similar situations will get the help they need. As the days grow darker, may our light grow stronger!

 

New initiative will expand privacy protections

Brad Dacus, president of the Pacific Justice Institute

SACRAMENTO — A new voter initiative would significantly expand privacy protections in sensitive facilities such as public restrooms and locker rooms.

The measure is similar to but more protective than the referendum effort on AB 1266, the controversial legislation that allows students to use bathrooms and locker rooms based only on their self-perceived gender identity.

The new initiative, known as the Personal Privacy Protection Act, would reaffirm restroom use based on biological sex in all state and local government buildings, including schools. The PPPA would also allow businesses to protect the privacy of patrons and employees in restrooms and locker rooms.

The PPPA further includes a provision allowing proponents to defend the measure in court if state authorities refuse to do so.

The initiative was submitted to the office of Attorney Genral Kamala Harris on behalf of Privacy for All by attorney Kevin Snider of Pacific Justice Institute.

Brad Dacus, president of Pacific Justice Institute, said, “The Personal Privacy Protection Act will allow Californians to reclaim essential privacy rights that have been trampled by our politicians. We can and we must be both compassionate toward those suffering from gender identity dysphoria, and exercise common sense in not casting aside crucial constitutional rights like privacy. This initiative strikes the appropriate balance.”

Once a title and summary are issued by the Attorney General, proponents will have 180 days to gather 365,880 valid signatures. The Privacy for All Students coalition gathered about 620,000 signatures in a shorter timeframe for the AB 1266 referendum, of which more than 487,000 were validated. Low voter turnout in California’s 2014 gubernatorial election has resulted in fewer signatures being required to place initiatives on the 2016 ballot.

Pacific Justice Institute will issue further releases when the initiative is ready for signature-gathering.

 

Jackals in the henhouse, firebugs in the barn

Ferguson

By Alex Ferguson

Back in the good old days, a self-proclaimed Communist and enthusiastic “Truther” like Van Jones would have been anathema to our political and media elites. Today, however, under the Obama regime, he is the darling of the liberal left, a fixture on political television shows, and a one-time “Green Jobs Czar” in that same Obama administration.
Lest anyone be fooled into thinking that the soft-spoken, Brooks Brothers image that he projects today is the real Van Jones, they should hearken to his own words: “I am willing to forego the cheap satisfaction of the radical pose for the deep satisfaction of radical ends.”
In another notable quote, on Oct. 22, 2014, Jones told host Don Lemon on CNN’s “360” that, “Sarah Palin, people forget, she had the Democratic Party shaking in our boots in 2008. She came out. She gave that speech at the convention. That was hands down, one of the best convention speeches, not by a woman, by anybody in 2008. People were running for the hills.”
Of course, because they absolutely cannot tolerate a conservative woman – any more than they can tolerate a conservative black – the leftist media elite went into an attack mode that turned the usual “politics of personal destruction” to a level of slander, libel, and ridicule never before seen in American political life; comments by the likes of left-wing comedians David Letterman and Bill Maher rising to a level of depravity that would, as they say, gag a maggot.
One of the most pernicious of the false charges made against Sarah Palin was that she was not only ignorant but given to wildly inaccurate pronouncements. Subsequent analysis reveals that her pronouncements were much more often correct than not. A perfect example would be her 2008 contention that Barack Obama was “someone who sees America as so imperfect that he is palling around with terrorists who would target their own country.”
Much has been made of Obama’s close relationships with Marxists like his parents, Frank Marshall Davis, and Jeremiah Wright – not to mention actual murderous Communist terrorists like Bernadine Dohrn and Bill Ayers – but what about the people he has brought into his administration? Any terrorists?

VAN JONES

We have already cited Van Jones, an open Communist who has belonged to a laundry list of unsavory, Marxist organizations, some of which have advocated or at least praised acts of terrorism.

AL SHARPTON

Much more recently, Obama has moved the “Reverend” Al Sharpton to the front and center of his administration as point-man on race relations. Sharpton is a tax cheat ($4.5 million), a deadbeat ($65,000), an extortionist, a rabble-rousing racist, and an anti-Semite.
Given his aggressive support for the levelling of false rape charges against six innocent white men in the Tawana Brawley case, he is also a lying character assassin. (Note that, when Sharpton refused to pay a $65,000 judgement in the defamation lawsuit resulting from the Brawley case, the issue became moot when rich supporters picked up the tab.)
While such shenanigans hardly amount to terrorism, other escapades do.
For instance, in 1991, in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights, a Jewish man accidentally killed a black child in a traffic collision. Local blacks rioted, resulting in the fatal stabbing of rabbinical student Yankel Rosenbaum. Meanwhile, Al Sharpton made one incendiary speech after another, whipping up sufficient anti-Semitic violence for one wag to refer to the result as “America’s kristallnacht.” Some rioters chanted, “death to Jews,” while others attacked Jewish homes, which they identified by the mezuzahs on the door. Sharpton called Jews “diamond merchants” at Gavin Cato’s funeral, while others held up a banner which proclaimed, “Hitler did not do the job.”
Then, in 1995, Sharpton turned a simple landlord-tenant dispute into an anti-Semitic massacre that Goebbels and Himmler would have been proud of: “We will not stand by and allow them to move this brother so that some white interloper can expand his business.” Or, “We are not going to stand idly by and let a Jewish person come in black Harlem and methodically drive black people out of business up and down 125th St.”

It seems that, while Sharpton was leading protest marches demanding that Jews be driven from the neighborhood, Roland James Smith Jr., one of his followers, walked into Jewish-owned Freddy’s Fashion Mart (a business at the heart of the tenant dispute) with a loaded pistol.
He then ordered all the blacks – except the black security guard, who had been called a “cracker lover” and “traitor” – out of the store, poured paint thinner on bins of clothing, and lit the make-shift firebombs, burning up himself and seven innocent human beings.
And the difference between Al Sharpton and Charles Manson is what exactly? Oh, Al Sharpton has black privilege? Well, never mind then.
For Obama to appoint this race-hustling poverty pimp as his point-man on race relations cannot be condemned too harshly. The fruit of this poisoned tree did not take long to burgeon. For instance, one of Sharpton’s “Million Marchers” mobs chanted, “What do we want? Dead cops! When do we want them? Now!”

Almost immediately, two New York cops were ambushed and executed in direct response to this disgraceful rhetoric.
Charles Manson rots in jail, while Al Sharpton dines in the White House and rides around in limousines.

ERIC HOLDER

That leads to Attorney General Eric Holder, who, as a freshman at Columbia University in 1970, joined a black separatist group called the “Student Afro-American Society” (SAAS). One of their first actions was a five-day armed occupation of a closed ROTC, demanding that it be renamed the “Malcolm X Lounge.” (Later, Barack Obama used this same “lounge” as a hang-out spot, so apparently the brandishing of guns, the threats, and the intimidation were well worth it.) They also took over the office of the Dean of Freshmen, which they occupied until their demands were met.
Should anyone be confused regarding SAAS’s attitude toward the actual spilling of blood, “in March 1970, the group released a statement supporting twenty one Black Panthers charged with plotting to blow up department stores, railroad tracks, a police station, and the New York Botanical Gardens.” (Red State)
Naturally, with an undergraduate record like that, Democrats couldn’t wait to appoint Holder to the most powerful positions in government agencies and private law firms. It is worth noting that, in virtually every case, he used his newfound powers to release the most violent, bloodthirsty terrorists that American law enforcement agencies had managed to identify and incarcerate.
For instance, when Bill Clinton appointed him Assistant Attorney General in 1997, he became the “gatekeeper of presidential pardons.” Holder was a key figure entrusted with the task of vetting the Clinton Administration’s 176 last-minute pardons in 2001. The beneficiaries of those pardons included such notables as former Weather Underground members Susan Rosenberg (who was involved in the deadly 1981 robbery of a Brinks armored car) and Linda Evans (who used false identification to buy firearms, had harbored a fugitive, and was in possession of 740 pounds of dynamite at the time of her arrest in 1985.)” {DISCOVERTHE- NETWORKS.ORG}
“Holder was also intimately involved in President Clinton’s August 11, 1999 pardon of 16 members of the Puerto Rican FALN acronym for the Armed forces of National Liberation … This violent, Marxist-Leninist, terrorist organization was active in the U.S. from the mid 1970s through the early 1980s.”{ibid} Their goal was political independence for Puerto Rico. In furtherance of that objective, they set off 130 bombs between 1974 and 1983, killing six people and wounding more than 80.
More than a dozen of these murderers (together with several members of Los Macheteros, another band of Puerto Rican terrorists) were sentenced to 35 to 105 years. They refused to participate in any clemency efforts, which would have ended the matter had the Justice Department not waved its usual contrition requirement.

Moreover, despite the form-letter clemency requests produced on their behalf, they refused to renounce violence. Meanwhile, victims’ relatives were never even notified of the impending hearings.
Sentencing judges, U.S. attorneys, the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the Fraternal Order of Police, and the FBI all filed objections, but to no avail. Sixteen of these monsters were granted clemency (although four actually refused to accept it). The House of Representatives voted 311 to 41 against clemency, while the Senate followed suit with a vote of 95 to 2 against. Even Attorney General Janet Reno declared that their release “would ‘increase the threat’ of terrorism.”
Are we beginning to discern a pattern here?
As a result of the furor over Holder’s shepherding of Marc Rich’s pardon application through to Bill Clinton’s desk, Holder withdrew from public life and joined the Washington, D.C. law firm of Covington and Burling. Among other questionable clients that this firm defended were no less than 17 Yemeni “enemy combatants” residing at Guantanamo Bay.
Radical attorneys working for Holder put in 3,000 hours of work on their cases – pro bono. As a result, at least one of these homicidal fanatics returned to the battlefield soon after his release. He subsequently blew himself up in a 2008 truck bombing that killed 13 Iraqi soldiers and seriously wounded 42 others.
Of course the average president-elect would have assiduously avoided a degenerate like Holder, but he fit Barack Obama like a well-used jockstrap. Consequently, Obama appointed this worm to the office of Attorney General of the United States of America.
Having endorsed and supported the Black Panthers’ political violence when he was an undergraduate at Columbia, Holder, as incoming AG, endorsed and supported political violence perpetrated by the New Black Panthers. It seems that, during the 2008 election that inflicted Obama on America, two New Black Panther Party members dressed up in black uniforms, armed themselves with nightsticks, and “intimidated white voters with racial slurs and threats of violence at a Philadelphia polling place.”
Unfortunately for these two militant morons, their fascistic tactics were not only photographed, but witnessed by Bartle Bull, a former civil rights attorney and campaign aide to the late Bobby Kennedy. The Panthers didn’t even bother to answer the charges filed by the Bush Administration, so a federal judge entered a default judgement against them.
That should have been the end of the matter, but the incoming Holder Justice Department snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by dropping all charges. As a result, “in June of 2010, J. Christian Adams, a five year Department of Justice (DOJ) veteran, resigned to protest the ‘corrupt nature’ of the DOJ’s dismissal of the case … Adams gave damning public testimony about how the DOJ believed that ‘civil rights law should not be enforced in a race neutral manner, and should never be enforced against blacks or other national minorities.” (DISCOVER- THENETWORKS.ORG)
“Christopher Coates – Voting Section Chief for the DOJ – testified to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and corroborated Adams’ contentions.” (ibid) This is an official endorsement of terrorism on the part of Holder’s DOJ, plain and simple.
While the injustices perpetrated by Holder’s Justice Department are legion, the present examination needs be limited to those that touch upon terrorism, and that takes us to the Fast and Furious scandal. Many have speculated on what could possibly have motivated Holder to allow more than 2,000 guns to be shipped to Mexican drug cartels in 2011. He claims that he wanted to track them and build cases against the recipients. Did he fail to make any arrangements to track them because he had made some secret deal with the narcotraficantes, or was he just too stupid to implement his own scheme?
(This is always the over-riding question when analyzing the antics of the Obama Administration. How much do we attribute to corruption, how much to treason, and how much to simple verticranial rectumitus?)
As usual, the cover-up is as bad as the crime. Remember that the Justice Department originally responded to congressional requests for information by supplying a document that even they later admitted was full of falsehoods. Rather than correct that abominable record, Holder flatly refused to to comply with subpoenas and was apparently unfazed when confronted with a contempt of Congress conviction. No other sitting cabinet member in American history has been so disgraced, but “Eric the Red” has nothing but contempt for Congress, just as he has contempt for American law enforcement officers like Brian Terry, the Border Patrol agent who was murdered by a Fast and Furious rifle.
Would anyone but a terrorist endorse and enforce Obama’s efforts to close Gitmo and release virtually every murdering terrorist that we have managed to capture? This is called “accessory after the fact.”

JOHN KERRY

That takes us to Secretary of State John Kerry. Having parlayed three minor scratches into three Purple Hearts, which qualified him for a hardship transfer out of Vietnam, Kerry took it upon himself to co-found an anti-war group called Vietnam Veterans Against the War. He had already falsely testifies before Congress about trumped-up atrocities supposedly committed by American soldiers overseas. Now, he and Jane Fonda put together a phony “Winter Soldier” propaganda orgy in which misfits who had never been anywhere near Vietnam confessed to crimes against humanity that never took place.
A perfect example was John Kerry’s second in command at the VVAW, Al Hubbard. Hubbard was a Black Panther and former Air Force sergeant who claimed to have been a captain and to have been wounded flying missions over Vietnam. In point of fact, Hubbard was a complete fraud. He had never been to Vietnam, and he had never been wounded. Check out the videos of those long-ago anti-war demonstrations, and you may notice a faction waving Vietcong Communist flags. That would be the VVAW. Far from being for peace, they were a Maoist revolutionary cadre dedicated to bringing the war home to America.
That takes us to a Kansas City VVAW steering committee meeting of Nov. 12-15, 1971, at which they voted on whether to kill pro-war American politicians or kidnap them and use them to extract concessions from the government.
Naturally, John Kerry lied about his participation in these diabolic deliberations, but author Gerald Nicosia located several witnesses who saw him there and unearthed FBI archives that ended all doubt.
Somewhat sympathetic toward Kerry and his activities, and being a man of integrity, Nicosia notified Kerry’s camp of the impending release of his discoveries in his upcoming book, “Home to War.” He even supplied a Kerry campaign messenger with copies.

“And then on March 25 approximately 4,000 of the FBI documents –
perhaps hundreds of them on Kerry himself, in folders that I had
already bookmarked – were stolen from my home; a burglary that
remains unsolved, but about which I have my own suspicions, and
which I definitely believe to have been politically motivated.”
(“Home to War”)

So, you tell me. Has Barack Hussein Obama packed his administration with terrorists,
or is that a vicious, racist rumor?

Alex Ferguson is a longtime Whittier resident and contributor to the Whittier Daily News. You can read more of Alex’s conservative thoughts at conservativecannonade.org

‘Pleasure activist’ raises parents’ ire

Brad Dacus, president of the Pacific Justice Institute

By Brad Dacus

President, Pacific Justice Institute

LAFAYETTE – Controversy is growing in a Northern California community as parents have learned disturbing new details about recent sex-ed presentations for freshmen in the Acalanes Union High School District.

For months, parents have pushed school officials for answers about who was involved and what was being taught by Planned Parenthood on campus. Just before Christmas, in response to a public records request from Pacific Justice Institute, the district finally identified some of the PP employees involved with the program. Parents are now more concerned than ever.

The parents started asking more questions and learned that one of the sex-ed instructors at Acalanes High School, when she is not working for Planned Parenthood, leads “pleasure workshops” demonstrating the use of sex toys for a sex toy porn shop in Berkeley called Good Vibrations. It is not yet clear what this instructor may have told students about the store’s offerings.

Parents also identified the public Twitter feed of another sex-ed instructor at Acalanes High School, the PP education manager for Northern California, where she calls herself a “pleasure activist.” She commented enthusiastically on attending the CatalystCon pornography conference for her continuing education along with other Planned Parenthood representatives, just prior to teaching at AHS this past fall.

This event attracts leading members of the porn industry and focuses on topics like using explicit instructional media for sex-ed, the history of sex toys and how to effectively share your sex life on the stage and on the page. Other tweets (since deleted) by this instructor are too vulgar to be included here.

PJI previously reported on the district’s use of racy sex checklists, a diagram of the “Genderbread Person,” and coaching students in asking each other if it’s OK to take their clothes off. In a letter sent to PJI in early January, a lawyer for the district strongly defended the program as “age appropriate” and claimed the sex checklists were merely “idea-generating worksheets” rather than illegal surveys or questionnaires.

Although the district is promising to continue the controversial program, there are signs it is beginning to feel the parents’ pressure. After being confronted with the backgrounds of the two instructors outlined above, Superintendent John Nickerson confirmed to parents that neither of those individuals would take part in the sex-ed program that began Jan. 5. The district has not disclosed, however, who would be teaching the class and has previously admitted it does not conduct background checks on PP instructors.

As president of Pacific Justice Institute, I commented, “It has become clear that Acalanes officials have breached parental trust at every turn. They have brought individuals into the classroom who should not be anywhere near a school campus, and they continue to defend an indefensible program. In light of these most recent revelations, we are renewing our call to the district to suspend its relationship with Planned Parenthood and make sweeping changes to comply with the letter and spirit of state law. We are also calling on responsible journalists to join us in asking tough questions and holding the district accountable for these serious lapses in judgment.”

 

An acrostic poem for 2015

Ferguson

By Alex Ferguson

conservativecannonade.org

Jonathan Gruber

Editor’s note: An acrostic poem is one that contains a word or words that
is or are accessed by reading the first letter
of each line, moving from top to bottom.

Liars for hire
Infect the liberal movement.
A desire to conspire
Removes any chance of improvement.
Secrecy and stealth

Force citizens into slavery.
Our power and wealth
Redistributed among the unsavory.

How could these Leninist lice
Infest every part of our nation?
Resist this tightening vice.
Entreat God to grant our salvation!

Alex Ferguson is a longtime Whittier resident and contributor to the Whittier Daily News. You can read more of Alex’s conservative thoughts at conservativecannonade.org

Marriage chaos in the courts

Brad Dacus, president of the Pacific Justice Institute

By Brad Dacus

President, Pacific Justice Institute

Like me, you have probably been frustrated and disappointed by what seems like an avalanche of bad news lately in the fight for natural marriage. In the midst of the confusion being caused by our courts, I wanted to give you three quick insights about what is happening, and what we can still do.

1. The battle is not over, but the battlefield is shifting. With the media triumphantly proclaiming the end of natural marriage as we know it, they are hoping to short-circuit a debate that is definitely not over. Earlier this week, the Supreme Court shocked most legal experts (myself included) by declining to hear a number of cases striking down marriage laws in the Fourth Circuit (based in Virginia), Tenth Circuit (based in Denver) and Seventh Circuit (based in Chicago). Cases are still very active, though, in the Sixth Circuit (Cincinnati), Fifth Circuit (New Orleans) and in lower federal courts in other parts of the country. It is likely that one of these remaining courts will uphold natural marriage laws and that the Supreme Court will step in at that point.

2. Our next great challenge will be to protect the church. PJI has been very active in filing friend-of-the-court briefs in many of these marriage cases, and we will continue to stand up for natural marriage in the courts. It is not a foregone conclusion that same-sex marriage will be forced on every state. In fact, if you look across the Atlantic to Europe, LGBT activists have not been able to convince the courts to force their will on all member countries, and many continue to staunchly resist. The same could happen here. Regardless of what happens in the coming months, though, we will be focused on protecting the church’s independence from government mandates. Whatever it takes, we absolutely cannot allow local, state or federal officials to dictate who pastors must marry, what will be preached, or any other essentials. Make no mistake — the activists will push further; marriage is only the beginning for them. It is up to us to protect the liberties our Founders and forefathers have handed down to us.

3. This next month offers us an opportunity to take action. In less than a month, each of us will get the chance to vote for members of Congress, as well as many state and local offices. While it is very tempting to conclude, based on the judicial activism we’ve seen lately, that our votes don’t count, I urge you to use this election to speak out on the importance of natural marriage and our constitutional freedoms. Regardless of party affiliation, if a candidate has not taken a strong stance of defending marriage, we cannot afford to vote for that candidate. I have been amazed the last several months as even some politicians who claim to be conservative have abdicated their responsibilities to defend their state’s laws, or have otherwise “gone wobbly” on the sanctity of marriage. PJI can’t endorse or oppose particular candidates, but let’s all do our homework before voting so these elected officials know how important religious freedom is to us!

We can’t sugar-coat it — these are very challenging times in which we live. But that’s all the more reason to pull together, stand firm and send our roots deeper for the great cause of freedom. Our children deserve no less!

Running the race …

The facts about transgenderism

By Robert Canales

Chief Executive Officer

Whittier Area Transgender Association

I am writing because I read the article by Brad Dacus of the Pacific Justice Institute. I am writing as the Chief Executive Officer of the Whittier Area Transgender Association.

We do not believe that Mr. Dacus has all his facts in order when it comes to transgender Americans. As part of our mission to educate the community about transgender issues, we would like to offer a response.

Scientists have found in study after study that transgenderism is caused by a combination of genetics and the biochemical interactions of mother and child inutero. Generally a child’s biological father has no impact on whether the child will turn out transgender. The trait can only be passed by the maternal line.

We have to be careful when it comes to children, however. For example the Association would never recommend sex reassignment surgery for anyone under the age of 21 because they are still developing, but we do recommend hormone replacement therapy starting no sooner than the onset of puberty. A child who is 4 years of age does not have the mental capacity to know whether he or she is truly the opposite gender. Remember, this is the age that kids tend to have invisible friends and believe themselves to be superheroes. We recommend that parents wait and see before rushing to put their kids on HRT. It is better to be cautious than to make a mistake.

It is the position of the Whittier Area Transgender Association that initiating sex reassignment surgery on children younger than adulthood and HRT on prepubescent children to be a form of child abuse at worse and child endangerment at a minimum.

Any person who seeks to undergo these procedures needs to be capable of rational decisions and needs to know the serious risks in addition to benefits. Children do not have the capacity to understand these things.

Now with regards to the restrooms policy, this issue should be handled on a case-by-case basis to protect the privacy rights of not only cisgender students but transgender students as well. No one, not event a parent, has the right to know if another student at their child’s school is transgender or not. To this end we find that the California restroom law is inadequate and that a better model for these situations is the Title VII 1964 Civil Rights Act. The US Department of Education has ruled Title VII applies to transgender students. Under this ruling transgender students, by federal law, must be permitted to use the restroom of the gender they identify as. Title VII, however, does allow a district to require proof of trangenderism unlike current state law which prohibits schools from requiring such proof.

What the Whittier Area Transgender Association recommends is that schools verify that a student is truly transgender. This can be accomplished with a simple note from a doctor or mental health professional. This note would then go into a private marked file which would be exempt from public records requests to protect the student from harrassment and discriminatory treatment. In this respect only the school nurse, principle, and the district superintendent would have the authorization to access or hold such information because of job requirements.

Once status is verified, the transgender student would then be required to use the restroom of his or her medically assigned gender which could be different from birth gender.

This is not to say that district should be prohibited from sending a transgender student to another health professional to get a second opinion.

As for the law itself, we believe that California’s law is invalid because it is superseded by federal law on the matter. Which is good for everyone because the federal law protects everyone, not just transgenders.