When Good Soldiers Go Bad

 

My country-love it or leave it was an expression I heard a lot while growing up.  My politics evolved in the south during desegregation, the Kennedy assassination, the MLK assassination, RFK assassination, and the shooting of George Wallace, and Vietnam.  A lot was happening during those years.  I also witnessed the Vietnam POWs arrive home after years of incarceration.  One of those broken men who got off that plane was John McCain.  I witnessed Watergate and the resignation of Richard Nixon on my TV screen.  Much of what I grew up thinking gradually wore away.

Read More

Social Security Turns 75

Social Security turns 75 this year.  The following was taken from their first pamplet to Americans:

To Employees of Industrial and Business Establishments

FACTORIES-SHOPS-MINES-MILLS-STORES-OFFICES AND OTHER PLACES OF BUSINESS

The checks will come to you as a right. You will get them regardless of the amount of property or income you may have. They are what the law calls “Old-Age Benefits” under the Social Security Act. If you prefer to keep on working after you are 65, the monthly checks from the Government will begin coming to you whenever you decide to retire.

Beginning November 24, 1936, the United States Government will set up a Social Security account for you, if you are eligible. To understand your obligations, rights, and benefits you should read the following general explanation.THERE is now a law in this country which will give about 26 million working people something to live on when they are old and have stopped working. This law, which gives other benefits, too, was passed last year by Congress and is called the Social Security Act.Under this law the United States Government will send checks every month to retired workers, both men and women, after they have passed their 65th birthday and have met a few simple requirements of the law.

WHAT THIS MEANS TO YOU

THIS means that if you work in some factory, shop, mine, mill, store, office, or almost any other kind of business or industry, you will be earning benefits that will come to you later on. From the time you are 65 years old, or more, and stop working, you will get a Government check every month of your life, if you have worked some time (one day or more) in each of any 5 years after 1936, and have earned during that time a total of $2,000 or more.

Read More

Deport Those Convicted of Drunk Driving?

Senate Judicary ranking Republican  Lamar Smith (R- Texas) wants the Department of Homeland Security to start tracking the illegal immigrants who are convicted of drunk driving.   He then wants to  deport every last one of them, according to the Washington Times. 

 

Current law doesn’t require DUI suspects to be detained, thanks to a 2004 Supreme Court interpretation, but Mr. Smith said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement can detain illegal immigrants in such cases anyway, and he wants that to become the policy.

“Doing so will prevent these aliens from again getting behind the wheel of a car and killing or maiming innocent Americans,” he said in his letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Times. “Sadly, such a new policy would come too late for Sister Mosier. However, many other lives can be saved.”

Matt Chandler, a spokesman for Ms. Napolitano, said Homeland Security would not respond to Mr. Smith through the press, though he said the department is conducting a review into why Mr. Montano was not detained in 2008.

 

Read More