great post by Professor Walter Williams:

One of the unappreciated casualties of the War of 1861, erroneously called a Civil War, was its contribution to the erosion of constitutional guarantees of state sovereignty. It settled the issue of secession, making it possible for the federal government to increasingly run roughshod over Ninth and 10th Amendment guarantees. A civil war, by the way, is a struggle where two or more parties try to take over the central government. Confederate President Jefferson Davis no more wanted to take over Washington, D.C., than George Washington wanted to take over London. Both wars are more properly described as wars of independence.

Oklahomans are trying to recover some of their lost state sovereignty by House Joint Resolution 1089, introduced by State Rep. Charles Key.

The resolution’s language, in part, reads: “Whereas, the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States reads as follows: ‘The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.’;

Continue reading here!

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July 9, 1997 Brazil: A TAM Airlines Fokker 100, carrying 55 passengers and five crew members, was climbing through 2400m after taking off from Sao José dos Campos when a bomb exploded in the passenger cabin at row 18, underneath seat 18D. The passenger seated in seat 18E was ejected out of the aircraft through a 2mx2m hole in the fuselage. Despite extensive damage to the aircraft, the pilots were able to land the plane safely at an airfield in São Paulo.

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#5 Take seriously your own responsibilities (we all in some ways have neglected to do what we ought and struggle with remaining sin but it is discouraging when some blame the pastor for his inability to resolve situations that have occurred because of negligence on their part! The pastor’s heart breaks when he sees these situations and would gladly give his right arm to be able to heal every hurt and resolve every seemingly negative situation. Yes, the pastor will gladly give counsel and pray for your situation, however, the Word doesn’t give the pastor the power to heal nor does the Word give us an easy escape from the immediate consequence of our sin. We are thankful that the Lord has given us eternal relief from the penalty of sin through our Lord Jesus Christ!)

#4 Financial support (the Bible is clear about the local church’s responsibility to support those charged with the gospel ministry! Pity the church whose pastor struggles to support his family and must carve out more of his precious time away from study and toward secular concerns)

#3 Prayer (he earnestly prays for you - let him know that you are praying for him and his family!)

#2 Attentiveness (the pastor notices when the congregation is pre-occupied or ill-attentive during preaching and/or teaching times)

#1 the number one way to encourage your pastor:

Attend church regularly!

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LOS ANGELES — An American Airlines flight from Boston to Los Angeles was diverted to Oklahoma City Friday after a passenger stripped, put his clothes back on and then tried to open an emergency exit door before being subdued by members of a Major League Soccer team on board, the FBI said.

Members of the New England Revolution helped grab the man near an exit door, and tie wraps were placed on his wrists, FBI spokesman Gary Johnson said. The man, whose name was not immediately released, was taken off the flight in Oklahoma City and was undergoing mental evaluation, Johnson said.American Flight 725, a Boeing 757, arrived in Oklahoma City at 1:35 p.m. CDT and was back in the air an hour later on the way to Los Angeles, said Tim Smith, a spokesman for American Airlines.

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NEW YORK - A 21-year-old Drexel University student was arrested at Kennedy Airport (JFK) after going berserk aboard a British Airways flight in which he was lewd and spat on flight attendants and broke a jump seat. Taylor Kircher guzzled an entire bottle of vodka he spirited onto Flight 115 from London last Thursday, authorities said. The booze kicked in about two hours into the transatlantic flight when a woman passenger reported Kircher was masturbating through his clothing, according to a complaint filed in Brooklyn Federal Court. “He stated that he was unable to stop,” Federal Air Marshal Basilios Argyros said in the complaint. Kircher was issued a written warning letter by the captain, but continued acting abusively to other passengers and pushed a flight attendant who asked him to move his seat, authorities said. Members of the crew restrained Kircher with plastic handcuffs. He spat in the faces of two crew members and broke the jump seat. “At one point he told a flight crew member that he was going to ‘blow this plane up if you don’t untie my … feet,’” causing most of the passengers to flee the section around him, the complaint states. Kircher, of Pennsylvania, was released on $75,000 bail and agreed to enter an alcohol treatment program. “The kid has a drinking problem, and we’re trying to get him the help he needs,” defense lawyer Brian Waller said. (New York Daily News, June 30, 2008)

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A disruptive passenger caused a Paris-to-Newark flight to divert to Bangor, Maine. The passenger  was a 21-year-old male of (guess where) descent who resides in Paris. He was described as being sweaty and fidgety, and he engaged in the following bizarre behavior during the flight:

- Scribbled notes, removed his shirt, and wrote in ink on his arms and chest;
- Claimed he was afraid of “snakes coming out of the boxes” and
- Repeated the phrase, “Five, four, three, two, one…boom;
- Removed and carried a seat cushion flotation device about with him, and when instructed to replace it,  repeatedly responded “It’s personal;
- Changed seats several times;
- Said that he wanted to stand at the front of the plane;
- Tried at least twice to sneak or force his way past crew members when told to take his seat; and
- Shouted in (guess what language) in the face of the second captain and stepped on his toes.

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Recurrent flight training today - the scenario was a flight from Charleston SC to Atlanta GA - about 25 minutes after departure got a low oil pressure warning on the number one engine. The warning was not accompanied by oil temperature increase and just about the time I got the checklist out the warning ceased. All seemed well for about five minutes and we got the oil pressure warning again. And like before it stopped between 45 and 60 seconds later. I discussed the issue with the first officer - we considered the possibility that this was simply a oil pressure sensor gone bad and therefore it would be a shame to shut down a good engine when who knows but we may need both engine thrust (or electrical generators, or hydraulic pumps) later. We considered the fact that this aircraft with one engine was more than capable of making a successful approach and landing from our position if we choose to secure engine #1 as a precaution. We also considered the possibility that if we were to run both engines and ignore the intermittent warnings we might configure the instrument approach into Atlanta normally but at the last minute unexpectedly lose engine #1.

In the end we both agreed that it would be best to retain the redundancy of two engines as long as possible while planning for a possible loss of that engine at the worst possible time. The worst possible time to lose an engine would be in the event of a missed approach. Attempting to climb with full flaps at low altitude with maximum power on one engine, though certainly possible, would be challenging for the pilot flying along with the increased task load of securing the engine (challenging for the pilot not flying).

Our compromise decision was to idle the problematic engine, run the Engine Shut Down and Single Engine Procedure checklists (without actually shutting down engine #1) to ensure we could simply select fuel cut-off (and press the fire switches, if necessary) if the engine were to actually fail.

The #1 engine did, in fact, fail on approach - no severe damage or fire so I simply went to fuel cut-off and we procedeed to land.

Like most LOFTs*, this is one of those multiple approach type problems that has no book solution - as the instructor said, ‘good thinking outside the box’ Needless to say, the first officer and I were pleased!

*Line Oriented Flight Training

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