Why The Post Office Is Broke

Stock Market Gains Through Democrat Lens

Rahm The Cat

Red Ink, Inc

Thief caught stealing from undercover police car for a second time

The Telegraph:

Dean Hancock, 29, was already serving a suspended sentence for stealing a sat nav from another covert police car.

Sentencing Hancock to a six-week jail term plus the previously suspended 32-week sentence, Judge Simon Darwall-Smith branded him a “serial thief”.

He said: “You are a serial thief, particularly from motor cars. The public deserves as much protection from your activities that the court is able to give.

“Individually the offence was relatively minor, but it’s the quantity that makes it serious. Again and again and again you are committing offences against people’s property.”

Bristol Crown Court heard Hancock spotted the purse on the seat of the police owned, silver Peugeot ‘honeypot’ parked in Clifton, Bristol, on March 6.

Hancock forced the lock and pinched the £5 purse – unaware that it was part of a police sting and he was being filmed in perfect technicolour by a covert camera hidden inside the vehicle.

Avon and Somerset Police came up with its ‘covert capture’ cars after months of problems trying to crack increasing numbers of high-value thefts from cars.

The force took several normal cars and fitted them with tiny, high-quality cameras with a lens the size of a pinhead concealed around the dashboard.

The cars are now parked around the crime hot spots of Bristol in an attempt to nab the most prolific offenders.

Mark Hollier, prosecuting, said that on this occasion Hancock had only stolen the £5 purse and had left behind a TomTom sat nav system, cigarettes and a rucksack.

He said: “Police saw the door lock had been forced and the purse was missing. The DVD was viewed and it was as plain as day it was the defendant.”

Hancock, of Bristol, has a string of previous convictions for stealing sat navs, both from covert police cars and private vehicles, as well as convictions for vehicle interference and an attempted theft of a car stereo.

Oliver Willmott, defending, said that Hancock was undergoing drug rehabilitation treatment and added: “This is a repeat offender but the value of the purse was low.”

It’s Not Socialism

Obama Determined To Make New Friends: Iran to send envoy to U.S.-backed Afghanistan summit

CNN:

Iran will send an envoy to a U.S.-backed international conference on Afghanistan, Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency reported Thursday.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will represent the United States at the United Nations meeting next Tuesday in The Hague, but does not plan “substantive meetings” with Iran, the State Department said.

But the United States “welcomes Iranian participation,” State Department spokesman Gordon Duguid said Thursday.

It is not clear who Iran will send to the conference.

Iran also had its first contact with NATO since the Islamic revolution 30 years ago, NATO confirmed Thursday.

An Iranian diplomat spoke with NATO’s assistant secretary general for political affairs and security policy, Martin Erdmann, chief NATO spokesman James Appathurai told CNN. He did not name the diplomat or say when the talks took place.

“This is the first in decades, if ever,” that NATO and Iran talked, he said.

He called the meeting an informal discussion about Afghanistan. The NATO spokesman said Iran is concerned about drug problems and refugees created by instability in Afghanistan, with which it shares a long border.

“We are also concerned about these issues,” he said.

President Barack Obama is expected to make a speech Friday outlining his policy for Afghanistan, where U.S. troops deaths have been rising.

Obama made an overture to Iran last week in a video address marking the Persian new year holiday of Nowruz.

“My administration is now committed to diplomacy that addresses the full range of issues before us, and to pursuing constructive ties among the United States, Iran and the international community,” the president said in his message Friday.

Iran‘s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei responded a day later that he sees no change in U.S. policy toward Iran despite the American promise of a “new beginning.”

Khamenei said that a change in rhetoric is not enough and that Washington must practice what it preaches, according to the English-language Press TV channel in Iran. He also promised that Iran will change its policy if the United States does so as well, Press TV reported.

The United States and Iran broke off diplomatic relations 30 years ago after the Islamic revolution.

Whatever Happened To Jeremiah Wright?

How to Kill a Nation (From Within)

Quadrant Online:

Enough already. Let’s just get it over with and put this nation out of its misery. How much further down the gurgler can it go? Surely it has reached rock bottom by now, and no amount of CPR is going to do it any good. Only a miracle can resurrect this basket case.

I refer to the nation once known as Great Britain. It is now Godless, Gruesome and Ghastly Britain. I have written before of its many acts of self-immolation. Incredibly, two more PC whoppers have just emerged. I don’t know how any nation can survive so many self-inflicted wounds.

The first case of insanity involves possible prison terms for parents who refuse to let their kids sit through a homosexual indoctrination program in a primary school. As one news report says, “UK parents could face criminal charges for having removed their children from programs held at George Tomlinson Primary School promoting the homosexual lifestyle. Waltham Forest council has announced it will prosecute parents of about 30 children who did not attend a week’s worth of lessons coinciding with ‘Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender History Month’.”

Fortunately there are a few Brits with a modicum of sanity left in the country. Richard Littlejohn of the Daily Mail did not mince his words about this idiocy: “This isn’t education, it’s cultural fascism”. It is all about coercing people into politically correct ideologies, and children are our big losers: “Labour’s deranged obsession with social engineering over genuine education has betrayed an entire generation”.

Of course the school says this is an important component of the study of history. But as Littlejohn rightly asks, “What has any of this got to do with ‘history’? It’s about as historical as Andy Pandy. (Come to think of it, I’m surprised the relationship between Andy and Teddy isn’t being explored as part of gay history month. Goodness knows what they got up to in that box.) And why a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender month, anyway? Why not a Foot Fetishists, Spankers, Sadists and Masochists History Month?”

And spare us this baloney about tolerance: “Risibly, Waltham Forest said that action was being taken against the parents as part of a policy of ‘promoting tolerance’. So why not tolerate parents who, for sincerely-held reasons, consider their children too young to be taught about gay relationships? That’s because when it comes to so-called tolerance, the new, intolerant state religion of ‘diversity’ trumps the old religions any day of the week. Parents who choose to tell their children about homosexuality only when they feel the time is right have to be pummelled into submission, using the full might of the law if necessary.”

The second episode involves yet another round of attack on marriage and family. It especially helps bring about the death of fathers and the very notion of fatherhood. As a Daily Mail article puts it, it seems that “single women having IVF will be able to name anyone they like as their baby’s father on the birth certificate. New regulations mean that a mother could nominate another woman to be her child’s ‘father’. The ‘father’ does not need to be genetically related to the baby, nor be in any sort of romantic relationship with the mother.”

“Critics said a woman could list her best friend on the birth certificate. The word ‘father’ may even be replaced with the phrase ‘second parent’. The second parent, who will have to consent to being named, will take on the legal and moral responsibilities of parenthood. This raises the spectre of a legal minefield in which female ‘fathers’ will fight for visitation rights and be chased for child support payments if their fragile relationship with the mother breaks down. The changes, due to come in on April 6, will apply to many of the 2,000 women a year who have IVF using sperm from anonymous donors.”

The article offers a number of concerns raised by critics: The practice would lead to the “falsification of the birth certificate. This is putting the rights of the parents way above those of the child. It is absurd that anyone can be named as the father or the second parent.” (Baroness Deech, a former chairman of the HFEA)

“There is no doubt from sociological evidence accumulated over the past few years that children do best in a two-parent married family with heterosexual couples being the married parents. It probably will be the child that is the loser but by the time we find that out, in 15 or 16 years, a huge amount of damage will have been done.’” (Dr Trevor Stammers, a GP and lecturer in healthcare ethics)

“I don’t think the state should collude with parents to conceal the true genetic identity,” and a birth certificate should be a true record of a child’s genetic heritage. (Geraldine Smith, Labour MP for Morecambe)

“This sounds like social engineering on the hoof.” (David Jones, a professor of bioethics)

“We are going to get to the point where a birth certificate is not going to be a true statement of anyone’s biological heritage.” (Philippa Taylor, of Christian charity CARE)

“The present Government seems not to care a damn about families. Teenage pregnancy is on the increase, abortion is on the increase, family breakdown is at record levels and we have got a growing number of dysfunctional children that are the product of broken homes. The lesson seems to be loud and clear to me that fathers are required.” (Former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith)

Other critics are mentioned. And rightly so. This is just another example of anti-family social engineering run amok. Every step of radical engineering not only destroys families, but destroys societies and nations. Everyone suffers when such lunacy is allowed to run unchecked.

These two cases, along with many others which this website and others have reported, make it crystal clear that there is nothing great about Great Britain any more. Having jettisoned and renounced its own Judeo-Christian heritage, it is left floundering on the raging tempest of relativism, subjectivism, radical individualism and statism.

Jesus once said that a house built on the rock will stand, but a house built on shifting sands will collapse when the winds and the rains arise. England today is a nation without a foundation, and it is in terminal decay, unless something drastic happens to turn this mess around. Whether that happens is anyone’s guess.

Cartel Wars