Congressman Gohmert urges convert rest of bailout into tax holiday for Main Street

Rep. Louie Gohmert (left) hugs Addalyn Thrasher,daughter of fallen Customs and Border Protections officer Clint Thrasher. Thrasher's wife Rachel stands to the right. Clint was honored during National Police Week. [Photo by SPA D.B. Wagner, Customs and Border Protection; Rep. Gohmert website.](Washington, D. C.)--U.S. Congressman Louie Gohmert (R-Tex.) has a capital idea just in time for Christmas—use the last $350 billion earmarked for the bailout to benefit U.S. taxpayers. Gohmert wants to to put that money towards a tax holiday from both personal income tax and FICA tax for Americans during January and February, 2009. Gohmert’s next statement may garner a number of fans. He stated, "By instating a temporary tax holiday, we could electrify the American economy and provide overwhelming relief to taxpayers, all for less than the cost of the current failed Paulson-Pelosi bailout system. [W]e need to give this money to the people who earned it. I am sick of Washington millionaires trying to decide which of their cronies should get the next wad of taxpayer money…” And that’s not all. Gohmert recently proposed returning all 2008 income taxes to American taxpayers as a solution to boost the ailing economy. He said he believes taxpayers, rather than the government, should be using their hard-earned money to choose the economy's winners and losers.

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Mumbai rampage a grim reminder to the US: War of ideology thrives

NATO Secretary General, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer visited Afghanistan president Hamid Karzai in late November. (Photo NATO website)In the U.S. we welcomed family and friends for Thanksgiving, but the usual weekend emphasis on football was usurped by victims of terrorists in Mumbai. For many of us, the parallels to 9/11 were unavoidable. Innocents who decided to have dinner in a restaurant or to board a train were gunned down in cold blood by strangers. Within days a fragile peace between India and Pakistan began to unravel—precisely the outcome the terrorists desire. Both Western and Eastern media suggested responsibility lay with the terror group Lashkar-i-tayyaba (LET). Many media said LET trained in Pakistan. But by Monday, the Taliban was issuing new threats.

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Australian newspaper one of select few to question politics of global warming

Prague at Dusk. [Photo from Czech Republic pages at European Union Website.]Only the Sydney Morning Herald is brave enough to explore the validity of politics in the global warming debate. Elite U.S. media follow Al Gore’s alarmist theories like a rat follows the scent of any kind of food, fresh or spoiled. Global warming sparks arguments in many select quarters and vicious battles in media and on Web forums, with many skeptics like me suggesting it’s time to put both sides of the arguments before the people. No major U.S. media have questioned the discreet change from the ‘global warming’ term to ‘climate change.’ The Environmental Protection Agency slid that one in as a cover-your-rear approach, since many scientists say we’re cooling in some areas and warming in others, with large differences between urban and rural areas. Reducing our dependency on oil is a necessary goal, but doing it with a sensible, economically sound plan is the only humane way to proceed.

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U.S. should consider revenue potential after prosecuting terror cases

In December, 2001, the Holy Land Foundation was ranked the largest Muslim charitable organization in the U.S.[Photo FBI news release](Dallas, Tex.)—The Federal Bureau of Investigation announced in a news release on Tuesday that the agency’s fight against terrorism funding paid a big dividend when five former leaders of a U.S.-based Muslim charity were convicted of funneling more than $12 million to the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas. Guilty verdicts on all 108 counts against the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development were announced in federal court in Dallas. The release also says the FBI first got involved in the Holy Land case nearly 15 years ago. In 1994, the agency began looking into the organization’s financial ties to Hamas. During the investigation, agents traveled the globe to conduct more than 100 interviews, to sort through hundreds of boxes of documents (including many Arabic documents), to view hundreds of video and audio tapes in Arabic, and to review thousands of pages of bank records. Now it's time to show us the money. Are we sending Hamas a bill?

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Thanksgiving in Washington—U.S. legislators give thanks

Mrs. Chickie agreed to stand in for a turkey. We couldn't get a live turkey to agree to a photo shoot, seeing as how Thanksgiving is just around the corner.Most of us will say abundant gratitudes on Thursday for family, friends and a roof over our heads, but our elected officials in Washington have some rather unique blessings to offer thanks for. Take Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.). Rangel will probably say something like, ‘I’m grateful I’m not going to jail like Wesley Snipes for screwing up my income taxes.’ Or for helping a major donor get a major tax break.

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Technology a boon and a curse, with suicides and emotional damage from online experiences

Calls for Internet regulation are increasing in the U.S. as stories about suicides, emotional trauma and job losses find their way to mainstream media. In Florida, a 19-year-old man committed suicide, live streaming his drug overdose as fellow members of a social community watched. In Los Angeles a woman is being tried for conspiracy to commit hoax by computer, violating the terms of service at MySpace. Her case is related to the suicide of a 13-year-old girl distressed because the woman pretended to be a boy seeking romance. In Philadelphia, a TV news anchor has been sentenced to 6 months house arrest for acts stemming from his hacking the email account of a co-anchor. And in North Carolina, two school employees have been fired for posting inappropriate content on Facebook. Welcome to the dark side of the Web.

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Special ‘24’ movie ‘Redemption’ focuses on child soldiers in African countries

Sunday's premiere of the '24' movie 'Redemption' brought fans a much-needed fix and directed attention to the plight of children forced into military service in war-torn countries. The setting for ‘Redemption’ was a fictional village in South Africa, but the plot grew from real life incidents in places like Sierra Leone. If you’ve read Ishmael Beah’s memoir ‘A Long Way Gone,’ the parallels in that book and the ‘24’ special movie ‘Redemption’ will not escape you. Where there is internecine warfare and a vulnerable populace, a militia bent on seizing control will often conscript youth into the military—in Sierra Leone, boys who hadn’t entered puberty were given drugs to pump their minds and AK47s to pump their ammo. They were taught to kill without remorse, and Beah’s book is a story of conscription that ultimately leads to his own redemption.

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