Of note on Sunday, from the Salt Lake Tribune:

The Utah Highway Patrol Association has signed a settlement agreement that sets a time frame for removing 12-foot-high crosses intended to memorialize state troopers killed in the line of duty.

The association is still reeling from an October decision by U.S. Supreme Court justices, who declined to hear the contentious First Amendment case over the appropriateness of the memorials on public land. The decision means that 10 of the 14 white crosses that currently sit on public land, either outside UHP offices or alongside a highway, must come down or be moved to private property.

All 14 of the crosses, whether on public or private lands, must have the UHP insignia removed. The state also has agreed to pay $388,000 in attorney’s fees.

Yes, those contentious and highly-offensive memorial crosses honoring fallen Utah Highway Patrol troopers who died in service, thank God they’re being removed.

Reminds me of this e-mail I recently received:

After being interviewed by the school administration, the prospective teacher said: “Let me see if I’ve got this right.

You want me to go into that room with all those kids, correct their disruptive behavior, observe them for signs of abuse, monitor their dress habits, censor their T-shirts and instill in them a love for learning.

You want me to check their backpacks for weapons because they can no longer have lockers, wage war on drugs and sexually transmitted diseases, and raise their sense of self-esteem and personal pride.

You want me to teach them how to register to vote, how to recognize inequality, be kind to the environment, love animals and hate capitalism.

You want me to check their heads for lice, recognize signs of anti-social behavior and make sure they pass all their final exams.

You also want me to provide them with the highest education and communicate regularly with their parents in English, Spanish, Vietnamese or Chinese, by letter, telephone, newsletter and report card.

You want me to do all this with a piece of chalk, a blackboard, a bulletin board, a few books, a big smile and a starting salary that qualifies me for food stamps.

You want me to do all this and then you tell me: I can’t pray.”

Correct.

BZ

In what I thought was likely the most exciting game of the year, the San Francisco 49’ers pulled out a last-moment win against the favored New Orleans Saints, 36 to 32, in the NFC playoffs.

In the last two minutes, Drew Brees threw for a TD that put the Saints over the 9’ers.

In the last nine seconds, Smith threw to Davis for the confirming win.

What a game!

BZ

The media and Islamists are taking the Marine/Taliban incident to the troposphere.

I submit that Florida Representative Allen West has it nailed in an e-mail that he sent to The Weekly Standard, reproduced in full here (and WS had permission to print the e-mail itself):

I have sat back and assessed the incident with the video of our Marines urinating on Taliban corpses. I do not recall any self-righteous indignation when our Delta snipers Shugart and Gordon had their bodies dragged through Mogadishu. Neither do I recall media outrage and condemnation of our Blackwater security contractors being killed, their bodies burned, and hung from a bridge in Fallujah.

“All these over-emotional pundits and armchair quarterbacks need to chill. Does anyone remember the two Soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division who were beheaded and gutted in Iraq?

“The Marines were wrong. Give them a maximum punishment under field grade level Article 15 (non-judicial punishment), place a General Officer level letter of reprimand in their personnel file, and have them in full dress uniform stand before their Battalion, each personally apologize to God, Country, and Corps videotaped and conclude by singing the full US Marine Corps Hymn without a teleprompter.

“As for everyone else, unless you have been shot at by the Taliban, shut your mouth, war is hell.”

An excellent solution.

And that should be the end of that. No more kissing the ass of Islam. Period.

BZ

It’s broken record time all over again: the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results.

Mr Obama and his administration is truly insane.

He believes it’s time to kick the debt ceiling up again. In his mind it should never stop. There should never be a limit, no boundaries, no perimeter, no threshold that should never be exceeded. Just keep spending and spending and spending.

Though there likely is little if any gold in Ft Knox. Despite there being no gold standard. Despite there being no silver standard. Despite there being no backing of American cash except how people feel about American cash.

That concept in and of itself should be sufficiently frightening.

From The Washington Post:

President Obama formally notified Congress on Thursday of his intent to raise the nation’s debt ceiling by $1.2 trillion, two weeks after he hadpostponed the request to give lawmakers more time to consider the action.

Congress will have had 15 days to say no before the nation’s debt ceiling automatically is raised from $15.2 trillion to $16.4 trillion.

In a letter to House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), Obama wrote that ”further borrowing is required to meet existing commitments.”

I’m sorry, but this is getting rather silly.