By Frosty Wooldridge website: http://www.rense.com/general75/niht.htm

When Do We Say “Uncle,” and Get A Life? Are we hypnotized, or mesmerized? Can an entire civilization possess a death wish?

Can Americans, by our own apathy, encourage their own destruction? Can American citizens be that stupid?

Are our leaders that corrupt?

Can Americans be that disinterested as the core of their values rots like fish in three-day-old garbage?

Look around fellow Americans.

You’ve got Muslims swearing-in on the Koran in the United States Congress. That book stands diametrically opposed to the U.S. Constitution.

(continue reading…)

David Kopel: Supreme Court Victory…Now What?

Supreme Court rules on District of Columbia v. Heller

Highlights of the Supreme Court’s Decision

On June 26, 2008, the Supreme Court affirmed, in a 5-4 decision, the ruling of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in Parker v. District of Columbia (re-cast as District of Columbia v. Heller before the Supreme Court), that the Second Amendment protects a pre-existing, private, individually-held right, to keep arms and to bear arms, without regard to a person’s relationship to a militia.

The Court held that the Second Amendment does not (as the District argued) protect a right to possess arms only while in service in a militia or (as others have argued) a “state’s right” to maintain a militia. (No dissenting justice endorsed the “state’s right” theory, putting an end to it once and for all, one can only hope.)

(continue reading…)

More than 1,600 severely disabled veterans could receive retroactive traumatic injury insurance payments as a result of a newly released review of how benefits have been paid under the 3 1/2-year-old supplemental benefits program.

The payments, ranging between $25,000 and $100,000, could be paid as early as this fall as a result of discussions between the Department of Veterans Affairs, which runs the program, and doctors who are treating severely wounded combat veterans.

The average retroactive payment would be $32,000, according to the review, dated July 2008.

About 4,400 people have received traumatic injury insurance payments since the program was created in 2005. The estimated 1,640 people who would receive retroactive benefits as a result of the review include some who did not previously qualify and some who received payments but would now get more, according to VA officials.

(continue reading…)

Initial claims for a variety of veterans’ benefits now can be filed online, Veterans Affairs Department officials announced Wednesday.

The announcement marks a step toward modernizing the much-derided VA claims process that could result in more people filing claims, but could also shorten the processing time because it would require essential information to be included.

Applications are available at VA’s Web site at

http://vabenefits.vba.va.gov/vonapp/main.asp

VA officials call this process VAONAPPS, an abbreviation of “VA online applications.”

Applying electronically for claims is not new to VA, but the new process eliminates the requirement that applicants also send paper claims bearing their signatures, which some veterans’ groups have aid defeats the very purpose of electronic applications.

(continue reading…)