Yellow Rose's Garden

Today is Veteran's Day. A day for remembering and being thankful for the sacrifices made on our behalf by the men and women that have served in the Armed Forces. Nanny used to refer to this day as Armistice Day, until I was older, I didn't know why. When you are a kid, what you understand most is ... day off from school. Armistice Day commemorates the signing of the treaty (or armistice) that ended World War I.

A bit of trivia, in my senior year of high school, the last football game of the season was at the homefield of our arch rival on Nov. 11, 1977. The score was 19-18. We won. I just find it interesting that the score was the same as the year the war ended and the game was on the same day.

Now.. to get all Emily Littella on this... What's all this fuss about the pledge of allegiance again? It seems student leaders at Orange Coast College have decide to restrict the Freedom of Speech of their fellow students. Oh, yes, I know... only Congress is not allowed to do that according to the Constitution and these young people have opted to ban it at their meetings. Apparently it only applies to meetings of the student board of trustees and no other groups on campus.

A school official had this to say:

Martha Parham, a spokeswoman for the Coast Community College District, said her office had no standing on the student board and took no position on the flag salute ban.

"If their personal belief is that they don't want to say the Pledge of Allegiance, the district certainly isn't going to dictate what they do," she said.

I just want to know when colleges started being in districts like public schools.

Isn't California where the atheist doctor was from that tried to say making his daughter say the pledge violated her rights? What scares me about that is we have a doctor that didn't bother to do the most basic research into his case history. His daughter didn't object to saying under God because she was raised as a Christian, therefore, it wasn't really violating her rights at all. I think it's freaking hilarious that a man who calls himself the Rev. Dr. Michael Newdow is an atheist.

Wasn't it also in California where all this mess started about one man/one woman after the rumblings in Washington? California had it built into the state constitution and there was San Fransisco, one of its own cities challenging it.

The Declaration of Independence has this nice little thing in it about "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." As long as someone's pursuit of happiness does no harm to anyone else, I just don't see the fuss. I mean really... all this crap now has probably set off a chain reaction that wasn't expected. In some state, it's now a nono to marry and/or have a domestic partnership with a person of the same gender. Well, how does one define a domestic partnership? Does this now mean that parents will have to worry their college student offspring needing to be bailed out at same point for having a roommate of the same gender? I bet they weren't thinking about that when they went to the polls to say no to gay marriage, etc.

And people laughed when we, here in Texas, voted for allowing concealed handguns with permits? Statistics have proven that crime has gone down. We hear far less about car jackings. Why? Well.... if you have any working brain cells, you'd be wondering if you do try to jack a car on the highway if it will be the last time you ever do anything. I'm surprised that more states didn't jump on that bandwagon and say... "Hey, this could work for us." This not to say that handgun ownership is the solution to everything, it's not. It's just... in most cases laws just keep honest people honest. 

The spark plug for the passage of that law was a massacre in a local cafeteria. All they wanted to do was have lunch. Many people were touched by that event in many ways. I know a girl that lost her father, she was in our Scout troop.

Anyway... getting back to my point, I have to wonder how many more things that start in California are going to end up shaking up the country .... aaaaaaaaaaagain.