Parra booted from office - and the Capitol

By Shane Goldmacher - sgoldmacher@sacbee.com

Last Updated 2:25 pm PDT Monday, August 18, 2008

In the latest episode of Capitol punishment, Assembly Speaker Karen Bass tossed Assemblywoman Nicole Parra from her office on Monday morning after the Central Valley Democrat failed to vote for the budget on Sunday.

In a twist, Parra hasn't been reassigned to more cramped quarters in the Capitol itself - but booted straight across the street to the Legislative Office Building. She will be the only member of the Legislature whose office is not housed in the Capitol.

"I knew going in Sunday that if I didn't support the budget, something was going to happen," Parra, D-Hanford, said in an interview shortly after receiving the news. The budget, now 49 days late, failed 45-30, with 54 votes needed for passage.

The state Assembly's chief administrative officer informed Parra of the change shortly before noon and gave her staff until late afternoon to clear out of the office, she said.

"Boxes have been delivered," said Parra, who added that she was unhappy she would be unable to pack her "personal stuff" because the Assembly was in session and she was on the floor.

Her staff will be divided between her new office and a side office on the fifth floor of the Capitol.

Parra told Speaker Bass in a letter at the end of July that she would not support a budget until a "solution to the Central Valley's water supply" - in the form of a water bond - was passed by the Assembly.

She said Monday she stood by her decision - despite the consequences.

"Is it worth it? Yes," Parra said. "If there's no future for water, then let's pave over the Central Valley and let's import all our food," she added.

Some Democrats, however, were quick to defend Bass' move.

"I believe it was done because she went in holding the speaker hostage on voting on this budget," said Assemblywoman Patty Berg, D-Eureka. "There are two things you do when you are in the majority party when you are in this Assembly. One is vote on your leader and two is vote on the budget, because the budget has been negotiated amongst Democrats and it represents the majority's negotiated budget."

Berg added that Assembly Democrats have "spent millions of dollars ensuring that Nicole comes back three times in a row to our caucus."

Assemblyman Paul Krekorian, D-Burbank, called it "outrageous that any member, Democrat or Republican, of this Legislature would force the children and the elderly and the disabled people of California to continue to suffer without a budget because of the narrow interests of their own district. We can't let agribusiness corporations hold this state's budget hostage."

The punishment is the first meted out by Bass, a Los Angeles Democrat, since she assumed the speakership earlier this year.

Moving lawmakers who go against leadership into small offices has a long tradition in the Capitol.

In 2007, Assemblyman Todd Spitzer, an outspoken Orange County Republican, was moved to the smallest office in the Capitol after angering former Speaker Fabian Nunez.

Spitzer quickly came to Parra's defense on Monday. "I love Nicole Parra," he said, throwing his arm around the Hanford Democrat in front of a TV camera.

He said the move by Bass showed "a complete lack of maturity."

Parra admitted that though she expected punishment for her non-vote Sunday she was "kind of shocked it would be across the street."

"Even Todd Sptizer got an office in the Capitol," she quipped.

Crime-ridden Arkansas town expands 24-hour curfew

By JON GAMBRELL – 18 hours ago
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jypHZNgftqxSfgX2MymtfD-6oIIwD92H9CA80

HELENA-WEST HELENA, Ark. (AP) — Officers armed with military rifles have been stopping and questioning passers-by in a neighborhood plagued by violence that's been under a 24-hour curfew for a week.

On Tuesday, the Helena-West Helena City Council voted 9-0 to allow police to expand that program into any area of the city, despite a warning from a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas that the police stops were unconstitutional.

Police Chief Fred Fielder said the patrols have netted 32 arrests since they began last week in a 10-block neighborhood in this small town on the banks of the Mississippi River long troubled by poverty. The council said those living in the city want the random shootings and drug-fueled violence to stop, no matter what the cost.

"Now if somebody wants to sue us, they have an option to sue, but I'm fairly certain that a judge will see it the way the way the citizens see it here," Mayor James Valley said. "The citizens deserve peace, that some infringement on constitutional rights is OK and we have not violated anything as far as the Constitution."

The area under curfew, in what used to be a West Helena neighborhood, sits among abandoned homes and occupied residences in disrepair.

White signs on large blue barrels warn those passing by that the area remains under curfew by order of Mayor James Valley. The order was scheduled to end at 3 p.m. Tuesday, but Valley said the city council's vote would allow police to have the same powers across Helena-West Helena.

Among the curfew operation's arrests, 10 came from felony charges, including the arrest of two people carrying both drugs and weapons, Fielder said. The police chief said the officers in the field carry military-style M-16 or M-4 rifles, some equipped with laser sights. Other officers carry short-barrel shotguns. Many dealing crack cocaine and marijuana in the city carry pistols and AK-47 assault rifles, he said.

"We've had people call us, expressing concern for their children," Fielder said. "They had to sleep on the floor, because of stray bullets."

Fielder said officers had not arrested anyone for violating the curfew, only questioned people about why they were outside. Those without good answers or acting nervously get additional attention, Fielder said.

However, such stops likely violate residents' constitutional rights to freely assemble and protections against unreasonable police searches, said Holly Dickson, a lawyer for the ACLU of Arkansas who addressed the council at its packed Tuesday meeting. Because of that, Dickson said any convictions coming from the arrests likely would be overturned.

"The residents of these high-crime areas are already victims," she said. "They're victims of what are happening in the neighborhoods, they're victims of fear. But for them to be subject to unlawful stops and questioning ... that is not going to ultimately going to help this situation."

The council rejected Dickson's claims, at one point questioning the Little Rock-based attorney if she'd live in a neighborhood they described as under siege by wild gunfire and gangs.

"As far as I'm concerned, at 3 o'clock in the morning, nobody has any business being on the street, except the law," Councilman Eugene "Red" Johnson said. "Anyone out at 3 o'clock shouldn't be out on the street, unless you're going to the hospital."

The curfew is the second under the mayor's watch since the rival cities of Helena and West Helena merged in 2006. That year, Valley set a nightly citywide curfew after a rash of burglaries and other thefts.

Police in Hartford, Conn., began enforcing a nightly curfew for youths after recent violence, including a weekend shooting that killed a man and wounded six young people.

Helena-West Helena, with 15,000 residents at the edge of Arkansas' eastern rice fields and farmland, is in one of the nation's poorest regions, trailing even parts of Appalachia in its standard of living.

In the curfew area, those inside the homes in the watch area peered out of door cracks Tuesday as police cruisers passed. They closed the doors afterward.

The law, which was proposed 14 years ago and finally received official approval last year from the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, the country's top legislature, aimed to build a uniform, open, transparent market, and to encourage fair competition, experts said. Sheng Jiemin, a Peking University law professor, told Xinhua it had introduced some advanced concepts from America's anti-monopoly law, which strikes at dominating enterprises' monopolistic activities and puts safeguarding consumer rights as priority. "It is different from other economic laws," Sheng explained. "Punishment usually comes after a long and thorough investigation and research under the anti-monopoly law." The State Council, China's Cabinet, said it had established an Anti-monopoly Committee earlier this week. It will research and map out relevant laws, investigate and monitor enterprises and companies, assess the competition situation in the market and cooperate with other government bodies to enforce the law. Despite this significant improvement in the country's economic reform and legal system, experts felt the government still had a lot to do to perfect the law and enhance its efficiency. "There is possibility for crossing and overlay of the functions between the three law enforcement bodies," Sheng said. "It is hoped that an unified institution comes out in the coming years, which will be better in accordance with the country's situation." "The country currently has no better measures to solve the monopoly problem in some crucial centrally-administrated and state-owned large enterprise and industrials,buy wow gold" said Zhang Yansheng, the NDRC's International Economic Research Institute director. Any activities that harm consumer rights were discouraged, Zhang added. Three government organs, including the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the Ministry of Commerce,buy wow gold and the State Administration for Industry and Commerce (SAIC), will enforce the law and carry out its implementation in a coordinated fashion. The SAIC said earlier it had established an independent bureau,cheap wow gold which was in charge of investigating and punishing unfair competition,age of conan powerleveling commercial bribery, smuggling and other cases that broke relevant economic laws. In addition, the country's top economic regulator, the NDRC, finished a draft of the anti-price monopoly law regulation earlier this week, which was a component of the anti-monopoly law. According to the draft, monopolizing enterprises that intended to control prices, dump their products at extremely low prices and sold products at various prices between different consumers at random, would face punishment. "The anti-price monopoly law regulation will determine the government's actions in cracking down on price monopoly via a legal basis," said Li Lei of the NDRC's price supervision department. The anti-monopoly law was not expected to shake the country's "4S" automobile marketing mode,cheapest wow gold which features a combination of "sales,age of conan power leveling spare parts, service, and survey," market analysts said.

One of the biggest turn offs for me  a few years back, from traditional Christianity and their version of God, was the notion that God would command us to love Him, or command us to praise Him, or command us to Worship Him. To my way of thinking at the time , this meant that God was forcing love, praise and worship from us. It sounded much like a tyrant, or dictator commanding reverence from his people. the notion that the God of the universe, who was supposedly all loving, all compassionate, all good, etc, would do such a thing , how little of God, so I thought.

I mean, its all right there in black and white, in the Bible, I know I thought I read it there too. Does not the bible say 'The 10 Commandments' ? and is it  in the first 3 or 4 'commandments'  that we are 'commanded' to love ,worship , obey God? Well so I thought, and promptly  used this and other misinformation's as my excuse to leave this religion behind me.

Well I thought I was through with God, but over the years one by one, all the stuff I used to defend the reasons why I did not want to be a Christian were being answered , slowly, but surely, (not as fast as I would have liked, like I want these things answered, like, yesterday) So I take up a study to see what is really written and what is really meant in the words we read and have in our bibles.

 

So here is the real meaning of some words, hopefully it will clear up some misconceptions one might have, for it is surely clearing up some for me.

 

he word Torah is a frequently used and misused Hebrew word. In our English Bibles, it is commonly translated “law.” This is sometimes appropriate, often misleading.

            The word Torah in Hebrew usage has a range of meanings. As with all words, usage and context determine meaning in any given instance. It is bad methodology to assign the meaning of “law” to the word torah, and then to say that is what it means in every instance of usage. The definition given for torah in Strong’s Concordance is fundamentally in error. It is also misleading and can be used to support an erroneous theology about Biblical law. Strong’s (No. 8451) gives the following definition for torah: “a precept or statute, espec. The Decalogue or the Pentateuch – law.”

            Torah does not mean “precept,” “statute,” or “law.” Nor does it primarily refer to the Decalogue. It can, in some contexts, refer to the Pentateuch (the five books of Moses).

            An authoritative definition of torah is provided in A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (Brown, Driver, Briggs), on page 435d: “direction, instruction, law.” Note that the primary definitions are “direction” and “instruction.” There are instances where the word can mean “law” but it is the context and usage that determines which meaning is intended.

            The word torah is a noun derived from the verb yara meaning to “throw” or “shoot” (BDB, p. 434d). For example, when Pharoah’s armies were “cast” into the sea, the word used is yara. If in ancient times, one asked for directions, the person given them might “cast” or “throw” his hand in a given direction and say, “It’s that way.” We cast or throw stones in a given direction. We point a finger to provide instruction. We shoot an arrow at a target. Thus the verb yara came to mean to “lead” “guide” (BDB, p. 434d). It can also mean, “teach.” It is the word used for casting lots (Joshua 18:6). Another relevant meaning is to “point out” or “show” (ibid., p. 435).

            In Genesis 46:28 we read, “And he sent Judah before him unto Joseph, to direct his face unto Goshen…” Hebrew translations say, “to point out the way.” The verb used here is yara. In Proverbs 6:13 of the KJV we see the term “teaches with his fingers.” Again the verb is yara. In Isaiah 9:14, yara is translated “teaching.”

            BDB also points out that the word is used “specially of the authoritative direction given by priests on matters of ceremonial observance…they teach thy judgments to Jacob, and thy direction to Israel…” (Deut. 33:10). The word “teach” is yara.

            So we see that the verb yara is the root from which the noun torah is derived. To “instruct” or “teach” is the verb. The “instruction” or “teaching” is the noun.

            Notice now the discussion of the meaning of torah from an authoritative Jewish source (Back to the Sources edited by Barry Holtz):

            “Torah for the Jewish tradition is a multifaceted term. On one level it refers to the first five books of the Bible, the content of the scroll found in any synagogue. In another more expanded sense, Torah is the Hebrew Bible as a whole. But Torah stands for more than one text or one book. Torah is revelation, the entire revelation and the entire activity of Jewish study throughout the generations. When the rabbinic sages speak of the Written Torah and the “Oral Torah” (the Oral Torah being the commentaries and holy texts of later generations) as both being given at Mount Sinai, they mean to suggest that all Jewish study is Torah and all Torah has the value of revelation” (Holtz, p. 12).

 

What Torah Does Not Mean

Holtz takes pains to clarify what the word Torah does not mean. He writes, “The title ‘Law’ however, is of Greek, not Hebrew, origin and derives from the word nomos, ‘law.’ This is familiar from the name of the fifth book of Torah, Devarim in Hebrew. This Hebrew name means ‘words’ and is taken from the first words of the book: ‘These are the words that Moses spoke to the Israelites across the Jordan…’ But in the Greek translation of the Bible adopted by the Christian Church, the book was entitled Deutero-nomos…which describes its contents as a review of the law, a second law” (Holtz. p. 84).

            The Greek nomos is not an exact equivalent of the Hebrew torah. Holtz explains what torah does not mean: “The Hebrew word torah does not strictly mean ‘law.’ The fact that it does not is crucial to its role in Judaism. Hebrew does employ words for a ‘statute,’ a ‘ruling,’ and, of course, a mitzvah, a ‘commandment.’ But the word torah itself means ‘instruction’ or ‘teaching.’” (Holtz p. 84).

            Note that Holtz considers it “critical to Judaism” that the word torah be correctly defined and used.

****************************************************************

 

So from this I find that the 10 Commandments, should read, The 10 words, or The 10 teachings, or The 10 Instructions, from God.

So what I was shown this time around, was that no, God is not commanding us to love ,worship or praise Him, but that if you follow MY directions, He says, if you follow MY teachings, if you follow MY instructions, it will go well with thee. Not just with God but with each other. These 10 directions,teachings, instructions, the 10 Words of God were given for our good, so that we would sow what is good,in our lives  and therefore reap good, and not sow the bad and reap it's just rewards. Just looking at a few of these 'instructions' we can see the truth of this. Do not murder, well can we see,that if we sowed murder and hate that we would reap revenge,hate and death as well? Do not steal, if we sowed thievery in our lives, would we reap the same, or be put into prison?

So once I understood, the true word meanings here of 'the Law' and the Torah, I was able to see more clearly what God was trying to accomplish with this crowd of people who did not know the God that had rescued them from bondage nor did they know how to live with each other and get along,  and that this God wanted them to be able to live happy lives with each other and with their God. So again God is showing me His truths, and now  one of my many old excuses and  old arguments that led me away from the God of the Bible  was laid to rest. and so it goes............

blessings in His Light

ANN

I recently got an email from a friend at church informing me that McDonald's Corp. had suddenly taken interest in supporting the homosexual agenda. I wondered why we don't hear about stuff like this on the news. Oh, that's right! Because they don't want to loose business. Well the word is out now and as a Christian who believes the Bible that condemns homosexuality, you will not see me at McDonald's so long as they continue to support the homosexual agenda. The same thing happened to Ford years ago when they "went to the dark side" and their stocks dropped drastically because of Christian boycotting and have ner' recovered.

 

Then I got to looking at other oragnizinations and advertising campaings that CHOOSE to go against the Word of God.

 

For example, Degree deordorant came out with a new campainge aimed at the younger crowd. Their slogan: "Degree! For every OMG moment!" Yes, there is a problem with this one. Thou shall not take the Lord's name in vain. I doubt highly that they are ushing "OMG" as a means of prayer or supplication as it is meant to be. In today's slang, it is used as an expression of surprise or frustration and is often accompanied with other not-so-nice words. So, needless to say, I will not be buying Degree's brand of deodorant.

 

Another example, ABC has recently put on a new sitcom "Secret Life of An American Teenager."  About a high-school girl who get's knocked up and tries to hide it from her parents. I havn't seen any of the episodes myself but I hope that it teaches a lesson: KEEP YOUR LEGS CLOSED, GIRLS! I'm hoping against hope but can probably assume that the parents will be supporting of the girl and they'll live happily ever after and instead the show will send the message "It's ok to have sex before marriage as long as your in love."  Spare me! Did we not learn anything from Britney Spears? I know people, some of them barely legal girls, who have had children outside of wedlock. Either their boyfriends have left them, their parents kick them out, they can't afford the bills and raising a child. Overall life sucks for them and I tell them why. Because you have sinned against a Holy God. Repent and be made right. I highly doubt ABC is going to send that kind of message to it's viewers so I will say it here. ABC is a "New Kind of Family" that supports sinful lifestyles in today's youth. Forgive me if I cancel my subscription to the ever increasing filth called television.

 

My pastor made a point at our 4th of July service a few weeks ago. "God bless America only if America blesses God."

 

Ndosch

To live is Christ, to die is gain!

Phil 1:21

 

Prayers - Wayne, Dave, Alicia, Jack, Travis, Joey, Beau, TurningPoint