So, today the Supreme Court rejected a ruling which would make it illegal to place pornographic or otherwise harmful material within easy reach of children surfing the web. This bill would call for all pornography web sites to require an access code for adults and include a steep fine for breaking this rule.

I think this would have been the greatest achievement in U.S. Legislation I would have ever seen in my entire life.

But our Supreme court ruled, 5-4, that this could possibly infringe on our freedom of speech. hmmm.

Does it infringe a person's freedom of speech when people are forced to pay money to get into a theater to watch a movie? Nope. Is it an infringement of the first amendment when a bookstore asks for money before you walk off with a book? I mean, you can't just go to a newsstand and look at dirty pictures, you have to pay for the magazine first. Surely this is not also a violation of free speech.

Maybe our Supreme court doesn't know that most convicted rapists admit that pornography was the motivation for their crimes, and that many of them directly involve pornography in their terrible crime. Or maybe they do not realize that cities that have banned pornography have typically seen a reduction in all areas of crime for their city. I guess they didn't know that.

I mean, if it is wrong for people to take their clothes off during the super bowl...I think you get it.

Ever notice that we are all allowed to speak freely, but for some reason we cannot yell 'FIRE' in a crowded theater, or say 'BOMB' on a plane? We can be fined for using racial slurs and swearing at police officers, and rightly so. I do not believe those who are guilty of slander and verbal hate crimes should be protected under the first amendment. Our country has already limited our freedom of speech in order to ensure the quality of American's lives, anyone who ever believed that our freedoms were absolute knows little about how our government interprets and enforces the bill of rights.

Clearly, the Supreme Court has made an error.

Not to mention (I hate to be long winded here, but...) the pornography industry includes many rich men who could have padded the wallets of those supreme court members who voted against this ruling...but we will never know about that. (In case anyone is wondering, there were men and women of the Supreme Court who voted on both sides of this issue.)

-DeepForestGreen

Oh yeah, for those who are still reading...Japan just released this odd device which enables you to choose your dreams. You just put a picture in it and talk into it before you go to sleep and stare at is as you doze off and this $150 device will deliver your dreams to you...about 22 percent of the time...

...What?!? Don't these guys know that people usually dream about whatever happened to them that day, and whatever is going through your mind as you fall asleep will likely be in your dreams? You could talk to your cat about what you want to see in your dreams and find it there 22 percent of the time. sheesh.

-------------------------

Old installment...

In August 2002, U.S. Armed forces searching Iraq came across two odd metal objects sticking out the Iraqi sand. Without being able to tell exactly what these objects were, the soldiers began to dig. Before long they discovered that these metal objects were part the tail fin of an old soviet fighter jet - a member of the Iraqi air force to be exact. Since the cold war, the Russians have been selling their old war machines and explosives to fund their starving nation. Naturally, the Russians do not care who these weapons go to, so wherever there is terrorism you tend to find Russian weapons. Consequently, at least 30 Iraqi military aircraft were discovered hidden in the sand, buried there to hide them from American forces. These planes were absent in the war, probably because the Iraqi's knew that they were outnumbered and their air forces did not stand a chance in battle.

Did anyone hear about this? No, of course not, the liberal media did not report this, but it seems to me that if it was this easy to hide thirty military planes from sight, weapons of mass destruction would be even easier to hide. With GPS technology, something could be buried in the middle of the desert and easily dug up later by anyone knowing its location. At any given time our enemies in the middle east could decide to dig up their weapons and start fighting.

We are being told by the media that Iraq had no substantial weapons, and that we attacked Iraq needlessly. But these planes (Which we found 9 months ago) are evidence that the Iraqis had more weapons than we knew about. Also, this discovery tells us that Saddam Hussein was ready to return to the fight at some point, and to employ these weapons he had buried in the sand. Also, we know that there could be anything buried out there in the Iraqi sand, we have good reason to believe that there is more down there.

Don't believe me? Sound hard to believe? Check out these links…

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/special_packages/iraq/6433232.htm

http://www.arabicnews.com/ansub/Daily/Day/030802/2003080210.html

http://www.snopes.com/photos/military/sandplanes.asp

(this one has pictures!)

Well, I hope that sets a few things straight with the war in Iraq. Speaking of setting things straight, have you ever heard anyone say that if you shave any hair on your body it grows back thicker? That is not true - just another old wives tale. Don't believe me? Research it for yourself, I am not going to make this one easy for you.

(message from the Head Snipe: anyone who criticizes the president on not having found WMD is loony for the above reason, and also for the fact that the weapons could be in Syria; the fact that the French and the Democrats thought there were WMDs; the fact that we found the WMD factories; the fact that we found the Iraqi forces with WMD antidotes; the fact that the Iraqis used illegal missiles on Kuwait; and the fact that Saddam had used WMDs on Kurds and Iranians in the old days.) See here for more.

"SETTING IT STRAIGHT" FROM A WEEK OR TWO AGO

If there is one thing I cannot stand it is the way people take rumors and legends at face value. I cannot tell you how many times I have seen people led away from the truth because they believed what someone told them. There are so many stories out there that most people would claim were absolutely true, but they have absolutely no reason to believe in this, only someone's word.

My favorite example deals with the story 'Letters from Teddy.' Most of us have heard this story before (if any of you are education majors you probably have this story memorized) as it has been dictated to us from behind pulpits and classroom lecterns for years.

'Letter from Teddy' is the familiar story about a certain teacher who has a smelly, ugly, and unpopular little boy in her class. She later realizes that no one has ever really invested in this child and she decides to make 'Teddy' her own personal project. She spends time helping him out and eventually Teddy becomes an 'A' student, gets married and sends her the now famous 'Letters from Teddy' telling this teacher about her life and what an impact she made on him.

It kind of makes me want to cry. Well, not really but every time I hear that story someone around me tears up. And when they do, I don't always have the heart to tell them the truth: this is a fictional story!

Every time I hear this story told, it is told as a true story, one that happened to a friend of the narorator or something. Many writers, even Christian writers, cite this story in their nonfiction books as if it were true.

The truth is that the story was originally written by Elizabeth Silance Ballard in 1976, who has stated over the years that the story was entirely fictional. But we believe that it is true simply because someone else said so. (don't believe me? There is more at http://www.snopes.com/glurge/teddy.htm)

The point is that we take things at face value without any evidence. How can we apply this to our lives here at DBU? Well, how many of you knew for sure that the new fountain in front of the Mahler, which looks very nice, cost some anonymous donor 2.4 million dollars? Than of course, a few weeks later, we all found out that is was only worth a few hundred thousand dollars. Than some clever person put soap in it. (c'mon, we ALL talked about doing it) First everyone said it was a baseball player, than they said that DBU had caught the culprits and is was definitely NOT a baseball player. Yet there is no reason to believe any of these things are true without some kind of evidence.

Now, don't get me wrong, I am not saying any of this is false. I am saying that it is foolish to believe these rumors and stories unless we have some reason to believe in it. We cannot stand on the phrase, 'someone told me so…' when deciding whether or not something is true.

Well, that wraps up my first article, a little longer than I expected. I hope that this column can be informative and somehow entertaining as well. Long live the DBU snipe.