Sweden Plagued By Stoned Bears

It seems that Sweden, home of the massage, is not all that safe a place to be these days. You can go out for a walk and come face-to-face with a stoned bear. Even if you have to bring you own stones.

"I noticed something moving (…) and once I realised what it was I thought this will be my last journey," Tord Forsberg told the Norrbottens-Kuriren daily.

The bear, which Forsberg believes was an almost fully grown cub, turned around and left, only to return and then go away again. But the third time it made as if to attack, standing on its hind paws only five metres (yards) away.

"I was so scared that I grabbed a handful of stones and threw them at the bear's muzzle," Forsberg said. "It worked and the bear turned around and disappeared into the forest."

The incident happened as Forsberg was walking his dog early on Sunday morning in Strandforssel in northern Sweden.

We here at Blue Crab Boulevard are happy to not have to deal with stoned moose. We have more than enough dealing with the coke-fiend rabbits and the drunken ferrets.

Rot. In. Hell.

You and I have the right to free speech because fellow Americans throughout the history of this nation have secured that right with their very lifeblood. Which is why this is so upsetting.

ORCAS ISLAND, Wash. - Vandals burned dozens of small American flags that decorated veterans' graves for Memorial Day and replaced many of them with hand-drawn swastikas, authorities said Monday.

Forty-six flag standards were found empty and another 33 flags were in charred tatters Sunday in the cemetery, authorities said. Swastikas drawn on paper appeared where 14 of the flags had been.

Members of the American Legion on this island off Washington's northwest coast replaced the burned flags with new ones Sunday afternoon.

The vandals struck again on Memorial Day after a guard left at dawn, the San Juan County sheriff's office said. This time, the vandals left 33 of the hand-drawn swastikas.

"This is not an act of free speech. This is a crime," Sheriff Bill Cumming said in a statement released Monday afternoon.

No, it is not free speech. It is an abuse of what better people than the perpetrators of this crime secured for us all. I'd like to ask a favor here. Could the leftwing folks, bloggers or readers, please join in condemning this hideous desecration?

Please?

That’s A Relief!

Elisabeth Hasselbeck has got to be breathing a sigh of relief right now. The still-employed co-host of The View won't have to worry about being yapped at endlessly by the currently-unemployed former co-host.

NEW YORK - Rosie O'Donnell says she will likely never speak to "The View" co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck again after an on-air tiff last week that led to O'Donnell's early departure from the show.

The former host of the ABC daytime chatfest says in a video blog posted on her Web site that she has never tried harder to be friends with someone, but she doesn't think she succeeded with Hasselbeck.

"I haven't spoken to her, and I probably won't, and I think it's just as well," she said. "I wrote her an e-mail, and she wrote me back, and there you have it."

The fight ended a colorful eight-month tenure for O'Donnell that lifted the show's ratings but no doubt caused heartburn for show creator Barbara Walters. O'Donnell feuded with Donald Trump and frequently had snippy exchanges with the more conservative Hasselbeck.

On Friday, ABC said O'Donnell asked for, and received, an early exit from her contract. O'Donnell said last month she would be leaving because she could not agree to a new contract with ABC executives. In the video blog, she said she never really fit in.

"I was really just like a foster kid for a year," she said. "I came, you know, we considered adoption, but I didn't really fit into the family and now it's time for the foster kid to go back home."

O'Donnell fessed up that chief writer Janette Barber drew a mustache on a photo of Hasselbeck at the show's studio before they left. "It was a joke on the way out," she said.

Yes, you are a joke on the way out, Rosie. Thanks for the clarification. But seriously, couldn't you see your way clear to promise the rest of us you'll never speak to us again? We'd be willing to start a fundraiser to pay you to shut up.

Really.

UPDATE: Others: Thinkin' About Stuff, The Slug, The Moxargon Group, George Archibald,

Use Biofuel: Kill An Orangutan!

Right in line with the previous post comes this article: Palm oil puts squeeze on Asia's endangered orangutan.

PALANGKARAYA, Central Kalimantan (Reuters) - Bound hand and foot, disheveled orangutans caught raiding Borneo's oil palm crops silently await their fate as a small crowd of plantation workers gather to watch.

Lacking only hand-cuffs and finger-printing to complete the atmosphere of a criminal bust, such "ape evictions" have become part of life for Asia's endangered red apes.

Thousands have strayed into the path of international commerce as Indonesia and Malaysia, their last remaining habitats, race to convert their forests to profitable palm crops.

Branded pests for venturing out from their diminishing forest habitats into plantations where they eat young palm shoots, orangutans could be extinct in the wild in ten years time, the United Nations said in March.

Fighting against this grim prediction is the Nyaru Menteng Borneo Orangutan Survival (BOS) centre in Central Kalimantan, which rescues orangutans and returns them to the wild at the cost of US$3,000 per ape.

"They will kill the animals if we don't go … It's cheaper to kill the orangutan than put up a fence or snares," said Lone Droscher-Nielsen, the Danish-born founder of the centre.

While harming the apes is illegal, her centre has amassed a slew of photographs of the grisly fates of some plantation trespassers: Apes with their hands cut off and slashed to death with machetes, and others with bullets through their foreheads.

With dozens captured this year, cages are full, and finding secure land for releases is a constant challenge for the centre.

"It's not just orangutans — bears, gibbons — everybody is losing their home," said Droscher-Nielsen.

"If it was only the orangutan, people just say: 'Well it's only one species that's going to go extinct'. But it's not just one species. Those forests have millions of animals in them that are all going to go extinct if we continue."

So why are the orangutans being executed? Why, to provide trans-fat-free oil and to produce "eco-friendly" biofuel!

Used in cookies, toothpaste, ice cream and breads it is the world's second most popular edible oil after soy.

Demand is also soaring for palm oil-derived biofuel, despite objections from critics who slam the "green" alternative to pricey crude oil as "deforestation diesel" because of the destruction wreaked on forests to make way for palm plantations.

Of 6.5 million hectares cultivated in Malaysia and Indonesia in 2004, almost four million hectares was previously forest, environment group Friends of the Earth calculated.

For orangutan, the clearances are a matter of life and death.

"You can see how desperate the situation is," said forestry department official Sugianto, 43, as he gestured at row after row of palms in the ape's last stronghold, Central Kalimantan.

"The company knows the orangutan has a protected status … if they have a permit to clear 60,000 hectares they clear 60,000 hectares, orangutan or not. They only care about their profit."

The pushers of the global warming agenda and their nanny-state allies could frankly give a damn about the orangutans. It is more important to bring the Western economies to their knees than it is to actually care about the environment they profess to be concerned about to further their agendas. This is the upshot of the "environmental" agenda. No more orangutans so that there is plenty of trans-fat-free oil and abundant biofuel. Lots and lots of gushing about how industry is embracing the environmental agenda without even a glance at what that entails.

Really want to go there? Meet the new boss.

EVER so much worse than the old boss.

Department Of The Obvious Department

Not to be confused with the department of redundancy department. Nancy Pelosi is attempting to influence American policy by stating the obvious: "Climate change is a reality."

What she leaves out of that is that climate change is the norm - not the exception.

After meeting with German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel, Pelosi praised Berlin for its leadership on the issue.

Her trip comes ahead of next week's Group of Eight summit and a climate change meeting next month involving the leading industrialized nations and during a time of increased debate over what should succeed the Kyoto Protocol, a 1997 international treaty that caps the amount of carbon dioxide that can be emitted from power plants and factories in industrialized countries. It expires in 2012.

President Bush rejected that accord, saying it would harm the U.S. economy and unfair excludes developing countries like China and India from its obligations. Pelosi, who strongly disagrees with that decision and many other of Bush's environmental policies, said Friday she said she wants to work with the administration rather than provoke it.

Pelosi said she hoped Bush would be open to considering a "different way" in the future.

The California Democrat pointed to her delegation's weekend stop in Greenland, "where we saw firsthand evidence that climate change is a reality; there is just no denying it."

"It wasn't caused by the people of Greenland — it was caused by the behavior of the rest of the world," she said.

Scientists have noticed that Greenland's output of ice into the North Atlantic had increased dramatically, doubling over the decade that ended in 2005.

"We hope that we can all assume our responsibilities with great respect and that our administration will be open to listening to why it is important to go forward perhaps in a different way than we have proceeded in the past," she told reporters.

Gabriel and Chancellor Angela Merkel have made the fight against global warming a key point of Germany's presidencies of the G-8 and European Union. Still, Merkel has said that progress at the June 6-8 summit in Heiligendamm is not assured.

According to comments on a document released by the environmental group Greenpeace, the Bush administration is preparing to reject new targets on climate change at the summit. The White House declined to confirm the comments were from U.S. officials.

"We regret very much that we must so far have the impression that it is difficult to reach concrete results with the American administration," Gabriel said after meeting Pelosi.

Gabriel said industrial nations must take joint responsibility for the global warming that has occurred thus far.

So the West must assume responsibility for the last global warm period when Greenland got that name because it was actually green? Even though there was no burning of fossil fuel? Even though there was no industry worth mentioning? Even though the original inhabitants died off completely when the ice came back? Do we also get credit for that "little ice age" not all that many years ago as well?

Kyoto was - and is - a farce. The signatories to it have not met the grandiose targets. There is NO stasis in the climate of this planet and no perfect climate. The majority - the vast majority - of greenhouse gas is water vapor, not CO2. Not man-made water vapor, either. To gut the West's economies and send all industry to the completely unregulated - and frankly uncaring - countries like China is a recipe for national suicide.

Yet that is exactly what people like Pelosi are demanding.

The Odd Thing

I was stopped by someone the other week who said it was not surprising there was so much terrorism in the world when we invaded their countries (meaning Afghanistan and Iraq). No wonder Muslims felt angry.

I said to him: tell me exactly what they feel angry about. We remove two utterly brutal and dictatorial regimes; we replace them with a UN-supervised democratic process.

And the only reason it is difficult still is because other Muslims are using terrorism to try to destroy the fledgling democracy and, in doing so, are killing fellow Muslims.

Why aren't they angry about the people doing the killing? The odd thing about the conversation is I could tell it was the first time he'd heard this argument.

The words of outgoing British Prime Minister Tony Blair from the Australian Daily Telegraph (originally published in the Sunday Times of London.) That is exactly the odd thing, isn't it? Both the islamists and the Western left keep screeching about how America and the West deserve what is happening in Iraq and the Middle East because we caused it. But how? By eliminating a murderous thug who filled mass graves on a routine basis? A bestial father who produced even more vile offspring who thought rape was recreation? By eliminating a regime that demolished historical wonders and enslaved women? By trying to stop islamists - who use the trappings of religion to gain political, temporal power? And who do so by killing innocents from the very religion they hold up as a shield?

Our left wing in the West is hell bent on surrendering the field to these murderous thugs. Why? Is it more important to gain domestic political power than to spread democracy?

Well, we already know the answer to that, don't we?

“If You Shoot Him, You’ll Just Make Him Mad.”

Bart: I better go check out this Mongo character.
[Bart reaches for his gun]
Jim: Oh no, don't do that.
Bart: Why not?
Jim: If you shoot him, you'll just make him mad.
(Blazing Saddles, 1974)

Or why the movie Blazing Saddles should be required viewing for recruits attending police academies all across the country. The Casselberry, Florida police department could have used that advice on Sunday when they tried to kill an 80-pound monitor lizard there. They shot the beast twice - and it escaped to plot its revenge on residents of the Orlando suburb.

CASSELBERRY, Fla. - Police say they're sure they shot a four-foot-long, 80-pound monitor lizard that had been lurking in an Orlando suburb for months. Still, neighbors aren't ready to let their children or pets back outside until they see a carcass.

The lizard didn't bite anyone, but police officers were authorized to kill it because of the potential danger it posed to small children and animals.

An officer shot the reptile twice Sunday but wasn't close enough to catch it before the animal scampered into a retention pond, said Lt. Dennis Stewart of the Casselberry Police Department.

"If they did shoot it, I'm sure it's going to be angry if it comes out now," said Ilene Gothelf, whose home borders the pond about 10 miles from Orlando. "I want to know that it is safe for the kids to come out."

The Animal Uprising™ develops the bullet-proof lizard, apparently. We here at Blue Crab Boulevard urge the Casselberry police to issue bigger guns to police officers. Something along these lines. After all, what is more fitting to go after a Monitor than a Merrimack?

Lights Out

AFP notes that Venezuelan president and would-be dictator, (T)Hugo Chavez is coming under a lot of criticism for his closure of independent televisions network RCTV. Not that any of that criticism will bother him.

After 54 years on the air, RCTV went black at midnight Sunday after the government refused to renew its license. It was promptly replaced by TVes, a state-backed "Socialist" station.

On Monday morning, hundreds of university students protested against the network's closure under a sizable police presence.

One of the country's leading dailies, El Nacional, denounced the "end of pluralism in Venezuela," and slammed the government's growing "information monopoly."

Archbishop Baltasar Porras Cardoso slammed Chavez's "sectarianism" and compared him to Hitler, Mussolini and Cuban leader Fidel Castro — who is a close friend of the left-wing Venezuelan president.

"Every day, the sectarianism of this government narrows the room for maneuver of those who don't agree with it completely," the Venezuelan Catholic cleric wrote in Brazilian daily O Estado de Sao Paulo.

The EU's German presidency Monday said it was concerned the government had let the license for Radio Caracas Television (RCTV) expire "without holding an open competition" for a successor station.

"The European Union believes it is important to recall the promises made by the Venezuelan authorities regarding an open competition and a tender process for that same license," a statement from the presidency said.

"Freedom of speech and freedom of the press are essential elements of democracy. The European Union expects therefore that… Venezuela will uphold these freedoms."

Several international organizations supporting press freedom have also slammed the move.

Do not think this cannot happen here in this country, either. The left is very vocal about how they are being "silenced" - they go on national television to say so. But they are also pushing hard for a "fairness doctrine" where they get to silence voices that disagree with them.

Time To Go

Newsbusters makes a devastating point when noting the "resignation" of Cindy Sheehan from the Democratic party and today as the "face" of the American anti-war movement:

The major media could give a crap.

It’s been a full 48 hours since antiwar icon Cindy Sheehan publicly announced that she was leaving the Democrat Party due to Thursday’s bipartisan agreement on an Iraq war funding bill.

Yet, Google News and LexisNexis searches have identified that not one major media outlet has covered her announcement.

Not one.

Given the media’s fascination with this woman since she traveled to Crawford, Texas, in August 2005 to picket near President Bush’s ranch, one must wonder why they have abandoned her now?

Does this suggest that the media’s antiwar proclivities are only important when they shed a negative light on the Administration and Republicans, but not when events such as this speak poorly about Democrats?

Before you answer, consider the following data. Since August 1, 2005:

CNN has aired 511 segments which included Sheehan’s name
ABC has aired 92
NBC has aired 75
CBS has aired 63
The Associated Press has published 280 articles which included Sheehan’s name
The New York Times has published 147
The Washington Post quite coincidentally has also published 147
The Los Angeles Times has published 122
USA today has published 40.
Please be advised that this data is un-audited, and unchecked for duplications. However, it is quite clear that Sheehan, when she served a function of embarrassing the Bush administration, got a lot of attention.

In fact, as you might imagine, many of the 1,447 reports referenced above included actual interviews with Sheehan. And, if we broaden our search to include all major American press outlets, we find a total of 2,272 articles or transcripts referring to Sheehan since August 1, 2005.

Yet, when she made a major announcement concerning her departure from the Democrat Party for antiwar reasons, not one media organization thought it was newsworthy.

What’s the only logical conclusion?

Cindy Sheehan only had value to the press when her antiwar sentiments embarrassed the President. But, when she attacked Democrats for betraying their antiwar campaign promises, she became persona non grata.

How disgraceful.

Sheehan's "resignation" from the anti-war movement is posted over at Daily Kos, not exactly a place I care to link, but here it is:

I have come to some heartbreaking conclusions this Memorial Day Morning. These are not spur of the moment reflections, but things I have been meditating on for about a year now. The conclusions that I have slowly and very reluctantly come to are very heartbreaking to me.

The first conclusion is that I was the darling of the so-called left as long as I limited my protests to George Bush and the Republican Party. Of course, I was slandered and libeled by the right as a "tool" of the Democratic Party.  This label was to marginalize me and my message. How could a woman have an original thought, or be working outside of our "two-party" system?

However, when I started to hold the Democratic Party to the same standards that I held the Republican Party, support for my cause started to erode and the "left" started labeling me with the same slurs that the right used. I guess no one paid attention to me when I said that the issue of peace and people dying for no reason is not a matter of "right or left", but "right and wrong."

I am deemed a radical because I believe that partisan politics should be left to the wayside when hundreds of thousands of people are dying for a war based on lies that is supported by Democrats and Republican alike. It amazes me that people who are sharp on the issues and can zero in like a laser beam on lies, misrepresentations, and political expediency when it comes to one party refuse to recognize it in their own party. Blind party loyalty is dangerous whatever side it occurs on. People of the world look on us Americans as jokes because we allow our political leaders so much murderous latitude and if we don’t find alternatives to this corrupt "two" party system our Representative Republic will die and be replaced with what we are rapidly descending into with nary a check or balance: a fascist corporate wasteland. I am demonized because I don’t see party affiliation or nationality when I look at a person, I see that person’s heart. If someone looks, dresses, acts, talks and votes like a Republican, then why do they deserve support just because he/she calls him/herself a Democrat?

Newsbusters has this pegged. Sheehan was important to the media as long as she attacked the Bush administration. Now, she's worthless to them and has been memory-holed. And I rather suspect that her resignation has a lot to do with her realizing that.

My advice - and this is not meant to be a snark - is to finally get some grief counseling. That is what has really been needed.

UPDATE: Others:  Don Surber, BLACKFIVE, this blog is full of crap, The Populist, Little Green Footballs, Hot Air,

Memorial Day Images

These were taken last year, the weather is not looking too cooperative for more photos today.

Others: Jules Crittenden, The Anchoress,

Caught

Bill Richardson, one-time Clinton administration official, current governor of New Mexico and future former presidential candidate, has been caught out telling a whopper. He has been telling a story that is not true, according to the person he claims to have spoken to. She is very angry about it.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Presidential hopeful Bill Richardson said Sunday he will stop using the name of Marine from New Mexico who was killed in Iraq and whose story the Democratic governor has recounted while campaigning.

Richardson has told how he attended a memorial service three years ago for Lance Cpl. Aaron Austin, 21, who was killed in April 2004. The governor said Austin's mother, De'on Miller of Lovington, N.M., thanked him for the federal death benefits she had received.

Miller says the conversation about money never took place.

Miller, in fact, said a great deal more than that:

“Three years ago, Richardson attended a memorial service for Lance Corporal Aaron Austin, 21, who died in April” of “2004.  As he campaigns for the Democratic nomination, the New Mexico governor often recounts an emotional conversation with Austin’s mother, saying she thanked him for the federal death benefits she had received and even showed him the government check.

“In speeches in New Hampshire, Richardson has gotten Austin’s name wrong at least once,” “age wrong at least twice.  He also has called Austin the first New Mexico soldier killed in Iraq—instead of the third.

“But that’s not what bothers the Marine’s mother, De’on Miller, of Lovington, New Mexico, who says the conversation about money never took place.  ‘I don’t know a person rich or poor that would be told that” her “only living child has been killed, and you’re going to strike up a money conversation?  Bill Richardson needs to stop pushing this lie.  Aaron’s name had better not be used again in any way.  Not mine either.  A full written apology is due me for this.’” Will you apologize to her? (Emphasis added)

If you read the transcript, Richardson doesn't apologize - instead he dances all around the issue but says he'll stop using Austin's name.

Proper Uniform

Here's a handy tip: if you find that you need to wrestle and pin down a wild leopard, be sure you're wearing the proper uniform. Underwear.

The 49-year-old nature guide was fast asleep Monday, his family and pet cat dozing beside him, when a larger feline hopped in his bed for a latenight visit — a wild leopard, to be exact.

Du Mosch, 49, a nature guide, didn't flinch. Clad only in underwear and a T-shirt, he lunged at the leopard, grabbed it around the neck, then pinned it down for 20 minutes — until park rangers arrived on the scene.

"This kind of thing doesn't happen every day," he said, plainly. "I don't know why I did it. I wasn't thinking, I just acted."

Raviv Shapira, who heads the southern district of the Israel Nature and Parks Protection Authority, said a half-dozen of the leopards have been spotted near Du Mosch's small community in the Negev desert in southern Israel, "but we have never heard of a leopard coming into a private home," he said.

He said it was food, not curiosity, that lured the cat.

Well, sure it was. Nothing like a juicy haunch of nature guide for a midnight snack! Funniest thing in the article, however:

Du Mosch said he probably would not have been able to control the big cat were it in better health. As a nature guide, he said, he was familiar with animals and did his best to hold down the leopard without harming it. He said he took it all in stride, "but the kids were excited."

His young daughter had been in the room at the time because a mosquito in her own bedroom had frightened her, he said.

Terrifying mosquitoes as opposed to underwear clad dad wrestling a leopard. Hmm. Something wrong with that choice, kid.

(We won't speculate on what color the underwear was - either before or after the incident. We'll leave that up to the readers.)

In Which We Reiterate Our Calm Warning To Ireland

As we so calmly noted back in November, THE VIKINGS ARE COMING BACK, IRELAND! Hide the silverware!

ROSKILDE, Denmark - On the skipper's command, deckhands haul in tarred ropes to lower the flax sail. Oars splash into the water. The crew, grimacing with strain, pull with steady strokes sending the sleek Viking longship gliding through the fjord. A thousands years ago, the curved-prow warship might have spewed out hordes of bloodthirsty Norsemen ready to pillage and burn. This time, the spoils are adventure rather than plunder. (Ed. Note: Yeah, sure)

The Sea Stallion of Glendalough is billed as the world's biggest and most ambitious Viking ship reconstruction, modeled after a warship excavated in 1962 from the Roskilde fjord after being buried in the seabed for nearly 950 years.

Volunteers are preparing it for a journey across the legendary Viking waters of the North Sea — leaving Roskilde in eastern Denmark on July 1 and sailing 1,200 miles to Dublin, which was founded by Vikings in the 9th century.

"It's like a banana boat. It moves like a snake," crew member Preben Rather Soerensen, 42, said after a recent test sail in the Roskilde fjord.

The crew will explore the challenges of spending seven weeks in an open vessel with no shelter from crashing waves, whipping wind and drenching rain. Working in four-hour shifts, the history buffs and sailing enthusiasts will have to steer the 100-foot-long ship through treacherous waters with a minimum of sleep, comfort and privacy — just as the Vikings did.

"They must have been incredibly tough to do what they did," said 24-year-old crew member Triona Nicholl, an archaeologist from Dublin. "We all have waterproof gear. We have radios and life jackets and all the stuff. They must have been hardier people."

The Vikings turned to the stars and their ancient Norse gods for help as they navigated across the open sea, reaching as far as Iceland and North America. Many perished in the hostile waters of the North Atlantic.

Ah yes, that would be the little known OdinNet system for GPS (Grendel Positioning System).

(Sea Stallion official website - with countdown clock to the voyage, no less.)

Our Back Pages

Peter Collier reminds us that the relegation of America's heroes to the back pages of our national consciousness isn't a good thing for us. Collier knows a bit about heroes, having interviewed living Medal of Honor recipients for a book. He recounts the stories of just a few of these men in today's Opinion Journal.

Yet their stories were not only about killing. Several Medal of Honor recipients told me that the first thing they did after the battle was to find a church or some other secluded spot where they could pray, not only for those comrades they'd lost but also the enemy they'd killed.

Desmond Doss, for instance, was a conscientious objector who entered the army in 1942 and became a medic. Because of his religious convictions and refusal to carry a weapon, the men in his unit intimidated and threatened him, trying to get him to transfer out. He refused and they grudgingly accepted him. Late in 1945 he was with them in Okinawa when they got cut to pieces assaulting a Japanese stronghold.

Everyone but Mr. Doss retreated from the rocky plateau where dozens of wounded remained. Under fire, he treated them and then began moving them one by one to a steep escarpment where he roped them down to safety. Each time he succeeded, he prayed, "Dear God, please let me get just one more man." By the end of the day, he had single-handedly saved 75 GIs.

Why did they do it? Some talked of entering a zone of slow-motion invulnerability, where they were spectators at their own heroism. But for most, the answer was simpler and more straightforward: They couldn't let their buddies down.

Big for his age at 14, Jack Lucas begged his mother to help him enlist after Pearl Harbor. She collaborated in lying about his age in return for his promise to someday finish school. After training at Parris Island, he was sent to Honolulu. When his unit boarded a troop ship for Iwo Jima, Mr. Lucas was ordered to remain behind for guard duty. He stowed away to be with his friends and, discovered two days out at sea, convinced his commanding officer to put him in a combat unit rather than the brig. He had just turned 17 when he hit the beach, and a day later he was fighting in a Japanese trench when he saw two grenades land near his comrades.

He threw himself onto the grenades and absorbed the explosion. Later a medic, assuming he was dead, was about to take his dog tag when he saw Mr. Lucas's finger twitch. After months of treatment and recovery, he returned to school as he'd promised his mother, a ninth-grader wearing a Medal of Honor around his neck.

But, as Collier points out, these men are treated almost as a curiosity these days. Leftovers from a long-forgotten tradition that is no longer fashionable. The danger of consigning men such as these to the back pages is that without such bravery, there can be no freedom. Go read the whole thing - let's try to bring these men off the back pages at least on this one day when we are supposed to honor them and all the others who have fallen in the service of this land of the free.

Delinquent Owls Take Over Park

When owls go bad, they go very bad indeed. Owls have taken over a footpath in Lancashire, England and are denying humans the right to use it. The cowardly county council has refused to stand up to the thugs and has ordered humans to stay away from the area.

Lancashire county council closed the right of way after reports of the parent birds swooping at dog walkers using the moorland path near Dunsop Bridge.

"The problem is that the path runs between the nest site and the point where the adult birds perch regularly, and they regard people using it as a potential threat", said Nick Osbourne, the council's countryside officer.

"They seem to take particular exception to people with dogs. I have had six incidents reported to me, one of which resulted in someone receiving hospital treatment for a minor injury."

The council wants to ensure the public's safety while at the same time giving the birds a chance to rear their three young chicks.

Signs were originally erected warning people they might come under owl attack if they used the path. Then, after consultation with Duncan Thomas, the Lancashire police wildlife liaison officer, emergency powers were used to close the right of way.

Our informants tell us that the information the council is giving out is completely false. The owls are no raising young at all, they are merely teenage delinquents. We have photographical evidence of one of the suspects, one Oswald "Wiseguy" Bubo.