Upper Sac is Back

In 1989, a chemical tanker car on a Southern Pacific train that derailed poisoned most of the Upper Sacramento River—the river between Dunsmuir and Shasta Lake. Although the river has been gradually opened to fishing over the last several years, it was a move viewed by some as premature and a political move to boost the local economy and not a decision based on sound environmental reasoning.

I spent the last five days along this river and was very happy with what I had observed. There were large numbers of “case worms” (a type of larva) that is a food source for the trout in the river. There were a large quantity of fish from very small fry to mature adults and all stages in between all along the river.

These are the best conditions that I have seen in the river since the spill. My observations are even more remarkable in light of the fact that some small feeder creeks and ponds near the river have been treated to kill mosquitoes as a response to concerns about West Nile Virus. I think it is safe to say that the river is back.

English Church: Spouse Equated With Civil Partner

Liberal Anglicans are using the English government to force gay marriage into Church Law by bypassing normal procedures and just rewriting key sections of Church Cannons. They are going to replace the word “spouse” with “civil partner” according to an article in the August 12th edition of Church of England Newspaper. This change will take effect on December 5th, 2005.


Needless to say a firestorm has been ignited by this action. There is not much coverage of this conflict or others raging within the Episcopal Church but things are really boiling. I will periodically give you some glimpses of this conflict on my blog.


Below are a few reactions to the current state of the Episcopal Church:

The Bishop of Worcester Dr. Peter Selby

Andrew Cary Blog

David Virtue

Ohio Girls Can’t Say, “NO”

65 of 490 girls at Timkin High School in Canton, Ohio are in a family way. That’s right, over 13 percent of the young lasses have reported the consequences of promiscuity. This is double the teen pregnancy rate of the rest of Ohio.


If you add in a factor of one in three pregnancies ended by abortion, then the actual pregnancy rate would be closer to 20 percent of all females in the school. This is outrageous!


The school website contains this excerpt from a letter by the principal.


Our students have the opportunity to focus their academic careers through the Arts, Services and Technology academies. These in turn produce natural opportunities in extracurricular activities. It is an exciting concept, and this is an exciting time in our school’s history.

Yeah, they must have lots of unsupervised extracurricular activities; and this might very well qualify as school history, but not the kind that makes alumni write big checks.


The school mascot really is the Trojans!


Now if we could prove that Planned Parenthood wrote their sex ed curriculum, we could close the circle on this failed institution.

Hugh Hewitt stole some of my thunder about this subject on his radio show today but this the type of story that is too good to pass up. Thanks to Matt Drudge for giving this article the attention that it deserved.

Liberal Episcopalians Dealt Near Fatal Blow

In a victory for local parishes, an Orange County Superior Court Judge David C. Velasquez said the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles had not shown that it was likely to prevail in a property dispute with a local parish, St. James Church.

Also see story in L.A. Times.

Under current bylaws, the Episcopal Church claims ownership of all real property in the denomination; even if the local parish paid for their buildings without any assistance from the denomination. No local parish in the Episcopal Church in the United States (ECUSA) owns their church buildings, parsonages or any other property!

Centralization of assets appears to be invalid based on this ruling. A similar case in the Methodist Church also was ruled in favor of St. Lukes; a local parish in Fresno.

It appears that the end of ECUSA’s monopoly is drawing nearer. Those parishes that still adhere to the Christian faith may at last be allowed to go in peace to serve the Lord taking both their people and real property with them.

California Loses 43% of Its Vehicles

After taking office a year ago, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger ordered the State to conduct an audit of vehicles owner by the state. The State estimates that it owns about 70,000 vehicles. However, a physical inventory of vehicles by various state departments yields a count of 40,000. Where the rest may be located is unknown.


* One state agency spent four million dollars on vehicles but has no records of where they were purchased.
* The state has no idea what it costs to operate its fleet of vehicles.
* There are no state agencies that are adequately tracking their vehicles.

Border Agent an Illegal Alien

Oscar Antonio Ortiz  was employed as a United States Border Patrol Agent in 2001. Oscar is in trouble for smuggling illegal aliens across the Mexican border using his Border Patrol vehicle. He also allowed others to smuggle illegals in groups as large as fifty across the border. Furthermore, he made good money charging admittance into the United States.


Prior to being employed by the Border Patrol, Oscar was honorably discharged from an enlistment in the US Navy.

 


In order to be employed by the Navy or the Border Patrol, Oscar underwent background investigations. While not as extensive as the background check on Supreme Court Nominee, John Roberts, neither check on Oscar turned-up the fact that he is an illegal alien from Tijuana, Mexico. Oscar was using a fake birth certificate to get both jobs.

Farewell to My Grandfather

I had some fun items that I was going to really spend a lot of time writing about this weekend. I had a great call to Eric Hogue this morning and my day was going great for a Friday. I was looking forward to writing lots on my blog. As I was sitting down at the computer I got the phone call that I had dreaded since I was a teenager. It was my dad. He told me that my grandfather had died.


My grandfather was 96 years old and it seemed that he would live forever. Ray was born in Oroville and spent most of his youth in Arbuckle. He did lots of manual labor as a young man. He did many things over the course of his life. He was a cattle rancher, a rice farmer, owned his own rice milling company and did many other jobs related to rice milling. In his later years, he came up with a quick cooking wild rice and invented more energy efficient systems for rice milling and drying.


He loved hunting and fishing. Deer hunting and trout fishing stories were always welcome subjects for discussion. My grandfather spent many deer seasons at the Jackson Ranch west of Arbuckle. As I understand it he went hunting there almost every year from the late 1930s until the 1970s.There was no hunting during World War Two and as a result the Jackson Ranch was teaming with game during the 1950s. By the time I went hunting there with him, the deer were very scarce.


In the 1960s and 1970s he also spent the second deer season at the Anderson Ranch west of Willows. I remember exiting Interstate 5 at Norman-Princeton Road many times as a kid. His 1946 Willies Jeep was always in tow behind his old Ford Ranchero.


At the Anderson Ranch, I killed my first deer at age ten. It was the weekend of the big slaughter. We got thirteen deer in two days. My deer was the biggest. My dad and other grandfather, Jim, were with me in his International Scout. When we got back to camp, my Grandfather Ray was happy for me.


My grandfather also loved trout fishing. He took his three children to Stonyford to catch fish. They also spent many summers at Lake Tahoe and the Truckee River. In his 50s and 60s, my grandfather spent his time fishing in Lake Berryessa. He liked the lake so much that he bought a place at Steel Park Resort. He tried retirement at age 65 but he got bored with that after about a year and went back to work.


My grandfather had seven patents related to rice milling, drying and production. While he could never make any commercially successful, he always hoped that they would catch on. In an earlier age, he might have been as revered as a pioneer in the rice industry but he never got the recognition that he was due.


Grandfather loved to talk about politics. My earliest recollection of talking politics with him was about the symbols of the two major parties. Democrats had the symbol of the donkey because they were jackasses. He hated labor unions and loved Richard Nixon and later Ronald Reagan. He and my step-grandmother used to watch All In The Family. Grandma used to tease that Archie Bunker was based on my grandfather.


For most of his life, my grandfather had a hatred for God and religion. It was the area of his life that held bitterness. God and ministers were usually described with curses and profanity. I have prayed for him since I was a teenager. In the last few years, he seemed to loose much of his hostility towards God. His cussing was noticeable decreased and he seldom used Gods name in vain.


A few months ago, my parent’s pastor started calling on him on a regular basis. About three months ago, he prayed the sinners prayer with the pastor. The pastor continued to look in on him from time to time. The active rebellion towards God was gone. He seemed at peace with the world and his maker.


He died this morning in his sleep.


I love him and wish the peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be upon him in his eternal rest.


Comments, Trackbacks, Pingbacks:
Comment from: Julie [Visitor]
Bill,

What a wonderful story of the memories that you had of Grandpa. Two years ago in October when Grandpa got sick, I called on our old Pastor to look in on him and he never followed through. That night in the Hospital, I prayed Lord please spare his life and do not take Grandpa’s life until he accepts The Lord as his Savior.


Well, as the story goes, When I started to go to West Valley Baptist Church this past winter, I asked Pastor Everston to start visiting Grandpa in St. John’s retirement home and he did just that. He took Dylon along with him, at first Grandpa didn’t want to hear about God and so they would talk about fishing and hunting.


About a month and a half ago when Grandpa almost died, Pastor had a strong sense to go and visit Grandpa and talk to him about heaven. He did just that and Grandpa told him that he already had a glimpse of heaven and he was ready to go and wanted to hear more about it, so Pastor Everston told Grandpa how to know Jesus as his Savior and when I got the call that he accepted Christ as his personal Savior, I cried.

Thank you for the memories of a wonderful man. He was know as “SPARKIE” to the immediate family.
08/13/05 @ 05:27

Meet Cindy Sheehan

Cindy Sheehan is camping out in front of the President’s property in Crawford Texas as part of a publicity stunt to accuse George Bush of killing her son in Iraq.


Cindy Sheehan has a home on the internet that you can visit. Here you will find George Bush called every name that a flaming Leftist can throw at someone.


I surveyed her writings and her view of the Global War on Terrorism. Her views seem to dovetail nicely with Michael Moore. It is no surprise that she is associated with MoveOn.org.


She always calls the President “George” not President or Mr. Bush or anything showing respect for the office or the man himself.


Cindy Sheehan seems to view Iraq as a peaceful and idyllic place prior to the arrival of the American military. In her essay, Where Do I Live?, she describes the Iraqi portion of the War on Terrorism as the “destruction of an innocent country” in an “unjust, immoral, and illegal war” where American soldiers are “killing and maiming tens of thousands of innocent people.”


Cindy Sheehan explains her son’s Stories from the Front as that of a young man that joined the Army in May of 2000. She gives no indication of his schooling or specialty in the armed services. He—like all young men—had hopes and dreams about what his experience would be like during his enlistment. If Mrs. Sheehan’s description is accurate, her son did not quite know what military life is really like. His expectations may not have been realistic.


(All enlistment contracts are eight years. Depending on the contract, the time of active and reserve duty is split. Most contracts are either two or four years of active duty. The active duty portion of the contract is usually based on the specialty that the recruit wishes to pursue. Sheehan is unclear about the details of her son’s contract.)


9-11 changed things; suddenly, her son couldn’t do all the things that his recruiter had promised. Duh!

After Casey enlisted he knew I was upset. He told me, “Mom, you don’t have to worry, Sgt. (I forget his name) told me that since I scored so high on the ASVAB (military competency) test, I will never see combat, even if there is a war. I will only be in a support role.” I can still hear his voice saying those exact words to me. Those words chilled me to the bone then, and have haunted me since 9/11. First of all, because I thought Casey would be sent to fight terrorists (and “terrorists”) wherever they might be, and I could see George and his warmongering band of neocons rushing us into a crazy invasion of Iraq.

 

In her essay, Still Not Worth It, she recounts her appearance on Larry King to comment on her view of President Bush’s nationally televised speech on June 28th, 2005 about the Iraq War. In this essay, she describes President Bush is “vacuous man giving his hollow speech “ She suggests that the President “could have always replaced the word “terrorists” with the phrase: “my moronic and callous foreign policies.”


“People have characterized the speech-lite in many ways, but if I had to pick a few words to describe it, I would say: “Hypocritical, manipulative, condescending, meaningless drivel.””


During Larry King, Senator John Warner spoke favorable of our presence in Iraq. Sheehan described Warner’s support this way, “he fell in lockstep behind his Führer.”


Sheehan describes her appearance on Larry King as:

I finally got on to speak for my 82 seconds (all the time Larry King Live could spare for the peace message) about how this war is a catastrophe and how we should bring the troops home and quit forcing the Iraqi people to pay for our government’s hubris and quit forcing innocent children to suffer so we can allegedly fight terrorism somewhere besides America. How absolutely racist and immoral is it to take America’s battles to another land and make an entire country pay for the crimes of others? To me, this is blatant genocide. How dare we export our brand of flag-waving death and devastation to a people who have been through so much already? It wasn’t bad enough that our sanctions killed tens of thousands of Iraqis before we even started an active aggression against them. Now we have to create confusion, chaos, and disorder there. How dare our president and Congress, and we Americans, allow this to continue?

Her view of trying to bring democracy to Iraq is illustrative of her mindset. She laments the evil that will be unleashed on the world if “George’s endless war … is allowed to continue spreading the cancer of imperialism in the Middle-East” She also unloaded her venom on John McCain. (Remember that she also met with him when she met with President Bush last year.) Commenting on Senate John McCain who was a Vietnam POW for seven years,

He hasn’t had a loved one killed in this enormous tragedy of a war, nor does he have a loved one in harm’s way. It has not affected him personally one bit. What skin is it off McCain’s nose if our troops remain for a highly unlikely rosy outcome at the cost of thousands of more lives?

Cindy is worried about America. In her essay, Where Do I Live?, she wants to know what you will do “When, God forbid, the jack-booted thugs come pounding on their door some midnight?” Sorry Cindy but Waco was when the other party was in power.

Eric Hogue asks about the Sheehan children.

In The Sounds of Hope, there is a poem by her daughter Carley. The poem reads in part
Have you ever heard the sound of taps played at your brother’s grave?
They say he died so the flag will continue to wave,
But I believe he died because they had oil to save.
Have you ever heard the sound of taps played at your brother’s grave?

Media Saves Russian Sub Crew

Like many of you, my heart and prayers went-out to the seven sailors trapped in the Russian Sub over the weekend. What we did not learn until today was that if the Russian military had their way, these men would still be at the bottom of the sea.


Thank to an anonymous phone call to a local radio station in the port city of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, a chain of events was set-off that led to the rescue effort of the men.


As a former sailor, I can imagine nothing more frightening than being stuck at the bottom of the sea as you slowly watch your air supply run out knowing that you can do nothing to save yourself.


As a result of this mishap, word is that Russia has ordered two Scorpio rescue robot subs from the British. Above is photo of the US version of Scorpio robot sub.


The form of government may change, but the value of life in Russia is still darn cheap

Tookie: Penance of Restitution?

Tookie has written children’s books to warn youngsters of the dangers of gangs. For this act of penance, Craig DeLuz argues that Tookies’ sentence should be commuted to life in prison.

I like Craig and have talked with him on several occasions but in this instance, I must respectfully disagree. I would like to submit the following article on this subject for your consideration. This article first appeared in the Sacramento Union on June 1, 1991. It was written by Rev David Chilton. At the time, Chilton was Pastor of Church of the Redeemer in Placerville, CA.

Forgiveness Requires Restitution
The condemned man sat in his cell awaiting execution. James Morgan had been convicted of murder and sentenced to death under the justice system of 17th-century Massachusetts—the Puritan Colony par excellence.


The Puritans have often been stigmatized as narrow-minded legalists, unconcerned about the plight of “sinners” in their midst. To the contrary, the Puritans, as good Calvinists, believed that all people —themselves included—are depraved and sinful, in need of the grace of God and the mercy of fellow men.


Accordingly, the Rev. Cotton Mather and other ministers visited Morgan in his cell and urged him to pray for repentance and forgiveness. To their delight, Morgan heard them and soon gave evidence of a sound, sincere conversion.


The whole Puritan colony joyously responded to Morgan’s change of heart. They held a special worship service, where Morgan testified to his newfound faith. He was embraced and received as a brother in Christ, with all the rights and privileges of a citizen of the heavenly kingdom.

The congregation sang a psalm of praise, thanking God for His goodness to James Morgan, the sinner who had become a saint.


Then they took him to the gallows and hanged him.


Shocked? If so, you need to understand how our forefathers’ world view affected their concept of capital punishment. To begin with, they firmly believed that only God is God. No institution can rightfully take His place.


That meant that only God could change people’s hearts. Unlike modern Americans, of both conservative and liberal stripe, Puritans did not expect civil government to transform the character of its citizens. The state, they believed, existed as a ministry of vengeance, to bring down God’s earthly justice upon criminals.


The purpose of punishing ‘a criminal, therefore, was not to reform the criminal’s nature, but to force him to make restitution. A thief was forced to repay his victim—double!—entering a period of indentured servitude, if necessary.


And the only restitution for murder was by the death of the murderer (based on such Biblical passages as Numbers 35:31 and. Romans 13:4). Capital punishment was mandatory. No exceptions.


But what if the murderer sincerely repents? Shouldn’t he be forgiven? Here, again, the Puritan conviction that man is not God provided a two-pronged focus that shielded them from our modern confusion.


The first point: Man—the state—is not free to bestow divine forgiveness. Since God has commanded capital punishment, evading it would be sacrilegious, nothing less than playing God.


The second point of their focus involves the nature of forgiveness. True forgiveness, they said, means simply this: dropping charges when full restitution has been rendered.


They were thus able to distinguish divine forgiveness from human, civil forgiveness. Divine forgiveness, based on the restitution provided by Christ’s atonement, comes to all who find God’s grace. But earthly, civil forgiveness is based on restitution to the victim.


Executing a repentant, Christian murderer is perhaps the purest form of a proper separation of Church and State: neither institution tries to do the other’s job.

Keep this in mind next time you hear about Robert Alton Harris, the convicted murderer scheduled for execution. Some supporters argue he shouldn’t be executed. He has “changed,” they say; he’s “a different person” from the man who butchered two teenagers in 1978.


If that’s true—and the constant smirk on his televised image belies that claim—we are happy for him. We would encourage him to remain steadfast as he approaches the ultimate religious experience.

Ditto for Tookie and if he has found redemption, may God welcome him into His kingdom.

Trackback
http://www.craigdeluz.com

I want to thank you for the trackback and for sharing with our readers about Stanley. But your post does misrepresent my argument. Penance, redemption and/or forgiveness are not even part of my reasoning. As I stated in my piece: Stanley’s efforts, as extraordinary as they are, do not absolve Mr. Williams of his crimes, nor should they be cause to release him from the debt he must pay to society for those crimes. As a consequence of his crimes, Stanley Williams has given up his life. The question now is “What is the best use of this life we now hold in our hands?” The work he has done has had a significant, proven impact on reducing gang violence. I have read articles and letters from around the world detailing the impact his work has had. And because of this proven track record, I believe that there is a greater benefit to society by keeping him alive, in prison and continuing this work. I understand if you still disagree, I just wanted to clarify my point.