We thank immensely those who have made the ultimate sacrifice, and a big special thank you goes out to all our veterans out there for keeping us safe. We love and appreciate you very, very much.

Here’s a bit of history on Memorial Day.

Take care, everyone.

The crime rate is increasing in Britain, even with the severe restrictions on gun ownership. Now one group of doctors are lobbying for a ban on certain types of kitchen knives. What will it be next?

A&E doctors are calling for a ban on long pointed kitchen knives to reduce deaths from stabbing.

A team from West Middlesex University Hospital said violent crime is on the increase - and kitchen knives are used in as many as half of all stabbings.

They argued many assaults are committed impulsively, prompted by alcohol and drugs, and a kitchen knife often makes an all too available weapon.

The research is published in the British Medical Journal.

The researchers said there was no reason for long pointed knives to be publicly available at all.

They consulted 10 top chefs from around the UK, and found such knives have little practical value in the kitchen.

None of the chefs felt such knives were essential, since the point of a short blade was just as useful when a sharp end was needed.

I understand the concern, but there was the belief that severe gun restrictions would cut the crime rate. Didn’t work. Do they think this is going to deter crime?

This is comforting. Not.

ALBANY, N.Y. — Scores of convicted rapists and other high-risk sex offenders in New York have been getting Viagra paid by Medicaid (search) for the last five years, the state’s comptroller said Sunday.

Audits by Comptroller Alan Hevesi’s office showed that between January 2000 and March 2005, 198 sex offenders in New York received Medicaid-reimbursed Viagra after their convictions. Those included crimes against children as young as 2 years old, he said.

Hevesi asked Michael Leavitt, secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, in a letter Sunday to “take immediate action to ensure that sex offenders do not receive erectile dysfunction medication paid for by taxpayers.”

A call to Leavitt’s office was not immediately returned Sunday.

According to Hevesi, the problem is an unintended consequence of a 1998 directive from federal officials telling states that Medicaid prescription programs must include Viagra. His office discovered that the state was helping sex offenders pay for Viagra by checking Medicaid pharmacy expenditures against the state’s sex offender registry.

Hillary to the rescue:

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton said in a statement that it was “deeply disturbing and runs contrary to the purpose of Medicaid, which is to provide health care coverage for uninsured, low-income individuals.” Clinton, a Democrat, urged Leavitt to look into the matter, and said she would explore legislative options.

Also happening in Virginia:

RICHMOND, Va. — Medicaid paid the costs of Viagra and other prescription erectile dysfunction drugs for 52 men registered as violent sex offenders in Virginia, a state official said Thursday.

Also, Gov. Mark R. Warner issued an emergency order Thursday that bars the state from paying for the drugs for those 52 men under the government program for the poor, elderly and disabled.

The Dems sure want you to think so, though. Here’s more:

Politicians from Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Howard Dean have recently contended that abortions have increased since George W. Bush took office in 2001.

This claim is false. It’s based on an an opinion piece that used data from only 16 states. A study by the Alan Guttmacher Institute of 43 states found that abortions have actually decreased. Update, May 26: The author of the original claim now concedes that the Guttmacher study is “significantly better” than his own.

Please read the whole thing.

Guess those Republican policies weren’t that “draconian” after all, were they Mr. Kerry?

Well, whadda ya know. Newsweek really WAS wrong:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Guantanamo detainee who told an FBI agent in 2002 that U.S. personnel there had flushed a Koran in a toilet retracted his allegation when questioned this month by military investigators, the Pentagon said on Thursday.

“We’ve gone back to the detainee who allegedly made the allegation and he has said it didn’t happen. So the underlying allegation, the detainee himself, within the last two weeks, said that didn’t happen,” chief Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita told a briefing.

An FBI document, dated Aug. 1, 2002, contained a summary of statements made by the detainee in two interviews with an FBI special agent at the prison for foreign terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The names of the detainee and the agent were redacted.

“The guards in the detention facility do not treat him well. Their behavior is bad. About five months ago, the guards beat the detainees. They flushed a Koran in the toilet,” the FBI agent wrote.

Di Rita told reporters on Wednesday the U.S. military, as part of an inquiry into Koran treatment at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo, interviewed the same detainee on May 14, and that the man did not corroborate the earlier allegation. But Di Rita at the time said he did not know whether the man actually had recanted his earlier statement.

During his news conference on Thursday, Di Rita said he changed his account of what the detainee had said after getting more information from the commander of the Guantanamo prison, Brig. Gen. Jay Hood.

On a related note:

No Intentional Abuse of Koran at Guantánamo, General Says

WASHINGTON, May 26 - The American military commander at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, said today that investigators had found “no credible evidence” that a Koran had ever been flushed down a toilet there to unsettle detainees, and no serious incidents of intentional mishandling of the Muslim holy book by Americans.

The commander, Brig. Gen. Jay W. Hood of the Army, said 13 possible incidents had been investigated in which the book might have been mishandled: 10 by guards and 3 by interrogators. Of the 13, only 5 embody “what could be broadly defined as mishandling of a Koran,” the general said, but declined to provide details.

In several other incidents, he said, guards had accidentally touched the book or touched it “within the scope of their duties.” And in two other incidents, both involving interrogations, there was possible inadvertent mishandling, General Hood said.

“We’ve also identified 15 incidents where detainees mishandled or inappropriately treated the Koran, one of which was the specific example of a detainee who ripped pages out of their own Koran,” the general said.

Say it isn’t so! And folks, this isn’t due to massive state tax hikes, either:

State government revenues are soaring again, ending a period of budget shortfalls and prompting proposals for tax cuts and new spending initiatives for the first time since 2000.
Tax collections rose to a record $600 billion in the states last year, up 7.2% over 2003, the biggest increase since 2000. The money is rolling in even faster this year as many states report double-digit revenue increases through April. (Related story: States find budget wiggle room)

The most immediate effects of improving state finances across the USA are college tuition hikes that were smaller than expected, pay raises for government workers and less borrowing. The big decisions — tax cuts vs. major new spending — are starting to brew in most legislatures but won’t be decided until late this year or early 2006.

Many governors and legislatures are reacting cautiously to the rising revenue, approving mostly small new spending proposals and tax cuts. Arizona funded a new medical school. Utah boosted its tourism promotion budget. Idaho plans to give a 1% bonus to teachers and other public employees.

The reversal of fortune ends what the National Governors Association had called the states’ worst economic situation in 60 years.

“We’ve come a long way, baby,” says Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, a Republican. He faced a $3 billion budget shortfall during his first year in office in 2003. Now, his state is on track for its second straight year of surpluses. He wants to use about half the surplus to cut the state income tax to 5% from 5.3%.

About 30 states are still working on budgets for the fiscal year that begins July 1.

“Nearly every state is at or above what they expected to get in revenues,” says Arturo Perez, a budget analyst at the National Conference of State Legislatures.

He says many states were stunned by an “April surprise” of unexpectedly large tax collections. April is the most crucial month for state revenue — like December for retail stores — because that’s when income taxes are due. California, Pennsylvania, Arkansas, Idaho and Vermont are among many states enjoying unanticipated windfalls.

Gasp! Those Bush tax cuts sure did KILL the economy, didn’t they?

Chuck Colson makes a sound argument today in a Townhall.com op/ed piece regarding the ‘protestors’ to President Bush’s commencement speech at Calvin College:

I was in Grand Rapids last week for a celebration, as Calvin Seminary established a chair in my name. I agreed because of my respect for the man who will hold it, Dr. Neal Plantinga—one of the keenest thinkers in the Christian world and a wonderful, godly man.

But while there, I was confronted by the ad in the Grand Rapids Press challenging President Bush’s Christianity. Before the president spoke at the commencement at Calvin College (which is affiliated with the seminary, but a different institution), nearly eight hundred students, professors, and alumni signed the ad.

Now, I believe, of course, that Christians are free to protest. And though the majority of evangelicals support this president, some do not. And that’s okay. In my book Kingdoms in Conflict, I wrote that Christians should never get enmeshed in a partisan agenda.

But there’s a time and place to do it. And a college commencement that the president is gracious enough to attend is not the place. Calvin ought to make a course on civility and manners mandatory.

The ad said, “Your deeds, Mr. President—neglecting the needy to coddle the rich, desecrating the environment and misleading the country into war—do not exemplify the faith we live by.”

Ironically, right before the president appeared at Calvin, he announced that he would veto any stem-cell bill that destroyed life, despite huge pressures to sign it. No president in my lifetime has been more consistently pro-life.

Please make sure to read the whole thing and I think you’ll agree with him.

I have to say I don’t like it. Not even the very well reasoned John Podhoretz can convince me otherwise.

What it appears to be to me is a short term victory for the Republicans and a long term victory for Democrats. Republicans will get to have three of - what is it 7? - the nominees that have been previously blocked by Democratic filibusters stand for an up/down vote in the Senate and the Democrats keep the ‘right’ to filibuster any nominee they wish under “extraordinary circumstances” - which is I think purposely vague in meaning.

We’re very likely going to have a Supreme Court justice retire before W’s tenure is over. How much money do you want to bet that WHOEVER is nominated to replace that retired justice, that they will be filibustered under the “extraordinary circumstances” reasoning?

This is what happens when ‘moderates’ get together at the table in Washington. The moderate Republicans cave and the Democrats essentially retain the power to do exactly what they want to, and that’s to obstruct, obstruct, obstruct. I’m very disappointed in how this turned out.

How is it we can have the House by a good margin and the Senate by a good margin as well as the Presidency, and still not accomplish our goals?

Yours truly “left the left” a long time ago … just how many more out there share the views of this man, who is also leaving the left?

Eight-million Iraqi voters have finished risking their lives to endorse freedom and defy fascism. Three things happen in rapid succession. The right cheers. The left demurs. I walk away from a long-term intimate relationship. I’m separating not from a person but a cause: the political philosophy that for more than three decades has shaped my character and consciousness, my sense of self and community, even my sense of cosmos.

I’m leaving the left — more precisely, the American cultural left and what it has become during our time together.

I choose this day for my departure because I can no longer abide the simpering voices of self-styled progressives — people who once championed solidarity with oppressed populations everywhere — reciting all the ways Iraq’s democratic experiment might yet implode.

My estrangement hasn’t happened overnight. Out of the corner of my eye I watched what was coming for more than three decades, yet refused to truly see. Now it’s all too obvious. Leading voices in America’s “peace” movement are actually cheering against self-determination for a long-suffering Third World country because they hate George W. Bush more than they love freedom.

Like many others who came of age politically in the 1960s, I became adept at not taking the measure of the left’s mounting incoherence. To face it directly posed the danger that I would have to describe it accurately, first to myself and then to others. That could only give aid and comfort to Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and all the other Usual Suspects the left so regularly employs to keep from seeing its own reflection in the mirror.

Now, I find myself in a swirling metamorphosis. Think Kafka, without the bug. Think Kuhnian paradigm shift, without the buzz. Every anomaly that didn’t fit my perceptual set is suddenly back, all the more glaring for so long ignored. The insistent inner voice I learned to suppress now has my rapt attention. “Something strange — something approaching pathological — something entirely of its own making — has the left in its grip,” the voice whispers. “How did this happen?” The Iraqi election is my tipping point. The time has come to walk in a different direction — just as I did many years before.

Workers who can’t recall injury may get compensation

PHOENIX - Employees who don’t know exactly how they got injured during normal business hours may be entitled to workers’ compensation insurance, the Arizona Court of Appeals has ruled.

The groundbreaking decision says when there is no witness to an injury - including the victim himself - the employee is entitled to the presumption that the incident is work-related. Until now, that rule had existed only if the worker was killed.