In my investigative piece into the Tarrant Regional Water District Board, I questioned why the Fort Worth Star Telegram ignored citizen requests over a five-year period to investigate allegations of corruption at the agency. I found it especially odd considering the TRWD’s offices are in the same building as the newspaper. I found it even [...]

read more from this topic.....

BloggerNews has learned of a broad-ranging, long-term property seizure scheme in Texas’ Tarrant County Regional Water District, in which District employees have abused eminent domain privileges, forced homeowners and businesses off their properties, and awarded no-bid contracts via secret meetings that are never reported to the public. Background The Tarrant Regional Water District (TRWD) was [...]

read more from this topic.....

BBG Watch Commentary Fired Radio Liberty Russian journalists delivered some of the best in depth analysis of the links between the Boston bombings, violent jihadism and Chechnya. Known as Radio Liberty in Exile, journalists fired last year by the former management of Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) turned to their still employed RFE/RL [...]

read more from this topic.....

BBG Watch Commentary. U.S. government-funded Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) still broadcasts uncensored radio programs in local languages to the largely Muslim North Caucasus region in the Russian Federation, the reported home of the Boston bombing suspects. But if U.S. government bureaucrats and the Obama Administration had their way, these broadcasts, which include [...]

read more from this topic.....

And so she is finally gone, turned into a handful of ashes and a puff of smoke into the Mortlake sky. As was the case with Osama Bin Laden there will be no gravestone around which worshippers will be able to congregate, or for dissenters to desecrate. That’s the end of Margaret Thatcher – the [...]

read more from this topic.....

They say that each person has a double floating around on the world. Somebody that looks like him or her and may even act the same way. Nearly everyone who knows Lincoln, who goes by the nickname Linc, hopes and prays for his parents’ sake that this is not true. Twelve year old Linc has [...]

read more from this topic.....

BBG Watch has learned that a distinguished leader and scholar Tenzin Tethong was chosen as the new Tibetan Service director at Radio Free Asia (RFA). He accompanied his family to India in 1959 a few months after the Dalai Lama had arrived there from Tibet. He has been living in the United States since 1995. [...]

read more from this topic.....

It’s Holy Week here in the Philippines, which means lots of church going and Manila is emptying out for folks to go home for the Easter Holidays. First Things magazine discusses how Americans should view the crucifixion: not as an event to be watched, but as the result of our sins. They even quote Luther [...]

read more from this topic.....

One only has to scan the news papers or listen to comments about religion to see anti religion is now in style: not just of Catholics, of course, but hatred of all men of good will who follow traditional values. How dare they think that some things are actually right and some things are wrong [...]

read more from this topic.....

The BBC series Sherlock has hit the Philippines, and although I think the plots are stupid, the dialogue and characters are quirky enough to keep my interest. But as a doc, I got very annoyed with the Dr. Watson limp in story number one. Quick: What’s wrong with this picture? The answer is that he [...]

read more from this topic.....

Well, today we Filipinos woke up and found we wouldn’t be losing Cardinal Tagle to Rome: Apparently an Argentinian bishop was picked for the next Pope. But choosing a name usually is a hint on what the Pope plans to do when in office, and it is interesting that Cardinal Bergloglino chose the name of [...]

read more from this topic.....

My relatives in Philly are in the “anti bullying” mode after a local schoolboy died after beaten by thugs. My comment? Maybe if the locals had paid more attention to the terrible bullying incidents against Asians in the area a couple years ago, that the school would have implemented a strict “no violence” policy. Perhaps [...]

read more from this topic.....

Osteoporosis is a bad problem for older women. This is the thinning of the bones that one develops with aging, leading to broken arms and hips from minor falls. Originally, women were given female hormones to prevent this, until studies showed that this increased the rate of uterine cancer, and maybe either caused breast cancer [...]

read more from this topic.....

From what my sources and I have been able to observe the highest priority of the state, the FBI, BIA as well as other federal agencies has been to silence us, to label us as liars, as incompetents not qualified to identify the abuse of a child, to minimize the seriousness of this situation with their fabricated, self-serving claims. Among these claims are, “It’s a new problem”; “This problem arose because the Tribe lost the person responsible for filing their forms”; “If those whistleblowers would shut up everything would be fine”; “Everything is fine”; “They are making great progress”; “You are expecting too much progress too quickly”; “They are working hard.”;“It’s all fixed.”; “We’re doing a great job for kids” “You are not a subject matter expert”.

read more from this topic.....

This week we Catholics celebrate Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent. A lot of good Catholics were slightly hung over from too much Mardi Gras on Tuesday, but never mind: The idea is that “there is a time to party and a time to fast”, and now the time to fast has arrived. Traditionally, at [...]

read more from this topic.....

The latest reports is that our beloved President has breathlessly announced to Davos that he has eliminated corruption here since taking office, so come and invest your money here! From a headline in the Manila Bulletin: Aquino: PH Corruption Over With the days of corruption and mismanagement of the past administration finally over, the Philippines [...]

read more from this topic.....

The Aliens are coming! The Aliens are coming! Or maybe not…. One of the amusement of studying ancient history is how all those sophisticated Yanks seem to think “primitive” people are stupid, so anything they don’t understand is attributed to “Aliens”. As Chesterton once quipped: Once people stop believing in religion, they start believing in [...]

read more from this topic.....

“A politician thinks of the next election. A statesman, of the next generation.”  James Freeman Clarke  I suppose we all flirt with stupidity once in a while. The relationship that we should have seen was doomed from the start. The career move than wasn’t right and was made for the wrong reasons. The intemperate response [...]

read more from this topic.....

In the book The Hobbit, Bilbo was given a short contract that included “funeral expenses” and a right to one fourteenth percentage of the treasure. Peter Jackson in his usual fashion did Tolkien one better, so Balin gives Bilbo a long intricate paper contract with a lot more details, written in a satire of legalese. [...]

read more from this topic.....

Attention Girls: Stephanie Plum is back, and  getting in and out of trouble in the latest book of Janet Evanovich’s series. In this one, the cliches are right on time (with her car blown up quickly) and then the mystery begins: Where is the man who embezzled a lot of money from a nursing home? [...]

read more from this topic.....

The advertisements for the film of the musical Les Miserables should come with a warning: Warning: May induce tears and crying. It’s a three handkerchief movie, and I say that as one who rarely cries at films. Ironically, the film starts with a scene of lots of CGI men pulling a ship into a dock. [...]

read more from this topic.....

“On the 19th September 1946 Winston Churchill delivered a famous speech at Zurich University which proposed the formation of a united Europe. Prescient though Churchill was about the need for political unity to replace conflict in Europe, there was some ambivalence about the part that Britain was, in his view, to play in this development. [...]

read more from this topic.....

I love when elites at green sites put guilt trips on ordinary folks. Yes, these types of articles are needed to educate citified yuppies who love organic food and green living but are blithely unaware that these practices were routine in the days of their grandparents and remain routine in poorer areas of the country [...]

read more from this topic.....

 Here in the Philippines, guns were confiscated under Marcos, and although one can get a permit, the average person doesn’t have permission to carry a gun. That is not to say that the average person doesn’t have a gun: most middle class folks have one or two guns or rifles illegally stashed in their homes, [...]

read more from this topic.....

The fight between the NRA and the Obama administration is just political fog. The “excuse” is because of several high profile mass murders, yet the real problem is that the press publicizes and glorifies such murders, leading to “copy cat” crimes by the unstable. One has to wonder at dear old Joe Biden’s remark, justifying [...]

read more from this topic.....

What does the UK Guardian asking for us to reconsider the crime of pedophilia, and the Life of Pi have in common? Making up pretty lies to confuse the reality of the crime. The Guardian insists that the crime of having sex with children isn’t bad and such impulses should just be accepted as part [...]

read more from this topic.....

BBG Watch Commentary Commenting on the defense authorization bill that President Obama signed last night, which includes a provision that reduces restrictions of the Smith-Mundt Act on the dissemination of materials within the United States that were originally intended for audiences overseas, former Broadcasting Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) and Voice of America (VOA) official [...]

read more from this topic.....

Living outside the USA, I wonder if I would recognize my birthland if I return someday. We now see the NYTimes proposing that “we” get rid of the US constitution, which is standing in the way of what “we” want to do. AS the nation teeters at the edge of fiscal chaos, observers are reaching [...]

read more from this topic.....

After days of nothing from the NRA on the subject, this morning they finally spoke out. It was an interesting event. Wayne LaPierre, second in command of the organization essentially played the blame game on everything but guns. He suggested that contributing factors are violent video games, blood soaked movies, gun free school zones, and [...]

read more from this topic.....

The report on the Benghazi attack attracted attention today for two reason, the first being that failures were identified and no one in particular was singled out for responsibility, the second being that resignations began within hours of the public getting the news. Important parts of this investigation, and the changes that result, or do [...]

read more from this topic.....