Good Sam Residents Healthy

Good Samaritan Society - Mt Carroll would like to thank family, the community and all visitors for supporting us while we had illness throughout the home. Residents are healthy and welcome family, community members and visitors back into their home.

Thank you,
Good Samaritan Society –
Mt Carroll Staff and Residents

Wood’s Morrison City Council Notes

January 28, 2013 at 6:30 pm there was a public hearing in Morrison. It was concerning the low to moderate income survey the residents were asked to fill out. There were enough responses and enough eligible low to moderate incomes in Morrison to qualify to apply for a Community Development Block Grant. It will benefit all of the residents.

Bridgette Stocks was on hand from Fehr Graham to answer questions. They will apply for a grant of $450,000 that can only be used for infrastructure in Morrison. They need the city council to commit a 25% match of funds ($150,000) to be used in conjunction with the grant for infrastructure repairs. Resolution #13-02 – Resolution of Support and Commitment of Funds was approved at the regular City Council meeting that followed the public hearing.

The public hearing and the Morrison City Council meeting were attended by Hayenga, Blean, Thorndike, Sullivan, Zuidema, Wood, and Connelly. Rose was absent. Chief Melton, Public Works Director Tresenriter, Clerk Schroeder, Mayor Drey, Attorney Zollinger, and CA Wise. The public was there in force also.

I asked if the minutes of the Jan. 14, 2013 meeting could include that I voted no to amend the budget because I could not get the numbers to balance out. Attorney Zollinger stated that since I did not state it at the time of the vote, it could not be added.

During discussion of the support and commitment of funds of 25% towards infrastructure repairs, the representative from Fehr Graham stated they would try to keep the scope of work within the $600,000 ($450,000 grant and $150,000 City) framework. CA Wise stated this is just the beginning and it would be up to a $2.2 million dollar project. The Resolution was approved.

Request of Relief of Utility Bill for Stephanie Becker was carried over from the last meeting. Wood made a motion seconded by Sullivan to forgive $255 of the excessive bill. (Sullivan, Wood, Zuidema, Connelly were ayes. Thorndike, Blean, Hayenga were nayes.)

Emmanuel Reformed Church requested as street closure for a car show to be held June 29, 2013. It was approved, as were bills payable.

Resolution #13-01 Adopting and approving amendments to the City of Morrison Personnel Policy Manual was approved after some discussion on bereavement pay, grievance procedures, and some other items.

Upcoming meetings are: Historic Preservation Commission meeting – basement city hall - Feb. 5, 2013 at 5:00 pm; MBAG meeting Dunlap Masonic Lodge Feb. 7, 2013 at 8:00am; Feb. 11, 2013 City Council Meeting at County Board Room 7:00pm; Feb. 12, 2013 7:00pm Morrison Budget meeting at basement city hall. Everyone is welcome to see our city at work!

A Morrison Taxpayer
Marti Wood

More on Guns

Read the fear mongering, and overall gun grabbing hype in the January 30, letters section. Just to clarify, the government originally opted to save money, by closing many mental health facilities. Anyone with minimal common sense, should have realized that maneuver would put us all at risk. Now, all honest law-abiding citizens who legally own guns, are targeted as “THE PROBLEM”. Want to look into our possible future of a gun free society? Then look no further than Mexico. As I understand it, the only ones with guns down that way, are corrupt police, and the drug runners. Which are sometimes one and the same. Citizens live in constant peril.

The Bushmaster fear, and the hundreds of other named guns that are targeted for the melting pot, is unprecedented. With tears in their eyes, the gun grabbers (call them what they are) emphatically say, “no hunter uses this gun to hunt wild game!” (While holding up the likeness of a Bushmaster rifle.) Really? Do they seriously think hunters of wild hogs go in the field with six shooters, and 12 gauge shotguns, that are plugged for a mere three rounds? FYI, Bushmasters on the shoulder, and 9mm’s on the hip are the most basic of tools in hog country. If you are unfortunately enough to be charged by several hogs with Russian genetics, you’ll be glad your rifle has at least 20 rounds in it. If they get you off your feet, you’ll be glad the last line of defense on our hip has another ten. By the way, Kevlar vests have saved countless dogs, and hunters who get knocked down, from germ contaminated slashing tusks. Without those hog hunters on the front line of what has been called the pig bomb, our Carroll County crops would already be rooted up.

If the feds are truly driven to curb violence, there is an easy cure. Enforce the laws we already have. Beyond that, quit cutting deals with career criminals. When they are given the opportunity to testify against someone else, to minimize their own sentence, of course they are going to lie. Their ultimate goal is to get back to their life of crime ASAP. Whether a person is a violent offender. Or if he learned a wide range of unsavory arts from cutting herbicide and the bull semen, to bank and tax fraud, from his daddy. The odds are high that such crimes will be passed through many generations, as long as each is confident that deals can be worked as needed.

Chet Peugh
Chadwick, IL

Commentary

Why Would Anyone Need a Military Styled Assault Weapon?

By Dr. Harold Pease

No one needs a military styled assault weapon for personal protection or hunting. Some wonder why we can’t let this part of the 2nd Amendment go?

Many may not remember their basic U.S. History courses and a little review might help us understand why the Second Amendment exists in the first place. Certainly, when enacted, their was no thought of restricting type of firearm, or where, or who could carry. So its placement as the second most valued freedom in the Bill of Rights had nothing to do with personal safety, or even hunting, these were already assumed. It was specifically placed right after freedom of religion, speech, press and assembly to make certain that these freedoms were never taken from us. It was aimed (if I may use this word in this context) squarely at the government. But certainly we need have no fear of the government today?

To understand it more fully one must remember that the early patriots did not ask the existing British government if they could revolt against them. They argued in The Declaration of Independence, that they were “endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” coming from a much higher source than mere man and that “whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government.” God is referenced five times in this document and thus, they believed, He sanctioned their rebellion. They were expected to suffer evils while sufferable, “but when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariable the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.”

The right of revolution requires the means of revolution and this is why the Second Amendment exists. Normally the ballot box is the only self-correction that is needed but they had no intention of giving up the same right that they exercised to give us freedom in the first place. Nor were they pious enough to assume that their correction would stay in place and that future generations would never need the more serious self-correction as they had.

The wordage of the 2nd Amendment was stronger than any other sentence in the Constitution. “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” They saw this right as being connected with a free country and specifically forbade the federal government any authority with respect to it because historically it was always a government that took away liberty.

An armed populace had twice proved their value to liberty in the Revolutionary War. Many do not remember why Lexington and Concord were so important. The Americans learned that the British planned to go door to door to confiscate their firearms so they gathered and hid them in these two villages. Now the British night gun raid, and Paul Revere’s desperate midnight ride warning the Americans en-route, make sense. The Battle of Saratoga preventing the conquest of the northeast by General Johnny Burgoyne was stopped, not by the military, but by angry farmers with their own military styled assault rifles. This American victory encouraged other countries, notably France, to come into the war on our side. It is doubtful that we would have won the war, and freedom, without an armed citizenry.

The Founders’ attitude regarding guns—even military issue— was clear. Thomas Jefferson wrote: “No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.” And George Washington said: “A free people ought not only to be armed,” but also, “they should promote such manufacturies [sic] as tend to remind them independent of others for essential, particularly military, supplies” (Gun Control, Freemen Report, May 31,1975, p. 1).

Five monumental things frightened many Americans in 2012 alone, beginning with the Presidents signing of the National Defense Authorization Act, which enabled him to kidnap and send to Guantanamo Bay for indefinite detention anyone he identified as a terrorist. This was followed by the “Media Monitoring Initiative” where the federal government gave itself permission to “gather, store, analyze, and disseminate” data on millions of users of social media, primarily Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. In March we saw and heard Joint Chief of Staff Chairman General Martin Dempsey and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, each, in testimony given to the Senate Armed Services Committee, inferred that the authority that they depended upon for military purposes came not from Congress, as required in the U.S. Constitution, but from unelected UN or NATO authorities. Also, on March 16, President Barack Obama issued his National Defense Resources Preparedness Executive Order authorizing the Executive department to take-over, in case of a national emergency, all civil transportation, including the “movement of persons and property by all modes of transportation … within the United States.” In June, frustrated by his inability to get through Congress a law on immigration he favored, and tired of making law the constitutional way, President Barack Obama, openly defied Congress and the Constitution on June 16, 2012, by ordering a like measure to that previously defeated, implemented anyway.

There has been a slogan for many years that runs like this. “I love my country but I fear my government.” Many Americans have come to believe that the real reason that the federal government wants assault weapons banned has less to do with the 16-year-old gunman in Sandy Hook Elementary, and more to do with disarming America so that they cannot resist tyranny. Given the unconstitutional antics noted above perhaps we should hang on to the 2nd Amendment intact for the time being?

Dr. Harold Pease is an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He has taught history and political science from this perspective for over 25 years at Taft College. To read more of his weekly articles, please visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org.

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