While out and about I noticed that a new Chinese restaurant was right next to the vitamin store where I was stopping. My stomach was carrying on because breakfast had been many hours earlier. So, I chose Chinese for lunch.

While waiting for my take-out, I happened to notice a young woman attempting to deposit what appeared to be twin rug-rats into the back of a Plymouth van. The temperature was in the middle 90s, the sun was bright, the little kids were obviously cranky, and the mother didn’t seem to be in any better spirits. Who knows how hot it was inside that van when she opened that door -- like an oven, probably.

Not having to haul little kids around for the last couple decades, I must admit that I didn’t know the procedure involved. And it did seem, to me anyway, to be a long drawn out procedure. It certainly was while standing on the hot asphalt at one in the afternoon when both the temperature and humidity were in the middle nineties.

Back when I did it, I would sit (or lay, depending) the kids on the front passenger seat, toss the stroller in back and away we would go. The preferred procedure would probably be to start the car and get the air conditioner running full blast before inserting little kids and/or, open a couple doors to let some of the heat out.

Anyway, the young mother went through over 15 minutes of strapping those two little kids into little seats that looked like the tilting full-body holders that supported the astronauts of the 1970s during take off. The children were, of course, protesting. Never mind. They were strapped in anyway.

Then, the woman had a problem collapsing the stroller. That done, she closed the side door of the van and walked around to the driver’s side. I was inside the Chinese restaurant and so could not hear what was going on out there. But it was my impression that it was very loud in that van by that time. If that procedure had taken any longer, those kids would have started cooking.

So, I got to thinking -- always dangerous -- why did something that would have taken me 15 to 20 seconds now take a parent a good 15 minutes? The answer, of course, is easy: The federal government became involved.

The overreaching buttinskies in the federal regulatory bureaucracy learned that they made a grievous error in mandating air bags in all vehicles. Those air bags can easily kill small people and kids. But, of course, bureaucrats will never admit when they make stupid laws. So, the bureaucrats required children be protected by a wrap- around holder somewhat similar to those once used by astronauts. There is no Constitutional authority for the federal government to even comment on our automobiles, but whatever. They did it and we didn’t tell them to shut up. Therefore, the whole situation is now extremely stupid.

Because, the real true fact of this case is that these unconstitutional demands of government caused harm to that young mother and her two little children. Multiply this by a few thousand instances every day around the country -- and a situation nearly as bad on a cold winter day -- and the government’s mandate of lashing children into half-cages for transport becomes more dangerous than anything that happened to previous generations of kids in the family cars.

Being the oldest of nine kids who were never lashed down when we went for a ride in the old ’46 Ford, and later the ’49 DeSoto, I remember the fidgeting and horseplay along the way. But, as I also remember, we were all within reach for a quick correction, when necessary.

There was a time, way back then, when kids liked to go for a ride with their parents. All that required was to get in the car, sit somewhat still and do nothing to alarm the driver. Government changed that into some sort of major procedure.

There is nothing wrong with using whatever protection that might be available for the kids. However, there are times when common sense dictates that the law must take a back seat so the rug-rats do not get char- broiled before they get home. And that is exactly why any such mandatory procedures by the federal government should be repealed. Parents, not interfering Washington bureaucrats, are responsible for how their children are transported.

Most people don’t realize it, but insects are the most successful life form on the planet. Some scientists estimate that there might be as many as 10 million different types of insects worldwide.

Insects are divided up into 32 orders (depending on whose taxonomic system is used) of which the largest is the beetles. There are at least 125 different families of beetles, separated into around 500,000 different species. In fact, one in every four animals on this planet is a beetle. On land, there isn't anywhere you can go where you can’t find some insects living -- even in the frozen extremes of the Arctic and Antarctica during summer.

Insects also sometimes exist in surprisingly large and diverse populations. One scientist inventoried an acre of British pastureland near Cambridge and found it to be quite the buggy place. He estimated there were over 1,000,000,000 Arthropods, of which nearly 400,000,000 were insects and 666,000,000 were mites. The remaining 38,000,000 were myriapods (centipedes and millipedes).

Scientists do not know how many different types of insects there are in the world, or even in the United States, for two very important reasons: First, there are two many varieties to catch one of each all at the same time. And second, in the time it would take to catch one of each and catalog them all, some would have died out as part of natural selection and others would have mutated into something slightly different. That has been going on for millions of years and man cannot retard it. Besides, the number of different types of insects -- 500,000 types of beetles alone -- vastly outnumbers the number of scientists willing to study them.

Nevertheless, that does not mean that some ecowhacko groups won’t try to “protect” one when they can only find a few in an area. In fact, that is exactly what is happening today.

And now comes the saga of one such little bug whose days on this earth are understandably numbered:

The American burying beetle (Nicrophorus americanus), is a member of the carrion beetle family Silphidae.(1) It is the largest carrion-frequenting insect in North America and may reach a length of l l/2 inches. Carrion beetles, as their name implies, are scavengers. They eat dead flesh. There are 570 species of silphids found worldwide, and 31 of them live in North America. Eighteen different species live in Nebraska alone.

Today, the American burying beetle seems to be largely restricted to areas most undisturbed by human interference -- areas where the carcasses of small dead animals can be easily located. It is not proven that there are any other limiting factors for sustaining these beetles. Their specific habitat requirements are unknown and vegetation and soil type do not seem to matter. They want dead flesh to eat and lay eggs on and that is not usually plentiful in areas where humans live.

However, because ecologists are not able to find very many of them, they have to blame it on something. So, the prevailing theory is that “the disappearance of the American burying beetle involves habitat fragmentation.” Which means, the beetles need more open spaces where humans do not remove dead carcasses.

Other human factors affecting the beetle “might” include: (1) artificial lighting that decreases populations of nocturnally active insects, (2) changing sources of carrion because of habitat alteration, (3) isolation of preferred habitat because of land use changes, and (4) increased edge effect harboring more vertebrate competitors for dead flesh.

Can’t have that. So, “the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, in cooperation with the scientific community, has formulated a recovery plan that is now being implemented. Surveys at several places in the eastern United States are being conducted to find remnant populations so they can be protected from land development authorized or funded by state and federal agencies. The search for remnant populations is now the primary activity in Nebraska. The populations in Rhode Island and Oklahoma are being monitored, and the habitats there are being managed to prevent any disruption that might be harmful.”

The beetles are being reintroduced in Massachusetts from a laboratory colony at Boston University, and other introductions are planned. These beetles will, of course, remain on the endangered list. So, wherever ecologists implant the colonies will understandably become protected areas.

That’s how it works with today’s bureaucrats and ecowhackos. They resurrect a useless bug that should be extinct. Then, they move out the people. It’s a control thing. Designed to control us humans.

1. http://www.ngpc.state.ne.us/wildlife/beetle.html

The third world Neanderthals and associated socialists making up the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination have criticized the American people again. This time, they said the United States’ record on racism is bad and demanded a halt to the death penalty and immediate moves to stamp out police brutality. The three page preliminary report was released last Monday.

According to Reuters: “The body of 18 independent experts, who monitor how signatory countries comply with the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, noted ‘a disturbing correlation between race, both of the victim and the defendant, and the imposition of the death penalty’ in America. It called on the United States to ensure that no death penalty was imposed as a result of racial bias, ‘perhaps by pronouncing a moratorium’.”(1)

According to the UN, about 54 percent of people currently on death row in the United States come from a minority background, but minorities make up just 20 percent of the population, so that’s proof there must be some racial bias.

These people, of course, have zero idea what they are talking about; yet they talk anyway. So, just for kicks, let’s wander over to the U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics(2) and take a cold, hard look at exactly who is being protected by “prosecution” of these minority perpetrators:

Right up front we see that blacks were 6 times more likely than whites to be murdered in 1999 and 7 times more likely than whites to commit homicide. And, “black offenders are involved in a relatively large percentage of felony-murders (nearly six out of ten).” Would it be a good or a bad thing to protect the honest, law abiding residents of the black community against black perpetrators? Apparently, the UN takes the position that we should slap the wrists of black predators and let them back out to kill more black people.

In 1999, there were 4,646 white on white homicides but only 820 black on white homicides. Yet, there were another 4,235 black on black homicides that year. In 1999, there were only 285 white on black homicides.

Put yet another way, in 1999 the homicide rates per 100,000 population was 3.5 for whites, 25.6 for blacks and 3.9 for “others.” Or, there were 7,938 white homicide offenders, 8,911 black and 538 “others.”

In all felony murder cases reported, 55.3% of the victims were white and 42.0% black. But, 39.3% of the felony murder perpetrators were white and 59.1% were black.

So, what did we get out of all those numbers? One very important fact: There are nearly 5,000 black people killed annually in the United States by other black people. The black population in the United States is but a fraction of the white population, yet the number of black people killed annually is higher.

This was never the case before the federal government interfered with their “Great Society” and welfare programs that decimated the black family structure in our cities. But, this is most definitely a major problem today.

In Detroit, little children were shot dead from stray bullets while watching television in their own living rooms. Young punks killed just to get a car for joy riding. Two high school students shot two other students “just for something to do.” The drug gangs had active contract killer squads. Often, stick-up artists would shoot the victim “just because.” Some of these perpetrators were guilty of many shootings.

Most of this violence was black on black. Should that make a difference? Shall we prosecute all malicious and premeditated violence to the fullest extent of the law or have different standards for different races?

The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination is way out of line to even mention anything that happens in the United States with all the killing, slavery and oppression currently happening in other parts of the world. If they want to support human rights, they might look into all those Christians used as slave labor in communist China’s prison camps. After they get results on that, they should start on the African women captured for sex slaves.

1. http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010814/ts/un_usa_racism_dc_2.html

2. http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/race.htm

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