Orlando Sentinnel, 9/11/09:

The office of Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland has issued a statement, saying the teenage girl who ran away from her Muslim home in Columbus, Ohio, to evangelical Christians in Orlando, should be returned.

“Child welfare agencies and authorities in Ohio and Franklin County are fully capable of providing for the security and well-being of Ohio’s children,” said the statement. “The governor believes this is a family matter and therefore would most appropriately be handled here in Ohio with the assistance of the child welfare and foster care system.”

Fathima Rifqa Bary, 17, is currently living with a foster family in the Orlando area. She fled Columbus aboard a Greyhound bus in July, saying her father had threatened to kill her because she had abandoned his faith — Islam — and become a Christian.

Her father, Mohamed Bary, a jeweler and Amway distributor, says that never happened. A Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigation supports his claim. So does Franklin County Children’s Services, the child welfare agency serving Columbus.

Rifqa was recently granted emergency jurisdiction to the Florida DCF at her last hearing.  The next hearing is scheduled for Monday, September 21.

Will she find freedom and safety from radical Islam in America?

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Her story in her own words:

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Rifqa also tells her story at her personal website: http://rifqabary.com/

Let the reader understand:

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Flashback: Democratic etiquette in the Bush era

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(HT: HotAir)

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President Barack Obama campaigns for ObamaCare in New York Times, joins Nancy Pelosi in making Op-Ed magic.  This is not Political?  Right.

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Are Democrats now retreating from the “public option”? (HotAir)

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Conservatives seem to be getting their message across:  Guess who is still #1 on the New York Times best seller list! And, guess who is #4 and #5!

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Music Video: “If 10% is good enough for Jesus, it oughta be good enough for Uncle Sam!”

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Congressman and Physician Phil Roe (Republican from Tennessee) accepts President Obama’s invitation to sit down together and go over health bill “line by line”

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“Obama Resistance Grows” says Lee Cary (American Thinker)

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It is a sad day. Feddie has left the building. (Southern Appeal)

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“Manufactured Health Care Crisis” (American Thinker)

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Arlen Specter is out of touch: “I think we have to bear in mind that, although those people need to be heard and have a right to be heard, that they’re not really representative of America, in my opinion”

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Child Prodigies: @between2worlds:  Something Tells Me This Kid Isn’t Spending a Lot of Time Playing Videogames

UPDATE: Wikipedia has a large list of these crazy kids.

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Usain Bolt drinks jet fuel, shoots rocket fire out of his feet: @breakingnews: Usain Bolt has won the 100 meters final at the world athletics championships in a world record time of 9.58 seconds.

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Sinclair Ferguson has resumed his Sunday night expositions on the book of Romans. Last weeks “Baptizatus Sum” was a knockout. Listen here!

A senior Russian general on Wednesday brushed off American concerns about two Russian submarines spotted off the East Coast of the United States, saying the patrols were routine and suggesting that the U.S. Navy carries out similar missions near Russia.

“I don’t know if there is any news in this news for anyone,” said Col. Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn, deputy chief of staff of the Russian armed forces. “The fleet shouldn’t sit on its hands and be idle.”…

…Asked at a news conference about the submarines, Nogovitsyn drew a comparison to the resumption of the long-range bomber missions. “This is our right. We got tired of flying circles on our routes and started strategic flights,” he said.

“And you remember how much clamor this caused at the time? Just because we started going out on combat patrols,” he continued. “But I must tell you that the battle potential of our strategic aviation is serious, and has only risen since then.”

“Long voyages of Russian submarines, this is a normal process,” he added, saying U.S. officials who are expressing concerns “understand this very well.”

Are we supposed to believe this, that a Russian fleet got bored being idle and making circles in the north seas and set out for an adventure?  Perhaps the Russians are up to something sinister.  Or, perhaps a couple of Russian submarine captains wanted to get a better view of an incredible land:

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Whatever the case, we better be keeping our radar on and our scramblers on standby.

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If you listen to my words, it would have the same suggestion: that only Latinos would come to wiser decisions, but that wouldn’t make sense in the context of my speech either, because I pointed out in the speech that eight—nine—white men had decided Brown v. Board of Education. And, I noted in a separate paragraph of the speech that no one person speaks in the voice of any group. So, my rhetorical flourish, just like hers [Justice O’Conner’s], can’t be read literally. It had a different meaning in the context of the entire speech.

Judge Sotomayor offered this explanation with such regularity and apparent sincerity that one would actually be led to believe that words can only mean what their author intended them to mean. A novel concept, indeed!

It seems that Originalism has found a defense from another unlikely advocate: the Obama administration. The Obama administration has gone on offense after a YouTube compilation video caught fire when Matt Drudge linked to it on his site. Among many clips of Obama speaking on different occasions was one in which he explained that he was a “proponent of a single-payer, universal health care plan.” The title of the clip is, “SHOCK UNCOVERED: Obama IN HIS OWN WORDS saying His Health Care Plan will ELIMINATE private insurance.”

Well, the White House is firing back via a response from former ABC news correspondent Linda Douglass. In it, she criticizes the compilation video on very interesting grounds. Countering the suggestion that President Obama’s health care plan will eliminate private insurance, Douglass says:

Well, nothing could be farther from the truth. You know, the people who always try to scare people whenever you try to bring them health insurance reform are at it again. And they’re taking sentences and phrases out of context, and cobbling them together to leave a very false impression.

The truth is that the President has been talking to the American people a lot about health insurance reform, and what is at stake for them. So, what happens is that, because he is talking to the American people so much, there are people out there with a computer and a lot of free time and they take a phrase here and there—they simply cherry pick and put it together—and make it sound like he said something that he didn’t really say.

Let us assume, for the moment, that Linda Douglass is correct. The gist of Douglass’ argument is that President Obama has never said anything that would indicate that he wants to eliminate private insurance. The video appears to show him in his own words, but what we really see is a bunch of clever edits of multiple clips spliced together so it appears that the President has said something that he has never said. We will therefore stipulate that the President has never publicly stated that he wants to eliminate private health insurance.

But for our purposes, let us assume even more in order to make the President’s argument as compelling as possible. That is, we shall not only assume that President Obama has never publicly stated that he wants to be rid of private health insurance, but we will go further and assume that President Obama genuinely does not want to eliminate private insurance. We will, of course, have to ignore the uncut video of him saying, with his own words, that he is a “proponent of a single-payer, universal health care plan.” Yes, friends, what I am asking you to do is, for a brief moment, behave as the left tends to behave, and ignore plain, dispositive facts. With these assumptions in place, I want to examine what Douglass’ (and the White House’s) objection actually is.

The objection is that, despite a video that seemingly reveals otherwise, it is not true that President Obama wants to eliminate private health insurance. His words have been taken out of context, moved around, and spliced together, making it appear that he said something that he really did not say. Is this not an objection grounded in Originalism? I think it certainly is. And I think the following assumptions are essential to Douglass’ objection:

1. The President’s words have a fixed meaning. If this were not so, then it would make no sense to say that it is untrue that the President’s words mean that he wants to eliminate private health insurance.
2. The fixed meaning of the President’s words is not set by those listening to/reading his words. If this were not so, then it would make no sense to object to the video editor’s particular interpretation of the President’s words.
3. The fixed meaning of the President’s words, whatever it be, is accessible to the public at large. If this were not so, then it would make no sense to suggest that someone is deliberately misconstruing the President’s words.
4. The President’s interpretation of his own words is authoritative. If this were not so, then it would make no sense to suggest that the President’s interpretation of his own words is true, while the interpretation made by the person who created the video is false.
5. The President’s intended meaning is the only legitimate meaning of the words he speaks/writes. If this were not so, it would make no sense to criticize someone for taking his statements out of context in order to splice them together in a way that leaves a “very false impression.”

If these assumptions are not true, then Douglass’ objection falls flat. It is common to hear the left argue that the words in the Constitution have no fixed meaning. “The Constitution,” we are often told, “is a living, breathing document, the meaning of which must change to adapt with the times.” An important thing to note is that the change advocated by most proponents of this argument is not achieved by amending the Constitution, a process that adds words to the document to update its meaning. Rather, the change is achieved by reinterpreting the words that are already there. Changing the Constitution by this method runs contrary the the five assumptions above. Thus, if the previous assumptions are true, then there is a glaring inconsistency between the standard by which the Obama administration wants us to understand the President’s words, and the standard by which that same administration wants us to understand the words of our Framers.

A question that is now prominent on my mind is this: if cutting up various words of the President and splicing them back together results in an illegitimate interpretation of his words, then why does it not follow that cutting up various Amendments in the Constitution and splicing them back together similarly results in an illegitimate interpretation of the Constitution? This is, of course, what happened in Griswold vs. Connecticut, the decision that gave us a sweeping, undefined Constitutional right of privacy–a right that we have since learned is “broad enough to encompass a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.” (Roe v. Wade). The President insists that we interpret his words according to their original meaning. Is it really too much, then, to insist that the President afford our Framers the same courtesy?

Obama on a single payer system in 2003:

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HT: HotAir

The ObamaCare truthers at WhiteHouse.gov have released the counter video:

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Jekyll and Hyde:

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HT: Take Your Vitamin Z

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HT: HotAir, @marklevinshow, American Thinker

Mark Levin C-SPAN Interview:

part 1

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Links: part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6

Levin’s bio from wikipedia:

Levin is an American radio host, author, and political commentator. He is the host of The Mark Levin Show, a nationally-syndicated talk show that airs throughout the United States on Citadel Media (formerly known as ABC Radio Networks). Levin earned his B.A. and J.D. at Temple University. His book Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto debuted at #1 on the New York Times Best Seller list (hardcover nonfiction) the week of April 3, 2009.

Beginning in 1981, Levin served as advisor to several members of President Ronald Reagan’s Cabinet, eventually becoming associate director of presidential personnel and ultimately Chief of Staff to Attorney General Edwin Meese; Levin also served as deputy assistant secretary for elementary and secondary education at the U.S. Department of Education, and deputy solicitor of the U.S. Department of Interior. He has practiced law in the private sector, and is president of the Landmark Legal Foundationin Leesburg, Virginia. He holds a B.A. from Temple University, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude, and a J.D. from Temple University School of Law.

In 2001, the American Conservative Union gave Levin its Ronald Reagan Award.

On Wednesday the President will visit Raleigh, North Carolina and hold a town hall meeting at Broughton High School.  North Carolina has been noted to be a “crucible for health care“.  The Times & Observer sets the scene for what the President will be walking into on Wednesday:

Rallies, phone banks and door-to-door canvassing are under way, TV commercials blast on the airwaves, and petitions appear beside ripe tomatoes at farmers markets. It’s July in a nonelection year, but the political machinery is fully engaged, complete with letter-writing campaigns and statewide bus tours….

…Though the health-care debate is national, it is particularly loud in North Carolina because of the concentration of moderate Democrats that both sides see as potentially persuadable, particularly freshman Sen. Kay Hagan.

The Tar Heel State is also the home of some major players in the health-care industry, including GlaxoSmithKline, one of the nation’s largest pharmaceutical companies.

Moreover, North Carolina is now seen as one of the nation’s newest battleground states, having gone for Obama last November after voting Republican in the previous seven elections.

One night last week at Raleigh’s RBC Center, home of the Carolina Hurricanes hockey team, opponents were trying to fan opposition to Obama’s health-care proposal, literally.

The 350 people who packed into the club room were given fans that bore a drawing of a hand and the slogan: “Hands Off My Health Care.”

Following the Raleigh event on Wednesday, the president will travel to Bristol, Virginia to have a town hall meeting inside a Kroger grocery store.  This is a key location because it is in the heart of Appalachia, a region that is frequently talked about in the health care reform debate.  The President’s visit to Bristol comes one week after an annual free clinic which was held in the region called RAM (Remote Area Medical).  The event was attended by Virginia Governor Tim Kaine.  RAM is an event that provides free medical, vision, and dental care and is highly attended each year in the region.  This year, the event reportedly served a record number of people.  The Bristol Herald Courier sets the scene for what the President will be walking into at this town hall meeting:

President Barack Obama is expected to talk health care in Bristol, Va., on Wednesday, just days after thousands of uninsured people received free health and dental care at the 10th annual Remote Area Medical clinic in Wise County.
The president, who is pushing Congress to adopt sweeping health care reform legislation this summer, will appear at a town-hall-style meeting with Kroger employees at the grocery store at 31 Midway St. about 4 p.m.

In his last ObamaCare campaign event before a congressional recess and potential congressional vote, the President will attempt to sell his version health care reform to the nation and to Congress.  I look for him to especially use the Bristol event for this purpose.  It may be of interest to note that Bristol is very close to Appalachia, Virginia which is the home of Debby Smith whose  story made headlines during the first town hall meeting in Annandale, Virginia.  I look for the President to use these events as his “Exhibit A” in his final push for Obama Care before a possible congressional vote later this week.