I know this is hard to believe but I just heard on Fox & Friends that the Westboro Baptist church is going to protest at the Amish funerals.

So I looked it up:

http://www.pennlive.com/news/patriot...770.xml&coll=1


The Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka blamed Gov. Ed Rendell for the mass murder of the five girls in a one-room schoolhouse because he ridiculed the church on a national television news show, the news release said.

I believe this will be the most shocking thing I will read today.

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I want to change the world but they won't give me the source code.

What the fuck, How sick can people be...
I knew those bastards should have been shot during the military funerals..:

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Anyone who thinks freedom comes cheap, please put the blindfold on and stand against the wall.

Many times I believe Americans will have to take back the country and start a new government.

Oh, for fuck's sake.

That's just sickening.

Phelps is one of those folks who make it hard to hold fast to a belief in the First Amendment....

Matt

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De duobus malis, minus est semper eligendum

I heard 7 girls are now dead.

Our society has gotten way too soft on crime and I blame that for all of the school shootings. We need to bring back public hangings and let people see what happens to those who do bad things. Watching someone doing the wormy dance on the end of a rope may cause people to rethink things before they act out.

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Anyone who thinks freedom comes cheap, please put the blindfold on and stand against the wall.

Many times I believe Americans will have to take back the country and start a new government.

I don't understand.....the guy shot himself...

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I want to change the world but they won't give me the source code.

Shooting yourself is the easy way out, IMO that is.
If you had a choice of dieing, you’d pick the bullet over a rope any day.

My comment wasn’t pertained to this case but to the crime problem facing our nation in general.

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Anyone who thinks freedom comes cheap, please put the blindfold on and stand against the wall.

Many times I believe Americans will have to take back the country and start a new government.

I don't think the answer in solving crime is to violently kill them and have everybody watch.

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I want to change the world but they won't give me the source code.

Well our current system isn't working so I am open to any ideas for improvement. If going backwards (public hangings) means going forward, I'm open to it....
Any how, that would be for another thread, I "try" not getting of topic.

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Anyone who thinks freedom comes cheap, please put the blindfold on and stand against the wall.

Many times I believe Americans will have to take back the country and start a new government.

The First Amendment offers no protection to do what they are doing IMO and I'm not just saying that to stop them from preaching their hateful crap which is protected speech. The trick is that time, place and manner is an appropriate mechanism to prevent what they are doing, because you don't have a right to say what you want where you want whenever you want. This place and timing is intended to hijack the mourning place of others as a captive audience where nobody can mourn the children without being forced to endure their horrid messages when almost anyone would walk away from it and them. Pennsylvania already passed a law preventing picketing at a military funeral, and unfortunately these creeps are just changing the venue. The laws need to be all-encompassing. A funeral is not a public courthouse, etc. In no way is this practice protected, and I hope the local township ordinance, state law, etc can be quickly drafted in neutral language so that it keeps them away.

I'll laugh my ass off if the Amish beat them into a breath of their lives.

But them, the media will cuddle those bastards and blame the Amish.

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Anyone who thinks freedom comes cheap, please put the blindfold on and stand against the wall.

Many times I believe Americans will have to take back the country and start a new government.

The Amish would forgive them.

Andrew

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Ethanol is a fabulous solution to our energy dilemma because it will provide more fuel for us to drive around and look for food.

-- Unknown

I live in the area of the school. Andrew is right--the Amish will pray for them and forgive them for the errors of their ways. And the media will not coddle them--they will be absolutely outraged by it as all of us are.

There is actually a real basis for that although there are obvious offsets when doing so too because they are tough things to witness both ways. The public execution lets the community see the penalty first hand.

And as awful as it sounds, sometimes showing unedited footage of the crime scene and its victims has the same effect. I can fully understand why it it not done out of sensibilities to the families and the victims, not wanting to sicken and shock people and especially children on television and in the public, etc, but the drawback is that the sanitisation makes such events a talking point spectacle rather than the true to life nightmare that it really is, and the graphic reality of such horrors would sink into the psyche much more effectively should people really appreciate what it is really like. Anyone who has actually witnessed a crime scene especially one involving a homicide or murder scene never quite get it until they see its brutal reality. It's the same with war scenes. When you get to see a war first hand, it puts things into such a perspective that you really need to see (how ugly it is and should never been frivolously done, how bad some vicious enemies really are when they would otherwise be underestimated, etc)

Seemingly random violence and tragedy should not justify institutionalized violence.

I think one reason for all of these shootings in such a short period is, as someone said, related to the media. I had to read an excerpt of a book in my sociology class, and statistically, suicide numbers increase after a highly publicized suicide (and plane crashes increase, curiously - a disguised suicide, perhaps?).

Quite logically, violence begets violence. Frightening people into conformity with the law is not, in my opinion, the right way to enforce that law.

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No man is an island...
Each man's death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in Mankind.
And therefore, never send to know
For whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.
—John Donne

The Amish will always seek to see the better in others, enlightenment and hope for even the likes of these people who won't let them grieve andbury their dead in peace. They should have our love and prayers at this time of life; not moral relativism by a few fringe lunatics!