Friday, September 12, 2008

Palin - Why Aren't We Focusing On Her Rape Policies?


While it media is busy focusing their newest cutie pie - Sarah Palin -- it's astonishing that no one has dug deeper to understand her policies toward women who are rape victims.

Fact: When Sarah Palin was mayor of Wasilla, her policy was to charge rape victims for their forensic exams.

It's abhorrent, especially when you consider she Palin had no problem raising money to build a sports center, but drew the line at paying for rape exams.

But there are two points that are worth underscoring.

First, this would have been bad enough if it was just a matter of being decent to women who have been raped.

But it's not.

Unless the police catch the guy in the act, forensic exams provide some of the best evidence against a rapist.

Not collecting this evidence means significantly lowering your chances of convicting the man who did it.

That means that the people who pay for this idiotic policy are not just the rape victims whose tests are not done, but any women their rapists might go on to rape in the future.

Not collecting the evidence that would put rapists behind bars means more rape victims in the future.

You'd think that $5,000 to $14,000 a year would be a small price to pay for putting violent sex offenders behind bars.

Apparently, Sarah Palin disagrees.

Second, Alaska had to ban this practice in order to qualify for funding under the Violence Against Women Act.

Which was, of course, sponsored by Joe Biden

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

The Great Escape - A Remarkable Engineering Achievement




In 1943 work had begun on 'Harry', the tunnel that allowed over 70 men to escape from the German POW camp, 'Stalag III', during World War II.

This was the same tunnel made famous by the movie 'The Great Escape'.

The link below takes you to a site where one of the men, after the War, drew a diagram with explanations of each of the sections.

Electric lighting. A railroad. An air ventilation system.

Against incredible odds, the Allied airmen imprisoned at the Nazi POW camp Stalag Luft III secretly engineered these and other technological marvels 30 feet underground in the three escape tunnels they named "Tom," "Dick," and "Harry."

They used only tools that they could manufacture themselves out of tin cans, and they scavenged building materials at great risk. When they were done, the airmen carried out one of the greatest mass escapes of all time.

Through this interactive map, drawn after the war by one of the POWs, Ley Kenyon, you can explore the remarkable story of Harry, the 300-foot tunnel that 76 men snuck through during their infamous getaway on the night of March 24-25, 1944.

When graphics appear, move cursor over the number (no need to click) to display an explanation of activity.

Make sure you take the tour. It's really something to see.

www.kerman94.com/tunnelharry.html




Thanks to the Big Boy