Check out what's coming from Right Wing, Republican, "Conservative", "Small Government" Southwest Missouri

Check out what just came out of Southwest Missouri---and don't think it won't be headed your way:

First sobriety checkpoint using 'No refusal' guidelines

If this isn't a rights travesty, I don't know what is. Check out the details:

Numerous arrests were made during sobriety checkpoint Friday evening.

The four-hour checkpoint at the intersection of Kansas Expressway and Broadmoor Street involved more than 900 motorists.

According to a news release, this was the first checkpoint in which the agencies utilized a "no refusal" program announced by Greene County Prosecuting Attorney Dan Patterson earlier this week.

This new program is an effort to help keep impaired drivers off the streets.

It is called a "no refusal" policy because all arrested impaired drivers who refuse breath testing are subject to blood testing for alcohol if a judge approves a warrant. The ability of law enforcement officers to submit their search warrant applications to judges electronically make this process both easy and relatively quick.

The checkpoint was funded through a grant from the Missouri Department of Transportation, Division of Highway Safety.

There are so many things to say about this, I'll do my best to be brief.

And understand, up front, I have personally been the victim of two drunk driving accidents where the person smashed into my car. My own injuries were extensive in each, too, so I'm not against keeping drunks or drug addicts off the streets and out from behind the wheels of cars, don't get me wrong.

What I am patently against here is the presumption, from the outset, of sobriety checkpoints, first, and then, this second, added feature of a "no refusal" policy for a breath test.

What part of "innocent until proven guilty" do these people not understand?

This is what we've come to in America? Personal rights be damned, full speed ahead?

And I love that they got everyone on board here, too--the county sheriff, the local police, the highway patrol, the whole kitten-kaboodle. I'm surprised the Boy Scouts of America weren't asked to participate. "Sure! Get 'em all on board! Let's show 'em how we treat rights in America!"

Whatever in the world happen to Fifth Amendment rights and the Presumption of innocence?

I say again, this is supposed to be Right Wing, if not extreme Right Wing, very Republican, very "red", "small government", "conservative" Southwest Missouri and Springfield. Where are these Gestapo tactics coming from?

I think people ought to organize down there in Springfield and the surrounding area, Greene County and others, and go straight for the next weekend checkpoint. Then, when they're pulled over, all say the same thing: "No, I won't take a breathalyzer test. I've done nothing wrong. I know my rights. This is America, after all."

Then, let them drag them all, hopefully hundreds of them, into jail.

I'd join that party.

Just please go away

As I write this, I've been made aware of 4 events concerning the Catholic Church.

You just can't get much more out of touch with reality and the present than by being in and part of the Catholic Church.

The first thing I was made aware of is that the Vatican has made it known they're upset about a 9 year old girl, who had been raped, getting an abortion for the twins she was going to have.

You have to be effin' kidding me.

Here's a young girl, 9 years old, whose been raped, for pity's sake, and the Catholic Church thinks it should intervene, if only with opinion.

Thanks, keep it to yourself.

Can you imagine what a 9 year old girl would go through--and have to go through--to take a pregnancy to term and give birth?

Good God. (figuratively speaking).

So here there's a group of MEN--the Catholic Church--that thinks they can and should interject their opinion into this delicate and very private situation.

What chutzpah.

The 2nd situation is that Kansas City, Kansas Catholic Archbishop (where are there Archbishops--or, for that matter, Bishops, Cardinals and even Popes in the Bible?) Joseph Naumann announces, publicly, that he's "concerned personally" for Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius, since she supports abortion rights.

Geez. These people need to go away.

This whole "concerned personally" nonsense is so insulting. It's a not-too-hidden, secretive phrase, meant to say that the Archbishop thinks the Governor may go to hell, let's be blunt.

It's so insulting.

It's so 15th century.

The 3rd instance, coincidentally, is that Roman Catholic Bishops (there they are again) are telling "the faithful" (can you say needy and co-dependent?) to "give up technology such as Ipods and text messaging until Easter." Read: for Lent.

Good God. They seem to outdo themselves in ridiculousness and absurdity.

These people are all stuck back some 100 to 500 years ago and their followers and media are still paying them attention and giving them headlines. We all need to get over this and move on to the intelligence and education we have and know.

We need to get away from the superstition and ignorance that is old, uninformed religion, particularly Catholicism and other fundamentalist, archaic religions, including Mormonism, fundamentalist Christianity, among others.

Finally, today, President Obama is having to announce that the government is going to rely more on science and less on religion and ideology for policy and that proof of this is that we can go back to using stem cell research in science and labs.

The biggest part of this, besides repudiating the non-science dogma of the Bush years, is that stem cells from embryos are needed so much less anyway, in the first place, due to advances in technology and secondly, the whole idea that you're "killing people" by using embryonic stem cells is laughable, at best, to the biggest part of the entire world.

We're smarter than this, people.

We all need to move on.