Rais Bhuiyan symbolizes theme of AMV Peace Convention

2011 AMV Convention glimpse-1C

AMV American Muslim Voice Peace Convention 2011 draws large crowd

By Abdus Sattar Ghazali

American Muslim Voice held its Annual Peace Convention on Sunday (Dec 11, 2011) at the Chandni Restaurant in Fremont/Newark. The 5-hour long Convention attracted a crowd of around 400 people from near and far. The master of ceremony was Anser Hasan, a reporter from the CBS5 morning show.

AMV brought together Muslim scholars, featured speakers, panelists, award recipients and a diverse crowd of people in order to highlight the importance of community and peace building in America. 2011 AMV Convention Multifaith prayers-C

The program began with multi-faith prayers by Rabbi Elisheva Salamo (Jewish), Sister Margaret Hoffman (Christian) and Omar Raza (recitation of the Holy Quran).

The theme of the convention was “Awakening the American Spirit: Turning the Tide of Hate into Love.” The convention was divided into two sessions. The first session comprised of two parallel events: Conversation with Muslim Scholars and Civil Rights Panel Discussion.

Khalid Saeed, the AMV National President, presented an overview about the AMV achievements since its establishment eight years.2011 AMV Convention KS-9C

He said: “We take pride and comfort in being recognized regionally and nationally as a Muslim peace building and community building organization. We have been active in support of human and immigrant rights; we are unique as a grassroots facilitator of interfaith/intercultural dialogue. The secret of our success is practicing Islam with our actions- not just words- in the main stream among our fellow Americans- responding first to each community’s needs, serving the whole community and nation from the part of us that is rooted in the universal values of love, peace, and justice given to us through Islam.”

He went on to say: AMV campaigns like, “Share the joy of Ramadan and Eid with your fellow Americans,” “Light the night for peace and friendship,” an Iftar dinner held in 2009 across from White House have been very successful in changing the negative image of Islam and Muslims, promoting mutual respect, acceptance and harmony. [Text of Khalid Saeed’s Speech]

Rais Bhuiyan

Rais Bhuiyan, a featured speaker perhaps symbolized the theme of the convention. A victim of post-9/11 shooting spree, Bhuiyan forgave and tried to spare the life of the man who shot him and left him for dead. Rais Bhuiyan shared his courageous story of compassion, love and forgiveness. A white supremacist shot Rais and two other South Asians. The other two innocent victims of hate died while Rais survived. He was blinded in one eye and still carries 35 shotgun pellets embedded in his face. Rais Buiyan-F

Just 10 days after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Rais Bhuiyan was working at a gas station in Dallas when he was shot in the face by a man named Mark Stroman, an avowed white supremacist, who was on a shooting spree, targeting people who appeared to be Muslim or of Middle Eastern descent.

Stroman also shot and killed Waqar Hasan, a Pakistani immigrant in Dallas. Vasudev Patel, an Indian immigrant and gas station owner in Mesquite, TX, was Stroman’s third and final victim. Stroman admitted to the shootings.

The press labeled the murders Texas's first post 9/11 hate crime. Stroman himself claimed that “blinded by rage,” he killed to avenge the United States. The prosecution convinced the jury that robbery was his true motive, (even though he hadn’t taken money from his victims) and he was sentenced to death.

Bhuiyan had mounted an aggressive campaign to convince Texas authorities to commute Stroman's sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole. He has asked the state board of pardons and paroles to make a positive recommendation for clemency to Gov. Rick Perry, and has asked Texas prison administrators for permission to meet face-to-face with Stroman for a victim-offender reconciliation process. After those efforts were met with no response from Texas officials, Bhuiyan filed a lawsuit against the state, arguing that his rights as a crime victim to meet with his attacker had been unjustly denied.

Bhuiyan’s efforts on behalf of Stroman were motivated by his Muslim faith. He says: The Koran teaches that those who forsake retribution and forgive those who have wronged them become closer to God.

Bhuiyan has created a website called World Without Hate to educate others about hate crimes as a means of preventing them. He's also working with Amnesty International and Stroman's defense attorney, who has filed several appeals on Stroman's death sentence.

Read more about this inspiring event at American Muslim Voice home page -- Click here

Everything is an opportunity for awareness

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
by Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study and begin reading. Take down the dulcimer.

Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways...

— from Open Secret: Versions of Rumi Interpreted by Coleman Barks with Translator John Moyne
====
SONG here

US "efforts" in Iraq according to Craig Murray (and Christopher Hitchens)

While I admire the writer Christopher Hitchens prolific way with words and willingness to share his struggles, we can't take lightly that he was pro-Iraq war ...

See the article by Craig Murray which follows and the comments under that one at his site:

here

Hitchens/Iraq

here (Could there have been any "best" reasons for war with Iraq?)

UPDATES Dec 19 2011: US County Responds to the 2012 NDAA

See this one especially at Democracy Now for a short up-to-date summary by Glenn Greenwald who may have been studying the NDAA most intensely since the national debate has begun -- GO here

You may want to see a bold US early effort in response to the unweildy and deeply worrisome passing of the US National Defense Authorization Act of Fiscal Year 2012

County Commission in COLORADO passes NDAA resolution
El Paso County resolution on due process passes

Posted on Fri, Dec 16, 2011 at 11:59 AM:

Last night, the El Paso County Board of Commissioners became the first such body in the state, and likely the nation, to pass a resolution in response to the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act.

here

Quote of the evening came from County Commissioner Sallie Clark: "I don't usually agree with the ACLU, but today I do."

Also, keep watching the bordc.org and nogitmos.org

======

poems on loving anyway

*
Thanks
by W.S Merwin

Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridges to bow for the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water looking out
in different directions.

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you
looking up from tables we are saying thank you
in a culture up to its chin in shame
living in the stench it has chosen we are saying thank you
over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the back door
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks that use us we are saying thank you
with the crooks in office with the rich and fashionable
unchanged we go on saying thank you thank you

with the animals dying around us
our lost feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us like the earth
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
we are saying thank you and waving
dark though it is


let it go – the
by e.e. cummings

let it go – the
smashed word broken
open vow or
the oath cracked length
wise – let it go it
was sworn to
go

let them go – the
truthful liars and
the false fair friends
and the boths and
neithers – you must let them go they
were born
to go

let all go – the
big small middling
tall bigger really
the biggest and all
things – let all go
dear
so comes love


The Invisible Cloak
by John O'Donohue

On the day when
the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble,
may the clay dance
to balance you.
And when your eyes
freeze behind
the grey window
and the ghost of loss
gets in to you,
may a flock of colours,
indigo, red, green,
and azure blue
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight.

When the canvas frays
in the currach of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.


The Arc That Bends Towards Mercy
loves justice too
don't think that will ever change
in case you want off the hook
yet
in the case of a butterfly
or a sparrow with a broken wing
or person
or child
in any kind of body
or what if
you've been attacked
or you're the slinger
or maybe everybody
needs forgiving...

when you consider your options
maybe right away
or
even after a long time
you get your choice
you get to choose
when and how to heal
when to go back
and ahead
to find
that...

what you don't have to take
or be
anymore
is not only
the wounding
but the wounding back

what you feel then
is that you are riding
once more
on the golden elephant
over the arc of tears
into the arms of home
and even before getting to heaven...
even you might want to stop again
and get the elephant to let you off
for another sunrise when
once more orange and pink swirls
with caws and fish and birds
over the sea reaching as if to Asia
or to America
either
or both
are swaddled in visions
and truehopes once more
and compassion and beauty is
here
once more
as real as the morning mist
over the waters
rising
yet still connecting
communities of us all
as never before
in fact as a nation of one
in the here
in the becoming
world
wide--
and our real lives
become authentic
a lived reality stage
once more.

Once again
there is still
room for love...

(By connie l. nash on the morning after the US may have killed the Bill of Rights 220 years after it was written - 16 December, 2011)

* scene found at Yes! Magazine for Fall 2011 at site for Thanks by W. S. Merwin

Update: Why a Constitutional Law Professor Cannot Sign NDAA

Update midnight just before 16 December: You may want to view C-Span for today's recorded Congressional activity. And you may be so moved as to sign this petition:
GO here

Excerpt: "...you don't need to be a constitutional scholar to know that permanent wartime powers amounts to the overthrow of the Bill of Rights of the US Constitution. Common sense alone says you might have unlimited powers in a war of limited duration, or you might have limited powers in a war of unlimited duration, but the plain language of the Constitution tells us you cannot have both: unlimited powers in a war of unlimited duration."

Detention of Americans

Why a Constitutional Law Professor Cannot Sign NDAA, Allowing Military Detention of Americans

By Ralph Lopez - Posted on 15 December 2011 on warisacrime.org

There has never been a better time to take a close look at how we got here, with Obama, a former Constitutional law professor, about to sign a law which overnight turns the U.S. into a Third World country, where anyone can be swept off the streets by the military to rot forever, or even be killed. Some people say wearily that the new powers for the indefinite military detention of Americans are not new at all. That this is nothing the government cannot, and has not, already done.

What this misses is that the new government powers seek to codify, "hard-wire" if you will, an area of law which is in flux, and far from settled in the courts. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) proclaimed in his momentous speech on the Senate floor that:

“1031, the statement of authority to detain, does apply to American citizens and it designates the world as the battlefield, including the homeland.”

Graham goes on to say that the proposed law is simply based on the "law of the land" in the Fourth Circuit Court decision in the case of Jose Padilla, the first American arrested in the US and declared "enemy combatant" in the war on terror. Padilla was held for 3 1/2 years in isolation, tortured, and given, according to his lawyer, some kind of hallucinogenic drug such as LSD. His attorney Andrew Patel said that after a time, according to brig staff, “Mr. Padilla's temperament was so docile and inactive that his behavior was like that of a piece of furniture. ”

An examining psychiatrist before his eventual trial said that after the 3 1/2 years, Padilla exhibited "facial tics, unusual eye movements and contortions of his body.”

Mr. Graham, University of South Carolina School of Law, the man who at the moment occupies one of the US Senate seats for the Great State of South Carolina, got wrong what any eighth-grader would know from civics class were he no more than a "C" student. A higher authority than Graham, the Founding Fathers, declared in Article VI that not the Fourth Circuit, but the Constitution, was the "supreme law of the land":

"This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby..."

The Fourth Circuit decision to which Graham was referring, upholding the Bush administration's authority to hold Padilla indefinitely, without trial if it wished, was handed down by Judge Micheal Luttig. Luttig, University of Virginia School of Law, gave Bush the benefit of the doubt believing that the question would go before the US Supreme Court to be properly deliberated. Luttig in essence relied on the World War II precedent Ex parte Quirin, in which a number of German-Americans were held as enemy combatants after being accused of spying for Germany during World War II.

Luttig must have known that, were the Padilla case to be properly deliberated, one of first questions to arise would be the applicability of a WWII precedent.

One of the most fundamental understandings of American-English jurisprudence is that precedents can only apply when a case has a similar set of operative facts. Black's Law Dictionary defines "precedent" as a "rule of law established for the first time by a court for a particular type of case and thereafter referred to in deciding similar cases." This is not to say precedents cannot apply to cases with very different circumstances: different times, different places. But the "operative" pieces, i.e. the major assumptions, must be substantially the same.

Since a war which lasts forever is substantially different from than one that does not, Luttig must have suspected that previous precedents on enemy combatants, cannot apply. The war on terror is the first war which by definition has no end, in which the "enemy" is an amorphous network rather than the kind of military hierarchy we have opposed in every previous war. This is the first war in which there is no one from whom to accept surrender.

George Bush clearly defined the war on terror as lasting forever when he said to a joint session of Congress on September 20, 2001, that ... the war on terror was "a task that does not end."

Perhaps, then, this is why Luttig was livid when Bush released Jose Padilla to civilian trial before his case could come before the Supreme Court:

Judge Luttig Slams Bush Administration in Padilla Case

The appeals court opinion reflected a tone of anger that is rare for a federal court addressing the United States government, particularly in a matter of presidential authority.

Luttig said the government's actions created the appearance "that the government may be attempting to avoid" Supreme Court review in a matter of "especial national importance."

Why would Luttig be so angry? No one but Luttig knows. What we do know is that the Bush razzle-dazzle prevented his administration's declaration of permanent wartime powers from being struck down, and it made Luttig the man on whose written opinion Graham relied to abolish the Bill of Rights. This would be Luttig's place in American history.

The adjudicated wartime powers now being codified have never been put to the test in the Supreme Court. Yasar Hamdi in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld carried the crucial difference that Yasar Hamdi was captured in Afghanistan, arguably behind true "enemy lines."

You don't need to be a meteorologist to know if it's raining outside, and you don't need to be a constitutional scholar to know that permanent wartime powers amounts to the overthrow of the Bill of Rights of the US Constitution. Common sense alone says you might have unlimited powers in a war of limited duration, or you might have limited powers in a war of unlimited duration, but the plain language of the Constitution tells us you cannot have both: unlimited powers in a war of unlimited duration.

This is the question which has been ignored since 9/11. Instead of addressing it, the Congress, and the Executive, are jumping on a flawed Appeals Court decision and rushing to codify it. But Appeals courts make bad rulings all the time, and there is no rush to codify the error. Judge Luttig may not be a bad man. But his place in history may be assured, and it is not an enviable one. Could it be that his anger was not misplaced?

UPDATE: The NDAA:The "Rule of Law" and Cakes

Feinstein's "Fix" did not Fix the NDAA - GO here to see why. Plz see "Did Dianne Feinstein's "Fix" on AUMF Language Actually Authorize Killing American Citizens (Be sure to see the pertinent conversation in the Comments on the emptywheel.net site and also below on oneheartforpeace)

SO, PLEASE Call your elected officials -- including the President -- NOW to say NO loud and clear to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). (And even after it is declared cut in stone - complain loud and clear!) CALL EMAIL FAX the White House. Maybe President Obama will flip-flop again with enough pressure? Plz, no excuses - don't delay! Find Contact Info for our US folk here Capitol Switchboard 202 224-3121

File: A mosaic LAW by Frederick Dielman, 1847-1935.JPG*

CBS reported Wednesday evening that Laura Murphy, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office said, "If President Obama signs this bill (The National Defense Authorization Act - NDAA), it will damage both his legacy and American's reputation for upholding the rule of law."

Our best experts are saying things like "The last time Congress passed indefinite detention legislation was during the McCarthy era, and President Truman had the courage to veto that bill."

My daughter and son both had birthdays recently. So once again, I had the dillemma of wanting to make homemade cakes - but knowing they always flopped. My daughter pointed out with tact and truth: Mom, you're a great cook just not at cakes. It's because with cakes "you don't follow rules". I finally got it.

The Rule of Law is a requirement, not a mere matter of whim or belief in an individual's or a certain group's morality.

Without a way to challenge an executive or legislative action in court, the executive and legislative branch is not truly bound by the rule of law.

So what are we allowing TODAY as the NDAA measure to end some of our most basic laws proceeds? What is happening with a detainee' ability to argue - successfully or not -that she deserves the US Bill of Rights as well as whatever process the Constitution says he or she is due? What is happening as we give unconscionable power into the hands of our President?

Over our relatively small number of years we've fought to be a democracy, we've also seen the grave need for new rulings for which we've worked and battled long and hard - nationally and stateside. We've needed and got laws which don't give as much wiggle room for hate crimes and for bias on issues of life and death. In North Carolina, for example, The Racial Justice Act has set the stage for better safeguards, not less and has been saved (for now) by NC Gov. Beverly Perdue's rejection of the repeal voted on in the state's congress.

We and our representatives in the courtroom and on the police beat need help to do what we say we will do about fairness. We need the thoroughness and care required by a law about fairness -- even if we are inconvenienced in the process. That the court is going to be just on racial justice without such a safeguard -- as some of the legal "experts" and representatives in NC have claimed -- has simply not been true in history -- neither long past nor more recent.

Like rules for making a decent cake, we need such guidelines. To repeal the same after such a disgusting history without it, and such hard, long, careful work to get it, would be to scoff the "rule of law" for the rights of all.

Sometimes even the best lawyers spout their intentions of deciding on justice fairly by themselves on many issues. They often complain about certain laws that seem to cramp their style or hold things up. Often such self-aggrandizing folk claim they would follow the principles just as well without the law. But is this always or even often true --given the history of human kind without such just law?

While the term "the rule of law" in modern times gives credit to A. V. Dicey, the legal concept can be traced through history to many ancient civilizations.

Aristotle opposed letting the highest officials wield power beyond guarding and serving the laws. In other words, Aristotle advocated the rule of law when he said: It is more proper that law should govern than any one of the citizens. The Roman statesman Cicero has been quoted as saying, "We are all servants of the laws in order that we may be free."

In Islamic jurisprudence rule of law was formulated before the twelfth century, so that no official could claim to be above the law, not even the caliph.

In 1215, the English King John placed himself and England's future sovereigns and magistrates at least partially within the rule of law, by signing Magna Carta. In the US, the phrase "rule of law" is found in a petition to James I of England in 1610from the House of Commons:

"Amongst many other points of happiness and freedom which your majesty's subjects of this kingdom have enjoyed under your royal progenitors, kings and queens of this realm, there is none which they have accounted more dear and precious than this, to be guided and governed by the certain rule of the law which giveth both to the head and members that which of right belongeth to them, and not by any uncertain or arbitrary form of government...."

In 1776, the notion that no one is above the law was popular during the founding of the United States, for example Thomas Paine wrote in his pamphlet Common Sense that "in America, the law is king."

The following, from wikipedia on the Rule of Law may help us (capitalization is mine):

"Formalists hold that the law must be prospective, well-known, and have characteristics of generality, equality, and certainty. The substantive interpretation holds that the rule of law intrinsically protects some or all individual rights...

'All government officers of the United States, including the President, the Justices of the Supreme Court, and all members of Congress, pledge first and foremost to uphold the Constitution. These oaths affirm that the rule of law is superior to the rule of any human leader. At the same time, the federal government has considerable discretion: the legislative branch is free to decide what statutes it will write, as long as it stays WITHIN ITS ENUMERATED POWERS and respects the constitutionally protected RIGHTS OF INDIVIDUALS... "

Law Professor Frederick Mark Gedicks among many others have written that "Cicero, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and the framers of the U.S. Constitution believed that an unjust law was not really a law at all."

The Council of the International Bar Association passed a resolution in 2009 endorsing a substantive or "thick" definition of the rule of law:

"... An independent, impartial judiciary; the presumption of innocence; the right to a fair and public trial without undue delay; a rational and proportionate approach to punishment; a strong and independent legal profession; strict protection of confidential communications between lawyer and client; equality of all before the law; these are all fundamental principles of the Rule of Law. Accordingly, arbitrary arrests; secret trials; indefinite detention without trial; cruel or degrading treatment or punishment; intimidation or corruption in the electoral process, are ALL UNACCEPTABLE. The Rule of Law is the foundation of a civilised society. It establishes a transparent process accessible and equal to all. It ensures adherence to principles that both liberate and protect. The International Bar Association calls upon ALL countries to respect these fundamental principles. It also calls upon its members to speak out in support of the Rule of Law within their respective communities. "(World Justice Project)

British jurist A. V. Dicey who popularized the phrase "rule of law" in 1885 emphasized three aspects of the rule of law:

1. No one can be punished or made to suffer except for a breach of law proved in an ordinary court.
2. No one is above the law and everyone is equal before the law regardless of social, economic, or political status.
3. The rule of law includes the results of judicial decisions determining the rights of private persons.

Some would argue that if there's a fear of being killed - it's OK to assasinate or in the case of the NDAA lock up (with or without charge or advocacy) whoever is deemed to be the "villain". This, of course, creates wide differences in standards from place to place and among WHO decides. What if who decides wants to hide the facts from public eyes? Isn't that a little like saying I can simply "wing-it" -- disregarding the necessary rules -- and end up with a beautiful cake?
* At last, I learned my lesson this year and for the first time I remember I DID make -- not only one lovely cake -- I made TWO (even if I did make them from mixes). Just maybe, next year, I'll go for "from scratch - but you better bet, I'll follow the rules with cakes if I'm going to have happy eaters.

My daughter -- just yesterday -- also spoke wisely for the value of rules in other aspects of our social lives. She reminded me calmly -- and with absolutely perfect reasoning -- that I needed to have an eye to LONG-RANGE results when it came to certain kinds of conversations within the family. Isn't this the same for our Rule of Law?

What are we doing NOW for our nation's future? What about our children's and grandchildren' futures?

What do we gain in our communities and societies by seeking to calm temporary fears with bandaid measures and protections of officials over the people indicted or arrested? What about our proven overload of security measures like drones and waterboarding? What about our random disappearances - killings - imprisonments - tortures and the humiliation of unecessary threats and other intimidations? )

How are we making our societies and nations safer when we merely tantalize "other extremists" to "do unto others as done to them" rather than the more sound version of the golden rule?

What will we tell our children someday when they (and their compatriots and fellow democracy-lovers around the world) wonder what we did so that they are unable to receive justice and fair advocay in a court of law? Are we going to have to tell them - - if we are telling the truth -- that we messed up our's and their constitution and bill of rights out of fear, ignorance, because we were merely "following orders" and unwilling to stand alone?

What if we 'egg on' more and more trouble with our injustices than we assume we've been dealt? Haven't we already done enough damage along this line?

What if we are setting continual patterns that will continue to multiply? What if our supposed and real "enemies" deal the same to our own sons and daughters? What about the "recruitment tools" we simply plase securely in the palms of those we call extremists? What about the absolute fact that our nation sells -- barters -- and distributes more small handguns around the world than any other nation? Who among us has seriously considered and acted upon the fact that many of those end up in the hands of various manner of extremists/terrorists?

What and how many international agreements -- to which we are party -- do we continue to despise?

What kind of nation does the rest of the world watch us become as we call many of our laws and repeals of older, longer-standing rulings and principles null and void?

Look what has happened with the misuse and over-use of our emergency methods -- occupations before agreed upon -- use of torture such as as Abu Ghraib and Gitmo and many other places still under US auspices? Are we as a nation really happy with our Patriot Acts and growing surveillance state and the drones now using our skies without our permission? What of our willingness to become a police state step by step?

What about our US leaders choice to in cahoots with corporations such as Verizon in sharing private information?

What about the actual origins and choice of this particular time in our history - right before holy and holly days to quickly process such a ruling before we can all sit down and take a breath and learn what in the world is going on now?

I'm writing this little Op Ed on The US Bill of Rights Day. Today, The Bill of Rights Defense Committee (BORDC.org) states:

"The Bill of Rights was meant to ensure basic rights during times of war and times of peace, regardless of who is in power. IN ORDER TO ENSURE ITS FUTURE, we must keep using the First Amendment and speaking out when our rights and the rights of non-citizens are threatened."

In 1941, 150 years after the first 10 amendments were ratified, President Franklin Roosevelt declared December 15 "Bill of Rights Day."

How will we be proud of ourselves next year -- if today -- by such rulings as the National Defense Authorization Act -- we end up declaring away our most basic, famed and protective American rights?

If you are even just a little bit concerned - why not call NOW? Why don't we seek to stop such an unruly "law" or at least to say WHOA Nellie -- slow down! ...let's have some more national conversations first. Then we can all take a deep breathe before we sign our birthrights away.

(Some of the history notes above - especially where quoted with or without quotations were found at free Wikipedia on Rule of Law. Capitalizing freedom for emphasis on this unusual day is mine.)



* cake image above found at photobucket.com - credit goes to BARB43_bucket

After you've made your calls --

Source for breather image: myrevelment.com via Kelly on Pinterest