I have a question for anyone who would be able to answer it. Can humans catch the avian bird flu from a mosquito bite just like the West Nile virus? Please post your answer as a comment so everyone else can know the answer as well.

First off, the Iraqi army isn’t strong enough yet to withstand an attack from another dictator invading the country. If we pull out, the country could be taken over again and all of the lives that were lost in this war would have been for nothing.

Second, there are three main factions in Iraq that have never really gotten along with each other. Without our troops, those three groups could split Iraq into three smaller countries, one or more of which could support the terrorists.

Finally, I asked a soldier what he thought and he said that if we pull out, the situation will revolve right back at us and another 9/11 will occur. If you can’t trust a soldier, than whom can you trust?

For those who believe that the only reason Bush has not pulled out our troops is oil, why are gas prices still higher than they were before we invaded Iraq?

I wish to say that schools need music in their curriculum. Although we have music standards, many schools do not have the proper funding for this program. I suggest that a way be found to give schools the funding needed for a decent music program.

Music teaches science, math, history, physical education, foreign language, and art all at the same time. Music teaches science through the basics of acoustics. It teaches math because it is based on rhythmic subdivisions of time done in split seconds. Music teaches history because the song being played usually transcends the time period in which it was written. Music requires coordination of fingers, hands, arms, lips, cheeks, and facial muscles as well as the control of your diaphragm, back, and stomach and chest muscles just to make sure each note comes out clearly and in pitch, thus covering physical education. Musical terms are usually in Italian- such as Forte, meaning loud and Piano, meaning soft- or other foreign languages and music itself is in its own foreign language of symbols, representing ideas. Music teaches art most of all, allowing a human to take simple notes on a page and transform them into emotions, feelings, and life that cannot be found in any other human capability.

After months of hard work, a student will finally perform and when they receive the audience’s approval, it increases their self-confidence greatly. When a student participates in an ensemble or a band, they learn teamwork and make lifelong friendships that they will appreciate later in life. Music brings down the rate of drug and alcohol use in secondary students on a lifelong time frame as well as a current time frame. Memories are improved and violence is less abundant when music is added to student life.

237 second grade students participated in a study that used piano keyboard training and newly designed math software to demonstrate improvement in math. The test students who used the keyboard training and the math software scored almost 30% higher in proportional math and fractions than the students who only used the math software, proving that music brings up test scores. These are some facts about music and I hope that the State Legislate considers these facts when deciding the educational budget for our state in 2006 and future years.

I sincerely thank you for your time and thought concerning my proposal. I suggest that the importance of music in schools is studied further in hopes of improving the low test scores our state currently “boasts��?. Again, I thank you for your time and the consideration of my proposal. I hope to receive a response from you as well as a signature. Pease keep our state running smoothly.

Thank you,

Katherine

PS: For more information about the importance of music in schools, check out the following websites:

Children’s Musical Workshop

Education magazine: The Importance of Music Education

Bolivar R-I School District: How important is music to your child’s education?

What People Say About the Importance of Music in Our Schools

American Music Conference: AMERICANS OVERWHELMINGLY WANT
MUSIC EDUCATION IN SCHOOLS

Of course, many other sites exist, but these are a few that I thought that you would find interesting and convincing.

Cold in the night,
No one in sight,
Winter winds
Whirl and bite,
How I wish I were happy and warm,
Safe with my family out of the storm.

Liberty Council, a religious-liberty law firm, says this year�s winter program has children decorating classrooms with various figures from many religious celebrations this time of year, including Santa Claus, menorahs, and Labafana, a mythical witch that Italian children use as part of their Christmas celebrations. Liberty Council sent a letter to the school demanding a change in the winter program. They will file suit if their demands are not met immediately.

Personally, I agree with the Liberty Council on this matter. Schools were first used to teach students how to read the Bible on their own. Of course, nobody really thinks about that now, but that is what schools were meant to do. If that doesn�t prove that schools are against Christianity, then maybe these facts will.

Books by Plato, Homer, and other classic authors from the Greco-Roman era would have been lost after the fall of Rome if not for the movement that Saint Patrick started. Missionaries following in Patrick�s footsteps founded monasteries that preserved these wondrous books for over a thousand years. In later years, these manuscripts were publicly available via the printing press.

In other words, the classic works of ancient civilization that sit in university libraries would have not endured the thousands of years that they did if it weren�t for the Christian, Saint Patrick. This is one thing that I never learned in my Social Studies class, but from a book entitled How the Irish Saved Civilization (by Thomas Cahill), which explains this matter in detail. I guess that means that the school board picks and chooses what they want us students to know from history, leaving out a large percentage of history having to deal with Christian figures, all for the sake of a Constitutional prohibition that doesn�t exist: religious neutrality.

This interpretation of law prohibits discussing only one religion in the classrooms. That�s just one example of prejudice against Christianity.

This also reminded me about an occurrence that happened at school about a month ago in my Social Science class. A girl abruptly says �Christ was born on Christmas Eve, but the Wise Men gave him gifts on Christmas Day.�
My teacher tells her �Christ is a religious figure and you are preaching a religion in class, which is against the law�.
A boy pipes up, �But he�s a historical figure as well!�
�She still can�t talk about him at school,� my teacher retorted, and went on to explain that even though Christians might believe that Christ was a real person, other people don�t and that�s why their was a law against preaching religion in school.

I felt sorry for the girl who started this in the first place because she was accused that day of preaching a religion when she was just stating a historical fact. What many people don�t understand is that Christ is a historical figure as well as a religious figure and the only thing arguable about that is weather or not Christ is a higher being.

Schools state that some things in history are too religious to be taught in a Social Science class. Enough is enough! I want a full history education, not just somebody�s opinion on what I should know and what I shouldn�t know. The fact is that schools just don�t want us to know what a major role Christianity has played throughout history.

If society truly wants to remove any record of the contributions of Christianity, then they should just let Michael Newdow win his lawsuit. By its actions, the Wisconsin school board is agreeing with the beliefs of Michael Newdow and allowing radicals like him to shape the future of our country.

Students are not as educated as they need to be in order to understand that what they have now could be lost forever.  They need to stand back, appreciate, and think about what they can do to preserve the many books and the complete history of our era for future generations to enjoy, as others did for us.

Our staff here at ReallyRight.com has been able to reconstruct the crime as follows.

Ronald McDonald met with his accomplice at the Round Table inside the local Pizza Hut. After much deliberation, Ronald and his partner agreed to a rather Shakey plan.

Using the Famous Star that Carl�s Junior had given to Paris Hilton last summer; Ronald would distract Wendy by pretending to be a Subway inspector is search of the elusive Jack in the Box. Meanwhile, his accomplice would drink an A & W rootbeer float to hide his face from security cameras as he went In and Out of the office. His partner would grab more loot than Long John Silver�s treasure chest and head for the local Quizno�s.

After a quick Stop n� Shop, he was ToGo to Rico�s.

Ronald entered the Wendy�s at 7:11. All was going according to plan until the Burger King pulled into the drive-thru for a Frosty.  Once he saw Ronald, the King rang the Taco Bell. Colonel Sanders and his posse came to the assistance of Wendy�s manager, Mr. Hardey�s.

Ronald was pursued past the Outback outhouse and the Texas Roadhouse to Ruth Crist�s Steakhouse. After a brief peppering, he surrendered in the Olive Garden. 

The fact that Newdow does not seem to get is that most of our Founding Fathers were Christians and held a strong Christian worldview. The most famous line of our Declaration is as follows:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

The Creator our founding fathers believed in, and trusted, in just happens to be the Christian God.

In fact, many of our Founding Fathers had been ministers or at least had studied theology. Abraham Baldwin (Georgia) had been a minister, along with Hugh Williamson (North Carolina), James Madison (Virginia), and Oliver Ellsworth (Connecticut). Many more Founding Fathers had also studied theology and had not been ordained.

So, most of the Founding Fathers had been Christian, but what does that have to do with anything? Well, if the men who had signed the Declaration and Constitution were Christian, then these documents we use as a founding for all of America�s laws were based on Christian principles. The Founding Fathers did put trust in the Christian God. Therefore, the phrase �In God We Trust� on America�s currency is perfectly acceptable.

Newdow says that he �� just wants the government to say that we don�t have an opinion on religion. American citizens do what they want.�  Being a lawyer, he should be the first to know that the government does, in fact, have an opinion on religion. The government has intervened in religious practices from time to time, often with great restraint, when deciding when it is in the public�s best interest to intervene.

When Utah was becoming a state, one of the requirements that the government gave them was that they had to have a law prohibiting polygamy. Utah, as most know, is a Mormon state and polygamy used to be a major part of the Mormon religion. Joseph Smith, the man who started Mormonism, had 34 wives. Thus the government does have an opinion on religion and will not say what Newdow wants them to say.

Newdow also states that he would fight just as much if the government had said that there is no god. Why would he fight it, if it is his own belief? He would back that statement up with his own assumptions and his own lies. That�s what this lawsuit is: a pack of lies.