The Illinois Veterans Home presented a Memorial Day Program Friday that included speaker Dan Grant, director of Illinois Department of Veterans Affairs. The event also featured music, a wreath laying, rifle salute and Benediction.
Below is a video of the event and interviews with a Veterans Home resident and a volunteer veteran.
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A sampling of newspaper front pages from around the world announcing the death of terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden. The New York Daily News cover is seen at right.
Toby Harnden of The Telegraph offers these 10 thoughts on bin Laden’s death.
One thing that’s getting overlooked while columnists, commentators and presidential wannabes lob verbal grenades over what caused the tragedy in Tucson is that six innocent people were killed and 12 more wounded by a deranged young man who was able to get his hands on a weapon.
Unfortunately, as Bob Herbert of the New York Times notes, murder is a flourishing business in the United States. He points to sobering statistics that show, excluding the people killed in the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, more than 150,000 Americans have been murdered since the beginning of the 21st century. Think about that number for a minute, and ask yourself why that issue merits little more than lip service.
Writes Herbert:
This endlessly proliferating parade of death, which does not spare women or children, ought to make our knees go weak. But we never even notice most of the killings. Homicide is white noise in this society. … For whatever reasons, neither the public nor the politicians seem to really care how many Americans are murdered — unless it’s in a terror attack by foreigners. The two most common responses to violence in the U.S. are to ignore it or be entertained by it. The horror prompted by the attack in Tucson on Saturday will pass. The outrage will fade. The murders will continue.
Click here for the full column.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch is not enamored with the way Gov. Jay Nixon and the Missouri Legislature fashioned the state’s latest budget. In summing up:
Missouri, by virtue of its backward thinking, has entered a deadly feedback loop: No services, no businesses, no revenue. Until voters demand smarter, better government — and those in power have rigged the campaign finance game against them — we are stuck with this dismal reality show.
Are you one of those consumers who go online for independent consumer reviews of products and services?
If you do, you should realize that such reviews can be tainted. The Associated Press reports that many bloggers have accepted perks such as free laptops, trips to Europe, $500 gift cards or even thousands of dollars for a 200-word post. And many of these bloggers haven’t disclosed the freebies.
The Associated Press says the practice has grown so much that the Federal Trade Commission is getting involved. New guidelines, expected to be approved late this summer, would clarify that the agency can go after bloggers — as well as the companies that compensate them — for any false claims or failure to disclose conflicts of interest.
This would be the first time the FTC tries to patrol systematically what bloggers say and do online. According to The Associated Press, the common practice of posting a graphical ad or a link to an online retailer — and getting commissions for any sales from it — would be enough to trigger oversight.
One interesting example was cited in the story: A New York mother of four said she makes as much as $800 a month between ads on her five blogs and payments from advertisers who want her to review products. Eight hundred bucks! Pays her monthly grocery bill, she said.
If the guidelines are approved, bloggers would have to back up claims and disclose if they’re being compensated, although the FTC hasn’t said how. The FTC could order violators to stop and pay restitution to customers, and it could ask the Justice Department to sue for civil penalties.
It should be noted that any type of blog could be scrutinized, not just ones that specialize in reviews.
A couple of thoughts:
• Maybe it’s just me, but is it a good idea to buy something, stay somewhere or eat something based on what you read from a total stranger on the Internet?
• Should this really be near the top of the to-do list for the FTC? I mean, saving people from themselves is a noble cause, but …
