Adopt-a-Family
The holiday season is quickly approaching. The Foothills Food Bank has been serving a record number of clients who are having rough economic times. These clients all live in our Desert Foothills area.
We are once again organizing an ADOPT-a-FAMILY special holiday event. The Foothills Food Bank will provide a holiday meal for each family.
Those of us who are in a position to help often ask, “What can I do to make a real difference?”
Adopting a family involves buying gifts or donating money for gifts. You will be given ages, gender and wish lists for specific individuals. You can buy the gifts, wrap them and bring them to the Foothills Food Bank drop off location, or you can give money and one of Santa’s helpers will take over for you.
We need people like you, your family, neighbors, sport groups, HOA groups, classmates and offices.
This will give you the opportunity to make a difference in our community in this time of need and put smiles on the faces of many people.
If you have previously been a Donor, we thank you and hope we can count on your support again this year.
If you are able to help, please complete the enclosed Donor Sign-Up Form (www.FoothillsFoodBank.com) so you can be matched with a family. Then send in your form, at your earliest convenience, one of several ways
Email the completed Donor Form to [email protected], fax
the completed form to 480-488-9008 or mail it to
Adopt-a-Family, Foothills Food Bank, PO Box 715, Carefree, AZ 85377.
Thank you for caring and improving lives in our community through your support.
ADOPT A FAMILY 2013 COMMITTEE
Jeanne Panhorst, Co-Chair
Judi Anderson, Co-Chair
Picture on front page of September 18 issue
The picture of the Backyard Encounter was interesting, but it would have been more interesting if someone had also stated the outcome of the rattlesnake and the bobcat.
Thank you.
Darlene Gregory
Email
Editor note: We will redouble our efforts to include pertinent information about reader photos whenever possible.
Want me to make a reservation? It may be a little harder now
Monti's, the famed Tempe restaurant, is now cutting hours for employees because of ObamaCare.
The same law that Kyrsten Sinema helped craft, campaigned for, and voted to keep is hurting workers in her own district.
But this isn't the first time that the law's regulations have hit home for Sinema. Just a few weeks ago, ObamaCare caused her coworkers at ASU to see their hours cut.
When she supports laws that actively hurt those in the 9th district, Kyrsten Sinema proves that she's just too big a risk for Arizona families.
"The disastrous law that Kyrsten Sinema helped craft and campaign for is hurting workers right in her district. How can workers and families trust her to dismantle ObamaCare when she was its biggest cheerleader in the first place?"
Matt Gorman
NRCC Spokesman
Defend Joe Arpaio
Fellow Patriot,
All he is doing is enforcing the existing laws on the books. But the opponents of Sheriff Joe Arpaio - the most prominent national symbol in the fight against illegal immigration - will not stop their efforts to bring him down.
After winning a Sheriff's election last year that saw George Soros spend a staggering $10 million - far more than most U.S. Congressional campaigns - to defeat him, Joe had to face down a recall attempt just 6 months later.
But now, just months after his victory, Joe once again is the target of the open-borders lobby - and he needs your help. And this time the outcome could affect the entire nation.
That's right, now that Joe has prevailed over the recall, a Federal judge with links to the radical "La Raza" movement, has ruled against 'America's Sheriff' - outrageously stating that enforcing the rule of law against illegal aliens amounts to "racial profiling" against Latinos.
This despite the fact that Joe and his deputies have been cleared and even praised by a Federal ICE audit to be fully complying with existing laws, and not "profiling" based on race.
Yet, just weeks ago, leftist Judge Murray Snow issued his ruling, and prohibited Joe and his deputies from “using race as a factor” in law-enforcement decisions related to immigration, and outrageously said the fact that most illegal aliens arrested for identity theft and other crimes are "Latino" proves racist intent. Worse - these groups say the case against Sheriff Joe will be used as a precedent to bar enforcement against illegal aliens nationwide.
Sheriff Joe says if this happens America will have a permanent, virtual amnesty for tens of millions of illegal aliens
So Joe has launched a vigorous appeal of the Judge's ruling.
If the ACLU and La Raza prevail in this case, it will "set a legal precedent" that enforcement against illegal aliens is "unconstitutional racial profiling".
Since the ruling, Joe has not backed down - continuing to conduct workplace raids - including one this past week which netted 121 illegal aliens using stolen identities of Americans. Two of the illegals were even using the SSNs of deceased citizens! But these raids will come to a screeching halt if this judge's ruling prevails.
Joe will not quit. He cannot quit. Because his county - America's 4th largest - is under constant siege from criminal aliens.
But Joe does not have the resources to battle the Left, George Soros, the media and now a Federal judge by himself.
Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his deputies apprehend a staggering 25 percent of all criminal illegal aliens in the entire U.S. every year – 80 percent of whom are heading for states other than Arizona when caught. That means Joe doesn't just keep illegal alien rapists, robbers, gangbangers and identity thieves out of Arizona – he also keeps criminals from threatening your city or town, and those across America.
And with this case - if Joe can hold the line against this activist judge - he can keep the La Raza radicals from gutting immigration enforcement across the nation. Please do whatever you can to help him prevail. This is OUR fight....all of us, as Americans.
Thank you!
JOEPAC
Phoenix
What Congress Needs to Do About the NSA
Washington is beginning to debate the proper extent of government eavesdropping powers in the wake of Edward Snowden’s revelations about the NSA. It’s hardly as robust a discussion as it should be, but it’s a desperately needed start.
The colossal effort to monitor Americans’ communications constitutes an expansion of government power without precedent in the modern era. Yet no member of Congress saw an urgent need for public discussion. This is astounding. It took the actions of a leaker to spur any real airing of the matter on Capitol Hill.
Even now, it seems unlikely that Congress will make significant policy changes. All the nation’s key actors and institutions appear to approve of the surveillance programs — Congress, President Obama, the intelligence community, the courts, and the American people, who by their lack of widespread outrage have signaled that in this one case, at least, they believe the government can be trusted to keep us safe.
So Congress has missed its chance to lead a reasoned national debate over how extensive we want surveillance over Americans’ communications to be. It’s unlikely that genie can ever again be forced back into its bottle.
And that’s a problem. Once given power, the government rarely yields it. So even if you concede that the current administration and its intelligence leadership have been responsible stewards of the powers they’ve been given — and I don’t — that is no guarantee that the people who follow them, or the people who come after that, will be equally trustworthy.
This means that Congress has challenging work ahead. It needs to restore the proper balance between effective intelligence-gathering and intrusion into Americans’ privacy. And it needs to exercise greater oversight and insist on more transparency, more information, and more constraint on surveillance programs. There is no place for the timidity it has shown so far on these issues.
Americans should demand action to strike a better balance between privacy and security. In the past, the congressional overseers of the intelligence community have been captivated, if not captured, by the people they’re supposed to supervise. Same with the courts. And the admin-istration has hardly been forthcoming. That means it’s up to the American people to insist that our leaders do their jobs. It’s no less true today than it was at our founding: the price of liberty is eternal vigilance.
Lee Hamilton, Director
Center on Congress at Indiana University
Correspondence from Senator McCain
September 26, 2013
Dear Mr. Sorchych:
Thank you for contacting me regarding the recent events in Syria. I appreciate hearing from you on this important issue.
You may be aware of Syria’s recent history. In 2011, the Regime of Bashar al-Assad responded to pro-democracy Syrian protestors by deploying his army, triggering a wave of violence that continues to the present. Rather than addressing the legitimate concerns of the Syrian people, the Assad regime has crushed peaceful demonstrations, unjustly imprisoned thousands of protestors, and slaughtered more than 110,000 people, indiscriminately using chemical weapons, firing artillery into neighborhoods, and overrunning villages with tanks and warplanes. Syria is now engaged in a full-fledged civil war which threatens to become a regional conflict and there is no end in sight to this oppression and slaughter.
It remains clear to me that only the threat of potential military action against the Assad regime and its chemical weapons capabilities can potentially yield the negotiated weapons turnover plan brokered by Moscow. I am hopeful that this will happen, but at the same time, all of us need to be realistic about this situation.
We should not trust, and we must verify. The only credible way for the Obama Administration to test the Russian proposal is to immediately introduce a U.N. Security Council Resolution that spells out in clear, detailed terms exactly what the international community should expect of the Assad regime if it is serious about abandoning its weapons of mass destruction. Assad will use the months and months afforded to him to delay and deceive the world using every trick in Saddam Hussein's playbook. It requires a willful suspension of disbelief to see this agreement as anything other than the Obama Administration being led into a blind alley by Bashar al-Assad and Vladimir Putin. No one trusts Assad’s sincerity. And there is little reason to have more faith in Russia, especially when President Putin himself still insists that the Syrian opposition was responsible for the use of chemical weapons. This is why enforcement is so critical. Unfortunately, the Obama Administration’s claim that the threat of force remains on the table rings somewhat hollow in light of the events of the past few weeks.
Even worse, the Russian proposal to remove chemical weapons does nothing to resolve the real problem in Syria, which is the underlying conflict that has killed 110,000 people, driven millions from their homes, destabilized our friends and allies in the region, emboldened Iran and its terrorist proxies, and become a safe haven for thousands of Al-Qaeda affiliated extremists. Is the message of this agreement that Assad is now our negotiating partner, and that he can go on slaughtering innocent civilians and destabilizing the Middle East using every tool of warfare, so long as he does not use chemical weapons? That is morally and strategically indefensible.
As awful as chemical weapons are, and as much as we all want them taken away from Assad, they are just one symptom of the deteriorating conflict in Syria. We need a strategy to end this war as soon as possible, because the longer it goes the worse it gets. That strategy must degrade the military capabilities of the Assad regime, upgrade the military capabilities of the moderate opposition, shift the momentum on the battlefield, and thereby create conditions for a negotiated end to the conflict and the removal from power of Assad and his top henchmen.
For the reasons stated above, Congress should still proceed to consider and vote on the authorization for use of force. This will give the President additional leverage to press Russia and Syria to make good on their proposal to take the weapons of mass destruction out of Assad’s hands, and also turn the tide against the tyrannical rule of the Assad regime.
Let’s be clear—no one wants to be involved in Syria. But the reality is we are involved. We are more involved today than one year ago. We were more involved one year ago than two years ago. And we will almost certainly be more involved next year than we are now – only then, the conflict will be worse, and we will have worse and fewer options to address it. But eventually we will have to address it, not because we want to, but because our interests, and the security of our friends and allies, require it.
Once again, thank you for writing to me on this very important and dynamic issue. I am passionate about this issue and take my positions and responsibilities very seriously. I thank you for your input, respect your stance, and will keep your concerns in mind as we move forward.
Sincerely,
John McCain
United States Senator
Dear Senator Flake
Because of your commitment to strike Syria which is very naive and laughable, you have lost all our votes. I'll either abstain from voting, or vote for your contender even it's against my own will. I always voted Republican and particularly for you, because I am a Christian with Assyrian conservative values.
Mr. Senator, have you ever acknowledged how many Saudi Arabian terrorist fighters through the financial help of our BIGGEST enemies Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar are being helped and armed, including Chemical weapons to destroy the Christian community in Syria. Does any country in the world accept its sovereignty to be obstructed? By the help of the unwise calculation of the United States thousands of innocent ASSYRIAN Christians have been massacred in Iraq, and recently in Syria, in which you, and your colleague John McCain have never acknowledged. The entire indigenous people of Iraq over a million Assyrian fled the tyranny and butchery of Islamic fanatic, those foreign fighters taught, trained and directed by the prejudice, Christian hated countries mentioned above.
I know for fact you would not have time to read my letter. But meantime my people, the Assyrian Christians have been butchered, slaughtered in Iraq, and Syria collectively because of our wrong diplomacy in Middle East. I urge you to think with a rightful conscious. Why not Saudi Arabia? Does the Saudi society has more freedom than the Syrian society? Ask yourself, which country among those two produces more doctors, engineers? Which country mentioned above allows Christians to worship freely, in Saudi Arabia Christianity is persecuted by Islamic law . Saudi Arabia is the origin of Sharia Law. Do you know what Sharia is? You know that, COME ON! Are there churches, house of worship in Saudi Arabia? Why not, when they are building thousands of Mosques across the land of Brave and Free, The United States of America?
Challenge you. Go to Syria wearing a Cross around your neck, and then go to Saudi Arabia, and see who among those countries will allow you, and which one will cut off your head. Then why are you bombing the land where Christianity is strong and Muslims are willing freely to convert to Christianity?
The war in Syria is not addressed rightfully to the American people. It is merely a bitter two thousand years old war between Sunni and Shiites. But truly speaking, have you seen, heard a Shiite blowing himself up and killing innocent people? Have you heard or seen Shiite slaughtering people in the name of "Allah." Only Sunni does that, and only Sunni are the bitter enemies of the United States, Democracy, and the West. I am from Middle East. I traveled extensively all across all countries of Middle East, speak their language and also my own Assyrian language, and I have no political affiliation to any countries of Middle East except to my own Assyrian Christian people and to this great adopted country of mine, the United States.
Please, try to help the Christian Assyrian people of Syria, and Iraq. If Syria falls in the hands of those fanatic Muslims who you are financing and arming with American people tax dollars, then Lebanon, the last Christian bastion shall fall quickly, next come Jordan, Iraq. And the sphere of influence of Saudi Arabia and Turkey will strengthen with nothing for the United States to gain. Israel will suffer tremendously, and its future will be oblique. I know the region and I know the politics of that volatile region.
If you really seek to solve the dilemma in Syria, cut off the hands of those who are arming the rebels, then urge the Syrian people to have a fair vote. Try to help the two Assyrian bishops whom have been kidnapped by your Islamic fanatic terrorist friends for over three months. Please work for Peace, because our Savior, and Lord Jesus Christ is the Prince of Peace. Help the Syrian people so they may love the United States, not hate it. Today, in Lebanon, the most hated country among the Christians is United States. Why? Go there. I'll take you there and you ask those good Christians in Lebanon why they hate the United States, after endless generation that admired and loved it more than Lebanon. Let us be sincere to ourselves, and to the American people.
Thank you,
Ashour Youluos Malek
Cave Creek
From: [email protected]
Subject: Thank You For Contacting Me
Date: Mon, 23 Sep 2013 19:49:12 -0400
Dear Mr. Malek:
Thank you for contacting me about the ongoing crisis in Syria.
As you may know, on August 20, 2012, President Obama announced that the use of chemical weapons in the Syrian civil war would constitute crossing a "red line" that could trigger a U.S. response. On June 13, 2013, the White House confirmed that the Assad regime had used chemical weapons against the rebels multiple times in the previous year. On August 21, 2013, another chemical attack by the Assad regime killed well over 1,000 people, including approximately 400 children. In an unprecedented response, President Obama announced that he would seek Congressional authorization to launch limited and narrow military strikes against the regime in an effort to deter it from using chemical weapons again, and to degrade its capability to do so. After hearing testimony from Secretary of State John Kerry, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, upon which I sit, voted on September 4, 2013 to authorize the President's resolution by a vote of 10 to 7. I voted in favor of this authorization.
I remain skeptical of the Obama Administration's handling of the crisis in Syria over the past two years, and I am sympathetic to concerns regarding the United States' involvement in yet another conflict. However, regardless of the circumstances that led us to this point, I believe that, as commander-in-chief of the United States, the President has the authority to respond militarily. Voting to deny the President the authorization he sought, but did not need, would have far-reaching and damaging effects on our national security interests – when the President of the United States draws a red line, there must be no doubt amongst adversaries or allies that there will be consequences for crossing it.
Before the full Senate considered the President's request for authorization, however, an international agreement was reached seeking the establishment of a United Nations Security Council resolution requiring President Assad to dismantle his chemical weapons arsenal.
Although diplomacy is always the preferred option when possible, I have doubts that Syria will honor its pledge to turn over all of its chemical weapons. As a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, I will monitor this situation closely and carefully review the available policy options to address this conflict.
Thank you for contacting me. Please do not hesitate to do so again in the future. I also encourage you to visit my website, which may be found at flake.senate.gov.
Sincerely,
Jeff Flake
United States Senator
