Last week, I received on email from Barry Matthews who is the President / CEO of United Way of West Tennessee.

2-1-1 Is Here!

Please join us at 2:11 p.m. on Monday, February 12th in our office (1341 North Highland Avenue in Jackson) for the announcement of our 2-1-1 service for West Tennessee. 2-1-1 is a easy-to-remember three-digit toll free telephone number that people can call to receive information and referral assistance on social services when they don't know where else to go for help. It is a powerful new service that assists with daily needs as well as recovery efforts after community-wide disasters.

2-1-1 is a special initiative of United Way of West Tennessee. We appreciate your support and attendance as we celebrate the establishment of this important service to the community.

The official campaign for 211 is described:

Every hour of every day, someone in the United States needs essential services - from finding an after-school program to securing adequate care for a child or an aging parent. Faced with a dramatic increase in the number of agencies and help-lines, people often don't know where to turn. In many cases, people end up going without these necessary services because they do not know where to start. 2-1-1 helps people find and give help.

Now 211 is not an expansion of social services per say but a means of directing individuals to a specific organization. Now you not only don't have think about stealing from taxpayers, you don't have to do the research, it's one stop shopping, all at you fingertips or your blackberry. Of course controlled by United Way.

I was polite with my first reply:

Thank you, Barry, for the invitation to your announcement this February 12th. I am sure that it will be a successful campaign. I can not, however, be there for this program due to other appointments.

Thank you again for the invitation.

But he ( I am sure unintentionally) rubbed in the salt....

Thanks for the reply. Just for your information, this service is being funded in part by a Community Development Block Grant through the City of Jackson. We presented the program to the council last spring during Dave Ralston's report. Thanks for your support in making this happen.

So I pulled out my Davy Crockett response and threw it out:

I didn’t want you to get the wrong impression that I might have been in favor of this particular program. I was not, nor will I ever be in favor of the use of such funds that make it easier to unconstitutionally spend federal funds for social programs.

I have as much sympathy for the suffering of the living, if there be, as any man in this country, but I would never permit my sympathy for part of the living to lead me into an act of injustice to the balance of the living. I will not go into an argument to prove that Congress or the City Council had not the power to appropriate this money as an act of charity. Every member on that floor knew it.

We have the right as individuals, to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of the City Council, we had no right to appropriate a dollar of the public money. Some of said that it is our debt to society to aid the unfortunate. Every man knows it is not a debt. Without the grossest corruption, could the city or congress appropriate this money as the payment of a debt. They did not have the semblance of authority to appropriate it as charity.

I am sure it went out over deaf ears.

Want to see what lobbying groups are hosting receptions for state lawmakers? The info is out there – you just have to know where to look.

As a result of the state’s new ethics law, organizations employing lobbyists who host events for state legislators have to submit their written invitations to the Tennessee Ethics Commission prior to the occasion.

The commission then posts the invitations on their Web site, shining new light on what receptions are being held where and who’s trying to get better acquainted with whom.

Please note there is a fifty dollar per person per event cost limit.

Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center scientists have found a set of "master switches" that keep adult blood-forming stem cells in their primitive state.

Unlocking the switches' code may one day enable scientists to grow new blood cells for transplant into patients with cancer and other bone marrow disorders.

The scientists located the control switches not at the gene level, but farther down the protein production line in more recently discovered forms of ribonucleic acid, or RNA.

MicroRNA molecules, once thought to be cellular junk, are now known to switch off activity of the larger RNA strands which allow assembly of the proteins that let cells grow and function. "Stem cells are poised to make proteins essential for maturing into blood cells, but microRNAs keep them locked in their place," says cancer researcher Curt Civin, M.D., Ph.D., who led the study.

"We're looking for ways to flip these microRNA switches, to control when stem cells grow into new blood cells," says Robert Georgantas, Ph.D., research associate at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center and first and corresponding author of the study.

Tom Tancredo visits Ramos in Mississippi.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will be rinsing the taste of sour grapes out of his mouth for some time after Republicans rallied to stop his anti-Bush, anti-troop Iraq resolution this week. All but two GOP senators (Susan Collins and Norm Coleman, for those keeping score) voted against proceeding forward on debating the resolution opposing the troop buildup, essentially bringing dreams of embarrassing the President to a halt for the time being.

Reid and company accused Republicans of stifling debate, and the Left media pointed the dirty end of the stick at the GOP for using parliamentary procedures that Democrats mastered during their time in the minority. However, all Reid had to do to get the debate over his precious resolution was to allow a vote on two competing Republican resolutions also making the rounds. Republicans are not ducking a fight over Iraq; they are, in fact, trying to have a debate. It’s just not going to be on Reid’s terms. He seems most genuinely angry that even though his party has the control they’ve coveted for so long, he still can’t do anything effective with it.

One of the resolutions on which Minority Leader Mitch McConnell tried to hold a vote was written by John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman. It would have called for the Iraqi government to reach clearly defined benchmarks over time to earn America’s continued military and financial support. This is not an unreasonable resolution, and it is similar in tone to what Democrats were calling for last year.

A second resolution, which is quite crafty in its execution, was written by Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH). The text of the resolution calls for support of the troop buildup, but it also declares that Congress should not cut off funds for troops in the field. Democrats don’t want to vote in support of Gregg’s language, because pulling funding is exactly what they plan to do should their other attempts to abandon Iraq fail. They can’t afford to vote against it, though, because doing so will expose their rank hypocrisy.

Thus, while it looks as if the anti-troop buildup resolution is dead in the Senate, the war debate is far from over. Reid is sure to hold hostage a large Iraq funding package coming up in a few weeks in order to get his point across that the Demos are determined to throw in the towel in Iraq.

The Federalist

Senator Barack Obama, an Illinois Democrat, officially launched his presidential bid on Saturday attempting to link himself to Abraham Lincoln.

Obama made his announcement in the Illinois State capital, where Lincoln got his own political start. Lincoln launched his own presidential campaign during a time of war when detractors said he was too inexperienced.

"[I]n the shadow of the Old State Capitol, where Lincoln once called on a house divided to stand together, where common hopes and common dreams still live, I stand before you today to announce my candidacy for President of the United States of America," he told a cheering crowd.

U.S. military officials on Sunday accused the highest levels of the Iranian leadership of arming Shiite militants in Iraq with sophisticated armor-piercing roadside bombs that have killed more than 170 troops from the American-led coalition.

The military command in Baghdad denied, however, that any newly smuggled Iranian weapons were behind the five U.S. military helicopter crashes since Jan. 20 - four that were shot out of the sky by insurgent gunfire.

A fifth crash has tentatively been blamed on mechanical failure. In the same period, two private security company helicopters also have crashed but the cause was unclear.

The deadly and highly sophisticated weapons the U.S. military said it traced to Iran are known as "explosively formed penetrators," or EFPs.

May God Bless and  Keep You This Day Till Tomorrow