Morning at the Office

General Convention

Saturday, November 14, 2009

Cool, clear water


NASA struck gold when they crashed a satellite onto the moon last month and found water, lots of it.
The United States or the UN should lay claim to that water sooner than later.
If they don't Texas will.



Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Priest's plea for help nets beating


tampabay.com

Priest's plea for help nets beating

By Alexandra Zayas and Demorris A. Lee, Times Staff Writers

Published Tuesday, November 10, 2009


TAMPA — Marine reservist Jasen Bruce was getting clothes out of the trunk of his car Monday evening when a bearded man in a robe approached him.

That man, a Greek Orthodox priest named Father Alexios Marakis, speaks little English and was lost, police said. He wanted directions.

What the priest got instead, police say, was a tire iron to the head. Then he was chased for three blocks and pinned to the ground — as the Marine kept a 911 operator on the phone, saying he had captured a terrorist.

Police say Bruce offered several reasons to explain his actions:

The man tried to rob him.

The man grabbed Bruce's crotch and made an overt sexual advance in perfect English.

The man yelled "Allahu Akbar," Arabic for "God is great," the same words some witnesses said the Fort Hood shooting suspect uttered last week.

"That's what they tell you right before they blow you up," police say Bruce told them.

Bruce ended up in jail, accused of aggravated battery with a deadly weapon. He was released Tuesday on $7,500 bail. Marakis ended up at the hospital with stitches. He told the police he didn't want to press charges, espousing biblical forgiveness.

But Tuesday, Bruce wasn't saying sorry.

• • •

The two men are a year apart in age, and a world apart in life experiences.

Father Michael Eaccarino of St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Cathedral in Tarpon Springs says Marakis, 29, entered a Greek monastery as a teenager and became a priest nine years ago. He is studying theology at Holy Cross, a Greek Orthodox school in Massachusetts, and traveled to Tarpon Springs two months ago to work on his master's thesis. He has taken a vow of celibacy.

Eaccarino says the visiting priest got lost Monday after ministering to the elderly in a nursing home.

Jasen Bruce, 28, enlisted as a reserve Marine as a teenager, was discharged honorably when he finished his contract, and enlisted again this March. He has never been deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, a Marine Corps spokesman said. He got married last month in full dress uniform.

Bruce is a sales manager for APS Pharmacy in Palm Harbor. His blog entries tout the benefits of increasing testosterone and human growth hormones. He was charged with misdemeanor battery in 2007 for hopping over the bed of a tow truck and shoving its driver. He pleaded no contest.

Online photo galleries depict him flexing big muscles wearing little clothing.

An exterior surveillance video of Tuesday's chase captured the two men in motion, said Tampa Police Department spokeswoman Laura McElroy:

"You see a very short, small man running, and an enormous, large muscular man chasing after him."

This is what police say happened at 6:35 p.m. Monday:

The priest's GPS gave him the wrong directions, leading him off Interstate 275 and into downtown Tampa. He followed a line of cars into a garage at the Seaport Channelside condominium to ask for help.

He found Bruce, whose back was turned, bending over the trunk of his car, and he tapped his shoulder before saying, in broken English, "please" and "help."

That's when Bruce reached for the tire iron. Police say that by the end of the chase, he had hit the priest four times.

Hours after his release from Orient Road Jail on Tuesday, Bruce stood silently as his attorney, Jeff Brown, told his version:

The bearded man wearing a robe and sandals was clearly trespassing in the garage. In a sudden move, the stranger made a verbal sexual advance and grabbed Bruce's genitals. The Marine defended himself. And immediately, he called 911 as he chased him.

Brown said the police initially called the Marine a "hero" and said the priest was "mentally ill."

He called the police's account "one-sided" and said the department should investigate a sergeant he said made derogatory comments about the Marine's military background.

Police said that sergeant is, himself, a veteran. They say that the priest was disoriented when they found him at the corner of Madison and Meridian avenues, but a translator at Tampa General Hospital helped him communicate. And that the GPS corroborates the priest's story.

When police arrived at Bruce's apartment at 1:30 a.m., before they had mentioned charges, he had already called an attorney.

Television news stations showed the priest's photo on Tuesday and mentioned what the Marine said he did. If the priest had watched, he wouldn't have understood it.

He'd spent the day in great spirits, his fellow priest said. His main worry was that he inconvenienced the others who had to care for him. Then, a man named Jerry Theophilopoulos got in touch with him. He's a lawyer, speaks Greek and served as a former board member of the church. The lawyer said he told the priest what the Marine said. Marakis was stunned. His eyes grew wide. He said it was a lie.

Times researcher John Martin and staff writer Jamal Thalji contributed to this report.


Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Take me home, country roads


The Episcopal Public Policy Network
The Episcopal Public Policy Network
Policy Alert

[Episcopal News Service] The Episcopal Public Policy Network (EPPN) has issued an appeal for church members to call on President Barack Obama to end the Coal River Mountain mining project.

"Mountain top removal mining and valley fill practices cause significant social and environmental impacts, often devastating ecosystems and destroying human communities through water pollution and flooding," a Nov. 10 EPPN alert said. "We have confirmed that blasting has begun on Coal River Mountain, West Virginia, the highest peak ever slated for mountaintop removal mining, and the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) confirmed that coal was being moved off the mountain.”

The EPPN alert, which is emailed to about 25,000 Episcopalians and religious advocates, says the news has been "devastating" to local residents "who have rallied around a plan to build a wind farm on the peaks of Coal River Mountain." The proposed wind farm would provide enough wind potential to generate electricity for more than 85,000 homes, as well as clean, permanent jobs to the community.

"Local residents have witnessed workers throughout this past week moving heavy equipment up to the mining zones, and blasting and plumes of smoke were seen and heard near the Brushy Fork coal slurry impoundment," the alert said. "The Brushy Fork impoundment is an enormous retention pond holding 8.2 billion gallons of toxic coal slurry waste. If the impoundment were to fail due to the blasting, hundreds of lives will be lost and thousands more will be in jeopardy from an enormous slurry flood."

Through the EPPN website, individuals can send a letter to Obama urging an end to the Coal River Mountain mining project.

The Episcopal Church's 73rd General Convention in 2000 passed Resolution D005 in opposition of "environmental racism," and called on the Office of Government Relations in Washington, D.C., to "track legislation seeking to eliminate the practice of locating polluting industries disproportionately near neighborhoods inhabited by people of color or the poor."

The resolution also called on the Washington office to "monitor and issue policy alerts regarding the practice of mountain top removal and valley fill mining and other large scale mining operations that threaten the ecology and low income communities."

"As people of faith, we believe that every creature is precious to God, but we have seen repeated disregard for citizens and the environment through mountaintop removal mining practices," the alert says. "As part of our call to be stewards of creation, we have a duty to use the land responsibly, to manage it so that it serves the good of all, and to protect it for future generations and for all life."

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