FORT WORTH — They call it the Highway of Holiness.

About 1,500 miles of pavement, stretching from Laredo to northern Minnesota, best known as Interstate 35.

Some churchgoers and religious leaders believe that the interstate has a holy destiny, and many are trying to make sure that it is reached.

"We’re using I-35 as a springboard to get America praying,” said Steve Hill, pastor of the Heartland World Ministries Church in Las Colinas, a Dallas suburb. "We’re trying to set this nation on fire for God.”

So he said he and others are praying for safer neighborhoods. For people who live near the highway. For adult establishments near the highway.

And for the soul of every person in the world, whether or not they are near I-35, he said.

But the religious leaders are focusing on I-35, and the land around it, because of a passage in the Old Testament from the book of Isaiah – 35:8.

"And a highway shall be there, and a way, and it shall be called The way of holiness,” the verse begins.

When Cindy Jacobs read Isaiah 35, she kept thinking Isaiah 35, Interstate 35, Isaiah 35.

And she wondered.

"We felt like I-35 could be the road they were talking about,” said Jacobs, a self-proclaimed prophet who with her husband co-founded Generals International, based in Red Oak, south of Dallas. "And we thought, wouldn’t it be great if there was a revival of faith?”

So earlier this year, they kicked off a 35-day nationwide prayer effort – Light the Highway – setting up 24-hour prayer rooms in at least a dozen cities, meeting with churches, holding "purity sieges” outside night clubs, offering street evangelism, even praying as they drove on the road.

The Heartland World Ministries Church, one of several churches that participated in the effort, knocked on 8,000 doors in Las Colinas, talking to people about God, Hill said.

"We believe in the power of prayer, but we also believe in putting feet to the prayer,” Hill said.

Televangelist Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcast Network recently aired a segment on this effort.

Robertson weighed in on the effort, saying it would be wonderful if it did spur a reformation.

"Traffic’s heavy on this busy interstate, but it’s nothing compared to what’s happening on the side of the road,” he said. "Wouldn’t that be wonderful  cut a line right down the middle of America and let it spread to both coasts.”

The churches involved in the effort indicate that the real effort is just beginning.

"We want everyone who drives on (I-35) or lives near it, to have a fresh encounter with Jesus Christ and feel his love and power,” said Joe Oden, a Heartland evangelist. "We would like to see everyone in America touched by God. We are just focusing on one area.”

Jacob said she expects to see results.

"We want a holy nation,” she said. "Prayer works.”

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NEWPORT BEACH, Calif., Dec. 28 (UPI) — A 15-year-old boy was arrested in Newport Beach, Calif., on suspicion of pointing a laser at a commercial jet and a police helicopter.

Authorities said the teenager, a Las Vegas resident, was arrested Tuesday after he allegedly pointed a laser he received as a gift at a SkyWest Airlines plane and a Newport Beach police helicopter that was sent to investigate the incident, the Los Angeles Times reported Friday.

The arrest was the third involving lasers in Orange County, Calif., in the space of a week.

Police in Garden Grove, Calif., arrested a 52-year-old man Sunday after an airline pilot contacted the Federal Aviation Administration to report a laser, the Times said. The crew of an Orange County Sheriff’s Department helicopter said they were hit in the eyes with a laser beam while investigating.

A 19-year-old man was arrested hours later on suspicion of aiming a laser at the same sheriff’s helicopter.

"Every year around Christmastime, people get lasers as presents and we see this sort of thing," sheriff’s spokesman Jim Amormino told the Times. "We don’t know if the intent is malicious … but it’s against the law, and we intend to prosecute."

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A Barack Obama campaign handout taped to the wall at Los Sauces, a restaurant in the heart of Des Moines’s Little Mexico, is like nothing on display at the typical Iowa campaign rally. On it, the Democratic presidential candidate greets a little girl in an embroidered Mexican dress next to the phrase, Barack Obama sanará America. Barack Obama will heal America.

This election season, candidates are walking the fine line between public anger over illegal immigration and the growing clout of the country’s largest minority group. At the same time politicians are talking more about tougher border control and cracking down on immigration violations, they’re also ramping up efforts to connect with Hispanic voters.

And they’re doing so even in Iowa, where the Latino population remains tiny but is growing rapidly.

Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton recently launched a series of efforts to connect with Iowa’s Spanish-speaking community. The Con Hillary Una Vida Mejor (A Better Life with Hillary) bilingual campaign has been flooding the state’s Spanish radio airwaves this month. Because there are no Spanish-language television stations in Iowa, the Clinton campaign is going door-to-door with bilingual DVD infomercials in Hispanic communities. The video talks about such issues as education, universal health insurance, the mortgage crisis and the high cost of gasoline, but it doesn’t mention immigration.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has been one of the most outspoken candidates in either party this year against illegal immigration. The Republican also launched a separate Spanish-language Web site the first week of his campaign. In Iowa, Mr. Romney’s youngest son, Craig, who is fluent in Spanish, visits the Hispanic community and speaks to Spanish-language newspapers and radio stations. The outreach focuses on the candidate as a person and a father, not on immigration.

Spanish advertising and outreach has been a big part of past presidential campaigns, as candidates tried to connect to the country’s Hispanics, who now number about 47 million. Before the 2008 campaign, most of these efforts came out only during the general-election campaign, and they often included little more than ads dubbed into Spanish, or a small, translated section of a candidate’s Web site.

Now, the outreach has begun earlier than ever, especially in the campaign for the hotly contested Jan. 3 Iowa caucus, where a few thousand votes can make the difference between victory and defeat.

There are about 115,000 Hispanics in Iowa, a nearly 30% increase from the 2000 total and almost 4% of the state’s total population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. An estimated 37,000 Hispanics in Iowa are registered to vote, according to campaign organizers.

This is an appealing demographic to Democrats. According to a recent national survey by the nonpartisan Pew Hispanic Center, registered Hispanic voters favor Democrats over Republicans by a ratio of 57% to 23%, compared with 49% to 28% in 2006.

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, the first prominent Hispanic politician to run for president, is also courting those votes. Another leading Democratic candidate, former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, has a Spanish-language Web site and has appeared in Iowa with such Latino politicians as Patricia Madrid, a former U.S. attorney general for New Mexico.

Sunday, Mrs. Clinton held a "Holidays with Hillary" event in Central Iowa’s Marshalltown, where a meat-processing plant sparked a tenfold increase in the Hispanic population in the 1990s. Last year, immigration officials raided the plant and deported undocumented workers.

The city of 26,000 residents is now nearly 13% Hispanic, about the same proportion as the rest of the U.S. As Mrs. Clinton gave a speech at a veterans hospital, Spanish-language ads for her campaign played on the local radio station and "Iowans for Hillary" signs were displayed outside a nearby Mexican grocery store.

Mrs. Clinton didn’t speak about immigration to the audience of mostly white elderly veterans, but tensions over the issue simmered among the audience. Betty Stotser, a 76-year-old retired teacher, griped before the event about the new arrivals: "They shouldn’t get more rights than the tax-paying people who live here."

The Clinton campaign has also set up a Spanish-language social-networking Web site called MyGrito.com (My Cry). Such high-profile Hispanic supporters as Bronx borough president Adolfo Carrión Jr. and California Rep. Hilda Solis have campaigned for Mrs. Clinton in Iowa and elsewhere. Ms. Solis posted a blog entry aimed at English-dominant Latinos about her time campaigning in Iowa.

Mr. Obama has made several recent appearances in heavily Hispanic neighborhoods, sometimes with prominent Latino politicians such as former Denver mayor and Obama campaign co-chairman Federico Peña. He has handed out Spanish-language fliers and has had Spanish-speaking volunteers go door-to-door.

"Four years ago, no one had a Hispanic platform during the primaries," says Fabiola Rodríguez-Ciampoli, the director of Hispanic communications for the Clinton campaign who also worked on John Kerry’s bid for the presidency in 2004.

Ms. Rodríguez-Ciampoli says research shows Hispanics value relationships with candidates, so reaching out early and often is important. She says candidates can’t expect immigration to be the only issue of concern for Hispanic voters.

Last week, central Iowa’s largest Spanish-language newspaper, El Latino, endorsed Mr. Obama. "Since Obama’s father was an immigrant and Obama is a minority in the U.S., he not only understands the Latino community, he feels it — the good and the bad," wrote the editorial board of El Latino, which has 15,000 readers.

Looking beyond Iowa, many candidates are broadcasting Spanish-language ads in Nevada, which holds a caucus Jan. 19. Advertising executives say candidates have bought television and radio advertising time on such Spanish-language networks as Univision Communications Inc., Telemundo Communications Group Inc. and TV Azteca S.A. ahead of the Jan. 29 primary in Florida, where Hispanics make up 17% of the population. Mr. Romney’s son Craig already stars in two Spanish-language radio ads in Florida and Nevada.

While the flurry of early outreach is making some Hispanic voters feel more welcome this election, others say the ads come off as insincere when candidates go on to talk about deporting Latin Americans and sealing off the Southern borders.

"They kiss Mexican babies and sing with mariachis," says Marguerite Rose Jiménez, a 25-year-old Richardson supporter in Mason City, Iowa, but as soon as the immigration issue comes up, all these efforts "seem so superficial."

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If the majority of Latinos are in the US illegally, then it would stand to reason that of those that do vote, the majority of those votes are fraudulent. Not that anyone is going to stop illegal aliens from voting; especially not the open borders presidential candidates whoring for votes.

Hello Kitty is no sexist.

The cute cuddly white cat from Japan’s Sanrio Co., usually seen on toys and jewelry for girls and young women, will soon don T-shirts, bags, watches and other products targeting young men, company spokesman Kazuo Tohmatsu said Friday.

"We think Hello Kitty is accepted by young men as a design statement in fashion," he said.

The feline for-men products will go on sale in Japan next month, and will be sold soon in the U.S. and other Asian nations, according to Sanrio.

The usual bubble-headed shape of Hello Kitty was slightly changed for a more rugged, cool look to appeal to men in their teens and early 20s.

For example, a picture of the cat on a $36 black T-shirt has the words, "hello kitty," instead of the usual dots for the eyes and nose.

Hello Kitty is one of mascot-obsessed Japan’s biggest "character" hits, decorating everything from a humble eraser to a $48,000 diamond necklace.

The planned products mark the first time Sanrio is developing Hello Kitty items especially for males, Tohmatsu said.

But Sanrio had tried a "limited edition" collaboration in men’s clothing with designers in Tokyo’s chic Harajuku section earlier this year, and they proved popular, he said.

"Young men these days grew up with character goods," said Tohmatsu. "That generation feels no embarrassment about wearing Hello Kitty."

Heads_Up The Conservative Voice

Half a million fewer Britons are in work following the unprecedented influx of migrants from Eastern Europe, it was disclosed last night.

MPs said the figure demolishes the Government’s claim to be providing ‘British jobs for British workers’.

Research by the independent House of Commons Library found that 24,473,000 people of working age born in the UK held jobs in 2003 – the year prior to the expansion of the EU.

The drop in the number of UK workers has been matched by a surge in arrivals from abroad

But the figure has now fallen to 23,948,000, a dramatic cut of 525,000 in the size of the home-grown workforce.

The library’s research did not cover the number of jobs taken by foreigners over the same period. But the drop in the number of UK workers has been matched by a surge in arrivals from Poland and other former Eastern Bloc nations.

Since May 2004, when the EU expanded eastwards, 700,000 have registered with the Home Office to work here.

This will fuel suspicions that some UK workers are being forced out of the jobs market by migrants.

Shadow Immigration Minister Damian Green said: "Yet again Gordon Brown’s dubious claim to provide ‘British jobs for British workers’ has been exposed as dishonest rhetoric.

"It is clear that the Government is doing the opposite."

Tory MP James Clappison, who unearthed the figures, said the key figure is the fall in the percentage of the UK’s working-age population who have jobs – down from 75.7 per cent in 2003 to 75.2 per cent in 2007.

It dispels the Government’s claim that immigrants are not taking jobs from British workers, but filling gaps left by a reduction in the size of the British-born workforce.

Instead, the figures suggest that a larger number of Britons of working age are finding themselves out of jobs.

Mr Clappison, a member of the Commons home affairs committee, said: "This is very worrying.

"Both the number of UK nationals of working age and the proportion of them is falling.

"This clearly shows the Government is failing in its objectives.

"At the same time, we are seeing an unprecedented influx from Eastern Europe and record numbers of work permits granted to workers from outside the EU, which is entirely at the Government’s discretion."

The British Chamber of Com-merce has already warned that a generation of British children is at risk of going ‘from school straight to welfare’ while migrants fill skills shortages in the economy.

Director-general David Frost said 500,000 18 to 24-year-olds are out of work, but nobody noticed because immigrants had taken their place in the jobs market.

More than 100,000 young Britons may have been pushed into unemployment by the wave of Eastern European immigrants, an economic analysis on the impact of migration has revealed.

A study by the influential Ernst & Young ITEM Club, found that although the recent influx has boosted Britain’s economy and kept inflation low, it may have increased unemployment for younger Britons and reduced pay rises for all.

Earlier this month, the Statistics Commission said 1.4million workers born abroad had taken jobs in Britain since 1997 – up to 81 per cent of the 1.7million new jobs for people of working age.

It led former Labour Minister Frank Field to call on the Government to stop Eastern Europeans taking jobs here.

He said: "We could have stopped Polish and other Eastern European workers coming when their countries joined the European Union.

"But we didn’t because the Home Office said there would be only 5,000 to 13,000 a year. This is clearly damaging the British labour market and British unemployed people are not moving into work.’ Emigration may also be a factor, with a record number of British citizens – 207,000 – leaving the country last year.

â– The House of Commons Library compiled the figures from the Government’s Labour Force Survey of 60,000 households, carried out every three months. Householders are asked a series of questions including country of birth, age and whether they are in work. The results are then projected on to the entire population to produce an estimate of the size and make-up of the workforce. It is the most comprehensive survey available, and produced by the office of National Statistics.

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A dozen people remain in custody after Houston police broke up what they said was a counterfeit payroll check ring that bilked companies out of thousands of dollars.

The operation was based out of a southeast Houston home in the 6900 block of Ilex but also involved other Texas cities and had links to California and Arizona, Houston Police Department detectives said.

"They were mostly targeting small grocery stores and check-cashing businesses," said Lt. Robert Manzo, with HPD’s financial crimes unit.

The operation would start after a member of the ring got a short-term job, often as a laborer, in order to receive a payroll check.

"Once that paycheck was obtained, it was sent out of state to be professionally counterfeited and duplicated," Manzo said.

Detectives said the alleged ringleader, Daniel Vega Marin, 37, would later meet with several people at the home on Ilex.

"Marin would hand each individual a payroll check, which was counterfeited for an amount ranging between $500 to $800, and the false identification to match the forged checks," Manzo said.

The suspect would then join the line of other workers cashing the checks at the targeted businesses.

Protection for businesses

Charles Bruce, the director of the National Check Fraud Center in Charleston, S.C., said successful scammers always know which companies to hit.

"They know which ones to go to who do not use (check) verification services," he said. "We always tell merchants, ‘If you don’t use a service, you’re going to lose money.’ "

Marin, known as "El Zorro," would usually follow in another car to keep an eye on the transaction, police said.

The ring passed nearly $70,000 worth of bogus checks each week, rotating among Houston, Austin, Dallas and San Antonio, detectives said.

"This is a very lucrative business. It’s growing. It’s not declining," said Bruce, whose agency receives at least 1,200 to 1,300 complaints per day.

Federal agents also were brought into the investigation because the ring also operated in Arizona and California, police said. Detectives don’t know how long the group had been targeting local businesses. They got wind of the operation early this month.

Identity theft investigated

Police also discovered a cache of documents, including Texas driver’s licenses and Social Security cards, when they raided the home on Ilex last week. Manzo said they are checking the cards to determine if the ring also engaged in identity theft.

Marin was charged with forgery and remains in the Harris County Jail without bail. Also arrested were: Jesus Garcia, 33; Jose Manuel Jimenez; 31; Idelfonso Mora, 32; Luis Luna, 37; Juan Zepeda, 23; Aldahir Chavez, 32; Victor Acosta, 42; Jose Galarza, 27; Joses Flores, 33; Maria Ramos, 33; and Felipe Diaz, 27.

All were charged with engaging in organized criminal activity or forgery and remain in the Harris County Jail. Police said the 12 — along with four others taken into custody last week at the home — are believed to be illegal aliens.

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Culberson County authorities faced a potentially explosive situation on Thursday when a tanker truck with 15,000 gallons of propane rolled over on top of a 10-inch high-pressure gas line. The driver was killed.

Because of the danger, it took authorities hours to remove the body of the driver from the truck, a 23-year-old Juárez man driving on a remote section of Texas Highway 652, about 20 miles southeast of the Guadalupe Mountains National Park, Sheriff Oscar Carrillo said.

The truck remained on top of the gas line on Thursday night. A hazardous materials crew from Carlsbad was expected to attempt to remove it after sunrise today.

"Basically, I got a potential bomb sitting on a potential bomb," Carrillo said.

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 Via mediabistro:

CNN’s Wolf Blitzer spent much of the first 16 minutes of today’s Situation Room talking with Mark Siegel, Benazir Bhutto’s longtime friend and spokesperson in the U.S. In October she sent an email (above) to Siegel. Siegel then sent it on to Blitzer on the condition it only be read in the event Bhutto was killed. In introducing the segment Blitzer said, "Only now can I reveal to you what I know. This is a story she wanted me to tell the world on her behalf if she were killed." The story, as detailed in the email, is that Pres. Pervez Musharraf was behind her assassination.

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For a Harvard educated woman, her spelling sure is was bad. You’d think she would at least know how to spell Musharraf correctly.

DALLAS — A charter bus company involved in a crash that killed four people in Arkansas last month must immediately cease all operations because it is an "imminent hazard to public safety," the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration announced Thursday.

According to an operations out-of-service order dated Dec. 21, Dallas-based Tornado Bus Co. must cease all operations because of its "unacceptable safety compliance," "failure to adequately establish safety management systems" and its practice of permitting drivers to exceed mandated maximum hours of service.

"Your motor carrier operation poses an imminent hazard to public safety," the order says. The company’s numerous violations "substantially increase the likelihood of serious injury or death to Tornado’s drivers, passengers and to the motoring public."

Officials at Tornado did not respond to a phone message left by The Associated Press.

A Tornado bus carrying 47 people from Chicago to Dallas crashed along Interstate 40 near Forrest City, Ark., on Nov. 25. Three people on the bus were killed, as was the driver of a pickup truck that was struck. More than 20 people were injured.

The company remains under federal investigation, and has been the target of four compliance reviews since 2001. The reviews have resulted in fines totaling $57,680 for violations that include falsifying driver duty records, according to the safety administration.

Routine roadside inspections have resulted in another $5,140 in fines for other violations.

"Despite the imposition of these penalties, Tornado’s method of operation remained unchanged," according to the out-of-service order. "The immediate and severe hazard to safety stems from Tornado’s egregious indifference to the hours-of-service requirements."

The order allowed vehicles to continue to their next scheduled stop so that passengers could be safely accommodated. "No additional passengers may be loaded, nor may the buses be operated in interstate or intrastate commerce," the order says.

Tornado’s Web site is in English and Spanish and touts its routes to Mexico. It also advertises routes from Georgia, North Carolina, Illinois, Florida, Tennessee and Texas.

Tornado. founded in 1985 in Houston, bills itself as "a major tour and charter transport company serving the Hispanic community in the United States and Mexico."

A spokeswoman for the agency leading the investigation said it is unusual for the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to issue out-of-service orders.

"We put trucks or drivers out of service for various reasons but not necessarily an entire company out of service very often," agency spokeswoman Melissa Mazzella DeLaney said.

It is, however, at least the second Texas-based bus company ordered shut down since 2005. Federal regulators shut down Global Limo after a 2005 bus fire killed 23 nursing home patients fleeing Hurricane Rita.

Global Limo’s owner, former NFL player James Maples, was convicted last year of maintenance and inspection charges — poorly managing his fleet and not requiring drivers to fill out vehicle inspection reports. None of the charges were directly related to the deadly bus fire.

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Upon further digging we would probably find that …

The 28 years old Mexican driver of the bus was in the US…here it comes…wait for it…illegally (You know he is) and not suppose to be behind the wheel of anything let alone a bus carry people; even if those people happened to all be Mexican illegal aliens. The Mexican bus company most likely was transporting illegal aliens and other illegal shit from Mexico to parts of the US (You know they were) and the FEDS (Only because of the crash and before news of more felonious activity within the company hit the press) had to close them down.

We wonder if the passengers bought their fraudulent documents from the bus company or the border bridge inspectors.