A SPECIAL BIRTHDAY!

I want to wish Happy Birthday to one of the most beautiful persons I have known - Floreine Data, who will be celebrating her 100th birthday on June 8. Floreine's husband, Henry James "Hank" Data, passed away in 2012. Hank and Floreine were married for 72 years.

I first met Floreine and Hank in 1989 when the Gazette was first published. I think Floreine and Hank were the kindest, most thoughtful couple it has ever been my pleasure to know.

Happy Birthday and God bless you Floreine. I know Hank is smiling down upon you on this very special day.

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I thoroughly enjoyed attending the Special City Council and Board of Education Joint meeting Tuesday at the Fillmore High School Farm. My thanks to all those responsible for serving that delicious BBQ meal. Many thanks also to the Future Farmers of America members who did such a great job as servers. These occasional joint meetings give these two groups a chance to discuss important issues relating to both while having a little fun.

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On to less pleasant issues from the DRUDGE REPORT.

CNN has fired Kathy Griffin from their annual New Year’s Eve program, which she co-hosted with anchor Anderson Cooper. Griffin is among the several foul-mouthed radical liberals who populate the liberal left media. I'm surprised that CNN did the right thing by firing her for appearing in a video where she pretends to present the president's bloody, severed head to the public. Griffin is vile and disgusting, like so much of the Never Trump media.

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" LA law enforcement high alert after gangs threaten officers..."
It's time to deal with this country's criminal gangs the way we treat foreign and domestic terrorists - directly and violently. They constitute a clear and present threat to American safety. They are violent predators who have no respect for human life and property. They share the absence of human conscience that Islamic terrorist groups exhibit.

It will take large, cooperating units of police and military, specially trained for urban warfare to get the job done effectively. Our police forces have enough crime to tackle without taking on large-scale anti-gang movements. After all, gangs like the metastasizing MS-13 are no different from ISIS, except in scale. They need to be exterminated.

Chicago, and elsewhere, report an increase in the use of long guns in gang activity. This escalates the danger to such an extent that new, harsher laws are needed mandating extremely long sentences even for possession of long guns. Where anyone is killed with such weapons, the death penalty should also be mandated. Law-abiding citizens of sound mind should not have their Constitutional right to keep and bear such arms "infringed".

The clear language of our Constitution declares "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

The Founding Fathers also declared this, and all other rights announced by our Constitution, to be God-given, not merely government-sanctioned privileges. Criminal gangs steal our freedoms. The Second Amendment defends American citizens against such crimes.

Our professional defenders of freedom are American police and military organizations, whom we must always strongly support. Inextricable with this honorable group, and the primary recipients of this protection, are American citizens themselves, standing ready to assure that their God-given rights do not become mere privileges. These are the fundamental issues of the American way of life, which make us truly exceptional in this world.