Freedom Lawyers of America

> Most distant known object in universe discovered
>
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/local/states/california/northern_california/7961704.htm
>
> PASADENA, Calif. - Peering back in time to when the universe was just 750
> million years old, a team of astrophysicists announced Sunday they have
> spied a tiny galaxy that is the most farthest known object.
>
> "We are confident it is the most distant known object," California
> Institute of Technology astronomer Richard Ellis said of the galaxy, which
> lies roughly 13 billion light-years from Earth.
>
> The team uncovered the faint galaxy using the two most powerful telescopes
> of their kind - one in space, the other in Hawaii - aided by the natural
> magnification provided by a massive cluster of galaxies.
>
> The gravitational tug of the cluster, called Abell 2218, deflects the
light
> of the far more distant galaxy and magnifies it many times over.
>
> "Without the magnification of 25 afforded by the foreground cluster, this
> early object could simply not have been identified or studied in any
detail
> with presently available telescopes," said astronomer Jean-Paul Kneib, of
> Caltech and the Observatoire Midi-Pyrenees in France.
>
> The magnification process, first proposed by Albert Einstein and known as
> "gravitational lensing," produces double images of the galaxy.
>
> Word of the discovery came during the annual meeting of the American
> Association for the Advancement of Science in Seattle. Further details
> appear in a forthcoming issue of the Astrophysical Journal.
>
> The discovery gives a rare glimpse of the time when the first stars and
> galaxies began to blink on, ending a period that cosmologists call the
> "Dark Ages," said Robert Kirshner, an astronomer with the
> Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass.
>
> "The possibility is here we really are beginning to peek into that time,"
> said Kirshner, who was not connected with the discovery.
>
> "People have gone there in their imagination - they've thought about it.
> Now we are getting the facts. And there's nothing like getting the facts,"
> he added.
>
> The Hubble Space Telescope revealed the first glimpse of the galaxy,
backed
> up by subsequent observations made with the Keck Observatory's 10-meter
> telescopes atop Mauna Kea.
>
> The galaxy is just 2,000 light-years across. That's far smaller than our
> own Milky Way, which is roughly 100,000 light-years in diameter.
>
> Analysis of the galaxy revealed its light had been shifted into redder
> wavelengths, or redshifted. The farther away an object is in our expanding
> universe, the faster it is moving and the larger its redshift.
>
> The team was less confident about the precise redshift they had measured,
> estimating it as between 6.6 and 7, Ellis said. Any value in the range
> would still place the galaxy as the farthest known object, he added.
>
> The galaxy also has a stronger ultraviolet signal than that seen in
younger
> star-forming galaxies. That suggests the galaxy contains a higher
> proportion of massive stars.
>
> Cosmologists have predicted that early galaxies contained types of stars
> unlike those that came into being much later in the history of the
universe.
>
> The team searched only a small area of the sky before they turned up the
> galaxy, suggesting the sky is dense with similar galaxies and that the
type
> of massive stars it contains were common after the end of the so-called
> Dark Ages, Ellis said.
>
> "That's very interesting if it's true," Kirshner said.
>
> No one knows how long the Dark Ages lasted in the wake of the Big Bang
13.7
> billion years ago.
>
> ON THE NET:
> http://www.caltech.edu
> http://www2.keck.hawaii.edu/
> http://hubblesite.org/
>
>
> Biblical images etched in highest courts in America
> http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=2441
>
> On November 13, 2003 the Alabama Court of the Judiciary ordered the
removal
> of Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore from his post. The decision resulted
> from Moore's refusal to obey what he considered a tyrannical order from a
> federal judge commanding him to remove a stone monument of the Ten
> Commandments from the rotunda of the Alabama supreme court building.
>
> The federal court, which was not overruled because the Supreme Court
> refused to consider Moore's appeal, insisted that the state of Alabama
> could not acknowledge God by displaying a religiously-based
representation,
> even though the Alabama constitution says, "We, the people of the State of
> Alabama, in order to establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, and
> secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, invoking
> the favor and guidance of Almighty God, do ordain and establish the
> following Constitution and form of government for the State of Alabama."
>
> HUMAN EVENTS intern and photojournalist Carrie Devorah went to federal
> government buildings in the District of Columbia and photographed some of
> the many religious and religiously inspired items in those buildings. In
> addition, she obtained a picture from the White House of the Adams Prayer
> Mantel. These pictures are a small sampling of the many religious images
> scattered throughout government buildings in D.C. and around the country.
>
> Will all of these images eventually be removed by the order of
unrestrained
> federal judges? Will the Alabama state constitution?the current version of
> which was adopted over 100 years ago, in 1901?have to be revised? More
> important, will Congress and the President act to restrict federal courts'
> jurisdiction over such matters, as the U.S. Constitution explicitly gives
> them the authority to do, before it is too late?
>
> [CAPTIONS TO ALL PICTURES SHOWN:
> Moses with the Ten Commandments in the rotunda of the Library of Congress
> Moses on the rear facade of the U.S. Supreme Court
> Moses with the Ten Commandments inside the Supreme Court's courtroom
> "Liberty of Worship" statute resting on the Ten Commandments outside the
> Ronald Reagan Building
> The Ten Commandments in the floor of the National Archives
> The Adams Prayer Mantel in the White House (Photo Courtesy of the White
House)
> Painting called "Knowledge" in the North Hall of the Library of Congress
> An excerpt from Virginia's Statute of Religious Freedom, authored by
Thomas
> Jefferson, on the wall of the Jefferson Memorial
> "De Soto's Burial in the Mississippi River" in the rotunda of the U.S.
Capitol
> A stained glass window of George Washington praying, in the chapel in the
> U.S. Capitol
> A phrase from Lord Tennyson in the rotunda of the Library of Congress
> A memorial plaque from the Free Press Methodist Episcopal Church inside
the
> Washington Monument
> A painting of the Roman goddess of war in the Senate side of the U.S.
Capitol
> An excerpt from Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural speech carved into the
> interior of the Lincoln Memorial]
>
> These images are the sort that federal courts have increasingly ruled
> "unconstitutional" for decades.
>
> If the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) or some other plaintiff
> decides to sue to remove any or all of these images, what would be the
result?
>
> If the courts are consistent, these images -- and countless more like them
> -- could be removed by a judicial elite hostile to all forms of religious
> expression in public.
>
> --------------------
>
> # God in the Temples of Government: Part II
> http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=2664
>
> As a follow-up to her first project on religious images in Washington,
> D.C., public buildings (see "God in the Temples of Government"), HE intern
> and photojournalist Carrie Devorah took more pictures of religious images
> and also gathered three U.S. stamps with religious themes.
>
> Will the courts eventually outlaw these images, as they have other
> religious symbols such as former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore's Ten
> Commandments monument?
>
> If not, why not?
>
> [CAPTIONS TO ALL PICTURES SHOWN:
> Inscription inside the Washington Monument
> Jesuit Father James Marquette in the U.S. Capitol
> Sculpture in front of the U.S. district court building
> Image called "Religion" in the U.S. Capitol
> Carving of Ten Commandments on doors of the U.S. Supreme Court
> Charlemagne inside U.S. Supreme Court
> Muhammad inside U.S. Supreme Court
> Painting in U.S. Capitol of Pocahontas' baptism
> Three U.S. stamps commemorating holidays
> Discovery of the Mississippi River by Hernando De Soto in the U.S. Capitol
> Detail of one of the ornaments on the Christmas tree in the Library of
> Congress.]
>