A few items worth reading

Many people are aware I read a lot. I'm always in search of information to help me in making decisions pertaining to my life, family, business and the community, state, nation and world in which I live.

I'm sharing some of the items I found interesting in recent reading. Some I disagree with. Some facts are unpleasant. As we face challenges in education, the economy, terrorism, cultural changes and moral values, we should not be ignorant or uninformed before forming opinions.

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What is at stake? In their book "Lost in America," Tom Clegg and Warren Bird relate the following fascinating statistics. Within a typical day:

10,799 babies will be born and 6,403 people will die. There will be 6,148 marriages and 3,110 divorces.

3,246 women will have an abortion, and 3,445 unmarried women will give birth to a child.

84 people will commit suicide, 45 people with the AIDS virus will die, and 43 people will die in alcohol-related traffic accidents.

4,630 15-year-old girls will have sexual intercourse for the first time, 1,312 students will drop out of high school, and more than 6,000 people under the age of 18 will try their first cigarette.

28,206 people will be arrested.

63,288 people will receive food stamps.

And eight churches in the United States will close their doors for the last time.

Every day. All of this and much more takes place every 24 hours. And the numbers are trending upward. -- Good News

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One of my favorite singers and personalities has been Johnny Cash, who died this year and recently received three Country Music Awards and a Grammy for his song "Hurt."

The following was shared in the book "Spiritual Journeys: How Faith Has Influenced 12 Music Icons." The chapter on Cash reported this event:

While Jewish boys reach their age of religious responsibility at 13 for their bar mitzvah, Baptist boys in Cash's family had to make the decision at 12. Once the time had come, he already knew that he had reached "the age of moral and spiritual accountability." While the congregation sang the invitational hymn, "Just as I Am," Cash walked down the aisle of the church and "accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior."

Only a few months after that experience at the altar, he was confronted with the horrible death of his older brother Jack. While he was cutting fence posts, one got tangled up in the swinging saw and jerked him into it, cutting him severely. Jack was rushed to the hospital, but there wasn't much that could be done. His mother and father were on their knees praying when Jack awoke and asked, "Why is everybody crying over me? Mama, don't cry over me. Did you see the river?"

"No, I didn't, son," Carrie replied.

"Well, I thought I was going toward the fire, but I'm headed in the other direction now, Mama. I was going down a river, and there was fire on one side and heaven on the other. I was crying, 'God, I'm supposed to go to heaven. Don't you remember? Don't take me to the fire.' All of a sudden I turned, and now, Mama, can you hear the angels singing?"

"No, son, I can't hear it."

Jack began to squeeze her hand and said, "But Mama, you've got to hear it." The tears began to fall from his eyes as he said, "Mama, listen to the angels. I'm going there, Mama." The family at his bedside listened with stunned attention.

"What a beautiful city," he said. "And the angels singing. Oh, Mama, I wish you could hear the angels singing." Those were Jack's last words before he died, according to Cash's "Man in Black."

"It was like a burden had been lifted from all of us," remembered Cash, "and it wasn't just the eight-day burden of fighting for Jack's life. Rather, we watched him die in such bliss and glory that it was like we were almost happy because of the way we saw him go. We saw in our mind's eye what he was seeing -- a vision of heaven."

That vision would be long lingering in his psyche and spirit. "The memory of Jack's death, his vision of heaven, the effect his life had on the lives of others, and the image of Christ he projected have been more of an inspiration to me, I suppose, than anything else that has ever come to me through any man," he would say.

nOne of the more honorable elected officials from Missouri -- former attorney general, governor and U.S. senator -- John Ashcroft has become a symbolic target of some on the left.

The following is a brief observation on the USA Patriot Act, which was passed by about 80 percent of the members of the U.S. House and Senate immediately after the 9-11 destruction.

Our Iron Curtain: No law in recent history has inspired such spirited opposition -- based on considerable misinformation -- as the USA Patriot Act. Most of the act's provisions involve modest changes in existing law that are hardly novel in theory or in practice. [But] the law makes one fundamental change that we should all understand: It shattered the dysfunctional way in which the U.S. approached terrorism investigations. Prior to the Patriot Act, there was a wall between criminal investigators and intelligence investigators that prevented the sharing of information between the two groups of investigators.

What did this mean in practice? When I was on a team that began a criminal investigation of Osama bin Laden in 1996, we had access to a number of sources. We could talk to citizens. We could talk to local police officers. We could talk to the CIA. We could talk to foreign police officers. Even foreign spies. And we did all those things. We could even talk to al-Qaida members -- and we did. Whom could we not talk to? The FBI agents across the street assigned to a parallel intelligence investigation of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida. We could not learn what information they had gathered. A system that lets criminal investigators talk to al-Qaida but not FBI intelligence agents is fundamentally flawed. The Patriot Act fixed that. -- Patrick J. Fitzgerald, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, as quoted in the Chicago Tribune

Gary Rust is the chairman of Rust Communications.