This is great news as I feel that the case of discrimination is pretty straightforward, which I wrote about in an earlier post. This is not the first time that the City of Walnut has been sued in a discrimination case by the Department of Justice.
WALNUT - A judge has given permission for the U.S. Justice Department to go forward with a discrimination lawsuit against Walnut.
A U.S. District Court judge at a hearing last week denied the city's motion to dismiss a federal lawsuit alleging religious discrimination.
The Justice Department's Civil Rights Division sued Walnut in September, accusing the city of discriminating against the Chung Tai Zen Center group when city officials denied its request to build a Buddhist worship center in January 2008.
~Juliette Funes, SGV Staff Writer
I thought I would list a few tidbits of information that some of you may not know about me, since I get new readers all the time. Not like it's a lot of interesting stuff, but anyways...
- I actually was given a dharma name, Muso, which means 'beyond thought or beyond thinking'. It was given to me by my first Zen teacher who, oddly enough, was a neighbor of mine. I don't use it now, though I've been thinking I should.
- My first teacher served in the Japanese Imperial Army during World War 2, in both Burma and China. He went on to became a Zen monk in Japan after the war and then moved to the United States in the 1970's. He passed away some years ago.
- I have actually had the great pleasure to met the Dalai Lama back in 2007 here in Washington DC. Sorry, I am not really allowed to divulge how or why.
- I studied Military History in college, and grew up behind the Civil War battlefield of Chancellorsville, here in Virginia. I have visited every major American Revolution, Civil War and War of 1812 battlefield on the East Coast, and many in the West. One day, I very much want to visit the battlefields of WW1 in France and Belgium. I have a large collection of relics from several wars, most I dug myself from Civil War sites.
- My grandparents on my mothers side immigrated to the United States from Hungary and Romania shortly after WW1. They both came from the area known as Transylvania, one of them from the Romanian speaking side and the other from the Hungarian side. They met over here in the 1930's. My grandfather worked at US Steel in Trenton, NJ for most of his life. He always used to tell us stories about the several times he met Albert Einstein, who was teaching at Princeton University at the time. Einstein wanted some very specific types of steel for some experiments, to which my grandfather was put in charge of helping him with.
- My fathers family was a mix of Irish and English, many of whom had been in the US since before the American Revolution. My father's grandfather's brother was the NY Irish gangster "Wild" Bill Lovett, who was born in Ireland and immigrated to the US in 1914. "Wild" Bill had many run-in's with the Italian mobsters in NY, most famously, several associates of Al Capones', including Frankie Yale. (before Capone moved to Chicago) "Wild" Bill was murdered in 1923 in Brooklyn by either other Irish mobsters or by one of the NY Italian mafia families.
- I was raised Catholic and was an alter boy for St. Patrick's church in Fredericksburg, Virginia for 4 years. The US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, has a son who is a priest and is currently one of the Father's serving at St. Patrick's church. To this day, I can still recite the Apostles' Creed.
- Although I was born in New Jersey, I have lived in rural Virginia since I was 6 months old. I used to hunt and fish a lot growing up. I was even a member of the NRA about 15 years ago, though I'm not anymore. I do still own several firearms, but now only target shoot when I get the chance.
- I started swimming competitively at the age of 12, and at the age of 16 was ranked in the top 20 in the nation for 100M backstroke. I got very bored of swimming, given the grueling twice a day workouts. At age 17 I turned down scholarship offers from three Universities because I didn't want to swim anymore. I used to compete against another local swimmer, Jeff Rouse, who went on to win several Olympic medals, including a silver in 1992 and a gold in 1996. He also held the world record for 9 years in the 100M backstroke.
I'm sure there is more, but I can't remember them right now.
