Professor Steven Calabresi argues that the Democrats have already won the battle to keep conservative women, minorities, and Catholics off the Supreme Court by their use of the filibuster against Bush Appellate nominees. Miguel Estrada has withdrawn himself from consideration. Janice Rogers Brown, Bill Pryor, Priscilla Owen and Carolyn Kuhl have yet to be confirmed, though Pryor sits on the bench through a recess appointment. He presumes that the failure of the Senate to confirm these judges is grounds for keeping them off the Supreme Court, noting that only older white men are mentioned as possible nominees in the event of a Supreme Court resignation or death. I disagree with Calabresi, but let me come back to that later.
This has happened, of course, due to the desire of Democrats to avoid the appointment of a certain kind of justice to the Supreme Court.
When George W. Bush became president in 2001, the legal left and the Democratic Party rallied around the slogan "No more Clarence Thomases." By that they meant that they would not allow any more conservative African Americans, Hispanics, women, or Catholics to be groomed for nomination to the High Court with court of appeals appointments. The Democrats have done such a good job of this that, today, the only names being floated as serious Supreme Court nominees are those of white men.This is what is at stake in the fight that rages now over whether the filibuster of judges gets abolished. Leading Democratic activists like Bruce Ackerman have called on Senate Democrats never to allow another Antonin Scalia or Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court. If they succeed in establishing the proposition that it takes 60 instead of 51 votes to get on the Supreme Court, conservatives can forget about ever again appointing a Scalia or a Thomas.
On this point, I agree. Compromise with the Democrats, never a good idea when we are dealing with principle or constitutional matters, is impossible on this point. Senate Republicans need to choke the life out of the filibuster of judicial nominees now, for that tactic will surely be used this summer when Chief Justice Rehnquist (presumably) will resign due to ill health. The nation's highest court, the only one actually established by the Constitution, must not be allowed to continue to be a tool of the political minority.
More to the point, the Democrats must not be allowed to post a metaphorical "No Conservative Minorities Allowed" sign on the bench of our nation's highest court.
Why are Senate Democrats so afraid of conservative judicial nominees who are African Americans, Hispanics, Catholics, and women? Because these Clarence Thomas nominees threaten to split the Democratic base by aligning conservative Republicans with conservative voices in the minority community and appealing to suburban women. The Democrats need Bush to nominate conservatives to the Supreme Court whom they can caricature and vilify, and it is much harder for them to do that if Bush nominates the judicial equivalent of a Condi Rice rather than a John Ashcroft.Conservative African-American, Hispanic, Catholic, and female judicial candidates also drive the left-wing legal groups crazy because they expose those groups as not really speaking for minorities or women. They thus undermine the moral legitimacy of those groups and drive a wedge between the left-wing leadership of those groups and the members they falsely claim to represent.
These are mainstream jurists with mainstream political philosophies. Most have been handily reelected to judicial office by the voters of their states, or confirmed handily for District Court seats by the Senate. There is no reason for them not to be confirmed. But what Senate Democrats do not realize is that they may be creating their own worst nightmare. I hope President Bush simply bumps one of these nominees up to the Supreme Court.
Some of you may ask how that could happen. After all, they don't have Circuit Court experience. My response is that the lack of such experience is irrelevant and unnecessary.
Sandra Day O'Connor was a state judge in Arizona at the time of her nomination. William Brennan was a state Supreme Court justice in New Jersey. William Rehnquist was an assistant attorney general. Earl Warren was governor of California. Hugo Black was a US Senator from Alabama. I could name others as well, but I think you see the point. Experience on the federal bench is not now and never has been a requirement to be nominated to the Supreme Court -- and each of those I mention is considered to be a great or near great justice.
Now here is where I disagree with Calabresi. I do not think that some of these potential Supreme Court nominees need be taken out of consideration. Justice Janice Rogers Brown and Justice Priscilla Owens have current background checks, have had hearings and Judiciary Committee votes in recent weeks. There is no need to reinvent the wheel with either of them. George W. Bush could take a stand and make the nomination to the Supreme Court and justify it with the state Supreme Court experience and the complete record that has been compiled for the current confirmation battle. Hearings could be abbreviated (after all, what more is there to bring out?), and the new justice seated quickly. That would be the ideal moment for the nuclear option to be used.
For that matter, the president could let it be known privately that the nominee had better be approved quickly, lest his replacement nominee be even less palatable and more bulletproof. Who might the nominee be? Either Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, whose criticism of Owens while he was a Texas Supreme Court justice is used as an excuse to hold up her nomination and who was recently confirmed; or Senator John Cornyn, who like Gonzalez is also a former justice of the Texas Supreme Court and whose status as a Senator would make him difficult for Senate Democrats to reject. Rather than allow either of the alternatives to be put forward, Democrats would likely fold their hand and give in.
(Hat Tip -- Southern Appeal)
Principal John Brucato of Milford High School in Milford, Massachusetts, sees the issue as a very clear one. The shirts that a few students wore to school on Tuesday were inapporpiate, and had to go.
"It's analogous to somebody wearing a slogan T-shirt that's an advertisement for drugs or alcohol -- that's against our philosophy," he said.
What were the horrendous words on the shirts? Why, they were pro-life messages. They said that "Abortion Kills" and "Abortion Is Homicide".
In Brucato's defense, he was merely upholding a school policy that reads as follows.
The Milford High School Student Handbook states, "Individual attire that is disruptive to the educational process or causes distraction to others will not be tolerated. Inappropriate dress will be defined as any clothing/accessory that disrupts the regular learning process and leads to distraction or is offensive, vulgar or provocative to other students, faculty, staff or administration."It also details the banned items as, "clothing which displays tobacco or alcohol advertising, profanity, racial slurs, disruptive images or words, drug or gang related symbols" and "offensive images or words that would be considered socially, culturally or ethically inappropriate and disrupt the educational process."
Unfortunately, that would appear to conflict with the following two policies. There is this one.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
It is generally known as the First Amendment, and it was extended to cover state actors, including school districts, by the Fourteenth Amendment, as is noted in Tinker v. Des Moines.
The other may be found here in the Massachusetts Constitution.
Article XVI. Liberty of the Press; Freedom of Speech. - The liberty of the press is essential to the security of freedom in a state: it ought not, therefore, to be restained in this commonwealth. The right of free speech shall not be abridged.
That amendment is further amplified in Pyle v. School Committee of South Hadley
The principal, though, claims that the message on the shirts worn by a couple of high school girls caused a disruption. His evidence?
Principal John Brucato said about three or four students brought the shirts to the attention of Assistant Principal Kevin Maines."They were very upset that these slogan T-shirts were being displayed by kids," Brucato said. "One was upset enough to have left school and maybe a couple of others visited the adjustment counselor."
Brucato said it is his job to protect all students and he does not believe anyone's rights were violated.
"Everybody has a right to self-expression, however the law states very clearly that school buildings are limited open forums for self-expression," Brucato said. "The reason the law states that is because it grants school authorities the ability to protect everybody as a whole."
So, Principal Brucato, the fact that you have three or four kids who don't like the message is enough to shut that message down? It strikes me that the problem is the failure of your school to teach the principles contained in the First amendment and Article XVI. After all, these students should know that the right the mere fact that they are offended or upset is not a basis for the government to prohibit speech. Heck, I'm rather concerned that you are unaware of the controlling legal principles here.
So tell me, sir, objectively, what was wrong with these shirts? Not the subjective issue of "someone got upset and complained," but an actual objective standard that applies so that these students would have known that the shirts were a violation of the policy. Your own words indicate that there isn't one.
Under your explanation, a couple of Yankees fans could come to you sniffling and weeping and you would have to ban Red Sox jerseys and t-shirts from your school. All they have to do is claim to be distraught and offended. I'm sure your Muslim students will be glad to know that they can ban any Christian expression in school in precisely the same manner. And of course, you have now given the students on your campus who oppose homosexuality the tool they need to shut down any pro-homosexual propagandizing by their classmates -- they just need to burst out in tears and beg to see the "adjustment counselor." After all,such messages would have caused a disruption of similar size and nature, and you are supposed to "protect everybody as a whole."
And that is what you said in explaining why you don't believe this is a free speech case.
"These young ladies have the right to express their views and opinions -- they have not been denied those rights," he said. "What we said simply was this type of advertisement is offensive to others in the community. I've been consistent. If even one or two individuals finds something offensive I'm going to ask that individual to remove it. I'm exercising my authority and judgment as a school administrator to administrate to the population as a whole."
Principal Brucato, you had better be damned even-handed in the future, because you have set the standard here -- having knowledge of one or two individuals complaining now REQUIRES that you apply EXACTLY THE SAME STANDARD in every case. You are no longer the principal of Milford High School -- you are the Supreme Censor. Enjoy your new role.
My closing comment is this -- I admire the young ladies in question, and think they behaved appropriately in this case. While I would have liked to have read that Amanda Chattman, Autumn Gerami and their classmates had told Supreme Censor Brucato to take a flying leap, I understand their reluctance to do so. The article does not make clear what disciplinary threat Brucato bullied them with to get them to forego the liberties guaranteed them under not merely one, but two separate constitutions, so I cannot judge if they surrendered their freedom too cheaply. I just hope that they do pursue the litigation that is clearly warranted, and that in the mean time they hold Brucato's feet to the fire by monitoring what other messages are allowed and by making complaints regarding ANY they find offensive (and maybe even a few they really don't, just to make the point). Good luck, girls!
Not long ago, The UK's Association of University Teachers decided to boycott two Israeli Universityies and examine the possibility of expanding that boycott to cover all Israeli schools. There has been an uproar since then, and now it appears that the boycott will never go into effect. Why not? Because of a grassroots rebellion by union members, some of whom have resigned while others are circulating a demand for an emergency meeting to repeal the ban.
The first academics to resign from the AUT, Shalom Lappin and Jonathan Ginzburg, have circulated an open letter calling on members to join them in breaking away from the union."For the past several years an ugly campaign of anti-Jewish provocation has been building on the margins of the Israel hate-fest that the boycott supporters have been promoting on campuses throughout the UK," they said in the letter.
"There comes a time when an organization discredits itself to the point that it can no longer be taken to stand for the values that it purports to represent. When this point is reached, one has no alternative but to disassociate oneself from it."
It seems that, contary to the expectation of the union's anti-Zionist/anti-Semitic leadership (more on that later on) , Jewish professors and supporters of israel would not stand by silently while the union supported terrorists who advocate a new Holocaust.
The condemnation has not just come from within Great britain, but has also been heard from around the globe.
A letter from the New York Academy of Sciences told the AUT that its resolution, "by selecting individuals and universities for boycott, is a very clear reminder of 'McCarthy-like' tactics of accusation."The letter concluded: "We call upon the AUT to take immediate steps to rescind their regressive vote and join forward-looking academics the world over in voting for cooperation and not boycott."
In the mean time, the repeal movement has already gained significant headway.
Chris Fox, lecturer in Computer Science at Essex University, told The Jerusalem Post that the 25 signatures by AUT local association members required to submit a motion calling for the repeal of the boycott resolutions were being collected.
The motion would be heard in an emergency national meeting. Fox said that if the executive failed to call such a meeting, the AUT could expect further resignations.
"I will be resigning in the next few days if the national executive of the union fails to indicate an intention to act directly to reconsider or rescind the boycott," said Fox....
One Oxford "Oaths of political loyalty do not belong to academia. They belong to illiberal minds and repressive regimes," wrote Ottolenghi. "Based on this, the AUT's definition of academic freedom is the freedom to agree with its views only. Given the circumstances, I wish to express in no uncertain terms my unconditional and undivided solidarity with both universities and their faculties. "I know many people, both at Haifa University and at Bar Ilan University, of different political persuasion and from different walks of life. The diversity of those faculties reflects the authentic spirit of academia. The AUT invitation to boycott them betrays that spirit because it advocates a uniformity of views, under pain of boycott." "In solidarity with my colleagues and as a symbolic gesture to defend the spirit of a free academia, I wish to be added to the boycott blacklist. Please include me. I hope that other colleagues of all political persuasions will join me," Ottolenghi conclude.Dr. Emanuele Ottolenghi, of the Middle East Center at St. Anthony's College at Oxford University, has written to AUT general-secretary Sally Hunt requesting to be included in the boycott.
Now some of you may argue that anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism. That argument has always been a weak one, but one British author and columnist makes it clear that, especially in this case, they are one and the same.
Author and columnist Howard Jacobson said that the boycotts underlined the fact that "Anti-Zionism is, after all, anti-Semitism."Referring to Sue Blackwell, the Birmingham University lecturer who tabled the boycott motions, Jacobson said that "For Blackwell, the argument of history is only circular anyway. It is no defense of Israel that it has had to fight against being driven into the sea, because the sea, in her view, is where it belongs."
Howard also said that Blackwell's "feverishly pro-Palestinian Web site is under investigation by a Common's Committee [for] possible links with a site blaming Jews for 9/11." Blackwell later said that her Web site had included the link "inadvertently."
Blackwell has posted a triumphant message on her Web site, entitled: "Victory to the academic intifada!" Underneath a photograph of herself wearing a dress made from the Palestinian flag, and flashing a victory sign, the lecturer told readers: Yes folks, we won.
"Anti-Zionism, now, is anti-Semitic," said Jacobson, "because by the actions of its members, the Association of University Teachers has made it so."
So, what we have here is a group of terrorist supporters who have hijacked a union and politicized it in favor of their political goals. In this case, it is acting in support of those who murder Jews for being Jews, and who wish the six million Jews of israel to join the six million Jews of Europe slaughtered by Hitler. Fortunately their anti-Semitism has not spread so far into academia that there is no opposition.
And when they are through dealing with the jew-haters in their midst (indeed, among their leaders), maybe the membrship of the Association of University teachers will consider the issue of whether that corrupt organization needs to exist at all.
Here is a little something for my fellow history geeks!
Egyptian archaeologists have discovered a number of rare Pharaonic seals of soldiers sent out on desert missions in search of red paint to decorate the pyramids, Egypt's culture minister said Thursday.The 26 matchbox-sized seals belonged to Cheops, who ruled from 2551 to 2528 BC, in whose honour the greatest of the great pyramids of Giza southwest of Cairo was built, and show Pharaonic soldiers' ranks, the MENA news agency quoted Faruq Hosni as saying.
"These seals were used by a mission sent by Cheops to collect ferric oxide, which is necessary to make red paint," said Zahi Hawwas, secretary general of the Higher Council of Antiquities.
Over 50 pottery fragments bearing imprints from the clay and stone seals were found nearby in the region of the Giza pyramids.
"Artisans at the time needed ferric oxide to decorate the pyramids as well as (other) material and funerary installations of the IVth dynasty," to which Cheops belonged, said Hawwas.
"The seals proved the official nature of the missions sent to desert regions," he added.
"The mission was made up of 400 men and a group of people whose job it was to cook during the journey," according to inscriptions on the pottery pieces.
"Archaeologists also found a number of leather bags containing ferric oxide brought back by the mission," he said.
I will never cease to be amazed that, four and a half millenia after the fact,we are still finding the discarded refuse of the ancients and using it to learn about their lives and activities.
Once again, the GOP has tried to accomodate the obstructionism of the Democrats in the Senate. Bill Frist offered 100 hours of debate on each nominee to the Courts of Appeals, followed by an up or down vote on the nomination. The Democrats, of course, reject any solution that allows the will of the majority of Americans to be carried out.
Reid characterized the Frist offer in an interesting manner.
[T]he Senate's top Democrat immediately expressed doubt about the proposal, calling it "a big wet kiss to the far right."
I suppose that we could therefore characterize the Democratic obstruction of the majority rule as the extended fellatio of the extreme left.
Senate Republicans must do something. Either invoke the nuclear option or insist that the Democrats engage in a real filibuster by speaking 24/7, resulting in the shut-down of all Senate business.
Just when it appeared that the Red Chinese might be ever so slightly softening their line towards Vatican involvement in Chinese Catholic affairs, they turn around and make a move like this.
Seven priests of the underground Catholic Church were arrested in China's Heibei province on Wednesday, April 27, the Cardinal Kung Foundation reports.The priests had been attending a spiritual retreat led by Bishop Jia Zhiguo of the Zhending diocese-- who had been under 24-hour surveillance by police for most of the past month. Bishop Jia had reportedly been warned by Chinese officials that he should not schedule any religious activities.
The tight surveillance of Bishop Jia had begun when the death of Pope John Paul II appeared imminent, and continued through the election of Pope Benedict XVI. The Chinese government has established a history of crackdowns on the underground Church at times when religious sentiments are high-- such as Easter and Christmas-- as well as the time of major national holidays and Communist Party meetings.
The article does not indicate what has happened to Bishop Jia. Based upon this report, I presume he is still at liberty, though under observation by Chinese Security forces.
This action shows that the status quo is unchanged in China, despite official condolences offered by Beijing on the death of Pope John Paul II and congratulations to Pope Benedict XVI. Chinese Christians who refuse to be worship under the auspices of the official churches controlled by the Communist government will remain the subjects of persecution and martyrdom for the forseeable future. The international community will, of course, continue to ignore thse human rights violations, and China will continue to serve as a member of the UN Human Rights Commission.
UPDATE: If you want to see the degree to which Chinese Catholics are persecuted, follow this link. The shear number of priests and bishops prevented from exercising their ministry to their flocks is shocking.
I’m a big defender of free speech, including speech that I profoundly disagree with. That said, I think these folks have crossed the line. Look at this skit from Err America’s Randi Rhodes Show, as reported by Drudge.
The announcer: "A spoiled child is telling us our Social Security isn't safe anymore, so he is going to fix it for us. Well, here's your answer, you ungrateful whelp: [audio sound of 4 gunshots being fired.] Just try it, you little bastard. [audio of gun being cocked]."
This isn’t the first time Rhodes has advocated the murder of George W. Bush. Last year, according to Michelle Malkin, Rhodes did this little number last May.
Comparing Bush and his family to the Corleones of "Godfather" fame, Air America host Randi Rhodes reportedly unleashed this zinger during her Monday night broadcast: "Like Fredo, somebody ought to take him out fishing and phuw. "Rhodes then imitated the sound of a gunshot.
In "Godfather II," Fredo Corleone is executed by brother Michael at the end of the film.
Buh-bye, bitch – we’ll see you in 10-20 years. Such statements about killing the president are a crime.
UPDATE: It seems this is a serious story on which Drudge got the scoop. Even the folks from Err America are investigating Randi.
I’ve written about the plight of Chinese Christians who refuse to join the state controlled churches. They are subject to arrest, torture, and other forms of abuse for exercising the freedom to believe and to worship as they choose. One would think such persecution would be of interest to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. Sadly, though, it is not.
Not only is it not of interest to that organization, but one of its members, China, recently forced the suppression of testimony about the atrocities it commits against Christians. On April 5, Bob Fu of the China Aid Association, appeared before the group to testify about the case of Cai Zhuohua, a pastor imprisoned for printing Bibles without government permission. Fu noted the use of various instruments of torture, in Chinese prisons. This brought a most disturbing result.
One of the Chinese police's favorite torture devices — and one that has probably been used repeatedly on Cai Zhuohua — is a kind of electric baton. Bob Fu owns such a baton, smuggled out of a Chinese prison. He took it to Geneva after obtaining permission from the secretary of the UNCHR to conduct a demonstration of it during his testimony. This demonstration consisted of Fu's holding it in the air over his head and turning it on for six seconds.Predictably, the Chinese delegation went berserk, its members claiming that the demonstration made them feel threatened. (One is left to wonder how they would feel if the baton were actually used against them.) They then demanded that Fu be booted from the proceedings. The commission's chairman, obliging chap that he is, agreed. Fu was escorted from the building and stripped of his U.N. badge. His baton was also seized, and has not been returned.
So, it is more serious to offend the government of a repressive dictatorship than it is for that state to engage in the torture of citizens exercising their human rights. How interesting. How pathetic. And they wonder why so many of us do not recognize the legitimacy of the UN any longer.
Some folks want a big church wedding. Others would prefer something more low key, such as getting married by a judge at the County Building. But it appears that there is even a “no frills” way of getting married that eliminates all the ceremony – a wedding at which neither party has to appear. Believe it or not, you can do that in the state of Montana – even if both of you are not physically in the state. Believe it or not, it is legal, and can be done for under $1000.
Who gets married this way? Here's one typical couple.
First Lt. Derek Ping couldn’t wait to marry his fiancee. So he got hitched from 7,000 miles away, without even saying “I do.”“When she told me we could get married without either of us being there, I thought it was pretty weird,” the 25-year-old soldier admitted. “Now that we did it — well, it’s still weird. But I’m glad we did it.”
The couple’s double-proxy marriage — a legal ceremony requiring neither party to be present — is among about 30 weddings organized by S&B Inc, nearly all military.
While several states allow a stand-in to say the vows for one spouse, the completely absentee nuptials are an option only in Montana; the union is recognized by all 50 states and the U.S. military.
The Pings, who live in Waco, Texas, had to fill out several identification forms and submit notarized statements of their sworn love before they received a marriage certificate in the mail. But for the couple, it was the only way to tie the knot while he was deployed in Iraq.
Soldiers are realizing that if they don’t make it home, the woman they promised to marry later will have no access to benefits if he dies. So rather than waiting, there is a way for the couples to get married now. It may not be romantic, but it is practical. Most couples apparently have a church wedding latter.
At the University of California – San Francisco, it will be "Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day" on Thursday, with the program sponsored by the Center For Gender Equity. Unfortunately, the term “Gender Equity” has quite an Orwellian meaning. All you have to do is look at the scheduled program to understand that the program is being run in a manner that can only be described as “separate and unequal.”
For example, the 9- and 10-year-old daughters are being invited to participate in 17 hands-on activities such as working with microscopes, slicing brains, doing skull comparisons, seeing what goes on in the operating room, playing surgeon, dentist or nurse for a day, and visiting the intensive care unit nursery, where they can set up blood pressure cuffs and operate the monitors. They can learn about earthquake and disaster preparedness, how to use a fire extinguisher, how to operate several types of equipment -- even fire a laser.And what do the boys get to do?
Learn about "gender equity in fun, creative ways using media, role playing and group games" -- after which, the boys can get a bit of time in with a microscope or learn how the heart works.
Yeah, you’ve got it – the girls get to experience all the neat things the University has to offer, while the boys get political indoctrination in Double-Plus-Good feminist thought. The Center’s director defends the two-track program this way.
Longtime center director Amy Levine, however, tells us the program isn't intended to give boys and girls the same learning opportunities -- nor, she says, is it a career day."It's about dealing with effects of sexism on both boys and girls and how it can damage them," she said.
Hence, while the boys undergo gender sensitivity training, the girls focus on their capabilities -- be it handling a scalpel or microscope.
Well, at least they are not claiming that the programs are equal – but I am a little bit scared that Ms. Levine is so proud of fostering discrimination at a public university using public dollars. What led to the decision to set up the two tracks?
UCSF tried mixing the boys with the girls a few years back, but Levine says it just didn't work out."It mirrored the same sexism that occurs in the classroom daily," she said, "where boys raise their hands more often, demand more attention and have discipline problems."
So now the boys have their own gender sensitivity program, where "they learn about violence prevention and how to be allies to the girls and women in their lives," Levine said.
So because boys acted like boys and girls acted like girls, there needs to be a separate program to emasculate the males and turn them into pathetic little Alan Aldas and Al Frankens. I hope that parents at UCSF have the courage to just say no to this pathetic attempt at social engineering, and that UCSF either mends it or ends it by the time next year rolls around.
We got new textbooks at school last year. As I began to flip through them, I noticed that they used the traditional B.C./A.D. dating convention rather than the newer B.C.E./C.E. convention that has become more popular in recent years. Personally, I don’t have a problem with using either system, but it seems that folks on both sides of the debate are somewhat more worked up over it.
In certain precincts of a world encouraged to embrace differences, Christ is out.The terms "B.C." and "A.D." increasingly are shunned by certain scholars.
Educators and historians say schools from North America to Australia have been changing the terms "Before Christ," or B.C., to "Before Common Era," or B.C.E., and "anno Domini" (Latin for "in the year of the Lord") to "Common Era." In short, they're referred to as B.C.E. and C.E.
The life of Christ still divides the epochs, but the change has stoked the ire of Christians and religious leaders who see it as an attack on a social and political order that has been in place for centuries.
For more than a century, Hebrew lessons have used B.C.E. and C.E., with C.E. sometimes referring to Christian Era.
This raises the question: Can old and new coexist in harmony, or must one give way to the other to reflect changing times and attitudes?
Now I don’t see why both sides cannot exist in harmony. The breaking point is still the same, and that is the life of Christ. But while I am generally accepting of the B.C.E./C.E., I was initially taught it as Before Christian Era and Christian Era. In my classes, I present both dating systems, and discuss the underlying reasons for using each. I also tell my students that they ultimately have to make a choice in what system to use, and that either one is acceptable – and then proceed to use B.C. and A.D myself for the rest of the year.
Now I am particularly shocked at this criticism that shows up in the article, indicating extreme ignorance or extreme bias.
Although most calendars are based on an epoch or person, B.C. and A.D. have always presented a particular problem for historians: There is no year zero; there's a 33-year gap, reflecting the life of Christ, dividing the epochs. Critics say that's additional reason to replace the Christian-based terms.
Hold on just one moment. There is no 33-year gap between the eras. The year 1 B.C. is followed by 1 A.D., marking the traditional year of the birth of Christ (who probably was born between 7 B.C. and 4 B.C.) – there are no years floating around in limbo, falling into neither category. And the lack of a Year 0 is a rather absurd idea as well. After all, when we start counting something, we do not begin by labeling the first one as zero. No, we count them out sequentially, beginning with the number one. The arguments the article makes are just plain stupid, and I cannot imagine any serious scholar offering them.
Now there is a legitimate argument to be made against using B.C. and A.D., and that is the fact that it makes every date into a statement about a religious figure who is rejected by about 75% of the people of the world – more, if one recognizes there are a lot of folks out there who call themselves Christian who have no particular faith in Christ. I certainly understand where making a religious profession every time one uses a calendar might trouble them.
"When Jews or Muslims have to put Christ in the middle of our calendar ... that's difficult for us," said Steven M. Brown, dean of the William Davidson Graduate School of Jewish Education at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City.
I accept that argument, which is why I’m not troubled by the usage of B.C.E. and C.E. as meaning Before Christian Era and Christian Era. It accurately acknowledges the reason for the reason for making a change in dating in the traditional Western calendar system, but avoids requiring anything that resembles a profession of faith. At the same time, it does not engage in religious cleansing, in that it acknowledges the historical centrality of Christianity in the Western world.
Not everyone agrees with me, though.
Candace de Russy, a national writer on education and Catholic issues and a trustee for the State University of New York, doesn't accept the notion of fence-straddling."The use of B.C.E. and C.E. is not mere verbal tweaking; rather it is integral to the leftist language police -- a concerted attack on the religious foundation of our social and political order," she said.
For centuries, B.C. and A.D. were used in public schools and universities, and in historical and most theological research. Some historians and college instructors started using the new forms as a less Christ-centric alternative.
"I think it's pretty common now," said Gary B. Nash, director of the National Center for History in the Schools. "Once you take a global approach, it makes sense not to make a dating system applicable only to a relative few."
Now I think de Russy overstates the case. The original use of the term in Hebrew schools was designed to be sensitive to both Christians and Jews, and I think that principle certainly extends beyond those two groups and into the world as a whole. But I think Nash carries the argument too far, given that the logical implication of his position is that we should develop a whole new calendar that begins with the year 1 B.W.S.S. (Because We Say So). And that ignores the fact that for some 15 centuries, dates in the West have been calculated according to the system set up by Dionysius Exiguus. It has become the de facto dating system of the world.
In the end, I find myself coming down on the same side as the Professional Association of Georgia Educators’ Tim Callahan.
"Is that some sort of the political correctness?" said Tim Callahan, of the Professional Association of Georgia Educators, an independent group with 60,000 educator members. "It sounds pretty silly to me."
The entire debate is rather silly. There are much greater issues for us to look at. In the end, any of the usages should be considered acceptable. This is a battle that does not need to be fought by either side, and from which all should disengage with an understanding that all three dating conventions will be tolerated. Anyone who cannot do that does not deserve to be taken seriously.
The liberal wing of the US Supreme Court upheld the right to keep and bear arms today, against the dissents of conservative judges who sided with the Bush administration in its attempt to restrict firearms ownership. And the entire case revolved around the question of whether or not a statute should be read literally.
In a 5-3 decision, the court ruled in favor of Gary Sherwood Small of Pennsylvania. The court reasoned that U.S. law, which prohibits felons who have been convicted in "any court" from owning guns, applies only to domestic crimes.Justice Stephen G. Breyer, writing for the majority, said interpreting the law broadly to apply to foreign convictions would be unfair to defendants because procedural protections are often less in international courts. If Congress intended foreign convictions to apply, they can rewrite the law to specifically say so, he said.
"We have no reason to believe that Congress considered the added enforcement advantages flowing from inclusion of foreign crimes, weighing them against, say, the potential unfairness of preventing those with inapt foreign convictions from possessing guns," Breyer wrote.
He was joined by Justices John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O'Connor, David H. Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
In a dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas argued that Congress intended for foreign convictions to apply. "Any" court literally means any court, he wrote.
"Read naturally, the word 'any' has an expansive meaning, that is, 'one or some indiscriminately of whatever kind,'" Thomas said.
He was joined by Justices Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy.
Small had answered "no" to the felony conviction question on a federal form when he bought a handgun in 1998, a few days after he was paroled from a Japanese prison for violating weapons laws in that country.
Small was indicted in 2000 for lying on the form and for illegally owning two pistols and 335 rounds of ammunition. He later entered a conditional guilty plea pending the outcome of this case.
The Bush administration had asked the court to apply the statute to foreign convictions.
It seems somewhat ironic here that the conservative reading of the statute brought the dissenting justices into support for one more liberal gun-grabbing scheme, and that the liberals supported gun ownership. After all, these folks would usually line up the other way on Second Amendment issues. However, Thomas has the matter right in noting that the plain language of the statute does not exclude foreign convictions. Breyer’s disregard for the plain meaning of the word “any” is one more example of the tendency of liberal judges to make the law say what they want it to say, not what it actually says.
On the other hand, I would have preferred that the entire statute be tossed as a violation of the right to keep and bear arms.
I’m not an Ann Coulter fan by any stretch of the imagination, but I feel I should comment on this story. It shows the hypocrisy of liberal academics when it comes to conservative speakers.
The Rev. Dennis Dease, President of Minnesota’s University of St. Thomas, condemned a speech by author and columnist Ann Coulter given last week at his school.
The president of the University of St. Thomas on Monday condemned a speech at the Catholic school last week by conservative author Ann Coulter, saying "such hateful speech vulgarizes our culture and goes against everything the University of St. Thomas stands for."The Rev. Dennis Dease wrote in Bulletin Today, a university newsletter, that "although her presentation may have been meant as an 'act' or a 'shtick' to entertain by provoking those who disagree, such behavior unfortunately contributes to the growing dark side of our culture -- a disrespect for persons and their sincerely held beliefs."
Now I find Coulter a bit to vituperative for my taste, but you won’t find me condemning her speech at St. Thomas. After all, I wasn’t there, and haven’t seen a transcript.
That didn’t stop Dease. You see he didn’t attend the speech either, but has merely relied on second-hand accounts of the event. It’s sort of telling when an intellectual feels he can condemn the content and tone of a speech that he didn’t attend. Doesn’t THAT go against everything the University of St. Thomas stands for? Or does Rev. Dease think that “respect for persons and their sincerely held beliefs” doesn’t include giving them a fair hearing before condemning them for expressing those sincerely held beliefs? And would Dease have made the same sort of statement against Ward Churchill?
Robert Downey, Jr. had this unusual exchange with interviewer Lorraine Kelly on the UK show This Morning.
The former Hollywood bad boy had daytime viewers choking on their cornflakes when he made the remark on ITV1 show This Morning.Kelly, wearing an orange cardigan and black camisole which revealed a hint of cleavage, was hosting the show in place of Fern Britton.
She welcomed Downey Jr to the show by telling him: "You look fantastic, you look really well."The 40-year-old actor replied: "Thanks. I was going to say that your t*ts look great too!"
A clearly shocked Kelly, 45, said "Thank you, that's nice," as Downey Jr added: "Particularly today."
Kelly managed to say: "Oh good, well I'm glad I made you happy."
Gazing down at her cleavage and adjusting her top, she said: "I didn't realise they were so out."
Kelly's co-host Jeremy Kyle, on his first day as temporary replacement for Phillip Schofield, stepped in to change the subject by saying: "Let's move swiftly on."
An embarrassed Kelly agreed: "I think we should."
Could you imagine such an exchange with Katie Couric?
Some stories are just too good to ignore.
PIKESVILLE, Md. (AP) - A herd of buffalo somehow got loose and wandered around an upscale neighborhood Tuesday, disrupting traffic and alarming homeowners before officers managed to corral them in a tennis court.More than a dozen police cars and a police helicopter were used to herd the roughly 10 beasts, authorities said.
"Somehow they figured it out; I've got to give a lot of credit to the creativity of our officers," police spokesman Shawn Vinson said.
Authorities have identified the owner of the buffalo but did not release the person's name immediately.
Residents in the Baltimore suburb first reported that buffalo were meandering along the road about 7 a.m.
Police shut down several major traffic arteries, including a section of the Baltimore Beltway, while they tried to anticipate which way the buffalo would roam.
Officers eventually managed to maneuver the buffalo onto the tennis court about a mile from where they first were spotted.
No word on deer and antelope sightings.
When you are in a poetry class, you are supposed to write poetry. Or at least that is what Southern Connecticut State University graduate student Edward Bolles thought when he signed up for English 202, Introduction to Poetry. But he and the professor, Kelly Ritter, had differences of opinion over the liberal political themes of poems selected by Professor Riitter, and the two developed a dislike for one anotehr. That led to Bolles to write a satirical poem about a racist white professor, loosely based upon Ritter.
That is when the crap hit the fan.
Southern Connecticut State University barred a student from a poetry class after his professor said a poem he submitted contained veiled threats to sexually assault her and her 3-year-old daughter.The student, Edward Bolles, said his poem entitled "Professor White," was meant to be a satirical piece about globalization. In it, a Mexican student named Juan has a sexual encounter with the daughter of his white professor.
Bolles' professor, Kelly Ritter, found the poem "disturbing," according to an April 8 campus police report, and said she believed the poem was a threat. University officials prohibited Bolles, who is Mexican, from attending his poetry class while he was investigated.
Now there are some key differences between Bolles and Juan, and between Ritter and the poem's title character. The main one is that the daughter with whom Juan has a sexual encounter is a college student, not a three-year old, while Bolles was unaware that Ritter had a daughter at all.
Bolles said the poem's interracial affair symbolizes white America's feeling that Mexicans are corrupting their culture. The encounter is not violent, and the professor's daughter brings Juan home to meet her disapproving mother."I came in using a different set of reasoning as context to look at the craft of poetry, and she was put off by it," Bolles said.
The poem ends with the professor trying to get Juan kicked out of school by calling one of his poems racist.
Ritter, claiming that the poem was a threat of sexual assault against bothe her and her daughter, filed a police report and demanded Bolles be removed from her class. Not only that, but she demanded that the student be required to submit to a psychiatric evaluation. Presumably the results of that evaluation, had it been required, would have been the basis for seeking Bolles expulsion from the college.
Bolles, though, fought back. After being put out of his class, he began a protest around campus. It got the results he wanted, probably because of the embarassing publicity that his actons generated.
Bolles began publicly protesting the university's decision Monday, wearing a "Save Professor White" shirt and handing out fliers on campus. After that protest began and university officials received calls from The Associated Press Monday, Bolles received a hand-delivered, one-sentence letter from the administration:"As a result of the investigation, I wish to inform you that no formal disciplinary charges will be filed on behalf of the university and you are permitted to return to your English 202, Section 1, course, Introduction to Poetry," Christopher Piscitelli, director of judicial affairs, wrote.
Bolles remains concerned about his return to the class. He declines to offer Ritter any apology, nor do I believe he should. Of greater concern is how he will be received by classmates following the two week absence from the class and Ritter's possible comments on it. He is also concerned about having fallen behind due to Ritter's persecution of a student she didn't like or agree with, amd whether or not he will be given a fair chance to recover from his forced exile.
And as an outside observer, I have to wonder what action will be taken against Professor Ritter for her unjust and unfounded actions against Edward Bolles.
The California Legislature is seeking to overturn the will of the people of California by considering Assembly Bill 19, “The Religious Freedom and Civil Marriage Protection Act,” would amend the California Family Code to make marriage a gender neutral proposition in the state. This would, of course, make homosexual marriage legal and recognized in the state of California.
Unfortunately, this would also overturn Proposition 22, passed by the voters in 2000. It reads as follows.
"Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California."
Now I may be a bit slow, but that seems pretty clear to me. Marriage, according to the California voters, is one man and one woman. It isn’t two guys, two girls, or any other combination. The voters have spoken, approving Prop 22 with a 62% majority, and under the California Constitution the legislature cannot overrule that decision. But the supporters of homosexual marriage are still hell-bent on trying to validate and recognize something other than marriage between a man and a woman -- even if it means violating laws, constitutions, and the will of the people to get it.
I recently commented on the refusal of New York City law enforcement officials to file hate crime charges in a racially motivated attack where the perpetrators were black and the victims were white. Well, someone higher up on the food chain finally listened to the outrage of New Yorkers and other Americans, and have upgraded the charges.
City lawyers overruled the Police Department and charged a band of Brooklyn toughs with a hate crime for allegedly shouting, "Black power!" as they beat up a group of girls in Marine Park, The Post has learned.In a case that roiled racial tensions in Brooklyn — and became a rallying point on white-supremacy Web sites — locals are now second-guessing law enforcement.
Cops locked up five of the alleged attackers — all juveniles — but did not charge them with a bias crime.
The city's Corporation Counsel Office, which prosecutes cases in Family Court, raised the charges against the assailants.
Sources said the initial report did not include the comments allegedly made by the suspects. "It should have been a hate crime from day one," fumed one parent.
The article makes it clear that this was no simple fight in the park, but rather a premeditated action in which the original aggressors repeatedly set out to get more help to make sure they significantly outnumbered the six victims.
As you may or may not already be aware, members of the Watcher's Council hold a vote every week on what they consider to be the most link-worthy pieces of writing around... per the Watcher's instructions, I am submitting one of my own posts for consideration in the upcoming nominations process.
Here is the most recent winning council post, here is the most recent winning non-council post, here is the list of results for the latest vote, and here is the initial posting of all the nominees that were voted on.
Also, there is a spot open on the Watcher's Council -- see this link for details.
I don't like the smutty novels that Father Andrew Greeley writes -- not so much because they are unbecoming of a priest, but more because they are not that good. I've been amused by his tentative efforts at science fiction, and more impressed by his scholarly works in sociology. As a teen, i was especially entranced by his study of American anti-Catholicism, and wish he would write more on the subject. He was the seminary classmate of one of my former pastors, and he cancelled speaking engagements some years ago to fly to be with some of my family's old neighbors and say the funeral mass for their teenage son when he was killed in a fall while rock-climbing. In short, I think he is a good man, even if I don't agree with him in a lot of areas. However today he writes a newspaper column that, in my mind, hits the nail squarely on the head.
Greeley begins by noting that young people seem quite entranced by the newly elected Pope Benedict XVI. How strange, he notes, that there is this "rock star" style enthusiasm for an old theology professor who espouses views that so many of these young people reject. Did John Paul II somehow endow future popes with this sort of charisma, an aura, that draws the young?
That possibility raises the question of whether the pope, almost by definition, enjoys an entirely new charisma -- an immediate appeal to young people. A second question follows on this day of Be Ne De To's installation as pope: Given the inexperience and shallowness of the young, how much is this charisma worth?I submit that it is a license for a pope to teach and not an automatic guarantee of any other long-term religious impact. One heard often in Rome before the conclave that the new pope should be able to communicate with young people like the late pope. Yet, in truth, the religious attitudes and behavior of young people in every country where there has been a World Youth Day have not changed -- nor, for that matter, have the attitudes and behavior of adults changed in any of the countries John Paul visited. As collective religious rituals, these events were dramatic. They were a celebration of Catholic faith and Catholic heritage -- and as such eminently effective. But they didn't change much in ordinary human life.
My three pretty young Italian cheerleaders, unless they were different from typical Italian young women, would eventually sleep with their boyfriends before marriage and use birth control after marriage. They would see no contradiction between such behavior and enthusiasm for Benedict XVI. Does it follow that the new pope should try to teach as well as celebrate religious faith when he attends the next World Youth Day in Cologne?
An excellent question indeed, especially in a world faced with rising Islamist extremism and lukewarm Christianity that has too often surrendered to valueless secularism. What can Benedict XVI say to the assembled young people at this year's World Youth Day in Cologne (including some of my own students, traveling with a parish youth group led by one of my colleagues)? Greeley has an excellent suggestion -- start with the basics.
If he should tell them that they should reform their sexual lives, they will simply laugh. Far better that he listen to them talk about their religious faith and urge them to be patient and forgiving in all of their relationships and generous in helping others. Let sex wait for the next time or the time after. The re-evangelization of Europe cannot be done all at once. This is what I mean when I say that youthful admiration for the pope gives a license to teach -- wisely, cautiously and slowly, as any good teacher would.
Greeley is correct. Start with the basics of Christianity, and build from there. Begin with the fundamentals and build up from there. Just as one does not whip out The Summa of St. Thomas Aquinas and make it the starting point of catechesis and evangelization, one cannot begin with the nuanced and beautiful Catholic teachings on human sexuality without laying the basics. Too often since Vatican II, those basics have not been effectively taught, whether through neglect, rejection, or confusion, and have been drowned out by what then Cardinal Ratzinger called a "dictatorship of relativism" only a week ago. The Christian nature of Western society has been eroded over the course of decades, and there is no way that this pope will live to repair the damage. But the job is his to start, using the special affection this generation appears to have for the successor of St. Peter as a tool for evangelization. By beginning with the fundamentals of the faith, Benedict XVI may begin a revival of the Christian West that matches the fervor and explosive growth of Catholicism (and Christianity in general) in other parts of the world.
One of the bad things about defending the First Amendment is that it sometimes means defending the right of someone to say something you find offensive. That is especially true when PC types attempt to shut down "insensitive" speech, or when someone tries to be "humourous" about a topic which is not, in the least, funny. One such current case involves the newspaper of the University of Nevada -- Las Vegas, The Rebel Yell.
That which passes for humor these days is often nothing more than profanity-laced crudity attempting to evoke uncomfortable titters through shock. However, the same shtick that can fetch a living wage on the comedy club circuit can draw the wrath of the politically correct crew on campus. AdvertisementThat was the scene a little more than a week ago at UNLV during a meeting of the advisory board of the campus newspaper, The Rebel Yell. About 40 students and faculty showed up to protest a column called "Ask Jubert."
Jubert is an amalgam of the names of the paper's editor and managing editor, Justin Chomintra and Hubert Hensen, respectively. The column, two-thirds of which is penned by Hensen, is meant to be a satirical send-up of advice-to-the-lovelorn columns, only written from the perspective of a doltish, misogynistic, rage-prone bully.
Until March the column reportedly had been met approvingly or indifferently. But then the March 7 "Ask Jubert" offered advice on how to "get back at an ex," by recommending -- tongue firmly in cheek and ripping off dialogue from the movie "Anchorman" -- that "the best way to seize revenge is with sudden, blinding violence. Punch the filthy pirate whore in her mouth. Show her exactly how you feel about her. The harder the punch, the more she'll realize how much you care."
Though it carried a disclaimer at the bottom saying, "The Rebel Yell does not condone any form of violence, especially domestic violence, nor cruelty against animals. (The column also contained advice on stringing up the ex's poodle.) 'Ask Jubert' is meant to be humorous and should not be taken seriously," it was taken quite seriously.
Now let's say this very clearly -- the piece is crude and offensive. I don't see why anyone would find it in the least bit funny. I don't understand why the young men in question would even think it was appropriate to publish something like that -- even if it is meant to be a satire on advice columns. That said, I also recognize that the First Amendment applies to it, and that those who wrote the column should not be in any way disciplined for their sophomoric attempt at humor.
Needless to say, there was a huge turnout at the next meeting of the paper's advisory board, demanding censorship of the paper and punishment of the offenders. Several law students had the audacity to demand that the paper be censored (did they sleep through their Constitutional Law class?) and that there be a ban on "hate speech" in The Rebel Yell (I'll bet they only wanted to ban hate speech against "protected classes", not whites, heterosexuals, males, or Christians). Fortunately, the board held the line and refused to impose such measures.
One professor, the head of the Women's Studies Department (raise your hand if you weren't surprised) joined in the call for censorship.
Several people found it a bit ironic that the chair of UNLV's Women's Studies Department, Lois Rita Helmbold, offered a jesting aside about refraining from using her martial arts skills on Hensen.Helmbold conceded she made a joke but declined to elaborate. She described the advocacy of domestic violence as irresponsible journalism and not funny.
The professor also pointed out that student fees pay for operations of the campus newspaper, unlike other newspapers which people may choose to purchase or not. I thought that was a pretty good point and drew an analogy to taxpayers objecting to their money being used to sponsor "art" that consisted of a crucifix in a jar of urine. For some reason she didn't agree.
I love it when a liberal hypocrite doesn't commits the exact same act that she demands others be punished for, and refuses to concede that the principle of censorship that she supports could logically be extended to censor her point of view. After all, I imagine Professor Helmbold arguing, men are oppressors by nature, so they deserve to be beaten as an act of female liberation; and the patriarchal Christians are racistsexisthomophobes whose beliefs and symbols merit no respect.
In the end, the advisory board did not impose any sanctions or restraints on The rebel Yell. It did turn down Hubert henson's application to be the editor of next year's paper, but that decision appears to have been made on the merits of another candidate, not the controversy over teh column that caused such excitement. he plans on leaving the staff, and devoting himself to completing his degree in physics.
Advisory Board member Steve Sebelius, editor of the weekly CityLife newspaper and a former political columnist with the Las Vegas Review-Journal, makes this observation about those who turned out in favor of censorship and against freedom of the press and freedom of speech.
"If these people ever get hold of the apparatus of power, it will be a Hitlerian danger to free speech."
he is, of course, correct. And not just about those on the Left, but also about those on the Right who would require that words pass some ideological litmus test before being granted the protection afforded them without reservation by the First Amendment.
We all know that the American broadcast networks are de facto arms of the Democrat National Committee. All one has to do is look at Memogate to confirm that reality. But when all is said and done, private businesses have every right to support whatever political philosophy they want. After all, the public can simply cut into their bottom line. A tax-supported broadcast outlet, such as the UK's BBC, needs to remain scrupulously neutral. Guess what -- they don't, and have now been caught formenting the disruption of a Conservative Party event.
The BBC was last night plunged into a damaging general election row after it admitted equipping three hecklers with microphones and sending them into a campaign meeting addressed by Michael Howard, the Conservative leader.The Tories have made an official protest after the hecklers, who were given the microphones by producers, were caught at a party event in the North West last week. Guy Black, the party's head of communications, wrote in a letter to Helen Boaden, the BBC's director of news, that the hecklers began shouting slogans that were "distracting and clearly hostile to the Conservative Party".
These included "Michael Howard is a liar", "You can't trust the Tories" and "You can only trust Tony Blair".
Mr Black's strongly-worded letter accused the BBC of staging the event "to generate a false news story and dramatise coverage. . . intended to embarrass or ridicule the leader of the Conservative Party". The letter said that BBC staff were guilty of "serious misconduct". At least one of the hecklers was seen again at a Tory event in the North East, Mr Black added.
Last night, the BBC claimed that the exercise was part of a "completely legitimate programme about the history and art of political heckling" and said that other parties' meetings were being "observed". However, The Telegraph has established that none of Tony Blair's meetings was infiltrated or disrupted in similar fashion.
So, how did these folks get caught? What evidence is there that this was a BBC set-up, not simply a program on the political heckling?
Tory officials became suspicious at the meeting in Horwich, near Bolton, last Wednesday, when they saw BBC camera crew focusing on the hecklers rather than Mr Howard. They twice challenged the two men and a woman involved, and discovered they had been equipped with radio microphones.Mr Black said that they described themselves as "shoppers". In fact, they were under direction from a BBC team making a programme called The History of Heckling for the BBC3 channel. The programme, whose producer is Paul Woolwich, is in the process of being edited.
Mr Black's letter said of the hecklers: "It is entirely clear to me that the success of their presence required an element of performance on their behalf, and that this was a premeditated event intended to disrupt the course of Mr. Howard's speech.
"I do not believe that the BBC should be in the business of creating news. It also appears that the same crew was at the Michael Howard visit to Stockton-on-Tees and it can be no coincidence that someone with them was one of these 'hecklers'.
Absolutely incredible! An arm of the British government supplied equipment to those looking to disrupt a rally featuring the head of the opposition party. This is serious stuff, given the fact that there is no evidence of the BBC sponsoring any such attacks on Tony Blair's Labour Party. Could you imagine the uproar in this country if PBS were to have perpetrated something like this against John Kerry during the last election? It would have been seen as proof positive that the Bush Administration was attempting to create a totalitarian regime (granted, the Left made that claim without any evidence whatsoever, but you see my point) and would have cost the president any chance at reelection. Heck, if the generally conservative Fox News had done this, it would have been viewed as a Karl Rove instigated dirty trick.
And yet this seems to have had little effect in the UK. That is too bad. If the British people had a little bit more spine, they would demand the resignation of the Blair government, the prosecution of those involved in this abuse of government power, and the end of the BBC as a tax-supported entity. Here's hoping there is at least enough spirit left in out cousins on the other side of the pond to see them reject Labour and its dirty tricks.
In the West, Muslims practice their religion freely and with complete legal protection. This is fully in keeping witht he ideas that spring from the Enlightenment, that religious tolerance is necessary to a free society. But what of non-Muslims in Muslim countries? I think this example from Saudi Arabia says it all.
Forty foreigners, including children, were arrested for proselytizing when police raided a clandestine church in suburban Riyadh, the head of a wide-ranging security campaign in the capital said Saturday.Lt. Col. Saad al-Rashud said the 40 were arrested Friday in the neighborhood Badeea. Their church, he said, contained crosses and was run by a Pakistani man who claimed to heal the sick. He allegedly was holding prayers, hearing confessions and distributing communion.
It is illegal to promote religions other than Islam in Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam. There are no legal churches in the conservative kingdom, where members of other religions generally can practice their faith in their own homes, but not try to convert people or hold religious gatherings.
Authorities said those arrested with him were foreigners, but did not specify nationalities.
A conviction on proselytizing can result in a harsh prison sentence followed by deportation.
Multiple thoughts spring to mind -- few of them suitable for publication. But I will say one thing, however unpopular.
If Saudi Arabia cannot see its way clear to allowing fundamental freedoms to its people, maybe it should be the next country liberated by the US military.
I didn't think I could get any angrier than I was when I originally posted on this last night. I was wrong. The San Francisco Chronicle has run a "news story" (actually a thinly disguised advocacy piece) about Lynne Stewart, the convicted terrorist supporter who admits that she passed operational information on behalf of the blind sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman. Not only did this violate federal law, it violated special administrative measures (SAM) imposed by the Justice Department to prevent the terrorist leader from continuing to direct his folowers from a federal prison.
"I argued that lawyering can't be interfered with by government regulations,'' Stewart said. "SAMs now seem to override a lawyer's sense of what is right and proper to do for a client. The government will decide that now.''
Damn straight the government will decide those things, when it comes to protecting national security. You ignore two things in your flawed analysis. First, the man committed an act of war against the United States and had been duly convicted at the time you acted. Second, when an attorney becomes a party to a conspiracy to commit a criminal act, attorney-client privilege no longer applies. Your complaint is, in effect, that you got caught and were not held to be above the law because you are a lawyer.
If you live out in the San Francisco area and want to show your contempt for this traitor, here's where you can view her schedule.
And since the Left has organized a letter writing campaign in an attempt to get her a lenient sentence for her betrayal of the United States, I would like to urge loyal Americans to write the judge urging that Stewart face the maximum possible sentence. Send them to the court at the following address.
Honorable John G. Koeltl
United States District Judge
Southern District of New York
United States Courthouse
500 Pearl Street
New York, New York 10007
My best advice is that they be typed, respectful, and note the seriousness of Lynne Stewart's actions and her utter lack of remorse for them. If you or someone close to you suffered any harm due to the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center or other terrorist attacks on the United States, be sure to share that with the judge. Focus on the fact that America is currently in a battle for its survival against Islamist jihadis of the nature assisted by Stewart, and that her sentence should be severe enough to deter others from following her anti-American example. Urge the judge to sentence her to the maximum penalty of 30 years in prison.
When he became head of the Democrat National Committee, Howard Dean said he was going to change the tone of politics in America, talking about what is right with the Democrats rather than defining the Democrats as the anti-Bush party. Well, let's take a look at how he has done.
• In a speech in Kansas in February, not long after his election as DNC chairman, Mr. Dean said the contest between Democrats and Republicans was "a struggle of good and evil. And we're the good."• In Florida earlier this week, he accused Republicans of being "corrupt," saying, "You can't trust them with your money, and you can't trust them with your votes. ... Evangelicals don't like corruption either."
• In a closed-door Democratic fundraiser in Lawrence, Kan., he said conservative Republicans were "intolerant" on the issue of abortion. "They don't think tolerance is a virtue. I'm not going to have these right-wingers throw away our right to be tolerant."
• Speaking to Democrats Abroad, Mr. Dean called Republicans "brain-dead," saying the reason his party lost the 2004 race to the "brain-dead" Republicans was because of the Democrats' "tendency to explain every issue in half an hour of detail."
So, "Mr. Positive" (or should that be "Dr. Positive") has been anything but positive. Rather than defining what the Democrats are, he has maligned the Republicans as evil, corrupt, intolerant and brain-dead. Not only that, but after the Democrats complained about Republicans "politicizing" the Terri Schiavo case, Dean has promised to "use Terry Schiavo" to score political points against the GOP. Along the way, Dean has defined the Democrats as against Bush judges, against the Bush Social Security Plan, against Bush nominee John Bolton, and against virtually every policy initiative proposed or implemented by the Bush Administration.
So, Howard, where are your solutions? Where are your programs? Your platform can be summed up in two words -- "Oppose Bush". How can you claim to be positive when you spend your time engaging in nothing short of anti-Republican hate speech.
When I was about 14 or so, the chaplain at Naval Training Center -- Great Lakes, Fr. R. Conway O'Connor (may he rest in peace) got approval to offer a Saturday evening Mass in Latin. No, not the Tridentine Mass, but the current liturgy promulgated by Pope Paul VI following the Second Vatican Council. I got to serve mass, along with my brother and a couple of buddies. I was entranced by a language that I didn't understand, didn't recognize, but knew carried with it a weightiness and sense of the sacred that was missing in the regular vernacular mass that I was used to. Years later, while a seminarian, I was one of the guys who struggled to learn Latin from Sister Dorothy in the afternoons, though I soon dropped out of the class because it conflicted with choir practice. Looking back, i would have done better to drop choir.
The advent of the papacy of Benedict XVI may send a lot of folks scrambling for Latin dictionaries and classes in the classical tongue (or its ecclesiastical offspring). Just as a knowledge of Polish was helpful in the Vatican during the pontificate of John Paul the Great, it appears that Latin may become an important means of communication in a Church that has practically abandoned the tongue outside of "official" texts of documents.
Latin may be considered a dead language today, but for many centuries it was the language of the Catholic Church.Forty years ago the Vatican decided to drop Latin as the official language of the mass and switch to the vernacular.
In the 1990s, even bishops stopped talking to each other in Latin when they went to official meetings at the Vatican.
When he was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI originally supported the idea of dropping the Latin mass.
Now he is Pope, he has apparently had a rethink and Italians are struggling to keep up.
Now I am certain that the Tridentine Mass will not be making a major comeback, though this pope will probably allow its more liberal use where tehre is a desire for it. Nor do I think we will see an end to vernacular liturgies. What I believe we will see, though, is a move back towards the teaching of Latin in seminaries and the revival of the use of the language for liturgical purposes. I would expect that Catholics will be able to find a Latin liturgy in a local parish, if not their own, as one more option. And I suspect that we will see more use of the Latin language in liturgical celebrations for international gatherings, to communicate the message that the Church is universal and timeless institution.
And besides -- if we are to see the continued internationalization of the Catholic Church leadership, there needs to be one language that is shared among those who work in the Vatican and those back in the local dioceses and parishes of the world. It needs to be a langage that doesn't change from pontificate to pontificate, and which is clear and fixed in its meaning. So unless the Church is going to adopt Esperanto, there is one obvious candidate -- Latin, which was the language of choice for most of the history of the Church.
Oh, those ever so tolerant Muslims! Their "holy" book is filled with anti-Semitism and negative comments about Christians. Their religious law calls for the death of those who dare to speak against their religion or their prophet. So it should be no surprise that a well-known Swedish minister is in police protective custody following a provocative sermon.
Celebrity Pentecostal preacher Runar Søgaard is under protection by Swedish police after receiving death threats. A high-profile sermon where Sögaard called the prophet Mohammed "a confused pedophile" has triggered fears of religious war.
Excuse me? His sermon has triggered fears of a religious war? I thought Sweden was a Western democracy where religious rights were guaranteed to all citizens. Did I miss it becoming an Islamic caliphate?
Consider this little gem from one Swedish paper, quoting one of the Islamists who dominate Islam today.
"Even if I see Runar while he has major police protection I will shoot him to death," a radical Islamist told Swedish newspaper Expressen.
So what we have here is someone who is prepared to commit murder because a Swede dared to exerciee his rights under Swedish law. I cannot help but notice that the story protects the man's identity, lest he be apprehended by police and prevented from carrying out his religious duty to murder someone for daring to disrespect the founder of the religion that has bred the bulk of modern terrorism. After all, identifying him might also have put the newspaper or the reporter at risk.
And it isn't just a couple of radicals mouthing off, either.
Persons connected to the Kurdish group Ansar al-Islam claim to have received a fatwa, a decree from a Muslim religious leader, to kill Søgaard.Muslim organizations have called Søgaard's sermon, which is on sale on CD at the Stockholm Karisma Center's web site, a hateful attack on Islam and fear the type of violent conflict that scarred the Netherlands after filmmaker Theo van Gogh was killed by an Islamic extremist for a controversial film.
Notice, they claim they fear that the sermon will cause a violent conflict. They claim they don't want it. Well, fine, then why don't you Muslims act to restrain the radicals among you who threaten to murder an innocent man for expressing his opinions? How dare you blame him for the problem, as if his rights were somehow subordinate to the feelings of the followers of your murderous sect?
That isn't, of course, what they are out to do. Instead they are making demands that Swedish Christians submit to Islam in order to be spared bloodshed and a reign of terror in their streets.
Imam Hassan Moussa, head of Sweden's imam council, demanded that Christian communities repudiate Søgaard's remarks, and promised that Sweden would avoid the ugly scenes experienced in Holland.
Yeah. Swedes should submit to the foreigner among them in their own country, and allow an alien cult to determine their religious rights. In other words, the people of Sweden need to submit to dhimmi status.
What needs to happen is for the Swedish government to follow the precedent set by Ferdinand and Isabella at the end of the Reconquista. Muslims must convert to Christianity or be expelled for the good of the nation, to protect the liberties of the Swedish people. Threats of jihad cannot be tolerated.
And as such threats appear in other countries in Europe or the Western Hemisphere, the same course of action must be followed. Otherwise Western civilization is doomed.
UPDATE: DhimmiWatch has this post about the case. It appears that some Muslim authroities are calling for restraint. On the other hand, at least one denies the words of the hadith in order to deny the charge made against Muhammad.
If this does not make your blood boil, nothing will. Lynne Stewart, convicted of knowingly and intentionally giving assistance to and communicating messages for the terrorist mastermind of the World Trade Center bombing, is being allowed to go on a public speaking tour!
A federal judge is letting convicted terror lawyer Lynne Stewart jet across the country as part of her campaign to argue that she was unjustly prosecuted and to rally her supporters to raise funds for an appeal.Trial Judge John Koeltl approved Stewart's request to travel to the Left Coast, where she has arranged to speak at nine events in the San Francisco Bay area and participate in at least six radio and TV interviews, starting today.
A jury convicted Stewart Feb. 10 of fraud, providing material support to terrorism, and filing false statements while she represented blind Egyptian terror cleric Omar Abdel-Rahman, the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Her sentencing has been pushed back to September.
Stewart faces up to 30 years in prison.
Frighteningly enough, this is not Stewart's first trip to give a speech to her fellow radicals and terrorist supporters. Since her conviction, Stewart has been permitted to travel to Florida, California and Boston. Seems that she is not considered to be a flight risk. Still, isn't she a security risk, given her past actions?
Frankly, I don't know why she was even allowed to stay on the streets pending her sentencing. She ought to be in a cage down at Gitmo, with the low-level terrorists who have made war on our nation!
It has been 90 years since the Muslim Turks began their genocide of 1.5 million Christian Armenians, but the Turkish government still will not admit to that crime.
VARAZDAT was six when his family were driven from their home by Turkish troops in 1915. But even 90 years after Ottoman troops began the slaughter of up to 1.5 million Armenians, fear still flickers in his eyes.As the family and 200,000 other Armenians fled east from their homes in Van, near modern Turkey’s eastern border, Turk and Kurdish forces opened fire from both sides. “They killed so many. Mothers threw their children in the lake. They said it was better to drown them than let the Turks have them,” Varadzat Harutyuniyan told The Times.
Turkey still denies responsibility, minimizes the number of Armenian dead, and paints the Turkish people as the greater victim. It is illegal in Turkey for anyone to claim that this genocide happened. It refuses to have diplomatic relations with Armenia and refuses to allow traffic across the border the two countries share. This unacknowledged genocide is one of many factors that stands in the way of Turkey’s admission to the EU – no less that 15 countries have demanded that Turkey do so before the EU allow Turkey to become a member.
How deep is this denial and refusal to acknowledge Turkey’s crime against the Armenians? Look at the high level denial of the genocide by a high level Turkish official.
On Wednesday the head of the Turkish Armed Forces, General Hilmi Ozkok, called on Armenia to drop the genocide allegations. The 1923 Lausanne Treaty, which established modern Turkey, “put an end to the baseless genocide claims politically and legally,” he said.
Yet in the end, this political claim cannot hide the historical truth of the murder of over 1 million people by the Turks. A treaty cannot deny the reality of photographs of Turkish soldiers posing with severed Armenian heads held (or stacked) as trophies. Until Turkey is willing to admit its historical guilt in the matter, there can be no allowing it into the EU.
Former Polish President Lech Walesa makes the case clearly.
“The truth must come out,” said Lech Walesa, the former Polish President, at this week’s conference. “It is a just claim of the Armenians that Turkey’s entrance into the European Union should come after admitting genocide.”
When will our president label what happened as genocide? When will he join other world leaders in making it clear that Turkey cannot be considered a member of the civilized world until it acknowledges the crime of its jihad against the Christian Armenians?
Wouldn’t this be neat to see? A 5000-year-old tomb, the largest pre-dynastic funerary structure ever discovered, containing 7 bodies – including four who appear to have been human sacrifices.
The necropolis was discovered by a joint US and Egyptian team in the Kom al-Ahmar region, around 600 km (370 miles) south of the capital, Cairo. Inside the tombs, the archaeologists found a cow's head carved from flint and the remains of seven people.They believe four of them were buried alive as human sacrifices.
The remains survived despite the fact that the tombs were plundered in ancient times.
Egypt's chief archaeologist, Zahi Hawass, said the discovery would add greatly to knowledge of the elusive pre-dynastic period, when Egypt was first becoming a nation.
The complex is thought to belong to a ruler of the ancient city of Hierakonpolis in around 3600 BC, when it was the largest urban centre on the Nile river.
Egyptologists say the city probably extended its influence northwards defeating rival entities. The unification of Upper and Lower Egypt eventually led to the establishment of rule by the Pharaohs.
Excavations at the site started in 2000 under the leadership of Egyptologist Barbara Adams, who died in 2002.
The site contains some of the earliest examples of mummification found in Egypt.
Call me a geek, but I find this stuff really cool.
Are cows happy? The California Milk Producers Advisory Board has run a series of commercials making the claim that "Great cheese comes from happy cows. Happy cows come from California." PETA filed suit in 2002, claiming that the ads were false and that cows live miserable lives, repeatedly being milked and impregnated before being killed.
"False advertising is no less harmful when it comes from government-run businesses," said Matthew Penzer, the attorney for PETA in the lawsuit. "Painting a 'happy' image of an industry that sends 400,000 cows to slaughter every year and their calves to the isolation of veal crates is deceptive, no less so because it is the government doing the deceiving."
California courts have ruled that the Board is immune from lawsuits, just like other state agencies.
And the liberals wonder why we need lawsuit reform. This case is a classic argument
10th Grader Shot and Killed
There is only one conclusion to be drawn. The story must be about some school shooting.
And then you read the actual story.
Police in Niagara Falls say a 10th grader was shot and killed after he tried to rob a pizza delivery man Wednesday night.Detectives say the pizza driver admited he shot and killed 16-year-old Anthony Maurice Sheared, after he and another teen pulled a BB gun on him while he was making a delivery on Pierce Avenue.
Police say they will not charge the delivery man. They say he was acting in self-defense. "The driver was told to go to 1319 Pierce and was told to go to the back door and when he got out he was jumped by two men and they tackled him to the ground," says Niagara Falls Police Lieutenant Ernie Palmer.
The other teen, 16-year-old Aldeaz M. Lewis, was located by police and charged with second degree robbery.
Now, why is the fact that the dead felon is in 10th grade the issue being highlighted? He isn’t a victim of anything but his own criminal behavior and the preparedness of a guy just trying to make a living. There is no tragedy here – unless, perhaps, you consider the fact that the delivery guy didn't ventilate the other young felon as well.
When someone dies before their time, I tend to view that as a tragedy. But you know what, I can’t muster up a whole lot of sympathy in this case.
A convicted sex offender apparently committed suicide in despair over signs posted in his neighborhood calling him a child rapist.Clovis Claxton, 38, was found dead by his father with one of the signs beside his body. It was less than a day after his release from a psychiatric hospital.
His mother blames Marion County Commissioner Randy Harris for her son's death. Harris proposed putting up flyers in the neighborhoods of sex offenders to alert neighbors.
Sheriff Ed Dean objected. He says he understands the concern of parents but doesn't want to see hysteria.
Sorry, Sheriff, but you have this one dead wrong. This guy is a convicted sex offender. The public has a right to that information. You have no right to hold it back out of some misguided concern for the criminals. Better that this guy be known by his neighbors to be a potential threat than that we have another kid killed by a child rapist who law enforcement isn’t keeping track of.
And as for the Claxton family, I’d like to say I’m sorry for your loss – but I won’t because I am not. Your son showed himself to be a self-centered bastard who violated others in an attempt to overcome his own inadequacies as a human being. Once he found out that he couldn’t hide from society and its disapproval, he took his own life rather than stand up like a man and face the consequences of his actions. Quite bluntly, I am glad he won’t victimize anyone else, and that is a sentiment I am sure is shared by anyone worthy of being called a civilized human being.
UPDATE: It seems that someone altered the posters in question, adding Claxton's address and the words "CHILD RAPIST" to the poster. That is appears to be a violation of Florida law, and a spokesman for the Marion County Sheriff's Department is talking about investigating the matter and referrign it for prosecution. I hope the local prosecutor has the decency not to file charges over someone adding truthful information to more fully inform the public of the monster in their midst. And if charges are brought, it sounds like an excellent time for a little bit of jury nullification.
UPDATE II: After pawing around Bob's website, I finally found some information to show that the accusation that Claxton was a Child Rapist or a continuing threat was untrue. As such, I have to change my view that his death was anything other than a tragedy/ Those who posted the innacurate signs should be prosecuted and convicted. That said, I still believe that all neighbors should be notified of the presence of sex offenders in their midst.
Yesterday I commented on Mort Kondracke’s column on the filibuster of nominees to the appellate courts. I mentioned the views of Jonathan Turley, a liberal scholar of the law and judiciary, which Kondracke himself had referenced. Well, what should appear in my local paper this morning but a column on the subject by Turley himself?
The decision to nuke or not to nuke has obscured the real issue: Are the Republican nominees qualified or are they flat-Earth idiots? As a pro-choice social liberal, I didn't find much reason to like these nominees. However, I also found little basis for a filibuster in most cases. Indeed, for senators not eager to trigger mutually assured destruction, there is room for compromise.
Turley then goes on to analyze each of the judges that the Democrats label extremists who are unfit for the bench – or who they object to because a Republican president is not deferring to their home state Democrat senators. He indicates that the judges in question are generally well-qualified and within the mainstream of the law. In most of the cases he shows that the criticism is either wrong or insignificant. So strong are his objections to the use of the filibuster that he says, “For nine of the Republican nominees, Democratic opposition looks as principled as a drive-by shooting.”
Only three of the nominees present a problem for Turley.
Democrats are on good ground in filibustering William J. Haynes II, who signed a memo that appeared to justify torture of POWs and suggest that the president could override federal law — an extreme view that preceded abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.Then there's 9th Circuit nominee William G. Myers III, a former mining lobbyist who, as an Interior Department official, advocated extreme-right positions on Native American and environmental issues, often in contravention of accepted law. Given the centrality of such issues to the 9th Circuit, there is reason to bar his confirmation.
Finally, there is the closer case of Priscilla R. Owen. She has a "well-qualified" ABA rating, but she is also indelibly marked by a prior public rebuke. Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, her colleague on the Texas Supreme Court, said she engaged in "an unconscionable act of judicial activism" in restricting a minor's access to an abortion. That and other charges of activism leave Owen damaged goods for confirmation.
Of these three, I agree on one – the Haynes nomination. It is not that I think that Haynes was necessarily wrong in his position, because I don’t. But at this time, I think the issue is one that is too radioactive. Haynes might be a good nominee in a couple of years – just not now.
I’m not sure about Myers. Do his political positions prevent him from being an acceptable candidate for the judiciary – or at least for the appellate level, beyond which most cases never go? Perhaps. That he lacks experience on a lower court troubles me, because it prevents determining if Myers has an appropriate judicial temperament. I would not be troubled by his confirmation, but would not be troubled by his rejection, either. I just don't see his nomination as a hill worth dying for.
And then there is Priscilla Owens, on whom I steadfastly disagree with Turley. She has been a good justice here in Texas, and while I have disagreed with her position on a number of issues, I have accepted the reasonableness of her rulings. Turley wants to write her off because of an ad hominem attack by one of hercolleagues, the current attorney general. Frankly, I find that to be a pretty weak argument, given that the same statement could have been made against then-Justice Alberto Gonzales in the same case. More to the point, the ABA rated her well-qualified (the alleged “gold standard” for nominees, according to Senate Democrats at the time of Owens' original nomination) and the people of Texas have overwhelmingly reelected her to the bench since that case was decided. Those two facts, taken together, show that she is not an extremist, and is eminently qualified for the federal appellate bench.
Overall, however, I agree with Turley. Now, are there enough honest liberals -- more to the point, enough honest liberals in the Senate -- for such clear thinking to carry the day?
The New York Times – the former “paper of record” for important news in the United States – has long accused Pope Pius XII of being silent in the face of the Holocaust, and of being “Hitler’s Pope”. The fact that it contradicts the evidence contained in its own pages – in one instance the paper called Pius “a lonely voice in the silence and darkness enveloping Europe”, and in another “a lonely voice crying out of the silence of a continent.” Yet recent scholarship has examined the New York Times response to the Holocaust. The results are damning – a paper published by a German-Jew buried the most important (and horrific) news of the twentieth century in the bowels of the paper rather than make it front-page news. At least that is the claim of one recently published book, Buried by the Times.
The author, Laurel Leff, a professor of journalism and a former reporter for TheWall Street Journal, has done a fine job of research in the archives of the paper of record. Others could have done that, but nobody has. More important, she has brilliantly analyzed the reasons Arthur Hays Sulzberger, the German-Jewish publisher of The Times, brought Jewish self-hatred to a head long before the rubric gained popularity.In 1939, when the Nazis began to destroy the Jews of Poland, what bothered Sulzberger was Franklin Roosevelt's casual remark that Jews were a "race." He got FDR to call them a "faith," which settled the issue of the Warsaw Ghetto for him.
On the eve of Thanksgiving 1942, the State Department confirmed that 2 million Jews were dead in Europe, and it allowed Rabbi Stephen Wise, the leader of American Jewry, to announce the news. The Times didn't send a reporter to the press conference in Washington. Instead, it ran a short from The Associated Press - on page 10, surrounded by turkey ads.
What if FDR had announced the news? Then, even a scared Jew like Sulzberger would have been afraid to keep it off the front page. And if that happened, millions of Jews could have been saved.
What if Sulzberger and the Times had spoken out? What if they had actively covered the story of the extermination of Europe’s Jews? They might well have forced Roosevelt to speak out. Instead, over the course of 6 years they buried over 1100 stories in the heart of the paper, somewhere between the police blotter and the grocery ads.
One can always argue that Pius XII didn’t say enough, but it is estimated that the Catholic Church saved between 750,000 and 1,000,000 Jews during the war, much of it with the active encouragement and support of the pope. The charge that Pius was “Hitler’s Pope” is a blood libel.
On the other hand, it seems clear that Sulzberger and the Times were certainly in the pocket of the Roosevelt Administration – and that the muting of the Times at the behest of an anti-Semitic president most likely resulted in the deaths of millions because it allowed the malignant neglect of the Jews at a time when they most needed help. As such, would it not be fair to say, using the standard the New York Times has applied in recent years to Pius XII, that Sulzberger was “Hitler’s Publisher”, and the New York Times was “Hitler’s Paper”?
The Democrats keep telling us that religion based attacks on political opponents are unacceptable and run contrary to the values of the Constitution. If that is truly the case, what is Senator Ken Salazar doing making these comments?
"I do think that what has happened here is there has been a hijacking of the U.S. Senate by what I call the religious right wing of the country," Salazar told reporters at a Capitol Hill news conference Wednesday.He singled out Focus on the Family by name, objecting to full-page newspaper ads the ministry's political arm recently placed, targeting 20 senators in 15 states.
"I think what has happened is Focus on the Family has been hijacking Christianity and become an appendage of the Republican Party," Salazar said in an interview. "I think it's using Christianity and religion in a very unprincipled way."
Uh, Senator – who are you to call their religious faith into question? Is that not a religious attack? Isn’t that the exact sort of “unprincipled” behavior to which you are objecting?
Imagine this – you and a group of co-workers regularly buy lottery tickets as part of a pool. The drawing is held and the guy who buys the tickets announces that he has a winning ticket – but that it isn’t one that belongs to the group, but is instead one that he bought for himself. You and the rest of the group are out of luck.
Three hospital employees who thought they were about to split a second-place Mega Millions jackpot worth $175,000 are suing a co-worker who insists he bought the winning ticket for himself."I felt betrayed," said Veronica Edmondson, who is among the trio of Mount Sinai Medical Center office workers suing John Piccolo, the office's regular designated lottery ticket buyer. "We trusted him with our money."
Edmondson, 30, of the Bronx, said joy turned to anger when Piccolo called in late for work on Nov. 3 - a day after the drawing.
"Don't be mad at me, but I just won the Mega Million second prize," he told her, according to court papers.
"I exclaimed: 'We won, John!' to which Mr. Piccolo responded: 'No, I won,'" Edmondson said in an affidavit.
Edmondson told the Daily News yesterday that Piccolo offered to give her a Mega Millions umbrella that officials handed him when he picked up his check.
"He said, 'There is nothing you can do. The courts won't take it.' He even had the nerve to come to work and show us the receipt for the money with the taxes taken out of it," she added.
Guess what – Piccolo was dead wrong. The courts will take such suits – and have so far ruled in favor of the co-workers.
In a decision made public yesterday, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Marylin Diamond said his co-workers have a convincing case.She refused to throw out the lawsuit and froze $81,750 of the $109,000 Piccolo collected after taxes.
Piccolo offered each person in the pool $1,000 - but later halved it to $500 saying he needed money for a down payment on a house. "He offered some money because he thought it was the right thing to do," said his lawyer, Thomas Weiss.
No, Mr. Weiss, the right thing for your client to have done would have been to not rip off his co-workers. I’m hoping that by the time he is done paying damages, attorney’s fees, and court costs, he ends up deep in a financial hole – maybe to the tune of $175,000.
One of the many “crimes” for which Pope Benedict XVI is often chastised is the “silencing” of heterodox theologians. In reality, all that actually happened was that their licenses to call themselves Catholic theologians were revoked. Want proof? Here is one of the silenced theologians, Father Charles Curran, offering his critique of the new pope's election and the continued push for Catholic orthodoxy, from his tenure-secured job teaching at Southern Methodist University.
I grew up as a typical pre-Vatican II Catholic. I entered the seminary at 13 and became a priest 11 years later, never questioning church teachings. But as a moral theologian in the 1960s, I began to see things differently, ultimately concluding that Catholics, although they must hold on to the core doctrines of faith, can and at times should dissent from the more peripheral teachings of the church.Unfortunately, the leaders of the Catholic Church feel differently. In the summer of 1986, the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, under then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the powerful enforcer of doctrinal orthodoxy around the world, concluded a seven-year investigation of my writings. Pope John Paul II approved the finding that "one who dissents from the magisterium as you do is not suitable nor eligible to teach Catholic theology." Cardinal Ratzinger — now Pope Benedict XVI — told the Catholic University of America to revoke my license to teach theology because of my "repeated refusal to accept what the church teaches."
I was fired. It was the first time an American Catholic theologian had been censured in this way. At issue was my dissent from church teachings on "the indissolubility of consummated sacramental marriage, abortion, euthanasia, masturbation, artificial contraception, premarital intercourse and homosexual acts," according to their final document to me. It's true that I questioned the idea that such acts are always immoral and never acceptable (although I thought my dissent on these issues was quite nuanced).
Unfortunately, the Vatican — which was already moving toward greater discipline and orthodoxy — was having none of it. Seven years earlier, it had punished the Swiss theologian Hans Küng because of his teachings on infallibility in the church. Later, Cardinal Ratzinger "silenced" Brazilian Franciscan Leonardo Boff, an advocate of liberation theology, for a year. Just recently, Ratzinger said U.S. Jesuit Roger Haight could not teach Catholic theology until he changed his understanding of the role of Jesus Christ.
Gee, imagine that. If you are teaching things that run directly contrary to the teachings of the Catholic Church, you can’t run around calling it Catholic theology. One would have hoped, of course, that fundamental decency and a sense of honesty would have prevented folks like Curran from making such claims. It didn’t, and so Catholic authorities acted to clarify the situation for the world – you cannot use the forum of a Catholic college or university to put forth ideas that diverge from Catholic truth while claiming that they represent authentic Church teachings.
Curran, of course, is distressed by the advent of the pontificate of Benedict XVI. The result is a call for the rejection of the teachings of the Church. If one is looking for evidence in support of the actions taken against him two decades ago, one need look no further than his continued rejection of those teachings and his attempt to undermine them in the minds of others.
One of my buddies grew up in Ridgway, Illinois – the Popcorn Capitol. One of the questions he could never answer for me was why some kernels didn’t pop.
Well, the latest scientific research from the Popcorn Board out of Chicago gives us a potential answer.
It's long been known that popcorn kernels must have a precise moisture level in their starchy center -- about 15 percent -- to explode. But Purdue University researchers found the key to a kernel's explosive success lies in the composition of its hull.Unpopped kernels, it turns out, have leaky hulls that prevent the moisture pressure buildup needed for them to pop and lack the optimal hull structure that allows most kernels to explode.
"They're sort of like little pressure vessels that explode when the pressure reaches a certain point," said Bruce Hamaker, a Purdue professor of food chemistry. "But if too much moisture escapes, it loses its ability to pop and just sits there."
The findings may help popcorn breeders select the best varieties -- or create new ones -- with superior hulls that yield few, if any, unpopped kernels. But for now, there's no way to screen out potential old maids before they end up in bags of popcorn.
Hamaker and his associates compared the microwave popping performance of 14 Indiana-grown popcorn varieties and examined the crystalline structure of the translucent hulls of both the popped kernels and the duds.
I’ll admit, it isn’t rocket science (and living so close to Johnson Space Center, I know plenty of rocket scientists), but maybe it will one day guarantee that that every kernel is “good to the last pop”.
What a world we live in! The faithful (and the faithless, for that matter) are invited to write to Pope Benedict XVI at his new email address.
Got a prayer or a problem for the new pope? Now you can e-mail him. Showing that Pope Benedict XVI intends to follow in the footsteps of John Paul II's multimedia ministry, the Vatican on Thursday modified its Web site so that users who click on an icon on the home page automatically activate an e-mail composer with his address.In English, the address is benedictxvi@vatican.va. In Italian: benedettoxvi@vatican.va.
Vatican spokesmen could not immediately be reached for comment on how many messages Benedict may have received already.
Pope John Paul II also had an email address, and made use of computers and the internet.
Is loving one's vagina grounds for being suspended or expelled from school? Apparently it is in Winona, Minnesota. It seems that two students at Winona High School saw The Vagina Monologues, and wore buttons to school that read "I [heart] My Vagina".
Two Winona High School students have found themselves in hot water with school officials.Why? Because after Carrie Rethlefsen attended a performance of the play "The Vagina Monologues" last month, she and Emily Nixon wore buttons to school that read: "I [heart] My Vagina."
School leaders said that the pin is inappropriate and that the discomfort it causes trumps the girls' right to free speech. The girls disagree. And despite repeated threats of suspension and expulsion, Rethlefsen has continued to wear her button.
The girls have won support from other students and community members.
More than 100 students have ordered T-shirts bearing "I [heart] My Vagina" for girls and "I Support Your Vagina" for boys.
"We can't really find out what is inappropriate about it," Rethlefsen, 18, said of the button she wears to raise awareness about women's issues. "I don't think banning things like that is appropriate."
Hmmmm.....
I'll tell you, I have some mixed emotions here. There is clearly some redeeming content here, designed to address an "Important Issue" in society. I don't particularly want to see that stifled. Given that we are dealing with high school students, it isn't like they are unfamiliar with what a vagina is, nor with the issues in question. So while I wish the girls would find a different way to address the women's issues (after all, one act in the play glorifies the sexual abuse of a young girl by a lesbian babysitter who plies her with alcohol) I don't find the button that disruptive. I think the school administrators have likely made a serious mistake in their handling of the situation.
The buttons were not disruptive, it seems, until spotted by a secretary. Later, one teacher appears to have completely over-reacted.
Rethlefsen said school officials first told her the button was inappropriate in mid-March when a school secretary spotted it. That started a string of visits -- and debates -- with teachers, counselors, an assistant principal and the principal. A teacher barred Rethlefsen from her classroom as long as she wore her button."The principal said that by wearing the pin, I was giving people wrong ideas," Rethlefsen said. "That I was giving an open invitation [to guys]."
The girls said they tried to explain that the buttons are meant to spark discussion about violence against women, about women's rights. But Principal Nancy Wondrasch said others find the buttons offensive.
"We support free speech," she said. "But when it does infringe on other people's rights and our school policies, then we need to take a look at that."
Wondrasch said she thought they had worked out a compromise with the girls, allowing them to set up a table in the school to discuss women's issues. But Rethlefsen said school officials are insisting that they review and approve any information the girls want to present.
And then comes the issue of the shirts that the girls have ordered. Again, that is political speech that is protected. Here is where the school has gotten particularly heavy-handed, even more that with the prior approval requirement for the information table, which doesn't strike me as particularly unreasonable except for the circumstances that led up to that "compromise".
Nixon said more than 100 students are expected to wear the shirts. She added that officials have threatened real consequences if that happens."They told us that if a single person showed up wearing them, we're going to get expelled," she said. "People are going to wear them anyway."
And these shirts are where I could see a problem arising -- actually the same problem that might have been feared by those who objected to the buttons. What happens when the first satirist shows up wearing a shirt that says "I [heart] My Penis"? What about "My Penis [hearts] Your Vagina"? The whole thing has the potential to spiral out of control. Do we want various and sundry vaginas and penises, each with a different message, wandering the hallways of the high school? Is the decision of the school administration really all that unreasonable?
Frankly, I'm not sure. On the one hand, I applaud the girls in question and their supporters for dealing seriously with a serious issue. On the other, I see the potential difficulties. I am, without question, loathe to see prior restraint based upon a mere hypothetical. And I don't see how or where a bright line can be drawn between supporting the constitutional rights of students and lat the same time letting them know when they have crossed a line. If anything, this case is much more difficult than the Day of Silence/Day of Truth conflict I wrote about over the weekend.
Still, in the end I have to side with the "Vagina Warriors". They seem to have learned their lessons well when it comes to exercising their civil rights. Here's hoping they have learned to do so responsibly and respectfully.
Yes – and that seems to be the problem for some folks.
The election of Benedict XVI seems to have put a quick end to the love-feast that we have witnessed in the three weeks since the illness of his beloved predecessor, Pope John Paul the Great. Having been a lightning rod for criticism as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, it was inevitable the new pope would be controversial. Yet when it comes down to it, the real complaint seems to be that Pope Benedict XVI is just plain too Catholic.
Consider the criticisms found in this article. First we get the feminists who are seeking to undo the two millennia old practice of limiting the priesthood (and higher advancement) to men only.
The Women's Ordination Conference, a Catholic feminist organization working for the ordination of women priests, said the church desperately needs a healer, but the cardinals have elected a divider: "This is another example of how the hierarchy is out of touch with Catholics in the pews," said Joy Barnes, executive director of the Women's Ordination Conference.
Sorry, Ms. Barnes, there was never any possibility of you getting what your heart desires. The Church hasn’t survived for two thousand years by taking flash-polls and interpreting survey data. You may not like that – and you may even have survey results showing that two-thirds want just the “reform” you are backing. But that said, I wouldn’t count on that change happening. The weight of scriptural, historical, and theological evidence is against you, as my dear former professor Sister Sara Butler (herself once a vocal supporter of ordaining women until she studied the issue more closely) used to tell us back during my seminary days. And while I may now be an ex-seminarian married to a woman who is a former church pastor, I fail to see how such a change can be made in a Catholic context.
And then there was this comment from the “official” organization of American nuns.
The National Coalition of American Nuns noted that the new pope has the reputation of being "rigid in his position as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, silencing and expelling theologians, priests and nuns whom he perceived as not being orthodox."He certainly is not known for his sensitivity to the exclusion of women in the Church's leadership," the nuns said in a statement.
Uh, ladies, the teachings of the Catholic Church are not the menu of your local Chinese restaurant. You don’t get to pick one from column A and two from column B. The “silenced” theologians (many of whom are incredibly vocal) were not teaching what the Church teaches, but claimed that they were. What else is the individual charged with ensuring orthodoxy supposed to do? And as far as alleged rigidity is concerned, that is a necessary virtue for one who is expected to be the arbiter of orthodoxy.
And where would we be without these words of dissent from those who utterly reject the teachings of the Church on human sexuality, yet insist that they (and not the Church hierarchy) get to redefine the historic teachings of the Church to meet their own desires?
"The new Pope is seen as the principal author of the most virulently anti-gay, anti-GLBT rhetoric in the last papacy," said DignityUSA President Sam Sinnett."The elevation of Cardinal Ratzinger is being seen by many GLBT Catholics as a profound betrayal by the leaders of the Roman Catholic Church and betrayal of one of the most fundamental teachings of Jesus Christ as the loving Good Shepherd who reached out to the ones separated from the flock."
Sinnett called the election of the new pope a test of faith: "We express deep sadness for all those who will find themselves further alienated from the church because of Cardinal Ratzinger's assumption of the papacy. With their support and that of all our members and allies, we will re-double our efforts to speak the truth of our lives as faithful GLBT Catholics."
Never mind that the teachings of the Church are congruent with the words of the Bible itself in a way that the position of DignityUSA is not – they’ve got the truth and the new Vicar of Christ has it all wrong.
I could go on, but it is simply more of the same. Such theological luminaries as Maureen Dowd and Andrew Sullivan have weighed in, as has the New York Times. Their words lead me to ask one pressing question -- How did Catholicism ever manage to make it through its first two millennia without their prophetic voices to guide it?
UPDATE: Seems that I'm not the only one to have noticed that the objections to Ratzinger boiled down to his being too Catholic. This piece showed up in the London Times.
WHAT HAS been most enjoyable about the stunned reaction of the bulk of the media to the election of Pope Benedict XVI has been the simple incredulousness at the very idea that a man such as Joseph Ratzinger could possibly have become leader of the universal Church.Journalists and pundits for whom the Catholic Church has long been an object of anthropological curiosity fringed with patronising ridicule have really let themselves go since the new pontiff emerged. Indeed most of the coverage I have seen or read could be neatly summarised as: “Cardinals elect Catholic Pope. World in Shock.”
As headlines, I’ll grant you, it’s hard to beat God’s Rottweiler, The Enforcer, or Cardinal No. They all play beautifully into the anti-Catholic sentiment in intellectual European and American circles that is, in this politically correct era, the only form of religious bigotry legitimised and sanctioned in public life. But I ask you, in all honesty, what were they expecting?
Did the likes of The Guardian, the BBC or The New York Times think there was someone in the Church’s leadership who was going to pop up out on the balcony of St Peter’s and with a cheery wave, tell the faithful that everything they’d heard for the past 26 — no, make that 726 — years was rubbish and that they should all rush out and load up with condoms and abortifacients like teenagers off for a smutty weekend? Or did they think the conclave would go the whole hog and elect Sir Bob Geldof (with Peaches, perhaps, as a co-pope) in an effort to bring back the masses?
Right on the head, Mr. Baker -- I only wish I had written it so well!
Update 2: I thought I had seen it all when it came to the anti-Catholic garbage of the Left. The I found this piece from SFGate.com, which is the web portal for the San Francisco Chronicle. Talk about disgusting and sacriligious!
This, then, was to be your biggest challenge. To make yourself relevant again, make yourself known. To make open-hearted and sex-positive and choice-happy and pantheistic changes to your dusty dying church that make the world sit up and take notice and applaud.Is it still possible? Is there still a glimmer of hope that you might choose to buck dour church tradition and kick down the doors and throw open the stained-glass windows and remake yourself as modern, as inclusive, as the Pope That Changed Everything? Because right now, the world has this sad, sinking feeling again. All signs point to more of the same as the last bitter and bilious 2,000 years, if not even worse. All signs point to more repression, homophobia, intolerance, denial, insularity, guilt like a weapon.
Be thankful that the dark, evil hateful repressed, < YOUR BIGOTTED ADJECTIVE HERE > Catholics are restrained by a moral code that says to love their neighbor and turn the other cheek. If you wrote this about Muslims, they'd be purchasing an orange jumpsuit and sharpening their scimitars.
I’ve had vehicles that I’ve not been pleased with, but never to quite this degree of hostility.
John McGivney had enough.He loaded his .380-caliber handgun Friday afternoon, walked out to the parking lot of his Lauderdale-by-the-Sea apartment building and fired four shots into the hood of his ailing Chrysler.
"I'm putting my car out of its misery," McGivney told his landlord.
But the Broward Sheriff's Office didn't see it as a mercy killing. They arrested McGivney on a misdemeanor charge of discharging a firearm in public.
After a night in jail, he was back at his Bougainvilla Isles apartment on $100 bond -- the bullet-riddled 1994 Chrysler LeBaron LX dead in the spot where he left it. McGivney said Tuesday he hasn't tried to start the car and suspects that the four slugs he fired into it probably made his car trouble worse.
McGivney, 64, said the car has been giving him trouble for years and had "outlived its usefulness."
He called the shooting "dumb," and said he'll probably be evicted. But he doesn't regret a thing.
"I think every guy in the universe has wanted to do it," McGivney said. "It was worth every damn minute in that jail."
I'm curious -- which old car does this story make you fondly (o not so fondly) remember?
Mine would have to be that old Plymouth Volare wagon, painted silver-gray.
Columnist Mort Kondracke makes a persuasive argument in his recent column on judicial filibusters. The Democrats may have a case for trying to stop some of the Bush appellate nominees, but not for denying a vote to all of them as a matter of routine action.
In the case of Bush's nominees, Democrats have scarcely tried to mount a campaign on the merits. The quick, now-routine resort to the filibuster suggests that Democrats don't think they can muster convincing, substantive arguments that the nominees are extreme.George Washington University Law professor Jonathan Turley, himself a liberal, thinks that good cases could be made against Texas Supreme Court Justice Priscilla Owen, District Judge Terrence Boyle and former Pentagon counsel William Haynes.
However, he says that most of Bush's other nominees, including California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown and Alabama Attorney General William Pryor, while ideologically conservative, have demonstrated that they are principled jurists who put the law ahead of their beliefs.
Now I can agree with that sentiment. There could be among the judges denied an up-or-down vote some who are clearly unworthy. But the Democrats have not made that case – they have simply refused to allow the nominations to be voted upon as a matter of course. They haven’t debated or deliberated – they have insulted and assassinated their characters. In the end, real debate is needed on each nominee. A vote is necessary for each and every judge. And if the Democrats have any actual basis upon which to reject a judge, they should prove it before the entire Senate – and the American people.
Hey, they had almost 97% voter turnout in the election in the Communist dictatorship to the south of Florida – but does it really count as an election?
"I don't think any other country has such a high voter turnout," Cuban President Fidel Castro said in a televised address after Diaz presented the results.
Cuba consistently defends its system as democratic, but critics of Castro's government argue that tight state control, a heavy police presence and neighborhood-watch groups that report on their neighbors prevent any real political freedom.
Though it is not obligatory to vote, pressure to participate is high. Municipal and national elections always have a high turnout.
The municipal elections, dubbed "the most democratic in the world" by Castro after he voted Sunday, take place every 2 1/2 years. The turnout in the last municipal elections was reported to be 95.75 percent.
Under Cuba's one-party system, municipal, provincial and national representatives are elected by citizens on a local level. Anyone can be nominated to these posts, including nonmembers of the island's ruling communist party — the only one recognized in Cuba's constitution.
So when it comes right down to it, the dictator allows a modicum of freedom and the people exercise it. But in the end, this freedom amounts to nothing, because the only legal party wields the real power.
Supporters of affirmative action know they have only tenuous public support for these programs. Most Americans believe that non-discrimination is a policy that should be worked both ways – protecting the rights of both whites and minorities. That is why the opponents of the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative are seeking to knock the measure off the ballot, despite the fact that supporters turned in petitions with more than 160% of the required signatures.
A pro-affirmative action group says some voters were tricked into signing a petition they thought would protect affirmative action when the initiative would actually hurt those programs. The group filed a challenge with state election officials Monday afternoon in an attempt to block a proposed constitutional amendment targeting the November 2006 election."People were deceived," said Luke Massie, chairman of Operation King's Dream, a campaign affiliated with the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration & Immigrant Rights and Fight for Equality by Any Means Necessary (BAMN). "There is an overwhelming pattern of fraud specifically with black voters, but it extends beyond black voters to white and suburban voters."
The group backing the proposal — the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative — successfully defended the wording of its petition in state courts last year. The next fight could be certifying enough of the 508,000 signatures of Michigan voters collected in its petition drive.
The group must have at least 317,757 valid signatures of Michigan voters to qualify for the ballot. Michigan Civil Rights Initiative executive director Jennifer Gratz said she was confident her group has enough signatures to make the ballot, and that the claims made by BAMN and Operation King's Dream were without merit.
Ultimately, the question is this – why are supporters of affirmative action so unwilling to let the people of the state of Michigan have a say on this matter of public importance. If their case for affirmative action is so strong, they won’t have any problem in defeating the MCRI. -- or is that the crux of the problem?
One of the more egregious acts of antiquities theft was the removal of an obelisk dating back to the Axumite kingdom from the ancient city of Axum by Mussolini. It is in the process of being returned, seven decades later.
A teenage Abebe Alenayehu watched Italian soldiers haul away Axum's revered obelisk nearly seven decades ago and never thought he would live to see its return.But if the weather cooperates, he will see the dream he shares with his nation come true Tuesday when a giant cargo plane returns the 82-foot monument's top section to this wind-swept town that was the seat of the ancient Axumite Kingdom.
"The memory still leaves a bitter taste in my mouth," Abebe said about the loss of a monument that Ethiopians consider the symbol of their nation. "Every day for the last 67 years I have thought about the obelisk."
The Italian Foreign Ministry said Monday that the two other pieces of the 176-ton obelisk should be back by the end of April. Lattanzi, the Italian company organizing the return, says no one has attempted to fly such a massive monument before.
Abebe, 81, vividly recalls the day the masterpiece of the Axum civilization was taken away and shipped to Rome.
"All the adults in the town were under curfew," he said. "But we played with the soldiers who gave us sweets and sugar. We didn't realize what was happening, but our parents were hiding their faces and crying."
The restoration of this ancient monument is a fitting end to the evils committed by Mussolini and his forces against the Ethiopian people during the occupation of their nation from 1936-1941. And it sounds like it will be even more of an engineering nightmare than its removal was in 1937.
God has given us Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as the new Pope Benedict XVI.
He was elected in only four ballots, which tells me that the Cardinals are pretty firmly united behind him. I also cannot help but suspect that this is the man who John Paul the Great would have chosen as his successor.
As I expected, Joseph Ratzinger did not choose to be called John Paul III. I had a funny feeling that Benedict would be the choice, and have said so repeatedly over the last few days. Many are linking him to the shy Pope Benedict XV, who tried so hard to end World War I. I think another model to consider would be Benedict XIV, who was concerned about the accommodation of Christian truth to the practices of non-Christian cultures.
I find the new pontiff’s words to the faithful inspiring and appropriate. Pope Benedict, for all his gigantic intellect, remains a humble man of deep spirituality.
"Dear brothers and sisters, after our great pope, John Paul II, the cardinals have elected me, a simple, humble worker in God's vineyard.I am consoled by the fact that the Lord knows how to work and how to act, even with insufficient tools, and I especially trust in your prayers.
In the joy of the resurrected Lord, trustful of his permanent help, we go ahead, sure that God will help, and Mary, his most beloved mother, stands on our side.
Thank you."
We shall see how this papacy will develop. Will he be a pope in the image of John Paul the Great? Or will he be something completely different?
Update: I commented on the London Times piece on Pope Benedict’s youth in Nazi Germany. His detractor’s are already making scurrilous comments about him in relation to his brief – and legally mandated – membership in the Hitler Youth and military service. The Jerusalem Post provides some excellent insight into the issue – and also the important work of this pope in his predecessor’s reconciliation with the Jewish faith.
There have been two votes taken, assuming the cardinals have stuck to their announced schedule. Shortly before noon in Rome, dark smoke billoed from the chimney over the Sistine Chapel. There is no new pope yet.
Dan Patrick has been a thorn in the side of politicians in Houston for years. A couple of years back, he went state-wide when he led a group of listeners to Austin to protest the annual 10% appraisal increases allowed under state law. The experience made him an activist, as he and the common folks who took those buses to the Capitol were dissed and dismissed by Re. Fred Hill in favor of a group of lobbyists.
Well, after spending time digging through tax records to prove that politicians were getting favorable tax treatment by appraisal districts, I guess we shouldn't be surprised to find that the other side did the same thing to Dan. But whereas Dan did his work publicly, they did theirs undercover and anonymously, dumping the information they found in the lap of a Houston Chronicle reporter who would write a story that favored the stealth-tax supporters.
As a host on his own radio station, Dan Patrick has crusaded against rising property taxes.Until this month, however, his taxes hadn't been rising as fast as everyone else's. It seems that Patrick, owner of homes in Katy and Montgomery, had homestead exemptions on both.
It wasn't his fault, really. As a professional slinger of zingers, he'd hardly leave himself open to something so easily verified on the Internet.
Which is how we checked out the anonymous phone tip. Sure enough, Patrick's home on Lake Conroe has a full homestead exemption, designed to lessen the tax burden on a primary residence. And his home in Katy also had a homestead break from the Katy Independent School District.
Until we made a couple of calls.
When Patrick transferred his homestead to Lake Conroe a few years ago, Montgomery and Fort Bend counties coordinated the removal of most of his Katy exemptions.
But Katy ISD straddles two counties and its school taxes are collected by Waller County. Montgomery didn't communicate with Waller, and Patrick didn't volunteer that he still had a KISD exemption because, he said, he didn't even notice.
Waller kept the exemption until contacted by the Chronicle. The county has billed him $595.
I left out the part of the story where the reporter gratuitously throws in Dan's real name (Dan Patrick is the professional name he has used in broadcasting in this city for around a quarter century), despite the fact that it did nothing to enhance the story. The sad thing is, Dan's real name may have been the only actual fact in the piece. According to his account over at Lone Star Times, it wasn't some reporter that prompted the change -- and Dan has the letters and paperwork to prove that he acted properly in this situation.
I made it very clear to Mr. Feldstein last week that I had done nothing wrong, that the facts of the matter are clear about my having done nothing wrong, and that he was being used by my political opponents in an attempt to harm me.Knowing all that, he chose to go ahead and write this article anyway.
Here are the facts, which I am prepared to document and attest to under oath, in the course of a legal proceeding:
* For many years I lived with my family in Katy, located in Fort Bend Co., and listed that home as my primary residence.
* During the period that my home in Katy was my primary residence, I always paid my Fort Bend Co. property taxes on time and in full.
* Only for purposes of paying Katy Independent School District taxes, my home in Katy was subject to appraisal and assessment by Waller Co.
* During the period that my home in Katy was my primary residence, I always paid my Waller Co. property taxes on time and in full.
* Because my home in Katy was my primary residence, I claimed and received a standard homestead exemption from both Fort Bend and Waller counties.
* For the past several years, I have also owned a second home on Lake Conroe in Montgomery Co.
* Because my second home on Lake Conroe was not my primary residence, I neither claimed nor received a homestead exemption for it.
* During this period, I always paid my Montgomery Co. property tax bill on time and in full.
* In 2003 my home on Lake Conroe became my primary residence.
* As required by law, I immediately notified the proper taxing authorities in both Fort Bend and Montgomery counties, dropping my homestead exemption from the former and reassigning it to the latter.
* In situations such as this, not only is it standard procedure for Fort Bend Co. to notify Waller Co. of any changes in homestead exemption status, they have a legal obligation to do so.
* Fort Bend Co. taxing authorities have confirmed for me, on multiple occasions, both verbally and in writing, that they– not I– were in error by not following standard procedures or meeting their legal obligation to notify Waller Co. of my change in homestead exemption status.
* My "dual homestead" exemptions were the result not of my actions, nor of my legal negligence, but of multiple bureaucratic errors that the bureaucracy itself acknowledges I was neither responsible for nor aware of.
* When my property tax bills of the last two years came for my home in Katy (which was now no longer my primary residence), I paid what the taxing authorities told me I owed.
* Because of mistakes and errors made not by me, but rather by three separate taxing bureaucracies, over the past two years I wasn’t assessed approximately $500 in property taxes, out of a combined property tax bill for my home in Katy that totaled close to $20,000.
* In February of this year I received a letter from Fort Bend Co. taxing authorities notifying me of their failure to properly communicate with Waller Co., but including no statement as to the amount of back taxes I might owe as a result of their mistake.
* Also in February of this year I received a letter from Waller Co. taxing authorities notifying me of their failure to properly communicate with Fort Bend Co., but also not including any statement as to the amount of back taxes I might owe as a result of their mistake.
* Of my own volition, I contacted Fort Bend Co. taxing authorities and spoke with a supervisor, who was very professional, very helpful, and who made it clear to me that this mistake had been their fault, not mine.
* I asked the supervisor if I owed any back taxes as a result of their error, and she advised me that there would be a tax bill due of approximately $500 dollars.
* The supervisor informed me that there would be no penalty due if I paid the tax by May 1st, 2005, since this matter had not been the result of my error.
* I have that statement in writing, signed by the supervisor.
* When I informed the supervisor that I was selling that home, she suggested that I simply allow the taxing authorities to assess and collect that amount at closing.
* Despite having closed the sale of my former home in Katy at the beginning of this month (April), it doesn’t appear that any taxing authority took the amount of back taxes I accrued as a result of their error.
* I am in the process of verifying that fact, so that I do not overpay my taxes.
* In fact, I still haven’t gotten an official statement, from any taxing jurisdiction, telling me exactly how much I owe them as a result of their mistake.Again, I want to be perfectly clear– I communicated to Dan Feldstein and the Houston Chronicle the substance of all of this information last week.
So it turns out that the appraisal authorities of three different taxing authorities screwed up his assessment and exemption -- and acknowledge it in writing. They made contact about the matter with him IN FEBRUARY, not last week, as the article implies. And Dan did exactly what most of us do when we receive that bill (if it isn't paid through a mortgage company) -- wrote the check and didn't go over the thing with fine-tooth comb. We assume that the agencies in charge have done their job correctly and sent us a bill for the correct amount. What's more, the total annual shortfall was around $200 a year over the last three years -- an almost insignificant amount on a tax bill that approaches $7000 annually. The short answer is that Dan did everything right, unless you believe that a taxpayer has an obligation to double-check the work of the taxing authorities for accuracy and competence.
Now Dan Feldstein seems miffed at something Dan Patrick said during the course of his interview.
"If you come after me, I'll come after you," he cheerily imparted to an inquiring reporter.
Well, Dan Patrick has an explanation for that as well.
I made that promise to Mr. Feldstein because as our interview went on it became clear to me that he was less interested in being fair than in smearing me– a suspicion borne out by the callous disregard for the truth evident in the article he finally produced.
Guess what -- when you are a reporter you usually are able to get away with writing a slanted hit-piece. Dan Patrick, on the other hand, has something that Dan Feldstein doesn't -- his own radio station where he talks about whatever he wants for two hours a day (wanna guess what today's topic was), a professionally maintained website that is reqad by many Houstonians where he can post a response that will be read, and an audience that will defend him. Were I Dan Feldstein, I would expect to be on the receiving end of a lot of heat over this attempted smear.
To no one's particular surprise, the Conclave has not elected a new pope. Black smoke was seen in Rome following the first vote taken by the cardinals. By tradition, the first vote is one in which cardinals cast votes for friends, esteemed colleagues, or a favorite son candidate from their own country or region. In 1978, for example, Cardinal Karol Wojtyla cast his first ballot votes for his beloved mentor, Polish Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński, in both 1978 conclaves. Serious voting will begin tomorrow.
Black smoke streamed from the Sistine Chapel's chimney today to signal that cardinals failed to select a new pope in their first round of voting, held just hours after they began their historic task: finding a leader capable of building on John Paul II's spiritual energy while keeping modern rifts from tearing deeper into the church."It seems white. ... No, no, it's black!" reported Vatican Radio as the first pale wisps slipped out from the narrow pipe and then quickly darkened.
As millions around the world watched on television, at least 40,000 people waited in St. Peter's Square with all eyes on the chimney, where smoke from the burned ballots would give the first word of the conclave: white meaning a new pontiff, black showing that the secret gathering will continue Tuesday.
In the last moments of twilight, the pilgrims began to point and gasp. "What is it? White? Black?" hundreds cried out. In a few seconds — at about 8:05 p.m. — it was clear the 115 cardinals from six continents could not find the two-thirds majority needed to elect the new leader for the world's 1.1 billion Roman Catholics. Only one vote was scheduled for today.
Few expected a quick decision. The cardinals have a staggering range of issues to juggle. In the West, they must deal with the fallout from priest sex-abuse scandals and a chronic shortage of priests and nuns. Elsewhere, the church is facing calls for sharper activism against poverty and an easing of its ban on condoms to help combat AIDS.
The next pontiff also must maintain the global ministry of John Paul, who took 104 international trips in his 26-year papacy and is already being hailed as a saint by many faithful
As I pointed out at the old place, we Texans were done over by a group of Republican legislators who didn't want to allow us to vote on a property tax reform amendment to the state constitution that is a part of the Texas GOP platform. Heck, they wouldn't even vote to allow their fellow representatives to debate the matter on the House floor.
These 36 RINOs (Republicans In Name Only) must be removed from office. Each deserves to be challenged and defeated in the primary by a Republican committed to property tax reform -- or during the general election by a Democrat who is committed to it.
Who are the guilty RINOs?
1. Ray Allen (Grand Prairie - DFW)
2. Roy Blake (Nacogdoches)
3. Dan Branch (Dallas)
4. Carter Casteel (New Braunfels)
5. Warren Chisolm (Pampa - Amarillo)
6. Byron Cook (Corsicana)
7. Myra Crownover (Denton - DFW)
8. Dianne Delisi (Temple)
9. Mary Denny (Denton - DFW)
10. Joe Driver (Garland - DFW)
11. Charlie Geren (Ft. Worth)
12. Tony Goolsby (Dallas)
13. Bob Griggs (Ft. Worth)
14. Pat Haggerty (El Paso)
15. Rick Hardcastle (Vernon)
16. Linda Harper-Brown (Irving - DFW)
17. Will Harnett (Dallas)
18. Fred Hill (Richardson - DFW)
19. Bob Hunter (Abilene)
20. Delwin Jones (Lubbock)
21. Terry Keel (Austin)
22. Edmund Kuempel (Seguin)
23. Jodi Laubenberg (Parker - DFW)
24. Jerry Madden (Dallas)
25. Brian McCall (Plano - DFW)
26. Tommy Merritt (Longview)
27. Geanie Morrison (Victoria)
28. Anna Mowery (Ft. Worth)
29. Rob Orr (Burleson)
30. Elvira Reyna (Mesquite - DFW)
31. Todd Smith (Euless - DFW)
32. John Smithee (Amarillo)
33. Burt Solomons (Dallas)
34. David Swinford (Dumas)
35. Vicki Truitt (Keller - DFW)
36. Buddy West (Midland)
Let's get 'em, folks. That especially goes for you folks in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, since it seems that the bulk of this list is composed of your so-called Republican Representatives.
Well, this isn't exactly the first post. Ans many of you know, I've been posting as "The Precinct Chair" over at Precinct 333. I've moved over here and made some changes because I feel the need to get away from Blogger, and also because I've grown and changed since I beganblogging last June.
My old blog began as an impulsive act. I wanted to put my tribute to Ronald Reagan out to the world, and so I wrote. I also wanted a place to express myself on issues of the day, since I was resolved to quit arguing over them with my wife, who is the very light of my life. And so I continued writing.
Blogging has expanded my horizons, made me thing about my views, and even changed my mind more than once. I'll avoid the cliche that "I've grown." I'll just say I've lived and thought, and experienced. I've made friends, made enemies, and had interesting conversations.. I'm glad that has happened.
Let's see how this site, now rather bare, evolves. let's see how this writer evolves, too. But expect to read more of the types of things you saw on the old site. Just expect to find them here instead.