Sunday, May 31, 2009
Just Say No To Big Government
From the Campaign for Liberty
By Jack Hunter
Frustrated with Gov. Mark Sanford's refusal to accept $700 million in federal stimulus dollars and his opposition to the state budget, S.C. Senate President Pro Tem Glenn McConnell addressed the governor in an open letter this month, writing, "Time and again, you have failed to address problems in a constructive manner and proactively work with the Legislature to find solutions."
Noting Sanford's constant opposition to the Republican-dominated state legislature, McConnell added, "While the attacks you have launched may have been intended to build your national image as a reformer, in the final analysis, the work of a true reformer is measured not by words or TV ads or by press releases, but by what he or she has been able to accomplish."
McConnell has a point. But it's also nearly impossible to accomplish anything when there's only one reformer.
There are two types of "conservative" Republicans. The first type believes that government is broken, but simply needs Republicans to better manage it, while the other believes we need to actually reduce government. The first type can enjoy long careers by peppering their continuing support for the status quo with conservative-sounding language. The second type tends to make fewer friends because their career-long language consists of telling Democrats, Republicans, and even their constituents one word: "No."
Texas Congressman Ron Paul earned the name "Dr. No" in the House of Representatives for opposing most legislation brought to the floor. During his tenure in Congress, Sanford joined Paul in saying "no" more than any other congressman. Would America have been better served if Paul and Sanford tried to work more with the rest of the legislature to help bring us to our current state? Or might we have been better off if there were more leaders willing to consistently say "no" to more laws, more spending, and more government in general?
Consider the example of New Mexico's own "Dr. No," former Republican Gov. Gary "Veto" Johnson, who earned his nickname for vetoing 750 bills from 1995 to 2003, more than all the vetoes of the other 49 governors combined. Johnson also cut the growth of his state's government in half, privatized half of the state's prisons, reduced state employees by 1,000, oversaw the longest period without a tax increase in the state's history, and left office with a budget surplus. No doubt, New Mexico leaders wanted to spend as much money as South Carolina's legislature or any other state government. But Johnson constantly said "no," and was able to do some good.
The bloated budget and massive debt that continues to plague the state of South Carolina is a microcosm of the bloated budget and massive debt that continues to plague the entire United States. Everyone from across the political spectrum will generally agree that such reckless behavior is a problem and we cannot go on forever conducting business as usual. Yet when any leader dares to reverse course by saying "no," such leaders will invariably find themselves being attacked for daring to obstruct business as usual. The same state legislature that created our current economic woes are the same leaders who are now saying Sanford is the problem, as if a more cooperative gubernatorial extension of themselves would be preferable and somehow produce different, better results.
When Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980, the new president hung a portrait in the White House of his hero, President Calvin Coolidge. Author Ivan Eland described Coolidge as a president who believed the United States had too many laws. He once said, "We would be better off if we didn't have anymore ... The greatest duty and opportunity of government is not to embark on any new ventures." But as it was in his own time, Coolidge's conservative philosophy remains unpopular today, where "good" or "great" leaders are always defined as those who expand the power of government to accomplish certain goals. The opposite is also true, and it was for this reason that Time magazine once felt compelled to declare Sanford one of America's "worst governors" for his habit of constantly opposing government.
I'm often criticized for bashing Republicans, but I do so because it's hard to take most of them seriously. Any Republican who talks about "fiscal responsibility," yet spends as much as any Democrat, whether at the national or state level, is completely worthless. Unfortunately, this description fits the bulk of the Republican Party. Most Republicans aren't the least bit serious about their conservative rhetoric.
And as America continues to spiral downward the longer spending goes upward, the few, serious conservatives willing to say "no" to government will always get the loudest "yes" from me.
The "Southern Avenger" Jack Hunter is a conservative commentator (WTMA 1250 AM talk radio) and columnist (Charleston City Paper) living in Charleston, South Carolina. See his blog.
Noting Sanford's constant opposition to the Republican-dominated state legislature, McConnell added, "While the attacks you have launched may have been intended to build your national image as a reformer, in the final analysis, the work of a true reformer is measured not by words or TV ads or by press releases, but by what he or she has been able to accomplish."
McConnell has a point. But it's also nearly impossible to accomplish anything when there's only one reformer.
There are two types of "conservative" Republicans. The first type believes that government is broken, but simply needs Republicans to better manage it, while the other believes we need to actually reduce government. The first type can enjoy long careers by peppering their continuing support for the status quo with conservative-sounding language. The second type tends to make fewer friends because their career-long language consists of telling Democrats, Republicans, and even their constituents one word: "No."
Texas Congressman Ron Paul earned the name "Dr. No" in the House of Representatives for opposing most legislation brought to the floor. During his tenure in Congress, Sanford joined Paul in saying "no" more than any other congressman. Would America have been better served if Paul and Sanford tried to work more with the rest of the legislature to help bring us to our current state? Or might we have been better off if there were more leaders willing to consistently say "no" to more laws, more spending, and more government in general?
Consider the example of New Mexico's own "Dr. No," former Republican Gov. Gary "Veto" Johnson, who earned his nickname for vetoing 750 bills from 1995 to 2003, more than all the vetoes of the other 49 governors combined. Johnson also cut the growth of his state's government in half, privatized half of the state's prisons, reduced state employees by 1,000, oversaw the longest period without a tax increase in the state's history, and left office with a budget surplus. No doubt, New Mexico leaders wanted to spend as much money as South Carolina's legislature or any other state government. But Johnson constantly said "no," and was able to do some good.
The bloated budget and massive debt that continues to plague the state of South Carolina is a microcosm of the bloated budget and massive debt that continues to plague the entire United States. Everyone from across the political spectrum will generally agree that such reckless behavior is a problem and we cannot go on forever conducting business as usual. Yet when any leader dares to reverse course by saying "no," such leaders will invariably find themselves being attacked for daring to obstruct business as usual. The same state legislature that created our current economic woes are the same leaders who are now saying Sanford is the problem, as if a more cooperative gubernatorial extension of themselves would be preferable and somehow produce different, better results.
When Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980, the new president hung a portrait in the White House of his hero, President Calvin Coolidge. Author Ivan Eland described Coolidge as a president who believed the United States had too many laws. He once said, "We would be better off if we didn't have anymore ... The greatest duty and opportunity of government is not to embark on any new ventures." But as it was in his own time, Coolidge's conservative philosophy remains unpopular today, where "good" or "great" leaders are always defined as those who expand the power of government to accomplish certain goals. The opposite is also true, and it was for this reason that Time magazine once felt compelled to declare Sanford one of America's "worst governors" for his habit of constantly opposing government.
I'm often criticized for bashing Republicans, but I do so because it's hard to take most of them seriously. Any Republican who talks about "fiscal responsibility," yet spends as much as any Democrat, whether at the national or state level, is completely worthless. Unfortunately, this description fits the bulk of the Republican Party. Most Republicans aren't the least bit serious about their conservative rhetoric.
And as America continues to spiral downward the longer spending goes upward, the few, serious conservatives willing to say "no" to government will always get the loudest "yes" from me.
The "Southern Avenger" Jack Hunter is a conservative commentator (WTMA 1250 AM talk radio) and columnist (Charleston City Paper) living in Charleston, South Carolina. See his blog.
Will France Really Be A Muslim Country?
The following translation from a Muslim forum is an extraordinary insight into the thinking of Islamists about the future of France. The Islamization of other European countries is happening at an even swifter pace.From The Brussels Journal
By Tiberge
There's a 16-page discussion at a Muslim forum called Mejliss el kalam, linked by François Desouche. To translate the entire discussion is out of the question. But here is the first page somewhat simplified....The initial question, dated April 11, 2009, comes from ShamsTabrizi, from Somalia:
[Note: He links to another thread where Israelis are said to call for the slitting open of the stomachs of pregnant Muslim women. "Parisien" was eventually suspended from the forum, not surprisingly.]- Salam. In a city of 22 thousand inhabitants a few miles from Paris, more than 6 thousand persons participated in the Friday prayer at 2:00 p.m., including a significant number of converted Frenchmen and Frenchwomen. At the end of the prayer, seeing these people, I began to wonder in how many years France will be a mostly Muslim country.
- (Abelatif from Belgium responds): You must not have any illusions, my brother. France as a Muslim country will be several generations form now, or more. But it's true that it's beautiful to see Muslims of all origins at the mosque... Praise be to Allah
- (ShamsTabrizi): I don't agree. considering the evolution of the situation I have been witnessing, I do not give it more than 30 years before we will see mayors giving sermons on Friday to the faithful.
- (Abdel93600 from The Netherlands): Salam. The French are no longer having many children. Let's do France a favor and ensure the renewal of generations. It's a problem for many European countries! The birth rate in France recently reached a record, the highest in Europe, due in great part, to immigrant women.
- (Prince.Hakim from Belgium): I think we're heading for a Franco-Creole-Maghrebin civilization with massive intermarriage under the aegis of Islam.
- (Maléikite from Belgium): Brussels will be majority Muslim in less than 20 years (these are non-Muslim statistics). Inch'Allah.
- (MonSpeudo2 from France): Stop dreaming up tales about our country. It will never belong to you
- (ShamsTabrizi to Prince.Hakim): Then you agree with me. France will surely be a Muslim land for our grandchildren, maybe our children. So we must begin to construct a good basis to avoid unpleasant surprises for them in the future.
- (Maléikite to MonSpeudo2): Don't worry, we'll protect your rights, you will have the status of dhimmi.
- (ShamsTabrizi to MonSpeudo2): Ask your father if he ever imagined so many mosques and Muslims when he was your age. Then you'll have the answer as to whom France will belong. I like France, and I will like it even more when it's Muslim. Don't worry, we will be lenient on Christian minorities.
- (Prince-Hakim to MonSpeudo2): It will not be a matter of conquest, but of adherence to a joint effort between Frenchmen and Maghrebins. You should consider converting to Islam.
- (Ilyas_95 from France to MonSpeudo2): Bah! As far as I know France belongs to me as much as to you, doesn't it?
- (Parisien from France to Ilyas_95): No. I don't think so...
- (Prince.Hakim to ShamsTabrizi): I would even say the French deserve to be a part of the Umma.
- (Ilyas_95 to ShamsTabrizi): It's ridiculous to use threats... We're stuck in the suburbs and the high-rises. To say things like we're going to turn France upside-down, when we are not even able to agree on the best way to scratch our noses...
- (Ilyas_95 to Parisien): Really? Why not?
- (El-che from France): In 1974, at the UN, the Algerian president Houari Boumediene, declared: "One day, millions of men will leave the southern hemisphere to go north. And they won't go there as friends. Because they will be going to conquer. And they will conquer and people the land with their sons. It is the womb of women that will bring us victory."
In Le Figaro, December 19, 2006, our great friend Muammar Quadhafi declared: "Without sword, without rifles, without conquests, the 50 million Muslims in Europe will transform it soon into a Muslim continent!"- (Prince.Hakim from Belgium): I think we should have a friendly attitude towards the French and convince them to join us.
- (ShamsTabrizi to Ilyas_95): There is no threat but a simple observation, and when you say we can't agree among ourselves you're off the topic. I don't see what that has to do with the evolution of society advancing in the interests of Islam and Muslims. And that is precisely why I said earlier that we must begin to construct a good basis for the future of our children.
- (Abdel93600 from The Netherlands): Salam. Are there any cities in France that are already majority Muslim or close to it? Except for Roubaix (that goes back a long time) and Marseilles? We're off to a good start, one at the northernmost end the other at the southernmost end?
- (Ilyas95 to ShamsTabrizi): The political power is now in the hands of a minority that remains in power. The numbers do not in any way change the rules of the game... we just have to see to what extent "our" cities (those that are majority Muslim) represent an enviable model for the entire world...
- (Le Compagnon from the UAE to MonSpeudo2): It already belongs to us. First mission accomplished, second mission: children, third: Islamization. End of operation. You will have the right to attend school without a veil.
- (Shams Tabrizi to Prince.Hakim): Salam. That's the way things are going. In the mosque where I prayed on Friday, it was the number of French Muslims that surprised me the most. Naturally, Islamization of society will take place with their help.
- (Ilyas_95 to ShamsTabrizi): What is "Islamization" of France??? The fact that everybody is Muslim???I say this because it is an important point after all...
- (Parisien from France): Then the Israelis are right after all.
[Notice that he said TEN million, not the usual five or six we so often hear about.]- (Need_Peace from Morocco): Assalam alaikom to all. I was in France just once, in August 2007. I spent two weeks there on holiday. I did not make any particular acquaintances with our brothers and sisters of Islam, but for the entire time, I had the certitude that it was a country where Islam will be majority, and I said to everyone that France will be glorified by Islam. Inch'Allah. It warms the heart to see the number of committed sincere converts.
- (ShamsTabrizi to Ilyas_95): Who said anything about taking power? Here we are talking about a majority of the population and it's already a good start. If you also want power, then instead of thinking of yourself as weak and saying that we'll never succeed, rise up and give yourself the means to do it. Don't look for excuses to stay in bed.
- (Didyme from France to ShamsTabrizi): Hello. There are about 3 thousand converts to Islam each year. Let's be liberal and say 5 thousand. Let's forget about the Muslims who become apostates. In order for France to become a majority Muslim country only through conversion, 20 million Frenchmen would have to convert (half of the 60 million Frenchmen minus the 10 million who are already Muslim).
At the rate of 5 thousand conversions per year it would take... 4000 years! So it's difficult to count on conversions alone.[Note: If he thinks Sarkozy is expelling many immigrants, he is perhaps fooling himself. Larger numbers are coming in than returning home.]
You can count on the higher birth rate among immigrant Muslim families than among non-Muslims. But as Muslim immigrants attain the same standard of living as non-Muslims, the birthrates will become equal.
You can count on immigration even though the current policies indicate the opposite, that is, a policy of expulsion.But some can always dream about a majority Muslim France in a "maximum of 30 years."
- (El-che to Prince.Hakim): We are not supposed to be a people who terrorize and who seek to wage war and cause blood to be shed, so yes, we must have a friendly attitude towards them.
-(Prince.Hakim to Parisien, re: the Israelis): They should go back to Russia or Poland or Ethiopia.The conversation goes on for 15 more web pages. I have not had time to read through it all, but French readers may be interested. The comments at François Desouche are worth a look, although I can only post a few at random out of the 200:
- I will not have my children baptized, so that they don't appear on the lists of Christians. Islamists, when they are in power in France, like the Nazis before them, love to consult lists.Like the discussion at Mejliss, this goes on and on. It's very interesting, but the main question still remains: What will really happen when the tipping point has been reached? Will the French wait until that happens, then rebel in violence? Violence can be prevented by sane immigration policies, a refusal to build mosques and an affirmation of nationalism, if not Christianity. If violence does erupt it will be chaotic and directed at the "collaborators" as much (possibly more?) as towards the Muslims.- History always ends with massacres and bloodbaths! If you know how to read between the lines, you know what you have to do!
- (...) In short, I'm very pessimistic for the future of France. I think that the only element that could change the situation might come from international events and a possible conflict with Iran. The Muslims of France will feel threatened and I think very violent riots are foreseeable on French territory, even kamikaze attacks! At that moment, a possible civil war between pro-Iranian and ethnic Frenchmen (of Christian origin) could break out.
- What a bunch of rats... but frankly, even if the country becomes Islamized, I don't think it will become a Muslim country so easily. I have hope that the French people in their majority will finally revolt before that happens.
- We still have time. You don't need 50% Muslims in France for chaos to reign. there are about 4-5 million Muslims in France, or 6 to 8% of the population. They already have quite a bit of nuisance value. Not to mention the non-Muslim foreigners. In all, perhaps 8 million non-Europeans, or 13% of the population.
- (...) Really I would tend to say there are about 8 to 10 million Muslims in France.
- With respect, I feel that the number of 5 million Muslims in France was surpassed long ago. There are at least 10 million!!
- I would say 10 to 12 million. Sometimes, I feel like leaving this country. It's becoming too hard, like seeing a woman you love, with her veins slashed, in a bathtub, and not being able to help her.
- Nobody is really fooled. At any rate not the ethnic Frenchmen. Almost everybody knows that there will be violence at the moment of the "passing of the torch", when the Muslim community is almost in the majority and their "cultural demands" become laws... There will always be a temptation on the part of this community to affirm its domination. It's then that things will begin to go badly.
- (...) Our friends the immigrants, Islamists, collaborators should not worry too much: the French are patient, very patient, too much so, but above all they are unpredictable and the day when the fire is lit, no one will be able to stop it. History has already proven that. (...)
- Having worked a various maternity hospitals in Paris and the nearby suburbs, I can attest that black women are in a very large majority. And they don't have just one child... I saw fewer Maghrebins.
- (In response to the reader who said he wants to leave the country) And that doesn't take into account the social climate. I don't know how it is where you work, but at my job it's war.
- At my job if they're unhappy, they back off. But there's a Frenchman who praises the "virility" of the immigrants, but when it's said about a white man, that's no good, it's Le Pen. Yet in his heart, I feel sure that he suspects it will end in complete chaos. But he prefers to live like an ostrich.
One recurring theme is that despite outward passiveness, the French, in general, know that violence will come. This seems to indicate a higher level of awareness on the part of the population than is generally acknowledged. Notice that the Muslims calmly plot the takeover without any thought of a rebellion from the natives.
Pentecost Sunday
"And there appeared to them tongues as of fire, distributed and
resting on each one of them. And they were filled with the Holy Spirit..."
Acts 2:3
resting on each one of them. And they were filled with the Holy Spirit..."
Acts 2:3
Roberta Invernizzi - "Veni Creator Spiritus " - Niccolò Jommelli
"Pentecost (Whitsunday), with Christmas and Easter, ranks among the great feasts of Christianity. It commemorates not only the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles and Disciples, but also the fruits and effects of that event: the completion of the work of redemption, the fullness of grace for the Church and its children, and the gift of faith for all nations."
Undercover at an Evangelical University
From NPR
Taking a semester off to travel and focus on writing isn't that unusual for a student at Brown University. But instead of studying comparative literature in Europe, Kevin Roose decided to go to Lynchburg, Va., and enroll at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University. Roose passed himself off as an evangelical Christian to blend in with students at the school founded by the late Moral Majority leader. The experience led to a book, The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner's Semester at America's Holiest University.
Roose, the product of the "ultimate, secular, liberal upbringing," got the idea to go undercover after meeting a group of Liberty students while a freshman at Brown. "I had never really come into contact with conservative Christian culture," he says. "It became clear very quickly that we had almost no way to communicate with each other."
Read the rest of this entry >>
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Yankee Genocide Still Here
From NewsWithViewsBy Alan Stang
Our source for the present discussion is War Crimes Against Southern Civilians, by Walter Brian Cisco (Pelican, Gretna, Louisiana, 2007). It is important to establish that the spiritual and political inheritors of the war criminals who committed those crimes do not deny them. They ignore them, hoping that if they say nothing those crimes will fade away; and so far they have been successful. Remember, the winner of a war writes the history of the war. They will respond only if their crimes become sufficiently known.
It is important to correct the record. The crimes and the criminals need to be named. More, they must be explained, because the motives that inspired them continue to motivate the men who run our country, regardless of political party. As we shall see, little has changed. Only if we drag this continuing horror into the light do we have a chance of exorcising it.
Let’s begin with a revealing contrast. In 1863, Confederate General Robert E. Lee invaded the North. The South by then had suffered two years of Yankee crimes and some Southerners thought the invasion was their chance to retaliate. Not so, said Lee. In a proclamation he reminded his men that “the duties exacted of us by civilization and Christianity are not less obligatory in the country of the enemy than in our own.”
“The commanding general considers that no greater disgrace could befall the army, and through it our whole people, than the perpetration of the barbarous outrages upon the unarmed and defenseless and the wanton destruction of private property, that have marked the course of the enemy in our own country. . . .”
Remember that at the beginning of the war Lincoln offered Lee command of the Union army. Imagine the humane result had he been able to accept. We make war “only upon armed men,” said Lee. Taking vengeance for the “atrocities of our enemies” would lower ourselves and offend “against Him to whom vengeance belongeth.” What atrocities is he talking about? Our source is divided into the states of the Confederacy. Let’s begin with Missouri.
Union Brigadier General James H. Lane: “We believe in a war of extermination. I want to see every foot of ground . . . burned over – everything laid waste. . . .” Whoa! A war of extermination? Why? Wasn’t the restoration of the Union the goal of all this? Wouldn’t that have been accomplished simply by occupying the offending states? As we shall see, some other motive was at work.
But so it was. Civilians, male and female – yes, female – died by the hundreds in diseased Yankee jails. The Yankees stole everything they could lift. Lane himself stole a carriage, a piano and women’s dresses. My favorite was his chaplain, Rev. Hugh D. Fisher, who stole the altar furnishings from an Osceola church. He needed them for his own church in Kansas. “Brethren, let us worship.”
A long caravan of stolen property wound its way to Kansas. Arson, theft and murder became commonplace. No citizen was allowed to own guns or ammunition. At war’s end, vast sections of Missouri were uninhabited. Lane’s policy of extermination had been imposed.
General William T. Sherman wrote that “rebel” farms should be given to immigrants from the North. “Enemies must be killed or transported to some other country.” Deported Missourians left the state in miles-long wagon trains laden with household effects. Foraging Yankees robbed and killed them on the way. One report speaks of a road “crowded with women and children, women walking with their babies in their arms, packs on their backs and four or five children following after them . . . .”
There is a word for all this. At the time, the word had not yet been coined. It is “genocide.” Indeed, that is what the UN calls forcibly removing one population and replacing it with another. Genocide was settled Yankee policy imposed from the top.
In Tennessee, pastors were told to declare allegiance to the Union. They refused and were jailed. Episcopal rector George Harris was arrested and told to pray for Lincoln or be hanged. Happily, he was able to escape. The Yankees used his church to store munitions. The Communists would later do something similar to churches in Russia. The Yankees closed every church in Murfreesboro and all the schools in Nashville. In that city, there was an election for circuit court judge and the secessionist won. He was arrested, charged with treason and sent to the penitentiary.
How did the Yankees treat blacks? In Athens, Alabama, they raped a slave girl at the home of Charlotte Hine. At the John Malone plantation, they went to the slave quarters and raped again. A black woman charged a soldier with the crime; his commanding officer refused to prosecute: “I would not arrest one of my men on Negro testimony.” Doesn’t your Communist school textbook say the Yankees had come to free the slaves, not to rape them?
In New Orleans, Cpl. William M. Chinock raped Mary Ellen De Riley, a black woman. He was fined $40 and reduced to private. Captain S. Tyler Reed fired his pistol at William Bird, a black boy, and put out an eye. His sentence? A reprimand. Major General Benjamin Butler, known as the “Beast,” made crooked millions in New Orleans, committed outrageous atrocities and was the only Union commander the Confederacy called a criminal. After the war the people of Massachusetts elected him Governor, proving that, with some noble exceptions, they were already as stupid as they are now.
In occupied Virginia, Union Brig. Gen. Robert H. Milroy wrote his wife that “my will is absolute law – none dare contradict or dispute my slightest word or wish . . . both male and female tremble when they come into my presence . . . I feel a strong disposition to play the tyrant among these traitors.” Wow! They actually trembled, Bob? So then, you must have been something like a god, correct?
In South Carolina, “. . . The free blacks who made up Charleston’s force of firefighters struggled heroically to protect their city and its people.” Free blacks? In South Carolina? Trusted to run the fire department? Hmm!
In Louisiana, Union brigadier general William Dwight wrote: “The scenes of disorder and pillage . . . were disgraceful to civilized war. Houses were entered and all in them destroyed …. Ladies were frightened into delivering their jewels and valuables into the hands of the soldiers by threats of violence toward their husbands. Negro women were ravished in the presence of white women and children.” The Union, forever! Hurrah, boys, hurrah.”
“The home, barn, and store of Samuel Schmulen were looted and burned. . . . Benjamin George, a fifty-year-old slave who lived nearby . . . tried to help his neighbor at least try to save the store. The effort was in vain. Then a group of drunken soldiers surrounded George, demanding to know why he, a black man, would try to assist this white Southerner. They demanded his money, and when George pleaded that he did not have any, one of the soldiers shot him in the right thigh. He survived the wound but was crippled for life.”
The forced evacuation of Atlanta saw “aged grandmothers upon the verge of the grave, tender girls in the first bloom of young womanhood, and little babes not three days old in the arms of sick mothers, thrown out upon the cold charity of the world.” A Yankee reported, “The African Methodist Episcopal Church, built by the colored people with their hard earnings, was also demolished by our soldiers.”
Union war criminals even introduced a criminal scheme later perfected by Chicago gangsters. One of them told a lady he had orders to burn her house, but, “I’ll insure it for fifty dollars.” Selling “insurance” against their own depredations was one extortion technique they used. “You buy my insurance or I breaka you head. Capish?”
In Columbia, South Carolina, Union terrorists stole everything. “Purses, watches, hats, boots, overcoats . . . were taken from victims, white or black.” A witness says: “Commissioned officers, of a rank so high as that of a colonel, were frequently among the most active.” They took the rings from the fingers of a dying woman. They urinated on the beds. They opened graves in search of lucre and left the corpses on the ground.
But here is la pièce de résistance. “Countless women had earrings ripped from bleeding ears.” A foreign diplomat wrote: “I have myself seen a lady with the lobes of both ears torn asunder.” Witnesses saw soldiers torching the Catholic convent. “What do you think of God now?” they shouted to the nuns. “Is not Sherman greater?. . .”
In St. Landry Parish alone, in western Louisiana, there were 1,596 free blacks just before the war. Some owned sugar plantations and slaves. What? Yes, blacks owned slaves. Invading Yankees were shocked. One Connecticut officer was indignant because they dared “call themselves Americans.” The Yankees stole from these free blacks as well as from the whites.
In Nashville, in September, 1862, blue bellies couldn’t find seats in a crowded theater. They ejected blacks from the “Negro gallery,” beat them and threw them down the stairs. After enjoying the performance, they attacked every black they found in the streets. In Gallatin, in May, 1864, they torched two new schools for black children, murdered one freedman and swore they would kill every black in town.
In southeast Georgia there were many free blacks who had accumulated substantial property. Indeed, so had hard working slaves. Union goons stole it all, even threatening black wives. In some cases, black husbands had to rescue them. They stole everything from a black nurse and killed her animals. “Honey, I never knowed a Yankee that wasn’t mean as dirt. . . . What can you spec from a hog but a grunt.”
And finally, in Columbia: “One black woman . . . was raped by seven soldiers of the United States Army. She then had her face forced down into a shallow ditch and was held there until she drowned.” William Gilmore Simms reported how “regiments, in successive relays,” committed “gang rape on scores of slave women.” On the Sumter District plantation, the corpses of eighteen black women were found. Each had been stabbed in the chest with a bayonet. Yankee war criminals had done with them.
Remember, these are just a few examples. You really need to read the book. So what are we looking at? Obviously it is considerably different from the mostly mythical war to “free the slaves” your high school textbook told you about. Notice that it is motivated by an insane, messianic fury. The war criminals are enraged, utterly out of control. About what? Obviously not about slavery. Men outraged by slavery do not rob, rape and murder slaves. And remember that chief war criminal Lincoln was as foul a racist as ever lived, even discomfited other racists, staunchly defended slavery and wanted to ship American blacks “back” to Africa.
No, what drove these Yankee war criminals insane was that the Southerners had dared to come out from under, to say no to the Leviathan state, to total government, to go their own way. They had expressed their freedom through secession. They had invoked their inalienable right to depart.
A debate endures about whether they had the constitutional right to secede. I don’t know why. I can solve the problem for all time. The Founding Fathers seceded from England. In the Declaration of Independence – the nation’s birth certificate – they said that whenever a people find their government oppressive, they have the right to alter or abolish it. To argue that there is no right to secede is to say that only a few years later, these same men, would concoct a document – the Constitution – in which they would deny themselves that blood-bought right.
Indeed, there were a few incipient attempts to secede before Lincoln. No one tried to argue that secession was illegal. One area that seriously considered secession was New England. What? Yes. And all through the Twentieth Century, did not the United States vociferously advance the right to secede for other people? We even fought a couple of wars, and lost thousands of the best of the best, to ensure the independence of South Korea and South Vietnam. Could there possibly be a straight-faced argument that other people deserve independence but we do not?
The Founding Fathers did not create slavery; they inherited 150 years of it. Many Southern slaves were sold to the South by Yankee slavers who no longer had need of them. Slavery was an intolerable stain on the American record. That stain could only be expunged by total abolition. Other countries, including Russia, abolished it without violence. Only ours did so at the cost of some 600,000 men and the destruction of the Union, by men who claimed to revere it and who had owned slaves themselves – and who did all this to keep the South in economic subjection.
But even this is not the core. Remember the strutting Yankee generals who confused themselves with God. Indeed, remember the terrorist assertion that insane mass murderer Sherman actually outranks God. Consider the messianic fury we have mentioned. Something more than mere greed was at work.
It is literally a satanic perversion of Christianity, a perversion pretending to be Christianity, which erupts time and again across the centuries. From time to time people who are smarter than God appear, usurpers who have the temporal power to do the job right. If you disagree with them they burn you at the stake. If you try to get out from under them, they scream you are a rebel. You have betrayed them. They will rob and rape you, they will kill you; they will invade and burn your country to the ground, to persuade you to see it their way. Either do that or die. They are disciples of Satan.
The reason this is so relevant is that this very mentality rules the nation today. That is why the federal juggernaut is so merciless, so confiscatory, so totalitarian. Reconstruction continues, not just of the South; this time of the whole nation, conducted by men consumed by hubris, who believe they can improve upon God.
But Sherman is still dead. God is alive.
There is a word for all this. At the time, the word had not yet been coined. It is “genocide.” Indeed, that is what the UN calls forcibly removing one population and replacing it with another. Genocide was settled Yankee policy imposed from the top.
In Tennessee, pastors were told to declare allegiance to the Union. They refused and were jailed. Episcopal rector George Harris was arrested and told to pray for Lincoln or be hanged. Happily, he was able to escape. The Yankees used his church to store munitions. The Communists would later do something similar to churches in Russia. The Yankees closed every church in Murfreesboro and all the schools in Nashville. In that city, there was an election for circuit court judge and the secessionist won. He was arrested, charged with treason and sent to the penitentiary.
How did the Yankees treat blacks? In Athens, Alabama, they raped a slave girl at the home of Charlotte Hine. At the John Malone plantation, they went to the slave quarters and raped again. A black woman charged a soldier with the crime; his commanding officer refused to prosecute: “I would not arrest one of my men on Negro testimony.” Doesn’t your Communist school textbook say the Yankees had come to free the slaves, not to rape them?
In New Orleans, Cpl. William M. Chinock raped Mary Ellen De Riley, a black woman. He was fined $40 and reduced to private. Captain S. Tyler Reed fired his pistol at William Bird, a black boy, and put out an eye. His sentence? A reprimand. Major General Benjamin Butler, known as the “Beast,” made crooked millions in New Orleans, committed outrageous atrocities and was the only Union commander the Confederacy called a criminal. After the war the people of Massachusetts elected him Governor, proving that, with some noble exceptions, they were already as stupid as they are now.
In occupied Virginia, Union Brig. Gen. Robert H. Milroy wrote his wife that “my will is absolute law – none dare contradict or dispute my slightest word or wish . . . both male and female tremble when they come into my presence . . . I feel a strong disposition to play the tyrant among these traitors.” Wow! They actually trembled, Bob? So then, you must have been something like a god, correct?
In South Carolina, “. . . The free blacks who made up Charleston’s force of firefighters struggled heroically to protect their city and its people.” Free blacks? In South Carolina? Trusted to run the fire department? Hmm!
In Louisiana, Union brigadier general William Dwight wrote: “The scenes of disorder and pillage . . . were disgraceful to civilized war. Houses were entered and all in them destroyed …. Ladies were frightened into delivering their jewels and valuables into the hands of the soldiers by threats of violence toward their husbands. Negro women were ravished in the presence of white women and children.” The Union, forever! Hurrah, boys, hurrah.”
“The home, barn, and store of Samuel Schmulen were looted and burned. . . . Benjamin George, a fifty-year-old slave who lived nearby . . . tried to help his neighbor at least try to save the store. The effort was in vain. Then a group of drunken soldiers surrounded George, demanding to know why he, a black man, would try to assist this white Southerner. They demanded his money, and when George pleaded that he did not have any, one of the soldiers shot him in the right thigh. He survived the wound but was crippled for life.”
The forced evacuation of Atlanta saw “aged grandmothers upon the verge of the grave, tender girls in the first bloom of young womanhood, and little babes not three days old in the arms of sick mothers, thrown out upon the cold charity of the world.” A Yankee reported, “The African Methodist Episcopal Church, built by the colored people with their hard earnings, was also demolished by our soldiers.”
Union war criminals even introduced a criminal scheme later perfected by Chicago gangsters. One of them told a lady he had orders to burn her house, but, “I’ll insure it for fifty dollars.” Selling “insurance” against their own depredations was one extortion technique they used. “You buy my insurance or I breaka you head. Capish?”
In Columbia, South Carolina, Union terrorists stole everything. “Purses, watches, hats, boots, overcoats . . . were taken from victims, white or black.” A witness says: “Commissioned officers, of a rank so high as that of a colonel, were frequently among the most active.” They took the rings from the fingers of a dying woman. They urinated on the beds. They opened graves in search of lucre and left the corpses on the ground.
But here is la pièce de résistance. “Countless women had earrings ripped from bleeding ears.” A foreign diplomat wrote: “I have myself seen a lady with the lobes of both ears torn asunder.” Witnesses saw soldiers torching the Catholic convent. “What do you think of God now?” they shouted to the nuns. “Is not Sherman greater?. . .”
In St. Landry Parish alone, in western Louisiana, there were 1,596 free blacks just before the war. Some owned sugar plantations and slaves. What? Yes, blacks owned slaves. Invading Yankees were shocked. One Connecticut officer was indignant because they dared “call themselves Americans.” The Yankees stole from these free blacks as well as from the whites.
In Nashville, in September, 1862, blue bellies couldn’t find seats in a crowded theater. They ejected blacks from the “Negro gallery,” beat them and threw them down the stairs. After enjoying the performance, they attacked every black they found in the streets. In Gallatin, in May, 1864, they torched two new schools for black children, murdered one freedman and swore they would kill every black in town.
In southeast Georgia there were many free blacks who had accumulated substantial property. Indeed, so had hard working slaves. Union goons stole it all, even threatening black wives. In some cases, black husbands had to rescue them. They stole everything from a black nurse and killed her animals. “Honey, I never knowed a Yankee that wasn’t mean as dirt. . . . What can you spec from a hog but a grunt.”
And finally, in Columbia: “One black woman . . . was raped by seven soldiers of the United States Army. She then had her face forced down into a shallow ditch and was held there until she drowned.” William Gilmore Simms reported how “regiments, in successive relays,” committed “gang rape on scores of slave women.” On the Sumter District plantation, the corpses of eighteen black women were found. Each had been stabbed in the chest with a bayonet. Yankee war criminals had done with them.
Remember, these are just a few examples. You really need to read the book. So what are we looking at? Obviously it is considerably different from the mostly mythical war to “free the slaves” your high school textbook told you about. Notice that it is motivated by an insane, messianic fury. The war criminals are enraged, utterly out of control. About what? Obviously not about slavery. Men outraged by slavery do not rob, rape and murder slaves. And remember that chief war criminal Lincoln was as foul a racist as ever lived, even discomfited other racists, staunchly defended slavery and wanted to ship American blacks “back” to Africa.
No, what drove these Yankee war criminals insane was that the Southerners had dared to come out from under, to say no to the Leviathan state, to total government, to go their own way. They had expressed their freedom through secession. They had invoked their inalienable right to depart.
A debate endures about whether they had the constitutional right to secede. I don’t know why. I can solve the problem for all time. The Founding Fathers seceded from England. In the Declaration of Independence – the nation’s birth certificate – they said that whenever a people find their government oppressive, they have the right to alter or abolish it. To argue that there is no right to secede is to say that only a few years later, these same men, would concoct a document – the Constitution – in which they would deny themselves that blood-bought right.
Indeed, there were a few incipient attempts to secede before Lincoln. No one tried to argue that secession was illegal. One area that seriously considered secession was New England. What? Yes. And all through the Twentieth Century, did not the United States vociferously advance the right to secede for other people? We even fought a couple of wars, and lost thousands of the best of the best, to ensure the independence of South Korea and South Vietnam. Could there possibly be a straight-faced argument that other people deserve independence but we do not?
The Founding Fathers did not create slavery; they inherited 150 years of it. Many Southern slaves were sold to the South by Yankee slavers who no longer had need of them. Slavery was an intolerable stain on the American record. That stain could only be expunged by total abolition. Other countries, including Russia, abolished it without violence. Only ours did so at the cost of some 600,000 men and the destruction of the Union, by men who claimed to revere it and who had owned slaves themselves – and who did all this to keep the South in economic subjection.
But even this is not the core. Remember the strutting Yankee generals who confused themselves with God. Indeed, remember the terrorist assertion that insane mass murderer Sherman actually outranks God. Consider the messianic fury we have mentioned. Something more than mere greed was at work.
It is literally a satanic perversion of Christianity, a perversion pretending to be Christianity, which erupts time and again across the centuries. From time to time people who are smarter than God appear, usurpers who have the temporal power to do the job right. If you disagree with them they burn you at the stake. If you try to get out from under them, they scream you are a rebel. You have betrayed them. They will rob and rape you, they will kill you; they will invade and burn your country to the ground, to persuade you to see it their way. Either do that or die. They are disciples of Satan.
The reason this is so relevant is that this very mentality rules the nation today. That is why the federal juggernaut is so merciless, so confiscatory, so totalitarian. Reconstruction continues, not just of the South; this time of the whole nation, conducted by men consumed by hubris, who believe they can improve upon God.
But Sherman is still dead. God is alive.
Alan Stang was one of Mike Wallace’s original writers at Channel 13 in New York, where he wrote some of the scripts that sent Mike to CBS. Stang has been a radio talk show host himself. In Los Angeles, he went head to head nightly with Larry King, and, according to Arbitron, had almost twice as many listeners. He has been a foreign correspondent. He has written hundreds of feature magazine articles in national magazines and some fifteen books, for which he has won many awards, including a citation from the Pennsylvania House of Representatives for journalistic excellence. One of Stang’s exposés stopped a criminal attempt to seize control of New Mexico, where a gang seized a court house, held a judge hostage and killed a deputy. The scheme was close to success before Stang intervened. Another Stang exposé inspired major reforms in federal labor legislation.
(Reprinted with permission of the author.)
Tiananmen Square Cleared But Not Forgotten
Twenty years ago today the Goddess of Democracy stood in Tiananmen Square and thousands of students and their supporters hoped for a more just and democratic China. Within a week their peaceful protest was brutally put down, with thousands murdered, and families billed for the bullets that killed their loved ones. The square was cleared, but the memory of those that gave their lives will surely not be forgotten in China and around the world. The following video documents those extraordinary days.
Sunlit Uplands Nominated for Catholic New Media Awards
Sunlit Uplands is very pleased to have been nominated in numerous categories of the prestigious Catholic New Media Awards, including "Peoples Choice Blog," "Best Blog by a Man," "Best Written Blog," and "Most Informative Blog."
This is a great opportunity to introduce the blog to many new readers, and we are most grateful to those loyal readers who nominated us.
Those wishing to vote in the Catholic New Media Awards may register at the site. Registration is free and voting begins on June 1, and continues through the entire month.
It is an honor to be nominated, and that honor is shared by a circle of friends, our readers, who have contributed many fine articles, ideas, editorial help, and encouragement over the past year.
This is a great opportunity to introduce the blog to many new readers, and we are most grateful to those loyal readers who nominated us.
Those wishing to vote in the Catholic New Media Awards may register at the site. Registration is free and voting begins on June 1, and continues through the entire month.
It is an honor to be nominated, and that honor is shared by a circle of friends, our readers, who have contributed many fine articles, ideas, editorial help, and encouragement over the past year.
Goodbye, Columbus
The death of a holiday at Brown
How are things elsewhere in the academy? Well, last month the faculty at Brown University voted to rename Columbus Day “Fall Weekend.” What do you make of that? Rather lacking in poetry, “Fall Weekend.” But from the perspective of the tenured elite, that anodyne moniker has the advantage of ideological neutrality. “Fall Weekend” does not commemorate a European explorer. It therefore does not honor the memory of the settlement and cultivation of the American continent and, by implication, withholds approbation of the ultimate fruit of that settling and cultivation: the founding of the United States. As Fox News reported, the Brown faculty acted in response to the clamoring of students, hundreds of whom had petitioned the university “to stop observing Columbus Day, saying Christopher Columbus’s violent treatment of Native Americans he encountered was inconsistent with Brown’s values.”
“Christopher Columbus’s violent treatment of Native Americans,” eh? How about the violent treatment Native Americans meted out to each other (and to Europeans, when they could get their hands on them)? Is that consistent with “Brown’s values”? Need a refresher course about all that? Here is the historian Keith Windschuttle, in his book The Killing of History, on “the widespread practice of human sacrifice which prevailed at the time of the Spanish conquest.”
Human sacrifice was practised by the Aztecs of Mexico, the Mayas of Yucatan, the Incas of Peru, the Tupinambas and the Caytes of Brazil, the natives of Guyana and the Pawnee and Huron tribes of North America. In societies that had developed urban settlements, such as those of the Aztecs and Mayas, victims were usually taken to a central temple and lain across an altar where priests would cut out their hearts and offer them to the gods. In the less technologically developed societies of Guyana and Brazil, victims would either be battered to death in the open and then dismembered, or tied up and burned to death over a fire. The early Europeans were shocked to find that sacrifice was often accompanied by cannibalism. In Tenochtitlan, the remains of sacrificed victims were taken from the temples and distributed among the populace, who would cook the flesh in a stew. In Guyana and Brazil, limbs of victims were skewered and roasted over a spit before being consumed. The Caytes of the Brazilian coast ate the crew of every wrecked Portuguese vessel they found. The American anthropologist Harry Turney-High writes: “At one meal they ate the first Bishop of Bahia, two Canons, the Procurator of the Royal Portuguese Treasury, two pregnant women, and several children.”
Whatever barbarities European explorers visited upon the indigenous populations of the Americas pale in comparison with the barbarities the natives visited upon others. Moreover, the European settlers have this large achievement in the credit column of their moral reckoning: they brought civilization, spiritual as well as material, to the various backward populations they subdued. They also joined together to create a society that grew into the richest, mightiest, and freest country in the history of the world. We mean the United States of America. No, it is not perfect. But for all its faults it remains, as Abraham Lincoln put it, “the last best hope of earth.” Recognizing that, of course, is really what is “inconsistent with Brown’s values.”
Friday, May 29, 2009
Should Homosexuality Be a 'Litmus Test' for High Court?
"Gary Glenn, president of the American Family Association of Michigan, contends the position held by Focus on the Family is the equivalent of 'moral retreat.' 'It's not just the damage caused by Focus on the Family's moral retreat on the issue,' Glenn argues. '[That explanation] will be used by homosexual activists and their allies in the media to further marginalize and delegitimize any pro-family organization that continues to take a Biblical standard.'"
From OneNewsNow
By Jim Brown
Conservative political activists are divided over whether homosexual behavior should disqualify a judicial nominee from consideration for the U.S. Supreme Court.
Focus on the Family's judicial analyst, Bruce Hausknecht, recently told liberal blogger Greg Sargent that Focus would not oppose a Supreme Court nominee solely because of their homosexual behavior. "Our concern at the Supreme Court is judicial philosophy," Hausknecht said. "Sexual orientation only becomes an issue if it effects their judging."
Ashley Horne, federal policy analyst at Focus, says just like a nominee's ethnicity and life experience, homosexuality should not be a litmus test.
"Someone's sexual orientation or their preferences, none of these things should come into consideration when we're talking about evaluating someone who will make decisions based on precedent under the law [and who will] practice judicial restraint," Horne explains. "Those are the things we look at for whether or not someone would make a fit justice on the Supreme Court."
Gary Glenn, president of the American Family Association of Michigan, contends the position held by Focus on the Family is the equivalent of "moral retreat."
"It's not just the damage caused by Focus on the Family's moral retreat on the issue," Glenn argues. "[That explanation] will be used by homosexual activists and their allies in the media to further marginalize and delegitimize any pro-family organization that continues to take a biblical standard."
Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council agrees with Focus on the Family that homosexuality should not be an absolute litmus test for a Supreme Court nominee. He argues in blog comments that "even Supreme Court nominees deserve some zone of privacy, and...there is at least a hypothetical possibility that somewhere in the country there is a judge who has experienced same-sex attractions, but who also respects judicial restraint and the original intent of the Constitution.
"In the real world, however, the chances of finding a highly-qualified judge who fits both of those descriptions are probably about equal to the chances of a camel passing through the eye of a needle," Sprigg concludes. "So don't hold your breath waiting for social conservatives to 'support' a 'gay' judicial nominee."
Focus on the Family's judicial analyst, Bruce Hausknecht, recently told liberal blogger Greg Sargent that Focus would not oppose a Supreme Court nominee solely because of their homosexual behavior. "Our concern at the Supreme Court is judicial philosophy," Hausknecht said. "Sexual orientation only becomes an issue if it effects their judging."
Ashley Horne, federal policy analyst at Focus, says just like a nominee's ethnicity and life experience, homosexuality should not be a litmus test.
"Someone's sexual orientation or their preferences, none of these things should come into consideration when we're talking about evaluating someone who will make decisions based on precedent under the law [and who will] practice judicial restraint," Horne explains. "Those are the things we look at for whether or not someone would make a fit justice on the Supreme Court."
Gary Glenn, president of the American Family Association of Michigan, contends the position held by Focus on the Family is the equivalent of "moral retreat." "It's not just the damage caused by Focus on the Family's moral retreat on the issue," Glenn argues. "[That explanation] will be used by homosexual activists and their allies in the media to further marginalize and delegitimize any pro-family organization that continues to take a biblical standard."
Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council agrees with Focus on the Family that homosexuality should not be an absolute litmus test for a Supreme Court nominee. He argues in blog comments that "even Supreme Court nominees deserve some zone of privacy, and...there is at least a hypothetical possibility that somewhere in the country there is a judge who has experienced same-sex attractions, but who also respects judicial restraint and the original intent of the Constitution.
"In the real world, however, the chances of finding a highly-qualified judge who fits both of those descriptions are probably about equal to the chances of a camel passing through the eye of a needle," Sprigg concludes. "So don't hold your breath waiting for social conservatives to 'support' a 'gay' judicial nominee."
Americans Vote with Wallets to See Obama Birth Certificate
More than $40K in 1st 4 days for 'truth and transparency' billboard campaign
From WorldNetDaily
As WND's billboard campaign to raise visibility of the issues surrounding Barack Obama's constitutional eligibility yesterday continued to attract eager donors, the president had this to say: "I will never hide the truth because it is uncomfortable."
As WND's billboard campaign to raise visibility of the issues surrounding Barack Obama's constitutional eligibility yesterday continued to attract eager donors, the president had this to say: "I will never hide the truth because it is uncomfortable."
"On all of these matters related to the disclosure of sensitive information, I wish I could say that there is a simple formula," Obama said. "But there is not. These are tough calls involving competing concerns, and they require a surgical approach. But the common thread that runs through all of my decisions is simple: we will safeguard what we must to protect the American people, but we will also ensure the accountability and oversight that is the hallmark of our constitutional system. I will never hide the truth because it is uncomfortable. I will deal with Congress and the courts as co-equal branches of government. I will tell the American people what I know and don’t know, and when I release something publicly or keep something secret, I will tell you why."
Joseph Farah, WND's editor and chief executive officer, reacted to Obama's statement in stunned amazement.
"This is a guy who has no trouble turning over sensitive documents from previous administrations, but he still refuses to release for public view something seemingly so innocuous as his own birth certificate," said Farah. "This is a double-standard wide enough to sail the Queen Mary 2 through. Statements like this need to be challenged by a vibrant and free press. And that's what our 'Where's the birth certificate?' billboard campaign is all about."
Read the rest of this entry >>Could Sotomayor Turn Out to be Obama's Souter?
Glenn Beck raised an interesting question about the appointment of Sonia Sotomayor. Given her lack a qualifications for the nation's highest court, and the lack of enthusiasm for her among the hardcore leftists of the Democrat Party, could it be Obama's intention to throw her under the bus? Were Republicans to block her appointment, the Hispanic vote would be even more securely Democrat. Then, once conservative Republicans had spent their firepower on Sotomayor, Obama could appoint an even more radical ideologue more to the liking of his base. When one considers that The One has thrown both his pastor of twenty years and the grandmother who raised him under that bus, it seems plausible.
And here's a story from The Washington Times that should really send chills down the spines of the radical left -- Bill Donohue of the Catholic League says "it looks like she'll be at least a wash with Souter, and maybe we'll even see improvement." Donohue says he will "quietly root for her."
We've had plenty of Republican President's surprised and disappointed by their nominees to the Supreme Court. Could Sonia Sotomayor turn out to be Obama's Souter?
And here's a story from The Washington Times that should really send chills down the spines of the radical left -- Bill Donohue of the Catholic League says "it looks like she'll be at least a wash with Souter, and maybe we'll even see improvement." Donohue says he will "quietly root for her."
We've had plenty of Republican President's surprised and disappointed by their nominees to the Supreme Court. Could Sonia Sotomayor turn out to be Obama's Souter?
Pro-Life Catholic Leader Roots for Sotomayor
From The Washington Times
By Victor MortonA prominent pro-life Catholic says he will be quietly rooting for Judge Sonia Sotomayor to be confirmed to the Supreme Court and said she may even be an improvement over retiring Justice David H. Souter - as both sides of the abortion issue try to discern her position.
William Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, said Judge Sotomayor's record has more bright spots than conservative Catholics can reasonably expect to get from an appointee of President Obama.
"If the Republicans are smart, they would not fight this one," he told The Washington Times in an interview Thursday.
"I wish I knew more about her. But from what we know, it looks like she'll be at least a wash with Souter, and maybe we'll even see improvement."
Judge Sotomayor's record on abortion-related cases is thin and tangential. She ruled on the right of pro-life protesters to sue on charges of police brutality and on a challenge to the "Mexico City policy," which prevented U.S. government funds from going to aid organizations that counsel for or provide abortions.
The White House said that Mr. Obama did not specifically ask her about her views on the issue but that the president is confident she agrees with him on the fundamental constitutional issues.
But pro-choice groups are uncertain about Judge Sotomayor, and this week they called on senators to ask her directly how she would rule on Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that established a constitutional right to an abortion.
"We encourage the Senate Judiciary Committee to engage Judge Sotomayor and any future nominees to the Court on their commitment to the principles of Roe v. Wade," said Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights. "Anything less threatens not only a woman's constitutional rights, but her life and health."
Pro-life groups also said senators should press for answers.
"We believe it is critical that senators thoroughly explore whether Judge Sotomayor believes that Supreme Court justices have the right to override the decisions of elected lawmakers on such issues as partial-birth abortion, tax funding of abortion and parental notification for abortion," said Douglas Johnson, legislative director of the National Right to Life Committee.
In the protester case, she said the pro-lifers had a right to have their police-brutality claims adjudicated by a jury rather than be summarily dismissed.
In the 2002 Mexico City policy case, Judge Sotomayor rejected claims from the Center for Reproductive Rights and its attorneys, based on both appeals court and Supreme Court precedent.
Although the decision didn't deal with the fundamental constitutional issue of abortion rights, she said in the Mexico City case that the "Supreme Court has made clear that the government is free to favor the anti-abortion position over the pro-choice position, and can do so with public funds."
Mr. Obama ended the Mexico City policy soon after taking office this year.
At the White House, press secretary Robert Gibbs said Mr. Obama did not ask Judge Sotomayor about her views on the legality of abortion but asked her enough to be comfortable that she sees the constitutional issues the same way he does. Mr. Obama is pro-choice.
"I think he feels comfortable in asking her to describe the way she interprets, to describe her views on that. He felt comfortable that they shared a philosophy on that interpretation," Mr. Gibbs said.
He said Mr. Obama and Judge Sotomayor discussed both unenumerated rights and what constitutes settled law.
In 2005, President George W. Bush found himself having to defend his own Supreme Court nominee, Harriet Miers, against complaints from conservatives and pro-life activists who said she lacked a paper trail to prove her conservative credentials.
Miss Miers eventually withdrew her nomination.
Mr. Donohue was not alone among conservative Catholics in calling for pro-lifers to hold their fire.
"My concern is that the people in Obama's on-deck circle are much worse," said Steve Dillard, an adviser to the 2008 presidential campaign of Mike Huckabee and founder of the site Catholics Against Rudy. He called Judge Sotomayor "the best of the worst."
"Do you really want to win this battle only to get Diane Wood?" said Mr. Dillard, a lawyer and former clerk at the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, where Judge Wood, whom he called a brilliant radical, sits.
Beyond abortion, Mr. Donohue said, he saw in Judge Sotomayor's record a history of backing religious liberty claims.
"She said it was wrong to prohibit a menorah on public ground; I like that. She talks about the religious rights of prisoners; I like that too," he said.
Mr. Donohue also mentioned a more personal angle: his identification with New York's Puerto Rican community, from which Judge Sotomayor comes. He mentioned leading the Puerto Rican Day Parade at St. Lucy's Catholic Church in Spanish Harlem and taking "groups of 15, 16 kids to Yankee Stadium."
"All these things put together, I'm gonna quietly root for her," said Mr. Donohue, who has never met the nominee.
Mr. Donohue also suggested that opposing Judge Sotomayor's confirmation would not be wise in the short term, in terms of who the alternative nominee might be.
"I am looking at this pool of likely competitors, and, far and away, Sotomayor is the best candidate," he said, adding that making too big a political fight over the Sotomayor pick "might look like we have an agenda that will not look good to many in the Latino community."
Group Urges IRS Review of Liberty Tax Exemption
From OneNewsNow
The group Americans United for Separation of Church and State wants the Internal Revenue Service to review Liberty University's tax-exempt status because the Christian school revoked its recognition of a student-run Democratic club.
The group Americans United for Separation of Church and State wants the Internal Revenue Service to review Liberty University's tax-exempt status because the Christian school revoked its recognition of a student-run Democratic club.Americans United made the request in a letter to the IRS, arguing that Liberty's recognition of a Republican club offers GOP candidates support that is not available to Democratic candidates.
Read the rest of this entry >>
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Homosexuals More Likely to Molest Kids, Study Reports
From Baptist Press
By Ken Walker
Read the rest of this entry >>By Ken Walker
A social researcher who has studied sexual behavior for 24 years believes the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) has sound reasons for maintaining its prohibition against gay scoutmasters.
A homosexual cannot automatically be considered a child molester, said Judith Reisman, president of the Institute for Media Education in suburban Louisville, Ky.
But with 17-24 percent of boys being abused by age 18, nearly as many as the 25 percent of girls, there is cause for concern, she said.
Since heterosexuals outnumber the homosexual population about 44 to 1, as a group the incidence of homosexuals molesting children is up to 40 times greater than heterosexuals, she said.
"You're looking at a much higher rate of abuse," said Reisman, a former university research professor who recently completed a study titled, "Crafting Gay Children." "The Department of Justice just released data and the rate of abuse are off the charts."
BSA's policy has been the subject of constant attacks from gay activists, who have convinced a number of school boards to oust the Scouts from board property.
In a story that aired Apr. 1 on CBS, "60 Minutes" also questioned its validity. After California congressman Dana Rohrabacher called the prohibition common sense, reporter Lesley Stahl remarked that common sense turns out to be a myth.
According to the FBI and several clinical studies published in reputable journals, gay men aren't more likely to sexually abuse boys, she said.
"In fact, the largest database of child molesters in the country shows that those who molest boys are over three times more likely to be heterosexual in their adult relationships than homosexual," she said.
But Reisman points to figures from a 1991 population study by the U.S. Department of Commerce.
It showed that 8 million girls were abused by age 18 by heterosexual men, a ratio of 1 victim to 11 adult men. However, 6-8 million boys were abused by age 18 by 1-2 million adult homosexuals, a ratio of 3-5 victims for every gay adult.
Questioned about Reisman's claims, CBS stuck by its story.
Spokesman Kevin Tedesco said "60 Minutes" staffers spoke with leading sources of information on child molestation, including the FBI, American Psychological Association and several clinical researchers.
The database was assembled by psychologist Dr. Gene Able, director of the Behavioral Sciences Institute in Atlanta, he added.
However, Reisman also cites a past study by Able to bolster her contention that BSA has reason to fear admitting homosexuals to the scoutmaster ranks. It found that 150 boys are abused by one male homosexual offender, compared to 19.8 girls by heterosexual offenders.
In a study published in 1987 in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence, Able said homosexuals sexually molest young boys with an incidence five times greater than the molestation of girls. (Calls to Able seeking further comment were not returned.)
"We looked at the leading gay travel guide," Reisman said of her research. "Forty-seven percent of the 139 nations they talked about identified places to find boys. The average heterosexual travel guide is not concerned with finding children."
Crime statistics also pose concerns. Figures released last summer by the Justice Department reveal that adults are not the primary victims of sexual assault, she said.
They showed that 67 percent of all reported sex abuse victims are children and 64 percent of forcible sodomy victims are boys under 12.
Obama Names Theology Professor, Campaign Donor as Holy See Ambassador
An associate professor will be the next US Ambassador to the Vatican -- I guess the graduate assistants were busy with more important matters. But being Cuban-American, he does complement the Sotomayor-Puerto Rican-American pick in Obama's identity politics/Hispanic strategy. Now he just needs to find a Mexican-American to head the US Immigration and Naturalization Service, and all the Latino bases will be covered.
From Catholic World NewsPresident Barack Obama has nominated Miguel Diaz, associate professor of theology at St. John's University and the College of Saint Benedict in Minnesota, as US ambassador to the Holy See. The author of On Being Human: U.S. Hispanic and Rahnerian Perspectives, Diaz is a board member of the Catholic Theological Society of America.
Diaz-- who supported the nomination of former Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius as secretary of Health and Human Services, despite her record on abortion-- donated $1,000 to the Obama Victory Fund in September 2008.
Source(s): these links will take you to other sites, in a new window.
- Theology professor nominated to be U.S. ambassador to the Holy See (College of Saint Benedict/Saint John’s University)
- Hispanic theologian chosen for Vatican ambassador (AP)
- 26 prominent Catholics back Sebelius pick (National Catholic Reporter)
- Archbishop Naumann laments Sebelius appointment, warns of threat to Catholic hospitals (CWN, Mar 5)
- Federal Election Commission
Romney and Obama Advisor Urges Abolition of Government Recognition of Marriage
By Gary Glenn
President, American Family Association of Michigan
Doug Kmiec, the Obama-supporting law professor who today called for abolition of government recognition of marriage between one man and one woman was -- immediately before he endorsed Obama -- co-chair of the Romney for President Advisory Committee on the Constitution and the Courts. His call to deconstruct legal recognition and thus formal social endorsement and support for one-man, one-woman marriage should come as no surprise, given his support for first a Republican and then a Democratic presidential candidate whose vocal support for the homosexual agenda and opposition to constitutionally securing the definition of traditional marriage have at various times during their political careers been identical.
Romney -- under no court order to do so, but solely at his own initiative via executive order -- implemented the actual practice of so-called homosexual "marriage" in Massachusetts, ordering a revision of the state's marriage licenses to remove reference to a "husband" and "wife" and then ordering magistrates to either issue them to homosexual couples or resign. Obama promises, by repealing the federal Defense of Marriage Act, to expand nationwide what Romney started in Massachusetts.
It's no surprise that a lawyer who endorsed Obama would propose abolishing legal recognition of marriage as a unique social ideal between a man and a woman. It should open some eyes that the very same man was chosen by Mitt Romney to be his chief advisor on issues regarding the Constitution and the courts, a post that reasonably could have led to a similar position in the Romney Administration, including advising the president on judicial appointments and social policy, had Romney been elected.
Catholic Obama Campaign Adviser Wants to Replace All Legal ‘Marriages’ with ‘Civil Licenses'
From CNSNews.com
By Pete Winn
A top constitutional law professor who served as a surrogate for then-presidential candidate Barack Obama told CNSNews.com that he would like to see “marriage” replaced in the legal sense with a neutral “civil license.”
“As awkward as it may be, I think the way to untie the state from this problem is to create a new terminology that they would apply to everyone--straight or gay-call it a ‘civil license,’ said Douglas Kmiec, a law professor at Pepperdine University and author of “Can a Catholic Support Him?’
“The net effect of that, would be to turn over--quite appropriately, it seems to me, the concept of marriage to churches and a church understanding,” Kmiec said.
Kmiec said that one of the things that motivated the passage of California’s Proposition 8, which defines marriage as between one man and one woman, “was a genuine concern on the part of religious believers--including myself--that the previous California ruling was not addressing what that would mean for religious practice.”
“After the state of California acknowledged same-sex marriage, would that mean, for example, that churches like the Catholic Church and the Mormon Church, which don’t acknowledge those relationships as a marriage by virtue of their scriptural and theological teaching--would they be subject to penalty? Would they lose public benefits? Would they be subject to lawsuits based upon some theory of discrimination?”
Kmiec said his idea would address those questions.
“One of the possible outcomes that would be good in this case, would be if the state got out of the marriage business, did their licensing under a different name--which, of course, would satisfy the state’s interests for purposes of distribution of taxation and property, but then the question of who can and cannot be married would be entirely determined in your voluntarily chosen faith community.
“We know that religions differ as to how they see that question,” Kmiec said. “But it seems to me that would be a nice way to reaffirm the significance of marriage as a religious concept--because that is a much fuller concept than just civil marriage.”
"Because, as we all know, from a standpoint of religious belief, the couple is not just making a promise to themselves, or even to their local community or their state, but they are making a covenant between themselves and their Creator. That’s something that is differently expressed in different religious traditions, but we shouldn’t lose the value of that, and this is an opportunity to heighten the value of that in order to help the State of California out of the corner it has worked itself into.”
But Princeton University law professor Robert George, who is also a top constitutional scholar--and a Catholic academic--said that Kmiec’s idea would do away with the public role of marriage--and banish it to the religious “ghetto.”
“That is a terrible idea,” George said. “The idea that the state would abandon its concern for the institution of marriage, that it would treat marriage as a purely religious matter, is I think a very bad one.”
Marriage is more than merely a religious institution, George told CNSNews.com.
"It’s not like baptisms and bar mitzvahs,” he said. “It has profound social significance, public significance; it’s a pre-political institution. It exists even apart from religion, even apart from polities. It’s the coming together of a husband and wife, creating the institution of family in which children are nurtured.”
“The family is the original and best Department of Health, Education and Welfare,” George said.
“No government agency can ever surpass it, ever has surpassed it,” he added. “Governments and economies and systems of law all rely upon the family to produce something they need, but that they themselves cannot produce, and that is, basically honest, decent, law abiding people of goodwill--citizens--who can take their rightful place in society.
“Family is built on marriage, and government--the state--has a profound interest in the integrity and well-being of marriage, and to write it off as if it were a purely a religiously significant action and not an institution and action that has a profound public significance, would be a terrible mistake,” George said.
“I don’t know where Professor Kmiec is getting his idea, but it’s a very, very bad one.”
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
America's Mugabe and Dealergate
Civilized people have been shocked to see President Mugabe of Zimbabwe and his partisan thugs murder the political opposition, threaten and beat journalists, and drive white farmers off their own land. But that kind of political thuggery may not be quite so foreign as many think. In what is coming to be known as "dealergate," many are beginning to suspect that anti-Obama political contributions played a role in which Chyrsler dealers have been closed. The Doug Ross@Journal blog reports that " that many of the Chrysler dealers on the closing list were heavy Republican donors. An attorney who deposed Chrysler's president has said "It became clear to us that Chrysler does not see the wisdom of terminating 25 percent of its dealers... It really wasn't Chrysler's decision. They are under enormous pressure from the President's automotive task force."
Doug Ross provides the following partial list of closed Chrysler dealers; virtually all are significant Republican donors. In every case, Chrysler dealers who have been donors to Obama remain open and are benefiting from those whose businesses have been destroyed.
• Vernon G. Buchanan: $147,450 to GOP candidates and organizations
• Wallace D. Alley and Family: $4,500 to GOP.
• Robert Archer: $4,600 to GOP and conservative causes.
• Homer S. Higginbotham and Family: $2950 to GOP.
• James Auffenberg and Family: $28,000 to GOP; $6,000 to one Democrat candidate.
• Michael Maroone and Family: $60,000 to GOP; $8,500 to two Democrat candidates.
• Jerome Fader: $6,500 to Democrats; $2,500 to Independent Joe Lieberman.
• Stephen Fay and Family: $13,500 to GOP.
• William Numrich: $20,000 to GOP.
• Robert Carver: $10,000 to Democrats including $1,950 to Hillary Clinton, nothing to Barack Obama.
• Robert and Linda Rohrman: $24,000 to GOP.• Frank Boucher, Jr. and Family: $18,000 to GOP, $1,000 to one Democrat candidate.
• Scott Bossier: $4,300 to GOP.
• Todd Reardon: $17,000 to GOP; $2,000 to one Democrat candidate.
• Russ Darrow and Family: $78,000 to GOP.
• Bradford Deery and Family: $24,700 to GOP.
• Charles Gabus and Family: $30,000 to GOP.
• Brian Smith: $15,500 to GOP.
• Michael Schlossman: $14,000 to GOP; $14,000 to three Democrats ($12,500 to Sen. Russ Feingold).
• Don Hill: $11,000 to GOP; $12,800 to conservative incumbent Rep. Heath Shuler.
• Don Miller: $2,000 to GOP; $1,000 to Feingold.• Eddie Cordes: $2,150 to GOP.
• Robert Edwards: $1,100 to GOP.
• James Crowley: $19,100 to GOP.
• Stanley Graff: $2,200 to John Edwards (2008 Presidential Run); $500 to GOP.
• John Stewart: $10,500 to GOP.
• John Fitzgerald and Family: $4,600 to John McCain (2008); $2,000 to Hillary Clinton (2008); nothing to Barack Obama.
• William Churchill and Family: $3,500 to GOP.
• Thomas Ganley: $9.450 to GOP.
• Gary Miller: $20,000 to GOP.
• Kevin and Gene Beltz: $18,500 to GOP.
• Arthur Grayson: $14,000 to GOP.
• Eric Grubbs and Family: $26,000 to GOP.
• Michael Leep and Family: $19,500 to GOP; $4,800 to three Democrats including Sen. Evan Bayh.
• Harry Green, Jr.: $10,000 to GOP.
• Ronald Hoover: $5,250 to GOP.
• Ray Huffines and Family: $18,500 to GOP.
• John O. Stevenson: $1,500 to GOP.
• James Marsh: $8,200 to GOP.
• Max Pearson and Family: $112,000 to GOP.
America's Mugabe is more polished, but no less determined to kick aside the rule of law in imposing his new socialist order. But at least our journalists have no fear of abduction, beatings, and murder; they are his willing accomplices.
We will be looking into this story more deeply in the weeks ahead. We would welcome any information from Chrysler dealers.
We will be looking into this story more deeply in the weeks ahead. We would welcome any information from Chrysler dealers.
Lady Thatcher Meets Pope Benedict XVI after Audience in St Peter's Square
(Francesco Sforza/AFP/Getty Images)
Lady Thatcher meets Pope Benedict XVI
By Richard Owen
A frail-looking Lady Thatcher, 83, today met Pope Benedict XVI at the end of his general audience on St Peter's Square.
The former Prime Minister, a Methodist by upbringing, was accompanied by Paul Johnson, the Catholic writer and historian, and Charles Moore, her biographer and the former editor of the Daily Telegraph, also a Catholic, who held an umbrella over Lady Thatcher's head to shield her from the sun.
Pelosi-CIA Situation 'Untenable,' Security Risk
An Iowa congressman is pushing for a resolution calling for the suspension of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's security clearance.
From OneNewsNow
By Chad Groening
Speaker Pelosi (D-California) continues to refuse to provide evidence of her allegation that the CIA lied to Congress about interrogation techniques used at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. On Friday she brushed aside reporters' questions to elaborate on her earlier charges that the CIA lied about using waterboarding on terrorism suspects. The speaker said she would say no more on the matter.
"I have made the statement that I am going to make on this," she said emphatically when questioned. "I don't have anything more to say about it. I stand by my comment, and what we are doing is staying on our course and not be [sic] distracted from it."
Congressman Steve King (R-Iowa) thinks Pelosi's refusal to give details on her allegations jeopardizes the trust between Congress and the CIA.
"This is an untenable situation," says King. "It puts our entire national security at risk, and it must be resolved."
The congressman says the speaker's accusations are a serious matter. "...[S]ince she cannot be legitimately briefed, because she has directly challenged the integrity of the CIA, ...I'm asking that her security clearance be suspended or removed until such time as the situation is resolved."
King says if Congresswoman Pelosi is unable or unwilling to provide evidence to support her allegation, the American people will be left with no choice but to conclude that she made this allegation for political purposes.
"I have made the statement that I am going to make on this," she said emphatically when questioned. "I don't have anything more to say about it. I stand by my comment, and what we are doing is staying on our course and not be [sic] distracted from it."
Congressman Steve King (R-Iowa) thinks Pelosi's refusal to give details on her allegations jeopardizes the trust between Congress and the CIA."This is an untenable situation," says King. "It puts our entire national security at risk, and it must be resolved."
The congressman says the speaker's accusations are a serious matter. "...[S]ince she cannot be legitimately briefed, because she has directly challenged the integrity of the CIA, ...I'm asking that her security clearance be suspended or removed until such time as the situation is resolved."
King says if Congresswoman Pelosi is unable or unwilling to provide evidence to support her allegation, the American people will be left with no choice but to conclude that she made this allegation for political purposes.
Napolitano to Canada: Stop Saying I'm Joe Biden's Twin Sister
The AP reports that Janet Napolitano is in Canada trying to calm a storm she created by wrongly declaring that the 9/11 terrorists crossed into the United States from Canada. In the long tradition of Democrat wreckage, Janet is telling Canadians that she wants to "move on."
Mike Huckabe on the Californa Supreme Court Decision
From Mike Huckabee
The California Supreme Court by a near unanimous vote of 6 to 1, upheld Proposition 8, which they should have. This is the second time that the people of California had affirmed traditional marriage with their votes, and this time, the Court accepted that the role of the court is to uphold the Constitution—not to re-write it. On November 4, 2008 voters in California approved this new amendment to the California Constitution, which says “only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.” Marriage should be defined as a marriage between one man and one woman. I support a federal constitutional amendment that defines marriage as a union between one man and one woman so that we can have a clear affirmation of the only definition of marriage that has existed throughout history and which in fact reflects the beliefs of people on both side of the political spectrum, including President Obama, Vice President Biden, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton..
One in 7 Who Leave Guantanamo Involved in Terrorism
Our President's concern for his Muslim brothers will result in data more damning than a "misery index" when he runs again -- instead, we will be able to count the slaughtered that result from his terrorist-friendly policies.
From Reuters
Seventy-four, or one out of every seven, terrorism suspects formerly held at the U.S. detention site at Guantanamo Bay are confirmed or suspected of having returned to terrorism, the Pentagon said on Tuesday.
Of more than 530 detainees transferred from the U.S. base in Cuba, 27 are confirmed and 47 suspected of "reengaging in terrorist activity," according to a written Pentagon summary.
The total of 74 has more than doubled since May 2007, when the Pentagon said about 30 had gone back to terrorist activity, and increased slightly since January, when the figure stood at 61.
Read the rest of this entry >>
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
The Speeches that Helped Save Western Civilization
By Winston S. Churchill, Prime Minister of Great Britain (1940-45)
From AmericanDiplomacy.org
Reviewed by Francis P. Sempa
Text and audio: http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/winstonchurchillbloodtoiltearssweat.htm
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/winstonchurchillbemenofvalor.htm
http://www.winstonchurchill.org/learn/speeches/speeches-of-winston-churchill/128-we-shall-fight-on-the-beaches
http://www.winstonchurchill.org/learn/speeches/speeches-of-winston-churchill/122-their-finest-hour
When a nation is at war, its spirit, confidence, and will to achieve victory can be enhanced by the speeches of its leaders. Sixty-nine years ago, the civilized world, including Great Britain, was menaced by the seemingly unstoppable Nazi onslaught. On May 10, 1940, as German panzers thrust through the Ardennes Forest on their way to Belgium and France, the conservative government headed by Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain fell from power. Britain now turned to the one statesman who repeatedly had warned of the folly of appeasement – Winston Churchill.
In his war memoirs, Churchill wrote that despite the dangers and trials ahead, he took the reins of power with calm and confidence. “I felt,” he wrote, “that I was walking with destiny, and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial.”
During the next 40 days, Churchill made a series of speeches designed to prepare the British people for a perilous future, but also to rally Britain and the civilized world to fight on to victory. Those speeches may have been among the most important speeches in world history, for as John Lukacs has noted, the fate of Western Civilization was at stake during these crucial days. Much of the British political elite sought to make the best deal possible with Hitler. Churchill, however, would not relent.
On May 13, 1940, in an address to the House of Commons, Churchill announced the formation of a bipartisan War Cabinet, and offered the nation nothing but “blood, toil, tears, and sweat.” The government’s policy, said Churchill, was to “wage war by sea, land, and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us...” The government’s aim, he said, was “victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be.”
Six days later, in a broadcast to the nation, Churchill detailed the early German military successes and expressed the hope that the French army would stabilize the war front. He warned, however, that German aggression would soon be directed toward Britain, and expressed confidence that Britain was “ready to face it; to endure it; and to retaliate against it.” In the battle for Britain, Churchill stated, “we shall not hesitate to take every step, even the most drastic,” to defend the homeland. Hitler had already conquered the Poles, Norwegians, Dutch, Danes, and Belgians, “upon all of whom the long night of barbarism will descend...unless we conquer, as conquer we must, as conquer we shall.”
In his war memoirs, Churchill wrote that despite the dangers and trials ahead, he took the reins of power with calm and confidence. “I felt,” he wrote, “that I was walking with destiny, and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial.”
During the next 40 days, Churchill made a series of speeches designed to prepare the British people for a perilous future, but also to rally Britain and the civilized world to fight on to victory. Those speeches may have been among the most important speeches in world history, for as John Lukacs has noted, the fate of Western Civilization was at stake during these crucial days. Much of the British political elite sought to make the best deal possible with Hitler. Churchill, however, would not relent.
On May 13, 1940, in an address to the House of Commons, Churchill announced the formation of a bipartisan War Cabinet, and offered the nation nothing but “blood, toil, tears, and sweat.” The government’s policy, said Churchill, was to “wage war by sea, land, and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us...” The government’s aim, he said, was “victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be.”
Six days later, in a broadcast to the nation, Churchill detailed the early German military successes and expressed the hope that the French army would stabilize the war front. He warned, however, that German aggression would soon be directed toward Britain, and expressed confidence that Britain was “ready to face it; to endure it; and to retaliate against it.” In the battle for Britain, Churchill stated, “we shall not hesitate to take every step, even the most drastic,” to defend the homeland. Hitler had already conquered the Poles, Norwegians, Dutch, Danes, and Belgians, “upon all of whom the long night of barbarism will descend...unless we conquer, as conquer we must, as conquer we shall.”
The impending defeat of France and the successful evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk led Churchill to address the House of Commons on June 4. He called German victories in France and Belgium “a colossal military disaster,” and warned British citizens that they must focus on “home defense against invasion.” It was necessary, he said, to “take measures of increasing stringency” against aliens, suspect British subjects, and Nazi Fifth Columnists. The government would use domestic security powers “without the slightest hesitation until we are satisfied that this malignancy in our midst has been effectively stamped out.” Churchill closed with some of his most memorable remarks:
Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous states have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.
The last in this series of speeches – perhaps the most famous – was made on June 18, 1940, four days before France formally surrendered to Germany. Churchill warned his colleagues against efforts to assign blame for the military disasters in France. “There are many who would hold an inquest ...on the conduct of Governments and of Parliaments...,” he lamented. “They seek to indict those who were responsible for the guidance of our affairs.” He called this “a foolish and pernicious process,” and warned that if “we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find that we have lost the future.” The country must focus, instead, on resisting the inevitable Nazi onslaught:
[T]he Battle of France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour.’
Rallying citizens for a civilizational struggle. Explaining the necessity of securing the homeland. Warning against partisan inquests in the midst of war. Establishing an uncompromising goal of victory. Churchill’s words echo in our own time.
The New Republic on Sonia Sotomayor
The New Republic published a series of reports on the prospective candidates for the open seat on the United States Supreme Court. The following is their profile of Sonia Sotomayor, nominated today by President Obama.The Case Against Sotomayor
By Jeffrey Rosen
A judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, Sonia Sotomayor's biography is so compelling that many view her as the presumptive front-runner for Obama's first Supreme Court appointment. She grew up in the South Bronx, the daughter of Puerto Rican parents. Her father, a manual laborer who never attended high school, died a year after she was diagnosed with diabetes at the age of eight. She was raised by her mother, a nurse, and went to Princeton and then Yale Law School. She worked as a New York assistant district attorney and commercial litigator before Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan recommended her as a district court nominee to the first President Bush. She would be the first Hispanic Supreme Court justice, if you don't count Benjamin Cardozo. (She went to Catholic schools and would also be the sixth Catholic justice on the current Supreme Court if she is, in fact, Catholic, which isn't clear from her official biography.) And she has powerful supporters: Last month, the two senators from New York wrote to President Obama in a burst of demographic enthusiasm, urging him to appoint Sotomayor or Ken Salazar.
Sotomayor's former clerks sing her praises as a demanding but thoughtful boss whose personal experiences have given her a commitment to legal fairness. "She is a rule-bound pragmatist--very geared toward determining what the right answer is and what the law dictates, but her general approach is, unsurprisingly, influenced by her unique background," says one former clerk. "She grew up in a situation of disadvantage, and was able, by virtue of the system operating in such a fair way, to accomplish what she did. I think she sees the law as an instrument that can accomplish the same thing for other people, a system that, if administered fairly, can give everyone the fair break they deserve, regardless of who they are."
Her former clerks report that because Sotomayor is divorced and has no children, her clerks become like her extended family--working late with her, visiting her apartment once a month for card games (where she remembers their favorite drinks), and taking a field trip together to the premier of a Harry Potter movie.
But despite the praise from some of her former clerks, and warm words from some of her Second Circuit colleagues, there are also many reservations about Sotomayor. Over the past few weeks, I've been talking to a range of people who have worked with her, nearly all of them former law clerks for other judges on the Second Circuit or former federal prosecutors in New York. Most are Democrats and all of them want President Obama to appoint a judicial star of the highest intellectual caliber who has the potential to change the direction of the court. Nearly all of them acknowledged that Sotomayor is a presumptive front-runner, but nearly none of them raved about her. They expressed questions about her temperament, her judicial craftsmanship, and most of all, her ability to provide an intellectual counterweight to the conservative justices, as well as a clear liberal alternative.
Read the rest of this entry >>
Shut Up, General Powell
General Colin Powell is living proof that military officers (particularly Generals) and politics don't and shouldn't mix. It is mind boggling that this man, who has never been elected to anything, should continue to lecture the Republican Party on inclusiveness and the need to adopt more liberal policy positions. Has anyone else noticed that when the Republican Party nominated just such a candidate, the most liberal candidate it has ever nominated for the Presidency of the United States, Colin Powell endorsed Barack Obama?
We can well understand the guilt and the regret Powell must feel for his race-based endorsement, but he has lost all standing, if he ever had any, to lecture the Republican Party on how to win elections.
What rankles the arrogant General is the impertinence of real Republicans like Dick Cheney and Rush Limbaugh for suggesting that he is a horse's ass and a hypocrite, who endorsed a Marxist simply because he is black.
If General Powell has any commitment to the Republican Party and believes his liberal views are the path to its revival, let him demonstrate that at the polls. If he is unwilling to show us how it should be done, he should get off his high horse and shut up.
We can well understand the guilt and the regret Powell must feel for his race-based endorsement, but he has lost all standing, if he ever had any, to lecture the Republican Party on how to win elections.
What rankles the arrogant General is the impertinence of real Republicans like Dick Cheney and Rush Limbaugh for suggesting that he is a horse's ass and a hypocrite, who endorsed a Marxist simply because he is black.
If General Powell has any commitment to the Republican Party and believes his liberal views are the path to its revival, let him demonstrate that at the polls. If he is unwilling to show us how it should be done, he should get off his high horse and shut up.
Archbishop of Westminster: Tony Blair "Not a Good Guide to the Teachings of the Catholic Church"
From LifeSiteNews
By Hilary White
The newly installed Archbishop of the Catholic diocese of Westminster, recently told Times columnist Dominic Lawson in an interview that former Prime Minister Tony Blair is not someone worthy of trust on religious matters. Archbishop Vincent Nichols called it "extraordinary" that Blair should have presumed to "lecture" the Pope on moral issues in an interview last month.
By Hilary White
The newly installed Archbishop of the Catholic diocese of Westminster, recently told Times columnist Dominic Lawson in an interview that former Prime Minister Tony Blair is not someone worthy of trust on religious matters. Archbishop Vincent Nichols called it "extraordinary" that Blair should have presumed to "lecture" the Pope on moral issues in an interview last month. In April Blair gave an interview to a homosexualist magazine in which he attacked Pope Benedict XVI and the Catholic teaching on homosexuality. Nichols, however, said that Blair's strong "political instincts," are "not a good guide to the teachings of the Catholic Church."
He continued, saying that "a bit more reflection is needed as to the relationship between political instinct in general - and certainly his - and the nature of the truth that the Church tries to put forward.
"Maybe he lacks a bit of experience in Catholic life."
Nichols, usually described as a "conservative" by the British press, is widely credited with having helped spearhead the fight against the Blair government's legislation that caused many of the British Catholic adoption agencies either to close or secularise in the face of new requirements that they allow adoption by homosexual partners.
At his May 21st installation Mass at Westminster Cathedral in London, Nichols urged Catholics to express themselves confidently in the public square. "Faith is never a solitary activity, nor can it be simply private," he said. "Faith in Christ always draws us into a community and has a public dimension."
In the Times, Lawson described Nichols, the former archbishop of Birmingham, as "still seething" over the adoption agency issue and describes him as never having "been afraid of taking the battle to the politicians when he feels his church is under attack."
He quotes the Nichols saying, "We have been pushed out unnecessarily ... It was a disproportionate response [by the government] and the victims are the children, not the church."
Nichols said that all government adoption agencies except for the 11 Catholic ones accepted homosexual partners for consideration for adoptions, and therefore the Catholic agencies should have been allowed to opt out of the law.
However, critics of the archbishop's reasoning point out that by the archbishop's own admission, his own Birmingham Catholic adoption agency had "for years" been accepting single homosexuals as potential adopters against the teachings of the Church. In 2007, at the height of the adoption agency controversy, Nichols told the BBC in an interview that his agency was happy to adopt children out to single homosexuals but that the objection was only to those in legally recognised domestic arrangements.
The Birmingham diocesan agency would also allow single non-homosexuals and unmarried but cohabiting heterosexual couples to be considered. However, the teaching of the Catholic Church says that to allow children to be adopted into irregular domestic situations, including with homosexual partners, unmarried single people or unmarried "common-law" partners, constitutes an act of "violence" to their natural development. Children, the Church teaches, have the right to be raised in the context of the natural family, with a mother and a father.
Critics have also pointed out that as head of the archdiocese of Birmingham, Nichols, with the rest of the Catholic bishops of England and Wales, had been fully briefed by an expert on Britain's discrimination laws that it was unnecessary for any Catholic adoption agency either to close or secularise. "Regulation 18" in the law allows them to operate according to their religious beliefs said Neil Addison, a barrister and the author of a textbook, "Religious Discrimination and Hatred Law."
Addison told LifeSiteNews.com that there was no need under the law for any Catholic adoption agency in the UK to close or secularize, if they had been acting in accordance with Catholic teaching, or willing to change their practices to do so. Addison claims that the bishops were complicit in the closure or secularisation of the adoption agencies due to their unwillingness to fight for the religious nature of the agencies.
Addison told LSN that, with the exception of Bishop Patrick O'Donohue of Lancaster, the bishops of the Catholic Church of England and Wales simply ignored the existence of Regulation 18, claiming in the media that the government was forcing their adoption agencies to close.
Monday, May 25, 2009
Susan Boyle Has Got Talent!
The star born of YouTube and worldwide acclamation got off to a shaky start on the first couple of notes in her semi-final performance this past weekend on Britain's Got Talent; but Susan Boyle finished strong and brought the audience and judges to their feet once again. She continues on to the final, and regardless of the outcome, probably one of the best selling albums of 2009.
And here is a recently discovered video of Susan in 1984:
Obama Aide - Not Our Goal to Reduce Abortions
Author’s Note: Because of the Obama speech at Notre Dame and the widespread misunderstanding that this Administration has fostered, others have urged me to make public what the White House official in charge of finding “common ground” stated in our meeting.
Two days before President Obama’s commencement address at Notre Dame, I was at the White House for one of the meetings that he spoke about. About twenty of us with differing views on abortion were brought in to find “common ground.” But the most important point that came from the meeting was perhaps a slip from an Obama aide.
It revealed that what many people believe -- including high-profile pro-life leaders who support Obama -- is sorely wrong.
Ask nearly anyone, “What is Obama’s goal on abortion?” They’ll answer, “Reduce the number of abortions.” A Notre Dame professor and priest insisted this in a television debate after Obama’s speech. The Vatican newspaper reported it. Rush Limbaugh led a spirited debate on his radio program the next day based on this premise.
But that’s not what his top official in charge of finding “common ground” says.
Melody Barnes, the Director of Domestic Policy Council and a former board member of Emily’s List, led the meeting. As the dialogue wound down, she asked for my input.
I noted that there are three main ways the administration can reach its goals: by what it funds, its messages from the bully pulpit, and by what it restricts. It is universally agreed that the role of parents is crucial, so government should not deny parents the ability to be involved in vital decisions. The goals need to be clear; the amount of funding spent to reduce unintended pregnancies and abortions is not a goal. The U.S. spends nearly $2 billion each year on contraception programs -- programs which began in the 1970s -- and they’ve clearly failed. We need to take an honest look at why they are not working.
Melody testily interrupted to state that she had to correct me. “It is not our goal to reduce the number of abortions.”
The room was silent.
The goal, she insisted, is to “reduce the need for abortions.”
Well, this raises a lot of questions.
If you reduce the need, doesn’t it follow that the number would be reduced? How do you quantify if you’ve reduced the “need”? Does Obama want to reduce the “need” but not the number of abortions? In that case, is he okay with “unneeded” abortions?
Note what Obama said in his speech at Notre Dame:
“So let us work together to reduce the number of women seeking abortions. …”
Abortion advocates object to the phrase “reducing abortions.” It connotes that there is something bad or immoral about abortion. Melody’s background as a board member of one of the most hard-core abortion groups in the country (Emily’s List even opposes bans on partial-birth abortion) sheds light on why she was irritated when that was stated as her boss’ goal.
The Los Angeles Times reported in 2004 that Democrats, after losing the presidential election, began rethinking their harsh, no compromise stance on abortion. Their solution?
Change their language but not their position.
The LA Times interviewed me on this strategy and reported: “Wright said it was too early to know whether Democrats would change their votes on upcoming antiabortion legislation, or would only change the way they speak of abortion. She said the comments of some party leaders led her to believe that ‘it would just be changing of wording, just trying to repackage in order to be more appealing -- really, to trick people.’”
Howard Dean, then head of the Democratic National Committee, validated my concern. He told NBC's Tim Russert: "We can change our vocabulary, but I don't think we ought to change our principles."
By all his actions so far, Obama is following this plan.
Obama needs to be honest with Americans. Is it true that it is not his goal to reduce the number of abortions?
More importantly, will he do anything that will reduce abortions? Actions are far more important than words.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Obama to Apologize to Germany for World War II?
The Atlas Shrugs blog has distilled several recent news stories and scholarly articles that suggest Obama is about to apologize to the Germans for World War II. Were this any other American politician of the Left, we would consider such an idea sheer lunacy. Of course many of them hate America, its history, and all that it has stood for in the world. But most have enough political pragmatism to keep such impulses in check. In Obama we have an ideologue whose hatred and arrogance surpasses base political pragmatism. He is a narcissist whose hatred and evil is on a grand scale. Once he has finished apologizing to the world for all the evils of America, can reparations be far behind?
As you reflect this Memorial Day weekend on the hundreds of thousands who gave all for their country, consider the fact that all they fought against now occupies the White House.
From Atlas Shrugs
The latest inconceivable Obamaction is yet another unbecoming apology in Europe, this time in Germany for WWII. John Rosenthal suggests, "As bizarre as it may seem, President Obama’s impending trip to Dresden suggests that German revisionists have a friend in the White House".
And American Thinker adds, "the message Obama intends to send by visiting both sites is clear; while the Germans did bad things during World War II, they were also victims of Allied atrocities."
The latest German reports suggest Obama’s principal German destination will be Dresden. According to an article in the local paper Die Dresdner Neueste Nachrichten, representatives of the German and American governments met in Dresden last Wednesday to discuss preparations for the visit. An American security detail is reported to have already scoped out sites in the city: presumably for a public speech.
The symbolic significance of a visit to Dresden by the American president — especially one undertaken in connection with a D-Day commemoration in France — may be missed by some Americans, but it is absolutely unmistakable for the German public. For Germans, Dresden is the symbol bar none of German suffering at the hands of the Allies. The city was heavily bombed by British and American air forces in February 1945, toward the end of the war. According to the most recent estimates of professional historians, anywhere from 18,000 to at most 25,000 persons died in the attacks. These numbers come from a historical commission established by the city of Dresden itself. But far higher numbers — ranging into the hundreds of thousands — have long circulated in Germany and beyond. The bombing of Dresden is commonly described as a “war crime” in German discussions.
Alleged crimes committed by the Allies against Germans and Germany have indeed become a sort of German literary obsession in recent years, with numerous books being devoted to the subject. The taste of the German public for the theme was made particularly clear by the enormous success of author Jörg Friedrich’s 2002 volume The Fire [Der Brand], which is about the Allied bombardment of Germany. The book’s success was so great that Friedrich and his publisher quickly followed up with a picture book on the same topic titled Scenes of the Fire: How the Bombing Looked.
Obama should spend the day tending to the graves of our brave and glorious dead, who sacrificed their lives so that Europe could live on to descend into a pathetic, amoral collectivism. Europe owes us an apology for squandering our blood and treasure on a morally bankrupt transnational gobbledy goop EU wallowing in pathetic collectivism.
Time for a history lesson. What better day to teach the foreign exchange student in the White House a lesson about American exceptionalism, heroism, and greatness?
America's European Arrogance (hat tip Joan S)
1. The American Cemetery at Aisne-Marne, France. A total of 2,289 of our military dead. We apologize.
2. The American Cemetery at Ardennes, Belgium. A total of 5,329 of our dead. We are so ashamed of our arrogance.
3. The American Cemetery at Brittany, France. A total of 4,410 of our military dead. Excuse us.
4. Brookwood, England American Cemetery. A total of 4,680 of our dead. We are such an evil country.
5. Cambridge, England. 3,812 of our military dead. What on earth were we thinking?
6. Epinal, France American Cemetery. A total of 5,525 of our military dead. Please forgive us.
7. Flanders Field, Belgium. A total of 3,680 of our military. We are so sorry.
8. Florence, Italy. A total of 4,402 of our military dead. We are a bully nation.
9. Henri-Chapelle, Belgium. A total of 7,992 of our military dead. They deserved what they got.
10. Lorraine, France. A total of 10,489 of our military dead. FDR and Truman were lying war criminals.
11. Luxembourg, Luxembourg. A total of 5,076 of our military dead. Arrogant oppression, pure and simple..
12. Meuse-Argonne. A total of 14,246 of our military dead. Just think of how many civilians they killed.
13. Netherlands, Netherlands. A total of 8,301 of our military dead. They were murderers.
14. Normandy, France. A total of 9,387 of our military dead. Baby killers, one and all.
15. Oise-Aisne, France. A total of 6,012 of our military dead. They were torturers, too.
16. Rhone, France. A total of 861 of our military dead. Remorseless killers doing the bidding of an evil nation.
17. Sicily, Italy. A total of 7,861 of our military dead. What can America ever do to redeem itself?
18. Somme, France. A total of 1,844 of our military dead. Arrogant war-mongers of an arrogant nation.
19. St. Mihiel, France. A total of 4,153 of our military dead. War criminals.
20. Suresnes, France. A total of 1,541 of our military dead. Oh, God in heaven, please forgive us for being such an arrogant country.
The total number of Americans buried at the cemeteries above is 104,366 -- a mere fraction of those who died liberating Europe -- and yet an American president who confuses arrogance with leadership feels the need to apologize in Europe for the country he obviously holds in contempt.
It is virtually unthinkable that Obama could give a speech in Dresden and not allude to the bombing of the city. Most of the city’s historical monuments — which Obama’s advance team were apparently inspecting — were severely damaged or destroyed in the bombing and had to be rebuilt. Moreover, for Obama to visit both Dresden and Buchenwald would suggest precisely the sort of outrageous parallels that have become commonplace in Germany at least since the publication of Friedrich’s The Fire.
(As so happens, although tens of thousands of persons died there, Buchenwald was not one of the camps specifically devoted to the extermination of Jews. But far be it from Obama to know that. When, during the election campaign, he first referred to his Uncle Charlie’s WWII exploits, he said that his uncle had helped to liberate “Auschwitz.” Moreover, Charlie Payne did not really participate in the liberation of Buchenwald either, but rather in that of Ohrdruf: a lesser-known, affiliated camp some sixty kilometers away.)
Europe traded the lives of 6 million Jews for 55 million Muslims. Good luck with that.
And Ovamit is apologizing.
Thatcherite Wins Backing for Reagan Statue in London
From The Times
By Philippe Naughton
The former US ambassador apparently thought it a good idea. His replacement, when Barack Obama eventually names him, may not be so keen.An interior designer from Chelsea who is a leading light in the Thatcherite Conservative Way Forward group has won approval for a statue of the great American conservative Ronald Reagan to be erected outside the US Embassy in London. The project was given the nod on Thursday night by Westminster City Council’s planning sub-committee in a break with its policy of allowing memorials only to people who have been dead for at least ten years. The former US President died in 2004 aged 93.
The 10ft bronze statue of the man hailed by Margaret Thatcher for winning the Cold War without firing a shot will be placed on a 6ft plinth of Portland stone outside the embassy building in Grosvenor Square, Mayfair, near an existing statue of Dwight D Eisenhower, the war hero President, unveiled by Mrs Thatcher in 1989.
The architects behind the project, the same firm responsible for the statues of Nelson Mandela in Parliament Square and the Queen Mother near Buckingham Palace, say that it was enthusiastically backed by the former ambassador, Robert Tuttle, who left office in February. It was also supported by the Ronald Reagan Foundation in California, which chose the sculptor Chas Fagan to create the statue.
Unsurprisingly, perhaps, the current inhabitants of the embassy — who are still waiting for President Obama to confirm Mr Tuttle’s replacement — appear less keen to have a larger-than-life statue of the darling of the American Right on their doorstep.
“This is not something that we have requested oractively tried to get brought about,” an embassy spokesman said yesterday. “We’re happy to have our presidents honoured but this statue was not a US Government initiative.” Asked whether the mission would take the statue with it when it leaves Grosvenor Square for its new head-quarters in Nine Elms, south of the Thames, he replied: “It’s not our statue.”
Read the rest of this entry >>
Westminster Cathedral Choir - "Kryie" and "Gloria" - Palestrina
From 'Missa Aeterna Christi Munera" by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina. The choir is directed by James O'Donnell.
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Gulag Survivor Says EU 'Built on Soviet Model'
Vladimir Bukovsky spent many years in Russian labor camps and psychiatric prisons for defending human rights. He settled in Britain in 1976. He lectures and writes on the old Soviet system and the EU.
'Extremism' Report 'Tip of the Iceberg'
Lawyer: Napolitano's promise to 'reword' document 'scary'
From WorldNetDaily
By Bob Unruh
A lawyer pursuing a lawsuit against Department of Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano over an "extremist" report her agency issued that linked 2nd Amendment supporters, pro-life activists and others with terror says he's concerned by Napolitano's promise to "reword" the report.
"She says, 'Well, we're going to reword the document – and we're going to make it more precise,'" Richard Thompson, chief of the Thomas More Law Center, told WND today. "That's scary because we know they are still going to maintain some kind of targeting for various people that she's never apologized to or never retracted [her accusations]."
At issue is the agency's "Rightwing Extremism" report called "Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment." WND has posted the report online for readers to see.
Read the rest of this entry >>The Installation of Vincent Nichols, Archbishop of Westminster
Oh Canada! ... Role-Reversal in North America?
From Brussels Journal
By Marc Huybrechts
Stereotypes are often rooted in some current or past reality, but they can also become outdated. While the USA and Japan have for a long time been regarded as small-government countries, among industrial countries, Canada has long been considered more ‘socialistic’ and closer to the big-government model of Western Europe. However, a careful look at the relevant economic data casts serious doubt on that old stereotype. That is exactly what three economists did in a recent article in The Washington Post (Chris Edwards, Jason Clemens and Niels Veldhuis, Great Right North, Sunday, May 17, 2009), using data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and development (the OECD, which is specialized in constructing ‘comparable data’ for industrial countries) as well as on national data from the USA and Canada. Consider the following 7 criteria for judging the degree of socialism in North America (excluding Mexico).
By Marc Huybrechts
Stereotypes are often rooted in some current or past reality, but they can also become outdated. While the USA and Japan have for a long time been regarded as small-government countries, among industrial countries, Canada has long been considered more ‘socialistic’ and closer to the big-government model of Western Europe. However, a careful look at the relevant economic data casts serious doubt on that old stereotype. That is exactly what three economists did in a recent article in The Washington Post (Chris Edwards, Jason Clemens and Niels Veldhuis, Great Right North, Sunday, May 17, 2009), using data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and development (the OECD, which is specialized in constructing ‘comparable data’ for industrial countries) as well as on national data from the USA and Canada. Consider the following 7 criteria for judging the degree of socialism in North America (excluding Mexico). 1) Government Spending
Over the last twenty years or so, consolidated general government spending, i.e. spending at ALL levels of government (federal, state/provincial, local) has steadily declined in Canada from a peak of about 53 percent of GDP (gross domestic product) in 1992 to just below 40 percent in the last few years (2004-08).
By contrast, in the USA, over most of the same time period, general government spending has tended to fluctuate narrowly around 35-36 percent. However, in recent years (2006-08) it has turned sharply upwards to reach the current ‘Canadian level’ of just below 40 percent of GDP.
Read the rest of this entry >>Friday, May 22, 2009
PRAVDA SAYS 'AMERICAN DESCENT INTO MARXISM HAPPENING WITH BREATHTAKING SPEED'!
Sunlit Uplands is rightly accused of having a bias. We readily admit it. We hate godlessness, socialism, totalitarianism, and those who would impose their will in place of God-given rights and freedoms.
But do you think those working for what was the propaganda arm of the former Soviet Union might know something about totalitarian Marxism? We've presented a column by the head of the Communist Party USA exulting in the coming of Obama. Now PRAVDA has told its readers that the "American descent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed."
But do you think those working for what was the propaganda arm of the former Soviet Union might know something about totalitarian Marxism? We've presented a column by the head of the Communist Party USA exulting in the coming of Obama. Now PRAVDA has told its readers that the "American descent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed."
From PRAVDA
It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people.
True, the situation has been well prepared on and off for the past century, especially the past twenty years. The initial testing grounds was conducted upon our Holy Russia and a bloody test it was. But we Russians would not just roll over and give up our freedoms and our souls, no matter how much money Wall Street poured into the fists of the Marxists.
Those lessons were taken and used to properly prepare the American populace for the surrender of their freedoms and souls, to the whims of their elites and betters.
First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather then the classics. Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas then the drama in DC that directly affects their lives. They care more for their "right" to choke down a McDonalds burger or a BurgerKing burger than for their constitutional rights. Then they turn around and lecture us about our rights and about our "democracy". Pride blind the foolish.
Then their faith in God was destroyed, until their churches, all tens of thousands of different "branches and denominations" were for the most part little more then Sunday circuses and their televangelists and top protestant mega preachers were more then happy to sell out their souls and flocks to be on the "winning" side of one pseudo Marxist politician or another. Their flocks may complain, but when explained that they would be on the "winning" side, their flocks were ever so quick to reject Christ in hopes for earthly power. Even our Holy Orthodox churches are scandalously liberalized in America.
The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been a record setting, not just in America's short history but in the world. If this keeps up for more then another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Wiemar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe.
These past two weeks have been the most breath taking of all. First came the announcement of a planned redesign of the American Byzantine tax system, by the very thieves who used it to bankroll their thefts, loses and swindles of hundreds of billions of dollars. These make our Russian oligarchs look little more then ordinary street thugs, in comparison. Yes, the Americans have beat our own thieves in the shear volumes. Should we congratulate them?
These men, of course, are not an elected panel but made up of appointees picked from the very financial oligarchs and their henchmen who are now gorging themselves on trillions of American dollars, in one bailout after another. They are also usurping the rights, duties and powers of the American congress (parliament). Again, congress has put up little more then a whimper to their masters.
Then came Barack Obama's command that GM's (General Motor) president step down from leadership of his company. That is correct, dear reader, in the land of "pure" free markets, the American president now has the power, the self given power, to fire CEOs and we can assume other employees of private companies, at will. Come hither, go dither, the centurion commands his minions.
So it should be no surprise, that the American president has followed this up with a "bold" move of declaring that he and another group of unelected, chosen stooges will now redesign the entire automotive industry and will even be the guarantee of automobile policies. I am sure that if given the chance, they would happily try and redesign it for the whole of the world, too. Prime Minister Putin, less then two months ago, warned Obama and UK's Blair, not to follow the path to Marxism, it only leads to disaster. Apparently, even though we suffered 70 years of this Western sponsored horror show, we know nothing, as foolish, drunken Russians, so let our "wise" Anglo-Saxon fools find out the folly of their own pride.
Again, the American public has taken this with barely a whimper...but a "freeman" whimper.
So, should it be any surprise to discover that the Democratically controlled Congress of America is working on passing a new regulation that would give the American Treasury department the power to set "fair" maximum salaries, evaluate performance and control how private companies give out pay raises and bonuses? Senator Barney Franks, a social pervert basking in his homosexuality (of course, amongst the modern, enlightened American societal norm, as well as that of the general West, homosexuality is not only not a looked down upon life choice, but is often praised as a virtue) and his Marxist enlightenment, has led this effort. He stresses that this only affects companies that receive government monies, but it is retroactive and taken to a logical extreme, this would include any company or industry that has ever received a tax break or incentive.
The Russian owners of American companies and industries should look thoughtfully at this and the option of closing their facilities down and fleeing the land of the Red as fast as possible. In other words, divest while there is still value left.
The proud American will go down into his slavery with out a fight, beating his chest and proclaiming to the world, how free he really is. The world will only snicker.
Stanislav Mishin
British Churches to be Forced to Hire Active Homosexual Youth Workers under Equality Bill
From LifeSiteNews
By Hilary White
British churches will be forced to accept practicing homosexuals or "transsexuals" in positions as youth workers and similar roles, under upcoming equality legislation, the government has said. The Labour government's Equality Bill will prohibit churches from refusing to hire active homosexuals even if their religion holds such behavior to be sinful, said deputy equalities minister Maria Eagle.
The legislation is due to come into force next year, and churches fear that it will force them to act against their religious convictions in a broad range of areas. Eagle indicated at a conference called "Faith, Homophobia, Transphobia, & Human Rights" in London, that the legislation "will cover almost all church employees."
"The circumstances in which religious institutions can practice anything less than full equality are few and far between," she told delegates. "While the state would not intervene in narrowly ritual or doctrinal matters within faith groups, these communities cannot claim that everything they run is outside the scope of anti-discrimination law.
"Members of faith groups have a role in making the argument in their own communities for greater LGBT acceptance, but in the meantime the state has a duty to protect people from unfair treatment."
The bill allows a religious exemption for roles deemed to be "for the purposes of an organised religion" but restricts this definition to those who conduct liturgical celebrations or spend their time teaching doctrine.
The Daily Telegraph quoted Neil Addison, a Roman Catholic barrister and expert on religious discrimination law, who said that the bill will leave churches powerless to defend the fabric of their organization. "This is a threat to religious identity. What we are losing is the right for organizations to make free choices," he said
Equality commissioners include the homosexual lobbyist, Ben Summerskill, the head of the leading British homosexualist activist group Stonewall. Summerskill has called for churches to be forced to employ homosexuals and for the police to stop Christians who were peacefully protesting against 'gay rights' laws outside Parliament.
Tony Grew, a homosexualist activist and the former editor of PinkNews.co.uk, wrote recently that the Equality Bill will "entrench gay rights in all aspects of public life." Grew wrote on PinkNews that the bill will open unprecedented opportunities for homosexuals.
The bill, he said will cover central government departments, local authorities, education bodies, NHS bodies and the police service, plus a wide range of other public and private bodies, including churches and church-run institutions. It will impose the "Equality Duty" on all organizations providing public services, he said, such as residential care homes that "would have to consider the needs of same-sex couples."
The legislation is due to come into force next year, and churches fear that it will force them to act against their religious convictions in a broad range of areas. Eagle indicated at a conference called "Faith, Homophobia, Transphobia, & Human Rights" in London, that the legislation "will cover almost all church employees."
"The circumstances in which religious institutions can practice anything less than full equality are few and far between," she told delegates. "While the state would not intervene in narrowly ritual or doctrinal matters within faith groups, these communities cannot claim that everything they run is outside the scope of anti-discrimination law.
"Members of faith groups have a role in making the argument in their own communities for greater LGBT acceptance, but in the meantime the state has a duty to protect people from unfair treatment."
The bill allows a religious exemption for roles deemed to be "for the purposes of an organised religion" but restricts this definition to those who conduct liturgical celebrations or spend their time teaching doctrine.
The Daily Telegraph quoted Neil Addison, a Roman Catholic barrister and expert on religious discrimination law, who said that the bill will leave churches powerless to defend the fabric of their organization. "This is a threat to religious identity. What we are losing is the right for organizations to make free choices," he said
Equality commissioners include the homosexual lobbyist, Ben Summerskill, the head of the leading British homosexualist activist group Stonewall. Summerskill has called for churches to be forced to employ homosexuals and for the police to stop Christians who were peacefully protesting against 'gay rights' laws outside Parliament.
Tony Grew, a homosexualist activist and the former editor of PinkNews.co.uk, wrote recently that the Equality Bill will "entrench gay rights in all aspects of public life." Grew wrote on PinkNews that the bill will open unprecedented opportunities for homosexuals.
The bill, he said will cover central government departments, local authorities, education bodies, NHS bodies and the police service, plus a wide range of other public and private bodies, including churches and church-run institutions. It will impose the "Equality Duty" on all organizations providing public services, he said, such as residential care homes that "would have to consider the needs of same-sex couples."
Obama Is Said to Consider Preventive Detention Plan
What's a President to do with 800 empty FEMA detention camps? Round up the right wing extremists already identified by the Department of Homeland Security -- bloggers, veterans, tax objectors, right to lifers, and border security supporters.
From The New York Times
By Sheryl Gay StolbergPresident Obama told human rights advocates at the White House on Wednesday that he was mulling the need for a “preventive detention” system that would establish a legal basis for the United States to incarcerate terrorism suspects who are deemed a threat to national security but cannot be tried, two participants in the private session said.
The discussion, in a 90-minute meeting in the Cabinet Room that included Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. and other top administration officials, came on the eve of a much-anticipated speech Mr. Obama is to give Thursday on a number of thorny national security matters, including his promise to close the detention center at the naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
Human rights advocates are growing deeply uneasy with Mr. Obama’s stance on these issues, especially his recent move to block the release of photographs showing abuse of detainees, and his announcement that he is willing to try terrorism suspects in military commissions — a concept he criticized bitterly as a presidential candidate.
The two participants, outsiders who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the session was intended to be off the record, said they left the meeting dismayed.
They said Mr. Obama told them he was thinking about “the long game” — how to establish a legal system that would endure for future presidents. He raised the issue of preventive detention himself, but made clear that he had not made a decision on it. Several senior White House officials did not respond to requests for comment on the outsiders’ accounts.
“He was almost ruminating over the need for statutory change to the laws so that we can deal with individuals who we can’t charge and detain,” one participant said. “We’ve known this is on the horizon for many years, but we were able to hold it off with George Bush. The idea that we might find ourselves fighting with the Obama administration over these powers is really stunning.”
The other participant said Mr. Obama did not seem to be thinking about preventive detention for terrorism suspects now held at Guantánamo Bay, but rather for those captured in the future, in settings other than a legitimate battlefield like Afghanistan. “The issue is,” the participant said, “What are the options left open to a future president?”
Mr. Obama did not specify how he intended to deal with Guantánamo detainees who posed a threat and could not be tried, nor did he share the contents of Thursday’s speech, the participants said.
He will deliver the speech at a site laden with symbolism — the National Archives, home to the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. Across town, his biggest Republican critic, former Vice President Dick Cheney, will deliver a speech at the American Enterprise Institute.
Mr. Cheney and other hawkish critics have sought to portray Mr. Obama as weak on terror, and their argument seems to be catching on with the public. On Tuesday, Senate Democrats, in a clear rebuke to the White House, blocked the $80 million Mr. Obama had requested in financing to close the Guantánamo prison.
The lawmakers say they want a detailed plan before releasing the money; there is deep opposition on Capitol Hill to housing terrorism suspects inside the United States.
“He needs to convince people that he’s got a game plan that will protect us as well as be fair to the detainees,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, who agrees with Mr. Obama that the prison should be closed. “If he can do that, then we’re back on track. But if he doesn’t make that case, then we’ve lost control of this debate.”
But Mr. Obama will not use the speech to provide the details lawmakers want.
“What it’s not going to be is a prescriptive speech,” said David Axelrod, Mr. Obama’s senior adviser. “The president wants to take some time and put this whole issue in perspective to identify what the challenges are and how he will approach dealing with them.”
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Afghanistan: US Military Burns Bibles for Fear They'd Be Used to Convert Muslims
From Jihad Watch
Crusaders at work. "Military burns unsolicited Bibles sent to Afghanistan," from CNN, May 20 (thanks to Kapil):
(CNN) -- Military personnel threw away, and ultimately burned, confiscated Bibles that were printed in the two most common Afghan languages amid concern they would be used to try to convert Afghans, a Defense Department spokesman said Tuesday.
The unsolicited Bibles sent by a church in the United States were confiscated about a year ago at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan because military rules forbid troops of any religion from proselytizing while deployed there, Lt. Col. Mark Wright said.
Such religious outreach can endanger American troops and civilians in the devoutly Muslim nation, Wright said.
"The decision was made that it was a 'force protection' measure to throw them away, because, if they did get out, it could be perceived by Afghans that the U.S. government or the U.S. military was trying to convert Muslims," Wright told CNN on Tuesday.
Troops at posts in war zones are required to burn their trash, Wright said.
The Bibles were written in the languages Pashto and Dari.
This decision came to light recently, after the Al Jazeera English network aired video of a group prayer service and chapel sermon that a reporter said suggested U.S. troops were being encouraged to spread Christianity....
Dick Cheney: A Caring and Worried Patriot
"But in the fight against terrorism, there is no middle ground, and half-measures keep you half exposed. You cannot keep just some nuclear-armed terrorists out of the United States, you must keep every nuclear-armed terrorist out of the United States."
Dick Cheney has served the United States for thirty-five years. He is financially secure, has no political ambitions, and has nothing to gain by speaking out about the dangerous national security decisions being made by the current regime. And yet he continues to speak out because he knows better than anyone in America the deadly threats posed by Islamic Jihad, and what is required to ensure America's safety. His comments today at the American Enterprise Institute are in stark contrast to the amateurs jeopardizing America for cheap political points with their base -- those, here and abroad, who hate America.
Vice President Cheney's address to AEI is here.
What Did Pelosi Know, and When Did She Know It?
Today's Washington Times has an excellent editorial on the dilemma facing Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Even the Obama appointed Director of Central Intelligence is suggesting that his former colleague is a liar and that she tone down the rhetoric. Sadly, she has a long history of being fast and loose with the truth. What is clear is that either the Central Intelligence Agency, and all those other Members of Congress they briefed, are lying, or Mrs. Pelosi is lying. When any such questions arose in the Bush administration, her response was to call for a Congressional investigation. Given that either the Speaker of the House or the Director of Central Intelligence is a liar, we believe that the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct should initiate a full and public investigation to settle the matter and take what steps are needed to remove the official that can no longer be trusted by the American public. The Committee on Standards of Official Conduct is divided equally, with 5 Democrats and 5 Republicans; they are in the best position to sort this out.
When Mrs. Pelosi was suggesting that the Bush Administration had politicized the Justice Department, she said: "We cannot let the politicizing of, for example, the Justice Department to go unreviewed. I want to see the truth come forth." Surely, at a time when good, trustworthy intelligence information is vital to Congress and to the safety of millions of Americans, this matter cannot "go unreviewed." Let "the truth come forth."
Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord
"This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven." (Acts 1:11)
Beethoven - "Christus am Oelberge" ("Christ on the Mount of Olives")
The Ascension
From the Council of Trent
Filled with the Spirit of God, and contemplating the blessed and glorious Ascension of our Lord, the Prophet David exhorts all to celebrate that splendid triumph with the greatest joy and gladness: Clap your hands, all ye nations: shout unto God with he voice of joy.... God is ascended with jubilee.
This, then, the faithful must believe without hesitation, that Jesus Christ, having fully accomplished the work of Redemption, ascended as man, body and soul, into heaven; for as God He never forsook heaven, filling as He does all places with His Divinity.
He ascended by His own power, not being taken up by the power of another, as was Elias, who was carried to heaven in a fiery chariot; or, as the Prophet Habacuc, or Philip, the deacon, who were borne through the air by the divine power, and traversed great distances.
Neither did He ascend into heaven solely by the exercise of His supreme power as God, but also by virtue of the power which He possessed as man. Although human power alone was insufficient to accomplish this, yet the virtue with which the blessed soul of Christ was endowed was capable of moving the body as it pleased, and His body, now glorified, readily obeyed the behest of the soul that moved it. Hence, we believe that Christ ascended into heaven as God and man by His own power.
This, then, the faithful must believe without hesitation, that Jesus Christ, having fully accomplished the work of Redemption, ascended as man, body and soul, into heaven; for as God He never forsook heaven, filling as He does all places with His Divinity.
He ascended by His own power, not being taken up by the power of another, as was Elias, who was carried to heaven in a fiery chariot; or, as the Prophet Habacuc, or Philip, the deacon, who were borne through the air by the divine power, and traversed great distances.
Neither did He ascend into heaven solely by the exercise of His supreme power as God, but also by virtue of the power which He possessed as man. Although human power alone was insufficient to accomplish this, yet the virtue with which the blessed soul of Christ was endowed was capable of moving the body as it pleased, and His body, now glorified, readily obeyed the behest of the soul that moved it. Hence, we believe that Christ ascended into heaven as God and man by His own power.
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
More Attacks on Religious Freedom
From Christianity Today Australia
By Bill Muehlenberg
Throughout the Western world rights talk is being used to promote the agendas of activist minority groups, and to silence Christians from publically affirming their faith. This takes many forms: hate crimes legislation, equal opportunity laws, anti-discrimination legislation, and so on.
The militant homosexual lobby especially likes these laws, because under the guise of “fairness” and “human rights” they are seeing the rights of believers to uphold their conscience in the public arena taken away, while they manage to get special rights granted to themselves by governments.
Of course the militant activists know that the two main institutions standing in the way of their agendas are the church and the family. That is why both are under such ferocious assault recently. Examples of this abound. Here in Victoria for example the activist government is holding an inquiry into its Equal Opportunity Act, and is looking to remove religious exemptions to it.
The entire 173-page document is a worry, but the main concern involves sections 75 to 77 (pp. 106-131). These sections specifically have to do with religious exemptions. I offer a link to the document below. It is vital that all concerned Victorians look at the document and put in a submission on this.
A good way to see how dangerous such moves are is to look overseas where similar attacks on religious freedom have been occurring. Chuck Colson recently had a two-part commentary on how Christians are increasingly losing their freedoms as militant homosexuals use rights legislation to silence dissent and force conformity to their lifestyle. He offers the following stories:
Read the rest of this entry >>
By Bill Muehlenberg
Throughout the Western world rights talk is being used to promote the agendas of activist minority groups, and to silence Christians from publically affirming their faith. This takes many forms: hate crimes legislation, equal opportunity laws, anti-discrimination legislation, and so on.
The militant homosexual lobby especially likes these laws, because under the guise of “fairness” and “human rights” they are seeing the rights of believers to uphold their conscience in the public arena taken away, while they manage to get special rights granted to themselves by governments.
Of course the militant activists know that the two main institutions standing in the way of their agendas are the church and the family. That is why both are under such ferocious assault recently. Examples of this abound. Here in Victoria for example the activist government is holding an inquiry into its Equal Opportunity Act, and is looking to remove religious exemptions to it.
The entire 173-page document is a worry, but the main concern involves sections 75 to 77 (pp. 106-131). These sections specifically have to do with religious exemptions. I offer a link to the document below. It is vital that all concerned Victorians look at the document and put in a submission on this.
A good way to see how dangerous such moves are is to look overseas where similar attacks on religious freedom have been occurring. Chuck Colson recently had a two-part commentary on how Christians are increasingly losing their freedoms as militant homosexuals use rights legislation to silence dissent and force conformity to their lifestyle. He offers the following stories:
Read the rest of this entry >>
Revolution
From American Thinker
By Herbert E. Meyer
During the last 30 years we Americans have been so politically divided that some of us have called this left-right, liberal-conservative split a "culture war" or even a "second Civil War." These descriptions are no longer accurate. The precise, technical word for what is happening in the United States today is revolution.Because of our country's history, we tend to think of revolutions as military conflicts, and of the revolutionaries as the good guys; the image of Minutemen fighting valiantly against the British forces at Lexington and Concord lies deep within our DNA. But sometimes -- quite often, actually -- revolutions aren't military conflicts, and the good guys are the ones trying to keep the revolution from happening. In January 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany by its elected president; he would spend the next two years consolidating his power with the legislative connivance of his political allies in the Reichstag. In October 1917, Lenin and his Bolsheviks took control of Russia from Kerensky and his Social Democrats -- who had overthrown the Czar earlier that year -- entirely through parliamentary maneuvering in Russia's fledgling Duma.
What defines a revolution -- and this is the crucial point to grasp -- is that when it's over a country has changed not merely its leaders and its laws, but its operating system.
Since most of us think of computers when we hear the phrase "operating system" let me use this analogy to illuminate my point: Every computer has an operating system, and most of us are using either the Microsoft or the Apple operating system. If you want to do something with your computer -- send an email, watch a DVD, read an online essay like this one -- you must do it the way your computer's operating system is designed to work.
No operating system is perfect, which is why Microsoft and Apple send updates to their customers from time to time. And every so often these companies launch new versions of their operating systems that incorporate a lot of modifications at once. Can you change the operating system you use? Of course you can. Two years ago I threw out every Microsoft-based machine in our company's office and replaced them with Apple products. Last month I met a corporate CEO who had just done the opposite, and replaced the Apple computers in his office with ones that run on the Microsoft operating system.
Democracies and Dictatorships
Now, just as computers have operating systems so too do countries. In fact, countries have dual operating systems - one political and the other economic. Broadly speaking, there are two kinds of each: Politically you can be a democracy or a dictatorship, and economically you can have either a free market or a command economy. Because countries don't buy their operating systems off the shelf, the way we buy our computer operating systems, each country develops its own versions. This is why our country's democracy is somewhat different from Canada's, which in turn is slightly different from Australia's, and so forth. These countries all have free-market economies, but again they aren't quite the same. Still, the similarities among democracies and free-market economies are more striking than the differences. Likewise, while no two dictatorships are the same, and no two command economies work in exactly the same way, the differences among them are comparatively trivial.
Since no country's operating systems are perfect, can they be improved? Of course they can. Every time our Congress passes a new law, or enacts a new regulation -- or whenever the Supreme Court issues an opinion -- that's the equivalent of an update to our political or economic operating system. Can you change a country's operating system? Yes, you can. And the precise, technical word for replacing one political or economic operating system with another is -- revolution.
When politics in a democracy is normal, the political parties all agree to preserve the operating system while they compete to improve it. This is what is actually happening when one party in Congress introduces a new piece of healthcare or education legislation and the other party opposes it or introduces its own healthcare or education bill, or when two candidates for the Senate argue over whether or not to change our immigration laws. Honorable people often will disagree about what to do -- sometimes quite strongly, just as the software engineers at Microsoft and Apple will sometimes argue through the night about whether a proposed change in the operating system's code is an improvement or just "kludge." But in normal politics the outer limits of all these disagreements are marked by a shared commitment to preserving and improving the operating system.
In abnormal politics, the objective of one party isn't to improve the operating system, but to overthrow it.
With this analogy in mind, now we can see clearly what's been happening in the United States during the last three decades. While conservatives have been working to improve our democracy and our free-market economy, liberals have been working to replace our democracy with a dictatorship, and our free-market economy with a command economy controlled by the government. The liberals couldn't say this aloud, because if they did the American people would have tossed them out of office on their ears. So the liberals worked covertly, feigning support for democracy and for the free market while working diligently to undermine both.
This is why our politics has been so partisan, so vicious, and so deadlocked. This is why words have lost their meaning in Washington, why we can never get to the bottom of anything, why we lurch from one manufactured scandal to another. It's all been part of a decades-long effort by the liberals to throw sand in our eyes -- to keep us from seeing clearly where they really want to take us. (And this explains why, when we question their judgment on some issue, they go berserk and accuse us of questioning their patriotism. They're afraid we're on the verge of catching on. If you want to have some fun, the next time you're chatting with a liberal and he goes nuts when you call him a socialist, say to him: "I'm so sorry you're offended. Please tell me, what is there about socialism you don't like?" You won't get a coherent answer; he'll just accuse you of a hate crime.)
Obama's Two-Front Offensive
With the election of Barack Obama as president, the liberals have launched a massive, two-front offensive they believe will end in victory. They have judged that our public education system is so degraded that only a few Americans are left who even understand what a democracy is, and how the free market actually works. They are convinced that the majority of Americans are too frightened by the current recession to care about preserving the principles that made us the most powerful, productive and innovative country the world has ever known. In short, the liberals are reaching for victory because they believe that history now is on their side.
Focus on the Family's Dobson on Hate Crimes Bill: "Utter Evil" Coming out of Congress
From LifeSiteNews
By Alex Bush
James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, stated on his daily radio program, Focus on the Family Daily, that "utter evil" is coming out of the United States Congress. He made the remark in reference to the recently passed Hate Crimes Bill, H.R.1913, which makes "sexual orientation," as well as race, religion, class, gender or disability, categories that are protected from "hate crimes."
By Alex Bush
James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, stated on his daily radio program, Focus on the Family Daily, that "utter evil" is coming out of the United States Congress. He made the remark in reference to the recently passed Hate Crimes Bill, H.R.1913, which makes "sexual orientation," as well as race, religion, class, gender or disability, categories that are protected from "hate crimes." Bill H.R.1913 has been criticized by conservative commentators, who say that it could be used to prosecute religious leaders who simply defend traditional moral views on sexuality. Critics have also charged that the bill is redundant, since violent crimes are already punishable by law, and that the bill, by protecting special classes from "hate," effectively criminalizes thoughts rather than criminal actions.
Dobson was joined on his radio show by Congressmen Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, and Steve King, R-Iowa.
"Every case they bring up would not be affected one iota, not one bit, by this hate crimes legislation," Gohmert said, "What this bill does is, it starts saying [that] some classes, some types of people, are more important to protect than others. That divides America, it's un-American."
Bill H.R.1913 states that whoever "attempts to cause bodily injury to any person, because of the actual or perceived religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability of any person" commits a hate crime.
Advocates of the bill, however, have responded to religious critics, pointing out that it includes a clause, in Section 10.4, saying that, "Nothing in this Act shall be construed to allow prosecution based solely upon an individual's expression of racial, religious, political, or other beliefs or solely upon an individual's membership in a group advocating or espousing such beliefs."
In addition, it states that if one is charged with a hate crime under H.R.1913, "evidence of expression or associations of the defendant may not be introduced as substantive evidence at trial." But Gohmert emphasizes the importance of the next line of the bill: "unless the evidence specifically relates to that offense."
According to Gohmert, if a religious leader teaches "that homosexuality is wrong and someone goes out and commits a crime of violence then [the religious leader] can be arrested for inducing that person to do it and under existing Federal Law you are as guilty as the one who committed the act of violence."
Dobson then quipped in response, "So much for the 1st amendment."
Dobson also expressed his concern that, "The broad definition [of sexual orientation] could mean anything including the 30 forms of sexual deviancy that are listed by the American Psychiatric Association."
Currently the term "sexual orientation" is not defined in the hate crimes bill, and is only defined in one law in the books, a law that is not referenced in the bill. Gohmert said that when a judge is trying to figure out how to define a term that is not defined in the law and does not reference another law, the judge gives the term the plain meaning.
"Some judge is going to finally say, 'Sexual orientation' means exactly what the words say: it is whatever you are oriented toward sexually."
Congressman King, in attempting to pre-empt this catch-all definition of "sexual orientation," proposed an amendment that would prevent pedophiles from being protected under H.R.1913. Pedophilia is one of the "sexual orientations" listed by the American Psychiatry Association. The amendment, however, was rejected. "We have a record roll-call vote that shows every Democrat on the judiciary committee voting to have pedophiles protected under sexual orientation," said King.
Tony Perkins, the head of the Family Research Council, stated in April, after H.R.1913 passed through Committee but before being passed to the Senate for review, that the hate crimes bill is simply redundant, since "such acts [of violence] are already crimes under state law. What converts the acts targeted by this bill into a federal offense are the thoughts or opinions of the perpetrator alone."
H.R.1913 has passed through the House of Representatives and has been introduced to the Senate as bill S.909.
From Our Mail: PepsiCo a Member of the National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce
From: American Family Association
Re: PepsiCo Boycott
PepsiCo is a member of the National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce (NGLCC). The NGLCC is an organization that promotes the homosexual agenda including homosexual marriage.
Other companies -- including Ford, McDonald's and Wal-Mart -- withdrew their membership from NGLCC after being asked to do so by AFA.
AFA has asked PepsiCo to be neutral in the culture war, including homosexual marriage, but the company has consistently refused to do so.
• PepsiCo requires its employees to attend diversity training classes promoting the acceptance of homosexuality.
• PepsiCo financially supports "gay pride parades" in cities across America.
• PepsiCo gave $1,000,000 to the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) and Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG). HRC gave hundreds of thousands of dollars in an effort to legalize homosexual marriage in California.
• PepsiCo uses its TV commercials to promote the homosexual lifestyle.
Take Action!
Call PepsiCo's Board of Directors Concern Line at 1-866-626-0633 and tell the board of directors that you are boycotting PepsiCo and asking others to do the same.
Sign the Boycott Pepsi Pledge. After signing the pledge, please call Pepsi (914-253-2000 or 1-800-433-2652) and tell the company you will boycott its products until it stops promoting the homosexual agenda.
- Call the Pepsi bottler nearest you and ask it to stop supporting the homosexual agenda.
- Pepsi’s products include Pepsi soft drinks, Frito-Lay chips and snacks (800-352-4477), Quaker Oats (800-367-6287), Tropicana (800-237-7799) and Gatorade (800-884-2867).
- Print the Boycott Pepsi Pledge and distribute it.
- Tell your friends and family about Pepsi's support of the homosexual agenda. Millions of people are not aware of Pepsi's support of homosexual organizations.
Why Government Can't Run a Business
Politicians need headlines. Executives need profits.
From The Wall Street Journal
By John Steele Gordon
The Obama administration is bent on becoming a major player in -- if not taking over entirely -- America's health-care, automobile and banking industries. Before that happens, it might be a good idea to look at the government's track record in running economic enterprises. It is terrible.
In 1913, for instance, thinking it was being overcharged by the steel companies for armor plate for warships, the federal government decided to build its own plant. It estimated that a plant with a 10,000-ton annual capacity could produce armor plate for only 70% of what the steel companies charged.
When the plant was finally finished, however -- three years after World War I had ended -- it was millions over budget and able to produce armor plate only at twice what the steel companies charged. It produced one batch and then shut down, never to reopen.
Read the rest of this entry >>
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Did Christopher Buckley Betray His Father?
Fathers and Sons
A Book Review by Joan Frawley Desmond
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A Book Review by Joan Frawley Desmond
Christopher Buckley, Twelve, 272 pages, $24.99
And Noah, a farmer, planted a vineyard. He drank of the wine and became drunk and was uncovered in his tent. And Ham, the father of Cannan, saw his father uncovered and he denounced him to his two brothers outside. And Shen and Japheth took a robe and put it on both their shoulders and went backwards and covered the shame of their father (Gen 9:20-23).
When the relatives and friends of William F. Buckley and Patricia Taylor Buckley first learned that Christopher Buckley, the satirical novelist, was completing a memoir of the year during which he lost both his parents, there was considerable and well-founded alarm. All three Buckleys had enjoyed famously contentious relations, and, in recent years, Christopher had not only confirmed his agnosticism on matters religious, but went so far as to announce his plan to vote for Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election.
Has Losing Mum and Pup: A Memoir confirmed the worst fears of Buckley loyalists? The appearance of a portion of the book in the New York Times Magazine suggests that the scion has provided a juicy deconstruction of a conservative icon. Readers are invited to feast on a series of delicious vignettes that strip away the parents' public charisma and reveal their profound limitations in domestic relations. Mom is a serial liar and self-justifying socialite who never apologizes for routine bad behavior. Dad is a frenetic "great man" and control freak who impatiently abandons his only son on the day of his college graduation.
What more is there to be said? A great deal, actually. Not only does the younger Buckley acknowledge many rich and distinctive moments of parental love and devotion, the narrative reveals something more than the author may have intended: the connection between this ambivalent portrait of his parents and his own waning faith in God. To this reviewer, his critique of the Buckley paterfamilias reads like an attempt to demystify and exorcise the inconvenient Catholic values that shaped the author's upbringing and still plague his conscience.
Has Losing Mum and Pup: A Memoir confirmed the worst fears of Buckley loyalists? The appearance of a portion of the book in the New York Times Magazine suggests that the scion has provided a juicy deconstruction of a conservative icon. Readers are invited to feast on a series of delicious vignettes that strip away the parents' public charisma and reveal their profound limitations in domestic relations. Mom is a serial liar and self-justifying socialite who never apologizes for routine bad behavior. Dad is a frenetic "great man" and control freak who impatiently abandons his only son on the day of his college graduation.
What more is there to be said? A great deal, actually. Not only does the younger Buckley acknowledge many rich and distinctive moments of parental love and devotion, the narrative reveals something more than the author may have intended: the connection between this ambivalent portrait of his parents and his own waning faith in God. To this reviewer, his critique of the Buckley paterfamilias reads like an attempt to demystify and exorcise the inconvenient Catholic values that shaped the author's upbringing and still plague his conscience.
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Cardinal Arinze Presents Authentic Vision of Catholic Education in Wake of ND Scandal
From LifeSiteNews
His Eminence Francis Cardinal Arinze, former Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments, delivered the commencement speech and received an honorary doctorate at The Thomas More College of Liberal Arts (TMC) in Merrimack, New Hampshire. During his address, Arinze delivered to the graduates an authentic vision for the mission of Catholic institutions of higher education. "Cardinal Arinze's words of wisdom ring true in this age of contrasts when more and more Catholic universities are recognizing the priceless value of their Catholic identities, said Patrick Reilly, President of The Cardinal Newman Society (CNS). CNS is a watchdog organization devoted to Catholic education.
"Unfortunately," he continued, "some Catholic universities, including Notre Dame, have chosen prestige over principle. It is good to know that Thomas More College is encouraging graduates to emulate such a defender of the Catholic faith as Cardinal Arinze. This is the kind of public witness Catholic institutions should be providing in the public square."Cardinal Arinze emphasized the mission of Catholic universities to strive to educate students about the relationship "between faith and reason, on specialization and orientation, and on science and ethics." He noted that the marker of success for Catholic colleges and universities is having "succeeded in forming and turning out model Christians who are good citizens."
Arinze continued, "If a Catholic College or University adopts this attitude of 'courageous creativity and rigorous fidelity,' it will be able to contribute much to promote a healthy synthesis between faith and culture in society."
"A Catholic college or university educates students to appreciate that moral rules of right and wrong apply also to science, technology, politics, trade and commerce, and indeed to all human endeavors."
"In the complicated world of today, where all kinds of ideas are struggling for the right of citizenship, a university student needs a clear and viable orientation on the relationship between religion and life. The Catholic College or University is ideally positioned to help him see the light and equip himself for a significant contribution in society."
Cardinal Arinze encouraged TMC for its rigorous moral, as well intellectual formation. He asked, "But what does it profit us if a student is an intellectual giant but a moral baby… if he or she can shoot out mathematical or historical facts like a computer but is unfortunately a problem for the parents, corrosive acid among companions in the College, a drug addict and sexual pervert, a disgrace to the school, a waste-pipe in the place of work and Case number 23 for the Criminal Police? It is clear that intellectual development is not enough."
The Cardinal noted the difficulties facing new graduates in a world ruled by moral relativism. "A person who holds that certain actions, like direct abortion, are always objectively wrong, is regarded as 'judgmental', or as imposing his views on others."
Echoing Pope Benedict XVI's address to Catholic educators, he said, "The exercise of freedom in pursuit of the truth is very much a part of integral education. If a Catholic College or University does not help in this way, should we not say that it has failed in one of its important roles?"
"If a Catholic college or university answers to its vocation in the ways outlined above, then it will be educating, forming and releasing into society model citizens who will be a credit to their families, their college, the Church and the State. It will prepare for us members of Congress or the Senate who will not say 'I am a Catholic, but...' but rather those who will say 'I am a Catholic, and therefore...'"
During his speech, Cardinal Arinze praised TMC as "a young and dynamic Catholic liberal arts college…dedicated to forming students intellectually and spiritually within the Catholic intellectual tradition and with unapologetic fidelity to the Magisterium, or the Teaching Authority of the Church."
Thomas More College of Liberal Arts is also lauded in The Newman Guide to Choosing a Catholic College for its significant emphasis on intellectual offerings and for its recent strengthening of "its already notable Catholic identity." (See: http://www.catholichighered.org/TheNewmanGuide/tabid/356/Default.aspx)
Steele's Spending on Friends Spurs Special Meeting of State GOP Leaders
The Washington Times is reporting today that RNC Chairman Michael Steele has hired longtime associates and family friends at salaries nearly three times that of their predecessors in the jobs. His spending and, we hope, his psychotic behavior and lunatic comments will be hot topics at a special meeting of Republican state party chairmen Tuesday and Wednesday in Washington's Maryland suburbs.If financial malfeasance provides the excuse to get rid of a party chairman who is demonstrably unsuited for the job, we hope party leaders will seize it.
Governor Sanford Repudiates Graham Attack on Libertarianism
By now, thousands of people have seen Senator Lindsey Graham being jeered by the South Carolina Republican State Convention for denouncing libertarianism and its champion, Ron Paul. What is less known is that Governor Mark Sanford repudiated those comments and defended liberty within moments of Senator Graham's most recent hissy fit:
Monday, May 18, 2009
Obama's Faith-Based Adviser Urges Challenge to ‘Heteronormative' Fatherhood
It would be difficult to overstate the evil of these people. And a nation that isn't in open revolt over their agenda probably deserves the chastisement that is coming.
From CNSNews
By Fred LucasA controversial member of President Barack Obama’s faith-based council said that part of the administration’s role in promoting responsible fatherhood should include moving beyond America’s “heteronormative view of fatherhood.”
Harry Knox, appointed last month to the 25-member President’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, has drawn fire for inflammatory comments about the Catholic Church and Pope Benedict XVI.
Knox talked about fatherhood and other issues the council would work on in a May 11 PBS interview, which aired two days before a May 13 letter – signed by nearly two dozen prominent Catholics, including House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) – was sent to the White House asking Obama to remove Knox from the council.
The letter was also signed by L. Brent Bozell III, president of the Media Research Center, the parent organization of CNSNews.com.
“Responsible fatherhood offers us an immense opportunity to speak to a real need in the country,” said Knox, director of the faith and religion program at the Human Rights Campaign, a homosexual rights group, during the PBS interview broadcast on its Religion & Ethics Newsweekly show.
“It’ll be challenging to do that for instance in ways that are not dismissive of the tremendous gifts of single mothers; not to sort of hold a heteronormative view of fatherhood up as the only model,” said Knox.
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To the Eternal Shame of Notre Dame!
Isaiah 5:20
An 80 year old priest arrested at Notre Dame for praying and opposing the killing of babies!
Obama's Jewish Problem
From Canada Free Press
By Joan Swirsky
In times past, coalminers working in the depths of the earth took along caged canaries. As long as the canaries warbled, the miners knew they were safe from the methane and carbon monoxide that would kill them in minutes. But when the tiny songbirds stopped singing, the miners knew to run for their lives.Jews have always been the canaries in the coal mines of civilization, serving as a warning of impending doom to those who believed, as Churchill said, that the crocodile—of tyranny—would eat them last. The Jews of Hitler’s Germany who listened carefully to the savage dictator’s early words, and watched as his promises of hope and change morphed into incremental losses of freedom and ultimately genocide, fled their country and survived, while the six-million who said “it can’t happen here”—as well as six-million non-Jews who believed they were immune—perished in the largest mass-murder in history.
After Hitler’s brutal annihilation of half the Jews on earth, the straggling survivors established the State of Israel, which in less than 50 years became a formidable power, and also a world obsession—admired and respected but also envied and loathed.
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'I was Groomed for Jihad in Britain'
A Muslim teenager in London gives the first inside account of how extremists are luring recruits
From TimesOnline
By Kevin Dowling
A TEENAGER has revealed how he was recruited by Al-Qaeda-inspired extremists and groomed to carry out suicide attacks in Britain. In the first insider account of how radicals are preying on vulnerable Muslim youths, the teenager describes being approached by Islamists at a mosque in south London that was used by the failed 21/7 bombers, and indoctrinated at a secret network of squats.
Aged 15, he was the youngest of about 50 recruits who were shown “martyrdom” videos and encouraged to travel to Pakistan to receive terrorist training.
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Sunday, May 17, 2009
PBS Stations May Have To Lose Their Religion
From The Business Insider
By Dan Colarusso
The muckety-mucks at PBS headquarters are looking closely at instituting a rule that would strip a public television station of its PBS affiliation if it broadcast any religious shows.The measure is to be voted on next month and it’s already causing ripples across the nation’s network of public TV stations, which broadcast a mix of local favorites (such as Mass For Shut-Ins in Washington, D.C.) to highly regarded PBS fare such as Frontline and The News Hour with Jim Lehrer.
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Becoming Barbarians
Hungry, rootless, and revolutionary, the Right has adopted the habits of the horde.
From The American Conservative
By Rod Dreher
Perhaps it’s a measure of the depths of my cultural pessimism, but when I take a sounding of the conservative predicament these days, I find myself not asking, “What would Reagan do?” but rather “What would Benedict do?” Benedict of Nursia, I mean, the 5th-century founder of Western monasticism, the man most responsible for preserving European Christian culture through the Dark Ages.
The Catholic philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre famously ended his landmark 1982 book After Virtue with a gloomy meditation about the collapse of a common moral sense in the West. He suggested that we were too far gone into nihilism and relativism to save and that those devoted to the traditional virtues should consider hiving off, as Benedict and his followers did in Rome’s final days, to build communities that can withstand the incoming tide of chaos and despond. MacIntyre wrote that our unawareness of how lost we are “constitutes part of our predicament,” one that can only be adequately addressed by “another—and doubtless very different—St. Benedict.”
What could that mean for conservatives today? That we should consider what I’ve come to call the “Benedict Option”—that is, pioneering forms of dropping out of a barbaric mainstream culture that has grown hostile to our fundamental values. The case for traditional conservatives to make a strategic retreat to defensible perimeters, so to speak, has become even more appealing since 1999, when Paul Weyrich issued his famous fin de siècle call for conservatives to pull back radically from “a [cultural] collapse so great that it simply overwhelms politics.”
The barbarians are upon us! That’s what I told an audience not long ago in a speech in Austin, Texas. The next day, I drove home to Dallas, went to bed, and had a dream that has haunted me since.
Read the rest of this entry >>
Help Free Gao Zhisheng
Christian human rights attorney Gao Zhisheng, disappeared February 4, and was last seen being taken away by a dozen police officers. Gao Zhisheng has been repeatedly kidnapped, arrested, imprisoned and tortured by Chinese authorities, because he has defended the persecuted and has been an unyielding voice for justice in the Chinese courts.
Read Gao's account of 50 days of torture in 2007.
Read Gao Zhisheng's letter to the U.S. Congress in 2007.
Read Geng He's open letter to the U.S. Congress.
Read Senator Dorgan's speech from the Senate floor.
ChinaAid together with Mr. Gao's wife and children are deeply concerned about Mr. Gao, and reports from inside China indicate he is experiencing severe torture.
Please sign the petition on the page that The Voice of the Martyrs has dedicated to this brave Christian man.
Saturday, May 16, 2009
California Senate Approves 'Harvey Milk Day,' Would Require Public Schools to Honor Sodomite Icon
“In-your-face, anything-goes, homosexual-bisexual-transsexual indoctrination”
From California Catholic Daily
The California Senate yesterday approved a bill designating May 22 as an unpaid state holiday to honor Harvey Milk, the homosexual rights activist who was assassinated in 1978 while serving as a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. May 22 is Milk’s birthday.
The measure, which needed 21 votes to pass, was approved by a margin of 24 to 14 on Thursday morning. All 23 Democrats in the Senate voted yes, along with a single Republican, Sen. Abel Maldonado of Santa Maria. With the exception of Maldonado, all other Republican senators voted against the bill.
Read the rest of this entry >>
Freedom Is Not A Pendulum
From NewsWithViews.com
By Margaret Goodwin
The periodic swings from one party to the other in control of our government often give rise to the analogy of a pendulum. A pendulum swings from one side to the other, always passing through the equilibrium position at its center. This flawed analogy leads to the illusion that our country's political swings from left to right also pass through a stable center that is fixed and permanent. History belies that illusion. Throughout the history of civilization, there has never been a government that did not eventually come to an end, either through defeat in war or corrosion from within. The Roman Republic lasted 500 years before it gave way to the Roman Empire, and that too collapsed after a few hundred more years. Ancient history? Yes, indeed. But the rate of social, political, industrial, technological, and cultural changes on the global scale have accelerated, not decelerated, from ancient to modern times. Change happens much more rapidly than it used to.
Read the rest of this entry >>
Socialist Brazilian Government to Remove "Homophobic" Christian Programming from Daytime TV
Will add warning to such programs, pushing them to 11 pm or later
From LifeSiteNews
By Matthew Cullinan Hoffman
The Brazilian government is considering adding warning labels to Christian programming it regards as "homophobic," according to Folha de Sao Paulo, one of Brazil's largest-circulation newspapers.According to Folha, the programs will display a warning label that reads, "not recommended for people under the age of 18."
The newspaper reports that the policy decision stems from a plan for the "promotion of the citizenship of LGBT (lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transvestites, and transsexuals), which will be launched today in the afternoon by the President's Secretariat of Human Rights."
Brazil's Secretary of Justice reportedly told Folha that, while such programming would be restricted to after 11 pm, "the ideal is that they not be shown at any time."
If carried out in accordance with Brazilian President Luiz Lula's definition of "homophobia," the new restrictions will effectively ban public statements on television that identify homosexual behavior as sinful and/or unhealthy.
"Pornographic sex education classes that praise homosexuality cannot be rated as 'unsuitable for children and teens,' because they have the approval from the pro-homosexuality socialist State," writes pro-family activist Julio Severo, himself in exile from Brazil because of charges of "homophobia."
"Yet, evangelical and Catholic radio and TV shows now run the risk of being rated as 'morally harmful,' 'homophobic' and 'unsuitable for children and teens' and other attributions, until the social climate is ready for heavier measures, including jail, for those transgressing the state standard for social behaviors."
The measure is only one example of the Lula administration's national and international homosexualist policy.
Working closely with Brazilian homosexual leader Luiz Mott, Lula has created a nationwide campaign called "Brazil Without Homophobia" that seeks to normalize and legitimize the behavior of homosexuals. As LifeSiteNews has reported, Mott is an open defender of pedophilia and pederasty.
Lula is also seeking to pass an "anti-homophobia" law that would prohibit any public criticism of homosexuals or homosexual behavior. He recently reiterated his commitment to "criminalize words or acts that are offensive to homosexuality" (see LifeSiteNews coverage at http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/apr/09043008.html).
However, even in the absence of the proposed "homophobia" law the Brazilian government has already fined individuals and groups for opposing homosexuality, including the Evangelical group National Vision for the Christian Conscience (VINACC), which was ordered to cancel its pro-family campaign for quoting the Bible's strictures against homosexual unions.
Friday, May 15, 2009
From Our Mail: Lindsey Graham Representing Massachusetts Again
From: Gun Owners of America
Re: Graham Sponsoring Bill That Will Result in National Anti-Gun Database
Friday, May 15, 2009
Do you know what your supposedly "Republican" senator is doing right now?Well, it turns out that Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina is also leading the "hit parade" on behalf of legislation which would expand the scope of government in a way unprecedented in human history -- and which would place your most private medical data into an anti-gun database.
Hard to believe?
But there he is: Sen. Graham is right up there with certifiable liberals like left wing Oregon Democrat Ron Wyden and left wing Michigan Democrat Debbie Stabenow.
The bill is S. 391, and it is being pushed by some Republicans as an alternative to the Health Care Gun Ban that we've been warning you about.
S. 391 does a hodgepodge of things, but by far the most important one is to "solve" the problem of 48 million uninsured by taking away the right of Americans not to purchase government-approved insurance.
If you are uninsured, you would have to buy health insurance, whether you can afford it or not. If your employer is not unionized, he would have to retool your employer-provided health insurance policy to comply with government requirements.
If your employer cannot afford government-approved insurance with all of the politically correct bells and whistles, too bad. His only legal alternative is to fire you.
If you cannot afford government-approved insurance, too bad.
If you have to lose your home -- or your small business -- or your kids' college fund -- in order to pay for government-approved insurance, too bad.
And like the Massachusetts system on which it is modeled, the federally mandated insurance would inexorably revolve around a federal database of medical information that you could not opt out of.
So, remember when your kid's pediatrician asked him about your gun collection? Or when you grandfather was diagnosed with a mental disability which could disqualify him from owning a gun?
All of that will be in the federal database, which could be searched by virtually anyone in the Department of Health and Human Services -- and by BATF, by simple request.
And, although section 103 of S. 391 purports to allow you to keep the coverage you have, all employer-provided insurance which you wish to keep has to be rewritten to contain all the government-required mandates -- or you're not allowed to keep it.
ACTION: Contact Senator Graham and urge him to remove his cosponsorship from S. 391. Please use his webform at http://lgraham.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Contact.EmailSenatorGraham to do so.
More Americans "Pro-Life" Than "Pro-Choice" for First Time Since 1995: Gallup Poll
As we noted yesterday, God brings good out of evil. The most militantly pro-death President ever -- one who will leave a survivor of abortion to die -- is beginning to awaken the dormant consciences of millions of Americans. As more and more Americans grasp the depravity of the Obama regime, watch the politicians follow.From LifeSiteNews
By Kathleen Gilbert
A new Gallup Poll, conducted May 7-10, has found that 51% of Americans call themselves "pro-life" on the issue of abortion and 42% "pro-choice." This is the first time a majority of U.S. adults have identified themselves as pro-life since Gallup began asking that question in 1995.The new results, obtained from Gallup's annual Values and Beliefs survey, represent a significant shift from a year ago, when 50% were pro-choice and 44% pro-life. Prior to the current poll, the highest percentage identifying as pro-life was 46%, in both August 2001 and May 2002.
The new survey documents comparable changes in views about the legality of abortion. About as many Americans now say the procedure should be illegal in all circumstances (23%) as say it should be legal under any circumstances (22%), in contrast with the last four years, when public opinion tilted more strongly in favor of unrestricted abortion.
Most people (53%) still say abortion should be legal only under certain circumstances; of these, 35% say it should be legal "only in a few circumstances," as opposed to "most circumstances."
Americans' recent shift toward the pro-life position is confirmed in two other surveys. The same three abortion questions asked on the Gallup Values and Beliefs survey were included in Gallup Poll Daily tracking from May 12-13, with nearly identical results, including a 50% to 43% pro-life versus pro-choice split on the self-identification question.
Additionally, a recent national survey by the Pew Research Center recorded an eight percentage-point decline since last August in those saying abortion should be legal in all or most cases, from 54% to 46%. The percentage saying abortion should be legal in only a few or no cases increased from 41% to 44% over the same period. As a result, support for the two broad positions is now about even, sharply different from most polling on this question since 1995, when the majority has typically favored legality.
The source of the shift came from among GOP ranks, according to the Gallup Values and Beliefs survey, where Republicans calling themselves "pro-life" rose from 60% to 70% since last year. About two out of three Democrats continue to identify as "pro-choice," virtually unchanged from recent years.
The swelling of the pro-life position since last year is seen across Christian religious affiliations, including an eight-point gain among Protestants and a seven-point gain among Catholics.
"With the first pro-choice president in eight years already making changes to the nation's policies on funding abortion overseas, expressing his support for the Freedom of Choice Act, and moving toward rescinding federal job protections for medical workers who refuse to participate in abortion procedures, Americans - and, in particular, Republicans - seem to be taking a step back from the pro-choice position," the pollster comments.
"That's a historic event from the pro-life perspective," American Life League president Judie Brown told LifeSiteNews.com today. She called the poll results are "excellent signs for progress."
Brown said the poll shows that grassroots-level pro-life education is paying off, and also that "people have begun to see through the deception of politicians who claim that they favor a woman's right but in fact don't favor anybody's rights, except the right to be re-elected."
Regarding the sharp upturn in pro-life identification over the past year, Brown agreed that the heavily pro-abortion agenda of President Obama has likely worked in favor of the pro-life movement.
"I think that people have now envisioned - maybe for the first time in some of their lives, because abortion has been decriminalized for so long - they envision an enemy who is very deceptive, and who never met an abortion he didn't like, and people are beginning to understand that, to see through him - and that's a great plus for us.
"As far as we're concerned, as pro-lifers, he [Obama] is helping us a great deal," said Brown. "It's fantastic."
Now Veterans are Dangerous Right-Wing Extremists
The report is withdrawn but a question remains; why does a federal department have staff busy drafting warning reports about US citizens who are patriotic veterans, tax objectors, supporters of laws requiring border enforcement, and pray at abortion clinics? Homeland Security looks increasingly like a Ministry of Political Intimidation and Propaganda.
From The Washington Times
By Audrey Hudson
A contentious "Rightwing Extremism" report that warned of military veterans as possible recruits for terrorist attacks against the U.S. was not authorized, has been withdrawn and is being rewritten, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told Capitol Hill lawmakers.
"The wheels came off the wagon because the vetting process was not followed," Ms. Napolitano told the House Homeland Security Committee on Wednesday.
"The report is no longer out there," she said. "An employee sent it out without authorization."
The report was shared with state and local law enforcement officials nationwide via the department's internal Web site on April 7, angering Republican lawmakers and military veterans who said it unfairly stereotyped veterans.
Ms. Napolitano did not say when the report was taken off the "intel Web site" and all Homeland Security Department Web sites, but she said it is in the process of being "replaced or redone in a much more useful and much more precise fashion."
Read the rest of this entry >>
Thursday, May 14, 2009
ISRAEL: Atittudes Toward Christians
From Los Angeles Times, "Babylon & Beyond"By Batsheva Sobelman in Jerusalem
Jewish Israelis are very diverse. In a nation whose immigrants come from countries and cultures far and wide, pluralism often refers to tolerance among different cultural groups of Jews.
But diversity discourse in Israel differs considerably when it comes to interaction with non-Jewish groups. Rival historic, religious and national narratives make real diversity a tough principle to practice.
Most Christians in Israel are Arabs, a minority within a minority squeezed between different layers of conflict. Christians account for 2.1% of the population. Israel's non-Arab Christians are mainly immigrants from the former Soviet Union, foreign workers, resident clergy and even Catholic Jews. And Jewish Israelis don't quite know how to perceive any of them -- for cultural, national and religious reasons.
Fifty-two percent of Jewish Israelis have no Christian friends or acquaintances, but almost 100% of them have opinions about them. A recent poll surveyed attitudes among the adult Jewish population toward Christians, Christianity and the Christian presence in Israel. The results of the survey, carried out by the Jerusalem Center for Jewish-Christian Relations (JCJCR) and the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies (JIIS), shed light on how Jewish Israelis perceive Christians and what they know about them, or think they do know.
Generally, most answers showed that the higher the level of religious observance, the more negative the attitude toward Christians. Such attitudes also were seen the lower the level of age, income and education. The following numbers mostly refer to the overall sample, but keep in mind the observance breakdown of the respondents: 23% Orthodox, 24% traditional and 53% secular.
But diversity discourse in Israel differs considerably when it comes to interaction with non-Jewish groups. Rival historic, religious and national narratives make real diversity a tough principle to practice.
Most Christians in Israel are Arabs, a minority within a minority squeezed between different layers of conflict. Christians account for 2.1% of the population. Israel's non-Arab Christians are mainly immigrants from the former Soviet Union, foreign workers, resident clergy and even Catholic Jews. And Jewish Israelis don't quite know how to perceive any of them -- for cultural, national and religious reasons.
Fifty-two percent of Jewish Israelis have no Christian friends or acquaintances, but almost 100% of them have opinions about them. A recent poll surveyed attitudes among the adult Jewish population toward Christians, Christianity and the Christian presence in Israel. The results of the survey, carried out by the Jerusalem Center for Jewish-Christian Relations (JCJCR) and the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies (JIIS), shed light on how Jewish Israelis perceive Christians and what they know about them, or think they do know.
Generally, most answers showed that the higher the level of religious observance, the more negative the attitude toward Christians. Such attitudes also were seen the lower the level of age, income and education. The following numbers mostly refer to the overall sample, but keep in mind the observance breakdown of the respondents: 23% Orthodox, 24% traditional and 53% secular.
* 54% of the Jewish population think it is necessary to teach about Christianity in schools, including 25% of Orthodox Jews. But only 37% believe it's necessary to teach about the New Testament.
* 42% believe Christianity is closer to Judaism than Islam. A total of 32% believe Islam is closer. The breakdown of religious observance is interesting here, with 49% of Orthodox Jews believing Islam is closer and only 17% believing that Christianity is. But 54% of secular Jews believe Christianity is closer and 22% that Islam is.
* 41% agreed very much or largely with the claim that "Christianity is an idolatrous religion," including 24% of secular and 78% of Orthodox Jews.
* 37% believe it is forbidden for a Jew to enter a church, with the predictable observance differential. Still, the percentage of people who say they do not enter churches in practice is lower (29%) than those who believe it's forbidden.
* 23% are greatly or significantly bothered when meeting in the street a Christian wearing a cross, including 8% of secular respondents and 60% of Orthodox Jews. This was an issue during the papal visit: Shmuel Rabinowitz, rabbi of the Western Wall, had asked that the pope remove or at least cover his cross when visiting the site. He didn't. Rabinowitz said he felt the same way about a Jew entering a church with a prayer shawl and phylacteries. Chief Sephardic Rabbi Shlomo Amar responded by wearing a chain with a pendant depicting the tablets of the Ten Commandments when he met the pope Tuesday.
* And here's one that says a lot: 46% do not agree that Jerusalem is a central city for the Christian world, including 31% of secular and 67% of Orthodox Jews.
* 21% agree with the claim that all or most Christians want to convert Jews to Christianity, including 14% of secular and 43% of Orthodox Jews.
* 39% believe the attitude of the Roman Catholic Church to Judaism and Jews is positive. 58% believe there has been a change for the better in the church's attitude toward Jews in the last 50 years. Nearly 20% had no opinion on this one.
* 55% say it is acceptable for Jewish organizations to receive financial assistance from Christian religious bodies, including 70% of secular and 20% of Orthodox Jews. 41% of the population said it was unacceptable.
* So, should Israel allow churches to operate in Israel? 39% say yes -- but that they shouldn't be helped in any way. 34% say they should be assured freedom of religion and helped like any other religious institution, while 20% believe their activities should be restricted as much as possible.
* And here's one thing most agree on: 71% say Israel should not permit Christian bodies to purchase property in Jerusalem for building new churches.
* 45% believe the Arab Christians have a positive attitude toward the state; 45% believe their attitude is negative. 39% consider them loyal to the state.
* 56% don't think Israel needs to take any action on Christian emigration from the country; 9% thought Israel should do something to stop it and 31% say that the state should encourage it.
********************
Briefing reporters before the pope's visit, JCJCR director Daniel Rossing stressed the importance of inter-religious dialogue for society but also for the peace process. One of the flaws of the process, he said, was that the mainly secular actors assumed that to succeed, religion needed to be removed from the picture. Rossing believes this creates a vacuum that invites extremists to fill it.
On Christian emigration, Rossing said it was important that Christians continue to be a vibrant community and that "this not become a Disneyland of holy places without a living community. They can serve as a bridge and everyone stands to lose if they disappear from here."
Accused of Sexual Abuse, But Back in the Classroom
If you think this is unique to Los Angeles or other far away big cities, think again. The public education establishment is very good at hushing up this problem, but the South Carolina State Board of Education routinely deals with issues of child sexual abuse by teachers.
From Los Angeles Times
By Jason SongThe 13-year-old on the witness stand looked to be an ordinary adolescent, her diffident smile unveiling a set of braces. Her attorney began gently, with questions about her favorite band and trips to the mall.
Then he brought up "Mr. Ricardo" and second grade. The girl buried her face in her hands and sobbed.
When her mother took the stand, she testified that the girl had not been the same since the day the teacher's aide put his hands on her. "I just believe this whole thing changed her life," the mother said. "I don't see her so confident around people. . . . I believe she has no interests."
A jury late last year ordered the Los Angeles Unified School District to pay nearly $1.6 million to the families of three girls molested by Ricardo Guevara, who is now serving 15 years in prison for lewd acts with a child.
But there was something the jury -- and the public -- was never told: This was the third set of accusations that Guevara had molested students. Twice before, when law enforcement officials had decided they lacked the evidence to win a criminal conviction, L.A. Unified officials had quietly put him back in the classroom.
Guevara's case fits a pattern, a Times investigation shows: Repeatedly, the district failed to follow up on sexual misconduct complaints against employees once police or prosecutors dropped criminal actions. Some ended up at new schools. In at least one instance -- involving Guevara -- the new principal had no idea of his history.
Read the rest of this entry >>
New Video Exposes Christian Genocide
Stating that "the Muslim persecution of Christians has reached Genocidal proportions," the Freedom Center has produced a shocking flash video about the "millions of Christians being put to death for the sole reason that they are Christian." (Viewer discretion is advised-very disturbing images.) The video can be seen here.The Center is raising funds so that The Muslim Persecution of Christians can be used to spread the truth and expose the nature of Islam and the threat it poses to all peoples of the world and in this case specifically, the plight of the Christians. The once vibrant Christian communities of the Middle and North Africa are disappearing before our eyes.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Fr. Jenkins to Graduating ND Students: "There is Much to Admire and Celebrate in the Work of Obama"
The motivations behind University of Notre Dame President Father John Jenkins are becoming clear. He has defied the hierarchy in Rome and throughout the United States, cost the University of Notre Dame millions in alumni donations, spawned a rebellion among students who refuse to be Herod's pawns in an effort to divide Catholics, and created a scandal from which his once respected university will not soon recover, because his board is comprised of close Obama supporters, some of whom have financially benefited from earmarks proposed by Barack Obama during his brief Senate career.
But as Saint Augustine wrote, “God judged it better to bring good out of evil, than to suffer no evil to exist.” We have reason to believe that efforts are underway to "clean house" at the University of Notre Dame. This outrage has galvanized an often spineless American Catholic hierarchy as few issues have ever done. One of the Church's most prominent scholars and the former US Ambassador to the Holy See has refused the University's highest honor, Church going Catholics are overwhelmingly opposed to Obama receiving honors from the flagship Catholic university in the United States, awareness of Obama's deadly agenda is considerably greater among all Americans than it was previously, national polls show opposition to abortion has increased by 8%, and Catholic colleges and universities will think twice before according a platform, much less honors, to any pro-abortion politician in the future.
As we wish Father Jenkins good riddance, we are thankful for the good that God has brought out of the scandal Jenkins created.
From LifeSiteNews
By Kathleen Gilbert
The president of the University of Notre Dame, Fr. John Jenkins, has issued a letter to graduates addressing the controversy that has exploded over the school's invitation to President Obama to deliver this year's commencement address and receive an honorary degree. In the letter Jenkins expresses his admiration for President Obama and his record."There is much to admire and celebrate in the life and work of President Obama," wrote Fr. Jenkins. "He's a remarkable figure in American history and I look forward to welcoming him to Notre Dame."
(To see full text of Fr. Jenkins' letter: http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/may/09051305.html)
The University has been the center of a firestorm of controversy, drawing criticism from 74 U.S. bishops and 360,000 petitioning Catholics, ever since it was announced that Obama would appear on campus for graduation on May 17.
Instead of attending the official commencement ceremonies, pro-life graduating seniors protesting the invitation will attend a meditation led by Fr. Frank Pavone of Priests for Life in the university's Grotto of Our Lady Lourdes. A rally on Notre Dame's South Quad, organized by ND Response and featuring several speakers, is expected to draw thousands of peaceful pro-life protesters.
"The decision to invite President Obama to Notre Dame to receive an honorary degree and deliver the Commencement address has triggered debate," wrote Fr. Jenkins in the letter to graduates dated May 11. Jenkins noted that the debate has grown "heated," even among some "who agree completely on Church teaching regarding the sanctity of human life, who agree completely that we should work for change - and differ only on how we should work for change."
Saying that both he and the University are "unequivocally committed to the sanctity of human life," Jenkins said he was "saddened" that those protesting the invitation "have suggested that our invitation to President Obama indicates ambiguity in our position on matters of Catholic teaching."
"Notre Dame has a long custom of conferring honorary degrees on the President of the United States. It has never been a political statement or an endorsement of policy," he said. "As St. Peter wrote (I Pt. 2:17), we should honor the leader who upholds the secular order."
Jenkins said that the Catholic university's "special obligation not just to honor the leader, but to engage the culture" has "never been easy or without controversy."
"The President's visit to Notre Dame can help lead to broader engagement on issues of importance to the country and of deep significance to Catholics," said the university president.
Jenkins concluded highlighted as especially admirable Obama's "views and policies on immigration, expanding health care, alleviating poverty, and building peace through diplomacy have a deep residence with Catholic social teaching." He added that, "As the first African-American holder of this office, he has accelerated our country's progress in overcoming the painful legacy of slavery and segregation."
"He's a remarkable figure in American history and I look forward to welcoming him to Notre Dame."
In the letter Fr. Jenkins does not criticize Obama for the extreme pro-abortion record that has led U.S. pro-life advocates to label him the "most pro-abortion" president in U.S. history.
Last month, Fr. Jenkins told the audience of a town hall meeting that Notre Dame is "tremendously proud" to honor Obama.
Concerning the unprecedented backlash the decision drew, Jenkins said, "I think it's unfortunate that the great event of President Obama coming to this campus has been a little clouded by that controversy."
Pope Benedict Walks Out of Inter-Faith Meeting After Pressure from Palestinians
From TimesOnline
By James Hider
Pope Benedict XVI walked out of an inter-faith meeting in Israel last night after a Palestinian cleric called on the pontiff to help stop Israeli "crimes". The Pope is visiting some of the holiest sites in Judaism and Islam today in the latest stage of his Holy Land pilgrimage.
The Vatican has insisted the trip is a spiritual, not political journey, but that has not stopped Palestinians from looking to him to criticise Israeli restrictions on their freedom of movement and the ongoing occupation of Palestinian territory.
At one point, the Catholic leader – who has dedicated his visit to reconciliation between the three mutually distrustful religions - walked out of an interfaith meeting last night when a Palestinian Muslim cleric attacked Israeli policy in Jerusalem, and called on the Pope to help stop Israeli “crimes”.
Read the rest of this entry >>
American Psychological Association Changes Tune on Genetic Nature of Homosexuality
From LifeSiteNews
By A. Dean Byrd, Ph.D., MBA, MPH
In 1998, the American Psychological Association (APA) published a brochure titled "Answers to Your Questions about Sexual Orientation and Homosexuality."
This particular document was ostensibly published to provide definitive answers about homosexuality. However, few of the assertions made in the brochure could find any basis in psychological science. Clearly a document anchored more in activism than in empiricism, the brochure was simply a demonstration of how far APA had strayed from science, and how much it had capitulated to activism.
The newest APA brochure, which appears to be an update of the older one, is titled, "Answers to Your Questions for a Better Understanding of Sexual Orientation & Homosexuality."
Though both brochures have strong activist overtones (both were created with "editorial assistance from the APA Committee on Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Concerns"), the newer document is more reflective of science and more consistent with the ethicality of psychological care.
Consider the following statement from the first document: "There is considerable recent evidence to suggest that biology, including genetic or inborn hormonal factors, play a significant role in a person's sexuality."
That statement was omitted from the current document and replaced with the following:
"There is no consensus among scientists about the exact reasons that an individual develops a heterosexual, bisexual, gay or lesbian orientation. Although much research has examined the possible genetic, hormonal, developmental, social, and cultural influences on sexual orientation, no findings have emerged that permit scientists to conclude that sexual orientation is determined by any particular factor or factors. Many think that nature and nurture both play complex roles..."
Although there is no mention of the research that influenced this new position statement, it is clear that efforts to "prove" that homosexuality is simply a biological fait accompli have failed. The activist researchers themselves have reluctantly reached that conclusion. There is no gay gene. There is no simple biological pathway to homosexuality. Byne and Parsons, and Friedman and Downey, were correct: a bio-psycho-social model best fits the data.
On the question of whether or not therapy can change sexual orientation, the former document offered a resounding "no." However, the current document is much more nuanced and contains the following statement: "To date, there has been no scientifically adequate research to show that therapy (sometimes called reparative or conversion therapy) is safe or effective."
Of course, no mention is made of the Spitzer research, the Karten research, or the recent longitudinal research conducted by Jones and Yarhouse -- all of which support the conclusion that some people can and do change.
Of the Spitzer research, psychologist Dr. Scott Hershberger (who is a philosophical essentialist on questions of sexual orientation) conducted a Guttman analysis of the study sample, and declared:
"The orderly, law-like pattern of changes in homosexual behavior, homosexual self-identification, and homosexual attraction and fantasy observed in Spitzer's study is strong evidence that reparative therapy can assist individuals in changing their homosexual orientation to a heterosexual one."
The Spitzer study found no evidence of harm. Neither did the Karten study, nor the Jones and Yarhouse study.
For the rest of this commentary please see the website of the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality here:
http://www.narth.com/docs/deemphasizes.html
By A. Dean Byrd, Ph.D., MBA, MPH
In 1998, the American Psychological Association (APA) published a brochure titled "Answers to Your Questions about Sexual Orientation and Homosexuality."
This particular document was ostensibly published to provide definitive answers about homosexuality. However, few of the assertions made in the brochure could find any basis in psychological science. Clearly a document anchored more in activism than in empiricism, the brochure was simply a demonstration of how far APA had strayed from science, and how much it had capitulated to activism.
The newest APA brochure, which appears to be an update of the older one, is titled, "Answers to Your Questions for a Better Understanding of Sexual Orientation & Homosexuality."
Though both brochures have strong activist overtones (both were created with "editorial assistance from the APA Committee on Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Concerns"), the newer document is more reflective of science and more consistent with the ethicality of psychological care.
Consider the following statement from the first document: "There is considerable recent evidence to suggest that biology, including genetic or inborn hormonal factors, play a significant role in a person's sexuality."
That statement was omitted from the current document and replaced with the following:
"There is no consensus among scientists about the exact reasons that an individual develops a heterosexual, bisexual, gay or lesbian orientation. Although much research has examined the possible genetic, hormonal, developmental, social, and cultural influences on sexual orientation, no findings have emerged that permit scientists to conclude that sexual orientation is determined by any particular factor or factors. Many think that nature and nurture both play complex roles..."
Although there is no mention of the research that influenced this new position statement, it is clear that efforts to "prove" that homosexuality is simply a biological fait accompli have failed. The activist researchers themselves have reluctantly reached that conclusion. There is no gay gene. There is no simple biological pathway to homosexuality. Byne and Parsons, and Friedman and Downey, were correct: a bio-psycho-social model best fits the data.
On the question of whether or not therapy can change sexual orientation, the former document offered a resounding "no." However, the current document is much more nuanced and contains the following statement: "To date, there has been no scientifically adequate research to show that therapy (sometimes called reparative or conversion therapy) is safe or effective."
Of course, no mention is made of the Spitzer research, the Karten research, or the recent longitudinal research conducted by Jones and Yarhouse -- all of which support the conclusion that some people can and do change.
Of the Spitzer research, psychologist Dr. Scott Hershberger (who is a philosophical essentialist on questions of sexual orientation) conducted a Guttman analysis of the study sample, and declared:
"The orderly, law-like pattern of changes in homosexual behavior, homosexual self-identification, and homosexual attraction and fantasy observed in Spitzer's study is strong evidence that reparative therapy can assist individuals in changing their homosexual orientation to a heterosexual one."
The Spitzer study found no evidence of harm. Neither did the Karten study, nor the Jones and Yarhouse study.
For the rest of this commentary please see the website of the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality here:
http://www.narth.com/docs/deemphasizes.html
No Story Here
From "Off the Record," Catholic World News
By Diogenes
Father Lawrence Perry has been suspended, after being accused of sexual misconduct with adult parishioners. The case will undoubtedly revive arguments for an end to priestly celibacy in the Catholic Church.
Oh, wait. Father Perry is an Episcopalian priest, not a Catholic. And the Episcopal Church allows priests to marry. So this case will probably cause pundits to write.....
...
... nothing at all.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
More Notre Dame Students Boycott Graduation Over Pro-Abortion Obama Speech
By Steven Ertelt
More graduating seniors at the University of Notre Dame are boycotting the commencement ceremony scheduled to take place this weekend featuring pro-abortion President Barack Obama. Their refusal to attend is a dramatic conclusion to what has been branded a scandal of national proportions. Students say the decision to boycott the graduation and attend alternative commencement events, including a prayer vigil featuring Father Frank Pavone, is not a political decision.
“It’s not a political issue; this is an issue of human dignity, and it’s a Catholic issue,” said Greer Hannan, a Notre Dame graduating senior. “As a Catholic university, we need to stand up for it.”
The evening of May 16, Bishop of the Fort Wayne-South Bend diocese, Rev. John D’Arcy, will lead a candlelight prayer vigil for graduating seniors and their families to pray for an end to abortion.
On graduation day, in addition to the meditation ceremony with the Priests for Life leader, a large rally will be held on the South Quad of the university featuring a variety of speakers.
ND Response, the student-led coalition that is planning the events, told LifeNews.com today that "Notre Dame should not be honoring a political figure who supports abortion and embryonic stem cell research."
The collection of several pro-life groups has also released a new Hollywood style video showcasing their displeasure with Notre Dame and Obama.
Meanwhile, a new article on the popular Catholic web site PewSitter indicates some reasons for why Notre Dame president, Rev. John Jenkins, invited pro-abortion President Obama to be the graduation speaker.
The article indicates political connections between members of the Notre Dame Board of Trustees and Obama which may explain why a Catholic university would ignore Church teachings and significant public outcry to honor the pro-abortion president with an honorary degree.
One example listed in the expose' is that of the Chair of the Notre Dame Trustees, Richard Notebaert, and his wife may be friends of Obama's and the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum has received federal funding earmarked by Obama when he was a senator.
One of Obama's "key" fundraisers, Frank Clark, served on the museum board at time the funding was received.
The PewSitter article also explores other connections and makes the case that Jenkins may be doing little more than the bidding of a Board of Trustees politically disposed to support Obama.
Related web sites:
ND Response - http://www.ndresponse.com/
New video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KUBdrrbF6o
Those TEA Parties You Hate, Obama, Are Only Just Beginning!
The American Family Association is preparing Independence Day tea parties in 659 cities, in all 50 states. If you missed the first round, as we unfortunately did, there is no better time than the Fourth of July to express your contempt for big, oppressive government, its irresponsible spending, and confiscatory taxes.
From AFA's TEA Party Day website:
On Saturday, July 4th, be part of the Taxed Enough Already (TEA) party rally in your community. Help organize a local TEA Party.
Obama adds 78,000 new employees to government payroll
2009 budget grows to a deficit of $1.8 trillion, more than four times higher than last year’s all time high and 50% of total budget
With the national debt already out of control, President Obama has added 78,000 new government jobs to the federal payroll since he took office. Obama’s increase in the number of government employees will add hundreds of millions of dollars to our debt. If history is any measure, these jobs will never be eliminated. They will simply add to the mountains of debt we are leaving our grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Obama and Congress continue to spend money the government doesn’t have. The deficit for the current year will be $1.8 trillion, 50% of the total budget. In order to pay interest on the debt, the government will have to cut spending, raise taxes, print more paper money or borrow from another country like China, which already holds billons of U.S. debt. With no end of spending in sight, some estimates project that our national debt could reach $8 trillion by the year 2014.
Obama and liberals in Congress are taking us down the road to socialism, seizing control of key banks, insurance companies, the automobile industry, etc. They are currently working on a government funded national health care program which is expected to cost roughly $2 trillion while rationing services.
Are you fed up with a Congress and a president who:
- vote for a $500 billion tax bill without even reading it?
- are spending trillions of borrowed dollars, leaving a debt our great-grandchildren will be paying?
- consistently give special interest groups billions of dollars in earmarks to help get themselves re-elected?
- want to take your wealth and redistribute it to others?
- punish those who practice responsible financial behavior and reward those who do not?
- admit to using the financial hurt of millions as an opportunity to push their political agenda?
- run up trillions of dollars of debt and then sell that debt to countries such as China?
- want government controlled health care?
- want to take away the right to vote with a secret ballot in union elections?
- refuse to stop the flow of millions of illegal immigrants into our country?
- appoint a defender of child pornography to the Number 2 position in the Justice Department?
- want to force doctors and other medical workers to perform abortions against their will?
- want to impose a carbon tax on your electricity, gas and home heating fuels?
- want to reduce your tax deductibility for charitable gifts?
- take money from your family budget to pay for their federal budget?
If so, help organize and/or participate in a Taxed Enough Already (TEA) party in your community on July 4. You choose the time and the location.
Obama Calls for Condom Funding to Replace Abstinence Education
We reject the contraceptive mentality and the many evils to which it has led, but some days we can't help thinking: "if only his father had one!"
From LifeSiteNews
By Kathleen GilbertIn President Obama's Fiscal Year 2010 Proposed Budget, the president recommends that Congress eliminate funding for abstinence education and instead pour funds into condoms and contraceptive-based sex education.
The proposed budget calls for an additional $150 million for contraceptive-only education, which includes competitive grants, research, evaluation and authorization for $50 million in new mandatory condom grants to states, tribes and territories, according to an Abstinence Clearinghouse press release.
The budget eliminates the $133 million set aside for CBAE (Community Based Abstinence Education) and Title V Abstinence Education Program, the two main federal abstinence-education initiatives.
Pregnancy centers and other charitable organizations throughout the country would be among those affected by the elimination of CBAE funds.
Read the rest of this entry >>
U.S. Will Pay $2.6 Million to Train Chinese Prostitutes to Drink Responsibly on the Job
And you thought the Stimulus Package was just for the benefit of the United States!
From CNSNews.com
By Edwin MoraThe National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAA), a part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), will pay $2.6 million in U.S. tax dollars to train Chinese prostitutes to drink responsibly on the job. <
