Smoky Mountains Sunrise

Saturday, April 12, 2014

Father Ray Kelly Surprises Bride, Groom and Families with a Special Song



Father Ray Kelly of Oldcastle, County Meath, Ireland hit the viral jackpot this week with this surprise performance of a rewritten "Hallelujah" by Leonard Cohen at the wedding of Chris and Leah O'Kane. The YouTube video is now at 9 (now 16) million views and going strong.

Regaling audiences in song is nothing new to the priest from Tyrrelstown in County Westmeath. He had vocal training in Dublin and was part of "The All Priests Show."

"I love to sing, and I love the buzz of performing," Fr. Kelly told The Irish Times. "I travelled to America and did shows there."

However, viral stardom is quite a different experience.

"I've never had to deal with anything like this before, but I'm coping," he said.

Fr. Kelly also has experience as a recording artist and is working on his third album, which is good news for a world who's fallen hard for him. Friday night, the singing priest will appear on the venerable "Late Late Show" in Ireland.

Lucky for his new fans, another wedding performance by Father Ray Kelly is now online. Here he is, singing the classic tune "You Raise Me Up" by Secret Garden – popularized by Josh Groban – for a wedding in 2010.



Friday, April 11, 2014

More TEA Party Leaders Join in Supporting Bill Connor for US Senate, Issue Statement


Columbia, SC - The week after prominent state Tea Party leader Joe Dugan endorsed Afghanistan combat veteran, attorney, and Republican candidate for U.S. Senate Bill Connor, more leaders of the Tea Party movement across the state have followed suit.
We, as individual patriot leaders in South Carolina’s constitutional community, fully endorse Bill Connor to be the next US Senator from South Carolina.

Bill is a constitutional conservative who will fight to stop the massive spending, bailouts, and debt that are destroying our country. He isn't afraid to stand up to the Washington establishment and he will do what it takes to stop Obamacare, amnesty, and stop government intrusion in our lives.

Bill has been a part of the Tea Party movement in South Carolina since its inception in 2009. He spoke at the first SC Tea Party event on Feb 27, 2009 and at the following event two months later on April 15 where he introduced Jim DeMint. Over the years, and as the movement has grown nationwide, he has not wavered from the conservative principles that brought him into active politics all those years ago.

Bill Connor is a 24 year Airborne Ranger Infantry officer and Afghanistan combat veteran and currently serves as a Lt. Colonel in the US Army reserves. Bill also is a partner in a successful general law practice with an emphasis on military law. He will stand with and support our troops.

As a family man, along with his wife who is a practicing OB/GYN in South Carolina and veteran herself, he has personal experience from a patient and doctor perspective on the harm that Obamacare is doing to the quality, availability and cost of our healthcare system. He will be a champion and stand with Ted Cruz and Mike Lee to stop this dangerous legislation.

We believe it is vital to America’s future to send a true comprehensive, Reagan-conservative to replace Lindsey Graham, and Bill fits that description best among those challenging Senator Graham. He is a fiscal, social, and national defense conservative, who will not only stand up for Constitutionalism at home, but also stand for a strong military, stand by allies like Israel, and stand true to a "strategic national interest only" foreign policy.
Janet Spencer
N. Myrtle Beach, SC
Chair, Carolina Patriots
Freedomworks Activist 
Charlotte Hendrix
Florence, SC
Chair, Tea Party Patriots Florence
Freedomworks Activist  
Pat Dansbury
Ridgeland, SC
Chair, Bluffton Tea Party
Freedomworks Activist  
Linda Ensor
Summerville, SC
Chair, Lowcountry Conservatives in Action
Renee Cannon
N. Charleston, SC
Freedomworks Activist


Audrey Aldridge - Longs
Al Aversano - Myrtle Beach
Richard Whitford, Jr. – N. Charleston
Richard Spencer – N. Myrtle Beach
Michael Cutler - Florence
Bill Besemer - Conway
Lee Besemer - Conway
Janice Rice - Florence
Diane Aversano – Myrtle Beach
Sandra Wellington - Florence
Carl Wellington - Florence
Gene Geraldo – Myrtle Beach
Diane Geraldo – Myrtle Beach
Dick LoBue – Murrells Inlet
Sandra Camlin - Florence
Harold Camlin - Florence
Ralph Billeter - Conway
George O’Neill – Little River
Janice Owens - Florence

Blair Owens - Florence
Sue O’Neill – Little River
Shelia Bond – Myrtle Beach
Barbara Matthews - Florence
Sam Matthews - Florence
Mary Ann Carnazza - Longs
Leonila Eaddy - Longs
Jack Justice - Florence
Dave Truby – Myrtle Beach
Connie Hudson - Florence
Jean Hampton – Myrtle Beach
Cathy Cantey - Florence
Ron Hendrix - Florence

Bill Connor is a 24 year Airborne Ranger Infantry officer and Afghanistan combat veteran. He currently serves as a Lt. Colonel in the US Army reserves. He is a Citadel graduate who returned to SC after active military service. He has been married to his wife, Susan, for 23 years and they have 3 children. The Connors make their home in Orangeburg, where Bill and a partner operate a small general practice law firm with an additional emphasis in military law.


Ding Dong Sebelius is Gone!

Couldn't run a federal department, couldn't create a website, couldn't collate the pages of a speech, but she thought she knew how to run your life.



Patrick J. Buchanan: What Would Reagan Do?

By Patrick J. Buchanan 

President Reagan was holding a meeting in the Cabinet Room on March 25, 1985, when Press Secretary Larry Speakes came over to me, as communications director, with a concern.

The White House was about to issue a statement on the killing of Major Arthur Nicholson, a U.S. army officer serving in East Germany. Maj. Nicholson had been shot in cold blood by a Russian soldier.

Speakes thought the president’s statement, “This violence was unjustified,” was weak. I agreed. We interrupted the president, who reread the statement, then said go ahead with it.

What lay behind this Reagan decision not to express his own and his nation’s disgust and anger at this atrocity?

Wednesday, April 9, 2014

Lee Bright's Political Heroes? Vladimir Putin and Bashar Al-Assad of Syria

Lee Bright's Political Heroes - Bashar al-Assad and Vladimir Putin
We wrote previously that the failed upstate businessman, Lee Bright, whose personal finances are in crisis and has debt totaling between $1.1 million and $3.1 million owed to 29 creditors, appears willing to say or do anything to secure a job offering a six year contract, a salary of $174,000, an outside earned income allowance of more than $27,000, a large taxpayer-paid staff, paid travel, housing deductions, health, dental and life insurance, a private gym and the world's best pension fund.

The desperate Bright has now demonstrated our point and raised a red flag for all those who want Lindsey Graham replaced with a solid, thoughtful and respected conservative.  On April 6, (not so) Bright told the Washington Watch television audience that Republicans should look to Vladimir Putin and Bashar al-Assad, two thuggish war criminals, as models.  In Bright's own words:
If [Speaker] Boehner had the courage that Putin and Assad had, we'd be living in a different America, but we don't have the leadership and we've got to continue to try to get folks to Washington that are going to take the fight to the liberal agenda.
One thing I didn't mention earlier, you were talking about things going around the state, we've got the homosexual agenda on the full march in our institutions of higher ed and we've gone from education to indoctrination, so we are in a fight — they have seized the educational establishment and we've got to take that back and we've got to get folks involved in that or otherwise that's our next generation.
If the likes of Putin and Assad were running America, it would, indeed, be a different country, but it would not be anything like the America our Founders established.  And much as we agree with Bright's criticism of "the homosexual agenda on the full march in our institutions of higher ed," someone who has actually spent some time at an institution of higher education might have some awareness of authentic conservative models.  He might have cited the kind of models who actually believed in freedom, human dignity and God-given rights -- thoughtful men like Edmund Burke, Adam Smith, Thomas Jefferson and Russell Kirk, not murderous thugs.

Lee Bright's comments point up just how important an American political campaign can be in distinguishing the charlatans from potential statesmen.  After the traitorous career of Lindsey Graham, South Carolina does not need a Senator who would quickly become a national joke.  

Tuesday, April 8, 2014

Catholicism Flourishing in South Carolina and Throughout the South and West

Saint Joseph Catholic Church, Columbia, South Carolina
We were astonished to learn this past Sunday that in our Columbia, South Carolina parish, 9 adults will be baptized and an additional 28 adults will be received into the Church at the Easter Vigil.  In following-up on this good news, the statistician for the statewide Diocese of Charleston informs us that approximately 500 adults throughout South Carolina will be received into the Church this Easter.  In a small state where Catholics are not quite 4% of the population, that is a remarkable rate of growth.  Indeed, Catholic numbers in South Carolina are up by more than 30,000 in the past 10 years, and unlike traditional centers of Catholic life, like the Archdiocese of Newark, which has closed more than 80 schools in the past 10 years, South Carolina is building new churches and schools.

At a recent conference at Villanova University, demographers have presented heartening data indicating that Church numbers in the United States are climbing and would continue to grow even without immigration.

Holy Mass at Prince of Peace Catholic Church, Taylors, South Carolina
Having lived in Virginia and South Carolina, as well as in the Northeast and Midwest, we can attest to an extraordinary contrast between regions.  The most faithful, orthodox and beautiful liturgies we have encountered have been in the South.  Devotion to our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, traditional Catholic devotions, sound preaching and all the richness, beauty and fullness of the Faith are alive and well in places like the Dioceses of Arlington and Charleston.  After all the painful corruption and scandal on the part of a few, we can see the hand of God renewing His Church in unexpected places and in  wondrous and surprising ways.  "Where sin abounded, grace did more abound."



Queen Welcomes Irish President Michael D Higgins on First State Visit to Britain

Irish President Michael D Higgins is welcomed to the UK by the Queen at the start of the first state visit by an Irish head of state

Michael D Higgins met the Queen at Windsor Castle Photo: Getty Images

Irish President Michael D Higgins has met the Queen on the first ever state visit to Britain by the country's head of state.

Mr Higgins and his wife Sabina met the monarch at Windsor Castle - three years after the Queen's historic visit to Dublin heralded the start of a new chapter in the relationship between the two countries.

The significance has been further deepened with the presence of Northern Ireland Deputy First Minister and former IRA commander Martin McGuinness, who will attend a banquet hosted by the Queen - a move unthinkable only a decade ago.

The streets of Windsor were decked out in Union flags and Irish Tricolours this morning ahead of the visit. 

Read more at The Telegraph >>