April 21, 2005
The author, Laurel Leff, a professor of journalism and a former reporter for TheWall Street Journal, has done a fine job of research in the archives of the paper of record. Others could have done that, but nobody has. More important, she has brilliantly analyzed the reasons Arthur Hays Sulzberger, the German-Jewish publisher of The Times, brought Jewish self-hatred to a head long before the rubric gained popularity.In 1939, when the Nazis began to destroy the Jews of Poland, what bothered Sulzberger was Franklin Roosevelt's casual remark that Jews were a "race." He got FDR to call them a "faith," which settled the issue of the Warsaw Ghetto for him.
On the eve of Thanksgiving 1942, the State Department confirmed that 2 million Jews were dead in Europe, and it allowed Rabbi Stephen Wise, the leader of American Jewry, to announce the news. The Times didn't send a reporter to the press conference in Washington. Instead, it ran a short from The Associated Press - on page 10, surrounded by turkey ads.
What if FDR had announced the news? Then, even a scared Jew like Sulzberger would have been afraid to keep it off the front page. And if that happened, millions of Jews could have been saved.
What if Sulzberger and the Times had spoken out? What if they had actively covered the story of the extermination of Europe’s Jews? They might well have forced Roosevelt to speak out. Instead, over the course of 6 years they buried over 1100 stories in the heart of the paper, somewhere between the police blotter and the grocery ads.
One can always argue that Pius XII didn’t say enough, but it is estimated that the Catholic Church saved between 750,000 and 1,000,000 Jews during the war, much of it with the active encouragement and support of the pope. The charge that Pius was “Hitler’s Pope†is a blood libel.
On the other hand, it seems clear that Sulzberger and the Times were certainly in the pocket of the Roosevelt Administration – and that the muting of the Times at the behest of an anti-Semitic president most likely resulted in the deaths of millions because it allowed the malignant neglect of the Jews at a time when they most needed help. As such, would it not be fair to say, using the standard the New York Times has applied in recent years to Pius XII, that Sulzberger was “Hitler’s Publisherâ€, and the New York Times was “Hitler’s Paperâ€?
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while Pope John Paul was 84 when he died. I wonder if the Vatican's trying to buy time for the right ("younger") Pope when "Papa Ratzi" (ha ha) may die at anytime due to him looking a bit on the frail side.
The author, Laurel Leff, a professor of journalism and a former reporter for TheWall Street Journal, has done a fine job of research in the archives of the paper of record. Others could have done that, but nobody has. More important, she has brilliantly analyzed the reasons Arthur Hays Sulzberger, the German-Jewish publisher of The Times, brought Jewish self-hatred to a head long before the rubric gained popularity.In 1939, when the Nazis began to destroy the Jews of Poland, what bothered Sulzberger was Franklin Roosevelt's casual remark that Jews were a "race." He got FDR to call them a "faith," which settled the issue of the Warsaw Ghetto for him.
On the eve of Thanksgiving 1942, the State Department confirmed that 2 million Jews were dead in Europe, and it allowed Rabbi Stephen Wise, the leader of American Jewry, to announce the news. The Times didn't send a reporter to the press conference in Washington. Instead, it ran a short from The Associated Press - on page 10, surrounded by turkey ads.
What if FDR had announced the news? Then, even a scared Jew like Sulzberger would have been afraid to keep it off the front page. And if that happened, millions of Jews could have been saved.
What if Sulzberger and the Times had spoken out? What if they had actively covered the story of the extermination of EuropeÂ’s Jews? They might well have forced Roosevelt to speak out. Instead, over the course of 6 years they buried over 1100 stories in the heart of the paper, somewhere between the police blotter and the grocery ads.
One can always argue that Pius XII didn’t say enough, but it is estimated that the Catholic Church saved between 750,000 and 1,000,000 Jews during the war, much of it with the active encouragement and support of the pope. The charge that Pius was “Hitler’s Pope” is a blood libel.
On the other hand, it seems clear that Sulzberger and the Times were certainly in the pocket of the Roosevelt Administration – and that the muting of the Times at the behest of an anti-Semitic president most likely resulted in the deaths of millions because it allowed the malignant neglect of the Jews at a time when they most needed help. As such, would it not be fair to say, using the standard the New York Times has applied in recent years to Pius XII, that Sulzberger was “Hitler’s Publisher”, and the New York Times was “Hitler’s Paper”?
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"I do think that what has happened here is there has been a hijacking of the U.S. Senate by what I call the religious right wing of the country," Salazar told reporters at a Capitol Hill news conference Wednesday.He singled out Focus on the Family by name, objecting to full-page newspaper ads the ministry's political arm recently placed, targeting 20 senators in 15 states.
"I think what has happened is Focus on the Family has been hijacking Christianity and become an appendage of the Republican Party," Salazar said in an interview. "I think it's using Christianity and religion in a very unprincipled way."
Uh, Senator – who are you to call their religious faith into question? Is that not a religious attack? Isn’t that the exact sort of “unprincipled” behavior to which you are objecting?
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Three hospital employees who thought they were about to split a second-place Mega Millions jackpot worth $175,000 are suing a co-worker who insists he bought the winning ticket for himself."I felt betrayed," said Veronica Edmondson, who is among the trio of Mount Sinai Medical Center office workers suing John Piccolo, the office's regular designated lottery ticket buyer. "We trusted him with our money."
Edmondson, 30, of the Bronx, said joy turned to anger when Piccolo called in late for work on Nov. 3 - a day after the drawing.
"Don't be mad at me, but I just won the Mega Million second prize," he told her, according to court papers.
"I exclaimed: 'We won, John!' to which Mr. Piccolo responded: 'No, I won,'" Edmondson said in an affidavit.
Edmondson told the Daily News yesterday that Piccolo offered to give her a Mega Millions umbrella that officials handed him when he picked up his check.
"He said, 'There is nothing you can do. The courts won't take it.' He even had the nerve to come to work and show us the receipt for the money with the taxes taken out of it," she added.
Guess what – Piccolo was dead wrong. The courts will take such suits – and have so far ruled in favor of the co-workers.
In a decision made public yesterday, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Marylin Diamond said his co-workers have a convincing case.She refused to throw out the lawsuit and froze $81,750 of the $109,000 Piccolo collected after taxes.
Piccolo offered each person in the pool $1,000 - but later halved it to $500 saying he needed money for a down payment on a house. "He offered some money because he thought it was the right thing to do," said his lawyer, Thomas Weiss.
No, Mr. Weiss, the right thing for your client to have done would have been to not rip off his co-workers. I’m hoping that by the time he is done paying damages, attorney’s fees, and court costs, he ends up deep in a financial hole – maybe to the tune of $175,000.
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Three hospital employees who thought they were about to split a second-place Mega Millions jackpot worth $175,000 are suing a co-worker who insists he bought the winning ticket for himself."I felt betrayed," said Veronica Edmondson, who is among the trio of Mount Sinai Medical Center office workers suing John Piccolo, the office's regular designated lottery ticket buyer. "We trusted him with our money."
Edmondson, 30, of the Bronx, said joy turned to anger when Piccolo called in late for work on Nov. 3 - a day after the drawing.
"Don't be mad at me, but I just won the Mega Million second prize," he told her, according to court papers.
"I exclaimed: 'We won, John!' to which Mr. Piccolo responded: 'No, I won,'" Edmondson said in an affidavit.
Edmondson told the Daily News yesterday that Piccolo offered to give her a Mega Millions umbrella that officials handed him when he picked up his check.
"He said, 'There is nothing you can do. The courts won't take it.' He even had the nerve to come to work and show us the receipt for the money with the taxes taken out of it," she added.
Guess what – Piccolo was dead wrong. The courts will take such suits – and have so far ruled in favor of the co-workers.
In a decision made public yesterday, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Marylin Diamond said his co-workers have a convincing case.She refused to throw out the lawsuit and froze $81,750 of the $109,000 Piccolo collected after taxes.
Piccolo offered each person in the pool $1,000 - but later halved it to $500 saying he needed money for a down payment on a house. "He offered some money because he thought it was the right thing to do," said his lawyer, Thomas Weiss.
No, Mr. Weiss, the right thing for your client to have done would have been to not rip off his co-workers. I’m hoping that by the time he is done paying damages, attorney’s fees, and court costs, he ends up deep in a financial hole – maybe to the tune of $175,000.
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I grew up as a typical pre-Vatican II Catholic. I entered the seminary at 13 and became a priest 11 years later, never questioning church teachings. But as a moral theologian in the 1960s, I began to see things differently, ultimately concluding that Catholics, although they must hold on to the core doctrines of faith, can and at times should dissent from the more peripheral teachings of the church.Unfortunately, the leaders of the Catholic Church feel differently. In the summer of 1986, the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, under then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the powerful enforcer of doctrinal orthodoxy around the world, concluded a seven-year investigation of my writings. Pope John Paul II approved the finding that "one who dissents from the magisterium as you do is not suitable nor eligible to teach Catholic theology." Cardinal Ratzinger — now Pope Benedict XVI — told the Catholic University of America to revoke my license to teach theology because of my "repeated refusal to accept what the church teaches."
I was fired. It was the first time an American Catholic theologian had been censured in this way. At issue was my dissent from church teachings on "the indissolubility of consummated sacramental marriage, abortion, euthanasia, masturbation, artificial contraception, premarital intercourse and homosexual acts," according to their final document to me. It's true that I questioned the idea that such acts are always immoral and never acceptable (although I thought my dissent on these issues was quite nuanced).
Unfortunately, the Vatican — which was already moving toward greater discipline and orthodoxy — was having none of it. Seven years earlier, it had punished the Swiss theologian Hans Küng because of his teachings on infallibility in the church. Later, Cardinal Ratzinger "silenced" Brazilian Franciscan Leonardo Boff, an advocate of liberation theology, for a year. Just recently, Ratzinger said U.S. Jesuit Roger Haight could not teach Catholic theology until he changed his understanding of the role of Jesus Christ.
Gee, imagine that. If you are teaching things that run directly contrary to the teachings of the Catholic Church, you can’t run around calling it Catholic theology. One would have hoped, of course, that fundamental decency and a sense of honesty would have prevented folks like Curran from making such claims. It didn’t, and so Catholic authorities acted to clarify the situation for the world – you cannot use the forum of a Catholic college or university to put forth ideas that diverge from Catholic truth while claiming that they represent authentic Church teachings.
Curran, of course, is distressed by the advent of the pontificate of Benedict XVI. The result is a call for the rejection of the teachings of the Church. If one is looking for evidence in support of the actions taken against him two decades ago, one need look no further than his continued rejection of those teachings and his attempt to undermine them in the minds of others.
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I grew up as a typical pre-Vatican II Catholic. I entered the seminary at 13 and became a priest 11 years later, never questioning church teachings. But as a moral theologian in the 1960s, I began to see things differently, ultimately concluding that Catholics, although they must hold on to the core doctrines of faith, can and at times should dissent from the more peripheral teachings of the church.Unfortunately, the leaders of the Catholic Church feel differently. In the summer of 1986, the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, under then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the powerful enforcer of doctrinal orthodoxy around the world, concluded a seven-year investigation of my writings. Pope John Paul II approved the finding that "one who dissents from the magisterium as you do is not suitable nor eligible to teach Catholic theology." Cardinal Ratzinger — now Pope Benedict XVI — told the Catholic University of America to revoke my license to teach theology because of my "repeated refusal to accept what the church teaches."
I was fired. It was the first time an American Catholic theologian had been censured in this way. At issue was my dissent from church teachings on "the indissolubility of consummated sacramental marriage, abortion, euthanasia, masturbation, artificial contraception, premarital intercourse and homosexual acts," according to their final document to me. It's true that I questioned the idea that such acts are always immoral and never acceptable (although I thought my dissent on these issues was quite nuanced).
Unfortunately, the Vatican — which was already moving toward greater discipline and orthodoxy — was having none of it. Seven years earlier, it had punished the Swiss theologian Hans Küng because of his teachings on infallibility in the church. Later, Cardinal Ratzinger "silenced" Brazilian Franciscan Leonardo Boff, an advocate of liberation theology, for a year. Just recently, Ratzinger said U.S. Jesuit Roger Haight could not teach Catholic theology until he changed his understanding of the role of Jesus Christ.
Gee, imagine that. If you are teaching things that run directly contrary to the teachings of the Catholic Church, you can’t run around calling it Catholic theology. One would have hoped, of course, that fundamental decency and a sense of honesty would have prevented folks like Curran from making such claims. It didn’t, and so Catholic authorities acted to clarify the situation for the world – you cannot use the forum of a Catholic college or university to put forth ideas that diverge from Catholic truth while claiming that they represent authentic Church teachings.
Curran, of course, is distressed by the advent of the pontificate of Benedict XVI. The result is a call for the rejection of the teachings of the Church. If one is looking for evidence in support of the actions taken against him two decades ago, one need look no further than his continued rejection of those teachings and his attempt to undermine them in the minds of others.
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Well, the latest scientific research from the Popcorn Board out of Chicago gives us a potential answer.
It's long been known that popcorn kernels must have a precise moisture level in their starchy center -- about 15 percent -- to explode. But Purdue University researchers found the key to a kernel's explosive success lies in the composition of its hull.Unpopped kernels, it turns out, have leaky hulls that prevent the moisture pressure buildup needed for them to pop and lack the optimal hull structure that allows most kernels to explode.
"They're sort of like little pressure vessels that explode when the pressure reaches a certain point," said Bruce Hamaker, a Purdue professor of food chemistry. "But if too much moisture escapes, it loses its ability to pop and just sits there."
The findings may help popcorn breeders select the best varieties -- or create new ones -- with superior hulls that yield few, if any, unpopped kernels. But for now, there's no way to screen out potential old maids before they end up in bags of popcorn.
Hamaker and his associates compared the microwave popping performance of 14 Indiana-grown popcorn varieties and examined the crystalline structure of the translucent hulls of both the popped kernels and the duds.
I’ll admit, it isn’t rocket science (and living so close to Johnson Space Center, I know plenty of rocket scientists), but maybe it will one day guarantee that that every kernel is “good to the last popâ€.
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Well, the latest scientific research from the Popcorn Board out of Chicago gives us a potential answer.
It's long been known that popcorn kernels must have a precise moisture level in their starchy center -- about 15 percent -- to explode. But Purdue University researchers found the key to a kernel's explosive success lies in the composition of its hull.Unpopped kernels, it turns out, have leaky hulls that prevent the moisture pressure buildup needed for them to pop and lack the optimal hull structure that allows most kernels to explode.
"They're sort of like little pressure vessels that explode when the pressure reaches a certain point," said Bruce Hamaker, a Purdue professor of food chemistry. "But if too much moisture escapes, it loses its ability to pop and just sits there."
The findings may help popcorn breeders select the best varieties -- or create new ones -- with superior hulls that yield few, if any, unpopped kernels. But for now, there's no way to screen out potential old maids before they end up in bags of popcorn.
Hamaker and his associates compared the microwave popping performance of 14 Indiana-grown popcorn varieties and examined the crystalline structure of the translucent hulls of both the popped kernels and the duds.
I’ll admit, it isn’t rocket science (and living so close to Johnson Space Center, I know plenty of rocket scientists), but maybe it will one day guarantee that that every kernel is “good to the last pop”.
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Got a prayer or a problem for the new pope? Now you can e-mail him. Showing that Pope Benedict XVI intends to follow in the footsteps of John Paul II's multimedia ministry, the Vatican on Thursday modified its Web site so that users who click on an icon on the home page automatically activate an e-mail composer with his address.In English, the address is benedictxvi@vatican.va. In Italian: benedettoxvi@vatican.va.
Vatican spokesmen could not immediately be reached for comment on how many messages Benedict may have received already.
Pope John Paul II also had an email address, and made use of computers and the internet.
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April 20, 2005
Two Winona High School students have found themselves in hot water with school officials.Why? Because after Carrie Rethlefsen attended a performance of the play "The Vagina Monologues" last month, she and Emily Nixon wore buttons to school that read: "I [heart] My Vagina."
School leaders said that the pin is inappropriate and that the discomfort it causes trumps the girls' right to free speech. The girls disagree. And despite repeated threats of suspension and expulsion, Rethlefsen has continued to wear her button.
The girls have won support from other students and community members.
More than 100 students have ordered T-shirts bearing "I [heart] My Vagina" for girls and "I Support Your Vagina" for boys.
"We can't really find out what is inappropriate about it," Rethlefsen, 18, said of the button she wears to raise awareness about women's issues. "I don't think banning things like that is appropriate."
Hmmmm.....
I'll tell you, I have some mixed emotions here. There is clearly some redeeming content here, designed to address an "Important Issue" in society. I don't particularly want to see that stifled. Given that we are dealing with high school students, it isn't like they are unfamiliar with what a vagina is, nor with the issues in question. So while I wish the girls would find a different way to address the women's issues (after all, one act in the play glorifies the sexual abuse of a young girl by a lesbian babysitter who plies her with alcohol) I don't find the button that disruptive. I think the school administrators have likely made a serious mistake in their handling of the situation.
The buttons were not disruptive, it seems, until spotted by a secretary. Later, one teacher appears to have completely over-reacted.
Rethlefsen said school officials first told her the button was inappropriate in mid-March when a school secretary spotted it. That started a string of visits -- and debates -- with teachers, counselors, an assistant principal and the principal. A teacher barred Rethlefsen from her classroom as long as she wore her button."The principal said that by wearing the pin, I was giving people wrong ideas," Rethlefsen said. "That I was giving an open invitation [to guys]."
The girls said they tried to explain that the buttons are meant to spark discussion about violence against women, about women's rights. But Principal Nancy Wondrasch said others find the buttons offensive.
"We support free speech," she said. "But when it does infringe on other people's rights and our school policies, then we need to take a look at that."
Wondrasch said she thought they had worked out a compromise with the girls, allowing them to set up a table in the school to discuss women's issues. But Rethlefsen said school officials are insisting that they review and approve any information the girls want to present.
And then comes the issue of the shirts that the girls have ordered. Again, that is political speech that is protected. Here is where the school has gotten particularly heavy-handed, even more that with the prior approval requirement for the information table, which doesn't strike me as particularly unreasonable except for the circumstances that led up to that "compromise".
Nixon said more than 100 students are expected to wear the shirts. She added that officials have threatened real consequences if that happens."They told us that if a single person showed up wearing them, we're going to get expelled," she said. "People are going to wear them anyway."
And these shirts are where I could see a problem arising -- actually the same problem that might have been feared by those who objected to the buttons. What happens when the first satirist shows up wearing a shirt that says "I [heart] My Penis"? What about "My Penis [hearts] Your Vagina"? The whole thing has the potential to spiral out of control. Do we want various and sundry vaginas and penises, each with a different message, wandering the hallways of the high school? Is the decision of the school administration really all that unreasonable?
Frankly, I'm not sure. On the one hand, I applaud the girls in question and their supporters for dealing seriously with a serious issue. On the other, I see the potential difficulties. I am, without question, loathe to see prior restraint based upon a mere hypothetical. And I don't see how or where a bright line can be drawn between supporting the constitutional rights of students and lat the same time letting them know when they have crossed a line. If anything, this case is much more difficult than the Day of Silence/Day of Truth conflict I wrote about over the weekend.
Still, in the end I have to side with the "Vagina Warriors". They seem to have learned their lessons well when it comes to exercising their civil rights. Here's hoping they have learned to do so responsibly and respectfully.
UPDATE: Well, today was t-shirt day in Winona. About 40 kids wore the shirts -- turned inside out -- and two wore them right-side-out. The two girls were suspended.
After all the radio interviews, after all the newspaper stories and television stories and hundreds and hundreds of e-mails, Carrie Rethlefsen ended her lesson in free speech and democracy today by doing a simple thing:She walked into school with her "I [heart] My Vagina" T-shirt's message in plain sight. About 40 classmates had walked in just seconds before after turning their T-shirts inside out.
And, minutes later, she emerged with another lesson learned. The administrators at Winona Senior High School mean what they say. They sent her home for the day.
"I'm happy," said Rethlefsen, 18. "I got my message out there."
Also sent home was senior Katelyn Delvaux.
Congratulations, girls, for standing up for freedom of speech in schools.
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The election of Benedict XVI seems to have put a quick end to the love-feast that we have witnessed in the three weeks since the illness of his beloved predecessor, Pope John Paul the Great. Having been a lightning rod for criticism as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, it was inevitable the new pope would be controversial. Yet when it comes down to it, the real complaint seems to be that Pope Benedict XVI is just plain too Catholic.
Consider the criticisms found in this article. First we get the feminists who are seeking to undo the two millennia old practice of limiting the priesthood (and higher advancement) to men only.
The Women's Ordination Conference, a Catholic feminist organization working for the ordination of women priests, said the church desperately needs a healer, but the cardinals have elected a divider: "This is another example of how the hierarchy is out of touch with Catholics in the pews," said Joy Barnes, executive director of the Women's Ordination Conference.
Sorry, Ms. Barnes, there was never any possibility of you getting what your heart desires. The Church hasn’t survived for two thousand years by taking flash-polls and interpreting survey data. You may not like that – and you may even have survey results showing that two-thirds want just the “reform” you are backing. But that said, I wouldn’t count on that change happening. The weight of scriptural, historical, and theological evidence is against you, as my dear former professor Sister Sara Butler (herself once a vocal supporter of ordaining women until she studied the issue more closely) used to tell us back during my seminary days. And while I may now be an ex-seminarian married to a woman who is a former church pastor, I fail to see how such a change can be made in a Catholic context.
And then there was this comment from the “official” organization of American nuns.
The National Coalition of American Nuns noted that the new pope has the reputation of being "rigid in his position as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, silencing and expelling theologians, priests and nuns whom he perceived as not being orthodox."He certainly is not known for his sensitivity to the exclusion of women in the Church's leadership," the nuns said in a statement.
Uh, ladies, the teachings of the Catholic Church are not the menu of your local Chinese restaurant. You don’t get to pick one from column A and two from column B. The “silenced” theologians (many of whom are incredibly vocal) were not teaching what the Church teaches, but claimed that they were. What else is the individual charged with ensuring orthodoxy supposed to do? And as far as alleged rigidity is concerned, that is a necessary virtue for one who is expected to be the arbiter of orthodoxy.
And where would we be without these words of dissent from those who utterly reject the teachings of the Church on human sexuality, yet insist that they (and not the Church hierarchy) get to redefine the historic teachings of the Church to meet their own desires?
"The new Pope is seen as the principal author of the most virulently anti-gay, anti-GLBT rhetoric in the last papacy," said DignityUSA President Sam Sinnett."The elevation of Cardinal Ratzinger is being seen by many GLBT Catholics as a profound betrayal by the leaders of the Roman Catholic Church and betrayal of one of the most fundamental teachings of Jesus Christ as the loving Good Shepherd who reached out to the ones separated from the flock."
Sinnett called the election of the new pope a test of faith: "We express deep sadness for all those who will find themselves further alienated from the church because of Cardinal Ratzinger's assumption of the papacy. With their support and that of all our members and allies, we will re-double our efforts to speak the truth of our lives as faithful GLBT Catholics."
Never mind that the teachings of the Church are congruent with the words of the Bible itself in a way that the position of DignityUSA is not – they’ve got the truth and the new Vicar of Christ has it all wrong.
I could go on, but it is simply more of the same. Such theological luminaries as Maureen Dowd and Andrew Sullivan have weighed in, as has the New York Times. Their words lead me to ask one pressing question -- How did Catholicism ever manage to make it through its first two millennia without their prophetic voices to guide it?
UPDATE: Seems that I'm not the only one to have noticed that the objections to Ratzinger boiled down to his being too Catholic. This piece showed up in the London Times.
WHAT HAS been most enjoyable about the stunned reaction of the bulk of the media to the election of Pope Benedict XVI has been the simple incredulousness at the very idea that a man such as Joseph Ratzinger could possibly have become leader of the universal Church.Journalists and pundits for whom the Catholic Church has long been an object of anthropological curiosity fringed with patronising ridicule have really let themselves go since the new pontiff emerged. Indeed most of the coverage I have seen or read could be neatly summarised as: “Cardinals elect Catholic Pope. World in Shock.”
As headlines, IÂ’ll grant you, itÂ’s hard to beat GodÂ’s Rottweiler, The Enforcer, or Cardinal No. They all play beautifully into the anti-Catholic sentiment in intellectual European and American circles that is, in this politically correct era, the only form of religious bigotry legitimised and sanctioned in public life. But I ask you, in all honesty, what were they expecting?
Did the likes of The Guardian, the BBC or The New York Times think there was someone in the Church’s leadership who was going to pop up out on the balcony of St Peter’s and with a cheery wave, tell the faithful that everything they’d heard for the past 26 — no, make that 726 — years was rubbish and that they should all rush out and load up with condoms and abortifacients like teenagers off for a smutty weekend? Or did they think the conclave would go the whole hog and elect Sir Bob Geldof (with Peaches, perhaps, as a co-pope) in an effort to bring back the masses?
Right on the head, Mr. Baker -- I only wish I had written it so well!
Update 2: I thought I had seen it all when it came to the anti-Catholic garbage of the Left. The I found this piece from SFGate.com, which is the web portal for the San Francisco Chronicle. Talk about disgusting and sacriligious!
This, then, was to be your biggest challenge. To make yourself relevant again, make yourself known. To make open-hearted and sex-positive and choice-happy and pantheistic changes to your dusty dying church that make the world sit up and take notice and applaud.Is it still possible? Is there still a glimmer of hope that you might choose to buck dour church tradition and kick down the doors and throw open the stained-glass windows and remake yourself as modern, as inclusive, as the Pope That Changed Everything? Because right now, the world has this sad, sinking feeling again. All signs point to more of the same as the last bitter and bilious 2,000 years, if not even worse. All signs point to more repression, homophobia, intolerance, denial, insularity, guilt like a weapon.
Be thankful that the dark, evil hateful repressed, < YOUR BIGOTTED ADJECTIVE HERE > Catholics are restrained by a moral code that says to love their neighbor and turn the other cheek. If you wrote this about Muslims, they'd be purchasing an orange jumpsuit and sharpening their scimitars.
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John McGivney had enough.He loaded his .380-caliber handgun Friday afternoon, walked out to the parking lot of his Lauderdale-by-the-Sea apartment building and fired four shots into the hood of his ailing Chrysler.
"I'm putting my car out of its misery," McGivney told his landlord.
But the Broward Sheriff's Office didn't see it as a mercy killing. They arrested McGivney on a misdemeanor charge of discharging a firearm in public.
After a night in jail, he was back at his Bougainvilla Isles apartment on $100 bond -- the bullet-riddled 1994 Chrysler LeBaron LX dead in the spot where he left it. McGivney said Tuesday he hasn't tried to start the car and suspects that the four slugs he fired into it probably made his car trouble worse.
McGivney, 64, said the car has been giving him trouble for years and had "outlived its usefulness."
He called the shooting "dumb," and said he'll probably be evicted. But he doesn't regret a thing.
"I think every guy in the universe has wanted to do it," McGivney said. "It was worth every damn minute in that jail."
I'm curious -- which old car does this story make you fondly (o not so fondly) remember?
Mine would have to be that old Plymouth Volare wagon, painted silver-gray.
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John McGivney had enough.He loaded his .380-caliber handgun Friday afternoon, walked out to the parking lot of his Lauderdale-by-the-Sea apartment building and fired four shots into the hood of his ailing Chrysler.
"I'm putting my car out of its misery," McGivney told his landlord.
But the Broward Sheriff's Office didn't see it as a mercy killing. They arrested McGivney on a misdemeanor charge of discharging a firearm in public.
After a night in jail, he was back at his Bougainvilla Isles apartment on $100 bond -- the bullet-riddled 1994 Chrysler LeBaron LX dead in the spot where he left it. McGivney said Tuesday he hasn't tried to start the car and suspects that the four slugs he fired into it probably made his car trouble worse.
McGivney, 64, said the car has been giving him trouble for years and had "outlived its usefulness."
He called the shooting "dumb," and said he'll probably be evicted. But he doesn't regret a thing.
"I think every guy in the universe has wanted to do it," McGivney said. "It was worth every damn minute in that jail."
I'm curious -- which old car does this story make you fondly (o not so fondly) remember?
Mine would have to be that old Plymouth Volare wagon, painted silver-gray.
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In the case of Bush's nominees, Democrats have scarcely tried to mount a campaign on the merits. The quick, now-routine resort to the filibuster suggests that Democrats don't think they can muster convincing, substantive arguments that the nominees are extreme.George Washington University Law professor Jonathan Turley, himself a liberal, thinks that good cases could be made against Texas Supreme Court Justice Priscilla Owen, District Judge Terrence Boyle and former Pentagon counsel William Haynes.
However, he says that most of Bush's other nominees, including California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown and Alabama Attorney General William Pryor, while ideologically conservative, have demonstrated that they are principled jurists who put the law ahead of their beliefs.
Now I can agree with that sentiment. There could be among the judges denied an up-or-down vote some who are clearly unworthy. But the Democrats have not made that case – they have simply refused to allow the nominations to be voted upon as a matter of course. They haven’t debated or deliberated – they have insulted and assassinated their characters. In the end, real debate is needed on each nominee. A vote is necessary for each and every judge. And if the Democrats have any actual basis upon which to reject a judge, they should prove it before the entire Senate – and the American people.
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In the case of Bush's nominees, Democrats have scarcely tried to mount a campaign on the merits. The quick, now-routine resort to the filibuster suggests that Democrats don't think they can muster convincing, substantive arguments that the nominees are extreme.George Washington University Law professor Jonathan Turley, himself a liberal, thinks that good cases could be made against Texas Supreme Court Justice Priscilla Owen, District Judge Terrence Boyle and former Pentagon counsel William Haynes.
However, he says that most of Bush's other nominees, including California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown and Alabama Attorney General William Pryor, while ideologically conservative, have demonstrated that they are principled jurists who put the law ahead of their beliefs.
Now I can agree with that sentiment. There could be among the judges denied an up-or-down vote some who are clearly unworthy. But the Democrats have not made that case – they have simply refused to allow the nominations to be voted upon as a matter of course. They haven’t debated or deliberated – they have insulted and assassinated their characters. In the end, real debate is needed on each nominee. A vote is necessary for each and every judge. And if the Democrats have any actual basis upon which to reject a judge, they should prove it before the entire Senate – and the American people.
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April 19, 2005
"I don't think any other country has such a high voter turnout," Cuban President Fidel Castro said in a televised address after Diaz presented the results.
Cuba consistently defends its system as democratic, but critics of Castro's government argue that tight state control, a heavy police presence and neighborhood-watch groups that report on their neighbors prevent any real political freedom.
Though it is not obligatory to vote, pressure to participate is high. Municipal and national elections always have a high turnout.
The municipal elections, dubbed "the most democratic in the world" by Castro after he voted Sunday, take place every 2 1/2 years. The turnout in the last municipal elections was reported to be 95.75 percent.
Under Cuba's one-party system, municipal, provincial and national representatives are elected by citizens on a local level. Anyone can be nominated to these posts, including nonmembers of the island's ruling communist party — the only one recognized in Cuba's constitution.
So when it comes right down to it, the dictator allows a modicum of freedom and the people exercise it. But in the end, this freedom amounts to nothing, because the only legal party wields the real power.
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"I don't think any other country has such a high voter turnout," Cuban President Fidel Castro said in a televised address after Diaz presented the results.
Cuba consistently defends its system as democratic, but critics of Castro's government argue that tight state control, a heavy police presence and neighborhood-watch groups that report on their neighbors prevent any real political freedom.
Though it is not obligatory to vote, pressure to participate is high. Municipal and national elections always have a high turnout.
The municipal elections, dubbed "the most democratic in the world" by Castro after he voted Sunday, take place every 2 1/2 years. The turnout in the last municipal elections was reported to be 95.75 percent.
Under Cuba's one-party system, municipal, provincial and national representatives are elected by citizens on a local level. Anyone can be nominated to these posts, including nonmembers of the island's ruling communist party — the only one recognized in Cuba's constitution.
So when it comes right down to it, the dictator allows a modicum of freedom and the people exercise it. But in the end, this freedom amounts to nothing, because the only legal party wields the real power.
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A pro-affirmative action group says some voters were tricked into signing a petition they thought would protect affirmative action when the initiative would actually hurt those programs. The group filed a challenge with state election officials Monday afternoon in an attempt to block a proposed constitutional amendment targeting the November 2006 election."People were deceived," said Luke Massie, chairman of Operation King's Dream, a campaign affiliated with the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration & Immigrant Rights and Fight for Equality by Any Means Necessary (BAMN). "There is an overwhelming pattern of fraud specifically with black voters, but it extends beyond black voters to white and suburban voters."
The group backing the proposal — the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative — successfully defended the wording of its petition in state courts last year. The next fight could be certifying enough of the 508,000 signatures of Michigan voters collected in its petition drive.
The group must have at least 317,757 valid signatures of Michigan voters to qualify for the ballot. Michigan Civil Rights Initiative executive director Jennifer Gratz said she was confident her group has enough signatures to make the ballot, and that the claims made by BAMN and Operation King's Dream were without merit.
Ultimately, the question is this – why are supporters of affirmative action so unwilling to let the people of the state of Michigan have a say on this matter of public importance. If their case for affirmative action is so strong, they won’t have any problem in defeating the MCRI. -- or is that the crux of the problem?
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A teenage Abebe Alenayehu watched Italian soldiers haul away Axum's revered obelisk nearly seven decades ago and never thought he would live to see its return.But if the weather cooperates, he will see the dream he shares with his nation come true Tuesday when a giant cargo plane returns the 82-foot monument's top section to this wind-swept town that was the seat of the ancient Axumite Kingdom.
"The memory still leaves a bitter taste in my mouth," Abebe said about the loss of a monument that Ethiopians consider the symbol of their nation. "Every day for the last 67 years I have thought about the obelisk."
The Italian Foreign Ministry said Monday that the two other pieces of the 176-ton obelisk should be back by the end of April. Lattanzi, the Italian company organizing the return, says no one has attempted to fly such a massive monument before.
Abebe, 81, vividly recalls the day the masterpiece of the Axum civilization was taken away and shipped to Rome.
"All the adults in the town were under curfew," he said. "But we played with the soldiers who gave us sweets and sugar. We didn't realize what was happening, but our parents were hiding their faces and crying."
The restoration of this ancient monument is a fitting end to the evils committed by Mussolini and his forces against the Ethiopian people during the occupation of their nation from 1936-1941. And it sounds like it will be even more of an engineering nightmare than its removal was in 1937.
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He was elected in only four ballots, which tells me that the Cardinals are pretty firmly united behind him. I also cannot help but suspect that this is the man who John Paul the Great would have chosen as his successor.
As I expected, Joseph Ratzinger did not choose to be called John Paul III. I had a funny feeling that Benedict would be the choice, and have said so repeatedly over the last few days. Many are linking him to the shy Pope Benedict XV, who tried so hard to end World War I. I think another model to consider would be Benedict XIV, who was concerned about the accommodation of Christian truth to the practices of non-Christian cultures.
I find the new pontiffÂ’s words to the faithful inspiring and appropriate. Pope Benedict, for all his gigantic intellect, remains a humble man of deep spirituality.
"Dear brothers and sisters, after our great pope, John Paul II, the cardinals have elected me, a simple, humble worker in God's vineyard.I am consoled by the fact that the Lord knows how to work and how to act, even with insufficient tools, and I especially trust in your prayers.
In the joy of the resurrected Lord, trustful of his permanent help, we go ahead, sure that God will help, and Mary, his most beloved mother, stands on our side.
Thank you."
We shall see how this papacy will develop. Will he be a pope in the image of John Paul the Great? Or will he be something completely different?
Update: I commented on the London Times piece on Pope Benedict’s youth in Nazi Germany. His detractor’s are already making scurrilous comments about him in relation to his brief – and legally mandated – membership in the Hitler Youth and military service. The Jerusalem Post provides some excellent insight into the issue – and also the important work of this pope in his predecessor’s reconciliation with the Jewish faith.
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* * *
As a kid, I first heard the term “uniate” used to describe the Maronite Christians of Lebanon. Later, I heard the term describe Ukrainian Catholics. I didn’t understand what the term meant at the time, but later study – especially during my seminary years at Mundelein – brought me to a deep appreciation of those in the Catholic Church who follow the rituals of Eastern Christianity while being in union with Rome. By extension, I also learned to appreciate the rich spiritual history of the Orthodox churches of the East. To this day, I wonder if they might serve as a bridge between the two halves of Christianity split asunder in 1054.
Joseph P. Duggan raises the same issue in a column on the possibility (however unlikely) of the election of an Eastern Rite pope. Two cardinals in the current conclave are of the Eastern Rite leaders, not Latin Rite. It is not inconceivable – though highly improbable – that one of them could appear on the balcony overlooking St. Peter’s Square, clad in white. It would be a magnificent step towards full equality and respect for the Eastern Rites within the Catholic Church, and towards reunion between the oldest extant strains of Christianity. It would also be in keeping with one of Pope John Paul the Great’s fondest desires and most precious dreams.
John Paul visited numerous countries where the Orthodox Church is dominant and spoke of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches as equals, expressing hope that Christianity once again may "breathe with both lungs." He implored Orthodox Christians to forgive and set aside the schisms of the second Christian millennium and take inspiration from the first millennium, when the Churches of East and West were united. John Paul's encyclical letter Ut Unum Sint ("That All May Be One,") offered a bold invitation to all Christians for their ideas on how the papacy might be transformed to be more effective in promoting Christian unity. Even before Pope John Paul, some four decades ago, Orthodox and Catholic prelates rescinded their mutual excommunications, and the churches recognize the full validity of one another's ordinations and sacraments.
Duggan, of course, notes that one of the great changes that would necessarily be wrought by such an election would be the rethinking of mandatory clerical celibacy. While forbidden in the Latin Rite (and in the United States by a wrong-headed papal decree sought by American bishops n the nineteenth century), the Eastern Rites ordain married men as priests. It is hard to imagine that a pope from among the non-Latin Catholics would long retain the mandatory celibacy that dates back a millennium. Priests would not be able to marry, but married men could become priests. Precedent exists for this in the early history of the Church, and in the special dispensation granted to some Anglican and Lutheran converts over the last couple of decades. When one considers that the church historically has had a father and son serve as popes (in the sixth century – St. Hormisdas, the 52nd Bishop of Rome, and St. Silverius, the 58th), not to mention the married Simon Peter who is reckoned the first, this would be a return to tradition rather than a departure from it.
The election of an Eastern Rite pontiff would be a significant step for the Catholic Church, one that reaffirms its catholicity every bit as much as the election of a Polish cardinal to that office did in 1978. Duggan envisions a pope celebrating a liturgy using the vestments and rituals of the Byzantine or Syriac Church. And yet, there is nothing to stop that from happening now – and a strong argument for encouraging the practice no matter who the next pope is. After all, a pope leads a church which claims the hallmark of catholicity – universality – and as such he is called to be a shepherd to those who worship in the styles of the East every bit as much as those whose rituals are those of the West. Such actions would serve as a healing gesture of fraternal love for Eastern Catholics and Eastern Orthodox. May we live to see the day when the seeds planted four decades ago by Popes John XXIII and Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras in Jerusalem, seeds tenderly watered and nurtured by Pope John Paul the Great during his papacy, bring forth a harvest of unity for the glory of the Risen Savior.
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April 18, 2005
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Well, after spending time digging through tax records to prove that politicians were getting favorable tax treatment by appraisal districts, I guess we shouldn't be surprised to find that the other side did the same thing to Dan. But whereas Dan did his work publicly, they did theirs undercover and anonymously, dumping the information they found in the lap of a Houston Chronicle reporter who would write a story that favored the stealth-tax supporters.
As a host on his own radio station, Dan Patrick has crusaded against rising property taxes.Until this month, however, his taxes hadn't been rising as fast as everyone else's. It seems that Patrick, owner of homes in Katy and Montgomery, had homestead exemptions on both.
It wasn't his fault, really. As a professional slinger of zingers, he'd hardly leave himself open to something so easily verified on the Internet.
Which is how we checked out the anonymous phone tip. Sure enough, Patrick's home on Lake Conroe has a full homestead exemption, designed to lessen the tax burden on a primary residence. And his home in Katy also had a homestead break from the Katy Independent School District.
Until we made a couple of calls.
When Patrick transferred his homestead to Lake Conroe a few years ago, Montgomery and Fort Bend counties coordinated the removal of most of his Katy exemptions.
But Katy ISD straddles two counties and its school taxes are collected by Waller County. Montgomery didn't communicate with Waller, and Patrick didn't volunteer that he still had a KISD exemption because, he said, he didn't even notice.
Waller kept the exemption until contacted by the Chronicle. The county has billed him $595.
I left out the part of the story where the reporter gratuitously throws in Dan's real name (Dan Patrick is the professional name he has used in broadcasting in this city for around a quarter century), despite the fact that it did nothing to enhance the story. The sad thing is, Dan's real name may have been the only actual fact in the piece. According to his account over at Lone Star Times, it wasn't some reporter that prompted the change -- and Dan has the letters and paperwork to prove that he acted properly in this situation.
I made it very clear to Mr. Feldstein last week that I had done nothing wrong, that the facts of the matter are clear about my having done nothing wrong, and that he was being used by my political opponents in an attempt to harm me.Knowing all that, he chose to go ahead and write this article anyway.
Here are the facts, which I am prepared to document and attest to under oath, in the course of a legal proceeding:
* For many years I lived with my family in Katy, located in Fort Bend Co., and listed that home as my primary residence.
* During the period that my home in Katy was my primary residence, I always paid my Fort Bend Co. property taxes on time and in full.
* Only for purposes of paying Katy Independent School District taxes, my home in Katy was subject to appraisal and assessment by Waller Co.
* During the period that my home in Katy was my primary residence, I always paid my Waller Co. property taxes on time and in full.
* Because my home in Katy was my primary residence, I claimed and received a standard homestead exemption from both Fort Bend and Waller counties.
* For the past several years, I have also owned a second home on Lake Conroe in Montgomery Co.
* Because my second home on Lake Conroe was not my primary residence, I neither claimed nor received a homestead exemption for it.
* During this period, I always paid my Montgomery Co. property tax bill on time and in full.
* In 2003 my home on Lake Conroe became my primary residence.
* As required by law, I immediately notified the proper taxing authorities in both Fort Bend and Montgomery counties, dropping my homestead exemption from the former and reassigning it to the latter.
* In situations such as this, not only is it standard procedure for Fort Bend Co. to notify Waller Co. of any changes in homestead exemption status, they have a legal obligation to do so.
* Fort Bend Co. taxing authorities have confirmed for me, on multiple occasions, both verbally and in writing, that they– not I– were in error by not following standard procedures or meeting their legal obligation to notify Waller Co. of my change in homestead exemption status.
* My "dual homestead" exemptions were the result not of my actions, nor of my legal negligence, but of multiple bureaucratic errors that the bureaucracy itself acknowledges I was neither responsible for nor aware of.
* When my property tax bills of the last two years came for my home in Katy (which was now no longer my primary residence), I paid what the taxing authorities told me I owed.
* Because of mistakes and errors made not by me, but rather by three separate taxing bureaucracies, over the past two years I wasnÂ’t assessed approximately $500 in property taxes, out of a combined property tax bill for my home in Katy that totaled close to $20,000.
* In February of this year I received a letter from Fort Bend Co. taxing authorities notifying me of their failure to properly communicate with Waller Co., but including no statement as to the amount of back taxes I might owe as a result of their mistake.
* Also in February of this year I received a letter from Waller Co. taxing authorities notifying me of their failure to properly communicate with Fort Bend Co., but also not including any statement as to the amount of back taxes I might owe as a result of their mistake.
* Of my own volition, I contacted Fort Bend Co. taxing authorities and spoke with a supervisor, who was very professional, very helpful, and who made it clear to me that this mistake had been their fault, not mine.
* I asked the supervisor if I owed any back taxes as a result of their error, and she advised me that there would be a tax bill due of approximately $500 dollars.
* The supervisor informed me that there would be no penalty due if I paid the tax by May 1st, 2005, since this matter had not been the result of my error.
* I have that statement in writing, signed by the supervisor.
* When I informed the supervisor that I was selling that home, she suggested that I simply allow the taxing authorities to assess and collect that amount at closing.
* Despite having closed the sale of my former home in Katy at the beginning of this month (April), it doesnÂ’t appear that any taxing authority took the amount of back taxes I accrued as a result of their error.
* I am in the process of verifying that fact, so that I do not overpay my taxes.
* In fact, I still haven’t gotten an official statement, from any taxing jurisdiction, telling me exactly how much I owe them as a result of their mistake.Again, I want to be perfectly clear– I communicated to Dan Feldstein and the Houston Chronicle the substance of all of this information last week.
So it turns out that the appraisal authorities of three different taxing authorities screwed up his assessment and exemption -- and acknowledge it in writing. They made contact about the matter with him IN FEBRUARY, not last week, as the article implies. And Dan did exactly what most of us do when we receive that bill (if it isn't paid through a mortgage company) -- wrote the check and didn't go over the thing with fine-tooth comb. We assume that the agencies in charge have done their job correctly and sent us a bill for the correct amount. What's more, the total annual shortfall was around $200 a year over the last three years -- an almost insignificant amount on a tax bill that approaches $7000 annually. The short answer is that Dan did everything right, unless you believe that a taxpayer has an obligation to double-check the work of the taxing authorities for accuracy and competence.
Now Dan Feldstein seems miffed at something Dan Patrick said during the course of his interview.
"If you come after me, I'll come after you," he cheerily imparted to an inquiring reporter.
Well, Dan Patrick has an explanation for that as well.
I made that promise to Mr. Feldstein because as our interview went on it became clear to me that he was less interested in being fair than in smearing me– a suspicion borne out by the callous disregard for the truth evident in the article he finally produced.
Guess what -- when you are a reporter you usually are able to get away with writing a slanted hit-piece. Dan Patrick, on the other hand, has something that Dan Feldstein doesn't -- his own radio station where he talks about whatever he wants for two hours a day (wanna guess what today's topic was), a professionally maintained website that is reqad by many Houstonians where he can post a response that will be read, and an audience that will defend him. Were I Dan Feldstein, I would expect to be on the receiving end of a lot of heat over this attempted smear.
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Black smoke streamed from the Sistine Chapel's chimney today to signal that cardinals failed to select a new pope in their first round of voting, held just hours after they began their historic task: finding a leader capable of building on John Paul II's spiritual energy while keeping modern rifts from tearing deeper into the church.Posted by: Greg at 04:56 PM | No Comments | Add Comment"It seems white. ... No, no, it's black!" reported Vatican Radio as the first pale wisps slipped out from the narrow pipe and then quickly darkened.
As millions around the world watched on television, at least 40,000 people waited in St. Peter's Square with all eyes on the chimney, where smoke from the burned ballots would give the first word of the conclave: white meaning a new pontiff, black showing that the secret gathering will continue Tuesday.
In the last moments of twilight, the pilgrims began to point and gasp. "What is it? White? Black?" hundreds cried out. In a few seconds — at about 8:05 p.m. — it was clear the 115 cardinals from six continents could not find the two-thirds majority needed to elect the new leader for the world's 1.1 billion Roman Catholics. Only one vote was scheduled for today.
Few expected a quick decision. The cardinals have a staggering range of issues to juggle. In the West, they must deal with the fallout from priest sex-abuse scandals and a chronic shortage of priests and nuns. Elsewhere, the church is facing calls for sharper activism against poverty and an easing of its ban on condoms to help combat AIDS.
The next pontiff also must maintain the global ministry of John Paul, who took 104 international trips in his 26-year papacy and is already being hailed as a saint by many faithful
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Now Senator Charles Schumer has responded to the charge with an epithet of his own. He has attacked Dr. Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council with a particularly troubling charge.
The conservative group's president, Tony Perkins, "stepped over the line," Mr. Schumer said. "He said it's people of faith versus Democrats.""That is so un-American. The founding fathers put down their plows and took up muskets to combat views like that - that one faith or one view of faith should determine what our politics should be," Mr. Schumer said on the ABC News program "This Week."
Sorry, Senator, but your party has been relentlessly hostile to Christians and other believers over the last decade or so. In the wake of the recent election, your leadership even acknowledged that the Democrat Party has lost touch with typical Americans who believe in God and go to church. Why then is it “un-American†for Dr. Perkins to note the same trend?
Sorry, Senator, you stepped over the line by telling a religious leader that he is un-American for speaking out about his view of the great issues of our day. And dare I suggest that such an attempt to silence your religious Americans with such an epithet is, in and of itself, un-American.
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Now Senator Charles Schumer has responded to the charge with an epithet of his own. He has attacked Dr. Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council with a particularly troubling charge.
The conservative group's president, Tony Perkins, "stepped over the line," Mr. Schumer said. "He said it's people of faith versus Democrats.""That is so un-American. The founding fathers put down their plows and took up muskets to combat views like that - that one faith or one view of faith should determine what our politics should be," Mr. Schumer said on the ABC News program "This Week."
Sorry, Senator, but your party has been relentlessly hostile to Christians and other believers over the last decade or so. In the wake of the recent election, your leadership even acknowledged that the Democrat Party has lost touch with typical Americans who believe in God and go to church. Why then is it “un-American” for Dr. Perkins to note the same trend?
Sorry, Senator, you stepped over the line by telling a religious leader that he is un-American for speaking out about his view of the great issues of our day. And dare I suggest that such an attempt to silence your religious Americans with such an epithet is, in and of itself, un-American.
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April 17, 2005
These 36 RINOs (Republicans In Name Only) must be removed from office. Each deserves to be challenged and defeated in the primary by a Republican committed to property tax reform -- or during the general election by a Democrat who is committed to it.
Who are the guilty RINOs?
1. Ray Allen (Grand Prairie - DFW)
2. Roy Blake (Nacogdoches)
3. Dan Branch (Dallas)
4. Carter Casteel (New Braunfels)
5. Warren Chisolm (Pampa - Amarillo)
6. Byron Cook (Corsicana)
7. Myra Crownover (Denton - DFW)
8. Dianne Delisi (Temple)
9. Mary Denny (Denton - DFW)
10. Joe Driver (Garland - DFW)
11. Charlie Geren (Ft. Worth)
12. Tony Goolsby (Dallas)
13. Bob Griggs (Ft. Worth)
14. Pat Haggerty (El Paso)
15. Rick Hardcastle (Vernon)
16. Linda Harper-Brown (Irving - DFW)
17. Will Harnett (Dallas)
18. Fred Hill (Richardson - DFW)
19. Bob Hunter (Abilene)
20. Delwin Jones (Lubbock)
21. Terry Keel (Austin)
22. Edmund Kuempel (Seguin)
23. Jodi Laubenberg (Parker - DFW)
24. Jerry Madden (Dallas)
25. Brian McCall (Plano - DFW)
26. Tommy Merritt (Longview)
27. Geanie Morrison (Victoria)
28. Anna Mowery (Ft. Worth)
29. Rob Orr (Burleson)
30. Elvira Reyna (Mesquite - DFW)
31. Todd Smith (Euless - DFW)
32. John Smithee (Amarillo)
33. Burt Solomons (Dallas)
34. David Swinford (Dumas)
35. Vicki Truitt (Keller - DFW)
36. Buddy West (Midland)
Let's get 'em, folks. That especially goes for you folks in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, since it seems that the bulk of this list is composed of your so-called Republican Representatives.
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My old blog began as an impulsive act. I wanted to put my tribute to Ronald Reagan out to the world, and so I wrote. I also wanted a place to express myself on issues of the day, since I was resolved to quit arguing over them with my wife, who is the very light of my life. And so I continued writing.
Blogging has expanded my horizons, made me thing about my views, and even changed my mind more than once. I'll avoid the cliche that "I've grown." I'll just say I've lived and thought, and experienced. I've made friends, made enemies, and had interesting conversations.. I'm glad that has happened.
Let's see how this site, now rather bare, evolves. let's see how this writer evolves, too. But expect to read more of the types of things you saw on the old site. Just expect to find them here instead.
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Four South Windsor high school students were sent home Friday after T-shirts they wore bearing anti-gay slogans caused disturbances, students and school officials said.The boys, who wore white T-shirts with the statement, "Adam and Eve, Not Adam and Steve," say their constitutional right to free speech was violated.
"We were just voicing our opinions," said Steven Vendetta, who made the T-shirts with his friends, Kyle Shinfield, David Grimaldi and another student who was not identified by the Journal Inquirer of Manchester. "We didn't tell other people to think what we're thinking. We just told them what we think."
Hold it here -- THE SHIRTS caused the disturbance? How did the articles of apparel cause a disturbance? It must have been the words on the shirts that were the problem, the message that they conveyed. But how did they cause a disruption? Obviously, they did not -- it must have been the response to the shirts.
Other students say they felt threatened by the shirts, which also quoted Bible verses pertaining to homosexuality."I didn't feel safe at this school today," said Diana Rosen, who is co-president of the school's Gay-Straight Alliance.
You don't feel safe at school because of the words? They contained no threat. They expressed an opinion. Do you mean, Diana, that you feel unsafe when others are permitted to publicly disagree with you? How, pray tell (and I don't care if you are offended by my use of the word "pray") does the expression of an alternative religious, political, or social view make you unsafe? How do you expect to survive in American society, with its robust protection of free speech, if the expression of a contrary view reduces you to a tearful quivering mass of gelatin?
There is, of course more to the story, as this article makes clear.
Vendetta said the impetus for the T-shirts came earlier in the week, when students at the high school took part in the annual Day of Silence, a project orchestrated by the national Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network. On the Day of Silence, students across the country do not speak, as a reminder of the discrimination and harassment experienced by homosexuals.Students at the high school also wore signs showing their support for legislation that would recognize civil unions for same-sex couples in Connecticut, Vendetta said.
Vendetta and his friends, who oppose civil unions, wanted to make their feelings known.
"We felt if they could voice their opinions for it, we could voice our opinion against it," he said. "There is another side to this debate, and we're representing it."
So, after showing respect and tolerance for the views of the pro-homosexuality/pro-civil union students, who seem to have gone through the day unmolested, they decided to exercise the same rights, and expected the same courtesy. After all, the school clearly had created something of an open forum by allowing (perhaps promoting?) the earlier event. That made what these boys did fair game -- and it should have been expected.
Instead of tolerance, what the boys got from Ms. Rosen and her fellow students was something different. What they got from the administration was a threat of censorship, and the promise of a heckler's veto.
Almost immediately, the shirts drew comment and debate from other students, Vendetta said."I walked down the hall, and people were either cheering me on, yelling at me, or just sneering," he said. "It was the most intense experience."
Teachers brought the situation to the attention of high school Principal John DiIorio, who said Friday that the law protects students' freedom of speech, as long as that speech doesn't disrupt the educational process.
He told the boys they could continue to wear the shirts as long as they didn't become a distraction to others.
The students returned to class. But heated arguments and altercations ensued almost immediately, with some students becoming "very emotional," said student Sam Etter.
Rosen said that when she first saw the shirts, she "almost didn't believe it." She became very upset, crying and spending most of the day in administrators' and guidance counselor's offices. She also got into several arguments, she said.
"I saw a large crowd gathered during one of our lunch waves," said senior William "B.J." Haun. "A large debate was going on. It involved a lot of people. By the end of the day, everyone was talking about it and giving their two cents."
Eventually, DiIorio called the boys into the office and told them that other students were becoming "emotionally distraught," Shinfield said. He then asked the boys to remove the shirts. They refused and were sent home.
Gee, imagine that. The shirts promoted discussion. Where I come from, that is called learning, and perhaps even citizenship. Some of the discussions became heated and may have threatened to become physical. That should have resulted in the punishment of those who were fighting, not the censorship of the message. And poor, overly-sensitive Ms. Rosen seems to have spent the day lobbying for that censorship, when she was not confronting students and actively creating the disruption. Unfortunately, the spineless Principal DiIorio gave into those who wanted to make sure that the anti-homosexual/anti-civil union message was suppressed.
When all is said and done, I have three observations.
Steven Vendetta, Kyle Shinfield, David Grimaldi and unnamed friend, while the message on your shirts may have been a bit more juvenile than I would have liked, I applaud you for being willing to voice your beliefs even in the face of an administrator who was wishy-washy about protecting your civil rights. I wish there were more like you. I hope that you and your supporters continue to press for your rights to be respected -- and demand that either you be allowed to wear your shirts or that the Gay-Straight Alliance be shut down as incompatible with the policies of the school, which forbid free and open discussion of homosexuality.
Diana Rosen, you should be ashamed of yourself. If you had any principles, you would have been out there defending the rights of your classmates to voice their beliefs, even when (especially when) you disagree. You are more than willing to make use of the First Amendment when it suits your purposes, but your actions that day showed that you are a censor and a dictator at heart. And since you are head of the group that conducted the Day of Silence, I suggest that you do not plan on holding one again. You have supplied your opponents with the weapon they need to shut you down by asserting that your fear and emotional weakness are grounds for silencing those with whom you disagree. All they have to do now is claim that your group and its message frighten and anger them. You may as well disband the group now, because you have made it impossible for your message of "tolerance" to ever be taken seriously.
Principal DiIorio, you are a failure as an educator. You had the opportunity to teach citizenship and respect. What you taught was censorship. Your actions were fundamentally wrong, and betrayed the very values your school is supposed to be teaching. At the first sign of a problem, you should have been on the PA system reminding the students of the values contained in the First Amendment, their obligation to tolerate messages with which they disagree, and the school's obligation to protect the rights of every student. You didn't. Instead you let the situation get out of control, and then silenced the victims. What you have taught is that hurt feelings and offended ideologies matter more than the US Constitution. In other words, you have undermined one of the very things your school is responsible for teaching. More to the point, you would NEVER have shut down the Day of Silence because students were angry, offended or "scared" by the message it communicated. You are simply a PC weenie who set these boys up to take a fall. You have no legitimate place in education.
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The schedule for the Conclave will be as follows. All times are local time in Rome, which is GMT+2.
At 4.30 p.m. on Monday, the procession of cardinal electors will leave the Hall of Blessings for the Sistine Chapel. This ritual will be transmitted live on television.Once in the Sistine Chapel, all the cardinal electors will swear the oath. The cardinal dean will read the formula of the oath, after which each cardinal, stating his name and placing his hand on the Gospel, will pronounce the words: 'I promise, pledge and swear.' Over these days, there has been frequent talk of the bond of secrecy concerning the election of the Pope. However, I would like to reiterate that this is just part of the oath. First of all, an oath is made to observe the prescriptions of the Apostolic Constitution Universi Dominici Gregis; then another oath is made that - and I quote - 'whichever of us by divine disposition is elected Roman Pontiff will commit himself faithfully to carrying out the munus Petrinum of Pastor of the Universal Church.Â’
After the oath, the master of Liturgical Celebrations of the Supreme Pontiff pronounces the 'extra omnes,' and all those who do not participate in the conclave leave the Sistine Chapel. Only the master of Liturgical Celebrations and Cardinal Tomas Spidlik remain for the meditation, once that has finished they too leave the Sistine Chapel.
During the conclave, the cardinals will have the following timetable:
At 7.30 a.m., the celebration or concelebration of Mass will take place in the Domus Sanctae
Marthae. By 9 a.m., they will be in the Sistine Chapel. There they will recite the Lauds of the Liturgy of the Hours and, immediately afterwards, voting will take place according to the prescribed ritual (two votes in the morning, and two votes in the afternoon). In the afternoon, voting will begin at 4 p.m. At the end of the second vote will be Vespers.
After the two votes of the morning and the two of the afternoon respectively, the ballots and any notes the cardinals have made will be burnt in a stove located inside the Sistine Chapel.
Purely as an indication then, the smoke signals could appear at around 12 noon and at about 7 p.m. (unless the new Pope is elected either in the first vote of the morning or the first vote of the afternoon, in which case the smoke signal will be earlier). In any case it is expected that, along with the white smoke, the bells of St Peter will sound to mark a successful election.
According to Apostolic Constitution Universi Dominici Gregis, after three days without the selection of a new pope there will be a day taken for prayer and reflection. The voting will resume for seven ballots, then break for another such period if no new pope has been elected. This pattern will continue until a new pope is chosen. After the 33rd or 34th ballot, the Cardinal Electors may choose to reduce the margin from the initial 2/3 vote to a simple majority, or may limit themselves to only the top two candidates (or, I presume, both).
The identity and regnal name of the new pontiff will not be announced to anyone outside of the Conclave until the new pope is brought out to the balcony overlooking St. Peter's Square. There will be no special notification of the press, as was done when on the death of Pope John Paul II.
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THE wartime past of a leading German contender to succeed John Paul II may return to haunt him as cardinals begin voting in the Sistine Chapel tomorrow to choose a new leader for 1 billion Catholics.Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, whose strong defence of Catholic orthodoxy has earned him a variety of sobriquets — including “the enforcer”, “the panzer cardinal” and “God’s rottweiler” — is expected to poll around 40 votes in the first ballot as conservatives rally behind him.
Although far short of the requisite two-thirds majority of the 115 votes, this would almost certainly give Ratzinger, 78 yesterday, an early lead in the voting. Liberals have yet to settle on a rival candidate who could come close to his tally.
Unknown to many members of the church, however, RatzingerÂ’s past includes brief membership of the Hitler Youth movement and wartime service with a German army anti- aircraft unit.
Although there is no suggestion that he was involved in any atrocities, his service may be contrasted by opponents with the attitude of John Paul II, who took part in anti-Nazi theatre performances in his native Poland and in 1986 became the first pope to visit RomeÂ’s synagogue.
“John Paul was hugely appreciated for what he did for and with the Jewish people,” said Lord Janner, head of the Holocaust Education Trust, who is due to attend ceremonies today to mark the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
“If they were to appoint someone who was on the other side in the war, he would start at a disadvantage, although it wouldn’t mean in the long run he wouldn’t be equally understanding of the concerns of the Jewish world.”
Now hold on for just a minute. The Ratzinger family was anti-Nazi, but the 14-year-old Josef Ratzinger was required by a 1941 law to be a member of the Hitler Youth until he could get an exemption because of his seminary studies -- all school children were. And yes, he served in an anti-aircraft battery, but he was drafted into that service at a time when the German Army was taking 15 & 16-year-olds and putting them on the front lines. Those who refused to serve were shot. Ratzinger himself deserted when he became aware of the slaughter of the Jews in the death camps, and was briefly held as in Allied POW camp.
You cannot make a Nazi or a war criminal out of a guy who was only six when Hitler came to power in 1933. It seems quite unreasonable to complain that a 16-year-old lacked the courage to place himself in mortal danger in the midst of the horrors that existed in wartime Nazi Germany. What is this really about?
It is about Ratzinger's theology, of course. He is one of the more conservative, orthodox wing of the College of Cardinals, and was the Pope's close associate and doctrinal point-man during much of John Paul II's pontificate. The two had been friends and colleagues since the Second Vatican Council, when they first met and worked together. Today they are frightened by the prospect of the man they have reviled for over two decades being mentioned prominently as a possible pope. And that is why some would do anything to keep him out of the Shoes of the Fisherman, even defame him and raise the spectre of Hitler and the Holocaust to tar a good and holy man.
His condemnations are legion — of women priests, married priests, dissident theologians and homosexuals, whom he has declared to be suffering from an “objective disorder”.He upset many Jews with a statement in 1987 that Jewish history and scripture reach fulfillment only in Christ — a position denounced by critics as “theological anti-semitism”. He made more enemies among other religions in 2000, when he signed a document, Dominus Jesus, in which he argued: “Only in the Catholic church is there eternal salvation”.
In other words, his detractors are gravely concerned that Ratzinger is the one thing they cannot tolerate -- a believing Catholic, loyal to the historic teachings of the Catholic Church, and cut from the same cloth as the Pope he worked with for nearly a quarter century.
By this time next week there will almost certainly be a new pope. And soon thereafter, I expect we will begin to hear the true story of what happened in the Conclave. The question is -- will it be a story of Ratzinger's ascent to the Chair of Saint peter, or of the making of some other pope, probably with his support?
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April 16, 2005
Just days before Roman Catholic cardinals select a new pope, a human rights lawyer filed a criminal complaint against an Argentine mentioned as a possible contender, accusing him of involvement in the 1976 kidnappings of two priests.
Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio's spokesman today called the allegation "old slander."
The complaint filed in a Buenos Aires court Friday by human rights lawyer Marcelo Parrilli accused Bergoglio, the archbishop of Buenos Aires, of involvement in the kidnappings of two Jesuit priests by the military dictatorship, according to the Buenos Aires newspaper Clarin. The complaint does not specify Bergoglio's alleged involvement.
The priests were released after five months.
"This is old slander," the Rev. Guillermo Marco, Bergoglio's spokesman, told The Associated Press in Rome. "This is the week of slander."
Under Argentine law, an accusation can be filed with a very low threshold of evidence. The court later decides whether there is cause to investigate and file charges.
The Italian newspaper Corriere dell Sera called the accusations "an infamy fueled by Bergoglio's enemies," saying Saturday that far from participating in the kidnappings, the cardinal helped win the priests' freedom. It did not detail its sources.
The accusations against Bergoglio, 68, in the kidnappings of priests Orlando Yorio and Francisco Jalics are not new, being detailed in a recently published book by Argentine journalist Horacio Verbitsky.
Marco called Verbitsky "a gentleman of dubious fame who is advertising himself to sell a book," saying the journalist was "taking advantage of this moment."
So, do we have a man who cooperated in the kidnapping of a couple of priests under his authority? Or do we have an author who is seeking to sell his book by making the most of a sensational charge in it?
And will it make any difference for the humble Cardinal who is considered a bright light among Latin American contenders for the papacy?%
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Imagine your kids playing basketball on a court at a playground. Suddenly, another group of kids appears and demands that your children leave. Since your kids are not done with there game -- and were there first, -- they refuse. Now they haven't done anything unreasonable, have they?
The new arrivals leave in a huff -- and come back with about 30 kids, shouting racial slurs and engage in a physical assault upon your children. Certainly there is a crime -- and given the language used during the assault, it must be a hate crime, right?
Wrong -- not if the children who are brutally beaten are white and the little thugs are black.
Invoking the name “Martin Luther King” and screaming “Black Power!” a gang of up to 30 black teens attacked four white girls in Marine Park in what police are saying is not a bias crime.
The March 30 attack was a hot topic at state Senator Marty GoldenÂ’s recent public safety forum.
According to witnesses and parents of the victims, four young girls from St. EdmundÂ’s had the day off from school due to Easter recess. They were playing basketball during dismissal from nearby Marine Park Junior High School, when several Marine Park students demanded to use the court.
After adults intervened and asked them to wait their turn, the teens left - but returned in a pack of up to 30, both boys and girls, and stormed into the park.
Witnesses say the attackers were all black and called their victims “white crackers” during the bloody melee, which raged for almost 20 minutes.
“This is not being looked at as a bias crime,” NYPD Deputy Inspector Kevin McGinn said at the meeting.
Well why the hell not, Deputy Inspector McGinn? You have an unprovoked act of violence, prima facie evidence of racial animus, possible evidence of religious bias, and a violent attack by a mob on four little girls. What more do you need? Isn't an assault serious enough to cause the hospitalization of two victims by a mob shouting racial epithets sufficient to file such charges? Would their being beaten to death have been sufficient?
I mean, let's consider what happened in this vicious attack by a group of feral children (who have much more in common with a pack of wild dogs than the great civil rights leader whose name they invoked) attempting to maim or kill four little white girls who thought they had the right to play basketball on a public court in a public park.
“When I pulled my car up to the park, I witnessed a pandemonium I’ve never seen in my life,” said Debbie, a mother of one victim who asked to remain anonymous for safety reasons.
Her daughter ran to the car, screaming, “They’re going to kill us,” Debbie recalled. My daughter was so scared and kids were running around like crazy.
Pursued by dozens of teens, some of the girls were “literally running into traffic to save their lives,” she said.
One girl made it as far as a nearby house, but was dragged by her hair back into the playground by a “wolf pack of children,” Debbie said.
The St. Edmund girls were bleeding and beaten to the point where they had cuts, scrapes, footprints and dirt all over them - and the attackers surrounded her car and started pounding on the windows as Debbie tried to herd the terrified children into her vehicle.
It seems to me that the reason the police and DA won't call this a bias crime is that the victims don't have a high enough melanin content to be subject to equal protection of the laws. You and I both know that we would be seeing a hate-crime prosecution if this were an attack by 30 white kids on a couple of little black girls. We'd have Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and the New Black Panther Party out in the street crying "No Justice -- No Peace!" We would probably still be reading about riots if you failed to file hate-crime charges if the victims were black and the perps were white.
Al Sharpton got a state investigation into the fake assault on Tawana Brawley. The LA riots provoked a federal prosecution of the cops who beat Rodney King. Where are the state and federal investigations and prosecutions here, of a hate crime perpetrated against white children -- and the failure of the legal system in New York City to treat this crime with the seriousness it deserves.
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Now Sanchez is facing jail for violating the vry laws he swore to uphold.
Immigration Enforcement Agent Ramon M. Sanchez Jr., 41, was charged Tuesday with harboring an illegal alien. Sanchez married the woman, Flor Liliana Velasco Barrera, on Feb. 25 of this year. But as early as last November he knew she was a Mexican citizen who was not authorized to live or work in the United States, even though she had been in the country for the past four years, authorities said.
Sanchez, whose work involves transporting detainees and doing other support services for the Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement bureau, was arrested Monday and could face a maximum of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine, said a news release from the U.S. Attorney's Office.
Dude -- what were you thinking? You knew her immigration status, and you didn't report it. Not only that, you helped her stay here illegally. Were you not aware that both actions were crimes? Or did you, in your arrogance, think the law didn't apply to you?
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Frankly, the records of two of these judges is sufficient to show that the "extremist judges outside the mainstream" argument fails miserably.
It has been almost four years since President Bush nominated Texas Supreme Court Judge Priscilla Owen to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit. Since then the Senate has held two hearings, conducted many days of floor debate, analyzed Owen's judicial opinions down to the last comma and attempted four times to invoke cloture so that debate could finally be concluded and the Senate could take an up-or-down vote on her nomination.
Not only has Owen withstood this intensive examination, she has shown time and again that the American Bar Association got it right when it unanimously awarded her its highest possible rating. She was also reelected with 84 percent of the vote in 2000 and had the endorsement of every newspaper in Texas. Owen has earned the support of a clear majority of senators.
She is not alone. This July will mark almost two years since the president nominated Justice Janice Rogers Brown to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Brown started life as the daughter of a sharecropper in the segregated South and through hard work and determination became the first African American woman to serve on California's highest court. In 2002 she was called upon by her colleagues to write the majority opinion more often than any other member of the California Supreme Court. She was retained with 76 percent of the vote in her last election. In short, Brown has shown herself to be unquestionably trustworthy, highly intelligent and well within the mainstream, and she has earned the enthusiastic support of a majority of the U.S. Senate.
There is no legitimate basis for calling either of these women unfit for the federal bench. Allowing a minority to block their confirmation is nothing short of tyranny. As the support they have received shows, neither one of them is unqualified or outside the mainstream -- unless the overwhelming majority of voters in both California and Texas are outside of that mainstream as well.
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The same thing is going on in Iraq, according to writer Austin Bay.
On April 2 and again on April 4, the terror gang led by al-Qaida's Iraq commander, Abu Musab al Zarqawi, launched "military-style attacks" on the Abu Ghraib prison complex in Baghdad. In the April 4 assault, U.S. forces took 44 casualties (most of them minor wounds). The terrorist gang, however, took 50 casualties, out of a force estimated at 60 gunmen.
On April 11, the gang attacked a Marine compound at Husaybah near the Syrian border. As I write, terrorist casualties are unconfirmed, but the assault flopped.
While bomb attacks on unarmed Iraqi civilians continue (particularly against Shiites), public opinion now matters in Iraq, and the thugs' public slaughters have killed too many Iraqi innocents. January's election dramatically lifted public morale and changed the media focus — suddenly, democracy looks possible, and an Arab Muslim democracy is al-Qaida's worst nightmare.
Hence the "Tet gamble." Bombs haven't cowed the Iraqi people — but perhaps the American people will lose heart and buckle if al-Qaida concocts a military surprise.
U.S. forces, however, are "hard targets" — unlike civilians standing in line to vote, U.S. troops shoot back. Since 9/11, al-Qaida has never won a military engagement at the platoon level (30 men) or higher. Coalition forward operating bases are heavily fortified.
Unfortunately for the American military, the press at home and the pro-terrorist Left are ready to paint every unsuccessful attack by the terrorists as an unmitigated failure of the US military. The terrorists do not have to win -- the ;eft-wing media and left-wing ideologues consider every assault on Americans (and innocent Iraqi citizens) to be a victory for the enemy by virtue of the fact that they still have the capability to make the attack. Under their logic, terrorist Eric Rudolph's cowardly bombing of abortion clinics was a victory for those of us opposed to abortion (it wasn't, as it betrayed our principles).
Looking at the bright side, we have the ability to defeat the terrorists in a war of attrition. The ultimate question is if the American and Iraqi peoples have the will.
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Calgary's police chief Jack Beaton has used a rare legal tactic to seize a computer from a private home that was believed to have been used to operate a website critical to Beaton and his senior managers.
Beaton obtained a civil court order this month to enter the home of a civilian police employee and seize the computer.
A sweeping gag order issued at the same time prevents anyone from talking about the case or reading documents related to it, which have been sealed.
So, let's consider the basic outline here.
A website criticizes government agency and its high officials.
The courts order the site taken down and the equipment used to engage in that free speech confiscated.
All comment on it is stifled by a gag order against the allegedly corrupt officials (who want the charges to go away) and the folks making the charges.
And local elected officials, for whom the police chief works, applaud the move.
However, Ald. Craig Burrows, who sits on the police commission, says Beaton acted properly.
"I think any time you go after the morale of a service or the morale of a city that takes pride in its service, the chief has a right to act," Burrows said.
"I'm afraid we live in a culture today where you can say anything you want about people, as negative as it is, and you don't think you can be held accountable. I think our chief is just basically ensuring that, moving forward, if you're going to say something that's going to affect the reputation of the service and officers, you have to have evidence to support that claim."
So, if you are going to make critical remarks, the government can shut you down, preventing you from presenting that evidence to the public. That effectively means that there is no right in Canada to criticize the government if the officials involved do not like the criticism.
Now you may wonder what sort of accusations were made on the website.
Messages on the site said it spoke for officers who had suffered under Beaton's "corrupt" administration.
It stated: "We are the police, the communications officers, the administration staff and other police service members and employees that either have been the victims of tyranny, politics, harassment, bullying, racism, constructive termination, etc., or we know someone who has."
Last fall, Beaton was quoted in the Calgary Herald as "vowing to take every measure necessary to get those behind the website."
He has also called the site "mean-spirited" and "in poor taste."
Four current or former police officers, who agreed to talk to the CBC about their concerns as long as their names weren't used, said promotions on the force are based on who you know, and that racist and sexist behaviour is tolerated.
Sounds to me like this was clearly raising issues of public concern about problems in a government agency. You know, the sort of things that citizens should be aware of and permitted to discuss freely in a democratic society. The failure of Canadian law to protect such a basic right is simply one more piece of evidence that our neighbor to the north has ceased to share fundamental values with the United States. When a public official is allowed to remain in office after making a public statement that he will "get" those who dare to criticize how he does his job by using the full police power of the government to suppress those criticisms, it is clear that the protection of fundamental rights no longer exists. What you have in such a case is an authoritarian system that feigns respect for civil liberties.
I'm curious -- where are all the liberals running websites that claim the Bush administration is oppressive and urging folks to flee to Canada? Why are they not speaking out against this atrocity?
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Now we have this case, in which a court is allowing the government to overrule the clear intent of an enemy of the United States.
A Cuban exile on a monthlong hunger strike protesting his detention as a suspected spy was in a hospital's inmate ward Friday after a judge cleared the way for U.S. officials to have a feeding tube inserted in him.
Juan Emilio Aboy was being held at Jackson Memorial Hospital's inmate ward, hospital spokeswoman Lorraine Nelson said Friday.
On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Paul Huck agreed with another judge's order to ``involuntarily administer nutrients'' to Aboy though a stomach or intravenous tube, and to restrain him if he attempts to remove it.
``Mr. Aboy is now completing his fourth week without eating. The decision to not eat was his choice. A court order was issued allowing the U.S. Public Health Service to take any necessary precautions in the interest of his health,'' said Nina Pruneda, spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Miami.
So what we have here is a precedent that says you can kill the sick, but must intervene to stop a voluntary death.
Who says this country hasn't lost its way?
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I'll be changing the site name, the site address, the appearance of the page, the software being used, and even the handle I post under.
Why?
1) Blogger drives me nuts at times. They do a good job, but it runs so slow, and crashes often.
2) You never know -- I may not be the precinct chair in this precinct forever.
3) It's time for a change, and I'm nearly ready to make the move.
I'll tell you more later, when the move is ready.
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