TV News Baby Killers Harass Catholic Pharmacist With a Conscience

(Now there's a headline you won't see anywhere else. How about "Holy Crap! We're Actually Starting to Fight Back"?)


Battling the forces of the Anti-Christ in Milwaukee
(One pharmacy at a time...)



A WISN 12 News investigation has discovered that a Milwaukee-area pharmacist has refused to fill prescriptions for women citing religious reasons.
A Milwaukee mother of six walked into a north side Walgreens with a prescription for the so-called morning after pill.
The woman, who 12 News is not identifying, said it was a difficult decision.
"Financially, I wouldn't be able to afford having another child," Jane Doe said.
She asked 12 News to disguise her identity -- afraid of backlash from those who might judge her.
"I mean, I guess I was desperate," Doe said.

Doctors prescribe the pill to prevent pregnancy. It should be taken within 72 hours of conception.
"It was right after New Year's weekend. I got it as soon as I could," Doe said.
But the pharmacist refused to fill her prescription.
"She just told me that she will not fill it. That she's Catholic, and it's murder," Doe said.

Yippee!

Then, she said, before a crowded waiting area, the pharmacist berated her.
"'You're a murderer. I will not help you kill this baby. I will not have the blood on my hands,'" Doe said. "I tried to explain to her that it's emergency contraceptives, that it's not an abortion pill. She then snatched the form from me, that the prescription was attached to, telling me the paper was full of lies, and she won't be a part of it. I was crying, shaking, upset, so embarrassed. I wanted to run out of the store and hope nobody else could get a good look at me."

Wait for it.

"So, did you ever get your emergency contraceptives?" 12 News Senior Investigative Reporter Colleen Henry asked.
"No, I never received that one," Doe said.
"And you became pregnant?" Henry asked.

Wait for it.

"I did become pregnant, and I had to terminate the pregnancy. It was very hard. And I didn't want to be what she called me. But that's what I ended up being," Doe said.

There you have it. The means may be different, but the end is the same. May God have mercy on her soul and the soul of her child.

Her lawyer said Walgreens failed to ensure its female customers have the same access to reproductive health care as men.
"Condoms are sold there, very easily, very accessible. Viagra ... and I suspect there is no situation where that pharmacist has said to a man, 'I think there's something wrong in you taking Viagra,'" attorney Tricia Knight said.

Huh? Viagra? What the...? Oh, a lawyer is speaking now. Time to unthink. (BTW, princess, Viagra is not a contraceptive. It is designed to help men unfortunate enough to marry harpies like you to do their conjugal duties. And I'll bet if those condoms were behind the counter, our intrepid Catholic heroine would refuse to sell them too.)


WISN 12 News went to Long to ask about the woman's complaint.
"She said that you refused to fill her morning after pill prescription, that you called her a baby-killer, and said you didn't want blood on your hands," Henry stated.
"No, I'm sure I didn't say that. No, I'm quite positive I wouldn't say that," Long responded.
"Do you fill prescriptions for the morning after pill?" Henry asked.
"No," Long said.
"Is that for religious reasons?" Henry asked.
"Yes," Long answered.
Walgreens policy allows pharmacists to refuse to dispense drugs they object to.

Bravo Long! Bravo Walgreens!

"It's like she's trying to play God or something," Doe said.

But the woman believes Walgreens' policy is selling women short.

"What's been the hardest thing for you in all of this?" Henry asked.

"Having to have an abortion. I feel like it didn't have to get to that point. It could have been prevented. That's what I was attempting to do," Doe said.

Cognitive dissonance! If you kill your child a couple of hours or days after conception, everything is cool. But if you wait a while longer before you kill, then it's a painful tragedy, emotional trauma, and fodder for some ambulance chaser.
Somebody needs to invent an incubator that can handle kids who are eight and one-half months premature. That'll fix it.

A state lawmaker has introduced a bill to give pharmacists a so-called conscience clause -- legal protection for refusing to dispense a prescription. It would be the same way the law protects doctors who opt out of procedures they find immoral.

That will do. Temporarily.

STOP HR 810/S 471

Call, write, e-mail, and visit your congressman and senator NOW.


(CNSNews.com) - A pro-life group says a bill expanding research on embryonic stem cells is likely to come up for a vote in the House of Representatives this summer -- and it may pass.

H.R. 810 -- known as the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act -- had 198 co-sponsors as of this week, only 20 shy of an absolute majority, the National Right to Life Committee said in a press release.Introduced by Reps. Mike Castle (R-De.) and Diane DeGette (D-Colo.), the bill would allow federal funding of research on human embryos that were created in fertility clinics. The bill envisions that many of the embryos would be donated by couples who don't plan to use them.

The companion Senate bill (S. 471) was introduced by Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) and Tom Harkin (D-Iowa).

Remembering V-E Day

From Arthur Herman on NRO:


Despite the horrors of the Holocaust, Germany's defeat could hardly be called a victory for justice or humanity. After all, it left Hitler's brutal collaborator, Josef Stalin, in control of eastern Europe. Russian soldiers liberated Auschwitz on April 27, yet the camp was only a clone of Stalin's own gulag. In a few months, Soviet judges would be sitting solemnly at the Nurnberg trials trying German defendants for using slave labor — as odious a twist of irony as history has ever delivered.

So this was not a victory for justice. It was, however, a crucial victory for liberal democracy, the very system that had seemed to be on the brink of destruction four years earlier. It was that system that Hitler and others had blamed for plunging the world into the Great Depression, and which he promised to crush by defeating the liberal democracies and their "Jewish capitalist warmonger" allies. To Hitler, Britain and America represented a way of life that was decadent, corrupt, and grossly self-serving — precisely the same complaints voiced by Osama bin Laden and today's Islamic terrorists. And it was a way of life that in the fall of 1940 seemed about to pass into history.

It is important to remember how many people, especially Europeans, wanted democracy to lose and hoped Hitler would win. They included the world's Communist parties, who followed the directions of their leader Josef Stalin in enthusiastically embracing his alliance with Nazi Germany. They included politicians and intellectuals who, after Hitler's lightning victories in Poland and France, saw a new world order arising and wanted to be part of it. Denmark's elected government enthused in July 1940 that Hitler had "brought about a new era in Europe, which will result in a new order in an economic and political sense..." France's Robert Brasillach saw Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin as the men of the future and Roosevelt and Churchill as "grotesquely antiquated" relics of the past. Catholic mystagogue Teilhard de Chardin proclaimed that "we are watching the birth, more than the death, of a World....the Germans deserve to win..." Holland's Paul de Man, later the darling of the deconstructionist Left at Yale and other universities, announced that Europe's future under Nazi rule was brighter than ever and that "we are entering a mystical era, a period of faith and belief, with all that this entails," with the Third Reich at its center.


Anyone want to argue against a pre-emptive strike on Hitler, Tojo, and Stalin? Or at least standing up to them from the very first?

Do we have to wait for a worldwide war to begin before we take action?

One last thing. Sometimes, some people just have to be killed.

Holocaust Remembrance Day on Israeli TV

From Israelinsider, what most people would consider an ultra-rightwing site. I don't know my left from my right anymore, but if I was a Jew, I would own plenty of guns and be more than proficient in their use. I would also buy plenty of ammunition.


I watched the ceremony broadcast live from Auschwitz on Yom HaZikaron, Holocaust Remembrance Day. I listened to the stories, the voices, the prayers. I watched the audience, felt pride at seeing an Israeli soldier in uniform, Israeli flags and hundreds, even thousands dressed in blue and white.

They lit the large torches in memory of the children, the mothers, the righteous gentiles, the educators, and ultimately for the State of Israel. And then the unthinkable happened. The master of ceremonies thanked the audience, closed the ceremony, and asked that everyone stay in their places until the Prime Ministers had left. When I was in Poland two years ago, every ceremony ended with the singing of 'Hatikva,' the national anthem of Israel. We sang it at Auschwitz and Maidanek, Treblinka and Chelmo. We sang it at the Children's Forest, where 800 children were separated from their parents and murdered, and we sang it in Jedwabne, where 1,600 Poles rose up in 1941 and murdered their 1,500 Jewish neighbors without a German in sight. It all begins and ends with 'The Hope,' Hatikva. Ceremonies in Israel always end with 'Hatikva'.

As long as deep in the heart, The soul of a Jew yearns, And forward to the
East To Zion, an eye looks Our hope will not be lost, The hope of two thousand
years, To be a free nation in our land, The land of Zion and Jerusalem.

A Minor Matter of Maturity: Abortion vs. Murder

People imagine that judges are naturally endowed with special wisdom or that it comes to "rest" on those who don a black robe. Oh, that it were so.

Consider that the state of our laws can result in the following contradiction regarding a minor's maturity:A 13-year-old girl convicted of murdering her newborn infant with premeditation and malice aforethought cannot be sentenced to death because she's too immature to appreciate the consequences of her decision. The same 13-year-old can be mature enough to end the life of her unborn child by abortion, even at the point of birth.

Is U.S. in Slow Motion to Socialism?

This question comes about 100 years too late.

Sobran gets me thinking and typing.

Note: The link above will take you to Joe's current on-line column. The archive is here. Not all of his past columns are available in the archive.


Joe Sobran is reposting some old columns. This one is from 1998.


But there was no inevitable connection between slavery and secession. In fact, the first secessionists were Northern abolitionists who wanted no part of a Union that tolerated slavery. They just didn’t acquire enough influence to persuade their fellow Northerners to declare their independence.

Suppose they had. Suppose New England had pulled out of the Union in indignation over slavery. Suppose the remaining states had declared war in order to save the Union, and after a bitter five-year struggle, costing nearly a million lives, New England had been conquered.

Then what? History might record that the victorious Union took a fierce revenge by occupying, looting, and setting up puppet governments in New England for several years; furthermore, that it also amended the Constitution not only to protect slavery in the South, but to extend the right to own slaves to every state and all U.S. territories.


An interesting "what if?"


A more chilling thought is that the Union victory over New England might not only have saved slavery, but conferred moral legitimacy on it. Abolitionism might be associated with those nasty rebels who tried to destroy the Union, and slavery with the cause of patriotism! To the victor belong the spoils — including, to a great extent, the moral sense of the population.


That seems reasonable.


Both sides in the actual Civil War were engaged in subjugation. The South was protecting chattel slavery; the North was denying the right of secession on which this country was founded.

At the time the Constitution was adopted, several states, including Virginia and New York, ratified it on the express condition that they might withdraw from the Union at any time they deemed it in their interest to do so. This was in keeping with the Declaration of Independence, which says that people have both the “right” and the “duty” to “alter or abolish” a government destructive of their rights.

Nobody at the time challenged these states’ claim to a right of secession. Not only did the Declaration support them; as a practical matter, nothing could stop them. The federal government was too weak.

The Civil War established that the federal government had grown strong enough to prevent and punish any independence movement. From then on, no state could secede for any reason, no matter how tyrannous the federal government might become.


Obviously.


The military ratio has widened enormously: today the states still have rifles, but the federal government has a nuclear arsenal. Nobody talks about secession (at least not very loud).

This is what makes it possible for the federal government to dictate to the states. If the Union were still voluntary, the Supreme Court wouldn’t dare, for example, to strike down the abortion laws of all 50 states, because many of those states would have seceded immediately after such an outrageous usurpation of their power.

Ah, but we no longer speak of federal “usurpation” — and why not? Because the powerful can change even our moral sense, unless we are extremely vigilant. So most of the country has accepted as legitimate the court’s claim to authority over state abortion laws.


Too true.


So, as a practical matter, there is no longer any such thing as a federal “usurpation” of power. Nobody can enforce the Constitution against the federal government, so why bother trying? Which makes the Constitution pretty useless for the purpose of limiting that government.

When you look back on a famous victory in any war of the past, don’t be too sure the right side won.


That is the logical conclusion.


The exercise of power almost always has evil consequences. The Church itself was corrupted by temporal power and has suffered many schisms and heresies because of the will to power in man. (This is not Nietzchean. It is an apt phrase.) Of course, these rebellions are always cloaked in the rhetoric of some kind of freedom: freedom of conscience, national freedom, sexual freedom, etc.

No one should be surprised, then, when those pursuing and exercising power cost their fellow men their lives and their souls in untold numbers.

So, was the American Civil War immoral? Was it a just war? Most involved undoubtedly believed they were doing their duty as Christians. We know the numbers of dead and wounded. But how many souls were lost? Even a cursory reading of history tells you war changes the rules by which even the most civilized of peoples live. Souls are corrupted one at a time, but war tears men from their homes, families, communities, and puts them face to face with imminent death. Frankly, stories of atrocities do not surprise me.


Is the only true Catholic option disengagement from the world and unconditional pacifism? Our socialist brethren will say no to the former and yes to the latter, thinking that the avoidance of violent death is the supreme earthly good and "militarism" is what corrupts men's souls.

Let's consider the Quakers. There are many inspiring stories of these principled pacifists serving in medical and other non-combatant roles in defense of this country. Today, however, the Quakers are just another deracinated and squishy-left sect barely clinging to the name Christian. The last "principled" public stand I remember any Quakers taking was their effort to drive pregnant Pennsylvania teenagers to other states for abortions. You see, the charitable pacifists saw the Commonwealth's parental notification law as...well, it couldn't be satanic. No, I doubt they believe in the foolish one.

They must have thought the law evil (or at least wrong) to justify violating it. Remember, these are the descendants of those Quakers who disobeyed earlier laws in the name of civil rights for blacks. So murdering children is morally equivalent to voting rights for all regardless of skin color?

How can a group founded on and dedicated to charity to neighbor and unconditional pacifism descend to the level they have reached?

As a Catholic, the answer is plain to me. People who separate themselves from God, His Church, His Word, and His Sacraments are bound to get lost. And worse. Losing your own soul is bad enough. Dragging others along with you reserves you a place in a particularly nasty circle of Hell.

It is difficult enough for those of us who are Catholic to resist the siren song of temptation, whether in great things or small. I thank God I do not have the added burden of being outside His Church. I cannot imagine how much greater a sinner I would be.

I know. You think I have digressed too far from Mr. Sobran's column. But the main question he inspired me to ask was this: How to live in the fallen world? The implications of this admittedly unoriginal question are profound. We must save our immortal souls and help to save as many others as possible, while burdened with the responsibilities of family, work, and citizenship, along with many, many others.

A more tantalizing way of asking the question (get ready for the big finish folks) would be: What would Abraham Lincoln have done differently if he
had been Catholic?

Sunday is V-E Day + 60 years

Tomorrow is the 60th anniversary of the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany's armed forces.

Thanks to my Dad, uncle Tony, my two uncle Joes and all the boys of 1941-1945.

I pray we never forget.

Saint of the Day

Today we honor two early martyrs of the Church, Saints Marian and James. All you angels and saints, pray for us.

Today's reading is Acts 18:9-18
Today's Gospel reading is John 16:20-23

Today is the First Friday of May.

Everyday links: The Blessed Virgin Mary
The Rosary
Our Mother of Perpetual Help

Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Scott Ritter, Super Genius

Normally, I wouldn't go near Al Jazeera (it's much less melodius than Al Martino), but Major K. spotted Scott Ritter vomiting hate, lies, and hate-filled lies to the network that now has to worry about shoring-up its South American commie demographic. So, naturally, I took a peek.



In the months that have passed since Iraq's much-hyped democratic elections, one word keeps creeping into my mind as I assess the tragic events unfolding in Mesopotamia today: Vietnam.

Betcha $20 Scott can't spell Mesopotamia.

The American press and punditry, intimidated and compensated into slavishly reporting on Iraq solely along lines that will not overly alienate them from the powers that be inside the administration of George Bush, have long ago foregone drawing comparisons between the ongoing conflict in Iraq and the one America lost in Southeast Asia some three decades in the past.



Oh, BTW, it seems Scottie has a thing for little girls. Here's a truism for you: A defective will is not just defective in one way. (Notice how this doesn't seem to bother serial adulterer Rush Limbaugh in the article.)

Colonel David Hackworth, Requiescat in pace

Whether you agreed with him or not is beside the point. Right or wrong, he worked tirelessly for the troops. May God have mercy on his brave soul.

The reign of the Stalinistas afflicts the poor people of Venezuela

South America set for Al Jazeera-style Chavez-backed TV


BUENOS AIRES -- A Venezuelan-backed TV network modeled after Al Jazeera is set to begin broadcasts throughout South America.
Critics fear it could become a pulpit for Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Telesur, short for "Television of the South," is billed as a commercial-free, hemispherewide counterbalance to North American media. It is slated to begin broadcasts within a few weeks.
"Soon we will have Telesur, a channel with information for South American countries, because is not possible that Venezuela and the other southern countries depend only on information from CNN," Mr. Chavez said ...


How in the world does he expect the masses to distingush between a Marxist-Stalinist propaganda tool of the invincibly ignorant and Telesur?


And then there is this pile of steamy profundity from the pinhead with a Che complex:


Capitalism and democracy are incompatible, leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said while espousing the benefits of socialism.

"The truth is democracy is impossible with capitalism because (with capitalism) there are only a few powerful while the majority of people are weak," said Chavez, El Universal newspaper reported Thursday.
"The course of socialism is the only true democracy."



Our Lady of Coromoto, patroness of Venezuela, please pray for the conversion of all souls.

Our attempt to establish a racist theocracy suffers a setback

...or, Andrew Sullivan bravely foils another papist plot.



Voters reject white separatist


Bozeman, Montana - A white separatist who stunned members of this community when he gathered enough signatures to run for the school board was defeated by a wide margin. Kevin McGuire received 157 votes Tuesday, compared with 4,039 votes and 4,031 votes for the two candidates who beat him and were elected to seats. Election officials said it was the highest turnout in 21 years. Mr. McGuire, 23, a member of the separatist group National Alliance, issued a statement late Tuesday saying he planned to stay in the city of about 57,000.
(Thanks to The Washington Times)

Humans for sale

From The Weekly Standard (via The Washington Times):


Crossing a line


"If there were ever any doubts that the National Academy of Sciences is pursuing an 'anything' goes approach to biotechnological research, they were erased by the organization's recently published tome, 'Guidelines for Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research.' " Wesley J. Smith writes at the Weekly Standard Web site (www.weeklystandard.com).
"The purported purpose of 'Guidelines' is to create voluntary ethical protocols to govern human embryonic stem cell and therapeutic cloning research -- 'to assure the public that such research is being conducted in an ethical manner.' Setting aside for the moment whether human cloning and embryonic stem cell research (ESCR) can ever be ethical -- a matter that remains heatedly controversial -- the NAS Guidelines clearly don't deliver the goods." said Mr. Smith, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute and a special consultant to the Center for Bioethics and Culture.
"Remember when, in 2001, proponents of federally funded embryonic stem cell research repeatedly told us that all they wanted was access to embryos left over from in vitro fertilization treatments (IVF) that were due to be destroyed anyway? Remember when ESCR advocates repeatedly asserted that they would never countenance the making of human embryos solely for use in research? These warm assurances were intended to convince a wary public that scientists deeply respected human life in all its stages and to soothingly assure us that biotechnologists would limit their investigations to embryos that were already doomed.
"Many of us suspected that restricting scientists to leftover IVF embryos was a temporary measure, a cynical political tactic intended to push the proverbial camel's nose of unlimited human biotechnological research under the flap of the public opinion tent. And that is exactly the way things have turned out.
"With most polls now friendly to ESCR, 'Guidelines for Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research' completely drops the leftover-IVF-embryos-only pretense. Indeed, in a major expansion of policy that was either ignored or dramatically downplayed in media reports and editorials about the guidelines, the NAS explicitly opens the door to using embryos 'made specifically for research' both through fertilization and nuclear transfer cloning.
"This is big news: The most respected science organization in the country is now formally on record as supporting the creation of new human lives explicitly as harvestable and, perhaps, patentable commodities."


People are not things. It's almost time to crack open those Soylent Green cookbooks.

SAT death rattle

From the NYT (via Best of the Web Today) comes the most idiotic and sick-making (hat tip: Evelyn Waugh) pile of offal since...well, since the last one:


Long Passes
Not long ago the College Board revamped the SAT, adding an essay section along with the traditional multiple-choice aptitude tests; the essay counts for 25% of the total SAT verbal score. The New York Times reports that Les Perelman, "one of the directors of undergraduate writing at Massachusetts Institute of Technology," analyzed all the graded sample tests the board has made public, and concluded, in the Times' words, that the test "is actually teaching high school students terrible writing habits"--namely, the longer the better:
[Perelman] was stunned by how complete the correlation was between length and score. "I have never found a quantifiable predictor in 25 years of grading that was anywhere near as strong as this one," he said. "If you just graded them based on length without ever reading them, you'd be right over 90 percent of the time." The shortest essays, typically 100 words, got the lowest grade of one. The longest, about 400 words, got the top grade of six. In between, there was virtually a direct match between length and grade.
He was also struck by all the factual errors in even the top essays. An essay on the Civil War, given a perfect six, describes the nation being changed forever by the "firing of two shots at Fort Sumter in late 1862." (Actually, it was in early 1861, and, according to "Battle Cry of Freedom" by James M. McPherson, it was "33 hours of bombardment by 4,000 shot and shells.")
Dr. Perelman contacted the College Board and was surprised to learn that on the new SAT essay, students are not penalized for incorrect facts. The official guide for scorers explains: "Writers may make errors in facts or information that do not affect the quality of their essays. For example, a writer may state 'The American Revolution began in 1842' or ' "Anna Karenina," a play by the French author Joseph Conrad, was a very upbeat literary work.' " (Actually, that's 1775; a novel by the Russian Leo Tolstoy; and poor Anna hurls herself under a train.) No matter. "You are scoring the writing, and not the correctness of facts." . . .
SAT graders are told to read an essay just once and spend two to three minutes per essay, and Dr. Perelman is now adept at rapid-fire SAT grading. This reporter held up a sample essay far enough away so it could not be read, and [Perelman] was still able to guess the correct grade by its bulk and shape. "That's a 4," he said. "It looks like a 4."
Perelman's recommendation for students preparing for the SAT: "I would advise writing as long as possible, and include lots of facts, even if they're made up." That's also good advice for those who want to go to work for Dan Rather at CBS's "120 Minutes."


Send your kids to Japanese schools!

Scathing report on IRS finally may see daylight

Will the kleptocrats of the Clinton administration finally face justice? Stay tuned, but don't hold your breath.


A Senate rider inserted in an emergency appropriations bill in the dead of the night which would close a rare window into political foul play at the Internal Revenue Service was quietly removed Tuesday in Senate-House negotiations. That offers full disclosure of a major scandal that has been percolating for a decade.
The rider would have de-funded the investigation begun in 1995 of then-Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros by Independent Counsel David Barrett. The amendment was sponsored by three highly influential Democrats, purportedly to stop leakage of federal money in a run-on program and end persecution of a no-longer-prominent Democratic politician. In fact, Barrett's investigation is the first independent probe, with subpoena power, of the IRS.

On the Future of the Jews

From Barbara Lerner at NRO:


It's Holocaust Remembrance Day, and secular Europe is sick of it. Certain that they have long since been cleansed of any guilt for the sins of their fathers, Eurosecs see themselves as the very incarnation of postmodern virtue. Naturally, they reject the grotesque racist stereotypes their fathers embraced. They know today's Jews are their moral inferiors for an entirely different, entirely factual, reason: that Israel is a poisonous foreign element in the Middle East — a racist, colonial state whose 5 million Jews are oppressing the Palestinians, occupying their land, and preventing peace and progress in the 22 failed Arab states that surround them.

That's leftist anti-semitism.


Catholic Europe sees Jews differently. Even though the Holocaust was a product of secular Europe, the Church is not sick of it; it's sick about it. From the end of World War II to the present, a succession of remarkable European popes have struggled to come to grips with the Church's responsibility. Men like Giovanni Roncalli of Italy, Karol Wojtyla of Poland, and Josef Ratzinger of Germany zeroed in on the old Christian idea that, in refusing to accept Christ, Jews defy God's will and become God's enemies. These popes faced up to the fact that this idea makes Jews seem wicked and hatred of them righteous, and makes it easy for secular forces to single them out for persecution whenever secular failures call for a scapegoat. The post-war popes decided that this idea isn't just destructive, it's false. The truth, as Pope Benedict XVI proclaims it today, is that God has a purpose for the Jews, and by maintaining their fidelity to the 3,700-year-old religion of Abraham, they are not defying God's will but fulfilling it.


And now, rightist semitophilia?


Evangelical Christians share the Catholic understanding that God has a purpose for the Jews, and take it one step further by focusing on the role of the state of Israel in fulfilling that purpose. They know God promised the sliver of sacred land between the River Jordan and the sea to the Jewish people because the Bible tells them so, and millions believe He has chosen the Jews to see that His promise — not the U.N.'s or the EU's — is fulfilled.
If you are growing uncomfortable at this point, dear reader, it may be because the Biblical claim to the Holy Land is the great unmentionable in American foreign policy. Amerisecs join with Eurosecs, the U.N., and the Arab League in insisting with lockstep unanimity that religious claims have no legitimate place in our Middle East policy, and in demonizing and dismissing any Christian or Jew who dares suggest otherwise as a dangerous fanatic, hell-bent on undermining our secular Republic and turning it into a medieval theocracy.


Now, Francis, we are talking about the real end of history, for the Jews are a key part of Christian eschatology, whether they want to admit it or not. (And whether or not certain Christians want to admit it.) Will the chosen people recognize Him when He returns? I hope so, but only time will tell.

21st century international power politics

...or Francis Fukuyama, call your office.


Ilan Berman of NRO wonders about an anti-US triple entente:


During his visit to New Delhi last month, Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao took pains to stress the similarities between Russia, China, and India, and to urge “coordination and cooperation” between the three countries as a means of promoting international “peace and security.” Jiabao’s comments were notable, insofar as they represent the first public endorsement by a Chinese official of a trilateral alliance between Beijing, Moscow, and New Delhi. But is such a construct possible? Many observers remain deeply skeptical. Earlier this year, Moscow’s Nezavisimaya Gazeta ridiculed the idea. “China, Russia and India are not forming and will not be able to form such a conglomerate,” the opposition paper insisted in a January editorial, stressing the historically-rocky ties between Beijing and New Delhi and Moscow’s wariness over China’s expanding energy ambitions. Some Chinese scholars are likewise incredulous, citing competing priorities between China and India and the long-standing premium placed by the PRC on independent foreign policy decision-making.

Kerouac Doll Joins Baseball Hall of Fame

...and its writings are just as meaningful as the original.


He was at one time a Catholic, and he was a writer, but by no stretch of the imagination can he be regarded as a Catholic writer. May God have mercy on his black, bloody soul.

Neo-Darwinist chickens run and hide

From The Washington Times Op-Ed page:


Starting today, the Kansas Board of Education will begin a six-day debate on the state's science standards, specifically the teaching of Darwinian evolution. On one side there will be about two dozen skeptics of Darwinism and proponents of an alternative theory of evolution known as intelligent design. And on the other side there will be a trial lawyer, Pedro irreconcilable, who has volunteered to defend Darwin.
If this seems one-sided, that's because the Darwinian scientists have chosen to boycott the debate, which is surprising since Darwinian theory is still the accepted standard within the scientific community. Their reason for doing so, at least according to Mr. Irreconcilable, is that "[t]o debate evolution is similar to debating whether the earth is round. It is an absurd proposition."


p implies q, therefore, p implies q! Brilliant!
Pay no attention to the non-existent transitional forms behind the curtain!


Read Darwin's Black Box by Michael Behe. He lays waste to "Darwinism". (which does not even exist anymore. What afflicts us today is neo-Darwinism, which is merely a political agenda masquerading as science.) If Darwin himself were still alive, he would have abandoned his theory decades ago because the evidence he deemed necessary does not exist.

Thomas Sowell cuts through the racialist fog...

...and smacks us upside the head with scholarship!
(Thanks, Townhall.com)


Black identity has become a hot item in the movies, on television, and in the schools and colleges. But few people are aware of how much of what passes as black identity today, including "black English," has its roots in the history of those whites who were called "rednecks" and "crackers" centuries ago in Britain, before they ever crossed the Atlantic and settled in the South.
Saying "acrost" for "across" or "ax" for "ask" are today considered to be part of black English. But this way of talking was common centuries ago in those regions of Britain from which white Southerners came. They brought with them more than their own dialect. They brought a whole way of life that made antebellum white Southerners very different from white Northerners.


I can think of at least a couple of people who are going to hate this.


Black identity has become a hot item in the movies, on television, and in the schools and colleges. But few people are aware of how much of what passes as black identity today, including "black English," has its roots in the history of those whites who were called "rednecks" and "crackers" centuries ago in Britain, before they ever crossed the Atlantic and settled in the South.
Saying "acrost" for "across" or "ax" for "ask" are today considered to be part of black English. But this way of talking was common centuries ago in those regions of Britain from which white Southerners came. They brought with them more than their own dialect. They brought a whole way of life that made antebellum white Southerners very different from white Northerners.


Take that, all you racialists, black AND white!

From the Watch What Happens When You Screw With the Natural Law Department:

Human babies 'grown in lab'


Human eggs which could grow into embryos have been created in a laboratory for the first time, scientists announced yesterday.
They were created by scraping stem cells off the surface of ovaries and exposing them to a chemical which stimulated growth.
The breakthrough suggests limitless supplies of eggs could be grown, solving the problem of the acute shortage of donor eggs for infertile women wanting IVF treatment.
But the idea has horrified pro-life groups after scientists admitted they could use the technique to 'farm' embryos for their research.
(Thanks to Drudge)


We are going to pay for things like this. All of us.

2 YEARS OF WTC PLANS LIE IN RUINS AS PATAKI ORDERS A NEW TOWER

From the NY Post (via Drudge):


It's back to the drawing board for the Freedom Tower at Ground Zero.
Gov. Pataki yesterday ordered up a complete redesign of the planned signature skyscraper in the wake of Police Department warnings about security risks.
The move is a major reversal of Pataki's promise to move rapidly to restore lower Manhattan's skyline with an "iconic" post-9/11 tower that would be the world's tallest building and a symbol of liberty.
Officials familiar with the decision say a new design by architect David Childs is expected within several weeks and will include a building that will rise 1,776 feet, like the original proposal from April 2003, but otherwise will "look a lot different."


Let's hope it looks different.


Pataki said the new design would remain consistent with architect Daniel Libeskind's master plan for the World Trade Center site.


Take a look at Mr. Libeskind's monstrosities here.
All the bloggers in the world blogging for a thousand years without pause could not even begin to expose all that is wrong with architecture today.

Another inappropriate use of the "Nazi" analogy

Italian website banned over 'Nazi' pope picture


An Italian website that published a photo montage of Pope Benedict XVI dressed in a Nazi uniform was told to suspend its activities on Wednesday for offending the Roman Catholic religion, court officials said.
Rome prosecutors accuse the Indymedia Italia site, which is part of a network of alternative media websites, of causing offense to the Catholic religion by publishing the photo montage alongside the caption "Nazi pope".
Under Italian law, the offense is punishable by up to one year in jail.
(Thanks to Drudge)


Sound familiar?

From the sports desk:

1) My homerun king is Hank Aaron.

Bonds has third surgery this year on knee


2) Is it my imagination or does Lakers owner Jerry Buss look like Rip Taylor's long-lost brother?

Battle of the Day

The fall of Corregidor (1942)

Today is the Feast of the Ascension of the Lord

1
The former treatise I made, O Theophilus, of all things which Jesus began to do and to teach,
2
Until the day on which, giving commandments by the Holy Ghost to the apostles whom he had chosen, he was taken up.
3
To whom also he shewed himself alive after his passion, by many proofs, for forty days appearing to them, and speaking of the kingdom of God.
4
And eating together with them, he commanded them, that they should not depart from Jerusalem, but should wait for the promise of the Father, which you have heard (saith he) by my mouth.
5
For John indeed baptized with water: but you shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost, not many days hence.
6
They therefore who were come together, asked him, saying: Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom of Israel?
7
But he said to them: It is not for you to know the time or moments, which the Father hath put in his own power:
8
But you shall receive the power of the Holy Ghost coming upon you, and you shall be witnesses unto me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and Samaria, and even to the uttermost part of the earth.
9
And when he had said these things, while they looked on, he was raised up: and a cloud received him out of their sight.
10
And while they were beholding him going up to heaven, behold two men stood by them in white garments.
11
Who also said: Ye men of Galilee, why stand you looking up to heaven? This Jesus who is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come as you have seen him going into heaven.

Today's readings are Acts 1:1-11 and Ephesians 1:17-23
Today's Gospel is Matthew 28: 16-20

Everyday links: The Blessed Virgin Mary
The Rosary
Our Mother of Perpetual Help

Deaf kids, their Marine friend, & a blog

Simply too cool for words. Thanks to The Mudville Gazette.


Students at Kendall Demonstration Elementary School at Gallaudet University had used e-mail and a school Web log to get first-hand accounts of the insurgency in Iraq and the daily survival of a U.S. Marine stationed there.
Yesterday, the 42 students met their personal link for the first time. Sgt. Earl "Jay" Beatty, 31, joined the school's sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders at a homecoming ceremony on Gallaudet's campus in Northeast. He returned home to Mitchellville March 18.
The students, who are deaf or have partial hearing loss, used sign-language interpreters to thank a tearful Sgt. Beatty and his wife, Donna, 30, for their contributions to their country and for their correspondence with the students. "People who went to Vietnam didn't get thanks. Just to see how important this was to these kids means a lot," Sgt. Beatty said.

From the History Never Rests Department:

Napoleon died of cancer


SWISS researchers say Napoleon Bonaparte died of stomach cancer, debunking the arguments that the dethroned emperor of France had been poisoned.
Those who argue that he was poisoned say that before his death Napoleon presented an abnormal weight gain for someone with cancer.
The Swiss study, however, compared nine pairs of trousers worn by Napoleon both before and after his exile on the island of Saint Helena.
The researchers concluded that the former emperor had lost more than 11 kilos during the last five months of his life.

I figured we had forgotten what pikes were...

'Bring bin Laden's head on ice'


United States spy chiefs ordered agents to deliver Osama bin Laden's severed head in a box of dry ice and hoist heads of other al-Qaeda leaders on pikes, a retired field officer has disclosed...


Schroen was also ordered to kill other al-Qaeda leaders suspected in the plot which saw terrorists slam planes into New York's World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, killing nearly 3,000 people.
It was the first time in 30 years with the CIA he had been ordered to set out to kill a target rather than try to bring them in alive, Schroen told NPR's station's Morning Edition programme.
He said he told Black: "Sir, those are the clearest orders I have ever received.
"I can certainly make pikes out in the field, but I don't know what I'll do about dry ice to bring the head back, but we will manage something."

(Thanks to WorldNet Daily)

Could Belarus be next?

Jeffrey T. Kuhner clues us in.


The winds of change are about to sweep across the plains of Belarus. Since 1994, the former Soviet republic has been ruled by Stalinist strongman Alexander Lukashenko. This proud nation has the dubious distinction of being Europe's last dictatorship. Mr. Lukashenko has stifled dissent, curbed opposition parties, imposed state control over the media and rigged elections to ensure his grip on power. Anti-Lukashenko journalists face constant harassment from the secret police, and several high-profile critics have gone "missing" -- most likely murdered by former KGB thugs.



or, is Lebanon still next?

Deli Owners to Send Salami to U.S. Troops

From the AP via The Washington Times:


The co-owners of Hobby's Deli hope to send salami to the entire 42nd Infantry Division, currently in Tikrit.
It'll take an estimated 23,000 salamis to reach that goal. But the first 2,000 or so of the dried meat - about 2 tons in all - was boxed and loaded onto a U.S. Postal Service truck Tuesday in the first phase of what the brothers dubbed "Operation Salami Drop."
"We know there are a bunch of homesick men and women over there, and to be able to do something. ... How do you put words to it? You have to do something. I can do salamis," Marc Brummer said.


How cool is this?


All have been purchased with donations of $10 per salami, including a 13-year-old girl who donated $1,000 from her bat mitzvah money.


I guess soldiers (and war) haven't changed much over the years.


The inspiration for the project was twofold. The Brummers' 82-year-old father, Sam - who owned the 95-year-old deli before his sons took over its operation - fought in World War II in France and described receiving a salami in the mail about every month and carrying it around in his backpack for weeks.
"My whole platoon would line up and I would slice pieces for them," Sam Brummer recalled. "It was very important to us."
The other source was Michael Rothman of Melville, N.Y., a college friend of Michael Brummer who is a captain in the 42nd Infantry Division. When Rothman noticed fellow soldiers taking a keen interest in the salamis he received in the mail from Brummer, the two decided to expand the operation.

Ha! I knew Pat Robertson didn't get it

From Greg Pierce in The Washington Times' Inside Politics column:


"In response to a question about whether religious conservatives would split off from the Republican Party if a moderate like Mayor Giuliani were nominated for president, Rev. Robertson quickly said, 'I don't think so. Rudy is a very good friend of mine, and he did a super job running the city of New York. And I think he'd make a good president. I like him a lot. Although he doesn't share all of my particular points of view on social issues, he's a very dedicated Catholic."


Uh, Pat? Pat?

A man who is divorced and remarried, advocates abortion, contraception, sodomite "marriage", and who knows what else, is obviously many things. But a "very dedicated Catholic" is not one of them.

Beware the misuse of words. Especially words you like and words you use to describe yourself.

BTW, are you now beginning to see why we Catholics (the truly dedicated kind) do not totally trust evangelical protestantism?

Google Refuses Conservative Ad, Similar to Liberal Ad

From CNSNews.com:


He noticed an anti-DeLay ad for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee that stated, "The Truth About Tom DeLay - Learn about DeLay's many scandals and help us clean up the House! dccc.org."

Greene attempted to purchase a similar ad that stated, "Truth About Nancy Pelosi - Learn about Pelosi's many scandals and help us clean up the House! RightMarch.com"

"That's all we did," Greene told Cybercast News Service. "We took the liberal ad and changed the words to make it a conservative ad." But Google refused the ad.

"At this time, Google policy does not permit ad text that advocates against an individual, group or organization," Google wrote Greene on the administration page of his ad account. "As noted in our advertising terms and conditions, we reserve the right to exercise editorial discretion when it comes to the advertising we accept on our site."


This is another reason I use Clusty the Clustering Engine.

Moral Absolutes:Part XI

Dennis Prager tries mightily, and gets close to the truth.


Nothing more separates Judeo-Christian values from secular values than the question of whether morality -- what is good or evil -- is absolute or relative. In other words, is there an objective right or wrong, or is right or wrong a matter of personal opinion?


But what about the relativistic Christians? Some of them call themselves conservative too. Being only a little relativistic or less relativistic than others just will not do. Remember, we are talking about the salvation of souls.

Thanks to Townhall.com. I cannot recommend this site enough.

Race, Sex, and Roe

From Peter Kirsanow of National Review Online:


Professor Steven Calabresi of Northwestern University Law School maintains that the Democrats’ unprecedented filibuster of federal appellate-court nominees is driven by the party’s imperative to retain its political advantage with minorities and women. Professor Calabresi notes that nominees such as “Miguel Estrada, who is Hispanic, Janice Rogers Brown, who is African American, Bill Pryor, a brilliant young Catholic, and two white women, Priscilla Owen and Carolyn Kuhl.” are victims of Democrats’ determination “not to allow any more conservative African-Americans, Hispanics, women or Catholics to be groomed for nomination to the High Court with court of appeals appointments.”
On the other hand, John Leo contends that the judicial filibuster threat is all about abortion politics.
Each is partially right.
Calabresi correctly notes that conservative black, Hispanic, Catholic, and female judicial nominees “drive left-wing legal groups crazy.” These nominees are drawn from groups Democrats view as part of their natural constituency — a demographic political entitlement of sorts. Elevating such nominees to highly visible judicial posts would highlight the fact that there are political alternatives for minorities, women, and Catholics other than the Democratic party. If the example of Janice Rogers Brown (along with non-judicial appointments such as Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell and Alphonso Jackson) can convince a mere ten percent of the black electorate to consider switching allegiances to the GOP, the Democratic party will go the way of the Whigs.


Does it really matter if it is religious hatred or merely power politics? I think they are the same thing. Both stem from the will to power. (BTW, Republicans and conservatives are not immune to this.) Everything is reducible to one of two things: Love or Power. Either you serve Love or you serve Power.



But while minority and female Republican judicial nominees may stir the most vehement opposition, is their disparate treatment truly based on race or sex? The fact that similarly situated white males are being forced to run the same gauntlet as Estrada, Brown, and Owen, suggests that race and sex are not the only reasons for the opposition. Indeed, several white male GOP nominees also have been subject to the filibuster threat: Terrence Boyle, William Pryor, William Meyers, and Brett Kavanaugh.
This is where Leo’s thesis comes in. While Calabresi notes that Democratic trepidation about Catholic nominees may be fueling the Pryor filibuster threat, Leo asserts that it’s actually a nominee’s demonstrated or suspected stance on abortion, not the nominee’s religion, that dictates whether the threat will be invoked. And although it’s true that an abortion litmus test may have a disparate impact on faithful Catholics, the same could be said for Evangelicals, Muslims, and Orthodox Jews (and for that matter, agnostic textualists).
Special vituperation, however, seems to be reserved for minority nominees suspected of being pro-life. Estrada, Rogers Brown, Claude Allen, and Levanski Smith were/are among these apostates. Pro-life minority nominees represent the perfect storm for Left-leaning opposition groups: non-conformist role models from the Left’s most reliable voting blocs who may one day be in a position to reconsider Roe v. Wade. Better to filibuster them than to have a televised debate on the Senate floor that might raise interesting and useful questions concerning the merits of monolithic minority support for one party or an unyielding defense of Roe.

Joe Sobran on the Left vs. Pope Benedict XVI

Sobran nails it, as he does most of the time.


The election of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger as Pope Benedict XVI comes as a shock to the liberal Catholics of Europe and America. For them the great papacy of John Paul II was a long ordeal, and Ratzinger, the uncompromising defender of Catholic orthodoxy, was a chief reason.

It had become customary for liberals to say they “disagreed” with John Paul’s “positions,” as if those were mere arbitrary personal opinions of the man himself rather than immutable truths upheld by the Church. On this view, a pope is a sort of dictator who may change the party line at his whim. If he doesn’t change it in keeping with the fashions of the age, he seems incomprehensibly stubborn.

But the Pope is chiefly a custodian, whose principal duty is to preserve the ancient faith we have inherited. It isn’t up to him to edit that faith to suit his taste or anyone else’s. In Catholicism, novelty is not a virtue. It usually signifies corruption, not improvement.

To the liberal mind, progress consists not in gradual development, but in dramatic breaks with the past, typified by the U.S. Supreme Court’s use of the U.S. Constitution — a “living document” — to foist sudden changes on an entire polity. Old laws (in America, there is no such thing as the ancient) are abruptly declared unconstitutional. To be disruptive is to be “progressive.”


And, oh, by the way, you think you know what the Second Vatican Council was, but you don't.


Until the 1960s, this outlook was alien to the Catholic Church. But the Second Vatican Council, summoned by Pope John XXIII, introduced the most sudden changes in liturgy and discipline in Catholic history. Liberals rejoiced, willfully mistaking these for changes, or at least the promise of change, in Catholic doctrine itself. The “spirit of Vatican II” became the equivalent of the American judiciary’s “living document” — allegedly authorizing unlimited change, including dissent from the most basic Catholic teachings. The supposed liberal “spirit” of the Council contradicted the orthodox letter of what the Council had actually said.

Conservative from the waist up

Michelle Malkin discusses the flavor of the week, South Park Conservatives.


Anderson argues that Comedy Central's cartoon series "South Park" embodies the "fiercely anti-liberal comedic spirit" of the "new media" from Kaus to Coulter. The cartoon, he writes, reflects a "post-liberal counterculture" that is "particularly appealing to the young, however much it might offend older conservatives."
Well, I'm 34 and no fan of "South Park." I have many good friends who are indeed huge boosters of the show, but I find that the characters' foul language overwhelms any entertainment I might otherwise derive from the show's occasional, right-leaning iconoclastic themes.
"South Park" may be "politically incorrect." But "politically incorrect" is not always a synonym for "conservative."


The correct phrase for these self-proclaimed conservatives is "conservative from the waist up". Reagan and Newt divorced and remarried, James Dobson's endorsement of masturbation, evangelical Protestant acceptance of contraception and divorce, etc. You get the drift.


My discomfort with "South Park's" increasingly mainstream vulgarity is not a matter of nitpicking. We're not just talking about a stray curse word here or there. As liberal New York Times columnist Frank Rich points out, "South Park" "holds the record for the largest number of bleeped-out repetitions (162) of a single four-letter expletive in a single television half-hour." That's probably about the same number of profanities uttered at John Kerry's infamous New York City celebrity fundraiser last summer, which Republicans rightly condemned for its excessive obscenities.
Rich is wrong about most things, but he's painfully on target in noting the incongruous pandering now taking place by some in the cool-kids clique on the Right. Conservatives criticize Hollywood relentlessly, but as Rich notes, "the embarrassing reality is that they want to be hip, too."


Michelle also verbally cuffs the First Lady, who appears to be soft on baby killing, just like her mother-in-law.


The First Lady resorting to horse masturbation jokes is not much better than Whoopi Goldberg trafficking in dumb puns on the Bush family name. It was wholly unnecessary.


This is what you get when people are taught they can decide for themselves what is right and what is wrong.
Conservative from the waist up. Demand truth in advertising.

International Respect for Chickens Day

I shall pay them the highest compliment with the utmost respect:


Cannelloni alla Toscana

Recipe courtesy Mario Batali and the Food Network.

Battle of the Day

On this date in 1942, the Battle of the Coral Sea began. The battle continued through May 8.

CALENDAR CHECK!

Tomorrow, May 5, is the Feast of the Ascension of the Lord. It is a Holy Day of Obligation.

Saint of the Day

Today is the feast of St. Thomas More, martyr and Lord Chancellor of England, St. Monica, the mother of St. Augustine, and St. Walburga,the daughter of St. Richard and the sister of St. Boniface. She is the patroness of sailors and invoked against storms and the fear of water.
All you angels and saints, pray for us.

Florida Judge OKs Abortion for 13-Year-Old

No link, no words, no nothin'. The story writes itself. May God have mercy on our souls.

Various threats

Thanks to NewsMax for these:



U.S. Commanders Can Launch Preemptive Nuke Strikes


Rice Warns N. Korea: U.S. Will Defend Itself


Iran: U.S. Needs a 'Punch in the Mouth'

From The Don't Screw With The Natural Law Department:

Oral contraception linked to prostate deformities


New Scientist provides the details:


Oestrogen-like chemicals commonly found in oral contraceptives and plastic packaging could deform the prostate gland of human embryos, suggests a new study in mice. Deformities to the prostate gland have been linked to prostate cancer and bladder disease in later life.
The finding is significant because up to 3% of women taking oral contraceptive drugs become pregnant without their knowledge, and continue exposing the fetus to the contraceptive drug many months into pregnancy.

In the immortal words of Victor Buono, "What you don't know can hurt you a whole lot." (This quote is from "The Exorcists" - Episode #82 of one of the greatest TV series ever, The Odd Couple. Mr. Buono played Dr. Clove.)

From The Science is Cool Department:

Even when practiced by the communist Chinese. (Worry not. In a couple of years, these guys will be teaching at Cal Tech.)


THE Great Wall of China is poised to play its part in pushing back the boundaries of quantum cryptography. Later this year a Chinese team, which has just broken the record for transmitting entangled particles, will test the feasibility of satellite-based quantum communication using the wall.
The Great Wall's new role was revealed after Jian-Wei Pan of the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei and his colleagues successfully transmitted "entangled" photons through more than 7 kilometres of the Earth's turbulent lower atmosphere without losing the photons' fragile quantum properties.
Quantum entanglement allows two particles to behave as one even if they are very far apart. Measure the property of one particle and you instantly know the property of the other. Entanglement allows you to transmit secure encryption keys over a public channel, but until now the furthest anyone had transmitted entangled particles through air was about 600 metres. This was achieved by researchers at the University of Vienna, who sent entangled photons across the river Danube (New Scientist, 28 June 2003, p 15). (Thanks to New Scientist)

The Mid-Atlantic Air Museum's 15th Annual WWII Weekend is only a month away!

The MAAM's 15th annual World War II Weekend happens June 3, 4, and 5 in Reading, PA. For war bird freaks, it doesn't get much better than this. Aerial demonstrations, war bird rides, you name it, they've got it.

My absolute favorite is the P-61 Black Widow night fighter the museum has been painstakingly restoring for years. When they get her airborne, she will be the only one in the world that can fly. But the planes are just the beginning.

There are huge US, Allied, and Axis encampments, mock battles, memorabilia sales, big band music, food, WWII vets swapping war stories, Abbott & Costello, and that other great comedy duo from that era, Eleanor & Franklin Roosevelt. (Yeah? So sue me. These guys are actors and the real ones are long dead.)

It is a wonderful way to spend a day or three with your family. Bring the kiddies and show them real live history, up close and personal.

And if you can't make it this year, it happens every year on the first weekend in June.

You see, it's cute when socialists do it...

...because they know what women want. Les Kinsolving on Kweisi Mfume's plan to win a US senate seat from Maryland by emulating the first black president.

From The Hand Of God Department:

A brain-damaged firefighter is back after ten years.

It can't be said often enough: Get your kids out of the government schools!

Notice how it is called "birth control".



A veteran school nurse who was fired after taking a teenager to an off-campus clinic where she got a pregnancy test and a "morning after" birth-control pill is suing the superintendent in federal court.
Lola Charette said she was unfairly fired from her job at Fort Kent Community High School because she followed the law and protected a student's right to confidentiality. But officials at School Administrative District 27 say she was terminated for violating an unwritten policy that prohibits students from leaving the school without parental permission.



Awwww, how cute! Concern for the fetus! (None dare call him a child.):


"It's also an issue in pregnancy," Miller said. "You don't want a pregnancy to go on for five months without any health care, because there can be consequences for the fetus."


"Plan-B". How clever. Imagine the marketing possibilities. (When you don't care enough to let your daughter live, try chewable Flintstones Plan-B baby killing pills. They leave your womb minty-fresh!)


When she got back to the school office, the principal's secretary told Charette that one of the girls had thrown away a cardboard package for "Plan-B," a brand name for the contraceptive.

Example: How not to use a Nazi reference

From UPI (via The Washington Times) we have a report that Rudy Giuliani is the victim of Photo Shop terrorism. His crime? He had the audacity to clean up New York City, once upon a time.
Do they not teach 20th century history to these children? Once again, I must invoke Fyodor's Rule #6: Get your kids out of the government schools!

War Films, Hollywood and Popular Culture

Michael Medved explains why Hollyweird cannot make a decent war picture anymore.


Three elements were always present in classic war movies—films like the John Wayne version of The Alamo, or The Longest Day, or A Bridge Too Far or Sergeant York. First, there was great affection for, and indeed glorification of, the American fighting man, who was portrayed as one of us—as representative of the best of what this country is. Second, there was obvious sympathy for the American cause. And third, the wars being dramatized were portrayed as meaning something.
Every once in a while we’ll still get a war film of this kind. Saving Private Ryan is an example, I think—even though there is a line in it where the Tom Hanks character says, “If we can bring Private Ryan back to his mother, then this whole god-awful war will have meant something.” Needless to say, WWII would have meant something even if Private Ryan had been lost. Another example is Glory, a great Civil War movie about a famous African-American regiment, made up partly of former slaves, and its doomed but gallant assault on Fort Wagner in South Carolina. And there was Mel Gibson’s We Were Soldiers, the single finest film ever made about Vietnam. But such traditional war movies are now the rare exception.
It is far more common in war films today, regardless of the war being depicted, for the three elements of the classic war film to be turned on their heads. American troops are more likely than not to be portrayed as sick, warped and demented—in any case, very different from normal Americans. Very often the audience is manipulated to root for the other side, whatever the other side happens to be. And whatever the war, we are left with the idea that it is meaningless.

(Thanks to townhall.com)

The Trouble With Tony

Andrew Stuttaford tells us why Tony Blair should not be re-elected.

Whenever I post any criticism of Blair over on The Corner a few angry e-mails usually come my way. Their gist: Blair is a great, great man, America’s ally; don’t bother us with the internal squabbles of your miserable little islands. This misses the point. In understanding why Tony Blair deserves to lose, remember that he’s the prime minister, not of the world, but only of those unfortunate specks in the sea. He may have been good for America, but he’s been bad for Britain.
And yet, when Britain votes on May 5 Blair will win. The only question will be by how much. But this seemingly inevitable success will owe little or nothing to Blair the international statesman (it will not be a referendum on the war, which, however unfairly, has done little for Blair other than to bolster his reputation for untrustworthiness) and almost everything to an economy that appears, however deceptively, still to be ticking over quite nicely. Critically too, Blair benefits from the weakness of an opposition seen by most voters as unprepared for prime time.


What about the Tories?


The Conservatives would, at least, be an improvement on Labour. They aren’t much, but they’ll do (come to think of it, that should be their slogan). After the traumas of recent years, they have been reduced to a rather tatty rump, led by a man sometimes compared to a vampire (well he has been endorsed by Christopher Lee), but, given the obstacles they face, this is inevitable. Nobody entirely normal would agree to take on the task of toppling Labour. That this is such a challenge is a measure of the Conservatives’ failure. Labour rule has been marked by sleaze, spin, economic mismanagement, relentless political correctness and a chaotic immigration policy, a record that, given more effective opposition, should be enough to ensure defeat.


A friend in need...etc., well, that is all well and good. But never forget what the Labour Party is.

Saint of the Day

Today we honor St James the Less, patron of druggists, the dying, hatters, piemakers, and Uruguay. St. James, pray for us.

Offered without comment...

This is a letter to the editor from the Lancaster, PA Sunday News on May 1, 2005:


I’m tired of people bashing Wal-Mart! I can’t speak for the chain as a whole, but the Ephrata Wal-Mart has been a great store for the Ephrata area and for our son, especially.
Our 19-year-old, learning-disabled son lost his part-time job when the Akron Restaurant closed, just after he graduated from high school. For six long months, we helped him look for a job, but nobody would give him a chance; only one business interviewed him.
Small family-run businesses are wonderful places at which to shop or work, but they can only hire a small number of physically and mentally challenged individuals. Wal-Mart is different. It is larger and its philosophy has been one of community involvement.
Wal-Mart called our son the day after he applied for a food-service job, interviewed him, and hired him within a month at a rate more than $2 over minimum wage for a full-time position with benefits. He received a raise in three months time.
The job was a great fit for our son. Though he took longer to train, he did better than even we expected because he was given a chance in a job he really likes. The managers have been extremely helpful in trying to accommodate his disability, and he is now able to contribute to society as a wage-earning young adult.
Maybe the reason Wal-Mart’s pay scale is lower than the national average is because it is willing to hire people who would either be unemployed or earning only minimum wage for the rest of their lives at a subsidized rehabilitation center.
Our family says thank you to Wal-Mart for being willing to risk hiring individuals who may not seem to be able to offer “normal” productivity. Maybe “normal” is overrated.

Susan C. Jones – Akron, PA

Kilroy Is Still Here

Proof that at times, the world is still a pretty cool place.

From the Can You Count The Number Of Evil Things In This Picture Department:

HoustonPress.com brings us what passes for a morality tale in post-Modern, post-Christian America:


Davis and Shapaka asked if he'd ever hit Erica before.
Yes, he said, but he always aimed for the arms.
They returned Jerry to school, only to arrest him later that afternoon.
With a videotape and CD recording the interview, Jerry repeated his story. He hit Erica only on the arms. There was nothing new.
The interview over, Shapaka turned off the devices and removed the tape and CDs.
But Jerry told him to wait. He had something more to say.
He told them he did more than hit Erica's arms. He did something unspeakable. He didn't want to do it, but she had asked. She had begged.
After Erica's doctor's visit a week earlier, Jerry said, she had decided she didn't want to be pregnant anymore. She'd heard that if someone stood on a pregnant woman's stomach, you could abort the babies. For days, she'd asked Jerry to do it. He didn't want to, but ultimately he gave in.
Erica lay on the bedroom floor, and Jerry, about five foot eight and 180 pounds, stepped onto her stomach, just above the navel. Then he pressed his K-Swiss sneakers into her flesh. Their statements vary as to how often they repeated this process. Jerry said it was two or three times during the week leading up to the miscarriage; Erica said he stepped on her twice in the two weeks prior to the miscarriage.


The punch-line? She will not be charged because she has the right to an abortion. (Thanks to Best of the Web Today.)

One Priest's Cross

What you think you know, and what you don't know about the Catholic Church's abuse scandal in the US.

The best news in years

(courtesy of Best of the Web Today on opinionjournal.com)

We'll Drink to That
"It's the news drinkers have waited years to hear--alcohol consumption is good for your brain," reports London's Evening Standard:
A pint of beer or a glass of wine triggers the growth of new brain cells and boosts memory, scientists say. . . . The growth of new neurons could improve memory and learning, said Prof Stefan Brene, who carried out the research at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. . . .
The findings did not surprise members of the Campaign for Real Ale. "It is well known that alcohol in moderation is good for your body so it's no surprise it's also good for your mind," said a spokeswoman. "Maybe that is why lots of pub quiz teams are so bright."
But there is a caution: "The increased production of new nerve cells while drinking can lead to alcohol addiction," says Brene. Besides, if you know too much, the Mafia might kill you.


Note the gratuitous anti-Italian slur at the end. I guess we can give a guy named Taranto a pass. Once.

BLACKFIVE's Blog

BLACKFIVE is one who Gets It. Big time.
Check out this post:

Occasionally, I get email from folks who ask me why I am such a supporter of Soldiers' Angels. Read this, and, if you don't know why at the end, you never will understand.
Back in early November, I wrote about Willie Aufmkolk as Someone You Should Know. Willie is a great lady with a heart of gold. She is a German citizen who (with the help of her husband and friends) has been taking care of our wounded troops as they are brought into Germany before making the trip back to the states (Walter Reed, Bethesda, etc.). She's part of the Germany contingent of Soldiers' Angels.
Here's just one story about how Willie connected with a wounded American soldier...
On January 13th, Specialist Matt Braddock, a Cavalry Scout with the 116th Brigade Combat Team, was driving a humvee near Kirkuk, Iraq, when an IED was set off near his vehicle.
The left side of his body bore the brunt of the explosion - severed artery in his left arm, shrapnel lodged in his left knee, mangled his lower leg, both feet were crushed.


If you are feeling cynical, this will help.
Also, if you buy one of his cool t-shirts here, you can help Soldiers' Angels.

Let Cookie Monster Be Cookie Monster

Jonah Goldberg is rocketing up the charts with great stuff like this:


The producers of Sesame Street have decided that Cookie Monster is gay.


There once was a movie entitled "Serial". I remember three things about it. It starred Martin Mull, Christopher Lee played a homosexual biker gang leader, and a kid in it quoted Mr. Spock thusly: "In an insane society, the sane man must appear to be insane".

Penis Day at Roger Williams University

or, Whatever happened to the Fairness Doctrine?


College administrators have been enthusiastic supporters Eve Ensler’s play The Vagina Monologues and schools across the nation celebrate “V-Day” (short for Vagina Day) every year. But when the College Republicans at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island rained on the celebrations of V-Day by inaugurating Penis Day and staging a satire called The Penis Monologues, the official reaction was horror. Two participating students, Monique Stuart and Andy Mainiero, have just received sharp letters of reprimand and have been placed on probation by the Office of Judicial Affairs. The costume of the P-Day “mascot” — a friendly looking “penis” named Testaclese, has been confiscated and is under lock and key in the office of the assistant dean of student affairs, John King.
The P-Day satirists are the first to admit that their initiative is tasteless and crude. But they rightly point out that V-Day is far more extreme. They are shocked that the administration has come down hard on their good-natured spoof, when all along it has been completely accommodating to the in-your-face vulgarity of the vagina activists.


Good luck kids. You are going to need it. (BTW, "Testaclese" is sheer genius.)

Saint of the Day

Today is the feast of St. Athanasius, Bishop, Confessor, and Doctor of the Church. He is known as The Father of Orthodoxy. Please pray for us, St. Athanasius, we could use some more orthodoxy.

What exactly does the US Navy have against Lt. Gordon Klingenschmitt, former chaplin aboard the USS Anzio?

Apparently, the chaplin dared to stick to his Christian churches' (Episcopal AND Roman Catholic) teaching on homosexuality, heaven & hell, sin, death, etc. (you know, all that Jesus stuff) and the Navy sent him ashore. This, and this is the Chaplin's side of the story. Call me old fashioned, but I think he makes a lot of sense and the Captain of the Anzio appears unworthy of a ship bearing that hallowed name.
The AP reported yesterday the Navy is reviewing Lt. Klingenschmitt's complaint.

Nazis = Stalinists

National Review Online brings us this update on the idiotic British professors' union, helpfully entitled The Stalinists of the AUT:


Israel, alone in the family of nations, earns the undivided attention of such initiatives. But please don't call these zealous unionised scholars Nazis. Call them by their true name: Stalinists. Theirs is not a blanket boycott. The AUT is ready to offer a waiver to scholars on the condition that they publicly state their willingness to conform to the political orthodoxy espoused by those academics who sponsored the motion. In their crusade for academic freedom, this minor detail clarifies their own definition of the concept of liberty: the freedom to agree only with the views espoused by the AUT itself; the freedom to endorse only one opinion; the freedom to conform; the freedom to be ostracized if you do not conform; the freedom to accept what otherwise would be imposed on you, under pain of boycott; the freedom to see your research set aside, censored, and denied publication if you do not embrace the spirit of the age; the freedom to remain silent and dissimulate your views if you disagree; the freedom to take an oath of allegiance to the dominant ideology of our times, and stand courageously loyal to the opinion nobody dares to challenge for fear of retribution; the freedom to harass, silence, oppress, discriminate against those who disagree. And of course, that typical Marxist tool of self-vilification, the freedom to publicly denounce your deviant views, make an act of contrition, and embrace the orthodox doctrine the executive committee of the AUT has sanctioned to be welcome back into the family of scholars. No book-burning, just Selbstkritik, please: We are British, after all...


Remember, this stuff is nothing new. The 20th century just made it more efficient. Who knows what new horrors the 21st will bring? Also please note this is happening in an enlightened liberal democracy (you heard me, SinnIRA).

And for you democrat wanna-bes out there in the unfree world, just remember the recipe for Leninist-Stalinism (Leninist-Leninism to the cognoscenti): Take a nascent liberal democracy, add a few thugs willing to kill absolutely anyone for any reason, and in no time at all you have totalitarian rule and 34 million murder victims.