France oui! EU non!

A leaked memo from a British government minister accuses French President Jacques Chirac of endangering the European Constitution through his inept leadership of the campaign for a "yes" vote in the forthcoming referendum and contends a rejection of the document would mean the death of the treaty.

If I could say it in Dutch, I would.

Babbling Commie Cretin of the Day

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez lambasted former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Azner calling him "worse than Hitler."
Thanks to (The Washington Times)

U.S. warned on dues freeze

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan's chief of staff yesterday acknowledged that scandals involving Iraq, peacekeeping and human rights have hurt the world body, but said any move to freeze or cut U.S. dues would set back the cause of reform.

"The option of withholding money immediately sets you off from all of your allies in this fight," Mark Malloch Brown, Mr. Annan's recently appointed chief of staff, told a House International Relations Committee hearing.

"It would be seen as the United States once again acting alone," he said.


Oooooohhh! What're they gonna do, kick us out?

Hey...wait...Yeah! I dare you to kick us out! Yeah, you pansies, you don't have the stones to kick us out!

The controversy over evolution includes a growing number of scientists who challenge Darwinism. Should schoolchildren learn that fact?

Darwinists say no, but Kansas officials may say otherwise.
(By Timothy Lamer of World Magazine)

The auditorium at Memorial Hall here looks like it came straight out of one of the older, small high schools that dot the Kansas landscape. At any moment, it seems, teenagers could come out onto the elevated stage and begin performing Grease for a theater production or singing "The Greatest Love of All" for a talent show.

But Memorial Hall isn't a high school and half the scientists invited to perform refused to participate. On May 5, 6, and 7 the Kansas State Board of Education had three days of testimony about whether schools, along with teaching evolution, should also inform students of the scientific evidence against Darwinism; in other words, whether schools should "teach the debate." Darwinians boycotted the hearings, insisting that there is no debate.

That conclusion was not shared by the 23 witnesses at the hearings.
Lehigh University biochemist Michael Behe, University of Georgia biology professor Russell Carlson, and University of Missouri-Kansas City professor of medicine William Harris were among those who argued that Darwinism is scientifically controversial. They pointed to challenges to the theory posed by the fossil record and by Mr. Behe's argument that gradual evolution by natural selection cannot account for the complexity of the cell. They argued that the evidence points not to macroevolution but to ID, Intelligent Design.

And now, see the violence inherent in the system.

The Darwinist response to such a challenge is no secret. "My strategy at this point is the same as it was in 1999," wrote Liz Craig of Kansas Citizens For Science on the group's discussion board in February. "Notify the national and local media about what's going on and portray them in the harshest light possible, as political opportunists, evangelical activists, ignoramuses, breakers of rules, unprincipled bullies, etc. . . . we can sure make them look like asses as they do what they do."

A perfect example of neo-Darwinism. No empirical evidence to back their beliefs, (I know Liz doesn't have an example of a transitional form of an eye in her pocketbook.) just a political agenda and the concomitant fascist bullying tactics. Lysenko Lives!

Supreme Court Wine Decision A Win for Constitution, Consumers

A step forward, but a small one.

In a ruling that bolsters the U.S. Constitution and benefits consumers, the Supreme Court on Monday struck down state laws banning interstate wine sales.

Old-economy regulations shield established industries from having to adapt to new and better ways of doing business. All too often, regulators skew the regulatory process in favor of established, "traditional" off-line companies.
(Thanks to the Competitive Enterprise Institute via Townhall.com)

Why do "Catholic" universities wish to associate themselves with the Church if they are utterly contemptuous of everything she stands for?

Truly a question for our age. Thomas E. Woods, Jr. of Human Events On-line offers an apologia.

The poet Robert Frost once described a liberal as someone who refuses to take his own side in an argument. He could have been speaking about all too many Catholic universities today, where you’d have about as much chance of hearing a commencement address delivered by a prominent Catholic who loves the traditional faith as you would Ted Nugent doing a public service announcement for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

Nice opening.

Last week, the Archdiocese of New York finally withdrew the Catholic designation from Marymount Manhattan College, which refused to rescind its invitation to New York Senator Hillary Clinton to deliver its Commencement address and receive an honorary degree. It was Senator Clinton’s support for abortion that brought down the archdiocese’s ire, though of course her entire ideology renders her completely unfit to address a Catholic institution.

That was overdue.

The Catholic Church, on the other hand, built Western civilization as we know it. The university system, a unique contribution of the West to the world, grew out of the Church. The modern idea of international law developed from the work of Fr. Francisco de Vitoria and other sixteenth-century priest-professors in Spanish universities. No longer do historians of economic thought date the origins of the “dismal science” to Adam Smith and the eighteenth century; more and more it is sixteenth-century Catholic philosophers who are being called “the founders of modern scientific economics” (in the words of the great economist Joseph Schumpeter).

BAM!

We have all heard a great deal about the Church’s alleged hostility toward science. What most people fail to realize is that historians of science have spent the past half century drastically revising this conventional wisdom, such that the mainstream view is now that the Church played an important role in the development of modern science. Some scholars, like Stanley Jaki, even say that it was certain aspects of the Christian worldview that account for the unique success of science in the Western world.

Take that!

How many people know that the first person to measure the rate of acceleration of a freely falling body was a priest, Fr. Giambattista Riccioli? Or that the man who discovered the diffraction of light, and gave the phenomenon its name, was another priest, Fr. Francesco Grimaldi? Or that to this day the American Geophysical Union honors exceptional young geophysicists with an annual medal named after yet another priest, the great seismologist Fr. J.B. Macelwane?

Likewise, how many people know that 35 craters on the moon are named after Jesuit astronomers and mathematicians, or that it was the Jesuits who spread Western science to places ranging from India and China to Ecuador and the Philippines?

Modern scholars like Brian Tierney are now saying that even the idea of individual rights, one of the distinguishing features of Western culture, can be traced back to Church lawyers of the twelfth century!

Take no crap from heretics and schismatics! (This is fun.)

Then there is Catholic charity. Catholic charity did not simply surpass the charitable work of the ancient world, though of course it did. It totally transformed the world’s outlook on helping the poor. No longer, as in ancient Greece and Rome, was charity dispensed in order to call attention to oneself or to place others in your debt. With the Church’s emphasis on the sacredness of human life came the idea of serving the poor with a cheerful heart, expecting nothing in return.

Yep.

And this is only the tip of the iceberg of what we as Westerners owe to the Catholic Church.

Amen to that, brother.

What (Most) Women Want

A review of Taking Sex Differences Seriously by Steven E. Rhoads

Yet amble any great distance along the path of sex differences, and you will soon find yourself with Harvard President Larry Summers, tripping painfully on the gnarled and dangerous roots buried there. Summers's provocative comments about sex differences at an academic conference prompted Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Nancy Hopkins to walk out of the room in protest. Hopkins, who now moonlights as the Ivy League's self-appointed, publicity-seeking gender warden, several years ago spawned a similar media tempest by claiming, on paltry evidence, that women at MIT were the victims of institution-wide discrimination.

Posturing provosts nationwide reacted with predictable alacrity, setting up panels and convening commissions at their own universities to root out this new but amorphous enemy: "unintentional" discrimination against women. Summers's crime, in this context, was to have the temerity to state what science has long known about men and women, and to do so without worrying about offending the missish sensibilities of some female academics.

It is, in this clime, a great relief to discover Steven E. Rhoads's Taking Sex Differences Seriously, an intrepid book that does much to advance the debate about why men and women are the way they are. A professor of public policy at the University of Virginia who has written previous books about economics and comparable worth legislation, Rhoads brings common sense and astute critical judgment to the difficult task of explaining sex differences. He begins with the word "sex" itself, noting, "When discussing the lives of men and women, we now use the term gender far more often than sex." This, he argues, "reflects the assumption that any distinctions between the sexes' traits, values, interests, skills and behaviors arise from societies' rigid gender roles, which channel people's thoughts and actions in stereotypical directions."

But this assumption is incorrect. Drawing on extensive scholarly research in history, biology, sociology, child development, psychology, and economics, Rhoads examines a range of evidence about the biological basis of sex differences and in an appropriately dispassionate tone notes the intractability of certain facts: Men's and women's brains are structured differently, for example, and even from the earliest moments of a child's life, the effects of these differences are impossible to ignore. "One-week-old baby girls can distinguish an infant's cry from other noise; boys usually cannot," Rhoads writes. "Three-day- old girls maintain eye contact with a silent adult for twice as long as boys," and boys "are more interested than girls in three-dimensional geometric forms and in blinking lights" at five months of age. Children understand these differences intuitively, as anyone who has glanced at a kindergarten playground, where young boys and girls self-segregate by sex, can attest.
(Thanks to The Claremont Institute via Townhall.com)

It is amazing that this is even a question. That'swhat we get for thinking sloppily.

Human embryo cloned for first time in Britain

From Yahoo! News (Thanks Drudge Report)


Scientists at Newcastle University, the first in Britain to obtain a licence to carry out therapeutic cloning for stem cell research, said they had successfully produced a blastocyst -- a tiny, early-stage embryo consisting of a hollow ball of cells -- cloned from a human cell using nuclear transfer.

Saint of the Day

Today we honor St. Bernardine of Siena. Pray for us, St. Bernardine.


Today's reading is Ecclesiasticus (Sirach) 6:5-17
Today's Gospel reading is Mark 10:1-12

Here's Mark 10:11-12, for those of you who think men like Reagan, Newt, and Limbaugh are good Christian conservatives:

11
And he saith to them: Whosoever shall put away his wife and marry another committeth adultery against her.
12
And if the wife shall put away her husband and be married to another, she committeth adultery.

See "Conservative from the waist up"



Everyday links: The Blessed Virgin Mary
The Rosary
Our Mother of Perpetual Help
St. Joseph, her most chaste spouse, pray for us.

Prayer to Saint Anthony, Martyr of Desire

Dear St. Anthony, you became a Franciscan with the hope of shedding your blood for Christ. In God's plan for you, your thirst for martyrdom was never to be satisfied. St. Anthony, Martyr of Desire, pray that I may become less afraid to stand up and be counted as a follower of%2

OK, I lied. Here's the dolphin letter to the editor

Well, it wasn't actually written by a dolphin. At least I think so. It could have been. They are terribly bright, after all. A sea mammalian propagandist perhaps.


Great Moments in American Letters

This item has no point, except that it made us laugh. Yesterday's Asheville (N.C.) Citizen-Times carried this letter to the editor, from Dave Genova (fourth letter):

I remember when President Kennedy raised our hearts, minds and spirits by pledging to send Americans to the moon. When we accomplished that incredible feat, my grandpa said it was a hoax and that in fact, the moon was really made of his favorite cheese, provolone. Today, science tells us that our galaxy, The Milky Way, contains more than 100 billion stars like our sun and beyond it are another 100 billion galaxies like the Milky Way stretching to the end of telescopic vision. Intelligent design or evolution? Evolution or intelligent design? Is it so scary to believe that the Creator belongs to no particular religion and that she, he or it provided the spark of creation more than 10 billion years ago with the intent to allow evolution to take its course? Is it so scary to think that we are related to dolphins, chimpanzees and field mice? It is a fact that there has never been a known case in which a dolphin has killed another dolphin. There is also evidence that dolphins can see inside of children, using eco-location, to help doctors locate and treat disease. That is a distant cousin I am proud to say I am related to.

Why Taranto? Why?
Why do you distract me with colorful kerfuffles, joyous jimcracks, and foolish fooferall? I want to spend my days studying federal budget projections and worrying over the latest food tetrahedron. Stop being so darned entertaining!

Dolphins are not your friends.

Just one more today from Best of the Web Today :

The Delphine Menace

Yesterday we noted a zany letter to the editor in an item we said "has no point." How wrong we were. It turns out that the letter writer, Dave Genova of Asheville, N.C., was dead wrong when he described dolphins as peaceful creatures. They have, in fact, been implicated in a whole host of crimes:

Bullying.
"Gangs of strong males pick on younger or smaller dolphins," National Geographic television reported in 1999.

Domestic violence.
"Dr. Richard Connor, studying dolphins in Shark Bay in Western Australia, has documented cases of males kidnapping and holding females captive, sometimes for months at a time," according to National Geographic.

Interspecies hate crimes.
"Harbour porpoises are being killed in increasing numbers by bottlenose dolphins around British coasts," the BBC reported in January. The New York Times reported in 1999 that "dolphins have been found to bludgeon porpoises to death by the hundreds."

Infanticide.
"Dolphin researchers from the United States and Britain recently reported that baby bottlenose dolphins found dead on the shores of both countries were likely battered to death by adult bottlenose dolphins," reported Ocean Watch in 1998. The Times reported in 1999 that "off Scotland, a scientist watched in shock for nearly an hour as an adult dolphin repeatedly picked up a baby in its mouth and smacked it against the water, over and over, until it sank from view."

Sexual Assault.
"A Norwegian man is accusing a dolphin of attempted rape," Reuters reported from Oslo in 1999. "Norway's top-selling daily Verdens Gang on Tuesday quoted the 28-year-old as saying that the dolphin apparently mistook him for a female after swimming alongside him in the sea off Farsund, south Norway, earlier this month. The dolphin's penis got caught between the man's swimming costume and his legs. . . . 'The dolphin shoved me forward two or three metres [six to 10 feet] before I got loose,' he said. 'At first I thought it was a fin . . . but dolphins don't have fins on their underbellies.' "

But here's some good news: It turns out that the fishing nets used to catch tuna have the added benefit of ensnaring and killing dolphins. Tuna that is not caught using this method is labeled "dolphin safe" so that you can avoid it. This Web site has a helpful list of supermarket chains that sell non-dolphin-safe tuna. Tuck away a nice tuna-salad sandwich, and you'll be doing your part to save the world from the delphine menace.

BTW, wasn't Flipper a porpoise? I sure hope so.

Headline of the Year nominee

Comedy Club Losing Members
"Joke-Telling Genitals Don't Get Free-Speech Protection"--headline, Detroit Free Press, May 12

Best of the Web Today is unstoppable.

From The Get Your Kids Out Of The Government Schools Department:

Great Moments in Public Education

"The Teacher of the Year for the Lucia Mar Unified School District cannot be named within the space of this story," reports the San Luis Obispo (Calif.) Tribune:
"It's everyone," said Branden Leach, president of the Lucia Mar Unified Teachers Association.

All 575 instructors in San Luis Obispo County's largest school district are winners, he said. "We all help children in our own special way."
The name of the winner was to have been announced at tonight's school board meeting. Instead, Leach will read a statement explaining why the union has decided not to pick a single winner this year.

Leach explains that the union actually means to make a political statement: "choosing one among us as the best is similar to merit pay," which Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger supports. Leach says that in the past when the union named a teacher of the year, "the winner invariably said 'I'm not the best.' " We're not sure arguing that all teachers are equally bad is the best way to win public support.
(Thanks to James Taranto of Best of the Web Today)

Were Spain's 3/11 bombings a coup d'etat?

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. of National Review On-line offers an explosive possibility.

But what if the perpetrators were neither Islamofacists, as the winning socialists immediately asserted, nor the Basque terrorist organization known as ETA, as the government of José Maria Aznar initially (and fatally) assumed?

On May 16, the Madrid daily El Mundo published a remarkable editorial that draws upon the paper’s ongoing investigation and contains information potentially as explosive as the 3/11 attacks themselves: El Mundo suggests that, almost immediately after the 12 bombs went off in one of the city’s busiest train stations, some in the Spanish police force fabricated evidence, then swiftly hyped it to the domestic and international press. The object seems to have been to support the oppositions’ claims that Islamists angry over the government’s support for the war in Iraq were responsible for the attacks.

At worst, the information uncovered by El Mundo could mean that the deadly bombing was actually perpetrated with the complicity of the same Spanish police bomb squad, Tedax, that was subsequently charged with investigating the crime.

Either way, if the leads published in recent days pan out, it would appear that Spain’s 2004 elections were stolen by terrorists, alright. But the terrorist operation that brought the socialists to power may have been an inside job — in effect, a coup perpetrated by some of the same authorities who are responsible for preventing terror. Explosive stuff, if true. But all preliminary and speculative right now.

I would be surprised, but not shocked if it turns out to be true. Machiavellian would not begin to accurately describe it.

If a Democrat falls in the forest and the liberal media doesn’t report it, does it make a noise?

Donald Luskin of NRO asks and answers.

On Monday, Florida congressman Robert Wexler broke ranks with fellow Democrats by offering a plan to reform Social Security. Amazing! After months of party-line stonewalling, Wexler made a gesture of bipartisanship. And yet there hasn’t been one solitary word about it in the “paper of record,” the New York Times.

This is big news. Why the silent treatment from the liberal media?

Could it be the liberal establishment is hoping that if they pretend Wexler’s initiative doesn’t exist, it will just go away, allowing the Democrats to get back to business as usual by boycotting President Bush’s efforts at reform?

Could it be an honest Democrat? Could it be Scoop Jackson reincarnated? Could an immense cold front be approaching Hell from the northwest? Could pigs be flying as we speak?

More likely, the reason for the media silence is that the substance of Wexler’s Social Security reform proposal is an embarrassment to the Democratic party. You see, Wexler’s proposal consists of just one element: raise taxes — 6 percent on anyone making more than $90,000 a year. Yes, normally Democrats aren’t embarrassed about wanting to raise taxes. But in the case of Social Security, higher taxes carry some special problems.

May is Victims of Pornography Month.

I did not know that. Anti-porn needs a better ad agency.

Predators & Pornography: A disturbing link.
By Penny Nance on NRO

On February 2, 2003, when seven-year-old Danielle van Dam disappeared from her family home in the middle of the night, every mother’s nightmare was played out on national television for almost a month while authorities searched for the girl. When Danielle’s body was found at the end of that month, the police and prosecutors discovered a frightening story about a neighbor of Danielle’s who had computer files filled with child pornography and even a sickening cartoon video of the rape of a young girl.

According to a report by Robert Peters, president of Morality in Media, on the link between pornography and violent sex crimes, the prosecutor in the Danielle van Dam case said “The video represented [the defendant’s] sexual fantasies and inspired the abduction, rape, and murder of Danielle.” According to Raymond Pierce, a retired NYPD detective who worked on the sex-crimes squad for many years and is now a criminal-profiling consultant, about 80 percent of rapists and serial killers are heavy pornography users. I was a victim of an attempted rape by a disturbed man who turned out to be involved in pornography.

May is Victims of Pornography Month. Today Senator Sam Brownback (R., Kan.), Rep. Katherine Harris (R., Fla.), Rep. Joe Pitts (R., Pa.), and leaders from the values community will participate in a summit to explore the troubling connection between pornography and violence against women and children.

As if I needed another reason to be proud I voted for Joe Pitts.

Just this past February, the New York Times reported a story about a teenage babysitter who had raped three young children he was watching in their homes. According to the Times, his pattern was to watch pornographic videos with the oldest of the children, a 12-year-old boy, and intimidate them all by torturing them with a knife and threats to their family members. Perhaps one of the most notorious serial killers, Ted Bundy, participated in an interview with Dr. James Dobson shortly before he was executed. In the interview, Bundy explained, “I’ve lived in prison for a long time now. And I’ve met a lot of men who were motivated to commit violence like me. And without exception, every one of them was deeply involved in pornography — without exception, without exception — deeply influenced and consumed by an addiction to pornography.”

Believable. But, remember, Bundy was a world class liar. That's how he talked his way into his victims' lives.

Yes, this stuff should anger you. But don't just get angry. Yes, you should pray. But don't just pray. Be an instrument of His will. How?

*We need to fund more studies of the addiction to pornography and its effects on violent behavior.

*Parents can install filters on any computer used by children and keep the family computer in a central location, not in a child's bedroom or someplace where parents might not regularly see it.

*We need to demand tougher law enforcement on the state and federal level. The Bush administration is stepping up federal enforcement of obscenity laws. This is a good first step. Contact the U.S. attorney for your district and ask what they are doing to enforce the laws.

*We need tougher state penalties against both possession and distribution of child porn and passing any kind of pornographic material to kids. Experts indicate that pornography is often used by pedophiles to break down the resistance of child victims. (emphasis mine)

*Parents should check out their state’s penalties for child rape and make sure offenders are going to jail and staying there for these offenses. Florida, for example, just passed a tough new law after the tragedy involving Jessica Lunsford, whose killer was a recently released violent offender.

*We should pass legislation to address the threat to children on the Internet. This includes chat sites, websites, spam, and peer-to-peer networks. Peer-to-Peer networks are of particular concern because they are widely visited by kids and offer porn for free without any age verification.

We can do this. Yes, it is a billion dollar plus a year business and yes, it is mostly run by organized crime, (eternal shame to all the paisans involved in this dirty business) but it can be stopped.

Change the laws and then change the hearts.

Okinawa hot under the hem over schoolgirls' short skirts

Once in a while, I'll post something concerning our friends in the Land of the Rising Sun. This caught my eye.

Schoolgirl skirts are creating a massive war of words in Okinawa, Japan's tropical island prefecture in the south, according to Flash (5/31).
Okinawa's schoolgirl skirt spat started in February when Katsuhiro Yoshida, a member of the Okinawa Prefectural Assembly, complained that hemlines were too high.

"When I've been walking through the streets recently, I've been stunned by the growing number of girls wearing incredibly short skirts. I don't know where to turn my eyes. And that's a bother. Have these girls no sense of shame?" Flash quotes the politician as saying in a protest he filed with the superintendent of the prefectural board of education. "We need concrete steps to counter this."

No, not that. This:

Others say the crackdown on short skirt uniforms is all for the good of the girls.

The men's weekly says that fans of long skirts point to the rape of local lasses by members of the U.S. military stationed throughout the prefecture as good reason for the girls to choose more modest attire.

Maybe it is time for us to leave Okinawa too.

Why Islam is disrespected

Jeff Jacoby of Boston.com hits a grand slam.

IT WAS front-page news this week when Newsweek retracted a report claiming that a US interrogator in Guantanamo had flushed a copy of the Koran down a toilet. Everywhere it was noted that Newsweek's story had sparked widespread Muslim rioting, in which at least 17 people were killed. But there was no mention of deadly protests triggered in recent years by comparable acts of desecration against other religions.

No one recalled, for example, that American Catholics lashed out in violent rampages in 1989, after photographer Andres Serrano's ''Piss Christ" -- a photograph of a crucifix submerged in urine -- was included in an exhibition subsidized by the National Endowment for the Arts. Or that they rioted in 1992 when singer Sinead O'Connor, appearing on ''Saturday Night Live," ripped up a photograph of Pope John Paul II.

There was no reminder that Jewish communities erupted in lethal violence in 2000, after Arabs demolished Joseph's Tomb, torching the ancient shrine and murdering a young rabbi who tried to save a Torah. And nobody noted that Buddhists went on a killing spree in 2001 in response to the destruction of two priceless, 1,500-year-old statues of Buddha by the Taliban government in Afghanistan.
Of course, there was a good reason all these bloody protests went unremembered in the coverage of the Newsweek affair: They never occurred.

Christians, Jews, and Buddhists don't lash out in homicidal rage when their religion is insulted. They don't call for holy war and riot in the streets. It would be unthinkable for a mainstream priest, rabbi, or lama to demand that a blasphemer be slain. But when Reuters reported what Mohammad Hanif, the imam of a Muslim seminary in Pakistan, said about the alleged Koran-flushers -- ''They should be hung. They should be killed in public so that no one can dare to insult Islam and its sacred symbols" -- was any reader surprised?

The question that obviously presents itself is this: What is wrong with Islam?

Let's get rid of the word "Holocaust"

This has bothered me for years, but this is the first time I have seen it addressed anywhere. I was not sure if Jews knew what the word "holocaust" meant or not. I figured they were entitled to call the nearly successful attempt to exterminate them from the face of the earth whatever they chose.
But now I feel justified in refusing to misuse the word "holocaust" ever again. It is "Shoah" from now on.

As we recall the defeat of the Nazis and their collaborators sixty years ago it is also appropriate that we take a look at the single word that has come to define many of the horrendous events of that period -- Holocaust. Why? Because the word "Holocaust" is an inappropriate description of what occurred, an insult to the memory of those who were murdered, and a theological affront to Jews. Despite the fact that the English language calendar notes that "Yom HaShoah" translates to "Holocaust Remembrance Day", the Hebrew word "shoah" and the word "holocaust" (which comes from Greek) do not mean the same thing -- not even close. Shoah means a calamity or catastrophe, something devoid of the presence of God. It was this word, along with the word "hurban" (Hebrew for destruction), that was used by contemporary European Jews to describe what was happening all around them. Jewish documents and reports of that era also use the word shoah as did the pre-Israel Jewish government, the Jewish Agency for Palestine. And it is the word used in Israel today to describe the events. But the word holocaust means something very different. According to the Oxford English Dictionary holocaust is derived from the Greek words "holos" (whole) and "kaustos" (burnt). The first definition listed is "a sacrifice wholly consumed by fire; a whole burnt offering." The earliest uses of the term to describe the mass murder of the Jews of Europe goes back to the 1950s, although some sources can pinpoint such a use in the mid-1940s. The key words for this discussion are "sacrifice" and "offering" and as such this definition is fraught with theological implications. In using the word holocaust to describe the death of millions of Jews, for the crime of being Jews, the word holocaust really begs three very disturbing and interrelated questions: Who is being sacrificed; for what reason; and to whom? Are we to infer that millions of Jews were sacrificed to God? Did God accept this sacrifice? For the sake of argument, if the answers to the first two questions are "yes", we must then assume that the sacrifice had a purpose. If the answers to the first two questions are "no" we are left to wonder why we are using the word holocaust.

Right on so far, but the author's limitations become evident when she begins ruminating on Christianity.

Among Jews, for whom the end to the practice of human sacrifice was codified in the Book of Genesis when God provided Abraham with a ram in place of his son Isaac, the very notion of millions of lives given as an offering for any reason, and the acceptance by God of such an offering is not only abhorrent, it is theologically untenable. Yet for Christians, the idea of human sacrifice, or more accurately, one human's sacrifice for a higher purpose, is at the core of their belief. From the Christian perspective does the death of so many Jews have a higher purpose? Was it God's plan that Jews should continue to be punished for the crime of refusing to accept Jesus as their Messiah? Can the Christian belief in the sacrifice of the Jew who has come to be known as Jesus of Nazareth, and his transcendence through death, be extended down through the centuries to include every Jew, perhaps his familial, but not his theological descendants? Christians are comfortable with the concept of physical and spiritual destruction and rebirth. Indeed Christians might feel at ease with the premise that so many Jews were destroyed and then reborn in the form of the State of Israel. Not only does it absolve them of complicity in the Shoah and the centuries of persecution, murder, segregation, and forced conversions to Christianity that preceded it, but it serves as a means of fulfillment of their prophecies.

UGH! That seems to be a particularly offensive twisting of Christian belief, (Quick! Call the Anti-Catholic Defamation League!) but that is the way the world works. The important point is we should not misuse "holocaust", regardless of the reason.

Babyattoir industry spies on possible Supreme Court nominees

Robert Novak, ace reporter of the Chicago Sun-Times, lifts a rock and finds baby-killing maggots.

On May 5, the U.S. Judicial Conference in Washington received a request from a Mike Rice of Oakland, Calif., for the financial disclosure records of U.S. Appeals Court Judge Edith Jones (5th Circuit) of Houston. A 20-year veteran on the bench, Jones is a perennial possibility for the U.S. Supreme Court. The demand for her personal records is part of a major intelligence raid preceding momentous confirmation fights in the Senate.

An unprecedented assault upon the independence of our judiciary! Who could be behind this dastardly plot? CuriousGeorge BushMonkey? Cheney? DeLay???!!!???

Jones was not alone as a target, and Rice is not just a nosy citizen. He and Craig Varoga, a former aide to Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, are partners in a California political consulting firm. Their May 5 petition requested financial information on 30 appellate judges in all but one of the country's judicial circuits, including nine widely mentioned Supreme Court possibilities. Varoga & Rice's client: NARAL Pro-Choice America.
Nobody can recall any previous mass request for such disclosures by federal judges. This intelligence raid is financed by the abortion lobby, but it looks to Republicans like a front for Reid and other senators who will consider President Bush's appointments for Supreme Court nominations. But Reid told me that he had heard nothing about this, adding: "It's ridiculous. What do we have Senate committees for?"

Relax, America, and know that those tireless defenders of your right to slaughter your kids in ways PETA would not approve for pigs is on the case! BabyMurder, Inc. has your back (and your son's entrails). They will do anything to stop the insane radicals who threaten your right to fornicate without consequences.

Saint of the Day

Today we honor St. Theophilus of Corte, a Franciscan. Pray for us, St. Theophilus.

Today's reading is Ecclesiasticus (Sirach) 5:1-8
Today's Gospel reading is Mark 9:41-50

Here's Mark 9:41, offered as a warning to all those who would harm children, especially sodomites who think hiding as a Catholic priest is the way to go:

And whosoever shall scandalize one of these little ones that believe in me: it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck and he were cast into the sea.


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

Task Force 2-2

From Stars & Stripes (via Lance in Iraq):

On the eve of last November’s battle for Fallujah, Lt. Col. Peter Newell and Capt. Kirk Mayfield stood together on a rooftop at the edge of the city thinking about the fight to come.
The Germany-based Task Force 2-2 — led by Newell’s 2nd Battalion, 2nd Infantry Regiment and including Mayfield’s Troop F, 4th Cavalry Regiment as well as the 2nd Battalion, 63rd Armor Regiment — would join a Marine division in an assault on the city that had turned into Iraq’s nastiest nest of insurgents.
That night, Mayfield’s company rained artillery and mortar fire on an entrenched enemy platoon, the first skirmish in what was to be the biggest Iraq operation since the fall of Baghdad. For much of the next two weeks, he and his men were under fierce enemy fire.
Newell said he never doubted his troops would win the battle.
“It was [over] before the fight started,” he said. “It was just a matter of how long it was going to take.”
On Monday, six months after the battle, Army Secretary Francis J. Harvey pinned some of the Army’s highest awards on Newell’s men for their victory at Fallujah. Newell accepted the Army’s highest unit honor, the Presidential Unit Citation, on behalf of the 2-2 Infantry.
Nine men earned Silver Stars for valor. Five of them — including Newell’s and his three company commanders’ — were for bravery at Fallujah. The medal presentation anchored a two-hour ceremony honoring the 1st Infantry Division for its yearlong tour in Iraq that ended in February.

Be sure to read the Silver Star citations starting near the halfway point of the article.

Joseph Farah on Buchanan on WWII.

I commented on this here.
Mr. Farah, Grand Poobah of WND, offers this:


Here's where Buchanan went wrong: "If the West went to war to stop Hitler from dominating Eastern and Central Europe, and Eastern and Central Europe ended up under a tyranny even more odious, as Bush implies, did Western Civilization win the war?"

The answer is actually quite simple: The West did not go to war to stop Hitler from dominating Eastern and Central Europe. The West went to war to protect itself from Hitler's domination.

Actually, the US went to war to protect Western Europe from German domination.

From The Culture Of Death Department:

From Scotsman.com, Mr. Leslie Burke fights for his life with the ghouls in the white coats. Bless and protect him, Lord.

ONE of the most important right-to-life appeals to ever come before a British court began yesterday as doctors called for clear guidelines on when it is appropriate to withdraw treatment from a terminally ill patient.
Last year, Leslie Burke, 45, who suffers from the degenerative brain condition cerebellar ataxia, won the right to stop doctors withdrawing treatment when his illness reaches its final stages.

But in an historic case at the Court of Appeal in London, the General Medical Council (GMC) is arguing the decision puts doctors in "an impossibly difficult position".

In the wake of the controversial case of Terri Schiavo in the US, lawyers for the GMC want to clarify how much treatment should be given to terminally ill patients.

Hearing Mr Burke’s case at the High Court in London in May last year Mr Justice Munby said that if a patient is competent - or, if incompetent, has made an advance request for treatment - doctors have a duty to provide artificial nutrition or hydration (ANH).

Yesterday, Philip Havers, QC, representing the GMC, told three appeal judges headed by the Master of the Rolls, Lord Phillips: "In other words, the doctor must provide the treatment which the patient demands notwithstanding that the doctor’s clear professional view is that the treatment will provide the patient with no clinical benefit or will be futile."
He said this was not the law - a patient did not have a right to require the provision of any particular form of treatment.

Mr Burke, of Mardale Road, Lancaster, sat in court in his wheelchair as Mr Havers outlined the GMC case for overturning the ruling by Mr Justice Munby.

The scary thing is that thousands of these cases are "resolved" every day and nobody but the victims, the killers, and the family members inconvenienced by the ill and infirm notice.
(Thanks to WND)

Clever children and the parents who don't understand them - Next on Maury

In Boynton Beach High's 2005 yearbook, her son, Robert Richards, is shown with a leash around his neck.

Students voting on superlatives — a staple of yearbooks for decades — elected Richards as "Most Whipped" by his girlfriend, using the slang term for a person who is controlled by another in a relationship. The accompanying photo shows Richards, who is black, on a leash held by Melissa Finley, who is white.

Nobles wants the books recalled.

"I know it's supposed to be in fun, but there are people still having trouble with African-Americans' past and this will be offensive," said Nobles, who said the picture reminded her of the poster for the 1970s miniseries Roots, which featured a manacled slave. "This picture, to me, is very distasteful."

What if they are into S&M. This could be a case of anti-pervert bias.

Another photo, of the winners of the "Most Likely To Be On Jerry Springer" category, features a male student pretending to be on the verge of hitting a female with the back of his hand.
(Thanks to WND)

Shouldn't that be "grackles of color"?

Black grackles attack walkers in Houston, 1 bloodies lawyer

A NEW PECKING ORDER

Dive-bombing grackles send workers running

The blackbirds' efforts to defend their nest ruffle some feathers downtown
By BILL MURPHY
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle

Some people who work in the seat of Harris County government are having trouble with higher-ups, and it has nothing to do with bosses or elected officials.
Aggressive grackles around the County Administration Building launched attacks Monday that left a lawyer bloodied and county employees wondering whether Hitchcock's The Birds was make-believe.

From The How Does This Clown Continue To Draw A Paycheck Department:

Keith Olbermann wasn't any good when he was doing sports on ESPN. He certainly wasn't funny. Now, he is more than a little pathetic.
A man should know his limitations. One of Keith's seems to be thinking.

I smell something — and it ain’t a copy of the Qu’ran sopping wet from being stuck in a toilet in Guantanamo Bay. It’s the ink drying on Scott McClellan’s resignation, and in an only partly imperfect world, it would be drifting out over Washington, and imminently.

Hardee har-har-har.
Read it if you want, but I will not waste more bandwidth on the likes of this churl.

Frank Gorshin, Requiescat in pace

Frank Gorshin, the impressionist with 100 faces best known for his Emmy-nominated role as the Riddler on the "Batman" TV series, has died. He was 72.
Gorshin's wife of 48 years, Christina, was at his side when he died Tuesday at Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center, his agent and longtime friend, Fred Wostbrock, said Wednesday.
"He put up a valiant fight with lung cancer, emphysema and pneumonia," Mrs. Gorshin said in a statement.
Despite dozens of TV and movie credits, Gorshin will be forever remembered for his role as the Riddler, Adam West's villainous foil in the question mark-pocked green suit and bowler hat on "Batman" from 1966 to '69.
"It really was a catalyst for me," Gorshin recalled in a 2002 Associated Press interview. "I was nobody. I had done some guest shots here and there. But after I did that, I became a headliner in Vegas, so I can't put it down."

May God have mercy on the soul of this boy from Pittsburgh.

Yeah, that Red Lobster sure is difficult to resist.

The lure of seafood may explain why some human beings first left Africa, according to a genetic analysis published Friday, the London Daily Telegraph reports. The international study is based on DNA evidence that early humans spread across the Red Sea from the Horn of Africa, along the coast of the Indian Ocean toward the Pacific over a few thousand years. It suggests the first wave probably included fewer than 600 women, the mothers of all non-Africans alive today, whose ancestors split off from the rest near the Persian Gulf.
(Thanks to The Washington Times)

Who's afraid of Janice Rogers Brown?

Why, the party of Blasphemy, Buggery, and 'Bortion, that's who.
Peter Kirsanow of NRO fills us in on why your evil neighborhood Lenin-Leninist hates a judge who happens to be black and female.

To Democrats, Janice Rogers Brown is the scariest nominee to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in the history of the republic. Since her nomination nearly two years ago, she has been the subject of the most vitriolic and persistent attacks ever leveled against a nominee to the federal bench other than Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas.
The black sharecropper's daughter, born in segregated Alabama, has been excoriated as a closet member of the Ku Klux Klan who, at least according to the Senate minority leader, would like nothing better than to return America to "Civil War days." Left-leaning political cartoonists depict her as an Aunt Jemima on steroids, complete with exaggerated physical features typically found only in the racist literature distributed by hate groups. She's been called insensitive to the rights of minorities, the plight of the poor, and the difficulties of the disabled. Her opponents warn that she is "the far right's dream judge" and that "(s)he embodies Clarence Thomas's ideological extremism and Antonin Scalia's abrasiveness and right-wing activism." And her opponents are plentiful, a who's who of Left-wing advocacy groups: Planned Parenthood, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, NAACP, NOW, People for the American Way, National Abortion Federation, Feminist Majority, and the American Association of University Women, just to name a few.

Smell the fascism? It's coming. Just wait.

What's driving the hysteria? Three things: demographics, abortion (more specifically, the doctrinal approach that produced Roe v. Wade), and impending Supreme Court vacancies.
As Professor Steven Calabresi of Northwestern University Law School has noted, Democrats are determined "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." And John Leo observes that abortion politics also is driving the opposition to filibustered nominees like Justice Brown.
As I noted in an earlier piece, 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. In that regard, Janice Rogers Brown could well be the Storm of the Century: A black female who has been nominated to the court viewed as a springboard to the Supreme Court and who may not view Roe as the zenith of constitutional jurisprudence.
Thomas Sowell adds the kicker: "What really scares the left about Janice Rogers Brown is that she has guts as well as brains. They haven't been able to get her to weaken or to waver. Character assassination is all that the left has left."

Wait for it...

Some of Brown's detractors dress up their opposition in legal garb. They contend that she "disregards legal precedent" but fail to cite a single case in which she's overturned existing law. They also allege that she lacks the qualifications to be a judge, ignoring ten stellar years on the California supreme court.
The biggest howler, however, is the claim that Brown "disregards the will of the people as expressed through their legislators." This, despite the fact that she dissented when the California supreme court struck down the will of the people (as expressed through their legislators) requiring parental notification in the case of a minor's abortion. Moreover, Brown wrote the main opinion upholding Prop. 209 — the referendum outlawing racial preferences that was overwhelmingly supported by the people but rabidly opposed by many of the same groups now opposing Brown's nomination. California voters duly punished Brown for disregarding their will by returning her to the supreme court with 76 percent of the vote.

Bingo!

None dare call it conspiracy.

Memos reveal strategy behind judge filibusters

Charles Hurt of The Washington Times reveals the origins of the most famous current example of obstructionism and obscurantism by the Party of Love.


The "nuclear" showdown that is expected to begin unfolding in the Senate today has its origins in closed-door discussions more than three years ago between key Senate Democrats and outside interest groups as they huddled to plot strategies for blocking President Bush's judicial nominees. In a Nov. 7, 2001, internal memo to Sen. Richard J. Durbin, who is now the minority whip, an aide described a meeting that the Illinois Democrat had missed between groups opposed to Mr. Bush's nominees and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Massachusetts Democrat and member of the Judiciary Committee.

All the usual suspects, I'm sure.

The internal Democratic memos, downloaded from Democratic computer servers in the Judiciary Committee by Republican staffers, offer a unique look into the early stages of the filibuster campaign, when Democrats were clearly doubtful that they could succeed in blocking any of the nominees. In the 14 memos obtained in November 2003 by the Wall Street Journal and The Washington Times, Democratic staffers outlined the concerns held by outside groups about Justice Owen's "hostile" position toward abortion and her "pro-business" attitude.
In a June 4, 2002, memo to Mr. Kennedy, staffers advised him that Justice Owen would be "our next big fight."
"We agree that she is the right choice -- she has a bad record on labor, personal injury and choice issues, and a broad range of national and local Texas groups are ready to oppose her," the aides wrote. Another nominee discussed often in the memos is Miguel Estrada, a Washington lawyer who became the first filibustered nominee and who withdrew his nomination to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit after waiting two years for a final vote. In the 2001 memo to Mr. Durbin, the staffer explained the concerns that the outside groups had about Mr. Estrada.
"They also identified Miguel Estrada (D.C. Circuit) as especially dangerous because he had a minimal paper trail, he is Latino, and the White House seems to be grooming him for a Supreme Court appointment," the aide wrote.

Apparently, the Party of Love does not love those who refuse to bow and scrape, otherwise known as intellectual kow-towing.

Happy 23rd birthday to The Washington Times!

Since I seem to be on a hot streak with America's real Times, I thought I would include my congratulations on a thankless job well done.

The Washington Times celebrated its 23rd anniversary yesterday with cake and champagne served to its employees at a midafternoon assembly, as its executives announced a substantial gain in audited circulation in the face of a national trend of declining U.S. newspaper numbers. For the six-month period ending March 31, the newspaper's daily circulation from Monday through Friday climbed to 103,017 -- an increase of nearly 3 percent over the similar period last year, according to Fas-Fax, the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) report of publishers' estimates.

As long as they do not push the Moonie nonsense too hard...

Delenda est kudzu.

The hardy, invasive, intrusive kudzu vine, introduced to this country 75 years ago to control soil erosion, could have what it takes to curb binge drinking, research suggests. The vine, which can grow at the rate of a foot a day and has been called "the vine that ate the South" because it grows with such abandon in the Deep South, appears to contain a compound that can be effective in reducing alcohol intake among humans.

Nooooooooooooo!

If they used any of my taxes on that research...why, I'll...I'll..

SAVE THE HOLY "FILIBUSTER"...

...PROPPING UP TOTALITARIANISM SINCE 2002 (when the party of Blasphemy, Buggery, and 'Bortion lost the US Senate).

BTW, it is not a filibuster properly speaking. A filibuster is a talkathon employed to stall legislation. There is nothing in the US Constitution permitting such behavior when the Senate is fulfilling its "advise and consent" duty.

Yippee! CBS cancels Joan of Arcadia

The failure of "Joan of Arcadia," which received an Emmy nomination and critical acclaim in its first season but faded this year, was one of his biggest disappointments, Moonves said.

I do not want to waste anyone's time (especially mine) discussing the cesspool known as TV, but this ignorant little weekly hour of blasphemy served up with oh-so-serious yet cute teen angst deserves to be buried and forgotten immediately.

BTW, there is at least one show worth watching on network TV. ABC's Extreme Makeover: Home Edition is enjoyable and it actually helps people. Yes, they constantly hump the tearjerker moments to grab the distaff side of the viewing public, but just concentrate on the power tools.

Malkin: It's not just Newsweek

One of the innumerable smokin' hot conservative chicks hears the death rattle of Big Media.

If you want to hear an earful, ask an American soldier how he feels about our news media. You will invariably hear an outpouring of dismay and outrage over antagonistic and reckless reporting. I have stacks of letters and e-mails from soldiers and their families sharing those frustrations. During the Vietnam War, those sentiments would get packed away -- private hurts to be silently borne for decades.
But today the Internet has allowed soldiers on the front to disseminate their views -- breaking through the media's entrenched, anti-military bias -- in unprecedented ways. In the wake of Newsweek's publication of its unsourced, mayhem-inducing and now-retracted item about Koran desecration by U.S. military interrogators at Guantanamo Bay, a sergeant in Saudi Arabia immediately responded on a blog called The Anchoress (theanchoressonline.com):
I have placed my life and the life of my fellow soldiers in danger in order to achieve a measure of the freedoms we enjoy at home for the Iraqi and Afghani people. As soldiers, we all understand that we may be asked to participate in wars (actions) that we (or our countrymen) don't agree with. The irresponsible journalism being practiced by organizations such as Newsweek, however, [is] just inexcusable. At this point, because of their actions and failure to follow up on a claim of that magnitude, they've set the process back in Afghanistan immensely . . .
I don't regret serving my country, not one bit, but to have everything I'm doing here undermined by irresponsible journalists leaves me disgusted and disappointed.
Military bloggers across the Web this week echoed the sergeant's disgust with American journalism. And it's not just Newsweek.

POW!

Take that you holier-than-thou elitist thugs! If you had not been silencing your consciences for decades with drugs, porn, perversion, and socialism, you might be able to beg the forgiveness of the real people - those who enable you to live freely. Those who sacrifice themselves for you. Yes, YOU, you smirking sons of bitches.

Buchanan Smacks the Catholic-baiting NYT

A must read for sane Catholics and Jews, and all sane people in general.

On the eve of Pentecost, the birthday of the church, this Catholic-baiting newspaper opened its op-ed page to a venomous anti-Catholic rant by Arthur Hertzberg, "a visiting professor of the humanities" at New York University.
Hertzberg slandered no fewer than three popes. Not only did the church of Pius XII remain "silent while Europe's Jews were murdered," he alleges, the church of John Paul II taught Catholics that the "sin of letting the Holocaust happen at its doorstep need not haunt the church ..."

Can we now inaugurate JINO (Jew In Name Only?)

For Hertzberg and the Times are perpetuating a blood libel that is Hitlerite in dimension. Just as Hitler blamed Bolshevism on the Jewish people by constantly denouncing "Judeo-Bolshevism," because some Jews had collaborated in the monstrous crimes of Lenin and Stalin, so Hertzberg damns the church because some Catholics participated in the crimes of Hitler.
Beyond a vile slander, this is a moral outrage. For Hertzberg seeks to lay the crimes of a Nazi regime at the door of a church and pope who spoke out with greater moral clarity and did more to save the Jews of Europe than any other institution. (emphasis mine)

Exactly! You think you know, but you don't know.

In a brilliant new anthology, The Pius War, every lie about the church and libel against Pius XII is addressed. Ronald J. Rychlak, Rabbi David Dallin and others scatter the jackal pack with the sword of truth. Here is but a fraction of what they discovered:
Of the 44 speeches Cardinal Pacelli, the future Pius XII, gave as papal nuncio in Germany from 1917 to 1929, 40 condemned some aspect of Nazi ideology.
In March 1935, as Vatican secretary of state, Pacelli wrote an open letter to the bishop of Cologne calling the Nazis "false prophets with the pride of Lucifer."
Though slandered as "Hitler's Pope" today, in the German press of the 1930s, Pacelli was called the "Jew-loving" cardinal because of 55 protests he sent to Germany as Vatican secretary of state.
In 1939 and 1940, Pius XII acted as the secret intermediary between the German plotters against Hitler and the British.
In 1940, the pope granted an audience to Joachim von Ribbentrop, who chastised him for siding with the Allies – at which Pius XII began to read to Hitler's foreign minister a list of Nazi atrocities. Wrote a newspaper of record: "In the burning words he spoke to Herr Ribbentrop, (Pius) came to the defense of Jews in Germany and Poland." That newspaper was the New York Times.
After hearing the pope's Christmas address of 1941, the Times wrote: "The voice of Pius XII is a lonely voice in the silence and darkness enveloping Europe this Christmas. ... In calling for a 'real new order' based on 'liberty, justice and love' ... the pope put himself squarely against Hitlerism."
In October 1944, after the liberation of Rome, the New York Times wrote, "Under the pope's direction, the Holy See did an exemplary job of sheltering and championing the victims of the Nazi-Fascist regime."

Buy this book!

In 1943, Chaim Weizmann, later the first president of Israel, wrote, "The Holy See is lending its powerful help wherever it can, to mitigate the fate of my persecuted co-religionists."
In 1944, Rabbi Isaac Herzog, chief rabbi of Israel, declared, "The people of Israel will never forget what His Holiness ... (is) doing for our unfortunate brothers and sisters in the most tragic hour of our history, which is living proof of Divine Providence in this world."
At war's end, Moshe Sharett, who would become the second prime minister of Israel, met with Pius XII and "told him that my first duty was to thank him and through him the Catholic Church on behalf of the Jewish public for all they have done in the various countries to rescue the Jews."
On Pius' death in 1958, he was eulogized by Golda Meir.

Read this book!

Links are back and better than ever

Books of the Day (What you don't know about the Spanish Civil War)...

...or, spitting into the post-literate wind.

Russia, Spain, Italy (and sometimes Australia) are passions of mine. At present, the old Soviet Union's archives are granting us a view of the truth Orwell could only guess at.

Here are three books I highly recommend:

The Spanish Civil War, The Soviet Union, and Communism by Stanley G. Payne

Spain Betrayed edited by Ronald Radosh, Mary R. Habeck, and Grigory Sevostianov

(Hey, did somebody put something in the water up there at Yale?)

Franco by Paul Preston

Everyone knows Franco's a joke. A dictator and mass murderer. Right? Well...

Consider his record now.

1) He protected The Church.

2) He kept the Soviet Union and Spanish communists from ruling Spain.

3) He kept Spain out of WWII.

4) He did not hand Spanish Jews over to the Nazis.

5) He provided for a peaceful transition to a constitutional monarchy upon his death.

All in all, not a bad record by 2oth century standards. He may be in Hell, but my guess is he is in a more comfortable circle than his dictatorial peers.

Saint of the Day

Today we honor Pope St. John I, pope and martyr. Pray for us, all you angels and saints.


Today's reading is Ecclesiasticus (Sirach) 4:11-19
Today's Gospel reading is Mark 9:38-40


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

Re: Judge Bataillon

P-BS-Watcher said...
Is Judge Bataillon so stupid as to believe that anyone would buy his argument, or is he so stupid as to believe it himself?

Unfortunately, he does not need a whole lot of people to believe his argument. All he needs is people too indoctrinated or too timid to stand up up for the law. Do nothing, and Bataillon and his ilk win. And don't think for a minute they don't know it.

Buchanan sees 'war' within conservatism

Ralph Z. Hallow of The Washington Times interviews true conservative Pat Buchanan:


"The conservative movement has passed into history," says the one-time White House aide, three-time presidential candidate, commentator and magazine publisher.
"It doesn't exist anymore as a unifying force," he says in an interview with The Washington Times. "There are still a lot of people who are conservative, but the movement is now broken up, crumbled, dismantled."

It was always a coalition. The "movement" consists of faithful Catholics, politically friendly evangelicals, and an ever decreasing number of people who see government as a necessary evil.

Unnamed phonies, he suggests, have infiltrated the movement. There are "a lot of people who call themselves conservative but who, on many issues, I just don't consider as conservative. They are big-government people."

The current president, for one, and his father.

He suggests that in some respects, traditionalists might be fighting for a lost cause. "We say we won a great victory by defeating gay marriage in 11 state-ballot referenda in November," he says. "But I think in the long run, that will be seen as a victory in defense of a citadel that eventually fell." As he later says, "I can't say we won the cultural war, and it's more likely we lost it."
The evidence? He says it was all over the tube, in prime time, at last year's Republican National Convention, which featured California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, New York Gov. George E. Pataki and former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, all social liberals.
"They are indifferent to those moral issues because they see them — and correctly — as no longer popular, no longer the majority positions that they used to be," he says. "They say, 'Let's put those off the table and focus on the issues where we still have a majority — strong national defense and cutting taxes.' "
So, Mr. Buchanan concludes, Republicans have "abdicated from the cultural war. They've stacked arms."

This is the newsworthy part of the interview. The Republican Party is not a conservative party and never has been. Sooner or later, for the reasons Buchanan mentions (and others), real conservatives will have to start a Conservative Party of some sort because their voices will always be ignored by the Republican leadership.

Just try to talk to the vast majority of Republican politicians about contraception, divorce, pornography, abortion, and increasingly, gambling, and watch his eyes glaze over.

Saint of the Day

Today we honor St. Paschal Baylon, Franciscan. Pray for us, St. Paschal.


Today's reading is Ecclesiasticus (Sirach) 2:1-11
Today's Gospel reading is Mark 9:30-37


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

LINKS are down for reshuffling.

It is a blogger's prerogative.

From The Perfidious Albion Department:

Now that's a real live DRUDGE link up there! The story: Lifestyle maintenance baby killings in the land of G.K. Chesterton.


A dramatic rise in repeat abortions has reinforced fears that women are increasingly having terminations for lifestyle reasons.One in three abortions is now carried out on women who have had at least one before. London's DAILY MAIL reports on Monday.

More figures from the British Pregnancy Advisory Service suggest that women who become pregnant at university or at the start of their careers see abortion as a means of delaying motherhood.Women between 20 and 24 have taken over from teenagers as the largest age group to have terminations-while only one in 100 abortions is carried out solely because of a medical risk to the baby. It was revealed that one woman from London had six abortions in just 12 months!

May God have mercy on our souls.

The truth about America's first ED president trickles out.

If not DRUDGE, then who?
(Well, it's actually Yahoo News from almost a week ago, but who cares? DRUDGE does the heavy linking.)

Bill Clinton rose to the White House in part claiming to be a supporter of women"s rights, but a shocking new book claims to document a pattern of disturbing attacks against women that renders the former President"s claim hollow.

In "Their Lives: The Women Targeted by the Clinton Machine" (World Ahead Publishing, $25.95, ISBN 0974670138), author Candice E. Jackson documents how Bill Clinton used his political power to harass, intimidate, and terrorize women who got in his way. Whether it was assembling a smear team to attack a grief-stricken widow, threatening a reporter for her research into an Arkansas health care scandal, or hiring private investigators to bully an ex-flame's family members, Jackson says that Clinton showed no reluctance to go after any woman who inconvenienced his political career.
"This pattern of cold-blooded willingness by Clinton, his wife, and their inner circle to do anything to maintain power is clear," claims Jackson, an attorney and commentator who is also a recovering victim of domestic assault.

How much have they raised for Peyronie's Disease?

Drawn from first-hand interviews and hundreds of sources, the book promises to counter Clinton's recent efforts to rehabilitate his legacy, although it does not focus on the morality of Clinton"s philandering but rather his willingness to wield his political power against his victims.

The book's publication has been hailed by the women whose story it profiles. Clinton sexual harassment accuser Kathleen Willey praises the book as "the most accurate portrayal...of the true nightmare Bill and Hillary put me through." Alleged Clinton rape victim Juanita Broaddrick says "Their Lives" is "a complete chronological account."

The kidnapping, rape, and slow brutal sadistic murder of Psychology...

...or, one of the things wrong with the Catholic Church in the US.

One of an occasional series.


There was nothing wrong with the word "psychology" until Freud, et al. got their bloody little paws on it. But since then, the Catholic Church has shied away from it, leaving the intellectual battlefield to the totalitarians and the perverts.

From the exile of the Tridentine Mass and Latin, to the hideous new church architecture, removing the altar rails, turning the altars around, the near oblivion of the Sacrament of Penance, receiving the Blessed Sacrament in one's hand while standing and receiving the Precious Blood at every Mass, to the Hee-Haw music and earth-worship lyrics, the "Eucharistic Ministers" and altar girls, to the shunting of the Tabernacle off to some side "chapel" as if the Body of Christ were some crazy uncle we have to hide in the attic so we aren't ashamed when we face of our Protestant neighbors, to clapping after every baptism and wedding anniversary announcement, to the Moonie-like confirmation ceremony of 3,000 kids in a hockey arena (This is a personal favorite of mine from the Diocese of Harrisburg, PA a few years ago.), the Catholic Church has forgotten there is indeed such a thing as the psychology of the laity, and all this foolishness is having an effect on American Catholics.

Don't the leaders of the Church realize all this is a major component of the loss of respect for the Church, Her Sacraments, and God Himself?

Or, do they know this all too well?

To be continued...

Today's forecast from Peking

Chance of continued commie enslavement is 100%.

Bill Walton's Minstrel Show

From the Sports Desk:

Why is Bill Walton's wearing an afro wig during ABC's NBA pregame show on Sunday different from a rascist minstrel show?

Oh, yeah, I forgot. He's a socialist moron of long standing. He's allowed to make fun of blacks because he really has their best interests at heart.

...and on Sunday, he almost had to wear it...

...for Indy rookie Danica Patrick nearly won the pole.


INDIANAPOLIS: Qualifying Sunday for the 89th Indianapolis 500 IRL IndyCar Series event on the 2.5-mile Indianapolis Motor Speedway, with starting position, car number in parentheses, driver, chassis-engine and four-lap average speed. Top 22 positions filled today; final 11 positions to be filled May 21-22:

1. (11) Tony Kanaan, Dallara-Honda, 227.566
2. (6) Sam Hornish Jr., Dallara-Toyota, 227.273
3. (8) Scott Sharp, Panoz-Honda, 227.126
4. (16) Danica Patrick, Panoz-Honda, 227.004

On Friday, Lucifer bought a sweater...

...because Tiger Woods missed the cut at the Byron Nelson Classic.

The Saint of the Day

Today we honor St.Brendan of Ireland, who may or may not have discovered America. Today is also the Feast of St. John Nepomucene, the "Martyr of the Confessional" who died rather than reveal what had been told him in the Sacrament of Penance. Pray for us, all you angels and saints.


Today's reading is Ecclesiasticus (Sirach) 1:1-10
Today's Gospel readingis Mark 9:30-37


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