Oops! There goes the insanity defense.

Convicted sex offender Joseph Edward Duncan bragged to his 8-year-old captive during more than six weeks on the run, telling her how he used a shotgun and hammer to kill her family after staking out their home for days, court documents show.

Shasta Groene remembered it all and has been providing authorities with details that are building a strong case against Duncan.

Duncan was charged Tuesday with three counts of first-degree murder and three counts of first-degree kidnapping in the deaths of Shasta's mother Brenda Groene, 40, her brother Slade, 13, and Groene's boyfriend Mark McKenzie, 37. If convicted, he could face the death penalty.

"He told her he was out driving around looking for children to kidnap," Kootenai County sheriff's detective Brad Maskell testified during a probable cause hearing. "He ... saw her playing in the yard with her brother and wearing a bathing suit. At that point he chose them as possible kidnap victims."

Public defender John Adams declined to comment after the hearing. "We try to do our litigation in the courtroom," he said.

Shasta's ordeal began when she heard her mother call her into the living room early on the morning of May 16. Her mother, brother and McKenzie were bound with zip-ties and duct tape.

Duncan then bound her and Dylan and left them on the ground outside near a swing set. Shasta said she heard McKenzie yell out several times, and at one point they saw Slade stagger, incoherent and bleeding profusely from the head, out of the home. The children yelled for Slade to untie them, but he was unable to respond.

Shasta remembered that Duncan wore dark gloves and had a shotgun and night-vision goggles. She also recalled the brand name of the hammer used to bludgeon the victims, which Duncan showed her after the attacks.
During weeks of captivity at a remote campsite in western Montana, Duncan told Shasta that he cased the family's home for two to three days, using his goggles to look in the windows and study the family's habits and the layout.
(Thanks to AP and Yahoo!News.)

BONUS Saint of the Day!

Today is also the Feast of St. Clelia Barbieri, patroness of those ridiculed because of their piety. She is also the foundress of the Congregation of Minims of the Sorrowful Mother who concentrate on ministering in hospitals and elementary schools to the sick, the aged, the lonely, and a prayer ministry for the poor. Pray for us, St. Clelia.

Saint of the Day and daily Mass readings.

Today is the Feast of St. Henry, the patron saint of the childless, of Dukes, of the handicapped and those rejected by Religious Orders. He was a great emperor and warrior and he was married to St. Cunegundes. This is also the Feast of St. Dogfan and St. Myrope. Pray for us, all you angels and saints.

Today's reading for the Feast of St. Henry is Micheas 6:6-8 .
Today's Gospel reading is Matthew 1:21-27 .


Everyday links:

The Blessed Virgin Mary
The Rosary
Our Mother of Perpetual Help
Prayers from EWTN
National Coalition of Clergy and Laity (dedicated to action for a genuine Catholic Restoration)


Memorare

Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary, that never was it known that any one who fled to thy protection, implored thy help or sought thy intercession,was left unaided.Inspired with this confidence, I fly unto thee, O Virgin of virgins my Mother; to thee do I come, before thee I stand, sinful and sorrowful;O Mother of the Word Incarnate, despise not my petitions, but in thy clemency hear and answer me. Amen.

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 the Lord Jesus. Intercede also for my other intentions. (Name them.)


PRAYER TO SAINT MICHAEL THE ARCHANGEL

St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle, be our defense against the wickedness and snares of the devil; may God rebuke him, we humbly pray, and do thou O Prince of the heavenly hosts, by the divine power, thrust into hell Satan and all the evil spirits who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.

The latest headlines from ScrappleFace.

When satire is this good, it threatens to become real.

Rove Resigns Over Ignorance of Plame's Name

Jailed Journalist Reports NY Times Desecration

G8 Mulls Qaeda Offer to End Modern Civilization

Bush: Africa's Poverty Reduces Greenhouse Gases

Kennedy Slams Unnamed Supreme Court Nominee

Insensitive and Possibly Insane Specieist Remark of the Day.

This one's for you, Jane baby.

Name That Panda!

The Washington Post on Sunday offered some suggested names for the National Zoo's new panda cub. The Post avoided the obvious choices, like Sandra O'Connor (pandas swing on trees; O'Connor, when she isn't teaching fourth grade in Alaska, casts swing votes), and some of their choices were truly inspired:

Parkay (Enough with all the comparisons to it being the size of a stick of butter. It's not butter, okay?)

That gives us a better idea. Given how unlikely it is that the cub will survive, why not name it Toast?
(Thanks to Best of the Web Today.)

Wristband kerfuffle coldcocks Little Chucky Schumer.

Band in Boston?

It appears we were too hasty in inferring yesterday that New York's other other senator, Charles Schumer, has accepted Jesus as his personal savior. The red wristband Schumer, who is Jewish, wore on "Meet the Press" turns out to have many possible meanings.

For one thing, it symbolizes several diseases: multiple sclerosis, diabetes and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, popularly known as Lou Gehrig's disease. It also has other medical-related meanings: Schumer could have been encouraging blood donation or protesting high medical malpractice costs in Arizona.

Red wristbands also are worn to support the troops and to memorialize Pat Tillman, who left pro football for the Army and was killed in action in Afghanistan. They can mean "freedom isn't free" or "listen to children." They can represent "Hope Courage Bravery Endurance" (though not proper punctuation) or a show of solidarity with "the artists and crafts people in developing nations."

Probably Schumer, a Democrat, doesn't mean his wristband to show support for Illinois Republicans, or, given that he is a New Yorker, for the Boston Red Sox. But maybe, just maybe, it's his subtle way of opposing a certain prominent "Yankee fan."

This is another reason why I highly recommend the red, white, and blue star spangled wristbands from the Paralyzed Veterans of America.

As the language goes, so goes the culture.

BBC No Evil

"The BBC has re-edited some of its coverage of the London Underground and bus bombings to avoid labelling the perpetrators as 'terrorists,' " London's Daily Telegraph reports:

Early reporting of the attacks on the BBC's website spoke of terrorists but the same coverage was changed to describe the attackers simply as "bombers."

The BBC's guidelines state that its credibility is undermined by the "careless use of words which carry emotional or value judgments."

Consequently, "the word 'terrorist' itself can be a barrier rather than an aid to understanding" and its use should be "avoided," the guidelines say.

A blogger called Gene has some specific examples. This sort of thing actually poses a problem for American liberals, though obviously they aren't responsible for the Beeb's actions. But can they credibly deny that they share something of this apologetic mindset?
(Thanks to Best of the Web Today)

Taranto on the fascist left's latest anti-Bush woody.

Roly Poly Fish Heads

Oh boy, a feeding frenzy! The speculation, and later revelation, that Karl Rove was a source who blew the whistle on Joe Wilson's Niger chicanery has revived the Valerie Plame kerfuffle. Just when you thought things couldn't get sillier, they do, as the Angry Left's excitement has bubbled up into the mainstream media.

The lead story in today's New York Times is headlined "At White House, a Day of Silence on Rove's Role in C.I.A. Leak." As the Mediacrity blog notes, this is "too cute," given that the Times has dispatched one of its own reporters to jail so that it can keep silent about what it knows about Rove or some other source.

Of course, there is a difference: The Times is keeping silent because the public has a right to know.

Yesterday's White House press briefing featured a similarly hilarious question from ABC News's Terry Moran to press secretary Scott McClellan:
Now that Rove has essentially been caught red-handed peddling this information, all of a sudden you have respect for the sanctity of the criminal investigation?

The information that Rove has been "caught red-handed peddling" is that Wilson's wife, Plame, engineered his trip to Niger. Wilson denied this when it became public two years ago this week, but it turned out that Rove was telling the truth and Wilson was not. In other words, here we have Moran, a reporter, attacking the White House for providing accurate information to reporters! This is journalism at its best?

We're too weary of the subject to review once more why there's nothing to the "scandal"; read John Podhoretz if you need a refresher. In any case, people who think in clichés keep asserting that "there's blood in the water," meaning Rove's. Those of us who have actually gone fishing know chum when we see it.

My next correspondent places WAY too much emphasis on pre-pubescent anatomy.

Methinks the pervert doth protest too much, but maybe I'm too close to the situation. Read my posts on Mr. Joseph Edward Duncan III's blog here and here.

Whether or not "Fred October" likes little girls (or boys) is between him, his therapists, and the cops. And the Feds, if ol' Fred can manage to find the state line.

As you peruse his two comments, dear reader, please note the following:

1) The infantile fist waving against God and His law.

2) His refusal to mention the first post, which equates Mr. Duncan's perversion with the intellectualoid perversion our crisis of faith engenders.

BTW, this is not a left vs. right thing. Second-rate pervert (I demoted him after reading about La Crowley.) Alfred Kinsey was a Repansycan. (literally)

Fred's first excretion:
Oh, please. Mr. Duncan is the Christian ideal. We, of the proper Christian faith, embrace him as a true visionary!How many times will we Christians we forced to ignore what is rightfully ours for the taking?Did you see any of the photos of that little saucy whore of Babylon? In those flip-flops? What Christian didn't want to park it rightly in her posterior? Roughly, to boot! OH! GOD! What an ass!You can rant and rave all you want...(Unjustly!)... about Mr. Duncan. He is the new message of our MIGHTY AND MORALLY SUPERIOR REPUBLICAN CHRISTIAN PARTY!He is a god amongst men that must be embraced and cherished for having the gumption to do what we all crave and desire to.

Fred's second excretion:

And let's be honest here. No true Christian in his right mind would even give one iota about that ugly brother.Tapping the end-quarters of the female is where the heart of all Christian men lie.

I must have unwittingly typed some kind of crank code word...

...'cause I got some mail from my intellectual and moral superiors!

First, there's Tarzan's concubine, replying to this morning's post on the vile mass murderer Rachel Carson. (I'll italicize the most blatant nonsense so you will not lose too many precious brain cells, dear reader.)

Jane said...
Are you insane???? DDT has been proven over and over again to cause eggshell thinning in birds. Mama bird sits on the nest, thereby crushing the would-be progeny. DDT is the cause of a number of extinctions and many more species becoming endangered. Rachel Carson had the nerve and smarts to come out with this in a time of rampant consumerism when people were thinking of nothing but themselves.

The blight on this earth is PEOPLE. The loss of a few people means nothing, in the scheme of things. The loss of an entire SPECIES means everything, evolutionarily.

La Jane doesn't mess around. She went straight to The Lenin Gambit in the second paragraph!

Please don't post such blatant misinformation when you obviously know nothing about the subject.

Judge for yourself, gentle reader. Was Rachel Carson a disinterested scientist using accepted empirical methods, or was she an ignoramus with a political and economic agenda?

Jane, while I may be insane, (I'm waiting for Tom Cruise and Kirstie Alley to give me their expert diagnosis.) you, princess, are a racist of the worst sort: Pretending birds are in danger while millions of black skinned people die needlessly!

Have you no shame, madame?

Major Steve Reich, Requiescat in pace.

America has lost another hero, who just happened to be one heck of a pitcher. Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN.com reports.

When you do this job for a living, there are athletes that stay with you. The years pass, the old newspaper clips fade, but those stories stay with you. Steve Reich always did. He was a West Point pitcher with a 90 mph fastball and a big, bright smile. He could've walked out of the United States Military Academy for a Top 25 baseball power and someday the Major League Baseball draft, but he never did.

Despite a fastball in the 90s, Steve Reich passed on a promising baseball career.Reich had given his word. In his mind, he played for the Corps of Cadets.

"I wanted to see how I stacked up against the best kids," Reich said. "I wanted to see how far I could push myself. Before I came here, I had no idea of what my potential was. I had no idea who I was."

No one had ever heard of Pat Tillman back in the early 1990s, but Reich, the left-hander whom a Cleveland Indians scouting director insisted "could have a long career and make a lot of money," stayed the course at West Point. Once Reich returned for his junior year in 1993, the Army had him for the next seven years – his final two at the Academy, and the mandatory five-year active-duty commitment that followed. In the end, his country would need him and he had been right: He had a commitment to honor.
"He was able after two years [at the Academy] to look past the possibilities of instant glamour," his father, Ray, said then.

David Robinson once had this choice to make at the Naval Academy. He stayed too. Only difference: The Navy let the 7-foot star out of his commitment and turned him into a public relations boon. Reich was no sure thing to make it big, and the Army always believed his greatest value belonged with them. They never did let Reich have his baseball career, and yet he always understood it. They had bigger plans for him.

Sometimes, the athletes we write about do stay with us. It isn't always the most famous and most talented that leave an impression on you. All those millionaires I've covered, and I always wondered how it turned out for Steve Reich, a small-town hero out of Washington, Conn. We had a common friend – the sports information director at West Point, Bob Beretta – and he would sometimes give me updates on Reich.

So, Beretta called Thursday afternoon to report that it was believed Reich had been flying that M-47 helicopter in Afghanistan earlier this week – delivering reinforcements to a fight against al-Qaida forces – when militants shot it out of the sky, killing the 16 American soldiers on board.
Major Steve Reich had beaten the odds on three voluntary tours in Afghanistan. This had been his fourth turn there. He kept asking to go back. He was 34 years old.

Point of information, please?

Transgender female dies of silicone shot
(Thanks to WND for the heads up.)

Is a "transgender female" a male pretending to be a female, or vice versa? (Ha! "Vice" versa! Get it?)

Patricio Gonzalez, 45, was hospitalized June 19 after being injected with silicone along with five other transgender females, officials said.

Since Patricio is a man's name, I'll go with that.

May God have mercy on his soul.

It Takes a Village to Staff a Gestapo Unit Update.

WorldNetDaily serves up an excerpt from the Book of the Day: "Hillary's Secret War," by Richard Poe.

By contrast, most conservatives – whether in or out of public life – long ago abandoned any effort to investigate the "Clinton body count." The topic has become taboo.

With Hillary all but certain to run for president in 2008, that taboo needs to be lifted. No critique of Mrs. Clinton can lay claim to thoroughness without addressing these darkest of allegations against the Clinton White House.

As noted previously, the secret "Communication Stream of Conspiracy Commerce" report makes clear that Hillary feared the Internet in 1995 chiefly because it served as a conduit for speculation regarding the Clinton body count – the growing number of Clinton critics, whistleblowers, former lovers, business associates and eyewitnesses to Clinton scandals of one sort or another who had been threatened, beaten, murdered or, in several cases, reportedly committed suicide.

The Clintons were hardly settled in the White House when Internet chatter about the "body count" began spilling over into mainstream media – into foreign media, that is. Most U.S. journalists were no more willing to touch the story in the early '90s than they are now.

"[A] peculiar pattern of suicides and violence surrounds people connected to the Clintons or their associates," noted the staid British journal the Economist on July 9, 1994. "It may be no more than coincidence, but it prompts questions."

Why so many people with knowledge of Clinton scandals met sudden and often violent deaths remains a mystery. Perhaps the Clintons were just lucky. Whatever the reason, the "peculiar pattern of suicides and violence" that surrounded the Clintons was an open secret in Washington from the earliest days of their co-presidency.

When covering Clinton scandals, journalists in the know feared for their safety. The most widely publicized case of journalist-bashing on the Clinton beat involved L.J. Davis, a contributing editor of Harper's magazine. New Republic Editor Andrew Sullivan dispatched Davis to Little Rock, Ark., to look into the Whitewater scandal. Davis produced a brilliant report titled, "The Name of the Rose."

Published April 4, 1994, Davis' nine-page cover story artfully untangled the spaghetti-like business relationships that bound the Clintons and the Rose Law Firm to an elusive, global network of money launderers, drug runners, and S&L pillagers, many with links to the corrupt Bank of Credit and Commerce International.

Davis told New York Post columnist Deroy Murdock that a "high government official" in Washington had warned him against lingering too long in Little Rock. "You've gotten into a red zone," said the official. "Work your ass off and get out of there as fast as possible."
Davis did not get out fast enough.

At about 6:30 p.m., on Feb. 14, 1994 – St. Valentine's Day – Davis went to his room in the Legacy Hotel and unlocked the door. The next thing he remembers is waking up four hours later with a lump "the size of a darning needle over my left ear." Davis' doctor told the Wall Street Journal that the wound was not consistent with a fall, but looked more as if Davis had been struck with a blunt object. The hapless journalist suffered a concussion and a blood clot on the brain, for which he was given medication.

Davis' watch and wallet were not stolen, but several pages of his notebook had been torn half through, as if someone had been rifling through them.
Davis bravely stayed on in Little Rock until his work was done. But things got stranger by the day. On March 8, Davis e-mailed a partial draft of his story to the New Republic. The phone rang in his hotel room three hours later.

"What you're doing makes [Iran-Contra Independent Counsel] Lawrence Walsh look like a rank amateur," said a man's voice.

"Who is this?" asked Davis.

"Seems to me you've got your bell rung too many times. But did you hear what I said?" the man continued.

"Yes, I did," Davis replied. The mystery caller hung up.

The man's remarks, especially his crack about Lawrence Walsh, seemed to indicate that he had intercepted and read Davis' draft. "Somebody seems to be reading my computer transmissions," Davis told Murdock. "Whoever called me knew what I'd just sent to the New Republic."

The biggest problem we have with Hitlery's candidacy is the fact she has female sexual organs. She will receive a free pass from all except the vast you-know-what. No one will even bother to ask any of the easy questions the nominee of The Party of Blasphemy, Buggery, and 'Bortion usually gets.

Speaking of Rachel Carson...

...here's another excerpt from Hoodwinked, courtesy of WorldNetDaily.

The following commentary is excerpted from Jack Cashill's eye-opening new book, "Hoodwinked: How Intellectual Hucksters Have Hijacked American Culture," where he shows how, over the last century, "progressive" writers and producers have been using falsehood and fraud as their primary weapons in their attack on America.

© 2005 WorldNetDaily.com

If there is any one man who defined the word "environmentalist," it is the recently deceased J. Gordon Edwards. Edwards was an author, a park ranger, a legendary mountain climber, and an esteemed entomologist.

In 1962, when Rachel Carson published her breakthrough book on the environment, "Silent Spring," Edwards was delighted. The young scientist eagerly raced through the first several chapters, but as he did, his anticipation eroded into uneasiness: "I noticed many statements that I realized were false." Attracted by Carson's message, Edwards tried to overlook the misstatements or to rationalize them away, but increasingly he could not. "As I neared the middle of the book," he adds, "the feeling grew in my mind that Rachel Carson was really playing loose with the facts."

In 1962, however, Edwards was doing fieldwork in Wyoming. He was scarcely in a position, either through prestige or geography, to challenge Carson's book, one that Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas was hailing as "the most important chronicle of the century for the human race."

Rachel Carson, however, had little interest in that race. There is no mistaking her position on man or his attempts to assert his mastery over nature. "The 'control of nature' is a phrase conceived in arrogance," writes Carson, "born of the Neanderthal age of biology and philosophy, when it was supposed that nature exists for the convenience of man." Today, Carson's geocentric smugness is the stuff of science fairs and after-school specials, but then it had the power to shock the system.

Carson derived much of that power from her Gothic literary flair. The title of the book derives from an opening "fable" in which a "strange blight" has crept over an imagined American town, casting its "evil spell" and spreading a "strange stillness" across the land. Throughout the book, Carson uses words like "toxins," "contaminants," "hazards," "death-dealing materials," and the inevitable "poison" where others might use "chemical" or "insecticide." And she never lets up.

As Edwards and others have argued, millions of people might be alive today – who aren't – if Carson had turned her talents to fiction or identified her work as such. For the one "poison" that truly provoked her literary rage was dichlorodiphenyl-trichloroethane or, as it is more commonly known and reviled, DDT.

A German chemist by the name of Othmar Zeidler had first composed this chemical compound in 1874, but did not suggest a use for it. In Switzerland, in 1939, Dr. Paul Muller was looking for chemicals that might kill insect pests when he came across Zeidler's written directions for preparing DDT. Muller perfected it, applied it, and in 1948 received the Nobel Prize for his work with it.

Had Gordon Edwards been in a position to cast a vote that year on Muller's behalf, he surely would have done so. While on duty in Italy in 1944, he and the other soldiers in his company had been plagued by body lice. This lice was spreading typhus among the troops, a disease that had killed 3 million people in Europe during and after the previous war. To check the developing epidemic, the chemists at Merck & Company in New Jersey produced the first 500 pounds of American-made DDT, rushed it to the airport, and flew it to Italy.

There, Edwards got the order to dust every soldier in his company with the DDT powder. For two weeks straight, he did just that, breathing the fog of white dust as he did so. Much to everyone's relief, the DDT worked, and the epidemic was checked. The surgeon general estimated that the DDT had saved the lives of 5,000 soldiers. After the war, inspired by this experience, Edwards went on to get his Ph.D. in entomology from Ohio State University and eventually headed out to San Jose State University where he taught medical entomology courses for more than 30 years.
Carson's iconic status never slowed Edwards down. In a series of articles and very public presentations, he exposed Carson and others like her who would deceive the public to advance their cause.

When Carson alludes to increased bird deaths during the DDT era, Edwards responds, "Is it possible that Carson was unaware of the great increases in mammals and game birds." Her claim that robins were on the verge of extinction because of DDT and related chemicals he reveals to be transparently untrue. Observers, he points out, spotted 12 times more robins in the DDT era than before. As to her claim that DDT was originally tested as an "agent of death" for man, this he calls "despicable." At the end of the day, beyond all reasonable doubt, Edwards revealed Carson's claim that DDT is "deadly" to be "completely false."

Not afraid to put his mouth where his moxie was, Edwards took to swallowing a tablespoon of DDT on stage before every lecture on the subject. In September 1971, Esquire magazine pictured Edwards doing just that. The accompanying text explained that Edwards had "eaten 200 times the normal human intake of DDT." He did not even consider this gesture risky. In the one year of 1959, for instance, unprotected workmen had applied 60,000 tons of DDT to the inside walls of 100 million houses. Neither the 130,000 workmen or the 535 million people living in the sprayed houses had experienced any adverse effects.

Today, more than 40 years after Carson's death, the struggle over DDT use continues. One Western country after another followed America's lead and outlawed the chemical. In his bold and meticulously documented 2004 novel, "State of Fear," Michael Crichton describes this ban as "arguably the greatest tragedy of the 20th century" and provides the mortality statistics to back up his claim.

Like Crichton, J. Gordon Edwards was not afraid to tackle the naturalist establishment. He cited the 500 million saved lives that the National Academy of Sciences attributed to DDT. He echoed the World Health Organization's affirmation that no substance had ever proved more beneficial to man. And then he dared to question publicly why Rachel Carson and her followers chose to ignore the undeniable human benefits of DDT.

In Carson's case, the answer is apparent on every other page of "Silent Spring." Straightforward as always, Edwards describes the Carson philosophy as a "lack of concern for human lives." She could vividly describe the death of a bird, notes Edwards, but nowhere in the book does she even think to describe the death of a human by an insect-borne disease.

For the record, the research activities of this DDT-eating scientist finally caught up with him. Edwards died of a heart attack while climbing Divide Mountain at Glacier National Park, where he held the unofficial title as the patron saint of climbing. He was 84 years old.

I'll urge Bush to fire Karl Rove when Sandy Berger is hanged for treason.

Golly, it feels good just to type that.

The Rove kerfuffle.
(Remember, the NYT is hardly a disinterested obsrver of all this.)

Berger's crime.

1) Rove never spoke the name Plame.
2) The NYT is keeping their reporter in the big house because they want to protect their secret source. It can't be Rove. Can you imagine those bastards protecting Karl Rove?
3) The source may be Plame's husband. He's a liar and a traitor.

End of kerfuffle.

Saint of the Day and daily Mass readings.

Today is the Feast of St. Veronica, who wiped the Lord's face as he struggled with the Cross. His image on her cloth afterwards gave her the name Veronica: "vera icon" means true image. This is also the Feast of St. Peter Khanh, a Vietnamese Catholic catechist matyred in 1842.

Today's reading is Exodus 2:1-15 .
Today's Gospel reading is Matthew 11:20-24 .


Everyday links:

The Blessed Virgin Mary
The Rosary
Our Mother of Perpetual Help
Prayers from EWTN
National Coalition of Clergy and Laity (dedicated to action for a genuine Catholic Restoration)


Memorare

Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary, that never was it known that any one who fled to thy protection, implored thy help or sought thy intercession,was left unaided.Inspired with this confidence, I fly unto thee, O Virgin of virgins my Mother; to thee do I come, before thee I stand, sinful and sorrowful;O Mother of the Word Incarnate, despise not my petitions, but in thy clemency hear and answer me. Amen.


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 the Lord Jesus. Intercede also for my other intentions. (Name them.)


PRAYER TO SAINT MICHAEL THE ARCHANGEL

St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle, be our defense against the wickedness and snares of the devil; may God rebuke him, we humbly pray, and do thou O Prince of the heavenly hosts, by the divine power, thrust into hell Satan and all the evil spirits who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.

More from a perverted killer's blog.

Below is the last post to a blog believed to belong to Joseph Edward Duncan III, multiple murderer and sex offender. What caught my eye was the first paragraph where he types "Does it matter?"

This reminds me of something Jack Cashill said while talking about his latest book Hoodwinked: How Intellectual Hucksters Have Hijacked American Culture on CSPAN. He said the common thread throughout all the intellectual frauds he investigated, from Aleister Crowley and Walter Duranty to Lillian Hellman, from Rachel Carson and Margaret Mead to Alfred Kinsey, was a moment when each lost all faith. Not just a particular religion, but faith in everything.

This despair enabled these people to do anything and justify anything. They acknowledged no truth but their own wills. And millions were murdered. And even more untold millions lost their souls because of them.
May God have mercy on Mr. Duncan's soul. He is going to need it.

I doubt it would be of any comfort to him to know he shares quite a bit with some of the intellectual "giants" of our age.


Friday, May 13, 2005

Still Confused

My blog entries lately are erratic and full of a lot of B.S., for that I apologize. I am just trying to put down what is in my head, regardless. As far as "taking people with me" well, I don't know if that is right or wrong. In fact, I don't know much any more what right and wrong even is. My view is either everything is right (in some regard) or everything is wrong (in some other regard). The question (one I am struggling with at this point) is, "Does it matter?"

Does anything matter? My mother is crying right now, because her son is in trouble again. She tried to raise a good son, and she knows her son has a good heart, so why does he do these things? She is probably more hurt and confused than me. Does it matter? It hurts me to know these things, but DOES IT MATTER???

Have pity on her O Lord, and comfort her.

A hundred years from now, all my mothers pain will be forgotten, and other mothers will cry for there sons. A million years from now there probably won't be any mothers (at least not like we know).

Some pain is eternal, Mr. Duncan. As is the memory of The One Outside of Time.

I have feelings, in fact I think I must be more sensitive than most people because I seem to feel more than they do, at least more than what they openly express. I feel for the starving children and families in the world, others say, "Oh, that's too bad, but I can't do anything so..."

Obviously, sir, you are a great humanist.

I wish I could be more honest about my feelings, but those demons made sure I'd never be able to do that. I might not know if it matters, but just in case, I am working on an encrypted journal that is hundreds of times more frank than this blog could ever be (that's why I keep it encrypted). I figure in 30 years or more we will have the technology to easily crack the encryption (currently very un-crackable, PGP) and then the world will know who I really was, and what I really did, and what I really thought. Also, maybe then they will understand that despite my actions, I'm not a bad person, I just have a disease contracted from society, and it hurts a lot.

It has been shared with the world countless times by countless men such as you. It will be written again and again after you are gone from this place.

I hope to complete this journal before I die (soon) or turn myself in (I still might do that, I think it is the right thing, but of course, I'm not sure).Speak of being sure; I wish I could be sure about my thoughts. But right now the only thing I'm sure about is that I'm sure about nothing. It is not a good position to be in considering my circumstances (being a felony fugitive and all).

You should have turned yourself in before you chose to slaughter and rape again.

The comfort of the innocent lies in the fact that Justice Himself exists.

"Blogging the Fifth Nail"...

...or, Confessions (Rationalizations?) of a child killer.

Joseph Duncan's Criminological Theories

We haven't really been following this horrific story, except inasmuch as it's unavoidable on the cable news networks. But now there's a new-media connection:

Convicted sex offender Joseph Edward Duncan III spent months on the Internet documenting his internal struggle over right vs. wrong. Then, four days before two Idaho children he is accused of kidnapping disappeared, he wrote: "The demons have taken over."

Literally.

It was one of the last entries in Duncan's Weblog before the 42-year-old North Dakota man was arrested and charged this week with two kidnapping counts. Authorities believe he took 9-year-old Dylan Groene and 8-year-old Shasta Groene from their Idaho home shortly before their 13-year-old brother, mother and her boyfriend were bludgeoned to death May 15. Police say Duncan also is a suspect in the killings.

We checked out Duncan's blog, and it is as creepy as you'd expect. It also turns out Duncan has theories about crime and punishment, as evidenced by this Feb. 21 entry:

If you knew without doubt that closing 9 out of 10 prisons and releasing the 9 least violent out of 10 prisoners would reduce new crimes by more than half in less than 5 years, would you be for it?

In the real world, meanwhile, the number of people in prison keeps rising despite lower crime rates! The New York Times should look into this.
(Thanks to Best of the Web Today.)

OHMYGOODNESS! An intelligent leftist...

...or, Is William Saletan a blind squirrel holding a broken pocket watch?

James Taranto leaves me in a quandry:

One liberal who makes sense, though, is Slate's William Saletan:

Bin Laden's whole game plan is to turn the people of the democratic world against their governments. He thinks democracies are weak because their people, who are more easily frightened than their governments, can bring those governments down. He doesn't understand that this flexibility--and this trust--are why democracies will live, while he will die. Many of us didn't vote for Bush's government or Blair's. But we're loyal to them, in part because we were given a voice in choosing them. And if we don't like our governments, we can vote them out. We can't vote out terrorists. We can only kill them.

Amen to that, brother.

From The Why Am I Not Surprised? Department:

Mossad tells Brits: Same explosives likely used in Tel Aviv and London blasts

The German newspaper Bild am Sonntag reported that Mossad informed British security authorities that the explosive material used in the attack on Mike's Place pub was probably used in the bombings in London last Thursday. The Mossad office there received advance notice about the attacks, six minutes before the first blast, confirming an earlier report by AP which Israeli officials denied. (Thanks to Israelinsider for the heads up.)