As A Man, I Can Only Marry A Man. Because There's No Difference Between A Man & A Woman

Read this. Welcome to the Mental Ward. 

A Dose Of Gloom

Mark Steyn has a particularly gloomy (even for him) jeremiad on the increasing conversion to Islam of Europeans.

The other day, Arnoud van Doorn, the producer of Wilders's anti-Islamic film Fitna, announced that he'd converted to Islam — or "accepted Islam," as they say — and made a pilgrimage to Medina to repent and ask for Allah's forgiveness. There's a lot of it about. Tony Blair's sister-in-law has converted. So has Gitmo guard Terry Holdbrooks, who was touched by the way the detainees "wake up each day and smile," and Katherine Russell, the "all-American girl" from Rhode Island who married Tamerlan Tsarnaev and whose parents were "very supportive" of their daughter's decision to "accept Islam" and retreat beneath the veil and stayed "very supportive" right up until their son-in-law blew up the Boston Marathon. The two men who butchered Royal Fusilier Lee Rigby on the streets of London were also converts, British-born sons of Nigerian Christians.

I balked at it because I recall a story in the Weekly Standard from the Bush era about the untold story of African Christian immigration to Holland, and how the much-predicted Islamization of the Dutch was not materializing.

So I googled, and 6 years later the news does seem depressing.

Europeans (including Liam Neeson acc. to this report!) Increasingly Converting to Islam
Rise of Islamic converts challenges France
BBC News Video: Europeans Converting to Islam  (this report claims WOMEN are the converts by 3-1. Why would that be?)

Then I looked for Christian immigration, and it's running about neck and neck with Islamic immigration.
the share of Christian immigrants (42%) and the share of Muslim immigrants (39%) in the E.U. are much closer, though Christians still outnumber Muslim immigrants by nearly 1 million.

So back to Steyn:

"Terrorism's great achievement isn't hijacking jetliners, but hijacking the debate," wrote George Jonas in Canada's National Post. "Successful terrorism persuades the terror-stricken that he's conscience-stricken." Which is why, in the decade after 9/11, Western governments ramped up Islamic immigration instead of slowing it to a trickle; and their citizens were "very supportive" of those who converted in record numbers, instead of mourning the wholesale abandonment of their inheritance; and their community-outreach enforcers dragged those who disrespected the Prophet into court for ever more footling infractions, instead of obliging Islam to adjust to core Western values like freedom of expression. Meanwhile, Islamic self-segregation intensified. The "War on Terror" was always an evasion, for "terror" doesn't easily encompass, say, demands for segregated swimming sessions or even the nightly car burnings in Stockholm. It does, however, accurately capture the response of Sweden's "center-right" government, bleating about doing more to alleviate "social exclusion." We now expect European leaders to sound like battered wives — like Katherine Tsarnaev.

I still insist there is a counter-movement, as that 2007 story indicates And remember all those fervent Eye-talian Christians I wrote about last week? They are growing, not shrinking. But Steyn'ss not wrong and it's more of a horse race than I understood previously. If we think Islam isn't attractive and there's nothing to worry about, we are wrong. A culture with no standards will cause people to seek security and protection. When the culture doesn't offer it, strict rules and Islamic submission do.

The Real Question Is: Are We At War?

Even if you don't agree with its conclusions, you owe it to yourself to read this Andy McCarthy piece on the NSA surveillance flap. It's an excellent primer (or refresher course) on how the programs came into being, what the arguments were and which reasons carried the day back in 2004, and why we are suddenly re-fighting them. He argues, persuasively to my mind, that the issue isn't really privacy -- it's does the nation think it is at war? RTWT.

Not Sure About Anything Except that I Don't Trust Edward Snowden

Still unsure what I think about the NSA wiretaps. I think I'm about where Jonah Goldberg said he was in his G-file June 14th:

I've actually been pretty careful about not locking into a position on the substance of the NSA story because I've had the sense from the beginning that there's just too much we don't know yet.

Thank you! If I were smart I'd let that be a full stop, but I am talky and not smart and there's a reason for the title of this blog, so I share in some of Goldberg's tentative conclusions. This:

First, James Clapper simply lied to Congress. I understand why he did. But from what I can tell, most of the people who lie to Congress do so for what they think are good reasons (Lois Lerner is an exception to that rule). That Clapper was unprepared to answer that question in a way that wasn't objectively deceitful amounts to gross malpractice.

But most especially this:

Edward Snowden is fishier than the Frying Dutchman's All-You-Can-Eat Seafood Buffet. I'm not saying he's a Chinese agent or anything. Or, better said, I'm not saying he revealed all of this stuff as an agent of the Chinese. He might be auditioning for the position now. After all, you kind of lose some street cred when you bitch about the evil of the surveillance state and a lack of transparency and then set up shop in China. It's sort of like quitting your job as a lighting technician at the Mickey Mouse Club because you don't approve of the lax moral standards and then applying for a job at the Spearmint Rhino. Regardless, I think he's pretty clearly lying about what he was able to do as a cog in the NSA machine. He says he had the "authorities" to read anyone's e-mail, including the president's. I call shenanigans on this -- or at least the experts I've talked to do. It's unclear he even had the capability, which is a very different thing than the authority. I have the capability to drive my car through the window of a crowded Chipotle Mexican Grill and proclaim, "I came here to do two things: Chew gum and eat burritos, and I'm all out of gum!" That doesn't mean I have the authority to do such a thing.  

He seems like just another clueless young person who thinks he's the moral center of the universe. All of which is merely a set-up for this, curtsies to Brutally Honest (Hey, and thanks for the recent link-love, Man!):

More seriously -- and back to Goldberg:

This brings us to a really important distinction in all this: Existence vs. Abuse. I am coming around to the view that the program as it exists isn't necessarily outrageous on the merits. As far as we know so far, Snowden hasn't revealed any actual abuses of the program. And his hints about abuses are like bad pretzels: impossible to swallow without a lot of grains of salt. Now, you can argue that the existence of the program itself is, uh, itself an outrage. I have many friends who think this. I am truly torn on this question.

Me too. I haven't read anything yet about the program that offends me per se. What offends me is that in light of the IRS, FBI, DoJ and other scandals, it's patently obvious this administration will abuse any power it has. That it is more likely to use its powers to torment its domestic political enemies than to keep us safe. But the proposed solutions -- removing the powers to keep us safe-- don't exactly thrill me. In fact, Edward Snowden's morality seems of a piece with that of the Administration to me. We're in the hands of folks with no allegiances beyond their own belly buttons, no broad understanding of the world, and no self-restraint. That's what's really scary.

Update: See Michael Walsh's column on this topic. The Courts have held that the content of phone calls is private but the records of who calls whom isn't. So in the service of getting bad guys, I don't disapprove. But as Walsh connects the dots, this administration isn't going after bad guys, only after Americans who disagree with them.

Pretty Good Man

I strongly expected to hate Man of Steel. It was obviously going to be a one damn thing after the other kind of flick, and I'm jet lagged after a 2nd trip to Rome in 6 weeks, and I think we've established that I cannot enjoy a movie when I'm tired. Plus I'd read this to see if I could take the kids. And PLUS, a Brit plays an American icon....even playing Superman is now a job Americans won't do.

But one must celebrate the end of the school year with one's kids and I guess I was in a merciful mood or else was sufficiently braced for the worst that I kind of liked it. It has the typical summer blockbuster deficiencies, and there are battles that just go on, especially at the end where the story comes to an end and then there's one more lengthy fight scene just so we can watch two men from Krypton punch each other through 6-7 skyscrapers at a time. (At one point Girl Weed quipped, "Oh, man. We just finished rebuilding Metropolis from the Avengers movie.")

But I just didn't care.  The flick has the following strengths, which wooed me.

• Henry Cavill (Superman) is yummy.
• General Zod is an excellent straight-up bad guy. I'm tired of villains who possibly are merely misunderstood or suffering from bad childhoods or are crazy. Zod is plain mean -- and yet not a mad-man or merely sadistic. He has a mission which has a certain rationale and is ruthless in accomplishing it. An enemy to respect. Maybe there's a wee bit of Coriolanus in him. Nah, that's too much.
• Critics are saying there's too much sensitive back-story, but I liked seeing some of Clark Kent's hidden life with his adoptive parents and some of the challenges posed by their son's being better than everyone else and needing to hide it. I didn't find it maudlin; it was good story-telling.
• You can't miss the christological references -- there's an Agony in the Garden, a visit to Church to discern his Father's will, a voluntary surrender to the forces of Evil to intercede for mankind. We even learn Clark is 33 years old.... Maybe a little much, actually, but on the whole positive. I don't mind filling my young men's heads with such things.
• And  --who am I kidding? this is what really sold me, empowering me to overlook almost anything-- Planned Parenthood is the cause of all the misery! (This would take spoilers to explain, but trust me.)

Parental advisory? There's intense violence (though no gore beyond one face scrape) and no profanity or taking the Lord's name in vain. There are a couple instances I recall of coarse language, all out of the way pretty early (mostly kids bullying young Clark Kent with nasty insults -- and they are nasty. I'm sure my youngest hadn't heard such things before).

Here's what the Weedlets had to say, interviewed in isolation from one another.

Youngest Weed, 9: A-. I liked watching it but it was really kind of depressing. (Pressed, he explained that in the end there's a LOT of destruction and while mankind has won, there's not really a happy ending.)
Middle Weed, 12: B. I liked it a lot, but it got really draggy at the end.
Girl Weed, 14: B+ Very good, but C'mon, that last fight scene was ridiculous
Eldest Weed, 16. B+ or maybe A-. It could have been 30 minutes shorter, but I thought it was well done overall and I liked the fact that the incitement to action was a legitimate moral problem. 

Kindness Requires A Permit

This kind of thing makes my brain explode. A guy's been giving homeless people haircuts for 25 years -- even was honored by his city for humanitarian work not too long ago-- and now he's been forbidden by city officials to keep going.

The justification for our massive government is that people aren't taken care of without government programs. But then when individuals step up with charity-- of a kind that's much more of a balm to the human spirit because there is human interaction involved-- they're forbidden by the government to do so.

Plus, you know, DUMB. Wasn't there a crack house the police could have raided instead?

Pelosi: Abortion Is Sacred Ground

Actually, as you'll see or read, she didn't quite say late-term abortion was sacred ground. What she said, by way of avoiding admitting there is no difference between the horrors Kermit Gosnell was prosecuted for and what the law of the land explicitly allows, is this: 

I've responded to you to the extent that I'm going to respond to you. Because I want to tell you something. As the mother of five children, my oldest child was 6 years old the day I brought my 5th child home from the hospital, as a practicing and respectful Catholic, this is sacred ground to me when we talk about this. I don't think it should have anything to do with politics. And that's where you're taking it and I'm not going there. 

Which is to say: life is so sacred that I shouldn't have to be pinned down on my duty to protect it. Or: it's a sin to even talk about this!

I wonder if Ms. Pelosi would also be uncomfortable reading the text of Gonzales v. Carhart, which describes what the most common second term abortion procedure in the United States is like (85-90% of our annual 1.3 million abortions take place in the first three months). In the second term, the most typical procedure is like this. From the Court decision.

A doctor must first dilate the cervix at least to the extent needed to insert surgical instruments into the uterus and to maneuver them to evacuate the fetus. Nat. Abortion Federation, supra, at 465; App. in No. 05-1382, at 61. The steps taken to cause dilation differ by physician and gestational age of the fetus. See, e.g., Carhart, 331 F. Supp. 2d, at 852, 856, 859, 862-865, 868, 870, 873-874, 876-877, 880, 883, 886. A doctor often begins the dilation process by inserting osmotic dilators, such as laminaria (sticks of seaweed), into the cervix. The dilators can be used in combination with drugs, such as misoprostol, that increase dilation. The resulting amount of dilation is not uniform, and a doctor does not know in advance how an individual patient will respond. In general the longer dilators remain in the cervix, the more it will dilate. Yet the length of time doctors employ osmotic dilators varies. Some may keep dilators in the cervix for two days, while others use dilators for a day or less. Nat. Abortion Federation, supra, at 464-465; Planned Parenthood, supra, at 961.
     After sufficient dilation the surgical operation can commence. The woman is placed under general anesthesia or conscious sedation. The doctor, often guided by ultrasound, inserts grasping forceps through the woman's cervix and into the uterus to grab the fetus. The doctor grips a fetal part with the forceps and pulls it back through the cervix and vagina, continuing to pull even after meeting resistance from the cervix. The friction causes the fetus to tear apart. For example, a leg might be ripped off the fetus as it is pulled through the cervix and out of the woman. The process of evacuating the fetus piece by piece continues until it has been completely removed. A doctor may make 10 to 15 passes with the forceps to evacuate the fetus in its entirety, though sometimes removal is completed with fewer passes. Once the fetus has been evacuated, the placenta and any remaining fetal material are suctioned or scraped out of the uterus. The doctor examines the different parts to ensure the entire fetal body has been removed. See, e.g., Nat. Abortion Federation, supra, at 465; Planned Parenthood, supra, at 962.
     Some doctors, especially later in the second trimester, may kill the fetus a day or two before performing the surgical evacuation. They inject digoxin or potassium chloride into the fetus, the umbilical cord, or the amniotic fluid. Fetal demise may cause contractions and make greater dilation possible. Once dead, moreover, the fetus' body will soften, and its removal will be easier. Other doctors refrain from injecting chemical agents, believing it adds risk with little or no medical benefit. Carhart, supra, at 907-912; Nat. Abortion Federation, supra, at 474-475.

That, see, the Court is okay with. Is it different in magnitude than Gosnell? What the decision bans is a variation on this grisly procedure in which the baby is turned to breech position, all but the head is delivered, and then the doctor stabs the baby in the head and collapses the head for delivery.

If you ask me, the banned procedure, horrifying as it is (and don't get me wrong, I'm glad we could ban something, to establish a limit on abortion), is actually more humane than the acceptable procedure, where the doctor pulls the baby apart limb by limb -- clearly more painful and more prolonged. We can't just kill the fetus, we have to torture it besides.

This is Pelosi's sacred ground. It's a sin to even bring it up.

Vindicated

And now for a little gloating. I've been saying to people (both those critical and those delighted) not to be too quick to read grand commentary into some of Pope Francis' homey practices. While freely admitting I know nothing more about it than anyone else (having first heard of Bergoglio/Francis back in February), I nonetheless have had a simple intuition that his not wearing red shoes is not a commentary on anything, but a function of his being a religious with a vow of poverty rather than a secular priest (you non-Catholics: here's the difference). I'd read that Cardinal Bergoglio's shoes were hole-y and some friends purchased new ones for him for the conclave. It just makes sense to me that a man with a vow of poverty would wear his old shoes until they were threadbare rather than accepting new ones.

As for his living in Domus Marta, I further intuited that this has less to do with rejecting riches than with Bergoglio's personality -- he needs a community to stay sane just as Benedict needed ongoing intellectual interaction and found ways to get it (made the same point here towards the end of the "popery" section). I'd read the same comments we all have about his shock about how big the papal apartments are. But as both buildings already exist, it can't cost that much less for the pope to live and have his guards in Domus Marta than for him to be in the papal apartments. And he could always live in one room and stash homeless people in the rest of the space if he chose.

Now we have it on his own authority. In a Q&A with students, here's how the pope answered the question about why he's not in the papal apartments (my translation from the Spanish report):

"It's not only about riches," he said "but a problem of personality."
"I need to live among people and if I were to live alone, isolated, I wouldn't feel well. A professor asked me this same question, "Why don't you live there?" And I told him, "Look, Professor, for psychological reasons, eh?" This is my personality. Yes, the apartment isn't as luxurious. But I couldn't live alone, understand?"

So HA! One of the things that impresses me about the trio of popes I've encountered personally is how fully, uniquely themselves each one has been and how realistic about their own strengths and frailties. Each seems to me in his way to embody the truth of faith that "grace builds on nature." It doesn't crush or supplant who you are, but elevates it. Men fully alive as St. Paul would say.

I conclude with my First Rule of Papal Interpretation: The pope is a man. Or: never assume a sermon where personality is a sufficient explanation.

Tony, Tony, Come Around Liberty's Lost & Can't Be Found

St. Anthony preaching to the fish,
fresco in the basilica of St. Anthony, Padua. 

See a better photo (with a cute little crabby and all kinds of other fish!) here.

It's the feast of St. Anthony. Legend has it he once preached to fish, exasperated by the heretics who wouldn't listen to him. That's about how I feel reading this.

I was out of the country when the NSA story broke and am not fully caught up on the news so I have only a provisional opinion, but I am not among those who sees the NSA spy program as necessarily horrible -- presuming that they really are only collecting externals like #s, not listening to actual conversations. I am inclined to believe that's true because: "ain't nobody got time fo' that." Plus, I think if you're going to engage in civil disobedience, you stand and face the consequences like a man (I'm thinking of civil rights protestors, and protesting pro-lifers being dragged off to jail), you don't flee to Hong Kong -- so I can't muster great admiration for Mr. Snowden, who seems determined to let terrorists know how to evade us.

So I was inclined to reserve judgment until reading more but then there's the story linked above:

Since October 2011, mosques have been off-limits to FBI agents. No more surveillance or undercover string operations without high-level approval from a special oversight body at the Justice Department dubbed the Sensitive Operations Review Committee.

And:

Before mosques were excluded from the otherwise wide domestic spy net the administration has cast, the FBI launched dozens of successful sting operations against homegrown jihadists — inside mosques — and disrupted dozens of plots against the homeland.
If only they were allowed to continue, perhaps the many victims of the Boston Marathon bombings would not have lost their lives and limbs. The FBI never canvassed Boston mosques until four days after the April 15 attacks, and it did not check out the radical Boston mosque where the Muslim bombers worshipped.
The bureau didn't even contact mosque leaders for help in identifying their images after those images were captured on closed-circuit TV cameras and cellphones.
One of the Muslim bombers made extremist outbursts during worship, yet because the mosque wasn't monitored, red flags didn't go off inside the FBI about his increasing radicalization before the attacks.

We're listening to Gramma's calls but not checking in the places we're most likely to find Islamist ideology? So much for the "all this spying is to keep us safe" argument. One is forced to the provisional conclusion that all this spying is for the purpose of the Chicago Machine's criminalizing disagreement. (I'd be interested to know how they used the Romney campaign's communications, wouldn't you?)

As the Official Cartoonist of Wheat & Weeds tweeted days ago:

NSA warns amnesty will make it that much more difficult to spy on real Americans.
— Sam Ryskind (@sryskind) June 12, 2013

St. Anthony, pray for us!

Caption Contest

Shamelessly pinched from Intermirifica.net
Click to enlarge.

What is the Holy Father saying in each panel? (Any order, but specify.)

Update: a couple of worthy entries in the comment box. I think he's leading the Vatican Choir in a rousing rendition of this song.


God's got a way
You can't go over
God's got a way
You can't go under
God's got a way
You can't go around
You must come in at the door.

Breeding Traitors

The Obama IRS scandal keeps getting worse. It's now clear that the official policy of the Administration is to target enemies using the coercive power of the state (see this important post, too). I don't know why we're surprised. It's just Chicago machine tactics elevated to the level of the Presidency -- but here's another First Amendment freedom gone, right? No freedom of religion, no freedom of the press, and now no freedom of assembly.

• The IRS told a pro-life group it would back off if it stopped picketing an abortion clinic. 

• The IRS even goes after adoptive parents, if you can believe it. 90% of adoptive parents are asked for "additional information" and 69% of them are audited (in comparison with millionaires, only 12% of whom are audited -- so now we know what "paying your fair share" means). Apparently the Administration not only wants to prevent any children from being born, it doesn't want people to have children by adoption either.

• And it's not just the IRS, either. The FBI also comes after you if you are an ordinary citizen caught in public with an anti-Administration opinion.

Those are just a sampling of the amassing stories. Anyway, not the most important thing in the ongoing revelations and discussion, but this caught my eye in a story about how our intelligence agencies cultivate "contacts" (meaning spies, meaning traitors to their home countries).

A case officer also looks for prospects among individuals who seem to be in search of an ego, their spirits stamped flat by purges, cultural revolutions or protracted tax investigations (a favorite tactic of today's Kremlin).

The most dangerous thing about this Chicago mafia running our country is not its specific policies; it's that it's breeding contempt for law and teaching people -- and the most law-abiding citizens at that-- to hate their country.

What The Heck is Happening in France?

Yesterday I posted this about the massive anti-gay marriage demonstrations continuing in France, though it's so buried you are forgiven for missing it. You should really read it though.

Multicultural demonstration against same-sex marriage on French Mother's Day

shamelessly pinched from here.

Today, an update from my spy in a Paris that turns out not be all that gay after all. My spy confirms the original report about the nature of the crowd of demonstrators:   

The participants in the manif were quite diverse, including some on the Left (in addition to French hard hats from the CGT, also young, middle class socialists), but overwhelmingly ordinary families of all stripes, with their children.  There were specific contingents from the UMP, some RBM (new name for the FN), but not in any official way, and Catholics and other religious groups  of all stripes, though the media sought out the most conservative to interview. Generally it was a huge middle class family grouping, though anarchists, as usual, came in to smash things at the end. A comédienne, "Frigide Bardjot", with dyed blonde hair, was general organizer, and tried to keep political parties at arms length; but she had many death threats after several months, and did not march on the 26th.   

The government said it was merely putting through what it had promised on its electoral platform of last year.  But this was number 32 on the platform, and it was not discussed at all during the campaign.  The Socialists did not bring it up, and the Right feared that doing so would cost points in the close election that was expected. The media stressed that polls prior to the election showed more than 50% of French favoring the law.  But after months of actual debate after the election, the points raised about rights of adoption by homosexual couples, effects on revising school manuels in primary grades, the French legal code forbidding speech considered hateful (with its effect on future discussion of this issue) had the effect of changing popular opinion to at least  54% opposed on the eve of the law's adoption.  Once presented in the National Assembly, the government imposed strict party discipline and rammed the measure through (though three Socialists risked their careers and voted against - with a similar number of the UMP doing the reverse).  

Get a load of this: 

A particular point, hardly discussed by the media, is the changed rule on determining family name subsequent to the homosexual marriage law.  Initially the law proposed that the family name of homosexual couples be hyphenated, with priority accorded alphabetically to establish the first of the hyphenated names.  But then it was pointed out that such a rule would discriminate between homosexual and heterosexual couples.  Ainsi, in good Cartesian fashion, the solution was that the same rule would apply to heterosexual couples, who also would have hyphenated names, with name priority determined according to alphabetic priority. What will happen for the second and third generations, including the alphabetic priority of four or more names, has not been discussed, as far as I know.  There may be a compromise whereby couples have the option of discussing and settling this among themselves prior to the marriage --perhaps even during the ceremony.  Bref - you may understand why perhaps more than a million people, of otherwise diverse persuasions assembled on different weekends on the Champs de Mars to give a mighty Bronx cheer à la française.

 Wait. The Socialists are defending marriage?