May As Well Make It Official

Instead of allowing Catholics to be driven out of the adoption business city by city as is happening, Pete Stark's introduced an official "Bill to Ban Christians From Running Adoption Agencies." Only he's calling it "Every Child Deserves A Family," since driving half the adoption and foster care agencies in the nation out of business will be SO helpful to children in need of families.

He should really name it the "Place Every Abandoned Child At the Mercy of Already Overworked Government Run Agencies" bill. I suppose it won't pass; but if it does, about 18 months later the government agencies will be swamped with the case load that Christian agencies have been carrying and we'll be told it's "necessary" to humanely put these children down since "no one wants them."

Curtsy: CMR

Happy Memorial Day

Ramirez, shamelessly pinched from the Corner

For the souls of the nation's fallen, we pray to the Lord.  Meanwhile, we're going to try to re-create a little of last year's magic because the Official Cartoonist of W&W is marching in the national parade. Enjoy your holiday.

Potpourri of Popery, Mary Month of May Edition

Had to post a photo from the papal trip to Aquileia & Venice before he goes to Croatia the first week of June.

Many cool pics if you scroll around (love the look on the gondolier's face here), but I like this because it looks as if the Pope's in something Batman would ride until you realize the Popedola is sandwiched between two ordinary gondolas.

Popery
His homily at San Guiliano Park in Mestre (this was the culminating event of the trip) is an exposition of the encounter at Emmaus.

This episode shows the effects that the Risen Jesus works in two disciples: conversion from despair to hope; conversion from sorrow to joy; and also conversion to community life. Sometimes, when we speak of conversion we think solely of its demanding aspect of detachment and renunciation. Christian conversion, on the contrary, is also and above all about joy, hope and love. It is always the work of the Risen Christ, the Lord of life who has obtained this grace for us through his Passion and communicates it to us by virtue of his Resurrection. 

I've just picked up Light of the World again after a hiatus (for Jesus of Nazareth part II) and am struck once again by how often this man speaks of joy.

Christian Europe is like the disappointed disciples. On the one hand, everything it is is Christian:

You are living in a context in which Christianity is presented as the faith which has accompanied the journey of many peoples down the ages even through persecutions and harsh trials. The many testimonies that have spread everywhere are an eloquent expression of this faith: churches, works of art, hospitals, libraries and schools; the actual environment of your cities, of the countryside and the mountains, is everywhere spangled with references to Christ.

On the other hand, this culture is gradually becoming emptied of content, embracing life only superficially. The discouragement of travelers to Emmaus is present in Mestre, too:

This happens when today’s disciples drift away from the Jerusalem of the Crucified and Risen One, no longer believing in the power and in the living presence of the Lord. The problem of evil, sorrow and suffering, the problem of injustice and abuse, fear of others, of strangers and foreigners who come to our lands and seem to attack what we are [emphasis mine], prompt Christians today to say sadly: we hoped that the Lord would deliver us from evil, from sorrow, from suffering, from fear, from injustice.

His program is a little different than the "welcome the immigrant" headlines let on.

It is thus necessary for each and every one of us to let ourselves be taught by Jesus, as the two disciples of Emmaus were: first of all by listening to and loving the word of God read in the light of the Paschal Mystery, so that it may warm our hearts and illumine our minds helping us to interpret the events of life and give them meaning. Then it is necessary to sit at table with the Lord, to share the banquet with him, so that his humble presence in the Sacrament of his Body and Blood may restore to us the gaze of faith, in order to see everything and everyone with God’s eyes, in the light of his love. Staying with Jesus who has stayed with us, assimilating his lifestyle, choosing with him the logic of communion with each other, of solidarity and of sharing. The Eucharist is the maximum expression of the gift which Jesus makes of himself and is a constant invitation to live our lives in the Eucharistic logic, as a gift to God and to others.

The Gospel also mentions that after recognizing Jesus in the breaking of the bread, the two disciples “rose that same hour and returned to Jerusalem” (Lk 24:33). They felt the need to return to Jerusalem and to tell of their extraordinary experience: the encounter with the Risen Lord. A great effort must be made so that every Christian, here in the North East [of Italy] as in every other part of the world, may be transformed into a witness, ready to proclaim vigorously and joyfully the event of Christ’s death and Resurrection.

There's more: he tells them to be holy and to resist the perpetual onslaught of consumerism and hedonism. But basically he's telling them to "deal" with the political and cultural changes brought on by mass immigration in the region by evangelizing all those souls.

On May 7th he met with the people of Aquileia, and his address there contains a nice little history of the Church of Aquileia and its importance for the spread of Christianity not only in Northern Italy, but into Bavaria, Croatia, Austria, etc.. He sets the tone here for the series of addresses that will follow, in which he encourages these people to rediscover their ancient faith, to receive the Eucharist worthily, and to defend and spread Christianity.

An address to bishops and priests strikes a similar note. After noting the cultural heritage of the region and recommending some things for them to take up at their upcoming conference, he says:

The geographical location of the North East, no longer only the crossroads between East and West Europe, but also between the North and the South (the Adriatic carries the Mediterranean to the heart of Europe), the huge phenomenon of tourism and immigration, territorial mobility, the process of homogenization resulting from the action of a pervasive mass media, have accentuated cultural and religious pluralism. In this context, which in any case is that which Providence gives us, it is necessary that Christians, sustained by a “trustworthy hope”, present the beauty of the event of Jesus Christ, the Way, the Truth and the Life, to every man and every woman, in a frank and sincere relationship with the non-practicing, with non-believers and with believers of other religions.

You are called to live with that attitude full of faith that is described in the Letter to Diognetus: do not deny anything of the Gospel in which you believe, but live in the midst of others with sympathy, communicating by your very way of life that humanism which is rooted in Christianity, in order to build together with all people of good will a “city” which is more human, more just and more supportive.

Interestingly, he goes on to entrust to them the work of inspiring lay people who are capable of entering politics.

His address to the people of Venice from St. Mark's (boy, he likes the Venetians!) is nice. This one, to priests and ecumenical guests primarily, made me tear up a bit. He was preaching about Zaccheus' conversion and then he bursts out:

Beloved Church in Venice! Imitate the example of Zacchaeus and surpass it! Overtake the men and women of today and help them to surmount the barriers of individualism, of relativism; never let yourselves be brought low by the failures that can scar Christian communities. Strive to look closely at the person of Christ, who said: “I am the way, the truth and the life” (Jn 14:6).

And

As Successor of the Apostle Peter, visiting your land in these days, I repeat to each one of you: do not be afraid to swim against the tide in order to meet Jesus, to direct your attention upwards to meet his gaze. The “logo” of my Pastoral Visit portrays the scene of Mark delivering the Gospel to Peter, taken from a mosaic in this basilica. Today, symbolically, I come to redeliver the Gospel to you, the spiritual children of St Mark, in order to strengthen you in the faith and encourage you in the face of the challenges of the present time. Move ahead with confidence on the path of the new evangelization, in loving service to the poor and with courageous testimony in the various social realities. Be aware that you bear a message meant for every man and and for the whole man; a message of faith, of hope and of love.

It made me tear up because I think of how much the vast majority of decent priests have suffered in recent years for the betrayals of a few of their colleagues...genuine Judases...and here is the Holy Father bucking them up...truly "strengthening the brethren." 

He found time as well for a brief "meeting with the world of culture,"  to which he addressed an elegant little challenge.

All that in just two days! 

Other addresses of note:

With the Italian Bishops at a rosary celebrating Italy's unification.

An important address to Caritas, during which he encouraged them but also insisted they be faithful to the Magisterium and rather pointedly said this, which perhaps those "Catholic academicians" who wrote to Speaker Boehner might like to ponder:

In the political sphere - and in all those areas directly affecting the lives of the poor - the faithful, especially the laity, enjoy broad freedom of activity. No one can claim to speak “officially” in the name of the entire lay faithful, or of all Catholics, in matters freely open to discussion (cf. Gaudium et Spes, 43; 88). On the other hand, all Catholics, and indeed all men and women, are called to act with purified consciences and generous hearts in resolutely promoting those values which I have often referred to as “non-negotiable”. 

(For that matter, certain Catholic neo-manualists might like to ponder it too, but I digress.)

He's also embarked on a new catechesis series: on prayer. Well worth reading each week at Zenit, here are the current installments, in reverse chronological order: On wrestling with God; Abraham's prayer (forgiveness); On the universal religious sense part 2; On the universal religious sense.

A pair of addresses to university communities: Catholic University of the Sacred Heart; and to the Theology faculty & students of the Teresianum in Rome --this is where he dropped the remark that everyone serious about prayer needs a spiritual director.

And this is so cute: a papal Q&A with astronauts aboard the space station -- only B16 asked the questions. I heard about this on the radio, and they said the astronauts demonstrated micro-gravity for him and there were lots of jokes as well. 

Potpourri:
China: Observes Day of Prayer for the Church in China by arresting priests; "the pope's battle"
Egypt: pays for reconstruction of Coptic Church burnt by Salafists.
Great Britain: 
Malta: Sigh: votes to allow divorce (Because that's worked out so admirably for the rest of the world?)
NorKo: Releases American prisoner.
Oz: Cardinal Pell on the sacking of Bishop Morris.
Pakistan: Christian & Hindu girls kidnapped, forceably converted and married off to Muslim men, police do nothing.
UK: The Druid says Shakespeare was a Catholic; doctor in a Christian practice reprimanded for mentioning the G-word.
US: John Jay report on abuse crisis released, round-up here. Archbishop Dolan liberates Catholic social teaching for free debate (Huzzah!); ex-schismatic Christ the King monastery restored to communion (Benedict is the Pope of Christian unity!Beautiful story there.); trouble for Bishop Finn in KS City, his statement here (knowing nothing more, he seems to me to have acted appropriately and with due diligence); another US city drives Catholic Charities out in the name of tolerance; Bishops' June meetings upcoming, a round-up of new bishops here.
Catholic Charities' relief efforts for Joplin (that Diocese --Springfield/Cape Girardeau-- also has many residents who've lost their homes to Mississippi flooding); disaster fund for Diocese of Birmingham here.

And finally....nevermind.

AP Photo/Antonio Calanni

We Found The Missing Mass!

If we’re looking very very long distances from Earth we’re detecting mass but if we’re looking closer to Earth we only see about half the mass that we’re expecting to see. So this is what is called the missing mass problem,” she said.
”People have theorised that this mass has settled in filaments that extend between clusters of galaxies, so we tested and confirmed this prediction by detecting it in the filaments.”

ninme, via Brett McS, finds a breakthrough in Astrophysics that I don't quite follow because it includes names such as Fraser-McKelvie, Pimbblet and Lazendic-Gallowayut (I mean there's your missing mass right there: all those consonants!), but I gather means one more mystery of the universe is solved.

I bring this up not because I'm so keen on astrophysics, but because of Brett McS' keen observation in comments that he's not surprised it was a woman who found it. Nor am I.

Men can't find stuff. It requires two X chromosomes. If Mr. W. or one of his three sons opens the refrigerator and the catsup is at eye level in the front in the mondo-size from the warehouse store, as males of the species they will call up to me from several stories away to ask where the catsup is. Girl Weed, on the other hand, can find Middle Weed's transparent microscopic special Lego brick where it's been lying for a month after it popped off his spaceship and rolled under a dust bunny in a hidden corner of the coat closet under the rain boots that no one has worn for three years. It's uncanny.

Old Times...And Getting Older

Here's WaPo's review of Harold Pinter's Old Times, now onstage at the Shakespeare Theater. It has all the good that can be said of the production: the appropriateness of the set and costumes, Michael Kahn's good directing, workmanlike performances.

But nothing really overcomes the fact that it's... a Harold Pinter play.

Here's a taste of the plot for you. A man and his wife receive a visit from the wife's old friend. The wife is a kind of cipher, and the man and the visitor's competing memories of the past become a duel to control the present as well:

Deeley begins to become angry at Anna’s intimacy with his wife, and both women become defensive. In an attempt to win back Kate’s loyalty, he tells her about his meeting Anna twenty years before. Faced with competing memories, Kate suddenly recalls seeing Anna dead on her bed, covered in dirt. She took a bath, and then brought a man in, only to find that Anna’s body had disappeared. She then smeared the man’s face with dirt, to which he responded with a marriage proposal. Upon hearing the story, Deeley cries.

I admire Kahn's determination to bring not only the classics but the modern classics to life, but I'm just not sold that Pinter is going to last in the oeuvre, and certainly not Old Times. The set was contemporary as you please, Kahn did all the good he could for the script, but from the opening moment the whole play was just SO 1970s. So dated. I can't imagine that script ever breaking free of a particular moment in time, and that not an especially memorable one. (Though I will do Pinter the justice of saying he at least knows how banal and meaningless his existence is ...clearly that's why he's so angry all the time.)

I tend to agree with the Post reviewer that it's pointless to try to "solve" the riddle of the play's meaning, but in theory it's an exploration of how memory creates reality and old lovers may have wildly different recollections of the same events. As to that, someone has said that more charmingly, and in considerably fewer than 90 minutes.




Photo credit

Cookies Are Bad For You

Blogger cookies, anyway. Advice to my fellow Blogger bloggers for the glitch that's been plaguing us. This worked for me.

And He Means This **Literally**

Joe Biden on Obama killing Osama:

the boldest decision … any president has undertaken on a single event in modern history

Yes, Dear.

Let The Torment Begin

Rapture rumors may not have panned out, but the five months of torment is definitely true. To wit, commenting on the decisions of Huckabee, Daniels, Pence, Barbour et al not to run, Bill Kristol writes:

It would be unfair to call the current field a vacuum. But it doesn't exactly represent an overflowing of political talent. And insofar as politics abhors even a near-vacuum, others are bound to get in. I now think the odds are better than 50-50 that both Rick Perry and Paul Ryan run. I also now think they (and others—Sarah Palin, Chris Christie, John Bolton) may not feel they have to decide until after Labor Day—or maybe even until October or even November. The field could well remain open and fluid until Thanksgiving.

I repent! Save me from the months of feckless speculation!

Teehee: Greg in comments says the rapture was of desirable GOP candidates.

Peace In Our Time!

Perhaps the President is on to something. How about Israel negotiates starting with its pre-6 Day War borders.....but so does "Palestine"?

Exemplars of Civil Discourse

Compare and contrast.
Paul Ryan wrote Archbishop Dolan a letter about the moral dimensions of the budget.
Archbishop Dolan, speaking as President of the USCCB, wrote back. He neither endorses nor criticizes any dimension of Ryan's plan (in some places perhaps he suggests the bishops might push his plan in a certain direction), but does praise his consideration of moral principles in thinking about budgetary matters.

Read both. And God bless Archbishop Dolan for blowing the budget debate open for thinking Christians to discuss without the nonsense idea that preferential option for the poor can take no form other than massive federal intervention.

Your letter is correct in observing that the Church makes an essential contribution to society when she raises up moral principles to help guide and inform decisions about public policy in a compelling way. We bishops are very conscious that we are pastors, never politicians. As the Second Vatican Council reminds us, it is the lay faithful who have the specific charism of political leadership and decision (Lumen Gentium, 31; Apostolicam Actuositatem 13). The high call to public service which you have nobly answered entitles you and all our elected officials to our respect and constant prayer. Thanks to you and your colleagues for accepting that call.

Now compare the level of discussion in those letters with this, which the Dolan letter effectively rebukes it seems to me, even if that is not the intent. (No wonder Speaker Boehner issued this statement.) Or this.  Who is grappling with Catholic social teaching in a serious way?

No Jooooos Allowed

Circumcision ban to appear on San Francisco ballot.

If the measure passes, circumcision would be prohibited among males under the age of 18. The practice would become a misdemeanor offense punishable by a fine of up to $1,000 or up to one year in jail. There would be no religious exemptions.

American Buffaloed

Excellent profile of David Mamet and his gradual renunciation of Lefty politics. Here's a scene from a couple of years ago when he told a room full of academics at Stanford that higher education had become preposterous:

Higher ed, he said, was an elaborate scheme to deprive young people of their freedom of thought. He compared four years of college to a lab experiment in which a rat is trained to pull a lever for a pellet of food. A student recites some bit of received and unexamined wisdom—“Thomas Jefferson: slave owner, adulterer, pull the lever”—and is rewarded with his pellet: a grade, a degree, and ultimately a lifelong membership in a tribe of people educated to see the world in the same way.
“If we identify every interaction as having a victim and an oppressor, and we get a pellet when we find the victims, we’re training ourselves not to see cause and effect,” he said. Wasn’t there, he went on, a “much more interesting .  .  . view of the world in which not everything can be reduced to victim and oppressor?”

A worthwhile read, but let the record show that whatever his politics and in spite of his doing more than anyone alive to truly mainstream the F bomb, I like him for the sole reason that he once wrote a play entitled Keep Your Pantheon.

Cry Havoc, Release The Cats of War

Photo illustration by Holly Allen, photograph by Giuseppe Cacace/AFP/Getty Images.

What will ninme think of this? Photographs of US top secret CATS program revealed.

In Defense of Stategery

Bill Whittle contra every stupid media meme about the war on terror. I give Obama a little more credit for the "gutsy" call --I think it was gutsy by his lights. I took him more for a predator attack kind of guy and am surprised he put boots on the ground. But the rest: that Bush never suggested Mission Accomplished, that waterboarding isn't torture....well, please watch.

Curtsy: American Digest

Pro-Life, Therefore Anti-Amnesty

John Zmirak has a provocative post on the President's new amnesty bill. You may remember from the Bush years that I favor a closed border but a very generous legal immigration policy, and generally hate the way Conservatives argue the issue of immigration  (anti-Mexican jokes offend me). Zmirak has a different take entirely: he compares the President's amnesty bill to the antebellum South's perpetual lobbying for more slave states. It's a pro-life argument, and also a yes, you have to think about the consequences of your vote and not rest content with feeling "pure" argument. So I like it.

if President Obama’s amnesty is granted, it is easy to predict how this will affect the next election — which is, of course, the reason Obama is pushing his amnesty now: He is desperate to recruit new liberal voters for the 2012 and subsequent elections, to reverse the pro-life gains of the 2010 elections and guarantee a pro-abortion, pro-gay-marriage majority for the foreseeable future. There is ample historical precedent for this: Whenever the Southern, pro-slavery forces gained the upper hand in antebellum America, their focus was always foremost on their single issue: admitting new slave states to the Union, to lock in proslavery votes and keep the peculiar institution legal. Civil war erupted in Kansas and several other states, whose residents (on both sides of the issue) knew the stakes: demography is destiny. The safest way to gain solid votes is to import them — as the Democrats now hope to import millions of safe, pro-abortion votes by admitting them to the Union, via amnesty. If we were to grant amnesty — the full rights of citizenship, including the right to vote, collect government benefits, and use affirmative action at the expense of (for instance) impoverished white male war veterans — to the estimated 10-12 million illegal immigrants in America, we would be adding at the very least 6.3-8 million liberal, pro-abortion voters. No, these recent illegals need not, by the laws of physics, vote for liberal, pro-abortion Democrats. But that is how they will vote, and anyone who tells you otherwise is lying. Anyone who claims to value unborn life, who favors padding the voter rolls with those who will vote to leave the unborn unprotected, is also either lying or simply and doggedly refusing to consider the consequences of his actions.

Not to put too fine a point on it:

I do not wish to imply that those who know how amnestied illegals are almost certain to vote and who still favor amnesty are not, in cold fact, pro-life. I would never leave such a statement to mere implication. I wish to say it outright: Those who favor amnesty for illegal immigrants are not, in cold fact, pro-life.

Muslims Against Jihad

Jennifer Rubin found some interesting "moderate Muslims" in a conference at the Heritage foundation.

C. Holland Taylor, the founder of LibforAll — a private foundation that promotes moderate Muslims’ efforts to root out Islamic extremism — and the co-publisher of and contributor to the book, along with Kyai Haji Achmad Mustofa Bisri, an Indonesian religious leader, scholar and artist (and the author of a new epilogue for the English-version of the book), appeared on the first of two panels. The message was two-fold. First, radical Muslims have propounded the false notion that theirs is the one true interpretation of Islam and that anyone who doesn’t abide by their interpretation (Muslim or otherwise) is wrong and should be silenced (by death if need be). Second, there are highly respected religious figures as well as politicians and cultural figures in Muslim countries pushing back against an ideology of hate, violence and religious supremacy who could use our help.

Read on, but also compare what is said with this, a post about the perspective of a magazine for Muslim-Americans. Not radical, but not democratic, either --rather like that tiny sub-set of Catholics pining for a return to monarchy? (Also answers for me the question why the Muslim community is pro-Obamacare.)

Freedom Of Speech

Hitch has a beautiful essay on losing his voice and the power of the spoken word.

Update: during the JP II beatification vigil celebration, someone I can't recall --Joaquin Navarro-Valls or Cardinal Dsiwisz or someone like that recalled the late Pope's last Audience, when he tried desperately to speak and couldn't. Apparently the pope told those close to him then that if he couldn't speak it might be better for him to die. It came to mind as I was reading the Hitchens piece that it would be good for those so inclined to ask for JP II's intercession for Hitchens.

Errm....No.

Here's a snippet of conversation transcribed from video of Chris Wallace interviewing Tom Donilon, our National Security Adviser. FOX calls this "hammering" the guy as if they're proud of it. Wallace asks:

We'll all stipulate that bin Laden was a monster. But why is shooting an unarmed man in the face legal and proper while enhanced interrogation, including waterboarding of a detainee under very strict controls and limits, why is that over the line?

Donilon offers a defense of shooting bin Laden, to which Wallace responds:

I'm not asking you why it was OK to shoot Usama bin Laden. I fully understand the threat. And I'm not second-guessing the SEALs.

The conversation continues:

WALLACE: What I am second guessing is, if that's OK, why can't you do waterboarding? What can't you do enhanced interrogation of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was just as bad an operator as Usama bin Laden?
DONILON: Because, well, our judgment is that it's not consistent with our values, not consistent and not necessary in terms of getting the kind of intelligence that we need.
WALLACE: But shooting bin Laden in the head is consistent with our values?
DONILON: We are at war with Usama bin Laden.
WALLACE: We're at war with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

And so forth.

Just to be clear, that line of questioning appears morally bankrupt. Its premise is that because it's ok to kill OBL, it's okay to do ANYTHING to him, including, in a vivid example provided by Mr. W., slow-roast him over a fire and draw out his intestines, as the Brits used to do to the martyrs. The Framers wanted to prevent us from being infected with such practices as were carried out by the French Revolution.*

Waterboarding, if it is permissible, is permissible only because it can reasonably be understood not to be torture. The primary reason we don't torture is not out of concern for the likes of OBL or KSM, but because the torturer degrades himself in the process. We mustn't make monsters out of our own interrogators, degrading their human dignity and ours in the supposed defense of human dignity. We put limits on what may be done to even our most brutish enemies as much out of concern for our own humanity as theirs.

I think the administration's efforts to prosecute Bush-era people for policies they don't like is obscene and I think its incoherent approach to enemy interrogation encourages "shoot to kill" where capture and question would be preferable (speaking in general, not second-guessing what was done with OBL.) But I defend Donilon in this exchange. I don't want to see the Right taking the line suggested by Wallace's question.

*Mr. W. thinks I haven't made it clear I understand the Constitution pre-dates the FR. Yes, I know. The Framers wanted to prevent us from being infected by the kinds of behavior subsequently seen in .....

Osama's Last Days

The Formerly Grey Lady has a piece on OBL's hidden life. Don't know how much of it will turn out true, but two little tidbits jump out at me. First, is it plausible neighbors didn't know OBL was there? Yes. Why? Because he was living in a culture where hiding out from reprisal killings is kind of normal.

“We thought maybe they had killed someone back in their village or something like that and were therefore very cautious,” said a neighbor, an engineer who identified himself as Zaheer. 

So they figured there was some problem next door. A murderer. A woman who'd smiled at a man. Something like that. 

You know how his most recent messages were an odd mixture of his death to America clap-trap and Western progressivism? Suddenly he was talking about climate change & Noam Chomsky and praising Jimmy Carter's book? I think we have an explanation. The man had nothing to do but watch non-cable tv and read Western news assembled for him on jump drives. And --possibly-- listen to the radio.

It is not known if he had a radio in the house, but his son Omar, who lived with him in Afghanistan until 1999, described his father as constantly listening to the BBC.

Imagine if the BBC loved the West what we might have heard. Death to America! Soon the Christians will die at their own hands because they are soft and love comfort and will neither rein in entitlement spending nor engender the children they need to pay into their systems!

Transparency!

I suspect this is not what the American people understood by the promise to be the most transparent administration ever.

The president is expected any day now to sign an executive order that routs 70 years of efforts to get politics out of official federal business.
Under the order, all companies (and their officers) would be required to list their political donations as a condition to bidding for government contracts. Companies can bid and lose out for the sin of donating to Republicans. Or they can protect their livelihoods by halting donations to the GOP altogether—which is the White House's real aim. Think of it as "not-pay to play."
Whatever you call it, the order amounts to the White House brazenly directing the power of government against its political opponents—and at a time when the president claims to want cooperation on the budget and other issues.

Too Soon?

Facebook has informed me that as a Christian I should not have been ululating over our getting bin Laden. Hey, I prayed for his soul, too. I am large, I contain multitudes. Can I at least indulge in some bin Laden jokes?

I've heard two I like. One is the new drink called the bin Laden: two shots and a splash. The other informs of a slight misapprehension existing in Islam of the reward for jihad. Bin Laden died; we get 72 versions!

Draw What Moral Conclusions You Will

We caught Osama because Khalid Sheik Mohammed was waterboarded and gave up the nicknames of OBL's couriers.

In a secret CIA prison in Eastern Europe years ago, al-Qaida's No. 3 leader, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, gave authorities the nicknames of several of bin Laden's couriers, four former U.S. intelligence officials said. Those names were among thousands of leads the CIA was pursuing.

Update: Whoops. I completely missed the paragraph further on making the opposite claim.

Mohammed did not discuss al-Kuwaiti while being subjected to the simulated drowning technique known as waterboarding, former officials said. He acknowledged knowing him many months later under standard interrogation, they said, leaving it once again up for debate as to whether the harsh technique was a valuable tool or an unnecessarily violent tactic.

Hmm. Are all the Conservatives making my original point jumping to a false conclusion?

Actually, reading more carefully, these two assertions don't seem contradictory, but rather just steps on the road. First KSM gave up the nicknames of couriers, apparently under "enhanced interrogation" (though I am no longer clear). That led to other clues from Hassan Gul and al-Libi and months later they seem to have circled back to KSM under standard interrogation, when he finally acknowledged the courier by his real name.

Update 2: Peter King, Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee asserts baldly that KSM cracked under waterboarding.

Commentary: By Any Means Necessary

Well Done

Pulitzer material

 

Drew Angerer/The Washington Times

The President's announcement.

Tonight, I can report to the American people and to the world that the United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of al Qaeda, and a terrorist who’s responsible for the murder of thousands of innocent men, women, and children.

The story of bin Laden's capture. 
Not hiding in a cave, but in a luxury compound. Three men killed with him --and one woman, used as a human shield.

Slideshow of spontaneous reactions in DC & Washington.

Blessed!

Tapestry of Bl. John Paul II, AP Photo/Pier Paolo Cito

2/3 of the Wheat and Weedlets arose at 2:30 to watch the beatification Mass live. A beatification or canonization is an excellent moment to entrust an intention to a new saint, so we prayed our private prayers and ate ice cream sundaes in celebration. (Why do I think the two youngest weedlets' prayers might have been thus answered on the spot?)

Here's the homily.

And to the nay-sayers who say, what's the rush? I say: you are either insincere; or ungrateful (liberating us from Soviet communism and the great and terrible malaise of the 1970s wasn't enough?); or too young to remember the flakiness and ennui that characterized the Church at the time he took office --and thus don't see how rapidly he changed things for the better.

More importantly: we had 27 years watching this man. We know he is holy (which is not the same as omniscient, omnipotent, or perfect in judgment, those being qualities belonging to God alone; nor is it a claim that a great work of reform you'd begun was yet brought to completion); that's what the crowds chanting "Santo subito!" at his funeral meant. Why is it the same people insisting the Church should be more democratic are always so resistant when it's shown the Church in fact does listen to her people?  See this crowd, which six years on gathered once again and spread all the way down the Via della Conciliazone (500 meters long according to Wiki) to the Tiber and then left & right into the side streets? This is a beatification by acclamation:

The pope opens with the same idea:

Six years ago we gathered in this Square to celebrate the funeral of Pope John Paul II. Our grief at his loss was deep, but even greater was our sense of an immense grace which embraced Rome and the whole world: a grace which was in some way the fruit of my beloved predecessor’s entire life, and especially of his witness in suffering. Even then we perceived the fragrance of his sanctity, and in any number of ways God’s People showed their veneration for him. For this reason, with all due respect for the Church’s canonical norms, I wanted his cause of beatification to move forward with reasonable haste. And now the longed-for day has come; it came quickly because this is what was pleasing to the Lord: John Paul II is blessed!

(The full process was respected; the only change was the pope's waiving the 5 year waiting period before a cause can be introduced.)

What was the great cause of John Paul's life?

It is the same one that John Paul II presented during his first solemn Mass in Saint Peter’s Square in the unforgettable words: “Do not be afraid! Open, open wide the doors to Christ!” What the newly-elected Pope asked of everyone, he was himself the first to do: society, culture, political and economic systems he opened up to Christ, turning back with the strength of a titan – a strength which came to him from God – a tide which appeared irreversible. 

Benedict offered a personal reflection as well:

I would like to thank God for the gift of having worked for many years with Blessed Pope John Paul II. I had known him earlier and had esteemed him, but for twenty-three years, beginning in 1982 after he called me to Rome to be Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, I was at his side and came to revere him all the more. My own service was sustained by his spiritual depth and by the richness of his insights. His example of prayer continually impressed and edified me: he remained deeply united to God even amid the many demands of his ministry. Then too, there was his witness in suffering: the Lord gradually stripped him of everything, yet he remained ever a “rock”, as Christ desired. His profound humility, grounded in close union with Christ, enabled him to continue to lead the Church and to give to the world a message which became all the more eloquent as his physical strength declined. In this way he lived out in an extraordinary way the vocation of every priest and bishop to become completely one with Jesus, whom he daily receives and offers in the Church.

Finally:

Blessed are you, beloved Pope John Paul II, because you believed! Continue, we implore you, to sustain from heaven the faith of God’s people. You often blessed us in this Square from the Apostolic Palace: Bless us, Holy Father! Amen.

What can one add but: Santo Subito!