Saturday, April 30, 2005

WorldNetDaily: Hillary gets the Catholic out of Catholic college

Actually, the Catholic college got the "Catholic" out all by themselves, by inviting Hillary to speak at their commencement and conferring on her an honorary degree. I'm sure Pope John Paul II would have agreed with that, as I know Pope Benedict XVI will. While I still have problems with many tenets of Catholic doctrine, I have no problem with the Catholic Church deciding that they're not going to put up with affiliated institutions--or politicians--claiming to be Catholic while doing un-Catholic things. In this case, it's about Hillary's pro-abortion stance, which she has never moderated.

WorldNetDaily: Bride-to-be bombshell!

Specifically, Jennifer Wilbanks got cold feet, skipped town without telling anyone, cut her hair short, and must have hidden a stash of clothes somewhere along her jogging route. Police found clippings from her hair and the clothes she disappeared in.

From Duluth, GA, she got on a bus to Las Vegas, and then got on another bus to Albuquerque. There she called 911 and told the cops that a man and a woman had abducted her and taken her on a long road trip by car. She even told that story to the FBI. But now she has admitted that she got cold feet.

She's lucky that the cops in Albuquerque, not to mention the FBI, aren't charging her with filing false crime reports. Skipping town wasn't a criminal matter (though she's also lucky that the cops won't proceed against her to recover the costs of a criminal investigation and search). But lying to the police, and especially the FBI, is. The only reason why the authorities will not proceed against her is that that would cost more than it's worth and make for bad public relations.

The speculative comments are already rolling in to the Fox News Channel. (Isn't e-mail wonderful? Instant Letters to the Anchorman and Managing Editor!) I've heard from many who express their sympathy with the girl, not because she has fallen out of love with her intended (though she might have, and no one wants to admit it), but because the wedding plans had snowballed. Six hundred invitations, fourteen bridesmaid and usher pairs--who did the bride's family think they were--the aedili curules of Gwinnett County (where Duluth is located)? A wedding is not supposed to be a series of public games! Yet how often do we plan big weddings, whether out of sheer vanity or because after you invite one circle of family and friends, now you have to invite the next circle, and the next, and the next. And people wonder why wedding planning is so daunting. Far be it for me to tell another couple how to celebrate their wedding, but my idea of wedding is a short guest list--one hundred fifty guests, tops--along with best man, maid (or matron) of honor, three each ushers and bridesmaids (or bridesmatrons or any combination), and a church with a fellowship hall so that people don't have to jump in their cars and drive across town to some swanky hotel where even the guests have to play dress-up just to impress the staff. And at the reception, one dance between bride and groom, and background music (emphasis on background) so that people can get together and chat. It's called "don't go overboard."

But others have hinted darkly that mere cold feet doesn't explain it all. Does she still love her intended? What must he be feeling, now that he knows the true reason for her disappearance? A runaway bride is supposed to happen only in the movies--some good (like It Happened One Night with Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert) and some goofy. It's not supposed to happen to--well, to any groom to whom it actually does happen.

Add to it that both families have shoulder-rubbing privileges with major public officials, including the Mayor of Duluth who knows the groom's family very well, and you have a case that no soap-opera story consultant would dare develop on her own. But now you can predict with ninety-five-percent confidence that the soapy towns of "Oakdale" and "Springfield" will have similar stories happening there. The CEO of Procter and Gamble must be drooling right now--a great story idea, and in the public domain, too. Folks, it doesn't get any better than that--or any worse.

Thursday, April 28, 2005

WorldNetDaily: Randi Rhodes: Repeat offender

In other words, this is the same radio hostess who:
  • Had another announcer pretending to be a country-boy officer telling a soldier to use a fluorescent tube as an instrument of torture. (I absolutely refuse to be any more specific--or graphic--than that.)
  • Nastily compared Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to a gang of rapists.
  • Most nastily of all--and very interesting in light of 18 USC 871--said this:
    Like Fredo [Corleone, a character in Mario Puzo's The Godfather], somebody ought to take him out fishing and [sound of someone firing a gun with a silencer attached].
Why hasn't someone arrested her under 18 USC 871? And how sincere can her apology be if it's for a repeat offense?

WorldNetDaily: Air America radio host: Punish me if I broke law

That's from Randi Rhodes, who opened her show yesterday with a tasteless skit containing a threat to shoot the President. Yesterday I finally found an MP3 of the whole show. The "announcer" in the skit was actually an actor pretending to be a Depression-generation retiree and saying, "We're the American Association of Armed Retired Persons!" Even Randi had a problem with that one: she said, "At least don't arm all the old folks until I get out of Florida!"

And today she apologized for the whole thing--sort of:

If the bit was understood to be a threat against the president, I need to apologize to the president of the United States, and I do. I also need to apologize to the Secret Service [which] has a very, very serious job. If they had to take two seconds out of their day to look into me, I apologize for that. ... But where is the apology when they threaten judges from the Senate floor or from the House floor? Or where's the investigation into [WND columnist] Ann Coulter's mouth? ...

[My apology] is sincere. I feel bad that anybody would feel threatened by comedy. That's one thing, but I also feel bad that it wasn't funny. And I also feel bad that there could be a perception that I would be advocating violence against anybody, let alone the president of the United States of America. It's no secret that I think he's a terrible president, but I don't think that anybody should have violence advocated against them in any way, shape or form ever! ... That [skit] will never see the light of day again. It was bad.

Well, apart from my having a copy--along with countless other political junkies like myself--I have a few observations:
  1. The lady doth protest too much, methinks. If you have to say that you're sincere, chances are you're not.
  2. Neither Ann Coulter nor any US Senator or Representative has ever threatened anyone with death. (Well, Robert C. Byrd's history is in some question, but at least he no longer stands by any of his Klan activities--at least I don't think he does. But I digress.) Rhetoric still has some standards of decency--besides which, a direct threat against the life of a public official is as illegal as it is impolite.
That said, at least we got an apology from the source. Twenty-five years ago, we wouldn't have gotten even that much--nor did we when some said that their biggest beef with John W. Hinckley the Third was that he couldn't shoot straight. (Then again, forty-five years ago, no one would have dared say such a thing.)

Wednesday, April 27, 2005

Drudge Report Flash: Air America Probed after Bush 'Gunshots'

As also quoted on WorldNetDaily, someone on "Air America", the liberal so-called answer to the Excellence In Broadcasting Network (Rush Limbaugh's radio show, for those of you in Rio Linda), put together a skit mentioning Bush in very unflattering terms and actually including gunfire and the sound of a gun being cocked. I quote:
A spoiled child is telling us our Social Security isn't safe anymore, so he is going to fix it for us. Well, here's your answer, you ungrateful whelp: [audio sound of 4 gunshots being fired.] Just try it, you little bastard. [audio of gun being cocked].
Now to be fair, I cannot vouch for that recording. Why? Well, Drudge included a link to what purported to be an MP3 recording of the skit. But all of my attempts to follow the link to save the content, or even to load it into my browser, have failed. The message: "The link has been removed or the web site has changed its name." Which, of course, is the cybernetic equivalent of "[Do, sol, ti!] We're sorry. The number you have called has been disconnected."

Are they crazy? I'm not going to speculate that anyone remotely connected with the network has a plot to kill the President. (I think that that shadowy Arab organization that calls itself "The Base" has such a plot, but that's not germane at the moment.)

But when I was finishing high school in Dallas, Texas, I had occasion to fly out of Dallas Love Field and the new Dallas-Fort Worth Regional Airport. At both facilities, back in the early days of metal detectors and luggage X-rays, every passenger could see signs at every checkpoint, that read as follows:

Comments about guns and bombs are taken seriously. Please no jokes.
And a government source told Drudge that even to joke about assassinating the President is a federal offense. Now if you don't believe that, then let me quote to you 18 USC 871:
(a) Whoever knowingly and willfully deposits for conveyance in the mail or for a delivery from any post office or by any letter carrier any letter, paper, writing, print, missive, or document containing any threat to take the life of, to kidnap, or to inflict bodily harm upon the President of the United States, the President-elect, the Vice President or other officer next in the order of succession to the office of President of the United States, or the Vice President-elect, or knowingly and willfully otherwise makes any such threat against the President, President-elect, Vice President or other officer next in the order of succession to the office of President, or Vice President-elect, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.
That section doesn't say a word about blowing off a joke about such a thing.

So here is my answer: [large rasping buzz, followed by the rumbling sound of a metal door in motion, ending in a clang.] Just think about what you're doing, or saying.

Thursday, April 21, 2005

WorldNetDaily: No charges for soldier who held aliens

And why no charges? Simple--Sergeant Haab had perfectly valid grounds to make a citizen's arrest. Arizona law allows any citizen to make an arrest if:
  1. he sees someone commit a felony, or
  2. a felony has taken place and he has reasonable suspicion that he is confronting the perpetrator(s).
Part of the initial problem is that just being in the USA illegally is a misdemeanor, not a felony--and misdemeanor suspects are not subject to citizen's arrest just for that. This is why at least two callers have urged Sean Hannity to support a (so far hypothetical) federal measure to make unlawful entry into, or presence in, the USA a felony--so that the MInutemen, for example, could detain suspected illegal border crossers if they wanted to.

But while unlawful entry is not in and of itself a felony, the smuggling of human beings into the country is a felony. So, too, is conspiracy to commit any sort of felony. And the way the law works, not only is the human smuggler guilty of a felony, but so are his passengers, if they are taking any more active a role than sitting in the back of a truck. In Haab's case, the seven illegal entrants charged him, until he held them at bay and then chased them down, not wanting them to bring harm upon a fellow citizen.

And what clinched it for the Maricopa County Attorney is that the seven illegal entrants couldn't get their stories straight. You can read the article for the details on the differing, and often changing, stories they told. That sort of thing possibly makes them liars. It definitely makes them unreliable witnesses.

Result: Haab goes free, as is only proper.

Wednesday, April 20, 2005

The Hill: Soros says be patient

Specifically, George Soros was speaking to a gathering of liberal moneymen, saying that they should have patience and settle in for a long wait for results from a network of liberal think-tanks.

If the sketchy details of that meeting are any indicator, Soros has got a long wait ahead of him.

To begin with, "liberal think-tank" seems to be a contradiction in terms. If that sounds harsh, just remember that the grandest experiment in liberal political theory occupied most of the twentieth century, and failed miserably. That experiment was called "Union of Soviet Socialist Republics" and "German Democratic Republic" and a host of other names, most of which are now consigned to the Dempster Dumpmaster of history.

Worse for them, liberals these days haven't been thinking at all. They've been emoting. And the primary emotion I've seen from liberals is unreasoning, unrestrained, unchanneled anger and hate. With the result that they have accomplished less in four years than Republicans accomplished in six, beginning in 1995 when they took over the Congress.

But the most damning indictment of George Soros' latest experiment was that, for all the talk at this meeting about "funding transparency," not one of the meeting organizers was willing to release a list of attendees. Even a quasi-establishment organ like The Hill couldn't find out much more than I have written here--because nobody was talking. And people think that the Yale senior society called Skull and Bones is a conpiratorial apparatus!

Dream on, George Soros. Buy yourself another $23 million tee-shirt, why don't you. And see what the rest of us care.

Tuesday, April 19, 2005

WorldNetDaily: Jihad comes to Small Town, USA

Ever since 9/11, I have long suspected that what Muslims say to one another in Arabic, the original language of Islam, and what they say to the world in the languages of the rest of the world, might be disconnected. The author of this article now offers conclusive proof.

It was supposed to be a meeting of how to turn America back to God and family values. So the author, an American woman who has Arabic and uses it as an intelligence analyst, showed up--and didn't let on that she had Arabic.

In the first session, young men did everything from brag about how to spook the American flying public, to pledge to continue to engage in jihad--defined at that meaning as physical warfare against everyone and everything non-Muslim.

And then in the second session--held in English--the presentation concentrated on how to raise Godly children in an ungodly world, especially in the public schools--just ths sort of things you might expect to hear at my church.

One session in Arabic, one in English--and the content of the sessions was as different from one another as night is from day.

The trouble is that this is all of a piece with Islam. Muslims are taught that it's OK to lie, so long as the lie will advance the faith. Muslims are also taught that no treaty they make with non-Muslims is binding on them.

Tell me again that Islam is a religion of peace. Oh, maybe it is, in the sense that the actor Paul Frees, as the disembodied voice of an all-powerful computer called Colossus, said in these lines from the motion picture of that name:

I bring you peace. It may be the peace of plenty and content, or the peace of unburied death. The choice is yours: obey me and live, or disobey and die.

WorldNetDaily: Mexico, U.S. to be 'integrated'?

Oh, yeah? In your dreams, SeƱor Luis Ernesto Derbez Baustista, Foreign Secretary of the United Mexican States!

He was speaking to an audience in Texas that he thought would be sympathetic. According to this article, it wasn't--or at least, not entirely.

But his most galling declaration was his wish that the Minutemen be prosecuted. For what? For monitoring the border and serving as extra eyes and ears for the Border Patrol? Because that's all they've done. He's just upset because the Minutemen have succeeded in completely interdicting border crossings along the 23-mile stretch of the US-Mexican border that they currently patrol.

And it gets better: the Minutemen have 15,000 volunteers to establish a much larger force along the entire length of the border. More than that, they're going to picket, rat-out, and otherwise make life a little more difficult for American businesses who, chiefly because they are unscrupulous and shortsighted, hire workers who are not lawful residents. No, they will not, as Cassandra "Elvira" Peterson once said was her favorite way to scare people, "go into the kitchens of trendy Los Angeles restaurants and shout, Immigracion!" Instead, they will call the Immigration Customs and Enforcement office in the LA Federal Building and tell them that if they went to the kitchen of the trendy LA restaurant, they'd score quite a catch of illegal immigrants.

Meanwhile, the ACLU's so-called legal monitors of the Minutemen have been caught smoking pot on patrol. Don't just take my word for it. See for yourselves. (Hat tip for the higher-res photos: Michelle Malkin's Immigration Blog.) Add to it that the Border Patrolmen's union supports the Minutemen, and it's hard to feature how anyone can prosecute those men successfully.

Tuesday, April 12, 2005

WorldNetDaily: Justices to be booted in Massachusetts?

Massachusetts' constitution turns out to have much better protections against runaway judges and Justices. In Massachusetts, a ruling like Marbury v. Madison would never have stood--because under Massachusetts' constitution (actually the oldest written constitution now in force and effect), justices don't nullify existing laws, and furthermore, all laws stay in effect until the legislature repeals them, regardless of what any judge says or thinks! The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court violated all these provisions when they ordered the legislature to draft a body of law permitting man to marry man, and woman to marry woman, in Massachusetts.

So what are people going to do about it? Remove the four offending Justices of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, on impeachment for and conviction of pouring contempt on Massachusetts' constitution, that's what.

It couldn't happen a moment too soon, or to a nicer bunch of guys and gals--especially Massachusetts' CJ, who, desirous as she was to "marry" another woman, ought to have recused herself from that ridiculous case anyway.

And maybe the Florida legislature, not to mention the United States Congress, can take the hint!

WorldNetDaily: Mexican army escorts border drug-runners

And interestingly, the Mexican Army is steering those drug-runners (and other illegal aliens) away from that stretch of the border that the Minutemen have all but secured with their own activities.

Two thoughts here:

  1. I'm sorry, el jefe estupendo Vicente loco como Fox, but what you are doing is an act of war. You're lucky that US troops don't confront your troops--whom they could have for lunch anytime they want to.
  2. And second, I think President Fox knows this. Why else would he instruct his regulars to steer clear of the Minutemen? Since when does a regular army of any nation have anything to fear from local militia, half of whom aren't even armed? He can't fear the Minutemen. But he probably fears our regulars, and just perhaps the Arizona National Guard (though whether Janet Napolitano would find in herself the moxie to deploy the National Guard to face off against Mexican regulars is anyone's guess).
My recommendation: the Minutemen Project should not fold up and go home at the end of April. They need to recruit for a permanent presence, and extend it all along the Rio Grande. And then maybe they can organize Up North, from Vancouver to New Brunswick.

Thursday, April 07, 2005

FOXNews.com - Politics - Officials: 'Minutemen' Dissuade Some Migrants

Not just "some", but half of those migrants who normally try to cross at the Minutemen's area of operations are not attempting the crossing--at least not along that 23-mile stretch. The "officials" that FoxNews quotes are Mexican officials, by the way.

WorldNetDaily: Pol: Paper made up quotes about Minutemen

Specifically, Councilman David Pfeffer of Santa Fe, NM, told the Albuquerque Journal that he would like to see Minuteman-like citizen patrols along the border near his city. But now, after catching a lot of heat from what I presume are his liberal friends, he denies that he ever said that.

For what it's worth, the Albuquerque Journal stands by the story and insists that they checked, cross-checked, and double-checked the reporter's notes on his speech. Also worth noting is where the councilman made his remarks: to a gathering of Minuteman volunteers in Tombstone, AZ (yes, that Tombstone), their chief staging point.

WorldNetDaily has this paraphrase of Councilman Pfeffer's attempted qualification:

While Pfeffer told KRQE[-TV] he supports securing the border between the U.S. and Mexico and appreciates the Minutemen raising issues about illegal immigration, his goal in traveling to Arizona was to observe the project and not ask the volunteers to come to New Mexico.
I would advise the Minuteman to come to Santa Fe anyway. What Pfeffer can't dispute or argue with is the success of the project. With enough volunteers, we could stop illegal immigration just that way.

Wednesday, April 06, 2005

Agape Press: Young Earth Creationist Has New Bone to Pick With Evolutionists

Specifically, Ken Ham, head of Answers in Genesis (and who also is building a Museum of Creation right here in the USA), says that the recent discovery of a thigh bone from Tyrannosaurus rex is further evidence for a young earth and against evolution.

First, a bit of background. Two kinds of Creationists exist: young-earth and old-earth. Old-earth creationists believe that life got here by creation, but they don't happen to believe that the earth is all that young. But evolutionists are all of one stripe: all believe in an old earth. The point: if the earth is old, creation might still be the right answer, though it's harder to prove. But if the earth is young, then evolution is impossible--because not enough time has passed. (And indeed, the notion that the earth is 4.6 billiion years old dates no further back than Charles Darwin.)

So what is all the fuss about today? Well, two years ago some archaeologists found a big T. rex bone. In order to airlift it to civilization, they had to break it. And when they did, they found soft tissue, which included blood vessels and presumably muscle.

Soft tissue? From a specimen that is supposed to belong to an era that ended seventy million years ago? Impossible. And I mean, impossible. No soft tissue could possibly last that long. No one would ever have predicted such a find.

But a young-earth creationist has no trouble explaining it. This particular specimen probably got swept away and buried in the Great Flood of Noah. Which, depending on whose chronology you follow, happened anywhere from 4,400 to 6000 years ago. (I follow James Ussher's chronology, just to set the record straight.)

But I have to agree with Mr. Ham when he observes that evolutionists will never admit that their basic premise is wrong. Instead, they'll think of some fudge, They always do. I remember reading all those fudges in my textbooks.

And why do the scientists always fudge the data? Because they can't bring themselves to believe that anything but random, impersonal chance produced the stunning variety of life we see around us today.

Nor is this especially good science. When Marie Curie repeatedly found that after analyzing pitchblende by conventional means, she still couldn't account for all the radiation it put out, she did not write it off as an unaccountable error. Instead she and her husband set out to extract what they knew was a heretofore-unknown radioactive element--which they named radium--from bags and bags of pitchblende. They succeeded. Their discovery turned upside down everything the world then knew about radioactive elements--because radium is hundreds of times more radiant than uranium. But they would never have accounted for the extra radiation if they hadn't gotten past the notion that the extra radiation came from what they initially thought was, for lack of a better word, junk.

This T. rex bone with the blood vessels and presumed muscle is the radium of paleontology--a find that will remain elusive so long as the community of science insists on their old theories. Madame Curie, I am almost sure, would be very disappointed.

WorldNetDaily: Minutemen catch 141 illegals so far

Not bad after two days of operation. Oh, they had some minor dust-up when they tripped some Border Patrol sensors by accident--or did they? I begin to suspect that that report, carried solely in the mainstream press, is more spin--from the media themselves or possibly from someone in Immigraiton Control and Enforcement who now has a lot of eggs Benedict on his face.

Here is more of what is really going on:

  1. The Minutemen have gained a reputation for acting like--well, like a "well-regulated militia."
  2. A city councilman in Santa Fe, New Mexico likes those guys so much that he wants to get something started on that stretch of the border near his town. He even said that when people come into the Minuteman Project and bring their guns, he considers that an eminently sensible thing to do!
  3. Illegal crossings of the Minutemen's stretch of the border are already declining. Smugglers have told Mexican news organs that they have to curtail or cease their operations so long as the Minutemen are present.
  4. Representative Tom Tancredo (R-CO) is pointing out the obvious: when the Border Patrol sent 500 more agents to the Minutemen's area of operations, that was no accident. The trouble is that those 500 agents came from other lengths of the border.
So what happens now? I suggest that citizens all along the border should join the Minutemen and organize similar militias where they are. The Minutemen have an excellent model for citizen border patrols, with rules of engagement that, so far, have succeeded in curtailing border crossings with no one getting hurt. Citizen militias do work--and those Minutemen just might thwart another Al-Qaeda strike, though they will probably never know it.

Tuesday, April 05, 2005

WorldNetDaily: Rev. Gene Robinson: Jesus 'might be 'gay''

(Pardon me for being so late with this article; my ISP had some servers shorted-out in the recent flooding.)

For those of you needing a recap: The Right Reverend Canon V. Eugene Robinson ("Canon Gene" for short), Bishop of New Hampshire and open homosexual, deliberately made some comments, as WorldNetDaily quotes in the above article, suggesting that Jesus might have been homosexual himself. His grounds for so saying were these:
  1. He was Single.
  2. He traveled in the exclusive company of men.
  3. He had in his entourage a particular disciple (St. John the Evangelist, presumably the same as John the Revelator) who described himself as "the one whom Jesus loved."
  4. He repeatedly stated that His family was a lot larger than just his earthly father and mother and brother.
Sportsfans, this is an example of how homosexuals wrongfully dictate the agenda of the culture. Thanks to this kind of thinking, a single man is automatically suspect, cannot have roommates, and cannot express any affection for another man and use the word love to describe it. Time was when a man could say that he "loved" another man without arousing such suspicion. The "loving" collegial relationship between the characters Walter Neff and Barton Keyes in the motion picture Double Indemnity is a good example of this. But now, whenever a man travels only with men, people want to suspect him of being homosexual. And notice that the loudest noise along that line comes from the homosexuals themselves!

More to the point, I have never heard a clergyman make such an outrageous statement about our Lord and Savior before this. I'm used to hearing that from playwrights with over-active imaginations. Any clergyman making statements like these is guilty of apostasy, blasphemy, and heresy.

Keep it up, Canon Gene. If you wanted to shock people--and fly your true rainbow colors--then you're doing a first-rate job.

Monday, April 04, 2005

NewsMax.com: Zogby Finds Americans Wanted Terri to Live

You see? Ask correct questions, and you'll get correct answers. Previous polls on the subject of Terri Schindler Schiavo had suggested that Americans would not have wanted any effort made to let Terri live. But John Zogby, to his credit, went back and re-phrased the questions. John Zogby is the only pollster who makes this kind of extra effort to find out what the American public really think. Everyone else is engaging in push-polling, as far as I'm concerned. While I probably disagree with John Zogby and his brother James on a number of issues (especially as regards Muslim-Christian and Muslim-American relations), I commend John Zogby for taking an active interest in the truth.

Understand this: I don't take a stand on the basis of any polls. (Which is why some who have commented on my blog think I'm a jerk, but never mind.) I take my stands on the truth, and on the facts as I observe them, as best as I can understand them. John Zogby's new findings have caused me to regain some of the respect I had lost for my fellow citizens and lawful residents. But it has not affected my confidence in the rightness of my position, because I already knew I was right, and I'm not afraid to say that.

WorldNetDaily: Minuteman project snagging 1st illegals

That's right. Even before its official announcement, the Minutemen, in the initial stages of training themselves for their patrols, spotted 18 illegal aliens who were just walking along, as easy as you please! The Minutemen did exactly what they intended to do: they called the Border Patrol, who then came and picked them up.

And apparently another illegal alien walked right into the Minutemen's camp! As it turned out, he was exhausted and dehydrated, so he got some badly needed attention. But he also got picked up, which is the whole point of the Minuteman Project.

This goes to show you that citizen militias do work. But their real test will come when, as, and if those MS-13 gangsters arrive to test their mettle.

Saturday, April 02, 2005

AP: Pope John Paul II Dies at 84

This is definitely confirmed, and the news is all over every electronic outlet.

I join in mourning a truly great Pope. He displayed a courage second only to that of Innocent III, in addition to being the third-longest-serving Pope, the most widely traveled Pope in history, and one of the most prolific publishers to occupy that post. While I cannot agree with all the late Pope's theology, I admire courage wherever and whenever anyone demonstrates it, as this Pope did. (Also of note: he was the first Pope ever to visit the New World, and made four visits to the USA.)

His funeral will take place next week, and then will come the Conclave, or literally the "locking-up together," of the College of Cardinals. I wish them the best in choosing a successor, as I don't see any obvious candidate.

Friday, April 01, 2005

WorldNetDaily: Schiavo: Awakening a sleeping giant

So says David Limbaugh (Rush's brother). And to every point he made, I would add:
  1. That dreadful press conference (hat tip: WorldNetDaily) by Attorney George Felos, during which he described how "beautiful" Terri was in death, must surely have filled significant numbers of the American people with revulsion. What I heard in that press conference was clear and convincing clinical evidence that George Felos is suffused with necrophilia--a neurotic condition in which the patient is obsessed with death itself, the appearance of human corpses, or both.
  2. Certain Democratic Party politicians and retirees have reacted with unseemly and unprovoked anger, accusing Republicans of provoking and inciting violence against those who disagree with them--this while all the political violence this country has seen in the last five years has been on the Democratic side, save only the Manhattan Incident of September 11, 2001, and certain other isolated incidents that the FBI might not want to admit are international terrorist attacks. Those aside, leftists have physically attacked conservative politicians and commentators alike; the evidence abounds. Conservatives do not behave that way. So it ill befits a liberal Senator to accuse a conservative Representative of inciting people to violence--as Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA) did today.
Keep it up, you guys. Keep it up. Let the American people see what you're really made of.

Will to Live State List

From the National Right to Life Committee. They have carefully crafted Advance Directive forms and instructions appropriate to every State of the Union, and the District of Columbia. These forms are not your standard Advance Directive forms that you get from your State government. These forms direct your health-care providers to keep you alive, not decide to pull the plug on you if your "expectations" of recovery become any less than "reasonable." Accordingly, NRLC calls these "Will to Live" forms, whose aims are the opposite of the standard "Will to Die" forms.