Bill Moyers and PBS

Ann Coulter is sharp-witted as ever in her take on attempts by Bill Moyers and PBS to fight government efforts to end Federal subsidy of their liberal propaganda network. My favorite part:

"...as regular viewers of PBS know, in fact, we invaded Iraq for oil. Yes, precisely. That's why U.S. forces seized Iraq's oil fields right after Baghdad fell, confiscated their vast oil reserves, and now we can buy all the gasoline we want here at home for just pennies a gallon any time we want. Sorry, we what? Folks, my switchboard is completely lit up and this isn't even a radio show. "

If we had a barrel of oil for every time we've been accused of invading Iraq for the oil, the result would be the same.

McCain's Nuclear Option

Apologies for not warning anybody that I wouldn't post this weekend. I've been pondering the home security implications of publicly advertising my absences, and will probably make adjustments to my blog profile for personal security purposes.

I've been in Mississippi, by the way, visiting in-laws for the Memorial Day weekend.

While down there, I've been pondering what in the world could have been going through John McCain's head last week as he very consciously betrayed his party over the judicial nominations. I will start with an assumption, and end with a speculation.

Assumption: McCain wants to become president. Every move he makes is calculated with that object in view. He and his staff are the only ones in North America who would deny that.

To become president, he believes he must appeal to the largest block of American voters. McCain banks on a backlash or at least a retreat from electoral conservatism after the American people have dealt with W. for president for eight years. Therefore, he must portray himself as plainly separated from the current administration. Hence, his conscious effort to move leftward of the president. The Dems love him. He is their version of Zell Miller.

But now all the solid Republicans-- the conservative base-- have gone beyond their perpetual irritation with McCain and simply detest the man. Right now, he couldn't be nominated for official Republican Party Crossing Guard, let alone president.

Now for the speculation. Right after the 2006 Senate race, as the various Democratic stars begin testing the waters for a 2008 candidacy, McCain will announce that the Republican Party's "right-wing extremism", the GOP's support for "a war based on a lie", and its desire to hijack the American judiciary, will have forced him out of the party.

He'll run for president as a Dem; and the Dems will go crazy for him.

New Blog

Two areas I feel passionately about are conservative politics and my Catholic faith. And I have written quite a lot about both on this blog. However, most of the readers who come here because of the religion stories are indifferent at best to the political material. Similarly, most of the political junkies who visit this site could care less about the minutiae of Catholic Church business.

So, I've started a new blog site I call Tennessee Catholic.

From here on out, I will do news and politics here at Tennessee Rants, and religion and culture at Tennessee Catholic.

Enjoy.

Ringside Seats

As rumors continue to swirl around the story of Fr. Marcial Maciel, the founder of the Legion of Christ currently being investigated for (or exonerated from?) sex abuse charges dating back to the 1950s, Amy Welborn published a post today which attracted one of those strings of comments which reveal more than the story itself. I came across the post by way of Vatican Watcher.

You have the camp of Maciel supporters, who aren't arguing so much on behalf of Fr. Maciel as they are for the orthodox Catholicism that he defends.

And you have the camp of accusers, aiming their guns not so much at Maciel as at the Legion, which they accuse of conspiracy and obstruction. But neither Maciel nor the Legion are the real targets. The accusers are invested in the notion that the sex scandal reaches all the way to the Vatican through Fr. Maciel, and that the shield provided by Catholic orthodoxy, and not the permissiveness of modern heterodoxy, is the real cause for the scandal.

I tend to suspect that Maciel has, in fact, been cleared. But I do wish people were honestly more interested in the facts of the case than the politics behind it, and I also wish the Vatican would clean up it's communication organs.

How to lose a coalition

I'm not writing about the "Coalition of the Willing" in Iraq or the coalitions found in parliamentary democracies. Rather, I'm talking about the voter coalition required to gain a majority of electoral votes in an American presidential election.

George W. Bush and the Republicans control the White House and Congress because they have offered hope for progress on national security, empowering taxpayers, and reforming the judiciary. Americans voted Republican because of these issues and despite GOP abandonment of the concept of secure borders and shrinking the Federal government.

Some conservatives (Pat Buchanan types) voted Republican despite being isolationists because taxpayer empowerment and court reform compensated for the war. Other, libertarian conservatives (Boortz and Reynolds types) voted Republican despite placing little importance on judicial reform because they felt the empowerment of taxpayers was extremely important.

Now we have the Senate compromise on judicial appointments, in which the Republicans have basically abandoned the idea of judicial reform because they cannot muster enough loyalty in the ranks. We also have social security reform moving all too slowly, faith based social services a failed program, and Democratic obstructionism (actually, a darn good holding action) killing the prospect of any legislative victories at all.

And the Buchanan conservatives are asking: "I tolerated the Iraq war and the open borders for this?"

And the libertarian conservatives are asking: "I've put up with Republican moralizing and and continued bloated government for this?"

And when the Senate races come up in 2006 and the presidential race in 2008, many of these voters are going to ask: "Should I take time off work to vote for these guys again?"

Unless the GOP manages to makeup for the judiciary defeat disguised as a compromise, they will have grim prospects in the upcoming election cycles.

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UPDATE (Wed., 5/25/05, 7:58 PM)

Tom Carter puts things in a somewhat calmer perspective here; while Rob Huddleston has good takes on the situation here and here. I agree with him. Frist isn't the cause of this disappointment; McCain is. However, Frist was in charge of Senate Republicans and is going to take heat for not keeping his cohorts in line. This will hurt him in 2008.

Finally... Maybe

Michelle Malkin reports that John Kerry claims to have finally kept his promise to sign the SF-180 to release his complete military records. However, in the highest traditions of Kerryesque politics, the situation tends to be somewhat confusing. See Michelle's take here.

In addition, if you look at the SF-180 here, you'll notice that the form will allow only for the release of records in the specific branches of the service requested. Therefore, Kerry can (in theory) release the forms on his service with the USN in Vietnam but hold the records on his service in the USNR, where rumor has it that he received something other than an honorable discharge because of going AWOL while hanging out with Jane Fonda, making happy with commies in Paris, and tossing other peoples' medals over the Whitehouse fence.

I'll believe that Kerry has provided complete disclosure when I see his complete disclosure.

This is bullying

The Chinese have been doing this to Japan, and this to Taiwan. There have been rumblings of the PRC building up their amphibious capability to secure either Taiwan or the shipping lanes passing through Indonesia. They even played this game with the United States during the spring of 2001.

Just about the only folks in East Asia they haven't tried to push around are the North Koreans.

As the Chinese people grow more restless under the incongruity of a communist government presiding over a growing, free market economy; the more the government there relies on the public relations boost they get internally by treating their neighbors as enemies, and the more tempted they become to use war as a means of supercharging their economy.

It's a recipe for disaster.

Compromise in the Senate

If not for some Republican wigglers, the judicial confirmations could have gone through with a complete victory instead of a this.
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AND ANOTHER THING (Monday, 5/23/05, 11:52 PM):

After glancing around the other conservative blogs, I've seen the message repeated several times that: "This is the death of John McCain's presidential ambitions!"

Shoot!

John McCain never did have a chance, because he has spent his entire career ignoring his party base. The guy who has had his ambitions hurt the most is Bill Frist. This is the biggest Senate battle he has ever fought and he ended it with a compromise. His heart might be in the right place, but this is a let-down that won't be forgotten anytime soon.

Fr. Maciel: Not so Strange Happenings

As I mulled my previous post on the stories and counter stories regarding the supposed clearing of Fr. Marcial Maciel (What a name!) of sex abuse charges, it occurred to me that this isn't the first time that news from the Vatican has trickled out amid a cloud of rumor and contradiction.

When JPII lay dying, Italian news agencies jumped the gun and reported his death a day early. Fox News jumped on the band wagon and prompted some premature mourning here in America; which included yours-truly.

When Cardinal Ratzinger was elected to replace JPII, there was confusion over why smoke and no bells? Why weren't the basilica doors thrown open immediately? Just what color was that smoke? And didn't that happen when JPII was elected?

When B16 selected Archbishop William Levada to replace him at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith: first he was selected, then it was only a rumor, then he was selected but there was a rumor that Fr. Joe Fessio would replace him in San Francisco.

And now we have Fr. Maciel. He was investigated in the 1950s, the 1990s, and again this last few months; all repeats of investigations of the same basic charges by the same alleged victims. First he was cleared; then the investigation reopened. Then he was cleared again, and then the clearance was reported as a hoax perpetrated by the Legion of Christ.

I doubt that. I suspect Fr. Maciel was, indeed, cleared. I believe that what is going on is not so much some war of whispers as a Vatican communications system which badly needs to streamline itself and join the new millennium. The habit of the sinecured clerics in Vatican City to use twentieth century (and earlier) techniques simply throws us Americans for a loop every time.

I recall reading an article by papal biographer George Weigel several years ago (I will attempt to locate it) in which he discussed how discouraged he was when he visited Vatican City in the midst of the sex scandal in 2001 and found several high ranking Cardinals who had only a passing knowledge of the scandal and tended to write it off as American newspaper sensationalism. He wondered about this attitude until he realized that not a single one of those clerics used e-mail, relied on Internet news, or was conditioned to instantaneous information processing in a fashion that even distantly approached what the average American assimilates on a daily basis.

We Americans like our information to be mainlined into our arteries. We are so conditioned (and addicted) to the "Information Superhighway" that when we come across a culture that doesn't yield volumes of data upon demand (like the Vatican) then we tend to rip it out of every source we can find connected to the group in question.

And what we get is not good information, but a jumble of rumors and counter rumors.

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UPDATE (Tuesday, 5/24/05, 7:53 AM):

The article mentioned above was not by George Weigel, but was by Terry Mattingly and discussed Weigel's impressions of the Vatican. Mattingly quotes:

"Suddenly it dawned on me that the Vatican is simply not, to this day, a part of the Internet culture," said Weigel. "There are a few people who take the trouble to go online every morning or evening. ... But in the main, what we have become used to and what frames our emotional responses to these questions, namely real-time information and a constant flow of chat, commentary, argument and so forth, ... none of this exists over there."

The complete article can be found here on Terry Mattingly's web site On Religion.

Fr. Maciel: Something Strange Happening

Over the weekend, a series of claims and counter-claims arose regarding the investigation of Father Marcial Maciel, Founder of the Legion of Christ, regarding sex abuse charges discussed at my old blog site a month ago.

The matter is discussed in detail at Open Book and Vatican Watch.

On Friday, the Catholic News Service (CNS) announced there would be "no canonical process" for Fr. Maciel, meaning no charges would be brought against him as a result of the investigation recently reopened by order of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger during the last days of JPII's pontificate. Essentially, the news meant that Fr. Maciel was cleared of any charges.

Today, a victim advocacy group called ReGAIN claimed that CNS had the story wrong: that CNS had credited the Vatican Press Office with the communique when, in fact, the announcement had been made by the Legionaries whom Fr. Maciel had founded. The implication, of course, is that the Legionaries are up to some monkey business to get their man off the hook.

So: are the Legionaries of Christ a pack of Machiavellian schemers who would have made the worst anti-Catholic fantasies about the Jesuits look like children's stories?

Or are the victim advocates merely stirring the brew to keep the controversy over Fr. Maciel alive?

Right now, I wouldn't hazard a guess.

The latest abortion case for the Supreme Court

I found this through Drudge, although I suspect it will likely lead most MSM news headlines tonight and tomorrow. The case, discussed here, will test the right of New Hampshire to allow a girl less than eighteen-years-old to have an abortion without her parents' knowledge. Pro-aborts object to the law because it does not include the explicit "life and health" loophole that liberal courts have generally driven Mac trucks through. ("The girl might get depressed if she has a baby. Abort the little blob!") The state of New Hampshire contends that since state courts have automatically ruled that every piece of legislation governing abortions in New Hampshire are subject to the "life and health" exemption, then this law will automatically be limited on that account even though such an exception is not written in the actual text of the statute.

This smells fishy.

I believe that what New Hampshire wants is a court ruling that every law they pass now or in the future regarding abortion will automatically be limited by an unwritten "life and health" exception.

Depending on the will of the court, a ruling might even be handed down stating that any law nationwide which governs the the practice of abortion will be limited by a "life and health" exemption. If that happens, then there will exist no legal way to limit abortions outside of a reversal of Supreme Court opinion or, otherwise, the passage of a constitutional amendment. That is, I suspect that another fundamental right is about to be discovered in the "penumbra of the Constitution."

The only good outcome for Pro-lifers in this case would be for the Supremes to uphold the law and explicitly state that since no "Life and Health" clause is written in, then no such exemption is implied.

That is very, very unlikely.

Newsweek:Balkanization of the News

This last week witnessed Newsweek along with several other opinion makers (Linda Foley of the Newspaper Guild, Indra Nooyi of PepsiCo) asserting themselves in ways which have conclusively exploded any notion that they might possibly be objective in their take on current events. These examples of distorting the truth-- lefty propaganda rendered as news-- were the sort of things that landed the New York Times, Eason Jordan, and Dan Rather in hot water as recently as four months ago. So, why aren't Foley, Isikoff and Barry of Newsweek, and the rest out looking for new jobs right now?

I think there is a basic retrenchment of the MSM taking place. It is not a conscious or a coordinated decision being made. No conspiracy here. Rather, what the MSM is doing is almost entirely a market driven trend. Observing how bloggers, with no pretense of personal objectivity, are perfrectly capable of outing MSM outlets who mangle the news, media chiefs around the country have experienced an epiphany. Now, news executives such as Linda Foley; Michael Kinsley at the L.A. Times; Richard Smith (Editor-in-Chief) Mark Whitaker (Editor) and Jon Meacham (Managing Editor) of Newsweek; and others no longer bother worrying over any absurd assertion of fairness in their organizations, but instead can play proudly to their primary, liberal, readers.

This basic shift in MSM attitude took off in a big way during the horrible, three week period preceding the death of Terri Schiavo. The MSM's who covered the protests and the judicial appeals gambled that if they persevered in their efforts to portray the protesters as semi-terrorists and the Schindlers as bereaved buffoons, then the story would die about the same time that Terri did, and the alternate medias of talk radio and the blogosphere would do nothing about it.

Emboldened by this grim victory, and realizing that they really could (with only a little more chutzpah than previously used) just ignore the bloggers about the same way they ignored talk radio for 15 years, media execs and editorial staff have asked themselves something to the effect of "Why do we try to satisfy people who don't like us to begin with? Let's just concentrate on providing positive reinforcement to the folks who already read us."

Newsweek, the L.A. Times, and the NYT (which is consciously rethinking their whole editorial and marketing approach) have quietly decided to play exclusively to the ideology of the majority of their readership. And if, as a result, their subscribers decline by, say, 10% over the next year, they will be happy to accept that rather than have to worry over the absudity that they care one way or the other that they might be balanced.

Then again, if their readership declines by 25% instead of 10%, then execs will start getting fired and the media revolution will be on its way again.

Interesting times to come.

Putting things in Perspective

I'm back from a weekend of camping and mountain biking with the Scouts. Terrific experience. We camped at a National Forest Service site between Lake Ocoee and the slopes of Chilhowee Mountain, about 45 minutes drive north of Chattanooga Tennessee. On Chilhowee Mountain, there is a network of about 26 miles of mountain bike trails with varying levels of difficulty and kept in outstanding condition by what has got to be some very hard working volunteers from the Chattanooga Bike Club. The views were gorgeous.

On Sunday mornings, the Scouts customarily do a non-denominational chapel service, the sort of thing that can't be offensive to anybody except a hard-line atheist with a very thin skin. The adult leaders leave it to the boys, and pray like crazy that nobody gets too sacrilegious in their presentation.

My thirteen-year-old son led the service and shocked me by giving everyone some food for thought. He held up a dime he had found that morning and asked what it was and what was written on it. He pointed-out the phrase "In God we Trust" and reminded us that even though many people either ignore that motto or wish it wasn't there; it had been placed on all our currency none-the-less. Then he noted that whatever else that motto might mean, it reminded him of where the money really comes from. My kid proceeded to remind us all that our wealth here in the U.S. and, indeed, all good things come from the Lord and that we, in turn, need to dedicate all things that we do to His name.

That alone, coming from my son, made the camping trip worth it.

Gone Camping

I'll be with the Boy Scouts in the woods all weekend. No posts 'til Monday.

Attack of the Cloners

According to this story I found through Drudge, South Koreans scientists have made a major breakthrough in "therapeutic" cloning.

So now we can make babies and reduce them to medical waste faster than ever.

Mating Call of the Moonbats

It's spring, and in an attempt to attract mates, liberals have been going out of their way to establish that they really don't like the United States. It started with Newsweek publishing the bogus "Koran in the toilet" story that has conclusively ended any pretence of objectivity (or credibility)at that magazine.

Then, as if in response, lefty opinion makers across the country have tried hard to establish that each one of them hates America even worse.

There was the White House press corps going ape on Scott McClellan for suggesting that Newsweek really should try to be more responsible regarding the military.

There was PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi describing America to Columbia Business School graduates as a huge, obscene gesture directed at the rest of the world. (Memo to Nooyi: look forward to an emergency meeting of PepsiCo's board of directors soon.)

And now you have Linda Foley of the Newspaper Guild apparently trying to stage an historical reenactment of the Eason Jordan fiasco on C-span.

Today is a good day to be conservative.

Add to my "I'm glad Dean is DNC Chair" File

Read this by Bob Novak.

Found on Drudge.

Blog Recommendation

Tom Carter is a Texan who writes a good, conservative blog here that touches on most current issues. His comments, especially on military issues, are given greater authority because of his status as a retired Army colonel.

Well worth a daily visit.

Illegal Immigration Part 3 -- Crime

For those of you who have been following this blog, this series of posts was prompted by my many positive interactions with Mexican laborers who, to the best of my knowledge, have been illegal immigrants. In Part 1, I spoke of how in my experience, Mexican immigrants (whether illegal or legal) have always proved generous, hardworking, peaceable, and unassuming.

Shortly after that post, President Vincente Fox got into trouble for verbalizing much the same sentiment in terms which were both racist and obnoxious. He sounded more like a car salesman dissing his competitors than a statesman stating the case for his people. This prompted a second post by myself, in which I looked at what America gains by cooperating with Fox in his desire to open the borders to anybody from his country who wants to head north.

Today I am writing about the issue of illegal immigrants and crime.

The very day before my original post on illegals, a Denver detective murdered by a Mexican Illegal was buried amid much well deserved outrage and mourning. The killer, a 19-year-old Mexican, has been traced back to Los Angeles where he ditched his stolen car. The fugitive is probably safe in Mexico right now where President Vincente Fox does not extradite suspects who are likely to be tried for a capital crime.

Egg on my face, of course.

But any egg on my face is nothing compared to the loss experienced by the family of slain Detective Donald Young. American law enforcement officers put their lives on the line day after day to preserve our own lives and liberty, including the liberty of bloggers like me who short sightedly bleat about how "I've never met an illegal I didn't like." I do here apologize to the family of Detective Young, and hope that if they ever read this post they can forgive me for considering the serious matter of the link between violent crime and illegal immigration in the dismissive, personal terms which I used while writing last Saturday.

I do not know the stats on the proportion of illegal immigrants who are violent criminals. If anyone has hard, statistical information on illegal immigrants and crime, I sure would appreciate a comment or a note. Michelle Malkin, whom I highly esteem and who provides plenty of anecdotal information regarding illegal immigration and policy about the same, provides little in the way of hard stats and analysis. (BTW: here is a link to her take on the Denver tragedy.)

You can also look at this website dedicated to chronicling the crimes, both violent and otherwise, in this country committed by illegals. Again, it's pretty bad. At the same time, there are no stats about percentages of illegals involved in violent crime, whether they are more or less likely than the general American population to be involved in this crime, what the country of origin of these illegals are by percentage, and so forth. I notice that most of the criminals discussed on the site are not Mexican. Although many of the criminals flee to Mexico to escape justice, most of the criminals seem either to be from the Caribbean or from Central America.

Fox's policy of providing de-facto sanctuary for suspects in capital crimes is pure folly. If he wants the United States to continue cooperating, he needs to arrest and extradite those Mexicans accused of committing murder in the United States. If President Bush doesn't get tough with Fox on this issue, Republican candidates across the southwest and in urban areas will pay the price.

Conclusion: crime among illegals is a serious matter. If, earlier, I portrayed illegals as a legion of saints, I was wrong. Also wrong is to permit a situation in which criminals can come into this country, murder people, go home again, and not worry about having justice executed on them. At the same time, the use of anecdotal rather than statistical evidence regarding crime among illegals may constitute a liable of sorts against the vast majority of illegals whose only crime is in their actual presence in this country.

No wonder the Democrats hate her

Listening to the radio this afternoon, I heard Rush Limbaugh reading the text of a speech someone else had delivered to The Federalist Society at the University of Chicago Law School about 5 years ago. The speaker said something which (for me) crystallized current political conditions with a sharpness I hadn't seen since the first time I heard Ronald Reagan speak in 1976. Quoting this person, Rush said:

"Government is the only enterprise in the world which expands in size when its failures increase."

Wow.

The person who wrote that was Janice Rogers Brown, foremost among the Bush judicial nominees now being filibustered by the Democrats. No matter what else they say about her (and they say plenty, most of it bent out of any recognizable semblance to the truth) the reason they hate her is that her philosophy of government coincides perfectly with the beliefs of Ronald Reagan.

Not to mention Thomas Jefferson.

Like the Dems, I don't want her to be a Federal District judge, either.

I'd like to see her on the Supreme Court.

The complete text of her speech is here.

That's Okay...

...Because even though Dan Rather has lost another job, at least he can pawn his Peabody Award.

Second thoughts on Newsweek

No, I'm not about to say that Newsweek really did get the story right or that they really weren't a serious example of rabid liberals letting their hatred for the President get in the way of honest reporting, common sense, and any regard whatsoever for their country or its armed forces.

But there is just a chance-- a small chance, mind you-- that the anti-American riots which swept the middle east this past week were pre-planned.

If I was an intelligence analyst, which I am not, I would want to look closely at the transcript of the first Al-Jazeera broadcasts covering Pakistani cricket hero Imran Khan's denunciation of American interrogation practices at Gitmo which he made at a press conference held on Friday, May 6. I would look for any phrases used either in the press conference or in the Arabic language commentary on the press conference that are not part of the repertoire, over there, of the usual anti-American cliches.

That is, I would be looking for an activation code to trigger various Al Qaida cells in the Middle East to commence a series of pre-planned riots.

How would this possibly help Newsweek's case? By making the staff and reporters concerned into stooges rather than instigators. Criminally liable stooges, but stooges none-the-less.

More importantly, if the riots were pre-planned and coordinated, then we will have identified a new M.O. by Al Qaida and, if local authorities cooperate, we will know who the leaders of various Al Qaida cells might be.

Blogstorm hits Newsweek

Numerous bloggers are taking a hard look at how Newsweek bias led directly to riots and nearly a score of deaths in various Moslem countries. Best coverage of the situation and links to other important bloggers who weigh in can be found at Michelle Malkin's site.

I'm not sure Newsweek or their reporter, Isikoff, realize quite how much trouble they are in. The incident, in legal terms, resembles the Valerie Plame flap two years ago which started out as an embarrassment for Republicans but ended with two reporters being jailed for refusing to name their source who had leaked confidential information regarding a case that did not amount to whistle-blowing.

If the Justice Department gets interested in who is spilling sensitive info on an ongoing military investigation, and if Isikoff and his associate, Berry, aren't forthcoming, they could wind up doing some first person reports on the American penal system.

Which is a good thing.

Instaspawn

When I came aboard Rocky Top Brigade, the first RTB blogger to link to me was Ron Huddleston of VOLuntarily Conservative. He describes himself saying: "One of Glenn Harlan Reynolds' students at The University of Tennessee when Instapundit.com was taking off, it was natural for me to enter the Blogosphere... A true conservative, a Christian, and a Tennessean..."

For anyone who doesn't know, Glenn Reynolds is the mild mannered, real identity of Instapundit, the most popular blogger among conservatives today. He teaches at the University of Tennessee here in Knoxville; making this town, if not a Mecca, then at least a Medina of the blogging world.

Now, a fresh batch of RTB inductees have been introduced, and one of them is Cole Stinson of Strange Things Afoot. And he says: "Strange Things Afoot is a blog that I started when I was in my last year of law school at the University of Tennessee. I was inspired by Glenn Reynolds, whose classes I took every chance I could get..." Stinson hasn't written much recently about politics, but decorates his site with GOP emblems and Bush/Cheney link buttons. He also confesses that where he presently lives in the Southwest: "Cinco de Mayo has more significance for me this year than ever before. Even though I am not Mexican, I can certainly get on board with celebrating kicking France's a**, no matter who is doing the kicking."

First Ron Huddleston and then Cole Stinson. Glenn Reynolds needs to practice "safe lecturing"... or is that "safer lecturing"?

RTB is a good outfit for any serious blogger, liberal, conservative, or whatever, in Tennessee.

Fessio on Levada

An interesting post with a comment discussion is here at the Insight Scoop blog published by Ignatius Press. It discusses a New York Times article last Saturday which treats Archbishop Levada's appointment as Prefect of the Catholic Church's Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith as a done-deal and, likewise, does a brief personality profile on him. The NYT article quotes Fr. Fessio making some cryptic remarks about how conservatives think Levada is liberal and liberals think him conservative. It seems odd that Fr. Fessio discusses what others think about Archbishop Levada without rendering his own opinion.

Fr. Joseph Fessio, for anyone who doesn't know, is about the most outspoken, activist and orthodox Catholic priest in America today.

Meanwhile, the CDF (Congregation of the... you know) is the Church's primary office overseeing doctrinal orthodoxy within the Church. Anti-Catholics love to point out the historical link between the CDF and the Inquisition of yesteryear. My opinion is that neither the CDF nor the Inquisition are as repressive as they are made out to be in literature and media.

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UPDATE (Tuesday, 5/17/05, 11:50)

Douglas LeBlanc at Get Religion covers the NYT assessment of Archbishop Levada along with several other national papers. His take on Levada is worrisome, very concerned about whether Levada ever took the reforms following the sex scandal seriously and whether Levada has been fully transparent regarding the priests of his own diocese.

Illegal Immigration Part 2-- Vincente Fox

Since posting the first part of my thoughts on illegal Immigration last Saturday, a few things have happened to delay the second part. Kids, piano recitals, Church stuff... Newsweek follies, riots in Afghanistan... and Mexican President Vincente Fox making me feel like an idiot.

Last week, Fox stuck his foot in his mouth while talking to a group of Texas businessmen. His remarks got him in trouble on several levels as he pointed out that Mexican laborers were important to America because they were willing to do work that other Americans, and even blacks, would not do.

People climbed all over him for implying that (1) Americans were lazy, (2) American Blacks were not willing to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, (3) Mexicans had no pride and (4) Vincente Fox himself couldn't manage his own economy without sending people north.

There is some truth to what Fox says. There is plenty of work here in America which many Americans simply don't do very well at and Mexicans generally are rather good at. And these jobs tend to be the most miserable forms of physical labor we have. Vincente Fox was unfortunate enough to express these thoughts in ways that are intolerable up here-- that is, in absolute terms and in racial terms which are not only false but which may promote international and racial prejudice.

At the same time, does anybody realize how his policies have held inflation down in the U.S.?

**Our trade treaty with Mexico has kept the cost of manufactured goods-- clothing in particular-- very low.

**Cheap Mexican labor in the U.S. has kept food prices, housing prices, and service industry prices under control.

**Cheap Mexican oil, one of our biggest sources in the U.S., has kept us from being skinned alive by the Arabs and also given us more diplomatic leverage in the Middle East.

I like having Fox down there. I suspect that President Bush, knowing how much he helps us and how much he can hurt us if U.S./Mexican relations deteriorate, has made a conscious decision to accommodate Fox on the issue of illegal immigration.

I've got at least two more posts I intend to make regarding illegal immigration. One regarding crime, and the other (which I promised earlier) regarding national security.

Buchanan is history

Wait... no. Buchanan-style conservatism is history. By his own admission, too, according to this report. I'm kinda' glad he's out of the Republican Party. If he was still in it, he would be causing the sort of mischief that Howard Dean is causing the Democrats right now.

A Surrender, of Sorts

A report here, which I found through Michelle Malkin, says that the New York Times is going to start charging people to read their op-ed columns. That means that all the pajama-clad counterpunchers across the nation will no longer be able to simply link to their webpage and start shredding their logic. And even if they do pay to read the editorials, they won't be able to copy them or provide others with links.

So, we won't have the NYT to kick around anymore.

That's okay, because the NYT will surrender whatever direct influence it once had over internet opinion.

Fr. Fessio to San Francisco?

Good discussion of the possibility here. I think the notion that he may become archbishop of the diocese from which the Jesuits banished him still falls under the status of interesting rumor. And speaking of rumors, some have been circulated that Fr. Fessio isn't all he's cracked up to be. Allegations include poor financial management, poor administrative skills, and being mean to people who disagree with him. I doubt the rumors. That sounds like half-panicked sour grapes from those opposing orthodox reform.
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ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS (Monday, 5/16/05, 1:42 PM):

Notice that the rumor of Fr. Fessio to Frisco gets much more interest than the rumor of Archbishop Levada to CDF.

I wonder if Fr. Fessio as Archbishop would formally excommunicate Nancy Pelosi and the other Bay Area politicians who call themselves Catholic while promoting homosexual marriage and unlimited abortion on demand? I also wonder if such a move would finally enervate the other bishops in the U.S. to follow suit in their own diocesan territories?

P.S. Anybody know the plural of diocese? dioceses? dioci?

NPR has a Complaint

It seems that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is finally trying to address the way their funding of National Public Radio has amounted to a government subsidy for liberal propaganda. As one might imagine, NPR is resisting. Angrily. The New York Times covers the story here.

What the CPB wants is to install a couple of ombudsmen who can address bias charges. They also indicate they may redirect funding from news to music programs. I don't think they will follow through on the funding shift unless NPR refuses to make the very tardy reforms.

I wouldn't mind NPR news so much if it was news. Instead, I get a steady stream of Democratic, Green Party, and socialist talking points. And, of course, no NPR broadcast day would be complete without some interviewer asking: "Is that when you realized you were a lesbian?"

Sometimes they even ask the men that question.

Now, there is an argument NPR could use against these changes that has a grain of truth to it.

With the current state of Air America, the only liberal talk radio that people listen is NPR .
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AND ANOTHER THING (Monday, May 16, 11:26 AM)

Look closely at the New York Times story. You'll notice that in the same sentence they discuss "alleged liberal bias" at NPR, they describe CPB Chairman Kenneth Y. Tomlinson as a conservative. No use of the modifier "alleged" there.

Endangered species alert

Kathy Shaidle has a good piece here on the state of all too many orders of North American nuns.

They don't have any survival skills, and they don't reproduce. If I was a Darwinist, I'd say the problem will fix itself in a few years. Unfortunately, the collapse of some of these orders will mean the final end of some great, historical institutions.

Newsweek Attempts some Self Analysis

Newsweek's coverage of how their misrepresentation of the Guantanamo investigation caused riots across the Moslem world offers some details regarding the most irresponsible piece of journalism since Rathergate.

According to Newsweek correspondent Evan Thomas, the "confidential Pentagon source" suddenly lost his sense of veracity after the rioting broke out.

Also according to Thomas, the writer who put together the original, inflammatory piece, Michael Isikoff, submitted his work for review by another correspondent who, I presume, was higher on the editorial food chain. That correspondent was John Barry. Isikoff got his story from a "senior Pentagon official". John Barry took Isikoff's draft and showed it to (you guessed it) another unnamed "senior Pentagon official".

Correspondent Thomas goes into a long explanation about how Barry's anonymous fact checker quibbled with one detail of the report, but said nothing about the Koran in the toilet business. Thomas emphasizes that the senior official did not intend to deceive, but was not thoroughly familiar with the Guantanamo investigation that Newsweek wanted the dirt on.

That is, Newsweek wants to blame their gaff on the government sources, as if the government is responsible for what gets leaked by subversive employees. That makes sense... if you're a moonbat.

But why was Newsweek so quick to believe the sources?

Thomas discusses that as well. He describes all the other allegations made over the past three years regarding Gitmo. He discusses two other "Koran in the flusher" allegations and a story of how a guard once knocked down a Koran which was inside a bag hanging from a cell ceiling. Ooooh, what a meanie!

In other words, the original story was "fake but accurate". And to prove it, Newsweek just offered more of the inflammatory stuff even though it is even less well substantiated than the original, false report.

Toward the end of the article, Thomas talks about how the poor economy in Afghanistan made that place more susceptible to unrest than the U.S. military expected. He attributes the poor economy to U.S. efforts to stifle the resurrection of the growth of the poppies used to manufacture illegal narcotics. (Translation: BAD Americans! Too dumb to expect an uprising and too stuck-up too allow narcotics).

Summary, Newsweek blames the government and not their lefty reporters for getting a story wrong which was intended to hurt our government. They claim their sources were bad, that we should have known that the Afghans were unhappy, that we are to blame for the Afghan riots triggered by their story, and the story was basically true even if it was all wrong.

Now that my head is done spinning, I have one more question for Newsweek.

If their journalists are so smart regarding the Moslem world, why didn't they know what the consequences of their little article would be.

P.S.: Michelle Malkin also has a good analysis here. So does Austin Bay.

Newsweek gets it wrong

At the very least, the editor-in-chief and the writer need to resign or be fired over this. Immediately.

Why Levada?

As noted earlier, Vatican Watch posted several pieces on B16's appointment of Archbishop William Levada of San Francisco as his replacement as Prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF). Vatican Watch has additional thoughts here and John Allen of the liberal (though still informative) National Catholic Reporter has analysis here.
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Update (Sunday, 5/15/05, 8:20 PM)

Vaticanisti publishes a rumor (I repeat: rumor) that Fr. Joseph Fessio, so recently ousted by the Jesuit University of San Francisco, will replace Levada as archbishop of that diocese. I doubt it. Considering the recent forced resignation of Fr. Thomas Reese as editor of the Jesuit Magazine America, this would add insult to injury.

Anyone looking at the Vaticanisti post should also check the comments, which demonstrate a decided lack of consensus over whether William Levada is the a brave bastion of Catholic orthodoxy in an otherwise pagan town, or if he is a soft compromiser as secularized as anybody might be who wants to fit-in in the City on the Bay.

A similar case exists with Fr. Fessio (a hero of mine). Some of the commenters at Vaticanisti, while not questioning his orthodoxy, hint that he is a poor administrator and money manager, that he breeds discord wherever he goes, and that he lacks compassion.

I would love it, none-the-less.

The meaning of the JPII's long death

Paul Jacob at Townhall published an almost agonizingly respectful article this morning to consider the question of "papal term limits". The reason for his "treat it like a defective grenade" approach was his consciousness of the fact that he himself was not a Catholic and his suspicion that if he even hinted at any disrespect for the institution of the Papacy, then he would have several thousand Catholic suddenly-former-fans asking what business it was of his anyway?

And he poses a good question. Why not term limits?

Answer: because the length of a given pontificate is itself part of God plan for every specific pope.

I am convinced that the reason JPII's decline was so long, drawn out, and painful for himself and for those millions upon millions who loved the man, was because God wanted us to know, and wanted to reinforce the Pope's assertion, that the aged and the infirm were not disposable. Further, it was a demonstration of the fact that great good could be found in human suffering and that there were many evils far worse than a lingering death.

Parkinson's disease was an ailment which JPII shared with (of all people) American actor Michael J. Fox. Fox's response to the disease was to initiate publicity campaigns to find a cure and to personally lobby congress to fund the use of fetal stem cells (in my mind, to subsidize the practice of legal abortion and experimentation on murdered fetuses) so we could find a cure. In short, people like Fox said that the suffering caused by Parkinson's was so great that it legitimized a practice which amounted to medical barbarism.

By the very act of carrying on and functioning in his office, JPII put the lie to that claim. It was his personal Calvary, and by climbing it, he personally lived the statement that suffering can be turned toward good, and that suffering does not justify evil.

I am so glad we did not cut that off with papal term limits.

This is not news

At least not to anyone familiar with the pro-life movement. What is news is that a major newspaper has published a story on it.

Here is the U.K. Telegraph on how abortion raises the risk of future miscarriages.

Illegal Immigration Part 1

I need to part with the conventional wisdom of conservatives here. I don't do that often, but what I observe in daily life is a lot different from what I am told on this issue.

Michelle Malkin is a great columnist, pundit, and blogger whose biggest pet peeve is illegal immigration. It is so big an issue with her that she devotes a second blog to it. I think she's great. She is, literally, my favorite blogger. But I disagree with her on this issue.

I spent four hours this morning doing some fund raising for Tennessee Right to Life. I stood in the intersection of two busy streets wearing a bright orange vest with the organization's name on it and holding a gallon milk jug with the front end sawed off so people could toss in loose change and cash. It went from rainy to hot and humid, and I was pretty much sustained by the idea that maybe, just maybe, Glenn Reynolds would drive by and photoblog me.

That didn't happen.

People tossed in coin, dollar bills, a few fives and a few twenties. It added up after awhile and I suspect our crew collected a couple thousand dollars in a few hours.

And all sorts of people drove by. Nobody was rude. I've caught obscene gestures on previous fundraising campaigns but not this time.

You know who stood out the most? The illegals. You knew who they were because they had dark skin and thick, straight, black hair. They had Latin American facial features, ragged work clothes, and drove cars I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. The car never had less than four occupants. Often, the only decent thing on the vehicle would be an Our Lady of Guadalupe decal on the back window.

Not once did these guys give me any change. Not once did they toss in a dollar bill.

They would throw in three to five dollars every time.

It made me think of one other time I had several interactions with illegals in a single day. A couple years ago, my boy was selling Boy Scout popcorn to raise funds for his troop and to put some money into his own camping account he kept with the troop. A boy who hustled during the popcorn sale could sometimes sell enough that he wouldn't have to pay to go on an outing all year; and my boy was hustling.

Hearing that truck drivers liked their munchies, we were trying to sell some at a truck stop. There were cars there and trucks. Parents with their kids would buy popcorn. Commuters would buy popcorn. Truckers would buy popcorn.

Illegals would come in there. They couldn't speak English, they looked broke, and they wouldn't buy popcorn. They wouldn't even touch the popcorn.

They would just give the boy money.

And I think about it. In Knoxville, I see illegals every day, generally doing work you couldn't pay a native born adult enough to even try and you couldn't get a teenager to do for more than a day. I've seen local people slacking sometimes, but I've never seen an illegal slacking.

I get hit-up by panhandlers every week or so. I've seen white panhandlers, black panhandlers, crazy panhandlers, druggy panhandlers, drunk panhandlers, and panhandlers just down on their luck. I've never seen an illegal panhandling in this town.

As far as I can tell, the only crime illegals commit is being here. They work hard. They are generous to others and especially kids, but frugal regarding themselves. They are unassuming and peaceable. They don't steal anybodies' jobs, but work hard at the jobs nobody else will do.

In my mind, they raise the quality of the community. I don't see what the problem is.

Oh... National Security.

I've got some thoughts on that, too. Tomorrow.

And I thought I was so clever

I was musing today on the mystery of affluent, free Americans who loath the nation they call home and hate people who do love this country.

So I coined a term-- patriophobia-- meaning fear of patriotism.

I got all excited. I'm imagining the phone interview with Sean Hannity while he calls me "the patriot who identified patriophobia" on national radio. I'm thinking about how I'll have to upgrade the hit counting service on my blog.

But just before drafting the blog-entry-that-will-go-down-in-history, I did a web search on "patriophobia".

Yep. The word already existed. I found it on a gay web site.

That's alright. I'll get my vengeance. Since I do subscribe to those Judeo-Christian sexual norms prescribed in the books of Moses and currently termed "homophobia" -- no web link.

Bwa ha ha ha ha ha ha!

Good News and Bad News

I've added Haloscan commenting and trackback to improve the quality of this blog. Unfortunately, it's wiped out all the old comments written to date.

Spotlight: Vatican Watcher

The day I switched my blogging service from AOL to Blogger, Jacob from Vatican Watcher posted a comment on my site giving me a warm welcome to Blogspot. Since then, he has posted comments every few days, usually to call me back to reality whenever I suggest sending the Second Marine Division into Syria or North Korea.

Vatican Watcher posts the latest statements, homilies, apostolic exhortations, and so forth, from the Vatican and adds just enough commentary to let us know what the specific relevance of the news is. For non-Catholics visiting his sight, he isn't into apologetics so much as helping the reader understand the meaning and relevance of what goes on in Rome.

He is working with three important pieces of news right now. One is his take on the forced resignation of Father Thomas Reese from the Jesuit magazine, America, here and here. A second story is his coverage of the possible new Prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith. He treats it here and here. The reason the story is important is because that is the post just vacated by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger when he became the new pontiff. Whoever gets Benedict XVI's old post will become both a very powerful official in the Vatican and likely come into consideration as the next pope when B16 passes away. A third story is his opinion on B16's decision to waive the five year waiting period before considering JPII's cause for sainthood.

All good stuff.

Tony Blair: so close to getting a clue

Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair, probably looking for a new initiative to prevent the Labour Party from ousting him in the aftermath of recent Parliamentary Elections, has vowed to reverse alarming trends in teen thuggery.

In the story here, which I found by way of Drudge, Blair didn't offer many specific ideas, but instead commented that: "I can't raise someone's children for them."

The problem is, that is exactly what the Labour Party has been trying to do ever since the close of WWII.

Voinovich: White Knight to Goat

My disappointment with George Voinovich stems mostly from the way his bizarre performance this month contrasts with the white-knight start he got on the national scene.

In 1979, I was a high school kid in northeastern Ohio. I liked the place where I lived. I was a big fan of the Cleveland Browns (though they hadn't made the playoffs since 1972) and the Indians (though they hadn't won a pennant in my lifetime) and the music (rock-n-roll, courtesy of a radio station with an evil looking, hippie-haired buzzard for its logo).

Despite a sense of loyalty to the city of Cleveland, I can't say I was proud of it. After all, our town was the butt of jokes all over the country. And a big reason Cleveland suffered such indignities was because of Dennis Kucinich. Yeah, that Dennis Kucinich. You might say he was a local version of our then president, Jimmy Carter.

Dennis Kucinich, the "boy mayor" of Cleveland, had enmeshed the mayor's office in half a dozen embarrassing incidents that climaxed with the city's fiscal collapse and default on its loans. With the financial woes, the antics of the mayor, and a highly publicized issue regarding water pollution in the local Cuyahoga River and Lake Erie, Cleveland became the stuff of late night comedy.

After an unsuccessful recall election to oust Kucinich, George Voinovich was the candidate who finally replaced him in the next regular mayoral race. Voinovich went on to guide Cleveland into a renaissance wherein that city finally transformed itself from a rust-belt tragedy to a service-economy success story. It almost seemed magic. Even the Browns and Indians started winning again. People still made fun of Cleveland, Ohio, but folks there now had their sense of civic pride back and could look out-of-town friends in the eye while telling them where to stick their Cleveland jokes.

Regardless of whether his roll in Cleveland's comeback was real or symbolic, George Voinovich became symbol for that comeback. He also became a kind of hero. In the early 1980s. He was to Dennis Kucinich (Denny-Boy, as we called him) as Ronald Reagan was to Jimmy Carter. Later, Voinovich became governor of Ohio and then Senator.

Denny-Boy, meanwhile, was eventually rehabilitated by Cleveland Dems who didn't want a negative memory of his tenure hanging around their necks. Kucinich's career has been resurrected so that now he can look silly running for president instead of mayor.

And twenty-six years after being elected mayor of Cleveland, George Voinovich has transformed himself from white knight to goat.

Worse yet, he deserves to be a goat.

For anyone who hasn't followed the news, Senator Voinovich missed the first sessions of the Senate subcommittee meeting considering John Bolton as U.N. Ambassador. Upon his tardy arrival, Voinovich stalled the confirmation process by announcing significant reservations about Bolton based on highly implausible accusations by a lady with an admitted history of dishonesty.

Today, Senator Voinovich added to the weirdness by raking Bolton over the coals, calling him unfit for the position of U.N. Ambassador, and then voting to send his nomination to the Senate floor where he would vote against Bolton.

The truly strange part is that if Voinovich really wanted to kill the Bolton nomination, he could have done it right there in committee. With Bolton's nomination on the Senate floor, the only thing that can stop him now is a real skeleton stepping out of his closet.

Voinovich is trying to play both sides of the street. Now he can tell red-meat Republicans that without him, Bolton's case would have died in committee. Then, by voting against Bolton on the floor, he can tell Dem-leaning swing voters that he voted against Bolton.

"I voted for him before I voted against him."

I think Voinovich has been listening to too many experts telling him how to position himself as a "moderate Republican". He doesn't really care about Bolton one way or another. Instead, Voinovich's chief concern is to win reelection in a state still highly agitated over the close returns in the 2004 race. He may also be trying to position himself as a V.P. candidate in 2008.

As it is, the red-meat Republicans (that is, the base) are going to remember his wishy-washiness in 2005 and many of them won't bother getting off work to vote the next time he runs for Senate. Meanwhile, the left leaning swing voters will be very strongly reminded by Voinovich's next opponent just how two-faced he has been in this matter.

I don't believe he'll be reelected to the Senate. His seat will pass to the Dems.

It might even pass to Denny-Boy.

Buchanan Asks a Question

Pat Buchanan published a commentary on President Bush's speech last Saturday in Riga, Latvia. In the speech, Bush pointedly reminded Russian President Vladimir Putin that the only good end which can come from a war is freedom for the people affected by that war. Buchanan quotes Bush's words:

"For much of Eastern and Central Europe, victory brought the iron rule of another empire. V-E day marked the end of fascism, but it did not end the oppression. The agreement in Yalta followed in the unjust tradition of Munich and the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Once again, when powerful governments negotiated, the freedom of small nations was somehow expendable. ... The captivity of millions in Central and Eastern Europe will be remembered as one of the greatest wrongs in history."

Very stirring. Also, a very honest confrontation with one of the great, tragic errors in American diplomacy. I suspect Putin was left grinding his teeth, as he should if the diminutive Russian thinks there was anything good about Stalin's horrific dictatorship. I also commend Buchanan for his support of our current president's actions in this area.

Buchanan then continues by summarizing the dismal diplomacy prior to the war, the way France and England had declared war against Germany over that country's invasion of Poland, how the rest of the world was sucked in, and how in 1945, Poland had exchanged German rule for Soviet dominance.

Finally, Buchanan poses the question: "Was that worth fighting a world war-- with 50 million dead?"

I'd like to answer that:

YES! On behalf of all the murdered Jews, Gypsies, and other "undesirables" whom you didn't even bother to mention: YES! On behalf of all the American servicemen and allies who died for the sake of freedom: YES!

And despite the fact that the diplomacy of Roosevelt and Churchill negated many of the gains of that war: YES!

It was still worth fighting.

And by the way, shame on you, Pat Buchanan, for using President Bush's words to dishonor those who fought and those who died for our country.

Now I'd like to pose a question of my own. "Was having Pat Buchanan leave the Republican Party worth losing whatever votes he took with him?"

YES!

Democrats, look at Howard Dean and take note.

One more reason

I'm glad I homeschool the kids.

More on the Jesuit Spanking

The resignation of Thomas Reese as editor of the Jesuit Magazine America, which I noted in an earlier post, has prompted a lively debate at the Get Religion blog here and here.

Looking at Get Religion's take on the matter, I noticed for the first time that Terry Mattingly and Douglas LeBlanc have now added Jeremy Lott to their team. That means they now have a Orthodox Christian, an Evangelical Protestant/Episcopal (Figure that out!), and a Roman Catholic. It's an ecumenical blog.

As it happens, I do disagree with Lott's opinion of the Reese resignation. Lott argues something to the effect that any Catholic periodical which wants to amount to something better than newsletter status needs to entertain a wide variety of viewpoints. He argues against Mark Brumley of Ignatius Press who maintains that a journal representing an organ of the Catholic Church has a duty to keep its viewpoints within the limits of orthodoxy.

Lott argues that the lack of orthodox restraints on journals such as America is part of what finally exposed the priest sexual abuse scandal for what it was: sexual deviance protected through institutional coverup.

That's where I beg to differ.

The lack of orthodox restraints on Catholic journals in particular and Catholic institutions in general is what created the climate of opinion that made it possible for bishops, heads of orders, seminary presidents, and other clergy to think that any sexual deviance whatever could possibly be tolerated in the Catholic priesthood.

For Lott to commend heterodox publications for exposing abuse by priests is like commending a fox for exposing holes in the barnyard fence.

I side with Brumley, here. It is high time to for Catholics, both pontiff and people, to demand orthodoxy from the Church's various organs.

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Update (3:45 pm):

The debate at Get Reigion has prompted an even bigger debate at Amy Welborn's blog.

On the border

The USMC is performing a large operation against insurgent positions along the border between Iraq and Syria where the Euphrates crosses from the one country to the other. This makes sense. The presence of the river makes this area the ideal point of entry for troublemakers in Iraq.

According to the reports, the operation is following a hammer and anvil tactic, wherein the Marines hit enemy positions and drive them toward the Syrian border where (while still on the Iraqi side) they walk into kill zones created by other Marine units.

This accomplishes several things:

• It cuts off supplies and reinforcements to terrorists in Iraq's interior.
• It kills the enemy.
• It sends a message to the Syrian government: "Be afraid, be very afraid."
• The operation may itself destabilize the Baath government in Syria.

A key question can be posed here: how active has Syrian support for terrorist activities in Iraq been? We know the Syrians do support the terrorists. It may be active (providing intelligence, supplying weapons, ammo, supplies, shelter, secure border crossings, guides) or passive (looking the other way while the terrorists do all this themselves).

If Syrian support is passive, then they can claim they are in the same position as Pakistan regarding the presence of Al Qaida in their country. In that case, the U.S. will have great difficulty making the diplomatic case for hitting terrorists in their safe havens inside Syria. We would probably have to see Condoleezza Rice absorb multiple rebuffs from the Syrians over controlling their borders before considering ourselves justified in cleaning the situation up ourselves.

However, if the U.S. can find evidence of active Syrian support, we may be looking at the next stop on the U.S. Armed Forces "World Freedom Tour."

But there is a problems there, too. Our strategic intelligence is, in a word, awful. The CIA is so politicized that the President probably looks out the window when the Director of Central Intelligence tells him the sky is sunny. That is what led to the "No WMD's" fiasco in the aftermath of the fall of the Saddam regime. It has caused a lack of credibility in administration assertions regarding foreign threats, and it is probably the reason why we haven't heard the administration make any specific accusations regarding Syria. The sad fact is, the U.S. can't confirm anything it says about the Syrians.

And that is grim news. It means that the level of evidence we will need before hitting the Baathists inside Syria will have to amount to American soldiers or Marines killed because of observable, verifiable Syrian action.

Only one way to explain this

According to this story that Drudge found in the Bennington Banner, DNC Chairman Howard Dean is endorsing a socialist for run for the Senate seat Jumpin' Jim Jeffords is planning to vacate. By socialist, I don't mean a Democrat with socialist tendencies, but a real-live socialist.

The man's name is Bernie Sanders, and he is serving now as a Congressman from Vermont.

I read the Banner story and saw no mention of the "s" word; and I began to wonder if Drudge was exaggerating. According to the story, Sanders was "an independent". So I looked up Bernie Sanders on his official Congressional web site and, by gummy, the guy really is a socialist! And he's proud of it!

That might cut the mustard in Vermont, but it sure won't help the Democrats' image nationally. I'm at a loss to explain such a decision making process.

All I can imagine is Howard Dean sitting down with his staff on the first business day of every month and saying, "Folks: let's do some brainstorming. What can we do next to convince the American people that the Democratic Party is a pack of certifiable, lefty-loons?"

I hope Dean stays DNC chairman a long time.

Pols and Celebs take up blogging

When I found out yesterday that Governor Phil Bredisen of Tennessee had started his own blog, I glanced at it for about two seconds before tapping out some mean stuff about how I hoped he found a good staffer to update it for him.

I published the post, stared at it for a few minutes, and then deleted it. After all, it was only a bit of knee jerk partisanship on my part and, in truth, I'm not sure Governor Bredisen is all that bad even if he is a Democrat.

(I know, I know. A blogger doesn't delete his own posts. Well, I do if I think I'm flat wrong.)

Besides, the custom in the blogosphere is to at least give a new blogger a warm welcome before vomiting on his posts.

Welcome, Governor!

I commend Governor B. for making himself vulnerable by hanging a blog out there where nobodies like me can take pot shots at it. At the same time, I do hope that what he publishes actually is a blog, where the writer is candid and communicative. I would be disappointed if it merely turns out to be a website that happens to be called a blog but is really nothing more than a series of press releases written in the first person singular.

For an example of a true blog written personally by a politician, check out State Representative Stacey Campfield's blog. You know he wrote it himself because no professional political adviser would let him hang the stuff out there that he does.

On the topic of warm welcomes to new bloggers, that custom was certainly not followed regarding Ariana Huffington, who also published a new blog yesterday. I saw it and, although I wasn't all that impressed (as if my blog was impressive?) I do think that Nikki Finke's remarkably nasty review published in L.A. Weekly was beyond the pale even for west coast gossip columnists writing about the rich and famous.

I don't care for Huffington. I think she's fickle and flaky. But when I saw the unfair attack Finke made on her, I became sympathetic.

And I don't usually do sympathy where liberals are concerned.

They have a strange way of crying for help

According to the BBC article here, North Korea may have up to six nuclear warheads in their arsenal by now. When I saw the head line, my first reaction was: "Well, time to power up the stealth bombers and download a whuppin'."

However, UN nuclear watchdog chief Mohammed ElBaradei had a slightly milder take on the situation. According to the BBC:

He said that whether the activity observed by satellites was real or simply a bluff, "it involves crying for help, frankly."

"North Korea, I think, has been seeking a dialogue with the United States, with the rest of the
international community... through their usual policy of nuclear blackmail, nuclear brinkmanship, to force the other parties to engage them," he said.

The best way I can imagine to "engage" North Korea would be to facilitate a change of government for them.

RTB Spotlight

When RTB inducted me last week, the folks from Swap Blog attempted several times to contact me but could not because of AOL comment restrictions and e-mail filters. I didn't realize how sheltered I was! Information exchange is far easier blogging on blogspot.com.

Swap Blog is an RTB member blogging on all kinds of local, national and international stuff from a conservative and Christian standpoint.

Also, except for the shot of guy with the kilt whom they think is my "brother by a different mother", the photography is quite beautiful.

One of these days I'll upload my own "kilt pic" taken some 20 years ago.

Spotlight on Terry Mattingly

Terry Mattingly wrote an excellent newspaper column last Saturday on the tantalizingly warm relationship between B16 and the more traditional bishops of th Anglican Communion.

Mattingly is my favorite religion writer. Period.

Which is surprising, since he isn't Catholic.

He is close to it. I've been following his newspaper columns for 15 years now. When I first noticed him, he was a professor and journalist working out of a small college in East Tennessee and had written a piece about area snake handlers. At that time, he was a Southern Baptist, but seemed to have problems with their congregational structure and non-liturgical services.

So he became an Episcopal, but never seemed happy there and started writing regular pieces about the slow heterodox disintegration of that denomination. I would sometimes see letters to the editor in my local newspaper from angry Episcopalians suggesting that if he didn't like his adopted Church, then he should get out.

He took them at their word, and became an Antiochian Orthodox Christian. This was one of the original Churches founded by the apostles in the first century which remained more or less in union with the Holy See until the Great Schism of 1054.

I suppose he would note, in that dry fashion he has, that he belongs to the other Church founded by Peter.

My personal suspicion is that he has been in a long search for a church with visible, apostolic roots. I believe he would have become a Catholic some time ago except that he has some specific doctrinal issues with which he simply can't reconcile himself in good conscience.

During his journey, he has also started a good religion blog here, and presently teaches at Palm Beach State University in Florida.

Very good writer.

Rehabilitating the Crusades

I was so pleased and surprised, while looking at Relased Catholic today, to find a historical summary of the Crusades which didn't follow the conventional wisdom of "Christians bad people, Moslems good chess players".

Until the 1960s, the CW on the Crusades had been just the opposite. All was mighty King Richard and Errol Flynn fighting hoards of bad guys who all somehow resembled Basil Rathbone in the popular imagination. Airplanes, athletic teams, and consumer brands were inspired by the great enterprise to rescue the Holy Land from Moslem Rule. This version, of course, was somewhat rosier than the reality.

For the last 40 years, however, an exaggerated opposite view has prevailed in the study of these wars. I believe this late 20th century, anti-Crusader version of the story has been prompted primarily by lefty academics who despise everything associated with the rise and growth of western civilization. I think there is a terrible irony in the fact that Evangelical Christians, in their enthusiasm to promote reformed religion, have bought into this view which is every bit as much anti-Christian as it is anti-Catholic.

Based on the advance publicity, I fully expect the upcoming movie "Kingdom of Heaven" to become an archetype expression of the anti-western take on the Crusades. I also expect the upcoming movie to be supported by a multi-media educational campaign of the sort I encountered here.

The Crusades failed in their immediate goal of establishing a secure Christian presence in the Holy Land. At times, the Crusades provided horrible examples of how Satan can bring great evil out of what has begun as a good enterprise (see the sack of Constantinople in 1204).

Still: if it weren't for the Crusades and those knights willing to travel to another continent for their faith, I do not think there would be a Catholic or a Christian Church today.

And we worry about John Bolton

Germany's ambassador to Great Britain chose the wrong day to gripe about the Brits not having gotten over WWII. That, of course, is the 60th anniversary of V.E. day. The situation is described in a UK Independent article which I found at Drudge.

There could be other factors. The Independent or the German Ambassador could be reacting to tensions created by the Iraq War and Labour's victory this week. The Independent might have done some surgical quote lifting on the ambassador. Also (and this I know from about every Brit I've ever encountered personally) the English people do still carry emotional baggage from that war. For all the pain they experienced, I can't blame them.

My New Location

Well, I've done it. After being urged by friends who visit my site and fellow bloggers from the Rocky Top Brigade, I've left AOL Journals and reopened the blog here at Blogspot.com.

I hope to enjoy several advantages here.

1. Anyone can comment on this blog, not just AOL members and subscribers to one or two other internet services.

2. I can change and customize the format much more easily.

3. I can spell check on the same page on which I write my posts. Previously, I had to cut and paste the entire document into a word processing application to check my spelling and grammar. What a bother!

4. I can save and store a post without publishing it.

5. I am no longer publishing from a service regarded as... well... "Internet Lite".

Anybody wanting to visit my old blog can find it here.

Must... like... Howard... Dean

Of course, I can't stand him. In my mind, his biggest contribution to national politics was to transform the presidential election of 2004 into a hate fest that early on starred him hating George Bush and retained that flavor even after he quit the race.

Today, I would personally enjoy great satisfaction if he were unceremoniously fired as DNC chair.

But the fact is, he is doing such an abysmal job in his current position, as testified by Townhall.com's Michael Novak here, that I know the best thing for Republicans would be to have him stay right where he is as long as possible. What should Republican's do?

--Pretend to be terrified over the terrific job he is doing in hopes the Dems will keep him there?

--Laugh uncontrollably at his antics and hope the self-absorbed Dems don't notice?

--Talk about how good it is that he is DNC chairman and probably won't run again for president? ("Please, oh please don't throw me in that briar patch!")

Choices, choices.