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RECENTLY POSTED ARTICLES If you know of anyone else who might be interested in receiving "All Things Political" and "Religion/Culture/Morals" updates (or if you just want to contact me), click HERE (will open new message in Outlook program) or email me at tmorelli@hotmail.com Grover Weather Forecast, MO (63040) (By the way, here's the most up-to-date weather in Grover, Missouri....) 5-8-12 Tuesday 6:00 pm (ET) Friends, Romans, Countrymen, Thirty-six "All Things Political" and nineteen "Religion/Culture/Morals" articles have been posted. "All Things Political" articles 1) Where's The 'Probable Cause'? The Affidavit In The Zimmerman Case Fails To Justify A Second-Degree-Murder Charge - John Lott 2) The New Black Panthers' Unpunished Threats: The Department Of Justice Appears Uninterested In Pursuing The Group - John Fund 3) Real Moms Of The GOP Versus White House SOP - Michelle Malkin 4) The Media That Ignored Obama's Beliefs Goes After Mitt's Mormonism - Doug Giles 5) Ouch! Decade Of Obamacare Will Cost $1,160 Billion - Michael Barone 6) Gingrich Staying In The Race For 'The Conservative Movement' - John Gizzi 7) The Right To Bear Arms Is A Human Right - Newt Gingrich 8) Diane Sawyer Versus 'Too Rich' Romney - Brent Bozell 9) Why Romney Has A Real Chance - Victor Davis Hanson 10) When Administrations Implode - Victor Davis Hanson 11) The 25 Best Quotes From Thomas Sowell - John Hawkins 12) No More "Mr. Obama Is A Nice Guy" - Michelle Malkin 13) Top 10 Obama Flimflams - Human Events 14) Obama's 2.5 Percent Stall - Larry Kudlow 15) Why Are The Rich Still Enamored Of Obama? - Austin Hill 16) Catholic Bishops Take On Obama - Vincent Phillip Munoz 17) Five Devastating Numbers That Show Obama's Incompetence - John Hawkins 18) Obama EPA Official Vows To "Crucify" Oil And Gas Industry - Rush Limbaugh 19) The Shrinking Immigration Problem (The Number Of Illegal Immigrants From Mexico Is Getting Smaller) - Michael Barone 20) Do The Math: Senate Could Shift Republican In 2012 - John Gizzi 21) Not Excited About Romney? - David J. Peterson 22) Public-Employee Unions Gone Wild (Their Excessive Demands Are Squeezing Local Governments) - Patrick Brennan 23) Who Is 'Racist'? - Thomas Sowell 24) Who Is 'Racist'?: Part II - Thomas Sowell 25) 'Crucify Them': The Obama Way : The EPA Emulates Roman Tactics To Terrorize Business - Michelle Malkin 26) Don't Look Now, But Social Security's Trust Funds Are Vanishing - Veronique de Rugy 27) The Utterly Horrifying English Welfare State - Daniel J. Mitchell 28) Are We Still Serious About Our Republic - Austin Hill 29) A Cynical Process - Thomas Sowell 30) A Cynical Process: Part II - Thomas Sowell 31) Obama Has Already Lost - Lurita Doan 32) Why Your Doctor Secretly Hates Obamacare - Katie Kieffer 33) Seven Of Barack Obama's Dorkiest Moments - John Hawkins 34) Mamas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be "Julia" - Michelle Malkin 35) A Nation Of Julias (Ask Not What You Can Do For Your Country; Ask What Your Country Can Do For You) - Rich Lowry 36) 10 Things That Would Be Happening Today If Obama's Policies Were Working - John Hawkins "Religion/Culture/Morals" articles 1) As I Lay Dying A Voice Said: 'Let's Go' - Rory Fitzgerald 2) April 11 Audience: On Easter's Spiritual Joy: "Sadness And The Wounds Themselves Become Sources Of Joy" - Pope Benedict XVI 3) In Hard-Hitting Document Vatican Launches Clean-Up Of Feminist Nuns In United States - John-Henry Westen 4) Jane Austen's Advice: Choose The Right Man And Live Happily Ever After - Rebecca Hagelin 5) On The Apostles' Response To Persecution: "In The Face Of Trial, They Pray, They Get In Touch With God" - Pope Benedict XVI 6) New York Times Op-Ed: Co-Habitation Can Lead To Divorce - Christine Dhanagom 7) Why Do Catholics Leave, And What Can Be Done About It? - Father Robert Barron 8) Dick Clark Remembered - Cal Thomas 9) Chuck Colson Dead At Age 80 - Faith Issues 10) Who Is 'Racist'? - Thomas Sowell 11) Screw The Earth - Andrew Klavan 12) Denver Priest 'Pulls Out The Big Guns' On Planned Parenthood: Says Mass On Street Outside Clinic - Christine Dhanagom 13) Dad Rescues 'Brain Dead' Son From Doctors Wishing To Harvest His Organs - Boy Recovers Completely - Matthew Cullinan Hoffman 14) Comic Strip To Feature Homosexual 'Prom' Date - Ben Johnson 15) Parents: Don't Delay Baptism For Your Infants! - Monsignor Charles Pope 16) Glee Celebrates The 'T' - Brent Bozell 17) On Prayer And Ministry: Without Prayer 'We Risk Suffocating Amid A Thousand Daily Cares' - Pope Benedict XVI 18) On The Prayer Of The First Christian Martyr: "Our Prayer, Too, Should Be Nourished By Listening To God's Word" - Pope Benedict XVI 19) Five Myths About Living Together Before Marriage - Dan Delzell Take care, Tom "All Things Political" articles 1) Where's The 'Probable Cause'? The Affidavit In The Zimmerman Case Fails To Justify A Second-Degree-Murder Charge National Review http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/295984/where-s-probable-cause-john-r-lott-jr http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2871888/posts 4-13-12 John Lott The charges brought against George Zimmerman sure look like prosecutorial misconduct. The case as put forward by the prosecutor in the "affidavit of probable cause" is startlingly weak. As a former chief economist at the U.S. Sentencing Commission, I have read a number of such affidavits, and cannot recall one lacking so much relevant information. The prosecutor has most likely deliberately overcharged, hoping to intimidate Zimmerman into agreeing to a plea bargain. If this case goes to trial, Zimmerman will almost definitely be found "not guilty" on the charge of second-degree murder. The prosecutor wasn't required to go to the grand jury for the indictment, but the fact that she didn't in such a high-profile case is troubling. Everyone knows how easy it is for a prosecutor to get a grand jury to indict, because only the prosecutor presents evidence. A grand-jury indictment would have provided political cover; that charges were brought without one means that the prosecutor was worried that a grand jury would not give her the indictment. The affidavit consists of six main points: - Zimmerman was upset about all "the break-ins in his neighborhood" and expressed anger at how criminals "always get away." - According to a discussion with Trayvon Martin's girlfriend, who said that she was talking to Martin before the attack, Zimmerman followed Martin. He did so despite the police operator's saying "we don't need you to do that." - Zimmerman "confronted Martin and a struggle ensued," though no evidence is cited on this point. - Trayvon Martin's mother identified the voice crying for help on a 9-1-1 call as her son's. - Zimmerman shot Martin in the chest, and this is confirmed by both Zimmerman's statement and ballistics tests. - Martin died from the gunshot wound. Note some of the points that are missing. The prosecution doesn't claim Zimmerman had racial animus against blacks. There was no "f***ing coons" on the police call. Some extremely relevant information from the police report is completely excluded: There is no mention of the grass and wetness found on the back of Zimmerman's shirt, the gashes on the back of his head, the bloody nose, or the other witnesses who saw Martin on top of Zimmerman, beating him, before the shot was fired. There is not even an attempt to say that the police report was in error; instead the affidavit just disregards it. Even if everything in the affidavit is correct, it does not even begin to deal with the most crucial question: Who attacked whom? Even if it is true that "Zimmerman confronted Martin and a struggle ensued," there may have been no wrongdoing on Zimmerman's part. "Confronted" does not mean "provoked" or "assaulted." It could simply mean that Zimmerman followed Martin and asked him what he was doing in the neighborhood. Surely Zimmerman had the right to investigate a strange person in his neighborhood. The police operator's advice that "we don't need you to do that" was merely suggestive, not an order to stop. Indeed, the police had no authority to give Zimmerman such an order. Now take the charge of "second degree" murder. There is no way that the affidavit justifies such a charge. In Florida, second-degree murder is defined as "the unlawful killing of a human being, when perpetrated by any act imminently dangerous to another and evincing a depraved mind regardless of human life, although without any premeditated design to effect the death of any particular individual." But if Zimmerman was being beaten, there was no "depraved mind regardless of human life," and the act "imminently dangerous to another" would be justified as self-defense. Angela Corey, the special prosecutor who filed charges, claimed multiple times on Wednesday that the prosecutors "are seekers of the truth." In our legal system, grand juries can sometimes provide a check on prosecutors who indict based on political pressure or the desire to seek the limelight. It is no surprise that Corey avoided the grand jury. 2) The New Black Panthers' Unpunished Threats: The Department Of Justice Appears Uninterested In Pursuing The Group National Review http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/295919/new-black-panthers-unpunished-threats-john-fund http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2871544/posts April 13, 2012 John Fund George Zimmerman is facing charges of second-degree murder. A jury will decide his guilt or innocence. Here's hoping the criminal-justice system cools rather than exacerbates the passions the killing of Trayvon Martin has raised. But Attorney General Eric Holder isn't helping. Wednesday, he appeared before the Reverend Al Sharpton's National Action Network to praise Sharpton "for your partnership, your friendship, and your tireless efforts to speak out for the voiceless, to stand up for the powerless, and to shine a light on the problems we must solve, and the promises we must fulfill." This is the same Al Sharpton who has led several rallies against Zimmerman, in which he called for civil disobedience and an "occupation" of Sanford, Fla., where the shooting occurred, if an arrest wasn't made. This is the same Al Sharpton who has never apologized to Steven Pagones, the assistant district attorney he falsely accused of raping Tawana Brawley, a black teenager. The "dastardly deed" Sharpton accused Pagones of was found to be a complete fabrication. In 1998, Sharpton was found liable for seven defamatory statements he'd made against Pagones and ordered to pay $65,000. Earlier in the 1990s, Sharpton had become famous exacerbating racial tensions in New York's Crown Heights neighborhood, tensions that led to the killing of Anthony Graziosi. In 1995, Sharpton denounced the owners of Freddy's Fashion Mart in Harlem as "bloodsuckers" and "white interlopers" over a rent dispute the business had with tenants. A short time later, a man entered Freddy's and told all the black people present, patrons and employees alike, to leave. Once they did, the man firebombed the building, killing seven people - including a black security guard. Sharpton insisted he bore no responsibility for the incident, saying it was only a tenant/landlord dispute that had escalated out of control. It is exceedingly strange for Holder to praise the likes of Al Sharpton and bring him greetings from President Obama. But it is even stranger that Holder should pledge to the Sharpton activists that he will take appropriate federal action against any civil-rights crime, while he appears completely uninterested in the ugly forces calling for violence against George Zimmerman. It's been three weeks since Mikhail Muhammad, leader of the New Black Panther Party, offered a $10,000 bounty for the "capture" of Zimmerman and warned that Zimmerman "should be fearful for his life." The Panthers have distributed wanted posters of Zimmerman and offered the bounty "dead or alive." Just this week, Michelle Williams, the chief of staff for the Panthers, told WTSP-TV in Tampa, "Let me tell you, the things that's about to happen, to these honkies, these crackers, these pigs, these pink people, these [inaudible] people. It has been long overdue. My prize right now this evening . . . is gonna be the bounty, the arrest, dead or alive, for George Zimmerman. You feel me?" Ms. Williams later apologized for her remarks, but her statements and those of other Panthers amount to criminal threats, and could break federal hate-crime laws. Indeed, a relative of George Zimmerman wrote to Attorney General Holder this week noting the threats. "The Zimmerman family is in hiding because of the threats that have been made against us, yet the DOJ has maintained an eerie silence in this matter," read the letter, which was obtained by the Daily Caller. "Why, when the law of the land is crystal clear, is your office not arresting the New Black Panthers for hate crimes? . . . Since when can a group of people in the United States put a bounty on someone's head, circulate Wanted posters publicly, and still be walking the streets?" The DOJ's public-affairs office has not responded to inquiries by reporters asking if Holder's statement on federal civil-rights crimes also applies to the New Black Panther Party. Holder's Justice Department has taken a pass on the New Black Panther Party in the past. In 2009, it inherited from the outgoing Bush administration a civil-rights lawsuit against the Party and three of its members for showing up armed outside a Philadelphia polling place in 2008 and shouting racial threats at voters. Bartle Bull, a former civil-rights lawyer who had been arrested in the South in the 1960s and later went on to become publisher of the liberal Village Voice, actually witnessed the intimidation and reported the Panthers' actions to Justice. When the defendants failed to answer Justice's lawsuit, a federal court in Philadelphia entered a default judgment against them. The Holder Justice Department responded by snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, suddenly dropping the charges against the Panthers and two defendants. The third defendant was merely barred from displaying a weapon near a Philadelphia polling place for the next three years. The bizarre decision prompted congressional outcries and a formal investigation by the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, which sent a letter to Justice in August 2009 saying, "We believe the Department's defense of its actions thus far undermines respect for rule of law." The Commission later issued a harshly condemnatory report of Justice's behavior in the case. Could Justice's leniency encourage the Panthers to think they can act with impunity in the future? Bartle Bull says he is very concerned that Justice is practicing a double standard when it comes to enforcing civil-rights laws. "When he took office, Attorney General Holder stated that America was a 'nation of cowards' when it comes to race," he told me in 2010. "But who are today's 'cowards' on race? This kind of double standard is not what Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy stood for." 3) Real Moms Of The GOP Versus White House SOP Townhall.com http://townhall.com/columnists/michellemalkin/2012/04/13/real_moms_of_the_gop_vs_white_house_sop http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2871532/posts April 13, 2012 Michelle Malkin The authenticity of conservative women has always been under attack by radical orthodox feminists, but perhaps not as brazenly as by someone with such direct and frequent access to the corridors of the White House message machine as Hilary B. Rosen. The D.C. career lobbyist and Democratic media strategist took to CNN's airwaves this week to craft a left-wing "War on Women" attack on the real moms of the GOP. Ostensibly aiming at Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney for his "old-fashioned" views of women, Rosen's mouth instead shot off in the direction of wife, stay-at-home mother of five, grandmother of 16, and cancer and multiple sclerosis survivor Ann Romney. Mrs. Romney, sneered Rosen, "never worked a day in her life" outside of the home and should have no voice on women's issues. President Obama never met a payroll in his life, but that hasn't stopped him from dictating what business owners across the country should and shouldn't be doing. But I digress. This was no accidental rhetorical drive-by. "Progressives" from Gloria Steinem to Patricia Ireland to Naomi Wolf have derided their conservative counterparts as female impersonators, fake women and men with breasts from time immemorial. It's SOP: standard operating procedure. In 1992, Hillary Clinton mocked women who stayed at home and "baked cookies and had teas." In 2004, blueblood Teresa Heinz Kerry, wife of Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry, sniffed that first lady Laura Bush (a former teacher and librarian before becoming a homemaker) never "had a real job -- I mean, since she's been grown up." Alas, if you're a conservative mom, you're damned if you do stay home and damned if you don't. In 2008, Howard Gutman, a member of the Obama campaign's national finance committee, attacked GOP vice presidential candidate and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's ability to be a good parent and have a high-powered public life at the same time. "Your responsibility is to put your family first," Gutman lectured as he singled out Palin's Down syndrome baby and then-pregnant teenage daughter. "The proper attack is not that a woman shouldn't run for vice president with five kids; it's that a parent, when they have a family in need..." should get out of the public sphere and stay home. What's striking about Rosen's latest ideological sniper attack is that she is not some lone-wolf operative on the fringes of Beltway influence. She works with former White House communications director Anita Dunn at the D.C.-based strategic communications consulting firm SKDKnickerbocker. That's the same company that promoted the anti-Palin smear movie "Game Change" and that represented liberal Georgetown law school student activist and manufactured War on Women poster woman Sandra Fluke. Smack dab at the intersection of progressive agitation and Democratic Party campaign-season maneuvering. White House visitor logs (which nonpartisan watchdogs point out are woefully incomplete) show that "Hilary B. Rosen" or "Hilary Rosen" has visited 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. at least 35 times, including several direct meetings with President Obama (5); White House senior adviser and consigliere Valerie Jarrett; senior adviser David Axelrod; senior adviser turned 2012 campaign manager Jim Messina; and a parade of communications/media team officials in both the West Wing "surrogate booking" office and the East Wing. Axelrod and Messina, who took to Twitter immediately Thursday night after the social networking site exploded with a conservative mom backlash, scrambled to disassociate themselves from their frequent visitor. POTUS and FLOTUS followed suit. But when you collect and connect the dots, Rosen's role as a surrogate hit-woman for the White House is unmistakable. Rosen was forced to issue a non-apology apology as Democratic women tossed her under the bus (or at least shoved her temporarily to the back until things boil over). What's changed in 2012 is the Internet revenge of thousands of conservative female activists who have played a larger role than ever in controlling political narratives. These include tea party leaders such as Breitbart.com editor Dana Loesch, national grassroots groups such as Smart Girl Politics, the proliferation of conservative female bloggers and podcasters, and the critical mass of stay-at-home moms, work-at-home moms and young conservative women flocking to Twitter. As we've documented at my new Twitter curation/aggregation site, Twitchy.com, GOP moms, grandmothers and daughters have besieged White House social media efforts to paint conservatives as anti-women. They've torn apart hypocritical White House rhetoric about equal pay from an administration that has failed to practice what it preaches. And as Ann Romney is now experiencing on Twitter, the women of the right are fighting their way through a hostile cesspool of misogyny that has been SOP for the feminist left. Rosen and her media defenders dismissed "faux outrage" about her attack. But the real moms of the GOP have launched their own Occupy movement in the social media space once dominated by Obama's army. And they're winning. 4) The Media That Ignored Obama's Beliefs Goes After Mitt's Mormonism Townhall.com http://townhall.com/columnists/douggiles/2012/04/15/the_media_that_ignored_obamas_beliefs_goes_after_mitts_mormonism http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2872356/posts April 15, 2012 Doug Giles When the former junior state senator from Chicago, one Barack Obama-a man no one knew diddly about-decided, "Hey, I'm gonna run for president!" people were eager to learn more about this promising upstart. Uncle Joe Biden was curious about Barack. Joe said at first blush that Obama seemed "clean" and "articulate," which, I think, would be a hate crime if a conservative said that about him. Anyhoo, Obama impressed many chiefly because he could enthusiastically read vague, cliché-riddled speeches off a teleprompter that included lots of big words like nobody's business! This ability to read hazy political speeches in public without putting folks into a full-on level IV coma left the bedazzled masses wondering, "Who is this masked man? Who are his buddies?" and . "Are there more like him? He's a doozy!" Yep, people wanted to know from whence he came, what books he read and what groups supported him because he was three words: A-May-Zing! As the various news outlets started finding out that BHO's buddies were sordid, anti-American fellows of the baser sort; his favorite book was dedicated to Lucifer; his endorsers included Communists and Hamas; and his folks weren't exactly the Huxtables, the mainstream media decided, "Eh, let's not talk about his past and his present friends and philosophy but rather how inspiring his fuzzy speeches are and how skinny he is." Indeed, everybody was like, "Well, those are some strange playmates, and those books are interesting-really not the ones we would read, but who are we to judge? And haven't we all had, at one time or another, one or two friends in our past who dedicated riot-inducing books to Satan, set off a bomb in the Capitol Building and hated Israel with a passion? Would we like it if people painted us with our friends' bizarre brush?" Gadfly Sean Hannity wouldn't leave well enough alone in '07 and decided to investigate not only Obama's pals but Barack and Michelle's pastor/mentor and religion that they had enjoyed for the last two decades. Boy howdy, did Hannity and others stumble onto some interesting revelations about Obama's church. Stuff like ... - Anti-Semitic conspiracy theories - The advocacy of bizarre, pseudo-scientific racial ideas - Opposition to interracial marriage - Praising Communist dictatorships - The denunciation of black "assimilation" - The belief that the American government created AIDS to kill black people - Preaching that America deserved 9/11 terrorists attacks - The fact that Reverend Wright was, according to the Chicago Sun-Times, a "close confidant" of Obama When common folks discovered Reverend Jeremiah Wright's religious views were racist, Marxist and nuttier than a squirrel's turd, some rightly wondered if BHO also believed this bogus smack, and if not, why he would sit for twenty years listening to those race-baiting beliefs if he fundamentally and radically disagreed. Why, they wondered, did he not vehemently condemn this cuckoo stuff? The media, however, decided for us cattle that Reverend Wright's racially-charged sermons, his black liberation theology and the fact that Obama sat for two decades under this slow drip of heresy wasn't newsworthy and bypassed those tasty morsels. Instead, they crucified anyone who dared question Obama's affiliation with his class warfare junkie Jeremiah (who was swiftly tossed under BHO's campaign bus). Fast-forward to 2012 and Mitt Romney and his religion. The same media that ignored information about Obama's racist religious roots steeped in Marxism is already queuing up with queries about Romney's Mormonism as somehow being weird and a tad white. MSNBC led the charge this past week wondering aloud if and when Mitt would rebuke Mormonism's disallowance of blacks into the Mormon priesthood until 1978. The duplicitous journalists who saw no story in the well-documented anti-honky rhetoric of Wright's/Obama's "religion" now want to paint Romney with the racist brush? How convenient. As an evangelical I'll be the first to admit that I don't get Mormonism, but I do get Marxism, and we're now seeing the political fruit coming from Obama's ignored and divisive theological roots. Which leads me to this conclusion as an evangelical: I don't care if Mitt is crazy rich and wears magic Mormon underroos. In 2012 I will take a quasi-conservative Mormon who has been ridiculously successful over an uncompromised Marxist any ol' day. And lastly, a word of advice for the MSM: I would leave Mitt's Mormonism well enough alone unless, of course, you want Obama's religious roots to be exposed, as well. I believe Americans will find in Mormonism more pro-traditional American sentiments than they will in Reverend Wright's greatest sermon collections. 5) Ouch! Decade Of Obamacare Will Cost $1,160 Billion Townhall.com http://townhall.com/columnists/michaelbarone/2012/04/16/creators_oped http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2872644/posts April 16, 2012 Michael Barone How much will Obamacare -- call it the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act if you like -- cost over the next 10 years? More than you've been led to believe, reports Charles Blahous of George Mason University's Mercatus Center. To be specific, he projects it will add $1,160 billion to net federal spending over the next 10 years and at least $340 billion to federal budget deficits in that time. Blahous was appointed by Barack Obama as one of two public trustees of the Social Security and Medicare programs. He worked on these issues in George W. Bush's administration and submitted his Mercatus paper for anonymous peer review. Why does he say Obamacare will increase spending when the Obama administration, citing Congressional Budget Office numbers, promised it will save money? One reason is that the CBO said Obamacare's "Class Act" provisions would save money, since the government would collect premiums immediately but not pay off policyholders until later. But Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has conceded that the Class Act is unworkable, and so Blahous zeroes out those phantom savings. Another reason Obamacare was supposed to save money is that it raises the Medicare tax 0.9 percent for high earners. It then dedicates those resources both to Medicare and to general revenues, with the CBO counting the savings twice. That's because under a 1985 internal ruling (not a full-fledged law passed by Congress), the CBO scores the costs of legislation against a hypothetical baseline rather than against current law. But, as Sebelius conceded to Congress in March 2011, that's double counting. The government can't spend the same money twice. Medicare tax revenues dedicated to current Medicare spending can't be used to reduce the budget deficit. That's true "in practice," Medicare chief actuary Richard Foster wrote last year, despite the CBO's scoring procedure. And, as Blahous points out, if the funds don't go to Medicare, then under current law, Medicare will go broke faster and be forced to reduce benefits. Since Congress is not likely to let that happen any sooner than it has to, the deficit reduction promised by the CBO score and claimed by the Obama administration simply ain't going to happen, no how, no way. To all of which the Obama White House says only the CBO numbers should count and that Blahous worked in a Republican administration. This is about as intellectually serious a reply as, "Nyah, nyah, nyah nyah nyah, nyah." Which is what we are coming to expect from the Obama White House. Consider the president's Supreme Court trash-talking earlier this month. The supposed constitutional scholar didn't seem to know that the Supreme Court has been overturning laws since Marbury v. Madison in 1803. He suggested the Lochner case was an example of the Supreme Court striking down New Deal legislation. But Lochner was decided in 1905 and overturned a state, not a federal, law. Similarly, Obama characterized House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan's budget as "social Darwinism" and falsely said it would require zeroing out spending for various wonderful programs. And he has heaped scorn on those who harbor any doubt that renewables will become major energy sources in the 21st century. His experiences in university neighborhoods and Chicago politics have apparently left Obama ignorant that there are intellectually serious arguments against liberal policies. So when presented with such arguments by Ryan and others, he scowls, calls people names and does the intellectual equivalent of stamping his feet. Someone needs to tell him that combining arrogant condescension with intellectual shoddiness is not a winning political tactic. Or a winning governing strategy. Obamacare's architects also combined arrogant condescension with intellectual shoddiness. They shamelessly gamed the CBO scoring process to make Obamacare look like a money-saver. They threw in unworkable programs like the Class Act to make political points. And so when Charles Blahous totes up the numbers and give us an idea of what Obamacare would really cost, they are left without an intellectually serious reply. If Obama really knew constitutional law, he might remember that the Supreme Court unanimously overturned the National Recovery Act in 1935, after it became clear that, with its 700-plus industry groups setting wage and prices, it was unworkable and was becoming increasingly unpopular. The legal arguments are not quite on point, but Obamacare is looking to be as unworkable as the NRA and even more unpopular. Plus, as Charles Blahous has established, hugely more expensive than advertised. 6) Gingrich Staying In The Race For 'The Conservative Movement' Human Events http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=50921 http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2873863/posts 4-18-12 John Gizzi As Republican Party leaders increasingly coalesce behind Mitt Romney as their presumed nominee for President this year, a defiant Newt Gingrich fights on and insists he will continue his own campaign until the GOP national convention in Tampa this summer. Following a fighting speech and hero's welcome at the Lancaster County Republican Party dinner Tuesday night -- in which he followed Romney to the speaker's podium -- the former House speaker spelled out to Human Events just why he remains an active candidate. "I owe it to the conservative movement to stay in the race," Gingrich told us, emphasizing that it was important that Romney face competition "from a conservative in the Reagan mold." Before we spoke, top aides to Gingrich said that he felt strongly that by competing with Romney up to the convention, he would reduce the chances that Romney would back away from a conservative campaign or party platform. Gingrich noted that he is fielding a full slate of delegates in the Pennsylvania primary April 24 and that his national campaign chairman (former Rep. Bob Walker) is running for national convention delegate from Lancaster County. And, he added, "we're competing in primaries in Delaware the same day, in West Virginia and North Carolina in May. And we'll compete in Arkansas, Kentucky and Texas later that month." Has Gingrich spoken to Rick Santorum, who has suspended his own campaign -- and who was conspicuous by his last-minute cancellation from the dinner here at the Lancaster Convention Center? "We spoke on Friday at the NRA [National Rifle Association] convention last Friday," Gingrich told us, "and we've swapped a few [email] messages. Look, he's got to deal with his [campaign] debt and he's got his family situation [the illness of 3-year-old daughter Bella that Santorum cited as a reason for exiting the race]." As to whether Santorum might possibly endorse former rival Gingrich, the former speaker said: "I have no idea. But we'll keep talking." There were strong signs throughout the evening that while the Harrisburg-born Gingrich may have lost the nomination race, he had still won the hearts of the party. Whether his remarks were denunciations of "Obama's left-wing socialist agenda" and his own vow as President "never to bow to a Saudi king," Gingrich was cheered strongly. Hale Womble, second-grader at St. Leo the Great school and son of delegate candidate Ann Womble, told us after Gingrich's remarks: "I was counting. Mr. Romney was applauded four times, but Mr. Gingrich was applauded 12 different times." 7) The Right To Bear Arms Is A Human Right Human Events http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=50909 http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2873641/posts April 18, 2012 Newt Gingrich At the United Nations, the governments (and the dictatorships) of the world are conspiring to deny their people a means to defend their families and their liberty. The Small Arms Treaty and the U.N.'s project on International Small Arms Control Standards seek to impose global restrictions on gun ownership that would apply to Americans and the citizens of every country that ratified the agreements. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has pledged to support the treaty, an excuse for governments everywhere to empower themselves and limit their citizens instead of the other way around. As long as we're limited to fighting over the Left's gun control agenda we're debating on their terms. We have to go on offense. The Constitution does not give us the right to bear arms. It says the right to bear arms shall not be infringed. We already have the right, because it doesn't come from government-it comes from God. Our founders understood this right is essential to the defense of liberty. It was a lesson they learned firsthand at the Battles of Lexington and Concord, 237 years ago this week. As David Hackett Fischer's Paul Revere's Ride recounts, in order to quench the beginnings of the American Revolution, British soldiers marched to confiscate gunpowder and other militia supplies, an act that they hoped would incapacitate the colonial rebels. Thus, it was in defense of the right to bear arms as a means of securing the other liberties that the first battle of the American Revolution was fought. As the Second Amendment implies, the right to bear arms isn't given to us by the government, and it isn't just an American right. It is a human right. As a fundamental component of self-defense, the right to bear arms is intimately tied to those universal truths expressed in our Declaration of Independence-that all men have rights to life and liberty, with which they are endowed by their Creator. And they have not just a right but a duty to throw off despotic government. These truths are universal. The Second Amendment is an amendment for all mankind. Every person on the planet has the right to defend themselves from those who would oppress them, exploit them, harm them, or kill them. Far fewer women would be raped, far fewer children would be killed, far fewer towns would be destroyed, and far fewer dictators would survive if people everywhere on the planet had this God-given right to bear arms recognized. Mass killings and rapes like those that took place in Darfur might have been prevented if the people had the right and the means to defend themselves. When citizens have the power to defend themselves against a violent and tyrannical regime, governments think twice about trampling the lives and liberty of the people. The United Nations has an extensive Declaration of Human Rights, including the right to join a labor union and the right to social services and security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood or old age. Nowhere does it provide for the right to keep and bear arms that in many places around the world is so critical to self-defense. And the Small Arms Treaty is a deliberate attempt to restrict these human rights. I believe the United States should submit to the U.N. a treaty that extends the right to bear arms as a human right to every person on the planet. It is critical not just for those living under oppressive regimes, but for the many people who live in conditions in which the government cannot secure their safety. From dangerous neighborhoods even here in the United States to lawless regions of the world run by gangs and warlords, firearms are often the only means of personal security. When criminals have weapons, taking away the right to bear arms is nothing less than eliminating the right to self-defense. Only the elites, who've never had to live in a dangerous place or fear for their own lives, could be so confident that denying ordinary citizens the right to bear arms would make everyone safer. It isn't enough to watch people move from one dictatorship to another, nations lurching from disaster to disaster. In submitting a treaty to the U.N. guaranteeing that right, America can represent its trust in the basic decency of millions of people around the world and our belief that the God-given rights in the Declaration of Independence apply to them, too. We can let them know that if they had a government that recognized their inherent rights; a government that understood that they were a citizens, not subjects; a government that understood it is government which is to be limited, not people, they too would the chance to pursue happiness and live in safety. That's the message our president and secretary of state should be standing up for, not a document designed for the protection of dictators. 8) Diane Sawyer Versus 'Too Rich' Romney Townhall.com http://townhall.com/columnists/brentbozell/2012/04/18/diane_sawyer_versus_too_rich_romney http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2873548/posts April 18, 2012 Brent Bozell Republican strategists should generally be wary of campaign advice from liberals -- and when it's from the media, generally becomes definitely. Washington Post political writer Chris Cillizza recently suggested Mitt Romney's general-election strategy should start with getting a "positive first introduction" to voters through the liberal media because "only the national media can provide that megaphone and serve as a sort of validator for him." How hard did he laugh after he wrote that? No Republican should think he could end-run the liberal media establishment entirely and not suffer damage. Ask Dick Cheney. On the other hand, no Republican can expect fairness from these people, either. Romney should enter the national-media coliseum fully aware he's designed to be food for the lions. Exhibit A comes from ABC's Diane Sawyer. This is how Sawyer probed Obama just after the 2006 elections: "Do you think that residual resistance is greater for race or for gender? Is the nation secretly, I guess, more racist or more sexist?" In keeping with that line, Sawyer would be expected to ask Romney today if he felt his wealth would be used against him by those who begrudge success. Not even close. Instead, she implied Romney should be dismissed as a Richie Rich or Thurston Howell type who can't connect to the little people. On "World News," she hammered Romney with five questions about his wealth and his tax returns. Sawyer announced "the Obama campaign is working overtime to paint the portrait of a man whose riches have put him out of touch." She then offered the Obama spin: "the speaking fees, the Cadillac, the story out now that there's an elevator for your cars in the new house you're planning in La Jolla. Is this a relatability problem?" There's an obvious answer that Romney did not give. "Diane, you make $12 million a year. The ritzy Manhattan penthouse, the wealthy movie director husband, the estate on Martha's Vineyard. Does that make you too rich and elitist to relate to your audience?" Romney's actual answer wasn't bad. "We don't divide America based upon success and wealth and other dimensions of that nature. We're one nation under God. We come together. This is a time when people of different backgrounds and experiences need to come together." Sawyer simply replied by calling it "fairness" to resent the rich: "Do you still face a fairness question ... about envy, (as in) fairness is concern about envy?" Romney adroitly tossed the fairness issue right back. "I think it's unfair that this president has been in office three and a half years and 93 percent of the people who lost their jobs have been women." Sawyer hammered him about the tax returns: "Why not release 12 years as your father did?" She said Romney gave 23 years of tax returns to the McCain campaign during the vice-presidential vetting process in 2008, so why not release those? Do you recall Sawyer even asking for this from John Kerry? By contrast, Sawyer's last interview with the current president ended with her asking how much Kentucky would win by in the NCAA basketball tournament and she compared Obama to Lincoln, as she encouraged him to talk about his prayer life: "What about the famous quote from another beleaguered president, Abraham Lincoln, who said he had been driven many times to his knees because his own wisdom and that around him 'was insufficient for the day'?" Obama replied: "I do a lot of praying." Actually, he does a lot more golfing on Sundays. Sawyer asked Romney about Mormonism and whether he could "really talk ... about something that holds a lot of curiosity for people? ... do the people think you're reluctant to talk about being a Mormon?" Sawyer did not ask Obama, "Your mother was an atheist who married two Muslim men. Are you reluctant to talk about that?" Never mind Jeremiah Wright. Sawyer even stooped to raising that stupid -- and 29-year-old -- story about Romney putting his incontinent dog Seamus in a car-top carrier on a family trip. "First about Seamus -- which as you know is out there forever -- would you do it again?" One host on NPR actually called Romney "the Michael Vick of presidential candidates." Sawyer underlined the vulnerability: "You said it was the most wounding thing in the campaign so far." That's why she wanted to ask it. So for the record: Bill Clinton was never asked by a TV anchor whether he raped Juanita Broaddrick in 1978. But they can ask Mitt Romney if he shouldn't have put the doggie in a car-top carrier in 1983. If anyone can point to anything Sawyer has ever asked the Obamas that compares to this low personal blow, they should speak up. This is just the opening mud bath. It's going to get only worse for Romney as we get closer to November. 9) Why Romney Has A Real Chance National Review Online http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/296373/why-romney-has-real-chance-victor-davis-hanson http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2874159/posts April 18, 2012 Victor Davis Hanson The odds of defeating an incumbent president should be slim but they are in fact at least 50/50. Here are some reasons that this is true. 1) Romney is a more experienced and better candidate than he was in 2008. That often happens after a run or two. Nixon was tougher in 1968 than in 1960 in the way that Reagan was wiser in 1980 than in 1968 and 1976, and George H. W. Bush was better in 1988 than in 1980. McCain ran more effectively in the primaries in 2008 than he did in 2000. The Republican primary rough-housing sharpened Romney's debating skills, and he seems far more comfortable than he was four years ago. 2) The old mantra that at some point the massive $5 trillion borrowing, the fed's near-zero interest rate policies, and the natural cycle of recovery after a recession would kick in before the election increasingly appears somewhat dubious. The recovery is anemic, and seems stymied by high gas costs, fears over Obamacare, and a new feeling that lots of businesspeople with capital are strangely holding off, either scared of what more of Obama's statist policies have in store for them, or in anger about being demonized by Obama, or in hopes Romney might win. The net result is that the recovery by November might not be as strong as was thought six months ago. 3) Romney is going to be a lot tougher on Obama than was McCain in 2008. For all the complaints against his moderation by the tea-party base, they will slowly rally to him as he makes arguments against Obama of the sort that McCain was perceived as unable or unwilling to make. So far Romney's attitude is that he is in the arena where blows come thick and fast, and one can't whine when being hit or hitting - a view far preferable to McCain's lectures about what not to say or do in 2008. Left-wing preemptory charges that Romney is "swift-boating" or "going negative" will probably have slight effect on him. Just as Bill Clinton saw that Dukakis in 1988 had wanted to be liked rather than feared and so himself ran a quite different, tough 1992 race, so too Romney knows where McCain's magnanimity got him in 2008. Romney won't be liked by the press, knows it, and perhaps now welcomes it. 4) In 2008 Rudy Giuliani's idea that Obama was out of the mainstream and a Chicago-style community organizer was not pressed in fear of the counter-charges that one was racialist or at least insensitive to the historic Obama candidacy. In 2012, there is a record, not an image or precedent, to vote for or against; and Romney will find it far easier to take down Obama than McCain found in 2008. That Obama did not reinvent the world as promised won't mean that his supporters will vote for Romney, only that they won't come out in the numbers or with the money as they did in 2008. There is no margin of error in 2012 and turnout will be everything for Obama. 5) The Republicans seem so far to have a lot more interest in defeating Obama than Democrats do in reelecting him. That enthusiasm level can change; but so far we are not going to see, I think, a lot of moderate Republicans writing about Obama's sartorial flair and his first-class temperament, or screeds against a Republican incumbent. One meets lots of people who sheepishly confess they voted for Obama in 2008 but learned their lesson, less so those who regret that they voted for McCain and now promise to rectify that. 6) Obama is a great front-runner who can afford to talk of unity and magnanimity, but when behind he seems to revert to churlishness and petulance. The more he references Bush, the "mess" in 2008, tsunamis, and the EU meltdown, the more one wants to ask: When will he ever get a life? Them versus us is not "hope and change." 7) Ann Romney, whether she is used in a more partisan style or more in the manner of a reticent Laura Bush, is an invaluable asset, both her narrative and her grace - a treasury really that somehow was under-appreciated in 2008 but won't be in 2012. 8) Obama is becoming repetitive and tiring in his speechifying in a way that Carter did by late summer 1980 and George H. W. Bush did in 1992. Before he gets to the podium, Americans anticipate that he will blame someone for a current problem rather than introducing a positive solution - and they are beginning to get to the further point that they cannot only anticipate the villains of the hour, but the manner in which Obama will weave together the usual straw men, the formulaic "let me perfectly clear." "make no mistake about it," and the fat-cat/pay-your-fair share vocabulary. The public finally grows tired of whiners and blamers. 9) Juan Williams and others have made the argument that race explains the disenchantment of the white male working-class voter. I think that is hardly persuasive: Give that clinger voter just a year of 5 percent unemployment, $2-a-gallon gas, 4 percent GDP growth, a balanced budget, and he would gladly vote for Obama. The better point is not that race is a determinant in 2012 but that the charge has lost its currency. The minority of working-class white male voters who voted for Obama in 2008 was vastly higher than the percentage of African-Americans of all classes and both genders who voted for McCain, a moderate Republican who one would have thought might have gotten a larger percentage of the black vote than did George W. Bush. Based on percentages in 2008, I think that one could logically infer that the number of blacks who did not vote Republican as they had once done in the past was larger than the number of white male working-class voters who did not vote Democratic as they had in the past. Playing the race card in 2012 will prove a boomerang, especially if the Sharpton-Jackson nexus turns the Martin case into a reverse O. J. trial, and if Holder or Obama editorialize any more, or revert to the exhausting "stupidly," "punish our enemies," "cowards," "my people," tropes. 10) It is no longer "cool," the thing to do, neat, or making a statement to vote for Obama. The 2008 lemming effect is over; no one believes any more that he will lower the seas or wants to believe that he can. Michelle's lightness/darkness biblical image is hokey not moving. The fading 2008 Obama bumper stickers are no longer proof of one's noble nature. 10) When Administrations Implode Townhall.com http://townhall.com/columnists/victordavishanson/2012/04/19/when_administrations_implode http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2874033/posts April 19, 2012 Victor Davis Hanson Administration meltdowns are hardly novel. In almost every presidency there comes a moment when sheer chaos takes hold, whether self-induced or as a result of an outside crisis. Vietnam had effectively destroyed Lyndon Johnson by 1967. Watergate unraveled the Richard Nixon administration, as the disgraced president resigned in the face of certain impeachment. Gerald Ford could not whip inflation and was not re-elected. One-termer Jimmy Carter was undone by the Iranian hostage crisis and skyrocketing oil prices. For a time, it seemed that Ronald Reagan's second term might not survive the Iran-Contra scandal. George H.W. Bush could not be re-elected after he broke his promise not to raise taxes and Ross Perot entered the 1992 race. The popular Bill Clinton was impeached over the Monica Lewinsky affair and limped out of office tainted. The insurgency in Iraq and the fallout from Hurricane Katrina crashed for good the once-high poll ratings of George W. Bush. The Obama administration over the last month has seemed on the verge of one of these presidential meltdowns. An open mic caught the president promising Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that he would be more flexible after the election -- as if Obama might grant concessions that would be unpalatable if known to the general public before November. That embarrassment followed an earlier hot-mic put-down of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last year. The president also unwisely attacked the Supreme Court as it deliberated the constitutionality of Obamacare. He needlessly referred to the justices as "unelected" and wrongly claimed that that they had little precedent to overturn laws that dealt with commerce. The gaffe about the court and its history was doubly embarrassing because Obama has often reminded the public that he used to teach constitutional law. Democrats unwisely went after the Catholic Church and religious conservatives on the grounds that they did not support federal subsidies for contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs. Another gratuitous scrap soon escalated into an unnecessary fight with Catholic bishops. To widen the controversy further, Vice President Joe Biden and Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz alleged that the contraceptive fight was part of a wider Republican "war on women." But that new psychodrama also blew up in the administration's face when a zealous Democratic consultant, Hilary Rosen, claimed that Ann Romney, wife of presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, had "never worked a day in her life." In fact, the affable Mrs. Romney had raised five children and had survived both multiple sclerosis and breast cancer. That silly offensive got worse when, at almost the same time, news leaked that women working at the Obama White House, on average, made 18 percent less than their male counterparts there. Meanwhile, 11 Secret Service agents assigned to the president's trip to Colombia were sent home for soliciting prostitutes -- and then haggling over the cost. Not long before, the General Services Administration was caught wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars on a junket in Las Vegas -- leading to the resignation of the GSA administrator, a political appointee. Then there was the aftermath of the Trayvon Martin shooting. After Obama's disastrous 2009 commentary about the detention of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates -- when the president alleged that police acted "stupidly" -- he might have been wise to keep quiet about another explosive racial controversy. Instead, he foolishly plunged in with a puzzling comment that if he had a son, he would have looked like the deceased Trayvon Martin. That editorializing served no purpose except to remind the nation of the racial tensions simmering around the shooting. The president also went after the rich with the "Buffett Rule," which would ensure that millionaires like his friend Warren Buffett paid at least 30 percent in income taxes. But Obama and his wife Michelle paid just over 20 percent in federal taxes on the $790,000 they earned in 2011. And even if the bill passed, the Obama Treasury would only get new revenue amounting to less than half of 1 percent of what it borrows every year. The effect of all these unnecessary missteps was to make the Obama administration appear inept -- at precisely the time Republicans were unifying around Romney and ending their long, suicidal primary fights. Some polls even showed Romney suddenly ahead in the presidential race. So why is the president rashly picking these stupid fights? Apparently his team wishes to divert attention from generally bleak economic news. The economy still suffers from a dramatic spike in gas prices, chronically high 8 percent plus unemployment, sluggish growth, and serial $1 trillion annual deficits that have sent the debt soaring to $16 trillion. These perfect storms often either destroy presidents or turn them into unpopular lame ducks. Obama should learn from the fates of his predecessors: There are enough forces in the world to destroy a presidency without needlessly creating more on his own. 11) The 25 Best Quotes From Thomas Sowell Townhall.com http://townhall.com/columnists/johnhawkins/2012/04/20/the_25_best_quotes_from_thomas_sowell http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2874356/posts April 20, 2012 John Hawkins Thomas Sowell is not only one of the finest columnists in the business, he's a prolific author, a brilliant economist, and he has an incomparable knack for simplifying complex concepts that few other human beings can match. Enjoy the distilled wisdom! 25) "Since this is an era when many people are concerned about 'fairness' and 'social justice,' what is your 'fair share' of what someone else has worked for?" 24) "Imagine a political system so radical as to promise to move more of the poorest 20% of the population into the richest 20% than remain in the poorest bracket within the decade? You don't need to imagine it. It's called the United States of America." 23) "Four things have almost invariably followed the imposition of controls to keep prices below the level they would reach under supply and demand in a free market: (1) increased use of the product or service whose price is controlled, (2) Reduced supply of the same product or service, (3) quality deterioration, (4) black markets." 22) "What sense would it make to classify a man as handicapped because he is in a wheelchair today, if he is expected to be walking again in a month and competing in track meets before the year is out? Yet Americans are given 'class' labels on the basis of their transient location in the income stream. If most Americans do not stay in the same broad income bracket for even a decade, their repeatedly changing 'class' makes class itself a nebulous concept." 21) "There are few talents more richly rewarded with both wealth and power, in countries around the world, than the ability to convince backward people that their problems are caused by other people who are more advanced." 20) "The poverty rate among black married couples has been in single digits ever since 1994. You would never learn that from most of the media. Similarly you look at those blacks that have gone on to college or finished college, the incarceration rate is some tiny fraction of what it is among those blacks who have dropped out of high school. So it's not being black; it's a way of life. Unfortunately, the way of life is being celebrated not only in rap music, but among the intelligentsia, is a way of life that leads to a lot of very big problems for most people." 19) "The first lesson of economics is scarcity: there is never enough of anything to fully satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics." 18) "Each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late." 17) "The vision of the anointed is one in which ills as poverty, irresponsible sex, and crime derive primarily from 'society,' rather than from individual choices and behavior. To believe in personal responsibility would be to destroy the whole special role of the anointed, whose vision casts them in the role of rescuers of people treated unfairly by 'society'." 16) "No one will really understand politics until they understand that politicians are not trying to solve our problems. They are trying to solve their own problems - of which getting elected and re-elected are number one and number two. Whatever is number three is far behind." 15) "Life has many good things. The problem is that most of these good things can be gotten only by sacrificing other good things. We all recognize this in our daily lives. It is only in politics that this simple, common sense fact is routinely ignored." 14) "There is usually only a limited amount of damage that can be done by dull or stupid people. For creating a truly monumental disaster, you need people with high IQs." 13) "Civilization has been aptly called a 'thin crust over a volcano.' The anointed are constantly picking at that crust." 12) "We seem to be moving steadily in the direction of a society where no one is responsible for what he himself did, but we are all responsible for what somebody else did, either in the present or in the past." 11)" For the anointed, traditions are likely to be seen as the dead hand of the past, relics of a less enlightened age, and not as the distilled experience of millions who faced similar human vicissitudes before." 10) "It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong." 9) "Intellect is not wisdom." 8)" The charge is often made against the intelligentsia and other members of the anointed that their theories and the policies based on them lack common sense. But the very commonness of common sense makes it unlikely to have any appeal to the anointed. How can they be wiser and nobler than everyone else while agreeing with everyone else?" 7) "Much of the social history of the Western world, over the past three decades, has been a history of replacing what worked with what sounded good." 6) "Experience trumps brilliance." 5) "The problem isn't that Johnny can't read. The problem isn't even that Johnny can't think. The problem is that Johnny doesn't know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling." 4) "One of the consequences of such notions as 'entitlements' is that people who have contributed nothing to society feel that society owes them something, apparently just for being nice enough to grace us with their presence." 3) "Weighing benefits against costs is the way most people make decisions - and the way most businesses make decisions, if they want to stay in business. Only in government is any benefit, however small, considered to be worth any cost, however large." 2) "In short, killing the goose that lays the golden egg is a viable political strategy, so long as the goose does not die before the next election and no one traces the politicians' fingerprints on the murder weapon." 1) "There are no solutions; there are only trade-offs." 12) No More "Mr. Obama Is A Nice Guy" Townhall.com http://townhall.com/columnists/michellemalkin/2012/04/20/no_more_mr_obama_is_a_nice_guy http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2874350/posts April 20, 2012 Michelle Malkin There is a reflexive desire among a certain species of moderate Republicans to be perceived as "civil" by liberal opponents who believe that the mere existence of free-market, limited-government conservatism is an indecent affront to humankind. All aboard the U.S.S. Lost Cause. This disastrous, bend-over bipartisanship is a hard habit to break. In 2008, Arizona Sen. John McCain rode the "Barack Obama is a nice guy, but vote for me" wave to crashing defeat. In 2012, McCain's endorsee, Mitt Romney, has made "Barack Obama is a nice guy but in over his head" a standard stump-speech talking point. Conservatives of good will who've watched President Obama brutalize his enemies have one question for the nice-guy niceties: Why, GOP, why? Romney's smarter-than-thou strategists explain that he can't scare off independents and Democrats with straight talk about Obama's thuggery. But he's turning off the conservative base, on whom his hold is tenuous. More importantly, Romney's McCain-lite impersonation is also writing off independents and Democrats who've come to realize what the myriad targets of White House bullying have learned the hard way over the past four years: Barack Obama is not a "nice guy." Ask Gerald Walpin, the former AmeriCorps inspector general who was pushed out of his job by the Obamas after exposing fraud and corruption perpetrated by Democratic mayor of Sacramento and Obama friend Kevin Johnson. Walpin was unceremoniously fired and smeared by Team Obama. The White House baselessly questioned the veteran watchdog's mental health and never apologized for slandering him. Ask the family, friends and co-workers of murdered Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. They have been forced to sue the Obama administration to combat the Operation Fast and Furious cover-up of deadly policy decisions that led to their hero's death. "I think they are liars, and I would tell them that," Terry's father, Kent, said of Obama's henchmen. As Townhall editor Katie Pavlich makes clear in her devastating new book, "Fast and Furious: Barack Obama's Bloodiest Scandal and Its Shameless Cover-Up," the president, his corrupt attorney general, Eric Holder, and their minions weren't "in over their heads." They knew exactly what they were doing and have obstructed investigations into the bloody consequences of their policies ever since. That's not "nice." It's rotten to the core. Nice? Ask those who have felt the wrath of Obama: tea party members, bitter-clinging gun owners and voters of faith; budget-reform leaders, such as Wisconsin's GOP Rep. Paul Ryan and Gov. Scott Walker, Chrysler creditors and dealers, and Delphi auto-parts workers strong-armed and cut out of the White House auto bailout negotiations with United Auto Workers; the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Americans for Prosperity and their donors; Fox News, conservative talk-radio giant Rush Limbaugh; the Congressional Budget Office and the Supreme Court. There is nothing shameful about shattering the left's defining fraudulent narrative -- which was promoted again this week by myth-making first lady Michelle Obama -- that the president has "brought us out of the dark and into the light." There is nothing hateful about exposing Team Obama's hardball tactics and government witch-hunts against taxpayers, businesses and political opponents. There is nothing unbecoming or un-presidential about questioning the Obama administration's Chicago gangster treatment of dissidents, whistleblowers and watchdogs. Let it be noted that Mr. "Nice Guy" never goes out of his way to show his opponents respect. In 2008, Obama openly bragged that his campaign strategy is: "If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun." Remember when he sneered at millions who turned out for the nationwide Tax Day tea party protests in 2009: "You would think they'd be saying thank you." Remember when he taunted GOP leaders: "We don't mind the Republicans joining us. They can come for the ride, but they gotta sit in back." Remember when he told Republicans to shut up during the stimulus debate: "I want them just to get out of the way" and "don't do a lot of talking." Remember when he outrageously insinuated before the 2010 midterms that conservatives were racist: He called critics of his amnesty policies "enemies" who needed to be "punished" by Latino voters because they were not "the kinds of folks who represent our core American values." Remember when he remained silent about his surrogates' misogynistic attacks on GOP vice presidential candidate and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. Remember when he remained silent about the vulgar rallying cry of Teamsters Union President Jimmy Hoffa, who introduced Obama at a Detroit Labor Day rally by urging union members to work against Republicans and "take these son of a bitches out." Romney's surrogates insist that conservatives should "stick to the issues." But Obama's by-any-means-necessary ruthlessness is an issue. Like Chiffon Margarine said, "It's not nice to fool Mother Nature." And it's not nice to delude the American electorate in the name of comity, politesse and simpering civility. 13) Top 10 Obama Flimflams Human Events http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=50982 http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2874785/posts 4/21/2012 This list of half-truths, sleight-of-hands, and outright lies are a good reason why Obama doesn't deserve a title more ennobling than huckster-in-chief. 1. Unprecedented shorthand After the Supreme Court heard oral arguments on ObamaCare, the President came forth with his thoroughly discredited analysis that it would be "unprecedented" for the high court to overturn a congressional action, perhaps thinking we all forgot about Marbury v. Madison (1803). After the nation's laughter subsided, White House spokesman Jay Carney explained away the fumble, saying "the President was not clearly understood by some people because he is a law professor, he spoke in shorthand." 2. Invoking Reagan Obama tried citing President Reagan's tax policies as a cover for his own tax-hiking fervor, referring to Reagan as "that wild-eyed, socialist, tax-hiking class warrior." Not even close, Mr. President. We all know that Reagan cut the marginal rates for the top income bracket from 70 percent to 28 percent and reduced the capital gains tax from 28 percent to 20 percent, creating an economic boom. 3. Keystone cop-out President Obama was obviously stung by the backlash to his Keystone Pipeline decision, as even his union backers were aghast that he jettisoned a jobs-creating project. Obama tried to change perceptions by taking credit for the Southern leg of the pipeline, from Oklahoma to the Gulf of Mexico. But the Pipeline to Nowhere was already in the works before Obama said he green-lighted it and, besides, it will not bring any Canadian oil to the U.S. Market. 4. False Rutherford B. Hayes smear Obama's campaign rhetoric reached back to the 19th Century to make a point about Republicans opposing new technology. Obama said, "One of my predecessors, Rutherford B. Hayes, reportedly said about the telephone, 'It's a great invention, but who would ever want to use one?' That's why he's not on Mount Rushmore because he's looking backwards." Actually, Hayes was something of a high-tech geek for his era, introducing the first telephone to the White House and hobnobbing with Thomas A. Edison. 5. Weathering budget cuts It is a tried and true Democratic tactic to exaggerate proposed Republican budget cuts -- which are usually just slowdowns in future proposed spending. Obama got in on the act, saying that under Paul Ryan's budget, "Our weather forecasts would become less accurate because we wouldn't be able to afford to launch new satellites." Hmm, less accurate weather forecasts -- sounds like a prescription for more global warming alarmism. 6. Poisoning children Another liberal strategy is to demonize the opposition, making the GOP sound like evil maniacs. Obama recently implied that the Republican vision includes "poisoning our kids" by allowing higher levels of pollution. No, Mr. President -- the problem that our kids will inherit is the crushing debt caused by your out-of-control spending. 7. Buffett gimmick Even the President admits that the so-call ed Buffett rule is a gimmick that would do virtually nothing to close the budget deficit. But that hasn't stopped him from repeatedly trotting out the plan to make sure the very rich pay a higher marginal tax rate than their secretaries. Even Obama can't figure out how to do that in real life, as his own tax returns show him paying a 20.5 percent tax rate, lower than his own secretary. 8. Blaming others Obama has perfected the blame-game maneuver, saying his dismal record in office was the fault of George Bush, the Japanese, or the Arab Spring. Our favorite Obama excuse was his attempt to deflect attention from his poor job-creation record by saying it was the fault of Automatic Teller Machines putting bank clerks out of business. 9. Rhetorical overkill Obama is cranking up the rhetoric, calling Republicans "members of the flat Earth society," mocking Mitt Romney for using the word "marvelous," and calling Paul Ryan's budget a "Trojan Horse" for "social Darwinism." Of course, running a campaign that focused on the issues would require the President to defend his first term's record. 10. War on women Obama is attacking Republicans for waging a war against women, which in reality is nothing more than Democratic talking point. Obama tried to show solidarity with female voters by bemoaning higher dry-cleaning bills for women, saying, "We haven't gotten on the dry cleaning thing yet. I mean, I know that is still frustrating. I'm sure." Yes, Mr. Obama, focus your efforts on the dry-cleaning crisis and quit meddling with healthcare and the economy. 14) Obama's 2.5 Percent Stall Townhall.com http://finance.townhall.com/columnists/larrykudlow/2012/04/21/obamas_25_percent_stall http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2874782/posts April 21, 2012 Larry Kudlow Wall Street headlines are full of fears of a springtime stall for the already subpar economic recovery. And if that weren't bad enough for Obama's reelection chances, a spate of new polls show Mitt Romney's economic-approval ratings are far outdistancing the president's. Even while the headline surveys basically show an Obama-Romney tossup, it will be very difficult for Obama to pull out a victory this fall. Traditionally, incumbents who poll below 50 percent are in trouble. And with Obama consistently in the mid-40s, he has a tough uphill climb ahead. Of course, a subpar recovery has kept the president's reelection hopes in doubt for some time. Former Bush economist Ed Lazear calls it the worst recovery in history. Okay. That may be a partisan shot. But actually, the data points bear this out. At roughly 2.5 percent growth, the Obama recovery is way below the 4.5 percent average since World War II. And within Obama's 2.5 percent economy, polling data show high voter anxiety over gas prices, home values, and the ability to pay mortgages. Voters even worry that they won't be able to afford to send their kids to college. The unemployment rate may have come down to 8.3 percent. But the problem for several years is that discouraged workers have been dropping out of the labor force. So real-world unemployment is considerably higher than the official stats. And if all this weren't bad enough for the president, recent economic numbers are going in the wrong direction: Initial jobless claims have increased about 6 percent. Existing homes sales and housing starts have fallen the last two months. Manufacturing, which has been a very positive story (assisted by rock-bottom natural-gas prices from the shale revolution), actually fell last month. And while retail sales continue to be a bright spot, incomes after inflation -- including high gas and food prices -- may not be keeping up. Perhaps the most optimistic statistic is the Index of Leading Economic Indicators. This measure has increased six straight months and stands at its highest level in four years, a good sign that the 2.5 percent trendline growth rate will continue without a double dip. But it's still only 2.5 percent growth. No one can yet tell if any of the economic soft spots are reflected in the latest polls. But the economic headlines read badly. And overall disappointment on the economy is undoubtedly why former governor Mitt Romney has such a strong lead in economic approval. A Wall Street Journal/NBC poll puts that lead at six points. Rasmussen has it at ten. And Quinnipiac has voter disapproval of Obama's handling of the economy at a whopping 56 percent. At this point in the election cycle, Romney is in stronger shape for November than almost anyone appreciates. He is consolidating political support from all sections of the Republican party. And while the economy is the biggest election-year issue, it's also Romney's greatest strength. Whether independent voters yet understand all of Romney's free-enterprise, merit-based, limited-government, tax-cutting policies is not yet clear. Really, he is still introducing himself to the general public. But what is clear is that the very same general public is very unhappy with the economy, and blames President Obama for it. Obama owns the economic angst. His big-government policies have not solved it. All his finger pointing and blame-game, enemies-list excuses are not working. That's really what the polls are telling us. And unless something very big and very positive happens to the economy in the next few months, Mr. Obama is in a heap of trouble. As for Mitt Romney, right now he may be the most underrated politician in America. The odds of a Romney win come November look increasingly good. 15) Why Are The Rich Still Enamored Of Obama? Townhall.com http://townhall.com/columnists/austinhill/2012/04/22/why_are_the_rich_still_enamored_of_obama http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2875065/posts April 22, 2012 Austin Hill A question for the rich: if President Obama successfully breaks the backs of the working middle class, is that really good for you? And how about this: if over half of your fellow Americans pay no income taxes and are quite happy to have you foot the bill for our wasteful bloated government, will that be good for your portfolios- or anybody else's? We're less than seven months away from selecting either four more years of Barack Obama, or a new President named Mitt. At this point President Obama isn't running on his track record, so much as he is running against his own characterizations of Congress and his Republican presidential opponent. But is that the stuff that leadership is made of? The President portrays the Congress as though it is inept and obstructionist. Despite his own party's control of the entire U.S. Senate, "Congress" is preventing further progress, Mr. Obama tells us, and it is threatening the hope and change that he has already created. As for Mitt Romney- well, he's a creature of wealth and privilege, according to President Obama, a man defined by his greed. Ivy League law school grad's Barack and Michelle understand the struggle of the middle class, but Mitt and Ann are incapable. But look who's funding the President's campaign - overwhelmingly it's the richest among us. According to a New York Times report last year, Obama's top donors included many Silicon Valley executives, hedge fund managers, entertainment executives, and former supporters of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. Today the President's campaign is aggressively seeking low-dollar donors, soliciting contributions as little as $3.00 and raffling "dinner with the President" opportunities. Yet his financial support among middle and lower income Americans is miniscule, while wealthy Americans who are willing to pay up to $40,000.00 for dinner and a photo continue to flock to his side. Yes, there's been a slowdown in the big-dollar donations, as the headlines indicate, but Barack Obama is still the presidential candidate of choice for rich folks. And why? Are wealthy Americans so easily charmed by the thrill of "hanging" with a U.S. President that they're ambivalent to the agenda they're funding? And what part of the Obama agenda do rich people believe is strengthening our country - or even their own personal fortunes? Consider the recent unemployment data. Thus far this year the U.S. Department of Labor has issued 14 reports on unemployment benefits claims, and 14 times the Department of Labor has revised the number upward, after the initial report was released. The Obama Administration grabs headlines with what appears to be a decrease in government benefits, then after the fact reports that the dependency is increasing. Is this what attracts the rich folks? And how about the sharp decline in the number of people who are actually trying to work? The labor pool is shrinking (not just the number of available jobs) and the President's solution to the problem is clear: more "free" services for the lower and middle class, and higher taxes for the rich. But is this our pathway to prosperity? Reports about fewer people wanting to work have been dismissed as "right wing spin." Yet it was none other than the Congressional Budget Office that predicted this phenomenon, after the Obamacare bill was signed in to law. Douglas Elmendorf, the Director of the non-partisan C.B.O., a federal agency within the legislative branch of our government that employs people to analyze government policies, predicted 2 years ago that, given the generous enhancements to Medicaid and the supposed "universal coverage" of Obamacare, lots of us would simply choose to no longer work for a living. Elemendorf said as much at a little noted conference in October of 2010, held at the University of Southern California's Leonard D. Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics. Nobody paid much attention to him then, but it appears now that what he predicted then is now beginning to happen. Less productivity and higher taxes on the rich - what part of this spells "success" for rich folks? It's perplexing that there aren't more wealthy Americans like Steve Wynn, the successful C.E.O. of the publicly traded Wynn Resorts, Ltd. Last July, Wynn caught national attention for daring to disagree with the President's agenda. The headlines at the time stated "Wynn Slams Obama On Business," but if you had read or listened to any of Wynn's actual remarks at the time, you would have concluded to that there really wasn't much of any "slamming" going on. More accurately, Wynn's comments seemed very accurate, rational and fair - as if he was simply stating the obvious. Speaking with a calm tone during a corporate conference call with his associates, Wynn said, among other things: ". This administration is the greatest wet blanket to business, and progress and job creation in my lifetime.my customers. are frightened of this administration. Everybody complains about how much money is on the side in America.those of us who have business opportunities and the capital to do it are going to sit in fear of the President. And a lot of people don't want to say that. They'll say, God, don't be attacking Obama. Well, this is Obama's deal and it's Obama that's responsible for this fear in America." More government entitlements and less productivity. Is this good for rich Americans? Is it good for anyone? 16) Catholic Bishops Take On Obama The Weekly Standard http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/catholic-bishops-take-obama_640569.html http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2875622/posts April 23, 2012 Vincent Phillip Munoz The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has taken a bold stand for religious freedom. In a recent statement, titled "Our First, Most Cherished Liberty," the bishops call for repeal of contraception coverage mandated by the Department of Health and Human Services. The clarified position sets up a dramatic confrontation with the Obama administration-and would, if the bishops prevail, help preserve the religious liberty of all Americans. The HHS mandate requires employers to provide insurance coverage for contraception and sterilization services. It is, according to the bishops, an "unjust law." They write: "It cannot be obeyed and therefore one does not seek relief from it, but rather its repeal." The statement is a rebuke of President Obama and the so-called accommodation his administration proposed in February. It also raises the stakes between the president and the leaders of America's Catholic Church. The bishops call on Catholics in America, "in solidarity with our fellow citizens," not to obey the law. They implicitly compare the HHS regulation to a segregation-era statute, and even cite Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letter from a Birmingham Jail." In a not-so-subtle manner, the bishops tell the Obama administration that they are willing to go to prison rather than comply with the mandate's provisions. In doing so, the bishops are ruling out the possibility of a compromise that might preserve the mandate by expanding possible conscience exemptions from it. Most discussion had been over how far the religious liberty exemption should extend-but with the bishops calling for repeal, that all could change. The Obama administration was not against an exemption per se, it just wanted a narrow one that only covered church employees serving members of their own faith with jobs pertaining to the inculcation of religious belief. The Catholic bishops, it seemed, wanted a more robust exemption that covered institutions of faith, including hospitals, universities, and other social service providers. Now the bishops have made clear that the contraception mandate must be rescinded, because, in their view, even a more expansive exemption cannot sufficiently protect religious freedom. The bishops did not have to take this route, but all those who cherish religious liberty should be glad they did. If the bishops settled for a more expansive accommodation, they might have been able to get an exemption for their hospitals and universities (including my own, Notre Dame). That would have been the easy way to "preserve" religious liberty while also retaining the mandate. But what, then, would the bishops have said to business owners who likely would not have been covered by a more expansive exemption? How could church leaders say that it's wrong for church institutions to pay for contraception and abortifacients, but that Catholic business owners must cover these costs? The exemption approach might have allowed the bishops to secure religious liberty for their institutions, but not for all their followers. That would have been a failure of moral authority and political strength to protect the common good. To their credit, the bishops appear to understand this and are now willing to lead the battle to preserve religious liberty for all, Catholics and non-Catholics, church institutions and private employers. But it won't be without confrontation. This statement from the bishops sets up a dramatic showdown between the leaders of the Catholic Church and the Obama administration, a confrontation that may not be good for either side. It is hard to see what middle ground exists, or even if it does. The Constitution was designed to prevent such fundamental clashes between church and state. Perhaps the best way out of this thicket would be for the Supreme Court to step in and stop it from happening. Striking down the contraception mandate would avert the disastrous situation of the president sending bishops to jail for being faithful witnesses to their religious convictions. 17) Five Devastating Numbers That Show Obama's Incompetence Townhall.com http://townhall.com/columnists/johnhawkins/2012/04/24/five_devastating_numbers_that_show_obamas_incompetence http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2875816/posts April 24, 2012 John Hawkins Whether you've had some form of head trauma that has caused you to like Barack Obama or like all good hearted people, you can't stand him, his performance has objectively been terrible. Of course, we can debate WHY his performance has been so bad. His supporters would probably blame Bush, Republicans in Congress, ATM machines, fairy dust shortages and people forgetting to click their heels together three times before saying, "There's no place like home." On the other hand, people who haven't been drinking Barney Frankosaurus brand Kool-Aid might note that if Obama is going to blame Republicans for everything that happens while he's President, we might as well just replace him with a Republican. Whatever the case may be, here are five devastating numbers that show how poorly America has fared under Barack Obama's watch. 1) 3 years and 2 months: "The National Debt has now increased more during President Obama's three years and two months in office than it did during 8 years of the George W. Bush presidency. The Debt rose $4.899 trillion during the two terms of the Bush presidency. It has now gone up $4.939 trillion since President Obama took office." -- CBS NEWS Keep in mind that in 2008, when Obama was in full "hope, change, and bullflop" mode, he actually called Bush "unpatriotic" for adding so much to the debt which is kind of like being called a traitor by Benedict Arnold. 2) $9.5 trillion: At a certain point, it does get a little tedious to keep hammering home how much debt we're piling up, but it's such an urgent problem that produces so little reaction, that it's nearly impossible to do otherwise. It's almost like being chained to people in a house that's burning down, but they're too busy camping out on the couch eating chips and watching American Idol to bother to save themselves. This country has already lost its AAA rating, we're 15 trillion dollars in debt, we have 100 trillion dollars in unfunded Social Security and Medicare liabilities, and barring a major course correction, we're going to default on our debts and start into a downward spiral that this nation will not recover from in the lifetime of anyone reading this column. So what is the Obama Administration doing to tackle an issue so serious that it makes every other problem we have pale in significance? The Congressional Budget Office on Friday released its analysis of President Obama's 2012 budget proposal and found it does less to rein in deficits and the debt than the administration had estimated. CBO estimates Obama's plan would produce 10 years of deficits totaling $9.5 trillion. By 2021, it would increase the debt held by the public to 87 percent of gross domestic product. This is a "sit in the burning house until the roof falls in and we all die" budget. If we add another $9.5 trillion to the debt over the next 10 years, it will mean that generations of Americans will have to grow up in dire poverty, wear sack cloth, and have to eat their dogs to make it through the winter. On the upside, if American children do have to eat Fido, it may mean they'll grow up to be President one day. 3) 1091 days: We're now up to 1,091 days without a budget despite the fact that it's the most basic function of Congress and it's required by law. There's a simple reason for this: Democrats don't want to offend the general public by increasing spending or their base by cutting spending; so they've decided to do nothing. This is kind of like a police department full of officers who've decided that arresting people is too much of a hassle; so they're going to sit in the station, eat doughnuts, drink coffee, and play Angry Birds all day. Worse yet, when Republicans like Paul Ryan have presented responsible budgets that don't go far enough, but are at least valiant attempts to take the country in the right direction, they've been criticized by Barack Obama and the Democratic Party. In other words, not only are the Democrats not going to do their jobs, they don't want Paul Ryan trying to do their jobs and to top it all off -- they then complain that the Republicans are blocking THEM. What a perverse political world it is that we live in when the Democrats have decided that their best chance of keeping their jobs is to refuse to do their jobs and then blame the other side for their adamant refusal to remove their own thumbs from their behinds. 4) $2,170: One of the great ironies of this election is the still rabid support that black Americans have for Barack Obama. This is kind of like Columbine High School throwing a "We Sure Do Miss You" Memorial Rally for Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. When Mr. Obama was inaugurated black unemployment was 12.6%. 36 months later, it is at a depression era level 15.8%. - Black teenage unemployment is a jaw dropping 42.3 percent. - In October 2010, blacks accounted for 22.6 percent of the then 40.5 million Americans who received food stamp benefits each month. That figure was projected to rise in 2011. Mark Rank of Washington University suggests a whopping 90 percent of black children may eventually live in households that need food stamps. - In 2007, before Obama took office, white households had a median net worth of $134,280, compared with $13,450 for black households. By the end of 2009, the median net worth for white households plummeted 24% to $97,860. But for black households, it dropped 83% to $2,170. The Chicago Sun-Times called it, "The Disappearing Black Middle Class." If a Republican President did the sort of damage to black Americans that Barack Obama has, it would be called a hate crime. 5) 5 Million: The average unemployment rate during George Bush's time in office was roughly 5.3% as compared to 8.2% today, which is part of the longest streak of over 8% unemployment since the Great Depression. However, because of the way the unemployment rate is calculated, even those horrific numbers don't give you the full sense of the Mt. Krakatoa-like havoc that Barack Obama has wreaked on the job market. When the recession supposedly officially ended in June, 2009, the labor force participation rate was still 65.7%. In the latest, much celebrated unemployment report, the labor force participation rate had plummeted to 63.7%, the most rapid decline in U.S. history. That means that under President Obama nearly 5 million Americans have fled the workforce in hopeless despair. The trick is that when those 5 million are not counted as in the work force, they are not counted as unemployed either. They may desperately need and want jobs. They may be in poverty, as many undoubtedly are, with America suffering today more people in poverty than in the entire half century the Census Bureau has been counting poverty. In other words, there are 5 million Americans who not only lost their jobs, but who became so discouraged trying to find a job that they just gave up. That's definitely a "change," but the only "hope" at this point is that Obama will be voted out of office so that those people will be able to get back into the labor market. 18) Obama EPA Official Vows To "Crucify" Oil And Gas Industry RushLimbaugh.com http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2876917/posts April 26, 2012 Rush Limbaugh RUSH: "Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) took to the Senate floor today to draw attention to a video of a top EPA official saying the EPA's 'philosophy' is to 'crucify' and 'make examples' of oil and gas companies -- just as the Romans crucified random citizens in areas they conquered to ensure obedience." Now, in setting this up, I just want to remind you -- and, again, I'm always cognizant of the fact that we have a considerable number of new audience members in the last six weeks who are not up to speed or in context. So indulge me for a moment if you've been a regular listener for a number of years here. To the Democrat Party as currently constituted, the American left Big Oil, Big Retail, Big Success is their enemy. They believe in The State. They believe in The Government doing everything for everybody. They want the power; they want the control. And if you've paid any attention whatsoever over the years, you cannot deny that every Democrat under the sun has demonized Big Oil. The gas price goes up a penny, and the Democrats get into gear and start targeting Big Oil. Big Oil executives! They want to raise taxes on 'em, want to blame 'em. Obama's trying to get rid of oil and replace it with batteries and green technology, which is pie-in-the-sky. There's no business there. One of the things, one of the challenges I've always had in these 23 years is convincing non-ideological people just who liberals are. It's been one of my quests, in fact. It's one of the things that keeps me showing up here every day. It's an unfinished job, it's an unfinished project, to finally find ways to get through to people who are not ideological. And by that I mean they don't live life -- or analyze life -- in terms of liberal versus conservative, left versus right. In fact, they might hate that. These are the people that don't like labels. These are the people that think that looking at people that way is simplistic. It's not. And, by the way, there's nothing wrong with simple. Simple is always best. Complex is unnecessary. That's why I like to make the complex simple and understandable. So if you are one of these non-ideological people who when you hear, for example, me issue warnings about who liberals are and what they really believe, you have to hear this. This is an appointed official at the EPA. This is somebody Obama wants there. Obama himself has said oil is tired and old and we have to get rid of it. That should matter to you. Oil is the fuel of the engine of freedom. Oil is directly tied to standard of living, prosperity, opportunity for prosperity, and freedom. It's not a pollutant. It's not any more dangerous than anything else that's organic and found naturally on this planet. What is illogical and borders on the insane is the hatred the left has for oil. That's what's insane. That's what's illogical. That's what's irrational. There's no reason to hate oil! But they do. And they hate people who work in that business. Now, that may sound extreme. People don't want to believe that kind of thing. So every once in a while you get a gift, and we have it: This EPA administrator. I don't have to tell you what the left thinks, because we have a member of the Obama administration doing it for me. His name is Al Armendariz. (I don't know if I'm pronouncing that right.) But he is the EPA Region 6 administrator. This is from May 2010, two years ago, in Dish, Texas. This is who liberals are. This is who Obama wants in power, because this is also what Obama believes. You may as well just assume that Barack Obama is saying this. All these people that said, "Gee, how did this guy get past Obama? Does Obama know these people?" Yes! They didn't "get past" him. He finds them. He has people that find these people. Barack Obama is going to get around Congress any way he can. The EPA, writing law in the form of regulations, is one way he's gonna do it. Two years ago, Dish, Texas, Al Armendariz... ARMENDARIZ: I gave an analogy to my staff about my philosophy with enforcement. It was kind of like how the Romans used to conquer little villages in the Mediterranean. They'd go into little Turkish towns somewhere, they'd find the first five guys they saw, and they'd crucify them. And then, you know, that town was really easy to manage over the next few years. So you make examples out of people who are, in this case, not complying with the law. Find people who are not complying with the law, and you hit them as hard as you can and you make examples out of them. It's a deterrent factor. RUSH: A deterrent. You hit 'em as hard as you can. Find people not complying with the law. I gave an analogy to my staff about my philosophy with enforcement. He's talking about oil here. Kind of like how the Romans used to conquer little villages in the Mediterranean. They go into a little Turkish town somewhere, they'd find the first five guys they saw and they'd crucify them. And then that town was really easy to manage over the next few years. This is who these people are. Had you not heard this, Dawn? This is who they are, folks. This is the governing philosophy of this administration. This may as well have been Barack Obama saying this. EPA Official: EPAs "philosophy" is to "crucify" and "make examples" of US energy producers> Here's the full transcript. "I was in a meeting once and I gave an analogy to my staff about my philosophy of enforcement, and I think it was probably a little crude and maybe not appropriate for the meeting, but I'll go ahead and tell you what I said: It was kind of like how the Romans used to, you know, conquer villages in the Mediterranean. They'd go in to a little Turkish town somewhere, they'd find the first five guys they saw and they'd crucify them. Then, you know, that town was really easy to manage for the next few years. It's a deterrent factor." Explaining the EPA as following the Romans' philosophy for subjugating conquered villages. That's how this guy wanted to deal and was dealing with oil and gas companies, legitimate American and international corporations. He hates them, he wants to subjugate 'em, he wants to crucify 'em, just because he can. And he's bragging about how to do it. That's who they are, my friends. This is who the American left is, the worldwide left. That is their plan and their philosophy and their approach for everybody and everything they disagree with. Here's another sound bite. This is Barack Obama, January 2008. He's a senator, interviewed by the San Francisco Chronicle editorial board. They're having a discussion about energy and the environment. Obama was asked, "What about alternatives, including coal? What are your plans for alternatives using coal?" OBAMA: What I've said is that we would put a cap-and-trade system in place that is as aggressive, if not more aggressive, than anybody else's out there. So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can. It's just that it will bankrupt them because they're gonna be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that's being emitted. RUSH: So in 2008 Obama told the San Francisco Chronicle editorial board that he intended to put the coal business out of business by making it financially impossible for them to stay in business. And, by the way, in Obama's home state of Illinois they are closing coal-fired power plants. At that same editorial board meeting, Obama described his energy plan in general. OBAMA: When I was asked earlier about the issue of coal, you know, under my plan of a cap-and-trade system, the electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket. Obama: My Plan Makes Electricity Rates Skyrocket RUSH: Get rid of coal, demonize oil and gas and try to find a way to replace that and electricity rates will skyrocket. This was the plan. Now, the mainstream media didn't report any of this. The San Francisco Chronicle released the tape, but they didn't make a big deal of it back when Obama said it. It was left up to us. They've not hidden who they are. Obama has not hidden who he is. This guy, Al Armendariz. They're oil-phobes. These people are dangerous, folks. They pose a clear and present danger. RUSH: By the way, the interior secretary, Ken, the cowboy hat, Salazar, said, "Gasoline could get to nine dollars a gallon. Nobody knows where it's gonna end up." Nine dollars a gallon. The regime is saying that with a shrug of the shoulders. You notice this Al Armendariz guy was speaking to colleagues. Have you noticed we only hear the left's real plans when they're talking with their colleagues, with fellow travelers. That's how we heard Obama's comments about the bitter clingers as well as his plans for moving to us single-payer health care system when he was talking to the unions. When he's talking to fellow travelers at the San Francisco Chronicle. That's when we hear he's gonna put the coal business out. He never tells you that. He never says this stuff in public. He only says it to his friends, and Al Armendariz, same thing, down there in Texas, with his colleagues, and here's how I'm gonna crucify, as Reverend Wright would say, going to crucify Big Oil, so forth. Let me tell you what that was about. At the same time of this tape of Al Armendariz down in Texas, 2010, he was targeting at the EPA, this same guy was targeting a company called Range Resources. A company based in Fort Worth. Range Resources is the company that discovered the Marcellus Shale field in Pennsylvania, the biggest natural gas field in America, one of the biggest in world. Range Resources discovered it. This guy, Al Armendariz, claimed that Range Resources' fracking had contaminated groundwater in Texas. He issued an order to just shut them down, the guy you heard on the tape. The Texas Railroad Commission, which regulates oil and gas drilling in Texas, found no evidence that Range Resources had polluted anything. And finally, just last month, two years after the fact, the EPA withdrew its order and a federal court dismissed the EPA's case. In fact, according to Senator Inhofe and other experts, the environmentalists have still not been able to produce a single case to prove that fracking contaminates groundwater, but this little bureaucrat thinking he's Mr. Hot Stuff, doing the bidding of Barack Obama. Yes, I'm mad. I am spitting mad over this. Everybody ought to be. This little bureaucrat, on his own, admitting to his colleagues that his job is to crucify Big Oil and big gas the way the Romans did it. You go in and you find five guys, whether they've done anything or not, and you crucify them. You make an example, and that's how you scare everybody into not doing anything you don't want 'em to do. So this Range Resources discovers the Marcellus Shale field, biggest natural gas field in America, and this guy accuses them falsely of contaminating groundwater because of their fracking technique, and orders them to be shut down. And he can do it. He's doing Barack Obama's bidding. It takes two years, and finally the whole thing's thrown out with no evidence whatsoever. Two years this company had to endure. This is EPA terrorism. And that's who these people are. And that's why you need to see these people in an ideological framework, folks. It's who they are. RUSH: E-mails during the break: "You just say -- you just SAY -- all this stuff about Al Armendariz shutting down Range Resources. You don't cite a source!" Okay. It's Forbes magazine. Like I'm gonna make this up! Forbes magazine has the details on what Al Armendariz tried to do, or what he did do to Range Resources, all because why? What did they do? They discovered the largest natural gas field in America. That's a crime! Because they used fracking to do it, and the left believes that fracking contaminates groundwater. There's no evidence. They looked at it for two years. There's no evidence whatsoever that fracking contaminates groundwater. But because the left is against the discovery of oil and gas, they'll simply lie about the destruction of the environment in the process of getting more oil and gas, because they hate it. (New Castrati impression) "Why do they hate oil and gas, Mr. Limbaugh? That's a ridiculous thing to say!" They hate oil and gas because it equals freedom. It equals something the government is not providing. The government doesn't provide oil. Therefore, there are no votes in it. The government doesn't provide natural gas. The private sector produces it. The private sector is the enemy. It's just that simple. The challenge for you is to believe it, folks, 'cause that's who these people are. Senator Inhofe said, "[I]t's clear that EPA did not base these three studies on sound science," the fracking allegations, "or engage in the proper scientific process; the agency has been using questionable authorities while usurping the rightful regulatory authority of states," meaning Texas. If anybody's gonna shut down Range Resources, it's Texas that does it. Al Armendariz can't come in as an EPA, you know, little Nazi, come in and do it. But he did it. "EPA clearly went through with these investigations based on preconceived conclusions with the explicit goal of tying potential environmental harms to hydraulic fracturing," whether it exists or not. There's a moratorium on drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico, folks. I don't know what more evidence anybody needs. The Keystone pipeline? You have to have the courage to believe that's who these people are. There are hundreds of thousands of jobs waiting for the Keystone pipeline. There's all kinds of new domestic oil we have. We would be less dependent on Middle Eastern oil. Obama's opposed to it. "Why?" Who cares why? The fact is he's opposed to it; that ought to be enough to disqualify him. RUSH: Department of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said, quote, "No one knows," close quote, if gasoline prices in the US will reach nine dollars a gallon. He acknowledged the possibility is outside his control. Salazar was talking to reporters. He was asked if gasoline prices could reach nine dollars a gallon as they have in Greece. "I don't think anyone can speculate what will happen with respect to oil prices and gas prices because they are set on the global economy. ... What we see happening today are the influences first of unrest in places like the Middle East and Iran, which disrupt the markets and allow the futures markets to play on some of what they see ... and secondly the huge demand that you've started seeing in places like China, India and Brazil." So nobody knows if the US is headed to nine dollars a gallon. No, nobody knows. Can you imagine if George W. Bush had said, "Nobody knows. We might be headed to nine dollars." Can you imagine the conniption fit? RUSH: George in Charlotte, North Carolina, welcome to the EIB Network. Hello. CALLER: Hello, Rush. It is indeed an honor to speak to the all-knowing, all-caring Maha Rushie. RUSH: Thank you very, very much. It's great to have you with us. CALLER: Yes, sir. RUSH: You bet. CALLER: I heard you about an hour ago playing that part of Obama. I had never heard that about what he said on the coal companies. I cannot believe that a man that is supposed to be even a US citizen, which I doubt, would even say that we will tax you to death or we will fine you to death or we will put you out of business. RUSH: Grab audio sound bite number two, Ed. Here's what he's talking about. This is Obama, January 2008, San Francisco Chronicle editorial board meeting. OBAMA: What I've said is that we would put a cap-and-trade system in place that is as aggressive, if not more aggressive, than anybody else's out there. So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can. It's just that it will bankrupt them because they're gonna be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that's being emitted. RUSH: Barack Obama telling the San Francisco Chronicle editorial board he's gonna put the coal business out of business by making it impossibly expensive to be in business. You've never heard that quote? CALLER: No. If we do not in November get this dictatorship socialist regime out of office, you had mentioned earlier how many millions of illegals are going back to Mexico. RUSH: Yeah. CALLER: We will be better off to get on the bus with them with their gross national product twice what ours is than stay here and try to go into business. RUSH: Well, what makes you think they're on the bus? CALLER: Well, probably not, but -- RUSH: Think they're taking the hoof express. CALLER: -- knowing Obama he's probably gonna pay for their fare back. RUSH: Back, yeah, he needs 'em here. Absolutely. See, that's great. George had not heard that quote. RUSH: I want to go back, audio sound bite number one, Al Armendariz two years ago in Dish, Texas, describing how they're gonna squash Big Oil. ARMENDARIZ: I gave an analogy to my staff about my philosophy with enforcement. It was kind of like how the Romans used to conquer little villages in the Mediterranean. They'd go into little Turkish towns somewhere, they'd find the first five guys they saw, and they'd crucify them. And then, you know, that town was really easy to manage over the next few years. So you make examples out of people who are, in this case, not complying with the law. Find people who are not complying with the law, and you hit them as hard as you can and you make examples out of them. It's a deterrent factor. RUSH: That is Al Armendariz talking about how he's gonna "crucify" oil and gas companies just because they exist. I said earlier today, "This is Obama. This guy is an appointee. Obama wants him there. These are the kinds of people that Obama has populating these agencies." So today at the White House press briefing, the Fox News Channel's Chief White House correspondent Ed Henry said to Jay Carney, "The White House spokesman, president's approach going back to the campaign of '08 was about 'hope and change,' setting a new tone. Somebody saying we should 'crucify' the oil industry. Why is that person still working at the EPA? He's a political appointee. What's going on here, Jay?" CARNEY: He -- he -- he's apologized, uh, and he's, uh... What he said is clearly (long pause) not representative of either, uh, this president's belief, uhhh, in the way that we should approach these matters or in the way that he has approached these matters. Either, uh, from this office here in the White House or at the EPA. RUSH: Not true. So this guy is saying, "Hey, this Al Armendariz, he doesn't speak for Obama!" He does speak for Obama. We've got the tapes of Obama describing how he's gonna put the coal business out of business. He's gonna make it too expensive how to operate. We have him saying how electricity rates are gonna skyrocket. So he's got an appointee at the EPA crucifying oil and gas companies. And Carney says, "Well, no, no, that's not the presiden! This is not representative of this president." It is! He's a political appointee. Armendariz is there for a reason, and that is he is Obama. RUSH: Obama said he was gonna crucify the coal industry to the San Francisco Chronicle. This Armendariz guy is "crucifying" little oil and gas companies like Range Resources. He's doing Obama's bidding! They're all on the same team. 19) The Shrinking Immigration Problem (The Number Of Illegal Immigrants From Mexico Is Getting Smaller) National Review http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/297021/shrinking-immigration-problem-michael-barone http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2876728/posts 4/26/2012 Michael Barone The illegal-immigration problem is going away. That's the conclusion I draw from the latest report of the Pew Hispanic Center on Mexican immigration to the United States. Pew's demographers have carefully combed through statistics compiled by the U.S. Census Bureau, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Mexican government, and have come up with estimates of the flow of migrants from and back to Mexico. Their work seems to be as close to definitive as possible. They conclude that from 2005 to 2010, some 1.39 million people came from Mexico to the United States and 1.37 million went from the U.S. to Mexico. "The largest wave of immigration in history from a single country to the United States," they write, "has come to a standstill." The turning point seems to have come with the collapse of housing prices and the onset of recession in 2007. Annual immigration from Mexico dropped from peaks of 770,000 in 2000 and 670,000 in 2004 to 140,000 in 2010. As a result, the Mexican-born population in the United States decreased from 12.6 million in 2007 to 12.0 million in 2010. That decrease consisted entirely of Mexican-born illegal immigrants, whose numbers decreased from 7 million in 2007 to 6.1 million in 2010. Mitt Romney has been ridiculed for saying that illegal immigrants should "self-deport." But that seems to be exactly what many of them have been doing. The U.S. government has been sending back more illegals lately, but most of the flow to Mexico has been voluntary. The Pew analysts hesitate to say so, but their numbers make a strong case that we will never again see the flow of Mexicans into this country that we saw between 1970, when there were fewer than 1 million Mexican-born people in the U.S., and 2007, when there were 12.7 million. One reason is that Mexico's population growth has slowed way down. Its fertility rate fell from 7.3 children per woman in 1970 to 2.4 in 2009, which is just above replacement level. Meanwhile, Mexico's economy has grown. Despite sharp currency devaluations in 1982 and 1994, its per capita gross domestic product rose 22 percent from 1980 to 2010. Mexico, like the United States, experienced a recession from 2007 to 2009. But since then, Mexico's GDP has grown far faster than ours - 5.5 percent in 2010 and 3.9 percent in 2011. Mexico seemed yoked to the U.S. growth rate after passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1993. But since the recession, it seems yoked to the more robust growth rate of the state with the biggest cross-border trade, Texas. An end to the huge flow of immigrants from Mexico has huge implications for U.S. immigration policy. Because of our long land border with Mexico (the Rio Grande is a trickle most of the year), it has been relatively easy to emigrate illegally from that country. As a result, Mexican immigrants tend to be younger, poorer, less educated, and less fluent in English than immigrants from other countries. They are also more likely to be illegal - Mexicans are 30 percent of all immigrants but 58 percent of illegals - and less likely to become U.S. citizens. A continued standstill in Mexican immigration means that the number of illegals in the United States will probably continue to decline, even in an economic recovery. Children of illegals born in the U.S., who are automatically U.S. citizens, don't add to the illegal numbers. And no other country has produced or is likely to produce anything close to the number or share of illegals that Mexico has. The central focus of the debate over the so-called comprehensive immigration bills that came to the floor of the Senate in 2006 and 2007 was their provisions for legalization of those illegally here - amnesty, to opponents. On the campaign trail, Barack Obama is promising to push for such legislation, just as he promised in 2008. But he didn't deliver when Democrats had supermajorities in both houses and is unlikely to get anywhere on this project in a second term. It may not matter much. With the Mexican reservoir of potential illegals dried up, and with better border enforcement and increased use of the much improved E-Verify system in workplaces, the illegal population seems likely to decline. The key immigration issue for the future is whether America, like our Anglosphere cousins Canada and Australia, will let in more high-skilled immigrants. 20) Do The Math: Senate Could Shift Republican In 2012 Human Events http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=51009 http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2876650/posts 4/23/2012 John Gizzi Less than 200 days before the November elections, Republicans are brimming with confidence about gaining at least the four seats they need to put the U.S. Senate in their column. With 47 Republican senators and 53 Democrats, the number of seats up for election clearly point to the much-desired GOP net gain of four and then some. There are 35 Senate seats are up for grabs this fall, with 10 held by Republicans and 25 by the Democrats. Of that 25, six Democratic senators are retiring: Akaka (Hawaii), Nelson (Neb.), Bingman (NM), Conrad (N.D.), Webb (Va.), Kohl (Wisc.). In addition, one independent who votes with the Democrats for Senate control, Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, is also calling it quits. In all seven situations, Republicans range from being slam-dunk favorites to pick up seats (Nebraska and North Dakota) to at least even money of winning (New Mexico, Virginia, and Wisconsin) to fighting chances in states once considered lost causes. In Hawaii, which last elected a Republican senator in 1970, popular two-term Gov. and moderate GOPer Linda Lingle is thought to be a formidable candidate against whoever wins the hotly contested Democratic primary. In Connecticut, where Rep. Chris Murphy and Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz are duking it out for the Democratic nomination, Republicans feel they can pick up the pieces and win their first Senate race since 1982. "I'm an honest broker," Connecticut GOP Chairman Jerry Labriola told Human Events during a recent interview, underscoring his neutrality, "but if Chris Murphy [who is 38] wins, he could be there for the rest of my life. So we have to have a candidate we can rally behind to stop that from happening." The two Republican hopefuls are 2010 nominee and former World Wresting Entertainment executive Linda McMahon, a center-right GOPer, and former Rep. (1987-2006) Chris Shays, a liberal Republican. In contrast, three of the seven Republican incumbents facing the voters are considered certain winners: Wicker (Miss.), Corker (Tenn.) and Barrasso (Wyo.). In Indiana and Utah, the two most senior Republican senators respectively-Richard Lugar and Orrin Hatch, both of whom won their first terms in 1976-faced spirited renomination challenges. But so weak are the Democratic contenders in either state that even if the insurgents were to depose the senators, they would be the betting favorites to keep the Senate seats in the two states. Only two Republican senators are in danger of possible defeat: Scott Brown of Massachusetts, who won the nationally watched special election for the seat of the late Edward Kennedy in January 2010, and Dean Heller of Nevada, appointed to replace fellow Republican John Ensign when he resigned over a sex scandal last year. Brown faces former Obama administration official Elizabeth Warren, while Heller is locked in a tight contest with Democrat and Las Vegas-area Rep. Shelley Berkley. Danger in Maine Of the three Republican Senate seats in which incumbents are retiring, only one is in danger of falling into Democratic hands: Maine, where former two-term Gov. and independent Angus King is the favorite to defeat both major party candidates and succeed retiring Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe. King insists he won't say which party he will side with for Senate control, but it is widely expected that the former governor would go with the Democrats. In contrast, retiring GOP Sens. Jon Kyl of Arizona and Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas are sure to be succeeded by fellow Republicans. In the 15 states where Democratic senators are running again, at least half are sites for highly competitive contests: Florida, where Sen. Bill Nelson should face a strong challenge from Rep. Connie Mack; Michigan, where either former Rep. Pete Hoekstra or former Legal Services chief Clark Durant could upset Sen. Debbie Stabenow; Missouri, where three strong GOPers are vying to challenge Sen. and narrow '06 winner Claire McCaskill; Montana, where Rep. Denny Rehberg is in a nasty bout with Sen. Jon Tester; Ohio, where State Treasurer Josh Mandel is locked in a tight battle with far-left Sen. Sherrod Brown, and West Virginia, where the administration's "war on coal" could sweep out Sen. Joe Manchin in favor of John Raese, who narrowly lost to Manchin in the 2010 special election. That leaves Vermont, where Bernie Sanders, an independent with Democratic backing, is favored to win again. So you don't think Republicans can win the Senate this fall, huh? Just do the math. 21) Not Excited About Romney? Catholic Exchange http://catholicexchange.com/not-excited-about-romney/ http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2876636/posts April 25, 2012 David J. Peterson This year's GOP primary has been an odyssey filled with sound and fury. But, like elephants who never forget, millions of Republicans are muttering "haven't we seen this movie before?" Conservatives who were looking for a solid alternative to Democrat Barack Obama are angry and disappointed. The party rank and file was opposed to the nomination of Mitt Romney, seeing him as a weathervane - willing to adopt any position or cause to suit his ambitions. The Republican establishment, which is dominated by big business and the Wall Street elite, heard the same chorus of protests when Senator John McCain was nominated in 2008. The party elites argue that, as a centrist, Governor Romney has the best chance of beating the incumbent president in the November US elections. They claim that since his term ended in Massachusetts, a left-leaning stronghold, Romney's positions have "evolved" and he is now closer to mainstream conservatives. Yet, his detractors say fielding a candidate who is clearly unable to articulate any coherent moral outlook is a big blunder. American voters have not warmed up to the nominee. Since early 2011, Romney support among Republican voters in statewide polls never rose above 20 to 30 percent. In an ABC survey in March - just 34 percent of all voters had a favorable opinion of him. His unfavorable score, nearly 50 percent, was exceeded only by one other Republican, former House speaker Newt Gingrich, and by only one top candidate in 28 years, Hillary Clinton in 2008. It is a mystery how a candidate so unpopular among average voters could remain the "front runner". In addition, the single issue where Barack Obama is most vulnerable is his controversial national health care mandate. Unbelievably, it turns out that the original model for the "Obamacare" health law was first enacted by Governor Romney in Massachusetts. Both laws require everyone with income to purchase health insurance. As with Obama, Romney's plan provides free contraceptive coverage, which Catholic and other religious institutions must pay for! The outcome of the GOP primary season poses the question: is democracy taking a long sabbatical in the country where it all began back in 1776? First, there is the obvious issue of disparity in money. Multi-millionaires like Romney have a tremendous advantage over opponents. At the same time, candidates who are not responsive to the wealthy elite will always be swimming upstream. With access to unlimited donations raised by "SuperPacs," the GOP winner shelled out hundreds of millions in slick attack ads - helping to vilify his opponents in every state primary. The two expected nominees have already raised a combined total close to US$400 million. Overall spending by both presidential campaigns in 2008 was $1.7 billion, 10 times what it was in 1976, and perhaps this will double in 2012. A second major concern is how Governor Romney was originally designated as the front runner. Who determined that the Republican nomination was his, unless a challenger could snatch it away? It is hard to escape the conclusion that a corrupt bargain was in place from the start involving the top US elites, the GOP establishment and the national media barons. In modern election contests, the big media carefully frame the race between two poles, the liberal Democrats against conservative Republicans. In the primary debates the media make it next to impossible for a dissenting candidate to get anywhere near the nomination. From 1970 to 2000, America's former Christian culture has been stripped away like bark from a tree. As with Sarah Palin - a leading Christian conservative who was nominated for vice president in 2008 - a candidate who openly talks of a serious commitment to Christian or Biblical moral virtues is considered a "cult follower" or extremist. This year former Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, former Senator Rick Santorum and even Texas Governor Rick Perry were all bullied and ostracized by partisan TV journalists. When Perry or Santorum made foolish statements, the media labeled them hopeless bumpkins who were unfit for higher office. Mitt Romney's blunders were criticized but labelled as just bumps in the road. But the front runner made several mega-gaffes where he appeared to be getting coaching from Ebenezer Scrooge. During the worst economic crisis in almost a century, multi-millionaire Romney stated "I am not concerned about poor people". Elsewhere he bragged about how he enjoys firing people. He described government loans which saved two-thirds of the auto industry and over 1 million American jobs as a terrible mistake. After first stonewalling on his taxes, he revealed that by using loopholes and off shore accounts he paid only 14 percent, a rate well below that of most middle-income Americans. For independent minded voters, including social conservatives and Christians, there is a temptation to simply avoid the race or to stay away from the polls this fall. The damage done by Obama in the next four years may not be as bad as one or two terms under a slightly less liberal alternative. Before he suspended his surprising campaign, Rick Santorum said the difference between Romney and his Democratic rival is negligible. Arguments about the lesser of two evils, which surface like a swarm of cicadas every four years, are sounding hollow. As Plato noted in the Republic - in an oligarchy "there is not one state but two, one of the very wealthy, and one of everyone else. "If history is a guide, then Ben Franklin's remarks at the 1787 Constitutional Convention should be noted. When asked - 'what have we got?' - he replied, 'A republic if you can keep it'." As in earlier eras, 21st century Americans will have to provide their own answer to his timeless warning. 22) Public-Employee Unions Gone Wild (Their Excessive Demands Are Squeezing Local Governments) National Review http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/297094/public-employee-unions-gone-wild-patrick-brennan http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2877111/posts 4/27/2012 Patrick Brennan Terry List, a teacher in Saginaw Township, Mich., has a depressing lesson for her students: "I would not recommend to my pupils to become a teacher in Michigan." What's discouraging her? A proposed pension-reform bill in Michigan would derail her plans to retire - at age 47. After these rapacious reforms, List would have to work another 16 years, to age 63, in order to earn her retiree health-care benefits. "I understand we have to tighten our belts," she laments, "but we don't have to use a tourniquet and cut off the blood supply entirely." Under the reforms, such a tourniquet means she could still retire now and have a guaranteed income for the rest of her life, but she'd have to pay for her own health care until age 65 - like, you know, most Americans. Ninety percent of public employees in the United States enjoy defined-benefit pension plans, meaning they will receive a guaranteed income, and usually health insurance, until death. These benefits are prohibitively expensive, and more so when they are tied to retirement ages that are atypically low. Given rising life expectancies, we could see a raft of public pensioners spending more years collecting retirement benefits than they spent working their government jobs, and in fact this isn't uncommon already. Thanks to the strength of teachers' unions, the average retirement age for a public-school teacher in America is 59. In California, the oldest age at which some categories of state and local employees can retire is 60, though for most the age is significantly lower. It's hard to generalize, because some unions have pillaged far more than others. For a sense of how extreme the demands of some can be, one more example will have to suffice. Until recently, employees of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority enjoyed "23 and out" pensions. No matter when they began their careers, they could collect nearly full pensions after 23 years on the job. (That has been raised to the a punishing figure of 25 years, and now with a minimum age of 55 before they can collect.) Perhaps the most famous member of the organization that negotiated these benefits, the Boston Carmen's Union, is Patrick Bulger, son of longtime Massachusetts state-senate president Billy Bulger. The younger Bulger retired from the Carmen's Union at 43 and began collecting an annual pension of $41,000. Plus cost-of-living adjustments. For the rest of his life. It's hard to justify such benefits when the rest of America relies on 401(k)s, Social Security, and Medicare, making their effective retirement age, on average, 63 - and soon to rise. Public employees retire still very much in their working years. Even though they're guaranteed financial security for life, some of them in "retirement" go on to lucrative jobs in the private sector - or, more disturbingly, back in the public sector. Take retired MBTA manager Michael Mulhern, age 48, who now enjoys a $130,000-a-year pension - and earns $225,000 a year as executive director of the MBTA's retirement fund. Of course, the case can be made that some public employees - police and firefighters - need and deserve to retire at a relatively earlier age. Public-safety employees were often the first to win generous pensions and lower retirement ages. The largesse has quickly spread to the unions of other government employees. In Illinois and California, almost one in three state employees are now on "public safety" retirement schedules. Public-safety rules often extend, for instance, to any "law enforcement" employee - including, say, all employees of public defenders' offices. In New York City, the level of benefits for public-safety workers was soon enough extended to all uniformed employees of the city, so that sanitation workers fall under the same "20 and out" policy as do officers of the NYPD. This absurdity of extending so-called hazard schedules to professions that just aren't hazardous has grown to Hellenic proportions.Greece's hairdressers retire from their work with dangerous chemicals at age 53. Is it any less ridiculous that New York's sanitation workers receive their pensions after all of 20 years? But rock-bottom retirement ages aren't just huge burdens on the state and wasteful privileges for certain workers. They also epitomize the perverse nature of public-sector collective bargaining, which tends to be exacerbated by a lot of optimistic projections, back-loaded spending, and ill-conceived promises. Imagine the basic bargaining game. A public union goes to the table, asking for increased compensation. The government usually realizes that pay increases are unaffordable or fiscally irresponsible, and does not want to provide them. So the two parties reach a compromise: Instead of increasing current pay, increase future compensation by a present value roughly equivalent to what the union wanted now. But because governments (though they have improved in recent years) operate by optimistic standards or none at all, they don't fairly evaluate the costs of what they've just promised. The more unfairly they evaluate the compensation, the more the union gets. Agreement on early retirement works for both sides. It's psychologically less costly. For state and local government officials, increasing salaries, retirement benefits, or health-care benefits involves very obvious financial commitments, whether present or future. Lowering the retirement age, especially for new employees, does not, though it does no less to immanentize the fiscal equivalent of doomsday. Furthermore, lax accounting standards allow a government to ignore or distort just how big the burdens are that youthful retirees will impose - something it couldn't do if it promised benefits in the here and now rather than deferring them. Moreover, much of the cost that governments incur when they grant early retirement comes from health-care benefits, which are easy to promise but costly to deliver. Insuring the elderly can mean that a retiree already receiving a pension that amounts to 80 percent of his peak earnings in wages could easily be costing his public employer more than he ever did as a full-time worker. In a nation where everyone must rely on Medicare, there's no good reason for retirees to be provided health-insurance benefits, which shift the burden of an undersized risk pool and inflated tax-exempt benefits onto local governments and taxpayers. But these benefits are important for the unions, because otherwise employees couldn't afford to retire before 65, when they become eligible for Medicare. And so public-safety employees whose retirement ages have always been much lower than 65 require extremely expensive health-care benefits in order to make their early-age pensions worthwhile. This practice spread as hazard schedules were applied to other professions until, eventually, it became a common retirement benefit. As a 2007 GAO report explains, rising health-care costs make these promises extremely difficult, almost impossible, to account for - when state and local governments even bother. They usually don't. Few still rely on pay-as-you-go budgeting for pensions, though it remains common for health care. By almost every measure, public-sector unions have managed to extract excessive levels of retirement benefits from governments, whose obligations have been vastly increased by the early ages at which the benefits can be claimed. That the benefits enjoyed by public employees already are more generous than anything the average American knows, and that they can enjoy them at an age when the average American is still working, isn't just adding insult to injury. It's adding kerosene to tinder. 23) Who Is 'Racist'? Creators.com http://www.creators.com/print/conservative/thomas-sowell/who-is-racist.html http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2875453/posts April 24, 2012 Thomas Sowell Whatever the ultimate outcome of the case against George Zimmerman for his shooting of Trayvon Martin, what has happened already is enough to turn the stomach of anyone who believes in either truth or justice. An amazing proportion of the media has given us a painful demonstration of the thinking - and lack of thinking - that prevailed back in the days of the old Jim Crow South, where complexion counted more than facts in determining how people were treated. One of the first things presented in the media was a transcript of a conversation between George Zimmerman and a police dispatcher. The last line in most of the transcripts shown on TV was that of the police dispatcher telling Zimmerman not to continue following Trayvon Martin. That became the basis of many media criticisms of Zimmerman for continuing to follow him. Only later did I see a transcript of that conversation on the Sean Hannity program that included Zimmerman's reply to the police dispatcher: "O.K." That reply removed the only basis for assuming that Zimmerman did in fact continue to follow Trayvon Martin. At this point, neither I nor the people who assumed that he continued to follow the teenager have any basis in fact for believing that he did or didn't. Why was that reply edited out by so many in the media? Because too many people in the media see their role as filtering and slanting the news to fit their own vision of the world. The issue is not one of being "fair" to "both sides" but, more fundamentally, of being honest with their audience. NBC News carried the editing even further, removing one of the police dispatcher's questions, to which Zimmerman was responding, in order to feed the vision of Zimmerman as a racist. In the same vein were the repeated references to Zimmerman as a "white Hispanic." Zimmerman is half-white. So is Barack Obama. But does anyone refer to Obama as a "white African"? All these verbal games grow out of the notion that complexion tells you who is to be blamed and who is not. It is a dangerous game because race is no game. If the tragic history of the old Jim Crow South in this country is not enough to show that, the history of racial and ethnic tragedies is written in blood in countries around the world. Millions have lost their lives because they looked different, talked differently or belonged to a different religion. In the midst of the Florida tragedy, there was a book published with the unwieldy title, "No Matter What ... They'll Call This Book Racist." Obviously it was written well before the shooting in Florida, but its message - that there is rampant hypocrisy and irrationality in public discussions of race - could not have been better timed. Author Harry Stein, a self-described "reformed white liberal," raised by parents who were even further left, exposes the illogic and outright fraudulence that lies behind so much of what is said about race in the media, in politics and in our educational institutions. He asks a very fundamental question: "Why, even after the Duke University rape fiasco, does the media continue to give credence to every charge of racism?" Harry Stein credits Shelby Steele's book "White Guilt" with opening his eyes to one of the sources of many counterproductive things said and done about race today - namely, guilt about what was done to blacks and other minorities in the past. Let us talk sense, like adults. Nothing that is done to George Zimmerman - justly or unjustly - will unlynch a single black man who was tortured and killed in the Jim Crow South for a crime he didn't commit. Letting hoodlums get away with hoodlumism today does not undo a single injustice of the past. It is not even a favor to the hoodlums, for many of whom hoodlumism is just the first step on a path that leads to the penitentiary, and maybe to the execution chamber. Winston Churchill said, "If the past sits in judgment on the present, the future will be lost." He wasn't talking about racial issues, but what he said applies especially where race is involved. 24) Who Is 'Racist'?: Part II Creators Syndicate http://www.creators.com/print/conservative/thomas-sowell/who-is-racist-part-ii.html http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2877239/posts April 27, 2012 Thomas Sowell Around this time of year, I sometimes hear from parents who have been appalled to learn that the child they sent away to college to become educated has instead been indoctrinated with the creed of the left. They often ask if I can suggest something to have their offspring read over the summer, in order to counteract this indoctrination. This year the answer is a no-brainer. It is a book with the unwieldy title, "No matter what ... they'll call this book Racist" by Harry Stein, a writer for what is arguably America's best magazine, "City Journal." In a little over 200 very readable pages, the author deftly devastates with facts the nonsense about race that dominates much of what is said in the media and in academia. There is no subject on which lies and half-truths have become so much the norm on ivy-covered campuses than is the subject of race. Moreover, anyone who even questions these lies and half-truths is almost certain to be called a "racist," especially in academic institutions which loudly proclaim a "diversity" that is confined to demographics, and all but forbidden when it comes to a diversity of ideas. The ultimate irony is that many of those who publicly promote or accept the prevailing party line on race do not themselves accept it privately. A few years ago, when a faculty vote on affirmative action was proposed at the University of California at Berkeley, there was a fierce disagreement as to whether that vote should be taken by secret ballot or at an open faculty meeting. Both sides understood that many professors would vote one way in secret and the opposite way in public. In short, hypocrisy is the norm in discussions of race - and not just at Berkeley. Moreover, it is the norm among blacks as well as whites. Black civil rights attorneys and activists who denounce whites for objecting to the bussing of kids from the ghetto into their neighborhood schools have not hesitated to send their own children to private schools, instead of subjecting them to this kind of "diversity" in the public schools. As for whites, author Harry Stein says that many white liberals "give blacks a pass on behaviors and attitudes they would regard as unacceptable and even abhorrent in their own kind." This, of course, is no favor to those particular blacks - especially those among young ghetto blacks whose counterproductive behavior puts them on a path that leads nowhere but to welfare, at best, and behind bars or death in gangland street warfare at worst. In the introduction to his book, Stein says that his purpose is "to talk honestly about race." He accomplishes that purpose in a fact-filled book that should be a revelation, especially to young people of any race, who have been fed a party line in schools and colleges across America. He looks behind the highly sanitized picture of Al Sharpton, as a civil rights statesman with his own MSNBC program and his designation as a White House adviser, to the factual reality of a man with a trail of slime that has included inciting mobs, in some cases costing innocent lives. Positive news also receives its due. Some readers of this book may be surprised to learn that the ban on racial preferences in the University of California system did not lead to a disappearance of blacks from the system, as the supporters of affirmative action claimed would happen. On the contrary, more blacks graduated from the system after the ban - for the very common sense reason that they were now admitted to University of California campuses where they qualified, rather than to places like UCLA and Berkeley, where they had often been admitted to fill a quota, and often failed. Stein's book is also one of the few places where many young people will see the actual words of people like Bill Cosby, Shelby Steele, Pat Moynihan and others who have opposed the fashionable platitudes that confuse racial issues. Whether those words convince all readers is not the point. The point, especially for young readers in our schools and colleges, is that this may be one of the few times they will ever encounter a fundamentally different set of views on race - views that they have only heard referred to as coming from "Uncle Toms" or "racists." 25) 'Crucify Them': The Obama Way : The EPA Emulates Roman Tactics To Terrorize Business National Review http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/297103/crucify-them-obama-way-michelle-malkin http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2877090/posts 4/26/2012 Michelle Malkin One of President Obama's radical eco-bureaucrats has apologized for confirming an indelible truth: This White House treats politically incorrect private industries as public enemies who deserve regulatory death sentences. Environmental Protection Agency administrator Al Armendariz, an avowed greenie on leave from Southern Methodist University, gave a little-noticed speech in 2010 outlining his sadistic philosophy. "I was in a meeting once, and I gave an analogy to my staff about my philosophy of enforcement, and I think it was probably a little crude and maybe not appropriate for the meeting, but I'll go ahead and tell you what I said," he began. In a video obtained and released by Sen. James Inhofe (R., Okla.), Armendariz then shared his bloody analogy: It was kind of like how the Romans used to conquer little villages in the Mediterranean. They'd go into a little Turkish town somewhere, they'd find the first five guys they saw, and they would crucify them. And then you know that town was really easy to manage for the next few years. . . . So, that's our general philosophy. Echoing President Obama's "punch back twice as hard" treatment of his political enemies, Armendariz explained to his underlings: "You hit them as hard as you can, and you make examples out of them, and there is a deterrent effect there. And, companies that are smart see that, they don't want to play that game, and they decide at that point that it's time to clean up." In other words: Suck up, fly left, or face prosecution. The goal isn't a cleaner environment. The goal is political incitement of fear. Publicly humiliated by the video release of the persecution strategy session, Armendariz said this week he regretted his "poor choice of words." "It was an offensive and inaccurate way to portray our efforts to address potential violations of our nation's environmental laws. I am and have always been committed to fair and vigorous enforcement of those laws." Tyrannical actions, of course, speak louder than weasel words. And the record shows that Obama's environmental overlords run amok. It was Obama's power-mad interior secretary Ken Salazar who vowed to keep his "boot on the neck" of BP after the Gulf oil spill in 2010. Salazar and former eco-czar Carol Browner colluded on a fraudulent report - condemned by federal judges - that completely distorted a White House-appointed expert panel's opposition to the administration's job-killing, industry-bashing drilling moratorium. It was Obama's EPA that railroaded a senior government research analyst for daring to question the agency's zealous push to impose rules on greenhouse gases. When Alan Carlin asked to distribute an analysis on the health effects of greenhouse gases that didn't fit the eco-bureaucracy's blame-human-activity narrative, he was gagged and reprimanded: "The time for such discussion of fundamental issues has passed for this round. The administrator and the administration has [sic] decided to move forward on endangerment, and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision. . . . I can only see one impact of your comments given where we are in the process, and that would be a very negative impact on our office." Public-relations management trumped truth in science, the deliberative process, and fairness. It was Obama's U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, in cahoots with the witch hunters at the Department of Justice, that raided Gibson Guitar factories in Memphis and Nashville three years ago over an arcane endangered species of wood. The guitar police have yet to bring charges, leaving the company in costly legal limbo. And as Inhofe pointed out in response to Armendariz's "apology": Not long after Administrator Armendariz made these comments in 2010, EPA targeted U.S. natural gas producers in Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wyoming. In all three of these cases, EPA initially made headline-grabbing statements either insinuating or proclaiming outright that the use of hydraulic fracturing by American energy producers was the cause of water contamination, but in each case their comments were premature at best - and despite their most valiant efforts, they have been unable to find any sound scientific evidence to make this link. Indeed, Armendariz the Executioner tried nailing a drilling company - Texas-based Range Resources - to the cross in 2010 with an emergency declaration that its fracking work in the Lone Star State had contaminated groundwater. The Texas Railroad Commission, which oversees the oil and gas industry, found no scientific evidence for the Obama EPA's claims. Forbes magazine reported: "In recent months a federal judge slapped the EPA, decreeing that the agency was required to actually do some scientific investigation of wells before penalizing the companies that drilled them. Finally in March the EPA withdrew its emergency order and a federal court dismissed the EPA's case." Vice President Joe Biden is right about Obama's "big stick." Too bad he's using it to beat down America's domestic energy producers and wealth creators instead of our foreign enemies. 26) Don't Look Now, But Social Security's Trust Funds Are Vanishing Washington Examiner http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/op-eds/2012/04/dont-look-now-social-securitys-trust-funds-are-vanishing/538751 http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2877655/posts 4/27/2012 Veronique de Rugy You had better start increasing your personal retirement savings, because Social Security is fast approaching insolvency. According to the latest Social Security Trustees' report, released Monday, the program's combined trust funds will be exhausted by 2033 -- three years earlier than last year's projection and seven years earlier than projections made in 2006. This means that by 2033 Social Security benefits would have to be slashed significantly. Sounds bad, right? Well, it gets worse. Since 2010, Social Security has been running a permanent cash-flow deficit. This means that the taxes collected for the program aren't enough to cover the benefits going to retirees. The last time this happened was at the beginning of the 1980s. Social Security optimists will argue, this time around, that the program can draw on the $2.7 trillion in assets accumulated in its trust funds. That's why Congress created the trust funds in 1983, following the recommendations of the Greenspan Commission. In any year when the program runs a surplus, Social Security invests it in trust funds, from which benefits are paid in years when outlays exceeded payroll tax receipts. For instance in 2011, the payroll tax brought in $691 billion to pay the $746 billion in retirement benefits. To fill the gap, Social Security drew from the trust fund balances to make payments to retirees. This system will theoretically continue until the trust fund assets are exhausted in 2033. At that point, current law dictates that benefits will be slashed to the level of payroll tax revenues. That will translate to a 25 percent benefit cut across the board. Think about it this way. Today, monthly Social Security benefits average $1,125 per recipient. After the cut, benefits would dropped to $843.75 -- a $3,375 reduction in benefits a year.. There's another reason why these trends are alarming. For years, the federal government has used Social Security's surpluses to pay for roads, education and wars. Now that the Social Security program will be demanding its money back from the Department of Treasury on an annual basis, the government will have to borrow more and more from investors, increasing the publicly held debt at a greater pace. Lawmakers could also cut benefits or raise taxes, but they are usually reluctant to go down these unpopular roads. Neither party has introduced a serious plan to reform Social Security, but both sides have, for two years running, supported reductions in payroll tax rates without equal benefit cuts. To pull this off, policymakers borrow yet more money and transfer it to the Social Security Trust Fund to make it appear as if tax revenue was collected. It is another unfunded promise to seniors that will be paid for by future generations. Unfortunately, Congress has been using a similar gimmick for some time. Beneficiaries of the Earned Income Tax Credit, for example, already have their share of the payroll tax refunded to them. The Making Work Pay tax credit -- part of the stimulus bill -- did the same. The silver lining to Social Security's new annual deficit is that it exposes the fiction that the program doesn't need reform because it is fully backed by tax contributions. This is important, because a failure to reform the program means dramatic benefits cuts in the future, even for the poorest Americans. Lawmakers have many policy options to choose from: private accounts, privatization with safety net for the poor or eligibility age hike. The only bad option is to do nothing. 27) The Utterly Horrifying English Welfare State Townhall.com http://finance.townhall.com/columnists/danieljmitchell/2012/04/29/the_utterly_horrifying_english_welfare_state http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2877799/posts April 29, 2012 Daniel J. Mitchell I've occasionally commented on foolish public policy in the United Kingdom, including analysis on how the welfare state destroys lives and turns people into despicable moochers. But if you really want to understand the horrifying absurdity of the welfare state, check out these passages from a report in the Daily Mail. Carl Cooper thought he was doing a public service by offering seven benefits claimants the chance to work for him. But the company boss was flabbergasted when none of them turned up on the first day. Astonishingly, not a single one even had the courtesy to tell the marketing firm boss they would not be coming in. Mr Cooper and other staff members called the new employees to ask them where they were. Initially, some refused to answer their phones when they recognised the number calling them. When the staff finally got through, five said they would be better off staying on state benefits rather than doing the commission-based work. Four of the seven also claimed torrential rain had put them off. Wow. Five out of seven admitted that mooching off the taxpayers was a better way to live. What does that tell us about the over-generosity of handouts? Let's continue. Mr Cooper, who runs Car Smart, a marketing firm for independent car dealers in Canterbury, Kent, criticised the benefits system and said it rewarded people for doing nothing. He added: 'I was left stunned when none of the new recruits turned up for work. They are a bunch of workshy layabouts. 'These are people who are so morally twisted that they would rather stay on the dole than work. 'People keep saying there are not enough jobs in the UK but the real problem is that there are not enough determined or ambitious people. 'The benefit system is too generous and encourages the unemployed to stay unemployed and just breeds more laziness.' But it's even worse than Mr. Cooper realizes. He'll still be paying these people, but in the form of taxes that then get redistributed to subsidize idleness. You might think the moochers would lose their benefits because they chose laziness over work, but you would be wrong. Mr Cooper said all his employees received a basic retainer of £100 a week initially and are enrolled on to the company's commission structure, which could see earnings rise to up to £400 a week. The jobseekers who failed to turn up will not lose their benefits because the basic pay is under the minimum wage. I found the above story via Kyle Smith, who also cites a story from the Times about a crazy proposal to have bureaucrats scrub floors and serve as human alarm clocks for the welfare class. Town hall officials have been told to get down on their hands and knees and "clean the floors" of the homes they visit under David Cameron's Troubled Families programme. They have also been urged to turn up at family homes at 7am if necessary to get parents out of bed and children ready for school on time. The orders were issued by the programme head, Louise Casey. "I want to see people rolling up their sleeves and getting down and cleaning the floors if that is what needs to be done. If a family needs to be shown how to heat up a pizza, show them how to do it. If it takes going round three times a week at 7am to get Mum up, then do it." I would have included a link to the underlying story, but the Times has the most incompetently designed website I've ever encountered (presumably because they want to charge, but they don't even give you a chance to click on the story and then pay). Anyhow, I have three quick reactions to this bit of foolishness. 1. I'd like to see the head bureaucrat, Ms. Casey, spend a month scrubbing floors and waking people up at 7:00 a.m. She strikes me as the typical leftist clown, sitting in an office enjoying a cushy and overpaid job while dreaming up absurd ideas on how to waste taxpayer money. Maybe if she gets her hands dirty by "rolling up [her] sleeves," she'll learn the difference between blackboard theorizing and the real world. 2. My gut reaction is that the government should cut the handouts to these dysfunctional households. For every day the welfare bums aren't up on time to get their kids to school, they lose 10 percent of their loot. If their floors are dirty, that's another 10 percent. If you want to change their behavior, start cutting into the budget for cigarettes and booze. 3. More realistically, we're dealing with a problem of people who have little if any self-respect, and they pass horrible habits to their children. Kicking them off the dole might wake up some of them, but I suspect more than a few of them are past the point of no return. Society would probably be better off if their kids were put in foster homes, but I'm sure government would screw that up as well. Stories like this leave me increasingly convinced that the only good approach is radical decentralization. Get these programs out of capital cities like Washington and London. The U.S. welfare reform was a decent start, but get responsibility to the local level. And in cities, put neighborhoods in charge. Have those small communities in charge of raising the money and spending the money. That approach is far more likely to generate good ideas and good solutions, though I confess I'm pessimistic about anything working. But we should figure out ways to stop inter-generational poverty and welfare. I gather it's considered bad form to suggest mandatory birth control for welfare recipients, so has anyone proposed a different approach that might work? 28) Are We Still Serious About Our Republic Townhall.com http://townhall.com/columnists/austinhill/2012/04/29/are_we_still_serious_about_our_republic http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2877782/posts April 29, 2012 Austin Hill "...Are you serious?" Those are three simple words that form one simple question. And the question has led us to this moment in time. Recall in October of 2009, when then-Speaker of the U.S House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi was asked about the formulation of the Obamacare bill, and she asked that very question of a reporter. "Madam Speaker," a reporter from CNSNews.com said to her, "where specifically does the Constitution grant Congress the authority to enact an individual health insurance mandate?" Ms. Pelosi seemed surprised. Her indignant "are you serious?" response was followed with a slight bit of nervous laughter, as she then repeated herself. "Yes," the reporter answered Ms. Pelosi, "yes I am." Pelosi's Press Secretary Nadeam Elshami stated that the reporter's inquiry was "not a serious question," Pelosi shook her head in disbelief, and they both moved on to address another reporter, completely ignoring the question about "constitutionality." And after ignoring concerns about constitutionality for over three years, Democrats are now watching the Administration of their party Leader, Barack Obama, struggling to answer serious questions before the Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court. The left's disregard for the limitations of government has been apparent for decades - President Obama himself was on record years before his election lamenting that the Constitution only stipulates what the government cannot do to you, instead of specifying what the government should do for you. But now a moment of truth is staring all Americans in the face, as the Supreme Court will soon determine if the government can force you to buy something, along with determining whether or not the distinction between "citizen" and "non citizen" (as in Arizona's illegal immigration law) matters any longer. As President Obama's former Pastor Jeremiah Wright once famously said, "America's chickens. are comin' home to roost.." The fact is that when Presidents and members of Congress dismiss the Constitution as Mr. Obama and his party have, the only thing standing between the individual citizen and the raw, brutal force of governmental power is the Supreme Court itself. The American founders understood some things about the history of the world, as it existed leading up to our nation's birth, and they recognized the natural human tendency of those in power to control and ultimately brutalize those beneath them. This is why our Constitution stipulates that we are governed by three co-equal branches of government (not just one or two), and why those branches intentionally create a "check and balance" between each other. So what if the Supreme Court says that Barack Obama is wrong? What if the Justices collectively determine that our government cannot force the individual citizen to buy something, and that the distinction between being a citizen and an illegal immigrant is real? The Democrats would prefer a Supreme Court stacked with Obama appointees, who would then presumably approve of everything that Obama wants, but (thankfully) they haven't achieved this yet. v If Democrats must campaign for the final months of this year's election against a backdrop of Obama failures at the Supreme Court, we may see a well-financed P.R. assault against the Supreme Court Justices themselves. History provides a lesson about this matter, becausePresident Obama is not the first White House occupant to desire more power than the Constitution allows. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, angered when the Supreme Court overturned some of his "new deal" (read "big government") programs that he believed were unquestionably necessary to save the country, famously began maligning the Justices of the Supreme Court, publicly labeling them as the "9 Old Men." Additionally, as a means of overcoming the "separation of powers" obstacle, he proposed to "reform" the old, antiquated Supreme Court system by adding up to six new justices - justices that would all be selected and appointed by himself. Thankfully FDR didn't get his way. The Congress rejected his court reform legislative proposal (the checks-and-balances phenomenon worked again), and the American people took a dim view of Roosevelt trying to circumvent the Constitution. But that was the America of 1937. Today, it's not difficult to imagine that President Obama could curry the favor of millions of Americans, if he chose to campaign against the Justices who may vote to overturn his all-important "Obamacare" law. Who would stand with Obama in a campaign of Supreme Court bashing? Start with the entire AFL-CIO. Then add the entire "occupy" movement, and the burgeoning "99% Spring" uprising, and eventually one could include all the prevailing powers of the Democrat Party. Put them all together, and you've got a critical mass of Americans who neither care nor understand a wit about history, "limited government," the U.S Constitution, or the Separation of Powers. They want "stuff" - "free" healthcare, education, or whatever - and they want raw power in Washington to deliver that stuff to citizen and non-citizen alike, and by whatever means. So is America serious about a constitutional government? Many of us are far more serious about receiving "things" from our government than the idea of a constitutional republic. Depending on how the high court rules this summer, we may see Democrats campaigning on an agenda of "constitutional and judicial reform" before November arrives. 29) A Cynical Process Creators Syndicate http://www.creators.com/print/conservative/thomas-sowell/a-cynical-process.html http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2878263/posts May 1, 2012 Thomas Sowell Labor unions, like the United Nations, are all too often judged by what they are envisioned as being - not by what they actually are or what they actually do. Many people, who do not look beyond the vision or the rhetoric to the reality, still think of labor unions as protectors of working people from their employers. And union bosses still employ that kind of rhetoric. However, someone once said, "When I speak I put on a mask, but when I act I must take it off." That mask has been coming off, more and more, especially during the Obama administration, and what is revealed underneath is very ugly, very cynical and very dangerous. First there was the grossly misnamed "Employee Free Choice Act" that the administration tried to push through Congress. What it would have destroyed was precisely what it claimed to be promoting - a free choice by workers as to whether or not they wanted to join a labor union. Ever since the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, workers have been able to express their free choice of joining or not joining a labor union in a federally conducted election with a secret ballot. As workers in the private sector have, over the years, increasingly voted to reject joining labor unions, union bosses have sought to replace secret ballots with signed documents - signed in the presence of union organizers and under the pressures, harassments or implicit threats of those organizers. Now that the Obama administration has appointed a majority of the members of the National Labor Relations Board, the NLRB leadership has imposed new requirements that employers supply union organizers with the names and home addresses of every employee. Nor do employees have a right to decline to have this personal information given out to union organizers, under NLRB rules. In other words, union organizers will now have the legal right to pressure, harass or intimidate workers on the job or in their own homes, in order to get them to sign up with the union. Among the consequences of not signing up is union reprisal on the job if the union wins the election. But physical threats and actions are by no means off the table, as many people who get in the way of unions have learned. Workers who do not want to join a union will now have to decide how much harassment of themselves and their family they are going to have to put up with, if they don't knuckle under. In the past, unions had to make the case to workers that it was in their best interests to join. Meanwhile, employers would make their case to the same workers that it was in their best interest to vote against joining. When the unions began losing those elections, they decided to change the rules. And after Barack Obama was elected President of the United States, with large financial support from labor unions, the rules were in fact changed by Obama's NLRB. As if to make the outcome of workers' "choices" more of a foregone conclusion, the time period between the announcement of an election and the election itself has been shortened by the NLRB. In other words, the union can spend months, or whatever amount of time it takes, for them to prepare and implement an organizing campaign beforehand - and then suddenly announce a deadline date for the decision on having or not having a union. The union organizers can launch their full-court press before the employers have time to organize a comparable counter-argument or the workers have time to weigh their decision, while being pressured. The last thing this process is concerned about is a free choice for workers. The first thing it is concerned about is getting a captive group of union members, whose compulsory dues provide a large sum of money to be spent at the discretion of union bosses, to provide those bosses with both personal perks and political power to wield, on the basis of their ability to pick and choose where to make campaign contributions from the union members' dues. Union elections do not recur like other elections. They are like some Third World elections: "One man, one vote - one time." And getting a recognized union unrecognized is an uphill struggle. But, so long as many people refuse to see the union for what it is, or the Obama administration for what it is, this cynical and corrupt process can continue. 30) A Cynical Process: Part II Creators Syndicate http://www.creators.com/print/conservative/thomas-sowell/a-cynical-process-part-ii.html http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2878271/posts May 1, 2012 Thomas Sowell A small headline in the 2nd section of the Wall Street Journal last week told a bigger story than a lot of front page banner headlines. It said, "U.S. Firms Add Jobs, but Mostly Overseas." Just as there is no free lunch, there is no free class warfare. Some people may be inspired by President Obama's talk about making "the rich" pay their undefined "fair share" of taxes, or taking away corporations' "tax breaks." But talk is not always cheap. It can be very costly to those working people who are looking for jobs that the Obama administration's anti-business policies are driving overseas. According to the Wall Street Journal, "Thirty-five big U.S.-based multinational companies added jobs much faster than other U.S. employers in the past two years, but nearly three-fourths of those jobs were overseas." All these companies have at least 50,000 employees, so we are talking about a lot of jobs for foreigners with American companies overseas. If the Wall Street Journal can figure this out, it seems certain that the President of the United States has economic advisers who can figure out the same thing. But that does not mean that the president is interested in the same thing. In this, as in so much else, Barack Obama is interested in Barack Obama. Whatever bad effects his policies may have for others, those policies have had a track record of political success for many politicians in many places. To put it bluntly, killing the goose that lays the golden egg is a viable political strategy, provided the goose doesn't die before the next election. In this case, the goose simply lays its golden eggs somewhere else, so there is no political danger to President Obama. Unemployment may remain a problem to many Americans, but that only provides another occasion for the Obama administration to show its "compassion" with extended unemployment benefits, more food stamps and various interventions to save home buyers from mortgage foreclosure. This can easily be a winning political strategy. Franklin D. Roosevelt won his biggest landslide victory after his first term in office, during which the unemployment rate was never less than twice what it has been under Barack Obama. The "smart money" inside the Beltway says that a high unemployment rate spells doom at the polls for a president. But history says that people who are getting government handouts tend to vote for whoever is doing the handing out. The Obama administration has turned this into a handout state that breaks all previous records. Lofty rhetoric about "stimulus," "shovel-ready projects," "green jobs" or "investment" in "the industries of the future" all give political cover to what is plain old handouts to people who are likely to vote to re-elect Obama. At the local level as well, history shows that some of the most successful politicians have been people who ruined the local economy and chased job-creating businesses away. Mayor Coleman Young of Detroit in the 1970s and 1980s was not worried when affluent whites began moving out of the city in response to his policies, because they were people who were likely to vote against him if they stayed. Of course they took their taxes, their investment money and the jobs they created with them. But that was Detroit's problem, not Coleman Young's problem. Barack Obama may win re-election by turning the United States into Detroit writ large. Something similar happened in earlier times, when James Michael Curley served 4 terms as mayor of Boston, and 2 terms in prison. As the non-Irish left the city, in response to Curley's policies, that increased Curley's likelihood of being re-elected. This kind of cynical politics is even more likely to succeed when political opponents fail to articulate their case to the public. And Republicans are notorious for neglecting articulation. The phrase "tax cuts for the rich" has been repeated endlessly by Democrats without one Republican that I know of saying, "Folks, I don't lie awake at night worrying about millionaires' tax problems. Millionaires have lawyers and accountants who get paid to do that. But I do worry about jobs being lost to millions of American workers because we make the business climate here worse than in other countries. That's a high price to pay for rhetoric." The case can be made. But somebody has to make the case. 31) Obama Has Already Lost Townhall.com http://townhall.com/columnists/luritadoan/2012/04/30/obama_has_already_lost http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2878049/posts April 30, 2012 Lurita Doan On April 30th in 1789, at Federal Hall in New York City, George Washington took the oath of office to become the first president of the United States. He took that oath amidst a widespread surge of popularity and consensual respect that has yet to be replicated in any subsequent presidential election in this country. For two terms, Washington was able to govern, and govern well, because even before he won the election as president of the United States, through his deeds, Washington had won the respect and trust of all of colonial America. If measured against that high standard, Barack Obama, whether he is elected in November 2012 or not, will be unable to govern effectively, if at all. Whether the standard to measure Barack Obama is legislative, fiscal, foreign policy, managerial or personal, Obama ranks among the lowest of the low in presidential ability. Legislatively, Obama's signature piece of legislation, Obamacare, is tied up in a Supreme Court challenge which has exposed the shameful short cuts, side dealings and horse-trading that Team Obama was forced to implement in order to have the legislation scrape past the Senate. Billions of dollars of "incentives" to Senators and congressmen can be done once or twice. But, if congress requires these kinds of tawdry incentives to advance Obama's presidential agenda, it is hard to imagine Obama has any ability to implement future legislation. Consider some of Obama's other signature efforts--a JOBS bills that doesn't create jobs, an energy policy that increases the price of gas at the pump and increases America's dependence on foreign oil. An insistence of subsidies, for failed "green" endeavors, that waste billions of taxpayer dollars on ill-thought Solar and wind schemes that advance the agendas of Obama's political allies. Fiscally, Obama has been the most irresponsible president in the history of the United States (and that is saying something!). Obama's spend, spend, spend agenda has kept the economy from growing, has created new generations of citizens dependent upon the government dole and has resulted in the slowest growth in GDP in three years. And for what? Obama has not been able to create the jobs he promised because Obama doesn't understand that business, not government, creates jobs in a free economy. Entitlement spending has ballooned to outrageous levels wherein over 50% of Americans do not work, nor do they look likely to do so in the future. Obama has put in place trillions of taxpayer dollars as spending intended to stimulate the economy. But the economy has not been "stimulated", though the pockets of Obama's political allies have been generously lined with taxpayer dollars. The president has not even been able to produce a federal budget that can be debated seriously by congress. His last such pathetic attempt was unanimously voted down (0-414), showing that Obama has been abandoned by his own party. Could congress, in a bi-partisan effort, be sending the president an indisputable message about what they think of Obama's stewardship of the economy? What does it say that Obama can't even get one vote on an issue as important as the federal budget? There seems to be universal, bi-partisan agreement that in matters financial, the president is irrelevant. Obama's international shenanigans, from his bowing and scraping his way across Asia during his first year in office, to his hugs and handshakes for charlatans and brutish dictators, has been a public embarrassment. Obama's off-mike comments to Medvedev show the president to be an anxious schoolboy, lackey-like and eager to be all things to all people, desperate for praise and willing to sacrifice American values to achieve. The story of George Washington and the cherry tree may be apocryphal; merely a tale emblematic of George Washington's propensity for truthfulness, but Obama spawns no such legend. He has told too many falsehoods, taken too many short cuts, and appointed as his spokespersons and surrogates, too many who do the same, and hence, Obama has lost the trust of the American people. What Obama has lost is what Americans value most-integrity. And then there is the personal. It is turning out that Obama is actually not very likeable. At every opportunity, Obama seems to jump into controversies that should be solved at a state or local level (Gates affair in Cambridge, MA or Trayvon Martin in FL), before he has all the facts. Obama is showing himself to be a race-baiter, citing directly, or through his surrogates, that any who disagree with his policies or opinions must somehow be racist. Or there's the class-warfare mongering. Repeatedly, Americans hear Obama blaming "millionaires and billionaires", claiming that they haven't paid their "fair share", though Obama is a multi-millionaire and he, too, takes advantage of every tax loophole. Barack Obama has been so fixated on his re-election (another of his falsehoods since he has often stated he didn't care if he was a one-term president) and consumed with building winning "issues-based" coalitions, that he has lost the trust and respect and confidence of most Americans. Even if Obama, by some sleight of hand, were to win in November, he has no mandate; he lost consumer confidence, and he can't govern. John Marshall once said that a statesmen is a "a person that loves the people enough to tell them the truth". Barack Obama is clearly no statesmen and has repeatedly refused to deal honestly with the nation's problems as he ceaselessly maneuvers for short term political gain. Even if he wins the election, it'll be the longest lame duck session in the nation's history. Barack Obama cannot govern. The nation is wiser and demands a statesman. 32) Why Your Doctor Secretly Hates Obamacare Townhall.com http://townhall.com/columnists/katiekieffer/2012/04/30/why_your_doctor_secretly_hates_obamacare http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2878047/posts April 30, 2012 Katie Kieffer Your doctor won't tell you this when you're sitting in his office, so I will: He hates Obamacare. It's time you know why your doctor is concerned about Obamacare. Doctors already live in constant fear of malpractice lawsuits. The last thing they want to do is stick their necks out and publicly attack Obamacare. Doctors also do not have an effective D.C. lobby group or public advocate. A 2011 survey by Jackson and Coker reports that most doctors believe the mega-lobbyist group, American Medical Association (AMA), fails to represent docters' interests on Capitol Hill. Forbes reports: "Much of that dissatisfaction stems from the organization's support for President Obama's contentious health care reform package. . [The AMA] has backed a law that would force some physicians to work longer hours for less pay and others to operate in perpetually overcrowded emergency rooms." Doctors question how the AMA can represent them in D.C. while cutting back-door deals with the government. Doctors have been effectively forced to fund the AMA by purchasing Medicare and Medicaid billing code books. Dr. Jane Orient, a privately practicing doctor in Arizona, blew the whistle when she discovered that, beginning in 1998, the Health Care Financing Administration gave: ". the AMA the exclusive copyright on the codes." reports The New American. Since the AMA does not speak up for doctors, I will try to be a voice for doctors. Here are two primary reasons why your doctor hates Obamacare: 1.) Doctors Need Ownership Dagny Taggart is the heroine of Ayn Rand's novel, "Atlas Shrugged." At one point, Dagny asks a renowned medical doctor named Dr. Hendricks why he left the medical practice. He says: "I quit when medicine was placed under State control . Do you know the kind of skill it demands, and the years of passionate, merciless, excruciating devotion that go to acquiring that skill [performing brain surgery]? .I would not let them [politicians] dictate the purpose for which my years of study had been spent, or the conditions of my work, or my choice of patients, or the amount of my reward. I observed that in all the discussions that preceded the enslavement of medicine, men discussed everything-except the desires of the doctors. . Let them discover the kind of doctors that their system will now produce. Let them discover, in their operating rooms and hospital wards, that it is not safe to place their lives in the hands of a man whose life they have throttled. It is not safe, if he is the sort of man who resents it-and still less safe, if he is the sort who doesn't." Obamacare removes ownership from the medical field. An individual doctor no longer owns his education, career or even day-to-day lifestyle choices. Under Obamacare, he goes from feeling a sense of caring ownership for his patients and his craft to feeling over-worked, under-paid and micro-managed. Obamacare effectively steals from doctors by confiscating the skills, energy and time they have devoted to medicine. When you steal a man's life-long passion; his hard-won goal; his lifestyle-do not expect him to be happy or to maintain his conscientious passion for practicing medicine. 2.) Doctors Need Motivation and Compensation A better name for Obamacare is the "16.7 Percent Paycut," because that is what it means for doctors. In order to "save" Medicare, Obamacare asks doctors to take a 16.7 percent paycut. And, guess what? Patients will suffer, not just doctors. Patients will suffer because smart and caring young men and women will forfeit their dreams of entering the medical profession and choose alternate careers that promise less stress and higher pay. A few months ago, I had the opportunity to visit my brother at his medical school and meet some of the other medical students. They were intelligent and hard-working individuals who clearly cared about helping people. I did not get the sense that money was their primary motivation in becoming doctors. Indeed, 60 percent of doctors are concerned that Obamacare will diminish their ability to care for patients, finds a Feb. 29, 2012 survey completed by The Doctors Company Market Research, America's largest surgeon and physician medical liability insurer. Money simply allows smart young Americans, like my brother and his peers, to justify spending an additional four-to-ten years after college holed up in a library just to graduate with $160,000 in debt (the median debt load for medical school grads according to a 2010 Mayo Clinic study). There are 70 million baby-boomers out there who will be looking for geriatricians soon. But there is only one geriatrician for every 2,600 Americans over the age of 75, according to the American Geriatrics Society. Why is this? Money. Geriatricians made a median salary of $183,523 in 2010, reports the Medical Group Management Association. America desperately needs more geriatricians, but young doctors are choosing to specialize in other areas because they can earn two-to-three times more. Money is a suitable incentive, especially when you are asking people to give up their youth studying while amassing debt. But Obamacare removes the practical "profit motive" of capitalism and replaces it with the idealistic "poverty motive" of socialism. A Better Way I think trying to save something that is hopelessly broken, like Medicare, is a mistake. Ultimately, I think it's a choice between complete government control over limited medical care resources or a more freedom-based system where prices are lower because competition exists and health insurance is actually insurance (now, insurance covers basic, common care which is ridiculous and causes overall healthcare costs to rise). Insurance should only be involved in major medical care; otherwise, it's not insurance, it's maintenance. When it comes to medicine, you get what you pay for. As patients, I think we should be willing to pay a little more in exchange for the highest quality of care. Sorry, President Obama, but your plan is "JurassicParkCare"-doctors go extinct and their patients go untreated while your buddies in Hollywood cheer. 33) Seven Of Barack Obama's Dorkiest Moments Townhall.com http://townhall.com/columnists/johnhawkins/2012/05/01/seven_of_barack_obamas_dorkiest_moments http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2878442/posts May 1, 2012 John Hawkins For reasons that are hard to fathom, we've recently had conservative after conservative publicly agreeing that Barack Obama is amazingly super cool. This is bizarre because they've been convinced of this by the same old liberal hype machine at work. Remember when fashion magazines were regularly declaring that Michelle Obama, who is the worst dressed First Lady in living memory, was some kind of fashion icon? How about when Sharon Stone was telling people that Hillary Clinton was just too sexy to be President? Now the coolest man alive is supposed to be Barack Obama because he dances almost well enough to have been an extra on American Bandstand? Really? Seriously? Besides, since when did anyone in politics become "cool?" Maybe Obama is "cool" compared to Harry Reid or Mitch McConnell, but the effeminate guy in the White House that people compare to Urkel isn't "cool" by any normal standard of cool. There is a reason politics is called "showbiz for ugly people." If some empty suit who reads dull speeches from his teleprompter and then heads off to golf could really be "cool," Mick Jagger, Dwayne Johnson, and Tim Tebow would be politicians instead of doing what they do. Know what cool isn't? 1) Geek biking: When you imagine a "cool" person riding a bike, what does he look like? He's probably riding a badass motorcycle, looking vaguely threatening, like he could hop off and put a foot in your behind if he were so inclined -- kind of like this picture of Allen West. You might also imagine someone sitting on a four wheeler, powering it across a muddy stream after an off-roading session -- kind of like Sarah Palin. President Nerdly Nerdison, on the other hand, looks like such a tool on a bike that he probably needs the Secret Service to keep 6th graders from pummeling him and stealing his lunch money every time he goes out riding. 2) Mom jeans: Yes, there's nothing cooler than a man who steals mom jeans from Kathy Lee Gifford's closet so he can girlishly throw out the first pitch of the 2009 MLB All-Star game. Betty White could have well gone out in his place. They would have worn the exact same outfit and she probably has a better arm. 3) Confusing a door and a window at the White House: Who was the last person to confuse a window with a door at your house? Actually, it probably wasn't a person. More likely, it was a bird whose teeny, tiny brain told him "clear sailing" right before he slammed into the window and thudded to the ground dead. Speaking of teeny, tiny brains, in a Gerald Fordesque fit of dopiness, Barack Obama was actually completely puzzled when he wasn't able to walk into the White House. Through a WINDOW. 4) Making fun of kids in the Special Olympics: I thought anti-bullying campaigns were the hip, new thing. At least that's the impression you'd get from Lady Gaga. Either someone never gave Barack Obama the message or he comes at it out of that Dan Savage "I'm a bully who's against bullying" school of thinking. We know that because Obama went on Jay Leno and said his bowling looked like the Special Olympics. That was classy, huh? Melissa Clouthier, who wrote for Right Wing News at the time, talked about having a special needs child and noted that his Little League teammates, "haven't laughed or poked fun. Not. Once. They have managed to show more class, patience, empathy and charity than the President of the United States." I guess, unlike Obama, they just didn't realize how incredibly cool it was to make fun of special needs kids. 5) Thinking there are 57 states: Dan Quayle, who probably has 30 IQ points on Barack Obama, was permanently branded an idiot for misspelling potato when it was spelled incorrectly on a card that was given to him by the school. Barack Obama, on the other hand, thought there were 57 states, signed a guestbook 2008 in 2011, thanked the "fallen heroes" in the audience, and even ended up thanking himself once because the teleprompter told him to. In other words, he's like Joe Biden, who nobody thinks is cool, with twenty less IQ points. 6) Bowing: We've come a long way from "Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth lasts for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour!'" or "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall" to Barack Obama bowing like a manservant to dictators. Since when was Alfred the Butler cooler than Bruce Wayne? When did standing tall like a man become less cool than bowing like a servile little apple polisher to the Saudi King or the Chinese Prime Minister? 7) Eating dog: A lot of people actually misunderstand the Buffet rule. It actually means Obama wants all the Poodle, Corgi, and Chihuahua he can eat at state dinners. Maybe that's not even a joke. After all, nobody knows when Obama last ate dog or for that matter, whether he'll pledge not to eat his dog Bo if he's elected to a second term. When did eating Scooby Dooby Stew, Eggs rover easy, and Yorkshire pudding pups become stylish? It actually seems kind of strange and disgusting. 34) Mamas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be "Julia" MichelleMalkin.com http://michellemalkin.com/2012/05/04/mamas-dont-let-your-babies-grow-up-to-be-julia/ http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2879901/posts 5/4/2012 Michelle Malkin I told my 11-year-old daughter about "Julia." She had one word: "Creepy." I'm doing my job right. Notice, by the way, how "progressive" women are awfully quiet about the patriarchal hegemony symbolized by Obama's faceless, dependent Julia. Cue the crickets: Chirp, chirp, chirp. Quick, hide under the covers. The nation's storyteller, Barack Obama, unveiled a frightening new fable on the Internet intended to scare women away from supporting fiscal conservatives in November. But as is increasingly common with Obama's social media propaganda initiatives, "The Life of Julia" immediately flopped. Why? Because 1) self-sufficient women voters aren't as sheeple-ish as Democratic strategists make them out to be, 2) conservative activists are overtaking Obama's zombie army online, 3) non-delusional Americans don't want cradle-to-grave utopians turning their country into the next Greece or Spain, and 4) responsible grownups are getting sick and tired of radical Saul Alinsky-style tall tales from the progressive Pied Piper. Using snazzy graphics and interactive slideshow features, BarackObama.com spins a glowing narrative of imaginary Julia's life from age 3 to 67. But "Julia" is a pathetic figment of the progressive imagination. She simply cannot function without the lifelong intervention of federal patriarchs. Instead of two parents preparing her for school, Obama credits Head Start bureaucrats with ensuring that Julia is "ready to learn and succeed" in kindergarten. Instead of individual teachers, private mentors, home-school organizers or charter school leaders, Obama extols his federal Race to the Top program for implementing the high school "classes she needs to do well" in college. Instead of thrift-minded families who save for their own kids' higher educations (or who opt for non-college alternatives) and who encourage those kids to work in private-sector summer jobs, Obama praises his "opportunity tax credit" and Pell Grants for putting Julia through college. Instead of acknowledging how costly Obamacare mandates have caused individual-market health care insurers to drop plans altogether, Obama promotes the government-manufactured umbilical cord tethering "children" like Julia to their parents' health care plans until age 26. Instead of accepting that the costs and consequences of a woman's sexual choices should be a matter of personal responsibility, Big Daddy Obama heralds his religious liberty-crushing birth control/abortion mandate for allowing Julia to "focus on her work instead of worrying about her health." Despite the fact that most private health care plans already covered maternal screenings, prenatal care and related screenings before Obamacare passed, the president attributes Julia's pregnancy well-being to the law. And it's not local sovereignty or financial discipline that results in better schools for Julia's new son, "Zachary." Nope. It's Obama's "investments" in education and "programs like Race to the Top." (Is there nothing Race to the Top can't do?) "Under President Obama," the campaign web feature then crows, "Julia starts her own web business. She qualifies for a Small Business Administration loan, giving her the money she needs to invest in her business. President Obama's tax cuts for small businesses like Julia's help her to get started. She's able to hire employees, creating new jobs in her town and helping to grow the local economy." In the real world, according to Dun and Bradstreet, the SBA supported fewer than 62,000 small business loans: a measly 0.2 percent of the nation's 27.5 million small businesses. The vast majority of entrepreneurs get their start without the SBA's "help" and want only one thing: for Obama and his wealth-confiscators to leave them the heck alone. As soon as Obama publicized "The Life of Julia" on the web, conservative activists swarmed Twitter to provide real-world counter-narratives. "I'm no Julia," @CatsPolitics wrote. "As a small-business owner I'm being taxed to death. I need the (government) to get out of my way and let me make money." Another young conservative female, @BiasedGirl, tweeted: "As a woman and a business owner I'm offended that POTUS thinks I need him to survive and thrive." Conservative writer Kemberlee Kaye added: "What the Julia example really shows is the Democrat ideal. Complete and total reliance on the government." My story? I've founded three web ventures over the past eight years without a penny of taxpayer money or government venture socialism. We free-market-centered small-business women can "grow the local economy" and raise our children and improve our schools just fine without the meddling, patriarchal hand of President Obama taking credit for our every last success. After hyperventilating for months about the Republican "war on women," Democratic new-media gurus inadvertently have exposed the real Barack Obama: a chauvinistic control freak who would tether every last woman and child to his ever-expanding, budget-busting Nanny State. Mamas, for the sake of your family's freedom and our republic's survival, don't let your babies grow up to be "Julia." 35) A Nation Of Julias (Ask Not What You Can Do For Your Country; Ask What Your Country Can Do For You) National Review http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/298936/nation-julias-rich-lowry http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2879802/posts 5/4/2012 Rich Lowry In the competition for the creepiest campaign material of 2012, we may already have a winner. It is "The Life of Julia," the Obama reelection team's cartoon chronicle of a fictional woman who is dependent on government at every step of her life. The phrase "cradle-to-grave welfare state" originated with Clement Attlee's socialist government in post-World War II Britain. Back then, it was meant as a boastful description of a new age of government activism. Subsequently, it became a term of derision for critics of an overweening government. In the spirit of Attlee, the Obama campaign revives the concept of "cradle to grave" as it highlights Obama-supported programs that take care of Julia from age 3 to her retirement at age 67. Julia begins her interaction with the welfare state as a little tot through the pre-kindergarten program Head Start. She then proceeds through all of life's important phases, not Shakespeare's progression from "mewling and puking" infant to "second childishness and mere oblivion," but the Health and Human Services and Education Departments version: a Pell grant (age 18), surgery on insurance coverage guaranteed by Obamacare (22), a job where she can sue her employers for more pay thanks to the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act (23), free contraception (27), a Small Business Administration loan (42) and, finally, Medicare (65) and Social Security (67). (In a sci-fi touch, these entitlements are presumed to be blissfully unchanged sometime off in the 2070s.) No doubt, the creators of Julia - imagine a dour and featureless version of Dora the Explorer who grows old through the years - weren't seeking to make a major philosophical statement. But they inadvertently captured something important about the progressive vision. Julia's central relationship is to the state. It is her educator, banker, health-care provider, venture capitalist, and retirement fund. And she is, fundamentally, a taker. Every benefit she gets is cut-rate or free. She apparently doesn't worry about paying taxes. It doesn't enter her mind that the programs supporting her might add to the debt or might have unintended consequences. She has no moral qualms about forcing others to pay for her contraception, and her sense of patriotic duty is limited to getting as much government help as she can. The alleged benefits to Julia are exaggerated or nonexistent. Pity the poor thing if she depends on Head Start for her launch into the world. A study by the Department of Health and Human Services last year found that positive educational effects tend to wear off by the first grade. The government assistance she gets for financing college feeds into the maw of inexorable tuition increases. The chances that the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act is going to boost her pay, as a web designer, are essentially nil. Julia is getting punked. Her life is framed to show that she gets more from President Barack Obama than from Republicans. The same contrast could be achieved differently. She could lose her web-design job and go on unemployment, which President Obama always wants to extend despite Republican objections. With her family's income dropping, she could resort to the food-stamp program, which has expanded massively under President Obama despite Republicans' inveighing against the trend. These examples don't suit the campaign's purposes, though. They show government to be a poor substitute for the robust recovery that President Obama hasn't delivered even as he has endeavored to make Julia's birth-control pills free. The point of view of "The Life of Julia" is profoundly condescending. It assumes that giving people things will distract them from larger considerations of the public weal - the economy, debt, the health of the culture. This view's infantilizing tendency is captured by Obamacare's insistence that, for purposes of health insurance, young adults are children who belong on their parents' policies until the age of 26. It devalues self-reliance and looks at us less as independent citizens than as drab Julias, bereft without the succor of our life partner and minder, the state. No thanks. 36) 10 Things That Would Be Happening Today If Obama's Policies Were Working Townhall.com http://townhall.com/columnists/johnhawkins/2012/05/04/10_things_that_would_be_happening_today_if_obamas_policies_were_working http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2880160/posts May 5, 2012 John Hawkins Barack Obama has "already held more re-election fundraising events than every elected president since Richard Nixon combined." Yet, despite the fact that he has been campaigning almost non-stop since the 2010 election, aside from trying to steal credit from the SEALs for killing Osama Bin Laden, you very seldom hear Obama talk about his record. This is especially noteworthy because like him or hate him, Obama has passed a lot of legislation. So, if Barack Obama has such an extensive record, why is it that Republicans are the ones that are always talking about it while Obama tries to steer the conversation to anything else? Simple: Obama is a failed President. His policies haven't worked. If Obama had actually produced results, the country would look very different today. 1) Obama touts General Motors as a success story. If that were true, General Motors would have made a profit without taxpayers losing 14 billion dollars on the deal while GM received a special 45 billion dollar tax break. 2) Obama spent hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars to promote the Chevy Volt and said he had a goal of seeing a million electric cars in the U.S. by 2015. If that was going to happen, Volts would be flying off the showroom floor as opposed to the meager 7,700 that were sold last year -- before production was halted this year. 3) Judging by the number of times Barack Obama attacked George W. Bush for high gas prices and Obama's insistence that alternative fuels are a viable alternative to gasoline, you'd expect plentiful, cheap gas at under $2.00 a gallon as opposed to more than a doubling of the price of gas to $3.80 per gallon. 4) If Obama's decision to set a timetable in Afghanistan and ignore the recommendations from the generals about how many troops to send made sense, we'd be winning, not losing in Afghanistan. 5) Mexican criminals are supposed to be in jail today because of Operation Fast and Furious. Instead, the Obama Administration ended up putting guns that were used to kill more than two hundred Mexicans and an American citizen in the hands of Mexican cartels while Eric Holder may be about to face contempt charges because he refuses to cooperate with the congressional investigation. 6) Hillary Clinton famously pressed the "reset" (overcharge) button with the Russians. Had that worked, Russia wouldn't be helping Iran build nuclear weapons and threatening to make pre-emptive attacks on our missile defense sites. 7) Obama spent more than 75 billion dollars of taxpayer money to directly address the mortgage crisis outside of the hundreds of billions that he (along with Bush) injected into the system via TARP. So, is it handled? Is the housing market back? Have "too big to fail" Freddie and Fannie been forced to dramatically reduce the number of mortgages they hold to help prevent a future crisis? No, on all counts. Although the mortgage crisis was the decisive factor that helped Obama permanently pull ahead of McCain in the end, Obama has done very little of significance to help most homeowners over the long term or to prevent a future housing crisis. 8) Obamacare was supposed to reduce the deficit, give almost universal coverage, and everyone was supposed to be able to keep his own health care plan if he wants it. Yet, according to the CBO "it will add 700 billion dollars to the deficit over its first 10 years, 3-5 million people will lose their health care, and 30 million people still won't have health coverage." 9) When he was running for office, Obama said, "I refuse to leave our children with a debt they cannot repay, and that means taking responsibility right now, in this administration, for getting our spending under control." So, our AAA rating should still be in place, the deficit should be significantly lower than in the Bush years, and we should be closing in on a balanced budget by now. 10) The unemployment rate has been mired above 8% for more than 3 years now. However, according to the Obama Administration's own projections, the unemployment rate should be all the way down to 5.5% by now because of the nearly trillion dollar stimulus it pushed through with no Republican votes in the House and only three Republican votes in the Senate. "Religion/Culture/Morals" articles 1) As I Lay Dying A Voice Said: 'Let's Go' Catholic Herald http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/features/2012/04/09/as-i-lay-dying-a-voice-said-lets-go/ http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2871575/posts April 12, 2012 Rory Fitzgerald Howard Storm was an atheist until he had an extraordinary near-death experience. After that, everything changed. Indeed, he is now a Christian minister. His book, My Descent into Death, shot to prominence globally after the novelist Anne Rice called it "a book you devour from cover to cover, and pass on to others". She added that "Storm was meant to write it and we were meant to read it." Storm recently spoke to me from his home in Kentucky. He recounted going out to San Francisco in 1967, aged 19, in pursuit of the hippy dream. "We earnestly were going to create a culture of peace and love," he says, but "because it was so hedonistic and anarchistic it was doomed to failure. We soon began to see our contemporaries being destroyed by the excesses of drugs and sexuality." Disillusioned by hippiedom, religion and mainstream American society, he became increasingly nihilistic. He says he turned to "total narcissism: I'm no longer interested in changing the world . I'm going to live for myself." Storm rose through academia and took a job as a professor of art in Kentucky where he says that the overwhelming majority of the faculty were atheists and hedonists. "Being cynical gives you a false and inflated sense of superiority," he says. "You can look down on all the ignorant fools who go to church and believe in religion. "The sad part of it is we conveyed those attitudes to our students. Many students came from homes where faith was valued. After a few short years in university they had nothing but contempt for faith. I think it was a horrible thing that we did." Storm's life changed during a field trip to Europe in 1985. One morning, aged 38, he collapsed in his hotel room with a perforated duodenum. No surgeon could be found, and after hours in agony he "knew that it was over" as he fell unconscious. "I fully expected that to be it: lights out, end of story," he says. "Then, I found myself standing next to my bed, feeling wonderful. My senses were very heightened. The pain was gone. I tried to communicate with my wife. I thought she was ignoring me. I also noticed an occupant in my bed who bore a remarkable resemblance to me. I knew that person was dead. "Then I heard people calling me from outside the room, saying: 'It's time for you to go. Hurry up. Let's go.' They said: 'We know all about you. We've been waiting for you.' I thought they were from the hospital." But when he stepped out into this "hallway" it was "very dim, grey and fuzzy, like a really bad black-and-white television picture". He says: "I went in to this hallway and had a very clear sense that the 'portal' back into the room was somehow closed. I could never go back. The people led me away, and the hallway subtly became darker and darker and darker over a long period of time. Eventually, I realised that I was in complete darkness, encircled by a crowd of people and overcome with fear. I said to them: 'I want to go back.' And they started pushing and pulling at me. The more I fought, the better they liked it. They were biting and scratching and tearing at me, all the while yelling and screaming. "Later on, I realised that they were people like me, who had rejected God and had lived for their own selfish gratification. Their wish had come true: this is what they had. In the place they inhabit there's no light, no birds, no joy, no hope, no love. a bunch of rats in a cage." They screamed and tortured him for an age, he says. "Eventually, I was too ripped up and defeated to do anything. I was solid pain. The real pain is the emotional pain. They did things that I don't talk about. degrading things. "I was lying there, when I heard a voice say: 'Pray to God.' I said: 'I don't pray. I don't believe in God.' Then, it came a second time; and a third: 'Pray to God.' "So, tried to think of a prayer. I started to mumble some things. A mention of God came into a few of these phrases. With each mention the people around me became very, very angry, and started screaming at me: 'There is no God' and 'Nobody can hear you.' It angered them so much that they were retreating from me. The mention of God was unbearable to them." Encouraged, he mumbled other jumbled half-remembered phrases: "Glory, glory hallelujah, God Bless America, Our Father who art in heaven." Eventually, he found himself alone in this dark place. Thinking over his life he found it gravely wanting. He felt he deserved to be where he was. "I felt that there was some kind of justice in the universe and that if you lead a miserable life you go down the sewer pipe of the universe into the septic tank. And that's where I was. Yet I knew I hadn't been flushed down into the deeper part, just yet. "In that state of hopelessness I had a memory of myself as a child in Sunday school, singing 'Jesus Loves Me'. I also had a vivid feeling of being a child and feeling that there was a wonderful God-man named Jesus who was my friend and who loved me. With real sincerity, I called out: 'Jesus, please save me.' With that, a tiny light appeared in the darkness and it came down over me. Out of this light came two hands. They reached down and touched me, and all the gore and filth that was me just fell away. "In two or three seconds I was healed and filled with an indescribable love. In this world there is no equivalent to that kind of love. These arms picked me up and brought me into this brilliant light. I was held against the body of this man. I knew that he was Jesus. I cried. "We were moving straight up, faster and faster towards the world of light. It dawned on me then that everything I had believed in was wrong, and I was going to where God lived. I thought: 'They've made a terrible mistake. I don't deserve this. I'm garbage.'" At that thought, "we stopped, and he spoke to me for the first time, and said: 'We don't make mistakes. You do belong here.' He had responded to my thought. He laughed and said: 'I know what you're thinking. I know everything you've ever thought.' Then he called out in musical tones and a group of beings of light - angels - who had recorded my life came. They began to show me my life, starting with my birth." Storm says they showed him scenes he had no memory of, like being a baby and his sisters playing with him. But as his life unfolded into adolescence and adulthood "things started going downhill". "It became painful, because I saw that when I did bad things, I knew that it caused Jesus and the angels actual pain. It hurt them. "So, here I am hanging in space, between the worlds of light and dark, watching my life. I am being held by Jesus, but I can see that I caused him actual unhappiness. It was just so shameful." He says that "the only thing they showed me was how I interacted with people". They showed no interest in his awards, promotions or other worldly achievements. "It became evident that the primary thing was how I had loved other people. I had done very poorly. I had failed God's expectations of what I was supposed to be doing, which was caring for other people." As to how long this process took, Storm says that "there was no perception of time", but "when I try to frame it in our time, I say, it took longer than graduate school, which for me was three and a half years". Eventually, he was told he wasn't ready for heaven and would have to go back to earth. "I was very upset," he says. Reluctantly, after some resistance, he accepted his fate. Then, instantaneously, he was back in his body in that Paris hospital, being prepared for surgery. Afterwards his life changed utterly. He could no longer go back to his old ways. His friends met his story with "rejection, ridicule and scorn". But he found new friends at Bible study groups. Gradually he became more and more involved in his church, eventually becoming a minister in the United Church of Christ. In this capacity he works closely with Catholic Church in Latin America. He argues that "God sees the Church as one Church" and that "all the divisions are manmade". This one Church, he says, "should be out there risking their pretty vestments", pursuing those lost souls, gripped by the nihilism and atheism, now running rampant across the western world. 2) April 11 Audience: On Easter's Spiritual Joy: "Sadness And The Wounds Themselves Become Sources Of Joy" Zenit News Agency http://www.zenit.org/article-34604?l=english http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2873786/posts April 16, 2012 Pope Benedict XVI Here is a translation of the Italian-language catechesis Benedict XVI gave during the general audience held in St. Peter's Square on Wednesday, April 11. * * * Dear brothers and sisters, After the solemn celebrations of Easter, our meeting today is pervaded by spiritual joy; even if the skies above are grey, in our hearts we carry the joy of Easter and the certainty of the Resurrection of Christ, who has definitively triumphed over death. First, I wish to renew my cordial Easter greetings to each one of you: in every home and heart, may the joyous announcement of Christ's Resurrection resound, bringing new hope. In this catechesis, I would like to show the transformation that Easter brought about in Jesus' disciples. Let us begin with the evening of the day of the Resurrection. The disciples are locked in the house where they are staying for fear of the Jews (cf. John 20:19). Fear grips their hearts and prevents them from going out to encounter others, to encounter life. The Master is gone. The memory of His Passion fuels their uncertainty. However, Jesus has at heart those who are His own, and He is about to fulfill the promise He had made during the Last Supper: "I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you" (John 14:18); and He says this also to us, even when times are grey: "I will not leave you orphans". The disciple's anxious situation changes radically with Jesus' arrival. He enters in through closed doors, He stands in their midst and He gives them the peace that puts them at ease: "Peace be with you" (John 20:19b). It is a common greeting, yet now it acquires a new meaning, for it effects an interior transformation; it is the Easter greeting, which overcomes all of the disciples' fears. The peace that Jesus brings is the gift of salvation, which He had promised during His farewell discourse: "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid" (John 14:27). On this day of Resurrection, He gives it in full, and for the community it becomes a source of joy, certainty of victory and security in relying on God. "Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid" (John 14:27b), He says also to us. After this greeting, Jesus shows His disciples the wounds in His hands and His side (John 20:20), the signs of what had gone before and what shall never be erased: His glorious humanity will be forever "wounded". This act is intended to confirm the new reality of Christ's Resurrection: the Christ who now stands in the midst of His disciples is a real person, the same Jesus who just three days prior was nailed to the Cross. Thus it is that, in the brilliant light of the Resurrection, in the encounter with the Risen One, the disciples grasp the salvific meaning of His passion and death. Then do they pass from sadness and fear to the fullness of joy. Sadness and the wounds themselves become sources of joy. The joy born in their hearts comes from "seeing the Lord" (John 20:20). He again says to them: "Peace be with you" (verse 21). At this point, it is evident that it is not only a greeting. It is a gift, the gift that the Risen One wills to make to His friends, and at the same time it is a handing on: this peace, which Christ obtained by His blood, is for them but it is also for everyone, and the disciples will have to carry it throughout the world. In fact, He adds: "As the Father has sent me, even so I send you" (ibid.). The Risen Jesus returned among His disciples in order to send them out. He completed His work in the world; now it is their turn to sow faith in hearts, so that the Father -- known and loved -- may gather together all of His scattered children. However, Jesus knows that His followers are still very much afraid, always. Therefore, He breathes on them and regenerates them in His Spirit (cf. John 20:22); this act is the sign of the new creation. Indeed, a new world begins by the gift of the Holy Spirit, which comes from the Risen Christ. With the sending out of the disciples on mission, the journey of the people of the new covenant is inaugurated, the people who believe in Him and in His work of salvation, the people who bear witness to the truth of His Resurrection. This newness of a life that never dies -- which Easter brings -- is intended to be spread everywhere, so that the thorns of sin that wound man's heart may give way to the buds of Grace, to the presence of God and of His love, which conquers sin and death. Dear friends, today too the Risen One enters into our homes and into our hearts, even though at times the doors are shut. He enters, bestowing joy and peace, life and hope, gifts that we need for our human and spiritual rebirth. Only He can roll back those sepulchral stones that we often place over our sentiments, our relationships and our behavior; stones that sanction death: divisions, hatred, resentments, jealousies, mistrust and indifference. He alone, the Living One, can give life meaning and enable the one who is weary and sad, discouraged and deprived of hope, to continue on the journey. This is what the two disciples experienced, who were making their way on Easter day from Jerusalem to Emmaus (cf. Luke 24:13-35). They talk about Jesus, but their "saddened faces" (cf. Verse 17) express disappointed hopes, uncertainty and melancholy. They had left their native land to follow Jesus with His friends, and they had discovered a new reality, where forgiveness and love were no longer merely words but concretely touched their lives. Jesus of Nazareth had made all things new; He had transformed their lives. But now He was dead and everything seemed to have come to and end. Suddenly, however, there were no longer two but rather three persons walking. Jesus draws near to the two disciples and walks with them, but they are unable to recognize Him. Certainly, they had heard rumors of His Resurrection; in fact, they refer to it: "Some women of our company amazed us. They were at the tomb early in the morning and did not find His body; and they came back saying that they had even seen a vision of angels, who said He was alive" (verses 22-23). And yet, this had not been enough to convince them, since "Him they did not see" (verse 24). Then Jesus, patiently, "beginning with Moses and all the prophets, interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning Himself" (verse 27). The Risen One explains Sacred Scripture to the disciples, offering the fundamental key to their reading; namely, He himself and His paschal mystery: to Him do the scriptures testify (cf. John 5:39-47). The meaning of everything -- of the Law, the Prophets and the Psalms -- suddenly is opened and made clear before their eyes. Jesus opened their minds to understand the Scriptures (cf. Luke 24:45). In the meantime, they reached the village, probably the home one of the two. The wayfaring stranger "appeared to be going further" (verse 28), but then he stopped, for they ardently asked him, "Stay with us" (verse 29). We too, again and again, should ardently ask the Lord: "Stay with us". "When He was at table with them, He took the bread and blessed, and broke it, and gave it to them" (verse 30). The reference to the actions performed by Jesus at the Last Supper is evident: "And their eyes were opened and they recognized Him" (verse 31). The presence of Jesus -- first by His words, then by the act of the breaking of the bread -- enables the disciples to recognize Him, and they are able to hear in a new way all that they had already experienced on their walk with Him: "Did not our hearts burn within us while He talked to us on the road, while He opened to us the scriptures?" (verse 32). This episode indicates to us two privileged "places" where we can encounter the Risen One, who transforms our lives: the hearing of the Word in communion with Christ, and the breaking of the Bread; two "places" that are profoundly united since "Word and Eucharist are so deeply bound together that we cannot understand one without the other: the Word of God sacramentally takes flesh in the event of the Eucharist" (Post-synodal Apostolic Exhortation Verbum Domini, 54-55). Following this encounter, the two disciples "rose that same hour and returned to Jerusalem; and they found the eleven gathered together and those who were with them, who said: 'The Lord has risen indeed, and has appeared to Simon!'" (verses 33-34). In Jerusalem they hear the news of Jesus' Resurrection, and in turn they recount their own experience, inflamed by love for the Risen One, who opened their hearts to an uncontainable joy. They were -- as St. Peter says -- "born anew to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead" (1 Peter 1:3). Indeed, enthusiasm for the faith, love for the community and the need to announce the good news were reborn in them. The Master is risen, and with Him all of life flourishes; to bear witness to this event becomes for them an insuppressible need. Dear friends, may the Easter season be for us all the propitious occasion to joyously and enthusiastically rediscover the sources of faith, the presence of the Risen One among us. It means following the same path along which Jesus had the two disciples of Emmaus walk, through the rediscovery of the Word of God and the Eucharist; in other words, it means walking with the Lord and allowing Him to open our eyes to the true meaning of the Scripture and to His presence in the breaking of the bread. The summit of this journey, today as it was then, is Eucharistic Communion: in Holy Communion, Jesus feeds us with His Body and His Blood in order to be present in our lives, to make us new, enlivened by the power of the Holy Spirit. In conclusion, the experience of the disciples invites us to reflect on Easter's meaning for us. Let us allow ourselves to be encountered by the Risen Jesus! He, living and true, is always present among us; He walks with us in order to guide our lives and to open our eyes. Let us trust in the Risen One, who has the power to give life, and to give us rebirth as children of God, capable of believing and of loving. Faith in Him transforms our lives; it frees them from fear, gives them sure hope and enlivens them by what gives full meaning to life, God's love. Thank you. [The Holy Father then greeted the people in several languages. In English, he said:] Dear Brothers and Sisters, Our General Audience today is marked by the spiritual joy of Easter, born of the Christ's victory over sin and death. When the risen Lord appeared to the disciples in the Upper Room and showed them his saving wounds, their lives were changed. With the gift of the Holy Spirit, Christ gave them the peace which the world cannot give (cf. Jn 14:27) and sent them forth to bring that peace to the world. The mission of the disciples inaugurates the journey of the Church, the People of the New Covenant, called to bear witness in every age to the truth of the resurrection and the new life which it brings. Today too, the Lord enters our hearts and our homes with his gifts of joy and peace, life and hope. Like the disciples on the way to Emmaus, may we recognize his presence among us in his word and in the breaking of the bread. During this Easter season, let us resolve to walk in the company of the risen Christ and allow our lives to be transformed by faith in him and by the power of his resurrection. * * * I offer a warm welcome to the newly-ordained deacons from the Pontifical Irish College, together with their families and friends. Dear young deacons, may you conform your lives ever more fully to the Lord and work generously for the building up of the Church in your country. I also welcome the distinguished delegation from the NATO Defense College, with prayerful good wishes for their service to the cause of peace. Upon all the English-speaking visitors present at today's Audience, especially those from England, Ireland, Sweden, Australia, Canada and the United States, I invoke the joy and peace of the Risen Lord. Happy Easter! [In Italian, he said:] Lastly, my thoughts go to young people, to the sick and to newlyweds. Dear young people, especially you who have come from the diocese of Cremona, may you be increasingly more aware that only the Lord Jesus can respond completely to your desire for happiness and to your search for what is truly good for your lives; dear sick, especially you who belong to UNITALSI of Teano-Calvi, there is greater comfort in your suffering than the Resurrection of Christ; and you, dear newlyweds, may you live your marriage in concrete adherence to Christ and to the teachings of the Gospel. 3) In Hard-Hitting Document Vatican Launches Clean-Up Of Feminist Nuns In United States Life Site News http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/in-hard-hitting-document-vatican-launches-clean-up-of-feminist-nuns-in-unit http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2873784/posts 4/18/2012 John-Henry Westen The Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) has launched a 5-year reform of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), the association of the leaders of congregations of Catholic women religious in the United States representing more than 80 percent of the 57,000 women religious (nuns) in the country. Based on a 2008 investigation into the nuns, the Vatican evaluation was candid, noting, "The current doctrinal and pastoral situation of the LCWR is grave and a matter of serious concern." The CDF doctrinal assessment, released today, criticized positions espoused at LCWR annual assemblies and in its literature as well as the absence of support from LCWR for Church teaching on pro-life issues, women's ordination and homosexuality. The CDF said that the documentation "reveals that, while there has been a great deal of work on the part of LCWR promoting issues of social justice in harmony with the Church's social doctrine, it is silent on the right to life from conception to natural death, a question that is part of the lively public debate about abortion and euthanasia in the United States." "Further," the CDF report said, "issues of crucial importance in the life of the Church and society, such as the Church's Biblical view of family life and human sexuality, are not part of the LCWR agenda in a way that promotes Church teaching. Moreover, occasional public statements by the LCWR that disagree with or challenge positions taken by the Bishops, who are the Church's authentic teachers of faith and morals, are not compatible with its purpose." The CDF said, "The Assessment reveals serious doctrinal problems which affect many in Consecrated life," calling it a crisis "characterized by a diminution of the fundamental Christological center and focus of religious consecration." The document listed the principal findings of the LCWR doctrinal assessment. On LCWR annual assemblies, it said, "The talks, while not scholarly theological discourses per se, do have significant doctrinal and moral content with implications which often contradict or ignore magisterial teaching." On formation of religious superiors and formators, the CDF said, "Many of the materials prepared by the LCWR for these purposes (Occasional Papers, Systems Thinking Handbook) do not have a sufficient doctrinal foundation. These materials recommend strategies for dialogue, for example when sisters disagree about basic matters of Catholic faith or moral practice, but it is not clear whether this dialogue is directed towards reception of Church teaching." The Vatican said that it has appointed Archbishop Peter Sartain of Seattle as its Archbishop Delegate for the initiative. Bishop Leonard Blair and Bishop Thomas John Paprocki also were named to assist in this effort. The Vatican is attempting to present the measure as a friendly renewal. However, even the initial announcement of the assessment in 2008 was greeted with severe hostility by leftist nuns in the U.S. The sternly-worded assessment document is not likely to be received with any greater enthusiasm. The Prefect of the CDF Cardinal William Levada noted that the assessment is "aimed at fostering a patient and collaborative renewal." Archbishop Sartain commented on his new role saying, "I am honored that the CDF has entrusted this important and sensitive work to me, because the ministry of religious sisters, especially here in the United States, is deeply respected and paramount to the mission of the Church. Just as the LCWR can be a vital resource in many ways for its members, I hope to be of service to them and to the Holy See as we face areas of concern to all." The intransigence and betrayal of many of the women religious in the United states toward Catholic values have been keenly felt in recent months by Catholic bishops - particularly in the fight over religious freedom and abortion funding in President Obama's health care law, in which religious sisters have played a key role, in Obama's favor. That betrayal has also been registered in the Vatican. Cardinal Raymond Burke head of the Vatican's highest court - the Apostolic Signitura - in a speech earlier this year, denounced "the public and obstinate betrayal of religious life by certain religious." Burke asked: "Who ever could have imagined that religious congregations of pontifical right would openly organize to resist and attempt to frustrate an apostolic visitation, that is, a visit to their congregations carried out under the authority of the Vicar of Christ on earth, to whom all religious are bound by the strongest bonds of loyalty and obedience?" "Who could imagine that consecrated religious would openly, and in defiance of the bishops as successors of the Apostles, publicly endorse legislation containing provisions which violate the natural moral law in its most fundamental tenets, the safeguarding and promoting of innocent and defenseless life, and fail to safeguard the demands of free exercise of conscience for healthcare workers?" he added. 4) Jane Austen's Advice: Choose The Right Man And Live Happily Ever After Townhall.com http://townhall.com/columnists/rebeccahagelin/2012/04/18/jane_austens_advice_choose_the_right_man_and_live_happily_ever_after http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2873608/posts April 18, 2012 Rebecca Hagelin Culture Challenge of the Week: Finding A Good Man Call it the lament of the young, single woman: there are no good men left. Or if there are, where are they? And how can a young woman pursue a healthy, marriage-minded relationship in a singles culture of casual sex and perpetual adolescence? In her new book, The Jane Austen Guide to Happily Ever After (Regnery Publishing, 2012), Elizabeth Kantor provides some answers. She writes, "Of course it's no secret that modern mating rituals have gone badly wrong." And indeed they have: the number of cohabitating couples has doubled in the past twenty years, and the marriage rate has dropped precipitously. Many singles find themselves on a path to lifelong singlehood, not necessarily by choice. And even within relationships, time-honored ideals---like fidelity-increasingly fall by the wayside. (A recent Match.com survey found that only 62% of men believe that sexual fidelity is a "must have" in a relationship. In comparison, 80% of women say fidelity is a must for a successful relationship.) Happily Ever After offers a thought-provoking, encouraging, and often witty take on what's wrong with today's dating patterns. Even better, Kantor draws on the wisdom and insights of Jane Austen's heroines to mark out a confident path for young women who want a good man and a relationship that will deliver a lifetime of happiness-and love-in marriage. Kantor asks, "What is it that Jane Austen heroines do (that we're not doing) that makes really satisfying happy endings possible for them, and not so likely for us?" The author's interpretation of Jane Austen-whose old, romantic novels became modern box office hits--suggests a model for young women who want lasting, happy relationships. Modern-day Jane Austen "heroines" should cultivate "true elegance" instead of "hotness," demand love without humiliation, develop competence about men, respect their own female psychology, and take relationships seriously. How to Save Your Family: Share Happily Ever After Today's singles often seem clueless about what makes a relationship work or even what they should hope it will include. And for women, it's even more confusing. Feminist thought urges women to plan their futures with a single-minded career focus, leaving little room for men, marriage, and children. Young women may fall into the trap of pursuing personal autonomy and career success with little thought about relationships, marriage, and family-until they find themselves lonely and alone. Kantor resists the notion that a Jane Austen-style approach to relationships requires "a life of pre-feminist misery and oppression." But she stresses that it's reasonable for women to "spend significant intellectual and emotional capital on our relationships-but in the right way, not the wrong way." What's the right way? Neither romantic illusions, nor Victorian repression, nor modern cynicism. Instead, Kantor writes, women need to understand the real meaning of love and happiness-and settle for nothing less. Sprinkled throughout the book are "Tips" for "Janeites," little nuggets of good advice, like these: - "Stop making the same old bad choices about men before those choices 'fix' your character, freezing you into habits you may not be able to break out of." - "Drama is not the same thing as love." (Who really wants a Kardashian-style relationship?) - "Keep your distance, not to increase his love by suspense-but so you can make up your mind about a man while you can still see him clearly." (An important point for a generation that too easily moves from the bar to the bedroom to sharing an apartment.) At the end of each chapter, Kantor frames questions to help readers assess their own relationships. In easy to read bullet points, she helps women probe the strengths and weaknesses of their current relationships. And in true Jane Austen style, she urges them to have the boldness to "arrange their own marriages"-to choose wisely and decide fearlessly if a relationship is likely to secure a happy future. And the Jane Austen promise? That love and happiness go together: women can live "happily ever after" marriages if they recognize, expect, and pursue true love. Share The Jane Austen Guide to Happily Ever After with your daughters - and all the single women you know. 5) On The Apostles' Response To Persecution: "In The Face Of Trial, They Pray, They Get In Touch With God" Zenit News Agency http://www.zenit.org/article-34630?l=english http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2874304/posts April 19, 2012 Pope Benedict XVI Here is a translation of the address Benedict XVI gave at the general audience Wednesday. * * * Dear brothers and sisters, After the great feasts we return to the catechesis on prayer. In the audience before Holy Week we reflected on the figure of the Blessed Virgin Mary, present in the midst of the apostles when they were awaiting the descent of the Holy Spirit. An atmosphere of prayer accompanied the Church's first steps. Pentecost is not an isolated episode since the presence and action of the Holy Spirit constantly guide and animate the path of the Christian community. In the Acts of the Apostles, in fact, St. Luke, besides narrating the great effusion of the Spirit in the cenacle 50 days after Easter (cf. Acts 2:1-13), refers to other great irruptions of the Holy Spirit which return in the Church's history. And today I would like to reflect on that which has been called the "little Pentecost" that occurred at the culmination of a difficult period in the life of the nascent Church. The Acts of the Apostles tell how after the healing of a paralytic at the Temple in Jerusalem (cf. Acts 3:1-10), Peter and John were arrested (cf. 4:1) because they announced Jesus' resurrection to the whole people (cf. Acts 3:11-26). After a summary trial, they were freed, they went to their brothers and recounted what they suffered because of their witness to the risen Jesus. At that time, says St. Luke, "all together lifted their voice to God" (Acts 4:24). Here St. Luke reports the longest of the Church's prayers that we find in the New Testament, at the end of which, as we have heard, "the place where they were gathered shook, and they were all filled with the holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness" (Acts 4:31). Before considering this beautiful prayer, let us note an important basic attitude: in the face of danger, difficulty, threats, the first Christian community does not try to conduct an analysis about how to react or seek strategies about how to defend itself, about what measures to adopt, but in the face of trial, they pray, they get in touch with God. And what characteristic does this prayer have? It is a single and concordant prayer of the whole community that, because of Jesus, confronts a situation of persecution. In the original Greek St. Luke uses the term "homothumadon" - "all together," "in agreement" - a term that appears in other parts of the Acts of the Apostles to underscore this persevering and unanimous prayer (cf. Acts 1:14; 2:46). This concord is a fundamental element of the first community and it must always be fundamental for the Church. So it is not only the prayer of Peter and John, who found themselves in danger; it is the prayer of the whole community, because what the two apostles experience does not only touch them but the whole Church. In the face of persecutions endured for Jesus' sake not only is the community not frightened and divided but is deeply united in prayer, as a single person, calling on the Lord. This I would say is the first wonder that occurs when the believers are tested because of their faith: their unity is strengthened rather than compromised because it is supported by an indestructible prayer. The Church must not fear the persecutions that it will undergo in its history but trust always, as Jesus did at Gethsemane in the presence, help and power of God, invoked in prayer. Let us take a further step: what does the Christian community ask of God in this moment of trial? It does not ask for its life to be protected during persecution nor that the Lord harm those who imprisoned Peter and John; it only asks that it be granted to "proclaim in all boldness" the Word of God (cf. Acts 4:29), that is, it asks that it not lose the courage of faith, the courage to proclaim the faith. First, however, it tries to understand more deeply what has happened, it tries to interpret the events in the light of faith and it does this precisely through God's Word, which permits us to decipher the world's reality. In offering up its prayers to the Lord, the community begins by recalling and invoking the greatness and immensity of God: "Sovereign Lord, maker of heaven and earth and the sea and all that is in them" (Acts 4:24). It is the invocation of the Creator: we know that everything comes from Him, that everything is in His hands. This is the knowledge that gives the community certainty and courage: everything comes from Him, everything is in His hands. It then acknowledges how God has acted in history - so it begins with creation and then continues through history - how He has been near to His people, showing Himself to be a God who cares for man, who has not retreated, who does not abandon man, His creature; and here Psalm 2 is explicitly cited, in the light of which the difficult situation that the Church is currently experiencing is interpreted. Psalm 2 celebrates the enthronement of the king of Judah, but prophetically refers to the coming of the Messiah, against whom nothing can stir up rebellion, persecution, the tyranny of men "Why did the Gentiles rage and the peoples entertain folly? The kings of the earth took their stand and the princes gathered together against the Lord and against His Christ" (Acts 4:25). The Psalm about the Messiah already says this prophetically, and throughout history this rebellion of the powerful against the power of God is characteristic. Just reading Holy Writ, which is the Word of God, the community can say to God in its prayer: Indeed they gathered in this city against your holy servant Jesus whom you anointed, Herod and Pontius Pilate, together with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel to do what your hand and your will had long ago planned to take place" (Acts 4:27). What had happened was read in the light of Christ, who is the key for understanding persecution too; the cross, which is always the key to the resurrection. The opposition to Jesus, His passion and death, are reread through Psalm 2, as the realization of God's plan for the world's salvation. And here we also find the meaning of the experience of persecution through which the first Christian community is living; this first community is not a mere association but a community that lives in Christ; thus, what it experiences is part of God's design. Just as it happened to Jesus, the first disciples too encounter opposition, incomprehension, persecution. In prayer, meditation on Sacred Scripture in the light of the mystery of Christ is an aid to interpreting the reality present in the history of salvation that God realizes in the world, always in his own way. Precisely because of this the request that the first Christian community in Jerusalem formulates in its prayer to God does not ask to be defended, to be saved from trial, from suffering, it is not a prayer for success, but only to proclaim with "parresia," that is, with boldness, with freedom, with courage, the Word of God (cf. Acts 4:29). The community then adds that this proclamation be accompanied by the hand of God, that healings, signs, wonders might occur (cf. Acts 4:30), that is, that God's goodness be visible, as a power that transforms reality, that changes hearts, minds and men's lives and brings the radical newness of the Gospel. At the end of the prayer, St. Luke observes, "the place where they were gathered trembled and all were filled with the Holy Spirit and proclaimed the Word of God with boldness" (Acts 4:31). The place trembled, that is, the faith has the power to transform the world. The same Spirit that spoke in Psalm 2 in the Church's prayer, breaks forth in the house where the disciples are and fills the heart of everyone who has called on the Lord. This is the fruit of the united prayer that the Christian community lifts up to God: the effusion of the Spirit, gift of the Risen One, that supports and guides the free and courageous proclamation of the Word of God, who drives the Lord's disciples to leave the house without fear to bring the good news to the ends of the earth. We too, dear brothers and sisters, must know how to bring the events of our daily lives into our prayer, to find their deeper meaning. And like the first Christian community, we too, letting ourselves be enlightened by God's Word through meditation on Holy Scripture, can learn to see that God is present in our lives, present even and precisely in difficult moments, and that everything - even things that are incomprehensible - is part of the superior design of love in which the final victory over evil, over sin and over death is truly that of goodness, of grace, of life, of God. As with the first Christian community, prayer helps us to interpret personal and collective history according to the right and faithful perspective, that of God. And we too want to renew the request for the gift of the Holy Spirit, that warms the heart and illumines the mind, to see how the Lord realizes what we plead for according to his will of love and not according to our ideas. Guided by the Holy Spirit of Jesus Christ, we will be able to face every situation of life with serenity, courage and joy and boast with St. Paul "in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces patience, patience proved virtue and proved virtue hope": that hope that "does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been bestowed upon us" (Romans 5:3-5). Thank you. [Following his address, the Holy Father greeted those present in various languages. In English he said:] I offer a warm welcome to the General Chapter of the Brothers of Saint Gabriel. I also greet the group from the Faculty of Canon Law of Saint Paul's University in Ottawa, Canada. I thank the choirs for their praise of God in song. Upon all the English-speaking pilgrims and visitors, including those from England, Ireland, Finland, South Africa, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Vietnam, Trinidad, Canada and the United States, I invoke the joy and peace of the Risen Lord. [In Italian he said:] I would like to express my cordial gratitude for all of the well-wishes I have received for the seventh anniversary of my election, and for my birthday. I ask you to sustain me always with your prayers, so that, with the help of the Holy Spirit, I can persevere in my service to Christ and the Church. My thoughts go out also to the sick, to the newlyweds and to the young people present, especially the many students who have come from various regions. Dear children and young people, to you too, like the first disciples, the risen Christ says: "Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, so I send you" (John 20:21). Respond to these words with joy and love! May the resurrection of Christ be an inexhaustible source of comfort and hope to you dear ones who are sick. And may you, dear newlyweds, be witnesses of the Risen One with your conjugal love. 6) New York Times Op-Ed: Co-Habitation Can Lead To Divorce Life Site News http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/new-york-times-op-ed-co-habitation-can-lead-to-divorce http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2874240/posts 4/19/2012 Christine Dhanagom The belief that living together before marriage helps to avoid divorce is "contradicted by experience," says a New York Times Op-Ed by clinical psychologist Dr. Meg Jay, published this past Saturday. Jay, a specialist in young adult development, professes to be "neither for or against" co-habitation, but offers a searing critique of the practice, which she says is becoming "a norm" among young adults. According to her article, the phenomenon has increased by more than 1500% since 1960, when there were about 450,000 unmarried couples living together. There are now over 7.5 million such couples. Recent studies have indicated that there is a causal relationship between the rise in divorce that has accompanied the rise in co-habitation, says Jay. In the past, she notes, some researchers have rejected the suggestion that cohabiting can actually cause divorce, attributing the correlation between the two to "selection, or the idea that cohabitors were less conventional about marriage and thus more open to divorce." Drawing from research and from her own experience working with young adults, Jay argues that there is actually something internal to the practice of living together that can put a future marriage on shaky grounds. The decision to live together is often one that couples "slide" into simply because it is economical or convenient, she says. After moving in, they feel "locked in" because of all the entanglements of living together, such as co-ownership of furniture or pets, which can in turn lead to a mentality of sliding unreflectively into marriage. Jay cites the situation of one her clients, a 32-year-old woman she calls "Jennifer," who lived together with her boyfriend for four years, married him, and was looking for a divorce lawyer less than a year later. "I felt like I was on this multiyear, never-ending audition to be his wife," Jennifer had told Jay. "We had all this furniture. We had our dogs and all the same friends. It just made it really, really difficult to break up. Then it was like we got married because we were living together once we got into our 30s." "I've had other clients who also wish they hadn't sunk years of their 20s into relationships that would have lasted only months had they not been living together," Jay writes. "Others want to feel committed to their partners, yet they are confused about whether they have consciously chosen their mates. Founding relationships on convenience or ambiguity can interfere with the process of claiming the people we love." Studies have also revealed that men and women tend to go into a cohabiting situation with different mentalities, she notes, with women seeing it as a "step towards marriage" and men often viewing it as "a way to test a relationship or postpone commitment." "This gender asymmetry is associated with negative interactions and lower levels of commitment even after the relationship progresses to marriage," she says. 7) Why Do Catholics Leave, And What Can Be Done About It? Catholic News Agency http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/column.php?n=2117 http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2874080/posts April 19, 2012 Father Robert Barron I saw an advance copy of a survey by William J. Byron and Charles Zech, which will appear in the April 30th edition of "America" magazine. It was conducted at the request of David O'Connell, the bishop of Trenton, and its focus was very simple: it endeavored to discover why Catholics have left the church. No one denies that a rather substantive number of Catholics have taken their leave during the past 20 years, and Byron and Zech wanted to find out why. They did so in the most direct way possible and asked those who had quit. The answers they got were, in many ways, predictable. Lots of people cited the church's teachings on divorce and re-marriage, gay marriage, contraception, and the ordination of women. These matters, of course, have been exhaustively discussed in the years following Vatican II, and I'd be willing to bet that anyone, even those vaguely connected to the Church, could rehearse the arguments on both sides of those issues. But there just isn't a lot that the church can do about them. No bishop or pastor could make a policy adjustment and announce that divorced and re-married people can receive communion or that a gay couple can come to the altar to be married or a woman present herself for ordination. What struck me about the survey, however, was that many of the issues that led people to leave the church are indeed matters that can be addressed. Many of the respondents commented that they left because of "bad customer relations." One woman said that she felt "undervalued by the church" and found "no mentors." Many more said that their pastors were "arrogant, distant, aloof, and insensitive," and still others said that their experiences over the phone with parish staffers were distinctly negative. Now I fully understand that parish priests and lay ministers are on the front lines and hence are the ones who often have to say "no" when a parishioner asks for something that just can't be granted. Sometimes the recipient of that "no" can all too facilely accuse the one who says it as arrogant or indifferent. Nevertheless, the survey can and should be a wake-up call to church leaders-both clerical and non-clerical-that simple kindness, compassion, and attention go a rather long way. I distinctly remember the advice that my first pastor-a wonderful and pastorally skillful priest-gave to the parish secretary: "for many people, you are the first contact they have with the Catholic Church; you exercise, therefore, an indispensable ministry." One respondent to the survey observed that whenever he asked a priest about a controversial issue, he "got rules, and not an invitation to sit down and talk." Unfair? Perhaps. But every priest, even when ultimately he has to say "no," can do so in the context of a relationship predicated upon love and respect. A second major concern that can and should be addressed is that of bad preaching. Again and again, people said that they left the church because homilies were "boring, irrelevant, poorly prepared," or "delivered in an impenetrable accent." Again, speaking as someone who is called upon to give sermons all the time, I realize how terribly difficult it is to preach, how it involves skill in public speaking, attention to the culture, expertise in biblical interpretation, and sensitivity to the needs and interests of an incredibly diverse audience. That said, homilists can make a great leap forward by being attentive to one fact: sermons become boring in the measure that they don't propose something like answers to real questions. All of the biblical exegesis and oratorical skill in the world will be met with a massive "so what?" if the preacher has not endeavored to correlate the "answers" he provides with the "questions" that beguile the hearts of the people to whom he speaks. Practically every Gospel involves an encounter between Jesus and a person-Peter, Mary Magdalene, Nicodemus, Zacchaeus, etc.-who is questioning, wondering, suffering, or seeking. An interesting homily identifies that longing and demonstrates, concretely, how Jesus fulfills it. When the homily both reminds people how thirsty they are and provides water to quench the thirst, people will listen. A third eminently correctable problem is one that I will admit I had never thought about before reading this survey. Many of the respondents commented that, after they left the church, no one from the parish contacted them or reached out to them in any way. Now again, I can anticipate and fully understand the objections from pastoral people: many Catholic parishes are huge-upwards of three or four thousand families-and staffs are small. Yet, just as major corporations, serving millions of people, attend carefully to lost customers, so Catholic parishes should prioritize an outreach to those who have drifted (or stormed) away. A phone call, a note, an e-mail, a pastoral visit-anything that would say, "We've noticed you're not coming to Mass anymore. Can we help? Can you tell us what, if anything, we've done wrong? We'd love to see you back with us." The problem of Catholics leaving the church is, obviously, serious and complex, and anyone who would suggest an easy solution is naïve. However, having listened to a representative sample of those who have left, parishes, priests, and church administrators might take some relatively simple and direct steps that would go a long way toward ameliorating the situation. 8) Dick Clark Remembered Townhall.com http://townhall.com/columnists/calthomas/2012/04/20/dick_clark_remembered http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2874369/posts April 20, 2012 Cal Thomas Dick Clark, who died Wednesday at 82, was called "America's oldest teenager." That's not only because he looked so good late into life, but also because he carried with him the teen memories of those of us who grew up watching "American Bandstand" on glorious black-and-white, small-screen television sets. Every weekday afternoon, I would arrive home from school, say hello to Mom, grab a snack and plop down in front of the TV to watch a dance show broadcast live from South Philadelphia. There were lots of sensuous girls of Italian decent. Some wore false collars called dickies (which had nothing to do with Clark) and great sweaters. The boys had slicked-back hair and a serious attitude about dancing. Those who weren't on the dance floor sat in bleachers, waiting their turn in the crowded studio. Dick basically introduced songs and guest artists. They ran the gamut from the volatile Jerry Lee Lewis (who was later banned after marrying his 13-year-old cousin), to Run DMC. Singers would lip-sync their hits. Sometimes Clark would ask the teens to "rate" a song. They'd respond, "I like the beat. I'll give it a 95," or something like that. Freddy "Boom Boom" Cannon made over 100 appearances, more than anyone else. "Bandstand" premiered on TV in Philadelphia in 1952; five years later "American Bandstand" was picked up nationally. Clark served as its host from 1956 to 1989. Later, Clark and Ed McMahon co-hosted a long-running show called "TV's Bloopers and Practical Jokes." Dick Clark also hosted for many years ABC's "New Year's Rockin' Eve," until he suffered a stroke and had to withdraw. He made only cameo appearances after that. While Dick Clark transcended more than one generation, he "belonged" to those of us who were teenagers in the '50s. We "invented" rock 'n' roll. The music was mostly fun then, before it turned ugly, misogynistic and crude. The '50s were also happier times, safer times. Drugs were bought with a prescription and kids often lied about sex, because most of us were too afraid to actually "do it." I met Dick Clark just once by accident. Sitting in a makeup chair at NBC in New York, preparing to go on a TV program, I noticed a man in the next chair. I began a conversation, turned his way and realized it was Dick Clark. He was used to this and was gracious, thanking me for appreciating his work while I was growing up. My high school classmate, Renny Temple, a former member of the folk band The Highwaymen, sent me an email from Los Angeles informing me of Dick Clark's passing. It said, "Dick Clark is dead. Long live rock and roll!" Chuck Berry, along with Danny and The Juniors -- who also appeared on "American Bandstand" -- would agree. 9) Chuck Colson Dead At Age 80 Faith Issues http://www.faithissues.com/page/471630193 http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2874965/posts 4/21/2012 Evangelical Christianity lost one of its most eloquent and influential voices today with the death of Charles W. "Chuck" Colson. The Prison Fellowship and Colson Center for Christian Worldview founder died at 3:12 PM ET today at the age of 80. After a brief illness, Colson passed away at a Northern Virginia hospital with his wife, Patty, and family at his bedside. On March 30th, Colson became ill while speaking at a Colson Center for Christian Worldview conference in Lansdowne. The following morning he had surgery to remove a pool of clotted blood on the surface of his brain, and doctors determined he had suffered an intracerebral hemorrhage. Though Colson remained in intensive care, doctors and family were optimistic for a recovery as he showed some signs of improvement. However, Tuesday (April 17th) Colson became gravely ill when further complications developed. A Watergate figure who emerged from the country's worst political scandal, a vocal Christian leader and a champion for prison ministry, Colson spent the last years of his life in the dual role of leading Prison Fellowship, the world's largest outreach to prisoners, ex-prisoners and their families, and the Colson Center, a research and training center focused on Christian worldview teaching. Colson has been a central figure in the evangelical Christian community since he shocked the Washington establishment in 1973 by revealing his new Christian commitment in the midst of the Watergate inquiry. In later years Colson would say that because he was known primarily as Nixon's "Hatchet Man," the declaration that " 'I've been born again and given my life to Jesus Christ' kept the political cartoonists of America clothed and fed for a solid month." It also gave new visibility to the emerging movement of "born-again" Christians. In 1974 Colson entered a plea of guilty to Watergate-related charges; although not implicated in the Watergate burglary, he voluntarily pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice in the Daniel Ellsberg Case, which was prosecuted in the acutely sensitive Watergate atmosphere. He entered Maxwell Federal Prison Camp in Alabama in 1974 as a new Christian and as the first member of the Nixon administration to be incarcerated for Watergate-related charges. He served seven months of a one- to three-year sentence. Colson emerged from prison with a new mission: mobilizing the Christian Church to minister to prisoners. He founded Prison Fellowship in 1976; this would become perhaps his greatest contribution to the Church and the world. Although many local churches had ministered in nearby prisons for many years, most observers would affirm that Colson and Prison Fellowship truly put prison ministry on the agenda of the church in a substantial way. Colson's personal prison experience and his frequent ministry visits to prisons also developed in him new concerns about the efficacy of the American criminal justice system. His founding of Justice Fellowship in 1983 helped make Colson one of the nation's most influential voices for criminal justice reform. His call for alternative punishments for non-violent offenders was often effective because Colson's conservative credentials enabled him to line up conservative legislators in support of what had traditionally been seen as a liberal set of reforms. That passion and sense of obligation to God's calling and to his fellow inmates took Colson into prisons several times a year. He visited some 600 prisons in the US and 40 other countries, and built a movement that at one time extended to more than 50,000 prison ministry volunteers. Often, particularly in the early days of Prison Fellowship, he was vocal in his disgust over the terrible conditions in the prisons and the need for more humane conditions and better access to religious programs. Colson's advocacy for prisoners' religious rights took an additional form in the late 1990s when he and Justice Fellowship were at the forefront, lobbying legislators to support the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA), both nationally and state by state. Colson's and Justice Fellowship's work to bring an end to the national scourge and shame of prison rape culminated with the passage of the Prison Rape Elimination Act in 2003. His 1987 book, "Kingdoms in Conflict," was a best-selling directive to the Christian community on the proper relationships of church and state, and it positioned Colson as centrist evangelical voice for balanced Christian political activism. Although not as visible as others in the frontline battles, Colson provided counsel to many of the most-evident activists and had a strong influence on Christian politicians who went to Washington in the 80s, 90s and into the new millennium. In recognition of his work among prisoners, Colson received the prestigious Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion in 1993, donating the $1 million prize to Prison Fellowship. In perhaps his most-eloquent and well-known speech, "The Enduring Revolution," given at acceptance ceremonies at the University of Chicago, Colson encouraged the Church in the face of troubling times: "For history's cadence is called with a confident voice. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob reigns. His plan and purpose rob the future of its fears. By the cross He offers hope, by the resurrection He assures His triumph. This cannot be resisted or delayed. Mankind's only choice is to recognize Him now or in the moment of ultimate judgment. Our only decision is to welcome His rule or to fear it." Colson's other awards included the Presidential Citizens Medal (2008, the second-highest US civilian honor), Humanitarian Award from Domino's Pizza Corporation (1991), The Others Award from the Salvation Army (1990), several honorary doctorates from various colleges and universities (1982-1995), and Outstanding Young Man of Boston from the Chamber of Commerce (1960). Recognized as a champion for historic orthodoxy, Colson ignited a controversy in the Protestant world in the mid-1990s with his initiative to declare common ground with conservative Roman Catholics in two documents called "Evangelicals and Catholics Together." The evangelical-Catholic issue was just one in which Colson brought intellectual vitality to popular Evangelicalism in the last three decades. Many considered him a prophetic voice for the evangelical community, and, perhaps, an intellectual successor to theologian/sociologist Francis Schaeffer. Perhaps in open recognition of that legacy, his magnum opus was titled "How Now Shall We Live?" after Schaeffer's "How Then Shall We Live?" In all, Colson wrote more than 30 books, which have sold more than five million copies. His autobiographical book, "Born Again," was one of the nation's best-selling books of all kinds in 1976 and was made into a feature-length film. His last book, "The Faith," is a powerful appeal to the Church to re-embrace the foundational truths of Christianity. Colson was one of the Christian community's most sought-after speakers, but he resolutely refused to establish a speaker's fee. Perhaps anticipating criticism of any appearance of self-enrichment by a former Watergate figure, Colson donated all speaking honoraria and book royalties to the ministry and accepted the salary of a mid-range ministry executive. In 1991 Colson launched "BreakPoint," a unique radio commentary that provides a Christian perspective on today's news and trends. "BreakPoint" was aired weekdays on more than 1,400 outlets nationwide with an audience of 8 million listeners. But his heart was ever with the prisoner. He clearly never forgot the promise he'd made to his fellow inmates during his brief stay in prison that he would never forget those behind bars. In his later years, Colson focused full time on developing other Christian leaders who could influence the culture and their communities through their faith. The capstone of this effort was The Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview, a research and training center launched in 2009 for the promotion of Christian worldview teaching. In addition to a vast library of worldview materials, the Colson Center provides online courses and serves as a catalyst for a growing movement of Christian organizations dedicated to impacting the culture. In 2009, Colson was a principal writer of the Manhattan Declaration, which calls on Christians to defend the sanctity of human life, traditional marriage and religious freedom. More than half a million people have signed the Manhattan Declaration. Collaborating with other Christian leaders, Colson aimed to launch other ecumenical grassroots movements around moral and ethical issues of great concern. Colson was born in Boston in 1931 and received a scholarship to Brown University and went on to earn his law degree at George Washington University in Washington. He served in the Marine Corps from 1953-1955, becoming what was at the time its youngest captain. He began his political career in 1956, when he was the youngest administrative assistant in the Senate, working for Massachusetts Senator Leverett Saltonstall. Although God worked through Colson to encourage Christians around the world and serve many whom society would often neglect, his greatest love and focus were his family. Colson is survived by his wife of 48 years, Patty; three children, Wendell, Christian and Emily; and five grandchildren. 10) Who Is 'Racist'? Creators.com http://www.creators.com/print/conservative/thomas-sowell/who-is-racist.html http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2875453/posts April 24, 2012 Thomas Sowell Whatever the ultimate outcome of the case against George Zimmerman for his shooting of Trayvon Martin, what has happened already is enough to turn the stomach of anyone who believes in either truth or justice. An amazing proportion of the media has given us a painful demonstration of the thinking - and lack of thinking - that prevailed back in the days of the old Jim Crow South, where complexion counted more than facts in determining how people were treated. One of the first things presented in the media was a transcript of a conversation between George Zimmerman and a police dispatcher. The last line in most of the transcripts shown on TV was that of the police dispatcher telling Zimmerman not to continue following Trayvon Martin. That became the basis of many media criticisms of Zimmerman for continuing to follow him. Only later did I see a transcript of that conversation on the Sean Hannity program that included Zimmerman's reply to the police dispatcher: "O.K." That reply removed the only basis for assuming that Zimmerman did in fact continue to follow Trayvon Martin. At this point, neither I nor the people who assumed that he continued to follow the teenager have any basis in fact for believing that he did or didn't. Why was that reply edited out by so many in the media? Because too many people in the media see their role as filtering and slanting the news to fit their own vision of the world. The issue is not one of being "fair" to "both sides" but, more fundamentally, of being honest with their audience. NBC News carried the editing even further, removing one of the police dispatcher's questions, to which Zimmerman was responding, in order to feed the vision of Zimmerman as a racist. In the same vein were the repeated references to Zimmerman as a "white Hispanic." Zimmerman is half-white. So is Barack Obama. But does anyone refer to Obama as a "white African"? All these verbal games grow out of the notion that complexion tells you who is to be blamed and who is not. It is a dangerous game because race is no game. If the tragic history of the old Jim Crow South in this country is not enough to show that, the history of racial and ethnic tragedies is written in blood in countries around the world. Millions have lost their lives because they looked different, talked differently or belonged to a different religion. In the midst of the Florida tragedy, there was a book published with the unwieldy title, "No Matter What ... They'll Call This Book Racist." Obviously it was written well before the shooting in Florida, but its message - that there is rampant hypocrisy and irrationality in public discussions of race - could not have been better timed. Author Harry Stein, a self-described "reformed white liberal," raised by parents who were even further left, exposes the illogic and outright fraudulence that lies behind so much of what is said about race in the media, in politics and in our educational institutions. He asks a very fundamental question: "Why, even after the Duke University rape fiasco, does the media continue to give credence to every charge of racism?" Harry Stein credits Shelby Steele's book "White Guilt" with opening his eyes to one of the sources of many counterproductive things said and done about race today - namely, guilt about what was done to blacks and other minorities in the past. Let us talk sense, like adults. Nothing that is done to George Zimmerman - justly or unjustly - will unlynch a single black man who was tortured and killed in the Jim Crow South for a crime he didn't commit. Letting hoodlums get away with hoodlumism today does not undo a single injustice of the past. It is not even a favor to the hoodlums, for many of whom hoodlumism is just the first step on a path that leads to the penitentiary, and maybe to the execution chamber. Winston Churchill said, "If the past sits in judgment on the present, the future will be lost." He wasn't talking about racial issues, but what he said applies especially where race is involved. 11) Screw The Earth Pajamas Media http://pjmedia.com/andrewklavan/2012/04/23/screw-the-earth http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2875383/posts 4/23/2012 Andrew Klavan Sunday was Earth Day, and in honor of the occasion, I'd like to say that as far as I'm concerned the Earth can go to hell. The Earth - for those of you who may have fallen behind on your reading - is a piece of rock trapped in a slow death spiral into a cauldron of exploding plasma which, for lack of a better word, we'll call the sun. Because that's its name. There is exactly one interesting or worthwhile thing about this hunk of doomed space debris, and that is: it happens to maintain the conditions necessary for supporting life. (The odds against this would be ridiculously impossible, by the way, if there were no God - so impossible that scientists have been forced to invent all kinds of silly multi-universe scenarios solely for the purpose of convincing themselves that there is no God. But that's their problem, and neither here nor there.) So the earth supports life. Whoopee. And there is exactly one interesting or worthwhile thing about life - only one - and that is the mind of man. "Holy cannoli, Klavan on the Culture," you may be saying to yourself, or even out loud - because, let's face it, you're kind of an odd person - I mean, just look at you. Anyway, "Holy cannoli or even moley," you may be saying, "how can you say the mind of man is the only interesting or worthwhile thing about life? What about the beauty of the running gazelle? The nobility of the flying eagle? The awesome awesomeness of the spacious skies above the amber waves running to the purple mountains above the fruited plains? And how about those glazed donuts with the yellow creme inside? I love those!" First of all, stop talking so much, this is my blog. And b, there is no beauty, no nobility, no awesome awesomeness - not even the taste of a glazed donut - outside the human mind. The science is not yet settled, but reality itself may be in part a production of the human mind as there are some aspects of the world that don't seem to resolve themselves until we observe them. But in any case, the gazelle would be fleet for nothing, the eagle would be a winged eating machine, the skies and the waves and the mountains would be dreams without the dreamer if man were not here to know them. More Important Than the Earth. Once you realize this, everything changes. You no longer worry about the earth running out of energy resources, because you realize there are no energy resources - there never were - there are only various forms of matter that our minds, the mind of man, transformed into energy resources for our pleasure and convenience. These will never run out as long as we're here because the mind is limitless and will invent more. You no longer worry about pollution, because you know that once free people become annoyed by it, other free people will fix it with cleaner fuel-burning methods and filters. Where are the pea soups of London? Where are the smogs of Los Angeles? Where are the snows of yesteryear? All right, I was just curious about that last one. You no longer worry about the earth, because the earth is here for us, not the other way around. The earth is just our living space - for now. We should keep it reasonably clean and pleasant. But a carping obsession with spotless housekeeping turns you into a scolding fishwife - or an environmentalist - and makes life less comfortable for man, not more. I'm a lifelong outdoorsman. I hike. I fish. I run through the woods acting out scenes from Lady Chatterly's Lover. Or I did before the restraining order. I understand that a reasonable caution for the good of the environment should balance the profit motive of those excellent people who provide us with all the wonderful energy we need. I believe we can begin to achieve that reasonable caution by burying every environmentalist we can find up to his neck and then pouring honey on his head to attract the ants. You like ants, don't you? So there's a good way to celebrate Earth Day! The earth is not warming catastrophically. Fracking does not cause earthquakes. We should find and use every drop of oil we've got - there's enough there for centuries, by which time we'll be living on Alpha Centauri powering our flying cars with toilet paper or old pages of Barack Obama's autobiography. but I repeat myself. So screw Earth Day. I would like to declare today - and every day - the Mind of Man Day. Celebrate that - nurture that - glorify that - and the earth, believe me, will take care of itself. 12) Denver Priest 'Pulls Out The Big Guns' On Planned Parenthood: Says Mass On Street Outside Clinic Life Site News http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/denver-priest-pulls-out-the-big-guns-on-planned-parenthood-says-mass-on-the http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2876029/posts April 23, 2012 Christine Dhanagom Prayerbooks, rosaries, and pro-life pamphlets are a common sight outside Planned Parenthood's massive facility in downtown Denver, but this year, local organizers of this spring's Forty Days for Life campaign decided that one last piece was missing to bring the light of Christ to the country's second largest abortion facility: the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. The idea to celebrate the Catholic Mass in front of Planned Parenthood came from Fr. Joseph Hearty, Assistant Pastor at Our Lady of Mount Carmel in nearby Littleton, who felt that it was time to "pull out the big guns." It was, he told LifeSiteNews, an inspiration from the Holy Spirit. "If we can pray the rosary, why not offer the Mass, why not use the Mass and the Eucharist as a means of fighting this tragedy," he said. "Why not use the most powerful means that we have?" As it turned out, the idea energized the local pro-life community far beyond what organizers had expected. Fr. Hearty planned for thirty attendees at his first Mass on March 3rd, and got a hundred. Providentially, an empty parking lot right across the street from the Planned Parenthood owned by a pro-life couple was big enough to accommodate the crowd. As a member of the traditional Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter, Fr. Hearty celebrated the traditional Latin Mass, known as the Tridentine Mass. Diocesan priests have also gotten in on the action, though, with six different Masses offered in the parking lot during the Forty Day campaign in English and Spanish. All six Masses were well attended, averaging between fifty and a hundred persons. A March 31st closing rally kicked off with a Spanish Mass, followed by a rosary led by Bishop James Conley, apostolic administrator for the Denver Archdiocese. In comments at the rally, Bishop Conley urged pro-lifers to vigilance as Planned Parenthood continues to build "megaplex death mills" across the country, the Denver Catholic Register reports. According to the Register, over 300 people attended the rally, which ended with a second Latin Mass celebrated by Fr. Hearty. There were so many at the final Mass that the priest returned to the altar four times to break up the hosts for distribution before finally running out. The popularity of the idea, says Fr. Hearty, is a sign that "people really want to do something." He hopes the idea will spread, and in particular that clergy in other parts of the country will be inspired to become more involved in pro-life work. "That's our vocation," he said. "We're there to mediate, and we're there to lead, and we're there to encourage." As for the effort in Denver, organizers are hoping to build on the momentum and establish a regular schedule of Masses in front of the clinic, continuing to wage spiritual warfare against the nation's largest abortion provider. "Our fight is not against the world, it's against principalities and darkness, it's against evil, it is against the devil," says Fr. Hearty. "Why not make a few demons quake?" 13) Dad Rescues 'Brain Dead' Son From Doctors Wishing To Harvest His Organs - Boy Recovers Completely Life Site News http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/dad-rescues-brain-dead-son-from-doctors-wishing-to-harvest-his-organs-boy-r http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2876918/posts April 25, 2012 Matthew Cullinan Hoffman According to the Daily Mail newspaper, a young British man owes his life to an insistent father who would not allow his son's organs to be removed from his body, despite assurances from four doctors that his son could not recover from the wounds he had suffered in a recent car accident. The Mail reports that Stephen Thorpe, then 17, was placed in a medically-induced coma following a multi-car pileup that had already taken the life of his friend Matthew, who was driving the vehicle. Although a team of four physicians insisted that his son was "brain-dead" following the wreck, Thorpe's father enlisted the help of a general practitioner and a neurologist, who demonstrated that his son still had brain wave activity. The doctors agreed to bring him out of the coma, and five weeks later Thorpe left the hospital, having almost completely recovered. Today, the 21-year-old with "brain damage" is studying accounting at a local university. "'My impression is maybe the hospital weren't very happy that my father wanted a second opinion," he told the Mail. The case is similar to dozens of others LifeSiteNews has reported in recent years, in which comatose or otherwise unconscious patients are declared to be "brain dead," or hopelessly incurable. In many cases, aggressive doctors seek the organs of the patient for harvesting. In 2011, the Quebec Hospital Sainte Croix de Drummondville sought permission to extract the eyes of a patient who had choked on hospital food in the absence of a nurse, claiming she was "brain dead." After the family demanded proof from physicians of her alleged condition, she regained consciousness, and recovered most of her faculties. The family declared its intention to sue the hospital. In 2008, a 45-year-old Frenchman revived on the operating table as doctors prepared to "harvest" his organs for donation, following cardiac arrest. In the subsequent investigation by the hospital's ethics committee, a number of doctors admitted that such cases, while rare, were well known to them. That same year, a "brain dead" 21-year-old American, Zack Dunlap, was about to have his organs harvested when his two sisters, both nurses, decided to test the hospital's theory that his brain was no longer functioning. Family members poked his feet with a knife and dug their fingernails under his nails, provoking strong reactions by Dunlap and proving he was conscious. He recovered completely. He later related that he was conscious and aware as doctors discussed harvesting his organs in his presence. The term "brain death" was invented in 1968 to accommodate the need to acquire vital organs in their "freshest" state from a donor who some argue is still very much alive. While death had previously been defined as lack of respiration and heart activity, "brain death" was judged as compatible with an otherwise living patient. "Brain death" has never been rigorously defined, and there are no standardized tests to determine if the condition exists. Dr. John Shea, a medical advisor to LifeSiteNews.com, points out that patients diagnosed as "brain dead" often continue to exhibit brain functions. In "Organ Donation: The Inconvenient Truth", Shea states that the criteria for "brain death" only "test for the absence of some specific brain reflexes. Functions of the brain that are not considered are temperature control, blood pressure, cardiac rate and salt and water balance. When a patient is declared brain dead, these functions are not only still present, but also frequently active." 14) Comic Strip To Feature Homosexual 'Prom' Date Life Site News http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/comic-strip-to-feature-homosexual-prom-date http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2876701/posts 4/24/2012 Ben Johnson A long-running, nationally syndicated comic strip will feature a homosexual couple holding hands and attending the prom together. "Funky Winkerbean" will depict two men holding hands as they buy tickets at the fictional Westview High School. "So, who are you guys taking to the prom, anyway?" asks a young female ticket seller. "Uh, that would be each other," they reply. The comic is featured in 400 newspapers nationwide. "Dealing with intolerance is something I've dealt with many times before. Adding the gay angle is just a twist to the topic," said strip creator Tom Batiuk (pronounced "Battick"), 63. However, in December 2009, Batiuk featured six comic strips about the "bullying" of homosexual character Cody. "I'm not trying to shock anyone," Batiuk stated. "I'm just telling a story." The strip, which celebrated its 40th anniversary last month, joins a growing number of homosexual characters in juvenile literature. Archie comic book character Kevin Keller "married" his boyfriend in the January 2012 issue. Archie Comics CEO Jon Goldwater said the introduction of the first openly homosexual character into the world of Jughead, Betty, and Veronica in September 2010 was "just about keeping the world of Archie Comics current and inclusive. Archie's hometown of Riverdale has always been a safe world for everyone." One Million Moms, a project of the American Family Association, asked for members to contact Toys 'R' Us stores to prevent the issue's display in front of an impressionable young audience. "Unfortunately, children are now being exposed to same-sex marriage in a toy store," the organization's press release said. "This is the last place a parent would expect to be confronted with questions from their children" about sexual orientation. The homosexual teen storyline was opposed by co-CEO Nancy Silberkleit, a former third grade teacher. She and Goldwater are locked in a legal battle for control of the comic empire. Jon Goldwater - who is distantly related to Barry Goldwater - wants to "update" the message to expand its earnings potential. He has discussed creating a Hollywood film about Archie with help from Rahm Emanuel's brother, Ari, a Hollywood "super agent" who called for a Hollywood boycott of Mel Gibson in 2006. The comic book's new direction is a far cry from the example of Jon's father and company founder John L. Goldwater, who reveled in the comic's wholesome image. Although Jewish, he allowed the Archie characters to be used in Christian-themed comic books for a fee. Christian Spire Comics created 18 faith-themed Archie issues from 1973-1982. "That was a really nice piece of business for a long time," said Michael Silberkleit, who ran the company from 1983 until his death in 2008. A Christian Archie comic from the 1970s. Neither Archie nor "Funky Winkerbean" is the first comic strip to feature an LGBT character. In 1993, Lynn Johnston's "For Better or Worse" revealed the character Lawrence was a homosexual. Batiuk said "the younger generation's attitudes toward gays," though "not perfect," are "more open and accepting than their predecessors." "It shows promise for an emerging generation that will bring this issue [of acceptance of open homosexuality in high schools] to an end." "This [strip] is a pretty straight-forward expression of how I feel about the subject," he said. The comic strip featuring the couple will run on April 30. 15) Parents: Don't Delay Baptism For Your Infants! Archdiocese Of Washington http://blog.adw.org/2012/04/parents-dont-delay-baptism-for-your-infants/ http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2877390/posts April 22, 2012 Monsignor Charles Pope BAPTISM There is a trend that has set up for years now, and that is that Catholics are waiting many months to get their children baptized. I suspect that what we have here is a combination of a much lower infant mortality rate and, also, a less fervent practice of the faith by many. Further, there seems little sense among the faithful today that an unbaptized infant would be excluded from heaven. As regards the last point, I think it is pastorally sound to trust in God's mercy for infants who die before baptism. However, I do not think it follows that we ought to disregard or substantially delay a sacrament which Jesus commands, and which the Church indicates ought not to be delayed. The Code of Canon Law says the following: Parents are obliged to see that their infants are baptised within the first few weeks. As soon as possible after the birth, indeed even before it, they are to approach the parish priest to ask for the sacrament for their child, and to be themselves duly prepared for it. If the infant is in danger of death, it is to be baptised without any delay. Can. 867 §1,§2 The Catechism also states: The Church and parents deny a child the priceless grace of becoming a child of God were they not to confer baptism shortly after birth. (CCC # 1250) So it seems clear that a higher priority should be given to scheduling the baptism of babies within the first few weeks after birth. Protestant practice departs from the received Tradition - Another factor for American Catholics is that many are influenced by the Protestants. Protestants, (though not all of them) disagree with our Catholic practice of baptizing infants. They usually wait until a child is between 8 and 12 to baptize, reasoning that the child will know and understand what is happening and be able to claim Christ for themselves. But, I hope you see the supreme irony of this in the fact that the Protestants, who so emphasize that salvation does not come from works, delay baptism on the grounds that the infant has not achieved (i.e. worked up to) the proper level of maturity. To know, requires one to learn, which is a work. And we Catholics, who supposedly teach salvation through works (we do not), baptize infants who can work no work. Novelty - Indeed, the Protestant denominations (mostly Baptists (another irony), Pentecostals, Fundamentalist and Evangelicals) who refuse baptism to infants, engage in a novelty unknown to the Church until recent times. It is a simple historical fact that the Church has always baptized infants. Even our earliest documents speak of the practice. For example the Apostolic Tradition written about 215 A.D. has this to say: The children shall be baptized first. All of the children who can answer for themselves, let them answer. If there are any children who cannot answer for themselves, let their parents answer for them, or someone else from their family. (Apostolic Tradition # 21) Scripture too confirms that infants should be baptized if you do the math. For example People were also bringing babies to Jesus to have him touch them. When the disciples saw this, they rebuked them. But Jesus called the children to him and said, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. (Luke 18:15-17 NIV) So the Kingdom of God belongs to the little children (in Greek ????? (brephe) indicating infants and little children still held in the arms, babes). And yet elsewhere Jesus also reminds that it is necessary to be baptized in order to enter the Kingdom of God: Jesus answered, "I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. (John 3:5 NIV) If the Kingdom of God belongs to little children, and we are taught that we cannot inherit it without baptism, then it follows that baptizing infants is necessary, and that to fail to do so, is a hindering of the little children which Jesus forbade his apostles to do. So both Tradition and Scripture affirm the practice of baptizing infants. Many of the Protestants who do refuse infant baptism also water down (pardon the pun!) the fuller meaning of baptism, no longer seeing it as washing away sins and conferring righteousness per se, but more as a symbol of faith that they claim to have already received when they said the "sinners prayer" and accepted Christ as their savior. But what a tragic loss for them, since baptism and particularly the baptism of infants, says some very wonderful things about the complete gratuity of salvation and the goodness of God. Consider these points: 1. The baptism of infants is a powerful testimony to the absolute gratuity (gift) of salvation. Infants have achieved nothing, have not worked, have not done anything to "merit" salvation. The Catechism puts it this way: The sheer gratuitousness of the grace of salvation is particularly manifest in infant baptism. (CCC # 1250) The Church is clear, salvation cannot be earned or merited and infant baptism teaches that most clearly. Salvation is pure gift. How strange and ironic that some of the very denominations which claim that Catholics teach salvation by works (we do not) also refuse, themselves, to baptize infants. They claim that a certain age of maturity is required so that the person understands what they are doing. But this sounds like achievement to me. That the child must meet some requirement, seems like a work, or the attainment of some meritorious status wherein one is now old enough to "qualify" for baptism and salvation. "Qualifications..Achievement (of age)..Requirements..it all sounds like what they accuse us of: namely works and merit. To be clear then, the Catholic understanding of the gratuity of salvation is far more radical than many non-Catholics understand. We baptize infants who are not capable of meriting, attaining or earning. 2. The Baptism of infants also powerfully attests to the fact that the beauty of holiness and righteousness is available to everyone regardless of age. To be baptized means to be washed. Washed of what? Original Sin. At first this seems like a downer, "Are you saying my baby has sin?" Yep. All of us inherit Original Sin from Adam and Eve. We are born into a state of alienation from God that is caused by sin. The Scriptures are clear: [S]in entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned (Rom 5:12). So even infants are in need of the saving touch of God. Now why would we wish to delay this salvation and resulting holiness for 7 to 12 years? The Catechism says this, Born with a fallen human nature and tainted by Original Sin, children also have need of new birth in Baptism to be freed from the power of darkness and be brought into the realm of the freedom of the children of God..The Church and parents would deny a child the priceless grace of becoming a child of God were they not to confer baptism shortly after birth. (CCC # 1250). St. Cyprian Bishop of Carthage in the 3rd Century was asked if it was OK to wait to the 8th day to baptize since baptism had replaced circumcision. He respond with a strong no: But in respect of the case of the infants, which you say ought not to be baptized within the second or third day after their birth, and that the law of ancient circumcision should be regarded, so that you think that one who is just born should not be baptized and sanctified within the eighth day We [the bishops] all thought very differently in our council. For in this course which you thought was to be taken, no one agreed; but we all rather judge that the mercy and grace of God is not to be refused to any one born of man. (Epist# 58). So then here is the beauty, that infants are summoned to receive the precious gift of holiness and righteousness and that they are summoned to a right relationship with God by having their sin purged and holiness infused. Infants are called to this dignity and should not be denied it. With this done, some of the holiest and most innocent days of our lives may well be our first years. Then, as the will begins to manifest, and reason begins to dawn, the grace of holiness gives us extra strength to fight against the sinful world that looms. 3. The Baptism of Infants also attests to the fact that faith is gift for every stage of development- To be baptized is to receive the gift of faith. It is baptism that gives the true faith. Even with adults, true faith does not come until baptism. Prior to that there is a kind of prevenient faith, but it is not the Theological Virtue of Faith. Now faith is not only an intellectual assent to revealed doctrine. It is that, but it is more. To have faith is also be be in a righteous and trusting relationship with God. An infant relates to his parents long before he speaks or his rational mind is fully formed. He trusts his parents and depends on them. It is the same with God. Thus the infant can well trust and depend on God and be in a right relationship with God, in an age appropriate way. With his parents, his or her relationship of trust with parents, leads the infant to begin to speak and understand as he or she grows. It is the same with God. As the infant's mind awakens, the infant's faith grows. It will continue to grow until the day he or she dies (hopefully) as an old man or woman. That faith accompanies us through every stage of our life, and develops as we do, is essential to its nature. An infant needs faith no less than an old man. An infant benefits from faith no less than a teenager or an adult. To argue, as some Protestants do, that you have to be a certain age before faith can exist, hardly seems to respect the progressive nature of faith which is able to bless EVERY stage of our human journey. I have some very vivid memories of my experience of God prior to seven years of age and I will say that God was very powerfully present to me in my early years, in many ways even more so than now, when my mind sometimes "gets in the way." Too many Catholics are waiting months, even years to have their children baptized. Precious time is lost by this delay. Infant Baptism speaks powerfully of the love that God has for everyone he has created and of his desire to have everyone in a right and saving relationship with Him. Surely baptism alone isn't enough. The child must be raised in the faith. It is the nature of faith that it grows by hearing and seeing. Children must have faith given at baptism but that faith must be explained and unwrapped like a precious gift for them. Don't delay. Get started early and teach your child the faith they have received every day. 16) Glee Celebrates The 'T' Townhall.com http://townhall.com/columnists/brentbozell/2012/04/27/glee_celebrates_the_t http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2877084/posts April 27, 2012 Brent Bozell It was a very special disco-themed episode of "Glee" on Fox the other night. A new character named Wade from a different high school shared that he was born in the wrong body. He was black, but he said he felt he was born white and decided to go out on stage at Regionals painted over as a white man. Everyone adored and applauded him as he sang "Boogie Shoes" looking just like the lead singer of KC and the Sunshine Band. If you actually watch "Glee" or just know Hollywood liberals, you know I'm kidding. Of course, he wasn't a white kid trapped in a black body. Wade was an unfortunate boy "trapped" in a male body. It was "Transgender Is Cool" night. Everyone must adore and applaud. A new wall is down. Of course, had Wade wanted to reject his blackness, Hollywood would suggest there's something wrong with this boy. Why does he hate his own nature? What's wrong with being black? And how does a boy know he's not black? But the sexual libertines are different for some reason. They don't think it's wrong to reject your gender. In fact, it's a wonderful delusion to think you're something else. Society just needs the enlightenment and the "courage" to applaud it. Why do parents allow their children to watch this garbage? On "Glee," Wade shows up declaring that he only had the confidence to come to school because "I pretended I was a different person, a person I dreamed of being -- the real me." The "real me" is named -- I'm not making this up -- "Unique." Kurt, the effeminate homosexual teen, replies, "Unique sounds like a really great person. I hope one day you can build up enough courage to be him." Wade rebutted: "Actually, Unique's a her ... because that's what I feel like I am, inside." Dude. Or is it Dudess"? Wade's told that "this is Ohio" and it's not going to be accepted if he sings "Boogie Shoes" dressed up in a black dress and high heels. But "Unique" shows up to perform and is adored by the crowd. It's a true Hollywood ending. The Huffington Post recently published an article titled "Raising a Transgender Child: A Star is Born." A mother named Julie Ross reported her 9-year-old son George declared, "he is a girl." Nine years old. The moment of "truth" came when the Boston Globe published an article on its front page about identical twin boys, "one of whom had identified as transgender and was now living fully as a girl." Her son saw it and "It was at that moment that Jessie was born, moved in and has since made herself comfortable in my house." Shortly thereafter, "Jessie" got pierced ears and announced "herself" at school by showing up at Pajama Day in pink polka-dot pajamas. The Globe story was headlined "Led by the child who simply knew. The twin boys were identical in every way but one. Wyatt was a girl to the core, and now lives as one, with the help of a brave, loving family and a path-breaking doctor's care." The Globe promoted the "Children's Hospital Gender Management Services Clinic," which employs hormone therapies to halt puberty in "transgender children, blocking the development of secondary sexual characteristics -- a beard, say, or breasts -- that can make the eventual transition to the other gender more difficult, painful, and costly." The "girl" twin, Wyatt, now 14 and calling himself "Nicole," said the next step is mutilation -- "to undergo surgery to get a physical female body that matches up to my image of myself." It's so Orwellian that libertines promote you should find "who you really are" by rejecting exactly "who you really are." At the Huffington Post, Ross reported that her son has received "total acceptance" in his imagined gender and she is "grateful that Jessie's social transition, thus far, has been as seamless as we ever could have hoped for. She has that sparkle in her eye and a new confidence which is the envy of many an adult." Bill O'Reilly dared to strike a blow for traditionalism -- and simple rational thought -- on Fox News, not buying this "The Emperor Has Girl Clothes" attitude that's demanded of everyone. He said "Glee" could cause imitators: "They might go out and experiment with this stuff." For this obvious point, he was roundly booed. Judge Jeannine Pirro replied incredulously to O'Reilly, "You're not saying it's contagious." It's not a medical metaphor. It's the usual Hollywood metaphor. They demand no one show someone glamorously smoking a cigarette because it promotes an unhealthy lifestyle. But it's truly a progressive moment of "truth" to show someone universally applauded for glamorously rejecting his or her own gender. What's left out, with a fear of a viewpoint becoming "contagious"? Anyone who disagrees. 17) On Prayer And Ministry: Without Prayer 'We Risk Suffocating Amid A Thousand Daily Cares' Zenit News Agency http://www.zenit.org/article-34664?l=english http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2878225/posts April 25, 2012 Pope Benedict XVI Here is a translation of the Italian-language catechesis Benedict XVI gave today during the general audience held in St. Peter's Square. The Pope continued his reflection on prayer in the Acts of the Apostles. * * * Dear brothers and sisters, In the last catechesis, I showed that from the beginning of her journey, the Church found herself having to face unforeseen situations, new questions and emergencies, which she sought to respond to in the light of faith, by allowing herself to be guided by the Holy Spirit. Today I would like to pause to reflect on another of these situations, on a serious problem that the first Christian community in Jerusalem had to face and resolve, as St. Luke tells us in the sixth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, regarding the pastoral care of charity shown to those were alone and in need of help and assistance. The question is not of secondary importance for the Church and, at the time, it risked creating divisions within the Church; in fact, the number of the disciples was increasing, but the Hellenists began to murmur against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution (cf. Acts 6:1). Faced with this urgent need involving a fundamental aspect of the life of the community; i.e. charity shown to the weak, the poor, and the defenseless -- and justice -- the Apostles summon the whole group of the disciples. At this time of pastoral emergency what stands out is the Apostles' discernment. They are faced with the primary need to proclaim the Word of God according to the mandate of the Lord; but even though this is the primary demand placed upon the Church -- they consider with equal seriousness the duty of charity and of justice, that is, the duty of assisting widows and the poor, of lovingly providing for their brothers and sisters in situations of need, in order to respond to Jesus' command: love one another as I have loved you (cf. John 15:12,17). Therefore, the two realities they must live out within the Church -- the proclamation of the Word, the primacy of God, and concrete charity, justice -- are creating difficulties and a solution must be found, so that both may have their place, their necessary relation. The Apostles' reflection is very clear; they say, as we heard: "It is not right that we should give up preaching the Word of God to serve tables. Therefore, brethren, pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we may appoint to this duty. But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word" (Acts 6:2-4). Two things appear: first, that from that moment in the Church, there is a ministry of charity. The Church must not only proclaim the Word; she must also make the Word, which is charity and truth, a reality. And the second point: these men were to be not only of good repute; they must be men filled with the Holy Spirit and wisdom; that is, they cannot be mere organizers who know how to "do"; they must "do so" in the spirit of faith by the light of God, in wisdom of heart. Therefore also their role -- though primarily of a practical nature -- is still a spiritual role. Charity and justice are not only social actions; rather, they are spiritual activities realized in the light of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, we may say that the situation is handled with great responsibility on the part of the Apostles, who make this decision: seven men are chosen; the Apostles pray in order to ask for the power of the Holy Spirit; and then they lay hands on them so that they might be dedicated in a special way to this service of charity. Thus, in the Church's life, in the first steps she takes, what happened during Jesus' public life, in the home of Martha and Mary in Bethania, is reflected in a certain way. Martha was wholly given over to the service of hospitality offered to Jesus and to His disciples; Mary, on the other hand, devotes herself to listening to the Word of the Lord (cf. Luke 10:38-42). In both cases, the moments of prayer and of listening to God, and daily activity, i.e. the exercise of charity, are not placed in opposition. Jesus' reminder: "Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things; one thing is needful. Mary has chosen the better part, which shall not be taken away from her" (Luke 10:41-42), as well as the Apostles' reflection: "We . will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the Word" (Acts 6:4), demonstrate the priority that we must give to God. I do not wish to enter now into an interpretation of this Martha-Mary pericope. At any rate, activity on behalf of one's neighbor, for the other, should not be condemned; however, it should be emphasized that activity must also be penetrated interiorly by the spirit of contemplation. On the other hand, St. Augustine says that the reality of Mary is a vision of what shall be ours in heaven; therefore, on earth we can never have it completely, but a little taste of anticipation must nonetheless be present in all of our activities. The contemplation of God must also be present. We must not lose ourselves in pure activism, but should always allow ourselves to be penetrated, even in our activity, by the light of God's Word and thereby learn true charity, true service of our neighbor, who doesn't need many things -- certainly he has need of the necessities -- but who above all needs our heart's affection, the light of God. St. Ambrose, commenting on the episode of Martha and Mary, thus exhorts his faithful and also us: "Let us also seek to have what cannot be taken away from us, by offering diligent, undistracted attention to the Lord's Word: for it also happens that the seeds of the heavenly word are carried off, if they are strewn along the path. Like Mary, stir up within yourself the desire to know: this is the greatest, most perfect work." And he adds: "may the care of ministry not distract us from the knowledge of heavenly words," from prayer (Expositio Evangelii secundum Lucam, VII, 85: PL 15, 1720). The saints, then, have experienced a profound unity of life between prayer and action, between total love of God and love for the brethren. St. Bernard, who is a model of harmony between contemplation and industriousness, in the book De consideratione, addressed to Pope Innocent II in order to offer him a few reflections on his ministry, insists precisely upon the importance of interior recollection and of prayer in defending oneself from the dangers of excessive activity, whatever be the condition in which we find ourselves and the task we carry out. St. Bernard affirms that too many occupations, a frenetic life, often end in hardening the heart and in making the spirit suffer (cf. II, 3). It is a precious reminder for us today, habituated as we are to evaluate everything based upon the criteria of productivity and efficiency. The passage from the Acts of the Apostles reminds us of the importance of work -- whence, undoubtedly, true ministry is born - and of the importance of commitment to daily activity responsibly carried out with dedication, but it also reminds us of our need for God, for His guidance, for His light, which gives us strength and hope. Without daily prayer faithfully lived out, our activity becomes empty, it loses its deep soul, it is reduced to mere activism, which in the end leaves us unsatisfied. There is a beautiful invocation from the Christian tradition to be recited before each activity, which goes like this: "Actiones nostras, quæsumus, Domine, aspirando præveni et adiuvando prosequere, ut cuncta nostra oratio et operatio a te semper incipiat, et per te coepta finiatur", that is: "Inspire our actions, Lord, and accompany them by your help, so that our every word and act may always have its beginning in you and in you be brought to completion." Every step of our lives, every action -- also of the Church -- must be carried out before God, in the light of His Word. In last Wednesday's catechesis I had emphasized the first Christian community's undivided prayer in the face of trial and how, precisely in prayer, in meditation on Sacred Scripture, it was able to understand the events it was going through. When prayer is nourished by the Word of God we are able to see reality with new eyes, with the eyes of faith, and the Lord -- who speaks to the mind and heart -- gives new light on the journey at every moment and in every situation. We believe in the power of God's Word and in prayer. Even the difficulties the Church was living through when faced with the problem of service to the poor -- the question of charity -- were overcome through prayer, in the light of God, of the Holy Spirit. The Apostles did not merely ratify their choice of Stephen and the other men, but "after having prayed, they laid their hands upon them" (Acts 6:6). The Evangelist will record these acts again on the occasion of the election of Paul and Barnabas, where we read: "after fasting and praying they laid their hands on them and sent them off" (Acts 13:3). It again confirms that the practice of charity is a spiritual service. Both realities must go together. With the laying on of hands, the Apostles confer a particular ministry upon seven men, so that they might be given the corresponding grace. The emphasis on prayer -- "after praying," they say -- is important because it highlights the action's spiritual dimension; it is not simply a matter of conferring a task, as happens in a social organization; rather, it is an ecclesial event in which the Holy Spirit appropriates to Himself seven men whom the Church has chosen by consecrating them in the Truth, who is Jesus Christ: He is the silent protagonist, present in the imposition of hands so that those who are chosen might be transformed by His power and sanctified in order to face the practical challenges, the challenges of pastoral life. And the emphasis on prayer reminds us, moreover, that it is only through and intimate relationship with God cultivated each day that a response to the Lord's choice is born and that every ministry in the Church is entrusted. Dear brothers and sisters, the pastoral problem that led the Apostles to choose and lay hands on seven men charged with the task of the service of charity, in order that they might dedicate themselves to prayer and to preaching the Word, indicates also to us the primacy of prayer and of God's Word, which then also produces pastoral action. For Pastors, this is the first and most precious form of service paid to the flock entrusted to them. If the lungs of prayer and the Word of God fail to nourish the breath of our spiritual life, we risk suffocating amid a thousand daily cares: prayer is the breath of the soul and of life. And there is another precious reminder that I would like to emphasize: in our relationship with God, in listening to His Word, in conversation with God, even when we find ourselves in the silence of a church or in our room, we are united in the Lord with so many brothers and sisters in faith, like an ensemble of instruments that, though retaining their individuality, offer to God one great symphony of intercession, of thanksgiving and of praise. Thank you. [In English, he said:] Dear Brothers and Sisters, In our catechesis on Christian prayer, we now consider the decision of the early Church to set aside seven men to provide for the practical demands of charity (cf. Acts 6:1-4). This decision, made after prayer and discernment, provided for the needs of the poor while freeing the Apostles to devote themselves primarily to the word of God. It is significant that the Apostles acknowledge the importance of both prayer and works of charity, yet clearly give priority to prayer and the proclamation of the Gospel. In every age the saints have stressed the deep vital unity between contemplation and activity. Prayer, nourished by faith and enlightened by God's word, enables us to see things in a new way and to respond to new situations with the wisdom and insight bestowed by the Holy Spirit. In our own daily lives and decisions, may we always draw fresh spiritual breath from the two lungs of prayer and the word of God; in this way, we will respond to every challenge and situation with wisdom, understanding and fidelity to God's will. I greet all the English-speaking pilgrims and visitors present at today's Audience, including those from England, Finland, Sweden, Nigeria, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and the United States of America. Upon you and your families I cordially invoke the joy and peace of the Risen Lord. [In Italian, he said:] Lastly, my thoughts turn to young people, to the sick and to newlyweds. Dear young people, may you enter the school of Christ and learn therein to faithfully follow in His footsteps. May you, dear sick, receive your trials in faith and live them in union with Christ's. I hope that you, dear newlyweds, will become generous servants of the Gospel of life. 18) On The Prayer Of The First Christian Martyr: "Our Prayer, Too, Should Be Nourished By Listening To God's Word" Zenit News Agency http://www.zenit.org/article-34708?l=english http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2879420/posts May 2, 2012 Pope Benedict XVI Here is a translation of the Italian-language catechesis Benedict XVI gave today during the general audience held in St. Peter's Square. On this first Wednesday in May the Holy Father continued his catecheses on prayer by reflecting on the witness and prayer of the Church's first martyr, St. Stephen. * * * Dear brothers and sisters, In the most recent catecheses, we have seen how in personal and communal prayer, reading and meditation on Sacred Scripture open us to hear God who speaks to us, and infuse us with light in order that we may understand the present. Today I would like to speak about the witness and prayer of the Church's first martyr, St. Stephen, one of the seven who were chosen for the service of charity to those in need. At the moment of his martyrdom, as narrated in the Acts of the Apostles, the fruitful relationship between the Word of God and prayer is again revealed. Stephen is brought into court before the Sanhedrin, where he is accused of having declared that "Jesus . will destroy this place, [the temple], and will change the customs which Moses delivered to us" (Acts 6:14). During His public life, Jesus had in effect foretold the destruction of the temple of Jerusalem: "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up" (John 2:19). Yet, as the Evangelist John notes, "He spoke of the temple of His body. When therefore He was raised from the dead, His disciples remembered that He had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word which Jesus had spoken" (John 2:21-22). Stephen's address before the tribunal, the longest in the Acts of the Apostles, expands precisely upon this prophecy of Jesus, who is the new temple, who inaugurates a new worship and who replaces the ancient sacrifices with His self-offering on the Cross. Stephen wants to show that the accusation made against him of subverting the law of Moses is unfounded and to illustrate his vision of salvation history, of the covenant between God and man. Thus, he reinterprets the whole biblical narrative, the itinerary contained in Sacred Scripture, in order to show that it leads to the "place" of God's definitive presence, which is Jesus Christ, particularly His Passion, Death and Resurrection. Stephen also interprets his discipleship of Jesus within this perspective, following Him to the point of martyrdom. Meditation on Sacred Scripture thus allows him to understand his mission, his life, his present circumstances. In this, he is guided by the light of the Holy Spirit, by his intimate relationship with the Lord, so much so that the members of the Sanhedrin saw that his face "was like that of an angel" (Acts 6:15). This sign of divine assistance recalls the radiant face of Moses as he descended from Mount Sinai after having encountered God (cf. Exodus 34:29-35; 2 Corinthians 3:7-8). In his address, Stephen begins with the call of Abraham, a pilgrim to the land indicated by God, which he possessed only as a promise; he then passes on to Joseph, who was sold by his brothers but was assisted and liberated by God, to finally reach Moses, who becomes God's instrument to liberate His people but who also meets many times with rejection by the same people. What emerges from these events narrated by Sacred Scripture, which show Stephen's devout hearing, is God, who never tires of going out to man even though He often meets with obstinate opposition, and this is true in the past, the present and the future. Therefore, he sees in the whole of the Old Testament the prefiguration of the coming of Jesus Himself, the Son of God made flesh, who -- like the ancient Fathers -- encounters obstacles, refusal and death. Stephen therefore refers to Joshua, to David and to Solomon, who were brought into relationship with the construction of the temple, and he concludes with the words of the prophet Isaiah (66:1-2): "Heaven is my throne, and earth my footstool. What house will you build for me, says the Lord, or what is the place of my rest? Did not my hand make all these things?" (Acts 7:49-50). In his meditation on God's action in salvation history, by emphasizing the perennial temptation to reject God and His action, he affirms that Jesus is the Righteous One announced by the prophets; in Him, God himself has made Himself present in a unique and definitive way: Jesus is the "place" of true worship. Stephen does not deny the importance of the temple for a certain period of time, but he underscores that "God does not dwell in houses made with hands" (Acts 7:48). The new, true temple where God abides is His Son, who put on human flesh; it is the humanity of Christ, the Risen One who gathers the nations and unites them in the Sacrament of His Body and Blood. The expression of the temple as "not made by hands" is also found in the theology of St. Paul and in the Letter to the Hebrews; the body of Jesus, which He assumed in order to offer Himself as a sacrificial victim for the expiation of sins, the body of Jesus is the new temple of God, the place of the presence of the living God; in Him, God and man, God and the world are really in contact: Jesus takes upon Himself all the sin of humanity in order to cast it into God's love and to "burn it" in this love. To approach the Cross, to enter into communion with Christ, means entering into this transformation. This is what it is to enter into contact with God, to enter into the true temple. Stephen's life and words are interrupted suddenly when he is stoned, but his martyrdom is the fulfillment of his life and of his message: he becomes one thing with Christ. Thus, his meditation on God's action in history, on the divine Word, which in Jesus finds its complete fulfillment, becomes a participation in the same prayer of the Cross. Before dying, in fact, he exclaims: "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit" (Acts 7:59), taking as his own the words of Psalm 31 (verse 6) and following the last words of Jesus on Calvary: "Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit" (Luke 23:46). Lastly, like Jesus, he cries out in a loud voice before those who are stoning him: "Lord, do not hold this sin against them" (Acts 7:60). Let us note that, if on the one hand the prayer of Stephen harkens back to Jesus', it is addressed to someone different, because the invocation is addressed to the Lord; that is to Jesus, whom he contemplates glorified at the right hand of the Father: "Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing at the right hand of God" (verse 55). Dear brothers and sisters, St. Stephen's witness offers us several pointers for our prayer and for our lives. We may ask ourselves: where did this first Christian martyr find the strength to face his persecutors and in the end to attain to the gift of himself? The answer is simple: from his relationship with God, from his communion with Christ, from meditation on the history of salvation, from seeing God's action, which in Jesus Christ reached its summit. Our prayer, too, should be nourished by listening to God's Word, in communion with Jesus and His Church. A second element: St. Stephen sees the figure and mission of Jesus prefigured in the story of the relationship of love between God and man. He -- the Son of God -- is the temple "not made by hands" where the presence of God the Father becomes so close that it enters into our human flesh, in order to lead us to God -- in order to open to us the gates of Heaven. Our prayer, then, should be a contemplation of Jesus at the right hand of God, of Jesus as Lord of our, or my, daily life. In Him, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, we too can address God, we can make real contact with God, with the faith and abandonment of children who turn to a Father who loves them infinitely. Thank you. [In English, he said:] Dear Brothers and Sisters, In our catechesis on Christian prayer, we now consider the speech which Saint Stephen, the first martyr, delivered before his death. Stephen's words are clearly grounded in a prayerful re-reading of the Christ event in the light of God's word. Accused of saying that Jesus would destroy the Temple and the customs handed down by Moses, Stephen responds by presenting Jesus as the Righteous One proclaimed by the prophets, in whom God has become present to humanity in a unique and definitive way. As the Son of God made man, Jesus is himself the true temple of God in the world; by His death for our sins and His rising to new life, He has now become the definitive "place" where true worship is offered to God. Stephen's witness to Christ, nourished by prayer, culminates in his martyrdom. By his intercession and example may we learn daily to unite prayer, contemplation of Christ and reflection on God's word. In this way we will appreciate more deeply God's saving plan, and make Christ truly the Lord of our lives. * * * I greet all the English-speaking pilgrims and visitors present at today's audience, including those from England, Ireland, Norway, Sweden, Nigeria, Australia, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Canada and the United States. I offer a cordial welcome to the delegation from the Christian Council of Norway and to the ecumenical groups from Sweden. I also thank the traditional choir from Indonesia for their song. Upon you and your families I cordially invoke God's abundant blessings. [In Italian, he said:] Lastly, a thought goes to young people, to the sick and to newlyweds. May the joy of Easter continue to enliven your lives; dear young people, do not extinguish the aspiration to happiness characteristic of your age, by knowing how to find true joy, which only the Risen one can give; dear sick, may you courageously face the trial of your suffering through the awareness that life should always be lived as God's gift; and may you, dear newlyweds, know how to draw from the teachings of the Gospel all that is necessary for building an authentic community of love. 19) Five Myths About Living Together Before Marriage Christian Post http://www.christianpost.com/news/five-myths-about-living-together-before-marriage-74355/ http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2879865/posts 5/4/2012 Dan Delzell So you think there are advantages to living together rather than getting married. Before you close your mind any tighter on the issue, check out these five myths: Myth #1 Living together first will tell us if we are right for one another. No it won't. You are comparing apples to oranges. Just because one tastes good or bad to you doesn't mean the other will taste the same. Marriage is a totally different proposition than simply living together. Marriage is built upon a promise before God to remain faithful to one another. Living together involves no such promise. You could fail at living together with someone you may have succeeded with in marriage. It all depends upon how much both people are relying on God for assistance and love. By the way, the divorce rate of couples who live together first is significantly higher than for those who do not. If your partner will not commit to you for life, don't deceive yourself into thinking that he or she will be willing to make that commitment at some later point. Marriage is a promise to stay together. Living together for many couples lasts about 18 months, give or take. At the end of that year and a half, you still have no idea how your partner might have done if you both had taken the plunge and made a lifetime commitment to one another. Now you will never know. You settled for the easy way in and the easy way out. Your shot at true love with that person gets blown away with the wind if you decide to shack up first. Living together prepares people to find reasons not to get married. Marriage, on the other hand, is based on unconditional love and a lifetime commitment. It is not an "audition" for marriage like you have with cohabitation. All of us are imperfect and bound to slip up at various times during the audition. Talk about conditional "love." It's "I love you" now....and "I will really love you" once you prove you are worthy. You better walk on eggshells in that situation. It's get pretty dicey in a hurry....and awkward. Myth #2 Living together will show us if we are sexually compatible. No it won't. That would be true if you were animals....say dogs for example. You are human beings. You both have a soul. Sex between dogs is only physical. Sex between human beings was designed to be physical, emotional, and spiritual. God designed it in such a way that sex outside of marriage will never produce what I would call a "spiritual orgasm." That is why it leaves you still feeling empty after the physical orgasm has gone away. Without a spiritual union through Christ, sexual compatibility is only measured in a superficial way. If you have not yet had sex in marriage while both of you are born again and living for Christ, then you have no idea what you are missing. It is the total package....body, soul, and spirit. No wonder people without that union are often drawn to continue experimenting sexually to try to satisfy their hunger for a spiritual union in sex. That hunger can be satisfied, but only in marriage and only when both the husband and the wife are believers in Christ. Myth #3 We are just as committed to each other as a married couple. No you're not. Neither of you are "all in." You are both "hedging your bets." You are both still "kicking the tires." Your "commitment" is conditional. It's not "for better or worse." Instead, it's "for better or....see ya, wouldn't wanna be ya." Anyone in that situation must surely feel the pressure to perform. You have been given a trial run by your partner. Aren't you lucky. Deep down, you know in your heart that marriage is far more than a piece of paper. It is a promise before God to love and cherish your spouse for life. People who only shack up also make a promise, sort of. "I promise to do my best....and to watch you very closely to determine if you are worth it. If it doesn't work out....oh well. It's not like we were married or anything." Myth #4 Our friendship won't suffer by moving in together. That's what you think. Your friendship will soon become tense and uncomfortable. You went from courtship to "no man's land." You're not married, but you're not really dating either. How boring....and unnatural. No wonder the comfortable feelings of friendship soon turn into the awkward feelings that come with shacking up. It's "friends with benefits....minus the unconditional friendship." There is always the fear of being kicked to the curb if you don't measure up. No security. No deep peace. Hence, you end up with a strained relationship that is fraught with angst. Not exactly the ingredients of a healthy friendship. Myth #5 We can love one another just as much without marriage. No you can't. God says so. It would be true if you had evolved from a monkey. In that case, the Bible would only be a storybook filled with fantasies. As it is, you did not evolve from a monkey. You were created by God in His image. He consists of three Persons in One God....Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. You too are a being that is three in one....body, soul, and spirit. Monkeys are not three in one. God did not institute marriage between monkeys. God did not promise to bless a union of monkeys. You have no idea how much love can fill your heart for your partner until you receive God's love in Christ and get on the "marriage train" for life. Comparing living together to marriage is comparing apples to oranges....and maybe even to bananas....you know, the kind monkeys eat. To get to the Free Republic website (where I get nearly ALL of the articles I post here), simply click on the (above) Free Republic banner - OR just click on "Forums (browse all)" - where the actual articles that I use are found. (NOTE: For those of you who DO register at Free Republic....I use the screen name "ConservativeStLouisGuy".) Saint Alberic Crescitelli | Favorite President George W. Bush Pictures | Website Home Page/Index | Fr. 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