My Letter to Dina Titus

The Honorable Dina Titus
319 Cannon House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515

Dear Dr Titus,

As an American ex-pat member of the Greek Orthodox Church, I was appalled when I read Andrew Manatos’ article on the home page of your website entitled “Congresswoman Dina Titus Sworn-In on Grandfather’s Greek Bible.”

In this article, he claims “Orthodox Christians would be proud of the ethics Congresswoman Titus brings to politics.” Manatos, in an article clearly endorsed by you, equates this to a lack of negative campaigning in the 2008 elections. He also claims that you are looking out for Orthodox issues in Congress.

Metropolitan Jonah of the Orthodox Church in America boldly declared in Washington, D.C. in January of this year, “…the unqualified opposition to abortion that is at the heart of the Orthodox Christian Tradition and is unarguably the teaching and the dogma of the Orthodox Church.”

Inasmuch as you have voted in favour of using tax dollars to fund abortion, in House Roll Call No. 571 (the District of Columbia funding bill, H.R. 3170), in House Roll Call No. 643 (the Pence amendment to H.R. 3293), and in House Roll Call No. 884 (the Stupak-Pitts Amendment to H.R. 3962), you are not looking out for Orthodox issues in Congress. Such votes unarguably stand in opposition to the ethics of the Orthodox Church.

As a member of the Greek Orthodox Church, I am embarrassed that someone of such public prominence would claim to not only be a member of the Church, but claim to bring Orthodox ethics and look out for Orthodox issues, and yet make just as publicly and prominently a stand in absolute opposition to the same.

As a fellow Orthodox Christian, I am obligated to urge you to repentance in rejecting the teaching and dogma of the Orthodox Church and Holy Tradition. As by your votes in the House of Representatives you have publicly stood against the Church, I urge you to publicly repent and declare you intention to conform your ethics to teaching of the Church. Otherwise, do the honest and ethical thing and remove yourself from the membership and communion of the Church.

I would never suggest that you should not vote in accordance with your conscience. However, if your conscience is opposed to the unarguable teaching and dogma at the heart of the Orthodox Tradition, please do not claim to be Orthodox.

Respectfully yours,

Addresses of Orthodox Congresspeople

I finally sorted out the best methods for contact Congresspeople as a non-constituent.

The Congressional email system is specifically designed to filter out non-constituents. All snail mail to Congressional offices goes through the irradiation process. The processing time varies, though someone in Zack Space’s office told me the got a letter today that was postmarked November 12. However Melissa Bean’s office and Olympia Snowe’s website recommended sending mail to the district office. I have included what appears to be the best correspondence addresss for each.

Here are the addresses for the Orthodox Congresspeople who promote the killing of the unborn:

Sen. Olympia Snowe
Edmund S. Muskie Federal Building
40 Western Avenue
Room 408C
Augusta, ME 04330
Phone: (207) 622-8292
Fax: (207) 622-7295

Rep. Melissa Bean
1701 E. Woodfield Road
Suite 200
Schaumburg, IL 60173
Phone: 847-517-2927
Fax: 847-517-2931

Rep. Zack Space
315 Cannon House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
Phone: (202) 225-6265
Fax: (202) 225-3394

Rep. John Sarbanes
426 Cannon HOB
Washington DC 20515
Phone: (202) 225-4016
Fax: (202) 225-9219

Rep. Dina Titus
319 Cannon HOB
Washington, DC 20515
Phone: (202) 225-3252

How a Bishop Should Respond

In a previous post I mention the conflict between Bishop Tobin of Providence and Rep. Patrick Kennedy of Rhode Island over the issue of abortion and Kennedy’s putative Catholic faith.

With thanks to Seraphim, who mentioned it in a comment and to Fr John Whiteford, from whose blog he got it, I refer you to Bishop Tobin’s direct response to Kennedy’s claim to Catholicism.

Our Orthodox bishop should take note. Won’t but should.

Making Contact

In following up my own responsibility to do the things I urged all Orthodox Christians to do in the previous blog post, namely, to write to all Orthodox Congresspersons who support the culture of death and reject the teaching of the Orthodox Church and to their respective bishops, I have come across an interesting stumbling block. Congresscreatures can be tricksy when trying to reach them by correspondence.

Some prefer email and others prefer postal mail. At least some will only get postal mail in their Washington office after it has been through a month-long irradiation process. Senator Snowe states this on her website. Others block email from non-constituents.

In terms of reaching them, it would certainly be most effective for them to hear from Orthodox Christians who also happen to be constituents. However, because they claim to be members of the Orthodox Church, they represent Orthodoxy in Congress whether they like it or not, and the best attempt should be made to remind them of that fact.

I’m going to have to do a little research tomorrow find out the most effect ways to correspond with each. On the other hand, the addresses for the respective hierarchs are more straightforward and as far as I know they don’t send their post to Ohio for irradiation. Though the addresses are easy enough to find on the internet, for your convenience I have included them below:

With regard to Senator Olympia Snowe and Rep. Niki Tsongas:
Metropolitan Methodius
Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Boston
162 Goddard Avenue
Brookline, MA 02445
Tel: (617) 277-4742
Fax (617) 739-9229
email: metropolis@boston.goarch.org

With regard to Rep. John Sarbanes:
Metropolitan Evangelos
Greek Orthodox Metropolis of New Jersey
215 East Grove Street
Westfield, NJ 07090-1656
Tel: (908) 301-0500
Fax: (908) 301-1397
email: metropolis@nj.goarch.org

With regard to Rep. Zack Space:
Metropolitan Nicholas
Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Detroit
2560 Crooks Road
Troy, MI 48084
Tel: (248) 823-2400
Fax: (248) 823-2401
Email: office@detroit.goarch.org

With regard to Rep. Dina Titus:
Metropolitan Gerasimos
Greek Orthodox Metropolis of San Francisco
245 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94103
Tel.: (415) 753-3075
Fax: (415) 753-1165
Email: metropolis@sanfran.goarch.org

With regard to Rep. Melissa Bean
Bishop Longin
Serbian Orthodox Diocese of New Gracanica – Midwestern America
P. O. Box 371
Grayslake, IL 60030
Tel: (847) 223-4300
Email: eparhija@newgracanica.com

The Greatest Scandal in American Orthodoxy

After seeing an article about the clash over abortion between US Rep. Patrick Kennedy and his diocesan bishop Thomas Tobin of Providence, RI, I decided to look into the voting records of the one senator and five representatives who are members of the Orthodox Church. The results are not surprising, but equally as shameful. I almost don’t know where to start.

The teaching of the Orthodox Church concerning abortion is just as clear and just the same as the teaching of the Catholic Church. It doesn’t matter that it is an issue the Ecumenical Patriarch skirts around, perhaps because it takes away from his main job of opening evironmentalist conferences and exhibitions. And just like the Catholic Church, the Orthodox Church has members who have been elected to public office and act in direct opposition to the Orthodox Christian faith. It is not a matter of what they do in their private lives, for which they should go to confession and after which their priest should happily partake with them of the most precious body and blood.

Rather, it is a matter of what they lead their country to do. They have chosen to take a public stand against the teaching of the Church. They have appropriated the public purse for the killing of unborn children. They have otherwise refused to protect the unborn and directly facilitated those who would kill them.

It is the duty of the diocesan bishops of those members of the Orthodox Church who openly and knowingly pay for, or otherwise facilitate, the killing of the unborn to excommunicate those persons. Any bishop who knows what a Congressperson who claims to be under their spiritual authority is doing in this regard is failing in their responsibilities if they to otherwise.

Any Orthodox bishop, including the Ecumenical Patriarch, who praises or elevates such a person in the Church should be causing a scandal far worse than the misappropriation of funds in the OCA, or a drunk Antiochian touching up girl in a casino. Every clergy and every lay person of such a diocese who cares about the integrity of the Orthodox Church should be writing to their bishop.

I already knew the views of Olympia Snowe. She has been one of the most social liberal Republican members of Congress since she entered the US House in 1979. She has been in the Senate since 1995. She has consistently voted against the unborn. Has Metropolitan Methodius of Boston spoken out against her? No.

Pro-abortion senator and archon of the Orthodox Church, as conferred by Black Bart himself, Paul Sarbanes may be out of the upper chamber, but now his son John represents Maryland’s 3rd district. Equally as pro-abortion, this year Rep. Sarbanes has voted to fund the State Department under Hilary Clinton to promote abortion projects throughout the world, fund abortions in the District of Columbia, fund Planned Parenthood to provide abortions, and to provide federal subsidies to insurance companies to pay for abortions. Has Metropolitan Evangelos of New Jersey taken a stand against him? No.

Rep. Zach Space of 18th District in Ohio may be a Blue Dog Democrat, but he voted with Sarbanes on all but the last of the four legislative measures mentioned above. He also voted with Sarbanes for the DeGette clone-and-kill bill, and the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act, among others. I’d like to hear something from Metropolitan Nicholas of Detroit on this. If you hear anything, let me know.

Rep. Niki Tsongas is the widow pro-abortion Sen. Paul Tsongas and has been elected serve the 5th district of Massachusetts. She has also voted against unborn life 100% of the time. Still nothing from Metropolitan Methodius…

The Greek do not have a monopoly on Orthodox representation in Congress. The Serbs have Melissa Bean of Chicago in Illinois’ 8th district. Bean actually lives in the adjoining 10th district, but it’s all the same for our purposes. She has also voted against the unborn 100% of the time. Bishop Longin of the Diocese of New Gracanica – Midwestern America needs to say something and do something.

The one that stands out the most as a bad example of Orthodoxy on Capitol Hill has to be Alice Costandina “Dina” Titus, from the 3rd District of Nevada. Not only had she voted against the unborn 100% of the time like the others, she makes the strongest public claim to Orthodoxy. On the home page of her website, she boldly declares “Congresswoman Dina Titus Sworn-In on Grandfather’s Greek Bible” (if it has moved from the home page by the time you read this, try this direct link to the article).  The article, written by Andrew Manatos, notes “Congresswoman Dina Titus’ rise to national prominence is a story that will make all Hellenes and Orthodox Christians proud.” Clearly for Manatos, like so many Greeks, Hellenic culture and background and Orthodoxy are the same. And clearly for Manatos and for Congresswoman Titus, the important thing about being Orthodox is being Greek, not adhering to the unchanging teaching of the Church, particularly about the sanctity of life.

Let me make this clear: Dina Titus’ rise to national prominence is a story that should make all Orthodox Christians, Hellenic or not, ashamed. Has Metropolitan Gerasimos of San Francisco denounced Congresswoman Titus’ votes to fund the killing of the unborn?

There is one Orthodox member of Congress who has not sacrificed the children of America to Moloch. Gus Bilirakis repesents the 9th district of Florida. He has a 100% pro-life voting record. Whether his votes have been guided by his Orthodoxy or by his adherence to the Republican Party and conservativism, I don’t know.

As for the others, I think every American Orthodox Christian who adheres to the teaching of the Orthodox Church has a responsibility to write to every Orthodox Congressperson who votes in opposition to Orthodoxy and call them to account. Likewise, they should write to every Orthodox hierarch who has refused to demand the protection of the unborn and refused to excommunicate those who lead the nation in opposition to the moral teaching of the Orthodox Church and call them to account.

If the Orthodox hierarchy will not stand up, the Orthodox laity must stand up. I’m not so naïve to imagine that either the Congresspersons or the hierarchs will actually listen. The Congresspeople have shown that their loyalty lies with their political party and the hierarchs have shown that their loyality lies with their ethnicity. No matter. Orthodoxy doesn’t change because of either. The unborn are being murdered in their thousands every day and the faithful need to declare to those who are complicit in these murders: You do not speak for me! You do not represent the Holy Orthodox Church, the Holy Tradition and it’s unchanging inerrant understanding of the Holy Scriptures.

I think every Congressperson should be free to vote their conscience. If that conscience says the teaching of the Orthodox Church through the Holy Scriptures is wrong, then they should leave the Orthodox Church. They should excommunicate themselves and go be Episcopalians or whatever semblance of Christian form suits them.

God of the Present Tense

I recently sent a message to the son of a deceased friend and was about to mention what a great man I thought his father had been. I caught myself before I phrased it that way. I realised that in the Christian life, there is no past tense.

There are events in the past, but the life remains. I suppose that if I thought my friend had been good at one point in time and had ceased to be good later, I could say that he was a good man. The man remains. Even while the body is in repose, temporarily going back to the earth from whence it came, the man remains.

As Orthodox Christians we are reminded of this when we venerate the saints through their icons, though when talking of the saints, I lapse into the past tense: who was St Athanasius or who was St Paul. When I teach about Jesus in school, I am very vigilant to always speak of Him in the present tense, because I want the kids to understand that Easter happened after Good Friday. And since we pray to Jesus, we have a habit of speech that constantly recognises Him in the present tense.

But it is not just those glorified heroes of the Faith that are still alive with Jesus. To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. (We can discuss various Catholic and Orthodox theories about how instantaneous this is, but it still is.) Likewise, the disembodied soul in the presence of the Lord is but a temporary arrangement.

God only has a present tense. He revealed it to Moses. He revealed it in Jesus. Though we are created beings and have a beginning, as we are knitted together in our mother’s womb, once created in God’s image we share in his eternity. When we live in communion with Him, we share that eternity with Him. As Jesus told the Sadducees, God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. Jesus’ Resurrection was the down payment to guarantee our own.

My friend Mark has been away from his body for a number of years now. God took him quite suddenly and quite young. Because he trained me to be an Emergency Care Attendant and an ambulance driver, I still think about him every time I use my cut-through-anything EMT shears. There will be a time when EMT shears won’t be needed, but for now they remind me that there is a time after time when those who have gone before and those of us who will go sometime hereafter (for death comes to all men) will rejoice in the presence of God together in the new creation.

Hypocrisy, Caricature, and Abuse: How Treating Nick Griffin Badly Failed, Badly

I haven’t gotten much response in the past when I said anything about the British National Party, but lack of response has never stopped me before.  Considering that the BNP has been the only topic in the news media for the last few days, I thought I’d add my tuppence.

The national news papers on Friday all carried giant headlines about Nick Griffin’s appearance on the BBC current affairs panel show Question Time. It was a huge, big, giant deal when the BBC invited the leader of the BNP as one of the panellists. It was in line with the BBC policy of including parties that have reached the electoral threshold of 5% and have leaders elected on a national level. Griffin is now one of the Euro MPs for Northwest England.

The show was stage managed so that rather than talking about the issues of the week, everything was about Griffin and the BNP. It was a set-up job, really. Half the debate, both before and after, was whether this was a good thing or bad thing for the BNP. No one wanted to give them time to air their views, but everyone wanted to get have a chance to get in a shot at them. Every panelist and every audience member given air time went to extraordinary lengths to declare their revulsion toward Griffin and the BNP. The papers Friday then took every possible sound bite out of context and ripped into Griffin and the BNP again.

Now let me state clearly that I do not support the BNP. But neither do I support hatchet jobs justified because the policies of the BNP are so repugnant to so many. I wish I could say it has amazed me, but it is really what can be expected from what passes for British journalism these days.

For example, Griffin claims to have changed views he’s held in the past. No one believes him. He was a member of the neo-Nazi National Front when he was in and just out of Cambridge and when it comes to neo-Nazis, the leopard never changes his spots. The Nazis, after all, killed millions of Jews, which makes them evil.

At the same time many members of the Labour Party were part of neo-Communist groups such as Militant, but that’s apparently okay. The Communists killed millions of Jews, Christians, and all sorts – millions upon millions more than the Nazis ever could have and over many more years – but being a former – or still borderline – Marxist is perfectly okay. No one gets the hypocrisy.

Justice Secretary Jack Straw was on the Question Time panel. No one brought up (or would have even cared) that when he was elected chair of the Leeds University Labour Society, he had the name changed to elected chair of the Leeds University Socialist Society and withdrew support from the Labour Party for not being left-wing enough. No one brought up (or would have even cared ) that when he was elected president of Leeds University Union, it was with the support of the Communist Society.

The biggest headlines I saw as I walked by news stands in the aftermath of Question Time were about Griffin’s support for the KKK. He was questioned by David Dimbleby about having appeared at a public gathering with David Duke and the KKK and before his answer was cut off, he said that it was a non-violent KKK group. Neither Chicago-born panelist Bonnie Greer nor the tabloids were having any of it, though even the (former?) Communist David Aaronovitch in The Times acknowledged that it was true. But the caricature of KKK sells more newspapers than trying to explain the complexities of racist politics in American history, so even suggesting that there are racists who are not going around lynching every black man in sight is tantamount to showing support for them.

When Griffin attempted to explain any of his views, he was excoriated as being a weasel and a liar. Either he accepted the facile comments that were thrown at him from audience and panelists alike and admitted that he was the vile person they insisted he was, or he rejected their accusations and thus proved he was the vile person they insisted he was. It was a lose-lose situation.

Not everyone bought the dinner of bile and vitriol being served up. There were about 300 complaints to the BBC about the programme. about 75% were complaining about the way Griffin was treated. But the telling indicator was the YouGov poll taken hours after Question Time. It showed that 22% of voters would consider voting BNP. This is not because the BBC agreed to have Griffin on the panel. It is because everyone on the panel made it the Nick Griffin Show and neither they nor the audience, nor David Dimbleby for all his protestations to the contrary, could restrain themselves. They gave the BNP the credibility it gained.

Christians Charged for Knowing Too Much Islamic History

Here we go again. Ben and Sharon Vogelenzang were sharing their faith with one of the guests in the hotel they run, the Bounty House Hotel in Liverpool. The guest was a Muslim woman. Seems they didn’t agree about Jesus or Muhammad. The guest was offended that they insisted Jesus is the Son of God and not a prophet of Islam.

In the course of the conversation, Ben Vogelenzang said that Muhammad was a warload. I teach about Islam for a living – been doing for six years – and I’d have to say that’s a reasonable observation based on the historical facts. It has nothing to do with whether or not he was a prophet. The story of Islam from the time of the Hijra until at least the conquest of Makkah (Mecca) by Muhammad’s army is one of battles fought and tribal groups subdued and the Arabian peninsula Islamified at the point of the sword. It is a legacy that Muhammad bequeathed to his successors as the spent the next 120 years doing the same thing through Northern Africa and the Middle East.

Clearly the Vogelenzangs’ guest was not well versed in Islamic history. Either that or the word “warlord” was not reverential enough for the false Prophet.

It didn’t help that Sharon Vogelenzang said that traditional Muslims dress for women is a form of bondage. This was just too much for their guest. Neither the guest nor the Merseyside Police think Sharon is entitled to express this opinion. It constitutes either harassment, alarm or distress in the wording of the statute. So does Ben’s enlightening the guest regarding her ignorance of history.

The Vogelenzangs were interrogated twice by police before being charged. They have appeared in court and are now awaiting trial.

US Government and Others Trying to Block Access to Books

The US Justice Department is trying to stop Google creating a digital library.  It’s not just the government. Microsoft, Yahoo and Amazon don’t like this either. I just don’t get it.

I mean, I get why the three companies are fighting it. Microsoft and Yahoo don’t like Google having such a large share of the internet marketplace, particularly in terms of searches and results. They want their billions of dollars, too. Amazon is doing e-books and other digital access – in fact, it has had almost a monopoly – and it doesn’t want to see its market share challenged. It seems the only people who want this deal are authors, publishers, the general public, and Google.

Google plans to scan thousands of books that are in the public domain and give everyone free access to them. Microsoft and Yahoo can do the same thing, if they so desire. The books are, after all, in the public domain.

Google has also struck a deal with the Authors Guild to scan millions of out-of-print books that are still under copyright. Authors and publishers will manage their own rights to access and can refuse to allow a book to be used. If they do allow a book to be used, they will receive 67% of revenue generated from it. The revenue they otherwise receive from out-of-print books? $0. £0. 100% of 0.

Every public library will get complete access for free. Every college and university will be able to subscribe to the  same service. Every home user will get free access to 20% of the text of each book, so they can decide whether to buy access to the rest.  These are in-copyright out-of-print books that would otherwise be completely inavailable.

What is Google going to do with the books that are in print? Absolutely nothing. The actual book market as it is today will be untouched. However, millions of books that would otherwise been unavailable will be available again. Not just the odd copy in a used book shop or off the shelves of a distant library.

As the Authors Guild puts it:

Here’s the math: we expect the settlement to make at least 10 million out-of-print books available, which, at an average of 300 pages per book, represents at least 3 billion pages of professionally written, professionally edited text.  20% of that is 600 million pages of text available at every desktop computer in the U.S. as a free preview. (For comparison, Encyclopedia Britannica is about 44,000 pages in print form; Wikipedia’s featured articles total about 5,000 pages. All English Wikipedia articles, including stubs, total perhaps 3 million pages.)

This is the next great step in the information age.

Closing the Gap: Commandment Breakers on the Christian Left

I received my usual email bulletin from a UK based left-leaning Christian think-tank and once again I see that they are concerned with the gap between the rich and the poor, this time as exacerbated by the worldwide recession. Closing the gap is one of the mantras of the Left, whether their economics is cloaked with Christian buzz words and bad theology or not.

Why are we supposed to close this gap? Jesus said, “you have the poor with you always.” The story of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25 makes it clear that it is imperative for us to care for the poor and it is an indication of our eternal destination. That’s pretty serious business. The Holy Scriptures are replete with the words spoken through the prophets concerning God’s concern about our care of the poor.

However, it does not necessarily follow that the poor are better off by making the rich less well off. This is simply bad economics. It assumes that there is a fixed pie of world-wide wealth and it can only be sliced so many ways. According to this model, if some people get big pieces then other people are forced to have small pieces, even to the point that if some people get huge pieces, then some will be left with none.

It is not surprising that some politicians fall into this fallacy, because they confuse “wealth” with “government budget”. It is true that the government should only have a fixed amount of money to divvy up. After all, they have to get it from those who have created it. This confuses a lot of politicians, too. They have somehow gotten the idea that they are, or should be, or even can be, wealth creators. Once again, this comes from the inability to grasp simple economic concepts, and if you have heard some members of Congress speak to the press or to their colleagues during the legislative process, this incompetence shouldn’t surprise you.

Once we get past the fixed pie false paradigm, the source of wealth gap economics is clear. It is nothing more than the politics of envy. This is the root of Marxist and redistributionist ideology. It is a violation of the Tenth Commandment. The giving to someone else of something belonging to you is called charity. The taking of something belonging to you to give to someone else is called theft. That’s a violation of the Eighth Commandment. Governments that do this turn the less fortunate into receivers of stolen goods.

Now while matters of commandment breaking have no bearing on your average atheist Marxist, they should be relevant to the Christians that have co-opted the socialist ideology and attempted to baptise it. While the Commandments are in the Bible, the idea of making sure everyone has the same wealth, oppotunities, or advantages – closing the gap between rich and poor – is not.

Mythbusting: Who Were the First Congressmen?

Because I was recently reminded of the popular idea amongst those favouring Congressional term limits and the ideal citizen legislator that the original intent was for yeoman farmers to serve a single term and return to his land, I decided to do a little bit of research.

Looking at the members of the House of Representatives in the First Congress (1789-91), I compiled information about how many terms they served, what their occupations were outside of politics, and what political offices they held prior and subsequent to their service in the House. The results were quite surprising.

The House of Representatives of the First Congress of the United States was comprised of 66 members. There were 65 seats, but one member, Theodorick Bland of Virginia, died in office and was replaced by William Giles. In calculating the average number of terms, I have used Giles. The average number of terms served in the House was 2.72.

However, of the 66, only two (George Gale of MD and Giles of VA) held no previous political office, though Gale was a member of his state’s convention to ratify the US Constitution. Of the rest, 48 had previously served in their state’s legislature and 29 had served in the Continental Congress. Only 13 ended their public service with their stint in the House of Representatives and only three of these were single term Congressmen. Seventeen served in the US Senate, including 4 of the 18 who only served one term in the House. Balancing out the 18 single-termers are 18 who served four or more terms.

Twelve held executive branch appointments after leaving Congress, including Thomas Tucker who served as Treasurer of the United States for 27 years,  John Steele, who was Comptroller of the US Treasury and Elias Boudinot who became director of the US Mint.

Others were elected to executive office in their home states, including seven governors and two lieutenant governors. Thirteen served as judges after leaving Congress, six on the supreme courts of their states and four as federal judges.

So how many were farmers? Of the 11 with agricultural interests, eight owned plantations. Only three could be referred to as lesser farmers. Of those three, only one, William Floyd of NY, was just a farmer. George Mathews of GA was also a merchant and Joshua Seney of MD was also a lawyer.

A lawyer? Surely there weren’t lawyers in Congress back in this golden era! Well, only 29 of them in the first House of Representatives. That’s 44% of the membership. Yes, almost half. The next closest occupation represented amongst the Representatives are the thirteen with mercantile interests. Five were clergymen and five were teachers (this includes William Baldwin of GA, who had been both).

There seems to be little evidence from the First Congress that members were expected to be yeoman farmers who spent a few weeks in Washington during a single two-year term and then went back to the land. For the most part they were lawyers and rich merchants who spent a significant part of their lives engaged in the business of government.

Forgive Us Our Trespasses

Recent conversations and a few newspaper articles about the death of Ted Kennedy have revealed the continuing animosity toward Kennedy with regard to the death of Mary Jo Kopechne. This has highlighted to me the tendency that we often have to think and act in a personal way toward public figures. This is true of politicians, celebrities, and notorious criminals, and those we might think fit into the triple overlap of these categories (if it were a Venn diagram, they would be in the middle).

With elected politicians, we have a responsibility to call them to account for their actions and decide whether they should continue to represent us – by impeachment for high crimes and misdemeanors, and by voting against them in the next election for lesser reasons. Except for citizens of Massachusetts, this is where unforgiveness toward Ted Kennedy falls short. Though he was nationally known, he did not represent the nation. He was elected by the people of Massachusetts and it was their decision, for better or worse, to return him seven times to the United States Senate.

The idea of forgiving or not forgiving public figures not personally known to us is foreign to any concept in the scriptures. Jesus said we should pray, asking the Father to “forgive our tresspasses and we forgive those who trespass against us,” and said further said, “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone.” It’s a personal thing.

Not forgiving Ted Kennedy is about as pointless as the politicians on Capitol Hill who apologised last summer and this summer for something they didn’t do. In July of last year, the U.S. House of Represenatives apologised for slavery and racial segregation. The Senate did the same thing in June of this year with almost identical language.

This is ridiculous for a number of reasons. First of all, neither the House nor the Senate ever legalised slavery. Slavery has always existed. (It still exists today, even in the US, but that is a subject for a future post.)

Admittedly, they did vote to approve the Corwin Amendment which would have prohibited any other Amendment to the Constitution allowing the federal government to interfere with slavery. (Congressmes and Senators from the seven Deep South states did not vote for the Corwin Amendment, as they were already in the process of seceding – it was a Northern proposed amendment to preserve slavery.) Despite their apology 148 years later, that amendment is still pending as it was only ratified by the state legislatures of Ohio, Maryland, and Illinois.

The only slaves that could be said to have been owned by the United States itself were those used by the Union armies in the Recent Unpleasantness. Not the freedmen soldiers that everyone hears about, but the still enslaved laborers. (I can’t imagine why those Yankee-authored history books fail to mention this.) Neither the House nor Senate mentioned the Corwin Amendment or the use of slave labor by the bluecoats and I don’t think either body had either issue in mind.

On the other hand, Congress at times voted to restrict slavery’s extenstion into certain territories. It then voted to abolish slavery through the 13th Amendment. Likewise it passed the 14th and 15th Amendments to send to the states for ratification. It passed various Civil Rights Acts. So even if it could apologise, there is nothing to apologise for.

But what really angers me about both House Resolution 194 and Senate Concurrent Resolution 26 is that both purport to apologise on my behalf. “The Congress…apologizes to African-Americans on behalf of the people of the United States, for the wrongs committed against them and their ancestors who suffered under slavery and Jim Crow laws…” This may surprise some people, but I have never owned a single African-American slave. I would go so far as to suggest that no living American citizen has ever owned a single African-American slave. Having been born less than four months before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 came into effect, I can also assure readers that I have never promulgated or enforced any Jim Crow laws. (But then again, neither has the US Congress, in its present, or any previous, incarnation, as Jim Crow laws were state laws.)

I have lots of ancestors who owned slaves. Lots of slaves. Just for the record, I do not apologise for them either. I couldn’t even if I wanted to do so.

I do admit to calling another 2nd grader “nigger” in 1971. I will not even offer the excuse that my erstwhile friend Scott encouraged me to do it. I was beaten soundly about the buttocks by the school principal and had to apologise, so I think I have paid my debt. (I hope that any of my friends who haven’t forgiven Ted Kennedy for the Chappaquiddick incident will not also refuse to forgive me for something that happened two years after.) However, I do not believe the US Congress needs to apologise for this on my behalf.

Why Kay?

It used to be my job to stay abreast of developments in Texas politics and write about them. I have not been a resident of my native Lone Star State since 1988, so I may not be aware of some of the finer details these days. For example, Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison is planning to run against Rick Perry for Governor of Texas. Why?

Hutchison’s campaign tag line is “I’m running for Governor because I love Texas and I know we can do better.” How? As states go, Texas is in pretty good shape. It has suffered less in the recession than most states, thanks to Perry’s protection of the rainy day fund. It has lost fewer jobs. So if it isn’t the economy, what is it? What does Hutchison expect to do better?

“On key challenges like property taxes, education, private property rights, transportation, utility rates, insurance rates and health care; we need results, not politics.” What sort of results? What has Perry not accomplished? Seems to me there may be differences with regard to some policies or projects, but Perry has gotten things done.

Most recently Perry has been in the news for standing up to the Obama administration. He has appeared at various TEA parties. Some people tried to distance themselves from him when he made remarks that suggested support for secession, though that raised his stock with me.

A couple of years ago Perry told a group of black ministers, “It’s a ridiculous notion to say you cannot legislate morality.” Perhaps he realises that all legislation is, in fact, morality.

And who would have thought back in 1985 when I was helping to coordinating efforts to get the Texas Board of Education to leave homeschoolers alone that one day a homeschool mom would be on the Board. Word is that Perry is considering her for board chairperson and the liberals are frothing at the mouth. Yep, another tick in the Perry column.

Except for voting in favour of the federal bailout, Hutchison is rather conservative. NARAL don’t like her, though National Right to Life only rate her at 75%. The NEA rate her at 36%, which is a little high for my comfort but still no sell-out to their liberal education agenda.  The environmentalists don’t like her, so that’s good.

But as conservative as she may be, the only reason for her to run for governor is that she wants to. She’s always wanted to be governor and at 66 she’s no spring chicken. In fact, if elected she will be the oldest Texas governor inaugurated to a first term. So this is her last shot, really.

Is that reason enough to send Rick Perry back to Haskell County? I don’t think so.

The Responsibility Handed Down by Apollo

I have been used to getting visits to my blog every day from searches about the Moon landings because of the short piece I wrote one year ago today. While everybody focuses on the the big round numbers when it comes to civic anniversaries, I have kept focus on the achievements of the Apollo program even through the leaner times. With everybody writing for the last week or more about the 40th anniversary of the first lunar landing, I doubt very many people will pass this way.

I have been caught up in the hype as well, taking advantage of the various Internet opportunities to remember Apollo 11. I have used We Choose the Moon from the JFK Presidential Library. I have read along with the transcripts of the mission tapes from NASA as I listened to the real-time (+40 years) streaming audio. The BBC News Channel covered the news briefing today in Washington DC attended by Walt Cunningham, Jim Lovell, Dave Scott, Buzz Aldrin, Charlie Duke, Tom Stafford, and Gene Cernan. Even as I am writing this, the Ron Howard documentary In the Shadow of the Moon is on Channel 4.

Neil and Buzz may have been the first to walk on the Moon, but the Apollo program was full of firsts. The entire program could have been completed (instead of cutting out the final three missions) and they would not have run out of firsts. Sadly, TV audiences get bored so Congress started thinking about how much more money it could appropriate to more worthy causes, like blowing up villages and rice paddies in Vietnam controlled by people with the wrong political ideas. Why continue to advance the edges of scientific understanding on a cosmic scale when you can buy more napalm?

Buzz Aldrin’s new memoir was timed to come out at the same time as the 40th anniversary. He has been making the rounds on a promotional tour, using the opportunity to push his view that we should leave the Moon behind and go straight to Mars. When I watched today’s briefing, I saw just how forcefully his pushes this idea. Most of the other living Apollo astronauts seem to favour returning to the Moon as a staging point for perfecting base-building on a non-terrestrial body before going on to the Red Planet.

As much as I want to see missions to Mars in my lifetime, and as smart as Buzz is, there is still so much to be learned from our only known natural satellite. We need to go own the Moon, so to speak. Not in the legal sense – I think the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 is a good thing (not to be confused with the unratified Moon Treaty of 1979 which is completely bonkers) – but use of the Moon needs to be fully established. It would be so much more useful than that floating white elephant known as the International Space Station. The Moon has resources to be tapped that could make a dramatic difference to life on Earth without there being any chance of damaging the Moon itself.

I was struck by once again by Jim Lovell’s revelation that from the Moon you can put the whole Earth behind your thumb. Other astronauts have talked about how tiny and fragile it looks from 240,000 miles away. Writing 3,000 years ago, the singer-songwriter David ben Jesse could not have imagined the how much more meaningful his words would become in December 1968 when Bill Anders took the famous Earth-rise photo from Apollo 8.

When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers,
The moon and the stars, which You have ordained,
What is man that You are mindful of him,
And the son of man that You visit him?

That God cares about a tiny blue planet suspended in space is amazing enough. That out of all the universe He came down and became man and shared in our suffering is mind boggling. That we have the technology to go beyond this planet to explore the wonder and value of His creation is a responsibility that should not be ignored.

When a Deal Is Not a Deal

The Atlantic Coast Conference has has reneged on its deal to host three post-season tournaments in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Inspired by the National Association for the Advancement of Cultural Poverty (the only thing I can imagine those initials represent), the conference has pulled out because South Carolina flies a Confederate flag at the Statehouse in Columbia. The legislators of the State of South Carolina did not decide to fly the flag after the ACC committed to the BB&T Coastal Field in Myrtle Beach, motivating some sort of response. In fact, it was after being bullied by the NAACP nine years ago that the flag was removed from the capitol dome and flown elsewhere on the grounds as a compromise.

Nonetheless, the National Association for the Annihilation of Constitutional Patriotism (I imagined another possible meaning of the initials, given that this was why the South had to raise arms against the Northern aggression in the Recent Unpleasantness) insists that anyone and everyone boycott South Carolina. It seems in more ways than one that when it comes to the NAACP, a deal isn’t a deal.

It is unfortunate that the NAACP has been able to bully the NCAA into meaning No Cooperation from African Americans and the ACC into Against Caucasian Culture. But that’s what they do. It’s based on the Marxist idea that you can’t advance one part of the population without pulling down another. That must be what it stands for: Neo-marxist Anger Against Conservative Politicians.

The ACC cannot blanket boycott South Carolina because Clemson University is one of its member institutions. However, what it does is consider each athletic venue on a case-by-case basis. It has given the NAACP veto power over any location it doesn’t like. The NAACP objects whenever an event is scheduled anywhere in the Palmetto State.

“Our baseball committee and institutional administrators awarded the championships to Myrtle Beach with the understanding that the event had the blessings of all parties within the state of South Carolina. It has become clear this was not the case,” commissioner John Swofford said. “It’s unfortunate that this miscommunication occurred, and since the original announcement, we have had productive conversations with members of the NAACP,” he added. “In the end, given the conference’s commitment to diversity, equality and human rights, our institutions have determined that this change should be made.”

This is open admission that the NAACP is a party that has to bless the actions of the ACC. Never Act Absent our Consent Party – I think we’ve sussed out the meaning of the initials now. The voiceover over near the end of college sports telecasts should now say, “Rebroadcast or retransmission in any form without the express written consent of the NCAA and the NAACP is strictly prohibited.” It is also a statement that South Carolina is not committed to diversity, equality or human rights because it recognises the historical realities of mid-19th century and doesn’t sweep them under the rug of revisionism.  The role of the ACC is also to take a political viewpoint and demand conformity to the mantras of the Left.

The deal that brought the ACC baseball tournament to the Grand Strand area of South Carolina would have benefited the people of Horry and Georgetown counties. Horry County is over 15% black. Georgetown County is nearly 40% black. Has walking out on the deal benefited them? National Association for the Advancement of… well no, clearly not. It obviously doesn’t stand for that.

China Hides the Truth About the Uyghurs

Some time ago, in a previous blogging identity, I raised the problems of the Uyghurs in East Turkistan (known as Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region by the occupying Chinese). I noted how the Chinese government was using the fact that the Uyghurs are Muslim to build up resentment against them in the West. It is much easier to do this with regard to East Turkistan than it is with Tibet, because nobody hates Tibetan Buddhists just for being Buddhists.

After all, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region is only autonomous to the transplanted ethnic Han population who rule it. For the Uyghurs, complete autonomy from Beijing is exactly what they want. Outside communist doublespeak, “complete autonomy” is another term for independence. Yet Xinjiang has long been one of the most tightly controlled regions claimed by the Chinese government.

Here’s how things work in East Turkistan. Chinese officials claim that 156 died in violence that erupted from protests (originally about how Uyghur workers had been killed in a toy factory in Guangdong province) on Sunday and that most of those killed were Han. Chinese officials – never a very trustworthy lot – then arrested 1400 Uyghurs. About 200 Uyghur women, understandably unhappy about the 1400 arrests, decided to protest to appeal for the freedom of the detainees. They were confronted with riot police.

On Tuesday, some of the Han population in Urumqi (the capital of East Turkistan) then rampaged through the Uyghur parts of the city with clubs and machetes, smashing up businesses.

As is their common practice, the Chinese authorities don’t want the outside world to get unfiltered information. They shut down internet service and international telephone service in Urumqi. I think it is a good idea to fear a government that fears the truth.

The only just resolution to the current violence and more importantly to the suppression of the Uyghur people is true autonomy. They should have the right of self-determination.  When the left in the US and elsewhere complain about what they perceive to be right-wing American imperialism I marvel at the short-sightedness of not seeing the true imperialism of their fellow socialists, the Chinese government. I am also ashamed of the governments of other nations in the world (especially the US and UK) for not taking a stronger stand. No one wants to offend the Chinese government.

Ain’t Nothing But a Hound Dog

Our puppies are now six weeks old. They have been interesting to watch over the last few weeks, as they have found their feet and cut their teeth. Without any sort of instruction or training, they began to fight each other. They will spar until one yields, usually in some sort of pain. They other thing is that they like meat. Again, no one had to tell them to like dead flesh. They will eat other things, but they like meat.

Dogs are predators. They like to kill things. That’s the way they are made. I marvel at the so-called animal rights activists and supporters who do not support the right of dogs to kill. In this country they have ineffectually banned fox hunting and hare coursing. (The hunts continued despite protestors causing criminal damage and sending videos to the police. The police have openly stated they will not enforce the ban of foxhunting, though they still chase hare coursers occasionally.) In the case of fox hunting, fox can be killed after being chased by hounds, but they must be killed by humans. Likewise it is legal to shoot a hare; you just can’t send a dog after it.

This is because there are people who enjoy watching the dogs do what dogs do. It is not the prey that is banned – only the predator. We are supposed to feel that there is something wrong with watching the natural course of predator vs. prey – unless we are watching wild animals on a David Attenborough documentary, of course. So it’s okay to watch an alligator kill a kangaroo or an orca chomp down on a seal, but not a hound chase down a fox.

I also think it is hypocritical to spay or neuter a dog. So many of those who support animal rights also support human reproductive rights (both causes being favourites of the Left). It seems unnecessarily cruel to an animal to take away their reproductive organs merely as a human convenience. If you don’t want puppies, keep the bitch away from a dog.

We breed and sell sighthounds. Many people breed them as show dogs. They try to develop certain qualities in them that appeal to the poncy prima donnas at Crufts and other dog shows, with just the right colour, height, and grooming. We don’t breed show dogs. We breed dogs that can do what dogs do best. We only sell them to people who let them use their natural ability and instinct. They see (with a peripheral range of about 270°), they run really fast (up to about 45 mph), and they kill. And they love it. That’s the way God made them.

Because I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and, doggonit, people like me!

Al Franken has been declared the Senator-elect from Minnesota. Franken, whose previous contributions to the political arena have included such thoughtful books as Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot, will now be the 60th Democrat in the Senate. If possible, he will tilt the chamber further to the left.

It will be interesting to see how he gets along with colleagues across the aisle. It was only a couple of years ago that he wrote, “Republicans are shameless dicks. No, that’s not fair. Republican politicians are shameless dicks.” I’m not seeing a lot of bi-partisanship there.

Hopefully he’s given up violence as a means of controlling free speech. Back in 2004, he body-slammed a demonstrator at a Howard Dean rally. He justified his actions by saying, “I’m neutral in this race but I’m for freedom of speech, which means people should be able to assemble and speak without being shouted down.” Apparently that means people who assemble and agree with the man on the stump. After all, he didn’t say people should be free to assemble and speak without being knocked down. It’s a good thing he’s in the quieter Senate rather than in the more robust House of Representatives. There should be less opportunity for body slamming the opposition.

I agree with most pundits that being the filibuster-breaking 60th senator is not going to be significant. Filibustering is not a frequent tactic. What is significant is that the President has another ideological comrade in the Senate.

It’s Nothing Personal

I am not mourning the death of Michael Jackson. It’s nothing personal. And by that, I mean that’s the reason I’m not mourning. I didn’t know Mr Jackson. I don’t even know anyone who did know him.

It’s like the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. The world wailed and cried. I was sorry that she had left two young sons without a mother. Likewise, I am sorry that Michael Jackson’s young children will be without their father. I am also sorry for the thousands each day throughout the world who become orphans and feel the same loss as Prince, Paris, and Blanket (otherwise known by their real names: Michael, Paris, and Prince). But grief and mourning are based upon a personal loss.

He was a significant contributor to popular culture, though I can’t say that’s necessarily a particularly laudable thing, either. I don’t know that we are better off for the moonwalk, the crotch grab, or faux militaria and the single glove. Like I said, it’s nothing personal.

I am also sad for the thousands of people who appear to be beside themselves at his death. They seem lost for meaning or purpose and shocked that he is no longer “with us”. Why it should be remarkable that a 50-year-old man who constantly abused his body with surgery and drugs has died, I don’t know.  It speaks volumes about state of world.  Those volumes make up a very sad story (again, about the world, not about Jackson).

When it comes to people I know, with whom I have a relationship as family, friend, or even acquaintance, when they mourn, I mourn, for I participate in a small way in their loss. This is why as Orthodox Christians we have panikhida services in our parishes. We share each others’ love and temporary loss in hope of the Resurrection of the Dead and the life of the world to come. We light our own candle for a loved one now beyond the veil, but we light our candles from each other and they shine together. Together we sing, “Memory eternal!”

The wall-to-wall coverage of the death of Michael Jackson cheapens death itself. It shares something with the constant images of violence and death that are the substantance of so many films and video games. We no longer see it as our common end, a pointer to our own mortality. It is a spectator sport.

Let Michael Jackson’s family and friends grieve and mourn his loss. He has secured his place in history. Let it be for us to remember that as he has become, so shall we all one day be, awaiting the Final Judgement.

The Decline and Fall of the English Language

I was going to blog last month about how a BBC2 documentary found that 80% of Britons cannot recite a single verse of poetry. This is not helped by the fact 58% pupils never study poetry in school. Not a line. The ones who do read Carol Ann Duffy, the Scottish lesbian who was just named the new Poet Laureate. I’m not saying there is anything wrong with Miss Duffy’s poetry, but reading a single living poet does not constitute a sufficient literary education.

Like I said, I was going to blog about it, but I’d just be whinging once again about the state of education in this country. Then yesterday I was having a conversation with a couple of 14-year-olds. It start with me telling off one of them for using a participle that is an inappropriate term derived from an innocuous noun. He had no idea what a participle is. Okay, that’s not a big surprise. I probably didn’t learn about participles until at least the 9th grade, maybe even the 10th.

The disturbing thing is that neither he nor his friend knew what a noun is. This is something I learned well before the 5th grade, because by then we were parsing sentences. Now with the average 14-year-old, I have trouble getting them to write in sentences. I had a 16-year-old who handed in an entire 1500-word coursework without using a single mark of punctuation. I’m not exaggerating. But back to the boys in Year 9. . .

They had heard the term “noun” before. They just couldn’t agree on what it was. One of them thought it was a “doing” word. The other thought it was a “describing” word. He contended it couldn’t be a “doing” word, because that was an adverb.  These were not pupils in the bottom English set. They were not pupils with special educational needs. Because I was teaching a mixed-ability group, there was a top-set girl who actually knew that a noun was a “naming” word.

No poetry, no grammar. Is it the end of the English language or the end of civilisation?

One thinks of Eliot. . .

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends

No, wait. That would be trite  to anyone who has seen this over-used reference to Eliot.  And on the other hand, clearly it would be lost upon anyone with a secondary education in Britain in the last decade. I believe the general response would be, “T. S. who?”

Buying Drugs

Paracetamol (as it is known in most of the world) or acetaminophen (as it is known in North America) is the most commonly overdosed drug. Nonetheless, in the US you can go to Wal-mart and get a tub of 225 of them, since they are perfectly safe when taken as directed. In the UK you can get 16. That’s right. The biggest pack of paracetamol is 16.

Legally you can buy six packs, but most stores, convinced by propaganda, will only sell you two. In fact, when the discount store Poundland started offering three packs for £1, there was quite a kerfuffle. The Royal Pharmaceutical Society is ‘extremely concerned’.  The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency wants to change the law because they accuse Poundland of exploiting a loophole.

It’s not the price. You can get three 16s at Asda cheaper. Of course you would have to buy two packs,  take them out to your car, go back into the store and buy another pack, because this is apparently effective suicide prevention. The Goverment here thinks that you will buy the 32 (enough at once to damage or kill you anyway), and then think, “I’d like to do the job right, but since I’ll have to walk back into the store and pick another pack off the shelf, and go to the self-checkout, and fish out another 30p from my pocket, and take my receipt, and walk back out to my car… I’ll just go ahead and get on with my life.”

But the propaganda war as virtually been won. As reported in the Daily Mail,

Nurse Nichola Sheehan, who was stunned to spot the offer at her local branch in Chatham, Kent, said the offer could prove deadly and accused the chain of the ‘height of irresponsibility.’

Mother-of-two Mrs Sheehan, 47, who has worked for the NHS for more than 20 years, fears the offer could lead to tragedy as a dose of just eight paracetamol can prove fatal.

If eight is fatal, it’s seems like one pack of 16 would be more than enough. By Mrs Sheehan’s logic, they shouldn’t be selling it over the counter. In fact, they probably shouldn’t be selling it at all. It should only be available in a hospital administered by a doctor and locked in a cupboard.

Do we ever wonder why this country is going down the pan? The Government is busy micro-managing our lives, telling people how much paracetamol they can buy.

On the Death of George Tiller

I don’t know when I first became acquainted with the name of George Tiller. When I lived in Arkansas, I had friends and acquaintances who were regular protesters at his Kansas clinic. “Tiller the Killer” we called him. There was a time when I prayed Psalm 109 on behalf of the unborn with Tiller in mind. After all, while all abortionist equally take lives for money, Tiller was a special breed of abortionist. He was one of the few who would do late-term killing.

It is possible to make rational arguments about when life begins. People can have reasons for questioning the full humanity of the pre-born in the early stages of gestation.  Some people try to argue that fetuses in the earliest stages of development do not feel pain, though the scientific evidence is growing that this sense begins much earlier than previously thought. I think it is an irrelevant argument with regard to whether or not the fetus is fully human, and it was irrelevant with regard to the practices of George Tiller.

I’m not sure when Tiller believed human life begins, but even if believed it is at or sometime after birth, this does not excuse his actions. The Nazis didn’t believe the Jews were fully human, but that doesn’t excuse what they did. So many of those children who met up with George Tiller were in the latter part of development. Their organs were fully formed. Their brains were working, their blood circulating. And they died. Because George Tiller killed them.

Even now op-ed pieces are being published in newspapers blaming me for Tiller’s death. That’s right. Me. As Mike Hendricks of the Kansas City Star says:

And if we’re right about that [that Tiller's murder was motivated by anti-abortion sentiment], then we already know the identities of his accomplices.

They include every one who has ever called Tiller’s late term abortion clinic a murder mill.

Who ever called Tiller “Tiller the Killer.”

That’s me. I called a spade a spade. Or as Hendricks puts it, I fomented blind hatred. Refusal to adopt the spirit of the age, whether it has to do with the unborn or creating rights based upon sexual preferences or any of the areas in which the supposedly radical right wing won’t budge, it always called hatred. Not “disagreement”, not “principle”, not “conviction” – only “hatred”. In fact, any opposition to abortion of any kind is so irrational that the bloggers of the left, like the Daily Kos, call us “Wingnuts”. They make it sound almost unbelievable that dangerously crazy hateful people like me want to the see the unborn born. What an unhinged idea.

Tiller’s chosen profession, and the violence of police against those who protested against it particularly in the late 80s and early 90s, motivated one of the songs I wrote and used to perform. I used to have people walk out of my shows when I sang lyrics like:

I saw perfect baby girl
Wrapped in a plastic blanket
In a garbage can
Lying in a bed of arms and legs
Dismembered remains of children
Slightly less fortunate.

The inviolability of property
Used for the worst atrocity
To take away the sanctity of life
While black-jack toting riot police
With orders from human deities
Crush all who dare object

So am I dancing up and down with Tiller’s demise? No. As the Lord said through the Prophet Ezekiel: “I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live.”

Probably unlike the man in his 50s in the powder blue Ford and currently in custody, I don’t think that the death of George Tiller has saved any lives. He may have been one of the few in the US to perform very late-term abortions, but there will be someone to take his place. This man, like Paul Hill, John Salvi, and Eric Rudolph, took the law into their own hands and rightly must suffer the consequences. If anything, this act will have the opposite effect, because Tiller will become a martyr to those who do not value the life of the unborn. With a pro-abortion president and a pro-abortion Congress, this will be used to further facilitate abortion and further restrict the lawful actions of those who oppose it.

May God have mercy on the soul of George Tiller. In the Resurrection he will receive his reward, not because God or anyone else hates him, but because of his own choices.

May God have mercy on a country where George Tiller was allowed to ply his trade and where the blood of the innocent cries out like the blood of Abel.

May God have mercy on us all.

I’m Back

I can’t believe I haven’t blogged in such a long time. I have started a number of entries, but never bult up the steam to get them done. It’s not like there haven’t been things happening in the news and in my life. In fact, it is probably because there has been so much happening around here that I haven’t given more time to the insightful news commentary you all so desperately crave.

I’ve been job hunting for a situation I would find more appealing. Time consumed on applications and interviews. I only got two interviews and neither was a position I was inclined to take. In the second one, I was the only candidate and I withdrew.

At the same time, work has been quite time consuming.

Then there was getting ready for a visit from my parents. The Woman has been temporarily working full-time outside the home, so it took a lot effort to get is ship-shape and Bristol fashion. Then there was the visit, which was worth all the effort.  We usually only get to see my folks twice a year.

And of course I’ve been working on the book. It may not sound like much by I’ve got two chapters finished and parts of two others written. I’ve been a bit stuck and doing more research to make them historically accurate.  I thought I knew where I was going with a particular storyline that is key to my first act and then got new information which made it unworkable. It is only today that I think I have found a way around it.

I hope I can (and will) blog more regularly in the coming weeks.

House of Common Criminals

Parliament and the Government are in total disarray. In the States, Newt Gingrich is calling for Nancy Pelosi to resign for lying to Congress, but that’s small potatos compared to what’s happening over here in the People’s Republic of Britain. Members of the House of Commons are calling on Speaker Michael Martin to resign. This just doesn’t happen here. Not since 1695.

The Commons Speaker, unlike the Speaker in the US House of Representatives and in the various US state legislatures, is not supposed to be affected by political party affiliation or loyalty. When they are elected by the members, they resign their party membership and when they run for re-election to represent their constituency, they are on the ballot as Speaker. They then serve as Speaker until they retire.

Over the past few years, there have been informal suggestions by some backbenchers (members of the Commons who are neither Government ministers or the spokespeople from opposing parties) that the Speaker should step down because he has been incompetent and feathering his own nest. However, this is the first time that a motion of no confidence in the Speaker has been put before the House or that a party leader has openly spoken against the Speaker.

It all stems from the huge fiasco over how members expenses have been paid. It turns out that many members across all parties have been claiming expenses for some pretty outrageous things. Two members of the Labour Party have been expelled from the party and one Government minister has stepped down during the investigation. Criminal charges may be in the offing for members who have been completely fraudulent, for example claiming expenses for mortgages that didn’t exist.

For mortages, rents, renovations, repairs, and every other conceivable domestic expense, MPs have repeatedly engaged in “flipping”. This means they will claim a particular residence is their second residence, claim loads of expenses, then flip the designation to a different home, claim loads of expenses, and continue doing this.

Married cabinet ministers Ed Balls and Yvette Cooper made a claim for almost four times the amount of mortgage interest to which they were entitled. They flipped the designation of their second home to three different properties within the space of two years. They also charged the taxpayer £600 per month to feed themselves. This is on top of their combined salary of nearly £285,000.

But back to Mr Speaker. As reported today in the Daily Telegraph:

Parliamentary authorities, overseen by Michael Martin, the Speaker, gave secret permission for some MPs to over-claim for thousands of pounds in home loan interest in deals that led to the systematic abuse of the taxpayer-funded expenses system.

He let his people collude with MPs to cheat the taxpayer. He also tried to stop the publication of information about expenses. He tried to call the police on the Daily Telegraph when they started exposing all of this. He has got to go.

But so do so many other MPs. Many have hastily repaid some of their more outrageous claims but some caught with their hand in the cookie jar just don’t care. For example:

Ben Chapman, a Labour MP, admitted last night that he was allowed to continue claiming for interest payments on his entire mortgage after repaying £295,000 of the loan in 2002.

Over 10 months the arrangement allowed Mr Chapman to receive £15,000 for the part of the home loan which had been paid off. Last night, he said he would not give back the money.

It has gotten so bad that even the Queen, who never gets involved in political matters, has had strong words with the Prime Minister. She is conscious that her people are suffering the effects of a recession, while her Parliament are stuffing their pockets with every available taxpayer pound.

More and more people and media outlets are calling for a swift general election. What we need is time for the smoke to clear and for constituency organisations of all parties to have time to de-select offending incumbents (thus preventing them from standing for re-election as anything other than an independent) so the election can be fought on the failure of the Labour Party and not on the behaviour of individual members.

Notre Dame is Not a Catholic University

The last vestiges of Catholicism are being torn away at Notre Dame. They are ignoring the local bishop. They are ignoring the provincial metropolitan archbishop. They are ignoring the call of bishops across America. They are arresting pro-life demonstrators, including priests.

That’s right. Priests with pro-life signs are unwelcome at Notre Dame. Only pro-abortion presidents are welcome.

The Congregation of the Holy Cross should disassociate themselves from the university and from John Jenkins, unless Jenkins resigns and Obama is uninvited. The Catholic Church should disavow any relationship whatsoever and from the Congregation of the Holy Cross if they refuse to act. I don’t care how many theology classes are  taught or that over 100 masses are celebrated every week on campus.

When Fr Jenkins approved the Notre Dame Queer Film Festival, he said he was “very determined that we not suppress speech on this campus”. That’s called academic freedom. His diocesan bishop John Michael D’Arcy disagreed, but Jenkins didn’t care. Welcoming debate was too important. However, when it comes to supporting the official teaching of the Church about the killing of unborn children, free speech is suppressed with vigor.

It should not even be an issue.