Mississippi's only abortion clinic faces immediate closure in new front of culture wars
The Bible Belt heartland of Mississippi is set to become the first American state without an abortion clinic in the latest battleground between pro-Life and pro-Choice advocates.
While some conservatives may think Justice Roberts was following in Justice Marshall's giant footsteps, the more apt comparison is to the Republican Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes. Hughes's court struck down the centerpieces of President Franklin Roosevelt's early New Deal because they extended the Commerce Clause power beyond interstate trade to intrastate manufacturing and production. Other decisions blocked Congress's attempt to delegate its legislative powers to federal agencies.
...
But Hughes sacrificed fidelity to the Constitution's original meaning in order to repel an attack on the court. Like Justice Roberts, Hughes blessed the modern welfare state's expansive powers and unaccountable bureaucracies—the very foundations for ObamaCare.
But a lot of those same observers were shocked on Thursday, when Chief Justice John Roberts, rejecting the Commerce Clause argument, agreed with Verrilli that the mandate simultaneously was and was not a tax, and that therefore Obamacare would stand. Roberts joined the court's four liberal justices, Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor and Kagan, who seemed prepared to uphold Obamacare under any circumstances.
Roberts' sleight of hand drove his conservative colleagues nuts. "The government and those who support its position on this point make the remarkable argument that [the mandate] is not a tax for purposes of the Anti-Injunction Act, but is a tax for constitutional purposes," wrote dissenters Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. "That carries verbal wizardry too far, deep into the forbidden land of the sophists."
St. Thomas explains that faith is an act of the intellect assenting to divine truth through the movement of the will. What moves the will toward faith? Grace, of course. The gift of God’s very life moves our will toward him, and if we allow that process to develop, eventually our intellect will acquiesce to divine truth. Faith, however, like the other theological virtue of hope, are animated by charity. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church states, “Fruit of the Spirit and fullness of Law, charity keeps the commandments of God and his Christ. . .” and is “the form of the virtues” (See CCC 1823 and 1827).
But what happens if, over time, we turn away from the grace of God, or simply become lazy? Every Catholic received sanctifying grace through their baptism, and continues to receive it through the eucharist. One might assume, therefore, that as long as Catholics continue to go to mass every Sunday and receive communion, they will maintain grace in their souls moving them toward divine truth.
And they will, assuming they haven’t committed mortal sin. As every Catholic knows, mortal sin destroys sanctifying grace in the soul and separates us from the love of God. Such sin principally destroys charity, which is the root of our desire to be with God. When this happens, inevitably we move further and further away from God. Our will turns back toward the self, and divine truth begins to slip away. The only thing that can repair that fissure is confession, which restores sanctifying grace to the soul.
Republican governors are planning to ignore the Supreme Court's decision Thursday to uphold Obamacare hoping that the issue will drive voters to dump President Obama in favor of Mitt Romney who has vowed to kill the Affordable Care Act.
After the decision, the Republican Governors Association said that nothing should be done by the states until after the election, a clear signal that they believe a GOP president, House and Senate will kill the health care reform pushed through by Democrats and opposed by Republicans.
...even if the Court is correct that, under its jurisprudence, the mandate that undergirds Obamacare can be sustained as a tax, it is surely intolerable for the Supreme Court to aid and abet Congress and the president in the commission of a massive fraud: upholding as a tax something they swore up and down was not a tax — allowing them to enact as a tax something that would never have passed if honestly presented as a tax, allowing them to escape accountability for passing a massive tax increase.
Saint Clare of Assisi, a model for religiousIt’s tempting to see the nuns vs Vatican story through the prism of gender politics. ... From the nuns' perspective, it’s frustrating that the Church’s teachings on social justice are being subordinated to an obsession with patriarchal orthodoxy.
But this row is about theology, not identity politics. The Catholic Church is one of the few institutions left in the West that simply cannot change. Its theology is like a delicate spider’s web: remove one strand and the entire structure would collapse. It can’t be done. ...
In short, the Catholic Church cannot change and it cannot indulge rumours of past error. Arguably, it doesn’t have to because it has never been proven theologically wrong.
If this is obvious to a layman, then why do the American nuns persist with their theological innovation? Alas, the answer is that some of them simply aren’t very Catholic. Or, at least, their Catholicity takes a second place to their political liberalism.
The whole article is worth a read.For the same government that is, in effect, commanding Jews to eat pork, as did Antiochus in the days of the Maccabees, or commanding a man to show his intellectual capitulation by spitting upon a crucifix, as does Professor Frost in C. S. Lewis’ That Hideous Strength, is now commanding Catholics and other Christians to purchase the means and the guarantor of sexual vice – the falsely named “birth control,” pills or chemical-leaching devices designed to trick a woman’s body into a kind of childless pregnancy. It does so, moreover, against the mounting evidence to show the destruction of lower-class and now lower-middle-class communities occasioned by the devices and by the sexual profligacy they both encourage and entrench.If it be argued that my analogies are inadequate, I agree. Unlike what the Pill has done, the eating of pork does not, in itself, bring harm. Nor does spitting upon a piece of carved wood. Catholics should boldly resist the toxin as such. But more is at stake here. If the Jews had capitulated to Antiochus, they would have ceased to be Jews, and we would hear little more of them now than we hear of Medes and Parthians. If Mark Studdock, the agnostic sociologist, had capitulated to his professorial enticer, he would have lost what little remained of his human integrity and his soul. And if Catholics capitulate to breaking the law of God as they see it, spitting upon the crucifix, they too will lose their soul; there will no longer be a Catholic Church worth troubling about, just as the State does not trouble itself about those innocuous denominations that have surrendered to the sexual revolution and to statist ambition.The horrible secret is that the American people may well no longer wish to be free, because the practice of the virtues is too difficult. The teachings of the Catholic Church threaten them; they are openly gleeful when they can point to priests and laymen who violate those teachings. They prefer the servility of sexual license, made comfortable by levies from their neighbors. They are thus at the point of cheerfully giving away their most precious liberty, just so that they may do as they please with the zipper. Words cannot describe the baseness of it all.
A conservative group hosted a seminar Tuesday afternoon blasting a federal mandate that requires some religious organizations to provide insurance coverage for "contraceptive, sterilization, and abortifacient" treatments.
The issue has caused a political firestorm and is part of a debate over health care law championed by President Barack Obama that is at the center of state and federal races around the country and is currently under scrutiny of the Supreme Court.
On hand for the event, hosted by Thomas International Center atop the Wells Fargo Building in downtown Raleigh, was N.C. House Majority Leader Skip Stam. Stam told the group of around a dozen that the Supreme Court decision, expected on Thursday, could pave way for the revival of HB2, a bill exempting the state from insurance mandates that passed last year but was vetoed by Gov. Bev Perdue.
Speaking in dissent of most of the court’s rulings on Arizona’s immigration law, Scalia took a clear swipe in his remarks at the Obama administration’s new policy ending deportations of many young adults brought into the country illegally — which was not part of the Arizona case.
“The president has said that the new program is ‘the right thing to do’ in light of Congress’s failure to pass the administration’s proposed revision of the immigration laws,” Scalia said. “Perhaps it is, though Arizona might not think so.”
Scalia asked whether states would have entered into the union had the Constitution included a clause enacting immigration laws but stipulating that the president had a choice on whether to enforce them. Delegates would have “rushed to the exits” at Independence Hall.
By passing a state immigration law, he added, Arizona had “moved to protect its sovereignty — not in contradiction of federal law, but in complete compliance with it.”
But, “if securing its territory in this fashion is not within the power of Arizona, we should cease referring to it as a sovereign state.”
MIAMI (CBSMiami) – To see 20-month old Lyna Gonzalez, you would think she’s just like every other toddler at that age – vibrant and energetic.
“She’s perfectly normal, thank God,” said mother Tammy.
But it wasn’t always that way. During her pregnancy, Gonzalez’s doctors discovered a benign tumor the size of a tennis ball growing on her unborn baby’s mouth. Doctors told Tammy there was little chance her daughter would survive birth – and if she did, she would require an immediate tracheotomy in order to breath and have multiple surgeries thereafter. ...
After a lot research and heart ache, Tammy sought help from University of Miami/Jackson Memorial fetal surgeon Ruben Quintero.
Quintero, a pioneer in fetal medicine, has treated many birth defects and high risk conditions while the baby is still in the womb. ...
In May 2010, Quintero and Dr. Eftichia Kontopoulos operated on Tammy’s baby in utero. Using an endoscope guided by ultrasound they performed a first of its kind surgery and removed the tumor from the fetus’ mouth.
I have to be honest and say I have found the IEC [International Eucharistic Congress] in Dublin somewhat disappointing to view because, and despite the sincere fervour, dedication and the obvious prayerfulness of the people and all the hard work going on, it seems as though the attempts by Pope John Paul II to bring an end to irregularities in the liturgy (cf.Dominicae Cenae, 1980; Redemptionis sacramentum, 2003) and Pope Benedict’s call for continuity with Tradition in liturgy (Curial Address, December 2005) have never happened. While some excellent points have been made in addresses and homilies, we seem to have had little Gregorian Chant, despite the directive of Vatican II (Sacrosanctum concilium 116) that Gregorian Chant be given pride of place (even sacred polyphony was not given the prominence of chant, it being lumped together with ‘other kinds of music’ which are given the status of simply “not necessarily excluded”), yet we have had girls dancing through the congregation with bowls of incense and a Cardinal finding he has to use the Altar of Sacrifice as a lectern from which to preach during a Penitential Service.
A group of Catholic sisters broke bread Tuesday with the poor and homeless at Milwaukee's St. Benedict the Moor Catholic Church, part of a nine-state bus tour drawing attention to proposed Republican budget cuts and the Catholic charities they say would be harmed by them.
"The current House budget is going to devastate people at the margins," said Sister Simone Campbell, executive director of Washington-based Network, the Catholic social justice lobby singled out in a recent Vatican rebuke of U.S. Catholic sisters.
"We believe we need reasonable revenues for responsible programs," she said.
Our budget ends welfare for those who don’t need it, but strengthens welfare programs for those who do. Government safety-net programs have been stretched to the breaking point in recent years, failing the very citizens who need help the most. When solidarity and subsidiarity are in balance, civil society is revitalized, not displaced. We rightly pride ourselves on looking out for one another — and government has an important role to play in that. But relying on distant government bureaucracies to lead this effort just hasn’t worked.
In order for us to justify the way we live, we have to get rid of the notion that an order exists in our human being. We have to maintain that the distinction of the sexes was accidental. We have to deal with the consequences of our acts. The nagging specter of God’s order for our own good becomes a burden on our souls. For our own peace of soul we must boldly affirm that God does not exist. This affirmation, we think, makes us free of God. Those who continue to believe in God’s existence are no longer merely deluded people, they are dangerous. We must deal with them.
We must restrict what they call “freedom of religion.” Religion itself is the real problem. Religion is an illusion. We must drive it from the public order. We will not be free till the last vestiges of God are eradicated from our midst. We can no longer “respect” religion or conscience. We want to give our “rights” to do whatever we will to everyone whether he wants them or not. If someone does not want them, that person cannot really belong to our culture or polity.
Jesus intended the parable of the mustard seed as a similar encouragement to the sometimes faltering faith of his disciples. The mustard seed “at the time of its sowing in the soil is the smallest of all the seeds on earth”. Pride is competitive, and it is scarcely surprising that it should tempt us into believing that, in comparison with others, our own faith is so diminutive as to be insignificant. ...
Our pride demands instant perfection, and when we cannot achieve it we are tempted to give up. Holiness and virtue, like the fruit of a seed hidden in the ground, are grown from a patient trust in God’s presence.
MILITARY RELIGIOUS LEADERS REPORT PRESSURE, BACKLASH OVER BELIEFS
In the era of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, a number of support groups advocated for gay service members who feared backlash for speaking freely. But the repeal of the ban in late 2011 has not ushered in a new era of free speech; rather, now it is chaplains who say they are being muzzled by the military and a group has formed to pass legislation seeking relief on their behalf. ...
Now, the Chaplain Alliance for Religious Liberty, a coalition of retired chaplains formed to support their active-duty counterparts in such situations, told Human Events it has collected anecdotal reports from a number of chaplains who say they have felt pressure from command leaders regarding how they express their beliefs about homosexuality.
A small handful of bones found in an ancient church in Bulgaria may belong to John the Baptist, the biblical figure said to have baptized Jesus.
There's no way to be sure, of course, as there are no confirmed pieces of John the Baptist to compare to the fragments of bone. But the sarcophagus holding the bones was found near a second box bearing the name of St. John and his feast date (also called a holy day) of June 24. Now, new radiocarbon dating of the collagen in one of the bones pegs its age to the early first century, consistent with the New Testament and Jewish histories of John the Baptist's life.
"We got some dates that are very interesting indeed," study researcher Thomas Higham of the University of Oxford told LiveScience. "They suggest that the human bone is all from the same person, it's from a male, and it has a very high likelihood of an origin in the Near East," or Middle East where John the Baptist would have lived.
WASHINGTON — Last summer, gays in the military dared not admit their sexual orientation. This summer, the Pentagon will salute them, marking gay pride month just as it marks other celebrations honoring racial or ethnic groups.
Officials said Thursday that they’re planning the first-ever event to recognize gay and lesbian troops.
A fire destroyed a church in Juárez early Wednesday morning, but spared a Virgin of Guadalupe image, despite the fierce blaze, Juárez officials said today.
The incident took place at about 4:04 a.m. on Wednesday, at San Agustín Chapel at Paseos del Alba and Paseos del Ángel Streets, Juárez Fire Department officials said.
"The fire tore down the whole church," said Cap. Martin Morales, of the Fire Department in Juárez, in a telephone interview.
But the fire spared a Virgin of Guadalupe image inside the church. The beloved icon, 60 centimeters tall and one meter wide, was framed in wood.
A photo showing a foetus whose mother was forced to have an abortion has shocked China web users.
Feng Jiamei, from Shaanxi province, was made to undergo the procedure in the seventh month of pregnancy, local officials said after investigating.
Ms Feng was forced into the abortion as she could not pay the fine for having a second child, US-based activists said. ...
Internet users expressed outrage.
"This is what they say the Japanese devils and Nazis did. But it's happening in reality and it is by no means the only case... They [the officials] should be executed," one reader on news website netease.com said, according to the AFP news agency.
BEIJING – Feng Jianmei says she was manhandled by seven people, some of them local family planning officials, some of whom she didn’t know.
Feng, 22 years old and seven months pregnant, was dragged out of her relative’s home, carried and shoved into a van that headed straight to a hospital on June 2, she told NBC News in phone interview.
She was blindfolded, thrown on a bed, and forced to sign a document that she couldn’t read with the blindfold still on her eyes. Then two shots were injected into her belly. Thirty hours later, on the morning June 4, she gave birth to a dead baby girl.
Feng is one of the many Chinese women who have been forced to have abortions under China’s strict one-child-only policy started in late 1970s to contain the country’s fast growing population, which has now topped 1.3 billion people.
VATICAN CITY (AP) — The Vatican has formally proposed a way to reconcile with a breakaway group of traditionalist Catholics in a final bid to end a quarter-century of schism.
The Vatican said Thursday it had proposed making the Society of St. Pius X a "personal prelature" — akin to a diocese without borders — during a meeting Wednesday with the society's superior. Currently, only the conservative Opus Dei movement enjoys that designation.
Birth Control Linked to Heart Attack, Stroke
... The decision to use birth control is one that most women face at some point, and today many options exist to help women control whether and when they get pregnant. But some of these approaches may carry risks. It has long been known that certain kinds of birth control can increase the risk of clots in the legs and lungs. ...
Now, a new study by Danish researchers suggests that hormonal contraception also increases the risk of heart attacks and stroke in women.
Is dialogue possible with her?ROME -- In the wake of Tuesday's meeting with representatives of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, the Vatican official responsible for a recent crackdown said he still believes the relationship can work, but also warned of a possible "dialogue of the deaf," reflected in what he sees as a lack of movement on the Vatican's concerns.
Cardinal William Levada, prefect of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, floated the possibility that should the LCWR not accept the reforms outlined in an April 18 assessment, the result could be decertifying it in favor of a new organization for women's religious leaders in America more faithful to church teaching. ...
Specifically, Levada cited publication of an interview with Fr. Charles Curran, a moral theologian censured by the Vatican in the 1980s for his views on sexual morality, in a recent issue of the group's Occasional Papers as well as decisions to invite Barbara Marx Hubbard, often described as a "New Age leader," to address the upcoming August assembly meeting and to bestow an award on Immaculate Heart Sr. Sandra Schneiders, another theologian sometimes critical of Vatican policy.
LONDON - The Church of England and Roman Catholic bishops of England and Wales formally objected Tuesday to the government's proposal to permit gay marriages, both asserting that their historic understanding is that marriage is the union of a woman and a man.
Prime Minister David Cameron is backing a proposal to permit civil marriages for gay couples, despite the strong opposition of some lawmakers in his Conservative Party. Gay couples are already allowed to have civil partnerships, with the first such ceremony in 2005.
The churches' responses were released on the day when the traditional marriage group Coalition for Marriage prepared to deliver a petition with more than half a million signatures opposing the change to Cameron's office. Thursday is the deadline for public comment, which the government will consider in drafting legislation.
A new study finds that adult children of parents in same-sex relationships fare worse socially, psychologically and physically than people raised in other family arrangements. ...
People who reported that their mother or father had a same-sex relationship at some point were different than children raised by their biological, still-married parents in 25 of the study's 40 measures. And most of the time, they fared worse. The children of parents who at some point had a same-sex partner were more likely to be on welfare, have a history of depression, have less education and report a history of sexual abuse, the study found.
Pope Benedict XVI says the Second Vatican Council did not reject Eucharistic adoration outside of Mass, including the Corpus Christi procession that he led June 7 Rome.
“One unilateral interpretation of the Second Vatican Council has penalized this dimension, restricting in practice the Eucharist to the moment of celebration,” the Pope said during his homily for the feast of Corpus Christi.
“In this case, the accentuation placed on the celebration of the Eucharist acted to the detriment of adoration as an act of faith and prayer addressed to the Lord Jesus, truly present in the Sacrament of the Altar,” he stated. ...
The Pope told the large outdoor congregation that the way Eucharistic adoration was de-emphasized in the Church was “influenced by a certain secularizing mentality of the 1960s and '70s,” and this had “repercussions for the spiritual life of the faithful.”
He proposed that limiting one’s relationship with the “Eucharistic Jesus” solely to the moment of the Mass risked “emptying his presence in the rest of existential time and space,” including in our daily lives.
Golden gate: Masterpiece restored
No less an artist than Michelangelo said it was so beautiful it could grace the entrance to Heaven and dubbed it the Gate of Paradise.
But after six centuries exposed to the elements, the Renaissance Porta del Paradiso in Florence's main piazza had lost its lustre and was removed in 1990.
Now the landmark has been returned to its original glory by a restoration that took 33 years and involved the use of lasers and chemical baths to remove centuries of grime and oxidisation.
The gold-plated Porta del Paradiso, as it is known in Italian, was created by Lorenzo Ghiberti after he was commissioned by a guild of Florentine cloth importers.
Ghiberti, a renowned sculptor and metalworker, took 27 years to complete the work and included a bald-headed likeness of himself in the doors, which were finally unveiled in 1452.
1) Only in America could the President talk
about the greed of the rich at a $35,000 a plate campaign fund-raising event.
2) Only in America could people claim that the government still
discriminates against black Americans when we have a black President, a
black Attorney General, and roughly 18% of the federal work force is black
while 12% of the population is black.
3) Only in America could we have had the two people most responsible
for our tax code, Timothy Geithner, the head of the Treasury Department
and Charles Rangel who once ran the Ways and Means Committee, BOTH turn out
to be tax cheats who are in favor of higher taxes.
4) Only in America can we have terrorists kill people in the name of
Allah and have the President and the media react by fretting that Muslims might be harmed by the backlash.
5) Only in America would we make people who want to legally become American citizens wait for years in their home countries and pay tens of
thousands of dollars for the privilege while we discuss letting anyone who
sneaks into the country illegally just become American citizens.
6) Only in America could the people who believe in balancing the
budget and sticking by the country's Constitution be mocked by the President
and labeled "extremists" by the media.
7) Only in America are you required to present a driver's license to
cash a check or buy alcohol, but not to vote.
8) Only in America could the President and the media blame oil
companies for gouging the public because the price of gas went up when the return
on equity invested in a most major oil companies is less than half that of
a company making tennis shoes (Nike).
9) Only in America could the government collect more tax dollars from
the people than any nation in recorded history, but still spend over a
trillion dollars more than it has per year while the President complain that
there is not nearly enough money to do what he wants.
10) Only in America could the people who pay 86% of all income taxes
be accused by the President of not paying their "fair share" on
behalf of the people who don't pay any income taxes at all.
Almost 400 Nun Signatures Found On Scott Walker Recall Petition
At least 392 nuns participated in the left’s effort to recall Wisconsin governor Scott Walker. These Catholic gals are supposed to be pro-life and embrace traditional moral values. As a group, they seem intent on replacing the pro-life Walker with a pro-abort/pro-gay marriage secular humanist. I guess the “social justice” sisters support lefty Democrats because they have confused nanny state socialism with charity. Leftist claptrap psychobabble (think radical feminism/”gay equality”/moral relativism ETC) likely also holds a lot of appeal to them. Someone please explain to them that socialism A) doesn’t work B) involves forcible theft of the fruit of citizens’ labor B) requires surrendering liberty to secular statist central planners and C) can only be enforced by a tyranny.
MADISON, Wis. — Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's resounding victory over political foes who had sought his removal from office cemented the ascendancy of a new class of Republicans whose political style was forged in the Badger State.
A new CBS News/New York Times poll reveals that nearly seven in ten Americans want the Supreme Court to overturn either all or President Obama's health care law or strike down just the individual mandate.
In the poll released on Thursday, 41 percent of those polled think Mr. Obama's health care law should be overturned completely by the Supreme Court, with another 27 percent of respondents saying they want the court to keep the law but overturn the mandate.
Babies could be tested for 3,500 genetic faults
Scientists could soon be able to routinely screen unborn babies for thousands of genetic conditions, raising concerns the breakthrough could lead to more abortions.
(CNN) – Mariela Castro, the daughter of Cuban President Raul Castro, said she would like President Barack Obama to win a second term as president.
"As a citizen of the world, I would like him to win," Castro told CNN's Christiane Amanpour in an interview set to air Monday. "Seeing the candidates, I prefer Obama."
A single election rarely determines a democracy's fate, but some matter more than others. Tuesday's recall election of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is one that matters a great deal because it will test whether taxpayers have any hope of controlling the entitlement state and its dominant special interests.
Specifically, we will learn if a politician can dare to cross government unions and survive. ...
Students of democracy from Alexis de Tocqueville to Mancur Olson have pointed out that the greatest threat to self-government comes from the tendency of democracies to become barnacled with special interests that vote themselves more benefits than society can afford. This is the crisis of the modern entitlement state, which is unfolding from California to Illinois, Greece, Italy and even Washington. Wisconsin is a critical test of whether democracies can reform before the crisis becomes debilitating.
VATICAN CITY (AP) — The Vatican on Monday sharply criticized a book on sexuality written by a prominent American nun, saying it contradicted church teaching on issues like masturbation, homosexuality and marriage and that its author had a "defective understanding" of Catholic theology.
The Vatican's orthodoxy office said the book, "Just Love: A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics" by Sister Margaret Farley, a member of the Sisters of Mercy religious order and emeritus professor of Christian ethics at Yale Divinity School, posed "grave harm" to the faithful.
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith said that in the 2006 book, Farley either ignored church teaching on core issues of human sexuality or treated it as merely one opinion among many.
They [the left in Wisconsin] are right to worry, because Walker earned his narrow lead by breaking the Democrats’ inbuilt advantage in state politics – perhaps permanently. He did it with one simple reform. Before Walker, union member dues were paid straight from the employer to the union. The member never got to see the money and, likely, never thought about how much he was losing. After passage of Walker’s reforms, the money now goes into the employee’s pay packet first and they then get to choose whether or not to give it to the union. Unsurprisingly, workers have taken one look at the substantial contributions they have been asked to make and, channeling Justin, said, “Hell no!” To quote the Wall Street Journal, “Wisconsin membership in the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees — the state's second-largest public-sector union after the National Education Association, which represents teachers — fell to 28,745 in February from 62,818 in March 2011 … Much of that decline came from Afscme Council 24, which represents Wisconsin state workers, whose membership plunged by two-thirds to 7,100 from 22,300 last year.”
Call it empowering employees or call it defunding the unions, the point is that Walker has emasculated the political force behind the recall vote. That means that the 100,000 who crashed Madison to protest his policies weren’t the beginning of a new revolution. They were the last hurrah of an old political order.
5. Mary I. O, how different things might have been if Mary Tudor had given birth to an heir. England would have returned in perpetuity to the Catholic Church and we would have been wedded by blood to the Spanish empire with all its lovely American gold. There would have been no Troubles, no sexless Puritanism, no Presbyterian capitalism and no Giles Fraser. Instead we got the wooden toothed Elizabeth I in her place, who refused to even try to have an heir. Mary gets an “A” for effort.
American nuns come out swinging against Vatican in face of ‘radical feminist’ accusations
(CNN) – The leadership representing most of America’s nuns came out swinging Friday against the leaders of the Roman Catholic Church, in the face of charges from the Vatican that the nuns are espousing “radical feminism” and straying from church teaching.
The Vatican’s criticism of the American nuns has “caused scandal and pain throughout the church community, and created greater polarization,” the Leadership Conference of Women Religious - which represents about 80% of American nuns - said in a statement Friday. ...
Church experts say that the nuns have a few options in responding to one of the most powerful offices in the church. They could accept the assessment, negotiate or resign en masse and form a new group outside the watchful eye of the Vatican.
If abortion is an acceptable form of birth control, a matter of “reproductive health” rather than life and death, why are pro-choicers so touchy about the subject of sex-selecting abortions? If life doesn't begin until a baby can feel pain or it can survive on its own (or whatever arbitrary, unscientific designation we’ve come up with), why is using abortion to determine sex any more detestable than using abortion for convenience sake? Does the intent change the reality of the act? ...
What seems to offend many pro-choice advocates is that gendercide is typically aimed at baby girls -- predominantly in Asia. Is it a problem in the United States? In some communities, yes. But in a wealthy nation, it seems to me that selective abortions wouldn’t skew much higher for one gender or the other, making it, well, just simple infanticide. Selecting sex is just another outgrowth of “choice,” is it not? What I want my family to look like is none of your business, right? It's not like we're aborting anything with consciousness or awareness, so what's the problem?
The real difficulty with the topic -- already straining under the weight of euphemisms -- is that it presents a massive logical and ethical dilemma. It forces pro-choice advocates to admit that abortion, in certain circumstances at least, is wrong. Why? I still haven't found an answer.
