Creative Minority Report

White House Lie: Our Door is Open to Bishops

2012-05-24T13:17:00.000-04:00

The Cafferty File on CNN has a typically unbalanced report on the lawsuit against the HHS mandate. But this isn't about the bias, it's about how the Obama administration regularly lies.

Here's a piece of the report:

As a compromise, they said insurance companies would have to provide contraception for employees who wanted it - so Catholic employers could avoid directly providing birth control.

But that wasn't good enough for the church.

So far, the White House isn't commenting on these lawsuits, although one official told The Wall Street Journal that they're still trying to work things out with Catholic leaders: "Lawsuits or no lawsuits, our doors remain open."

Doors remain open?

But this flies in the face of what Timothy Cardinal Dolan recently told Charlie Rose who said of Obama, "He keeps telling me he wants this to work," said Dolan. But we've heard from the White House that this is all your going to get and there will be no substantial mitigation."

So here you have two mutually exclusive statements from a Cardinal and the President but the media would rather just report that Obama has an open door to the bishops, which is a lie under pretty much any common definition of an open door.

You see, what Obama means when he says the door is open is that you're welcome to come in and surrender any time.

Remember in 2010 when Benjamin Netanyahu came to the White House, Obama tried to get him to sign a written agreement about settlements. When Netanyahu refused, Obama stormed out of the meeting, told him he could consult with advisers and said “let me know if there is anything new."

That's what Obama means by open door.

NY Proposes Ban on Anonymous Comments

2012-05-24T11:00:00.004-04:00

I am no fan of anonymous comments. As a conservative, if I don't like them I can choose to turn them off. Liberals (even Republican liberals) are not content to make their own choice. They want you to make their choice too.

NYS lawmakers are proposing a ban on anonymous comments.

I am serious. There is no problem so small that legislators can leave to ordinary people.

Nearly half of the Republicans serving in the New York State Assembly have proposed legislation that would ban anonymous online comments.

If enacted, the legislation would require websites — including social networks and online newspapers — to remove all anonymous comments that are brought to the attention of administrators.

An anonymous comment could remain if the author “agrees to attach his or her name to the post and confirms that his or her IP address, legal name, and home address are accurate.”

UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh told The Daily Caller that the bill is “clearly unconstitutional.”

“The Supreme Court has held for 50 years that anonymous speech is protected,” explained Volokh, pointing to the 1960 case Talley v. California. “This kind of breach of anonymity on demand is just not constitutional.”

“I would love to hear from these legislators… Presumably at least one of them should be able to speak to the constitutional objections to the statute,” Volokh added.

The sponsor of the state Senate’s version, Republican Thomas O’Mara, told TheDC that he had not initially considered that the legislation might ban First Amendment-protected speech.

Butt out!!

Study: IVF Puts Women in Danger

2012-05-24T07:27:00.002-04:00

You know how pretty much any study that says there may be an increased rate of cancer if you use your cell phone, drink soda, eat meat or cook your lunch in the microwave.

But any study that says anything about contraception or IVF being in danger to women is typically met with silence by the mainstream media.

So CMR thanks the UK Telegraph for their report showing a link between IVF treatements in your women and breast cancer.

Researchers at the University of Western Australia found women who had IVF treatment at a younger age had a higher risk of developing the disease over the following 15 years.

Oestrogen, a hormone which is known to fuel certain forms of breast cancer, may be up to 13 times higher during an IVF cycle than normal.

Concerns have been raised about the use of strong hormones to stimulate the ovaries to produce more eggs during fertility treatment as hyperstimulation can be fatal.

I'm telling you that there's a lot of Catholics out there who don't have any clue that IVF is viewed as anything but a wonderful new way to make babies. I can think of three Catholics who didn't.

I don't know why we don't discuss this more. We should absolutely promulgate this more. And besides being morally problematic, it's dangerous.

Every, Every Life Is God's Gift

2012-05-23T23:06:00.002-04:00

Have you seen this video?

Lacey Buchanan of Woodbury, Tennessee is a mom and for that she has been criticized. You see, our culture and some rude people on the street think she should have aborted her son Christian. WOuldn't everyone be better off.

Lacey Buchanan answers those critics in a very moving way that shows that every life, every life is part of God's plan and a gift.

When you watch this video in which Lacey doesn't speak, you will assume that she tells her whole story through the written cards she holds up. No, the real story is told in her face. Her face...

I have to go now, I have something in my eye.

Hans Küng: Pope A Schismatic!

2012-05-23T18:05:00.001-04:00

I knew that Hans Küng is a heretic, but I never knew that he was this funny.

Hans Küng has warned the Pope that he will ipso facto be a schismatic by allowing the SSPX back into the Church. Apparently the Big Tent Church the liberals love is all out of room.

Pope Benedict will be a schismatic because the SSPX has questions about Vatican II. Every other doctrine or dogma is up for discussion, but not Vatican II.

Both in the official and in the alternative activities in the Mannheim Katholikentag*, the prevailing sentiment was one of resentment and frustration over the delayed reforms in the Church. In fierce contrast with that, Pope Benedict XVI prepares, apparently for Pentecost, the final reconciliation with the Catholic Church of the traditionalist Society of Saint Pius X, with its bishops and priests. This should happen even if the SSPX keeps rejecting key conciliar documents, having to be incorporated into the Church with the use of skillful canonical tactics. Before the Pope does this, he must be duly warned, not least by the bishops, because of the following:

1. The pope would be including in the Church bishops and priests that are definitely invalidly ordained. According to the Apostolic Constitution of Pope Paul VI "Pontificalis Romani recognitio", of July 18, 1968, the ordination of bishops and priests by Archbishop Lefebvre is not only illegal but also invalid. This view is shared among others by a relevant member of the "Doctrinal Commission", Karl Josef Becker, SJ, now a cardinal.**

2. With such a scandalous decision, Pope Benedict would, in his overall regretted isolation, be even more separated from the People of God. The classical doctrine regarding schism should be a warning to him. According to it, a schism of the Church happens when there is separation from the Pope, but also when the latter separates himself from the body of the Church. "Even the Pope could become a schismatic, if he will not guard the unity and communion proper to the whole body of the Church." (Francisco Suárez, major Spanish theologian of the 16th/17th centuries).

3. A schismatic pope loses his position according to that same teaching of the constitution of the Church. At least, he cannot expect obedience. Pope Benedict would be therefore encouraging the already widespread popular movement of "disobedience" against a hierarchy that is disobedient to the Gospel. He would bear sole responsibility for the grave rift and the strife created inside the Church. Instead of reconciling with the ultra-conservative, anti-democratic, and anti-Semitic SSPX, the Pope should rather care about the majority of reform-minded Catholics and reconcile with the churches of the Reformation and the entire ecumenical movement. Thus he would unite, and not divide.

So now he is claiming that the Church will have no Pope. It goes to show you that the crazies on the left end up in the same place as the crazies on the right.

Indian Doctors feed aborted female fetuses to dogs to hide sex-selection abortion

2012-05-23T14:57:00.001-04:00

This is just horrific. Abortion is horrific. Gendercide is horrific. And so it is no surprise that these practices breed more horror. I really hope this report is not true. From India Today:

Some doctors in Beed are disposing of female foetuses by feeding them to dogs in order to destroy evidence of female foeticide.

The shocking revelation was made by Varsha Deshpande of Lek Ladki Abhiyan, an NGO working against the practice.

Maharashtra's Public Health Minister Suresh Shetty also admitted he had heard of foetuses thrown to the dogs in Beed.

Deshpande's allegation is significant as Beed in Marathwada has the worst child sex ratio - 801 girls being born per 1,000 boys (2011 census) - in Maharashtra.

The low percentage of females is attributed to rampant female infanticide in the area...

Deshpande claimed her organisation had conducted a sting operation on the doctor in 2010, in which he openly talked about how he was aborting female foetuses and feeding them to his five dogs....

"A person even saw a foetus being fed to the animals. This is known to everyone in Beed, but the police are not taking action as Munde is influential," Deshpande said.

She added that some other doctors in Beed kept dogs for the same purpose - to avoid the hassle of disposing of the bodies.

No before we sit back, all comfortable in our enlightenment, we need to be reminded that the West is not totally blameless in the global war on females. Mara Hvistendahl, in her fascinating book Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men, goes beyond the typical reasons why many Asian countries are aborting their girls in record numbers. We know Asian countries like India have a preference for boys and China has one-child policy. But Asia has always prized their sons and only China has a one-child policy. Yet all over Asia, in the last few decades, millions of girls have gone missing. Why?

Hvistendahl makes a compelling case that the Western world shoved population control down the throats of Asians and presented sex-selective abortion as the "ethical" means to do it. The typical arrogant and fearful Western minds thought we had to control the growth of Asian populations and reasoned that if Asians kept having children until they got a boy, then providing sex-selective abortion was the answer. They could just abort all their girls until they got a boy and then they would be happy with only one child. Hvistendahl writes:

Some population control advocates realized that using sex selection for population control might create a world where women might have to be locked up or forced to marry multiple men or traded like commodities but this was acceptable conditions to fight over-population.

In the 1960s and 1970s, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the World Bank, the United Nations and even Disney told couples all over Asia that they had to limit their family size or their children, and the rest of the world, would suffer. China responded with their one-child policy.

Eventually, decades later, the population control education is complete. Coercion and propaganda, paid for by Western dollars, are no longer needed and families are voluntarily limiting themselves to one or two children. And with portable ultrasounds and legalized abortion, they can ensure that at least one child is a boy. India and China have now made sex-selective abortion illegal but the gendercide continues and women are becoming more and more marginalized as they become a rare commodity.

Now Asian countries are faced with the fruit of a population control movement that came from outside their borders and encouraged their gender preference: a world full of men unable to marry because their brides were aborted, a culture that increasingly treats women as commodities to be bought sold and traded, and a place where females fetuses are targeted, killed and apparently fed to the dogs.

Rebecca Taylor blogs at Mary Meets Dolly

Gallup: 82% of Catholics Think Contraception is Morally Acceptable, Let's Change That

2012-05-23T12:43:00.000-04:00

According to Gallup's recent survey 82% of Catholics believe contraception is morally acceptable. That's a shame.

Gallup does point out that this has nothing to do with the fight over religious liberty but it is a helpful benchmark to know where we stand. In fact, those numbers were a little more encouraging.

At the same time, when given a choice, 56% of Catholics in a Gallup survey conducted Feb. 16-19 said they sympathized with the views of religious leaders on the contraception-healthcare coverage debate, while 39% sympathized with the Obama administration's position.

But I think this highlights the desperate need that this fight over religious liberty affords us. Now would be a great time for priests, bishops and cardinals to preach about why contraception is morally unacceptable. Let's use this government overreach as an opportunity to spread the message of the Catholic Church. We must remember that winning politically is great but winning souls is what we're all about.

Gallup: Pro-Choicers Disappearing

2012-05-23T07:20:00.000-04:00

Gallup has the latest numbers on the breakdown of self professed "pro-life" and "pro-choice" Americans.

While the number of pro-lifers remains steady at around 50%, the number of "pro-choicers" dropped precipitously.

The 41% of Americans who now identify themselves as "pro-choice" is down from 47% last July and is one percentage point below the previous record low in Gallup trends, recorded in May 2009. Fifty percent now call themselves "pro-life," one point shy of the record high, also from May 2009.

Based on these numbers, I'm sure the media and certain Republicans will advise that Republicans should now abandon all pro-life issues because they're killing Republicans at the ballot box. It'll be just like gay marriage which loses at the ballot box every time it's tried so we're told to give up defending traditional marriage because it's killing us at the ballot box.

This is good news but, of course, as it's asking people on the phone to self identify it's real life applicability is somewhat questionable. I think the number I'm looking for is a massive reduction in the number of abortions in America. That'll be pro-life.

Then...The Wheel Came Off

2012-05-22T23:41:00.000-04:00

So we were packing up the kids to go to our nephew's birthday party and everyone's running around.

The twelve year old wants the yellow shirt that's in the washing machine but she couldn't move it into the dryer because the pink load is still in the dryer. (Yeah, we have a pink load. What? We've got four girls.) I tell her she has to pick another shirt because there's no time.

My nine year old wants to know if she can have a catch with someone outside.

What?! We're leaving. Now!!! Bring the mitt and ball with you, we'll have a catch at the party because it's outside.

My seven year old is asking me if after the party we can uhm maybe go skydiving.

Wait, what?

"Damon said a new skydiving place is opening up right near Wal-Mart," he said confidently.

There's an interesting thing that happens with kids. Up until your kids go to school you are the font of all information. All your years of experience pay off big time when you have a child. They ask every question under the book like why magnets stay together ('cause God wants them to), why the sky is blue ('Cause God is the Father and guys like blue), and why the neighbors cat keeps sneaking into our house (because we have air conditioning.)

But suddenly, he goes to school and all of your knowledge might as well be put in storage because some kid in his class has replaced you as the source of all information. And it doesn't matter how messed up the info is, he believes it. I'm telling you now that my son thought it was a real possibility that we were going to be parachuting into the toy aisle at Wal-Mart that afternoon. Why? Because Damon said so.

My ten year old daughter asks, "Uhm. What car are we taking?"

The van, I tell her.

Oh.

She hates the van. One time two years ago I ran out of gas in the van and we had to walk to get gas and walk back. Ever since then, she monitors the gas gauge as if she's a submarine captain staring at the depth gauge. Whenever the van gurgled or harumphed if I looked in the rearview I saw her eyes wide asking, "What was that?"

I always told her it was nothing. The van was fine. And she gave me her look like she didn't believe me that little girls must practice because they're all very good at it.

So my wife is in the car alone in front of the kids and I because the van had been making a lot of noise lately and we were heading to our nephew's 2nd birthday party 45 minutes away.

We were in the van on a pretty major road - two lanes going each way. All of a sudden I start heading a rumble from the front of the van.

Hmmm. (That hmmm is about the sum total of my car knowledge.)

As it got louder my "hmmm" transmogrified into an equally useless "What in the world?"

And that's when the wheel came off.

Not the tire. The whole freakin' wheel. The van lurched forward and I'm struggling to keep the van on the road as sparks are flying past my window. Out of the corner of my eye I'm watching the wheel rolling in front of us. I struggle to pull the car over to the side of the road and I succeed. Yes! The kids all looked a little panicked and they're all looking at the smoke coming from the metal where the tire used to be so I told them all to hop out and jump up onto the grass. Their car knowledge is limited to cartoons and movies where cars explode like balloons at the slightest provocation.

My ten year old looked at me as she was getting out. "The van's fine, huh?" I sensed a tone of accusation in her tone. (Yup. I speak tone.)

My wife called me a few minutes later when she realized we weren't behind her anymore. "Where are you?" she asked. "What happened?"

"The wheel came off?" I said.

"What, like engine trouble?" she asked.

"No, the wheel came off."

"Do you have a spare?"

"You're not understanding me. The whole entire wheel came off and rolled away. And I'm not speaking metaphorically. It rolled about a hundred yards up the road. I'm looking at it."

Oh.

I assured her the kids were O.K and she came back around and sat down on the grass with the kids and called the motor club for a tow. I walked up the road to retrieve the wheel while saying a prayer of thanks that nobody was injured. I wheeled it back just as a police officer passed by and pulled up behind us. He got out of his car and walked slowly around the car from the drivers side. I followed him from the other side of the car and we met in front. And that's the first time I noticed the pink boots.

There were two pink boots strewn right in front of my poor badly damaged van. I saw the officer look down at the boots and then he looked up at me and I looked at him.

Uh-oh.

"The boots were here before I got here," I said. "They were a pre-existing condition."

The officer gave me his "I'm not amused because I secretly think you ran over someone who was wearing pink boots up until a few moments ago" look.(It was a complicated look but fortunately I speak "look" too.)

Without saying a word he plodded around the van. I'm pretty sure he was looking for a crumpled up woman with bad fashion sense and no shoes. I was thankful that the owner of the boots had ambled off because if he'd found her sleeping somewhere I'm pretty sure I would've been tazed pretty quick.

My wife was still on the phone with the motor club, saying, "No the whole tire is gone. Well, it's not gone but it's in the front seat now but we just need a tow."

The officer comes back from his exhaustive search for a woman with no boots and he looked at me and then at all the kids. "These all yours?"

Now normally, when I get that question I say something like four of them are mine and one was just a hitchhiker we picked up but remembering the tazer, I just said, "Yup."

He looked at all of them and back at me and then he walked slowly back to his car. I told my wife to pack four kids in her car and the ten year old and I would go back with the tow truck. As he was getting in the car, the boy told me that Damon said one time a plane landed with no wheels.

OK.

When they left, the ten year old and I sat on the grass waiting for the tow. We relived the saga of the wheel and she told me she'd had a funny feeling about the van for a while. I told her I've had a funny feeling about the van for three years ever since the engine light came on, the front passenger window stopped working, and the cd player broke. Never mind that the van would wait about 6-8 seconds before it would actually start moving after I put it into drive. It was like it was saying, "You want me to move NOW?"

I always compared it to the maid on The Jeffersons. Sure, it eventually did the job but it sure gave off a lot of attitude before doing it.

When the tow driver showed up, he looked at the van and at the pink boots. He didn't ask any questions though. I think that actually disturbed me more.

The whole ride home he regaled the ten year old and I with the tale of how and why he beat up his boss at his last job. I stayed silent but my ten year old told him, "You warned him to stay out of your tool box so he knew what to expect?"

The driver seemed to appreciate her more than me so he focused the rest of his story to her and then she told him about a fourth grader who kept throwing the ball at people's heads in dodgeball. And then she stopped talking. Now, he didn't understand that my ten year old loves telling stories but they're not stories in the traditional sense. They're often excellent premises for a story but she doesn't see conclusions, morals, or lessons as crucial parts of the story. She just likes telling stories.

He looked at her and she looked back at him and finally he got the idea that she was done talking so he said, "What happened?"

"Oh, we had to go back in for lunch."

Oh. So he then thought that this conversation needed to conclude in some manner so he added, "Next time that kid throws at someone's head you walk right up to him and throw it at his head. That'll teach him."

"But I'll get in trouble," she said

Yeah. That seemed to stump him so I interjected by telling him where to turn to take us home. He dropped the car in our driveway and we thanked him. As he pulled away my ten year old looked at me and said, "he was funny."

He wasn't. But I was glad she thought so.

We walked in the door and my seven year old was waiting for me to tell me that Mom said we needed a new van and that Damon said Ferrari's were pretty cool cars.

"I've heard Ferrari's are good," I told him. "But I hear they don't have a lot of legroom." He and the four year old promised their willingness to scrunch their legs.

As I inspected the damage to the van, the twelve year old walked outside with her (now dry) yellow shirt on, the ten year old followed her regaling her with the story of the two truck driver who beat up his boss, the nine year old tossed the ball to the twelve year old, and the four and seven year old talked about fast cars while diving head first down the slide in our backyard.

My wife and I looked at the poor van and we both thought about how much money a new van will be and then she said, "We are so blessed. When you think what could've happened and here we all are all fine and happy. We are so blessed."

I thought about how that tire took out the left side of my van rolled across two lanes of traffic, rolled over a median, rolled over two more oncoming lanes of traffic before resting comfortably against a fence about one hundred yards away without hurting anyone or causing an accident. I wondered how something like that could happen. I just don't know how. I guess I'll ask Damon. He probably knows.

The Mysterious Case of the Disappearing Republicans

2012-05-22T14:03:00.003-04:00

The latest Washington Post/ABC News poll has Obama up 49-46 percent in the poll.

But if one delves deeper into the sample of voters, one might rightly wonder where all the Republicans went.

Hot Air reported that today’s D/R/I breakdown is 32% Democrat, 22% Republican, and 38% Independent.

That's right, according to ABC and The Washington Post only 22% of voters are Republicans.

Of course, this is terribly worrisome because even in 2008 which was the worst year for Republicans in decades, Republicans made up 32% of the electorate. And in 2010, Republicans made up 35% of the electorate. But just a year and a half later the pollsters have only 22% of the electorate as Republicans. That's 13% of the electorate...GONE! Missing!

Can we fit that many faces on the side of a milk carton?

I, for one am very disturbed by all these missing Republicans. I'm starting to wonder if all the conspiracy theories are true and Obama is carting away Republicans...or worse. I know us Catholics, when we need to get rid of someone we just dial 1-900-Albino-Monk. (This is not a toll free call) and the problem gets taken care of, if you know what I mean.

I'm wondering who is the equivalent of the albino monk assasin is for the Obama administration. Paul Begala maybe. Could you imagine waking up to that freakish smiling face on top of you as he gleefully chloroforms everyone of voting age in your house to do his will with you later in the panic room of his Georgetown condo.

I guess I could really get myself all worked up about all these missing Republicans but then maybe, just maybe ABC and The Washington Post aren't looking all that hard for them. Maybe, just maybe they'll reappear magically on voting day when 53% of the electorate votes to kick Obama out of office.

Obama's Sickening Birth Control Ad

2012-05-22T11:31:00.000-04:00

This is just awful and so full of lies that I'm almost stunned by it.

The gist of this is that little girls dreams will die unless you pay for their birth control.

I always get a chill of revulsion up my spine when I see an ad that touts abortion rights while playing soft music and showing slow motion video of children. Kinda' freaks me out.

As Katie Pavlich of Townhall writes:

There are many problems with this ad.

The first: The use of contraception is not controversial, forcing others, including religious institutions morally opposed to contraception, to cover and pay for contraception, is.

The second: Contraception is readily available at an inexpensive price pretty much everywhere.

The third: Have we really gotten to the point in America where young girls can only fullfil their dreams if someone else pays for their birth control? No, not even close. In fact, Forbes just named their 100 most powerful celebrities in the world. Four out of the top five celebrities were women and seven out of the top ten were women. Taxpayers weren't paying for their birth control through a govenment mandate along their way to the top.

The fourth: The woman narrating the ad says, "We need a president who will stand up for women's health and stay focused on jobs and the economy." Let me remind readers that it was President Obama who decided to make birth control a "controversial" issue and a distraction from his horrific economic record when his ally Nancy Pelosi tapped 30-year-old reproductive activist Sandra Fluke of Georgetown University to testify/complain before a congressional committee about paying $3000 a year for birth control.

Notre Dame: Good News and Bad News

2012-05-21T23:11:00.001-04:00

Yesterday, something very good happened and the University of Notre Dame was part of it. As you are no doubt aware, Notre Dame, the Archdioceses of New York and Washington and 40 other Catholic institutions joined in a lawsuit against the Obama Administration's unconstitutional abridgement of religious liberty via the HHS mandate.

Led by Cardinal Dolan, the US Bishops have been rock solid on this issue and they continue to impress. It is immensely gratifying to say that while this steadfast resistance to such infringement might not have been expected from the Bishops just a few short years ago, we have almost come to expect it now and that is amazing in and of itself. The Holy Spirit can truly work wonders.

Much more of a surprise is the participation of Notre Dame in the lawsuit. While much of the student body and faculty maintain a strong Catholic identity, the school administration's commitment to Catholic teaching and Catholic identity has become suspect over the last several years as a result of several controversial moves by Fr. Jenkins and the Notre Dame Board. Chief among these controversies is the choice of the Notre Dame administration to have the virulently pro-abortion President Obama as commencement speaker in 2009 and to honor him with an honorary degree.

After the announcement about the HHS mandate and the subsequent non-accommodating accommodation, Father Jenkins at Notre Dame made a series of ambivalent and tepid statements about the mandate. As a result, it was unclear whether Notre Dame would sit on the sidelines during the most crucial battle between the Church and an overreaching State or perhaps even capitulate.

So it is that many Catholics understandably reacted with relief and gratitude at the announcement that Notre Dame will participate in the crucial lawsuits necessary to defeat this unconstitutional infringement of religious liberty. I too am relieved and grateful.

That is the good news.

The not so good news is contained within Fr. Jenkins letter announcing the legal challenge.

In his announcement, Fr. Jenkins strongly makes the point that this issue is not about contraception, but rather about fundamental religious liberty. About that he is very right. However, within his statement are a few lines that seems to legitimate the idea that Catholics can 'conscientiously' use birth control and that Notre Dame 'respects' this decision.

Continue Reading at The Register>>>>

Taxpayer Funded Program: Do It Yourself Abortions

2012-05-21T22:44:00.000-04:00

Ick. There's a taxpayer-funded pilot program in California for training non-doctors to perform first-trimester vacuum aspiration surgical abortions.

What? What could possibly be dangerous about that? They get two days of instructions on how to rip babies apart.

The Life Legal Defense Foundation requested to know who was involved in the project and a judge is essentially telling them to mind their own business and that nobody can know the names of people involved.

Chelsea Schilling reports on this madness. She writes:
In his May 17 decision, Judge Evelio Grillo denied the Life Legal Defense Foundation’s petition for a writ of mandate to require release of the names of physicians, clinicians and stakeholders who participated in the pilot project conducted by the University of California San Francisco/Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health.

“[T]he court finds that the public interest in withholding the names of the Clinicians outweighs the public interest in disclosing those names,” the decision states. “First, there is a public interest in protecting persons who provide abortion services from harassment. … Second, the public has an interest in academic research, and that interest may be compromised if research participants cannot participate with the assurance that their privacy will be protected.”

It seems that all of this is tied to some legislation that Planned Parenthood is pushing. What a shock, I know. Planned Parenthood would love to save money and have janitors killing babies because they're cheaper than doctors.

It seems that this program was supposed to form the basis of testimony to pass the bill that would allow non-doctors to perform abortions. And remember these are the people who care sooooo much about women.

DC Comic Superhero To Come Out as Gay

2012-05-21T16:20:00.001-04:00

TV Guide is reporting that DC Comics plans to reintroduce a character as gay. That means they're going to take a character that wasn't gay and make him gay.

But wait, I thought it was genetic. I thought you didn't become gay. I thought you were born that way.

DC Comics have had alternate universes for a while but this would be an "alternative" universe, if you know what I mean. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that a guy who goes out at night in tights might come out as gay. I guess we should be surprised that it doesn't happen more often.

I'm thinking they won't monkey with the big heroes like Supes or Bats but maybe Martian Manhunter could go the other way, right? I mean, he's got "manhunter" right in his name.

This isn't the first time, though. If you'll recall, comic book writers have been trying to wave the rainbow flag for a bit. Remember some dude in the Archie comics "married" a dude. I suspect this kind of thing will occur with increasing frequency in the near future as we all are forced to "evolve" just like Obama.

Tons of Pot Found Off California Coast

2012-05-21T16:05:00.000-04:00

It's being reported that four tons of marijuana in large bales were found bobbing off the Southern California coast, according to news reports.

Investigators have no leads. But the dolphins had stopped swimming and were looking into see if Taco Bell delivered.

Bishops To Obama: Sue You!

2012-05-21T13:10:00.003-04:00

We live in amazing times.

I'm thinking the gloves are off.

(CNSNews.com) - The archdiocese of New York, headed by Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the archdiocese of Washington, D.C., headed by Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the University of Notre Dame, and 40 other Catholic dioceses and organizations around the country announced on Monday that they are suing the Obama administration for violating their freedom of religion, which is guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution.

The dioceses and organizations, in different combinations, are filing 12 different lawsuits filed in federal courts around the country.

The Archdiocese of Washington, D.C. has established a special website--preservereligiousfreedom.org--to explain it lawsuit and present news and development concerning it.

"This lawsuit is about an unprecedented attack by the federal government on one of America’s most cherished freedoms: the freedom to practice one’s religion without government interference," the archdiocese says on the website. "It is not about whether people have access to certain services; it is about whether the government may force religious institutions and individuals to facilitate and fund services which violate their religious beliefs."

How about Notre Dame stepping up? I think that's the most pleasant surprise of all in this.

Future Jesuit Sounds Like a Jesuit

2012-05-21T12:20:00.004-04:00

An article about a student at Boston College who's intending to become a Jesuit drew my attention.

I give great kudos to this young man who seems prepared to give his life to Christ. But I question the basics he's been taught by the Jesuit college. Just read these few paragraphs:

Kennedy says he sees the church as a dynamic institution, and that he feels responsible for helping to bring about its renewal.

“I’m not entering the church of 50 years ago or 500 years ago. I’m entering the church in 2012,’’ he said. “So you have to be realistic about the challenges of the images of priesthood in this day and age. . . . I don’t find it daunting, but it’s going to be a challenge.’’

He says he shares some of the critics’ questions, such as why the Vatican decided to investigate the US nuns, and why the church has taken such a hard line against gay relationships. He talks about the importance of lay empowerment and of affirming the role of women as leaders in the church. When he becomes a priest, he says, he plans to adopt a consensus-building approach, as some of the best priests he knows have done.

“The intentions of leadership within the church I don’t think are bad - I don’t think they wake up every day and say, ‘How can we make someone’s life miserable?’’’ he said. “But . . . what is the lived experience of Catholics today? You have to account for that.’’

A lot to worry about in that. I pray for the day that Jesuit colleges do a better job of teaching the faith.

The MoDo Bird

2012-05-21T08:25:00.001-04:00

Some species are just too dumb to survive. Case in point, the MoDo Bird.

Maureen Dowd, Catholic means never having to say you're sorry.

I ALWAYS liked that the name of my religion was also an adjective meaning all-embracing.

I was a Catholic and I wanted to be catholic, someone engaged in a wide variety of things. As James Joyce wrote in “Finnegans Wake:” “Catholic means ‘Here comes everybody.’ ”

So it makes me sad to see the Catholic Church grow so uncatholic, intent on loyalty testing, mind control and heresy hunting. Rather than all-embracing, the church hierarchy has become all-constricting.

It was tough to top the bizarre inquisition of self-sacrificing American nuns pushed by the disgraced Cardinal Bernard Law. Law, the former head of the Boston archdiocese, fled to a plush refuge in Rome in 2002 after it came out that he protected priests who molested thousands of children.
...
The latest kooky kerfuffle was sparked by the invitation to Kathleen Sebelius, the health and human services secretary, to speak at a graduation ceremony at Georgetown University on Friday. The silver-haired former Kansas governor is a practicing Catholic with a husband and son who graduated from Georgetown. But because she fought to get a federal mandate for health insurance coverage of contraceptives and morning-after pills, including at Catholic schools and hospitals, Sebelius is on the hit list of a conservative Catholic group in Virginia, the Cardinal Newman Society, which militates to bar speakers at Catholic schools who support gay rights or abortion rights.
...
I called Cuomo to see if, as his son Andrew weighs running for president, he felt the church had grown less tolerant.

“If the church were my religion, I would have given it up a long time ago,” he said. “All the mad and crazy popes we’ve had through history, decapitating the husbands of women they’d taken. All the terrible things the church has done. Christ is my religion, the church is not.

“If they make the mistake of saying that a politician has to put the church before the Constitution on abortion or other issues, there will be no senators or presidents or any other Catholics in government. The church would be wiser to take the path laid out for us by Kennedy than the path laid out for us by Santorum.”

I didn't know you could pack so much stupid into one article.

Harvard Profs Call Docs to Civil Disobedience

2012-05-20T23:43:00.003-04:00

Writing in USA Today, two Harvard Medical School professors urged doctors to civil disobedience over what they call "unprecedented and sweeping legal assault on women's reproductive rights."

The piece by doctors Marcia Angell and Michael Green of Harvard suprisingly begins with an argument against recent laws protecting doctors from "wrongful birth" lawsuits. Why? Because the two doctors seem to think that eeeevil pro-life doctors won't tell mothers if their babies in the womb aren't perfect in time to abort them.

Just think about that for a second. One could almost surmise that these doctors like abortions more than they dislike lawsuits. Greater love hath no doctor than willing to risk a lawsuit for laying down the life of a child, huh?

But it actually gets crazier from there.

Continue reading at The National Catholic Register>>>

The Big Facebook Fail

2012-05-20T11:40:00.003-04:00

They will one day write about Facebook in textbooks. However the entry will not be in the success story chapter but rather in the chapter entitled Cautionary Tales.

The Facebook IPO is the textbook definition of irrational exuberance. Farhad Manjoo writing at Slate states that in order to just maintain its current share price, Facebook will have to increase its revenue tenfold. Tenfold, just to maintain.

The problem for Facebook is that one or two ads by beloved companies like Ben & Jerry’s just isn’t going to cut it. To justify Facebooks’ $100 billion valuation, investors are going to expect amazing growth in its revenues—something on the order of 25 to 30 percent per year, according to analysts. At the moment, Facebook makes nearly $5 in revenue per user per year, and just $1 in profit per user per year. Because it will be difficult for Facebook to attract far more than a billion users—there are only so many Internet-enabled people on earth—its revenues must grow by selling each user for more money to advertisers. As my colleague Will Oremus explained last month, Facebook has to find a way to generate an order of magnitude more money from each of us. If it doesn’t make steady progress on that goal every single quarter, its stock price will fall—and even though Zuckerberg is very well insulated from shareholder revolt, a falling stock price will hurt Facebook’s ability to hire the best engineers, to acquire the best startups, and even to attract more ads.

Every few years investors need to be reminded of the law of gravity. Every once in a while they delude themselves into thinking that the rules have changed. That this company, this sector, this market is different and we will only see up. But gravity is not a suggestion, it's a law.

Increasing revenue tenfold just to maintain. Never. Gonna. Happen. Facebook is doomed and with it all the irrational exuberance that sustains this economy.

I suspect that within the next 2-3 years (or sooner) we will witness the mother of all corrections in the market and the economy. The only question in my mind is whether or not they will call it the Facebook correction or not?

Ha! NOW Rally Epic Fail.

2012-05-19T09:08:00.000-04:00

Compare the March for Life with this. The National Organization of Women held a rally against Rush Limbaugh and...it didn't turn out very well. They probably mistakenly scheduled it at the same time as the blue plate dinner special at 4 p.m.

7 Women showed up. 7. Ha!

The Pill is the New Asbestos

2012-05-18T14:18:00.003-04:00

The Pill took the world by storm. It was rapidly embraced by millions and millions with little concern shown for indiviudal or societal consequences.

Some, however, have been warning for quite some time that ther Pill has tons of unofreseen consequences, including an environmental one.

Dr. Rebecca Oas wrote a piece that appeared in Zenit that should scare folks:

When a new synthetic substance is created, or a naturally occurring substance is generated at greatly increased levels, the effects can be far longer-lasting and wider-reaching than its manufacturers predict or intend. Some well-known examples of this include asbestos, a popular insulation and flame retardant in the late 19th century, which was later discovered to be carcinogenic; and polystyrene foams like Styrofoam, which is frequently used in disposable packaging, yet takes hundreds of years to break down once discarded.

In the case of oral contraceptives, the key ingredients are synthetic hormones known as progestins, which mimic progesterone, either alone or combined with estrogen. When used therapeutically in contraceptive pills or in hormone replacement treatments for menopause, these synthetic hormones make their way into the water supply after being excreted in the patients’ urine.

As environmental contaminants, these are referred to as endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs), due to the fact that they interfere with the endocrine systems of humans and animals alike following exposure.

While its impact is still being widely studied, there is no doubt that the exposure is occurring: multiple international studies have documented elevated levels of natural and synthetic hormones in drinking water, and one such study conducted in France noted that progestins in particular were more resistant to removal by water treatment methods, compared with other types of pharmaceuticals (3).

Due to the accumulation of synthetic steroids in water, much of the research conducted on its impact has been done using water-dwelling vertebrates such as fish and frogs. An ever-increasing collection of studies report harmful effects of these hormones on aquatic vertebrates, particularly with regard to their reproduction, as would be predicted given the nature of the contaminants (4). One study focused on the effects of exposure to the progestin Levonorgestrel (LNG) on the frog Xenopus tropicalis. While the male reproductive system did not appear to be impaired, female tadpoles exhibited severe defects in the development of their ovaries and oviducts, rendering them sterile (5).

The whiole thing is definitely worth a read at Zenit.

For some reason the past few generations have excelled in exclusively short-term thinking. We spend our children's and grandchildren's money by the billion and then we kill our children and grandchildren by the million. We embrace the Pill without any concern for its physical, societal, or environmental impact. Ah, let's just ignore it a little while longer so we can keep the party/orgy going.

Note: Read Oas' piece at Zenit.

Author of "The Exorcist" and Georgetown Alumni Preparing Canon Lawsuit

2012-05-18T00:51:00.001-04:00

Georgetown University alumni, students and others are preparing a canon law suit to be filed with the Archdiocese of Washington and the Vatican, seeking remedies “up to and including the possible removal or suspension of top-ranked Georgetown’s right to call itself Catholic or Jesuit in its fundraising and representations to applicants.”

The effort is being led by the distinguished Georgetown alumnus William Peter Blatty, who won an Academy Award for his screenplay and book The Exorcist and has been honored by Georgetown with its John Carroll Medal for alumni achievement.

Continue reading at The Cardinal Newman Society>>>

Former Priests, Retired Priests Attack Church on Gay Marriage

2012-05-18T00:41:00.002-04:00

A small group of retired priests and a much larger groups of former priests are publicly opposing the Church's stance on gay marriage.

This occurs in light of a major effort by Archbishop Nienstedt to ensure that Catholic voters vote to protect trraditional marriage.

Minnesota Public radio reports:

Catholics are not united behind the church's official position, a point made clear today, when a group representing 80 former Catholic priests spoke out against the marriage amendment. They said the amendment violates Christian principles of love and justice.

Also coming forward to oppose the amendment were John Brandes, Tom Garvey and Tim Power, three retired priests who are still part of the church. They also came forward to oppose the amendment, putting them on a collision course with John C. Nienstedt, the Archbishop of St. Paul and Minneapolis, who last year informed all priests that they could not publicly dissent.

Catholic bishops have made passage of the amendment a top political priority this year, even though Minnesota law already prohibits gay marriage. Proponents of the amendment say it is needed to block a Hennepin County court case that seeks to overturn state law and numerous attempts by Democratic state legislators to legalize gay marriage.

In a letter submitted to the Star Tribune, titled "Catholics of Minnesota you have a choice!" they wrote, "There is not just one way for Catholics to vote in November."

Their letter describes gays and lesbians as brothers and sisters in Christ, who need allies.

Brandes, 85, served in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis for 61 years, including time at the Cathedral of St. Paul, St. Rita's in Cottage Grove and St. Mark's in St. Paul. Brandes said he and the two other retired priests want to be respectful of those who hold other views, and at the same time encourage dialogue about the diversity of Catholic views.

Garvey, ordained in 1957, served the Archdiocese for 40 years including at St. Luke's in St. Paul and St. Frances Cabrini in Minneapolis. He said his views on homosexuality changed decades ago after he watched an interview with a lesbian woman who described how she was different. "She began to cry convulsively and I said, 'We've got the wrong position on this,' " Garvey recalled.

Power, ordained in 1966, served at St. Thomas the Apostle in Minneapolis and St. Timothy's in Blaine before retiring after 24 years at Pax Christie in Eden Prairie. Power calls their letter "a small counterbalance" to the Church's official position on the amendment.

Power said he was compelled to speak out by the collective silence of other priests.

"People [were] saying to me, 'Where is the voice of the priests that believe the way we do? They can't all believe the party line,' "he said. "And I'm thinking too, 'Yeah, where are they?' That's us."

The one priest said he changed his mind on the issue because he saw a video with a woman crying. He reportedly said his views on homosexuality changed after he watched an interview with a lesbian woman who described how she was different. "She began to cry convulsively and I said, 'We've got the wrong position on this,' " Garvey recalled.

Well, at least it was an intellectually based decision.

A Combox Atheist In The Real World

2012-05-18T00:32:00.000-04:00

I have always presumed that comment box on Catholic sites (or any religious sites) provided a unique distance and anonymity that allows commenters to behave badly. Among the most misbehaved are atheist commenters who prowl around comboxes making vicious, insulting, and often vacuous comments while feeling so superior in the process. If you have been around Catholic comboxes for any length of time, you have seen them. No more explanation is needed.

Like I said, I presumed this to be strictly a combox phenomenon for while I have met many atheists in my life I have never met one who behaves in person like these others do in comboxes. I have never met one who behaved like they do, until now.

I was having a conversation with a work colleague of mine. He is Greek Orthodox. We were having the latest in our ongoing conversation in which he misrepresents, misunderstand, and misinterprets history in ways that put the Greeks and the Orthodox at the center and as saviors of the Universe. And I, for my part, was correcting him. We do this frequently and we always have fun.

A consultant currently working in my office sitting nearby overheard our (loud) conversation and decided to weigh in.

"All religions are stupid because there is no God and people who believe in religion are biased and have closed minds. There is no point in speaking to anyone who believes in religion because they don't have an open mind."

"Okay," I said as I foolishly took the bait. "By that logic...

Continue Reading >>>>