Saturday, June 30, 2012

Hey DC- Reading is Fundamental


Just remember, if you vote Democrat for Congress in November, you are electing a person of this caliber to head the House of Representatives. And your votes for President as well as Congress will determine who will sit on the highest court in the land.





 h/t: Gary Varvel

Obamacare's Revolutionary Malapropism

Considering Supreme Court Chief Justice John Robert's taxing legal "logic" on Obamacare, we should be mindful of President Thomas Jefferson's cautions about the Federal Judiciary.

Moreover, on November 6th, we need to our duty as citizens to fight against "Taxation with Misrepresentation" and protect our liberty. Remember, our Founding Fathers risked everything sparked by taxation without representation.

h/t: Bob Gorrell

Bob Dylan on Character

   

Friday, June 29, 2012

Thomas Jefferson on the Judiciary




Something to think about as we try to comprehend the legal logic in US Supreme Court Chief Justice's holdings for the Obamacare cases.

Is there any real limits to the reach of the federal government if a thin veil of a tax can justify it under the taxing and spending authority of Congress? 

Was this ruling more motivated by preserving the power of the court against a progressive tide of criticism as opposed to ruling on its Constitutional merits? 

A Contemporary Road to Serfdom



As Dr. Zaius observed in the original "Planet of the Apes" (1968):

 "The Forbidden Zone was once a paradise. Your breed made a desert of it, ages ago."



h/t: Peoplescube

Sunday, June 24, 2012

G.K. Chesterton on the intersection of theology and polity

Chesterton's words of warning is more than just theology, it is instructive to the polity during this Fortnight for Freedom

Friday, June 22, 2012

Aren't You Proud About White House Party Behavior


Last week, President Obama invited some prominent homosexual activities from Philadelphia to the first White House Gay Pride celebration. Well, some of the guests from the City of Brotherly Love felt so at home that they could get contemptuously familiar with some of the surroundings.

A couple of the guests used social media to show their lack of class. Matthew "Matty" Hart, the Director of Public Engagements at Public Solutions, chose to give a two handed lone Eagle salute to the portrait of President Ronald Reagan. When Hart posted his photo on Facebook, he captured it "F–k Reagan. Hate to break it to you Matty but your invitation was to a painting and has no chance of success other than showing your lack of class.


Zoe Strauss also insisted on telling President Reagan’s White House portrait that he was number one, but her angry TwitterPic had no caption, as she chose to delete her "F–K YOU, REAGAN" commentary. 

It seems both Strauss and Hart are epic fails on public civility. But after the Cheesehead Fleebagger episode and the occupation of the Wisconsin State Capitol, it is no surprise which side has left behind their anger management therapy.

Straus, however, made herself out to be the life of the party by posting another picture making out with another individual under Reagan’s portrait.


When Philadelphia Magazine (the source of the White House Gay Pride photos) tried to interview Ms Strauss, she insisted that she was "keeping out of the press". Well, when you post an etaper les bourgeois photo on your blog with the caption "Me and LB making out under a portrait of Reagan at the White House. That was amazing.", then it’s a little late to avoid public interest and well deserved scorn.

Mark Segal, the publisher of Philadelphia’s Gay News chose a more subtle slight by taking a sarcastic thumbs up pose with the newly hung official portrait of President George W. Bush. Segal should be commended for respecting the People’s House while offering tongue in cheek protest.

Aside from the demonstrations of anger, there was other DRAMA at this Gay White House Soiree as there was a marriage proposal. Keeping with the rarified guest list, the proposal was between a female-to-male transgendered individual and a biological woman.




At a time when the LGBT community demands public respect and equality, some prominent LGBT White House guests exhibit such "special" behavior. Does this make them proud?

h/t: Philadelphia Magazine
      The Blaze

Fast and Furious Fumbling on Obama Administration Transparancy


Considering the dearth of documents that the Attorney General Eric Holder and the DOJ produced to the House Government Oversight Committee (and the spurious last minute Executive Privelege claim), this totally blacked out document held up by Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA 49th) puts to lie the claim President Obama made that his would be the most transparent Administration ever.



Was President Obama's 21 January 2009 declaration of transparency just rhetoric or is it reality?

h/t: SecondAmendmentTaskForce.com

Fulton Sheen on Faith


I never thought that I would want to be a criminal.  But considering the way the Obama Administration imposed Obamacare without regard to the First Amendment protection of freedom of religious expression, it may be the time to embrace a rebel yell.

But to be honest, a tune that is more my taste that embodies the same spirit is from Les Miserables.

Launching the Fortnight for Freedom

To educate people on the importance of preserving religious liberty and showing how the HHS mandate encroaches on every American's First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion, the USSB has launched the Fortnight for Freedom campaign.

But between the normalcy bias, Nuns on the Bus, the Soros funding Faith in Public Life and a secular culture which mistakenly thinks that the First Amendment protects the public from the free expression of religion rather than guaranteeing that right, there is a lot of education to be done in a short amount of time.

READ MORE at the DC Barroco website

George Bernard Shaw on Truth

Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Noah in America

 

In the year 2012, the Lord came unto Noah, who was now living in the United States, and said, "Once again the earth has become wicked and overpopulated, and I see the end of all flesh before me. Build another Ark and save 2 of every living thing along with a few good humans, thy sons and their wives."  He gave Noah the blueprints, saying, "You have 6 months to build the Ark before I will start the unending rain for 40 days and 40 nights."  Six months later, the Lord looked down and saw Noah weeping in his yard -- but no Ark.  "Noah!" He roared, "I'm about to start the rain! Where is the Ark?"  "Forgive me, Lord," begged Noah, "but things have changed.  "I needed a building permit. I've been arguing with the inspector about the need for a sprinkler system. My neighbors claim that I've violated the neighborhood zoning laws by building the Ark in my yard and exceeding the height limitations. We had to go to the Development Appeal Board for a decision.  "Then the Department of Transportation demanded a bond be posted for the future costs of moving power lines and other overhead obstructions, to clear the passage for the Ark's move to the sea. I told them that the sea would be coming to us, but they would hear nothing of it.  "Getting the wood was another problem. There's a ban on cutting local trees in order to save the spotted owl. I tried to convince the environmentaliststhat I needed the wood to save the owls -- but no go!  "When I started gathering the animals, I got sued by an animal rights group. They insisted that I was confining wild animals against their will. They argued the accommodation was too restrictive, and it was cruel and inhumane to put so many animals in a confined space. I am required to apply for 834 different licenses to keep wild beasts on private property.  "Then the EPA ruled that I couldn't build the Ark until they'd conducted an environmental impact study on Your proposed flood. Further, the pitch to water-poof the ark has been banned by the EPA as inimical to the environment.  "I'm still trying to resolve a complaint with the Human Rights Commission on how many minorities I'm supposed to hire for my building crew.  "Immigration and Naturalization is checking the green-card status of most of the people who want to work. The scaffolding to build  the superstructure is not OSHA-approved and is forbidden to use except for private structures less than 5 cubits..  "The trades unions say I can't use my sons. They insist I have to hire only Union workers with Ark-building experience.  "To make matters worse, the IRS seized all my assets, claiming I'm trying to leave the country illegally with endangered species.  "So, forgive me, Lord, but it would take at least 100 years for me to finish this Ark."  Suddenly the skies cleared, the sun began to shine, and a rainbow stretched across the sky. Noah looked up in wonder and asked, "You mean You're not going to destroy the world?".  "No," said the Lord. "The government beat me to it."

Domestic Drilling, Democrat Style


What the frack?

Lord Acton on Liberty

Monday, June 18, 2012

Obama's EPA Has Pulled the Plug on America

As Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency implements regulations which make it too complicated and economically untenable to operate Coal Generation plants.  The EPA’s regulation (which was not approved by Congress) will shut off 10% of electricity generation in the US.This Congressional unapproved Obama Administrative mandate will hit the Midwest particularly hard.  Michigan may have to deal with unreliable power deliver (read blackouts) if any additional co-generation plants are shuttered.  According to the Chicago Tribune, electricity rate-payers in Ohio should expect to pay $179 per household extra for these EPA regulations.   Of course, these coal power conversion “challenges” will complicate adding jobs during this “Summer of Recovery”.  Then again, that was Obama’s gimmick for the 2010 election cycle.

 

It is not as if this result was not unexpected. In 2008, then Senator Obama gave an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, where he predicted that his policies would cause electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=An-l4fm7ckU&w=420&h=315] The only difference is that Obama thought that it would be Cap and Trade legislation which would prompt Americans to dig deep in their pockets to do the right thing.  The problem is that the Senate never approved Cap and Trade legislation, so EPA bureaucrats took the onus on their unelected shoulders to proffer the regulation.  But then again, following the Constitution would be a DREAM Act from My POTUS (sic).

 

If only we could treat this as a laugh-a-second farce like Johnny's antics in the original Airplane movie (1980).

Alas, it's no laughing matter.  The fog of economic uncertainty is getting thicker and Obama's Leviathan government is getting larger.

h/t: Institute for Energy Research

     Michael Ramirez, Investors Business Daily

DREAM Act for My POTUS



Since regular rules seem alien to him, perhaps this flow chart will help immigration the Chosen One to the Constitutional path.

Sunday, June 17, 2012

Star Wars Father's Day


It's a stroke of luck that their patromony does not derive from former Vice President Dick Cheney, otherwise self congratulatory purveyors of compassion and tolerance would be in a real bind.





Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Field of Progressive Dreams


Time to send the Fed's back to the minor leagues.  If not, maybe we can settle for "Washington- First in War, First in Peace but last in the American League".

h/t: TerrellAfterMath

Jules Renard on Life

Sunday, June 10, 2012

Dept. of Just Us



From Philly Voter Intimidation to DOMA to AZ sb 1070 to stopping Voting Fraud through the Civil Rights Act.  The DOJ is just a Holder-out.

Friday, June 8, 2012

Walker Break-Thru

It sure wasn't a brick of cheese, despite it being Wisconsin.

Pelosi's Bull on Authentic Catholicism

Pope Benedict XVI (vested in white) greets then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (ironically dressed in purple), on the Papal pilgrimage to Washington, DC in 2008

House Minority Leader (and former Speaker of the House) Nancy Pelosi (D-CA 8th) prides herself on being an ardent Catholic but she seems quite confused about her faith, yet she continues to foist her heresy in the realm of politics.

A couple of years ago, at a Capitol Hill conference, Rep. Pelosi offered that her favorite word was “The Word” and stressed how it was crucial to give voice to that scriptural word when conducting public policy. However, when a reporter during the former Speaker’s weekly press gaggle followed up on when the Word became flesh, suddenly the concept was only fit for church. Perhaps Pelosi did not want to reconcile her beliefs with the inconvenient truth that her faith teaches about human life beginning at the moment of conception.



After then Senator Obama’s (D-IL) appearance at the Saddleback Civil Forum where the successful Presidential candidate deflected a question about abortion as being “above my pay grade”, Pelosi was pressed about abortion, she insisted that the doctors of the Church had been unable to make that definition.



Maybe Nancy was relying too much on Senator Augustine, uh Saint Augustine's, 4th Century notion of quickening instead of acknowleding Pope Paul VI's Encyclical Humanae Vitae in 1968 which makes it quite clear that the Catholic Church believes that life begins at the moment of conception. It might give context as to why the American Catholic Sees are seething about the contraception mandate embedded in Obamacare.

Minority Leader Pelosi dismissed American Bishops objecting to the HHS mandate as imposing on religious freedom, noting that she respects her pastor not when these Shepherds of the Faith act as lobbyists on Capitol Hill. Instead of confining herself to be a hypocritical politico, Pelosi has annointed herself as a theologian. Pelosi pontificated that it was not entire Catholic Church was against the HHS mandate, just 43 Catholic organizations, such as the Archdiocese of Washington. Pelosi embellishes her bull by noting that they had not spoken ex cathedra.

 

So by Pelosi's train of thought, the Cardinal Bishop in her Archdiocese between the beltways is not speaking authoritatively on matters of faith for Catholic Church or she bears false witness about respecting her pastor.

But to correct the record as either Pelosi's religious education at Trinity College was inadequate or it was an instance of invincible ignorance, ex cathedra statements are solemn and formal papal pronouncements on matters of faith and morals. Before the Congresswoman from California takes solace that the Humanae Vitae encyclical was only a papal teaching, she should consider what Pope Blessed John Paul II stated in a 1993 papal audience:


When the Roman Pontiff speaks ex cathedra, that is, when in exercising his office as shepherd and teacher of all Christians he defines with his supreme apostolic authority that a doctrine on faith and morals is to be held by the whole Church, through the divine assistance promised him in the person of St. Peter, he enjoys that infallibility with which the divine Redeemer wished to endow his Church in defining a doctrine on faith and morals.
But the lawsuits from 43 Catholic institutions protesting forced participation in contraception, sterlizations and abortion are rooted in natural law hence it is part of the unaltered Magesterium (teaching) of the Catholic Church. The same is true for the Catholic Church's opposing same sex so called "marriage". The same is true of opposition to homosexual "marriage", which trumps Pelosi's puerile justification supporting same sex marriage as her Catholic faith (allegedly) teacher her that that she must oppose all forms of discrimination.

 Faithful critics both instead and out of the Catholic Church grumble that former Speaker Pelosi should be excommunicated for her beliefs. Excommunication should never be used in a punitive secular sense, as it is intended to save the soul from eternal damnation. However, excommunication proclamation need not be issued by an ecclesial court under canon law ( ferendae sententiae). A Catholic's very actions may ipso facto result in a latae sententiae excommunication, which can include an apostate, a heritic or a schismatic. Often a bishop will convey this warning in private. For all we know, this may have already happened.

When former Speaker Pelosi visited the Vatican in 2009, she was granted a fifteen minute meeting with the His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI, with no press or photographers present. Pelosi issued a press release which complimented the Roman pontiff for standing for religious freedom and praised the Church's leadership for fighting poverty, hunger and global warming. The Vatican press office had a chillier characterization of the brief greeting. The papal statement indicated:


His Holiness took the opportunity [of the brief greeting with Mrs. Pelosi -ed] to speak of the requirements of the natural moral law and the Church's consistent teaching on the dignity of human life from conception to natural death which enjoins all Catholics, and especially legislators, jurists and those responsible for the common good of society, to work in cooperation with all men and women of good will in creating a just system of laws capable of protecting human life at all stages of its development.




It sounds like the Supreme Pastor of the Catholic flock was pretty clear about when life begins. This comes on top of the 2002 doctrinal note "The Participation of Catholics in Political Life," which states rather succinctly that politicians who profess to be Catholic have a "grave and clear obligation" to oppose any law that attacks human life. The brief greeting might have sotto voce also been a word to the wise.

Well, Mrs. Pelosi persists in purusing a public policies that is anathamatic to Catholics. Worse, the House Minority Leader justifies her progressive political positions in faith while misrepresenting the Magesterium. In this environment, Canon 915 seems applicable to this layman which denies the Eucharist to someone who obstinantly persists in grave sin. Even though Washington's Archbishop Donald John Cardinal Wuerl has recently been appointed to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Wuerl seems chary about keeping pro-abortion Catholic politicians from participating in Communion. Based on Monsignor Charles Pope's recent reflection, it is dubious that such action would be applied.

It is galling that a Cafeteria Catholic extols spiritual junk food for mass consumption instead of the Divine Feast under the illusion of obeying "The Word". In a pluralistic representative Republic, it is not uncommon for a politician to promote positions which an individual finds repugnant. What seems unjust is that leader lying about the moral underpinnings of these positions when it directly contradicts clear tenants of Catholic faith. If she wants to rationalize her positions on abortion, contraception and same sex "marriage" through a veneer of  religiosity, she would do well to swim the Tiber in reverse, as her secuclar humanist progressive political  positions would be welcomed with open arms among most Episcopalians or even Unitarians. But such a principled act would fail to pander to a large voting bloc of Catholics

Albert Einstein on Character

A great mind on clutter.

Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Crooked North Pole?


Why not? Wisconsin has conducted 18 recall elections over the last year and a half on as spurious of charges?

On Gov. Walker Recall--Come Smell the Dairy-Air



It's a pity that former Governor Anthony Earl (D-WI) rejected the license plate slogan "Eat Cheese or Die!" in 1985, as today the people seem to be applying the same sort of Common Sense which would make Thomas Paine proud.

h/t: Glenn Foden