INSIGHT
Published August 31, 2009 | 
PATRIOT POST, MONDAY, AUGUST 31, 2009
“The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power. … We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it.
Power is not a means, it is an end.
One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution;
one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.
The object of persecution is persecution.
The object of torture is torture.
The object of power is power.
Now do you begin to understand me?”
–George Orwell, “1984″
http://patriotpost.us/
CULTURE
Published August 31, 2009 | PATRIOT POST, MONDAY, AUGUST 31, 2009
“Chicago politics is not about ideology. It is about, ‘Who Gets What, When, and How,’ to quote the inimitable Harold D. Laswell, one of the outstanding political theorists of the last century. The sine qua non of Chicago politics is power, getting it and keeping it. Everything else is incidental. Even corruption is a byproduct of power and is functional only if it enables you to stay in power. In Chicago politics, you don’t make waves, you don’t back losers, and you ‘don’t talk to nobody nobody sent.’ Chicago politics is always about hierarchy and centralization. …
If you want to understand Obama’s health care policy, you need to start where Obama starts. You need to start with Chicago. You need to look at constituent interests. Obama won in 2008 because, among other things, he mobilized the electoral periphery. He mobilized young voters and minority voters, people who traditionally had a lower probability of showing up on Election Day. Chicago politics is about mobilizing the vote. ‘Vote early and often’ is the city’s sardonic refrain. Obama needs his newly socialized base. He needs them to keep coming to the polls. In the vein of Chicago politics, he needs to deliver benefits to them. Unrewarded, the electoral periphery will revert back to apathy. Health care is a reward to this base of people who are on the economic as well as political periphery. …
Obama understands that his objective is to provide his base with the spoils of power — in this case insurance. …
If all that Obama wanted were to insure those who fall between the cracks, he could put them into the same wonderful program that Congress created for itself by subsidizing their premiums. This would neither require a thousand pages of legislation nor a new series of bureaucracies. But building a new power base resulting from the mobilization of the political and economic periphery requires redefining the nation’s health problems as the nation’s health catastrophe. Health reform is Chicago politics on a national level.”
–University of Cincinnati emeritus professor of political science Abraham Miller
http://patriotpost.us/
September 5 To Mark Feast Day of Blessed Teresa of Calcutta
Published August 31, 2009 | | 30-August-2009 — Catholic News Agency |
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CNA STAFF, Aug 30, 2009 (CNA).- This Saturday, the Church will celebrate the feast day of Mother Teresa, a universal symbol of God’s merciful and preferential love for the poor and forgotten.
Mother Teresa was born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu on August 26, 1910, in Skopje, Macedonia, the youngest of three children. She attended a youth group called Sodality, run by a Jesuit priest at her parish, and her involvement opened her to the call of service as a missionary nun.
She joined the Sisters of Loretto at age 17 and was sent to Calcutta where she taught at a high school. She contracted Tuberculosis and was sent to rest in Darjeeling. It was on the train to Darjeeling that she received her calling – what she called “an order” from God to leave the convent and work and live among the poor. At this point she did not know that she was to found an order of nuns, or even exactly where she was to serve. “I knew where I belonged, but I did not know how to get there,” she said once, recalling the moment on the train.
Confirmation of the calling came when the Vatican granted her permission to leave the Sisters of Loretto and fulfill her calling under the Archbshop of Calcutta. She started working in the slums, teaching poor children, and treating the sick in their homes. She was joined a year later by some of her former students and together they took in men, women, and children who were dying in the gutters along the streets and cared for them.
In 1950 the Missionaries of Charity were born as a congregation of the Diocese of Calcutta and in 1952 the government granted them a house from which to continue their service among Calcutta’s forgotten.
The congregation very quickly grew from a single house for the dying and unwanted to nearly 500 around the world. Mother Teresa set up homes for AIDS sufferers, for prostitutes, for battered women, and orphanages for poor children.
She often said that the poorest of the poor were those who had no one to care for them and no one who knew them. And she often remarked with sadness and desolation of milliions of souls in the developed world whose spiritual poverty and loneliness was such an immense cause of suffering.
She was a fierce defender of the unborn saying: “If you hear of some woman who does not want to keep her child and wants to have an abortion, try to persuade her to bring him to me. I will love that child, seeing in him the sign of God’s love.”
Mother Teresa died on September 5, 1997 and was beatified only six years later, on October 19, 2003.
Mother Teresa once said, “A sacrifice to be real must cost, must hurt, must empty ourselves. The fruit of silence is prayer, the fruit of prayer is faith, the fruit of faith is love, the fruit of love is service, the fruit of service is peace.” She also said, “give yourself fully to God. He will use you to accomplish great things on the condition that you believe much more in His love than in your own weakness.”
Health Care is Not a Group Service
Published August 31, 2009 |
Health Care as a group service is the horrifying tale where the individual becomes subservient to the greatest good of the state, just as in the above examples. The vexing problem with a socialist system for distributing health care is twofold. First each of us, should we not be killed suddenly, will reach a point in our lives where the health care we need to continue to live is either too costly, or does not yet exist. This establishes the paradox of an impossible question.
That is one true dread of socialized medicine. It robs the impossible question of the only humanity that can be offered, that it be I or my family, those most impacted, those emotionally vested, and those that must bear the cost, who make the decision of when to stop. I fear that decision to be made by the apathetic government bureaucrat, regardless of qualification. Again robbing from the most merciless point in life the comfort of choosing my own fate.
We walk this Earth not as ants with collective minds set to one purpose, but as conscious individuals, each physically, emotionally and mentally unique, with unique dreams and plans. The one size fits all egalitarian approach to medicine is itself a poison to this uniqueness, pretending that every life can have the question of physical care answered with one set of rules. It places within the providence of government the care of the individual’s body, giving the former complete jurisdiction over the latter. If you accept the government has such juris dicta to speak what parts of your body might receive replacement or healing care, you must accept that your body is no longer your belonging, and also be ready to accept your caretakers instructions on how you might use the vessel they maintain. What foods you are allowed to eat, what activities you may participate, and for the utterly unscrupulous government what you may say and think.
No egalitarian goal of more equal distribution of care (note I will not say equal, because elitists will always have care far and beyond that of the peons beneath) is worth robbing health care of its humanity and individuality, a mirror of the humans it serves, as care of the mortal coil should be, personal and private.
Federal Government Will Borrow 40 Percent of the Money It Spends Next Year, Says White House Report
Published August 31, 2009 |
Top 10 Ridiculous Democrat Quotes on Health Care
Published August 31, 2009 | 2. “They’re carrying swastikas and symbols like that to a town meeting on health care.” — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in an August 5 interview
3. “What good is reading the bill if it’s a thousand pages and you don’t have two days and two lawyers to find out what it means after you read the bill?” — Rep. John Conyers (Mich.) at the National Press Club, July 24
4. “These disruptions are occurring because opponents are afraid not just of differing views — but of the facts themselves. Drowning out opposing views is simply un-American.” — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (Md.), writing in USA Today, August 10
5. “The last time I had to confront something like this was when I voted for the civil rights bill and my opponent voted against it. At that time, we had a lot of Ku Klux Klan folks and white supremacists and folks in white sheets and other things running around causing trouble.” – Rep. John Dingell (Mich.), on MSNBC
6. “What we’re seeing right now is close to Brown Shirt tactics.” — Rep. Brian Baird, (Wash.) told a local newspaper
7. “The last time I saw well-dressed people doing this, was when Al Gore asked me to go down to Florida when they were recounting the ballots, and I was confronted with the same type of people.” — Sen. Barbara Boxer (Calif.)
8. “I hope people will take a jaundiced eye to what is clearly the Astroturf nature of so-called grassroots lobbying … The Astroturf nature of grassroots lobbying, which is largely the term for, you know, this is manufactured anger.” — White House spokesman Robert Gibbs
9. “Republicans and their allied groups — desperate after losing two consecutive elections and every major policy fight on Capitol Hill — are inciting angry mobs of a small number of rabid right-wing extremists funded by K Street lobbyists to disrupt thoughtful discussions about the future of healthcare in America taking place in congressional districts across the country.” — Democratic National Committee communications director Brad Woodhouse
10 (tie). “These are nothing more than destructive efforts to interrupt a debate that we should have, and are having. They are doing this because they don’t have any better ideas … It’s really simple: They‘re taking their cues from talk-show hosts, Internet rumor-mongerers and insurance rackets.” — Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (Nev.)
“Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute.” — Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.), responding to a town hall participant.
Glen Beck Exposes Dangerous Link Between Nazi Eugenics and ObamaCare Reform Experts
Published August 31, 2009 | ….Beck argues that the Obama administration’s appointment of czars unaccountable to Congress, ramming massive legislation through Congress, and especially his health-care plan, bear close resemblance to how Germany’s National Socialists consolidated overwhelming powers under the executive led by Adolf Hitler in such a way that strangled democracy in Germany….
By Peter J. Smith, Catholic Exchange, August 31st, 2009
“Question with boldness.” That is the motto of radio host and FOX News television host Glenn Beck, who says he asks questions no different than ordinary Americans – he just has an army of researchers to help him explore these questions. But what the question explores is the disturbing relationship between eugenics, Nazism, and the imposition of Obama’s health care plan upon the United States.
Like the old adage “those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it,” Beck has looked back to the past to get a glimpse of the future. Throughout the past few weeks, Beck has given considerable attention to the Obama Administration centralizing power under the Executive Branch away from Congress through the appointment of more than 31 powerful “Czars” or “special policy advisors” as the Administration prefers to call them.
Beck argues that the Obama administration’s appointment of czars unaccountable to Congress, ramming massive legislation through Congress, and especially his health-care plan, bear close resemblance to how Germany’s National Socialists consolidated overwhelming powers under the executive led by Adolf Hitler in such a way that strangled democracy in Germany.
Although many people remember the National Socialists for their brutal extermination of the Jews during World War II, Western leaders like Winston Churchill had condemned National Socialism as a regime contrary to the very root of Christian civilization and “guided by the lights of perverted science.”
The question Beck asks is, “why does Obama surround himself with so many advisors to reform health-care, who do not believe all human lives have equal value?” And one of Obama’s czars believes that even after birth, a child is not yet human.
Roots of Nazi Eugenics
“They tried to figure out how much is a life worth and put a price on how much each individual is worth,” said Beck, making clear that the logical conclusion is that some lives are worth more than others.
The roots of Germany’s eugenics program, however, began in England and the United States. Beck traces its beginning with the social progressives creating laws mandating compulsory sterilization for groups which the state deemed “procreation inadvisable”: such as the destitute, criminals, and the mentally disabled, some of the most vulnerable members of society. Illinois passed the first compulsory sterilization law in 1907, and more than 30 other states would follow before the Nazis rise to power in Germany.
One of the most egregious cases of this type of human rights violation is Buck v. Bell in 1927. In that case, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes ruled that Virginia was right to sterilize Carrie Buck against her will because, “three generations of imbeciles are enough.” Buck, however, was poor but not mentally disabled. Buck’s sister Doris was also sterilized forcibly when she was hospitalized for appendicitis, but she never found out why she could not have children until 1980.
Beck said that “no one is saying that eugenics is coming” or the “master race,” but a lesson should be drawn from Germany, which descended down the dark road of perpetuating crimes against humanity once they had accepted the principle that there was “Lebensunwertes Leben” or “life unworthy of life.”
Nazi Germany: Cutting Costs By Making Judgments on Quality of Life
For Beck, the idea of “life unworthy of life” gets personal. His daughter has cerebral palsy and he tells his viewers that doctors told him that statistically she would never walk, talk, or feed herself.
“She went to college. They were wrong,” Beck says.
But Germany, which provided universal health care, began to view Germans with conditions like cerebral palsy as primarily a drain on health resources that could be allocated to healthier Germans. Beck choked up as he held a Nazi poster that featured a man with cerebral palsy and said it costs 60,000 Marks to keep him alive. Another poster said that the resources spent for one year on a mental institution could have built homes for Germans.
“What happened in Germany was that they could not afford health-care for all,” warns Beck.
Beck repeats that he does not mean to say that President Obama is building a euthanasia program, like Germany’s T4 program, which put to death around 70,000 human beings they deemed physically or mentally unfit. However, what Obama and his advisors have in common with Germany is the idea that some lives are worth more than others, and in the crisis of the Depression.
But the danger is that since Germany succumbed to National Socialism after its inflationary practices destroyed the economy in 2009, there is a real danger that the enormous national debt of the United States and its inflation of the money supply in order to stimulate the economy could lead to a similar collapse. Such a situation would create, amongst many other dire outcomes, near unavoidable rationing of healthcare.
“If there is a crisis what will they do? Whose voice will he hear?” asks Beck.
Beck says that answer lies with what President Obama himself said on the campaign trail: if one wants to know his policies, then pay attention to his advisors.
So when it comes to health-care reform: four advisors behind the effort deserve special attention: Dr. Ezekiel Emmanuel, Health Reform Policy Advisor; John Holdren, Science Czar; Cass Sunstein, the Regulatory Czar; and Van Jones, the Green Jobs Czar.
Another article will detail Beck’s unusually frank and alarming revelations about Obama’s advisors – revelations made on his Fox television program that is skyrocketing in popularity and which Obama supporters are frantically attempting to shut down.
This article is courtesy of LifeSiteNews.com.
http://catholicexchange.com/2009/08/31/121502/
Kennedy Catholicism: The Church of St. Ted and the Church of Rome Are Not Identical
Published August 31, 2009 |
Though Kennedy’s words may strike detractors as a preposterous revision of history, it’s worth considering that it’s often the sinner rather than the saint who finds strength from the church. In a life that endured the violent deaths of four siblings, three miscarried children, and countless scandals, Ted Kennedy may have indeed, particularly during his prolonged illness, turned to his faith. Who, but God, can judge the content of a man’s soul?
But it’s not Senator Abortion’s 11th hour effort to transform himself into Senator Catholic that has the media up in arms. “Why couldn’t the pope have replied in his own name?” Sam Donaldson incredulously asked on This Week with George Stephanopoulos. “I was disappointed.” Time magazine found it noteworthy that a shepherd with a flock of more than 1 billion would respond in “silence” to the senator from Massachusetts’s missive.
In 1939, Pope Pius XII issued the Eucharist to seven-year-old Ted Kennedy, who, biographer Joe McGinniss claims, was “the first American citizen ever to receive his first holy communion from a pope.” In the seventy years since, Ted Kennedy’s relationship with the Catholic Church has been problematic, to say the least. From receiving communion at Mary Jo Kopechne’s funeral, to procuring an annulment for a marriage of 25 years that had produced three grown children, to revelations during the William Kennedy Smith rape trial that the senator had woke his son and nephew on Good Friday to instigate the ill-fated carousing in Palm Beach’s bars, Ted Kennedy hasn’t exactly acted as a model Catholic.
Highlighting this is the other major story — the transformation of the Kennedy Compound into a museum — to emerge from the Kennedy funeral. “Rose [Kennedy] wanted to turn the place over to the Benedictine monks before she died,” Benedict Fitzgerald, the late Kennedy matriarch’s personal attorney, told author Ed Klein for his book Ted Kennedy: The Dream That Never Died. “I drew up the legal papers for her on my front porch. But when Ted found out about it, he ripped the thing in half. There was no way he was going to have the place turned into a monastery.” Instead, as Fox News reported, “The Kennedy compound in Hyannis, Mass. will be converted into an educational center and museum as a tribute to the late Sen. Edward Kennedy.”
With Boston archbishop Sean O’Malley offering a blessing at the senator’s funeral, and the former archbishop of Washington, D.C. presiding over the burial, many of Kennedy’s political antagonists are outraged, not that the Church was silent, but that it so loudly honored a man who fought to undermine church teaching.
“No rational person can reasonably be expected to take seriously Catholic opposition to abortion when a champion of the Culture of Death, who repeatedly betrayed the Faith of his baptism, is lauded and extolled by priests and prelates in a Marian basilica,” C.J. Doyle, executive director of the Catholic Action League of Massachusetts, explained on Saturday. “This morning’s spectacle is evidence of the corruption which pervades the Catholic Church in the United States.”
Though Ted Kennedy never won the role his supporters had scripted for him, those emotionally invested in “President Ted Kennedy” acted as though he had. Massachusetts’s senior senator often played along, compiling a staff that dwarfed those of his colleagues and acting as a shadow president for various liberal constituencies outside of power in a conservative age. The prolonged made-for-TV funeral, which travelled from Hyannis to Boston and then from Capitol Hill to Arlington National Cemetery, was a mourning event fit for a president. But Ted Kennedy was a senator, not a president.
That fact alone, leaving aside Kennedy’s friction with the church over abortion, gay marriage, and other hot-button issues, should explain why the pope added no further fuel to the public relations juggernaut that has dominated the American news cycle for almost a week. Those generationally, geographically, or politically tethered to Camelot mythology are befuddled why others, particularly the pope, haven’t embraced their delusion that the man whom they had wished to be president should be mourned as a president — rather than a parochial figure infused with special meaning to baby boomers, New Englanders, and the Democratic Party’s left wing.
“Here in Rome, Ted Kennedy is nobody,” a Vatican official bluntly told Time. “He’s a legend with his own constituency. If he had influence in the past, it was only with the Archdiocese of Boston, and that eventually disappeared too.”
“Running against a Kennedy is almost like running against the church,” one Massachusetts pol observed during Ted Kennedy’s initial run for Senate in 1962. But after Ted Kennedy enlisted as a combatant in the culture wars against his church, few conflate Kennedyism with Catholicism as they did a half century ago.
Homily of the Day: Do You Really Know Jesus?
Published August 31, 2009 | By Monsignor Dennis Clark, Ph.D., Catholic Exchange, August 31st, 2009
Thessalonians: 4:13-18 / Lk 4:16-30
The Good News that Jesus brought to the people of his hometown, Nazareth, was the best news they’d ever heard or even hoped for. But they didn’t listen, they didn’t take it seriously, because they didn’t take Jesus seriously. And why? “Because we know your father, Joseph, and he’s nobody.”
That’s pretty lightweight reasoning, but it had heavy consequences for those villagers. It cut them off from everything Jesus had to offer. It threw away their chance for a whole new life. They were so sure they knew who Jesus was, and they were so wrong.
And that raises a fair question about us: Do WE really know who Jesus is and what he’s about, or do we just THINK we do because we’ve been showing up at his church for quite a few years? It reminds me of G. K. Chesterton’s words, “Christianity hasn’t failed; it just hasn’t been tried!”
Why not try a few questions on yourself:
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Have I spent enough serious time with the Lord to really know his mind, to see the world through his eyes, to see my life through his eyes?
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Have I trusted him enough to rearrange my life on the basis of what he’s helped me see?
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Am I a different person than I would have been BECAUSE my heart is bonded to the Lord the way that two pieces of wax bond together?
A “no” answer to any of those questions will tell us that we’re like Jesus’ neighbors in Nazareth: We think we know him, but we don’t — no matter how often we happen to show up in church!
Knowing the Lord takes an open heart and lots of listening time. Why not start listening right now. Jesus has Good News that will surprise you…if you hear it on the inside!
Parents ‘Last Good Bye’ Saved Their Baby’s Life
Published August 31, 2009 | Source: Lisa Arneill, Editor, The Milk of Human Kindness, December 7, 2007
When Carolyn Isbister put her 20oz baby on her chest for a cuddle, she thought that it would be the only chance she would ever have to hold her.
Doctors had told the parents that baby Rachel only had only minutes to live because her heart was beating once every ten seconds and she was not breathing.
Isbister remembers:
I didn’t want her to die being cold. So I lifted her out of her blanket and put her against my skin to warm her up. Her feet were so cold.
It was the only cuddle I was going to have with her, so I wanted to remember the moment.” Then something remarkable happened. The warmth of her mother’s skin kick started Rachael’s heart into beating properly, which allowed her to take little breaths of her own.
We couldn’t believe it – and neither could the doctors. She let out a tiny cry.
The doctors came in and said there was still no hope – but I wasn’t letting go of her. We had her blessed by the hospital chaplain, and waited for her to slip away. But she still hung on.
And then amazingly the pink color began to return to her cheeks. She literally was turning from gray to pink before our eyes, and she began to warm up too.
The sad part is that when the baby was born, doctors took one look at her and said ‘no’.
They didn’t even try to help her with her breathing as they said it would just prolong her dying. Everyone just gave up on her,” her mom remembered.
At 24 weeks a womb infection had led to her premature labor and birth and Isbister (who also has two children Samuel, 10, and Kirsten, 8 ) said, “We were terrified we were going to lose her. I had suffered three miscarriages before, so we didn’t think there was much hope.” When Rachael was born she was grey and lifeless.
Ian Laing, a consultant neonatologist at the hospital, said: “All the signs were that the little one was not going to make it and we took the decision to let mum have a cuddle as it was all we could do.
Two hours later the wee thing was crying. This is indeed a miracle baby and I have seen nothing like it in my 27 years of practice. I have not the slightest doubt that mother’s love saved her daughter.”
Rachael was moved onto a ventilator where she continued to make steady progress and was tube and syringe fed her mother’s pumped breastmilk.
Isbister said, “The doctors said that she had proved she was a fighter and that she now deserved some intensive care as there was some hope. She had done it all on her own – without any medical intervention or drugs. She had clung on to life – and it was all because of that cuddle. It had warmed up her body and regulated her heart and breathing enough for her to start fighting.
At 5 weeks she was taken off the ventilator and began breastfeeding on her own. At four months Rachel went home with her parents, weighing 8lbs – the same as any other healthy newborn. Because Rachel had suffered from a lack of oxygen doctors said there was a high risk of damage to her brain. But a scan showed no evidence of any problems and today Rachel is on par with her peers.
Rachel’s mom tells us, “She is doing so well. When we brought her home, the doctors told us that she was a remarkable little girl. And most of all, she just loves her cuddles. She will sleep for hours, just curled into my chest. It was that first cuddle which saved her life – and I’m just so glad I trusted my instinct and picked her up when I did. Otherwise she wouldn’t be here today.”
When a parent holds their baby on their chest, skin-to-skin, it is referred to as Kangaroo Mother Care.
The benefits for all babies of KMC are that they stabilize faster with skin-to-skin care than in an incubator (very few stabilize in an incubator well during the first six hours of life). KMC babies also have stable oxygen rates and breathing thanks to the steady regulation of Mother’s respiration. The heart rate is stable (mother’s heartbeat regulates baby’s heartbeat). The temperature is most stable on the mother – in skin-to-skin care mothers chest automatically warms to warm a cold baby, and mothers core temperature drops if her baby has a temperature.
Sleeping within an arm’s reach of baby (as long as a parent does not smoke) also regulates all of his physiological needs in the same way ~ they are kept steady thanks to Mom’s warm, even-paced body. We lose far fewer babies to prematurity, irregularity of breathing or heartbeat after birth, and SIDS all with the natural help of skin-to-skin holding, or Kangaroo Care.
QUOTE: Understanding Obama: The Making of a Fuehrer
Published August 31, 2009 | 
Obama inebriated with the fantasy of unlimited success.
“Understanding Obama: The Making of a Fuehrer”
By Ali Sina, September 22, 2008
This article has been published in more than 1000 sites, erroneously attributing it to Dr. Vaknin. One person even wrote to me accusing me of plagiarism (double whammy?). Those sites are in error. If you find this article attributed to anyone else but me please write to them and correct them. You are welcome to reproduce this article, or any of my articles on Obama listed at the bottom, in part or in its entirety, but you must provide a link to the source in this site. Thank you. http://www.faithfreedom.org/obama.html
BILL WOULD GIVE OBAMA ‘EMERGENCY’ CONTROL OF INTERNET
Published August 31, 2009 | ….Probably the most controversial language begins in Section 201, which permits the president to “direct the national response to the cyber threat” if necessary for “the national defense and security.” The White House is supposed to engage in “periodic mapping” of private networks deemed to be critical, and those companies “shall share” requested information with the federal government. (“Cyber” is defined as anything having to do with the Internet, telecommunications, computers, or computer networks.)….
Internet companies and civil liberties groups were alarmed this spring when a U.S. Senate bill proposed handing the White House the power to disconnect private-sector computers from the Internet.
They’re not much happier about a revised version that aides to Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, have spent months drafting behind closed doors. CNET News has obtained a copy of the 55-page draft of S.773 (excerpt), which still appears to permit the president to seize temporary control of private-sector networks during a so-called cybersecurity emergency.
The new version would allow the president to “declare a cybersecurity emergency” relating to “non-governmental” computer networks and do what’s necessary to respond to the threat. Other sections of the proposal include a federal certification program for “cybersecurity professionals,” and a requirement that certain computer systems and networks in the private sector be managed by people who have been awarded that license.
“I think the redraft, while improved, remains troubling due to its vagueness,” said Larry Clinton, president of the Internet Security Alliance, which counts representatives of Verizon, Verisign, Nortel, and Carnegie Mellon University on its board. “It is unclear what authority Sen. Rockefeller thinks is necessary over the private sector. Unless this is clarified, we cannot properly analyze, let alone support the bill.”
Representatives of other large Internet and telecommunications companies expressed concerns about the bill in a teleconference with Rockefeller’s aides this week, but were not immediately available for interviews on Thursday.
A spokesman for Rockefeller also declined to comment on the record Thursday, saying that many people were unavailable because of the summer recess. A Senate source familiar with the bill compared the president’s power to take control of portions of the Internet to what President Bush did when grounding all aircraft on Sept. 11, 2001. The source said that one primary concern was the electrical grid, and what would happen if it were attacked from a broadband connection.
When Rockefeller, the chairman of the Senate Commerce committee, and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) introduced the original bill in April, they claimed it was vital to protect national cybersecurity. “We must protect our critical infrastructure at all costs–from our water to our electricity, to banking, traffic lights and electronic health records,” Rockefeller said.
The Rockefeller proposal plays out against a broader concern in Washington, D.C., about the government’s role in cybersecurity. In May, President Obama acknowledged that the government is “not as prepared” as it should be to respond to disruptions and announced that a new cybersecurity coordinator position would be created inside the White House staff. Three months later, that post remains empty, one top cybersecurity aide has quit, and some wags have begun to wonder why a government that receives failing marks on cybersecurity should be trusted to instruct the private sector what to do.
Rockefeller’s revised legislation seeks to reshuffle the way the federal government addresses the topic. It requires a “cybersecurity workforce plan” from every federal agency, a “dashboard” pilot project, measurements of hiring effectiveness, and the implementation of a “comprehensive national cybersecurity strategy” in six months–even though its mandatory legal review will take a year to complete.
The privacy implications of sweeping changes implemented before the legal review is finished worry Lee Tien, a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco. “As soon as you’re saying that the federal government is going to be exercising this kind of power over private networks, it’s going to be a really big issue,” he says.
Probably the most controversial language begins in Section 201, which permits the president to “direct the national response to the cyber threat” if necessary for “the national defense and security.” The White House is supposed to engage in “periodic mapping” of private networks deemed to be critical, and those companies “shall share” requested information with the federal government. (“Cyber” is defined as anything having to do with the Internet, telecommunications, computers, or computer networks.)
“The language has changed but it doesn’t contain any real additional limits,” EFF’s Tien says. “It simply switches the more direct and obvious language they had originally to the more ambiguous (version)…The designation of what is a critical infrastructure system or network as far as I can tell has no specific process. There’s no provision for any administrative process or review. That’s where the problems seem to start. And then you have the amorphous powers that go along with it.”
Translation: If your company is deemed “critical,” a new set of regulations kick in involving who you can hire, what information you must disclose, and when the government would exercise control over your computers or network.
The Internet Security Alliance’s Clinton adds that his group is “supportive of increased federal involvement to enhance cyber security, but we believe that the wrong approach, as embodied in this bill as introduced, will be counterproductive both from an national economic and national secuity perspective.”
Declan McCullagh is a correspondent for CBSNews.com who writes a daily feature called Taking Liberties focused on individual and economic rights. You can bookmark his CBS News Taking Liberties site here, or subscribe to the RSS feed. You can e-mail Declan at declan@cbsnews.com.
Human Life International’s Statement on the Passing of Senator Edward Kennedy
Published August 31, 2009 | 
We must, as a matter of precept, pray for the salvation of heretical Catholics like Senator Edward Kennedy, but we do not have to praise him let alone extol him with the full honors of a public Catholic funeral and all the adulation that attends such an event. There was very little about Ted Kennedy’s life that deserves admiration from a spiritual or moral point of view. He was probably the worst example of a Catholic statesman that one can think of. When all is said and done, he has distorted the concept of what it means to be a Catholic in public life more than anyone else in leadership today.
Obviously we don’t know the state of Senator Edward Kennedy’s soul upon death. We don’t pretend to. We are told by the family that he had the opportunity to confess his sins before a priest, and his priest has said publicly he was “at peace” when he died. For that we are grateful. But it is one thing to confess one’s sins and for these matters to be kept, rightfully, private. It is another thing entirely for one who so consistently and publicly advocated for the destruction of unborn human beings to depart the stage without a public repudiation of these views, a public confession, as it were.
It is up to God to judge Senator Kennedy’s soul. We, as rational persons, must judge his actions, and his actions were not at all in line with one who values and carefully applies Church teaching on weighty matters. Ted Kennedy’s positions on a variety of issues have been a grave scandal for decades, and to honor this “catholic” champion of the culture of death with a Catholic funeral is unjust to those who have actually paid the price of fidelity. We now find out that President Obama will eulogize the Senator at his funeral, an indignity which, following on the heels of the Notre Dame fiasco, leaves faithful Catholics feeling sullied, desecrated and dehumanized by men who seem to look for opportunities to slap the Church in the face and do so with impunity simply because they have positions of power.
It is not enough for Kennedy to have been a “great guy behind the scenes” as we have seen him referred to even by his political opponents. It is also not praiseworthy to put a Catholic rhetorical veneer on his leftist politics that did nothing to advance true justice as the Church sees it or to advance the peace of Christ in this world. Every indication of Senator Kennedy’s career, every public appearance, every sound bite showed an acerbic, divisive and partisan political hack for whom party politics were much more infallible than Church doctrines. Whatever one’s political affiliation, if one is only “Catholic” to the extent that his faith rhymes with his party line, then his Catholicism is a fraud.
As the Scriptures remind us, there is a time for everything under the sun. This, now, is the time for honesty about our Faith and about those who are called to express it in the public forum. If we do not remind ourselves of the necessity of public confession for public sins such as Senator Kennedy was guilty of, then we are negligent in our embrace of the Faith and we are part of the problem. As Pope Benedict has reminded us recently, charity without truth can easily become mere sentimentality, and we must not fall into that error. A Catholic show of charity for the family must not eclipse the truth that is required of all with eyes to see and ears to hear.
Senator Kennedy needs to be sent to the afterlife with a private, family-only funeral and the prayers of the Church for the salvation of his immortal soul. He will not be missed by the unborn who he betrayed time and time again, nor by the rest of us who are laboring to undo the scandalous example of Catholicism that he gave to three generations of Americans.
Sincerely,
Rev. Thomas J. Euteneuer,
President, Human Life International
LifeSiteNews.com Headlines
Published August 31, 2009 | 
Kennedy’s Letter to Pope: “I’ve never failed to believe and respect the fundamental teachings” of Catholic Faith - Spoke of Support for Conscience Protections for Catholic in Healthcare: The contents of the letter from Senator Ted Kennedy delivered to Pope Benedict XVI by President Barack Obama in July were made public at Kennedy’s burial today. Former Washington Cardinal Theodore McCarrick read excerpts from the letter and a response from the Vatican during the burial service. Full Story
Cardinal O’Malley to preside at Kennedy Funeral - The Boston Cardinal will preside at the funeral of notorious pro-abortion Sen. Kennedy Saturday at the Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help. Fr. J. Donald Monan, a Jesuit priest who was the longtime president of Boston College and is now the chancellor, will be the principal celebrant. And Fr. Mark R. Hession, pastor of Our Lady of Victory Parish in Centerville, will deliver the homily. Full Story
Beck to the Future II: Three Scary ObamaCare “Czars” - Beck looks at three critical advisors or “Czars” in President Obama’s Administration and reminds his audience to take up President Obama’s advice: to know his policies and who influences his thinking, look at his advisors Full Story
The Kennedy Funeral – A Golden Opportunity or Capitulation for the Catholic Church - Saturday’s grandiose Catholic funeral for Senator Ted Kennedy has the potential to be a scandal that will make Notre Dame’s Obama Day a walk in the park. Full Story
LifeNews.com Headlines
Published August 31, 2009 | TERRI SCHIAVO’S FATHER ROBERT SCHINDLER DIES, PRO-LIFE GROUP MOURNS HIS DEATH
St. Petersburg, FL (LifeNews.com) – Robert Schindler, the father of Terri Schiavo, whose former husband subjected her to a painful 13-day starvation and dehydration death, died overnight. Schindler, 72, had been battling health issues and he died of apparent heart failure.
SPEAKER NANCY PELOSI RELEASES MISLEADING FACTSHEET ON ABORTION, HEALTH CARE
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) – House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has released a misleading factsheet perpetuating the myth that the House version of the government-run health care plan does not included taxpayer-financed abortions. Pelosi’s “Daily Mythbuster” contains an analysis that has been rebutted by various media outlets and an independent political watchdog.
JOHN MCCAIN WANTS TO STOP DEMOCRATS’ POSSIBLE HEALTH CARE RECONCILIATION MOVE
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) – Senator John McCain is hoping to bring back as many elements of the Gang of 14 as possible to stop a move by Senate Democrats to use a procedural process to railroad through the health care bill that contains taxpayer-funding for abortions and rationing.
NBC JOINS ABC IN REFUSING TO AIR AD CRITICAL OF PRO-RATIONING HEALTH CARE MEASURE
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) – NBC has joined ABC in refusing to air a conservative group’s ad that talks about the rationing concerns present in the government-run health care plans Congress is considering. While ABC rejected the ad outright, NBC is demanding the organization make revisions to it.
CATHOLIC HEALTH ASSOCIATION: NOT ENDORSING HEALTH CARE BILL, WANTS ABORTION OUT
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) – The Catholic Health Association released a statement on Friday saying it is not officially endorsing the government-run health care bills currently pending in Congress. The CHA says it can’t endorse either the House or Senate bills because they do not specifically exclude abortions.
PHYSICIANS, BLACK PRO-LIFE GROUP SUE WHITE HOUSE FOR HEALTH CARE SNITCH EMAIL
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) – An organization for physicians and a black pro-life group have banded together for a new lawsuit against the Obama administration. They are suing the White House over the email address set up for backers of the pro-abortion health care bills to snitch on opponents.
EX-EMPLOYEES NOTE UNSAFE, ILLEGAL CONDITIONS AT LEROY CARHART’S ABORTION CENTER
Omaha, NE (LifeNews.com) – Earlier this week, Nebraska-based late-term abortion practitioner LeRoy Carhart laid off nearly half his staff as he faces a potential investigation from state officials. Now, the former staffers are coming forward to describe what they call illegal and unsafe conditions at his Bellevue abortion center.
EKEKIEL EMANUEL, OBAMA’S RATIONING CZAR, SAYS WE HAVE TOO MUCH HEALTH CARE
by Betsy McCaughey
Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, health adviser to President Barack Obama, is under scrutiny. As a bioethicist, he has written extensively about who should get medical care, who should decide, and whose life is worth saving. Emanuel is part of a school of thought that redefines a physician’s duty, insisting that it includes working for the greater good of society instead of focusing only on a patient’s needs.
Founder’s Quote Daily
Published August 31, 2009 | 
“The people can never wilfully betray their own interests; but they may possibly be betrayed by the representatives of the people; and the danger will be evidently greater where the whole legislative trust is lodged in the hands of one body of men, than where the concurrence of separate and dissimilar bodies is required in every public act.”
–Federalist No. 63
http://patriotpost.us/
GOSPEL & MEDITATION: “He Who Hears You, Hears Me”
Published August 31, 2009 | Father Andrew Mulcahey, LC
Luke 4:16-30
Jesus came to Nazareth, where he had grown up, and went according to his custom into the synagogue on the sabbath day. He stood up to read and was handed a scroll of the prophet Isaiah. He unrolled the scroll and found the passage where it was written: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord. Rolling up the scroll, he handed it back to the attendant and sat down, and the eyes of all in the synagogue looked intently at him. He said to them, “Today this scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.” And all spoke highly of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They also asked, “Isn´t this the son of Joseph?” He said to them, “Surely you will quote me this proverb, ´Physician, cure yourself,´ and say, ´Do here in your native place the things that we heard were done in Capernaum.´” And he said, “Amen, I say to you, no prophet is accepted in his own native place. Indeed, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah when the sky was closed for three and a half years and a severe famine spread over the entire land. It was to none of these that Elijah was sent, but only to a widow in Zarephath in the land of Sidon. Again, there were many lepers in Israel during the time of Elisha the prophet; yet not one of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.” When the people in the synagogue heard this, they were all filled with fury. They rose up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town had been built, to hurl him down headlong. But he passed through the midst of them and went away.
Introductory Prayer: Lord, I love you and thank you for all that you have done for me. And yet, Lord, so many times I have plea-bargained with you and made my prayer conditional on receiving what I ask for. This time, Lord, I want to be completely open — no strings attached. In this prayer I place myself completely at your disposal, confident of your good will and grace.
Petition: Lord, I welcome you into my soul. Help me to allow you to enter and rule over the house of my soul.
1. Speak Lord, Your Servant Is Listening As curious as it seems, our openness to a message often depends quite heavily on our openness to its messenger. Have you ever rejected somebody’s advice outright only to later embrace it when it comes from a different person? Have you disregarded a light from God because he revealed it to you through a person you would not have chosen, or even imagined God would have chosen? This is the common, simple error of the Nazarenes that Christ felt he had to point out to them. What has Christ been trying to tell me recently? Through whom? Am I ready to listen to him and allow him to use whatever messenger he may choose?
2. Open My Heart to Your Message Initially, the people of Nazareth in today’s Gospel seemed quite receptive to Christ’s message, his delivery, and his authority. What they couldn’t stomach was that they believed him just “one of them.” He would later prove himself “too much for them.” Surely they must have thought that he had forgotten his roots and that his Capernaum fame had gone to his head. But of course, the Nazarenes were neither the first nor the last to fall into the trap of focusing more on the messenger than on the message. This is precisely why Christ brought up the example of Naaman the Syrian, who was rewarded with a cure only after overcoming his rationalism and eating a bit of “humble pie.” (See his story in 2 Kings 5.) Has my hurt pride ever blinded me from listening to what Christ is desperately trying to tell me?
3. Lord, I Trust in You At one point in his public ministry, Christ would tell his listeners, “If you don’t believe the words that I speak, at least believe the works that I do” (cf. John 14:10-11). Why wouldn’t he at least give his own people from Nazareth the same advice and opportunity? Are a few miracles too much to waste on Nazarene soil? We must remember that faith is a gift. It is given and not bargained for or merited. On Calvary some would taunt him with a similar deal, “If you come down from the cross, then we will believe in you” (Cf. Mark 15:32). We must wonder from whom came the harder blow: from his accusers, or from “his own.” A proud demand is especially ugly and hurtful when it comes from a friend or loved-one.
Conversation with Christ: Jesus, I accept your invitation to come to the house of my soul. Help me to see the areas of my life in need of cleaning. Help me to see the areas of my life which prevent you from coming – those rooms that I close to you. Help me be humble enough to let your grace set to work in me.
Resolution: I will console Christ with a total and immediate trust in him and in his plan for my life today, whatever may come.
http://www.regnumchristi.org/english/articulos/articulo.phtml?se=363&ca=975&te=735&id=20302
SAINT OF THE DAY: ST. RAYMOND NONNATUS
Published August 31, 2009 | Raymond became a priest due to his quiet persistence in prayer and study.
He was born to a noble Spanish family in 1204. His father had planned a career for Raymond in the royal court, but the young Raymond felt drawn to religious life. In an attempt to dissuade him, his father ordered him to manage one of the family farms. However, Raymond spent his time with the workers, studying, and praying. His father finally gave up and allowed Raymond to enter the Mercederians.
Fr. Raymond spent his entire estate ransoming Christians. He even offered himself as a hostage to free another. He was sentenced to death but was spared because of his large ransom value.
During his imprisonment, he succeeded at converting some of his guards. To keep him from continuing his preaching, his captors bored a hole through his lips with a hot iron, and attached a padlock. He was eventually ransomed, and he returned to Barcelona in 1239.
He died one year later in 1240, at age 36, after being created cardinal. He was on his way to Rome to answer a papal summons.
Put On the Armor of God . . . Have the Courage to Speak As I Must
Published August 28, 2009 | Chapter 6: 10-20
Therefore, put on the armor of God, that you may be able to resist on the evil day and, having done everything, to hold your ground. So stand fast with your loins girded in truth, clothed with righteousness as a breastplate, and your feet shod in readiness for the gospel of peace. In all circumstances, hold faith as a shield, to quench all (the) flaming arrows of the evil one. And take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.
With all prayer and supplication, pray at every opportunity in the Spirit. To that end, be watchful with all perseverance and supplication for all the holy ones and also for me, that speech may be given me to open my mouth, to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel for which I am an ambassador in chains, so that I may have the courage to speak as I must…..
Obama Administration Wants to Punish 85% of Americans Who Have Earned Healthcare Insurance to Cover the 15% Who Don’t Have It
Published August 28, 2009 | 
IS IT TIME FOR ANSWERS?
Published August 28, 2009 | 
August 28, 2009 at 10:02 am – Glenn Beck
Dateline: New York, NY
“Mr. President, is your civilian national security force to protect us from things the Missouri State Police, your own Homeland Security and the liberal Southern Law Poverty Center have come out and said were a threat: militia groups; tea party goers; folks with “Don’t Tread on Me” flags; me; Sarah Palin?”
How Serious is Your Marriage, Anyway?”
Published August 28, 2009 | I heard a shocker the other day. One evening, while out with a few girlfriends, a man approached my sister-in-law and started flirting. It had only been a few months since she and her husband had exchanged wedding rings, so she happily flashed him her diamond and turned back to her friends. The guy was not put off. Instead he said, “Hey, it’s okay with me if you have a husband. I mean, how serious is your marriage, anyway?”
I was stunned. I could see this guy’s questioning an existing dating relationship, my sister-in-law is a very attractive young woman, but to completely brush off an existing marriage?! The guy’s question was outright vulgar, but it got me thinking. What if all married people asked this brazen question of themselves on a regular basis? When we have an argument with our spouses, what if you and I were to ask ourselves, “How serious is my marriage?” Are our marriages worth the humbling work needed to reconcile as quickly as possible, or are we going to pout or shout or talk behind our spouse’s back until we “win” this one? When someone other than our spouses flirts with us, what if we were to ask, “How serious is my marriage?” Would we still entertain this so-called innocent banter, or would we turn away and purposefully refocus our romantic thoughts on the one to whom we said, “I do”?
Really, why is it that we willingly work 40 to 70 hours a week to further our careers, or bury ourselves in 30 years’ worth of debt in order to own a home, but think that a marriage ought to be capable of running on cruise control? Is it because there is no entity out there bestowing awards or promotions on us for having the Best Marriage of the Year? Perhaps. Personally, I think we are also flat out lazy and easily distracted from any pursuit that requires a long-term, personal investment, but especially from one offering no material reward.
Frankly, I think we’re a bunch of suburban cowboys living in a gas grill world. We want the flames of love, ignited with just one sparkling courtship and wedding, to keep leaping high while we go off and grab a beer. But marriage is not even remotely like a gas grill. Marriage, by its very nature, requires a long-term, personal investment, and not even on eBay will we find a bottomless tank of pressurized love to keep our marriage sizzling in our physical or emotional absence.
Marriage is, however, the grandest adventure for which two lovers could ever sign up. To find an activity parallel to the true adventure of marriage, we’d need to step away from our gas grills on our electrically-lit decks, hike over our automated sprinkler systems in our chemically green lawns, and envision “just the two of us” on the wide-open prairie surrounded by tumble weeds, lowing cattle, baying wolves, and outlaws. Under such a vast and starry sky, building a modest campfire and simply staying alive would require our complete and shared attention. We’d stay the warmest if we slept on the same side of the flames sharing bodily warmth and taking turns tending the embers and listening for the wolves and the outlaws. Remember that guy who flirted with my sister-in-law? He was an outlaw, trying to steal from my brother-in-law, and our gas-grill world has made his job all too easy.
On this point a shout-out has to be given to the Catholic Church for teaching Natural Family Planning as the only morally acceptable way of determining family size. Where artificial birth control and sterilization foster an always-available, gas-grill mind-set about sex, there is nothing quite as adventurous as NFP where spouses have to work together closely to keep both the love- and the life-giving elements of sex burning brightly. Thank you, Catholic Magisterium, for pointing married couples toward the campfire mindset.
If we will tend to our marriages like real cowboys tend their campfires, then our marriages will be infinitely more capable of keeping the chill of apathy, affairs, and divorce at bay, and of allowing the warmth of Christ’s love to fill both of our hearts. So from one married person to another, “Just how serious is your marriage, anyway?”
Obama and the Thugs: A Disturbing Pattern
Published August 28, 2009 |
“If you want the next four years lookin’ like the last eight, then I’m not your candidate. But if you want real change…then I need you. I need you to go out and talk to your friends, talk to your neighbors…I want you to argue with them, get in their faces…you guys are the ones who can make the change.”
- Candidate Barack Obama to supporters September, 2008
Well, first, I was there to sell, you know, flags and buttons and stuff that said, “Don’t tread on me.” And I was setting out there, and I guess something got — just went through my head. I said I’m just going to give them away and stuff like that. So a pastor’s wife walked up to me, and she just took a liking to some of the buttons. So I start showing her some of the buttons and everything. This guy walked up and he said, “Who in the — who in the blank is selling or giving away this stuff here?” I said, “Sir, this is my merchandise. And would you like a flag or a button or something like that?” And he said, “What kind of ‘n’ are you to be giving this stuff out.”Yes, they surrounded me. Actually, after the first two guys got me on the ground, they surrounded me and started kicking me in the head and in the back, and the knees and stuff like that. And after it was done, I got up, kind of dazed, looking for my glasses. And the one guy actually was coming at me again, and that’s when the police came in and, you know, cordoned off everything and started, you know, started arresting people.
Why Marriage Matters
Published August 28, 2009 | 
I have long chronicled the decline of moral values in America, but I must admit that even I was shocked to read recently that the Centers for Disease Control has estimated that nearly 40 percent of American births in 2007 occurred out of wedlock. Perhaps it’s unsurprising when teenagers or members of lower socioeconomic classes fall prey to this phenomenon; but the reality of our high rate of out-of-wedlock births suggests that the problem has spread much wider than previously imagined. It signals the wholesale disintegration of our American family.
On a ‘A Catholic Funeral for Ted Kennedy?’
Published August 28, 2009 | ‘My reading of the canonical tradition behind Canon 1184** says that those actions suffice as ‘some signs of repentance’ making Ted Kennedy eligible for a Catholic funeral.’
Catholic Online, 8/28/2009
NEW YORK, NY – Ed Peters is a respected Canon lawyer who regularly publishes his helpful analysis on vital canon law questions and issues on a weblog entitled “In the Light of the Law”. It can be found at http://www.canonlaw.info/blog.html
His recent posting is entitled “A Catholic Funeral for Ted Kennedy?” which we set forth in its entirety below:
*****
“A Catholic Funeral for Ted Kennedy?”
Edward N. Peters, JD, JCD
“Most of Teddy Kennedy’s politics, and most of whatever parts of his personal life I knew through the media, angered and sometimes even disgusted me. But my opinions about Teddy’s legacy are not at issue in assessing his right to a Catholic funeral under canon law. I trust that my writings on the proper understanding and correct application of 1983 CIC 1184 (the canon regulating the funeral rites to be accorded – - or not, as the case may be – - to Catholics) are reasonably well-known to readers of this blog.* So let’s move directly to the canonical question of Kennedy’s funeral.
“Now, any man with a 100% rating from NARAL (to highlight just the tip of the iceberg of Teddy’s decades-long campaign against natural rights) has, to put it mildly, the burden of proof in seeking a Catholic funeral (okay, technically, his executors have the burden of proof, but you see the point) in that notorious pro-aborts seem to be “manifest sinners who cannot be granted ecclesiastical funerals without public scandal of the faithful.”
“Unless, that is, “they gave some sign of repentance before death.” And there is at least some evidence that Ted Kennedy did just that.
“Mark Leibovich of the New York Times notes that, among things, “The Rev. Mark Hession, the priest at the Kennedys’ parish on the Cape, made regular visits to the Kennedy home this summer and held a private family Mass in the living room every Sunday. Even in his final days, Mr. Kennedy led the family in prayer after the death of his sister Eunice . . . [and when] the senator’s condition took a turn Tuesday night a priest, the Rev. Patrick Tarrant of Our Lady of Victory Church in Centerville, was called to his bedside.”
“Folks, my reading of the canonical tradition behind Canon 1184** says that those actions suffice as “some signs of repentance”, making Ted Kennedy eligible for a Catholic funeral. Of course I wish that Teddy’s repentance, if that is what it was, had been more explicit, for the scandal the man left was enormous and demanded great atonement in this life (or more dreadfully in the next). But on the narrow question as to whether Edward Kennedy is eligible for a Catholic funeral, the information before me suggests that he is, and that a bishop who permits such rites can find support in the Code of Canon Law for his decision.
“Now, about President Obama giving a eulogy thereat, don’t even get me started.”
http://www.catholic.org/national/national_story.php?id=34336
The Kennedy Funeral – A Golden Opportunity or Capitulation for the Catholic Church
Published August 28, 2009 | …the funeral is set to be a royal crowning, right inside a Catholic Church, of a man who betrayed the most fundamental moral teachings of the faith….
Editorial by John-Henry Westen, August 26, 2009, LifeSiteNews.com
Saturday’s grandiose Catholic funeral for Senator Ted Kennedy has the potential to be a scandal that will make Notre Dame’s Obama Day a walk in the park. With all four living former Presidents in attendance and an address from President Barack Obama, the funeral is set to be a royal crowning, right inside a Catholic Church, of a man who betrayed the most fundamental moral teachings of the faith.
What example will this give to Catholics and the rest of the world looking in? It will surely belie the Catholic teachings on the sanctity of life and sexuality. “Surely,” they will say, “if one of the most vociferous proponents of abortion and homosexuality in politics is so feted in the Church, the Church cannot possibly regard abortion as murder.” Would anyone so honor one who so advocated what the church officially considers an “unspeakable crime“?
The Church in the US has suffered a dangerous precedent with the recent Notre Dame award to President Obama. However, President Obama is not Catholic. Therefore, the impact of the scandal was blunted. Regarding Senator Kennedy, however, the stakes are much higher in terms of scandal and public relations.
Kennedy, began his life as a Catholic in great ceremony. At age seven, he received his First Communion from Pope Pius XII in the Vatican. He was also pro-life early in his political career. “Wanted or unwanted, I believe that human life, even at its earliest stages, has certain rights which must be recognized – the right to be born, the right to love, the right to grow old,” he wrote in 1971.
However, abandoning the practice of faith is regarded as worse than never having known. The Bible, in the second book of Peter teaches: “For if, flying from the pollutions of the world, through the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they be again entangled in them and overcome: their latter state is become unto them worse than the former. For it had been better for them not to have known the way of justice than, after they have known it, to turn back from that holy commandment which was delivered to them.” (2 Peter 2:20-21)
Rev. Patrick Tarrant, pastor of the Church where Kennedy is to be buried has informed the media that he was present at Kennedy’s death and thus hopefully the senator made a last confession and was reconciled with the Church.
However, only a public repudiation of his militantly anti-life and anti-family actions would serve to lessen the scandal of the upcoming funeral extravaganza.
I don’t discount that that might be coming. After all, Kennedy did have President Obama deliver a letter to the Pope when Obama made his visit to the Vatican in July. Although unlikely, given the Senator’s recent, intense support for Obama’s health care reforms, perhaps there was a public confession in the letter waiting to be released. We can hope and pray.
If we assume a private confession was made there could be a private funeral Mass for the family, without politicians and media. And of course there would still be a secular memorial event, with all the pomp and ceremony for this star of the secular world.
Such a deliberately subdued Catholic liturgical event for the Senator would, at this time, with the announcement of the Catholic funeral already out, come at the cost of enduring the rage of those who have become used to the Church giving in to their demands. However, the eternal benefit would be to send a clear message to Catholic politicians in particular, and to the public in general, that the Church is actually serious about the sanctity of human life.
It could also be an opportunity for Church leaders to repent of having failed to work hard enough to bring wayward Catholic politicians back to faith, or even of having in many cases led them away from the faith, as some clergy are known to have influenced Kennedy.
It would not be the first time the Church has apologized for not living up to it’s pro-life convictions. In 2000, when Pope John Paul II was making his much touted “Universal Prayer” of “Confession Of Sins And Asking For Forgiveness” one of the ignored apologies concerned the unborn.
Then-Archbishop François Xavier Nguyên Van Thuân prayed “let us pray for those who are most defenseless, the unborn killed in their mother’s womb or even exploited for experimental purposes by those who abuse the promise of biotechnology and distort the aims of science.”
The Pope responded in prayer, “God, our Father, you always bear the cry of the poor. How many times have Christians themselves not recognized you in the hungry, the thirsty and the naked, in the persecuted, the imprisoned, and in those incapable of defending themselves, especially in the first stages of life. For all those who have committed acts of injustice by trusting in wealth and power and showing contempt for the “little ones” who are so dear to you, we ask your forgiveness: have mercy on us and accept our repentance. We ask this through Christ our Lord.”
Canada suffered a similar scandal in 2000, with the death of former Catholic Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. Despite his having legalized abortion, divorce and homosexuality he was given a state funeral in Montreal’s Notre-Dame Basilica, presided over by the archbishop of Montreal, Cardinal Jean-Claude Turcotte. One of the pallbearers was Cuba’s communist president Fidel Castro.
Five months after the funeral Calgary Bishop Fred Henry was asked if he were offended by Trudeau’s funeral. He replied: “Yes, I was…. there were some issues or questions there that might make one kind of pause and consider whether or not this was an appropriate funeral to have or not.”
Beck to the Future: Glen Beck Exposes Dangerous Link Between Nazi Eugenics and ObamaCare Reform Experts
Published August 28, 2009 | ….The question Beck asks is, why does Obama surround himself with so many advisors to reform health-care, who do not believe all human lives have equal value?” And one of Obama’s czars believes that even after birth, a child is not yet human . . . “They tried to figure out how much is a life worth and put a price on how much each individual is worth,” said Beck, making clear that the logical conclusion is that some lives are worth more than others.….
By Peter J. Smith, August 27, 2009, LifeSiteNews.com
WASHINGTON, D.C. - “Question with boldness.” That is the motto of radio host and FOX News television host Glenn Beck, who says he asks questions no different than ordinary Americans – he just has an army of researchers to help him explore these questions. But what the question explores is the disturbing relationship between eugenics, Nazism, and the imposition of Obama’s health care plan upon the United States.
Like the old adage “those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it,” Beck has looked back to the past to get a glimpse of the future. Throughout the past few weeks, Beck has given considerable attention to the Obama Administration centralizing power under the Executive Branch away from Congress through the appointment of more than 31 powerful “Czars” or “special policy advisors” as the Administration prefers to call them.
Beck argues that the Obama administration’s appointment of czars unaccountable to Congress, ramming massive legislation through Congress, and especially his health-care plan, bear close resemblance to how Germany’s National Socialists consolidated overwhelming powers under the executive led by Adolf Hitler in such a way that strangled democracy in Germany.
Although many people remember the National Socialists for their brutal extermination of the Jews during World War II, Western leaders like Winston Churchill had condemned National Socialism as a regime contrary to the very root of Christian civilization and “guided by the lights of perverted science.”
The question Beck asks is, why does Obama surround himself with so many advisors to reform health-care, who do not believe all human lives have equal value?” And one of Obama’s czars believes that even after birth, a child is not yet human.
Roots of Nazi Eugenics
“They tried to figure out how much is a life worth and put a price on how much each individual is worth,” said Beck, making clear that the logical conclusion is that some lives are worth more than others.
The roots of Germany’s eugenics program, however, began in England and the United States. Beck traces its beginning with the social progressives creating laws mandating compulsory sterilization for groups which the state deemed “procreation inadvisable”: such as the destitute, criminals, and the mentally disabled, some of the most vulnerable members of society. Illinois passed the first compulsory sterilization law in 1907, and more than 30 other states would follow before the Nazis rise to power in Germany.
One of the most egregious cases of this type of human rights violation is Buck v. Bell in 1927. In that case, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes ruled that Virginia was right to sterilize Carrie Buck against her will because, “three generations of imbeciles are enough.” Buck, however, was poor but not mentally disabled. Buck’s sister Doris was also sterilized forcibly when she was hospitalized for appendicitis, but she never found out why she could not have children until 1980.
Beck said that “no one is saying that eugenics is coming” or the “master race,” but a lesson should be drawn from Germany, which descended down the dark road of perpetuating crimes against humanity once they had accepted the principle that there was “Lebensunwertes Leben” or “life unworthy of life.”
Nazi Germany: Cutting Costs By Making Judgments on Quality of Life
For Beck, the idea of “life unworthy of life” gets personal. His daughter has cerebral palsy and he tells his viewers that doctors told him that statistically she would never walk, talk, or feed herself.
“She went to college. They were wrong,” Beck says.
But Germany, which provided universal health care, began to view Germans with conditions like cerebral palsy as primarily a drain on health resources that could be allocated to healthier Germans. Beck choked up as he held a Nazi poster that featured a man with cerebral palsy and said it costs 60,000 Marks to keep him alive. Another poster said that the resources spent for one year on a mental institution could have built homes for Germans.
“What happened in Germany was that they could not afford health-care for all,” warns Beck.
Beck repeats that he does not mean to say that President Obama is building a euthanasia program, like Germany’s T4 program, which put to death around 70,000 human beings they deemed physically or mentally unfit. However, what Obama and his advisors have in common with Germany is the idea that some lives are worth more than others, and in the crisis of the Depression.
But the danger is that since Germany succumbed to National Socialism after its inflationary practices destroyed the economy in 2009, there is a real danger that the enormous national debt of the United States and its inflation of the money supply in order to stimulate the economy could lead to a similar collapse. Such a situation would create, amongst many other dire outcomes, near unavoidable rationing of healthcare.
“If there is a crisis what will they do? Whose voice will he hear?” asks Beck.
Beck says that answer lies with what President Obama himself said on the campaign trail: if one wants to know his policies, then pay attention to his advisors.
So when it comes to health-care reform: four advisors behind the effort deserve special attention: Dr. Ezekiel Emmanuel, Health Reform Policy Advisor; John Holdren, Science Czar; Cass Sunstein, the Regulatory Czar; and Van Jones, the Green Jobs Czar.
Another article will detail Beck’s unusually frank and alarming revelations about Obama’s advisors – revelations made on his Fox television program that is skyrocketing in popularity and which Obama supporters are frantically attempting to shut down.
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/aug/09082707.html
Padre Pio Devotions: Crosses and Roses
Our Lord sends us crosses but they are marks of his love. It is a rose in disguise. The crosses give him an excuse for entering into closer union with us. They are a message of a lover to somebody whom he loves and with whom he wants to be more intimate and more closely united. He wants to shape us according to his own mind and heart so that he can share our life completely. If he has given us a greater cross, he wants, so to speak, to have an excuse for giving us more of his strength.
- Father Eugene Boylan OCSO
http://www.padrepiodevotions.org/reflection.asp