Scott Brown Swears to Uphold the U.S. Constitution!
Published February 5, 2010 | 
Obama Agenda Crippled as Brown Sworn In, Democrats Fracture in Senate
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Republican Scott Brown’s swearing-in to the Massachusetts seat held for decades by Sen. Edward Kennedy means that Obama and the Democrats, who still enjoy big majorities in both the House and Senate, can do virtually nothing between now and the November elections without the GOP’s say-so.
It’s all about the number 41, the new count of Republican senators, just enough to block anything the 59-member majority wants to pass. In fact, some of Brown’s new GOP colleagues have even taken to calling him “41.”
The first likely casualty: Craig Becker, Obama’s nominee to the National Labor Relations Board. He won party-line approval by a Senate committee on Thursday, but that won’t be enough to win confirmation — at least for now — in the full Senate. Republican John McCain of Arizona, Obama’s opponent in the 2008 Continue reading
Pope’s Lenten Message 2010: The Justice of God Manifested through Faith in Jesus Christ
Published February 5, 2010 | ….’Man lives by that love which only God can communicate since He created the human person in His image and likeness.’….
Vatican Information Service, 2/5/2010
‘Adam and Eve, seduced by Satan’s lie, snatching the mysterious fruit against the divine command, replaced the logic of trusting in Love with that of suspicion and competition.’ (Pope Benedict XVI)
“Each year, on the occasion of Lent, the Church invites us to a sincere review of our life in light of the teachings of the Gospel. This year, I would like to offer you some reflections on the great theme of justice, beginning from the Pauline affirmation: ‘The justice of God has been manifested through faith in Jesus Christ’.
“First of all, I want to consider the meaning of the term ‘justice’, which in common usage implies ‘to render to every man his due’, according to the famous expression of Ulpian, a Roman jurist of the third century. In reality, however, this classical definition does not specify what ‘due’ is to be rendered to each person. What man needs most cannot be guaranteed to him by law.
“In order to live life to the full, something more intimate is necessary that can be granted only as a gift: we could say that man lives by that love which only God can communicate since He created the human person in His image and likeness.
“Material goods are certainly useful and required – indeed Jesus Himself was concerned to heal the sick, feed the crowds that followed Him and surely condemns the indifference that even today forces hundreds of millions into death through lack of food, water and medicine – yet ‘distributive’ justice does not render to the human being the totality of his ‘due’.
“Just as man needs bread, so does man have even more need of God. St. Augustine notes: if ‘justice is that virtue which gives every one his due … where, then, is the justice of man, when he deserts the true God?’
“The Evangelist Mark reports the following words of Jesus, which are inserted within the debate at that time regarding what is pure and impure: ‘There is nothing outside a man which by going into him can defile him; but the things which come out of a man are what defile him. … What comes out of a man is what defiles a man. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts’.
“Beyond the immediate question concerning food, we can detect in the reaction of the Pharisees a permanent temptation within man: to situate the origin of evil in an exterior cause. Many modern ideologies deep down have this presupposition: since injustice comes ‘from outside’, in order for justice to reign, it is sufficient to remove the exterior causes that prevent it being achieved.
“This way of thinking – Jesus warns – is ingenuous and short-sighted. Injustice, the fruit of evil, does not have exclusively external roots; its origin lies in the human heart, where the seeds are found of a mysterious co-operation with evil. With bitterness the Psalmist recognizes this: ‘Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me’.
“Indeed, man is weakened by an intense influence, which wounds his capacity to enter into communion with the other. By nature, he is open to sharing freely, but he finds in his being a strange force of gravity that makes him turn in and affirm himself above and against others: this is egoism, the result of original sin.
“Adam and Eve, seduced by Satan’s lie, snatching the mysterious fruit against the divine command, replaced the logic of trusting in Love with that of suspicion and competition; the logic of receiving and trustfully expecting from the Other with anxiously seizing and doing on one’s own, experiencing, as a consequence, a sense of disquiet and uncertainty. How can man free himself from this selfish influence and open himself to love?
“At the heart of the wisdom of Israel, we find a profound link between faith in God who ‘lifts the needy from the ash heap’ and justice towards one’s neighbour. The Hebrew word itself that indicates the virtue of justice, ‘sedaqah’, expresses this well. ‘Sedaqah’, in fact, signifies on the one hand full acceptance of the will of the God of Israel; on the other hand, equity in relation to one’s neighbor, especially the poor, the
stranger, the orphan and the widow.
“But the two meanings are linked because giving to the poor for the Israelite is none other than restoring what is owed to God, who had pity on the misery of His people. It was not by chance that the gift to Moses of the tablets of the Law on Mount Sinai took place after the crossing of the Red Sea. Listening to the Law presupposes faith in God who first ‘heard the cry’ of His people and ‘came down to deliver them out of hand of the Egyptians’.
“God is attentive to the cry of the poor and in return asks to be listened to: He asks for justice towards the poor, the stranger, the slave. In order to enter into justice, it is thus necessary to leave that illusion of self-sufficiency, the profound state of closure, which is the very origin of injustice. In other words, what is needed is an even deeper ‘exodus’ than that accomplished by God with Moses, a liberation of the heart, which the Law on its own is powerless to realize. Does man have any hope of justice then?
“The Christian Good News responds positively to man’s thirst for justice, as St. Paul affirms in the Letter to the Romans: ‘But now the justice of God has been manifested apart from law … the justice of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction; since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, they are justified by His grace as a gift, through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as an expiation by His blood, to be received by faith’.
“What then is the justice of Christ? Above all, it is the justice that comes from grace, where it is not man who makes amends, heals himself and others. The fact that ‘expiation’ flows from the ‘blood’ of Christ signifies that it is not man’s sacrifices that free him from the weight of his faults, but the loving act of God Who opens Himself in the extreme, even to the point of bearing in Himself the ‘curse’ due to man so as to give in return the ‘blessing’ due to God.
“But this raises an immediate objection: what kind of justice is this where the just man dies for the guilty and the guilty receives in return the blessing due to the just one? Would this not mean that each one receives the contrary of his ‘due’? In reality, here we discover divine justice, which is so profoundly different from its human counterpart. God has paid for us the price of the exchange in His Son, a price that is truly exorbitant.
“Before the justice of the Cross, man may rebel for this reveals how man is not a self-sufficient being, but in need of Another in order to realize himself fully. Conversion to Christ, believing in the Gospel, ultimately means this: to exit the illusion of self-sufficiency in order to discover and accept one’s own need – the need of others and God, the need of His forgiveness and His friendship.
“So we understand how faith is altogether different from a natural, good-feeling, obvious fact: humility is required to accept that I need Another to free me from ‘what is mine’, to give me gratuitously ‘what is His’. This happens especially in the Sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist.
“Thanks to Christ’s action, we may enter into the ‘greatest’ justice, which is that of love, the justice that recognizes itself in every case more a debtor than a creditor, because it has received more than could ever have been expected. Strengthened by this very experience, the Christian is moved to contribute to creating just societies, where all receive what is necessary to live according to the dignity proper to the human person and where justice is enlivened by love.
“Dear brothers and sisters, Lent culminates in the Paschal Triduum, in which this year, too, we shall celebrate divine justice – the fullness of charity, gift, salvation. May this penitential season be for every Christian a time of authentic conversion and intense knowledge of the mystery of Christ, who came to fulfill every justice. With these sentiments, I cordially impart to all of you my apostolic blessing”.
http://www.catholic.org/international/international_story.php?id=35355
Who Killed Obamacare?
Published February 5, 2010 | 
David Catron, American Spectator, Feb. 5, 2010
Obamacare is dead. The politicians, journalists and bloggers who continue to talk about passing “reform” via reconciliation or some other procedural skullduggery are like those characters in the comedy, Weekend at Bernie’s, who lug a corpse around pretending it’s still alive. It is, of course, possible — even likely — that the Democrats will pass some anemic health care bill that will allow the President to declare victory and give his congressional accomplices a talking point for the midterms. It will not, however, be the grandiose program that everyone expected Obama to sign into law. So, it’s worth considering how a piece of legislation whose passage seemed all but inevitable less than a year ago met with such an ignominious fate. What, or rather who brought about the very timely demise of this nanny-state abomination?
Searching for telltale signs of the “real killer” amidst the scattered debris of last year’s tumultuous health reform debate, it is difficult to miss the trail of blood that leads to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. As counterintuitive as it may seem, a preponderance of the evidence suggests that Obamacare met its unexpected end at the hands of the President himself. Obama killed his signature initiative by creating what he referred to in his State of the Union address, with no apparent sense of irony, as a “deficit of trust.” He has broken virtually every campaign promise he made concerning reform, presided over a series of shady back room deals, and treated the voters like an irritating group of poorly behaved and dull-witted children. Continue reading
‘Tea Party’ Movement: Who Are They and What Do They Want?
Published February 5, 2010 | ….In Massachusetts, tea party organizers helped to funnel money and manpower to state Sen. Scott Brown’s successful bid for the late Ted Kennedy’s seat in the US Senate. The upset victory, wrote conservative columnist Mary Katharine Ham, shows that “Democrats fooled themselves into believing the town-hall/tea party caricature and ignored the feelings of real Americans.”….
Of all the protest signs at all the rallies and town-hall meetings where people gathered last year to object to Washington’s plans to save the US economy and reform healthcare, this hand-lettered one is memorable: “You can’t fix stupid, but you can vote it out.”
That’s the “tea party” movement in a nutshell.
The left paints the movement as a largely white and middle-class mob – and as including kooks who equate President Obama with Joseph Stalin.
There’s some truth to that view. But where some see a bunch of white people standing in the way of progress, others see a growing expression of dissatisfaction with what former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) calls the “neomonarchists.”
Ahead of the Tea Party Nation convention in Nashville, Tenn., slated for Feb. 4-6, here’s a look at the tea party movement – its birth, its leadership, and its aspirations.
When – and why – was the tea party movement born?
CNBC editor Rick Santelli’s on-air “rant” last February about a proposed mortgage bailout is widely considered to be the “big bang” moment for the birth of the movement.
A few days later, a couple of conservative foot soldiers – John O’Hara of the Heartland Institute and J.P. Freire, then of The American Spectator – wondered if there were a way to harness Mr. Santelli’s frustration.
“You know what would be funny?” Mr. Freire mused to Mr. O’Hara, leading into a discussion that would become so much more than talk.
The pair organized “A New American Tea Party” rally outside the White House on Feb. 27, according to O’Hara’s book about the movement. Six weeks later (around tax day), about 500,000 people took to the streets in small, medium, and large protests from San Francisco to Atlanta. Today, says O’Hara in a phone interview, “there are absolutely hundreds” of local and state tea party organizations.
Is the tea party a real populist movement or a front for big business?
No single person leads the tea party movement. Sympathizers and role players include conservative politicians Sarah Palin and Dick Armey, antitax crusader Grover Norquist, online organizer Eric Odom of the American Liberty Alliance, and media personalities such as talk radio’s Mark Williams and Fox News hosts Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck.
But unheralded operatives, such as Brendan Steinhauser, campaign director for FreedomWorks and author of “The Conservative Revolution,” created the backbone of the movement, establishing websites and Facebook pages that would become populated with fed-up voters.
Critics say it is being funded or co-opted by entrenched conservative powers like FreedomWorks, which recruits volunteers to lobby for smaller government and lower taxes. The Washington Post has reported that the tea party movement is, through FreedomWorks, tied to corporations like MetLife, Philip Morris, and “foundations controlled by the archconservative Scaife family.”
“Nobody is saying that the passion is manufactured,” says Chris Harris at MediaMatters, a media watchdog group on the left. “But partisan and pro-business interests … [are] using people’s real passion in a way that protesters aren’t meaning.”
Tea partyers, however, say the amateur-hour feel of their movement proves it’s a true grass-roots uprising. “You can’t simultaneously call the movement fractured and incompetent and a vast right-wing conspiracy,” says O’Hara.
What do tea partyers want?
The movement, in its essence, is about safeguarding individual liberty, cutting taxes, and ending bailouts for business while the American taxpayer gets burdened with more public debt. It is fueled by concern that the United States under Mr. Obama is becoming a European-style social democracy where individual initiative is sapped by the needs of the collective.
“The issue is no longer tea tariffs and imperial rule, but bailouts and handouts, stimulus in the face of deficits, cap and trade [on carbon emissions], universal healthcare … dictated against the will and interest of the people, and at the peril of … the nation as a whole” leading to “an inevitable blow-back in a battle over America’s constitutional principles,” writes O’Hara in “A New American Tea Party,” which hit bookstores this month.
Is the tea party affiliated with the Republican Party?
Certainly more Republicans than Democrats show up at tea party events. But the movement’s aim is to fight profligate spending by both parties in Washington. (GOP chairman Michael Steele was notably refused a spot on the speaking roster at a Chicago tea party event last year.)
In some ways, the tea party movement poses less of a challenge to Democrats than to Republicans, who must weigh the potential gains and pitfalls of courting far-right tea partyers against those of courting middle America. To what extent the tea party movement is middle America is the big question – one that coming elections will help answer.
What has the tea party movement achieved so far?
It appears to be winning the image war, for one. Forty-one percent of American adults have a positive view of the tea party, compared with 35 percent for the Democrats and 28 percent for the GOP, according to a recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.
Tea partyers did transform the healthcare reform debate, some analysts say, after activists stormed town-hall meetings last summer.
Moreover, decisions by Democratic Sens. Christopher Dodd and Byron Dorgan not to run for reelection this year is an acknowledgment that they probably would have faced a tea-party-inspired populist backlash at the polls, say tea party watchers.
In Massachusetts, tea party organizers helped to funnel money and manpower to state Sen. Scott Brown’s successful bid for the late Ted Kennedy’s seat in the US Senate. The upset victory, wrote conservative columnist Mary Katharine Ham, shows that “Democrats fooled themselves into believing the town-hall/tea party caricature and ignored the feelings of real Americans.”
What role do tea party activists envision playing in the 2010 elections?
For a template, look to an emerging showdown in Florida between Gov. Charlie Crist and former state House Speaker Marco Rubio over a US Senate seat. Tea partyers are backing Mr. Rubio and making a horse race out of a GOP primary that the popular Mr. Crist should have strolled through.
“The genie has been let out of the bottle,” says Robert Watson, a political scientist at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Fla
How will the tea party convention advance or hurt the movement?
Recent convention developments have some tea party activists worried the event could tarnish the movement. The decision by two of the convention’s key speakers, Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R) of Minn. and Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R) of Tenn., to pull out is giving Americans a glimpse of the internecine fighting in the tea party movement.
Some are also raising questions about convention expenses and its upscale lobster dinner, saying they contradict the movement’s thrifty image and bolster arguments that the convention is a GOP ruse to raise millions.
Those who oppose the convention also question the cult of personality around Sarah Palin, the convention’s headline speaker, and say it’s the people who should be speaking to politicians, not the other way around.
Still, for many the controversy only proves the tea partyers are a grass roots movement with no central authority, and it’s creating a forum for just the kind of healthy debate necessary to shape a stronger and more influential movement.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20100204/ts_csm/275402
Another Undead Conservative Idea
Published February 5, 2010 | 
By February 05, 2010
Planned Parenthood Ad Responds To Tebow
Published February 5, 2010 |
Louis Armstrong – When The Saints Go Marching In
Published February 5, 2010 | GEAUX SAINTS!
Louis Armstrong – Danny Kaye
The George Bailey Syndrome: “If The Pro-Life Movement Had Never Existed”
Published February 5, 2010 | ….at the height of (George Bailey’s) despair, he was visited by an angel who showed him what the world would have been like had he never lived. In the end, George had come to see that he was allowing his life to be defined by its failures….
Mark Crutcher, President, Life Dynamics Inc., February 1, 2010
At the beginning of the classic movie, It’s a Wonderful Life, George Bailey stood on a snow covered bridge preparing to jump into the icy river below. He was going to kill himself after concluding that he had made a mess of things and that his life had counted for nothing. Then, at the height of his despair, he was visited by an angel who showed him what the world would have been like had he never lived. In the end, George had come to see that he was allowing his life to be defined by its failures.
There is a valuable lesson in that for the pro-life movement.
We recently observed the 37th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision and I sometimes get the feeling that our self-doubt and sense of failure has grown with each of those years. While we certainly don’t question the rightness of our cause, the enormity of the challenges it presents makes us doubt that our blood, sweat and tears are even making a difference much less leading us to victory. This attitude seems to be reinforced when you recognize that, for all our efforts, we have not returned legal protection to one baby in one state. On the surface, it would seem that all we’ve really done is minimally regulate the circumstances under which they are killed.
While that analysis may be technically accurate, it paints a picture that does not reveal the whole story. Although few, if any, would call me an angel, I want to show you – my brothers and sisters in this struggle – what our little corner of the world would be like if you had not done what you have done.
When I started Life Dynamics in 1992, there were over 2100 free-standing abortion clinics in America. Today, there are fewer than 750 and those that remain continue to close. But be assured, if the pro-life movement had never existed, there could easily be one in every mall and strip shopping center in the country.
Now if you think the idea of mall-based abortion franchises is too crass even by Planned Parenthood’s standards, you don’t know much about Planned Parenthood. In reality, this is precisely the kind of thing they would do if they could get away with it. You might also be tempted to think that the American people would not tolerate something this outrageous. If so, I remind you that, fifty years ago, those same people would have labeled you insane if you had predicted that they would soon be driving past free-standing abortion businesses with toll-free numbers, Yellow Page ads and credit-card decals on the front door. And they would have hauled you away to some asylum if you had predicted that it would be perfectly legal for these people to offer late-term abortions on viable healthy babies being carried by healthy moms. It’s also likely that they would have shot you on the spot if you had suggested that it would be legal for 12-year-old girls to be taken to these places and aborted without their parent’s knowledge.
The point is, if you consider that these things happened in a country with a vibrant pro-life movement, it’s not farfetched to imagine abortion franchises in the malls of a country with no pro-life movement. In that environment, we could also expect to see the abortion pill, RU-486, hanging in bubble packs at every convenience store. Obviously, they’d be the perfect companion to the large variety of condoms and “personal lubricants” that are hanging there right now.
There’s more.
If the pro-life movement had never existed … it is almost guaranteed that every public school and university in America would either have an on-site abortion clinic or a contract with a nearby abortionist.
If the pro-life movement had never existed … there would be no debate about paying for abortion in national health care. Instead, the government would have been funding them since day one. In addition, the right-to-life of the unborn would not even be discussed in either the public arena or the political process. But due to your efforts, poll after poll is now documenting a dramatic shift toward the pro-life position – especially among the young.
If the pro-life movement had never existed … we would not see the faces of children with diseases like Down syndrome – not because these maladies had been cured but because abortion would have long ago become the accepted medical “treatment” for every imperfect baby. After all, killing people is cheaper than healing them and easier than accommodating them.
If the pro-life movement had never existed … there would be no crisis pregnancy network to help those women who might not want to submit to abortion. That’s because, without your voices, abortion would be the default position for every unplanned pregnancy. Without you, we would have devolved into a nation where the killing of an unborn child has no more moral significance than the pulling of a tooth. That is what Ronald Reagan was saying when he referred to the pro-life movement as “The Conscience of the Nation.”
The list goes on and on and, if you think I am exaggerating about these things, let me introduce something you may not have considered.
In the early 1920s, the Soviet Union became the first country in the world to legalize abortion. Many years later, several studies were conducted to determine how that decision was playing out. To say the least, the findings were stunning.
One published study discovered that the average Soviet woman would have nine abortions during her child-bearing years. Other research documented that 90 percent of all first pregnancies in the Soviet Union and 60 percent of all subsequent pregnancies were legally aborted. It is also known that, of the remaining pregnancies, many of them ended in illegal or unreported abortions. The result was that, according to one American researcher, in some parts of the Soviet Union women underwent as many as 28 abortions.
Today, the Russian government is saying that the health consequences of this have been “catastrophic” for that nation’s women. Additionally, economists are predicting that the demographic realities brought on by Russia’s shrinking population will soon cause an economic meltdown. In fact, some demographers are saying that this collapse has already begun.
The Soviet experience with abortion is a prototype for what happens in a country where the abortion lobby is allowed to operate without opposition and, therefore, without restraint. Make no mistake, had it not been for the American pro-life movement, what happened in Russia would have been duplicated in every state of the union. In that case, we would not now be standing on the graves of 50 million dead babies; we would be standing one the graves of 150 million or 250 million or … God only knows how many. Think about that the next time you start to wonder what your blood, sweat and tears have bought.
As we go forward, it is important to never forget that this is not a war between the pro-aborts and us. It is a war between the pro-aborts and the unborn. You and I are merely soldiers who volunteered to fight on the side of the unborn. This means that, without the pro-life movement, these babies would be left alone to defend themselves against these remorseless cowards and amoral barbarians.
But that has not happened and it never will. Although it is true that we have made mistakes and will make some more, the most important truth is that we will never turn our backs on the unborn. We all know that there have been times in the last 37 years when it would have been easy to walk away. It is no secret that, since the day this battle began, the abortion lobby has had every advantage they needed to wipe us out. They’ve had boxcars full of money, they’ve literally owned the media and they’ve had a stranglehold on the political process, the judicial system, the academic community, Hollywood, the music industry and most of what’s seen on television.
Yet despite all that, we didn’t walk away. Instead, we’re still standing and stronger than ever. That’s because we have always sent a clear and unmistakable message that whatever sacrifice must be made, we will make; whatever burden must be borne, we will bear; and whatever obstacle must be overcome, we will overcome. We do this because it is what God expects of us. He promised that the gates of hell would not prevail against us – and if abortion is not a gate into hell, then hell does not exist.
So you and I will continue to do our duty and we will continue to trust God to deliver the victory. Until that day comes, whatever our role in this cause, we will not allow Satan to rub our noses in our failures. We will be proud of our past, focused on the battle in front of us and resolute about the future. And we will leave the snow covered bridges to our enemies.
http://www.markcrutcherblog.com/index.cfm/2010/2/1/The-George-Bailey-Syndrome
Pro-life Leaders Respond to Criticism for Backing ‘Pro-Choice’ Brown
Published February 5, 2010 | ….In an interview with LifeSiteNews.com (LSN) this week, Massachusetts Citizens for Life (MCFL) President Anne Fox defended her organization’s pro-Brown campaign on several fronts. Although Brown labels himself pro-choice, she argued, he has a more pro-life record than many self-avowed “pro-life” lawmakers coming to Washington from the state….
By Kathleen Gilbert, LifeSiteNews.com, February 4, 2010
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Republican Senator-elect from Massachusetts, Scott Brown, is expected to be sworn in at 5 p.m. today, in a process speeded by his own request in order to make official his place as the 41st GOP vote – thereby breaking the Democrats’ Senate supermajority.
In recent weeks some pro-life leaders have taken heat for supporting the self-avowed “pro-choice” candidate, whose victory may have spelled the demise of the abortion-expanding federal health care reform bill. Two leaders responded this week to defend their endorsement, saying that they were up front with Brown’s pro-choice identification, but charged ahead with their support to prevent the largest expansion of abortion since Roe v. Wade from passing the U.S. Senate.
Brown’s swearing-in ceremony was originally scheduled a week from today, on February 11, but the popular candidate pushed for the earlier date, saying “it’s time to get to work.”
In the state’s January 19 special election, Brown rode a surge of conservative ire against the runaway Democrat supermajority into Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat. Since then, Democrat leaders have been scrambling to find a way to pass the health care bill suddenly exposed to a GOP filibuster. No clear path has yet emerged to save the measure, which was poised to unleash government funding of abortion.
Meanwhile, Brown’s rising persona as the “everyman’s” champion has drawn enormous political attention. Questions even began to arise as to his presidential potential: Brown declined to rule out a 2010 run when questioned by Barbara Walters over the weekend.
But for all his conservative support, Brown has not assumed the “everyman” image for America’s pro-life majority: he has repeatedly affirmed his “pro-choice” position, and said the decision to abort a child should be made between a woman and her doctor.
Several top pro-life leaders literally erupted in cheers when Brown’s victory last month was announced, throwing a devastating wrench in the Democrats’ pro-abortion health reform effort. Yet some pro-life and pro-family leaders, such as the American Life League and Mass Resistance, condemned the Brown support as ultimately detrimental to the cause. Continue reading
Sarah Palin on Abortion and Evolution; Supports All Forms of Legal Contraception
Published February 5, 2010 |
Canadian Station Pulls Pro-Life Ad – Too “Graphic”
Published February 5, 2010 | “One of the fundamental purposes of media is to identify truth and show truth. When they fail to do that they are compromising their own purpose and their fundamental reason for being,” said a representative from Kelowna Right to Life. Full Story
Everyone Against Abortion Please Raise Your Hand
Founder’s Quote Daily
Published February 5, 2010 | 
“Your love of liberty — your respect for the laws — your habits of industry — and your practice of the moral and religious obligations, are the strongest claims to national and individual happiness.”
–George Washington, letter to the residents of Boston, 1789
Tim Tebow’s Father: “I Asked God for a Preacher, and He Gave Me a Quarterback.”
Published February 5, 2010 | By Steven Ertelt, LifeNews.com Editor, February 4, 2010
EXCERPTS: …..”Have you heard the story of Timmy’s birth?” he told the magazine.
“When I was out in the mountains in Mindanao, back in ’86, I was showing a film and preaching that night. I was weeping over the millions of babies being [aborted] in America, and I prayed, ‘God, if you give me a son, if you give me Timmy, I’ll raise him to be a preacher,’” he recalled . . . Shortly afterwards, Bob and Pam gave birth to their
son, their fifth child, after what turned out to be a difficult pregnancy.
“The placenta was never properly attached, and there was bleeding from the get-go,” Bob told SI. “We thought we’d lost him several times.” . . . Pam contracted amebic dysentery early in the pregnancy and that put her in a temporary coma . . . Then, after refusing the abortion, Pam gave birth to Tim on August 14, 1987 and named the baby Timothy Richard Tebow.
“All his life, from the moment he could understand, I told him, ‘You’re a miracle baby,’” Bob told Sports Illustrated in July 2009. “‘God’s got a purpose for you, and at some point I think He’s going to call you to preach.’
He concluded: “I asked God for a preacher, and he gave me a quarterback.”
Related web sites:
Video interviews with Pam and Bob, Tebow Heisman trophy winning speech - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Kf16qExpZQ&autoplay=1
LifeNews.com Headlines: Feb. 5, 2010
Published February 5, 2010 | BARACK OBAMA MAY HAVE TWO SUPREME COURT PICKS SOON, WOULD AFFECT ABORTION
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) – The main talk in the nation’s capital today is that President Barack Obama may have the chance to appoint two new Supreme Court justices soon. That’s because two of the members of the high court’s 5-4 pro-abortion majority are facing advancing age and health issues and may consider retirement.
STUDY FINDS PATIENTS THOUGHT TO BE IN VEGETATIVE STATE HAVE ACTIVE BRAIN ACTIVITY
London, England (LifeNews.com) – A new study finds that patients who are supposedly in a “vegetative state” have active brain activity. The study includes one patient who was able to respond to basic questions with affirmative yes and no answers despite having the dehumanizing term applied to his medical condition.
TIM TEBOW CLOSES NATIONAL PRAYER BREAKFAST IN PRAYER WITH OBAMA MISSING
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) – The following is the text and video of pro-life college football player Tim Tebow closing the national prayer breakfast in prayer. Tebow appeared at the event in an ironic contrast to pro-abortion President Barack Obama as the nation awaits a Super Bowl story about how his mother spared him from abortion.
TIM TEBOW’S FATHER BOB TEBOW TALKS ABOUT DECISION AGAINST ABORTION, SON’S BIRTH
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) – By now, most Americans have heard about the famous Tim Tebow advertisement Focus on the Family will air during the Super Bowl. The ad reportedly features Tebow and his mother Pam and her story about how she decided against an abortion. But few people have hear Tebow’s father discuss the story of Tim’s birth.
CATHOLIC PRO-LIFE GORUP PRESENTS PRESIDENT BUSH AWARD FOR OPPOSING ABORTIONS
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) – A national Catholic business group is slated to present an award to former President George W. Bush tonight honoring him for his lengthy record combating abortions during his administration. The event will also see Legatus honoring Cardinal Francis George and hearing from Newt Gingrich
‘Stop Dehydration Deaths,’ Says Terri Schiavo’s Brother in Response to New Brain Scan
Published February 5, 2010 |
- Reacting to news of a breakthrough in brain scanning technology, Terri Schiavo’s brother Bobby Schindler is calling for a halt to removing hydration from brain-damaged patients who are thought to be in a persistent vegetative state.
An “unscientific, inaccurate” diagnosis of unresponsive patients is being used as “a criterion to kill,” Schindler charged.
Schindler was responding to news that researchers from the Medical Research Council (MRC) and the University of Liège have used a technique called functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to map a patient’s brain activity while he was asked to answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’ questions.
One patient, a 29-year-old man who suffered a severe traumatic brain injury in a traffic accident, was able to communicate by willfully changing his brain activity, a press release from the MRC reports. He correctly answered questions such as “Is your father’s name Alexander?”
Dr. Adrian Owen and his team at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge, England were the developers of the technique.
“We were astonished when we saw the results of the patient’s scan and that he was able to correctly answer the questions that were asked by simply changing his thoughts,” Dr. Owen commented. “Not only did these scans tell us that the patient was not in a vegetative state but, more importantly, for the first time in five years, it provided the patient with a way of communicating his thoughts to the outside world.”
Dr. Steven Laureys of the University of Liège, a co-author of the study, said the scans were the only viable method for the patient to communicate since his accident.
“It’s early days, but in the future we hope to develop this technique to allow some patients to express their feelings and thoughts, control their environment and increase their quality of life.” Continue reading
GOSPEL & MEDITATION: Jesus Mistaken for John
Published February 5, 2010 | Friday, 4th week in Mark 6:14-29
King Herod heard about it, for his fame had become widespread, and people were saying, “John the Baptist has been raised from the dead; that is why mighty powers are at work in him.” Others were saying, “He is Elijah”; still others, “He is a prophet like any of the prophets.” But when Herod learned of it, he said, “It is John whom I beheaded. He has been raised up.” Herod was the one who had John arrested and bound in prison on account of Herodias, the wife of his brother Philip, whom he had married. John had said to Herod, “It is not lawful for you to have your brother´s wife.” Herodias harbored a grudge against him and wanted to kill him but was unable to do so. Herod feared John, knowing him to be a righteous and holy man, and kept him in custody. When he heard him speak he was very much perplexed, yet he liked to listen to him. She had an opportunity one day when Herod, on his birthday, gave a banquet for his courtiers, his military officers, and the leading men of Galilee. Herodias´s own daughter came in and performed a dance that delighted Herod and his guests. The king said to the girl, “Ask of me whatever you wish and I will grant it to you.” He even swore (many things) to her, “I will grant you whatever you ask of me, even to half of my kingdom.” She went out and said to her mother, “What shall I ask for?” She replied, “The head of John the Baptist.” The girl hurried back to the king´s presence and made her request, “I want you to give me at once on a platter the head of John the Baptist.” The king was deeply distressed, but because of his oaths and the guests he did not wish to break his word to her. So he promptly dispatched an executioner with orders to bring back his head. He went off and beheaded him in the prison. He brought in the head on a platter and gave it to the girl. The girl in turn gave it to her mother. When his disciples heard about it, they came and took his body and laid it in a tomb.Introductory Prayer: Lord, I believe in you and all that you taught as it has been passed down to us through your Church. I hope in you, knowing that you will never send me out of your presence. Only by sin could I cut myself away from your loving hands. Although I am weak, I trust that you will keep me close. Lord, I love you and long for my love for you to grow, for you deserve so much better than my measly offering. Yet I know, too, that you are pleased with my desire for you.
Petition: Grant me, O Lord, an honest and sincere heart.
1. Our Sins Come Back to Haunt Us The verdict of conscience always makes itself known. Herod’s guilt regarding John the Baptist’s murder is projected into the present as a haunting memory. Those who have radically rejected God, though they might possess great power or wealth, great intelligence or ability, are ultimately the most insecure people on earth. When true goodness appears in their life, it presents itself as a threat. It condemns them and alienates them from themselves. All this is but a reflection of their state of soul before God. Such is the power of man’s conscience: it imposes its painful sentence long before the person ever reaches the ultimate tribunal of justice. Like Christ, we can only remain silent before the Herods of the world, praying that they break their resistance to grace.
2. The Truth Sets us Free ”Fear the grace of God that passes never to return.” In the lives of all persons, even the wicked, enough goodness is given them to be saved, enough such that God can offer them the truth of salvation within the scope of their freedom. Such graces last for only a time, not forever. These moments cannot be treated as moments that temporarily pacify our conscience, only to permit us to continue in our sin and resistance to living a holy life. Herod feared John, knew he was a holy man and felt the attraction of his words, but he did nothing to respond to it. You cannot play around with God and win. Herod loses and attacked what he knew he should love. This tragedy must teach us to be sincere and never imprison the voice of God in our soul, but to let it reign in our life. We must use our freedom to respond to God’s voice, breaking the chains of human respect or fear of sacrifice that bind us to darkness.
3. A Witness to the End The last honor Christ could offer a faithful apostle, who has stood firm in the truth against the twisted provocations of evil around him, is–in some sense–a “full” participation in his Paschal Mystery. What began as testimony by proclaiming conversion, John now concludes with testimony to the victorious hope the blessed possess in Christ. This is never clearer than in a martyr’s death as intimated in this passage from the Book of Wisdom:
For though in the sight of men they were punished,
their hope is full of immortality.
Having been disciplined a little,
they will receive great good,
because God tested them and found them worthy of himself;
like gold in the furnace he tried them,
and like a sacrificial burnt offering he accepted them (Wisdom 3:4-6).
May we accept today the hard road of fidelity so as to be “disciplined a little” and be found worthy of the hope that is “full of immortality.”
Conversation with Christ: Let me experience, dear Jesus, the glory of your martyrs through many small acts of fidelity-to my conscience, to my mission and to the service to souls. Heroic and filled with hope, may I accept a sentence of love and not fear any path you set before me today. May I be like one who has died and yet lives the blossom of a holy life that will never end.
Resolution: I will work to be sincere in all I do, and use the sacrament of confession as a place of constant conversion and openness to God’s will.
http://www.regnumchristi.org/english/articulos/articulo.phtml?se=363&ca=975&te=735&id=20302
ST. AGATHA
Published February 5, 2010 | 
Although we have evidece that Agatha was venerated at least as far back as the sixth century, the only facts we have about her are that she was born in Sicily and died there a martyr.
In the legend of her life, we are told that she belonged to a rich, important family. When she was young, she dedicated her life to God and resisted any men who wanted to marry her. One of these men, Quintian, was of a high enough rank that he felt he could force her to acquiesce. Knowing she was a Christian in a time of persecution, he had her arrested and brought before the judge – - himself. He expected her to give in to when faced with torture and possible death, but she simply affirmed her belief in God by praying: “Jesus Christ, Lord of all, you see my heart, you know my desires. Possess all that I am. I am your sheep: make me worthy to overcome the devil.”
When she continued to profess her faith in Jesus, Quintian had her tortured. He refused her any medical care but God gave her all the care she needed in the form of a vision of St. Peter. When she was tortured again, she died after saying a final prayer: “Lord, my Creator, you have always protected me from the cradle; you have taken me from the love of the world and given me patience to suffer. Receive my soul.”
Because she was asked for help during the eruption of Mount Etna she is considered a protector against the outbreak of fire. She is also considered the patroness of bellmakers for an unknown reason — though some speculate it may have something to do with the fact that bells were used as fire alarms.
A New Abortion Scandal! Where Are the U.S. Bishops?
….And Catholics must stop funding the Catholic Campaign for Human Development…..
By Media Research Center, Catholic Exchange, February 5th, 2010
There is meat on this bone. Now they’ve discovered that a top USCCB executive for “human development” simultaneously served as an executive for a radical-left group called the Center for Community Change (CCC).
John Carr is the executive director of the USCCB’s Department of Justice Peace and Human Development. He has been employed by the bishops’ conference since 1987. Carr’s relationship with the CCC goes back at least to 1983, serving in leadership roles from 1999 to 2006 — including as chairman of the board. In 2001, while Carr served as both a USCCB executive and a CCC leader, the bishops’ conference funneled $150,000 to the CCC.
The explanation Carr gave a reporter from Our Sunday Visitor newspaper is simply not believable. He claimed he knew nothing: “I had no involvement in or knowledge of the actions alleged in the press release. My experience with CCC was that it focused on poverty, housing and immigration and had no involvement in issues involving abortion and homosexuality.”
It’s true that CCC wasn’t primarily an abortion-rights advocacy group during that time. But Carr certainly had to know that CCC was a thoroughly leftist group, on all the issues. He served simultaneously on the CCC board with Sara Gould, the head of the Ms. Foundation. The CCC gave a “Community Change Champion” award in 2005 to Sen. Barack Obama. In the summer of 2005, the CCC signed a statement asking President Bush to name a “consensus” (read: “pro-choice”) nominee to replace Sandra O’Connor at the Supreme Court.
And it’s being funded by Catholics, giving at the instructions of their own bishops.
In a 2005 speech decrying both parties – and imploring Democrats to recognize the rights of the unborn – Carr declared “I remember being told on a board meeting for the Center for Community Change. One of the Kerry strategists, who shall remain nameless, that the strategy was to go after singles, seculars, and gays. And my reaction was, that’s a great way to carry Berkeley and midtown Manhattan. It’s not a way to win Ohio.”
So why support it with Catholic money?
John Carr knew there was a grave conflict between Catholic teaching and CCC advocacy, but allied the bishops with anti-Catholic campaigns anyway. The pattern continues today. In 2007, CCC launched an offshoot called the Campaign for Community Values, which more explicitly advocates leftist social positions. It recently issued an activist “toolkit” that lamented that “conservative strategy also fostered hostility toward those struggling for equal opportunity — people of color, women, immigrants, gays and lesbians, and poor people.”
In his book “The Courage to Be Catholic,” author George Weigel surprised readers by insisting that the very secular and liberal Boston Globe and the New York Times had done the Lord’s work in rooting out the story of child sexual abuse by priests in the Catholic Church.
Weigel is correct, and never mind that the newsies at the Globe and the Times were relishing making the Church cringe. But these secular liberal media outlets will not tell the story when the American bishops allow the donations of Catholics to be diverted to fund abortion-rights activism, even if most Catholics view abortion as the most horrific form of child abuse. The media almost unanimously celebrate abortion as the summit of women’s “liberation,” and so the treatment is just the opposite. The press is refusing to cover this scandal.
The American Life League and the Bellarmine Veritas Ministry have been demanding reform of the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, a project of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. They charge that no less than 50 organizations (one fifth of all CCHD grantees from 2009) are in some capacity engaged in pro-abortion or pro-gay causes.
The CCC has also been a partner in the Stop Stupak coalition to strip pro-life language out of the health-nationalization bill. On December 2, 2009, CCC’s Marvin Randolph spoke at the Stop Stupak Day of Action: “Anti-choice activists have seized on the general controversy around the reform and found an opportunity to further restrict women’s access to reproductive health care by tying their cause to the general campaign of hate and misinformation that bombards the country’s airwaves.”
Randolph must be laughing at the Catholic bishops. Wouldn’t you, if you were trashing their “anti-choice” position while being funded by unsuspecting Catholics?
Our pro-abortion media will find no scandal here. They won’t ask the hard questions they posed during the sex-abuse scandal. Did the bishops know that the donations of faithful Catholics were being diverted to libertine-left lobbying coalitions? If they didn’t know, why didn’t they pay more attention? Once they were told, why did they do nothing? Clergy and laity alike should demand an independent investigation to determine how this moral corruption has happened.
And Catholics must stop funding the Catholic Campaign for Human Development.