And with your blogwatch wrapped around your arm, oh sonny

My heart, it left with you–
What else can I do?

Oh, it’s just a cavalcade of rotten today, people.

First Things: “A few years ago the English edition of Magnificat (click here) was launched and it has caught on in a big way. It is a handsome little book sent monthly to subscribers and contains a simplified version of the daily office. I’m told that there are now more than 200 thousand subscribers, and there should be 2 million. It can be carried conveniently in pocket or purse and provides a framework for a disciplined prayer life, keeping in mind that an undisciplined prayer life is almost no prayer life at all.” (…I resemble that remark.)

Hit & Run: Arrests in Syria.

From the Hartford Courant: “Mentally unfit, forced to fight”:

The U.S. military is sending troops with serious psychological problems into Iraq and is keeping soldiers in combat even after superiors have been alerted to suicide warnings and other signs of mental illness, a Courant investigation has found.

Despite a congressional order that the military assess the mental health of all deploying troops, fewer than 1 in 300 service members see a mental health professional before shipping out.

Once at war, some unstable troops are kept on the front lines while on potent antidepressants and anti-anxiety drugs, with little or no counseling or medical monitoring.

And some troops who developed post-traumatic stress disorder after serving in Iraq are being sent back to the war zone, increasing the risk to their mental health. [clipped]

(more–link via Ratty)

And from the BBC: “I’m the Daddy”:

Ian Mucklejohn made history when he became the first single man in the UK to have his own children without a female partner. But he knew one day they would have to meet their mother.

Five years ago bachelor Ian Mucklejohn, a 58-year-old businessman, decided that what was missing in his life was children.

He could have found a woman just to have a baby with, but didn’t think that would have been ethical or morally justifiable. Also, if the relationship broke up, the mother would get custody.

So with the help of the internet he found an American egg donor, had her eggs fertilised with his sperm in California and paid a surrogate to carry the babies–something he would not have been able to do legally in the UK. …

Despite being very close to his own mother, he does not believe his sons are missing out because the concept of “mother” plays no part in their daily existence. …

[clipped]

(more–ten different kinds of wtf, my friend. Link via Family Scholars.)

And from Reuters:

A Chinese Internet writer was jailed for 12 years on Tuesday for “subversion of state power” after backing a movement by exiled dissidents to hold free elections, his lawyer said.

Yang Tianshui, 45, who has been in custody since last December, did not plan to appeal, a protest against a trial he felt was illegal, his lawyer, Li Jianqiang, said. …

It was one of the heaviest prison terms meted out in recent years to an Internet writer. Writer Shi Tao was sentenced last April to 10 years in prison for leaking state secrets abroad.

Yang is one of several Internet writers and journalists being tried this month, amid what analysts say is a tightening of controls on media and freedom of expression.

Yang was charged after posting essays on the Internet in support of the “Velvet Action of China”, a movement named for the “Velvet Revolution” that peacefully overthrew communist rule in the former Czechoslovakia.

(more–via BABH)