Instead of going to the Walk for Life in Washington, DC, I may go to San Francisco for the Walk for Life West Coast, instead. Better weather. Much more resistance. Coals to Newkirk. Flowers to Moloch. etc. The annual Walk for Life West Coast has faced official resistance and counter protesters from the start, but it has grown exponentially, just the same. An estimated 5,000 walkers showed up the first year. The number ballooned to 40,000 last year. This year,... Read more
Elizabeth Scalia, who blogs at The Anchoress and is one of the most generous people it has been my privilege to know, wrote today about another egregious example of internet cruelty. The internet gives the mentally unbalanced and the just plain mean people among us a way to hit out at others. Troubling events agitate these folks and get them moving. The Sandy Hook tragedy has been a magnet for both the good and the bad among us. Almost everyone... Read more
Vice President Joe Biden began meetings on possible gun control legislation today. The most interesting point, at least for me, is that the vice president indicated that he expects votes on whatever he proposes after the first of the year. I interpret that to mean that the President has probably decided not to issue executive orders about this, at least for now. Meanwhile, the Democratic Caucus of the House of Representatives has announced a push to ban the sale of... Read more
Things are looking up in a couple of areas. One Michigan Christian who wouldn’t stop fighting won in local court against the Freedom From Religion Foundation. Two Christian colleges won in Federal Appeals Court against the HHS Mandate. I’m sure the HHS Mandate ruling will be appealed, but the cases are slowly turning our way on this terrible mandate. Say your prayers that this trend continues all the way to the Supreme Court. The Becket Fund article describing the HHS... Read more
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Three senior U.S. State Department officials were asked to resign after an official inquiry harshly criticized their offices for failing to provide adequate security at the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, before it came under attack in September, a U.S. official said on Wednesday. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Eric Boswell, the assistant secretary for diplomatic security; one of his deputies, Charlene Lamb; and an unnamed official in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs were asked... Read more
DUBLIN (AP) — Ireland’s government pledged Tuesday to pass a law soon that will allow women to receive abortions if continued pregnancy threatens their lives — including from their own threats to commit suicide if denied one. The announcement comes after decades of inaction on abortion in Ireland, and just weeks after the predominantly Catholic country faced international criticism over the death of an Indian woman hospitalized in Ireland with an imminent miscarriage. Health Minister James Reilly said parliamentary hearings on the issue would... Read more
Warren, Mich., Dec 18, 2012 / 04:01 am (CNA).- A 67-year-old tradition of placing a nativity scene on a public median in Warren, Mich. has been re-established after a four-year legal battle involving the Freedom From Religion Foundation. “John Satawa was persistent enough to follow through,” CNA was told Dec. 17 by Richard Thompson, president of Thomas More Law Center, which represented Satawa, the crèche’s caretaker. Satawa is “an individual citizen who was not going to disappear silently into the night,... Read more
President Obama announced today that he has put Vice President Joe Biden in charge of his efforts for reform concerning shootings such as what happened last week at Sandy Hook. Vice President Biden is a long-time supporter of gun control. Mayor Bloomberg of New York called a press conference in which he pushed the president to use his executive order powers to make a unilateral regulation which would be a de facto form of gun control. President Obama has refused... Read more
America has suffered a series of terrible tragedies in the past 20 years. This is a recent feature of our American history. We went for over two hundred years without facing the insanity of repetitive mass murders of innocent civilians in public places by socially inept angry young men. There have been incidents of mass violence throughout our history, including at least one school bombing in the 1920s. But the present-day phenomena of one shooter killing people one after the... Read more
It’s still Advent. Christmas is right around the corner. We have to pull ourselves out of the grief cycle and find normal again. This isn’t easy. It’s never easy. But after a season of repeated tragedies layered on top of a tumultuous political campaign, it’s even harder. Finding normal is the work in front of us. Advent is a holy season of self-examination and repentance. Those activities seem especially fitting in this week after Sandy Hook. We need to use... Read more
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