progressive involvement

Muslim incident on airplane

The Muslim's name is Jabir Hazziez Jr.  He stopped a man in severe emotional distress from getting into the cockpit of the plane.

Mr. Hazziez Jr. is a Kansas City firefighter, a reserve Jackson County deputy, and a member of the Naval Reserve.

The--ahem!--"dictatorship of relativism"

That's Pope Benedict's phrase, which means "we don't run things anymore, people think for themselves, and ain't it awful."  What he calls "dictatorship of relativism," others would call "freedom of thought."

Catholic Charities of Illinois has provided foster care and adoption services on behalf of the state of Illinois for many years.  The state then passed a civil unions law.  Catholic Charities sued the state of Illinois because they didn't want to serve LGBT couples.

Catholic Charities has now withdrawn the lawsuit, and said they will go out of the foster care and adoption business rather than treat gay and lesbian couples as couples.

They're claiming persecution of their religious beliefs.  They believe they shouldn't have to treat gays and lesbians the same as other people, and if you argue with this stance, or refuse to fund it, you're persecuting them.

“In the name of tolerance, we’re not being tolerated,” said Bishop Thomas J. Paprocki of the Diocese of Springfield, Ill., a civil and canon lawyer who helped drive the church’s losing battle to retain its state contracts for foster care and adoption services.

Bishop Paprocki is invoking the "dictatorship of relativism."  The question, however, is not toleration.  Of course you're being tolerated.  What you're not being is funded.  Why should the taxpayers of Illinois be expected to fund an organization that refuses to treat everyone equally?

Tim Kee, a teacher in Marion, Ill., who was turned away by Catholic Charities three years ago when he and his longtime partner, Rick Wade, tried to adopt a child, said: “We’re both Catholic, we love our church, but Catholic Charities closed the door to us. To add insult to injury, my tax dollars went to provide discrimination against me.”

The New York Times article also cited the work of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (LCMS) in Illinois.  The LCMS position on homosexuality is similar to that of the Roman Catholic Church.  They, however, have chosen to follow the law in order to continue to provide adoption and foster care services for children.

 

If it was with Mussolini, you could kind of understand

A 99 year old Italian man is divorcing his wife of 77 years over an affair she had in the 1940's.

Sign of the times

Suburban poverty:

“These are families that were living on the edge in the city, but in many cases over the last 20 to 30 years, regained some stability when they found affordable housing in the suburbs,” said Cooper. “Now, the economy tanks, they lose their jobs, they’re poor, and they’re out in the suburbs on the edge once again.”

Crooks

Among their many crimes:  "In the U.S., JPMorgan was investigated by the Justice Department, the Securities and Exchange Commission and attorneys general in 25 states for its role in rigging the bids of investment contracts. The bank agreed to a $228 million settlement this year on charges that it conspired to overcharge cities at taxpayer expense, acknowledging responsibility for illegal, anticompetitive conduct by former employees."

A's may not know the way to San Jose

I like a lot of teams--Chiefs, Broncos, Bears, 49ers, Royals, Rockies, Nuggets--but my first love was the San Francisco Giants, my oldest, longest-running sports team loyalty.  

The reason?  Willie Mays was my boyhood idol, and the Giants were Willie's team--and still are!  Three photos adorned my room:  Willie, Willie McCovey, and Juan Marichal.  All three of these Giants are, today, living legends of the game of baseball.

The Giants' competition in the Bay Area, the Oakland A's, want to move to nearby San Jose.  The Giants are fighting the move, though, and you can see why.  San Jose has a large Giants' fan base, as does nearby South Bay.  Eventually--not right away, but eventually--the A's would take that over.  

The Giants would likely move more into East Bay, but, given the choice, they'd rather have San Jose for the most obvious of reasons:  Silicon Valley has way, way, way more money than Oakland.

The A's, one recalls, went from Philadelphia to Kansas City to Oakland.  As a Kansas City fan as well as an SF one, it looked to us like the pretty crummy Kansas City A's moved to Oakland, and then, all of a sudden, got good.  If the Giants block the move, the Giants win and the A's lose--a win-win, in other words.

Even if worse came to worst and the A's actually did move to San Jose, the Giants could say, legitimately, that they ran the A's out of town--another Giant victory!

10th straight year

Hillary Clinton is the "most admired woman" yet again.

Wasn't Carlos Marcello supposedly involved in the Kennedy assassination?

Daily Mail:  A new biography by Don Fulsom, a veteran Washington reporter who covered the Nixon years, suggests the 37th U.S. President had a serious drink problem, beat his wife and — by the time he was inaugurated in 1969 — had links going back two decades to the Mafia, including with New Orleans godfather Carlos Marcello, then America's most powerful mobster.

Early Service Christmas Eve Sermon

My policy is not to post sermons, on the principle that, if you want to hear a sermon, you should come to church.  This one time, however, in response to a specific request, borne of a  good reason, I'm making an exception:

I don’t know why I do this exactly, but, every year, I make a mental note to watch for newspaper articles on the problem of depression at the holidays.  The first one I noticed this year appeared in the Denver Post on December 12.  

It talks about the “holidays blues” and the pressure to act happy during the holidays.  It says in about 600 words what my Uncle managed to say with 10:  “Of course you’re depressed,” he’d say.  “‘Tis the season to be jolly.”

Why a person should be leery of pious politicians

The national government will maintain and defend the foundations on which the power of our nation rests.  It will offer strong protection to Christianity as the very basis of our collective morality.  Today Christians stand at the head of our country.  We want to fill our culture again with the Christian spirit.  We want to burn out all the recent immoral developments in literature, in the theater, and in the press--in short, we want to burn out the poison of immorality which has entered into our whole life and culture as a result of liberal excess during recent years.

The author.  (Collected Speeches, Vol. 1, New York:  Reynell and Hitchcock, pp. 871-2)