Russian Orthodox Church Asserts Role in Civil Society

MOSCOW — Just over 20 years ago, any religious education outside church walls was still banned in the Soviet Union. Today, churches are being built on state university campuses, theology departments have opened around Russia, and the Russian Orthodox Church has built its own educational network with international contacts and even become something of a model for the secular system.

Still, state universities struggle on many levels to integrate into the international system; the Bologna Process, an agreement streamlining higher-education standards across Europe, has upset many Russian academics who contend that it undermines the achievements of the Soviet system, where a standard specialist degree required five years of study.

But the Russian Orthodox Church, which started building its education system virtually from scratch in the post-Soviet era, has applied international standards from the outset, said Archimandrite Cyril Hovorun, deputy chairman of the church’s education committee. Speaking of the state education system, Father Hovorun said, “It is more concerned about finding compromises between the old Soviet system and the new European standards.”

At the same time, the church is proposing its vision of educational reform.

“Education is not a personal matter but a sphere of public life on which the existence of society and the state depend,” Patriarch Kirill I, the church’s leader, said in September in a speech at Voronezh State University. “It is the backbone of the existence of society, and that’s why the transfer of education exclusively into the sphere of rendering of market services is, in my view, a big mistake.”

Yulia Rehbinder, 30, who received a degree in social pedagogy this year from St. Tikhon’s Orthodox University, which was founded in Moscow in 1992 as a theological institute, said she had chosen the university because she thought it offered a more sophisticated humanities program than state universities. It received state accreditation as a university in 2004.

“In Soviet times, everything connected with Christianity, its history and culture, was purposely removed from humanitarian education,” said Ms. Rehbinder, who is now working with orphans and doing graduate research on Russian émigré teaching methods in France. “As a result, it ended up that specialists couldn’t understand the essence of works of art, of many historical events, or the motives of human actions, since a Christian worldview was alien to them.”

While the church has helped create over 30 theology faculties at secular state universities, Father Hovorun said, the state education authorities still refuse to recognize theology as a stand-alone doctoral-degree subject.

Archpriest Vladimir Vorobiev, rector of St. Tikhon’s, told Pravoslavie i mir, an Orthodox news Web site, that he objected to the state authorities’ refusal to recognize theology as a social science at the doctorate level. He asserts that some people in high levels of Russian academia are still influenced by a Soviet mind-set that cannot accept a social “science about God.”

“In Europe, they would only laugh at the phrases we have heard here about theology not being a science,” Father Vorobiev said. “To them, it’s the equivalent of saying that math is not a science.”

Read the rest here.

1950's? Nope... try 2011 in Ohio

Read the story here.  This is simply disgusting.

HT: The Deacon's Bench

Christopher Hitchens outspoken author is dead at 62

Christopher Hitchens, the author, essayist and polemicist who waged verbal and occasional physical battle on behalf of causes on the left and right and wrote the provocative best-seller "God is Not Great," died Thursday night after a long battle with cancer. He was 62.

Hitchens' death was announced in a statement from Conde Nast, publisher of Vanity Fair magazine. The statement says he died Thursday night at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston of pneumonia, a complication of his esophageal cancer.

"There will never be another like Christopher. A man of ferocious intellect, who was as vibrant on the page as he was atthe bar," said Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter. "Those who read him felt they knew him, and those who knew him were profoundly fortunate souls."

A most-engaged, prolific and public intellectual who enjoyed his drink (enough to "to kill or stun the average mule") and cigarettes, he announced in June 2010 that he was being treated for cancer of the esophagus and canceled a tour for his memoir "Hitch-22."

Hitchens, a frequent television commentator and a contributor to Vanity Fair, Slate and other publications, had become a popular author in 2007 thanks to "God is Not Great," a manifesto for atheists that defied a recent trend of religious works. Cancer humbled, but did not mellow him. Even after his diagnosis, his columns appeared weekly, savaging the royal family or reveling in the death of Osama bin Laden.

"I love the imagery of struggle," he wrote about his illness in an August 2010 essay in Vanity Fair. "I sometimes wish I were suffering in a good cause, or risking my life for the good of others, instead of just being a gravely endangered patient."

Eloquent and intemperate, bawdy and urbane, he was an acknowledged contrarian and contradiction -- half-Christian, half-Jewish and fully non-believing; a native of England who settled in America; a former Trotskyite who backed the Iraq war and supported George W. Bush. But his passions remained constant and enemies of his youth, from Henry Kissinger to Mother Teresa, remained hated.

Read the rest here.

Army Pfc. Manning to face pretrial hearing in WikiLeaks case

Not long after allegedly passing a massive trove of U.S. government secrets to WikiLeaks, Army Pfc. Bradley Manning told an acquaintance on an Internet chat that he just wanted “people to see the truth,” to prompt “worldwide discussion, debates and reforms” over war and foreign policy.

“We’re human . . . and we’re killing ourselves . . . and no-one seems to see that . . . and it bothers me,” he typed to Adrian Lamo, a convicted computer hacker whom Manning appeared to consider a kindred spirit, in May 2010.

Instead, Lamo contacted authorities with suspicions that Manning, an intelligence analyst with a top-secret clearance, had committed one of the largest national security breaches in U.S. history.

These exchanges between Lamo and Manning, a baby-faced tech savant who joined the Army in a bid to turn around a troubled life, could be among key evidence in a pretrial hearing starting Friday at the Military District of Washington courtroom at Fort Meade. Investigators also have forensic evidence from computers used by Manning and data from the WikiLeaks Web site.

Manning, who turns 24 Saturday, has been accused of aiding the enemy, violating the Espionage Act and several lesser charges — enough to send him away for life. Aiding the enemy carries a potential death sentence, but Army officials have said they will not seek it. At the Article 32 hearing, which is likely to last for several days, an investigating officer will determine whether the prosecution has enough evidence to send Manning to trial. It will be up to a convening authority whether to refer the case to court-martial.

Read the rest here.

Jewish extremists burn Mosques in occupied West Bank

JERUSALEM — Defying a crackdown on Jewish extremists ordered by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, vandals set fire to a mosque in the West Bank and defaced it with Hebrew graffiti Thursday after Israeli forces tore down structures in an unauthorized settlement outpost.

The arson in the village of Burqa, near Ramallah, was the latest in a string of similar attacks on Palestinian mosques in the West Bank and came a day after an unused mosque was torched and defaced in a Jewish neighborhood of Jerusalem.

The wave of extremist violence, which included a rampage by militant Jewish settlers at a West Bank army base Tuesday, has brought expressions of alarm from across the Israeli political spectrum and prompted the government to announce measures to curb it.

Read the rest here.

Iraq War is finally (mostly) over

BAGHDAD — America’s war in Iraq came to an unspectacular and deeply uncertain end Thursday at a ceremony held amid fortified concrete blast walls at Baghdad’s international airport, not far from a highway where U.S. troops first fought their way into the capital more than eight years ago.

There were speeches paying tribute to the fallen, promising that America would not abandon Iraq and warning of challenges ahead. A brass band played, and the flag that had flown over the headquarters of the U.S. mission here was lowered for the last time.

And that was it. No pronouncements of victory, no cheers or jubilation — only a profound sense that the war’s real reckoning is yet to come even as America’s part in it draws to a close.

Read the rest here.

Joint Christmas Carols Between Muslims and (who else?) Anglicans

One grim finding for Anglicans in the new British Social Attitudes survey is how few find religion after not being born into it. So says the ‘concerned’ Nick Spencer in The Guardian.

But even grimmer for Anglicans are ‘inclusive’ Christmas carols services – you know, the sort that bend over backwards to be all things to all people in order that by any means possible none may be offended. In fact, it is these sort of gospel-lite and theology-free services which are largely responsible for people not finding Christ – even at Christmas.

Royal Holloway College, in the University of London, held its Christmas carol service in its own College Chapel, presided over jointly by the College's Chaplain – an Anglican vicar, the Rev'd Cate Irvine, and a Roman Catholic chaplain from the local church, Fr Vladimir Nikiforov.

And what did the assembled festive throng hear? The prophecy of of Isaiah? 'For unto us a child is born...'? The Gospel of Luke? 'There went out a decree from Caesar Augustus...'? A reading from Micah, perhaps? 'But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall He come forth unto Me that is to be Ruler in Israel'?

No, none of the above. Instead, they got the Qur'an:

Read the rest here.

HT: Blog reader John L.

An Endorsement for President of the United States

After careful, and prayerful consideration, I have decided to endorse Congressman Ron Paul of Texas for President of the United States. This endorsement is not unqualified. There are a number of points where I have concerns and respectful disagreements with the Congressman. But in general I think he is the best of the candidates now running. Point in fact, with the possible exception of John Huntsman, there are no other candidates running that I feel certain I could in conscience vote for. Ron Paul is not the perfect candidate. But he is the best one out there.

First my points of concern and disagreement with the Congressman from Texas. Rep. Paul is an economic anarchist. That is to say he is not merely in favor of reducing government regulation of business, Wall Street, and private enterprise, he wants to eradicate it. Giving a blank check to the same people who, thanks to the abandonment of the regulatory reforms following the crash of 1929, bear a great deal of responsibility for the current economic crisis is unwise. He also favors completely dismantling the social safety net and returning to a purely Darwinist society where the poor either pull themselves up by their own bootstraps or are left to depend upon the often arbitrary and unreliable mercy of private charity. Fortunately, neither of these things will happen if he is elected. He would require the assent of Congress to undertake such a radical reversal of American economic and social policy which will not be forthcoming no matter who wins the election. At times Congressman Paul has hinted at sympathy for some of the bizarre conspiracy theories that I routinely lampoon on this blog, such as Birtherism and 9-11 Trutherism. Finally there is the question of his age. Ron Paul will be 77 on Jan 20th 2013. One should reasonably assume that he would be a one term president purely on that basis. Also more care than normal would have to be given to his selection of a Vice-Presidential running mate.

Reservations aside however, Paul is the only candidate who has demonstrated a consistent record of principled constitutional conservatism. Just a few of the reasons why I am supporting him include...

• He is the only candidate committed to ending the incestuous relationship between the War Department and private business which has lead to a policy of perpetual war for perpetual profit, otherwise known as the Military Industrial Complex.

• In line with the above he will end America's post World War II policy of interventionism and enlightened imperialism. The Cold War is over, and we won. It's time to give up the cold war mentality and move on. We need to learn to mind our own business.

• He is the only candidate who grasps that bombing people is a lousy way to make friends but a very good way to make enemies. Likewise when almost every bomb dropped on Muslims has “Made in America” stamped on it, irrespective of who is dropping it, this does great harm to our country's image in the world. The world has enough bombs. We don't need to add to the supply.

• He will end foreign aid except for the purely humanitarian kind. It's time to take care of our own first. And it is again time to stop meddling in other people's affairs.

• Based on his track record one may reasonably assume that he is the only man running for President who really will wield the veto ruthlessly in an effort to cut spending and end legislative pork. It is possible that some of his proposed spending cuts will exceed the tolerances of the American people. Again however we will know we have reached that point when Congress says “no” and votes with a bipartisan super-majority to override a veto. The constitution provides wonderful checks and balances.

• He is the only man running for office who grasps the dangers of our out of control monetary policy. And while I am dubious about efforts to return to a rigid gold standard, I think we can count on a President Paul to clip the wings of the FED.

• Ron Paul is committed to ending the undeclared wars at home as well as abroad, including the war on our civil liberties. He will move to repeal the USA Patriot Act (one of the most noxious pieces of legislation passed in the last 100 years). He will end the unconstitutional spying by the government on its own citizens and the illegitimate suspension of Habeus Corpus along with the government sponsored murder of American citizens.

• Ron Paul will end the domination of American Foreign and Domestic Policy by persons committed to governing based on religious belief. To whit he will end the modern American version of prohibition, meaning our disastrous so called “war” on drugs. That war is over, and we lost. And while people's personal domestic living arrangements may make a very good topic for a sermon in church, they are not an appropriate subject for intrusive legislation. Likewise the blank check support for Israel demanded by the religious right on Biblical grounds will go away. Theo-cons and social-cons beware. Ron Paul is your worst nightmare.

All in all Ron Paul is the best, if perhaps not the perfect candidate for President of the United States. While I am not able to vote for him in the primary, having disaffiliated myself from the Republican Party, I nonetheless express my support for his candidacy and would encourage others to consider doing the same.

Some say "No thanks" to Facebook

Tyson Balcomb quit Facebook after a chance encounter on an elevator. He found himself standing next to a woman he had never met — yet through Facebook he knew what her older brother looked like, that she was from a tiny island off the coast of Washington and that she had recently visited the Space Needle in Seattle.

“I knew all these things about her, but I’d never even talked to her,” said Mr. Balcomb, a pre-med student in Oregon who had some real-life friends in common with the woman. “At that point I thought, maybe this is a little unhealthy.”

As Facebook prepares for a much-anticipated public offering, the company is eager to show off its momentum by building on its huge membership: more than 800 million active users around the world, Facebook says, and roughly 200 million in the United States, or two-thirds of the population.

But the company is running into a roadblock in this country. Some people, even on the younger end of the age spectrum, just refuse to participate, including people who have given it a try.

One of Facebook’s main selling points is that it builds closer ties among friends and colleagues. But some who steer clear of the site say it can have the opposite effect of making them feel more, not less, alienated.

“I wasn’t calling my friends anymore,” said Ashleigh Elser, 24, who is in graduate school in Charlottesville, Va. “I was just seeing their pictures and updates and felt like that was really connecting to them.”

To be sure, the Facebook-free life has its disadvantages in an era when people announce all kinds of major life milestones on the Web. Ms. Elser has missed engagements and pictures of new-born babies. But none of that hurt as much as the gap she said her Facebook account had created between her and her closest friends. So she shut it down.

Read the rest here.

Don't look for me on Facebook.  You won't find me.

An Update

Back on Dec 1st I posted a news item about the idiot lawyer in Minnesota who filed a legal brief packed with anti-Catholic slurs.  So over the top was it that if I had not double checked the source I would have wagered money that it was from the Onion.  Now the Wall Street Journal is reporting that Bill Donahue of the Catholic League has filed a petition with the state bar to sanction the attorney in question.  And the judge has issued an order for the attorney to show cause why she should not be held in contempt of court and fined $10,000.  Under the circumstances I think the fine rather light, but otherwise I'm on board with the rest.

HT: Lowering the Bar

Anglican Expatriates; Wither now?

Fr. Anthony Chadwick has posted an interesting piece on his excellent blog English Catholic.  It is an invitation from Bishop Roald Flemestad of the Nordic Catholic Church for those traditional Anglicans seeking a new home to consider his church. Now I have no real objection to anyone tooting their own church's horn and putting out the welcome mat. But I do find it interesting that this piece which was originally published by Forward in Faith, a highly regarded Trad Anglican organization, is being treated as seriously at is. Here we have huge numbers of people who have slaughtered entire forests and filled up gazillions of Gigabytes online with the endless debate over the merits of entering into communion with Rome, and now there is serious discussion among some of the PNCC or the Nordic Catholic Church? And yet there has been one thing notable for its absense in all of the discussion among disaffected Anglicans on the subject of where to go, which I addressed in the following comment.

I find it curious that so many Anglicans who come to the realization that their communion is self destructing, fail to consider one of the most obvious potential answers to the question “wither now?” For those with a Protestant mindset and who seek “a church” there are no shortage of options. Pick one. But for those possessed of a catholic mindset, which is to say those seeking “The Church,” I would think one’s choices are essentially limited, Rome or Orthodoxy. And yet for all the debate (ad infinitum) of the pro’s and con’s of entering communion with Rome, it is passing far beyond rare to see an even remotely serious discussion of Orthodoxy. All of which leaves me to wonder why the more or less universal dismissal of the the world’s second largest communion, one with a credible claim to catholicity at least as sound as Rome’s? A dismissal,that again, appears to be so universally accepted as to not even warrant sober discussion.

What if Greece abandons the Euro?

LONDON — It would be Europe’s worst nightmare: after weeks of rumors, the Greek prime minister announces late on a Saturday night that the country will abandon the euro currency and return to the drachma.

Instead of business as usual on Monday morning, lines of angry Greeks form at the shuttered doors of the country’s banks, trying to get at their frozen deposits. The drachma’s value plummets more than 60 percent against the euro, and prices soar at the few shops willing to open.

Soon, the country’s international credit lines are cut after Greece, as part of the prime minister’s move, defaults on its debt.

As the country descends into chaos, the military seizes control of the government.

Read the rest here.

Russian Orthodox Church Adds Voice to Calls for Election Reform

MOSCOW — The Russian Orthodox Church added its influential voice over the weekend to calls for a just election process in Russia. The step followed demonstrations across the country that called for a recount or a fresh vote, and outpourings from individual members of the church’s clergy, who reflected popular anger at the flawed Dec. 4 election.

“It is evident that the secretive nature of certain elements of the electoral system concerns people, and there must be more public control over this system,” said Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, the most prominent spokesman for the church, in remarks to a widely followed Orthodox news Web site. “We must decide together how to do this through civilized public dialogue.”

The pronouncement by Father Chaplin, chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate’s synodal department of church and society relations, was especially significant because he is often criticized as an apologist for the Kremlin. He has made several conservative statements in the past year, including a call for an Orthodox dress code in Russia, that have stirred controversy.

In a telephone interview on Sunday night, Father Chaplin said that if the church obtained proven documentation of election violations from named sources, it would be ready to take it up with government officials.

“If there are proven facts, then of course we’re going to examine them, present them to the church hierarchy and discuss them with the Central Election Commission and other government bodies,” he said.

Father Chaplin’s remarks to the Web site appeared intended to get the church back out in front of individual clergy members’ condemnations of election rigging, a first for the post-Soviet Russian Orthodox Church. The comments might suggest the government is accommodating the critique of the political system, perhaps because it has become too widespread to stifle.

“It’s amazing that this awakening of civic consciousness has affected the church as well, and not just lay people but clergy, too,” Sergei Chapnin, editor of the Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate, said last week, on the sidelines of a seminar about Russia’s historical identity, before the new statement by Father Chaplin.

Read the rest here.

1928: Al Smith and the great anti-Catholic hysteria

Click on photo to enlarge.

...The response to this belief was public and private, during a campaign that lasted only two months, from September to November. Yet feelings were so strong that they swirled into a hurricane of abuse, a crescendo of fear and hate blasting through eight weeks. The school board of Daytona Beach, Fla., sent a note home with every student. It read simply: “We must prevent the election of Alfred E. Smith to the Presidency. If he is elected President, you will not be allowed to have or read a Bible.” Fliers informed voters that if Smith took the White House, all Protestant marriages would be annulled, their offspring rendered illegitimate on the spot.

Opponents blanketed the country with photos of the recently completed Holland Tunnel, the caption stating that this was the secret passage being built between Rome and Washington, to transport the pope to his new abode. Countless copies of a small cartoon appeared on lampposts and mailboxes everywhere. Titled “Cabinet Meeting — If Al Were President,” it showed the cabinet room, with the pope seated at the head of the table, surrounded by priests and bishops. Over in the corner was Al Smith, dressed in a bellboy’s uniform, carrying a serving platter, on top of which was a jug of whiskey. Summing up, the minister of the largest Baptist congregation in Oklahoma City announced, “If you vote for Al Smith you’re voting against Christ and you’ll all be damned.”

The Ku Klux Klan became actively involved in preventing a Catholic from ever getting near the White House, going all out to defeat Smith. One Klan leader mailed thousands of postcards after Democrats nominated the New Yorker, stating firmly, “We now face the darkest hour in American history. In a convention ruled by political Romanism, anti-Christ has won.” A Klan colleague in remote North Manchester, Ind., warned his audience, in booming tones, of the imminent arrival of the pope: “He may even be on the northbound train tomorrow! He may! He may! Be warned! America is for Americans! Watch the trains!” When I interviewed Hugh L. Carey, only the second Roman Catholic governor of New York, for my Smith biography, he remembered Klan parades in Hicksville when he was 9 years old and how frightened he was, because “there was a real anti-Catholic sentiment.”

Read the rest here.

Austerity waits in the wings as America delays the debt crunch

2011 began with Congress digesting a report called The Moment of Truth. Commissioned by President Barack Obama and co-authored by two experienced Washington hands, its 66 pages pulled few punches.

America's debt was the greatest threat to the country's national security, it argued, before laying out a comprehensive plan to cut it. As the year draws to an end, and the report gathers dust, it is hard to escape the irony that the Pentagon is now facing a $500m (£319m) cut to its own budget from the start of 2013. That the Defence Department is in the line of fire sums up a year of failure by politicians to confront a national debt that quietly passed the $15 trillion mark last month. It's been a two-part failure and is worth briefly recapping.

In early August, Congress just avoided default by raising the country's $14.3 trillion debt ceiling. As part of that deal, $900m in cuts were agreed on and a committee established to find another $1.2 trillion of savings by the end of November. Failure to do so would trigger automatic cuts in government spending, including the Pentagon. A day before the Thanksgiving holiday, the committee's 12 members admitted they couldn't agree.

Bond investors haven't blinked at the lack of progress this year. The yield on the 10-year US government bond has hovered close to a record low for the past six months. Many on this side of the Atlantic know that the explanation for the bond market's leniency lies in Europe.

Unsure whether the euro will survive, global investors have poured money into the US Treasury market. Analysts at Bank of America estimate that the yield on the 10-year bond would be half a percentage point higher without Europe's woes.

But with 2012 coming into view, there's an uneasy recognition in Washington and on Wall Street that America's reckoning on the deficit is moving closer. "We've seen a lot of European countries take a bath this year," said Bill Frenzel, the former top Republican on the House of Representatives Budget Committee. "For a country that can't pay our bills, it's miraculous that our interest rates haven't gone up. It can't last," he says.

Read the rest here.

Say it aint so! National League MVP Ryan Braun Busted In Dope Test

According to Mark Fainaru-Wada and T.J. Quinn of ESPN.com, Brewers outfielder Ryan Braun has tested positive for a performance-enhancing drug.

Braun, who won the 2011 National League MVP Award, is disputing the result through arbitration. If it is upheld, he will face a 50-game suspension.

It should be noted that Major League Baseball has not once overturned the result of a PED test.

Read the rest here.

Russians rally against Putin and corruption

MOSCOW — Tens of thousands of Russians walked purposefully to a square in the center of Moscow on Saturday, speaking up against their authoritarian government after years of silence and marking a dividing point in the rule of Vladimir Putin.

People raised their voices in cities and towns across the country, an estimated 20,000 to 40,000 in Moscow, another 10,000 in St. Petersburg. In a buoyant mood, they celebrated a widespread feeling that something had changed as they gathered in the largest opposition protests Putin has ever encountered.

While no one was calling it a revolution — bloggers dubbed it The Great December Evolution — protesters demanded free elections and called for their leaders to listen to them. Organizers promised to hold an even bigger rally on Dec. 24.

Putin no doubt will win the presidency in March, putting him in position to rule for another 12 years. But by the end of the demonstration, change had already begun. Heavily armored police stood silently and respectfully and made no arrests here, unlike earlier in the week. Two government-owned television stations, Channel One and NTV, broadcast straightforward reports of the demonstration after ignoring the others over the last week. And in a message from his jail cell, blogger Alexei Navalny told Russians they had brought about the most important transformation simply by standing in the square.

Read the rest here.

The End of Canterbury

The archbishop of Canterbury is going to resign next year. At least that’s the story making the rounds of newspapers in London, and the interesting part is not that the 61-year-old Rowan Williams should be willing to give up another decade in the job. Or even, if the Telegraph is right, that the clergy and his fellow bishops are working to push him out.

No, the interesting news about the looming resignation is how little attention anyone appears to be paying to it. The Church of England just doesn’t seem to matter all that much, fading from the world’s stage only slightly more slowly than the British Empire that planted it across the globe.

Theological consequences will follow the dwindling of Anglican identity—the claim, ever since Queen Elizabeth I, that the Church of England represents the great middle way between Protestantism and Catholicism. Ecclesiological consequences, as well, will follow the end of Anglican unity: the disappearance of a coherent, worldwide denomination, led by the archbishop of Canterbury, for those who hold a certain moderate form of Christian belief.

Christianity will survive in other forms, of course, both theologically and denominationally. In the long run, the great tragedy of the fading of Canterbury and the looming breakup of the Anglican communion may be the geopolitical consequences—fraying the already weak ties between the global South and Western civilization.

Read the rest here.

HT: Dr. Tighe

Supreme Court blocks redistricting plan for Texas

The Supreme Court Friday night blocked a redistricting plan for Texas drawn by a panel of federal judges, putting the justices in the middle of a partisan battle over how the state’s electoral maps should change to recognize the state’s burgeoning minority population.

Texas had objected to the judicially drawn maps, which analysts said would increase chances for Democrats and minorities, and favored maps drawn by the Republican-dominated legislature. Attorney General Greg Abbott (R) requested the Supreme Court’s intervention; the justices will hear arguments Jan. 9.

Read the rest here.

Five myths about Ron Paul

Ron Paul is the Rodney Dangerfield of Republican presidential candidates. The 12-term Texas congressman ran for president on the Libertarian Party ticket back in 1988 and was widely seen as a sideshow in 2008, despite finishing third in the GOP field behind John McCain and Mike Huckabee. Why, despite a small but devoted set of supporters, does this 76-year-old obstetrician turned politician routinely get no respect from the media and GOP operatives? Let’s take a look at what “Dr. No” — a nickname grounded in his medical career and his penchant for voting against any bill increasing the size of government — really stands for.

1. Ron Paul is not a “top-tier” candidate.

At some point in the race for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, the mainstream media became more obsessed than usual with designating GOP hopefuls as “top-tier” candidates, meaning “people we want to talk about because we find them interesting or funny or scary.” Or more plainly: “anybody but Ron Paul.”

Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney has been accorded top-tier status from the start, but otherwise it’s been a rogues’ gallery. As their numbers soared, Texas Gov. Rick Perry and pizza magnate Herman Cain enjoyed stints in the top tier, and former House speaker Newt Gingrich is now ensconced in that blessed circle.

Back in August, Rep. Michele Bachmann (Minn.) was designated “top tier” after winning Iowa’s Ames Straw Poll.Paul was not, despite losing to her by only about 150 votes. And when Paul won the presidential straw poll of about 2,000 attendees at the Family Research Council’s Values Voter Summit in Washington in October, the contest’s organizer pronounced him “an outlier in this poll.”

Yet Paul is doing increasingly well in national and state-level polls. He’s running in second place in Iowa ahead of the Jan. 3 caucuses and third in the New Hampshire primary — the first two contests for the GOP nomination. And now that Cain has dropped out, Paul’s stock is likely to keep climbing. The congressman is no less a top-tier candidate than anyone else in the race.

2. Ron Paul is a doctrinaire libertarian.

Yes, he once ran for president on the Libertarian Party ticket and was accurately described by New York Times columnist Gail Collins last month as against “gun control, the death penalty, the C.I.A., the Civil Rights Act, prosecuting flag-burners, hate crime legislation, foreign aid, the military draft under any circumstances, campaign finance reform, the war on drugs, the war on terror and the war on porn.” But Paul parts company with many libertarians on many issues.

These include immigration, where he favors ending birthright citizenship and reducing the number of newcomers until the welfare state is dismantled. Paul says abortion law should be settled at the state level, but in Congress in 2005, 2007, 2009 and this year he introduced the Sanctity of Life Act, which would define life as beginning at conception.

In theory he supports free-trade agreements, but he votes against them, dismissing them as “managed trade.” He’s known for adding earmarks to spending bills he votes against, thus bringing home pork while maintaining his “Dr. No” credentials. As a result, says David Boaz of the libertarian Cato Institute, Paul is “an imperfect messenger” for libertarians’ small-government gospel.

3. Ron Paul’s call to “end the Fed” is crazy.

Paul’s 2009 “End the Fed” manifesto pretty much gives away the plot in the title. But the book sold well and drew respectful notices not just from folk singer Arlo Guthrie and actor Vince Vaughn, but also from the likes of media magnate and former GOP presidential candidate Steve Forbes. “History,” Forbes wrote in a review of Paul’s book, “will judge that Paul had it right when it came to the Fed and its often misbegotten monetary policies.” David Stockman, the former Republican congressman and Reagan budget director, has said that “our monetary system is out of control” and that Paul is the “one guy who understands it.”

Read the rest here.

Somebody goofed

I just checked three different weather sites and all of them are reporting the current temperature in Modesto CA as one (1) degree above zero.  Granted it's chilly out.  But it aint no wheres near zero.  I seriously doubt it has ever gotten that cold here for as far back as they have records.  The projected low tonight is 32.  My guess is someone at the airport or wherever they record the temperature for the weather people missed a digit, probably the number four, that should have gone before the one.  I wonder how long before someone catches the ooops.

A Risk Once Unthinkable

Are customer accounts at brokerage firms safe?

Until the collapse of MF Global, that’s a question I thought I’d never have to ask.

Brokerage firms are required by law to maintain segregated accounts holding all client assets, including stocks, bonds, mutual funds, money market funds and cash. The law was passed after the 1929 crash, in the depths of the Depression, to make sure that customer assets were there at all times, ready to be disbursed even if everyone asked for their money at once.

This obligation to protect customer assets “is considered sacrosanct,” Robert Cook, director of the division of trading and markets at the Securities and Exchange Commission, told me this week. “It’s considered a sacred obligation.”

Lehman Brothers may have engaged in many foolhardy practices, but even in the firm’s last days, when officials were desperate for cash, no one dared touch customer assets, which remained safely segregated despite the firm’s collapse.

And then came the revelation that an estimated $1.2 billion in customer assets had vanished at MF Global, the large brokerage and futures trading firm headed by Jon S. Corzine, the former Goldman Sachs executive and Democratic politician, that collapsed in late October after a catastrophic bet on European sovereign debt.

How could such a thing happen? I had always assumed it was impossible and that strict internal controls existed at all brokerage firms so that firm officials couldn’t tap segregated customer funds even if they were willing to break the law. Thanks to MF Global, it’s now apparent that isn’t necessarily true. “If people are determined to misuse customer funds, they will misuse them,” said Ananda Radhakrishnan, the director of the division of clearing and risk at the Commodities Futures Trading Commission.

Read the rest here.

Europe: Major Bank Failures Are Imminent

Senior analysts and traders warned of impending bank failures as a summit intended to solve the European crisis failed to deliver a solution that eased concerns over bank funding.

The European Central Bank admitted it had held meetings about providing emergency funding to the region's struggling banks, however City figures said a "collateral crunch" was looming.

"If anyone thinks things are getting better then they simply don't understand how severe the problems are. I think a major bank could fail within weeks," said one London-based executive at a major global bank.

Read the rest here

As Europe Moves Toward Stronger Union Britain Holds Out; Risking Isolation

BRUSSELS — A landmark summit of the 27-nation European Union ended here Friday with both a pledge and wedge: A pledge among nations to work toward a new treaty binding them more closely together in a pact to save the euro, and a wedge between the continent and Britain, which opted to sit it out.

In a summit portrayed by leaders as a make-or-break moment in the decades-long march toward European unity following World War II, the outcome signaled the growing clout of Germany and a potentially wayward path for Britain.

The veto by British Prime Minister David Cameron, a Conservative euro-skeptic who cherishes the pound and looks askance at heavy-handed European regulations in British affairs, underscored his nation’s long unease with relinquishing national powers to the E.U. and left London isolated in a region now moving toward deeper integration without it. His move left Britain’s Guardian newspaper asking, “Will it be Splendid Isolation, or Miserable?”

Read the rest here.

Why don't we form some sort of loose confederation consisting primarily of the English speaking nations of the world like the US, Great Britain, Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and some of the Caribbean states?  It could promote free trade and commerce within the confederation while respecting national sovereignty.  It could also provide a purely defensive military alliance that would replace many of the globalist organizations like NATO that have become instruments for interventionist foreign policies.

Russia braces for massive anti-Putin protests

MOSCOW -- Russian authorities are allowing the opposition to hold a massive Moscow protest against election fraud following a violent police crackdown on unsanctioned demonstrations earlier this week, rally organizers said Friday.

The decision to let up to 30,000 protesters rally on Saturday on a square across the river from the Kremlin appears to be an attempt to avoid the violence that occurred at demonstrations after last Sunday's parliamentary election.

Election authorities on Friday officially declared the vote valid, handing the victory to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's United Russia party. The party won 49 percent of the vote, but was granted 53 percent of seats in the lower house of Parliament because of votes redistributed from the three parties that did not meet the 5 percent threshold.

Russia's opposition parties and observers said that even that result was highly inflated because of vote rigging, and international monitors also pointed to ballot stuffing.

Read he rest here.

Huge Bank Accused of Gouging Customers

The accusations are as outrageous as they are plentiful: Hundreds of “robocalls” -- in one case, 800 to a single person -- to collect auto loan debts; illegal repossession of cars from active duty military deployed overseas; late fees assessed three years after the fact and then compounded into $2,000 or $3,000 bills; harassing calls to friends, neighbors, co-workers -- even children -- on cell phones. And now, a flurry of lawsuits filed around the country, and lawyers fighting over potential clients.

The defendant in the lawsuits is Europe’s largest bank, Banco Santander S.A., which is preparing to make a big push into U.S. retail banking. But many Americans already have been introduced to the Spanish financial powerhouse, a first encounter that many liken to a nightmare.

Read the rest here.

Banks are the enemy.

Albert Pujols is moving to California (for $250 Million)

Welcome to California Mr. Pujols. Please ignore the giggling from the state tax office in Sacramento. They are all Angels fans... really.

Last night the buzz coming from the winter meetings was that Albert Pujols wasn’t anywhere near making a decision, but either that was wrong or things changed dramatically overnight.

Tim Brown of Yahoo! Sports reports that Pujols has agreed to sign with the Angels, getting a 10-year contract worth between $250 million and $260 million.

Wow. It didn’t take Jerry Dipoto long to make a huge splash as general manager.

Until now Alex Rodriguez was the only player in baseball history to secure a contract in excess of $200 million and according to Brown the massive deal also includes a full no-trade clause, which was something the Marlins reportedly were never willing to give Pujols.

Read the rest here.

Perry bets the house on social conservatives

Rick Perry's campaign has pivoted to make a play for Iowa's socially conservative voters in the closing weeks of the primary campaign.

Perry's campaign, in the midst of a $1 million ad buy in the Hawkeye State, has highlighted the Texas governor's evangelical Christian faith in its two most recent ads.

"[Y]ou don't need to be in the pew every Sunday to know there's something wrong in this country when gays can serve openly in the military but our kids can't openly celebrate Christmas or pray in school," Perry said in his new ad, "Strong," released Wednesday. "As President, I'll end Obama's war on religion. And I'll fight against liberal attacks on our religious heritage."

In his previous ad, "Faith," he said: "Now some liberals say that faith is a sign of weakness. Well, they're wrong."

The spots appear to be part of an emergent strategy by Perry's campaign to focus on bread-and-butter social conservatism in a last-ditch effort to revive his campaign before Iowa's Jan. 3 caucuses, where social issues loom large.

Read the rest here.

GOP blocks nominee to lead financial protection agency

President Obama lashed out at Congress on Thursday for blocking his nomination to head a consumer financial watchdog agency, saying Americans are frustrated with legislators for holding up critical appointments to win concessions on other matters.

Speaking shortly after the Senate rejected his appointment of former Ohio attorney General Richard Cordray as head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Obama said his Capitol Hill adversaries were not acting “on the level” in their consideration of the public interest. And he complained that Republicans in Congress were systematically delaying his political appointments.

Read the rest here.

Two Are Shot Dead at VTech

BLACKSBURG, Va. -- Two people, including a campus police officer, were shot dead Thursday at Virginia Tech, where 33 people were killed in 2007 in the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history, a university spokesman said.

Officials warned everyone to seek shelter while an armed suspect was at large on the campus.

The officer was shot during a traffic stop, Virginia Tech spokesman Mark Owczarski told NBC News.

"Witnesses reported to police the shooter fled on foot heading toward the Cage, a parking lot near Duck Pond Drive. At that parking lot, a second person was found. That person is also deceased, Owczarski said.

A Virginia Tech alert described the suspected shooter as a white male wearing gray sweat pants, a gray hat with a neon green brim and a maroon hoodie, and carrying a backpack.

Read the rest here.

This is breaking news.  The text at the above link is likely to change.

ECB cuts interest rates, trying to stave off recession

The European Central Bank on Thursday cut interest rates for the second straight month and unveiled a new strategy to pump money into cash-strapped banks, in new efforts to bolster the ailing economy and financial system on the continent.

As European heads of state gathered in Brussels for a potentially fateful series of meetings meant to develop a new path forward for integrating the nations’ fiscal policies, the central bank for the 17 nation euro zone was meeting in Frankfurt, Germany, offering its own response to the deepening crisis.

Read the rest here.

Quote of the day...

And we must not have a dystopian view of the twenty-one ecumenical councils of the Church, as the Orthodox pick and choose.

From here.

People wonder why I grind my teeth every time I hear references to "online Orthodox."

In Germany it's cash and carry

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Navy Secretary Politicizing Ship's Names

The responsibility for naming U.S. warships has traditionally been left to the secretary of the Navy. That needs to change. President Obama’s Navy secretary, Ray Mabus, has politicized the christening process to the point where some form of oversight is needed.

The Senate version of the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act includes an amendment proposed by Sen. Roy Blunt, Missouri Republican, to “require a report on the policies and practices … for naming the vessels of the Navy.” The measure would require the secretary of defense to submit a report to Congress detailing current Navy policies for ship naming, the extent to which they vary from historical practices, and an assessment of the feasibility of establishing fixed policies for naming ships.

The catalyst for the amendment was the announcement last spring that the newest supply ship in the Navy’s inventory would be named after labor leader Cesar Chavez. This radical served briefly in the Navy after World War II but did not accomplish anything noteworthy while in uniform. His claim to fame was solely from organizing migrant laborers and agitating for the rights of illegal immigrants. Rep. Duncan Hunter, California Republican, said at the time that naming a ship after Chavez appeared to be “more about making a political statement than upholding the Navy’s history and tradition.”

The Lewis and Clark class of dry cargo/ammunition ships are named for explorers and pioneers, such as Richard E. Byrd, Amelia Earhart, or the namesakes of the class. On Mr. Mabus‘ watch, the namings have taken a decidedly political turn. In 2009, the Navy announced the naming of the USNS Medgar Evars after the civil-rights leader. Sen. Barbara Boxer, California Democrat, defended the practice as part of the Navy’s “rich tradition,” but naming ships after political activists began with the Obama administration.

Mr. Mabus was also wrong to name the amphibious ship LPD-26 after the late Rep. John P. Murtha, breaking with the tradition of naming San Antonio class ships after U.S. cities. Although Murtha was a Marine, he was criticized by veterans groups for calling the U.S. Marines facing charges for killing 24 Iraqis in Haditha, Iraq, in 2005 “cold blooded killers.” Almost all the charges were later dropped. When Murtha died in 2010, an extensive federal corruption investigation was underway against him. His name is not fit to carry our heroes to war.

Mr. Blunt questions whether such ship namings were “an appropriate thing to do or even related much to the military” and it would be useful for the secretary of the Navy to “go beyond his own desk” to justify them. Responsible officials need to “think more carefully about who we are going to name our Navy vessels after,” he said. America and our sea services deserve better. This measure is a useful first step to return balance to a process that has been sullied by politics.

Read he rest Source.

John Hepworth: Why the surprise?

Archbishop John Hepworth of the Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC) is once again creating quite a stir among both Roman Catholics and traditionally minded Anglicans on the blogosphere.  For those not familiar with his background Hepworth started out as a Roman Catholic.  He was ordained as a priest in that church in the late 1960's but in 1976 he became an Anglican and was accepted as a minister/priest in the Anglican Church of Australia.  In this capacity he continued until 1982* (1992) when he was received into one of the so called "continuing Anglican" churches.  Not long after he was made a bishop in their church and eventually succeeded as the primate of the TAC.  Subsequent to his Roman Catholic ordination he has been married, divorced, and married again.

In recent years Hepworth, has been instrumental in leading the TAC into the Roman communion.  Under his leadership the college of bishops voted to request full communion with Rome and each member then signed the Catechism Of the Catholic Church as a sign of their unconditional acceptance of Rome's magesterial authority and all of her doctrines and dogmas.  During this period Hepworth intimated that when the time came he was prepared to accept whatever role the Roman Church deemed right and appropriate for him, including that of a layman.

Now his work is bearing fruit.  Pope Benedict XVI has ordered the erection of an "Ordinariate" for Anglo-Catholics seeking full communion with the Holy See.  Guidelines have been issued and in several countries local Ordinariates have been, or are in the process of being, erected.  If perhaps there has not been an avalanche of Anglican conversions there have been more than a few, especially in traditionally Anglican countries like Great Britain and Australia.

In general the guidelines for receiving Anglican clergy appear to my mind to be fair and even to some degree generous.  But Rome has it's own rules and and also some doctrinal issues.  Recall those signatures on the Roman Catechism.

First, Roman Catholic canon law forbids the return to active ministry of their clergy once they leave for another church.  In other words once you are a Roman cleric, including their so called "minor orders," if you leave there is no coming back as a cleric.  You can return to Rome, but only as a layman.  A very few exceptions have been made over the years, but usually only when there are truly unusual or extenuating circumstances.*

Secondly Rome does not recognize the validity of divorce and remarriage.  Nor does it recognize the possibility of a valid marriage by someone bound by vows of celibacy.  This is so elementary it should not require serious discussion.

And yet it needs to be mentioned because there have been howls of astonishment in certain quarters over the fact that Archbishop Hepworth has been told by Rome that he will not be received back into their church as anything other than a laicized priest, and then presumably only after his irregular marital situation has been remedied.  All of which leads me to ask...

Why the surprise?  Seriously.  Anyone who did not see this coming has either been willfully blind or appallingly ignorant of what would be expected of persons entering the Roman Catholic Church.  Did they think they would just continue to be Anglicans, only now with the added benefit of being admitted to the sacraments of the Latin Church?  Rome has some standards and while there may be some give on a few things there is none on others.

I do not mean to be uncharitable or disparaging of John Hepworth.  But it is worth taking a look at his resume from a Catholic perspective for a moment.

• Ordained a Roman Catholic priest.  Vowed obedience and celibacy among other things.
• Left Rome and twice changed religions.
• Married then divorced then remarried.
• Has received Protestant orders as a "bishop."
• Has claimed (credibly) sexual abuse by Roman Catholic priests.

How can anyone have realistically expected that a man with that background would be received into active ministry as a Catholic priest?

And now reinforcing to my mind Rome's judgment in this matter comes word that Hepworth has opted to remain outside the Roman Church to minister to those Anglicans not yet ready to make the leap!  So let's get this right.  He signed the Roman Catechism and affirmed each and every doctrine of that church.  He encouraged his clergy and lay flock to convert into the Roman Church.  He even persuaded the Pope to make special arrangements and concessions to facilitate large scale conversions by Anglicans.  And he indicated his understanding that when the time came he was prepared to make the move himself as a layman.  Now though, the moment having come and Rome's terms being made clear, he has refused to take the plunge.

I really am having a difficult time understanding the shock among Anglicans at Rome's refusal to receive him in any clerical capacity.  And I am equally having a difficult time grasping the surprise of Catholics that a man with his track record would balk when told he must live the remainder of his life as a layman and endure a painful process of sorting out his marital situation with no certain outcome.

Anyone shocked by recent events simply hasn't been paying attention.

*Corrections: See Dr. Tighe's comment in the combox (2nd from the top) for two corrections.

Death penalty dropped against Mumia Abu-Jamal

Prosecutors announced Wednesday that they will no longer pursue the death penalty against former Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal, meaning he will spend the rest of his life in prison for gunning down a white police officer nearly 30 years ago.

The decision by District Attorney Seth Williams, made with the support of the officer's widow and the city police commissioner, comes after nearly 30 years of legal battles over the racially charged case.

Abu-Jamal was convicted of fatally shooting Philadelphia police Officer Daniel Faulkner on Dec. 9, 1981. He was sentenced to death after his trial the following year.

Abu-Jamal, a one-time journalist who has been incarcerated in a Pennsylvania prison, has garnered worldwide support from those who believe he was the victim of a biased justice system. Hundreds of vocal supporters and death-penalty opponents regularly turn out for court hearings in his case, even though Abu-Jamal is rarely entitled to attend.

His message resonated particularly on college campuses and in the movie and music industries — actors Mike Farrell and Tim Robbins were among dozens of luminaries who used a New York Times ad to advocate for a new trial, and the Beastie Boys played a concert to raise money for Abu-Jamal's defense fund.

Read the rest here.

Good. Now let the murderous SOB rot in prison for the rest of his life and maybe the rest of the world can try to forget he existed. I don't support the death penalty, but that's not the same thing as saying he is innocent (he isn't). His death sentence has given him far too much free publicity and turned a truly odious character into some kind of pop martyr. Shame on the left for idolizing an unrepentant cold blooded killer.

RIP: Harry Morgan

Harry Morgan has reposed at 96.  Most remember him as Col. Sherman T. Potter.  Those of us of a certain age however might also remember him as Det. Bill Gannon on Dragnet.  A wonderful actor.  May his memory be eternal.

Ex-Gov. Rod Blagojevich gets 14 years in prison for corruption

CHICAGO — Rod Blagojevich, the ousted Illinois governor whose three-year battle against criminal charges became a national spectacle, was sentenced to 14 years in prison Wednesday, one of the stiffest penalties imposed for corruption in a state with a history of crooked politics.

Among his 18 convictions is the explosive charge that he tried to leverage his power to appoint someone to President Barack Obama’s vacated Senate seat in exchange for campaign cash or land a high-paying job.

Read the rest here.

In surprising split Feds uphold prescription only rule for abortion pill

The federal government Wednesday rejected a request to let young teenage girls buy the controversial morning-after pill Plan B directly off drugstore and supermarket shelves without a prescription.

In a rare public split among federal health officials, the Health and Human Services Department overruled a decision by the Food and Drug Administration to make the drug available to anyone of any age without a restriction.

Read the rest here.

Memory Eternal: Pearl Harbor 70 years ago today

FDR's war speech in full.  Probably his greatest address as president.

The End of The Republic? Congress votes to establish military power of arrest without warrants or courts

While you weren't looking, those hilarious pranksters in Congress passed the National Defense Authorization Act, which among other things authorizes the military to detain U.S. citizens arrested in this country "without trial until the end of the hostilities authorized by the Authorization for Use of Military Force," meaning until the "War on Terror" is over, meaning never.

That's seriously what just happened.

I don't want you to think your representatives took a collective dump on the Sixth Amendment without talking it over first, because they did debate a little before voting to end the Republic. In particular, they discussed whether the indefinite-military-detention provision really applied to citizens, because it wasn't clear as drafted. Seems like it would have been pretty easy to make clear that it didn't apply to citizens if that's what you wanted, maybe by adding something like, "the authority granted by this section shall not extend to American citizens," but I'm no legislator. Your Supreme Court has held that it is okay to detain a citizen forever if arrested overseas, you may recall, and if you enjoyed that then you'll love this bill, which extends that to citizens arrested in the U.S. That is, as Lindsay Graham conceded on the Senate floor, this bill makes the homeland is a "battlefield" where the laws of war apply.

Under Section 1031 of the bill, the military is authorized to detain "covered persons" under the law of war, and you are "covered" if you were connected to 9/11 or have "substantially supported" anybody who was. Under 1031(c), a covered person may be held indefinitely. The debate was over 1032, "Requirement for Military Custody," which required that detainees be held by the military (as 1031 authorized). Did that cover citizens, some cared enough to ask? The end result was that 1032(b) now provides that "[t]he requirement to detain a person in military custody ... does not extend to citizens of the United States." Feel better? Don't. All that says is that military detention isn't required. It's still authorized.

But wait, you say, I'm not a "covered person" because I'm not a terrorist and I totally think 9/11 sucked. Well, of course I believe you, but how will you prove that, person in military custody? At your trial? I see. Well, you can either have a military tribunal now or a trial when the War on Terror is over. In America we give you the freedom to choose!

Read the rest here.

Margaret Baroness Thatcher On Socialism

Romeny Spent 100k In Public Money To Hide His Records

Mitt Romney spent nearly $100,000 in state funds to replace computers in his office at the end of his term as governor of Massachusetts in 2007 as part of an unprecedented effort to keep his records secret.

The move was legal but unusual for a departing governor, Massachusetts officials say.

The effort to purge the records was made a few months before Romney launched an unsuccessful campaign for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008. He is again competing for the party’s nomination, this time to challenge President Obama.

When Romney left the governorship of Massachusetts, 11 of his aides bought the hard drives of their state-issued computers for themselves. Also before he left office, the governor’s staff had e-mails and other electronic communications wiped from state servers, state officials say.

Those actions erased much of the internal documentation of Romney’s tenure as governor, which ended in January 2007. Precisely what information was erased is unclear.

Read the rest here.

Euro Collapse Likely to Hit US Hard

To get a sense of how vulnerable the U.S. economy could be if the euro currency union cracks apart, start with the volume of U.S. exports to the euro zone — $153 billion in the first six months of the year. Add several hundred billion dollars in investments by U.S. banks in the euro zone and several trillion dollars’ worth of other financial contracts between the two economies.

As European leaders meet later this week to try to resolve their spreading debt crisis and prevent the breakup of the 17-nation euro zone, U.S. politicians, corporate leaders and financial analysts are watching anxiously for a breakthrough.

The alternative could be staggering for the U.S. economy. American banks and other companies could find themselves battling with any country that leaves the euro union and reinstates its own currency.

“The risk is likely paralysis,” said Michael Hood, a market strategist at J.P. Morgan Asset Management. “You won’t even know what people owe you.”

Read the rest here.

Obama slams GOP on economics

President Obama, in one of his most expansive speeches to date, declared on Tuesday that supply-side economics is a failure and called “gaping inequality” across the country a moral shortcoming that is distorting American democracy.

Obama’s speech in Kansas was not just another attack on Congress, or a plea to pass his jobs bill. He did not roll out a new, snappy slogan – such as telling the audience that “we can’t wait” to enact new laws.

Instead, Obama delivered a searing indictment of Republican economic theory, setting the stage for the coming presidential campaign. Summoning the image of a populist Theodore Roosevelt — in the same town (Osawatomie) where Roosevelt delivered a famous speech on economic fairness in 1910 — Obama deployed the language of right and wrong, fairness and unfairness, in a lengthy address that aides said he largely wrote himself.

Read the rest here.

Paul - not Romney - leads anti-Gingrich offensive

With Newt Gingrich now surging in the polls, the first Republican presidential candidate to attack him in a paid TV ad isn’t Mitt Romney. Or Rick Perry. Or Michele Bachmann.

Instead, it’s Ron Paul.

The Texas congressman has emerged, arguably, as Gingrich’s most vocal critic -- at least for now -- cutting a web video from last week that was scathingly critical of the former Speaker into a 60-second TV spot for air in Iowa.

"We wanted to ensure this ad reached as many voters as possible, to debunk the myth that the Newt we are seeing on the 2012 campaign trail is the conservative he has been touted to be all along," Paul campaign manager Jesse Benton said in a statement.

Read the rest here.

Russia: Violence flares as police and pro-democracy protestors clash

MOSCOW -- Police and protesters clashed Tuesday on a central Moscow square as people tried to hold a second day of demonstrations against alleged vote fraud in Russia's parliamentary elections. Protesters in the city of St. Petersburg also broke through police lines.

Hundreds of people have been arrested in the two cities.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's United Russia party saw a significant drop in support in Sunday's election, but it will still have a majority in parliament. Opponents say even that watered-down victory was due to massive vote fraud.

Russia's beleaguered opposition has been energized by the vote, staging its biggest protests in Moscow for years.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reiterated U.S. suggestions that Sunday's election was neither free nor fair. Russia's Foreign Ministry later branded U.S. criticism "unacceptable." Meanwhile, Republican Senator John McCain offered Putin a warning on Twitter: "Dear Vlad, The Arab Spring is coming to a neighborhood near you."

Read the rest here.

Pearl Harbor Survivors Return to Ships After Death

HONOLULU (AP) — Five memorials are being held in Pearl Harbor this week for servicemen who lived through the assault and want their remains placed in Pearl Harbor out of pride and affinity for those they left behind.

Divers will place the remains of one sailor on the USS Utah and another on the USS Arizona. The ashes of three others will be scattered in the harbor.

Jim Taylor, a retired sailor who coordinates the ceremonies, says the survivors want to return and be with their shipmates.

The memorials are happening the same week as the 70th anniversary of the attack that killed 2,390 Americans and brought the United States into World War II.

A larger ceremony remembering all of those who died will be held Wednesday morning.

Source

Pentagon retreats from Bible ban in U.S. military hospitals

One day after an outraged Congressman denounced a Pentagon ban on Bibles or any other religious literature in U.S. military hospitals, the Obama Administration has dropped the policy.

But questions linger. Why would unelected bureaucrats think they can ban Bibles? How did such a policy ever get approved? Who is responsible?

In Texas, an ongoing battle has been waged by the Veterans Administration and volunteers from the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars. Officials at Houston’s national cemetery barred any religious ceremonies at graveside and ignored denunciations by members of Congress as well as infuriated families. Calls have resounded nationwide for the firing of the cemetery’s director — but she has remained in office.

Now, Congressman Steve King (R-Iowa) has demanded that officials explain why bureaucrats have prohibited family members of wounded military troops from bringing Bibles or any religious reading materials to their loved ones.

“The President of the United States should address this and should excoriate the people who brought about this policy and the individual who brought it about should be dismissed from the United States Military,” said Congressman King.

Speaking from the floor of the House of Representatives, King blasted an order from the commander of Walter Reed National Military Medical Center written by Chief of Staff C.W. Callahan. The September 14th memo covers guidelines for “wounded, ill, and injured partners in care.”

“No religious items (i.e. Bibles, reading material, and/or artifacts) are allowed to be given away or used during a visit,” the policy states.

Read the rest here.

Fox Business Channel: Kermit is a Commie

Moscow, December 4, 2011. On the feast of the Presentation of the Blessed Lady and Theotokos in the temple of our God and the anniversary of the enthronement of St. Tikhon, Patriarch of All Russia, His Holiness Patriarch Kirill celebrates Divine Liturgy at the Cathedral of the Great Don stavropigialny monastery. During the Liturgy the Primate led the consecration of Archimandrite Theodosius (drywall) as bishop.

Gingrich Will Be the GOP Nominee

Newt Gingrich will be the Republican nominee for president. Why? Because Mitt Romney is a Mormon, and the GOP primary/caucus schedule favors a non-Mormon candidate.

White Evangelical Christians are perhaps the strongest, most loyal constituency of the Republican Party. That is Romney’s greatest obstacle to the nomination. In a Pew poll conducted just before Thanksgiving, two-thirds of Evangelical Christians expressed the belief that Mormonism is not a Christian religion. In other polls, a significant majority of Evangelicals consistently express doubts that they would vote for a non-Christian for president.

Romney = Mormon = non-Christian

That same Pew poll, conducted shortly before Herman Cain’s implosion, showed the pizza godfather leading nationally among Evangelical Republicans at 26%. Newt Gingrich came next at 19%, followed by Romney with just 17%. Now that Cain is out of the race, his supporters must choose a new candidate. Many will move to second tier candidates like Michele Bachmann or Ron Paul. One can surmise, however, that a large percentage will select one of the two current front-runners. The Pew poll strongly suggests Gingrich will get far more former Cain supporters than Romney.

Now consider the primary/caucus schedule:

Jan. 3: Iowa

Jan. 10: New Hampshire

Jan. 21: South Carolina

Jan. 31: Florida

Feb. 4: Nevada

Feb. 7: Colorado, Minnesota, Missouri

Feb. 11: Maine

Feb. 28: Arizona, Michigan

Mar. 3: Washington

Mar. 6: Super Tuesday – Alaska, Georgia, Idaho, Massachusetts, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia

If the race has not been decided by Super Tuesday, it will certainly be decided on that date. The primaries that follow Super Tuesday will play no role in the selection of a candidate.

Read the rest here.

Personally I think this makes a good case for why Romney won't be the GOP nominee (something I have said from day one) .  Gingrich winning the nomination is another matter.  But I will concede that for the moment he is the anti-Romney.

Consecration of Bishop Vladimir (Samokhina)

Consecration of Archimandrite Vladimir (Samokhina) Bishop of Skopinsky and Shatsky on the Feast of St. Philaret of Moscow in Christ the Savior Cathedral.

Optina: Vespers for the Feast of the Presentation of the Most Holy Theotokos in the Temple

If you are an Episcopalian this is what you are in full communion with

You probably aren’t aware that November 20 is the national Transgender Day of Remembrance. Cameron Partridge is. The observance began after the 1998 murder of a transgendered Boston woman. November 20 also happens to be Partridge’s birthday (he turns 38 this year), and BU’s new Episcopal minister, the University’s first openly transgendered chaplain, once shuddered at a birthday that reminded him both about his own mortality “and that you could be killed.”

Then a church he served hosted commemoration services that pulled in hundreds each year. “I started to feel like, you know what? I need to go. This is really important,” Partridge says. “There’s still part of me that’s like, ugh, but honestly, I really find that it’s such a powerful experience of community. And that’s a really wonderful thing to have on your birthday.”

As he takes over the University’s part-time Episcopalian chaplaincy, Partridge, who lives outside Boston with his wife and their toddler son, says he wants to minister with the empathy that has sometimes been denied him since he completed his transition to a man in 2001. His father, for example, no longer speaks to him. “It’s not my choice,” he says. (Most family and friends accepted him after long conversations.)

Read the rest here.

HT: T-19

Some good news on jobs with lots of qualifiers

Some companies are hiring, especially retailers.  But a lot of the new jobs are temp positions and even those that are full time  pay very low wages.  In raw numbers the official unemployment rate fell to 8.6%.  The real unemployment rate remains near 16%.  A significant factor in the decline of the official rate is that many of the long term unemployed have lost benefits and are no longer tracked by the system.  Once you lose your unemployment benefits you are no longer counted as jobless.  Huge numbers of the long term unemployed have simply given up and stopped looking for work.  These people do not figure into any government statistics.

In short, what the numbers show is less a recovery in jobs than a contraction in the number of people that the Labor Department keeps track of.  All of which is not to say no real jobs were added.  Some were.  But not nearly enough to move an accurate statistical measurement by any meaningful degree.

GOP becoming reality TV show

Media mogul Donald Trump will moderate a Republican presidential debate sponsored by the conservative website Newsmax in Des Moines, Iowa on Dec. 27, Newsmax confirmed today.

“We approached Donald Trump,” Newsmax.com executive director Steve Coz told The Fix. “He is a well-known and vocal conservative, and we thought it was a great partnership.”

Trump adviser Michael Cohen confirmed his participation.

This is an absolutely terrific idea. What better way to build confidence in the GOP primary process, and to reinforce the gravtias of candidates who are aspiring to be seen as prepared for the presidency, then to submit them to questioning from a reality-TV star whose appeal to conservatives is rooted in the fact that he spent his own short-lived freak-show presidential campaign questioning Obama’s citizenship, right up until the killing of Bin Laden wiped the smug, megalomaniacal grin off his face?

In all seriousness, this guy is a showman. It’s all about the show. There’s no telling what he’ll say or do or ask. This won’t end well. You’ll see.

Read the rest here.

This should be embarrassing.  The fact that no one in the GOP is in the least bit serves as further evidence that the once great political party of the center-right has become the domicile of tin foil hat conspiracy theorists, radical social-cons, militaristic imperialists and right wing buffoons.

This country desperately needs a viable third party not beholden to the lunatic fringe of either the left or the right.

Haunted By Hyperinflation; Germany Fears The Printing Press

BERLIN — Norbert Schulze was not yet born when the hyperinflation of the 1920s deeply scarred the German psyche. But he still remembers the Reichsmark notes denominated in millions and billions that years later were tucked into a box with the family’s old black-and-white photographs

Now, Mr. Schulze, a 56-year-old auto mechanic, says runaway inflation looms again, threatening to decimate his savings and turn his carefully planned retirement into abject poverty. It is not so much the ghost of the 1920s that he fears, but the vocal demands around Europe and abroad for a “big bazooka” of public money to reassure markets and help European countries in heavy debt.

“I’m worried about my pension and my savings and the problems we’re facing right now,” Mr. Schulze said.

Many economists say aggressive purchases of the sovereign bonds of heavily indebted states by the European Central Bank are the quickest and surest path to stabilizing the crisis. On Thursday, Mario Draghi, the bank’s president, laid the groundwork for bolder intervention in markets if certain conditions were met.

To German ears those bond purchases, or anything that smacks of printing money, sound like a recipe for skyrocketing prices. German leaders, including Chancellor Angela Merkel and her former economic adviser, Jens Weidmann, now head of the German Bundesbank, have strongly discouraged any such move by the European Central Bank, stalling the rescue of the euro zone in the view of critics.

The prospect of a dim historical memory — the antique photograph of the wheelbarrow full of nearly worthless bills — helping to drive the world off the economic precipice and into another deep recession may seem like the height of irrationality and even irresponsibility.

But the German obsession with inflation has been difficult to overcome because Germans perceive themselves as more vulnerable to inflation today than their neighbors are. It is a force they believe could reduce or wipe out the competitive and financial edge they have labored to build.

By robbing a currency of its value, inflation wipes the slate clean for debtors and savers alike. Germans say they like the slate the way it is because they are on the plus side of the ledger.

Consumer debt, whether credit cards or in many cases even home mortgages, is frowned upon here. According to figures of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the German savings rate was more than 10 percent every year between 2003 and 2009, while during the same period it bottomed out at 1.5 percent in the United States, and never rose above 6.2 percent. As a result German households had net savings of $4.3 trillion, according to the Bundesbank, in a country of fewer than 82 million people.

Germans own homes at a lower rate, 41.6 percent, than the 66.3 percent of Americans who do. And most people do not invest in the stock market here.

Read the rest here.

Religious slurs in lawyer's memo have court up in arms

In the sedate and sober world of bankruptcy law, one lawyer's memorandum sticks out like a sore loser.

"Across the country the court systems and particularly the Bankruptcy Court in Minnesota, are composed of a bunch of ignoramus, bigoted Catholic beasts that carry the sword of the church," the Nov. 25 filing said.

It went on to call one bankruptcy judge "a Catholic Knight Witch Hunter," said one trustee was "a priest's boy" and claimed another trustee is a "Jesuitess."

It got worse from there.

Hastings lawyer Rebekah Nett also called U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Nancy Dreher and other court personnel "dirty Catholics." Then she expressed concerns over what might transpire at a hearing docketed for next week, writing, "Catholic deeds throughout the history have been bloody and murderous."

People who spend their time writing and reading legal documents were stunned.

"I've never seen anything in 30 years of practicing law like this," said Brian Leonard, a bankruptcy trustee. "This is so far over the line, it's in another world."

Nett got her law degree from the University of Minnesota in 1999 and is licensed to practice in Minnesota and Wisconsin. There is no record of any disciplinary action against her in either state.

Read the rest here.

This is so bizarre (not to mention repulsive) that at first I seriously suspected it was some sort of prank or satire.

HT: A blog reader.

Muslim Brotherhood bends rules and expects to win big in Egypt

CAIRO – The Muslim Brotherhood has already started coloring outside the lines in order to win a majority in Egypt’s parliamentary elections.

The organization, which gave its political branch the more ambiguous title, The Party of Freedom and Justice (FJP), is expected to win 40 percent of the seats in the lower house of parliament, according to analysts estimates. Official results from the first round of voting will be announced Thursday.

Based on our own observations at polling stations across Cairo and anecdotal evidence, they seem to have won support at the polls by bending the rules in their favor.

Free food and cheap meat
In Cairo’s Saida Zeinab neighborhood, at one of the busiest polling centers in the city, we saw a party member and two other supporters of an independent candidate passing out leaflets to voters waiting in long lines to cast their ballots – in clear violation of election laws. Soldiers who were on site for crowd control, did nothing to stop them. At the same spot, a tech-savvy FJP member sat on a bench, laptop in hand, to conduct exit polls. At other polling stations, they provided polling information to baffled voters.

In a more economically disadvantaged part of Cairo known as “The Slaughterhouse,” Hanan Nasr, a mother of three, watched FJP members pass out free packages of rice and oil to voters on their way to the polling station – again in contravention of campaign law. They also bussed in party members from surrounding neighborhoods.

Voter confusion played into the hands of the FJP. Many voters simply did not know who the candidates were because of the sheer number of mostly unknown candidates (4,000), unknown parties (35 new ones since President Hosni Mubarak fell from power) and a complicated voting system requiring choices of farmer, labor and independent candidates.

For those who did not understand the voting system, the FJP had people on hand before the election to explain how to make their ballots count – for FJP candidates.

Read the rest here.

Egypt's Christians prepare for new political climate

CAIRO — A young woman with a kerchief on her head lit a candle and prayed Sunday beneath a mosaic of Mary and Jesus at a packed Mass at St. Mark’s Coptic Orthodox Church. Then she picked up a leaflet next to the candle rack from an organization called Shahid, or Witness. It listed emergency phone numbers, e-mail addresses, Facebook and Twitter information should trouble arise at voting stations during parliamentary elections this week.

For those attending Mass at St. Mark’s, in the upper-class district of Maadi in Cairo, the elections represent the beginning of a democratic Egypt but also instill fear of a party coming to power that favors Islamic law.

It is widely expected that the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party will dominate the political landscape. This expectation has already affected the Christian community. Since the Jan. 25 revolution that removed President Hosni Mubarak from power, 100,000 Christian families have emigrated abroad, according to Naguib Gibrael, the Coptic Church’s lawyer.

To counter the Muslim Brotherhood, St. Mark’s has encouraged its parishioners to vote for the secular Egyptian Bloc, made up of both Muslim and Christian candidates. Bishop Danial, spiritual leader for church members in Maadi, made a special appearance at St. Mark’s on Sunday. In his sermon, after emphasizing the need to reject hatred in favor of compassion, the bishop turned to politics.

“These elections matter a lot to us,” he told the congregation. “Perhaps the situation is not as stable as we would have liked before voting, but we must participate. This is freedom and democracy. The Muslim Brotherhood, however, is very organized.”

“You can choose whomever you want,” he added, “but we have had meetings with the moderate Muslims and Christians in the Egyptian Bloc and we support these parties.”

Read the rest here.