More threats from North Korea as tenions stay high

North Korea escalated its provocative rhetoric on Thursday, warning that its military is authorized to wage "cutting-edge smaller, lighter and diversified" nuclear strikes to protect against the United States.

"The moment of explosion is approaching fast. No one can say a war will break out in Korea or not and whether it will break out today or tomorrow," read the statement of an unnamed military spokesman.

The statement was carried by the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Wednesday that North Korea's latest provocations are "a real and clear danger and threat" to U.S. interests and Washington is taking them seriously.

Read the rest here.

A Sad Note

A beloved family pet, my mom's standard poodle Rusty died today at the very respectable age of 13. Of the many pets we have had over the years he was by far the most affectionate, and he is already greatly missed. Needless to say mom is pretty broken up. Those of you who have experienced the loss of a family pet will know the pain of which I write.

It's Baseball Season And All Is Right In The World

The Mets are tied for first place and the Yankees are tied for last.

An Indictment of Orthodox Participation in the National Council of Churches

I just hate it when Protestants make highly pointed criticisms of the Orthodox Church... that are completely fair and correct. Read it here.

Judge Clears Stockton for Bankruptcy

A U.S. bankruptcy judge’s decision Monday cleared the way for indebted Stockton, Calif., to seek relief through Chapter 9 bankruptcy. Experts say the precedent-setting case has implications for other financially struggling cities such as Detroit, as well as municipal bondholders, public workers and retirees.

“The fact of the matter is, the city can’t pay its bills,” said Marc Levinson, lead bankruptcy counsel for the city of Stockton. With the judge’s ruling, “We have a forum to try to discuss the city’s debts.”

Read the rest here.

Fears High After Second Texas Prosecutor Assassinated

KAUFMAN, Texas — Deputies escorted some Kaufman County employees into the courthouse Monday, two days after the district attorney and his wife were found shot to death in their home in an attack that stirred fears that other public employees could be targeted by assassins.

Law enforcement officers were seen patrolling one side of the courthouse, one holding a semi-automatic weapon, while others walked around inside.

Read the rest here.

Happy Easter

A blessed feast to those celebrating Easter on the Roman Catholic calendar.

Plan for Westminster chapel to host gay weddings

For the last 700 years, it has been the main place of Christian worship in the Palace of Westminster, aside from brief periods as a wine cellar and a stable for Oliver Cromwell’s horses.

But now, it seems, the Government has a new role in mind for the chapel of St Mary Undercroft, which is nestled in a crypt beneath Parliament.

Ministers are considering changing the historic Anglican chapel into a multi-faith prayer room – so that it can be used to conduct same-sex weddings.

Under the gay marriage legislation currently passing through Parliament, the chapel will not be able to offer such ceremonies, because the Church of England is to be exempt from the new law.

To get round this and to ensure same sex marriages can be held there, plans have been introduced to convert the room into a multi-faith area.

Read the rest here.

Marcus Brauchli on David Stockman's New Book

...Now, he has cast his acid eye on the country’s entire economic edifice. What the former divinity student sees doesn’t merely dismay, it outrages him morally, page after page, chapter after chapter. Stockman’s new tract, “The Great Deformation,” is a kaleidoscopic rant against people, institutions and practices he knows well. He attacks, upends, eviscerates, mocks and denigrates them all, usually with some justification, always in the brutalist prose of a manifesto.

The New Deal was a “political gong show,” and Franklin D. Roosevelt and Richard M. Nixon were “peas in a statist pod.” Morgan Stanley’s former chief executive, John Mack, is a “ruthless gambler and bully who never hesitated to exploit any avenue to make a buck.” Reagan’s defense secretary, Caspar Weinberger, was “obdurate and imperious on everything within his brief.” Alan Greenspan and Milton Friedman get entire chapters dedicated to their free-market heresies.

But here’s the thing: Even as he indulges his spleen, Stockman produces a persuasive and deeply relevant indictment of a system dangerously akilter.

Over the past 40 years, the United States has become a strange fantasy land where many politicians think deficits don’t matter, regulators are closely entwined with their charges, and the Federal Reserve manages the economy through high-stakes, high-risk experimentation. The financial turmoil of the past few years is just a glimpse of what lies at the end of the road we’re on, Stockman warns.

In showing us where it leads, he takes the long way, ambling past the wreckage of fiscal and market calamities dating back a century, pausing to praise the gleaming fiscal conservatism of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, then arriving at the ever-more-dire failures of the last generation.

The country began veering badly off course, Stockman argues, in August 1971. That was when Nixon decided to scrap the international financial arrangement that anchored the dollar’s value to gold and thus other currencies in the decades after World War II. “In an act that cascaded down through the decades, Richard Nixon caused the United States to default on its . . . obligations . . . and thereby inaugurated an era of global trade imbalance, currency pegging and manipulation, massive debt creation, and financial speculation that had no historic antecedents,” Stockman writes. “It became the era of bubble finance.”

Read the rest here.

The name of the book is ‘The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America’ by David Stockman.

Concern Rises Over North Korean Saber Rattling

The latest round of threats exchanged by North Korea and the United States is dragging on longer and taking on a more virulent tone than in the past, provoking deep concerns among American officials and their allies.

Following blustery warnings by Kim Jong Un, North Korea’s 30-year-old leader, and videos depicting North Korean attacks on the United States, the Obama administration took the unprecedented step this week of sending two stealth bombers to South Korea as part of an ongoing military training exercise.

Read the rest here.

The Great Canon of St. Andrew of Crete

Pope Francis washes the feet of inmates in juvenile prison

ROME – Since he was elected leader of the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Francis has proved many times over that he wants to break away from clerical privilege, come down from St. Peter’s throne and act as a humble servant of the faithful.

And on Holy Thursday he reinforced the idea that he will champion social outcasts and the poor by washing the feet of a dozen young inmates in a juvenile detention center.

The washing of feet is an important religious rite on Holy Thursday -- the day Christianity celebrates Jesus’ Last Supper ahead of his crucifixion -- as it re-enacts Christ’s humble gesture toward his disciples before the meal.

Read the rest here.

Predictably the traddies are having a stroke over this. Seriously, take a look at some of the commentary over at Rorate (here and here). The Pharisaical legalism is breathtaking. In fairness I am a little disturbed by this Pope's reputation (which seems to be accurate) for having little regard for liturgy. But neither did John Paul II.

Congressional Abdication and the Rise of the Imperial Presidency

IN MATTERS of foreign policy, Congress, and especially the Senate, was designed as a hedge against the abuses exhibited by overeager European monarchs who for centuries had whimsically entangled their countries in misguided adventures. America would not be such a place. The Constitution would protect our governmental process from the overreach of a single executive who might otherwise succumb to the impulsive temptation to unilaterally risk our country’s blood, treasure and international prestige. Congress was given the power to declare war and appropriate funds, thus eliminating any resemblance to European-style monarchies when it came to the presidential war power.

Importantly and often forgotten these days, Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution was also carefully drawn to give Congress, not the president, certain powers over the structure and use of the military. True, the president would act as commander in chief, but only in the sense that he would be executing policies shepherded within the boundaries of legislative powers. In some cases his power is narrowed further by the requirement that he obtain the “Advice and Consent” of two-thirds of the Senate. Congress, not the president, would “raise and support Armies,” with the Constitution limiting appropriations for such armies to no more than two years. This was a clear signal that in our new country there would be no standing army to be sent off on foreign adventures at the whim of a pseudomonarch. The United States would not engage in unchecked, perpetual military campaigns.

Congress would also “provide and maintain a Navy,” with no time limit on such appropriations. This distinction between “raising” an army and “maintaining” a navy marked a recognition of the reality that our country would need to protect vital sea-lanes as a matter of commercial and national security, confront acts of piracy—the eighteenth-century equivalent of international terrorism—and act as a deterrent to large-scale war.

Practical circumstances have changed, but basic philosophical principles should not. We reluctantly became a global military power in the aftermath of World War II, despite our initial effort to follow historical patterns and demobilize. NATO was not established until 1949, and the 1950 invasion of South Korea surprised us. In the ensuing decades, the changing nature of modern warfare, the growth of the military-industrial complex and national-security policies in the wake of the Cold War all have contributed to a mammoth defense structure and an atrophied role for Congress that would not have been recognizable when the Constitution was written. And there is little doubt that Dwight D. Eisenhower, who led the vast Allied armies on the battlefields of Europe in World War II and who later as president warned ominously of the growth of what he himself termed the “military-industrial complex,” is now spinning in his tomb.

Perhaps the greatest changes in our defense posture and in the ever-decreasing role of Congress occurred in the years following the terrorist attacks on U.S. soil of September 11, 2001. Powers quickly shifted to the presidency as the call went up for centralized decision making in a traumatized nation where quick, decisive action was considered necessary. It was considered politically dangerous and even unpatriotic to question this shift, lest one be accused of impeding national safety during a time of war. Few dared to question the judgment of military leaders, many of whom were untested and almost all of whom followed the age-old axiom of continually asking for more troops, more money and more authority. Members of Congress fell all over themselves to prove they were behind the troops and behind the wars.

Read the rest here.

Clean Friday Matins

Ecumenical dialogue at its best

"...The introduction of the institution of female bishops will lead to the elimination of even a theoretical possibility of the Moscow Patriarchate recognizing the church hierarchy of the Anglican Church, the communications service of the Department for External Church Relations reported on Saturday.

"I would like you to know about that and take our opinion into account when this issue arises again," Metropolitan Hilarion said.

Read the rest here.
HT: T-19

Axios!

The Triumph of Orthodoxy

Christ the Savior Cathedral 26 March 2013

Barack Obama - The President that Nixon Always Wanted to Be

This month, I spoke at an event commemorating the 40th anniversary of the Watergate scandal with some of its survivors at the National Press Club. While much of the discussion looked back at the historic clash with President Nixon, I was struck by a different question: Who actually won? From unilateral military actions to warrantless surveillance that were key parts of the basis for Nixon's impending impeachment, the painful fact is that Barack Obama is the president that Nixon always wanted to be.

Four decades ago, Nixon was halted in his determined effort to create an "imperial presidency" with unilateral powers and privileges. In 2013, Obama wields those very same powers openly and without serious opposition. The success of Obama in acquiring the long-denied powers of Nixon is one of his most remarkable, if ignoble, accomplishments. Consider a few examples:

Read the rest here.

This is just damning.

Thought for the day...

From Byzantine Texas.

Enough already!

The political abuse of an ancient tradition needs to stop. And yes, both sides have done it over the last decade but its getting ridiculous. We need to reinstate the rule that Navy ships will only be named after deceased persons and there should be a five year waiting period from their death before they can be considered for the honor. (I'd waive the five year wait for Medal of Honor recipients.)