Egypt: Some encouraging news

Egypt’s majority Muslim population stuck to its word Thursday night. What had been a promise of solidarity to the weary Coptic community, was honoured, when thousands of Muslims showed up at Coptic Christmas eve mass services in churches around the country and at candle light vigils held outside.

From the well-known to the unknown, Muslims had offered their bodies as “human shields” for last night’s mass, making a pledge to collectively fight the threat of Islamic militants and towards an Egypt free from sectarian strife.

“We either live together, or we die together,” was the sloganeering genius of Mohamed El-Sawy, a Muslim arts tycoon whose cultural centre distributed flyers at churches in Cairo Thursday night, and who has been credited with first floating the “human shield” idea.

Among those shields were movie stars Adel Imam and Yousra, popular Muslim televangelist and preacher Amr Khaled, the two sons of President Hosni Mubarak, and thousands of citizens who have said they consider the attack one on Egypt as a whole.

“This is not about us and them,” said Dalia Mustafa, a student who attended mass at Virgin Mary Church on Maraashly Street. “We are one. This was an attack on Egypt as a whole, and I am standing with the Copts because the only way things will change in this country is if we come together.”

In the days following the brutal attack on Saints Church in Alexandria, which left 21 dead on New Year’ eve, solidarity between Muslims and Copts has seen an unprecedented peak. Millions of Egyptians changed their Facebook profile pictures to the image of a cross within a crescent – the symbol of an “Egypt for All”. Around the city, banners went up calling for unity, and depicting mosques and churches, crosses and crescents, together as one.

Read the rest here.

I find this news encouraging. Perhaps there is some hope that the vast majority of Muslims have had enough of the murderous extremists who have turned the very name of their religion into a synonym for terrorism.

RIP: Dick Winters

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Richard "Dick" Winters, the Easy Company commander whose World War II exploits were made famous by the book and television miniseries "Band of Brothers," died last week in central Pennsylvania. He was 92.

Winters died following a several-year battle with Parkinson's Disease, longtime family friend William Jackson said Monday.

An intensely private and humble man, Winters had asked that news of his death be withheld until after his funeral, Jackson said. Winters lived in Hershey, Pa., but died in suburban Palmyra.

The men Winters led expressed their admiration for their company commander after learning of his death.

William Guarnere, 88, said what he remembers about Winters was "great leadership."

"When he said 'Let's go,' he was right in the front," Guarnere, who was called "Wild Bill" by his comrades, said Sunday night from his South Philadelphia home. "He was never in the back. A leader personified."

Read the rest here.

A great American hero. Memory Eternal.

An Episcopal Iconostasis

In case there remained any doubt. See also the favorable write up at the The Episcopal Cafe. Every time I think I have reached a point where I am impervious to any further shock from them, they prove me wrong. Words fail me.

HT: Bob Koch

New converts flocking to an ancient church

Like many of his parishioners, Father Richard Petranek came to the Orthodox church in search of the past.

After 30 years as an Episcopalian priest, Petranek converted to the Antiochian Orthodox Church and leads a new but growing parish in west Houston, filled almost entirely with converts to the ancient faith.

"Most people come for the stability," he said. "The same thing that is taught today in the Orthodox church was taught 500 years ago, was taught 1,000 years ago, was taught 1,500 years ago."

At a time when most mainline Christian churches are losing members, Eastern Orthodox churches — which trace their beliefs to the church described in the New Testament - are growing, both in Houston and across the United States.

The numbers are still small: the 2010 U.S. Orthodox census estimates there are about 32,000 active Orthodox churchgoers in Texas and just more than 1 million nationally, although other estimates are higher. But the number of U.S. Orthodox parishes grew 16 percent over the past decade.

In Houston and its suburbs, the growth has been more dramatic, fueled by immigration from Eastern Europe, the Middle East and elsewhere, along with an increasing number of converts.

The Orthodox tradition includes Greek Orthodox, Antiochian Orthodox, Russian Orthodox and the Orthodox Church in America, among others.

"We were amazed the church still existed, and it had never changed," said Lana Jobe, who with her husband, Lloyd, left a Baptist church to join Petranek at St. Paul Antiochian Orthodox Church four years ago. "That was so important to us."

Read the rest here.

Rome gives two reasons in one example for staying away

Rorate Caeli has an interesting story up here about a bizarre group called the Neocatechumenal Way. This group is pretty dissident on a number of fronts and has in the past incurred sharp criticism from orthodox Roman Catholics. In any event the Catholic bishops of Japan apparently have had enough and announced that the group was to have its activities suspended for five years. So far so good.

But... Apparently no one checked with Rome, or maybe the problem is that they did. Now the Holy See has intervened and said "No, you can't do this to them." Rome demands that the bishops of Japan must dialogue with them, with the mediation of someone who "loves" the NCW. What claptrap! The NCW is a wacko group that flaunts RC discipline and by most accounts is filled to the rafters with heretics. Suppressing such groups is (or should be) a part of the job description for any bishop.

Which brings me to my points. The Japanese bishops were acting the way one would expect of true bishops. But Rome is demonstrating two things that should give serious pause to any Orthodox ready to ring the "communion now with Rome" bell.

1. First, Rome tolerates, and apparently has active defenders in high places for, groups like the Neocatechumenal Way. And...
2. When the rubber hits road, there is only one real bishop in the Roman Catholic Church. The rest are glorified auxiliary bishops who serve at the pleasure of, and take their marching orders from Rome.

Kinda reminds me of a scandalous situation a little closer to home here in Orthodox N. America... But that's a subject for another day.

Tax Cuts From ’70s Confront Brown in California

LOS ANGELES — The last time Jerry Brown was governor of California, voters passed Proposition 13, drastically slashing local property taxes and constraining lawmakers from raising any other taxes. Mr. Brown first fought the proposition but then executed it with gusto and sent billions of dollars from the state to school districts and counties to help offset the lost revenues.

That may be a decision that Mr. Brown has come to regret, as his career has come full circle and taken him back to Sacramento 33 years later to confront yet another budget crisis.

As much as Proposition 13 signaled a national revolt against taxes that reverberates to this day, its actual legacy in California — not just the proposition itself, but the way Mr. Brown and the Legislature responded to it — has emerged as a major obstacle to the new governor as he confronts what is probably the worst fiscal crisis in this state’s history.

The measure cut off a major source of revenue by capping property taxes at 1 percent of valuation and required a two-thirds vote by the Legislature to raise taxes. And because it cut property tax collections by local government by nearly two-thirds, the state, initially at Mr. Brown’s behest, took on more and more costly responsibility for financing schools, welfare and other services that were once the responsibilities of local governments.

An estimated 70 percent of the taxes collected by the state now goes to local governments.

On Monday, Mr. Brown will propose a fiscal rescue plan to deal with the state’s budget crisis that aides said would propose shifting back to local governments many of the programs that the state took over. In effect, it is an about-face from what Mr. Brown did the first time he was governor.

Read the rest here.

Illinois feels no love from bond investors

The proposed state financial fix, with its income tax increases and steep borrowing to pay bills and pension obligations, does not go far enough to assuage many bond investors' concerns about the risks of lending to fiscally teetering Illinois, according to a range of debt market experts.

While investors laud Democrats for taking the unpopular step of suggesting increases in personal and corporate income tax rates, they say lawmakers also need to cut state spending if they want to improve the state's deteriorating credit rating and lower the punishing borrowing costs associated with its fiscal mess.

"This makes me think they have not gotten religion," said bond portfolio manager and author Marilyn Cohen, president of Envision Capital Management Inc., in Los Angeles. "They need to amp it up."

The tentative plan, which continues to be negotiated, calls for an income tax hike to support as much as $12.2 billion in new borrowing, including $8.5 billion to pay overdue bills and $3.7 billion to cover the state's contribution to employee pension funds this fiscal year.

While the plan suggests a moratorium on new programs and would limit new spending to less than 1 percent, it does not make sweeping cost cuts.

Read the rest here.

FED's Hoenig Says Gold Standard "Legitimate" System

KANSAS CITY, Missouri (Reuters) - A gold standard that forces countries to back their currency reserves with bullion is a "legitimate" monetary system, though it would not prevent financial crises, Kansas City Federal Reserve President Thomas Hoenig said on Wednesday.

"The gold standard is a very legitimate monetary system," Hoenig said, adding: "We're not going to have fewer crises necessarily. You will have a longer of period of price stability or price level stability, but I don't know that you'll have lower unemployment, I don't know that you'll have fewer bank failures."

Source

US Warns People Named in Cable Leaks

WASHINGTON — The State Department is warning hundreds of human rights activists, foreign government officials and businesspeople identified in leaked diplomatic cables of potential threats to their safety and has moved a handful of them to safer locations, administration officials said Thursday.

The operation, which involves a team of 30 in Washington and embassies from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, reflects the administration’s fear that the disclosure of cables obtained by the organization WikiLeaks has damaged American interests by exposing foreigners who supply valuable information to the United States.

Administration officials said they were not aware of anyone who has been attacked or imprisoned as a direct result of information in the 2,700 cables that have been made public to date by WikiLeaks, The New York Times and several other publications, many with some names removed. But they caution that many dissidents are under constant harassment from their governments, so it is difficult to be certain of the cause of actions against them.

The officials declined to discuss details about people contacted by the State Department in recent weeks, saying only that a few were relocated within their home countries and that a few others were moved abroad.

Read the rest here.

U.S. Subpoenas Twitter Over WikiLeaks Supporters

WASHINGTON — Prosecutors investigating the disclosure of thousands of classified government documents by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks have gone to court to demand the Twitter account activity of several people linked to the organization, including its founder, Julian Assange, according to the group and a copy of a subpoena made public late Friday.

The subpoena is the first public evidence of a criminal investigation, announced last month by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., that has been urged on by members of Congress of both parties but is fraught with legal and political difficulties for the Obama administration. It was denounced by WikiLeaks, which has so far made public only about 1 percent of the quarter-million confidential diplomatic cables in its possession but has threatened to post them all on the Web if criminal charges are brought.

Dozens of Pentagon and State Department officials have worked for months to assess the damage done to American diplomatic and military operations by the disclosures. In recent weeks, Justice Department officials have been seeking a legal rationale for charging Mr. Assange with criminal behavior, including whether he had solicited leaks.

The move to get the information from five prominent figures tied to the group was revealed late Friday, when Birgitta Jonsdottir, a former WikiLeaks activist who is also a member of Iceland’s Parliament, received an e-mail notification from Twitter.

In the message, obtained by The New York Times, the company told her it had received a legal request for details regarding her account and warned that the company would have to respond unless the matter was resolved or “a motion to quash the legal process has been filed.” The subpoena was attached.

Read the rest here.

Congresswoman Giffords is shot with 18 others (possible accomplice is sought)

TUCSON —Representative Gabrielle Giffords, an Arizona Democrat, and 18 others were shot Saturday morning when a gunman opened fire outside a supermarket where Ms. Giffords was meeting with constituents.

A 22-year-old suspect was in custody, law enforcement officials said. But at a Saturday evening news conference, investigators said they were looking for an accomplice who may have helped the gunman.

Six of the victims died. The Pima County sheriff, Clarence W. Dupnik, said among those killed were John M. Roll, the chief judge for the United States District Court for the District of Arizona, and a 9-year-old girl.

Ms. Giffords, 40, who the authorities said was the target of the attack, was said to be in very critical condition at the University Medical Center in Tucson, where she was operated on by a team of neurosurgeons. Dr. Peter Rhee, medical director of the hospital’s trauma and critical care unit, said that she had been shot once in the head, “through and through,” with the bullet going through her brain.

Read the rest here.

NPR: Congresswoman Giffords Assassinated (False report)

(UPDATE: Some news services are backing off reports that she has died. FOX News is still reporting her death on their website. CNN and MSNBC say they have conflicting reports on her condition.)

NPR is reporting that Congresswoman Giffords has died after being shot in the head at a meeting with constituents in Arizona. Media reports suggest a dozen or more people were also shot. A suspect is reported to be in custody.

Update: Multiple reports suggest at least six other fatalities in what is being described as a mass shooting.

Congresswoman Giffords has been shot in AZ

This is breaking news. Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) was shot outside a grocery store in Arizona. No word on her condition.

Update: Early reports suggest as many as a dozen people may have been shot. Rep. Giffords is said to have been shot at close range.

Orthodox Christmas Hymns and Chant

Christ is born!

Merry Christmas to all who follow the traditional church calendar.

Egypt begins to acknowledge they have a problem

CAIRO — A deadly suicide bomb attack outside a Christian church in Alexandria on New Year’s Eve has forced the government and religious leaders here to acknowledge that Egypt is increasingly plagued by a sectarian divide that could undermine the stability that has been a hallmark of President Hosni Mubarak’s nearly three decades in power.

As Egypt’s Christians headed to church under heavy security Thursday night to observe Coptic Christmas Eve, the nation was struggling to come to terms with a blast that killed at least 21 people, highlighted a long list of public grievances with the government and prompted concerns that national cohesion was being threatened by the spread of religious extremism among Muslims and Christians.

“I have heard this a lot, that this type of incident might be the first in a series, turning Egypt into another Iraq — that is the fear now,” said Ibrahim Negm, the chief spokesman for Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa, the nation’s highest religious official. “There is a paradigm shift here that says we have to do something about the sectarian issue.”

Read the rest here.

"...religious extremism among Muslims and Christians."

Can they not shelve their politically correct blinders for even a minute? Where is the Christian religious extremism in Egypt or anywhere in the Islamic world? When was the last time (or anytime) that a Christian set off a bomb in a mosque? This is not just idiocy. It is insulting idiocy.

OCA orders parish to cease fundraising for Seraphim

WINNIPEG — The Orthodox Church in America has ordered a Vancouver parish to delete from its website an appeal for funding to defend a disgraced former Winnipeg cleric facing sexual abuse charges.

"We'd sent out the instruction in English before, and this parish hadn't complied," Chancellor Dennis Alexander Pihach said Thursday. "That's because the parish isn't English. It's an immigrant community and it probably wasn't cognizant (of) our instruction."

The Vancouver parish of the Russian Orthodox Church in America had posted three messages of support for Archbishop Seraphim Storheim, including one with an address in Edmonton to send funds for his defence.

The appeal angered a victims' group.

"It's terribly inappropriate and intimidating when parishioners publicly help an alleged child molester, especially through a church website," said Melanie Jula Sakoda of the Chicago-based Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.

Storheim's first court date in Winnipeg is Jan. 10, but he is not expected to attend in person. He was the highest-ranking official in the Russian Orthodox Church in Canada until officials suspended him in November, days after Winnipeg police laid charges against him.

Read the rest here.

Ousted patriarch behind locked doors in Jerusalem

JERUSALEM -- Six years ago, Irineos I was the patriarch of the Greek Orthodox Church of Jerusalem with about 100,000 followers. Today, he sits behind locked doors in his Old City apartment, claiming he has been imprisoned by the successor who ousted him in a dispute over sale of church land to Israelis.

The only way Irineos could speak to The Associated Press Thursday was through a wireless microphone hoisted at the end of a rope to his roof - in the same black shopping bag supporters use nightly to deliver him groceries.

Reporters who tried to gain access to Irineos through the compound's massive metal door were denied entry by church guards peering out through a crack.

"They allow nobody out and nobody in to visit me," said Irineos. "They are afraid of the people because I'm loved by the people, and I love the people," he said into the AP microphone, peering over the edge of his roof.

It is a harsh comedown for a man who ruled his flock for four years as a revered spiritual figure.

Irineos said his successor, Theofilos III, will not allow attorneys, doctors or visitors to enter the home he has lived in for almost 40 years, which sits inside a large church-owned complex. He said he's been detained for three years over his refusal to concede the patriarchate.

Theofilos replaced Irineos in 2005 after allegations he sold church property to Israelis seeking to expand the Jewish presence in east Jerusalem, which Palestinians claim for the capital of a future state.

Read the rest here.

Christmas Vigil in Christ the Savior Cathedral

For those who don't know what day it is... It is Christmas Eve!

I have been noticed

My post on the most recent evidence of the apostasy of the Episcopal Organization has been quoted on the Midwest Conservative Journal. Aside from tooting my horn I draw your attention to the response and the various comments posted, some of which are well worth a read.

A Correction: I accidentally posted the wrong link. The correct one is now up.

Australia: As if the flooding were not bad enough...

It's starting to sound like the Biblical plagues...

Flushed out by Queensland's rising flood waters, deadly snakes are on the move in the region's cities and towns.

There are also fears that crocodiles are now floating in flood waters. Residents have been advised not to enter the waters.

The Australian state of Queensland is home to some of the world's most venomous snakes, including the Common or Eastern Brown snake, the Coastal Taipan and the Death adder, as well as saltwater crocodiles - among the largest of the species, and a notorious man-eater.

But now some of these dangerous creatures are on the move and the likelihood that they will come into contact with humans is increased.

Venomous snakes are climbing trees, seeking cover in homes and outbuildings and trying to find higher, dryer ground, meaning that the same number of snakes will be present in a smaller area.

Crocodiles too are dispersing, the limits of their natural habitat now vastly expanded.

Read the rest here.

Snakes... yuck.

NPR news editor who sacked Juan Williams resigns

NPR's top news editor, Ellen Weiss, resigned on Thursday after the release of an internal review of the news organization's handling of the firing of analyst Juan Williams in October. And NPR's board of directors said that chief executive Vivian Schiller, who stood by the decision to fire Williams, will not receive a 2010 bonus.

Weiss was the NPR editor who fired Williams after he told Fox News host Bill O'Reilly that he became "nervous" flying with people dressed in "Muslim garb."

NPR maintained that Williams had been warned repeatedly not to express personal opinions on the air, but the firing touched off a huge firestorm of criticism. Republican members of Congress vowed to cut the broadcaster's federal funding in the wake of the episode.

Margaret Low Smith, the vice president of programming and a veteran news executive, would replace Weiss on an interim basis, NPR said.

NPR's board of directors said in a statement that it found that Williams's firing was legally sound and that it was "not the result of special interest group or donor pressure."

Read the rest here.

Two mail bombs explode in MD

A federal official says two packages exploded Thursday at state government buildings in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, according to NBC News.

Both were apparently sent through the mail, an official says. In both cases, the packages emitted a small bang or flame.

An official says two people, including a mailroom employee, suffered minor injuries.

State police tell NBC News that one package was about the size of a book. When it was opened, it emitted smoke. One of the packages was sent to the Jeffrey Building in downtown Annapolis. The other was sent to the Maryland Department of Transportation in Hanover.

Read the rest here.

Note: This is breaking news so the text above may have changed when you click on the link.

After a few bumps, a solemn reading

Setting the tone for the 112th Congress — in which every House bill must cite the constitutional source of its authority — members of House of Representatives began to read the United States Constitution aloud from the floor of their chamber Thursday morning.

Like the Constitutional Convention itself, things did not begin auspiciously.

Before the reading began, Jay Inslee, a Democrat from Washington, asked Republicans to illuminate exactly what part of the Constitution would be read, what parts would be deleted and who would decide how things would unfold.

It was decided in advance that any portion of the Constitution that was superseded by amendments — including the amendments themselves — would not be read, preventing lawmakers from having to make references to slaves, referred to in article one section two as “three fifths of all other Persons” or things like prohibition.

These inquiries about parliamentary procedure were not well received, and for several minutes, before a word of the preamble could be uttered, Democrats and Republicans batted back and forth over the issue of language, perhaps presaging future partisan battles over the meaning, purpose and application of the document.

Once that was settled, just after 11 a.m., Representative John Boehner, the newly installed speaker of the House read the preamble (that magical “We the people”), before yielding to the woman who handed him the gavel Wednesday, Representative Nancy Pelosi, who picked up with Article one section one (“All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives”), followed by Representative Eric Cantor, the House majority leader and other House leaders.

From there, members who wished to read were recognized from their seats, beginning with Representative Steve Rothman, a Democrat from New Jersey. So it was, sentence by sentence, in accents that reflect that the myriad districts that did not even exist when the document came to being, by women and African Americans whose full rights were not recognized at that time, the Constitutional language fluttered through the chamber.

Read the rest here.

Yes, it's political theater. But sometimes theater is useful.

Great Britain: Inflation is soaring

Most foodstuffs in the UK are zero-rated for VAT – so you might be forgiven for thinking that at least the price of a loaf of bread would escape the heady mix of inflationary pressures that has gripped virtually everything else. Think again. From Argentina to the Ukraine – and everywhere in between – extreme weather has driven the price of wheat to record levels, threatening steep increases in the cost of many processed foods, including bread, pasta and biscuits. The bread rolls have escaped the Chancellor's clutches, only to fall victim to droughts and floods.

If an act of God was all we had to fear, we could be reasonably relaxed. Bad harvests come and go; a poor crop one year is generally followed by a bumper one the next. Yet the surge in wheat prices is part of a far broader pattern: almost all of the necessities in life, from utility bills to train fares, seem to be running out of control, with little chance of wage rises to compensate.

At the pumps and on supermarket shelves, prices are edging higher. Add in the pain of higher VAT, university tuition fees and the threat to mortgage costs posed by looming interest rate increases, and middle- and lower-income living standards have rarely seemed under such sustained assault.

While some of the pressure is self-inflicted, the majority is the result of wider global developments that are beyond the control of any government. Figures released yesterday by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation show that global food prices rose to a record high last month, past the previous record of 2008, when rising prices sparked riots in some parts of the developing world. Many other raw materials and agricultural commodities are close to or above their pre-crisis peaks. Oil, though still well below the ruinous $140 a barrel it reached in the summer of 2008, is once more approaching the $100 level.

If you like, you can blame it on financial speculators: to the disgust of those who see food and raw materials as a basic human right, commodity funds are again all the rage among investors. Or you can blame it on the US Federal Reserve, which stands accused of monetary vandalism for flooding the world with cheap dollars

Read the rest here.

EU Wants Bondholders to Share Bank Bailout Costs

BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union is moving ahead with plans to shield taxpayers from having to bail out big banks in the future, but there are substantial obstacles to making bondholders share losses.

The EU's executive Commission on Thursday presented plans that could give national regulators the power to force the owners of bank bonds to accept so-called haircuts — a reduction in the amount of money they are owed.

But the Commission stressed that any new bond rules would not affect existing debts — an issue that is closely watched in Ireland, where the government's commitment to guarantee struggling banks' debts pushed the country to the brink of default.

The EU proposal forms part of a larger package designed to give regulators the tools to deal with banking crises and keep institutions from becoming too big to fail.

Read the res here.

Democrats plan vigorous defense of health care reform

Democratic leaders in Washington plan to spend the next week doing what they all but refused to do in the 2010 midterm elections: mount a vigorous defense of President Obama’s health care legislation.

The “all fronts” plan is a response to the decision by the new House speaker, John A. Boehner, to schedule a vote next Wednesday on a complete repeal of the health care law that Mr. Obama signed last March.

Senior Democratic officials said their effort would be managed by a rapid response operation modeled after the ones Mr. Obama used in his presidential campaign. That team will monitor Republican claims, send out fact-checks and deploy a team of surrogates to get their views on television.

Paid television advertisements will be run “as warrants,” said one senior Democrat, who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the program. Organizing for America, the president’s chief political apparatus, will host phone banks and schedule events featuring people who would lose their benefits if the health care law were repealed.

Read the rest here.

The Feast of Theophany

Heir to the Russian Throne Meets Pope Benedict XVI

HIH The Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna, HH Pope Benedict XVI and HIH Grand Duke George Mikhailovich

The head of the Russian Imperial House, HIH Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna, arrived in Italy on December 12th for a 5-day visit. Her visit included a pilgrimage to the Russian Orthodox Church and Basilica at Bari, and a meeting with Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican on December 14th. The Pope told the grand duchess that he was ready to cooperate with the Russian Orthodox Church in the fight against materialism and lack of spirituality in the western world.

Alexander Zakatov, the official spokesman and chancellor of the Russian Imperial House said, "the Grand Duchess visited the Vatican with the blessing of the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, Kirill, and a meeting between the Pope and Her Imperial Highness lasted about an hour and had a casual tone.

The pontiff welcomed Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna and her son Grand Duke George Mikhailovich in the papal residence at the Vatican. According to Mr. Zakatov, the Grand Duchess and the Pope talked about the cooperation between Christians in the face of modern-day threats. "The head of Russian Imperial House, thanked the pope for his support in the construction of the Church of St. Catherine in Rome, and the return of the Church and Basilica of St. Nicholas in Bari, Italy. The church, dedicated to St Nicholas, was built in the early 20th century to welcome Russian pilgrims coming to the city to visit the 11th-century Basilica of St Nicholas, where the saint's relics lie. Bari is the most popular destination in the world for Russian orthodox pilgrims, for whom St Nicholas holds great importance. The Pope, in turn, praised the work of the Russian Imperial House and attaches great importance to its efforts for the spiritual revival of Russia. The Pope also said that he benevolently watches what is happening in Russia, noting that “the spiritual revival of Russia is important for the world".

Read the rest here.

This is somewhat belated as I only just stumbled on the story. But I think it is sufficiently current and important to warrant posting.

Quote of the day...

“New York has no future as the tax capital of the nation, Our young people will not stay, businesses will not come, this has to change. Put it simply, the people of this state simply cannot afford to pay more taxes, period...”

“...The State of the State begins with an honest analysis of the crisis we face,” In government as in life, you can never solve a problem if you refuse to acknowledge it.”
The state of New York spends too much money; it is that blunt and it is that simple,our spending has far exceeded the rate of inflation.”

Source

-Andrew Cuomo (D) the newly sworn in Governor of New York in address to the State Legislature.

Anyone familiar with New York politics will understand how stunning these words are.

Some Presidential Secrets (that probably should have stayed secret)

Via The Young Fogey some... errr... colorful stories I admit to not having known about a few of our presidents.

CAUTION: If you are even mildly prudish in your sensibilities just move along to the next post. This one is Rated R.

Calif. Supreme Court approves warrantless data seizures by police

If you're arrested in California, data stored on your mobile phone, tablet or other portable computing devices could be seized by police without so much as a search warrant.

That's thanks to a recent decision by the state's highest court, which declared on Monday that any and all expectations of privacy are lost once a defendant is in state custody.

By a vote of 5-2, the court said police may "rummage at leisure through the wealth of personal and business information that can be carried on a mobile phone or handheld computer," according to the dissenting opinion of Justice Kathryn Mickle Werdegar.

Werdegar was joined by Justice Carlos Moreno in opposing the decision.

"The majority thus sanctions a highly intrusive and unjustified type of search, one meeting neither the warrant requirement nor the reasonableness requirement of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution," Werdegar continued. "As a commentator has noted, '[i]f courts adopted this rule, it would subject anyone who is the subject of a custodial arrest, even for a traffic violation, to a preapproved foray into a virtual warehouse of their most intimate communications and photographs without probable cause.'"

Read the rest here.

H/T Bill (aka The Godfather)

Birthright Citizenship Looms as Next Immigration Battle

NOGALES, Ariz. — Of the 50 or so women bused to this border town on a recent morning to be deported back to Mexico, Inez Vasquez stood out. Eight months pregnant, she had tried to trudge north in her fragile state, even carrying scissors with her in case she gave birth in the desert and had to cut the umbilical cord.

“All I want is a better life,” she said after the Border Patrol found her hiding in bushes on the Arizona side of the border with her husband, her young son and her very pronounced abdomen.

The next big immigration battle centers on illegal immigrants’ offspring, who are granted automatic citizenship like all other babies born on American soil. Arguing for an end to the policy, which is rooted in the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, immigration hard-liners describe a wave of migrants like Ms. Vasquez stepping across the border in the advanced stages of pregnancy to have what are dismissively called “anchor babies.”

The reality at this stretch of the border is more complex, with hospitals reporting some immigrants arriving to give birth in the United States but many of them frequent border crossers with valid visas who have crossed the border legally to take advantage of better medical care. Some are even attracted by an electronic billboard on the Mexican side that advertises the services of an American doctor and says bluntly, “Do you want to have your baby in the U.S.?”

Read the rest here.

This is a tough one. I am highly sympathetic to the argument against birthright citizenship. Few countries permit this. The problem is that the language in the Constitution is crystal clear. I think Congress should pass and send to the states an amendment to strike that line from the 14th Amendment. I have little doubt that there are enough states that would vote to ratify the amendment. The argument that it was not the "intent" of the framers of the 14th Amendment to extend citizenship to everyone born here is dubious. But more importantly is that it can not be resolved definitively one way or another. And once you start down the path of putting your own "well I think this is what they meant" stamp on the Constitution you have become a liberal, irrespective of your cause. It is a slippery slope.

Do it right. Amend the Constitution.

For History Enthusiasts: 150 years ago today...

I draw the reader's attention to the near daily series being run in the New York Times retelling the events of the Civil War as it happened 150 years ago. As an avid history buff I find the stories, often told in the present tense, engrossing and even suspenseful despite knowing how things will turn out. I have also linked the "DISUNION" blog in the sidebar. You can find the previous entries at the blog site as well.

Near Mobile, Ala., Jan. 4, 1861

They struck at daybreak. Armed men seemed to drop out of the morning air, landing with soft thuds on the lawn, like ripe fruit falling from a tree. By the time Capt. Jesse Reno realized what was going on, he was already overrun. One party of attackers had scaled the rear wall of the arsenal compound with ladders, leaping to the ground from atop the 14-foot parapet. Others forced open the main gate.

The surrender was bloodless; Captain Reno, the dozen men under his command, and their wives and children could scarcely have resisted this onslaught of hundreds. And they had been taken unawares – quite literally caught sleeping. An attack had seemed impossible: the state of Alabama was still officially within the Union, after all.

But it was useless now to demand explanations, much less to protest. The 35-acre Mount Vernon arsenal and barracks – located just north of Mobile and perhaps the most valuable military post in the state of Alabama – was now in rebel hands. Even more important, so were the contents of its storerooms: 20,000 stand of arms, 150,000 pounds of gunpowder, assorted cannons and other munitions of war.

This was no rash assault by a few self-appointed vigilantes. The governor of Alabama, Andrew B. Moore, had ordered it personally, telegraphing the state militia colonel at Mobile that he was to make the seizure without a moment’s delay. The city’s proudest volunteer companies – the finest troops the cosmopolitan port could muster – were dispatched on the mission: the Mobile Rifles with their dark-green coats and white-plumed hats; the scarlet-uniformed Washington Light Infantry; the German Fusiliers; the francophone Gardes Lafayette.

The occasion for this sudden attack, according to later newspaper reports, was the unexpected appearance in Mobile Bay of a small naval vessel, the USS Crusader, which was wrongly assumed to be bringing federal troops. (Her captain actually just needed to stop and cash a check.) But there was considerably more to the story than just that. Two days earlier, Governor Moore’s counterpart in Georgia had telegraphed to suggest that although secession had not yet officially been proclaimed in their respective states, federal military assets should be seized as a precaution.

Read the rest here.

Guess what; you're not going to win the Mega Millions tonight

And that's probably a good thing...

Hey, guess what, everybody – you're not going to win the lottery tonight!

In case you've somehow avoided all the hoopla, tonight there is a Mega Millions lottery drawing – $355 million! – that your chances of winning are so infinitesimal as to be virtually nonexistent.

Not that it hasn't been fun reading about the dreams of random deluded people quoted in lottery-hype stories. We get it: You'd buy yourself some nice things, provide for your family, maybe donate to charity (or, as the case may be, burn money in front of poor children).

So let's say you win big (again, not going to happen) and get that hefty lump sum. Is it all it's cracked up to be?

The site Business Pundit has a rundown of 10 of the most surprising examples of post-lottery meltdown, and, coincidentally or not, two of them involve people from our humble state. One, a machinist named Kenneth Proxmire, won $1 million in the Michigan Lottery in 1977 and tried to open a chain of sporting-goods stores in California, only to fail and wind up in bankruptcy. In 1989, a man named Willie Hurt won $3.1 million in the Michigan Lottery, and within two years had blown his new fortune on crack cocaine and lost his wife and kids.

That's just Michigan. Other stories include those of the lottery-winning man whose brother tried paying to have him killed, the guy who was so bored with his new fortune that he went back to work at McDonald's, the Texas farming community that fell into ruin after 43 of its residents became overnight lottery millionaires and the man who committed suicide within two years of winning a $31 million jackpot. Then there's Jack Whittaker, whose $315 million windfall in 2002 resulted in the drug-related deaths of his granddaughter and her boyfriend and provides the origin of the phrase “lottery curse.”

Read the rest here.

Full disclosure (lest I be accused of hypocrisy); yes, I have bought an occasional lottery ticket. So I am not judging anyone. Just be sure that at least one part of your brain remains firmly anchored in the real world and you understand that no, you are not going to win. Think of it as cheap entertainment (cheaper than a movie ticket) that allows for a little daydreaming. And remember that there is no statistically significant change in your odds if you drop a buck or $100. You get the exact same day dream and you are still not going to win. The only difference is that we are no longer talking about cheap entertainment. We are now talking about either compulsive gambling or a delusional belief that you might actually be "that guy." (Kinda the same thing?)

On the extremely off chance that someone reading this has the good (or mis-) fortune of being statistically struck by lightning (repeatedly and in the same place) and is inclined to point it out to me... Yes, I will eat crow, for a price. :-)

GOP prepares to swing a meat clever at the budget

WASHINGTON — The incoming Republican majority in the House is moving to make good on its promise to cut $100 billion from domestic spending this year, a goal eagerly backed by conservatives but one carrying substantial political and economic risks.

House Republican leaders are so far not specifying which programs would bear the brunt of budget cutting, only what would escape it: spending for the military, domestic security and veterans.

The reductions that would be required in the remaining federal programs, including education and transportation, would be so deep — roughly 20 percent on average — that Senate Republicans have not joined the $100 billion pledge that House Republicans, led by the incoming speaker, Representative John A. Boehner, made to voters before November’s midterm elections.

Even if adopted by the House, the Republicans’ budget is unlikely to be enacted in anything like the scale they envision, since Democrats retain a majority in the Senate and President Obama could veto annual appropriations bills making the reductions.

But the effort is more than symbolic: in particular it could give House Republicans increased leverage in budget negotiations with the White House this winter and spring, when the administration must get Congress to raise the federal debt limit or risk a government financing crisis.

Read the rest here.

Russia still wrestling with Tolstoy

MOSCOW — A couple of months ago one of Russia’s elder statesmen set out on a paradoxical mission: to rehabilitate one of the most beloved figures in Russian history, Tolstoy.

This would have seemed unnecessary in 2010, a century after the author’s death. But last year Russians wrestled over Tolstoy much as they did when he was alive. Intellectuals accused the Russian Orthodox Church of blacklisting a national hero. The church accused Tolstoy of helping speed the rise of the Bolsheviks. The melodrama of his last days, when he fled his family estate to take up the life of an ascetic, was revived in all its pulpy detail, like some kind of early-stage reality television.

And in a country that rarely passes up a public celebration, the anniversary of his death, on Nov. 20, 1910, was not commemorated by noisy galas or government-financed cinematic blockbusters. Officially speaking, it was barely noted at all.

With this in mind Sergei V. Stepashin, a former prime minister here, sat down to write to the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, which has become an arbiter of politics and culture. In painstakingly diplomatic language, acknowledging “the particular sensitivity” of “this delicate theme,” Mr. Stepashin asked forgiveness on behalf of Tolstoy, who was excommunicated 110 years ago.

Read the rest here.

Religious Divorce Dispute Leads to Secular Protest

This should have been a good New Year’s for Aharon Friedman, a 34-year-old tax counsel for the Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee. He spent time with his 3-year-old daughter, and could have been thinking about the influence he will have starting Wednesday, when his boss, Representative Dave Camp of Michigan, becomes chairman of the powerful tax-writing committee.

Instead, Mr. Friedman, an Orthodox Jew, finds himself scrutinized in the Jewish press, condemned by important rabbis, and attacked in a YouTube video showing about 200 people protesting outside his Silver Spring, Md., apartment on Dec. 19. They were angered by Mr. Friedman’s refusal to give his wife, Tamar Epstein, 27, a Jewish decree of divorce, known as a get.

The Friedman case has become emblematic of a torturous issue in which only a husband can “give” a get. While Jewish communities have historically pressured obstinate husbands to give gets, this was a very rare case of seeking to shame the husband in the secular world.

Holding signs saying, “Do the right thing” and “Free your wife,” the crowd included religious women with their heads covered, men in skullcaps and a rabbi with a bullhorn who shouted, “Withholding a get is abusive.”

Read the rest here.

Jerry Brown is sworn in as California's Governor (again)

SACRAMENTO — Jerry Brown began his return engagement as governor of California on Monday, using his inaugural address to call for an end to partisan battling that he said was paralyzing the state and to promise, in what is presumably the last chapter of his public life, to lead California out of one of the toughest budget crises of its history.

“Choices have to be made, and difficult decisions taken,” Mr. Brown declared to an audience that included two former governors and hundreds of state legislators. “At this stage of my life, I have not come here to embrace delay and denial.”

At times jocular, at times earnest, Mr. Brown noted — indeed celebrated — his longevity in California politics, a depth of experience that in no small part accounted for his victory in November as voters in so much of the rest of the country were turning to outsiders. At 72, Mr. Brown is returning for a third term as governor, a position also held by his father, offering a West Coast echo of what took place in Albany on Sunday with the swearing-in of Andrew M. Cuomo as governor of New York.

“For me, this day is also special because I get to follow in my father’s footsteps once again, and, 36 years after my first inauguration as governor, even follow in my own,” Mr. Brown said.

In contrast to his first inaugural speech — where he called for a 7 percent cut in the size of his office staff — Mr. Brown did not offer many specifics for how he intended to deal with a state budget shortfall that is now projected at $28.5 billion over 18 months. But he has made clear that his solution, in a budget due Jan. 10, will call for deep cuts in state spending, and his aides have said it is also likely to include a request that voters extend tax surcharges scheduled to expire this year.

Read the rest here

European debt markets 'face second credit crisis'

Banks alone must refinance about €400bn (£343bn) of debt in the first half of the year, but add in the more than €500bn European governments must replace over the same period, as well as further hundreds of billions of euros of mortgage-backed debt maturing and there is the potential for chaos in the credit markets.

"What we are looking at here clearly has the potential to become a second credit crunch. However, this time it would be much worse than before," said Celestino Amore, founder of IlliquidX, which specialises in trading hard-to-price debt.

"Governments have been able to slow down the process, but the problems did not go away. There remains trillions of dollars of debt that must be refinanced or sold."

Mr Amore predicts a rush to sell assets, much like that which kicked off the first credit crunch in the summer of 2007. However, many fund managers and other large institutional investors are looking to reduce their exposure to bonds, leading to warnings that there will not be enough demand to buy all the debt banks and governments will need to sell.

Last week the Centre for Economic and Business Research said a new eurozone crisis was its top prediction for 2011, pointing out that Spain and Italy alone must refinance more than €400m of bonds in the spring.

Read the rest here.

Top Republican: Obama Administration among the most corrupt

The Republican congressman who is taking over responsibility for congressional oversight called President Obama's administration "one of the most corrupt administrations" on Sunday and predicted that the investigations he is planning over the next two years could result in about $200 billion in savings for U.S. taxpayers.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), the incoming chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, was bullish in laying out his agenda for the new Congress with Republicans in control of the House.

Issa, who as chairman will have subpoena power, said he will seek to ferret out waste across the federal bureaucracy. While he used fiery rhetoric in describing the Obama administration in a series of television interviews Sunday, he said he will focus on wasteful spending, not the prosecution of White House officials.

Asked on "Fox News Sunday" about reports that the White House is staffing up on lawyers to prepare for his oversight hearings, Issa said: "They're going to need more accountants.

Read the rest here.

GOP prepares to undo Obama's victories

WASHINGTON — Soon after the 112th Congress convenes Wednesday, Republicans in the House plan to make good on a campaign promise that helped vault many new members to victory: voting to repeal President Obama’s health care overhaul.

The vote, which Republican leaders pledged would occur before the president’s State of the Union address later this month, is intended both to appeal to the Tea Party-influenced factions of the House Republican base and to emphasize the muscle of the new party in power. But it could also produce an unintended consequence: a chance for Democrats once again to try their case in support of the health care overhaul before the American public.

Democrats, who in many cases looked on the law as a rabid beast best avoided in the fall elections, are reversing course, gearing up for a coordinated all-out effort to preserve and defend it. Under the law, they say, consumers are already receiving tangible benefits that Republicans would snatch away.

House Democrats will get help from allies in the Senate, who can stop any repeal, and at the White House, where officials hope to transform the law from a political liability into an asset, a centerpiece of President Obama’s expected bid for re-election.

Health care is only one item on an aggressive agenda of Republicans eager to distinguish themselves quickly from the House that was run by Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Many seem to have latched on to “Undo It” the hit by the country singer Carrie Underwood, as the refrain for their planned attack against legislation that grew out of the 111th Congress, when the Democrats were at the helm in both chambers.

The health care law, entitlement programs, new limits on emissions of greenhouse gases from oil refineries and power plants, and other legislation that Republicans say cannot be justified by a strict interpretation of the Constitution — a document the new leaders plan to read on the House floor on Thursday — are all in the cross hairs.

Read the rest here.

Historic Lesbian Marriage in Boston Cathedral Unites Top Clergy of Episcopal Church

Cambridge, Mass. Jan 02 2011

The Episcopalian bishop of Massachusetts began 2011 by solemnizing the first lesbian marriage - of two senior Episcopalian clergy - at Boston's St Paul's Cathedral Saturday (January 1).

The marriage of Episcopal Divinity School, dean and president, the Very Reverend Katherine Hancock Ragsdale and Mally Lloyd, Canon to the Ordinary, was the first lesbian marriage solemnized by the Right Reverend M Thomas Shaw SSJE, Bishop Diocesan of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts.

At the marriage attended by close to 400 guests, Bishop Shaw commented: “God always rejoices when two people who love each other make a life long commitment in marriage to go deeper into the heart of God through each other. It's a profound pleasure for me to celebrate with God and my friends, the marriage of Katherine and Mally.”

The couple met on June 30, 2008, at the urging of a mutual friend. At the time, Canon Lloyd, 57, said, “We were both travelling a lot and so we would talk by phone. And somehow when you talk a lot by phone, a relationship can go deeper more quickly than when you spend time in person. At least that is what happened to us.”

Although this is a second marriage for Canon Lloyd, it is the first for Dean Ragsdale,52. “It's astonishing how the world is changing,'' Dean Ragsdale said, “when I grew up, I never believed I would be able to have someone special in my life and now to have almost 400 people show up to support us at our marriage ceremony is wonderful.”

Read the rest here if you have the stomach.

...And when a woman becomes pregnant within a loving, supportive, respectful relationship; has every option open to her; decides she does not wish to bear a child; and has access to a safe, affordable abortion – there is not a tragedy in sight — only blessing. The ability to enjoy God’s good gift of sexuality without compromising one’s education, life’s work, or ability to put to use God’s gifts and call is simply blessing.

These are the two things I want you, please, to remember – abortion is a blessing and our work is not done. Let me hear you say it: abortion is a blessing and our work is not done. Abortion is a blessing and our work is not done. Abortion is a blessing and our work is not done.

I want to thank all of you who protect this blessing – who do this work every day: the health care providers, doctors, nurses, technicians, receptionists, who put your lives on the line to care for others (you are heroes — in my eyes, you are saints); the escorts and the activists; the lobbyists and the clinic defenders; all of you. You’re engaged in holy work.

-Katherine Hancock Ragsdale (Dean of the Episcopal Divinity School Cambridge, MA.)
From a sermon July 21, 2007.

To any readers or visitors to this blog who may be Episcopalian; I apologize for what I am about to write. It is going to sound horribly harsh and judgmental. And it may offend some of you. But sometimes things need to be said plainly.

I think it was Perry Robinson who came up with the great line that in Christianity, you are who you are in communion with. With that in mind, you do know that you belong to the same church as these people, right? And that you are in full communion with the bishop who just blessed this "marriage," right? I am slow. So please indulge me and explain how anyone who self identifies as a Christian can in good conscience belong to a church that is by any reasonable standard utterly apostate. And yes, a church that does these things and ordains and promotes clergy who call abortion a blessing has ceased to be Christian. Do you call sinners into the Episcopal Church for their salvation? Do you in all honesty believe that the Episcopal Church is truly a branch of the catholic church spoken of in the ancient creeds? Do you seriously doubt for even an instant that if any of the Fathers of the Church walked the Earth today, that they would shout "ANATHEMA!" at the Episcopal Church?

Liam Halligan writes a sobering (and must read) article on QE and the banking crisis

This article is so good I almost posted in its entirety. But here (pardon the pun) is the money quote.

Modern capitalism, at its core, relies on the public's trust of fiat money and the sanctity of contract. QE is seriously undermining both those cardinal concepts. We're not supposed to call QE "money printing" because money printing is the last refuge of declining economic empires and banana republics. It also amounts to state-sponsored theft. And against that, yes Professor Congdon, I declare an "implicit prejudice".

Read it all and read it carefully.

A few predictions for 2011

New year's predictions are often amusing. (Sometimes they can be even more amusing at the end of the year when you look back and see just how wrong you were.) In the past I have avoided making new year's prognostications. But it's a rainy day and I am bored, so why not give it a whirl.

Here goes...

Religion:

• The press, especially the Catholic press, will continue to report that a meeting is imminent between the Pope and the Patriarch of Moscow.
• No such meeting will occur in 2011 nor will one be announced.
• The slow motion train wreck that is the Anglican Communion will continue to unfold. There will be much huffing and puffing from the more conservative provinces but none will break communion with Canterbury.
• A significant block of the so called Anglo-Catholic wing will swim the Tiber. Those who don't will either migrate to the so called Continuum or accept their status as dhimmi within the ultra liberal CofE - TEO - ACC. Very few will even consider Orthodoxy.
• The SSPX will not reconcile with Rome.
• (This one is going out on a limb.) The Ecumenical Patriarch will announce the date for the long anticipated Great and Holy Pan-Orthodox Synod.
  

Politics:

• There will be a series of fierce battles over spending in Congress with some cuts being made. But they will not be enough to seriously impact the growing national debt.
• The Republicans will attempt and fail to repeal the health care reform bill.
  
• They will succeed in passing some modifications to it.
• No significant new taxes will be passed.
• Sarah Palin's super-star status has probably peaked. She will remain an important figure but her popularity will start to wane somewhat as Republicans gear up for the 2012 presidential election and consider who is best suited to run against Obama.
• No significant social reform legislation will pass in 2011.
  
• In Great Britain the coalition government will hit some bumps but it will hold together through 2011.

Foreign Affairs:

• Most US military forces will finally leave Iraq.
• Most US military forces will not leave Afghanistan.
• North Korea will launch another armed provocation against South Korea. This time S. Korea will respond with force and there will be a nasty but short fight that will not lead to a full scale war.
• Israel and the Palestinians will still be dancing around the peace table at years end.
• China will continue to flex its economic muscles in the Western Pacific as it attempts to assert geopolitical hegemony.
  

Economics:

• Unemployment will remain high through 2011.
• The stock market will continue to rise, but more slowly than the last two years. Upward movement will be driven by money printing and will be more pronounced in foreign stocks as the dollar depreciates.
• The dollar will continue its death by a thousand cuts. The only major currency likely to do worse is the Euro.
  
• The 30 year party in the bond market is over. This is going to be a bad year for bonds, possibly a very bad year. Interest rates will rise across the curve with municipal bonds taking the biggest hit as the true extent of state and municipal debt starts to become clear.
• The sovereign debt crisis will get worse in 2011, possibly endangering the survival of the Euro.
• Greece will default on its debt.
• This one will be interesting to look back on at the end of the year. Predicting inflation is easy when the Federal Reserve is printing money like it's going out of style. Timing is a different matter. For what it's worth I think the effects of all the inflation being created by the FED, which have thus far been confined mainly to commodities and the financial markets, will begin to show up in the CPI. I expect official inflation (currently below 1%) to at least double by the year's end (still low by historical standards). However this is just the beginning of a multi year inflationary cycle born out of staggering sovereign debt and money printing. My gut says the real blow up will come in 2012.
• Gold and silver will both continue to do well. Gold will end the year somewhere between $1600-1700 oz.
• A double dip in the housing market is likely.

Sports:

• The Yankees (gag) will win the AL Pennant and the Giants will return to the World Series for the National League. It will be the Giants over the Yankees in six games.
  
• If the previous prediction comes off I will be offered a six figure contract by ESPN which I will decline because it would interfere with my blogging.
  

Culture:

• The King's Speech will win the Oscar for best picture.
• I will finally finish reading Tolstoy's War and Peace (yea right).
  

Mexico: The greatest threat to American national security

Forget Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Iran and North Korea. They are all on the other side of the world. And while what goes on there is not unimportant, they don't border the United States. Mexico does. And right now Mexico is dangerously close to collapsing into near total anarchy.

There is a technical term for this. It is called a "failed state." Several years ago Mexico declared war on the drug cartels that have been running much of the country for years. As of right now that war is going very very badly. Massive efforts by the police (hugely corrupt) and even the armed forces to reign in the drug gangs which operate like feudal lords over whole swaths of the nation have merely provoked an almost unimaginably horrific backlash.

Violence directed at both the government and rival gangs has reached levels that make Afghanistan look relatively safe by comparison. Mass murders, kidnappings, torture (often videoed and posted on the internet) have become so commonplace that a powerful sense of defeatism has set in at every level of society. Confidence in the government is now all but extinct. Not long ago one of Mexico's leading newspapers responded to the most recent kidnapping and torture-murder of one of its reporters by posting a front page open letter from the paper's editors to the drug cartels. In the letter they asked for instructions on what they would be permitted to print in order to avoid any further killings of their staff.

All of this of course is being supported by the United States. Even as our government aggressively encourages Mexico to carry on a war that almost everyone admits is lost we are bankrolling the drug cartels with tens of billions of dollars from the underground drug trade and providing the Narcos with an arsenal that most third world countries would envy in the form of American made firearms and ammunition smuggled and often even openly carried across the border from the United States into Mexico. I am not talking just hunting rifles and shotguns folks. I am talking about .50 caliber rifles that can be legally bought at gun shows in Texas and that will punch holes in "bulletproof" glass along with even more lethal weapons of war.

I suppose we could call it reciprocal trade. They send us thousands of tons of narcotics and a million or so illegal immigrants every year and we send them billions in Narco money and enough guns and ammunition to fight a very real war. (A war that the Narcos are currently winning.) On second thought maybe we should call this Santa-Anna's revenge.

In any case entire cities are being abandoned by desperate and frightened people. Terror now stalks Mexico. And terrified people who have lost any trust or respect for their government, and any confidence in the rule of law are dangerous. In some ways perhaps as dangerous as the Narcos. I don't care how isolationist you are. Mexico is too close to ignore. What happens there affects us.

If Mexico disintegrates into anarchy (a very real possibility), the spill over is going to hit us like a brick in the face. If you think we have an immigration problem now just wait until a nation where 112 million people are faced with living in an utterly lawless society ruled by armed gangs with little hope of even being able to keep their families from starvation. A society where the economy and every aspect of a normal civilized society that we take for granted breaks down.

There will be a human tidal wave rolling across our southern border. And we won't be able to stop it unless we are prepared to order troops to fire on civilians, whole families, including women and children. We are already seeing a small foretaste of this. Many of the illegals here are coming not just in search of a better job or money, but to escape a world where they or their family members can be robbed, kidnapped, raped or murdered at any time with impunity. And of course these won't be the only ones rolling across the border.

The drug cartels will be coming with them. And again there is evidence that some of them have already begun moving into the United States. And lest there be any doubt on the subject, these are not people who are intimidated by our legal system. They shoot cops for sport and ambush military convoys to send a message about who is in charge.

This country had better start thinking about our backyard a little bit more. Mexico is far more dangerous than Al Qaida right now. We need to completely reconsider our attitudes about a whole range of issues before it's too late. I would suggest we start with prohibition. I am not wild about people using narcotics or selling them over the counter at the local pharmacy. But we need to face some painful facts. The war on drugs is over, and we lost. All we have done is spend billions of dollars criminalizing a very large percentage of our population and warehousing them at great expense in prisons, where we turn mostly non-violent consensual offenders into violent and hardened criminals. Because that is what prisons do.

And then of course there are the tens of billions we are sending to Mexican drug cartels because we are too stubborn to face the reality that if just legalized the damned drugs it would put most of them out of business overnight. Teenagers who now kill each other over who has the commercial rights to which street corner are not going to be doing that when a hit of your drug of choice can be bought legally in a drugstore for about 20 cents. There is no percentage in it.

On the other hand if we are not prepared to end this insane war we had better start rethinking the rules of engagement. Because the drug cartels are not paying much attention to the Geneva Convention. How far are we prepared to go to block out the humanitarian catastrophe in Mexico that we are engineering? How much power are we prepared to hand to the government to deal with ultra-violent cartels as they begin moving into the United States? Are we prepared to suspend Habeus Corpus? What about martial law?

Where are we going to lock all of these people up? Our prisons are already exploding in population. And we won't be able to deport people to a country that will have effectively ceased to exist. And where are we going to get the money to fight the next stage of the failed war on drugs? From a Congress dominated by people who have a stroke of apoplexy at the mere mention of the word "tax?"

Just some food for thought. But I would strongly suggest we start thinking hard, and fast. Time is not on our side.

Civil Service Unions Face Increasing Public Outrage

FLEMINGTON, N.J. — Ever since Marie Corfield’s confrontation with Gov. Chris Christie this fall over the state’s education cuts became a YouTube classic, she has received a stream of vituperative e-mails and Facebook postings.

“People I don’t even know are calling me horrible names,” said Ms. Corfield, an art teacher who had pleaded the case of struggling teachers. “The mantra is that the problem is the unions, the unions, the unions.”

Across the nation, a rising irritation with public employee unions is palpable, as a wounded economy has blown gaping holes in state, city and town budgets, and revealed that some public pension funds dangle perilously close to bankruptcy. In California, New York, Michigan and New Jersey, states where public unions wield much power and the culture historically tends to be pro-labor, even longtime liberal political leaders have demanded concessions — wage freezes, benefit cuts and tougher work rules.

It is an angry conversation. Union chiefs, who sometimes persuaded members to take pension sweeteners in lieu of raises, are loath to surrender ground. Taxpayers are split between those who want cuts and those who hope that rising tax receipts might bring easier choices.

And a growing cadre of political leaders and municipal finance experts argue that much of the edifice of municipal and state finance is jury-rigged and, without new revenue, perhaps unsustainable. Too many political leaders, they argue, acted too irresponsibly, failing to either raise taxes or cut spending.

A brutal reckoning awaits, they say.

Read the rest here.

Great Britain: The dangers of constitutional reform

It is exactly 100 years since a Liberal government resolved to eradicate the power of the hereditary peerage and create instead an elected House of Lords. Its purpose was explicitly set out in the preamble to the Parliament Act of 1911, which reads as follows: “It is intended to substitute for the House of Lords as it at present exists a Second Chamber constituted on a popular instead of hereditary basis.”

Alas for the prime minister, HH Asquith, he was evicted from office before he had time to realise his vision for the Upper House. Various prime ministers since – Harold Wilson in the late 1960s, Tony Blair in the late 1990s – have attempted to return to the issue, but their efforts met with at best partial success.

This is why, at the end of the first decade of the 21st century, the House of Lords remains largely as it was. Its members are selected either through the 18th-century principle of patronage (life peers) or the medieval principle of ancestor worship (hereditary peers). It is enjoyable, for example, to report that Lord Willoughby de Broke retains his place as a legislator. His grandfather (the 19th Baron) was one of the most forthright of the Tory peers, or so-called “backwoodsmen”, who fought in the last ditch against Asquith’s Parliament Act 100 years ago...

...Nick Clegg’s proposals, however, pose far more of a threat to the British system of government than Wilson’s plans ever did. This is because Clegg has secured a vital victory in Cabinet: that members of his House of Lords will be elected under the so-called STV system of proportional representation. This is the genuine PR which the Lib Dems have traditionally demanded, not the compromise AV method that voters will be asked to favour in May.

PR has many disadvantages, not least the loss of the constituency link. But on one issue it is unassailable: it represents what national voters want much more exactly than any other system. Members of Clegg’s House of Lords will be able to claim that they are the pure, unrefracted voice of the British people – and therefore the more legitimate of the two Houses. It is also likely that members of the new Lords (or Senate, as it will be called) will be sworn in for a decade or more, giving them extra power and authority.

It is easy to understand why Nick Clegg should advocate this. His Lib Dems, with around 20 per cent of the seats, will always hold the balance of power in the Upper House. The trouble is that such an arrangement will be a disaster for the nation as a whole. Voters will suddenly wake up and discover that we have two Parliaments rather than one. These Chambers will continually be in dispute, like the US Senate and the US Congress. Admittedly, disagreements between the Lords and the Commons have long been a feature of British politics. But these are mitigated by the fact that, as an unelected Chamber, the Lords has zero standing with the voters. This will change.

Read the rest here.

Personal opinion... Britain really doesn't need two houses of parliament. But I just can't think of a decent way of getting rid of the Commons.

First wave of Anglican converts swim the Tiber

Priests and worshippers from around 20 Church of England parishes converted to Catholicism on Saturday at a ceremony in Westminster Cathedral.

Three former bishops were among those confirmed at the service, which saw the first wave of Anglicans defecting to Rome to join the Ordinariate.

The Pope introduced the structure in 2009 to welcome disillusioned Anglicans into the Catholic fold after secret meetings were held at the Vatican with Church of England bishops, as The Sunday Telegraph revealed a year earlier.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, admitted the move had put him in “an awkward position”, but more recently he said he respected the decisions of those who decided to leave.

While around 50 clergy are expected to defect to the Catholic Church over the coming months, it has been predicted that thousands of traditionalist worshippers will join the exodus, particularly if they are given no concessions once women are made bishops.

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Euro stands just 20pc chance of survival in next decade

In its annual list of predictions, the CEBR said a new eurozone crisis was its number one forecast for 2011, citing the hundreds of billions of euros of debt that members must replace this year.

"If the euro doesn't break up, this could be the year when it weakens substantially towards parity with the dollar," said Douglas Williams, chief executive of CEBR.

Spain and Italy alone must refinance more than €400bn (£343bn) of debt in the first half of the year, which could prove impossible given investor fears over the finances of southern European countries.

"The euro might break up at this point, though European politicians are normally able to respond to a crisis and I suspect that what will break up the euro will be the failure of most of the countries to take the tough medicine necessary to make their economies competitive over the longer term," said Mr Douglas.

Mr Douglas added that he was not ruling out another round of government quantitative easing to support the credit markets and prevent a crisis.

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Wisconsin State Workers Fret, as G.O.P. Takes Over

MADISON, Wis. — In preparation for Monday’s inauguration of the new governor, Scott Walker, red, white and blue bunting has been draped around the Capitol’s echoing rotunda. Lawmakers are unpacking files in their newly assigned offices. And state workers are fretting.

“What does this bring? What does it mean? Where are we going here?” Marty Beil, the leader of a union that represents 22,000 of Wisconsin’s corrections officers, maintenance workers, game wardens and others, said the other day. “State employees feel like they are the target of all the slings and the arrows and the bullets that the new administration is already throwing.”

There is a reason this place has, at moments lately, looked like a parade of boxes — arriving, departing and shuttling to better (and lesser) offices. The amount of change here is huge: the fall election turned control of the State Assembly, the State Senate and the governor’s office from the Democrats to the Republicans. But even before soon-to-be-Governor Walker and other Republican leaders officially take over next week, the fight over public workers nearly boiled over.

December, often a sleepy time around here, brought a series of explosive episodes. Democratic leaders, pressing to approve contracts for state workers before Republicans took control, called a special session.

Mr. Walker, who has said publicly that he hopes to force public employees’ wages and benefits “into line” with everyone else’s, urged leaders against the session, saying he needed “maximum flexibility” to handle the state’s coming budgets, but Democrats argued that the contracts were not particularly beneficial to workers anyway (they included no raises and furlough time that amounted to a pay cut).

In the end, the State Assembly approved most of the contracts by a single vote, one that was cast, Republicans complain bitterly, by a legislator who had been permitted to travel to Madison to vote though he was serving a jail sentence (with work-release privileges) for driving under the influence of an intoxicant. But a tie in the State Senate — thanks, in part, shockingly to a “no” vote from the Democrats’ own majority leader — meant the contracts failed. (The leader, Russ Decker of Schofield, who had already lost his re-election bid, was then deposed by his caucus.)

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21 Are Martyred By Islamic Terrorists In Egypt

ALEXANDRIA, Egypt (AP) — A powerful bomb, possibly from a suicide attacker, exploded in front of a Coptic Christian church as a crowd of worshippers emerged from a New Years Mass early Saturday, killing at least 21 people and wounding nearly 80 in an attack that raised suspicions of an al-Qaida role.

The attack came in the wake of threats by al-Qaida militants in Iraq to attack Egypt's Christians. A direct al-Qaida hand in the bombing would be a dramatic development, as the government of President Hosni Mubarak has long denied that the terror network has a significant presence in the country. Al-Qaida in Iraq has already been waging a campaign of violence against Christians in that country.

The bombing enraged Christians, who often complain of discrimination at the hands of Egypt's Muslim majority and accuse the government of covering up attacks on their community. In heavy clashes Saturday afternoon, crowds of Christian youths in the streets outside the church and a neighboring hospital hurled stones at riot police, who opened fire with rubber bullets and tear gas.

Egypt has seen growing tensions between its Muslim majority and Christian minority — and the attack raised a dangerous new worry, that al-Qaida or militants sympathetic to it could be aiming to stoke sectarian anger or exploit it to gain a foothold.

Nearly 1,000 Christians were attending the New Year's Mass at the Saints Church in the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria, said Father Mena Adel, a priest at the church. The service had just ended, and some worshippers were leaving the building when the bomb went off about a half hour after midnight, he said.

"The last thing I heard was a powerful explosion and then my ears went deaf," Marco Boutros, a 17-year-old survivor, said from his hospital bed. "All I could see were body parts scattered all over — legs and bits of flesh."

Blood splattered the facade of the church, as well as a mosque directly across the street. Bodies of many of the dead were collected from the street and kept inside the church overnight before they were taken away Saturday by ambulances for burial.

Some Christians carried white sheets with the sign of the cross emblazoned on them with what appeared to be the blood of the victims.

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Many Years

To my Godson on his name day!

Happy New Year

May you all enjoy health and joy in the New Year!