Mr. Keller, Answer Your Critics Directly

 

Bill Keller, Editor of the New York Times, has written a response to those who have expressed concern about the NYT exposing a secret program which the US government has been using to track financial transactions of terrorists and those who are doing business with them.  The Times last week published their findings based on information received from undisclosed sources.  The article indicates that the program was not illegal, was effective and had been subject to oversight within the legislative bodies of the US.

Hugh Hewitt and others have asked Keller to respond directly to those who feel that publication of the materials represents a seditious act.  Mr. Keller refuses to confront directly his position, expressed in the original article:

Bill Keller, the newspaper’s executive editor, said: “We have listened closely to the administration’s arguments for withholding this information, and given them the most serious and respectful consideration. We remain convinced that the administration’s extraordinary access to this vast repository of international financial data, however carefully targeted use of it may be, is a matter of public interest.”

If there is strength in his conviction, then Keller should welcome at least several opportunities to be interviewed or debated.  In his prepared response to critics, Keller writes:

Some of the incoming mail quotes the angry words of conservative bloggers and TV or radio pundits who say that drawing attention to the government’s anti-terror measures is unpatriotic and dangerous. (I could ask, if that’s the case, why they are drawing so much attention to the story themselves by yelling about it on the airwaves and the Internet.) Some comes from readers who have considered the story in question and wonder whether publishing such material is wise. And some comes from readers who are grateful for the information and think it is valuable to have a public debate about the lengths to which our government has gone in combatting[sic] the threat of terror.

It’s an unusual and powerful thing, this freedom that our founders gave to the press. Who are the editors of The New York Times (or the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post and other publications that also ran the banking story) to disregard the wishes of the President and his appointees? And yet the people who invented this country saw an aggressive, independent press as a protective measure against the abuse of power in a democracy, and an essential ingredient for self-government. They rejected the idea that it is wise, or patriotic, to always take the President at his word, or to surrender to the government important decisions about what to publish.

The response suggests that the outcry is an effort to discredit the Times by conservatives.  This type of response is a deflection, not a true response.  Secondly, he suggests that the “freedom of the press” trumps all considerations including national security. 

Imagine that the “press” had obtained information about the time and place of the D-Day landings in 1944.  Would Keller argue that the public’s right to know would justify publication of the information?  Would he suggest that the public would acknowledge a legitimate right to be informed of the landing information?  Would the public accept that many more men might die because such information was printed?  Would the “freedom of the press” trump the right of the government to keep such information confidential?  I think that an intellectually honest Keller would have to answer as he has in the present case-print the information and damn the consequences.  Many American soldiers should die to preserve the press right to publish such information according to Keller.  Does Mr. Keller see a connection between the government’s current activity to inhibit terrorist finances and the death of our soldiers and innocent civilians?  Perhaps, in which case their action is even more reprehensible. 

Mr. Keller and the entire NYT staff should feel deep shame for their actions.  They do not, to say the least.

Freedom Essays and Michelle Malkin have additional comment.

Alleged Sears Tower Terrorists Arrested

 

Breaking news from Miami where seven suspects have been arrested in an apparent plot to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago.

From the AP:

The official told The Associated Press the alleged plotters were mainly Americans with no apparent ties to al-Qaida or other foreign terrorist organizations. He spoke on condition of anonymity so as not to pre-empt news conferences planned for Friday in Washington and Miami.

AP appears intent on dismissing any al-Qaida ties however, ABC News reports that the suspects may have been sympathetic to radical Islam:

The group has been under surveillance for some time and was infiltrated by a government informant who allegedly led them to believe he was an Islamic radical, a Justice Department official said.

CNN.com provides few additional details, but Reuters reports information again suggesting Islamic sympathies:

“In the past couple of days, the U.S. government has taken into custody seven people who were conspiring to conduct jihad (holy war) in the United States,” the law enforcement source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Recall that Miami has been a hot bed of Islamofacist activity and linked to 9/11.

It will be interesting to see the names of the arrested individuals.  The event is certain to provide ample material for the blogosphere.

Š

Mother Jesus?

 

Should there be any doubt about the seriousness of the implications of the recently concluded Episcopal Church convention, consider the following in The Catholic Reporter (HT Amy Welborn):

Perhaps the new head of US Episcopal Bishops, Katherine Jefferts Shori, sent a message in her first homily by saying, “Mother Jesus.”

Yes, I would think that her message was heard loud and clear by many conservative (read:faithful) Episcopalians.  And her real message may be “This is not your grandfather’s church anymore.  Any notion that the leaders of this church see the Gospel as anything other than a quaint and irrelevant note in history, should be dispelled.  We are in charge and we have an agenda.”

And there are implications for the Catholic Church.  Expect to see disillusioned Episcopalians to come home to the Church.

The Catholic Church will be greatly affected by this convention. The Catholic Church will receive many converts and none of them will be liberal.  The orthodox faithful of the Episcopal Church who are considering coming our way have made it very clear to me that if they come they will preach, from the rooftops if necessary, the evils of liberalism, relativism etc.  One person said to me, “If I do cross the Tiber, I will preach from the rooftops about the wickedness I have seen envelope my church. I cannot stand to see this happen to anyone else.”

The report contains brief interviews with some of the “players” at the convention including Rev. Susan Russell, President of Integrity, the organization that supports gay and lesbian issues in the Episcopal Church.

Dave Hartline:   When you say the rights of gays and lesbians what do you mean? I know a lot of traditional Catholics, Episcopalians etc who would say they don’t discriminate against anyone but that gay marriage, civil unions; openly gay clergy has nothing to do with discrimination. It is scriptural.

Rev. Susan Russell: Let me tell you something, if someone says they don’t discriminate and is still against gay marriage, civil unions and an openly gay clergy, they discriminate.

Dave Hartline: What about 2,000 years of Christian tradition?

Rev. Susan Russell:  I find it odd that the people in the Episcopal Church would talk about scripture as if they were some fringe element fundamentalist.  One of the reasons our church broke with Rome was because of issues like the Magesterium.  Now they want one?  I am a cradle Episcopalian.  I still believe in the One Holy Catholic Apostolic Church.  I grew up saying that.  I don’t know if you are aware of it but that’s what we said.  I want to have unity with your church but we aren’t going back to being second class citizens.  You know we have a level of support in all of the churches, including yours and among some important people too.  Just not important enough.

Rev. Russell is right in one sense; those that oppose ”gay” marriage do discriminate between that which is right and true and that which is not.  Note that those who point to scripture as a source of knowledge are “fringe element fundamentalist[s].”  Get it?  The effort is to marginalize and stigmatize those that oppose a 2000 year old tradition of marriage being one man and one woman.

Time to swim the Tiber?Š

Bush is Now Responsible for Abortions

 

HT to Mary Katharine Ham at Hugh Hewitt.com posting a link to Washington Post editorial from a Dana L.

The conservative politics of the Bush administration forced me to have an abortion I didn’t want. Well, not literally, but let me explain.

And she goes on as to how she got pregnant with a “family complete” and was unable to get Plan B (levonorgestrel) from her doctor.  She laments the fact that this drug (see below) was not immediately available to her without a prescription and that her doctor was not obligated to give her a prescription when she requested one.

Meanwhile, I hadn’t even been able to get Plan B with a prescription that Friday, because in Virginia, health-care practitioners apparently are allowed to refuse to prescribe any drug that goes against their beliefs. Although I had heard of pharmacists refusing to fill prescriptions for birth control on religious grounds, I was dumbfounded to find that doctors could do the same thing.

Moreover, they aren’t even required to tell the patient why they won’t provide the drug. Nor do they have to provide a list of alternative sources. I had asked the ob-gyn’s receptionist if politics was the reason the doctor wouldn’t prescribe Plan B for me. She refused to answer or offer any reason, no matter how much I pressed her. By the time I got on the phone with my internist’s office and found that he would not fill a Plan B prescription either, I figured it was a waste of time to fight with the office staff. To this day, I don’t know why my doctors wouldn’t prescribe Plan B — whether it was because of moral opposition to contraception or out of fear of political protesters or just because they preferred not to go there.

Well of course she has the “unwanted abortion” and of course she has no responsibility for her actions, rather Bush and “religion” made her do it.  Imagine that.

It was a decision I am sorry I had to make. It was awful, painful, sickening[imagine how the baby felt]. But I feel that this administration gave me practically no choice but to have an unwanted abortion because the way it has politicized religion made it well-nigh impossible for me to get emergency contraception that would have prevented the pregnancy in the first place.

Dana’s dilemma is one that follows the philosophy of “sex as recreation.” There is no deeper meaning imparted upon the act and therefore she was inconvenienced when the pregnancy occurred. 

But morning after pills can be dangerous and RU-487 can be deadly. The Chicago Tribune reports: 

Through March 31, the FDA has received reports of 950 serious side effects after use of RU-486, including nine life-threatening incidents, 232 hospitalizations, 116 cases of heavy bleeding that required transfusions and 88 infections. Four of the five women who died of septic shock were from California, the other from Canada.

Another American died of septic shock after taking the abortion pill, but she had an infection different from the Clostridium sordellii infection linked to the other deaths, said Dr. Janet Woodcock, an FDA deputy commissioner.

So Dana would have this medication available on demand to women of any age.  Would she want all morning after drugs available on demand?  Would she mourn the death of even a single teenage women who used RU-487 over the counter?  For all the ranting concerning “safe” abortions, where is the concern for this drug’s potential lethality?  Could this be the new “coat hanger” abortion?

Legal Illegals?

 

There is an interesting AP Wire article concerning Hazelton, PA and the city mayor’s efforts to limit the crime and gangs that he and others in the town attribute to illegal immigrants.

With tensions rising and its police department and municipal budget stretched thin, this small northeastern Pennsylvania city is about to begin what the mayor calls one of the toughest crackdowns on illegal immigrants anywhere in the United States.

“Illegal immigrants are destroying the city,” said Mayor Lou Barletta, a Republican. “I don’t want them here, period.”

Last week Barletta introduced, and the City Council tentatively approved, a measure that would revoke the business licenses of companies that employ illegal immigrants; impose $1,000 fines on landlords who rent to illegal immigrants; and make English the official language of the city.

The article goes on to describe other local efforts throughout the country coping with illegals and associated problems.  One local resident, objecting to the efforts to discourage illegals in town is quoted:

“It’s going to scare a lot of people,” said Christian Lechuga, 23, who emigrated from Mexico eight years ago.

His father came to the United States illegally in 1982, received amnesty in 1986 and now operates a grocery store and restaurant in Hazleton. Jose Lechuga, 42, said Barletta is “abusing his authority and abusing human rights.”

“He’s confusing illegal people with criminals,” Jose Lechuga said.[emphasis mine]

Are not those who break our immigration laws criminals?  I think this comment gives insight into the mind of those who support illegals in the US.

Episcopal Schism Update

 

It appears increasingly likely that there will be a schism between the Episcopal Church and the worldwide Anglican Communion, the umbrella under which the Episcopal Church is organized.  From the Washington Times:

Episcopalians passed a resolution expressing “regret” for consecrating a homosexual bishop in 2003, but not “repentance” as many of the world’s Anglican archbishops have urged.
    The resolution that apologized to other Anglicans for not taking into account “the impact of our actions” was passed the same day as the newly elected presiding bishop played up the divisions within worldwide Anglicanism by saying homosexuality is not a sin.
    Meanwhile yesterday, a key conservative bishop responded to the election of Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori by asking the worldwide head of the Anglican Communion for “alternate oversight” under a foreign archbishop who holds the traditional church teaching on homosexuality and female ordination.

When the Episcopal Church ordained openly gay Rev. Gene Robinson (who left his wife and children to live with his male lover) as a bishop, there were some faithful congregations that petitioned African bishops to formally lead them in faith.  Those calls for relief from the oppression of apostate bishops continue.  Again from the Washington Times:

    Meanwhile, the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth, which opposes women’s ordination, appealed to Archbishop Rowan Williams of Canterbury for an alternative to Bishop Schori of Nevada, who was chosen Sunday as the denomination’s new presiding bishop.
    Their request, for “immediate alternative primatial oversight and pastoral care,” asks Archbishop Williams to provide a substitute male archbishop for Fort Worth’s 18,000 Episcopalians. If granted, it would be unprecedented in the 70-million-member worldwide Anglican Communion.
    Fort Worth Bishop Jack Leo Iker said that Canterbury had acknowledged receiving his request and that he was confident it would be granted.
    ”If a congregation can get a substitute bishop if they have a substitute in the event of a dispute with their diocesan bishop, why can’t a diocese?” he said in an interview. The choice of Bishop Schori to head the U.S. church “was an in-your-face gesture to the entire Anglican Communion.”

The election of Bishop Schori is in itself a point of contention with the Anglican Communion, in that the ordination of women is viewed as invalid by many within the greater church.

The issue is that of authority.  If there is no absolute authority, then there can be no discipline and schisms will continue as new issues arrive.  Without authority and authentic teaching, interpretations of Scripture become opinions and subject to endless fracturing.  The truth becomes a matter of politics and “fellowship.”

A nice summary of papal authority in the Catholic Church can be found here and here.  I believe that Christ understands the nature of fracture within the Christian faith and organized his mystical body on Earth under the authority of Peter, his successors and his faithful bishops.

Schism

 

As Hugh Hewitt discussed this evening, it would seem that there is a significant likelihood that the Episcopal and Presbyterian Church USA may have to deal with schism in their ranks.

The Episcopal Church has elected a woman bishop, who supported the election of Gene Robinson to be the first openly gay bishop in the denomination, as their presiding bishop:

EPISCOPAL Church leaders have chosen Nevada Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori as their leader, making her the first woman to head any denomination in the Anglican communion.

The decision to choose a female presiding bishop for the 2.3 million-member denomination came as a senior English bishop said that a schism in worldwide Anglicanism was now inevitable.

Three years ago, Episcopalians angered many conservatives by electing an openly gay man from New Hampshire, Gene Robinson, as a bishop.

One big issue in the church is the question of homosexuality.

She was asked particularly about the church’s stance on homosexuality and said, “I believe that God welcomes all to his table, people who agree and people who disagree, and the Episcopal Church has always had a strong voice for including a variety of theologies, a variety of opinions and insisting that all the marginalized are most especially welcomed at the table.”[emphasis mine]

I would suggest that the Episcopal Church has lost its way because their theology is guided by zeitgeist.  Rather than working to bring light to a sick world, they have opted to formulate their beliefs to accommodate the world.  They prefer to follow rather than lead morally and they continue into the darkness undeterred.

The Presbyterian Church USA also struggles with the issue of homosexuality and with divestment from Israel.

The Israeli/Palestinian conflict “is worse than apartheid,” said the Rev. Donald Wagner, director for the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at North Park University in Chicago, during a General Assembly dinner Sunday night.

“It is time now that we start using the word apartheid,” Wagner told attendees at the National Middle Eastern Presbyterian Caucus (NMEPC) dinner. “In fact, it is worse than apartheid.”

The Catholic Church has had its problems in the last 2000 years.  But there is an authority based on Scripture and Tradition which guides the Church.  Sola Scriptura results in many, many interpretations of Sacred Scripture and these interpretations result often an accommodation to our desires and worldly ways.  Scripture has been used to justify many unholy enterprises.

Endless schisms are inevitable after the first.

Mark D. Roberts, a guest of Hugh Hewitt, promised to write on current events in the Episcopal and Presbyterian Churchs.

I’ve written a bit in the past about some of the issues above.

For those in the Episcopal and Presbyterian Churchs, I pray that you may lay aside any prejudice that you may have and look at what the Catholic Church teaches.  Read the Catechism of the Catholic Church and read works from those who know and love the Church.  Read the stories of those who have come home to the Catholic Church from your own denominations (who almost always look lovingly on their former churchs) and understand the freedom that the Catholic Church brings. 

More Valium Please at the Daily Kos

 

I will occasionally check out the postings that the Daily Kos to get a sense of the left’s take on current events.  Every now and again, one finds a particularly idiotic rant.  Consider the reasoned logic of Bill in Portland Maine.  He writes a rant entitled “How Wronger Can You Idiots Be???”  Note the careful word crafting and punctuation.  The title reflects the well communicated ideas Bill has of why the Republicans are wrong on just about every issue.  Consider:

You’re still all wrong on Iraq.  Completely, utterly, insanely wrong on everything there.  The list has gotten too long to print.  And I’m sorry, but killing al-Zarqawi had nothing to do with you and everything to do with the intelligence and fortitude of our troops, 2,500 of whom have, or will, come home in pine boxes.  For what?  Instead of bashing Democrats for not “having a plan,” why don’t you tell us yours?  Because you can’t, that’s why.  Because your precious leader, George “30 Percent Approval” Bush, is too busy polishing his and Condi’s stationary bikes to admit that he fucked up royally—the biggest mistake in presidential history.  And you’re too busy giving him a free pass to notice.  Idiots.

You’re still wrong on global warming.  And now we know you’ll not only resort to doctoring scientific documents to hide your wrongness, but you’ll endorse a smear campaign against Al Gore for lifting the veil of carbon-based emissions to reveal your head-in-the-sand non-response to this looming crisis.  For the gazillionth time…the debate is over.  Yet you still insist on fighting to prove just how wrong you can be.  You guys couldn’t suck any harder if you were siphoning gas from a Hummer.

You’re still wrong on homeland security, too.  Our ports, borders and infrastructure aren’t any more protected now than they were a year ago.  How is this even possible??  We’ve been at terror threat level “Yellow” for 1,550 days, and at “Blue” or “Green” for zero.  You actually wanted to turn over the security of our ports to a country that helped fund the 9/11 attacks.  And now you’re cutting Homeland Security funds from cities like New York and Washington, D.C. that are most vulnerable to a terrorist attack.  But that’s okay—the Federal Duct Tape Reserve Closet is stocked and ready for action at the first sign of sarin gas.

-

You’re still wrong on those idiotic tax cuts.  They haven’t stimulated job growth, nor have they helped the middle or lower class climb any rungs on the economic ladder.  Last week you spent valuable time trying to abolish the death estate tax, which benefits 0000.25 percent of the U.S. population.  But at least you had the sense to vote on gay marriage in the same week—it’s an important issue to a full one percent of the general public.  I hear you’ll be tackling flag burning next, which affects a whopping zero percent of We the People.  Maybe it’s just as well—more time spent screwing up the fringe issues means less time spent screwing up the important ones.  It may buy us just enough time to put the grownups back in power before we become China-Lite.

And he drones on and on.  I guess this is an annual installment.  Lovely. 

With this type of reasoned, well referenced discourse, how can conservatives ever hope to prevail ?

 

Reclaiming Life in Europe

 

If you have not yet read George Weigel’s “The Cube and the Cathedral,” and are interested in various reasons for the moral and cultural decline in Europe, this book is worth the read.  The publisher’s note reads in part:

Weigel traces the origins of “Europe’s problem” to the atheistic humanism of the nineteenth-century European intellectual life, which set in motion a historical process that produced two world wars, three totalitarian systems, the Gulag, Auschwitz, the Cold War-and, most ominously, the Continent’s de-population, which is worse today than during the Black Death. And yet, many Europeans still insist-most recently, during the debate over a new EU constitution-that only a public square shorn of religiously-informed moral argument is safe for human rights and democracy. Precisely the opposite, Weigel suggests, is true: the people of the “cathedral” can give a compelling account of their commitment to everyone’s freedom; the people of the “cube” cannot. Can there be any true “politics”-any true deliberation about the common good, and any robust defense of freedom-without God? George Weigel makes a powerful case that the answer is “No,” because, in the final analysis, societies are only as great as their spiritual aspirations.

In continuing on this them, Dr. Weigel writes about a resent meeting that was arranged in Vienna by Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, O.P., and attended by a group of  Catholic intellectuals including Professor Rémi Brague.  Professor Brague sees reclaiming Europe’s hope by proposing a metaphysical question of being-and-nothingness.

Picking up on a phrase I had used in The Cube and the Cathedral, that Europe is “dying from a false story,” Brague suggested a fascinating way of looking at the last two centuries of western history. The 19th century, he proposed, was focused on the question of good-and-evil: the “social question,” posed by the industrial revolution, the emergence of an urban working class, and the demise of traditional society, dominated the landscape. The 20th century, he argued, had been the century of the question of true-and-false: totalitarian ideologies, built on perverse misunderstandings of the human person, defined the contest for the human future that drove history from the aftermath of World War I until the Soviet crack-up in 1991.

And the 21st century? Ours, Professor Brague said, is the century of the question of being-and-nothingness — the century of the metaphysical question.

Which may sound extremely abstract, but is, in fact, very concrete. For if nothing is “given” in the human condition, then everything is up-for-grabs. If, to take a salient example on both sides of the Atlantic, maleness and femaleness are mere “social constructs,” then “marriage” can mean anything someone wants it to mean, including not only “gay marriage” but polygamy and polyandry — and to deny that is an act of irrational bigotry.

Europe lives in a type of cultural debonair nihilism.  Birth rates have decreased as religiosity has waned.  Most Europeans are oblivious to their plight it seems.  They in fact resent the fact that deep religious convictions can and do inform American opinion in politics.  This resentment is shared by the American left to large degree. 

For those who propose removing God from the public square, Dr. Weigel’s study should be (although likely will not be) a wake up call. 

 

Michelle Malkin has a piece on the state of the Camp Pendleton 8, seven Marines and a Navy corpsman sitting in a military prison awaiting investigation the possible kidnapping and murder of an Iraqi man.  The men are in wrist and leg shackles and have not yet been charged with a crime. According to Malkin:

The men are in solitary confinement, locked in 8′x8′ cells at San Diego’s Camp Pendleton, as investigators probe an April 26 incident involving the 3rd Battalion, 5th Regiment, 1st Marine Division. They are behind bars 23 hours a day; family members can only see them through inch-thick Plexiglas. Military blabbermouths have told the press that the service members are suspected of kidnapping and shooting a man in the Iraqi town of Hamdaniya. The Iraqi man’s family reportedly came forward seeking payment for his death as media hysteria set in over the separate alleged atrocity in Haditha.

One of the wives of the men being held has set up a website for the welfare of her husband. She writes:

My husband is one of the seven Marines and one sailor that are being held without being charged over accusations about the incident in Hamandiya that has been in the news for the past few weeks.  Whenever he leaves his cell, he is shackled, handcuffed, and escorted by two guards.  He is kept in solitary confinement and let out for exercise only 1 hour a day.  When I visit him, he is presented to me behind a thick glass barrier and still shackled.  We can’t even touch each other.

My husband’s term in the Marine Corps is up this November.  Four long years…..and then something like this happens.   He was planning on re-enlisting this November to become a recruiter or work at the rifle range.  He loves his job and sees himself in the Corps for at least 4 more years.  But his dreams just may have went down the drain.

I seems odd to me that men who are suspected, but not yet charged with a serious crime would be treated in such a manner.  With the terror suspects at Gitmo/Guantanamo being pampered, the stark contrast in treatment is appalling.  Where are the human rights groups that made such a big stink over the “torture” of the terror detainees?  Detain these men pending investigation and charges, but do so in a more humane manner.

Read the whole posting at Malkin’s site.