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I saw that commercial, Pascal, but didn’t make the connection.  Funny.

I’m not much of a football fan.  I don’t watch many games during the season, but I usually watch the playoffs and Super Bowl.  I didn’t have a preference between the teams.  But this was a great game.

I’m not sure this will have significant negative political consequences for 0. All this hubbub is taking place well before the election, leaving the left plenty of time to paper over it and distract the voters with slime on the eventual Republican candidate. The Rev. God blank America tape was released in March 2008, and the widespread revulsion at the time did not prevent 0’s victory in November.

I find it hard to believe such savvy political operators as Axlerod and Obama would be surprised by this blacklash from Catholics and religious orders in general (let’s remember orthodox Jews and Muslims are also troubled by this ukase).  They simply have to know that abortion and contraception are the “no pasaran” issues for Catholics.

I think the bigger issue is whether these same groups will wake up to the indisputable fact that handing over this degree of power to the Central State is inherently threatening to not only religious liberty, but liberty in general.  One cannot simply create a Frankenstein’s monster and assume it will perpetually obey one’s every command and whim.  Put the power of de facto nationalized healthcare into the hands of the State, and it will be just a matter of time before they’re jamming scissors into Baby Rachel’s cranium down at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital.

The unions might stay home, both on election day and during the fall campaign season…which would be an absolute and unmitigated disaster for Democrats, costing them not just battleground states in the actual election, but huge armies of free manpower. The effect would probably be limited to this year, but it’d be a crippling one while it lasted. The enviroweenies might stay home or go vote for the Green party (which in electoral terms amounts to the same thing as staying home), but this would be much less painful at the ballot box for Obama, since the only states where enviroweenies are powerful enough to matter are also states where Obama would still win even if he disemboweled a live kitten on national television. So even without considering any moral or economic questions and strictly limiting the focus of analysis to matters of political expediency, the Keystone pipeline decision seems completely inexplicable.

Catholics? Um…yeah, Catholic Democrats might very well vote for a Republican this fall, if Obama doesn’t back off his brinksmanship. Worse yet (for the Democrats, anyway), they might notice that the sky doesn’t fall when they do, and let it become a habit.

As a Catholic and a believer in freedom of conscience against the state, I of course abhor the HHS mandate. But as an American who wants to see the hard left rendered utterly powerless in national politics, I can’t help but cheer a little bit, to see the enemy make such a truly collossal strategic blunder.

I have to disagree with those who paint Obama as just another craven politician. The man has, from practically the day he was inaugurated, seemed to me quite prepared to be a political martyr for his causes. If he cared more about a second term than about pushing government policy hard to the left, he’d have done a lot of things differently. (Think Bill Clinton with darker skin.) No, this dude’s a True Believer(tm).

He’s got some of the world’s foremost experts on winning elections sitting in his circle and giving him advice. And he’s obviously not listening to them.

As I have usually heard it, the road to hell is paved with bishops skulls.

I agree fully with your overall thesis.

Yes.

“The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.”
~ Vladimir Lenin

I for one believe it is important to distinguish between indentured servitude and chattel slavery. The difference is huge and yet most discussions ignore the distinction.

I was nominally in the “sic ‘em, each other!” camp for this game, but was really rooting for the Giants.  Tough, smart, and really on their game.  Congrats, N’Yawk!

It’s interesting to me I slave half the hours I work to support the freedom of those who don’t work to enjoy their leisure.

It seems that in modern American society, the upper half are slaves, and the lower half are free.

Very interesting.  I shall be quite interested to see your approach to the final question you posed, and your discussion of Distributism.

PolyKahr said: “Implied, it seems, in this statement, is the duty to resist unjust laws.  Agreed?”

And then Francis said, “Agreed, Poly. With ruffles, flourishes, and flaming letters.”

I’m missing something, here.  I understand that there are those with guns, ammo and food stored up for the coming “times.”  But I don’t get exactly how those of us who are “in the middle” (or just cowards) are supposed to rally to some definitive thing.

Are you Catholics winking at the rest of us as you arm yourselves?  Are you quietly arming yourselves while reading second-amendment blogs?

For all the media attention it gets, it seems to me that what was called the Tea Party was a once in a generation chimera.  *I* went out there, but it really didn’t get any media traction or provide a voice that really inspires a national call to action.

For all this talk of the tea party’s versus establishment republicans in Congress, the truth is there has always been a difference between one wing of a party and another.

The question - as it has ALWAYS been - is, what do we do about it?

Withhold votes?  Self-defeating.  Take to the streets?  Almost never works.  Particularly with the current news meme.

Start a third party for NEXT time?  Probably.  It DOES work, maybe once in a generation.

Retreat into our redoubts with our guns and principals?  This is the one that scares me, because maybe it’s the best chance we have.

Vote?  Many of you reading this believe that votes are stolen or created and we can’t get a national ID voting card without being declared “racist hate-mongers.”

So how do we exercise our first amendment right - nay, our absolute right as individuals - to protest this government?

Bosnia and Libya were both prime examples of “problems” that weren’t OUR problems and were on the back, porch of Europe, ripe for Europeans to take care of assuming anything needed to be done.  That the U.S. just couldn’t help itself and lashed out at each tar baby is just absurd.  Not to mention that our interventions came after decades of allowing the Europeans a free ride under NATO.

“Perhaps the funniest highlight ever to be captured by a camera came with 57 seconds to go, as Ahmad Bradshaw struggled not to enter the end zone…”

Adding to the humor was how that entry into the endzone rivaled this unique commercial that appeared at the beginning of the Superbowl.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=MlYCBJSYWBQ#t=12s

Mr. Bradshaw and Mr. Quigley, forever linked.

1. R2P in action.
2. A fine example of the movers and shakers new favorite acronym.
3. Thanks for another good rumination.
V/R JWest

“It’s impossible to say too much about second-year phenomenon Jason Pierre-Paul.”

Watching him move I couldn’t believe just how freaking big he is. At 6’5”, 270lbs, he moves like a man half his size. But when he would connect, hard, I could feel the impact through the screen. The Giants had better keep a hold of him.

My wife and I are fans of the Pats, but we also really like Eli Manning, so it was a nail biting game at my household.

That 96 yard drive was a thing of beauty, too bad that was the Patriots’ peak effort for the game.

Possibly the strangest way of getting to 21 points I’ve ever seen.

Congrats to the Giants…we here in St. Loo have never forgiven the Pats for their cheating-tainted win.

I suppose I should have completed that sentence, Matt: “can never be unmade by the Church.” The State can do so, and has done so many times in history—sometimes by ceasing to exist—but once a church becomes a handmaiden of a regime, it’s in the position of a man on a tiger’s back: dismounting is usually fatal.

It’s been suggested, and by some fairly intelligent people at that, that a Church-State alliance, once forged, can never be unmade.

I find it hard to credit much intelligence to any person who’d suggest that, considering that Church-State alliances have been rather famously unmade all over Christendom over the course of the last couple of hundred years.

Which is not to diminish the important of actually learning the lessons of history, when they teach us that any alliance between Church and State inevitably works to the benefit only of the State and its minions, and not (in the long run) to the benefit of the institutional Church, and never to the benefit of God or the faithful congregation.

All anyone would have to do is produce the body of Jesus at any time after it was purported that He rose from the dead and Christianity would be refuted.

Wrong. He would have to establish beyond all doubt that he had produced the body of Jesus. That wasn’t possible in the First Century A.D., and it certainly hasn’t been possible since then. Chain of evidence and all that.

One quibble: by the standards included in this post, Christianity is not a religion, because Christianity’s test claim, the Resurrection of Christ, is a falsifiable claim.  All anyone would have to do is produce the body of Jesus at any time after it was purported that He rose from the dead and Christianity would be refuted.  The fact that no one could is the strongest compelling argument toward the verity of Christianity.

#4: This is why St. Paul cautioned Timothy, Bishop of Ephesus not to ordain presbyters lightly.  The presbyter (priest) in question was committing scandal (the sin of causing or attempting to cause others to sin by appearance of impropriety or direct encouragement).  Since “the wages of sin is death,” scandal is a sin on par with attempted murder, and the presbyter should have been rebuked by his bishop and disciplined further if he refused to repent.  Read 1 Timothy to learn all about clerical matters.

Agreed, Poly. With ruffles, flourishes, and flaming letters.

Francis,

We don’t say “The road to hell is paved with good intentions” merely because it sounds profound. We say it because it’s true—because we’re all too prone to forgetting it. No end can justify an evil means. Any means that takes moral judgment out of the hands of individuals is inherently evil. When agencies and instruments of violence are permitted to don a cloak of “compassion” and “mercy” by undertaking charitable duties that properly belong to us as individuals, the evil is compounded beyond all understanding. It’s a Christian’s duty to resist it to the limit of his powers…if not beyond.

Implied, it seems, in this statement, is the duty to resist unjust laws.  Agreed?

If only the leaders of your church were as wise and insightfull as you.

Perhaps the point is being missed? 

Rendering unto Caesar .... implying the paying of ones taxes,  as being the exclusive meaning of same is, to my (tiny) mind, not the case.  Rendering unto Caesar would also imply a willingness/obligation to follow all government edicts/law as long as it is not specifically in conflict with the tenants of your faith/God.

And this is where we are right now with the Catholic Church.  They feel (and rightly so) they are being forced into complying with a government enforced edict.  That in order to (continue) to provide various services to their faithful (along with the public at large), they must conform to standards which are in direct violation to teachings of the mother Church. 

It goes beyond individual choice. This is a direct attack on the Catholic Church (and to some extent, all Christian faiths).  You either bend to the will of the state, or you are not allowed to provide these services. 

the State “allegedly” (yes those are scorn quotes) does not care one way or the other what your personal beliefs, or what any particular institutions beliefs, are.  They claim this is, purely a case of one having to conform (to the will of the state), and nothing else.  Surly not an attack on any religion.  If you believe this, I have some masonry work covering a flowing body of water, you might be interested in purchasing.  They (the State) have lied, are lying, and will continue to do so as long as it benefits them.

What should be of concern to all, not just Catholics, is this trend being allowed to continue.  If this is the case, it will simply be the Catholics being first in line ... they will NOT be the last.

Hope that helped.  If not, I await the onslaught of flaming arrows!