Round 2...

...of the Great Recession is heading our way.

Lyrical History.

I remember the Kingston Trio's song about "Charley, the man who never returned,"  who was condemned to ride the MTA underneath Boston because he lacked the nickel to get off the train.  It was a cute, catchy jingle.

What I didn't know is that it was a campaign song and the part about "vote for George O'Brien" was a real solicitation to vote for an actual candidate in a Boston Council race back in 1949.

So the lawyer said to St. Peter, "But I died so young".....

...and St. Peter replied, "Well, according to your billing records you are 102 years old."

Lawyer suspended for billing more than 24 hours in a day.

An Ohio lawyer has been suspended for overbilling local courts for her representation of poor clients, submitting bills for more than 24 hours a day on three different occasions.


The lawyer, Kristin Ann Stahlbush of Toledo, will be suspended for two years, with the second year stayed if she completes a one-year probationary period, the Legal Profession Blog reports.

According to an Ohio Supreme Court opinion (PDF) issued Tuesday, Stahlbush billed the courts in Lucas County for more than 24 hours a day on at least three different days, and more than 20 hours a day on five other occasions.

The court said Stahlbush failed to keep adequate records of the hours she worked, submitted inflated fee requests, and sometimes “merely guessed at the time she had spent on a case.” She had no prior discipline, however, and was known as a competent and hardworking lawyer.

Amazing.

Detecting Earth-sized planets 2,000 light years away by telescope.

It's the Kepler telescope, but I thought that it was impossible to see something so small, so far away, against the glare of a star.

Perhaps one of my "Central Valley Astronomy Club" friends can explain how this is possible.

The Economics of the Ponzi Scheme.

Apparently, the financial sector of the economy was engaged in a big Ponzie scheme for two years before the meldtown.  According to the Central Valley Business Times:

Over the last two years of the housing bubble, Wall Street bankers perpetrated one of the greatest episodes of self-dealing in financial history.


Faced with increasing difficulty in selling the mortgage-backed securities that had been among their most lucrative products, the banks hit on a solution that preserved their quarterly earnings and huge bonuses:

They created fake demand.

A ProPublica analysis shows for the first time the extent to which banks -- primarily Merrill Lynch, but also Citigroup, UBS and others -- bought their own products and cranked up an assembly line that otherwise should have flagged.

The products they were buying and selling were at the heart of the 2008 meltdown -- collections of mortgage bonds known as collateralized debt obligations, or CDOs.

As the housing boom began to slow in mid-2006, investors became skittish about the riskier parts of those investments. So the banks created -- and ultimately provided most of the money for -- new CDOs. Those new CDOs bought the hard-to-sell pieces of the original CDOs. The result was a daisy chain that solved one problem but created another: Each new CDO had its own risky pieces. Banks created yet other CDOs to buy those.

Individual instances of these questionable trades have been reported before, but ProPublica's investigation shows that by late 2006 they became a common industry practice.

An analysis by research firm Thetica Systems, commissioned by ProPublica, shows that in the last years of the boom, CDOs had become the dominant purchaser of key, risky parts of other CDOs, largely replacing real investors like pension funds. By 2007, 67 percent of those slices were bought by other CDOs, up from 36 percent just three years earlier. The banks often orchestrated these purchases. In the last two years of the boom, nearly half of all CDOs sponsored by market leader Merrill Lynch bought significant portions of other Merrill CDOs.

ProPublica also found 85 instances during 2006 and 2007 in which two CDOs bought pieces of each other's unsold inventory. These trades, which involved $107 billion worth of CDOs, underscore the extent to which the market lacked real buyers. Often the CDOs that swapped purchases closed within days of each other, the analysis shows.


There were supposed to be protections against this sort of abuse. While banks provided the blueprint for the CDOs and marketed them, they typically selected independent managers who chose the specific bonds to go inside them. The managers had a legal obligation to do what was best for the CDO. They were paid by the CDO, not the bank, and were supposed to serve as a bulwark against self-dealing by the banks, which had the fullest understanding of the complex and lightly regulated mortgage bonds.

It rarely worked out that way. The managers were beholden to the banks that sent them the business. On a billion-dollar deal, managers could earn a million dollars in fees, with little risk. Some small firms did several billion dollars of CDOs in a matter of months.

Another reasons to trust government - graft and corruption edition.

Being a CalPers director is like being a Rock Star, complete with groupies:

California's public pension fund allowed its fund managers to take mega-jet-set kickbacks from financial companies looking to win big state investments.


In testimony related to Attorney General Jerry Brown's bribery lawsuit against a former California Public Employee Retirement System board member, a CalPERS representative has admitted that he and other CalPERS investment staffers accepted gifts, steaks at Morton's, toys, and dozens of luxury trips to exotic ports of call like Shanghai, Mumbai and New York.

Was sex part of the package? Sounds like it. From Evan Halper at the L.A. Times:

The court filings reveal a culture at CalPERS where it was common for large private equity firms such as Yucaipa, the Carlyle Group and Oak Hill Capital Partners to fly CalPERS investment staff around the country and the world, sometimes for what were described as "one on one" strategic meetings.

It is good to be King.

Obama's sixth vacation of 2010.

We can't begrudge him these vacations.  He's worked hard to get where he is.  In fact, one time he had to hold the same job for all of four years.

Hope and Change.

Jury Instructions.

A lesson from the Blogojevich trial:

As the jurors in the corruption case against Rod R. Blagojevich, the former Illinois governor, entered a 25th-floor conference room here, one problem was instantly clear: They were overwhelmed.

The judge had handed them instructions that ran to more than a hundred pages. The verdict sheet was as elaborate as some income tax forms. And many of the 24 counts they were being asked to consider came in multiple parts and were highly technical and interconnected.


“It was like, ‘Here’s a manual, go fly the space shuttle,” Steve Wlodek, one of the jurors, said Wednesday.

And jurors aren't being paid $300 per hour to work on the damn thing.

From the "Hope and Change" File...

...allowing the public sector to grow too large means that we can't stop spending ourselves into bankruptcy without causing a recession or depression.

According to NRO's Kevin D. Williamson:

Two things to keep in mind in light of today’s news: One is that the CBO keeps ringing the alarm bells — even today, in the course of trimming, a little bit, its deficit estimate for 2010: “Continued large deficits and the resulting increases in federal debt over time would reduce long-term economic growth.”


Which is to say, Paul Krugman & Co. aside, spending and deficits can be a brake on growth as well as an accelerator of it. Today’s stimulus is tomorrow’s burden.

The second thing: Take another look at Greece. Greece is falling apart. Krugman & Co. will tell you that’s the result of too much austerity and not enough stimulus spending. But there is another lesson to take away from Greece: When you let the public sector get that big — so big it dominates the economy — then it is nearly impossible to cut back public-sector spending without creating an economic crisis. Our stimulus programs are geared, in no small part, toward achieving permanent expansions of the public sector. Which is to say, we’re stimulating ourselves into a Greek corner. Best to reverse course now before we’re locked in good and tight.

Live the Dream!

Because sometimes wallowing in an ignorant idolatry is "la dolce vita."

From Carl Olsen's post on "Reasons not to become Catholic."

Must be the traffic jams caused by Obama's LA fund raiser.

A surprisingly critical look at Obama's fund raising efforts by the LA times.

Obama and his declining base.

Obama fundraiser ties up LA traffic for hours.

I remember Clinton tying up air traffic to get a haircut, and now this, but I don't remember anything like this with George Bush. 

Malinvestment.

Check out this post on how a bank in Southern California is tearing down newly built homes rather than spending the money it would take to complete the projects.

Here's the video.

The Song of Ice and Fire...

...as literature.

Out of Touch.

Another Guardian article likening the Obamas to a "modern ancien regime."

The timing of this lavish European vacation could not have come at a worse moment, when unemployment in America stands at 10 percent, and large numbers of Americans are fighting to survive financially in the wake of the global economic downturn. It sends a message of indifference, even contempt, for the millions of Americans who are struggling just to feed their families on a daily basis and pay the mortgage, while the size of the national debt balloons to Greek-style proportions.


While the liberal-dominated US mainstream media have largely ignored the story, it is all over the blogosphere and talk radio, and will undoubtedly add to the President’s free falling poll ratings. As much as the media establishment turn a blind eye to stories like this, which are major news in the international media, the American public is increasingly turning to alternative news sources, including the British press, which has a far less deferential approach towards the White House.

Jeepers, who could have known that a person whose longest job experience was 4 years as Senator might not be up to being President?

The Telegraph explains "The stunning decline of Barack Obama: 10 key reasons why the Obama presidency is in meltdown."

If only swimming coaches....

...could marry.

More geopolitical news about the instability of the world system.

A totalitarian dictatorship with 30 million excess men and a propensity for treating its population like herd animals is about to deploy long range, incredibly accurate missiles with the ability to kill American aircraft carriers.

Over 20 years ago, John Keegan predicted that with the advent of missiles, the future would belong to submarines with the ability to interdict the seaways.

Marriage, Men and Making Babies.

Law Professor Nelson Lund makes the following observation:

Without marriage, men often would be uncertain about paternity or indifferent to it. If left unchecked, many men would have little incentive to invest in the rearing of their offspring, and the ensuing irresponsibility would have made the development of civilization impossible.


The fundamental purpose of marriage is to encourage biological parents, especially fathers, to take responsibility for their children. Because this institution responds to a phenomenon uniquely created by heterosexual intercourse, the meaning of marriage has always been inseparable from the problem it addresses.

Homosexual relationships (and lots of others as well), have nothing to do with the purpose of marriage, which is why marriage does not extend to them. Constitutional doctrine requires only one conceivable rational reason for a law, and the traditional definition of marriage easily meets that test.

The Dishonest Prop 8 Decision.

I suspect that a lot of people bought into the officially approved media narrative that the defenders of Prop 8 were incompetent in their defense of the institution of marriage. A point in the narrative was the judge's claim that the defenders of Prop 8 didn't have to offer any defense of their claims that marriage is associated with, you know, making babies.

Ed Whelan explains:

Among the many distortions and falsehoods that Judge Vaughn Walker has tried to propagate through his anti-Prop 8 ruling is his claim that the Prop 8 proponents—who intervened as defendants in the case and valiantly carried out the role of defending Prop 8 when the state defendants abandoned their duties to do so—“failed to build a credible factual record to support their claim that Proposition 8 served a legitimate government interest.” (Slip op. at 11.) Walker’s claim, which many in the media evidently unfamiliar with the case have parroted, operates to divert attention from the manifest bias that he exhibited throughout the case and that pervades his ruling. But in fact the Prop 8 proponents offered a thorough case that Walker almost entirely ignored—a case resting on a broad array of judicial authority, recognized scholarship in various academic fields, extensive documentary evidence, and elementary common sense.

Whelan analyzes the argument actually provided in the Closing:

As Cooper proceeded to work his way through “eminent authority after eminent authority”—all in evidence submitted at the trial—Walker interrupted him to ask the bizarre question, “I don’t mean to be flip, but Blackstone didn’t testify. Kingsley Davis didn’t testify. What testimony in this case supports the proposition?” (3039:16-18.)


Cooper responded to Walker’s question:

Your Honor, these materials are before you. They are evidence before you.… But, your Honor, you don’t have to have evidence for this from these authorities. This is in the cases themselves. The cases recognize this one after another. [3039:19-3040:1]

Walker: “I don’t have to have evidence?” [3040:2]

Cooper: “You don’t have to have evidence of this point if one court after another has recognized—let me turn to the California cases on this.” [3040:3-5]

Note that only the underlined portion of the passage is what Walker quotes in his opinion.

Cooper then proceeded to present California cases stating (in Cooper’s words, which may include direct quotations not reflected in the transcript’s punctuation) that the “first purpose of matrimony by the laws of nature and society is procreation,” that “the institution of marriage … channels biological drives … that might otherwise become socially destructive and … it ensures the care and education of children in a stable environment,” and that (in a ruling just two years ago) “the sexual procreative and childrearing aspects of marriage go to the very essence of the marriage relation.” [3040]

2. Walker’s question—“What testimony in this case supports the proposition?”—wasn’t just flip. It was downright stupid—amazingly so, from a judge who has been on the bench for more than two decades. Even if one indulges the mistaken assumption that there was any need for a trial in the case (rather than its being disposed of, one way or the other, on summary judgment, with competing expert and documentary submissions), live witness testimony is merely one form of trial evidence. Exhibits submitted in evidence at trial are another form. And a judge is of course free to, and expected to, take judicial notice of certain facts.

3. In context, it’s clear that Cooper cited extensive evidence in the record, as well as relevant legal authorities, in support of the proposition that “responsible procreation is really at the heart of society’s interest in regulating marriage.” Indeed, the evidence that Prop 8 proponents submitted (and cited in their proposed findings of fact) in support of this heretofore obvious and noncontroversial proposition was overwhelming.

4. When Cooper stated “you don’t have to have evidence for this from these authorities”—Kingsley Davis and Blackstone and the other “eminent authorities” that Cooper was ready to discuss when Walker interrupted—and that the “cases themselves” “recognize this one after another,” it’s crystal-clear in context that he wasn’t contending that he hadn’t provided evidence or that he didn’t need to provide evidence or other authority. He was merely making the legally sound observation that the many cases recognizing the procreative purpose of marriage were an alternative and additional source of authority for the proposition.

But you wouldn’t know any of this from Walker’s highly distorting clip of Cooper’s statement—or from Olson’s contemptible misrepresentation of it, or the media’s mindless parroting of it.

Walker’s outrageous distortion on this point isn’t an aberration. As I will show when I have time, it’s representative of his entire modus operandi throughout his ruling.

The nice thing about having Democrats in control is that there is never any bad news.

The New York Times touts the advantages of unemployment for those who have kept their jobs - "For Those With Jobs, a Recession With Benefits."

Father Barron on Mel Gibson and Anti-Catholicism.

Bummers....Our Chance to Live in a Brave New World is not as Good as We had Hoped.

NRO relays this interview with the scientist responsible for the Human Genome Project:

SPIEGEL: So the Human Genome Project has had very little medical benefits so far?


Venter: Close to zero to put it precisely. . . . [W]e have, in truth, learned nothing from the genome other than probabilities. How does a 1 or 3 percent increased risk for something translate into the clinic? It is useless information. . . . [For there to be practical medical applications] we need a lot more information: Information about your body’s chemistry, your physiology, your complete medical history, your brain and your entire life. We would need to do that a million times on different people and correlate that data with their genetic information.

SPIEGEL: Will that lead in the end to the kind of personalized medicine that genetic researchers have always touted? Each person would get his or her own personal treatment that is tailored precisely to that person’s genetic make-up?

Venter: That was another one of these silly naïve notions that was out there. It’s not, “Oh, we know your genome, we’re going to make this drug for you.” That will never happen. It is more important that you use the information in the genome about your personal risks and reduce them through intelligent behavior.

The Common Sense of Selma - Or will the '60s end during our lifetime?

Victor Davis Hanson nails the common sense of the average person who wakes up in the morning and observes the bizarro-upside down world we now live in.

Populism Is Now Bad?


In contrast, the proverbial people seem angry. A book will have to be written explaining how in 19 months Obama blew a 70% approval rating and is headed for under 40% — something that took Bush six years. A handful of judges nullified what millions voted for in Arizona and California, apparently on the premise that wanting federal immigration law enforced, and seeing marriage as a traditional bond between a man and woman as it has been for 2,500 years in the West, was bigoted, analogous to the racism of the Jim Crow South, and thus in need of judicial intervention.

A guy in Bakersfield might think it prejudicial that a gay judge struck down an amendment to the Constitution passed by a majority of voters and opposed by the gay lobby; a guy in DC would think the guy in Bakersfield prejudicial for coming up with that preposterous conclusion.

Meanwhile, in our postracial age, race is everywhere: Charles Rangel, who won’t follow the tax laws he writes, whines about an “old-English, Anglo-Saxon procedure.” Maxine Waters (under the cloud of insider bank influence peddling) and the Black Caucus (recipient of federalized GM donations) cite racism as the source of their ethical dilemmas (at least Larry Craig did not cite gay-bashing and Duke Cunningham reverse discrimination and Chris Dodd ageism and the late John Murtha girthism).

A mass murderer at a beer distribution center (so much for Van Jones’s assurances that such mayhem was a white thing) is portrayed on the airwaves as an aggrieved victim of racism lashing out. Not a word about the shattered lives of those gunned down and their families. Welcome to the post-racial Obama age — with much more to follow. (Nemesis gives no quarter: once Barack Obama years ago went down the patronize-and-use-Rev.-Wright path, the payback was only a matter of when, not if.)

And:

The present symptoms that characterize both our popular culture and current governance — shrill self-righteousness; abstract communalism juxtaposed with concrete pursuit of the aristocratic good life; race/class/gender cosmic sermonizing with private school and Ivy league for the kids; crass and tasteless public expression; a serial inability to take responsibility for one’s actions; the bipartisan mega-deficits; the inability to cut pensions and social security for the baby boomers — from the trivial to the fundamental, all derive from a bankrupt cohort that came of age in the sixties and seventies.


We see the arrested adolescence and hypocrisy that come from that sermonizing generation, whether in Al Franken’s puerile face-making, the ideologically driven suicide at Newsweek, the steady destruction of the New York Times, John Kerry’s tax-avoiding yacht, the Great Gatsby Clinton wedding, Michelle on the Costa del Sol, Nancy Pelosi’s jet, Tim Geithner’s tax skipping, or the constant race-card playing of a Charles Rangel and Maxine Waters. Yes, one walk across the Yale or Stanford campus circa 1975, and one could see pretty clearly what sort of culture that bunch would create when it came of age and was handed power. If that is reductionism, so be it.

Prop 8 Ruling.

Of course, the ruling was never in doubt.  Judge Walker is homosexual and throughout the proceeding has acted as if any opposition to homosexual marriage was inspired by conspiratorial and sinister motives.  Judge Walker has shown little or no sympathy for the civil rights of those who opposed Prop 8, going so far as to make their motives in voting for Prop 8 the issue of the case and allowing supporters of Prop 8 to be hauled into court and treated in a way that liberals thought was wrong when it was Communists being treated that way, rather than the hated "religious" citizen.

Here is Judge Vaughan Walker's ruling.

A case in point is where Judge Walker plays theologian in characterizing the beliefs of the Catholic Church:

77. Religious beliefs that gay and lesbian relationships are sinful or inferior to heterosexual relationships harm gays and lesbians.

a. PX2547 (Nathanson Nov 12, 2009 Dep Tr 102:3-8: Religions teach that homosexual relations are a sin and that contributes to gay bashing); PX2546 (video of same);

b. PX2545 (Young Nov 13, 2009 Dep Tr 55:15-55:20, 56:21-57:7: There is a religious component to the bigotry and prejudice against gay and lesbian individuals); see also id at 61:18-22, 62:13-17 (Catholic Church views homosexuality as “sinful.”); PX2544 (video of same);

Well, no.  Catholicism teaches:

2357 Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity,140 tradition has always declared that "homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered."141 They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.


2358 The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God's will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord's Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.

2359 Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection.

So, we get from Judge Walker a stereotype.

The next step will undoubtedly be further steps to depict Catholics as "unAmerican" and a "suspect group."

The strange thing is that religion is actually protected by the Constitution, but homosexuality is never mentioned.

Do walls a Christian make?

St. Augustine answered "yes."  Father Barron offers an explanation for this conclusion in his reflection on Anne Rice's "unversion":

However, what she is proposing is, quite simply, impossible. With complete coherence, Ms. Rice could withdraw from the Gandhi Society, even while maintaining her deep admiration for Gandhi, or she could resign from the Better Business Bureau, even while retaining a commitment to the ideals of that organization. But she can’t leave the church and still cling to Christ, precisely because the church is not a club or voluntary society, but rather Jesus’ own mystical body. When the risen Jesus addressed Saul, who was on his way to persecute the Christian community in Damascus, the Lord said, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” In the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew’s Gospel, we find Jesus’ great parable of the separation of the saved and the condemned on the last day. To the blessed, Jesus says, “whatsoever you did to the least of my people, you did it to me,” and to the damned he says, “whatsoever you neglected to do to the least of my people, you neglected to do it to me.” The followers of Jesus are related to their Lord as the members of a body are related to the head, for Christ and his church form together, not a society, but a living organism. To say, therefore, that one loves Christ but has given up on his church is precisely equivalent to saying “I love you, but I just can’t be around your body!”


To make this principle more concrete, consider the fact that Anne Rice came to know Christ through the densely-textured world of her New Orleans Catholicism: its art, music, liturgy, stories, and above all, its powerful spiritual personalities. More to it, she experienced the renewal of her faith through the mediation of the liturgy broadcast on EWTN. The point is that the church, with all of its flaws, remains, down through the ages, the vehicle which bears Jesus Christ to the world, just as our bodies, with all of their imperfections, remain the means by which our identities and personalities come to expression. You just can’t discover Christ or stay with him in abstraction from his body. I know that Church people, even of the highest rank, do and say lots of stupid things. I fully realize how deeply scandalous the recent behavior of some priests and bishops has been to millions of Catholics, and I completely acknowledge that certain of the church’s attitudes, behaviors, and statements over the centuries have been deeply harmful. Heck, John Paul II dedicated the last several years of his pontificate to apologizing for the ways that churchmen have caused harm, sometimes greviously, over the past two millennia. But yet, as St. Paul said, “we hold a treasure” in these fragile vessels, and the treasure is Jesus himself.

When will the '60s come to an end?

One small part of the '60s has ended.  Marilynn Buck - a former "anti-imperialist freedom fighter" responsible for the death of several police officers in typically loonie radical fund-raising schemes, i.e., the forced expropriation of other people's money - has died of cancer one month after being released from prison 20 years into her 50 year "bit."

Reading the article brings back memories of these narcissistic loons that were once young, and murdered for their cause.

Obama Disconnected.

William Jacobsen at Legal Insurrection argues that Obama's strategy of stifling dissent has left half of America alienated from him.

But as I wrote in July 2009, and again in February 2010, Obama was misplaying the "Birther" card because the frequency of the strategic accusations merely raised the public consciousness and suggested that Obama was hiding something. Far from disproving the claims of "Birthers," the Obama strategy simply drove the issue below the surface.


Thus, it is not surprising that yet another poll finds that a significant percentage of the population either does not believe Obama was born in Hawaii, or is uncertain.

According to a CNN Poll, only 42% of Americans believe that Obama "definitely" was born in the U.S.

Put differently, 58% are not certain, or believe otherwise. (The other results were 29% probably born in U.S., 16% probably born elsewhere, and 11% definitely born elsewhere, with 2% having no opinion.)

The results, predictably, where higher among Republicans that Obama was not born here, and lower among Democrats. But among independents, the numbers pretty closely tracked the overall numbers, with the exception that only 37% said Obama definitely was born here.

These numbers are astoundingly bad for Obama, and reflect a strategy which has worked in the short run but failed miserably in the long run.

There was an interesting but long forgotten poll by Democratic pollster PPP taken in October 2009, asking the provocative question, "Do you think that Barack Obama loves America?"

The responses were as follows: Yes (59%), No (26%), Not Sure (14%). I have not seen a similar question polled since then, but I would venture to guess the numbers would be even more negative. But even using those almost year-old numbers, the picture is bleak as a President when 40% of the population either thinks you do not love America, or is not sure.

Put it all together, and Obama has disconnected at a fundamental level from almost half the population, or that population has disconnected from him.

Shirley Sherrod - Race/Class Oppressor

Leftist publication Counterpunch runs a story on how Shirley Sherrod and her husband oppressed Black workers hired through their non-profit New Communities, Inc:

Shirley Sherrod was New Communities Inc. store manager during the 1970s. As such, Mrs. Sherrod was a key member of the NCI administrative team, which exploited and abused the workforce in the field. The 6,000 acre New Communities Inc. in Lee County promoted itself during the latter part of the 1960s and throughout the 70s as a land trust committed to improving the lives of the rural black poor. Underneath this facade, the young and old worked long hours with few breaks, the pay averaged sixty-seven cents an hour, fieldwork behind equipment spraying pesticides was commonplace and workers expressing dissatisfaction were fired without recourse.

St. Charles Lwanga - The Blood of the Martyrs.

Father Barron observes that when St. Charles Lwanga was killed by King Mwanga in 1886 it seemed that Christianity was dead in Africa.  Now, there are 400 million Christian Africans.

"The Federal Government can do anything it wants."

Quite a change from the intent of the Founders.

Redefining Marriage.

From Mercator:

Proponents of “marriage equality” sing their refrain over and over: “Our relationships are just the same as yours.”


Not even close. While just 7 per cent of Americans believe that adultery (sexual infidelity by married, heterosexual partners) is morally acceptable, Dr Hoff’s report emphasizes that nearly 50 per cent of gays in committed relationships specifically affirm sexual infidelity. Other research shows shockingly higher rates (75-95 per cent) of non-monogamy in long-term gay relationships.

(Note that we are talking about male homosexual relationships here. Research on lesbian couples is sparse but one study finds that 20 per cent of lesbians pursue open relationships.)

But what of the roughly 45 per cent of gay relationships that, according to the study, do claim monogamy? Their relationships should yield insights applicable to traditional opposite-sex marriages, right?

Not likely. Any apparent similarity between gay relationships and heterosexual couples disappears once it becomes clear what “monogamy” means in the gay paradigm. A 2010 study from England entitled, "Gay Monogamy: I Love You But I Can't Have Sex With Only You", found that none of the gay couples in the study defined monogamy as sexual exclusivity. In fact, they all engaged in sex with outside partners, even though they professed to be in a monogamous relationship.

How’s that, again?

The Center for Research on Gender and Sexuality, in its spring 2010 newsletter, summarized the English study, explaining that sex with outside partners is the “monogamous” norm for gay couples.

“All participants perceived fidelity as emotional monogamy. Thus, forming an emotional bond with an outside partner constituted cheating.” Sexual encounters with others didn’t count as “cheating” as long as it was “compartmentaliz[ed], which they defined as the process of separating sex from emotion and was key to most participants’ ability to manage sex outside the relationship