Patum Peperium

History's most historic president becomes more historic : The University that once honored him is now suing him. Don't you love America?

 

.

Madame's Nightshirt

Mrs. Peperium

.

 

.

Longtime readers of PP may recall the times when Father Jenkins of Notre Dame has been taken to the woodshed in this space. The S.S. Notre Damned and America, the Catholic Chickens are coming home to roost! being among those woodshed moments.

PP wasn't the only Catholic (mental) Institution or person to take Father Jenkins out to the woodshed for inviting Obama to his graduation speaker and give him a honorary legal degree. Many bishops, Archbishops and even Cardinals did as well. Some of their choicer woodshed soundbites:

.

"They made a big mistake.”

--Cardinal Dolan of New York

 

"Whatever else is clear, it is clear that Notre Dame didn’t understand what it means to be Catholic when they issued this invitation,"

-- Cardinal George of Chicago

.

"I am saddened and heavy of heart about your decision to invite President Obama to speak at Notre Dame University and even to receive an honorary degree.

"It is a public act of disobedience to the Bishops of the United States."

-- Bishop Olmstead of Phoenix, Arizona

.

."It is a travesty that the University of Notre Dame, considered by many to be a Catholic University, should give its public support to such an anti-Catholic politician. I hope that you [Fr. Jenkins] are able to reconsider this decision. If not, please do not expect me to support your University in the future.”

--Archbishop Nienstedt of Saint Paul and Minneapolis

“If Notre Dame does not alter its present course, it will be difficult for me to offer support for the University on any level.”

--Bishop Barbarito of Palm Beach
 

"And we also have the duty to avoid prostituting our Catholic identity by appeals to phony dialogue that mask an abdication of our moral witness.  Notre Dame did not merely invite the president to speak at its commencement.  It also conferred an unnecessary and unearned honorary law degree on a man committed to upholding one of the worst Supreme Court decisions in our nation’s history: Roe v. Wade."

-- Archbishop Chaput of Philadelphia

.

“I find the invitation very disappointing. . . Particularly troubling is the Honorary Law Degree since it recognizes that the person is a ‘Teacher,’ in this case of the Law. I think that this decision requires charitable but vigorous critique.”

--Cardinal DiNardo of Galveston - Houston

.

There was no excuse – none, except intellectual vanity – for the university to persist in its course. And Father Jenkins compounded a bad original decision with evasive and disingenuous explanations to subsequently justify it."

-- Archbisop Chaput of Philadelphia

"You have to sit back and get past the immediate moral outrage and say, ‘Now what’s the best thing to do in these circumstances?’"

-- Cardinal George of Chicago

.

“Notre Dame extended this invitation unilaterally, seemingly without regard for the consequences for the mission of the Catholic Church in the United States. It is contrary to the efforts of bishops, parish priests, and laity to resist the anti-life decisions, policies, and legislation promoted by the Obama administration.”

-- Bishop Lori of Bridgeport

.

"In retrospect, it’s clearly adroit.  It’s also, just as clearly, an illogical and intellectually shabby exercise in the manufacture of excuses.  Father Jenkins’ explanations, and President Obama’s honorary degree, are a fitting national bookend to a quarter century of softening Catholic witness in Catholic higher education.  Together, they’ve given the next generation of Catholic leadership all the excuses they need to baptize their personal conveniences and ignore what it really demands to be “Catholic” in the public square."

-- Archbishop Chaput of Philadelphia

.

“I, along with other bishops throughout the country, fully support Bishop D’Arcy in this matter.”

--Bishop Taylor of Little Rock

.

 “[Fr. Jenkins,] I can assure you of my prayers for your conversion, and for the conversion of your formerly Catholic University.”

 -- Bishop Bruskewitz of Lincoln

.

“This is Our Lady’s university choosing to give an honorary degree to the single most outspoken pro-abortion president since the issue was foisted upon the country by the Supreme Court. It must, indeed, embarrass Our Lady.”

--Bishop Zubik of Pittsburgh

.

"In my letter, I have also asked Father Jenkins to correct, and if possible, withdraw the erroneous talking points, which appeared in the South Bend Tribune and in other media outlets across the country. The statements which Father Jenkins has made are simply wrong and give a flawed justification for his actions.

"I consider it now settled — that the USCCB document, “Catholics in Public Life,” does indeed apply in this matter.

"The failure to consult the local bishop who, whatever his unworthiness, is the teacher and lawgiver in the diocese, is a serious mistake. Proper consultation could have prevented an action, which has caused such painful division between Notre Dame and many bishops — and a large number of the faithful.

"That division must be addressed through prayer and action, and I pledge to work with Father Jenkins and all at Notre Dame to heal the terrible breach, which has taken place between Notre Dame and the church. It cannot be allowed to continue."

-- Bishop D'Arcy of  Fort Wayne-South Bend

.

. .

 

 

As the 2009 Graduation day luvfest photos demonstrate, none of the Bishops'  woodshed words penetrated Father Jenkins skull.  But since that fateful graduation day they must have. Yesterday Father Jenkins took his celebrate graduation speaker to court. Here's Father Jenkins' explanation for why he has done such a historic thing to such an historic president :

 

. . . Let me say very clearly what this lawsuit is not about:  it is not about preventing women from having access to contraception, nor even about preventing the Government from providing such services.  Many of our faculty, staff and students -- both Catholic and non-Catholic -- have made conscientious decisions to use contraceptives.  As we assert the right to follow our conscience, we respect their right to follow theirs.  And we believe that, if the Government wishes to provide such services, means are available that do not compel religious organizations to serve as its agents.  We do not seek to impose our religious beliefs on others; we simply ask that the Government not impose its values on the University when those values conflict with our religious teachings. We have engaged in conversations to find a resolution that respects the consciences of all and we will continue to do so.

This filing is about the freedom of a religious organization to live its mission, and its significance goes well beyond any debate about contraceptives.  For if we concede that the Government can decide which religious organizations are sufficiently religious to be awarded the freedom to follow the principles that define their mission, then we have begun to walk down a path that ultimately leads to the undermining of those institutions.  For if one Presidential Administration can override our religious purpose and use religious organizations to advance policies that undercut our values, then surely another Administration will do the same for another very different set of policies, each time invoking some concept of popular will or the public good, with the result these religious organizations become mere tools for the exercise of government power, morally subservient to the state, and not free from its infringements.  If that happens, it will be the end of genuinely religious organizations in all but name. . . .

 

The healing of the terrible breach between Notre Dame and the Church has been underway for some time, without much notice from the media...

.

Archbishop Timothy Dolan, left, was welcomed to Notre Dame by Holy Cross Father John Jenkins, president of the university.

.

ARCHBISHOP DOLAN AFFIRMS DIGNITY OF PERSON AT NOTRE DAME

Dcember 7, 2011

In the question-answer period following Archbishop Dolan’s lecture, an audience member cited a letter from Holy Cross Father John Jenkins, Notre Dame president, to Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services. That Sept. 28, 2011, letter urged that the definition of religious employer in the rules for the new healthcare law be broadened to provide conscience protection. Father Jenkins noted that the current rules put Notre Dame in the “impossible position” of being required either to provide services and insurance coverage contrary to Catholic teaching, or to discontinue employee and student health care plans.

The questioner said that non-Catholics also attend and work for Notre Dame who believe that contraception and sterilization are moral. He asked how this “conflict between two consciences” could be resolved without offending the equal human dignity of either side.

Archbishop Dolan replied that he was “grateful” Father Jenkins had taken a “brave and courageous stand” on this issue.

“Our religion would require us to respect the rights of all and never to denigrate them,” he said. “However, it would also obviously require us to obey our own consciences and follow the allegiances of our own faith.”

With a “defined community” that stands for a given set of values, people expect that community to live out the demands of the faith it professes, Archbishop Dolan explained. So, it is not a judgment against people who do not share the faith, but rather an insistence on the rights of conscience and insistence that the government would never have the right to compel violation of conscience.

“That of course is not only a Catholic principle,” Archbishop Dolan said, but also a principle of our country. So, while Father Jenkins is making a religions claim, “He also is calling America back to its most cherished principles that never would we force someone or an institution to do something contrary to its conscience.”

 

.

Well done Bishops.

Well done Father Jenkins for hearing them.


 

Politics imitates art.

.

Madame's Nightshirt

Mrs. Peperium

 

Six Degrees of Separation, 1993

"An affluent New York couple find their lives touched, intruded upon, and compelled by a mysterious young black man who is never quite who he says he is."

 

 

President Obama, 2008 -

 

From Roger L. Simon:

 

Reading the extraordinary revelation about Barack Obama’s youthful literary career on Breitbart.com — that his agents published a promotional book in 1991 with a bio of Obama saying he was born in Kenya — set my old mystery writer mind ablaze.

How could that be? Why would they think such a thing?

There are only two forks in this road — either he was born in Kenya or he wasn’t.

I have never been a conspiracy theorist and will assume the latter, although I have to confess that for the first time, given this revelation, I have the tiniest soupçon of doubt.

Nevertheless, the more interesting, and actually frightening and depressing, conclusion is the former. So what if he was born in Kenya? At least we know why he lied about it. He wanted to be president.

But why did Obama’s agents think he was born in Kenya? That’s a more interesting question. (Obama, of course, is a liar either way.)

I will leave aside for the moment the question of whether he vetted the agent’s material himself. As the author of eleven published books and seven produced feature films, I have had plenty of dealings with agents and publicity people and always looked over the bios they had written about me. Every author I ever talked to about it always did too. We’re those kind of egotists. But I have no way of proving that Obama did — although I would faint if he hadn’t.

But whatever he did, the question remains. Why did they put “Born in Kenya” in his bio and leave it there until 2007? The latter part of that question can of course be ascribed to normal human sloth, but the first part — there’s the rub.

Here are the explanations I can think of:

Obama told them.
It was in some early draft of Obama’s abandoned book (Journeys in Black and White) he submitted to them.
Obama wrote it in his book proposal to them.
Obama told them in a query letter.
Obama answered one of those biographical forms.
… Well, I’m running out because they all amount to the same thing.

There is one other possibility. The agents simply made up the place of Obama’s birth, but I have never in all my life heard of a literary agent doing such a thing. It’s possible I suppose, but hardly likely. And why?

Anyway, per Occam’s Razor, I am going with the obvious — the agent’s source for Obama’s birthplace was… Barack Obama.

But again why? Why would he lie about where he was born?

Well, he might have wanted to glamorize his past, but if that’s so, it’s pathetic. I suspected there was a more substantive reason, one that would cause him to leave his African birth place in place in the bio. But to take the risk of being found out, it would have to be strong.

My wife Sheryl and I, like Nick and Nora Charles, discussed it over gimlets this evening. We both agreed the mystery lay somewhere in Obama’s college and university years at Occidental, Columbia, and Harvard. We knew, as you do, there must be an explanation for why the court eunuchs of the mainstream media have never bothered even to investigate the scholastic career of the most powerful person in the world.

Because Obama got bad grades? Yawn — so did Bush, Kerry, Biden, Ted Kennedy, and dozens of others who later found themselves making life or death decisions over our lives.

No, it had to be something more significant, more potentially dangerous. What if, we thought, as others have suggested, the reason Obama’s school records have not surfaced is that he enrolled, at one of those institutions at least, as a foreign student — a Kenyan?

But why would he choose to do that? Well, maybe for a grant, a subvention, a scholarship that was available uniquely to students from Africa or similar locales.

Yes, I know that’s not “fair,” in the lexicon of the Lord of Fairness, to have adopted a phony identity and deprived others of an opportunity they may have more richly deserved. But it would certainly fit with Obama’s early need to be recognized as a Kenyan by his agent and, presumably, his publisher. As we all know, it’s not the crime, but the cover-up. (In this case, actually, it’s both.)

As time went on, of course, college drifted away and politics reared its head. The Kenyan identity became less necessary, even a liability, so it was dropped.

I don’t know about you — but this makes sense to me. It also fits with the tomb-like silence around his college years.

But I could be wrong. After all, I am only a mystery writer and, worse yet, a screenwriter. The professional investigative journalists at The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times will no doubt dig deep and give us the true explanation.

But if they don’t, and I know you’re skeptical, we have to keep pushing, every one of us. We must learn the truth of this. We owe it to Andrew B. — and to our country.

.

Charlie Rose, the day after the 2008 election:

 

MEACHAM: I was very struck watching the stagecraft -- and this comes out again and again in the project -- in Grant Park [Chicago], he walks out with the family, and then they go away. Biden’s back, you know, locked in the bar or something, you know --

(Rose laughs.)

MEACHAM: They don’t let him out. And have you ever seen a victory speech where there was no one else on stage? No adoring wife, no cute kid -- he is the message.

THOMAS: There is a slightly creepy cult of personality about all of this. I mean, he is such an admirable --

ROSE: ‘Slightly creepy cult of personality’?

THOMAS: Yes.

ROSE: What’s ‘slightly creepy’ about it?

THOMAS: It just makes me a little uneasy that he’s so singular. He’s clearly managing his own spectacle. He knows how to do it. He’s a -- I think, a deeply manipulative guy -- you know, this could be a useful thing in a leader --

ROSE: How so is he ‘deeply manipulative’?

THOMAS: I think he's always in control, you know -- he controls events, events don't control him. He's a pretty calm guy. He seem to be able to get people to do pretty much what he wants.

ROSE: Watching him last night in that speech, he finishes --

MEACHAM: Yeah.

ROSE: -- and he sort of -- it's almost like he then ascends to look at the circumstance.

MEACHAM: He watches us watching him.

THOMAS: Watching him!

ROSE: Exactly!

THOMAS: He does --

MEACHAM: It's amazing.

ROSE: It is amazing.

THOMAS: He writes about this metaphor being a screen upon which Americans will project. He said they want of Barack Obama; I'm not sure I am Barack Obama.

ROSE: Mmm!

THOMAS: He had -- he has the self-awareness to know that this creature he's designed isn't necessarily a real person, and he's self-aware enough --

 

Some Reviews of Six Degrees of Separation:

 

 This is a play about the supposed spiritual emptiness of bourgeois New Yorkers that was essentially written as a cathartic guilt trip for bourgeois New Yorkers—in other words, for the people who go to the theater. By the end, most moviegoers are liable to see it as much ado about nothing. - Entertainment Weekly

 

A rare sight: a sharply observed Hollywood satire of poignant ideas, such as opportunities in life, achieving fame in American society, and how we all are in one way or another con men. - Emanuel Levy

Ultimately, Six Degrees of Separation will succeed or fail for the individual viewer based on their expectations and preferences. -- Reel Views

 

It's too clever by half, an inside joke aimed at the New York gentry. -The Washington Post

 

 

.

Wither Georgetown?

.

Madame's Nightshirt

Mrs. Peperium

 

 

MISSION STATEMENT OF

CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA

As the national university of the Catholic Church in the United States, founded and sponsored by the bishops of the country with the approval of the Holy See, The Catholic University of America is committed to being a comprehensive Catholic and American institution of higher learning, faithful to the teachings of Jesus Christ as handed on by the Church. Dedicated to advancing the dialogue between faith and reason, The Catholic University of America seeks to discover and impart the truth through excellence in teaching and research, all in service to the Church, the nation and the world.

(approved by the Board of Trustees, December 12, 2006)

 

 

123rd Annual Commencement Address
Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York
East Portico, Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception
May 12, 2012

Cardinal Wuerl, our eminent chancellor;

President Garvey, officers of the administration and distinguished faculty; especially rightly radiant class of 2012, with your family and friends, now proud alumni of this venerable and renowned university:

Thanks for your gracious invitation and warm welcome; thanks for the honor you bestow upon me, in company with Father Julian Carrón, Giuseppe Mazzotta, Carmen Ana Casal de Unanue, and Joseph A. Unanue; thanks especially for being true to the noble mission of this great university; and thanks, class of 2012, for the hope and promise you give all of us. Congratulations!

You're welcome. I was in charge of the weather. This is the first time I have worn red since I was made a cardinal. I forgot my red sash. Luckily Cardinal Wuerl has an extra ... well, two extras.

I came to this University the same year Colonel Brooks Tavern opened. I may have spent more time there than Mullen Library.

I do this quite a bit — speaking at commencements. I enjoy it. This spring alone I have or will give three university commencement addresses, two at our high schools, one at an eighth grade occasion, and even an address at Pre-K graduation. Bring ‘em on! I love them!

But this one this morning is especially meaningful for me, as I myself am a proud and grateful alumnus of this institution of highest learning, having left here thirty years ago . . . and just finished paying my tuition . . . sorry to bring that up! . . .; and because I am deeply grateful, as a Catholic, and as an American, for the iconic value of this, The Catholic University of America.

Just six days ago, Pope Benedict XVI, in addressing bishops from Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Wyoming, spoke warmly of Catholic education here in the United States, and of the need of our Catholic colleges and universities “ . . . to reaffirm their distinctive identity in fidelity to their founding ideals and the Church’s mission in service to the Gospel.”

The Holy Father showed a somber realism, though, when he expanded that need to include “ . . . ecclesial communion and solidarity in the Church’s educational apostolate, becoming all the more evident when we consider the confusion created by instances of apparent dissidence between some representatives of Catholic institutions and the Church’s pastoral leadership . . .”

Is not a big part of our gladness and pride this happy morning of graduation a grateful recognition that this university does indeed exude such “ecclesial communion and solidarity?” That this university is both Catholic and American, flowing from the most noble ideals of truth and respect for human dignity that are at the heart of our Church and our country? That a university’s genuine greatness comes not from pursuing what is most chic, recent, or faddish, but what is most timeless, true, good, and beautiful in creation and creatures? That the true goal of a university is to prepare a student not only for a career but for fullness of life here and in eternity?

Some might wonder if Pope Benedict’s description of a university is way too impractical; if a university can be really Catholic and American; if the genuine freedom a university demands can flourish on a campus whose very definition includes a loyalty to Holy Mother Church . . . well, to them I say, as you and I did, “Let them come to Brookland!” This university you can now, with me, call alma mater, at the heart of our nation, is also ex corde ecclesiae, at the heart of the Church. For that I am most proud.

The Holy Father mentions not only truth as being at the core of the mission of a Catholic university, but also love. And so I want to tell you about a wonderful woman named Clara Almazo. Just a little over a month ago, Clara and her little eight year old grandson, Michael, were walking home from Holy Thursday Mass at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Parish on Staten Island. As they crossed the street, a car barreled toward them, with little Michael in the crosshairs. His abuela, Grandma Clara, pushed her grandson away to safety, taking herself the whole force of the car, and was instantly killed.

Clara’s selfless act of heroic love was, as you might imagine, the tearful talk of New York over the Easter weekend. No one failed to note that her life-giving act was made the more poignant as it came on the night before Jesus died, returning from the Mass of the Lord’s Last Supper, when He predicted His own sacrificial death, and where he gave the touching example of selfless service in washing the feet of His apostles.

When I celebrated her funeral on Easter Tuesday, every one of her 13 children and 23 grandchildren were profoundly sad; but not one of them was surprised, for through their sobs, they told me she was a woman of constant, heroic, selfless giving.

Jesus Christ . . . His Church . . . this university . . . Clara Almazo . . . truth . . . love . . . the words of Pope Benedict . . . the achievement and the hopes of the Class of 2012 . . .

Let me try to bring all of these together with the coherence I learned at this University.

Might I suggest these all coalesce in what we call the Law of the Gift.

“Greater love than this no one has, than to give one’s life for one’s friends.” There’s the Law of the Gift as defined by the Son of God Himself.

“It is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.” There’s the Law of the Gift as chanted by St. Francis.

"I know Jesus Christ, who sacrificed His life for others. I understand well the meaning of the cross. I am ready to give up my life for my people." There's the Law of the Gift as stated by Shabaz Bhatti, a Catholic who served as federal minister for religious minorities in Pakistan.

“For we are at our best, we are most fully alive and human, when we give away freely and sacrificially our very selves in love for another.” There’s the Law of the Gift as described by Blessed John Paul II.

Not long ago at a dinner I sat next to Admiral Mike Mullen, a Marine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, himself a Catholic, who asked me, “What percent of the American population is Catholic?”

I replied, “I'm not sure exactly but I think about 24%.”

“But do you realize,” he went on, “that 40% of the Marine Corps identify themselves as Catholic?”

I did not realize that, but I was not surprised, nor was Admiral Mullen, for at the heart of the Church’s ethos is the Law of the Gift, and it would be tough to be a Marine — or to be an abuela like Clara Almazo — if you didn’t believe in that.

Or, as the head of the department of pediatric oncology at a leading hospital recently told me, “Cardinal Dolan I’m not even a religious believer, but, when I hire doctors, nurses, attendants, or staff for this grueling work of trying to heal kids with cancer, the applicants who are alumni of Catholic school have a leg up.”

I didn’t know that either, but, I’m hardly surprised, for, while it’s sure not listed in any catalogue, the course on the Law of the Gift is part of the DNA of any Catholic school, this sterling one included.

So, I conclude that all of you, at this university where every classroom features the most effective audio-visual aid of them all, the crucifix; and where the entire campus is overshadowed by the dome of the shrine devoted to the Jewish woman who whispered, “Be it done unto me according to your will, not mine,” that I’m looking out at graduates who have majored in this Law of the Gift.

Now, let’s be clear: I’m hardly claiming that Catholics have sole “bragging rights” on fostering, protecting, and obeying this Law of the Gift. The exaltation of selfless, sacrificial love and service is at the marrow of every religion, and, as a matter of fact,on the ground floor of most purely humanistic values.

However, even our critics admit that a particularly pointed contribution that religion, that the Church, that faith makes to any enduring culture, society, or nation is that it has a honed talent to foster, protect, and obey the Law of the Gift.

Without the Law of the Gift we have no Marines, fewer effective pediatric oncologists, and no Clara Almazos or Shabaz Bhattis. Religion, faith, the Church promote a culture built on the Law of the Gift. Thus, wise people from Alexis de Tocqueville to John Courtney Murray — both of whose work I was forced to read while a student here — have observed that an essential ingredient in American wisdom and the genius of the American republic is the freedom it allows for religion to flourish. Thus would I predict that a challenge you, class of 2012, will inevitably face is the defense of religious freedom as part of both our American and creedal legacy.

Now, one final thing: You all had a head-start in learning the Law of the Gift and the importance of faith to sustain it.

For, see, the Law of the Gift is most poetically exemplified in the lifelong, life-giving, faithful, intimate union of a man and woman in marriage, which then leads to the procreation of new life in babies, so that husband and wife, now father and mother, spend their lives sacrificially loving and giving to those children. That union — that sacred rhythm of man/woman/husband/wife/baby/mother/father — is so essential to the order of the common good that its very definition is ingrained into our interior dictionary, that its protection and flourishing is the aim of enlightened culture.

And your tutelage in the Law of the Gift, class of 2012, was only refined here at this Catholic University, for it began in the most sublime classroom of them all, your home and family, under the most significant of all professors, your mom and dad. Congratulations, parents of our graduates!

That we are at our best when we give ourselves away in love to another — the Law of the Gift — is I’m afraid, “counter-cultural” today, in an era that prefers getting to giving, and entitlement to responsibility; in a society that considers every drive, desire, or urge as a right, and where convenience and privacy can trump even the right to life itself; and in a mindset where freedom is reduced to the liberty to do whatever we want, wherever we want, whenever, however, with whomever we want, rather than the duty to do what we ought . . .well, the Law of the Gift can be as ignored as a yellow traffic light in New York City.

At one of the eighth grade commencements I attended, as referred to earlier, the fourteen year old student speaker called his classmates to pay attention to the words of John F. Kennedy, fifty-two years ago, observing that the temptations he and his classmates were facing now is to ask what your family, your friends, your church, and your country can do for you, rather than what you can do for them.

Not bad advice at all, leading me to conclude that this parish grade school was also granting degrees in the Law of the Gift.

So, I praise God that I look out at graduates in admiration, affection, and appreciation among whom are new Clara Almazos, children of beaming parents, alumni of a university where goodness, truth, and beauty reign and where every student majors in the Law of the Gift.

Congratulations, class of 2012!

 

...

.

MISSION STATEMENT OF

GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY

Georgetown is a Catholic and Jesuit, student-centered research university.

Established in 1789 in the spirit of the new republic, the university was founded on the principle that serious and sustained discourse among people of different faiths, cultures, and beliefs promotes intellectual, ethical and spiritual understanding. We embody this principle in the diversity of our students, faculty and staff, our commitment to justice and the common good, our intellectual openness and our international character.

An academic community dedicated to creating and communicating knowledge, Georgetown provides excellent undergraduate, graduate and professional education in the Jesuit tradition for the glory of God and the well-being of humankind.

Georgetown educates women and men to be reflective lifelong learners, to be responsible and active participants in civic life and to live generously in service to others.

...

.

STATEMENT BY JOHN J. DEGIOIA ON THE 2012 GPPI TROPAIA
May 14, 2012

In recent days on the Georgetown University campus and in the larger American Catholic community, concerns have been expressed by some who object to an invitation to Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to participate in a Public Policy Institute awards ceremony during the University’s commencement weekend.

Last fall, public policy students expressed preferences for potential speakers who could participate in the program. Given her role in crafting the landmark legislation that will make health care more accessible to 34 million Americans who are currently uninsured, Secretary Sebelius was identified by students as a leading policy maker in our country who could contribute to this event. Secretary Sebelius has a long and distinguished record of public service, including two terms as governor of Kansas before beginning her service in April, 2009, as Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. She is also the spouse and the mother of Georgetown graduates. 

In early January, an invitation was extended to Secretary Sebelius and she accepted.  In the weeks that followed, elements of the legislation, specifically terms covering contraception, dominated our public discourse and impacted our Georgetown community very directly.

In different contexts over the past three months, including a March 14 “Statement on Religious Freedom and HHS Mandate,” the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops expressed strong opposition to the position put forward by the Obama Administration.  Some have interpreted the invitation of Secretary Sebelius as a challenge to the USCCB.  It was not. The invitation to Secretary Sebelius occurred prior to the January 20th announcement by the Obama Administration of the modified healthcare regulations.

The Secretary’s presence on our campus should not be viewed as an endorsement of her views.  As a Catholic and Jesuit University, Georgetown disassociates itself from any positions that are in conflict with traditional church teachings.

We are a university, committed to the free exchange of ideas. We are a community that draws inspiration from a religious tradition that provides us with an intellectual, moral, and spiritual foundation.  By engaging these values we become the University we are meant to be.

...

 

Statement of the Archdiocese of Washington Regarding the Selection of U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius as a Featured Speaker at Georgetown University

May 15, 2012

During the past week there has been much in the national and local news regarding the controversial selection of the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, to be a featured speaker at an awards ceremony at Georgetown University’s Public Policy Institute. Yesterday, the President of the University, John J. DeGioia, issued a public statement in response to the concerns, objections and even outrage that have been expressed.

The Archdiocese of Washington reserved public comment to permit Georgetown University and its sponsor, the Society of Jesus, the opportunity to address the controversy. While the explanation of how this unfortunate decision was made is appreciated, it does not address the real issue for concern – the selection of a featured speaker whose actions as a public official present the most direct challenge to religious liberty in recent history and the apparent lack of unity with and disregard for the bishops and so many others across the nation who are committed to the defense of freedom of religion.

Contrary to what is indicated in the Georgetown University President’s statement, the fundamental issue with the HHS mandate is not about contraception. As the United States Bishops have repeatedly pointed out, the issue is religious freedom. Secretary Sebelius’ mandate defines religious ministry so narrowly that our Catholic schools and universities, hospitals and social service ministries do not qualify as “religious enough” to be exempt. This redefinition of religion penalizes Catholic organizations because they welcome and serve all people regardless of their faith. Ironically, because of Georgetown’s commitment to open its doors to Catholic and non-Catholic students alike, the university fails to qualify as a religious institution under the HHS mandate.

Given the dramatic impact this mandate will have on Georgetown and all Catholic institutions, it is understandable that Catholics across the country would find shocking the choice of Secretary Sebelius, the architect of the mandate, to receive such special recognition at a Catholic university. It is also understandable that Catholics would view this as a challenge to the bishops.

It is especially distressing to think that the university’s Public Policy Institute would be unaware of this national debate since the mandate was published last August. Such a radical redefining of ministry should prompt Georgetown, as a Catholic and Jesuit university, to do more to challenge the mandate and speak up for freedom of religion.

 

.

Talk about withering...

Obama goes Gay for Pay, black women and children hurt the most.

.

Madame's Nightshirt

Mrs. Peperium

.

"No matter who you love or what God you worship, you can still pursue happiness -- I will support you every step of the way,"

and

"You can be stylish and powerful too."

President Obama to the 2012 graduating class of Barnard College.

 

  From Tammy Bruce:

 

The following revelation come from a dinner conversation at a fancy restaurant last night (she’s a 1percenter, I’m proudly Friends with 1percenters ;) In the midst of some complaining about Obama, the conversation naturally turned to him becoming Gay for Pay, a phrase normally used for heterosexual young male hustlers who are willing to sleep with men if the price is right. Obama’s sudden support for gay marriage, and the fundraising-mania surrounding his confession, makes the phrase unfortunately apt for the Preezy of the United Steezy.

That said, we then wondered why Obama would really do it. We know he doesn’t give a damn about the issue, and oh sure, he’ll get a bit more cash from the left, but it really won’t even make a dent in what he wants to fund-raise or plans on spending...

 

 

"...You know part of it was also just knowing friends and family, people that I’d gotten to know who had these wonderful relationships and they’d say to me you know what? The words matter. So even though you’re a strong supporter of civil unions somehow it still says we’re different and that particular set of conversations that I had is ultimately what led me to this conclusion."

President Obama on The View.

.

From Forbes:

In the days following his endorsement of gay marriage, President Obama is doubling down on efforts to attract LGBT donors with the help of gay celebrities and a network of high-profile gay and lesbian supporters. His calendar this month and next is filling up with gay-centric events poised to rake in millions for his re-election efforts. [...]

The Washington Post recently combed through the list of top Obama bundlers — that is, those bringing in more than $500,000 — and identified as many as 1 in 6 as openly gay. [...]

While bundlers play a crucial role, LGBT activists have also seen an increase in donations at the grassroots level. [...] Much of this money was donated online, where Obama’s team is hoping to capture the youth vote. His campaign is capitalizing in an uprising of LGBT support in its web store, where a $30 ‘I’m Out For Obama’ t-shirt is creeping up the bestsellers list.

Equal rights advocates say interest in, and contributions to, the Obama campaign from the gay community will only increase in the wake of his gay marriage endorsement. “Some in the LGBT community have been hesitant up until now,” said Sean Eldridge, senior adviser at Freedom to Marry, who has had conversations with the President and his team on the gay marriage issue in the past. “Now that he’s come out in full support, that hesitation is gone. Gay and lesbian activists are all in now, on every level.”

 

.

 

Falsani: Do you believe in sin?

Obama: Yes.

Falsani: What is sin?

Obama: Being out of alignment with my values.

Chicago Sun-Times interview, 2004.

.

 From Fox News:

.

Dwight McKissic, pastor of Cornerstone Baptist Church in Arlington, wrote in a blog on May 9 that Obama’s statements is worthy of incurring wrath of biblical proportions.

From McKissic’s blog:

President Obama has betrayed the Bible and the Black Church with his endorsement of same-sex marriage. The Bible is crystal clear on this subject, and the Black Church strongly opposes same-sex marriage. His endorsement is an inadvertent attack on the Christian Faith. America is now a candidate for the same judgment received by Sodom and Gomorrah. This was a sad, sad day and a very bad decision, by our beloved President. The moral impact of this day and decision is equal to the military impact of AL-Queda when they attacked the Twin Towers on 911. Today’s announcement is a moral earthquake equivalent to a tsunami or hurricane that will have far more devastating results than Katrina.”

.

From TheNYTimes:

About two hours after declaring his support for same-sex marriage last week, President Obama gathered eight or so African-American ministers on a conference call to explain himself. He had struggled with the decision, he said, but had come to believe it was the right one.

The ministers, though, were not all as enthusiastic. A vocal few made it clear that the president’s stand on gay marriage might make it difficult for them to support his re-election.

“They were wrestling with their ability to get over his theological position,” said the Rev. Delman Coates, the pastor of Mt. Ennon Baptist Church in Clinton, Md., who was on the call.

In the end, Mr. Coates, who supports civil marriages for gay men and lesbians, said that most of the pastors, regardless of their views on this issue, agreed to “work aggressively” on behalf of the president’s campaign. But not everyone. “Gay marriage is contrary to their understanding of Scripture,” Mr. Coates said. “There are people who are really wrestling with this.”

In the hours following Mr. Obama’s politically charged announcement on Wednesday, the president and his team embarked on a quiet campaign to contain the possible damage among religious leaders and voters. He also reached out to one or more of the five spiritual leaders he calls regularly for religious guidance, and his aides contacted other religious figures who have been supportive in the past.

The damage-control effort underscored the anxiety among Mr. Obama’s advisers about the consequences of the president’s revised position just months before what is expected to be a tight re-election vote...

 

 

From Juan Williams:

 

Last week the First Husband and First Daddy, better known as President Obama, was asked if losing next year’s election would devastate him.      

“I’m sure there are days when I say one term is enough,” he told The Today Show. “Michelle and the kids are wonderful in that if I said ‘You know what guys I want to do something different,’ they would be fine. They are not invested in Daddy being president or my husband being president.” [...]

Whatever one’s political disagreements with President Obama may be, Republicans, Independents and Democrats -- all Americans -- can take pride in the fact that they have a President who is a devoted husband and loving father. As a dad he is a national treasure, a visual icon to remind us of the importance of fatherhood and family.

This President stands as a defiant daily contrast to the pop culture message that wealthy, strong, successful men are unattached to families. He is also a father who puts the lie to the image of fathers as dummies -- the bumbling, barely tolerated dads all over TV from Peter Griffin in ‘Family Guy’ to Homer Simpson.

Even if you can’t stand his policies, President Obama has consistently offered the nation the image of an intelligent, successful man who puts being a good husband and father first.

And the fact that he is a good father who leads a black family is even more important because the rate of absentee fathers in the black and Hispanic community amounts to a national crisis. [...]

President Obama made the importance of fatherhood a continuous theme of his 2008 presidential campaign that culminated in his election as the first black President of the United States.

It is very much to his credit that Obama has not abandoned his commitment to fatherhood as President -- both in his own life and in setting policy for the nation.Three years ago, Barack Obama spoke before a packed congregation at Chicago’s Apostolic Church of God, one of the largest black churches in the city. Then a candidate for president, he issued a clarion call about the need for black men to meet their responsibilities as husbands and fathers. [...]

On this Father’s Day, we can celebrate the president’s example and his wise words about fatherhood. America’s churches, schools and civic organizations all need to join in meaningful action to increase the number of good fathers...
 

 

Tammy Bruce again:

 

That said, we then wondered why Obama would really do it. We know he doesn’t give a damn about the issue, and oh sure, he’ll get a bit more cash from the left, but it really won’t even make a dent in what he wants to fund-raise or plans on spending. None of the swing-states at risk during the election were hanging by a thread on this issue (to say the least), and in fact this will likely hurt him in at least North Carolina and Virginia.

Then it dawned on me–Obama’s internal polls must show him losing to Romney, and handily. The latest Rasmussen certainly show the Golfer-in-Chief in trouble and behind the GOP nom. He must realize it’s over and is now simply looking to establish his “legacy,” while reinforcing leftist relationships he desperately wants to keep–like with Hollywood–after we kick his ass to the curb. For an obsessed, cynical and narcissistic president like Obama, he only makes moves that serve his agenda one way or another–and the only upside to this exists out of the White House. Liberal gays will vote for him anyway, and 1 in 6 of his top bundlers have already raised $500,000+ for him. I believe he’s frantic to not have his legacy be the truth–one of disaster brought by narcissism and incompetence, he hopes this sort of story, covers like Newsweek, will be the thing that allows him to walk away at least within his liberal/leftist base as not a complete pariah.

Even more telling–throughout this conversation in the table next to us were a couple of gay men. When I declared my realization that Obama knew he was out, it was, well, a little louder than I would have liked. The two fellows next to us looked over, and as I expected some snarky remark back, they both just looked depressed and then down at their very French appetizers. They knew, too, that they were being played by Obama and that as gays we were all now being saddled with a gigantic “gay friendly” failure of a Preezy.

 

.

 .

.

.

 

Selective abortions bad for our country? How much worse selective Christianity?

.

Madame's Nightshirt

Mrs. Peperium

.

.

 

 

The President, Gay unions, and the problem of selective Christianity

By: Msgr. Charles Pope

[Emphasis in red mine- Mrs. P]

The President’s disclosure that he now accepts so-called “Gay marriage” has received a good bit of political analysis. I am no political prognosticator and this is not a political blog. But when the President invokes Christ and the “golden rule,” to justify his decision, now I think we have something to discuss on a blog like this.

We have discussed at great length the problem with homosexual “marriage” before HERE,  HERE HERE, and HERE) there is no reason restate it all again. Just click through to read those sorts of articles. Further I make reference in this post to Scripture’s consistent teaching forbidding Homosexual acts. I do not set forth all the Scriptures here but you can read what I have set forth more fully here: Biblical Teaching on Homosexual Activity

In this post however lets consider the problematic appeal of the President to Jesus to affirm Gay “marriage.” Specifically Mr Obama said to ABC News:

…In the end the values that I care most deeply about and she [Michele] cares most deeply about is how we treat other people and, you know, I, you know, we are both practicing Christians and obviously this position may be considered to put us at odds with the views of others but, you know, when we think about our faith, the thing at root that we think about is, not only Christ sacrificing himself on our behalf, but it’s also the Golden Rule, you know, treat others the way you would want to be treated. And I think that’s what we try to impart to our kids and that’s what motivates me….[1]

It is a common problem today that people often present simplistic portraits of Jesus Christ to support a variety of agendas. And the portraits of Jesus are not only simplistic, they are incomplete (usually intentionally so), and fail to accept that Jesus cannot be reduced to a simple sentence or two.

I would argue this is what the President is doing here. As if to say, “Jesus, was basically a nice and affirming person, who spoke of Love,  and so beautifully and taught us to do unto to others as we would have them do to us. “Surely,” the thinking goes, “this Jesus would affirm and rejoice over two Gay people getting “married.”" It is as if this were all Jesus was or said, “Love…Do unto others”. Never mind that he had some pretty high standards when it came to sexuality (Matt 5:27-30; Matt 15:19; Mk 10:11; Rev 22:15; Rev 21:8) Never mind that he told his apostles he had other things to teach them and would send his Holy Spirit, and never mind that His Holy Spirit inspired the Epistles writers like Paul to speak clearly in the ancient Biblical tradition about the sinfulness of homosexual activity, fornication, and adultery [2]  “Never mind all that,” says the modern world, and our President, “I chose the Jesus who said only, ‘God is love, and be kind to one another.’”

And this is the textbook definition of heresy, to pick or choose. The English word derives from the Greek word hairesis, meaning to chose.

The essence of orthodoxy is in the balance [3, 4] and maintaining the tensions inherent in Jesus and the Christian message.  The essence of heresy is to pick and choose. And, as author Ross Douthat has ably demonstrated in his book Bad Religion – How we became a nation of heretics, there is a lot of heresy being peddled today. Heresy picks one, or perhaps several teachings, and emphasizes them in exclusion to other teachings which balance and complete them. And to be fair, as Douthat points out, heresy is not just a problem on the left side of the political or theological aisle. The right does it as well (e.g. prosperity gospel, easy justification for war etc).

The modern tendency on the left, from which the President speaks has been to reduce Jesus to a rather harmless hippie who went about talking about love and inclusion and healed people. Gone from this harmless and politically correct  Jesus are volumes of verses that help complete the picture: a Messiah who claimed authority in our lives, who spoke quite clearly of sin, yes even sexual sin, and who warned repeatedly of the coming judgment, and the reality not only heaven, but of hell.

But Jesus is not either of these descriptions alone, he is both. Orthodoxy is in the balance, not choosing one or the other or tipping in one direction.

In a masterful description, Ross Douthot shows the paradoxes and the necessary balances about Jesus and the faith with which true orthodoxy must wrestle and hold in tension:

Christianity is a paradoxical religion because the Jew of Nazareth is a paradoxical character. No figure in history or fiction contains as many multitudes as the New Testament’s Jesus. He’s a celibate ascetic who enjoys dining with publicans and changing water into wine at weddings. He’s an apocalyptic prophet one moment, a wise ethicist the next. He’s a fierce critic of Jewish religious law who insists that he’s actually fulfilling rather than subverting it. He preaches a reversal of every social hierarchy while deliberately avoiding explicitly political claims. He promises to set parents against children and then disallows divorce; he consorts with prostitutes while denouncing even lustful thoughts. He makes wild claims about his own relationship to God, and perhaps his own divinity, without displaying any of the usual signs of megalomania or madness. He can be egalitarian and hierarchical, gentle and impatient, extraordinarily charitable and extraordinarily judgmental. He sets impossible standards and then forgives the worst of sinners. He blesses the peacemakers and then promises that he’s brought not peace but the sword. He’s superhuman one moment; the next he’s weeping. And of course the accounts of his resurrection only heighten these paradoxes, by introducing a post-crucifixion Jesus who is somehow neither a resuscitated body nor a flitting ghost but something even stranger still—a being at once fleshly and supernatural, recognizable and transfigured, bearing the wounds of the crucifixion even as he passes easily through walls. (Kindle Edition Loc. 3005-16)

Douthat goes on to conclude:

The boast of Christian orthodoxy, as codified by the councils of the early Church and expounded in the Creeds, has always been its fidelity to the whole of Jesus…..[Where heresy says which one] Both, says orthodoxy….The goal of the great heresies, on the other hand, has often been to extract from the tensions of the gospel narratives a more consistent, streamlined, and noncontradictory Jesus. (Ibid).

Indeed a remarkable passage, even if I might quibble with a few words (e.g. the standards of Jesus moral vision are not “impossible” with grace). I would highly recommend the book and will be commenting on it some more in days ahead.

Disclaimer! - In saying the President is exemplifying heresy (i.e. pick and chose Christianity), I am alleging material heresy,  but I am not call (sic) him a heretic. It is not my role or in my competency to to declare someone a formal heretic.

But the President is clearly proclaiming a very partial and thus reconstructed Christ. The real Christ is, as Douthat ably notes, far more complicated and far less vague than the President would have us think. And there is far more to his teaching than the “Golden Rule.”

Another form of heresy common today is to pick and chose Scripture. The usual approach, especially in terms of homosexuality and sexual matters in general, is to reduce the entire New Testament to the verbal utterances of Jesus alone, a kind of “red letter” reductionism. This of course, denies the inspiration of the entire New Testament and, in effect, says that Acts, all the Epistles, and Revelation are not the Word of God, are not inspired, and may safely be ignored.

But this is heresy since we cannot pick and choose the books of the Bible, we cannot tear out pages, or cross out lines. Orthodoxy is to accept the whole of the Sacred Text, and to consider its claims with reference to the whole of Scripture and in keeping with its trajectory. For a Catholic, of course this is done in union with the Magisterium and Sacred Tradition.

Many supporters of homosexual behavior adopt this heresy by saying, “Jesus never said a word about or against Homosexuality.” True, but he also never said a word about a lot of things: drinking to excess, beating one’s wife, he never forbade ethnic humor, or said people should wear clothes, He never declared how big and how much money should be spent on the military etc, whether Government should provide welfare etc. Since Jesus did not say out of his own mouth we cannot beat our wives then it must be okay to beat them? Of course not. An argument from silence is very poor and unhelpful.

Further it is heresy to say divine revelation closed with the ascension of Jesus. Rather it continues unto the death of the last apostle. The Epistles are every bit the Word of the Lord, and authored by the Same Holy Spirit as are the Gospels. We cannot pick and choose what we like.

To be clear, the reading of Scripture is not a purely mechanistic endeavor. For example, merely pulling proof texts out of thin air, and out of context is wrong, for that too is often heresy – picking one thing, forgetting the rest.

Rather, Scripture is to be read in a way which respects the overall trajectory of the Scriptures as God leads his people through stages to Christ. Therefore certain things are operative early in Scripture (e.g. certain feasts, dietary laws and punitive measures) that later fall away or are fulfilled. Thus Passover is fulfilled and subsumed into the Eucharist, Jesus cancels dietary laws by declaring all foods clean, the application of stoning and other severe punishments are curtailed etc. But all these organic developments take place in Scripture itself, and can be observed there.

However, there ARE teachings (notably the Divine Moral Law) that remain unchanged and are continuously articulated at every stage of Biblical revelation. They do not undergo change or fall away.

Regarding sexuality, at no stage in the Old Testament all the way through to the end of the New Testament, is fornication or adultery affirmed. The same is true for homosexual acts. At no stage, anywhere in Sacred Scripture are homosexual acts or fornication, or adultery ever affirmed, nor are these acts described as anything but sinful (e.g. Leviticus 18: 22; Lev 20:13; Gen 19; 1 Corinthians 6-9; 1 Tim 1:8-11; Rom 1:19ff, inter al).

Thus orthodoxy, which holds to the whole and does not pick and choose Scripture, must in every way accept and announce that these are sinful acts, sinful enough to exclude one from the Kingdom if they are not repented of (e.g. 1 Cor 6:9).

Simply ushering in a “Jesus is love” argument cannot override texts like these. For the same Scripture which says, God is love, also contains these teachings forbidding extra-marital sex and a host of other moral teachings. The Biblical record sees no essential conflict in saying both “God is love” and “Fornication, Adultery, and Homosexual acts are sinfully wrong.” Thus neither should we have a problem. Orthodoxy says “both.”  Heresy says, “there is tension here and I am going to resolve it by picking the concept I like and excluding the other.”

The orthodox approach accepts the tension and sees a Christ who loves sinners (us) and holds them close, but who also summons us to repentance and a life that is increasingly free from sin and conformed to the truth by his grace .

I don’t know how the President will fare politically, but he has flunked theology and is, if you ask me (and even if you don’t) refashioned Jesus for his own purpose.

 

.

.

.

God and Man at Georgetown

.

Madame's Nightshirt

Mrs. Peperium

.

 

 From The Cardinal Newman Society:

The Georgetown Eight Ask That Sebelius Invitation Be Rescinded

Patrick J. Deneen, who is soon to leave his post as Associate Professor of Government at Georgetown University, has launched a campaign to obtain Georgetown faculty signatures on a letter asking Georgetown President John J. DeGioia  to rescind an invitation to “pro-choice” HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to speak at the Jesuit university on commencement day.

Sebelius’s HHS promulgated the mandate that faith-based institutions must provide health insurance policies that cover contraception and abortifacients, regardless of their moral objections to these practices.

Calling the invitation to speak on commencement day “one of the greatest honors that a University community can bestow upon an individual,” the letter says, “Secretary Sebelius’s role in crafting and advancing the HHS mandate that would require religious institutions to offer insurance coverage that would provide abortion-inducing drugs, sterilization and contraceptives, makes her a profoundly objectionable choice.”

Only eight members of the Georgetown faculty besides Deneen himself have signed the letter, which Deneen plans to present to President DeGioia late this afternoon, have signed so far. Deneen remains technically a member of the Georgetown faculty until May 30.

Georgetown has 2, 173 full- and part-time  faculty (not including other staff). So 8 is 0.4 percent of the university’s faculty.

 “There really aren’t a lot of faculty members at Georgetown who would sign a letter like this,” Deneen told The Cardinal Newman Society. “That’s very sad.”

Deneen announced earlier this year that he was resigning his position at Georgetown over concerns that the university has lost its Catholic identity. He has accepted a position at the University of Notre Dame.

 “Once I had made that announcement, I didn’t intend to make any further public statements about the decisions and activities at Georgetown. But this [invitation to Sebelius] was just so scandalous,” Deneen said in a telephone interview. Deneen wrote the letter on Sunday and has been trying to get signatures since.

 “I’m in touch with a lot of graduates of Georgetown,” he said, “and the thing I’ve been hearing from them is, ‘I keep telling people it’s not as bad as it seems [at Georgetown]. But this decision changes that.’”

In addition to the general “Dear Colleague” letter, Deneen crafted a special letter and invited signatures from the nearly 90 members of the Georgetown faculty and administration members who sent Rep. Paul Ryan a letter challenging his interpretation of Catholic social teaching before Ryan spoke at the university.

Deneen reminded those who wrote to chastise Ryan that they had invoked the authority of Church teaching in doing so:

According to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops – whose letters you approvingly cite in your open letter to Congressman Ryan – the HHS mandate constitutes a grave infringement upon the religious liberty at the heart of the tradition of Catholic Social Thought.  Indeed, Francis Cardinal George of Chicago has stated his fear that under the HHS mandate, all Catholic hospitals and schools – including universities – will either have to be closed or secularized.  At the heart of the tradition of Catholic Social Thought is the role of the servant Church itself, a role that is now under threat.  We believe it is altogether inappropriate for Georgetown to accord the architect of the HHS mandate the honor that is implied by an invitation to speak at Commencement exercises.

No word yet on how many of the 90 will sign this letter.

 

The answer to how many signed from The Cardinal Newman Society:

 

Georgetown Professors Oppose Sebelius, Others Support Contraception

Georgetown Associate Professor of Government Patrick Deneen told The Cardinal Newman Society this morning [May 10] that he “just hit the send” button on his joint faculty letter asking Georgetown President John J. DeGioia to rescind an invitation to “pro-choice” HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to speak at the Jesuit university on commencement day.

Sebelius’ HHS promulgated the mandate that would force faith-based institutions to pay for health insurance coverage that includes contraception and abortifacients, regardless of their moral objections to these practices.

The number of signers of the letter has not increased since Deneen’s campaign was reported yesterday: eight, plus Deneen himself, who will soon be leaving Georgetown for the University of Notre Dame. Three Jesuits signed. (The text of the letter and names of signers are included below.)

As noted yesterday, Georgetown has 2,173 full- and part-time faculty (not including other staff). So eight is just 0.4 percent of the university’s faculty.

Interestingly, Deneen made a special effort to obtain signatures of the nearly 90 Georgetown faculty and administration members who signed a letter last month to Rep. Paul Ryan, chiding him for what they called “misuse of Catholic teaching” when the Chairman of the House Budget Committeepoke at Georgetown in April.

Tally: Only one signer of the Ryan letter was willing to sign Deneen’s.

“It’s fascinating,” Deneen said, “because I received in several instances email replies from signers of the Ryan letter stating that they disagree with the Church’s teaching on contraception.”

Deneen found this ironic because the letter to Congressman Ryan cited Catholic social teaching as the signers’ rationale for criticizing Ryan’s budget proposals.

“That is the reality—where it is convenient for them, people will invoke Church teaching without having a commitment to it,” Deneen said.

Deneen announced earlier this year that he was resigning his post at Georgetown over concerns about the university’s Catholic identity. The professor said that he was grading papers, packing to move, and helping his children get ready to leave, but that he “dropped everything” when it was announced that Sebelius had been invited to speak at Georgetown.

Here is the letter:

Dear President DeGioia:

The invitation to serve as a speaker during commencement exercises is one of the greatest honors that a University community can bestow upon an individual. Such invitations do much more than recognize the accomplishments of honorees; they constitute a statement by our community of the esteem in which we hold their words and actions. Our community presents such speakers as models to our graduates at the culmination of their years of study at Georgetown. As you put it so well: “Our commencement speakers are exceptional individuals … who will provide inspiration for our students as they envision more clearly the impact they can make in the world.”

For this reason, we, the undersigned members of the Georgetown University academic community, wish to state our belief that it was a grave and serious mistake—indeed, a scandalous one—for Georgetown to invite Health and Human Services Department Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to serve as speaker before the 2012 graduating class of the Georgetown Public Policy Institute. Secretary Sebelius’s role in crafting and advancing the HHS mandate that requires religious institutions to offer insurance coverage that would provide abortion-inducing drugs, sterilization and contraceptives, makes her a profoundly objectionable choice. To afford Secretary Sebelius the singular honor that is accorded in this invitation, especially in the context of the ongoing efforts of the Catholic bishops and many Catholic faithful, joined by eminent leaders of the Protestant, Jewish, and Muslim communities—effectively implies endorsement by Georgetown of the grave and dangerous assault upon religious liberty that the mandate constitutes. In truth, it is difficult to believe that the according of this honor to Secretary Sebelius was motivated by anything other than a desire to send a message of endorsement.

The Ad Hoc Committee on Religious Liberty of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has issued a powerful statement defending the primacy of religious freedom as “the first liberty,” that liberty that makes possible all others. It notes with special attention the threat that is posed to this “first liberty” by the HHS mandate as proposed, and even as amended, by Secretary Sebelius. As the Bishops write in their report entitled “Our First, Most Cherished Liberty” (http://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/religious-liberty/our-first-most-cherished-liberty.cfm) – indeed, invoking the example of Georgetown’s founder, Bishop John Carroll S.J. – the robust protection of religious liberty “is our American heritage, our most cherished freedom. If we are not free in our conscience and our practice of religion, all other freedoms are fragile. If our obligations and duties to God are impeded, or even worse, contradicted by the government, then we can no longer claim to be a land of the free.” The USCCB states that “the mandate of the Department of Health and Human Services has been met with our vigorous and united opposition.” Georgetown, the nation’s oldest Catholic university, should be joining the Church’s leaders in this opposition; its administration and faculty should certainly not be honoring the mandate’s leading architect.

Further, we note that the Catholic bishops of the United States addressed precisely the issue before us in their 2004 document, Catholics in Political Life. What they had to say could not be clearer: The Catholic community and Catholic institutions should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles. They should not be given awards, honors or platforms which would suggest support for their actions.

We prayerfully implore you to revisit the invitation to Secretary Sebelius. It would be a mistake to confuse the honorific and hortatory role of a commencement event speaker with the legitimate exchange of ideas in the daily life and activities of the university. We respectfully request that you withdraw this invitation to Secretary Sebelius.

Sincerely,

Patrick J. Deneen

Associate Professor

Tsakopoulos-Kounalakis Chair in Hellenic Studies

Founding Director, The Tocqueville Forum on the Roots of American Democracy

Department of Government


Kevin Doak

Professor and Nippon Foundation Endowed Chair

Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures
 

The Rev. Stephen M. Fields, S.J.

Associate Professor, Historical/Philosophical Theology

Department of Theology


Edward J. Finn

Professor (Emeritus)

Department of Physics


The Rev. Mark G. Henninger, S.J.

Professor

Martin Chair of Medieval Philosophy

Department of Philosophy


Mark C. Murphy

Professor

McDevitt Chair of Religious Philosophy

Department of Philosophy


John Pfordresher

Professor

Department of English


The Rev. James V. Schall, S.J.

Professor

Department of Government


Wilfried Ver Eecke

Professor

Department of Philosophy

 

 

From Yale Alumni Magazine:

 

The heart of God and Man at Yale is Buckley's assertion "that the duel between Christianity and atheism is the most important in the world [and] … that the struggle between individualism and collectivism is the same struggle reproduced on another level." He said that influential Yale faculty and the university itself were leading students to join the side of evil in both aspects of this struggle. The fate of the university and indeed of the nation was at stake. The solution was for the faculty to be required to inculcate belief in Christ and to explain the evil of "collectivism," defined as government restrictions on the economy. The orders should come ultimately from the alumni via the Corporation—as the owners of Yale and employers of both the faculty and the administration.

Academic freedom, in the '50s as today, was a cherished concept in higher education, with origins early in the first universities in Europe, although it was not widely acknowledged in the United States until the twentieth century. For Buckley, it was hypocrisy and should be abolished. "Freedomites" (his word) were simply hiding their misconduct behind a false claim. Faculty should owe their positions not to academic freedom, but to alumni. To quote:

The faculty of Yale is morally and constitutionally responsible to the trustees of Yale, who are in turn responsible to the alumni, and thus duty bound to transmit to their students the wisdom, insight, and value judgments which in the trustees' opinion will enable the American citizen to make the optimum adjustment to the community and to the world. … The trustees of Yale, along with the vast majority of the alumni, are committed to the desirability of fostering both a belief in God, and a recognition of the merits of our economic system. … It was the clear responsibility of the trustees to guide the teaching at Yale toward those ends.

 

 

According to The WaPo, as of April 2011, there were 55-60 Jesuits at Gerogetown. Only 3 of them objected to the invitation of Sebelius. In the 1700's the Jesuits were disbanded for a few decades by the Vatican as they were meddling too much into politics.

History may just have to repeat itself.

 

..

.

 

 

About last night....

.

Madame's Nightshirt

Mrs. Peperium

.

 

Amendment One passed in North Carolina:

 

Sec. 6. Marriage. Marriage between one man and one woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this State. This section does not prohibit a private party from entering into contracts with another private party; nor does this section prohibit courts from adjudicating the rights of private parties pursuant to such contracts.

 

 

The Hill:

 

President Obama's campaign said he was "disappointed" that North Carolina voters approved a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage in the state.

"The President has long opposed divisive and discriminatory efforts to deny rights and benefits to same sex couples," Obama North Carolina campaign spokesman Cameron French said, in a Tuesday statement on the vote over Amendment 1.

 
“He believes the North Carolina measure singles out and discriminates against committed gay and lesbian couples, which is why he did not support it,"

 

The Corner:

 

The Margin of Victory in North Carolina

By Maggie Gallagher

May 9, 2012

2006, in Virginia, with a similarly worded marriage amendment, the people approved it by a vote of 57 percent to 42 percent. Six years later, in a similar southern swing state, the people approved it by an even larger margin 61 to 39 percent. Progress.

 

The Corner:

 

Marriage Beats Non-Marriage 61-39 in N.C.

By Maggie Gallagher

May 9, 2012

Even Public Policy Polling (a Democratic firm), which showed marriage amendment passing by 16 points right before the election, were shocked by the massive victory for the North Carolina marriage amendment, admitting via tweet: “Hate to say it, but I don’t believe polls showing support for gay marriage nationally. Any times there is a vote it doesn’t back it up.”

Actual margin of victory: 22 points, in a swing state which backed Obama in 2008.

 

Liberal TWITTER freakout over North Carolina. So much for civility and moral and intellectual superiority.

.

.

 

 The Daily Kos:

 

Forty years ago, Dick Lugar was called "Richard Nixon's favorite mayor" for his support of turning control of some federal programs to local communities. Despite Nixon's ignominious departure two years later, the label didn't seem to hurt Lugar as he won a seat in the U.S. Senate from Indiana in 1976. He's been there ever since. Now, campaigning for his seventh term, the 80-year-old Lugar has collected a new label from right-wingers: "Obama's favorite Republican."
On Tuesday, the Club for Growth will begin airing a 30-second TV ad and two 60-second radio spots. The TV ad backs state Treasurer Richard Mourdock in the primary, pointedly calling him “The Conservative Choice For Senate.” In one of the radio spots, the narrator says: “Dick Lugar might be a statesman, but he’s not a conservative [...] Lugar voted to raise the gas tax. Voted for the Wall Street bailout. The Fannie Mae bailout. He even voted to put taxpayers at risk bailing out New York City. [...] Lugar voted for each and every every Obama Supreme Court Justice. [...] Indiana conservatives deserve better than Obama’s favorite Republican."

The National Rifle Association has a laundry list of things Lugar has done to irk the organization dating back to Lugar's support for the 1993 assault-rifle ban. Of the seven other Republicans who voted for the ban, only Dan Coats, also of Indiana, is in the Senate.

The deep-voiced narrator of the NRA ad, which also backs Mourdock, says that some things, like "Indiana values" and "the protection of our Second Amendment and hunting rights" shouldn't change. "But over 36 years in Washington, Dick Lugar has changed. He's become the only Republican candidate in Indiana with an F rating from the NRA." The ad buy in that case will be in the six figures.

These attacks added to the fact that Lugar hasn't owned a home in Indiana for nearly 25 years and has spent less than 15 percent of his time in Indiana during his 35 years in the Senate, plus attacks from social conservative groups like the forced-birthers of Indiana Right to Life, the Tea Party Express and the tea party-connected FreedomWorks, and an approval rating below 50 percent, could give the senator a rough go of it in the May 8 primary. Quite the turnaround for someone who has never faced a primary opponent before and didn't even have a Democrat running against him 2006.

“What we’re really seeing here is the erosion of the patience that American voters have historically had,” says former Utah senator Bob Bennett, a nominal conservative whose shocking ouster at his party’s 2010 state convention sent a terrifying message to incumbents everywhere. “The comment being made … is, ‘Well, you haven’t gotten it done for 36 years. What makes you think you can finally get it done in the next six years?’”

What we're really seeing here is more of the effort to dump another moderate seen to be tainting the ranks of a party becoming ever more extremist in platform and temperament.

.

 

.

The Daily Caller:

Obama, Biden lament Lugar loss as damaging to bipartisanship

Biden are throwing flower-wrapped bricks at the GOP this morning, following the unsurprising primary loss by six-term Republican Sen. Richard Lugar.

“While Dick and I didn’t always agree on everything… he was often willing to reach across the aisle and get things done,” said an Obama statement released Tuesday night by the White House.

“The Senate lost a brilliant strategic mind, a man with absolute integrity,” Biden’s office tweeted out May 9. “He will be missed.”

The lavish praise sets up other Democrats to slam GOP activists and their tea party allies as extremists, following the successful campaign to replace Lugar with the conservative Richard Mourdock.

Democratic partisan Paul Begala was on the job before midnight.

“With Lugar’s defeat can we finally stop repeating the dishonest trope that both parties are equally to blame for hyperpartisanship?” he tweeted out late Tuesday night. Begala is a senior adviser for Obama’s SuperPAC, Priorities USA Action.

That’s also the portrayal being pushed by Obama’s campaign, whose television attack ads feature tea party activists.


His new ad, “Go,” for example, shows a person dressed in 19th century costume — a visible feature of many tea party protests — while the announcer declares “some said out best days were behind us.”

The ad then declares that Obama trusts Americans. “He believed in us.”

Obama’s current praise for Lugar follows three years during which Obama has slammed Senate GOP members as hard-edged partisans whenever they disagreed with his priorities. Throughout the second half of 2011, for example, Obama argued that the GOP puts “party before country,” and threatened to damage the nation’s credit rating for partisan advantage.

But Obama’s election strategy seeks to portray the GOP and Gov. Mitt Romney as servants of the wealthy, indifferent to Americans’ concerns and eager to block “progress” offered by the Democrats.

Obama’s post-primary praise for Lugar helps that pitch. “My administration’s efforts to secure the world’s most dangerous weapons has been based on the work that Senator Lugar began… he comes from a tradition of strong, bipartisan leadership on national security that helped us prevail in the Cold War and sustain American leadership ever since,” he said.

“He has served his constituents and his country well, and I wish him all the best in his future endeavors,” Obama added.

 

.

 

.

From InBusinessWisconsin:

 

Sing it, recallers! The thrill is gone

Sing it with Mr. B.B. King!

Tuesday’s recall election was a giant repudiation of Big Labor. It was a huge smackdown of the union bosses by a Wisconsin that is 86.5% non-union and tired of all the whining. Gov. Scott Walker was the real winner last night.

The air is out of the recall balloon. The government employee unions’ anointed one, Kathleen Falk, was routed big-time. Their cause? In tatters. Their followers, dazed and dispirited.

Tom Barrett routed The Kathleen 58% to 34% in the Democrats’ gubernatorial primary precisely because he did not sell his soul to the government labor unions. (In Dane County, where people know Falk best, he won 62% to 31%!)

That was expected. Here is the shocker: With no reason for Republicans to vote, Gov. Scott Walker darn near got more votes than the four Democrats combined – 626,538 to 665,436. And how many of his supporters went for Falk in a mischief vote is an open question. What’s more, the Democrats managed to attract only two-thirds as many votes as the 900,000 who signed the recall petitions. Why did almost 300,000 people stay home?

Wisconsin isn’t drinking the unions’ Kool Aid

.

 

The Daily Mail:

 

How unpopular can Obama get? Texas INMATE gets 40 per cent of votes against President in West Virginia primary
Prisoner Keith Judd got 40% of vote in West Virginia to Obama's 60%
Inmate 11593-051 got on ballot by paying $2,500 fee and filing forms
Attracting 15% of vote normally qualifies candidate for a delegate to the Democratic National Convention

Just how unpopular is President Obama in some parts of the country? Enough that a man in a Texas prison received four out of 10 votes in West Virginia's Democratic presidential primary.

Inmate Keith Judd, 53, is serving 17 years for extortion at the Beaumont Federal Correctional Institution. He was sentenced in 1999 for making threats against the University of New Mexico and is due to be released on June 24 next year.

With 93 per cent of precincts reporting, Obama was receiving just under 60 per cent of the vote to Judd's 40 per cent.

For some West Virginia Democrats, simply running against Obama is enough to get Judd - or Inmate Number 11593-051 - votes.

'I voted against Obama,' said Ronnie Brown, a 43-year-old electrician from Cross Lanes who called himself a conservative Democrat.

'I don't like him. He didn't carry the state before and I'm not going to let him carry it again.'

When asked which presidential candidate he voted for, Brown said: 'That guy out of Texas.'

Judd was able to get on the state ballot by paying a $2,500 fee and filing a form known as a notarized certification of announcement, said Jake Glance, a spokesman for the Secretary of State's office.
According to the Charleston Gazette, Judd circulated his political standpoints to local media. These include opposing national health care reform on the grounds that it violates the 10th Amendment. [...]

Mr Brown, the Cross Lanes electrician, went to the polls on Tuesday with his 22-year-old daughter, Emily. She planned to vote for Judd too until she found out where Judd has been living.

'I'm not voting for somebody who's in prison,' she said.

However she was certain about one thing: 'I just want to vote against Barack Obama.'

 

Big Government:

Everywhere there was a primary last night, Democrats had a very bad night, especially in West Virginia where a prison inmate won over 40% of the vote against Barack Obama. Naturally, because Democrats simply refuse to face the reality of this failed administration, the cry of racism was heard even before the polls closed. Only this time the Democrats' charge of racism was directed at fellow Democrats:

Democrats in the state attributed Obama's problems to his race, and sought to counter that with an unusually blunt campaign message in October, seeking — unsuccessfully — to convince white Democrats to vote for the African-American candidate. Primary exit polls found that 20% of white voters in West Virginia cited race as a factor in their overwhelming support for Hillary Clinton, the most in any state.

No, not 20% of white voters -- 20% of white DEMOCRAT voters -- cited race as a factor in 2008.

But that doesn’t explain why over 40% of voters voted against Obama in favor of an unknown federal prisoner currently serving time for extortion and threats against a university.

This is much less a vote against Obama based on his skin color and much more a sign of deep-seated discontent with a divisive President who has failed decisively in every imaginable arena. And as of now, West Virginia's Democrat Governor and U.S. Senator have both declined to give Obama their support in November, as well.

There was also bad news for team Obama here in North Carolina, a state Obama won in 2008 and where he's holding his convention this year. Last night, nearly 21% of North Carolina Democrats chose "no preference" over the President.
Are they racist?

How do we know "no preference" isn't a gay, black single mother with dyslexia and a glass eye?

Let the Democrats declare their own rural, working class voters racist. There's room for them on the right, and as long as Obama blames his woes on everything but his own failed policies, that also works in our favor.

.

 

 

Obama, rallying what's left of his base&party, come October.

 

.

.

 

 

 

Real Indian skeletons found in Elizabeth Warren's closet.

 

.

Madame's Nightshirt

Mrs. Peperium

.

 

.

Cruel irony in Elizabeth Warren's Cherokee saga

By William A. Jacobson

May 8, 2012

Throughout her career and political campaign, Elizabeth Warren has found victims everywhere she looked, including when she looked in the mirror and saw an alleged descendant of one of the most historically victimized groups, Native Americans.

In what may be the ultimate and cruelest irony, not only is it unlikely that Elizabeth Warren’s great-great-great grandmother was Cherokee, it turns out that Warren’s great-great-great grandfather was a member of a militia unit which participated in the round-up of the Cherokees in the prelude to the Trail of Tears.

The evidence resulted from a tip provided by a Legal Insurrection reader to a genealogical compilation of militia members who allegedly participated in the removal of the Cherokees from Georgia.  The list included the name Jonathan Crawford, who was the husband of O.C. Sarah Smith, the person the Warren campaign has identified as Warren’s great-great-great grandmother and allegedly Cherokee.

Since confirming this genealogical information was outside my comfort zone, I forwarded the information to author and genealogist Michael Patrick Leahy, who already had written about and investigated Warren’s genealogy.

Leahy reaches the conclusion, based on a variety of sources, that Jonathan Crawford was indeed a member of the militia which rounded up Cherokees in the prelude to the Trail of Tears.

Leahy lays out the evidence supporting his conclusion in a post at Breitbart.com,

Elizabeth Warren Ancestor Rounded Up Cherokees for Trail of Tears:

But the most stunning discovery about the life of O.C. Sarah Smith Crawford is that her husband, Ms. Warren’s great-great-great grandfather, was apparently a member of the Tennessee Militia who rounded up Cherokees from their family homes in the Southeastern United States and herded them into government-built stockades in what was then called Ross’s Landing (now Chattanooga), Tennessee—the point of origin for the horrific Trail of Tears, which began in January, 1837.

Why is this the ultimate and cruelest irony?

Who Warren’s great-great-great grandparents were or what they did should be irrelevant, except that Warren has incorporated “lore” about those victimized ancestors into her own personal, professional and, now, political narratives.

Recall the background.

In the mid-1980′s through the mid-1990′s Elizabeth Warren filled out biographical forms for the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) identifying herself as Native American.

That self-designation was based solely on Warren’s family “lore” not genealogical research, and resulted in Warren being included on a list of “Minority Law Professors” in the AALS annual directory.  That listing would have put Warren in a position to benefit from the desire of law schools to diversify their faculties.

Warren apparently did nothing else to follow up on her alleged heritage, such as seeking tribal membership or publicly identifying herself as Native American, even though she says her alleged Native American heritage was a frequent topic of family conversation.

When The Boston Herald discovered that Harvard Law School in 1996 was promoting Warren as Native American, Warren pleaded ignorance, and denied ever identifying as Native American in any professional capacity.

When law professor David Bernstein discovered the AALS annual directories, Warren then asserted that she listed herself that way in order to meet other Native Americans.  That explanation made no sense since the AALS annual directories only list the category “minority,” not which minority.  Warren also never has explained why she stopped listing herself as Native American in the AALS annual directory after joining Harvard Law.

Shortly after the controversy broke, the Warren campaign asserted that Warren’s great-great-great grandmother, O.C. Sarah Smith, may have been Cherokee based on an electronic index of a marriage license filled out by O.C. Sarah Smith’s son.  That would make Warren 1/32 Cherokee, a notion which has formed the basis for Warren’s defense of her AALS listing, even though Warren was not aware of the 1/32 Cherokee connection until recently.

But further scrutiny caused that 1/32 connection to be called into question, since none of the source documents confirmed that O.C. Sarah Smith was Cherokee.  According to Leahy, there is no credible evidence that O.C. Sarah Smith was Cherokee, and the best evidence is that O.C. Smith was at least partially of Swedish descent.

The entire episode has led to claims that Warren tried to game the system, to take flimsy family “lore” and spin it into minority status to help Warren in climbing the law school ladder all the way to Harvard Law School, which touted Warren’s Native American status at a time when it was under intense pressure to hire more minority law professors.  To this day Harvard Law says it has a single Native American law professor, although it will not identify if Warren is that person.

Where are we as of this writing?

Warren’s Native American self-narrative has not held up to scrutiny, so far.  Worse still, that narrative has revealed a cruel irony in the form of Warren’s great-great-great grandfather, who was a member of the militia which rounded up the Cherokees in the prelude to the Trail of Tears.

-- Professor Jacobson

Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren, fending off questions about whether she used her Native American heritage to advance her career, said today she enrolled herself as a minority in law school directories for nearly a decade because she hoped to meet other people with tribal roots.

“I listed myself in the directory in the hopes that it might mean that I would be invited to a luncheon, a group something that might happen with people who are like I am. Nothing like that ever happened, that was clearly not the use for it and so I stopped checking it off,”

-- Elizabeth Warren

 

"The important thing is the Warren story illustrates the rottenness of our system of racial quotas and preferences"

-- Michael Barone, Comedic Counting By Race

 

.

.

Georgetown is as overrated as Obama.

.

Madame's Nightshirt

Mrs. Peperium

.

 

 

 

Obama speaks @ Georgetown May 3, 2009

with IHS covered up at Obama's insistence.

 

From Georgetown's website:

 

Georgetown University is one of the world’s leading academic and research institutions, offering a unique educational experience that prepares the next generation of global citizens to lead and make a difference in the world. We are a vibrant community of exceptional students, faculty, alumni and professionals dedicated to real-world applications of our research, scholarship, faith and service.

Established in 1789, Georgetown is the nation’s oldest Catholic and Jesuit university. Drawing upon this legacy, we provide students with a world-class learning experience focused on educating the whole person through exposure to different faiths, cultures and beliefs.  With our Jesuit values and location in Washington, D.C., Georgetown offers students a distinct opportunity to learn, experience and understand more about the world.

 

From Georgetown's Public Policy Institute's [GPPI] website :

 

Welcome to the Georgetown Public Policy Institute, one of the top-ranked public policy schools in the U.S. according to U.S. News & World Report.

At GPPI, we are training tomorrow’s policy leaders today. Our mission is to teach our students to help design smart policies and put them into practice in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors, in the U.S. and around the world.

And a message from GPPI's current Dean:

 

Georgetown's Jesuits tradition places service to others at the very core of our mission and makes educating the whole person a central tenant of our approach.  This mission sets us apart from the rest and moves us to cultivate an environment in which students can grow, thrive, and tackle today's most pressing policy problems with knowledge and compassion.

.

Two weeks ago at GPPI:

 

Ryan vs. Georgetown

By George Weigel

There is snobbery, and then there is academic snobbery.

Snobbery is often instinctual and inadvertent, and if it’s cruel, it’s the cruelty of the unthinking. Academic snobbery is deliberately cutting, snarky, intended to wound, and usually clumsy in asserting its own superiority.

Snobbery was the immediate reaction of English historian Christopher Dawson’s mother to the news of her son’s impending conversion to Catholicism: Mrs. Dawson wasn’t bothered so much by questions of doctrine, she told her son, but by the sad fact that he’d “now be going to church with the [Irish] help.” Academic snobbery is the letter from more than 80 Georgetown faculty members delivered to Representative Paul Ryan (R., Wis.), prior to his delivering the university’s annual Whittington Lecture on April 26. In that letter, the Hoya pedagogues not-so-subtly suggested that Ryan was a Catholic ignoramus, presumed to instruct the congressman on the meaning of the Catholic social ethical principle of subsidiarity, and concluded on an arch note, redolent of tenured arrogance: “Along with this letter, we have included a copy of the Vatican’s Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, commissioned by John Paul II, to help deepen your understanding of Catholic social teaching.”

(And if you’re a good boy, Paul, we might let you audit Georgetown courses on Catholic social doctrine; that would help you better understand colleagues on the Hill such as Nancy Pelosi, Dick Durbin, Barbara Mikulski, and Rosa DeLauro.)

The Georgetown letter’s substance, to stretch a term, is the same old, same old: a bedraggled catalogue of complaints about the Ryan budget “gutting” various federal programs, with results the Hoyas promise will be “devastating.” Those with memories that reach back into the mid-1990s will remember the same apocalyptic warnings coming from the same intellectual quarters about federal welfare reform; those warnings were accompanied by, indeed based on, the same simplistic understanding of the Catholic “preferential option for the poor” as a preference for more and more government. The welfare apocalypse never happened. Empowerment strategies helped end patterns of welfare dependency. But you will learn none of this from the Hoyas, for one of the other notable features of academic snobbery is its addendum to Love Story moral theology: Moral superiority means never having to say you’re sorry (or wrong).

The Georgetown letter also embodied the Catholic Left’s unfortunate habit of cherry-picking papal statements. No one risks contradiction by suggesting that the election of Joseph Ratzinger as Pope Benedict XVI seven years ago caused mass heartburn on the Georgetown faculty. Yet here are seven dozen or so Georgetown faculty members quoting Benedict XVI at Paul Ryan: “Subsidiarity must remain closely linked to the principle of solidarity and vice versa.”

Alas, for the rhetorical force of that presumed pontifical slam dunk on the Ryan budget, that was precisely the point Paul Ryan had made on EWTN’s The World Over on April 20. Perhaps on the well-founded assumption that EWTN is not required viewing at Georgetown, Ryan drove the point home again in his Whittington Lecture. Insisting that America needed a better approach to poverty than the Obama spend-a-thon (which, he argued, was accelerating a “debt crisis in which the poor would be hurt the first and the worst”), Ryan proposed that a new approach “should be based on the twin virtues of solidarity and subsidiarity — virtues that, when taken together, revitalize civil society instead of displacing it.”

Thus, Ryan demonstrated that he is entirely familiar with the social doctrine of John Paul II, with its insistence on what the pope called “the subjectivity of society” — what the Anglosphere calls “civil society.” Civil society, Catholic social doctrine insists, is an essential component in shaping free politics, free economics, and the vibrant public moral culture needed to bend the energies of democracy and the market toward empowerment, inclusion, and genuine human flourishing. And that brings us to another facet of recent papal social teaching that the Georgetown faculty might consider more carefully: the warnings John Paul II raised about the corrosive effects of the “Social Assistance State” on the moral sinews of the free society, a process of deterioration the pope saw at work in Europe toward the end of his life.

Adapting themes from John Paul II in the 2003 apostolic letter Ecclesia in Europa [The Church in Europe] and Benedict XVI in his 2011 address to the German Bundestag, Paul Ryan has carefully measured history’s verdict in Europe. The massive and increasing space that national governments and Brussels occupy in European public life has further constricted the already-sclerotic associational and philanthropic instincts of Europeans. And the decay of those instincts has helped erode the political culture that makes rational democratic decision-making possible (cf. Greece; Italy; etc.). Ryan, applying history to his reading of the implications of Catholic social doctrine, argues that the United States need not go down that road and can combine compassion with fiscal responsibility and a vibrant civil society. He has also laid out a path toward that end and is quite prepared to debate and modify his proposals when persuaded that there are better ways forward. Have the Georgetown faculty who wrote Ryan forgotten that one of the great achievements of modern Catholic intellectual life is the dialogue between history (Blessed John XXIII’s “great teacher of life”) and theology? That’s not an unreasonable conclusion to draw from their letter, in which men and women who imagine themselves  Ryan’s moral and intellectual superiors ignore the evidence of contemporary history and thus have little to add to the debate but a tattered defense of failed public-policy strategies and programs — a defense made even more implausible by its insouciance about fthe debt crisis and its burdening of the poor.

Paul Ryan knows that Catholic social doctrine is not some sort of doughnut machine that plops out ready-made answers to complex questions of public policy. There is no — repeat, no — direct line from the principles of Catholic social doctrine to judgments on levels of WIC funding, food-stamp funding, or Pell Grant funding, three issues on which the Georgetown faculty claims moral certainty when the relevant mode of moral analysis is prudential judgment. Ryan knows that and is prepared to explain why that’s the case. That willingness, plus Ryan’s refusal to concede the moral high ground to the Catholic Left in the public-policy debate, plus the intelligence, good humor, and conviction he brings to these arguments, helps explain why he’s the Catholic Left’s worst nightmare. The Catholic Left recognizes that; and thus, predictably, things have turned chippy, even ugly.

In one of its nastier moments, the Hoya professoriate suggested that Ryan misconstrues the core Catholic social-ethical principle of subsidiarity as “a free pass to dismantle government programs and abandon the poor to their own devices.” Bosh, and arrogant bosh at that. Whatever else you may think of Paul Ryan, he is an uncommonly well-informed congressman and a thoroughly decent man; to suggest that he has so grotesquely distorted (or, in the words of the Georgetown letter, “profoundly misread”) Church teaching for callous ends is snobbery compounded by calumny.

What Ryan has in fact done is to follow Benedict XVI and push the subsidiarity-solidarity debate forward, suggesting that there is a kind of moral and political space where solidarity — the moral imperative to live responsibly with and for others — and subsidiarity — the anti-totalitarian, pro-civil-society principle of Catholic social doctrine — intersect. At that broad intersection, there are no obvious answers to public-policy questions, and especially to budgetary questions. But there is prudential judgment: the weighing of risks and benefits; the calculus of probable consequences; the fitting of ends to appropriate means.

Prudence, the Catechism of the Catholic Church notes,“is called auriga virtutum (the charioteer of the virtues); it guides the other virtues by setting rule and measure.” Prudence is the cardinal virtue that allows us to live creatively at the intersection of solidarity and subsidiarity. No one lives at that intersection in a creative way by repeating tired shibboleths about abandoning the poor to their own devices and having the federal government “walk away from the most vulnerable.” Indeed, if the Georgetown letter accurately reflects the depth of thought given to these hard questions on the Hilltop, parents pondering a quarter-of-a-million-dollar education for their children there might want to inquire closely into what their sons and daughters are getting into.

Charity requires that one not judge an entire university and its impact on students by the political shenanigans of seven dozen faculty members, and another theological virtue, hope, suggests that no one is quite invincibly ignorant. If those Georgetown faculty members who wrote Paul Ryan would actually engage Ryan and those of his cast of mind, rather than consigning them to the outer darkness of the uncaring, some creative thought that takes into consideration the full richness and subtlety of Catholic social doctrine just might result. I won’t hold my breath, especially in an election year when Paul Ryan’s Hoya correspondents are very likely to vote for the president who lied to the head of the U.S. bishops’ conference and who demanded, with the full force of federal power, that the Church do things the Church teaches are morally wrong.

But once the Health and Human Services mandate and the Obama administration are unhappy memories, one can hope that that conversation at the intersection of subsidiarity and solidarity will be convened. Paul Ryan would be open to it. Perhaps his Hoya correspondents, following Vatican II’s injunction to read the signs of the times and recalling the classic Jesuit emphasis on the importance of examining conscience, will then be ready to join.

Last week at GPPI:

 

May 4, 2012

Dear President DeGioia:

It has come to the attention of The Cardinal Newman Society and the following signers that U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has been granted the honor of speaking at the commencement [diploma] ceremony for Georgetown University’s Public Policy Institute on Friday, May 18.  We strongly urge you to withdraw the invitation to Secretary Sebelius immediately.

It is scandalous and outrageous that America's oldest Catholic and Jesuit university has elected to provide this prestigious platform to a publicly "pro-choice" Catholic who is most responsible for the Obama administration's effort to restrict the Constitution's first freedom -- the right to free exercise of religion -- while threatening the survival of many Catholic and other religious colleges and universities, schools, charities, hospitals and other apostolates.

Georgetown insults all Americans by this honor.  The selection is especially insulting to faithful Catholics and their bishops, who are engaged in the fight for religious liberty and against abortion.  The contrast is stark between Georgetown University and those faithful Catholic colleges and universities that have stood for faith and freedom.

Sincerely,

Patrick J. Reilly
President

 

Yesterday at GPPI:

 

Georgetown Edits Sebelius Announcement, Backtracks on ‘Commencement Speaker’

Rather than rescind its invitation to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to speak at the graduation ceremony for its Public Policy Institute (GPPI) on May 18, Georgetown University has quietly edited its website announcement of the event and is now attempting to deny that she is a “commencement speaker.”

“Secretary Sebelius is not speaking at Georgetown’s commencement. She is speaking at Georgetown Public Policy Institute’s annual student and faculty awards event,” Georgetown spokesman Rachel Pugh said in an email to The Cardinal Newman Society.

“Georgetown has 28 ceremonies to honor the achievements of our graduates and our faculty.  We have 10 official commencement ceremonies to award degrees for the different schools within the university, and 18 other awards ceremonies to honor student and faculty achievements. We do not have one main commencement speaker. The GPPI ceremony is one event during commencement weekend, but it is not a commencement ceremony (degrees are not conferred),” the email continued.

“At this event, GPPI Public policy Institute will give end-of-the-year awards, several students speak, the Dean will speak, and GPPI will give awards to a faculty member and an alumni,” Pugh concluded.

The announcement is still headlined “Commencement 2012 to Feature Wide Range of Speakers,” and Georgetown President John DeGioia is quoted celebrating “our commencement speakers.”  In the following list of speakers, Sebelius is now listed under the subhead, “Speakers at Other Ceremonies,” and is identified as speaking at GPPI’s “Tropaia” ceremony.  “Tropaia” is described as as Greek word meaning “trophies.”

But that’s not what Georgetown announced Friday.  The Friday subhead declared, “Speakers at Other Commencement Ceremonies,” and “Tropaia” was not mentioned.  The Cardinal Newman Society has a printout of Friday’s announcement which we can make available to reporters. It is also currently on the Yahoo site here.

GPPI students will participate in the larger Graduate School Commencement Ceremony before hearing from Sebelius at the GPPI Tropaia Ceremony.  But the GPPI website describes the two ceremonies as intricately linked, with diplomas distributed to students at the second ceremony to which Sebelius has been invited:

The Graduate School Commencement Ceremony and GPPI’s Tropaia are actually one ceremony and you should definitely go to both parts.  Your degree will be conferred at the Graduate School ceremony which begins at 9:00 a.m.  …GPPI’s Tropaia ceremony is where diplomas will be distributed.  Each student will walk across the stage to be recognized.

 

Also yesterday :

 

A former dean of the Georgetown University institute that will host Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius as a graduation day speaker on May 18 calls the “pro-choice” Cabinet member “an inspiration for our students” at the Jesuit university.

“She will be an excellent speaker,” Judy Feder, the former dean who is now a professor at the Georgetown Public Policy Institute (GPPI), told The Cardinal Newman Society. ”We’ve been fortunate to have Cabinet secretaries before. Secretary Sebelius is a great inspiration to our students.”

Feder was reminded that Sebelius’s HHS promulgated the mandate that faith-based organizations must pay for health insurance that provides contraception, regardless of their beliefs, and that this is widely regarded as an affront to the Catholic Church.

“I don’t see it that way,” Feder said. “Georgetown already covers these services for employees.”

Feder continued, “The real issue is that this is a public policy school. What I would say as a professor in the Public Policy Institute is that I value Georgetown’s commitment to exposing students to a wide array of ideas.”

 

The "inspiration" for GPPI students, Kathleen Sebelius' most recent attempt to explain how she crafts public policy.

 .

 

 

"Our mission is to teach our students to help design smart policies and put them into practice in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors, in the U.S. and around the world."

 

Tell that to the parents & banks who coughed up the $$$$$ for the educations as well as the Supreme Court...

 

.

.

.

Obama should've read more Yeats.

.

Madame's Nightshirt

Mrs. Peperium

.

Come let us mock at the great
That had such burdens on the mind
And toiled so hard and late
To leave some monument behind,
Nor thought of the leveling wind...

-- William Butler Yeats
Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen

 

.

 

2010 Forbes Most Powerful Women Summit

 

The leveling wind has hit Obama. Time to mock on folks. Mock on and yes, he said all of these and the press corpse (Obama's annunciation) has looked the other way and mocked as many Republicans as possible for being stupid...

 

."My friends, we live in the greatest nation in the history of the world. I hope you'll join with me as we try to change it."

.
"I've now been in 57 states -- I think one left to go."

.
"Let me be absolutely clear. Israel is a strong friend of Israel's. It will be a strong friend of Israel's under a McCain...administration. It will be a strong friend of Israel's under an Obama administration. So that policy is not going to change."

.
“What I was suggesting—you're absolutely right that John McCain has not talked about my Muslim faith,”
.

.
“The reforms we seek would bring greater competition, choice, savings and inefficiencies to our health care system.” -

.
"On this Memorial Day, as our nation honors its unbroken line of fallen heroes -- and I see many of them in the audience here today -- our sense of patriotism is particularly strong."
.

"When you start saying, at a time when the top one-tenth of 1 percent has seen their incomes go up four or five times over the last 20 years, and folks at the bottom have seen their incomes decline -- and your response is that you want poor folks to pay more? Give me a break. If asking a billionaire to pay the same tax rate as a Jew -- as a janitor makes me a warrior for the working class, I wear that with a badge of honor. I have no problem with that."

..
"We're the country that built the Intercontinental Railroad."

 

There's no fool like a teleprompter fool. If anyone needs any further proof that Barack Obama merely says what the teleprompter tells him to, the remarks delivered at yesterday's ceremony marking the new chairman of the joint chiefs provides it. The President of the United States refers to his wife as "Michael." Don't believe me? listen to him yourself, 35 seconds into the C-SPAN video of the address: Note that the president was addressing Admiral Mike Mullen and his wife, Deborah, and then speaks of "Michael and I" acknowledging the service of the Mullens' son Jack, "deployed today."

.

 
..

"I'm confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress."

 

"What's the difference between a pit bull and a hockey mom? A pit bull tastes delicious...a little soy sauce..."

"when she told him that she loved him, his [Obama's] response was not 'I love you, too' but 'thank you.'".

"In the new Barack Obama campiagn piece The Life of Julia, voters can 'Take a look at how President Obama’s policies help one woman over her lifetime — and how Mitt Romney would change her story.' It is one of the most brazenly statist pieces of campaign literature I can ever remember seeing. Let’s for the purposes of this post forget about the piece’s misleading generalizations regarding policy (no one is innocent on that account, obviously). What we are left with is a celebration of a how a woman can live her entire life by leaning on government intervention, dependency and other people’s money rather than their own initiative or hard work. It is, I’d say, brazenly un-American, in the sense that it celebrates a mindset we have — outwardly, at least — shunned. It is also a mindset that is offensive and patronizing. When they’re old enough, I hope my own two daughters would find the notion that their success hinges on the president’s views on college-loan interest rates preposterous. Yet, according to the 'Life of Julia,' women can’t do anything, not without the guiding hand of Barack Obama.
.

.
" This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility."
.

.

 

 

When a Deomocrat talking point becomes a Presidency.

.

Madame's Nightshirt

Mrs. Peperium

.

 

 

COOPER: And, Senator Obama, my final question — some of your Republican critics have said you don’t have the experience to handle a situation like this. They in fact have said that Governor Palin has more executive experience, as mayor of a small town and as governor of a big state of Alaska.  What’s your response?

OBAMA: Well, you know, my understanding is, is that Governor Palin’s town of Wasilla has, I think, 50 employees. We have got 2,500 in this campaign. I think their budget is maybe $12 million a year. You know, we have a budget of about three times that just for the month. So, I think that our ability to manage large systems and to execute, I think, has been made clear over the last couple of years.

-- August 28, 2008

When this campaign started, one of my biggest questions about Barack Obama was whether he would be any good at managing things. The President is, after all, the head of a very large organization, and he had better either have good management skills or hire a chief of staff who does. The fact that I didn't know whether Obama had them didn't prevent me from voting for him -- none of the other candidates I might have supported had a track record in management either -- but I would have been happier had I known whether Obama was any good at running things.

I don't have that problem any more. Obama has spent the past year and a half running a large organization -- as of last December, it had "about 500 employees and a budget of $100 million" -- and running it very well. It's not just that he and his team beat the Clinton campaign, which started out with enormous advantages. It's not even that he often did so by building effective political machines from scratch in states in which Clinton had locked down the political establishment. It's that every account of the Obama campaign that I've read makes it clear that he has done an outstanding job of constructing and running a political organization.

--August 31, 2008, The Washington Monthly

 

.

Even so, the way Obama has run his campaign has been a marvel of sound management: He laid down principles, put the right people in positions of authority, and spent money strategically. And he has shown a remarkable steadiness. Whether he was far behind Hillary Clinton before the Iowa caucuses or on the verge of locking up the Democratic nomination, whether he was leading or trailing McCain in the general election contest, Obama made the same forward-looking appeal to voters’ best instincts.

-- October 8, 2008, Obama for President, The Boston Globe

 

.

Obama's relative inexperience was one reason we didn't endorse him in the Democratic primary, and it remains a concern: He's only three years removed from the Illinois State Senate. We are also critical of his decision to abandon a pledge to tap public campaign financing for his presidential run.

But organizing and running a national campaign is a tough test of executive ability -- one that Obama has passed impressively. We believe that he will be able to draw from his campaign and professional experience to hone conflicting ideas and philosophies into sharp policy prescriptions on the challenges the next president will face over the coming four years.

-- November 1, 2008, Newsday Editorial Board Endorses Obama

 

 

DAVID BROOKS:  He is, like all supreme politicians, you come out of the guy thinking -- away from the guy thinking, "Oh, Mr. President, I love you."  I mean, he... (laughing) 

CHARLIE ROSE: And he knew exactly what would push your buttons.

DAVID BROOKS: I actually once went in there to -- David Axelrod walks into a meeting with me carrying "The Reflections on the Revolution in France" by Edmund Burke. They are not without manipulation.

CHARLIE ROSE: Exactly.

CHARLIE ROSE: Do you think you're going to argue that being a community organizer was very good training for becoming president?

DAVID BROOKS:  The biggest shock to me, I thought, the guy's 47, the guy's barely been in Washington.  Can he run an effective administration?  Yes. 

CHARLIE ROSE: And an effective campaign, too.

BROOKS: He has run a tremendously effective, efficient managerial administration.  That is the biggest surprise and I think the biggest story of the first hundred days.  Because if he didn't do that, if he didn't have the essential level of competence, nothing else would matter, people would not trust him.  But he is a competent manager. 

ROSE:  This White House is very much an intellectual hothouse.

BROOKS:  Intellectual power.

ROSE:  The self-confidence and the intelligence.

BROOKS:  There are certain intellects which are like fluorescent, and the president is one of them.

ROSE:  He seems to be like Michael Jordan with 30 seconds to go.  He wants the ball.  He seems to be like Joe Montana with two minutes to go.

BROOKS:  He e-mails him, "You're like Michael Jordan," and Obama e-mails him back, "Just give me the ball."

ROSE:  I didn't even know that.

BROOKS:  Yeah, there you go.

BROOKS:  Obama didn't need the crowd.  The crowd needed him.

ROSE:  Is it John F. Kennedyesque?  McLuhan said there are cool characters and hot characters.  Bobby Kennedy was hot.  Jack Kennedy was cool.

BROOKS:  Well, I mean it's certainly true that Obama's cool.

ROSE:  Cool.

-- April 2009, Charlie Rose, PBS

 

.

.

President Obama, campaigner in chief

By Dana Milbank, The Washington Post

April 30, 2012

 

The preezy of the United Steezy is making me queasy.

I’m not troubled by President Obama’s slow jam with Jimmy Fallon, who dubbed the commander in chief “preezy” during Obama’s appearance on late-night TV. No, preezy is making me queasy because his nonstop campaigning is looking, well, sleazy — and his ad suggesting that Mitt Romney wouldn’t have killed Osama bin Laden is just the beginning of it.

In a political culture that long ago surrendered to the permanent campaign, Obama has managed to take things to a whole new level. According to statistics compiled for a book to be published this summer, the president has already set a record for total first-term fundraisers — 191 — and that’s only through March 6. Measured in terms of events that benefit his reelection bid, Obama’s total (inflated in part by relaxed fundraising rules) exceeds the combined total of George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush, Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter.

It’s not just the gatherings officially categorized as campaign events. To a greater extent than his predecessors, Obama has used the trappings of his office to promote his reelection prospects even while handling taxpayer-funded business.

According to the same book, “The Rise of the President’s Permanent Campaign,” by Naval Academy political scientist Brendan Doherty, Obama was the first commander in chief in at least 32 years to visit all of the presidential battleground states during his first year in office. He has kept that pace, devoting nearly half of his travel to 15 swing states that account for just over a third of the population.

The election is still six months away, but it’s increasingly difficult to distinguish Obama’s political events and speeches from the official ones.

This was the case on Monday, when he spoke to a group of trade-union leaders at the Washington Hilton. The event, the morning after he and Clinton made a joint fundraising appearance, was ostensibly an “official” speech to the AFL-CIO’s building trades section. But it was a campaign rally in everything but name.

The audience members shouted out Obama’s “Yes, we can” slogan and chanted, “Four more years.”

“I’ll take it,” offered the president, who unloaded on congressional Republicans for not spending money on infrastructure projects.

“Time after time, the Republicans have gotten together and they’ve said no,” he said.

“Boo!” the audience responded.

“I sent them a jobs bill that would have put hundreds of thousands of construction workers back to work,” he continued.

“Boo!” the audience repeated.

“I went to the speaker’s home town,” Obama said, referring to a trip to House Speaker John Boehner’s battleground state of Ohio, “stood under a bridge that was crumbling.”

“Let him drive on it!” somebody shouted.

“Maybe he doesn’t drive anymore,” Obama joked.

Predictably, Boehner has been complaining about the president’s campaigning. He said Obama’s team should “pony up” and reimburse taxpayers for trips to three colleges in swing states last week. Boehner called Obama’s traveling “pathetic.” The Republican National Committee formally asked the Government Accountability Office to investigate the president’s travel.

The Republicans will get nowhere with that, just as Democrats failed when they made similar complaints about George W. Bush. Rules separating the official and the political are flimsy, and even when a president’s campaign reimburses the Treasury, it’s for a tiny fraction of the cost, which includes $179,750 per hour to operate Air Force One.

In fairness, it’s not entirely clear what choice Obama has. As with his blessing of a super PAC after condemning such groups, the alternative is unilateral disarmament. Also, his fundraising total has been inflated by a rule change that allows him to hold events that jointly benefit him and the Democratic Party (although his total number of fundraising appearances still eclipses that of each recent predecessor). Republicans, meanwhile, are determined to block the president’s agenda, so it’s an effective use of time to campaign for their defeat.

Still, Obama’s acquiescence to an intolerable status quo raises a question: Shouldn’t presidential leadership be about setting an example?

Instead, he is erasing the already blurred lines between campaigning and governing. During his “official” speech to the union group Monday, he hailed Tim Kaine as “the next United States senator from the great commonwealth of Virginia,” and his partisan speech spurred audience members to shouts of “Vote ’em out!” and “Gotta throw ’em out!”

“Not everything should be subject to thinking about the next election instead of thinking about the next generation,” Obama said of the Republicans. “Not everything should be subject to politics.”

He should follow his own advice.

 

When you vote for the presidential candidate who ran on I-ran-a-big-campaign-so-I-can -run-the-ccountry" you shouldn't be surprised when you end up with a campaign instead of a President.

Quit your caterwauling Millbank. Besides it demonstrating exceptionally poor taste, bordering on sore loser-ish and sounding like David Brooks, you were warned by John McCain :

.

 For Barack Obama to argue that he’s experienced enough to be president because he’s running for president is desperate circular logic and it’s laughable.

.

Ouch. That still leaves a mark 4 years later. The 2008 election is 16 Trillion dollars and counting over the dam. Millbank, you need to be thinking progressively. You need to thinking outside the Beltway box and envisioning what will happen if Obama is re-elected again and no longer needs to campaign?

Obama has given us a big clue  :

 

 

 

.

.

 

.

 

To think Obama's pit bull joke was funny you have to hate Sarah Palin.

.

Madame's Nightshirt

Mrs. Peperium

.

 

Even the First Lady can't believe he said it.

For more than a year the Grand Wizards of ad campaigns, Axelrod & Plouffe (plus Gail Collins of the WaPo) have been hoping to destroy Mitt Romney's presidential aspirations by the telling and retelling of the time Mitt drove from Massachusetts to Montreal with the family dog on top of the family station wagon.

 

 

 

Then Mitt Opposition Research Team (MORT), once Romney had secured the Republican nomination, dropped their golden nugget -- as a kid Obama dined on dogs. Not using them as tables but serving them as the main course. Tough, as in texture, and not in being able to swallow Lassie, was how Obama described the injesting of Dog Manchurian atop steamed rice in his second autobiography. No doubt in hopes of winning a Grammy like Hillary Clinton, and happily for MORT Obama recorded his autobiography.  MORT provided the audio clip of Obama saying he ate dogs. This meant Axelrod & Plouffe could not simply spin Obama's dog eating the way that works for Team Clinton every time they trot it out, even before Grand Jurys -- Obama simply didn't know what he had written in his own autbiography. Axelrod & Plouffe were left with this:

 

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

 

 

By Saturday, they realized they had an ace up their sleeve Team Clinton never did - the Left's all consuming hatred of Sarah Palin. Hence they connected Sarah Palin's very successful joke from the 2008 campaign to Obama's dog eating to cast him in a better light - Obama may have eaten dog but at least he's not Sarah Palin.

 

 

 

Sarah Palin isn't creepy. Obama is. But a lot of us who voted for Sarah Palin understood this about Obama in '08. The joke is on those who didn't get it about Obama in '08 and are now witnessing their President using irrational hatred for Sarah Palin to make himself look better. 

And the press corps laughs....

 

.

 

Time to hit the reset button.

.

Madame's Nightshirt

Mrs. Peperium

 

 Don Surber, this morning:

 

The undignified display of raucous partying by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in Colombia shows that this administration cares nothing for the American people or the United States of America. Her spend-it-all attitude toward America’s goodwill, Treasury and reputation in the world shows more than any poll will just how slim the president’s real chances are for a second term. Secret Service agents partying with hookers reflects directly on this administration. Hard to imagine wither President Bush tolerating such nonsense. The fish rots from the head down, and this fish head is Barack Obama.

Here is his leadership, as reported by CNS:

Just two days after President Barack Obama gave a sharply edged response to news anchor Larry Conners of KMOV in St. Louis after Conners had asked the president about Americans who “get frustrated and even angered when they see the first family jetting around [to] different vacations and so forth,” Obama told a panel at the Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia that part of his job there was to scout out locations for a future vacation with First Lady Michelle Obama.

Obama was speaking on a panel with Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos and Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff when he made the remarks. The panel was moderated by Chris Matthews of MSNBC.

“I want to thank President Santos and the people of Colombia for the extraordinary hospitality in the beautiful city of Cartagena,” said Obama. “We’re having a wonderful time. And usually when I take these summit trips, part of my job is to scout out where I may want to bring Michelle back later for vacation. So we’ll make sure to come back sometime in the near future.”

His future is vacations come January. And like the screwball who knows he is going to get fired, Barack Obama is playing it for all it is worth. I hope Laura Bush counted the White House silverware before leaving.

 

From Mary Bruce of ABC:

CARTAGENA, Colombia — Secretary of State Hillary Clinton kicked back Saturday night, dancing and drinking beer at a local hotspot after a day of summit meetings in Cartagena.

The AFP/Getty got images of the Secretary dancing at Café Havana with her hands up in the air and swigging a local brew with friends.

Clinton and President Obama are spending the weekend in the resort town for the Summit of the Americas, along with the leaders of 33 Latin American countries.

They are entitled to blow off a little steam?

No way.

They went to Colombia to work.

No accord was reached.

This is simply partying on the public’s dime because they can.

From Dick Cheney: “He has been an unmitigated disaster to the country. I can’t think of a time when I felt it was more important for us to defeat an incumbent president today with respect to Barack Obama. I think he has been an unmitigated disaster to the country.”

I agree.

 

 

The Australian press demonstrates how much more of a free press it is than our own as well as completely unafraid of Axelrod:

 

Oh to see the look on Michelle's face when she sees this...

.

.

 

Chairman Mao didn't think much of stay-at-home moms either.

.

Madame's Nightshirt

Mrs. Peperium

.

 

MAO: Do you want our Chinese women? We can give you ten million.

H. KISSINGER: The chairman is improving his offer.

MAO: We can let them flood your country with disaster and therefore impair your interests. In our country we have too many women, and they have a way of doing things. They give birth to children, and our children are too many.

 

President Obama has had another very bad week. Hilary Rosen, a PRmaven, Democrat strategist and CNN contributor while appearing on a CNN talking head show to promote President Obama's re-election chances went off script by taking a very mean and dismissive swipe at Ann Romney. A swipe that extended beyond stay-at-home Ann Romney and to all stay-at home Moms. Unfortunately for the President, Rosen's comments were more than a swipe, they were a window to Rosen's soul. Several of Rosen's friends, including Foxs News host Greta Van Susteran have tried to defend her remarks by placing them in a better context but it didn't work. Their defense fell as flat as the Justice Department lawyers' arguments for Obamacare before the Supreme Court. The problem was Hilary Rosen's comments were mean and dismissive but, more improtantly, they were sincere.

To understand the level of Rosen's rare burst of sincerity, we need to revisit the early days of the Obama White House.

 .

In June of 2009, the Obama White House Communications Director was Anita Dunn. No doubt due to importance of her position in such a historical presidency, Anita was asked to be the commencement speaker at the St. Andrews Episcopal School Class of 2009 Graduation Service, held in the National Cathedral. Here's an excerpt of Anita's speech given from the pulpit to the graduating seniors, their familes, and friends :

 

Alot of you have a great deal of ability. A lot of you work hard. Put them together and that answers the "why not" question. There is usually not a good reason. And then the third lesson and tip actually comes from two of my favorite political philosophers: Mao Zedong and Mother Teresa, not often coupled together, but the two people that I turn to most to basically deliver a simple point, which is, you're going to make choices. You're going to challenge. You're going to say why not. You're going to figure out how to do things that have never been done before. But here's the deal -- these are your choices. They are no one else's. In 1947, when Mao Zedong was being challenged within his own party on his plan to basically take China over, Chiang Kai Shek and the nationalist Chinese held the cities that had the army. They had the airport. They had everything on their side, and people said, "How can you win? How can you do this? How can you do this, against all the odds against you?" And Mao Zedong said, "You know, you fight your war, and I'll fight mine." And think about that for a second. You don't have to accept the definition of how to do things, and you don't have to follow other people's choices and paths, OK? It is about your choices and your path. You fight your own war. You lay out your own path. You figure out what's right for you. You don't let external definitions define how good you are internally. You fight your war. You let them fight theirs. Everybody has their own path. And Mother Teresa, who, upon receiving a letter from a fairly affluent young person who asked her whether she could come over and help with that orphanage in Calcutta, responded very simply, "Go find your own Calcutta." OK? Go find your own Calcutta. Fight your own path. Go find the thing that is unique to you. The challenge that is actually yours, not somebody else's challenge. One of the things that we see the Obamas, both of them, Michelle and Barack, came out of backgrounds as community organizers, working.

 

In October of 2009 Glenn Beck, still of Fox News, finally discovered this clip.  He attacked Anita's words regarding Mao both historically and, more importantly,  comically. Beck drew enough blood that Anita was forced to respond via CNN :

 

"The use of the phrase 'favorite political philosophers' was intended as irony, but clearly the effort fell flat -- at least with a certain Fox commentator whose sense of irony may be missing."

 

Dunn's response was so effective at handling Beck's criticisms this was next communiqe from the White House regarding Dunn as their Communications Director:

 

Anita Dunn is stepping down from her position as White House communications director, making way for her deputy, Dan Pfeiffer, to take the reins, senior White House officials said Tuesday.

But White House officials said Dunn will not be going far.

Dunn, a veteran Democratic political consultant, will still have work space at the White House, attend all strategy sessions and be present for major decisions, said Valerie Jarrett, President Barack Obama’s senior adviser.

“I’ll still see her every day,” said Jarrett. “She has so clearly earned the respect of the president and his entire team.”

Dunn and her colleagues in the West Wing said she always expected to leave and had stayed longer than she initially planned.  [...]

In an e-mail, Dunn said: “It’s an honor to serve the nation and the President and I have been fortunate to be given this opportunity at this critical time in our history. I look forward to continuing to work for the President’s agenda for change in the future.”

Dunn took the job as communications director on an interim basis about six months ago after the first person Obama named to the key post, former Emily’s List director Ellen Moran, left to take a job at the Commerce Department, citing family reasons.

Dunn, too, cited family as a reason for her departure.

“She feels that being a mother is her first responsibility, and I certainly can’t argue that point,” Jarrett said, noting that by giving up the communications director title Dunn will be able to leave the office at “a far more reasonable hour.”

Dunn made few headlines in the White House until last month when she seemed to kick off a crusade aimed at de-legitimizing Fox News. The anti-Fox campaign generated criticism from other members of the press as well as a lot of second-guessing from other Democratic strategists, some of whom described it as an unnecessary distraction.

Dunn also came under attack in recent weeks from conservatives over a speech she gave in which she described Chinese leader Mao Zedong as one of her “favorite political philosophers.” Fox TV host Glenn Beck said Dunn’s comment about Mao, who is considered responsible both for the modernization of China and for the deaths of millions of Chinese, was the equivalent of expressing admiration for Hitler.

Jarrett and other senior White House officials said Dunn’s departure was unrelated to the battle with Fox. [...]

Dunn, whose career in Democratic politics dates back to the Carter White House, served in a top role in Obama’s presidential bid, overseeing policy, communications, and research. 

Her departure and her replacement by Pfeiffer could exacerbate complaints that few players in the top ranks of the White House are women.

But Jarrett pointed out that Dunn will still be a presence in the West Wing.

“I have said throughout that there are many senior women in the administration,” Jarrett said.

 

.

.

It was just last month when Anita Dunn returned our nation's news cycle. She was a behind-the-scenes player with Obama's big re-election splash in the Catholic Bishop's faces by forcing them to pay for not only birth control of their employees but their abortions too :

“As we reported last night ‘The Factor’ believes Sandra Fluke contraception controversy was manufactured to divert attention away from the Obama administration’s disastrous decision to force non-Catholic organizations to provide insurance coverage for birth control and the ‘morning after’ pill. That might very well be unconstitutional.”

“Anyway, we’re having trouble tracking down just who is sending Sandra around to the media,” he continued. “It’s very strange. So far, the 30-year-old activist has appeared on eight national news programs where she was not challenged at all. Last week we called Sandra on her cell phone and invited her on ‘The Factor.’ She didn’t call back. Very unusual.”

 

Very unusual? No. Very Anita Dunn. Just part of her winning the future for Obama by employing Mao's tactics. (WTF?) Why would Dunn send Fluke on a show where her (philosophical not sexual) positions could be challenged sucessfully? Mao would never do such a thing. Thanks to O'Reilly's reporting, Dunn and her (professional not sexual) partner Hilary Rosen were forced to come out of the closet:

Hilary Rosen and her Democratic public relations firm has been deeply involced [sic] in recent public relations battle between Republicans and Democrats in the so-called "War on Women."

When Sandra Fluke was at the center of her own media controversy, Hilary Rosen's public relations firm stepped into help.

“We are proud to provide pro-bono support to Sandra Fluke, an incredibly courageous young woman who is standing up for the rights of women everywhere in the face of sustained, personal attacks," Hilary Rosen said in a statement to Erick Wemple on March 20. "This week, we began helping Sandra, a full-time law student, manage the enormous volume of incoming media requests that came to a head when she was publicly disparaged for advocating for contraception coverage."

Rosen explained that they were connected with Fluke from a 'personal friend" who put her in touch with her firm, SKDKnickerbocker, where she is a Managing Partner together with former White House Communications Director, Anita Dunn.

Dunn worked for President Obama at the White House from April through November 2009, before teaming up with Rosen.

Ironically, Dunn was also at the center of her own controversy after Ron Suskind's book reported her remarks about the White House being a hostile workplace.

“It actually fit all of the classic legal requirements for a genuinely hostile workplace to women,” Dunn said, according to the excerpts of the book.

Dunn walked back those comments, suggesting the Suskind reported them out of context.

“The president is someone who when he goes home at night he goes home to house full of very strong women,” she clarified to the Washington Post in September. “He values having strong women around him.”

 

Sandra Fluke is not the only woman Rosen and Dunn are representing. DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz is a client of theirs at the suggestion of the White House:

.

Excerpted from The Washington Examiner: Controversial Democratic strategist and CNN contributor, Hilary Rosen, was hired by DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz to coach her on media appearances.

According to a Wall Street Journal report in February, Obama advisers told Wasserman Schultz to “tone it down,”  suggesting that she hire “two seasoned Democratic female pros, Anita Dunn and Hilary Rosen,” for media training, in preparation for the upcoming campaign. Wasserman Schultz willingly accepted.

“I’m glad to get constructive criticism,” she said in the Wall Street Journal article.

Rosen is now under fire for suggesting that Mitt Romney’s wife Ann, “never worked a day in her life.”

Today, Patrick Gaspard, executive director of the Democratic National Committee sought to distance the party from Rosen’s comments.

“Hillary Rosen is absolutely not a paid adviser to the DNC or to the Obama campaign, absolutely not,” he said.

But Republicans at the Republican National Committee, have already pulled data on payments made by the DNC to Rosen.

“DNC has paid $120,000 to Rosen’s firm since 2011 for both a “communications consultant” and “media consultant,” tweeted Joe Pounder, the director at the RNC, “Sounds like Dunn and Rosen.”

 

 

One of the soundbites that convinced the Obama advisors that DNC Chair Wasserman Schultz needed to tone it down-  from a June 2011 appearance on CNN :

 

You have the Republicans, who want to literally drag us all the way back to Jim Crow laws and literally -- and very transparently -- block access to the polls to voters who are more likely to vote for Democratic candidates than Republican candidates.

 

The Obama advisors' suggestion of Dunn & Rosen as Wasserman Schultz's Tone-It-Down Coaches will probably be viewed by future historians as a bad suggestion for Obama, professionally. A few days back, DNC Chair Wasserman Schultz's Tone-It-Down Coach Hilary Rosen went on CNN's Anderson Cooper to discuss the Democrats "War On Women". Rosen not only ended up starting another war - "War on Stay-At-Home Moms", she's given Ann Romney the big opportunity to become a beloved-by-nation First Lady -a la Barbara Bush :

 

ANDERSON COOPER: To the Romney campaign’s point, they say they’re focusing on the economy, and that’s what women say they overwhelmingly care about right now in poll after poll. And whether it’s a typical pattern or not, women are seeing jobs come back much more slowly than men are. Is there anything really wrong then, on reaching out to women on an issue that they care about, on the economy?

HILARY ROSEN: Well, first, can we just get rid of this word, “war on women”? The Obama campaign does not use it, President Obama does not use it—this is something that the Republicans are accusing people of using, but they’re actually the ones spreading it. With respect to economic issues, I think actually that Mitt Romney’s right, that ultimately, women care more about the economic well-being of their families and the like. But he doesn’t connect on that issue either. What you have is Mitt Romney running around the country saying, “Well, my wife tells me what women really care about are economic issues.” And, “When I listen to my wife, that’s what I’m hearing.” Guess what? His wife has never actually worked a day in her life. She’s never really dealt with the economic issues that a majority of the women in this country are facing—in terms of how do we feed our kids, how do we send them to school, and how do—why we worry about their future. So I think it’s, yes, it’s about these positions, and yes there will be a war of words about the positions, but there’s something much more fundamental about Mitt Romney—he just seems so old-fashioned when it comes to women, and I think that comes across, and I think that’s going to hurt him over the long term. He just doesn’t really see us as equal.

 

Ann Romney's gentle and soothing Mom-like response:

 

 "My career choice was to be a mother and I think all of us need to know we need to respect choices other women make. Other women make other choices to have a career and raise families, which I think Hilary Rosen has actually done herself. I respect that, that's wonderful. But you know, there are other people who have a choice. We have to respect women in all those choices that they make."

 

Tone-It-Down Coach Hilary Rosen was then forced to apologize:

.

Let’s put the faux ‘war against stay at home moms’ to rest once and for all. As a mom, I know that raising children is the hardest job there is. As a pundit, I know my words on CNN last night were poorly chosen. In response to Mitt Romney on the campaign trail referring to his wife as a better person to answer questions about women than he is, I was discussing his poor record on the plight of women’s financial struggles …

As a partner in a firm full of women who work outside of the home as well as stay-at-home mothers, all with plenty of children, gender equality is not a talking point for me. It is an issue I live every day. I apologize to Ann Romney and anyone else who was offended. Let’s declare peace in this phony war and go back to focus on the substance.”

 

Tone-It-Down Coach Hilary Rosen added her more fullsome view. It's far too tiresome --even Planned Parenthood gets a shout out-- to cut and paste in here but do take a gander. Rosen is still waging war her (and Obama's) way which is the losing way. To understand what absolute ill-educated and intolerant hacks Rosen & Dunn are as well as total idiots for trying to use Mao's tactics in America, let's revisit what Dunn said to the 2009 Class of St. Andrew's:

 

And then the third lesson and tip actually comes from two of my favorite political philosophers: Mao Zedong and Mother Teresa, not often coupled together, but the two people that I turn to most to basically deliver a simple point, which is, you're going to make choices. You're going to challenge. You're going to say why not. You're going to figure out how to do things that have never been done before. But here's the deal -- these are your choices. They are no one else's. [...] And Mother Teresa, who, upon receiving a letter from a fairly affluent young person who asked her whether she could come over and help with that orphanage in Calcutta, responded very simply, "Go find your own Calcutta." OK? Go find your own Calcutta. Fight your own path. Go find the thing that is unique to you. The challenge that is actually yours, not somebody else's challenge. One of the things that we see the Obamas, both of them, Michelle and Barack, came out of backgrounds as community organizers, working.

 

Had Glenn Beck focused on Dunn's Mother Teresa comments rather than Mao's, he may have changed the path of this most historic of presidencies.  Had Anita been properly challenged on her assertions to the graduates, she and her boss may have come to a better understanding of the Catholic Church's role in this world. For instance, Catholicism is not a political ideology, it is a religion. Mother Teresa - Blessed Tereasa -was not a philosopher but a nun whose cause for Sainthood is under examination. If Obama had grasped this reality, then he may not have been so Mao-like as to force the Church, by law, to provide birth control and abortion.

In her commencement speech Anita Dunn misquoted Blessed Teresa. This is what Blessed Teresa actually said:

.

Stay where you are. Find your own Calcutta. Find the sick, the suffering, and the lonely right there where you are — in your own homes and in your own families, in your workplaces and in your schools. You can find Calcutta all over the world, if you have the eyes to see. Everywhere, wherever you go, you find people who are unwanted, unloved, uncared for, just rejected by society — completely forgotten, completely left alone.

 

.

 

.

...

 

David Brooks' Inferno.

.

Madame's Nightshirt

Mrs. Peperium

 

Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate.

"Leave behind all hope, you who enter"  

.

 

Dear readers this past Good Friday I was reading C.S. Lewis and found the key to understanding Dante Brooks, I mean David Brooks :

 

I think the "low" church milieu that I grew up in did tend to be too cosily at ease in Sion. My grandfather, I'm told, used to say that he "looked forward to having some very interesting conversations with St. Paul when he got to heaven." Two clerical gentlemen talking at ease in a club! It never seemed to cross his mind that an encounter with St. Paul might be rather an overwhelming experience for an Evagelical clergyman of good family. But when Dante saw the great apostles in heaven they affected him like mountains. There's lots to be said against devotions to saints; but at least they keep on reminding us that we are very small people compared with them. How much smaller before their Master?

--Letters to Malcolm, Letter 2

(Note : Lewis writes "Sion" meaning Zion meaning Heaven.)

 

David Brooks upon seeing the great Obama debate John McCain:

 

What struck me is how incredibly even he is and how, frankly, reassuring he is. It's like you're camping and you wake up one morning and there's a mountain and then the next morning there's a mountain and then the next morning there's a mountain. Obama is just the mountain. He's there. He's always the same. He doesn't hurt himself. McCain can sometimes lob a cannon ball into the mountain but the mountain doesn't move and the mountain doesn't care. So I think his steadiness, his temperament has been the dramatic theme of this, uh, this campaign, dramatic as being undramatic, and it was to display tonight. Uh, and the good part of the mountain is that he's reassuring and reliable.

-- October 15, 2008, PBS

 

To David Brooks, the over-celebrated author of Bobos in Paradise, the reaction when seeing the King of the Bobos, Obama on the telly was the same Dante had in Paradise when seeing St. John, St. James and St. Peter  :

 

 The impact upon Dante of meeting the Apostles in his arrival in Paradiso: They affected him like mountains. Dante used a poetic image to capture what he saw to be a fundamental truth : the Saints in Glory are overwhelmingly greater than ourselves here and now.

-- Inklings of Heaven, C.S. Lewis and Eschatology

 

To be perfectly truthful, the evening David saw the great Obama as "just the mountain" was not the first time David saw the great Obama. The first time it was more personal and unforgettable. Let's revisit it to see if David's poetry can stand up to Dante's.From Paradiso Canto 25 (Longfellow and Mandlebaum trans. ; Dante in red, David in blue):

"...at which my eyes were lifted to the mountains"

 

"...and I was looking at his pant leg,"

 

"whose weight of light before had kept me bent."

"his perfectly creased pant leg,"

 

"Because our Emperor, out of His grace,"

"and I'm thinking, a) he's going to be president and b) he'll be a very good president."

 

"Since, through his grace, our Emperor wills that thou
Shouldst find thee face to face, before thy death,
In the most secret chamber, with his Counts,"

"I divide people into people who talk like us and who don't talk like us. Of recent presidents, Clinton could sort of talk like us, but Obama is definitely — you could see him as a New Republic writer."

"So that, the truth beholden of this court,
Hope, which below there rightfully enamours,
Thereby thou strengthen in thyself and others,"

"I think he's more talented than anyone in my lifetime. I mean, he is pretty dazzling when he walks into a room. So, that's why it's important he doesn't fuck this up."

 

Though David is no Dante, he still is able to tell us we are nothing next to the crease in Obama's trousers. The trouble for David may be one of perspective. Dante had his eyes raised to the mountains while David had his set at pant level. Big difference, both aesthetically and professionally. The New York Times would never have hired Dante.

 

 

.

.