Brutally Honest

Now can we renege on the F16/Abrams Tank deal with Egypt?

Or is it too late?

I'm going to link three stories that are hitting the wires today.

First up, from Haaretz:

Ahmadinejad said the world must now treat Iran as a nuclear country. “They want Iran to go back to what it was in the past, but they won’t succeed. They assume we’ll give in to pressure; such thoughts are misguided. We’re already an industrial and nuclear country, a country that has conquered space. For years we have been thinking about sending a human being into space, and we will do that, with Allah’s help. We must ensure development and growth and bring them to pass, and the world must acknowledge our progress,” he said, adding that the best solution was cooperation with Iran.

Mentioning the possibility of an Israeli attack on Iran, Ahmadinejad said that while it might be easy to launch missiles or attack using fighter jets, Iran’s response and defense capability were important in this context.

He reiterated that the Zionists were trying to take over the foci of power and wealth throughout the world. “They want to attack Iran, but we’re not preparing any attack against them because the purpose of our program is defense.”

During the interview, Ahmadinejad condemned what he described as massacres committed by Israel. “For us, supporting the Palestinian people is a matter of human importance in every sense. The Palestinians must receive their rights, and the Zionists are moving closer and closer toward the edge.”

With that as background, read what follows coming our way via Reuters:

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, on the first visit to Cairo by an Iranian leader in more than three decades, called for a strategic alliance with Egypt and said he had offered the cash-strapped Arab state a loan, but drew a cool response.

Ahmadinejad said outside forces were trying to prevent a rapprochement between the Middle East's two most populous nations, at odds since Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution and Egypt's signing of a peace treaty with Israel in the same year.

"We must all understand that the only option is to set up this alliance because it is in the interests of the Egyptian and Iranian peoples and other nations of the region," the official MENA news agency quoted him in remarks to Egyptian journalists published on Wednesday.

The two countries have not restored diplomatic ties since Egypt overthrew its long term leader Hosni Mubarak in 2011, but its first Islamist president, Mohamed Mursi, gave Ahmadinejad a red-carpet welcome on Tuesday to a summit of Islamic nations.

"There are those striving to prevent these two great countries from coming together despite the fact that the region's problems require this meeting, especially the Palestinian question," Ahmadinejad said.

With these sorts of alliances being talked about, you would think that it would be most prudent to adopt a go slow approach with the F16/Abrams tank deal but apparently, we've already delivered on at least part of the deal:

Egypt received four F-16 aircraft from the United States on Sunday, February 3, the Egypt Independent reports.

According to the report, the country’s Defense Minister Abdel Fattah al-Sisi praised the growing military cooperation between Egypt and the U.S. after receiving the four fighter jets.

At a ceremony in honor of the F-16s received from the U.S., Sisi said Egypt looks forward to further cooperation to build and develop the combat capabilities of the Armed Forces.

The four aircraft are part of a group of 20 F-16s that are expected to be delivered to Egypt this year. They are part of the US$1.3 billion in annual military aid to Egypt.

The jets were ordered by deposed Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, but the current Muslim Brotherhood-led administration under President Mohammed Morsi will take over the inheritance.

To date, the U.S. has delivered 224 F-16 aircraft to Egypt, according to a statement published on the U.S. Embassy in Cairo’s website and quoted by the Egypt Independent.

Heidi Grant, deputy undersecretary of the U.S. Air Force for International Affairs, said that delivering these fighter planes confirms U.S. keenness to strengthen military cooperation between the two countries to achieve security and stability in the Middle East.

Egyptian military leaders and U.S. Ambassador to Egypt Anne W. Patterson attended the ceremony on Sunday, according to the Egypt Independent.

“Today’s ceremony demonstrates the firm belief of the United States that a strong Egypt is in the interest of the U.S., the region, and the world,” said Patterson.

Really Ms. Patterson?  A strong Egypt is in the best interest of the U.S., the region, and the world, that same Egypt that rolled out the red carpet for Ahmadinejad, the same Ahmadinejad who is talking about an alliance with Egypt, the same Ahmadinejad who want to see Israel annihilated, a goal that has also been vocalized by the current President of Egypt?

Are there any adults in charge?

We are in such deep shit.

"Death by Bureaucracy"

I stumbled across this story on Facebook this morning:

After a two and a half year legal battle, 15 tons of cheese made and aged near Mountain View was hauled to a dump.  To fans of natural foods, it is monumental waste and over-regulation.  To Missouri's Milk Board, it's merely protecting public health. 

"I see the destruction of what my wife and I and family have worked to build," said Joseph Dixon, owner of Morningland Dairy. 

Dixon and his family aren't the only ones outraged by the trashing of about 30,000 pounds of cheese produced on the farm in Howell County.

"You said earlier you would weigh this cheese.  How do we know that you're being held accountable gentlemen?" a bystander asked of State Milk Board members.

Members of the State Milk Board, which embargoed the cheese 2 1/2 years ago, arrived to dozens of protestors. 

"You have people here today that are saying, hold it!  We have questions why, and that's why these people are here, and we appreciate everyone being here," said Dixon.

Details of the story can be read at Morningland Dairy's blog:

Joseph and Denise Dixon took over Morningland Dairy after Denise completed a two year internship with the founders of Morningland, Jim and Margie Reiner. The Dixons finalized the purchase and began improvements on the Missouri Milk Board inspected and approved raw milk cheese plant in October of 2008. The entire family was tremendously pleased because this would allow Joseph to be home with the family instead of on the road working as an electrician in the eastern half of the United States.  The Dixons wanted to expand the varieties of cheese made by the company and ventured into a broader array of production.

Their desire was to help other families in the historically poverty stricken Missouri Ozarks to make an actual living on the farm and allow families to stay together. They consulted with the Missouri Milk Board and arranged for two families to begin providing goat milk to Morningland and launched a popular goat milk cheese line shortly after taking over the company.

Morningland had six employees and other farming families dependent upon the continuance of the cheese plant. On August 26^th, 2010, it came to a screeching halt.

While Joseph and Denise were at a cheese making conference in Washington State, the plant manager received a call from the Missouri Milk Board stating that there was an issue of potential contamination found by the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) in Morningland cheese.

The cooler of $250,000 worth of cheese was immediately put under embargo, more accurately understood as house arrest, by the Missouri Milk Board. Don Falls, an inspector for the Milk Board, told the plant manager, “You should be back up and running by early next week.” Obviously, that wasn’t true. As a matter of fact, the very next morning, presumably after he spoke with the FDA, Falls’ entire attitude changed.

Over the weekend, the FDA leaked a nation wide recall on all of Morningland’s cheese produced in 2010. Not just the two batches that California indicated might be “suspect” for contamination, but their entire year’s production. Most of the cheese implicated as “suspect” by California had already been consumed. No complaints or ill effects were reported by any of the consumers of any of Morningland’s cheese. Nonetheless, the FDA required all of their products to be recalled.

Death by Bureaucracy

 Very few people realize the FDA has an armed and very military aspect. They showed up at Morningland in camouflage and made a lovely impression on those able to be at the unveiling of the future of food safety “FDA style”.

The FDA and Milk Board worked hand in hand to ensure that this little cheese plant in the midst of the Missouri Ozarks, that hadn’t made anyone sick in 30 years, would never make another batch of cheese for their loyal customers. Yet the FDA, who admit to killing 100,000 people a year, are allowed to gain ever more control over everything we take into our bodies. So the tally on deaths over the 30 year history of Morningland Dairy versus the FDA is:  Morningland “Zero”, FDA “3 Million”…or somewhere near that.

Despite significant effort, the FDA found no contamination in any cracks or drains in the cheese plant or even on the legs of the milk talk in the dairy barn. This evidence was not allowed to be introduced as part of Morningland’s defense because the Missouri Attorney General’s office contended that the FDA “was a separate issue.”

When pointedly asked what the specific process for getting the cheese plant back into production was, the Milk Board representative said it would involve a panel and consultation with the FDA to determine if that were a possibility. The members of the panel, other than the Milk Board and the FDA, and the specific requirements and processes were never delineated and no effort to achieve anything other than the destruction of the plant was ever evidenced by any official arm of the State of Missouri.

Neither the State of Missouri or the FDA ever conducted any tests on Morningland’s cheese. As a matter of fact, when Morningland tried to contract with a State approved lab to do proper tests on batches of their cheese, they were told that the lab simply did not want to get involved in the controversy. Morningland was denied the ability to legitimately test their product and defend their livelihood.

Adding insult to injury, Milk Board employee Don Falls testified in court and under oath that, improperly collected cheese samples, taken with no supervision and no instruction by an employee of Morningland for the plant’s manager, were in fact the State’s own tests.  This remains a very sore point for Joseph Dixon. He says, “When one commits perjury and no one in authority will hold them accountable for it, that individual and the system they support are nothing more than liars and thieves. In this case, the theft is of our ability to provide for our family and is based on bearing false witness to harm people who have harmed no one.”

There's more.

It smells of travesty.  

It smells of what America is becoming under progressive leadership.

It smells worse than bad cheese.

God bless the Dixons.  

Their blog post ends as follows:

Rest In Peace, Morningland. Righteous judgment will come.

I'd like to say God have mercy on those who will be judged... but I'm not feeling it.

God have mercy on us all.

Radical anti-Catholic Democrat nominated to Connecticut Supreme Court

Back in March of 2009, a bill aimed exclusively at the Catholic Church, was introduced to the Connecticut State Legislature.  Wikipedia picks it up from there:

The bill, introduced in March 2009, was sponsored by Democratic state  senators Mike Lawlor and Andrew J. McDonald.

On March 10, 2009, the bill was tabled.

History

Senator McDonald and Representative Lawlor claimed that the bill was proposed as a response to the 2006 fraud case in which Rev. Michael Jude Fay, a priest from the Diocese of Bridgeport, was accused of stealing $1.4 million from his parish. However, since Raised Bill 1098 explicitly referred only to the Roman Catholic Church,[1] and would require the creation of administrative corporate boards of lay people as heads of parishes, replacing the Church's normal oversight by priests and bishops, many recognized that the bill was probably raised largely to antagonize and harass the church, which had opposed certain legislative initiatives of McDonald and Lawlor. On March 11, 2009, a scheduled protest by 3500 marchers became a celebration following the news that the bill had been tabled.[2] As the public outcry rose, McDonald and Lawlor issued several conflicting and inconsistent statements regarding the origins of the bill. At times they blamed each other, and at other times they said it was drafted by unnamed constituent(s). At a public hearing on the bill, experts such as then dean of Boston College Law School John Garvey and others said that Bill 1098 was the most obviously unconstitutional bill they had ever seen.

Controversy

According to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), the bill "would force the Church to alter its structure in violation of its own religious principles."[3] One of the sponsors of the Bill, Andrew J. McDonald, stated that the effort was an "attempt to create a forum for a group of concerned Catholic constituents to discuss their legislative proposals regarding parish corporate finances."[2] Bridgeport Bishop William E. Lori described it as "unconstitutional,"[2] as a violation of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal has opened an investigation to "determine its intent and its possible violation of the constitution."[2]

Thankfully, the bill went nowhere though not, apparently, without a fight.

In news only beginning to surface now (I wonder why), Andrew McDonald, one of the bill's sponsors, has been nominated to the Connecticut Supreme Court by the Governor of the state:

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy has nominated former State Senator Andrew J. McDonald to one of two vacancies in the Connecticut Supreme Court.

A former partner at the Stamford office of Pullman & Comley, McDonald has known and worked closely with Malloy over the past 20 years, first as Stamford corporation counsel for three and a half years when Malloy was mayor, and for the past two years, as Malloy's top legal counsel.

At a press conference Thursday in the Old Judiciary room at the capitol, Malloy's remarks were brief but unstinting: "In my estimation, Andrew possesses a unique ability to understand, research, analyze, and evaluate legal issues. These are skills that have served him well previously, and I'm sure those same skills will allow him to be a great jurist on the Connecticut Supreme Court. Malloy praised McDonald's ability as a listener, adding, "he sometimes even listens to me."

Standard fare from a Governor looking to appoint someone from the same party to State's Supreme Court.  But then the plot thickens:

Malloy described McDonald as "highly principled and ethical." A lawyer himself, Malloy cited the 2008 Connecticut landmark case of Kerrigan v. State, which guarantees marriage equality in the state. He noted, "It was my pleasure to perform the marriage of Andrew and Charles [Gray] while I was the mayor of Stamford. It was equally my pleasure to know that Andrew, when confirmed by the General Assembly, will be the first openly gay appellate jurist to serve in Connecticut's history."

Let there be little doubt as to what this appointment is about and what it might mean to faithful Catholics or anyone seriously concerned about religious liberty.

And this is only a harbinger.

Fr. Z. sheds light on the strategy being deployed and not just in Connecticut:

Liberals work to warp society and to undermine the Catholic Church from within and without, through creeping incrementalism.

They introduce some odd ball scheme, it gets shot down.  They have bumped the paradgim a little bit toward their goal.  They introduce it again.  It gets shot down again.  They bumped the paradigm.  They introduce it again, and again, and again….  Then it passes.

Or they place people in judicial positions where they can ensure the agenda is moved forward.

The threat to liberty is real and present.

Sooner or later, we'll each have to choose which side to defend, which side to align ourselves with.

I think it best to choose now.

While we're able.

What slippery slope?

Oh, I dunno, maybe... this one:

In 1976 the National Council for Civil Liberties, the respectable (and responsible) pressure group now known as Liberty, made a submission to parliament's criminal law revision committee. It caused barely a ripple. "Childhood sexual experiences, willingly engaged in with an adult," it read, "result in no identifiable damage … The real need is a change in the attitude which assumes that all cases of paedophilia result in lasting damage."

It is difficult today, after the public firestorm unleashed by revelations about Jimmy Savile and the host of child abuse allegations they have triggered, to imagine any mainstream group making anything like such a claim. But if it is shocking to realise how dramatically attitudes to paedophilia have changed in just three decades, it is even more surprising to discover how little agreement there is even now among those who are considered experts on the subject.

A liberal professor of psychology who studied in the late 1970s will see things very differently from someone working in child protection, or with convicted sex offenders. There is, astonishingly, not even a full academic consensus on whether consensual paedophilic relations necessarily cause harm.

So what, then, do we know? A paedophile is someone who has a primary or exclusive sexual interest in prepubescent children. Savile appears to have been primarily an ephebophile, defined as someone who has a similar preferential attraction to adolescents, though there have been claims one of his victims was aged eight.

But not all paedophiles are child molesters, and vice versa: by no means every paedophile acts on his impulses, and many people who sexually abuse children are not exclusively or primarily sexually attracted to them. In fact, "true" paedophiles are estimated by some experts to account for only 20% of sexual abusers. Nor are paedophiles necessarily violent: no firm links have so far been established between paedophilia and aggressive or psychotic symptoms. Psychologist Glenn Wilson, co-author of The Child-Lovers: a Study of Paedophiles in Society, argues that "The majority of paedophiles, however socially inappropriate, seem to be gentle and rational."

Legal definitions of paedophilia, needless to say, have no truck with such niceties, focusing on the offence, not the offender. The Sex Offenders Act 1997 defined paedophilia as a sexual relationship between an adult over 18 and a child below 16.

There is much more we don't know, including how many paedophiles there are: 1-2% of men is a widely accepted figure, but Sarah Goode, a senior lecturer at the University of Winchester and author of two major 2009 and 2011 sociological studies on paedophilia in society, says the best current estimate – based on possibly flawed science – is that "one in five of all adult men are, to some degree, capable of being sexually aroused by children". Even less is known about female paedophiles, thought to be responsible for maybe 5% of abuse against pre-pubescent children in the UK.

Debate still rages, too, about the clinical definition of paedophilia. Down the years, the American Psychiatric Association'sDiagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders – "the psychiatrist's bible" – has variously classified it as a sexual deviation, a sociopathic condition and a non-psychotic medical disorder. And few agree about what causes it. Is paedophilia innate or acquired?Research at the sexual behaviours clinic of Canada's Centre for Addiction and Mental Health suggests paedophiles' IQs are, on average, 10% lower than those of sex offenders who had abused adults, and that paedophiles are significantly less likely to be right-handed than the rest of the population, suggesting a link to brain development. MRI scans reveal a possible issue with paedophiles' "white matter": the signals connecting different areas of the brain. Paedophiles may be wired differently.

This is radical stuff. But there is a growing conviction, notably in Canada, that paedophilia should probably be classified as a distinct sexual orientation, like heterosexuality or homosexuality. Two eminent researchers testified to that effect to a Canadian parliamentary commission last year, and the Harvard Mental Health Letter of July 2010 stated baldly that paedophilia "is a sexual orientation" and therefore "unlikely to change".

As society continues to place pressure on the acceptance of disordered behaviors as something other than disordered, we really can't be surprised when said same society widens the net as to other behaviors needing to be legitimized.

Yea, that slippery slope.

The more we set God aside, the more we forget Him, the more this sort of thing will come to the forefront and, more threateningly, the more those of us who find problems with it will be ostracized as intolerant, bigoted and out of the main stream.

But you knew that.

Right?

The New York Times takes up the cause - What to call those averse to commitment

More particularly, those who'd rather shack up than marry:

“I went through a phase of just calling him Eric, even to people who didn’t know who that was,” said the master wordsmith Ann Kjellberg, 50, editor of the journal Little Star and the literary executor of the poet Joseph Brodsky. Eric Zerof spent 15 years as her live-in not-spouse and is the father of Ms. Kjellberg’s child. “I kept thinking, ‘This should not be this hard!’ I was very unhappy about the situation. I could never find a word I liked.”

One might imagine we would be less tongue-tied. The faux spouse is a pretty ho-hum cultural specimen for such a gaping verbal lacuna. But none of the word choices are good. Everyone agrees that partner sounds awful — too anodyne, empty, cold. Lover may be worse — too sexualized, graphic, one-dimensional. Boyfriend sounds too young. Significant other sounds too ’80s. Special friend or just friend (both favored by the 65-and-over crowd) are just too ridiculous.

Faced with such weak English-language options, Janna Cordeiro, 43, a nonprofit and public health consultant in San Francisco, settled on calling Sebastian Toomey, her mate of 23 years, “mi hombre” — my man. (Pronunciation: deep and forceful, with rolled r, as in a Western.) “My daughter goes to a Spanish-immersion school,” Ms. Cordeiro explained. “When she started kindergarten, I started asking the Spanish-speaking parents how to introduce Seb. Everybody kept saying, ‘mi esposo, mi esposo.’ I kept saying that was wrong and started saying, ‘mi hombre,’ and it stuck.”

Anne Tierney, 32, a bodyworker in West Palm Beach, Fla., went for “fusband,” which, she explains, is a catchall for “fake husband, future husband.” (Ms. Tierney’s fusband, Ozzy, calls Ms. Tierney “wifey.”) Technically the two are engaged, but Ms. Tierney said: “The word fiancé makes me cringe. What am I, in France?”

The engagement process, according to Ms. Tierney, was also a bit of a debacle: “I was sitting on the ground. Ozzy was standing up. Little Ozzy” — their baby, now a toddler — “was crying.” Big Ozzy gave Ms. Tierney a necklace. She said she thought, “Why is this guy giving me a necklace?” Then he gave her a diamond ring that, because they had not planned on marrying, she assumed was fake. (It wasn’t.) The two have not set a wedding date and probably never will. Ms. Tierney said: “If I ever get the urge, maybe I’ll drag him to a wedding shop and we’ll take a few pictures. If he could just come and stare at me lovingly, that would make me happy.”

There's more, if you can stomach it.

It does make one think... why the fuss by those in support of gay marriage (guarantee you'll find the commitless among them) when marriage in and of itself is seen to be such anathema?

I don't get it.

Unless one takes the angle that the trek to gay marriage is really just another weapon in the war against the Church, one to be discarded once wounds to the institution have been inflicted.

Societal decay.

It's on the march.

H/T to Deacon Greg.

Societal decay

The implications here, if you can read long enough to get past the ick factor, are huge... and indicative of how completely screwed up Western culture has become:

Topekan William Marotta sought only to become a sperm donor — but now the state of Kansas is trying to have him declared a father.

Nearly four years ago, Marotta donated sperm in a plastic cup to a lesbian couple after responding to an ad they had placed on Craigslist.

Marotta and the women, Topekans Angela Bauer and Jennifer Schreiner, signed an agreement holding him harmless for support of the child, a daughter Schreiner bore after being artificially inseminated.

But the Kansas Department for Children and Families is now trying to have Marotta declared the 3- year-old girl’s father and forced to pay child support. The case is scheduled for a Jan. 8 hearing in Shawnee County District Court.

Hannah Schroller, the attorney defending Marotta, said the case has intriguing social and reproductive rights implications.

She said Marotta, a mechanic who has taken care of foster children with his wife, Kimberly, answered a Craigslist ad placed by Bauer and Schreiner seeking a sperm donor in March 2009.

In an email to Marotta that is part of court records, Bauer described herself and Schreiner as a “financially stable lesbian couple,” with Bauer working outside the home and Schreiner being a stay-at-home mom with their other children.

“We are foster and adoptive parents and now we desire to share a pregnancy and birth together,” Bauer wrote.

Marotta responded in an email that he was 43 years old, 6 feet 1 inches tall and weighed 205 pounds, reasonably fit and in good health, with blond hair and blue eyes.

Marotta, Bauer and Schreiner each signed an agreement saying he would be paid $50 per semen donation, with the arrangement including a clear understanding that he would have no parental rights whatsoever with the child or children.

The agreement also called for Bauer and Schreiner to hold Marotta harmless “for any child support payments demanded of him by any other person or entity, public or private, including any district attorney’s office or other state or county agency, regardless of the circumstances or said demand.”

Schroller said that after consulting with his wife, Marotta decided to donate free of charge rather than taking the $50.

She said Marotta subsequently received periodic email updates on the child after her birth but hasn’t had much contact with Schreiner and Bauer. The Topeka Capital-Journal was unable to reach the women Friday.

I realize it's the equivalent of beating a dead horse but operating outside of God's boundaries as to marriage and what defines a family has consequences.  

Lex Communis opines as to the obvious:

This baby has two parents, not three, although it may well be the case that if same-sex marriage becomes the law of the land, the biological fact that a baby has two parents will be supplanted by a new politically correct invention that permits babies to many more parents.

Then, let the law sort out the resulting custody issues.

Welcome to the future.

The future is dim.

A margin of doubt for the Medal of Honor

Posted by guest blogger Locutisprime

The last time I checked, awarding the Medal of Honor was not hinged upon some courtroom standard of reasonable doubt. Witnesses testify to the acts of the individual cited and the medal is awarded for cause based upon eye witness testimony.

In  this case a young Marine died saving his comrades from a grenade attack in Iraq eight years ago, yet the secretary of defense and his predecessor don't believe that what he did that day is good enough to receive the nation's highest honor. This fallen Marine was observed scooping a live grenade underneath his body to save his comrades, but that isn't good enough. Serious questions have been raised.  Questions like......which hand did he use to grab and scoop the grenade with?

Seriously? In the fog of war, one man's recollection of which hand was used differs from another? And that is cause to inject reasonable doubt and deny this medal? Other questions linger and suggest the autopsy report reflects that Sgt. Rafael Peralta suffered a mortal head wound before the incident and therefore, he couldn't have done that which others witnessed him perform? Really?  A mortally wounded Marine saved his comrades, but that couldn't have happened as it has been reported? So what the hell did the witnesses see that day? Was it a dead man that reached out and scooped up a grenade and saved his comrades? Or was Sgt. Rafael Peralta shot in the head after the act? Or did his fellow Marines simply place his body on top of a live grenade after his death for shits and giggles?

Leon Panetta and Robert Gates are both POS in my opinion. Neither of them have provided anything other than yes man stone walling for this cardboard cutout presidency of Barack Obama. Both have been responsible for the countless deaths of our service men in Afghanistan since Obama took office via their complicit issuance of absurd rules of engagement. Rules specifically aimed at furthering the liberal agenda and perception, while sacrificing our troops on the alter of political correct egalitarianism. Panetta and Gates are personally responsible because they have implemented Obama's political policies to the detriment and the death of young men and women who deserved more from their leaders than political correctness and egalitarian lies.

This young Marine deserves the honor that he earned. This medal was paid for in full in Fallujah Iraq eight years ago. It was paid for with the last full measure of love and devotion that Sgt. Rafael Peralta could offer to his friends as he was dying in a despicable place for a despicable cause.

Shame on all who have sought to deny this hero the honor and respect that he earned

Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta has denied the request to give Sgt. Rafael Peralta the Medal of Honor, saying there are still too many questions to accept that he knowingly scooped a grenade beneath himself to absorb its blast and save his fellow Marines.

The Pentagon informed Peralta’s family Wednesday morning of the denial, eight years after he was killed in Fallujah, Iraq, and four years after then-Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates denied an initial bid to award Peralta the military’s top honor despite eyewitness reports from his platoon that he saved their lives.

Icela Donald, Peralta’s sister, said the decision was a disappointment — compounded by the lack of a good reason. She said the family was told that one overriding factor was Mr. Panetta's reluctance to overturn the decision of Mr. Gates.

“That right there just truly made it even worse,” she said. “It’s not that they don’t want to do the right thing, it’s that they don’t want to turn over someone else’s decision.”
A Pentagon spokesman said the Defense Department wouldn’t comment “on Medal of Honor nominations under consideration.”

Peralta has been awarded the Navy Cross, the second-highest honor a Marine can earn, but his family has not accepted it. Ms. Donald said her mother feels that if she accepted it, she would be settling.
The quest to upgrade to the Medal of Honor seemed to get a big boost last week when Navy Secretary Ray Mabus backed the move, and Peralta has had a key ally in Rep. Duncan Hunter, a California Republican who served tours in Iraq and Afghanistan as a Marine officer.

Peralta was under consideration for the Medal of Honor four years ago, but the Pentagon questioned the reliability of eyewitnesses, who said Peralta scooped the grenade under him but disagreed about details such as which hand he used.

The Pentagon also pointed to autopsy data that suggested he was likely dead, and probably blinded, from a friendly-fire gunshot wound to the head and thus could not have voluntarily scooped the grenade toward himself.

“There is no way to reconcile differences in forensic evidence and conflicting testimony of Marines involved,” the Pentagon report said, but it concluded that the forensic evidence created enough “margin of doubt” that the medal could not be issued.

Read the rest.

Signs of the Apocalypse - Men in leggings

Are you someone who smirks when you hear that men today have been emasculated and feminized by the culture?

Smirk no more:

When trendsetters speculated what would be the defining men's fashion movement to sweep New York this winter, few opted for the male legging.

But "Megging", as the male legging is known, is now all the rage in sartorial circles. Celebrities such as Justin Bieber, Russell Brand and Lenny Kravitz have all been spotted wearing leggings, while fashion stores Uniqlo, Barneys and Nordstrom are selling tights for men.

...

They are expected to follow on from the trend for "skinny jeans" on men, which have become a staple of the British high street.

One proud "megger" is Mark Dorosz, 34, an English internet entrepreneur who lives on the Upper East Side in Manhattan.

"Male tights are so much more comfortable than skinny jeans," he said. "I've always had good legs and it's nice to show them off all year round.

...

Some New Yorkers, however, see the "megger" as an affront to masculinity. Gabriel Cru, 35, from the Bronx, said: "Men in tights? Get out of here. We don't do men in tights in New York. That's European!"

New York-based British fashion designer Lucy Sykes warned that 'megging' is a hard look to pull off. "The only guy I've seen that looks good in a legging is my friend Neil who works with me at Rent the Runway," she said. "But he's young, dark and handsome and used to perform ballet at Lincoln Centre.

"Frankly any other man I have seen [in tights] looks a bit of a wally."

Maybe there's something to this Mayan calendar bit.

Seriously.

With a less than enthusiastic tip of the hat to Mr. Reynolds.

Gonzaga University fails to wake up and smell the catastrophe

The title of this post reflects two related pieces found in my feed reader this morning.  The first, via Mark Shea, contains a note he received apparently late last week:

Sadly, it appears that GU will comply with the HHS Mandate without even a fight.   I spoke to Melissa in Human Resource at Gonzaga today and she confirmed December 1, 2012 Gonzaga will cover contraceptives, sterilizations and plan b drugs.  This devastating news comes out at the same time Cardinal Dolan said as Catholics we will fight the immoral HHS Mandate.

As Catholics, we will be called in the days ahead to stand up for our Catholic faith and it will be difficult.   Remember what our Lord said about being “lukewarm” and have courage.

If you feel called to email or make a phone please do.  Above all please keep Dr. McCulloh and Bishop Cupich in your prayers.

President Thayne McCulloh, D. Phil
president@gonzaga.edu
509-313-6102

Most Reverend Blase J Cupich
509-358-7305
Mary Cole, Executive  Assistant to the Bishop
mcole@dioceseofspokane.org

It's a sad commentary upholding the reason Fr. Longenecker has put up this post asking the Catholic world to wake up:

The biggest problem with American Catholics is that the majority of them are asleep. Lulled by materialism, the good life and the cares of the world, they’re blind to the real crisis facing America and blind to the real crisis facing the Catholic Church. They’re frogs in a pan of water.

We need to wake up and smell the catastrophe. We need to be aware that the temperature’s rising.

The catastrophe is that certain implicitly modern ways of viewing the world have crept into our society and have undermined a Catholic world view. The first of these is relativism–the idea that there is no such thing as truth, or if there is such a thing as truth you can’t know what it is, you can’t express it, and you certainly cannot attempt to impose it anyone else. Relativism relegates all truth claims to personal opinion. You have your truth. I have my truth. You say po-ta-to. I say po-tah-to. If all truth is relative than anything goes. Think it through. If all truth is relative then you may do what you please and I must tolerate it.

The second poison in modern society which has seeped into the Catholic Church is utilitarianism. This is the belief that what is useful is what is good. We want our technology to work. We want our infrastructure to be efficient and economical, and that’s fine, but when we apply utilitarian principles to moral choices the result is deadly. Suddenly a person’s worth is determined by how useful they are or what ‘quality of life’ they have or whether it is costing us a lot to keep them alive. Utilitarianism has infected the mindset of Catholics so that they choose worship style, marriage choices and most every other choice according to what is useful, economic or practical.

The third thing that poisons modern Catholicism is sentimentalism. This is when people choose only according to what seems nice, compassionate or caring. We must, of course, be nice, compassionate and caring, but there are other criteria for choice as well, and if the only criteria for choice is to be compassionate, caring and nice, then what happens when it seems more “compassionate” to provide abortion for a poor woman or more “caring” to terminate the life of the aged or the infirm or the disabled? Sentimentalism combined with utilitarianism leads to death camps.

American Catholics who don’t think this will happen here are asleep. They’re like the frog in the pan of boiling water–the temperature increases bit by bit until they are boiled to death and all along they just thought it was getting more and more warm and comfy.

It’s Advent. Wake up and smell the catastrophe. Realize where this country is headed. Realize that already our hospitals have complicated “Do not resuscitate procedures” which are similar to England’s “Liverpool Care Pathway”. This euphemistically named procedure was first devised by caring and compassionate doctors to provide a way to care for terminally ill patients. Now it is being used to euthanize the old and even newborns with disabilities.

Wake up and smell the catastrophe. It is all much further along than you think. 

Gonzaga, as Mark writes, has caved.  And as Fr. Longenecker writes, has given in to relativism, utilitarianism, and sentimentalism.  

It's a sad day if you're a faithful Catholic.

"I have won today. But what will tomorrow bring?"

I'm positive that tomorrow, a tomorrow coming sooner rather than later, will not bring good news for faithful people:

A Christian who was demoted for posting his opposition to gay marriageon Facebook has won a legal case against his employer.

Adrian Smith lost his managerial position, had his salary cut by 40%, and was given a final written warning by Trafford Housing Trust (THT) after posting in February last year that gay weddings in churches were "an equality too far".

The comments were not visible to the general public, and were posted outside work time, but the trust said he broke its code of conduct by expressing religious or political views which might upset co-workers.

Smith brought breach of contract proceedings, saying the trust acted unlawfully in demoting him, and Mr Justice Briggs ruled in his favour at the high court on Friday. The judge said the trust did not have a right to demote Smith as his Facebook postings did not amount to misconduct, and the demotion imposed by way of purported disciplinary sanction constituted a breach of contract.

The dispute began in February 2011 when Smith saw an article on the BBC News website headed "Gay church marriages get go ahead". He linked to it on his Facebook page and added the comment: "An equality too far". Two colleagues read the remark and one of them posted a response asking Smith to explain what he meant.

The next evening he posted: "I don't understand why people who have no faith and don't believe in Christ would want to get hitched in church.

"The Bible is quite specific that marriage is for men and women. If the state wants to offer civil marriage to the same sex then that is up to the state; but the state shouldn't impose its rules on places of faith and conscience."

The judge admitted disquiet about the "very modest" damages due to Smith, limited to £100 for technical reasons.

"Mr Smith was taken to task for doing nothing wrong, suspended and subjected to a disciplinary procedure which wrongly found him guilty of gross misconduct, and then demoted to a non-managerial post with an eventual 40% reduction in salary.

"The breach of contract which the trust thereby committed was serious and repudiatory.

"A conclusion that his damages are limited to less than £100 leaves the uncomfortable feeling that justice has not been done."

...

"Something has poisoned the atmosphere in Britain, where an honest man like me can be punished for making perfectly polite remarks about the importance of marriage.

"I have won today. But what will tomorrow bring? I am fearful that, if marriage is redefined, there will be more cases like mine – and if the law of marriage changes people like me may not win in court.

"Does the prime minister want to create a society where people like me, people who believe in traditional marriage, are treated as outcasts? That may not be his intention, but, as my treatment shows, that's what will happen. 

A time is a'comin'... and it will be here before you know it.