The American Conservative

Says the NYT:

Orange County finds itself at the enter of a new wave of laws restricting the movement of sex offenders. The county government and a dozen cities here have banned sex offenders from even setting foot in public parks, on beaches and at harbors, rendering almost half the parks in Orange County closed to them. Ten more cities are considering similar legislation.

And Orange County is far from alone. In recent years, communities around the country have gone beyond regulating where sex offenders can live and begun banning them outright from a growing list of public places.

From North Carolina to Washington State, communities have designated swimming pools, parks and school bus stops as “child safety zones,” off limits to some sex offenders. They are barred from libraries in half a dozen Massachusetts cities, and from all public facilities in tiny Huachuca City, Ariz.

Here in Louisiana, a bill that will ban sex offenders from public libraries is awaiting the governor’s signature, which it will certainly receive. Our 12 year old son volunteers in the local library, and couldn’t figure out the other day why the librarians were being so protective of him. It turns out that a known, registered sex offender was loitering in the library that afternoon, and was observed sitting at a table using a webcam to observe kids. All perfectly legal — until the governor signs the bill, that is. Bring it.

Real-life Sunday School dialogue from this past weekend:

Teacher:  The Holy Spirit changes the bread and the wine into the Body an Blood of Christ.  The priest puts the consecrated bread (called the Lamb) into the chalice, which has already been filled with wine and warm water.  The chalice represents our unity in Christ — when we receive Communion, we receive Christ and become one with God and one another, like He prayed in today’s Gospel, “that we all may be one.”

Student 1:  So what happens to the leftovers?

Teacher:  The priest consumes whatever is left.

Student 2:  You mean Fr Mark gets drunk every Sunday?

Teacher:  Uh, well, there’s a fair amount of water in there…

I am informed by knowledgeable ecclesiastical authorities that Lucas Dreher, age 8, is Student 2.

If everyone would read P.G. Wodehouse, half the problems of the world would solve themselves. I feel certain of this. Here is the opening to “Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves”:

I marmaladed a slice of toast with something of a flourish, and I don’t suppose I ahve ever come much closer to saying “Tra-la-la” as I did the lathering, for I was feeling in mid-season form this morning. God, as I once heard Jeeves put it, was in His heaven and all right with the world. (He added, I remember, some guff about larks and snails, but that is a side issue and need not detain us.)

It is no secret in the circles in which he moves that Bertram Wooster, though as glamorous as one could wish when night has fallen and the revels get under way, is seldom a ball of fire at the breakfast table. Confronted with the eggs and b., he tends to pick cautiously at them, as if afraid they may leap from the plate and snap at him. Listless about sums it up. Not much bounce to the ounce.

But today vastly different conditions had prevailed. All had been verve, if that’s the word I want, and animation. Well, when I tell you that after sailing through a couple of sausages like a tiger of the jungle tucking into its luncheon coolie I was now, as indicated, about to tackle the toast and marmalade, I fancy I need say no more.

On and on like this for 221 glorious pages. I don’t think there was ever a funnier writer of English prose than P.G. Wodehouse. The man’s similes are the best thing ever. “He looked haggard and careworn, like a Borgia who has suddenly remembered that he has forgotten to shove cyanide in the consommé, and the dinner-gong due any moment.” Top that, Mister!

So says the Catholic writer Marc Barnes, because it would make us better men than we are now. Excerpt:

The pagans, by which I refer to pre-Christian Western man, may have been unwilling to accept that strange doctrine of the Son of Man, but they willingly accepted that they were sons of men. They may not have known how to be Christian, but they knew how to be human. The post-Christian, having left Christ, is in the busy process of altogether leaving Man. With respect to those delivering our daily mail, one might say we are moving increasingly to the Age of the Post-Man.

Think about it: Christianity is still attacked — one would hardly deny the fact — but the Christian today is rarely summoned up to defend the Holy Family. He is instead forever being called to rise to the defense of that Pagan institution, the humanfamily. The fundamentally human idea that a vow is a thing forever kept is an idea weary and battered by divorce. That natural, human understanding that a child is Good is an understanding contracepted from our hearts. That our elders are a hell of a lot more important than ourselves is a thing that must be defended against the cult of progress, the cult of the youth, euthanasia and all the rest. Many fault Christianity for adopting elements of Paganism. I praise it for the same, for that she adopted was well worth keeping.

As Lewis says, “Christians and Pagans had much more in common with each other than either has with a post-Christian. The gap between those who worship different gods is not so wide as that between those who worship and those who do not…” Indeed, and I would sum it so: The Pagans may have had false Gods, but they had real men. The post-Christian attempts to be God, and loses man in the process.

Via FT.

Fascinating stuff from a Paris Review interview with Dorothy Parker:

PARKER: I knew a lady—a friend of mine who went through holy hell. Just say I knew a woman once. The purpose of the writer is to say what he feels and sees. To those who write fantasies—the Misses Baldwin, Ferber, Norris—I am not at home.

INTERVIEWER: That’s not showing much respect for your fellow women, at least not the writers.

PARKER: As artists they’re not, but as providers they’re oil wells; they gush. Norris said she never wrote a story unless it was fun to do. I understand Ferber whistles at her typewriter. And there was that poor sucker Flaubert rolling around on his floor for three days looking for the right word. I’m a feminist, and God knows I’m loyal to my sex, and you must remember that from my very early days, when this city was scarcely safe from buffaloes, I was in the struggle for equal rights for women. But when we paraded through the catcalls of men and when we chained ourselves to lampposts to try to get our equality—dear child, we didn’t foresee those female writers. Or Clare Boothe Luce, or Perle Mesta, or Oveta Culp Hobby.

INTERVIEWER: You have an extensive reputation as a wit. Has this interfered, do you think, with your acceptance as a serious writer?

PARKER: I don’t want to be classed as a humorist. It makes me feel guilty. I’ve never read a good tough quotable female humorist, and I never was one myself. I couldn’t do it. A “smartcracker” they called me, and that makes me sick and unhappy. There’s a hell of a distance between wisecracking and wit. Wit has truth in it; wisecracking is simply calisthenics with words. I didn’t mind so much when they were good, but for a long time anything that was called a crack was attributed to me—and then they got the shaggy dogs.

(Via TNC, who says Dorothy Parker would kill on Twitter).

Our badass president, the dude who keeps a “secret kill list”, is not the guy liberals thought they were electing, or that conservatives vilify as Jimmy Carter II, Electric Boogaloo:

In interviews with The New York Times, three dozen of his current and former advisers described Mr. Obama’s evolution since taking on the role, without precedent in presidential history, of personally overseeing the shadow war with Al Qaeda.

They describe a paradoxical leader who shunned the legislative deal-making required to close the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, but approves lethal action without hand-wringing. While he was adamant about narrowing the fight and improving relations with the Muslim world, he has followed the metastasizing enemy into new and dangerous lands. When he applies his lawyering skills to counterterrorism, it is usually to enable, not constrain, his ferocious campaign against Al Qaeda — even when it comes to killing an American cleric in Yemen, a decision that Mr. Obama told colleagues was “an easy one.”

His first term has seen private warnings from top officials about a “Whac-A-Mole” approach to counterterrorism; the invention of a new category of aerial attack following complaints of careless targeting; and presidential acquiescence in a formula for counting civilian deaths that some officials think is skewed to produce low numbers.

The administration’s failure to forge a clear detention policy has created the impression among some members of Congress of a take-no-prisoners policy. And Mr. Obama’s ambassador to Pakistan, Cameron P. Munter, has complained to colleagues that the C.I.A.’s strikes drive American policy there, saying “he didn’t realize his main job was to kill people,” a colleague said.

Beside the president at every step is his counterterrorism adviser, John O. Brennan, who is variously compared by colleagues to a dogged police detective, tracking terrorists from his cavelike office in the White House basement, or a priest whose blessing has become indispensable to Mr. Obama, echoing the president’s attempt to apply the “just war” theories of Christian philosophers to brutal modern conflict.

More:

Dennis C. Blair, director of national intelligence until he was fired in May 2010, said that discussions inside the White House of long-term strategy against Al Qaeda were sidelined by the intense focus on strikes. “The steady refrain in the White House was, ‘This is the only game in town’ — reminded me of body counts in Vietnam,” said Mr. Blair, a retired admiral who began his Navy service during that war.

Mr. Blair’s criticism, dismissed by White House officials as personal pique, nonetheless resonates inside the government.

William M. Daley, Mr. Obama’s chief of staff in 2011, said the president and his advisers understood that they could not keep adding new names to a kill list, from ever lower on the Qaeda totem pole. What remains unanswered is how much killing will be enough.

Here is the biggest problem, as I see it:

Mr. Hayden, the former C.I.A. director and now an adviser to Mr. Obama’s Republican challenger, Mr. Romney, commended the president’s aggressive counterterrorism record, which he said had a “Nixon to China” quality. But, he said, “secrecy has its costs” and Mr. Obama should open the strike strategy up to public scrutiny.

“This program rests on the personal legitimacy of the president, and that’s not sustainable,” Mr. Hayden said. “I have lived the life of someone taking action on the basis of secret O.L.C. memos, and it ain’t a good life. Democracies do not make war on the basis of legal memos locked in a D.O.J. safe.” [Emphasis mine -- RD]

“One guy gets knocked off, and the guy’s driver, who’s No. 21, becomes 20?” Mr. Daley said, describing the internal discussion. “At what point are you just filling the bucket with numbers?”

So says The New York Times, in an editorial. Excerpt:

In 1993, Congress required government actions that “substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion” to advance a compelling interest by the least restrictive means. The new contraceptive policy does that by promoting women’s health and autonomy.

And there was no violation of religious exercise to begin with. After religious groups protested, the administration put the burden on insurance companies to provide free contraceptive coverage to women who work for religiously affiliated employers like hospitals or universities — with no employer involvement.

This is a clear partisan play. The real threat to religious liberty comes from the effort to impose one church’s doctrine on everyone.

I draw your attention to the comment someone forwarded to me from Facebook, written by a Catholic lawyer:Yes, it is the Church that is being partisan.  The New York Times continues to sell its typical bs.  “This is a clear partisan play. The real threat to religious liberty comes from the effort to impose one church’s doctrine on everyone.”

Look, I just don’t get why the NY Times and sympathetic readers get their rocks off on forcing the Catholic Church and her institutions to pay for abortifacients (which I think all can agree are at least morally problematic), sterilization, and contraception.  Seriously, why not find a solution that allows the Catholic Church to do its good work without compromising its principles.  If your religion requires free contraception, as the NY Times’ religion does, find another way to pay for it. Have a contraceptive lock box like the Social Security lock box.  Why the insistence on forcing the Catholic Church and her institutions to do this?  I just don’t get it.

It isn’t like the Church’s understanding of sexuality is some random bizarre religious view.  It happens to be the one that many (perhaps most?) people adhered to for most of time — including all the Christian Churches until the late 1920s (or is 1930?).

I’ve said that I have problems with the Bishops pitching this as merely a religious liberty matter — because I think the merit of the actual position matters.  If for instance the Church were saying that it shouldn’t have to pay for tonsilectomies, I think that would be an unreasonable possession.  But we aren’t talking about that.

How is the Church imposing anything on anyone?  Seriously.  And the narrow vision that the Obama Administration and the NY Times have of religion has no basis in lived reality, in how religious people understand themselves.  Dorothy Day and the Catholic Workers weren’t some social service agency detached from their Catholic beliefs.  They were the outgrowth and consequence of those beliefs.

Still at the end of the day I do think the breadth and depth of the Catholic Church’s involvement in feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, housing the homeless, and caring for the poor, should count for something and the fact that the Times and its readership think it perfectly legitimate to force Catholic institutions to pay for something they think deeply immoral just makes no sense to me.  In other words, the special position of the Church vis-a-vis social services would seem to me to warrant an exception — if this is in fact is perfectly “legal” under the Constitution and RFRA (the latter of which I have my doubts).

But it is not only that they think that the Church should have to do it.  It is that absurd notion that they actually think that the desire of a Catholic organization not to pay for this in fact an instance of the Catholic Church IMPOSING its religion on “everyone.”  Seriously?  How can such shallow logic and idiocy rule the day at the NY Times op-ed page?

“Should count for something”? Silly man. Don’t you understand that sex is the blessed sacrament in the Church of These People? The Catholic Church can do whatever it wants to for the poor, but the only thing that matters to the NYT and the people for whom it speaks is that the Church HATES HATES HATES WOMEN AND GAY PEOPLE  opposes their views on sex and sexuality.

Remember your NYT catechism, people: Attacks on religious liberty do not exist, and anyway, religious people have it coming. 

Have you been following the Vatileaks scandal? I thought it was fairly small potatoes a couple of days ago. Boy, was I wrong. From AFP’s report:

As the Vatican moves to root out whistle blowers who have been copying and leaking private documents straight from Pope Benedict XVI’s desk, rumours have been circulating in the Italian media over whether the plot may run deeper.

Frustration over the management of Church scandals in recent years — from allegations of money-laundering to clerical sex abuse — has apparently led some to begin preparing the way for their chosen candidate to become future pope.

“A group of cardinals has begun to act on a very ambitious aim: to take the secretary of state, and then, conquer the conclave (the assembly which elects a new pope) with a chosen pope among them,” said La Repubblica newspaper.

More:

Rumours are that there are around 20 whistle blowers who have been supplying the media with documents — at least two have spoken out anonymously — and it is not clear if the Holy See will be able to patch up the damage done so far.

“What’s certain is that Tarcisio Bertone will not come out of this in a positive light,” said Vatican expert Sandro Magister.

“The shortcomings of his governance are clear for all to see,” he said, adding that the pope might replace him “in the next few months.”

According to expert Bruno Bartoloni, the “Vatileaks” scandal may be the last straw for many in an institution dogged by bad governance and corruption.

“This scandal has enormous consequences, it will create unease and exasperation among the cardinals,” he said.

“They want to find someone who can do a serious clean up. But in cleaning up, they risk starting a revolution,” he added.

Magister is generally well respected. For his part, John L. Allen, also well respected, says this is a big, big deal; Allen’s coverage is well worth following.

I wonder what a “revolution” would mean in the Vatican? Serious question. Please give me some serious answers.

 

That was part of the spread at the Memorial Day event I went to way out in the country. Three cheers for our generous hosts! What did you eat today? Here’s one of the things we drank; it’s really good, and everybody here in south Louisiana is crazy for it. I saw a friend in Natchitoches in from Dallas who said she had been searching all over Big D for the stuff:

I spent the afternoon at a great Memorial Day barbecue out in the country. One of the guests is an American who lives in Europe, and whose husband is an economist. We talked briefly about the situation with the euro; she is very, very pessimistic about what’s to come.

I thought about the post-euro “survivor’s guide” that Simon Johnson and Peter Boone have just published. Excerpt:

A disorderly break-up of the euro area will be far more damaging to global financial markets than the crisis of 2008. In fall 2008 the decision was whether or how governments should provide a back-stop to big banks and the creditors to those banks. Now some European governments face insolvency themselves. The European economy accounts for almost 1/3 of world GDP. Total euro sovereign debt outstanding comprises about $11 trillion, of which at least $4 trillion must be regarded as a near term risk for restructuring.

Europe’s rich capital markets and banking system, including the market for 185 trillion dollars in outstanding euro-denominated derivative contracts, will be in turmoil and there will be large scale capital flight out of Europe into the United States and Asia. Who can be confident that our global megabanks are truly ready to withstand the likely losses? It is almost certain that large numbers of pensioners and households will find their savings are wiped out directly or inflation erodes what they saved all their lives. The potential for political turmoil and human hardship is staggering.

For the last three years Europe’s politicians have promised to “do whatever it takes” to save the euro. It is now clear that this promise is beyond their capacity to keep — because it requires steps that are unacceptable to their electorates. No one knows for sure how long they can delay the complete collapse of the euro, perhaps months or even several more years, but we are moving steadily to an ugly end.

Johnson & Boone contend that the euro simply cannot be saved at this point. More:

Forget about a rescue in the form of the G20, the G8, the G7, a new European Union Treasury, the issue of Eurobonds, a large scale debt mutualisation scheme, or any other bedtime story.  We are each on our own.