Employment Found
Well, after some miscommunications and playing a round of phone tag, I will be starting my new job as an associate attorney for a small downtown San Francisco maritime law firm on Monday. Although I'll only be starting out on a two-week try out basis, I have fairly high hopes that there will be a good match between myself and the firm, and that I will be employed there for a while. But if not, I just scheduled an interview with a firm out in Napa on the 21st of this month.
Friday, May 07, 2004
Thursday, May 06, 2004
Lazy Reporting or Intentionally Misleading?
Here's an "interesting" sentence that appears in the middle of a news report about the ACLU threatening to sue a city council over the practice of legislative invocations:
The U.S. Supreme Court banned sectarian invocations prior to legislative meetings in 1989.
You'll notice when you read the report that no Supreme Court case is referenced to support the above assertion. Want to know why? Because there is none. Just one more example of why you should never trust what the lame stream media says.
Here's an "interesting" sentence that appears in the middle of a news report about the ACLU threatening to sue a city council over the practice of legislative invocations:
The U.S. Supreme Court banned sectarian invocations prior to legislative meetings in 1989.
You'll notice when you read the report that no Supreme Court case is referenced to support the above assertion. Want to know why? Because there is none. Just one more example of why you should never trust what the lame stream media says.
Wednesday, May 05, 2004
Charitably Speaking, the Man is an Idiot
Lest he actually be given some credit for abstaining from Communion while remaining in support of abortion, New Joisey Gov. McGreevey preserves his public contemptuousness by utterging this asinine remark:
"I believe it's a false choice in America between one's faith and constitutional obligation."
First of all gub'ner, you are only required to enforce the law. There is no constitutional obligation for any publicly elected official to be in favor of abortion rights. Secondly, the Church is not telling you how to do your job. Rather, she is dictating what you must believe and uphold within the context of a self-identified Catholic. If you don't want to believe in or uphold the Church's teachings, then stop calling yourself Catholic, and become a member of a religious community that is more in tune with your own warped beliefs on the sanctity of human life.
Lest he actually be given some credit for abstaining from Communion while remaining in support of abortion, New Joisey Gov. McGreevey preserves his public contemptuousness by utterging this asinine remark:
"I believe it's a false choice in America between one's faith and constitutional obligation."
First of all gub'ner, you are only required to enforce the law. There is no constitutional obligation for any publicly elected official to be in favor of abortion rights. Secondly, the Church is not telling you how to do your job. Rather, she is dictating what you must believe and uphold within the context of a self-identified Catholic. If you don't want to believe in or uphold the Church's teachings, then stop calling yourself Catholic, and become a member of a religious community that is more in tune with your own warped beliefs on the sanctity of human life.
Hedging Their Bets
With the pending implosion of the Democrat Party (see Blog from the Core's collection of "Democrats in Self Destruct Mode" stories) is it really any wonder that the trial lawyers are starting to give more campaign money to Republicans?
Trial lawyers have one of the best records on Capitol Hill when it comes to killing legislation their members find objectionable. The group has thrived by pouring money into Democratic campaigns at every level of government and opposing legislation that would limit the rights of plaintiffs to seek redress through the court system.
But behind the scenes, ATLA has been surprisingly generous toward GOP organizations, provoking a rebuke from a top Senate Democrat.
?Not based on merit ? that?s for sure,? said Minority Whip Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) when asked about the contributions.
ATLA gave $30,000 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) and another $30,000 to the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) this cycle ? just as congressional Republicans are pushing the tort-reform measures through Congress. That is the maximum amount ($15,000 per year) that a political action committee can donate to a party organization.
With the pending implosion of the Democrat Party (see Blog from the Core's collection of "Democrats in Self Destruct Mode" stories) is it really any wonder that the trial lawyers are starting to give more campaign money to Republicans?
Trial lawyers have one of the best records on Capitol Hill when it comes to killing legislation their members find objectionable. The group has thrived by pouring money into Democratic campaigns at every level of government and opposing legislation that would limit the rights of plaintiffs to seek redress through the court system.
But behind the scenes, ATLA has been surprisingly generous toward GOP organizations, provoking a rebuke from a top Senate Democrat.
?Not based on merit ? that?s for sure,? said Minority Whip Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) when asked about the contributions.
ATLA gave $30,000 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) and another $30,000 to the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) this cycle ? just as congressional Republicans are pushing the tort-reform measures through Congress. That is the maximum amount ($15,000 per year) that a political action committee can donate to a party organization.
Tuesday, May 04, 2004
Stop Calling Yourself Catholic!
Mamas, don't let your kids grow up and go to a Jesuit college.
In February of 2004, the University of San Francisco formally ratified an amendment to employee contracts that provides benefits for "legally domiciled adults." An e-mail that was sent to faculty boasted that the University of San Francisco was "the first Jesuit university to do so" and invited staff to a celebration that included, among others, university president Father Stephen Privett, S.J. Father Privett was identified as one of the "administration members most responsible for the successful conclusion of this agreement."
Mamas, don't let your kids grow up and go to a Jesuit college.
In February of 2004, the University of San Francisco formally ratified an amendment to employee contracts that provides benefits for "legally domiciled adults." An e-mail that was sent to faculty boasted that the University of San Francisco was "the first Jesuit university to do so" and invited staff to a celebration that included, among others, university president Father Stephen Privett, S.J. Father Privett was identified as one of the "administration members most responsible for the successful conclusion of this agreement."
Kirk and Conservatism
A new book by W. Wesley McDonald is coming out about Russell Kirk, the man who essentially established the word "conservative" as a political term. Although I don't believe Kirk ever wrote anything about Catholicism (of which he was a convert to) one gets the distinct feeling from reading a few of his works that he would have made a fine apologist for the faith.
What Kirk extracted from Burke's thought -- and found embodied in the work of British and American figures as diverse as John Adams, Benjamin Disraeli, and T.S. Eliot -- was a strong sense that tradition and order were the bedrock of any political system able to provide a real measure of freedom. Reformers and revolutionaries might appeal to disembodied, universal concepts to justify changing the world, or to draw up blueprints for a new society. But for Kirk, what must be cultivated was not reason but "the moral imagination" -- a resonant, if ambiguous notion that Mr. McDonald devotes much of his book to elucidating.
The "reason" that Kirk found so objectionable, writes Mr. McDonald, caused liberals to define themselves "as enemies of authority, prejudice, tradition, custom, and habit." For liberal rationality, the social order was a contract among individuals "bound together ... not by love or duty, but rational, enlightened self-interest."
By contrast, Kirk's "moral imagination" enabled people to see their lives as part of, in Burke's words, "a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born." The obligation to preserve old institutions and ways of life -- and to change them, if at all, only very slowly -- was not a matter of nostalgia. "The individual is foolish," wrote Kirk in The Conservative Mind, "but the species is wise." We have inherited from the past "the instruments which the wisdom of the species employs to safeguard man against his own passions and appetites."
A new book by W. Wesley McDonald is coming out about Russell Kirk, the man who essentially established the word "conservative" as a political term. Although I don't believe Kirk ever wrote anything about Catholicism (of which he was a convert to) one gets the distinct feeling from reading a few of his works that he would have made a fine apologist for the faith.
What Kirk extracted from Burke's thought -- and found embodied in the work of British and American figures as diverse as John Adams, Benjamin Disraeli, and T.S. Eliot -- was a strong sense that tradition and order were the bedrock of any political system able to provide a real measure of freedom. Reformers and revolutionaries might appeal to disembodied, universal concepts to justify changing the world, or to draw up blueprints for a new society. But for Kirk, what must be cultivated was not reason but "the moral imagination" -- a resonant, if ambiguous notion that Mr. McDonald devotes much of his book to elucidating.
The "reason" that Kirk found so objectionable, writes Mr. McDonald, caused liberals to define themselves "as enemies of authority, prejudice, tradition, custom, and habit." For liberal rationality, the social order was a contract among individuals "bound together ... not by love or duty, but rational, enlightened self-interest."
By contrast, Kirk's "moral imagination" enabled people to see their lives as part of, in Burke's words, "a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born." The obligation to preserve old institutions and ways of life -- and to change them, if at all, only very slowly -- was not a matter of nostalgia. "The individual is foolish," wrote Kirk in The Conservative Mind, "but the species is wise." We have inherited from the past "the instruments which the wisdom of the species employs to safeguard man against his own passions and appetites."
Sunday, May 02, 2004
Federal Court Affirms Demjanjuk was a Nazi Camp Guard
Over at the Catholic singles site I've been hanging out at lately, there are some "hard" conservatives who have been trying to convince people to write in Pat Buchanan in the upcoming presidential election. Buchanan, of course, has been a long time and outspoken defender of John Demjanjuk. I can't imagine that this ruling will be helpful for the ad hoc Buchanan 2004 campaign.
The unanimous ruling from the three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit said the government had provided ''clear, unequivocal, and convincing evidence" of Demjanjuk's guard service.
Although it years ago abandoned an assertion that he was the notorious Ivan the Terrible at the Treblinka death camp in Poland, the Justice Department maintained that Demjanjuk had persecuted civilians during World War II at five Nazi concentration camps, including Trawniki, Sobibor, and Flossenburg.
''The court's decision sends a powerful message to every participant in the ghastly Nazi campaign of genocide who is still living in this country: The government will not waver in its determination to find you, prosecute you, and remove you from the United States," said Eli M. Rosenbaum, director of the Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations.
Over at the Catholic singles site I've been hanging out at lately, there are some "hard" conservatives who have been trying to convince people to write in Pat Buchanan in the upcoming presidential election. Buchanan, of course, has been a long time and outspoken defender of John Demjanjuk. I can't imagine that this ruling will be helpful for the ad hoc Buchanan 2004 campaign.
The unanimous ruling from the three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit said the government had provided ''clear, unequivocal, and convincing evidence" of Demjanjuk's guard service.
Although it years ago abandoned an assertion that he was the notorious Ivan the Terrible at the Treblinka death camp in Poland, the Justice Department maintained that Demjanjuk had persecuted civilians during World War II at five Nazi concentration camps, including Trawniki, Sobibor, and Flossenburg.
''The court's decision sends a powerful message to every participant in the ghastly Nazi campaign of genocide who is still living in this country: The government will not waver in its determination to find you, prosecute you, and remove you from the United States," said Eli M. Rosenbaum, director of the Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations.
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