Pot, Kettle, Black...

A painting which depicts President Bush being sodomized was taken down from open display in an art gallery after Michael Friedman, an "artist" who had painted a picture of Pope Benedict XVI with several swastikas in the background, complained that the sexually explicit painting of Bush was offensive and tasteless. (via Powerline)

"Sodomy in a public forum is not, from my perspective, considered art," [Friedman] said. "I think somebody has to draw the line somewhere. I like political satire. However, that type of image...I don't think is artistic."

Friedman's right about the sodomy depiction, of course, but I'm trying to figure out [toungue in cheek] how his suggestion that the pope is a Nazi is artful satire rather than illustrated bigotry or hate speech.

Class of '87

It's been a while since I've done it, but Amy Welborn has kind of inspired me to google some people I knew in high school to see where they might be in life today. Here's what I was able to find:

For some reason, I'm not surprised he has a tattoo.

Absolutley no surprise that he's doing what he's doing. (Kind of funny, though, that I found him on the same business networking website as the guy above).

I indirectly keep in touch with him through a relative.

Haven't had any luck finding any of the gals I knew in my graduating class, probably because most of them are married now and have changed their names.

T-minus two years until my 20th year reunion. Yikes!

Update: Although this guy (scroll all the way down)was into theater and acting back in high school, he was a fairly decent cross country and long distance runner as well.

The Intolerant Left Strikes Again

This time with soda cans filled with marbles that were thrown at people before the start of a meeting in Garden Grove featuring Minuteman Project founder Jim Gilchrist.

Still Not Quite Right

The correction should read "The institutional Church and orthodox Catholics believe it is His body and blood." (link via Amy Welborn)

I Like Apple Pie Because Chicken Tastes Good

Makes about as much sense as saying legal immigration will be undermined by beefing up border security and allowing the police to arrest someone because he is in this country illegally. God save Los Angeles.

Attack Journalism

Al Reuteera publishes the following "facts" about Priscilla Owen, whom the Senate finally voted on and confirmed to the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals (link via Powerline):

Owen, 50, recently received the worst rating on the Texas Supreme Court in an annual judicial evaluation poll by Houston lawyers. With 350 votes cast, 39.5 percent said she was outstanding, 15.2 percent rated her acceptable and 45.3 percent said she was "poor." None of the court's eight other judges had as many "poor" votes and only one had fewer "outstanding" votes.

Looks bad, but I'm sort of interested in knowing who exactly conducted this poll. And aren't there more than 350 lawyers in Houston? It's also curious that Al Reuteera doesn't mention the fact that Justice Owen received the highest possible rating from the American Bar Association (hardly a bastion of conservatism).

Owen is a member of the Federalist Society, an increasingly powerful legal society that describes itself as "a group of conservatives and libertarians" who believe "it is emphatically the province and duty of the judiciary to say what the law is, not what it should be."

Gee, I'd hate to see what Al Reuteera would say if Justice Owen was as member of Opus Dei.

Owen graduated in 1977 from the law school at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, as the top student in her class. She worked as a corporate lawyer with expertise in oil and gas at a large Houston law firm before being elected to the Texas Supreme Court in 1994 in a campaign aided by current White House adviser Karl Rove. She was re-elected in 2000 with 84 percent of the vote.

In other words, Owen is just another pawn in Karl Rove's master plan to rule the world, and the 84% who voted for Owen are all brainless robots.

U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has endorsed Owen's nomination but they clashed on a number of cases when they were on the Texas Supreme Court, most famously in an abortion rights case in 2000. Owen was a dissenter on the court's vote upholding a teenage girl's right to abortion without notifying her parents. In his opinion, Gonzales wrote that dissenting justices advocated a position directly contradicting state law and that adopting their view "would be an unconscionable act of judicial activism."

Read this, then try to tell me that most "journalists" in the MSM aren't a bunch of lazy hacks who don't bother to investigate any claim that coincides with their leftist agenda.

Owen is a divorcee who lives in Austin, Texas, where she teaches Sunday school and tends the altar at St. Barnabas the Encourager Evangelical Covenant Church, which split from the Episcopal Church last June because of disagreements with national church leaders who ordained a gay bishop and allowed dioceses to consider blessing same-sex unions.

In other words, Owen is a hypocritical fundamentalist Christian who needs to be feared.

Note to Al Reuteera: Let us know when you stop confusing so-called facts about a person with whom you disagree with uninformed partisan commentary.

Our Nutty Fundie Friends

Of course, it's stuff like this which adds fuel to the fart winds of pandering blowhards like Congressman John Conyers. (via Drudge)

Our Fathers

On Showtime tonight. I don't have cable or satellite, so I obviously can't watch it. Even if I could, I probably wouldn't, as I'm sure there will be plenty of unwarranted and unsubstantiated slams against the Church that have little or nothing to do with the Situation. I mean, for crying out loud, uber-Hollywood leftist Ted Danson is in this thing.

In Case All the "Sith" Showings are Sold Out

You can try catching the other prequel Exorcist movie that was made a couple of years ago but never released until now.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

John Conyers is a pandering Left-wing dolt. (HT: ChronWatch Blogs)

An Islamic civil rights group is urging all "people of conscience" to support a Democrat-sponsored resolution recognizing that the Koran, like the holy book of any other religion, "should be treated with dignity and respect."

The resolution, to be introduced by Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), also "condemns bigotry and intolerance against any religious group, including our friends, neighbors and citizens of the Islamic faith."

"This resolution expresses America's respect for the holy texts of all faiths. If passed, it will also reiterate our nation's condemnation of bigoted behavior and religious intolerance," said Corey Saylor, CAIR's government affairs director.

When I read that line from CAIR, the milk I was drinking sprayed out of my nose.

What I'm Reading

Because I frankly have nothing else to blog about right now:

Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President

Someone Needs to Close Up the "Big Tent" Flaps

WorldNet Daily reports that "actress" and former California gubernatorial candidate, Mary Carey, will be attending a GOP sponsored fundraiser dinner for President Bush.

"I'm hoping to run as lieutenant governor of California next year," Carey said. "Since Arnold [Schwarzenegger] is a Republican, I thought this dinner would be a great networking opportunity for me."

"I'm especially looking forward to meeting Karl Rove," Carey added. "Smart men like him are so sexy. I know that he's against gay marriage, but I think I can convince him that a little girl-on-girl action now and then isn't so bad!"

How do you respond to such silliness?

The Left Hates Traditional Believing Christians

And longs for the institution of religious litmus tests for the judiciary. Such is perfectly illustrated by this headline in the New York Times and this picture which briefly appeared on the website of Moveon.org.

May As Well Throw In World Peace and a Cure for Cancer While You're At It!!

That's what I felt like blurting out at a court hearing today in Los Angeles on whether there should be public disclosure of the personnel files of several former employees of the Diocese of Orange who had been accused of sexually molesting or abusing minor children. I was specially representing one of the non-priest employees who did not want his personnel files made public.

In the papers that I filed, I basically argued that since my client was not an expressly named party in the action against the Diocese of Orange, his personnel files were protected by the right to privacy under the California Constitution. Absent his consent, the only way that my client's files can be publicly discolsed is if the requesting plaintiffs can show a "compelling interest" and the information they seek cannot be gathered from any other nonconfidential source or by way of deposition.

At the hearing today, plaintiffs' counsel (there were several of them) essentially argued that getting "the truth" out about all the allegations that led to the sexual abuse lawsuits against the Diocese of Orange was a compelling interest. In counsels' collective mind, unless the personnel files are publicly disclosed, the plaintiffs in the matter will have no proper sense of "closure," even though they've all been paid a boat load of money in a settlement with the diocese. There was also a nonsensical suggestion that not getting "the truth" out would somehow deny the public of having any knowledge that there was/is a sexual abuse problem in the Church. On this, I felt like yelling out in court, "Just so you know: Japan militarily attacked Pearl Harbor in December of 1941!"

As objectively weak and surreal as the above arguments are, the presiding judge in the hearing, Peter Lichtman, was clearly buying into them. In fact, while I was making some remarks on behalf of my client in support of his disclosure objection, Lichtman rhetorically, and somewhat brusquely, asked me if I wouldn't make the same argument as the plaintiffs. When he said this to me, I pretty much knew that I was wasting my breath. Lichtman was basically signaling to everyone in the courtroom that he thought plaintiffs' thinly veiled desire to publicly humiliate the Diocese of Orange was a compelling enough interest to undermine the privacy rights of certain individuals who were never criminally charged or personally sued for doing things they have only been accused of committing. Given the disposition he displayed today, I will be absolutely shocked if Lichtman doesn't allow public disclosure of the personnel files in question here.

Sidebar Note: Looks as though Judge Lichtman is quite an ambitious jurist.

Update: Qualified shock. Although several personnel files were ordered to be publicly disclosed, it seems that many of them were withheld because of the objections that were made. I didn't stay around to see if Lichtman was going to make a ruling from the bench, and since my client is in pro per, I'll have to wait for him to get notice of the ruling in the mail before I know how he made out.

The New Archbishop of San Francisco

Who will it be now that Levada is going off to Rome? I'm hoping the Holy Father has a strong sense of poetic justice and names Fr. Joseph Fessio.

A Rashomon Moment

Rashomon is the title of a classic Japanese language film whose story centers upon the rape of a woman and murder of her husband. The hook of the movie is that every witness who claims to have seen the crimes take place, tells a different story of what happened. To a large extent, the movie is an illustrative commentary on the imperfectness of human nature and the strong tendecy we all have to see and interpret things as we want, rather than as what they are.

The underlying theme of Rashomon seems to have reared its head at Southern Appeal over this recent article written by Pat Buchanan on President Bush's celebration of the 60th anniversary of VE day in Russia. Seems that SA, and several of its combox commentators, think that Buchanan's criticism of Bush is a thinly veiled condemnation of America's involvement in WWII, and a backhanded slight toward all those who fought and sacrificed their lives in that war. I think, however, a closer reading of the article shows something entirely different, and is not what some people are interpreting it to be.

As Buchanan rhetorically asks, "But were we and the Soviets ever fighting for the same things, as FDR believed?" The asking of this question essentially sets up the premise of Buchanan's main argument: that the Soviet Union's involvement in WWII was primarily about preserving its world expasionist goals, and not resisting Nazi aggression. In light of this, Buchanan is expressing befuddlement as to why an American President would go and celebrate VE Day at ground zero for historical world communism.

I can only speculate as to why the good folks at SA seem to be misinterpreting Buchanan's article. This is only a guess, but I suspect that their reading of the piece is colored by their frustration with Buchanan's occasional alignment with the Left on various issues like the war in Iraq, his borderline anti-Semitic blatherings, and his pejorative labeling of any conservative he disagrees with as a "neo-conservative." I certainly share in this frustration about Buchanan, but it shouldn't be a reason to start imputing a belief on him that he never expressed.

Sigh

Assuming she didn't give her consent, I suppose Jennifer Wilbanks is enough of a "newsworthy event" to where this company can try to make money directly off of her image.

It's still sad commentary on our culture, though.

What to Make of It

There seems to be some teeth to the rumor about San Francisco Archbishop William Levada going to CDF. (link via Amy Welborn) While I don't think this would be a great move by PBXVI, it may not be all that bad. First, I highly suspect that no matter who is made the new head of CDF, PBXVI will be keeping a pretty tight reign on it. Second, we can start wildly speculating about the possibility of Fr. Fessio being elevated and appointed as the new Archbishop of San Francisco.

Update: Do I know what I'm talking about, or do I know what talking about? (via Amy Welborn)

Blatant Dishonesty

Tom Berg at the Mirror of Justice Blog writes the following in response to an argument that St. Thomas University Law School's express disavowal over being labled a "conservative" school will lead people to think that the school is not very serious about its Catholic identity, and is, in fact, liberal:

Mr. Adkins doesn't actually claim that being inclusive is the same as softening the teachings; he backs off to saying that "that is the message folks are going to take away from the [St. Thomas] disclaimer." Sorry, folks, but that reminds me of CNN smuggling a scandalous story onto the air in the guise of reporting about how other media are reporting the story. If people interpret a law school's statement that it does not "ascrib[e] to any political agenda" as being "anti-conservative," this will likely be in part because they read commentators who describe the school that way (inaccurately in this case, as I've said in my comments on the Seventh Age blog).

Apparently, Mr. Berg, a self-identified Protestant, has forgotten the following comments by the dean of STU Law School that he (Berg) had posted on the MOJ blog just two days ago:

There is nothing politically “conservative” about our mission, and the people we have attracted prove this. The vast majority of our faculty and student body are left-of-center politically. Our faculty includes individuals who are openly gay, who support abortion rights, who oppose the death penalty, and who have worked on behalf of other “liberal” causes.

Translation: She's an "Uncle Tom"

How else to interpret this comment about D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals nominee Janice Rogers Brown by Democrat Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid: 'She is a woman who wants to take us back to the Civil War days.'