William P. Clark, R.I.P.

William P. Clark, Ronald Reagan's closest advisor, passed away yesterday. It's quite possible that you've never heard of Judge Clark, but he just so happens to be one of the chief architects of Reagan's vision for the downfall of Soviet communism, and played a key role in implementing that plan.

The following excerpt is from an interview Ignatius Insight did a few years ago with Paul Kengor, Clark's biographer (his book is The Judge: William P. Clark, Ronald Reagan's Top Hand):

... Clark helped set up that initial and historic June 1982 meeting between President Reagan and Pope John Paul II, where the two men confided in one another that they believed that God had spared their lives for a special purpose, which they concluded was to undermine Soviet communism, beginning particularly in Poland, which both men—as well as Clark—saw as the wedge that could crack the entire Communist Bloc.

Over the next year and a half that followed, Clark became the primary White House conduit to the Vatican. Along with CIA director Bill Casey, another committed Catholic, Clark met very frequently with Pio Laghi, the apostolic delegate to Washington. He and Casey had code language when discussing over the telephone the need for a quick meeting with Laghi: "It's time to get some cappuccino," they would say. That meant a visit to Laghi's residence for a cappuccino and to share information about the critical activities going on around the world, especially in Poland. They were the middle men between Reagan and Pope John Paul II, the principal liaisons. Clark was the point man who would then report that information directly back to Reagan...

Kathryn Jean Lopez's tribute to Judge Clark at National Review is definitely worth a read.

Requiescat in pace, Judge Clark.

Catholic Left: Pope Francis "Has Some Splainin' to Do"

Some on the Catholic left seem to have reservations about the fact that Jorge Mario Bergoglio (a.k.a., as of yesterday, Pope Francis) was not immersed in the so-called "liberation theology" movement that was rampant in Latin America from the late 60s through the early 80s until Pope John Paul II rooted it out.

This quote in the comments following the linked post is just precious:

"... practically any non-liberation theology bishop from Latin America probably has explaining to do. I hope Pope Francis is forthcoming about this."

Yes, how dare Pope Francis not involve himself in something his predecessor popes described as a heresy?

Malthusian Nonsense Alert: "The Earth Is Full"

How long before China's chief cheerleader in the West, the New York Times' Thomas Friedman, calls for a U.N.-mandated 1-child policy for the entire world?

... “In China’s thousands of years of civilization, the conflict between humankind and nature has never been as serious as it is today,” China’s environment minister, Zhou Shengxian, said recently. “The depletion, deterioration and exhaustion of resources and the worsening ecological environment have become bottlenecks and grave impediments to the nation’s economic and social development.” What China’s minister is telling us, says Gilding, is that “the Earth is full. We are now using so many resources and putting out so much waste into the Earth that we have reached some kind of limit, given current technologies. The economy is going to have to get smaller in terms of physical impact.”

We will not change systems, though, without a crisis. But don’t worry, we’re getting there.

We’re currently caught in two loops: One is that more population growth and more global warming together are pushing up food prices; rising food prices cause political instability in the Middle East, which leads to higher oil prices, which leads to higher food prices, which leads to more instability. At the same time, improved productivity means fewer people are needed in every factory to produce more stuff. So if we want to have more jobs, we need more factories. More factories making more stuff make more global warming, and that is where the two loops meet...

[More]

Heck, for all I know, given Friedman's crush on all things ChiCom, he's probably already suggested a U.N.-mandated 1-child policy.


Previous Pro Ecclesia posts on this subject:
Hypocritical Malthusian Nonsense: Father of 5, Ted Turner, Wants U.N. to Institute World-Wide 1-Child Policy

Man vs. Nature: the Inhuman Agenda Behind the Fight Against “Climate Change”

What the One-Child Policy Has Wrought

Baby-Hating Malthusian Nonsense Goes Mainstream at Copenhagen

China Begins to "Figure it Out" on Demographics

Obama Culture of Death Update™: President's "Science Czar" Supports Forced Population Control Measures [UPDATED]

UK Government Official Says Having More Than 2 Children "Irresponsible"; Catholics Respond

Rich Leonardi on the "Obnoxiousness" of the Concept of "Carbon Footprints"

Malthusian Nonsense Alert: "Save the Planet — Have Fewer Kids"

Deacon Fournier Reviews Population Controllers

Malthusian Nonsense Alert: Babies a Drag on the Economy, Report Says

Darwin Catholic: "Want Sustainable? Try a Family"

Malthusian Nonsense in the Extreme: "When Should You Die?"

Population Control Movement is "Number One Violator of Human Rights," Author Claims

USAToday Columnist: Religion is Killing the Planet

The Pitter-Patter of Carbon Footprints ...

Cardinal Pell Criticizes Australian Medical Ass'n for Publishing Letter Advocating Carbon Tax on Children

Professor Solves Global Warming: Let’s Tax Reproduction

Global Alarming Update: Focus on So-Called "Carbon Footprint" Anti-Family

Malthusian Nonsense from "Global Warming" Alarmists

Cardinal Pell on Global Warming Alarmists: "Scaremongers" and "Zealots"

Why Is the Left Hostile to Vietnamese-Americans?

On Tuesday, Congress lost its sole Vietnamese-American member, thanks in no small part to efforts by the left to target his Congressional district for pick up. Anh "Joseph" Cao (R-LA), a devout pro-life Catholic, had became the nation's first Vietnamese-American elected to Congress in 2008 when he defeated nine-term incumbent William Jefferson who was facing federal corruption charges. Cao represented a majority-black district in New Orleans that has always been a traditional Democrat stronghold, so his ability to hold onto the seat was always going to be tenuous. But it wasn't hopeless, especially in a big GOP year like 2010.

However, the Democrats and the far left made recapturing Cao's seat a top priority. In fact, President Obama during the 2010 election cycle cut exactly ONE ad for a Congressional candidate, and that candidate was Cao's opponent. This despite the fact that Cao had been anything BUT a partisan member of the GOP and had even voted for the House version of ObamaCare when it still contained the Stupak language banning abortion funding. Cao seemed a caught off guard and hurt by the President's decision to actively campaign for his opponent, given Cao's willingness to reach across the aisle and work with the President and the Democrats on certain issues.

While I understand the Democrat impetus to pick up House seats where they could in a year that was going to be otherwise awfully tough for them, it does raise some questions (at least in my mind) that the President would be so glib about going above and beyond to defeat the country's lone Vietnamese-American member of Congress.

And then there's the case of Van Tran. Van Tran was the Republican challenger to the truly repugnant California Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez in Tuesday's elections. He lost to Sanchez, in no small part, because of blatant racial demagoguery. Sanchez, speaking to Spanish-language station Univision about her opponent, claimed that "The Vietnamese are after my seat":

"The Vietnamese and the Republicans are, with an intensity, trying to take this seat from which we have done so much for our community — to take this seat and give it to this Van Tran, who is very anti-immigrant and very anti-Hispanic.”

You may wonder how Van Tran, who immigrated with his family from Vietnam to the U.S. in 1975, could be "anti-immigrant". Well, that's because to the Democrat Party only certain kinds of immigrants "count" (that would be those who haven't fled from commie hell holes like Vietnam and Cuba). You see, this seat "belongs" to Mexican-American Democrats, which makes you automatically "racist" and "anti-immigrant" if you are trying to win it and you happen not to be a Mexican-American Democrat.

So, to the Democrat mindset, an ACTUAL immigrant fleeing communist oppression in Vietnam is "anti-immigrant" just because he is a Republican, while the pampered American-born child of middle-class Mexican immigrants who came to this country for economic opportunities automatically qualifies for the "poor oppressed me" club just because she is a Democrat.

It seems somewhat odd that the party that calls itself the "party of immigrants" has NEVER had a Vietnamese-American among its Congressional ranks, and that the supposedly "anti-immigrant" party ran two such candidates in the 2010 Congressional elections. What seems even more odd is that the alleged "party of immigrants" would go to such extremes to oppose those two Vietnamese-American candidates. One might think that the left has a problem with Vietnamese-American immigrants. That's because they do.

Recall what religious left icon Jim Wallis said about the Vietnamese Boat People:

Following the 1979 refugee crisis in Vietnam, Wallis lashed out at the desperate masses fleeing North Vietnam's communist forces by boat. These refugees, as Wallis saw it, had been "inoculated" by capitalist influences during the war and were absconding "to support their consumer habit in other lands." Wallis then admonished critics against pointing to the boat people to "discredit" the righteousness of Vietnam's newly victorious Communist regime.

Hmmmm. That's revealing. I can't help but think that the primary reason for the left-wing coolness toward Vietnamese-Americans is that this particular immigrant population serve as a constant reminder to us all of the devastating consequences suffered by the Vietnamese population as a result of the perfidious left's embrace of North Vietnam's communist oppressors who were trying to overrun South Vietnam during the Vietnam War.

How dare these Vietnamese immigrants prefer America to the Maoist utopia the left had given so much aid and comfort to creating for them back in Southeast Asia?!?!?

Ah, My Beloved Charlottesville [UPDATED]

Carpetbagging lefties have turned this quaint, historic university town - the hometown of Thomas Jefferson - into a socialist canker in the middle of one of the most conservative regions of the Commonwealth of Virginia:




UPDATE
And it's not just carpetbaggers who make my beloved C'ville what it is. Here are some of the homegrown variety of socialists that make Mr. Jefferson's city hostile territory for anyone to the right of Chairman Mao (LANGUAGE WARNING - NOT SAFE FOR WORK):



Can't you just feel the peace and love?

Ironically, you can't drive 100 feet in Charlottesville without seeing one of those insipid "COEXIST" bumper stickers on the back of some Volvo.

(Hat tip: Shaun Kenney)


Previous Pro Ecclesia posts on this subject:
An ObamaCare Catholic in Big Trouble in My Old Stomping Grounds

NPR Thinks Wishing Jesse Helms or One of His Grandchildren Would Die of AIDS is Okay [UPDATED]

This is the only conclusion one can draw from National Public Radio's decision to fire Juan Williams after Williams related to Bill O'Reilly his understandable anxiety over flying with Muslims after 9-11 (while nevertheless warning O'Reilly of the necessity of not stereotyping all Muslims for the actions of a few), but NOT firing Nina Totenberg several years ago after making the following statement:

“... if there's retributive justice, [Jesse Helms] will get AIDS from a transfusion, or one of his grandchildren will get it.”

As the linked piece notes, Totenberg is still NPR's legal affairs correspondent. It is perfectly reasonable to conclude, therefore, that NPR thinks it's just great for one of its correspondents to publicly wish AIDS upon the innocent grandchildren of someone with whom that correspondent disagrees politically.

Any doubts about whether NPR is anything more than a left-wing propaganda organ may now be removed.




UPDATE
JUAN WILLIAMS: I Was Fired for Telling the Truth


UPDATE #2 (22 October)




UPDATE #3 (22 October)
The Corner has complied a list of Nina Totenberg's Greatest Hits: "What About Totenberg?"

(Hat tip: Creative Minority Report)

Meanwhile, the NPR ombudman/person, while noting that the firing was "poorly handled", nevertheless defends the public broadcaster's decision to terminate the contract of Juan Williams.


UPDATE #4 (22 October)
For the record, someone in this whole Juan Williams - NPR dustup made a public comment that should cost someone that person's job. That someone was NOT Juan Williams, but NPR's CEO, Vivian Schiller:


Someone needs a refresher course on HR dos and don'ts. Ms. Schiller has likely opened up herself and NPR for a lawsuit. I, for one, hope Williams decides to take them to the cleaners.

“I Would Argue That More People Would Support My Catholic Faith Than His Marxist Beliefs”

The appropriate response to the left's disdain for the presence of people of strong faith in the public square.

More here.


UPDATE
Patrick Archbold has more at National Catholic Register with "The Catholic Or The Commie?".

When Lefties Congregate ...

... they do so in MUCH SMALLER NUMBERS while leaving the place FAR DIRTIER than their right-wing counterparts.

Man vs. Nature: the Inhuman Agenda Behind the Fight Against “Climate Change”

At Inside Catholic, Joe Hargrave writes on the Malthusian assumptions underpinning current efforts to curb carbon emissions blamed for causing "climate change":

... One year ago, a study conducted by Oregon State University concluded that "having one less child" would be the best way for a family in the United States to reduce their impact on the environment, even more so than all of the energy-efficient cars and appliances that they could use in a lifetime. But it is the researchers at the Optimum Population Trust (OPT) at the London School of Economics who consistently make strident arguments for population reduction as the most effective way of combating global warming.

Their decision to look directly at how contraception would affect carbon emissions should be unnerving enough for Catholics: For every $6.63 spent on birth control, it would cost $31.48 to reduce carbon emissions with low-carbon technology by the same amount, in their estimation. But it is the shift in language that we ought to find more disconcerting. To quote the chairman of the OPT: "It's always been obvious that total emissions depend on the number of emitters as well as their individual emissions." Is this how we are to be seen by those who have arrogated to themselves the task of rescuing the planet? As "emitters"?

Those who think that the very question is alarmist would do well to consider the praise some of our Western intellectuals offer the Chinese population-control regime, which includes regimented family size as well as forced abortions and sterilizations. At the Copenhagen summit last year, Chinese officials proclaimed that, due to such policies, "China has seen 400 million fewer births, which has resulted in 18 million fewer tons of CO2 emissions a year." Of course, the majority of those prevented births were not caused by forced abortion; rather, they are largely attributable to the fact that the Chinese government has promoted contraception to the point that "85 percent of the Chinese women in reproductive age use contraceptives, the highest rate in the world."

Around the same time, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman expressed his admiration for the Chinese authoritarian regime, lauding it as "a reasonably enlightened group of people" that can, without any checks or balances, impose whatever policies it sees fit "to move a society forward in the 21st century." While this did not directly praise China's population-control measures, a column in the Financial Post by Diane Francis caused quite a controversy for doing exactly that. In the midst of her alarmist screed forecasting the immanent doom of the planet if governments did not take sharp measures to reduce the population, she identified the main obstacle to this goal: "Leaders of the world's big fundamentalist religions preach in favor of procreation and fiercely oppose birth control."

Used in this pejorative sense, there is of course nothing "fundamentalist" about the largest religious organization on the planet that also happens to preach these unpopular ideas with the most resolve: the Catholic Church. But there is something quite fundamental about the Church's teaching on the sanctity of human life and the true purpose of sexuality. In Evangelium Vitae, Pope John Paul II wrote that, "to defend and promote life, to show reverence and love for it, is a task which God entrusts to every man, calling him as his living image to share in his own lordship over the world" (42). In bringing new life into the world, men and women take part in "a certain special participation" of spouses in the "creative work of God" (43)...

[Read the whole thing]

(Hat tip: The American Catholic)


Previous Pro Ecclesia posts on this subject:
National Academy of Sciences Plots Attacks on AGW Skeptics [UPDATED]

Political Accountability for Scientific Arrogance

Another American Media Failure

World May Not be Warming, Say Scientists

Nope, No Reason for Skepticism Whatsoever

What the One-Child Policy Has Wrought

Baby-Hating Malthusian Nonsense Goes Mainstream at Copenhagen

Sen. Inhofe Sticks Fork in Global Alarming Hysterics

BBC Asks "What Happened to Global Warming?"

China Begins to "Figure it Out" on Demographics

Obama Culture of Death Update™: President's "Science Czar" Supports Forced Population Control Measures [UPDATED]

UK Government Official Says Having More Than 2 Children "Irresponsible"; Catholics Respond

Rich Leonardi on the "Obnoxiousness" of the Concept of "Carbon Footprints"

Malthusian Nonsense Alert: "Save the Planet — Have Fewer Kids"

Deacon Fournier Reviews Population Controllers

Malthusian Nonsense Alert: Babies a Drag on the Economy, Report Says

Darwin Catholic: "Want Sustainable? Try a Family"

Malthusian Nonsense in the Extreme: "When Should You Die?"

Population Control Movement is "Number One Violator of Human Rights," Author Claims

USAToday Columnist: Religion is Killing the Planet

The Pitter-Patter of Carbon Footprints ...

Cardinal Pell Criticizes Australian Medical Ass'n for Publishing Letter Advocating Carbon Tax on Children

Professor Solves Global Warming: Let’s Tax Reproduction

Global Alarming Update: Focus on So-Called "Carbon Footprint" Anti-Family

Malthusian Nonsense from "Global Warming" Alarmists

Cardinal Pell on Global Warming Alarmists: "Scaremongers" and "Zealots"

Another Reason to Hate Homeowners' Associations

I've declared on at least one previous occasion my distaste for homeowners' associations, as well as my belief that restrictive covenants containing HOAs should be declared void on public policy grounds.

But someone should be summarily executed for this injustice:

Capt. Mike Clauer was serving in Iraq last year as company commander of an Army National Guard unit assigned to escort convoys. It was exceedingly dangerous work — explosive devices buried in the road were a constant threat to the lives of Clauer and his men.

He was halfway through his deployment when he got a bolt from the blue — a frantic phone call from his wife, May, back in Texas.

"She was bawling on the phone and was telling me that the HOA [homeowners association] had foreclosed on our house, and it was sold," he says. "And I couldn't believe that could even happen."

Clauer had a hard time understanding what his wife was saying. His $300,000 house was already completely paid for. Could it be possible that their home was foreclosed on and sold because his wife had missed two payments of their HOA dues?

In many states it is not difficult for an HOA to foreclose on a member's home for past dues even if the amount owed is just a few hundred dollars.

"I was really in a hurry trying to get home before my family was living on the streets," Clauer says.

But by the time he got back to Texas, it was too late. The Clauers' four-bedroom, 3,500-square-foot home had been sold on the courthouse steps for just $3,500 — enough to cover outstanding HOA dues and legal costs.

The new owner quickly sold it for $135,000 and netted a tidy profit.

"Basically it's everything to us," Clauer says. "Having a house like this paid for was huge for us, for our retirement plans. We thought we were so far ahead, and now it's like we're starting from the beginning."

Lawyers for the HOA say that while Clauer's case is regrettable, it was his and his wife's fault for not paying their dues in a timely manner.

[Read the whole thing]

(emphasis added)

The neighborhood Napoleans that run HOAs are nothing but cranks and glorified thieves.


Previous Pro Ecclesia posts on this subject:
Homeowners' Association Sues To Oust 3-Year-Old

Compassionate, Non-Violent Lefties Spread the Love

Gateway Pundit reports: "GOP Official & Boyfriend Savagely Beaten For Wearing Palin Pins – Including Broken Leg, Jaw, Concussion… Media Silent".

Bernie Sanders Says Climate Change Skeptics Remind Him of Nazi Appeasers

The U.S. Senate's only socialist member (at least he's the only one who will own up to being one), Bernie Sanders of the People's Republic of Vermont, says climate change skeptics remind him of those who denied the Nazis were a threat:

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders is comparing climate change skeptics to those who disregarded the Nazi threat to America in the 1930s, adding a strident rhetorical shot to the already volatile debate over climate change.

"It reminds me in some ways of the debate taking place in this country and around the world in the late 1930s," said Sanders, perhaps the most liberal member of the Senate, during a Senate hearing Tuesday. "During that period of Nazism and fascism's growth-a real danger to the United States and democratic countries around the world- there were people in this country and in the British parliament who said 'don't worry! Hitler's not real! It'll disappear!"

Sanders’ reference to the Nazi threat is sure to enrage Republicans who are already skeptical of the science behind climate change. But Sanders wasn't the only one throwing bombs at a hearing that was ostensibly about the EPA's fiscal 2011 budget. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), who has called global warming a "hoax," is asking for an investigation into the science used in the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the governing body on climate science.

Earlier in the hearing, Inhofe had chided Sanders: "I know the senator from Vermont wants so badly to believe that the science on climate change is settled but it's not."

[Read more]

My Comments:
That's all right, Bernie, because the climate change proponents, their tactics, and their policy preferences seem to me to bear a remarkable resemblance to the Soviet-era Stalinists.

World May Not be Warming, Say Scientists

Heh!

And heh, again.

But, you know, I'm just "anti-science" and a "denier".


UPDATE (16 February)

(Language Warning)

What the One-Child Policy Has Wrought

(Hat tip: Mark Steyn)

This is the policy for which China is being praised for its "responsible stewardship" by all the global warming alrmists:

To say that China’s one-child family policy has been a disaster is an understatement. A report released earlier this month by the nation’s top think tank – the Communist Government’s Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) - says that the policy has created a huge gender imbalance with significant implications for future social stability.

Indeed, according to the report, 24 million men reaching marriageable age by 2020 will never marry because of the sex imbalance. Think of it in these terms: what if the entire population of New York City or of Australia was never able to marry. Imagine the social implications in a city or nation that large where no one can marry. Imagine if that city or country is comprised solely of 24 million men; men with no homes to return to at night; men without the responsibilities of a family to keep them engaged in productive pursuits.

[...]

Interestingly the CASS report termed those condemned to bachelorhood “bare branches” because they would not be able to establish family trees of their own.

How China got to this pitiful state is well documented. A rigid one child per family policy, legal and easily available abortion, and a cultural and economic preference for sons, resulted in sex selective abortions since the early 1980s. Laws to deter such behaviour have failed resoundingly. For example, obtaining knowledge of an unborn baby’s sex from ultrasounds was made illegal to stop abortions of baby girls by the 1990s. But throughout China’s rural villages and towns it remains possible to bribe staff in medical clinics and hospitals to find out the sex of an expected child. Once the parents decide to abort an unborn baby, Chinese law does not require them to carry an unborn baby girl to term.

More girls than boys are aborted. Many more.

[...]

The main concern raised by the CASS report is that 24 million men condemned to a life alone will result in a major strain on the State welfare system. Essentially, without families of their own to care for them as this generation starts ageing, the State will need to step in with sufficient pension funds and aged care facilities for the old bachelors of the latter decades of the 21st Century.

But other problems – such as a rising incidence of prostitution and violent crime - are on the horizon, judging by some current trends.

For example, while the number of baby girls being born has declined, the number of kidnappings and trafficking of young girls has risen. According to the National Population and Family Planning Commission – that’s right, the very organization responsible for the one child family policy -- abductions and trafficking of women and girls has become “rampant”.

Young girls are being kidnapped within China and also from neighboring countries (Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Myanmar, Thailand) by organized gangs who sell them to families with boys of a similar age. The girls will be raised by the families and given as brides to their sons as soon as they reach marriageable age. Others are shipped to brothels within China for a life as sex slaves.

[More]

My Comments:
Yes, let's all hear it for China's "responsible" global "stewardship".


Previous Pro Ecclesia posts on this subject:
Baby-Hating Malthusian Nonsense Goes Mainstream at Copenhagen

China Begins to "Figure it Out" on Demographics

Obama Culture of Death Update™: President's "Science Czar" Supports Forced Population Control Measures [UPDATED]

UK Government Official Says Having More Than 2 Children "Irresponsible"; Catholics Respond

Rich Leonardi on the "Obnoxiousness" of the Concept of "Carbon Footprints"

Malthusian Nonsense Alert: "Save the Planet — Have Fewer Kids"

Deacon Fournier Reviews Population Controllers

Malthusian Nonsense Alert: Babies a Drag on the Economy, Report Says

Darwin Catholic: "Want Sustainable? Try a Family"

Malthusian Nonsense in the Extreme: "When Should You Die?"

Population Control Movement is "Number One Violator of Human Rights," Author Claims

USAToday Columnist: Religion is Killing the Planet

The Pitter-Patter of Carbon Footprints ...

Cardinal Pell Criticizes Australian Medical Ass'n for Publishing Letter Advocating Carbon Tax on Children

Professor Solves Global Warming: Let’s Tax Reproduction

Global Alarming Update: Focus on So-Called "Carbon Footprint" Anti-Family

Malthusian Nonsense from "Global Warming" Alarmists

Cardinal Pell on Global Warming Alarmists: "Scaremongers" and "Zealots"

Baby-Hating Malthusian Nonsense Goes Mainstream at Copenhagen

Matthew Archbold reports:

China's at the forefront of saving the planet. And they're doing it one baby at a time. That is, killing one baby at a time, according to Max Schulz from the Washington Examiner:

Want to save the planet from global warming? Forget about getting rid of coal plants or the internal combustion engine. Get rid of the humans. They're the true problem.

That insidious message gained new currency with the United Nations Copenhagen climate change circus this month. While the conference likely will be remembered for participants' failure to reach a binding emissions reduction agreement, its legacy may be that it brought mainstream respectability to the fringe left-wing notion that mankind is a scourge on the planet.

In so doing, it has breathed new life into population control proposals that had seemed discredited since the population bomb alarmists warned about in the 1960s and '70s failed to detonate...

[...]

Can you imagine being present at a conference where they're boasting about 400 million forced abortions and not storming out or at least slamming the door. But no, our President and the elite of the world sat on their hands or worse...even approved. 400 million?! That's not environmentalism, that's a holocaust.

[More]

My Commnents:
Just a few days ago, we commemorated the Feast of the Holy Innocents. But, in retrospect, Herod had nothing on these environazis.

Pope Rejects Moral Equivalency

Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War, fellow travelers are still playing the moral equivalency game between the free West and the Soviet-bloc East.

However, the Holy Father said something recently that appears to reject that moral equivalency. Here's the Pope's statement concerning the 60th anniversary of the Federal Republic of Germany's Basic Law and the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall:

... Under the communist dictatorship there was no action that would have been regarded as evil and always immoral in itself. Whatever served the objectives of the party was good -- however inhuman it might be. Today someone has asked whether the Western social order is much better and more humanitarian. In fact, the history of the Federal Republic of Germany is a proof of this...

(emphasis added by James H at Opinionated Catholic)

"Age and ability in the arts or anything else, in my opinion, does not excuse a crime"

Actor Rod Steiger's ironic response (at least it's ironic in light of current events) in 1999 to film director Elia Kazan (89 years old at the time) being awarded an Honorary Oscar for Lifetime Achievement for such works as "On the Waterfront".

Paradoxically, Kazan's alleged "crime" was not a crime at all. He had informed on Hollywood commies who had colluded with the Soviet Union.

Drugging and raping a 13-year-old girl and fleeing the country to avoid the justice system, however, IS a crime, albeit one that Hollywood types tend not to get too worked up over and, in fact, sign petitions to excuse. May all these Hollywood pervert-apologist jerks see that dirtbag Roman Polanski do hard time rotting in a California prison.


UPDATE
Ed Morrissey has more on this topic in "Hollywood’s statute of limitations":

In order to completely understand the perverse nature of Hollywood’s almost-total support for director Roman Polanski in his effort to fight extradition and avoid the consequences of his conviction for statutory rape 32 years ago, recall their attitude towards another seminal director ten years ago. When the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) announced that they would give a lifetime achievement Oscar to Elia Kazan, many in Hollywood erupted in anger and protest. After all, Kazan had committed the unpardonable sin of naming names of Communists in Hollywood to the House Un-American Activities Committee.

[More]

Previous Pro Ecclesia posts on this subject:
Reminder: Roman Polanski Raped a Child [UPDATED]

Hey, Environut Whackjobs! "Butt" Out!

The green-on-the-outside-red-on-the-inside watermelon envirocommies are messing with our toilet paper:

... It is a fight over toilet paper: the kind that is blanket-fluffy and getting fluffier so fast that manufacturers are running out of synonyms for "soft" (Quilted Northern Ultra Plush is the first big brand to go three-ply and three-adjective).

It's a menace, environmental groups say -- and a dark-comedy example of American excess.

The reason, they say, is that plush U.S. toilet paper is usually made by chopping down and grinding up trees that were decades or even a century old. They want Americans, like Europeans, to wipe with tissue made from recycled paper goods.

It has been slow going. Big toilet-paper makers say that they've taken steps to become more Earth-friendly but that their customers still want the soft stuff, so they're still selling it...

Just say "NO" to the sandpaper these socialist busybodies want you to scrub your assets with.

UK Government Official Says Having More Than 2 Children "Irresponsible"; Catholics Respond

Soon to be a meme heard round the world:

Couples who have more than two children are putting an 'irresponsible' burden on the environment, the Government's leading green advisor has warned.

Jonathon Porritt called on ministers to divert money away from curing illnesses towards contraception and abortion services to limit the country's population and help in the fight against global warming.

And he criticised fellow green campaigners for dodging the issue of population growth and its effect on the environment because it is too 'controversial'.

It came as Catholic bishops in England and Wales lambasted environmentalism as an ideology every bit as dangerous as communism. [ED.: Yep.]

In a booklet, they say worshippers should be deeply sceptical of claims the green movement makes on global warming. [ED.: Yep.]

***
Mr Porritt, who has two children himself, added: 'I am unapologetic about asking people to connect up their own responsibility for their total environmental footprint and how they decide to procreate and how many children they think are appropriate.

'I think we will work our way towards a position that says having more than two children is irresponsible. It is the ghost at the table. We have all these big issues that everybody is looking at and then you don't really hear anyone say the P-word.

***
A spokeswoman for the Pro-life Alliance said: 'Yet again we hear an expert calling for more contraception and abortion: but our high abortion figures are the fruit of that kind of approach.

'The unpleasant aspect of this statement is the idea that how many children you have should be down to the state. Wherever we have seen such policies being imposed, such as in China, we have seen a preference for male children and a rise in infanticide.' [ED.: Yep.]

The views expressed by Mr Porritt came under attack from the Catholic Church, which views contraception as 'intrinsically evil'.

A booklet by the London-based Catholic Truth Society, a charity under the patronage of Peter Smith, the Archbishop of Cardiff, said there was a proven tendency among the environmental lobby to exaggerate the threat of global warming to vindicate their calls for radical Government measures to 'forcibly' move the world down a 'sustainable' path. [ED.: Yep.]

The book, Global Warming: How Should we Respond, says: 'Just as Marxism advocated Communism as the only solution to the world's ills, so Greens warn us of major catastrophe if we do not adopt their calls for radical change.'

It says the ideology of the Green movement ran counter to Christian beliefs, because it saw 'mankind as just one species among many'. [ED.: Yep.]

The book says that population programmes targeting the 'supposedly feckless breeding' of the poor, especially in developing countries, were the result of racist and unfounded prejudices. [ED.: Yep.]

'Environmental campaigns which demand that the natural world should be treated with greater respect imply that this is the only issue that matters, ignoring the plight of humanity or any spiritual values,' it said. [ED.: Yep.]

[More]

(emphasis and editorial commentary added)


UPDATE (3 February)
Fr. Finigan notes that large families are greener:

The Sunday Times last weekend reported on a GP who discourages families from having more than two children. (See: Green GP refuses to help women have large families.) Dr Pippa Hayes is a member of the Optimum Population Trust whose motto is "stop at two". Essentially, the OPT believes that having more children is not eco friendly. This is an old idea dressed up in green language; human beings are seen as a kind of pollution.

The article does give space to an alternative assessment - that in fact large families often lead more environmentally friendly lives. To take one example, they certainly don't use air travel to the same degree because with a large family, package holidays in the sun are prohibitively expensive. The active outdoor alternatives are not only very beneficial for children but also, in fact, tend to waste fewer natural resources. The photo shows one family making the most of our current weather.

The large families I know also tend to make economies of scale at home, passing on clothes and other things, cooking with fresh ingredients, growing stuff in the garden, keeping chickens, enjoying games with things that have been made, not bought, and generally getting out into the environment rather than just talking about it.

Previous Pro Ecclesia posts on this subject:
Rich Leonardi on the "Obnoxiousness" of the Concept of "Carbon Footprints"

Malthusian Nonsense Alert: "Save the Planet — Have Fewer Kids"

Deacon Fournier Reviews Population Controllers

Malthusian Nonsense Alert: Babies a Drag on the Economy, Report Says

Darwin Catholic: "Want Sustainable? Try a Family"

Malthusian Nonsense in the Extreme: "When Should You Die?"

Population Control Movement is "Number One Violator of Human Rights," Author Claims

USAToday Columnist: Religion is Killing the Planet

The Pitter-Patter of Carbon Footprints ...

Cardinal Pell Criticizes Australian Medical Ass'n for Publishing Letter Advocating Carbon Tax on Children

Professor Solves Global Warming: Let’s Tax Reproduction

Global Alarming Update: Focus on So-Called "Carbon Footprint" Anti-Family

Malthusian Nonsense from "Global Warming" Alarmists

Cardinal Pell on Global Warming Alarmists: "Scaremongers" and "Zealots"

The ELITE Plan

(Hat tip: Rick Lugari)



LOL!