Month: January 2011

Critical Issues

They couldn’t help noticing the disgusting conditions, the dazed patients, the discarded fetuses

Posted on by John W Gillis / 0 Comment

Quote of the Day for Thursday, January 20, 2011: From page 8 of the Grand Jury report of the First Judicial District of Pennsylvania concerning the long-unfettered illegal practices of abortionist Kermit B. Gosnell, M.D: Pennsylvania is not a third-world country. There were several oversight agencies that stumbled upon and should have shut down Kermit Gosnell long ago. But none of them did, not even after Karnamaya Mongar’s death. In the end, Gosnell was only caught by accident, when police raided his offices to seize evidence of his illegal prescription...

Politics & Economics

The western world is an end state: the comfy couch at the end of history

Posted on by John W Gillis / 0 Comment

Quote of the Day for Wednesday, January 19th, 2011: Walter Russell Mead, writing at The American Interest on the on-going decline – and largely unconsidered future – of the structures underpinning modern life in the West: The word ‘developed’ contains an important assumption: that a historical process known as development (closely related to modernization — another problematic word) not only exists throughout the world, it culminates in a known end which has already been reached.  This word implies that countries like France, Canada and our ow...

Religion & Society

The smoking gun we’ve been looking for

Posted on by John W Gillis / 0 Comment

Quote of the Day for Tuesday, January 18th, 2011: Priestcraft hysteria breaking out in an AP article by Shawn Pogatchnik, as published on Boston.com this evening, relating to the release today of a 1997 letter allegedly implicating the Vatican in a “cover up” of clerical sexual abuse: Any bishops who tried to impose punishments outside the confines of canon law would face the "highly embarrassing" position of having their actions overturned on appeal in Rome, [Apostolic Nuncio Luciano Storero] wrote. Catholic officials in Ireland and the Vatica...

Media & Culture

Such dangerous behavior could be triggered by any number of future public events

Posted on by John W Gillis / 0 Comment

Quote of the Day for Monday, January 17th, 2011: Call it a parting shot (!) on the Great Tucson Media Meltdown of 2011. This is former Washington Times Editor in Chief, Tony Blankley, commenting over at National Review Online: Because even though the Tucson shooting did not cause the media irresponsibility — this time — continued media misreporting and bias is now so ingrained that such dangerous behavior could be triggered by any number of future public events. Now is the time for us all to pause, and consider how the working members of the media can li...

Media & Culture

Almost 1,700 people had clicked that they “like” “General Rachid Ammar President”

Posted on by John W Gillis / 0 Comment

Quote of the Day for Sunday, January 16, 2011: From the New York Times’ World News desk, in an article on the evolving – or devolving – political situation in Tunisia, following the sudden departure of long-entrenched President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali: On Saturday afternoon, there were some signs that General Ammar himself may now have an eye on politics. On Facebook, a staging ground of the street revolt, almost 1,700 people had clicked that they “like” a Web page named “General Rachid Ammar President” and emblazoned with his official photographs. While...

Politics & Economics

That sometimes frustrating, sometimes contentious, but always necessary and never-ending process to form a more perfect union

Posted on by John W Gillis / 0 Comment

Quote of the Day for Thursday, January 13th, 2011: President Barack Obama, from his address yesterday at the memorial service for those killed in the Tucson shooting: In George and Dot, in Dorwan and Mavy, we sense the abiding love we have for our own husbands, our own wives, our own life partners. Phyllis – she’s our mom or grandma; Gabe our brother or son. In Judge Roll, we recognize not only a man who prized his family and doing his job well, but also a man who embodied America’s fidelity to the law. In Gabby, we see a reflection of our public spirite...

Politics & Economics

Vicious charges made by people who claimed to be criticizing viciousness

Posted on by John W Gillis / 0 Comment

Quote of the Day for Wednesday, January 12th, 2011: New York Times columnist David Brooks, in a too-rare moment of lucidity, commenting Monday on the despicable liberal media spin on the Giffords shooting: Keith Olbermann demanded a Palin repudiation and the founder of the Daily Kos wrote on Twitter: “Mission Accomplished, Sarah Palin.” Others argued that the killing was fostered by a political climate of hate. These accusations — that political actors contributed to the murder of 6 people, including a 9-year-old girl — are extremely grave. … They ...

Politics & Economics

Free Speech and the Peaceful Public Order

Posted on by John W Gillis / 0 Comment

I arrived home from my sister Mary’s funeral Saturday evening, and saw that Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and several other people had been shot during some kind of meet-and-greet in her congressional district. I’d never heard of Giffords, but was discouraged that such a thing would happen – it’s hard enough just given our political process to get good people to run for public office, and it was of course a terrible tragedy for the people involved. It seemed to me that it had been a long time since something like that had happened. As I read t...

Scripture

Magi from the East

Posted on by John W Gillis / 0 Comment

Since today is actually the great Feast of Epiphany – despite what the bishops say! – I thought I would celebrate it by posting a short essay I wrote several years ago on the first two chapters of Matthew’s Gospel – especially the Visit of the magi, which forms the central mode of our celebration of this feast in the Latin world. Jesus’ genealogy is a little dicey, and Matthew makes an obvious point of it, recognizing among his ancestors the Canaanite Tamar, who tricked her father-in-law Judah into impregnating her while she posed as a prostitute; Rahab,...

Politics & Economics

I can’t image that socialists are very good chess players.

Posted on by John W Gillis / 0 Comment

Quote of the Day for Thursday, January 6th, 2011: Some pseudo-anonymous commenter calling him/her/it-self “rabbit,” commenting on David Thompson’s blog, on a post about an article written by an English genius who is advocating what is for all intents and purposes the public annexation of spare bedrooms in “under-occupied” English houses: I can’t image that socialists are very good chess players. They can never seem to see more than one move ahead. Priceless. Don’t even ask me how I ended up reading that post – never mind the comments – but this com...