extreme Catholic 

Most Catholics, yes, most Catholics are responsible for there being legal abortion today in the United States. Not abstaining from voting, most Catholics voted for Clinton and most Catholic voted for Obama. Pro-life Catholics do not need to become Republican. The political agenda for pro-life Catholics is (a) vote for the the pro-life candidate and (b) urge everyone to vote pro-life. The sooner "Faithful Citizenship" is repudiated the better as its statement that "Catholics are not single issue voters" was the permission slip to vote for the murder of the unborn.

(Some full disclosure, I was part of the Catholic blogger outreach in the successful 2004 campaign to reelect President George Bush.)

The primary author Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship was Bishop Dimarzio and you can see and hear him talk about a "hierarchy of values" immediately, then mentioning a dozen other issues, and then mentioning "life" as "most important" rather matter-of-factly at timestamp 00:50.

I don't doubt for an instant the sincerity and intelligence of Bishop Dimarzio. I believe his error was allowing language to make abortion merely seem to be only one of many moral issues of varying weight, and perhaps as a single issue, abortion carries the most weight.

He simply overestimated the ability of the average Catholic voter reading this to see nuance. He underestimated the rhetorical power of one clear unambiguous "Catholics are not single issue voters".

These six words were the tool in the hands of Obama's media outlets to hand out a bishops-endorsed permission slips to vote for Obama. It frankly cut us off at the knees from insisting that abortion was such a critical moral flaw of America that Catholic teaching required us to become single issue voters to deal with it. ("us" is not merely the Catholic bloggers and talk-show-callers, but serious Catholic opinion leaders like EWTN, Catholic Answers, and Priests for Life)

Labels: clinton, internet obama, politics, pro-life, usccb

posted by Patrick Sweeney at 12:25 PM   Permalink  

I think I understand now what is at stake with preventing Hillary from becoming president in a way that I can articulate. I think her election would cement into the political landscape a way of campaigning which is cynical and contemptuous of the small -d democratic process. The idea is you win by any means necessary. I don't know if the origin of this is the old-line Bolsheviks or the spiritual children of Saul Alinsky but she is a practitioner of it and wrote her thesis on him.

Obama on the other hand is a "good" politician, kissing the babies, wearing the odd hats, making the backroom deals. He, of course, agreed with the National Democratic Committee with not seat delegates and not campaign in Michigan and Florida. Hillary won most of these delegates, so now they want to change the rules to include them.

If elected, as far as I see it, there would be no differences in what policies they would put forward.

What concerns me is the residual effect it would have on the Democratic Party to have been able to crush Obama in the nominating process regardless of total votes cast in the primaries, and votes of elected delgates.

This should end the inclusion of super-delegates. Let people like Charlie Rangel run on the ballot as regular delegates.

Labels: clinton, election, obama

posted by Patrick Sweeney at 4:12 PM   Permalink  

Let's look at the outcomes from the political scene on February 9, 2008: McCain defeats Clinton or Obama

If McCain wins, then we face an opponent we helped elect. McCain will hold us in contempt and condescension and undermine any effort to restore conservatism to the mainstream of the Republican party. He can't change and wouldn't change that aspect of personality.

On one hand, he may focus on the war, considering everything else small potatoes. On the other hand, he may carry on his grudge from 2000 when he blamed his losses in the primary on conservatives. I hope he's indifferent to whether his successor follows his political style.

In any case, I hope we can identify the man who is the Reagan-of-1977 to become the Reagan-of-1980. It may just be Mitt Romney. Even if McCain wins, he may not be the nominee in 2012.

Prediction:A 4- or 8- year distraction of fighting McCain's agenda and dealing with his insults and undermining of the conservative movement by marginalizing it as extremist. It will be nasty. We need to dedicate some of the fight to reclaim the soul of the Republican party from the people we were calling days ago "RINO"s. Meanwhile the country digs itself into a hole like Jimmy Carter's single term.

Clinton or Obama defeats McCain

There are no serious differences between these two except for personalities. I think Democrats are looking to the future and not the past (I give the edge now to Obama). Either of them brings defeat to the war on terror, socialism to the economy, and Quebec- (or Belgian- or Balkan-) divisions to this nation making the notion of "an American culture" a matter of nostalgia. Many will welcome each of these, and the President will proclaim their mandate for this.

Prediction:A 4-year rush to implement everything while they have the White House, Congress, and 2 or 3 upcoming Supreme Court vacancies. I think they have the political savvy to know how far too go without disturbing the American electorate. The Democrats believe they are writing the obituary for the Republican Party and a permanent electoral majority at the federal level.

Even if, a conservative gets the 2012 (or 2016) Republican nomination and wins, he or she faces not only the same challenges as Nixon, Reagan, and Bush-43 did cleaning up after an activist Democrat but the accumulation of entitlements and pork spending as obligations for their term of office. The next conservative may face a government essentially locked-in to a socialist track and demographically transformed by 25 to 50 million immigrants.

Labels: clinton, mccain, obama

posted by Patrick Sweeney at 11:27 AM   Permalink  

In his 2002 lawsuit in Suffolk County Superior Court, Eisenberg sued former Archbishop Bernard Law, alleging that a priest at St. Catherine Church in Westford, Massachusetts, molested him in the early 1980s. The priest denied abusing Eisenberg, who claimed the abuse when he was about 21.

Leeland Eisenberg with a fake bomb threatened to blow up the a New Hampshire campaign office of Hillary Clinton and took hostages demanding to speak to Mrs. Clinton.

Of course, Cardinal Law is not a former Archbishop, he is the former "Archbishop of Boston", he is currently assigned as Archpriest of the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore {Saint Mary Major Basilica}

I don't know whether this allegation is credible or incredible -- but I suspect many people have found another reason to hate the Catholic Church -- for they infer was the cause of Eisenberg's problems later in life.

Labels: clegy abuse, clinton

posted by Patrick Sweeney at 8:54 PM   Permalink