It becomes ever more necessary, as this news story indicates:

Thousands of Connecticut Catholics rallied at the state capitol on Wednesday to protest a proposed state law which would have reorganized the financial and pastoral structure of the Catholic Church.

Bishop William Lori of Bridgeport had warned that the bill “directly attacks the structure of the Roman Catholic Church.” The bill itself requires that parish pastors report to the board of directors about all “administrative and financial matters.” The archbishop or bishop would serve as an “ex-officio” member and would lose his voting rights.

Bishop Lori argued the bill, S.B. 1098, would remove any real relationship between the parish and the bishop and would turn pastors into “figureheads.”

S.B. 1098 was pulled on Tuesday, following protests from Catholics and others who saw it as a clearly unconstitutional proposal.

The bill was introduced by two openly homosexual members of the Connecticut legislature who are strong supporters of gay marriage and long-time critics of the Catholic Church. The bill was allegedly submitted at the request of constituents who wanted more accountability in the use of Church funds. At bottom, however, it was an attempt to make the Catholic Church illegal in the State of Connecticut – and thus the bill, had it been turned into law, would have either been struck down by the State courts, or by the US federal courts, if that proved necessary. But this is just one of many attacks on religious freedom, and we need to counter it. The best way to do this is to enact a “Religious Liberty Restoration Act”.

Such an Act would spell out just what governments are prohibited from doing regarding religion – and I think the law should clearly state that outside of concerns for public health and safety, government must not interfere in religious practices at all. For too long now religious liberty has been chipped away at to the point where now we see this clear attempt to wreck a particular religion. It is only a matter of time before someone re-writes a hate crimes law to state that Christian teaching on subjects such as marriage, birth control, abortion and homosexuality are “hate speech”. Think it can’t happen in a free country? Its already happening in Canada and Europe – those places so admired by our own left.

To really put teeth into such an Act, what it must do is provide sanctions – civil and criminal – for anyone who seeks by legislation or judicial action to limit the scope of free exercise outside the needs of public health and safety. So, when some busybody of an atheist tries to force a school to prohibit a church group from using the facilities – as other groups are allowed to do – that busybody would be liable for jail time and punitive damages. Such provisions would make busybodies pause – they like using the courts and back-channel legislative action in order to harass religion, but I doubt very much they’d like to put their own money and liberty at stake over such a thing.

Liberals have given us all the freedom we want – provided that freedom is the freedom to have sex, view pornography and kill unborn children. The rest of liberty – the real liberty – liberals have steadily curtailed. Our freedom of association, speech, property rights, rights of self defense and a host of other liberties have been been hemmed about with progressively greater restrictions, and its time we take a stand and insist that even if liberals are afraid of freedom, we’re not and we’re not going to let them take it away from us.

Nothing like getting down to brass tacks:

Beginning Sunday, the White House will harness every part of the Democratic Party’s machinery to defend President Obama’s budget and portray Republicans as reflexively political, according to party strategists.

A participant in the planning meetings described the push as a successor to Democrats’ message that Rush Limbaugh is the Republican Party leader. “We have exhausted the use of Rush as an attention-getter,” the official said.

David Plouffe, manager of Obama’s presidential race, helped design the strategy, which includes the most extensive activation since November of the campaign’s grassroots network. The database—which includes information for at least 10 million donors, supporters and volunteers—will now be used as a unique tool for governing, with former canvassers now being enlisted to mobilize support for the president’s legislative agenda.

Others involved in the planning included White House senior adviser David Axelrod; the DNC chairman, Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine; and DNC Executive Director Jennifer O’Malley Dillon.

The plan follows the private complaints of some Democrats that Obama let the GOP get the better of him during the debate over pork in the budget bill he just signed, and growing concerns among some Democrats that charges of big spending could stick to the president.

Democrats, after being reflexively political, are now going to claim that we GOPers are reflexively political. Just when you think the Democrats can’t sink any lower, down they go. And the worst part of it: for the Obamaniacs, this will all pass un-noticed. A sock-puppet collective, when Obama and Co shove it up and shake their fingers, Obama’s core supporters will be thrilled to be used in a sick, political game.

The deal here is that Obama and his Democrats are not so much trying to gain support for Obama’s asinine and destructive policies but, instead, trying to make the GOP so odious that when the wheels come off the Obama Express, the voters will become apathetic rather than turn to the GOP. Always keep in mind that for Democrats is doesn’t matter how you win, just as long as you win – and if they can win by continuing to poison the political atmosphere, they’ll do it. And, as a matter of fact, its probably the only thing they’ve got left – remember, their politics of personal destruction worked against President Bush. You just relentlessly attack everything the other side does, never give an inch and allow a friendly MSM to fly cover for you.

Can we thwart them? Yes, but it will be difficult – and it will take fresh leadership in the GOP willing to go toe to toe every day, in every way, with the Democrats along with a complete GOP turn-away from the MSM. We can’t win on their field – but the “Tea Party” movement shows that we can win on our field, which is genuine grass roots efforts to bring real change to government. We go to the people, we’ll clobber these corrupt and dishonest Democrats from Obama on down.

The disturbing news story:

Russia could use bases for its strategic bombers on the doorstep of the United States in Cuba and Venezuela to underpin long-distance patrols in the region, a senior air force officer said Saturday.

“This is possible in Cuba,” General Anatoly Zhikharev, chief of the Russian air force’s strategic aviation staff, told the Interfax-AVN military news agency.

The comments were the latest signal that Moscow intends to project its military capability in far-flung corners of the globe despite a tight defence budget and hardware that experts consider in many respects outdated.

Zhikharev indicated that Russia was looking only at occasional use of the facilities — not setting up permanent bases in the region.

In all cases, entirely unacceptable – we cannot tolerate that a non-American power shall have strategic forces based within the Americas, even for a short period of time. Putin seems bent on pretending that Russia is a super-power, and he’s playing with fire here.

Should such a thing happen, I urge that President Obama take the most strenuous action possible to prevent, including intercepting the Russian planes and forcing them down in US territory.

From Rasmussen:

The botched Caroline Kennedy-for-Senate affair? Proposing a slew of unpopular new taxes? These issues and more have prompted a 26-point dive in New York Governor David Paterson’s approval ratings over the last two months.

Thirty-nine percent (39%) of New York voters now approve of Paterson’s performance as governor, including just seven percent (7%) who Strongly Approve, according to a new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of voters in the state.

Fifty-nine percent (59%) disapprove of the job the Democratic governor is doing, with 30% who Strongly Disapprove. Only one percent (1%) don’t have an opinion.

Patterson is up for re-election in 2010, and that starts to look dicey. On the whole, I perceive a general drop in overall support for Democrats – not, at this point, enough to change the balance of power, but with the GOP starting to look good in Virginia, New Jersey, New York and many other places which went Democrat in 2008, we can see that unless things start to perk up for the nation, Democrats might be in for a very long 2010.

The news story:

Nearly a year after a painful break from his Chicago church, President Barack Obama and his family are considering joining several churches of various denominations in the nation’s capital but have yet to settle on one, and aides said that they’re unlikely to decide before Easter.

I would like to kindly suggest to President Obama and family that they may find the Church to be an excellent spiritual home. Its going to be a long four years for President Obama, and I honestly think that a regular series of Divine Mercy novenas for a person in full communion with the Church will help him enormously.

Plus, when the girls take first communion they’ll get to dress up real nice – I know, in the grand scheme of things, not the most important…but there’s nothing quite as adorable as little girls dressed up in their Sunday best.

But this looks like it will go down to the wire:

With less than three weeks to go before the March 31 special election, Democrat Scott Murphy has slashed Republican James Tedisco’s apparent lead to just four percentage points, according to a Siena Research Institute poll released Thursday.

The new poll has Tedisco ahead of Murphy 45 percent to 41 percent in the race to fill the open 20th Congressional District seat.

The institute sampled 712 likely voters in the district by phone on Monday and Tuesday. The poll’s margin of error is 3.7 percentage points.

Murphy cut Tedisco’s lead by two-thirds since Siena released a poll two weeks ago.

This is to fill the seat vacated by Kirsten Gillibrand when she was appointed to fill Hillary’s Senate seat – its pretty much a swing district, but Gillibrand was re-elected with nearly 62% of the vote this past November. If this seat switches to the GOP it will be quite a blow to Democrats and show that the bloom is rapidly coming off the rose.

If you live in the district, get out there and help Tedisco; if you don’t live in the district, you can still donate. Here is Tedisco’s website – lets win this one for the GOP and drive the first nail in the Democrats’ political coffin.

So much smarter than those dumb Republicans:

Gupta: Let’s talk about something you talked a lot about in the early part of your presidency, stem cells. There was an order today providing federal money for embryonic stem cell research. First of all, let me just ask you, as someone who studied this, is this going to always be as divisive an issue as it is now? Is this going to be the abortion of the next generation? Or are people going to come around?

Clinton: I think – the answer is I think that we’ll work it through. If – particularly if it’s done right. If it’s obvious that we’re not taking embryos that can – that under any conceivable scenario would be used for a process that would allow them to be fertilized and become little babies, and I think if it’s obvious that we’re not talking about some science fiction cloning of human beings, then I think the American people will support this….

Gupta: Any reservations?

Clinton: I don’t know that I have any reservations, but I was – he has apparently decided to leave to the relevant professional committees the definition of which frozen embryos are basically going to be discarded, because they’re not going to be fertilized. I believe the American people believe it’s a pro-life decision to use an embryo that’s frozen and never going to be fertilized for embryonic stem cell research….(emphasis added)

Imagine what a field day the left would have if George Bush or any other GOPer had made statements this ignorant – Bill Clinton clearly hasn’t the foggiest notion of what an embryo is; a 7th grade bit of science which he seems to have missed out on. And yet he’s the smart guy.

Yeah, right:

While publicly identifying with the nation’s have-nots, the Obama administration has been cultivating the Beltway social elite behind the scenes.

Earlier this year, the Obama administration invited top editors of three of Washington’s local luxury lifestyle magazines — Capitol File, DC magazine and Washington Life — to a meeting where they discussed, among other things, how President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama can embrace Washington’s glittery social scene.

The White House is “identifying taste makers in order to help create grass-roots interest in some of the programs they are working on,” said Washington Life’s Michael Clements, who attended the meeting. “They wanted to introduce themselves. It was certainly a departure from previous administrations.”

The Obamas “are trying to push the vibrancy of Washington night life to the forefront,” said Tony Hudgins, the associate publisher of DC magazine, who also attended the meeting, organized by Michael Strautmanis, a deputy to Obama senior adviser Valerie Jarrett.

A White House aide who spoke on the condition of anonymity dismissed the notion that a publicly populist Obama White House is privately courting socialites, contending that the meeting was held to explore how the Obamas can “engage in the community.” The aide also pointed out that similar meetings were held with representatives of sports, entertainment and philanthropic organizations in Washington.

What this points out, other than Obama’s rank hypocrisy, is the fact that The Rich know they have nothing to fear from Obama – when Obama seeks to tax The Rich, the “rich” people will actually be the upper-middle class business owners and other high wage earners who, while well off, have no wealth to compare to the super rich Obama is hob nobbing with at the White House. This is the dirty, little secret of the liberals’ class war rhetoric – the genuinely rich people, those worth, say, $50 million or more, are largely secure against any liberal tax schemes because liberals tax income, not wealth.

Our weak-minded liberal rank-and-filers think that when Obama proposes to make The Rich pay their “fair share”, he’s going to tax Bill Gates, et al and really sock it to ’em for their nefarious ripping off of the poor…but Bill Gates has little or no actual income to tax; his money is all in various instruments which are taxed little or not at all. And so The Rich are happy to oblige Obama’s desire to become an integral part of the rich, ruling elite in this nation – after all, Obama is quite wealthy, too, and he’ll become wealthier still…and join those who have fabulous riches, but who pay little taxes.

Two cheers for the Obama Administration on this action – they’ll get the third if there’s sufficient follow-through over time:

A potential conflict was brewing last night in the South China Sea after President Obama dispatched heavily armed American destroyers to the scene of a naval standoff between the US and China at the weekend.

Mr Obama’s decision to send an armed escort for US surveillance ships in the area follows the aggressive and co-ordinated manoeuvres of five Chinese boats on Sunday. They harassed and nearly collided with an unarmed American vessel.

Washington accused the Chinese ships of moving directly in front of the US Navy surveillance ship Impeccable, forcing its crew to take emergency action, and to deploy a high-pressure water hose to deter the Chinese ships. Formal protests were lodged with Beijing after the incident.

On a day that Mr Obama and his senior officials met the Chinese Foreign Minister, Yang Jiechi, in Washington, Beijing showed no sign of backing down. Its military chiefs accused the unarmed US Navy ship of being on a spying mission.

This is a freedom of the seas issue and we must not back down an inch. China’s actions have put her entirely in the wrong and China must cease all harassment of US vessels in international waters and give guarantees against any repeat in the future.

This is, indeed, one of those early tests President Obama will face in foreign affairs – China’s government wants to know what sort of man Obama is, just as they wanted to know what sort of man President Bush was back in 2001 when they challenged our flights off the Chinese coast. President Bush passed his test, and Obama has taken the step necessary to pass his – provided this is not just a face-saving one time cruise. We have to keep going back, at least several times a year, to re-assert our right to navigate freely in international waters.

VA chief Eric Shinseki, one-time hero of the anti-victory left:

Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki confirmed Tuesday that the Obama administration is considering a controversial plan to make veterans pay for treatment of service-related injuries with private insurance.

But the proposal would be “dead on arrival” if it’s sent to Congress, Sen. Patty Murray, D-Washington, said.

Murray used that blunt terminology when she told Shinseki that the idea would not be acceptable and would be rejected if formally proposed. Her remarks came during a hearing before the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs about the 2010 budget.

No official proposal to create such a program has been announced publicly, but veterans groups wrote a pre-emptive letter last week to President Obama voicing their opposition to the idea after hearing the plan was under consideration.

Where does one come up with the sheer cretinism necessary to pull such an idea out of the intellectual sewer? Well, it helps if you’re a member of a liberal, Democrat Administration ’cause in such an Administration there will be a dearth of people who can spot utter stupidity. I mean, think about it – we’re spending trillions on all sorts of things including a good deal of entirely useless nonsense…and someone wants to cut a little cost on the backs of wounded American heroes?

“Dead on arrival” doesn’t really cover it – Shinseki should apologize and resign.