Blogs For Victory

About time this particular battle is joined in earnest:

The apologetics organization Catholic Answers has filed suit against the Internal Revenue Service claiming the federal tax collection agency has “intimidated” churches and non-profit groups into silence on politically controversial moral issues.

In an announcement posted at the organization’s web site, Catholic Answers president Karl Keating explained that the IRS fined the group for a 2004 e-letter it wrote saying that Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry should not be allowed to receive Holy Communion.

Keating charged that Francis Kissling, then-leader of the pro-abortion front group “Catholics for a Free Choice,” had instigated the IRS action with a complaint.

He said Kissling “hated” Catholic Answers’ “Voter’s Guide for Serious Catholics,” which aimed to educate Catholics on issues such as abortion. However, the guide did not mention any candidates or political parties and was cleared of any violations by the IRS.

According to Keating, the IRS did rule that the e-letter’s remark about Sen. Kerry was “intervening” in the election, a charge Keating called “preposterous.”

He said the IRS has been using “very vague criteria” to “intimidate” churches, non-profits and ministries into “silence” on controversial moral issues.

“The intimidation has become so bad that nowadays, most churches and non-profits in America are scared to death even to talk about moral issues that are deemed ‘political’ (such as abortion).”

Especially now that we have a Democrat in the White House – and a long and troubling history of Democrat Presidents using the IRS to attack opponents – we must ensure that religious groups, as religious groups, are able to speak out on issues of the day. Religious groups must have full freedom of speech – able to speak out about candidates, parties and issues without let or hindrance from any government entity. We’ve gone far enough in forcing religion out of the public square and it is time we allowed it back in – part of our problem in 2009 is that our religious groups have to be extra careful in how they preach in public, lest they run afoul of anti-religious bureaucrats and politicians.

From North Dakota:

Snow falls in western ND, in June

Snow has fallen in Dickinson in June, the first time in nearly 60 years the city has seen snow past May.

National Weather Service meteorologist Janine Vining in Bismarck says there were unofficial reports of a couple of inches of snow in Dickinson on Saturday.

Vining says snow in North Dakota in June is uncommon, though it’s not unheard of. She says other parts of the state have seen June snow within the past 10 years.

Williston and Bismarck had received only rain as of mid-Saturday, but Vining said snow was possible in those cities later in the day.

It will be 84 degrees in Las Vegas tomorrow – that is rather toasty for most of you, but it is 12 degrees below normal.

Scary.
http://www.eyeblast.tv/public/eyeblast.swf?v=ydaG6UprkU

Rob Port put it best, “We fought the American revolution to reject the idea of monarchs leading by divine right. Now, two and a half centuries later, we’re back to our political leaders being gods.” Sad isn’t it? But, as I have said many times before, the left’s desire to canonize Obama makes him extraordinarily dangerous. He is, perhaps, the biggest threat to our country’s prosperity, freedom, and security in history.

UPDATE, by Mark Noonan: From Powerline

Yes, that’s Obama all right–“standing above the world.” Good Lord. Reporters are often compared to teen-age girls with crushes on Obama, but, as the father of three present, former or about-to-be teen-age girls, I object to the analogy. I personally have never seen a teen-age girl make a fool of herself over a boy the way many–most–mainstream reporters have over Barack Obama.

Victor Davis Hanson tells a personal tale and illuminates just what is wrong with Obama’s world view. You. Must. Read. This.

…perhaps in three and a half years Americans will too…

The economic recession should have meant easy votes for Europe’s left-wing movements, longtime critics of unchecked capitalism.

Yet as Europe goes to the polls, left-leaning parties across the continent are looking likely to falter. That’s true both for those in government, such as in the U.K. and Spain, and in the opposition — such as France, Germany and Italy.

France’s Socialist Party is trying hard to rally voters ahead of Sunday’s European parliamentary elections. “Let’s unite with all the French who contest free market, unfair policies that aim at deregulating everything,” party leader Martine Aubry urged at a pre-election rally.

Yet less than 20% of voters say they plan to cast their ballot for the Socialist Party, according to recent surveys. That would be a weak performance considering France’s main opposition party got 29% of the votes in the last European parliamentary elections.

In Germany, the Social Democrats are expected to get only around 26% on Sunday, consistent with their low opinion-poll ratings ahead of Germany’s national elections in September. Italy’s center-left Partito Democratico is expected to get a similar percentage.

One reason is that as Europe tipped into recession, the right moved left — appropriating some of the left’s long-standing economic policies, including nationalizations and bailouts.

French conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy, for example, helped recapitalize French banks, earmarked six billion euros for the auto sector and lashed out at “rascal bosses” with huge pay packages.

So, my friends, there is hope for us too. Socialism will truly become a failed experiment in America… and the Democrats, who are rapidly bringing this country and its economy down, will find the voters less accepting of the government running businesses and every other aspect of our lives.

This news out of Europe is somewhat promising. If conservative parties can attract voters with a centrist platform in Europe, then perhaps there is a rightward shift happening across the continent, that may result in reversals of left wing policies in the long term.

Capitalism will prevail. Freedom will prevail. All we have to do is remove Obama and the Democrats from power.

Spengler brings up the question:

..In countries where torture is habitual, unexceptionable and embedded in everyday life, it is foolish to imagine that our armed forces might conduct successful operations without employing torture as a matter of normal practice. That is why we cannot hope to intervene in civil societies in the Middle East. On April 4, the London Times published a video of Taliban soldiers publicly torturing a teenaged girl in Pakistan’s Swat Valley, reportedly for the crime of stepping out of her house unaccompanied. It is hideous; men hold the girl down while one beats her with a leather strap. The girl screams in pain. Around her a large circle of men watch…

…This observation came in Pipes’ recent commentary on a remarkable report of the torture of a businessman by a prince of the United Arab Emirates over a commercial dispute. Videotapes of Sheikh Issa bin Zayed al Nahyan torturing a grain dealer over a $5,000 delivery were aired April 22 on ABC News.

The Sheikh begins by stuffing sand down the man’s mouth, as the police officers restrain the victim. Then he fires bullets from an automatic rifle around him as the man howls incomprehensibly. At another point on the tape, the Sheikh can be seen telling the cameraman to come closer. “Get closer. Get closer. Get closer. Let his suffering show,” the Sheikh says.

Over the course of the tape, Sheikh Issa acts in an increasingly sadistic manner. He uses an electric cattle prod against the man’s testicles and inserts it in his anus. At another point, as the man wails in pain, the Sheikh pours lighter fluid on the man’s testicles and sets them aflame. Then the tape shows the Sheikh sorting through some wooden planks. “I remember there was one that had a nail in it,” he says on the tape. The Sheikh then pulls down the pants of the victim and repeatedly strikes him with board and its protruding nail.

Sometimes ignorance and prejudice reinforce a hostile view of peoples or countries. In the case of the Middle East, the vast majority of Americans have no clue as to the degree of ambient cruelty. Leave aside that between 50% (lowest estimate) and 90% (highest estimate) of Egyptian girls are subjected to genital mutilation, the horror of everyday life in what President Obama calls “the Muslim world” is more than the American mind can absorb.

Which regimes in the Western world have been most notorious for a high level of ambient cruelty? Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, Castro’s Cuba, etc. What do these regimes have in common? All of them completely suppressed freedom. The only way Sheikh Issa can get away with his monstrosity is because he figures no one would ever find out – at least, no one who can possibly over throw him will find out, because he won’t allow anyone to freely inquire into his doings. So it was with Hitler, Stalin and Castro – these men behaved in the most beastly manner possible towards their fellow human beings, but it didn’t matter because there was no one within their nations who could expose it to the general public and thus provoke a reaction against the barbarism.

Moslems, being people, are no different from any other people, on the whole. Certainly, due to their religious background they have some different view points from us, but the fundamentals of humanity are the same everywhere…Fallen Man is capable of horrific acts of evil, but the nature of evil deeds makes all but the most depraved unwilling to do them before the general public. The reason Issa – or Hitler, Stalin or Castro – can do the horrible deeds is because their societies are unfree, and thus there is no one to call them to account. Thus it goes throughout Moslem-majority areas of the world…outside of Iraq and Afghanistan (and, as yet, very imperfectly, even there), there is no place a Moslem can live in surrounded by Moslems where there is the freedom to criticize the government. And so the government’s are able to act in an unjust manner, and this tends to mean that the most ruthless tend to run the show.

Obama is, indeed, far too starry eyed about Islam – and most Americans also don’t have a full appreciation of the sort of people who run the Moslem nations. But we cannot and must not seal ourselves off from Islam – we must engage, by war and diplomacy, in order to press Islam into becoming free. Once the Moslem people are free, they will take care of their own savages, just as we take care of ours.

A word to you liberals who are mad at us for attacking The One:

Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things. – Winston Churchill

The absurd lengths some people will go to in order to keep any mention of God out of the public square:

A professor at the government-funded University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) has prohibited a graduating student from saying “I want to thank my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ,” in her own graduation speech.

Christina Popa just posted the proof emails on her facebook page, showing how other students are permitted to have their speeches read aloud at a pre-graduation ceremony, and Christina would also be allowed, but only if she didn’t mention Jesus.

Instead, UCLA Biology Professor Dr. Pamela Hurley deliberately censored Christina’s proposed speech, and emailed back to Christina saying: “UCLA is a public university where the doctrine of separation of church and state is observed,” and the professor proposed a censored version of Christina’s proposed speech, deleting any reference to Jesus Christ.

When Christina objected, Dr. Hurley threatened, “If you prefer, Christina, I can read none of what you wrote. I am very sorry that this is a problem for you.”

Dr. Hurley would probably be the first to assert she’s a stout defender of academic freedom…

I mean, you wanted DeLay’s head on a pike for a lot less than this:

Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., steered millions of dollars in defense work to a campaign donor and the Pentagon went along with it, even though two convicted drug dealers had been deeply involved with the company.

Records filed in U.S. District Court in Pittsburgh starting in 2005 raise questions about whether the government ever checked into the background of William Kuchera of Windber, Pa., a Murtha constituent who has been doing government work for over 20 years.

He’s corrupt, liberals – and he’s your hero. But it is time for you to hold your side to the same standard you hold ours. Unless, that is, you’re just a bunch of chicken-poop creeps.

The army has a video presentation on the battle. As a personal note, my maternal grandfather was there.