Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada promised a thorough debate that will probably last through the week, if not longer. He said it’s clear that “global warming is real” and Congress must act.
But supporters of the bill acknowledged it will be difficult — perhaps impossible — to overcome a certain GOP filibuster threat against the legislation, meaning congressional action on global warming will probably be decided in the next Congress and by the next president.
Many of the GOP senators who voted to debate the issue have said they are opposed to the bill.
The Senate measure, which has wide Democratic and some Republican support, would cap U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, cutting them by 18 percent by 2020 and by two-thirds by mid-century. It would specifically target refineries, power plants, factories and transportation for 70 percent reductions and make emissions allowances available to be traded in an open market.
In other words, $4/gallon gas is just the beginning. Here we have an imagined concept, man-made global warming (by the way, the last two years have been cooler than the previous 20, and the years before the previous 20 were cooler too, causing fears of global cooling) and it’s going to lead congressional lemmings to drive up our costs for everything while we are surpassed by the likes of China. Time to go learn Chinese.
In a story sure to surprise no one, here’s what Reuters says about the Vatican’s recent statement on “female ordination.”
The Vatican issued its most explicit decree so far against the ordination of women priests on Thursday, punishing them and the bishops who try to ordain them with automatic excommunication.
The decree was written by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and published in the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, giving it immediate effect.
A Vatican spokesman said the decree made the Church’s existing ban on women priests more explicit by clarifying that excommunication would follow all such ordinations.
Excommunication forbids those affected from receiving the sacraments or sharing in acts of public worship.
Of course, class, we all know that one excommunicates oneself by one’s actions, the Church simply formally states it if necessary. What the heck does “sharing in acts of public worship” mean?
Father Pfelger, pastor of something called “Faith Community of St. Sabina” spoke recently at Trinity UCOC – better known as the church Barack Obama has attended for 20 years (but never when Rev. Wright said something controversial.) Pfelger, to put it simply, has several big problems with his priesthood. First of all, he’s ridiculously pro-abortion by virtue of his support of Obama. Further, he called for the murder of a gun shop owner. Third he is apparently a racist, based on his statement on the home page of “St. Sabina Faith Community” that “St. Sabina is a Word-based, Bible teaching African-American Catholic Church…” Fourth, he is apparently anti-semitic based on his statement in support of Farrakhan. And of course the list goes on. Suffice to say, he comes of sounding downright nutty, and not at all like a Catholic priest. Cardinal George ought to do something about this. But I bet he won’t.
By the way, apparently “Faith Community” means something similar to “church.” And apparently, it’s okay to advertise the race of your local parish. I’m going to go over to SMCRome.org right now and change it to say that we are a White European and Hispanic Catholic Parish. Watch how fast Father Jim would be on the phone calling me and telling me to change it!
Guiliani received Communion at one of the papal masses…big mistake. Apparently he had an agreement with Cardinal Egan. Now Cardinal Egan is mad.
New York Cardinal Edward M. Egan will request a meeting with Rudolph Giuliani, saying in a statement he deeply regretted that the former New York mayor received Communion during a Mass celebrated by Pope Benedict XVI at St. Patrick’s Cathedral April 19.
A statement issued by Cardinal Egan April 28 said that when he first came to the archdiocese and Giuliani was mayor the two of them “had an understanding … that he was not to receive the Eucharist because of his well-known support of abortion.” Giuliani has long opposed efforts to limit access to abortion and supported state funding of abortions for poor women in New York. He was widely described as a pro-choice candidate during his run for president that ended earlier this year.
Cardinal Egan’s statement said he would be “seeking a meeting with him to insist that he abide by our understanding.”
Giuliani was among guests invited to attend the Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral celebrated by Pope Benedict. The Mass was described as being for clergy and religious, although there were other invited guests including Giuliani and current Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who is Jewish.
Giuliani told reporters as he left the Mass that he had received Communion.
Cardinal Egan’s statement said “the Catholic Church clearly teaches that abortion is a grave offense against the will of God. Throughout my years as archbishop of New York, I have repeated this teaching in sermons, articles, addresses and interviews without hesitation or compromise of any kind.
It’s reasonable for Egan to raise this issue – a public person involved in publicly removing themselves from Communion with the Church. He’s been told not to receive but he did anyway. It will be interesting to see what happens if they have their meeting. More
Here’s a shock…Al Sharpton is calling for his followers to shut down New York City because a trial didn’t go the way he wanted it to:
Al Sharpton promised to “close this city down” to protest the acquittals of three police detectives in the 50-shot barrage that killed a groom on his wedding day and wounded two friends.
“We strategically know how to stop the city so people stand still and realize that you do not have the right to shoot down unarmed, innocent civilians,” Sharpton told an overflow crowd of several hundred people at his National Action Network office in the historically black Manhattan neighborhood. “This city is going to deal with the blood of Sean Bell.”
Sharpton was joined by the family of 23-year-old Sean Bell – a black man – and a friend of Bell who was wounded in the 2006 shooting outside a Queens strip club. Two of the three officers charged were also black.
The rally at Sharpton’s office was followed by a 20-block march down Malcolm X Boulevard and then across 125th Street, Harlem’s main business thoroughfare, where some bystanders yelled out “Kill the police!”
This could be a redux of the riots in Los Angeles after the Rodney King verdict. God forbid that happen. I’ll be interested though, to see if Senators Obama or Clinton have anything at all to say about it. Even more interesting would be if Jeremiah Wright got in on the action. Could be very entertaining (and very damaging to Obama.)
Fr. Michael Pfleger, famous for encouraging the murder of a gun shop owner , got some face time on Fox News recently, talking about how Jeremiah Wright isn’t racist, bigoted, hateful, or nuts. Pfleger recently had Wright speak at his parish. Stinks when you find content for your blog on DailyKooks, but they seem to think that Pfleger handed the reporter’s hinder to him on a plate…personally, I think the video serves to show how Pfleger should be in a monastery somewhere. In the background you can see the Father’s goons (I mean, bodyguards.)
I know it may come as a shock, but Hollywood’s making a movie about President Bush that is not accurate.
“It leaves you with the impression that the White House is run as a fraternity house with no reverence for hierarchy, the office itself or for the implications of policy,” said Robert Draper, author of “Dead Certain: The Presidency of George Bush.” “Everybody calling everybody else nicknames and chatting about whether to go to war as if they were chatting about how to bet on a football game really misses the mark of how many White Houses, including this one, are run.”
Jacob Weisberg (”The Bush Tragedy”) was skeptical about Stone’s claim that he wants to make “a fair, true portrait” of Bush. “His saying he is going to be fair to Bush is like Donald Trump saying he is going to be modest,” Weisberg quipped.
Wow, who would have thought Oliver Stone would depict something inaccurately?
And as the father of 2, let me first say that there are times when it feels like a punishment…
Barack Obama was campaigning recently and explained how he would educate his daughters…he said he’d teach them values and morals, but if they made a mistake, he didn’t want them punished with a baby or an STD. Apparently, he isn’t interested in teaching them the value of personal responsibility or natural consequences. They need to have an “out.” Hmm…think that you might repeat the same mistake over and over if there’s no consequence? Also telling is that he considers a baby and and STD to be on a similar plane.
Several weeks ago I wrote on Allen Hunt. The Georgia Bulletin (Atlanta’s diocesan newspaper) finally saw fit to do the same thing:
The 44-year-old also finds himself on Sundays in the pews at Mary Our Queen Church, Norcross. He is one of the newest members of the Catholic Church in the Atlanta Archdiocese.
“I’m home and glad to be home. I have a deep, deep sense of interior peace,” said Hunt about joining the church. “It’s where God wants me to be. I have no doubt.”
So, now that a prominent former-Muslim has been baptized Catholic, the Vatican is having to do damage control and distance itself from what the convert says.
VATICAN CITY (CNS) — When Pope Benedict XVI welcomed into the Catholic Church a Muslim-born journalist often critical of Islam, it was not a sign that the pope accepts everything the journalist believes, said the Vatican spokesman.
The Italian journalist, Magdi Allam, “has the right to express his own ideas. They remain his personal opinions without in any way becoming the official expression of the positions of the pope or the Holy See,” said Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi.
Basically, the “Muslim world” is saying that the Pope shouldn’t have publically baptized this guy, because he is guilty of hate speech against Islam.
Nayed questioned the pope’s decision to baptize Allam March 22 during the globally televised Easter Vigil from St. Peter’s Basilica.
“It is sad that the intimate and personal act of a religious conversion is made into a triumphalist tool for scoring points,” Nayed said.
“It is sad that the particular person chosen for such a highly public gesture has a history of generating, and continues to generate, hateful discourse,” he added.
Naturally, one must remember that hate speech against Islam means disagreeing with Islam. The man has every right to make the comments he makes, because essentially there’s a price on his head. The Vatican’s being accused of not recognizing human dignity and freedom of choice somehow by publicly baptizing the man…fortunately, the Vatican spokesman got a dig in about that too:
Father Lombardi said the Catholic Church today does not deserve an accusation that it lacks respect for human dignity and freedom, but there are many situations in the world where such respect is lacking and which need attention.
“Maybe this is why the pope accepted the risk of this baptism: to affirm the freedom of religious choice which derives from the dignity of the human person,” he said.
No Comments »