Could it be? A Catholic Bishop with a spine?

Miracles happen, kids.

Can't see anything wrong with this. I know, I'm supposed to think Coulter's a lousy polemecist, but this bit:

Is there nothing five justices on the Supreme Court could proclaim that would finally lead a president to say: I refuse to pretend this is a legitimate ruling. Either the answer is no, and we are already living under a judicial dictatorship, or the answer is yes, and – as Churchill said – we're just bickering over the price.

Is pretty much dead-to-rights.

New link coming, because of this post. Boys, I know when I'm outclassed, and this fellow leaves me outclassed. I've eviscerated Lithwick in my time, but this is simply gorgeous.

And this simply confirms many of my pre-existing theories about PBS. If you're stuck with the Palestinian Broadcasting Service for a while -- as I was -- you learn that with the exception of some children's programming, Ken Burns, a few documentaries, some Nova programming, and British comedies, you have drek.

Andrew Sullivan says something unequivocally bad about abortion! It can be done!

Technophobes of the world, UNITE!

Just for the information of all the vaguely anti-religious folks out there, most of us like science, and its results. What we don't like is the sacrifice of human life for anything other than highly specific self-defense.

Gone for a week, kids. I'm posting over at Ben's place (I think he thinks I'm doing him a favor, when the reverse is quite clearly true). Wander over, and happy Thanksgiving.

In other news, Democrats unwilling to commit political suicide.

It's gonna get wild, y'all. Keep your mind on your riches, baby. Keep your mind on your riches.

UPDATE: Or maybe they are. Attacking the AARP is either brilliant or utterly insane for these guys. Who else is with me in voting the latter?

Let's get this out in the open: Joe Lieberman is not a serious candidate for the Democrat nod. He's way too likely to think before opening his mouth.

Dear Orrin and Ben:

I really hate to say this, but: Told ya so.

Donkeys in Louisiana have a time-honored tradition: Around noon on election day, they figure out how many votes they need; then, before the polls close, they produce them. Somehow. Certainly not illegally.

Sorry, guys. I was pulling for him, too.

Best regards,

T.

And Tacitus actually reads this trash.

I don't know whether to pity him or admire him.

It's official: Butch Davis is a moron.

Kids, this isn't hard. He's one of the best possession receivers in the NFL, if not the best. He's the leading receiver on the team. So of course they drop him.

Then again, they keep benching and mentally screwing with Couch, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

What happens when faith is just another argument.

Guys, look, here's the deal. First, the Church does not "represent you to God." You represent you to God. I take it from your actions that either, one, you do not actually care about the Faith, but rather you care about making asses out of yourselves, in a way that would embarass my 1.5 year old; two, you do care, but your Catechesis is so lousy as to defy explanation; and/or three, you forget: You have free will. You can go to another Church. The guy from whom I got this link did so.

I assume for the sake of argument that you're born "that way." I know that makes it harder for you to follow the Church's teachings. My uncle has severe Down's syndrome. This makes virtually everything harder for him. In other words: Deal. Or go.

I always thought Mark Shea's references to gay fascism were overblown. Mark, if you're reading this: Mea culpa.

No sooner than I get all gushy over the Old Oligarch than he posts something with which I must mildly take issue:

Natural Woman -- so typical of many people we've known who have adopted NFP, through twists and turns and sometimes despite their pastors and DRE.

Now, I say the rest of this with the following qualifiers:

(1) Believe it or not, I really try to be a faithful Catholic. Oh, Lord knows I mess up sometimes. I've never said otherwise (except to irritate my wife, but that's different).

(2) My wife and I practice natural family planning, because, first, I understand the theology associated with it, it makes sense, and even if it didn't, my name does not start with "Pope"; and, second, my wife and I are not cavalier about the side effects of the pill, especially in light of her family's history of breast cancer.

(3) I'm not really going after anyone here, at least in my usual bared-teeth way.

That said:

I'm calling bullshit.

My wife and I have used NFP since we got married. We were -- no pun -- religious about it. We understood the whole thing -- temperature, mucus, cervical position, even (a fourth dimension on the graph!) certain bodily sensations associated with ovulation. My wife is an engineer. I am the son of an engineer and a microbiologist. We both love to chart things. My wife is an obsessive compulsive. I'm a paranoid freak. We never miss a day of charting.

We wanted to wait, after we got married, for one year before having a family. We wanted to make sure we were settled in where we were gonna stay for a while, and we wanted to make sure we had enough money to properly care for the little one. (I've never bought, not cared much for, the "We had to get to know each other" crap as a reason to wait: If you didn't know each other before you got married, why did you say, "I do"?) Accordingly, my wife charted everything for months before we got married. We continued once the chain was fastened vows were spoken. Remember: One year.

We were married in June. We apparently conceived in late July. You know, less than two months later.

Don't get me wrong; I count as God's greatest blessing to me, my son. I love him much more than my own life. I would not have his existence any other way.

But let's be honest about this: If you buy the Church's, um, teaching, that NFP is 99% or so effective, you'll buy anything.

Yeah, but it's just one time, you say. Freak incident. The exception that proves the rule.

Au contraire, copains. My wife is now in sixteen weeks along with our second child. Same religious attention to detail. Had the doctor help this time to make sure. We had been planning to wait until about, oh, now, to do this; the starting gun went off early, apparently.

Again: Don't misunderstand. My life in trade for my children without hesitation. The tortures of Hell for their safety, in a heartbeat. I am fully aware of what those tortures are -- to some extent, I've lived them for periods of time -- and I say that even so.

But.

If you have a very regular, set-your-watch-by-it cycle, NFP will work for you. Guaranteed. But for those women who do not -- who, like my wife, drop multiple eggs just at random, or who have variable cycles, or whatever -- you're playing with loaded dice. As my wife's extremely Catholic OB told her (the lady won't discuss any sort of "contraception" except NFP), when we told her that we think the wife is just scatter-shooting eggs, "Looks like you were made to be a Mommy."

Which brings me back to my point: People who use NFP -- or at least, a larger percentage than the folks at pre-Cana let on -- really are called "parents."

Just sayin'.

How do I admire the Old Oligarch? Let me count the ways:

Here's a starter.

There is nothing, nothing stupider than putting less than our best and brightest out in the way of combat just so we can all feel warmer and fuzzier. Eliminate the massive physical and psychological differences between men and women, and we can talk. Otherwise, spare me the cockamamie crap about making girls feel good and accepting the needless loss of men and women as an acceptable consequence.

Just for the record: Statements like

“It’s the seat of the American revolution,” DNC spokeswoman Deborah DeShong said of Boston, “and we hope it’s going to be the seat of another revolution, and that’s taking over the White House.”

are cute, and everything, but may be -- just may be -- why our politics has become so poisoned.

Every time someone mutters about the need for regime change, a coup, a revolution, whatever, when what they're actually talking about is a normal, legal election, they drag us a little closer to the brink. Words have meaning, guys.

I actually have a theory about this: Politics becomes warfare about once or twice a century. In the heady few decades after the revolution, Hamilton wasn't the only politician who took one in the chest from a rival. Congressmen went to battle -- I mean that precisely -- with each other on the legislative floor on the eve of the Civil War. The elections of 1876-1888 marked a high-point in the late nineteenth century's mudslinging. (The conventional wisdom, from which I see no need to depart, is that 1876 was so very bad, so very dangerous for the political health of the nation, that things toned down, fast, and that is the peace from which we are now awakening.)

Obviously, some of the century or so that we came through made this peace unusually tenable: Two World Wars, in a sense Three, a Great Depression That Shouldn't Have Been As Bad As It Was But There It Is, and massive economic growth from 1950 or so on, etc.

But it appears we're back.

I don't even know what to say about this any more. I do know this: Things will be, politically speaking, ugly for a little while.

I'm addicted to the format. Sue me.

Right. As opposed to the humorless, whiney conservatism of the libertine right.

That said, this well-traveled piece is worth a read and a chuckle.

For those of you not reading Little Tiny Lies, go there now.

On the woman whose husband is trying to kill her: For the record: The reason he is her guardian is not because, as her husband, he is ipso facto her guardian, it is because he asked a court to be so, and he was so made. Hence, his decisions concerning her welfare are subject to judicial scrutiny. And the judiciary in Florida is no greater than any other branch of that State's government. A judicial order may be put aside by legislative action. it is, precisely, that simple.

(Mr. Sullivan: Yes, it's because life trumps marriage, and we're treating his marital "rights" -- although the word is not applicable here -- cavalierly because he is so doing, and is therefore waiving them. Put differently: Some people have a little more perspective than you.)

Paul Cella produces one of the most impressive essays I've read in a while.

Mr. Kennedy: It is a profoundly bad idea to get sloshed just before a significant vote, especially when you're trying to make sure that an additional thousands of children go to the abbatoir every year.

Just for kicks: Mary Jo Kepechne.

Why I'm not a libertoid, Volume XII: Liberty for me, and not for thee. I'll probably get to this later, but the short of it is this: We say Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in that order, because each successive one is predicated on the latter. One cannot have liberty without life. Therefore, any "libertarian" who whines about government restrictions on killing children in utero is merely a selfish nitwit -- his liberty trumps another's life (and therefore her liberty). Following that, even assuming secondhand smoke isn't deadly, it still stinks, and it's, you know, smoke, so forcing me to inhale it is hurting me so you can benefit. (I'll spare you talk of negative externalities for a little while.)

ACLU sides with murderous husband.

In other news, Asmodeus sides with Satan.

In case you're wondering:

(1) Yes, I'm being awfully Manichaean about this. So? A man is attempting to kill his lawfully married wife -- whom he won't divorce because he's "Catholic," even though he's engaged to another woman, and has conceived two kids by her already -- because she, allegedly, once, said that she didn't want to be kept alive by tubes. Of course, he only remembered this five years into battles to kill her, and is taking this little soiree down Murder Lane after promising a jury he'd take care of her the rest of her life. ("Fraud on the courts," anyone?) And the ACLU -- founded, let us not forget, by some folks who thought the American Communist Party was a bunch of wussies -- one of the foremost bastions of the theory that Civil rights matter, but alleged civil rights that kill matter more joins in, and I should be surprised, or soft about it? Bupkis.

I never really appreciated before what the words "the culture of death" mean. Now I know.

(2) I'm also being terribly fair.

A little girl died recently. She had been a client. She lived a hard life, made harder the last seven years because virtually everyone charged with taking care of her failed, miserably, at some point along the line. I can't say any more because of the nature of the settlement and my, and her family's, desire for privacy, but she's with God now; say a prayer for her if you have the time.

Requiem aeternas, regina parva.

A quick rundown:

If you own a cat, and you normally do not clean the litter box; if you are married, and you discover that God has blessed you with a child; if your wife will not allow you to get rid of the cat: Cry.

The word for the day, kids, is slander.

Some times, a measure of faith in humanity is rewarded. This is what euthanasia always devolves to, guys. (Assuming without conceding that's not what it is in the first place.) Thank God we're not as far gone as the Europeans.

Let this post, too, be a public apology to Christ for doubting that miracles happen any more.

(And dang it, Ben, why do you always do it one better? In all seriousness, as he says, let us rejoice.)

Myopia. Um, y'know, those critiques of the "fundamentalists" (Catholics too, Dickie!) would be great, except they hold, depending on which poll we believe, either a massive plurality or a small majority of the votes at least in sympathy, y'know? Put differently: Any state with a dying culture and economy, no matter how large, is not the template for the nation Morris imagines it to be. Put more simply: California isn't Ohio, Dick.

Maybe. But I'm not holding my breath.

Six nuclear warheads handle this problem nicely. They work almost as well in the form of a threat. Any takers?

Remember: It's not really human unless it makes it through a razor-edged gauntlet in the birth canal. That, at least, is what the usual suspects are saying about this. Put religion to the side, and think about this: Barbara "Dim-Bulb" Boxer and the gang are saying that a child, post viability, may only live if her mother wants her to:

But Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-California, called it a "very sad day for the women of America, a very sad day for the families of America."

"This Senate is about to pass a piece of legislation that for the first time in history bans a medical procedure without making any exception for the health of a woman," she said in remarks before the vote.

"I want a civilized society. That means you care about the women of this country. That means you care about their pregnancies. That means you want to help them through the most difficult times. That means you don't play doctor here."

If the doctors won't play doctor, someone's got to, sweet cheeks.

Now, that said, let me just pretend I'm Pope for the day:

These bastards are going to hell.

Enjoy the desolation, guys.

Something is deeply wrong with a society where people who would applaud at this aren't dragged into the streets and hanged.

As my infrequent updates on this page are turning into a constant critique of Andrew Sullivan, I figure I should clarify a few things for the record, then move on.

Mr. Sullivan has more or less left the Catholic Church. For the record: When I said, numerous times, that he should just stay or go, dammit, I was serious: It is within one's God-given power to elect or decline membership in a faith. But this Hamlet-on-crack routine gets old after a while.

Despite my numerous disagreements with Mr. Sullivan, I am not happy he left. Necessarily, I think the Catholic Church is as close to right at any given time as is humanly possible (note: not perfect, just closer). The loss of a single light dims the whole; and, conversely, I mourn that a good man has willingly left the light.

All of this stems from what is surely a lousy catechesis: He believes -- he has internalized -- the idea that the Church does not promulgate the Truth; rather, they make rules, and worship more or less in God's name. Everything is a completely human decision; ergo, those with power construe it relative to those without. In this sense, the Body of Christ is merely a collection of people through time with a more or less similar view of God. How cheap. How poor.

Nonetheless, this cheap, poor view of the Pilgrim People of God is what led Sullivan to this point: The anger, the rage, that the Church, relying on the Bible as a whole, and on its Tradition, and the revelation of its Saints, could not, would not bend to his will. I am not casting stones; I've been in that position myself. (Ask me about the Immaculate Conception sometime; it ain't about Christ, kids.) But being Catholic means that you sometimes have to swallow your will and believe that, no matter how strongly you believe it, no matter how long and carefully you've thought about it, no matter how right it feels, you can be wrong, and when you conflict with the Church, you probably are. (If this were not so, we could solve every problem by just sitting there and thinking about it; unfortunately, this is why, in Mark Steyn's memorable phrase, the Democrats are on Planet Bananas right now.)

So, for the record: Come back, Andrew. It's not too late.

Better thoughts here, here, of course here, and, on a less directly related, but highly relevant note, here.

Repeat after me: The Pope is not Stalin.

I feel bad for the guy. He clearly misapprehends the nature of Catholicism ("The question is whether matters at the heart of controversy and dissent within the Church [contraception, women priests, celibacy and homosexuality] can even be discussed and debated"). No, Andrew, they cannot. I'm sorry. You either accept the 2,000 year-old, Scripture-and-Tradition based teachings of the Church in this regard, or you do not. It fundamentally misstates the very idea of Catholicism, let alone orthodox Christianity, to imagine that if we really, really want to, we can just change everything at the drop of a hat.

Do (ex-Church, in Andrew's case) liberals even understand what they're saying? Do they really think they're demanding and asking and pushing for something new?

Problem is, so many of them are Marxists, so they view all of this in terms of power structures. The pope and bishops have power, and use it to oppress the laity; the laity should have the power, because, well, they're the laity.

Do any of them ever read any of the documents from Vatican II? I'd expect smears like this from loonies like Matt Yglesias (no link, see Marshall, Joshua), but from self-professed Catholics who claim JP2 is corrupting Vatican II, might it not be the tiniest bit of a good idea to actually read the work that came out of that infallible Ecumenical Council?

Homework assignment for anyone reading this who thinks Andrew Sullivan is dead to rights on this: Actually read the whole library of documents that came from that Council. Then, if you think he's right, explain why. You can email me at the address right below this link. I'll post. Swear to Heaven.