From Rome:

Apr 12, 2011 / 11:29 am

Pope John Paul II’s biographer is welcoming the announcement of a new feast day for the soon-to-be beatified pontiff. The Vatican has declared that Oct. 22, the day he became Pope, will now mark the occasion.

“I think it’s an entirely appropriate date, for this was the day that Karol Wojtyla formally began his service to the universal Church and issued that ringing cry to freedom and evangelism: “Be not afraid! Open the doors to Christ,” George Weigel told CNA.

As is customary with beatified persons, the feast day will be inserted into the Church calendar of only those places where Pope John Paul II lived and worked – the diocese of Rome and the dioceses of Poland.

In other places, local bishops will have to formally ask the Vatican for permission to mark the feast day. The same restrictions also apply to the naming of churches for Pope John Paul.

In a break with custom, though, the Vatican is giving Catholics throughout the world a year to celebrate a Mass in thanksgiving for the beatification.

In an April 12 statement the Vatican said this is due to “the exceptional character of the beatification of the Venerable John Paul II, recognized by the entire Catholic Church spread throughout the world.” …

Go here for the rest of the story.

The undisguised bias of a dispatch tonight by Associated Press reporter Laurie Kellman, with help from Scott Bauer, about Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s appearance before a Congressional committee may have as its source two items found at the Newspaper Guild’s web site (seen after the jump).

One is an announcement relating to a possible deterioration in the Guild’s negotiations with AP, where union members have been working without a contract since November. Immediately below the announcement is an extraordinarily mean and spiteful cartoon produced by “alternative” comic Tom Tomorrow directed at Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan which has no place at the site of a group wishing to at least maintain a fig-leaf pretense of objectivity.

First let’s look at several of the sentences seen in the 10:26 p.m. version of the pair’s report (saved here at my host for future reference, fair use and discussion purposes) — after the headline (“Wisconsin governor defends hobbling unions’), with which the AP pair may have had help:

(more…)

Nails it:

Snips:

• “I thought it was a disgrace.”
• “… So shallow, so hyperpartisan, and so intellectually dishonest” …
• “… numbers suspended in mid-air with nothing under them.”
• “The Ryan plan is not about the Bush tax cuts; it transcends them. … you strip out loopholes and lower the rates for everyone.”
• “It’s a speech that was quite remarakable in how demagagogic it was …”

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UPDATE, 5:15 p.m.: Taranto at Best of the Web —

Domestically, Obama absolutely will not conduct a fundamental review of the federal government’s missions, capabilities and role in a changing world.

In fact, in a scene reminiscent of the president’s attack on the Supreme Court in the 2010 State of the Union Address, he heaped abuse on Rep. Paul Ryan, whom he had invited to sit in the front row, for being willing to think about “changing the basic social compact in America.” In a grotesque display of left-wing jingoism, he equated the welfare state to America itself: “The America I know is generous and compassionate. . . . This is the America that I know. We don’t have to choose between a future of spiraling debt and one where we forfeit our investment in our people and our country. . . . We do not have to sacrifice the America we believe in.“

The left believes that the welfare state IS America itself, and despite the fact that Americans are by leaps and bound the most generous people in the world with their money and other resources, to the left America will no longer be a generous nation if the government changes how it handles entitlement programs in any way, shape, or form.

This is our president insulting the people of the nation he was elected to serve.

The employment report’s relatively early appearance on April 1 means that it appeared before many other economic reports it usually follows. So some general economic catch-up is in order. The first two items represent good news; the rest, not so much.

The Institute for Supply Management reports both came in very strong. The Manufacturing Index reading was essentially unchanged at 61.2%, down from 61.4%, and still comfortably expansionary (any reading over 50% indicates expansion). The prices element of the index was 85%, which could portend the inflation so many fear. The far more important Non Manufacturing Index dropped 2.4 points from 59.7% to 57.3%, which should be cause for too much concern.

I previously mentioned Ford selling more cars than General Motors in March, but haven’t noted that the industry as a whole had a good month, with overall total sales up almost 17% over March 2010. Significant outperformers included Chrysler (+31%), Hyundai (+32%), Mazda (+33%), Mitsubishi (+39%), and Kia (+45%).

The two most recent unemployment claims reports shouldn’t impress anyone, especially the one released this morning (Update: As usual when it’s bad, the numbers rose “unexpectedly“; expectations were for a reading of 380,000). Here’s how the last six weeks look, with subsequent revisions:

Look’s like we’re stuck in the 390s — and that’s if today’s number, seemingly destined to be revised upward, isn’t the first sign that things are once again going the wrong way.

Today’s Producer Price Index report shows March prices increasing by 0.7%, capping off a quarter where prices rose by 3.1% (that’s not an annualized figure, it’s an actual). If inflation isn’t here, it’s standing right outside the door.

The double-dipping homebuilding industry is accompanied by moribund lending activity:

Mortgage applications decreased 6.7 percent from one week earlier, according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association’s Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey for the week ending April 8, 2011.

The Market Composite Index, a measure of mortgage loan application volume, decreased 6.7 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis from one week earlier. On an unadjusted basis, the Index decreased 6.3 percent compared with the previous week. The Refinance Index decreased 7.7 percent to its lowest level since February 11, 2011.

Retail sales in March were up a seasonally adjusted 0.4% over February. Excluding gas, it was 0.1%.

This Census Bureau report on construction shows that seasonally adjusted activity is down 6.1% since October 2010, and 6.8% since February 2010.

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UPDATE: The New York Times’s Economix blog reported Tuesday that Macroeconomic Advisers has trimmed its first-quarter 2011 growth estimate from an annualized 4.1% a early this year to 1.5% (I wonder if that got into the print edition?). MarketWatch noted that two other forecasters lowered their estimates to 1.5% and 1.7%.

The absolute minimum acceptable annualized growth during a recovery from a deep recession should be an annualized 4%, and there are strong arguments that the benchmark should be 5%. If 1Q11 comes in under 3%, there should be hell to pay. Growth during the seventh quarter of the post-recession recovery during Ronald Reagan’s first term in the early 1980s was an annualized 7.1%.

Investors Business Daily, in an editorial last night (bolds are mine):

Just days after the GOP unveiled a realistic plan to slash $4 trillion from our nation’s deficits over 10 years, President Obama counters with his own “plan.” That’s in quotation marks, because he has no specifics.

… Unlike Rep. Paul Ryan’s detailed plan to cut $4.2 trillion over a decade — not 12 years — no real, comprehensive budget numbers emerged from the president’s speech on Wednesday. But the handful of things he did mention are more than enough to raise alarms.

… While asking for Americans to share the sacrifice, the president called on the so-called rich — people he repeatedly termed “millionaires and billionaires” — to pay higher taxes while he and the Democrats who support him spend trillions more.

… (His) “promises,” by the way, pretty much take real entitlement reform off the table. Though entitlements now make up nearly 60% of our budget and are growing daily, Obama pushes spurious, nonspecific cuts in Medicare and none at all in Social Security.

So where do his “cuts” come from? Fully one-quarter from raising taxes on the “rich” — a sop to the far left. But again, far from falling just on “millionaires and billionaires,” Obama would raise taxes — or, as he calls them, “spending reductions in the tax code” — on the 2% of families that make $250,000 or more.

That group includes our most successful entrepreneurs and investors. Where will new jobs come from if they have to pay even more in taxes? And contrary to Obama’s claim, these “rich” have not seen their taxes cut. The 40% of the income-tax load they now shoulder (while earning just 30% of income) is the largest ever.

… In February, Obama forecast $46 trillion in spending over 10 years — a 77% rise from the last decade. The new plan changes that very little.

By midcentury, Tanner notes, “government at all levels would be consuming well over half of everything produced in this country.” Is that what America signed on for when it voted for Barack Obama?

This is exactly what America signed on for, many if not most of them not realizing it.

Over at the Wall Street Journal, this is also valid concern about the hostile tone of the speech:

The Presidential Divider

Did someone move the 2012 election to June 1? We ask because President Obama’s extraordinary response to Paul Ryan’s budget yesterday—with its blistering partisanship and multiple distortions—was the kind Presidents usually outsource to some junior lieutenant. Mr. Obama’s fundamentally political document would have been unusual even for a Vice President in the fervor of a campaign.

… Mr. Obama did not deign to propose an alternative to rival Mr. Ryan’s plan, even as he categorically rejected all its reform ideas, repeatedly vilifying them as essentially un-American. “Their vision is less about reducing the deficit than it is about changing the basic social compact in America,” he said, supposedly pitting “children with autism or Down’s syndrome” against “every millionaire and billionaire in our society.” The President was not attempting to join the debate Mr. Ryan has started, but to close it off just as it begins and banish House GOP ideas to political Siberia.

Mr. Obama then packaged his poison in the rhetoric of bipartisanship—which “starts,” he said, “by being honest about what’s causing our deficit.” The speech he chose to deliver was dishonest even by modern political standards.

The great political challenge of the moment is how to update the 20th-century entitlement state so that it is affordable. With incremental change, Mr. Ryan is trying maintain a social safety net and the economic growth necessary to finance it. Mr. Obama presented what some might call the false choice of merely preserving the government we have with no realistic plan for doing so, aside from proposing $4 trillion in phantom deficit reduction over a gimmicky 12-year budget window …

… Mr. Obama came out for further cuts in the defense budget, but where? His plan is to ask Defense Secretary Bob Gates and Joint Chiefs Chairman Mike Mullen “to find additional savings,” whatever those might be, after a “fundamental review.” These mystery cuts would follow two separate, recent rounds of deep cuts that were supposed to stave off further Pentagon triage amid several wars and escalating national security threats.

Mr. Obama rallied the left with a summons for major tax increases on “the rich.” Every U.S. fiscal trouble, he claimed, flows from the Bush tax cuts “for the wealthiest 2%,” conveniently passing over what he euphemistically called his own “series of emergency steps that saved millions of jobs.” Apparently he means the $814 billion stimulus that failed and a new multitrillion-dollar entitlement in ObamaCare that harmed job creation.

… According to Internal Revenue Service data, the entire taxable income of everyone earning over $100,000 in 2008 was about $1.582 trillion. Even if all these Americans—most of whom are far from wealthy—were taxed at 100%, it wouldn’t cover Mr. Obama’s deficit for this year.

… Mr. Obama ludicrously claimed that (Congressman Paul) Ryan favors “a fundamentally different America than the one we’ve known throughout most of our history.” Nothing is likelier to bring that future about than the President’s political indifference in the midst of a fiscal crisis.

This post yesterday demonstrates how correct the Journal’s final sentence is.

Read both editorials in full.

From Augusta, Georgia:

Updated: April 10, 2011, 4:13 PM ET

If you believe all Augusta National members are walking lumps of dandruff who eat boiled puppies for lunch, you’re not going to like this story.

It happened a couple years ago.

Brad Boss, the multimillionaire chairman emeritus of the pen company A.T. Cross Co., is a member at the National and a decent player, possibly because he never went out on the course without his favorite caddy, Joe Collins.

Joe had the kind of eyes that could see clean into tomorrow. A caddy at Augusta from the time he was 16, he was known as the best reader of greens in the entire caddyshack.

He took a practically unknown player named Jim Jamieson to a tie for fifth place at the Masters in 1972. Even when Augusta National lifted its local-caddies-only rule in 1983, Joe still got bags. Colin Montgomerie used him in 1998 and finished tied for eighth. In 2000, Tommy Aaron, then 63, rode Joe to a record as the oldest player ever to make the cut. Still stands, too.

No wonder so many guys asked for Joe — Michael Jordan took him three times — but Brad always got him. They were buddies. Sounds crazy, but over the top of a golf bag, nobody cares about your stock portfolio. Princes lean on peasants and peasants kid princes. Boss and Joe were together for more than 10 years. If you spend that much time, you’re more than player and caddy. You’re a kind of grass-stained team.

It didn’t matter that Joe dropped out of school in the 10th grade and Brad was educated at the best schools in the east. Didn’t matter that Joe’s mom gave him up to her sister when he was only three months old and that Brad inherited Cross from his grandfather. Didn’t matter that Joe walked to the course (he didn’t own a car) and Brad flew there sometimes in a private jet.

They were friends.

Joe sent Brad a card every birthday, every Christmas and Father’s Day, without fail. “They’d call each other plenty,” says Faye Latson, the aunt who raised him. “Seemed like Joe was always calling Mr. Boss up.”

Then Joe got lung cancer. You smoke for 40 years, that might happen. Joe moved back in with his aunt. “I had to take him in,” she says. “He didn’t have nobody else.”

He had to quit going to the National. If the cancer wasn’t going to kill Joe, that might. “He was so sad,” Faye says. “That man loved that golf course and all those people.”

When he died at 56 on June 27, 2009, Faye arranged for a simple funeral. She couldn’t afford much of a plot, but she and her daughter, Shirley Quarles, came up with enough for one in a shaggy downtown cemetery.

“But then Mr. Boss called,” said Faye. “And he was asking me, could he put Joe up on the hill above the golf course? He said he wanted Joe to have a nice view of it. Lord, I thought! Joe won’t be able to see nothin’, but OK.”

It’s a golf thing.

“We were just all overwhelmed,” says James Quarles, Shirley’s husband. “We couldn’t really believe it. We told him no, he didn’t have to, but Mr. Boss wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Boss flew down from New England for the visitation and spoke at the funeral. In fact, he was the first to get up. He told the crowd how much he admired Joe, how he wasn’t just his caddy, he was like family. Maybe that explains the Father’s Day cards.

Afterward, he asked Faye if he could put something in Joe’s pocket. Faye said sure. It was a gold Cross pen with Joe’s name on it and a Masters logo. Gift No. 2.

In New England, all this made friends of Boss shake their heads. “It just made me smile when I heard,” says Brad Faxon. “I thought, ‘Man, why aren’t there more people who do this stuff?’” …

Go here for the rest of Rick Reilly’s column.

Pictures aren’t working right now, and yes, it’s really annoying.

I’m told, just as readers are, that Photobucket is undergoing maintenance right now. Hopefully things will return to normal reasonably shortly.

UPDATE, 8 PM: Finally, they’re back, hopefully to stay.

This is about as weak as it gets.

This morning as seen here (saved here at my web host for future reference), an unbylined 90-word Associated Press report at 9:57 a.m. told readers the following, in part:

Facing criticism over the amount of taxes it pays, General Electric announced it will repay its entire $3.2 billion tax refund to the US Treasury on April 18.

GE uses a series of foreign tax havens that the company says are legal and that led to an enormous refund for the 2010 tax year.

At 10:40 a.m., CNBC called BS on AP:

GE Rebuffs Tax Refund Report as ‘Hoax’

General Electric called an earlier media report Wednesday that it would repay a $3.2 billion tax refund to the Treasury Department a “hoax.”

Members of an activist group calling themselves the “Yes Men” claimed responsibility for the hoax, according to a report from Reuters.

… Earlier Wednesday morning, the Associated Press reported that the U.S. conglomerate — using “a series of foreign tax havens” — would repay the “enormous” refund it received for the 2010 tax year.

Shares of GE, which is a minority shareholder in NBC Universal, the parent company of CNBC.com, slipped on the AP report.

… “It’s a hoax and GE did not receive a refund,” said Deirdre Latour, a GE spokeswoman.

… “The “Yes Men” sent the release to draw attention to GE’s approach to taxes, according to Andrew Boyd who described himself in a phone interview with Reuters as a member of the group.”

AP’s retraction, currently time-stamped at 1:35 p.m. but apparently originally published at about 10:30 a.m., now reads as follows:

The Associated Press mistakenly published a story Wednesday about General Electric Co. that was based on a fake press release.

The fake release said that General Electric, responding to criticism over the amount of taxes it pays, would repay a $3.2 billion tax refund for 2010 to the Treasury Department.

The fake release, which was emailed to the AP, included a GE logo and a link to a website designed to look like GE’s website.

The idea that GE would voluntarily pay $3.2 billion in tax it apparently wasn’t required to legally pay is so absurd that the legitimacy of the press release upon which the Associated Press relied — apparently without calling or e-mailing for any kind of authentication (but that logo and fake web site sure looked OK!) — should have been seriously questioned from the start. But it clearly wasn’t.

The AP demonstrates more and more with each passing day that it is not a serious news organization and has inadequate controls to prevent false, misleading, and slanted news from being published. Its subscribing newspapers, radio outlets, and TV stations — and the American people — are being poorly served.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

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BizzyBlog Update, April 14: Warner Todd Houston — “The fact is AP wanted this to be true more than they wanted to be factually correct.”

Andrew Malcolm on Barack Obama’s upcoming (as of the moment this post was written) speech today:

He’ll try to recapture control by adjusting the subject: Yes, yes the deficit is bad, though not as bad as you-know-which party makes it out to be. We do need to trim it with some cuts over time. But what we really need is more money to get stuff done.

Larry Kotlikoff, professor of economics at Boston University, and president of Economic Security Planning Inc., on what an incredible load of rubbish that belief of Obama’s really is:

Fiscal Meltdown in Spitting Distance

CBO’s (the Congressional Budget Office’s) baseline budget updates suggest the date for reaching what Carmen Reinhart, Kenneth Rogoff and other prominent economists believe is a critical insolvency threshold — a 90 percent ratio of federal debt held by the public to gross domestic product — has moved four years closer, in just nine months!

… Last June’s analysis had us going critical (crossing the 90 percent debt-to-GDP threshold) in 2021.

.. In January, the CBO modified its 10-year baseline forecast, taking into account the December deal. By my calculations, this meant the 90 percent threshold would be crossed in 2019.

On March 18, when the CBO released a new forecast that incorporated the president’s budget, the 90 percent mark had moved up to 2017.

Actually, 2017 is optimistic. Uncle Sam’s creditors will soon start charging exorbitant interest rates — like those Greece, Ireland and Portugal now face. The market’s concern with those countries’ bonds is outright default, which is unlikely in the U.S. What is likely is rising inflation as the Federal Reserve continues to print vast quantities of money to help pay the Treasury’s bills.

Earth to Obama: 2017 is only six years away, and I agree that critical threshold day is likely on track to occur sooner. That anyone can be so out of touch as to talking about the need for additional “investment” instead of serious spending adjustment and reform is really hard to take. Or are the people who have been claiming all along that the president’s goal is really the country’s ruination being proven right before our very eyes?

Disclosure: Yours truly is involved with Prof. Kotlikoff in certain Pajamas Media-related projects.

At a CNN blog: “No Opening Day for the White House” —

Neither President Barack Obama nor Vice President Joe Biden have the nation’s pastime on their schedules today, marking the first time in the administration that Opening Day ceremonies won’t have White House participation.

… Presidents have been throwing out the first pitch for more than one hundred years. William Howard Taft started the tradition of the first pitch for Opening Day in 1910 when he pitched from the mound at a Washington Senators game. Every president except for Jimmy Carter has taken part in the tradition ever since.

Another related story asserts that Obama “appears to be smarting from criticism he faced for filling out his NCAA brackets on ESPN.”

Zheesh. These supposedly smart people are incredibly tone-deaf. Nobody minds the President participating in traditional or ceremonial events (though we reserve the right to note their pitching prowess, or lack thereof). Gosh, at least send Biden. What many do mind is the President’s seeming habit of making it all about him. A simple thing like sending in his brackets and having someone else read his Final Four would have deflated most of the criticism.

Otherwise, I like the Carter comparison. Hopefully the reelection results will also be comparable.

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Speaking of media unions which are on board against AOL/HuffPo (see second item here earlier this morning), here’s an offering from the Newspaper Guild demonstrating why its members can’t do journalism:

Today (April 12) is Equal Pay Day, marking how much longer the average woman had to work to earn as much as the average man earned in 2010. Just one year out of college, working women already earn less than their male colleagues earn, even when they work in the same field with the same degree.

Sorry, guys and gals: “There Is No Male-Female Wage Gap” –

Feminist hand-wringing about the wage gap relies on the assumption that the differences in average earnings stem from discrimination. Thus the mantra that women make only 77% of what men earn for equal work. But even a cursory review of the data proves this assumption false.

It takes a special degree of deliberate ignorance to buy into the myth. Thankfully, even the Bloghers of the world seem not to be on board. Well, there is hope after all.

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If you are a union member, this web site will automatically generate a letter that you can print and mail to your union representative to claim your individual refund. UnionRefund will also send a courtesy notification letter to your union to ensure a quick resolution for your request. It’s that easy!”

Well, it may be “that easy” to get the letters out, but this BizzyBlog post from 2007 explains why in most states it’s not going to be “that easy” to actually obtain your refund.

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This decision absolutely reeks (HT PJ Tatler) of disgraceful, spiteful politics, and is a slap in the face to an awful lot of brave people and their families:

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden on Tuesday announced that Space Center Houston will not receive a retired space shuttle. The orbiters will instead be housed in Florida, California, Washington, D.C., and New York City.

Specifically, the space shuttle Atlantis will retire to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Endeavour will be housed at the California Science Center, just outside of Los Angeles.

Discovery, as previously promised, will go to the Smithsonian Institute.

The prototype Enterprise, which is currently housed at the Smithsonian, will be moved to the Intrepid Museum in New York City.

… Many legislative and business leaders, including Bob Mitchell of the Bay Area Houston Economic Partnership, were calling for a Congressional investigation into why Houston wasn’t chosen.

… Rep. Pete Olson said the decision “smacked of a political gesture,” and Sen. John Cornyn said it was “clear that political favors trumped common sense and fairness.”

The families of the victims of the Columbia and Challenger disasters released a joint statement Tuesday afternoon, saying they were heartbroken by the decision.

“Home is where the heart is, and Houston has served as the heart of the space shuttle program since its inception nearly four decades ago,” the families said.

“All the astronauts lost were Houston’s residents.”

There shouldn’t be an investigation. There should be a reversal of the award to either New York City or LA. Period.

Glenn Reynolds believes that the minimum drinking-age decision should be left to the states, and that the age should be lowered to 18. Glenn Reynolds is absolutely correct.

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An unpaid blogger is suing Arianna Huffington for a piece of Huffington’s Heist, unleashing a cacophony of Marxist rhetorical hilarity. Unionized media reporters should be disclosing to readers, listeners, and viewers that their union has backed an unrelated action against against AOL/HuffPo asking unpaid bloggers to withhold their services. But they won’t.

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At AP — “WH: Obama regrets vote against raising debt limit.” He doesn’t regret that nearly as much as millions of people regret voting for him.

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“Not This Mitt Again” Update: He’s exploring. Tea Partiers and sensible conservatives (a redundant term) need to dissuade him.

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At P/O’d Patriot (HT Gateway Pundit): “SEIU Members Arrested in WA After Pushing State Troopers.” The related local TV video never identifies the protesters as unionized workers, only as “health care providers.”

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This is a couple of weeks old, but given David Solway’s outstanding rundown of climate change fraud, phoniness, and deception, it should be noted: “Krugman: No ‘Scientific Impropriety’ in ClimateGate - ‘Hide the Decline’ an ‘Effective Graphical Presentation.’” What a maroon.

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Will collective-bargaining reform-backing Wisconsin petitioners really be able to place the names of eight Fleebaggers on recall ballots?

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At NewsBusters on Monday — “Chris Matthews: Paul Ryan’s Medicare Plan Will ‘Kill Half the People Who Watch My Show.’” Would that be his mom or his dad (towards whom I obviously wish no real harm)?

From Chicago:

Apr 7, 2011 / 06:02 am

On April 2, more than 400 friends and supporters of Pro-Life Action League founder Joe Scheidler paid tribute to his 38 years of activism at a banquet in downtown Chicago. On the streets outside, his cause continued to provoke the kinds of dramatic responses he’s come to expect.

“We had a contingent of protesters outside, screaming their heads off,” Scheidler recalled. “Then a group of kids came out, who called themselves the ‘Crusaders.’ There were about a hundred kids with yellow balloons that said ‘LIFE’ on them, and they rolled out a red carpet for us.”

“It’s a battle all the time. During the banquet, they were slicing the tires of people who had pro-life stickers on their cars. If it was a gay-rights group that was having a party, and somebody sliced their tires, they’d have the FBI on it. But they treat us like we deserve it.”

Scheidler told CNA that he felt “very much humbled” by the tribute banquet, sponsored by Citizens for a Pro-Life Society.

“It was very touching for me to hear everyone – they had 23 speakers, for three minutes each, just saying how they got to know me. Many of them were there to say, ‘You know, Joe got us started.’”

In the early years of the pro-life movement, Scheidler’s book “Closed: 99 Ways to Stop Abortion” was a foundational text. He traveled the world speaking on the ethics of abortion and outlining practical forms of activism that he had developed and tested. In the process, he inspired others to follow his lead.

“I would be watching, during my talks, and find the people who were listening most intensely,” he recalled. “I’d talk with them afterward, and suggest they go full-time in the movement. And a number of them did.”

Scheidler’s own career as an activist was an unexpected calling, but one he is “absolutely convinced” he was born to fulfill.

“I spent eight years in the seminary, and four years in the monastery, wanting to be a priest,” he said. “But when I was preparing for ordination, I thought, ‘Nope – this is not what I’m called to do.’ And then suddenly, everything started to fall together.”

“I read the Roe v. Wade decision, in 1973, and it was an atrocity – it was a great big lie. There is no ‘constitutional right’ to kill children. I was working as an account executive for a public relations firm at the time, and I just had to quit and do full-time pro-life work.” …

Go here for the rest of the story.