From Vatican City:

Jun 12, 2013 / 10:02 am

The progress of the Church can be hindered by the dual temptations of wanting to remain in the past and “adolescent progressivism,” Pope Francis said.

The danger of a progressive approach to the Holy Spirit is that believers becomes “like teenagers who in their enthusiasm want to have everything, and in the end? You slip up…” he said at the June 12 morning Mass.

“It’s like when the road is covered in ice and the car slips and go off track … This is the other temptation at the moment! We, at this moment in the history of the Church, we cannot go backwards or go off the track!” the Pope stressed.

The track the Church must follow, he said during his homily, “is that of freedom in the Holy Spirit that makes us free, in continuous discernment of God’s will to move forward on this path… .”

Pope Francis’ homily was inspired by today’s Gospel reading from Matthew 5:17, where Jesus says, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets.”

Christ brought the new law of the Spirit, the Pope noted, calling it the “road to maturity” for the Church. …

Go here for the rest of the story.

June 4:

Topics:
– Michelle Obama
– Jay Carney
– President Obama
– War on Terror
– Guantanamo Bay
– Charles Ramsey
– Eric Holder
– Robert Menendez
– Montana Dog Ate Cash

Best Line: “Cleveland kidnapping hero Charles Ramsey has refused offers by local restaurants to receive free hamburgers for life. When they learned of the offers, angry Democrats said, ‘Hey, offering people free stuff for life is our job.”

June 12:

Topics:
– Mobile Devices
– President Obama
– NSA Surveillance
– Supreme Court
– DNA Samples
– George W. Bush
– Congress
– Eric Holder
– Tea Party
– Fort Hood Shooter Nidal Hassan
– New Jersey senator Frank Lautenberg
– Michelle Obama
– IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman

Best Line: “President Obama insists that the NSA surveillance program does not listen to your phone calls, which marks the first time President Obama claimed to have knowledge about any of his own programs.”

Rules are here. Possible comment fodder may follow later. Other topics are also fair game.

From Washington:

Jun 7, 2013 / 12:08 pm

A new booklet on the vocation of Christian parenthood and its relationship to the parish and broader society is now available online.

“The Gift of Joy” was co-authored by Archbishop Joseph E. Kurtz of Louisville, Ky., and Msgr. J. Brian Bransfield of Philadelphia.

The booklet focuses on “The Blessing of the Child in the Womb,” which was prepared at the request of then-Bishop Kurtz, who currently serves as vice president and associate general secretary of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

The text for the blessing was drafted by the conference’s Divine Worship and Pro-Life Activities committees. Approved by the U.S. bishops in 2008, it received final approval from Rome in 2012. …

Go here for the rest of the story.

Its defined-benefit plans are unsustainable.

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This column went up with minor edits at Watchdog.org earlier this afternoon.

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In a story which should have stayed on its home page for several days but instead was gone within hours, the Cincinnati Enquirer reported on Saturday that the City of Cincinnati must pay at least $85 million into its $2 billion pension and retiree health care system next year.

Cincinnati is alone among Ohio’s major cities in that its employees do not participate in any of the state’s five statewide retirement systems.

In the past year alone, the Enquirer’s Cliff Peale notes, the Cincinnati Retirement System’s unfunded liability has ballooned by 22 percent to a whopping $870 million, or just under $3,000 for each man, woman and child living within the city’s limits.

Not that it’s much consolation, but the city is far from alone.
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Rules are here. Possible comment fodder follows. Other topics are also fair game.

(items below were added at 7:30 a.m.)

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The New York Times has acknowledged a 15-year global warming “plateau” “even as greenhouse gases have accumulated in the atmosphere at a record pace.”

Further, “The slowdown is a bit of a mystery to climate scientists. … the practitioners of climate science would like to understand exactly what is going on. They admit that they do not.”

Yet we’re supposed to submit to a complete overturning of the world economic order to combat “climate change.” Horse manure.

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Rush Limbaugh: “The Question is Not Whether the Obama Regime Will Survive, But Will America as Founded Survive the Obama Regime?”

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CBS News (video is at link):

State Department memo reveals possible cover-ups, halted investigations

CBS News’ John Miller reports that according to an internal State Department Inspector General’s memo, several recent investigations were influenced, manipulated, or simply called off. The memo obtained by CBS News cited eight specific examples. Among them: allegations that a State Department security official in Beirut “engaged in sexual assaults” on foreign nationals hired as embassy guards and the charge and that members of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s security detail “engaged prostitutes while on official trips in foreign countries” — a problem the report says was “endemic.”

In a total non-surprise, a Kennedy is involved in the interference.

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Girl Scouts USA, which sold out to homosexual militancy and promiscuity apologists decades ago, has become even more problematic:

GSUSA simply is not what it says it is. Instead of remaining neutral on issues like abortion, as they promised, the Girl Scouts fund and hang out with aggressive abortion rights advocates …

Given all of this, who the Girl Scouts have become is clear to me. And unfortunately, they certainly are not the positive influence on girls they once were.

Indeed. As noted elsewhere, “Girl Scouts is driven by a liberal ideology far out of step with the families and churches that support them.”

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Can’t make this up: The National Organization for Marriage is demanding that the Internal Revenue Service identify who leaked its donor list. The IRS has told the group, in Peggy Noonan’s words (HT Ace via Instapundit), “that the law prohibiting the disclosure of confidential tax returns also prevents disclosure of information about who disclosed them.”

The leaker broke the law and should be prosecuted. The IRS is protecting that person or person.

This is open-and-shut obstruction of justice.

From Vatican City:

Jun 7, 2013 / 12:30 pm

Setting aside his prepared text, Pope Francis tackled questions from children about having faith in times of doubt, his friends and his favorite aspects of Jesuit spirituality.

“Walking is an art because if we always walk in a hurry we get tired and we can’t reach the end,” he said in response to an older boy who admitted he had doubts about his faith.

“Walking is the art of looking at the horizon thinking where I want to go, but also to accept the tiredness of the walk,” the Pope reflected.

“So many times the walk is difficult.”

Pope Francis received around 7,000 students from Jesuit-run schools in Italy and Albania, accompanied by their teachers, alumni and family members in Paul VI Hall on June 7.

The overall atmosphere was relaxed, with the Pope joking that his five-page set of remarks was “boring” and giving honest and sometimes funny answers to the children who posed questions.

The rapport Pope Francis had with the students inspired him to set aside his prepared address and speak off-the-cuff in a question and answer format.

“There are days of darkness and some days of falls, one falls, falls. But always think this, don’t be afraid of the failures, don’t be afraid of the falls,” he said as he continued his words of encouragement to the student with doubts. …

Go here for the rest of the story.

In a story which I can attest is accurate, Gina Loudon at WND.com, formerly WorldNetDaily, reports that the Air Force’s 624th Operations Center is warning airmen not to look at the news.

That’s not exactly what they’re saying, but they might as well be. What the “Notice to Airmen” says is that “Users are not to use AF NIPRNET systems to access the Verizon phone records collection and other related news stories because the action could constitute a Classified Message Incident.” It’s currently pretty hard to go to a news site without seeing a blurb on a “related story,” given how many “related stories” there are which go way beyond Verizon to nine tech companies, 50 other companies, Edward Snowden, White House, congressional and bureaucrats’ responses, etc. The Air Force’s claim that reading a news story or even looking at documents which have been made public is a “Classified Message Incident” is pretty shaky, based on the definition provided in a two-year old memo I located. That definition, and a grab of the censorious memo, follow the jump.

Here’s the relevant portion of the memo:

Here’s the definition I found of a “Classified Message Incident,” accompanied by additional commentary (bolds are mine):

6/8/2011 – AVIANO AIR BASE, Italy — A classified message incident is when classified material or information is sent through e-mail over an unsecured work center computer such as the one I am using to write this article. A CMI is a foundational break down in our ability to protect classified information and results in a loss of man-hours, money and time. We as a team must focus on preventing these costly incidents and ensure everyone has a broader understanding of the CMI process and how we can prevent them.

Causes of CMIs are numerous and highlight poor classified protection practices. Computer users can prevent CMIs by not transmitting sensitive to classified material through normal e-mail and instead use secure means such as secret internet protocol router network, commonly referred to as SIPRNet. Information Protection practices are aimed at preventing the transmission of classified material through e-mail. E-mail users must take the time to consider material classification being written on their desktop or laptop before sending. Poor classified protection practices can be eliminated by slowing down. Always determine classification of material you are working with and never send classified via unsecured means.

Raising awareness about what a CMI is and how to prevent them are positive steps we can take to continue our efforts in preventing them. Together, we can make a difference by slowing down when writing information, ensuring we are fully aware of the type or classification of material we are working with, and learning from our costly mistakes. Remember, preventing CMIs saves man-hours, money and time.

Everything discussed above has to do with sending information which shouldn’t be sent.

If the Air Force has an argument, it’s that its personnel arguably shouldn’t be sending “look at this” emails to friends, relatives and acquaintances about the allegedly security-compromising leaks.

There is nothing in the CMI definition or the rest of the memo which could conceivably stretch its definition to include receiving the bits and bytes of a news story and then reading it.

The Air Force memo effectively keeps service members from accessing Drudge, the New York Times, the Associated Press, and virtually every other national and international news site’s home page for the next several days — if not weeks and months, at the rate things are going.

This isn’t what our service members has in mind when they swore to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic,” and that they “will bear true faith and allegiance to the same;” Those sections of the oath come before those relating to obeying the orders of the President of the United States and the officers appointed over them.

Officers at the 624th need to be ordered to stop bullying their subordinates. Frankly, someone deserves some serious discipline for issuing such a tyrannical order.

This story, whose accuracy I was able to indirectly verify, is not news anywhere except WND.

Does anyone remember the military ordering soldiers not to read stories about Watergate in 1973 and 1974? I didn’t think so.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

When last seen at NewsBusters in February, the Associated Press’s Liz Sidoti was talking down to the public about its “collective obsession with the trivial” less than a week after AP reporter Ken Thomas wasted 500 words of print and bandwidth on how Florida Sen. Marco Rubio took a sip of water during a speech.

Now Sidoti, who is the AP’s National Political Editor, is quite worried — actually, obsessed – that the public might waking up and contrasting what President Barack Obama is delivering compared to what he has promised at a most inopportune time, and that “controversies” might overtake Dear Leader’s second-term agenda (bolds are mine):

(more…)

Iowahawk:

Rules are here. Possible comment fodder follows. Other topics are also fair game.

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Lost in the noise over Michelle Obama’s petulant, immature response to a heckler at a Democratic fund-raising event (“Listen to me or you can take the mic, but I’m leaving. You all decide”) was the pathetic theme of her speech, which can be summarized in four words: “It’s for the children.”

What about this administration is “for the children”? The over $6 trillion in new debt since the administration took office ($10.63 trillion then, $16.74 trillion as of Thursday)? The higher education bubble caused by the breathtaking expansion in student (and parent) loans for college? The steep price they’ll have to pay for health insurance coverage far in excess of what they’ll ordinarily need? The temporary/part-time economy these clowns are creating?

“For the children” was last seen as a last-refuge cop-out during the Clinton administration. It’s come to that point under Obama as well.

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Another scandal to add to the scandal exhaustion list, in case you missed it (and it’s totally understandable if you have): “AP: Obama officials using secret e-mail accounts”

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Cincinnati’s going broke while pretending it has all kinds of money to throw at its ill-advised streetcar plan: “Cincinnati’s pension and retiree health care systems require an $85.5 million contribution next year, 53 percent of total payroll and dramatically more than the city says it can afford.”

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Related to the previous item:

Cincinnati officials say no taxpayer money would be used to operate the controversial streetcar once it is built.

But an Enquirer examination finds that would make it one of the most unusual streetcar systems anywhere.

… “There is no public transportation system in the world, with the exception of Hong Kong, that isn’t subsidized by the government, particularly in the U.S. where fare box revenue covers less than 50 percent of what it costs to operate” …

Barring a miracle, Cincinnati, which as noted above can’t afford it, will be taking on yet another ongoing and at this point undetermined annual cost. It won’t be small.

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Delegitimized 2012 General Election Update: “IRS officials knew as early as 2010 that pro-life and conservative groups were being targeted by the Internal Revenue Service. Of course, no news broke about the scandal until after President Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election victory.”

From Vatican City:

Jun 7, 2013 / 01:14 pm

Pope Francis said God does not love us with words but through closeness and tenderness during his morning Mass on the feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

“He does not love us with words, he comes close and gives us his love with tenderness,” the Pope said.

“Closeness and tenderness!” he stressed on June 7 at the chapel in Saint Martha’s House.

God loves us by “drawing near” and “giving all his love,” he preached, adding that he does so “even in the smallest things, with tenderness.”

Pope Francis made his comments based on Ezekiel 34, in which God shows his love by caring for the lost, wounded and sick sheep.

He referred to the feast as “the feast of love” of a “heart that loved so much.”

The pontiff then dwelt in greater depth on how Jesus loved with his deeds and life.

“This is a powerful love, because closeness and tenderness reveal the strength of God’s love,” said Pope Francis.

“The Lord loves us tenderly, the Lord knows that beautiful science of caresses, the tenderness of God.”

Besides God’s love being given through acts, the Holy Father underscored that God loves more by giving than receiving.

“These two criteria are like the pillars of true love, and the Good Shepherd above all else represents the love of God,” said Pope Francis. …

Go here for the rest of the story.