HIGH NOON AT THE U.N.:
Colin Powell's Iron-Clad Case Against Saddam

Yesterday, before the United Nations Security Council, Secretary of State Colin Powell gave a 90-minute presentation of recently declassified US intelligence data which apparently confirm beyond a shadow of a doubt that Iraq possesses chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction, as well as continues to develop more of them in massive quantities. For example, Powell noted, the Iraqis have manufactured and still possess over 4 tons of the lethal agent VX, a poison so deadly that only "[a] single drop" on a person's skin "will kill in minutes."

Moreover, said Powell, the data proves that Saddam Hussein was not only refusing to comply with all U.N. resolutions passed against Iraq, the Iraqis been systematically and deliberately deceiving the U.N.'s inspectors for the past 12 years.

The case Powell made was so compelling and convincing that life-long liberal Democrats Joe Biden and Ted Kennedy finally agreed with President Bush about the danger Iraq presents to the US and the rest of the world. Even The Washington Post's resident Clintonista, columnist Mary McGrory, wrote that she was "pursuaded."

Yet, we are told today, three key members of the Security Council --France, China, and Russia-- continue to resist using force to make Saddam disarm. Instead, they want to "respond" by sending more inspectors to Iraq. Perhaps they want to drag this on for another 12 years, by which time Saddam could very well be up to his eyeballs in nuclear weapons.

"LOVE TO ALL, LAUREL":
A Columbia Astronaut's Last E-Mail to Earth

Today the Associated Press released the text of an e-mail sent by astronaut Laurel Clark to her friends and family the day before her death. She happily tells them in some detail about her experiences in orbit. For example, she described the views from space of "our magnificent planet Earth" as "truly awe-inspiring," but adds that she and the rest of the crew were so "busy doing science round the clock" that "getting a moment to type e-mail is precious."

Clark vividly describes her seeing "lightning spreading over the Pacific, the Aurora Australis lighting up the entire visible horizon with the cityglow of Australia below, the crescent moon setting over the limb of the Earth, the vast plains of Africa and the dunes on Cape Horn, rivers breaking through tall mountain passes, the scars of humanity, the continuous line of life extending from North America, through Central America and into South America." While over Japan, she says, "Mount Fuji looks life a small bump from up here, but it does stand out as a very distinct landmark."

She also describes clearly seeing her native Lake Michigan area, especially the area of Wisconsin she came from. She didn't get a lot of chances for sight-seeing over Planet Earth, she said, because "much of the time I'm working back in Spacehab and don't see any of it." But "[w]henever I do get to look out, it is glorious. Even the stars have a special brightness." She noted that she took as many photos as she could, and felt she got some especially beautiful shots though expressing concern over their sharpness since zero-gravity can affect one's focusing. On that note, it would a nice turn in this tragedy if her camera is eventually recovered.

She writes, "I feel blessed to be here representing our country and carrying out the research of scientists around the world" and adds that "[t]he food is great and I am feeling very comfortable in this new, totally different environment." But eating and drinking in zero gravity has its challenges: "It still takes a while to eat as gravity doesn't help pull food down your esophagus. It is also a constant challenge to stay adequately hydrated. Since our body fluids are shifted toward our heads our sense of thirst is almost non-existent."

Clark closes her e-mail thanking her family and friends for "hav[ing] supported me and my adventures throughout the years. This was definitely one to beat all. I hope you could feel the positive energy that beamed to the whole planet as we glided over our shared planet."

"FLYING FOR ME"
John Denver's Tribute to the Space Shuttle Astronauts

According to a story published in 1997 in Florida Today, back in the 1980s the late singer-songwriter John Denver --an outspoken supporter of the space program as well as an avid amatuer pilot-- was seriously considered by NASA to be the first civilian non-astronaut to ride into space aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger in its ill-fated January 1986 flight. As we now know, school teacher Christa McAuliffe was chosen instead, apparently per President Reagan's wishes.

This is the song Denver wrote in honor of McAullife and the entire Challenger crew. It seems equally fitting for the Columbia crew as well:

FLYING FOR ME
by John Denver

Well, I guess that you probably know by now
I was one who wanted to fly
I wanted to ride on that arrow of fire right up into heaven
And I wanted to go for every man, every child, every mother of children
I wanted to carry the dreams of all people right up to the stars

And I prayed that I'd find an answer there
Or maybe I would find the song
Giving a voice to all of the hearts that can not be heard
And for all of the ones who live in fear
And all of those who stand apart
My being there would bring us a little step closer together

They were flying for me, they were flying for everyone
They were trying to see, a brighter day for each and everyone
They gave us their light, they gave us their spirit, and all they could be
They were flying for me

And I wanted to wish on the Milky Way and dance upon the falling star
I wanted to give myself, and free myself, enjoin myself with it all!
Given the chance to dream, it can be done
The promise of tomorrow is real
Children of spaceship Earth, the future belongs to us all

She was flying for me, she was flying for everyone
She was trying to see, a brighter day for each and everyone
She gave us her light, she gave us her spirit, and all she could be
She was flying for me

They were flying for me, they were flying for everyone
They were trying to see, a brighter day for each and everyone
They gave us their light, they gave us their spirit, and all they could be
They were flying for me

According to reports published soon after the song was released in 1987, Denver gave any money he earned from it to the families of the Challenger crew. In October 1997, Denver too died in a flight accident when he lost control of his experimental ultra-light aircraft, which plunged into the Pacific off the coast of California.

SADDAM'S SMOKING GUN:
Key Defector Reveals Secret WMD Sites

According to a piece in yesterday's edition of the Australian news daily Herald Sun,

SADDAM Hussein's senior bodyguard has fled with details of Iraq's secret arsenal. His revelations have supported US President George W. Bush's claim there is enough evidence from UN inspectors to justify going to war. Abu Hamdi Mahmoud has provided Israeli intelligence with a list of sites that the inspectors have not visited.

They include:

AN underground chemical weapons facility at the southern end of the Jadray Peninsula in Baghdad;

A SCUD assembly area near Ramadi. The missiles come from North Korea;

TWO underground bunkers in Iraq's Western Desert. These contain biological weapons.

William Tierney, a former UN weapons inspector who has continued to gather information on Saddam's arsenal, said Mahmoud's information is "the smoking gun".

Mahmoud, according to this article, paints a picture of an increasingly paranoid Hussein who "is a walking arsenal" with "concealed guns all over his body," especially after a 1996 assassination attempt on the life of his eldest son.

DAVE BARRY REMEMBERS COLUMBIA:
The Popular Humorist's Personal Tribute

In this light-hearted yet touching story on his weblog today, writer Dave Barry reminisces about the time an astronaut took one of his books into space aboard the Columbia

Thanks, Dave, for reminding us how human and down-to-earth our fallen heroes really were, and for giving us something to smile about in the midst of this sad time.

TRAGEDY IN SPACE:
The Space Shuttle Columbia Is Gone

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds --and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of --wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence, hov'ring there
I've chased the shouting wind along,
And flung my eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long, delirious burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew
And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

--"High Flight" by WW2 pilot John Gillespie Magee Jr.

Our prayers go out for the families, friends, and colleagues of the seven heroic astronauts who lost their lives yesterday in the NASA space program's worst accident since the 1986 Challenger tragedy.

May God bless and comfort them all.

PS: Especially noteworthy are the comments by syndicated columnist Peggy Noonan (from whom the above-quoted poem was taken), as well as the words of Junk Yard Blog's Bryan Preston, a NASA employee who once watched the Columbia take off.

A LIVELY NEW BOG:
Is It Really Dave Barry?

Fellow St. Blogger Kathryn Lively has happened upon a promising new blog, begun just last week, which seems to be the work of popular humor columnist Dave Barry. At least his official website includes a link to it.

Hmmmm. Maybe Dave, a Secular Humorist, will convert and join St. Blog's Parish.

MORE SMOKE BUT NOT MUCH GUN:
President Bush Makes His Case, Almost

Last night in his State of the Union address, President Bush repeated his intention to disarm Saddam Hussein, including unilaterally by force. Fewer folks than yours truly would like to see Hussein become another page in history, and lickety-split. He's clearly a major source of instability in the Middle East, and seems to have learned nothing from his defeat in Desert Storm 12 years ago. Except, perhaps, that the UN will drag its heels about living up to its warnings and resolutions. But the public was promised a "smoking gun" in the form of new evidence linking Hussein to Al Queda. It didn't happen. What we got instead was a better argument for taking military action against the Butcher of Bagdad, but an argument based on speculation about what Hussein might do if he had X, Y, and X, not an argument based on heretofore unrevealed hard facts.

We need more, Mr. President.

ABORTING GOOD TASTE:
St. Blog's Parish Responds to Planned Parenthood's Poster Contest

Back in October, in the epitome of bad taste, Planned Parenthood announced a poster contest to "celebrate" the then-upcoming 30th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, which anniversary occurs today.

In their own inimitable style, some of the more artistically inclined members of St. Blog's Parish have come up with their own --ahem-- inspired entries.

No doubt PP will be most appreciative.

40 MILLION DEAD AND COUNTING:
The Fruits of Roe v. Wade

Today marks the 30th anniversary of the Supreme Court caving in to the Culture of Death by declaring as "unconstitutional" every state law banning the crime of abortion. So far, thanks to those Justices, approximately 40,000,000 innocent preborn human beings have had their lives snuffed out by abortionists.

But the legalization of abortion was only the beginning: As Francis A. Schaeffer and other Christian leaders and teachers predicted at the time, the de-humanizing of the unborn has resulted in the de-humanizing of the born as well: Since Roe v. Wade more and more Western nations have been going down the slippery slope of legalizing infanticide (aka "partial birth abortion"), suicide, and euthanasia.

God help us all!

THOSE BRITISH "PAGANS"?
Yet Another Bishop Gets It All Wrong

Many thanks to Emily Stimpson at the Heart, Mind, and Strength BLOG for bringing to our attention yet another Church prelate who seems utterly clueless about the true state of today's Postmodernist and post-Christian Western culture.

It seems that the head of the Catholic Church in the UK thinks the majority of his countrymen are now pagans. According to an AP report today, "Archbishop of Westminster Cormac Murphy-O'Connor was quoted as telling the Daily Telegraph that Britain "has become, from a Christian point of view, very pagan. Children are not really taught religion in most schools. 'And yet, even though it is a pagan country, people don't dismiss religion, don't dismiss God, don't dismiss the spiritual side of their character,' he was quoted as saying."

But Stimpson got it right when she wrote in response to this,

... Plato was a pagan. Homer was a pagan. Ceneca was a pagan. Most modern day Brits (and a healthy share of Americans too) are not pagans. They are post-Christian agnostics and atheists whose philosophy is steeped in relativism and irrationalism. Calling them pagans is too high of a compliment. Pagans, for all they lacked, still believed in truth, virtue, the natural law, and religion.

The sad truth is that Paul could reason far more easily with a first century Roman pagan then any of us could with a twenty-first century devotee of Sex in the City.

Hear, hear!

The late Christian writer and teacher Francis A. Schaeffer, a noteworthy Evangelical who sounded the alarm within the conservative Protestant community about the dangers posed by the Culture of Death over 25 years ago, understood full well the kind of age we live in. He warned decades ago, in his very prophetic little books The God Who Is There and Escape From Reason (published in the early 1960s) that relativism and irrationalism would overtake Western culture and end up running society within the lifetimes of the very same college students he and his L'Abri staff taught and led to Christ by the thousands during the Counter-Culture era.

Schaeffer and L'Abri knew this because, unlike too many Catholic intellectuals and churchmen, he and his colleagues made it a point of staying "in the trenches" ministering to --and, most importantly, listening to-- those most deeply involved in the culture around them. As Stimpson points out above, modern day Western agnostics and atheists are post-Christian, not pagan.

Schaeffer --one of the first Christian writers and teachers to use the term "post-Christian," and may have even coined the term-- understood that difference very well, and understood the radical significance of that difference. It's high time more of the leadership of the Catholic Church understood it as well.

"...WHERE ARE THE CLONES?..."
...Maybe Next Year?

Memo from the P. T. Barnum Dept.:

According to the Associated Press today, it seems that the UFO cult-funded bio-engineering firm Clonaid is about to do an about-face on its promise to allow independent scientific verification of its claim that it had produced the first human clone.

What a surprise.

"...SEND IN THE CLONES..."
UFO Cult Claims Birth of "First Human Clone"

A bio-engineering company called Clonaid, founded by a small religious group (the "Raelians") which believes humans were created by space aliens, claims to have successfully created and brought to term the first human clone --a girl named "Eve."

According to Clonaid, Eve's genetic material was taken from the skin cells of a 31-year-old American woman and implanted in one of her eggs to create an embryonic copy of the woman. In other words, claims Clonaid, Eve is the infant twin of her own mom.

Read all about it here: Group claims first cloned human born

Of course, the jury is still out about the credibility of the Raelians' claim, a claim which has not been verified and which seems dubious at best. After all, it's being made by an outfit which claims to be in regular and ongoing contact with ET and is run by "bishops" who say lame-brained things like "she was born yesterday in the country where she was born," as if "she" could've been born somewhere other than where "she" was born.

PIMPIN’ BARBIE:
Mattel Hammers One More Nail Into Childhood’s Coffin

In the Outlook section of the Sunday Dec. 22 Washington Post, outraged Baltimore school teacher Deborah Roffman protests yet another example of the seemingly endless trend in popular American culture to sexualize childhood.

In the past, Roffman points out, the culprits have been the recording and fashion industries: Witness, for example, the influence of pop singer Britney Spears’ increasingly risqué “fashion” sense on the ways adolescent, and even prepubescent, girls dress in public. Witness also, says Roffman, the rapidly lowering age of more and more kids getting caught up in sexual activities:

Those of us in the business of education have been worried about middle- and high-school students for a while. The stories of the past few years are harrowing ….[But] [t]he litany of stories I'm hearing now involving young children are even more disturbing: "freak" dancing or "grinding" at fifth-grade graduation parties in public school buildings, with adults as passive onlookers; 8-year-olds being taken to see R-rated movies such as "American Pie II"; elementary school children posting sexual jokes and messages online, even on school networks; mothers finding pornographic passages in their fifth-grade daughters' diaries; fourth-grade boys turning to fourth-grade girls in the cafeteria line and asking, "Do you spit or swallow?"

In too many cases, Roffman argues, adults have been not only willfully blind to these dangerous phenomena, but even complicit in them, at least psychologically. Including adults in positions of great influence in children’s lives, up to and including toymakers. This is where Mattel comes in according to Roffman:

Still seeking that perfect gift for a special young girl in your life? …For a mere $45, you can surprise and delight her with a Lingerie Barbie. And what a Barbie Babe she is, decked out in her sexy black (or, if you prefer, pink) garters, stockings and obligatory stiletto heels. Even her PR is PG, giving the phrase "sex toy" a whole new level of meaning: "Barbie exudes a flirtatious attitude in her heavenly merry widow bustier ensemble accented with intricate lace and matching peekaboo peignoir." …Mattel [also] plans a February launch for its sixth "limited edition" Lingerie Barbie, promising she'll be "simply sassy in a short pearl-grey satin slip trimmed in black lace" and "thigh-high stockings" that "add a hint of flair."

Yep, now Mattel, it seems, is moving its famous “teen fashion model” out of the fashion business and into the soft porn business –and targeting children as its key market. Oh, yes: Forget about Mattel’s “disclaimer” that Lingerie Barbie is for “age 14 and up.” As any parent can tell you, Barbie’s chief market is the 6 to 12 year-old set. “Get real,” one adolescent student puts it, "No 14-year-old girl would be caught dead playing with a Barbie Doll, 'lingerie' or otherwise. Who do they think they're kidding?"

Who indeed!

Happily, says Roffman, both the teachers and parents of young girls –and in many instances, young girls themselves—are up in arms about Mattel’s shamelessly shameful new strategy of making a buck off kids:

Teachers and parents (even among Barbie fans) can't believe their ears when they hear about this one: Disgusting! How dare they! Don't they have little girls of their own? Where will it all end? Enough!!

Many teens I know, and even younger children, have been equally outraged. High school students at one all-girls school in Tennessee where I recently spoke were moved to start a national letter-writing campaign to chastise Mattel for this brazen sexualization of children.

”NOPE, AIN’T NO ANTI-SEMITES HERE”:
The Remnant Whitewashes Fr. Dennis Fahey

In his “rebuttal” of Sandra Miesel’s Crisis article poking holes in the conspiracy-mentality and “anti-Judaism” of the Sieg Heil wing of the Catholic Traditionalist movement, Remnant writer Christopher Ferrara claims that the famous Jew-baiting Irish priest of the first half of the 20th century, Dennis Fahey, was not really an anti-Semite. To read more on this, go to the full version of this commentary at our Bullies 'N' Bozos BLOG.

POST-MODERNIST HUMBUGGING:
Or, "Here We Come a-Politically-Correct-Caroling"

Many thanks to Fellow Blogger Lane Core for this very funny "politically correct" update of "The Twelve Days of Christmas." It certainly made our Day!

DPI NEWS FLASH: There will be no Congressional Creche on Capitol Hill this year: No one can locate a wise man anywhere in Congress, and as everyone knows there are no more virgins left amongst the interns. However, there are more than enough jackasses to fill every stable both inside and outside the DC Beltway.

OF NEO-NAZIS, CHRISTIAN IDENTITY, & KKKATHOLICS:
Is the Uber-Catholic Lunatic Fringe Going Sieg Heil?

Conservative Catholic blogger Bill Cork notes how the thinking of some within the self-styled "Traditionalist Catholic" movement is rapidly (and rabidly) becoming indistinguishable from that of anti-Semitic conspiracy-theory-and-white-supremacy-oriented sects and movements such as Christian Identity and the National Alliance (an openly neo-Nazi group whose founder gave us Timothy McVeigh).

For background info on this weird phenomenon, go to our Bullies 'N' Bozos Web Log and stay tuned for further developments.

THE MESS IN BOSTON:
It Didn't Begin With Cardinal Law

Here's a thoughtful behind-the-scenes analysis by noted conservative Catholic pundit Michael Novak on William F. Buckley's National Review Online web site:

The Boston Disease: What Remains After Cardinal Law

One of Novak's chief points was that the Boston archdiocese had been ripe for sex abuse scandal long before Bishop Law was sent there:

...The reputation [of the Boston diocese] for lax discipline that had started long before Cardinal Law's time did not compel his immediate attention on his arrival in Boston....

...Cardinal Law faced four huge moral deficits in the Archdiocese of Boston. The first is an unusually tribal and mutually protective, ranks-drawn-up clergy, circling around its own three-generation tradition of moral fault; a pattern of "weakness" or "corruption" in some few, but covered over and unpoliced by the others, in a long-standing and defensive posture.

The second is a 40-year period of massive moral dissent from Catholic moral teaching, especially in regard to sexual and "gender" questions, in the principal Catholic institutions of learning in Boston... This fairly systematic dissent, through which some have boldly called the theology of Pope John Paul II (and Paul VI before him) wrong, mistaken, and based on untruths, has had the inevitable effect of weakening the sense of right and wrong in those faced with severe sexual temptations....

Third is a laity in very large numbers living in open dissent and rebellion, and encouraged in this by many clerical voices — even among their own pastors — first on many small things but gradually on many increasingly large things, too. ...They seem to abhor the most-distinctive features of the Catholic Church, most notably full communion with Peter, the bishop of Rome. They seem embarrassed also by her traditional and not-at-all-new teachings of embodied personhood, the physical/sacramental nature of reality, the full and rich sexuality of Catholic teaching (expressed in so many great works of literature, painting, and music down the ages), the nature of matrimony, and most obviously the tradition of celibacy and chastity as high ideals affecting the lives of all....

WE WON'T HAVE AL GORE TO KICK AROUND ANY MORE:
The Heretofore Presidential Candidate-for-Life Bows Out

This breaking news, first revealed by Gore himself last night on CBS's "60 Minutes" t.v. "newsmagazine" show, stunned many but really surprised no one. Although he confirmed that, "personally," he had "the energy and drive and ambition to make another campaign" for a 2004 Presidential bid, Gore rightly conceded that doing so would "involve a focus on the past that would in some measure distract from the focus on the future that I think all campaigns have to be about."

Hear, hear!

Needless to say, however, the Republican leadership is mostly likely not at all happy about Gore's decision since (to them) Gore would've been running as a two-time loser assuring George W. Bush's re-election.

TURNING INTO A PILLAR OF SALT?
Trent Lott's Dixiecratesque Faux Pas May Cost Him His Career

Last week, Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) made the following ill-advised tribute to Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-South Carolina) on the latter's 100th birthday: "I want to say this about my state. When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either."

Lott was referring to Thurmond's 1948 run for the Presidency against then-President Harry Truman as one of the many "Dixiecrat" segregationists who broke with Truman's majority wing in the Democratic Party. (After the 1948 election, Thurmond returned to the Democrat Party but switched allegiances to the GOP in 1964.) The Dixiecrats claimed to be about "states' rights" versus increasing Federal encroachment.

But the Dixiecrats had broken with the Democrats specifically on the matter of racial integration in the areas of voting registration, education, housing, and employment --a reform which Truman and both the Democratic and Republican parties increasingly favored. The Dixiecrats argued that their Southern brand of apatheid was strictly a state-by-state matter, while the two major parties came to regard racial segregation as a violation of the basic Constitutional rights of its minority targets and therefore a Federal issue.

The Dixiecrat legacy is what Trent Lott, whether unwittingly or intentionally, seemed to voice support for last week in the eyes and ears of many, both Republicans and Democrats, especially those old enough to remember those bad old KKK-run days in the South. Even though Lott has since tried several times to get out from under the cloud of seeming to endorse segregationism, and even though most of his critics agree he's not a racist, his carelessness and lack of clear thinking may have turned his ability to lead into a pillar of salt. Hence the call from many Republican leaders and conservative pundits --such as Linda Chavez, Charles Krauthammer, Mona Charen, and Cal Thomas-- for Lott to step down as Senate Majority leader.