SAD NEWS FROM NORTH CAROLINA
17-Year-Old Jesica Santillon Dies; Victim of Botched Transplant Operation

For those of us who have been following this story, this is a sad day indeed. (Lord Jesus, bring this dear child into your Kingdom and send your comforting love and peace to the grieving family she left behind. Amen.)

One of the most astonishing aspects of this story is the reaction of some to the fact that young Jesica was the child of illegal aliens, who came to this country specifically for the purpose of helping their daughter, who had been born with a defective heart. These cold-hearted naysayers "argue" that Jesica had no "right" to the surgeries she received in the US because she and her parents weren't American citizens. Never mind that her medical treatment was funded by private donations, NOT taxpayers' money.

Pathetic.

OF PROTESTING THAT OTHER WAR:
"Peace In Middle Earth In Our Time"

An especially witty piece of satire written by blogger and Lord of the Rings fan Domenico Bettinelli opens thusly:

MINAS TIRITH (Gondor News Network) - Thousands of peace activists took to the streets of Minas Tirith and other cities of Middle Earth today to protest what they termed a rush to war with Mordor.

“We need more time for diplomacy,” said a key member of the Middle-Earth Security Council, Saruman the White. “I am not convinced by the evidence presented by my esteemed colleague, Gandalf the Grey, or that the Dark Lord Sauron presents an imminent danger to the peoples of the West.”....

Go HERE to read the rest of this fine piece.

OF IMMATERIAL "PEACE" PROTESTING:
Madonna Expresses Herself On Iraq and War

Long before President Bush made clear his determination to oust Saddam Hussein, the Hollywood glitterati --who tend to be liberal Democrats-- have been on the anti-Bush bandwagon. Their long-held antipathy for Dubya is now dressed up as "concern" for "peace" and "the Iraqi people."

Never mind that the Iraqi people have known no peace under Saddam during his entire 25-year regime. He started the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980's, which dragged on for years at the cost of millions of Iraqi lives. Never mind that he has imprisoned, tortured, and murdered tens of thousands of Iraqis who've expressed the least degree of disagreement with him, and has waged war on minority ethnic groups such as the Kurds. And never mind that he has used his own people, by the hundreds and thousands, as guinea pigs for his chemical and biological weapons.

Not to be left out of the Hollywood "peace" chorus is none other than the Material Girl herself, Madonna. It seems Madonna has been working on a controversial music video based on her new anti-war song "American Life." The video opens at a fashion show but "escalates into a mad frenzy depicting the catastrophic repercussions and horror of war," says Madonna spokesperson Liz Rosenberg.

However, numerous early reports claim it also includes alarming film clips of dead Iraqi soldiers and body parts --reports Madonna categorically denies. Moreover, Madonna asserts, "I feel lucky to be an American citizen for many reasons, one of which is the right to express myself freely." She added, "I am not anti-Bush. I am not pro-Iraq. I am pro-peace. I have written a song and created a video which expresses my feelings about our culture and values and illusions of what many people believe is the American dream -- the perfect life."

Of course, it's as much Madonna's right as anyone else's to express her views about Iraq or any other issue. No one would gainsay that. (In fact, we hope she'll add a blog to her web site for that very purpose.) Her liberalism aside, Madonna is one of the more insightful and intelligent (and, surprisingly enough, more intellectual) folks in show biz, as her 1994 Esquire interview by Norman Mailer demonstrated. Despite some monumental imbecilities --that silly Sex book, for example-- Madonna's no dummy. Too bad she tends to squander her keen intellect on cultural shallowness and inane causes.

The same question which applies to most celebrities-turned-political-pundits, who seem to live under the delusion that their fame and expertise in show business somehow makes them foreign policy experts, applies to Madonna as well (your humble servant is an Equal Opportunity Curmudgeon, after all): Namely, who cares what she thinks about Iraq or Sadam or any issue other than the sorry state of entertainment, the music industry, and popular culture in general? Like most big-name entertainers making a big to-do about Iraq these days, what Madonna knows about foreign affairs most likely wouldn't fill a thimble; except, perhaps, what she knows about the ones she's had herself.

What Madonna and other Hollywood naysayers need to remember and to keep in mind is that what has been required of Saddam today by both the US and the UN --namely, the dismantling of and cessation of development of WMDs-- was required of him 12 years ago as part of the terms for ending the Persian Gulf War without taking Baghdad and ousting him. Thus the proposed use of force against Saddam in response to 12 years of proven defiance and deception is more an act of finishing the last war than starting a new one. Therefore, if military action is taken against Saddam the responsibility for any and all innocent civilian casualties among the Iraqis falls squarely on Saddam's shoulders and no one else's.

SNOWBOUND IN BABYLON-ON-THE-POTOMAC
"It Ain't a Fit Day Out for Man or Beast" --W. C. Fields

The big news here in the DC area since Friday the 14th has been Saturday, Sunday, and Monday the 15th, 16th, and 17th. To be more precise, the nearly two feet of snow dumped on us since Saturday nite, a storm which didn't end until this afternoon.

Just about everything is closed here, including the Fed, until Wednesday at the earliest. Meanwhile both private citizen and public servant strive to dig us out of this. (One can hear laughter regaling from the upper Midwest and the snow belt around the Great Lakes. To those blizzard veterans, we poor benighted DC area folk are snow wimps: This is but a "flurry" to them.) But we're slowly digging out, and things'll be back to normal in a jiffy.

Or at least what passes for normal in Washington.

QUOTES OF THE WEEK
On France & Germany's Reaction to the USA vs Saddam

"Luckily, France and Germany still say they are still our allies. You know, the same way Bill and Hillary are husband and wife." --Jay Leno

"Did you all see Colin Powell speaking with the U.N.? He was very persuasive, but still some folks want more evidence. France wants to see more evidence. Well, hell, I was thinking the last time France wanted to see more evidence it rolled into Paris with a German flag." --David Letterman

"Going to war without France is like going deer-hunting without an accordian." --Jed Babbin, former Deputy Undersecretary of Defense

WHAT A SLOW NEWS DAY!....
...We Think We'll Go Squirrel-Fishing

Um, wait a minute. That's what our Bullies 'N' Bozos BLOG is for. Never mind.

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.