I’m tellin ya, it’s gonna start looking like a Sons of Italy meeting over there!

Yesterday was the feast of Christ the King. Since I tend not to post on weekends, let me catch up.

Angels, saints and nations, sing:
“Praised be Jesus Christ our King;
Lord of life, earth, sky and sea,
King of love on Calvary”

And of course:

Christus Vincit! Christus Regnat! Christus Imperat!

SOTOGRANDE, Spain (AP) – Jean Van de Velde, who blew the British Open six years ago on the final hole, will attempt to enter next year’s women’s British Open.

“I’ll even wear a kilt and shave my legs,” he said Thursday after shooting a 7-over-par 78 in the first round of the Volvo Masters.

What’s the big deal? I mean…Frenchmen…women…same thing, right?

Dear Beth,

Can we be friends again now? :)

I’ve been loyal to the President; I just wanted him to be loyal to me. After all, a bunch of us got on board because we wanted solid judges on the Supreme Court. That’s what we signed up for.

Even though Judge Roberts wasn’t some sort of “red meat” hard-core conservative pick, I was happy with it. This was a brilliant guy, with solid legal philosophy and a host of other pluses. You could look at Roberts, listen to Roberts, read Roberts and say, “This guy should be on the Supreme Court”.

But then there was Harriet Miers. Could anyone give me a good reason why she should be a Supreme Court justice? “Because the President likes her” isn’t enough. Apparently, Miss Miers couldn’t either; after all the REPUBLICAN senators she paid courtesy calls to weren’t impressed. It seems that the biggest boosters Miers had in the Senate were Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer.

That’s supposed to fill me with hope?

This is not to say Miss Miers is not a capable and intelligent woman. She’s most likely qualified for a number of positions in Washington. If the President wanted to make her a Cabinet member no one would have any problems with it. She just didn’t seem to have suitable qualifications for the Supreme Court. There’s no shame in that; not many people do.

Once upon a time, this President supported tariffs on European steel. Many free-trade conservatives were outraged at this act. They stood up for “conservative principles” in order to severely criticize his policy decision. No one insinuated they were “disloyal”, or “wrecking the party”.

Fast forward to the Present. The President gives us a nominee with no discernable qualifications for the Supreme Court outside of his personal respect for her.

Social conservatives, who fought in the trenches to get this President re-elected, who went along with putting ARLEN SPECTER back in the Senate, and who gave time and money to keep those GOP majorities, were upset. The response? “Just sit in the back of the bus and shut up. We know what’s best. How /dare/ you criticize the President! You’re going to destroy everything we’ve wanted you to work for.”

This Presidency will last three more years. Tariff regulations can be changed nearly overnight (and they were). A Supreme Court tenure is for life. Please get it right next time, Mr. President.

Can we all come out of our trenches now, or are we really going to regret the next nominee? That’s the scary thing; the President might not be willing to go back to the drawing board. We might get more of the same, but even worse.

Don’t look at me, I come from the Buchanan/Reagan wing of the party.

Hat tip to Stop the ACLU:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Harriet Miers withdrew her nomination to be a Supreme Court justice Thursday in the face of stiff opposition and mounting criticism about her qualifications.
President Bush said he reluctantly accepted her decision to withdraw, after weeks of insisting that he did not want her to step down. He blamed her withdrawal on calls in the Senate for the release of internal White House documents that the administration has insisted were protected by executive privilege.

From the one and only (Deo gratias!) Hilary White:

I’m breaking out in Rule Britannia!

Respondet Tommissar:

Britannia rules the waves no more!

‘Dust People’ Starve in Zimbabwe Ruins

SOME call them the “dust people”, others the “people with no address”. President Robert Mugabe’s government has a more graphic term: “Sniff out the rats who have sneaked back in” is the name of the latest campaign by police and soldiers against the city dwellers whose homes
they demolished earlier this year but who have refused to flee.

Thousands of Zimbabweans are now living like animals in the midst of rubble, crawling in and out of hovels less than 3ft high, fashioned from cardboard boxes and broken asbestos.

With no means of earning a living — and with aid agencies banned by the government from helping them — they are forced to forage in rubbish for rotten vegetables or prostitute themselves for the equivalent of 10p to feed their children. A doctor who managed to get in said tuberculosis was rife.

These are the victims of Operation Murambatsvina (drive out the filth), Mugabe’s so-called urban beautification campaign which, according to a damning report by the United Nations, left more than 700,000 homeless or without an income.

Yet last week the United Nations flew Zimbabwe’s president on an all-expenses-paid trip to Rome to celebrate World Food Day in defiance of European Union travel sanctions. Flanked by bodyguards, he proclaimed that there was no hunger in his country and blamed its problems on George W Bush and Tony Blair, branding them international terrorists and likening them to Hitler and Mussolini.

Andrew Stuttaford on The Corner discussing the celebrations commemorating the victory at Trafalgar:

I’m glad to be able to report that the occasion was not neglected yesterday in NYC, where there was a lunch in a French restaurant (naturally) attended by about seventy members of the British financial community. The ensign flew, admirals hats were worn, plenty, plenty, was drunk, Beef Wellington was eaten (well, of course), anthems (including Jerusalem, our real national song, and sporting attempts at the French, Spanish and American anthems) were sung, postcards of the divine Emma and the great Horatio decked the tables, a visitor from the Royal Navy made a fine speech, and the small (and intrepid) French delegation was kindly treated. The event was a lot of fun, patriotic, proud of British history, deeply nostalgic and punctuated by the self-mockery and sense of the ridiculous that made it a very English occasion.

I’m breaking out in hives.

I’m slightly surprised that you’ve never heard of devotion to St Joseph of Cupertino. You should have mentioned someone more obscure like St Margaret of Cortona.

Comment by Zadok the Roman — October 22, 2005 @

Are you going to take that, St. Margaret of Cortona people?

That a high school sophomore can show a better grasp of the Faith than some of the faculty at her Catholic school?

A person that thinks that parents should not be notified about their minor daughter having an abortion and who volunteers at abortion clinics on days when the killing occurs is probably not the best candidate for a position at an all-girls Catholic high school.

Go read the whole thing.