Something My Son-in-Law Won't Like: National Parks Discourage Fishing

Cobia Fishing in the Atlantic: Obama Plays Golf, Why Can't We Fish?

Here's some news that may irritate my son-in-law (he's the handsome devil at bottom right) as much as it did me: The National Park Service is systematically closing off access to fishing and other recreational activities in the name of "saving the environment," and many of the new restrictions will kick in just in time to ruin your summer vacation.

Human Events reports this morning:
"Planning a vacation this summer to Miami’s Biscayne Bay for a little fishing?

"Think again, because the National Park Service wants to set aside a large swath of the pristine area as a marine reserve zone, so you might have to leave the fishing poles at home. And the boat.

"Perhaps horseback riding is more your speed and the family plans to ride through California’s Sequoia or Kings Canyon National Parks? Sorry, but all of the permits were pulled for those activities this summer.

"Or maybe you just want to lounge on the soft sands of North Carolina’s Outer Banks and read a novel, fly a kite with the kids, toss a Frisbee to the dog, and watch dad catch some fish?

"No, no, no and no."

A slew of new federal regulations are shutting down access to beaches, fishing sites, boating lanes, and wildlife refuges.

As one distressed bait and tackle shop owner in North Carolina  noted: "It’s fine and dandy to protect the environment, but at the same time we have a mandate to provide protection of resources, as well as enhance the future and present recreational opportunities. But that’s not what’s going on. Now it’s a single mandate which is to protect the environment.”

 Read more at the link above.

What Is Wrong with the Department of Education?

4,800 staff members here spend $80 billion a year

Why does the lamestream media huff and puff every time a candidate makes the quite sensible suggestion that the Department of Education be shut down or, at least, reduced in size? After all, as National Review has noted, the department “was created as a straight political payoff to the teachers’ unions by President Jimmy Carter (in return for their 1976 endorsements). According to the National Center for Education Statistics, DE’s original budget, in 1980, was $13.1 billion (in 2007 dollars), and it employed 450 people. By 2000, it had increased to $34.1 billion, and by 2007 it had more than doubled to $73 billion. The budget for fiscal 2011 was $77.8 billion, and the department [by then employed] 4,800.”

What do 4,800 plus DE employees do, as they spend the equivalent of twice what Obama’s “Buffet rule” tax would raise in one year? My one-hour lunchtime search of Google could not produce a list of departments by number of employees and budget. But here’s some anecdotal news that they are wasting plenty of taxpayers’ money:

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli announced from Richmond March 31 that the state had succeeded in overturning a $55,000 DE fine levied on Virginia Tech in 2008. The reason for the fine? Apparently, the bloated staff at the department has developed strict guidelines on how campus officials must communicate emergency conditions to students, and Virginia Tech failed to follow these federally dictated standards during the 2007 shooting which left seven undergraduates dead. However, when Cuccinelli went to court to defend Tech, the chief administrative law judge of the U.S. Department of Education found that the university had complied with federal law in its response to the campus shootings, and as a result, he vacated the DE fine against the university.

In short, some bureaucrat at the Department of Education decided from his/her desk in Washington that it was correct and useful to harass Virginia Tech in the wake of the most terrible tragedy to ever befall the university community. This decision led to a colossal waste of time and money—at DE, the Virginia Attorney General’s Office, and at Virginia Tech. It’s a good case study in what happens when the federal government bureaucracy mucks around in local affairs that should not concern them.

Bishop Jenky of Peoria: Obama Follows Path of Stalin and Hitler

 St. Michael the Archangel with Bishop Jenky

There can be no neutrality in the war for religious liberty, Bishop Jenky of Peoria, Illinois told an audience of Catholic fathers who attended the annual gathering of diocesan men this week: "As Christians we must love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us, but as Christians we must also stand up for what we believe and always be ready to fight for the Faith.”

Bishop Jenky's address echoed the themes of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' April 12 Statement on Religious Liberty, which called for America's bishops to focus "all the energies the Catholic community can muster" on a national campaign of prayer and action during the 14 days between the Feast of Saints Thomas More and John Fischer (June 22) through the 4th of July.

Bishop Jenky compared Barak Obama's  mandate that Catholic institutions pay for health insurance that supplies abortion, sterilization, and contraception for employees to the worst attacks on religious liberty in the 20th century: “Hitler and Stalin, at their better moments, would just barely tolerate some churches remaining open, but would not tolerate any competition with the state in education, social services, and health care. In clear violation of our First Amendment rights, Barack Obama--with his radical, pro-abortion and extreme secularist agenda--now seems intent on following a similar path.”

“Now things have come to such a pass in America that this is a battle that we could lose, but before the awesome judgement seat of Almighty God this is not a war where any believing Catholic may remain neutral. This fall, every practicing Catholic must vote, and must vote their Catholic consciences, or by the following fall our Catholic schools, our Catholic hospitals, our Catholic Newman Centers, all our public ministries--only excepting our church buildings--could easily be shut down. Because no Catholic institution, under any circumstance, can ever cooperate with the intrinsic evil of killing innocent human life in the womb. No Catholic ministry--and yes, Mr. President, for Catholics our schools and hospitals are ministries--can remain faithful to the Lordship of the Risen Christ and to his glorious Gospel of of Life if they are forced to pay for abortions."


Get the full text of Bishop Jenky's address, and podcasts of other talks by the bishop, at the Peoria Catholic Post.

Women Beware: The Democrats' Brave New World for Families

 Morning Joy by Alexis Marie Lahaye

 What Democrats don't understand: Families Need Mothers

"Try to imagine what 'living with one's family' meant."

They tried; but obviously without the smallest success.

"And do you know what a 'home' was?"

They shook their heads.

--Chapter 3, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World

White House advisor Hilary Rosen’s consternation-producing comment that Ann Romney “has never worked a day in her life” serves quite efficiently to remind us of the radical-left-progressive ideal of womanhood championed by the Obama administration: Borrow tens of thousands to complete that college degree, sleeping with any man who catches your eye along the way; abort those pesky nuisance pregnancies; marry a suitable man (or not, if you prefer IVF);  suspend contraception just long enough to conceive (or not, if you want to hire a surrogate); have your baby (or not, if pre-natal testing determines it’s a girl, and you and hubby want a boy); find a daycare center that fits within your budget (remember, you have to figure in the costs of your colorist, car detailer, and personal trainer); and get the heck out of the house as soon as possible.

That is, of course, if you pull down a six figure income as a Democratic strategist like Rosen, or earn $316,000  a year selling the University of Chicago Hospital’s plan to dump its charity cases elsewhere, like Michelle Obama. If you are one of the 52 million working women in the United States whose family income is below the median, it’s much more likely that you are out cleaning other people’s houses,  doing other people’s cooking ,  and raising other people’s children, while your children stay at home, sometimes alone.

Either way, the degradation of the wonder of motherhood and the work of the so-called “stay at home mother”  has been a documentable disaster for the American family. 

For an uplifting look at things from the other side of the ideological spectrum, see Under the Gables: Dedicated to Discussion of Women and Their Work.

Is Your Congressman on the Socialist Party of America Membership List?

 Historically speaking, the socialists haven't done too well as concerns economic affairs. Leaving aside Barak Obama's dismal record, let's consider how much of the problem resides in the legislative branch of our government.
The Socialist Party of America boasts that the following members of the House and Senate are card-carrying members. Do you think they are doing a good job?


Co-Chairs
Hon. Raúl M. Grijalva (AZ-07)
Hon. Lynn Woolsey (CA-06)
Vice Chairs
Hon. Diane Watson (CA-33)
Hon. Sheila Jackson-Lee (TX-18)
Hon. Mazie Hirono (HI-02)
Hon. Dennis Kucinich (OH-10)
Senate Members
Hon. Bernie Sanders (VT)
House Members
Hon. Neil Abercrombie (HI-01)
Hon. Tammy Baldwin (WI-02)
Hon. Xavier Becerra (CA-31)
Hon. Madeleine Bordallo (GU-AL)
Hon. Robert Brady (PA-01)
Hon. Corrine Brown (FL-03)
Hon. Michael Capuano (MA-08)
Hon. André Carson (IN-07)
Hon. Donna Christensen (VI-AL)
Hon. Yvette Clarke (NY-11)
Hon. William “Lacy” Clay (MO-01)
Hon. Emanuel Cleaver (MO-05)
Hon. Steve Cohen (TN-09)
Hon. John Conyers (MI-14)
Hon. Elijah Cummings (MD-07)
Hon. Danny Davis (IL-07)
Hon. Peter DeFazio (OR-04)
Hon. Rosa DeLauro (CT-03)
Rep. Donna F. Edwards (MD-04)
Hon. Keith Ellison (MN-05)
Hon. Sam Farr (CA-17)
Hon. Chaka Fattah (PA-02)
Hon. Bob Filner (CA-51)
Hon. Barney Frank (MA-04)
Hon. Marcia L. Fudge (OH-11)
Hon. Alan Grayson (FL-08)
Hon. Luis Gutierrez (IL-04)
Hon. John Hall (NY-19)
Hon. Phil Hare (IL-17)
Hon. Maurice Hinchey (NY-22)
Hon. Michael Honda (CA-15)
Hon. Jesse Jackson, Jr. (IL-02)
Hon. Eddie Bernice Johnson (TX-30)
Hon. Hank Johnson (GA-04)
Hon. Marcy Kaptur (OH-09)
Hon. Carolyn Kilpatrick (MI-13)
Hon. Barbara Lee (CA-09)
Hon. John Lewis (GA-05)
Hon. David Loebsack (IA-02)
Hon. Ben R. Lujan (NM-3)
Hon. Carolyn Maloney (NY-14)
Hon. Ed Markey (MA-07)
Hon. Jim McDermott (WA-07)
Hon. James McGovern (MA-03)
Hon. George Miller (CA-07)
Hon. Gwen Moore (WI-04)
Hon. Jerrold Nadler (NY-08)
Hon. Eleanor Holmes-Norton (DC-AL)
Hon. John Olver (MA-01)
Hon. Ed Pastor (AZ-04)
Hon. Donald Payne (NJ-10)
Hon. Chellie Pingree (ME-01)
Hon. Charles Rangel (NY-15)
Hon. Laura Richardson (CA-37)
Hon. Lucille Roybal-Allard (CA-34)
Hon. Bobby Rush (IL-01)
Hon. Linda Sánchez (CA-47)
Hon. Jan Schakowsky (IL-09)
Hon. José Serrano (NY-16)
Hon. Louise Slaughter (NY-28)
Hon. Pete Stark (CA-13)
Hon. Bennie Thompson (MS-02)
Hon. John Tierney (MA-06)
Hon. Nydia Velazquez (NY-12)
Hon. Maxine Waters (CA-35)
Hon. Mel Watt (NC-12)
Hon. Henry Waxman (CA-30)
Hon. Peter Welch (VT-AL)
Hon. Robert Wexler (FL-19)

Obama's Red Roots

Don't recognize everybody in this rogues gallery? Of course, there's Karl Marx and communist icon Che Gueverra (now emblazoned on onesies and bibs for radical parents), and Obama. Flanking The One are two characters that deserve plenty more limelight in the 2012 White House contest: unreptentent Weatherman bomber Bill Ayers (right), and the man who taught Obama most of what he thinks about how society should be organized: Frank Marshall Davis. (photo courtesy of Sodahead.com) 

Over the past week, President Obama, administration officials, and the liberal media, have hardened their stance against the Catholic Church, and the constitutional right of all Americans to freedom of religion, repeatedly asserting the the HHS mandate guaranteeing free abortifacient drugs,  sterilization procedures, and contraception to all women under ObamaCare must be part of insurance plans offered by all religious institutions, even if abortion, contraception, and sterilization are against their beliefs.

Is it possible that, when Obama told reporters several years ago that America is not a Christian nation, he was asserting his hope for the future of American? If we are not to base our political and civil discourse on the Judeo-Christian principles of the founders, what system does Obama hold up as appropriate for the United States?

American Thinker blog's commentator Paul Kengor offers a compelling reminder that Obama learned his politics at the knee of the Marxist black nationalist radical Frank Marshall Davis. Davis had a political career that, among other things, featured enthusiastic support for the Soviet Union's Joe Stalin, and a calculated campaign to drive a wedge between American Catholics and Protestants on the issue of...contraception. Read Kengor's full analysis here.

Looking for a New President--II

Robert Edge Pine's portrait of the patriot Robert Morris, ca.1785

What was the Obama administration up to this past week? With events in the Middle East and Libya deteriorating apace, and Somali pirates murdering U.S. citizens, the major news from the administration consisted of Eric Holder’s announcement that the Justice Department will no longer fight in court against state efforts to overturn the federal Defense of Marriage Act, and that the office of the White House social secretary is to be occupied by a gay rights activist.

Clearly, Obama’s 2012 presidential bid is in full swing, and the barely post-adolescent strategists in his reelection war room have embarked on a calculated effort to harden factional lines in the Republican Party by throwing “social issues” into the media spotlight.

All the more reason that the most talented and energetic Republican leaders should step forward now and announce for the White House. We need a field of tough and smart candidates, with the guts and intellectual depth to rally a now-energized populace around the truth that there can be no solution to America’s deepening fiscal crisis separated from a solution to the horrible moral and social crisis facing our nation.

Rep. Mike Pence, the Indiana Republican who entered last week’s recent amendment to House federal budget legislation stripping Planned Parenthood of $360 million in taxpayer handouts, has made it clear what place he thinks social issues have in the party and in the election.

He made these remarks before the GOP sweep in last November's elections, and it seems that the candidates who also expressed this view did just fine at the polls:

“Now I know some say that Republicans should stay away from such issues …that the American people are focused on jobs and spending and our movement would do well to stand aside, bank the win and return to fight after this fiscal and economic crisis has passed. But we do not live in a world where an American leader can just focus on our financial ledger. A political party that would govern this great nation must be able to handle more than one issue at a time. We must focus on our fiscal crisis and support our troops. We must work to create jobs and protect innocent human life."

Pence continued, "To those who say we should focus on cutting spending, I say ‘Ok, let’s start by denying all federal funding for abortion at home and abroad! Stop funding research that destroys human embryos in the name of science, and let’s deny any and all funding to Planned Parenthood of America.’"

“We must not remain silent when great moral battles are being waged. Those who would have us ignore the battle being fought over life … have forgotten the lessons of history. As in the days of a House divided, America’s darkest moments have come when economic arguments trumped moral principles. Men and women, we must demand, here and now, that the leaders of the Republican Party stand for life … without apology."

How do you think a fellow like this would do in a nationally televised debate against Barak Obama? Get an idea of how such an event might shape up here.

Pence says he doesn’t want to run for President. This is understandable. For a serious patriot, the job is one of total personal sacrifice. Robert Morris, no doubt, did not want to spend his entire personal fortune to finance the War of Independence, but he did so anyway, and victory was secured. So there is really no telling what Pence might do, if called upon to serve his country from the White House.

Looking for a New President

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal was raised a Hindu and converted to the Roman Catholic faith as a young adult

Are you, like me, eager to see some motion in the national political process to produce a winning Republican ticket for the 2012 presidential elections? Are you also eager to find a candidate who demonstrates the ability to understand fundamental moral issues and will not compromise?

Rev. Luke Robinson of the Quinn Chapel Africa Methodist Episcopal Church in Frederick, Maryland, speaking recently to at the 38th annual March for Life in Washington, D.C., made an eloquent case that Americans must act now to scotch the candidacy of any GOP leader who proposes to shelf so-called social issues, that is euthanasia and the abortion of 4,000 babies a day in the United States, in favor of the so-called fiscal issue, that is, the nation’s pending bankruptcy. “There must be no retreat, no truce, and no going backwards,” he told 400,000 assembled activists. “We must hold our elected officials’ feet to the fire…We will give nobody a passcard, because life is too precious. There are those like Hailey Barbour of Mississippi and Mitch Daniels of Indiana, who call for a truce on social issues. They must be stopped before they get to the gate. They must not be given the slightest opportunity to extend the killing of the unborn…We do not need another President who is blind to the moral issues. We must move with dispatch and find someone who is in love with the culture of life and hates the culture of death….There must be no exceptions and there must be no compromises.”

Do you ask where committed pro-life voters can find a pro-life candidate with the guts and brains to stand up on this issue? I have begun with a serious look at Louisiana’s young Indian-American governor, Bobby Jindal, who has been writing on his conversion to Catholicism and aspects of Roman Catholic faith since the mid-1990s. Many of his articles appear in the New Oxford Review, and can be retrieved on line.

We must move with dispatch and give nobody a passcard.

Defeat the Freedom of Choice Act

"The first thing I'd do as president is sign the Freedom of Choice Act. That's the first thing that I'd do." -- Senator Barack Obama, speaking to the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, July 17, 2007

As the nation prepares to welcome up to 4 million visitors to Washington, D.C. for the January 20th inauguration of Barak Obama, let us consider the best way to defeat a piece of legislation that the President-elect repeatedly promised to support--"The Freedom of Choice Act" (FOCA).
FOCA as it is now written would establish the right to abortion as a fundamental right (at the same level as the right to free speech) and wipe away every restriction on abortion nationwide. It would eradicate state and federal abortion laws the majority of Americans support and prevent states from enacting protective measures in the future.
FOCA provides that “[i]t is the policy of the United States that every woman has the fundamental right to choose to bear a child, to terminate a pregnancy prior to fetal viability, or to terminate a pregnancy after fetal viability when necessary to protect the life or health of the woman.”
Further, FOCA would specifically invalidate any "statute, ordinance, regulation, administrative order, decision, policy, practice, or other action" of any federal, state, or local government or governmental official (or any person acting under government authority) that would "deny or interfere with a woman's right to choose" abortion, or that would "discriminate against the exercise of the right . . . in the regulation or provision of benefits, facilities, services, or information."
Clearly, its reach is very broad. This single piece of legislation would apply to any federal or state law “enacted, adopted, or implemented before, on, or after the date of [its] enactment.”

• FOCA would compel taxpayer funding of abortions.
• FOCA would force faith-based hospitals and healthcare facilities to perform abortions.
• FOCA would force faith-based hospitals and healthcare facilities to perform abortions.

Please read the expert analysis by Americans United for Life (AUL), sign the Fight FOCA petition at: http://www.fightfoca.com/, and consider what else you might do as an American citizen and activist, to discourage the President from supporting the FOCA legislation. For daily news on how the Obama White House is dealing with the abortion issue, visit http://www.onenationundergod.org/ms_president_elect_obama.html, maintained at the One Nation Under God web site. One Nation Under God also tracks the contributions of Planned Parenthood and other pro-abortion organizations to candidates for public office, so this is the place to locate information on your congressman and senator.

The Basis for Equality Among Men

Stained glass window in the Franciscan church of Szombathely, Hungary depicts Kolbe as a Nazi concentration camp prisoner

I struggled all during the presidential campaign to explain to family members and coworkers why I am convinced that the Democratic Party is on the wrong track when it comes to economic progress for America and her citizens.

This remarkable little essay from Saint Maximilian Kolbe, the Polish Conventual Franciscan priest who was martyred at Auschwitz, really hit me in the eye at the tail end of this year’s presidential campaign. Kolbe volunteered to take the place of a prisoner with a family in a group of Auschwitz inmates chosen to starve to death after a fellow prisoner disappeared from their barracks; after leading the dying men in prayer and meditation, he was finally killed by the Nazis with an injection of carbolic acid.

This compact and direct refutation of President Elect Barak Obama’s “redistribute the wealth” approach to economics was published as part of The Kolbe Reader: The Writings of Saint Maximilian M. Kolbe (Libertyville, IL: Franciscan Marytown Press, 1987).

When he sees the luxurious residence or the charming country house of a wealthy person, a poor workingman often asks himself: Why is there such inequality in the world?”

How many volumes have been written about equality among men! How much blood has been spilled for this idea! And yet, in spite of it all, we still have the rich and the poor…

Let us imagine that one day all the inhabitants of the work world would assemble to put into effect this sharing of all goods; and that in fact each person, granting that the world is very big, received an exactly equal portion of the wealth existing on earth.

The what? That very evening, one man might say, “Today I worked hard: now I am going to take rest.” Another might state, “I understand this sharing of goods well; so let’s drink and celebrate such an extraordinary happening.” On the other hands, another might say, “Now I am going to get to work with a will so as to reap the greatest benefit I can from what I have received.” And so, starting the next day, the first man would have only the amount given him; the second would have less, and the third would have increased his.

Then what do we do? Start redistributing the wealth all over again?

Even if everybody began to work right away with all his might and at the same time, the results would not be identical for all. There are, in fact, different kinds of work which are unequally productive; nor do workers enjoy the same identical capacities. This leads to a diversity of results achieved, and consequently to differences in people’s profits.

What would have to be imposed so that, once the division of goods was accomplished, people could continue to live on a basis of equality in this sense? All workers would have to perform the same tasks, all possess equal intelligence and ability, have similar professional training, the same degree of health and strength, and especially the same desire to put forth the necessary efforts. All of this is quite utopian.

To continue the argument, even if there were only two persons in the world, they would not succeed in maintaining absolute equality; for in the whole universe there are no two things completely identical in every respect…

In spite of this, the human mind still desires to bring about certain equality among men. Is there any possibility that this can happen? Yes, no doubt. Every man, whoever he is, whatever he possesses and whatever he is capable of doing, owes all this to God the Creator of the universe. Of himself man is nothing. From this point of view all of us are absolutely equal.

Furthermore we all possess free will, which makes us masters of all our actions. This too constitutes the basic equality of all men on earth. But the use made of our free will is not the same in all cases; it depends in fact on each man’s own determination, on the extent to which he makes use of this precious gift; for not all do so in the same degree. It follows that not even after death will perfect equality be achieved; it will not in fact exist, because every man will receive a just reward or punishment according to his deeds, good or evil.