This is not a reassuring Star Trek
I am not going to be happy if this is not worth my time.
Democrats attempt to take control of Connecticut Catholic Church.
Why, yes, that does sound like an egregious violation of various constitutions.
Chris Dodd must be annoying people all over Connecticut. The paper didn’t even try to hide political affiliations for this one:
After a priest stole $1.4 million from a church in Darien, state legislators have proposed a law that would regulate how parishes are controlled and operated.
The state’s Catholic bishops rallied opposition from the pulpits at weekend Masses.
The law essentially would strip the dioceses of all financial control of parishes and leave bishops and priests to oversee “matters pertaining exclusively to religious tenets and practices.” A board of elected laypersons would handle parish finances.
The bill, introduced Thursday by the Legislature’s Judiciary Committee, chaired by state Sen. Andrew McDonald, D-Stamford, and state Rep. Michael Lawlor, D-East Haven, caught many Catholics by surprise. They heard about it during Masses.
(Via AoSHQ) Before we go any further, let me quote from Article Seventh of the Connecticut state constitution: “It being the right of all men to worship the Supreme Being, the Great Creator and Preserver of the Universe, and to render that worship in a mode consistent with the dictates of their consciences, no person shall by law be compelled to join or support, nor be classed or associated with, any congregation, church or religious association. No preference shall be given by law to any religious society or denomination in the state. Each shall have and enjoy the same and equal powers, rights and privileges, and may support and maintain the ministers or teachers of its society or denomination, and may build and repair houses for public worship.” Continue reading Democrats attempt to take control of Connecticut Catholic Church.
(ICCC) The Vaclav Klaus speech.
And now, a break to the Charlie Daniels Band for no real reason
Except that I’ve been wrestling with video for two days now.
And some fiddle music’s never amiss. Even if I’m so bleary-eyed that I didn’t spell it “Charlie Daniels Band
Rep. McClintock interview with RedState.
As promised, here’s the Tom McClintock interview.
Link here, if that doesn’t work. As you can see, Rep. McClintock isn’t precisely shy about speaking his opinion, particularly when it comes to the religious aspect of global warming. I had originally written “essentially religious aspect” there, but when thinking about it McClintock was pretty unambiguous on that point, so neither should I be when describing him. If you don’t have time for the whole thing, the Congressman’s main theme was that it’s of primary importance that ordinary citizens get involved and stay involved in this issue.
Just a reminder: Democrats wanted Bush to fail in 2006.
Links via Hot Air. Here’s the first question, exactly as it was offered:
Contra Ed, though, the Sister Toldja post actually indicates that a bare majority of Democrats were pro-victory in 2007. Which is nothing to be proud of, considering that we were right and they were wrong, but expect the shouting to start over that. Besides, it’ll keep them from admitting to this:
21. Do you think most Democrats want the Iraq plan President Bush announced last week to succeed and lead to a stable Iraq or do they want it to fail and for him to have to withdraw U.S. troops in defeat?
SCALE: 1. Most Democrats want Bush plan to succeed 2. Most Democrats want Bush
plan to fail 3. (Some want one thing, some another) 4. (Don’t know)
(Some one,
Success Failure some another) (DK)
16-17 Jan 07 32% 48 8 11
Democrats 42% 38 7 12
Republicans 21% 67 7 5
Independents 30% 42 11 17
…translation: even the Democrats were at best evenly divided over whether their party wanted Bush to succeed. The rest of the country was under no such illusions.
Crossposted at RedState.
Preliminary notes from the ICCC breakfast: Tom McClintock.
Congressman Tom McClintock (R, CA-04) started off his comments at the ICCC breakfast session with reminding us about RFK Jr’s comment that global warming skeptics are quite a number of things, up to and including traitors. Not wanting to die a traitor’s death, McClintock then claimed that he came up with global warming long before Al Gore… in the third grade, when he noticed the entire dinosaur / mammoth thing in the local museum. Alas, his grade school teacher never wrote him up for the Nobel Prize. [More…]
That was the general tone of Congressman McClintock’s comments over breakfast; he’s generally a good speaker and not particularly afraid to either say what he thinks, or name names – neither of which will endear him to global warming advocates, specifically including the current Governor of California. We have the video of the speech, and will be hopefully putting it up soon: in the meantime, the Congressman in my opinion hammered two major points home. The first is that global warming is not a scientific issue, but a policy one; the second is that the State of California is currently going through the effects of the policies that are being advocated on a national level. And if people are being amused at the travails that California is going through right now, they should consider that Californians are moving out of the state – which means that these problems are going to be considerably less amusing when they’re starting to affect your local area.
One last note: during the question and answer, when asked about how to influence legislators, McClintock made an interesting point that you don’t call, or even visit their office. Instead, you confront them in public venues, and make them answer in public. Presumably, he’d be all right with people visiting Congressional offices in groups of, say, several hundred or so: when I interview him later today it’ll be one of the questions that I’ll ask him.
Moe Lane
Crossposted to RedState.
The Audi Shark Hovercraft.
Via the lovely and far-too-quiet Academic Elephant, the best concept vehicle that you’ll see this week:
You want one.
Admit it.
I have the Vaclav Klaus speech…
…from the 2009 International Conference on Climate Change; I’m just working on getting it up. In the meantime, my general impressions of the speech: President Klaus isn’t particularly shy about opining that the situation with environmentalists pushing climate change is not one of science, but of competing agendas, and that there is an economic dimension to the environmentalists’ policy platforms. He also had a few choice comments about how the typical response from climate change proponents to any kind of skepticism reminded him of the way the communists used to handle similar objections… which is, of course, not complimentary. Ending quote: “The environmentalists don’t want to change the climate: they want to change us and our behavior.”
His book Blue Planet in Green Shackles
Crossposted at RedState.
OK, so we’re here at the 2009 International Conference on Climate Change.
The 2009 International Conference on Climate Change. We’re here, we’re registered, and it’s a perfectly lovely day here in the Big Apple. Not too warm, not too cold, and not a blizzard in sight. In about an hour or so we’ll be in a reception, and this evening’s there’s going to be a dinner speech by Czech President Vaclav Klaus.
Skanderbeg and I are covering this conference: he’s doing the science, I get the politics. Tomorrow morning we should be hearing from Congressman Tom McClintock (R, CA-04) over breakfast: I’ll see if I can score an interview afterward. Needless to say, anyone attending this conference is welcome to stop by and see how we’re doing.
Moe Lane
PS: If I can, I hope to pull a Caleb and get a handle on whatever protesters might be showing up for this. And by “get a handle,” I mean, of course, “savagely mock.”
Crossposted to RedState.