Just Desserts

I’m not normally the guy putting up political YouTube videos, but this was just too funny to pass up. Ill. rep Baron Hill talks down to a journalism major about why she’s not allowed to record video during his town hall: because videos invariably end up showing compromising moments on YouTube. And now here he is, hectoring the girl, on YouTube.

Lesson: For politicians, life is like the Internet. If you do something stupid, it will always be there for everyone to see.

Cult of Personality-Take 2

A followup to my earlier post on school kids singing a hymn of praise to Obama.  Hattip to Gateway Pundit.  Apparently the video was posted on YouTube by the proud teacher behind this piece of agitprop.

“We began to write the song after watching the Inauguration. Our school day is packed bell to bell with academics, but were usually able to spend the last five minutes of singing songs as short ELD (English Language Development) activities. Day by day we used this tiny window of time to brainstorm lyrics. As the song took shape, the children became more and more proud of their accomplishment. It soon morphed into a tribute to MLK and others honored for their work towards social justice.

Jesuitical 8: I am Shocked! Shocked!

Part of my ongoing series on the follies of some of the Jesuits in this country.  Dana Loesch discovers that the Jesuit run Saint Louis University is still funneling volunteers to Acorn.   Of course this is over a year after the USCCB froze funding to Acorn, not to mention the recent colorful revelations that have led to investigations of Acorn and the cutting of funding by governmental bodies from coast to coast.  This is also after many years of scandal involving Acorn and voter registration fraud and misuse of funding.   I guess the hard pressed organization still has some friends among American Jesuits.  I am however shocked that the Jesuits would send student volunteers to a corrupt left wing organization, in much the same way that I am shocked that fire burns and water is wet.

Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto 2

Something for the weekend.  Sergei Rachmaninoff in 1929 playing with the Philadelphia Philharmonic his Piano Concerto 2.  One of the many genuises who throughout American history have sort refuge from tyranny and brightened our national life.

Archbishop Raymond Burke Speaks

A new essay by Archbishop Raymond Burke over at Inside Catholic is well worth your time, “Reflections on the Struggle to Advance the Culture of Life“.  I particularly enjoyed this part, where Burke quotes JP II:

In some way, our consciences have become dulled to the gravity of certain moral issues. When insistence on the elimination of legalized abortion in our nation is dismissed as a kind of “single-issue” approach, as the obsession of the “religious right,” which fails to take account of a whole gamut of moral issues, then we have lost the sense of the horror of destroying a human life in the womb. In a similar way, when the denial of nutrition and hydration to the gravely ill is seen as a “single issue,” then we have lost a sense of the horror of failing to give basic care to a brother or sister who has grown weak for whatever reason. It is not a question of a single issue but of what is fundamental to life itself and to society. I recall the words of the Servant of God Pope John Paul II:

The acceptance of abortion in the popular mind, in behavior and even in law itself, is a telling sign of an extremely dangerous crisis of the moral sense, which is becoming more and more incapable of distinguishing between good and evil, even when the fundamental right to life is at stake. Given such a grave situation, we need now more than ever to have the courage to look the truth in the eye and to call things by their proper name, without yielding to convenient compromises or to the temptation of self-deception (Pope John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Evangelium vitae, “On the Good and Inviolability of Human Life,” 25 March 1995, no. 58).