Timid Catholic?

Family Research Council continues to report on the hate crimes legislation attached to the Defense Authorization bill. Note the 9 Republicans who went along with the crowd (red highlights are mine), particularly one Anh Cao.

Get out your pen, Mr. President. Back on August 17 you made this promise to our veterans: "[I]f Congress sends me a defense bill loaded with... waste, I will veto it." Seven hundred seventy-eight earmarks later, the Defense Authorization bill is still standing. Why? Because House and Senate leaders aren't above playing politics with national security.
In a slap to the face of our servicemen and women, they attached "hate crimes" legislation to the final defense bill, forcing Congress to choose between expanding hate crimes or making our military go without. Unfortunately, House liberals had plenty of help from the GOP in sabotaging the bill. When it was put to a vote, nine Republicans refused to remove hate crimes from the Defense Authorization bill: Bill Cassidy (La.), Mark Kirk (Ill.), Todd Platts (Penn.), Charles Dent (Penn.), Greg Walden (Ore.), Judy Biggert (Ill.), Anh Cao (La.), Michael Castle (Del.), and Dave Reichert (Wash.). These Republicans are serving as the enablers for a radical social agenda that could ultimately silence Christians and use the force of government to marginalize anyone whose faith is at odds with homosexuality.

A note about 'enabler' Joseph Anh Cao from Louisiana. He is a Catholic who was hailed by Inside Catholic as representing 'a new generation of Catholics in politics -- a generation with the courage of Dostoevsky’s Alexei who will not follow in the way of the majority of Catholics presently serving in the U. S. Congress.'

Perhaps Cao doesn't understand how the hate crimes legislation can potentially be used to restrict the free speech of his fellow Catholics who believe in defending their Catholic values in the public square as Cao professes that he will do. What happened to his courage in this case?

Not 'a test lab'

Center for Military Readiness president, Elaine Donnelly, has an article at American Thinker called 'Roadmap for Railroading the Military.' A gay activist group in California called the Michael D. Palm Center knows that their goal of repealing the so-called 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' law (actual name of which is Section 65, Title 10) has little chance of being reversed if gay activists were to be principled enough to allow the democratic process to run its course. They know there aren't enough votes in Congress to repeal the law.

But, seeming to believe themselves above the law, the Palm Center is suggesting to the Obama administration a strategy 'that would short circuit the political system.'

Donnelly points out that the president's highest priority should be the protection of the American people 'not political payoffs or the demands of the LGBT Left.'

Our Military ' . . .should not be a test lab.'

Columnist Cal Thomas puts it well concerning gays in the military. Here is an excerpt from his column:

"I am sympathetic to the story told by Joseph Rocha, who claims in a Washington Post opinion column that he was discharged from the Navy because he is gay, though he says he never told anyone. Rocha says his male colleagues concluded he was gay when he wouldn't laugh at their dirty jokes about women or visit prostitutes with them. Gay service members have a point when they claim a double standard exists for heterosexuals and homosexuals regarding sexual behavior. ... But we are beginning in the wrong place. The place to start is whether citizens of this country, through their elected representatives and the military leaders named by them, have a right to determine what type of service members best serve the interests, safety and security of the United States. I contend we do. The military should not be a test lab. Pressure is building to put female sailors on submarines, along with gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people presumably. That many heterosexuals find homosexual behavior immoral and not conducive to unit cohesion is of no concern to the social wrecking crew. What gay activists apparently don't care about is the effect reshaping the military in their image would have on our ability to fight and defend the country, which, after all, is the purpose of a military. ... The gays in the military and gay marriage issues are part of a broader attempt by liberals to restructure society. Social activists despise biblical morality (which heterosexuals could use a little more of, too), traditional values that have been proven to work when tried and numerous other cultural mores. This is not an opinion. It is also not a secret."

Have You No Shame?

Blackfive asks U.S. Senators 'Have you no shame?' as Blackfive comments today on this story in the Washington Times about the $2.6 billion the U.S. Senate transferred from Pentagon operations funds to cover some of our Senators' pet projects in their home states as well as other projects the military doesn't want.

Have you no shame?

. . . they take away the money from the O&M Budget that buys the tools and the sustenance that we need to win against what is now, thanks to President Obama's Chamberlainesque dithering and waffling, a growing insurgency that is becoming virulent and strong and doing to us what we were once doing to it.

. . . we have politicians and a President who are plundering the Treasury and dithering while trying to impress the Eurotrash deciding on how many more Nobel Peace Prizes to award to him. And he can't seem to fit any strategy meetings into his busy TV Speech schedule.

I am growing weary of explaining that there is a difference between fighting to win and fighting to not lose to the government class that feels as if they rule . . . When the money starts to go away, the question becomes whether or not it is worth it to fight at all for someone who will disrespect your sacrifices, insult your efforts and deny you the tools to win; and then blame you for not doing the best job you could with resources they never provided.

I pray for the safety of my comrades who carry our fight to enemies of freedom far away from home and comfort and for the United States of America, because we truly now need divine inspiration and the help of the hand of the Almighty...

Amen to that.

More About College

If you're the parent of a high school senior, and you're still filling out college applications, there's always Oberlin out in Ohio. For $50,000 a year we parents can send our kids to what I'm always told is a wonderful school with an excellent music conservatory. What well-meaning friends and the college counselor don't mention is the added perk for our kids of 'Safer Sex Night' complete with porn movies, a 'Tent of Consent' and alcohol. We parents needn't be alarmed--it's all in the name of sex education.

Oberlin is one of those Mid-Western schools favored by Northeasterners, but in the last five years or so, I keep running into New Yorkers, real dyed-in-the-wool-liberal blue-staters, who don't like the place. Even their teenaged kids don't like the place. One parent described Oberlin as sort of dark with nobody looking very happy. Too much safer sex perhaps.

It's not only Oberlin that goes in for free and generous sex education for the benefit of its students. This article mentions Williams which has a 'Queer Bash' complete with pornography and Vassar which formerly hosted a 'Homo Hop.' Columbia University students report that they have a more sedate Health Fair in the spring. And then there was the XXX-rated porn movie to be shown last spring--with administrative approval--at the University of Maryland, Carnegie Mellon University, Northwestern University and UCLA.

We parents sit like puppies and listen to admissions counselors prattle on about the year abroad and the diversity of the student population, yet we don't bother to ask about the moral climate of the school where our kids will spend--largely unsupervised--four very formative years of their young adult lives.

Michael Yon on Afghanistan

Here's a short message from Michael Yon, the former Green Beret, self-employed war correspondent/photo-journalist who has been covering the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. You can follow his on-line 'magazine', read his book, Moment of Truth in Iraq, and support his mission. He has been warning about Afghanistan for the past several years. By the way, Yon's 2005 photo at right shows U.S.soldier Major Mark Bieger carrying a little Iraqi girl named Farah. American soldiers got Farah to the hospital where she died, but it was Al Qaeda terrorists who killed her when a suicide-car-bomber drove into a Stryker while about twenty Iraqi children crowded around. And Obama travels the world apologizing for our country?

This supposed "low intensity" war is high intensity for the handful on the burning end. While London and Washington waffle over troop levels, Afghanistan is on course to surpass anything we ever saw in Iraq. We can still turn this war around but at the current rate surely the war will be lost. Indecision on a troop increase is a decision to lose the war. The required information has been presented to leaders in Washington and London. They have all the information needed to make a decision on troop levels. Weak civilian leadership is sabotaging the war effort.

Democrats and their 'Hate Crime' Legislation

This is from Family Research Council (FRC) on the so-called 'Hate Crimes' legislation and how House Democrats are using the military to further the Democrats' social agenda. FRC points out why this legislation is unnecessary and why it is really 'thought crime' legislation.

The American military is trying to win two conflicts abroad, so the last thing it needs is to be deployed in a culture war to legitimize homosexuality. Unfortunately, that didn't stop House leaders from piggybacking on a military funding bill to pass their pet project: "hate crimes." Yesterday, the House voted 281 to 146 in favor of extending special federal protection to homosexuals as part of the $680 billion Defense Authorization bill, a maneuver that Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.) called a "disgrace." The Democratic majority "should be ashamed at the way it has used the needs of our men and women in uniform as a platform for a partisan agenda," he said. Republicans tried to stop Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) from hijacking the bill on Wednesday but failed by 56 votes from stripping hate crimes from H.R. 2647.

Under the charge of House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), 131 Republicans and 15 Democrats opposed the bill, but in the end it wasn't enough to stop Nancy Pelosi. After the vote, Rep. Boehner was frank in his disappointment--not only because hate crimes passed, but because liberals used an otherwise popular military bill to infringe on the very freedom our soldiers are fighting for." This is radical social policy that ... is being put on the defense authorization bill, on the backs of our soldiers, because they probably can't pass it on its own," he told reporters. The first prize on a very long wish list for homosexuals, "hate crimes" now heads to the Senate for approval. Contact your Senators today and ask them to stop the real crime: leaders who abuse their power to advance irrelevant special interests.