The Anchoress

Alright - lots of things I want to share with you, including a naughty limerick, so if you’re the delicate type who can’t bear to read/hear the eff word or if you are the sort who believes my printing a bad word deserves a wagging-finger-of-admonishment via email, then save yourself the palpitations and the wear and tear on your fingers and scroll past this post. I mean it, you’ve been warned.

Jack Kelly at Irish Pennants gives us three good reasons why a truly comprehensive investigation is needed into Katrina and New Orleans.

Andrew McCarthy brings you as up to date as you can be on the Able Danger matter, and you’ll want to read it in anticipation of this week’s hearings.

Some good news: Porter Goss appears to be spooking the spooks. We can only be grateful.

Pope Benedict XVI, you know mean old, unapproachable, stubborn, inflexible and un-pastoral Benedict has met with His Supreme Arrogant Putzness, dissenting theologian Hans Kueng. I never called Keung an arrogant putz until I read this line:

Kueng called his old colleague’s election “an enormous disappointment for all those who hoped for a reformist and pastoral pope,” although he gave him 100 days to “learn.”

100 days to learn. What conceit. Clearly Kueng has had a lifetime to learn and hasn’t yet figured it out. Read him. He’s the epitome of stuck-up “progressive” intolerance. Meanwhile, I am happy to see the pope being so resolutely pastoral and Christ-like by extending the hand to one who so dislikes him. Bush tried that in 2001 and it didn’t get him anywhere…but Benedict may have better luck.

Derek Jeter and why I love him

Where Charity and Love Prevail: An atheist comes to the troubling conclusion that Faith DOES Breed Charity.

Civilised people do not believe that drug addiction and male prostitution offend against divine ordinance. But those who do are the men and women most willing to change the fetid bandages, replace the sodden sleeping bags and - probably most difficult of all - argue, without a trace of impatience, that the time has come for some serious medical treatment. Good works, John Wesley insisted, are no guarantee of a place in heaven. But they are most likely to be performed by people who believe that heaven exists.

The correlation is so clear that it is impossible to doubt that faith and charity go hand in hand. The close relationship may have something to do with the belief that we are all God’s children, or it may be the result of a primitive conviction that, although helping others is no guarantee of salvation, it is prudent to be recorded in a book of gold, like James Leigh Hunt’s Abu Ben Adam, as “one who loves his fellow men”. Whatever the reason, believers answer the call, and not just the Salvation Army. When I was a local councillor, the Little Sisters of the Poor - right at the other end of the theological spectrum - did the weekly washing for women in back-to-back houses who were too ill to scrub for themselves.

Reminds me of a pretty young missionary sister who once came to my school. She talked about changing the bandages of a leper and we blanched and one kid said, “I wouldn’t do that for a million bucks,” and she grinned and said, “neither would I. But I’ll do it for Jesus, for free!”

God and Julie share an intimite moment.

Get out your handkerchief. A moving story about a very sick ten year old who got to call the play at Notre Dame. RIP.

His mother told Montana, who had just become paralyzed from the waist down a day earlier because of the tumor, to toss her a football Weis had given him. Montana tried to throw the football, put could barely lift it. So Weis climbed into the reclining chair with him and helped him complete the pass to his mother.

More guts and heroism in that kid’s frail little body than in all the healthy media-hog-tax-money-wasters that can be lifted into a paddy wagon.

California Conservative has pictures which suggest that the peaceful folks a-marching are not so peaceful. And they’re anti-semites, too.

Michelle Malkin also has some good pictures, including a couple of Mother Sheehan’s waste of taxpayer revenues as she giddily gets herself arrested. I didn’t get small, the protests did!

Professor Bainbridge has a poll for you to take regarding W. I suggest a catagory “none of the above” is needed.

Hamas says “Nevermind…we’ll get back to you when we have nukes. From Gaza, with love, XOXOX.”

Don Adams is dead. First Maynard G. Krebs, now Maxwell Smart! Sigh. I may as well admit that aside from olive-skinned latin men, I have a thing for Jewish men, too. Adams was a crush when I was about 6. he wrote once about prayer saving his life. Gone now. Sorry about that, Chief. RIP

Tony Snow says it is McCain-Feingold that has turned Harry Reid into Mr. Hyde (Think Jekyll and Hyde, not Henry Hyde!)

Stephen Johnson figures if Senators could vote for John Roberts in secret, he’d be confirmed by a big number. He muses about what that says about the character of many in the senate.

Bush’s quiet work with Japan. Bet you didn’t read this anywhere else. Or this alternative to Kyoto.

Father Fessio doesn’t think gay priests will be banned, either. But the ones in this article are still trapped in the victim spiral, and still seeing themselves as gay first, rather than as priests first. Come on, guys…I’m over here supporting you, don’t freaking wimp out and start blubbering. Buck it up! Once and for all - blame your pedarast brothers, not everyone else!

Maxed Out Mama has a good post on socialised medicine and how it’s not working out so well for Canada.

Rabbi Spero did not see racism in Katrina. He saw brotherhood. Tell it, Rabbi!

If I find anything today in the news about Chuck Schumer’s dirty tricks, I’ll post it…but so far it looks like yet another story the press can’t seem to find room for.

Limerick:
There once was a man from Nantucket
named Cronkite, there’s no way to duck it
who supported clean air bills
until the wind fan builds
obstructed his view; he said “f*** it.”