Truth Freedom Tradition

Notre Dame University answer to the ukase

 

You can find Notre Dame University's answer to this administration ukase at:

 

http://www.becketfund.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Garvey-Glendon-George-Snead-Levin-stmt-Feb-11-2012.pdf

February 10, 2012
Unacceptable
The Obama administration has offered what it has styled as an “accommodation” for religious
institutions in the dispute over the HHS mandate for coverage (without cost sharing) of abortioninducing
drugs, sterilization, and contraception. The administration will now require that all
insurance plans cover (“cost free”) these same products and services. Once a religiouslyaffiliated
(or believing individual) employer purchases insurance (as it must, by law), the
insurance company will then contact the insured employees to advise them that the terms of the
policy include coverage for these objectionable things.
This so-called “accommodation” changes nothing of moral substance and fails to remove the
assault on religious liberty and the rights of conscience which gave rise to the controversy. It is
certainly no compromise. The reason for the original bipartisan uproar was the administration’s
insistence that religious employers, be they institutions or individuals, provide insurance that
covered services they regard as gravely immoral and unjust. Under the new rule, the government
still coerces religious institutions and individuals to purchase insurance policies that include the
very same services.
It is no answer to respond that the religious employers are not “paying” for this aspect of the
insurance coverage. For one thing, it is unrealistic to suggest that insurance companies will not
pass the costs of these additional services on to the purchasers. More importantly, abortiondrugs,
sterilizations, and contraceptives are a necessary feature of the policy purchased by the
religious institution or believing individual. They will only be made available to those who are
insured under such policy, by virtue of the terms of the policy.
It is morally obtuse for the administration to suggest (as it does) that this is a meaningful
accommodation of religious liberty because the insurance company will be the one to inform the
employee that she is entitled to the embryo-destroying “five day after pill” pursuant to the
insurance contract purchased by the religious employer. It does not matter who explains the
terms of the policy purchased by the religiously affiliated or observant employer. What matters
is what services the policy covers.
2
The simple fact is that the Obama administration is compelling religious people and institutions
who are employers to purchase a health insurance contract that provides abortion-inducing drugs,
contraception, and sterilization. This is a grave violation of religious freedom and cannot stand.
It is an insult to the intelligence of Catholics, Protestants, Eastern Orthodox Christians, Jews,
Muslims, and other people of faith and conscience to imagine that they will accept an assault on
their religious liberty if only it is covered up by a cheap accounting trick.
Finally, it bears noting that by sustaining the original narrow exemptions for churches,
auxiliaries, and religious orders, the administration has effectively admitted that the new policy
(like the old one) amounts to a grave infringement on religious liberty. The administration still
fails to understand that institutions that employ and serve others of different or no faith are still
engaged in a religious mission and, as such, enjoy the protections of the First Amendment.
Signed:
John Garvey
President, The Catholic University of America
Mary Ann Glendon
Learned Hand Professor of Law, Harvard University

And many other signatures...

 

 

First answers of the Catholic Bishops to the ukase of the nihilist administration

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”)

intends to implement a rule that mandates that coverage for

sterilization, abortion-inducing drugs, and contraception be

included in virtually all health plans, regardless of whether

the employer or the insured individual has a moral objection

to such drugs and procedures.




The Bishop of Peoria wrote:


January 24, 2012
My dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
In the history of the United States, Friday, January 20, 2012

will certainly stand out as a moment of enormous peril for

religious liberty. On that day the Obama administration

announced regulations that would require Catholic institutions

to offer insurance programs providing abortifacients,

sterilization, and contraceptive services. If these

regulations are put into effect, they could close down every

Catholic school, hospital, and the other public ministries of

our Church, which is perhaps their underlying intention. What

is perfectly clear is that this is a bigoted and blatant

attack on the First Amendment rights of every Catholic

believer. Under no circumstances, however, will our Church

ever abandon our unshakable commitment to the Gospel of Life.
I therefore call upon all the faithful of this Diocese to

vigorously oppose this unprecedented governmental assault upon

the moral convictions of our Faith. Under the Constitution, no

president has the authority to require our cooperation with

what we consider to be intrinsic evil and mortal sin. We must

therefore oppose by every means at our disposal this gross

infringement upon the rights of Catholic citizens to freely

practice our religion. This country once fought a revolution

to guarantee freedom, but the time has clearly arrived to

strongly reassert our fundamental human rights. I am honestly

horrified that the nation I have always loved has come to this

hateful and radical step in religious intolerance. I hope and

pray that all people of good will would support the faith

based resistance of us their Catholic neighbors.
While it is primarily the laity who should take the leading

role in political and legal action, as your Bishop, it is my

clear responsibility to summon our local Church into spiritual

and temporal combat in defense of Catholic Christianity. Have

faith! Have courage! Fight boldly for what you believe! I

strongly urge you not to be intimidated by extremist

politicians or the malice of the cultural secularists arrayed

against us. Always remember that the One who is in you is

greater than the one who is in the world (1 John 4:4). Until

these grave issues are favorably resolved, I ask that every

parish, school, hospital, Newman Center, and religious house

in this Diocese insert the Prayer to Saint Michael ( January

24, 2012 Page two) the Archangel into the Sunday General

Intercessions just before their concluding prayer. It is God's

invincible Archangel who commands the heavenly hosts, and it

is the enemies of God who will ultimately be defeated. This

prayer should be announced as: a Prayer to Saint Michael the

Archangel for the freedom of the Catholic Church in America.
May God guide and protect his Holy Church.
Sincerely yours in Christ,
Most Reverend Daniel R. Jenky, C.S.C. BISHOP OF PEORIA




Archishop Vlazny ,Portland Oregon:

    Letter January 25, 2012 from Archbishop John G. Vlazny on

the matter of freedom of conscience and decisions by HHS

    Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ:

    It is important for you to know that the federal

government has just dealt a heavy blow to the Catholic

population and to the millions more who are served by the

Catholic faithful.

    The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced

last week that almost all employers, including Catholic

employers, will be forced to offer their employees’ health

coverage that includes sterilization, abortion-inducing drugs,

and contraception. Almost all health insurers will be forced

to include those “services” in the health policies they write.

And almost all individuals will be forced to buy that coverage

as a part of their policies.

    By this ruling, the Administration has cast aside the

First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States,

denying to Catholics our Nation’s first and most fundamental

freedom, that of religious liberty. Unless the rule is

overturned, we Catholics will be compelled to violate our

consciences or drop health coverage for our employees (and

suffer the penalties for doing so). The Administration’s sole

concession was to give our institutions one year to comply.

    We cannot and will not comply with this unjust law. People

of faith cannot be made second class citizens. We are already

joined by our brothers and sisters of all faiths and many

others of good will in this important effort to regain our

religious freedom.

    In generations past, the Church has always been able to

count on the faithful to stand up and protect her sacred

rights and duties. I hope and trust she can count on this

generation of Catholics to do the same. Our children and

grandchildren deserve nothing less.

    And therefore, I would ask of you two things. First, as a

community of faith we must commit ourselves to prayer and

fasting that wisdom and justice may prevail, and religious

liberty may be restored. Without God, we can do nothing; with

God, nothing is impossible. Second, I recommend visiting

www.usccb.org/conscience, to learn more about this severe

assault on religious liberty, and how to contact Congress in

support of legislation that would reverse the Administration’s

decision.

    Thank you for all you do to build the Church and society.

    Sincerely yours in Christ,

    Most Reverend John G. Vlazny

    Archbishop of Portland in Oregon





Decision unchanged on HHS exemptions
HHS Edict Will Force Catholics to Violate Conscience

‘To Hell With You’

By Bishop David A. Zubik, Pittsburgh

It is really hard to believe that it happened. It comes like a

slap in the face. The Obama administration has just told the

Catholics of the United States, “To Hell with you!” There is

no other way to put it.

In early August, the Department for Health and Human Services

in the Obama administration released guidelines as part of the

implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care

Act. The guidelines mandated that by Summer 2012 all

individual and group health insurance plans, including self-

insured plans, cover all FDA-approved contraception,

sterilization procedures and pharmaceuticals that even result

in abortion.

 A million things are wrong with this: equating pregnancy with

disease;  mandating that every employer pay for contraception

procedures including alleged contraceptives that are actually

abortion-inducing drugs; forcing American citizens to chose

between violating their consciences or providing health care

services; mandating such coverage on every individual woman

without allowing her to even choose not to have it; forcing

every person to pay for that coverage no matter the dictates

of their conscience.

Let’s be blunt. This whole process of mandating these

guidelines undermines the democratic process itself.  In this

instance, the mandate declares pregnancy a disease, forces a

culture of contraception and abortion on society, all while

completely bypassing the legislative process.

This is government by fiat that attacks the rights of everyone

– not only Catholics; not only people of all religion.  At no

other time in memory or history has there been such a

governmental intrusion on freedom not only with regard to

religion, but even across-the-board with all citizens. It

forces every employer to subsidize an ideology or pay a

penalty while searching for alternatives to health care

coverage. It undermines the whole concept and hope for health

care reform by inextricably linking it to the zealotry of

pro-abortion bureaucrats.       

For our Church this mandate would apply in virtually every

instance where the Catholic Church serves as an employer. The

mandate would require the Catholic Church as an employer to

violate its fundamental beliefs concerning human life and

human dignity by forcing Catholic entities to provide

contraceptive, sterilization coverage and even pharmaceuticals

that result in abortion.

There was a so-called “religious exemption” to the mandate,

but it was so narrowly drawn that, as critics charged, Jesus

Christ and his Apostles would not fit the exemption. The so-

called exemption would only apply to the vast array of

Catholic institutions where the following applied:

    Only Catholics are employed;
    The primary purpose of the institution or service provided

is the direct instruction in Catholic belief;
    The only persons served by the institution are those that

share Catholic religious tenets. (Try to fit this in with our

local Catholic Charities that serve 80,000 every year without

discrimination according to faith. It would be impossible!)

Practically speaking under the proposed mandate there would be

no “religious exemption” for Catholic hospitals universities,

colleges, nursing homes and numerous Catholic social service

agencies such as Catholic Charities. It could easily be

determined that the “religious exemption” would not apply as

well to Catholic high schools, elementary schools and Catholic

parishes since many employ non-Catholics and serve both

students and, through social outreach, many who do not share

Catholic religious beliefs. Such a narrow “religious

exemption” is simply unprecedented in federal law.

Last September I asked you to protest those guidelines to

Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of the U.S. Department for Health

and Human Services, and contact your political leadership in

the federal government. I asked that you request that this

flawed mandate be withdrawn because of its unprecedented

interference in the religious liberty and freedom of

conscience of the Catholic community, and our basic democratic

process.

You did. And you were joined by Catholics throughout the

country (and many others as well) who raised their voices

against the mandate, raised their voices against a meaningless

religious exemption.

On January 20, 2012, the Obama administration answered you and

me. The response was very simple: “To Hell with You.”

Kathleen Sebelius announced that the mandate would not be

withdrawn and the religious exemption would not be expanded.

Instead, she stated that nonprofit groups – which include the

Catholic Church – will get a year “to adapt to this new rule.”

She simply dismissed Catholic concerns as standing in the way

of allegedly respecting the health concerns and choices of

women.

Could Catholics be insulted any more, suggesting that we have

no concern for women’s health issues? The Catholic Church and

the Catholic people have erected health care facilities that

are recognized worldwide for their compassionate care for

everyone regardless of their creed, their economic

circumstances and, most certainly, their gender. In so many

parts of the globe – the United States included – the Church

is health care.   

 Kathleen Sebelius and through her, the Obama administration,

have said “To Hell with You” to the Catholic faithful of the

United States.

    To Hell with your religious beliefs,
    To Hell with your religious liberty,
    To Hell with your freedom of conscience.

We’ll give you a year, they are saying, and then you have to

knuckle under. As Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan, archbishop

of New York and president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic

Bishops responded, “in effect, the president is saying that we

have a year to figure out how to violate our consciences.”

As I wrote to you last September, with this mandate the

democratic process is being ignored while we are being ordered

to ignore our religious beliefs. And we are being told not

only to violate our beliefs, but to pay directly for that

violation; to subsidize the imposition of a contraceptive and

abortion culture on every person in the United States.

It is time to go back to work. They have given us a year to

adapt to this rule.  We can’t! We simply cannot!

Write to the president.

Write to Secretary Sebelius.

Write to our Senators.

Write to those in Congress.

Use the PA Catholic Advocacy Network to send an email message,

too.

I have included the addresses in a box accompanying this

article. Here’s what you can write:

"Dear (Representative):

“In early August, the Department for Health and Human Services

released guidelines that would force Catholic institutions to

subsidize through their health care plans contraception,

sterilization procedures and pharmaceuticals that even result

in abortion.

“It was announced on January 20thby Kathleen Sebelius,

secretary of the U.S. Department for Health and Human

Services, that this mandate is affirmed and that non-profit

institutions, including the Catholic Church, have one year to

adapt to the mandate.

“This is a direct threat to the religious liberty of

Catholics, freedom of conscience and the social service

ministry of the Catholic Church. The so-called ‘religious

exemption’ in the mandate is no exemption at all as it would

require any Catholic institution (that serves non-Catholics or

employs non-Catholics) to violate Catholic belief, discontinue

to provide health care, or close its doors.

“I ask that you do all possible to rescind the ‘Preventive

Service Mandate’ as an unprecedented federal interference in

the right of Catholics to serve their community without

violating their fundamental moral beliefs.” 

This mandate can be changed by Congressional pressure. The

only way that action will happen is if you and I take action.

Let them know that you and I will not allow ourselves to be

pushed around (or worse yet) be dismissed because of our

Catholic faith.

Let them know that you and I will not allow our religious

freedom to be compromised. 

Let them know that you and I will not allow our religious

liberty to be rescinded.          

Nobody, not even the president of the United States or anyone

who represents him, has the right to say to you and to me as

U.S. citizens, as Catholics, or as both: “To Hell with You.”

The president and our elected leaders need to hear from you

and me and to listen to us NOW.

And if NOT now, HOW can we get the president to listen to

us??? 
Contact your political leaders





from the Bishop of Marquette:

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ:
 
I write to you concerning an alarming and serious matter that

negatively impacts the Church in the United States directly,

and that strikes at the fundamental right to religious liberty

for all citizens of any faith. The federal government, which

claims to be “of, by, and for the people,” has just been dealt

a heavy blow to almost a quarter of those people — the

Catholic population — and to the millions more who are served

by the Catholic faithful.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced

last week that almost all employers,
including Catholic employers, will be forced to offer their

employees’ health coverage that includes sterilization,

abortion-inducing drugs, and contraception. Almost all health

insurers will be forced to include those “services” in the

health policies they write. And almost all individuals will be

forced to buy that coverage as a part of their policies.

In so ruling, the Obama Administration has cast aside the

First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States,

denying to Catholics our Nation’s first and most fundamental

freedom, that of religious liberty. And as a result, unless

the rule is overturned, we Catholics will be compelled to

either violate our consciences, or to drop health coverage for

our employees (and suffer the penalties for doing so). The

Obama Administration’s sole concession was to give our

institutions one year to comply.
 
We cannot—we will not—comply with this unjust law. People of

faith cannot be made second class citizens. We are already

joined by our brothers and sisters of all faiths and many

others of good will in this important effort to regain our

religious freedom. Our parents and grandparents did not come

to these shores to help build America’s cities and towns, its

infrastructure and institutions, its enterprise and culture,
only to have their posterity stripped of their God given

rights. In generations past, the Church has always been able

to count on the faithful to stand up and protect her sacred

rights and duties. I hope and trust she can count on this

generation of Catholics to do the same. Our children and

grandchildren deserve nothing less.

And therefore, I would ask of you two things. First, as a

community of faith we must commit ourselves to prayer and

fasting that wisdom and justice may prevail, and religious

liberty may be restored. Without God, we can do nothing; with

God, nothing is impossible. Second, I would also recommend

visiting www.usccb.org/conscience,to learn more about this

severe assault on religious liberty, and how to contact

Congress in support of legislation that would reverse the

Obama Administration’s decision.
 
Sincerely yours in Christ,
+Alexander K. Sample
Most Reverend Alexander K. Sample
Bishop of Marquette
 

Fast and Furious

Presented here without comment, Chairman Darrell Issa’s response to Attorney General Eric Holder’s letter from last week.

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa today sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder 

Dear Attorney General Holder:

From the beginning of the congressional investigation into Operation Fast and Furious, the Department of Justice has offered a roving set of ever-changing explanations to justify its involvement in this reckless and deadly program.  These defenses have been aimed at undermining the investigation.  From the start, the Department insisted that no wrongdoing had occurred and asked Senator Grassley and me to defer our oversight responsibilities over its concerns about our purported interference with its ongoing criminal investigations.  Additionally, the Department steadfastly insisted that gunwalking did not occur. 

Once documentary and testimonial evidence strongly contradicted these claims, the Department attempted to limit the fallout from Fast and Furious to the Phoenix Field Division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF).  When that effort also proved unsuccessful, the Department next argued that Fast and Furious resided only within ATF itself, before eventually also assigning blame to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Arizona.  All of these efforts were designed to circle the wagons around DOJ and its political appointees. 

To that end, just last month, you claimed that Fast and Furious did not reach the upper levels of the Justice Department.  Documents discovered through the course of the investigation, however, have proved each and every one of these claims advanced by the Department to be untrue.  It appears your latest defense has reached a new low.  Incredibly, in your letter from Friday you now claim that you were unaware of Fast and Furious because your staff failed to inform you of information contained in memos that were specifically addressed to you.  At best, this indicates negligence and incompetence in your duties as Attorney General.  At worst, it places your credibility into serious doubt.

Following the Committee’s issuance of a subpoena over six months ago, I strongly believed that the Department would fully cooperate with Congress and support this investigation with all the means at its disposal.  The American people deserve no less.  Unfortunately, the Department’s cooperation to date has been minimal.  Hundreds of pages of documents that have been produced to my Committee are duplicative, and hundreds more contain substantial redactions, rendering them virtually worthless.  The Department has actively engaged in retaliation against multiple whistleblowers, and has, on numerous occasions, attempted to disseminate false and misleading information to the press in an attempt to discredit this investigation.

Your letter dated October 7 is deeply disappointing.  Instead of pledging all necessary resources to assist the congressional investigation in discovering the truth behind the fundamentally flawed Operation Fast and Furious, your letter instead did little but obfuscate, shift blame, berate, and attempt to change the topic away from the Department’s responsibility in the creation, implementation, and authorization of this reckless program.  You claim that, after months of silence, you “must now address these issues” over Fast and Furious because of the harmful discourse of the past few days.  Yet, the only major development of these past few days has been the release of multiple documents showing that you and your senior staff had been briefed, on numerous occasions, about Fast and Furious.

The Mexican Cartels

A month after you became Attorney General, you spoke of the danger of the Mexican drug cartels, and the Sinaloa cartel in particular.  The cartels, you said, “are lucrative, they are violent, and they are operated with stunning planning and precision.”  You promised that under your leadership “these cartels will be destroyed.”  You vowed that the Department of Justice would “continue to work with [its] counterparts in Mexico, through information sharing, training and mutual cooperation to jointly fight these cartels, both in Mexico and the United States.”

Under your leadership, however, Operation Fast and Furious has proven these promises hollow.  According to one agent, Operation Fast and Furious “armed the cartel.  It is disgusting.”  Fast and Furious simply served as a convenient means for dangerous cartels to acquire upwards of 2,000 assault-style weapons.  On top of that, the Government of Mexico was not informed about Fast and Furious.  In fact, DOJ and ATF officials actively engaged in hiding information about Fast and Furious from not only Mexican officials, but also U.S. law enforcement officials operating in Mexico for fear that they would inform their Mexican counterparts.  This strategy is inapposite and contradicts the promises you made to the American people.

Your September 7, 2011 Statement

On September 7, 2011, you said that “[t]he notion that [Fast and Furious] reaches into the upper levels of the Justice Department is something that at this point I don’t think is supported by the facts and I think once we examine it and once the facts are revealed we’ll see that’s not the case.”  Unfortunately, the facts directly contradict this statement.

Lanny Breuer, the Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division, clearly a member of the Department’s senior leadership, knew about Fast and Furious as early as March 2010.   In fact, I have learned that the amount of detail shared with Breuer’s top deputies about Fast and Furious is simply astounding. 

For example, Manuel Celis-Acosta was the “biggest fish” of the straw purchasing ring in Phoenix.  From the time the investigation started in September 2009 until March 15, 2010, Manuel Celis-Acosta acquired at least 852 firearms valued at around $500,000 through straw purchasers.  Yet in 2009, Celis-Acosta reported an Arizona taxable income of only $15,475.  Between September 2009 and late January 2010, 139 of these firearms were recovered, 81 in Mexico alone.  Some of these firearms were recovered less than 24 hours after they were bought. 

This information, and hundreds of pages worth of additional information, was included in highly detailed wiretap applications sent for authorization to Breuer’s top deputies.  It is my understanding, the Department applied to the United States District Court for the District of Arizona for numerous wire taps from March 2010 to July 2010.  These wire tap applications were reviewed and approved by several Deputy Assistant Attorney Generals, including Kenneth A. Blanco, John C. Keeney, and Jason M. Weinstein.  Breuer’s top deputies approved these wiretap applications to be used against individuals associated with the known drug cartels.  As I understand it, the wire tap applications contain rich detail of the reckless operational tactics being employed by your agents in Phoenix.  Although Breuer and his top deputies were informed of the operational details and tactics of Fast and Furious, they did nothing to stop the program.  In fact, on a trip to Mexico Breuer trumpeted Fast and Furious as a promising investigation.Gary Grindler, the then-Deputy Attorney General and currently your Chief of Staff, received an extremely detailed briefing on Operation Fast and Furious on March 12, 2010.  In this briefing, Grindler learned such minutiae as the number of times that Uriel Patino, a straw purchaser on food stamps who ultimately acquired 720 firearms, went in to a cooperating gun store and the amount of guns that he had bought.  When former Acting ATF Director Ken Melson, a career federal prosecutor, learned similar information, he became sick to his stomach:

I had pulled out all Patino’s — and ROIs is, I’m sorry, report of investigation — and you know, my stomach being in knots reading the number of times he went in and the amount of guns that he bought. Transcribed interview of Acting ATF Director Kenneth Melson at 42.

At the time of his briefing in March of last year, Grindler knew that Patino had purchased 313 weapons and paid for all of them in cash.  Unlike Melson, Grindler clearly saw nothing wrong with this.  If Grindler had had the sense to shut this investigation down right then, he could have prevented the purchase of an additional 407 weapons by Patino alone.  Instead, Grindler did nothing to stop the program.

Following this briefing, it is clear that Grindler did one of two things.  Either, he alerted you to the name and operational details of Fast and Furious, in which case your May 3, 2011 testimony in front of Congress was false; or, he failed to inform you of the name and the operational details of Fast and Furious, in which case Grindler engaged in gross dereliction of his duties as Acting Deputy Attorney General.  It is fair to infer from the fact that Grindler remains as your Chief of Staff that he did not engage in gross dereliction of his duties and told you about the program as far back as March of 2010.

In the summer of 2010, at the latest, you were undoubtedly informed about Fast and Furious.  On at least five occasions you were told of the connection between Fast and Furious and a specific Mexican cartel – the very cartel that you had vowed to destroy.  You were informed that Manuel Celis-Acosta and his straw purchasers were responsible for the purchase of 1,500 firearms that were then supplied to Mexican drug trafficking cartels.  Yet, you did nothing to stop this program. 

You failed to own up to your responsibility to safeguard the American public by hiding behind “[a]ttorneys in [your] office and the Office of the Deputy Attorney General,” who you now claim did not bring this information to your attention. Holder Letter, supra note 1.  As a result of your failure to act on these memos sent to you, nearly 500 additional firearms were purchased under Fast and Furious. 

The facts simply do not support any claim that Fast and Furious did not reach the highest levels of the Justice Department.  Actually, Fast and Furious did reach the ultimate authority in the Department – you.

Your May 3, 2011 Statement

On May 3, 2011, I asked you directly when you first knew about the operation known as Fast and Furious.  You responded directly, and to the point, that you weren’t “sure of the exact date, but [you] probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks.”  This statement, made before Congress, has proven to be patently untrue.  Documents released by the Department just last week showed that you received at least seven memos about Fast and Furious starting as early as July 2010. 

In your letter Friday, you blamed your staff for failing to inform you about Operation Fast and Furious when they reviewed the memos sent to you last summer.  Your staff, therefore, was certainly aware of Fast and Furious over a year ago.  Lanny Breuer was aware of Fast and Furious as early as March 2010, and Gary Grindler was also aware of Fast and Furious as early as March 2010.  Given this frequency of high level involvement with Fast and Furious as much as a year prior to your May 3, 2011 testimony, it simply is not believable that you were not briefed on Fast and Furious until a few weeks before your testimony.  At the very least, you should have known about Fast and Furious well before then.  The current paper trail, which will only grow more robust as additional documents are discovered, creates the strong perception that your statement in front of Congress was less than truthful.

The February 4, 2011 Letter

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of this intransigence is that the Department of Justice has been lying to Congress ever since the inquiry into Fast and Furious began.  On February 4, 2011, Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich wrote that “ATF makes every effort to interdict weapons that have been purchased illegally and prevent their transport into Mexico.”  This letter, vetted by both the senior ranks of ATF as well as the Office of the Deputy Attorney General, is a flat-out lie.

As we understand it, in March 2010, top deputies to Lanny Breuer were informed that law enforcement officers intercepted calls that demonstrated that Manuel Celis-Acosta was conspiring to purchase and transport firearms for the purpose of trafficking the firearms from the United States into Mexico.  Not only was ATF aware of this information, but so was the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.  This information was shared with the Criminal Division.  All of these organizations are components of the Department of Justice, and they were all aware of the illegal purchase of firearms and their eventual transportation into Mexico.

These firearms were not interdicted.  They were not stopped.  Your agents allowed these firearms purchases to continue, sometimes even monitoring them in person, and within days some of these weapons were being recovered in Mexico.  Despite widespread knowledge within its senior ranks that this practice was occurring, when asked on numerous occasions about the veracity of this letter, the Department has shockingly continued to stand by its false statement of February 4, 2011.

Mr. Attorney General, you have made numerous statements about Fast and Furious that have eventually been proven to be untrue.  Your lack of trustworthiness while speaking about Fast and Furious has called into question your overall credibility as Attorney General.  The time for deflecting blame and obstructing our investigation is over.  The time has come for you to come clean to the American public about what you knew about Fast and Furious, when you knew it, and who is going to be held accountable for failing to shut down a program that has already had deadly consequences, and will likely cause more casualties for years to come. 

Operation Fast and Furious was the Department’s most significant gun trafficking case.  It related to two of your major initiatives – destroying the Mexican cartels and reducing gun violence on both sides of the border.  On your watch, it went spectacularly wrong.  Whether you realize yet or not, you own Fast and Furious.  It is your responsibility.     

Sincerely,

 

Darrell Issa

Chairman

 

 

 

 

Everybody must read this

 

Read it:

 

http://pajamasmedia.com/zombie/2011/02/21/death-channels/

HAPPY FOURTH !

ATTENDANT

                       Mil trescientos...fifteen dollars

                       American.



         As she pays him, distant thunder rolls.

         The boy yells something in Spanish as he runs off.



                                 SARAH

                       What did he say?



                                 ATTENDANT

                            (accented)

                       There is a storm coming in.



         Sarah gazes at the thunderheads building up out over the

         desert.  Heat lightning pulses in their depths.



                                 SARAH

                            (quietly)

                       I know.



TERMINATOR


by


James Cameron





.

Internationalism...

And two:

Neda

Iran, June 2009

A blog ? A monastery and a university !

What are we to do to resist the subversion of the Republic ?
We know (or we should know) that the domestic and foreign subversion aims at attacking/limiting/destroying the power of America because the force of America is the main obstacle for the international subversion's goal to  limit (or, which is the same, to end) Freedom. To oppose this plan we need to know how the subversion proceeds, how it got  here and where are its roots.
Failing this, we will play in the hands of the subversives because we will be lost in tactics while the subversives are always focused on long term strategy.
If we miss even the simple FIRST element of the analysis, we will keep thinking and saying that the subversives make policy "mistakes"  because we don't see that their goal is MAINLY to weaken America (and to this goal, exposing the economy to a catastrophic inflation, limiting the budget of the Defense, "apologizing" abroad for "America's arrogance" are not "mistakes" but operations carried on with precision): how much more we will misunderstand if we ignore the roots and the history of the nihilist-subversive conspiracy !

The subversives' project is based on
-  dividing the Nation by using ideologies,
and the ideologies of class-warfare are based on
-  a general nihilist "philosophy"
and the subversives have made of the nihilist pseudo-philosophy
-  a worldwide cultural regime in which true philosophies, i.e. alternatives to nihilism, cannot survive.

Let's discuss these points.

What's easier than the job of the subversives ? They pollute the society with the poison of civil war, of class-warfare, of civil strife and of hate, and after creating THAT political terrain they let their opponents fight on THAT terrain against them, thus causing THEIR OPPONENTS to increase the strife, the unrest, the divisions. The greater the scandal the subversives can create the better for them, because they know that the hearts of honest people will answer with embittered rage to their cruel provocations.
A sardonic smile is behind all this, an evil smile.

What's more difficult than the duty of the Freedom Fighter ? The Freedom Fighter has to reject hate, has to reject the divisive spirit that all the ideologies stemming from nihilism imply and support :  to be able to do that he has to remain ABSOLUTELY faithful to the core Principles of the Sacred Tradition, to the Sacred Truth that is alien to any ideology. The Freedom Fighter has to keep his mind and his heart centered on the truth of the Infinite God Who Is Infinite Love, only in this way he/she  can help all the People to reject the spirit of divisiveness. The Freedom Fighter has to be a fortress and a monastery, a dam and the fulcrum of the Resistance against the subversive-divisive spirit.
 
"...ONE NATION UNDER GOD, INDIVISIBLE, WITH LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL." To this Nation, made of free individuals, the subversives want to substitute a heap of groups in conflict with each other, because this will make the Nation weaker, and  this  in turn is the only way they have to impose a totalitarian regime to the People.
Long ago the subversives have invented one of their most destructive lies, that "classes" have conflicting interests and that the "class" of the "workers" has to fight to rip "the power" away from the "class" of the "rich". And it is certainly not rare to observe that many who should protect the People from such lies actually behave in a sort of upside down class-warfare, thus helping the subversives to spread their propaganda. Under the cover of "competition" there are some who traffic in human beings to pay third-world salaries for the work they need done, others move their companies to countries where forms of slavery and exploitation are common, and yet others pay low salaries to hard-working American citizens. All these are the true "useful idiots" of the subversives, and they contribute to the subversion of the Nation for the sake of their greed. Such USURERS are as much un-American as the subversives.
The Freedom Fighter must steer away from any trace and thought of class-warfare ideology and he/she must fulfill  the pledge of allegiance by keeping his actions and his thoughts in line with the Principle that is highlighted in the words "under God".

Resisting the subversive-divisive spirit means  being able to subvert the true core of the subversion, and such core is,  although in a perverted sense,  theoretical. The theoretical core of subversion is nihilism and nihilism implies  directly the rejection of every and any ethical value: if the sheer nothing is the true nature of everything, there can be no rational nor reasonable foundation for any ethic. The fundamental step to subvert the subversion is therefore subverting the blind faith that all that is has been originated by the sheer nothing  and that is also the necessary step to be able to defend any ethical value.  Only the Truth of the Infinite God Who Is Infinite Love is powerful enough to reject the spirit of civil war, the spirit of class warfare. Any discussion that remains limited to the ideological-political level is doomed to help the subversives because it implicitly denies any ethical and theoretical Principle. The Principles must be held high against the enemies of Freedom, and the Principles need to be deeply understood  by  the People, only this can crush the spirit of divisiveness.

The gramscian strategy of the subversives is badly understood when we say that the subversives have invaded the schools, the universities, and the media to conquer power: they did all that, but there is one additional important and decisive mediation that we must NEVER forget in our analysis: the subversives have conquered the schools, the universities, and the media to establish a stronghold - and a stranglehold - in and on our hearts and our minds. For subversion to succeed, despair must be in our hearts and our minds: if , instead, the Joy for the Miracle of the Eternal Creation is present in us, the subversives are defeated. Without this decisive mediation, all their work would be useless: the subversives need the SHARED lack of Principles to be able to win.
The leader of the Italian communists made all this clear in the Seventies, when he said he wanted to establish "a NEW COMMON SENSE". The process of subversion of Freedom cannot succeed without this fundamental subversion that tries to uproot the West from its five thousand years of Sacred Tradition.

The subversives hide the main goals of their strategy behind a barrage of propaganda, ideologies, and pseudo-scientific "facts", but we must be able to see through this fog and we must aim at subverting the CORE of  subversion, the core of despair that nihilism, as blind faith in the sheer nothing, is and has always been.

And we need a  long-range diagnosis of the strategy of the subversives, not only an understanding of their latest moves, because the subversives have carried on a long range maneuver that spans over the last two centuries.
The nihilists have carried on a double operation against culture; first they have presented delirious and irrational "answers" to the Tradition as the "new and true" knowledge (Kant...), they have made an idol of science, and they have called such follies "Age of Enlightenment", then (being perfectly aware that their positions were untenable) the nihilists have gradually taken control of all the channels of communication of culture and have ferociously refocused all the cultural debate by speaking, writing, publishing (and, more importantly, allowing to speak and to publish ONLY) AS IF the entire Western Tradition didn't exist as such, i.e., as the Sacred Tradition.
Today, well into the twenty-first century, any final product of the nihilistic brainwashing machine (a.k.a. as a "university graduate") knows maybe something about the masters of deception (Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche, of course in the nihilistic version )   but doesn't  know how to read the Talmud, or Parmenides, or the Odyssey, or Saint Anselm. Five thousand years of civilization have been declared useless by the apparatchiks of the nihilist regime and have been substituted by TV shows conductors "speeches" and by brainwashing political propaganda. In the West, few "specialists" can even read Hebrew AND Greek AND Latin ...and/or any other important language of the Western Tradition ...
If you check the biographies of the Founding Fathers you will have a really big surprise about this !
 
The patient work of education (the PAIDEIA) aimed at the formation of an intensely human human being has been substituted by the brainwashing with dogmas of nihilism: moreover, information has substituted formation, and "information" is of course what is produced by the nihilistic regime as the "correct"  food for the brainwashed mind: the regime doesn't only guarantee to you that you will ignore (i.e., you will be unable to reflect upon and understand) Ajax, Achilles , Hector and Patroclus,  David and Salomon, but it makes sure that you know very little about Brian Chontosh as well.

The true battle now is to spread the understanding that the worldwide regime of nihilism is the new Dark Age.
At the end of the Dark Ages, after the West had been ravaged by centuries of barbaric invasions, wandering intellectuals gathered in this or that city to listen to and to discuss the lessons of the few available teachers and the treasures of knowledge that had been preserved in the Monasteries (that for centuries had acted as the fortress of culture). In this way, a consistent network of knowledge was woven and that, in time, led to the foundation of the first universities (Bologna, Paris). Today "networking" takes a different meaning in a practical sense but not so different in historical terms: Internet allows us to escape the totalitarian control of culture and of information, the net is the new medium that the subversives for now do not control (completely) and, more importantly, the Net can be the new University, where the WHOLE history of the nihilist domination of culture and communication can be subverted.

We can defeat the subversives on the long run only if we  demolish their entire conquest machine, and that means that we have to become able to identify the roots of today's political follies in yesterday's cultural brainwashing and in the long war of nihilism against the Sacred Tradition.
We need Monasteries and Fortresses of Truth to resist the wave of neo-barbarianism !

As it is said in the article "Steady !" published some weeks ago on this blog, we will be able to dispel the darkness of the nihilistic regime only by re-centering ourselves entirely around the Truth of the Infinite God Who Is Infinite Love.
Politics will follow. But the real Power that can stop the subversion is the Power of the Prayer, and the work necessary to re-center the cultural debate away from the blasphemies of nihilism is a form of Prayer.

The masters of deception will not be able to counter the Force of the Truth: as we carry on our exodus from the Egypt of the pseudo-culture of nihilism, the Sea of Knowledge will close on their legions. The way is very dangerous for those who choose to deny the Teaching of the Tradition, and the Way is instead a Miracle of Joy, Mystery, Wonder, and Awe for those who  listen.

As Heschel said...

Yesterday I published a sentence by Heschel that says

"The decay of conscience fills the air with a pungent smell."

And today the smell is suddenly stronger.
Have a look at these pages:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/apr/14/federal-agency-warns-of-radicals-on-right/print/

http://michellemalkin.com/2009/04/14/confirme-the-obama-dhs-hit-job-on-conservatives-is-real/

It smells USSR, doesn't it ?

Steady !

The nihilistic forces that have fought for centuries against the Traditional Sacred Knowledge have always tried, and try today with renewed strength, to replace the Truth of the Tradition with their tasteless ideologies, with their blind faith in pseudo-concepts and pseudo-thoughts. While their job is intellectually poor and miserable, their power is great because they have built a propaganda machine that chokes dissent and spreads lies everywhere and continuously. On this blog, that propaganda machine is usually called  "the nihilistic regime".
But the nihilistic regime has another, subtler, way to corrupt the minds and the hearts: one of the operational branches of nihilism is political subversion and political subversion can scare the Citizens and make them withdraw into the trap of an ideological weltanschauung, oblivious of the Truth, terrorized by the immediate threats against the Republic, the Constitution, Freedom itself. Under the threatening pressure of the subversion, some Citizens move backwards to a foggy thinking, in which they delude themselves into believing that policies and politics can stop the danger and that the contrary of the contrary of good is "good".
All this is a big gift to the forces of nihilism that hide behind political subversion and at the same time it does not work to counter  the subversion itself because it induces larger numbers of Citizens into believing the lies of ideology and moves the field of the discussion farther away from the Truth.

We must instead hold our ground steadily, refusing to play on the terrain chosen by the enemies of the Truth. We must reject any and every ideology and remember that the Republic has not been founded on ideologies but on the Truth:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men...

The Divine origin of our rights is the foundation of any defense of the Republic, the Infinite Love of God is the bastion of Freedom.  Any defense of Freedom must therefore be a defense of the Truth from which Freedom stems. Ideology does not defend Truth, it replaces it with pseudo-concepts that derive from some form of nihilistic pseudo-philosophy.
From Truth derive the principles that can wisely lead our words and our actions, from ideologies derives a permanent drifting of thoughts and actions.
Every day we see "conservatives" who make this or that appeal to "principles", but that "conservatism" becomes instantly an ideology in the moment in which the Truth of the Infinite Light of God Who Is Infinite Love is omitted from the daily "political" discourse. The subversives, pushed by their nihilist puppeteers, have fought centuries to delete the Truth from the public discourse (political, cultural, whatsoever), thus any omission becomes a powerful help for the subversives, it cooperates with the brainwashing.
How many so-called conservatives can speak today of the free-market economy as the economy
- that has revolutionized the world because it has perfected the spirit of stewardship and
- that has destroyed the societies in which workers were just slaves by promoting a society in which each single Citizen has a dignity founded in the Divine Creation ?
Who speaks like that today ?
How many so-called "conservatives" do speak as if the subversives' descriptions of the world were "true" and just set it upside down, saying that what the subversives say is good is bad and vice versa ?
How many "conservatives" base their discourse on this or that doctrine of one or another "school of economics" instead of beginning from the Truth of the Love of God ? All their speeches often do nothing else than convincing the Citizens more and more that materialism is an acceptable view of life. With catastrophic consequences, even in politics !

We either believe with Mao, and all sorts of fascists and communists, that "the political power is born from the barrel of the rifle" OR we know that the Republic is founded on the Love of God, on the knowledge of the Eternal Truth, on the loving kindness for our fellow human beings, on the certitude of the Eternal (i.e., free from space and time) Creation as the Miracle of every split second. The "rifle" defends the Republic,  guided by the knowledge that God founds it.
Any step away from this Path will lead us astray and will immensely favor the forces of chaos and death. Any blind belief in politics and policies ( that ultimately reveals a blind belief in some form of historicism) will make us teach to the People the same atheist ignorance taught by the legions of nihilists.  When the Republic is  in danger,  the voices that rise sky-high pretending to defend Freedom while they are speaking only of policies know nothing about the Republic itself. The voices that we need to hear in defense of the Republic are the voices preaching the Infinite Love of God.
Policies come as a consequence of Truth and must remain SECOND, subsidiary, to it. We cannot bypass the brainwashing propaganda of the subversion directly, we need to re-address the attention of every Citizen towards the Principles and the Values established by the Truth.
The subversives preach class-warfare. We must preach Love to employees and employers.
The subversives preach "social-action". We must preach Prayer, that allows the opening of the hearts to the Light that can make of each Citizen a Builder.
The subversives call murder "choice". We must preach the Wonder of Life.

The Truth can make our hearts so great that our love can shine in the darkness of the ideological sermons and can cause all the people to re-center their minds and hearts on the Love of God.

How can we save the Republic if we haven't saved ourselves from all the fake ideas spread by the nihilists in the last two centuries ?
How can we save the Republic if despair is in our hearts ?
Demagogues can fake "hope" and they present their candidacy to be the terrifying "reformers" of the Republic and they can win important battles if the only way we know to counter them is a voice without enthusiasm and the shallow rationalism of the accountant: we must instead free the political and cultural discourse from the chains of a view of life as mere "survival" and we must speak of Wonder and Miracle, of Love and Good Will.
Today's subversion is only the result of centuries of propaganda in which the voice of the Truth has been silenced more and more: we cannot defeat today's subversion without attacking directly the nihilistic heart of the beast.
Yes, we think that it is not politically savvy to go in front of the TV cameras and speak of the Joy, of the Mystery, of the Wonder, of the Awe dictated by the Infinite Love of God. So we don't do it, and this omission is exactly how WE build a totalitarian country, and ultimately a totalitarian world: WE build it because we don't defend the Truth, the subversives are just exploiting the occasion.

Steady in the Joy of Infinite God Who Is Infinite Love, we will have no standing enemies, and the Republic will not  be in danger.