Psalm 137

EDITOR'S NOTE: Here's the psalm we talk about on the latest Revolution 21 podcast -- the one that's the basis of the Melodians' (not to mention Boney M's) "Rivers of Babylon."

1 By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.
2 We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof.
3 For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion.
4 How shall we sing the LORD’S song in a strange land?
5 If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning.
6 If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy.
7 Remember, O LORD, the children of Edom in the day of Jerusalem; who said, Rase it, rase it, even to the foundation thereof.
8 O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed; happy shall he be, that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us.
9 Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.


WELL, NOW. When you get to Verses 8 and 9, it certainly does sound like things haven't changed much in the Middle East in the past 3,000 years.

So, what do we make of those troubling (from a Christian perspective) final verses? I'm supposing that it all depends on how you read them.

I think you could read them very differently if, as some have contended throughout history, King David wrote all of the psalms, including this one -- hundreds of years before the Babylonian captivity. That would make it prophetic (as was Psalm 22, foretelling the passion of Jesus Christ, the Messiah), and I think you read it very differently then -- this is how people are going to react, rather than "I'm a goin' to kill pagan babies, and that's a good thing."

Or maybe it's just a straight recounting of how the captives genuinely (and fallenly) felt in their enslaved heart of hearts. The "human condition," in other words.

Whadda you think? Anyone know of a good Catholic commentary on this beautiful AND troubling psalm?

'How dare they pretend to give a damn about those they order to war?'

Veteran war corrspondent -- and decorated veteran -- Joseph Galloway is mad as hell at pols content to warehouse our grievously wounded soldiers in outpatient squalor. Galloway is eloquent and dead-on right; anything else I'd have to say would be superfluous

Here's an excerpt from the Editor & Publisher piece, but go read the whole thing. Please.

The same politicians, from a macho president to the bureaucrats to the people who chair the congressional committees that are supposed to oversee such matters, have utterly failed to protect our wounded warriors.

They’ve talked the talk but few, if any, have ever walked the walk.

No. This happened while all of them were busy as bees, taking billions out of the VA budget and planning to shut down Walter Reed by 2011 in the name of cost-efficiency.
Among those politicians are the people who sent too few troops to Afghanistan or Iraq, who failed to provide enough body armor and weapons and armored vehicles and who, to protect their own political hides, refused to admit that the mission was not accomplished and change course.

But it's they who are charged with the highest duty of all, in the words of President Abraham Lincoln in his Second Inaugural in 1865: "to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow, and his orphan."

How can they look at themselves in the mirror every morning? How dare they ever utter the words: Support Our Troops? How dare they pretend to give a damn about those they order to war?

They've hidden the flag-draped coffins of the fallen from the public and the press. They've averted their eyes from the suffering that their orders have visited upon an Army that they've ground down by misuse and over-use and just plain incompetence.

This shabby, sorry episode of political and institutional cruelty to those who deserve the best their nation can provide is the last straw. How can they spin this one to blame the generals or the media or the Democrats? How can you do that, Karl?

If the American people are not sickened and disgusted by this then, by God, we don’t deserve to be defended from the wolves of this world.

Psalm 1

1 Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.
2 But his delight is in the law of the LORD; and in his law doth he meditate day and night.
3 And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.
4 The ungodly are not so: but are like the chaff which the wind driveth away.
5 Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous.
6 For the LORD knoweth the way of the righteous: but the way of the ungodly shall perish.

Psalm 22

To the chief Musician upon Aijeleth Shahar, A Psalm of David.

1 My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?* why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring?
2 O my God, I cry in the daytime, but thou hearest not; and in the night season, and am not silent.
3 But thou art holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel.
4 Our fathers trusted in thee: they trusted, and thou didst deliver them.
5 They cried unto thee, and were delivered: they trusted in thee, and were not confounded.
6 But I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people.
7 All they that see me laugh me to scorn: they shoot out the lip, they shake the head saying,
8 He trusted on the LORD that he would deliver him: let him deliver him, seeing he delighted in him.
9 But thou art he that took me out of the womb: thou didst make me hope when I was upon my mother’s breasts.
10 I was cast upon thee from the womb: thou art my God from my mother’s belly.
11 Be not far from me; for trouble is near; for there is none to help.
12 Many bulls have compassed me: strong bulls of Bashan have beset me round.
13 They gaped upon me with their mouths, as a ravening and a roaring lion.
14 I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint: my heart is like wax; it is melted in the midst of my bowels.
15 My strength is dried up like a potsherd; and my tongue cleaveth to my jaws; and thou hast brought me into the dust of death.
16 For dogs have compassed me: the assembly of the wicked have inclosed me: they pierced my hands and my feet.
17 I may tell all my bones: they look and stare upon me.
18 They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture.
19 But be not thou far from me, O LORD: O my strength, haste thee to help me.
20 Deliver my soul from the sword; my darling from the power of the dog.
21 Save me from the lion’s mouth: for thou hast heard me from the horns of the unicorns.
22 I will declare thy name unto my brethren: in the midst of the congregation will I praise thee.
23 Ye that fear the LORD, praise him; all ye the seed of Jacob, glorify him; and fear him, all ye the seed of Israel.
24 For he hath not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; neither hath he hid his face from him; but when he cried unto him, he heard.
25 My praise shall be of thee in the great congregation: I will pay my vows before them that fear him.
26 The meek shall eat and be satisfied: they shall praise the LORD that seek him: your heart shall live for ever.
27 All the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the LORD: and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before thee.
28 For the kingdom is the LORD’S: and he is the governor among the nations.
29 All they that be fat upon earth shall eat and worship: all they that go down to the dust shall bow before him: and none can keep alive his own soul.
30 A seed shall serve him; it shall be accounted to the Lord for a generation.
31 They shall come, and shall declare his righteousness unto a people that shall be born, that he hath done this.

* See Matthew 27:46

Psalm 23

A Psalm of David.

1 The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.
2 He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
3 He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.
4 Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
5 Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.

A psalm a day . . . the Lenten way!

SOMETIMES, the best ideas come to you out of the blue. That's the deal with what Revolution 21's doing for Lent this year: We're going to blog a psalm a day until Easter.

Since, naturally, your Mighty Favog didn't come up with his bright idea UNTIL WE WERE TWO DAYS INTO LENT, we're going to have to start off with a bang -- a Psalter three fer, as it were.

TO VENTURE INTO THE PSALMS is to peer back some 3,000 years into the life of King David -- his joys, his praises to God, his prophecies and his despair and repentance. At a minimum, scholars attribute 73 of the 150 psalms to David. On the top end, many Church saints and scholars throughout millennia have argued that David wrote them all (in which case, Psalm 137, for example, would be a prophetic writing -- just like Psalm 22).

Regardless, the psalms are great poetry, early liturgical song -- prayers to God of thanks, of sorrow and, sometimes, cries for vengeance against the enemies of the Jewish people. The psalms are the human condition, which remains essentially unchanged over thousands of years.

Anyway, we'll be starting (in the next post) with the best known of all the psalms -- the 23rd. Which leads me to explain why a Catholic boy like your Mighty Favog will be taking our psalm blogs from the -- decidedly Protestant -- King James Version of the Bible.

WELL, IT'S LIKE THIS. Southerners of a certain age and older could not escape the lyrical verse of the KJV. The South always has been Christ-haunted (if not always actively Christ-following), and the common culture of the Deep South in which I came of age tended to paint Our Lord in Reformation orange, and it had Him speaking to us in the thees and thous of King James' 17th-century England.

The KJV is as beautiful to hear as it is sometimes alien to modern ears. And it is how God sounds to those of us reared in a time and place where the word of God was proclaimed with medieval authority, if not exactly heeded with due diligence.

I know this will be completely alien to readers under, say, 40 -- maybe 35 -- but when I was in elementary school, the Gideons (as in the Gideon Bible . . . think hotel rooms) would come to our public school and hand out pocket New Testaments, which included the Old Testament books of Psalms and Proverbs.

And in sixth grade, Mrs. Horn -- before getting around to diagramming sentences and the like -- would lead us in prayer and Bible study. Particularly the psalms.

Now, being that I've had precisely no reason to diagram a sentence in, oh, 35 years, I'm pretty shaky on that particular skill. But bless her wife-of-Southern Baptist-preacher heart, it was Mrs. Horn who introduced me to the Psalms, and to the concept of actually reading the Bible, as opposed to letting it collect dust . . . and family birth dates, wedding dates and death dates.

And it was Mrs. Horn who helped make it impossible for me to hear the 23rd Psalm in any other tongue but the King's English -- King James' English.

Now . . . on to Psalms for Lent.

We'll 'surge' . . . and 'surge' . . . and 'surge' until the last solitary Iraqi dies a free man

And that should take about 10 more years or so. File this under "What the politicians aren't telling you" . . . or, "Peeing down your leg and telling you it's raining."

By the time voters catch on to this, you have to wonder whether the Iraqi insurgency is going to be the least of President Bush's worries.

Newsweek's Michael Hirsh has the scoop:

The British are leaving, the Iraqis are failing and the Americans are staying—and we’re going to be there a lot longer than anyone in Washington is acknowledging right now. As Democrats and Republicans back home try to outdo each other with quick-fix plans for the withdrawal of U.S. troops and funds, what few people seem to have noticed is that Gen. David Petraeus’s new “surge” plan is committing U.S. troops, day by day, to a much deeper and longer-term role in policing Iraq than since the earliest days of the U.S. occupation. How long must we stay under the Petraeus plan? Perhaps 10 years. At least five. In any case, long after George W. Bush has returned to Crawford, Texas, for good.

But don’t take my word for it. I’m merely a messenger for a coterie of counterinsurgency experts who have helped to design the Petraeus plan—his so-called “dream team”—and who have discussed it with NEWSWEEK, usually on condition of anonymity, owing to the sensitivity of the subject. To a degree little understood by the U.S. public, Petraeus is engaged in a giant “do-over.” It is a near-reversal of the approach taken by Petraeus’s predecessor as commander of multinational forces in Iraq, Gen. George Casey, until the latter was relieved in early February, and most other top U.S. commanders going back to Rick Sanchez and Tommy Franks. Casey sought to accelerate both the training of Iraqi forces and American withdrawal. By 2008, the remaining 60,000 or so U.S. troops were supposed to be hunkering down in four giant “superbases,” where they would be relatively safe. Under Petraeus’s plan, a U.S. military force of 160,000 or more is setting up hundreds of “mini-forts” all over Baghdad and the rest of the country, right in the middle of the action. The U.S. Army has also stopped pretending that Iraqis—who have failed to build a credible government, military or police force on their own—are in the lead when it comes to kicking down doors and keeping the peace. And that means the future of Iraq depends on the long-term presence of U.S. forces in a way it did not just a few months ago. “We’re putting down roots,” says Philip Carter, a former U.S. Army captain who returned last summer from a year of policing and training in the hot zone around Baquba. “The Americans are no longer willing to accept failure in order to put Iraqis in the lead. You can’t let the mission fail just for the sake of diplomacy.”

Many U.S. military experts now believe that, if there is any hope of stabilizing Iraq, the Petraeus plan is the only way to do it. The critical question now, they say, is whether we have anywhere near enough troops committed to the effort, and whether America has the political will to see the strategy through to the end.

“This is the right strategy: small mini-packets of U.S. troops all over, small ‘oil spots’ [of stability] spreading out. It’s classic counterinsurgency,” says one of the Army’s top experts in irregular warfare, who helped draft the counterinsurgency manual that Petraeus produced while commander at Fort Leavenworth last year—the principles of which the general is applying to Iraq. “But it’s high risk and it’s going to take a long time.”

Gott segne Amerika!

When the Islamofascists get tough, the Americans get . . . Amerofascist?

Nat Hentoff has an important column in the Village Voice that you need to read. F'rinstance:

In 2002, Arar, a software engineer and citizen of Canada, was kidnapped and flown by the CIA to Syria, where for 10 months he was held in an underground cell seven feet high, three feet wide, and six feet deep ("like a grave," he said). The persistent tortures he underwent finally forced him to make a false confession of connections to Al Qaeda.
On his release, Syrian officials admitted there was a total lack of evidence against him. Then, after a two-year inquiry and its 1,200-page report by a Canadian commission—in which the United States refused to participate—Dennis O'Connor, the chief justice of the Ontario Court of Appeal, said, "I'm able to say categorically that there is no evidence to indicate that Mr. Arar has committed any offense or that his activities constitute a threat to the security of Canada."

The official inquiry had determined that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police had given the CIA unsubstantiated, brittle "evidence" that Arar was probably some kind of Al Qaeda supporter. And that's why, when he was changing planes at Kennedy Airport on the way back to Canada after a vacation in Tunisia, Arar was abducted by the CIA and sent to his native Syria.

On December 7, 2006, the commissioner of the RCMP, Giuliano Zaccardelli, resigned because he had mishandled the case, saying he had "made a mistake" in not being aware of the false information the RCMP had given the CIA.

In this country, you will not be surprised to learn, no one—at the CIA, the Justice Department, or in Dick Cheney's office of "dark arts"—has resigned or admitted any error at all.

Instead, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was asked at a press conference whether the Justice Department might at least offer Arar—who can't find a job and still suffers from the effects of his stay in the grave-like Syrian cell—an apology. Astonishingly, since Arar's ordeal has been reported in detail in mainstream American newspapers as well as in the foreign press, Gonzales actually said: "We were not responsible for Mr. Arar's removal to Syria. I'm not aware that he was tortured, and I haven't read the [Canadian] commission report. He was initially detained because his name appeared on terrorist lists, and he was deported according to our immigration laws."

(Hat tip: Mark Shea)

You guessed it . . . Ash Wednesday

Still Ash Wednesday

Ash Wednesday

White punks on Death

Or . . . "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds (Part 123,540,569,338)."

I wonder what freedom-loving nation will invade us to further the spread of democracy, justice and human rights.

From CNN:

MILWAUKEE, Wisconsin (CNN) -- All Nathan Moore says he wanted to do was smoke pot and get drunk with his friends.

Killing Rex Baum was never part of the plan that day in 2004.

"It all started off as a game," Moore said.

The 15-year-old and his friends were taunting the homeless man -- throwing sticks and leaves -- after having a couple of beers with him.

No big deal, Moore says, but he's sorry for what came next.

It was a mistake, he said, a sudden primal surge that made him and his friends Luis Oyola, 16, and 17-year-old Andrew Ihrcke begin punching and kicking Baum.

"Luis says 'I'm gonna go hit him,' We're all laughing, thought he was joking around,'" but he wasn't, Moore concedes. "We just all started hitting him."

They hurled anything they could find -- rocks, bricks, even Baum's barbecue grill -- and pounded the 49-year-old with a pipe and with the baseball bat he kept at his campsite for protection.

Ihrcke smeared his own feces on Baum's face before cutting him with a knife "to see if he was alive," Moore said.

After destroying Baum's camp, the boys left the homeless man -- head wedged in his own grill -- under a piece of plastic where they hoped the "animals would eat" him.

Then, Moore says, they took off to grab a bite at McDonald's.

Baum's murder was indicative of a disturbing trend.

A National Coalition for the Homeless report says last year, there were 122 attacks and 20 murders against the homeless, the most attacks in nearly a decade.

Police found Baum's body two days after the teens attacked him.

They bragged about it around town. Police picked them up and they described what happened.

Ihrcke told police that killing "the bum" reminded him of playing a violent video game, a police report shows.

All three teens pleaded no contest to first degree reckless homicide charges and went to prison.

Moore recently turned 18 at Columbia Correctional Institution in Portage, Wisconsin, where he is serving a 15 year sentence.

"When [the beating] stops, you say, 'What did we just do?'" he told CNN. "There's no rational explanation."

Dear Diary: Shakespeare comes to Pope FM

EDITOR'S NOTE: Here's another in the occasional series of dispatches recorded some years ago from the front lines of Catholic radio -- Pope FM.

* * *

FRIDAY, MARCH 1, 2002

Dear Diary,

Father Bob is a sick man, obviously is in deep denial, and his priesthood in all likelihood is shot to s***. But, hey, so are we at Pope FM . . . at least the deep in denial part: Our official response to this present darkness is "Time to circle the wagons."

We're probably pretty damn sick (in our own peculiar, clericalist way), too.

Not that Father Bob's priesthood shouldn't be toast. The saving grace of all this is the Madis County prosecutor stepped in and shined light on this (I hope) before Bob had the chance to slide from kiddie-porn addiction to something worse.

I've heard some things over the transom that cause me to have more sympathy for the man.

What the story is here is how just about EVERYONE is victimized by chanceries' ineptitude (to put it charitably) in dealing with this issue. In this, Father Bob has been victimized by the chancery's refusal to act more decisively just as much as anyone.

The archbishop basically destroyed the man's priesthood by putting him back into parishes right away with only the "stay away from kids" caveat -- one on which the archdiocese obviously did not follow up. If he had been reassigned to a desk job, been monitored and mentored closely and required to get serious mental-health counseling, perhaps one day -- one day -- he could have safely resumed parish work.

Here is what I think is going on. The arch has a bee up his butt about the media, and he has an ego the size of North Dakota. I mean, this is a SERIOUS blind spot the man has, with serious arrogance about it.

And he spreads this us-against-them mentality to everyone around him, and in the case of my boss, eggs on her native "evil secular media" mindset. It's all very Nixonian and, indeed, paranoia will destroy 'ya.

Furthermore, his chancellor's playing poor scared and eager-to-please souls like Mary, my boss, like a Stradivarius, feeding them full of crap about the latest "assaults" and recon missions against Mother Church by the evil and stupid press corps.

A pretty good trick if you can pull it off -- which, quite frankly, isn't tough to do when dealing with pious Catholics -- getting the people whom you have victimized to help cover your ass when the press tries to hold you accountable for your (to put the most charitable interpretation on it) bumbling.

This evening I told Mary in no uncertain words that the only way to "handle" the press is to tell reporters the truth, and if there's something you just can't comment on, to say "no comment." I told her reporters aren't stupid and they know when people are bull****ing them.

I also told her that I had read the newspaper story and asked her whether she really had said Father Bob was on Keys to the Kingdom two or three times, because that struck me as being way low -- that it was more like seven or eight times. She told me that she just wanted to get the reporter off the phone and pulled a number out of her hat.

Later, I told Mary that I thought the archdiocese had victimized everybody involved, most notably Pope FM and "Spirit Fire" by not keeping adequate tabs on Bob and by keeping the station and the youth group in the dark. (And the jerks did keep EVERYONE utterly in the dark.) I said that the chancery had risked unspeakable tragedy if anything had happened with a kid, and now was trying to hide from the press to escape accountability.

Basically, I said, the archbishop's job is to take responsibility for what goes on during his watch -- that was why the pope made him a bishop, to be a man and take the heat when the rubber meets the road.

I closed by saying I have been nearly physically ill over this since the news broke this weekend, and that I was totally disillusioned with the archdiocese. I added that I had expected better than the way Cardinal Law handled things in Boston. (Yes, in talking to True Believers like Mary, the chancellor is using the "shrinks gave him a clean bill of health" line. But they're not even saying that much publicly.)

Everyone keeps writing about this like it's an ecclesiastical Watergate. It's not. What it is, is a Shakespearean tragedy. And when you start stringing this s*** together from around the country, it's a Shakespearean tragedy of earth-shattering proportions.

THAT is the story. And the question at hand is this: How do we free faithful Catholics and scared-s***less Catholic media managers like Mary to do what needs to be done to save our Church, instead of them just being rank enablers for the walking pathologies in our chanceries?

A big question, that. And the stakes couldn't be higher.

And how do we treat our Hessians?

THAT IS . . . once the "Hessians" have outlived their usefulness, by getting themselves shot and blown up and then having the gall to survive the whole thing. The Washington Post has some insights on this, which have been picked up by the rest of the national press.

Which has left the Pentagon and the White House saying, in effect, "Homina, homina, homina . . . ."

Disengaged clerks, unqualified platoon sergeants and overworked case managers fumble with simple needs: feeding soldiers' families who are close to poverty, replacing a uniform ripped off by medics in the desert sand or helping a brain-damaged soldier remember his next appointment.

"We've done our duty. We fought the war. We came home wounded. Fine. But whoever the people are back here who are supposed to give us the easy transition should be doing it," said Marine Sgt. Ryan Groves, 26, an amputee who lived at Walter Reed for 16 months. "We don't know what to do. The people who are supposed to know don't have the answers. It's a nonstop process of stalling."

Soldiers, family members, volunteers and caregivers who have tried to fix the system say each mishap seems trivial by itself, but the cumulative effect wears down the spirits of the wounded and can stall their recovery.

"It creates resentment and disenfranchisement," said Joe Wilson, a clinical social worker at Walter Reed. "These soldiers will withdraw and stay in their rooms. They will actively avoid the very treatment and services that are meant to be helpful."

Danny Soto, a national service officer for Disabled American Veterans who helps dozens of wounded service members each week at Walter Reed, said soldiers "get awesome medical care and their lives are being saved," but, "Then they get into the administrative part of it and they are like, 'You saved me for what?' The soldiers feel like they are not getting proper respect. This leads to anger."

This world is invisible to outsiders. Walter Reed occasionally showcases the heroism of these wounded soldiers and emphasizes that all is well under the circumstances. President Bush, former defense secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and members of Congress have promised the best care during their regular visits to the hospital's spit-polished amputee unit, Ward 57.

"We owe them all we can give them," Bush said during his last visit, a few days before Christmas. "Not only for when they're in harm's way, but when they come home to help them adjust if they have wounds, or help them adjust after their time in service."

Along with the government promises, the American public, determined not to repeat the divisive Vietnam experience, has embraced the soldiers even as the war grows more controversial at home. Walter Reed is awash in the generosity of volunteers, businesses and celebrities who donate money, plane tickets, telephone cards and steak dinners.

Yet at a deeper level, the soldiers say they feel alone and frustrated. Seventy-five percent of the troops polled by Walter Reed last March said their experience was "stressful." Suicide attempts and unintentional overdoses from prescription drugs and alcohol, which is sold on post, are part of the narrative here.

Vera Heron spent 15 frustrating months living on post to help care for her son. "It just absolutely took forever to get anything done," Heron said. "They do the paperwork, they lose the paperwork. Then they have to redo the paperwork. You are talking about guys and girls whose lives are disrupted for the rest of their lives, and they don't put any priority on it."

AND BELIEVE ME, the story gets much, much worse from here.

Late, Late Show's good, good guy

Let's all raise a glass of sparkling grape juice to Craig Ferguson, late (or is that late, late?) of The Drew Carey Show and present host of CBS Television's The Late, Late Show.

From The Associated Press:

LOS ANGELES -- Craig Ferguson decided not to poke fun at Britney Spears for at least one night.

The host of CBS' "The Late Late Show" told viewers Monday that after seeing photos of the 25-year-old pop star's shaved head, he reconsidered making jokes at the expense of the "vulnerable."

(snip)

"For me, comedy should have a certain amount of joy in it," Ferguson said. "It should be about attacking the powerful -- the politicians, the Trumps, the blowhards -- going after them. We shouldn't be attacking the vulnerable."

Ferguson recalled his battle with alcoholism and said he worries Spears may be having troubles of her own.

OH . . . AND IT LOOKS LIKE Britney's giving rehab another shot. Let's hope it takes this time, and that she can get a grip on Demon Rum . . . and Demon Sex . . . and Demon Crappy Self-Concept . . . and Demon You, Too, Can Be as God . . . .

Hessians

A most interesting item from The Associated Press:

MCKEESPORT, Pa. — Edward “Willie” Carman wanted a ticket out of town, and the Army provided it.

Raised by a single mother in this old industrial steel town outside Pittsburgh, the 18-year-old saw the military as an opportunity.

“I’m not doing it to you, I’m doing it for me,” he told his mother, Joanna Hawthorne, after coming home from high school one day and surprising her with the news.

When Carman died in Iraq three years ago at age 27, he had money saved for college, a fiancee and two kids — including a baby son he had never met. Neighbors in Hawthorne’s mobile home park collected $400 and left it in an envelope in her door.

Across the U.S., small towns are quietly bearing a disproportionate burden of war. Nearly half of the more than 3,100 U.S. military casualties in Iraq have come from towns like McKeesport, where fewer than 25,000 people live, according to an analysis by The Associated Press. One in five have come from hometowns of less than 5,000.

Many of the hometowns of the war dead are not just small, they are poor. The AP analysis found that nearly three-quarters of those killed in Iraq came from towns where the per capita income was below the national average. More than half came from towns where the percentage of people living in poverty topped the national average.

Some are old factory towns like McKeesport, once home to U.S. Steel’s National Tube Works, which employed 8,000 people at its peak. Now, residents’ average income is just 60 percent of the national average, and one in eight lives below the federal poverty line.

On a per capita basis, states with mostly rural populations have suffered the highest casualties in Iraq. Vermont, South Dakota, Alaska, North Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming, Delaware, Montana, Louisiana and Oregon top the list, the AP found.

There’s a “basic unfairness” about the number of troops dying in Iraq who are from rural areas, said William O’Hare, senior visiting fellow at the University of New Hampshire’s Carsey Institute, which examines rural issues.

Diminished opportunities are one factor in higher military enlistment rates in rural areas. From 1997 to 2003, 1.5 million rural workers lost their jobs due to changes in industries like manufacturing that have traditionally employed rural workers, according to the Carsey Institute.

(snip)

Death is not the only burden the war has put on small towns.

Entrepreneurs in many small communities have lost their businesses after deploying in the Guard and Reserves, said Senator Jon Tester.

Another fairness issue, raised by Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., is the Pentagon’s practice of transporting the remains of military personnel killed in Iraq only to the nearest major airport. He has introduced legislation to require delivery of the remains to the military or civilian airport chosen by the family.

Support for the war in rural areas has declined sharply in the past three years. AP-Ipsos polls show that those in rural areas who said going to war was the right decision dropped from 73 percent in April 2004 to 39 percent now.

(snip)

Joanna Hawthorne is bitter about a military she said enticed her son with promises of money, then sent him to a war based on a lie.

When her son’s first enlistment was nearing an end, before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Hawthorne said he decided to re-enlist, partly because the signing bonus of more than $10,000 would help pay his bills.

When he deployed to Iraq, his sister said, he had money saved and planned to go to college when he got out of the military in 2005.

Instead, he died in Iraq in 2004 when his tank overturned.

Hawthorne said the military gave her $4,000 for his funeral, but it wasn’t enough to cover the $14,000 expense. The funeral home forgave the rest.

“You don’t see anyone who has money putting their children into the military,” Hawthorne said. “I’m all for our soldiers. Without them, our country wouldn’t be where we are today, but this war just doesn’t seem right.”

IT'S COME TO THIS in our all-volunteer military at a time of war. We're sending in the Hessians.

And the Hessians are coming back home -- coming back home disproportionately dead.

During the Revolutionary War, the British supplemented their ranks with soldiers-for-hire from what would eventually become Germany. Today, King George 43 and his generals in the Pentagon just send for their soldiers-for-hire disproportionately from America's small towns, where the deck is stacked (and not in a good way) and a future is what college boys from the big city have.

The military as a way out worked out pretty well for Audie Murphy during World War II. He killed a bazillion Krauts, then got a million-dollar wound, a Medal of Honor and a Hollywood career.

We knew why the hell we were in World War II. Somebody tell me -- with a straight face, now -- why the hell we're in Iraq.

Even amid the catastrophe that is Iraq, kids from small-town America still see the military as a way out. Or at least as something to do.

But that "something to do" too often means they come home not as postmillennial Audie Murphys but, instead, as merely dead. Or merely horribly wounded.

And the "who" of who is paying the price probably is why President Bush has gotten away with murder for as long as he has. We don't have to fight this insane, pointless war -- or at least the well off and the college boys and the politicians' sons and daughters don't, by and large.

We have the Hessians to do it for us, freeing us to worry about the truly important things in life. Like that ski weekend. Or replacing the SUV with a new H2.

Or sending Johnny off to State U., where the most dangerous thing he'll do in his dissolute college existence (before heading off to his dissolute adult existence) is drink to excess and risk a catching nasty case of something from "hooking up" with the coeds.

Dear Diary: It gets worser and worser

EDITOR'S NOTE: Here's another in the occasional series of dispatches recorded some years ago from the front lines of Catholic radio -- Pope FM.

* * *

TUESDAY, FEB. 26, 2002

Dear Diary,


The archdiocese is trying to pull a fast one.

Bob Kolfrier may have been "ordered" to stay away from kids (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) but he didn't. He was involved with the "Spirit Fire" youth group connected to Pope FM this whole time. He was an occasional guest priest on Keys to the Kingdom -- and we know that because of the bishops' document on Catholic media, HE HAD TO BE APPROVED BY THE ARCHBISHOP.

I know for a fact this was the case. The producer told me there were only so many priests approved to appear on that show.

This is total and complete bulls***.

THIS IS THE BUNCH OF LIES being fed to the newspaper:

Eight months before authorities started investigating a priest for allegedly
viewing child pornography, the Catholic Church removed him from his teaching
duties and limited his contact with children, according to police documents.

The Rev. Bob Kolfrier told his archbishop in February 2001 that he
viewed child pornography as many as four times a week, for several hours each
time, according to a search warrant filed Monday in Madis County.

Kolfrier was removed from his teaching position at Carson Catholic High
School and was ordered to abstain from contact with children outside of worship
services, documents state.

Last June, Kolfrier transferred to St. Theresa Catholic Church in Southtown as part of a regular rotation.

AFTER READING TODAY'S ARTICLE and seeing that what it stated was not the truth, the missus and I knew what conscience demanded that we do.

We called up one of the reporters on the story, and told her that Father Bob had been involved with Keys to the Kingdom, the Spirit Fire youth group and had gone on bus trips to "Steubenville of the Rockies." We also told her the chancery HAD to have known he was involved with Keys to the Kingdom because every priest on that show was approved by the archbishop or Father Mark Leinstell, the chancellor.

We also gave her the name of the bishops' document so she could look it up on the Web.

I wouldn't bet money that I won't be fired. Damn these people. Damn them all.

Internet matchmaker ad we'd like to see

Losing it

XM satellite radio programming guru Lee Abrams -- architect, by the way, of one of the great radio stations of my youth: WRNO, The Rock of New Orleans -- thinks we're losing our collective . . . er, stuff. He lays it all out in an inspired rant on his blog:

I think American Culture may be having a nervous breakdown. Popular Culture is one of our greatest resources and exports, but “junk” culture is clogging the arteries of our lives. I tune in a “respectable” news channel and hear, in order:

*A critical update on who the Father of Anna Nicole might be, along with ongoing coverage of Anna Nicole’s death. Since when does a trashy bimbo with absolutely no talent but DOES have a skill for attracting attention, warrant ANY coverage on a legitimate news channel? I thought we had tabloids for this stuff...and no she's NOT Marilyn Monroe.

Then…

*Ongoing debate about The Dixie Chicks and how “important” they are to the 2008 elections. Huh??? Keep up their rants and it’ll guarantee a Republican President.

Then…

*More about the pre-marital sex the astronaut with the attempted murder rap. If as much attention was paid to the positive efforts of NASA we'd have someone on Mars by now.

Then….

*An update on Brittney’s partying and a possible split with Paris. Important stuff...

This was NOT on an Entertainment” segment. This was masquerading as “news”. This celebrity thing is WAY out of control. It’s “junk culture”. It’s always existed, but never before have there been literally millions of websites, radio, TV and other outlets to spew this shit….and many people actually DO believe what they hear and read. And think it’s important. It MUST be if “News Alive Action Super Update at 10” is doing the lead story. This is very sick. What’s sick is the degree it is making us a Nation of media cretins. I can’t blame consumers... I can’t blame anyone— but its happening and it’s out of control…and it isn’t one of these old guy things wishing we were back in the 60’s….it’s one of those, we Americans better be careful or we’ll choke on our own trash. It CAN happen here.

Yep. Go read the whole thing.

You want a mission statement? I'll give you a mission statement

"To find those with holy hand grenades
up their butt and pull the pin."

(Hat tip: The Internet Monk)

I watched this interview with Canada's most listened-to Christian radio host -- aired on Canada's most-watched Evangelical television program -- and let's just say chords were struck.

Furthermore, I'm just grateful that I wasn't drinking hot coffee when I watched Drew Marshall on 100 Huntley Street. I'd still be trying to clean it all off of the monitor, the keyboard, the wall . . . .

Somebody's little girl

Here's what you won't read in our celebrity-obsessed media's non-stop coverage of Britney Spears' descent into madness: Britney Spears was somebody's little girl. She -- such as she is -- still is somebody's daughter.

And as she descends into the alcohol-, sex- and psychically fueled hellfire of her own making -- and as scads of American websites, newspapers, tabloids and magazines make s***loads of money chronicling every aspect of the destruction of a human being . . . turning profound tragedy into spectator sport -- those who love her grieve. Those who love her want her to just stop it, stop it now.

But they are utterly powerless to make her stop it.

They cannot stop her headlong -- now bald headlong -- descent into that special hell inhabited by poor little rich girls (and boys) for whom the camera never blinks. For whom the inner demons do their dirty work in front of 300 million slack-jawed gawkers who worship the rich and famous as they wait, just wait, for all of those Britneys to screw it all up . . . screw it all up bad enough so that their ordinary American lives seem just a bit less futile and meaningless by comparison.

We -- the hopelessly ordinary -- gawk at these magnificent human disaster areas for whom all the money and fame (and, sometimes, maybe even talent) in the world has profited nothing. Zilch. Zero. Nada. Rien.

Britney Spears. Lindsay Lohan. Paris Hilton. Pete Doherty. They're to today's mass media -- to today's mass media consumers -- what a good train wreck was to silent movies. They're Harold Lloyd hanging from the minute hand of a giant clock 15 stories up.

They're Slim Pickens riding the Big One down to the Apocalypse.

All for our amusement . . . and for our entertainment dollar.

SOMEWHERE, some poor little rich girl's mama cries.

Somewhere, an American media consumer -- leading a life of quiet futility and despair -- sits wide-eyed in front of the television set (or computer screen) waiting for the next human train wreck on Entertainment Tonight.

I am guilty. And so are you.

Somewhere, Britney Spears' mama sits, crying over her daughter adrift in a sea of futile wealth.

Somewhere, Britney Spears' children's souls are being lashed by an invisible bullwhip, the wounds from which will bleed somewhere down the road.

It just doesn't add up

OK, THIS IS BAD.

Even for a journalism major.

Don't mess with people's religion

It's axiomatic that you can expect more heat than light when you start talking religion or politics.

Daily Reveille columnist Emily Byers, however, just can't help herself. This brazen hussy down at Louisiana State University insists upon trashing most college students' religion with incendiary rhetoric such as this:

Imagine that parents taught children to form healthy relationships with this line of reasoning: The best relationships call for honesty, generosity and mutual respect. Your chances of finding happiness, security and fulfillment in such relationships are very high; however, they require you to exercise self-restraint. Since you're probably not capable of self-restraint, here are numerous ways to form relationships in which you and another person consent to use one another for your own selfish benefit. These relationships require you to take careful precautions to ensure your well-being, but they are just as acceptable as the first kind and much more common. Choose whichever you feel is best.

It may not make sense, but this is precisely how proponents of comprehensive sex education expect to teach young people to form healthy sexual relationships.

The French House hosted the Spirituality and Choice Discussion Series on Tuesday sponsored by the LSU Women's Center, Spiritual Youth for Reproductive Freedom and VOX: Voices for Planned Parenthood. This session, "Sex Education: Too Much or Not Enough?" explored the compatibility of spirituality and support for comprehensive sex education.

Each of the four speakers on the discussion panel claimed that ideally sex education should portray abstinence until marriage and the use of contraception as equally acceptable alternatives for young people. This approach is often called abstinence-plus or abstinence-based sex education. Each panelist emphasized the importance of ensuring that young people are free to choose what's best for them as individuals.

I'm not sure a person can be expected to choose "what's best" when he or she is told that both alternatives are equally acceptable. Young people are always free to choose abstinence or contraception. Even programs that strongly encourage abstinence don't deny them that choice; however, they can only make an informed decision when they've got a clear picture of both alternatives, and they certainly won't get that from the sort of program Tuesday's panelists described.

Acknowledging the validity of abstinence as a healthy choice while contending that it can be unhealthy to repress one's sexual urges is an apparent contradiction. How can self-restraint be healthy and unhealthy at the same time?

Calling abstinence until marriage "ideal," as members of Tuesday's panel repeatedly did while admitting that you don't expect young people to choose it is pointless. Why mention abstinence if you're going to insinuate that it's practically impossible to practice? Someone who sings the praises of "choice" but implies that young people are incapable of choosing to master their sexual urge clearly has very little faith in their ability to choose.

SHOCKING, ISN'T IT? This sort of disrespect of her contemporaries' -- indeed, our entire Western society's -- most sacred religious beliefs stung the student population at LSU, resulting in strong but surprisingly restrained and reasoned rebuttals in the Reveille's comboxes. To wit:

Ryan
posted 2/15/07 @ 11:13 AM EST

[QUOTE]An argument for contraception is essentially an argument against self-restraint and for consensual objectification. The contraceptive attitude says, "Let me use you, and I'll let you use me."

This attitude cannot teach people to have healthy sexual relationships. If a healthy sexual relationship requires mutual respect, one must act unselfishly and practice self-restraint in order to have one.[/QUOTE]

Wow, that's just a load of crap. How about "an argument for contraception is an argument against STDs and unwanted pregnancies and for two consenting adults to do something that is no business of yours or your church's".

How does this attitude not teach people to have healthy sexual relationships? It's much more healthy than failed abstinence-only plans. Why does mutual respect require abstinence? I guess it is easy to think this way if you discount all of the healthy relationships which have mutual respect without abstinence that people are in right now.

Maybe you need an article to justify your stance on an issue that is causing the death of millions of people, but publishing this load is not helping anyone.

Joe
posted 2/15/07 @ 5:39 PM EST

Travis, your comparison of sex to global warming is priceless. I love how you attempt to validate your biased point of view by trying to use irrelevant scientific facts. I suppose you feel that anyone who takes medicine for an illness is committing and unspeakable sin that goes against the natural process of life! Seriously, SRC and Ryan make excellent points in that it is scary that a person can become so brainwashed and lacking of any ability to think for themselves due to their religion or faith.

On a side note, just about every article written by this columnist makes me sick to my stomach at first, then I sit back and smile when I think how much more intelligent of a person I am for the simple reason that I am able to think for myself and how pitiful she is for being such a puppet.

ON THE OTHER HAND, I am a bit puzzled about the "freethinking" aspects of being a member of the largest and most doctrinaire religious organization in the United States, if not the entire Western world. Of course, I am not an adherent of the Church of the Holy Inconsequential Climax, so I admit to not being an expert on its internal discipine or on potential consequences facing dissenters.

I will admit, however, that some of the rituals of the Church of the Holy Inconsequential Climax are downright interesting.

Dear Diary: My pervs-in-the-Church nightmare

EDITOR'S NOTE: Here's another in the occasional series of dispatches recorded some years ago from the front lines of Catholic radio -- Pope FM.

* * *

MONDAY, FEB. 25, 2002

Dear diary,


From the newspaper:

A priest at St. Theresa Catholic Church in Southtown told an investigator that he viewed child pornography on the Internet as part of research he had been conducting since he was a seminary student.

Details of the investigation were included in a search warrant filed Monday in Madis County District Court. The investigation is taking place in Carson, where the Rev. Bob Kolfrier formerly served at Word Incarnate-St. Joan parish.

No charges have been filed against Kolfrier, and the investigation is continuing.

The search warrant gave these details of the investigation:

Church officials learned in January 2001 that two young men had seen Internet addresses for child porn Web sites on Kolfrier's computer in the church office.

The young men told a priest at another church, who notified the Word Incarnate-St. Joan pastor.

A meeting involving Archbishop Felton Burris, the Rev. Mark Leinstell, chancellor of the archdiocese, the pastor and Kolfrier was held Feb. 1, 2001.

Kolfrier was removed from his teaching position.

Kolfrier later transferred to St. Theresa in Southtown during the regular rotation period in summer 2001.

Police learned of the allegations in October 2001.

Sgt. Michael Bauer of the Carson police interviewed Kolfrier in his Southtown office Wednesday. According to the search warrant, Kolfrier told Bauer that he viewed child pornography on his computer three or four times a week for two or three hours at a time over three years. He said he was conducting research on child pornography. He also said he used a computer program to remove the Web site addresses from his computer.

Kolfrier was not at Masses this weekend and will not be working in the parish until the investigation is concluded, Leinstell said.

One reason for Kolfrier's absence, Leinstell said, is so television and newspaper reporters "won't run him down."

Leinstell said the archdiocese will cooperate with the investigation.

WHO THE !@#$ does Father Bob think he's fooling . . . other than, perhaps, himself? And note that the archdiocese knew about this for more than a year, but kept him in parish ministry. AND WORKING WITH THE KIDS ON KEYS TO THE KINGDOM !!!!!!!!

Ths is outrageous. Here at Pope FM, my boss is swimming down the River of Denial. She buys the research line, though she says it was "incredibly stupid." A quote from her: "I've known Father Bob since he was in high school, and there's no way he has any interest in child pornography."

One of the kids involved with Keys to the Kingdom is like a daughter to Mrs. Favog and me. She's devastated, more or less. She kept telling her mom, "But he's a great guy!"

Furthermore, Mary -- my boss -- said they would be having a meeting Friday night with the Keys to the Kingdom kids. She, the "spiritual activities director" and Father Fabian Desmond will handle it. I suggested they bring in a counselor specializing in this, from the Catholic rehab facility. I was rebuffed out of hand.

God help us all. Damn these people. Damn them.

Dear Diary: It's no longer academic. It's personal.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Here's another in the occasional series of dispatches recorded some years ago from the front lines of Catholic radio -- Pope FM.

* * *

SUNDAY, FEB. 24, 2002

Dear diary,


So much for Jesus in the tabernacle warding off all the bad s*** from Pope FM. It don't get no badder than this. Southtown is a suburb, pretty much right in the south-central part of town. Fr. Bob Kolfrier is a pretty regular guest on Keys to the Kingdom . . . I know him. Our assistant pastor at St. Matthew's is a good friend of his. He is (was?) supposed to be the priest on Keys to the Kingdom tomorrow night to talk about the Mass.

This from today's newspaper:

Published Sunday

February 24, 2002

Southtown priest under investigation in child-pornography case

A parish priest in Southtown is under investigation by authorities in Madis County in connection with allegations of child pornography.

Madis County Attorney John Nift confirmed the investigation and told the Carson Daily News that two search warrants had been served - at the Carson church where the priest had been assigned until last June as well as at a residence in the Southtown area. Computer equipment was seized in the search, the newspaper said.

Nift said no arrests have been made and the investigation was continuing. He could not be reached Saturday for comment.

The newspaper said the priest, the Rev. Bob Kolfrier, served at Word Incarnate-St. Joan parish in Carson from 1998, when he was ordained, to June 2001, when he became an associate pastor of St. Theresa parish in Southtown.

The Rev. Larry Beidecker, pastor of St. Theresa parish, said Saturday that he had no information on the investigation. He referred all questions to the Rev. Mark Leinstell, chancellor of the archdiocese. Leinstell could not be reached.

I (WE) NEED PRAYERS. If the archdiocese and my boss do not do the right thing tomorrow -- that is, make sure Father Bob (even though legally there is a presumption of innocence) IS NOT on the air and DOES NOT interact with those kids -- I intend to immediately quit my job. In this kind of thing, there is no debate, there is no worrying about the extreme financial hardship you will be leaping into.

There just isn't.

So, Holy Mother of God, pray for my boss to have common sense and for a sense of Pope FM's self-preservation override her propensity toward ultrapiety and circling the wagons. Pray for the archdiocese to do the right thing . . . and quickly. And pray for my actions to be guided by the Holy Spirit and not by intense anger, righteous though it may be.

And one more twice . . . What we're all about

EDITOR'S NOTE: Yet again -- and I'll probably do this every now again again -- we're rerunning this blog's opening post . . . just to make sure a few things that need to be said keep getting said. After all, Revolution 21 IS kind of, well, unique.

So here goes (again), a blast from the past:

GREETINGS. The Mighty Favog here. Welcome to Revolution 21.

Let's get something straight right now, O huddled masses: Revolution 21 ain't your grandma's radio podcast. It ain't your typical Catholic radio thing, and it ain't your typical corporate, over-researched, same-boring-playlist rock radio thing, either.

But is it really useful to define Revolution 21 by what it's not? So sorry, my plebes! My bad.

Let's just say -- plainly -- what Revolution 21 is. Revolution 21 is radio that aims to reflect life as it is lived by screwed-up, struggling, inspired-yet-bumbling children of God sorely in need of His grace and forgiveness.

Revolution 21 realizes that Catholics like the Mighty Favog -- your host and the master of dysfunctionality -- live life with one foot in Heaven and the other in the gutter with all the other schmucks called Humanity. We strive for holiness, we occasionally achieve it, and sometimes the best we can muster is Holier Than Thou.

Oh, well. Blame it on Eve and that damned apple.

For his part, the Mighty Favog -- though a great and mighty Favog -- is a Bad Catholic. It is to be hoped, however, that he is capable of decent radio . . . and a stellar podcast.

And he's trying most mightily to become, at the least, a Mediocre Catholic.

So, like us believing schmucks, Revolution 21 is a mixture of the sacred and the secular. The serious and the foolish. Rock . . . and roll. And blues in the night.

But Revolution 21 has a problem with our oversecularized, materialist and ultimately shallow culture. We figure schizo is the only thing you get out of putting faith waaaaaaaaaaaaaay over in one corner of your life and "real life" waaaaaaaaaaaaaay over in another corner so the two never touch (probably out of fear of some Matter-Antimatter cataclysm).

Or something like that.

Well, Revolution 21 LIKES IT when things get blowed up good. We say put that Faith Thing and that Life Thing in a bag, shake it the hell up and see what happens.

I mean, ain't that a lot more fun than alienation, ennui and life in Schizo City? Or, if not always fun, at least always a lot more interesting and, ultimately, rewarding.

But then again, it's not All About Me -- or All About You -- is it, now?

Enough blather, proclaims the Mighty Favog, your potentate of New Media!

Let us now proceed with trashing preconceived notions of radio formatting and stale bourgeois convention. Let us now do radio like we ought to be living -- faith and life together, recognizing only two kinds of music. That would be Good and Bad.

The bad, we don't mess with.

Dear Diary: More Catholic than the Pope FM

EDITOR'S NOTE: Here's another in the occasional series of dispatches recorded some years ago from the front lines of Catholic radio -- Pope FM.

* * *

SATURDAY, FEB. 18, 2002

Dear Diary,

I am spitting mad.

The other week, as I told you, I somewhat got into it with a couple of the Pope FM powers that be over their planning to bar the Keys to the Kingdom teen-agers (the ones not on the air) from our chapel during the show. I was told it was just for one week, until the little darlings could be "instructed" in proper decorum before the Blessed Sacrament.

Well, tonight, the kids were supposed to be instructed. But still, before I left the station tonight, our "spiritual activities director" denied one teen-ager permission to go into the chapel when he asked, and then told several of the kids that they were requested to (again) stay out of the chapel during the show.

I find this outrageous and incredibly self-righteous. Absolutely outrageous, this telling ANYONE, without demonstrated cause, that they cannot enter into the presence of the living God. That IS what we Catholics believe about the Eucharist, right? That it is the living God? Christ incarnate?

TRUTH BE TOLD, most of these kids are a lot more pious than I am. Though the young volunteer producer of Keys to the Kingdom told me last week that she had to "yell" at one kid for going in the Pope FM chapel barefoot.

I barely restrained myself from telling her "So what? The best Jesus ever did in the footwear department during His earthly life were first-century flip-flops."

Dunno, maybe my revulsion and puzzlement at this rigidity and hyperdevotionalism has turned me into a squishy AmChurch goofus, but I figure Jesus cares more about what's in the kids' hearts than what's on their feet.

This is deeply weird.

And Lord forgive the plank in my own eye, but I told the missus this morning that if Flannery O'Connor were still alive, she'd be writing about our "spiritual activities director."

Furthermore, I offer the following prayer with total sincerity and considerable pain:

"Saints Walker Percy and Flannery O'Connor, O precious barefoot Son of Man who had no home to lay Your sacred head . . . HELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLPPP!!! Amen."

And "Oy veh!"

They're gone . . . oh why? What went wrong?

From The Associated Press:

A second blogger working for Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards quit Tuesday under pressure from conservative critics who said her previous online messages were anti-Catholic.

Melissa McEwan wrote on her personal blog, Shakespeare's Sister, that she left the campaign because she was becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the level of attention focused on her and her family.

"This was a decision I made, with the campaign's reluctant support, because my remaining the focus of sustained ideological attacks was inevitably making me a liability to the campaign," McEwan said Tuesday night.

Kate Bedingfield, a spokeswoman for the Edwards campaign, said McEwan left the campaign under her own terms. Both Bedingfield and McEwan declined additional comment.

McEwan's resignation came just one day after another blogger, Amanda Marcotte, left the Edwards staff for similar reasons.

Both had become a flashpoint for conservative critics. Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, called Marcotte and McEwan "foul-mouthed bigots" for remarks he deemed anti-Catholic. Last week, Donohue called on Edwards to fire both bloggers.

Edwards, a former North Carolina senator, responded that he considered the bloggers' past writings personally offensive and added that similar content would not be tolerated. But he decided to keep Marcotte and McEwan on staff to give them "a fair shake."

"We're beginning a great debate about the future of our country, and we can't let it be hijacked," Edwards said in a statement last week.

Donohue had promised a nationwide public relations campaign in newspapers, magazines and Catholic publications in an effort to rid the Edwards campaign of the two bloggers. The Catholic League counts 350,000 members.

McEwan and Marcotte have stressed that the content and opinions on their personal blogs are in no way a reflection of the Edwards campaign.

In one posting, McEwan described Christian supporters of President Bush as his "wingnut Christofascist base." Marcotte once posed a mock question-and-answer session in which she speculated what would have happened if the Virgin Mary had taken an emergency contraceptive.

"You'd have to justify your misogyny with another ancient mythology," came the answer.