The first C-U Blogger Bash went well. An ecletic group of people showed up including members of the press. WILL and WCIA showed up to do interviews, and as far as we could tell, they just got the info from stalking our blogs. Go figure.
The only missing element was a celebrity death match between IlliniPundit and Matt Varble. Oh well, maybe next time… we could even make it a charity fundraiser!
Liberal pundits, like they did in Europe, are seeking to exclude orthodox Catholics from public life. The following is Culture & Cosmos on the subject.
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Pundit Class Says Roberts’ Faith Open for Questioning
A number of prominent pundits have written columns saying it is entirely legitimate to question Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts about whether his Catholic faith would interfere with his ability to serve on the bench. And in a recent interview former New York Governor Mario Cuomo went so far as to say that Congress should get assurance from Roberts that he will uphold the Constitution even if the pope tells him to do otherwise.
Writing for the online magazine Slate.com, Christopher Hitchens says that Catholic judges and the effect their beliefs would have on the way they carry out their duties are deserving of special scrutiny. “Why should this question be asked only of Catholics? Well, that’s easy. The Roman Catholic Church claims the right to legislate on morals for all its members and to excommunicate them if they don’t conform. The church is also a foreign state, which has diplomatic relations with Washington.” Hitchens also takes a swing at the Catholic Justice Antonin Scalia. Noting a speech Scalia gave in Baton Rouge in which he called on audience members to be “fools for Christ” Hitchens remarks, “Whether for ‘Christ’ or not, Scalia is certainly a fool. He should have fewer allies and emulators on the court, not more.”
Self-identified Catholic E.J. Dionne wrote a column for the Washington Post titled “Why It’s Right to Ask About Robert’s Faith.” In it Dionne asks, “If Roberts’s religious views are important to him, why should they be off-limits to honest discussion?” Writing for beliefnet.com Amy Sullivan accuses Republicans of hypocrisy saying they were the ones to make faith an issue. “It was conservatives who spent much of last year arguing that John Kerry’s religious beliefs were insufficiently reflected in his position on abortion,” she writes though conservatives never argued that Kerry’s faith would prevent him from carrying out the duties of the presidency.
One of the more outspoken proponents of the notion that Roberts’ faith should be a potential target of criticism is Cuomo. Speaking this Sunday on Meet the Press, he said, “Everybody takes an oath to support the Constitution, including especially judges. So why not ask them: Will you, Judge, apply a religious test to the Constitution? Will you start by saying, ‘I’m not going to support the Constitution if my pope tells me not to’?” Cuomo reiterated the point that assurances should be obtained from Roberts that he was not taking directions from the Pope. “Here, ironically, if you want to say religious test, the question for Judge Roberts is, Are you going to impose a religious test on the Constitution? Are you going to say that because the pope says this or the Church says that, you will do it no matter what? You will overturn Roe against Wade.”
Conservative constitutionalists and Catholics are increasingly concerned at what appears to be a growing religious test for the Supreme Court. They are reminded of what happened a few months ago in Europe where noted Italian statesman Rocco Buttiglione was denied a seat on the European Commission because of his Catholic beliefs. As one observer put it, “Let them question him on his political positions, or on his judicial philosophy, fine, but asking him about possible religious underpinnings of these positions is establishing an unconstitutional religious test for public office. It is particularly appalling that this is coming from supposed Catholics like Cuomo.”
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As it seems the sex post was the most popular here in awhile, I’ll be posting more on the subject in the future in a quasi series on the subject from a Christian/Catholic perspective.
If nothing else, it’ll be practice as I work on my masters in Theology.
It has become recent news that some banks have started to make home loans to illegal aliens. They live here, work here, and want homes. On one hand it makes sense, you have an untapped market of consumers. On the other hand there is one big risk, deportation. Some of the big banks recognize this which has left these kinds of loans in the hands of smaller banks.
With legal residents, you have some degree of assurance that they’ll be around in the long-term. Sure, something might happen, but odds are you’ll be able to get something out of them if push comes to shove, at least some of the time. With illegal aliens, if they get deported the chances of recouping any losses on that mortgage leave the country with them.
The economic problem comes in that those risks need to be balanced with higher costs to cover those risks. The only unpredictable feature is if there is a push to start enforcing immigration law. DeLay and Tarcedo have made illegal immigration campaign issues and it won’t take many terrorist attacks on US soil to convince people we need to secure the borders. All the sudden those loans become losses. If the banks price the loans appropriately the risk may be mitigated, if they don’t it could be a problem.
Bad loans have a high coincidence level with depressions. When banks loss lots of money very bad economic things happen. Because this is an untapped and “shady” market to get into, odds are those banks aren’t taking the appropriate steps. Combine that with other factors that may come in to play later (housing bubble burst, economic downturn, consumers starting to default on their already high debt loads, all those interest-only home loans coming due) and it could be a recipe for a financial nightmare.
He says the DNC needs a message… that much is true.
But the problem is, they already have one and it has been rejected.
