Rick Santorum's surprising victories in Colorado, Minnesota, and Missouri have upset the pundits' calculations and have had an impact on the polls.  Romney is no longer an unambiguous frontrunner.

Real Clear Politics monitors more polls than you can imagine are taken.  The latest poll in Ohio, a crucial battle ground state, shows Romney losing to Obama 45%-41%, while Santorum is tied at 44%-44%.  In the national Gallup tracking poll, Romney is ahead with 36%, while both Gingrich and Santorum are now tied at 20%.  It has become a three way race.

Santorum has won as many states as his two main opponents have together with only 1-5% of their money.  With financial backers now sending Santorum money, the race is becoming interesting.



Walter Shapiro is a special correspondent for The New Republic. He also writes the “Character Sketch” column for Yahoo News.
"But now Santorum has the campaign schedule on his side. A three-week pause until the February 28 Michigan and Arizona primaries gives Republicans plenty of time to wonder about nominating Mitt Romney, a candidate who arouses all the passions of a dead flashlight battery."

"The man from Bain Capital has always been vulnerable to what Tim Pawlenty long ago called a “Sam’s Club Republican.” What is fascinating is that Rick Santorum, the candidate who may well prove to be Romney’s most lasting foe, has been hiding in plain sight all along."

Update: Obama has moved ahead in the polls while Santorum has clearly taken the nation lead in polls for the Republican nomination (2/19/2012.)

The Lutherans Know It Is Our Religious Freedom at Stake!

I watched and heard Rev. Dr. Matthew C. Harrison's testimony before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform yesterday morning at our First Things together.  

 

Wow!

Dr. Harrison is the President of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod.  He testified on Thursday, Feb. 16., to discuss the recent U. S. Health and Human Services ruling mandating that all organizations no matter what their moral beliefs must provide an insurance mechanism that funds, without deductibles, abortion inducing drugs, sterilization, and contraception. On behalf of the LCMS, Harrison spoke to the issue and how it violates our freedoms of religion and conscience. 

The Synod President also issued a statement on February 3rd, 2012 about religious freedom in response to U.S. Department's of Health and Human Services requiring religious employers to cover contraceptives, even those that can kill unborn children.

Nor are these solid Lutherans sucked in by the President's supposed "compromise:" Dr. Harrison said his  church remains ‘deeply concerned’ about health plan mandate despite the White House statement.

It is difficult to know how to react to the "compromise."  Is the White House completely ignorant of economics or is it just blatantly cynical?  The compromise allows organizations and companies(?) who morally object to exclude the mandated coverage from their plan, but then must direct their employees to riders which the insurer must provide free of charge.  The first law of economics is TANSTAAFL: "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch."  As Robert Heinlein portrayed so well in The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, somebody pays.  The insurance company, forbidden to charge directly for sterilization, abortion inducing drugs, and contraception, will smear the costs into its rates.   





 

The Centrality of Faith to our Founding and Our Human Rights

Much commentary is being written about the last debate of the Florida Republican primary.

Rick Santorum was asked last night what role faith would play in his decisions as president.  Commentary's Peter Wehner is right when he calls former senator Santorum's reply,"[t]he best answer of the night in terms of political philosophy":


"Faith is a very, very important part of my life, but it’s a very, very important part of this country. The foundational documents of our country — everybody talks about the Constitution, very, very important. But the Constitution is the “how” of America. It’s the operator’s manual. The “why” of America, who we are as a people, is in the Declaration of Independence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights.” The Constitution is there to do one thing: protect God-given rights. That’s what makes America different than every other country in the world. No other country in the world has its rights — rights based in God-given rights, not government-given rights. And so when you say, well, faith has nothing to do with it, faith has everything to do with it. If rights come… (applause) if our president believes that rights come to us from the state, everything government gives you, it can take away. The role of the government is to protect rights that cannot be taken away. And so the answer to that question is, I believe in faith and reason and approaching the problems of this country but understand where those rights come from, who we are as Americans and the foundational principles by which we have changed the world."

 The father of our constitution, James Madison, advised that the only real guarantee of our liberty is that there is a Higher Authority than the state.

There is a New Biography of Ayn Rand–in Fact, Two!

Jennifer Burns has written a new biography of Ayn Rand, Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right.  And it has gotten a good deal of attention and Kendra Marr writes in Politco.com that Ayn Rand is having a mainstream moment."

On National Review Online, Peter Wehner hopes it will pass because "Objectively, Ayn Rand Was a Nut." He reminds us that "Whittaker Chambers...in 1957, reviewed Atlas Shrugged in National Review and read her out of the conservative movement." You can find that review online.   Rand's system seems as rational and inhuman as that of the socialists, yet her books have great appeal to libertarians and others.  They sell in the hundreds of thousands of copies.  Michael Berliner critiques Chambers' review in Capitalism Magazine.  Read both and judge for your self.

there is also a second new biography out: Anne C. Heller's Ayn Rand and the World She Made (Doubleday, 2009.)

We Are Now A Pro Life Nation

Bill Pascoe in CQpolitics reports that the latest Gallup poll shows those who identify themselves as "pro life" now out number those who identify themselves as "pro choice" 51 percent to 42 percent.

A straw in the Wind

The British and European media have been enthusiasts for our new president. Does anyone remember any interest remotely similar to this for George Bush's first hundred days?

Curiously, the Democracy in America blog on the Economist web site has a posting "another boring press conference." Could this be the turning point? Would Malcolm call it the tipping point? No, no, that's a different more marketable concept.

Another perspective is that the former junior senator form Illinois has arrived at the perfect strategy for defanging criticism: hold so many press conferences and make them so unewsworthy that no one bothers anymore.

Perhaps the most dangerous thing for the Obama white House is the Economist's last sentence: "I'm starting to feel suckered into watching an hour-long campaign advertisement."

Obama to the Vatican: Give Me Cover

I have met Austin Ruse and heard him speak. His wife, the former Cathleen Cleaver, chief pro-life spokesman for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, is an even more dynamite paraclete for life than he is. What a couple!

He writes in The Catholic Thing, "A reliable source tells me that someone representing the Obama administration is about to put pressure on the papal nuncio to the United States to get Archbishop Raymond Burke to be quiet."

Now why does the President want to gag Cardinal Burke? You need a bit of background.

Katherine Sabelius is my governor. She was an early and effective supporter of Barak Obama who carried the Kansas caucuses very nicely. Sebelius is a professed Catholic whose views and actions on abortion among other issues are very pro-death. In addition to her legislative and administrative record, her association with Dr. George Tiller is notorious. He is one of the few late term abortionists in the country. His evil work occurs virtually within walking and certainly within easy praying distance of where we live. A jury has just voted to acquit Tiller of 19 counts of violating the state's abortion laws, but is now under investigation by the state medical board. He was one of the largest contributors to Sebelius's campaign and she in turn gave him the use of the Governor's mansion to host a fundraiser for his pro abortion organization.

Archbishop Joseph Naumann, Bishop of Kansas City, Kansas, is her bishop. He has privately counseled her on the threat to her soul of actively promoting abortion. He has admonished her privately not to present herself for communion and offered her counseling. She spurned his pastoral efforts. He then repeated his injunction publicly. Archbishop Naumann appears to be of that solid central European stock whose hard work tamed the Kansas plains.

President Obama has nominated Sebelius to head Health and Human Services. Naturally enough, if her pastor in Kansas has admonished her not to present herself for communion at home, the same advice applies in Washington, her new base of operations. If A, then B, as John Chamberlain used to say.

Does B follow A in cannon law? Yes it does according to Archbishop L. Burke, formerly archbishop of St. Louis, bishop of La Cross and now Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, the cannon law equivalent to Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

Now candidate Obama got some cover on the abortion from the formation of some "pro abortion Catholic" (an oxymoron?) organizations such as Catholics United and Catholics in Alliance. They remind me of the popular front strategies of the old Communists. In these front groups they could always find "useful idiots" as Lenin described them.

Ruse tells us the Obama administration has commissioned a former Republican office holder to work behind the scenes to shut Burke up. More than one Catholic Blogger has used his blog to put Henry II's "Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?" into the President's mouth.

And the call the Mexico City policy a gag rule!

The Surge Succeeded. Who gets Credit?

Bush's Lonely Decision
Wall Street Journal: September 15, 2008; Page A22

Now that even Barack Obama has acknowledged that President Bush's surge in Iraq has "succeeded beyond our wildest dreams," maybe it's time the Democratic nominee gives some thought to how that success actually came about -- not just in Ramadi and Baghdad, but in the bureaucratic Beltway infighting out of which the decision to surge emerged.

That's one reason to welcome "The War Within," the fourth installment in Bob Woodward's account of the Bush Presidency. As is often the case with the Washington Post stalwart, the reporting is better than the analysis, which reflects the Beltway conventional wisdom of a dogmatic and incurious President. But even as a (very) rough draft of history, we read Mr. Woodward's book as an instructive profile in Presidential decision-making.

Consider what confronted Mr. Bush in 2006. Following a February attack on a Shiite shrine in the city of Samarra, Iraq's sectarian violence began a steep upward spiral. The U.S. helped engineer the ouster of one Iraqi prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, in favor of Nouri al-Maliki, an untested leader about whom the U.S. knew next to nothing. The "Sunni Awakening" of tribal sheiks against al Qaeda was nowhere in sight. An attempt at a minisurge of U.S. and Iraqi forces in Baghdad failed dismally. George Casey, the American commander in Iraq, believed the only way the U.S. could "win" was to "draw down" -- a view shared up the chain of command, including Centcom Commander John Abizaid and then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

Politically, the war had become deeply unpopular in an election year that would wipe out Republican majorities in Congress. The bipartisan Iraq Study Group, run by James Baker and Lee Hamilton, was gearing up to offer the President the option of a politically graceful defeat, dressed up as a regional "diplomatic offensive." Democrats united in their demands for immediate withdrawal, while skittish Republicans who had initially supported the war, including Senators Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Gordon Smith of Oregon, abandoned the Administration.

From the State Department, Condoleezza Rice opposed the surge, arguing, according to Mr. Woodward, that "the U.S. should minimize its role in punishing sectarian violence." Senior brass at the Pentagon were also against it, on the theory that it was more important to ease the stress on the military and be prepared for any conceivable military contingency than to win the war they were fighting.

Handed this menu of defeat, Mr. Bush played opposite to stereotype by firing Mr. Rumsfeld and seeking advice from a wider cast of advisers, particularly retired Army General Jack Keane and scholar Fred Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute. The President also pressed the fundamental question of how the war could actually be won, a consideration that seemed to elude most senior members of his government. "God, what is he talking about?" Mr. Woodward quotes a (typically anonymous) senior aide to Ms. Rice as wondering when Mr. Bush raised the question at one meeting of foreign service officers. "Was the President out of touch?"

No less remarkably, the surge continued to face entrenched Pentagon opposition even after the President had decided on it. Admiral Michael Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, went out of his way to prevent General Keane from visiting Iraq in order to limit his influence with the White House.

The Pentagon also sought to hamstring General David Petraeus in ways both petty and large, even as it became increasingly apparent that the surge was working. Following the general's first report to Congress last September, Mr. Bush dictated a personal message to assure General Petraeus of his complete support: "I do not want to change the strategy until the strategy has succeeded," Mr. Woodward reports the President as saying. In this respect, Mr. Bush would have been better advised to dictate that message directly to Admiral Mullen.

The success of the surge in pacifying Iraq has been so swift and decisive that it's easy to forget how difficult it was to find the right general, choose the right strategy, and muster the political will to implement it. It is also easy to forget how many obstacles the State and Pentagon bureaucracies threw in Mr. Bush's way, and how much of their bad advice he had to ignore, especially now that their reputations are also benefiting from Iraq's dramatic turn for the better.

Then again, American history offers plenty of examples of wartime Presidents who faced similar challenges: Ulysses Grant became Lincoln's general-in-chief in 1864, barely a year before the surrender at Appomattox. What matters most is that the President had the fortitude to insist on winning. That's a test President Bush passed -- something history, if not Bob Woodward, will recognize.

A Sleeper? Jay Cost's Thoughts on McCain's Speech

I typically do not engage in exegesis of candidate speeches, but given the reaction to McCain's address from many quarters, I think a dissenting view might be worth hearing. That plus the uniqueness of the speech's substance inclines me to make a more fuller comment than I otherwise would.

On the first viewing of McCain's speech, I was pretty much in line with Tom Bevan's thoughts on it: it was good enough, but far from great.

Read the whole sober analysis. I agree with him. Play the speech again yourself [below.] And you can read Mc Cain's Speech with this link.

McCain's Acceptance Speech

Gov. Sarah Palin's Speech

Obama On the O'Reily Factor

Sen. joseph Biden's Acceptance Speech

Obama's Acceptance Speech

37 million Heard the Pitbull with Lipstick

Ian Swanson and Aaron Blake report in The Hill, "Sarah Palin’s speech was the biggest draw of the Republican convention, nearly matching the number of people who watched Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama last week.

"More than 37.2 million people watched coverage of the Republican National Convention’s third night, where the star attraction was Palin, the party’s vice presidential candidate and current governor of Alaska."

Pelosi's Catholicism

Nancy Pelosi (D,Calif.) is the Speaker of the House. Around the time of the Democrats convention in Denver she was on Meet the Press. She told us she is “ardent practicing Catholic.” She considers it thus proper to discuss her Catholicism in public: this is not a private matter. Apparently the liberals' doctrinaire separation of church and state rules do not forbid her expressing opinions on matters of theology. (See my prior posting: In Case You Are Wondering Why The Archbishop of Denver Was Not Asked to Pray an Invocation at the Democrats' Denver Convention.)

Archbishop Wuerl, the shepherd of Catholics in our nation's capital, also noticed Ms. Pelosi's foray into theology. The Hill's Bob Cusack reported, "Washington archbishop rips Pelosi on abortion." I would have written "Washington archbishop corrects Pelosi on abortion." That is his job after all. Archbishop Wuerl should know what the church has taught on abortion from the time of the apostles until now. He coauthored with Fr. Ronald Lawler the predecessor to The Catechism of the Catholic Church: The Teaching of Christ. He has written at least one book on the early church fathers and knows his stuff.

Kathryn Lopez, editor of NROnline, provides even more insight. She attended mass at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Denver Sunday night before the Convention. She tells us what she heard: “'If you’re Catholic and you disagree with your Church. What do you do? You change your mind.'

"So said Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, archbishop of the Catholic archdiocese of Denver."

Lopez goes on to examine some of Pelosi's public statements about her beliefs. Does Pelosi really believe in the Real Presence? Read Lopez's column and judge for your self.

I have long believed that the decline of Catholic morality, including the evil slime of the priestly abuse of children scandal, has been directly related to the rejection of apostolic teaching and a loss of belief in the Eucharist.

Why Is Sarah Palin Different?

In Case You Are Wondering Why The Archbishop of Denver Was Not Asked to Pray an Invocation at the Democrats' Denver Convention

Many of us were told at Catholic colleges that past theologians such as Thomas Aquinas and Augustine were unsure of when a baby became ensouled. This is sometimes adduced as evidence that the Christian tradition is unclear about whether abortion is wrong (strictly speaking at what point does abortion becomes murder.)

This is a red herring. The tradition is consistent from the start that abortion is evil, no matter how you resolve the scientific issue. The Didache (written before parts of the New Testament), Justin (second century) and other authorities on down through the ages are clear.

The Democrats are holding their convention in Denver as I write. The Democratic Party has asked neither the Rev. Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap., Denver's Archbishop nor his extremely capable and pious Auxiliary, James D. Conley to pray one of the traditional invocations at their convention. Their fidelity to the Church's teaching and their moral courage are too clear. They would be dangerous addressing the abortion Party in prayer.

But the two shepherds have not been quiet. When House Speaker Nancy Pelosi spouted theology on Meet the Press, these eminent and holy bishops responded with clarity and accuracy in an open letter to their flock:

ON THE SEPARATION OF SENSE AND STATE:
A CLARIFICATION FOR THE PEOPLE OF THE CHURCH IN NORTHERN COLORADO

To Catholics of the Archdiocese of Denver:

Catholic public leaders inconvenienced by the abortion debate tend to take a hard line in talking about the "separation of Church and state." But their idea of separation often seems to work one way. In fact, some officials also seem comfortable in the role of theologian. And that warrants some interest, not as a "political" issue, but as a matter of accuracy and justice.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is a gifted public servant of strong convictions and many professional skills. Regrettably, knowledge of Catholic history and teaching does not seem to be one of them.

Interviewed on Meet the Press August 24, Speaker Pelosi was asked when human life begins. She said the following:

"I would say that as an ardent, practicing Catholic, this is an issue that I have studied for a long time. And what I know is over the centuries, the doctors of the church have not been able to make that definition . . . St. Augustine said at three months. We don't know. The point is, is that it shouldn't have an impact on the woman's right to choose."

Since Speaker Pelosi has, in her words, studied the issue "for a long time," she must know very well one of the premier works on the subject, Jesuit John Connery's Abortion: The Development of the Roman Catholic Perspective (Loyola, 1977). Here's how Connery concludes his study:

"The Christian tradition from the earliest days reveals a firm antiabortion attitude . . . The condemnation of abortion did not depend on and was not limited in any way by theories regarding the time of fetal animation. Even during the many centuries when Church penal and penitential practice was based on the theory of delayed animation, the condemnation of abortion was never affected by it. Whatever one would want to hold about the time of animation, or when the fetus became a human being in the strict sense of the term, abortion from the time of conception was considered wrong, and the time of animation was never looked on as a moral dividing line between permissible and impermissible abortion."

Or to put it in the blunter words of the great Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer:

"Destruction of the embryo in the mother's womb is a violation of the right to live which God has bestowed on this nascent life. To raise the question whether we are here concerned already with a human being or not is merely to confuse the issue. The simple fact is that God certainly intended to create a human being and that this nascent human being has been deliberately deprived of his life. And that is nothing but murder."

Ardent, practicing Catholics will quickly learn from the historical record that from apostolic times, the Christian tradition overwhelmingly held that abortion was grievously evil. In the absence of modern medical knowledge, some of the Early Fathers held that abortion was homicide; others that it was tantamount to homicide; and various scholars theorized about when and how the unborn child might be animated or "ensouled." But none diminished the unique evil of abortion as an attack on life itself, and the early Church closely associated abortion with infanticide. In short, from the beginning, the believing Christian community held that abortion was always, gravely wrong.

Of course, we now know with biological certainty exactly when human life begins. Thus, today's religious alibis for abortion and a so-called "right to choose" are nothing more than that – alibis that break radically with historic Christian and Catholic belief.

Abortion kills an unborn, developing human life. It is always gravely evil, and so are the evasions employed to justify it. Catholics who make excuses for it - whether they're famous or not - fool only themselves and abuse the fidelity of those Catholics who do sincerely seek to follow the Gospel and live their Catholic faith.

The duty of the Church and other religious communities is moral witness. The duty of the state and its officials is to serve the common good, which is always rooted in moral truth. A proper understanding of the "separation of Church and state" does not imply a separation of faith from political life. But of course, it's always important to know what our faith actually teaches.

+Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap.
Archbishop of Denver
+James D. Conley
Auxiliary Bishop of Denver
###

Obama Is for Change: Does That Include Changing His Record?

Say a baby is born live from an abortion. The odds are against it, but it happens. Should the hospital preserve this victim of an "unsuccessful" abortion? Most of us out of common decency would answer, "yes."

A bill was submitted in Illinois to require the dictates of decency in the situation. Senator Obama was in the Illinois legislature at the time. Obama spoke against the legislation in 2001 and 2002 and single-handedly defeated it in committee in 2003.

A citizen spoke to him a few years later about the bill after he had left the state senate. Obama told him, “I would have voted for the Born Alive Infant Protection Act in Illinois had it been worded the same as the federal bill. I think that’s the position the Democrats should take.”

According my source, "There’s just one thing he forgot to mention: Obama had stopped his committee from adding the federal wording."

Actions speak louder than words.

Actions Speak Louder than Words

Bill Clinton told us that he wanted abortion to be "legal, safe, and rare." Am I too cynical to note that he did little or nothing to make abortion "rare?" Adoption was not promoted. Chastity was not praised, much less promoted. The President had no clothes.

Senator Obama is sounding much the same.

He has announced a group called Catholics for Obama. Will McGurn has analyzed the make-up of this august body and his analysis is enlightening. He finds the best way to characterize these senators, governors, and congressmen is as "NARAL Catholics." NARAL is the National Abortion Rights League. If you think of it as some idealistic group of do-gooders, read Bernard Nathanson's inside account of NARAL's cynical beginning.

Here is how McGurn describes Obama's positions: "In a speech before Planned Parenthood, he declared that the right to an abortion is at stake in this election, and vowed that he would not yield on appointing judges that would uphold Roe v. Wade.

"Mr. Obama is for using tax dollars to fund abortions, and against restrictions on partial-birth abortion. In the Illinois Senate, he voted against legislation protecting a child who was born alive despite an abortion. In sum, if you want to know what Mr. Obama's policies mean, it's this: taxpayer-funded abortion on demand."

Perhaps you think McGurn is a right wing ideologue, he does write for the Wall Street Journal, that running dog of capitalism. What does Planned Parenthood say of Obama?

Planned Parenthood is America's largest company in the abortion business. Its New England branch endorsed Senator Barak Obama, the junior senator from Illinois: Nancy Mosher, the head of the New England affiliate [of Planned Parenthood], said "approving the decision to support Obama, who supports abortion funding at taxpayer expense and without any limits, was easy."

“Senator Obama has a long and consistent record of standing up for [abortion]," Mosher continued.

The head of Planned Parenthood of New England, said her group will work with the national organization to "educate voters about John McCain’s unacceptable record in regard to" abortion.

"In 25 years in Washington, John McCain has earned a zero percent voting record from Planned Parenthood," she said. "Senator McCain has also denounced Roe v. Wade as ‘bad law.'”

How do you make legal abortion "rare?"

Encourage adoptions, reduce red tape, promote a culture of life.

Senator McCain does not wear his personal life on his sleeve to borrow a metaphor from the Bard. Is he in favor of adoption? Ask Bridget, the daughter Mother Teresa ordered his wife Cindy to adopt. She is about eighteen years old now and very much a McCain. You can read an interview that touches on her in Dadmag.

Actions speak louder than words.