Ho, Ho, Ho

In the fine tradition of former Virginia governor now Senator Mark Warner (who in 2004 pushed through Virginia's largest tax hike in state history-- $1.6 billion) governor Tim Kaine today proposed a staggering $2 billion income tax hike in the midst of a recession.

These guys never change. The amazing thing is how they attempt to come across as "moderates" while urging the most reckless policies imaginable, like imposing hefty new income taxes when people's wages are in decline, according to the Commonwealth Institute.

To paraphrase, Tim Kaine's legacy is a poor excuse to pick the citizen's pocket this 25th of December.

Goodbye, Liam Clancy

Very sad to see that Liam Clancy, the youngest of the Clancy Brothers, has died.

The Clancys popularized Irish folk music in the US in the 1960s, even appearing on the Ed Sullivan show.

A couple of my personal favorites:










RIP, Liam Clancy... may you be reunited in heaven with your brothers and Tommy Makem, and make beautiful music there.

Reality

As I've mentioned before, some people allege that we're not supposed to be executing criminals anymore because of #2267 of the Catholic Cathechism, which opines that

Today, in fact, as a consequence of the possibilities which the state has for effectively preventing crime, by rendering one who has committed an offense incapable of doing harm—without definitively taking away from him the possibility of redeeming himself—the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity "are very rare, if not practically non-existent."

Of course, despite this official Catholic position of the Catechism, which assumes, as it must, the moral licitness of the death penalty, our American bishops actually are much more radical:

Capital punishment is cruel, unnecessary, and arbitrary; it often has racial overtones; and it fails to live up to our deep conviction that all human life is sacred: "Our witness to respect for life shines most brightly when we demand respect for each and every human life, including the lives of those who fail to show that respect for others. The antidote to violence is love, not more violence."

This position is not consistent with Catholic moral thought, since it takes the heretical pacifist view that the state has no moral authority to protect itself by lethal force.

I am put in mind of these issues because of the recent execution-style killing of police officers in Washington state by Maurice Clemmons, a repeat violent offender, who amazingly, despite his record of violence, was granted a commutation of his sentence (an authority which to my knowledge, every state chief executive in the nation possesses), which freed him to be able to kill the four officers. Clemmons had a lengthy history of violence in and out of custody:

Another time, Clemmons hid a hinge in his sock, and was accused of intending to use it as a weapon. Yet another time, Clemmons took a lock from a holding cell, and threw it toward the bailiff. He missed and instead hit Clemmons' mother, who had come to bring him street clothes, according to records and published reports.
On another occasion, Clemmons had reached for a guard's pistol during transport to the courtroom.
When Clemmons received the 60-year sentence, he was already serving 48 years on five felony convictions and facing up to 95 more years on charges of robbery, theft of property and possessing a handgun on school property.

Oh, and he was out on bond for child rape charges when he went on his killing spree.

Point is, when the Catechism or some bishop glibly talks about how capital punishment is uneccessary because our modern criminal justice system guarantees public safety, there's always a Maurice Clemmons out there to bring us all back to reality.

Justice Done

Every time people begin to wonder whether the death penalty is really necessary anymore, a case comes along to re-affirm that indeed, some crimes just flat out deserve the ultimate punishment, not, mind you, because of some base motive of revenge, but simply because the crimes are so offensive against the moral order that only the punishment of death can approach a congruent satisfaction for the crime.


Anyone familiar with Aristotle will recognize this concept of proportionality and retributive justice. These classical principles, based as they are on the Natural Law, were easily absorbed into Jewish and then Christian thinking about Justice. No amount of modernization of the civil justice system can derogate from the moral necessity that calls for proportional, congruent satisfaction for crimes. It is in fact one of the most important duties of the state to guarantee this type of justice, so that the community is protected, crime is punished and is perceived as being adequately punished, and to discourage private acts of vengeance.


And so recently in Virginia we witnessed the execution of John Allen Muhammad, the so-called "Beltway Sniper," who with cold calculation and meticulous efficiency, slaughtered 10 people and wounded three others. His guilt beyond any doubt whatsoever, his crimes reprehensible, his just execution was the only punishment that would approach justice in his case. Living his natural life as a ward of the state, enjoying the comforts that the American prison must offer inmates (hot meals, reading material, recreation opportunities, access to cable TV) while it would curtail his liberty, would hardly proportionally address the horrific loss of life he wantonly visited upon the affected communities.


For those keeping track, for our Catholic governor Tim Kaine, this was execution #10 that he allowed to proceed despite his supposedly "deeply held religious conviction" that the death penalty is immoral.

Bearing Not the Sword in Vain

Poor Papa Shea is having a fit of the vapors again about the death penalty because apparently Ohio is considering adjustments to its lethal injection protocols that would include injections into bone marrow or muscle, as a contingency in situations where intervenous delivery of drugs would be ineffective.

Now the dainty and sensitive Mr. Shea is famous for stirring up site-hits by issuing fatwahs against those who support enhanced interrogation methods against terrorists in possession of actionable intelligence. He casts into the outer darkness any who disagree with his private interpretation of what constitutes impermissible torture. He claims that they display an attitude of "how close can I get to morally impermissible torture."

Uh, with all due respect, Shea does the same thing with capital punishment. See, the Church holds that capital punishment is both moral and sometimes necessary. Shea, with some radical clerics, really wants no capital punishment, so they creep right up to the line of the heresy that holds that the state has no right to execute at all, and say in effect, "well, there is a theoretical right of the state to execute, but ya know, in actuality, the state can never licitly exercize that right."

In other words, all the flavor of the heresy with none of the fat and calories.

It bothers these radicals not that in fact the limiting clause placed by the new Catechism ("If, however, non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people's safety from the aggressor" the death penalty should not be used) does not apply in the United States since we have demonstrably not been able to render offenders harmless by the Catechism's unknown and unspecified "non-lethal means."

It also does not occur to them that in fact, executions in this country for murders take place only in roughly 1/4 of 1 percent of cases. If that's not "rare, if not non-existent" I can't imagine what is. It's certainly not the uncaring, bureaucratic, Orwellian state-run-amok that Papa Shea breathlessly clucks about.

Of course I was not surprised by his recently voiced support for a convicted cop-killer, because Shea has shown before that he doesn't hesitate to shoot first and ask questions later. And a guy who spills so much ink over a few jihadists getting roughed up is just the kind of guy who would go to bat for a convicted cop killer.

Perhaps he needs to re-aquaint himself with the Scriptures: "But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil. Wherefore ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake."

Up the Republic!

The Irish, who fought for some 700 years to throw off the shackles of English rule, now must decide whether voluntarily to shackle themselves to rule by the EU.

The Irish alone gummed up the works for the Euro-statists last time around, and now the EU and the Irish government apparently won't take "no" for an answer, and are again submitting the issue to the Irish people, who have the opportunity to strike a blow for national sovereignty for all the countries of Europe. Will they do it, or will Europe continue to march down the road to extinction of their individual nations, customs, culture, and religions?

What a tragedy should the Irish give up their sovereignty to be led by, of all people, Tony Blair, who is lobbying for the EU presidency.

A Comparison...

Do You Know What These Two Men Have In Common?

They both died June 25th, 2009.
One has been covered 24/7 by the media the other has been forgotten.

Travel back with me 44 years.....

You're a 19-year-old kid. You're critically wounded and dying in the jungle in the Ia Drang Valley , 11-14-1965, LZ X-ray, Vietnam . Your infantry unit is outnumbered 8-1 and the enemy fire is so intense, from 100 or 200 yards away, that your own Infantry Commander has ordered the MediVac helicopters to stop coming in.

You're lying there, listening to the enemy machine guns, and you know you're not getting out. Your family is half way around the world, 12,000 miles away and you'll never see them again. As the world starts to fade in and out, you know this is the day.

Then, over the machine gun noise, you faintly hear that sound of a helicopter and you look up to see an unarmed Huey, but it doesn't seem real because no Medi-Vac markings are on it.

Ed Freeman is coming for you. He's not Medi-Vac, so it's not his job, but he's flying his Huey down into the machine gun fire, after the Medi-Vacs were ordered not to come.

He's coming anyway.

And he drops it in and sits there in the machine gun fire as they load 2 or 3 of you on board.

Then he flies you up and out, through the gunfire to the doctors and nurses.

And he kept coming back, 13 more times, and took about 30 of you and your buddies out, who would never have gotten out.

Medal of Honor Recipient Ed Freeman died on Wednesday, June 25th, 2009, at the age of 80, in Boise , ID. May God rest his soul.

Since the media didn't give him the coverage he deserves, send this to every red-blooded American you know.

THANKS AGAIN, ED, FOR WHAT YOU DID FOR YOUR FELLOW SOLDIERS AND
OUR COUNTRY.
R.I.P.

(Reproduced from an anonymous commenter).