Pete Vere – Page 89 – Catholic Light

Mark Steyn on Johnny Hart and Islam

Mark Steyn weighs in with his usual pointed (and hilarious) commentary concerning the recent CAIR flap with Johnny Hart’s B.C. cartoon:

Although I agreed of course that Islamophobic cartooning was the most pressing issue of the week, in my usual shallow way I’d become distracted by some of the day’s more trivial stories – the 11 Hindus burnt alive by a Muslim gang in Bangladesh, the 13 Christian churches torched by Muslim rioters in the Nigerian town of Kazaure, and the 27 Turks and Britons murdered by Muslim terrorists in Istanbul.

No dead Jews in that particular day’s headlines, but otherwise a good haul of Hindus, Christians and, of course, Muslims. Every society has its ugly side: in America, the problem is stone-age cartoons; in Nigeria, it’s stone-age – or stoning age – reality. But one can’t help noticing that polysemic cartooning seems a notably ineffective way of stirring up anti-Muslim feeling, at least when one looks at preliminary statistics for Muslims murdered in America this Ramadan, compared with Muslims murdered in, say, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

The Weekly Standard mans the battle stations on Howard Dean

After joining Jim Antle over at Enter Stage Right as one of the few voices crying in the wilderness when it comes to Howard Dean, I was pleasantly surprised by the last few issues of The Weekly Standard. It seems that neo-conservatives are beginning to realize that Howard Dean could pose a serious threat to President Bush’s 2004 re-election campaign. This is especially the case among libertarian voters, whose influence extends far beyond their actual numbers. (See Jim Antle’s Conservative Crack-Up — Will libertarians leave the Cold War coalition? in a recent issue of The American Conservative).

Anyway, the past couple of issues of The Weekly Standard have done a great job exposing Dean. First, they went after Dean’s agricultural plan and showed how increased government regulation of minimum prices, rather than help the family farm, will kill it off. This is what happened to small mom-and-pop dairy farms in Vermont when Dean undertook to protect them through a multi-state dairy agreement in New England. The legislation enacted simply hastened their demise. Now try doing this nationally and in every area of agriculture, WS argues, and the results will be even more disastrous. Hopefully, libertarians will take note.

This was either followed up or preceded in another issue (I cannot recall which, since Florida mail has been out of whack these past couple of weeks) with an editorial speaking of how the economic recovery should help the President win re-election, but how he still remains politically vulnerable over the war should the right democrat be nominated. There was another piece recently discussing whether or not, if Dean got the nod, he would make a bee-line for the center. Regardless, it is good to see that the Weekly Standard, while supporting the President’s re-election bid, is not taking it for granted. The Republicans need to remain on the offensive since the potential for a Democrat upset remains.

Annulments and Abuse

A friend of mine, who happens to be the Adjutant Judicial Vicar of his diocese, graciously allowed me to blog the following email which he sent over a canon law listserve. I have to say that my tribunal experience has not been much different than his own:

Our Judicial Vicar asked the tribunal
notaries to do a brief review of the 555 marriage cases between 1998
and mid-2003. The tribunal collected data regarding various types of
reported abuse (verbal and emotional, physical, drugs and alcohol,
and sexual), including who was the victim of the abuse, when the
abuse occurred (pre-marriage, marriage, or both), and who was the
perpetrator of the abuse. A brief summary and a 4-point summary
follows.

We are sure the results will come as no surprise to those of us who judge theses cases but thought that the results might be of interest
to the group.

BRIEF SUMMARY:

In 84% of our cases, some type of abuse occurred. In 91% of these cases, the person experienced abuse prior to the marriage, and in 58% of these cases, the person also married into an abusive relationship. In 86% of these cases, the person was abused in the
immediate or extended family, and in 52% of these cases, the person’s spouse also experienced abuse prior to the marriage. Only 2.5% of the sexual abuse cases were reported, and of these, none of the abuse that had occurred in the immediate or extended family were reported to the proper authorities.

4-POINT SUMMARY:

1) In 84% of our annulment cases, some type of abuse occurred in the person’s life – 465 cases involved some type of abuse (84% of the 555 cases).

2) In 91% of the abuse cases, at least one person had experienced abuse prior to the marriage, and in 58% of the abuse cases, at least one person in the marriage had experienced some type of abuse both prior to the marriage and in the marriage – 421 cases involved abuse prior to the marriage (91% of the 465 cases), 149 cases involved abuse prior to the marriage only (32% of the 465 cases), 43 cases involved abuse in the marriage only (9% of the 465 cases), 272 cases involved abuse both prior to and in the marriage (58% of the 465 cases).

3) In 86% of the cases where the person experienced abuse, the abuse occurred in the immediate or extended family, and in 52% of the cases where the person experienced abuse in the immediate family, he or she also married someone who had also experienced abuse prior to the marriage – 365 cases involved abuse in the immediate family (78% of the 465 cases), 36 cases involved abuse in the extended family (8% of the 465 cases), 401 cases involved abuse in the immediate or extended family (86% of the 465 cases), 189 cases involved abuse prior to the marriage by both parties (52% of the 365 cases).

4) In 19% of the cases where the person experienced some type of abuse prior to the marriage, the abuse was reported to be sexual abuse. Of these, only two of the eighty cases (2.5%) were reported to the authorities. No one reported the sexual abuse that had occurred in the immediate or extended family.

The following numbers represent that various types of abuse often accompanies other forms of abuse, e.g., alcohol abuse by a family member often accompanies verbal and/or physical abuse on others. Emotional/Verbal: 334 cases of the 421 cases with pre-marriage abuse Alcohol/Drugs: 289 cases of the 421 cases with pre-marriage abuse Physical: 168 cases of the 421 cases with pre-marriage abuse Sexual: 80 cases of the 421 cases with pre-marriage abuse General figures indicate that one of three (33%) women and one of four (25%) to seven (14%) men have experienced sexual abuse. Thus, the reported figure of 19% appears to be conservative. At the same time, it is striking that this large a number is reporting the sexual
abuse in the tribunal process.

Fraternally,

Fr. X,
Diocese of Y

Dean of Libertarians

Howard Dean continues to strike me as probably the Dem. candidate most dangerous to the President in next year’s election. Unlike the other Dem hopefuls, Dean recognizes that he cannot win the presidency with only the Dem’s traditional constituencies. So he’s going after a number of traditional Republican constitutencies as well. Last week I stated that one of these would be the Libertarian vote. I’m not the only conservative to make this prediction. In fact, I’ve mostly been following the lead of my friend and fellow Enter Stage Right writer James Antle.
Last night I happened to catch one of Howard Dean’s ads on the television. He appeared to attack the President over the Patriot Act and the tightening of civil liberties. Dean was obviously aiming for the Libertarian vote by exploiting their discontent with the Bush administration. James Antle does an excellent job discussing the current troubled relationship between conservatives and Libertarians in this week’s American Conservative.
That being said, at a time when we’re making serious inroads into traditional Dem constituencies, what does the President need to do to protect his own? (Admittedly, if Dean were pro-life I would not be asking this question.) First, I think the President must continue to remain firm on abortion and other life issues. As a politician, W’s main strength is his character. This is why I generally trust W, even if I don’t always agree with his decisions. Secondly, I think W needs to dump his neo-con international policy wonks and put forward a good exit strategy for Iraq. Thirdly, I think he should ease up a little on the Patriot Act as well as the Drug War. This will go a long way toward blocking Dean from making further inroads into the Libertarian vote.

THE VERE PROTOCOL: Here Blogger spammer, spammer, spammer….

A number of people have begun complaining about spam that is showing up in the comments’ section of various blogs — including this one. In fact, all the various StBlogs.org bloggers have been in communication by email behind the scenes and have agreed to simply delete any blog spam that shows up.
Just so that everyone has fair warning, in dealing with this problem I have opted out of the aforementioned agreement. Instead, I intend to abide by the Vere Protocol (which is a variation of the Welborn Protocol). The Vere Protocol states that all unsolicited blog spam that shows up in comments to my entries will be fair game for my-writing. Those who spam have been forwarned.