Imus, Gen. Clark, & the Rome-bound St. Louisian

Start with this from Steve Rhodes:

North By Northwest
“I challenged people’s sensitivities and the way they think,” Mike North [newly fired smashmouth sports radio commentator] told Rob Feder [Sun-Times media reporter] last week.

I thought that was Don Imus’s job.

Then from an Investor’s Business Daily editorial about “the Sunday performance of Gen. Wesley Clark, an Obama adviser and possible VP pick” talking to CBS’ “normally unflappable” Bob Schieffer:

Obama talks about change and hope and masquerades as the anti-politician. But as the Rev. Jeremiah Wright noted after Obama disowned his pastor of two decades, Obama will do and say the things a politician has to do and say to win.

Clark dismissed McCain as military leader, not having “been there and ordered the bombs to fall” but merely “riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down.”

When a visibly shocked Shieffer asked what Obama’s command credentials were, Clark said Obama was running on the strength of his character and judgment. Oh. Considering that Clark was probably given the green light for his ad hominem attack, both are open to question.

Finally from AP:

Canon lawyer Raymond Burke, well known for urging denial of communion to pro-choice pols as archbishop of St. Louis, has been sent (not kicked) upstairs as newly appointed Vatican supreme court judge. 

Tom Reese SJ, ex-editor of America, sees the appointment as demonstrating high papal regard for Americans, who have been largely frozen out of churchwide governing positions.

Burke named presidential candidate John Kerry as not eligible for communion during the 2004 campaign.  This may become the churchwide norm, speculates Reese.

Burke’s new job makes him an adjudicator of marriage annulments among other things.  The word in Rome has been that American bishops give too many annulments.  But this American is a bet for stricter church practice in the future.