Month: April 2012

Wheeling Jesuit and its vice president investigated by feds

Wheeling Jesuit University's Seal
Wheeling Jesuit University's Seal (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Holy mackerel!  The guy who stood in for the peremptorily fired Jesuit president of Wheeling Jesuit U. in W. Va. in 2009, very big man on campus whose regular job there was to run or oversee federally funded programs involving millions of tax dollars, is being investigated by the federal government.

A federal investigation into J. Davitt McAteer and Wheeling Jesuit University appears to center on how the university handled federal funds between 2005 and 2011 — with an emphasis on how it billed expenses under grant programs or cooperative agreements, court documents indicate.

Documents by those seeking to unseal the warrants

show that NASA, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Inspector General and other agencies seized documents from McAteer’s offices in Wheeling and Shepherdstown on Feb. 16. McAteer, an attorney and former head of the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration, runs WJU’s Office of Sponsored Programs.

Investigators seized, copied and then returned records of expenses billed to federal programs and other records indicating how Wheeling Jesuit handled certain kinds of expenses through its Combined Cost Management Service Center.

Others are to be grilled and perhaps targeted:

The motions also say investigators are looking at current and former employees of Wheeling Jesuit, and some are expected to appear before a grand jury.

“We continue to cooperate with federal investigators,” WJU spokeswoman Michelle Rejonis said. “As information becomes available to us, we will gather information and work from there.”

The argument to unseal the warrants pits government wanting to marshal all relevant data before showing its hand (so far getting its way) vs. McAteer et al. protesting secrecy and its deleterious effects on his and the university’s reputation and ongoing performance by the funded university operations.

The fired Jesuit, Rev. Julio Giulietti, had finished two years at the Wheeling Jesuit helm.  His firing was followed by widespread alumni protests and coverage in two national publications , all of which was reported and discussed in this blog.  A search in this blog can uncover these reports and discussions.  Giulietti went on to work in Viet Nam as representative of Loyola University-Chicago in developing programs of nurse and physician education.

Barack alias Barry and the Mrs.: law prof not

A take on the Obamas as lawyers that qualifies as a take-down.

1. He got the U Chi lecturer’s job after a call to the law school from the trustees, he

Official photographic portrait of US President...
Did not qualify as adjunct!

having been turned down as adjunct.

2. She “voluntarily surrendered” her license, as Bill Clinton surrendered his after he was convicted of making false statement in the Lewinsky case. Point: “Voluntarily” is not the surrendering one’s idea.

(H/T Nancy J. Thorner)

What made Mike Wallace tick

In this 1995 article, a 1987 TV show is recalled, where Mike Wallace professed to be a “reporter” and nothing else. Nada. Discussion was about saving U.S. troops vs. getting the story. Wallace was for getting the story. Newscaster Peter Jennings had just said he’d save the troops, even at the cost of his own life.

Ogletree [the moderator] turned for reaction to Mike Wallace, who immediately replied. “I think some other reporters would have a different reaction,” he said, obviously referring to himself. “They would regard it simply as another story they were there to cover.” A moment later Wallace said, “I am astonished, really.” He turned toward Jennings and began to lecture him: “You’re a reporter. Granted you’re an American” (at least for purposes of the fictional example; Jennings has actually retained Canadian citizenship). “I’m a little bit at a loss to understand why, because you’re an American, you would not have covered that story.” Ogletree pushed Wallace. Didn’t Jennings have some higher duty to do something other than just roll film as soldiers from his own country were being shot?

“No,” Wallace said flatly and immediately. “You don’t have a higher duty. No. No. You’re a reporter!”

A truncated view, to be sure, but widely embraced, we fear, by the reportorial community. Wallace was bespeaking journalistic objectivity, a good thing, a dying attitude, but sans examination, sans morality. Unabashedly, and on air he turned Jennings around, making them both the object of scorn of soldiers also on the panel. And of many, we presume, who were not.

(Hat tip Instapundit)

Nancy J. Thorner

It was on March 31 that Vice President Joe Biden had the following exchange with a Davenport, Iowa TV station in a series of questions regarding H-1 visas taking American jobs:

Question: Are too many H1B visas given out each year?  Are too many highly skilled jobs going to people outside the U.S.?

Biden’s answer: No H1b visa can be granted to an employee to come to a company unless they can prove there is no American to fill the job. What we have had is a real vacuum in the number of computer engineers and high tech personnel to work In particularly Silicon Valley. That where most of those H1b visas are going. That why we have made it so attractive, and I don’t understand why Republicans have opposed it.

Either Vice President Biden has no clue of what he is talking about, or he is simply being untruthful…

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Lucubrations and observations.

Not for attribution

* Saturday in the park with Jim: Man with bent back passes bench, we exchange good mornings.  Little dog runs about, mistress tagging along, leash in hand.  Across the grass 50 yards away, three knights of the road (homeless to our unimaginative age) gather on a long bench, catching the self-same freshness of April-morning air as I, who have a home and limit my road-riding to the “L.”

A yellow-sweatered blond, legs jeans-covered, with moderately shaggy medium-sized dog — an older fellow — walking calmly along with her, unlike those little guys that run and run.  Like one who chases the floppy cloth frisbie thrown by his blue-jacketed mistress, leaps, catches in air, wheels about, returns, and does it again, though not always with like results. 

Two days ago, for instance, he did not return after catching cloth frisbie, but dropped it a few feet away, then looked about briefly for a…

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That religious freedom rally that got ignored by newspapers and TV and radio: making this an exclusive.

Not for attribution

“Today everybody’s a Catholic,” said an Anglican priest from the speaker’s platform at the media-ignored Federal Plaza rally for religious freedom on March 23 attended by hundreds. He was Rev. Stewart Ruch, senior pastor of the 950-member , in Wheaton. On the platform with him was Rev. Kevin Miller, associate rector, who gave the closing prayer.

A deacon from the same parish, Rev. Keith Hartsell, associate pastor for mission, stood in the rear of the crowd, making quite a figure in his jeans-cum-clerical collar, standing with two (“the middle two”) of his and his wife’s four children, pre-schoolers ensconced in a double stroller.

The parish has a grand total of four priests and four deacons on staff, Deacon Hartsell said. It’s enough to remind one of Roman Catholic parishes of old, with rectories full to bursting with priests, though these priests with wives and children — the senior pastor and…

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Short ‘graphs and menace

“Occasional, short, italicized paragraphs . . . with undercurrent of menace, gives . . . powerful and immediate tone,” says reviewer in Times Literary Supplement of The Mirador, dreamed memories of her mother.

It struck home with me as what I’d like to do with my various books in the hopper, in the writing of which I find myself bored.  If I’m bored, how will the reader feel? I ask myself.  The reviewer speaks of what the writer inserted.  Some possibilities here, as of now only dimly imagined.

A St. Peter’s Sunday

Shot down to the Loop on Palm Sunday for mass at St. Peter’s on Madison Street.  Green Line Special, fast and easy.

I went partly for that urban anonymity celebrated 50 years ago by Harvey Cox in his Secular City.  I found the crowd leaving the 9:30 mass, then waited for the 11:00. 

Found the service:

Neither pedestrian nor parochial. 

Marvelous organ playing as mood-setter and during mass, never intrusive.  The hymns were sacred, no pop melodies to be heard.  Acoustics excellent, nearby pre-mass chatting was absorbed, presented no problem to the would-be meditater. 

Sermon short and to the point (after long reading of passion).  Reading mainly by 50–ish short-haired petite blond woman in vestments who in the spoken word approximated the depersonalized, ceremonial style of the chant.  Same for other parts taken, each by a priest — the celebrant and his helper at the altar, acting as a sort of combination deacon and server. 

Nothing amateurish or stylized about any of this.  Indeed, the whole liturgy exuded professionalism, as in the church’s excellent sound system.  The building itself matters, and expense is there, but there’s also attention to important detail.  It’s how a parish can spend its money well. 

Later: Holy (Maundy) Thursday and Good Friday, more of the same.  Huge crowds, as today, they crowded in the back at 1:15 or so, filled the center aisle waiting in silence to “adore” (I’d say “venerate”) the cross, a Good Friday staple.  Preacher noted that Jesus’ “It is finished” from the cross has recently been discovered (the Greek word) to mean pay or paid — “paid in full” on the recently excavated tax-collector’s site.  So Jesus paid up for us all, restoring the balance so we have an even playing field, you might say.

Personal high moment in today’s passion narrative, per John’s gospel, was Jesus from the cross, looking at his mother and saying, “Behold your son.”  Poignant doesn’t do that justice.  The preacher cited that, repeating from the gospel, as I recall, so chalk up another for him.

Occurred to me about St. Peter’s: it’s not a parish church, which I knew, but an adjunct to Old St. Mary’s, once on the south edge of the Loop, for some time now in the heart of the farther, relatively new South Loop residential neighborhood, whose parish includes the Loop.  I doubt if they have baptisms and weddings at St. Peter’s, for instance, though they clearly have regulars who donate and help out.  So what is it?  A mission church, for one of the nation’s biggest commercial districts.