Author: Jim Bowman

Jim Bowman covered religion 1968-78 for the Chicago Daily News, since then has written books, articles, etc., mostly on corporate history but also on religion (Company Man: My Jesuit Life, 1950-1968), and more recently on politics (Illinois Blues: How the Ruling Party Talks to Voters -- Lulu.com, Kindle). Longtime Oak Park, Illinois, resident, he lives now on Chicago's North Side, where four of his and Winnie's six children live close by.

Don’t Deny Islamic State are Islamic.

Defend the Modern World

21-Isis2-AFPGetty-v2

As I write, the Jordanian air force is bombing ISIS positions in Syria, ostensibly in retaliation for the Nazi-like killing of one of its pilots last week. A photo on the Daily Mail website shows a Jordanian patriot writing a message on a bomb in marker pen (an American tradition) before the vessel that will carry it takes flight. His message reads as follows: “For you, the enemies of Islam”.

I have a feeling Liberals will waste no time in circulating that image. After all, it paints a rather pleasant, reassuring picture. The insinuation is that ISIS (and by logical extension, all radical Jihadis) are just a deviation from the true practice and theory of the Islamic religion.

I’m afraid we must pour water on this hopeful notion. It’s not only wrong but dangerous to believe. Despite the claims of the majority, Islamic State/ISIS are entirely faithful to Islamic teaching…

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Chicago Tribune editorial has a bad Saturday

In Saturday’s editorial, “Obama, the court and the border,” Chi Trib has this at the end about what’s clear to the writer:(Italics added)

. . .  a couple of things. . . . One is that under a sensible, humane immigration policy, the people Obama would allow to stay would be allowed to stay.

Another is that this [Obama’s countermanding Congress, or not] questionable executive action could have been prevented if Speaker John Boehner had allowed the House to vote on a comprehensive immigration bill that passed the Senate in 2012 with bipartisan support.

Obama may have overstepped his powers, but he acted on the legitimate belief that our immigration policy was broken. It still is. The courts may not fix it. Congress and the president can and should.

What? The president believes in something and therefore is justified in overstepping his powers?

And anyhow, it’s the speaker’s fault?

This on an editorial page that delivers much intelligent, coherent analysis in the course of its work week. But not on Saturday?.

Vatican backstabbing: shades of Renaissance Italy . . .

Pope Francis’s man for this season of cleaning up the financial stables is the target. He’s Cardinal George Pell of Australia, who has stirred up the hornets by a variety of actions:

For one thing, Pell clearly hasn’t been intimidated by lower-intensity pushback. On Monday, his Secretariat for the Economy released a set of procedures for closing the books on 2014, which among other things require every department head in the Vatican, for the first time, to sign a legally binding declaration that their reports are complete and correct.

The procedures also stipulate that external assets of a Vatican department have to be certified by the banks or other financial institutions that hold those assets, a classic expression of “trust but verify.”

For Pell, a day of reckoning approaches:

Pope Francis also returned on Friday from a week-long annual Lenten retreat, and sometime soon he’s expected to issue a new legal framework for Pell’s department and other financial oversight bodies he’s created.

The effect will be either to rein Pell in, as his critics hope, or to turn him loose.

While the catfight may continue for a while longer, a make-or-break moment is approaching. Sometime by mid-year, the Secretariat for the Economy will release its first-ever consolidated financial statement covering the Vatican’s fiscal year in 2014.

Which is when the stuff hits the fan. Stay tuned.

Pray for your enemies, advises Jesus in today’s Sermon on Mount selection . . .

Be ye perfect, he also advises. This bothers Fr. Adjuster, who prefers “compassionate,” being nervous about good-better-best thinking, likes to be mushy.

But we are advised to be big boys and girls who can have a goal and work for it, without going all to pieces, when (not if) we fail to achieve it.

Specifically we are to pray for our enemies and persecutors, like Jesus on the cross, “Forgive them, Father,” etc., which is asking a lot.

So pray for the beheaders and crucifiers, Islamic fanatics in Middle East and N. Africa. Pray for their conversion, why not? As we prayed for the conversion of Russia in the ’30s and ’40s. Impossible, you say. Do it anyway, I say.

This says nothing about protecting the innocent by militarily thwarting the fanatics with bullets and bombs, of course, in a just war.

Pretty basic stuff, all this, I agree.

Mainstreamers endorse Scott Walker — in their peculiar manner

Wall St. Journal’s James Taranto, reporting on Scott Walker’s very good early polls-showing, is properly cautious about his prospects, but adds this:

On the other hand, some conservatives and Republicans interpret the liberal media’s recent hazing of Walker as a sign that he is the candidate they fear. Lending support to this hypothesis is John Cassidy of the New Yorker, who weighed in yesterday with an essay titled “The Dangerous Candidacy of Scott Walker.”

Yes, yes, yes. Those bozos smell a threat and jump to it. Not incompetent but meaner than junk-yard dogs. That’s what a palace guard is for. (H/T Instapundit for useful term for media lemmings)

(As for Taranto and his Best of the Web, a longtime Internet denizen, the link is a tease of sorts if you are not a WSJ subscriber, but you can sign up for a good chunk of his columns by way of email.)

Costs more to hire people, fewer are hired . . .

Donald J. Boudreaux, economics prof at George Mason U., answering letter writer who objected to his holding that raising minimum wage hurts low-wage people:

. . . let me test your instincts with a question posed by the economist Mark Perry: Do you believe that imposing a tax on employers for every low-skilled worker that they hire would not reduce the number of low-skilled workers hired?

Do you believe that requiring employers to pay a tax of $2.85 per hour for every low-skilled worker on their payrolls would not prompt employers over time to employ fewer such workers?

Do you suppose that firms are so inattentive to their bottom lines or so unable to figure out how to operate profitably with fewer worker that such a tax – which would be about $5,700 annually for each and every low-skilled worker employed full-time – would not reduce low-skilled workers’ employment options?

If you do believe all this, it explains your support for a mandated minimum wage, he says, as do I.