Quip of the week, no question:

A pro-abortion zealot once castigated his pro-life opponents, saying, “Don’t you people get it? You’ve lost. It’s over. The fat lady has sung.” To which one of them replied, “It is not over when the fat lady sings. It is over when the angel blows his trumpet.” – Christopher Beiting

This fellow can talk to me any time.

Such a good site here, from Francella Belton. Full of writer’s stuff and beautifully laid out.

Google developers warns me against a site, a well-regarded Catholic conservative page dealing with religious and societal values.

The supposed problems are phishing and malware. Interesting, not a revolting development.

G. asks to be informed if their algorhythms are mistaken. I’d say they are in this case. Honestly mistaken, I trust.

Can’t always trust an algorhythm?

A free-market man responds to the New Yorker writer who said laissez-faire starved the Irish:

After defeating James II in 1690, victorious protestants subjected Catholics – Ireland’s majority population – to cruel restrictions on land ownership and leasing. These policies led most of Ireland’s people to farm plots that were inefficiently small and on which the Irish had no incentives to make long-term improvements.

As a result, agricultural productivity in Ireland stagnated, and the high-yield, highly nutritious, labor-intensive potato became the dominant crop.

In combination with other discriminatory measures that obstructed Catholics from participating in modern commerce – measures that kept far too large a portion of Ireland’s population practicing subsistence agriculture well into the 19th century – this over-dependence on the potato spelled doom when in 1845 that crop became infected with the fungus Phytophthora infestans.

There’s more more more here from the excellent Donald J. Boudreaux at George Mason U.

If she bears twins, you know it’s important who’s born first, of course. I mean Kate Middleton, of course. But you knew this, of course.

Something in the old-Jesuits-never-die category.

Stray radiators, the new wing of 1895, Father Grant the principal and Brother O’Connor his secretary, buried in Grant’s tomb, cherry bomb in the library. Life as a first-year scholastic at St. Ignatius High, Chicago, in 1957.

Excerpt from Company Man: My Jesuit Life, 1950-1968, available at Lulu.com.

Bishops to the rescue with letter on preaching:

The document is an admonishment of poor preaching, saying the bishops are “aware that in survey after survey over the past years, the People of God have called for more powerful and inspiring preaching. A steady diet of tepid or poorly prepared homilies is often cited as a cause for discouragement on the part of laity and even leading some to turn away from the Church.”

Well, they themselves should stop using “people of God” every time they turn around. It’s like “American people” on the lips of a U.S. politician. Loses its lustre after a time, does it not?

And while we’re at it, “admonishment”? Really? From WashPost at that? Clumsy, clumsy.

What’s with this “folks” business, as in this by press vet Jules Witcover:

Reporters, doing what they do, either knew of the call and tapped into it or learned of Romney’s remarks from folks who conveyed them to newspapers like the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times that quickly printed them. [italics added]

Once it was close to “folksy.” Obama did it. One more thing to hold against him. He’s NOT articulate, keeps falling back, between “uh”s, on tired phrases, not always, as in this case, used to agreen with accepted usage.

Martin Marty on new book subtitled A New American Christianity:

[D]ecades ago the word “New” appeared in my first book title and in ten books edited with colleague Dean Peerman. They have since become old-new and in some cases are more old than new. We chronicled valuable experiments and creative achievements which had positive effects. Is it the right moment now, however, to note that criticism of the established Christian institutions for not keeping up with the Zeitgeist, the “spirit of the times,” matches the Zeitgeist. The “emergent church keeps emerging,” yet many of its “newnesses” are seen as settling in and settling back along with “conventional” religious observances of old.

Oh yes, that ellipses above: . . . the more things . . . go ahead, you know the rest. Ze French has it zo neatly:

plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose

See what I mean?