Obama telling Irish kids how bad religious schools are.

CBS called about Benghazi:

A few weeks ago CBS reporter Sharyl Attkisson phoned me to ask about my Benghazi contacts. I assumed the call was being recorded. Now I read that her computer is bugged. It turns on and off by itself in the middle of the night.

Mine doesnt. At least I dont think it does. I tend to be asleep at three a.m.

It’s being audited that lurks.

Soon, nothing will be left but the smile.

(Subscripition only to the story, but pic’s the thing, for “Absent Commander in Chief” story)

PRESIDENT!

. . . but he knew when to open his mouth:

“The collection of taxes which are not absolutely required, which do
not beyond reasonable doubt contribute to the public welfare, is only
a species of legalized larceny. . . . .

more more more at http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Calvin.Coolidge.Quote.B6B6

(Would he have been targeted by our IRS?)

Reading any story like this and ask, what if these were Republicans?

Pacer’s big man got “real” with mediums after letting one slip, paid $75G, mouthed lawyerly apology, Charles B. elevated him to 2nd-most-favorite player.

Basketball is a fun game!

Bigger than General Motors:

After the 16th Amendment was ratified, an income tax was imposed starting in 1913 with rates ranging from 1 percent to 7 percent with the top rate applying only to incomes in excess of $500,000. . . . . The top rate exceeded 90 percent at its peak in the early 1950s. The first 1040 form — instructions and all — took up only four pages. Today there are some 4,000 pages of tax forms and instructions.

. . . . The IRS now has more enforcement personnel than the EPA, BATF, OSHA, FDA, and DEA combined. With its 115,000-man workforce, it has the power to search the property and financial documents of American citizens without a search warrant and to seize property from American citizens without a trial. It routinely does both.

. . . . the total cost to collect our federal taxes, including the effects on the economy as a whole adds up to an amazing 65 percent of all the tax dollars received annually.

. . . . IRS telephone information service has . . . given about one-third of all callers . . . the wrong answers to their questions. A 1987 General Accounting Office study found that 47 percent of a random sample of IRS correspondence — including demands for payments — contained errors. . . . a GAO audit of the IRS in 1993 found widespread evidence of financial malfeasance and gross negligence at the agency. The IRS could not account for 64 percent of its congressional appropriation!

They are the government and are here to help.

The Jack Egan connection:

Former editor Thomas J. Reese, S.J., shared this story with us: “When Thurston Davis, S.J., was editor of America, he received a call in the early 1960s from Jack Egan, an influential Chicago priest, telling him about a young parish priest who just finished his doctorate in sociology. ‘You should encourage him to write,’ said Egan. Neither recognized that they were opening a floodgate of prose and fiction that would have such a profound impact on the church.”

I was a “4th-year father” at West Baden (Ind.) College, finishing my 14th year of Jesuit training, when Andrew Greeley, who died day before yesterday, wrote in one of a dozen or so articles offered by America Mag about the “Jesuit college administrator” who

observed: “For four hundred years we [Jesuits] have been in the apostolate of Christian education, and now we suddenly find that our seminarians are demanding that we justify this apostolate.”

And a confrere added: “Jesuit seminarians are the most radical people in the American church–bar none.” Neither of the two was opposed to the New Breed, just puzzled by them.

I go into this phenomenon in Company Man: My Jesuit Life, 1950-1968, now available as Nook or I-Pad download.

For instance, this on page 119:

We younger Jesuits were said to think that each had the Holy Spirit to guide him individually, as opposed to church authority, its divinely licensed leadership, whose guidance should have been enough for us. We did think that way. We thought each had the Spirit, whom we had got at confirmation and had been relying on ever since. So did Martin Luther, and there you had a problem.

More later about Andrew Greeley.