Tag: Blithe Spirit

The Church and its cover-ups

Uh-oh. When you put it that way . . .

How can the church claim to act in the best interest of children while paying for the defense of one its priests who, according to the grand jury report, “has put literally thousands of children at risk of sexual abuse by placing them in the care of known child molesters”?

From the auld sod has come wisdom:

What we are experiencing in the United States is the difficulty that Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin, Ireland, described: “to bring an institution around to the conviction that the truth must be told.”

Each and every time local district attorney’s offices examine the church’s behavior — in Boston, in Manchester, N.H., in Long Island, N.Y., and elsewhere — they find that public relations and protection from criminal and civil penalties trump reconciliation and truth-telling at every turn. Philadelphia is an example, not an exception or aberration.

More from Archbishop Martin in Milwaukee:

All institutions have an innate tendency to protect themselves and to hide their dirty laundry, said Martin, who became archbishop of Dublin in 2004. We have to learn that the truth has a power to set free which half-truths do not have.

The bigger the ship, the harder to make it change course.

The toothless Wisconsin recall

Say what? The Wis. recall of Republicans has no teeth in it?

[W]hereas we thought Kloppenburg had a real chance of beating Prosser, we’ve always been skeptical to the point of incredulity about the prospects for recalling Republican senators. That’s because under Wisconsin law, an official has to have served for a year before being subject to recall. That shields both Walker and all Republican lawmakers who replaced Democrats in last year’s election. As Wisconsin senators serve four-year terms, only those who survived the Democratic sweep of 2006 or 2008 can be recalled.

So Dems-identified bad guys not affected? Did not know that. Took WSJ’s Taranto to tell me. Unions’ hopes for status quo being upset by Prosser victory and Recall neutering, the jig is up for them:

One of the most important reforms is that union dues will become voluntary. State and local government will no longer take money out of their employees’ paychecks and hand it over to the unions. This is likely to be the last Wisconsin election in which the Democrats have the advantage of support from organizations with the power to raise campaign funds coercively.
…………….
Starved of the nourishment of forcibly collected dues, they may look like a 98-pound weakling by 2012.

On, Wisconsin!

Prosser gains 7,500 votes in Waukesha County – JSOnline

Yet more from Wisconsin, where vote-counting has been a challenge to a number of elected officials.

Note: AP had it wrong because it was given it wrong. for instance, the whole town of Brookfield WI had not one of its votes counted at first. Tsk, tsk.

Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel is all over this, of course. This great state to escape to is looking not so sharp at this point. In any case, Prosser’s lead is big enough at this point to require his (losing) opponent to pay for a recount. Stay tuned.

Vote-counting gone awry in Wisconsin

More from Wisconsin vote-count scene, from Wall St. Journal:

Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice David Prosser took a significant lead in his re-election bid Thursday evening when the clerk of conservative-leaning Waukesha County reported she failed to count the ballots from a wealthy suburb west of Milwaukee.

It’s a “7,500 vote swing” that “represents a sizable blow to the hopes of the Democrat-backed challenger JoAnne Kloppenburg, who was leading the hotly contested race by 200 votes a day earlier.”