23 May 2012

Brett Kimberlin Has A Friend In Lee Stranahan, For ‘Worst Nightmare’ Values Of ‘Friend’

Posted on | May 22, 2012 | 9 Comments and 35 Reactions

by Smitty
Via Ace who throws down the gauntlet:

There are a lot of smaller bloggers who’ve heroically covered this. And one big blogger. And another big blogger is very interested (and I imagine that blogger will post soon; I just don’t want to commit this blogger to anything).
I will note them later. Right now, I’m just disgusted. Disgusted at my allies, disgusted at myself.
Cowards die a thousand deaths.
I already died 40 cowards’ deaths this past week. That’s enough for me. I will die no more of them.
Am I to understand only the smallest, least-well-financed bloggers are going to be covering this? While large media franchises with lawyers on retainer all decide “we’d rather let tiny one-man blogs take the lead on this?”
Does that make sense?

comes this:
With Lee Stranahan on the case, and videos like that one, Brett will soon be getting the media attention he deserves.
As a veteran, I didn’t mind having my life in harm’s way over all manner of people: sincere pacifists, vegetarians, homosexuals, Hari Krishnas. Liberty does not discriminate. But when I see a piece of trash like Kimberlin (admittedly, some distant relatives come to mind) I feel a deep anger. Such scum simply do not deserve their American citizenship.
Daily Pundit notes:

I suspect that this Kimberlin whackjob is going to regret taking on Stacy McCain.

Update: Here is a fat roundup of those who linked today’s noon post about bailing out of the People’s Republic of Maryland:
Instapundit
American Power

Brett Kimberlin Death Threats Against Robert Stacy McCain?
I don’t know, actually.
Robert Stacy McCain wrote yesterday that the police had been notified about the suspicious behavior of Brett Kimberlin, so my first thought was that Robert and his family were in physical danger. See: “Never Doubt That God Answers Prayer.”

Stacy made it clear in a phone conversation that the answer to Mr. Douglas’s reasonable question is: No. There have been no specific threats against RSM or his family from Mr. Kimberlin.
An Ex-Con’s View:

For once, we need to rise as a unified voice and say: “NO FARTHER!”
It is scandalous that this saga has gotten this far! Man (or woman) up and ACT!

The Camp of the Saints

I spoke briefly with Stacy a short while ago and he assures me that he and his family are fine.
You can never be too careful, however, when it comes to psychopathic/sociopathic people and Brett Kimberlin is just that kind of person.

HillBuzz

Free speech can be dangerous when you’re dealing with an unhinged terrorist.

Richard Fernandez

How does he get away with it? By getting away with it. The only recorded instance in which Bill Ayers expressed admiration for America was when he realized that he could escape punishment more easily than he thought. “Guilty as sin, free as a bird, it’s a great country”.
Blogger Robert Stacy McCain may have accidentally found stumbled onto part of the reason for impunity. McCain is in hiding after becoming the latest target of Kimberlin. McCain had discovered that Kimberlin is associated with Democratic Party operatives and wrote about it.

Conservatory

I don’t want anybody trying to shame people into publicizing this story, at least yet. It’s reasonable, though, to believe that those whom you support and help to boost might take at least a passing interest in helping to get this awful story the publicity that it so richly deserves. Asses like Brett Kimberlin survive and thrive because people find it to inconvenient to help put an end to their behavior, and that is why they persist in it.

Legal Insurrection

The story is not about McCain as such. It’s about how bloggers, who don’t have large organizations and cadres of lawyers standing behind them, can be the subjects of attempted intimidation through a perceived weakpoint, such as an employer.

Nice Deb

Kimberlin is an evil menace to society, and must be stopped before he hurts someone again. Just as chilling is the fact that there are powerful and deep pocketed entities on the left that are willing to fund his nefarious operations. That anyone in their right minds would want to have their names associated with such a miscreant should be shocking, but we’re talking about institutional left, here. There is apparently no limit to the depths of depravity Marxists will sink to in order to destroy their enemies..

The Tatler

Right now, the terrorist turned activist — who gets money from major Democrats including Teresa Heinz Kerry and Barbra Streisand — is apparently threatening McCain’s family. Given Kimberlin’s history of bombings, harassment and thuggery, Kimberlin is unfortunately a real threat and the state of Maryland needs to step in and stop him.

Da Tech Guy

To my friends on the left who are financing this fellow: Do you have any actual honor left? Have you become so secular, so utilitarian that you have reached this point? I have no problem with redemption and forgiveness, Christianity demands it but the person in question is not behaving in an honorable way, and if you are paying a man so he can force a reporter/blogger, his wife and children on the road to avoid him you have to ask yourself: Have you no decency? Have your totalitarian impulses becomes so strong that this is what its come to?

The Daily Gator

McCain has drawn the attention of one Brett Kimberlin, a Leftist terrorist, and scumbag in general. Kimberlin would love to silence bloggers like McCain, who has dared to try and expose Kimberlin and his allies for what they are.

That Mr. G Guy

Kimberlin is hiding something and people are getting closer to figuring it out. He’s running scared. Funny thing is, he’s just bringing more attention to himself. He’s doing the equivalent of screeching up to the bank across the road from the police station with the intention of robbing it. Way to keep a low profile dude.

The Lonely Conservative

Stacy McCain and his family are still in an undisclosed location. I suspect it will be that way for a while. I have no idea if they’re in Timbuktu or Vanuatu, I only know they aren’t at home in Maryland. He did another post today that does a great job summarizing things to date. For telling the truth about a dangerous man he’s now in hiding. God bless America.

Granite Grok

Well, leftists and terrorists (but I repeat myself) can be vindictive when cornered or exposed, and Stacy had worked over the record of a certain ‘gentleman’ with such sharp prose that you could have gotten paper cuts just by reading the articles!

Film Ladd

Stacy fled because he believed that Brett Kimberlin, convicted domestic lefty terrorist bomber, was overly curious re: Stacy’s geographic location.
This curiosity was most likely generated from Stacy’s very loud reporting on Kimberlin’s money ties to George Soros and Barbara Streisand.
I had a conversation with a political consulting friend about the matter.
“Is Stacy serious?” my friend asked. “I look at this post and he’s rattling his tip jar? I thought he was joking.”
Yes, I said; that’s just Stacy. It’s serious.

Update II: A special shout out to our kosher pal The Lid

Think about that for a second.. most bloggers get nasty emails, even threats and rebukes from politicians and public figures. Heck Steve Israel has sent out at least two fundraising letters pointing out things I’ve written as the reason he needs extra funds. But Stacy didn’t get an overt threat those are easier to deal with–he got the implied threat, the kind that can’t be acted on by the authorities.
I spoke to Stacy McCain tonight and you wouldn’t know he was on the run from a terrorist/sociopath (the guy was accused of killing his Grandma). McCain was calm, cool and determined to see this story through because he won’t shy away from the truth.

Kimberlin may not be wise, but you neglect his low animal cunning at your peril. Thus, while Stacy is playing perhaps a hyper-cautious hand (a wife and five children remaining at home limits flexibility, given Kimberlin’s history) there is also the understanding that Kimberlin’s less kinetic strategies resemble the bad guy in the Scooby Doo episode. Kimberlin seeks to bully and intimidate people, and he’d would’ve gotten away with it, too, if not for that meddling Stacy McCain shining a light into inconvenient history and still less convenient, rich Lefty ties.
Let’s see if those ties, and more recent skullduggery don’t become the focus as this story unfolds. I don’t know much about Kimberlin at all. But if he proves to resemble the dirtbag archetype I have in mind, then it may be that Kimberlin hasn’t really breathed an honest breath in a long, long time. Hope I’m wrong on that call.
via FilmLadd

“Everybody Blog About Brett Kimberlin Day.”

Free speech blogburst: Show solidarity for targeted conservative bloggers

By Michelle Malkin • May 23, 2012 05:59 AM

Over the past eight years that I’ve been blogging and operating Internet media companies, I’ve witnessed or experienced firsthand some of the most unhinged behavior against conservatives — from individual harassment and intimidation, to e-mail bombs and e-mail hackings, to troll infestations, distributed denial of service attacks, coordinated spam block attacks, and death threats.
Over the past twenty years that I’ve worked in daily opinion journalism, written books, and traveled across the country speaking in every type of venue, I’ve always believed that the most effective response to attempted censorship of conservatives is more speech, not less.
More. Louder. Bolder.
For conservatives online, it is also a time-tested truism that there is great strength in numbers. When bloggers, activists, video content creators, and Twitter users on the Right unite behind common principles — fighting jihadi propaganda, exposing corruption, calling out media bias, following the progressive money trail, holding the Republican Party’s feet to the fire, etc. — we can accomplish uncommon things.
Over the past year, Aaron Walker (who blogged as “Aaron Worthing”), Patterico, Liberty Chick, and now Stacy McCain have been targeted by convicted Speedway bomber Brett Kimberlin because they dared to mention his criminal past or assisted others who did. The late Andrew Breitbart warned about Kimberlin and company.
I have spoken directly with both Patterico and Aaron about their ongoing battles.
The mainstream press, not just the conservative blogosphere, needs to hear and report their stories.
This is a convoluted, ongoing nightmare that combines abuse of the court system, workplace intimidation, serial invasions of privacy, perjury, and harassment of family members. McCain was forced to move with his family out of his house this week, and has just gotten a small taste of what Aaron and Patterico have been enduring over the past year. Aaron and his wife were fired from their jobs after their employer feared the office would be targeted next. Convicted bomber Kimberlin has filed bogus “peace orders” against Aaron, when it is the Walkers who are the victims, not the perpetrators.
And Patterico’s plight will send chills up your spine when he is ready to tell it.
Institutional inertia, incompetence, and apathy among law enforcement officials on both coasts have exacerbated the victims’ suffering. It has moved far beyond a partisan or political story to a bottomless, Kafka-esque morass. And, via investigative journalist Matthew Vadum, it certainly doesn’t help that “progressive,” left-wing foundations that have funded Kimberlin continue to look the other way.
Ted Frank at Point of Law summed it up: “A scary tale of what can go wrong if one makes the wrong enemy of someone willing to persistently abuse the civil and criminal legal system, and how poorly the legal system protects those victims.”
Law blog Popehat wrote:

Aaron’s story is quite long. (We had a tiny, tiny piece of it here.) But he supports it with primary documents and video recordings, and ultimately it’s a wrenching depiction of how the system doesn’t prevent crazy and/or evil people from victimizing innocents — a depiction of how the system can be the instrument of such victimization. It’s not a pretty story, but it’s worth reading.

Dan Collins has a very useful summary of Aaron’s plight and the obliviousness of Maryland prosectors:

That Kimberlin lied repeatedly in his sworn charges isn’t a surprise, but it is a deep disappointment that the Maryland prosecutor seems to think there’s no substantial public benefit to be procured by making wannabe mass murderer Kimberlin pay for his false testimony in trying to frame blogger Aaron Worthing. My opinion is that people who attempt to use the law and the legal system as a means of tortious aggression towards other citizens should be summarily sentenced on conviction to penalties at least twice as high as those they’ve contemplated for their targets.

Lee Stranahan provides some basic background on Kimberlin here:
But it’s Kimberlin’s most recent actions that warrant attention and a strong wall to deter future abuse. Patterico writes:

First, this isn’t about dredging up a crime that happened 34 years ago. Kimberlin has done plenty since then. He made claims about selling pot to Dan Quayle — claims that the lefty author of a book about Kimberlin believes are false. He deceptively avoided paying a wrongful death judgment to the widow of the man he blew up. He sued a small-time blogger in 2011 for telling the truth about him, and made several false statements about his history under oath in an effort to win a large cash judgment. He made several provably false statements regarding his encounter with Aaron Walker, in an effort to get the State of Maryland to prosecute Walker. He has regularly defamed, harassed, and stalked people who criticized him.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg, folks.

Several blogs have already stepped up to the plate (links to all at the end of this post), but as Ace of Spades writes:

Cowards die a thousand deaths.
I already died 40 cowards’ deaths this past week. That’s enough for me. I will die no more of them.
Am I to understand only the smallest, least-well-financed bloggers are going to be covering this? While large media franchises with lawyers on retainer all decide “we’d rather let tiny one-man blogs take the lead on this?”
Does that make sense?

No. That won’t do.
For those of you who are old fogies in the blogosphere, you’ll remember the “blogburst” concept — hundreds of bloggers of all sizes getting together to push an idea or action item. In this case, a blogburst would raise the cost of the online terrorists’ speech-squelching business immensely. It’s a collective show of support and force.
Along those same lines, Stranahan has proposed that Friday be “Everybody Blog About Brett Kimberlin Day.”
Even a simple link, e-mail, or tweet will do.
I will join and I hope you will find a way to spread word about this horrifying saga, too (it gets worse, believe me). The targeted victims — past, present, and future — will need not only media support, but sustained financial support. A few good and brave philanthropists could come in handy right about now. Send me an email if you can help.
Telling the truth on the Internet shouldn’t mean risking your job or your life, or the well-being and safety of your loved ones. Make your voices heard if you agree.
***
Background reading:
Aaron Walker: Summary/Preview of my Post “How Brett Kimberlin Tried to Frame Me for a Crime (And How You Can Help!)”
Immediate action items to help Aaron are here.
Stacy McCain: Brett Kimberlin Saga Takes a Bizarre Turn, Forcing Me to Leave Maryland
Patterico: Brett Kimberlin’s Latest “Peace Order” Against Aaron Walker Is Retaliation for Truthful Speech

One of the things that Kimberlin complains about is that Aaron has called Kimberlin a terrorist…
“Terrorism” is a fair way to describe what Brett Kimberlin did to the town of Speedway, Indiana in 1978, when he set off eight bombs over the course of several days. Kimberlin has been convicted of those bombings, one of which blew off the limbs of a Vietnam veteran named Carl DeLong, who committed suicide as a result of his injuries. Brett Kimberlin earned the right to be called a convicted domestic terrorist, and he should not be marching off to court complaining about it when someone calls him just that.
It is beyond the scope of this post to detail every way in which Kimberlin’s peace order is misleading and deceptive. Kimberlin complains that Aaron spoke of purchasing a gun, implying that Aaron’s statement was aggressive — when Aaron actually said he had bought a gun to defend himself. Kimberlin claims that Aaron is responsible for “alerts” coming to his email inbox, suggesting Aaron is emailing him, when in fact the “alerts” Kimberlin is talking about are Google alerts. If you write about this guy on the Internet, he may run to a judge and say you are causing abusive alerts to come to his email.
You might say: what’s the harm in getting a peace order? I have watched this play out in other venues and I know just what Kimberlin is up to. As soon as he gets a “peace order,” he will run back to court the very next time Aaron mentions his name in public. That means that Kimberlin asserts the right to abuse the court process to harass Aaron — and if Aaron tells the world how Kimberlin is abusing the court process, Kimberlin will claim that as a violation of the peace order and try to have Aaron held in contempt of court.
Kimberlin and his crew have relentlessly harassed Aaron, me, and others over the course of the last several months. It is not harassment for us to tell the world what happened to us. It could happen to any of you. His supporters have outed or threatened to out commenters to this very site. They talk about wives, children, and fathers of bloggers and commenters. They ceaselessly abuse everyone they can who speaks the truth about Kimberlin’s past.
Ultimately, this is a free speech issue. Kimberlin and his group of thugs have done their level best to attack everyone in the blogosphere who wrote anything negative about him. Now the blogosphere is starting to wake up, and there are so many critics he can’t possibly intimidate them all.

***
Many bloggers have already spoken up for Kimberlin’s victims and/or linked to related stories (let me know if I’ve missed you):
Instapundit Glenn Reynolds
iowntheworld.com
The American Thinker
Walter Olson at Overlawyered
Blazing Cat Fur
Donald Douglas at American Power
The American Catholic
The Lonely Conservative
Kathy Shaidle at Five Feet of Fury
Nice Deb
Sundries Shack
PJMedia Tatler
Dan Riehl
Film Ladd
The Coalition of the Swilling
DaTechGuy
Richard Fernandez
Legal Insurrection
Doubleplusundead
Daley Gator
The Camp of the Saints
Wake Up America
Darth Chipmunk
Zilla of the Resistance
Lady Liberty 1885
Goldfish and Clowns
Small Dead Animals
Hillbuzz
Yid with Lid
Evil Blogger Lady
Israel Matzav
Every voice counts.

22 May 2012

Brett Kimberlin Saga Takes a Bizarre Turn, Forcing Me to Leave Maryland

Posted on | May 22, 2012 | 48 Comments and 235 Reactions

When terrorist Brett Kimberlin was convicted of multiple felonies in 1981,
he could have been sentenced to 230 years in federal prison.

FROM AN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION
Convicted terrorist Brett Kimberlin on Monday continued his effort to silence those who write about his criminal past by contacting my wife’s employer, claiming that I was “harassing” him. The resulting security concern required immediate relocation if I was to be able to continue writing about the case of Kimberlin, a violent felon, perjurer and admitted tax cheat who is employed as the director of a 501(c)3 non-profit that has collected $1.8 million in contributions since 2005.
Kimberlin was convicted of multiple federal felonies in 1981 and sentenced to 50 years in prison after he terrorized a small Indiana town in a brutal crime weeklong bombing spree. Law enforcement officials told the Indianapolis Star they believed the bombings were committed in an attempt to distract authorities investigating the 1978 murder of a 65-year-old grandmother, a crime in which Kimberlin was a suspect.
In recent months, Kimberlin has used a strategy of legal intimidation and workplace harassment in an apparent attempt to silence his critics, including blogger Seth Allen, Virginia attorney Aaron Walker and Los Angeles deputy district attorney Patrick Frey.
Walker says he and his wife were fired from their jobs because of Kimberlin’s harassment. Walker did legal work for Allen, who was sued after writing about Kimberlin’s criminal career. On Thursday, Walker published a 28,000-word account of how he says Kimberlin tried to “frame” him on a bogus assault charge.
Kimberlin is a known associate of Neal Rauhauser, a Democrat campaign consultant who has described himself as a computer “hacker.” Kimberlin, director of the tax-exempt Justice Through Music Project, is also involved in another tax-exempt group, Velvet Revolution, which has gained national attention by demanding criminal prosecution of high-profile figures including Republican strategist Karl Rove, U.S. Chamber of Commerce president Tom Donohue, and the late Internet news entrepreneur Andrew Breitbart. Kimberlin’s name also surfaced last year in connection with the so-called “Anonymous” international hacker conspiracy. Kimberlin has pursued numerous strategies to harass journalists and bloggers who have attempted to call attention to his criminal past and his notorious dishonesty — a “top-flight con man,” as Publisher’s Weekly called him in a review of award-winning journalist Mark Singer’s 1996 book, Citizen K: The Deeply Weird American Journey of Brett Kimberlin.
Convicted of drug smuggling and forging documents as well as numerous violent felonies, Kimberlin claims to have ceased his lifelong criminal career after being released from federal prison in 2000. Yet his habitual dishonesty – Kimberlin was first convicted of perjury at age 18 – appears unchanged. As recently as 2007, Time magazine reported that Kimberlin was gaining notoriety on progressive blog sites by “repeatedly asserting as fact things that are not true.” According to Walker, Kimberlin falsely accused him of assault after a courthouse encounter in which Kimberlin attempted to photograph Walker in violation of court policy. Walker says Maryland officials have refused to investigate his complaints of criminal actions by Kimberlin, and has asked his blog readers to contact those officials to demand action:

Attorney for Montgomery County
50 Maryland Avenue, 5th Floor
Rockville, Maryland 20850 states.attorney@montgomerycountymd.gov. 240-777-7300

* * * * * * *

Until I read Walker’s story Thursday morning, I had never heard of Brett Kimberlin. The story was so obviously newsworthy that I spent the next four days writing about it, including these items:

Particularly intriguing to me was the fact that Kimberlin is the director of a 501(c)3 organization which has received as much as $558,543 a year (in 2008) in contributions, including grants from major philanthropic foundations. Several people who have examined IRS filings by Kimberlin’s Justice Through Music Project and the 501(c)4 non-profit Velvet Revolution have told me they have concerns about the “thinly documented” filings (to quote one person experienced in non-profit work who wished to remain anonymous), that appear “very sketchy” (to quote another person who has examined the IRS Form 990’s for the two tax-exempt groups).
These concerns about Kimberlin’s “non-profit” activities raise intriguing questions, Walker observed Monday, considering what Singer wrote in his 1996 book about Kimberlin:

[Kimberlin] had not not yet turned nineteen when he first sought professional tax advice. “When I first started dealing dope, I went to see a lawyer in New York, who told me how to beat the tax people,” he said. “I had to pay this guy $2,500 or $3,000 for a couple of hours of consultation. Plus I had to fly out there. But it was worth it.” Other than driving an expensive car and owning a small airplane, he avoided ostentation and, along the way, the scrutiny of the tax authorities. Each year, he figured out how much he’d spent, extrapolated the income that would be required to support such a life, added ten percent, and filed a short-form tax return, taking the standard deduction. The tax code did not specifically require him to list his occupation, so he left that space blank. The only money he ever put in the bank, he said, was the money he used to pay taxes. He wrote only two checks a year — one to the Internal Revenue Service, and the other to the Indiana Department of Revenue.

Such boastfulness about his successful federal tax evasion make Kimberlin a very dubious person to be entrusted with the directorship of a tax-exempt non-profit organization that would seem to be his only source of legal income. His recent harassment of those who have written about his criminal career appears to have created renewed interest in Kimberlin’s activities. Major news organizations are rumored to be working on stories about the latest bizarre developments in the strange saga of the violent criminal known as the “Speedway Bomber,” who once falsely claimed to have sold drugs to a college-aged Dan Quayle.
My own encounter with Kimberlin’s attempted intimidation appears typical of his modus operandi, which students of psychology recognize as the habitual behavior of a deviant sociopath: Attempting to distract from his own malevolent actions by accusing his targeted enemies of doing to him what he is doing to them – and to many others. Several sources to whom I have spoken in recent days, who for obvious reasons wish to remain anonymous, have expressed suspicion that Kimberlin is doing this not only to hide his criminal past, but also in a misguided attempt to conceal his current malicious (and perhaps felonious) activities.
These are not accusations I make; rather, these are crucial elements of a newsworthy story that I am attempting to report. Kimberlin seems to be determined to prevent me – or anyone else – from reporting this story. In order to continue reporting it, without jeopardizing the safety of my family and other innocent people, I have been compelled to leave Maryland. Many people have responded to my appeal for prayer and financial assistance in this difficult crisis, but it is important to emphasize that this story is not about me.
This story is about Brett Kimberlin, a criminal of infamous reputation whose recent actions indicate that he fears widespread scrutiny. His attempts to suppress the truth have only generated more of the scrutiny Kimberlin had hoped to prevent, so that Monday for the first time his story merited a thread on the political news aggregation site Memeorandum.

– 30 –

The National Bloggers Club, Inc, a non-profit organization that organizes the annual Blog Bash event celebrating free-market bloggers, is making available a press contact for those interested in learning more about this story:
director@blogbash.org

Update (Smitty): welcome, Instapundit readers

The Kimberlin Files–Fresh Mint Juleps Requested Anonymously

Posted on | May 21, 2012 | 5 Comments and 9 Reactions

Technical Note: this post mostly produced as follows:

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Given a WordPress blog and a cPanel login, you can bring up phpMyAdmin, substitute some Category for ‘The Kimberlin Files’ in both places above, and re-use this. If you dare.

21 May 2012

Celebrating the Ascension on a Sunday is a sad sign of creeping secularisation in the Church | CatholicHerald.co.uk

Comment & Blogs

Celebrating the Ascension on a Sunday is a sad sign of creeping secularisation in the Church

We are witnessing the disappearance of the concept of sacred time

By Fr Alexander Lucie-Smith on Monday, 21 May 2012

The Ascension depicted at St Peter and Paul church in Mauren, Liechtenstein (CNS)

I hope all readers had a happy feast of the Ascension. For most people in this country it was Ascension Sunday that you celebrated; but for me and a small minority it was Ascension Thursday.
I have been away on retreat, staying in a strictly enclosed Benedictine monastery. On arrival I asked what was happening on the Thursday, and this is what I was told: “Here we celebrate the Ascension on Thursday, by special permission. Celebrating it on Sunday would mean that the novena between Ascension and Pentecost would make no sense.”
Funnily enough, this aspect of the great question had never occurred to me. Given that Ascension is on a Thursday and the feast of Pentecost the Sunday after next, that means that there is a nine day gap between the two, and this nine day gap, traditionally the time when the Church waits in prayer for the coming of the Holy Spirit, is the reason we keep novenas. This is the original ur-Novena.
It says in the Acts of the Apostles, 1:12-14:

Then [ after the Ascension] they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a sabbath day’s journey away. When they entered the city they went to the upper room where they were staying, Peter and John and James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James son of Alphaeus, Simon the Zealot, and Judas son of James. All these devoted themselves with one accord to prayer, together with some women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and his brothers.

Not only was this the first ever novena in the history of the Church, and the pattern of all future novenas, it was also the most distinguished one in Church history, consisting of the eleven apostles, the holy women, and the Mother of God Herself.
Despite this, I have the distinct feeling that novenas are going out of fashion. It is time they were revived, and the same goes for Octaves too, the custom of marking the eighth day after a feast and the period in between. The Easter Octave is still with us, but the Octave of the Assumption, which ends with the feast of the Queenship of Mary is one celebration that I have never witnessed. As a child, I do remember making a novena before the feast of the Immaculate Conception.
I suppose what we are witnessing here is the disappearance of the concept of sacred time; this is a huge pity, for a tradition once lost can only with great difficulty be restored. We can hardly complain about Christmas concerts and Christmas parties in the first weeks of December when we ourselves go along with this creeping secularisation. I asked last year about the restoration of the Ascension to the Thursday, and there was some talk of putting it back in its original place.
Is it worth asking again?

18 May 2012

ZENIT - Contraceptives and the Environment

ZE12051604 - 2012-05-16
Permalink: http://www.zenit.org/article-34791?l=english

Contraceptives and the Environment

What the Pill Is Doing to Our Water Supply

By Rebecca Oas, PhD
WASHINGTON, D.C., MAY 16, 2012 (Zenit.org).- In 1960, the combined oral contraceptive pill was first approved for use in the United States. Seven years later, “the Pill” was featured on the cover of Time Magazine, illustrating its enormous societal impact[1]. Roughly two generations later, statistics from the United Nations show that, within more developed nations worldwide, just under 16% of “partnered” women use contraceptive pills, a number which does not include usage among single women[2].
However, even as the popularity of oral contraceptives remains high, the drugs themselves have been evolving in response to further discoveries about the human reproductive system, as well as efforts to reduce the Pill’s negative side effects. As with any major technological or medical development, particularly one embraced very quickly by a large sector of the population, it can take years, and even decades, for the full range of effects to become evident. And as demonstrated by several recent studies, many questions remain unanswered regarding the long-term and environmental effects of the hormones used in oral contraceptives, as well as other medical treatments.
When a new synthetic substance is created, or a naturally occurring substance is generated at greatly increased levels, the effects can be far longer-lasting and wider-reaching than its manufacturers predict or intend. Some well-known examples of this include asbestos, a popular insulation and flame retardant in the late 19th century, which was later discovered to be carcinogenic; and polystyrene foams like Styrofoam, which is frequently used in disposable packaging, yet takes hundreds of years to break down once discarded. In the case of oral contraceptives, the key ingredients are synthetic hormones known as progestins, which mimic progesterone, either alone or combined with estrogen. When used therapeutically in contraceptive pills or in hormone replacement treatments for menopause, these synthetic hormones make their way into the water supply after being excreted in the patients’ urine. As environmental contaminants, these are referred to as endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs), due to the fact that they interfere with the endocrine systems of humans and animals alike following exposure.
While its impact is still being widely studied, there is no doubt that the exposure is occurring: multiple international studies have documented elevated levels of natural and synthetic hormones in drinking water, and one such study conducted in France noted that progestins in particular were more resistant to removal by water treatment methods, compared with other types of pharmaceuticals (3).
Due to the accumulation of synthetic steroids in water, much of the research conducted on its impact has been done using water-dwelling vertebrates such as fish and frogs. An ever-increasing collection of studies report harmful effects of these hormones on aquatic vertebrates, particularly with regard to their reproduction, as would be predicted given the nature of the contaminants (4). One study focused on the effects of exposure to the progestin Levonorgestrel (LNG) on the frog Xenopus tropicalis. While the male reproductive system did not appear to be impaired, female tadpoles exhibited severe defects in the development of their ovaries and oviducts, rendering them sterile (5).
While studies such as these cannot be taken as a direct assessment of the impact of environmental EDCs on humans, they do have certain advantages: the capability of controlling for the duration and concentration of exposure, and the fact that these animals’ life cycles are much shorter than those of humans, thus enabling multigenerational studies in far less time. Like the proverbial “canary in the coal mine,” animal studies can serve as early indicators of environmental conditions that may prove harmful to humans and direct our attention toward seemingly innocuous substances we encounter in the air we breathe, the food we eat, and, as in this case, our water supply. However, the effects of EDCs are not limited to water-dwelling frogs: female sterility resulting from early exposure to progestins has been reported in studies involving rats and mice, whose mammalian reproductive systems more closely resemble those of humans (6). The female reproductive system undergoes many key developmental changes in the early stages of life, and these changes are dependent on endocrine signaling events that are sensitive to contaminating environmental hormone exposure. A series of studies by a group at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have demonstrated that mice exposed to phytoestrogens – plant estrogens such as those found in soy products – at key developmental time points exhibited impaired fertility (7). In contrast to mice, in which the critical period of time is during the neonatal period, the human female reproductive tract is undergoing development from prior to birth through adolescence. Therefore, it is necessary to evaluate the risk of exposure to EDCs across a broader window of time, beginning in the womb.
The use of hormonal contraceptives by pregnant women is discouraged for the obvious reason that they are not ovulating, in addition to the potential for harm to the unborn child. However, postpartum contraception guidelines issued by the Centers for Disease Control in 2011 state that the use of progestin-only contraceptives “can be initiated immediately postpartum,” and discourage the use of estrogen-containing combined contraceptives in breastfeeding women primarily because the estrogen can reduce the mother’s milk supply (8). The presence of progestins in the breast milk of women taking oral contraceptives has not been demonstrated to adversely affect their babies’ health, although such assessments tend to focus on the short-term outcomes rather than those that might not manifest until adulthood. Nevertheless, the most recent report from the NIH group studying the effects of phytoestrogens highlights the notion that limiting early exposure to plant estrogens, such as those found in soy-based infant formulas, may prove to be beneficial to female reproductive health in the long term. Furthermore, the potential harms of prevalent EDC pollution in the environment are not restricted to women: in November of last year, the British Medical Journal published a report indicating that levels of prostate cancer in men are highest in geographic areas with the greatest use of oral contraceptives (9). While the authors stress that their findings are correlative rather than causative, their work provides a sobering hypothesis for further important research.
Ultimately, the Catholic opposition to contraception is grounded in a fundamental understanding of the meaning of human life and the purpose of procreation as a part of God’s plan, not a pragmatic conclusion reached by painstaking scientific research. While it makes intuitive sense that humans both individually and as societies benefit by living in accordance with the wishes of their Creator, in a fallen world there are practical things that can be done to alleviate some of our suffering, including the use of medical technology and pharmacology. It should be noted that synthetic hormones are not exclusively used in contraceptives, nor are the chemical compounds marketed as contraceptives intrinsically immoral – for instance, an unmarried and abstinent woman using hormonal treatments to treat endometriosis in the hopes of safeguarding her future fertility is doing nothing sinful, regardless of the efficacy or side effects of her decision. However, in a world in which influential groups and individuals are increasingly advocating for population control, often in a manner that recalls the eugenics movement of decades past, it is necessary to insist that research be done to uncover truths regarding the long-term and unintended side effects of widespread contraceptive pill usage.
* * *
Rebecca Oas, Ph.D., is a Fellow of HLI America, an educational initiative of Human Life International. Dr. Oas is a postdoctoral fellow in genetics and molecular biology at Emory University. She writes for HLI America's Truth and Charity Forum.
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1)    Time Magazine, April 7, 1967. http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,1101670407,00.html
2)    United Nations: World Contraceptive Use (2005) http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/contraceptive2005/2005_World_Contraceptive_files/WallChart_WCU2005.pdf
3)    Vulliet E; Cren-Olive C, Grenier-Loustalot MF. Occurrence of pharmaceuticals and hormones in drinking water treated from surface waters. Environmental Chemistry Letters (2011) 9:103–114
4)    Whitacre DM. Reviews of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology, Volume 218. Spring, 2012
5)    Kvarnryda M, Grabic R, Brandt I, Berg C. Early life progestin exposure causes arrested oocyte development, oviductal agenesis and sterility in adult Xenopus tropicalis frogs. Aquatic Toxicology 103 (2011) 18–24
6)    Uzumcu M, Zachow R. Developmental Exposure to Environmental Endocrine Disruptors: Consequences within the Ovary and on Female Reproductive Function. Reproductive Toxicology. 2007; 23(3): 337–352.
7)    Jefferson WN, Patisaul HB, Williams CJ. Reproductive consequences of developmental phytoestrogen exposure. Reproduction (2012) 143 247–260
8)    Update to CDC's U.S. Medical Eligibility Criteria for Contraceptive Use, 2010: Revised Recommendations for the Use of Contraceptive Methods During the Postpartum Period. CDC, July 8, 2011.
9)    Margel D, Fleshner NE. Oral contraceptive use is associated with prostate cancer: an ecological study. British Medical Journal Open. 2011 Nov 14;1(2)

15 May 2012

Bishop Morlino Defends Paul Ryan

11 May 2012

The Digital Hairshirt: Authentic Happiness

The Digital Hairshirt: Authentic Happiness: Yes, I know Authentic Happiness by Martin Seligman was written in 2002, but I am reading it now and since May is Mental Health Awareness Mo..

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Authentic Happiness

Yes, I know Authentic Happiness by Martin Seligman was written in 2002, but I am reading it now and since May is Mental Health Awareness Month, I just want to offer this from it:

The thoughts of depressed individuals are dominated by negative interpretations of the past, of the future, and of their abilities, and learning to argue against these pessimistic interpretations relieves depression to just about the same extent as anti-depressant drugs (with less relapse and recurrence).

[A]ll emotions about the past are completely driven by thinking and interpretation . . . an interpretation, a memory, or a thought intervenes and governs what emotion ensues. This innocent-looking and obvious truth is the key to understanding how you feel about the past. More importantly, it is the key to escaping the dogmas that have made so many people prisoners of their past.

You can control how you think. And that, in turn, governs your emotions.

Who doesn't want to be happier?

Seligman also quotes the great Catholic mystic, Julian of Norwich:

But all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well . . . He said not, "Thou shalt not be tempested, thou shalt not be travailed, thou shalt not be diseased," but He said, "Thou shalt not be overcome."

Have faith. Sunnier days, better times, happier moments are ahead on the road. Just take the steps to get there.

03 May 2012

Adrienne's Corner: The Catholic vote...

Adrienne's Corner: The Catholic vote...: will it make a difference in the election? The average Catholic is so poorly catechized, and so steeped in Marxist "social justice" garbag...