Civil Commotion

This is an emergency, a critical point in American history. Continuing down the path we are on will result in escalating persecution of Christianity, but even worse, risk losing the favor of God on our country, which would be an unimaginable horror. I am asking Christians to unite on the biblical principles which founded our country and help me take those principles to the United States Senate. Those who understand the history of our country know the vital role the church played not only in the establishment of hospitals, colleges, and a host of other charitable organizations, but in the revolution which established this great nation. If Christians do not rise up, the future of our country is bleak. I ask you to go to the polls on June 12 and cast a vote for the glory of God.

E.W. Jackson, Republican nominee
Lieutenant-Governor of Virginia

“The glory of God,” y’all should understand, would have been his selection as the Republican nominee for the United States Senate. He lost, so hope is not dead.

Abuse was covered up: Melbourne archbishop

[H/T: @GWFrink3]

… that the Murphy, Ryan, and Magdalene Laundries reports would have put the worst behind the Catholic Church in Ireland — but you’d be mistaken.

There has been a slight increase in the number of allegations of abuse being reported to the National Board for the Safeguarding of Children in the Catholic Church in Ireland.

The group says 242 new allegations of abuse were reported to the Board between April 1 last year and the end of March this year.

Like most of us, I grew up surrounded by some vague idea that the godly were somehow ‘better,’ et cetera, et cetera.

No; that’s wrong. Years of watching this have convinced me otherwise, that the sickness inheres in Christian dogma itself.

Worried about college? Which school, and how to pay for it? Well, you can stop worrying: Just take a shotgun to school, and Jerry Falwell, Jr., will soothe-away all your anxieties.

A Princeton High School senior and honors student who says he inadvertently brought two unloaded shotguns onto school property will be allowed to graduate, an attorney for Johnston County Schools said Thursday.

David Cole Withrow, 18, was arrested Monday on a felony charge of bringing a weapon onto educational property, after he realized he left the guns in his car after skeet shooting over the weekend.

[ ... ]

The news quickly spread on the Internet, causing an outpouring of support from across the world.

“It’s overwhelming, it really is,” Boykin said. “In this horrible situation that (the Withrow family) is in the middle of, this is the one thing that they have that they can hang onto – that there’s so many people coming out to stand up for their kid and realize he’s a good person who made a mistake.”

Withrow’s even received scholarship offers from Harding University in Searcy, Ark., and Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va.

I share the view that zero-tolerance laws should not become a substitute for actual thought and judgment, which is exactly what too often happens. That is what appears to have happened here, and it is what happens when pro-lifers allow a mother to die rather than abort a doomed pregnancy.

It bespeaks, at both extremes, a retreat from adult decision-making.

But … a scholarship? Seriously? A kid with a bad memory deserves a scholarship more than thousands of smart, hard-working kids for whom college is a dream as remote as the moon?

Clearly, what is going on here is that Falwell — who must not know that Obama, like Antonin Scalia, upholds the idea that gun ownership is an individual right — is using this kid for some cheap theater about gun rights. And if Master Withrow can’t see that, then he’s probably dumb enough to be comfortable on Liberty’s campus.

Charles Pierce sums up the debased Virginia GOP nicely:

Good god, people. You have put together a ticket that can howl, in harmony, at the moon?

That’s just about right. It goes, though, to something I’ve alluded to often: The professional politicians know that the GOP has become a laughingstock, that its policies are insane and destructive — but the nutcase activists down at the precinct level don’t know that. They think they’re engaged in a titanic death-struggle to save the Sunnybrook Republic from a nigra moozlim — and never mind that Obama has more in common with the progressive conservatism of Dwight Eisenhower than the old SDS.