When I first heard the news that there had been a massive shooting at Fort Hood, my first response was horror, a prayer for the victims, and a gnawing concern that this was going to turn out to be another terrorist attack.  Mentally, I squashed that last thought, even after I heard the shooter’s obviously Arabic name.  It isn’t fair, I told myself, to assume anything.

Well, we aren’t assuming anymore.

As more details came out, we all heard about Major Hasan’s outbursts in favor of suicide bombers and Muslims fighting the U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.  There were the suspicious internet postings (which could not be conclusively linked to Hasan, so the charges were dropped).  His family told reporters that he had been discriminated against for “his ethnicity.”  Given his vocal support for America’s enemies, I’m guessing it may not have been his ethnicity (or even his religion) that was the reason for the animosity he attracted.

It didn’t take long to start seeing a pretty awful picture of warnings and reports to the proper military authorities that were ignored or dropped for lack of proof.  Was political correctness a factor?  Did people fail to prosecute the accusations as well as they should have because they feared a PR headache with the ACLU or some other watchdog group if they accused a Muslim of these things?

And then more linkages came to mind.  Al Qaeda had claimed they were trying to recruit doctors specifically, to cause us further insecurity.  Remember the terrorist ring of Muslim doctors in Britain who tried to bomb Glasgow airport?  Plus, there have been thwarted attempts to attack military bases in the U.S. and elsewhere (notably, Fort Dix) and the murders at the Arkansas military recruiting office by a Muslim convert.

Our paper, of course, came out with a series of subheadings the day after the shootings implying the shooter was crazy (of course he wasn’t right in the head; he shot forty people) or that it was the stress from the wars that led to this (I can see the scene at my paper’s editor’s office: “Can’t let a good crisis go to waste!  What a great opportunity to point out the evil nature of Bush’s wars and get to imply that the DHS report fingering returning veterans as a security risk may actually be right!”).  And they wonder why I keep telling their obnoxious marketing department, “Well, I’m not sure your paper is worth the cost of renewing my subscription again.”

In the small sidebar the local paper dedicated to mentioning that, “Well, ok, he was a Muslim, but we don’t know if that means anything yet!” the paper deigned to mention that Hasan had argued loudly with colleagues that this wasn’t a “war on terror” but was, in fact, a “war on Islam.”  Therefore, he didn’t want to participate in the killings of Muslims and wanted to get out of his committment to the Army (never mind that, as a doctor, he wouldn’t be killing anyone).

Maybe this will give us, as a nation, to discuss who we really are at war with.  Fighting “terror” has been ridiculed from all sides as an entirely inadequate description of who we are trying to defeat.  What capital or objective must be taken to defeat terror?  When is the war over, at what milestone?  I mean, it sounds rather amorphous; radical Islam can be absolutely anywhere.  How do you fight that?

Our answer, unfortunately, has been that we don’t.  Preachers of real hate are ignored so that the government can declare “war” on Fox News or go after churches “hateful” enough to argue that homosexual “marriage” is not a right and abortion is evil.  (Anyone hosting a Democratic candidate at the pulpit is ok, though (our Virginia Democratic candidates swept through eleven churches the weekend before the election, our paper reported cheerfully), as is anyone preaching hatred against America.)

For much of its history, Islam has been at war with everyone around it.  Lulls in the fighting have generally only been for regrouping.  The fact that U.S. forces have defended and helped rebuild mosques in Iraq doesn’t mean anything to those who would insist that the U.S. is at war with Islam in general.  Nor does the fact that we allow mosques and madrassas in our country, but there are no churches nor Christian schools allowed in Saudi Arabia and few allowed in most other Muslim countries.

We are not at war with Islam.  We want to believe that there are adherents of Islam who are decent people who wouldn’t kill their wives or daughters for “honor” nor put up with those who do.  We want to believe that many Muslims don’t condone blowing up innocent civilians in Israeli cafes or crashing planes into busy office buildings as a method of spreading their faith.

The Basque separatists finally quit fighting when they got some measure of autonomy.  The various radical communist groups in Europe quit bombing things as time wore on and they got a little political power.  The IRA never took out its political frustrations half-way around the globe; they had/have a particular aim, and the violence has decreased as their political voice has increased.  Islamic terrorism is not like those other ideologies’ terrorism, yet we refuse to see the difference.

Unfortunately, we have yet to come to grips with the fact that significant sections of Islam are at war with us.  Not for Israel, not for Iraq, not for Afghanistan, and certainly not for some alleged lingering anger over the Crusades.  Radical Islam will be at war with us until everything is “submitted” under Islam.  Unlike in Christianity, there is no softening of the theological position with an acknowledgement of the humanity of non-believers; the order in the Koran is to convert or kill everyone.

We have let our political correctness drive us into a corner.

Thirteen soldiers died at Fort Hood for that intentional blind side.

And, no, I certainly do not mean the week of “volunteerism”-oriented programming.  (or the related spate of comic strips on “volunteerism”)

I’m not into the crime or courtroom dramas, so I didn’t see this when it came out.  My husband watched it online after getting an e-mail from Priests for Life encouraging everyone to check it out.  DH said it was very good, surprisingly even-handed, and even pro-life.

The episode is from Law and Order, discussing the situation of a pro-life person who confronts and kills an abortion doctor at his church.  They put a few twists on it that the actual case of the murder of Dr. Tiller didn’t have, but it’s obvious where they got their idea (common for the show; they take cases in the news and examine them through fictionalized versions).

Priests for Life put up a link to Law and Order’s abortion murder episode.

If you follow football at all, you know what happened with Brett Favre and the Green Bay Packers, or, more specifically, the new management.  The details are a little fuzzy, with a lot of they said/he said.  Favre had been frustrated by the lack of good talent on the team; reportedly, he’d even offered to take a pay cut to allow the team to hire some better new people.  Finally, Favre said he was going to retire, then changed his mind.  The management declared that they had “moved on.”  Many fans cried, “Foul!” and claimed the management was just trying to make a name for themselves, which meant getting rid of the previous management’s legacy, i.e. Favre.

The protests came to nothing, and Favre, after sixteen years with the Packers, was traded to the New York Jets.  The Jets did ok last year, but let Favre go at the end of the season.  Then, horrors of horrors, Favre signed with one of the Packers’ arch-rivals, the Minnesota Vikings.

The coverage dripped with nasty t-shirts (“Benedict Favre the traitor” being one of the milder ones) and distraught Packers’ alumni shaking their heads and saying, “Gee, we thought he was a good guy…”

People.  Get over it.  Seriously.

It’s football.  Not a war.  Not a country.  Not even politics.  Just football.

You fired him; what did you expect?  That he’d remain in mourning for you forever?  If one of my Naval Academy classmates took a job teaching at West Point, we’d rib him pretty hard.  But we would not seriously throw around the accusation of “traitor.”  We would not bemoan that we “used to think he was a good guy.”  (Ok, most of us wouldn’t; I was reminded by a recent commenter that some people take Navy sports way, way more seriously than I ever would.  Which is why the kicker one year was getting e-mails that bordered on death threats from alumni for missing a field goal at the Army-Navy game.)

All this, yet we can’t say anything bad about people who are betraying the Constitution.  The people who are selling our grandchildren into debt slavery.  The people who laugh and sneer that Republicans love Mao for being a strong dictator, but can’t seem to keep actual vocal Mao admirers out of the staff immediately surrounding the president.  No, you must not criticize them, or else you are a racist who just hates Obama!  And don’t you dare hold a rally protesting the government’s spending spree with our tax dollars, or the media and Nancy Pelosi will call you other nasty names, too, and claim that you are funded by big corporations… even though the big corporations that gave money to the Democrats seem to be benefitting rather nicely from the “stimulus” spending.

On second thought, maybe the problem is closer than it first appears.  Both the “Favre is a traitor” and “Everyone who disagrees with Obama is a racist/redneck/idiot” people are seeking to squash criticism of their own actions (or their side’s actions) by loudly maligning anyone who dares disagree, hoping to shift the argument from the facts to, well, arguing about the argument.

The elections are coming up and, although it’s an “off” year, since it isn’t a presidential election year, the ads and phone banks are out in force.  Cuccinelli, the Republican candidate for attorney general, has been called a dangerous, right-wing zealot (Why?  Because he’s a truly conservative, pro-life, pro-school voucher, homeschooler.  Yep, dangerous people, those homeschoolers!).  McDonnell, the Republican candidate for govenor has been accused of being anti-working-woman because of a graduate thesis he wrote twenty years ago (in spite of his having a daughter who is an Army officer and the fact that our president’s law school thesis remains shrouded in secrecy).

We need to redirect the argument to what is important.

Not football.

Not name calling of opponents.

The election is tomorrow (ok, technically “today”, now, in the Eastern Time Zone).  Get out there and argue about what is important.  Our future, our country, where we are headed, and where we should be headed.  The rest can wait.

Well, I’ve been in and out of the blogosphere lately (mostly out or just lurking briefly), but I am finally officially back.  The move from you-know-where is half over; the second half comes when my in-laws rent a mobile home somewhere and we get to move everything out of the storage units and into the house.  (Oh, joy.)  The good news is, a lot of stuff is gone, via the huge rummage sale, donations, and the trash, so the next move should be neither so painful nor so drawn out.

I’m sort of absorbed in a long-overdue quilt project, which will be shown whenever I have a working camera again, but I hope to be back to regular posting, effective immediately.

Thank you all for your patience and your continued visits, even when I was terribly irregular about being here to “meet” you with anything new!

“It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood.”
- James Madison (1751-1836), American statesman and fourth President of the United States of America.

This was the Quote of the Week on a homeschooler e-newsletter I get.  My husband’s comment was, “Yep.  We’re toast.”  Ok, he didn’t say “toast”, it was rather stronger than that, but you get the idea.

In case you haven’t heard, White House Communications Director Anita Dunn was caught on tape giving a high school commencement speech praising Mao as a wonderful political thinker.  Specifically, she said:

… the third lesson and tip actually comes from two of my favorite political philosophers: Mao Tse Tung and Mother Theresa– not often coupled with each other– but the two people that I turn to most to basically deliver a simple point which is you’re going to make choices, you’re going to challenge, you’re going to say, “Why not?”  You’re going to figure out how to do things that have never been done before… In 1947, when Mao Tse Tung was being challenged within his own party on his plan to basically take China over, Chiang Kai-Shek and the Nationalist Chinese held the cities, they had the army, they had the air force, they had everything on their side, and people said, “How can you win, how can you do this, how can you do this, against all of the odds against you?” and Mao Tse Tung said, “You fight your war, and I’ll fight mine.”

Yes, both Mother Teresa and Mao figured out “how to do things that have never been done before.”  Mother Teresa figured out how to be such a shining, authentic example of Christ’s love for everyone, including the “untouchables” in Calcutta that she inspired people in Calcutta and around the world to rethink their behavior.  Mao figured out how to murder an unprecedented number of people.  Mother Teresa famously told a National Prayer Breakfast audience (including President and Mrs. Clinton), “Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love, but to use any violence to get what they want. This is why the greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion.”  Mao and his successors don’t seem to have concurred with her comment, either on the evil nature of abortion nor on the importance of love over violence.

Ms. Dunn has since claimed that the comment was meant to be “irony” while others have leapt to her defense, saying it was satire.  And, hey, she mentioned Mother Teresa; isn’t that good for something, too?  Unfortunately, there is no evidence of satire or irony on that video: she appears to seriously think Mother Teresa has something beyond shared humanity in common with Mao.

Because it isn’t about what you actually do, it’s just about whether or not you have an “inspiring” story.  It’s all about admiring tenacity, wherever you find it!  Gee, and people say this administration is socialist and flirting with communism… where on earth would they get that idea?  (For the record, the first three sentences of this paragraph are sarcasm, a form Ms. Dunn obviously does not understand.  And I’ve never heard anyone refer to Mother Teresa as a political philosopher before.  Sounds like Ms. Dunn has no idea who the woman really was.)

Yes, just to be clear, we are talking about that Mao, as in:

* The man who dragged his country through a brutal civil war to implement communism, promptly getting himself installed as the new demi-god to replace the evils of the emperors, who thought they were demi-gods.  (To tinker with Benjamin Franklin’s comment on revolution, My demi-god status is good, it is only other peoples’ demi-god status that is bad.)

* The leader who unleashed the persecutions of tens of millions of educated people for the “sin” of being, well, educated, i.e. “elitist”.  He called it the Cultural Revolution.  Millions were displaced, sent to the countryside for “real work”.  One famous poet saw all of his work destroyed, while he was sent to a far western outpost to clean latrine pits.

* The progressive thinker who, as another part of his Cultural Revolution, decided to eliminate all traces of the imperialist past of China in favor of the good, honest workers.  Beijing’s city wall, an important historic monument, was torn apart.  Craftsmen and artists associated with the imperial court were killed or driven into hiding.  Important art and artifacts were destroyed.  Thank goodness the Terra Cotta Warriors were still buried at this time, or they would probably be gone, too.

* The head of state who, while implementing his idealistic (and unrealistic) version of How Things Should Be told all the farmers to make backyard iron smelters to fuel China’s would-be industrial revolution.  The result?  Millions starved and the shoddy, primitive smelters turned out junk iron that was totally inadequate for industrial use.

* The man who left behind a totalitarian government with just as heavy a fist and as huge a sense of its own importance as any emperor.  Most governments, at some point, had/have some sort of conscripted labor for big projects (the Great Wall, the pyramids, etc.) or wars.  Only modern China has instituted a mandatory “family planning” policy that reaches right into peoples’ homes and dictates how many children they will be allowed to have.  We probably won’t know the true damage of the One Child Policy for years, but, so far, it has resulted in more than 20 million young men of marriage age who will never have a wife, because all of the girls were aborted or killed at birth (a few were abandonned and sent to orphanages for adoption since it is illegal to place a child for adoption in China).  The Chinese now have an entire generation of “little emperors“, only children, disproportionally sons, who are pampered beyond belief because they are all that their parents and grandparents have.

Yes, Hitler was horrible.  He killed 12 million people in the concentration camps and other targeted mass murders: about 6 million Jews (for being Jewish) and 6 million others (for being against the Nazis, a gypsy, Polish, a Soviet POW, handicapped, or just not perfectly German enough).  He started a war that killed millions more, and he had plans to wipe out all of the Slavs after he was done with the Jews.

Mao killed 20 to 40 million people in the famine caused by the “Great Leap Forward” alone.  Millions more were displaced and had their lives ruined.  The total death toll attributed to him is 40 to 70 million people, which does not include the as many as 100 million his successors have killed, through the government Mao created, with the One Child Policy (Steven Mosher’s estimate).

Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised, given that most of our adoption group didn’t have a clue about China’s history.  These were all reasonably well-off, well educated adults.  After a fifteen minute explanation from our guide on Chinese Communist history, and Mao in particular, outside Chairman Mao’s mausoleum, the dozen couples in our group walked across Tiannamen Square towards the main gate into the Forbidden City.  As we neared the gate, someone in the front of the group pointed at the gigantic portrait of Mao over the main gate and asked, “Who’s this Mr. Yu guy, again?”  I wished, not for the last time, that I had a large button that said in Mandarin, “I apologize for these people.  Not all Americans are this stupid, honest.”

Apparently, 40 to 70 million dead Chinese aren’t worth as much as 12 million dead Europeans, because if Anita Dunn had said that Hitler was a great political philosopher, well, we all know she wouldn’t be working at the White House anymore.

But she admires Mao, so that’s ok, right?

Beats me why.

Dear Politicalhousewyfe,

I wonder what your thoughts are on childhood vaccinations, mainly those that contain fetal cell lines. We have recently discovered this horror and are endeavoring to try to find alternative vaccines that are ethical, to date there are none for the MMR and Hep A. Our Parish Priest, who belongs to the FSSP advised despite the whole double effect theory and the need for our children to have these questionable, vaccines does not outweigh the gravity of how they had been developed. Before speaking to him, we wrote a letter to HLI but haven’t received an answer.

I am in agreement with our PP but am so concerned about leaving our children vulnerable.

Regards, Lisa, Topeka, Kansas.

I received the above comment, plus a friend brought this up at church this morning (Thank you, Bozena), so I thought I’d comment on it while proving that I have not, in fact, quite dropped off the face of the earth, despite a gross neglect of the blog lately.

Lisa, I think I am going to disagree with your priest partially.  While you certainly can, and should, object to your pediatrician and to the vaccine manufacturers, skipping these vaccines puts your children at risk of disease.  There are a number of “beaten” diseases that are making a nasty comeback in the U.S., due partially to increased international travel and partially to illegal aliens, who, unlike legal immigrants, are not screened for communicable diseases.

A quick web search turned up an article about fetal cells, vaccines, and the Vatican position.  (Issued in 2005.  Why the heck do I never hear this from my parish or bishop?!?!)  In short, the Pontifical Academy for Life, after a request for clarification, came back with the answer that parents should seek out vaccines that did not use aborted children in their production, wherever possible.  Which is the problem: at least one vaccine does not have a non-aborted-tissue version.  Several other vaccines have some batches and companies that are ok, and some that are not.  The PAL also emphasized that parents should continue to pressure doctors and pharmaceutical companies to discontinue the practice of using aborted children’s tissues for vaccine production.

Several articles I came across point out that the handouts detail whether or not a specific vaccine was produced using a fetal cell line… but I’ve never seen or been offered the handouts that they say come with the vaccines; my pediatrician always gives me a laminated sheet detailing the possible adverse reactions of that general vaccine.  Nothing has ever been said about the dangers or risks associated with any particular type or manufacturer of the vaccine.  And I assumed my pediatrician would tell me something like that.

The question, of course, comes down to “How closely am I cooperating with the murder of an unborn child by using a vaccine cultured on their cells?”

In the case of, say, a pro-abortion politician, by voting for them you are assisting in the passage of pro-abortion legislation, which leads directly to more abortion deaths in the future.  Although the cooperation is technically “remote”, in that you yourself are not performing or procuring the abortion, you are very much involved.

Is that what happens when we use a vaccine that used an aborted baby in its production?  I’m not sure that we are.

After WWII, it was discovered that, among the other horrors the Nazis had perpetrated, they had done considerable research into various diseases.  Unhampered by any ethical considerations or concern for their victims, the Nazi doctors had intentionally infected thousands of people for the purposes of experimenting on them.  The ethical conundrum came up when the Allies found the records: the Nazis had discovered several cures.

To use the cures obtained by the careless murder of thousands, or to destroy the cures to keep our consciences clean?

The final decision that was reached was that the cures would be made available to the world, on the reasoning that the victims were already dead, whether we used the cures or not; to destroy the cures would be to render their deaths even more meaningless.  However, the “researchers” would receive no honor nor payment for their participation in the discovery of the cures, due to the grossly inhumane methods they had used.

Merck, one of the primary offenders in using the fetal cell lines from aborted babies, has claimed that the lines it uses are all it will ever need.  So, basically, they are claiming that they are in the same ethical position as the Allies discovering the Nazis’ research and choosing to use it to save lives.  The problem is that a) they have just started using a new cell line (so their initial claim to innocence is false) and b) they are not in the position of the Allies but that of the Nazi scientists who directly benefited from the murder of innocents for their research.

The Pontifical Academy for Life described the use of abortion-derived vaccines as “remote and passive.”  (Catholic theological parlance for, roughly, ”you are not directly involved in the evil act in question” and “you are not influencing the occurence or non-occurence of the evil act in question.”)  Their conclusion was that it is allowable for parents to vaccinate their children with abortion-derived vaccines when no other option is available.  (There is plenty out there on the internet, however, questioning whether or not we should ever use fetal cell-derived vaccines and claiming links between aborted children’s DNA in the vaccines and various adverse reactions and later diseases, specifically autism, but also others:

How could the contaminating aborted fetal DNA create problems? It creates the potential for autoimmune responses and/or inappropriate insertion into our own genomes through a process called recombination. There are groups researching the potential link between this DNA and autoimmune diseases such as juvenile (type I) diabetes, multiple sclerosis and lupus. Our organization, Sound Choice Pharmaceutical Institute, is focused on studying the quantity, characteristics and genomic recombination of the aborted fetal DNA found in many of our vaccines.

All of which I wish I’d heard or read back when I first heard about this and concluded that it would be too hard to keep track of which companies and batches were ok and which weren’t… so I ignored it.  It makes me sick to my stomach to think that I was warned of the problem (albeit, not warned, that I remember, about the consequences, which still makes me no less culpable) and chalked it up as just one thing too many to worry about, since my little dissent wasn’t going to change the drug companies’ behavior.

A full list of vaccines with their ethical options is available at Children of God for Life, under the button on the left that says “Vaccine Sources”.

“There are perticular times when I feel such an uneasiness, such a restlessness, as neither Company, Books, family Cares or any other thing will remove, my Pen is my only pleasure.”

- Abigail Adams

I’ll agree with her, especially right now, when my fingers are one of the few muscles that don’t ache.  (No, Tricia, I have not been running!)  Of course, Abigail didn’t have to deal with the computer failing to let her post her 7 Quick Takes Friday.  Or blog hosters who go on a week-long computer fast, resulting in… well… no actual 7 Quick Takes this week (interesting thought: computer fast… maybe I’d finally make some headway on my year-plus backlog of First Things.  Of course, it would then take me hours to dig out of the e-mail backlog… which was part of her point).

For anyone who was noticing, yes, my in-laws’ giant rummage was today.  As rummages go, it grossed well.  Of course, they had enough stuff out in the driveway and yard to set up an entire household, most of which didn’t sell.   (Unsold items will be hauled off by the first available charity thrift store.  I.  Am.  Not.  Touching.  That.  Stuff.  Again.)  The DH just limped by, moaning, “I don’t even know what doesn’t hurt…” because, after the rummage, we moved a bunch of other furniture out of the house.  (Lots of pretty blue and purple bruises, but no broken furniture.)  But wine and frozen Reese’s peanut butter pumpkins are helping, plus the fact that the front went through, and we’re back to normal fall temps, which means the house fan is on and the temperature is dropping.

And writing about it; that helps, too.

Ok, well, the official title for the feast day is “Our Lady of the Rosary”, but it was Our Lady of Victory first.

On Oct. 7, 1571, an outnumbered Catholic fleet faced off against the Ottoman Navy.  The forces of Christendom were plagued by infighting, including the fact that many monarchs refused to send any help at all.  Spain was busy sparring with England and protecting its far-flung colonies.  England refused to send anything, hoping the Catholic forces would be weakened by the battle, leaving only England with a full navy.  Much of northern Europe was entirely occupied by the wars of the Reformation.  With not much in the way of temporal backing, Don John of Austria turned to prayer: in addition to ensuring priests were available throughout the fleet to hear confessions and celebrate mass, he also required that every single sailor be given a rosary and encouraged to pray.

I remember several classes covering this time period; each teacher pointed out that the pope didn’t “bother” to do enough to deal with the Reformation, but no explanation for why besides implied laziness or something.  Want to know why?  Because the pope had bigger problems: the Ottoman Empire, which had a large army and navy, expansionist aims, and a stated goal of turning St. Peter’s in Rome into a mosque as had been done to Hagia Sophia in Constantinople.

There is a very good article at Wikipedia on the Battle of Lepanto.  I would add, from a Catholic point of view, one of the concluding scenes that Wiki skipped.  Far from the battle, in Rome, after a morning of prayers for the fleet, the pope was in a meeting, presumably discussing what would need to be done if the battle went poorly.  Suddenly, the pope stood up, gazed out a window, and cried out that business could wait: God had granted the Catholic fleet victory.

After facing horrible odds, Christian Europe emerged victorious.  Even Elizabeth I ordered a day of thanksgiving for the victory (which she had not helped the least bit).  Lepanto marks the beginning of the decline of the Ottoman Empire.  Thousands of Christian galley slaves were freed, and the Ottoman military would take decades to recover even part of what they lost that day in experienced archers, naval officers, and ground troops (used for deck fighting in naval battles at that time).

We celebrated the day by baking cookies (technically, I think that’s La Conquistadora, which is a related image).  I also told the kids about the battle, Islam, history, Hagia Sophia, and cappuccino (reputedly invented after the battle, when the thick, bitter Turkish coffee prompted someone to add some milk, and then notice that the drink was the same color as a Capuchin monk’s robe).

Although the recommendation is late for this year, I most highly recommend Lepanto, available from the American Chesterton Society.  The book contains the poem by G.K. Chesterton (yes, it’s available online), extended footnotes (absolutely necessary, if you have any hope of understanding the myriad references), commentary, and historical essays.  It will definitely be on the reading list around here in a few more years.

Happy feast day!

Specifically, this has to do with accusations of “lack of research”.  (No, not against me; I’ve been gone too much lately to have garnered many of those complaints recently.  Plus, I usually cite my research.)

I used to find columnist Leonard Pitts interesting, if sometimes directly at odds with how I view the world.  He was one of those people on the editorial page that, even when you completely disagreed with his conclusion, you at least found the column somehow useful or enlightening.  Lately, that’s not been the case.

The most recent column of Pitts’ that our local paper ran was the one about the wild, false claims made by Fox News.  Pitts specifically cited Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, and Glenn Beck.  Now, I don’t always catch O’Reilly and Hannity, but I almost always watch Beck nowadays, so I was curious what the accusation against him was.

Says Pitts in his Oct 6 column:

June 10 — Glenn Beck asks, “Why do we have automatic citizenship upon birth? We’re the only country in the world that has it.”

This is incorrect. Canada has it, as do 32 other nations.

Hmm.  I wonder what the other countries are that allegedly have our automatic-citizenship-by-birth rules?  Pitts didn’t say, and I have limited time tonight to try to guess what he meant, so we’ll just focus on Canada, which Pitts specifically claims has the same citizenship rules.

It took me precisely 30 seconds to find an answer, at the genealogy site The Ship’s List:

“Child” will not acquire Canadian citizenship if, as provided by Section 5(2) C.C.A. at the time of the child’s birth, his responsible parent (See appendix 2, Definitions):
(a) is an alien who has not been lawfully admitted to Canada for permanent residence; and
(b) is
• (i) a foreign diplomatic or consular officer or a representative of a foreign government accredited to Her Majesty,
• (ii) an employee of a foreign government attached to or in the service of a foreign diplomatic mission or consulate in Canada, or
• (iii) an employee in the service of a person referred to in subparagraph (i).

In other words, in Canada, simply being born on Canadian soil is not quite enough to confer citizenship.

• Children of foreign diplomats (or their foreign staff) do not get citizenship.
• Children of people in the country illegally do not get citizenship.
• Children of people who are not in Canada for the purposes of permanent residence do not get citizenship (this would seem to cover tourists, anyone on a temporary work/student visa, etc.).

Well, darn it all, American legal interpretation has dictated that any child born on U.S. soil is a citizen, regardless of the citizenship or even legal/illegal presence in the U.S. of the parent.

In the U.S., a child born this side of the border to a woman who cut through the U.S. border fence and entered this country illegally is a citizen.  In Canada, under the same circumstances, the child would not gain Canadian citizenship.  Thus, U.S. and Canadian laws on citizenship are not the same.  Somehow, I doubt the other 32 nations Pitts claims have the same policy as the U.S. actually have the same illogical, crime-rewarding policies we do on citizenship.

So, in a column complaining that Fox News can’t get its facts straight, Pitts, a famous, respected, Pulitzer-winning journalist who probably has a research staff or at least a few hours to do his own research, can’t get his facts straight.  And some former-naval officer housewife with a tiny blog taking time off of working on a quilt and planning tomorrow’s homeschooling debunked his smug dismissal of Beck in under a minute.

Next, unfortunately, the question becomes: Pitts can’t or won’t get his facts right?  Couldn’t he honestly say something like, “Ok, we are the only country with that exact interpretation, but that makes us morally superior, Beck, so pick on something else”?  As I pointed out, he has a lot more time on his hands to fact check and he won a Pulitzer; I have to assume he can get his facts straight.  Has journalistic professionalism been ground into the dirt by the desire to obliterate anyone who might dare question President Obama?

Pitts also complained that Beck lied about Obama’s health care plans.  Sojourners, a group of concerned Christians, said that Beck was wrong, so let’s trot out the tired old, “Hey, the Bible says ‘don’t lie’ and I say you’re lying, so you’re a hypocrite!  I will now yell HYPOCRITE loudly until you go away!”

Never mind that Sojourners, to put it mildly, leans left; they’re the kind of group that was trotted out at the faith-based health care conference to support the President’s health care plans and try to imply that other faith groups were just too stodgy, short-sighted, and addicted to the GOP to really care about the uninsured.  Sojourners’ website prominently features a section on calling Beck to account: “Tell Glenn Beck that health-care reform is consistently pro-life, and that you’re praying for him (and his advertisers) to choose hope over fear.” (In other words, “Who cares if the amendments specifically prohibiting government funding of abortions failed?  Can’t you just take the government at its word?”  Um, no, not generally; with the government, I want it in writing.)

Thanks for the reminder, y’all; I should remember to pray for Mr. Beck more often.  Maybe not quite in the way Sojourners and Pitts would like, though.