Briefly

Hi all.

Baby Burgy is keeping me busy, as you might expect, and thus posts have been very few and far between.

For the moment, a few things.

First, I invite you all to read a recent letter by the bishop of Sioux Falls, SD (my bishop and my boss), Robert Carlson, on Catholicism, abortion, and voting. You can find it here. Relatedly, Bishop Carlson will be giving this fall's first Sioux Falls Theology on Tap presentation on August 27th, and appropriately, the topic is faith and politics. Within a couple of weeks after that date, his presentation and responses to questions will be available at the diocesan website, here.

On another note, there's a new conservative website/blog that I encourage you all to read, and if you so desire, join. It's called Redstate.

Recently, I've been discussing the question of Bush lies [sic] at The Village Gate, and haven't really gotten anywhere, at least with my primary interlocutor. Go to these comments and scroll down to the comment titled, "an opportunity" by yours truly. The next comment which addresses the lies question is down a bit farther, so scroll down to the comment, "Bush lied," and go from there.

Today, John Kerry said that he would have authorized the use of force against Iraq, even if he'd known that there were no WMDs. He said, Yes, I would have voted for the authority. I believe it is the right authority for a president to have but I would have used that authority effectively, which means that he would have gotten more countries involved in the war. Relatedly, Kerry recently said that he'd seek to internationalize the force in Iraq, with the goal of bringing our troops home by next August. But as tacitus of Redstate notes, The purported allies are balking. France, Germany, and Russia all now explicitly deny that they would send any troops to Iraq as a favor to President John Kerry. The British quietly demur. The Saudis can't put a force together. And the Iraqis themselves don't want a different foreign force package than the one they've got right now. One wonders how Kerry plans to magically persuade these nations to send troops, when they've made it abundantly clear that they will do no such thing. (I'd also recommend this story by JayReding and this one by John Cole.)

Okay, that's it for now. More when I'm able :-)