YEE-HAW!
The offensive "Crescent of Embrace" idea for a Flight 93 memorial is slated to be modified.
Category: Current Affairs
Panic In The Skies
The fourth age of human communications is changing a lot of things–making things possible that never would have happened at any prior point in history.
Scary stuff!
The Ghosts Of New Orleans
We May Have Just Dodged A Bullet
EXCERPTS:
MEMPHIS, Tenn. – A university student from Egypt was ordered held without bond after prosecutors said they found a pilot’s uniform, chart of Memphis International Airport and a DVD titled "How an Airline Captain Should Look and Act" in his apartment.
Maawad, who is in the United States illegally, told the judge during a hearing Thursday that he is studying science and economics at the University of Memphis.
"My school is everything. I stay in this country for seven years; I stay for the school," he said.
Maawad had ordered $3,000 in aviation materials, including DVDs titled "Ups and Downs of Takeoffs and Landings," "Airplane Talk," "Mental Math for Pilots" and "Mastering GPS Flying," FBI agent Thad Gulczynski testified.
The company reported Maawad to authorities when he didn’t pay for $2,500 of merchandise it had delivered, Gulczynski said.
Don’t Smile!
German authorities have decided to wipe the grins off the faces of passport applicants:
"Germans were ordered Thursday to stay serious when having their photographs taken for new passports, wiping away any grins, smirks or smiles so that biometric scanners can pick up their facial features.
"Interior Minister Otto Schily ordered passport authorities to only accept pictures taken from the front showing the ‘most neutral facial expression possible,’ starting Nov. 1.
"Facial recognition systems match key features on the holder’s face and work best when the face has a neutral expression with the mouth closed.
"’A broad smile, however nice it may be, is therefore unacceptable,’ the Interior Ministry said in a statement."
English-speaking photographers have long ordered their subjects to say "Cheese!" before snapping the shot, presumably because saying that word widens the mouth and thus encourages a grin. I wonder what the command to German passport applicants now should be when having their mug shots taken.
The Littlest Saint
You may remember the story of the Torres family making the rounds of the Internet. Jason and Susan Torres were expecting their second child when Susan collapsed due to undetected cancer. Susan was kept alive on life support until the child, a little girl, was delivered August 2. Susan died the next day on August 3.
Tragically, little Susan Anne Catherine Torres died in the early-morning hours of Monday, September 12, after emergency intestinal surgery:
"An infant born last month to an unconscious, severely brain-damaged mother has died, the family said Monday.
"Susan Anne Catherine Torres, born prematurely on August 2, died of heart failure Sunday after emergency surgery to repair a perforated intestine, a family statement said.
"A spokeswoman at St. Rita’s Church in Alexandria [Virginia] said parishioners were told of the child’s death during morning Mass."
GET THE (HEARTBREAKING) STORY.
Please keep Jason Torres and his family in prayer. Their agony must be unimaginable. You can learn more about the Torres family’s story HERE.
Wanting to find some glimmer of hope in this tragedy, I did a Google search to see if I could find out whether or not the baby had been baptized. I figured she must have been baptized, but wanted to know if I could confirm it. I did.
GET THE (LIFE-AFFIRMING) STORY.
Because this little girl was baptized, we can know — not just hope — that she is a saint now. Susan Anne Catherine Torres, pray for us.
Dancing The Confirmation Two-Step
Yesterday morning I read A BRIEF PIECE listing different ways in which Judge Roberts dodged the abortion question during his senate confirmation hearings.
One comment concerned me. He was reported as saying that Roe "is settled as the precedent of the court."
I realized, though, that this is the kind of thing that might well be taken out of context. Roberts might be describing the present status of Roe without implying anything about whether he’d overturn it in the future.
I wondered what Feddie over at Southern Appeal would have to say on the subject, figuring he (and his co-bloggers) would be glued to C-SPAN and have heard the original context of the remark.
Sure, enough
When one reads the entirety of the exchange, it’s clear that Roberts is being as evasive as he can be on the subject of whether he’d overturn Roe (giving a clear answer on this being certain to torpedo his nomination or cause his defenders to completely melt away depending on the answer).
The comment quoted above, in context, is not an indication that he wouldn’t overturn. He mentions multiple times that overturning precedents sometimes is justified–and sometimes isn’t. The fact that Roe (and the subsequent Casey case) is a precedent does not mean it’s un-overturnable.
My suspicion is that Roberts will vote to overturn, though I’m not comfortable with his level of vagueness. But then I often don’t get my druthers. Ya just gotta deal with that.
Incidentally, in reading Feddie’s transcript you should be aware of a technical term that comes up over and over: stare decisis (pronounced "STAR-ry duh-SIGH-sis"), which is Latin for "to stand by the decisions" (roughly). This is a legal principle that one should be reluctant to overturn precedents because overturning them willy-nilly would have bad effects.
Roberts believes in stare decisis, which makes me unhappy because–to my mind–stare decisis should have only a very limited role in our judicial system. What the law means is what is important, not whether it was correctly interpreted by later courts.
If I’m being serious and nuanced I wouldn’t put the matter this bluntly, but much of the time I find myself endorsing the sentiment over at Southern Appeal (and elsewhere) that
"Stare decisis is fo’ suckas!"
Now if only Feddy would come out with those T-shirt’s he’s promsed that say that.
Will The Big One Be Next?
Many have long wondered when The Big One, a massive earthquake long predicted for California, will finally hit. Some are beginning to think it may be Any Day Now:
"U.S. Geological Survey seismologist Lucy Jones remembers attending an emergency training session in August 2001 with the Federal Emergency Management Agency [FEMA] that discussed the three most likely catastrophes to strike the United States.
"First on the list was a terrorist attack in New York. Second was a super-strength hurricane hitting New Orleans. Third was a major earthquake on the San Andreas fault.
"Now that the first two have come to pass, she and other earthquake experts are using the devastating aftermath of Hurricane Katrina as an opportunity to reassess how California would handle a major temblor."
The good news is that progress in seismic safety has been made. The bad news is that there is still a long way to go before California is prepared to ride out The Big One.
For those of you who are Californians interested in a patron saint to petition, the Patron Saints Index recommends Saints Agatha, Emidius, Francis Borgia, and Gregory Thaumaturgus (aka Gregory the Wonder Worker).
Saints, Agatha, Emidius, Francis, and Gregory, pray for us.
Euro-Reaction To Katrina
As an American living abroad, Vatican correspondent John Allen of the National Catholic Reporter reports on the European reaction to Hurricane Katrina and the U.S. response.
"Americans who lived overseas at the time of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York remember vividly the massive wave of sympathy for the United States that followed those events. The most common headline in European papers the next morning, including Corriere della Sera, the flagship paper in Italy, was, ‘We are all Americans now.’
"International reaction to Hurricane Katrina, at least from this vantage point, somehow feels different.
"In the early hours after the storm there was similar concern, especially since Katrina triggered memories of the recent Asian tsunami. As events unfolded, however, many observers were quickly dumbfounded by how ill-prepared American authorities seemed to be; this is not how the richest and most powerful country in the world is supposed to function.
"Then, as images of chaos played out on television screens, the inescapable fact that many of the hardest-hit victims are poor, minorities, and the elderly began to reinforce some of the worst stereotypes many overseas observers already harbor of America.
"Critics have long charged that the United States is a cut-throat culture with little sense of community, one in which the poor and minorities are largely left to fend for themselves. Here, it seemed, was dramatic proof of the point, as large pockets of already vulnerable people appeared to be literally abandoned."
I’ve been wondering why there was an apparent dichotomy between the European sympathy following 9/11 and the European tsking following Hurricane Katrina. Seeing the European perspective articulated in this report did make it easier to understand the European viewpoint. Especially interesting was Allen’s note that sub-sea-level urban centers in Europe, such as in Holland, are regularly protected against catastrophic flooding. I can’t help but wonder why New Orleans was left all but defenseless.
NOLA Will Rise Again
After more than a week of tragedy and heartbreak in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, sentiments like this make me want to stand up and cheer. NOLA (acronym, "New Orleans, Louisiana") may never be the same, but she will survive (even if only in the hearts of those who loved her); and, God willing, may she rise again.
If you haven’t yet done so, please consider donating something to help the survivors of Hurricane Katrina soldier on. Here is one option for your donations.