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The Holy Father today received the Letters of Credence of Walter Jurgen Schmid, the new ambassador of Germany to the Holy See. The Pope began by mentioning Fr. Gerhard Hirschfelder, a martyr priest who died under the Nazi regime and who is due to be beatified in Munster on 19 September. He also referred to the beatifications of four other priests and the commemoration of an Evangelical pastor, scheduled for 2011. "Contemplating these martyrs", said Benedict XVI, "it emerges ever more clearly how certain men, on the basis of their Christian convictions, are ready to give their lives for the...

Newly discovered statements by Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the man behind the Ground Zero mosque project, show he supports the destruction of Israel. His supporters may hold him up as a moderate, but he has spoken out in favor of a “one-state solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and he sees peace agreements with Israel as a means to that end.

One of the more insidious ways that Muslims try to impose their sharia laws on western nations is to use the west's liberal laws against them by warping that law to install sharia by stealth. Such is the case in a section of France where Muslims, sometimes appearing in the hundreds, choke a French street to perform their daily prayers. They have no permits, they have not asked for legal permission, they simply congregate by the hundreds and do it, breaking the law as they do so. Sadly, the French government has told the police to stand idly by and...

More than $3 million will be spent by the Federal and NSW governments getting talk show queen Oprah Winfrey to Australia, but Tourism Minister Martin Ferguson says it will be worth every cent. Winfrey announced overnight she would fly 300 members of her audience to Australia for an eight-day trip in December. During the visit Winfrey will shoot several episodes of her daytime talk show, which has a weekly following of 40 million Americans and is screened in 145 countries. The trip will be partly financed with $1.5 million from Tourism Australia's current financial year marketing budget.

A US busker called Bongo Jesus has been arrested after hitting a man who criticised his playing over the head with his guitar. The busker, whose real name is Brandin Hochstrasser, 31, was playing in the street in Madison, Wisconsin, when his critic approached him. Police spokesman Joel DeSpain said the 54-year-old homeless man had been unable to keep his thoughts about the guitar playing to himself. "The dispute started over some questionable guitar playing," Mr DeSpain told the Cap Times. "He went over to Bongo Jesus and provided some sort of critique which did not sit well. "When police...

Do you know why there's chocolate ice cream? It's because some people don't like vanilla! Thay might seem obvious, but it's a lesson that the leaders of the Republican Party have apparently never learned. People who don't like vanilla ice cream don't want "Vanilla Bean" or "French Vanilla" or "Vanilla Lite"; if they want ice cream all, what they want is something completely different: maybe chocolate or maybe not, but definitely NOT any kind of vanilla. The same thing applies to politics too: When people are upset with, or distrustful of, or even outright scared of the Democrat party and...

Our friend Pat Hickey has caught wind of some potentially interesting news on Chicago's soon to be roiling Mayoral election now that Richard "King" Daley has decided he no longer wants the big seat. Conservative publisher R. Emmett Tyrell, Jr. has reportedly said he might be interested in taking a run at City Hall. Pat reports that through the grapevine he heard of Tyrell's possible campaign: R. Emmett Tyrrell, the founder of The American Spectator is interested in running for Mayor of Chicago. Bob Tyrrell, like Governor Pat Quinn, is a proud Alumnus of Fenwick High School. It sure would...

Teamsters Local 628, which represents the drivers of the Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News, rejected by 191-4 vote Sunday the Philadelphia Media Network Inc.'s (PMN) final contract offer. PMN is seeking to take over the company, which also includes the website Philly.Com, from Philadelphia Newspapers LLC, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Feb. 21, 2009. Philadelphia Newspapers is a subsidiary of Philadelphia Media Holdings LLC. Local 628 is the only one of the company's unions not to have a agreed with a contract with PMN, a group of 16 financial institutions that bought the properties at auction...

REPLACING DALEY | Emanuel activates his Chicago network ### White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel has commissioned his longtime pollster, Stanley Greenberg, to survey Chicagoans about a potential mayoral bid. Meanwhile, former Sen. Carol Moseley Braun will accept a mayoral "draft" at a Monday news conference in Chicago. Sources told me that polling calls for Emanuel were being made over the weekend and that Emanuel has activated his Chicago network of pals to reach out to political figures in Chicago on his behalf. While Emanuel backed out of a Chicago visit last weekend, I'm told he will be in...

Either Uncle Sam's borrowing binge will flood the system with money, leading to a replay of the 1970s as inflation eats away at your purchasing power. Or all that debt and the liquidation of distressed financial assets will paralyze the economy and send prices falling, like the deflation Japan has suffered for the past 20 years. As obvious as it may sound, the belief that you ought to make a call and then overhaul your portfolio accordingly is wrong. "Instead, what matters is which of these risks would be most damaging to you." Depending on your circumstances, either a rise...

Maverick Buffalo businessman Carl Paladino is on the verge of one of the biggest upsets in modern New York Republican history. The outspoken and often controversial Paladino squares off today in the GOP gubernatorial primary against party-backed Rick Lazio.

How bad can the civil war get? We may find out Tuesday in Delaware. Mike Castle should have walked to the GOP nomination — that is, until Sarah Palin and her merry Tea Party men decided to back Christine O’Donnell. To put this into perspective, Castle was all but a lock to win: a moderate Republican who would have won if not for the fact that by Tea Party standards Castle is a Das Kapital-reading, want-to-take-your-guns-away-and-tax-you-to-the-nines liberal. It almost makes you laugh, as a Democrat, how the GOP is engaged in a never-ending, brutal civil war over ideological purity. From...

Featured Term (selected at random):I.H.S. Iesus (Jesus) Hominum Salvator (usual interpretation), Jesus Savior of Men. Really a faulty Latin transliteration of the first three letters of JESUS in Greek (IHS for IHC). See Also: IESOUS HEMETEROS SOTER,See Also: IESUS HOMINUM SALVATOR,See Also: JESUS All items in this dictionary are from Fr. John Hardon's Modern Catholic Dictionary, © Eternal Life. Used with permission.

Tech giant IBM Corp. is trying to help small businesses get supply contracts with blue chip companies in a variety of industries. It's an idea that combines a $10 million grant from IBM with the notion that small businesses are the main source of new jobs and therefore economic growth.

Right. Just like Prohibition did nothing to curb the people's desire to take a drink, but it sure did provide lots of money for Capone and his pals to run around shooting up Chicago and other cities with Tommy Guns.

From Allahpundit comes late breaking Washington showbiz news that another slasher flick from White House-Sulzberger-CBS Narrative Films has landed with a thud at the box office. As a result the studio will drop promising newcomer villain John Boehner and greenlight a big budget sequel starring - wait for it - Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, and Rush Limbaugh. More than anything, what really chaps my hide about this development is the lack of imagination. Why should these same boring overexposed studio "stars" get to hog all the limelight, when there are tens of millions of undiscovered amateur right wingers out here...

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka on Tuesday will accuse Republicans, private sector businesses and health insurance companies of “economic treason” in a red meat speech in Columbus, Ohio, to union members at their annual convention. Trumka’s charge is centered on his anger at private sector business and corporations for sitting on capital — as much as $2 trillion by some estimates — instead of spending it to expand and create jobs, and at insurers for proposing rate hikes. Business groups and leaders say that President Obama’s policies, namely the health-care overhaul and the financial regulation bill, have created massive uncertainty and...

PHOENIX -- Three police impostors smashed their way into a west Phoenix home and briefly kidnapped two men early Tuesday. The victims were released unharmed in the north Valley, Phoenix Police Sgt. Alex Ortiz said. He said the suspects -- two men and a woman -- "were looking for drugs and cash." Ortiz added, "We don't know if it was random or they were targeted. We still haven't talked to the victims yet. We still haven't entered our crime scene and investigated the interior of the residence." He said the suspects, posing as police officers, entered the home near 35th...

Continuing his makeover from Republican to independent U.S. Senate candidate, Gov. Charlie Crist on Monday affirmed his support for civil unions, adoption by same-sex couples, and doing away with the military's ban on openly gay soldiers. snip Crist's Democratic opponent for Senate, U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek, called it ``too little too late.'' snip Crist has been increasingly tilting leftward as he seeks to siphon Democratic votes from Meek and pitch himself as the only true foil to the conservative Rubio. In the first formal position paper released by the campaign, Crist laid out his position on nine issues relating to...

September 14, 2010Reaping the Whirlwind By Lance Fairchok "They sow the wind, and they reap the whirlwind." - Hosea 8:7 "Sooner or later in life, we all sit down to a banquet of consequences." - Robert Louis Stevenson There is a sense of foreboding rising in this country. It is not the usual pessimism fueled by a sensational press, nor is it surfacing because of the political crisis machine that generates one drama after another by which to manipulate the electorate. It is a feeling of imminent danger fueled by a realization based on evidence so obvious and so startling...