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It's gay rights laws that are intolerant, says Cardinal by STEVE DOUGHTY, The Daily Mail (UK) Last updated at 23:46pm on 28th March 2007 Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor accused Labour of "legislating for intolerance" in his most outspoken attack yet on the imposition of gay rights laws on church bodies. The leader of England and Wales's four million Roman Catholics also questioned "whether the threads holding together democracy have begun to unravel". The lecture delivered in Westminster made him the first Catholic leader in nearly 180 years to place a question mark over the allegiance of his church to the...

A French intellectual - in the worst sense of the term Jean Baudrillard could make any subject more obscure just by briefly visiting it Robert Fulford, National Post Published: Saturday, March 10, 2007 Jean Baudrillard, who died on Tuesday in Paris at the age of 77, was a French intellectual in the most sinister meaning of that term. He was intoxicated by hastily concocted theories and drunk on incomprehensible explanations of world affairs. He could make any subject more obscure just by briefly visiting it. Many of his readers eventually discovered that his work, some 50 books in all,...

Dealing with the new anti-Semitism Warren Kinsella in Ottawa, National Post Published: Thursday, February 08, 2007 In Chris Hedges' new book, American Fascists, there is a passage that recalls the challenge facing the hundreds of Jews gathered in frigid, frozen Ottawa this week. Quoting Italian medievalist Umberto Eco, the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times writer observes that fascists have a continual need to "feel humiliated by the ostentatious wealth and force of their enemies." Anti-Semites insinuate that Jews are powerful out of proportion to their numbers, running Hollywood, the news media and successive U.S. administrations. Since 9/11 in particular,...

Harper paints his opponentsas fairweather friends of Israel Norma Greenaway, CanWest News Service Published: Tuesday, February 06, 2007 OTTAWA — Israel can count on Canada to stand firm in its hour of need, Prime Minister Stephen Harper told the Canadian Council for Israel and Jewish Advocacy Tuesday. Harper repeatedly won applause from the appreciative dinner crowd as he defended his government’s staunch support for Israel during last summer's fighting between Hezbollah and Israeli forces. "When faced with such threats, Israel will always have a steadfast friend in Canada's new government," Harper said. "Over the past year, we got a...

When feminism and gay rights butt heads Barbara Kay, National Post Published: Wednesday, January 17, 2007 It isn't very often that womens' rights and gay rights collide, but we may be on the brink of just such an interesting moment. Reports suggest researchers at Oregon State University are having some success in "straightening" homosexual rams -- about 10% of which are "gay" -- by adjusting hormone balances in their brains, after which the ewe-eschewing males start paying their procreative dues in the traditional way. Such a breakthrough could enormously benefit people in the sheep-breeding business. But further research along...

A straight line to polygamy David Warren, Ottawa Citizen Published: Wednesday, January 10, 2007 My two standard themes -- the advance of Islamist fanaticism in the world, and the West's decline into decadence -- start coming together in the subject of polygamy. We will have legalized polygamy in Canada very soon. This is thanks to a decision of the Ontario Appeals Court last week that so far no one has had the stomach to take higher -- creating, in law, three parents for one child. But it was inevitable anyway, given the tastes and propensities of Canada's revolutionary courts,...

Ding dong, the tyrant's dead Barbara Kay, National Post Published: Tuesday, January 02, 2007 Funny things, these executions of murderous tyrants. They really separate the liberal elites from the ordinary people like nothing else I know. Take Saddam Hussein's execution the other day. When I, an ordinary person, heard Saddam had been executed, I did a little on-the-spot jig and started humming Ding Dong, the Witch is Dead. But most po-faced Western public figures (while doing a jig in their hearts) were jostling each other in the race to be first in line to condemn capital punishment. Of course...

2006 proved tough year for faithful By Rory Leishman London Free Press Tuesday, December 19, 2006 For Christians who uphold the authority of the Bible and the traditional moral teachings of the Holy Catholic Church, this year in Canadian politics has been, to quote Her Majesty the Queen, a veritable "annus horribilis." The nadir came on Dec. 7, when the House of Commons voted by the decisive margin of 172-123 to refuse even to reconsider last year's enactment of same-sex marriage into law. Just six years ago, this same House had affirmed on a vote of 216-55 that "marriage...

Canada's conscience Prime Minister Harper won't take the easy way out on foreign policy By Paul Jackson Calgary Sun November 26, 2006 Prime Minister Stephen Harper is forging a foreign policy for our nation with morality as the bottom line. Well, that surely makes a change from the weasel-like policies of former PMs Paul Martin, Jean Chretien and Pierre Trudeau. This is a dramatic shift, and one that bodes well for our image. From the Far East to the Middle East to Europe to the U.S. to Latin America we're rebuilding alliances with friends and refusing to kowtow to...

Anyone familiar with contemporary talk-radio in the United States knows that the word "liberal" has become for some a slur, implying that holders of ideals like tolerance for other cultures or concern for the poor and disadvantaged are somehow inherently polluted by nonchalance toward national security, too little concern about crime and too much about the rights of terrorists. But another word, "fundamentalist," has likewise been made into an insult of its own, something recently noted by David Klinghoffer, the erstwhile literary editor of National Review and current senior fellow at a public policy think-tank, the Discovery Institute. (Full disclosure:...

Those of us who believe in the death penalty for some murders are told by opponents of the death penalty that if the state executes an innocent man, we have blood on our hands. They are right. I, for one, readily acknowledge that as a proponent of the death penalty, my advocacy could result in the killing of an innocent person. I have never, however, encountered any opponents of the death penalty who acknowledge that they have the blood of innocent men and women on their hands. Yet they certainly do. Whereas the shedding of innocent blood that proponents of...

Jeb Bush, Florida's Favorite Governor After more than an hour of solemn ceremony naming Rep. Marco Rubio, R-West Miami, as the 2007-08 House speaker, Gov. Jeb Bush stepped to the podium in the House chamber last week and told a short story about "unleashing Chang," his "mystical warrior" friend. Here are Bush's words, spoken before hundreds of lawmakers and politicians: ''Chang is a mystical warrior. Chang is somebody who believes in conservative principles, believes in entrepreneurial capitalism, believes in moral values that underpin a free society. ''I rely on Chang with great regularity in my public life. He has been...

Full text: Blair & Howard Joint press conference of British Prime Minister Blair and Australian PM John Howard 22jul05 Good Afternoon everyone and a warm welcome to Prime Minister John Howard from Australia. Now before I say what the outcome of our talks has been together, I know you would want me to say a few words obviously on what has happened over the last few hours, and I hope you will forgive me if I say to you that it is best for operational details to go to the police and the emergency services and others that can give...

If I were Pope - and no, don't worry, I'm not planning a mid-life career change - but, if I were, I'd be a little irked at the secular media's inability to discuss religion except through the prism of their moral relativism. That's why last weekend's grand old man - James Callaghan - got a more sympathetic send-off than this weekend's. The Guardian's headline writer billed Sunny Jim as a man "whose consensus politics were washed away in the late 1970s". Is it possible to have any meaningful "consensus" between, on the one hand, closed-shop council manual workers demanding a...

If I were Pope — and no, don't worry, I'm not planning a mid-life career change — but, if I were, I'd be a little irked at the secular media's inability to discuss religion except through the prism of their moral relativism. That's why last weekend's grand old man — James Callaghan — got a more sympathetic send-off than this weekend's. The Guardian's headline writer billed Sunny Jim as a man "whose consensus politics were washed away in the late 1970s". Is it possible to have any meaningful "consensus" between, on the one hand, closed-shop council manual workers demanding a...

Watching the Presidential debates of October 1st, and the subsequent reactions to them, has left me once again with the sad realization that there are many millions of people who prefer a man who says the wrong things well over one who says the right things badly ? and in the case of the first debates we are talking about saying very, very stupid things well and intelligent things very, very badly. Now I don?t mean stupid in a bad way. I fully credit John Kerry with the intelligence needed to analyze, dissect, and evaluate a position and without mechanical...

When I was young, my parents in the early 1960s told me to ignore stories about the “Jews.” Of course, out here in rural California, I never met such distant persons, but only heard about them from disgruntled farmers (who, I wager, had never met any either). These pesky “Jews” apparently in some secretive cabal controlled the entire fruit-market of the United States! “They” — not the paradoxes of interstate commerce and the cutthroat nature of American marketing — explained why we got $3 a box for plums while “they” took $20. Middle men, market manipulators, and secret smart guys...

Anyone have a streaming audio link to Dennis Prager other than his home station of KRLA, Los Angeles. They have decided to halt their SA for 60 days while they "re-evaluate and update" their system.I work in a building where AM radio waves don't penetrate well. His 9-Noon (PST) show has become so routine and centered for me, that I hate the idea of facing its absence cold-turkey.Can anyone help?Thanks.

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Bush administration wants to convince the world that terrorism is just as immoral as piracy, slave trading and genocide, the Pentagon's policy chief said Wednesday. Douglas Feith said in a speech to Jewish leaders that the United States wants to use "moral, as well as military tools" in the war against terrorism. The top enemy on the moral front, Feith told the American Jewish Committee, is "an extremist interpretation of Islam that emphasizes hatred and brutality ... and hatred of the West." He said the "civilized world" must support moderate Islamic clerics and governments such as...