Tag: arizona

He Takes Them Off

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rom Jill Lepore, at The New York Times News Desk blog:

No one knows why Jared Lee Loughner did what he did. Maybe no one will ever know. No one can explain madmen with guns. There’s a corridor at the John F. Kennedy Library where the walls are painted black and where television monitors play, night and day, a single scene: Walter Cronkite announcing Kennedy’s death. He takes his glasses off; he looks at the clock; he puts his glasses back on. He takes them off. He says not a word. And then, he puts his glasses back on.

(via Scott Korb) Continue Reading →

Republicans Have Found Their Culprit

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Trent Franks (R-AZ) made a fantastic assignation of blame today when speaking with Candy Crowley on CNN.  The “culture of death” killed six people in Arizona, in the form of a lunatic young man:

But sometimes you can see central elements, and that central element is this unhinged lunatic that had no respect for human life was willing to make some grand statement, I don’t know if he even knows what grand statement he was willing to make to take the lives of his fellow human lives to do it. And there is the problem, a lack of respect for innocent human life. It’s a lack of respect for the constitution, for freedom.

Isn’t this the same language Republicans have been using for the past four decades regarding abortion? The narrative Franks again seamlessly employs to explain the murder of a pro-immigration representative in increasingly violent Arizona is a loss of our moral compass, a move from God, a betrayal of a certain interpretation of the constitution, as demonstrated by a lone killer. Because Franks and his Republican allies are right with God (the authority on innocent life, the constitution and freedom) they are exempt from blame; we, a society which has lost it’s way, however, are not.

I think Franks might be right but not in the way he thinks he is. Continue Reading →

An Authentically Catholic Hospital

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In November of 2009 Sister Margaret McBride was fired and excommunicated by Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted. As a member of the ethics board at St. Joseph’s hospital in Phoenix, McBride had authorized an abortion to save the life of a 27 year old mother of four.  The young mother survived.  In May of this year when the story was broken by The Arizona Republic, a local newspaper, Olmsted stated about his decision, “An unborn child is not a disease … the end does not justify the means.” Continue Reading →

Alarmingly, The Quran

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Kos pointed out part of a letter today that has been zipping around the internets. It was written by Arizona state legislator Silvia Allen and states the reasons why SB1070, the racist, economy-crushing new Arizona immigration law, is a good thing: it will stop the drug smugglers from invading America! Here’s point number two from the post:

– The people who live within 60 to 80 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border have been terrorized by the Mexican drug cartels and human smugglers. One rancher testified that 300 to 1,200 people cross his ranch every day, vandalizing his property, stealing his vehicles, cutting down his fences and leaving trash. He testified that in the last two years, he has found 17 bodies and, alarmingly, several copies of the Quran.

Continue Reading →