How Does a Government Empower the People?

Require all law abiding citizens to own and be trained in the use of firearms. Some communities have done it and crime plummets.



For more eye-opening data go to Gun Control Dictator Style. To see the way gun control laws are unfairly prosecuted by a "justice" system that peeks out from under the blindfold to treat elitists differently from the ordinary citizens who do the real work in our society check out this article. Meet the Press reporters who interview presidents get a pass when it comes to ignoring laws they want imposed on the rest of us. And that reminds me of that hypocrite Post columnist Carl Rowan who shilled for gun control but used an illegal weapon on some teenagers skinny-dipping in his pool. He actually was brought to trial but got off because of a hung jury.

Do You Love Christmas?...

...And hate to see the season come to end?

IT DOESN'T HAVE TO!

Every day of your life can be Christmas morning. Just go to daily Mass. It's a time machine taking you back to the stable. The beginning of the Mass is Advent, pointing the way to the coming of Christ at the Consecration when he is laid in the manger of the altar by the priest. We come, shepherds and kings, the lowly and the powerful together to worship. We bring Him gifts like the shepherds and the magi did, the gifts of ourselves: our prayers and sacrifices, our acts of charity. We know the gifts of the magi: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. We can imagine the gifts of the shepherd:, a woolly fleece to keep the baby warm and protect Him from the scratchy straw, perhaps goat milk and cheese for Mary and Joseph. Yes, the shepherds, despite their littleness, would have come bearing gifts for the King of Kings.

The Mass is Advent and Christmas, Lent and Easter all compressed into a short space of time that contains eternity. We see Christ at His birth; we hear His preaching in the Gospel; we sit at the banquet table of the Last Supper; we kneel at the foot of the Cross and share in His suffering and death. And we are there at the Resurrection and that moment Easter evening when He says, "Peace be with you; my peace I give you."

How can you stay away from daily Mass when God Himself calls you there and desires to feed you with His own Body and Blood? Let your New Year's resolution be to attend Mass as often as possible. It is the closest we will ever come to heaven on this earth.

Just a Thought...

We have more to worry about from the moral cliff than the fiscal cliff.

The moral cliff is at the end of the wide road that leads to hell. The road is level and pleasant at the beginning, filled with sinful pleasures along the way, but, as St. John Bosco saw in a dream, the farther souls travel on the road the steeper the descent becomes to the point it's so steep turning back is almost impossible. Imagine yourself sliding toward a precipice. Faster and faster you fall reaching for anything you can grasp to save yourself. You see the cliff below you and there is no way to stop. That is what Don Bosco saw in his dream of sinners on the road to hell. They literally slid down the incline and fell off the cliff into the hell fires below.

Sobering thought, isn't it? Of course, you can laugh and say you don't believe in hell, but what a surprise if you die and find out you were wrong. Pascal's wager still applies today. You have nothing to lose by acting like you believe in God and living a life of service and love of others. You have everything to lose, if you live a selfish, sinful life and find God's justice waiting for you on the other side.

Cuccinelli Deals Blow to Overreaching EPA

Two thumbs up for Virginia's Ken Cuccinelli who put the breaks on the tyrants at the EPA who use "environmentalism" as a club. Not this time! His win in federal court means a $300 million savings for Fairfax County. Go, Ken!

Water is not a "pollutant" under the Clean Water Act and is not subject to federal regulation.

You can support Ken for Governor of Virginia by contributing to his campaign. Virginia campaign laws prevent him accepting contributions during the legislative session which starts this week. Last days to give are today and tomorrow. Want to see a strong conservative governor, a pro-life leader in this important state? Donate to Ken's campaign TODAY. Help bring a culture of life and fiscal responsibility back to Virginia. Let's turn Virginia bright red for red-blooded Americans on fire with love for life and patriotic fervor!

Reality is Painful, But Kinda Funny

Obama's supporters are mad, really mad. After all, they thought he was only going to sock it to the "rich" but the lightbulb went on with their latest paychecks.

Obama Supporters Shocked and Angry at New Tax

The reality is there aren't enough rich folks. Even if you taxed them at 100% and took everything, you would hardly make a dent in the deficit. Most people (at least people paying income taxes) are in the middle class. When liberals look at the vast pool of potential payers, their eyes shine with dollar signs. As for the rich, they will be looking for ways to escape and politicians will continue to offer them plenty of loopholes because they contribute big bucks to politicians. The fiscal cliff and Hurricane Sandy bills were filled with pork for politician pals. 

Wake up, silly liberals. Politicians use class envy to fool you and then they punch you in the gut. And when hyper inflation hits, you may very well be living below the poverty level. So welcome to reality. This is just the beginning! Stock up on rice, beans, oatmeal before the real crunch. Oh...and buy seeds for the garden. You'll need them.

Narcissism on the Rise among Students

Study reveals rocketing sense of entitlement on U.S. campuses 
When kids hit the real world and find they're idea of themselves and their abilities is an inflated lie, what happens? "These young egotists can grow up to be depressed adults."

An excerpt from the article:

Despite a library's worth of self-help books promoting the idea we can achieve anything if we believe we can, there's very little evidence that raising self-esteem produces positive, real-world outcomes.

'If there is any effect at all, it is quite small,' said Roy Baumeister of Florida State University, who authored a 2003 paper on self-esteem studies. 

Baumeister found that while successful people did have high-self esteem in many cases, it was unclear what actual caused their success if the first place.

Both self-esteem and success were often influenced by another factor.
'Coming from a good family might lead to both high self-esteem and personal success.' Baumeister said. 'Self-control is much more powerful and well-supported as a cause of personal success. Despite my years invested in research on self-esteem, I reluctantly advise people to forget about it.' 

Twenge compared it to a swimmer trying to learn a turn who needs to believe that learning the skill is possible but who won't actually be aided in acquiring that skill by their belief.

A Small Sign of Hope

Catholic dorms to debut at two secular universities

This offers a way for Catholics and other serious students to escape the hook-up lifestyle. Pray for this to spread to other secular campuses.

The Coming of the Wise Men

I love the Epiphany! What a wonderful story -- three wise men watch the skies for signs and portents, men of action ready to head off across the world on a pilgrimage following a star. And why? To seek the one who is all truth, all beauty, and all goodness, the Word made flesh, the newborn king. What do they do when they get to their destination? They prostrate themselves in humility before God made man. The three kings illustrate as much as any figures in Scripture the reality that "fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." Our God is an awesome God who inspires "fear" in the sense of  "awe and wonder." That the high and mighty are humble enough to see their God in a feedbox testifies to both their wisdom and humility.

"He came to His own and His own received Him not." They could not see the glory of God in the Son of a carpenter. But the wise men never faltered. Outsiders, gentiles, nevertheless they saw with the eyes of faith and acted with love.

You can't go wrong following in the footsteps of the wise men on a pilgrimage to the house in Bethlehem, a house filled to the rafters with holy truth. There you will meet, and see through the eyes of faith  the just man, the queen of heaven and earth, and the Savior of the World, Him through whom all things were made. Hosanna in the highest!

A Wonderful Romp Through Life or Why I love Chesterton

If the only thing you've read of Chesterton is Orthodoxy, you may appreciate his wit, but not his childlike innocence. He was a lover of fairy tales and mystery stories, puppet theatres and games, but mostly he loved and enjoyed life with the exuberance of Father Christmas. I suspect Chesterton's little novel, Manalive, is his tongue-in-cheek laugh at himself.  The novel revels in the profoundly ridiculous and I could just see its hero, like the Pied Piper, attracting a crowd of little children dancing in his wake.

The protagonist, Innocent Smith, is a large man with a small head. And that, it seems to me, is the essence of Chesterton. He had a heart that required a large body to contain it, and a wise head that was not puffed up with its own brilliance. We meet Smith in a windstorm, leaping over the garden wall at Beacon House, a boarding house filled with solemn, cynical, and somewhat self-absorbed people. And like the wind that blew him into their lives, he blows them away creating a "crazy sense that it was everybody's birthday."

Message from the Hypocrite-in-Chief

Talking about the murder of twenty little first-graders in Connecticut, President Obama waxed eloquent about the need to protect our children. "We can't tolerate this anymore. These tragedies must end. To end them we must change," he said. This from the same man who voted numerous times not to protect children born alive after abortion. He cheerfully accepts the "carnage" of thousands of babies murdered every day. Watch this video and imagine he is talking about the "violence visited on our children year after year after year" by abortion. But he considers that violence a woman's right and champions Planned Parenthood, the largest baby butchery in the country. The hypocrisy of his message is stunning.