A great resource for Catholic parents

Here's a little booklet that my wife found which contains a list of good books for kids to read. The author, Theresa Fagan, has split the list into age categories: 2-7, 8-12, 13-17 and 18 and over. I'm using the list presently to help in the fueling process of my 8-year-old's voracious reading appetite.

Here's the author's pitch for A Mother's List of Books from the page on Adoremus Books:

"This list grew out of a desire to offer children books that delight, inform and inspire. It is by no means exhaustive. A few of the books are great, most are good and some are just pure fun. But they all respect the dignity of the human being. The list includes many lesser known books that are out of print but that are well worth looking for (interlibrary loans). The age categories are only approximate; many of the books could appear in two or three of them." -- Theresa A. Fagan

This list could probably be a benefit for non-Catholics as well. Likewise I'd be willing to look at other lists compiled by any people of good will.

David Horowitz Draws Out the Truth

Mentioned on Glenn Beck's program today.



The inability to answer a straight yes or no question is so, so sad. But eventually the hatred simply bubbles up and pops the cork.

Jimmy Dimora on "all of this 'Good Government' stuff"

H/T Red State. Dimora's true colors are displayed when he gets angry at Plain Dealer reporter Henry Gomez and he starts casting aspersions on Gomez's wife.

Moe Lane points out rightly that the PD did report what Dimora claims they didn't, viz., that Taylor hadn't released the state audits, and that the article includes a quote from Dimora himself!

Ohio Auditor Mary Taylor has yet to release state audits from 2007 and 2008 because of corruption-related questions surrounding county finances. As discussion over the rehired retirees batted back and forth Thursday, Dimora blamed politics for the delay. Taylor is a Republican.

"No one wants [the audits] released more than me," Dimora said. The long wait, he complained, is "holding hostage Cuyahoga County taxpayers. It's not right, and it's not just."

So when Dimora accuses Gomez of lying he's totally full of it.

This took forever to load, and I can only hope that it is because everyone in the county is watching this pathetic meltdown.


Why do I live in Cuyahoga County anyway? Maybe it's so I can have a front row seat when Dimora gets flushed down for the turd he is.

Kucinich's departure will be different. The Great Mothership will come down and hover over Lakewood as it beams up the little guy for his glorious return voyage. I'll cry like I did at the end of ET.

Elena Kagan doesn't like freedom of speech

Newsmax discusses how as Solicitor General, Elena Kagan argued against the right to political free speech. Of course, she didn't get a chance to take a cheap shot at SCOTUS like Obama did during his SOTU. Excerpt:

The court, in its 5-4 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, ruled against Kagan’s contention that the government can limit political speech by corporations.

In a scathing concurrence to the opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts blasted Kagan’s argument.

“The government urges us in this case to uphold a direct prohibition on political speech. It asks us to embrace a theory of the First Amendment that would allow censorship not only of television and radio broadcasts, but of pamphlets, posters, the Internet, and virtually any other medium that corporations and unions might find useful in expressing their views on matters of public concern,” he wrote.

“Its theory, if accepted, would empower the government to prohibit newspapers from running editorials or opinion pieces supporting or opposing candidates for office, so long as the newspapers were owned by corporations — as the major ones are. First Amendment rights could be confined to individuals, subverting the vibrant public discourse that is at the foundation of our democracy.”

Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the majority opinion that Kagan was defending a law that represents an illegitimate attempt to use “censorship to control thought.”

Yikes.

Dennis Prager on the "inability to identify the religious beliefs of Islamic terrorists"

I post this with a sigh. Who is not blue in the face at this point? But it's worth reading because Prager has such a gift for clarity and conciseness. Excerpt:

The Left's inability to identify the religious beliefs of Islamic terrorists and instead ascribe their murders of Americans to the terrorists' psychological tensions and economic problems―while at the same time utterly certain that conservative white Americans have only the most vile motives―is an expression of the Left's failure to recognize and confront real evil.

Just remember this: If Shahzad had not been identified as the would-be bomber, the mainstream (i.e., liberal) news media and leading Democrats would have told us repeatedly that a white male―surely a conservative white male―was the Times Square terrorist, and that we should therefore be looking suspiciously at our fellow Americans on the Right, especially those attending tea parties. For while liberals claim not to know the motives of Muslim terrorists, they are always certain of conservatives' motives: racism, sexism, homophobia and xenophobia.

A Meditation on the Paraclete from Cardinal Newman

From today's commentary in DailyGospel.org. Pretty intense meditation.

My God, I adore thee, O Eternal Paraclete, the light and the life of my soul. Thou mightest have been content with merely giving me good suggestions, inspiring grace and helping from without. Thou mightest thus have led me on, cleansing me with thy inward virtue, when I changed my state from this world to the next. But in thine infinite compassion thou hast from the first entered into my soul, and taken possession of it. Thou hast made it thy temple. Thou dwellest in me by thy grace in an ineffable way, uniting me to thyself and the whole company of angels and saints. Nay, as some have held, thou art present in me, not only by thy grace, but by thy eternal substance, as if, though I did not lose my own individuality, yet in some sense I was even here absorbed in God. Nay—as though thou hadst taken possession of my very, body, this earthly, fleshly, wretched tabernacle—even my body is thy temple (1Cor 6,19). O astonishing, awful truth! I believe it, I know it, O my God!

O my God, can I sin when thou art so intimately with me? Can I forget who is with me, who is in me? Can I expel a Divine Inhabitant by that which he abhors more than anything else, which is the one thing in the whole world which is offensive to him, the only thing which is not his?... My God, I have a double security against sinning; first the dread of such a profanation of all thou art to me in thy very presence; and next because I do trust that that presence will preserve me from sin... I will call on thee when tried and tempted... Through thee I will never forsake thee.

Daily Gospel is a service I highly recommend. You just put your email in the subscription box then click subscribe. Every day you will get the readings for the Mass for the day plus a commentary by a saint or spiritual writer like this one.