March 2010

The Vatican’s problems continue to grow. Something I didn’t know is that in Germany you have to register as a Catholic and if you leave the church you have to actually deregister. There’s government run offices to do that. On MSNBC a reporter said at one office she was at there were 85 people before noon doing just that.

The Vatican has to be asking themselves how much longer they are going to stand behind such a polarizing Pope. Before long it will get to the point that someone has to say “hey – we need to get rid of him”. If not then stories like this will continue to happen.

Yesterday news broke of federal agents raiding a militia group based out of Michigan, but also spreading to Indiana and Ohio:

At least seven people, including some from Michigan, have been arrested in raids by a FBI-led Joint Terrorism Task Force in Michigan, Ohio and Indiana as part of an investigation into an Adrian-based Christian militia group, a person familiar with the matter said.

The suspects are expected to make an initial appearance in U.S. District Court in Detroit on Monday.

On Sunday, a source close to the investigation in Washington, D.C. confirmed that FBI agents were conducting activities in Washtenaw and Lenawee counties over the weekend in connection to Hutaree, a Christian militia group. Detroit FBI Special Agent Sandra Berchtold told The Detroit News the federal warrants in the case are under court seal and declined further comment.

Needless to say some on the right tried veil attempts at question this, like Dan Riehl:

Just three days ago, members of the group were assisting LE in a rescue search. Must be some really evil people there, what?

Atlas Shrugs gets a little more to the point:

This unprecedented:

In July, 1798, Congress passed, and President John Adams signed into law "An Act for the Relief of Sick and Disabled Seamen," authorizing the creation of a marine hospital service, and mandating privately employed sailors to purchase healthcare insurance.

This legislation also created America's first payroll tax, as a ship's owner was required to deduct 20 cents from each sailor's monthly pay and forward those receipts to the service, which in turn provided injured sailors hospital care. Failure to pay or account properly was discouraged by requiring a law violating owner or ship's captain to pay a 100 dollar fine.

So unprecedented that they were only enacted by the 2nd President of the United States. I guess all those AGs suing over the “constitutionality” of the mandate didn’t really do their homework.

Adding….I  think we can also safely assume that the Texas Board of Education will be meeting this week to remove John Adams from the history books also.

The more we learn about tea baggers, the more we find out how confused they really are:

When Tom Grimes lost his job as a financial consultant 15 months ago, he called his congressman, a Democrat, for help getting government health care.

Then he found a new full-time occupation: Tea Party activist.

He wanted government run health care and now he is an activist for the group that tried to destroy any such program. Very interesting.

And then there’s this tidbit:

Mr. Grimes, who receives Social Security, has filled the back seat of his Mercury Grand Marquis with the literature of the movement, including Glenn Beck’s “Arguing With Idiots” and Frederic Bastiat’s “The Law,” which denounces public benefits as “false philanthropy.”

What really has me at a loss is why Grimes is on social security. The article doesn’t mention his age. Is it for disability, and if so then wouldn’t the physical exertion of protesting and lugging around literature bring the validity of a disability claim into question?

But this is the real clincher:

“If you quit giving people that stuff, they would figure out how to do it on their own,” Mr. Grimes said.

So we have a man, living off the government, who also wanted government health care bitching about people living off the system. Hypocrite much Mr. Grimes?