Who leaked Israel-Azerbaijan Agreement?

There is strong speculation overnight that the Obama regime just stabbed Israel in the back. How? By leaking a secret agreement that Azerbaijan would give Israel permission to land jets on Azeri airfields after a bombing raid on Iran. Apparently someone considers Israel bombing Iran to be more dangerous than Iran getting a nuclear bomb.

Now I am not going to jump the gun and say the Obama regime was definitely behind this despicable leak. But John Bolton and the Jerusalem Post sure are convinced the leak came from Obama’s men. And the report in Foreign Policy magazine claims to be based on “four senior diplomats and military intelligence officers.” Or put another way, “several high level sources . . . inside the U. S. government.” So it sure does smell like the Obama regime.

This might be something to watch. If this leak does get pinned to Obama, that his regime is undermining Israel and aiding Iran in this way, it could be explosive politically.

And it should be if so.

Bees are Back!

Bees have been restored to their rightful place in the new Roman Catholic English translation of the Exsultet, which is chanted before the Paschal Candle near the beginning of the Easter Vigil. The restored excerpt:

On this, your night of grace, O holy Father,
accept this candle, a solemn offering,
the work of bees and of your servants’ hands,
an evening sacrifice of praise, this gift from your most holy Church.But now we know the praises of this pillar,
which glowing fire ignites for God’s honour,
a fire into many flames divided,
yet never dimmed by sharing of its light,
for it is fed by melting wax,
drawn out by mother bees to build a torch so precious.

I join First Things and the New Liturgical Movement in rejoicing.

When Anthony Kennedy channels Robert Bork

First, I apologize if any missed me yesterday. I had a busy morning and not much energy the rest of the day. So I doubt anything I would have written would have been worth reading.

But I thought about posting yesterday anyway. For it was an interesting and very bad day for Obamacare at the Supreme Court. When Justice Anthony Kennedy started channeling Robert Bork, even the Mainstream News Media was alerted that Obamacare just might be in trouble.

Speaking of said Justice, my favorite take on yesterday is Redstate’s Sinners in the Hands of Anthony Kennedy. The wonderfully titled post goes into Kennedy’s questions and statements and the Left’s bad behavior surrounding the Supreme Court and Obamacare.

But the main point Redstate makes is that if “the constitutional integrity of our republic” depends on one man, on swing vote Anthony Kennedy, then our system of government is in a very bad way.

And that is absolutely on target . . . even if Kennedy does channel Robert Bork on a good day.

By the way, Redstate also does a good job handicapping the Obamacare ruling in light of yesterday’s session.

Obama: “After my election I have more flexibility” to cave to Putin.

This morning’s open mike revelation from Jake Tapper is a bombshell:

President Obama: On all these issues, but particularly missile defense, this, this can be solved but it’s important for him to give me space.

President Medvedev: Yeah, I understand. I understand your message about space. Space for you…

President Obama: This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility.

President Medvedev: I understand. I will transmit this information to Vladimir.

So Obama has just telegraphed to Putin that he would be glad to cave on missile defense after the election. And the world now knows about it thanks to an uncooperative open mike.

This, of course, begs the question of just what other nefarious post-election plans Obama is hiding from the American people. But more on that later. That Obama has just told the KGB agent in the Kremlin that he would be glad to cave on our defense after the election is bad enough, to put it mildly. It’s not quite treason, but it’s getting there.

I’ve said I do not support impeaching Obama because I think it better that an election removes him. And I still don’t, but now I’m beginning to wonder. After all, even if he is defeated there are over two months of him remaining in power. He could do a lot of damage once he has “more flexibility.”

There will be a political . . . manure-storm on this – and there should be.

Americans need to open their eyes, take a dose of common sense, grow a backbone, and tell Obama “No ‘space for you’!”

And if you think I’m a bit hot on this, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Look at Ed Morrissey’s take on this for starters.

GUNS!!

Anticipation of a second term for The Dear Leader is heightening the people’s enthusiasm! . . . for buying guns:

Sturm, Ruger & Company, Inc. (NYSE-RGR), announced today that for the first quarter 2012, the Company has received orders for more than one million units. Therefore, the Company has temporarily suspended the acceptance of new orders.
Chief Executive Officer Michael O. Fifer made the following comments:
-- The Company’s Retailer Programs that were offered from January 1, 2012 through February 29, 2012 were very successful and generated significant orders from retailers to independent wholesale distributors for Ruger firearms.
-- Year-to-date, the independent wholesale distributors placed orders with the Company for more than one million Ruger firearms.
-- Despite the Company’s continuing successful efforts to increase production rates, the incoming order rate exceeds our capacity to rapidly fulfill these orders. Consequently, the Company has temporarily suspended the acceptance of new orders.
-- The Company expects to resume the normal acceptance of orders by the end of May 2012.

Ruger is up about 4 points as the stock market opens, by the way. Who says Obama isn’t good for the economy.

BREAKING: McCain insults Supreme Court on Citizens United UPDATED

I’m sure glad I had CNBC on just now. Without being asked about the Citizens United ruling, Sen. John McCain volunteered that the said ruling is “the most disgraceful decision of the United States Supreme Court in my memory out of naiveté and ignorance and stupidity.”

So Roe v. Wade is not a worse ruling? So he insults the Supreme Court because it cares more about defending free speech than he?

I am floored by this statement. It will be interesting to see if there is any fall out from this.

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MORE: I’ve sniffed around and found this is not the first time McCain has called the Supreme Court ignorant and naïve in its Citizens United ruling.

Further he has said, "I predict to you there will be a major scandal associated with the Supreme Court decision on Citizens versus (sic) United. There is too much money washing around."

Wow.

I’ve yet to hear of a public figure calling him out on these statements.

The Feast of St. Cuthbert

Today is the Feast of St. Cuthbert.

My reverence and appreciation of him has deepened in the past year. I’ve read more about his holy life, holiness that was well recognized long before his departure.

He would not have had it so. The man could not escape for the solitary life he yearned for without the church begging him to leave his little island to become bishop. And, indeed, this man who would rather live the life of a monk was a great and gentle leader during the sensitive time after the Synod of Whitby. He did finally die as he desired, accompanied only by selected brother monks on his lonely island. (Here is a photo of the island from Barry Miller Photography. A condensed biography of St. Cuthbert may be found here.)

Visiting his grave in Durham Cathedral this past September and walking part of the path his body took as monks fled the Vikings to take him, as it turned out, to Durham also affected me. Not to mention viewing some of his relics at the Cathedral.

Speaking of which, today is definitely a red letter day at Durham Cathedral.

If you would like to do your part to honor St. Cuthbert, one way is to visit the British Library, either online or in person, and join me in throwing in a pound or two to help the library acquire St. Cuthbert’s Gospel, which I had the pleasure to view last year.

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MORE: Ohio Anglican has posted a brief biography and propers for the day.

I LIKE this judge!

When it came time to sentence ACORN for voter registration fraud, Nevada District Judge Donald Mosley imposed the maximum fine and put those Leftist election crooks in their place:

Mosley, reading the pre-sentence report, listed a series of voter registration fraud allegations against ACORN workers. He said that if the claims have been true, then "It is making a mockery of our election process. If I had an individual in this courtroom...who was responsible for this kind of thing, I would put that person in prison for 10 years, hard time, and not think twice about it," he said. "To me this is reprehensible. This is the kind of thing you see in some banana republic, Uruguay or someplace, not in the United States."

I LIKE this judge! And I, too, yearn for the day when people committing vote fraud in the United States are sent to prison. It would be even better if the jail birds were those elected via election fraud they were involved in. Election fraud is treason against constitutional democracy and a crime against legitimate voters and should be treated as such.

But instead under the Obama regime, the Department of Justice is enabling election fraud, not fighting it.

Archbishop of Canterbury to Resign at End of Year

Like most of you, I woke up to quite a surprise this morning. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, has announced that he will step down at the end of 2012 to become Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge. (Hmm, I’ve always thought him more an Oxford man.)

There will surely be much comment on his ten years on the throne of Canterbury. I might as well join in.

He is a nice and likeable man and a friend of Church of England Anglo-Catholics. But by most other measures that mean much to orthodox Anglicans, he is a failure as ++Canterbury. At the very time when upholding orthodoxy and church discipline was especially needful, he, willfully or not, enabled and even rewarded apostasy and heresy in the Anglican Communion. By trying to save the Anglican Communion by stringing along the orthodox, indabaing Lambeth, undermining the Primates, and the rest, he has only brought it that much closer to demise.

I wish the man well. But I also pray for a new Archbishop of Canterbury with the backbone to do what Rowan Williams should have done, who will do his part to banish all strange and erroneous doctrines and practices . . . instead of enabling them.

No Compromise on HHS Rule from U. S. Catholic Bishops

As George Weigel notes, there is and will be no compromise from U. S. Catholic bishops on religious freedom. They will not give in to the Obama regime and help dispense contraceptives against church teaching. Good on them!

I particularly appreciate how the bishops cut through all the bull… spin in their statement:

This is not about access to contraception, which is ubiquitous and inexpensive. . . . This is not about the religious freedom of Catholics only, but also of those who recognize that their cherished beliefs may be next on the block. This is not about the bishops’ somehow ‘banning contraception,’ when the U.S. Supreme Court took that issue off the table two generations ago. Indeed, this is not about the Church wanting to force anybody to do anything; it is, instead, about the federal government forcing the Church . . . to act against Church teachings. This is not a matter of opposition to universal health care, which has been a concern of the Bishops’ Conference since 1919, virtually at its founding. This is not a fight we want or asked for, but one forced upon us by government on its own timing. Finally, this is not a Republican or Democratic, a conservative or liberal issue; it is an American issue.

And, if I may add, this is not about a non-existent “war on women.” This is about a war on Constitutional freedom of religion. For under Obama and all in history with a totalitarian bent, the state must be served and worshipped uber alles!

My church got robbed. (Or how stupid can someone be?)

What crime is more stupid? Armed robbery of a gun show or burglarizing a small low church Anglican parish?

What prompts my question is, this past weekend, yet another gun show came to town, and my small Reformed Episcopal Church parish was broken into. And if the criminal tried to rob the gun show, he would be almost as stupid.

We did not lose much . . . because there wasn’t much to lose. We're traditional low church. We’re not a high church tat box (as much as I like those). We don’t have golden crosses and jewel-encrusted gospel books. And we’re not happy-clappy either. So not much of a sound system and not a single electric guitar. (Thanks be to God.) And we have enough sense not to leave money in the church.

Just what exactly did the perpetrator hope to find?

Heck, we gained more in good publicity than we lost in goods.

One area in which we are the not-so-smart ones – we don’t have a burglar alarm. The irony is that our bishop just advised us to get one, and our vestry was about to discuss that on the very day we were broken into.

But someone who would rob a small low church Anglican parish needs prayer . . . for both his soul and his brain.

Obama vs. Texas Voter ID

I was going to try to be calm and deliberative about this. And I have slept on it before writing. But it is hard to put into words that won’t get me in trouble or lose half my readers my outrage concerning the Obama Regime’s attempt to strike down Texas’ Voter ID law. Not to mention the outrage of other red-blooded Texans.

Obama, Holder, and the Leftists in charge of the Justice Department are willfully interfering with Texas holding free and fair elections. It is as simple as that. They are enabling the continuance of Demorat vote fraud in our state. This goes to the heart of constitutional democracy.

I expect the Supreme Court, if necessary, will uphold our Voter ID law as it has similar laws before. But if not . . . ?

Look Obama, you fool, “Don’t Mess with Texas” isn’t just a slogan. Texas WILL have free and fair elections.

And, yes, I do expect the regime’s brazen efforts to further rigged elections in Texas and elsewhere will backfire. Crooks, Demorats and Leftturds may like vote fraud. But most people do not.

Obama is NOT Mr. Inevitable.

No, I am not going to bash Obama . . . today. What I am going to bash is the false perception out there this it is just inevitable that Obama will be re-elected.

Yes, it is easy to think that with the weak and contentious Republican presidential circular firing squad going at it and with even some conservative pundits discouraged, ala George Will.

But look at the numbers.

Even the notoriously pro-Obama ABC/Washington Post poll has “the unstoppable incumbent” trailing Romney.

Rasmussen also has Romney narrowly ahead of Obama and Santorum and Paul(!) close. But what I find more revealing is Rasmussen’s approval index which he has run since the beginning of Obama’s term.

The approval index compares those who strongly approve/disapprove of Obama’s performance among likely voters. Right now, it is -16, a serious gap, though not the widest of the term. What I find more interesting of late is that both the strongly approve and strongly disapprove numbers have been rising. Views are solidifying and becoming even more polarized.

Most relevant to Obama’s re-election prospects is that those who strongly disapprove are now above 42%. It is hard to see how he gets to 50% of the vote with 42% strongly disapproving of him.

Now the total approve/disapprove results are not so stark: 47% to 52%. But those who disapprove are clearly more solid and committed.

Another Rasmussen Poll:

Ask voters which presidential contender’s views are more like their own, and just 37% say President Obama. Most (53%) say they think more like one of the four Republican presidential hopefuls.

Numbers like these indicate it should be easier for the eventual Republican nominee to gain ground than Obama . . . and Obama is trailing at the moment.

Now, yes, I think Obama can win this election (which scares the heck out of me), but is it inevitable? Far, far from it.

In fact, a case can be made that he is in big trouble.

Providence, Tree Pollen, and (no) Anglican 1000

I got a lesson in God’s providence this week.

Monday, I drove up to Plano for the Anglican 1000 conference and the Young Anglicans Project youth ministry pre-conference. Although I had been very busy and behind on my sleep, I felt fine as I arrived and immediately went over to the pre-conference already in progress.

But slowly but surely, my allergies began acting up. It was just an annoyance at first. But by the end of the day’s agenda at 9pm I was suffering. I took my strongest allergy meds (in addition to my routine allergy meds taken earlier) and went to bed immediately. I figured that a good sleep and the meds would reset me as they usually do.

But not so this time. I woke up about 3:30am and could not get back to sleep. And my allergies were not defeated. Realizing that staying and trying to do much of anything in the midst of the toxic air (I was told it was an outbreak of tree pollen.) would be futile, especially since a front would not come to clean things out until Thursday (today) at the earliest, I decided to flee and go back home after much prayer.

I started getting better as soon as I got home, but it is still a process. I slept half the time yesterday. And this is the first time I feel up to blogging for one thing. (And this may still be a bit of a ramble.) So I was right that I would not have been able to function back in Plano.

This was disappointing in a number of ways. I was looking forward to spending time with Anglican friends at Anglican 1000. And, among other things, I was looking forward to being a tournament director for a Friday night at the Dallas Chess Club. After I got back home, I found out Hikaru Nakamura, the best chess player in the U. S. will be there. Arggg!

So this is another one of those times when I remind myself of Romans 8:28 and of God’s providence. And that even though I don’t presume to know what God is doing in this.

I can make some guesses. During my brief time up there, I gave a dozen of my old book, God Knows What It’s Like to be a Teenager, to a gentleman to take to kids back at his church. Who knows how God may use that? While driving back, I visited a past church kid now in the Navy who is in a coma from an auto accident. (I was intending to visit while driving back this coming Sunday.) When I let his mom know of the timing, she thanked me and said she had woken up that morning sad because of him being alone. Perhaps God changed my schedule to answer her prayer? (And I was just well enough to manage a visit. So more providence there.)

And maybe God had rather I do something here at home rather than up in Plano. I don’t know. But God knows. And my business is to trust him and act accordingly.

I guess that’s one way I’ve grown up a bit. A few years ago, I would have been pretty upset about this. I was looking forward to an edifying, profitable and fun time up in Dallas. And I am missing out, no question (although my time at the pre-conference was edifying and profitable). And driving for half a day up there only to drive back the next day is a bit of a waste.

But God, as he often does, had different plans. And I’m fine with that. I am not very sensible at times. But I have enough sense to know his plans are better than mine.

Andrew Breitbart, RIP

I join those who mourn the sudden passing of Andrew Breitbart. The man was a fearless warrior for freedom and against tyranny.

By the way, response to the news on twitter, where “Andrew Breitbart” is trending, is interesting and eye opening. There are appropriate salutes to the man . . . and then there are numerous reactions from Lefties. If you think I am too hard on the Left, read a few of those.

A man is known by his enemies.