and stop worrying - or I'll think Dick Amery had a point ;)

But seriously, you don't come into office and give the store away. That's exactly the opposite of what Machiavelli said you should do. And wasn't it Obama's steadiness and unwillingness to act precipitously that recommended him so to all intelligent people?

Give him six months and then start worrying.

"Connections are replacing competence as a measure of person's worth."

Unlike Brownie and Alberto? And it's a real bummer that Harriet Myers wasn't connected enough to reach the Supreme Court, despite her undoubted competence . . .

JoeInAustin: Texans and Californians? Well, maybe *Americans* believe the Federal government has a role in giving States (and even school children) a helping hand when they need it.

just can't seem to get along. Especially if they share the name 'Maureen'.

But seriously, Joan, you are being unfair to MD on this occasion. Her column is unambiguously laudatory of Obama and what he's trying to do given what W. dumped on his lap.

Sure, she's trying to get an angle on him that will stick and give her a comic motif for the next four or eight years (I don't think the Spock label has legs, though) - but hey, a gal's gotta make a living.

You work your side of the street and let her work hers.

are irrelevant. The US will turn socialist when China opts to cash in its iou's.

Heil Hitler.

You forgot "Nolte over Murphy" in your buddy pairings.

I think Steele has two things going against him. One, he's not really a conservative in the populist mad-dog mode that has become de rigeur for the Republicans. Two, he's not clever enough to have figured this out, so he thinks he can pull it off.

But he will be laid bare and cast out by the fiery angels. Amen.

I don't get your point. Madow or Olbermann were never vice president.

But I'm really disappointed that CNN gave Cheney a forum. He had his eight years in the shadows. Now he and his malign opinions should be dispatched back to Mordor forever. He really is contemptible. Nixon's homunculus.

or as Chris Hitchens would say, 'Ms Walsh.'

I just read the Johnson piece today and it scared the hell out of me, especially since he concluded by asserting that the current crisis could be *worse* than the great depression.

If memory serves, FDR appointed Joe Kennedy to clean up Wall Street in the Thirties. Experienced, smart and tough enough to do it. Who would be his equivalent today? (And no, Bill Clinton can't do everything.)

"Polling more than 3,000 people, Gallup found that Catholics are more likely to think abortion, stem cell research, gay relationships and sex before marriage are "morally acceptable" than non-Catholic Americans. Even devout churchgoing Catholics are more liberal on those issues than devout churchgoing Christians of other denominations."

If so, then these people do not understand the religion they purport to belong to. If the Pope condemns these things as *morally unacceptable*, which he does (and in the case of abortion as an evil to rival the holocaust)then you cannot be a Catholic and think them "morally acceptable". It's certainly a sin - for a Catholic - to engage in these things, but it's probably a freaking sin just to THINK it's okay to engage in them.

So: if your views on central questions of personal morality are those of a liberal Protestant or an atheist, what is it makes you a Catholic? Feel-good tomfoolery at Christmas and Easter?

These theological geniuses should have the courage to drop the denial and leave the Church (or the Chruch).

Go Obama at ND!!

Are you kidding? Do you understand the meaning of the term as used by the CC?

The Pope is the mouthpiece of the Holy Spirit (one of the three divine persons and therefore God Himself) when he speaks on matters of Faith and Morals.

"There are plenty of ordained Deacons, Priests, and Bishops who disagree with the Pope on various matters. And some of them are very active and vocal both within the Church and without."

What "various matters" would they be? Heliocentrism or the theory of evolution? Or, more realistically, socialised medicine, the Tridentine mass or a head cover for women entering a church?

Your ordainees (ordained by whom, incidentally? - ultimately the resident of the Vatican) are free to disagree with the Pope on a whole host of matters (the Church's social teachings) but not on matters which have been pronounced ex cathedra.

They are of course free to disagree as human beings, but not as Catholics.

(Apologies to cestmoi for intruding.)

How is my understanding of the infallibility of the Chruch wrong? Please explain.

"Ex cathedra", whatever its strictly technical meaning, has become a blanket term for papal and church infallibility, which is the sense in which I was using it. In which case, the Church makes it clear that the central moral teachings of Catholicism (decided by the Magisterium and all that mullarkey) are to be regarded by the faithful as the infallible word of God and are not open to discussion. "He who heareth you, heareth Me."