The Benghazi Talking Points

The Weekly Standard ADVANCE ARTICLE from the May 13, 2013 issue by Steve Hayes

Even as the White House strove last week to move beyond questions about the Benghazi attacks of Tuesday, September 11, 2012, fresh evidence emerged that senior Obama administration officials knowingly misled the country about what had happened in the days following the assaults. The Weekly Standard has obtained a timeline briefed by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence detailing the heavy substantive revisions made to the CIA’s talking points, just six weeks before the 2012 presidential election, and additional information about why the changes were made and by whom.

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As intelligence officials pieced together the puzzle of events unfolding in Libya, they concluded even before the assaults had ended that al Qaeda-linked terrorists were involved. Senior administration officials, however, sought to obscure the emerging picture and downplay the significance of attacks that killed a U.S. ambassador and three other Americans. The frantic process that produced the changes to the talking points took place over a 24-hour period just one day before Susan Rice, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, made her now-famous appearances on the Sunday television talk shows. The discussions involved senior officials from the State Department, the National Security Council, the CIA, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the White House.

The exchange of emails is laid out in a 43-page report from the chairmen of five committees in the House of Representatives. Although the investigation was conducted by Republicans, leading some reporters and commentators to dismiss it, the report quotes directly from emails between top administration and intelligence officials, and it includes footnotes indicating the times the messages were sent. In some cases, the report did not provide the names of the senders, but The Weekly Standard has confirmed the identities of the authors of two critical emails—one indicating the main reason for the changes and the other announcing that the talking points would receive their final substantive rewrite at a meeting of top administration officials on Saturday, September 15.

The White House provided the emails to members of the House and Senate intelligence committees for a limited time and with the stipulation that the documents were available for review only and would not be turned over to the committees. The White House and committee leadership agreed to that arrangement as part of a deal that would keep Republican senators from blocking the confirmation of John Brennan, the president’s choice to run the CIA. If the House report provides an accurate and complete depiction of the emails, it is clear that senior administration officials engaged in a wholesale rewriting of intelligence assessments about Benghazi in order to mislead the public. The Weekly Standard sought comment from officials at the White House, the State Department, and the CIA, but received none by press time. Within hours of the initial attack on the U.S. facility, the State Department Operations Center sent out two alerts. The first, at 4:05 p.m. (all times are Eastern Daylight Time), indicated that the compound was under attack; the second, at 6:08 p.m., indicated that Ansar al Sharia, an al Qaeda-linked terrorist group operating in Libya, had claimed credit for the attack. According to the House report, these alerts were circulated widely inside the government, including at the highest levels. The fighting in Benghazi continued for another several hours, so top Obama administration officials were told even as the fighting was taking place that U.S. diplomats and intelligence operatives were likely being attacked by al Qaeda-affiliated terrorists. A cable sent the following day, September 12, by the CIA station chief in Libya, reported that eyewitnesses confirmed the participation of Islamic militants and made clear that U.S. facilities in Benghazi had come under terrorist attack. It was this fact, along with several others, that top Obama officials would work so hard to obscure.

After a briefing on Capitol Hill by CIA director David Petraeus, Democrat Dutch Ruppersburger, the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, asked the intelligence community for unclassified guidance on what members of Congress could say in their public comments on the attacks. The CIA’s Office of Terrorism Analysis prepared the first draft of a response to the congressman, which was distributed internally for comment at 11:15 a.m. on Friday, September 14 (Version 1 at right). This initial CIA draft included the assertion that the U.S. government “know[s] that Islamic extremists with ties to al Qaeda participated in the attack.” That draft also noted that press reports “linked the attack to Ansar al Sharia. The group has since released a statement that its leadership did not order the attacks, but did not deny that some of its members were involved.” Ansar al Sharia, the CIA draft continued, aims to spread sharia law in Libya and “emphasizes the need for jihad.” The agency draft also raised the prospect that the facilities had been the subject of jihadist surveillance and offered a reminder that in the previous six months there had been “at least five other attacks against foreign interests in Benghazi by unidentified assailants, including the June attack against the British Ambassador’s convoy.”

After the internal distribution, CIA officials amended that draft to include more information about the jihadist threat in both Egypt and Libya. “On 10 September we warned of social media reports calling for a demonstration in front of the [Cairo] Embassy and that jihadists were threatening to break into the Embassy,” the agency had added by late afternoon. And: “The Agency has produced numerous pieces on the threat of extremists linked to al Qaeda in Benghazi and Libya.” But elsewhere, CIA officials pulled back. The reference to “Islamic extremists” no longer specified “Islamic extremists with ties to al Qaeda,” and the initial reference to “attacks” in Benghazi was changed to “demonstrations.”

The talking points were first distributed to officials in the interagency vetting process at 6:52 p.m. on Friday. Less than an hour later, at 7:39 p.m., an individual identified in the House report only as a “senior State Department official” responded to raise “serious concerns” about the draft. That official, whom The Weekly Standard has confirmed was State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland, worried that members of Congress would use the talking points to criticize the State Department for “not paying attention to Agency warnings.”

In an attempt to address those concerns, CIA officials cut all references to Ansar al Sharia and made minor tweaks. But in a follow-up email at 9:24 p.m., Nuland wrote that the problem remained and that her superiors—she did not say which ones—were unhappy. The changes, she wrote, did not “resolve all my issues or those of my building leadership,” and State Department leadership was contacting National Security Council officials directly. Moments later, according to the House report, “White House officials responded by stating that the State Department’s concerns would have to be taken into account.” One official—Ben Rhodes, The Weekly Standard is told, a top adviser to President Obama on national security and foreign policy—further advised the group that the issues would be resolved in a meeting of top administration officials the following morning at the White House.

There is little information about what happened at that meeting of the Deputies Committee. But according to two officials with knowledge of the process, Mike Morrell, deputy director of the CIA, made broad changes to the draft afterwards. Morrell cut all or parts of four paragraphs of the six-paragraph talking points—148 of its 248 words (see Version 2 above). Gone were the reference to “Islamic extremists,” the reminders of agency warnings about al Qaeda in Libya, the reference to “jihadists” in Cairo, the mention of possible surveillance of the facility in Benghazi, and the report of five previous attacks on foreign interests.

What remained—and would be included in the final version of the talking points—was mostly boilerplate about ongoing investigations and working with the Libyan government, together with bland language suggesting that the “violent demonstrations”—no longer “attacks”—were spontaneous responses to protests in Egypt and may have included generic “extremists” (see Version 3 above).

If the story of what happened in Benghazi was dramatically stripped down from the first draft of the CIA’s talking points to the version that emerged after the Deputies Committee meeting, the narrative would soon be built up again. In ensuing days, administration officials emphasized a “demonstration” in front of the U.S. facility in Benghazi and claimed that the demonstrators were provoked by a YouTube video. The CIA had softened “attack” to “demonstration.” But as soon became clear, there had been no demonstration in Benghazi.

More troubling was the YouTube video. Rice would spend much time on the Sunday talk shows pointing to this video as the trigger of the chaos in Benghazi. “What sparked the violence was a very hateful video on the Internet. It was a reaction to a video that had nothing to do with the United States.” There is no mention of any “video” in any of the many drafts of the talking points.

Still, top Obama officials would point to the video to explain Benghazi. President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton even denounced the video in a sort of diplomatic public service announcement in Pakistan. In a speech at the United Nations on September 25, the president mentioned the video several times in connection with Benghazi.

On September 17, the day after Rice appeared on the Sunday shows, Nuland defended Rice’s performance during the daily briefing at the State Department. “What I will say, though, is that Ambassador Rice, in her comments on every network over the weekend, was very clear, very precise, about what our initial assessment of what happened is. And this was not just her assessment, it was also an assessment you’ve heard in comments coming from the intelligence community, in comments coming from the White House.”

It was a preview of the administration’s defense of its claims on Ben­ghazi. After pushing the intelligence community to revise its talking points to fit the administration’s preferred narrative, administration officials would point fingers at the intelligence community when parts of that narrative were shown to be misleading or simply untrue.

And at times, members of the intelligence community appeared eager to help. On September 28, a statement from ODNI seemed designed to quiet the growing furor over the administration’s explanations of Benghazi. “In the immediate aftermath, there was information that led us to assess that the attack began spontaneously following protests earlier that day at our embassy in Cairo. We provided that initial assessment to Executive Branch officials and members of Congress, who used that information to discuss the attack publicly and provide updates as they became available.”

The statement continued: “As we learned more about the attack, we revised our initial assessment to reflect new information indicating that it was a deliberate and organized attack carried out by extremists. It remains unclear if any group or person exercised overall command and control of the attack, and if extremist group leaders directed their members to participate. However, we do assess that some of those involved were linked to groups affiliated with, or sympathetic to al Qaeda.”

The statement strongly implies that the information about al Qaeda-linked terrorists was new, a revision of the initial assessment. But it wasn’t. Indeed, the original assessment stated, without qualification, “we do know that Islamic extremists with ties to al Qaeda participated in the attack.”

The statement from the ODNI came not from James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, but from his spokesman, Shawn Turner. When the statement was released, current and former intelligence officials told The Weekly Standard that they found the statement itself odd and the fact that it didn’t come from Clapper stranger still. Clapper was traveling when he was first shown a draft of the statement to go out under his name. It is not an accident that it didn’t.

The revelations about exactly how the talking points were written, revised, and then embellished come amid renewed scrutiny of the administration’s handling of Benghazi. Fox News spoke to a Special Ops soldier last week who raised new questions about what happened during the attack, and the State Department’s inspector general acknowledged that the office would be investigating the production of the Administrative Review Board report on the attacks because of concerns that investigators did not speak to a broad spectrum of individuals with knowledge of the attack and its aftermath. On May 8, the House Oversight and Government Reform committee will hold another hearing on the matter. And Republicans in Congress have asked the administration to release all of the emails, something that would further clarify how the changes came about.

Stephen F. Hayes is a senior writer at The Weekly Standard.

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Pope Benedict XVI to Resign on 02.28.13 - Who Will Replace him? – Updated

Update: Why the Pope retired For Real: Kevin Annett: European Governance issued an arrest warrant: and Closure and seizure of Vatican assets: Here are all the notices and dates Also See:  Pope Benedict to seek immunity and protection from Italian President Giorgio Napolitano on February 23  Being a former Catholic as they were selling, trying to sell, us on the fact the Pope Benedict was retiring due to health reasons and how this was such an honorable thing to do… possibly setting a new precedent for modern times, something just didn’t feel right.  And as usual the church and the ever so complicit and/or lazy U.S. media wasn’t doing their job… at least not the job of being the watchdog for the people.  Ask Marion~ – h/t to MJ and Anne

VATICAN CITY (TheBlaze/AP) — Pope Benedict XVI announced Monday that he would resign on Feb. 28 because he was simply too infirm to carry on – the first pontiff to do so in nearly 600 years. The decision sets the stage for a conclave to elect a new pope before the end of March.

TheBlaze: The 85-year-old pope announced his decision in Latin during a meeting of Vatican cardinals on Monday morning.

He emphasized that carrying out the duties of being pope – the leader of more than a billion Roman Catholics worldwide – requires “both strength of mind and body.”

“After having repeatedly examined my conscience before God, I have come to the certainty that my strengths due to an advanced age are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry,” he told the cardinals. “I am well aware that this ministry, due to its essential spiritual nature, must be carried out not only by words and deeds but no less with prayer and suffering.

“However, in today’s world, subject to so many rapid changes and shaken by questions of deep relevance for the life of faith, in order to govern the barque of St. Peter and proclaim the Gospel, both strength of mind and body are necessary – strengths which in the last few months, has deteriorated in me to the extent that I have had to recognize my incapacity to adequately fulfill the ministry entrusted to me.”

This file picture taken on December 31, 2012 shows Pope Benedict XVI arriving to pray in front of the nativity crib in Saint Peter’s Square after celebrating the Vespers and Te Deum prayers in Saint Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican. Pope Benedict XVI on February 11, 2013 announced he will resign on February 28, a Vatican spokesman told AFP, which will make him the first pope to do so in centuries. Credit: AFP/Getty Images

Video: Pope Benedict XVI to Resign

The last pope to resign was Pope Gregory XII, who stepped down in 1415 in a deal to end the Great Western Schism among competing papal claimants.

Benedict called his choice “a decision of great importance for the life of the church.”

The announcement did come as a surprise to many, including New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan. He was interviewed about it on the “Today” show and detailed his initial thoughts. He revealed that he wondered at first if it was just a rumor after getting a call from NBC’s Matt Lauer. That quickly gave way to confirmation:

“We did have fair warning, but at the same time since it is something that hasn’t happened in centuries, it always does comes as a surprise,” former Fox News reporter and Vatican spokesman Greg Burke told “Today.”

The move sets the stage for the Vatican to hold a conclave to elect a new pope by mid-March, since the traditional mourning time that would follow the death of a pope doesn’t have to be observed.

There are several papal contenders in the wings, but no obvious front-runner – the same situation when Benedict was elected pontiff in 2005 after the death of Pope John Paul II.

When Benedict was elected pope at age 78 – already the oldest pope elected in nearly 300 years – he had been already planning to retire as the Vatican’s chief orthodoxy watchdog to spend his final years writing in the “peace and quiet” of his native Bavaria.

Contenders to be his successor include Cardinal Angelo Scola, archbishop of Milan, Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, the archbishop of Vienna, and Cardinal Marc Ouellet, the Canadian head of the Vatican’s office for bishops.

Longshots include Dolan. But while Dolan is popular and backs the pope’s conservative line, the general thinking is that the Catholic Church doesn’t need a pope from a “superpower.” You can read TheBlaze’s detailed story on that from when Dolan was first named Cardinal here.

All cardinals under age 80 are allowed to vote in the conclave, the secret meeting held in the Sistine Chapel where cardinals cast ballots to elect a new pope. As per tradition, the ballots are burned after each voting round; black smoke that snakes out of the chimney means no pope has been chosen, while white smoke means a pope has been elected.

Popes are allowed to resign; church law specifies only that the resignation be “freely made and properly manifested.”

Only a handful have done so, however and there’s good reason why it hasn’t become commonplace: Might the existence of two popes – even when one has stepped down – lead to divisions and instability in the church? Might a new resignation precedent lead to pressures on future popes to quit at the slightest hint of infirmity?

Benedict himself raised the possibility of resigning if he were simply too old or sick to continue on in 2010, when he was interviewed for the book “Light of the World.”

“If a pope clearly realizes that he is no longer physically, psychologically and spiritually capable of handling the duties of his office, then he has a right, and under some circumstances, also an obligation to resign,” Benedict said.

The former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger had an intimate view as Pope John Paul II, with whom he had worked closely for nearly a quarter-century, suffered through the debilitating end of his papacy.

You can read the full text of the resignation announcement to the Cardinals below:

Dear Brothers,

I have convoked you to this Consistory, not only for the three canonizations, but also to communicate to you a decision of great importance for the life of the Church. After having repeatedly examined my conscience before God, I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry. I am well aware that this ministry, due to its essential spiritual nature, must be carried out not only with words and deeds, but no less with prayer and suffering. However, in today’s world, subject to so many rapid changes and shaken by questions of deep relevance for the life of faith, in order to govern the barque of Saint Peter and proclaim the Gospel, both strength of mind and body are necessary, strength which in the last few months, has deteriorated in me to the extent that I have had to recognize my incapacity to adequately fulfill the ministry entrusted to me. For this reason, and well aware of the seriousness of this act, with full freedom I declare that I renounce the ministry of Bishop of Rome, Successor of Saint Peter, entrusted to me by the Cardinals on 19 April 2005, in such a way, that as from 28 February 2013, at 20:00 hours, the See of Rome, the See of Saint Peter, will be vacant and a Conclave to elect the new Supreme Pontiff will have to be convoked by those whose competence it is.

Dear Brothers, I thank you most sincerely for all the love and work with which you have supported me in my ministry and I ask pardon for all my defects. And now, let us entrust the Holy Church to the care of Our Supreme Pastor, Our Lord Jesus Christ, and implore his holy Mother Mary, so that she may assist the Cardinal Fathers with her maternal solicitude, in electing a new Supreme Pontiff. With regard to myself, I wish to also devotedly serve the Holy Church of God in the future through a life dedicated to prayer.

As Pope Benedict XVI prepares his exit, the natural question observers are asking is: Who’s going to replace the pontiff? Speculation is already running rampant, with Irish bookmaker Paddy Power placing online bets on the results of the impending conclave. While there’s no definitive way to tell who will inevitably be selected by the cardinals to succeed Benedict, some key figures are being highlighted as good fits for the job.  One can only wonder if the Pope is suffering from a condition or disease that is more serious than he or the Vatican is saying.  Or is it truly the weight of the ongoing pedophilia trials in America, the changes in the world and demographics in the church, or is the spiritual war heating up needing a younger and stronger Supreme Pontiff?

This morning, TheBlaze reported that, throughout the church’s recent history, papal resignations are virtually non-existent. In fact, Benedict is the first pope in 600 years to abdicate the position and the first known Catholic leader in history to do so for health reasons. Whoever is chosen (we highlight the complex process here) will end up serving with the papal predecessor still living and remaining involved, at least to some degree, in the church — yet another factor that serves as an anomaly.

Prince and Grand Master of the Order of Malta, Fra Matthew Festing stands near Pope Benedict XVI during a mass given to mark the 900th anniversary of the official recognition of the Order of Malta by Pope Pascal II on February 9, 2013 in the Vatican City, Italy. His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI addressed over 4,000 members of the Order of Malta who have travelled from across the world to Rome to celebrate this event. The mass was presided over by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Secretary of State of the Holy See. Credit: Getty Images

Among the Catholic leaders who are being pinpointed by media as potential replacements are Canadian Cardinal Cardinal Marc Ouellet, Cardinal Peter Kodwo Appiah Turkson of Ghana, and Cardinal Leonardo Sandri of Argentina, among others. These options, alone, show the geographic and ethnic diversity present within the potential pool. But Paddy Power lists many others who the company believes could be under consideration. Here’s what the group says of some of the top contenders’ chances of being selected:

Canadian Cardinal Marc Ouellet is 5/2 market leader to be elected as the next Pope. He is Prefect of the congregation for Bishops which is seen as a powerful position within the Vatican, it seems. According to one of the Paddy Power lads who has his finger on the Catholic pulse, Cardinal Marc has experience of working in Latin in America, is a friend of Benedict and is apparently outgoing and charismatic. [...]

Cardinal Peter Turkson is 7/2 and speaks six languages. The Ghanaian can understand Latin and Greek and has seen plenty of support early doors.

Cardinal Francis Arinze of Nigeria at 7/2. If either Cardinal Francis Arinze or Cardinal Peter Turkson are elected it would be the first time in history there would be a black Pope.

Early steamers in the market are Cardinal Keith O’Brien from Scotland who has been trimmed from 40/1 into 33/1, and Ireland’s Archbishop Diarmuid Martin who has seen his price slashed from 150/1 in to 80/1.

While many of these names may seem unfamiliar to you (after all, these men are Catholic leaders from across the globe), we’ll take a brief look at at least a few of the key men who are mentioned above and in ongoing media speculation.

Cardinal Marc Ouellet holds a mass in celebration of The Pilgrimage of the Holy Robe at the Cathedral of St Peter on April 13, 2012 in Trier, Germany. The Pilgrimage of the Holy Robe runs from April 13 to May 13, during which hundreds of thousands pilgrims are expected to view the Holy Robe. The robe, said to have been worn by Jesus Christ leading up to his crucifixion, is housed by the cathedral and rarely displayed for public viewing. Credit: Getty Images

Oullet, 68, is the Archbishop of Quebec. Having expressed a hesitation at prospects of being elected pope in the past, it’s unclear whether he would accept the position (it is permissible to decline if one does not feel called to the papacy). Considering that he speaks six languages, Oullet would certainly be an attractive candidate. After all, he’d be able to communicate with a diverse subset of the global populace (see his Business Insider (BI) profile here).

Then there’s Turkson, 64, from Ghana who serves as the president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. As BI notes, he’s well-liked among the cardinals, a rising star, an excellent communicator and the face of an emerging church populace in Africa. With Europe and the West the central focus of Catholicism, his election would mean that eyes are also being set on other areas of potential growth across the globe (read more about him here).

Cardinal Peter Kodwo Appiah Turkson (Photo Credit: AP)

Of course, Oullet and Turkson are only two of the many options for potential replacements. In fact, BI has profiled 17 men who could be chosen for the top spot. Among the names not previously mentioned in this article is Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the 63-year-old Archbishop of New York. Last year, TheBlaze explored whether Dolan could become the first American pope. While such prospects are entirely possible, he isn’t currently faring well on Paddy Power’s web site (however, that’s not indicative of actual success or failure).

While BI doesn’t weigh too fervently either way, the outlet does mention that an American in a heavily-Italian Vatican would be a potentially-bad mix. This would thus be a strike against Dolan’s chances in the eyes of some critics.

Visit BI for all 17 profiles on potential papal replacements. TheBlaze will continue to cover these prospects as we move closer to the conclave.

WND: Seems 'Final pope' authors predicted Benedict would resign

Although a Roman Catholic pope had not stepped down in nearly 600 years, the startling resignation of Pope Benedict XVI was predicted by the co-authors of a book published last spring about a medieval prophecy that the next pontiff will be the last.

In Petrus Romanus: The Final Pope Is Here co-authors Tom Horn and Cris Putnam examine St. Malachy’s “Prophecy of the Popes,” said to be based on his prophetic vision of the next 112 popes, beginning with Pope Celestine II, who died in 1144. Malachy presented a description of each pope, culminating with the “final pope,” “Peter the Roman,” whose reign would end with the destruction of Rome and judgment.

Horn explained to WND in an interview today that his conclusion Benedict would resign rather than die in the papacy was based not only on St. Malachy but also on a host of historical and current information.

“We took ‘The Prophecy of the Popes,’ we took what was happening in Italian media, and we determined, based on a great deal of information, that Pope Benedict would likely step down, citing health reasons, in 2012 or 2013,” he said.

St. Malachy was an Irish saint and the archbishop of Armagh, who lived from 1094 to 1l48. Malacy described the penultimate pope, which Horn believes is Benedict, as “Gloria Olivae,” or “Glory of the Olive.”

Pope Benedict XVI was not a Benedictine priest, yet he chose the name of Benedict, the founder of the Order of Saint Benedict, which also is known as the Olivetans

The symbol of the Benedictine order includes an olive branch.

Benedict, speaking Monday morning in Latin to a small gathering of cardinals at the Vatican, said that after examining his conscience “before God, I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise” of leading the Roman Catholic Church.

Peter the Roman

Horn and Putnam discuss the evidence pointing to a Benedict resignation on pages 74 and 486 of their April 2012 book, and Horn has made the prediction on a number of radio programs in recent months, including Jan. 13.

Malachy described the last Pope as “Petrus Romanus,” or “Peter the Roman,” writing: “In the final persecution of the Holy Roman Church there will reign Peter the Roman, who will feed his flock among many tribulations; after which the seven-hilled city will be destroyed and the dreadful Judge will judge the people.”

Horn and his co-author have created their own list of 10 candidates to succeed Benedict and become “Peter the Roman.”

Interestingly, a leading candidate is Cardinal Tarcisio Pietro Evasio Bertone, the Cardinal secretary of state, who was born in Romano, Italy. His name could, therefore, be rendered Peter the Roman.

Another Peter on the list is a black African, Cardinal Peter Turkson of Ghana, the current president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace.

In any case, Horn noted, Catholics believe the pope inhabits the “Petrine office” as a successor of the apostle Peter.

Other candidates on Horn’s list are Francis Arinze, Angelo Scola, Gianfranco Ravasi, Leonardo Sandri, Ennio Antonelli, Jean-Louis Tauran, Christoph Schönborn and Marc Quellet.

In 1880, M. J. O’Brien, a Catholic priest, published in Dublin a book providing a “historical and critical account” of St. Malachy’s prophecies:  An Historical And Critical Account Of The So-Called Prophecy Of St. Malachy: Regarding The Succession Of Popes.

O’Brien believed Malachy was declaring that the reign of the pope identified as Petrus Romanus would culminate with the end of the world and the return of Jesus Christ.

O’Brien describes Malachy’s vision occurring while the saint was in Rome for a month, visiting and praying at the Eternal City’s many historical and holy sites.

The sight of the ruins of Pagan Rome, the tombs of the Apostles, the thought of so many thousands of martyrs, the presence of [Pope] Innocent II, who had been obligated to wander so many years in France and elsewhere on account of the anti-pope Anaclete – all this, I say, filled the mind of St. Malachy with deep and sad reflections and he was forced to cry out in the words of the old prophets: “Usquequo, Domine non misereberis Sion?” – “How long, O Lord! wilt Thou not have mercy on Sion?”

O’Brien continued:

And God answered: “Until the end of the world the Church will be both militant and triumphant. Until the end of time the sufferings of my passion and the mysteries of my cross must be continued on earth, and I shall be with you until the end of the world.” And then was unfolded before the gaze of the holy bishop of Armagh the long line of illustrious pilots who were to guide the storm-tossed bark of Peter until the end.

Malachy gave his manuscript to Innocent II, who was pontiff from 1130 to 1143. The document was placed in the Vatican archives, where it remained unknown until its discovery in 1590.

‘Amazingly accurate’

Through the past 900 years, various critics have questioned the authenticity and the accuracy of St. Malachy’s prophecies, often arguing the methods used by some of his interpreters to apply his epithets to certain popes have been tortuous.

Horn told WND he and Putnam took a critical view of “The Prophecy of the Popes” and determined that the first part of it, the first 70 or so predictions, probably was altered in the late 16th century.

“It appears that somebody had altered the original medieval document from 1590 backward to promote a particular cardinal to the College of Cardinals to be the fulfillment of what at that time was still a secret list of popes,” Horn explained.

An advocate for Cardinal Girolamo Simoncelli, Horn said, likely “tinkered with the document to make it look like it was pointing toward Simoncelli.”

In “Petrus Romanus,” Horn said, he and Putnam “disregard everything pre-1595, as partly or fully tainted.”

After 1595, however, “The Prophecy of the Popes” was open to public scrutiny.

A modern version of Malachy’s prophecies was published in 1969 by Archbishop H. E. Cardinale, the Apostolic Nuncio to Belgium and Luxembourg.

Cardinale wrote “it is fair to say the vast majority of Malachy’s predictions about successive Popes is amazingly accurate – always remembering that he gives only a minimum of information.”

Horn noted Benedict’s brother, Georg Ratzinger, also a priest, suggested last year that the pontiff might retire at age 85, arguing Catholic law would allow for him to step down if his health wouldn’t allow him to continue.

Benedict, himself, made a case for papal resignation in a book-length interview, “Light of the World.”

Asked if he thought it appropriate for a pope to retire, he said, “If a pope clearly realizes that he is no longer physically, psychologically and spiritually capable of handling the duties of his office, then he has a right and, under some circumstances, also an obligation to resign.”

Petrus Romanus: The Final Pope Is Here: For more than 800 years scholars have pointed to the dark augury having to do with “the last Pope.” The prophecy, taken from St. Malachy’s “Prophecy of the Popes,” is among a list of verses predicting each of the Roman Catholic popes from Pope Celestine II to the final pope, “Peter the Roman,” whose reign would end in the destruction of Rome. First published in 1595, the prophecies were attributed to St. Malachy by a Benedictine historian named Arnold de Wyon, who recorded them in his book, "Lignum Vitæ." Tradition holds that Malachy had been called to Rome by Pope Innocent II, and while there, he experienced the vision of the future popes, including the last one, which he wrote down in a series of cryptic phrases. According to the prophecy, the next pope (following Benedict XVI) is to be the final pontiff, Petrus Romanus or Peter the Roman. The idea by some Catholics that the next pope on St. Malachy’s list heralds the beginning of “great apostasy” followed by “great tribulation” sets the stage for the imminent unfolding of apocalyptic events, something many non-Catholics would agree with. This would give rise to a false prophet, who according to the book of Revelation leads the world’s religious communities into embracing a political leader known as Antichrist. In recent history, several Catholic priests – some deceased now – have been surprisingly outspoken on what they have seen as this inevitable danger rising from within the ranks of Catholicism as a result of secret satanic “Illuminati-Masonic” influences. These priests claim secret knowledge of an multinational power elite and occult hierarchy operating behind supranatural and global political machinations. Among this secret society are sinister false Catholic infiltrators who understand that, as the Roman Catholic Church represents one-sixth of the world’s population and over half of all Christians, it is indispensable for controlling future global elements in matters of church and state and the fulfillment of a diabolical plan they call “Alta Vendetta,” which is set to assume control of the papacy and to help the False Prophet deceive the world’s faithful (including Catholics) into worshipping Antichrist. As stated by Dr. Michael Lake on the front cover, Catholic and evangelical scholars have dreaded this moment for centuries. Unfortunately, as readers will learn, time for avoiding Peter the Roman just ran out.

This is a developing story. Updates will be added.

Related:

Book: Barack Obama, Prophecy, and the Destruction of the United States: Is Barack Obama Fulfilling Biblical, Islamic, Catholic, Kenyan, and other Ameri…

Book:  The Prophecies of St. Malachy

Book:  The Essential Pope Benedict XVI: His Central Writings and Speeches

Book:  Benedict XVI: A Guide for the Perplexed (Guides for the Perplexed)

Book:  Ratzinger's Faith: The Theology of Pope Benedict XVI

Book:  Pope Benedict XVI: A Personal Portrait

Book:  Forty Dreams of St. John Bosco: The Apostle of Youth

Technorati Tags: Catholics,Pope,Roman Catholic Church,religion,tradition,Rome,the Vatican,health,prophecy

The End of "Bill of Rights"

US Senate votes to end Bill of Rights,  authorizes military to occupy U.S. cities and detain Americans

Natural News:

In a stunning move that has civil libertarians stuttering with disbelief, the U.S. Senate has passed a bill that effectively ends the Bill of Rights in America.

This bill, passed late last night in a 93-7 vote, declares the entire USA to be a "battleground" upon which U.S. military forces can operate with impunity, overriding Posse Comitatus and granting the military the unchecked power to arrest, detain, interrogate and even assassinate U.S. citizens with impunity.

It's being called the most traitorous act ever witnessed in the Senate, and the language of the bill is cleverly designed to make you think it doesn't apply to Americans, but toward the end of the bill it essentially says it can apply to Americans "if we want it to."

Even WIRED magazine was outraged at this bill, reporting:

...the detention mandate to use indefinite military detention in terrorism cases isn’t limited to foreigners. It’s confusing, because two different sections of the bill seem to contradict each other, but in the judgment of the University of Texas’ Robert Chesney — a nonpartisan authority on military detention — “U.S. citizens are included in the grant of detention authority.”

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/12/senate-military-detention/

The passage of this law is nothing less than an outright declaration of WAR against the American People by the military-connected power elite. If this is signed into law, it will shred the remaining tenants of the Bill of Rights and unleash upon America a total military dictatorship, complete with secret arrests, secret prisons, unlawful interrogations, indefinite detainment without ever being charged with a crime, the torture of Americans and even the "legitimate assassination" of U.S. citizens right here on American soil!

If you have not yet woken up to the reality of the police state we've been warning you about, I hope you realize we are fast running out of time. Once this becomes law, you have no rights whatsoever in America -- no due process, no First Amendment speech rights, no right to remain silent, nothing.

Read my red alert warning on this urgent development at:  http://www.naturalnews.com/034291_SB_1867_war_on_terror.html

... and watch this urgent interview with Alex Jones of InfoWars.com at: http://www.infowars.com/stewart-rhodes-crossroads-ndaa-bill-is-pure-treason/

The mainstream media is engaged in a shameful and conspiratorial news blackout of this entire issue:http://www.businessinsider.com/the-medias-blackout-of-the-national-defense-authorization-act-is-shameful-2011-12

... and even the ACLU is outraged about this potential law:  http://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/senate-rejects-amendment-banning-indefinite-detention

Are you getting all this? Do you realize America is about to be overrun by our own military?

The rule of law is about to be utterly destroyed. No due process. No legal representation. Not even a right to know what you're being charged with when you are (indefinitely) detained.

This is an urgent time for action to protest the overreaching military police state in America. Immediately call your representatives in Washington and urge your House members to reject this bill in the reconciliation phase with the Senate. Call the office of the President and urge Obama to veto this bill if it is passed by both houses.

Call your local newspapers and protest this outrageous and traitorous attempt to nullify the entire Bill of Rights.

Do not be fooled by the trolls and disinfo agents who claim this bill does not apply to U.S. citizens -- a fact which has already been established without question. If this is signed into law, military humvees will roll down the streets in U.S. cities, with gunpoint checkpoints, illegal arrests, secret torture operations and the outright murder of U.S. citizens right in their own home towns.

In observing all this, you might ask WHY is this happening right now? Why would the U.S. Senate deliberately nullify the Bill of Rights and seek to authorize military action on the streets of U.S. cities?

The answer, my friends, will not comfort you: A global economic collapse is coming, and once started, it will likely unleash a wave of social unrest and rioting that could burn many U.S. cities to the ground. The U.S. Senate is probably trying to rush authorization of the military to operate in American cities before the economic collapse arrives, thereby placing troops deep within the roughest U.S. cities where they stand a chance at halting the runaway riots that are sure to materialize when peoples' life savings vanish as the banks collapse.

Keep reading NaturalNews.com for updates on this situation. We will continue to cover the Eurozone economic crisis as well as this Senate bill 1867, which is not yet law. Our last-ditch hope would be for Obama to veto it. We'll issue a red alert if that action is needed...

And remember, folks, the Bill of Rights protects us all -- liberals, conservatives, libertarians, agnostics, Christians, Jews, everybody! If you lose the Bill of Rights, you lose America and all the freedoms many generations have fought for. Right now protecting the Bill of Rights is perhaps the single most important thing we can do for our collective futures.

All of us who have been screaming about the importance of the U.S. Constitution have been trying to protect YOU from exactly this kind of scenario. The whole purpose of the Bill of Rights is tolimit the power of government so that this kind of Senate action is never allowed.

MBY NOTE 

Not only has the Senate voted for this bill, while many Americans were SLEEPING, but another bill was passed under American's noses as the media has kept quiet concerning our freedom of speech.

Watch and wake up, these bills are being passed before the elections, and I wonder why, an economic collapse possibly?  Yes, but also the president/dictator is passing these laws to take over, possibly before the elections or before Romney is sworn into office February 2013.  

Suppressing Free Speech:  http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=7SGWH3kirzg&vq=medium  -  The Bill of Rights is about gone and the free speech in America is now gone.  America is NOW OFFICIALLY a FASCIST country and when the Bill of Rights is gone it will be officially a COMMUNIST country.

Get out there while you still have a chance… right now!  This is the most important election of your life time!!  Vote and promote Romney-Ryan.  If Obama wins again there will be no turning back!

Technorati Tags: media blackouts,Bill of Rights,Constitution,destroying America,saving America,military,troops on American soil,enemies within

Tracking the Choom Gang…

Choom Gang ------ The left’s U.S. PRESIDENT

Why has it taken four years to get this info and why hasn't our wonderful media published it?  Don't know why we're just now getting it, but it's more than has ever been sent to me about this turkey's early years. I'm still mad he took US dollars to fund his education!

Google Choom Gang for more info....

1. The Choom Gang

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A self-selected group of boys at Punahou School who loved basketball and good times called themselves the Choom Gang. Choom is a verb, meaning "to smoke marijuana."

3. 2. Total Absorption

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As a member of the Choom Gang, Barry Obama was known for starting a few pot-smoking trends. The first was called "TA," short for "total absorption." To place this in the physical and political context of another young man who would grow up to be president, TA was the antithesis of Bill Clinton's claim that as a Rhodes scholar at Oxford he smoked dope but never inhaled.

5. 3. Roof Hits

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Along with TA, Barry popularized the concept of "roof hits": when they were chooming in the car all the windows had to be rolled up so no smoke blew out and went to waste; when the pot was gone, they tilted their heads back and sucked in the last bit of smoke from the ceiling.

7. 4. Penalties

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When you were with Barry and his pals, if you exhaled precious pakalolo (Hawaiian slang for marijuana, meaning "numbing tobacco") instead of absorbing it fully into your lungs, you were assessed a penalty and your turn was skipped the next time the joint came around. "Wasting good bud smoke was not tolerated," explained one member of the Choom Gang, Tom Topolinski, the Chinese-looking kid with a Polish name who answered to Topo.

9. 5. The Choomwagon

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[Choom Gang member] Mark Bendix's Volkswagen bus, also known as the Choomwagon. … The other members considered Mark Bendix the glue, he was funny, creative, and uninhibited, with a penchant for Marvel Comics. He also had that VW bus and a house with a pool, a bong, and a Nerf basketball, all enticements for them to slip off midday for a few unauthorized hours of recreation...

11. 6. Interceptions

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Barry also had a knack for interceptions. When a joint was making the rounds, he often elbowed his way in, out of turn, shouted "Intercepted!," and took an extra hit. No one seemed to mind.

13. 7. Slippers

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Choom Gang members often made their way to Aku Ponds at the end of Manoa Stream, where they slipped past the liliko'i vines and the KAPU (keep out) signs, waded into waist-high cool mountain water, stood near the rock where water rushed overhead, and held up a slipper (what flip-flops are called in Hawaii) to create an air pocket canopy. It was a natural high, they said, stoned or not.

15. 8. Ray The Dealer

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He was a long-haired haole hippie who worked at the Mama Mia Pizza Parlor not far from Punahou and lived in a dilapidated bus in an abandoned warehouse. … According to Topolinski, Ray the dealer was "freakin' scary." Many years later they learned that he had been killed with a ball-peen hammer by a scorned gay lover. But at the time he was useful because of his ability to "score quality weed."

...

In another section of the [senior] yearbook, students were given a block of space to express thanks and define their high school experience. … Nestled below [Obama's] photographs was one odd line of gratitude: "Thanks Tut, Gramps, Choom Gang, and Ray for all the good times." … A hippie drug-dealer made his acknowledgments; his own mother did not.

17. 9. Pumping Stations

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Their favorite hangout was a place they called Pumping Stations, a lush hideaway off an unmarked, roughly paved road partway up Mount Tantalus. They parked single file on the grassy edge, turned up their stereos playing Aerosmith, Blue Oyster Cult, and Stevie Wonder, lit up some "sweet-sticky Hawaiian buds" and washed it down with "green bottle beer" (the Choom Gang preferred Heineken, Becks, and St. Pauli Girl).

19. 10. Veto

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One of the favorite words in their subculture revealed their democratic nature. The word was veto. Whenever an idea was broached, someone could hold up his hand in the V sign (a backward peace sign of that era) and indicate that the motion wash not approved. They later shortened the process so that you could just shout "V" to get the point across. In the Choom Gang, all V's were created equal.

21. 11. Maui Wowie, Kauai Electric, Puna Bud And Kona Gold:

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In the Honolulu of Barry's teenage years marijuana was flourishing up in the hills, out in the countryside, in covert greenhouses everywhere. It was sold and smoked right there in front of your nose; Maui Wowie, Kauai Electric, Puna Bud, Kona Gold, and other local variations of pakololo were readily available.

23. 12. The Barf Couch

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The Barf Couch earned its name early in the first trimester when a freshman across the hall from Obama [in the Haines Hall Annex dorm at Occidental College] drank himself into a stupor and threw up all over himself and the couch. In the manner of pallbearers hoisting a coffin, a line of Annexers lifted the tainted sofa with the freshman aboard and toted it out the back door and down four steps to the first concrete landing on the way to the parking lot. A day later, the couch remained outside in the sun, resting on its side with cushions off (someone had hosed it clean), and soon it was back in the hallway nook.

25. 13. The Annex Olympics

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The main hallway at Haines Hall was called the Annex, home to the impromptu Annex Olympics: long-jumping onto a pile of mattresses, wrestling in underwear, hacking golf balls down the hallway toward the open back door, boxing while drunk. There were the non-Olympic sports of lighting farts and judging them by color, tipping over the Coke machine, breaking the glass fire extinguisher case, putting out cigarettes on the carpet, falling asleep on the carpet, flinging Frisbees at the ceiling-mounted alarm bell, tasting pizza boxes to the floor, and smoking pot from a three-foot crimson opaque bong, a two-man event involving the smoker and an accomplice standing ready to respond to the order "Hey, dude, light the bowl!"

Obama’s friend and roommate Chondo at Columbia.  Seem to be sitting awfully close for just friends?  Just sayin…  "To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists.", Barack Obama.

Is this really what you want in a president?  The example you want to set for your children?  The man you want as our representative and as leader of the Free World?  Think about it!  And if you haven’t already… please add these to your summer reading before the the Election:  Dreams from My Father, The Amateur; The Great Destroyer; Screwed!; and Barack Obama and the Enemies Within.

Will Ignorance Lead to a Second Obama Term??   The Choice: Mitt Romney or Barack Obama is becoming ever clearer. Time to focus on solutions, educate those around you and get in the fight to save America and your children's and grandchildren's futures.  We cannot survive four more years of the same or worse if Obama is re-elected!  And not voting or voting 3rd party, if Romney was not your first choice will ensure that Obama wins.  Time to unite!!

Ask Marion – h/t to Warbird at Sovereignty in Colorado

Related:

The ‘Choom Gang’: 9 Juiciest Details From Barack Obama’s Days as a Pothead

Obama and His Pot-Smoking ‘Choom Gang’

Another Sheriff Asking For Obama Documents and More Leaks About Obama 2008

The Choom Gang Cheat Sheet:  How Young Barack Obama (Barry) Might Vote Today in California

Technorati Tags: Choom Gang,Barry Soetoro,BHO,Barack Hussein Obama,one term president,one term Obama,wake-up America,stand-up America,vetting Obama,Obamaland,the real Obama,The Choice,Mitt Romney in 2012,choices,common sense,media blackout,vetting our candidates,Obama's friends,Obama's family. connecting the dots

Fallen… House Rejects Sex-Selection Abortion Ban – White House Agrees and Media is Silent

Have you seen this NASA photo before?  It is real.. a composite of the Helix Nubela taken by the Hubble Telescope, entitled God’s Eye. 
And for most of us it is a reminder that someone is watching…

Most Americans have always thought that our nation, the Founding Fathers and our Constitution were God inspired. 

And many have seen the correlation between our demise and turning our back, as a nation, on God.

House rejects sex-selection abortion ban

GOPUSA:

WASHINGTON (AP) - The House on Thursday fell short in an effort to ban abortions based on the sex of the fetus as Republicans and Democrats made an election-year appeal for women's votes.

The legislation would have made it a federal crime to perform or force a woman to undergo a sex-based abortion, a practice most common in some Asian countries where families wanting sons abort female fetuses.

It was a rare social issue to reach the House floor in a year when the economy has dominated the political conversation, and Republicans, besieged by Democratic claims that they are waging a war on women, struck back by trying to depict the vote as a women's rights issue.

"It is violence against women," said Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., of abortions of female fetuses. "This is the real war on women." (So why aren’t the feminists screaming about this?)

The White House, most Democrats, abortion rights groups and some Asian-American organizations opposed the bill, saying it could lead to racial profiling of Asian-American women and subject doctors who do not report suspected sex-selection abortions to criminal charges.

"The administration opposes gender discrimination in all forms, but the end result of this legislation would be to subject doctors to criminal prosecution if they fail to determine the motivations behind a very personal and private decision," White House spokeswoman Jamie Smith said in a statement. "The government should not intrude in medical decisions or private family matters in this way."

The bill had little chance of becoming law. The Democratic-controlled Senate would likely have ignored it, and the House brought it up under a procedure requiring a two-thirds majority for passage. The vote was 246-168 - 30 votes short of that majority. Twenty Democrats voted for it, while seven Republicans opposed it.

The bill's author, Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., said before the vote that regardless of the outcome, the point would be made. "When people vote on this, the world will know where they really stand."

Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the House's No. 2 Democrat, said he thought the bill was introduced because "somebody decided politically that this was a difficult place to put people in."

The legislation would have made it a federal offense, subject to up to five years in prison, to perform, solicit funds for or coerce a woman into having a sex-selection abortion. Bringing a woman into the country to obtain such an abortion would also be punishable by up to five years in prison. While doctors would not have an affirmative responsibility to ask a woman her motivations for an abortion, health workers could be imprisoned for up to a year for not reporting known or suspected violations of the ban on sex-based abortions.

An earlier version of the bill also made it illegal to abort a fetus based on race.

"We are the only advanced country left in the world that still doesn't restrict sex-selection abortion in any way," said Franks, who has also collided with abortion-rights groups recently over a bill he supports to ban abortions in the District of Columbia after 20 weeks of pregnancy.

Franks and others say there is evidence of sex-selection abortions in the United States among certain ethnic groups from countries where there is a traditional preference for sons. The bill notes that while the United States has no federal law against such abortions, countries such as India and China, where the practice has contributed to lopsided boy-girl ratios, have enacted bans on the practice.

Lawmakers "who recently have embraced the contrived political rhetoric asserting that they are resisting the artificial `war on women', created by Team Obama for political purposes for his upcoming election bid, must reflect on whether they now wish to be recorded as being defenders of the real escalating war on baby girls," said National Right to Life Committee legislative director Douglas Johnson. (Let us remember that both President Obama and HHS Secretary Kathleen Sibelius have always supported late term and partial birth abortions.  Senator Obama even voted against giving the tiny survivors or abortions comfort after the procedure, which is barbaric!)

His group, in a letter to lawmakers, said there are credible estimates that 160 million women and girls are missing from the world due to sex selection.

But the Guttmacher Institute, an organization that favors abortion rights, said evidence of sex selection in the United States is limited and inconclusive. It said that while there is census data showing some evidence of son preference among Chinese-, Indian- and Korean-American families when older children are daughters, the overall U.S. sex ratio at birth in 2005 was 105 boys to 100 girls, "squarely within biologically normal parameters."

NARAL Pro-Choice America president Nancy Keenan said that while her group has long opposed reproductive coercion, "the Franks bill exploits the very real problem of sex discrimination and gender inequity while failing to offer any genuine solutions that would eliminate disparities in health care access and information."

Marcia Greenberger, co-president of the National Women's Law Center, said the bill fosters discrimination by "subjecting women from certain racial and ethnic backgrounds to additional scrutiny about their decision to terminate a pregnancy."

"Doctors would be forced to police their patients, read their minds and conceal information from them," said Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y.

Republicans also used the bill to continue their ongoing criticism of Planned Parenthood, founded by eugenicist Margaret Sanger who endorsed abortion for racial purification, citing a video taken by the group Live Action purporting to show a Planned Parenthood social worker advising a woman on how to determine if her fetus was female before she terminated the pregnancy.

h/t Jim Abrams, June 1, 2012 6:50 am

The passing of this anti-sex-selection abortion law would have been more symbolic than anything else, for nobody would have gone into a clinic and said we want to terminate this pregnancy because of the gender of the fetus, especially after the law passed.  As Gretchen Carlson of Fox and Friends said: “Who would ever have thought that America, the United States, would need a law like this?”  But with the surfacing of now several videos showing that this despicable practice was not just an isolated incident and now the fact that Congress could/would not pass a bill banning gender selection abortion coupled with progressive politicians trying to turn this “real” ‘war on woman’ into a political shame… we sadly see that we definitely need this law!  After this vote we can no longer call the practices of China barbaric; we have defined our own culture as the only advanced country left in the world that still doesn't restrict sex-selection abortion in any way!  We have fallen a long way from the the God fearing people that founded our country!

As the polls indicate, pro-choice Americans are at record low and partial birth abortions and gender selection is unthinkable to most Americans; plus the Catholic Church has brought suit against the Obama Conception Mandate of ObamaCare… yet unless you watch Fox news, participate in the conservative blogosphere or perhaps receive a publication for your church, synagogue or a pro-life group you probably don’t know about any of this.  the media is silent… blacked out in support of President Obama and his administration.  This alone should be a huge flag of how they will handle the news between now and election and worry us all… blacked out news, distortion of their opponents and issues they oppose and slanted favorable news of Obama and Progressive candidates and issues… sounds a whole lot more like the USSR vs. the USA.

What we are is God's gift to us.  What we become is our gift to God.

Many feel he United States has fallen from grace… You be the Judge!

Related:

New Live Action video shows Planned Parenthood encouraging gender-selective abortion, Medicaid fraud

Catholic Groups File Against Obama Contraception Mandate – ‘Pro-Choice’ Americans At Record Low, Poll Finds

America Solidly Now “Pro-Life”

Many ask themselves how we got here…  When is the last time you took your kids and grandkids to church?  Are they teaching from scripture there?  And how can a modern translation of the Bible, The Voice Bible (Paperback: The Voice New Testament), that changes the nouns for God, Jesus Christ and angels to Eternal One, the Anointed One and a messenger of God and then offers a “watered down” version of the Gospel.  Was it T.S. Eliot who said the less people read the Bible the more they translate it?”  He also said something like ‘Watered down Christianity is worth nothing.’

Technorati Tags: Planned Parenthood,abortions,sex-selective abortion,China,God,fallen,culture,Founding Fathers,Constitution,erosion of culture,Catholic Church,Catholics,media blackout,media bias,Bible,Christians,people of faith,manipulation of the public,Margaret Sanger