Leaders approach the Horn - Vendée Globe 2024

Six weeks into the race the headline today is that records are about to fall at Cape Horn - but the solo sailors struggle with fatigue.  If you don't know the Vendee Globe - the rules are simple. Depart France (Vendee Department) circle the globe, respecting the antarctic exclusion zone, return to Sable D'Olonne.

Single-handed. No outside assistance.

VENDEE GLOBE - EN

Ranking | Vendée Globe 2024

TRACKER

Of the forty who started 36 are still racing.

Leader Yoanne Richomme has averaged 23.4 knots over the past 24 hours.  He is approaching the Horn.

Distance to finish7556.57 NM

Charlie Dalin, 15 NM behind has averaged 24.11 knots over the past day.

At the back of the fleet Denis Van Weynbergh is averaging 11. kts over the past day.

 

• Distance to finish14332.60 NM
• Distance to leader6776.03 NM

The differences reflect, of course, skill, and luck.  But mostly equipment as the fastest boats are foiling.

There are still five women racing.  The top three can be judged by the numbers.

11 Justime Metraux

JustineMETTRAUX

TEAMWORK-TEAM SNEF

• Speed17.65 KTS
• 24h average speed16.89 KTS
• Distance to finish9209.54 NM
• Distance to leader1652.98 NM

12 Clarisse Cremer

ClarisseCRÉMER

L'OCCITANE EN PROVENCE

• Speed12.06 KTS
• 24h average speed14.57 KTS
• Distance to finish10400.53 NM
• Distance to leader2843.96 NM

13Samantha Davie

SamanthaDAVIES

INITIATIVES-CŒUR

• Speed16.32 KTS
• 24h average speed14.27 KTS
• Distance to finish10454.26 NM
• Distance to leader2897.69 NM

Vaccines - A VITAL NECESSITY

 Trump is going to put the ridiculous Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.  He is an anti-vaxxer. Here's why NO to that

Which places would be most affected by the Trump administration’s immigrant deportation proposals?

Which places would be most affected by the Trump administration’s immigrant deportation proposals?

With President-elect Donald Trump set to take office next month for a second, nonconsecutive term, attention is turning to his policy agenda and its possible implications for individuals and communities. 

While the lack of a formal GOP platform during the campaign has rendered many aspects of that agenda ambiguous, Trump and his advisers have made clear many of the immigration policy actions they would seek to take in office. These include, among several others: conducting mass deportation of millions of unauthorized immigrants; revoking temporary legal status for hundreds of thousands of immigrants from countries suffering from violence and natural disasters; and suspending protections for students and workers whose parents brought them to the U.S. unlawfully when they were children. 

In a recent report, I argued that these actions and others would have disproportionate impacts on U.S. cities and urban areas, given that most foreign-born individuals live and work in these places. This report extends and deepens that analysis, drawing on other recent research to examine the profiles and locations of specific immigrant groups that Trump’s policy proposals may affect in the near term. As the analysis shows, those policies could reach a large and geographically diverse range of places, and dramatically disrupt local businesses, schools, public safety agencies, and community institutions. In addition to helping local and state leaders understand the potential impacts of these actions on their residents and communities, the report also suggests important ways in which these leaders might prepare and respond.  

The drama behind the pope's gay blessings declaration, one year later | National Catholic Reporter

The drama behind the pope's gay blessings declaration, one year later | National Catholic Reporter

By Christopher White

No Vatican document over the last year has caused more uproar than Fiducia Supplicans, the declaration from the church's doctrinal office allowing priests to bless individuals who are remarried or in same-sex unions.

The text — eight pages made available initially in five languages — arrived in reporters' inboxes at 2:15 in the afternoon one year ago today, on Dec. 18, for "immediate" publication. In many respects, it defined the year ahead for Pope Francis and some of his key allies.

The rollout was not dissimilar to another incident that occurred in March 2022, when after nine  years in the making, the Vatican released the text of its long awaited new constitution, Praedicate Evangelium. That document overhauling the church's central bureaucracy was one of the signature reforms of Francis' papacy. With little fanfare at all, the document arrived on a Saturday without a customary press conference to explain the sweeping changes until the following Monday — more than 48 hours after the document had been released and stories published.

But if that was mostly concerned with the church's internal governance, Fiducia was an outward facing document, potentially affecting the lives of many Catholic faithful and those who minister to them.

Faggioli's book challenges Catholic higher education - Winters. - National Catholic Reporter

Faggioli's book challenges Catholic higher education

December 18, 2024 

By Michael Sean Winters

National Catholic Reporter

 Massimo Faggioli's new book, Theology & Catholic Higher Education: Beyond Our Identity Crisis, comes not a moment too soon. The nation's premier ecclesiologist, Faggioli identifies the dangers facing theological faculties in their struggle for existence as a problem for the church, not just the university. What is more, he sees that solving the problem will require the attention and good faith of both the academic and the ecclesial establishments. 

This is a short book, but not a thin one. Faggioli begins by examining the identity crisis afflicting theology in the country's schools of higher education. Some of the problems are self-inflicted wounds, and others represent external threats. The wave of young neo-traditionalists who reject Vatican II can turn to niche schools like Christendom College or to non-academic, pseudo-experts who populate the internet. They will not turn to theology at a mainstream Catholic university because "the growing polarization in the United States between left and right in theology … relegated Catholic theology in universities to being the handmaiden of political progressivism." 

 A related problem followed upon, not to say caused by, the loss of ecclesial control over Catholic higher education. "At the very moment many Catholic colleges and universities were freed from episcopal interference, they happily surrendered to the influence of corporate donors eager to fund conservative projects on Catholic campuses — projects that often combined theological traditionalism with neo-liberal or libertarian economic ideology," he writes.

Montana Supreme Court Clean and Healthful Environment is a Right!

 

Whoa—the Montana Supreme Court holds that its state constitution protects the right to "a stable climate system," and strikes down a law that barred consideration of greenhouse gas emissions when permitting new fossil fuel projects. juddocumentservice.mt.gov/getDocByCTra...

[image or embed]

— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjsdc.bsky.social) December 18, 2024 at 1:17 PM

How Donald Trump’s War on Expertise Threatens Our Health By David Corn December 3, 2024

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya at a Heritage Foundation roundtable discussion on the Covid pandemic with members of the right-wing House Freedom Caucus on November 10, 2022. Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/AP How Donald Trump’s War on Expertise Threatens Our Health   Mother Jones

By David Corn  December 3, 2024

 

re you ready for another pandemic?

Last week, David Kessler, who headed the Food and Drug Administration during the George H.W. Bush and Clinton administrations and who served as the Biden administration’s chief science officer during Covid-19, issued a stark warning regarding “the possibility that the spreading avian flu might mutate to enable human-to-human transmission.” So far, he noted, there has been no person-to-person spread of H5N1. But he pointed out we may be two or three mutations away from a virus that can cause a pandemic. “The incoming Trump administration needs to be prepared,” he said.

Kessler, perhaps too politely, did not state the obvious: Donald Trump has proposed a public health team that will not be prepared and that may well do more harm than good. As Dr. Jonathan Reiner, a professor of medicine, surgery interventional cardiologist, and CNN medical analyst, put it in a tweet: “If a new pandemic comes to the US next year we’ll have an NIH director [Jay Bhattacharya] who advocated for letting COVID burn through the US, an HHS Sec [Robert F. Kennedy Jr.] who believes in raw milk but not vaccines, an FDA commissioner [Marty Makary] who said COVID would be over by 4/2021, and a CDC director [Dave Weldon] who supported the debunked theory that vaccines cause autism.” (I added the names to Reiner’s post.)

Transcript: Donald Trump interviewed by 'Meet the Press' moderator Kristen Welker

A lot of headlines have come from Donald Trump's Meet the Press interview.  He promptly set the tone attack.  Hyperbole uber alles.  The most disturbing thing is that more Americans were motivated to vote for him than for the eminently sensible Kamala Harris.  Though the Presidential margin was 1.5% - the Republicans took both houses of the Congress, and have solid control of the Supreme Court.

He knows what won him votes: immigrants, crime, and taxes.

- GWC

December 8, 2024

Full transcript: Donald Trump interviewed by 'Meet the Press' moderator Kristen Welker

KRISTEN WELKER:

Thank you so much for being here. You are the first president since Grover Cleveland to win non-consecutive terms. Republicans now have control of the House and the Senate. What do you plan to accomplish in your first 100 days in office?

PRESIDENT-ELECT DONALD TRUMP:

Well, we’re going to do something with the border, very strong, very powerful. That’ll be our first signal — first signal to America that we’re not playing games. We have people coming in by the millions, as you know, and a lot of people shouldn’t be here. Most of them shouldn’t be here. But we have jails being emptied into our country. We have mental institutions from all over the world being emptied into our country. So we’ll be doing that. 

We’re going to be extending within that period or as soon as we can the Trump tax cuts, because you know they’re coming due and they’re very substantial for people. It would be very — and I think it will anger a lot of people, frankly, if we don’t get an extension of that. That’s what led us to one of the greatest economies ever. And those two things are going to be very vital, very important. 

We’re going to be focusing on crime in the cities, and we’ll work with Democrat governors. Most of them are, as you know, if you look at the 25 worst places, they’re just about all Democrat-controlled cities and states. And we’re going to be working with Democrat governors and Democrat mayors, and I look forward to doing it. But we have to do something about crime, and mostly in our cities.

Senator Grassley demands FBI Director Wray resign

 Laying the groundwork for Donald Trump to install the abominable Kashyup Patel at the FBI, Iow Senator Chuck Grassley has issued a long accusation brief as a letter to Director Christopher Wray.

Liz Cheney pushes back against Trump threats - The New York Times

Threatened with Jail, Liz Cheney pushes back against Trump

By Peter Baker

Former Representative Liz Cheney on Sunday called President-elect Donald J. Trump’s threat to imprison her and other members of a congressional committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol an “assault on the rule of law and the foundations of our republic.”

Responding to comments Mr. Trump made in an interview aired on Sunday on “Meet the Press” on NBC, Ms. Cheney said the incoming president “lied about the Jan. 6 select committee” and that there would be “no conceivably appropriate factual or constitutional basis” to prosecute its members.

“Here is the truth: Donald Trump attempted to overturn the 2020 presidential election and seize power,” she said in a statement. “He mobilized an angry mob and sent them to the United States Capitol, where they attacked police officers, invaded the building and halted the official counting of electoral votes. Trump watched on television as police officers were brutally beaten and the Capitol was assaulted, refusing for hours to tell the mob to leave.”

She continued: “This was the worst breach of our Constitution by any president in our nation’s history. Donald Trump’s suggestion that members of Congress who later investigated his illegal and unconstitutional actions should be jailed is a continuation of his assault on the rule of law and the foundations of our republic.”

Pope Francis makes urgent appeal on behalf of U.S. death row inmates | National Catholic Reporter

I expect that this will have zero impact on the six right wing cradle Catholics on the U.S. Supreme Court.  they have already rationalized their departure from Francis on doctrines dear to the U.S. conservatives.  After all - a solid majority of Catholic men voted for Trump. - GWC

Pope Francis makes urgent appeal on behalf of U.S. death row inmates | National Catholic Reporter

By Christopher White

Pope Francis on Dec. 8 made a special appeal for the lives of death row inmates in the United States to be spared.

"Let us pray for their sentence to be commuted, changed," said the pope. "Let us think of these brothers and sisters of ours and ask the Lord to save them from death."

The pope's remarks come at a critical time when American Catholic leaders are pushing U.S. President Joe Biden to commute the sentences of the 40 inmates currently on death row. 

The Catholic Mobilizing Network, a leading advocacy group opposing capital punishment, has appealed directly to the Biden administration to use his remaining time in office to take immediate action before President Donald Trump returns to office next month.

During his first term, Trump reinstated federal executions, including a surge of 13 executions over a six-month period. 

"Trump has a sordid history with executions," said Catholic Mobilizing Network's executive director Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy in an earlier interview with the National Catholic Reporter. "Now is not the time to step back from death penalty abolition." 

The pope's remarks came during his weekly Sunday Angelus prayer delivered from the window of the Vatican's Apostolic Palace. He asked the faithful gathered there and listening in from around the world to join him in prayer that death row inmates receive mercy.

In 2018, Francis updated the official Catechism of the Catholic Church to declare the death penalty to be "inadmissible." 

"The death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person," states the new language, which commits the Catholic Church toward its global abolition. 

Democratic autopsy: The party needs a sense of history, humility and humor | National Catholic Reporter

I don't know where I come down on Winters' analysis.  Read the full essay, and his other recent, linked pieces.

I do think that the culture wars have driven us apart.  But I am unsympathetic to much "conservative" attitudes - because I find the history of the U.S. political system to have been driven by slavery and racism.  Rather than admit that the convention has been to treat the drafters of 17877 as apostles of freedom.

- GWC

Democratic autopsy: The party needs a sense of history, humility and humor | National Catholic Reporter

By Michael Sean Winters

Democrats must acquire a more balanced sense of history, humility about their public policy goals, and a sense of humor about human life if they are serious about winning elections again. That is just as important as abandoning their alienating traits, such as heresy-hunting and scientism, as we discussed recently.

History gives a culture its bearings. If you want to know why things are the way they are, you need to know how we got here. Sadly, a generation or more of college graduates, especially at elite colleges, were schooled in deconstructionism.

Deconstructionism is a method of analysis. It highlights inconsistencies or contradictions in received historical accounts, and recasts history with special emphasis on power dynamics, and a deemphasis of any ideals historical actors gave as their motivation for particular decisions. Associated with the French philosopher Jacques Derrida, its most familiar expression would be Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States: 1492-Present.

A wise friend observed, "Deconstructionism robs meaning." It also imports a new and different meaning. As the late Cardinal Francis George wrote in his theology dissertation, "If the United States is not to be a beacon, the universally inclusive 'city on hill,' then it must be a sinkhole, the evil source of global exploitation."

The ICC: Myths and Realities | James A. Goldston and Aryeh Neier | The New York Review of Books

The ICC: Myths and Realities | James A. Goldston and Aryeh Neier | The New York Review of Books

By James A. Goldston and Aryeh Neier

On November 21, when three International Criminal Court judges issued arrest warrants for leaders of Israel and Hamas, the decision drew a frenzy of hostile and often ill-informed reactions from many American lawmakers and defenders of Israel. The incoming senate majority leader, John Thune, had already called the charges against Prime Minister Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant “outrageous and unlawful” and promised that imposing sanctions against the ICC would be a “top priority in the next Congress.” Now Senator Lindsey Graham threatened to “sanction any country that aids and abets the arrest of any politician in Israel,” including Britain, Canada, France, and Germany. 

Meanwhile, writing in The Wall Street Journal, the Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz announced that he is “assembling a team of world class lawyers from around the globe to help defend Israeli leaders.” Dershowitz’s claims command particular attention, not only because he is a prominent legal scholar but also because they crystallize three principal arguments against the warrants that, however appealing they might be to the ICC’s critics, are in fact without merit.

***

Earlier this year the International Court of Justice concluded that “the right of the Palestinians in Gaza to be protected from acts of genocide” was plausibly in jeopardy. Amnesty International has just issued a meticulously documented report arguing that Israeli officials have manifested the intent required to justify the accusation of genocide. 

But the ICC arrest warrants do not charge genocide. Rather, they accuse both Netanyahu and Gallant of responsibility for the war crimes of starvation as a method of warfare and intentionally directing attacks against the civilian population of Gaza, as well as the crimes against humanity of murder, inhumane acts, and persecution. The crime of forced starvation requires the prosecution to show that the defendants “intentionally us[ed] starvation of civilians as a method of warfare by depriving them of objects indispensable to their survival, including willfully impeding relief supplies as provided for under the Geneva Conventions.” 

 

Tilda Swinton would like a word with Donald Trump

Tilda Swinton Would Like a Word With Trump About His Mother https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/07/magazine/tilda-swinton-interview.html?smid=nytcore-android-share

D.C. Circuit OKs law limiting Tik Tok

TIKTOK INC. AND BYTEDANCE LTD.,PETITIONERSv.MERRICK B. GARLAND, IN HIS OFFICIAL CAPACITY ASATTORNEY GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES,RESPONDENT 

On Petitions for Review of Constitutionality of the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act

GINSBURG, Senior Circuit Judge: On April 24, 2024 the President signed the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act into law. Pub. L. No. 118-50, div. H. The Act identifies the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and three other countries as foreign adversaries of the United States and prohibits the distribution or maintenance of “foreign adversary controlled applications.”1 Its prohibitions will take effect on January 19, 2025 with respect to the TikTok platform.

Three petitions — filed by ByteDance Ltd. and TikTok, Inc.; Based Politics, Inc.; and a group of individuals (“Creators”) who use the TikTok platform — which we have consolidated, all present constitutional challenges to the Act. We conclude the portions of the Act the petitioners have standing to challenge, that is the provisions concerning TikTok and its related entities,survive constitutional scrutiny. We therefore deny the petitions. 

**

1 A foreign adversary controlled application is defined in § 2(g)(3) as “a website, desktop application, mobile application, or augmented or immersive technology application that is operated, directly or indirectly (including through a parent company, subsidiary, or affiliate), by”: (A) any of — (i) ByteDance, Ltd.; (ii) TikTok; (iii) a subsidiary of or a successor to an entity identified in clause (i) or (ii) that is controlled by a foreign adversary; or (iv) an entity owned or controlled, directly or indirectly, by an entity identified in clause (i), (ii), or (iii); or (B) a covered company that — (i) is controlled by a foreign adversary; and (ii) that is determined by the President to present a significant threat to the national security of the United States following [certain procedures].

Book Review: "Tyranny of the Minority" by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt | Foreign Affairs

Book Review: "Tyranny of the Minority" by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt | Foreign Affairs

Why American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point

Crown 2023 384 pp.

Reviewed by G. John Ikenberry   Published on December 12, 2023

Why has American democracy come so close to a breaking point while other Western democracies appear more stable? In this sobering study, Levitsky and Ziblatt blame the United States’ eighteenth-century constitutional order for its modern democratic woes. Forged in a pre-democratic age, this order increasingly thwarts the will of an expanding multicultural majority in favor of a shrinking rural white minority. The drafters of the U.S. Constitution worried that the great threat to democracy was “the tyranny of the majority,” so they devised important countermajoritarian instruments, such as an independent judiciary and the Bill of Rights. 

The authors see many of these constitutional innovations as essential for the preservation of democracy but find others more worrisome. The electoral college system allows the candidate who receives fewer votes to win the presidency. The U.S. Senate overrepresents less populated states, and the filibuster requires a supermajority of 60 votes to pass legislation. The result is that majorities often cannot gain power, and if they do, they find it hard to govern. Levitsky and Ziblatt show that this paralyzing majoritarian rule makes the United States unique among its peer democracies. Germany and the United Kingdom have reformed their upper chambers to make them more representative of the population. Other democracies, with constitutions modeled on the United States’, have abolished indirect voting and the lifetime tenure of judges.

Catholicism and Public Affairs Colloquium - Fordham Institute on Law, Religion and Lawyers Work

 https://www.fordham.edu/school-of-law/centers-and-institutes/institute-on-religion-law-and-lawyers-work/catholicism-and-public-affairs-colloquium/catholicism-and-public-affairs-colloquium/

Catholicism and Public Affairs Colloquium

The Institute organizes the Faculty Colloquia on Jesuit, Catholic Values, and the Law School.

 

Fall 2022

Book Club - Can We Talk about Racism?

Spring 2022

Book Club - Common Good ConstitutionalismBook Club - Catholic Discordance

Spring 2021

Book Club - Joe Biden and Catholicism in the United States - 1st SessionBook Club - Joe Biden and Catholicism in the United States - 2nd Session  

Fall 2020

Ethics at the Edge of Law: Christian Moralists and American Legal Thought