The C-SPAN Lie: See 8 Clips of Obama Promising Televised Healthcare Negotiations

Bill Connor Receives Boiling Springs Tea Party Endorsement

Tea Party Movement backing Connor for Lt. Governor

Bill Connor’s campaign for Lieutenant Governor showed more momentum today as he picked up the endorsement of the Boiling Springs Tea Party organization, an Upstate organization with over 3000 members.

“We believe that Bill Connor’s advanced service to his country uniquely qualifies him for statewide office,” said Maria Brady, the group’s spokeswoman, in a release Tuesday. “Bill’s service as the leading US Advisor in Southern Afghanistan is proof of his commitment to our nation, and is well illustrated by his Bronze Star.”

“Col. Connor has been involved with the Tea Party movement since the first Tea Party in South Carolina back in Greenville in February. He has since been involved in more than a dozen Tea Parties across our state. Bill is committed to the ideals of freedom and liberty that are at the heart of our movement, and has shown that commitment in his articles and his actions. We are proud to support his candidacy for Lieutenant Governor,” Brady concluded.

“I am pleased to have the support of this great group of conservative and liberty-minded activists,” Connor said. “I have spoken at Tea Parties around our state for the past year about the need to get back to the ideals our nation was founded upon. I believe groups like this herald a new direction for our Republican Party, one where we refocus our efforts away from big government and towards the principles of freedom our Founders gave us more than two centuries ago.”

Czech Cardinal Warns: Muslims are Conquering Europe

From Catholic World News

Cardinal Miloslav Vlk, who has served as Archbishop of Prague since 1991, has warned in an interview that “if Europe doesn't change its relation to its own roots, it will be Islamized.”

“Europe has denied its Christian roots from which it has risen and which could give it the strength to fend off the danger that it will be conquered by Muslims-- which is actually happening gradually,” he said. Muslims “easily fill the vacant space created as Europeans systematically empty the Christian content of their lives.”

“At the end of the Middle Ages and in the early modern age, Islam failed to conquer Europe with arms. The Christians beat them then,” he added. “Today, when the fighting is done with spiritual weapons which Europe lacks while Muslims are perfectly armed, the fall of Europe is looming.”

Denouncing Europe’s “pagan environment” and “atheistic style of life,” Cardinal Vlk said that “Neither the free market nor freedom without responsibility is strong enough to form the basis of society. Not even democracy alone is a panacea unless it is embedded in God.”

The Czech press is speculating that Pope Benedict will name a successor to the 77-year-old cardinal within days.

Source(s): these links will take you to other sites, in a new window.

• Cardinal: EU faces Islamisation (CTK)
• Czech archbishop warns of Europe's 'islamisation' (AFP)

Rats Deserting a Sinking Ship

Dodd Follows Dorgan Out the Door

By Liz Sidoti ASSOCIATED PRESS

Connecticut Sen. Christopher Dodd, a five-term Democrat whose political stock began falling after the financial meltdown and his failed 2008 presidential bid, has decided not to seek re-election in November, Democratic officials told Associated Press early Wednesday.

Dodd was expected to make an announcement Wednesday. The officials who disclosed his plans would speak only on condition of anonymity ahead of the announcement. The Washington Post first reported Dodd's decision.

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Feast of the Epiphany

20 K+M+B 10

"From the east came the Magi to Bethlehem to adore the Lord; and opening their treasures they offered precious gifts: gold for the great King, incense for the true God, and myrrh in symbol of His burial."

Today's Feast of the Epiphany, also known as "Little Christmas," and "Twelfth Night," concludes the twelve days of Christmas. Of the many celebrations of the Christmas season and this special day commemorating the arrival of the Magi, the Polish "Festival of the Star" is as beautiful as any to be found in Christian tradition.

On the Feast of the Epiphany in Poland, the parish priest visits homes, blesses them, and using chalk writes over door lintels the initials of the three wise men - KMB (Kasper, Melchior and Balthazar) - with the prayerful hope that the family will be spared misfortune in the new year.

The Polish carols, "Gdy Sie, Chrystus Rodzi" (When Christ is born) and Medrcy Swiata (Three Wise Men) are a beautiful commemoration of this day signifying that Jesus came to redeem not only his own people, but the whole world.

When Harry Met Nancy

Jews Move to Halt Spitting at Christians in Jerusalem

From The National Catholic Reporter
By John L. Allen, Jr.

Globally speaking, the most serious new tension dividing Jews and Catholics is Pope Benedict XVI’s decision just before Christmas to advance the sainthood cause of Pius XII, the wartime pontiff whose alleged “silence” on the Holocaust has long been a subject of polarizing historical debate.

On the ground in Jerusalem, however, Jewish/Christian animus has a much more prosaic cause: Spitting.

Recently, the Jerusalem Post carried a piece quoting Rabbi David Rosen, a veteran of Catholic/Jewish dialogue, acknowledging that incidents of ultra-Orthodox Jews spitting at priests, nuns and other Christian clergy is “a part of life” in Jerusalem. Such incidents have been occurring for the last twenty years and are now on the rise, according to the story, although they appear to be limited to Jerusalem.

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