McCain campaign’s last minute distortion of Obama’s coal record an act of desperation

I'm sure the usual suspects from the Conservative board also agree with the conclusions of THIS Pennsylvania nut case and will be ready to blame Kennedy for starting trouble.  LMAO!

Conservatives are getting weirder by the hour.

Kennedy slams Santorum for church sex abuse remarks

By Lolita C. Baldor, Associated Press Writer  |  July 13, 2005

WASHINGTON --In a rare personal attack on the Senate floor Wednesday, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy called Pennsylvania Republican Rick Santorum self-righteous and insensitive for his remarks linking Boston's liberal reputation to the clergy sex abuse scandal.

In recent days, Santorum has refused to back down from comments he made in a 2002 column, in which he said promoting alternative lifestyles spawns aberrant behavior, such as priests molesting children. He went on to say that it was not surprising that liberal Boston was at the center of the scandal.

"The people of Boston are to blame for the clergy sexual abuse? That is an irresponsible, insensitive and inexcusable thing to say," said Kennedy, D-Mass., in a speech from the Senate chamber.

Kennedy called for Santorum to apologize to the people of Boston and across the nation, noting that the clergy abuse happened all across the country, in "red states and blue states, in the north and in the south, in big cities and small."

On Wednesday, Santorum spokesman Robert Traynham said the Pennsylvania conservative recognizes that the church abuse scandal was not just in Boston.

He said Santorum "was speaking to a broader cultural argument about the need for everyone to take these issues very, very seriously."

Santorum's initial observations were in a July 2002 column for Catholic Online, and came back to public light last month and earlier this week in newspaper accounts.

"Priests, like all of us, are affected by culture," Santorum wrote in the Catholic Online column. "When the culture is sick, every element in it becomes infected. While it is no excuse for this scandal, it is no surprise that Boston, a seat of academic, political and cultural liberalism in America, lies at the center of the storm."

Rep. John Tierney, D-Mass., accused Santorum of abject ignorance, and Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., called the senator's rationale bizarre.

"As a prosecutor in Massachusetts, I saw some of the worst criminals who had abused children and not once did I hear them hide behind Sen. Santorum's bizarre claim that the state was responsible for their acts," Kerry said.

David Clohessy, national director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said Santorum's column tries to minimize the abuse scandal, and imply that "some vague, larger societal defects" somehow caused clergy to assault children.

"In 2002, we gave Sen. Santorum the benefit of the doubt, assuming he was not aware of the scope of the abuse crisis," said Clohessy. "In 2005, it's hard to understand how he could repeat and stand by such misguided and harmful comments."

The scandal began in Boston in early 2002 when internal church files released under court order revealed abusive priests were transferred from parish to parish rather than removed from ministry. Cardinal Bernard Law resigned as archbishop later that year amid criticism over his handling of the crisis.

A 2003 investigation by Attorney General Thomas Reilly found that at least 1,000 children were abused by more than 235 priests and church workers between 1940 and 2000. And the archdiocese has paid out more than $120 million to settle abuse claims since 1950.

Reilly, a Democratic candidate for governor, also criticized Santorum on Wednesday. "For him to equate liberalism with child abuse is disgraceful," he said. "It's embarrassing for him and embarrassing to his party and his party should disown him." 

© Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
 

When this was first posted, it was posted before there were separate political boards.  Still, there was no response.

You people have done nothing by drive-by sniping posts for the last couple weeks, to the point where some of them had to be removed by the moderator.

Yet you're AFRAID to post outrage over child sexual abuse? 

I guess we can leave it at that.  You're obviously more outraged that I posted regarding this subject than you are at the subject itself.

And THAT speaks volumes.

Sweet Victory: United Methodist Church Calls For Withdrawal

It's one thing when former high-ranking members of your own Administration come out against your war. It's another thing when two-thirds of the country calls the invasion and occupation a mistake. It's really something when your own church issues a statement urging you to pull out the troops now.

Last week, the United Methodist Church Board of Church and Society--the social action committee of the church that both President Bush and Vice President Cheney belong to--resoundingly passed a resolution calling for withdrawal with only two 'no' votes and one abstention.

As people of faith, we raise our voice in protest against the tragedy of the unjust war in Iraq, the statement read. Thousands of lives have been lost and hundreds of billions of dollars wasted in a war the United States initiated and should never have fought.... We grieve for all those whose lives have been lost or destroyed in this needless and avoidable tragedy. Military families have suffered undue hardship from prolonged troop rotations in Iraq and loss of loved ones. It is time to bring them home.

The board also issued a strong statement against torture, urging Congress to create an independent, bipartisan commission to investigate detention and interrogation practices at Guantanamo, Iraq and Afghanistan.

It is my hope and prayer that our statement against the war in Iraq will be heard loud and clear by our fellow United Methodists, President Bush and Vice President Cheney, said Jim Winkler, General Secretary of the UMC's Board of Church and Society. Conservative and liberal board members worked together to craft a strong statement calling for the troops to come home and for those responsible for leading us into this disastrous war to be held accountable.

With its bold stands against the Administration, the UMC is fulfilling the words of Martin Luther King Jr., who called for the church to be not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion but a thermostat that transformed the mores of society.

Bush has asserted that he entered Iraq on a direct order from God. Now, he has a direct order from his own church to leave. Is he listening?