The prefect of the Apostolic Signature, Archbishop Raymond Burke, said this week that Catholics, especially politicians who publically defend abortion, should not receive Communion, and that ministers of Communion should be responsibly charitable in denying it to them if they ask for it, “until they have reformed their lives.”

So, the million dollar question for any Michigan reporter worth his salt is to ask Obama, "Should Kilpatrick resign?" Either way, Obama is up a creek with Detroit voters, it seems.

And by the way, in case you need any more of an idea for how utterly terrible Detroit is under Kilpatrick's tenure, take a look at this article. The banks can't even sell foreclosed houses for $1, partially because squatters have invaded and ripped out the copper wiring to sell in a junkyard.

This is common practice in third-world countries. Detriot is quickly on its way.

Barack Obama has been caught lying about his gruesome opposition to legislation to require health officials to provide care to babies who survived abortion as an Illinois state senator by the National Right to Life Committee.

Yes, that's what I wrote. Babies who survived abortion. Jill Stanek is a former Chicago nurse who once cradled a baby who wasn't properly aborted as he died because the law wouldn't permit her to give the baby life-saving medical treatment. After that experience she became a pro-life advocate and  was fired from her job because of her activism. She testified in favor of a law to give those babies care before the Illinois state senate and then the U.S. Senate. Sadly, her testimony wasn't able to sway hardline liberals in Illinois. Obama was one of those hardliners. At that time he was an Illinois state senator and chairman of the health committee.  In that position, he voted to kill the bill. On the federal level, the bill passed the Senate 98-0, without a single opponent. Not even known abortion rights supporters like  Sen. Barbara Boxer (D.-Calif.) or Sen. Hillary Clinton (D.-N.Y.) would take the position Obama did.

Obama's campaign has viciously attacked conservative opponents who have rightly criticized his extreme position on this bill. Obama's answer has always been that he would have supported his state?s version of the "born alive" bill if it included language to protect abortion rights guaranteed by Roe v. Wade. He's written this in his book Audacity of Hope and made this assertion through campaign statements.

Now there's documentation showing Obama did vote against a version of the Born Alive Infant Protection Act that contained language to protect abortion rights identical to language contained in the federal bill. The National Right to Life Committee has posted documents online showing votes in the health committee that Obama chaired to amend the born alive bill to contain the "neutrality act" included in the federal bill. The members of his committee, Obama included, voted 10-0 to put the clause in before holding a final vote on the bill.  Promptly after the clause was added, the committee voted 6-4 to kill it. Obama voted in the majority. The record of those votes is posted here.

Obama needs to come clean about his sickening record on abortion. He should explain why he opposed a bill that passed the U.S. Senate 98-0. And,I think he owes the pro-lifers who have reported his position correctly a swift apology.

This is a fine blog by an Olympian not many folks have heard of --yet.  In a very classy move, Warkentin posts the names of his coaches going back 15 years.  There's such a line of coaches behind every Olympian, stretching down to the littlest of leagues and most obscure of competitions.  Hats off to all of them, as well as those who never coached a future Olympian but who treated all of their athletes as though they might be, for their millions of hours of unselfish effort to raise up young people of courage and character.

Warkentin, btw, competes in open water swimming, which is set for Thursday, August 21 at 6 PM PST.  From Time's write-up:

Warkentin is the first American to qualify for the Olympics in men's open water swimming, a new event that is the swimming version of the marathon for the Games. The Beijing race will be held in a 680,000 sq m. lake built for the occasion. Swimmers will have to make four trips around a 2.5k course, which is freshwater and mostly devoid of waves: it's often contested in ocean waters. Warkentin, who took gold in the 2007 Open Water World Championship trials, automatically qualified for the Olympics in May when he finished seventh in the 10k at the FINA World Championships in Seville.

That's Lopez Lomong, and the headline quote is from the American Olympian, courtesy of the Times of London

IF things do not go according to plan, Lopez Lomong will run just 1500 metres in these Olympic Games. If the moon is made of cheese, he will win gold. Either way, tomorrow night, when he will carry the US flag in the opening ceremony in Beijing, the world will know exactly how far the 23-year-old has travelled in his young life.

Joseph Lopepe (Lopez) Lomong is one of the Lost Boys of the Sudan. He was kidnapped from his village in Kimotong at the age of six, escaped by tunnelling under the wire fence of his compound and spent three days on the run. Having fled across the border into Kenya, his home for ten years was the Kakuma refugee camp.

(HT: Powder Tracks).  Perhaps Barack "America is no longer what it could be, what it once was" Obama could schedule a meeting with Lomong on the nature of the country the senator seeks to lead.

Obama might also want to read Charles Krauthammer's latest before asserting again that inflating our tires will produce all the new oil available to us from drilling:

Barack Obama remains opposed to new offshore drilling (although he now says he would accept a highly restricted version as part of a comprehensive package). Just last week, he claimed that if only Americans would inflate their tires properly and get regular tune-ups, "we could save all the oil that they're talking about getting off drilling."

This is bizarre. By any reasonable calculation of annual tire-inflation and tune-up savings, the Outer Continental Shelf holds nearly a hundred times as much oil. As for oil shale, also under federal moratorium, after a thousand years of driving with Obama-inflated tires and Obama-tuned engines, we would still have saved only one-fifth the oil shale available in the United States.

But forget the math. Why is this issue either/or? Who's against properly inflated tires? Let's start a national campaign, Cuban-style, with giant venceremos posters lining the highways. ("Inflate your tires. Victory or death!") Why must there be a choice between encouraging conservation and increasing supply? The logical answer is obvious: Do both.

As the Olympics opens, most of us will be taking pride in athletes who grew up in a free society powered by a free economy fueled by abundant energy.  They will of course not all win medals, but each of them represents a decades of free choices and individual decisions reached independently of government command and pursued without government interference.  The pride deficit the Democratic nominee feels about our country may get a much needed repair, and then he can begin to retool his absurd energy plans.