Anthony doesn’t take the stand as defense rests

Well, the trial is almost over, and in my opinion, from everything I’ve read about the case,  Casey’s defense team hasn’t done a very good job of defending her. But then again, I’m not a lawyer.

In all honesty, looking at Casey, I hope she is truly innocent of murdering her daughter. I don’t mean that she is found innocent, I mean that she is factually innocent, as it would be sad to see a 25 year-old girl’s life ruined forever. Having stated this, it certainly appears as if she is guilty. I suppose we’ll know the verdict of the case in a couple of weeks, if not sooner. However, we may never really know exactly what happened to Caylee. Maybe Casey, her mother, is the only one who will ever really knows the truth… TGO

Refer to story below. Source: Associated Press

By KYLE HIGHTOWER – Associated Press | AP

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — Casey Anthony did not take the stand in her murder trial as defense attorneys wrapped up their case Thursday without presenting concrete evidence that Anthony’s 2-year-old daughter Caylee wasn’t killed but accidentally drowned.

Her attorneys also never produced any witnesses bolstering the claim made in last month’s opening statements that Anthony had acted without apparent remorse in the weeks after her daughter’s death because she had been molested by her father as a child, resulting in emotional problems.

Instead, their 13-day case primarily focused on poking holes in the prosecution’s contention that Anthony killed Caylee in June 2008 by covering her mouth with duct tape. Prosecutors said the woman dumped Caylee’s body in the woods near her parents’ home and then resumed her life of partying and shopping. Their case relied on circumstantial and forensic evidence, and it did have holes. They had no witnesses who saw the killing or saw Casey Anthony with her daughter’s body. And there was no certain proof that the child suffocated.

The defense said in its opening statement that Caylee drowned and that Anthony’s father George, a former police officer, helped her cover up the death by making it look like a homicide and dumping the body near their home, where it was found by a meter reader six months later. George Anthony has vehemently denied any involvement in Caylee’s death, the disposal of her body or molesting his daughter.

If convicted of first-degree murder, Anthony, 25, could receive the death penalty.

The defense’s final witnesses Thursday included Krystal Holloway, a woman who claims she had an affair with George Anthony that began after Caylee disappeared. She said he told her in November 2008 that Caylee’s death was “an accident that snowballed out of control.” George Anthony has denied having an affair with her but admitted visiting her home on several occasions.

They also recalled George Anthony to ask if he had supplied duct tape he used to put up posters of his granddaughter when she was missing. He said he couldn’t remember. Lead defense attorney Jose Baez also asked him if he buried his pets after their deaths in plastic bags wrapped with duct tape. Anthony said he had on some occasions. Prosecutors have contended Caylee’s body was disposed of in a similar manner. Under prosecution questioning, he said he had never thrown their carcasses in a swamp.

The prosecution Thursday afternoon began its rebuttal case with photographs of clothing taken at the Anthony home. Court was adjourned for the day later in the afternoon, with prosecutors set to continue Friday morning. Closing arguments would follow, probably on Saturday, and the jury would then get the case that evening or Sunday.

Caylee was last seen in mid-June 2008. For the next month, Casey Anthony avoided her parents, telling her mother and her friends that Caylee was with a baby sitter named Zanny.

Casey’s parents soon got a notice that their daughter’s car had been towed. George Anthony and the tow lot operator both said the Pontiac Sunfire smelled like death.

Prosecutors played a tape of a frantic 911 call made by Anthony’s mother, Cindy, reporting her granddaughter missing. She tells the operator, “It smells like there’s been a dead body in the damn car.”

Casey Anthony then told detectives that Caylee had been kidnapped by the nanny, and a massive search was launched.

Over the next several weeks, hundreds of volunteers scoured central Florida for any clues to Caylee’s whereabouts. Meanwhile, numerous photos surfaced of Casey Anthony drinking, some of them allegedly taken in the month after Caylee disappeared.

Caylee’s skeletal remains were reported in December 2008 by a municipal meter reader. A key part of the defense case was trying to discredit the meter reader, Roy Kronk, saying that he had actually discovered the body in August.

Woman who claims affair with Casey Anthony’s father testifies

And the plot thickens…

By the way, is everyone associated with this case a douche-bag? It sure seems that way. TGO

Refer to story below. Source: Reuters

By Barbara Liston | Reuters

ORLANDO, Fla (Reuters) – The woman who claims to have had an affair with George Anthony gave conflicting testimony on Thursday about whether he knew or merely speculated in 2008 what had happened to his then-missing granddaughter Caylee.

Krystal Holloway took the stand as a defense witness in the first-degree murder trial of George’s daughter, Casey Anthony.

Casey, 25, is accused of smothering her 2-year-old daughter with duct tape on June 16, 2008 so she could “live the good life” free of the demands of motherhood. Prosecutors say Casey stored the child’s body in her car trunk, then dumped it in woods near her home.

The defense contends Caylee accidentally drowned in the Anthony family’s backyard pool, and George found the body.

George previously has denied an affair with Holloway or having anything to do with Caylee’s death.

In a sworn statement Holloway gave to detectives in 2010, she quoted George as saying this about what happened to Caylee: “It was an accident that snowballed out of control.”

But under cross examination by prosecutor Jeff Ashton, Holloway said George also told her, “I really believe that it was an accident, and it just went wrong and she tried to cover it up.”

Asked by defense lawyers and prosecutors whether George said he knew that Caylee died as a result of an accident, Holloway seemed to agree with defense attorney Jose Baez that George knew, and also with Ashton that he didn’t know.

Ashton said in court that even he was confused by her answers.

Holloway also acknowledged that she initially lied to detectives when she denied an affair with George. She said that a few days after she talked to detectives, her sister told the media about the affair.

Holloway said she negotiated a deal to sell her story to the National Enquirer tabloid newspaper for $4,000. Holloway agreed with Ashton that she selected the tabloid over traditional media outlets that don’t pay because she felt the Enquirer would tell her story in the most “fair, honest and non-sensational way.”

Over Baez’s objection, Judge Belvin Perry instructed jurors to consider Holloway’s testimony only in terms of how they feel it reflects on George’s credibility, and not consider it as evidence of how Caylee died.

(Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Cynthia Johnston)

17 infants die in 48 hours at 1 Indian hospital

Seventeen dead babies in a span of two days, in one hospital; this is insane. Either the mothers are ill or malnourished and the babies are extremely weak and/or diseased, or the hospital is doing something wrong; or both. TGO

Refer to Story below. Source: Associated Press

NEW DELHI (AP) — At least 17 infants have died in the last 48 hours at a government-run hospital in eastern India and the state is investigating, media reported Thursday.

Television news channels showed images of weeping and wailing parents outside the B.C. Roy Hospital for Children in Kolkata, the capital of West Bengal.

The hospital head D. Pal told Press Trust of India the babies were either premature, suffering from septicemia or had low birth weight problems. He denied any negligence by the hospital.

PTI quoted the state’s top elected official, Mamata Banerjee, as saying her government had ordered an investigation.

In 2006, 22 infants died in three days at the same hospital because of prematurity or acute forms of either meningitis, encephalitis or septicemia, the hospital said at the time.

State-run hospitals in India are often overcrowded and ill-equipped to manage the large number of patients that come to them desperate for medical care.

India’s infant mortality rate is higher than the world average. It ranks 50th of 222 countries and territories, with about 48 deaths per 1,000 live births estimated this year, according to the CIA World Factbook.

James A. Haught: “Does God Exist?”

Does God Exist?

Well, it depends on what you mean by God.

The universe is a maze of mysteries. How can gravity – an invisible, unexplainable force – pull the Milky Way into a spiral? How can atoms contain such awesome power that an amount of matter smaller than a dime produced the energy in the bomb that killed 100,000 Hiroshima residents? How can the double-helix thread of DNA create all living things, from bacteria to trees to Beethoven? How can electrons, dormant in every atom of your body, explode into violent lightning bolts when they’re detached? Finally, why does anything exist, at all?

If you say that the power of gravity, atoms, DNA, lightning and all the rest is God – that God is E = MC2 – then God exists. Those baffling forces are undeniably real.

Or if you say, as some do, that God is the love and pity in every human heart, then God exists. Those feelings are real – just like the paranoid capacity for suspicion, hate, jealousy, anger, and the like.

But if you mean church-type deities – the three gods of the Christian Trinity, the 330 million gods of Hinduism, the wrathful Jehovah of the Old Testament, the multitudinous Greek and Roman gods, the invisible feathered serpent of the Aztecs, etc. – you’ve entered the Twilight Zone.

Human logic can find no trustworthy evidence to prove, or disprove, the existence of unseen spirits. Weeping statues and holy apparitions aren’t reliable proof. So the only truthful answer for an honest person is: I don’t know.

But honest people can go farther and speculate intelligently: Do demons exist? Angels? Leprechauns? Fairies? Vampires? Werewolves? Lack of tangible evidence leads educated people to laugh off these imaginary beings. It’s a small step to apply the same rationale to holy ghosts, resurrected saviors, blessed virgins, patron saints, etc. You can’t prove they aren’t hovering invisible in the room with you – but it’s unlikely.

Sigmund Freud said the widespread belief in a father-God arises from psychology. Tiny children are awed by their fathers as seemingly all-powerful protectors and punishers. As maturity comes, fathers grow less awesome. But the infantile image remains buried in the subconscious, and attaches to an omnipotent, supernatural father in an invisible heaven. Without knowing it, Freud said, believers worship their hidden toddler impression of the biological father, “clothed in the grandeur in which he once appeared to the small child.”

That makes sense to me. It says the father-God is just a figment of the imagination. But you can’t prove it’s true.

Through logic, you can see that the Church concept of an all-loving heavenly creator doesn’t hold water. If a divine-maker fashioned everything that exists, he designed breast cancer for women, leukemia for children, cerebral palsy, leprosy, AIDS, Alzheimer’s disease, Down’s syndrome, etc. he mandated foxes to rip rabbits apart (bunnies emit a terrible shriek at that moment) and cheetahs to slaughter fawns. No human would be cruel enough to plan such horrors. If a supernatural being did so, he’s a monster, not an all-merciful father.

When you get down to it, the only evidence of God’s existence is that holy men, past and present, say he exists. Priests have built worldwide, trillion-dollar empires on their claim that an unseen Deity waits to reward or punish people after death. But such priests once said that witches exist, and burned thousands of women on charges that they flew through the sky, copulated with Satan, changed into animals, and so forth. Priests later dropped this claim (but never apologized for the witch-hunts). If their assertion about God is as valid as their assertion about witches, their trillion-dollar empires rest on fantasy.

The universe is a vast, amazing, seething dynamo which has no discernible purpose except to keep on churning. From quarks to quasars, it’s alive with incredible power. But it seems utterly indifferent to any moral laws. It destroys as blindly as it nurtures.

Martin Heidegger said we know only that we exist for a while and we are doomed to die without knowing why we are here. If you are scrupulously honest, you can’t say much more than that.

Are the profound forces of the universe God? I don’t know. Is human love God? I don’t know. Is there a personal God waiting to reward me in a heaven or punish me in a hell? I don’t know – but I doubt it.

Richard Dawkins: “The Emptiness of Theology”

Free Inquiry magazine, Volume 18, Number 2.

A dismally unctuous editorial in the British newspaper the Independent recently asked for a reconciliation between science and “theology.” It remarked that “People want to know as much as possible about their origins.” I certainly hope they do, but what on earth makes one think that theology has anything useful to say on the subject?

Science is responsible for the following knowledge about our origins. We know approximately when the universe began and why it is largely hydrogen. We know why stars form and what happens in their interiors to convert hydrogen to the other elements and hence give birth to chemistry in a world of physics. We know the fundamental principles of how a world of chemistry can become biology through the arising of self-replicating molecules. We know how the principle of self-replication gives rise, through Darwinian selection, to all life, including humans.

It is science and science alone that has given us this knowledge and given it, moreover, in fascinating, over-whelming, mutually confirming detail. On every one of these questions theology has held a view that has been conclusively proved wrong. Science has eradicated smallpox, can immunize against most previously deadly viruses, can kill most previously deadly bacteria. Theology has done nothing but talk of pestilence as the wages of sin. Science can predict when a particular comet will reappear and, to the second, when the next eclipse will appear. Science has put men on the moon and hurtled reconnaissance rockets around Saturn and Jupiter. Science can tell you the age of a particular fossil and that the Turin Shroud is a medieval fake. Science knows the precise DNA instructions of several viruses and will, in the lifetime of many present readers, do the same for the human genome.

What has theology ever said that is of the smallest use to anybody? When has theology ever said anything that is demonstrably true and is not obvious? I have listened to theologians, read them, debated against them. I have never heard any of them ever say anything of the smallest use, anything that was not either platitudinously obvious or downright false. If all the achievements of scientists were wiped out tomorrow, there would be no doctors but witch doctors, no transport faster than horses, no computers, no printed books, no agriculture beyond subsistence peasant farming. If all the achievements of theologians were wiped out tomorrow, would anyone notice the smallest difference? Even the bad achievements of scientists, the bombs, and sonar-guided whaling vessels work! The achievements of theologians don’t do anything, don’t affect anything, don’t mean anything. What makes anyone think that “theology” is a subject at all?

Picture of the Day

Perfect from every angle… TGO

Dad’s suicide note is setback for Anthony defense

It would appear that Casey Anthony’s defense attorney, Jose Baez, goofed. For the first time in this trial it looks as if there is an opening for the prosecution. Only time will tell… TGO

Refer to story below. Source: Associated Press

By KYLE HIGHTOWER – Associated Press | AP

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — Casey Anthony’s father wrote in a suicide note that he had unanswered questions about what happened to his granddaughter, a revelation that undercuts defense claims that the toddler drowned accidentally and he helped cover it up.

Casey Anthony is on trial for murder in central Florida, accused of suffocating 2-year-old Caylee with duct tape in the summer of 2008. Her remains were found in the woods in December of that year.

Defense attorneys, who have been trying to paint the Anthony family as dysfunctional, say Caylee drowned in her grandparents’ backyard pool and Casey’s father, George, disposed of the body.

On Wednesday, lead defense attorney Jose Baez asked George Anthony about his January 2009 suicide attempt. But when prosecutor Jeff Ashton later asked Anthony if he had bought a gun five months before that, Baez objected.

With the jury out of the room, George Anthony said he planned to use the gun to try to get his daughter’s friends to tell him what happened to Caylee.

He also said he wrote in his suicide note about “unanswered questions” and that he chose to kill himself because “I needed at that time to go be with Caylee because I knew I failed her.”

Ashton argued that the statements were valid for the jury to hear because they rebutted the drowning theory and implied that George Anthony didn’t know what really happened to Caylee. Ashton also said the suicide note did not include any reference to George Anthony molesting Casey Anthony when she was a child, as Baez claimed in his opening statement.

Judge Belvin Perry agreed the jury could hear about the gun purchase and the suicide note.

“It looks to me like someone opened the door and someone is trying to walk through it,” he said.

When the jury came back, George Anthony got emotional as he recounted the months before his suicide attempt, in which he drove to Daytona Beach and tried to overdose on prescription medication.

He also said he never got the opportunity to confront his daughter’s friends because law enforcement confiscated the gun the day after he bought it in August 2008. Casey was out on bond and staying in his home, and firearms are prohibited in a place where a person on bond is living.

Karin Moore, a law professor at Florida A&M University, said alluding to the suicide attempt was a misstep by Baez.

“I think it backfired on him,” Moore said. “I think his intention was to craft an inference for the jury that George Anthony tried to commit suicide over the alleged abuse and death of Caylee. He opened the door and Ashton correctly pointed it out. “

Moore said she also thinks Baez was trying to avoid putting Casey Anthony on the stand.

“I think (Baez) did nothing but engender sympathy for George Anthony now the jury has contempt for Baez that could certainly reflect on Casey Anthony,” Moore said.

Cindy Anthony, Casey’s mother, was the first witness called Wednesday. Baez said the defense began the day with about six more witnesses to call, but it wasn’t clear if Casey would testify.

Tom Gleason: “Who Needs Reason in the Face of Truth?”

The Union; Grass Valley, California – August 6, 2004

Have you ever seen the movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers? In it, a struggling Donald Sutherland deals with colleagues who disappear one by one into mysterious, cult-like beings. They steal in and replace normal sleeping people with bodies of their own, whereupon the normal people frizzle-up and vanish into thin air.

Oh, what horror! But here’s something even more insidious: not having to hide the fact that you’re replacing the bodies in the first place. How do you do that? With a mind virus. Indeed, you simply reprogram each person, and before long, you’ve got your own cult following.

To set it up, all you’ve got to do is capitalize on people’s desires and fears. Tell them if they believe in “The Truth,” once they die, they’ll get all kinds of good stuff, like wealth, happiness, and paradise. But — don’t let them question it. No way. Reason isn’t allowed.

After all, this is “The Truth,” and they should have faith in that. If they should ever find contradictions or cruel absurdities in our “Holy Book,” just tell them that it’s the devil testing them and that they should resist doubts or questions, lest they risk being thrown from God’s love, never to be accepted again. They won’t want that! Remember, “We’re the Truth — but no testing allowed.”

Think of how effective your Truth will be, too. Especially on weak or disadvantaged people. Definitely plug them. Write your Truth into their alcohol-and drug-abuse meetings. Don’t stop there, either, because the very future of your cult lies right before you: children. Yes, get them while they’re young and malleable. Take advantage of them. They trust you, after all, so imagine how effectively your virus will take hold of them.

Like the adults, fill them with loving emotion and the dread of disbelief, then just watch as they, too, ignore all those other silly “truths” like science, evolution, or critical thinking. Why, even the words and ideas of America’s Founding Fathers can be ignored. We’ll just rewrite history and claim that our country was founded on Our Truth!

So what if our closed values conflict with freedom and democracy? We’ll make it seem like we coincide with them, then take control. Besides, once they see our Truth, they’ll be content with restriction and theocracy. Just like the people in Iran. Who needs flat, boring reason anyway? We’ll convince people with emotion! After all, our belief is our passion.

Later on, imagine the power you will command: corporate heads, lobbyists, congressmen and senators. Even the president of the United States! Wow, we’ll be rolling then — we can stamp our beliefs into the coinage and pledge of our countrymen, too. That’ll surely get the rest of them behaving. If not, we’ll keep tabs on those miscreants with our “Patriot Act.” How ingenious: If they complain, we label them “unpatriotic”!

With this power, we can force our narrow beliefs on everyone. Why not? It’s “God’s will.”

We’ll start out by rewriting the history of America, making up false quotes that our founding fathers or Lincoln said. We’ll force prayer in schools. We’ll force women under man’s power to prevent abortion. Yes, God into our money and pledge, too. (Who cares or knows what “E Pluribus Unum” meant, anyway?)

“Church and state?” What baloney! We’ll force our Ten Commandments into our courthouses. We’ll create “faith-based initiatives” and only hire our gang to boot. We’ll make embryonic stem-cell research (they’re killing babies!) illegal, and by God, we’ll push those sissy gays around!

We’ll push creationism in schools and even create our own tortuous “American Inquisition”! Hey, don’t scoff — we certainly didn’t care who we killed during the Crusades, way back then. We knew God would sort them out. Who cares about Amnesty International’s concerns? Our righteousness rules!

Don’t feel guilty about it, either. Just read the following words of God, straight from His lips, and you can have “the Passion,” too:

“Anyone who is captured will be run through with a sword. Their little children will be dashed to death right before their eyes. Their homes will be sacked and their wives raped by the attacking hordes. For I will stir up the Medes against Babylon, and no amount of silver or gold will buy them off. The attacking armies will shoot down the young people with arrows. They will have no mercy on helpless babies and will show no compassion for the children.” (Isaiah 13:15-18 NLT) Imagine our God saying that!

Judge blocks testimony from Casey Anthony fiancé

Yesterday was just another day in this totally confusing murder trial. I have a feeling that there is something BIG here which has yet to be discovered. It will be interesting to see if Casey is put on the stand… TGO

Refer to story below. Source: Reuters

By Barbara Liston | Reuters – Tue, Jun 28, 2011

ORLANDO, Fla (Reuters) – The former fiancé of accused child killer Casey Anthony testified on Tuesday that she claimed she once woke up to find her older brother standing over her, staring at her while she slept.

Judge Belvin Perry called Jesse Grund’s testimony impermissible hearsay evidence, and said he won’t allow the jury to hear it unless defense lawyers persuade him otherwise with sufficient legal arguments.

Grund said Casey told him about her experience with her brother after Grund asked her why she didn’t want her daughter Caylee to be around Lee Anthony.

Prosecutors say Casey, 25, smothered 2-year-old Caylee on June 16, 2008 so that she could “live the good life” free of the demands of motherhood. They say Casey stored the child’s body in her car trunk, then dumped it in woods near her home.

Defense attorney Jose Baez told jurors in his opening statement that Caylee accidentally drowned in the Florida family’s backyard pool, and the death went unreported.

Baez said Casey was sexually abused, and that explained why she partied and seemed inappropriately carefree after her daughter’s death.

But Baez has yet to produce evidence of the alleged abuse during Casey’s murder trial, now in its sixth week.

Casey’s father, George Anthony, has denied molesting her. Earlier this month, Perry scolded Baez when he asked a witness whether Lee could be Caylee’s father.

Much of the testimony on Tuesday came from Roy Kronk, the water department meter reader who discovered Caylee’s remains in a swampy part of a wooded area near the Anthony home in the Orlando area.

Kronk said he called the sheriff’s department three times in August 2008 to report he found what looked like a small skull.

At the time, a nationwide search was underway to find Caylee, who Casey claimed was kidnapped by a nanny. Special phone lines were created to handle the thousands of tips and leads sent to authorities.

But detectives were zeroing in on Casey, who they knew had lied extensively about Caylee’s disappearance.

Kronk said no one took him seriously until December 11, 2008, when he stopped at the location again and verified the object was in fact a skull. His supervisor alerted authorities, who arrived at the site and found Caylee’s remains.

MAJOR DISCOVERY

Kronk is a key witness for the defense. Baez has insinuated that Kronk played some sort of role in the disposal of Caylee’s body. The lawyer told jurors Kronk had sole “control” of Caylee’s remains during the intervening four months and claimed he was motivated by a $225,000 reward.

However, the reward money was offered to anyone who found Caylee alive.

“I just simply tried to do the right thing,” said Kronk, who noted he received $5,000 from the crime tip line.

Kronk testified he first spotted what looked like a skull on August 11, 2008 while taking a break with two co-workers, and called a crime tip line later that night to report the object.

Kronk said he called the Orange County Sheriff’s Office again on the evening of August 12 and the morning of August 13 before finally getting deputies to meet him at the location.

Two deputies came but neither went into the woods nor asked him to show them the skull-like object, Kronk said.

One deputy walked as far as a flooded area, quickly looked from side to side, slipped on mud on his way back to the roadside, and then berated Kronk for 30 minutes for wasting his time, the meter reader testified.

Kronk’s co-worker, David Dean, confirmed Kronk’s account of discovering the skull. Within a few weeks, Dean testified, a tropical storm deluged the area with rain.

Prosecutors have suggested one reason no one saw the remains during subsequent searches in the area was because it was under water.

George Anthony took the stand briefly again on Tuesday, denying assertions by Baez that he had an affair with search volunteer Krystal Holloway. George testified he only went to Holloway’s condominium to comfort her after learning she had cancer.

“I never had a romantic affair,” George said.

He denied ever telling Holloway that “Caylee’s death was an accident that snowballed out of control.” He also said he never told her that he grabbed Casey by the throat, threw her against a wall and demanded Casey tell him where Caylee was.

“She (Holloway) is not a good person,” George testified.

(Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Jerry Norton)

Pope’s first tweet marks Vatican social media revolution

Am I missing something here? I realize that the Catholic Church is losing its following and that its leaders are desperately trying to attract new (young) blood, but what is so special about the Pope hitting ‘Enter’ on a keypad? Does he not have fingers? It’s not as if he just discovered the theory of relativity or decoded the human genome? People, let’s keep things in perspective, he pressed a key on an iPad! TGO

Refer to story below. Source: Associated Press

By Jean-Louis de la Vaissiere | AFP – Tue, Jun 28, 2011

The site of Pope Benedict XVI tweeting on an iPad reveals a transformation underway in the tradition-bound Vatican to reach a younger global audience and improve a scandal-tainted image.

A bemused pope can be seen tapping on the tablet device in his Vatican palace in footage put up on YouTube this week, with a cardinal showing the 84-year-old how to scroll through the Holy See’s new multimedia web portal.

“Dear Friends, I just launched www.news.va. Praised be our Lord Jesus Christ! With my prayers and blessings, Benedictus XVI,” wrote the pope, using his formal name in Latin — still the Vatican’s official language.

The website includes Twitter updates, YouTube videos, Flickr photos and Facebook links and was developed by the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Social Communications, which has spearheaded the Internet drive.

It is decorated with the Vatican colours — white and yellow — and brings together information from the Vatican’s radio, television and print outlets as well as news from the Fides missionary news agency about the developing world.

Bruno Bartoloni, a Vatican expert who writes for Italian daily Corriere della Sera, said the Church’s embrace of social media was also a way to bypass traditional and more critical media to deliver information directly.

“The paedophilia scandals of recent years have shocked the Church and have encouraged it to abandon the language of tradition,” he said.

“The Church understands that its reasoning is often badly understood, with traditional media choosing to underline colourful aspects or criticism, or simplifying messages that are in essence complex,” he added.

But another expert in Vatican affairs in Rome, Sandro Magister from the news weekly L’Espresso, said the Holy See was in fact accepting it had to “widen the circle of people who can react and criticise” to the Church’s message.

Marco Politi from Il Fatto Quotidiano daily, said the site was part of “a media offensive to give an image of openness, of a pope in dialogue.”

The Vatican “does not want to stay on the sidelines of the web,” he said.

The website is only one of many Internet initiatives by the Vatican including another site that collected information about purported miracles attributed to late pope John Paul II, who is on the path to sainthood.

Benedict also produced podcasts ahead of his trip to Portugal last year and took questions during a chat show on Italian television earlier this year with questions sent via video link-ups from Japan, Ivory Coast and Iraq.

In a keynote message last year to mark the Church’s World Communications Day — another novelty — the leader of the world’s Catholics urged priests to make “astute use of the unique possibilities offered by modern communications.”

The Christian message “can traverse the many crossroads created by the intersection of all the different ‘highways’ that form cyberspace and show that God has his rightful place in every age, including our own,” he said.

Giovanni Maria Vian, the editor of the official Vatican daily Osservatore Romano, said this week: “In contrast to some stereotypes, the Vatican, the pope and his secretary of state are very sensitive to communications.”

Among the recent initiatives is a new e-learning centre that will inform clergy around the world on how to fight child abuse — a response to the thousands of scandals that have emerged across Europe and the United States.

The Vatican’s Gregorian University will host an international conference in February 2012 at which the new portal is expected to be launched.

Hans Zollner, a German psychologist priest leading the project, told AFP that the website would be “a step… on a long and painful path.”

Lemuel K. Washburn: “The Drama of Life”

With the passing of the season we are reminded of the rapid flight of life. It seems but yesterday that the first bluebird of spring lit on the bare bough of the apple-tree in the orchard near by, and the early robin sang his welcome notes in our glad ears, and yet the bluebird and robin are seen and heard no more, and the green promise of spring has changed to the brown harvest of autumn, which will soon be stored for winter’s use. This is the way every season comes and goes; a little long in coming sometimes; but never long in going; and every year grows shorter as we grow older, and every year goes more quickly as we near the border of old age. Life soon changes from a glad look ahead to a sad glance behind. From baby to boy, from boy to man, from man to tottering age, — how swiftly the scenes change, and life comes and life goes, and the door of death opens almost before the door of birth closes. The cradle and the grave touch, and the blithe youth that lends his strength to feeble age finds himself ere long leaning upon the arm of youth and strength. The circle of years soon rolls round, and life is but a day of toil and a night of dreams. As we look back upon vanished time and see the happy scenes of childhood mingled with the surroundings of later life, days and months shrink to hours, and years seem to be spanned by a sunrise; and a sunset with a little laughter and perhaps some tears between. We who have travelled more than half way on the road cannot look backward without a sigh, cannot think backward without a pang. Many of us have left the graves of father and mother behind, perhaps the smaller graves of children, where some of our heart lies buried too. The storms that beat on us make life seem shorter; make the days go faster, and the night draw nearer; and all of us have already, or must sometime, bow our heads to the blast.

One human being in the great world of man, and in the greater world of Nature, plays but a small part. Of but little account is a human life in the vast, limitless universe. A man fills but a little space while alive, and touches but a few hearts when he dies. We are fortunate if we make during life, one true, loyal friend who stands by us while that life lasts. We reckon this, after all, the grandest triumph of the human soul. It is not difficult to gather dollars — quite a number, at least, — nor to win a measure of fame, but to live, to be, to act, in such way as to bind one true heart to ours, is a victory which we may be proud of. Some lives have larger circumferences than others, radiate farther, influence more, but none can win the rare tribute of perfect friendship from more than one or two. Yes! man plays but a small part in the great drama of life. He is on the stage but a few short hours, and most men are but poor or indifferent actors at best.

Who cares when a man dies? Not the sun, for it shines just as gaily when he closes his eyes to its golden light; not the birds, for they chatter and sing over his coffin, and hop and sing on his grave; not the brook, for it runs laughing on and never stops its gambols and song; not any of the things of earth, but man.

When man dies, a few say, Is he gone? and then forget that he ever lived; a few go to help carry his dead body to the grave, and then turn away to join the business and pleasure of life, and forget that they have buried a man; a few, some days after, call at the house where he lived and drop a tear of sympathy for the weeping widow and tearful children, and then forget that the husband and father is no more. But does no one care? Perhaps a wife, who will carry his dead image in her heart as long as it beats; perhaps a daughter, who will remember him a year or two, or a little longer, who will miss his happy greeting, his loving kiss, his proud, kind look as he lifts the heart’s dearest idol to his knee; and this is all. And this is enough. We care for only a few; and why should many care for us?

Though life is short and not always heroic; and though, when it ends, the world goes on just the same, we love life and it is sweet while it lasts. Though we travel quickly over the road, we enjoy for the most part, the journey of life. We have pain, it is true; we learn of sorrow and grief; we feel the pang of parting and weep on the white face of some loved one, and yet, we find happiness, we enjoy living, and we regret when the curtain is rung down and our part is played and the lights turned out. When we strike the balance between pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow, happiness and misery, most find that life is worth living.

Picture of the Day

Time for Viagra… TGO

Golf-Woods confident he can catch Nicklaus’ majors record

Tiger Woods will definitely break Jack Nicklaus’ record of 18 major titles; that’s my opinion. He’s still young and has way too much talent to fall short of the record. TGO

Refer to story below. Source: Reuters

By Larry Fine | Reuters

NEWTOWN SQUARE, Pennsylvania, June 28 (Reuters) – Injured Tiger Woods said on Tuesday his best golfing years are ahead of him and he has plenty of time to attain his goal of surpassing the record 18 major titles won by Jack Nicklaus.

While Woods, who has struggled on and off the course for the last 19 months, missed this year’s U.S. Open with injuries and is unsure whether he will play in July’s British Open, the 35-year-old American does not feel like like the majors record is moving beyond his grasp.

“Absolutely not. He won when he was 46, right?” Woods said about the Golden Bear, who won his final major at that age in 1986. “I’ve still got some time.

“And on top of that, we’re about the same pace, I believe, years on tour and majors won. So I feel pretty confident of what my future holds and very excited about it.”

Nicklaus won 14 majors through his 35th birthday, the same number that Woods has.

Woods, who aggravated a ligament injury in his left knee and Achilles tendon he suffered at the Masters by trying to compete in the Players Championship in May, said he learned a lesson and would not return until he was 100 percent fit.

“I’m excited about coming out here and being ready to go instead of trying to kind of patch it, which I’ve been for a while,” Woods told a news conference at the AT&T National PGA event he is hosting this week.

Woods, who has since fallen to world number 17, noted that Tom Watson showed how long a great player could compete in the majors with his runner-up finish at age 59 in the 2009 British Open at Turnberry, which he lost in a playoff to Stewart Cink.

“I’m 35. I’m not 65,” said Woods. “I’ve still got some years ahead of me. Golf is unlike any other sport. I mean, Watson was, what, 59 years old when he almost won? We can play for a very long time. And given that we have the health to do it, guys have succeeded for a very long time.

“That’s what I would like to do, play this game for as long as I want to. I feel like my best years are still ahead of me.” (Editing by Frank Pingue; To query or comment on this story email sportsfeedback@thomsonreuters.com)

FACT CHECK: Bachmann bomblets raising eyebrows

One has to keep in mind the kind of people who vote for these ultra-conservative, religious, right-wing Republicans. Suffice it to say that they’re not the brightest, most open-minded or informed people on the planet. If asked to point out where France, Germany or Norway are on a map they probably couldn’t do so. In fact, they may not be able to distinguish Connecticut from Vermont! That’s why bullshit artists such as George W. Bush and Sarah Palin, who have a collective IQ of about 150 got their votes. Now throw in Michele Bachmann and Mitt Romney, both of whom are significantly more intelligent than the previous pair, then add street-smarts (which their electorate do not possess) and what they have is a cakewalk. 

This country is rapidly becoming the land of idiots. TGO

Refer to story below. Source: Associated Press

By BY CALVIN WOODWARD – Associated Press,JIM DRINKARD –

WASHINGTON (AP) — Michele Bachmann’s claim that she has “never gotten a penny” from a family farm that’s been subsidized by the government is at odds with her financial disclosure statements. They show tens of thousands in personal income from the operation.

And, on a less substantive note, she flubbed her hometown history when declaring “John Wayne was from Waterloo, Iowa,” and “that’s the kind of spirit that I have, too,” in running for president.

The actor was born nearly 150 miles away. It was the serial killer John Wayne Gacy Jr. who lived, for a time, in Waterloo.

Those were among the latest examples of how the Minnesota congresswoman has become one to watch — for inaccuracies as well as rising support — in the Republican presidential race.

Bachmann’s wildly off-base assertion last month that a NATO airstrike might have killed as many as 30,000 Libyan civilians, her misrepresentations of the health care law, misfires on other aspects of President Barack Obama’s record and historical inaccuracies have saddled her with a reputation for uttering populist jibes that don’t hold up. On Tuesday, she erred in describing John Quincy Adams as a Founding Father.

She announced her candidacy Monday in Iowa with a speech typical for someone joining the campaign. It laid out the broad themes of her candidacy and mostly avoided the Bachmann bomblets that have grabbed attention — and often fizzled under scrutiny — in the long lead-up.

The more the political season heats up, the more that exaggerations and sound-bite oversimplifications emanate from the Republicans going after Obama — and from the Democrats playing defense. Still, Bachmann’s record on this score is distinct.

Examining 24 of her statements, Politifact.com, the Pulitzer Prize-winning fact-checking service of the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times, found just one to be fully true and 17 to be false (seven of them “pants on fire” false). No other Republican candidate whose statements have been vigorously vetted matched that record of inaccuracy.

A look at some of her recent statements and how they compare with the facts:

BACHMANN: “The farm is my father-in-law’s farm. It’s not my husband and my farm. It’s my father-in-law’s farm. And my husband and I have never gotten a penny of money from the farm.” — On “Fox News Sunday.”

THE FACTS: In personal financial disclosure reports required annually from members of Congress, Bachmann reported that she holds an interest in a family farm in Independence, Wis., with her share worth between $100,000 and $250,000.

The farm, which was owned by her father-in-law, produced income for Bachmann of at least $32,500 and as much as $105,000 from 2006 through 2009, according to the reports she filed for that period. The farm also received federal crop and disaster subsidies, according to a database maintained by the Environmental Working Group. From 1995 through 2010, the farm got $259,332 in federal payments.

When asked about the subsidies and her income from the farm late last year, a spokesman for Bachmann said only that she wasn’t involved in decisions about the running of the farm.

Bachmann told The Associated Press on Monday that her husband became a trustee of the farm because his father had dementia before he died two years ago, and “oversees the legal entity.”

“Everything we do with those forms is in an abundance of caution,” she said, insisting she and her husband receive no farm income despite the forms reporting it.

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BACHMANN: “If you look at one of our Founding Fathers, John Quincy Adams, that’s absolutely true. He was a very young boy when he was with his father serving essentially as his father’s secretary. He tirelessly worked throughout his life to make sure that we did in fact one day eradicate slavery.” — On ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

THE FACTS: John Quincy Adams was not a Founding Father. He was 9 when the Declaration of Independence was made and 20 when the Constitution was adopted. His father, John Adams, was the Revolutionary War figure and an architect of the declaration — and therefore a Founding Father. Both father and son became president. Bachmann was defending her earlier, inaccurate remark that the Founding Fathers had devoted themselves to ending slavery.

John Quincy Adams, president from 1825 to 1829, privately called slavery a “great and foul stain” but largely sidestepped the issue in office, according to “The Reader’s Companion to the American Presidency.” He tried to avoid antagonizing the South while reasoning that his push for a stronger central government would hasten slavery’s end over time.

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BACHMANN: “Well what I want them to know is, just like John Wayne was from Waterloo, Iowa, that’s the kind of spirit that I have, too.” — Speaking to Fox News on Sunday.

Wayne was born in Winterset, Iowa, nearly three hours away, and moved to California in his childhood. John Wayne Gacy, convicted of killing 33 men and boys, was born in Chicago, moved to Waterloo to work in his father-in-law’s chicken restaurants and first ran afoul of the law there, sentenced to 10 years for sodomy. He began his killing spree after his release, and his return to Illinois.

Bachmann told CNN on Tuesday her comments “were just misspeaking” and that her main intent was to show she identified with Wayne’s patriotism.

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BACHMANN: “Overnight we are hearing that potentially 10 to 30,000 people could have been killed in the strike.” — Criticizing Obama in May for the “foolish” U.S. intervention in Libya, and citing what she said were reports of a civilian death toll from a NATO strike as high as 30,000.

THE FACTS: The U.S. ambassador to Libya, Gene Cretz, said in late April that U.S. officials have seen reports that 10,000 to 30,000 people may have died in Moammar Gadhafi’s crackdown on protesters and the fighting between rebels and pro-government forces, but it is hard to know if that is true. He was speaking about all casualties of the conflict; no one has attributed such a death toll to NATO bombing alone, much less to a single strike.

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BACHMANN: “It’s ironic and sad that the president released all of the oil from the strategic oil reserve. … There’s only a limited amount of oil that we have in the strategic oil reserve. It’s there for emergencies.” — On CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday.

THE FACTS: Obama did not empty all the oil from the strategic reserve, as Bachmann said. He approved the release of 30 million barrels, about 4 percent of the 727 million barrels stored in salt caverns along the Texas and Louisiana coasts. It’s true that the U.S. normally taps the reserve for more dire emergencies than exist today, and that exposes Obama to criticism that he acted for political gain. But the reserve has never been fuller; it held 707 million barrels when last tapped, after 2008 hurricanes.

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BACHMANN: “One. That’s the number of new drilling permits under the Obama administration since they came into office.” — Comment to a conservative conference in Iowa in March.

THE FACTS: The Obama administration issued more than 200 new drilling permits before the Gulf oil spill alone. Over the past year, since new safety standards were imposed, the administration has issued more than 60 shallow-water drilling permits. Since the deep water moratorium was lifted in October, nine new wells have been approved.

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Associated Press writers Brian Bakst in Waterloo, Iowa, and Dina Cappiello in Washington contributed to this report.