No Criminal Collusion With Russia, But Lots of Corruption

Trump and his Vichy Republicans are crowing that the Mueller report exonerates Trump yet curiously, Mitch McConnell is acting to block the full release of the report to the public.   If, as claimed by Trump and the Republicans giving him politico fellatio, the report is a full exoneration, one would think they'd have wanted an immediate release of the full report. Why the inconsistent behavior?  It's likely simple. The report may not have found criminal conspiracy with Russia, but I suspect it is full of (A) ugly and unsavory details about Trump's minions and staffers (including Don, Jr.) which would be highly damaging, even if not criminal, and (B) details that would justify further House committee investigations into Trump and his years of corrupt business practices that seeming have not abated over the last two years.  A column in the New York Times looks at what may be behind the Trump/GOP effort to keep the report from the public view.  Here are excerpts:

The Mueller investigation is over, and the only people close to Donald Trump who have been criminally charged are his former campaign chairman, former deputy campaign chairman, former personal lawyer, former national security adviser, former campaign foreign policy adviser and Roger Stone, the president’s longtime friend and strategist. The report written by the special counsel Robert Mueller, according to a quotation in a brief summary issued by Attorney General William Barr, says that “while this report does not conclude that the president committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.” Naturally, [Trump] the president and his allies are claiming, as one of Trump’s tweets said, “Complete and Total EXONERATION.”

Whatever else is in the Mueller report, it says, according to Barr, that the investigation “did not establish” that anyone from the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its 2016 election interference. . . . There will be no deus ex Mueller bringing this wretched presidency to an early end. On the contrary, Trump is emboldened, and his foes momentarily defensive.

Until the Mueller report is publicly released, however, it’s impossible to tell how much of Trump’s victory is substantive and how much is spin. The report, evidently, leaves open the question of whether Trump obstructed justice. In his letter to Congress about the report, Barr said that he and his deputy, Rod Rosenstein, made the determination that no obstruction of justice occurred. . . . There is no reason for anyone to take his finding seriously.

Even some of the underlying questions about Trump’s relationship with Russia remain open. . . . As we parse Barr’s letter, we should be aware of the human tendency toward motivated reasoning.

But we should be equally aware of the media tendency to capitulate in the face of Trumpian triumphalism. (Recall the pressure to give Trump credit after his first meeting with Kim Jong-un, despite the emptiness of the resulting agreement.) So we shouldn’t overlook the fact that when it comes to Trump’s relationship with Russia, Barr’s letter speaks only to very narrow questions about Trump campaign involvement in Russian information warfare operations in 2016.

Still, assuming Barr’s summary is accurate, it means that while Trump was installed with Russia’s help, neither he nor his campaign assisted Russia in committing the crimes that aided his ascent. (If he cheated his way to victory, it was through more pedestrian alleged violations of campaign finance law.) We’re still in the dark, however, about all the steps Trump took to thwart the investigation and about the extent of his vulnerability to compromise.

A Conservative Argues for Trump's Impeachment

I make no bones about the fact that I loath Donald Trump.  To me, he embodies everything one should NOT want one's children or grandchildren to be - I shudder what my impressionable grandchildren are being exposed to.  As an attorney of over 40 years, I also have respect for the rule of law and believe that oaths of office - such as every member of Congress takes - actually mean something.  Sadly, most Congressional Republicans are making a mockery of both the law and their oaths of office as they place party fealty and short term political advantage over the Constitution and the good of the nation. Some conservatives have belatedly come to see that the only way to restore accountability and to protect the national interest is to work for massive Democrat victories in November.  Others, are slowly coming to the conclusion that impeachment of Donald Trump is in order (although the prospect of a president Mike "Christian Taliban" Pence is equally terrifying).  A column in the New York Times by a long time conservative makes the argument of why it is time to consider the impeachment of Trump and his removal from office.  Here are excerpts:

For all of my opposition to Donald Trump, I have long been skeptical of the political wisdom or evidentiary basis of efforts to impeach him.

My reasons: First, being a terrible president and a wretched person are not impeachable offenses. Second, Robert Mueller’s investigation has so far produced evidence that can be interpreted as obstruction of justice, but not as clear proof. Third, impeachment in the House would be unlikely to translate into conviction in the Senate, even if Democrats win both chambers in the fall. Fourth, impeachment without conviction could strengthen Trump politically, much as it did for Bill Clinton after his own 1998 impeachment.

At least that was my view until this week. Michael Cohen’s guilty plea changes this. The Constitution’s standard for impeachment is “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” The standard is now met.

Trump’s longtime fixer acknowledged in court on Tuesday that he violated campaign finance laws by paying hush money to two women “in coordination with and at the direction of a candidate for federal office.” That means Trump. That means that, as a candidate, Trump is credibly alleged to have purposefully conspired with Cohen to commit criminal acts. That means the duo did so “for purposes of influencing [an] election for Federal office,” which is the legal definition of a campaign contribution.

It also means that, as president, Trump allegedly sought to conceal the arrangement by failing to note in his 2017 financial disclosure forms his reimbursements to Cohen. [Trump] The president most likely continues to lie to the American people about the nature and purpose of those payments.

The Trumpian rebuttal to these charges is that Cohen is a sleazy lawyer and proven liar. . . . . But if Cohen’s lies as Trump’s lawyer are one thing, lying under oath to a federal judge is quite another. Cohen’s sentencing isn’t until December, when he’s expected to be sent to prison for up to five years. If he’s being untruthful, that leaves plenty of time for any deceits to come to light. Ask yourself: Does he [Cohen] look like a guy eager to have his sentence doubled?

In Trump’s case, there is little doubt about the purpose of the payment to Stormy Daniels: To prevent disclosure of their alleged liaison, less than a month before the election and barely two weeks after the Access Hollywood tape came to light.

To suggest that this doesn’t amount to a felonious act also doesn’t pass the smell test. The president is now, in effect, an unindicted co-conspirator on charges already prosecuted by the government as a criminal matter against Cohen. Why should a lighter standard apply to Trump, since he’s the one at whose direction Cohen claims to have carried out the payments?

That question should especially engage those conservatives who demanded Clinton’s impeachment (as I did). Take South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham, one of the House managers overseeing the case against the 42nd president.

“Twenty-five years ago,” he said that December, “a Democratic-controlled judiciary committee, with a minority of Republicans, reported articles of impeachment against Richard Nixon. Why? Nixon cheated — he cheated the electoral system by concealing efforts of a political break-in, and his people thought the other side deserved to be cheated. They thought his enemies deserved to be mistreated. Ladies and gentlemen, they were wrong.”

He continued: “Today, Republicans, with a small handful of Democrats, will vote to impeach President Clinton. Why? Because we believe he committed crimes resulting in cheating our legal system. We believe he lied under oath numerous times, that he tampered with evidence, that he conspired to present false testimony to a court of law. We believe he assaulted our legal system in every way. Let it be said that any president who cheats our institutions shall be impeached.”

The emphases here are mine. To conservatives reading this column, ask yourselves the following questions:

If breaking the law (by lying under oath) to conceal an affair was impeachable, why is breaking the law (by violating campaign-finance laws) to conceal an affair not impeachable?

If cheating “our institutions” (by means of an “assault” in “every way” on the legal system) is impeachable, why is cheating those institutions (by means of nonstop presidential mendacity and relentless attacks on the Justice Department and the F.B.I.) not impeachable?

Pragmatists will rejoin that there’s no sense in advocating impeachment when the G.O.P. controls Congress. I’m sorry that so many congressional Republicans have lost their sense of moral principle and institutional self-respect, but that’s a reason to seek Democratic victories in the fall. The Constitution matters more than a tax cut. What the Constitution demands is the impeachment and removal from office of this lawless president.

Jobless Numbers Fall - GOP Conspiracy Claims Rise

It is almost entertaining to watch the spittle and bewilderment emanating for Romney/Ryan and the usual demagogues of the GOP as the react to the latest unemployment figures which show improvement notwithstanding all of the efforts of the GOP to destroy the U.S. economy in the hope of defeating Barack Obama.  All those efforts of total obstruction and throwing millions of Americans down the financial toilet and yet the economy is improving.  They simply cannot deal with it and as a result are claiming that somehow Obama conspired to cook the numbers.   To me, it's yet the latest example of how low and untethered to reality today's Republican Party has become.   The GOP would rather see the nation in a depression rather than see Obama re-elected.  Pretty f*cked up priorities in my book.  The Washington Post looks at yesterday's jobs report and why the GOP demagogues are so flummoxed.  Here are highlights:

For Mitt Romney, it was the number that proved everything. Since the very first speech of his campaign, the Republican candidate has used a simple figure to bolster his argument that President Obama couldn’t fix the U.S. economy: 8 percent.  For Romney, any number above 8 percent proved he was right and Obama was wrong.

Obama had promised, Romney told audiences repeatedly, never to let unemployment get that high. Instead, Romney said, the jobless rate blew past 8 percent and got stuck there.  Until Friday.

The 0.3 percent dip in unemployment in September, from 8.1 to 7.8 percent, deprived Romney of one of his central campaign themes.  It was enough to put him on the defensive just as he was basking in the afterglow of his debate performance Wednesday . . . . the economy had crossed a threshold that Romney had implied it would never cross without him.

The political importance of the 8 percent threshold was driven home, in a backhanded way, by a few conservatives who floated a conspiracy theory that Friday’s dip had been engineered to give Obama a boost.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics, a branch of the Labor Department, uses two main sources. One is a survey of 141,000 businesses. The other looks at 60,000 households, asking if the people in those households were working or looking for work in the last month. The household survey captures data that the business survey doesn’t, such as people who are self-employed or who work on farms.

The September survey of businesses indicated a relatively modest gain in hiring: Payrolls rose by about 114,000. But the household survey indicated a much greater boost in hiring, with about 456,000 people no longer unemployed.

Later in the day, Welch told MSNBC’s Chris Matthews that he had no hard evidence that the data had been fudged.  But he said he stood by his suspicions. “I don’t want to take back one word in that tweet,” Welch said. “These numbers defy logic.”

It is truly frightening that Republicans want to see the economy in decline and more Americans in dire straits solely so that they can be political opportunists.  It is truly sickening.  But then, the GOP leadership doesn't care about nearly half the population anyways.  Romney said so himself and said it wasn't his job to worry about such citizens.

Gary Bauer: Gays Cause Murder; Michele Bachmann Hunts Muslims

Speaking of conservative Christians driving the younger generations away from religion, two examples of the hate dripping animus that passes as religious motivated behavior, Gary Bauer - who looks like a self-loathing closet case to me (see the photo at right) - and Michele Bachmann are both on lunatic rampages that underscore the ugliness of Christianity at the hands of the far right.  First we have Bauer claiming that gays and gay marriage cause crime, especially murder in Chicago.  Right Wing Watch reports on Bauer's deranged mindset and effort to stir up violence against gay Americans.  Here are excerpts:

On Wednesday, Gary Bauer of the Campaign for Working Families attempted to tie the Obama administration’s support for gay rights…to violent crime. Bauer said that the escalating crime rate in the city of Chicago is due to children growing up in fatherless homes, which he maintained is a result of Democratic policies that have “made it comfortable for many women to not have husbands in the home” and even same-sex marriage. “Obama and the Democrats have embraced the radical idea of men marrying other men,” Bauer sneered, “How is that going to help the black family?”  

For the past fifty years, Rahm Emanuel's party, the Democratic Party, has made it comfortable for many women to not have husbands in the home. Now Obama and the Democrats have embraced the radical idea of men marrying other men! How is that going to help the black family?

When Emanuel worked in the Clinton White House, the response to gang violence, do you remember this, was midnight basketball programs. It didn't work, midnight basketball programs don't replace fathers. And, of course, it was around that time when Democrats and their media allies did their best to convince us that values really didn't matter. Even the disgusting values demonstrated in the Oval Office with a White House intern.

As if Bauer and his white supremacist leaning fellow Republicans give a rat's ass about black families!  

Meanwhile, Michele Bachmann sees a Muslim conspiracy under every bush and has embarked on more lunacy trying to ferret out Muslims infiltrating the government.   Salon has a piece that looks at Bachmann's Muslim witch hunt.  Here are highlights:

Muslim conspiracy theories have largely vanished from the political debate. But with another election looming, the tide may be rising again, and Rep. Michele Bachmann is predictably already ahead of the crowd.

The Minnesota Republican, joined by Republican Reps. Trent Franks, Louie Gohmert, Thomas Rooney and Lynn Westmoreland, sent letters to the inspectors general of five government agencies responsible for national security to demand they investigate infiltration by the Muslim Brotherhood into the highest reaches of the federal government. In particular, Bachmann singled out Huma Abedin, the wife of former congressman Anthony Weiner and a top aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Another letter targets the Department of Defense, which Bachmann et al. accuse of failing to “characterize accurately the jihadist motivations” of Maj. Nidal Hassan, the Army psychiatrist accused in the Fort Hood shooting.

A third letter went to the Department of Homeland Security, alleging the department is covering up the Muslim Brotherhood threat by developing an official lexicon that obfuscates its danger.

Yet another letter went to the Department of Justice inspector general warning that officials there had been meeting with Muslim groups that she accused of being “fronts” for the Brotherhood.

The final letter went to the Office of Director of National Intelligence, stating, “we request that your office conduct a formal investigation or evaluation into the extent to which Muslim-Brotherhood tied individuals and entities were involved 

In an interview with the American Family Association’s Sandy Rios late last month, Bachmann explained, “It appears that there has been deep penetration in the halls of our United States government by the Muslim Brotherhood.  

So what is Bachmann’s source? Every one of her letters prominently cites Frank Gaffney, a former Reagan defense official who has become one of the country’s most prominent anti-Muslim conspiracy theorists. Gaffney heads the Center for Security Policy and has for years been preaching to anyone who will listen that the Muslim Brotherhood is secretly infiltrating every aspect of American life in a grand scheme to impose Shariah law when we least expect it.

For Gaffney, everyone is an agent of the Brotherhood, including CPAC, the big annual gathering of conservatives in Washington, D.C., and Grover Norquist, the prominent anti-tax activist who is married to a Muslim woman.

Gaffney has since been ostracized from several other key conservative groups, yet Bachmann apparently feels justified demanding official investigations based on his theories.  

It would seem that the only "deep penetration" that has occurred is the level of Bachmann's insanity.  In my opinion, the woman belongs in a mental hospital.

GOP Insanity and Paranoia Deepens

It's getting to the point where to be a Republican on needs to be clutching a Bible - a KJV, of course - and wearing a tin foil hat. A lobotomy might also be helpful. There seems to be no alleged plot and conspiracy that the Christianist/Tea Party base of the GOP won't embrace. And actual facts and reality do nothing to dissuade them. Having Mitt Romney fan the flames of crazy conspiracy theories, obviously doesn't help. Now, Mitt :Etch A Sketch" Romney is fanning the flames that gasoline prices are rising because of an Obama administration conspiracy. It's just as disingenuous as the mantra of many in the GOP "drill, baby drill" who conveniently leave out the detail (known to anyone honest in the oil industry) that drilling, even if successful in finding new oil production, often doesn't truly increase supplies for a decade. That's right, drilling today might lead to more gas supplies in 2022, but certainly not this summer. Yet the cretins in the GOP base - there really is no other term to adequately describe them - buy the lies and deliberate bullshit from slippery politicians like Romney time and time again. Paul Krugman demolishes this latest conspiracy myth in a column in the New York Times. Here are some highlights:

Stop, hey, what’s that sound? Actually, it’s the noise a great political party makes when it loses what’s left of its mind. And it happened — where else? — on Fox News on Sunday, when Mitt Romney bought fully into the claim that gas prices are high thanks to an Obama administration plot.

This claim isn’t just nuts; it’s a sort of craziness triple play — a lie wrapped in an absurdity swaddled in paranoia. It’s the sort of thing you used to hear only from people who also believed that fluoridated water was a Communist plot. But now the gas-price conspiracy theory has been formally endorsed by the likely Republican presidential nominee.

[L]et’s get the facts on gas prices straight. First, the lie: No, President Obama did not say, as many Republicans now claim, that he wanted higher gasoline prices. . . . .The claim that Mr. Obama wanted higher prices is a lie, pure and simple.

And it’s a lie wrapped in an absurdity, because the president of the United States doesn’t control gasoline prices, or even have much influence over those prices. Oil prices are set in a world market, and America, which accounts for only about a tenth of world production, can’t move those prices much. Indeed, the recent rise in gas prices has taken place despite rising U.S. oil production and falling imports.

Finally, there’s the paranoia, the belief that liberals in general, and Obama administration officials in particular, are trying to make driving unaffordable as part of a nefarious plot against the American way of life. And, no, I’m not exaggerating. This is what you hear even from thoroughly mainstream conservatives.

As Richard Hofstadter pointed out in his classic 1964 essay “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” crazy conspiracy theories have been an American tradition ever since clergymen began warning that Thomas Jefferson was an agent of the Bavarian Illuminati. But it’s one thing to have a paranoid fringe playing a marginal role in a nation’s political life; it’s something quite different when that fringe takes over a whole party, to the point where candidates must share, or pretend to share, that fringe’s paranoia to receive the party’s presidential nod.

And it’s not just gas prices, of course. In fact, the conspiracy theories are proliferating so fast it’s hard to keep up. Thus, large numbers of Republicans — and we’re talking about important political figures, not random supporters — firmly believe that global warming is a gigantic hoax perpetrated by a global conspiracy involving thousands of scientists, not one of whom has broken the code of omertà.

Why is this happening? At least part of the answer must lie in the way right-wing media create an alternate reality. For example, did you hear about how the cost of Obamacare just doubled? It didn’t, but millions of Fox-viewers and Rush-listeners believe that it did.

But what about the broader electorate? If and when he wins the nomination, Mr. Romney will try, as a hapless adviser put it, to shake his Etch A Sketch — that is, to erase the record of his pandering to the crazy right and convince voters that he’s actually a moderate. And maybe he can pull it off.

But let’s hope that he can’t, because the kind of pandering he has engaged in during his quest for the nomination matters. Whatever Mr. Romney may personally believe, the fact is that by endorsing the right’s paranoid fantasies, he is helping to further a dangerous trend in America’s political life. And he should be held accountable for his actions.

The past generations of Republicans in my family would be utterly horrified over what has become of a party where facts and rational though used to matter.

The Catholic Hierarchy, Not Gay Marriage, Is "Grotesque"

My Google search agent today turned up many articles in which various members of the Roman Catholic hierarchy ranting against same sex marriage initiatives in both America and the United Kingdom. Illustrative of the anti-gay batshitery is this from the BBC:

Cardinal Keith O'Brien, the leader of the Catholic Church in Scotland, said the plans were a "grotesque subversion of a universally accepted human right".

He said the idea of redefining marriage, which David Cameron has said he supports, would "shame the United Kingdom in the eyes of the world". He said it was wrong to deliberately deprive a child of a mother or father.

Writing in the Sunday Telegraph, Cardinal O'Brien said: "Since all the legal rights of marriage are already available to homosexual couples, it is clear that this proposal is not about rights, but rather is an attempt to redefine marriage for the whole of society at the behest of a small minority of activists.

"Same-sex marriage would eliminate entirely in law the basic idea of a mother and a father for every child. It would create a society which deliberately chooses to deprive a child of either a mother or a father."

He added: "Imagine for a moment that the government had decided to legalise slavery but assured us that 'no one will be forced to keep a slave'.

Excuse me, but what is really grotesque is the world wide conspiracy by men like Cardinal O'Brien to enable and cover up for child rapists within the Catholic clergy. Oh, and the good cardinal might want to avoid the topic of slavery entirely since for many hundreds of years the Church supported the institution of slavery.

More details of the grotesque conduct of "princes of the Church" continues to come out in the trial of a Catholic monsignor in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Bombshells include a memo that documents that former Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua ordered the destruction of a memo that identified 35 sexual predators with the archdiocese ranks. Also implicated in the conspiracy to obstruct justice is current bishop of Allentown, Pennsylvania Edward Cullen. The Morning Call has details on the grotesque and twisted morality morally of the Church leadership. Here are highlights:

Nearly two decades ago, Allentown Bishop Edward Cullen was one of two or three high-ranking clergy present when the head of the Philadelphia Archdiocese ordered the shredding of a list of 35 priests suspected of sexually abusing children, according to a recent court filing in Philadelphia.

A copy of that list and a 1994 memo recording Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua's instructions to destroy it has turned up in the case of Monsignor William Lynn, a former archdiocesan official charged with endangering the welfare of children and conspiracy for allegedly enabling priests to molest children.

Lynn's attorneys have claimed the documents are proof of a conspiracy by Bevilacqua; Cullen, who was then the cardinal's top aide; Cullen's then assistant, Monsignor James Molloy; and Lynn's then assistant, the Rev. Joseph Cistone, to hide sexual abuse allegations.

"This startling revelation raises clear issues as to whether Cardinal Bevilacqua, Bishops Cullen and Cistone and Monsignor Molloy obstructed justice in connection with grand jury I," Lynn's lawyers Jeff Lindy and Thomas Bergstrom wrote in a motion to dismiss the case.

Cullen, 78, is likely to land on the witness stand because he and Cistone, who now is bishop of Saginaw, Mich., are the only two living church officials named in the newly disclosed documents. Bevilacqua died in January and Molloy died in 2006.

It proves what a lot of people have been saying all along, that the cardinal and hierarchy of the archdiocese had knowledge that at least 35 of its priests, and probably more, were sexually abusing minors," said Kenneth Millman, a Berks County attorney who represents a victim of one of the priests Lynn allegedly protected.

Lynn's trial threatens to shake the church to its core, said Rocco Palmo, a commentator for the National Catholic Reporter magazine. "Every person who has survived from the senior administration of the Philadelphia diocese is fair game in this one," Palmo said. "It's going to be unlike any trial that the Catholic Church has ever had. We've never been here before and no one really knows what to expect."

The list shows Lynn knew in 1994 that one of his co-defendants, the Rev. Edward Avery, had a record of sexual misconduct, and Lynn still recommended him for positions where he had contact with children, the prosecution's response says.

The sad reality is that a great number of "prices of the Church" ought to be under criminal prosecution for their roles in the sexual molestation of children and youths and active conspiracies to obstruct justice. If I or readers engaged in such behavior, we'd be prosecuted so fast that out heads would spin. It's time for the special rights and deference given to the Church hierarchy to end and to treat many of these men as the criminal co-conspirators that they were/are in fact..

The Catholic Bishops’ Incomplete Report

The Providence Journal (Rhode Island) has a timely editorial that looks at the failings of the report written by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops that basically tried to blame the Church's world wide sex abuse scandal on the "permissiveness" 1960's and 1970's. Left out, of course were details of how the Vatican coordinated a world wide plan to obstruct justice to "protect the Church" even as the lives of thousands and thousands of children and youths were written off as expendable. Likewise, the report ignores the huge number of abuse cases that occurred BEFORE the 1960's and 1970's. As I noted before, the only true positive aspect of the report was that it showed that as the number of gay priests increased, the instances of abuse decreased and thereby cut anti-gay blowhards like William Donohue off at the knees. Here are some column highlights:
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The report written by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops about sexual abuse by priests has left many people mystified. The report attributed an apparent increase in abuse (or at least in reported abuse) of young people, primarily males, to the sexual revolution of the 1960s and ’70s.
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It basically skirted the complex roles of priestly celibacy and sexual identity. And the report didn’t delve into the transfer, to try to evade public scandal, that some bishops engineered for priests suspected and/or accused of serial sexual abuse.
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Indeed, the document writers seemed to go out of their way to protect bishops anxious to get this public-relations nightmare off their backs.
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[L]et’s face it, this was a serious management problem. Some bishops were just not supervising and disciplining their people properly and some were in effect abetting serious violations of criminal law.

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There are some interesting data in this report, but we’ll need to await a more impartial one than this to fully understand what led to the church’s disastrous sex scandals.

$166 Million Catholic Church Sexual Abuse Settlement Reached

Even as the Archbishop Dolan of New York City compares same sex relationships to having sex with one's mother and the Vatican condemns the United Nations resolution against the criminalization of homosexuality and equates gay love/sex to incest and pedophilia, the ongoing hemorrhage of money in sex abuse settlements shows where the real moral bankruptcy lies. And it's not with loving and committed same sex couples. Oh no, it's instead within the halls of the Vatican and the bishoprics and cardinal's palaces where the protection of sexual predators was all too typically the norm. In the latest testament to the moral bankruptcy of the falsely pious members of the Catholic Church hierarchy, the Jesuit Order is paying our $166 million to victims in the Pacific Northwest who came forward with allegations of sexual abuse. This large sum is added to the billions of dollars paid out so far around the world. Again, I ask, why does anyone give any deference whatsoever to the monsters who have presided over an international conspiracy to cover up such foul crimes? Here are highlights from KVEW-TV:
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It's one of the largest settlements ever, in the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal, more than $166 million. 450 victims in the Pacific Northwest came forward with allegations of sexual abuse against the Jesuit order of the Catholic Church. The St. Mary's Mission School Omak, Washington is the only school where former students alleged abuse.

Katherine mendez was sent to St. Mary's Mission school in Omak when she was 11-years-old. She says one of the priests there, Father John Morse, started abusing her during her very first week there. Mendez says the sexual abuse got worse and happened twice a week for two years.
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Bryan Smith is one of the lawyers in this settlement. He says there were 38 claims by victims against the same priest who allegedly abused Mendez. Smith, "and so the sad reality is that these priests, the problem priests, the ones that were abusing children were sent to live with children where they were helpless." The majority of them are Native American who alleged abuse while attending mission schools set up by the Jesuits on reservations.
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The Oregon Province of the Society of Jesus leaders declined to comment on the settlement, saying they are doing so out of respect for the legal process, and the people involved.
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The settlement also calls for a written apology to the victims. Father John Morse now lives in a retirement community for Jesuits at Gonzaga University in Spokane. He does not face criminal charges, because child abuse victims can only report the crime before they turn 28.

Top Aide to Philadelphia Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua Indicted

Countless Catholics continue to stick their head in the sand and try to ignore the continuing tidal wave of evidence of the systemic moral bankruptcy throughout the Church's senior leadership. They need to wake up and face the reality that they have been blindly supporting what amounts to a worldwide criminal conspiracy to cover up crimes against children and youth. The latest example of the foul behavior of church officials is the the indictment of Monsignor William Lynn (pictured at right), one of former Philadelphia Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua's top aides, who is accused of shielding molester priests from detection and transferring them to unsuspecting parishes. Three other priests, plus a sixth-grade teacher at a Catholic school, were charged with actually raping and sexually assaulting the same boy. It's disgusting conduct (especially by those who strut around expecting sheep like parishioners to bow and scrape to them), but that 's the type of criminal behavior a part of each dollar contributed at the parish level continues to subsidizes. Anyone who proudly says that they are a "practicing Catholic," basically is admitting to be an accessory to crimes against children and youths. Here are highlights from the Village Voice
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[I]t's the indictment of Lynn for allegedly endangering the welfare of a child that breaks new ground in a scandal that broke nationally a decade ago. Everywhere else, including New York, high Church officials have escaped criminal prosecution. SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, hailed the stunning news: This news may mean that finally one of the hundreds of complicit Catholic officials who have hidden or are hiding clergy sex crimes might be brought to justice.
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A column in the Philadelphia Daily News describes just how rotten things have been in the Philadelphia archdioceses - and likely just as foul in many other diocese across the world. Here are some highlights:
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If a parish priest confessed that your tithing paid rapists to retire and funded interrogations that push innocents to suicide, would you demand a refund? And knowing that dozens of area priests accused of abuse remain on the job in good standing with access to children, should you think twice about signing up your son for altar service? The latest 124-page grand jury report on clergy sexual abuse makes abundantly clear that when it comes to predator priests, the Philadelphia Archdiocese blew its last chance to be believed.
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Victims who muster the courage to report their torment then must endure an investigatory process biased against them. One young man was hounded into giving an in-person statement with a church staffer who immediately relayed the details to lawyers fearing litigation. Another victim was guilted into reliving his trauma while hospitalized after a suicide attempt, only to learn later that the archdiocese had used his confidences against him in the defense of his priestly abuser.
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The church touted the "reforms," but made sure the new process was as sick and twisted as the old. Turns out the archdiocese refused to adopt any of the victim advocate's recommendations. And that much-hyped Review Board - chosen by the cardinal himself - regularly deems accusations "unsubstantiated" even when priests flunk polygraph tests and the evidence against them is overwhelming.

Why John Paul II is Unfit for Sainthood

Assuming one buys into the concept of sainthood - and I admittedly do not because it is a display of incredible hubris on man's part - the Roman Catholic Church's rush to sainthood for John Paul II makes a mockery and travesty out of the concept. More and more evidence is coming out - the 1997 letter to Irish prelates being but the latest - that confirms that John Paul both aided and abetted serial molesters like Marcial Maciel, directed that bishops engage in the deliberate obstruction of justice, and cared nothing about the rape and molestation of countless children and youths. Not exactly the behavior of a saint - or even a remotely moral person for that matter. Instead, it sounds like the behavior of a Mafia Don or some other low life criminal and, therefore, the rush to sainthood for John Paul II in my mind simply further underscores the complete moral bankruptcy within the Vatican and the ranks of the Church hierarchy in general. Andrew Sullivan not surprisingly holds similar views to my own and here are highlights of his lambasting of the sainthood effort for a man who should have been criminally prosecuted for criminal conspiracy or worse:
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And let us be clear who was presiding over this disgraceful and disgusting negligence of a core moral value: the protection of children from abuse and rape. The Pope ultimately responsible, John Paul II, is on an absurdly fast track for beatification. How will history look on a church that made a saint out of a Pope who ignored, suppressed, and had underlings covering up the rape of countless vulnerable children? In Ireland, the abuse was so severe, so long-running, so protected by a vile collusion between church and state that the attempt to hush it up is damning. It seems to me a stretch to argue that the Church under John Paul II returned to a very papal hierarchical structure and simultaneously say the Pope has no responsibility for the mass rape and abuse of children he so blithely presided over.
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[T]here is also no doubt in my mind that he was a disgraceful manager of the Church with respect to the greatest crisis it has faced in generations. His relationship with and protection of the pedophile, incestuous neo-fascist, Marcial Maciel, alone makes beatification, to my mind, an appalling swipe at the children John Paul II abandoned to the wolves.

1997 Vatican Letter Directed Irish Bishops to Cover Up Sex-Abuse

I have always held former Pope John Paul II to be anything but saintly and have viewed the rush to make him a saint as yet another cynical Vatican ploy to distract the ignorant, those fearful of independent thought, and the downright stupid/intellectually lazy from the reality of what a festering cesspool the Catholic Church hierarchy has been for decades if not centuries. Now, a newly released letter from 1997 to the bishops of Ireland (a copy of the letter is here) demonstrates that John Paul II and his minions were up to their eyeballs in orchestrating the cover up of the world wide sexual abuse of tens of thousands of children and youth. Rather than being beatified, John Paul II should likely have been criminally prosecuted for obstruction of justice. And only time will tell whether Benedict XVI shouldn't be under indictment. The larger question, of course is when rank and file Catholics will stop sticking their heads in the sand and realize that they are subsidizing and underwriting the criminal deeds of the Church hierarchy and walk away. The Globe and Mail has coverage on the 1997 letter and it's proof of Vatican involvement in the cover up of crimes against children. Here are highlights:
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A newly revealed 1997 letter from the Vatican warned Ireland's Catholic bishops not to report all suspected child-abuse cases to police – a disclosure that victims groups described as “the smoking gun” needed to show that the Vatican enforced a worldwide culture of coverup.
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The letter, obtained by Irish broadcasters RTE and provided to The Associated Press, documents the Vatican's rejection of a 1996 Irish church initiative to begin helping police identify pedophile priests following Ireland's first wave of publicly disclosed lawsuits.
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The letter undermines persistent Vatican claims, particularly when seeking to defend itself in U.S. lawsuits, that the church in Rome never instructed local bishops to withhold evidence or suspicion of crimes from police. It instead emphasizes the church's right to handle all child-abuse allegations, and determine punishments, in house rather than hand that power to civil authorities.
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Mr. Storero [Archbishop Luciano Storero, Pope John Paul II's diplomat to Ireland] wrote that canon law – which required abuse allegations and punishments to be handled within the church – “must be meticulously followed.” He warned that any bishops who tried to impose punishments outside the confines of canon law would face the “highly embarrassing” position of having their actions overturned on appeal in Rome.
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“The letter is of huge international significance, because it shows that the Vatican's intention is to prevent reporting of abuse to criminal authorities. And if that instruction applied here, it applied everywhere,” said Colm O'Gorman, director of the Irish chapter of human rights watchdog Amnesty International. Joelle Casteix, a director of U.S. advocacy group Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, described the letter as “the smoking gun we've been looking for.”
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“We now have evidence that the Vatican deliberately intervened to order bishops not to turn pedophile priests over to law enforcement,” she said. “And for civil lawsuits, this letter shows what victims have been saying for dozens and dozens of years: What happened to them involved a concerted coverup that went all the way to the top.”
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Irish church leaders didn't begin telling police about suspected pedophile priests until the mid-1990s after the first major scandal – of a priest, Brendan Smyth, who had raped dozens of children while the church transferred him to parishes in Dublin, Belfast, Rhode Island and North Dakota – triggered the collapse of the entire Irish government. That national shock, in turn, inspired the first victims to begin suing the church publicly.
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I hope this letter energizes a new round of lawsuits aimed directly at the Vatican. These horrid men need to be behind bars.

Could the Pope Be Arrested in Britain?

UPDATED: This post was cross posted at The Bilerico Project where it generated a number of comments. In response I posted the following comment that addresses some of the commentary:
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I do not deny that politics may trump the law in terms of any criminal prosecution of Benedict XVI. However, it is not accurate to say that the UN recognizes the Holy See as a sovereign nation. In fact, the United Nations does NOT recognize the Holy See as a sovereign state. Rather, it is afforded the status of a "Permanent Observer," the other such Permanent Observer entity being the Palastinian State which at present does not exist as a sovereign nation.
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The list of sovereign MEMBER nations is here: http://www.un.org/en/members/index.shtml
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The two permanent observers are listed here: http://www.un.org/en/members/nonmembers.shtml
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Chapter II, Article 4 of the UN Chrter states:
Membership in the United Nations is open to all other peace-loving states which accept the obligations contained in the present Charter and, in the judgment of the Organization, are able and willing to carry out these obligations.
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The Holy See is not a member nation. Other portions of the UN's own website seems to likewise note the differences between these distinctions in status: "The MEMBERS of the UN are sovereign nations . . . Just as individuals in a democracy have equal voting rights regardless of whether they are rich or poor, powerful or weak, all countries in the General Assembly have the same voting rights.
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In short, the UN itself distinguishes between sovereign NATIONS which are members and the non-nation Permanent Observers. I would also note that another definition of sovereign state is as follows: "a state which administers its own government, and is not dependent upon, or subject to, another power."

In terms of the Holy See, it has no municipal utilities of its own nor - as the Los Angeles Times notes - fire department. It is an enclave within the city of Rome/Italy.
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Two recent news stories raise the question of whether or not Pope Benedict XVI could potentially face criminal charges if he proceeds with his trip the the United Kingdom later in the year. The first is from the Los Angeles Times and raises the issue why the Vatican and specifically the Pope should not be afforded immunity as a sovereign nation/head of state. The reality is that the Roman Catholic Church is a religion, not a sovereign nation, and that the Vatican does not meet the definition generally applied to what constitutes a nation within the meaning of international law. As such, the Pope should not be allowed to claim immunity from prosecution because he is a "head of state." The second story was in the Sunday Times of London and focuses upon the planned effort of Richard Dawkins to have Benedict XVI arrested when he arrives in Britain in September - unless, of course, Benedict cancels the trip. Before looking at the two stories, it is helpful to look at some self-explanatory legal definitions of conspiracy, obstruction of justice and molestation within the criminal law context.

Conspiracy: An agreement by two or more people to commit an illegal act or to commit a legal act using illegal means. Proving conspiracy requires evidence that the parties agreed to the plan before taking action.
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Obstruction of Justice: An attempt to interfere with the administration of the courts, the judicial system, or law enforcement officers, including threatening witnesses, improper conversations with jurors, hiding evidence, or interfering with an arrest. Such activity is a crime.
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Molestation: The crime of sexual acts with children up to the age of 18, including touching of private parts, exposure of genitalia, taking of pornographic pictures, rape, inducement of sexual acts with the molester or with other children, and variations of these acts.

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The Los Angeles Times piece looks at the ridiculous manner in which the Vatican claims to be a sovereign nation and that the Pope is a head of state and, therefore, immune from criminal prosecution. The article makes - in my view - a convincing argument and set forth why Benedict XVI's claims of immunity need to be rejected. Here are some highlights:
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[I]s the spiritual leader of the world's Roman Catholics really a "head of state" as well? Benedict XVI is the head the church's governing body -- known as the Holy See -- which claims many of the privileges of a sovereign country. In recent decades the Holy See has welcomed ambassadors, signed international treaties and used its status to influence developments at the United Nations.
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That the Holy See is often treated as a state is deeply troubling, for several reasons. For one thing, the Catholic Church isn't truly a sovereign nation; to allow it to play one on the international stage perverts the meaning of statehood. Moreover, the church's claim to statehood gives it even more political influence than it would otherwise wield and grants outsized power to only one of the world's many religions. And its claim is particularly worrisome now that the church -- embroiled in a disturbing scandal that has reached from Boston to Berlin -- is claiming the sort of immunity enjoyed by prime ministers and presidents.
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This persists despite its [the Vatican's] lack of most of the key legal characteristics of statehood. It's true that Vatican City runs a popular post office and mints its own currency. But international law requires that a "state" have four attributes: territory, a permanent population, a functioning government and the ability to engage in international relations.
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As to the question of territory, there exists only the small parcel of land known as Vatican City. But as any visitor knows, Vatican City is in the middle of Rome and is little more than half the size of the Mall in Washington, D.C. In any event, the Holy See continues to claim that its international status is based on its religious authority, not its territorial enclave. To say that Vatican City possesses a permanent population of the sort envisioned by international law is even more of a stretch.
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For decades the strange practice of treating the Catholic Church as a state has been bad for women's equality, gay rights and reproductive freedom. The Holy See's fictive statehood allows it to promote its retrograde views on gender and sex in diplomatic settings and during treaty negotiations. Now, the unfolding sexual abuse scandal reveals another dark side of the Holy See's claim to statehood: the extraordinary immunities claimed by the pope in the face of conspiracy accusations that span the globe.
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Turning to the Times of London story, the theory on which the Pope could be criminally prosecuted is laid out - again in a argument that seems to make straight forward legal sense. Frankly, I hope Dawkins and his allies are successful. Clearly, Benedict XVI and the Catholic hierarchy engaged in a conspiracy to obstruct justice and shield predatory priest from appropriate criminal prosecution by civil authorities. There is little question that I or any readers who engaged in such a conspiracy to cover up rampant sexual abuse of minors on a global scale would find ourselves indicted before we knew what had hit us. Here are some highlights:
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RICHARD DAWKINS, the atheist campaigner, is planning a legal ambush to have the Pope arrested during his state visit to Britain “for crimes against humanity”. Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, the atheist author, have asked human rights lawyers to produce a case for charging Pope Benedict XVI over his alleged cover-up of sexual abuse in the Catholic church. The pair believe they can exploit the same legal principle used to arrest Augusto Pinochet, the late Chilean dictator, when he visited Britain in 1998.
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Dawkins and Hitchens believe the Pope would be unable to claim diplomatic immunity from arrest because, although his tour is categorised as a state visit, he is not the head of a state recognised by the United Nations. They have commissioned the barrister Geoffrey Robertson and Mark Stephens, a solicitor, to present a justification for legal action. The lawyers believe they can ask the Crown Prosecution Service to initiate criminal proceedings against the Pope, launch their own civil action against him or refer his case to the International Criminal Court.
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“There is every possibility of legal action against the Pope occurring,” said Stephens. “Geoffrey and I have both come to the view that the Vatican is not actually a state in international law. It is not recognised by the UN, it does not have borders that are policed and its relations are not of a full diplomatic nature.”
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Andrew Sullivan sums up the situation well from a morality perspective when he stated as follows on his blog:

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The Pope cannot blame the local bishops this time - they desperately tried to get the priest fired. He cannot claim he was out of the loop: his signature is on the letter. He cannot get an underling to take the fall: it's his name and his office behind the unconscionable delay and behind the actual, despicably callous and self-serving reasons to protect a man who tied children up and raped them. It's over now.
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When we look at this Pope we see a man who knew that one of the priests he had authority to fire had restrained and raped children. Yet he did nothing for years, and finally sided with the priest. He had more sympathy for the relatively young age of the rapist, rather than the innocence and trauma of the raped children. We see a man utterly corrupted by power and institutional loyalty. So when does he resign?

Inside the Mind of Tea Party Crazies

There is nothing wrong with being skeptical of government power and wanting facts and answers to support government courses of action. It is, however, something else entirely to allow one's self to be swept up in crazy conspiracy theories and/or covens of true believers who see immigrants, blacks gays - indeed, anyone who is different - as a threat that must be defeated. Personally, I find the tea party movement frightening because it seems to embrace any wild unfounded rumor and has a strong racist undertone. Elements within the GOP have helped unleash the tea party crowd, but I worry that its paranoia will lead to violence and other dangerous trends. Any movement that is unfettered from objective reality holds potential for danger. Here are highlights from a New York Times article that looks at the tea party phenomenon:
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The Tea Party movement has become a platform for conservative populist discontent, a force in Republican politics for revival, as it was in the Massachusetts Senate election, or for division. But it is also about the profound private transformation of people like Mrs. Stout, people who not long ago were not especially interested in politics, yet now say they are bracing for tyranny.
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These people are part of a significant undercurrent within the Tea Party movement that has less in common with the Republican Party than with the Patriot movement, a brand of politics historically associated with libertarians, militia groups, anti-immigration advocates and those who argue for the abolition of the Federal Reserve.
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Urged on by conservative commentators, waves of newly minted activists are turning to once-obscure books and Web sites and discovering a set of ideas long dismissed as the preserve of conspiracy theorists, interviews conducted across the country over several months show.
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Loose alliances like Friends for Liberty are popping up in many cities, forming hybrid entities of Tea Parties and groups rooted in the Patriot ethos. These coalitions are not content with simply making the Republican Party more conservative. They have a larger goal — a political reordering that would drastically shrink the federal government and sweep away not just Mr. Obama, but much of the Republican establishment, starting with Senator John McCain.
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In many regions, including here in the inland Northwest, tense struggles have erupted over whether the Republican apparatus will co-opt these new coalitions or vice versa. Tea Party supporters are already singling out Republican candidates who they claim have “aided and abetted” what they call the slide to tyranny.
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The ebbs and flows of the Tea Party ferment are hardly uniform. It is an amorphous, factionalized uprising with no clear leadership and no centralized structure. Not everyone flocking to the Tea Party movement is worried about dictatorship. Some have a basic aversion to big government, or Mr. Obama, or progressives in general.
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They are frequently led by political neophytes who prize independence and tell strikingly similar stories of having been awakened by the recession. Their families upended by lost jobs, foreclosed homes and depleted retirement funds, they said they wanted to know why it happened and whom to blame. That is often the point when Tea Party supporters say they began listening to Glenn Beck. . . . Many describe emerging from their research as if reborn to a new reality. Some have gone so far as to stock up on ammunition, gold and survival food in anticipation of the worst.
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It is a sprawling rebellion, but running through it is a narrative of impending tyranny. This narrative permeates Tea Party Web sites, Facebook pages, Twitter feeds and YouTube videos. It is a prominent theme of their favored media outlets and commentators, and it connects the disparate issues that preoccupy many Tea Party supporters — from the concern that the community organization Acorn is stealing elections to the belief that Mr. Obama is trying to control the Internet and restrict gun ownership.
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WorldNetDaily.com trumpets “exclusives” reporting that the Army is seeking “Internment/Resettlement” specialists. On ResistNet.com, bloggers warn that Mr. Obama is trying to convert Interpol, the international police organization, into his personal police force. They call on “fellow Patriots” to “grab their guns.”
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The article goes on for a number of pages. The bottom line is that many of these people are living in an alternate reality and that those who have whipped them into a frenzy have been irresponsible to say the least.

Bishops Have Again Deserted Their Flock

An interesting column in the Irish Times looks at the ongoing free fall of the Roman Catholic Church's reputation in Ireland. Hopefully, that free fall will begin to extend out to more country with the chance that maybe, just maybe, Benedict XVI and the bishops and cardinals will for once do the right thing since it will be a necessity if the Church is going to save itself from irrelevance. I am not going to hold my breath, however. I continue to believe that it is difficult for many to grasp just how morally bankrupt the Church hierarchy has become and just how self-centered and uncaring its members are when in comes to account for the misdeeds of so many bishops and cardinals and a number of the Popes, including John Paul II who I believe was anything but saintly. Again, I ask myself, why does anyone continue to show these disgusting men - who care nothing for the lives of children and youths - any deference much less give them money. Here are some column highlights:

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THERE APPEARS to be a view that Cardinal Seán Brady’s words of support this week for the Bishop of Cloyne John Magee have drawn a line in the sand where this latest Catholic Church clerical child sex abuse controversy is concerned. They have not. Rather, they have added to a growing deficit in the moral authority of the Catholic Church in Ireland, a deficit now every bit as large as that in the State’s finances, if deteriorating more rapidly. In this, the bishops have only themselves to blame.

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Their first instinct, when alerted in 1987 to the probability of clerical child sex abuse cases emerging in Ireland, was preservation of the institution at all costs. You might say it established what has become a consistent pattern. They took out insurance.
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It would be another eight years before they addressed the protection of children from such abuse. Then, in 1996, they published their first guidelines on child protection. These were updated in 2000 and again in 2005. It was in 1996, coincident with those first guidelines, that Cardinal Desmond Connell, then archbishop of Dublin, let it be known they were “only guidelines”.

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It was believed such thinking in the Irish church belonged to the past. Not so. From what we were told last month it would appear to have been the mindset of Bishop Magee until late 2008. This was disclosed in a report published on December 19th by the church’s own watchdog, the National Board for Safeguarding Children.

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But Bishop Magee’s culpability runs even deeper. This is a man who twice and recently misled the State, in writing, on child protection practices in his diocese. As recalled by Minister for Children Barry Andrews last week, on November 23rd, 2005, “in a direct reply” to then minister for children Brian Lenihan, Bishop Magee said Cloyne “fully complied with” the church’s 1996 guidelines and was “fully compliant” with the State’s guidelines.

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It has meant, as Andrews said, that because of “the discrepancy between stated policies and procedures and the validation of these policies and practices” in the diocese, Cloyne was being referred for investigation to the Dublin Commission. . . . Cardinal Brady thinks differently as to the gravity of Bishop Magee’s omissions. So also do two of the three other Catholic archbishops in Ireland – the Archbishop of Cashel, Dermot Clifford, and the Archbishop of Tuam, Michael Neary. For his part, the Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, chooses silence.

"A Pedophile's Paradise"

"A Pedophile's Paradise" - That's the title to a story on Dan Savage's blog that looks at yet more details of the sex abuse scandal that continues to dog the Roman Catholic Church even though the main stream media with its short attention span has become less fixated on the story line. In the newest lawsuit, the plaintiffs allege a cover up conspiracy which includes the head of the Northwest Jesuits from 1990 to 1996—is named as a co-conspirator. I continue to believe that until bishops and cardinals and the heads of religious orders suffer the consequences of their malfeasance and actions to cover up the sexual abuse of minors, the Church as an institution deserves no respect whatsoever. The truth is that many in the hierarchy knew what was going on, closed their eyes to problem and worked to try to keep the truth hidden. Not very Christian conduct. Here are some highlights:

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This morning (january 14th), 43 Alaskan Natives filed a lawsuit against the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits), claiming a widespread conspiracy to dump pedophile priests in small Alaskan towns and shelter them from exposure. The suit was filed in the Bethel, Alaska Superior Court.

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Attorney Ken Roosa announced the lawsuit at a chilly press conference outside Seattle University this morning and said, as of today, he knows of 345 cases of molestation, only two of them against non-natives. The Jesuits, he said, sent known pedophiles to isolated Alaskan villages—many of them only accessible by boat or plane—to let them abuse children with impunity. "It was a pedophile's paradise," Roosa said. "We are going to shine some light on a dark and dirty corner of the Jesuit order."

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The rate of child molestation by priests in Alaska, he said, "is several orders of magnitude larger" than anywhere else in the United States. (Roosa compared this lawsuit to one in Los Angeles, with 550 cases of abuse and a Catholic population of 3.5 million.) . . . This suit—against the Society of Jesus as a whole—is the latest battle in a long campaign Roosa has been waging against the opaque, secretive way the church responds to accusations of sexual abuse.

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A former Benedictine monk, Patrick Wall, said 28 pedophiles from four countries were specifically sent to Alaska "to get them off the grid, where they could do the least amount of damage" to the church's public image. "The Catholic church has the largest body of documentation of non-incarcerated pedophiles in the world," he said.

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Three years ago, Roosa said, a former head of the Northwest Jesuits testified about the "hell files"—personnel files with information about priests that was "special," "not public," and "not good." Sundborg allegedly would've had those files in his office when he was the head of the Northwest Jesuits. When Roosa tried to acquire those files from the Northwest Jesuits, he was told they didn't exist.

Memo Shows Long Term Mormon Plat Against Gays

As the crocodile tears of Mormons who got caught over their contributions to support "Yes on 8" continue to fall - these not so bright folks apparently though their contributions would not be public record - more evidence has surfaced that shows that the Mormon Church leadership has long been plotting to make sure LGBT Americans would be blocked from equal CIVIL marriage rights. Specifically, a new internal LDS Church document from a LDS General Authority (pictured at left) has surfaced showing the Church's involvement and strategy against gays going back more than a decade. Thus, Proposition 8 was not initiated as a reaction to the May 15, 2008, decision of the California Supreme Court. This new documentation also underscores why a boycott against all things Mormon by gays and their allies is justified. Both ABC News and 365gay.com have stories on the memo and what it reveals. Here are highlights from 365gay.com:

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The Church of Latter Day Saints began putting together a game plan 10 years ago to ensure same-sex marriage would not become legal, a internal church memo shows. The document, obtained by Salt Lake City ABC affiliate KTVX, was sent by a member of the LDS General Authority to a member of the Quorum of the Twelve, the church’s governing body.

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Dated March 4, 1997, the memo mentions a meeting with Gordon B. Hinckley, who was then President of the Church, and quotes Hinckley as saying the Mormons need to “move ahead” with the church’s opposition to same-sex marriage. Hinckley, according to the 11-year old document, suggests joining forces with the Roman Catholic Church. “The public image of the Catholic Church is higher than our Church. In other words, if we get into this, they are the ones with which to join,” the memo quotes him as saying.

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The Mormon Church was one of the leaders, with the Catholic Church and evangelical Protestant churches, in the passage of Proposition 8, the amendment to the California constitution that limits marriage to opposite-sex couples. The Church put an estimated $25 million into the battle to end gay marriage in California and has become a prime target of LGBT civil rights groups.

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The ABC News story adds: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints could not say for sure, but believes this recently surfaced 1997 memo is authentic.And those who opposed Proposition 8 are claiming that more documents like this do exist.