Paying People To Die in Oregon
August 11, 2009 by Patrick Madrid
Filed under Patrick's Blog
From The Daily Mail:
His body ravaged by cancer, lumberjack David Prueitt barely had the strength to raise the cup to his lips.
In it was a mix of apple sauce and dozens of crushed barbiturate pills, legally prescribed by the 42-year-old’s doctor to end his life. Within minutes, the drugs had started to take effect, the terminally-ill man slipping into unconsciousness as his wife sat by his side.
If all had gone to plan, David would have quickly and peacefully passed away, his breathing becoming more labored until it eventually stopped altogether.
But it did not happen like that. Instead, after three days in a deep coma, David suddenly woke up. ‘Honey?’ he said to his wife. “What the hell happened? Why am I not dead?”
For another 13 days, coherent but racked with pain, David survived before finally succumbing to the disease and dying naturally in his home near Portland, Oregon’s most populous city.
In that time he would be transformed from just another death to be recorded under Oregon’s policy of assisted suicide into a figurehead for opponents of the U.S. state’s deeply controversial Death With Dignity Act.
“He took five times the amount of barbiturates that should kill somebody and he still didn’t die,” his older brother Steve told the Daily Mail this week. . . .
This may seem far away, but following right-to-die campaigner Debbie Purdy’s victory in the House of Lords, the Oregon experience is suddenly starting to ring alarm bells in Britain.
The 46-year-old multiple sclerosis sufferer successfully argued that it was a breach of her human rights not to know whether her husband would be prosecuted if he helped her to die overseas — in Switzerland, through Dignitas — in the event that her condition worsened.
Going further than anyone expected, the Law Lords ordered Keir Starmer, the Director of Public Prosecutions, to spell out exactly when – or, possibly, if – action would be taken against someone who helps a friend or relative to take their own life. Opponents of assisted suicide are deeply worried that this may lead to effective legalization.
The right-to-die lobby is already pointing to the Oregon model as a possible blueprint for Britain. Former human rights lawyer Lord Joffe is one of the movement’s foremost proponents and his opinion is unequivocal. He says that assisted dying ‘clearly works’ in Oregon. And given that, he asks, how can anyone think that assisted dying would not also work in the UK. . .
But perhaps most worrying of all, say critics, is the trend for other treatment to be denied to those who are terminally ill. Instead of being given the medicines that might prolong their lives, they are being offered £30 to cover the cost of drugs that will end their days in a matter of hours.
To better answer the questions, it is first necessary to understand how Oregon’s Death With Dignity Act has worked since it was passed in 1997. So far, 401 patients have been assisted to their deaths. The majority of those were aged between 55 and 84, white and well-educated. Eighty per cent were cancer sufferers.
The most frequently mentioned motives for ending their lives were loss of autonomy, a decreasing ability to participate in activities that make life enjoyable, and a loss of dignity.
Under the terms of the act, those requesting a prescription for lethal medication must be over 18, a resident of Oregon, mentally capable and diagnosed with a terminal illness that will lead to death within six months. They must also be able to administer the medication themselves.. . . (continue reading) — special thanks to my friend, Father Bud!
The Prophet of Hyde Park (Secrets of a Streetcorner Apologist)
August 10, 2009 by Patrick Madrid
Filed under Patrick's Blog
One brisk, gray afternoon in London, I stood on a corner of Hyde Park with one of Frank Sheed’s old friends.
“That’s the spot where he used to stand and preach,” she said with a wistful smile. Now an elderly widow, in the 1940s and 1950s she had worked in the London Catholic Evidence Guild with Frank and his wife, Maisie.
It was easy to imagine the scene: a portly, smiling, middle-aged fellow, who looked a lot like W.C. Fields, evangelizing anyone who stopped in front of his speaker’s platform.
— By Patrick Madrid —
Over afternoon tea, Sheed’s friend described what it was like to watch Frank manage the crowd. He worked on hecklers and skeptics and scoffers the way a chiropractor works on a bad back-probing, searching for the tensed-up muscle, finding it, and going to work on it with precision. He massaged the minds of his audiences, breaking down hardened prejudices against Catholicism, kneading the “God does not exist!” arguments until they crumbled, and showing atheists the folly of their denials. He made countless converts on the stump.
Frank Sheed was one of the 20th-century’s greatest apologists. Some-especially those who knew him personally and saw him in action-say he was the greatest Catholic apologist of the last 100 years, maybe longer. One thing is certain: Few people of any era have been endowed with his unique, powerful combination of gifts-including a rare talent for expressing complex theological concepts, such as the Trinity or the Hypostatic Union, in words that were understandable and compelling to the average reader. His style was clear and luminous; it had the power to persuade as well as to inform.
Sheed was also an accomplished speaker. He preached the Catholic faith under the open sky to any and all who would listen-often in unforgiving and even hostile locations, such as New York’s Time Square and London’s Hyde Park (stomping ground of Communist firebrands, Protestant preachers, and agitators for every kind of cause and “-ism”).
He believed the Catholic faith to his core, and that belief impelled him to share the gospel with all those around him. For many of us, his “taking it to the streets” approach to Christianity might seem extreme or fanatical. But it shouldn’t. Frank Sheed understood that for Christians, public testimony about Christ should be the norm. “You are the light of the world,” Christ told us. “A city set on a hill cannot . . . (continue reading)
Try to Imagine a "Nationwide Katrina Event." It Could Happen.
August 8, 2009 by Patrick Madrid
Filed under Patrick's Blog
Report Claims "Community Organizer" Shills Are Busy in Catholic Parishes in OKC
August 7, 2009 by Patrick Madrid
Filed under Patrick's Blog
The flyer is simple but informative. “Community Organizing at St. Charles.” Sounds innocuous enough. But upon closer inspection, it appears to be further attempts by ACORN-esque organizers to infiltrate well-meaning parishioners in the Catholic Church in the Oklahoma City area, among other places.
The flyer reads: “Come to a special training in community organizing for Catholic parishes, presented by Oklahoma Sponsoring Committee and hosted by Our Lady of Perpetual Help parish.”
Not much could be found about the Oklahoma Sponsoring Committee, other than a Grace Presbyterian Church flyer online that notes that “the OSC is a congregation-based community action group that equips churches to better meet the needs of their communities through training and support.”
It also said seven Catholic churches are part of 27 churches in Oklahoma City that are getting involved with this community-organizing activity.
The corrupt group ACORN, which had been active in Oklahoma City until late last summer, is believed to be connected to this action considering it’s past links, as noted in this 2003 National Housing Institute article. Red Dirt Report was given an exclusive peek into a recently-abandoned ACORN office in south Oklahoma City last October. That report can be found here.
The event, scheduled August 8 from 9 a.m. until 4 p.m. is not being held at St. Charles Borromeo, rather at Our Lady of Perpetual Help in their Connor Center at 32nd and Western.
Among items on the “program” at this “community organizing” event, includes “interactive community organizing training based on the first five chapters of Nehemiah with attention to the concepts of subsidiarity and solidarity, by Kris Ausdenmoore, lead organizer, Oklahoma Sponsoring Committee.”
Ausdenmoore, it turns out, according to a 2008 article in the Sooner Catholic, was the lead organizer for the Oklahoma IAF. IAF stands for Industrial Areas Foundation. They are located throughout the United States and have chapters in Canada, England and Germany, according to www.industrialareasfoundation.org. And they deal with not only Christians but Muslims, Jews and others as well.
“The leaders and organizers of the Industrial Areas Foundation build organizations whose primary purpose is POWER – the ability to act – and whose chief product is social change. They continue to practice what the Founding Fathers preached; the ongoing attempt to make life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness everyday realities for more and more Americans.” . . . (continue reading)
Report Claims "Community Organizer" Shills Are Busy in Catholic Parishes in OKC
August 7, 2009 by Patrick Madrid
Filed under Patrick's Blog
The flyer is simple but informative. “Community Organizing at St. Charles.” Sounds innocuous enough. But upon closer inspection, it appears to be further attempts by ACORN-esque organizers to infiltrate well-meaning parishioners in the Catholic Church in the Oklahoma City area, among other places.
The flyer reads: “Come to a special training in community organizing for Catholic parishes, presented by Oklahoma Sponsoring Committee and hosted by Our Lady of Perpetual Help parish.”
Not much could be found about the Oklahoma Sponsoring Committee, other than a Grace Presbyterian Church flyer online that notes that “the OSC is a congregation-based community action group that equips churches to better meet the needs of their communities through training and support.”
It also said seven Catholic churches are part of 27 churches in Oklahoma City that are getting involved with this community-organizing activity.
The corrupt group ACORN, which had been active in Oklahoma City until late last summer, is believed to be connected to this action considering it’s past links, as noted in this 2003 National Housing Institute article. Red Dirt Report was given an exclusive peek into a recently-abandoned ACORN office in south Oklahoma City last October. That report can be found here.
The event, scheduled August 8 from 9 a.m. until 4 p.m. is not being held at St. Charles Borromeo, rather at Our Lady of Perpetual Help in their Connor Center at 32nd and Western.
Among items on the “program” at this “community organizing” event, includes “interactive community organizing training based on the first five chapters of Nehemiah with attention to the concepts of subsidiarity and solidarity, by Kris Ausdenmoore, lead organizer, Oklahoma Sponsoring Committee.”
Ausdenmoore, it turns out, according to a 2008 article in the Sooner Catholic, was the lead organizer for the Oklahoma IAF. IAF stands for Industrial Areas Foundation. They are located throughout the United States and have chapters in Canada, England and Germany, according to www.industrialareasfoundation.org. And they deal with not only Christians but Muslims, Jews and others as well.
“The leaders and organizers of the Industrial Areas Foundation build organizations whose primary purpose is POWER – the ability to act – and whose chief product is social change. They continue to practice what the Founding Fathers preached; the ongoing attempt to make life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness everyday realities for more and more Americans.” . . . (continue reading)
Social Commentary Through Pie Charts & Venn Diagrams
August 5, 2009 by Patrick Madrid
Filed under Patrick's Blog
Catholic congressman: I’d rather save my soul than vote for the health care bill
August 3, 2009 by Patrick Madrid
Filed under Patrick's Blog
.- Rep. Anh “Joseph” Cao, (R-New Orleans), the first Vietnamese-American congressman and a Catholic, announced this past weekend that, because of the “stealth mandate” for abortion still present in the Health Care bill, he prefers to “save his soul” rather than vote in favor of it.
Cao, the only member of the Louisiana House delegation who had not weighed in on where he stands on the health reform bill, told the Times-Picayune on Saturday that he cannot support any bill that permits public money to be spent on abortion.
“At the end of the day if the health care reform bill does not have strong language prohibiting the use of federal funding for abortion, then the bill is really a no-go for me,” said Cao, who spent time in formation to be a Jesuit priest.
“Being a Jesuit, I very much adhere to the notion of social justice,” Cao said. “I do fully understand the need of providing everyone with access to health care, but to me personally, I cannot be privy to a law that will allow the potential of destroying thousands of innocent lives,” he explained to the Louisiana newspaper.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee announced that Cao will be one of seven Republican members of Congress targeted with radio ads that will play on radio stations with largely African-American audiences, urging him to support Obama’s health reform efforts.
“I know that voting against the health care bill will probably be the death of my political career,” Cao said, “but I have to live with myself, and I always reflect on the phrase of the New Testament, ‘How does it profit a man’s life to gain the world but to lose his soul.’”
Cao is the first native of Vietnam to serve in Congress and the first Republican to serve in his district since 1890. He won in a district that usually votes overwhelmingly Democratic. . . . (continue reading)
Catholic congressman: I'd rather save my soul than vote for the health care bill
August 3, 2009 by Patrick Madrid
Filed under Patrick's Blog
.- Rep. Anh “Joseph” Cao, (R-New Orleans), the first Vietnamese-American congressman and a Catholic, announced this past weekend that, because of the “stealth mandate” for abortion still present in the Health Care bill, he prefers to “save his soul” rather than vote in favor of it.
Cao, the only member of the Louisiana House delegation who had not weighed in on where he stands on the health reform bill, told the Times-Picayune on Saturday that he cannot support any bill that permits public money to be spent on abortion.
“At the end of the day if the health care reform bill does not have strong language prohibiting the use of federal funding for abortion, then the bill is really a no-go for me,” said Cao, who spent time in formation to be a Jesuit priest.
“Being a Jesuit, I very much adhere to the notion of social justice,” Cao said. “I do fully understand the need of providing everyone with access to health care, but to me personally, I cannot be privy to a law that will allow the potential of destroying thousands of innocent lives,” he explained to the Louisiana newspaper.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee announced that Cao will be one of seven Republican members of Congress targeted with radio ads that will play on radio stations with largely African-American audiences, urging him to support Obama’s health reform efforts.
“I know that voting against the health care bill will probably be the death of my political career,” Cao said, “but I have to live with myself, and I always reflect on the phrase of the New Testament, ‘How does it profit a man’s life to gain the world but to lose his soul.’”
Cao is the first native of Vietnam to serve in Congress and the first Republican to serve in his district since 1890. He won in a district that usually votes overwhelmingly Democratic. . . . (continue reading)
The Epitome of a "Close Call"
August 3, 2009 by Patrick Madrid
Filed under Patrick's Blog
What in the world are they constructing their buildings out of in Turkey?
Flashback: Brent Bozell’s 1994 Comment About Mitt Romney
July 29, 2009 by Patrick Madrid
Filed under Patrick's Blog
