RULES SUCK

RULES SUCK!!!!

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These are excerpts from Kersten commentary.

Katherine can be found here at the Star Tribune:
http://www.startribune.com/bios/10645201.html

Sunday, September 26, 2010

KK explains why Islam has more freedom

"

In April 2010, Molly Norris, an editorial cartoonist at the Seattle Weekly, learned that the creators of the TV comedy "South Park" had been threatened with death by a Muslim extremist. The threat came after an episode in which the Prophet Mohammed appeared in a bear suit -- an allusion to Islam's prohibition against his depiction.

Norris was indignant at this use of threats of violence to stifle free speech. In protest, she drew a lighthearted cartoon of a poster announcing "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day." Tongue firmly in cheek, she named the day's sponsor as a nonexistent group: "Citizens against Citizens against Humor."

Today, Norris fears for her own life. On the FBI's advice, she's "gone ghost" -- changed her name and identity and abandoned her livelihood. The reason: A radical Muslim imam has called for her assassination on grounds that she blasphemed against Islam.

This sort of assault on free speech -- one of the West's most cherished liberties -- has become sadly familiar in places like the Netherlands and Denmark. In 2004, for example, a Muslim extremist slit the throat of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh in retribution for his movie condemning the abuse of women in conservative Islamic societies. In 2006, Dutch-Somali writer and politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali -- an outspoken critic of Islam -- was forced to flee Holland after threats on her life. In Denmark, cartoonist Kurt Westergaard lives under police protection after a Somali man attempted to murder him.

Now an event like this may be shaping up in America, with chilling implications for freedom and the rule of law. Yet chances are you haven't even heard about it.

Norris' disappearance was prompted by a "fatwa" issued by Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born imam living in Yemen. Awlaki has been cited as inspiring Nidal Hasan's massacre of 13 soldiers at Fort Hood, as well as Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's attempt to bomb Northwest Flight 253 on Christmas Day 2009 and the botched Times Square car bomb in May 2010.

Awlaki's fatwa against Norris was posted on the Internet by an Al Qaida- inspired magazine whose mission is to radicalize young Muslims. The fatwa ordered the cartoonist's "execution." Her "proper abode is hellfire," wrote Alwaki. "She "does not deserve life, does not deserve to breathe the air."

Surely, you say, American journalists and media moguls -- always staunch defenders of the First Amendment -- are proclaiming outrage and rallying round this young woman? On the contrary. The media have largely been silent about her nightmarish plight.

When the Washington Examiner, an on-line newspaper in Washington, D.C., asked the American Society of News Editors for a statement about Norris, none was forthcoming. Ditto for the Society of Professional Journalists. This, despite the fact that the editors group's mission statement extols "the First Amendment at home and free speech around the world," while the journalists claim to stand for "the perpetuation of the free press as the cornerstone of our nation and liberty."

Principle and backbone were more in evidence back in 1989, when Iran's radical Ayatollah Khomeini launched the current drive to extend Islamic law to the West. After Khomeini accused British novelist Salman Rushdie of blasphemy in "The Satanic Verses" and called for his death, the U.S. Senate unanimously resolved "to protect the right of any person to write, publish, sell, buy and read books without fear of violence."

But since 9/11, American media have increasingly caved to threats from radical Islam. The new norm is a self-censorship consistent with Muslim teaching that Islam must be free from insult, though other religions may be insulted at all times.

The best-known example of this double standard took place in 2005, when a handful of Danish cartoons mocking Mohammed sparked bloody riots throughout the Muslim world. American newspapers covered the protests closely. Yet only a handful of papers printed the cartoons that triggered the riots. Editors justified this self-censorship by invoking their "sensitivity" toward religious belief -- a quality rarely in evidence when the subject is Christianity.

This year, Yale University Press printed a book about the incident, entitled "The Cartoons That Shook the World." Originally, editors planned to include the cartoons, but Yale University intervened to prohibit this, citing concerns about violence.

When the Rev. Terry Jones, a self-promoting crackpot, threatened to burn the Qur'an, public figures -- starting with President Obama -- lined up to denounce his intolerance. Apparently, none of these people has had the courage to do the same with Awlaki and his henchmen, who pose a far greater danger.

Our elites, it seems, are content to leave gutsy individuals like Norris to stand up for the freedom at the core of Western civilization."


http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentary/103748279.html?page=3&c=y

Sunday, September 19, 2010

KK talks about new catholics

Here's an exerpt from this article:

http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentary/103167979.html?elr=KArksc8P:Pc:Ug8P:Pc:UiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUUr

"The Catholic Church's days are numbered. At least, that seems to be the view of opinionmakers, who see it as hopelessly out of step and pushing a moral code that few want to be saddled with these days. Add to that clergy sexual abuse. Isn't this an institution on its last legs?

Paradoxically, here in the Twin Cities, young Catholics are responding with a hearty "no." This fall, St. Paul Seminary -- which prepares men for the priesthood -- has its largest enrollment since 1981: 92 seminarians.

Many are entering after successful careers. This year's class -- average age, 29 -- includes men with degrees in civil and electrical engineering, TV production, geography, animal science and criminology.

Well, maybe some older men are showing interest, but younger guys just want to party, right? Down the street at St. John Vianney Seminary (SJV) on the University of St. Thomas campus, 140 young men -- ages 18 to 22 -- are considering the priesthood. SJV is the largest collegiate seminary in the nation. Seminarians there may blast rock music, but they start the day at 6:15 a.m. with an hour of silent prayer, attend Mass daily and on Sundays sing the ancient "Salve Regina" in Latin before an icon of the Virgin Mary.

This phenomenon of young people devoting themselves to religious life is not confined to the Twin Cities. Mary Anne Marks, a 2010 summa cum laude graduate of Harvard University, is entering the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist, in Ann Arbor, Mich. Marks delivered a commencement address in Latin at Harvard's graduation in May. She will join an entering class of 22 young women looking forward to a life of teaching, prayer and evangelism.

What draws young people to devote their lives to the Catholic Church -- widely regarded as intolerably judgmental and on the wane?

The Rev. Joe Bambenek, who has a master's degree in nuclear engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has an answer. He graduated from the St. Paul Seminary in May 2010, and is associate pastor at Nativity of Our Lord Church in St. Paul.

Bambenek suggests that disillusionment with today's culture of consumption and self-seeking is a powerful factor drawing young men and women to religious life.

"We've seen that a focus on materialism doesn't bring happiness," he says. As a result, "There is a hunger for things of God, an openness to God's word in our lives." It's precisely because this generation is so self-indulged, he adds, that "people are more willing, when they see the truth, to run after it." And when they experience the love and joy the truth brings, they want to share it.

Robert Kennedy, who teaches at the seminary, agrees. "Young men there sometimes tell me, 'We've had a career. Now we want a life.' They mean a vocation, a calling," he says.

Bambenek is a case in point. Before entering the seminary, he worked for an electric power company. In 2002, he racked up 230 plane flights, negotiating rules for high-voltage transmission system use.

Then his boss' wife came down with terminal cancer. "I discovered that walking with him through that experience was more meaningful and more satisfying than negotiating power rules," he says.

Seminarians study ancient wisdom and timeless truths to be best equipped to take on vexing contemporary problems. Their reading list includes Greek philosophers and the moral theology of St. Thomas Aquinas. In a society obsessed with the latest thing -- from smart phones to celebrity gossip -- this lineup may sound strange.

But there's a good reason for it, says Bambenek. While the world around us may change, human beings do not. We struggle with death, suffering, loneliness, disappointment, rejection -- always have, always will.

"As human beings, we're called by God to be good," says Bambenek. "But we also have the weakness of sin. Both our goodness and our sinfulness, at their core, don't change. That's why the truths God has revealed to us are always relevant."

In the end, today's seminarians have made a choice that is profoundly countercultural.

"Every generation forgets that young people want to be inspired by a big challenge," says Kennedy. For baby boomers, being countercultural meant wearing tie-dyed T-shirts and flashing the peace sign. It carried no risk, no cost.

"But there's nothing bigger and more challenging than the life these young people are taking on," says Kennedy. "They are getting ready to go out and engage a culture -- by their garb, their occupation, their very countercultural embrace of celibacy. It's very public, and it carries a lot of risk."

For today's seminarians, this is true freedom. "The Gospel message is a joyful message -- the message of freedom through God's truth, God's grace," says Bambenek. "When we're acting as God designed us, we're able to be all he made us to be."

Sunday, September 12, 2010

KK explains how you should spend your time..

http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentary/102655644.html?elr=KArks:DCiU1PciUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUU

"

On a typical evening we flop down, flip on the 36-inch flat screen, click the mouse, text, tweet, or feast on Facebook. The more adventurous among us grab virtual swords and enter the explosion-filled, fantasy universe of games like World of Warcraft, where we achieve instant superhero status.

We're megaconsumers of passive entertainment, spoon-fed by faceless folks in Hollywood or at companies like Sony. It's fun. It's relaxing. But when we log off, we often have a nagging question: Have we just wasted a lot of time?

It's a good bet Ingemar Holm never asks himself that question. Holm, 73, of Delano, is retired. The perfect time to enjoy passive entertainment, you say? Not Holm. He's got something that sounds long-ago and far-away: what we used to call a "hobby."

Holm's hobby is restoring vintage aircraft. He and his buddy Jim Johns, 75, of Bloomington have restored 18 World War II airplanes. Their latest project -- in which Dale Johnson, 73, of Burnsville and a dedicated band of three or four others have joined -- is the painstaking restoration of a World War II CG-4 combat glider.

The CG-4 was a giant, engineless aircraft -- a fragile contraption of wood and canvas that was towed at night behind cargo planes and released for what were often clandestine, behind-the-lines missions. Between 1942 and 1944, about 4,000 Twin Citians labored around the clock to turn out these "flying coffins," making 1,500 of the 14,000 produced nationwide.

The CG-4 glider was the only military aircraft ever made in Minnesota, according to Johns. Today, only seven remain in the world, most in woeful disrepair.

There's not a screen, a mouse or a game controller to be seen in the Eagan workshop where the glider is slowly coming to life. Instead of offering nonstop "fun," the project, begun in 2007, requires careful planning and slow, steady attention to detail.

The group began by tracking down the glider's rusty frame in Missouri, then obtained 1,250 pages of original blueprints from a Texas museum. Today, these plans are guiding them as they painstakingly duplicate and install the glider's 70,000 parts -- 69,900 made of wood, Johns estimates. The CG-4 has an 84-foot wingspan, and is largely "glued, taped and tied" together, requiring 15 miles of cord and 10 miles of electrical tape.

To build an aircraft like this requires thousands of man-hours, as well as the ability to delay gratification until the great day when the glider -- now 80 percent finished -- is complete. How did Holm, Johns and Johnson develop the abilities and character traits necessary to do this?

As boys, they were all captivated by the wonder of flight. Johnson credits his childhood on a farm in Bathgate, N.D., with firing his imagination and teaching him to stick to a task. "If you wanted a toy, you had to make one," he says. He pounded his first airplane together out of old barn boards.

As a boy, Holm used to hang around a giant pile of wooden discards at the old Tonka Toy factory in Mound. "We'd find busted wheels, and take them home to build our own cars, trucks and planes from the rejects," he recalls. Johns, for his part, remembers lovingly constructing model airplanes out of cardboard, because wood was hard to come by. "You'd spend hours cutting out and gluing the 1/16th-inch layers, and then sand them down into just the right shape."

What differentiates these men's hobby -- inspired by childhood games and projects -- from our electronic playland? Unlike our frenetic digital amusements, their use of leisure time requires patience, resourcefulness, self-discipline and perseverance.

It also hones valuable, real-life skills -- in their case, in design and wood and metal working. With these skills, they can create something tangible, instead of getting caught up in will-o-the-wisp superman clicks that evaporate each night into the ethernet. Rather than offering an escape from life, their hobby is life-enhancing.

By sharing their work on the glider, Holm, Johns and the others have forged deep personal bonds. Their camaraderie distinguishes them from the solitary man in his basement, who stares night after night at his glowing screen. It has also given them a stake in their community's -- and their nation's -- history. When the glider is finished, Holm, Johns and the others plan to return it to the people of Minnesota.

In 25 years, how many of us will be equipped to take on the kind of creative project these men are engaged in? When we get drawn into our passive, seductive electronic world, are we just indulging in a few hours of misspent leisure time, or is there something more at stake?"

Saturday, September 4, 2010

KK takes on economics ..

The following is an excerpt found here:

http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentary/102186784.html?elr=KArks:DCiU1PciUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUU

"This Labor Day weekend, work is in short supply. Unemployment is almost 10 percent, and higher when you include those who have given up seeking work. The economy grew at a snail-paced 1.6 percent in the second quarter of 2010. Many economists fear that third-quarter growth will actually be negative.

President Obama assures us that he and Congress have been working overtime to get Americans out of this hole. He points to his nearly trillion-dollar stimulus -- which, astonishingly, exceeded the cost of the entire Iraq war, according to the Congressional Budget Office. He points to costly bailouts, to loan guarantees, to "cash for clunkers" and to his $8,000 tax credit for housing. But this avalanche of taxpayer money -- and the staggering national debt it's producing -- weren't enough, it seems. What now? Obama tells us we may need another stimulus.

As the Wall Street Journal put it last week: "Never before has government tried to do so much and achieved so little."

Americans know that the Obama/Pelosi plan to create jobs by expanding government isn't working. In fact, they believe -- increasingly -- that Obama's tactics are actually killing jobs. At the Technology Policy Institute's recent Aspen Forum, Intel CEO Paul Otellini issued a clarion call to face the economic facts that Team Obama is ignoring.

America is at a turning point, Otellini warned. Unless government policies change, he predicted, "the next big thing will not be invented here. Jobs will not be created here. And wealth will not accrue here." Our nation's legal and political environment is now so hostile to business, he said, that we can expect "an inevitable erosion and shift of wealth -- much like we're seeing today in Europe. This is the bitter truth."

America's combined state and federal corporate income tax rate -- at about 38 percent -- is the second highest in the industrial world, said Otellini. (The industrialized-nation average is 18.2 percent.) "It is precisely these high statutory corporate rates that punish the most dynamic and innovative firms and hinder their ability to compete globally," he said. Congress has compounded the problem by repeatedly failing to make an R&D tax credit permanent.

"I can tell you definitively that it costs $1 billion more per factory [out of $4 billion] for me to build, equip and operate a semiconductor manufacturing facility in the United States," Otellini said. "Ninety percent of the cost difference" is the result of tax and incentive policies. "With such policies," he asked, "are we surprised that companies are investing overseas?"

Obama and Co. have ramped up the obstacles American businesses face by piling on onerous new laws and regulations. They've enacted a sprawling 2,400-page health care law and a 2,300-page financial regulation law. Just around the corner? Perhaps union "card check" legislation and crushing new carbon regulations.

No one knows how the blizzard of new --and potential -- laws and regulations will affect the future costs of hiring and doing business. The resulting uncertainty has paralyzed the economy.

Obamacare is already killing jobs, though it does not go into effect fully until 2014. For example, Assurant Health recently laid off 130 workers at its offices in Milwaukee and in the Twin Cities suburb of Plymouth to prepare for the new law's costly mandates. Small-business owners fear adding workers -- in part because of Obamacare's red tape, which includes a requirement to file an IRS 1099 form for every vendor from whom they buy $600 or more in goods. All this before the regulations that spell out Obamacare's details are even written.

The Dodd/Frank financial regulation law is another unknown. It requires "no fewer than 243 new formal rule-makings by 11 different federal agencies," according to the Wall Street Journal. Their content is anyone's guess.

On taxes, confusion reigns. Will the Bush tax cuts be allowed to expire at the end of this year? If so, we will face the largest tax rise in at least 16 years. Will Congress raise the payroll tax? Pass a value-added tax? No one knows.

Obama seems oblivious to the havoc he and his allies in Congress are wreaking. The president has staffed his administration with ideologues who are big on academic theories but woefully short of real-world experience. Few have ever operated a business, or have made a payroll, or have been held accountable for the real-world consequences of their actions.

Increasingly, the American people seem to agree with Mort Zuckerman -- publisher, real-estate mogul and former big-time Obama fan. Obama's administration is "the most hostile to business in decades," Zuckerman said recently. The man who promised "hope" and "change" is presiding over "the most fiscally irresponsible government in America..."