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Speaker Pelosi is allowed a vacation like every other working person; however, while her colleagues in the House are working for their constituencies and spending time with their families during the recess, Pelosi is defiantly pursuing her own agenda. Speaker Nancy Pelosi is in the Middle East during the spring recess of Congress this week. She is meeting with dignitaries such as Syrian president, Bashar Assad, and Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas.

Our government was formed by a Constitution of enumerated powers. This means that the Constitution delegates power in the affirmative, and Congress is only allowed to exercise those powers stated in the Constitution.

According to the Constitution, the president is given the power to “receive ambassadors and other public ministers” (Art. II, Sect. 3). Also, the president appoints United States ambassadors to work in his stead with the advice and consent of the Senate (Art. II, Sect. 2). As far as I can recall, Speaker Pelosi is not the president nor is she an appointed ambassador of the president. So, why, then, is she acting as an ambassador to a nation (namely Syria) that the elected President of the United States has decided to ignore?

Regardless of whether the President’s decision to isolate Syria is a good one or not, Speaker Pelosi is over-stepping her bounds as Speaker with her out-right defiance of our Head of State. Her actions show that she has very little regard for the Constitution and American government as an institution.

With all of the churn about Fred Thompson and Newt Gingrich, we here at Gop3.com have reset our primary poll to get a better feel for where everyone stands.

Please vote in the poll on the right side of the page. We will keep you up to date as it progresses so be sure to check back often or subscribe to our feed.

I hope this is the first, last, and only post I have to ever make about Ann Coulter for a long time.

I have received many comments and questions on Ann Coulter’s speech at CPAC. To clear up any questions or confusion: I did not attend the speech. I don’t think anyone from GOP3 took the time to wait in line to listen to her. I think one day I would try to see her speak just to say I did, but for now, I don’t think waiting in a long line at a conference to hear her is worth my time right now. Besides the fact I was not present at her speech, I didn’t even include an afterthought about what I had heard because I don’t find her particularly insightful or exciting.

In response to her comments/speech overall: I probably would have laughed if I had been there. She just wanted to stir some controversy, which of course is her trademark. If I were an offended, disgusted lefty (or even an offended, disgusted conservative), I would have just rolled my eyes and moved on. It is no surprise that she would say something to get people all riled up. A lot of you hate Ann Coulter. So why would you fuel the fire by getting your all panties in a twist? This is exactly what she wants: getting people really angry.

Ann Coulter was one speaker at a 3-day conference with dozens of conservative gurus who said infinitely more insightful, meaningful things to thousands of young conservative college students. I wouldn’t get too worked up about it, but thank you for your comments and questions.

CRISIS Magazine, from the Morley Group, published in its most recent edition a survey of all 176 dioceses and archdiocese of the Latin rite of the Roman Catholic Church in America.

The survey functions something like a much more limited US News and World Report ranking for dioceses. It looks at three indicators of diocesan health: the growth or decline in the number of active priests, the number of new ordinations as a percentage of the number of priests, and adults received into the Church (adult converts).

On the whole, Wisconsin’s five dioceses did not do very well as compared to other dioceses nationwide. The Diocese of Green Bay was one of the ten worst diocese nationwide for the percentage decline in the number of active priests, down 36% from ten years ago (1995/2005).

Averaging the rankings among the 176 dioceses in the three catergories, we find that Green Bay comes in at 164, a drop of 59 spots since 1995. La Crosse comes in at 161, a drop of 43 spots since 1995. The diocese of Madison comes in at 170, a drop of 6 spots since 1995. The archdiocese of Milwaukee comes in at 162, an improvement of five slots since 2005.

Only the diocese of Superior stays out of the bottom twenty dioceses in the nation. Superior came in at a respectable 76, in the top half, then, on the overall, and at 50 in rank for ordinations and 48 in rank for adult receptions. This represents a gain of 21 spots since 1995.

Now, it should be noted that the rankings should not necessarily be correlated with the bishops whose sees they currently are. Archbishop Dolan took over an already struggling Milwaukee in 2002, only serving 2 1/2 of the 10 years surveyed. Bishop Banks in Green Bay did not take over until Dec. of 2003. Bishop Listecki of La Crosse has only been in that post since March 2005.

Only one of Wisconsin’s bishops was head of a diocese before his current post. Bishop Morlino in Madison did not assume his post until August of 2003. Before that he was Bishop of Helena, Montana, for several years, which came in 64 nationwide, a jump of 78 spots from 1995, and 3rd nationwide in adult receptions in 2005. Before that he was rector of the Cathedral and a diocesan bureaucrat and priest in Kalamazoo, MI, which came in 3rd nationwide on the overall.

So on the whole, I’ll simply say kudoes to Bishop Fliss of Superior. He has served Superior as her bishop since 1985, and in the second half of his tenure piloted his diocese on up these rankings. Moreover, I think he has the best website of all five Wisconsin diocese.

CRISIS asked seven leading American Catholics to reflect on the report overall; you can read their responses online.

I received an email from a colleague of mine with a press release attachment from the World Congress of Families. The Italian Parliament just passed a bill that would grant legal rights and benefits normally granted to married couples to unmarried, cohabiting couples, which of course includes homosexual couples. This includes inheritance rights, welfare benefits and input on medical decisions. No matter what the law is in Italy, this is just another excuse to make a step toward legitimizing, and then legalizing gay marriage. This is more than granting “rights” and “benefits” to those who should not be receiving them in a certain capacity, this is substituting traditional marriage with an arrangement that will continue to severely weaken the family. From the press release (ChristianNewsWire):

The bill grants Italy’s estimated 560,000 cohabitating couples many benefits traditionally reserved for marriage – including inheritance rights, welfare benefits and input on medical decisions.

The legislation threatens to split Prodi’s narrow center/left coalition, with the government’s minister of justice boycotting the cabinet session in which the bill was approved. Justice Minister Clemente Mastella, a member of a Catholic party in the coalition, says he opposes the bill because “it seeks solutions and guarantees which imitate marriage.”

Warned Deputy Speaker of the Senate Roberto Calderoli: “They are destroying the family. This is just a Trojan horse to allow marriage between gays.”

I will say that gay marriage is not the only issue here. This bill has put a state-sanctioned “ok” on cohabiting living situations by recognizing them as legal relationships by conferring various benefits. Marriage, which is not only the foundational institution of political and civil society, is also the starting point for families. The fact that cohabitation is on the rise has had devastating consequences on the natural family and societies around the world. More and more children, especially in Western Europe, have been born out of wedlock and global birth rates are dropping incredibly quickly. Italy, in fact, is a country with one of the lowest birthrates, 1.2 children per mother. I suspect that when this bill takes effect, we will be seeing seriously upsetting results within the decade.

Here are the latest topics in Gop3.com: The Forum:

Vagina Monologues at Marquette University
Wisconsin Losing College Grads, Taxes to blame?
Georgetown Vs Marquette Predictions
Will Dominic James go pro?

After you register, be sure to check out the Member’s Lounge.

Today is the last day in January and the 110th Congress has yet to follow through with Speaker Pelosi’s five day work week plan for the House. Granted last week the Republicans were in Maryland for their retreat and tomorrow begins the Democrat’s retreat; however, even next week will be a shortened week for the Congress. Is the Speaker re-evaluating her decision or will the newly elected Speaker make the House buckle down before the President’s Day/District Work Period?

(My guess is no considering the fact that that week is Feburary 19th - 23rd.)

It would be an understatement to say that I am disappointed in the university I recently graduated from.

Marquette University’s about face on the Vagina Monologues is an example of masquerading behind a newly applied school policy in order to betray our Catholic Identity by putting on a morally reprehensible play about promiscuity, pedophilia and homosexual rape. All of this, in the name of “Academic Freedom” for the teachers.

Out of the otherside of our hypocritical administrators’ mouths comes the destructive denial of the Students for Academic Freedom on campus. Using a series of carefully constructed straw man arguments (described and dissected by Chuck, one of the founders of the organization), the university set up the Students for Academic Freedom for failure and them blew them over. This is just another glaring indicator of the Marquette University administrators’ continuing disregard for the university’s students and it’s Catholic identity.

I think Marquette is a good university that has the potential to be a great university but, not when it betrays it’s values and disrespects it’s students. Here are the three things I am asking you to do to show your support for the Students for Academic Freedom.

1. Email a simple request asking for the decision against Students for Academic Freedom to be overturned and requesting that Marquette stay true to it’s Catholic values when considering the Vagina Monologues to:
Father Wild robert.wild@marquette.edu
Daniel Callendrillo musg.president@mu.edu
Brock Banks musg.senate@mu.edu

2. Write an letter to the editor of The Warrior: Marquette’s Independent Student Newspaper

3. Join the Facebook group “We need a Student Bill of Rights at Marquette” a group of students who are behind the Students for Academic Freedom.

If you want to show Marquette the ridiculousness of it’s decision to support the Vagina Monologues as well, you can always join the satirical “Penis Monologues” facebook group.

ABC News Reports Yesterday:

Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illlin., wants every American to have health insurance, and said today that that goal should be a dominant issue in the 2008 election.
“In the 2008 presidential and congressional campaigns all across the country, affordable, universal healthcare for every single American must not be a question of whether, it must be a question of how,” Obama said in a speech before the Families USA conference.
Obama, who plans to officially launch his bid for president next month, also offered a timeframe for his goal saying that he is “determined that by the end of the first term of the next president, we should have universal healthcare in this country.”

A question not of if, but how? That’s the pressing important question every canidate absolutely must answer, right?

So, Senator, what’s your answer to how?

Because in the speech, you didn’t give one.

Saddam’s brother has been hanged and evidently, been beheaded as well. Films of the execution were not distributed or leaked like the Saddam execution video. However, the description of the hanging on Reuter’s was almost as bad as the videos released.

Officials showed journalists film of Barzan and former judge Awad Hamed al-Bander standing side by side in orange jumpsuits on the scaffold, appearing pale and trembling with fear as the hangmen placed black hoods over their heads.

As the two trap doors swung open, the force of the rope jerked Bander’s head off. The head fell to the floor next to his body in a pool of blood as Bander’s corpse swung above it.

This description, from an international news source, sound’s like a scene from a violent video game or movie. My question to you is, is this level of detail in text or video necessary to convince the public of the death of evil men? Would these hangings have the same impact on dictators-to-be if they were not described or depicted? Are these displays the byproduct of an increasingly brutal Hollywood culture?

I would hope this level of gore is not necessary but, if the market is any indicator of desire, our cultural demand for this type of violent description is on the rise.