51 year-old Scott Roeder is being held on one count of 1st degree murder (pre-meditated) of Dr. Tiller, and two counts of aggravated assault as witnesses reported Roeder aimed his firearm at them, threatening them as they tried to intervene. Susan Peters, a reporter with KAKE, says “In a post from May, 2007 on Operation Rescue’s website, the suspect Roeder writes “… sometime soon would it be feasable to organize as many people as possible to attend Tiller’s church. (inside...

Wichita Kansas: Media outlets are reporting that Dr. George Tiller has been murdered at his church in Wichita, Kan. He is one of the nation’s few doctors who performs late-term abortions in keeping with state and federal laws. (I will be researching the diagnosis and eitiology of those late-term medical abortions soon, insofar as HIPAA laws will allow, to see what circumstances led to these particular operations being undertaken. There are often severe conditions warranting such surgery that...

Well, I could write a whole article about the labels/ monikers Latinos carry… we are Latinos, Latinas (speaking/living in a common Latinate language and bloodline)… we are Chicanos, Chicanas (a self-named title for people of Latino descent who raise political voices)… we are spics and anclas (derisive), indios (derisive), meztisos, meztisas (Native American and Spanish blood in those of us who are Latinos/ Latinas.) As if all that isn’t confusing enough, many of us also come...

There are many kinds of mothers… But, there’s another definition of ‘who is really a mother’ that has both breadth and depth…. one that includes this first kind of mother, but also does not define ‘mother’ by marital status, gender, or that both mother and child are still alive, or are yet separated by circumstances beyond their control and longing for each other. I think one short definitation of a mother is one who warmly loves and teaches, shelters and...

D.C. Gay Marriage Measure Set for Mayor’s Signature The original vote was 13-0, for the Washington D.C. Council to recognize marriages of ALL people that are recognized in other states, including same-gender marriages. At first Marion Barry (D-Ward8) rushed to one side of the Council votes to honor other States’ same-gender unions, voting yes for it. But then, seeming to pretend he didn’t understand what he was voting for, he asked Council for a ‘reconsideration’ of...

Isis and Osiris are sister/brother gods from ancient Egypt. Every night, the evil god Set destroys Osiris, cutting him into pieces and scattering his parts over creation. Osiris’s sister, Isis, searches for and puts all the parts back together again, so Osiris, the sun god, can rise anew the next morning. Something like that goes on with all of us too. Who hasn’t needed a defrag of the hard disk from time to time? With Mr. Steele’s most recent –inhospitable pronouncements...

———- CODA: To TMV Readers. I appreciate your bearing with me on the size of my editorial cartoons that are sometimes apparently cut off left or right side on some monitors. I am just learning to wrassle with Image Manager and sizing of images on WordPress. Generally, I post images big-size so people with out-of-date reading glasses like me, can actually read the font size without going more blind. I finally after a few hours of beating my forehead on the monitor, figured out how...

This week Rep. Virginia Foxx, a grandmother, called the murder of Matthew Shepard, specifically the two convicted murderers’ intent to kill a man for being homosexual, “a hoax.” Mrs. Shepard, Matthew’s mother, who has suppported hate-crime bills since her son’s murder, was in chambers at the time. After a roar against Mrs. Foxx’s blithe use of the word ‘hoax’ ensued, she issued a tepid bathwater ‘apology’ which many saw as an insincere version...

I met a man today a young man with muscles lots of them a weightlifter/ bodybuilder… they’re so taken with themselves you know, all about themselves. He was clerking in a power-vitamin store where I was buying the 4# jug of protein powder. Upon leaving, my daughter pointed out I was driving around with my new license plates on the seat instead of on the bumper where they belonged, and my temporary paper tag in the window had expired yesterday. I didnt want to get a ticket, so… ‘Can...

PANIC vs WISDOM No panic. Get facts. Here are some of the most salient: STAYING UP TO DATE ABOUT SWINE FLU and HEALTH ISSUES Rather than placing here materials about Swine Flu that are being updated by the moment, Google is your friend for most up-to-date info… go to the general news-sites you trust, and especially, go to the pages of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention…which carries constant updates on the Swine Flu issue. TO PROTECT ONE’S HEALTH SYMPTOMS …follow...

I’ve recently been trying to understand how the MSM covers religious issues and people. I find, reading the religious news feeds rather ‘religiously’ daily, that many stories are buried by media before they find daylight. There is one here, at National Catholic Reporter online: Food aid for Catholic Relief Services programs in Rwanda is part of the cargo on the Maersk Alabama, the scene of a recent pirate hostage standoff and hijacking. CRS, the U.S. bishops’ overseas aid...

DATELINE: re SOMALIA, AFRICA U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Monday that three Somali pirates who were killed by the Navy’s Seals to end a hostage crisis were “untrained” teenagers. Addressing an audience at the Marine Corps War College in Quantico, Virginia, Gates said that the slain pirates, aged at between 17 to 19, were heavily armed but inexperienced. [The fourth teenager who is still alive is reported to be 16 and is in US custody.] They were shot dead...

Some may think the Cuban trade embargo is the most profound hardliner restriction all these years. It may be. But there’s another embargo that has gone on since many Cubans fled the island in the 60s during a military takeover… and that is the embargo on hearts and minds that has kept families separated from one another between mainland US and mainland Cuba… The latter hardline embargo has extracted a ‘right of humanity’ by setting barriers for decades against family members...

Of the four Somali terrorists in a life boat holding US Captain Phillips hostage, three are dead. Captain Phillips is alive and free and well. As is a fourth ‘pirate.’ Prior to the US action to free the Captain with firepower, the fourth “pirate” who for reasons yet unclear at the time of this first reporting, appears to have been aboard the US Navy ship Bainbridge. He reportedly was stabbed (UPDATE CORRECTION, original said ‘US sailor’) in the hand by a Maersk...

The Passion: After Beauty and Truth are Put To Death I wanted you to see this poem… it’s last lines tell of dying from pursuing truth and beauty in culture, in life… inferring an exhaustion sets in, one loses energy eventually… and dies not from glut of truth or beauty, but for want of them. There is more. Each reader will find their own thought somewhere in this poem, I think. I Died For Beauty by Emily Dickenson I died for beauty, but was scarce Adjusted in the tomb, When...

Last night, a local Network news affiliate had one of their newscasters saying: the “captain’s was a botched escape.” Botched? Hardly. Unable to make it to safe ship, yes. But, “Botched?” … you sometimes wonder who is writing the teleprompter copy… Not that long ago, the same news affiliate said of a child who was sexually intruded upon by an adult, that the “affair had gone on for over a year.” Affair? Have people truly somehow replaced their...

There’s an old saying that if you look, there will come a sparkling diamond from the block of blank coal. In this poem by Lewis Hyde, he shows us how lovers struck speechless when insulting each other, actually are removed forcibly– via their sudden muteness — from saying any further cruel thing to one another. That being struck dumb can sometimes be a good thing. He talks about how a crack in the ice might make the imagined ice fisherman disappointed, but the crack makes it so...

It’s not Michael Steele, it’s not Newt Gingrich, it’s not Rush LImbaugh, it’s Norm Kong-Coleman, the Republican running for Senate in one of the most tangled Minnesota election counts ever. Mr. Coleman is running against the comedian and radio talk show host, Mr. Al Zilla-Franken… and well, here, you read…. from the Washington Post, keeping in mind, and kicking aside that Mr. Coleman lost a foray today– –what makes Coleman the most powerful Republican...

Well, look. Our Lady can withstand anything, including people who want to hijack her into their internecine fighting. She grew up that way, remember? Pregnant and not married. Bearing the Son of God. Yeah sure, said the people of her time and they were mightily insulted. But, Guadalupe is the major girl gang leader in heaven. She can handle herself just fine. Remember, she is called La Conquista, the one who conquers the hearts of others. In other words, the mother of Christ is filled with love…...

The Electronic Letter Makers they are polite always wealthy but have one tiny trouble, so much money, but the wrong visa or safety deposit box key is missing or the country is under siege and the money sewn into pillows, or a bank account has been abandoned by a dead person… and all that is needed is a stranger– us– to wave the magic wand of incredulity… and for cooperating with the very high up person and smuggling their money somewhere, somehow, they will give us half. All...

THE CSENDES EMBER We were climbing up past Maroon Bells It was getting to be a straight up climb. Needing breath, we stopped talking… Ran out of words even more than running out of breath. Something about being in the Csendes ember of Nature Makes small talk stupider than usual… Csendes ember, amongst my Magyar tribal people means, Man of Silence, the name for any mountain anywhere, human or rock. Running out of words… Sometimes it’s all been said anyway, hasn’t it? And even...

You know, quoth Dr. E, this form of logic makes me think once again that if logic were all it’s cracked up to be, men would ride sidesaddle. From AP, by Donna Bryson, with Associated Press writers Ashwini Bhatia in Dharmsala and Malin Rising in Stockholm contributing. JOHANNESBURG – South Africa barred the Dalai Lama from a peace conference in Johannesburg this week, hoping to keep good relations with trading partner China but instead generating a storm of criticism. Friday’s peace...