Boże, któryś Tobiaszowi słudze Twemu, dal błogosławionego Rafała Archanioła za towarzysza w podróży, daj abyśmy słudzy Twoi zawsze jego opieką osłonieni, a pomocą wspierani byli. Przez Chrystusa Pana naszego. Amen.
For those who follow my blog, you will know that I have been commenting on NY State Controller Alan Hevesi and his repeated use of a State employee as a personal servant. The NY State Ethics Commission has now cited him for illegal activities and has referred the matter to the Legislature. He may be impeached.
It appears that the panel raised many of the issues I previously raised, including the fact that the State employee he used was his aide when he was NY City Controller. The employee provided the same services for him when they both worked for the city.
It appears that the aide, Mr. Nicholas Acquafredda, and yet another unnamed State employee both provided personal services to Mr. Hevesi on State time. In addition, the investigation alleges that Mr. Acquafredda had someone else entering his time records, and couldn’t perform the job he was supposed to be doing, because he was too busy being an errand boy.
Here’s a snippet from the NY Times article: Ethics Panel Says N.Y. Comptroller’s Use of Drivers Broke the Law
ALBANY, Oct. 23 —” The State Ethics Commission accused Comptroller Alan G. Hevesi on Monday of breaking the law by using state employees to chauffeur his wife, and sharply disputed his contention that his wife needed a driver for security reasons.
The accusation against Mr. Hevesi, the state’s chief fiscal watchdog, marks the first time that the commission has ever charged a statewide official with wrongdoing, officials said. The commission’s referral of the case to the Legislature left lawmakers scrambling to figure out how to discipline the guardian of the state’s finances.
The Legislature has a range of options, from doing nothing to fining Mr. Hevesi to removing him from office, possibly by impeachment, an action that has not been taken in decades. But the law for what comes next is murky, so the official accusation had officials in the Legislature and the governor’s office rummaging through their law books to figure out what to do.
The commission’s 26-page report sent shock waves through state politics and dealt a serious blow to Mr. Hevesi, a Democrat who is running for re-election in two weeks…
Mr. Hevesi should resign.
Peter of The Age to Come comments on the Prayer of Jabez and on our false notions of who and what God is. In pointing to this post the Young Fogey states, —God is not a vending machine.— Exactly right, God is not a slot machine dispensing happiness because we deserve it or ask for it.
I’ve reflected on this line of thinking from the perspective of the disaffected person seeking Christ, the person disaffected by our definition of them.
You know who ‘they’ are, the homosexual, the liberal, the conservative, the widow, the orphan, the aged, the poor, the Arab, the ‘free choice’ supporter, the person seeking cures through embryonic stem cell research.
It is our obligation as Christians to witness to these people, to acknowledge their pain and suffering, to lighten their load by our humanity and support, and in the end to show them that the world’s concept of an entitlement to happiness is a straw man.
We need to get away from hellfire condemnation (you have no right to suffer because your suffering is pure selfishness) and move to truthful charity.
This is not calling an evil good – we cannot veer from, or change God’s message. It is rather an act of catechetical guidance, helping them along the path to regeneration and from there on the road to Theosis. We need to assist them, and the world, in understanding that suffering is an on-going act of righteousness. Righteous suffering being suffering with purpose, and that purpose having true affect.
The AP reports: Olmert Brings Hard-Liner Into Government
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Monday brought into his government a hard-liner who wants to rid Israel of Arabs – a move that would shore up his shaky coalition but could hinder efforts to renew peace talks with the Palestinians.
Avigdor Lieberman, who leads the Yisrael Beiteinu party, said he hoped the deal to join Olmert’s governing coalition would be signed by Tuesday.
Yisrael Beiteinu, or “Israel Our Home,” brings 11 lawmakers into the coalition, giving Olmert control of 78 of 120 seats in the Knesset, or parliament…
Lieberman, 48, has a long record of hawkish positions toward the Palestinians…
He has also taken a tough line toward Israel’s own Arab minority.
He advocates trading Israeli Arab towns for West Bank settlements – in effect stripping Israeli Arabs of citizenship – and recently called for the execution of Israeli Arab lawmakers who met with leaders of Hamas, the ruling Palestinian group sworn to Israel’s destruction. Such positions have drawn accusations of racism.
But with his coalition weakened by infighting and harsh criticism of his handling of the Lebanon war, Olmert had little choice…
I know, I know, what are a few Arabs (including many Christian Arabs) and a little racism in comparison to holding on to power? These folks are expert in turning politics into an immoral exercise.
Many of history’s most notorious mass murderers also said that they had little choice.
From a beautiful reflection on our humanness from Huw Raphael: The Icon of God
In his homily Father Victor wondered how many of us could look at another human and see the icon, no matter how damaged.
…and upon expansion reveals why Thou shall not kill (murder, war, abortion, the death penalty, killing oneself through smoking, drugs, etc.) is a grave affront to God.
Julio Ojeda-Zapata reports on the early release (tomorrow) of Firefox 2.0 in The browser race is speeding up. An excerpt follows:
I love technology, but I’m fanatical about only a few things high-tech. Firefox is one of them.
The Web browser has always been an underdog to Microsoft’s market-dominant Internet Explorer, but Firefox is vastly superior in features and usability. That’s why it’s my fave browser.
So I am excited this week because Firefox creator Mozilla Corp. is releasing version 2.0. (It’s due to be available on Tuesday afternoon.) Its improvements aren’t revolutionary, but I’m rooting for the increasingly popular program to maintain its momentum in a suddenly intensified browser race.
That’s right: Dozing giant Microsoft recently awoke after neglecting its browser for years and also is offering a revamped version. It was released in final form Wednesday. While this new Internet Explorer isn’t revolutionary, either, and won’t make me ditch Firefox, it’s just useful and powerful enough to keep Microsoft in the browser game.
I test-drove near-final versions of Firefox 2 and Internet Explorer 7 on a Windows XP computer. There’s also a Macintosh version of Firefox, which I put on a new Intel-based Mac mini as well as an older, pre-Intel iMac machine…
The article goes on to evaluate Firefox 2.0 and IE 7.0. Check it out.
The AP reports on more union terrorism, and the requisite trouncing of the U.S. in front of the whole world. What Soviet and Chinese Communists couldn’t accomplish the homegrown ones are.
See: AFL-CIO files complaint with U.N. labor group: Protest is aimed at ruling on role of supervisors
WASHINGTON – Organized labor is filing an international protest about a federal decision redefining which workers are supervisors exempt from legal protection to join unions.
The AFL-CIO, a federation of about 50 labor unions with 9 million members, said it would file a complaint today with the International Labor Organization of the United Nations about a decision this month by the National Labor Relations Board.
The decision, covering a series of cases known as the Kentucky River cases, involved the role of a supervisor.
The board ruled that nurses who regularly run shifts at health care facilities should be considered supervisors and exempt from federal protections that cover union membership. The decision potentially has major implications for workers in other fields.
While the U.N. committee of labor law specialists from around the world has no enforcement power, the AFL-CIO is looking for support in efforts to restore the more traditional view of what makes a supervisor.
“This will demonstrate how far outside the mainstream of accepted international law the U.S. is moving,” said Craig Becker, a legal counsel to the AFL-CIO.
NLRB decisions cannot be directly appealed in the U.S. courts, although those issues might reappear in the courts in other labor cases, he said.
Workers classified as supervisors under the ruling would not be protected by the National Labor Relations Act. Dissenting members of the NLRB said the decision “threatens to create a new class of workers under federal labor law: workers who have neither the genuine prerogatives of management, nor the statutory rights of ordinary employees.”
Chwalebny wyznawco Chrystusa, który niczego innego na świecie nie pragnąłeś, jak tylko chwały Bożej i tryunfu Kościoła, uproś nam u Boga tę łaskę abyśmy Cię naśladując, mężnym umysłem znosili wszelkie utrapienia i przeciwności życia. Przez Chrystusa Pana naszego. Amen.