Take 2 ibuprofen & breathe deeply

Please pass the ibuprofen.

Cardinal J. Francis Stafford (formerly archbishop of Denver and now stationed at the Vatican) dissed President-elect Barack Obama in a recent lecture at Catholic University of America. Stafford said that Obama was ushering in a time of trial for America and that he is "aggressive, disruptive and apocalyptic."

And one more Ibuprofen please.

Maryknoll Father Roy Bourgeois is a veteran of Vietnam, pastoral work in Bolivia and El Salvador, and 18 years organizing to close the notorious "School of the Americas" known as the "School of Assassins." (For details on the SOA, including long lists of murderous graduates, go to: http://www.soaw.org/) Now Roy has been threatened with excommunication. His crime? He has unflinchingly supported the ordination of women and took part last August in Kentucky in the ordination of Janice Sevre-Duszynska. His 30-day deadliine for retraction of support for women's ordination ended last weekend as he led this year's protest at the SOA. I have heard he is now going to the Vatican to appeal, but I can't find further news. (A Vatican spokesman, Rev. Federico Lombardi, has said that Roy's excommunication would likely be automatic, but that does not seem to be clear in canon law.)

Here is Roy's response: "As a Catholic priest for thirty-six years, in conscience I cannot remain silent about injustice in my Church. I and many have come to the conclusion that the exclusion of women in the Catholic Church is a grave injustice, and I simply must—I cannot, in conscience, accept the Vatican’s demand that I recant my belief and my public statements in support of women’s ordination. This is simply wrong."

Stay tuned. And don't lose that ibuprofen bottle.

No slowing down for the Destroyer

Nobody but nobody should be surprised. George W. Bush is going to build up his resume as Destroyer-in-Chief till the day he steps down from the throne. (Well, not quite that long. By law, he has to finish his destroying by Dec. 20. But I'm sure he would be quite happy to use the rest of his time to shred records.)

The Unitary Lame Duck has dispatched his hatchet wielders to cause as much damage as possible. Some of the targets:

* Weaken the Clean Air Act
* Allow coal-fired power plants near national parks
* Diminish scientific review of projects that could harm endangered species
* Ease up on mining companies that want to dump their toxic waste into streams
* Open up millions of acres of federal land to oil and gas exploration
* Continue to downplay global warming
* Give the FBI new power to spy on Americans and infiltrate peaceful groups
* Allow the FBI to do racial and religious profiling

Hmmm. Some have said that Bush could not fall any lower in his approval ratings. Hah.

And apparently it will take at least months for the Obama administration to reverse this pathetic stuff.

A demeaning cloud

In the midst of all the wonderful sunshine of the Obama-Biden victory, a depressing little cloud showed up. Benjamin Emanuel, the father of Rahm Emanuel (Barack Obama's choice for chief of staff) had this to say about his son:

"Obviously he will influence the president to be pro-Israel. Why wouldn't he be? What is he, an Arab? He's not going to clean the floors of the White House."

Good grief, here we go yet again.

But the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee responded quickly and pointedly: "There should be no place for such demeaning rhetoric, and these comments are contrary to the very type of change the president-elect promised he would bring to America."

Let's hope that by now there has been some very strong filial correction delivered to dad.

He won, we won, the world won

I say without any hesitation that this has been one of the greatest nights of my life. And I am sure that countless others feel the same way.

In the wake of slavery, lynch mobs, the vast power of the KKK, assassinations of activists and endless modalities of segregation and discrimination, tonight a black man was elected president of the United States of America. Even a capital state of the Confederacy, Virginia, voted for him. (As I write this, the electoral votes stand at 338 for Barack Obama and 160 for John McCain.)

By 8:15 p.m., I was in the midst of a wonderfully noisy crowd in front of the barrio headquarters of Raúl Grijalva, one of the first in Congress to support Obama. Raúl gave a simple, beautiful talk, thanking his legion of volunteers who have gone door to door for months and echoing Barack's message of challenge and hope for the future.

A computer was projecting MSNBC on a high outdoor scrreen. I think it was two minutes after nine when a graphic suddenly showed Obama's electoral numbers had gone over the top. The local scene had already been electric, and the response to this news would have blown away the roof if we'd had one.

Goodbye to Bushworld with its outrageous impunity. Goodbye to the monarchical "unitary presidency." Goodbye to preemptive war, to illegal prisons and torture. Goodbye to unbridled deregulation. Goodbye to thumbing the nose at the rest of the world.

It is a brand new day for our country, and yes, for the world.

Day of the Migrant Dead

On Saturday we had this year's Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) walk to San Xavier Mission (just outside of Tucson) to remember all the migrants who have died crossing the desert in search of work. About 80 walkers carried crosses with the names of those whose bodies were found along the Arizona-Mexico border during the year that ended Sept. 30. But many of the crosses just said "desconocido" - unknown. I took this photo at the prayer service ending the eight-mile walk.



Our crazy immigration policy of the last dozen years has caused a steady stream of migrant deaths. Here are the numbers of known deaths in the last eight years just on the Arizona part of our 2,000 mile border with Mexico. (There is no doubt that many bodies are never found in our vast desert.)
2000-2001 -- 136 deaths
2001-2002 -- 163 deaths
2002-2003 -- 205 deaths
2003-2004 -- 234 deaths
2004-2005 -- 282 deaths
2005-2006 -- 205 deaths
2006-2007 -- 237 deaths
2007-2008 -- 183 deaths
Since Oct. 1st -- 6 deaths