News Updates, 5/17-18

Weakland: First bishop to 'come out' voluntarily
Admits to having sexual relationships with several men

Opinion: Rod Dreher on 'Rembert the Gutless'
How is Weakland a moral authority on anything?

Pope receives unseemly torrent of criticism
'Pilgrimage of peace' nets barrage of hostility

Obama at ND: find common ground on abortion
Hundreds of students hold prayer vigil across campus

Text of Obama's Notre Dame commencement speech
'Father Jenkins... You are doing an outstanding job'

Protesting ND grads receive diplomas in Grotto
Alternative commencement ceremony held across campus

Bishop speaks at ND in support of protesters
Rallies support against Obama's commencement speech

Three hecklers booted from ND commencement
'You owe an apology to the Mother of God'

Rwandan priest accused of war crimes
Took part in the genocide of Tutsis in 1994

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Other Issues
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Obama Motors to Set New Vehicle Rules, First Carbon Limit
Chairman Baraq Hussein Obama will announce new vehicle-emission rules tomorrow, setting the first-ever nationwide limit on greenhouse-gas pollution from autos, said people familiar with the plan. The move would force automakers to meet a fuel-economy standard for 2016 models of slightly less than 35.5 miles a gallon, a target Congress has said wouldn’t have to be met until 2020, according to one of the people, who asked not to be identified until the plan is made public...

Treasuries Advance as Stocks Fall, Fed Prepares to Buy Debt
Treasuries rose, adding to last week’s gain, as Asian stocks extended losses and the Federal Reserve prepared to buy 10-year notes today. Benchmark 10-year yields will fall about 40 basis points by mid-year and the U.S. economic recovery may stall, according to a report from Goldman Sachs Group Inc., one of the 16 primary dealers that trade directly with the Fed. The central bank also plans to buy Treasuries on May 20 and May 21 as part of its plan to cap borrowing costs and combat the steepest U.S. recession in 50 years...


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"The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing.

All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal.

We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power."

-George Orwell, 1984