THE OTHER SHOE DROPS: Updates To Previous Posts
† Manatees Have A Cow Over Losing Endangered Species Classification (second item): In another legal setback for our aquatic friends, the U.S. Supreme Court voted 5-4 to lift an injunction against the Navy's use of sonar in submarine-hunting training exercises off the coast of CA, reports The Associated Press. Environmentalists claimed that sonar can harm whales and dolphins, but in the majority opinion Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that “plaintiffs' ecological, scientific and recreational interests in marine mammals … are plainly outweighed by the Navy's need to conduct realistic training exercises.”
The Fearless Leader of the Manatees (below, left) decried the high court ruling.
† Why The Stiletto Cannot Support Mitt Romney For President (second item): There they go again. After repeatedly pledging to Holocaust survivors and their families that they would stop the bizarre and disrespectful practice of posthumous proxy baptisms of Jews killed in Nazi concentration camps, a review of the genealogical database maintained by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints shows resubmissions and new entries of names of Dutch, Greek, Polish and Italian Jews, reports The Associated Press. And a sampling of several thousand entries indicates such baptismal rites for Holocaust victims performed as recently as July.
At a press conference held on the 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht, Ernest Michel, honorary chairman of American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors & Their Descendants said:
“Baptism of a Jewish Holocaust victim and then merely removing that name from the database is just not acceptable. We ask you to respect us and our Judaism just as we respect your religion. We ask you to leave our six million Jews, all victims of the Holocaust, alone, they suffered enough.”
According to AP, the 1995 agreement between Mormons and Jews regarding these baptisms did not ban the practice outright but set restrictions when Holocaust victims were involved:
[That] would essentially be asking Mormons to alter their beliefs, church Elder Lance B. Wickman said Monday in an interview with reporters in Salt Lake City.
“We don't think any faith group has the right to ask another to change its doctrines,” Wickman said. "If our work for the dead is properly understood ... it should not be a source of friction to anyone. It's merely a freewill offering."
That doesn’t cut it with Michel, whose parents were killed at Auschwitz:
“They tell me, that my parents' Jewishness has not been altered but ... 100 years from now, how will they be able to guarantee that my mother and father of blessed memory who lived as Jews and were slaughtered by Hitler for no other reason than they were Jews, will someday not be identified as Mormon victims of the Holocaust?”
How indeed? Michel’s argument can also be made for victims of the Armenian Genocide – and for any group that was decimated in an ethnic cleansing meant to wipe them off the face of the earth.
As a bishop in the Mormon church, Mitt Romney has without a doubt performed such proxy baptisms, and if he has any plans for a 2012 run for the White House, The Stiletto strongly urges him to repudiate his church’s odious practice and use his considerable influence to effect a major doctrinal shift to forbid proxy baptisms of non-Mormons – even if it takes a “revelation” to do so – else she will oppose his candidacy as vigorously as she did this time around (second item).
† Updates To Previous Posts (second item, Obama’s Family Values: Part V): It turns out that Barack Obama’s fugitive alien absconder aunt is no longer living at taxpayer expense in a South Boston housing project. How Zeituni Onyango came to avail herself of taxpayer largesse in the first place is the subject of this Boston Globe editorial:
Under federal law, a family is allowed access to federally subsidized housing provided at least one member is a citizen or eligible noncitizen, such as an alien with permanent resident status. Housing authorities are required to check the status of applicants through databases maintained by the Department of Homeland Security. But no such inquiries can be made for state-subsidized housing, based on a 1977 federal consent decree that places citizenship status out of bounds. Confused? So are officials at the 244 housing authorities across the state who maintain 50,000 state-sponsored units and 34,000 federally sponsored units. …
No one at the state Department of Housing and Community Development can offer an explanation for why illegal immigrants should be allowed access to state-subsidized housing, other than to refer to the 1977 federal consent decree. On its face, it makes no sense to deny low-income citizens or eligible noncitizens access to housing in order to accommodate law-breakers.
When Onyango sought asylum in the U.S. in 2003 she was eligible for a subsidized apartment, but no one informed the Boston Housing Authority that her asylum request had been denied so they could initiate eviction proceedings.
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