Whipped Cream Difficulties

Benny’s stepping down from the Papacy is going to be one of the biggest news stories of the year. I wanted to note it here because it gives me a chance to plug a book I really liked: Thomas J. Reese’s Inside the Vatican: The Politics and Organization of the Catholic Church.

Reese devotes a fair amount of space to discussing questions about the papacy, such as: what happens if the Pope develops Alzheimer’s? What happens if he becomes totally incapacitated, say by a stroke? Or if he goes crazy? What happens if the Pope is in a coma (I know it’s serious)? And, can the Pope resign? I guess we have an answer to that last question: “Yes”.

I missed the 70th anniversary of the sinking of the troop transport Dorchester on February 3, 1943. You remember the story of the Dorchester, right? Or if you don’t remember the name of the ship…

For a long time, the story of the four chaplains was everywhere.
In classrooms, posters showed the men of different faiths, arms linked in prayer, braced against the waves engulfing the deck of their torpedoed troop ship on Feb. 3, 1943. They had given their life preservers to frantic soldiers and urged troops paralyzed with fear to jump into the icy North Atlantic before they were sucked down by the sinking ship’s whirlpool.

They were:

• John Washington, a Catholic priest. (“…Washington was asked by one player to bless his hand.
  ‘What?’ the father asked in mock outrage. ‘You want me to waste a blessing on a lousy pair of treys?'”)
• Rabbi Alexander Goode.
• Dutch Reformed minister Clark Poling.
• Methodist minster George Fox.

I didn’t get a chance to post an update from Friday’s Bell trial, so let me do that now: Teresa Jacobo is still on the stand, and they’re still going over the “working full time for the city” thing.

Questioned Friday by her attorney Shepard Kopp, Jacobo testified that Rizzo never mentioned that a full-time salary required additional work on authorities.
“Did anyone tell you that you needed to devote a certain number of hours per week, per month or per year to work on those authorities?” Kopp asked, referring to the various boards on which council members served.
“No,” Jacobo said.

In addition, nobody told Jacobo that “a certain number of meetings of those authorities” needed to be conducted at city council meetings, or that the meetings needed to last for a certain amount of time. Jacobo also claims that she gave out business cards with her home and cell numbers to her constituents; “Residents would often call her at all hours, she testified, for help with city issues.”

As I’ve said previously, a lot of the defense seems to be “it was all Rizzo”, as well as “nobody told me”, and “I assumed it was okay because the city attorney didn’t say it wasn’t”. I’m still thinking we’re going to end up with acquittals for the council members, and the bus is going to run over Rizzo, back up, and run over him again.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 11th, 2013 at 9:19 am and is filed under Books, California Über Alles, Clippings, History, Law. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.