Today on "Kresta in the Afternoon" - June 7, 2012

Talking about the "things that matter most" on June 7
4:00 – Kresta Comments

4:20 – Facebook plan to let kids join site finds resistance
Facebook is looking to tap a new market: kids. The social media giant is developing technology that would allow children younger than 13 – now banned - to use the site under parental supervision. But the idea is meeting much resistance. Jim Steyer, author of Talking Back to Facebook: The Common Sense Guide to Raising Kids in the Digital Age, says now, more than ever, parents need help in navigating their kids’ online, media-saturated lives. He joins us as doe Pam Stenzel, author of Who's In Your Social Network?: Understanding the Risks Associated with Modern Media and Social Networking and How it Can Impact Your Character and Relationships. She makes the case that many discover too late that uncritical participation can lead to distorted relationships and even stunted personal character.

5:00 – Why Catholicism Matters: How Catholic Virtues Can Reshape Society in the 21st Century
In recent years the Catholic Church has gone through turbulent times with the uncovering of horrible abuse. As a result many positive aspects of what the Catholic Church teaches and practices are now being overlooked, not just by the media, but by people in and out of the pews. This is not only unfortunate, but detrimental to society at large. As Bill Donohue makes plain, the Church’s teachings remain the best guide to good living ever adopted. Moreover, the content of these teachings defy today's typical ideological categorizations; the Church is decidedly conservative in matters of morality and compellingly liberal in social and economic affairs. Bill is here to tell us Why Catholicism Matters: How Catholic Virtues Can Reshape Society in the 21st Century.

PHONY ATTACK ON CARDINAL DOLAN

(Catholic League) Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments as follows: Timothy Cardinal Dolan is being criticized for inducing suspected miscreant priests to exit the priesthood while he was the Archbishop of Milwaukee. The attack is phony: if the issue were how to handle sex abusers, his critics would have previously commented on the following:

• In California, all government employees convicted of any crime receive a full pension
• A Los Angeles teacher charged with 23 counts of lewd acts with children aged 6-10 was paid $40,000 this year to drop his appeal
• In the state of Washington, a teacher accused of sexual misconduct was given $55,000 to withdraw his termination appeal this year
• A teacher in New York State (NYS) convicted this year of downloading child porn was awarded nearly $22,000 a year
• A convicted sex abuser in NYS serving up to 50 years is receiving a pension of more than $52,000
• Another sex offender in NYS convicted of child porn possession is receiving $49,210 in a pension
• In 2012, a New York City teacher convicted of a sex offense was paid over $100,000 a year while sitting for ten years in a rubber room; he is entitled to $85,400 a year in a pension; and he will also receive $55,000 for unused sick days
• A Queens guidance counselor accused of molesting a learning-disabled student has been receiving $102,852 a year since 2003
• A Queens teacher who allegedly molested and then married a girl (after he impregnated her) has been receiving $94,145 a year since 2003 (he was previously accused of molesting two 12 year-olds)

None of these incidents—and there are hundreds like them—will ever get the goat of those taking cheap shots at Cardinal Dolan. He inherited a big problem from the disgraced Milwaukee Archbishop Rembert Weakland, and did what he could to correct matters. Moreover, unlike public school employers, he didn’t grant lifetime salaries and benefits to suspected offenders. He should be commended, not condemned, for doing so.

Today on "Kresta in the Afternoon" - June 6, 2012

Talking about the "things that matter most" on June 6

4:00 – The Global War Against Baby Girls
Today Live Action released undercover footage showing two abortion clinics in Arizona agreeing to break state law and perform an illegal sex-selective abortion. This video is the third release in Live Action’s “Gendercide” project, documenting the abortion industry’s support for sex-selective abortion in America. This on the heels of Democrats in the US Congress opposing a ban on sex-selective abortion last week. Last fall Nicholas Eberstadt published an extensive report on “The Global War Against Baby Girls.” At this point the report seems prophetic. He joins us today.

4:20 – Kresta Comments

5:00 – Unbridled Grace: A True Story About the Power of Choice
A naïve doctor fresh out of school was just what the Russian Mafia sought for their fraudulent medical ring. As a surface Christian living a self-absorbed life, Dr. Michael Norman was the perfect hire for their web of evil after answering a two-line classified ad in the newspaper. Months later, it became difficult to distinguish the bad guys from the good guys as Dr. Norman's cooperation was cruelly turned against him by corrupt government officials well aware of his accidental ties to this criminal conspiracy. What follows is a frightening true story that could occur to any of us, and a powerful faith journey to redemption that is made possible only through our Christian faith and the bold use of our power of choice for God.

Gendercide Part III: AZ Abortion Clinics Break Law to Abort Baby Girls in New Undercover Video

Live Action has releasd yet another video of undercover footage showing two National Abortion Federation (NAF) clinics in Arizona agreeing to break state law and perform an illegal sex-selective abortion. Today’s video is the third release in Live Action’s “Gendercide” project, documenting Planned Parenthood and NAF’s support for sex-selective abortion in America.

The footage shows two NAF members, Camelback Family Planning in Phoenix and the Tucson Women’s Center in Tucson, promising to ignore the law and perform a sex-selective abortion and coaching a woman to lie on official paperwork to conceal the illegal abortion. When the woman purportedly seeking to abort her girl and try again for a boy explains this at the Camelback clinic, a counselor named Barb advises, “Don’t tell us that, because we don’t want to know.” Referring to the clinic’s abortion doctor, Gabrielle Goodrick, Barb says, “You can tell her, she’s gonna tell you the same thing, just: Don’t let it be down! She’s really good about that. You’ll like that about her.”

At the Tucson clinic, the surgical assistant Francisco tells the woman, “We could lose our license,” but agrees to cover-up her sex-selective abortion. “I’ll just forget about it,” he says, “But just be sure not to mention it” to the abortion doctor–“Don’t even mention it to him.”

NAF is the professional trade group for abortion doctors and clinics in the U.S. and Canada. Many NAF board members are current or former Planned Parenthood officials, and Planned Parenthood representatives frequently play a prominent role at NAF annual meetings. Sex-selective abortion is a felony in Arizona. No one may knowingly perform a sex-selective abortion in Arizona, or solicit or accept money to do so.

Live Action has sent the full footage from the Arizona clinics to the state Attorney General, Tom Horne, and to local law enforcement.

Live Action president Lila Rose urges Arizona authorities to enforce the state’s sex-selection ban: “Sex-selective abortion is a global search-and-destroy mission against little girls that is spreading at an alarming rate. While we wait for Congress to pass the Prenatal Non-Discrimination Act to ban sex-selective abortion in the U.S., state authorities should vigorously enforce Arizona’s law. The clinics supporting sex-selective abortion should be investigated, prosecuted, defunded, and delicensed immediately.”

‘Death with Dignity’ in Massachusetts

(National Review) — Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the Libyan convicted of the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am flight over Lockerbie, Scotland, died of prostate cancer on May 20. Nearly three years earlier, on August 20, 2009, Scottish authorities had released him on compassionate grounds so that he could return home to die. At the time, he was thought to have three months to live. Some think that al-Megrahi’s survival of his prognosis undermined whatever grounds there were for his early release. But if we set aside his crimes and consider him as a patient with medical needs, his case sheds light on the current proposal for doctor-prescribed suicide in Massachusetts.


Three days before al-Megrahi died last month, the disability-rights group Second Thoughts submitted a challenge to contest a measure on the November ballot in Massachusetts, arguing that the initiative’s language for legalizing doctor-prescribed suicide is “clearly misleading.” Second Thoughts objects in particular to the use of the term “terminally ill.” According to director John Kelly, “People will be encouraged to assume that being ‘terminally ill’ is a biological fact, rather than a human guess.” In the case of al-Megrahi, a human guess resulted in the transfer of a convicted terrorist to his home country of Libya, where, remarkably, he found care superior to what he was receiving in Scotland. The “human guess” that allowed for his release was off by over 1,000 percent.


The Massachusetts initiative proposes that “the public welfare requires a defined and safeguarded process by which an adult Massachusetts resident . . . who has been determined by his or her attending and consulting physicians to be suffering from a terminal disease that will cause death within six months may obtain medication that the patient may self administer to end his or her life in a humane and dignified manner.” The provision that the disease will cause death within six months is central to the proposal. But John Norton, a member of Second Thoughts, points out that “everyone knows someone who has outlived their terminal diagnosis.” As the cases of al-Megrahi and many others make clear, a diagnosis of death within six months is highly speculative — and a weak basis for securing the “public welfare.”
It is important to note that, according to the Wall Street Journal, the U.K.’s National Health Service had denied al-Megrahi “standard docetaxel chemotherapy.” When he was transferred to Libya, he received advanced chemotherapy, radiation, and testosterone inhibitors. To put it plainly, Britain’s rationing bureaucracy denied al-Megrahi the treatment that extended his life nearly three years beyond his 2009 prognosis. In an age of increasing bureaucratic control of health-care decisions, shouldn’t such rationing concern us, especially when we consider the question of legalizing doctor-prescribed suicide?


It has already been documented in Oregon, where doctor-prescribed suicide is legal, that the Oregon Health Plan has refused patients life-saving cancer treatments but offered “comfort care, including ‘physician aid in dying.’” Nor is the state making good on its purported goal of protecting patients from receiving lethal drugs when their decision is influenced by depression: Oregon’s latest annual report indicates that only one of the 71 persons who killed themselves with drugs in 2011 was referred for psychiatric evaluation, even though, according to a 2008 BMJ study, 25 percent of patients seeking doctor-prescribed suicide were depressed. Moreover, 9 of the 71 patients who killed themselves in 2011 received prescriptions for lethal drugs in “previous years,” making clear that the six-month-terminal-illness provision is a farce: “Death with dignity” laws are no more than efforts to elevate doctor-prescribed suicide to an accepted and inexpensive “treatment” under the pretense of compassion.


At first glance, legalization of doctor-prescribed suicide appeals to the libertarian in us all: If someone wants to end his life, who are we to stand in his way? But the members of Second Thoughts know what it is like for a medical professional to assume that their lives are not worth living, and they help us focus on the relevant question: What happens when death becomes a recognized and reimbursed medical treatment for “terminal” conditions? As a teenager, Norton was diagnosed with “terminal” Lou Gehrig’s Disease, but 50 years later he is alive and well.


What about the “terminal” mother who desperately wants to live but feels obligated to choose “death with dignity” so that her children can wrap up the division of her assets and property? What about the father who, on learning that advanced cancer threatens his life, loses for a time the will to live and is offered by his “compassionate” doctor a poisonous dose of barbiturates to end his life with? What about the patient who, in hope of a cure, is awaiting medical breakthroughs? Do these people deserve to be belittled with the offer of a fistful of lethal pills as a treatment option?


Al-Megrahi probably would have died earlier if he had stayed in Scotland, where his survival was balanced against the cost of his survival. In Libya, he was given state-of-the-art treatment for his disease. The prognosis is best when patients are free from pressure to accept the denial of medical care that they need and want. When care is rationed and the crime of assisting a suicide is redefined as medical treatment, the picture changes. Those who may see themselves as a burden on loved ones feel pressure to consider suicide a “treatment” option. How does that promote the public welfare?

For Greater Glory: How a Largely Unknown Story Became an Epic Film

(NCRegister) HOLLYWOOD — When the film For Greater Glory opens this weekend, it will tell the largely unknown story of religious persecution that occurred in our own hemisphere within the past century.
The Mexican-made movie tells the tale of the Cristero Rebellion, the Mexican peasant uprising against an oppressive government that took place between 1926 and 1929.


In his 1926 encyclical Iniquis Afflictisque, Pope Pius XI denounced the forces of “barbarism” that led to Mexican President Plutarco Calles’ persecution of Catholics and the Church.


The film opened in Mexico on April 20 with the title Cristiada. It opened in first place in gross for all admissions at the box office in Mexico. Producer Pablo Barroso said that not only is the story new for American theatergoers, it was for its Mexican audience as well.


“[Teaching about it] was banned,” said Barroso. “As a child growing up in Mexico in the 1970s, I didn’t learn anything about it. As I go around the country, people don’t know about the conflict. This was new to at least 70% of the people in Mexico.”


The Cristero War was the direct by-product of Calles’ implementation of the anti-clerical laws written into the 1917 Constitution. Calles expelled foreign priests and bishops, confiscated Church property and closed Catholic schools. When the archbishop of Mexico City spoke out publicly against the government’s actions, his residence and the chapel of Our Lady of Guadalupe were bombed. Tensions led to a three-year war between government soldiers against the faithful, many of them ranchers and landowners.

A-List Talent


The film follows the characters of Gen. Enrique Gorostieta (Andy Garcia), an atheist who is recruited by the Cristeros, the name given to the peasants because they fought for Cristo Rey (Christ the King), to organize them and lead their army, and Blessed Jose Sanchez del Rio (Mauricio Kuri), a Mexican boy who was martyred during the rebellion.


The film is Dean Wright’s directorial debut. He previously worked on Titanic, The Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia.


“The film focuses on the themes of faith and sacrifice,” said Wright. “While General Gorostieta was an atheist, his family told me that he believed in religious freedom no matter your faith. He felt you had the right to believe in God and worship God.”


The all-star cast includes not only Garcia, but also Eva Longoria, who plays his wife. Oscar winner Peter O’Toole plays an elderly foreign priest, Father Christopher; Ruben Blades plays Calles; Eduardo Verastegui plays Blessed Anacleto Gonzalez Flores, and Bruce Greenwood portrays Dwight Morrow, the U.S. ambassador to Mexico.


Verastegui, the star of Bella, was working on another film when he was approached with the script. He described the film as the Schindler’s List of Mexico. He chose the part of Anacleto Flores because it was a smaller part and he was inspired by the real life of the character.


“He was fighting back with peaceful means,” said Verastegui. “The character challenged me and made me ask, Am I willing to die for something bigger than myself?”


Since his success with Bella, Verastegui opened Guadalupe Medical Center, a pro-life crisis-pregnancy center in Los Angeles, where he frequently sidewalk counsels. Verastegui said that he hopes the film will inspire audiences as well.


“My hope is that people will leave entertained and with a spark in their heart not to be afraid to be heroes,” he said. “I hope they’ll leave inspired to do the right thing — to love more, to forgive, to learn from the mistakes of the past and to be ready to die to self.”

Relevant and Timely


For Greater Glory is “an incredibly resonant story of religious liberty,” said Andrew Walther, vice president for communications with the Knights of Columbus, who are mentioned in the film. Of the more than 200,000 people killed during the fighting, more than 70 were members of the Knights of Columbus. Nine of them, along with 29 other martyrs, have been either beatified or canonized.


“The shooting started Aug. 3, 1926, and, within days, the Knights had our Supreme Convention in Philadelphia condemning what was happening — and within weeks had met with President Calvin Coolidge,” explained Walther. “The Knights raised $1 million for humanitarian assistance to victims of the persecution, and seminaries were set up in the U.S. where displaced seminarians could continue their studies.”


Walther noted that the persecution led to the first wave of Mexican immigration to the U.S. “One million Mexicans fled to the U.S. This was where people could come to practice their faith.”
Jean Meyer, a French historian who became a Mexican citizen after interviewing hundreds of former Cristeros in the 1960s, authored the 1976 history The Cristero Rebellion.


“Meyer had planned to write a Marxist version of the story, but what he found out after interviewing more than 70 people involved is that it was a crusade or uprising largely by landowning peasants in west-central Mexico against the anti-Catholic government,” said Christopher Check, executive vice president of the Rockford Institute, who has lectured on the topic.


Check said that there are many parallels between the genocide against Catholics during the late 1700s in the Vendee region of France and what took place in Mexico.


“The parallels are extraordinary,” said Check. “Both rebellions were predominantly by peasant landowners in rural areas that were centers of religious fervor. The area where most of the fighting took place in Mexico is called the Mexican Vendee.”


Check said that it’s an important story for Americans to know, especially because of the current threats to religious liberty in the U.S.


“American knowledge of Mexican history is very poor,” said Check. “American Catholics especially have a duty to know this story, because, unlike the history of the U.S., Mexican history is Catholic history from its founding.”


The $40-million film has received high praise, by both Catholics and non-Catholics.


“For Greater Glory vividly depicts the difficult circumstances in which Catholics of that time lived — and died for — their faith,” said Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez. “It is a top-flight production whose message of the importance of religious freedom has particular resonance for us today. It is my earnest hope that people of faith throughout our country will rally behind For Greater Glory and, in doing so, will highlight the importance of religious freedom in our society.”


“[It’s] a compelling, thoughtful homage to religious freedom,” said Phil Boatwright, a movie critic who works with the Baptist Press and operates the website PreviewOnline.org. “This action-adventure has style and heart and forthrightly depicts the need for faith. Replete with epic scale and thematic power, it stands a good chance of being remembered come Oscar time.”


Young actor Mauricio Kuri, who plays Blessed Jose Sanchez in the film, said that the young martyr’s story should be known by more people.


“The world needs to know about him and his story,” said Kuri. “We know about the persecution by the Nazis, the Chinese and in Cuba, but we don’t know about this. The movie is a good opportunity for people to learn about this.”

I Want to Protect Our Girls

(The following petition can be found on protectourgirls.com)

I stand with the Protect Our Girls Coalition in calling for an immediate ban on the horrific practice of sex-selection abortion in America.

No girl should be deprived of the chance to be born simply because she is a girl.

Widespread sex-selection by means of abortion, resulting in severe demographic gender imbalance, has increased the global incidence of human trafficking and bride buying, violence against women, and other grave human rights violations.

I call on the United States to join together with the over 30 other countries that have already penalized this unethical and misogynistic practice.

An increasing number of U.S. states have also either passed laws or have called for a sex-selection ban. Clearly, the American people oppose abortion for the sole purpose of eliminating girls.

It is past time to enact nationwide legislation to Protect Our Girls and to send the clear message that each and every girl is welcome, cherished, appreciated and valued in all of our 50 states.

I, ________, want to Protect Our Girls, and I call for a ban on the unethical practice of sex-selection abortion in the United States of America.

Hymowitz: The single-mom catastrophe

By Kay S. Hymowitz (LATimes) — The single-mother revolution shouldn't need much introduction. It started in the 1960s when the nation began to sever the historical connection between marriage and childbearing and to turn single motherhood and the fatherless family into a viable, even welcome, arrangement for children and for society. The reasons for the shift were many, including the sexual revolution, a powerful strain of anti-marriage feminism and a "super bug" of American individualism that hit the country in the 1960s and '70s.


In its broad outlines, the story is familiar by now. In 1965, 93% of all American births were to women with marriage licenses. Over the next few decades, the percentage of babies with no father around rose steadily. As of 1970, 11% of births were to unmarried mothers; by 1990, that number had risen to 28%. Today, 41% of all births are to unmarried women. And for mothers under 30, the rate is 53%.


Though other Western countries also concluded that it was OK for the unmarried to have kids, what they had in mind as the substitute for marriage was something similar to it: a stable arrangement in which two partners, cohabiting over the long term, would raise their children together. The embrace of "lone motherhood" — women bringing up kids with no dad around — has been an American specialty.


"By age 30, one-third of American women had spent time as lone mothers," observed family scholar Andrew Cherlin in his 2009 book, "The Marriage-Go-Round." "In European countries such as France, Sweden and the western part of Germany, the comparable percentages were half as large or even less."


The single-mother revolution has been an economic catastrophe for women. Poverty remains relatively rare among married couples with children; the U.S. census puts only 8.8% of them in that category, up from 6.7% since the start of the Great Recession. But more than 40% of single-mother families are poor, up from 37% before the downturn. In the bottom quintile of earnings, most households are single people, many of them elderly. But of the two-fifths of bottom-quintile households that are families, 83% are headed by single mothers. The Brookings Institution's Isabel Sawhill calculates that virtually all the increase in child poverty in the United States since the 1970s would vanish if parents still married at 1970 rates.


Well, comes the response, maybe single mothers are hard up not because they lack husbands but because unskilled, low-earning women are likelier to become single mothers in the first place. The Urban Institute's Robert Lerman tried to address that objection by studying low-income women who had entered "shotgun" unions — that is, getting married after getting pregnant — on the theory that they represented a population roughly similar to those who got pregnant but didn't marry. The married women, he found, had a significantly higher standard of living than the unmarried ones. "Even among the mothers with the least qualifications and highest risks of poverty," Lerman concluded, "marriage effects are consistently large and statistically significant."


Women and their children weren't the only ones to suffer the economic consequences of the single-mother revolution; low-earning men have lost ground too. Knowing that women are now expected to be able to raise children on their own, unskilled men lose much of the incentive to work, especially at the sometimes disagreeable jobs that tend to be the ones they can get. Scholars consistently find that unmarried men work fewer hours, make less money and get fewer promotions than do married men.


Experts have come to believe that these are not just selection effects — that is, they don't just reflect the fact that productive men are likelier to marry. Marriage itself, it seems, encourages male productivity. One study by Donna Ginther and Madeline Zavodny examined men who'd had shotgun marriages and thus probably hadn't been planning to tie the knot. The shotgun husbands nevertheless earned more than their single peers did.


It's true that some opportunities — particularly well-paying manufacturing jobs — have declined for men. But a father's contribution to the family income, even if it's just $15,000, can dramatically improve the mother's lot, not to mention that of her — or rather, their — children. And it's still possible for families to move up to the middle class, despite the factory closings of the last few decades. Ron Haskins of the Pew Center on the States' Economic Mobility Project puts it this way: "If young people do three things — graduate from high school, get a job and get married and wait until they're 21 before having a baby — they have an almost 75% chance of making it into the middle class." Those are pretty impressive odds.


On the other hand, those who opt for single motherhood are hurting not just themselves but their offspring. The children of single mothers are twice as likely as children growing up with both parents to drop out of high school. Those who do graduate are less likely to go to college, even if you control for household income and the mother's education. Decades of research show that kids growing up with single mothers (again, even after you allow for the obvious variables) have lower scholastic achievement from kindergarten through high school, as well as higher rates of drug and alcohol abuse, depression, behavior problems and teen pregnancy. All these factors are likely to reduce their eventual incomes at a time when what children need is more education, more training and more planning. The rise in single motherhood was ill-adapted for the economic shifts of the late 20th century.

China hits couple with record fine for second child

(Wendy Wright) — If you thought it was costly to have a child, consider how much one couple in China paid. For violating China’s one-child policy by having a second child, the parents were fined 1.3 million yuan ($204,114).


Local family planning authorities worked with commerce, industry and township officials to investigate the couple’s finances. The parents were deemed “rich in assets” and hit with the highest fine on record.


The shock of the amount is compounded by the sex of the child. The couple’s first child, born in 1995, is a son. The second costly addition, born in February, is a baby girl. In a country where aborting girls is so prevalent it is suffering from a lack of females, China ought to be paying couples to have girls. Instead, these parents somehow eluded the authorities long enough to give birth, and paid a premium when caught.


The South China Morning Post reports that fines for violating China’s one-child policy are equivalent to three to 10 times the average after-tax income of the city where the couple lives or the net income of rural residents. But the family planning authority in this case said it based the fine on the provincial Population and Family Planning Ordinance. Parents with higher than average disposable incomes have to pay more.


The high cost is meant to deter people from having more than one child, an official told a newspaper.
It also allows for an ironic twist. If cost conveys value, these parents have exhibited the great worth of a child.

Americans Have No Idea How Few Gay People There Are

(The Atlantic) One in ten. It's the name of the group that puts on the Reel Affirmations gay and lesbian film festival in Washington, D.C., each year. It's the percent popularized by the Kinsey Report as the size of the gay male population. And it's among the most common figures pointed to in popular culture as an estimate of how many people are gay or lesbian.


But what percentage of the population is actually gay or lesbian? With the debate over same-sex marriage again an emerging fault line in American political life, the answer comes as a surprise: A lower number than you might think -- and a much, much, much lower one than most Americans believe.


In surveys conducted in 2002 and 2011, pollsters at Gallup found that members of the American public massively overestimated how many people are gay or lesbian. In 2002, a quarter of those surveyed guessed upwards of a quarter of Americans were gay or lesbian (or "homosexual," the third option given). By 2011, that misperception had only grown, with more than a third of those surveyed now guessing that more than 25 percent of Americans are gay or lesbian. Women and young adults were most likely to provide high estimates, approximating that 30 percent of the population is gay. Overall, "U.S. adults, on average, estimate that 25 percent of Americans are gay or lesbian," Gallup found. Only 4 percent of all those surveyed in 2011 and about 8 percent of those surveyed in 2002 correctly guessed that fewer than 5 percent of Americans identify as gay or lesbian.


Such a misunderstanding of the basic demographics of sexual behavior and identity in America has potentially profound implications for the acceptance of the gay-rights agenda. On the one hand, people who overestimate the percent of gay Americans by a factor of 12 seem likely to also wildly overestimate the cultural impact of same-sex marriage. On the other hand, the extraordinary confusion over the percentage of gay people may reflect a triumph of the gay and lesbian movement's decades-long fight against invisibility and the closet.


"My first reaction to that, aside from a little chuckle, is that it's actually a sign of the success of the movement for LGBT rights," said Stuart Gaffney, a spokesman for the group Marriage Equality USA. "We are a small minority, and we will never have full equality without the support of the majority, and a poll like that suggests the majority is extremely aware of their gay neighbors, coworkers, and friends."


In recent years, as homosexuality has become less stigmatized, pro-gay rights groups have come around to acknowledging that a smaller percent of people identify themselves as gay than some of the early gay rights rhetoric claimed, based on Alfred Kinsey's 1948 report, "Sexuality in the Human Male." His survey research on non-random populations in the immediate post-World War II period concluded that 10 percent of men "were predominantly homosexual between the ages of 16 and 55" and that 37 percent had had at least one homosexual experience in their lives, but did not get into questions of identity per se.


Contemporary research in a less homophobic environment has counterintuitively resulted in lower estimates rather than higher ones. The Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law, a gay and lesbian think tank, released a study in April 2011 estimating based on its research that just 1.7 percent of Americans between 18 and 44 identify as gay or lesbian, while another 1.8 percent -- predominantly women -- identify as bisexual. Far from underestimating the ranks of gay people because of homophobia, these figures included a substantial number of people who remained deeply closeted, such as a quarter of the bisexuals. A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey of women between 22 and 44 that questioned more than 13,500 respondents between 2006 and 2008 found very similar numbers: Only 1 percent of the women identified themselves as gay, while 4 percent identified as bisexual.


Higher numbers can be obtained when asking about lifetime sexual experiences, rather than identity. The Williams Institute found that, overall, an estimated 8.2 percent of the population had engaged in some form same-sex sexual activity. Put another way, 4.7 percent of the population had wandered across the line without coming to think of themselves as either gay or bisexual. Other studies suggest those individuals are, like the bisexuals, mainly women: The same CDC study that found only 1 percent of women identify as lesbian, for example, found that 13 percent of women reported a history of some form of sexual contact with other women.


"Estimates of those who report any lifetime same-sex sexual behavior and any same-sex sexual attraction are substantially higher than estimates of those who identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual," the Williams Institute's Gary J. Gates concluded.


These numbers are significant because identity -- and not behavior -- is the central determinant of whether or not someone will seek a same-sex marriage. A straight woman who makes out a couple of times with a female friend in college is not going to seek a same-sex marriage, nor is a guy who fooled around once with a male friend while drunk in high school. Neither individual is demographically relevant to the question of how often same-sex marriages will occur. And it's not clear at all what fraction of bisexuals will seek out same-sex marriages.


Overall, there have been fewer than 75,000 state-sanctioned same-sex marriages in the United States since they began to be permitted less than a decade ago, according to an estimate by Marriage Equality USA. Over the eight years since Massachusetts became the first state to legalize same-sex marriage in May 2004, 18,462 same-sex couples married in the Bay State. Another 18,000 were estimated to have wed in California during the few months before Proposition 8 passed in 2008, banning future ones; those marriages remain on the books, as the proposition was not retroactive. It's not totally clear how many same-sex marriages have taken place in New York, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire, and the District of Columbia, the other jurisdictions where it is permitted.


Of course, gays aren't the only minority population that has an outsized place in the public imagination. Americans also "vastly overestimate the percentage of fellow residents who are foreign-born, by more than a factor of two, and the percentage who are in the country illegally, by a factor of six or seven," according to a 2012 Wall Street Journal report on the social science of estimating minority groups. In 1993, a group of political scientists reported in Public Opinion Quarterly that "The extent to which minority populations are perceived as a kind of threat is ... related to perceived proportions, though the direction of causality cannot be determined." Correcting the misimpressions about the size of a minority group hasn't been proved to have much impact on beliefs about them in the short-term, but that doesn't mean that they might never.


One thing's for sure: it's hard to imagine the fact that so many think the country is more than a quarter gay or lesbian has no impact on our public policy.

The Church Pushes Back

(By Mark Lenzi, in the National Review) It was all too predictable that the filing of twelve different lawsuits by 43 different Catholic entities was almost completely ignored by traditional news outlets. One would think that this type of strong, coordinated legal attack in federal court, filed by one of the nation’s leading law firms (Jones Day) on behalf of the nation’s largest single religious denomination, would be deemed a top news story. The networks apparently disagreed — as did the New York Times, which ran the story on page A17.

But then the editorial writers at the Times eventually did grant the lawsuits prominent coverage — to criticize the Catholic Church for defending its rights. Their lead editorial on May 27 concludes that the mandate doesn’t present any actual threat to religious liberty. In their view, the “real threat to religious liberty” instead “comes from the effort to impose one church’s doctrine on everyone.”

The Times is wrong in every conceivable way about the mandate, religious-liberty law, and the lawsuits.

First, of course the Church’s lawsuits do not seek to “impose one church’s doctrine” on anyone, much less “everyone.” The question is not whether contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs will remain legal and available — it is whether religious organizations can be forced to provide free access to them. No one is forced to work for a Catholic institution. And those who do are perfectly free to get these drugs on their own, for free from the government, or from the many sources that willingly distribute them. Indeed, in no other context has anyone ever suggested that an employer’s failure to distribute an item for free is “imposing doctrine” on anyone. Catholic institutions also do not give out pornography, Big Macs, or trips to Disneyland. Failure to provide these things for free does not impose anything on anyone or restrict anyone’s freedom in any way. Overheated claims to the contrary cannot be taken seriously.

Second, the Times suggests there is something impermissible about the lawsuits’ asking for exemptions from “generally applicable” laws. It is hard to imagine anyone calling Obamacare “generally applicable” with a straight face. Anyone who watched the process leading to the law’s passage knows that it is larded full of special treatment and favors for different groups to secure their support. And since passage, the administration has granted thousands of waivers from the law’s provisions. Worse, the government freely admits that grandfathered plans (which are excluded to make good on the president’s political promise that “if you like your plan you can keep it”) will cover more than a hundred million people yet remain completely exempt from the mandate. In short, Obamacare is about the least generally applicable law you can imagine.

Third, even if the mandate were generally applicable, federal law is clear that an exemption is required even from generally applicable laws unless imposing a burden on religion is the “least restrictive means” of advancing a “compelling” government interest. The Times asserts, without explanation, that the mandate meets this demanding standard “by promoting women’s health and autonomy.” But the compelling-interest test is not satisfied simply by naming some generally important interest — instead, the Court has explained that this test is “the most demanding test known to constitutional law” and requires the government to identify an “actual problem” in need of solving.

Here, the administration’s repeated claims about the popularity of contraceptive use, and the wide variety of sources from which contraceptives are already available, belie any claim that there is an access problem in the first place.

Fourth, even if there were some problem with access to what Secretary Sebelius calls “the most commonly taken drug in America by young and middle-aged women,” there is no reason to think that the “least restrictive means” of addressing that problem would be to force unwilling religious institutions to provide access. As the government demonstrates each year through its Title X programs, it is perfectly capable of distributing contraceptive drugs directly when it wants to. And even so, the Supreme Court just last term explained that “the government does not have a compelling interest in each marginal percentage point by which its goals are advanced.”

Fifth and finally, the Times claims that the president “put the burden on insurance companies” to provide the drugs for free “with no employer involvement.” This is the “accommodation,” as the president described it in his February press conference. There are countless problems with this alleged compromise, but I will flag just two. First, it isn’t the law. All the administration has done is publicly announce that it will think about a compromise along these lines — but it hasn’t done anything other than brainstorm out loud about it. Second, there is no legal basis in Obamacare or anywhere else for simply declaring that insurance companies must provide services that are not covered in policies purchased by someone.

Our Constitution creates a republic, not a kingdom, and it has long been established that the president lacks the authority to take private property by fiat, as Professor Michael Stokes Paulsen has recently explained. So even if the “compromise” solved the problem for religious objectors (and for most it would not) and even if the costs would not be passed on to religious employers (which they very likely would be), the plan is not legal. This might explain why the administration has not actually cited any legal authority for it and conveniently has delayed its implementation until after the next election, at the earliest.

In short, when the Times finally decided to give the lawsuits prominent coverage (or, rather, to give prominent coverage to its own opinions about those lawsuits), it produced an editorial chock-full of errors about the mandate and religious-liberty law. Indeed, the editorial reads as if the Times did not even bother to consult with any lawyers before opining about the strength of the religious-liberty lawsuits. Sadly, there seems to be a lot of that going around these days, as Secretary Sebelius recently admitted in congressional testimony that she issued the mandate without considering the controlling law and without getting an opinion from the Department of Justice.

We can be thankful that these questions will eventually be decided in courtrooms rather than presidential press conferences and newspaper editorials — and that the judges deciding the cases will actually check the law before issuing their opinions.

Wisconsin recall: A test for Obama's reelection bid?

(AP) WASHINGTON - The strength of President Barack Obama's bid for a second term faces a key test Tuesday in a Wisconsin election to decide whether the Republican governor of the Midwestern state, a hero of the deeply conservative tea-party movement, should be ousted more than 2 years early.


The recall election marks just the third time in U.S. history that a state governor has been challenged midterm. What's more, Wisconsin is a key swing state in the November presidential election. It is seen as leaning toward Obama, but Tuesday's vote could show an inclination to flip toward Republican challenger Mitt Romney.


Beyond that, the political divisions gripping the Wisconsin electorate virtually mirror sentiments nationwide.


The effort to unseat Gov. Scott Walker is rooted in Wisconsin's labor union movement and the Democratic rank-and-file, both profoundly angered over his budget-cutting policies. If Walker successfully defends his leadership, it would be a major boost for already highly motivated tea party voters, who want smaller government, lower deficits and tax cuts.


With the economy the top issue in the presidential election, a victory for Wisconsin conservatives would underscore Romney's strength nationwide. He has endorsed budget-slashing, tax-cutting tea party fiscal plans at the national level.


Most polls show Walker with a slight advantage over Democratic challenger Tom Barrett, a former member of the U.S. Congress and Walker's opponent in the 2010 governor's race. Defending Walker has become a major cause for national Republicans and outside interests who back his pro-business, anti-union positions.


Walker said Monday he expects a close race and he's focused on turning out voters who supported his efforts to take on public-employee unions.


"We want to move on and move forward," he said.


Barrett, currently the Milwaukee mayor, has found support from top Democratic political figures, including former President Bill Clinton and party chairwoman Debbie Wasserman. Obama, however, has not intervened on his behalf, perhaps not wanting to chance being directly associated with what might be a losing effort with five months remaining before the presidential election.


White House press secretary Jeff Carney was asked during a briefing Monday why Obama wasn't campaigning for Barrett.


"The president supports him, stands by him," Carney said, adding that Obama hopes Barrett prevails.


Wisconsin recall: Battleground for hearts and minds
Big guns stump in Wis. as recall election nears
Clinton looks to fire up Wis. Democrats for recall


Walker stripped public employee union members of most of their collective bargaining rights and forced them to pay more for health insurance and pension benefits. Angry civil servants, from school teachers to firefighters and police, backed a petition drive that collected sufficient signatures to force the recall vote.


"Now it's our turn to speak," an exuberant Barrett told campaign workers Monday. "We the people of the state of Wisconsin are going to reclaim our future."


The campaign surrounding the vote also is producing fuel for opponents of a 2010 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that opened the door to unlimited corporate campaign spending. The only proviso requires that corporate donations go to a committee that does not coordinate directly with the candidate or his or her campaign organization.


The recall election has been unlike anything seen before in Wisconsin, with at least $62 million spent by the candidates and outside groups so far. Walker was the top spender at $29 million, with Barrett's campaign spending about $4 million. Outside groups have spent $21 million and issue ad groups that don't have to disclose their spending have put in at least $7.5 million.


The recall may have started over collective bargaining, but the overriding issue has become job creation. Walker promised in 2010 to create 250,000 jobs over four years, but he is not on pace to meet that goal. How far afield he is depends on what set of numbers are used to measure his promise. Monthly jobs figures, based on a survey of about 3.5 percent of Wisconsin employers, show job creation has been flat since Walker took office. But a combination of data, including 2011 numbers derived from a more comprehensive census of employers, shows about 33,000 new jobs have been created in Walker's term.


While the Walker-Barrett race is in the national spotlight, also on the ballot are recall elections for the Republican lieutenant governor and four Republican state Senate seats. If Democrats win any one of those seats, they will hold a majority in the Senate for the first time since 2010 and could obstruct any further advancement of Walker's agenda if he wins.


The only other two governors to have faced a recall vote lost, most recently California Gov. Gray Davis in 2003.


A defeat for Walker would badly damage a political career that until now had looked on course to national prominence. A victory would cement his place as a national tea party hero with a rosy future in a Republican party that is evolving more and more toward the hard right on the American political spectrum.

Argentinean baby girl saved from abortion brings joy to family

(EWTN) — In its June edition, the Argentinean magazine Familia y Vida featured the story of a baby girl who was conceived through rape but spared from abortion, and has become the joy of her family’s home.


The case of Luz Maria stirred the province of Missiones in 2011, as numerous organizations, media outlets and government officials urged that she be aborted because she was the product of rape.


The family, however, resisted pressure to abort Luz Maria.


“For us it was a race against time,” said Julieta Lardies of the Federal Network of Families, which worked to help save the baby’s life. 


“If we had to describe what we went through when this started we would say they were the five most intense days we have ever faced,” she added.


“Given the circumstances, each hour that passed, each minute, could have been decisive for the life of little Luz Maria, who since her mother’s womb was awaiting a death sentence.”


The magazine said Luz Maria’s testimony is essential to pushing back against the implementation of a March 13 Supreme Court ruling allowing abortions to be performed in cases of rape.

Suicide bomber hits church in Nigeria

(Catholic Culture) — At least 9 people were killed, and 35 seriously injured, in a suicide bombing at a Christian church in northern Nigeria on Sunday, June 3.


The suicide bomber drove his vehicle, packed with explosives, into a security checkpoint that had been set up by police near the church in Bauchi. Although the vehicle was stopped short of the church itself, the explosion caused the building to collapse, and worshippers who rushed out were caught in a fire started by the bomb.


The police security arrangements had been set up because of attacks in the region by Boko Haram terrorists. Although no group claimed credit for the latest explosion, authorities suspect that Boko Haram was again responsible for an attack on a Christian target.

Drennen: After Spiking Catholic Lawsuit Against Obama, Networks Unleash Avalanche of Stories Hyping Vatican 'Scandal'

From Kyle Drennen:

While the networks largely ignored 43 Catholic institutions suing the Obama administration over the ObamaCare contraception mandate, since news broke on May 25 of the Pope's butler leaking classified Vatican documents, those same networks saw fit to provide 13 stories in 5 days proclaiming "another black eye for the Vatican" and supposed "corruption at some of the highest levels."

ABC News lead the charge, with a total of six reports from May 26 through 28. NBC followed close behind with five reports, one of which was a news brief, from May 25 through 29. CBS had the lightest coverage of the controversy, with only two reports on May 28. CBS was also the only one of the three networks to provide any coverage of the Catholic lawsuit, offering a 19-second news brief on the May 21 Evening News and an interview with Cardinal Timothy Dolan on the May 23 This Morning.

(You can read the full story from the Wall Street Journal here.) 

Today on "Kresta in the Afternoon" - June 1, 2012

Talking about the "things that matter most" on June 1

4:00 – Kresta Comments

4:40 – The Clerical Frown: Our Chief Obstacle to Catholic Political Participation
What is the chief political obstacle for Catholics? Deal Husdon is here to answer that question. He says lay Catholics are the key. We simply need to affirm our obligation to engage fully in the political process without asking for permission from their pastor or their bishop. The Church itself teaches that prior permission is not required but that participation should be guided by the teaching of the Holy Father and the bishops. Deal is here to make his case.

4:40 – Christmas in May: Attorney Defends Nativity Display Before Federal Appellate Court
This week Robert Muise presented oral argument in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in an appeal to protect a private citizen’s First Amendment right to display a Nativity scene on public property during the Christmas season. The case, Satawa v. Macomb County Road Commission, et al., was brought by Muise on behalf of Satawa, a longtime resident of the City of Warren, Michigan, and a practicing member of the Catholic Church who was told, after 60 YEARS, to remove the nativity after a complaint from an activist atheist group. Rob joins us.

5:00 – Kresta Comments

5:20 – Rare Canon Lawsuit Filed Against Georgetown University
Georgetown University alumni, students and others are preparing a canon law suit to be filed with the Archdiocese of Washington and the Vatican, seeking remedies “up to and including the possible removal or suspension of top-ranked Georgetown’s right to call itself Catholic or Jesuit in its fundraising and representations to applicants.” The move comes on the heels of an unprecedented rebuke of Georgetown and its first lay president by His Eminence, Donald Cardinal Wuerl over Georgetown’s invitation to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to be a diploma ceremony speaker. The St. Joseph Foundation Canon Lawyers are working on the case and canon lawyer Michael Dunnigan joins us.

5:40 – The Cristero War and the Knights of Columbus
When the Mexican government of Plutarco Elías Calles began persecuting the Catholic Church in the 1920s, priests were not immune. In fact, they became targets of the regime. One of the hundreds of priests killed during that time for simply carrying out his priestly ministry was Father José María Robles Hurtado. His martyrdom in 1927 at the hands of Mexican troops is depicted in the film For Greater Glory, which opens today. The film sets the story of his martyrdom in the broader context of the persecution of the Church in Mexico at that time. During that same period, the Knights of Columbus in Mexico was instrumental in founding the League of the Defense of Religious Liberty, which organized economic boycotts and petition drives in response to the persecution. We talk to Andrew Walther, spokesman for the Knights, about the role of the Knights in the Cristero War.

Pope to attend La Scala concert of Beethoven’s Ninth on 1st day of events focused on families

MILAN (AP) — Pope Benedict XVI will attend a concert of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony conducted by Daniel Barenboim at La Scala on the first of three days of events focused on the family.


The pope will greet the faithful in the square outside Milan’s cathedral after his arrival Friday afternoon for the seventh World Encounter of Families — a welcome pastoral respite from an embarrassing and damaging leaks scandal at the Vatican that has engulfed the pontiff’s personal butler.


Then, a concert at the nearby La Scala theater will be followed by a Mass inside the cathedral.


The weekend events include a meeting at Milan’s San Siro stadium on Saturday with youths who recently received the sacrament of confirmation, and an open-air Mass expected to attract 1 million followers on Sunday.


Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

U.S. Employers Add 69,000 Jobs, Fewer Than Forecast

(Bloomberg) — American employers in May added the fewest workers in a year and the unemployment rate unexpectedly increased as job-seekers re-entered the workforce, further evidence that the labor-market recovery is stalling.


Payrolls climbed by 69,000 last month, less than the most- pessimistic forecast in a Bloomberg News survey, after a revised 77,000 gain in April that was smaller than initially estimated, Labor Department figures showed today in Washington. The median estimate called for a 150,000 May advance. The jobless rate rose to 8.2 percent from 8.1 percent, while hours worked declined.


Stock-index futures and Treasury yields plunged as the figures showed a looming recession in the euro area and slower growth in China and Brazil are taking a toll on the U.S. Bigger job and wage gains are needed to jumpstart a self-sustaining increase in hiring and consumer spending.


“The labor market is clearly deteriorating,” Hugh Johnson, chairman and chief investment officer at Albany, New York-based Hugh Johnson Advisors LLC, whose payrolls projection of 75,000 was the closest to the May reading among economists surveyed by Bloomberg. “Confidence in the economy is declining. Businesses are extremely reluctant to add workers when there’s so much uncertainty.”


The contract on the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index expiring this month slumped 1.7 percent to 1,286.7 at 9:08 a.m. in New York. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note dropped to 1.47 percent from 1.56 percent late yesterday.


Economists’ Estimates
Estimates of the 87 economists surveyed ranged from increases of 75,000 to 195,000 after a previously reported 115,000 rise in April. Revisions subtracted a total of 49,000 jobs to payrolls in March and April.
The figures follow data earlier today showing the global economy is struggling as Europe’s sovereign-debt crisis roils financial markets. A measure of manufacturing in the 17-nation euro fell to a three-year low, while measures of the industry in China, India, South Korea and Taiwan also weakened.


The jobs data also come five months before Americans head to the polls to either re-elect President Barack Obama or choose presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney, who has said White House policies have prevented a stronger economic recovery.


The unemployment rate was forecast to hold at 8.1 percent, according to the survey median. Estimates in the Bloomberg survey ranged from 8 percent to 8.2 percent. Unemployment has exceeded 8 percent since February 2009, the longest such stretch since monthly records began in 1948.


Participation Rate
The participation rate, which indicates the share of working-age people in the labor force, rose to 63.8 percent from 63.6 percent.


Private payrolls, which exclude government agencies, rose 82,000 after a revised gain of 87,000. They were projected to rise by 164,000, the survey showed.


“The U.S. economy is recovering but at a stubbornly slow pace,” Carl Camden, president and chief financial officer at staffing provider Kelly Services Inc., said on a May 9 conference call. “Weakening European economies have shaken confidence here in the U.S. business, consumers and investors remain cautious.” Still, with demand increasing for skilled workers, “we remain optimistic about 2012,” he said.
Factory employment increased by 12,000, less than the survey forecast of a 15,000 increase.


General Motors Co. is among companies boosting payrolls. The world’s biggest automaker said last month it will add 600 employees to a second shift at an assembly plant in Lansing, Michigan, according to the Detroit News.


Service Employment
Employment at service-providers increased 84,000 in May. Construction companies cut 28,000 jobs, the most in two years, and retailers boosted payrolls by 2,300.
“I have been searching relentlessly and I can’t find anything,” said Dexter Favors, 57, of Atlanta. Favors has been out of work for three years, though his wife is employed. “It is kind of rough right now because she is pulling the load.”


Favors, who worked last as a grocery store department manager and is an Air Force veteran, said he has put out around 80 applications for work and continues to search.
Government payrolls declined by 13,000.


Average hourly earnings increased 0.1 percent, today’s report showed. Compared with May of last year, earnings climbed 1.7 percent, the smallest increase since December 2010.


The average work week for all workers fell to 34.4 hours from 34.5 hours.


Underemployment Rate
The so-called underemployment rate -- which includes part- time workers who’d prefer a full-time position and people who want work but have given up looking -- increased to 14.8 percent from 14.5 percent.
The report also showed an increase in long-term unemployed Americans. The number of people unemployed for 27 weeks or more rose as a percentage of all jobless, to 42.8 percent from 41.3 percent.
Faster economic growth would help lay the groundwork for more hiring. Gross domestic product climbed at a 1.9 percent annual rate from January through March, down from a 2.2 percent prior estimate, reflecting smaller gains in inventories and bigger government cutbacks, according to revised Commerce Department figures released yesterday. The report also showed corporate profits rose at the slowest pace in more than three years and smaller wage gains at the end of 2011.


The pace of growth has been “disappointing” and “the headwinds retarding recovery are well known,” Federal Reserve Bank of New York President William C. Dudley said this week. He reiterated that he expects growth of about 2.4 percent over the next four quarters and said Europe’s sovereign debt crisis poses a downside risk to the outlook.


Today’s figures may put more pressure on the Fed to take further steps to boost the economy after their current maturity extension program, known as Operation Twist, expires at the end of June.

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder is working on strategies for when the good economic times return to state

MACKINAC ISLAND (Detroit Free Press) — Gov. Rick Snyder called for better government management and long-term planning in Michigan in his keynote address Thursday to the Mackinac Policy Conference. He also revealed how long-term, telling business leaders he's already working on state budgets as far out as 2050.


In a keynote address on the closing day of the Detroit Regional Chamber's annual island gathering, Snyder -- a CPA before he got into venture capitalism and, later, politics -- compared the state's billions of dollars in long-term liabilities to a home mortgage.


Once a mortgage is paid off, "you feel so much more confident that you don't have that liability anymore," Snyder told business leaders at the Grand Hotel.


Once the state's liabilities for long-term costs such as retirement health care are fully funded, the surplus cash flow that will result can be used to cut taxes or invest in programs, Snyder said.


That's why Snyder said he already has Budget Director John Nixon doing preliminary work on budgets in the 2030-2050 time range. Snyder has said he will seek a second four-year term in 2014 but will not be able to seek a third term because of term limits.


His speech was warmly received, though Michigan Democratic Party Chairman Mark Brewer, who attended the conference, criticized it for lacking substance.


Snyder "governs like an accountant, as if numbers were the only thing important to him," Brewer said.


"He represents 10 million people who have serious problems," Brewer said.


Snyder said many Michigan residents have reacted negatively to his view that the state needs to raise more money to spend on roads, viewing it as a tax increase.


"We have this warped view of how government works," Snyder said.


He compared the need to invest $1 billion-$1.5 billion a year in roads to the need for oil changes and other regular maintenance on automobiles. The investment will save Michigan money in the long term, he said.


Snyder has floated the idea of increased vehicle registration fees or increased fuel taxes but has not yet backed a specific proposal to raise an extra $1 billion a year or more to invest in roads.


This fall, Snyder said he will deliver a special message linking an energy strategy with an environmental strategy.


Michigan owns about 4 million acres of land but has no accompanying plan, he said.


"We should have a strategy as to why we own 4 million acres of land, what it means, where it's going, and why," the governor said.


Snyder has been criticized for reducing business taxes by about $1.8 billion while increasing taxes on pensions and cutting money for schools and reducing tax credits for poor people in his 2011 budget. But the state's unemployment rate also has dropped by two full percentage points in the last year and the automotive industry is on a strong rebound.


Snyder said Michigan's improved fortunes have sparked a negative reaction among states that compete with Michigan.


When the state's economy was a wreck, "they didn't care about us," he said. "Now they're actually saying bad things about us, saying we're all messed up. I view that as good progress."

Archbishop-designate Samuel J. Aquila on Religious Freedom