Video Meliora, proboque; Deteriora sequor

I love St. Padre Pio. He's like this perfect combination of no-nonsense piety and light-hearted accessibility. I'd probably have to be hospitalized in the ICU after an encounter with him, but it would certainly be worth it. One of my favorite stories is when he redirected our bombers from hitting San Giovanni Rotundo. - Rick Lugari

Cold, again. September has turned its back on us all. Indifferent drizzle, interminable parades of low clouds heading somewhere with great self-importance. I turned on the Oak Island Water Feature for that summertime feeling, and it ran dry after ten minutes. Used a plumber’s snake on the overflow pipe, and all was well. Aside from the rust-stained hands and heaps of sodden leaves...When you’re a latecomer to the day you end up making absurd claims on the night; when you rise at an early hour you’re content to let the night do as it wishes. Or so I hear. I still straddle the two, which is why I rise early and hit the hay late. This means I need a restorative nap – 20 minutes carved from the generally useless hour between four and five. - James Lilek

The sky is so clear tonight, and the stars so bright, that I remember again why we moved to the country. The children even spotted a few falling stars while stargazing. A leisurely walk under the stars with a three-year old girl of boundless enthusiasm does wonders for a middle-aged man fighting off a melancholoy spirit. And it is amazing how much the weather can change one's mood out here. The past few days of wind have blown away the summertime blues along with the haze, and what used to look like far distant mountain ranges now appear so close as to be almost touchable. - Jeff of "Hallowed Ground"

A sure sign of a political movement’s maturity is the discretion it shows in picking its leaders. Which is why gay groups could show how grown-up they are by excommunicating James McGreevey. - Jonah Goldberg

I was stunned to read this [John Powers] book [Do Black Patent Shoes Really Reflect Up?] and find that it was full of mean-spirited stories about the Catholic Church. Now, before you even tell me, I know, I know, if you were raised Catholic before a certain time these stories are hilariously true. All I can say is that, to me as a convert of today, if those stories ring true then thank the Lord for Vatican II. Honestly, if one strips the veil of memory off and reads what Powers writes about the Church in these two books there is no way that one would find these stories original or amusing (yes, I actually suffered through a second to make sure that I was being fair to Powers). I am put in mind of Bill Bryson's books about traveling around America. I eagerly picked one up, having thoroughly enjoyed "English, Our Mother Tongue and How It Got That Way" and found that the reason Bryson must live in England is because he hates America ... or just wants to tell mean stories about Americans to make a buck. Powers is in the same category for me. - Julie of "Happy Catholic"

As Uncle gilbert used to say, good prose words mean what they say, good poetic words mean what they do not say. - Sancta Sanctis

The best book for illuminating what's going on in the Muslim 'street' isn't some weighty treatise on Islam; it's a short little tract called White Guilt by Shelby Steele. The book isn't even about Islam. Steele focuses on white liberals and the black radicals who've been gaming them ever since the 1960s. Whites, he argues, have internalized their own demonization. Deep down they fear that maybe they are imperialistic, racist bastards, and they are desperate to prove otherwise. In America, black radicals figured this out a while ago and have been dunning liberal whites ever since...The West is caught in a similarly dysfunctional cycle of extortion and intimidation with Islam, but on a grander and far more violent scale. - Jonah Goldberg

I still hope and pray that Christopher "crush the Islamofacists, just don't bug my phone" Hitchens will pull a Muggeridge and turn Catholic five or ten years from now. That's the usual fate of people like him. I'll be delighted to witness it. We could use him. But for now, Hitchens is a liability. He and his Euston Manifesto friends actually believe we can win World War III with a vague admixture of Voltaire and Howard Stern. Good luck with that. And if you excuse your continued affection for the man with a plea to his incomparable prose style, that's the moral equivalent of admitting you hired your secretary just because she has big boobs. You're shallowness should shame you. - Kathy Shaidle

Anyway, as we witness the tail of the dinosaur twitching as the beast dies in fitful agony (stay away from that tail, it has spikes that curve like scimitars), the lie of "Moderate Islam" will peel away from the truth faster and faster. Now, a year or two ago when I said that, I got a few howls of indignation from typical compassionista liberals as well as from an indignant Mohammedan girl straight from Jihad Central Casting. After all, Imam Bush told us that Mohammedanism is a religion of peace, and isn't he authorized to issue Grand Fatwas? Well, I have said it before, and I will say it again: Moderate Mohammedanism is a fraud. It is either a lie to the outside world, to assuage our justifiable suspicions, or it is an internal lie to make a life of comfort and ease in the West seem compatible with the "evil and inhuman" faith of Mohammed. And you know what? There are decent and honest Mohammedans out there who will admit as much. - Erik of "Erik's Rants and Recipes"

Blessed Thomas More is more important at this moment than at any moment since his death, even perhaps the great moment of his dying; but he is not quite so important as he will be in about a hundred years' time. - GK Chesterton, in 1929, via "Sancta Sanctis"