Keep 'practicing', Madame Speaker

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is a self-described, "ardent, practicing Catholic". Transcript excerpt via Drudge:

STEPHANOPOULOS: Hundreds of millions of dollars to expand family planning services. How is that stimulus?

PELOSI: Well, the family planning services reduce cost. They reduce cost. The states are in terrible fiscal budget crises now and part of what we do for children's health, education and some of those elements are to help the states meet their financial needs. One of those - one of the initiatives you mentioned, the contraception, will reduce costs to the states and to the federal government.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So no apologies for that?

PELOSI: No apologies. No. we have to deal with the consequences of the downturn in our economy.

Here's the YouTube excerpt Drudge also linked.

March for Life pictures

I've uploaded pictures from Washington, DC last week to facebook in 4 albums:

Part 1 - http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=7828&l=e7790&id=1625663626
Part 2 - http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=7830&l=4650a&id=1625663626
Part 3 - http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=8090&l=ec947&id=1625663626
Part 4 - http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=8092&l=88970&id=1625663626

It was an awesome experience, and I'm especially grateful to have shared it with Calvin and other St. Jude and west-side friends.

March for Life

We marched with our group of west-eiders from the National Mall to the Supreme Court. The picture shows 3 blocks of Constitution Ave., packed with marchers. Earlier in the march, when we were at the other end of Constitution, that same area was just as full with the marchers in front of us.

Youth Rally Sold Out

The picture is of the outside of the Verizon Center, which is unfortunately as close as we're going to get to the Youth Rally, which was filled to capacity before 9 am. Plan B is Mass at the National Shrine.

Bus Ride and Vigil for Life

Calvin and I made the bus trip with 50 other pilgrims from St. Jude, Lourdes, St. Antoninus, St. Leo, Our Lady of Victory, and St. Bernard to Washington, DC for the March for Life tomorrow.
The bus ride was long (11 hours)...Somehow, we ended up in the rear of the bus with the younger set. Very well-behaved kids, but still noisy. Oh well - it certainly could have been worse.
After checking in to the Quality Inn College Park, we attended the Vigil Mass for Life at the incredible Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. Though it's the largest Roman Catholic Church in the US, there was still an overflow crowd. Mass was beautiful, but the audio and video for the overflow crowd in the 'Crypt Church' was lousy. Still an incredible experience, though.
Tomorrow, we wake up early for 6:30 breakfast, catch the youth rally and 10 am Mass at the Verizon Center, and then attend the March for Life at the National Mall and Supreme Court.

What's Chinese for Catch-22?

Another tip to the Corner for this link from Mark Steyn:

This is a helluva story on some of the grislier consequences on the ChiComs' (demographically disastrous) one-child laws:

A court in central China has sentenced a woman to death for hiring someone to strangle her 9-year-old son so she could have another child with her new husband without violating population laws, a court official and reports said Friday.

And this next sentence is headspinning:

Li initially received a death sentence suspended for two years because she had suffered from depression after having two abortions due to the rules against her bearing another child, the reports said. Such sentences are often commuted to life in prison.

Check out the whole post. Steyn updated it with a reader comment that sums up the whole sad, Orwellian truth.