Dispel the Illusion

Chris Matthews won't be working alone. Back in November, the Hardball host said it was his job to make Barack Obama's presidency a success. Today, another TV journalist expressed a similar sentiment. Tavis Smiley has declared that "we're all working for Barack Obama" and that "we have to help make Obama a great president."

Sacha Baron Cohen is preparing to shock America with his latest film, which is said to contain a black model called Jesus wearing a loincloth and a crown of thorns. The comedian, who has been sued by several people who featured in his film Borat, will be ready for similar reactions after the release of the big-screen debut of his character Bruno ... Clips of his work have become cult favourites on YouTube. And it is thought that the film version will see Bruno in more outrageous form.

A national survey has found that more than two in five Canadians could not identify Sir John A. Macdonald as the country's first prime minister. The Dominion Institute also found that only one-quarter of people surveyed could identify Sir Wilfrid Laurier as Canada's first francophone prime minister.

The Globe and Mail says it will reduce its work force by about 10 per cent through voluntary buyouts, and possible layoffs. The newspaper's publisher, Phillip Crawley, told staff the Globe is looking to cut between 80 and 90 jobs, and will offer voluntary buyout packages over the next few weeks. Should that target not be reached, layoffs will be needed to reach that figure, Mr. Crawley said.

An Ontario Superior Court judge has ordered a Toronto man to continue paying child support even though a DNA test shows he is not the biological father of his ex-wife's twins. In her ruling, Madam Justice Katherine van Rensburg decided that even though Pasqualino Cornelio did not father twins – now 16 – with Anciolina Cornelio, he must continue to pay child support because "he was the only father the twins knew during the course of the marriage."

85-year-old Carl Djerassi. The Austrian chemist was one of three whose formulation of the synthetic progestogen Norethisterone marked a key step towards the earliest oral contraceptive pill. Djerassi outlined the "horror scenario" that occurred because of the population imbalance, for which his invention was partly to blame. He said that in most of Europe there was now "no connection at all between sexuality and reproduction".

Topping the list compiled by the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission is the assault by radical homosexuals after Proposition 8 passed in California in November. In opposition to the amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman, some gay rights supporters verbally and physically assaulted Proposition 8 proponents, vandalized church property and automobiles and also blacklisted individuals, churches and businesses that donated money for the Yes on 8 campaign ...

On December 3, Taikang county, Henan province, more than 50 house church Christians gathered in the home of Xie Ruming. Officials from the Taikang County Domestic Defense Protection Squad suddenly broke into the home. All of the Christians were arrested ... Tang Houyong, Shu Wenxiang and Xie Zhenqi each received a one-year sentence of re-education through labor for "illegal proselytizing" and attending an "illegal gathering."

Police are searching garbage dumps in New Jersey and Pennsylvania for the body of a baby that was apparently thrown out with the trash at Jersey City's Christ Hospital. Investigators are saying a dead baby's remains were accidently tossed in the trash in New Jersey. Hospital spokeswoman Barbara Davy said the baby was stillborn on Dec. 21 and the body was placed in the hospital morgue. The body was gone when a funeral home employee came to pick it up on Jan. 2.

A nationwide survey commissioned by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has found that four out of five U.S. adults (82 percent) think abortion should either be illegal under all circumstances (11 percent) or would limit its legality. Thirty-eight (38) percent would limit abortion to the narrow circumstances of rape, incest or to save the life of the mother; and an additional 33 percent would limit abortion to either the first three or first six months. Only 9 percent said abortion should be legal for any reason at any time during pregnancy.

It has been said that one death is a tragedy, and a million, a statistic. But on occasion a feeling person writes something so moving that a statistic is transformed into a tragedy no one understands. Irrevocably, who we are as a people changes forever through vivid moral shock. I got the shock recently from Dr. Richard Selzer, a general surgeon retired from 26 years at Yale University Hospital. "It is midsummer ...You look down and see...a tiny naked body, its arms and legs flung apart, its head thrown back, its mouth agape, its face serious. A bird, you think, fallen from its nest. But there is no nest here on 73rd Street, no bird so big. It is rubber, then. A model, a...joke. Yes, that's it, a joke. And you bend to see. Because you must. And it is no joke. Such a gray softness can be but one thing. It is a baby, and dead. You cover your mouth, your eyes. You are fixed. Horror has found its chink and crawled in, and you will never be the same as you were ..."

Most Holy Redeemer Catholic Church, in the heart of San Francisco’s gay Castro community, was vandalized over the weekend by opponents of Proposition 8, the California resolution passed by voters in November that rejected gay marriage. Swastikas were painted on the church and the names Ratzinger (referring to Pope Benedict XVI) and Niederauer (the San Francisco Archbishop) were scrawled besides the Nazi symbol. Catholic League president Bill Donohue is asking Catholics nationwide to respond to this incident ... "Leaders in the gay community show no leadership when it comes to denouncing incivility committed in the name of gay rights. This has got to end.”