Invocation, Conventional. Rev. Doctor Howard Dean reads from his favorite books of the Bible: Jonah's Effusion to the Collisions: "Then we'll go to Antioch; and then we'll go to Nineveh; and then we'll go to Damascus; and then we'll go to Phillipi . . . Aaarrrruugggh!"

Real Obeisance to a Higher Power. Address by Fidel Castro via satellite. (Box lunches provided.)

Spontaneous Brie and Chablis Demonstration in the Aisles: "Why can't American politicians be charismatic like Dr. Castro?"

Welcome Address. Janet Reno. We're Sending the Homos after Your Children, and It's About Time

American Freedom Celebration I: Freedom from Speech. You Can't Say That!: How hate-speech and thought-crimes freed us from criticism.

Appreciation for President William Jefferson Clinton. (Restroom assignment matrix (by race, gender, pre-, post-, and non-surgical sex, sexual perversion, dietary obsession, age, and occupation) is in your delegate's packet.)

Day Two

Invocation, Inclusive. Princess Summer-Fall-Global Warming, Babesh Rama-Dama Doo-Wogga-Doo-Doo, The Thank-the-Goddess-the-Blood-on-our-hands-is-not-from-War-but-the natural-flows-of-Our-Mother-the-Earth Coven of East Hampton and the Moon, "President" Al Gore, and Paul Wellstone will consecrate The Convention to the Spiritual World that it might End War, Oppression, Racism, Sexism, Poverty, Energy Use, Energy, GDP, Environmental Arrogance, Obesity, Child Abuse, Marriage, Private Property, Privacy, Civil Order, High Gas Prices, Non-Bureaucratized Guns or anything else, the United States of America, the Politicization of Public Policy, and the Bush-Cheney-Ashcroft-Rumsfeld Regime of Terror.

Legislative Update: Original Intent, the Defense of Marriage Amendment, and Their Chilling Effect on The Living Constitution. Sandra Day O'Connor.

Spontaneous One-Minute Group Hate directed at George Bush, Elian Gonzalez, Neo-cons, Tobacco companies, Ronald McDonald, and embryos who that don't want to share their stem cells.

American Freedom Celebration II: Freedom from Religion. Communion Service conducted by Planned Parenthood. Surprise visit by Pope John Paul II (in effigy); homosexual priests f*** him and the horse he rode in on.

Salute to the Troops...of Abu Ghraib: Poor, ignorant, rural Public Employees, the Core of the Democratic Electorate. Until you existed, we had to invent you. Includes video presentation by John F. "Band of Mongols" Kerry: "When I was in Vietnam, We Didn't Allow This Sort of Thing to Happen".

Day Three

Make-A-Difference Parade—How the Democratic Party's Slogans and Shibboleths have turned molehills into mountains and changed the world. The boycotts, bans, and peace-making that have pumped up our self-congratulations will be celebrated by people—many of them dead—from Rwanda, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Albania, Bosnia, SE Asia, Palestine, Iran, Iraq, and by the fatherless children and other residents of thousands of emasculated slums across America. Festive floats will represent the additional hundreds of millions killed by malaria, abortion, the Gulag, unsafe autos, lung disease, AIDS and other STDs, and malnutrition. Special appearances by admiring, grateful bureaucrats, trial lawyers, terrorists, Red Chinese agents, and UN officials.

American Freedom Celebration III: Freedom from Association. Busing, public accommodation, multi-cultural, single-race dorms and student clubs. Single-sex marriage, Yes. Single-sex clubs, No.

Acceptance Speech. John F. Kerry. Content TBD.

Contest: Spot the phony Anti-Iraqi Freedom Protest Sign.

"I <heart> NY even more without the WTC"
"Support the Iraqi Resistance!"
"2000-Al Gore; 2001-Mullah Omar; 2002-High taxes; 2003-Saddam...and he's coming for YOU next".
"Death to America"
"Attn: M.I. 6, CIA, Mossad. Stop Blowing Things Up!"
Here for the answers.

Acceptance Speech. John F. Kerry. What I Really Said.

Myers explained the requirement that people—including politicians—who receive Holy Communion actually be in communion with the will of Christ and the teachings of the church in a pastoral letter.

The letter gives some credence to the "pompous" charge, but if anything Myers tries so hard to be gentle as to be ineffective.

Every faithful Catholic must be not only 'personally opposed' to abortion, but also must live that opposition in his or her actions.

Catholics who publicly dissent from the Church's teaching on the right to life of all unborn children should recognize that they have freely chosen by their own actions to separate themselves from what the Church believes and teaches.

To receive communion when one has, through public or private action, separated oneself from unity with Christ and His Church, is objectively dishonest…Because the Eucharist is the source and summit of our faith, the most sacred action of our Church, to misuse the Eucharistic symbol by reducing it to one's private "feeling" of communion with Christ and His Church while objectively not being in such union is gravely disordered. [my emphases]

Second, abortion rhetoricians love it when the Church uses talk like "right to life of all unborn children". It is so worn with use, so recognized as the catch phrase of one side in an unpleasant disagreement, that it has no sticking ability.

Likewise, for a different reason with "objectively . . . gravely disordered". Nobody listens to it or understands it. It just makes the Church's teaching seem arcane and distant. This is the measured circumlocution of canon lawyers, not of pastoral instruction to the faithful. Why not say that people who promote abortion have committed a mortal sin? They have turned their backs to God, commit sacrilege by receiving Holy Communion, and are going to Hell if they don't repent and confess.

I think the Church has made a grave mistake by giving up the blunt language of "sin", "mortal sin", and "Heaven and Hell". Ted Kennedy, John "Band of Mongols" Kerry, and Saddam Hussein can say "moral" without blanching—after all, we define for ourselves what morality is. No one cares--who could?--that his behavior is gravely disordered. Most of us feel our lives are disordered; how could they not be, we're all so busy? While there is a steady market for organizer-planners, life coaches, and financial advisers, we have pretty much lost the idea that there is a moral order, except to feel that it is an intolerable restriction of our personal freedom.

But talk of sin is shocking, so shocking that it appears nowhere in current American public speech except in the comforting context of ads for double-chocolate desserts. Now, the bishops are speaking of politicians' promotion of abortion as though it were a membership issue. This leaves the rhetorical gate open to cliched liberal complaints about separation of church and state, just as it is open to distracting blather about a woman's right to choose. It also leaves the gate open for the ignorant and half-ignorant to parse and misrepresent Church discipline, such as Tony Auth's cartoon equating teachings about abortion, war, and capital punishment.

Returning to the language of sin would bring to the fore the point that the abortionists conceded long ago and have since buried with inattention: Abortion is murder. Speaking this way would turn a putative institutional assertion of authority and power to an assertion of moral leadership. Anyone, the bishops should say, who has misused his public office to become complicit in the murder of the innocent unborn has committed a grave sin. Consequently, because he has separated himself from God's grace, he is unfit to receive Christ's Body and Blood in Holy Communion.

If the bishops made the murderous nature of abortion their starting point, the issue of refusing Holy Communion to abortion politicians would become simple and clear. The Democrats and RINOs would protest and scream, but they would be protesting that they are not murderers. Anytime you do that, you're already halfway lost.