I have avoided the Terri Schaivo case for the most part because I don't believe anyone in this whole story. As a husband, I do tend to think that the husband is and should be the primary caregiver, although I understand the parents fighting like hell to keep their daughter alive. I am bothered by the attempt to demonize the husband, I don't think it is fair. And it is a shame when it all becomes a political issue, it is hard to see how that benefits anyone. This is why it is important to have legal and clearly stated health care directives. It solves a lot of problems.

Al Sharpton is criticizing Howard Dean for what he calls an anti-Black agenda, i.e., anti-affirmative action, pro-death penalty, and anti-gun control. The fact that Black political leaders have flocked to Dean and Clark is beyond me. Common sense would seem to dictate Kerry, Edwards or Gephardt, who all have solid track records on issues important to the Black community.

Try to imagine what the Chesapeake Bay was like in 1600--one can only wonder and cry.

I'm still waiting to hear from my publisher about my book in the works. I sent in the manuscript and they are making edits and will get the script back to me. I hope this novel cracks the NY times bestseller list, the USA Today bestseller list and any other bestseller list that's out there. It is a great story, well written, engaging and very entertaining if I may say so myself, so pre-order your copy today!!

Fire Greg Williams dot com

Once again, the Bills appear on national TV and once again they embarass. Like a soldier once said, "Judah Ben Hur, let me die!"

What use is a number 3 ranked defense when you can't stop the opposition. I am sick, sickened and sickening. I know that the AFC East is still wide open, but this team just doesn't look good. They don't seem to be able to put any kind of pressure on the quarterback, it is comical to watch qbs carve up this number three rated defense.

Well, the Bills are going into a Bye week and the talk in Buffalo is whether coach Williams should be fired. I say yes, put Dick LeBeau as interim, hopefully that would give a shot in the arm and scare the barjesus out of Gillbride who will never ever think about throwing twice again on 1st and goal on the 9 yd line.

Of course the Democratic Presidential candidates debate was on at the same time on Fox another example of DNC brain freeze, luckily the Marlins wrapped things up quickly on Saturday.

My man, Kerry did well from what I can see, but the key is is he connecting with the primary voters. I hope so. I just got a bunch of flyers to begin to put up in my community. But this Iraq war thing has become a millstone around his neck. I still believe and pray that we get him as president, I think he has the potential to be a great one. For crying out loud, the man looks like he should be on Mt. Rushmore.

Okay. So I went gleefully to participate in my first John Kerry meetup last nite which ended up being a horror story. First I printed out the driving directions on mapquest, which said it shoud take me only 8 minutes. Well the directions were pretty good until 15 minutes into my drive I find that I am look for a turn that simply did not exist. Well, I eventually find myself in the thick of DC with crazy Friday night traffic. And BTW, DC is the worst laid out city in the nation. You could be driving straight ahead on a street and then see a "side" street veer to the right and then 5 mintues later you realize that going straight ahead and veering put you on another one way street with no straight forward way to get back.

Anyway, thirty minutes later, I found the Cha Cha lounge where the meetup was going to take place. Ah! but the other problem, no parking. I literally drove around for 30-45 minutes trying to find parking and eventuall I got lost somewhere in the city with rude drivers everywhere. Finally I chanced upon the familiar Rhode Island Ave and I got out of DC like a bat out of Hell.

it was dissappointing but that's life I suppose.

ER was pretty good last nite. I do not like any of the characters any longer, but I had to grudgingly accept that the episode was engaging and pushed the right emotional buttons. West Wing the nite before was decent too as was the quickly fading Alias.

The Bills are getting no love from the experts. I say, KC watch out! The Bills are unbeatable when they are on their game. We have a tough defense to score on and if we can get the running game going, the Bills are very tough.

Now what DNC bonehead scheduled a Democratic presidential debate for Sunday night in October during the World Series and football season, talk about brain freeze. The DNC has been a major dissappointment in handling their candidates.

I watched a focus group on CSPAN last nite. The focus group was about the presidential elections, the issues and candidates. I was appalled by the lack of knowledge by the subjects of the group, they could not, for the most part name the candidates. But I suppose that represents the apathy of the American electorate.

The Bills are going into Kansas City this Sunday. Conventional wisdom has the Bills losing this to the high flying chiefs. But I had conventional wisdom for lunch and it was delicious and I have no more use for it. I'm taking the Bills, 33-24. What people are forgetting is that the Bills, coming into the season, were the pick of the experts as the team most likely to surprise. So the recent win against Washington was no fluke.

USA Today has a report on a memo by Rumsfeld to his senior staff painting a grim picture of failing efforts in the war of terrorism. For all his issues, and the fact that can't stand him, I am impressed that, at the least, he is recognizing and asking tough questions. I can imagine that the administration is bristling at the revelation of this memo and someone is going to be working overtime on the spin control

I am teaching a class on Christian morality. It is great to be teaching again. This is a 6 week class for adults and it is always fun teaching adults who are there because they want to learn. I do have to do an hour seminar of the Pope's latest encyclical on the Eucharist. That should be interesting. The problem is that this seminar is meant to be somewhat introductory but the encyclical almost assumes basic knowledge because it is written to curb "abuses" and it thus has a polemical tone, which is not the best didactic tone to adopt. So I may just end up teaching that seminar from the Catechism and then go over what the Pope had to say.

John Kerry is on Hardball tonite and I suppose 95% of the hour will be dedicated to the Iraq issue. That whole issue is so played out, I am tired of it.

The Bush administration is now considering security guarantee talks with N. Korea after stonewalling for three years. Here is an incoherent foreign policy that makes no sense. For years people had said that we need to engage the N. Koreans but we refused to do so, like we refused to engage the Palestinian conflict, now we are left pixking up pieces and doing, two years late, what should have been done earlier. Even if the Bush admin did not want to give N. Korea non-aggression guarantees, the key was to keep them engaged in some sort of dialog. Instead Bush kept them at bay and guessing what the next move was. So in response, they ratchet up their nuke program and viola, there's possibly more nukes on the Korean peninsula.

My criticism is not partisan, my point is that they need to have a policy and be consistent with it.

The Bills pulled it off on Sunday and I am happy this week. I suspected they would, there is so much pressure on everyone eight now, it would have been phenomenal if they didn't rise to the occasion.

The running game produced almost 200 yards and the passing game was great. It is hard to evaluate the team, though, because one can't tell if it is the Bills getting better or Washington getting worse. At least, we can all take comfort in the fact that the play calling, run-pass selection is getting better.

I was still concerned with the pass rush. The Bills only managed one sack against the hapless Rob Johnson. They did harass Ramsey, so there was pressure but, I wasn't thrilled with the lack of sacks. There were also a few throws that if Washington had a better quarterback, they might have made because the pressure did not get to the QB on time.

The Bills have something here to build on. I do think that they'll surpise KC with a sound victory next week and the cream Dallas the week after their bye and establish themselves as a premier team again.

The second half of the season is where it gets bloody. We've got the Jets, Dolphins and New England, I think we have the rest of the NFC East also, i.e., Arizona and Eagles, which are winnable games.

I am cautiously optimistic, let's hope the Bills justify that optimism.

Cold season sucks!!!

Washington vs. the Bills on Sunday. My prediction is that the Bills will break out of their funk in the next two weeks. They'll cream both Washington and the Kansas City Chiefs, widely viewed as one of the best teams in football, and the Bills will reestablish themselves as players in the race to the super bowl.

I got John Kerry's Call to Service book today. I like it, I had thought it was an autobiography, but it is more of a defining statement. I think it is quite good and I look forward to reading the rest of it.

I just spent a week at a conference with liturgy people in which Cardinal Arinze among others spoke. It is always interesting being among liturgists and hearing their take on issues. My heart does go out to them because they do do the best they can but are under so much pressure from all sides.

One thing that I'll do some writing about later is the issue of Vatican II. To a person, they all seek to implement the reforms of Vatican II, but IMO, like other groups they remain parochial in their approach. What I mean is that liturgists focus on sacrosanctum concilium almost to the exclusion of other documents, just like scripture scholars focus on Dei Verbum, sytematic theologians on Lumen Gentium, and moral theologians on Gaudium et Spes,

r & r almost over. I write with a tiny one perched in one arm.

Basically, the Bills suck. I say fire coach Gregg Williams, put Dick Lebeau in charge for the remainder of the season. I don't doubt that Williams could turn things around, afterall the Raiders where 4-4 last year before the super bowl tear, but too much money has gone into this team to foul this up.

I watched the CNN Democratic presidential debate tonite and boy was it an embarasing disaster. CNN should be banned from hosting these things. After CNBC's excellent debate, I would have thought that someone would have taken notes and learned how to run one of these things. It was simply pathethic, the format was terrible, Judy Woodruff was pathetic and the candidates did not necessarily come off looking their best.

Well, its been San Antonio all week. We arrived on Sunday. At first I was dissappointment with my very limited exposure to the city, but view of the city was limited to my hotel and the grocery store close by. Travelling with kids is very interesting and intense and it has been an experience. Of course, though, the kids make everything much more fun.

So let's see, we've done the San Antonio thing, the River Walk, the Alamo and the Missions, and I think the city is really nice and they've done a very good job for tourists. The Alamo was a very interesting and moving experience. My wife's Texan, so it was a quasi-religious experience for her. For that reason, the visit was less of a touristy thing and more of a pilgrimage--very intense.

We visited two of the three main missions, unfortunately it was raining hard so we had to view them from the comfort of our car. They were awe-inspiring from a distance. At first, we were taken aback by the fact that the missions were right in the middle of everything else, with one of them, there was a Pizza Hut around the corner, etc, but then we kind'a liked the fact that these historic momuments were a part of the everyday lives of these people here.

Heading out to sunny San Antonio, should be fun.

There is a lot of nervousness about the Bills-Bengals game. I have a feeling that the Bills are going to kick the Bengal's. The problem there is that it tells us nothing about the quality of the team. They seem to beat up on run-down opponents but then struggle mightily against quality opposition.

Kerry's speech at the DNC was rocking. The man has the stuff and is pitching a steady game. I think Dean's campaign is going to stall and tread water. His loyalists are going to be out there making noise, but many of the heavyweights, the political activists and organizers don't think he can beat Bush, they think Kerry can beat Bush so they are backing Kerry. It is too early to tell about Clark, but he is going to have a major problem with the party faithful because of his recent conversion. He isn't dominating in the early states but we have to wait for a new slew of polls to see what's going on.

Going to bed at 2 am is not cool when you have to wake up at 6 am. Esepcially if this is the daily pattern. I was swamped with work last nite, not to mention the Red Sox game.

Rush Limbaugh quit ESPN, not soon enough in my opinion. The very sight of him made me cringe. It is incomprehensible that a network that deals with a very high percentage of Blacks would hire an irascible bigot on one of their most popular shows.

So, Senator Kerry reached his $1 million goal by Sept. 30 for a total of $5 million, no small achievement, though, dwarfed by Howard Dean's $15 million. I hope the Kerry campaign now sets early fund raising targets for November and be bold about it and post the progress on the internet, seeing such progress is what gets people excited. Howard Dean learned that early.

I think the Bush White House is reeling. It all smells nixonesque. Bush's response yesterday to the alelgations that someone outed a clandestine agent was cryptic and it sounds like he himself is not sure, but has his suspicions.