The Catholic Church has shifted ownership of nine [Tennessee] Midstate properties, an action critics say was calculated to protect assets from the kinds of huge settlements that have been awarded to victims of priest abuse. Diocese of Nashville officials filed paperwork so that eight churches and one school would be owned by the parishes or school instead of the bishops who had owned the properties for decades. The diocese is being sued for $68 million by two victims of abuse. The parishes are not named as defendants. [...] Critics say the Nashville diocese's move to distance itself financially from individual parishes mirrors legal strategies employed in recent years by dioceses in Portland, Ore., and Spokane, Wash. All three dioceses are in legal battles with alleged victims who have argued that the parishes are part of the dioceses.
"America was never innocent. We popped our cherry on the boat over and looked back with no regrets. You can't ascribe our fall from grace to any single event or set of circumstances. You can't lose what you lacked at conception.
"Mass-market nostalgia gets you hopped up for a past that never existed. Hagiography sanctifies shuck-and-jive politicians and reinvents their expedient gestures as moments of great moral weight. Our continuing narrative line is blurred past truth and hindsight. Only a reckless verisimilitude can set that line straight."
--James Ellroy, American Tabloid
Ensure a Free and Fair Election (Ban Paperless Voting Machines
"The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words."
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