If the Obama administration thought last week was a difficult one in its continued efforts to deny, deflect, and obfuscate to keep the growing scandals involving the IRS, the Department of Justice surveillance of Associated Press reporters phones, the cover-up involving the Benghazi massacre (and soon-to-be gun-running scandal), and HHS secretary Kathleen Sebelius shaking down private industry for donations to help implement Obamacare, this week is already starting out to be even worse.

Not that I didn’t tell y’all this would happen.

It’s not that there are – at least for now – new scandals on the horizon, but the broadening and deepening of each of these the scandals is presenting a greater challenge for the administration to contain than I’m betting even they ever thought possible. In just the past 48 hours we’ve learned not only that the IRS has been targeting Christian churches in Wyomning, even asking for lists of church members, something that smacks of Nazism’s deepest and darkest days, but you have the first IRS higher-up going before Congrees to plead the fifth rather than give sworn testimony. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out when people start pleading the fifth, you’re talking cover-up and prosecutions somewhere not too far down the line.

In the terms of the AP scandal, we now find that it wasn’t just AP reporters whose phones were targeted for surveillance by Eric Holder’s Department of Justice (something he claims to know nothing about, of course) it was the phone numbers of Fox News reporter James Rosen and other Fox News phones, even Rosen’s own parents line. Again, it doesn’t take a degree in rocket science to figure out that if the government were doing this to AP reporters and Fox News, the practice was pretty widespread, perhaps including CBS News reporter Sheryl Attkisson, whose reporting has helped keep the Obama administration’s cover-up of the Fast and Furious scandal alive.

The problem for the Obama administration on all these fronts at this point is two-fold: 1) the responses of Attorney General Eric Holder and White House spokesman Jay Carney denying knowledge of anything to do with these scandals in any way has even their most loyal supporters questioning their honesty and potential direct involvement (if not their overwhelming incompetence), and 2) scandals such as these tend to take on a life of their own as as people begin to come forward and spill their guts rather than face prison, and journalists invoke their inner Woodward and Bernstein when they sense blood in the water and great story to help break open. Just as the Nixon administration’s efforts to cover-up the Watergate break-in soon became an all-consuming effort that paralyzed the administration and ultimately led to its downfall, the Obama administration risks finding itself in a similar situation if it can’t find a way to rid itself of the stench surrounding itself so early in its second term.

What’s becoming readily apparent is that this administration, in its zeal to further its aggressive left-wing agenda, sought to stifle dissenting views, suppress the activities of conservative groups, and inhibit the ability of opposition forces to support the elections of Republicans in 2010 and 2012 by employing various agencies of the federal government to threaten, harass, and intimidate. It wasn’t just the actions of rogue low-level operatives, it was systemic and originating out of Washington. Whether or not those directions came directly from the White House is still something that will need to be determined, but if it is – and you can say you heard it here first that it did – as Charles Krauthammer says we could be talking about events that are fatal to this administration in every sense of the word.

What the Obama administration is slowly being shown to have been involved in – almost from its inception – will ultimately be shown to make Richard Nixon look like a brash amateur.

It’s stories like this that just tear your heart apart. There’s not much one can say and you can’t rationalize it in any way – bad things happen and good people are victimized through no fault of their own. It’s just being in the wrong place at the wrong time. What really bothers me about tragedies like this is that people with their own agendas will use them to further their own arguments, as if that makes any difference. You get that idiot senator from Rhode Island using it as an argument for man-made global warming, reinforcing my belief that most, if not all, politicians are as dumb as a bag of rocks. And, you inevitably get athiests asking believers where their God was during this event (as if they themselves think they know anything about the God they profess to not believe in). And you get faithful believers who will say stuff like, “there but for the grace of God go I”, as if God preference was with them but somehow not with the victims. Even worse, there are Christians who will say this kind of thing is God’s punishment for things we have done as a nation and a culture, as if senselessly killing children and innocents is God’s unique form of retribution.

I despise anyone who uses this kind of thing for any kind of political or religious messaging because it just shows how ignorant people can be.

The fact of the matter is that none of us know God’s will, but I firmly believe God has a bigger scope and bigger things in mind than re-directing a tornado so it hits, say, an empty 7-11 store instead of an elementary school full of children. We only hear about these kinds of tragedies because it takes place in a country and culture where media is omnipresent; for idiots who think today’s Moore tornado was the worst in history ought to do at least a little homework in order to see that tornado outbreaks in the middle of the U.S. are heardly unusual and it all comes down to technology (and the lack thereof) and being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I don’t mean to make light of the victims of the Moore tornado – far from it, but the fact is death is all around us, even more so if you live in Tornado Alley during the late winter and spring months when killer tornadoes are hardly a rare occurrence. And by its very nature – after all, human beings are instilled with an innate preference of life over death – death is something most people encounter without a lot of anticipation and joy. And while we mourn the deaths of those in Moore and pray for God’s comforting and healing presence on the surviving families and loved ones because of Monday’s tornado, when you get right down to it there’s no difference between their deaths and anyone else’s thousands of miles away as a result of war, disease, religious intolerance and even abortion. Death is death, it’s not a question of if but when and how, who you are, how much you are loved and by whom, and how and by whom you will be remembered in this life. For the believer and non-believer, unplanned death remains the great equalizer – the comfort for us believers comes in the faith that a loving God will surely take care of things in the next.

As a Christian I believe there is a better place beyond this and God has a way or sorting things out in the end. Of course, if the joke is on me and I’m wrong and the atheists are right, then it doesn’t really mattrer, does it? But it doesn’t stop me from saying my prayers tonight for the victims and survivors of that tornado in Moore, OK yesterday. The folks there need our prayers and our support, and as lovers of life itself, how can we not offer anything less to those so much in need of our help. And here’s how you can help.

To those not interested in helping out in any way and or using this tragedy to showcase your own ignorance, keep your opinions and stupid beliefs to yourselves and try not to live up to my expectations. I really have no patience or tolerance for the likes of you.

First, a subject nod to my favorite U2 song. Very grungy!

Want to know how small a 1,752 square foot can get? Just have your sister-in-law and her three rabbits and one love bird take possession of said premises. The rabbits, of course, we’ve had before – they’re the Beastie Boys with Butterscotch, who shacked up with the Beasties following the passing of her first mate Geronimo. They get the guest bedroom along with my sister-in-law Tam, and are, as rabbits tend to be, pretty quiet during the day. They might be mischevous at night, but that’s Tam’s problem and she’s used to their nightly shenanigans.

The lovebird, however, is a different matter entirely. The bird doesn’t really have a name, although Tam calls it or he or she or whatever it is “Big Bird” but that’s – to be brutally frank – not much of a bird name and a cop out, actually. I mean, why not call your rabbit “Bunny” or your cat “Kitty Cat” or your dog “Pain In The Ass”?

(Ed. note: I can hear dog lovers now writing me and saying, why not call your golf game “Incompetent”, but I’ll just ignore their protestations…)

At any rate, this bird is quite the squawker and talker, from the moment the blanket over his/hers/its cage at 7 AM through the time he/she/it is covered again around 8 at night. And because the bird squwaks because he/she/it wants attention, guess where the bird’s residence is? A room typically occupied by people during the day, especially one where there are all sorts of interesting sounds, like – oh I don’t know – the sound of typing, phone calls, and happy phone buttons being pushed.

You guessed right, my office.

Here’s the beast, perched on our roll-top desk just to the right of me. A pretty bird to be sure, but I got over birds a long time ago after our last parakeet died. Oh, and those few days back in our Dracut condo where we found a lost cockatoo on our front lawn and find her owner in the want ads. Now THAT was one cool bird – she’s was fun, entertaining, and extremely intelligent – although one might question just how intelligent the bird was if it got loose in the first place.

But I digress.

With the twins heading off to Florida on Wednesday for my sister-in-law’s daughter’s graduation, I’ve got the brood until Sunday. Judging from how today is going, it’s going to be a long week…

After Eastertide we finally reach the feast of Pentecost, one of my favorite feasts of the Church Year. Pentecost commemorates the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on Jesus’ followers and, as Fr. Rodney Kissinger notes, is recognized as the beginning of the Christian Church:

The Feast of Pentecost is the birthday of the Church. For some 2,000 years now the Church has withstood the devastating ravages of time. It has seen empires rise, flourish and then fall. It has withstood diabolical attempts to destroy it from without and corrupting influences from within. Through it all the permanence and the stability of the Church stand out like a beacon in the night of a sin-darkened world.

God wants all to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth. The Good News Jesus came to reveal was meant not only for the people of his day, but for people of all time. So while Jesus was personally proclaiming the Good News to his contemporaries, he was preparing a means by which his mission would be continued after he had returned to his heavenly Father.

He began by gathering together twelve men whom he called apostles. He spent the night in prayer before he called them to “Come follow me.” He taught them by word and example. As an internship he sent them out two by two and gave them authority to proclaim the Good News and cast out demons. He gave them specific instructions about what to wear and what to do. When they returned they were glowing with success. Jesus took them aside for debriefing and further instructions.

Before he returned to his Father, he gave them their formal commission. “Go into the whole world; make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you. And behold I am with you always until the end of the ages.” (Matt.28:19-20)

Then he told them to go to Jerusalem and wait until they received the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth that would remind them of all he had commanded and remain with them forever. Then just as the human body of Jesus was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit at the Annunciation, so too the Mystical Body of Jesus, the Church, was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. And just as the human Jesus lived his entire life under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, so too the Mystical Body of Jesus lives its entire life under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. It was by the power of the Holy Spirit that the Gospel of Christ crucified, so incredible and paradoxical in itself, so contrary to human nature and preached by such simple, unlettered men conquered the known world in a few centuries.

God could have chosen angels. But he chose men; fickle, fallible, sinful human beings. AND IT IS THIS VERY HUMANITY WHICH IS THE GREATEST PROOF OF ITS DIVINITY. If it were only human it would have been out of existence a long time ago. After the Resurrection when the apostles were brought before the Sanhedrin for teaching about the Resurrection, Gamaliel, a teacher of the law, said, “So now I tell you, have nothing to do with these men, and let them go. For if this endeavor or this activity is of human origin, it will destroy itself. But if it comes from God, you will not be able to destroy them; you may even find yourselves fighting against God.” (Acts 5:38-39) That was some 2,000 years ago. The Church today is still teaching the Resurrection.

If God had chosen angels would the Church be perfect? I don’t think so. How many myriads of angels said, “I will not serve” and were cast into the Hell prepared for them? And if the Church is perfect, how did you get in? How did I get in? How did any human being get in? If you are looking for a perfect Church and you find it, join it. And when you do it will no longer be perfect. The next time the humanity of the Church rears its ugly head let us not be shocked and scandalized. Instead of trying to twist the facts to deny the truth, let us realize that there is something here greater than all of us.

The Church is not God. It is the People of God. The Church is not Jesus. It is the Mystical Body of Jesus. The Church is human and divine. And the humanity of the Church is one of the greatest proofs of its divinity.

Back when I was a youth in the Episcopal Church and Anglican tradition it was called Whitsunday. Always liked that term – it just sounds so Anglican to these Anglo-Catholic ears. Reminds me of the St. Anne’s Episcopal Church of my youth and old Mr. Nichols.

Saturday’s Pentecost Mass at St. Mary Magdalene was as good as church gets – the setting with all the red linen, bright flowers in reds, oranges, and yellows, a large number of the congregation dressed in the same colors, and music that was perfect and perfectly-performed for the occasion. Father Will’s homily – on Pentecost being the New Testament reverse of the Old Testament’s Tower of Babel story – was enlightening and fascinating to listen to.

Now that Pentecost is over, next week is the Feast of the Holy Trinity when the Church Year goes back to the color of green and thereafter what is called ordinary time, which will close out the Church Year on December 1st with the start of Advent and a new Church Year. It’s truly hard to believe, and not a little bit frightening – just how fast this year is passing by.

“Dude, you’ve only got 205 to the center of the green, go for it. Ir grande o quedarse en casa, si?”

My playing partner Greg is speaking in Spanish again. Translation: Go big or stay home.

The seventeenth hole at Superstition Springs is a monster – the #2 handicap hole on the course – with a quasi-island green protected on three sides by water. Go short, left, or right and it’s agua caliente for your ball. As has happened nearly a dozen times today, I find myself in a very strange place, playing from a place I’ve never been before. From the middle tees, it’s 484 from tee to green, and normally I’m already playing a penalty shot having found the water at 180 yards, but today my drive has gone at least 260 with the tees moved up a bit, and I’m smack dab in the middle of the fairway with 205 to the center of the green.

“I’m going to lay up with a six-iron”, I tell Greg. “That’s the safe shot.”

“Mierda” (translation: bullshit), says Greg. “You mean safe like on 12 where you hit your six twenty yards over the green into that strip mall across the street? Donde estan los huevos, vaya para el!”

It’s a good thing I still remember a lot of Spanish from Mrs. Bicile’s eighth grade class. He’s questioning my manhood and telling me to go for it, and he’s got a point there. After all, I’ve got huge numbers interspersed with small ones all over my card, and my commitment to “pull the trigger” and “squash the bug” on every shot has left me in places at Superstition Springs I’d never seen or played from before. That 12th hole Greg mentioned was 143 yards and I’ve always played a six. In past rounds I’ve left it on the hill short of the green, but today my six carried the green by at least a dozen yards, landing on the down slope and crossing Superstition Springs Boulevard before coming to rest at the door of a formal shop across the street. In the past two hours I’ve seen drives go through fairways into water I never thought I could reach, a pitching wedge of 90 yards go 110 and land in a flower arrangement behind the ninth hole where brides and grooms normally say their vows, and a 155 yard five-iron placed to miss a family of geese carry them by fifteen yards and end up in a pot bunker I never knew existed. I’ve had one birdie and two other putts for birdie with a combined total of four feet that were two-putted for par and three-putted for bogey.

In short, I’ve been in places on this course I’ve played a dozen times in the past that I never even knew existed.

So when Greg tells me to vaya para el at 17, I pull out my five-wood, which, I have to admit, has performed admirably all day. I set up slightly open, open the face slightly to fly against the wind coming from left to right, square up my shoulders, and let it rip.

Greg knows it’s there as soon as the ball leaves the club. “Get in the hole!” he yells, and the ball hits the mound just beyond the water, takes a peek at the hole as it slides by, and comes to rest on the fringe sixteen feet away. Three putts later, I’m in for par on a hole I’ve never made less than double bogey on every time I’ve played.

They say a scorecard doesn’t lie, so the 55 + 53 = 108 is what it is. But it’s hard to be disappointed when that 108 includes a front nine with an eight and a ten on two par 4s (the first and ninth, respectively), and a back nine with a crowd-pleasing 11 on that damned 14h hole where I lost three balls in the water the last time I played and did the same thing today. On a course where the four par 5s are really well protected, if not overly long, I had an eagle chip and two birdie putts. I had eight holes – eight holes! – where I made bogey or less, even while hitting only five fairways all day. Sure, my putting left something to be desired (35 putts) but at Superstition Springs you have to commit to every putt, and my missing a half dozen from two feet or less shows where my commitment there was today.

To say I struck the ball well today would be an understatement. Thanks to Alex Black’s instruction my irons are better than they have ever been before, my driver is really starting to come around, and my chipping was pretty damned fine throughout the day – especially given the hard, fast greens. Thanks to Dr. Bob Winters I’m able to throw off an 11 on a par 4 and rip a drive dead center down the next fairway. After the step backward my last time out, I’m back to being on track to where I need to be come Goodboys Invitational weekend in July.

Sad to hear of the passing of Ken Venturi, 1964 U.S. Open winner, winner of 14 PGA events, legendary CBS golf announcer for over three decades, and recent World Golf Hall Of Fame inductee who passed away Friday at age 82. May he rest in peace and may his family be comforted in how much he was loved and respected throughout the professional golf community, and the knowledge he’s in a better place. One of the reasons I took up golf so enthusiastically more than two decades ago was a result of Venturi’s class and passion for the game. The Goodboys always honor Venturi in their own way when they implore each other on a tough, fast green to, in Kenny’s words, “don’t give away the hole”.

Venturi was the embodiment of class and everything the game of golf stands for. There was no other like him and he will be missed.

A potpourri of items from across the blogsphere – and a test for everyone!

I know the controversy over that Tiger Woods / Sergio Garcia spat on Saturday continues to swirl, but there’s no doubt in my mind and in others that Tiger did indeed take an improper drop on Sunday after his ball found the water at 14. They say Woods’s playing partner Case Wittenberg agreed with Tiger’s selection of his drop position, but what do you expect a Tour rookie to say – uh, no Tiger, I think you need to make your third shot somewhere adjacent to the white tees because your ball crossed the lateral hazard almost immediately? Of course not. But if you look at the hole design and the shot from above, Tiger did indeed take an improper drop and should have been DQ’d. He may indeed be the best golfer in the world, but he also gets more breaks than anyone else due to his stature and he’s not afraid to take advantage of that. If you’re asking am I questioning his integrity, the answer is yes.

OK, all you linguists out there – here’s a fun grammar test for you to try. It’s harder than I thought! (Hat tip: Ace Of Spades HQ)

I know we’ve first gotta get to the bottom of that IRS scandal enveloping the Obama administration like a fuzzy warm blanket, but to me the biggest impact will be on Obamacare – not just because it shows just how dangerous the government has shown itself to be with the power it wields, but also with the fact that none other than the IRS and its former head of tax-exempt policy and procedure is running the office to enforce it. If they can’t keep one’s tax investigations quiet, imagine what they’ll do with your health records!

I’m not much of a hockey fan, but that amazing Boston Bruins comeback against the Toronto Maple Leafs the other night must have been something to see.

I’m not in agreement with anything David Axelrod says very often, but in this case he’s right – the government is too damned big for anyone to effectively administer, so it’s time someone takes a chainsaw to it and cut it back down to a manageable size.

OK Sox fans, can we all agree that the John Lackey signing was an incredibly bad idea? Sure, the guy is coming off surgery, but he was lousy before and he’s really throwing nothing more than glorified batting practice now. If the Sox had anyone in the minors who was anywhere close to a sure-fire major league pitcher he’d be up by now and Lackey would be gone. What a waste of time and money.

2:30 PM on a Wednesday afternoon. It’s just me at the Kokopelli Golf Club driving range – well, not really, it’s just that the only other person there is several stalls down and hasn’t hit a ball in the last half-hour as he’s busy negotiating some big business deal from the sounds of it. Eddie Money’s “Two Tickets To Paradise” is blaring over the loudspeaker, the skies are a blistering azure, and there’s a hot wind blowing out of the south. I was about 90% through my bucket of balls before I took a break to work on my short game and a hour’s worth of chipping and putting on the practice green. With no one else out there I’m practicing every kind of pitch and chip one can think of, and my short game has never been this good.

I head back to my bucket, grab my 9-iron, and practice “squashing the bug” just like Alex Black showed me the other day. Before I took my break I could tell I was over-swinging and getting just a bit too aggressive, but the chipping and putting has created a sense of inner calm and peace, so this time the 9-iron is hit perfectly and with a perfect trajectory, landing softly about five yards past the 100-yard marker. After two more identically-perfect swings, I grab my eight-iron and do the same thing. I finish up by practicing low driver “stingers” that center-cut the imaginary fairway I’ve envisioned in front of me.

That’s three buckets of balls in five days, the best practice sessions I’ve had so far this year.

As self-satisfying as a practice session like this is, it’s also the loneliest of pursuits – something not unusual in the world of golf. I recall a passage in Tom Coyne’s Paper Tiger, where, upon meeting his girlfriend after months of banging balls in his pursuit to qualify for Q-School he finds there’s really not much to tell:

There is plenty about [Coyne's pursuit] that only I will ever know about, that I cannot re-create for her or even in these pages for you – it’s the aspect of the game I care for least. Some consider it golf’s greatest mystical asset, but I think it’s the part of the game that can leave you the emptiest. Every so often, you hit that pure shot – I make the perfect move Doc [Jim Suttie, his swing coach] has been imploring me to make, I pinch a ball off the center of a six-iron, it flies at a controlled, cannon trajectory, effortless and exact, and in that moment I know I have changed. I have reached a place where I never honestly believed I would touch – a part of me can strike a golf ball as well as I will ever need to, as well as anyone, anywhere playing the game.

I see a lot of myself in Coyne’s words, because there are times I feel the same way. In golf measurements, while it’s been less than three and a half months since my first round at Superstition Springs this year, I ‘ve traveled light years in terms of my swing and overall abilities, to the point where I don’t even feel like the same person anymore. It’s not just that, with the help of Alex Black and no small amount of work on my part, my golf swing has changed, I’ve changed as well. As someone who – rightly or wrongly – always expected too much of myself, put too much pressure on myself, and never felt adequate when it came to trying this game called golf, I’m at a point where I’m both comfortable and confident in my golf skin. When things go wrong, as they did my last time out with the sticks, I’m able to make the necessary corrections and stop further bleeding. It’s a direct result of that round at Trilogy that I discovered the set-up that was the final missing piece of the puzzle I’ve been working on, and I’ve found the confidence I’ve always lacked whenever a golf ball was put in front of me.

It occurred to me while watching Bruce Brown’s The Endless Summer the other night that the same sensation I’ve encountered on the driving range these past few sessions is not unlike the kind of experience surfers have when they encounter that perfect wave or perfect wave experience. Consider this quote by big wave surfer Greg Noll, from Susan Casey’s fine book, The Wave, where he talks about being “in the moment”:

That rush! I can’t explain it. When you blow down the side of a wave and the thing’s growling at you and snorting and all that power and fury and you don’t know if you’re gonna be alive ten seconds from now or not, it’s as heavy an experience as sex! If you surf, you know. And for all the rest of you sons of bitches, I feel sorry for you.

No less an authority than Roy McAvoy has been quoted as saying, “there’s no greater feeling in the world than a well-struck golf ball”, and he’s right.

A recent incident remains fresh in my mind: I’m hitting balls at Superstition Springs last Saturday when a guy from a couple of stalls comes over and says to me, “I’m about to be the worst kind of driving range visitor. There’s something I saw in your swing…”

I cut him off at the knees. Politely but firmly, I say, “thanks for your concern, but I know exactly what I’m doing out here and what I’m trying to do.”

And then, while he’s still watching me, I hit a seven-iron on the screws, really put a twist on it. It takes a lovely trajectory, fading ever so slightly over the 120-yard marker, coming to rest near the very same patch of dark sand I had picked out just seconds earlier.

“Any questions?”, I ask.

This is something I could never in my wildest dreams have imagined myself ever being able to do. It’s not just brushing off a “helpful Henry” – you see these guys at the range all the time – and it’s not the first time I’ve politely declined the help of a stranger. It’s the ability to make a confident swing with good – OK, great – results with a stranger staring down at you. Being able to do this is not just un-Great White Shank like, it’s positively otherworldly, as if some golf alien has taken up residence in my body. This is not to say I’m not going to make bad swings or even have bad rounds; what’s completely different is the resilience, discipline, confidence, and ability I’ve brought to my game with the help of Alex and my de facto mental guru Dr. Bob Winters.

Friday and my next round, at a very challenging Superstition Springs, awaits.

As much as I’ve tried from time to time to cultivate a daily time of prayer at my prayer table, I just haven’t been able to make it stick. My prayer table is always covered with the linen in the color of whatever season of the Church Year it happens to be and, sharing the same house space as my home office, it’s still a comfort to be near when the days get beyond long and beyond hectic. But taking time out for a spell of quiet prayer at the table is just not happening for me at this point in time.

…which is not to say God and prayer are not on my mind or not in my consciousness constantly – in fact, I find myself thinking spiritually more often recently than I have in the past couple of years. I think there are several reasons for that:

1. Like many Roman Catholics worldwide, I’m pretty psyched about our new Pope and the way he is going about his business. He’s not the kind of guy who’s going to tolerate the status quo or pay lip service to the Vatican power structure – he’s committed to bringing a call to holiness to the masses, and he’s not afraid to walk with the common folk or ruffle a few feathers in order to make his point. His call to a greater holiness is my own call to a greater holiness.

2. Here in my 58th year of existence I guess I’m feeling the need to adopt a greater sense of spiritual balance – not just in what I do on a day-to-day basis, but why I do it to begin with. I’m not going to kid myself – the days of big ideas, big dreams, and big achievements are over with (unless, of course, God has other plans in mind!), and it’s the smaller things that are becoming more important to me. Getting out of debt once again, I think, will help that out a great deal, as there are charities and organizations I’d like to have the flexibility to at least consider playing a larger role in going forward.

3. I’ve felt a need to revisit the monastic roots of my spiritual conversion back in 1994 through the writings of Henri Nouwen (specifically, his The Genesee Diary and The Road To Daybreak) and Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection(his Practice of the Presence of God), and their own ideas on living a life of prayer through everyday activities and contemplative prayer.

4. My new daily subscription to the Society of St. John the Evangelist, where they’ll send you a daily meditation in the form of a sentence or two really kicks off my day and gives me something to contemplate throughout the day. I highly recommend it to everyone, and it costs nothing to subscribe!

All of which brings me to my prayer candle, which I’ve set up adjacent to my work area. A year ago I stumbled upon Church Candles Online and found some really nice 5-day candles to center my spiritual life around. Every Sunday a new one is lit with a short prayer for those I love and care for, and those in need of prayer. Sometimes it’s a little more than that – for God’s light and the warmth of His love and presence to be seen and felt by more people in this troubled world, or growth in His Church and an increase amongst God’s faithful. But always, it is lit with the hope and prayer that my family, friends, and loved ones whom I’ve shared my journey with all these years will always be in God’s care, in this world and the next. At night, whenever I’m out by the far end of the pool or taking the trash or recyclables out and passing by my office window there’s great comfort in seeing that candle burning brightly, whether during the day or at night.

Tonight my prayers and thoughts are with my neighbor John’s mother Lucy, who has been fighting Alzheimer’s and a variety of other ailments. She’s living out her remaining hours home with John and Mary so her friends and loved ones can pay their final goodbyes. Only met her a few times before she really got bad, and she was a very nice and classy lady. May she know deep within her God’s abiding presence and healing spirit as she moves from this life to glory in the next.

The headlines from yesterday tell you all you need to know: the Obama administration is imploding before our very eyes and it wouldn’t surprise me to hear the word “impeachment” start cropping out in the days and weeks ahead as more and more is learned about who knew what and who gave the orders involving the following scandals enveloping the Obama White House:

Headline: Budget request denied, Sebelius turns to health executives to finance Obamacare. Talk about your Chicago-style gangster politics:

Her unusual fundraising push comes after Congress repeatedly rejected the Obama administration’s requests for additional funds to set up the Affordable Care Act, leaving HHS to implement the president’s signature legislative accomplishment on what officials have described as a shoestring budget.

Over the past three months, Sebelius has made multiple phone calls to health industry executives, community organizations and church groups and asked that they contribute whatever they can to nonprofit groups that are working to enroll uninsured Americans and increase awareness of the law, according to an HHS official and an industry person familiar with the secretary’s activities. Both spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk openly about private discussions.

An HHS spokesperson said Sebelius was within the bounds of her authority in asking for help.

There’s a fine line between “asking for help” and shaking down private industry to open its wallets, especially when you’re the face of the Obama administration and its legacy and greatest legislative victory is being threatened on all sides due to size, scope, and bureaucratic red tape and incompetence. I’d like to know exactly why Sebelius is “asking for help”, who authorized her to do so, and who made the decision on what industries would be targeted and why.

Headline: Government Taps Press Phone Records. For a White House that has had its ass plastered with lipstick by the mainstream media from day one this is really beyond belief:

The Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press in what the news cooperative’s top executive called a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” into how news organizations gather the news.

The records obtained by the Justice Department listed outgoing calls for the work and personal phone numbers of individual reporters, for general AP office numbers in New York, Washington and Hartford, Conn., and for the main number for the AP in the House of Representatives press gallery, according to attorneys for the AP. It was not clear if the records also included incoming calls or the duration of the calls.

In all, the government seized the records for more than 20 separate telephone lines assigned to AP and its journalists in April and May of 2012. The exact number of journalists who used the phone lines during that period is unknown, but more than 100 journalists work in the offices where phone records were targeted, on a wide array of stories about government and other matters.

In a letter of protest sent to Attorney General Eric Holder on Monday, AP President and Chief Executive Officer Gary Pruitt said the government sought and obtained information far beyond anything that could be justified by any specific investigation. He demanded the return of the phone records and destruction of all copies.

All I can say to mainstream media is, you sleep with dogs, don’t be surprised if you wake up with fleas.

Headline: Watch out for Petraeus in Benghazi scandal. Methinks things are about to get damned interesting as far as the Benghazi cover-up probe is concerned, especially since additional whistleblowers have shown their willingness to come forward and testify:

So little is known about what happened in Benghazi: Where was the commander in chief that night? No pictures from the Situation Room this time. Why didn’t the Pentagon authorize a quick-response team to swoop in? Members of the military say they were ready — burning — to go. The call came in: Stand down. Let them die. There were dozens of witnesses to the attack that night: Where are they? What do they know? What really happened that night?

With the White House putting all blame on the agency, expect push back this week — nuclear push back. Gen. David H. Petraeus, the former director forced to resign after a sex scandal, is a dangerous man to the Obama administration. Mad and intent on getting even, he’s already talking, telling one reporter the talking points were “useless” and that he preferred not to use them at all. The floodgates will open this week, and by the end of business Friday, the scandal will be full blown.

Wouldn’t surprise me if the Patraeus infidelity allegations were leaked to the media by Hillary Clinton’s State Department in retaliation for him not willing to play ball in regards to Benghazi. Hell hath no fury than a scorned (and criminally incompetent) Secretary of State.

Headline: House panel to formally question IRS commissioner Friday. And it wasn’t just conservatives and Tea Party groups, it was – get ready for it – pro-Israel Jewish advocay groups!

The House Ways and Means Committee has scheduled a formal hearing Friday to probe the Internal Revenue Service for placing heavier scrutiny on conservative groups that applied for nonprofit status between 2010 and 2012.

IRS Commissioner Steve Miller and Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration J. Russell George are expected to testify Friday morning during the hearing, which committee leaders said would examine the agency’s “practice of targeting applicants for tax-exempt status based on political leanings.”

Taken individually, any of these scandals would be egregious enough that, had a Republican been in the White House the major news networks and left-leaning newpapers and cable networks would be calling for impeachment hearings to start yesterday. Taken together, even these media outlets are going to have a hard time making the case that the Obama White House isn’t up to its neck in scandal, and not of a minor nature either. This is lawlessness, gangster politics, and reckless (likely criminal) incompetence on such a wide scale there’s no way this administration can expect to do anything but ride out its second term and pray to God no one goes to jail and/or gets impeached before it ends.

I hate to sound so self-serving and tell y’all I told you so, but the fact is, I told you so – infact I used the twrm Nixonian before anyone in the blogsphere or media even thought about it. As I wrote as far back as May, 2008, just four months into the administration’s first term:

Robert Samuelson is right: the Obama infatuation by the media is the great unreported story of our time, and, going forward, an incredibly dangerous one for America. If this President truly believes he and his administration are above any form of criticism and immune from any scrutiny by the media or Congress (and it’s clear just months into his administration that this is exactly what they think, and why shouldn’t they?) one can only imagine how far they’ll want to take this.

Taken together, this administration’s actions recall those of a former president, though not necessarily the one the Anointed One loves to compare himself to. Rather than FDR, however, these actions appear to be downright Nixonian – a term I believe you’re going to be hearing a lot more of as this president becomes increasingly power-drunk and more full of himself.

Now you’ve got major Obama supporters using the political “N-word” and a Republican senator hinting at impeachment hearings. As far as I’m concerned, these guys are all johnny-come-latelys, because if they had been listening to The Great White Shank – and no one does – none of the above scandals would have surprised them in the very least. (BTW, I’m still waiting for the courts to order Eric Holder’s Justice Department’s to turn over to Congress those withheld memos on Operation “Fast and Furious”, which will reveal the DOJ’s complicity in allowing guns to illegally “walk” across the border into Mexico, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of Mexicans and one, perhaps two U.S. Border agents.)

It’s not hard to see how this kind of thing should envelop the Obama White House – this is what happens when, rather than using the power of his office and his “bully pulpit” to bring Republicans and Democrats together to pass legislation and further an agenda that serves the needs the country while providing both sides with political cover, this President has done nothing but create division and hostility by villifying any form of opposition without any push-back from the media and journalists who ought to be responsible for holding the President and his administration accountable. In any organization, abuse of power is in response to the tone set by the person on top, and if this President finds himself immersed in scandal and losing public faith and trust in his administration and its second-term agenda he has only one person to blame – himself.

Perhaps a round or two of golf will help his general disposition. After all, it’s what he does best.

Awesome photo hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ