86-Year-Old Stowe Woman Chosen to Hear Historic Pope Francis Address to Congress

Photo Courtesy of U.S. Rep. Ryan Costello's office

U.S. Rep. Ryan Costello, accompanies Stowe resident Jeannine Ferrante through the U.S. Capitol on her way to hear Pope Francis address Congress Thursday.

Jeannine Ferrante has had an exciting couple of days.

The 86-year-old West Pottsgrove resident returned home Friday night after a trip to Washington, D.C. to witness Pope Francis address Congress.

"It was awe inspiring. In his humble, soft spoken way, he conveyed the most important messages, the way I imagine Jesus would," Ferrante said in written responses to questions e-mailed by The Mercury.

A parishioner of St. Gabriel of the Sorrowful Mother Church in Stowe since 1950, when she was married there, Ferrante was selected by U.S. Rep. Ryan Costello to use one of his tickets to see the address.

" It was almost unbelievable. I was pleasantly surprised and was most grateful to Congressman Costello for this opportunity of a lifetime," Ferrante wrote.

"The friends I shared the good news with were very happy for me."

The lucky lady was a little too tired after all the excitement to speak to The Mercury directly, but she did agree to answer some written questions.

She wrote that she found the Capitol to be "very impressive. It would be nice if every American could visit it."

Ferrante had only been there previously on school trips.

It's the first time she has ever seen a Pope in person.

Prior to heading to Washington, Ferrante did speak with Candy Woodall, a reporter from The Harrisburg Patriot-News.

In a Sept. 9 article, Ferrante said she is a fan of Francis.

"I think he's marvelous. I'm very fortunate to be chosen to be close to this person," she said.

"I'm not sure what would be best for him to say, but I'm sure whatever he says will be enlightening. Congress will hear something they've never heard before," Ferrante told the Patriot-News.

George Orwell is Laughing At Us

I used to joke about wanting to see my FBI file.

This was said in the vain hope that I actually had one.

There was a part of me that felt it would be kind of a curmudgeon's badge of honor to have one, but I wasn't quite sure I had been enough of a pain in the ass to merit one.

Turns out its not so special.

Turns out, we all have one.

Turns out all you need to do to merit being under surveillance in the United States is to be born in the United States, have an inalienable right to protection from unreasonable searches and seizures, and then have that right summarily ignored under some nebulously defined threat which will never go away.

Oh yeah, and own a phone or use a computer.

So first, thanks to The Guardian, a British newspaper whose financial foundations are shaky at best, we learn that the National Security Agency, which is charged with keeping an eye on foreign developments, has been collecting the phone records of millions of Verizon customers on a daily basis.

(Here's the court order that makes it all legal.)

The Verizon order was made under the provisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (Fisa) as amended by the Patriot Act of 2001, passed in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, The Guardian reports.

The Guardian also reported that:

The court order appears to explain the numerous cryptic public warnings by two US senators, Ron Wyden and Mark Udall, about the scope of the Obama administration's surveillance activities.

For roughly two years, the two Democrats have been stridently advising the public that the US government is relying on "secret legal interpretations" to claim surveillance powers so broad that the American public would be "stunned" to learn of the kind of domestic spying being conducted.

Sadly,  I think they overestimate the American public's sensitivity to this issue.

Me? I'm just stunned that two elected officials in Washington actually seem concerned about this.

Although, maybe when the public realizes the Obama administration considers them no more worthy of Constitutional protections then journalists, THAT will make them mad.

I mean come on. Journalists? Those guys are awful!

Then comes the news from The Washington Post that our friends at the NSA and FBI are also "tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio and video chats, photographs, e-mails, documents, and connection logs that enable analysts to track foreign targets, according to a top-secret document obtained by The Washington Post."

Like a bad spy novel, the Post reports the program is "code-named PRISM" and operates by:

"Collection directly from the servers of these U.S. Service Providers: Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, Apple.”

London’s Guardian newspaper reported Friday that GCHQ, Britain’s equivalent of the NSA, also has been secretly gathering intelligence from the same internet companies through an operation set up by the NSA.

All of this collection of "meta-data" is done by merely taking the information we gleefully allow private companies to collect on us all the time in exchange for convenience, so the government asking for information that already exists all seems kind of normal.

It shouldn't.

It should worry the hell out of us.

For those of us who think the Constitution is only about guns and free speech, permit a refresher on the Fourth Amendment:

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

No doubt the legal argument here is that the government is only taking what we have freely given to giant corporations.

It does not, however, make me feel secure in my papers or effects," and it appears the only "probable cause" or "affirmation," the government has offered in seizing this information is: "some of you might be terrorists."

I call it this the Jeff Foxworthy (of "You might be a red neck" fame) rationale.

We can spy on everyone because, well, some of you might be  a terrorist, if not now, then maybe some day.

This kind of "perpetual crisis" not only provides job security for everyone in the security business, it also means they will ever stop collecting this information and potentially using it against us for reasons that have very little to do with terrorism.

So if you don't have a file with the good old FBI, then maybe you've got one with the NSA, or maybe the CIA or even some agency so secret we're not even allowed to know it exists.

(Please note here that these are NEWSPAPERS no one buys anymore undertaking these investigations. No major network would have the balls to confront the government like this. Keeping those in power accountable is the job of a free press and, these stories indicate, we are still, sometimes, up to the job.

On my desk at work, I have a quote from Winston Churchill taped to my computer: "A free press is the unsleeping guardian of every other right that free men prize."

So when newspapers finally go away, so too will another avenue to find out what the hell our government is doing. But hey, at least we'll always know when Lindsay Fucking Lohan goes back to rehab again! End of rant.) 

It was inevitable I suppose.

Since the Internet, technology has raced forward at a pace far exceeding our ability to understand its full implications or recognize its downsides, much less muster the collective political will to do something about it.

Needless to say, the security agencies immediately recognized the opportunities and capitalized upon the inability of the political arm to adapt our laws to recognize that communication in an envelope should enjoy the same protections as communication in a virtual envelope.

They might need a court order to open your physical mail, but apparently all it takes is one to open EVERYONE's e-mail, or Internet searches, or Google searches of Skype conversations.

Once the law catches up to those practices, if ever, the government, our government, will already have stockpiled millions of pieces of data on its citizens for use as they see fit in the never-ending "war on terror."

(Seriously, how does one win a "war on terror." When a child gets terrified on a roller coaster, who do we declare war on? The child? The roller coaster?)

And once they have this information, how realistic is it that a law would be passed making them stop or give it back, particularly given that the law, process for enforcing it and contents of the searches are all secret?

These intrusions into our privacy began under President Bush's administration, but it is President Obama who has chosen to continue them and, in some ways, that makes him more guilty in my eyes.

Because, unlike Bush, Obama promised to stop these practices and has, instead, expanded them.

Combine these outrages with a drone program that kills American citizens without trial and one begins to consider that perhaps its not the Second Amendment we need to worry about this president undermining -- it's all the others.

These are supposed to be our founding principles. If we abandon them for convenience or because we're scared or under attack, how sacred can we really be said to consider them?

The fact that Ben Franklin's quote about "those who would sacrifice liberty in exchange for security deserve neither" is so overused its become trite, does not make it any less true.

Why should be we worried about this?

Pretty simple really and Guardian columnist Glenn Greenwald puts it simply:

"No healthy democracy can endure when the most consequential acts of those in power remain secret and unaccountable."

Is the Election Over Yet?

So my latest teaching-an-old-dog- new-digital-tricks exercise is Tumblr.

Sort of a combination of blogs and Facebook as best I can figure out, its free, like most services.

So I decided to try it out and have been posting my blog there as well as here.

But now for a little reverse.

Below is something that came across my Tumblr feed which I found kind of thought-provoking.

I am not as familiar with Tumblr as I am with the other platforms, so I can't vouch for the accuracy and certainly not the math.

But even if the numbers aren't right, I think you get the idea.

Have a look:

In just 16 days, outside spending groups (like super PACs, various breeds of nonprofits) spent $212.8 million on political ads, starting Oct. 1.

As Politico’s Dave Levinthal points out, that’s enough to buy every person living in Flint, Mich., or Green Bay Wis., a “high-end” LED flat screen TV.

That got us thinking, and playing with Wolfphram Alpha, what else could 16 days worth of political ads buy?

(Arranged in order from serious, to decidedly less serious.)

• 1,363 packs of ramen noodles ($334.58 worth) for each homeless person in the U.S. (using 2011 stats).
• Four years’ tuition and board at Harvard University for 976 students.
• A full tank of gas for 5,728,129 cars (using national average of $3.71, and assuming a 10-gal. tank).
• A year’s salary for 3,795 full-time, public school teachers (using U.S. average).
• The 2012 season salary for every active player on the New York Yankees — plus Derek Jeter and Joe Girardi — with roughly $3 million to spare.
• First of all, a $32,000 fixed-gear bicycle exists — but even for that price, you could buy 6,650 of ‘em.
• A binder (like this) for every woman living in the state of California.
• One of these giant gummy bears on stick for every child 4-years-old and under in the U.S.
• 5,600,000 shares of Facebook stock when company first went public … or 11,211,801 shares today (stock value is $18.98 now, $38.00 at IPO).

All of which is to say, even for a political junkie like me, I've about had it. Thank God we don't live in Ohio, Florida, Wisconsin or Virginia, I can only manage the hazards waiting when you turn on your television there.

Thanks a lot Supreme Court.

It is also to say that this is what we get when the U.S. Supreme Court says money is speech. Now even though  I disagree with the results of that decision, I do see the legal rationale.

I think we might all be able to withstand this barrage a little more if people had to be accountable for what they bought and have the names attached to the ad. No more "dark money."

But given that the only people who can fix the problem right now belong to a group of largely useless yahoos called the U.S. Congress, I'm not holding my breath.

Teaching Girls to be Advocates

Without advocates, would women have the vote today?

It was back in January that the Tri-County YWCA declared 2012 to be the "Year of the Young Woman."

Their "Girl Talk" series continues on Saturday, Sept. 22 at 1:30 p.m. when a panel discussion on "issues surrounding advocacy and its importance in the lives of women and girls" will be held.

The YWCA is located at 315 King St., and participants can park in the "permit spaces" in the Evans Street parking lot across King Street from the YWCA.

"The purpose of the program is to inspire a new generation of young women and girls to engage in issue advocacy starting in our local community," according to the YW's flyer on the subject.

"Whether those issues are Internet safety, getting more girls interested in math and science, homelessness or wellness, participation in advocacy is very empowering for young people, especially when they realize their ability to not only influence change, but to create it."

Advocacy can sometimes lead to higher office as well.

"Women are not a special interest group seeking special privileges," the flyer notes.

"We comprise 52 percent of the population and we are citizens who deserve the same freedoms and protections warded our male counterparts," the flyer notes.

"The YWCA Tri-County Area supports and empowers women to have the right to control their own bodies, make their own decisions about healthcare, receive equal pay for equal work and be treated with respect by the men and women who represent them in their state houses and in in Washington."

"We support the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment and the restoration of all the rights which have been limited or destroyed by governors and other legislators across the nation and which continue to limit women's participation and progress," the flyer read.

"The latest statistics indicate need for more women elected officials in state legislatures, in the United States Congress and in the White House," the flyer read. "Women comprise more than 50 percent of the population, but make up only 15.3 percent of elected officials in the United States Congress and only 22.8 percent in all state legislatures combined."

The advocacy panel discussion is free with a reservation that can be made at 610-323-1888 or by emailing Dawn Short at dshort@ywcatricountyarea.org