You know the Problem with America?

Pardon my language, but...

We have far too many fuckers; assholes; jackasses if you will. For example, we are currently under the political rule of Taliban-lite that likes to start unjust wars and kill innocent civilians by the bucket-load and unleash war for generations. At the same time they do this bullshit.

A canon lawyer seeking to have Senator John Kerry excommunicated by the Roman Catholic Church because of his support for abortion rights said on Monday that he had ammunition in the form of a letter issued at the request of a senior Vatican official.

The lawyer, Marc Balestrieri of Los Angeles, who heads a conservative Catholic nonprofit organization called De Fide, also said that, based on the letter, he would now seek to have four other Catholic politicians excommunicated: Senators Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, Tom Harkin of Iowa, Susan Collins of Maine, and Mario M. Cuomo, the former governor of New York.

"Senator Kerry, and all pro-choice Catholic politicians, who publicly call themselves Catholic yet who blatantly violate canon law by continuing to profess heresy and receive Holy Communion, must publicly reject their abortion advocacy for the sake of their own souls, and the others they have scandalized," Mr. Balestrieri said in a statement. "They have been excommunicated."

Only Ms. Collins is not a Democrat.

The letter to Mr. Balestrieri, written by another American canon lawyer at the request of a Vatican official, says that "if a Catholic publicly and obstinately supports the civil right to abortion, knowing that the church teaches officially against that legislation, he or she commits that heresy" and is "automatically excommunicated."

The letter, first reported on Friday by Eternal Word Television Network, a Catholic station in Alabama, was written last month after Mr. Balestrieri met with an official at the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

In June, Mr. Balestrieri filed a complaint accusing Mr. Kerry of heresy and seeking to have him excommunicated. The complaint was filed with the Archdiocese of Boston, where Mr. Kerry lives. The archdiocese, which declined to comment Monday, can decide whether Mr. Kerry should be excommunicated because he supports abortion rights.

Mr. Balestrieri said that when he was in Rome, he did not disclose to the Vatican that he had filed the petition against Mr. Kerry. He said he merely asked whether someone who publicly supports abortion rights was guilty of heresy.

Like I said, this country is overloaded with fuckers.

UPDATE: It was pretty clear from the article that Balestrieri was filing something and calling it the "truth" by that fact alone. A theory that would undoubtedly please political candidates and plaintiff's lawyers around the country were it true. However, it often is not. And the Vatican, and the person he got a reply from both say Mr. Balestrieri is full of it:

An official at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith said a California canon lawyer seeking a formal decree of heresy against Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, Democratic presidential nominee, has misrepresented his contact with the Vatican office.

"The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has had no contact with Mr. (Marc) Balestrieri," said Dominican Father Augustine DiNoia, undersecretary of the congregation.

"His claim that the private letter he received from (Dominican) Father Basil Cole is a Vatican response is completely without merit," Father DiNoia told Catholic News Service Oct. 19, declining to discuss the matter further.

...

Vatican officials contacted by CNS Oct. 19 said they did not agree with Father Cole's conclusion that Kerry has incurred excommunication.

"You can incur excommunication 'latae sententiae' (automatically) only if you procure or perform an abortion," one said.

In Washington, Father Cole told CNS the Holy See "gets these requests ... tons of them," and that Father DiNoia asked him to respond to Balestrieri in a private capacity.

"I have no relationship to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith ... and the letter that I wrote to Balestrieri was purely private," he told CNS Oct. 19. "I wrote it as a private theologian, not with any authority. It has no authority whatsoever.

"Its worth is disputable," he added.

One Vatican official contacted by CNS said no church official had seriously approached the point of declaring Kerry a heretic.

"No, Kerry is not a heretic," he said.