That’s about all I can do after reading the story in today’s Waukesha Freeman that Paul Bucher filed for divorce from Jessica McBride (Yeah, Bice has something, too). And it’s not a sigh of exasperation, but one of sadness.

It was inevitable, I suppose, once word got out that Ms. McBride had an affair with Milwaukee police chief, Edward Flynn. Mr. Bucher doesn’t appear to be the kind of guy who would tolerate that, even though reports are he and McBride had an affair while he was still married. But then again what man would tolerate it?

I like Ms. McBride. I feel I could call her Jessica, even though we never really met, and she wouldn’t mind. Although a little strident in her opinions (and as anyone who has ever read me and talked to me know, strident I am not), she had good thoughts aplenty. Perhaps, like Ann Coulter, couching her good thoughts in sometimes over-the-top rhetoric hides from the world opinions that should be heard.

And she liked me; at least, she used to like me–haven’t heard anything recent, but one post recommended me to take Laurel Walker’s place in the Journal Sentinel Waukesha section. I was honored to be so highly thought of.

And I like Mr. Bucher. I liked the way he stuck to his guns, even when he disagreed with his wife or the conservative wing of the southeastern Wisconsin blogosphere. I voted for him in the AG primary. Why not?

The last thing I want to do is engage in anything that comes close to schadenfreude, but maybe I already have. My hope is that maybe in the cacophony of faux outrage from the left (she has always been a lightning rod for the left in south east Wisconsin, probably because of her strong opinions) and silence or counter outrage on the right, my small voice will still be heard.

I ache for them both and I pray for them both. Divorce is messy, even if we think it’s unavoidable. And there’s a child involved which never makes it easier.

Marriage is sacred and marriage is work. Defending marriage is more than keeping homosexuals from marrying. It’s staying committed to what you’ve vowed (in most cases before God) to do. “As long as we both shall live,” are not just some beautiful words; they’re a commitment to each other. That commitment was broken and now both McBride and Bucher as well as their little girl, will pay the price for that.

At the same time, and at the risk of sounding like a raving lunatic, as a Christian, I believe as well as good, personified by God, there is evil, personified by Satan, Lucifer, the Devil or whatever you want to call him. He is not as powerful as God, but he certainly has power and does not us to live as we should. He certainly doesn’t want folks to stand up for godly values (such as marriage, pro-life, fill in your value) and will fight against it.

This doesn’t mean we don’t have a choice. But it does mean we have to be wary. Satan will make it harder, but we must depend on God more to resist temptation.

Most of these people who appear to be strong for family values are Republicans so the Left points with glee whenever one falls.

Perhaps some of that is our fault by being just a little too, for lack of a better phrase, “holier-than-thou” when we talk about family values issues. Maybe a little more understanding, a little more latitude, a little more grace would go further. But that doesn’t sell newspapers and it doesn’t get folks elected.

Jessica McBride, John Edwards, or pick your own. I’m acquainted enough with my own frailties to know, “There, but for the grace of God, go I.” One stumble, one lax moment and it could be me.

Maybe that’s why I don’t gleefully jump on the bandwagons. It just leaves me sad.

[This is cross-posted at Fairly Conservative. Thanks to Cindy for trusting me to allow me to post it there before she even read it.]

You may notice the new look around here. I’m tinkering with what WordPress gives me to work with, trying to make it more streamline and shoving some stuff to pages.

The blog roll probably needs some major work but for now I’ll just change two.

Darryl Enriquez, formerly of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, is now at Waukesha News Online. You can visit Darryl there.

James Wigderson, op/ed columnist extraorinaire, has moved from Blogger and taken up new digs at in his own domain, so go check out the new Wigderson Library and Pub.

I figured the least I could do for my friend Michael would be to buy and read his book, “The Abortionist.”

It was well worth it.

The story is about Elliot Stearns, a former policeman who took up writing after a bullet left him paralyzed from the waist down. As a free lance writer and crime columnist Elliot writes on his blog From Where I Sit and for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Michael explains all this on his blog.

In the book, a psychopath is killing women using techniques an abortion provider would use. Elliot along with his friends on the police force are attempting to find the very clever killer.

Things are complicated by the fact that Elliot has again come in contact with his ex-fiance, Caroline. Things come to a head when their relationship brings danger to Caroline.

I liked the book. It was a mystery, albeit with few possible suspects. The story moved along and there were enough surprises to keep you guessing.

Knowing I am a Christian, Michael asked me if the fact that the killer seemed to have religious reasons for doing his killing bothered me. It does, but that was mitigated by several things. One, so many killers in books, movies and TV are portrayed as “religious nuts” that one becomes used to the whole thing. Two, sadly, we hear too often on the news that someone very much like “The Abortionist” has done some gruesome killing using religion as justification. Three, Michael dealt very well with the subject in the Epilogue by saying that the guy wanted to kill and wrapped in religiosity to justify his evil, much like suicide bombers wrapping themselves in a few words from the Koran and missing the message of the rest of the book.

For my like-minded readers (evangelical Christians), the murders were recounted with perhaps too much gruesome detail. There are a couple of sex scenes and one or two of the victims were described as being unclothed. There is swearing throughout the book.

Technically, a couple of minor spelling and grammatical lapses were noticed.

None of these, however, took away from the story line and the underlying debate about abortion. Caughill has done a good job of being fair to both sides of the abortion debate and looking at the human drama underneath. This he has wrapped up in a gripping story that is worth the read.

Don’t get bogged down in trying to analyze the beliefs of the various characters. Enjoy the story. The Abortionist is worth your time.

The Senate Finance Committee rolled out their version their version of health care reform. The plan was released as a detailed 223 page summary (Only in government would we think of 223 pages as a “summary.”). This is the most moderate proposal to come from Congress thus far, intended to win Republican support. Early indication is that neither conservatives nor liberals are excited about the bill.

Here’s what caught my eye, found in the Times article:

The nonpartisan budget office also concluded that the bill would leave 25 million people uninsured in 2019; about one-third of them would be illegal immigrants. By contrast, a House version of the legislation would leave 17 million uninsured, the budget office has said. Currently, at least 46 million people are uninsured.

So after all this reform, the goal of which was to insure every American has coverage, we only reduce the uninsured by half to two-thirds.

Hmmmm.

So none of the versions are going to achieve their goal of insuring every one, the main reason we started down this road in the first place. And it’s going to take over 1,000 pages of legislation to not meet the goal.

Legislators. You gotta love them.

[Cross-posted at Fairly Conservative]

No? Try this on for size which is no worse than some I”ve seen on the left including Mr. McNally.

“…in a democracy, the loudest bullies win no matter how extreme a fringe they represent or how nonsensical their arguments are.”

Obama won the last election.

Therefore Obama is a loud bully.

If you say anything negative about Obama, you’re a racist (see, for example, Ms. Dowd).

Therefore Joel McNally is a racist.

It’s really quite simple.

I pondered what I should blog about my first post back from a six month plus hiatus. There are so many issues to choose from, health care (which was the subject of my first post way back in Nov., 2003), education, the economy, socialism in America, Obama’s approval polls, well, as you can see, it’s a rich target environment.

But there’s an issue more pressing that these, something that affects each one of us.

How do we refer to the next several years?

I’m talking about speaking rather than writing because you can put it in writing anyway you want. But how will we SAY it?

None of 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 nor their shortened forms, roll of the tongue like 2001-2009.

Of course, we used the entire year in 2000 and could repeat that again for the next 11 years. There are elections next year, so will we call them the 2010 elections, the oh-ten (not exactly the same as ‘01-’09 but close enough), or simply ‘10?

We like to shorten things when we can, but will these years be short-able? 2010 is only three syllables, but the rest are four or more, one more than we usually use for years when we’re talking, except in rare cases.

I’ve tried saying “10″ a few times and it just doesn’t feel comfortable. Will it become more so with practice?

Only time will tell.

Anyway, I’m back.

Today is the 8th anniversary of that tragic day. As I thought of making my comeback to blogging, I thought no greater post could I make than to once again honor those who perished that day. So I’m not starting with politics. As I did 3 years ago, I gave my blog a simpler theme and limited it to showing one post.

First, I honor Scott Hazelcorn, an employee at Cantor Fitzgerald. Here’s what I posted last year.

“…Hazelcorn, 29, was a trader of long-term treasury bonds at Cantor Fitzgerald; his girlfriend, Amy Callahan, was a special-education teacher. The pair had plans for a summer camp for needy kids. Scott often told his parents that he wanted to buy an ice cream truck, so he could hear the squeals of children all day.”

This year, I also asked to remember someone else so I could learn about them. The name I received was George A. Llanes. George worked for Carr Futures on the 92nd floor of World Trade Center North tower. A poignant post by his step dad can be found here.

Google books has part of the book Portraits of 9/11 which starts off with,

George Llanes was a sensitive, studious child, the kind that classmates often teased.

George was an only child and didn’t move out of his parents house until he was nearly 34, shortly before his death, because he had started smoking and he wanted to get a dog, both of which would give his mother allergy attacks.

It appears that George was a funny guy cracking jokes and making people laugh. You can read tributes to him here.

He was also a poet. He had given his mother a bound copy of his poems and when they cleaned out his apartment after his death, they found poems everywhere.

It was Mr. Llanes devotion to his dog, that led to his death. The dog,

a pug named Mae Mae, persuaded him to rejigger his work schedule. He switched to a schedule of 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. from an ordinary one of 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., despite a lifelong aversion to getting up early.

Had he been on his normal schedule, George would have not yet been at work on that fateful morning.

Two men. One sunny and outgoing. The other, a shy poet. Both dead much too early.

This day is Scott’s and George’s.

Project 2996 is the driving force behind these tributes. Here is their Facebook page. If you’re on Facebook, become a fan. If you have a blog, post a tribute. If you don’t, you can still honor a victim.

One more post because I promised I’d do one for this book.

Upon receiving the book, The Rose Conspiracy, and looking at the blurb on the back cover, I was prepared not to like it. It has “conspiracy” in the title and mentioned the Freemasons in the blurb.

In addition, it was a Christian novel. I don’t read many of those because they tend to be romances (UGH ) and are usually very predictable, with a main character getting “saved” near the end.

I was pleasantly surprised.

Parshall has woven a nice little mystery around the Lincoln assassination, the Freemasons, the Smithsonian Institute, the Bible, greed, and man’s eternal quest for immortality.

The elements of conspiracy reminded me somewhat of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code and the legal maneuvering made me think back to Scott Turow’s Presumed Innocent.

Vinnie Archmont, a beautiful artist, is accused of killing the curator of the Smithsonian Institute and stealing the missing pages of John Wilkes Booth’s diary. Financed by a wealthy Freemason living in England, she hires J. D. Blackstone, a law professor and high profile lawyer, to keep her from the death chamber.

The key seems to be a cryptic fragment purportedly from the diary. Blackstone must crack this code before the lovely artist’s trial. His journey to unscramble the meaning takes him into the secrets of Freemasonry, the occult and personal danger, while he tries to deal with his own personal demons.

Then comes the day of the trial and a surprise ending. The last chapter almost ruined it for me, but was sufficiently vague as to keep Blackstone’s salvation in question.

In any case this is a worthy read.

UPDATE: I voted today (April 3). The reasons I voted for these two should be obvious, but in case one is confused, let me spell it out. Their opponents are liberal whose views do not match mine.

OK, I had to come out of retirement to post my vote-getters next Tuesday.

OK, now that I’ve got a little time, let me add some details.

First thanks for all the kind comments to the previous post. I am humbled.

Next, I will still be on Facebook. I will still get comments from the blog here, so you can contact me that way or e-mail me at thoughtfulconservative [at] yahoo [dot] com. I will still join the live blog at Blogs.4Bauer.com when “24″ is on.

I still will attend Drinking Right and Blog ‘n’ Grog when I can. I will still vote for conservative candidates. I will attend political events as I can. I might even write letters to the editor at the Freeman and Journal Sentinel.

Now, the reason. I am fine. Blogging and twitter were just taking too much time and other things (not work) were falling behind. So I decided I needed a clean break.

Is it permanent? I have no idea. I will owe a blog post after I’ve finished a book and post a review here and at Amazon.com.

But I’ve got to catch up first. Then we’ll see.

See most of you at the next Drinking Right (Lord willing).