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Could it be that a random video shot of a little girl at the Republican Convention a few weeks ago could have lasting impact on the future of the world?

Perhaps I''m getting a little carried away, but I suspect this short video clip

will, in the long run, have a significant impact American attitudes about abortion.

What was captured in that moment is something that''s easy to understand but hard to define. It is love. Unconditional, boundless love.

This simple, unscripted video clip may have done more than almost anything else could do to remind people that every child, absolutely EVERY CHILD is wanted and will be loved, unconditionally, if we''ll just allow them to get out of the womb and into the world. If the net result of 40 million people seeing this image is even a small percentage of them reconsidering the importance of the abortion debate, the future may very well change.

New York Democrat Senator Charles Schumer came out a day or two ago with a statement showing his brand of ''support for the troops''. You can hear it at Hugh Hewitt''s Blog, but to put it succinctly he thinks the improving situation in Iraq have nothing to do with the US Military, we''re only winning because we''re so bad that the Iraqis have decided to win the war without us.

Put aside for a second the fact that Schumer just drips condescension and is almost the smarmiest person in the US Senate (I''d say THE smarmiest, but he has some serious competition in his own party). This man is so transparently biased against George Bush and the US Military and so motivated by a desire for political power that no quantity if factual data could force him to think rationally about the war.

The bigger questions are: When America does win this war (and we will if Chuck and his team don''t find a way to surrender before we''ve finished) will Chuck saunter up to the microphone and try to take credit for the victory? And if he does, will the dinosaur media types fawn over him like a rock star groupie?

Tonight I got a call from a cheerful volunteer from my State Republican Senate fund raising operation. She seemed nice enough, but I was in the mood to ask a few questions.

Cheerful Volunteer: We''ve got to do all we can to beat the Democrats so they won''t raise our taxes. Would you rather pledge $75 or just $50 this evening?

Fund Raising Target (That''s me): I think I''ll hang onto my money and see if the Republican party supports the 5 cent per gallon gas tax increase our Republican Governor is advocating. Why would I want to give money to the tax raising Republicans to beat tax raising Democrats?

CV: Did you realize that the increase in the gas tax is meant to offset Federal funds the state will not receive to repair the 35W bridge collapse? (warning - scary disaster ploy in effect here - ever since the bridge fell down every politician and bureaucrat and politician within 1000 miles is attempting to convince us that there isn''t a bridge in the midwest that isn''t poised to fall over at any minute. The only reasonable solution is to send gobs of our excess cash to the state capital)

FRT: Didn''t the state spend over $1.5 billion over the last few years on a light rail system to carry about 14 people from downtown to the airport? Perhaps we should have put that money into the bridges. Have any of our state senators called a press conference to say "not another dime for the light rail program until every bridge in the state is safe"?

CV: I don''t think any of them have said that yet.

FRT: If I''m not mistaken the state also has a $2 billion surplus to work with.

CV: I think that''s in case we have any unexpected disasters.

FRT: Wouldn''t the collapse of an interstate highway bridge at rush hour count as one of these?

CV: I guess it would. Well, perhaps you would like to start by helping with a smaller contribution this evening.

FRT: Perhaps I''ll wait. Make sure to tell the senators that I''ll be glad to support them if they stand by the promises they made when they were running for office.

CV: OK. Thank you, sir.

FRT: Thank you. Good night.

Not long ago, Minnesota Mom posted a Mary Story which brought to mind a little intervention with the Blessed Mother of my own. The event is long past, and I make no claim that it is even close to a miracle - just one small way that Mary reached into a person''s heart to help steer them when they had gone astray.

When I was younger I often wondered what good it did to keep saying the Hail Mary over and over again when my family prayed the rosary. Seemed to my young mind to be a waste of time.

As I grew older and moved away to college I drifted away from the church and from Jesus and Mary, I had completely stopped praying, never went to Mass and spend my time instead on frivolous and destructive pastimes.

When I was twenty-six and had spent a good 8 years isolated from the Catholic faith I found myself standing outside my house one January morning in the bitterly cold Minnesota winter with a car that would not start. The battery of my shiny new ride was completely dead. I managed to track down a friend and got a jump start and began my drive to work. As is the case when a car loses all power, my preset radio buttons had lost their stations, so when I turned on the radio the frequency I was tuned to was not one of my normal stations.

What struck me as odd was that the radio had not defaulted to the top or bottom of the dial as one might normally expect, but came to life somewhere in the middle of the radio spectrum. Stranger still, the radio wasn''t just spitting out static, it was actually on a station which was broadcasting a strong signal. I turned up the volume a bit and realized the people on the station were saying the rosary.

I reached for the tuner to change the station, but for some reason I didn''t do it. I began to listen to the voices as they recited the prayers. As I listened I was overtaken by the most empty feeling I had ever experienced.

I realized I had forgotten the words to the Hail Mary.

I have been a Catholic since birth, had attended Catholic schools and prayed the rosary as a child. I instantly understood that having forgotten the words to this prayer meant that something was drastically wrong in my life. I saved the station as a button on my radio and listened to the rosary for the rest of the trip to work. Throughout the day the empty feeling kept returning as the words of the Hail Mary echoed in my head.

After work I got in the car and turned the radio back on. There was no station there. Just static. Over the next few days I kept returning to the radio setting, in the morning when I had first heard it, over lunch, and in the evening when I drove home. I never picked up so much as a scratchy voice on any of my attempts. In fact, there were no stations anywhere near that spot on the dial, only static.

Shortly after that experience I was at the local library and took a few minutes to look up the frequencies of regional radio stations. There were no religious radio stations in the area which would have shown up where I found the rosary that day. Nothing even close.

Over the next weeks and months I began to think more and more about the Church and the Lord. Ultimately I returned to my Catholic faith, married a beautiful Catholic woman and have been blessed by God to have five children baptized into the Church.

So what do I make of this experience? A coincidence? A Miracle? A strange electromagnetic occurrence?

I can''t say, but I do know this: Parents must make their children say the Hail Mary over and over again, even if it doesn''t seem to be making much of an impact. This is the way we tie safety ropes onto little souls, so that one day the Lord (or His Mother) will have something with which to reel them back in again if they should happen to drift away.

That''s a good question. Just where have I been for the last two years? TWO YEARS!?!? Say it isn''t so. Well, it is so, I''ve been gone for two years. Where does a guy even start to describe a gap of this magnitude?

Well, we''ll start at the beginning and make it quick (get ready for some serious excuses):

1. Our 2nd son had a brain aneurysm in June of 1995 (you may have already read about that - about the time I dropped of the edge of the internet). He''s fine - everything turned out great and he''s now a normal 3rd grader.

2. Had another baby (OK, I didn''t, it was my bride who did the work, I just drove the bus) he was born in April of 2006 - that makes 5 so far, boy (age 10), boy (age 8), boy (age 6), girl (age 5) and boy (age 1). So that explains some of my distractions.

3. My beautiful bride was diagnosed with breast cancer. I wouldn''t wish that experience on anyone, but she''s handled it extremely well. Surgery in April and six weeks of daily radiation therapy over the summer. Not a pleasant time, but at least she didn''t need chemo. She''s doing much better now and is helping other who are diagnosed deal with the uncertainty. Over the last several months I''ve met a number of people fighting cancer and I now understand just a bit of what they''re going through. It''s an exceptionally difficult disease to deal with and I have a lot of admiration for those who must fight it.

4. Our children have gone through two more years of school. The 10 year old has discovered dad is clueless, the six year old has discovered that dad is all-knowing, the 5 year old girl has discovered that being the only girl in the family entitles her to "Princess Status" and rights to her own room - or at least it did until we moved the baby into her castle a few weeks ago. THAT hasn''t gone over too well yet. Turns out the baby still cries sometimes at night and likes to chew on stuff. It matters not that some of these things are the property of the Princess.

5. Redesigned the website - you''re looking at it. Implemented a new blog engine (the last one was homemade and contributed to my procrastination regarding this latest upgrade). This engine is called b2evolution - we''ll see how it works.

Doesn''t seem like much to report for two years of missed blog postings, does it? Well, I''m sure there were some other things that happened along the way, but I can seem to recall any of them.

And what about the future? I hope to do some serious blogging over the next few months, if for no other reason than to just put this blog engine to the test. I can''t even count the number of times something stupid, immoral or outrageous has come up on the news and left me with an overwhelming urge to write something on the blog - with any luck the world''s goof balls will remain active and I''ll have something to get wound up about. In any case, I know there probably isn''t anyone listening... you just can''t zone out for two years and expect to have the whole internet checking your site every day waiting for your return (although there has been a steady low level stream of hits - either loyal fans or web crawling bot - I''m betting on loyal fans...). But no matter, cause I read it and that''s one of us!