Pope John Paul II died today. Of course, it's not possible to not know this by now, it's been all over the Internet, radio and television. (I cannot concur with Michelle Malkin's outrage at the fact that CBS went ahead with airing the NCAA Men's Basketball national semifinals. The Pope died about 3 1/2 hours before the first game started and every other channel on the dial covered the event. CBS was the only channel with the basketball game -- there was no reason not to go ahead and show it.)

What is disappointing, but not altogether surprising, is the response from the left-side of the political spectrum. Over at DUMB (Democratic Underground Message Boards), they observe that psychics recently predicted the Pope's death (that was a real tough one to predict "recently") and express hope that predictions that Bush would not be president in the fall would also come true -- either by impeachment (unlikely with GOP majorities in both houses) -- or by assassination.

Beware. If you follow that last link you'd probably be better off bathing in a septic tank, it's that disgusting.

It's really amusing that the same "enlightened intellectuals" that belittle even the possibility of a risen Christ, are so ready and willing to believe the pronouncements of psychics and astrologers.

Over at Daily "Screw Them" Kos' site, they provide several interesting illustrations of their view of the world in light of the pontiff's death.

Evangelical Christians hate Catholics and believe they're not "saved." [I don't "hate" anyone -- unlike Howard Dean and many on the grassroots left. As for being saved, I think that some Catholics are, some aren't. For the record, I think some Presbyterians, Baptists, Lutherans, Methodists, etc., ad infinitum are saved, and some aren't.]

Right-wing blogs are strangely silent on the Pope's death. Because the Pope opposed the war in Iraq, "neocons" don't like him. [Oops]

The Pope was a very bad man because he refused to ordain women and opposed gay marriage specifically and homosexuality in general. [That's the famous tolerance for the beliefs of others.]

The Catholic church's ban on contraceptives -- condoms particularly -- resulted in the AIDS epidemic here in America.

This one reminded me of a journalism class I took in college. The instructor was Victor Valle, a Pulitzer Prize winner, and the discussion was about weighing conflicting wrongs when it came to reporting. The example he chose was the Catholic Church vs. the radical gay-rights group ACT-UP. He showed a video of ACT-UP "activists" storming a Catholic Church and vandalizing it.

The wrongs, as he saw them, were similar to the Kos commentator's. The Catholic Church prohibited the use of condoms and that had resulted in thousands dying as a result of AIDS.

I ruined his lecture.

I wasn't buying the Catholic Church's "wrong." I pointed out that Catholic Church teaching also prohibited sex outside the bounds of marriage. Since gays can't be married, if they're following Catholic teaching, they shouldn't be having sex either. If you're not having sex, you're not getting AIDS. If gays want to disregard the Catholic Church's rules on when and with whom to have sex, why do they feel bound by the rule against the use of prophalyctics?

The discussion was a lot less interesting when there was only one "wrong."

The seething hatred coming from the left is disgusting. They must lead very sad and meaningless lives if all they can do when someone who is not of their exact political persuasion dies is go to Internet message boards and blogs spew venom.