In a question that brought nervous laughter to other journalists, a question by Associated Press reporter Mathew Lee, asking whether the United States would monitor a Papal election, brought a serious formal non-answer, as reported by Family Security Matters via CNS News: 

State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland said on Friday that if a request were to "come forward" that the papal election be monitored by an international organization called the Organization for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), the U.S. government "would take it very seriously."

Nuland made the remark only after she did some "digging" on the issue because Associated Press reporter Matthew Lee had questioned her at Thursday's briefing about whether the administration believed the papal election had met international standards.

At both Thursday's and Friday's briefings there was more than a little jocularity in the way Nuland handled Lee's questions, and there was some laughter among the reporters who witnessed the exchanges. But Nuland's ultimate answer that the U.S. would take "very seriously" a request to monitor the papal elections was one she did in fact research and did not need to give.

As if Mr. Lee hadn't been offensive enough, he further added that "It's probably the least transparent election. I mean, it's more opaque than an election in North Korea or Iraq under Saddam Hussein."

So now a reporter is equating the College of Cardinals with North Korea, in an offensive moral equivalence. Well, perhaps we should have the selection process of department heads at journalism schools -- and the New York Times -- be monitored by Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh to see if the process is fair and contains true "diversity."

I have another, more logical, suggestion for Mr. Lee of the AP. Perhaps we should have the Holy See send people to monitor our American Elections, especially - but not limited to - the caucuses of the Democratic Party primaries.

Mr. Lee is echoing the ideas of Carl Bernstein and Sally Quinn, voiced on Face the Nation, where they advocated changes in the positions they wanted a new Pope to take in relations to race, gender and homosexuality.  As my fellow writer Paul Szemanczky pointed out, this is the same Carl Bernstein who cravenly did not utter one word in defense of his famous Watergate journalistic partner, Bob Woodward, when leftists were excoriating Woodward all over the media and internet as a heretic of the Holy Liberal Church, as Woodward pointed out that the Sequester was actually Obama's idea.

The book "IndocriNation: Public Schools and the Decline of Christianity," has its chapter 15 written by Dr. Erwin Lutzer, Senior Pastor of Chicago's Moody Church. In that chapter, Dr. Lutzer discusses values clarification in an explanation that appears to perfectly explain what Mathew Lee did at the State Department in moving the standards of acceptable behavior away from the traditional ones. On page 231, Dr. Lutzer states:

Values clarification was invented by Dr. Sidney Simon in order to change the beliefs, convictions, and moral values of a child. ...questions are to be used that solicit open-ended answers to teach the child there are no absolutes. Examples of such questions include: Would you favor a law that would limit the size of families to two children?...Do you think sex education should include techniques for love-making, and contraception? Would you like to have different parents?...

The child's values are as good as anyone else's and no one can tell him any different.

Not that the child has been stripped of his previous values, three more steps follow: (3) the teacher is to tell the child that he must make up his own mind as to what values he will accept (at this point the child is subject to psychological manipulation), and then (4) the child must publicly declare his "conversion" to the new values systems...Then (5) the child is to regularly act on these values. In the end, the child firmly believes that no one - neither his parents nor his church nor the Bible - has the right to tell him what is right and what is wrong. Because all values are preferences, they are not subject to argument or to be judged by any other authority.

The very issues that Mr. Lee raised would fit perfectly in any "values clarification" classroom exercise. They are designed to undermine the authority of organizations, in this case, The Catholic Church. One could argue that their public remarks are an attempt to turn the broadcast airwaves into a giant national "values clarification" remote learning classroom and desensitize all of us of having any respect for the Catholic or any other Church. And, by logical extension and emotional generalization, they would also have us become operantly conditioned to think and feel a lesser respect for any Jewish, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, etc. religious authority. These reporters are the well-spoken arm of a new Reign of Terror.