By Bill O’Donnell

Storm Clouds Gathering For Gerry Adams –Sinn Fein Party Leader and Dail Deputy from County Louth, Gerry Adams has led a relatively charmed life as prisoner, negotiator with the British, Good Friday peacemaker, and immensely successful politician with stakeholds in a persistently divided Ireland. However, that charmed life may be about to be interrupted by British government and loyalists forces in the North who finally have the scent of a weakened Irish republican in their sight.

The most tenacious charges that bedevil Adams are the widely publicized allegations that as an IRA war council member he ordered the murder and burial of many victims, with the most notorious charge involving the disappearance of Jean McConville, a Belfast mother of ten. Her body was found in 2003 and at least two now-deceased republican colleagues have implicated Adams in the McConville execution.

Despite accusations by former IRA members that Adams was a highly placed provo leader, he has steadfastly denied ever belonging to the IRA. The Sinn Fein leader, in a move redolent of OJ Simpson’s widely ridiculed call for help in finding his wife’s killer, has made appeals for information about McConville and other disappeared. They followed an RTE documentary about the victims and drew heavy criticism of Adams for his remarks.

Further threatening Adams’s image and his lofty political position are the fresh allegations that he withheld information on his niece’s serial abuse by his brother Liam. Liam Adams was recently found guilt in a Northern court of long-term sexual abuse of his daughter. Gerry Adams has admitted that it was nine years after he learned of his niece’s abuse that he reported what he knew to the police.

Howard Baker, the senator of Watergate Committee fame, first and famously asked of President Richard Nixon: “What did he know, and when did he know it?” Those same words could mean a relegating of Gerry Adams to some form of political exile, even if the McConville charges go unproven in any court proceedings. Time will tell.

The Northern unionist newspaper the Belfast Telegraph suggests that Adams is an ongoing liability to Sinn Fein and its election hopes and that having Adams lead his party into the 2016 national election is clearly “problematic.” He certainly is wounded. Make of that what you will.

Exorcism Rites Still Happen in Ireland – They are not done often and are most prevalent in the west and midlands, the Connacht Tribune reports in noting that exorcisms do occur and that the Catholic Church has procedures for dealing with the requests they receive. When people contact their parish priests claiming to be troubled by demons, they are assessed for psychiatric problems before being sent to priests who handle such matters. There are now three priests who are specially trained to carry out exorcisms. They include a Jesuit in Galway city, a Franciscan in Carlow, and a priest based in the Killaloe Diocese.

Before taking a troubled church member through the exorcism rite, the local priest or the regional bishop would come to their homes, say prayers, and bless the house with holy water. 

Irish President Will Make History – Michael D. Higgins will become the first Irish head of state to make an official visit to the UK. Higgins and his wife Sabina will be guests of the royal family during a state visit scheduled for next April. The three-day call at Windsor Castle follows the Queen Elizabeth’s successful trip to Ireland in the spring of 2011.

It was thought by many that Michael D., because of his age, generation, and lengthy tenure as a Labour TD  might be a caretaker Irish president, but, like Pope John XXIII, Higgins has turned out to be an outspoken leader in wading in on political issues and being heard on controversial matters of state, a traditional, if unserious, breach of presidential power.

The Higgins visit is, of course, not the first trip to the UK by an Irish president. Both Mary McAleese and her predecessor, Mary Robinson, attended functions in Britain but those were not official visits.

There is a full agenda set up for the Higgins visit and the scope of it, with a state dinner and formal time with the mayor of London, the prime minister, et al., strongly suggests that the queen and the British government are enthusiastic about building an ever-more substantial post-peace relationship between Ireland and the UK. The visit has the warm support of Taoiseach Enda Kenny and the Irish government.

Immigration Bill Dead, Says House Speaker – Signaling an unequivocal end to any attempt to move immigration reform legislation through the Republican-controlled House this session,Speaker John Boehner, in a few words, killed any hopes that that would happen this year, saying, “I’ll make clear we have no intention of ever going to conference on the Senate bill.” The deal breaker is something the Republicans call “amnesty” and the Democrats refer to as a “path to citizenship.” 

Obviously, the 11 million undocumented people in the US constitute the elephant in the room, but the GOP leaders, as fractured as they are, continue in their fantasy moments to talk about somehow sending millions of undocumented back to their homes. Or maybe they will, as Mitt the Romney used to say, “self deport.” Yes, indeed, watch those piggies fly.

The Senate has passed an expansive legislative proposal, but Boehner and his mainstream GOP colleagues are singing the Tea Party tune these days and a compromise or negotiated agreement is not about to happen, this year, or God knows when. The hope of folks like myself is that given the chaotic Republican Party, next fall’s midterm elections might see Democrats gaining control of the House while retaining at least their slim majority in the US Senate. But then again, they may not.

It is what it is, as someone once opined, but after Boehner’s stonewalling statement and next year’s elections, the prospect of real immigration legislation, shamefully, appears dead until maybe late 2014 or into 2015.

Justice Minister Says “No Guards For Bertie” – One of the Dublin punters earlier this year said aloud what many in Ireland feel: He called former Fianna Fail leader and TaoiseachBertie Ahern “the most despised man in Ireland.” I hope that’s not true. Incompetence, relentless self-absorption, and more than a few flights of fancy with the truth shouldn’t be a hanging offense.
But a recent minor pub scuffle between a disgruntled voter and the former Irish leader and some verbal hate attacks along the way suggest that Ahern is not all that popular at home. In any event, Minister of Justice Alan Shatter has announced that former PMs like Ahern earn enough money from the Irish state to pay for their own security. The minister said he believes they are in a position to arrange that themselves. Currently, after cutting back on former politicians perks, the only people in government that have Garda and personal cars assigned for security reasons are the sitting Taoiseach, the Tanaiste, and the justice minister.
Shatter is probably right. Bertie Ahern has a lifetime Irish government pension of $182,000 a year, or $3,500 a week.

JFK Wanted To Return To Wexford – The coverage of the 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s death in television, magazines, and newspapers was wall-to-wall throughout the days of November. For a young generation that has only newsreel memories and grainy tape recall, and for myself and a declining population who sat in sorrow and numbness through the three days of a long goodbye, the American media did their job plus some. I confess that I did not seek out nor want film replays of the gunshots from the Dallas book depository, but several times they popped up, as haunting and unforgettable as ever.

A poignant sidebar of the young president’s visit to his cousins in Dungantown are the memories of Patrick Grennan, a direct descendant of the original family emigrant, Patrick Kennedy. Grennan, who today runs the Kennedy farm, said that while the president and cousin Mary Ryan were sitting together having a fireside drink in one of their rare quiet moments, JFK turned to Mary and asked if he could come back privately. It seems that Kennedy, aware of how his personal entourage and security officials were ubiquitous and overwhelming, kept apologizing for bringing the big crowd. Years later, the late friend and aide to JFK, Dave Powers, repeatedly talked to me in our sessions in his JFK Library office, about how much the president enjoyed his trip to Ireland and his ancestral homestead. His “happiest time ever,” Powers said. JFK’s wife Jacqueline fulfilled her husband’s wish to return by visiting the Wexford homestead with Caroline and John in 1967.

Good Times, Bad Times for Taoiseach – One of Irish leader Enda Kenny’s resolutions this year was his determination to abolish the Irish Seanad Eireann (Irish Senate). Kenny and many others strongly believe that the Senate serves no constructive purpose and is merely a holding room for failed candidates seeking election to Dail Eireann (Parliament), the real source of legislative power.

Well, the Irish people (or at least 39 percent of them did) voted and Kenny and the government went down to defeat, 51-48, an uncomfortable result for the elected head of Ireland. Yet the affable Kenny, a veteran Fine Gael TD for many years prior to becoming Taoiseach, took the loss well, saying “You’ve given your verdict and decision and I accept it fully.”

While his national constituency was handing Kenny a defeat, the European Union was making a poor secret of wanting to induce the Taoiseach to take a very senior post with the European Union. Kenny is well thought of by the British prime minister and similar well-placed Europeans in the EU. The early line on Kenny’s possible jump to the EU has Kenny and the Finnish prime minister tapped as solid frontrunners as the next European Union President.

It is unknown if the Taoiseach would even consider leaving his Irish leadership post, but it is known that he is a Euro-friendly advocate of the EU and might like to be the leader of its 27 nations, a job similar to president of Europe. My guess is he will be staying put, but might very much like to be asked later on, if the position were still be open. But that seems unlikely.

Big Demand For Police Openings – In a recent recruiting drive by the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) to fill some 100 jobs, 7,500 applicants applied. It may be the stagnant Northern economy, the pensionable police jobs, or simply a desire for stable, long-term employment with the security forces, but the openings are attracting young people in the North with clean records. Also, this was the first recruiting outreach in three years.

Catholics made up nearly one-third of the applicants. Deputy Chief Constable Judith Gillespie said the PSNI was” particularly keen to draw applications from Catholics and women. The average age of almost half of the recent applicants was between 18 and 24. The starting salary is $37,000 a year – after 21 weeks of intensive training. Plans are to have the new police on the streets in March of 2014.

The volatile flag protests that filled the streets of urban Northern Ireland earlier this year convinced police officials that the PSNI today is understaffed. The 50/50 recruiting drive by the PSNI to increase the number of Catholic police officers ended in 2011. Before the drive, only 8 percent of the force was Catholic; today the number is 30 percent of the PSNI.

Obama’s ACA Rollout Flaws are puzzling –The failure of the Obamacare rollout enrollment is baffling to this observer. But what can you expect from one of the faithful! It is also exasperating when we take a closer look at the president’s 2012 get-out-the-vote computer technology that has been described by experts as “extraordinarily sophisticated, state of the art Plus” – and, by the way, hugely successful.

Called Narwhal, and involving digital, technologic, and analytic operations, it far outstripped the Romney campaign GOTV capability. The Obama GOTV campaign had 1,979 employees and a list of 16 million addresses. It added redundancy to the system, tested and retested the computer technology, and well before election day put the technology through what the geeks call live-action role-playing to determine how the computer system would perform under every possible disaster situation. Say that again: “under every possible disaster situation.”

If you were scoring computer success on election day, Romney’s technology crashed that afternoon and Obama’s worked superbly and was described as the ninth wonder of the world by one impressed computer expert.
Contacting people to vote or putting an interactive computer system online and enrolling medical plan subscribers is not the same, by any means, but it seems to this recovering Luddite that the genius of Obama’s Narwhal could have and should have been hired by the ACA to do the enrollment. It could hardly be worse than what we have seen in the opening days of the system.

RANDOM CLIPPINGS
First things first: Congratulations to Boston’s mayor-elect, Marty Walsh. I thought either man was up to the job, but Marty’s Connemara roots and his down-to-earth Galway approach is a gift to the city of my birth. … An Irish legal case was set for a five-hour court session but finished a couple of hours early. The lawyer’s fee: $72,000 (no kidding). … SDLP Leader and friend Dr. Alasdair McDonnell had it right about Sinn Fein and Ian Paisley’s old DUP – “the parties of disappointment, false promise, poor government, bad politics and no results.” … Great to see the statue of the biggest winner in team sports, Bill Russell, standing tall on Boston’s City Hall Plaza. … There’s Dick Cheney on TV and out with a book on his heart troubles. Couldn’t this warmonger and war criminal and certified liar do his thing from a cell at the Hague? … A monumental traffic jam in Galway City popped up when thousands of the faithful without warning came to the cathedral to see relics of St. Anthony of Padua. … The Irish Minister of Finance, Michael Noonan, says that a more favorable tax regime north of the border would benefit both regions and attract overseas investment, Good man, Michael. … Ian Paisley, now Lord Bannside, has softened on Sinn Fein, saying that Martin McGuinness and Co. are not the party of old. … Martha Coakley is a gangbusters AG but can’t she find a bookkeeper who knows how to do her books? … Richard Haass, a well-worn diplomat, has his hands full in NI, but he insists he’ll wrap it up by New Year’s. … Congratulations to the Irish Pastoral Centre on 25 compassionate and productive years helping young immigrants make a go of it. … Ireland has just received the welcome news that the country will exit the EU-IMF bailout without the usual credit line, a big boost to the people of Ireland who have been picking up the tab for bad banks and poor politics. … A favorite scheme in Galway and elsewhere has the Inland Revenue tax people rousting flash companies who close shop, skip their taxes, and open under a new name. Time’s up for most of them. … The Irish love their holidays. It’s now official that Nov. 14 kicked off the 2013 Christmas season there. … The EU’s director of economic affairs has told Irish leaders that drug prices in Ireland are too high and “not sustainable” Right on!

To one and all: Beannachtai Nollag!