{"id":886,"date":"2008-11-20T01:15:56","date_gmt":"2008-11-20T01:15:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2008\/11\/biden-daschle-pelosi-got-you-down.html"},"modified":"2008-11-20T01:15:56","modified_gmt":"2008-11-20T01:15:56","slug":"biden-daschle-pelosi-got-you-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/11\/biden-daschle-pelosi-got-you-down.html","title":{"rendered":"Biden, Daschle, Pelosi got you down?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Maybe this guy will cheer you up.<\/a><\/p>\n

Cao was born in Vietnam but immigrated to the United States at age 8 with his older sister and younger brother. The Communists had jailed his father after the fall of Saigon in 1975, and Joseph was raised by an uncle in Houston where he attended middle and high school and was eventually reunited with his parents. Joseph attended Baylor University in pre-med, where he met a Catholic chaplain who introduced him to the Society of Jesus.
\nHe entered the Jesuits in 1990, spending two years in the novitiate in Grand Coteau, Louisiana. While working as a Jesuit in Mexico he had an experience that led him out of the Order and into the world of politics.
\n\u201cI went all over the world to work with the poor and experienced a crisis of faith in Mexico over human suffering and God. I asked my spiritual director, \u2018What is God doing about all this suffering?\u2019 He told me that \u2018God sends people to help.\u2019 That was when I began to realize my calling was politics.\u201d
\nCao earned his M.A., in philosophy at Fordham University and spent a year teaching ethics at Loyola University, but left the Jesuits in May 1996. He earned a law degree and continued teaching at Loyola before he began his legal career as an associate at the Waltzer Law Firm. Cao left Waltzer to become in-house counsel for Boat People SOS.
\nCao lost his bid in 2007 to become a state representative in his home state, but he wasn\u2019t discouraged. \u201cI have a deep faith, and I believe that I am called to public service.\u201d
\nRunning against an entrenched incumbent doesn\u2019t faze Cao. \u201cThe election of Barack Obama suggests that people are willing to cross party and racial lines to vote for the person they think is best for the country and will bring accountability back into politics.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Maybe this guy will cheer you up. Cao was born in Vietnam but immigrated to the United States at age 8 with his older sister and younger brother. The Communists had jailed his father after the fall of Saigon in 1975, and Joseph was raised by an uncle in Houston where he attended middle and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nBiden, Daschle, Pelosi got you down? - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/11\/biden-daschle-pelosi-got-you-down.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Biden, Daschle, Pelosi got you down? - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Maybe this guy will cheer you up. Cao was born in Vietnam but immigrated to the United States at age 8 with his older sister and younger brother. The Communists had jailed his father after the fall of Saigon in 1975, and Joseph was raised by an uncle in Houston where he attended middle and…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/11\/biden-daschle-pelosi-got-you-down.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-11-20T01:15:56+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Biden, Daschle, Pelosi got you down? - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/11\/biden-daschle-pelosi-got-you-down.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Biden, Daschle, Pelosi got you down? - Via Media","og_description":"Maybe this guy will cheer you up. 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The Communists had jailed his father after the fall of Saigon in 1975, and Joseph was raised by an uncle in Houston where he attended middle and…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/11\/biden-daschle-pelosi-got-you-down.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2008-11-20T01:15:56+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/11\/biden-daschle-pelosi-got-you-down.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/11\/biden-daschle-pelosi-got-you-down.html","name":"Biden, Daschle, Pelosi got you down? - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2008-11-20T01:15:56+00:00","dateModified":"2008-11-20T01:15:56+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/11\/biden-daschle-pelosi-got-you-down.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/11\/biden-daschle-pelosi-got-you-down.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/11\/biden-daschle-pelosi-got-you-down.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Biden, Daschle, Pelosi got you down?"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=886"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/886\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}