National Right to Life is urging citizen action now in order to keep Team Obama and the Democrat-controlled House and Senate from moving our nation yet further into the culture of death. Let's move, people!
The Obama White House and Democratic congressional leaders are pushing for votes in late July on massive "health care reform" bills that contain sweeping mandates to expand access to abortion on demand, override state abortion laws, and establish federal funding of abortion.
These bills pose one of the greatest threats to pro-life policies since the Supreme Court handed down its Roe v. Wade ruling legalizing abortion in 1973.
Two Senate committees and three House committees are nearing the end of the process of crafting "health care reform bills" that would, among other things, result in mandatory insurance coverage of abortion on demand, federal subsidies for abortion, and mandated local abortion facilities. These bills will also allow the nullification of many state limitations on abortion...
Both of these bills would empower panels of federal officials to mandate coverage of abortion on demand in virtually all health plans. Both of these bills would also result in massive federal subsidies for abortion on demand. Both of the bills would empower federal officials to order expansions of abortion providers in many areas of the country (referred to by pro-life analysts as the "abortion clinic mandate"), and to override at least some state abortion regulations. And they do all this without ever mentioning the word "abortion."
"The pro-abortion movement sees federal 'health care reform' legislation as a golden opportunity to force-feed abortion into every nook and cranny of the health-care delivery system," said NRLC Legislative Director Douglas Johnson. "Their goal, as they sometimes put it, is to 'mainstream' abortion. If Obama and his allies succeed, the result will be a very large increase in the number of abortions performed in America."
"Pro-life Americans should vigorously oppose any federal ‘health care reform’ legislation that does not explicitly exclude abortion from the scope of any government-defined or government-mandated package of health care services,” Johnson explained. “A bill that delegates authority to some government board or official to require abortion coverage is simply a covert, two-step method for imposing sweeping pro-abortion mandates on employers and citizens.”...
Please take a few minutes to use the form [at the bottom of this page] to send messages to your two U.S. senators and to your representative in the U.S. House of Representatives, to urge them to oppose any federal “health care reform” legislation that does not explicitly exclude abortion. You can modify the suggested message as you see fit. When you fill in your mailing address, your messages will automatically be directed to the appropriate U.S. House member and to your two U.S. senators.
In addition, please TELEPHONE the offices of your two U.S. senators, give your name and address, and tell the senators' staff persons that you wish to be recorded as "opposed to Senator Kennedy's health care bill because it contains many pro-abortion mandates." The offices of any U.S. senator can be reached through 202-224-3121. Also, please TELEPHONE the office of your U.S. House member, give your name and address, and inform the staff person that you wish to be recorded as "opposed to the House Democratic Leadership health care reform bill because it contains many pro-abortion mandates." You can reach any U.S. House member's office through 202-225-3121. You can also find the direct-dial numbers (and fax numbers) for the Washington and in-state offices of your U.S. senators and U.S. House member by calling up their individual profiles on this website, here.
Also, please send short letters to the "letters to the editor" features of your local newspapers, in order to alert your fellow pro-life citizens to the sweeping pro-abortion mandates that the Obama White House and the pro-abortion lobby are trying to smuggle into law through "health care reform." You can find contact information for your local news media in our "Media Guide" here.
You might want to take an aspirin before reading Conn Carroll's "The Health Care Taxapalooza" over at NRO's The Foundry. But read it nevertheless. You need to know what's comin' at you.
Throughout his campaign President Barack Obama repeatedly promised the American people: “If you’re a family that’s making $250,000 a year or less you will see no increase in your taxes. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your personal gains tax, not any of your taxes.” Just 15 days into office, President Obama signed a bill expanding Medicaid eligibility that was paid for with a 156% tax hike on tobacco. Since slightly more than half of today’s smokers (53%) earn less than $36,000 per year, Obama’s first effort at expanding government’s role in health care also became his first broken promise. But that first Medicaid expansion was minor league compared to the estimated $1.5 trillion health care plan Congress is considering now.
And how does Congress plan on paying for this $1.5 trillion in new spending. Tax hikes. Some of these tax hikes even conform to Obama’s promise. They only punish our most productive workers and investors. Proposed tax hikes in this category include: 1) capping the value of itemized deductions including gifts to charities; 2) a 3% surtax on households earning more than $250,000; and 3) a millionaires tax.
But the left is beginning to figure out that you can only squeeze so much revenue from class warfare taxation. So Congress is also considering a slew of other taxes that will, again, force Obama to break his not tax hike promise. These include: 1) a tax on soda; 2) a tax on beer; 3) an increase in employer and employee payroll taxes; 4) a flat tax on health insurance companies; 5) broaden the Medicare tax on investment income; 6) an employer mandate; and 7) a value added tax on everything but food, housing, and Medicare. And we’re sure we missed some. The left sure can be creative when they are desperate to raise revenue...
Thanks to Ralph & Linda for sending this over. It comes from an e-mail that's been circulating for almost a year now. But it is an accurate rendition of what happened...and a soul-stirring one at that. I print here the message just as the Aldrich's sent it over. But, following that, I then give a bit more info about Ed Freeman from the local newspaper story last August.
You're a 19 year old kid. 
You're critically wounded and dying in the jungle in the Ia Drang Valley, LZ X-ray, Vietnam on December 14, 1965. Your infantry unit is outnumbered 8 - 1 and the enemy fire is so intense, from 100 or 200 yards away, that your own Infantry Commander has ordered the MediVac helicopters to stop coming in.
You're lying there, listening to the enemy machine guns and you know you're not getting out. Your family is 1/2 way around the world, 12,000 miles away, and you'll never see them again. As the world starts to fade in and out, you know this is the day.
Then - over the machine gun noise - you faintly hear that sound of a helicopter. You look up to see an unarmed Huey! But, it doesn't seem real because no Medi-Vac markings are on it.
Ed Freeman is coming for you.
He's not Medi-Vac so it's not his job, but he's flying his Huey down into the machine gun fire anyway. Even after the Medi-Vacs were ordered not to come. He's coming anyway.
And he drops it in and sits there in the machine gun fire, as they load 2 or 3 of you on board. Then he flies you up and out through the gunfire to the Doctors and Nurses.
And, he kept coming back.
13 more times.
He took about 30 of you and your buddies out who would never have gotten out.
Medal of Honor Recipient, Ed Freeman, died last Wednesday at the age of 80, in Boise, Idaho.
May God Rest His Soul.
And now from the Idaho Statesman of August 21, 2008.
As Ed "Too Tall" Freeman lay ill in a Boise hospital over the past few weeks, many came to pay their respects to the 80-year-old national war hero and former helicopter pilot.
One unexpected visitor offered a very personal thank you to Freeman, a veteran of three wars and recipient of the highest military award -- the Congressional Medal of Honor -- for his actions on Nov. 14, 1965, at Landing Zone X-Ray, Ia Drang Valley, Vietnam. As one of Ed's son's, Mike, recalled it, "A guy came into the hospital and said, 'You don't know me, but I was one of those people you hauled out of the X-Ray,Thanks for my life.'"
Freeman died Wednesday.
His Medal of Honor citation credits him with helping save 30 seriously wounded soldiers in 14 separate rescue missions in an unarmed helicopter...
The heroics of Freeman and the others involved in the Ia Drang campaign are immortalized in the Mel Gibson movie "We Were Soldiers," which is based on the book "We Were Soldiers Once ... And Young." A sequel, "We Are Soldiers Still," was released this month.
Freeman, a Mississippi native who married an Idahoan, began his military career at 17 with a two-year stint in the Navy during World War II. "He joined the Navy and hated it. The ocean thing was not his bag," Mike Freeman said. So he joined the Army, serving four years in Germany before getting deployed to the Korean conflict.
The 6-foot-4 tell-it-like-it-is Southerner got the name "Too Tall" because he was told he was too tall to be a pilot. That didn't stop him from pushing to fly. "He was tenacious about getting into flight school. He drove them insane until they let him in," Mike Freeman said.
He proved his mettle by becoming one the Army's most heralded helicopter pilots. Two streets at Fort Rucker, Ala., where Freeman trained to be a helicopter pilot, were recently named in honor of Freeman and Maj. Bruce P. Crandall, his commanding officer in the Ia Drang campaign.
In the early 1960s, Freeman served as aviation adviser to the Idaho Army National Guard. "He was a super instructor. He was not one of these guys who get excited very easily," said retired Maj. Gen. Jack Kane, former commanding general of the Idaho National Guard. Kane, a second lieutenant in 1963-64, got his first helicopter lessons from Freeman. Decades later, Kane attended the 2001 Medal of Honor ceremony for Freeman at the White House. "It was, really, a super-moving moment," said Kane, who was in a meeting at the Pentagon when Freeman called to invite him to the ceremony.
Freeman retired from the military in 1967 and a few years later moved to Idaho with his wife, Barbara, and sons, Mike and Doug. But he didn't give up flying. He went to work for the Department of Interior's Office of Aircraft Services. Mike Freeman said his dad made sure that helicopter pilots contracted by Department of Interior agencies were up to snuff. "Anyone who flew for the government had to get past him," he said.
Freeman retired from flying in 1991 with more than 25,000 hours of flying time, including 18,000 in helicopters, according to his family and a 2002 newsletter published by the Idaho Military Historical Society and Museum. That's nearly three years in the air.
Freeman became a highly sought-after speaker, and he still gets hundreds of letters each year from admirers of all ages. He rarely missed Friday lunches at Boise's Din Fung Buffet, where a group of Purple Heart veterans met each week for the past seven years. "We're a bunch of loose cannons. We have our own opinions, but everything is in jest," said Dick Bengoechea, 84, who was a U.S. Army tank driver in Germany during World War II.
On Friday, a miniature helicopter and Medal of Honor book will be placed at the head of the group's table in memory of Freeman.
Freeman, a Republican who his son says was anything but politically correct, was much more than a great patriot. He was a devoted family man whose many passions included Volkswagens (he had many over the years, including The Thing) and fly fishing with his grandson, Scott.
In the past year and a half, Parkinson's disease ravaged Freeman's body. With the help of his sons, he was able to live at home until he became gravely ill three and a half weeks ago. "He was a caring guy who cared about his family," Mike Freeman said. "I'll miss that a lot."
Remember last spring when Hillary Clinton received Planned Parenthood's Margaret Sanger Award?
Well, to refresh your memory of that event and to review Sanger's sinister eugenics philosophy, a crass elitism that makes the award such a "badge of odor," check out "Why Did Hillary Clinton's Award from Planned Parenthood Receive No Media Coverage?" from April 3.
But then read this excerpt from Emily Bazelon's interview of Ruth Bader Ginsburg published in the New York Times earlier this week.
Note particularly Ginsburg's remarks about Roe v Wade being designed against "populations that we don’t want to have too many of." Wow. After reading that alarming admission, one is bound to ask themselves, "With such a pompous sense of her own superiority (whether based on class or color, education or economics) and with her embrace of abortion as a means to get rid of the less fit 'populations,' doesn't Ginsburg deserve the Sanger award even more than Hillary?"
Justice Ginsburg (who is Jewish) would undoubtedly break company with Sanger over just which populations "we don’t want to have too many of." For, as is well established, the populations that Sanger believed most needed weeding out were Africans, Slavs, Latins...and Jews.
It's too bad that Bazelon, an outspoken pro-choice reporter who dismisses post-abortion syndrome -- that issue seems to be raised in the last question I reprint here -- didn't pursue the matter further. Just which "populations" was Ginsburg referring to? The poor? That could perhaps be surmised from her immediate reference to Medicaid abortions, but why didn't Bazelon pursue this obviously tantalizing item? Maybe she herself was taken aback by Ginsburg's seeming elitism. Maybe she didn't want to embarrass the Justice by probing or giving her a chance to make it even worse. And maybe she even shares Ginsburg's view.
Anyhow, here's the excerpt.
Q: If you were a lawyer again, what would you want to accomplish as a future feminist legal agenda?
JUSTICE GINSBURG: Reproductive choice has to be straightened out. There will never be a woman of means without choice anymore. That just seems to me so obvious. The states that had changed their abortion laws before Roe [to make abortion legal] are not going to change back. So we have a policy that affects only poor women, and it can never be otherwise, and I don’t know why this hasn’t been said more often.
Q: Are you talking about the distances women have to travel because in parts of the country, abortion is essentially unavailable, because there are so few doctors and clinics that do the procedure? And also, the lack of Medicaid for abortions for poor women?
JUSTICE GINSBURG: Yes, the ruling about that surprised me. [Harris v. McRae — in 1980 the court upheld the Hyde Amendment, which forbids the use of Medicaid for abortions.] Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of. So that Roe was going to be then set up for Medicaid funding for abortion. Which some people felt would risk coercing women into having abortions when they didn’t really want them. But when the court decided McRae, the case came out the other way. And then I realized that my perception of it had been altogether wrong.
Q: When you say that reproductive rights need to be straightened out, what do you mean?
JUSTICE GINSBURG: The basic thing is that the government has no business making that choice for a woman.
Q: Does that mean getting rid of the test the court imposed, in which it allows states to impose restrictions on abortion — like a waiting period — that are not deemed an “undue burden” to a woman’s reproductive freedom?
JUSTICE GINSBURG: I’m not a big fan of these tests. I think the court uses them as a label that accommodates the result it wants to reach. It will be, it should be, that this is a woman’s decision. It’s entirely appropriate to say it has to be an informed decision, but that doesn’t mean you can keep a woman overnight who has traveled a great distance to get to the clinic, so that she has to go to some motel and think it over for 24 hours or 48 hours.
I still think, although I was much too optimistic in the early days, that the possibility of stopping a pregnancy very early is significant. The morning-after pill will become more accessible and easier to take. So I think the side that wants to take the choice away from women and give it to the state, they’re fighting a losing battle. Time is on the side of change.
Q: Since we are talking about abortion, I want to ask you about Gonzales v. Carhart, the case in which the court upheld a law banning so-called partial-birth abortion. Justice Kennedy in his opinion for the majority characterized women as regretting the choice to have an abortion, and then talked about how they need to be shielded from knowing the specifics of what they’d done. You wrote, “This way of thinking reflects ancient notions about women’s place in the family and under the Constitution.” I wondered if this was an example of the court not quite making the turn to seeing women as fully autonomous.
JUSTICE GINSBURG: The poor little woman, to regret the choice that she made. Unfortunately there is something of that in Roe. It’s not about the women alone. It’s the women in consultation with her doctor. So the view you get is the tall doctor and the little woman who needs him...
And you thought the media honeymoon was over because Chip Reid and Helen Thomas acted like...gasp... independent reporters in that rare moment last week?
Not to worry; things never got out of hand. The American press remains as sycophantically submissive to the whims of the White House as ever.
Sure, Rupert Murdoch thinks that will inevitably change by the end of the year, but at least for now the press corps still serve as the President's best of pals.
Whether that means covering for Joe Biden's secret meetings (the kind that sent them over the edge when Bush did it), helping prepare the public to swallow yet another multi-billion dollar "stimulus" that we can't afford, agreeing to Obama's "ground rules" about secrecy in order to schmooze with him at the White House, or any one of a hundred other things, the press remains besotted with the Big O, so much so that they've tossed away any semblances of journalistic integrity and professionalism.
John Cook over at the Gawker (thanks for the alert, Lucianne) describes that "off record" Fourth of July party, the one where reporters swore not to be reporters because, well...because that's what the Prez wanted.
Reporters from roughly 30 television networks, newspapers, magazines, and web sites celebrated the Fourth of July with Barack Obama at the White House last weekend. Why didn't you know that? Because they were sworn to secrecy.
We reported yesterday that Politico's Mike Allen was spotted milling about as a guest at the White House's "backyard bash" by the pool reporter, who was allowed into the event for 40 minutes and kept in a pen before being ushered out. When Allen quoted from the pool report in his Playbook column the next day, he deleted a reference to his own name and didn't bother to tell his readers that he was actually at the party.
Well, he wasn't alone. Gawker has learned that the White House gave tickets to virtually every major news organization that covers the president—the New York Times, Washington Post, Newsweek, Time, ABC News, NBC News, CNN, CBS News, and so on, about 30 in all. The reporters were invited to attend on the following condition: "You are being invited to attend this event as a guest. Blogging, Twittering or otherwise reporting on this event is not permitted. If you feel that you cannot agree to abide by these ground rules, please don't claim a ticket."
That's right: Much of the White House press corps spent the Fourth schmoozing with White House staffers, catching performances by the Foo Fighters and Jimmy Fallon, and watching the fireworks from the most exclusive vantage point in the D.C. metro area, all off the record—not to mention off-the-Facebook and off-the-Twitter. These are the same people who just a week ago were whining in the press briefing about Obama's malicious and dastardly attempts to "control the press." (Well, not the self-same people—we're not sure if Chip Reid and Helen Thomas, the primary antagonists in that exchange, were in attendance.)
There is a cosmic irony at work here: The party was "closed press." (Ha!) It was covered, under onerous restrictions, by a pool reporter—the Baltimore Sun's Paul West. West was ushered in by White House staffers for a mere 40 minutes, so he could record the president's remarks. He was kept in a pen so that he wouldn't run amok and interview someone. He shouted questions at Obama as he worked the rope line, which the president ignored. Then he was taken away. West wrote up his blindered account of the party and then e-mailed it to the White House press corps, many of whom were actually at the party, outside of the pen, hanging out with all the other guests. And then, because they had temporarily signed away the right to do their jobs in exchange for facetime with staffers, a few cold Stoudt's American Pale Ales, and some corn on the cob, their news organizations picked up that pool report and used it to tell their readers what happened at the party. This is how the press covers the White House...
What doesn't make sense, at all, is why a group of reporters who have recently begun clinging to the notion that they are independent of Washington's clubby morass of back-scratching self-congratulation would agree to attend an off-the-record party at the White House while one of their own is walled off in a pen like some forlorn scapegoat, doing the job they're supposed to be doing.
Al Sharpton's eulogy included this line for the children of Michael Jackson, "Wasn't nothing strange about your Daddy."
Huh?
Just what planet has Sharpton been living on for the last 25 years?
Oh, yeah. The planet of love and tolerance, peace and understanding that the King of Pop created -- Neverland.
Here's an excerpt from that eulogy that the media is still swooning over. Read it and see how eerie, how cloyingly demented, how far beyond satire modern culture has become.
"...It was that dream that changed culture all over the world. When Michael started, it was a different world. But because Michael kept going, because he didn't accept limitations, because he refused to let people decide his boundaries, he opened up the whole world.
In the music world, he put on one glove, pulled his pants up and broke down the color curtain where now our videos are shown and magazines put us on the cover. It was Michael Jackson that brought Blacks and Whites and Asians and Latinos together. It was Michael Jackson that made us sing, "We are the World" and feed the hungry long before Live Aid.
Because Michael Jackson kept going, he created a comfort level where people that felt they were separate became interconnected with his music. And it was that comfort level that kids from Japan and Ghana and France and Iowa and Pennsylvania got comfortable enough with each other until later it wasn't strange to us to watch Oprah on television. It wasn't strange to watch Tiger Woods golf. Those young kids grew up from being teenage, comfortable fans of Michael to being 40 years old and being comfortable to vote for a person of color to be the President of the United States of America.
Michael did that. Michael made us love each other. Michael taught us to stand with each other. There are those that like to dig around mess. But millions around the world, we're going to uphold his message. It's not about mess, but it's about his love message. As you climb up steep mountains, sometimes you scar your knee; sometimes you break your skin. But don't focus on the scars, focus on the journey. Michael beat 'em, Michael rose to the top. He out-sang his cynics, he out-danced his doubters; he out-performed the pessimists. Every time he got knocked down, he got back up. Every time you counted him out, he came back in. Michael never stopped. Michael never stopped. Michael never stopped.
I want to say to Mrs. Jackson and Joe Jackson, his sisters and brothers: We thank you for giving us someone that taught us love; someone who taught us hope. We want to thank you because we know it was your dream too.
We know that your heart is broken. I know you have some comfort from the letter from the President of the United States and Nelson Mandela. But this was your child. This was your brother. This was your brother. This was your cousin. Nothing will fill your hearts' lost. But I hope the love that people are showing will make you know he didn't live in vain. I want his three children to know: Wasn't nothing strange about your Daddy. It was strange what your Daddy had to deal with. But he dealt with it...He dealt with it anyway. He dealt with it for us...."
In just a few paragraphs, John Nolte summarizes the cultural significance of Michael Jackson better than anything the MSM managed to do in its wall-to-wall, ad nauseum coverage. Check it out.
And note Nolte's definition of celebrity -- "One who doesn’t let dignity get in the way of fame." That's a keeper.
Writer, former analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency, and now the president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, Mark Tooley, has an excellent essay on the woeful hypocrisy and criminal naiveté exhibited by the National Council of Churches and others enlisted in the cause of the so-called "Cuban Five." It comes from FrontPage Magazine.
The National Council of Churches (NCC) has rarely, if ever, shown interest in political or religious prisoners in communist prisons on Cuba. But the NCC chief, recently visiting in Cuba, has called for "justice" for five imprisoned Cuban intelligence agents serving prison terms in Florida. Popularly called the "Cuban Five" since their arrest by the FBI in 1998, the communist agents are a cause celebre for the international Left.
"This is a case in which individuals and families have been caught in the quagmire of politics between the United States and Cuba," NCC chief Michael Kinnamon innocuously explained in Havana in late June, according to an NCC news release. "The Cuban Five have appealed their convictions on the grounds that their trials were unfair and the churches of the United States support due process to resolve their situation." Kinnamon is especially distressed that the U.S. Supreme Court recently declined to intervene on behalf of Castro's spies.
Seeing the tragic plight of these imprisoned Castroite agents as a pressing priority, the Rev. Kinnamon said he and other U.S. religious officials are seeking a private audience with President Obama to plead on their behalf. The NCC news release bashfully recounted that the "Cuban Five" were "intelligence officers convicted of espionage, conspiracy to commit murder, and other illegal activities," and who were "allegedly attempting to infiltrate U.S.-based Cuban exile groups who were organizing illegal and occasionally violent activities in Cuba."
The NCC did not mention that the "Cuban Five" also sought to infiltrate the U.S. Southern Command headquarters in Florida, for which they earned prison sentences ranging from 15 years-to-life.
It's not clear why the NCC said the quintet were "allegedly" criminals, since they were swiftly convicted in federal courts by juries. The NCC pointed out that the "Cuban government claims their presence in the U.S. was a measure to counter terrorist activities against Cuba." At least it's somewhat refreshing for the NCC to employ the word "terrorist," a term the NCC will not typically deploy against Islamists or Marxists. Evidently only anti-Marxists qualify...
Understandably, the official communist Cuban News Agency (CNA) gushed over the Rev. Kinnamon's "solidarity" with the Cuban "anti-terrorists" unjustly imprisoned by the imperialist Yanquis. The CNA reported that Kinnamon lamented the plight of the "Cuban Five" as a "clear expression of how politics influences U.S. justice," a concept foreign in Cuba.
According to CNA, Kinnamon was joined in his anti-U.S. press conference in Havana with Cuban Council of Churches President Marcial Miguel Hernandez, who also pledged his "solidarity" with the Cuban "antiterrorist fighters held in U.S. jails." The Rev. Hernandez likewise affirmed his support for ""what has always been done in our nation in the benefit of the people." Was Rev. Kinnamon nodding his head as Hernandez seemingly praised Cuba's Communist regime? In fairness to Hernandez, who is the subject of a totalitarian state, he has no choice but to mouth his government's propaganda. What is Kinnamon's excuse?
The CNA ostensibly quoted Kinnamon as explaining to his Cuban audience that Protestants work for "unity of all forces, in order to try to influence the decision-making of governments with regard to peace, solidarity, justice, and the struggle against poverty." In other words, Protestantism is indistinguishable from the proletariat! If Kinnamon attributed any religious purpose to Protestantism, CNA declined to mention it.
Kinnamon is relatively new to flacking for Cuba's tyranny, but the NCC is not. One of his predecessors as NCC chief, Joan Brown Campbell, once hosted Fidel Castro for an ecumenical lovefest in New York. Later she prominently championed returning Elian Gonzalez to Cuba. More recently she has joined such luminaries as Noam Chomsky, Angela Davis, Howard Zinn, and Danny Glover in touting the "Cuban Five."
"The Cuban Five and their loving families are victims of our propaganda against the Cuban people," the Rev. Campbell intoned in 2007. "We have created an atmosphere where their guilt is assumed and goes unchallenged by far too many Americans." Campbell spoke of refusing to be "intimidated by those in power," adding, "we must continue to speak out for the Cuban Five."
Evidently neither Campbell, nor her successor, is willing to offend "those in power" in Cuba, or to offer solidarity with Cubans in Cuba who are justifiably "intimidated" by their despotic rulers. Sadly, Campbell went on to praise Cuba for having "crafted a society that cares for the basic needs of all its people," with "quality and available health care for all" which is "still an unrealized dream" for Americans, and "education for even the poorest of Cuban people," and a land where "abject poverty and hunger do not exist." Did all of Campbell's sensory perceptions cease operations in 1979? Seemingly so.
How spiritually sterile, even by NCC standards, must church officials be to still shill for the crumbling shambles of Cuban communism in the year 2009?
The first story tells that about 1/4 of all delliberate abortions in the U.S. now involve mifepristone. (These figures do not include all the "secret" abortions which occur with use of birth control pills and other so-called contraceptives.) The second story takes another angle on the release of the same study, highlighting Planned Parenthood's promotion of mifepristone as safe -- this despite the lethal effect it has upon preborn children AND the deaths it has caused to mothers.
* Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- A new Planned Parenthood study finds one-fourth of all of the abortions done in the United States now involves the dangerous abortion drug mifepristone. That is the drug that has caused the deaths of more than a dozen women worldwide -- including at least six in the United States -- and has injured more than 1,200 nationwide according to figures from 2007. Sales of the abortion drug Mifeprex, the first part of the two-part RU 486 abortion pill process, rose 16.5 percent last year and 184,000 women used the drug.
The Planned Parenthood study also finds the abortion drug, which can be used at around seven weeks into pregnancy, now accounts for about one-third of all early-term abortions. The study, which will be reported in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine, analyzed 228,000 abortions at Planned Parenthood centers between 2005 and 2008.
Chris Gacek, of the pro-life Family Research Council, was not surprised by the increased use of the abortion drug. "I don't think at this point we're going to do anything" to try to limit its use, he said. "It's hard to know whether this increases the (total) number of abortions."
Last year, the Alan Guttmacher Institute, a former Planned Parenthood research arm, released a report showing the number of abortions has declined to record lows in the United States. But, women having abortions were more frequently using the dangerous abortion drug. According to AGI, about 13 percent of all abortions involve mifepristone. The report also showed that 57 percent of places that do abortions now have the abortion drug, compared with just 33 percent in 2001.
* Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- Planned Parenthood has released a new study it claims shows the dangerous abortion drug mifepristone is now safe, but the study ignores how Planned Parenthood's own protocol resulted in the deaths of women. The research, done at Planned Parenthood clinics across the country, supposedly shows that the new way of giving women the abortion drug orally, instead of vaginally, boosts its safety. "This is the first really huge documentation of how safe and effective medical abortion is," said Dr. Beverly Winikoff, a professor of family health and population at Columbia University. "The technology is very good and very well used in this country, and probably will be used more and more." The study's lead researcher, nurse practitioner Mary Fjerstad, added, "We decided we needed to make a safe procedure even safer."
When used normally, RU 486 involves a two drug combination involves mifepristone, which deprives the developing newborn baby of food and water and essentially starves the child to death. The second drug, misoprostol, causes contractions to force the woman to birth the dead baby. The abortion business had been telling women to use the drug in a different way than the FDA guidelines suggested and the study showed it contributed to the deaths of six women who got the abortion drug at its centers.
In fact, a June 2008 University of Michigan study suggests Planned Parenthood is at fault in the deaths of women in the United States from the abortion drug. It wasn't until four California women all died within a week of using the abortion drug they received from Planned Parenthood abortion businesses that it changed its policy to conform to the FDA protocol.
Lucianne.com featured a link this morning to the terrific video clip I post below. You'll love it, particularly if you are a traveler who has hassled with irresponsible, uncaring airline employees before. In fact, Dave Carroll's song will bring a smile to everyone who has to deal with any company's (or government's) unresponsive clerks, pass-the-buck telephone operators, and bumbling bureaucrats.
The full story of Dave Carroll's bad experience with United Airlines (as well as his subsequent mission) can be read here. It's an all too common story but you gotta' dig Dave's decision to fight back...especially in the creative, fun way he chose.
So, if you would like to help Dave Carroll send a message to deadbeat companies everywhere who refuse to do the right thing for their customers, watch the video and then pass along this post to your friends. C'mon; let's get that million hits!
For a Washington Post article, this one delving into the judicial philosophy of Sonia Sotomayor is surprisingly well-researched and fairly reported. It presents a rather skeptical view of her misplaced self-confidence and over-reaching tactics.
How nice to see solid, balanced reporting in the MSM, huh?
But I do find it curious that writer Jerry Markon refers many times in the article to how Sotomayor's "rulings fall within the mainstream of those by Democratic-appointed judges." It's a strange standard to use, particularly given that a judge is supposed to be completely above partisan politics, concentrating merely on the Constitution and the rule of law.
But we know that's not the case. For Democrats do tend to use the courts as an end run around legislative bodies. After all, they know that their aims are progressive, enlightened and right. So why should they be limited by the dull thinking and antiquated attitudes of legislatures or, for that matter, voters?
Markon's numerous references to Sotomayor's rulings being "within the mainstream of those by Democratic-appointed judges" thus reveals (perhaps unwittingly, perhaps quite cleverly) the substantial and consequential difference between the Democrats and Republicans when it comes to judicial philosophy.
The accompanying illustrations in the article certainly do. Here's a few excerpts:
Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor's opinions show support for the rights of criminal defendants and suspects, skepticism of corporations, and sympathy for plaintiffs alleging discrimination, an analysis of her record by The Washington Post found. And she has delivered those rulings with a level of detail considered unusual for an appellate judge.
During nearly 11 years on the federal appeals court in New York, Sotomayor has made herself an expert on subjects ranging from the intricacies of automobile mechanisms to the homicide risks posed by the city's population density. Her writings have often offered a granular analysis of every piece of evidence in criminal trials, and sometimes read as if she were retrying cases from her chambers.
Legal experts said Sotomayor's rulings fall within the mainstream of those by Democratic-appointed judges. But some were critical of her style, saying it comes close to overstepping the traditional role of appellate judges, who give considerable deference to the judges and juries that observe testimony and are considered the primary finders of fact...
The White House has portrayed Sotomayor as a tough-on-crime moderate who favors the "judicial restraint" often sought by Republicans, while conservatives call her a liberal activist whose decisions are influenced by ideology and her Latina heritage.
"She looks like a classic Democrat," Songer said. "I don't think it's fair to classify her as tough on crime. I would use the term 'moderately liberal,' not 'moderate.' But she certainly seems to be in the mainstream of Democratic judges."
The split decisions, which are heavy on the criminal and business cases that tend to dominate the Supreme Court's docket, show Sotomayor voting to overturn convictions or sentences eight times, at a rate comparable to that of other Democratic-appointed judges. Six times, she affirmed them.
In one case, Sotomayor and seven mostly Democratic colleagues voted to set free a convicted murderer who did not contest his guilt but had been tried on what the court called the wrong murder charge. In another, she joined an opinion that cited flawed jury instructions in throwing out a man's conviction for enticing someone he believed was a 13-year-old girl into sex.
And when she threw out a life prison term for a convicted heroin dealer, ordering that he be resentenced, Sotomayor wrote that judges should not show "slavish adherence" to the "literal terms" of then-mandatory sentencing guidelines when their language is flawed. The view echoed her criticism of the guidelines from the bench that became an issue in her 1997 confirmation hearings.
At those hearings, Republicans criticized Sotomayor for apologizing to a defendant for a mandatory minimum sentence she imposed and for calling the sentence an "abomination." She told senators that the apology expressed her frustration over a feature in the sentencing rules that Congress later changed, conceded she should not have used the word "abomination" and expressed general support for the guidelines.
Other cases displayed Sotomayor's support for First Amendment protections, campaign finance reforms challenged by conservatives and privacy rights. She ruled against corporations in six of eight business cases...
A fellow Democratic appointee, Judge Rosemary S. Pooler, dissented. Sotomayor's opinion, she wrote, was based on "speculations and conjectures" and disregarded the judge's "role as the finder-of-facts."
"It is inappropriate in all but the most extraordinary cases for this Court to second-guess a district court's credibility findings," Pooler concluded. "The majority's dissection of the district court's decision departs from our precedents and wrongly supplants the lower court's assessment of the evidence with its own factual inferences, never having seen or heard any of the testimony that it now seeks to discredit."
I Think, Therefore I Am My Synapses?
Neuro-reductionism -- we are our brains and our brains are just the inexplicable amalgamation of nerves, chemicals and what nots -- "is the flavour of the week in popular science."
DNA pioneer Francis Crick says that humans (and I would think -- that is, if I could think -- all other brained creatures) "are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules." His fellow neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux sums it up even quicker, "You are your synapses."
Hmm. So when Dr. Crick tell his wife that he loves her... does he expect her to believe him? Why? After all, if his description of Man is correct, there is no basis whatsoever for soul, for faith, for morality, for fidelity, or for love.
And what of Dr. LeDoux? Do you suppose that he smiles at a dog chasing his tail? Does he cry when a child is seriously hurt? Does he feel his spirit moved by a glorious sunset or a beautiful piece of music or the sound of a hamburger sizzling on the grill?
Of course they do -- those and ten thousand other evidences of their spiritual humanity. They, like all men, have been carefully, lovingly created in the very image of God. It is something they can't escape, no matter how hard they try to misinterpret the signs of His intelligent power all around them.
And so, despite what they play at in the laboratory, they end up living like what they are -- not brutish beasts, not machines, and certainly not a mixture of chemicals spilled together by convenient accidents over the millenia. They are men, made from miracle and made for fellowship with God Himself.
But the choice is theirs. God has revealed Himself in a myriad of ways, including those wondrous, intricate processes of life and science these fellows study in the lab. But He will not force belief. He leaves that up to us.
"For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened." (Romans 1)
Neuro-reductionism. It's just another labeling trick, another "God-dodge" that cannot stand up to the test of real life.
The video shows a Planned Parenthood staffer, identified as "Tanisha," telling a purportedly 14-year-old girl with a 31-year-old "boyfriend" that Planned Parenthood "does sometimes bend the rules a little bit" when it comes to reporting statutory rape to state authorities. Despite strong parental consent laws in Alabama, "Tanisha" also explains that a person with the "same last name" as the 14-year-old would suffice as a guardian or parent to sign off for the minor's abortion. In an interview last week, King said, "If that tape is an accurate depiction of what's happening, that's very troubling," and "if that video is true and accurate and correct, it's extremely troubling from a legal and moral point of view."
The Jefferson County Sheriff's Office has also expressed concern about the contents of the video and warned of potential repercussions for Planned Parenthood. Lt. Randy Christian said: "Anyone who sees that should be disturbed by it, and I hope they're disturbed by it. For a 31 year old to have sex with a 14 year old, that is rape in the second degree. I think they are not only morally obligated to report it - the law requires them to report it, and there could be some serious consequences otherwise."...
(From LifeSiteNews)
Scott Johnson at Power Line comments on President Obama's fawning, cowardly and historically-decrepit speech at the New Economic School in Moscow.
The twenty million victims of Stalin's Great Terror are tossed down the memory hole. Instead Obama vaguely alludes to the "old political and economic restrictions" of the Communist past.
One is tempted to laugh at the conclusion of his speech: "Russia has cut its way through time like a mighty river through a canyon, leaving an indelible mark on human history as it goes." Is this some kind of a joke? It is really a remarkable performance.
The latest Obamanation (it's awfully hard to keep up with them, isn't it?) occurred when our generous president gave away the store in Russia. Good grief -- this guy isn't satisfied with wrecking America from the inside; he's setting up our enemies so they can wreck it from the outside too.
Lord, give us strength.
Obama's Russian capitulations are the topic of today's must-read column. It's from our British friend Gerald Warner over at the Telegraph. (You will also find the Gardiner article he references of interest.)
No apologies for posting consecutively on Barack Obama: the Looney Tunes President’s sell-out of US and Western interests is proceeding at such a speed that it is difficult to keep pace. Well said, Nile Gardiner, for asking if Barack Obama is the most naïve president in American history. The answer is undoubtedly yes – unless he has a secret agenda to cut America down to size.
It was always in Russia that Obama threatened to do most damage and, as Nile Gardiner has rightly pointed out, these forebodings have been fulfilled. His supposed missile deal with Vladimir Putin (let’s cut straight to the organ-grinder and by-pass Medvedev, the monkey) is very satisfactory to Russian ambitions and realpolitik.
The nuclear power balance, as at 2007, was a Russian superiority of 2,146 land-launched nuclear warheads to 1,600 US; this was counterbalanced by a US superiority of 3,168 sea-launched US warheads to 1,392 Russian and 1,098 air-launched US warheads to 624 Russian. What should also be factored in is the leaking, deteriorating, rust-bucket condition of some of Russia’s deterrent ordnance, although it has already decommissioned the most basket-case Soviet weaponry. The bottom line, however, is that it is Russia which is now in the lead in ICBM development, not America.
For America voluntarily to reduce its nuclear superiority is madness. Bien-pensant talk of a nuclear-free world displays total stupidity in a global situation where nuclear weaponry is proliferating, not receding. There is even a nuclear bomb in Pakistan, which is teetering on the brink of failed statehood at the hands of Islamist insurgents. Is this a time for America to disarm, to “sell the store” as one trenchant right-wing commentator has already described Obama’s posturing in Moscow?
For Obama, success is not the delivery of watertight nuclear security for America; it is a feel-good news conference and photo opportunity that will create huge approval ratings on liberal campuses where the delusions of 1968 and the anti-Vietnam war movement still linger on in these isolated Jurassic Parks...
Uh, can I make that two must-reads today? It also concerns America's Patsy In Chief and comes as an editorial from Investor's Business Daily.
Diplomacy: Russia's nondemocratic rulers over the years have shown an uncanny knack for detecting weakness in their foes. Russia's Vladimir Putin is continuing the tradition.
President Obama no doubt believes he was dealing with honest brokers when he agreed with Russia's leaders to cut U.S. and Russian nuclear warheads to about 1,600 each. For the U.S., that's a cut of about a third.
But please read the fine print. This is a "preliminary" agreement. In order for it to go into effect, Russian leaders say they want the U.S. to give up its plans for a missile defense system.
To do so would, in effect, be a unilateral disarmament by the U.S. against the most feared weapons on earth — nuclear missiles. It's an abandonment of our allies, including Poland and the Czech Republic. It's not an acceptable bargaining chip.
It's reminiscent of the time in 1961 when President Kennedy — like Obama, youthful, attractive, intelligent, well-spoken — met with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. During that meeting, Khrushchev quickly sized up Kennedy as a foreign-policy lightweight.
Within months, he tested Kennedy's mettle — erecting the Berlin Wall, and, the following year, sending missiles to Cuba to challenge the U.S. just 90 miles off its own coast.
In public, Kennedy stood up to Khrushchev; behind the scenes, he caved, trading our missiles in Turkey for the ones in Cuba. Kennedy, in interviews, later regretted his own callowness.
Compare that with President Reagan's 1986 showdown with Mikhail Gorbachev in Reykjavik, Iceland. That came on the heels of a U.S. deployment of missiles in Europe, Reagan's refusal to sign a Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and his 1983 "Star Wars" speech. He was negotiating from strength — the only thing Russians get.
In 1985, Reagan had told Gorbachev bluntly during Geneva arms talks: "We won't stand by and let you maintain weapon superiority over us. We can agree to reduce arms, or we can continue the arms race, which I think you know you can't win."
In Reykjavik, with the world's media egging him on to make a deal, any deal, on nuclear arms with the USSR, Reagan said, "Nyet." Why? He wouldn't give up U.S. missile defense. With that stand, the Soviet Union's demise was assured.
By contrast, Obama on Tuesday called Russia, a country that's falling apart, a "great power" and reassured the nondemocratic Putin he'll keep Russia's interests in mind while crafting U.S. policy.
"As I said in Cairo," the president said, "given our interdependence, any world order that tries to elevate one nation or group of people over another will inevitably fail. That is why I have called for a 'reset' in relations between the United States and Russia."
This implies an equivalency between Russia and the U.S. that simply doesn't exist. Russia comes up short on any measure of civilizational success you might want to use. Indeed, we have elevated a country that has invaded a neighbor, uses energy as a weapon against our democratic allies and refuses to help in our effort to halt Iran's dangerous nuclear program.
Russia is not a "great" power. It's a Third World nation with First World nuclear weapons. It's in a downward spiral due to its collapsing population, shortening life-spans and shrinking economy. It might not even survive this century as a nation.
This has been the U.S.' biggest mistake: to give Russia respect it hasn't really earned. Maybe, as it turns out, Putin, a former top KGB operative, is more clever than Gorbachev. He knows our president needs a foreign affairs success.
Before President Obama signs off on anything, he'd do well to review the presidential history of dealings with the Soviets. He can learn from both Kennedy and Reagan.
(By the way, the canine illustration above comes from GraniteGrok.)
"Now we've turned into oldies but we were newies then."
Here's a few clips I found really touching, not only because of my love of classic doo wop music but because of the tender respect these performers feel for the music, the history and each other. As you'll see, they all involve Kenny Vance, a very successful music producer who also is a fine singer. In fact, Vance was an original member of Jay and the Americans and he now performs with the popular Brooklyn group, Kenny Vance and The Planotones.
The first clip is an impromptu rendition of "Just Two Kind of People in the World" with Vance joining Little Anthony and the Imperials. The second is an endearing moment with Vance and original Drifter Charlie Thomas. They overlook the old Paramount Theater in New York and do a little bit of the Turbans' "When You Dance" together. Very sweet. And finally, take that second cup of tea and listen to the provocative nostalgia of the Plantones' signature song, "Looking for an Echo." (You gotta' love those hats!)
If a Tea Party Is Held in a Forest With No Reporter Around..
Joseph Farrah weighs in on the truly remarkable absence of news coverage of last weekend's tea parties.
...So the Independence Day tea party was an extraordinary event to begin with. Everyone knew there would be about 2,000 rallies around the country – that we could count. There were probably far more. Everyone knew that these demonstrations would attract between 50 people at the low end and 5,000 to 10,000 at the high end. The times were set. The date was set – a predictably slow news day on a holiday weekend.
Yet, to my utter amazement, having been in the news business for more than 30 years, not one news organization – broadcast, print or Internet – bothered to put together what we call a "roundup" of these local stories to give the events some national context...
Twenty years ago, 10 years ago, I would have fired staffers for such lapses. But I suspect the lapses this time were not by one guy asleep at the switch at the AP. I suspect this is a striking example of the contempt most news people have for the mainstream American values represented by the tea partiers.
Most news organizations are lightly staffed on holiday weekends. WND is no exception. Nevertheless, even with a skeletal crew and the tools of the Internet, it was like shooting fish in a barrel to collect the information to give it some scope.
I do not exaggerate when I say, proudly, WND's coverage of the tea parties this past weekend was deeper and more comprehensive than the rest of the establishment, corporate press combined.
It wasn't even difficult beating them – because they were clearly not trying.
If the euphemistically named "mainstream" press cared to present a sweeping overview of what happened on Independence Day in America, it would have been easy to do – no more than a few hours of work for one enterprising reporter. The fact that AP didn't do it, CNN didn't do it, Fox News didn't do it and nobody else with their resources did it demonstrates their disdain for the hundreds of thousands who participated and millions more they represent.
I'm sure this sounds very self-serving. But since no one else is likely to point out this total abdication of responsibility by every other news organization – big or small – it falls to me.
Maybe my colleagues have just forgotten how to report – how to do their jobs. Maybe they've just become incredibly lazy. I guess these are possibilities. But I don't believe it for a minute. I am more convinced than ever that 99 percent of journalists in what Rush Limbaugh has coined the "state-run media" are indeed serving their masters...
A turkey walked defiantly into the courtroom....
Read this news excerpt from The Hill and make up your own jokes.
Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) has blocked President Obama’s candidate for regulation czar, Harvard law professor Cass Sunstein, because Sunstein has argued that animals should have the right to sue humans in court.
Obama has picked Sunstein, his adviser and longtime friend, to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, an office that has power to review and assess all draft regulations proposed within the administration.
But Chambliss worries that Sunstein’s innovative legal views may someday lead to a farmer having to defend himself in court against a lawsuit filed on behalf of his chickens or pigs.
Chambliss told The Hill that he has blocked Sunstein’s nomination because the law professor “has said that animals ought to have the right to sue folks.”
Indeed, in his 2004 book, Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions, Sunstein wrote: “I will suggest that animals should be permitted to bring suit, with human beings as their representatives, to prevent violations of current law.”...
In light of expanded federal guidelines on embryonic stem cell research which were confirmed by the Obama Administration yesterday; coupled with statements by University of Nebraska Board of Regents Chairman Kent Schroeder, Nebraska Right to Life is calling upon the Regents to hold a special meeting to address NU's current policy.
"Chairman Schroeder has indicated in the media that the issue of unethical medical research will not come up at the Regents' September meeting as he will be absent and the issue is too important to not discuss without the full Board present." said Julie Schmit-Albin, Executive Director of Nebraska Right to Life. "The Regents already put off discussion of its policy governing unethical research earlier this year when NU President James Milliken asked them to wait until the commentary period on the new federal guidelines had elapsed. Pro-life organizations attended the April Regents meeting but did not call for action at that time, considering President Milliken's request. Now the new regulations are in place and we are hearing that the Regents can't take up this issue in September."
"We have seen such delays before when dealing with unethical research issues at the Legislature. The University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) benefits from time elapsing with no action taken by the Regents." said Schmit-Albin. "Our concern is a delay allows UNMC to enter the grants process for expanded embryonic stem cell lines. Once that process begins, their mantra becomes, 'don't put a stop to something already started.' Then it becomes harder for the Regents to address their standing policy of following the Federal Administration's guidelines."
“Added to our concern about delaying a decision is a statement made by UNMC’s Dr. James Turpen in May at a Science Café event in Lincoln.” said Schmit-Albin. “Dr. Turpen stated in the 5/14/09 Lincoln Journal Star that, ‘a public armed with facts and understanding of science is better able to appreciate and apply scientific advances and to vote knowledgeably on ballot issues and initiatives related to science.’”
Nebraska Right to Life wrote the Regents on 5/15/09 about Dr. Turpen's statements asking them to question UNMC about any potential move to put the question of unethical medical research on the ballot through the initiative petition process. "Our concern is that UNMC could get around both the legislative and Regents' process by getting cleverly-worded language into the Nebraska Constitution supporting unethical research." said Schmit-Albin.
"These developments should be alarming to all pro-life Nebraskans and we are asking the grassroots to contact their Regents immediately to ask that a special meeting be called to address the Regents' policy." said Schmit-Albin. “Otherwise it appears that all of these events will work toward the NU Regents allowing expanded embryonic stem cell research and UNMC may well be in a position to encourage a ballot initiative in Nebraska which could enshrine unethical research into our State Constitution.”
Let's follow through with what Julie suggests. Here's the District Map showing who your regent is. Now their respective addresses can be found on this N.U. web page (just click on the name).
I first commented (with appropriate sarcasm) on the absolute insanity of the Amethyst Initiative last summer.
"Now here's an idea -- Let's see if we can help reduce the terrible problems connected to excessive drinking among young adults (binge drinking, drunk driving, irresponsible sexual decisions, lowered performance at school and work, crime, and so on) by reducing the legal age at which you can purchase hard liquor."
Remarkably, however, that's just what the Amethyst Initiative was trying to do, lower the federal drinking age from 21 to 18. And it was wasn't spearheaded by tavern owners, brewers or frat boys, but by a hundred college presidents!
Say what?
No kidding. Check out that post again.
And then check out this piece from last week written by the editors of the New York Times. It takes note of recent studies that show binge drinking has indeed risen among college students -- but fallen dramatically among young adults of the same age who are not in college.
The Times common sense conclusion?
"Whatever the causes, the solutions almost certainly lie mostly within the colleges — perhaps with better counseling or stronger bans on under-age drinking — not by lowering the legal drinking age."
Perhaps those daffy college presidents (they'll read the Times, won't they?) will now do less whining about the drastically dumb idea of lowering the drinking age -- and maybe start earning some of their exorbitant government salaries by fixing their own doggone problems.
A partisan divide has made the commission contentious in recent years. Yet the Department of Justice's decision to forfeit its voter-intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party and three individual defendants drew a 6-0 vote with one abstention by the commission. What unified the commission was outrage at the Justice Department for letting the Black Panthers off the hook.
The Civil Rights Commission has sent two letters -- on June 16 and June 22 -- to Loretta King, acting assistant attorney general for the civil rights division, asking for an explanation, but it has not received a response. Rep. Frank R. Wolf, Virginia Republican, sent a June 8 letter demanding an explanation, but the congressman told us he has yet to receive an answer from the department one month later...
The commission's letter quoted "Veteran of the civil rights movement, Bartle Bull" calling the defendants' actions "the most blatant form of voter intimidation I have encountered in my life in political campaigns in many states, even going back to the work I did in Mississippi in the 1960s."
The commission summed up the case in its June 16 letter to Ms. King: "Though it had basically won the case ... the [Department of Justice's Civil Rights] Division took the unusual move of voluntarily dismissing the charges .... In its notice of dismissal, the Division cites as its rationale only the fact that defendants failed to appear and respond ... the Division's public rationale would send the wrong message entirely - that attempts at voter suppression will be tolerated and will not be vigorously prosecuted so long as the groups or individuals who engage in them fail to respond to the charges leveled against them."
Lenore Ostrowsky, a commission spokesman, told us, "It is rare for a letter from the commission over the last four years to be sent out without any dissent." There's good reason for today's unanimity. One of the Black Panther defendants, Jerry Jackson, is an elected member of Philadelphia's 14th Ward Democratic Committee and was a credentialed poll watcher for Barack Obama and the Democratic Party when the intimidation occurred. We agree with the concern at the Civil Rights Commission. The Justice Department needs to explain why it is not pursuing charges against these thugs.
Why isn't the call of this Washington Times editorial being sounded from everywhere in the media? Sigh.
If you would like to add your letter (or phone call) to that of the Civil Rights Commission -- for a little while at least, you're still allowed to voice concerns to the government you're paying for -- you can do so at AskDOJ@usdoj.gov. or use this mailing address:
U.S. Department of Justice
Civil Rights Division
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Office of the Assistant Attorney General, Main
Washington, D.C. 20530
Telephone Number for the General Public - (202) 514-4609
...Sharia has been operating here, in parallel to the British legal system, since 1982. Work includes issuing fatwas - religious rulings on matters ranging from why Islam considers homosexuality a sin to why two women are equivalent to one male witness in an Islamic court.
The Islamic Sharia Council also rules on individual cases, primarily in matters of Muslim personal or civil law: divorce, marriage, inheritance and settlement of dowry payments are the most common.
However, in the course of my investigation, I discovered how sharia is being used informally within the Muslim community to tackle crime such as gang fights or stabbings, bypassing police and the British court system.
A few hardline leaders would like it to be taken even further. One told me that Britain should adopt sharia punishments such as stoning and the chopping off of hands to reduce violent crime...
A study last week by the thinktank Civitas claimed that there could be as many as 85 sharia courts in Britain, although Dr Hasan says most of these are not formal courts. But it is certainly a growing network.
In his courts, support staff interview plaintiffs and compile a case study. Judgments are delivered by senior imams at closed monthly meetings and are sent in writing to the concerned parties. Up to 7,000 cases have been handled so far.
The Islamic Sharia Council is listed as a charity but people seeking a divorce, or talaq, must fill in a form and pay a fee. For a man it is £100; for women, it is £250 because the imams say it takes more work to process a woman's application as her word has to be corroborated...
In Britain, sharia courts are permitted to rule only in civil cases, such as divorce and financial disputes. Until last year, these rulings depended on voluntary compliance among Muslims. But now, due to a clause in the Arbitration Act 1996, they are enforceable by county and high courts...
To the casual observer, it may appear like a rather dry committee meeting. But these men are in effect running a legal system that critics fear could fragment the legal framework in Britain. Laws that once ruled supreme in Kabul are now being enforced in cities across Britain...
When I suggest that many people in Britain would find some of sharia's provisions extreme and difficult to accept, he agrees. 'We need to adapt sharia for British law. We could use some of the more moderate measures.'
Such as? 'Child abuse, under-age sex, teenage pregnancy, for example.'
I ask what the penalty would be for under-age sex. 'You won't like it. But sharia says if they're caught doing it, you stone the woman.'...
As I prepare to leave Leyton, office staff are cheering on Andy Murray at Wimbledon, a scene being played out across the country. Meanwhile, in a back room, Sheik Haitham Al-Haddad, one of the most senior imams in Britain, is once more contemplating the fundamental split between religion and state.
'There is a conflict between these two sets of values,' he concedes. ' Muslims believe our values are best. The non-Islamic British believe theirs are better. But at the end of the day, understand this: Muslims are never going to give up certain principles, even if they are in conflict. That is a fact.'
Sharia law in Britain is here to stay and perhaps even spread. But it's a perilous tightrope we tread - the line between multicultural tolerance and protecting the rights of the individual.
Or maybe its his ego that's so thick, making him impervious to doctrinal purity and good sense -- that is, as long as liberals in the MSM are there to praise him as daring, innovative and progressive.
"Really, Mortimer; he's not at all like those other snake-handling, creationist, pulpit pounders out there. Sure, he's still a Southern Baptist but he's shaken off all that fundamentalist stuff. I mean, the guy has gone green, has homosexual friends, and chats with Barack Obama."
"No kidding, Mort; this Rick Warren is becoming as open-minded and inclusive as they come -- well, he's not a Unitarian, maybe but check this out -- Warren's teaming up with Muslims (You heard me right, Mort, Muslims!) to end 'the five global giants.' And just what are those giants, you ask. Well, they ain't what you think, Mort. They're war, poverty, corruption, disease and illiteracy -- regular liberal religionist stuff. Not sin. Not the devil. Not doctrines of demons. Not false religion. Not terrorism. Not self-centeredness or greed or sexual deviancy. And did you notice, Mortimer? Not abortion. I'm telling you...this guy isn't a conservative Christian anymore. He really is one of us."
"Them Jews aren't going to let him talk to me."
That's the complaint of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the anti-Semitic, radical minister who was Barack Obama's spiritual mentor for two decades. In other words, a nefarious group of people around Obama are forcing the president to behave contrary to his interests and instincts. Such are the Sauron-like powers ascribed to Obama advisors who, having eaten of the fruit of the matzo, now control the president and vast swaths of the nation...
But pride has turned to alarm as even some liberal American Jews are getting it: the Obama administration, including "them Jews," is uniquely hostile to Israel. For the first time since its founding, Israel is viewed by a U.S. president as the impediment to peace in the Middle East. And "them Jews" around him are working hard to make sure the anti-Israel views of the president are carried out in policy. Rahm Emanuel, for example, the president's Jewish chief of staff, has been reported by Richard Baehr to be behind the effort to force Israel to submit to Palestinian demands while the president cultivates Arab despots. And there is ample evidence that Obama, assisted by his minyan, will put more pressure on a Jewish state that is anathema to his radical allies.
As a result, the attitudes of American Jews are changing, however slowly. Kvell has turned to kvetch (the wonderful Yiddish word for whine or complain) as even the Jewish press, which spent the past year vying with Newsweek and mainstream television networks for a place at the Obama altar, realizes the truth of one of those rules around which God centered his scripture: "They sow the wind and reap the whirlwind." One prominent Jewish weekly did not need the Weather Channel or Winston Churchill to note the gathering storm at the six month mark of this radical administration, asking frankly "Will U.S. Jews Stand With Israel -- Or Obama?"...
Dr. Stuart Schwartz goes on in this American Thinker article to describe the secular, self-centered worldview of those Jews who have gathered around the president. It is a troubling (but important) read.
After the murder of George Tiller, the self-aggrandizing rantings of abortionists like Warren Hern and Leroy Carhart were all over the news. As were the paranoid pontifications of many other abortion promoters.
But there are a few voices that never seem to be included in the media coverage of the issue -- voices that are of crucial relevance and extremely valuable. Indeed, if the American press was as balanced and responsible as it is free, it would give a fair hearing to abortionists of a much different stripe; namely, ones that have stopped doing them -- people like Bernard Nathanson and Mary L. Davenport.
Dawn Eden, now writing for Americans United for Life, has reports on two developments involving the nation's largest (by far) abortionist, Planned Parenthood and a schizophrenic Ohio Supreme Court.
One involved a defeat for Planned Parenthood in which the Ohio Supreme Court ruled to uphold a state law regulating that abortion centers must properly follow FDA guidelines in administering RU-486.
Now, whether or not PP will abide by the ruling is another matter. They are, as you know, notorious for ignoring the law altogether. And they routinely get away with because of an outrageous laxity in enforcement by civil authorities.
And that includes the courts themselves. Thus, in the second case, that same Ohio Supreme Court has allowed Planned Parenthood to hide records that could serve as vital evidence that the organization was not only breaking the law but also grossly endangering the health and welfare of young girls.
Planned Parenthood had failed to alert parents of their young daughters’ abortions and to notify law enforcement officials of suspected sexual abuse.
Dr. Charmaine Yoest, AUL President & CEO, stated: “The American public is rightly outraged by Planned Parenthood’s blatant disregard for the welfare of young girls and their penchant for prioritizing profits over compliance with the law. Parents everywhere should be outraged that this court is now protecting a business that thrives on exploiting the most vulnerable.”
And the robed solons of the Ohio Supreme Court says, "Who cares?"
As if we needed yet more evidence that the system is broke (and broke really, really bad!), here's a news report about a New Mexican just convicted of his 23rd drunk driving offense.
How can lawmakers, cops, prosecutors, media and judges so foolishly ignore the cost of drunk drivers in America?
* The deaths -- Thousands every year.
* The severe injuries -- Severed limbs, brain damage, paralysis, and on and on.
* The devastated families -- No one gets over the needless death of a loved one.
* The economic loss -- Hundreds of billions of dollars...and counting.
There are only a few stupider, more irresponsible things than driving drunk; but certainly one of them is to ignore the cataclysmic crisis it represents.
Mercator Net: Maternal deaths during pregnancy or childbirth, the vast majority in developing countries, constitute one of the world’s greatest hidden epidemics. The death toll is estimated at more than half a million mothers a year.
World leaders meeting at the UN agreed that reducing maternal mortality is essential to fulfilling their “collective responsibility to uphold the principles of human dignity, equality and equity at the global level.” UN Millennium Development Goal 5 aims at reducing maternal mortality by 75 per cent between 1990 and 2015, but it is a target most unlikely to be reached.
One important reason for that, says American doctor and researcher Donna J Harrison, is unreliable data on the causes of maternal death -- in particular abortion...
MercatorNet: There are several direct causes of maternal death in the developing world. A New York Times article, for example, listed the five leading ones in this order: bleeding, infection, high blood pressure, prolonged labour and botched abortions. Why single out abortion for analysis?
Donna Harrison: Each of the other causes of maternal death has clear definitions, and is not in itself connected to a political agenda. However, the international politics pushing worldwide legalization of elective induced abortion does not foster clear thinking about the maternal deaths and injuries which accompany that legalization.
In order to understand the policy implications of a decision, one must be able to assess the effects of that decision. In common with many of the other causes, however, the incidence of induced abortion in developing countries, along with the number of maternal deaths and complications from them is not accurately known, despite estimates that are published from time to time.
Mifepristone and misoprostol abortions in the United States have been linked with severe adverse events, and women could easily die from infections and haemorrhage in areas where they do not have immediate access to transfusion and surgical facilities. Thus, introducing chemical abortions, whether with mifepristone and misoprostol, or with misoprostol alone, in medically underserved areas will mean that these severe adverse events will become maternal deaths.
MercatorNet: What are the main obstacles to getting good abortion data?
Donna Harrison: There are three main problems. First, the use of the terms “safe” and “unsafe”, which are not scientific terms but more legal and political, because they are directed to changing the law. In a 2007 article co-sponsored by WHO, for example, unsafe abortion is defined as “abortions in countries with restrictive abortion laws”. That means that any abortion in such a country, no matter how medically superior the conditions, would be counted as “unsafe”...
The second major problem comes from the way WHO collects data on hospital admissions due to abortion. In a 2003 document drawn up in conjunction with the UN Population Fund it defines these admissions as “due to abortion (spontaneous and induced, but excluding planned termination of pregnancy)”. This could mean in practice, “Don’t count complications in women admitted precisely to have an abortion,” or, “Don’t count any women who have had complications from planned termination of pregnancy.” It’s not at all clear what statistics to count. And, since planned termination of pregnancy in a hospital implies legal abortion, this method would give a distorted picture of maternal deaths and morbidity, or ill health, under a legal regime.
The third major problem comes from the statistical manipulation of such data as it has. For example, in estimating the number of “unsafe” abortions and related morbidity, WHO combines spontaneous abortions and induced abortions, and then “corrects” for spontaneous abortion according to what it believes the proportion should be.
I should add that this guesswork extends beyond abortion to the whole field of maternal mortality in developing countries. At the Women Deliver conference a WHO researcher, Dr Cindy Stanton, admitted: “In some areas we make huge adjustments to make the numbers turn out right. More than fifty percent of some numbers are ‘adjusted.’”...
MercatorNet: Does it matter very much if the numbers are not accurate? Governments do have to address all aspects of maternal health, including abortion, don’t they?
Donna Harrison: Actually, it matters enormously because of the implications for planning national policy. If a country finds that a large percentage of maternal deaths happen from a lack of skilled birth attendants at delivery, and a very small number come from induced abortions, then it becomes clear that funding should be directed to skilled birth attendants and not to abortion agencies.
But if a country where abortion is illegal uses methodology which allows spontaneous abortions to be counted as induced abortions, a falsely high number of maternal deaths may be attributed to “unsafe abortions”. The country will then be under international pressure to legalize abortion, on the assumption that it would result in the immediate lowering of the hospital admissions owing to abortion, and the associated costs.
As we have seen, however, this reduction would be more apparent than real, since adverse outcomes of planned and legal abortions might not be counted...
MercatorNet: Are there any signs that things are moving in this direction, or is the goal of providing good care to all the world’s mothers going to continue to be undermined by a bias towards “safe abortion”?
Donna Harrison: I have concerns about the direction that the U.N. may pursue under the leadership of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. In her recent statement before congress, Mrs Clinton stated clearly that the term “reproductive health” included abortion. This inclusion of abortion in the term reproductive health means an increasingly greater pressure to legalize abortion will be exerted on countries whose own people and legitimate governments have decided to ban it. The issue is significant because it becomes a kind of reproductive cultural imperialism from the United States and Europe...
There has been a lot of change in recent months – a $787 billion spending bill, a budget exceeding $3 trillion, government ownership of auto manufacturers, government-imposed caps on earnings, legislation imposing limits on economic activity in America under the name of environmental justice. It is increasingly difficult for conservatives to sustain any audacity of hope for moderate policies coming from the current administration.
What unites these policies and their sweeping designs is the progressive aim of “remaking America”—as President Obama said in his Inaugural Address—into a country much more like the highly regulated, secular and pacifist nations of Europe...
We don’t need to remake America, or discover new and untested principles. The change we need is not the rejection of America’s principles but a great renewal of these permanent truths about man, politics, and liberty—the foundational principles and constitutional wisdom that are the true roots of our country’s greatness.
As we celebrate the blessings of liberty that America’s Founders made possible and the sacrifices of succeeding generations have enabled us to enjoy, let us also rededicate ourselves, and strive to rededicate our nation, to the Declaration of Independence.
(Matt Spalding, The Foundry, July 3)
Maybe the fog is lifting a bit.
President Barack Obama has made it clear that he does not want the United States to be seen as "meddling" in Iran's internal politics. Never mind that the Islamic Republic has been "meddling" in our affairs for the past three decades, if such a bland word can be used to characterize the seizure of our embassy in 1979, the killing of 229 American servicemen in 1983 and the planting of roadside bombs to kill our soldiers in Iraq. The Obama administration apparently believes that words and actions in support for the Iranian people in their struggle against religious fascism will hurt their cause, even though the mullahs have never needed a pretext for blaming their self-inflicted wounds on the West.
The administration's response to the events in Iran was predictable given its obsession with "engaging" a regime that shows no interest in returning the favor.
Yet while distancing ourselves from democratic forces in Iran under the guise of respect for that government's sovereignty, we have been quite eager to "meddle" in the domestic politics of Honduras. Worse, we have wound up on the wrong side...
On Tuesday, Zelaya was given a hero's welcome by the United Nations General Assembly. More worrying has been American complicity in the campaign to restore an authoritarian to power, beginning with U.S. co-sponsorship of a resolution stating that the removal of Zelaya "interrupted the democratic and constitutional order and the legitimate exercise of power in Honduras."
This is exactly backwards. It was Zelaya, who in his avowal to ignore a supreme court decision and proceed with an illegal power grab, subverted his country's democracy. Nevertheless, the Pentagon has cut off all cooperation with the Honduran military and Obama administration officials told The New York Times of their intention to give the poverty-stricken Central American nation "a taste of isolation" (would they threaten such consequences for the mullahs in Iran?).
Secretary of State Clinton said that Honduras' actions "should be condemned by all" and President Obama said that his administration would "stand with democracy" by supporting Zelaya's reinstatement. Propping up an authoritarian undermining his country's constitution (which he claimed needs fixing to reflect a new "national reality," apparently one in which he rules forever) is a strange way to demonstrate that solidarity.
It is unfair to the people of Honduras and their institutions to characterize the removal of Zelaya as the rogue work of the country's military, and the most noxious aspect of the coverage this past week has been repeated use of the term "coup" to describe what transpired. A military coup is an extra-legal action occurring outside the realm of constitutional authority and democratic decision-making. This does not accurately describe what happened in Honduras, where the president was blatantly breaking the law and acting in dictatorial fashion, the military was acting on the orders of the Supreme Court, the nation's civilian attorney general concurred with its rulings and Congress validated Zelaya's removal.
And so the United States now finds itself in league with the likes of Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez, the latter of whom has threatened war on the nascent Honduran government. In his weekly newspaper column, Castro gloated about American support for Zelaya, writing that "Even Mrs. Clinton had declared that Zelaya is the only president of Honduras, and the Honduran coup leaders can't even breathe without the support of the United States."
On Thursday, the Organization of American States threatened to expel Honduras if it did not restore Zelaya's presidency. Yet just weeks ago, this purportedly democratic group voted to readmit communist Cuba, and it has routinely ignored abuses by governments in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador.
The widespread support for Zelaya from his Latin American neighbors is understandable given the continent's recent shift to the left. More perplexing is the position of the administration in Washington, which has been so reluctant to support democracy in far away Persia and has joined those undermining it in our own backyard.
It's a defining moment in a parent's life: Seeing their unborn child's image on an ultrasound for the first time. Now pregnant women could have the chance to hold a life-size model of their unborn baby.
The startling new medical technology is the result of a Royal College of Art design student's PhD.
Brazilian student Jorge Lopes has pioneered the conversion of data from ultrasound and MRI scans into life-size plaster models of living embryos using a method called rapid prototyping.
'It’s amazing to see the faces of the mothers. They can see the full scale of their baby, really understand the size of it,' said Dr Lopes.
'The technology can be also be used as an emotional tool for parents whose foetus might be deformed or need treatment,' added Hilary French, who heads the School of Architecture and Design Products.
A good way of understanding how rapid protoyping works is to imagine a printer that prints plastic powder instead of ink. Then as it prints layer up layer it slowly builds up a 3D model.
Dr Lopes' work will be displayed at an exhibition opening at the RCA in London today. The technology is currently being trialled at a clinic in Rio de Janeiro. His supervisor, King's College head of obstetrics Stuart Campbell, called the invention 'absolutely unique' and 'a fantastic development'.
Professor Campbell, who pioneered the use of ultrasound in the 1980s, also hoped the technology would help mothers - blind mothers in particular - to bond with their babies.
'I don’t know whether I am looking at science or I am looking at art', commented an external examiner reviewing the student's PhD viva.
(Daily Mail, June 26)
The myriad of legal complaints to the IRS filed by Americans United for Separation of Church and State have been almost exclusively leveled against conservative churches. That's hardly a surprise.
Nevertheless, this press release explains how the Liberty Counsel is fighting back against the audaciously hypocritical leftist group, primarily in exposing to the public Americans United patterns of lies and intimidation.
...AU is not concerned about truth. Its statements are designed to intimidate, silence, and harm those with whom it disagrees. AU’s activity is both reckless and partisan. It is reckless because AU never investigates the accuracy of its alleged complaints. AU’s pattern of reckless disregard for the truth, coupled with its malicious intent to injure those with whom it disagrees, is patently obvious. While the IRS considers such complaints confidential and will not release information to the public pending investigations, AU is only interested in getting its name in the media.
Mathew D. Staver, Founder of Liberty Counsel and Dean of Liberty University School of Law, commented: “The politically partisan pattern of Americans United is clear. Time after time the organization picks on churches whose pastors lean toward conservative or Republican candidates. At the same time, it ignores churches whose pastors lean toward Democratic candidates. Aside from the obvious bias of Americans United, the organization has never been successful in causing the IRS to revoke the tax-exempt status of any church. Indeed, the IRS has never revoked the tax-exempt status of any church for engaging in political activity. Congress ought to repeal any restriction in the IRS Code that limits churches from addressing political issues and candidates for public office. Such restrictions undermine our democratic process and are an offense to the open political discourse that has made America a great nation.”
(Thanks for alerting me to this, Jesse.)
Gerrit Lansing at The Heritage Foundation describes President Obama's latest fake, a supposedly freewheeling town hall meeting on health care that was just another tightly-controlled snow job. (Following Lansing's remarks is the video clip showing that at least some members of the press -- Chip Reid of CBS and the irascible Helen Thomas -- are getting tired of the con.)
Yesterday, President Obama held a town hall event in order to “sell his health care message to the public” during Congress’s July 4th recess. However, worried that the President cannot answer tough questions about his plan for health care reform, White House officials carefully screened each member of the audience in attendance and each question asked.
This time, the mainstream media took note, even grilling White House spokesperson Robert Gibbs on the choreographed spectacle. In fact, veteran White House correspondent Helen Thomas, not known as a conservative sympathizer, even lamented: “I’m not saying there has never been managed news before, but this is carried to fare-thee-well–for the town halls, for the press conferences. It’s blatant. They don’t give a d–n if you know it or not. They ought to be hanging their heads in shame.” She added: “What the h-ll do they think we are, puppets?”
The AP reported: “Some of Obama’s questioners Wednesday were from friendly sources, including a member of the Service Employees International Union and a member of Health Care for America Now, which organized a Capitol Hill rally last week calling for an overhaul. White House aides selected other questions submitted by people on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.”
With the elaborate choreography, President Obama managed to talk a good talk, despite his rhetoric not matching his plans. For example he said: “We need a permanent solution that when you lose your job, or change jobs, you can still keep your health insurance.” Absolutely. Do you lose your car or life insurance when you change your job? Of course not. The same should be true for your most important coverage: health insurance.
Heritage’s Bob Moffit, at a recent Congressional hearing, testified that “Americans need portability. If we had portability in health insurance that was tied to the person and not where they worked, the numbers of the uninsured would drop dramatically.“ Unfortunately, the President’s plan doesn’t offer this portability. Obama went on to deliver another one of his prized pieces of health care rhetoric: “If [private insurance] is such a great deal, why are [insurers] so concerned about government competing with private plans?”
The President has been searching for the logic on this one, and luckily it’s easy to explain. There’s no real competition when the Referee making the rules is also playing the game; it’s a fixed competition. Congress’ ability to pay doctors and other providers less will hide the true cost of the public plan. Undercutting private insurance will drive enrollment to the public plan. That’s not competition on a level playing field.
While bemoaning that Congress moves slowly on legislation, he offered this analysis of our Constitutional government three days before the 4th of July, saying: “Part of that is the way the Constitution is designed. We don’t have coups [d'etat] or governments collapsing. The disadvantage is it’s hard for us to make great, big, bold steps.”
At Heritage, we tend to think that one of the more important aspects of the Constitution is the very fact that it is so difficult to take “great, big, bold steps.” Perhaps, on America’s upcoming 233rd birthday, this is a quaint idea. Some still tend to agree with us, however. The point is, health care reform doesn’t need to be so radical that the Constitution holds it back. There are other ways to fix health care that won’t intrude into our daily lives or our personal choices.
Nevertheless, the President is going to ask you to hold his hand and jump off the cliff with him, saying: “We’re in one of those rare moments where everybody is ready to move into the future. We just can’t be scared.” Frankly, when a plan is so big, so intrusive, and so expensive to every American’s life that the President feels the Constitution might hinder its approval, you should be scared.
Here's 3 not-to-be-missed Town Hall columns from today's files:
* Emmett Tyrrell on the weird and wicked Al Franken
* Cal Thomas on the Honduras mess
* Michael Reagan on the need for a new American Revolution
Bruce Walker over at American Thinker looks at those poll numbers from Rasmussen (the ones showing a drop in Obama's "strongly approve" levels while those in the "strongly disapprove" column just keep climbing) and concludes,
What does this mean? Well, it does not mean that the flighty, rock star popularity of Obama is fading, but it does mean that any deep enthusiasm for him has grown progressively weaker, just as the number of Americans who are deeply worried about him has kept growing. It means -- and the polls show this too -- that more and more Americans are holding Obama accountable for our economy and no longer blame President Bush....
Republicans do not need a 1994 Tsunami to de-rail Obama. A couple of dozen House seats and a handful of Senate seats will force Obama's last two years in the White House into a Jimmy Carter holding action. The key poll to watch is not the goofy and doctored nonsense of the Leftist press, but the day by day scrupulous polling of Scott Rasmussen. If the slow, and sometimes uneven, trend continues, and by September the percentage of Americans who "strongly disapprove" of Obama is in the low forties, then the American people have gotten wise to this Chicago politician and his demands that Congress pass huge unread (even unwritten) bills as a way to cure our problems...
Lesbian columnist Deb Price was one of those peeved at Barack Obama for not doing enough to promote the wide-sweeping agenda of homosexual activists. But Obama's performance last week has reassured her that sexual aberrants (of all stripes) have a very good friend occupying the White House.
Standing beside a beaming first lady in the ornate East Room on Monday, Obama warmly welcomed more 250 gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Americans "to your White House."
The inspiring guest list ranged from two men who in 1969 resisted police harassment at the Stonewall bar -- the rebellion that kicked off the modern-day gay-rights movement -- to such gutsy contemporary trailblazers as Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson, former U.S. ambassadors Jim Hormel and Michael Guest, and Office of Personnel Management Director John Berry...
At times, the White House event sounded like the aftermath of a family intervention, with the president playing the loved one who feels compelled to issue reassurances that -- despite frightening behavior -- he really hadn't slipped off the equality wagon.
It also offered fascinating peeks into the president's strategic thinking about how he can pull off change he clearly believes in and not be outmaneuvered like President Bill Clinton...
Obama also offered a revealing glimpse at his attitude toward his Justice Department's disturbing brief embracing DOMA. Significantly, Obama used the phrase "so-called Defense of Marriage Act," distancing himself from its Orwellian title. Then he explained, "Now, I want to add we have a duty to uphold existing law. But I believe we must do so in a way that does not exacerbate old divides. And fulfilling this duty in upholding the law in no way lessens my commitment to reversing this law."
Translation: The next brief won't sound like a Pat Robertson fundraising letter.
Host and guests clearly shared a shrewd, results-oriented vision. "I expect and hope to be judged not by words, not by promises I've made, but by the promises that my administration keeps," Obama said. "... I suspect that by the time this administration is over, I think you guys will have pretty good feelings about the Obama administration."
At that line, the Associated Press story noted below tells us, the room exploded into cheers.
Additional details from the AP:
Countering criticism that he's done little on gay rights, President Barack Obama commemorated the 40th anniversary of the birth of the modern movement by welcoming its leaders to the White House and reaffirming his commitment to their top priorities.
"I want you to know: You have our support," Obama told members of the core Democratic constituency as he and first lady Michelle Obama hosted a cocktail-and-appetizer reception in the East Room for gay pride month. It's been some four decades since the police raid on New York City's gay Stonewall Inn that spurred gay rights activism across the country.
As activists work to change minds and change laws, Obama added: "I will not only be your friend, I will continue to be an ally and a champion and a president who fights with you and for you."
Note the description above (by veteran AP reporter Liz Sidoti) of the lesbian, homosexual, bisexual, transgendered, etc. being "the core Democratic constituency."
Golly. With other core constituencies being abortion zealots, socialists, radical secularists, Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam, and the blame America first crowd, this sure ain't your grandpa's Democrat Party!
Here's three wonderful songs from one of America's greatest "sweet sounds" big bands, the Larry Clinton Orchestra. The vocals are supplied by the lovely Bea Wain. The first two (music only) are Where in the World (1937) and My Reverie (1938). The third clip is from 1939 and is easily one of my favorite songs of all time, Heart and Soul.
