Project Sunlight Shines on New York State

Is it merely wishful thinking to imagine that citizens might ever find forthright, relevant information about the real business of government: the lobbyist's activities, the spending, the accountability (or lack thereof) of bureaucrats?

Well, Nicole Gelinas has a stimulating article over at City Journal about an attempt in New York to realize that political ideal. It's Project Sunlight, a voter-information website that illuminates those very details of the political process usually well hidden from the public view. And, surprisingly enough, the genesis of the project comes from government!

Here's a teaser:

Project Sunlight is the handiwork of Blair Horner, Cuomo’s advisor for public integrity, who long pushed good-government initiatives at the New York Public Interest Research Group before joining the AG’s office. The website features a brief video, “The Basics of New York State Government,” that would be better named “The Way Things Ought to Be.” In this videoland version of Albany, the governor and the state’s two legislative leaders don’t negotiate important bills behind closed doors and then present them as done deals to houses whose members vote in lockstep with leadership. Instead, each bill “is sent to a committee specializing in the subject matter,” such as labor or housing, where it’s subject to “hearings and proceedings,” and then, after getting through committee, is “debated by the full membership.”

Things haven’t worked like that in the capitol for a long time, perhaps ever, and Project Sunlight helps explain why. Through the power of its clearly presented data, the website shows how special-interest lobbyists, campaign contributors, and beneficiaries of pork-barrel spending dominate state government. Using the site’s search function, a visitor can type in, for example, “United Federation of Teachers,” and learn that the organization spent over $300,000 lobbying state government in the first six months of 2007. Or the visitor can browse lobbyists by industry—starting, say, with “health care” —and find out with a few mouse clicks and some simple arithmetic that the state’s biggest health-care union, Local 1199, has six separate lobbying accounts and spent a whopping $13 million during the same period. One can also sort bills by sponsoring legislator and find out which bills clients like 1199 lobbied to pass.

There’s more. The site enables constituents to look up each assemblyman or state senator and see how many “member items”—pork-barrel projects in his district—he pushed through during the most recent legislative session, and it identifies the beneficiaries of this taxpayer largesse, ranging from the Chinese-American Planning Council ($250,000) to Queers for Economic Justice ($2,000). The site also provides information on the sources of campaign contributions for statewide officials, from assemblymen and state senators to the governor himself...

Read the rest of this hopeful article here.

The Sad, Selfish Spiral of Franky Schaeffer

Author and seminary professor, Douglas Groothuis has written more than a review of Frank Schaeffer's new book. He has written a sharp and savvy critique of Frank Schaeffer.

It is an excellent essay, one that admirably answers several of the questions that have so puzzled Franky's former fans. Read it at the Pearcey Report right here.

"It's That One Extra Step That Causes Him The Trouble: CBS Highlights Romney's Exaggerations

Mitt Romney, who earlier this year had to backpedal on his hunting exploits, is explaining himself again after claiming an endorsement he did not receive and saying he witnessed his father in civil rights marches he could not have seen.

"It's a figure of speech," Romney said Thursday...

Romney similarly backtracked after telling a national television audience Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press" that "I received the endorsement of the NRA" in 2002 while running for governor of Massachusetts. The gun rights group did not endorse either candidate, and gave a higher issues rating to his Democratic opponent...

The questions are especially sensitive for Romney, who is trying to rebound against rival Mike Huckabee in Iowa and maintain a lead in New Hampshire, the leadoff contests in the voting for presidential nominees. Throughout his campaign, he has been dogged by allegations of flip-flopping on key issues, from abortion rights to gun control and gay rights.

"It's the fine-tuning that's created the problem. It's always that one extra step that causes him the trouble," said Tobe Berkovitz, a longtime Romney observer and the interim dean of Boston University's College of Communication. "You can't just say that African-Americans were accepted into the church and I was happy, you have to say you pulled over and you cried."

The latter was a reference to another statement Romney made on "Meet the Press," in which he tried to convey his emotion after learning in 1978 his Mormon church had given full privileges to blacks.

Romney recalled his exact location when he heard the news - the Fresh Pond traffic rotary in Cambridge - but he misspoke when he said he thought he was in law school at the time. In fact, he had graduated from Harvard Law School three years earlier.

"If this had been three months ago, it would have been more water off the back of the duck, but right now, everything is magnified not only for him but Rudy and Hillary and everybody else..."

Emergency Contraception Isn't

In this brief story in The Hindu, an Indian news service, Dr. Hema Divakar, Chairperson of the Federation of Obsteric and Gynecological Societies in India, decries the number of women who die each year because of legal but unsafe abortions. It is a sad and startling figure, to be sure, but the number she gives of preborn babies killed by abortions in India is much, much more so -- 11 million.

Dr. Divakar's purpose in talking about this overwhelming problem, however, is to promote emergency contraception methods. But, in doing so, she sneakingly spreads the usual misinformation about this powerful drug by denying its abortifacient properties.

The reporter goes along with the ruse and declares, "An Emergency Contraceptive (EC) can prevent pregnancy by over 80 per cent if taken within 72 hours of an intercourse...Clearing misconceptions associated with EC, [Dr. Divakar] said it was not an abortion pill and cannot abort a foetus once pregnancy is established."

But don't miss the trick employed by Dr. Divakar's statement.

Her use of the phrase "once pregnancy is established" refers, of course, to the zygote attaching firmly to the uterine wall. But that is not the historic (not to mention, scientific) definition of pregnancy at all.

Life begins at conception/fertilization. Anything that prevents the pregnancy from continuing after that point is not a contraceptive but rather an abortifacient.

And "emergency contraception" (like the birth control pill, Norplant, et al), though designed to be contraceptive is not always effective as such. "Breakthrough ovulation" does occur and, sometimes with it, the union of egg and sperm. However, when that happens, backup processes in these drugs inhibit the rapidly developing zygote from attaching to the life-sustaining womb, thus performing an abortion.

Dr. Divakar knows better. But for the cause of promoting abortifacient drugs, she is willing to engage in obfuscation and a deliberately deceitful use of language. And anything that requires a lie to sell...isn't worth buying.

Mike Huckabee: "The Evangelical Liberals Like"

Ann Coulter's spirited, witty look at Mike Huckabee, "the evangelical liberals like" should provide plenty of pause for those believing that he is the G.O.P.'s best hope.

Belarus Official: Government Registration Needed to Worship, Pray

Pastor Dmitry Osyko was fined about two weeks' average wages on 14 December for leading a worship service in November in a private home in the western town of Baranovichi, a court official told Forum 18 News Service. The two homeowners, Stepan Paripa and Nikolai Pestak, were each fined more than one month's average wages. Their Baptist congregation refuses to seek state registration and officials arrived at the service to declare it illegal.

"They can't use a private home as a place of worship," local ideology official Ruslan Krutko, who interrupted the service, explained to Forum 18. "You couldn't use a private home as a public toilet, could you?" He said the church members need a registered place of worship to be able to "pray to God".

Church members insist that Belarus' Constitution and Universal Declaration of Human Rights guarantee their right to meet for worship freely with others. Pastor Osyko is the latest of many religious leaders to have been fined for leading unregistered worship....

"Putin Is Our Everything."

The title above comes from the laudatory statement last spring of former First Deputy Duma Speaker Lyubov Sliska about Communist autocrat Vladimir Putin who has not only tightened his control over Russia but who has so enjoyed playing the part of the belligerent tough guy in the new Cold War with the West.

TIME magazine, of course, has named Vladimir Putin as its Man of the Year. But keep in mind that this particular honor doesn't necessarily suggest honorable behavior. Wallis Warfield Simpson "won" in 1936; Adolf Hitler in 1938; Josef Stalin twice in 1939 and 1942; Nikita Krushchev in 1957; the Ayatullah Khomeini in 1979; and Deng Xiaoping in 1985.

The TIME article is of great interest certainly but I believe a fairer, more insightful view of Putin and his effects can be found in this piece written by Radio Free Europe analyst Robert Coalson.

The Resurgence of Jewish Culture in Germany

The importance of faith assumes greater importance when it is ruthlessly denied. It always does.

Suzanne Fields has a fascinating article in Jewish World Review today about the legacy of religious faith in Germany.

The religious focus here is of an entirely different order than in the United States. No one much cares that Angela Merkel grew up as the daughter of a Lutheran clergyman in Communist East Germany, where being religious was an invitation to official trouble and harassment. The omnipresent Stasi, the government's efficient secret police, lurked behind every cross, a symbol of the free society the communists hated. But freedom of religion was only one among many of the freedoms the Germans were denied in the East.

Germans enjoy neither freedom of speech nor separation of church and state as we know it. Germans are free to say whatever they like, as long as they don't say anything forbidden by the government such as anti-Semitic Nazi slogans. All "official" religious bodies must pay taxes to the state, and in return receive subsidies from the state. Curiously, the fastest growing religious community here is made up of Jews, partly because so few were left in Germany after the Holocaust. The number of Jews in Germany is estimated to be as high as 200,000. The big growth started after the Wall came down; 85 percent of them coming from the former Soviet Union, where they were denied freedom of worship.

The Germans, forever looking for ways to assuage their guilt over the Holocaust, have been particularly receptive to Russian immigrants who signify a revival — especially in Berlin — of a Jewish culture, rising like a phoenix from the ashes of Auschwitz....

Read the whole of Field's article over here. (The photo above shows Germany's biggest synagogue, recently restored after having been nearly destroyed by the Nazis with the ruins left to fester by the Soviets. It is in East Berlin.)

Applauding the Heritage Foundation

Imagine a university where you could hear some of the best and brightest minds on a regular basis. Your faculty would include generals and attorneys general, public intellectuals and best-selling authors, dissidents and former political prisoners. In your classroom, you could question prime ministers and Nobel Laureates, members of Congress, cabinet secretaries and Supreme Court justices. Occasionally, the president and vice president would come by to make major policy statements.

And it wouldn’t cost you a penny.

Too good to be true, you scoff. I don’t blame you for being skeptical. But the “university” described above is real. I should know -- I work there. It’s The Heritage Foundation, and for my money, it trumps any Ivy League college for sheer intellectual firepower. As historian Lee Edwards recently noted, in 2006 alone Heritage produced 203 papers that delved deeply into the issues of the day, both foreign and domestic.

A sizable portion of these papers were lectures -- and they deserve special attention. Heritage recently passed a real milestone with the delivery of its 1,000th lecture...

Read more about Rebecca Hagelin's enthusiasm for The Heritage Foundation here. And use the link above for surfing around The Heritage Foundation website yourself. I'm pretty sure you'll want to re-visit it often.

Today's Posts

Here Comes Juno...And the Abortion Lobby Will Hate It.

"Behind the Scenes" of Roe v Wade

The Flat Tax and Other Fables

David Limbaugh on Mike Huckabee's Erroneous Foreign Policy Ideas

Homosexual Parenting

President Bush Saves Mexico City Policy. Democrats Not Allowed to Use Foreign Aid Money for Abortion.

Does Abortion Harm Women? Missouri Task Force to Examine this Question.

Here Comes Juno...And the Abortion Lobby Will Hate It.

Jill Stanek's review, "Juno': The Movie Pro-Aborts Will Hate" is up over at World Net Daily. Here is it's opening:

The movie "Juno" will be released in six days, on Christmas, and I can't wait. I previewed the movie a month ago and loved it. Pro-aborts will hate it. "Juno" is a great story that undermines almost all their talking points.

"Juno" is the third in an unplanned pregnancy movie trilogy, the others being "Waitress" and "Knocked Up," in which a girl undergoes a crisis pregnancy but heroically rejects abortion. Don't be thrown that Juno's screenwriting ingénue, Diablo Cody, is a stripper turned blogger turned movie writer. She handled the topic almost like we would, only with spice...

"Behind the Scenes" of Roe v Wade

Major General Dwayne Alons is a former Air Force pilot and Vice-Commander of the Iowa Air National Guard Headquarters. He is also a successful farmer, businessman, volunteer with the Gideons International, grandfather of ten, and is now the state senator representing District 4 in the Iowa House of Representatives.

Alons recently sent out the following e-mail to some of his constituents, including a good friend of mine, John Heyer, who passed it on to me. It's good stuff and so I thank John (as I know you will too) as I pass it on to you.

Do you really know the facts behind Roe vs. Wade? Here are a few questions from the website ROEIQTest.com that will open your eyes to the morbid reality of that highly controversial and divisive ruling that was made by the U.S. Supreme Court January 22, 1973. Since then we have slaughtered more innocent, unborn babies with an abortion procedure than all Americans killed in all of the wars we have entered. What a tragedy; what a culture of death we have succumbed to since 1973.

1. Which Supreme Court Justice said the following about Roe: "Roe v. Wade ... ventured too far in the change it ordered and presented an inadequate justification for its action."

The answer is Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, one of the court's most liberal member and former counsel with the American Civil Liberties Union. (SOURCE: Ruth Bader Ginsburg, "Some Thoughts on Autonomy and Equality in Relation to Roe v. Wade," North Carolina Law Review, 63 (January 1985); 375-386, at 376).

2. How many abortions have been performed since Roe vs. Wade?

While various sources place the number of abortions anywhere between 40-48 million, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would approximate the number of abortions performed since 1973 to be 40,944,029. (SOURCE: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Abortion Surveillance – United States, 2003, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, Vol. 55, No. SS-11, November 24, 2006).

3. True or False. Roe allowed sex-selection abortions – abortions performed because of the sex of the baby (For example: parents wanting a boy instead of a girl – and vice-versa).

Under Roe and Doe, there are no apparent restrictions on sex-selection abortions. Instead, Doe's protection of abortion for a woman's health explicitly includes "emotional, psychological, [or] familial" health, which would allow a woman to decide that having a child of a particular gender would be unhealthy for her or her family. (SOURCE: Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973); Doe v. Bolton, 41 U.S. 179 (1973).

"As with Dred Scott, Roe's fate is inevitable. It's just a matter of time. History will eventually judge Roe v. Wade every bit as harshly as it judged Dred Scott. But until that time, innocent children continue to die on a daily basis." J. Matt Barber "Grim Reaping - Do You really know Roe?"

Please check out the ROE IQ website for all of the questions to understand why Roe vs. Wade should be overturned. Knowledge is Power!

The Flat Tax and Other Fables

James Taranto's latest look at Mike Huckabee's Flat Tax proposals are well worth reading.

David Limbaugh on Mike Huckabee's Erroneous Foreign Policy Ideas

Presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee's recent rant against President Bush in Foreign Affairs magazine was a truly regrettable error -- one that perplexed me, made me angry, and which deepened the doubts I have of Huckabee's having the "right stuff" to be the leader of the free world.

It bothered David Limbaugh too.

...Until now, Huckabee has been fairly Teflon, avoiding real damage with conservatives for some of the unappealing aspects of his record and policy agenda. But the Foreign Affairs article, "America's Priorities in the War on Terror," could be his "Howard Dean scream" moment -- assuming Republicans are listening with a modicum of objectivity.

For taken at face value, a number of his statements in the piece surely will, to paraphrase Huckabee, "alienate very important segments of the Republican Party." Why? Because they wrongly trash President Bush in the words of ill-meaning Democrats who have slandered Bush's foreign policy from the beginning for their own partisan ends.

Huckabee's most offending words appeared at the very outset of the article, which should remove any doubt they were central to his theme. He wrote, "The United States, as the world's only superpower, is less vulnerable to military defeat. But it is more vulnerable to the animosity of other countries. Much like a top high school student, if it is modest about its abilities and achievements, if it is generous in helping others, it is loved. But if it attempts to dominate others, it is despised. American foreign policy needs to change its tone and attitude, open up, and reach out. The Bush administration's arrogant bunker mentality has been counterproductive at home and abroad. My administration will recognize that the United States' main fight does not pit us against the world but pits the world against the terrorists."

Are we to assume that Mike Huckabee agrees with The New York Times, which, in its editorial "America the Indifferent," once called the United States "the stingiest (country) in the Group of Seven industrialized nations"?

I believe America is the most benevolent and generous nation in the history of the world, which is all the more remarkable considering it is the world's sole super power. But our decency and generosity, Huckabee's theory notwithstanding, has not caused us to be universally loved by other nations, which have various reasons for hating us, none of which has anything to do with our mythical lack of generosity, benevolence or decency.

Nor have we attempted to dominate others. After removing Saddam, did we confiscate Iraq's oil? We sure could use it, couldn't we? Did we make Iraq our imperial subject or did we help it establish its own constitution and republican government? Yes, plenty of critics say Bush has made Iraq an American satellite, but you should expect to find them on Daily Kos and Democratic Underground, not at Huckabee HQ.

Huckabee's most objectionable criticism, though, is that Bush had an arrogant bunker mentality and should have changed his tone and reached out. But what readers seem to have missed is that Huckabee applied the criticism to Bush's domestic as well as his foreign policies -- "at home and abroad."

At once, Huckabee is validating the fraudulent Democratic critique that Bush conducted a "unilateral" foreign policy and, domestically, did not reach out across the aisle to Democrats, which he did on numerous occasions, only to be shot in the back by Ted Kennedy and company.

Everyone knows, though Democrats won't admit, that Bush has continually tried to reach out to other nations, as when he tried to build the coalition against Iraq. Many nations would not join -- not because Bush didn't plead with them but because they had their own corrupt or ignoble reasons for abstaining. Huckabee should join Republicans in condemning those recalcitrant nations rather than joining Democrats in opportunistically condemning Bush.

Republicans might overlook some of Huckabee's other anomalous policy positions, but his betrayal of President Bush, wrapped in a virtual endorsement of Jimmy Carter diplomacy, will require some real explaining.

Homosexual Parenting

The Family Research Council comments on one of the latest examples of the wacky, wicked world of homosexual culture bending:

It's not just the definition of marriage that is being attacked by the homosexual movement--it's also the definition of parenthood and of family itself. This was literally brought home today by an article in the Los Angeles Times regarding two homosexual men who wanted to have a child together.

They bought an egg from one woman, rented the womb of another, and mixed their sperm so that they wouldn't know which of them is the biological father. After "a four-year journey that involved three egg retrievals, 65 eggs, seven fertilization attempts, three surrogates and more than $200,000 in expenses," documented by the Times in a series last year, a surrogate mother fulfilled her contract nine weeks ago by presenting the two men with a baby boy.

She "continues to pump and freeze breast milk" and "ships bottles from Massachusetts to Georgia packed in dry ice." One of the two men says that other than that, "we're just going through what all parents go through."

Yet they have gone to such great lengths to ensure that this child will not "go through" the experience that most children enjoy of being raised by both a mother and a father. It is outrageous that courts in some states have become complicit in this denial of biological reality by allowing homosexual couples to have custody of newborns and birth certificates that mislead about the true parentage of the child.

President Bush Saves Mexico City Policy. Democrats Not Allowed to Use Foreign Aid Money for Abortion.

This brief abortion-related AP story over on the CBS News web site is a bit slanted (only one line given to a pro-life spokesman) but yet the news it yields is very good; namely, the Democrats' high hopes to spend your "foreign aid" tax dollars to perform abortions on preborn babies have been thwarted for at least another political season.

Does Abortion Harm Women? Missouri Task Force to Examine this Question.

Does abortion harm women?

Missouri Governor Matt Blunt, a kinda' pro-life Republican who has supported taxpayer funding of embryonic stem cell research, may be looking to reclaim the support of pro-life citizens in his state by creating a task force to answer this simple question.

Cheryl Wetzstein, writing in the Washington Times, examines the matter in a balanced and informative article. An excerpt is printed below but I'm sure you'll find value in reading the piece in its entirety.

...Nearly 20 years have passed, and research has led to general agreement that abortion can lead to complications such as bleeding, tears, perforations, injury to the cervix, pelvic infections, incomplete abortions and blood clots. Abortions — especially if done late-term or multiple times — can also be linked to menstrual irregularities and Asherman's syndrome, a condition in which scar tissue prevents pregnancy.

But complications are rare, say pro-choice groups, citing data from Guttmacher Institute. Of women who get early abortions, 97 percent report no complications, and of those that do, only 0.5 percent report serious problems.

If abortion-related deaths and complications are rare, why investigate abortion's effects on women's health? The answer lies in new research that raises questions about abortion's links to mental health problems, premature birth and breast cancer.

A 2003 review of 60 international studies found evidence that abortion increased risks for breast cancer, depression, suicide, and premature birth, said Dr. Elizabeth Shadigian, co-author of the review.

A 2000 study published in the Archives of General Psychiatry found that 1 percent of women who had early abortions suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. Because more than 1 million U.S. abortions occur each year, "that's more than 10,000 women a year," Dr. Miriam Grossman wrote in her book, "Unprotected: A Campus Psychiatrist Reveals How Political Correctness in Her Profession Endangers Every Student."

In April, the Supreme Court raised the mental health issue in its Gonzales v. Carhart ruling that upheld the ban on so-called partial-birth abortion.

"While we find no reliable data to measure the phenomenon," the court said, "it seems unexceptionable to conclude some women come to regret their choice to abort the infant life they once created and sustained. Severe depression and loss of esteem can follow."...

Today's Posts

More On Making Deranged Murderers Into Media Stars

The Baptist Answers the Catholics

Kingdoms in Conflict

Look Out Hillary; They're Comin' After You

Creating Illusions: ABC News/USA Today Misreports "Family Values" Issue

International Research Team: Abortion & Miscarriage Cause Subsequent Births to be Premature/Underweight

More On Making Deranged Murderers Into Media Stars

Gary Ledbetter, editor of the newspaper of the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention, has some important points to make about how news "coverage" can stimulate subsequent news happenings...in some cases leading to the most devestating of results.

According to the Associated Press, the deranged man who murdered people at the Youth With A Mission center in Denver and then at New Life Church in Colorado Springs left a message, one apparently borrowed from the Columbine murderers. It makes me wonder again if our hunger for "news" doesn't encourage insane people to go out in a blaze of infamy.

The multitude of news sources has created a level of competition that encourages foolishness. If one service behaves more responsibly while another runs toward the salacious, it often turns out that the second service is seen as more "cutting edge" or "in-depth." The more responsible service loses money and the salacious one becomes an example for others to follow. Don't forget it is a business. Our hunger for the details of human tragedy has helped create a lot of places that will sate that hunger.

When something horrible happens, viewers want to know why. That's understandable. I doubt, though, that 24/7 coverage on Fox News ever really answers that question. Sure, we might learn that this person was rejected for a job or that person was beaten by his dad or this other person wanted to impress Jodie Foster, but those answers don't change much for the survivors, at least not for the sane ones. I believe we should give a little thought to what endless and detailed coverage does for the crazy ones, though.

Here's a clue: With increasing regularity, rampaging killers are leaving manifestos of some kind so that we might "understand" the viewpoint that made it necessary for them to murder strangers. They do this because it gives them a moment of fame they never could have attained by doing something constructive. And we eagerly give them their moment.

Let's stop that. Give the victims' names if that's important, give the location and even give the ultimate fate of the killer. Don't tell us anything about him, though. I don't care what he said about what he did. His statement is either the raving of a mad man or the pathetic scribblings of a suicide. I don't even need to know his name. More to the point, troubled people in waiting don't need to see that they can get their names in the paper by instigating tragedy...

The rest of Ledbetter's article is here. Note too that Dave Kopel, writing in the Rocky Mountain News, also had a compelling piece about this same problem. You can read that excellent column here. And, if you haven't already read it, Mona Charen's column was also spot on.

The Baptist Answers the Catholics

There's no huge surprises here but this interview of Mike Huckabee by Catholic Online's Keith Fournier provides a good basic outline of the former governor's personal beliefs and political agenda.