Today's Posts

Here's Looking at You, Kid: The Number One Mug Shot of the Year

Suicide Rights for Pre-Teens?

"Jane Roe" of Roe v Wade Has a New Attitude About Abortion

"Bailout Bush" -- A Sour (and Dangerous) End to This Presidency

Though Supported by Many Christians, Obama Will Be the Abortion President.

Obama's "Energy Czar" Lobbied for Arab Oil Interests

Colleges Next in Line for Fed Bailouts (But Just a Measly $45 Billion!)

Here's Looking at You, Kid: The Number One Mug Shot of the Year

Hmm. Is The Smoking Gun making a political statement by making this compilation its #1 Mug Shot of the Year?

Suicide Rights for Pre-Teens?

Should a pre-teen kid have a protected right to suicide?

Feminist Margo MacDonald, a member of Scotland's Parliament, thinks so. And, no kidding, she's actually introduced legislation to that end.

I think I hear Barry McGuire singing again.

Here's the story from The Herald (Scotland).

"Jane Roe" of Roe v Wade Has a New Attitude About Abortion

Greg Schleppenbach informs me that one of the centerpieces of the next Virtue Media campaign here in Nebraska will be their spot featuring Norma McCorvey, the "Jane Roe" of Roe v Wade.

See the short TV spot right here.

Greg writes, "Last year’s effort was highly successful raising nearly $230,000 throughout Nebraska (including $21,000 from the Knights) which paid for roughly 9500 pro-life television ads reaching most of the state. More than 1.2 million Nebraskans saw these pro life ads at least 6 times including 99 percent of the young women in the most vulnerable age groups. The result was 580 responses from abortion-vulnerable women and 1120 responses from post-abortive mothers."

Vital Signs Ministries also made a donation to this remarkably fine and effective educational outreach ($10,000, for us a really substantial gift) and we are certainly hoping many more will get involved this year. Yes, that means you non-Catholics as well!

If you would like to be involved, please contact us soon.

"Bailout Bush" -- A Sour (and Dangerous) End to This Presidency

The Republican-led rejection of the auto bailout probably doesn't actually prevent a federal bailout of Detroit, but it does have noteworthy ramifications.

Nine Senate Republicans backed the auto bailout, which means that Democratic "Nay" votes, absences, and the early resignation of President-elect Barack Obama deprived Democrats of the 60 votes needed to invoke cloture.

Republican staff say Sen. Bob Corker's (R-Tenn.) compromise bailout was acceptable to many Republicans, but union officials rejected it because of wage and benefit concessions. Such a rejection reflects union confidence that a larger Democratic majority combined with a Democratic President will produce a favorable bailout.

Immediately upon the Senate's failure to move ahead on the bill, word leaked out that Bush administration would use the financial bailout passed in October for at least a patch until the 111th Congress can pass a bailout in January. This move highlights the nature of the Wall Street bailout as an open-ended bottomless slush fund for the Bush—and soon the Obama—administration to spend as it pleases.

Bush's relentless push for more bailouts, and his proclamation that he abandoned free market principles to save the free market—painting himself as some sort of reluctant new Franklin Roosevelt—heightens conservative and Republican disappointment in their outgoing president.

(Timothy P. Carney, writing in the Evans-Novak Political Report, 12/17/2008)

Though Supported by Many Christians, Obama Will Be the Abortion President.

...Mr. Obama was largely hesitant to talk about abortion throughout the campaign. It seems he had good reason to be apprehensive. Pro-choice groups want to pull out all the stops, and their wish list has no bounds - the policy paper even calls for more funding for the U.N. Population Control program. We are always more interested in which populations they decide need controlling and why...

This Washington Times editorial, "Obama's Abortion Conundrum," provides a good look at just how radically dehumanizing is the agenda of some 60 pro-abortion groups that are demanding Barack Obama's complete cooperation. Check it out. However, the title of the editorial (as well as part of its conclusion) suggests that Obama is somehow being tugged both ways in the sanctity of life debate.

He isn't.

His agenda on abortion and embryonic stem cell experimentation has been, is and will be the same as the zealots of Planned Parenthood, NARAL, Emily's List and the rest of that grisly gang. His only "conundrum" consists in how to proceed in his sacrifice of preborn babies without overly offending those kinda' pro-life people who supported him.

But then that's already been taken care of...and not by any clever manipulations by Barack Obama either but merely by the unprincipled surrender of those who should have stood firm against his wicked policies. Obama's positions on these crucial moral issues were clear, unequivocal and well known. Yet, in the saddest example of how deep is the corruption and faithlessness in the modern Church, Christians voted for him in droves anyhow.

When your opposition fawningly rolls over and gives up, there's certainly no reason to bargain, to go carefully, or to even go slowly. And Barack Obama, a man who viciously opposed even legislation to protect babies who survived abortion, will certainly not fail to push hard and push early for a complete domination of the abortion culture.

Obama's "Energy Czar" Lobbied for Arab Oil Interests

From the Prowler column over at the American Spectator comes this important unveiling of leftist Carol Browner, the gal picked by Barack Obama to be America's "energy czar." (For more on Browner, see this earlier Vital Signs post.)

Do you think the MSM will be outraged by this news or just ignore it...like it does with nearly all matters of Democrat hypocrisy, scandal and malfeasance?

Despite denials from her soon-to-be former employers, the Albright Group, former Clinton EPA head and soon-to-be climate change czar Carol Browner served as a de facto lobbyist for Dubai Ports World, owned by the United Arab Emirate of Dubai, which arranged to buy a company operating six major U.S. ports, including New York and New Jersey.

Browner told the Obama transition team that she never served as a lobbyist in her time in Washington, and her employer, the Albright Group, owned by former secretary of state Madeleine Albright, also said that the firm does not lobby. But in 2006, when the Dubai Ports deal set off a political firestorm, it was Browner taking her clients from Senate office to Senate office looking to build support for the deal.

"She can call what she does whatever she wants, but she was clearly lobbying my boss on the issue," says a Democrat Senate aide, whose boss ultimately supported the deal. "She was in the room with her clients and the Senator. She pressed him for support. I think that counts as lobbying."...

Downey represents a number of different clients that will create conflict problems for Browner, many of them in the energy business. Browner, though, won't have to answer any difficult questions, due to the fact that her White House job is not Senate-confirmable.

Colleges Next in Line for Fed Bailouts (But Just a Measly $45 Billion!)

"The line forms on the right" is an old idiom for something become clearer, more understandable. Remember its use as a Bertolt Brecht lyric about Mac the Knife?

Well, the line is now forming on the left, that line in which companies, banks, state and city governments, and just about everybody else that "ain't too proud to beg" (that lyric, by the way, comes from Motown's Norman Whitfield and Eddie Holland, Jr.) are waiting for federal bailouts in gargantuan proportions.

But that line also makes something much clearer; namely, that the United States is traveling a suicidal course towards full blown socialism. Particularly because the United States, no longer a secure, productive, independent economy, just can't deliver what everybody's begging for.

The latest in that forming line? Our already-overpriced institutions of higher learning.

Here's the WSJ editorial:

With the Big Three seeking a bailout from Washington, the Big Ten are following suit. Earlier this week the Carnegie Corporation of New York took out a two-page ad in the New York Times, signed by executives of 36 public universities, state university systems and higher-education associations, urging Congress and President-elect Obama to rescue them.

Mr. Obama has already promised to expand federal subsidies to higher education by increasing Pell grants and making student-loan terms more permissive. The university chiefs seek an additional "federal infusion of capital" -- as much as $45 billion -- to build new facilities, especially "green" ones. "To ensure a rapid response, only projects that are shovel-ready or on which construction can begin within 120-180 days should be funded," says the ad.

The Higher Education Investment Act, as the university chiefs call their proposed bailout, would allow them to make an end run around parsimonious state lawmakers: "The dollars should not be subject to appropriation by state legislatures. Federal funds should be conditional on states' agreement not to use these federal funds as an excuse to reduce budgetary commitments to state universities."

Yet American higher education might benefit from more parsimony. Economist Richard Vedder has shown that large government subsidies already contribute to making universities "relatively inefficient institutions partly sheltered from the discipline of the market -- a discipline that provides incentives for cost reductions, product improvement, and innovation." The more subsidies rise, the higher tuitions seem to go. If taxpayers are going to shovel out more money to these schools, the academic executives should at least allow outsiders to perform a cost "restructuring."

Today's Posts

Christmas Lights: The December LifeSharer Letter and More

Want Better Health Care? Get Yourself Into a California Prison.

Escape from New York? Governor Paterson's New Tax Plan Provides the Motivation.

Next in the Washington Merry Go Round

For the Third Time in Three Weeks, Planned Parenthood Caught Covering Up Statutory Rape

Grinch Alert

Christmas Lights: The December LifeSharer Letter and More

The December LifeSharer letter is up over at the Vital Signs Ministries site.

Included in it are a few thoughts about Christmas, a quick review of Vital Signs activities in 2008, and an even quicker preview of some of our plans for 2009.

Please check it out. In fact, if you're interested in finding out more about the ministry BEHIND this particular blog, the Vital Signs Ministries site describes the nature, scope and theological hallmarks of our ministry, now going into its 27th year of service in behalf of the gospel, the least of these, the family and theological orthodoxy.

And, if what you read there is an encouragement to help support our work, we would greatly appreciate it. Your prayers in our behalf are cherished as are your notes of encouragement. We especially love hearing from time to time that the "Taking Action" items we post here at Vital Signs Blog are helpful as you raise His banner in the public square.

And, yes; it's certainly true that we could use financial support too. You can do so quite simply by using the Donate Online feature which is down just a bit on the left sidebar here at Vital Signs Blog. It looks just like the picture I post here...but the one down the left sidebar really goes somewhere. There's also a Donate Online feature available on the left sidebar of the Vital Signs Ministries site.

(Note: My Governing Board members are going to be very pleased that I mentioned that last bit about the Donate Online button. Now, if a few of you would use it, they'd absolutely flip! Thanks for considering it.)

Want Better Health Care? Get Yourself Into a California Prison.

You gotta read this, Debra Saunders' look at how unelected bureaucrats from the California courts have thrown common sense, financial responsibility and even citizen safety into the dumpster in order to get incarcerated criminals 3 times the medical care that the average Californian does. And they're not stopping there. No, on the new agenda are beautician services, music therapy, early outs and more.

You can't make this stuff up.

A panel of three federal judges is holding a trial to determine whether to free 52,000 of California's 172,000 prison inmates to alleviate overcrowding. You might be asking yourself: Who elected these guys to run California?

One of the three judges, U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson, determined in 2005 that California's prison health care system is so bad that it's unconstitutional. He put the system in receivership and appointed law professor Clark Kelso to oversee prison health care.

Now Kelso is demanding $8 billion to renovate the system -- even though the state is spending about $14,000 on health care per inmate, according to the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. (California's total health care spending was $169 billion in 2006, the California Medical Association's Ned Wigglesworth told me, which divided by 37 million comes to about $4,600 per head -- or a third of what is spent on the incarcerated.)

Here's the unfunny funny part: Criminal Justice Legal Foundation President Michael Rushford recently figured out that inmates live longer on the inside than on the outside, and they live longer on the inside than outsiders live. He found a study, "Release from Prison -- A High Risk of Death for Former Inmates," published last year in the New England Journal of Medicine, which shows that the mortality rate for Washington state inmates spiked more than 1,200 percent in the first two weeks after their release, and averaged 386 percent higher than inmates in prison during the two years after release...

Apparently prison -- even prisons with shabby health facilities -- provides a healthier environment than what most criminals are used to. Behind bars, there are fewer ways to be self-destructive -- and there's health care...

These improvements are not good enough for Kelso. As the Sacramento Bee reported earlier this year, Kelso had been working on a plan for health care facilities with art therapists, music therapists and beauticians -- at an annual cost of $230,000 per inmate, according to a corrections agency draft.

Other problems, the Bee noted, were plans to build facilities with "proximity to urban areas, in several cases, backing up to neighboring homes and schools," in a "mall-based environment" with unlocked rooms that would allow male and female inmates to mix.

Does Kelso understand that 47 percent of the California prison population are repeat violent offenders, 33 percent are repeat offenders and many of the rest are first-time felons who committed serious crimes against people, like rape and murder?...

Escape from New York? Governor Paterson's New Tax Plan Provides the Motivation.

Where's Kurt Russell when you need him?

Check out the governor's (in office, remember, only because of the previous governor's sexual shenanigans with a call girl) announced plan to improve New York's flailing economy. Sure, the guy's a Democrat so you'd expect to see increased government spending backed by new ways to pick the pockets of taxpayers. A no brainer.

But increasing spending by $1.4 billion?

And introducing the biggest tax hike in history, a tax plan that includes a number of new taxes (137, to be exact) that's shocking even to other Democrats?

Now, that's something.

This New York Post story itemizes just a few of the amazing tax hikes in Governor Paterson's plan:

* An "iTunes tax" of 4 percent on videos, music or pictures downloaded from the Internet.

* A 4 percent tax on taxi, limo and bus rides. That means a $10 cab ride would cost 40 cents more.

* A 4 percent entertainment tax on tickets to movies, concerts and sporting events. That would add nearly 50 cents to a $12 movie ticket or $1.80 to the cheapest $44.50 seat at a Knicks game.

* The tax on beer increases 24 cents per gallon, or more than double the current rate, which means about 30 cents a case.

* An 18 percent tax on nondiet soft drinks, which aims to reduce child obesity. A $1.50 can of Pepsi would then cost at least 25 cents more.

* A 4 percent tax on cable TV and satellite services, raising a $100 bill by $4.

* Hiking the cost of "personal" services - including haircuts, manicures, pedicures, massages and gym memberships - by 4 percent.

* A 4 percent sales tax on clothing and shoes under $500, except for two weeks out of the year.

* Elimination of the law that caps the state sales tax on gasoline at 8 cents per gallon.

* Boosting the average vehicle registration fee for drivers by $11, from $44 to $55. Fees for new or renewed licenses also would increase 25 percent, or increase from $50 to about $62 to renew a license over eight years.

In addition, all drivers would have to get new, "reflectorized" license plates at a fee of $25 each...

Do you think a few New Yorkers might be moving to Jersey this year?

Next in the Washington Merry Go Round

The Heritage Foundation quips, "In a move that will probably not affect his day-to-day duties all that much, Time magazine's Washington bureau chief has agreed to become Vice President-elect Joe Biden's director of communications."

For the Third Time in Three Weeks, Planned Parenthood Caught Covering Up Statutory Rape

A staff member at a third Planned Parenthood abortion business in three weeks has been caught on videotape covering up a potential case of statutory rape. This tape involves in Indianapolis Planned Parenthood and it could lead to a widening of the investigation the state's attorney general has announced.

The first case showed a Charlotte, North Carolina Planned Parenthood covering up an incident of statutory rape. A second tape showed a staffer named Diana telling Lila Rose, a UCLA student who posed as a 13-year-old girl who had sexual relations with a man more than twice her age, that she didn't want to know any more about the incident.

This third, newly-released footage from this past summer shows Rose, who again claims she is an underage girl who had sex with an older man, hearing from employees about her sexual abuse.

This time, two Planned Parenthood employees say they "don't care" about the age difference between a 31-year-old man and the 13-year-old girl he was reported to have impregnated. "We don't really care about who, what, the age of the boyfriend," the unnamed Planned Parenthood staff member says. A second Planned Parenthood counselor adds, "I don't care how old he is."

Like the staff member Diana at the first Indiana Planned Parenthood exposed on tape, the staff at the Indianapolis facility tell Rose that she can get an abortion in another state without her parents knowing: "The surrounding states don't have parental consent. I can't tell you anymore."

As was the case with the Planned Parenthood facility in Bloomington, the Indianapolis abortion center apparently did not report the sexual abuse to state authorities as required by Indiana law.

Rose tells LifeNews.com the additional videotape is very concerning because is shows an emerging pattern of abuse, as more abortion center counselors evade their legal responsibility to report the statutory rape of young girls...

More from this LifeNews.com report can be found here.

Grinch Alert

Chuck Norris has a few incisive comments about the War on Christmas, particularly the mean-spirited displays erected by atheists that state governments have cravenly allowed as accompaniments to menorahs and creches. It's a fine piece containing a good dose of rationality, history and humor.

Atheists from England to the West Coast of America are stepping up their efforts this year to make a bigger antagonistic splash on the Christmas scene. From London and Washington, D.C., buses to Colorado billboards, skeptics are skewering religions with little respect to the adherents of the religions.

At the forefront is a group's government-sanctioned posting of a sign by a Nativity scene in the Capitol of Washington state (and now also in Wisconsin and Illinois): "At this season of THE WINTER SOLSTICE may reason prevail. There are no gods, no devils, no angels, no heaven or hell. There is only our natural world. Religion is but myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds."

I am a patriot, and I believe that atheists are free to believe, speak and post whatever they want. This is America, and that's their First Amendment right. But to do so with harassment and hatred under the guise of free speech is despicable. An anti-religious poster filled with spite is in no way equal to a religious symbol, such as a Nativity scene.

Where are the political correctness police when religious followers are the victims? If such words were written against any social minority group, protests would be ubiquitous. But anti-religious bigotry is in vogue these days...

Today's Posts

More Than 3 Children Die of Abuse in England and Wales...Every Week

"A Tale of Two Churches"

Dissent = Treason? Russia Cracks Down Yet Further.

Obama Wants a Holder Over Us

"To His Great and Enduring Credit, Our President Didn't Quit"

Our Santa Claus Congress: Ho, Ho, Horrible

More Than 3 Children Die of Abuse in England and Wales...Every Week

Labour Party MP Barry Sheerman said, "You have brought to us the most horrific figures I've ever seen brought into the public domain."

Conservative Party MP Graham Stuart lamented that there was "something profoundly wrong with our society."

What were they referring to?

The news that more than three children a week are dying in England and Wales as a result of child abuse!

And the revelations of how pitifully inept and uncaring has been the performance of Ofsted, the government agency designed to protect children, is also just as shocking.

Read the Telegraph (U.K.) report here.

And you say you still refuse to believe that European culture hasn't been severely weakened by its "open" abortion and euthanasia attitudes, its penchant for violence in entertainment, its liberal ideas on marriage and divorce, and its marginalization of the Christian religion?

Then you tell me -- why is this happening?

"A Tale of Two Churches"

One of today's must-reads is Doug Patton's "A Tale of Two Churches," a sharp comparison between Jeremiah Wright's Trinity United Church of Christ and Sarah Palin's Wasilla Bible Church. In his article Doug looks at the character and ideology of the two churches, the media's remarkably biased treatment of the two, and finally, his musings on how Wasilla Bible's response to being firebombed is markedly different than what would have been the case had Trinity United been so victimized.

Very good.

And while we're on the subject, it looks like the arson attack on Wasilla Bible Church, as horrific as it appeared at first glance, was something even more sinister and violent. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives explained yesterday that an accelerant had been poured at several locations around the church, including the exits. This, even though a group (including two kids) were inside the building when the fire was set off.

No, whoever set this fire wasn't looking to play a prank or even make a political or religious "statement." They were looking to kill people.

Dissent = Treason? Russia Cracks Down Yet Further.

There are some who may have thought my opinions too strong in yesterday's post ("The Old is New Again in Russia: Police State, Controlled Media, Rollback on Democratic Reforms") suggesting as I did that Russia had returned to its dictatorial, corrupt, Cold War ways...if, that is, it had ever really left them.

The evidence of the last several years, however, fully justifies my conclusions.

As do the latest moves of the Kremlin in expanding the definition of treason to include mere criticism of the state!

Indeed, Duma member Andrei Lugovoy (the man many believe is responsible for the murder of dissident Alexander Litvinenko) is publicly arguing that anyone "damaging the interests" of Mother Russia should be killed.

“If someone has caused the Russian state serious damage, they should be exterminated. Do I think someone could have killed Litvinenko in the interests of the Russian State? If you're talking about the interests of the Russian State, in the purest sense of the word, I myself would have given that order. I'm not talking about Litvinenko but about any person who causes serious damage.”

Here's the story about the brazen new law, Lugovoy's outrageous comments and the latest crackdowns on peaceful protest from this past weekend as explained by Tony Halpin, the Times (U.K.) reporter in Moscow.

Obama Wants a Holder Over Us

President-Elect Barack Obama’s nomination of Eric Holder to be attorney general surprised many. There are reasons that Holder ought not to be confirmed, but regardless of that, his nomination tells us quite a bit about Obama and the Supreme Court he will likely give this country...

...And that tells us two things about our next president.

First, he is doubtless only trying to nominate Holder because the Democrats have at least a 58-42 advantage in the Senate. Only nine cabinet nominations have been denied by the Senate in all of American history. While others have been withdrawn for various reasons, you can count on your hands the number that failed when the president decides to demand a vote.

The fact that Obama is willing to ignore the “Do No Harm” rule that usually accompanies cabinet picks shows that he is going to push the envelope on a number of issues.

This nomination might also shed light on the kind of policies Obama will pursue. Despite Obama’s new lip service to the Second Amendment, Holder signed onto a brief earlier this year reaffirming his long-held position that the Second Amendment confers no rights whatsoever to private citizens, and that the Supreme Court should have upheld D.C.’s absolute ban on handguns, even in homes. Holder also has far-left views on unrestricted abortion, and opposes the death penalty. And, in a war on terror, Holder believes that all the rights that U.S. citizens have in civilian courts should be extended to foreign terrorists captured abroad.

A president’s pick for attorney general also foreshadows the kind of judges the president will nominate. By picking Eric Holder, Obama is showing that he is dead serious about his campaign promise to appoint far-left judges like Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the Supreme Court, plunging this nation further into a regime where unelected, unaccountable jurists impose their personal political views on the rest of us through the courts, declaring the Constitution to require whatever they think the public policy should be.

(Ken Blackwell, "Telling Nomination" in Dec. 16 National Review Online.)