"I Don't Stink" and Other Quotes to Consider

* "Some people sing in the shower, in the shower half an hour. No kids, three minutes is more than enough. I've counted, three minutes, and I don't stink." (Venezuelan tyrant Hugo Chavez, speaking during a televised Cabinet meeting about the need to conserve water. Quoted from the Telegraph.)

* "President Obama's promise to empty the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay has run into a little obstacle: It turns out the place is full of terrorists!" (James Taranto, Wall Street Journal)

* "The current White House...wants to delegitimize any significant dissent. The objective is no secret. White House aides openly told Politico that they're engaged in a deliberate campaign to marginalize and ostracize recalcitrants, from Fox to health insurers to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. (Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post)

* "Net neutrality, as I see it, is the fairness doctrine for the Internet." (Marsha Blackburn, Republican Congresswoman from Tennessee, The Hill)

* Speaking of President Obama's dramatic drop in the public approval polls, Peggy Noonan writes, "The problem isn't his personality, it's his policies. His problem isn't what George W. Bush left but what he himself has done. It is a problem of political judgment, of putting forward bills that were deeply flawed or off-point. Bailouts, the stimulus package, cap-and-trade; turning to health care at the exact moment in history when his countrymen were turning their concerns to the economy, joblessness, debt and deficits—all of these reflect a misreading of the political terrain. They are matters of political judgment, not personality...The result of all this is flagging public support, a drop in the polls, and independents peeling off. In this atmosphere, with these dynamics, Mr. Obama's excuse-begging and defensiveness won't work." (Wall Street Journal)

* "House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer says it's constitutional to mandate insurance coverage. Congress, he insists, has 'broad authority' to make us buy things to provide for the 'general welfare.' [The] Democrats' Alice In Wonderland interpretation of what they consider to be a 'living Constitution,' where words mean what they say they mean based on political considerations, gets more bizarre by the minute." (Editorial in October 22nd's Investor's Business Daily)

Jewish Doctors Banned from Susan G. Komen "International" Breast Cancer Conference

James Taranto, writing in yesterday's Wall Street Journal, has a brief report about the banning of Israeli doctors from an "international" conference on breast cancer held in Egypt and sponsored by the Susan G. Komen Foundation.

Komen's timidity on this matter is a disappointment, of course. But it's certainly not the only problem that the Foundation has. A much bigger one is their choosing political correctness over good sense and good science -- as in their partnership with Planned Parenthood and their ongoing denial of the links between abortion and breast cancer. See these Vital Signs posts (1 and 2) for more.

UPDATE!

Dan Connor alerted me to the great news that this situation has changed and that doctors from Israel have been re-invited to participate in the conference. This doesn't change the dire needs of the Susan G. Komen Foundation to 1) start telling the truth about the increased risks of breast cancer for aborted women and 2) disassociate itself from the nation's leading abortionist, Planned Parenthood.

But the reversal about banning Israeli doctors at this conference is most welcome news.

For more, see this.

Today's Posts

UNMC Pushes for Yet More Embryo-Destructive "Science"

The National Association of Evangelicals Latest Blunder?

Ida Disappoints: The Endless, Desperate Search for the "Missing Link" Goes On

UNMC Pushes for Yet More Embryo-Destructive "Science"

For those of you Nebraskans who haven't been reading the latest puff pieces in the Lincoln and Omaha newspapers in behalf of yet more embryonic stem cell research, Julie Schmit-Albin sends along the following background information. It is then followed with an action alert about a peaceful protest demonstration set for tomorrow in Lincoln in which Claire and I will be honored to be a part.

The NU Board of Regents has a policy in place that says UNMC will follow the current Federal Administration guidelines following medical research. That was fine under the Bush guidelines, which limited research to 60 past embryonic stem cell lines from 2001 and before. But now with Obama, the guidelines have been expanded to include funding for new embyronic stem cell lines created from newly destroyed embryos left to languish in labs. The pro-life position is that we want UNMC and the Board of Regents which governs UNMC to stick with current policy (LB 606 which prohibits the creation and destruction of embryos in Nebraska) and to NOT expand their research beyond the 60 stem cell lines set by the Bush policy, which UNMC has already pursued.

Our opponents at Nebraska Coalition for Lifesaving Medical Cures (not to be confused with our friends at Nebraska Coalition for Ethical Research) are bringing in a California researcher to bolster their case at the NU Board of Regents' meeting this Friday, Oct. 23rd at 1:00 p.m.. We are asking pro-lifers to show up for a peaceful, prayerful presence outside the Regents' meeting place, Varner Hall, 3835 Holdrege St., East Campus, Lincoln from 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. that day. Feel free to bring your own sign reflecting the message: No To Expanded Embryo Research or baby (born and unborn) photo signs. Or you can just come to pray without a sign.

If you would like to address the Board of Regents about this issue for a minute or two, you must sign up with the Regents' secretary by noon Thursday Oct. 22nd by calling 472-3906. Please let us know if you plan to come to speak and that you have called the Board of Regents' secretary to sign up. We will ensure that you are in the line-up of pro-life speakers if you let us know you are signed up.

The National Association of Evangelicals' Latest Blunder?

It was way back in the mid-1980's that I attended a National Association of Evangelicals conference here in Nebraska. In fact, I had a Vital Signs Ministries booth at the event, one of only four or five such booths set up in the back of the room.

Of the 100 or so Christian leaders present for the day long affair, only one signed up for our free newsletter. Only three bothered to even converse with me. The other booths didn't fare much better, except for one very popular one that dealt with special life insurance rates for pastors.

The speakers were also disappointing. Theology wasn't under discussion but technique certainly was. Church growth, for instance, was quite important. Overcoming the complaints of older parishioners to contemporary Christian music made for a whole session. Leadership tips that came from the best of management consultants took up another.

Bible study? Intercessory prayer? Holiness? Engaging the culture in evangelism, discipleship and cultural reform? These things which I had figured would be the stuff of the weekend were treated as afterthoughts, sideline matters. Thus I came away from my first NAE experience a bit jaded and hoping that this "majoring on minors" attitude wasn't symptomatic of the organization as a whole.

However, the years following have only increased my disappointment with the NAE. Indeed, I'm finding myself regularly in outright opposition to their sophomoric flirtations with theological and political liberalism.

Here's a few examples from past Vital Signs posts, a few of which have included appeals for reader's protests of NAE silliness: Under Pressure, Richard Cizik "Reluctantly Resigns" from the NAE; The NAE's Richard Cizik: A Case in Point of What's Wrong in Today's Evangelicalism; Richard Cizik And the National Association of Evangelicals Are Way Off Course; and The Sinking Ship of the National Association of Evangelicals.

Well, Cizik may be gone but I didn't figure he was the problem anyway. After all, the leadership of the NAE was well aware of Cizik's heterodox predilections and cowardice and were yet quite content to leave him in place for all those years.

The organization as a whole had become much too worldly and therefore of little good either in confronting the secular power structure in Washington or in properly shepherding the NAE-member churches and denominations throughout the country.

Without a genuine shakeup in the organization (i.e. repentance, confession, and a consecration to holy living, bold preaching, fervent prayer, and holding tightly to the Bible's teaching on the issues the NAE had already compromised), I feared we were in for yet more revelations of the NAE's cave-in to liberalism and political correctness.

And here's the latest. The NAE's newset resolution (highly praised by the likes of Chuck Schumer as well as Joel Hunter and Bill Hybels) calls for immigration reform along the lines of the failed Comprehensive Immigration Act (CIR) of 2007. Like one might suppose, the resolution is heavy on government action. Of the 7 specific "Calls to Action" in the document, only one deals with the Church. ("That immigrants be treated with respect and mercy by churches.") The rest set out a political agenda for government.

In itself, this resolution may not set off alarms. But I'm afraid it cannot be taken on its own. For it does fit the pattern of recent years in which the NAE follows the paths established by the liberal powers that be. Where, for instance, are the evidences that the NAE is taking seriously the issues of abortion mandates in health care, the intolerance of Christianity, religious freedom abroad, the inculcation of anti-Americanism in tax-supported jihad schools, the President's promises to move forward the homosexual social agenda, the horrendous power play against the citizenry represented by the stimulus spending bill, the tyranny poised by Obama's oligarchy of leftist czars, and any one of a number of other important matters?

Mark Tooley, the President of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, who I refer to with some frequency here on Vital Signs, examines the NAE's latest resolution in the American Spectator. It's a good article and should be read in its entirety but I'll just drop in this excerpt and let Mark make the conclusion.

...In fact, NAE's resolution admits "the Bible does not offer a blueprint for modern legislation." So on what precisely does NAE base its political counsel? It's not clear. As my colleague Alan Wisdom points out, the NAE stance somewhat dismissively refers to "rule of law" and implies potential skeptics of its immigration position are "simplistic." It fails seriously to distinguish between legal and illegal immigrants, and similarly fails to admit the different responsibilities of the state versus the church. NAE also does not distinguish refugees fleeing persecution from other immigrants seeking economic advance.

Coming in the wake of NAE activism on Global Warming and U.S. terror interrogation techniques ("torture"), NAE is now gearing up next to call for nuclear disarmament. NAE's official stances for traditional marriage and sanctity of life seem to be taking a back seat. So how is NAE now substantively distinct from the old, left-leaning National Council of Churches (NCC) for which it was partly founded as a conservative alternative (at least for the NCC's predecessor) more than 60 years ago?

The NCC became mostly irrelevant when its Mainline Protestant voices stopped speaking for its churches and started speaking "prophetically" to them. Similarly, the NCC moved beyond issues of Christian consensus to adopt more morally ambiguous, and ostensibly more fashionable, political causes du jour. This sad history should be familiar to evangelicals. But the NAE seems determined to repeat what has already been tried and failed.

Ida Disappoints: The Endless, Desperate Search for the "Missing Link" Goes On

Truth About Controversial Fossil --
The huge fanfare surrounding a fossil discovery this spring may not have been warranted.

If Yahoo is your start up page, those were the banner headlines that greeted you when you turned on your computer this morning. And they revealed that the mainstream media (the subsequent story was from the AP) has gone surprisingly sour on a fossil that had them all atwitter just last spring. Remember?

Here's how I described it in a Vital Signs post last May:

...Darwinius masillae ("Darwin's creature from the Messel pit," now better known to the world simply as Ida) is getting absolutely enormous hype in recent days. This even though the fossil was discovered by amateurs way back in 1983. But the find was divided and sold to different buyers, only to be reassembled two years ago and presented to the world a couple of days ago.

And the world (well, the media anyhow) has gone crazy over it. It has been called the 8th wonder of the world; Google's home page today is emblazoned with an image of the fossil; some scientists and a whole bunch of journalists have gone completely over the top, mindlessly hailing the find as the missing link...

Paleontologist Jorn Hurum, whose team analyzed the fossil, is also promoting the lucrative after-effects: an upcoming book, an Anthony Geffen film, a TV special entitled "The Link. This Changes Everything" and a promotional web site -- to be followed, of course, by T-shirts, caps, lunchboxes and action figures. You get the point. There's money and notoriety involved here...as well as selling a worldview which openly competes with Christianity.

"This is the first link to all humans," Hurum says. It represents "the closest thing we can get to a direct ancestor."

But Hurum was wrong. Way wrong.

There were a few whose skepticism managed to break through the media hype last spring. One in particular I noted in that May 6th post, "But Ida is not the missing link. As CBS News reported (in one of the more responsible reactions around), this discovery doesn't even 'relate to the more heated debate over whether chimpanzees and humans share a common identity.' Conclusion? 'The fossil is not the so-called missing link [though] the two factions will likely pounce on this new find with evolutionists claiming the skeleton adds to the limited fossil record.'"

But now it is the skepticism that dominates the coverage. From this morning's Yahoo story:

Remember Ida, the fossil discovery announced last May with its own book and TV documentary? A publicity blitz called it "the link" that would reveal the earliest evolutionary roots of monkeys, apes and humans. Experts protested that Ida wasn't even a close relative. And now a new analysis supports their reaction.

In fact, Ida is as far removed from the monkey-ape-human ancestry as a primate could be...

Okay. Write in Ida as just the latest in an ever-lengthening list of vaunted "missing links" that turned out to be anything but. The field is awash with them. The one immediately before Ida was Tiktaalik in 2006 and before that Archaeopteryx in 1999 and before that Lucy in 1974 and a whole lot of others besides -- all of them with a crowd of scientists, reporters and educators going gaga and insisting that this one was the breakthrough, the long lost proof, the sought after "missing link."

But none of them could handle close investigation. Each one failed to be what was claimed.

This yearning hope to find the biological link between apes and man is, of course, a religious one. And those materialists (there's no small number of pantheists too) who seek warmth from the Darwinian flame are always looking for fuel -- and finding very little.

Hard science has turned out to be an enemy to their faith as the more we learn about the immense complexity of life, the more shallow (even silly) the evolutionists' position becomes. The discoveries in the science of DNA alone have inflicted particularly grievous wounds.

No, the search for Darwinian fuel has never been successful in the laboratory. It has always concentrated in the earth itself; that is to say, in archaeology. But that search too has been a failure. For the fossil record that should be so immense and comprehensive (if the evolutionist claims were true) just isn't. Not even close. Thus, we witness the extreme wishful thinking that erupts every few years when the fossil record is augmented by a new find. But the wishful thinking quickly "evolves" into absolute irrationality. And you end up with scientists claiming (with a straight face, no less) that the skeleton of an ancient lemur is incontrovertible proof that human beings descended from amoebas. Sigh.

The Darwinian worldview cannot face facts. It just cannot stand logical or scientific scrutiny. But the hardcore evolutionist doesn't really care about those things. He possesses such a fear of God's existence (and all the moral consequences which that would involve) that he will believe any alternative philosophy -- no matter how unscientific or harebrained it might be.

So he will keep his head down and desperately, ineffectually, and tragically...keep digging in the dirt.

Today's Posts

Memo to Al Gore: Bummer News, Dude; The Planet's Got A Lot More Natural Gas Than We Thought

A Bizarre Chemical Abortion Story: An Esteemed London Doctor Is Going to Jail

A Few Political Quotes to Ponder

Adult Stem Cell Science Gives Hope to Spinal Cord Injury Victims

The Man of Destiny...and Decadence

Hey, Let's Join In for an "Angel Tree" Christmas!

Your Wednesday Tea Break (Disco!)

Memo to Al Gore: Bummer News, Dude; The Planet's Got A Lot More Natural Gas Than We Thought

Here's an illuminating report (no pun intended) from the Telegraph about the huge upside for humanity represented by newly discovered natural gas resources.

Now, if the liberals will let us go get it.

America is not going to bleed its wealth importing fuel. Russia's grip on Europe's gas will weaken. Improvident Britain may avoid paralysing blackouts by mid-decade after all.

The World Gas Conference in Buenos Aires last week was one of those events that shatter assumptions. Advances in technology for extracting gas from shale and methane beds have quickened dramatically, altering the global balance of energy faster than almost anybody expected.

Tony Hayward, BP's chief executive, said proven natural gas reserves around the world have risen to 1.2 trillion barrels of oil equivalent, enough for 60 years' supply – and rising fast. "There has been a revolution in the gas fields of North America. Reserve estimates are rising sharply as technology unlocks unconventional resources," he said.

This is almost unknown to the public, despite the efforts of Nick Grealy at "No Hot Air" who has been arguing for some time that Britain's shale reserves could replace declining North Sea output.

Rune Bjornson from Norway's StatoilHydro said exploitable reserves are much greater than supposed just three years ago and may meet global gas needs for generations. "The common wisdom was that unconventional gas was too difficult, too expensive and too demanding," he said, according to Petroleum Economist. "This has changed. If we ever doubted that gas was the fuel of the future – in many ways there's the answer..."

Read the rest right here.

A Bizarre Chemical Abortion Story: An Esteemed London Doctor Is Going to Jail

Bella Prowse had once aborted a baby. It was a mistake she did not want to repeat. And so, when she learned she was pregnant again after engaging in a brief fling, she resisted the man's demands that she have this child killed.

That wasn't the right answer for her lover, Dr. Edward Erin, a well-respected London physician whose work with asthma had been widely heralded...and who turned out to be married with two other children.

True, that was a weird deal in itself. It was an "open marriage" between Erin and microbiologist Dr. Lowri Phylip, a relationship in which she knowingly accepted his numerous sexual affairs. Dr. Phylip even accepted the fact that her husband kept his marriage a secret from his professional colleagues, including Ms. Prowse.

At any rate, Dr. Erin didn't want any more complications in his life. And he wanted to make sure that Ms. Prowse was still able to ski, hike and...well, do other things that a pregnancy would postpone. She wouldn't even have to undergo surgery. He offered to give her drugs so that she would abort the child easily...and privately.

She again said no.

And so, since she resisted his arguments to abort the child they had conceived, he came up with another plan. Dr. Erin, who had earned a PhD. in pharmacology, attempted on three occasions to spike her drinks (tea, orange juice and a Starbucks coffee) with a poison that would have killed her preborn child.

Prowse got wise and turned him in. He was convicted on Monday.

The General Medical Council had already banned Edward Erin from working directly with patients but they are expected to now strike him off the medical register altogether.

Also expected is that Dr. Edward Erin, one of just two people in the past 40 years to be prosecuted under a rare statute of the 1861 Offences Against the Persons Act (originally designed before abortions became legal in the 1960s), will be going to jail.

And the child he targeted? He's now a healthy, growing boy.

For more, see these articles: Times, First Post, Metro and the Telegraph.

There are a whole bunch of points this case makes about the decadence of Western culture -- not the least of which is the schizophrenia involved in the court's prosecution of one doctor for endangering a mother and child with a powerful and dangerous chemical...while dozens of other doctors in the country are doing the very same thing every day!

The argument, of course, is that Dr. Erin did it without the mother's permission. Fair enough; throw the book at him for that.

But his crime against Ms. Prowse is only one aspect of the immorality and brutality that Dr. Erin committed. She had her day in court and I applaud her for defending her own person and rights, even as I applaud her for defending her child. But, Dr. Erin's primary intention was to "terminate a pregnancy" by killing the unborn child. That is surely the most severe injustice here.

But, then that's the specific intention of the whole abortion industry too. For one cannot "induce the termination of pregnancies" without deliberately killing preborn boys and girls.

So yes, I'm pleased that Dr. Erin is out of medicine and is headed to jail. I'm even more pleased that Bella Prowse and her son escaped the worst effects of the violence and are thus alive and safe.

But I'm not pleased at the cold-heartedness, the inconsistency and the perverse lack of logic that moves courts to protect some human beings (as well as animals and plants, for crying out loud) while shrugging their shoulders at the horrific crimes of lethal violence being perpetrated against innocent children every single day...by "legal" abortionists.

Thus, the lupus in fabula here (the wolf in the tale) isn't really Dr. Edward Luna (who ultimately failed in his sinister plot to kill a baby) but rather it is all those lawmakers, judges, medical authorities, businessmen, educators, ministers, and all the rest who ignore all the other Dr. Luna's out there whose abortion businesses are succeeding all too well.

A Few Political Quotes to Ponder

Tom Bevan at Real Clear Politics -- "Every White House complains about its press coverage. A contentious relationship between the Executive Branch and a free and independent media is part of America's DNA. Always has been.

But this White House seems to feel they're different. It's not just that the current occupant of the Oval Office has a particularly thin skin when it comes to criticism - which is especially ironic given that he's been the recipient of more glowing press coverage than possibly any candidate or president in modern American history. But not since Nixon conjured up an "enemies list" have we seen the full weight of the Office of the Presidency brought to bear in such a targeted and deliberate effort to delegitimize a media organization critical of the President."

John R. Bolton in the LA Times -- "...Taken together, weakness and indecisiveness have proved historically to be a toxic combination for America's global interests. That is exactly the combination we now see under President Obama. If anything, his receiving the Nobel Peace Prize only underlines the problem. All of Obama's campaign and inaugural talk about "extending an open hand" and "engagement," especially the multilateral variety, isn't exactly unfolding according to plan. Entirely predictably, we see more clearly every day that diplomacy is not a policy but only a technique. Absent presidential leadership, which at a minimum means clear policy direction and persistence in the face of criticism and adversity, engagement simply embodies weakness and indecision.

Obama is no Harry Truman. At best, he is reprising Jimmy Carter. At worst, the real precedent may be Ethelred the Unready, the turn-of the-first-millennium Anglo-Saxon king whose reputation for indecisiveness and his unsuccessful paying of Danegeld -- literally, "Danish tax" -- to buy off Viking raiders made him history's paradigmatic weak leader.

Beyond the disquiet (or outrage for some) prompted by the president's propensity to apologize for his country's pre-Obama history, Americans increasingly sense that his administration is drifting from one foreign policy mistake to another. Worse, the current is growing swifter, and the threats more pronounced, even as the administration tries to turn its face away from the world and toward its domestic priorities. Foreign observers, friend and foe alike, sense the same aimlessness and drift. French President Nicolas Sarkozy had to remind Obama at a Sept. 24 U.N. Security Council meeting that "we live in the real world, not a virtual one."

Examples of weakness abound, and the consequences are readily foreseeable..."

Victor Davis Hanson at NRO -- "Part of the problem with the president’s agenda is that it is predicated on a number of radical ideas that are asserted, rather than proven. His experts and the elites assure us of a reality that most people in their own more mundane lives have not found to be true. In short, they may find Obama personally engaging, but they no longer believe what he says...

Abroad, there is the same commonsense intuition that something about the president’s talk does not quite seem right. One or two apologies might convey magnanimity; three or more reveal obsequiousness. Apologizing to a cranky neighbor for mowing on a Sunday morning is wise; apologizing to the entire block for an array of past sins does not just ensure ridicule, but could prove downright dangerous...

Adult Stem Cell Science Gives Hope to Spinal Cord Injury Victims

When you "do" science in ways that do not offend God, He will bless your efforts abundantly. It's just that simple. Look at the ongoing breakthroughs being achieved by scientists using adult stem cells while the millions of hours (and billions of dollars!) spent on experiments in which human embryos are killed is producing nothing but false hope and failure.

Here's one of the latest examples of the difference in approaches.

A new study by a Wayne State University School of Medicine researcher details the outcome of adult stem cell grafts in spinal cord injuries and how the procedure led to increased mobility and quality of life for patients.

Associate Professor Jean Peduzzi-Nelson (see photo) of the Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology conducted the study, “Olfactory Mucosal Autografts and Rehabilitation for Chronic Traumatic Spinal Cord Injury,” which was published online in the journal Neurorehabilitation and Neural Repair...

In the study, 20 patients with severe chronic spinal cord injuries received a treatment combination of partial scar removal, transplantation of nasal tissue containing stem cells to the site of the spinal cord injury and rehabilitation. All of the patients had total paralysis below the level of their spinal cord injury before the treatment.

“This may be the first clinical study of patients with severe, chronic spinal cord injury to report considerable functional improvement in some patients with a combination treatment,” Peduzzi-Nelson said. “Normally, in people with spinal cord injuries that happened more than 18 months ago, there is little improvement.”

The injuries in the study patients were 18 months to 15 years old. The patients, ages 19 to 37, had no use of their legs before the treatment. One paraplegic treated almost three years after the injury now ambulates with two crutches and knee braces. Ten other patients ambulate with physical assistance and walkers (with and without braces). One 31-year-old male tetriplegic patient uses a walker without the help of knee braces or physical assistance. When the stem cell transplant and scar removal process was combined with an advanced form of rehabilitative training that employs brain-initiated weight-bearing movement, 13 patients improved in the standard measures used to assess functional independence and walking capabilities...

The partial scar removal and tissue transplantation procedures were performed in Portugal. The rehabilitation of patients took place in Italy and Portugal...Peduzzi-Nelson said that she and Jay Meythaler, M.D., chairman of the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, along with other colleagues, are seeking FDA approval to perform the procedure in the United States.

The Man of Destiny...and Decadence

...Obama obviously thinks of himself as a Man of Destiny, like Napoleon and quite a few other Saviors on Horseback. Men of Destiny don't wait for the world to recognize their superhuman virtues. They know it from the start, and by gum, the rest of the world better catch up quick. As Nicolas Sarkozy has said, Obama is "utterly immature... arrogant ... empty of all content." This is the Prez of France, who lives in a Heavenly Palace near the Avenue of the Heavenly Fields -- the Champs-Élysées. He's an expert on the swelled head, since every president of France is required to have one...

After all, the Feminist Left even politicized motherhood. All the traditional loyalties are just shotgun targets for Leftist takedown: Free speech, academic freedom, a genuinely free press, God, scientific integrity, the individual, the sanctity of life, private contracts, private property, the U.S. Constitution, the free web, hard work and sacrifice, love of country, family loyalty, marriage, babies, fatherhood, motherhood -- and now with Obama's "Safe Schools" Commissar Kevin Jennings, even childhood is no longer sacred.

That's why Jennings wrote his piece for Queering Elementary Education -- Advancing the Dialogue about Sexualities and Schooling (Curriculum, Schooling, and (Homo) Sexualities. That must be why he is now the de facto Gay Commissar in Obama's Education Department. He came to power in the LGBT world for Queering the Elementary School. It's on the public record, and his heroic stance on expanding the sexuality of little kids obviously didn't hurt his political career in LGBT -- which is why he is now in charge of "safe schools" for Obama.

Jennings built a political career out of his publicly stated ambition to meddle with the sexual development of elementary school kids, and ended up gracing Obama's White House. Look it up on Amazon if you doubt it.

I used to wonder why Dante needed so many circles in his Hell to punish evildoers. I thought he was some kind of madman. Now I think Dante was right. There really are degrees of more and more evil. Where do you think Dante would have put Kevin Jennings? Or all those who enable the Jenningses in politics? Beat poet Allen Ginsburg, another celebrated sexual predator of the Left, is quoted as yelling "We will get you through your children." Well, Obama seems determined to fulfill that promise.

We used to throw childhood predators in jail, but now we give them big jobs in the White House. On top of that Obama just promised to allow Gay politics to be publicly celebrated in the military. We have seen where that leads. This is not a matter of Gay rights but Gay aggression --- unless somebody would like to put on an annual Heterosexual Parade in the military just for balance. But no, that would be persecution of a designated victim group. It's heads I win, tails you lose.

Compared to all those swamps of corruption the Nobel Peace Prize means nothing. The world can live without it. Saving just a single kid from the clutches of Kevin Jennings' Brave New Elementary School is worth all the Nobels in the world. The Nobel PC Prizes have sometimes been pretty dubious, and over time they have become a mark of Cain. It's like the Imperial Deutschmark. Or the dollar. Even the most valued symbols can turn sour...

(James Lewis, "Did Obama Swing His Own Nobel?" American Thinker, October 20, 2009)

Hey, Let's Join In for an "Angel Tree" Christmas!

It's not too early to start thinking about Christmas.

At least, it's not too early to think about excellent outreach ministries like Prison Fellowship's Angel Tree, a ministry that reaches out to the children of inmates and their families with the love of Christ.

Check it out. Read about little Angel from California and how Angel Tree changed her whole world forever and then browse around the Angel Tree site for more information -- including how your family and your church can get involved.

Your Wednesday Tea Break (Disco!)

Instead of brewing up this afternoon, put on your dancing shoes and give that silver ball a spin for these disco classics.

Today's Posts

What's Wrong with "Every Child a Wanted Child?"

Did You Miss Columbus Day? (That's What You Were Supposed To Do.)

No Doubt About It, the Left Is Working to End Freedom of Speech

Will ACORN Rise from the Dead?

Dietrich Bonhoeffer on Abortion

Worried About that Monstrous Health Care Bill? Well, Don't Forget the "Stimulus" Bill We're Stuck With.

Obstetric Medical Team: We Are Only Obligated to Care for the Woman, Not Her Child

What's Wrong with "Every Child a Wanted Child?"

"Every child a wanted child."

It is one of the pro-abortion lobby's most common slogans because it sounds so soft and loving. However, the logical conclusion of the phrase is as cold and ruthless as an abortionist’s curette. For the phrase "every child a wanted child" arises from several intellectual and moral errors, all of which suggest that a child’s worth is based solely on the affections of others. It reduces children to objects whose only value is in their desirability as others evaluate it.

Indeed, this whole idea of "wantedness" being the determinant value of a person's value is not only incorrect -- it is wicked. A person's worth is determined by God Who created him or her in His image. Each person is therefore intrinsically, immeasurably sacred. The opinions of others cannot add or subtract anything to that person's value. A human being's worth is part of his very existence; it is inherent, bestowed by God. And no slogan, evil attitude or unjust law can deny that fundamental truth...not, at least, without the most horrible of divine judgments on the culture which tries to do so.

And, oh yes, one more important error related to the "Every child a wanted child" slogan is the assumption by pro-abortionists that an unplanned, unwanted pregnancy inevitably leads to an unwanted child. Ask just about any Mom you know if that's how life really works!

Did You Miss Columbus Day? (That's What You Were Supposed To Do.)

...About the only factor still keeping Columbus on the calendar in places like New York is his role in the Italian-American community, which have made many Mayors and Governors reluctant to toss the great explorer completely overboard. But while Ferdinand and Isabella may have brought Columbus back in chains, modern day political correctness banishes him to the darkened dungeon of non-personhood, erasing him from history and replacing him with a note reading, “I’m Sorry We Ever Discovered America.”...

And that is the ultimate goal of political correctness, to kill America’s soul. To stick George Washington, Patrick Henry, Jefferson, John Smith, James Bowie, Paul Revere, Hamilton, Adams, Franklin and all the rest on a shelf in a back room somewhere, and replace them with timelier Marxist and liberal heroes. Move over Columbus, Caesar Chavez needs this space. Forget Davy Crockett, the heroic General Santa Ana who was caught fleeing dressed as a woman will now be our hero for his resistance to colonialist imperialism. No more American heroes need apply. Followed of course by no more America.

This is how it all begins. Probably the final bit of politically correct lunacy is a headline in the Columbus Dispatch about the Columbus Day festival in the city of Columbus, Ohio. It reads, “Italian Festival honors controversial explorer with its own Columbus Day parade”. Once the great discover of America, Columbus is now called “controversial” by a newspaper named after him, in a city named after him.

Can the day when USA Today has a headline reading, “Some cities still plan controversial 4th of July celebration of American independence” be far behind?

(Daniel Greenfield, "America Apologizes for its Own Existence," Canada Free Press)

No Doubt About It, the Left Is Working to End Freedom of Speech

The Left's spirited campaign to restrict freedom of speech is gaining speed with every day. Using bubble zones against pro-lifers, a wicked distortion of "hate crimes" against those who teach the Bible's condemnation of homosexuality, false charges of racism against conservatives in general, trying to fintimidate Fox News and, of course, laying the groundwork for comprehensive censorship of the Right, so-called liberals are doing everything they can to shut up contrary voices.

Matthew Balan from NewsBusters gives a striking example of CNN's latest tirade against conservative talk radio. CNN's attack was a pretty desperate one (they typically are) using not only the typical "Fairness Doctrine" justifications but also a screwball psychiatrist who theorized that Rush Limbaugh has an audience because he’s “operating like the bully, and if you’re on the playground...you want to be...under the bully’s wing and go along with him and get...some power by proxy.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer on Abortion

"Destruction of the embryo in the mother's womb is a violation of the right to live which God has bestowed upon this nascent life. To raise the question whether we are here concerned already with a human being or not is merely to confuse the issue. The simple fact is that God certainly intended to create a human being and that this nascent human being has been deliberately deprived of his life. And that is nothing but murder.

A great many different motives may lead to an action of this kind; indeed in cases where it is an act of despair, performed in circumstances of extreme human or economic destitution and misery, the guilt may often lie rather with the community than with the individual. Precisely in this connection money may conceal many a wanton deed, while the poor man's more reluctant lapse may far more easily be disclosed. All these considerations must no doubt have a quite decisive influence on our personal and pastoral attitude towards the person concerned, but they cannot in any way alter the fact of murder."

(Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics)

Worried About that Monstrous Health Care Bill? Well, Don't Forget the "Stimulus" Bill We're Stuck With.

...The "American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009" (ARRA), was rushed through Congress on the grounds that fast-acting and temporary measures were needed to counteract the recession. The bill included $288 billion in tax relief, $144 billion in transfers to states and $357 billion in federal spending.

However, many of the provisions in the stimulus will not be temporary. Less than two weeks after ARRA was enacted, the Obama administration released its Fiscal Year 2010 Budget, which proposed to make five major components of the stimulus bill permanent, at a cost of $94 billion per year...All told, the Obama administration's budget seeks to make at least 37% of ARRA's spending and tax cuts permanent on an annual basis.

A number of other provisions are likely to have a permanent impact on the budget as well, since it would be political suicide to eliminate them now that they are enacted. Permanently extending just a subset of tax or spending provisions could further enlarge the deficit by over $48 billion per year...

It is important to stress, however, that this estimate is likely the floor and not the ceiling for what this bill will eventually cost. Our analysis was restricted to those policies estimated to cost $1 billion or more. But this legislation will create hundreds of distinct programs. Furthermore, we also excluded policies that were included in the stimulus bill but that existed previously, such as the alternative minimum tax patch and an array of energy tax provisions. Finally, we generously assumed that many other programs that potentially could be extended would not be, including the $144 billion in temporary aid to the States and the one-time $250 payment to Social Security recipients that now appears likely to reoccur at least in 2010.

While there is no question that rising health care costs pose a serious threat to our fiscal outlook, the health care proposals being debated in Congress will do little (if anything) to solve the problem. While this debate consumes our public attention, don't forget that a bigger fiscal wound has already been inflicted. Not only has the stimulus bill failed to turn the economy, but it promises to be a permanent drag.

(Alex Brill and Amy Roden, "A Sickening Deficit," Forbes)