And so it continues.....

Courts uphold partial-birth abortion
http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/01/31/D8FFTO604.html

Peter Singer gets it wrong again -- surprised?

I can't understand why Singer is still around, and why his semi-philosophical musings remain a matter for discussion, except that he always seems to inadvertantly point out exactly the opposite of what he claims to be the case....
http://www.nationalreview.com/script/printpage.p?ref=/comment/lee_george200601250829.asp

"God is Love" (1 John - 4:16) -- Pope Benedict's 1st Encyclical

Pope Benedict XVI's first Encyclical is a profound restatement of the Christian's vocation in this world (and the next).....
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20051225_deus-caritas-est_en.html

Boys will be boys, and girls will be girls....

As my friend ElDuderino well knows... I am, on the other hand, "blessed" on a daily basis with only the fairer sex at home.....



"Biology’s Revenge: Christina Hoff Sommers was right."
"The surest way to get attention in American society is to become a crisis. Boys are now on their way to achieving this dubious but indispensable distinction with the new cover of Newsweek, 'The Boy Crisis.'
It is to be hoped that the crisis establishes a simple truth that is astonishing anyone ever forgot — boys and girls are different. Or as Newsweek puts it, 'Boys are biologically, developmentally and psychologically different from girls — and teachers need to learn how to bring out the best in every one.'
A crisis always needs its own politically correct argot. A neurologist quoted in Newsweek takes a step toward establishing one here with his statement, 'Very well-meaning people have created a biologically disrespectful model of education." Thus, the boy-in-crisis has a rallying cry, "Don't disrespect my biology!'...
...[Some] educational theorists argue that boys would be fine if they could be made more touchy-feely. But Christina Hoff Sommers, who wrote the prescient The War Against Boys five years ago, calls boys 'the last of a vanishing breed of Americans who don't want to spend a lot of time talking about their feelings.' Instead of trying to change that, we should accept boys for who they are.
What we have witnessed recently — with more evidence of the differences between men and women, and the importance of the old-fashioned two-parent family — is biology's revenge. If we deny what is deep-down in our nature, people get hurt — in this case, the rambunctious boys missing out on the great adventure that is learning."
http://www.nationalreview.com/script/printpage.p?ref=/lowry/lowry200601240828.asp

"A Narrowed Rift" - Bork on Alito & Roe v. Wade, back in November -- read now for the 33rd anniversary

" ... We may be confident, I think, that a Justice Alito, like Chief Justice John Roberts, will not vote to create new and hitherto unsuspected constitutional rights. He will not share the extreme liberationist philosophy, one of the hangovers from the 1960s, that characterizes the current Court majority. But, also like Roberts, we do not know whether he will vote to overturn the worst constitutional travesties of the past. And, if he is the superb lawyer he is reputed to be, we will not learn that at his hearings either.
Yet overturning Roe v. Wade should be the sine qua non of a respectable jurisprudence. Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito will hear a lot about stability in the law, the virtues of stare decisis, and the reliance many women have placed on that decision. The obtrusive fact is that constitutional law has never been stable. Precedent counts for less in constitutional law than elsewhere for the very good reason that the legislature can correct the Court’s mistake in interpreting a statute, but the Court is final when it invokes the Constitution and only the Court can correct its own mistakes. For that reason, many justices have made the point that what controls is the Constitution itself, not what the Court has said about it in the past. Cases like Roe, that some will claim must not be disturbed, were themselves repudiations of prior understandings of the Constitution.
If judgments about the prudence of overruling are invoked, the justices should take note of the fact that Roe lies at the center of the bitter polarization of much of American society. In countries where the issue is decided democratically, no such intense animus exists. Compromises are worked out and each side knows that it is free to continue the public debate in hope of doing better next time. That was, and would be again, the case in America if the subject of abortion were returned to state legislatures and electorates. Overruling Roe would not, as some Democrats will claim, make abortion illegal, but merely the subject of democratic regulation. We have paid a high price for a ruling that rests upon nothing in the Constitution and was arrived at in an opinion of just over 51 pages that contains not a line of legal reasoning...."
For the full text go to:
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/bork200511031121.asp

Ireland, while succumbing to EU economic prosperity, continually spirals away from its unique roots in Christendom

Report calls for equal rights for gay people -- 23/01/2006 - 15:06:10
"A new report from the Equality Authority has called on the government to introduce equal rights for gay and lesbian people, similar to laws in the North."

http://breakingnews.iol.ie/news/story.asp?j=170235662&p=y7xz36368

The actual document:
http://www.equality.ie/index.asp?locID=107&docID=508

A 'must read' refresher about an issue not as old as Roe v. Wade

THE DEFEATICRATS

Hands up everyone who thinks Iraq’s a quagmire.
Not the Iraqi people. According to the latest polls, 70% think “life is good”, and 69% are optimistic that things will get even better in the year ahead. For purposes of comparison, they took a similar poll in Europe a while back: 29% of the French said they were optimistic about the future, and 15% of Germans.
Also from that ABC poll: 63% of Iraqis feel “very safe” in their own neighbourhoods, which is more than the residents of Clichy-sous-Bois can say.
Well, okay, those cheerful Iraqis are probably Shi’ites and Kurds and whatnot. How about the Sunnis? For a small minority group that held a disproportionate and repressive grip on power for decades, they’ve been getting a more solicitous press from western “liberals” than the white Rhodesians or South Africa’s National Party ever got.
But it turns out, after their strategically disastrous decision to stay home last January, the Sunnis are participating in Iraq’s democratic process in ever greater numbers.
Oh, okay, so the Shi’ites and Kurds and Sunni are feeling chipper, but in the broader Middle East the disastrous neocon invasion has inflamed moderate Arab opinion against America.
Well, it’s true the explosive Arab street finally exploded the other day. 200,000 Jordanians protested in Amman, waving angry banners and yelling, “Burn in hell, Rumsfeld” and “You are a coward, Bush”. Whoops, my mistake. They were yelling, “Burn in hell, Zarqawi” and “You are a coward, Zarqawi”. If you want to hear someone yelling “You are a coward, Bush”, you’ve got to go to Cindy Sheehan’s stake-out. And, in fairness to the network news divisions, it may be because so many of their camera crews have taken up permanent residence at the otherwise underpopulated Camp Cindy that they were unable to cover what was the largest demonstration against terrorism ever seen on the streets of the Middle East.
Oh, well. So the Shi’ites and Kurds and Sunni Iraqis and the Arab street’s on board, but come on, what about the insurgents? Everybody knows they’re winning.
Er, apparently they don’t. The Baathist diehard insurgents have split from the foreign al-Qa’eda insurgents. While the latter denounced the Iraqi election as “a Satanic project”, the Saddamite remnants urged Sunnis to participate and said they’d protect polling stations from attacks by the foreign terrorists in order that citizens could vote for their approved candidates (the leftover bits of Uday and Qusay, stuck on a tailor's dummy and now running on the Psychotic Dictatorship Nostalgia Party ticket). This division between the foreign nutcakes and the domestic nutcakes is the biggest strategic split over the insurgency since Joe Lieberman respectfully distanced himself from Nancy Pelosi.
On the other hand, it does belatedly prove the anti-war crowd’s long-held view that Saddam’s secular Baathists and Osama’s theocrat terrorists would never collaborate, even if it took until last month for the participants themselves to get wise to it. And, alas, unlike the Dems with Hillary, in the Sunni Triangle there’s no Sunni triangulator to craft a more nuanced position to hold both the Lieberbaathist and Pelosama wings together.
So the Shi’ites, Kurds, Sunni, the Arab street, and the Baath Party have figured Iraqi democracy’s winning. That leaves al-Qa’eda.
Not exactly. Ayman Zawahiri, the Number Two honcho in al-Qa’eda while they’re maintaining the polite fiction that bin Laden’s still functioning, recently rapped Zarqawi over the knuckles and called on him to cut out killings that “the masses do not understand or approve”. The twitchy Mr Zawahiri was presumably thinking of, for example, the assassination of the septuagenarian grand imam of Fallujah for urging Sunnis to get out and vote.
So the Shi’ites, Kurds, Sunni, the Arab street, the Baath Party and bin Laden’s deputy think the insurgency’s a bust. Hands up who thinks it’s winning.
Well, there’s Howard Dean: “The idea that we are going to win this war is an idea that unfortunately is just plain wrong.”
As I said, the article is a 'must-read' refresher on the issue.
See the rest at: http://www.steynonline.com/index2.cfm?edit_id=24

This is almost too sad to read, but the "right-to-die" component is revealing

HALEIGH WANTS TO LIVE
By Michelle Malkin · January 19, 2006 07:30 AM
This is Haleigh Poutre:
Last fall, Haleigh was hospitalized after her stepfather allegedly burned her and beat her nearly to death with a baseball bat. Haleigh, in a coma, was kept alive by a feeding tube and ventilator. Doctors said she was "virtually brain dead" -- in a persistent vegetative state with no hope of recovery.
The Massachusetts Department of Social Services wanted to remove Haleigh's feeding and breathing tubes.
Even her biological mother (who had been deemed unfit to care for Haleigh and whose former boyfriend was accused of sexually abusing the child) wanted her to be put to death (transcript via Nexis/CBS Evening News):
CBS reporter SHARYN ALFONSI: This is Haleigh Poutre before, before her teeth were broken, before her tiny body was burned and before she was beaten, doctors say, into a vegetative state. You're her mother.
Ms. ALLISON AVRETT (Biological Mother): Yes.
ALFONSI: What do you want for her?
AVRETT: I want her to rest.
ALFONSI: And right now?
AVRETT: She's not. Being kept like that is not a life.
The only person who wanted Haleigh alive was her stepfather, who will likely be charged with murder if Haleigh dies.
Two days ago, Massachusetts' Supreme Court ruled against Haleigh's stepfather, saying it was ''unthinkable" to give the power to make a life-and-death decision to the man accused of putting Haleigh in a coma. "Court: State can let beaten girl die," the headlines trumpeted.
Just one small complication for all of those who, for whatever reason, were in such a rush to "let Haleigh die:"
Haleigh wants to live.
As state officials prepared to remove Haleigh's life support, the supposedly impossible happened:
A day after the state's highest court ruled that the Department of Social Services could withdraw life support from a brain-damaged girl, the agency said yesterday that Haleigh Poutre might be emerging from her vegetative state.
DSS also said it has no immediate plans to remove her feeding tube.
''There has been a change in her condition," said a DSS spokeswoman, Denise Monteiro. ''The vegetative state may not be a total vegetative state."
Monteiro said Haleigh is breathing on her own, without the ventilator she has depended on for four months. Monteiro also said that doctors at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield elicited responses from Haleigh during tests performed yesterday.
Everyone had given up on Haleigh--except Haleigh.
This is a huge story, a wake-up call to "right-to-die" ideologues who recklessly put such unlimited trust in the medical profession and Nanny State. The same government bureaucrats and doctors who had conclusively deemed the 11-year-old girl "hopeless" and her vegetative state "irreversible" now tell us she is responding to stimuli and breathing on her own.
They were wrong.
Next, look for The Professionals to tell us that despite her improvements, her "quality of life" will be worthless. We already know how they feel about people with feeding tubes.
Haleigh's fight has just begun.
***
When the state condemns a convicted murderer to die, Hollywood celebrities trip all over themselves to protest.
Where are the Tinseltown activists who will rally to protect a truly innocent life?
***
Ace of Spades: "I do think it's interesting that a court can spot a conflict-of-interest, but only when the purported guardian with the conflict-of-interest is in favor of keeping the patient alive."
See-Dubya at Patterico's: "Unlike the Schiavo case, not only has Haleigh not told anyone of her true wishes, but she legally can’t make these kind of decisions. There should be a presumption that people, that children, even brain-damaged orphans, ought to live."
Karol at Alarming News frames the ghouls' position succinctly: "Quick, let's starve her to death!"
***
On the prospects of recovery:
Some patients with severe brain stem injuries may partially recover from a persistent vegetative state, but they rarely recover fully enough to communicate, feed themselves and live ordinary lives, Dr. Steve Williams, chief of rehabilitation medicine at Boston Medical Center, told the Globe. But he said recovery is more likely with children than adults.
“There’s more plasticity to their brain. There’s potentially other areas of the brain that can take over,” he said.
***More background on the case via the Boston Globe:
After her biological mother, Allison Avrett, was deemed unfit to care for her and Avrett's former boyfriend was accused of sexually abusing Haleigh, the girl went to live with Avrett's sister, Holli Strickland.
From the time Haleigh was 6, she lived in Westfield with Holli and Jason Strickland, who married in 2001. Holli Strickland legally adopted the girl when she was 7. As she went through elementary school, the DSS received numerous complaints from sources it won't name that Haleigh was being neglected or abused, but never concluded that the Stricklands' home was unsafe.
Last Sept. 11, relatives took the unconscious girl to a local hospital. She was found to have bruises all over her body, at different stages of healing, as well as severe traumatic brain injuries and a body temperature of 85 degrees. Doctors determined that her injuries could not have been self- inflicted.
As DSS took custody of the girl and began hearings for a do-not-resuscitate order, Holli and Jason Strickland were arrested on Sept. 20 on child abuse charges.
Holli Strickland, 32, was released on bail two days later, and within hours, was found dead alongside her grandmother. Police continue to investigate the two deaths, but say they believe it might have been a murder-suicide, though they are unsure who shot whom.
In October, the state won a court order from a juvenile court judge to cut off life-support systems for Haleigh.
Jason Strickland, 31, filed an appeal with the Supreme Judicial Court seeking to reverse the juvenile court ruling and keep her attached to life-support systems.
He denied accusations by relatives that he wanted to prolong Haleigh's life to avoid murder charges. He argued he was a "de facto" parent who helped financially support the family and helped care for Haleigh.
But the high court flatly rejected Strickland's arguments, saying in yesterday's opinion that there was little proof that he was significantly involved in her upbringing.
The court also said it took into account that the stepfather refused to testify about how Haleigh suffered the bruises and other injuries, asserting his constitutional right against self-incrimination.
"To recognize the petitioner as a de facto parent, in order that he may participate in a medical end-of-life decision for the child, is unthinkable in the circumstances of this case," Greaney wrote.
Avrett Haleigh's biological mother, who said she never wanted to give up custody of Haleigh said yesterday she is relieved by the ruling, though happy that more medical tests will be conducted.
When she visited Haleigh at the hospital last week, she said, she observed Haleigh's hand moving, which gave her new hope that Haleigh's condition might have changed.
But Avrett said she was later convinced by DSS officials and doctors that those movements were involuntary and not signs of revived brain function.
"I agree with the removal of life support, but it [the court ruling] doesn't make it any easier," she said. "I'm still burying my daughter."
Not so fast.
***
Updates:
Jan. 21, 2006: Blogging for Haleigh
Jan. 23, 2006: Failing to protect innocent life

Very informative article as a refresher on the anniversary

"The prominence of the national debate over abortion, not slowing one bit over thirty years, is similar to that over slavery in terms of intensity and longevity."

Twin Decisions: The bad news delivered on January 22, 1973.
By G. Tracy Mehan III

"I was a student at Saint Louis University School of Law when I learned of the Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade...
... For my part, I felt as if I had been struck a blow to the head which rendered me incapable of coherent thought. The highest tribunal of the United States of America had struck down every law restricting abortion, be it strict or lenient, in every state. It effectively established a radical right to abortion, on demand, for all nine months of pregnancy.
Yes, All Nine.
This last point might escape readers familiar only with Roe and not its companion case, Doe v. Bolton. Roe established a regulatory regime, based on the division of a pregnancy into trimesters. In the first trimester, the decision was left exclusively to the medical judgment of the pregnant woman and her physician. In the second trimester, the state could choose to regulate abortion only for the protection of the woman's health.
But subsequent to "viability," which Justice Blackmun, Roe's author, reckoned to be at about seven months, the state could promote its interest in the "potentiality of human life" (his term) by regulation, even to the point of proscribing abortion outright — "except where it is necessary in appropriate medical judgment, for the preservation of the life or health of the mother." This last statement — called "a cunning phrase" by the retired federal appellate judge John T. Noonan, Jr. — when read in connection with Doe v. Bolton, the evil twin of Roe, was the undoing of almost any regulation or prohibition of late-term abortions....

... 'Cosmic Issue' -- Another professor of mine, the historian James Hitchcock, once referred to the issue of abortion as 'cosmic.' I took him to mean that where someone stood on this issue would be determined by the fundamental way in which he understood human beings and their relation to reality. Where someone stood on this issue would be indicative of how he related to other human beings, whether as objects or subjects, means or ends, mere matter or the image of the divine.
It was many years later when I grasped this insight. I initially thought, "Surely, the empirical evidence of the humanity of the unborn will win over even the most liberal of people, given their regard for humanity, especially those that are defenseless..."...I was convinced that reason, grounded in empirical evidence, could win the hearts and minds of Americans of all ideological stripes.
I underestimated the sheer willfulness of human beings, especially in matters of sexual behavior. Any recognition of the humanity of the unborn would force an unwelcome crisis in accepted notions of sexual freedom. The premium placed on personal autonomy, to the exclusion of all else, precluded concern for the unborn...." See complete article at:
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/mehan200601230847.asp
— G. Tracy Mehan III, a lawyer, served as assistant administrator of water at the EPA in President Bush's first term.

Maryland's legislators, & its judges, will have their way......

Shoplifting as governance -- George Will

"In 1786 the Annapolis Convention, requested by Virginia and attended by only four other states, called for a second gathering to revise the Articles of Confederation in order to strengthen the federal government. Some revision: The second meeting became the Constitutional Convention. It scrapped the Articles, partly because the Founders were alarmed by states legislating relief of debtors at the expense of creditors, often in ways not easily distinguished from theft.
Something not easily distinguished from theft recently occurred in Annapolis. In legislation ostensibly concerned with any company that has 10,000 employees but pertaining only to one, Maryland has said Wal-Mart must spend 8 percent of its payroll on health care or must give the difference to the state...."
http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/will1.asp

Maryland ban on gay marriage overturned

"A Baltimore judge struck down a 33-year-old state law against gay marriage Friday, declaring it violates the Maryland Constitution's guarantee of equal rights...."
http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060121/NEWS06/601210476/1012

College or University, anyone?

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/01/19/D8F7UO204.html

So, has it come to this...?


" .... Nearing a diploma, most college students cannot handle many complex but common tasks, from understanding credit card offers to comparing the cost per ounce of food.
Those are the sobering findings of a study of literacy on college campuses, the first to target the skills of students as they approach the start of their careers.
More than 50 percent of students at four-year schools and more than 75 percent at two-year colleges lacked the skills to perform complex literacy tasks. ...."

'Intelligent Design' not science per se, but 'Natural Philosophy'

Intelligent design no science, not to be taught, Vatican newspaper says
By John Thavis -- 1/17/2006 --CNS
VATICAN CITY (CNS) – "Intelligent design is not science and should not be taught as a scientific theory in schools alongside Darwinian evolution, an article in the Vatican newspaper said.
The article said that in pushing intelligent design some groups were improperly seeking miraculous explanations in a way that creates confusion between religious and scientific fields.
At the same time, scientists should recognize that evolutionary theory does not exclude an overall purpose in creation -- a "superior design" that may be realized through secondary causes like natural selection, it said.
The article, published in the Jan. 17 edition of L'Osservatore Romano, was written by Fiorenzo Facchini, a professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Bologna in Italy. ...
...The problem with intelligent design is that it turns to a "superior cause" -- understood though not necessarily named as God -- to explain supposed shortcomings of evolutionary science. But that's not how science should work, the article said. ...."

Copyright (c) 2006 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops

'Intelligent Design' not science per se, but 'Natural Philosophy'

The Designs of Science
CARDINAL CHRISTOPH SCHONBORN

"In July 2005 the New York Times published my short essay “Finding Design in Nature.” The reaction has been overwhelming, and not overwhelmingly positive.
In the October issue of FIRST THINGS, Stephen Barr honored me with a serious response, one fairly representative of the reaction of many Catholics.
I fear, however, that Barr has misunderstood my argument and possibly misconceived the issue of whether the human intellect can discern the reality of design in the world of living things.
It appears from Barr’s essay — and a number of other responses — that my argument was substantially misunderstood. In “Finding Design in Nature,” I said:
The Church “proclaims that by the light of reason the human intellect can readily and clearly discern purpose and design in the natural world, including the world of living things.”
Any system of thought that denies or seeks to explain away the overwhelming evidence for design in biology is ideology, not science.”
Quoting our late Holy Father John Paul II: “The evolution of living beings, of which science seeks to determine the stages and to discern the mechanism, presents an internal finality which arouses admiration. This finality, which directs beings in a direction for which they are not responsible or in charge, obliges one to suppose a Mind which is its inventor, its creator.”
Again quoting John Paul II: “To all these indications of the existence of God the Creator, some oppose the power of chance or of the proper mechanisms of matter. To speak of chance for a universe which presents such a complex organization in its elements and such marvelous finality in its life would be equivalent to giving up the search for an explanation of the world as it appears to us. In fact, this would be equivalent to admitting effects without a cause. It would be to abdicate human intelligence, which would thus refuse to think and to seek a solution for its problems.”
Quoting the Catechism: “Human intelligence is surely already capable of finding a response to the question of origins. The existence of God the Creator can be known with certainty through his works, by the light of human reason. . . . We believe that God created the world according to his wisdom. It is not the product of any necessity whatever, nor of blind fate or chance.”
Referring to the Church’s teaching on the importance and reach of metaphysics: “But in the modern era, the Catholic Church is in the odd position of standing in firm defense of reason as well. In the nineteenth century, the First Vatican Council taught a world newly enthralled by the ‘death of God’ that by the use of reason alone mankind could come to know the reality of the Uncaused Cause, the First Mover, the God of the philosophers.”
My argument was based neither on theology nor modern science nor “intelligent design theory.” In theology, although the mind’s ability to grasp the order and design in nature is adopted by, taken up into, and elevated to new heights by the faith of Christianity, that ability precedes faith, as Romans 1:19-20 makes clear. In science, the discipline and methods are such that design — more precisely, formal and final causes in natural beings — is purposefully excluded from its reductionist conception of nature.
Instead, my argument was based on the natural ability of the human intellect to grasp the intelligible realities that populate the natural world, including most clearly and evidently the world of living substances, living beings. Nothing is intelligible — nothing can be grasped in its essence by our intellects — without first being ordered by a creative intellect. The possibility of modern science is fundamentally grounded on the reality of an underlying creative intellect that makes the natural world what it is. The natural world is nothing less than a mediation between minds: the unlimited mind of the Creator and our limited human minds. Res ergo naturalis inter duos intellectus constituta — “The natural thing is constituted between two intellects,” in the words of St. Thomas. In short, my argument was based on careful examination of the evidence of everyday experience; in other words, on philosophy.
Philosophy is the “science of common experience” which provides our most fundamental and most certain grasp on reality. And, clearly, it is philosophical knowledge of reality that is most in need of defense in our time.
Many readers will no doubt be disappointed. It seemed that, right or wrong, my original essay was all about science, about real, tangible, factual knowledge of the material world. But now I admit to be speaking in the language of natural philosophy, that old-fashioned way of understanding reality which quickly faded into the intellectual shadows after the arrival of the new knowledge of Galileo and Newton....."
http://catholiceducation.org/articles/science/sc0077.html

God on the Internet -- A great article with links to many, many religious websites.....

http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0512/articles/last.html

UK doctors kill off "terminal" patients at a rate of 8 per day in 2004

Doctors 'involved in eight euthanasia deaths a day'
By Sarah Womack, Social Affairs Correspondent(Filed: 18/01/2006)
"Doctors were involved in as many as eight deaths a day from voluntary or "non-voluntary" euthanasia in Britain in 2004, according to academic research.
A report by Clive Seale, professor of sociology at Brunel University, said 1,930 deaths were as a result of a doctor ending a patient's life without the patient's consent, a practice known as "non-voluntary euthanasia" or "mercy killing".
This involves the ending of the life of a person who does not have the faculty to make such a decision, for instance when they are in a coma.
Some 936 deaths were by voluntary euthanasia. Put together, these figures amount to 2,866 deaths or eight a day.
A third of the 584,791 people who died in 2004 - 192,000 patients - had their deaths "accelerated" by doctors using pain relief.
These deaths were put down to "alleviating symptoms" which may have had the effect of shortening life.
Just under a third were from "withholding treatment" - passively allowing someone to die - because it was deemed in the best interest of the patients. The two latter practices are allowed in the UK...."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/01/18/neuth18.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/01/18/ixnewstop.html

Pro-choice legal minds against Roe v. Wade

This site was pointed out to me recently....a good read on what 'pro-choice' lawyers actually think about Roe v. Wade....

http://www.timothypcarney.com/?page_id=176

An interesting read for MLK day.....

Can't wait to read the whole article...


Lightening Up -- Racial discrimination and global warming are two peas in a pod.

"It was a good start to the year for Sgt. Leslie Turner, who was awarded 30,000 pounds in an out-of-court settlement after suing Scotland Yard. Sergeant Turner was the first black officer in London’s Metropolitan Police to be made a royal bodyguard. It was his job to guard HRH the Duchess of Cornwall — that’s Camilla, the Prince of Wales’ new missus, though in some sort of Britannic Teresa Heinz–type arrangement she doesn’t use the moniker “Princess of Wales.” Anyway, Sergeant Turner ceased being a royal bodyguard last spring and subsequently brought his suit for “racial discrimination.” Here’s the wrinkle: He claims he was over-promoted only because he was black. ...."
http://www.nationalreview.com/issue/steyn20061170837.asp

Germany continues to be as big of a menace as France, but gets much less flack.....

An open letter to Germany's chancellor: By Diana West -- Jan 16, 2006
"Good morning, Madame Chancellor.
Here you are, Germany's Angela Merkel, on your first trip to Washington, D.C., preparing for your meeting with President Bush. As you look out of your Blair House window over Lafayette Square toward the White House, consider the historicity of the era: the beginning of Mr. Bush's fifth year leading his country, and the beginning of your first year leading your country in the so-called War on Terror. Or is that the War on Guantanamo Bay? I get them confused.
That's because in just about every account of your American trip -- biggish news in Europe -- it is prominently mentioned that Guantanamo Bay is prominently high on your list of, well, prominent concerns. Trouble spots. Global things you lose sleep over.
This is, with due respect, bizarre. Iran is going nuclear, Europe is going Islamic, Russia is going off the reservation, China is a fearsome thing, and your big concern is sending what is called a "clear message" to Mr. Bush about Guantanamo Bay, the tropical jail where the United States keeps jihadis on ice -- and keeps the rest of the world safer as a result. But that's not what you say. "An institution like Guantanamo can and should not exist in the longer term," you told the German news magazine Der Spiegel this week. "Different ways and means must be found for dealing with these prisoners."
I have a suggestion: How about if we ship all these guys -- unflushed Korans and all -- to Germany? Maybe "72 Virgins" Airlines would cut us a deal. Then you -- Germany -- can parole them to Lebanon.
That, of course, is just what you did just before Christmas with Muhammad Ali Hammadi, the convicted Hezbollah killer of Petty Officer Robert Dean Stethem...."
Diana West is a contributing columnist for Townhall.com.
Copyright © 2006 Newspaper Enterprise Assn.
Find this story at: http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/dianawest/2006/01/16/182461.html

Episcopal Bishop Removes Priest In Gay Clergy Dispute

"They dubbed themselves 'the Connecticut Six,' Episcopal priests who broke with the Hartford Diocese after Bishop Andrew D. Smith [pictured above] supported the ordination of an openly gay bishop in New Hampshire.
Now they are five, including the Rev. Ronald Gauss of Bishop Seabury Church in Groton, following Smith's removal of Mark Hansen from the priesthood on Friday...."
http://www.theday.com/eng/web/news/re.aspx?re=712F02AC-8DCA-499C-A60C-5785AB3F872D

New source of global warming gas found: plants

New source of global warming gas found: plants
Wed Jan 11, 1:06 PM ET
German scientists have discovered a new source of methane, a greenhouse gas that is second only to carbon dioxide in its impact on climate change.
The culprits are plants.
They produce about 10 to 30 percent of the annual methane found in the atmosphere, according to researchers at the Max-Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg, Germany....
.... Methane, which is produced by city rubbish dumps, coal mining, flatulent animals, rice cultivation and peat bogs, is one of the most potent greenhouse gases in terms of its ability to trap heat.
Concentrations of the gas in the atmosphere have almost tripled in the last 150 years. About 600 million tonnes worldwide are produced annually.
The scientists said their finding is important for understanding the link between global warming and a rise in greenhouse gases.
Scientists had previously thought that plants could only emit methane in the absence of oxygen.....
.... David Lowe, of the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research in New Zealand, said the findings are startling and controversial.
"Keppler and colleagues' finding helps to account for observations from space of incredibly large plumes of methane above tropical forests," he said in a commentary on the research.
But the study also poses questions, such as how such a potentially large source of methane could have been overlooked and how plants produced it.
"There will be a lively scramble among researchers for the answers to these and other questions," Lowe added.
Copyright © 2006 Reuters Limited.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060111/sc_nm/environment_methane_dc

Love it (your spouse & procreate) or lose it.....

THE CENTURY AHEAD It's the Demography, Stupid: The real reason the West is in danger of extinction.
BY MARK STEYN -- Wednesday, January 4, 2006 12:01 a.m.

"....Americans sometimes don't understand how far gone most of the rest of the developed world is down this path: In the Canadian and most Continental cabinets, the defense ministry is somewhere an ambitious politician passes through on his way up to important jobs like the health department. I don't think Don Rumsfeld would regard it as a promotion if he were moved to Health and Human Services.

The design flaw of the secular social-democratic state is that it requires a religious-society birthrate to sustain it. Post-Christian hyperrationalism is, in the objective sense, a lot less rational than Catholicism or Mormonism. ".....
Full article = http://www.opinionjournal.com/forms/printThis.html?id=110007760

What's a significant crime the UK?

What is a crime? It's a matter of opinion
By Mark Steyn(Filed: 13/12/2005)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2005/12/13/do1302.xml

"All over the United Kingdom, right now, real crimes are being committed: mobiles are being nicked, front doors are being kicked in, bollards are being lobbed through bus shelters - just to name some of the lighter activities that add so much to the gaiety of the nation. None of these is a "priority crime", as you'll know if you've ever endured the bureaucratic time-waster of reporting a burglary.
So what is a "priority crime"? Well, the other day, the author Lynette Burrows went on a BBC Five Live show to talk about the government's new "civil partnerships" and expressed her opinion - politely, no intemperate words - that the adoption of children by homosexuals was "a risk". The following day, Fulham police contacted her to discuss the "homophobic incident".....

Steyn nails it again -- the war on terror is a women's issue

" The war on terror is the real women's issue"

http://www.macleans.ca/culture/books/article.jsp?content=20060109_118922_118922##

"In other words, isn't the war on terror the real "women's issue"? As Ahmad al-Baqer, an MP from one of the more progressive Muslim nations (Kuwait), breezily put it, nixing a proposal to give broads the right to vote, "God said in the holy Koran that men are better than women. Why can't we settle for that?" Why indeed? From the Associated Press:

"Multan, Pakistan -- Nazir Ahmed appears calm and unrepentant as he recounts how he slit the throats of his three young daughters and their 25-year-old stepsister to salvage his family's 'honor' . . ."

Alas for Mr. Ahmed's daughters, that's all a long way away for Susan Sarandon, Gloria Steinem and the other sisters whose contribution to the liberation of Afghanistan was to oppose it. But the "honour killings" are getting closer. In London last summer, the police announced they were re-opening investigations into 120 deaths among British Muslim girls that they'd hitherto declined to look at too closely on grounds of "cultural sensitivity."

Legalized Polygamy not so far-fetched, after same-sex "marriage" legislation succeeds....

THEY'RE NOT QUEER BUT THEY'RE HERE. GET USED TO IT
Steyn I-told-you-so moment
[See the rest of the article via link.]
http://www.steynonline.com/pageprint.cfm?edit_id=35

"How about this story from The Toronto Star?
OTTAWA — A new study for the federal Justice Department says Canada should get rid of its law banning polygamy, and change other legislation to help women and children living in such multiple-spouse relationships...
Well, there's a surprise. I wrote about this in The Western Standard in September 2004 :
The better advocates of gay marriage are an ingenious crowd, full of artful arguments to support their claim. Initially, most of us on the other side found it hard to believe a countervailing argument was necessary, and by the time it became clear that neither "Oh, come off it, you can't be serious" nor "Well, I dunno, it just don't sound right" were going to suffice, the gays were already on their way to victory in the only arenas that matter--the media and the courts.
But the activists' intellectual rigour only goes so far. If you suggest, as some defendants of "traditional marriage" do, that gay marriage is the slippery slope to polygamy, the activists roll their eyes and go into "Oh, come off it, you can't be serious" mode. Like the chichi gay couple from New York who've built their dream home in rural Vermont, they don't want any other incomers muscling in. Gay marriage, they assure us, is the merest amendment to traditional marriage, and once we've done that we'll pull up the drawbridge. Sorry, but it's not going to work like that... There's a very obvious constituency for polygamy, and it says something about the monumental self-absorption of the gay marriage crowd that they seem unaware of it. Indeed, it's already here. Earlier this summer, Le Monde leaked a government report revealing that polygamy was routinely practised in Muslim ghettos in France. Anecdotal evidence suggests things aren't so very different in the Islamic communities of Ontario: as The Christian Science Monitor airily put it, polygamous unions "are being performed by the same religious figures adjudicating matters under sharia"--i.e., under the province's Muslim-friendly Arbitration Act....."
Document copyright Steynonline.com. All rights reserved.

Cheating the children -- Public Education

Cheating the children -- By John Stossel (Jan 11, 2006)

"Last week, Florida's supreme court ruled that public money can't be spent on private schools because the state constitution commands the funding of only 'uniform . . . high-quality' schools. How absurd. As if government schools are uniformly high quality. Or even mostly decent.
Apparently competition, which made even the Postal Service improve, is unconstitutional when it comes to public education in Florida....
.... For Stupid in America, a special report ABC will air Friday, we gave identical tests to high school students in New Jersey and Belgium. The Belgians trounced the Americans.
This should come as no surprise since public education in the USA is a government monopoly. If you don't like your public school? Tough. If the school is terrible? Tough. Your taxes fund that school regardless of whether it's good or bad.
Government monopolies routinely fail their customers.
Kaat Vandensavel runs a Belgian government school, but in Belgium, school funding follows students, even to private schools. So Vandensavel has to work hard to impress the parents. 'If we don't offer them what they want for their child, they won't come to our school.' That pressure makes a world of difference, she says.... She told us, 'We have to work hard day after day. Otherwise you just [go] out of business.'
'That's normal in Western Europe,' Harvard economist Caroline Hoxby told me. 'If schools don't perform well, a parent would never be trapped in that school in the same way you could be trapped in the U.S.'
Vandensavel adds, 'America seems like a medieval country . . . a Communist country on the educational level, because there's no freedom of choice -- not for parents, not for pupils.'
.... The public schools are cheating the children."
Award-winning news correspondent John Stossel is co-anchor of ABC News "20/20" and author of "Give Me a Break."
Copyright © 2006 John Stossel
Find this story at: http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/JohnStossel/2006/01/11/181913.html

An authentic Feminism continues to sprout, mature, and bear fruit

"For the question remains, do women want abortion? Not like she wants a Porsche or an ice cream cone. Like an animal caught in a trap, trying to gnaw off its own leg, a woman who seeks an abortion is trying to escape a desperate situation by an act of violence and self-loss. Abortion is not a sign that women are free, but a sign that they are desperate."

–Frederica Mathewes-Green
http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=19946937

Nuptials For Gay Cleric of Anglican Communion

It gets worse for Anglicans/Episcopalians worldwide....
http://uk.gay.com/headlines/9453

http://www.365gay.com/Newscon06/01/010906CofE.htm

Gay Rights Group Harasses Anti-Gay Marriage Petition Signers

Oh my .....
http://www.hubpolitics.com/archives/000142.php

Most high school seniors regard abortion as morally wrong and would severely limit a woman's right to choose.

Source: Hamilton College Released: Fri 06-Jan-2006, 09:30 ET -- Hamilton College Youth Poll: Abortion, Guns & Gays
YOUTH ISSUES SAME-SEX RELATIONSHIPS ABORTION GUNS
Most high school seniors regard abortion as morally wrong and would severely limit a woman's right to choose. According to a national poll released today in Washington by researchers at Hamilton College and Zogby International.

http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/517105/

We want to see Europe survive -- V. D. Hanson

January 06, 2006, 8:04 a.m., Victor David Hanson writes:

A Letter to the Europeans: Cry the beloved continent.

"Despite the bitter recrimination and growing rift between you and us, most Americans have not forgotten that a strong, confident Europe is still critical to the material and spiritual well being of the United States.
It is not just that as Westerners you have withstood — often later at our side — all prior challenges to the shared liberal civilization you created, whether the specter of an Ottoman global suzerainty, Bonapartism, Prussian militarism, Nazism, fascism, Japanese militarism, or Soviet Communism.

Nor is our allegiance a mere matter of history. Europe is the repository of the Western tradition, most manifestly in shrines like the Acropolis, the Pantheon, the Uffizi, or the Vatican. We concede that the Great Books — we as yet have not produced a Homer, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, or Locke, much less a Da Vinci, Mozart, or Newton — and the Great Ideas of the West from democracy to capitalism to human rights originated on your continent alone. And if Americans believe our Constitution and the visions of our Founding Fathers were historic improvements on Europe of the 18th-century, then at least we acknowledge in our humility that they were also inconceivable without it....."

Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is the author, most recently, of A War Like No Other. How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War

http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson200601060804.asp

Abortion researcher confounded by study

The first line is laughable in its arrogant, obvious, misrepresentation of the fact that this researcher is a biased, idealogical conformist of the pro-abortion, academic oligarchy.....the very fact that he would be "confounded" is truly laughable, he being an academic who has access to all of the data.....

But the rest of the article is interesting......

Abortion researcher confounded by study
05.01.06By Ruth Hill
" In the emotionally charged debate over abortion, no one could accuse Professor David Fergusson of ideological bias. He is "pro-choice" personally, but he admits his latest research - which suggests a strong link between abortion and mental illness - is liable to be used and misused as ammunition by the pro-life brigade. Researchers found that at age 25, 42 per cent of women in the study group who had had an abortion also experienced major depression at some stage during the past four years. This was nearly double the rate of those who had never been pregnant and 35 per cent higher than those who had chosen to continue a pregnancy. "Those having an abortion had elevated rates of subsequent mental health problems, including depression, anxiety, suicidal behaviours and substance use disorders," said the researchers, whose study has been published in the Journal of Child Psychiatry and Psychology." See the link to the whole article below.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=5&ObjectID=10362476

Journey of the Magi

Journey of the Magi

A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times when we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities dirty and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.

Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wineskins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

-- T.S. Eliot

Dorothy Sayers, mystery writer, on sloth = apathy

Dorothy Sayers’ essay, "The Other Six Deadly Sins," Sophia Institute Press.

Sayers writes, "The Church names the sixth deadly Sin Acedia or Sloth. In the world it calls itself Tolerance; but in Hell it is called Despair.... It is the accomplice of the other sins and their worst punishment. It is the sin which believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interferes with nothing, enjoys nothing, loves nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing, and only remains alive because there is nothing it would die for."

Celebrate the arrival of the Three Kings

Yes, they are on their way.....

Here are just a few items from my New Year's search

75% of Americans oppose abortion "rights" for 95% of the reasons given for actual abortions

"When asked, if they favor limitations on the abortion license–e.g. waiting periods, parental notification, only in the first three months or in instances of rape, incest, or direct threat to the life of the mother, etc.–it typically turns out that approximately 75 percent of the people think abortion should not be legal for the reasons that 95 percent of abortions are procured. [E.g., the emotional state of the mother, conveninece, etc.,.] The defenders of women’s “reproductive rights” ... are rightly anxious about the future of the unlimited abortion license imposed by Roe [v. Wade]."
http://www.firstthings.com/

Gay rights advocates ready for fights over adoption, clubs

http://news.mywebpal.com/news_tool_v2.cfm?show=localnews&pnpID=909&NewsID=686655&CategoryID=13280&on=0

Priest concerned over archbishop's pro-gay stance

News for San Franciscans

http://www.speroforum.com/site/article.asp?idCategory=34&idsub=127&id=2347

Abortion increases stress: study

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,17718868-29277,00.html

Three Bills Renew Senate Clash Over Abortion -- fetuses feel pain

by Lisa Ashkenaz Croke (bio) NewStandard Staff contributed to this piece.

"....[One] bill would require abortion providers to offer women who are more than twenty weeks pregnant "pain-reducing drugs" for the "unborn child." The provider would be required present a scripted statement informing the patient that the Congress "has determined that at this stage of development, an unborn child has the physical structures necessary to experience pain" and requires "the woman to explicitly either request or refuse the administration of pain-reducing drugs to the unborn child" on a decision form to be kept on record for an as yet undetermined period.
Anesthesia is used on prenatal patients undergoing surgery. Brownback's bill argues this protocol is evidence that "certain stimuli" cause a physical reaction in fetuses – responses that should be construed as experiencing pain...."
http://newstandardnews.net/content/index.cfm/items/1444