Common Cents

Coexist?

2012-02-15T20:32:00.002-05:00

2012-02-15T10:36:00.000-05:00

"To increase our debts while the prospect of paying them diminishes, does not consist with my ideas of integrity. I must, therefore, quit a situation which becomes utterly insupportable."
~ Robert Morris upon resigning as head of the treasury in 1783

Kind of makes you think, doesn't it?

The Postmodern Lord's Prayer

2012-02-15T10:27:00.002-05:00

Our celestial parent of unspecified gender, hallowed by thy name (but not so hallowed that thou can pass judgment on us; that would be intolerant of thee). Thy gender-neutral royal administration of the world come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven, or Valhalla, or wherever it is that we go after we die. Give us this day our daily organic tofu. And forgive us our unintentional indiscretions, for we didn't really mean it and who are you to judge us anyway? And lead us not to be tempted to judge our neighbor, but deliver us from intolerance. For ours is the power and the glory forever, for we can do anything if we just work together and accept one another as we are. Amen.

Happy Valentine's Day!

2012-02-15T09:13:00.001-05:00

(credit to someone on Facebook)

Obama vs. Constitution, Again

2012-02-14T07:26:00.007-05:00

I'm sure most of my readers have already heard about the Obama Administration's recent mandate that religious organizations, including Catholic charities, hospitals, & universities, provide their employees with health insurance coverage for contraceptives and abortifacients even if doing so violates their beliefs (which it does in many cases). Work has been busy lately, so I've been a bit late to the party on this. I hope it's obvious to most of my readers that this is an assault on our 1st Amendment religious freedoms. It should also be obvious that this is just one example of what happens when government grows too big and starts trying to control every area of our lives. After all, ObamaCare requires every American to purchase government-approved health insurance, which is also a violation of our constitutional freedoms, and it's really not much of a step from that to this birth control mandate imposed on religious organizations.

I found a great article by one of my favorite National Review Online authors, Andrew McCarthy, about this attack on religious freedom by Obama. It's called "The Contraceptive Mandate's Shaky Justification," and it does a great job of explaining how ridiculous Obama's claim is that women in our country lack access to "reproductive services." And don't be fooled by the so-called compromise that Obama's Administration has since offered to try to appease his critics -- it is all show and no substance, as this NRO editorial makes clear.

This issue is just one of many that demonstrate Obama's hostility toward religion. Other examples, many of which I have posted about here, include his radical pro-abortion positions, his refusal to defend or enforce the Defense of Marriage Act, his appointment of radical gay activist Kevin Jennings as his safe schools czar, his rolling back of freedom of conscience provisions for medical practitioners, his cavalier attitude toward global human rights, and his removal of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops from its position as administrator of the government's Human Trafficking Program despite its excellent qualifications to do so. Not to mention his administration's recent attempt to argue before the Supreme Court that the government should be able to interfere in religious organizations' choices to hire or fire their own leaders and teachers (which was fortunately shot down unanimously).

Of course, I'm sure people who are indifferent or hostile to religion or who want to silence religious expression in the public square and eliminate the influence of religious values on our society are perfectly happy with all of these decisions and actions. What I don't get is why any Christian who takes his/her faith seriously would ever consider voting to re-elect Obama (or sitting out the election).

UPDATE: I found another great article on the birth control mandate, this one written by Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and a blogger himself. Mohler analyzes a column by Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times in which, after lying about Christians wanting to ban contraceptives, Kristof defines religious freedom in this way: "“The basic principle of American life is that we try to respect religious beliefs, and accommodate them where we can.” Wow. Whatever happened to "inalienable rights" and "no law prohibiting the free exercise of religion"? It is scary when we have reached the point when a mainstream liberal columnist for one of the largest newspapers in the country defines freedom of religion as the government trying to respect and accommodate religion where it can.

Brief Thoughts on Yesterday's Primary/Caucus Results

2012-02-08T08:00:00.004-05:00

I don't have much time to blog now, but I wanted to just post a couple of quick thoughts on the outcome of the primaries and caucuses from yesterday. For those who haven't been following closely, Santorum won huge victories in the caucus in Minnesota and the primary in Missouri, and also pulled a shocker by upsetting Romney in the Colorado caucus as well. He ran the table, 3 for 3. Strangely, all three of these races were non-binding, which means Santorum did not win any actual delegates yesterday. But still, the results were a clear expression of dissatisfaction with the frontrunner, Mitt Romney. Romney actually finished 3rd behind Santorum and Paul in Minnesota, despite an endorsement from the state's former governor Tim Pawlenty.

Just a week and a half ago, I wrote a long post expressing my support for Mitt Romney as the best of the choices available to us. Since then, Romney has made some horrible gaffes ("I'm not concerned about the very poor") and has given conservatives more ammunition against him (among other things, by coming out in support of an automatic minimum wage increase tied to inflation). He has done a poor job defending his Bain Capital record and his 15% tax rate on his tax returns. His recent stumbles have called into question both his electability and his conservative credentials. (Obviously, many conservatives have questioned those things all along, but I am questioning them much more now than I was a few weeks ago.) The results yesterday confirmed the message also sent by South Carolina: Romney has a problem with conservative voters.

On one of the pro-Romney websites I frequent, some of the posters are attacking the "stupid" Republican base voters for supporting candidates like Gingrich, Santorum, and Paul who are "unelectable," accusing them of being anti-Mormon extremists who would rather lose an election rather than compromise their conservative purity. I find these attacks to be deeply misguided at best, and offensive at worst. The problem here is not with Republican voters. The problem is with Mitt Romney, who is doing an exceptionally poor job of getting conservatives to vote for him. Conservatives are not obligated to vote for the frontrunner just because the pundits say he is the only electable one. Candidates are not awarded votes automatically based on their resume and endorsements. They have to earn those votes.

Romney is sort of acting like he can just put it on cruise control and coast across the finish line. He seems to just want to play it safe, rather than showing real passion against Obama and his policies. He doesn't seem to be talking about issues that conservatives care about, except in very vague generalities. His super-PAC's are well funded and able to attack his GOP rivals, but he isn't convincing people to positively support him with his speeches and campaign activities. Republicans are angry about Obama and what he is doing to our country, and they want a nominee who is in touch with those concerns and who will effectively give voice to them. So far, Romney is not doing that. In fact, his cautious approach to the campaign is confirming the fears of many conservatives that he is a wishy-washy moderate who will say and do anything to get elected. It's not a coincidence that turnout is down in so many of these state primaries. Romney (and the entire field, for that matter) is not giving people a reason to come out and vote.

I badly want to see Obama defeated. I desperately want our party to nominate someone who is able to do that. On paper, Romney seems well-positioned to do that. He has a strong resume, executive experience, is a reasonably good speaker and debater, and appears to check all the right boxes with regard to the issues. I genuinely believe he is a social conservative and a man with morals and integrity. He seems able to appeal to independents and has raised a large amount of money. But his campaign up to this point is sending a different message. It suggests a man who is passionless, weak, cautious, slow on his feet, incapable of articulating voters' concerns, and less than fully committed to conservative principles on at least some issues. Can such a candidate defeat Obama? Not likely. If Romney doesn't improve significantly, he will do poorly both with independents/moderates and also with his base in the fall.

Santorum earned his victories yesterday. He campaigned hard, made a positive case for himself, and talked about issues voters care about, like Obama's HHS contraception/abortion mandate that Romney seems so afraid to bring up. His commitment to conservative principles is beyond dispute, and he seems ready to bring the fight to Obama. I question whether he can win a general election against Obama, but if Romney doesn't get his act together and start articulating a consistently conservative issue-driven alternative to Obama, then he probably won't win either.

I was very worried about Gingrich being the nominee, and that was part of the reason why I said that I would vote for Romney if I were a Florida primary voter. But now that Gingrich seems to be fading, and an opponent more worthy of being the conservative alternative to Romney is emerging, I am much more willing to see a good primary fight. Let Santorum and Romney fight it out for a while. If Romney can find his message and convince conservatives to support him, then he will be much better positioned for the fall campaign against Obama. If he can't, he doesn't deserve to be the nominee and would fail in a general election anyway.

Romney has nobody to blame but himself for his problems with the GOP base. And it's not the fault of Republican primary voters that all their options are so problematic. So Romney supporters had better stop smearing conservative Tea Party and evangelical voters as dumb, and start making a positive case for their candidate before it's too late.

Obama by the Numbers!

2012-01-31T17:56:00.003-05:00

Check out this fascinating list of statistics relating to the Obama economy. Of course, statistics can be easily manipulated one way or another, depending on your point of view. But I think these numbers are pretty damning for the president, and I like the fact that each statistic is backed up by a link to the source. This information could be useful next time you are discussing politics with an Obama supporter!

A little wisdom from the 18th century

2012-01-31T17:55:00.002-05:00

"The statesman, who should attempt to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capital, would not only load himself with a most unnecessary attention, but assume an authority which could safely be trusted, not only to no single person, but to no council or senate whatever, and would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of a man who had folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it."

~Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations, Vol. II (quoted in Basic American Government by Clarence Carson)

If I Were a Florida Primary Voter Tomorrow...

2012-01-30T19:58:00.004-05:00

Tomorrow is the Florida GOP presidential primary. The race has turned into a heated contest between Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, with Rick Santorum and Ron Paul lurking in the background, hoping to become spoilers. Florida has a much larger and more diverse voting population than the states that have previously voted, and its primary is winner-take-all, meaning that its results will doubtless be critical in determining the party's presidential nominee.

If I were a Florida primary voter, I would cast my vote for Mitt Romney. The fact that I have come around to supporting Romney is a bit surprising even to me, as I opposed him back in the 2008 presidential primary when many conservatives were supporting him against McCain. As recently as a few months ago, I was deadset against him being the nominee. Even now, unlike many of his fans, I am fully cognizant of his weaknesses, both with regard to his conservative credentials and his electability. He is far from a perfect candidate and far from a slam-dunk against Obama.

My support for Romney boils down to two key points: I believe he is the only candidate left in the race capable of defeating Obama, and I believe he is essentially a decent man, a competent executive, and a reasonably conservative politician who would be an acceptable Republican nominee.

Two of Romney's three remaining competitors fail on both points listed above. I believe Ron Paul is a highly unelectable candidate, for reasons I listed in a previous post, and I also find his positions on certain issues (primarily related to his views on foreign policy and the war against terrorism) to be unacceptable policy positions for our party's nominee.

Newt Gingrich, who is apparently the nominee of choice for many influential conservatives including Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh, likewise fails on these two points. Gingrich's personal negatives are high, especially among independents and women, and he consistently polls much worse than Romney in nationwide and state-by-state matchups against Obama. Many of the qualities that make him appealing to GOP primary voters -- his bombthrowing rhetorical style, his tendency toward grand but controversial ideas, his open contempt for the media -- are likely to be liabilities in a general election.

In addition to Gingrich's obvious electability issues, I find his personal character and past leadership to be deeply lacking. Anyone who believes that personal integrity and morality is key to effective leadership should have grave concerns about a President Gingrich. Not once, but twice, Newt Gingrich committed adultery and divorced his wife in order to marry his mistress. Other ingredients in these sordid affairs were delinquent child support payments by Gingrich, the fact that both of the first two wives were suffering serious health problems at the time he was cheating on them, and allegations by his second wife that he wanted an open marriage. It is especially distressing to me that so many Christian conservatives seem indifferent to these character flaws, and the hypocrisy of "values voters" voting in such large numbers for Gingrich in South Carolina is certainly not lost on non-Christians.

Of course, Gingrich's adulterous behavior is far from his only character flaw. His ego appears to be nearly as big as Obama's, and his leadership style is erratic and undisciplined. Although he deserves great credit for leading the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994, he proved to be an ineffective Speaker of the House and was forced out of leadership by his own party after only two terms. Few of his former colleagues have endorsed him, and many of them, including Tom Coburn, Tom DeLay, and Bob Dole, have sharply criticized him as a bullying egomaniac who was perfectly willing to sacrifice principle for power. (See this link for an example from Coburn's 2003 book.) His lobbyist connections to Freddie Mac, his criticisms of Congressman Paul Ryan's plan to tackle entitlements, his recent socialist-style attacks on Romney's business background with Bain Capital, and his past positions on federal health care mandates, climate change, and amnesty for illegal immigrants -- all of these things call into question Gingrich's claim that he is the conservative alternative to Romney. If we are going to sacrifice electability to get the most conservative candidate, we should at least make sure that the less electable candidate we are selecting is a principled and consistent conservative! It seems to me that the perception that Gingrich is more conservative than Romney is based far more on style than on substance.

With Paul and Gingrich off the table, the only other alternative to Romney is Rick Santorum. Unlike Paul or Gingrich, Santorum is an acceptable nominee in my opinion, and I could cast a primary vote for him with a clear conscience. I believe him to be a decent and devout man and a consistent conservative. Unfortunately, I also think it is highly unlikely that he could win a general election contest against Obama. Santorum's blowout Senate loss in Pennsylvania in 2006, his heavy emphasis on issues like abortion and gay marriage, his tendency to alternate between whining and bragging in the debates, and his poor showing in primary polling and voting in every state other than Iowa, call into question his ability to appeal to the broad spectrum of Republican and independent voters needed to win the White House.

That brings us back to Mitt Romney. Romney clearly is qualified to be President. His list of accomplishments include running several successful businesses, turning around a financially-troubled Olympic Commitee, and getting elected as a Republican and successfully governing a state that is usually very hostile to Republicans. These accomplishments demonstrate both an understanding of the free market and substantial executive experience. He is personally wealthy, but his wealth is largely self-made rather than inherited. From the debates I have watched, he comes across as knowledgeable and reasonably eloquent, and his answers and opinions seem consistent with conservative principles to me. His positions on the issues seem to be unchanged from 2008, when Rush Limbaugh was touting him as the presidential candidate most capable of uniting the three main factions of the Republican party (social conservatives, national defense conservatives, and economic conservatives). He appears to support the free markets and capitalism, support decreasing job-killing regulations, support developing our oil resources, oppose illegal immigration, oppose tax increases, support a strong military, and believe in American exceptionalism. There is no doubt in my mind he would sign a repeal of ObamaCare as well as most other conservative legislation sent to him by a Republican legislature. He is not as outspoken about reforming entitlements and drastically reducing spending as I would like, but he is still far better than Obama and probably no worse than Gingrich and Santorum.

Although his positions on the issues clearly seem conservative to me, he has appeal to independents and moderates because he avoids using inflammatory rhetoric, presents himself as a practical problem-solver, and was forced to govern as a centrist while governor of Massachusetts (due to the state's overwhelmingly Democratic legislature). For these reasons, he polls very competitively against Obama and is far more popular than his GOP rivals among the critical independent voting bloc.

Although Romney has been consistent throughout this campaign and his previous campaign for president in his pro-life and pro-traditional marriage positions, many Christian conservatives remain suspicious of him because of the fact that he was once pro-choice and the perception that he is a typical liberal Massachusetts Republican. I found this letter, signed by numerous social conservative leaders from the state, to be very reassuring, and I would encourage everyone who doubts Romney's commitment to traditional family values to read it. It is clear that pro-life and pro-family organizations in Massachusetts considered Romney to be a rare friend and ally. Ironically, the very fact that Romney is a Mormon -- a sore point for some evangelicals -- reassures me even further that Romney's socially conservative beliefs are probably sincere. On other policy issues too, including RomneyCare, it is easy to fault Romney for not being a perfect conservative during his time as governor, but it appears that he accomplished as much as he could given the opposition he faced. Does anyone doubt that Massachusetts would have passed a government health care law, with or without Romney?

No, Romney is not a perfect candidate. He needs to do much better at convincing the GOP base that he is a conservative and is their ally. He can come across as emotionally detached and insincere, and his upscale background can make it hard for him to connect to working class voters. He has deviated from conservative ideology significantly in the past, although the most damning quotes are all a decade or more old. He needs to sharpen his attacks on Obama in the months ahead. But overall, Romney is an acceptable nominee and the best option that I see right now, since my candidates of choice Mike Pence and Mitch Daniels chose not to run. And don't underestimate the importance of choosing a nominee who can beat Obama. Every conservative should be able to agree that Romney would be a dramatic improvement over Obama, and having a "pure conservative" nominee like Santorum is useless if it only results in four more years of the most left-wing administration our country has ever had.

It has been a divisive primary, largely because of the weaknesses of the candidates running. The voters will have a chance to speak tomorrow in Florida, and in many other states over the next couple of months. I believe that Republicans voters should and will rally around Romney as the best of the available options. Once he is the nominee, conservatives everywhere should make it their top priority to get him elected to the White House. To fail to do so would be extremely harmful to our conservative principles and our country.

The State of the Union

2012-01-28T23:15:00.004-05:00

Here are a few random thoughts on the passing political scene (I think I stole that line from Thomas Sowell).

I (half) watched Obama's State of the Union speech this past week. I wasn't planning to do so, but my wife is teaching a government class this semester and wanted to set a good example for her students by watching it. So I sat in the room with her and listened to the speech in the background while working on other things.

The speech went on and on (over an hour I think) but never seemed to address the real challenges we face as a country. In all those thousands of words, Obama barely touched on the topic of our crippling national debt and completely ignored the vital issue of entitlement spending. In fact, the speech was filled with new spending initiatives and government "solutions." It's all business as usual for Obama. Lots of "investments in our future," which is code for government spending. And as expected, a lot of talk about everyone getting "their fair share" -- Obama is obsessed with income inequality. His only suggestion for fixing our debt problem is to make the rich pay a lot more in taxes. Never mind that the wealthiest 10% already pay pretty much all the taxes and that about 50% of Americans pay no income taxes at all. Never mind that, even if the U.S. government confiscated all the wealth of the 400 richest Americans, it would still be less than just the current year's budget deficit under Obama.

There was so much irony in the speech, for those who have been following Obama's actions as President. He talked a lot about working together for the good of the country -- ironic coming from a President who has done so much to divide us and has made zero effort to reach out to the other side of the political spectrum. He talked about Washington's failures, apparently unaware that he himself is the face of Washington and Washington's failures are his failures. He bragged about oil and gas production during his first term, even though he did everything he could to oppose it, including dramatically cutting back on federal oil and gas leases, banning certain offshore drilling, and opposing the Keystone pipeline. He complained about not being able to get quick up-or-down votes on his judicial nominees, even though he repeatedly joined his party in filibustering Bush nominees as a U.S. Senator. He praised the results of the bailouts of General Motors and Chrysler, and just a few short minutes later came down hard against bailouts. Against all evidence, he insisted that our relationship with Israel is stronger than it has ever been and that America is not in decline.

Most bizarrely, Obama's idea of an inspiring ending was to say that "this nation is great because we worked as a team. This nation is great because we get each other’s backs.” Yeah, that's great if you're describing your teenage son's soccer team. We've come a long way from "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

The Republican response, given by Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, was everything Obama's speech was not -- short, concise, and focused on the important stuff. Here are some excerpts from the speech that are well worth reading:

In three short years, an unprecedented explosion of spending, with borrowed money, has added trillions to an already unaffordable national debt. And yet, the President has put us on a course to make it radically worse in the years ahead. The federal government now spends one of every four dollars in the entire economy; it borrows one of every three dollars it spends. No nation, no entity, large or small, public or private, can thrive, or survive intact, with debts as huge as ours....

We do not accept that ours will ever be a nation of haves and have nots; we must always be a nation of haves and soon to haves....

The routes back to an America of promise, and to a solvent America that can pay its bills and protect its vulnerable, start in the same place. The only way up for those suffering tonight, and the only way out of the dead end of debt into which we have driven, is a private economy that begins to grow and create jobs, real jobs, at a much faster rate than today....

The extremism that stifles the development of homegrown energy, or cancels a perfectly safe pipeline that would employ tens of thousands, or jacks up consumer utility bills for no improvement in either human health or world temperature, is a pro-poverty policy. It must be replaced by a passionate pro-growth approach that breaks all ties and calls all close ones in favor of private sector jobs that restore opportunity for all and generate the public revenues to pay our bills.

That means a dramatically simpler tax system of fewer loopholes and lower rates. A pause in the mindless piling on of expensive new regulations that devour dollars that otherwise could be used to hire somebody. It means maximizing on the new domestic energy technologies that are the best break our economy has gotten in years....

The mortal enemies of Social Security and Medicare are those who, in contempt of the plain arithmetic, continue to mislead Americans that we should change nothing. Listening to them much longer will mean that these proud programs implode, and take the American economy with them. It will mean that coming generations are denied the jobs they need in their youth and the protection they deserve in their later years.

It’s absolutely so that everyone should contribute to our national recovery, including of course the most affluent among us. There are smart ways and dumb ways to do this: the dumb way is to raise rates in a broken, grossly complex tax system, choking off growth without bringing in the revenues we need to meet our debts. The better course is to stop sending the wealthy benefits they do not need, and stop providing them so many tax preferences that distort our economy and do little or nothing to foster growth....

As a loyal opposition, who put patriotism and national success ahead of party or ideology or any self-interest, we say that anyone who will join us in the cause of growth and solvency is our ally, and our friend. We will speak the language of unity. Let us rebuild our finances, and the safety net, and reopen the door to the stairway upward; any other disagreements we may have can wait.

My Thoughts on Ron Paul

2012-01-19T23:00:00.002-05:00

I started writing a blog post about Ron Paul a few weeks ago, when he was a threat to win the Iowa caucus. I never got a chance to finish it, but I decided to revisit the topic after reading the link A.K. posted on the blog earlier today. I'm a little hesitant to write too much about Ron Paul, because my opinions about him put me at odds with a lot of people I care about, including family members. But during this GOP primary season, he has made himself pretty hard to ignore, and I have to be honest about what I think.

First of all, I must say that I agree with Ron Paul on many issues -- some of which are well expressed by the Voddie Baucham article linked in the previous post. I do believe that Paul is a sincere Christian and a highly principled politician who holds the Constitution in high regard. I agree that he is the most committed of all candidates currently running for political office to dramatically cutting federal spending and controlling the burgeoning power of the federal government. While I think Paul may be overly obsessed with the Federal Reserve, he does raise valid concerns about its manipulation of currency. (A.K. is far more knowledgeable about this topic than I.) And I like his emphasis on individual liberty. However, although I probably agree with him on more issues than I disagree with him, I consider the areas of disagreement to be important enough and the degree of those disagreements to be sharp enough that I absolutely could not vote for him in the Republican primary. I would vote for him in a general election against Obama, but that is not saying much because I would vote for my cat over Obama as well.

Let me present, as best as I can, the reasons why I could not vote for Ron Paul in the Republican primary.

1.His position on terrorism. He believes that non-U.S. citizens, including enemy combatants, are entitled to the same constitutional rights as U.S. citizens. He believes that Guantanamo Bay should be shut down and that the foreign terrorists currently being held there should be brought to America and tried in civilian courts, rather than military tribunals (much like Obama and Eric Holder!). He does not believe the government should be permitted to use any kind of enhanced interrogation techniques on captured terrorists, even if it could lead to information that will prevent terrorist attacks and save lives (as it has). He opposes the Patriot Act, which I believe provides vital intelligence-gathering tools to the government to foil terrorist plots. I do not believe these anti-terrorism measures are unconstitutional, and I previously linked to some excellent articles by Andrew McCarthy related to these topics that explain why they are not unconstitutional.

In fact, Paul has repeatedly expressed his opinion that the U.S. brought the 9/11 attacks on itself -- at least to a certain extent -- by its foreign policy decisions, a view which both minimizes the sheer evil of terrorism and demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of radical Islam which underlies 9/11 and other attacks. According to Eric Dondero, a long-time former senior aide, Paul "was opposed to the War in Afghanistan, and to any military reaction to the attacks of 9/11.... He expressed no sympathies whatsoever for those who died on 9/11, and pretty much forbade us staffers from engaging in any sort of memorial expressions, or openly asserting pro-military statements in support of the Bush administration." Dondero says that Paul was planning to vote "no" on the resolution authorizing force in Afghanistan, but changed his mind at the last minute, perhaps realizing that a no vote would be political suicide. Paul even questioned our recent killing of Osama bin Laden. I believe that Ron Paul's position on terrorism would put our country in grave danger from radical Islamic terrorism -- in violation of his most fundamental duty as Commander-in-Chief which is to keep our country safe from foreign enemies.

2. His anti-Americanism. Ron Paul always seems to rush to the most negative judgment about our country and our involvement in the world. In the presidential debates, he has parroted left-wing lies about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, such as calling them "blood for oil" and
"wars of occupation and aggression" and saying we declared "war on 1.2 billion Muslims." He accused the Americans who justifiably spoke out against the Islamic Center near Ground Zero of being Islamophobic, saying that "neo-conservatives never miss a chance to use hatred toward Muslims to rally support for the ill conceived preventative wars."

Worst of all, there is evidence that he sympathizes with "9/11 truthers," people who believe that the 9/11 attacks were an inside job carried out by the U.S. government. While Paul has long associated with crazies who believe this, the link here shows a recent video of Paul answering a question from a supporter about "why [he] won't come out about the truth about 9/11," an obvious reference to "truther" conspiracy claims. Paul's response? "Because I can’t handle the controversy, I have the IMF, the Federal Reserve to deal with, the IRS to deal with, because, no, because I just have more-too many things on my plate. Because I just have too much to do." It seems obvious to me that Paul agrees with the truthers, but he won't come out and say it because it would be too controversial. And Paul apparently has been greatly influenced an old friend named Lew Rockwell, whose libertarian website has published some incredibly nasty things about the U.S. military (see this post for an example).

3. His foreign policy beliefs. Ron Paul believes that we should dramatically cut funding for our military and withdraw our troops from all their bases and locations around the world (everywhere from Germany to the Korean border). He has publicly stated that our country faces no threat from Iran and believes they have a perfect right to acquire nuclear weapons. He is against all trade sanctions, even with countries like Iran and Cuba.

Quoting Dondero again, Paul is "most certainly Anti-Israel, and Anti-Israeli in general. He wishes the Israeli state did not exist at all. He expressed this to me numerous times in our private conversations. His view is that Israel is more trouble than it is worth, specifically to the American taxpayer. He sides with the Palestinians, and supports their calls for the abolishment of the Jewish state, and the return of Israel, all of it, to the Arabs." These claims are consistent with everything I have heard him say relating to Israel. While I agree with Voddie Baucham that the U.S. is not obligated to always agree with Israel, I think we should recognize Israel as virtually the only country in the Middle East that shares our democratic values and stands side-by-side with us against terrorism. Dondero also said that Paul "strenuously does not believe the United States had any business getting involved in fighting Hitler in WWII. He expressed to me countless times that 'saving the Jews' was absolutely none of our business." This is also a believable claim about Paul, since such a view is common in radical libertarian circles.

4. His slanders against fellow Republicans. During a recent campaign speech in Iowa, Paul said that immediately following the 9/11 attacks, "there was glee in the (Bush) administration, because now we can invade Iraq." This is a nasty slander against Bush that is entirely contradicted both by the shock, horror, and anger exhibited by Bush and his top aides following the attacks, and also by the fact that the war in Iraq did not start for well over a year after 9/11. Paul also recently appeared on the Jay Leno show, where he accused Michele Bachmann of hating Muslims simply because of her mainstream Republican beliefs about Iran and terrorism, and suggested Rick Santorum also hated Muslims and gays. He wants to be accepted and respected as a legitimate contender for the Republican nomination, but he shows little respect for his fellow Republicans. His loyalty to the party he wants to represent is questionable at best, since he left the party once before to run as a third party presidential candidate, and has not ruled out doing so again this year.

5. His support for the legalization of drugs. I am somewhat open to the idea of legalizing comparatively harmless drugs like marijuana, but Paul supports the legalization of all drugs, even hardcore ones like heroin, crystal meth, and cocaine. While the war on drugs has been costly for the U.S., I believe that it would be more costly for these dangerous and highly addictive drugs to be legal and readily available. Paul has even suggested that U.S. policy on this issue deliberately targets African-Americans for tougher sentences and therefore is racist -- a charge that would seem to be more at home in a Democratic debate than a Republican one.

6. His utterly unrealistic candidacy. Ron Paul supporters disagree with me, of course, but I believe that it is virtually impossible for Paul to be elected to the presidency. If, through some scenario almost impossible to imagine, he were to win the GOP nomination, he would split the party, since more than 60% of Republicans in polls say that he is an "unacceptable" nominee. The Left, which has been pretty nice to him so far, would turn on him with a vengeance and viciously attack him for all kinds of out-of-the-mainstream comments and votes. Remember those old racist newsletters published under Paul's name in the 1990's and Paul's disapproving comments about the Civil Rights Act? We'll be hearing a lot more about those things, courtesy of the media. (And to be honest, I think those issues raise real concerns about him too, even though I do not believe he is personally racist.) And even if he could get elected, he would not be able to accomplish anything close to what his supporters think he could accomplish. With almost no institutional support from either party, he would probably be unable to deliver on nearly all of his agenda. You think the outcry is loud now when Republican propose even modest adjustments to Medicare and Social Security? Imagine when Ron Paul comes on the scene and starts proposing eliminating dozens of departments and agencies!

I have tried to explain, in the limited time available to me, the major reasons why I could not vote for Ron Paul. Some of his supporters agree with Paul on most of the points listed above. Many others who support him disagree with many of these more extreme positions and statements, but still support him because they think his integrity and intention to dramatically shrink government make up for his shortcomings. Personally, I am bothered by the personality cult that seems to surround Paul, and the fact that many of his supporters seem to believe he is the only acceptable candidate and the only hope for America (Voddie Baucham does not).

But I also believe that there are many good people supporting Ron Paul, and the Republican party should treat Paul and his supporters with respect and should not take them for granted. Partly I believe this because the Republicans need the votes of many of his supporters in the general election. But I also believe this because the Republican party would do well to follow Paul's lead on many issues relating to our federal spending and our national debt. If he can influence the party to become more focused on restoring our country's economic liberty and fiscal solvency, then our party and our country will both benefit from his presence in the race.

Under no circumstances, though, do I think he should be the GOP nominee!

"Why Ron Paul?"

2012-01-19T14:40:00.002-05:00

I have a feeling this will stir things up. But that's ok. This is an excellent post by Voddie Baucham about why he supports Ron Paul. I think he does an excellent job of summing up Ron Paul's positions on many issues. I was also interested to read his discussion of Ron Paul's support/non-support (depending on who says it) of Israel. I am curious to hear what people have to say about this (assuming anyone's reading) so please comment.

New York City's War on the Churches

2012-01-13T08:43:00.005-05:00

I first heard about this story this past Sunday, when my grandfather's church brought this up as a matter for prayer. New York City is banning churches from using public schools for worship services at times when the schools are not in session. World Magazine has great coverage of this topic here and here. Because building space is so expensive and hard to find in New York, more than 150 churches depend on using public schools as meeting places. And the schools benefit significantly, collecting millions of dollars in rent that can be used to fund education. Furthermore, many of these churches are located in the poorest neighborhoods in New York and provide valuable services to the community, including caring for the homeless and for children.

So what is the rationale for this decision by the New York Board of Education? They say that "impressionable children" might think the schools are endorsing religious belief. In other words, the board is hostile to religion and thinks it is a negative thing for children to be exposed to it. As I mentioned in my last post, this is a sad distortion of the First Amendment, which prohibits "an establishment of religion." This means that the government is not permitted to establish a national church or to compel people to worship in a certain way or contribute money to a particular religious denomination -- as many of the colonies did when they were under English control. The Founders staunchly believed in individual freedom of conscience when it came to religious belief and practice. They would have been horrified if they had known that the First Amendment would be used by anti-Christian zealots to try to muzzle religious influence in society and government. They themselves constantly alluded to God and used Christian themes in their public speeches and promoted days of public prayer and thanksgiving to God. George Washington stated that "religion and morality are indispensable supports to any society."

Schools in New York City and around the country are constantly renting out their facilities for use by private groups during times when they are not needed for school activities. Everyone knows that the schools are not endorsing the beliefs of every group or organization that may rent its facilities. This is a right offered to both religious and non-religious organizations, and it is a benefit for both the school and the renting organization. By denying religious groups the same right to use school facilities that non-religious groups have, New York City is actively discriminating against religion -- and is doing so at a cost both to its own schools and to its communities. In fact, I would argue the city's action is detrimental to the free exercise of religion, because some of these churches may be forced to shut down entirely if they cannot find another place to meet.

Apparently New York decided to follow up this attack on religion with an attack on free speech as well. Police arrested 7 protesters, including 2 pastors, and held them in custody for three hours. Their crime? Kneeling in prayer and singing 2 hymns outside the city's Law Department office. They subsequently arrested 43 other people who were singing hymns and praying as part of a protest outside of a building in which the mayor was giving a speech. Contrast the treatment of these people exercising their right to speech and to peaceably assemble with the treatment by the police of the Occupy Wall Street protesters, who were permitted to block traffic on a major road and then allowed to spend months camping out in a public park, stinking up an entire section of the city and damaging property, before they were finally removed. Talk about a double standard.

I'm glad that my grandfather's church is standing in solidarity with these churches in New York. I think all of us who are concerned about the increasing hostility of government toward religion, especially public expressions of religion, should do the same.

Victory for Religious Liberty

2012-01-12T13:33:00.004-05:00

I was encouraged to read about the recent Supreme Court decision Hosanna-Tabor Church v. EEOC. The high court ruled unanimously that the government does not have the right under the First Amendment to interfere in the choices of churches, synagogues, and other religious organizations to hire or fire their own ministers, teachers, and other religious leaders. If the court had ruled otherwise, religious liberty would be in grave jeopardy. In the majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that “it is impermissible for the government to contradict a church’s determination of who can act as its ministers.”

Sadly, the Obama Administration argued vigorously against religious liberty in this case -- and was soundly beaten. This is yet another example of how out of touch Obama and his Justice Department are when it comes to our Constitutional freedoms.

You can read more about this decision on National Review Online's legal blog here and here. One of those links includes the following great quote on the First Amendment:

Church-state separation is often misunderstood and seen as an anti-religious program, or as requiring that “religion” stay out of politics or public life. But this is not the point of church-state separation at all. The idea is to constrain government regulation, not religious expression and practice. Separation is an arrangement that protects religious authorities, institutions, and communities from unjustified interference by governments.

Indeed, the phrase "separation of church and state" is not even in the Constitution. Instead, the Constitution states that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." It seems clear to me, both from the wording used and from what we know about the Founders, that the purpose of this clause was to encourage and protect religious practice and expression, not to stifle it. Today, some seem to think its purpose is to keep religious people from holding office or expressing their views in public.

Obama's Mockery of the Constitution, Part 2

2012-01-10T11:34:00.004-05:00

I want to follow up on what I wrote last week on Obama's "recess appointments" by linking to this excellent opinion article in The Wall Street Journal by Michael McConnell, the director of the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School. McConnell ably explains why Obama's unconstitutional appointments matter and refutes claims made by Obama's defenders.

I highly recommend that you read the entire article, as I cannot summarize everything from it here. However, I wanted to highlight one portion of the article in which McConnell notes that Obama's latest appointments merely continue the pattern of callous disregard for the Constitution that has marked his entire presidency. Obama decided to go to war in Libya not only without a congressional declaration of war, but also without following the reporting requirements of the War Powers Resolution that included a 60-day deadline for congressional authorization. His administration is attempting to bypass Congress entirely by imposing cap-and-trade regulations and union card check legislation, despite the fact that the people's representatives in Congress have rejected both.

Obama believes that he is above the law. He believes he has the right to appoint whomever he wants to whatever position he wants without congressional approval, the right to make sweeping new laws apart from Congress, and the right to unilaterally take our country to war with no accountability to Congress whatsoever. If he gets away with this behavior, he will be emboldened to be even more brazen. Democrats don't care; they support Obama's actions. Republicans control only one branch of Congress and so can do little to stop Obama -- and they are not doing a very good job using the power and public platform they do have. The media is far too busy asking the Republican presidential candidates about their views on contraception to bother to keep Obama accountable. It is difficult and time-consuming to challenge many of these things in court.

2012 is a critical year for those of us who value our constitutional system. We have a chance to defeat Obama, and we'd better not screw it up. I read comments on several conservative websites, and it worries me how divided conservatives are and how determined they seem to be to cannibalize each other. We may disagree on which of the GOP candidates is the best, but we should all agree that any of them, with all their imperfections, would be infinitely better than Obama. Romney, Santorum, Perry, Gingrich, Huntsman -- any of them. (Ron Paul is a bit of a special case, and his views are so dramatically out of the mainstream of the Republican party that I could understand some Republicans being unwilling to support him. But he is a niche candidate who has no chance of winning the nomination.) I keep reading comments from supposed conservatives saying they would "never" vote for ___ [insert name of Romney, Santorum, Gingrich, etc]. If conservatives continue with that attitude, they will swing this election to Obama. As conservatives, we should have one political goal this year, and everything we do should further that goal. Obama's defeat is the only thing that will make achieving our other goals possible, including repealing ObamaCare.

Obama's Latest Mockery of the Constitution

2012-01-05T07:20:00.002-05:00

This week, Obama appointed Richard Cordray to head the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. That's not the problem.

The problem is that this appointment is supposedly a "recess appointment." Recess appointments are a loophole that enables the president to avoid the constitutional requirement for top governmental and judicial appointees to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate. Recess appointments are only constitutionally permissible if Congress is in "recess." Congress is not in "recess" this week, according to the criteria set forth by Article I, Section 5 of the Constitution and its explanation in past Justice Department briefs. Congress is legally in session, and therefore Obama is not eligible to make recess appointments. But he did it anyway.

This is an open mockery of our Constitution -- and an unprecedented one. Back in 2007, Congress stayed in session for over a year to keep President Bush from making recess appointments. At one point, Congress was called into session for just 27 seconds to prevent such recess appointments. Because President Bush respected the Constitution and the rule of law, he did not make an illegal recess appointment. Now we have a president who doesn't care.

There's a reason the Constitution set up these checks and balances regarding presidential appointments. We live in a constitutional republic with division of powers between three branches of government. The whole point of the "advice and consent" Senate role is to keep the President accountable and ensure that his appointments are broadly acceptable to the public. If the President has the right to ignore such constitutional requirements altogether, he is setting himself above the law.

Obama's new appointee, Richard Cordray, will have tremendous power to influence the economy. The new Financial Consumer Protection Bureau can regulate any and every consumer transaction in this country. Because it is funded out of the Federal Reserve, it has no accountability to Congress. And now all power in this bureau is vested in one individual rather than in a five-member board (which was the original intent when this bureau was set up). Congress was trying to avoid this situation, where one unaccountable bureaucrat was running a powerful unaccountable agency, so it deliberately stayed in session to try to force reforms. Little did they know that Obama would trample on Constitutional and historical precedent to get his way.

People need to know what Obama is doing. The press is not reporting this accurately. CNN's headline is "Obama Recess Appoints Consumer Bureau Chief." You have to read deep into the lengthy article to even find out that Congress is not in recess, so therefore this cannot be a recess appointment. This illegal appointment by Obama continues his past history of avoiding Senate advice and consent by appointing an unprecedented number of powerful, unaccountable czars.

We need a President who respects the Constitution. Right now, we don't have one.

My Thoughts on the Recent Payroll Tax Scuffle

2011-12-27T14:20:00.006-05:00

Here are my thoughts on the recent payroll tax cut scuffle. The dirty little secret about the so-called "standoff" over the payroll tax cut is that the Republicans in the House were clearly right about wanting to extend the payroll tax cut for at least a year instead of the 2-month extension in the Democratic Senate bill. A 2-month payroll tax cut is laughable. Payroll software developers will barely have time to modify their programs to reflect the changes before those changes expire. It will have zero impact on the economy, since employers don't hire people for 2 months (or even for a year). Their hiring decisions are based on planning years ahead, not weeks or months. Of course, all such an "agreement" does is ensure we will have exactly the same argument again in 2 months, when once more the payroll tax cuts will expire and Congress will be scrambling to once more extend them. What kind of way is this to run a government?

OK, so maybe the House Republicans aren't exactly "right" on the policy aspect of this. Probably the right thing to do is to expose the fact that this supposed tax cut is really just a handout of about $19 per paycheck to middle-class employees -- taking money out of the Social Security trust fund while doing nothing to stimulate long-term economic growth. But what they are proposing makes much more sense than the 2-month extension passed by the Senate. And yet, everyone seems to agree that the GOP has thoroughly lost the debate and the Democrats have seized the tax-cutting mantle.

I'm not saying that the House Republicans couldn't have done better. They clearly walked into a political trap set for them by Obama and the Democrats. But there is still no way that the Democrats should come out smelling like a rose on this issue when their position is utterly ridiculous, from a substantive policy perspective. Obama's poll numbers have actually gone up and the Democrats are now perceived more favorably than Republicans on the issue of taxes. This is because the press has not covered this issue accurately. They have not helped Americans to understand the real substance of this debate and why a 2-month extension bill is not worth the paper it's written on. And the American people are also to blame because they have blindly accepted what has been spoon-fed to them by the media and by political soundbites. They have been bought off by simplistic solutions and easy handouts.

This is where I disagree a little bit with some other conservatives, who want to cast most of the blame on John Boehner and the Republicans in Congress. I don't exactly think Boehner is the brightest bulb in the box and I've been disappointed with a lot of his compromises in the past with Obama. But what exactly was he supposed to do in this situation? He tried to take a stand against the ridiculous 2-month tax cut bill passed by the Senate, but was pounded by the media. Even conservative talk radio hosts criticized his boneheaded political move of picking a fight in an election year that he could not win (from a political perspective). Then, he gave in and agreed to the Senate bill, and conservative talk radio hosts blasted him for not standing for his principles! It is easy for arm-chair pundits to attack elected Republicans for being politically stupid, or unprincipled, or insufficiently eloquent. But these Republicans are stuck in a morass called Washington, DC, which will often make you look politically stupid for standing on your principles and will reward unprincipled politicians. While very few possess the eloquence of Ronald Reagan, many congressional Republicans are capable of making a half-decent case for their positions if given the opportunity to speak and the audience to listen. But it is very hard for them to get their message across, given the 24/7 news cycle, a political culture where everything is reduced to 30-second soundbites, the hostility of much of the mainstream media, and the indifference of much of the public. They will never be able to make their case as effectively as Obama, with his gigantic bully pulpit and a highly-sympathetic press. It's always easy to blame politicians, but maybe it would be more accurate to blame the voters who repeatedly let themselves be swayed by empty rhetoric and deceitful promises. Not to mention a biased media that manipulates those voters into falling for such rhetoric.

Welcome to Our World

2011-12-25T22:56:00.002-05:00

Tears are falling, hearts are breaking
How we need to hear from God
You've been promised, we've been waiting
Welcome Holy Child
Welcome Holy Child

Hope that You don't mind our manger
How I wish we would have known
But long-awaited Holy Stranger
Make Yourself at home
Please make Yourself at home

Bring Your peace into our violence
Bid our hungry souls be filled
Word now breaking Heaven's silence
Welcome Holy Child
Welcome Holy Child

Fragile finger sent to heal us
Tender brow prepared for thorn
Tiny heart whose blood will save us
Unto us is born
Unto us is born

So wrap our injured flesh around You
Breathe our air and walk our sod
Rob our sin and make us holy
Perfect Son of God
Perfect Son of God
Welcome to our world

~Chris Rice, "Welcome to Our World"

For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.

~2 Corinthians 8:9

Merry Christmas!

Today's Impromptus...

2011-12-22T07:49:00.003-05:00

...by Jay Nordlinger of National Review Online is well worth reading. Actually, they all are, but this one is especially good. Check it out here.

One of the highlights of this Impromptus, along with the excellent comments about Ron Paul, was his account of what the Zambian foreign minister said to Amnesty International. Amnesty International, a despicable pseudo-human rights organization, called on Zambia and other African countries to arrest former President George W. Bush during his visit to that continent for "war crimes." Zambian foreign minister Chishimba Kambwili said this in reply: “On what basis does Amnesty International want us to arrest Mr. Bush? Tell them to hang, and also please ask them to create their own country and wait for Mr. Bush to visit their country so that they can arrest him to suit their wish and not here in Zambia.” Tell 'em, Chishimba!

Illinnoyed?

2011-12-15T08:01:00.003-05:00

I thought this Washington Times article about the stark economic differences between two neighboring states, Indiana and Illinois, was fascinating. States are an interesting microcosm of the country as a whole, and comparing the economic results of different policy approaches taken by different states should be instructive for our federal politicians as they try to figure out how to get our country out of its current economic mess. Months ago, I posted a link to an online Forbes article discussing how draconian environmental regulations had damaged the economy of California and driven businesses out of the state in large numbers. Like California, Obama's home state is dominated by left-wing Democrats, and those Illinois Democratic politicians are doing their very best to follow in California's footsteps.

About a year ago, Illinois's Democratic legislature, with support from its Democratic governor, forced through huge tax increases -- 67% increases for individuals, 30% increases for businesses -- on a party line vote (in a lame-duck session, no less). Since then, the state has lost 89,000 jobs. Over the past year it has competed with neighboring Indiana for new investment and jobs 45 times, and lost 42 of those contests to Indiana. The state has also had to turn around and offer tax incentives to large corporations based in the state to keep them from moving out, which has understandably enraged the public. And ironically, the revenue gained from those massive tax increases, supposedly needed to pay down the state's debt to avoid fiscal insolvency, has simply been used to pay bloated public employee pensions and as an excuse to continue to increase spending. Of course, out-of-control spending is the reason why both the federal government and many state governments are tetering on the brink of insolvency, but Democrats (and some Republicans as well) have no interest in reining in spending. They want to raise taxes instead, which hurts businesses, kills job growth, and drives away investment, which in turn makes the budget crisis even worse, which results in added debt. It's a vicious cycle that has left Illinois's economy in shambles and threatens our entire country as well.

By contrast, Indiana is headed by a fiscally responsible Republican governor (Mitch Daniels) and a conservative legislature that has succeeded in balancing its budget, reducing spending, and keeping taxes low. This is why the state has been so effective at stealing new business and investment from Illinois that it has started an ad campaign called "Illinnoyed?" that explicitly targets Illinois businesses.

Next November, our country has to decide whether to re-elect Barack Obama, another Democratic politician obsessed with raising taxes on the rich and on the evil corporations but completely uninterested in taking any meaningful steps to reduce federal spending and reform entitlements. I hope that, unlike Illinois, we make the right choice.

If I Were to Sum Up My Values on a Bumper Sticker...

2011-12-13T07:39:00.004-05:00

Yesterday morning on the way to work I was behind a car with an interesting bumper sticker. In big letters the sticker said "MY FAMILY VALUES," and then listed seven items: Equality, Free Speech, Accountability, Tolerance, Education, Liberty, and Peace.

Even though the bumper sticker called the items listed above "family" values, I would consider them to be largely political and social values rather than personal family values. And I disagree with most of them. True equality can never be achieved because people are not equal in their abilities, intellect, work ethic, determination, goals, etc. Our society should strive not for equality in wealth and outcomes, but rather for justice -- ensuring everyone is treated equally under the law -- and for equal opportunity for all people to succeed. Free speech is certainly important, but I would describe it as merely one critical aspect of liberty, the one item on the list with which I am in wholehearted agreement. I'm not even sure what is meant by accountability, but I don't think it's important enough to make it on a top 7 list of values. I value tolerance in the old sense of the word -- showing kindness and respect for people with differing beliefs and opinions. Today tolerance means recognizing all beliefs and opinions as equally valid and silencing any speech that could be perceived by anyone else as offensive. In this sense, tolerance is a threat to values I consider important like liberty and respect for truth. Education is not always a positive thing. It can be positive or negative, depending on whether the ideas being taught are true or false, beneficial or harmful. And while peace is an ideal to strive for, war and conflict are sometimes necessary to defeat evil and promote justice. Neville Chamberlain's "peace in our time" approach to the Nazi threat was foolish, and if the civil rights movement's primary goal was absence of conflict it would never have challenged the racist status quo.

Still, that bumper sticker got me thinking about what values I consider important. If I were to make a comparable list of the political and social values that I consider to be most critical to a healthy and prosperous democracy, here are the ones I would include (in no particular order):

--Justice
--Personal Responsibility
--Integrity
--Equal Opportunity
--Liberty
--Biblical Morality
--Compassion/Kindness
--Respect for Truth

If these principles do not largely prevail in the beliefs and behavior of our citizens and elected officials, I fear for the future of our country.

So This Is What Hope-and-Change Looks Like

2011-12-10T10:57:00.004-05:00

Item 1: The Justice Department's involvement in a botched operation called "Fast and Furious" which put 2,000 U.S. guns into the hands of Mexican drug cartels. Those cartels then used the guns to kill more than 300 people, including two U.S. agents. The Assistant Attorney General then apparently lied about it in May, when he denied that the government had lost track of any guns. Apparently, Obama's Justice Department is not only woefully incompetent, but also corrupt. Of course, no one has lost his job over this yet, and don't hold your breath either.

Item 2: The Department of Health and Human Services's awarding of a $433 million no-bid contract to a company run by a top Obama donor. Both the bidding process and the product provided under the bid appear to be highly suspect, as this NY Post article outlines, and now even Democratic senators are calling for an investigation. Hmmm...sounds a little like Solyndra. And come to think of it, no one in the Obama administration lost his job over that scandalous waste of taxpayer dollars either.

It's not just that the Obama administration is left-wing. It's that it is incompetent and corrupt. I can understand why liberals would defend an administration that is merely far to the left, but I would think they would be bothered by the incompetence and corruption.

Finally, one of my favorite conservative columnists, Mark Steyn, humorously demonstrates the folly of Obama's big-government mindset in this National Review Online article.

Odds 'n Ends

2011-12-09T11:09:00.002-05:00

Here are a few interesting links and comments for today:

First, I had the privilege of attending a prayer rally outside of Leroy Carhart's late-term abortion clinic in Germantown, Maryland on Monday morning. The rally memorialized the first anniversary of Carhart's presence in Germantown and planted 720 crosses in the ground to symbolize the approximately 720 human lives killed during that first year. I was greatly encouraged to see how many people came out to participate on a weekday morning, but I couldn't believe it when I checked online afterwards and found out that more than 2,000 people attended! That is more than double the attendance for the other large protests I have attended over the past year and far more than organizers expected.

Second, I found an interesting exchange relating to the treatment of enemy combatants between Andrew McCarthy of National Review and Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky which I thought was well worth reading. McCarthy's original article was in response to a discussion on the Senate floor between Sen. Paul and Sen. McCain on this topic (McCarthy links to a video of this discussion in his article). While I don't necessarily agree with everything McCarthy writes, especially related to the topic of Lincoln's conduct during the War Between the States, I think it is one of the best articles I have read refuting Ron and Rand Paul's positions on the War on Terror. McCarthy also has some harsh words regarding the U.S.'s attempts (under Pres. Bush) to set up democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan. I think I have largely come around to McCarthy's perspective on this as well, in hindsight. Rand Paul wrote a short response to McCarthy's article here, which McCarthy then responded to again here and here. Of course, I think McCarthy by far got the better of this argument, but I'm far from an objective observer and Paul's single response may have been too brief to present his argument well.

Finally, Charles Krauthammer summarizes Obama's case for re-election in this article with two words: class resentment. After all, what else does he really have to run on? He has no ideas to solve the big problems facing our country -- the ballooning national debt, out-of-control government spending, runaway entitlement programs, and an outdated and unfair tax code. In fact, his policies have only made these problems worse. He has not been active in working with Congress and seeking a bi-partisan solution to these problems, and barely lifted a finger to help the debt commission (that he himself authorized) succeed. As Gov. Chris Christie succinctly put it, "What the hell are we paying you for, Mr. President?" He says he needs to be re-elected because there are so many pressing problems facing our country that he hasn't finished solving, but he's spent the past year doing little more than giving campaign-style speeches, attending fundraising, and golfing. Next year will certainly be more of the same. He can't run on his record, so he has to blame others for all our country's problems -- especially the rich. His big campaign strategy is to pound the Republican nominee relentlessly and propose big new taxes for the rich to make sure they pay "their fair share." And I'm sure, with the help of the media, that strategy will lock up tens of millions of votes for him. Maybe enough to get re-elected.

Locavorism

2011-12-01T08:58:00.002-05:00

The local food movement has long been one of my pet peeves. This is a great article from Freakonomics that discusses some of the economic principles (division of labor, specialization, economies of scale...) that the push towards small, local farms seeks to ignore. It also applies these issues to climate change.

"From roughly 1940 to 1990, the world’s farmers doubled their output to accommodate a doubling of the world population. And they did it on a shrinking base of cropland. Agricultural productivity can continue to grow, but not by turning back the clock. Local foods may have a place in the market. But they should stand on their own, and local food consumers should understand that they aren’t necessarily buying something that helps the planet, and it may hurt the poor."

Newt for President?

2011-11-29T20:50:00.003-05:00

With Herman Cain thoroughly discredited, Newt Gingrich appears to be the newest rising star in the GOP primary and seems to be assuming the mantle as the favored "anti-Mitt" candidate. He is surging in the polls and just got a high-profile endorsement from an influential New Hampshire newspaper.

Is Newt really here to stay? Or will his rise and fall mirror the trajectory of the string of other alternatives to Romney -- Michelle Bachmann, Rick Perry, and Herman Cain? It's hard to say, of course, but I honestly find it rather amusing that the Anybody-but-Romney crowd seems to be settling on Newt Gingrich, of all people. To my mind, Gingrich has all the flaws of Romney as well as some big additional ones that Romney doesn't have.

One of the biggest complaints about Romney is that he has flip-flopped on too many issues and therefore his conservative credentials are suspect. But what about Gingrich? He flip-flopped on his position on the war in Libya over the period of just a few weeks. He appeared in a video with Nancy Pelosi three years ago advocating government intervention to prevent global climate change, although now he is singing a different tune. Are Gingrich's positions on the issues really more conservative than Romney? I don't know of a single major issue where Gingrich is significantly to the right of Romney -- correct me if I'm wrong.

Another complaint about Romney is that he is a typical politician, willing to throw conservative principles under the bus to appeal to moderates. But again, Gingrich has the same problem. I was shocked and appalled a few months ago when I heard Gingrich recycle tired Democratic talking points about Paul Ryan's budget plan and how it would throw seniors out in the snow, etc. Those comments were at least as bad, in my view, as Romney's attacks on Perry regarding Social Security for political expediency.

Romney takes a lot of heat for being an "establishment" Republican. But I don't know how much more of a Washington insider you can get than Newt Gingrich. He served in Congress for decades dating back to the 1970's. And he seemed to have some rather "cozy" relationships (some might say corrupt) in Washington, if the nearly $2 million of payments he collected from Freddie Mac are any indication. I can well remember the ire that Gingrich provoked from the conservative base back in 2009 when he endorsed the very liberal Republican candidate in the New York 23rd Congressional race over the Conservative party candidate. In many ways, he is more of an establishment candidate than Romney is.

Romney is also criticized for his public persona. He can come across as too slick and polished, aloof, a bit of a know-it-all, even slightly condescending. But what about Gingrich? He seems to have an even more exaggerated sense of self-importance than Romney and also has a combative personality. He is less likable than Romney (in my subjective opinion) and has a history of putting his foot in his mouth and of somewhat erratic behavior.

About the only major criticism of Romney that cannot be similarly applied to Gingrich, in my opinion, is the Massachusetts RomneyCare issue. This is a big concern I have, no doubt, and no matter how much Romney tries to finesse it, that issue will hamper his ability to attack Obama's health care plan during the campaign. But Gingrich has some pretty big liabilities as well.

For one thing, most Republicans did not consider Gingrich to be a very effective leader once he became Speaker of the House in 1995. He seemed to alternate between poorly-conceived political standoffs (the government shutdown) and disappointing compromises with the Democrats, and he was the only House Speaker ever to be forced out of his position by his own party. He did well getting his party into power in the first place, but his ego seemed to hamper his ability to lead once his party took power. That doesn't seem to bode well for his ability to be an effective president. As a college professor, he is great at talking, but I'm not so sure whether he is as good at leading. Reminds me of another college professor that proved even more incompetent as a national leader.....

Then there is the issue of Gingrich's pattern of having affairs, divorcing his previous wife, and marrying a younger woman. The most recent time this happened was only a little over a decade ago, so it's not like this was some indiscretion from his youth. I know some people say personal life doesn't matter, but I disagree. A candidate's pattern of personal behavior tells you a lot about his character and how he will behave once in office. If a candidate finds it easy to break a very important promise he makes to the person closest to him, how much easier will it be for him to break those much less important promises he makes on the campaign trail to people he doesn't even know? If he is corrupt in his personal dealings, why would you expect him to be honest as an elected official? And if the latest revelation about Herman Cain's long-term affair disqualifies him from being president, why should Gingrich's affairs be considered irrelevant?

All this is just a long way of saying that I really do not think Gingrich is a good alternative to Romney. I don't think it is at all clear that Gingrich would be a more reliably conservative president, and I have doubts both about his personal integrity and his electability. Either of them, of course, would be preferable to Obama....

The Moral Compass of the Obama Administration

2011-11-29T14:15:00.003-05:00

I often hear pro-choice people argue that they are not really FOR abortion. No one, they say, thinks abortion is a good thing -- it is merely the best of a bunch of bad options in some tragic cases. Well, there are probably plenty of pro-choice individuals who really do consider abortion a bad thing and even a tragedy, but the leaders of the Democratic party are definitely not part of that group.

In fact, for them abortion is so precious that the very word is avoided, lest it produce a negative reaction. Democrats don't talk about abortion -- they always use euphemisms like "the right to choose," "women's rights," and "family planning services." The right to choose what? They never say. Someone unfamiliar with American political word games would be utterly clueless as to what these politicians were even talking about. Of all the important choices that exist in this world and all the important rights that women have, it all boils down to one thing for the Obama crowd: abortion. Abortion for any reason, at any stage in the pregnancy, with no restrictions. They mean nothing more and nothing less than this when they talk about "choice" and "women's rights." This right is so sacrosanct to Obama that he refused to support a bill in the Illinois state legislature that offered protection to babies that were delivered alive as a result of botched abortions. It is so sacrosanct to Senator Barbara Boxer that she once stated on the Senate floor that a baby obtains rights once the mother "takes it home from the hospital."

For Democratic leaders and liberal activists, "the right to choose" (you know, abortion, that procedure that nobody thinks is a good thing) trumps almost every other issue. It was one of the only major issues that President Clinton never compromised with the Republicans on during his time in office, even going so far as to veto a ban on partial-birth abortion. Obama and Pelosi insisted on taxpayer funding for abortion in the final version of the health care bill even when doing so risked the defeat of the entire measure.

But if you really need proof of how sacred abortion rights are to the modern Democratic party, look no further than the Obama Health and Human Services Department, led by pro-abortion crusader Kathleen Sebelius. I found this article from the National Catholic Register, which tellingly shows what happens when the cause of helping victims of human trafficking comes into conflict with promoting abortion. The author of the article, Steven Wagner, formerly directed the Human Trafficking Program at HHS.

To summarize: The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) was chosen in 2006 as the organization best qualified to administer the Human Trafficking Program, and has been doing so ever since. That is, until this year, when Sebelius changed the rules of the competition to give "strong preference" to applicants that offer "the full range of legally permissible gynecological and obstetric care" (translation: perform abortions). Even under the new rules putting the USCCB at a disadvantage, their grant proposal still scored the second highest of all proposals submitted. Sebelius still chose to deny any funds to the USCCB and gave those funds instead to two other abortion-providing organizations that were deemed by the non-political program staff to be unqualified.

Wagner, who is very familiar with the horror of the sex trade, goes on to explain why having an abortion puts women who are trafficking victims in more danger. Victims are under the domination of someone else and therefore cannot provide informed consent to an abortion. Pregnancy keeps the victims off the street; an abortion merely serves the interest of the pimp by putting the victim back on the street to face further risk of exploitation and death (average life expectancy of victims involved in the sex trade is 7 years). Pregnancy also dramatically increases the likelihood that a woman will seek help, while an abortion reduces that likelihood.

It's pretty hard to avoid the conclusion that in Obama's HHS, abortion must be promoted at all costs, even if it harms victims of human trafficking. The moral priorities of this administration could not be clearer. I hope that pro-choice people who do at least acknowledge some moral dilemma in regard to unrestricted abortion -- rather than regarding it as a positive moral good to be promoted at all costs -- will recognize how radical this administration's position really is. You don't have to believe that life begins at conception to recoil at the actions of people like Sebelius and late-term abortionist Leroy Carhart in Germantown.

Happy Thanksgiving!

2011-11-24T08:00:00.002-05:00

This is a re-post from last year, but I think it bears repeating. I am thankful that when we see what is happening in our country and in the world, we can still look to our all-wise, all-powerful, omniscient and Provident God who holds the world in His hands and know that He is indeed working all things together for good. That is what I am thankful for this Thanksgiving.

George Washington's Thanksgiving Proclamation
General Thanksgiving
By the PRESIDENT of the United States Of America
A PROCLAMATION
WHEREAS it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favour; and Whereas both Houzes of Congress have, by their joint committee, requested me "to recommend to the people of the United States a DAY OF PUBLICK THANSGIVING and PRAYER, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to eftablish a form of government for their safety and happiness:"

NOW THEREFORE, I do recommend and assign THURSDAY, the TWENTY-SIXTH DAY of NOVEMBER next, to be devoted by the people of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be; that we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection of the people of this country previous to their becoming a nation; for the signal and manifold mercies and the favorable interpofitions of His providence in the course and conclusion of the late war; for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty which we have since enjoyed;-- for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enable to establish Constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national one now lately instituted;-- for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge;-- and, in general, for all the great and various favours which He has been pleased to confer upon us.

And also, that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions;-- to enable us all, whether in publick or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually; to render our National Government a blessing to all the people by conftantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed; to protect and guide all sovereigns and nations (especially such as have shewn kindness unto us); and to bless them with good governments, peace, and concord; to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increase of science among them and us; and, generally to grant unto all mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as he alone knows to be best.

GIVEN under my hand, at the city of New-York, the third day of October, in the year of our Lord, one thousand seven hundred and eighty-nine.

(signed) G. Washington

Source: The Massachusetts Centinel, Wednesday, October 14, 1789

[I have updated some of the spelling for easier reading.]

Ok, I guess I'm not finished being cynical for today.

2011-11-23T12:26:00.002-05:00

"The Government Can"
by Tim Hawkins

Happy Baracksgiving!

2011-11-23T11:12:00.004-05:00

A friend shared this video on Facebook, and I found the statistics quite interesting. I have definitely noticed the increase in grocery prices. In a few cases I have had to adjust my personal/household "don't buy unless it's less than x dollars" rules, and in some cases I just don't buy things (cheese?) as often. I had forgotten that the price of gas was so low just under 3 years ago. Now it seems we get excited when it's below $3.30 per gallon.

And now I realize I have left you on a very negative note. Still, it's worth noting. Hopefully a more positive post is to come later on in the day!

(Disclaimer: I know nothing about the organization that made the video.)

The 99% and the 47%

2011-11-22T12:20:00.005-05:00

A National Review Online blogger provides a helpful timeline of the Occupy Wall Street movement's accomplishments here.

If the people involved in this movement are even close to representative of "99%" of America, we are doomed.

In a completely unrelated article, National Review's Ramesh Ponnuru has an interesting analysis of the concerns some conservatives have raised about an imminent "freeloader" majority (currently 47%) who do not pay income taxes. His article really helped me to look at this issue in a different way. Ponnuru argues -- rather persuasively, in my opinion -- that even though the percentage of Americans who pay no income taxes today is much higher than it was 50 years ago, increased payroll taxes mean that the average lower middle class family still pays a larger percentage of its income to the government than it did 50 years ago. He points out that the focus of conservatives should not be to increase taxes on lower-income people "not paying their fair share," but instead should be to keep the number of people receiving benefits from the government as low as possible.

Obama's Disastrous Keystone Pipeline Decision

2011-11-17T09:31:00.003-05:00

Check out this excellent editorial by Dan Henninger of The Wall Street Journal regarding Obama's decision to delay building the Keystone pipeline. Apparently Obama is fine with unemployment in any industry relating to carbon production. This president's policies are job killers, pure and simple. As Henninger puts it, "Why should any blue-collar worker who isn't hooked for life to a public budget vote for Barack Obama next year?" Good question.

Herman Cain- Answer the question?

2011-10-26T21:35:00.005-04:00

Is Herman Cain pro-life? That's difficult to say based on recent interviews. I personally have seen segments from three different interviews lately in which he is asked about his stance on abortion. He is quite clear on the fact that he supports life from conception. Wonderful so far. The problem comes when the interviewer asks him to state an opinion on whether or not abortion should be legal. Below is the segment in which John Stossell interviewed him on the subject.

Tonight on his show, Sean Hannity showed two other segments that followed the same lines: one on Piers Morgan's show and one on Megyn Kelly's. He asked Cain to clarify. Cain's response? He had been taken out of context. No clarification or statement of his views. Hannity unfortunately did not press the issue.

Cain gives the impression that he believes he is making himself crystal clear in responding to these questions. I could possibly excuse one instance as perhaps lack of experience at handling interviews or simply a gaffe, though that in itself points to other problems with Cain as a potential candidate in the general election. However at least three cases with essentially the same situation is inexcusable. I applaud the fact that Herman Cain is pro-life from conception, however he must also be able to articulate his official stance on abortion and whether it should be legal.

The following is posted prominently on the homepage of Cain's website:
Cain's View on Abortion Policy
"Yesterday in an interview with Piers Morgan on CNN, I was asked questions about abortion policy and the role of the President.

I understood the thrust of the question to ask whether that I, as president, would simply "order" people to not seek an abortion.

My answer was focused on the role of the President. The President has no constitutional authority to order any such action by anyone. That was the point I was trying to convey.

As to my political policy view on abortion, I am 100% pro-life. End of story.

I will appoint judges who understand the original intent of the Constitution. Judges who are committed to rule of law know that the Constitution contains no right to take the life of unborn children.

I will oppose government funding of abortion. I will veto any legislation that contains funds for Planned Parenthood. I will do everything that a President can do, consistent with his constitutional role, to advance the culture of life."

Herman Cain-

I don't think that I personally have a problem with the views Cain expressed in this statement. I do find it very disturbing that he had multiple chances recently to articulate his stance and he failed to do so. He wasted a chance on Hannity tonight when he could have made this explanation on a show that is watched by many members of the demographic from which he is hoping to receive votes. Herman Cain's stance on abortion is rare enough. It is extremely disappointing that he is unable to articulate it clearly when given the chance.

Fundraising 2012

2011-10-20T19:48:00.003-04:00

This post by a blogger named Matt Stiles is kind of interesting if you like statistics, as I do. It has maps that show where in the U.S. each presidential candidate is raising most of his or her cash. Not surprisingly, Mitt Romney and Ron Paul seem to have the broadest geographical fundraising base.

Tuesday Dinner With Paul Ryan!

2011-10-20T11:29:00.002-04:00

So I don't have much information on this yet, but my wife and I just got a last-minute (free) invitation to a posh fundraising dinner in Washington, DC. The featured speakers? London Fletcher, Pro Bowl middle linebacker for the Washington Redskins, and Congressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin. As a diehard Redskins fan and a big supporter of Paul Ryan's Roadmap plan to address entitlements and the long-term national debt, I couldn't be more excited about this opportunity!

There are few politicians that I would be more excited to hear speak than Paul Ryan. To me, Congressman Ryan is the epitome of what an elected official should be - courageous yet thoughtful, principled without being overly partisan, a policy wonk who is more concerned about long-term solutions than short-term political gain. He has been one of only a handful of politicians willing to tackle head on one of the biggest challenges to our country (Social Security and Medicare reform) with his Roadmap for the Future plan, and has taken a lot of cheap shots from both Democrats and Republicans focused on political expediency. Not to say Ryan's Roadmap is necessarily perfect, but it's a great starting point for debate. It would be nice if Ryan's opponents would come to the table with their own specific plans and a willingness to honestly discuss our country's urgent spending and debt crisis. For decades our politicians have been "kicking the can down the road" when comes to dealing with these long-term problems, which might be good for their careers but is terrible for the future of our country. I look forward to hearing what Congressman Ryan has to say on Tuesday and sharing it with you!

Jay Nordlinger Weighs In on Last Night's Debate

2011-10-19T13:00:00.001-04:00

Jay Nordlinger's thoughts on last night's Republican presidential debate. Outstanding as always.

Pay my tuition!

2011-10-15T12:01:00.001-04:00

A budding young intellectual explains why the rich (dun...DUN...DUNNNNNNN! *thunderclap*) should pay for his college tuition. (from National Review Online)

So There was a Presidential Primary Debate Last Night....

2011-10-12T07:39:00.002-04:00

Some you have probably noticed that I haven't had much to say about the GOP primary race up to this point. The main reason for this is simple: I don't have a clear favorite in the race yet and I haven't had time to watch most of the debates. Tonight I got to watch about half of the Republican debate, which was aired only on the Bloomberg network. I watched small portions of the first hour during commercial breaks from NCIS (my wife's pick of what to watch!), and then watched the entirety of the second hour. Here are my impressions about the candidates based on the portion of the debate I watched. I deliberately did not read or listen to any other analyses of the debate before posting this, because I wanted to give my personal impressions without being influenced by the opinions of the pundits.

First, I did not think the debate was moderated impartially at all. The questioners grilled some of the candidates unmercifully while apparently giving a free pass to others. Perhaps if I had watched the entirety of the debate I would have a different perspective, but I doubt it. One of the questioners, Karen Tumulty of The Washington Post, seemed to "have it out" for Rick Perry. Twice during the debate she asked him "questions" that seemed to not be questions at all but simply statements attacking him. I did not observe similar treatment applied to any of the other candidates, and thought Romney in particular seemed to getting a real pass. I also thought the time was divided very unequally among the candidates. For example, Rick Santorum was barely given any time to speak at all during the entire second hour of the debate, which was very unfair. On the other hand, Mitt Romney seemed to talking all the time. And the candidate "introductions" shown on the network prior to the debate appeared to be simply intended as attacks on them. I only watched the first one relating to Rick Perry and then changed the channel. Bloomberg was literally running an attack ad against Perry and pretending it was news. Sad.

On to the candidates, starting with Mitt Romney. Every time I see Romney in a debate forum, I'm impressed with his poise and polish. He's a very smooth debater and comes across as very well-informed on the issues. I thought he deflected criticism well and gave some very intelligent responses, but I think that has less to do with his skill as a candidate and more to do with the weakness of his competitors. I continue to be bothered by his full-throated defense of RomneyCare, including his clear suggestion that candidates such as Perry who oppose it don't care about the plight of the poor. I thought that was a harsh and unfair attack -- something I would expect to hear from the Left but not between candidates in a GOP debate. (Of course, Perry did imply something similar about Romney with regard to illegal immigration policy in an earlier debate, but it wasn't as a harsh of an attack in my opinion.)

The bottom line is that I don't really like or trust Romney, and it has nothing to do with the fact that he is a Mormon. Romney comes across as a typically slick politician to me. He has flip-flopped on issues in the past and I don't trust his conservative credentials. He has refused to identify with the Tea Party movement. One of the things that disgusted me the most were his earlier vicious attacks on Rick Perry for stating the obvious truth that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme. Once again, this is the kind of political opportunism that I would expect from the Left -- and shows his willingness to put his own election before the good of the country. But as I watched the debate, I kept getting the sense that he is the only candidate (with the possible exception of Newt Gingrich who comes with his own set of problems) that is up to the herculean task of out-debating Obama in a general election.

I want to like Rick Perry. On paper he seems like a great choice: three times elected governor of the second-largest state in the country, an unabashed fiscal and social conservative, a likable, handsome guy who connects well with voters one-on-one. But he just doesn't seem up to the job, at least in the debate I watched (and based on what I read about other previous debates). Everyone from the moderators to the other candidates seemed to be piling on him, and he didn't seem able to fight back effectively. He did a poor job defending his record and didn't seem to land his blows against Romney. I think a lot of the attacks on Perry so far in this campaign have been very unfair, but that's the reality for anyone who wants to make a living in politics, especially a conservative. If he wants to get the GOP nomination for president he had better prove that he is knowledgeable enough and quick enough on his feet to fight back against those attacks and go on the offensive. He sure didn't prove that to me last night in the debate.

I have already written a positive post about Herman Cain, extolling his successful business background, his refreshing candor, and the work ethic that enabled him to work his way up from nothing. I didn't think Cain performed badly in the debate -- he displayed a great sense of humor and seemed confident in his answers. On the other hand, the debate did not include any questions about foreign policy which is Cain's greatest weakness. Maybe I have just been living too long in a suburban blue state enclave, but I think Cain comes across as a bit oversimplistic. His answers were repetitive and always seemed to come back to his 9/9/9 plan, which he touted as a virtual panacea for all economic ills. It would be easy for viewers to come to the conclusion (true or not) that Cain is a one-issue candidate that doesn't really have a lot to say beyond talking points about one specific economic idea. And by the way, I'm far from sold on Cain's idea to create a national sales tax.

For someone who has such a universal reputation outside the Republican base as a scary lunatic, Michele Bachmann actually performs pretty well in debates. As at other times, last night she seemed poised, intelligent, and relatively substantive, at least to me. Not to mention likable and far from crazy. And it's not like she's never accomplished anything in her life either -- her list of accomplishments include tax attorney, small business owner, foster mother of 23, state legislator, and U.S. congresswoman. It's a shame that the media is so unfair in their coverage that even many Republicans will only know her as the crazy Tea Party lady who's never done anything in her life. Still, there's no question she is about as conservative as you can get and probably too outspoken to be a winning general election candidate. I think she's a great leader in the U.S. House and should stay there.

Honestly, if I could pick my favorite candidate, regardless of his or her chance of winning the primary or the general election, I might pick Rick Santorum. Although he didn't get much air time last night, when he did speak he was effective. I thought he raised a great point about the danger of establishing a national sales tax in his question to Herman Cain. I also thought his answer on the topic of how to help people living under the poverty line was outstanding. He pointed out that one of the primary causes of poverty in the U.S. is the breakdown of the American family, noting that only 5% of children living with their married parents are under the poverty line. By contrast, a whopping 30% of children in single-parent homes live in poverty. Even in Republican circles, it's not very fashionable to talk about "family values," and I applaud Santorum for making this very important point. I also thought Santorum was most effective in challenging Ron Paul's somewhat wacky foreign policy views in a previous debate. I know that he is far behind in primary polls and is probably too outspoken about social issues to win a general election, but I am very glad that he is in the race and is willing to speak out on issues that the other candidates are too afraid to touch.

Newt Gingrich performed extremely well in the debate last night, in my opinion, which is consistent with his performance in other portions of debates I have seen. He has a solid grasp of domestic and foreign policy issues and definitely comes across as intelligent and confident. He seemed a bit less combative in regard to the moderators than he has been in the past, which was a good thing. Unfortunately, Gingrich's track record, both with regard to his personal life and his past political career, disqualifies him from being president in my opinion. I think he is a man with some severe moral failings and a good deal of arrogance who proved a poor leader the last time he was given a position of great authority, and I do not think he would perform well against Obama in a general election. However, I think he is a brilliant man who adds a lot to the debates, and I liked how he focused his fire on Obama last night and tried to unite the party by emphasizing that all the candidates on stage are much preferable to the Democratic alternative.

The debate last night was focused on economic issues, where I largely agree with Ron Paul, so I enjoyed listening to what he had to say and found myself mostly nodding my head. I think he, too, adds a lot to the debate and has a tremendous grasp of economics, but I could never vote for him. Among the shocking things I found about Ron Paul from previous debates, in addition to his extreme anti-war positions, his unwillingness to support Israel, and his belief that terrorists should be tried in civilian courts, are that he does not view Iran as a threat to the security of our country and that he does not believe that there should be any official recognition of marriage at any government level ("why do you even need a marriage license?"). The danger of Paul's benign view of Iran should be clear, now that we know that top government leaders of Iran recently plotted an assassination attempt on the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the U.S. right here in Washington, DC. I think Paul would make a good cabinet appointment to some purely financial/economic position, but he should never be president.

I saved Jon Huntsman for last because he is a candidate that I really don't like at all. He is generally acknowledged to be the most liberal candidate in the race, and the only one who has been outspoken in defending government regulation to help prevent man-made "climate change." Perhaps I could forgive some of his positions on issues if he didn't come across as such a snarky guy to me. One moment from last night's debate that made me truly angry was when Huntsman asked Romney a question. He started out by telling Romney he wasn't going to ask him about his religion (completely out of the blue -- no reason to even bring this up), then added as a sarcastic aside to Perry, "Sorry, Rick." I thought this was a really nasty dig, as to my knowledge Perry is not anti-Mormon and has not attempted to make Romney's Mormonism an issue in the campaign. He is not to blame if some of his supporters may dislike Romney's religion. It just reaffirmed the negative opinions I already had about Huntsman. Thankfully, he has no chance of winning the Republican nomination.

Perhaps this long post helps to clarify why I remain undecided about the GOP primary. Most of the candidates have strengths and weaknesses. Some of the candidates I like the best don't seem to be electable, and I don't trust some of the candidates that are supposedly the most electable and polished. I hope that the Republicans aren't pressured into coalescing around a single candidate too soon. I think that vigorous debate is what our party needs, and is the only way to ensure that we pick the best candidate to take on Obama next fall. The stakes for our country couldn't be higher.

Sports!

2011-10-10T20:55:00.000-04:00

As the subtitle of our blog says, this is "A Politics & Culture Blog." Sports are a big part of our culture, inspiring metaphors in politics such as "hitting a speech out of the park". Political metaphors are used in sports as well. Remember a few years ago when the Detroit Lions "pulled a McCain" by going 0-16? (OK, I made that one up.) Let's talk sports!

With the continuing NBA lockout and the possibility of a cancelled NBA season, major US cities are bracing themselves for higher crime rates due to more NBA players out on the streets. I have an idea. Maybe we should give these guys something to do, say...playing basketball...around 12:00 AM when they might be getting into trouble with the law. We could even allocate federal funds for it. This is a brilliant idea! Why has no one thought of this before?
The 4-0 Detroit Lions -- wait, 4-0? -- play against the Bears tonight. I never thought I would say "4-0 Detroit Lions".
The Tigers are losing the American League Championship Series two games to none against the Texas Rangers. Go Tigers.

"Down With Evil Corporations"

2011-10-10T19:22:00.005-04:00

The original photo is from the recent Occupy Wall Street protests in New York City. This version has been showing up around Facebook and the blogosphere.

Thomas Sowell on the "Hunger Hoax"

2011-10-08T08:14:00.004-04:00

Here is an interesting piece by Thomas Sowell on the "Hunger Hoax" (credit to Shawn Ritenour for pointing me to the article). Sowell sees it as a symptom of a bigger problem:
"An arrogant elite's condescension toward the people — treating them as children who have to be jollied along — is one of the poisonous problems of our time. It is at the heart of the nanny state and the promotion of a debilitating dependency that wins votes for politicians while weakening a society.

Those who see social problems as requiring high-minded people like themselves to come down from their Olympian heights to impose their superior wisdom on the rest of us, down in the valley, are behind such things as the hunger hoax, which is part of the larger poverty hoax."

I can see applications to the "childhood obesity epidemic" as well. We are all individuals and we all have the God-given ability to think for ourselves. To assume that the government must do something about peoples' problems, must help them to change their habits, the way they think, is demeaning. Some people may make poor decisions, but they are individuals with freedom and they should be allowed to make those choices for themselves. The role the government has taken in helping these people should belong to private charities only. They cannot force someone to change (though neither can the government), but if someone shows the inclination to change charities can help him to make a start and follow through.

Actually, I think they are more like Veruca Salt

2011-10-06T23:09:00.001-04:00

Those of you who have jobs and lives might not know what's happening on Wall Street. By "Wall Street", I mean the actual street, not a metaphor for big business. Some young liberals got tired of the fluorescent lights in their parents' basement and went to New York City to protest the evils of capitalism...or something like that.
At a forum in Washington, D.C., today, Vice President Joe Biden compared the Wall Street protesters to the TEA party. “There’s a lot in common with the tea party,” Biden said. “The tea party started why? TARP. They thought it was unfair we were bailing out the big guys.” That's the extent of the similarities between the TEA party and the aimless protesters on Wall Street. As Ann Coulter said, the TEA partiers have jobs, showers, and a point. Also, the similarity that Biden pointed out is an overstatement. Biden betrays his true thoughts by referring to the "big guys".

For Democrats -- and Biden is no exception -- everything boils down to class warfare. The Wall Street protesters on the left are no doubt angry that "fat cat" bankers got a bailout at the expense of the "working class". On the other hand, the TEA party objects to bailouts on principle because it is unfair for the taxpayers to pay the price for somebody else's bad choices, whether that somebody is a "fat cat" banker or a homeowner who took out a bad loan.

The TEA party wants government to get out of the way so they can provide for themselves and their families. The Wall Street protesters want the government to give them jobs. And a pony. Or at least a squirrel.

This says it all. (Source: UPI.com)

The Macaca Media

2011-10-05T13:20:00.002-04:00

Michelle Malkin ably demonstrates the complete baselessness of the recent charges of racism against Texas Governor Rick Perry in this article. Like Malkin, I have not been overly impressed with Perry so far, but The Washington Post's "reporting" about him is inexcusable. Not that I'm surprised. This is what The Washington Post does to everyone they don't like. I am still angry about the dishonest reporting they did about late-term abortionist Leroy Carhart and the Summer of Mercy event in Germantown, MD. In 2009, they ran about 20 front page "news stories" about some thesis that the Republican candidate for governor in Virginia, Robert McDonnell, had written more than 10 years earlier that supposedly provided evidence that he was "sexist." In 2006, they ran about 20 front page "news stories" about a word that Republican Virginia Senator George Allen used against a heckler on the campaign trail. Most people had never heard of this word, but apparently the experts at The Post determined that it was a little-known racial slur and therefore provided proof positive that Allen was an evil racist! They didn't even bother to put their dozens of discrediting articles in the editorial section. When it comes to The Washington Post, the front page IS the editorial section. The whole point of their paper is to cheerlead for candidates they like and to smear candidates they don't like. If you are a conservative and you choose to fund this enterprise with your subscribing dollars, you share some of the blame, in my opinion.

And don't even get me started on the charge of "racism." With few exceptions, when a candidate is accused of "racism" by the media, it simply means that the media wishes to discredit them to ensure they do not get elected. Any conservative politician, reporter, or pundit worth his salt has been labeled a racist more than once. If they are smart, they will wear it as a badge of honor. It proves that they are a threat to the Left and need to be silenced.

Anti-democratic democrats: an inadvertent moment of honesty

2011-10-03T19:06:00.002-04:00

Bev Perdue, Democrat governor of North Carolina, recently suggested that her state should suspend elections in order to get more accomplished in government. (She later said that her comments were sarcastic and a joke, which are dubious claims, given the tone of her voice and the notable absence of laughter from the audience.) Gov. Perdue has revealed what we all know about liberals: they think they are smarter than all the rest of us dumb rubes and should control every aspect of our lives. Here's what the always-brilliant Andrew Klavan has to say: http://pajamasmedia.com/andrewklavan/2011/10/03/the-left-vs-democracy-appalling-but-not-surprising/

Field Guide to the Presidential Candidates

2011-10-03T04:53:00.002-04:00

This opinion piece from the Richmond Times-Dispatch is one of the funniest pieces of political commentary I have read in a long time!

The Wall Street Journal Takes a Look at Herman Cain

2011-10-01T13:15:00.003-04:00

I found this opinion piece by Dan Henninger in The Wall Street Journal to be an interesting read. Henninger's basic point is that Herman Cain is a substantive candidate with an impressive resume and deserves serious consideration. It was a little surprising to me to read this in the WSJ and the many favorable comments in response by WSJ subscribers, since Cain has been pigeonholed as a Tea Party candidate and not someone who would be supported by establishment conservatives. I admit that I was one of those people who initially wrote Cain off as not smooth enough to be taken seriously as a presidential candidate, but I am starting to rethink that decision partially due to this WSJ editorial and due to Dennis Miller's endorsement of Cain on The O'Reilly Factor.

To my mind, Cain is the polar opposite of Obama. (And the more I see of Obama, the more attractive that is to me!) Obama is all show and no substance. Cain is all substance and no show. Obama has spent his relatively short life hobnobbing with the elites at Ivy League institutions and running for political office; Cain has spent his life in the private sector creating jobs, solving problems, and managing businesses. Obama was born in Hawaii, attended the most prestigious private colleges, and appears to have spent most of his life on the fast track to success, yet seems to nurse personal grievances against the U.S. Cain was born in the racially segregated Old South and literally worked his way from the bottom to the top through perseverance and determination, yet demonstrates an attitude of love and appreciation for our country.

There is no doubt in my mind that Cain would be a good president, and would probably be a tremendous breath of fresh air in Washington. The fact that he is not a career politician is a good thing in my book. He understands business and knows how to create jobs. He appears to be a man of great personal integrity and responsibility who knows how to work hard, motivate people, and solve problems.

My biggest concern is whether he would be able to get elected in the first place. In a country where people seem to base their voting decisions on 30-second soundbites, looks, elite connections, and the ability to talk smoothly and give a nice-sounding speech, will the blunt-talking, gaffe-prone Cain be able to catch on? I certainly expect a lot of mistakes on the campaign trail from someone who has never held political office before, and it gives me some pause. But, at this point, less pause than I have about voting for Romney or Paul or Perry or Bachmann or Huntsman.

One interesting thing that may work in Cain's favor in getting elected is the fact that he is black. The very fact that Cain is in the race as a Tea Party favorite demonstrates the utter ridiculousness of the popular leftist smear that conservatives -- and the Tea Party in particular -- are racist, but if he were to win the nomination it would make that smear seem all the more ridiculous to the American public. Certainly Obama would not be able to take the black vote for granted in a general election against Herman Cain, and while doubtless Democrats would continue to play the race card as they always do, Cain's presence in the race might make it that much harder for them to do it successfully. And if the media uses nasty, personal, race-baiting attacks against Cain the way they have done in the past against black conservatives, will the black community accept that lying down? I don't know, but it would be interesting to find out.

Nobody Makes Fun of Obama...

2011-09-19T11:35:00.001-04:00

..better than Andrew Malcolm of The Los Angeles Times. Check out his blistering commentary on Obama's "urgent jobs plan" here.

A Couple Great Articles...

2011-09-19T07:03:00.004-04:00

I found a couple of really great British opinion pieces today, courtesy of Jay Nordlinger of National Review. Both articles are in response to an amendment brought before Parliament that would have required that women considering an abortion receive counseling from a group separate from the group performing the abortion. This seemingly reasonable requirement, which has been influential in reducing abortion rates in Germany, was met with vitriol from the powers that be in Britain -- the same vitriol that we have come to expect here in America in response to even the most basic, commonsense regulations or restrictions on abortion. The first piece is by Mary Wakefield of The Spectator, and is one of the best articles I have ever read on the topic of abortion. I highly recommend it. The second is from The Telegraph, and while not as comprehensive as the first it makes some very good points. Among them is this:

In fact abortion is one of those “Left-wing” things that should be a Right-wing thing. After all, you’re far more likely to be aborted if you’re black, poor, disabled or female – the demographics of aborted foetus would give diversity consultants goosepimples if their protected characteristics were visible. And for people obsessed with equality, you don’t get a bigger inequality than life and death.

The second article also addresses the claim that the pro-life movement is merely a fringe religious movement by noting that opposition to slavery also started out as a religious movement:

The pro-life movement does remain strongly religious, which is a weakness, but it does not necessarily mean it is irrational or “unscientific”. Moral campaigns are often dominated by religious groups; once only tiresome weirdo Quakers opposed the natural and universally accepted institution of slavery. We might all now assume slavery is wrong, but to 18th century people it was not obvious.

Peter Schiff Testimony Before the House

2011-09-18T14:12:00.003-04:00

Here are a couple excellent videos of excerpts from Peter Schiff's testimony and answering questions before the House committee on the jobs bill and the economy.

Here is the text of his testimony entitled "How the Government Can Create Jobs." If more politicians and inviduals were listening to this well-reasoned and intelligent businessman and others like him we would not be in the mess we are today.

Why make a case against conservative views when you can simply misrepresent them?

2011-09-13T21:03:00.000-04:00

Liberals excel at slaying strawmen, creating false dichotomies, and generally misrepresenting the views of conservatives. They also like to create absurd, unrealistic scenarios that would make it seem unconscionable to hold conservative views. I see this phenomenon often in the comments sections on Pajamas Media and National Review Online. One common argument of Internet-dwelling liberals is that conservatives want a libertarian paradise like war-torn Liberia or Somalia. And of course, who can forget the frequent and passionate pleas on behalf of all those women who are pregnant after being raped and want to have an abortion? (Proponents of abortion don't talk as often about the remainder of abortions, most of which are performed just because somebody doesn't want to have a baby. See "Why women have abortions".)

Now, I wish to present Exhibit C. Check out this totally unbiased article on Yahoo about a Republican debate, titled "Audience at tea party debate cheers leaving uninsured to die". During the debate, CNN's Wolf Blitzer asked Ron Paul about a hypothetical, uninsured, comatose man and whether he should be left to die. Immediately after this, a few people in the audience shouted, "Yeah!" Personally, I think this outburst was a sarcastic response to a stupid question. The unspoken false dichotomy is that you either have to support Obamacare in its entirety or you want poor people to die. (And you probably hate puppies, too, you bastard.) For all I hear about how nuanced, sophisticated, and intelligent liberals are, they sure aren't very good at making distinctions.

I sincerely doubt that the good and generous people of the United States (and by "people", I mean conservatives) would let our hypothetical man die. Blitzer's silly false dichotomy is nothing but an attempt to make conservative views of limited government and personal freedom seem unconscionable and ridiculous. Harrumph! Harrumph, I say! End rant.

September 11, 2001: 10 years later

2011-09-11T09:31:00.001-04:00

May we never forget.

I kind of like this idea...

2011-09-07T19:50:00.000-04:00

Some bar owners in Michigan are angry about being forbidden to allow smoking in their privately-owned bars (you know...the buildings that they paid for with their own money and which customers enter of their own free will) and have banned lawmakers from the premises. (By the way, casinos are exempt from the Michigan smoking ban. Hmmmm...) Now if we could find a way to ban Democrats from the U.S. Capitol...

Must-see: "Fight For The Children" official video

2011-09-01T12:26:00.006-04:00

Natedawg posted in July about a song by the group Christcentric called "Fight For The Children."

While the song and lyrics themselves are powerful, the group has just released an official video that perfectly complements and enhances it. I strongly encourage you to view it. I teared up watching it.

Official Christcentric Video- "Fight For The Children" from Christcentric on Vimeo.

If you can't catch all the lyrics, you can read them here.

Fighting Back Against Obama's Job-Killing Policies

2011-08-31T11:57:00.002-04:00

As the economy continues to flounder, I continue to hear Obama and his administration deny any responsibility whatsoever for the terrible economic conditions. He and his people continue to tout their "job proposals" and take credit for supposedly turning things around and saving us from a depression. The truth is, Obama's job-killing policies are directly responsible for the economic mess we are in today. The new taxes and regulations his administration has pushed for are toxic to private sector job growth and have stunted what should have been a normal recovery from the 2008-2009 recession.

The two most pressing political problems facing our country right now are the poor economy and the ballooning national debt. These issues are not unrelated, as the deficit grows much more quickly in a sluggish economy. Obama has failed miserably on both counts. He has made no effort whatsoever to address entitlement reform or to push for serious debt reduction and spending cuts. After all, attacking the GOP plan for wanting to throw granny out on the street is much easier than bothering to present your own plan! Under his "leadership," our country has lost its AAA bond rating -- a well-deserved downgrade. He has pushed for tax increases, played political games with the debt ceiling, masterminded huge stimulus bills full of waste and corruption, and pushed through a health care bill that puts a tremendous financial and regulatory burden on employers. Under the "leadership" of his crony Harry Reid, the U.S. Senate went for years without passing a budget (one of the most basic duties given to Congress is to pass a budget annually).

Most of the above items should be common knowledge to people with a passing familiarity with politics and current events. What is not common knowledge to many people, I fear, are the many job-killing regulations that Obama's administration is putting into place behind the scenes. Many of Obama's top administration officials are "czars" who were never confirmed by Congress to begin with and have a free hand to reshape our country's regulatory policies in a radical direction. I highly recommend reading this article in National Review, which highlights 10 of the worst Obama economic policies and what Republicans in Congress are trying to do to stop these policies from taking effect. The Wall Street Journal is another great source for understanding why Obama's policies are hurting our economy so much.

It is vital for Obama to be defeated in 2012. But in order for that to happen, people need to know just how destructive his policies have been to our country economically. They need to know that he isn't just unlucky; there is a direct link between his policies and our current problems. I would encourage you to take the opportunity to bring up some of the facts from the article linked to above next time you are in a conversation with someone about the economy. By educating ourselves and others about how the economy works and what policies create jobs and what policies kill jobs, we can make a difference for our country. If our country is going to have a future of freedom and prosperity, we MUST get someone in the White House with fiscal sanity who understands how a free market economy works.

On a somewhat related note, National Review published a great article last week discussing the issue of global warming. The myth of man-made global warming, or "climate change" as it is now officially designated, has become a political club in the hands of power-hungry politicians. It is the basis for myriad anti-growth economic policies that are contributing to our national joblessness, including several of the ones mentioned in the previous article. I recommend this article as a relatively concise summary of the problems with the "science" behind Obama's global warming policies.

Heh heh

2011-08-27T19:09:00.000-04:00

Earlier this year sometime, the College Democrats of America released a video of some college students giving reasons why they are Democrats. I found a parody of it. My favorite line: "Because through government, we can do things that we can't do as individuals...like take other people's money." Zing!

Original video:

The new and improved parody...

Summer of Mercy Recap

2011-08-07T17:01:00.005-04:00

First...please watch the video of Kelly Stauffer's testimony about her abortion when she was 14 years old. It is found in the previous post and since I posted it just before this one, I don't want it to be overlooked! It is one of the most emotionally powerful statements I've ever heard.

I wanted to give you a recap of the amazing week we have had at Summer of Mercy 2.0! The week-long event kicked off last Saturday evening with a rally at Covenant Life Church in Gaithersburg, MD. There were a number of powerful speakers, including Wendy Wright, former president of Concerned Women of America, and Father Frank Pavone of Priests for Life. (If you have the time and inclination, I would highly recommend checking out Father Pavone's 30-minute speech here.) But by far the highlight of the evening was the extraordinary testimony from a Philadelphia woman named Keisha, who showed up at Carhart's clinic to have a late-term abortion but changed her mind and decided to keep her baby after talking to Dr. Grace Morrison and several other caring women standing outside the clinic that morning. Dr. Morrison and other pro-life activists have provided a great deal of assistance to Keisha -- both financial help and pre-natal care -- and Keisha is now the proud mother of a new baby girl named Kayden. Keisha was hoping to be in attendance that evening, but the recent birth of her daughter prevented that, so a video presenting her story was shown on the big screen instead. A smiling Keisha had nothing but gratitude for the "beautiful people" who helped to save her daughter's life. (You can find the video of her story by clicking on the Summer of Mercy video page here and scrolling down to the first link under the heading "July 30th- Opening Rally.")

Unfortunately, my wife and I were unable to attend the the Sunday evening Youth Rally, but among the attractions that evening were a live ultrasound shown on the big screen and a live performance by Christcentric (a hip-hop group whose members attend my church) of their new song "Fight For the Children." (See the video of their performance here.)

Throughout the week, Summer of Mercy participants kept daily vigils outside of the clinic at 8:00 am, 12:00 noon, and 7:00 pm. The Monday morning and Friday evening crowds were sizable, exceeding 300 people. One of the exciting stories of the week was Leroy Carhart's decision to shut down the clinic for the week due to the Summer of Mercy protests. My pastor, Charlie Baile, gave an impassioned speech at the Friday evening vigil, which was followed by pizza and fellowship outside the clinic. (See the video of Pastor Charlie's talk here.)

Throughout the week, every effort was made to keep the protests as peaceful and prayerful as possible. Each meeting was begun on our knees in prayer. There were no shouting, graphic signs, or angry slogans. The protests showed a remarkable unity across denominational lines, with Catholic, Presbyterian, Bible, Episcopal, Sovereign Grace, and non-denominational churches all taking an active part. Operation Rescue, which has been involved in the Summer of Mercy, stated on their website that about 3/4 of the people involved in the Summer of Mercy event were area residents who had never before participated in a pro-life street rally. (Operation Rescue's website also has lots of photos and further details about the events of the past week.) We had some success in outreach to those in the immediate community. The owner of a local ice cream shop in close proximity to the clinic at first expressed anger and told us to stay away from his property, but when someone from the Summer of Mercy talked to him personally and explained what Carhart was doing, he changed his tune dramatically and even offered to let us use his shop's bathroom during our vigils! He also kept his shop open late each evening so we could buy ice cream after our evening protests. Other local business owners expressed support for what we were doing, offering to sign our petition to the Maryland Board of Physicians to shut down Carhart's clinic and even participating in the protests! One of my friends also had the opportunity to speak to some of the security guards patrolling the area and explain to them why we were there. The Montgomery County Police Department did a great job assisting us and making sure we caused as little disruption of traffic as possible. Overall, I felt our group maintained a great witness to the community.

The pro-choice crowd was also staging a counter-protest called "Summer of Choice" this past week, but their numbers were paltry in comparison with ours (at least every event I attended). I saw a few pro-choice activists on the other side of the street holding signs now and then, but that was about it. More creepily, groups of three or four of them would walk up to us when we were praying and videotape us or write down notes about us on a notepad. We were under strict instructions not to engage them in any way and to avoid shouting back (or giving any response whatsoever other than a smile) if they shouted at us, but it was never an issue at any meeting I attended during the week.

One of the final events of the week was the "Cross 4 Life" event. All of us showed up outside the clinic at 2:00 this afternoon, wearing red shirts and holding red pieces of paper saying "Prayer for the Protection of Life." We then spread out from the clinic and covered two major streets, standing in the form of a giant cross with each local church covering a different section of road. It was so exciting to see such a huge tide of red shirts -- I'm not very good at estimating the size of large crowds, but I would guess anywhere from 600 to 1,000 people were there. The road I was standing on -- Route 118 Germantown Road -- is one of the biggest arteries through Germantown, which is now the largest city in Montgomery County. So there is no question that we were forcing people to take notice. Best of all, a friend of the pro-life movement who owns a small plane agreed to fly over the area during the rally to take aerial photos of the Cross 4 Life. I am excited to see them and will certainly post them on here when they come out. At the end of the event, it started pouring down rain and we all got soaked, but I saw nothing but smiles on everyone's faces!

Please continue to pray! The Summer of Mercy events may be coming to an end, but our work here in Germantown is not done as long as Carhart's clinic stays open. After being closed for the week, Carhart's clinic is re-opening tonight and the killing of babies resumes tonight and tomorrow. We continue to maintain a pro-life presence outside of the clinic tonight and are hoping for a large turnout tomorrow morning again. Pray for Carhart and his staff, for the women who are going in to have abortions and for those who have already had abortions, for those taking a public stand for life outside of the clinic, for local pregnancy centers that provide hope and alternatives for women who need help. Most of all pray for God to change people's hearts and open their minds to see the evil of abortion, especially the late-term variety that Carhart performs.

And please sign the online petition to revoke Carhart's medical license in Maryland! I would encourage everyone to sign, but especially people who live in Maryland. The online petition is only showing a small number of signatures at the moment, but hundreds of people attending the rally have signed in person so the total number of signatures is much higher than what is showing on the website right now.

Must-See Video From Summer of Mercy 2.0!

2011-08-07T16:19:00.002-04:00

Kelly Stauffer - Summer of Mercy 2.0 from Michael Martelli on Vimeo.

Please check out this amazing video testimony from Kelly Stauffer, speaking at the Summer of Mercy rally outside Carhart's clinic in Germantown, MD on Friday evening. Kelly had a 3rd-trimester abortion when she was 14 years old. She vividly describes the horror of feeling her unborn child kicking and somersaulting inside her womb and then feeling the child go still after the lethal dose was injected into her stomach. She describes the sick feeling she had going back to her hotel that night knowing she was carrying a dead baby -- a baby she was responsible for killing. She recounts the coldness and indifference of the abortion clinic staff as she delivered her dead baby over a toilet in a janitor's closet. She recounts the deep guilt and depression she experienced over the next decade of her life, including suicidal tendencies and bulimia. Finally, she tells the story of how she came to experience God's forgiveness through attending a Catholic retreat for women struggling with post-abortive depression. She is now happily married with a 18-month-old daughter and is an outspoken advocate for the rights of the unborn. This honest, courageous, and humble woman has one of the most emotionally powerful stories you will ever hear!

The Washington Post Slanders Pro-Life Activists

2011-08-02T19:00:00.009-04:00

Well, the Summer of Mercy has reached the ears of The Washington Post. They have weighed in with two recent "news stories" about Carhart and the Germantown protests -- two laughably biased reports filled with deceptions and inaccuracies. The most recent contribution of the paper to the Germantown late-term abortion debate is this July 31st gem entitled "Abortion Is Topic of Dueling Protests in MD." This ostensibly innocent news report is a textbook example about how the press distorts the facts and manipulates public opinion under the pretense of objective reporting.

The astute reader will notice that the report identifies the number of pro-choice demonstrators as "around 180" but makes no mention of the number of pro-life demonstrators, presumably an attempt to marginalize the pro-life opposition to Carhart. In fact, attendance at the first pro-life rally outside of the clinic on Monday morning was significantly higher than 180 -- I attended it and am confident there were at least 300 people there. The opening rally of the Summer of Mercy at Covenant Life Church had probably twice that number. Also, participants in the "Summer of Choice" are positively described as "pro-choice" and "supporters" of local physician Leroy Carhart. By contrast, participants in the "Summer of Mercy" are never positively referred to as "pro-life" or "supporters of life," only as "abortion foes" or "antiabortion demonstrators."

It only gets worse from there. The article does everything possible to discredit Keisha, the Philadelphia woman scheduled to have a late-term abortion at Carhart's clinic but who chose to keep her baby instead after talking with some pro-life activists outside of the clinic. The author quotes Carhart as saying that Keisha was a "plant" by "antiabortion forces" and leaves the accusation hanging without further comment. Is it too difficult for a paper with the resources of The Washington Post to do a little simple investigation to verify Keisha's story and determine whether or not Carhart is lying? Apparently so. But in the meantime the author subtly pushes this angle, noting sinisterly that the woman "identified herself only by her first name," as though her wish to preserve some level of privacy for herself and her family disproves her claims. (Any other time, The Post would be trumpeting the importance of preserving a woman's right to privacy to the ends of the earth!)

No mention is made of the fact that Keisha was all smiles in the video interview as she held her newborn baby and that she expressed thanks to the pro-life women outside of the clinic for the help they offered her, mentioning two specific women by name who had befriended her. She and her boyfriend referred to the pro-life activists as "beautiful people" with "good hearts" who made them "feel comfortable." No mention is made of the fact that pro-life activists referred her to organizations in Philadelphia who provided her with free pre-natal care and resources, continued to stay in touch with her up to the present day, and raised more than $1,100 to help with her financial needs at their opening night rally (which I attended). Of course, those details would not be helpful in furthering The Post's desired narrative, so the article merely makes the curt comment that "abortion foes" "talked her out of" having her abortion. As though a group of fast-talking activists manipulated her into a rash decision.

The article repeats a blatantly false claim originally found in a fawning profile the newspaper did of Carhart a week earlier: the claim that "all of the late-term abortions Carhart has done in Germantown have involved fetuses with abnormalities." Keisha specifically stated in her video that Carhart said nothing to her about any "fetal abnormalities" prior to her scheduled abortion -- her reason for the abortion had nothing to do with any actual or perceived health problems with the baby. This example alone disproves Carhart's ridiculous claim -- and not only does the article fail to mention this very important point that Keisha's baby was perfectly healthy and normal, but it twists Keisha's words in order to mislead its readers into thinking the opposite. Completely out of context, it quotes Keisha as saying "I just thank God that I had a healthy daughter," as though this occurrence was a source of unexpected relief for her!

Further belying Carhart's claim is the pro-life activist who helped Keisha choose life, Dr. Grace Morrison. She has been standing outside the clinic every week since Carhart came to Germantown in December, and said that out of the 27 women going into Carhart's clinic for abortions that she has spoken to over the past six months, only 1 of those 27 had an unborn baby with "abnormalities." In two articles in a row, The Post chose to take Carhart's claim at face value without doing even the most basic investigation into it or bothering to present any of the opposing evidence.

After discussing Keisha, the article seizes another opportune moment to caricature the pro-life activists, using a quote from Carhart to claim that they were "subjecting" the patients to "harassment." If these activists are so threatening, then why would Keisha even have stopped to talk with them in the first place, much less have been swayed by their advice? In fact, Dr. Morrison said that since Carhart's arrival in Germantown, 13 women have chosen not to go forward with scheduled abortions, at least temporarily, after conversations with pro-lifers outside of the clinic! If these activists were the hateful, angry people The Post claims, then why would any of these women have given them the time of day?

But the most disgraceful and inexcusable slander in the article comes near the end, when the author writes, "Because he [Carhart] wants to expand services, he has become a top focus of antiabortion groups. His friend and mentor, Kansas doctor George Tiller, was fatally shot by an abortion opponent in 2009." In two simple sentences, the author presents a close link between the activists peacefully protesting outside Carhart's clinic and a crazed madman who killed another abortionist two years ago in a state thousands of miles away. Tiller's murder was an evil act committed by a rogue killer that was strongly condemned by every pro-life group in the country, including the ones involved in the Summer of Mercy. That murder flew in the face of everything the pro-life movement stands for. We believe life is precious and should be protected. I have attended numerous pro-life rallies in the Germantown area over the past few months, and I have not witnessed a single expression of hatred or violence against Carhart or pro-choice activists. Over and over again, I have heard pro-life leaders pray for Carhart and plead that God would give him a change of heart. I have not heard any vicious personal attacks or expressions of hatred against him. Over and over again, I have heard it emphasized that our protests must be peaceful and demonstrate love and compassion. Both 40 Days for Life and the Summer of Mercy banned the use of signs with graphic images and encouraged us not to respond when heckled by pro-choice activists. At a rally a few months ago, we were interrupted by loud, disruptive chants by pro-choice activists claiming we "don't care if women die." We responded by spontaneously singing "Amazing Grace." Our pro-life protests are legally and constitutionally protected and have been conducted under the watchful eye of the Montgomery County Police Department. There is no link whatsoever between any of the groups currently involved these protests and the murder of George Tiller in Kansas, and there is absolutely no reason for the author to make this false association in his news story except raw prejudice against the pro-life position.

The story about Carhart that I linked to above is just as flagrant an example of propaganda. The author, Lena Sun, writes so glowingly of Carhart one might suppose she has an actual crush on him. He is described as a "grandfather and retired Air Force surgeon general" who "speaks softly" in an "understated manner." His "voice is weary" after a long, hard day of serving patients, but he remains "committed" to his important work. Unlike most abortionists who refuse to perform late-term abortions, Carhart is a brave man who doesn't care about "social stigma." (Insert the obligatory reference to the killing of George Tiller in Kansas and the association of the entire pro-life movement with his murder.) Many other doctors look up to him and "have asked to train with him." Despite persecution from those evil pro-life activists, Carhart's "tenacity" led him to work as an abortionist full time despite living in constant fear for his safety and his life. Still, their viciousness has created a stigma which makes him and other abortionists often feel "isolated," fearful of being "targeted by protestors." Often "you feel like you're alone in the world," quoth the good doctor, whose other interests include "adoption counseling" and pap smears for gay and transgendered people. (Insert obligatory reference to how he ONLY does late-term abortions "if the medical situation warrants.") Indeed, from this article it would be hard to understand how such an All-American Grandfather and All Around Good Guy could be considered remotely controversial, much less how he manages to attract hundreds of protestors outside his clinic week after week.

In fact there are some reasons why Carhart is controversial, although you'll never find out about them from reading The Washington Post. This pdf document from the http://kickoutcarhart.com/ website summarizes much of this information. Let's start with the fact that Carhart is under investigation by the Maryland Board of Physicians for making some very specific false claims on his application to practice in the state. He claimed he was an emergency room physician, but he hasn't had hospital rights in nearly 25 years! He also claimed he was a university professor even though this information too was more than a decade out-of-date, and omitted more than a decade of pertinent information related to his controversial practice of late-term abortions in Nebraska and Kansas. He is under criminal investigation back in his home state of Nebraska, based on sworn testimony by former employees of illegal activities occurring in his clinic. This testimony includes claims of "unlicensed employees... conducting medical tasks, illegal post-viability abortions, drug violations, financial malfeasance," the use of unsterilized and unclean medical instruments, and the failure of Carhart to follow even the most basic rules of personal hygience such as washing his hands between patients. After his Nebraska clinic partially burned, apparently due to unsafe storage practices, he tried to continue to perform abortions using a generator and extension cord until government authorities shut him down! Worst of all, in January 2005, a 19-year old girl with Down syndrome named Christin Gilbert died as a result of a botched 3rd-trimester abortion. Gilbert's death resulted from an infection that could have been avoided if she had received proper care. More information on this can be found here.

Let's cut to the chase. What does Carhart actually do that is so controversial? Well, he performs a nice humane procedure known as "Dilation and Evacuation" that involves sticking a needle into a woman's belly to inject poison into the "fetus." The woman goes back home for two days to wait for the "fetus" to die. Then she returns to the clinic, where the abortionist uses forceps to remove the arms and legs of the "fetus." Then the tiny skull of the "fetus" is collapsed so it can be easily removed. Finally the remaining remnants are suctioned out of the uterus. If the "fetus" is older, sometimes it will be delivered whole into a toilet rather than being dismembered. Carhart routinely does this procedure in the third trimester, and legally he can do it in Maryland up until the ninth month of pregnancy, long past the point of viability. Sometimes the "fetus" is still alive at the time the abortionist begins the pleasant process of dismemberment, and there is abundant evidence it can feel pain. Much more information about this, including photos, diagrams, and descriptions, can be found here. Fellow late-term abortionist Martin Haskell testified in court: "Typically when the abortion procedure is started we typically know that the fetus is still alive because either we can feel it move as we're making our initial grasps or if we're using some ultrasound visualization when we actually see a heartbeat as we're starting the procedure." He goes on to say that often the "fetus's" limbs are removed while the "fetus" is still alive. Carhart himself testified back in 2004 that frequently in the process of performing these late-term abortions the "fetus" was delivered whole and alive, but added that he thought "removing the brain contents eventually would [kill the baby]." Well, thank goodness for that.

As you can see, there are a lot of relevant facts about Dr. Carhart's history and abortion practices that paint a slightly different picture than The Washington Post profile of a kindly, soft-spoken grandfather who just wants to help women. It is disheartening for those of us fighting so hard against Carhart's brutal late-term abortion practice to read such biased reporting from the most influential media outlet in the area. With news organizations like The Washington Post shaping public opinion, it is hard to believe that anyone is willing to identify as pro-life.

I suppose all those pro-choice activists carrying signs saying "Dr. Carhart is my hero" and "We love Dr. Carhart" are perfectly within their legal rights. But what kind of a sick, twisted individual would choose a man like this to be his or her hero? The pro-choice community hides behind euphemisms and vague language like "women's rights," "choice," and "reproductive services." The thing they want to avoid at all costs is any description of what is actually happening in abortion. The truth is our greatest weapon, and their greatest enemy. And so we fight on, until the whole world knows the real truth about "late-term abortions," until justice is really administered in this country for ALL.

"Fight for the Children"

2011-07-26T07:33:00.003-04:00

The recently-written song "Fight for the Children" was performed by hip-hop group Christcentric at my church on Sunday after the worship service. It is a powerful song and a sobering reminder of the gruesome nature of late-term abortion. You can check out the audio of the song on Christcentric's website here (listed on the left side under "New Music"). I don't think there's a YouTube video yet although that will be coming soon. Christcentric will be performing at the Summer of Mercy events next week.

Summer of Mercy 2.0

2011-07-20T07:57:00.004-04:00

I wanted to post information about an upcoming local nine-day event co-sponsored by my church called "Summer of Mercy 2.0." The purpose of Summer of Mercy is for people who care about life to come together to fast, pray, and take a public stand against abortion, and in particular against the horrific form of late-term abortion practiced by Leroy Carhart in Germantown, MD. As noted earlier on this blog, Carhart kills viable babies up to ninth month of pregnancy. Today (July 20) and next Wednesday (July 27) are days of fasting and prayer in preparation for the event. Next Saturday, July 30, Summer of Mercy kicks off with a 7:00 pm rally at Covenant Life Church in Gaithersburg featuring a live ultrasound presentation and several speakers. There will be a second rally on July 31 with a youth emphasis. Then, from August 1 through August 5, there will be daily prayer at 8:00 am and noon and evening prayer rallies outside of Carhart's clinic. On August 6 there will be another meeting at Covenant Life Church at 7:00 pm. The event will close with a day of fasting on August 7 and a final big Cross 4 Life Prayer event outside of Carhart's clinic.

Operation Rescue President Troy Newman: "We sense a critical need to gather in Germantown to expose the horrific late-term abortion business of LeRoy Carhart, to prayerfully intervene on behalf of the babies that are scheduled to die, and to provide a peaceful yet powerful pro-life witness to the nation.... Now is the time for us to embrace the cross and walk in radical obedience unto the Lord. Our desire is to see a sovereign God powerfully move, shift history, bring awakening to our nation and end abortion."

My pastor, Charlie Baile: "We have seen many pro-life victories in this past year and are praying for a big tipping point for a Pro-Life America. Fetal pain laws are now being passed in many states due to the scientific proof that unborn children do indeed feel pain in the womb. As the technology of ultrasounds continues to improve, the heinous acts of abortion are being exposed. As post-abortive woman come out of the shadows and share their heartache and pain, it is plain for all to see that women know instinctively that killing their offspring is awful to live with. They need our prayers, Christian love, and forgiveness found at the cross of Jesus Christ.

"The pro-choice activists have sensed the growing swell of pro-life concern in Germantown, MD and they are putting all of their energies this summer into what they are calling the “Summer of Choice”. They are calling for the greatest pro-choice demonstration in history to come to Germantown and show their support for their hero, Dr. Leroy Carhart. They have borrowed our idea of a prayer walk and they are doing their own walk on Sunday afternoon, July 31st to raise monies for those who cannot afford their abortion. They are planning counter demonstrations during the Summer of Mercy dates. I want to appeal to you to come and be an advocate for the children at risk in the womb. 1/3 of our current generation has been killed off through this holocaust of abortion."

Germantown, MD, a mere 15 minutes from my home, has become Ground Zero in the battle over abortion in this country. Since this is happening in my backyard, I want to be involved in this event. To you my readers: I truly hope that if you live in the area, you consider attending at least some of the events or meetings. If you are unable to do so, at least you can stand with us in prayer for the countless victims of abortion (both mothers and babies) and for God to change hearts and minds on this crucial issue.

For more information, please check out the website at http://summerofmercy.com.

"The War Against Girls"

2011-06-21T19:12:00.009-04:00

I read this fascinating article in The Wall Street Journal today entitled "The War Against Girls." The article is actually a review of the book Unnatural Selection by Mara Hvistendahl. Unnatural Selection details the systematic targeting of female babies for abortion in many countries of the world, most notably China and India. In China, largely due to forced abortions resulting from the country's One Child policy, 121 boys are born for every 100 girls, with the ratio topping out at over 150 in some towns. In India, the ratio is 1.12. Sadly, Hvistendahl concludes that approximately 163 million girls that would otherwise have been born based on biological averages have been aborted over the past three decades by parents seeking sons. Aside from the obvious tragedy of females being systematically targeted for destruction, Hvistendahl points out the problems inevitably resulting from such a significant gender imbalance, including increased social turmoil and violence and the booming of a global female underclass through prostitution, forced marriage, and mail-order-bride businesses. And institutions such as the United Nations and Planned Parenthood have been instrumental in promoting such sex-selective abortion overseas.

The reviewer points out that Hvistendahl is adamantly pro-abortion and expresses fear that the facts in her book will jeopardize legalized abortion; yet, despite her biases she has documented something very important and tragic that should cause all of us to wake up and see where the culture of abortion has taken us. Ironically, a practice touted as a basic woman's right has resulted in tremendous harm to -- indeed in the systematic extermination of -- women in many countries around the world. It turns out that women themselves are the greatest victims of abortion.

Jonathan Last sums up his review this way:

Despite the author's intentions, "Unnatural Selection" might be one of the most consequential books ever written in the campaign against abortion. It is aimed, like a heat-seeking missile, against the entire intellectual framework of "choice." For if "choice" is the moral imperative guiding abortion, then there is no way to take a stand against "gendercide." Aborting a baby because she is a girl is no different from aborting a baby because she has Down syndrome or because the mother's "mental health" requires it. Choice is choice. One Indian abortionist tells Ms. Hvistendahl: "I have patients who come and say 'I want to abort because if this baby is born it will be a Gemini, but I want a Libra.' "

This is where choice leads. This is where choice has already led. Ms. Hvistendahl may wish the matter otherwise, but there are only two alternatives: Restrict abortion or accept the slaughter of millions of baby girls and the calamities that are likely to come with it.

Correction to Yesterday's "Green Hoax" Post

2011-06-15T09:36:00.004-04:00

After doing a little more research into my post from yesterday regarding electric cars, I discovered that there are some things I need to both correct and clarify. First, when I wrote that post, I was confused about whether the increased carbon emissions for manufacturing and disposing of electric vehicles were included in the overall calculation of carbon use over the vehicle lifetime. I originally thought they were not (based on some rather ambiguous language in one of the links I used), but in fact they were. Obviously, if I had taken more time to research the issue, I would have realized this. So I appreciate the commenter who pointed this out to me. His point was well taken that is always good to go directly to the source if possible.

So here are the baseline numbers, taken from the Low Carbon Vehicle Partnership press release. The study found that from the beginning of manufacture to the end of disposal, an average mid-size gasoline car would be responsible for emitting 24 tonnes of CO2. An average mid-size electric car would be responsible for emitting 19 tonnes of CO2. This is, of course, a carbon emissions savings, but not one I would consider to be all that significant given the hype surrounding electric cars.

However, there is more to the story than just these overall numbers. When you read the full report issued by the LCVP, you find that if you factor in a replacement battery for an electric car, total carbon emissions for the electric car go up significantly to 23 tonnes of CO2, nearly identical to that of a conventional gasoline car. These numbers were the ones used by the two articles to which I originally linked as a basis for the argument that electric cars have little advantage in terms of carbon emissions. Will most electric cars need a second battery after a few years? This has been a problem with electric cars to date. The LCVP argues that in a few years the technology for electric car batteries will have improved enough that replacement batteries will not be necessary. But obviously, that organization is a cheerleader for dramatic reductions in carbon emissions, so it's hard to know who to believe.

There's another thing to consider too. Electric cars, at least so far, are not suitable for long trips because their batteries must be recharged frequently. They are really only feasible for short mileage commutes. Therefore, it is likely that many of them will not end up accumulating a very great amount of mileage over their useful life. This reduces their apparent energy savings. Remember, close to 50% of their total carbon emissions occur at the beginning of their life cycle, during manufacture. They must be driven 80,000 miles just to break even with gasoline cars on total carbon emissions. It is entirely possible that many of them will not pass the 80,000 mileage mark in their lifetime, and therefore will prove to be LESS green than conventional vehicles. This point, coupled with the possible necessity of replacement batteries, helps to explain why the articles I originally linked to can claim that electric cars may be less green than gasoline cars. LCVP's study found that electric vehicles are only marginally greener than gasoline cars, and when you include other factors like the ones I have mentioned which were not factored into LCVP's study, electric cars may not even be greener at all.

So yes, I was confused about some facts in my original post. And I concede that my language about "green hoaxes" was a little over the top. I have no doubt that most proponents of electric cars are sincerely trying to help the environment and are not deliberately trying to pull the wool over consumers' eyes. However, I still think it is far from clear that electric cars will reduce carbon emissions very significantly. And so far, the evidence shows they are both inferior to gasoline cars for many purposes and also significantly more costly. Will the technology improve? Doubtless, but the technology used in the manufacture of gasoline cars is also improving. Furthermore, the whole premise behind radical reductions in carbon emissions is the idea that our emissions are causing global warming. I think it is far from clear that global warming is being caused by man-made activities at all, and highly doubtful that any reduction in carbon emissions will have an impact on global temperatures. So in my mind, the government is foolish to pour millions of taxpayer dollars down the drain to subsidize electric cars. And I stand by my original point about the environmentalist movement as well. I disagree with their values and believe their track record has been very poor.

Another Green Hoax

2011-06-14T08:03:00.003-04:00

A new study on electric cars has come out by the Low Carbon Vehicle Partnership, an organization jointly funded by Britain's government and automobile industry. Its findings? Electric cars actually are likely to produce HIGHER CO2 emissions over their lifetime than gasoline cars. The study found that mid-size electric cars produce only slightly less CO2 than their mid-size gasoline counterparts during their lifetime. This is not near enough to make up for the fact that it takes 50% MORE energy to manufacture electric cars in the first place and also 50% MORE energy to dispose of them. Not to mention the fact that most electric cars need a battery replacement after a few years (more carbon emissions!), and that some of the materials needed to manufacture the batteries are only available from countries like China and are difficult to dispose of in an environmentally safe way. And then there's the point that most electric cars are not suitable for long trips because they only drive a short distance on a single charge.

So tell me again: why is our government spending massive amounts of money subsidizing the electric car industry and incentivizing people to buy these very expensive cars?

The environmentalist movement in this country has gotten pretty extreme. Some of their causes, such as banning DDT worldwide and trying to stop industrialization in Third World countries, have left people in extreme poverty and even resulted in loss of life. Environmentalism is more than just a cause – it’s a religion for a lot of people. They worship Mother Earth, which they believe is eternal and is responsible for creating all life through the process of naturalistic evolution. For them, Mother Earth must be preserved in an untouched, pristine condition, no matter how many people must suffer as a consequence. Thus, they pass legislation that costs thousands of loggers their jobs because somewhere deep in the woods there may be a spotted owl somewhere that might have its habitat disrupted. Environmentalist concern for some obscure endangered species caused California to shut off the water supply to the central valley area of the state, one of the most fertile agricultural areas in the country, turning it into a dust bowl and costing thousands of farmers their livelihoods. Environmentalists are obsessed with global warming and are pushing for massive regulation to prevent it that will destroy industry and cost hundreds of thousands of jobs (the Kyoto Treaty for example), even though there is little or no evidence that human activity is causing global warming and even less evidence that scaling back on our activity will prevent it from occurring. (And recent Climategate email leaks have shown how much deception is present in the global warming alarmist camp.) Environmentalists are obsessed with the evils of fossil fuels and want to replace them with “renewable” energy sources, even though there are no such alternative energy sources that can come close to matching the usefulness and productivity of fossil fuels. I have no problem with researching to find better alternative energy sources, but in the meantime we have huge untapped supplies of fossil fuels that will sustain us for hundreds of years. Fossil fuels created the economic productivity that has given us so much wealth. I guess the earth was more pristine back in the days of the cavemen, but I don’t want to go back to that lifestyle just for the sake of being green. Environmentalists are obsessed with population growth and want to dramatically reduce the earth’s population. I watched a documentary on this, and in fact the earth is not overpopulated at all and dramatic reductions in the population would cause tremendous economic harm to our country and our world (and already has contributed to a lot of Japan and Europe’s economic problems).

That doesn’t mean that I don’t care about the environment and think we should just trash it. I don’t worship the earth and I don’t believe I owe my existence to it, but I still believe it is the good creation of God and as such we should seek to take care of it and protect it. A lot of environmental legislation from earlier in our history was good and necessary. It is good that companies are no longer allowed to dump raw sewage into the river. It is generally good that we are recycling. It is good that factories can’t pour out dangerous pollutants unrestricted. It is good that companies are responsible to clean up environmental damage they cause. It is good that littering is a crime. It is good that there are rules preventing the destruction of forests and wetlands. It is good that our national park system is preserving our most special natural landscapes for generations to come. I support all of those things and what they have done to preserve our environment. But the modern environmentalist movement has gone far beyond simple good stewardship and conservation. Now they want to regulate how much water I can have in my toilet and what kind of light bulbs I can use and how much fuel my auto uses. I think that the environmental movement cares more about a pristine earth than about the lives of people, and that's wrong.

I'm sick of all the group think and distortions when it comes to the environment. I want to protect the environment, but I refuse to buy into all the fashionable ideas currently on the market. I want our government to show the same concern for the truth and the facts.

Jay Nordlinger Rocks!

2011-06-10T16:53:00.004-04:00

The main point of this blog post is simply to say that if you have never read Jay Nordlinger's weekly Impromptus column on National Review Online, you have been missing out on a treat. Unlike many political pundits on both the left and the right, Nordlinger is a delight to read, never coming across as bitter, harsh, or angry. Every time I read him, I am struck by the paradox in his writing. Here is a man with tremendous knowledge of contemporary politics, strong conservative beliefs, and an impressive awareness of American history, especially American political history. He has been covering all the important players in Washington for decades and has forgotten more about politics than most people will ever know. And yet, it is so obvious from his writing that he doesn't let politics consume him. He loves life in all of its variety, quite apart from politics, and freely opines on a broad range of topics in his Impromptus column, from grammar to music to the arts to geography to culture. He is passionate about international human rights. His writing style is conversational. You can't read a column of his without concluding that this is a genuinely happy person who looks at the world in an eminently level-headed, commonsense sort of way. Even when he criticizes others, he generally does so in an indirect and gentle sort of way. (Wish I were better at doing that!) One of my favorite things that he does is jot down his quick thoughts and reactions to major speeches, debates, etc. They are always well worth reading.

Anyway, I thought his column this week was especially good. He has some great thoughts on the left's reaction to the Anthony Weiner scandal. Read it here. And then click on the "Archive" button at the top of the page and read all the other Imprompuses you've missed!

Radical Environmentalism Is Destroying California

2011-06-09T12:25:00.003-04:00

Those who think the modern environmentalist movement is harmless should read this excellent post on Forbes magazine's blog entitled "California's Green Jihad" by Joel Kotkin. Kotkin explains how green policies have made California the least business-friendly state in the nation, given it the second-worst unemployment rate in the nation (higher even than Michigan's), and driven away hundreds of thousands of jobs in agriculture, manufacturing, energy, and technology.

Memorial Day Is a Day to Celebrate America

2011-06-02T08:06:00.009-04:00

Monday was Memorial Day. For most of us, it is a day to celebrate America and remember the sacrifices made by our armed forces on behalf of our country and our freedoms. In particular, it is a day to honor our fallen heroes. Apparently, other people - and not just lefties - see Memorial Day as a golden opportunity to spew hate against our military and our country and accuse our troops of mass murder of innocent civilians. Someone sent me this delightful article from the libertarian site LewRockwell.com entitled "An Open Letter to the Troops: You're Not Defending Our Freedoms."

I am not going to respond in detail to every point in the article, partly because I don't think the author deserves that much respect, and partly because I don't have the time. But I have a few basic observations in response.

1. The timing of the article speaks volumes. I think it shows real disrespect to all Americans who have lost family members or friends in war to write such an insulting attack on our military on a day set aside to remember and honor those fallen soldiers. Whatever your opinions regarding recent American military operations, those soldiers died courageously in the service of our country and deserve our respect, as do their families who sacrificed so much. Further, the article shows real disrespect to our country. Memorial Day is a national day of remembrance, and honors fallen heroes throughout our history, including those who died in wars that presumably even the author would recognize as legitimate. Apparently the author feels the need to ignore and disrespect our entire national history simply to make his current political point about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

2. The language used in the article speaks volumes. Over and over again, the author uses words like the following to describe our country, its military, and its policies: occupation, aggressor, maimed, tortured, cruel, brutal, crimes, killing innocent people, empire, kangaroo courts, etc. This is the language we use to describe evil. One could be forgiven for thinking he was recounting the history of Nazi Germany or the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe, insteading talking about America. He repeatedly says that the U.S. created the terrorists by our policies. Apparently he believes, like Obama's infamous pastor Jeremiah Wright, that the attacks of 9/11 were simply America's "chickens coming home to roost." It is very clear that this is not about policy differences regarding the War in Iraq. In fact, he even says that the U.S. has been following these same policies for a long time -- long before 9/11. The author is writing this article because he despises what America stands for. He thinks -- indeed he says! -- that we are an evil empire that goes around slaughtering innocent people and conquering and exploiting weaker countries for our own financial gain and to enhance our global power. In his twisted mind, the bin Ladens and the Saddam Husseins of the world are the freedom-fighters trying to defend themselves against an evil and powerful aggressor known as the United States. Our country's alliances with Saudi Arabia and Israel have turned kindly, peace-loving moms and dads into crazed terrorists who behead American journalists on camera and fly planes into tall buildings filled with women and children.

3. At every turn, the author does whatever he has to do to paint the U.S. in the worst light possible, ignoring or distorting any facts that might stand in his way. He keeps saying over and over again that we killed many innocent people in Iraq and Afghanistan. Regarding the War in Iraq, he ignores the fact that our military action was based on reports from intelligence agencies of our country and other countries that stated that Saddam Hussein had WMD's that he intended to use against his neighbors or sell to terrorists. This intelligence turned out to be badly wrong, but it was believed by almost all of our political leaders at the time. (By the way, we never provided Iraq with WMD's, as the author claims, merely conventional weapons.) He ignores the fact that our intelligence had uncovered meetings between Hussein and top Al-Qaeda operatives. He ignores the fact that we tried hard to work through the U.N. to avoid military conflict, and that war only came after 17 U.N. resolutions that were disregarded by Hussein and after weapons inspectors were denied access to Iraq for years. He ignores the fact that Hussein was a brutal dictator whose torture chambers (real torture, as opposed the tough interrogations methods that the author loosely calls "torture") were notorious and who kept his people in fear. He ignores the fact that the Iraqi people welcomed us as liberators when we initially invaded the country, and that they tried and sentenced Hussein to death for his crimes. He ignores the fact that the Iraq people welcomed the new democracy set up by the U.S. and turned out to vote numerous times in large numbers despite threats against their lives. He ignores the fact that most of the civilian casualties in Iraq were not caused by our troops but by the insurgency, which was largely made up of terrorist fighters pouring into Iraq from other terrorist-supporting countries like Iran and Syria to undermine the young Iraqi democracy. He ignores the fact that the Taliban was sympathetic with and supportive of bin Laden and Al-Qaeda at every turn and refused to stop its cooperation with Al-Qaeda even after 9/11. He ignores the fact that the Taliban was a brutal totalitarian regime that sentenced people to have their limbs chopped off for simple theft and women to be gang-raped for crimes like allowing their face to be seen in public. He ignores the fact that our military followed careful rules of engagement in both Iraq and Afghanistan in which they targeted only known terrorists and tried to avoid injuring innocent civilians whenever possible. (In fact, I think our rules of engagement were too strict and caused our war effort to suffer in both countries.) He ignores the fact that those terrorists deliberately embedded themselves among innocent civilians in order to maximize civilian casualties to turn public opinion against the U.S. He ignores the fact that our "occupation" of Iraq lasted only long enough to ensure the Iraqi democracy was somewhat stable and capable of protecting itself and that all combat troops have now withdrawn from the country. He ignores the fact that we have did not exploit Iraq for financial gain and did not steal their oil for ourselves. And these facts are just the tip of the iceberg -- just the ones that come to my mind at first glance. Many, many more could be mentioned.

Oh yes. Here's a big fact that somehow also failed to make it into that author's article. Our Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden, the great enemy of our country who was responsible for the 9/11 attacks and other terrorist attacks against Americans. There is no doubt that this, coupled with the capture or killing of many other top Al-Qaeda operatives since 9/11 by our troops, has made us much safer and has been a big reason why we have not had another major attack on our soil since 9/11. Our soldiers risked -- and in some cases forfeited -- their lives to achieve these victories against the people who attacked our country and to keep us free and secure. Maybe that author, like his hero Ron Paul, is upset that we tracked down and killed the terrorist who murdered thousands of our citizens in cold blood without reading him his Miranda rights.

The point of listing out all these facts is not to say that the U.S. hasn't made mistakes in prosecuting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We have made some big mistakes. And our military made some big mistakes, like Abu Ghraib. But there is a big difference between saying we made mistakes and saying that we are an evil empire that attacks other countries for no reason to exploit them for financial gain and kill innocent civilians. I can respect someone who argues that the War in Iraq was unnecessary for our national defense, or was prosecuted in an incompetent way. I cannot respect someone who argues that the U.S. is an evil imperialist empire.

4. The author clearly thinks there should be no attempt to defend against terrorists at home either. He doesn't like the Patriot Act or tough interrogation techniques (what he calls "torture") or detaining terrorists or military tribunals or Guantanamo Bay. After all, in his view, terrorists don't really exist -- they're just artificially manufactured by our imperialistic policies. Apparently his idea is to let all the terrorists go (detaining them is illegal!) and make sure we don't ever do anything they don't like again. Whatever they demand from us, we just do it to make sure we don't make them upset. We can't support Israel because they don't like that. We can't have troops anywhere in the Middle East because they don't like that. We don't dare have a working relationship with any Middle East dictatorship because they don't like that. We can't publish cartoons that make fun of Mohammed because they don't like that. That's probably how the author advises his kids to deal with bullies too. Just be nice to them and they won't pick on you. What kind of a pathetic way is this to carry out foreign policy?

All right. I'm done fighting with people who hate America. They can go live with their freedom-loving Al-Qaeda friends in the Middle East, for all I care. Memorial Day is more than just a day off work or an occasion for a cookout. It is the day when we remember our brave men and women in uniform who gave the ultimate sacrifice for the sake of their country and its liberties. Despite many present problems and future challenges, America continues to offer its citizens a level of individual political and religious freedom, opportunity, prosperity, and justice virtually unmatched anywhere else on earth, both now and throughout history. We owe these blessings first and foremost to God, who graciously gave us life and sovereignly placed us in such a great country. But secondarily, we owe these blessings to our country's military heroes -- leaders and soldiers -- who fought to win us our independence in the first place and who risked their lives throughout our history to protect our soil from foreign attack and to defeat the enemies of freedom. Over more than two centuries, they have suffered hardship and danger on the battlefield and in the trenches so we could enjoy comfort and peace; hundreds of thousands of them died so that we can live in freedom. Such freedom was purchased at great cost to them, and at the very least, we owe them remembrance and honor. And we owe, at the very least, gratitude and support to all past and current members of our military and their families.

Most of America's wars, first against English rule and then later against the global threats of Nazism, fascism, Communism, and radical Islam, have been first and foremost to protect our country from actual or imminent threats by tyrannical movements and governments. A few of our wars (such as the wars in Kosovo and Libya, for example) have seemed more motivated by humanitarian considerations than imminent national security threats. There is honest disagreement about whether every war America has fought has been necessary or worth the cost, and certainly some wars such as Vietnam were executed very poorly. But I think there can be no honest disagreement that the wars America has fought, without exception, have been fought on behalf of freedom and democracy and to make the world a safer, more peaceful, and better place. Unlike most other great nations and empires throughout history, our wars have not been wars of conquest or aggression. They have been intended to free others, not to enslave them.

I believe few institutions have done more good for the world than the U.S. military. A non-exhaustive list of nations who owe their present freedom to the U.S. military includes England, France, Italy, Belgium, Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Austria, Grenada, the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan, Israel, Kuwait, Kosovo, Bosnia, and Iraq. Our soldiers have died to protect us and keep us free, but have also died to bring peace and freedom around the world.

What can we do to honor the memory of our fallen heroes and their sacrifice for us? We can donate our money and efforts to support organizations that help veterans and their families -- Hugh Hewitt provides some helpful links here. We can express our thanks to those who are currently serving or those who have served in the past and their families. We can vote for politicians who respect our military and want to keep it strong instead of using it as a showcase for political correctness. We can stand up to the militant left and the radical libertarian right which hate our military and undermine our country's wars at every opportunity. Most of all, we can thank God for the freedoms we have and use them to honor Him and serve others.

Here is another great link by Victor Davis Hanson that honors our military on Memorial Day.

Finally, the words to the song "The Other Little Soldier" by Josh Gracin, which reminds us just how great our soldiers' sacrifice is:

He used to play in Daddy's uniform
With the stripes across the sleeve,
And he knew when he was all grown up
What he was gonna be.
He used to like to ambush
Every careless cat or dog
That had the nerve to cross the
Battle lines that he had drawn.

And even though he didn't know
What his dad was fighting for,
He was proud to be the other little soldier
In this war

The phone rang in the middle of the night
When they called his dad to go,
Kissed him and his mom goodbye,
He said, "God, I love you both!
Now I know that it's a lot to ask
Of such a little man
But hold the fort and I'll be home
As quickly as I can."

And even though he didn't know
What his dad was fighting for,
He was proud to be the other little soldier
In this war

A wall could not begin to hold
The names of all the kids
Who gave the greatest sacrifice
That any child could give

It was the first time he'd ever seen
A flag from up that close,
And he watched them as they folded it
So careful and so slow;
As they gave it to his mother
He knew what he should do:
He raised his little hand
And gave his dad one last salute.

And even though he didn't know
What his dad was fighting for,
He was proud to be the other little soldier
In this war.

May God bless America and our troops, today and always!

Department of Injustice

2011-05-10T11:30:00.004-04:00

This post by Ed Whelan on National Review's Bench Memos blog caught my attention. We all know that Eric Holder's Justice Department is refusing to defend the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in court. What is also coming out is that Holder's Justice Department is also refusing to enforce DOMA as existing law. Whelan gives one clear example of this in his post, and also links to a longer article that provides much more detailed evidence and analysis of the Justice Department's actions.

This is par for the course for Holder's Justice Department. A Washington Times editorial from September 2010 explained how the DOJ is refusing to enforce federal laws that require states to purge their voting rolls of ineligible voters. Whistleblower J. Christian Adams recounted how a top official from the DOJ informed her staff that the department had no interest in enforcing those laws (presumably since voter fraud works to the Democrat's political advantage). Then there is this column by Andrew McCarthy on National Review, which recounts the testimony of another whistleblower, Christopher Coates, before the Civil Rights Commission. Coates described how the DOJ's dropping of all charges in the Philadelphia Black Panthers voter intimidation case, shocking as it was, was merely the tip of the iceberg and that at Holder's (and Obama's) direction, the DOJ was consistently enforcing civil rights laws in a racially discriminatory manner. As McCarthy pointed out, it is more than just politicization of the Justice Department - it is the criminalization of the Justice Department.

Clearly, President Obama and his buddy Eric Holder have no interest in enforcing laws they don't like. They will stop at nothing, including ignoring or violating the laws and Constitution of the U.S., in order to achieve their political and ideological goals. Their lawless tyranny must be stopped in November 2012, or our country may never recover.

Obama Politicizes Government Contracts

2011-05-07T14:31:00.005-04:00

I was appalled -- but not surprised -- when I read this article from The Wall Street Journal yesterday. The gist of it is that Obama is about to sign an executive order reversing a 70-year-old government policy. This new order will require all private companies and their officers to list their political donations as a condition to bidding for government contracts.

This is called using the power of the government to silence your political opponents. Companies have two choices: donate to Republicans (or conservative third-party groups) and lose out on all government contracts, or protect their livelihoods and don't give any money to Republican candidates. Oh yeah, and guess who doesn't have to disclose their donations? That's right. Unions, which donate overwhelmingly to Democrats.

Thanks to Obama, no longer will we have a federal contract system based on best value and best quality. Now politics will decide who gets what contract. That may be good for Obama's re-election campaign, but it's not very good for our country.

It is increasingly difficult for me to understand how someone who genuinely cares about the future of our country can support this radical leftist, this partisan hack who now occupies the White House.

"Al-Qaeda, Yes; Defense of Marriage Act, No

2011-04-27T09:14:00.002-04:00

Well, it's been a long time since I've posted here, but tax season is now over and I hope to start posting regularly again now that I have some free time! At the moment I am working on a long article on the topic of gay marriage which I hope to have ready to post in the next week or two.

In the meantime, I wanted to share a great link to an article by Andrew McCarthy of National Review Online entitled "Al-Qaeda, Yes; Defense of Marriage Act, No." McCarthy exposes the hypocrisy of the law firm King & Spalding, which has willingly defended all sorts of the vilest people from terrorists to murderers and rapists, but is now refusing to defend the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in court. The same is true of Eric Holder, the U.S. Attorney General, who presides over a Justice Department whose lawyers have willingly volunteered their time to assist Al-Qaeda terrorists but refuse to defend DOMA, a law passed by large bipartisan Congressional majorities a mere 15 years ago, signed by President Clinton, and supported by a majority of the American people.

Of course, the greatest hypocrisy of all comes from gay rights activists, led by the Human Rights Campaign, who used threats and intimidation to get King & Spalding to drop their legal defense of DOMA. For more on these threats see this article from The Weekly Standard's website. The gay rights lobby claims to stand for tolerance, understanding, and diversity of ideas. Except they have no tolerance for anyone who stands in their way. Their goal is to ensure that DOMA gets no reasonable defense in court whatsoever, and they will do whatever it takes to silence their opponents.

Germantown Press Conference

2011-04-26T14:27:00.003-04:00

Here is the link to the press release regarding the state medical board's investigation into abortionist Leroy Carhart. There was a press conference and prayer vigil in Germantown this morning.

Germantown clinic update

2011-03-31T20:00:00.005-04:00

Quite a bit has been happening lately in Germantown! The Maryland Coalition for Life is now leasing an office space directly across from abortionist Leroy Carhart's clinic. See pictures here. The space is intended to be a Resource and Referral Center for both undecided and post-abortive women. The center will be working with and referring women to the Rockville and Shady Grove Pregancy Centers. Training for receptionists is being held this coming Sunday.

40 Days for Life is continuing to ensure a peaceful and prayerful pro-life presence outside the abortion clinic. Apparently Leroy Carhart has now begun performing abortions on Sunday evenings, possibly to avoid the constant pro-life presence that 40 Days for Life has provided. Ironically (or Providentially), his procedures last Sunday evening just "happened" to coincide with the candlelight vigil celebrating the mid-way point of 40 Days for Life! There will be another candlelight vigil this coming Sunday from 8pm to midnight.

Here is a Gazette article about the new rental space. Given the Gazette's usual slanted coverage, I have been impressed with the balance I have seen in their past couple articles on the abortion debate in Germantown. ABC Channel 7 news also covered the story (you'll see two of my pastors at the beginning of the video). I understand the interviewer was surprised at their inability to find anyone from the office park, from Carhart's office, or from NARAL to interview for the pro-abortion perspective on their story (though there was a statement from a national abortion organization in the coverage). Donations are being accepted here to pay for the expenses of running the Resource and Referral Center in Germantown.

There is much more going on surrounding this issue, including legislation in Annapolis, than I can go into at the moment. I am amazed at the response to Carhart's move to Germantown in December, and that this movement continues to build momentum. There are so many wonderful people behind this effort to save the lives of the unborn. May God continue to work and be glorified through all of those involved in this debate, in their words, actions and presence.

Libya

2011-03-19T08:58:00.004-04:00

We do not mean to belittle what is happening and has happened in Japan and Libya. However "life happens" outside the blogosphere and although I do not have time for a detailed post on either, I do want to share an opinion piece I read today.

As sad and horrible as it is to see what is happening in Libya lately, I do not think US military action is apropriate. It is particularly inapropriate when it is not decided upon by our own Congress, but by the United Nations and the President.

The current poll on the National Review online home page is: "The West is now committed to taking military action in Libya. This development is..." 34% chose "Mistake" and 66% chose "Welcome." Obviously this is not a very scientific poll, but it is suggestive (especially at a Conservative publication).

Here is an Andrew McCarthy piece from National Review Online about the problems with the way President Obama is proceeding. It makes me sick enough to think of US involvement in another war, however it is even worse when that war has not been sanctioned by Congress. To quote McCarthy: "In the Libya situation, our constitutional system calls for seeking a congressional authorization of military force. Even if that weren’t so, it is terrible policy to go to war without public support."

You Can't Make This Stuff Up

2011-03-02T06:52:00.002-05:00

I read a couple of humorous articles on National Review that I wanted to share with you. One is a short blog post about San Francisco's sewer woes. It seems the city has been using "environmentally friendly" low-flow toilets that have caused sludge to build up inside the sewer pipes. Not surprisingly, this has created a horrible stench throughout the city that has forced its government to spend tens of millions over the past few years to try to upgrade the sewer system. Now the city wants to pump bleach into the sewers to further combat the smell. But of course, the very environmentalists whose policies caused the problem in the first place are upset about the bleach as well. Ah San Francisco. Is it really worth it to have your city inundated with poop just to "save" a few gallons of water (a completely renewable resource, by the way)?

The other is an even more humorous article about more destructive consequences of the radical environmental movement. The article is definitely worth reading for the humor alone, but here's an executive summary. Back in the early 1990's, the environmental movement led the charge to prohibit logging in many millions of acres of forests in Oregon and Washington to protect the habitat of the endangered spotted owl. This devastated the economy of many towns in the region and caused 30,000 loggers to lose their jobs. Now, a couple of decades later, it turns out that the spotted owl continues to die off, and the reason has little to do with logging. It seems the culprit is the barred owl, a rival species that is taking over the spotted owl's habitat. But the ever resourceful environmentalists have a new plan. Now they want to set up in the forest, play owl calls over loudspeakers, and shoot barred owls when they come in response to the owl calls. How do you feel about your tax dollars possibly financing the killing of one owl species to save another? And when are the loggers going to get an apology from the government for getting their jobs taken and their lives ruined based on junk science?

And how many other jobs are being lost as a result of junk science? Think "global warming" and "cap-and-trade." I think it's safe to say the environmental movement in this country has not learned its lesson.

Sharia Law Comes to America

2011-02-26T06:31:00.003-05:00

I first heard this story on the radio yesterday coming home from work, and it shocked me. The city of Dearborn, Michigan is arresting and jailing Christians for peacefully speaking to Muslims about Christianity and handing out Bibles in public areas. (For those who don't know, Dearborn and other surrounding towns are home to the largest concentration of Muslims in the U.S.) Several of the arrests were caught on video so there is clear evidence that the Christians were not "disturbing the peace" as the police claim. By contrast, after the arrests a crowd of Muslims gathered around and were shouting profanities and violent epithets -- yet none of them were arrested for "disturbing the peace." In one case, the missionaries, including an 18-year-old girl, were thrown in jail overnight. In another, the missionaries were actually brought to trial, but after jurors saw the video of the incident they immediately acquitted them of any wrongdoing. Even after their acquittal, the mayor and other city officials continued to publicly attack them. The full story is here on the website of the Thomas More Law Center, which is bringing a civil rights lawsuit on behalf of these missionaries.

Yes, folks, this is America. We are used to hearing about people arrested and jailed for their faith in other countries. But who would have thought it could actually happen here in America? Essentially the city of Dearborn is unofficially enforcing Sharia law, which prohibits people of any other religion from attempting to proselytize Muslims. And in the process, it is trampling on people's constitutional first amendment rights. Why are city officials doing this? I think it's obvious they are doing this because either they feel intimidated by or they want to curry favor with the large Muslim population in their community, which obviously supports their actions.

We all know that most if not all Islamic countries are governed by repressive regimes that deny even the most basic civil rights to their citizens, including freedom of speech and freedom of religion. What a lot of Americans don't realize is that many Muslims who are living in Western countries are fighting hard against freedom of speech and religion as well. In Europe, many Muslim communities have become islands unto themselves where national laws are not enforced and where the police are afraid to go. Muslims have been rallying in the streets in England and other countries, demanding the adoption of Sharia law. (Sharia law, for those who don't know, is the strict Muslim law code that calls for the utter subjugation of women, draconian punishments for moral violations such as homosexuality or adultery, and denies freedom of speech or religion.) Most people assume Sharia law can't happen in America, but the Dearborn incident demonstrates that it absolutely can if we do not remain vigilent. Kudos to organizations like the Thomas More Law Center that are exposing these incidents.

It's important for all Americans to understand that Sharia law and Muslims who support Sharia law stand for something that is antithetical to our country's values and laws -- in fact they are profoundly hostile to our values. Those who support Sharia law are enemies of freedom and of America's way of life, and we must not allow them to get even the slightest toehold in our country, as they have in many other Western countries. As the famous quote says, "The price of liberty is eternal vigilance."

Walk for Choice

2011-02-25T16:27:00.006-05:00

Abortion supporters are protesting the House's attempts to defund Planned Parenthood by holding "Walks for Choice" accross the country on Saturday, February 26. There will be a prayer vigil in Annapolis, where one of these walks is being held, and I would imagine similar pro-life events will be held elsewhere.

What strikes me is the logo for this event (above). The words "We have a voice. We have a choice." appear to me to contradict the image of the faceless woman. The pro-abortion crowd claims that they are the ones who truly care about women and that they are standing up for them and for their rights. However, to me this image of a generic woman with only words for a face implies that individual women with individual personalities and individual needs don't really matter to them, only that they stand for a "woman's right to choose." It saddens me how many women buy into these lies.

Now Who's the Party of No?

2011-02-25T12:12:00.004-05:00

You know, I have at times been critical of the Republican Party. I believe in conservative ideals, but I have often thought Republicans tend to be very spineless and weak in fighting for them. I know at one point on this blog I even urged my readers not to give money to the Republican National Committee because of their habit of giving big bucks to some very liberal Republican candidates. I have also said that I am not necessarily pro-Republican; merely (fiercely) anti-Democrat.

However, I have to say that I have been very encouraged lately about what I am seeing from Republican officials around the country. Many of them are showing a lot more leadership and backbone than I expected to see. The Republican governors, especially, are doing both their states and their party proud. When Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey was first elected at the end of 2009, I expected him to be a typical Northeastern liberal Republican squish. Boy, was I wrong! He has been fierce in taking on the unions and the political interest groups and fighting to get New Jersey back on a solid financial footing. Gov. Bob McDonnell has also done a great deal in only a little over a year to balance Virginia's budget and bring more jobs to his state. Gov. Tom Corbett of Pennsylvania is cracking down on abortion clinics in the state that violate health & safety codes. Not only did he succeed in exposing the disgusting & murderous activities going on in Kermit Gosnell's "abortion clinic" in Philadelphia, but he has also fired numerous state employees who were responsible for looking the other way for years while these violations occurred. Now, I am watching as Gov. Scott Walker and the courageous Republicans in the Wisconsin legislature take on the deeply entrenched public employee unions in the state in order to balance the state's budget. Despite intense pressure, angry mobs, and threats of violence, they are standing tall on their principles and refusing to back down. Other Republican governors are also standing up to the money-hungry unions, including Gov. John Kasich of Ohio.

Then there is the newly-elected GOP majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. They too are courageously standing up to the President. They recently passed a package with $61 billion in discretionary domestic spending cuts, including de-funding Planned Parenthood. Granted, it's small compared to the overall deficit, but at least it's a start -- a start staunchly opposed by the Democrats who want no cuts at all. John Boehner and the Republican leadership in the House have also announced that they intend to take on entitlement reform in their budget coming out in April. This is a somewhat risky thing to do, especially since the President wants to do nothing but use entitlements as a political football to get re-elected -- but it is the right thing to do. It is encouraging to see this new class of lawmakers willing to take on such an important issue that lawmakers have cravenly avoided for decades.

Who knows how everything will happen in the end. Maybe the Republicans will end up caving in the end. Maybe the Democrats will effectively demagogue the spending cuts to worm their way back into power in Congress. But for now, we have every reason to be encouraged at this new generation of Republican leaders. They seem to have principles, and they seem to be willing to fight for those principles. We should pray for them and support them in any way we can. And those "conservative" critics who claim there is "no difference between the two parties" and "all politicians are equally corrupt" should be ashamed of themselves. There is a very clear difference between the parties, and people who think that it doesn't matter whether you vote Republican or Democrat are not paying attention to what's happening out there.

Obama's rhetoric to the contrary, the Democrats do not stand for change. Public employees are not screaming epithets against the Wisconsin governor in the streets because they support change. They are reactionaries trying to defend a failed system that is tetering on the verge of bankruptcy. Democrats have no solutions to our looming financial crisis and our out-of-control deficit spending. I have known for a long time they are cowards -- I saw how they demagogued Bush's sincere attempt at Social Security reform back in 2005. What I have recently come to realize is that many Republicans actually do stand for change. Many of them are sincere about wanting to solve our deficit crisis and tackle entitlement reform. Many of them are willing to take risks and stand up to powerful & corrupt interests to do what's right. I don't put my trust in politicians, but I will say that I've rarely been prouder to be a Republican.

For a great article on this contrast between the parties, check out this column by Charles Krauthammer.

Did You Know Your Tax Dollars Are Funding the Democratic Party?

2011-02-24T11:53:00.004-05:00

Take a look at this outstanding column by a very thoughtful political analyst, Michael Barone of The Washington Examiner. The whole article is good, but this paragraph in particular caught my attention:

"'Follow the money,' Washington reporters like to say. The money in this case comes from taxpayers, present and future, who are the source of every penny of dues paid to public-employee unions -- who in turn spend much of that money on politics [$400 million in 2008 alone], almost all of it for Democrats. In effect, public-employee unions are a mechanism by which every taxpayer is forced to fund the Democratic party."

Disgusting Commentary on our Universities

2011-02-21T07:32:00.002-05:00

A war hero who was awarded the Purple Heart after being shot 11 times in Iraq and who spent two years in the hospital recovering from his wounds was booed and heckled when he spoke at a townhall meeting at Columbia University last week in favor of allowing the ROTC back on campus to recruit. Story here. These students don't deserve to have the freedom they enjoy in this great country, thanks to heroes like Sgt. Anthony Maschek. And what a sad, disgusting commentary on the left-wing teachers and professors who have shaped the worldviews of these kids.

Planned Parenthood Defunding Passes the House

2011-02-19T12:23:00.004-05:00

The House has passed Rep. Mike Pence's amendment to defund Planned Parenthood with a vote of House 240-185.
Here is a complete list of the budget reducing amendments that passed this week.

The Contrast Couldn't Be Clearer...

2011-02-18T12:57:00.003-05:00

...between those who are real leaders and those who aren't. Definitely in the "not a real leader" category is Barack Obama. His cowardly budget continues the big domestic spending while completely ignoring the massive problem of entitlements which threatens our country with bankruptcy. Charles Krauthammer has a lot more details in his great column here.

In the "real leader" category are two tough, courageous governors: Mitch Daniels of Indiana and Chris Christie of New Jersey. Both of these men are real leaders who taking the painful steps necessary to fix their states' financial problems, all the while being honest with their constituents about what's at stake. Peggy Noonan has a lot more details in her great column here.

Thoughts on the Wisconsin Showdown

2011-02-18T07:06:00.005-05:00

As most of you know, there's a showdown going on in Wisconsin, with protestors jamming the state capitol to protest a plan by the new Republican legislature to cut public employee benefits in order to attempt to balance the state's budget. Here are my thoughts on the subject.

1. You'd think, from reading the protestors' signs comparing Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker to Hitler and hearing union bosses call him the "Mubarak of the Midwest", that he and his allies in the state legislature were pushing something really radical. What they are actually proposing is for public employees to pay 12.6% of their health insurance instead of less than 5%. (Is there ANYBODY who works in the private sector who gets their employer to pay 87.4% or more of their health insurance???) Oh yeah, and they have to pay half of their pension contributions (as opposed to 0% now). I know, I know, can you believe those evil politicians asking public employees to contribute some money toward their own retirement? I mean it's not like non-government employees have to save for their own retirement or anything.

The bill also restricts the power of the unions in other ways. It keeps unions from forcing state employees to pay union dues. And it ends collective bargaining for public employee unions for everything except for wages (with the exception of police & fire), which means that benefit increases would be restricted to the CPI. The reason for this is quite simple. State and local government union employees make, on average, 45% more in total compensation than similar employees working in the private sector. Thanks to collective bargaining, public employee compensation (usually disguised as increased non-wage benefits) has continued to increase significantly despite the dismal economic conditions. Over the past few years, public-sector employment in Wisconsin has continued to increase while private-sector employment decreased. And unfortunately, Wisconsin simply can't afford to pay for it anymore. The state faces a $3.6 billion budget deficit over the next two years. Why shouldn't the unions have to tighten their belt like the rest of us?

Rich Lowry of National Review put it like this: "Walker's reforms, though, go beyond the immediate bottom line. They are aimed at curtailing the power of public-sector unions that feast on the circularity of their relationship with government. The unions work to elect politicians, then sit across a bargaining table from them -- and lo and behold, get what they want." This circular relationship is a big reason why so many states are going bankrupt.

2. The tactics of Big Labor, as always, are appalling. Teachers are walking off their jobs and shutting down schools to attend the protests (bringing their students with them in many cases). I wish I could get the taxpayers to foot the bill for ME to walk of my job to engage in days of political protests. As mentioned before, the governor is being compared to Hitler and Mubarak for having the cheek to try to balance the budget. The protestors have surrounded the capitol, waving vicious signs and shouting vicious things. Republican legislators are getting physical threats against them, and some of them have been forced to get police protection for their homes, businesses, and families. Unionists have actually targeted some of those homes and businesses for protests. They are trying to bully and scare state legislators into doing what they want. It's despicable. And give the Republicans credit for not backing down, at least so far. The behavior of the unions demonstrates just how corrupt and entitled they are and just how badly they need to be reined in.

Jay Nordlinger, as always, has some great thoughts on National Review. He writes, "A great advantage of the Left is that they are organized and determined -- and have a lot of time. Paid time. The taxpayer is funding these 'days of protest,' engaged in by the public-school teachers. They are using their 'sick' leave, provided by the taxpayer, to go rallying. And what are the other citizens of Wisconsin - the majority - doing? What they always do. Going about their business, or businesses; providing for their families. As we speak, some are having to stay home with their school-aged children, who have been locked out of their classrooms by their teachers. Ordinary Wisconsites aren't paid to go rallying in the capital. Besides, they 'ralled' at the polls last November. They had their say then. And now, Governor Walker and the rest are trying to conduct the people's business." Nordlinger also quotes a columnist from a local newspaper saying that union leaders "must figure that if they bring 13,000 shouting people to Madison, they can overrule the election."

3. Speaking of attempting to overrule the election. The Democrats in the Wisconsin legislature have disappeared. Yes, that's right, disappeared. They walked out of the capitol and literally left the state, driving to a hotel in Illinois. This forced the legislature to postpone the vote because there was not a quorum present. Unbelievable. You don't like what the majority of legislators -- democratically elected legislators -- are doing, so you just leave town and shut down the legislature completely. Yes, this is how Democrats operate. They act like two-year-olds and throw a little temper tantrum. What would happen to our system of government if the minority party left town every time the majority tried to pass a bill they didn't like? For the millionth time, Democrats demonstrate why they deserve to be a permanent minority.

"Planned Parenthood Is About Parenthood in the Same Way the American Cancer Society Is About Cancer"

2011-02-11T17:36:00.003-05:00

All right, I can't take credit for the title above. Some Dude came up with that quote. I wish I had.

Take a look at this explosive column by Michelle Malkin. Needless to say, she doesn't hold back as she blows out of the water the claim that Planned Parenthood is an innocent organization that exists to help and care for women in need. A more accurate definition would be "an organization that assists in the exploitation of young teenaged women for big financial gains." If you think that's an extreme statement, read the article and watch the videos from Live Action Films. Keep in mind that Planned Parenthood rakes in hundreds of millions of dollars from federal and state governments. Your tax dollars are funding this organization, although if Republicans in the House have their way that will soon change.

Boom-Bust Cycle Explained

2011-02-10T19:45:00.006-05:00

Dr. Thomas DiLorenzo testified before a House subcommitee yesterday. Although Congress likely isn't listening, I thought his explanation of the boom-bust cycle was too good to pass over. The text of his testimony is below. It's a bit long, but I hope you can read to the end. Unfortunately many people do not have a good understanding of the economics behind our monetary system, including many politicians.

________________________
Testimony of Dr. Thomas DiLorenzo
Professor of Economics, Loyola University Maryland
Committee on Financial Services, Subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Policy and Technology
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
2128 Rayburn House Office Building

Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, I thank you for the opportunity to address the issue of today’s hearing: "Can Monetary Policy Really Create Jobs?" Since I am an academic economist, you will not be surprised to learn that I believe that the correct answer to this question is: "yes and no." Monetary policy under the direction of the Federal Reserve has a history of creating and destroying jobs. The reason for this is that the Fed, like all other central banks, has always been a generator of boom-and-bust cycles in the economy. Why this is so is explained in three classic treatises in economics: Theory of Money and Credit by Ludwig von Mises, and two treatises by Nobel laureate economist F.A. Hayek: Monetary Theory and the Trade Cycle and Prices and Production. Hayek was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Science in 1974 for this work. I will summarize the essence of this theory of the business cycle as plainly as I can.

When the Fed expands the money supply excessively it not only is prone to creating price inflation, but it also sows the seeds of recession or depression by artificially lowering interest rates, which can ignite a false or unsustainable "boom" period. Lower interest rates induce people to consume more and save less. But increased savings and the subsequent business investment that it finances is what fuels economic growth and job creation.

Lowered interest rates and wider availability of credit caused by the Fed’s expansionary monetary policy causes businesses to invest more in (mostly long-term) capital projects (primarily real estate in the latest boom-and-bust cycle), and there is an accompanying expansion of employment in those industries. But since the lower interest rates are caused by the Fed’s expansion of the money supply and not an increase in savings by the public (i.e., by the free market), businesses that have invested in long-term capital projects eventually discover that there is not enough consumer demand to justify their investments. (The reduced savings in the past means consumer demand is weaker in the future). This is when the "bust" occurs.

The economic damage done by the boom-and-bust policies of the Fed occur in the boom period when resources are misallocated in the ways described here. The "bust" period is actually a necessary cure for the economic miscalculations that have occurred, as businesses liquidate their unsound investments and begin to make decisions on realistic, market-based interest rates. Prices and wages must return to reality as well.

Government policies that bail out businesses that have made these bad investment decisions will only delay or prohibit economic recovery while encouraging more of such behavior in the future (the "moral hazard problem"). This is how short recessions can be turned into seemingly endless ones. Worse yet is for the Fed to create even more monetary inflation, rather than allowing the necessary economic adjustments to take place, which will eventually set off another boom-and-bust cycle.

As applied to today’s economic situation, it is obvious that the artificially low interest rates caused by the policies of the Greenspan Fed created an unsustainable boom in the housing market. Thousands of new jobs were in fact created – and then destroyed – giving an updated meaning to Joseph Schumpeter’s phrase "creative destruction." Many Americans who obtained jobs and pursued careers in housing construction and related industries realized that those jobs and careers were not sustainable after all; they were fooled by the Fed’s low interest rate policies. Thus, the Fed was not only responsible for causing the massive unemployment that we endure today, but also a great amount of what economists call "mismatch" unemployment. The skills that people in these industries developed were no longer in demand; they lost their jobs; and now they must retool and re-educate themselves.

The Fed has been generating boom-and-bust cycles from its inception in January of 1914. Total bank deposits more than doubled from 1914 to 1920 (partly because the Fed financed part of the American involvement in World War I) and created a false boom that turned to a bust with the Depression of 1920. GDP fell by 24% from 1920–1921, and the number of unemployed more than doubled, from 2.1 million to 4.9 million (See Richard Vedder and Lowell Galloway, Out of Work: Unemployment and Government in Twentieth-Century America). This was a more severe economic decline than was the first year of the Great Depression.

In America’s Great Depression economist Murray N. Rothbard demonstrated that, once again, it was the excessively expansionary monetary policy of the Fed – and of other central banks – that caused yet another boom-and-bust cycle that spawned the Great Depression. It was not the Fed’s subsequent restrictive monetary policy of 1929–1932 that was the problem, as Milton Friedman and others have argued, but its previous expansion. The Fed was therefore guilty of contributing greatly to the massive unemployment of the Great Depression.

In summary, the Fed’s monetary policies tend to create temporary and unsustainable increases in employment while being the very engine of recession and depression that creates a much greater degree of job destruction and unemployment.
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Changing Hearts and Minds, One Life at a Time

2011-02-10T07:19:00.005-05:00

As those of you who follow this blog know, the new "late-term abortion" (euphemism for killing viable babies) clinic in Germantown, Maryland, has been the focus of a lot of prayers and concern for those of us who post here. So far, I have been able to attend two prayer walks outside the clinic. Both of them were pretty well attended despite very cold and windy weather, and while the evil of what we are protesting weighs heavily on our hearts, it has been encouraging to gather with like-minded people and stand for the protection of life and for justice for those unable to defend themselves. It has also been encouraging to see some renewed energy in the state capitol in Annapolis for the pro-life cause. Several legislators are introducing legislation to stop late-term abortion in Maryland. With all the negative publicity surrounding Kermit Gosnell's baby butcher shop in Philadelphia, we are praying that more pro-choice legislators will take a closer look at what is going on in the abortion industry and decide to support reasonable restrictions on abortion late in the pregnancy.

I wanted to share a really encouraging story from our community that happened just this week. A group of pro-life people from the community have been holding a prayer vigil every Monday morning outside of the Germantown clinic. This Monday, a woman went into the clinic for a scheduled abortion. While she was inside, the group of about 90 was praying hard for her and her baby. A short time later, she came back outside and told them, "I knew the love was out here and not in there." She also said that the clinic was "disgusting and the people are mean in there." She talked with the pro-life group for awhile and ended up accompanying one of them to the Shady Grove Pregnancy Center, which exists to help women like her who feel like abortion is their only option.

This reminds me a lot of another story I heard from a friend at Grove City College some years ago. My friend had been part of a group of people praying outside the abortion clinic in Pittsburgh when a woman came up and starting talking with a priest who was part of the group. It turned out that the priest had been standing outside the clinic praying a couple of years earlier when she arrived to have an abortion. He spoke with her, but she decided to have her abortion anyway. Now, two years later, she was pregnant again, and she remembered that the priest had demonstrated genuine love and concern for her, while the employees at the clinic had been cold and uncaring. She came and found the priest and told him she didn't want to have another abortion and asked for his help.

Stories like these give me hope that our prayers, protests, and vigils are not in vain. It makes me joyful and thankful to God to hear of these examples where love won out, a baby's life was spared, and a pregnant woman was able to find help and support.

These stories also highlight the vast difference between the pro-life pregnancy centers and the pro-choice abortion centers. Both supposedly exist to help pregnant women, but the contrast could not be greater. The reason these women found the people in the abortion clinics to be cold and unfeeling is because they are doing it for money, pure and simple. Abortionists and abortion clinics make thousands of dollars for each abortion they perform -- it is a multi-million dollar industry. (Abortion providers like Planned Parenthood also get a lot of federal money.) Obviously, anyone working in such a place, given the horrible sights and sounds witnessed every day (like dead dismembered babies being delivered and thrown in the trash), has to detach themselves emotionally and get through the day by mechanically processing each woman who comes in the door. Pro-life pregnancy centers, by contrast, are funded purely by churches and charitable donations and almost all their staff are unpaid. The pregnancy centers exist and are staffed because people care about these women and babies and want to help them so much they are willing to freely give of their time and money. (Unlike the abortion providers, these centers get no government money and often get a lot of harrassment from government entities like Montgomery County, MD.)

I saw this same contrast at the last pro-life walk I attended in Germantown on Sanctity of Life Sunday (the anniversary of Roe v. Wade). The small group of pro-abortion protestors (many of whom apparently were not even from the community) were chanting things like "Pro-life, that's a lie, you don't care if women die" and screaming hateful things and doing everything possible to disrupt our protest. In response to their chants, our group sang "Amazing Grace." They were angry because the police kept them on the other side of the street -- their whole purpose for being there was to get in our faces and disrupt our prayer walk. Yet I saw no one on our side respond with angry shouts. Any objective outside observers (such as people driving by and policemen directing traffic) had to see the contrast plainly.

We must, with God's help, keep up the fight, because those of us who stand for life are making a difference. And let's continue to love people -- because those stories I shared earlier are about how love won out over hatred and indifference. We will never win people's hearts and minds if we don't demonstrate with our words and actions that we really care for them.

Happy Birthday, Ronald Reagan!

2011-02-05T16:12:00.005-05:00

Tomorrow, February 6, 2011, Ronald Reagan would have been 100 years old. Though not perfect, I believe Ronald Reagan was one of our greatest presidents, and certainly our greatest modern president. If only more of those politicians currently in office attempted to live up to the standard set by this man.
There are numerous favorable and unfavorable articles about this man popping up around the internet, but I found this one interesting. About the attempted shooting of President Reagan in his first term when Jim Brady was shot, it offers a brief look at what might have been.

Sanctity of Life Week 2011

2011-01-27T11:37:00.006-05:00

An abortionist in Philadelphia was charged last week for 8 murders (among other charges)- one overdosed woman patient and 7 babies who were born alive, only to have their spines severed using scissors. It is good to see that this monster is finally being brought to justice, after what appears to have been a serious lapse in oversight allowed him to continue practicing far far longer than he should have. The grand jury reports that the state department of health found gross violations as early as 1989 and failed to see they were corrected. How many lives could have been saved if the local government had been fulfilling its committment to the community? More details here.

I encourage you to view this amazing video (Facebook login not required). It is mind-boggling to me that someone could see these images and still call this a fetus and refuse to grant her personhood. Thankfully there are signs that the tide may be beginning to turn. Former Planned Parenthood clinic director Abby Johnson's book Unplanned (according to an e-mail I received last week from Living Hope for Life) had sold out it's first run from the publisher the first day it was released, and was ranked #8 bestseller on Amazon.com and #3 at Barnes and Noble.

On Sunday there was a prayer walk outside the abortion clinic in Germantown, Maryland where Leroy Carhart is now performing late-term abortions. Though the news only reported "a few hundred," organizers counted about 600 atendees walking the block and praying for peaceful change. I was unfortunately prevented from being there by illness, but Natedawg was there and perhaps will be able to write an update at some point. Monday was the annual March for Life, on the 38th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. It is appalling how many years this holocaust has continued in our country.

For the Sunday walk in Germantown, organizers printed posters for atendees to carry. On one side in big letters it said "Pray for the Protection of Life" and on the other was a list of ten things to pray for during the 1.1 mile walk. At the top of that list was 2 Chronicles 7:14: "If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land." May that be my prayer this week and going forth.

Thoughts on the recent tragedy in Arizona

2011-01-11T23:20:00.001-05:00

I'm a little late to the party. By now, thousands of bloggers have already weighed in on this issue, but I am going to comment anyway. If you have paid any attention to the news, then you are aware now that a nut shot several people outside a Tucson, Arizona, grocery store, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and Judge John Roll. Roll was killed in the attack, and Giffords is expected to make a recovery.

Predictably, some commentators immediately suggested that a member of the TEA party is responsible for the attacks. Sarah Palin was also implicated because of her infamous map of targeted Democrats. Some lawmakers, including Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY) are taking advantage of the occasion to talk about gun control.

Here are my thoughts on the passing scene...

The attacks are a tragedy. This news does not make me happy. I do not wish for any harm to come to my ideological opponents in the Democrat party. All I want is for them to be defeated at the polls by large margins.
The attacker, Jared Loughner, is not a conservative. He's not a liberal. He's a nut. He shot all those people because he's a nut, and that's what nuts do sometimes. Among his favorite books listed on his blog are Mein Kampf, The Communist Manifesto, and Atlas Shrugged. (Essentially, the free market manifesto. A rather odd juxtaposition, don't you think?) His acquaintances also think that he has a few screws loose.
Gun control? Seriously? Do we really have to pass a new law every time something bad happens? And isn't it rather tacky to use a tragedy like this to push your pet cause?
As for blaming Sarah Palin for the attacks...good...grief. Seriously? Some crosshairs on a map made a guy flip out and kill a bunch of people?

I don't know about you, but I find this encouraging.

2011-01-06T08:53:00.005-05:00

The 112th Congress is opening by reading the entire Constitution, something that the House has surprisingly never done before. They also approved new rules, including a requirement that all bills cite the Constitution.

House Speaker John Boehner: "Hard work and tough decisions will be required of the 112th Congress. No longer can we fall short. No longer can we kick the can down the road. The people voted to end business as usual and today we begin to carry out their instructions."

I fully realize that Republicans haven't always been much better than Democrats in following the Constitution. The Tea Party was hugely influential in the last election, however, and if the new Congress is listening to their constituents they will begin to change things in Washington. Here's hoping that this is a real, and lasting, change from "politics as usual."

Late Term Abortion

2011-01-03T14:51:00.005-05:00

I just viewed this video from the pastor's lunch on December 15 and I strongly encourage you to do the same. In the video, Kelly Stauffer gives a compelling account of her own experience with late term abortion as a girl of 14. If you are interested in staying up to date on the Germantown clinic and abortions performed by Leroy Carhart, see Kick Out Carhart online. There are events scheduled for January 22 and 23 with details to be determined. I am personally praying for awareness (by citizens and legislators), peaceful outcry against these unspeakable practices, and most importantly for a change of heart for all involved.

Merry Christmas to all!

2010-12-23T16:17:00.001-05:00

If you haven't seen it already (or even if you have) I encourage you to watch Charlie Brown Christmas. Here is my favorite part, with Linus on "what Christmas is all about." Can you believe they used to show this stuff on TV, and that it's still running today!

Food Safety Modernization Act

2010-12-21T18:10:00.001-05:00

I had intended to write about this piece of legislation in a more timely fashion (shortly after it came up for vote in the Senate Thanksgiving week) but other things came up. Now I see that S. 510, the so-called Food Safety Modernization Act, has passed the House and is heading to the President's desk. This occured in spite of consitutionality questions; since this legislation is considered revenue-generating it should have originated in the House, not in the Senate. The Complete Patient (also see previous posts) has written several posts with great analysis.

The bill is intended to bring food safety into the present after outbreaks of foodborn illness. In fact it greatly increases FDA oversight of farming and the food industry, and increases extremely burdensome regulations on food production. Senator Tom Coburn, who outspokenly opposed the bill, believes that the increased regulation would not actually make food safer. He said: "The problem with food safety is the agencies don't do what they're supposed to be doing now. They don't need more regulations. They need less." Sen. Coburn also objected to the cost of the new legislation, which the Congressional Budget Office estimates as a "negligible" $1.4 million over four years.

Originally there was a great deal of outcry (from the few who knew this bill existed) because the new regulations would apply to all food production regardless of size. Sen. John Tester proposed an amendment as a solution to this problem, exempting small farms and those who sell at farmer's markets. Though this appeared to be a solution for small farms, instead of simply exempting them it apparantly places the burden on the farmer to prove that he is exempt. It looks like the FDA could inspect any time it chose. It also appears that the legislation would resurrect the failed National Animal Identification System, which required farmers to register every animal owned. Farming is not a neat and tidy business that can be laid out on paper and expected to remain somewhat constant (is any business, really?). To require extensive records from any business is a huge imposition and only impedes that business' activity and progress. The farmer, depending on his operation, must either hire someone to do the additonal paperwork or do it himself. Either way this greatly reduces the efficiency of his resources and prevents his business from performing to the full extent of his capability. Greater oversight makes the system more cumbersome and will do nothing to keep the people safe.

Dennis Prager Calls Out the Music Industry

2010-12-09T11:56:00.003-05:00

This column by Dennis Prager is excellent, although it is a very sad indictment of the American music industry (and pop culture at large).

More Thoughts on WikiLeaks

2010-12-09T08:05:00.004-05:00

In my previous post on WikiLeaks, a commenter included a link to this Salon article by Glenn Greenwald defending WikiLeaks' actions as good and even necessary. The article is very long and I can't respond point-by-point to everything in the article, but I wanted to respond to some of the major claims made in the article, which are similar to some other comments that I have heard in conversations on the topic.

Key to everything Greenwald writes is his claim that "those who expose secrets are far more hated than those in power who commit heinous acts using secrecy as their principal weapon." Now, the question is, what exactly are these "heinous acts" that Greenwald refers to? He doesn't explicitly define them, but one can hazard a pretty good guess about what he means by reading the entire article. He clearly considers the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to be in this category -- later in the article he goes so far as to include a "superb" quote that claims the U.S. "lie[d] blatantly to the entire world in order to invade a country it has long wanted to invade." This is completely false, of course -- Bush relied on U.S. and foreign intelligence agencies in determining that Iraq had WMD's, and nearly everyone else in Congress with access to that intelligence believed the same thing. The war was definitely based on faulty intelligence, but that is very different from claiming that Bush lied or misled the public into a war, a claim for which there is zero evidence. It is also fairly clear that Greenwald considers pretty much all of our country's tactics in the War on Terror, from wiretapping to enhanced interrogations to military tribunals to drone attacks against terrorists, to be "heinous acts."

This is an extremely important point to understand about Greenwald's argument. He not only does not support an aggressive prosecution of the War on Terror, but he actually thinks the U.S. has committed war crimes and deliberate murders of innocent civilians. Therefore, he believes the leaking of classified documents by WikiLeaks is justified because it exposes these crimes by our government. He believes the U.S. government is committing heinous crimes and therefore must be exposed, thwarted, and opposed in whatever way possible. Now, whether my readers agree or disagree with this, I don't see how there can be any debate that it is a deeply anti-American position. It assumes the U.S. is to blame for most of the problems in the world, and therefore cheers an organization that exists for the sole purpose of embarrassing its leaders and jeopardizing its international missions.

I couldn't be more passionately opposed to such a view. I believe our government has become sadly incompetent and corrupt in many ways, but I do not believe for a moment that the U.S. has committed heinous crimes on the international scene. Supposedly, according to Greenwald, WikiLeaks is shining a spotlight on these heinous crimes, but he provides not one example of a heinous crime committed by the U.S. government in any of these thousands of leaked documents. That is because the documents do not expose wrongdoing by the U.S. government. They do not reveal heinous crimes. It would be one thing if Assange were leaking a couple of specific documents that reveal crimes perpetrated or covered up by our government. That, in my opinion, would be justified. Instead, Assange is indiscriminately leaking thousands of classified documents, none of which expose crimes but all of which compromise our government's position in some way on the international scene. Assange is not a whistle-blower; he is an anti-American troublemaker. This provides an answer for the question that seems to puzzle Greenwald -- the question as to why so many liberals as well as conservatives have condemned WikiLeaks so harshly. The answer is simple: liberals as well as conservatives love our country and want to see it succeed and prosper.

What Greenwald doesn't seem to understand (or care about) is that our country is at war. There is an organization out there called Al Qaeda that wants to kill as many Americans as possible. Al Qaeda is supported and aided by many other radical organizations and national governments around the world. It has been a long time since 9/11, but several recent terrorist attacks and narrow escapes should remind us that this war is still very real. Because our enemies transcend national borders and operate with deception and secrecy, we cannot wage a conventional war against them. We also have to operate with deception and secrecy to track them down and destroy them. We have to take proactive measures such as enhanced interrogations to determine their plans before they strike and kill thousands of civilians. And of course, there is the little fact that we have hundreds of thousands of troops on the ground in countries like Afghanistan and Iraq. Classified documents are classified to protect their lives and the lives of foreign individuals and governments who are cooperating with and helping them. When that classified information is released indiscriminately, the lives of our military men and women are endangered and their mission is threatened. Leaking classified information is always dangerous, but especially so during wartime. Perhaps Greenwald doesn't think the wars are just, but is that any reason to put the lives of our troops in danger? They are just following orders and putting their lives on the line to defend us. Must they be sacrificed as collateral damage so Assange and Greenwald can get their kicks from embarrassing the U.S. government?

Greenwald's attitude is sadly typical of a sizable group of liberals and libertarians who think they are being patriotic when in fact they oppose our country at every turn. I am proud of our country and the fact that we have stood and continue to stand on the side of freedom and democracy around the globe while opposing tyranny and aggression (admittedly, this is becoming less and less of the case under Obama). You can argue about whether not the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were worth the cost or whether they made us safer, but you can't argue about the fact that we rescued millions of Muslims from two of the most evil, repressive regimes in the world -- Saddam Hussein and the Taliban. After taking control of Iraq, we worked to create a stable government and transition to local rule instead of exploiting it for personal gain. When we entered Iraq, we were welcomed as liberators, and the Iraqi people willingly tried Hussein for war crimes and executed him. We rescued Kuwaiti Muslims from Iraqi invasion, and Bosnian Muslims from Serbian brutality. We saved Grenada, South Korea, and most of Europe from the evil of Communism. We have spoken out against human rights abuses around the world, stopped genocide in Rwanda, fought the AIDS epidemic in Africa, and stood in solidarity with dissidents in China and Iran. Not every action we have taken internationally has been successful or turned out the way we wanted (think Vietnam War), but I would challenge Greenwald to point out even one example where our intention was not clearly to protect the security of our country and our allies and to promote freedom and democracy. Our international involvement for the past century has meant nothing but good to the world. When our country fails in its international missions and goals, democracy is set back and terrorists and dictators everywhere are emboldened. If we fail in Afghanistan, who wins? The Taliban and the terrorist organizations they support. If we fail to kill terrorist leaders and dismantle terrorist organizations around the world, then the lives of millions of Americans are endangered. Our country is at war, and Greenwald apparently is not on our side.

Some of Greenwald's points are just laughable. For example, he ridicules Wolf Blitzer of CNN for making the obviously correct point that the government should take swift action to keep our national secrets secure. The fact that Greenwald thinks its an outrage for journalists to call on the U.S. government to guard important national security secrets more closely shows just how radically anti-American he is. Sorry, but in wartime every government has the obvious right to keep certain information secret, and if you don't believe that you are either too clueless to be writing a national column or you are actively rooting for our country's military to be defeated. To attack journalists for taking steps to protect sensitive information that could endanger the lives of our troops or our allies is really rather shocking to me. If the New York Times is too hawkish and pro-military for Greenwald, then he truly is delusional. The fact is, even an organization as deeply distrustful of the U.S. military as the Times still has enough moral decency and respect for our troops and our country to not blab every national security secret willy-nilly. The American media has an ethical responsibility to not endanger our troops overseas or to unnecessarily oppose our country's legitimate international objectives. They take that responsibility far less seriously today than they have for most of our country's history, but apparently the fact that they have any moral qualms whatsoever about actively rooting against our country's wartime interests is upsetting to some people.

That doesn't mean that EVERYTHING Greenwald writes is off base. He is right that Assange cannot be tried for treason, as he is not an American citizen. However, the army private that stole the documents for our government IS an American, and he can be tried for treason. He also makes a good point that the U.S. government needs to be very careful about assassinating supposed enemies without due process, including Assange, and that we as conservatives should be careful to be responsible and thoughtful in our comments about the government "eradicating" people we don't like. But overall, I think Greenwald is deeply misguided and is supporting an organization that is deeply hostile and dangerous to U.S. interests.

Update on Yesterday's Prayer Vigil

2010-12-07T07:28:00.004-05:00

I wanted to give my readers an update on the press conference and prayer vigil from yesterday. There was a large crowd of people there -- especially impressive given the fact that there was only 72 hours notice. The Washington Post reported 300 people, but I think the number was significantly higher than that. (Remember the big Tea Party protest in Washington DC last year that drew 300,000 - 500,000 or more people? The Washington Post reported that "tens of thousands of people" showed up.) My sister-in-law counted around 600 people during the prayer walk, and a number of people including myself had already left by that time. I saw 30 people from my church there, and there were probably more I didn't see. There were also a few counter-protestors -- probably no more than 30 or so. Many of them were holding signs saying "Pro-Child, Pro-Faith, Pro-Choice. Come on, didn't you know that sending a healthy baby into fatal cardiac arrest is GOOD for the baby?

Rev. Patrick Mahoney of the Christian Defense Coalition started the rally by asking everyone to kneel and pray, reminding us that we come in humility to plead for God's mercy. Throughout the event, I was impressed with the spirit of the attendees. There were no violent signs or angry rhetoric. Several of the speakers emphasized God's love for both mother and baby and His offer of forgiveness to women who had had abortions. The event was carefully coordinated with the police to ensure that there were no disruptions and that everything was peaceful. We were there not so much because we are against something but because we are for something -- something precious and valuable. We stand for life and for the protection of innocent children. It was encouraging to stand alongside so many other like-minded people.

Several local pastors, including my own, spoke briefly. Two of the speeches that touched my heart the most were from women. One was a Catholic woman who had held a prayer vigil with her two children outside the Germantown abortion clinic every Friday for four years. She had been toiling alone for years, and you could see how much it meant to her to finally see the Christian community mobilized. Another powerful speech was from a woman who had a late-term abortion when she was 14 years old. Her abortionist was George Tiller, a close associate of Leroy Carhart's. She deeply regrets her decision to kill her healthy baby and has become a pro-life advocate.

After the speeches there was a brief question-and-answer session with the press, and then the crowd walked around the shopping center, praying alone or in small groups. The center was cordoned off with yellow tape, which Mahoney noted was significant. After all, the police use yellow tape to denote a crime scene.

While it was encouraging to see such a large turnout, this rally is just the beginning, as several speakers noted. We had held out hope that the board of directors of the condo association that runs the shopping center would decide to kick Carhart and his clinic out of the shopping center during their emergency meeting yesterday, but apparently they decided they did not have a legal option to do so. We have to continue to keep the pressure on Leroy Carhart and his clinic and make it clear that we are not going away. My pastor said that we have a four-pronged strategy to fight this evil: continuing prayer, continuing protests, opening up a pregnancy center in a vacant building across the street from the clinic, and working to pass legislation to ban late-term abortions in Maryland. It is an uphill fight in a left-wing pro-abortion state like Maryland, but with God all things are possible. To stand by and do nothing while a grave injustice is being perpetrated right in our back yard makes us just as responsible as the people perpetrating the injustice.

Follow-up #2: Late-Term Abortions in Maryland

2010-12-03T19:16:00.006-05:00

I wanted to follow up further on A.K.'s excellent postings about Leroy Carhart coming to Germantown, MD. Here are some additional thoughts:

1. It's important to understand that Carhart's specialty is killing babies in the 3rd trimester of the pregnancy--right up to the day before the baby's due date. In a large majority of these cases, the "fetus" that Carhart kills and disposes of like a piece of trash is viable and would survive outside the mother's womb. Operation Rescue describes the method of "late-term abortion" practiced by Carhart here. It is well worth reading the entire article, but a summary of the practice would be that the baby is injected with a massive dose of digoxin directly through the mother's abdomen, which is designed to give the baby a fatal heart attack. A couple days later, the woman gives birth to the dead baby over a toilet. In addition to the obvious evil of killing a living, breathing baby with tiny fingers and a beating heart that is capable of surviving outside of the mother's womb, this barbaric procedure causes pain and suffering to the baby. Massive heart attacks are frightening and painful, and studies have indicated babies as young as the 2nd month of pregnancy are capable of feeling pain. Of course, there have been numerous botched cases of late-term abortions, including ones in which the baby is delivered alive and left to die and ones in which the baby is born alive but severely disabled as a result of the procedure.

Now, I think all abortion is the taking of innocent human life and as such is a moral evil and a deep injustice (excluding those abortions necessary to save the life of the mother). I believe it is a moral issue, not a religious one, and I believe that there is abundant scientific evidence to support the pro-life position. However, I can understand why non-Christian people who do not hold to biblical principles about life beginning at conception might be open to supporting legalized abortions in the earliest stages of pregnancy. After all, the fetus seems quite undeveloped and doesn't look a whole lot like a baby in the first month or two. But it is impossible for me to understand how any person with a functioning conscience could support legalized abortion on demand (that is, abortion not due to rape, incest, or protection of the mother's life) past the point of the baby's viability. This is killing a living human baby capable of surviving outside the mother's womb -- and killing it in an inhumane, brutal fashion. It is infanticide and morally unconscionable by any conceivable community standard, religious or not. Huge majorities of Americans -- including self-described pro-choice Americans -- oppose late-term abortions.

2. If we care about justice and the protection of the most needy and helpless in our society, the slaughter of innocent babies in abortion should deeply grieve and anger us. But what really upsets me is that this is happening in my own backyard, in a town literally 15 minutes from my home. Because Leroy Carhart, one of the few individuals in the whole country brazen enough to perform late-term abortions, is setting up his practice right here in Montgomery County, MD, those of us who live in the area have a unique opportunity to speak out and take a stand on this issue. I am thankful that since the story first broke on Tuesday, my pastor has been at the forefront of the issue. He helped to organize the meeting yesterday with local pastors and activists that A.K. mentioned, and he had a 30-minute interview with a local Christian radio station earlier this evening about Leroy Carhart and the prayer vigil coming up on Monday. He has always been deeply reticent (correctly, in my view) about getting involved in any issue that could be seen as political, but this is not a political issue. It is an issue of life and death, and I think we are failing in our mission to be salt and light if we don't speak out and get involved.

3. So what can each of us as individuals do? The most immediate opportunity for those of us in the Montgomery County area is the prayer vigil coming up on Monday from 11:00 to 1:00 near the location of Carhart's new office in Germantown. The location of the vigil will be at 13233 Executive Park Terrace, Germantown, MD. For anyone interested in coming, there has been a new website set up called http://www.kickoutcarhart.com/ which has a detailed map showing where to park and additional information. There will be a press conference held right at 11:00 am, and we are expecting to have many local and perhaps even national media representatives there. After the press conference, we will spread out and pray. If you are like me and can only come for part of the time, then my pastor is encouraging people to come right at 11:00 for the press conference. We are hoping for a large turnout which will send a strong message that our community does not want Carhart performing late-term abortions here. The vigil and press conference are purely peaceful and we are coordinating with the local police to avoid disruptions; we want our testimony to demonstrate peace and love rather than anger and violence.

Carhart's background is extremely disturbing. He was the abortionist whose negligence apparently contributed to the death of Christin Gilbert, a woman with Down Syndrome who lost her life due to a botched late-term abortion. Also, the radio host who interviewed my pastor last night mentioned that Carhart is apparently moving to Maryland to avoid pending investigations into his practices by other states. It seems the board of the shopping center where Carhart's clinic is located is not too happy about him coming and about the negative response from the community, and they are holding an emergency board meeting to discuss the issue at noon on Monday -- during the prayer vigil! We should pray that the board will deny Carhart and his clinic space in the shopping center. Even if you do not live in the area or cannot come to the press conference and the vigil, you can still stand united with us in prayer. And wherever you live, you can volunteer and offer financial support for crisis pregnancy centers in your area. This is the front line in the fight against legalized abortion -- it offers an alternative to abortion for pregnant women, many of whom are scared and alone and who need love and support.

Follow-up: Late-Term Abortions in Maryland

2010-12-03T14:01:00.007-05:00

There was a meeting yesterday at Shady Grove PCA of local clergy, pro-life activists, and the director of the Christian Defense Coalition. The purpose was to pray about this new evil coming into our community and discuss the appropriate response.

Very few doctors in the country perform these types of procedures and there are currently no abortion clinics in Maryland that perform abortions after 19 weeks. LeRoy Carhart is a very prominent late-term abortionist, and will perform the procedure up to the 9th month of pregnancy. He is moving from Nebraska now that the state has outlawed abortions after 19 weeks.

Our pastor forwarded this information he received about late term abortions from Gail Tierney, Director of the Rockville Pregnancy Center: “Late term abortion can be performed up until the day of birth. It involves inserting a needle into the baby's heart, injecting medicine which will produce a fatal heart attack. This is done on viable babies.”

LeRoy Carhart could begin performing late-term abortions at Germantown Reproductive Health Services as early as Monday, December 6. There will be a prayer vigil and press conference held outside the office on Monday from 11am-1pm:
Germantown Commons Shopping Center
13233 Executive Park Terrace, Germantown.
Organizers are expecting that both local and national news will be reporting this event. The event will be peaceful and organizers are working with the police department. The intent is to stand up for these defenseless babies and to publicly show that the faith community and others in Montgomery County are opposed to the practice of late-term abortion in our community. Please come out to the vigil if you are in this area, and wherever you are pray that some change will come out of this event.

Late-Term Abortionist Moving to Maryland

2010-11-30T19:40:00.005-05:00

Shortly after Nebraska courageously banned abortions after 20 weeks, late-term abortionist LeRoy Carhart is moving to Germantown, Maryland. He chose the area to continue these procedures due to favorable laws. Though it is not particularly surprising to me that Maryland would offer such a favorable environment, this is horrifying and saddening. More background is available here.

Thoughts on WikiLeaks

2010-11-30T09:13:00.003-05:00

Once again, WikiLeaks is back in the news. You know, the organization that specializes in leaking stolen classified documents to a eagerly complicit press, endangering the lives of thousands of Americans and American allies.

On the Washington Post website, Marc Thiessen blasts the Obama Justice Department for taking no action to shut down WikiLeaks and prosecute its founder Julian Assange. I guess they're too busy suing Arizona for enforcing federal immigration law to bother with threats to our national security.

Over at National Review, Andrew McCarthy notes the irresponsibility of The New York Times and other media sources and also addresses the constitutional questions of free speech and the "right to know."

Also at National Review, Rich Lowry notes the raw anti-Americanism of WikiLeaks and discusses how Obama's election has done nothing to appease these America-haters, contrary to fashionable liberal opinion.

Peter Wehner from Commentary Magazine's Contentions blog notes that the confidential, private conversations of Arab leaders leaked in these documents demonstrates that most of them recognize the grave threat that Iran poses to the world -- a threat that cannot be defeated through appeasement. It's a sad day when the Arab world is more hawkish against Iran than much of the American left (and the current administration).

And then of course there are the liberals, who simply can't seem to get too upset over these leaks, no matter how many lives are endangered or no matter how much our international relations are damaged, as long as our efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan are hindered and Bush is made to look bad. Enter Richard Cohen of the Washington Post, who manages to allow that he doesn't "much like" what WikiLeaks has done before spending the rest of the column exulting in how the leaks supposedly embarrass Bush and make the war in Iraq look bad. It's hard to avoid the conclusion that liberals like Cohen are happy to see America embarrassed and defeated for the sake of their ideology.

Assange and the Army private responsible for leaking many of these documents, Bradley Manning, should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. I don't even think the death penalty is too extreme, given the fact that these treasonous leaks have (and will) doubtless cost American lives. Also, the Justice Department should determine how these leaks were able to happen in the first place. Whoever was responsible for the lax security of such important confidential documents should lose their job, and new measures should be put in place to prevent this from happening in the future. Our government must send a clear message that such leaks will not be tolerated, if we expect other countries to trust us and continue to cooperate with us in the future.

George Washington's Thanksgiving Proclamation

2010-11-28T08:50:00.006-05:00

General Thanksgiving
By the PRESIDENT of the United States Of America
A PROCLAMATION
WHEREAS it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favour; and Whereas both Houzes of Congress have, by their joint committee, requested me "to recommend to the people of the United States a DAY OF PUBLICK THANSGIVING and PRAYER, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to eftablish a form of government for their safety and happiness:"

NOW THEREFORE, I do recommend and assign THURSDAY, the TWENTY-SIXTH DAY of NOVEMBER next, to be devoted by the people of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be; that we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection of the people of this country previous to their becoming a nation; for the signal and manifold mercies and the favorable interpofitions of His providence in the course and conclusion of the late war; for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty which we have since enjoyed;-- for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enable to establish Constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national one now lately instituted;-- for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge;-- and, in general, for all the great and various favours which He has been pleased to confer upon us.

And also, that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions;-- to enable us all, whether in publick or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually; to render our National Government a blessing to all the people by conftantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed; to protect and guide all sovereigns and nations (especially such as have shewn kindness unto us); and to bless them with good governments, peace, and concord; to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increase of science among them and us; and, generally to grant unto all mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as he alone knows to be best.

GIVEN under my hand, at the city of New-York, the third day of October, in the year of our Lord, one thousand seven hundred and eighty-nine.

(signed) G. Washington

Source: The Massachusetts Centinel, Wednesday, October 14, 1789

[I have updated some of the spelling for easier reading.]

Thoughts on Food, Inc.

2010-11-22T19:42:00.002-05:00

I had the chance recently to watch the documentary Food, Inc. The film-makers traced what they see as a change in the way we eat and the way our food is grown. They described the increasing distance between consumer and consumed, noting that the traditional farm is a thing of the past. The film outlines the rise of fast food. According to the film it arose partly as a result of corn subsidies that led to increased and inexpensive corn supply and made corn a primary feed for beef and other meat animals, in turn making meat production much less expensive than it would otherwise have been. The corn lobby influences legislation and also led to the discovery of innumerable ways to use corn products, which can be found in many processed foods (such as high fructose corn syrup). The film also discusses the growth and centralization of the meat industry and how “big business” now runs most large farms instead of farmers. It discusses poor feedlot and chicken house conditions for both animals and workers and it blames those conditions and even a high proportion of corn in animals’ diets for the rise of a dangerous strain of E. coli virus and other contaminants. The contributors describe how fast food diets have led to poor nutrition and diseases such as type 2 diabetes. They trace the rise of organic production in response to the mainstream industry’s problems. The film discusses genetically modified seeds and abuses by the companies that own the patents, in addition to the connections between these companies and regulatory agencies and political administrations. The film closes with a list of actions viewers can take, including buying organic or locally grown produce and meat from those who respect both animals and workers.

I will readily admit that I did not expect to find much of value, but I had heard various things about the film and decided to watch it myself. In some ways my fears were confirmed, but I felt some of the material was good. I expected that it would be a biased portrayal of a controversial issue. I expected the scary music and footage. I also expected that I would have to research afterwards to determine the whole truth. I will continue to research some ideas and may write further in future, but here are some thoughts.

First of all, viewers should realize that the film has an agenda. By all means watch it, but realize that you will be unable to take the information at face value. If it makes you think and research to find the answers, your viewing time will not have been wasted. One of the aspects I disliked was the lack of documentation for the numerous assertions made. I would have appreciated seeing both sides of the story and deciding for myself, but I don’t believe this was the way the film-makers handled it. If the film-makers want to promote their agenda they should at least give the studies, the research, and the reasoning that led them to these conclusions.

I am still researching various issues discussed in the film. I saw a significant bias against big business, and even against capitalism (one of the individuals featured was clearly anti-capitalist). The discussion of E. coli contamination implied that organic produce was safer, when in fact the FDA has questioned this and has recalled organic produce in the past due to contaminants.

Subsidies
I did appreciate a very significant topic covered in the film, the issue of subsidies in agriculture. The film focused on corn subsidies and their effects on meat production. I wholeheartedly agree that subsidies to agriculture are a significant problem and one that is commonly overlooked by those who are otherwise politically conservative. I believe the film did well in describing how they have affected the industry overall. It described how the subsidies have resulted in a great amount of corn being produced very cheaply, which led to its becoming a primary meat animal feed and enabling the cost of meat production to fall as well. It has led to an industry that looks for ways to use corn in processed foods (HCFS, and many others). The film also discussed how US corn subsidies forced Mexican corn farmers out of business and forced some to illegally emigrate and work for US corn producers. The film attributed the rise of the fast food industry to corn subsidies, which enabled beef to be inexpensive enough for chains to sell it at a very low price.

The film did not follow through with this valuable store line, however. In the closing thoughts the writers made no mention of subsidies and how change in this area of agriculture might improve the system. One of the instructions was to contact the USDA. I think the implied meaning was that viewers should ask for more oversight and regulation of the industry. In fact less government involvement and removing subsidies to agriculture would benefit the market and consumer even more by removing unfair advantage (subsidy created artificial prices) and making the industry more responsible to the consumer.

Factory Farms
The film was very critical of factory farming. While I agree that subsidies have artificially affected prices and in the process have affected industry growth, much of the rest of the discussion was counter to good economic reasoning. The division of labor and the standardization that results increases efficiency in any area. The problem with factory farming is not that these operations follow the factory system, but that the subsidies have led to growth that would not have been sustained in a regular market. Use of the division of labor and factories has made innumerable products affordable when otherwise their cost of production would have made them prohibitive for many people (for example assembly lines used to produce Ford cars). Without division of labor our society would not be nearly as economically advanced as it is today.

There is nothing inherently wrong with organic farming or the idea of a self-sufficient farm, and you may choose to buy from such an operation. Realize, however, that you will be paying higher prices due to the higher cost of production. By nature that farm cannot produce as much food as efficiently as a more specialized farm. Location is another aspect of specialization, as some areas are more conducive to certain kinds of agricultural production than others. A small farm that grows all kinds of products may be able to do it, but it will be less efficient. The film profiled a family whose budget and time constraints forced them to eat mainly fast food and avoid fresh produce. They were already seeing ill health as a result. Unfortunately I doubt that the grass-fed beef, free-range chickens and eggs produced by Polyface Farms (featured in the film) are a viable solution for this family. The farmer himself mentioned that his products cost more than the mainstream. One would expect this and it is fine for consumers who are willing and able to pay, but this family is not in that category.

If it were not for the large, specialized factory farms, food would be much more expensive and there would be much less of it. Those who believe that only organic production is moral should seriously think about the repercussions such a belief would have if put into practice. Small, self-sufficient and organic farms are not a practical way to feed the world. Specialization and standardization allows products to be much more plentiful and affordable. Given the number of people struggling economically and the many who cannot afford to eat, whether in the US or elsewhere, I believe that any increased efficiency in this area is wholly positive. This does not mean that there should be no change in the factory farming system (halting agricultural subsidies would be a good start), but the system as a whole is not the problem.

Conclusion
I do not intend this to be a full discussion. I mainly want to provoke more careful thought about these issues and encourage viewers to research before making judgments based on this film. I encourage you to read the following excellent article “The Omnivore’s Delusion: Against the Agri-Intellectuals,” by Blake Hurst. In evaluating Michael Pollen’s (a Food, Inc. contributor) book The Omnivore’s Delusion, Hurst discusses many of Food, Inc.’s claims from a farmer’s perspective. He also outlines some of the reasons for the supposed cruel conditions like those described in Food, Inc.

Eleven Reasons For Hope

2010-11-17T07:47:00.002-05:00

I found this National Review article by Ramesh Ponnuru very encouraging, especially since Ponnuru is generally rather pessimistic and even critical of Republicans, whom he often views as weak and ineffective. He gives 11 reasons why 2011 should be significantly different (and better) for the Republicans in Congress than it was for them the last time they took over the House in 1995.

It is always wise not to put your trust in politicians or political parties, as they will always disappoint at some level. Nevertheless, I have to admit that I am cautiously hopeful and optimistic for the new Congress. So far, I am quite impressed with John Boehner, the new Speaker of the House. While I don't have a great deal of knowledge about him, I know he has been a reliable conservative vote in Congress for many years. In 20 years of service in Congress, he has never requested an earmark for his district and was instrumental in getting the Republican House conference to ban earmarks. He is a genuine American success story, growing up in a working-class family and working his way to the top through hard work. As a former small business owner, he understands how business works. He has shown a lot of humility since the election, acknowledging that Republicans made many mistakes the last time they were in the majority and insisting that he does not want to repeat those mistakes. I was impressed with his "hell no" speech on the House floor right before the health care vote as well as his leadership in opposing the bill, and I thought his emotional speech on election night was sincere and humanizing.

The House has not just a Republican majority, but an outright conservative majority now. In the Senate, the GOP has a conservative core of at least 41 senators who should be able to effectively filibuster the worst pieces of legislation. Mitch McConnell, the GOP Senate leader, is a political insider with a long history of pork barrel spending, but even he seems to be getting the message from the election. He recently agreed to support a ban on earmarks for the GOP Senate conference as well, which has now passed with almost unanimous GOP support.

Certainly the best we can hope for over the next two years is an uneasy stalemate. But Obama will no longer be able to force his agenda through, and the Republicans will have a chance to offer some alternative ideas and solutions. If they do a good job, they may be able to put the GOP presidential nominee in a good position to run against Obama in 2012. That is our only hope for repealing ObamaCare.