Chris Christie Does It Again
Some pro-lifers expressed fear that New Jersey Governor Chris Christie was a bit of a moderate on social issues, especially with regards to abortion. Well Governor Christie has done something that few other governors and other political leaders have done, namely veto funding for Planned Parenthood. And now he’s done it again.
Following the release of a video that has received nationwide attention showing Planned Parenthood staff at a New Jersey abortion center helping alleged sexual traffickers cover up their crimes with abortions and STD testing, Governor Chris Christie has vetoed a bill funding Planned Parenthood.
A new undercover video shows Planned Parenthood officials in New Jersey telling a pimp and his prostitute assistant how they can get abortions for young teenage girls who, Planned Parenthood officials are informed, are Asians in the country illegally and forced into the sex trade. The staffer was later fired for her actions.
The Perth Amboy abortion center where the video is filmed is the second-largest Planned Parenthood center operated by Planned Parenthood of Central New Jersey and the abortion business plans to double its number of abortion centers in the state.
Christie has already yanked state taxpayer funding for Planned Parenthood but the state legislature sent him a bill to restore the taxpayer funds.
I’m not sure that this is directly related to the sting videos. As mentioned, Christie had already vetoed funding for Planned Parenthood before and most likely would have done it again anyway. Whatever the case, kudos to Governor Christie.
I also suggest that this this is further proof that economic and social conservatism need not and should not be divorced from one another. In other words, no truce required.
Obama Administration to Stop Reporting Abortion Statistics?
Beginning in 1969 the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention collected data on legal abortions carried out in the United States through its Abortion Surveillance System. The report based on this data ordinarily appeared as an article in CDC’s professional journal, The Mortality and Morbidity Weekly Report (MMWR) the week after Thanksgiving. The report lagged the data by three years, i.e., the 2006 data were printed in 2009.
While not comprehensive, the CDC report provided the best single estimate of abortions in the US, as well as providing detailed breakdowns: the age of the baby at the time of abortion, age of the mother, number of abortions the mother had previous to the current one, etc. People on both sides of the abortion debate have cited these statistics to make their points.
Last year, contrary to the long-established practice, November came and went with no report posted on the CDC’s website. Over the following weeks, multiple visits to the site proved fruitless. The possibility the report was not merely delayed, but had in fact been axed from higher up, had to be considered.
Last week, RedState began investigating by calling those in DC who might have some answers. After several attempts, we finally received confirmation from Rhonda Smith at the CDC’s press office in Atlanta that the report has been buried indefinitely; the CDC “will not have stats available at any time in the near future” and there “are no plans for them to come out any time soon.”
More. This is outrageous, and raises the question of why the Obama Administration wouldn’t want the report published.
Mark Shea Gone Wild!
Gone Greek Orthodox!
It’s been a looong week for Mark!
This is how he looked before his trip to Mount Athos:
Hat Tip: LarryD of Acts of the Apostasy
A Ticking Time Bomb
Hattip to John Sexton at Hot Air. After Major Nidal Hasan went on his murderous jihadi rampage, I theorized, here, here and here, that political correctness and cowardice kept steps from being taken in the Army to remove him from the service. Long before he went on his rampage, his behavior and comments gave off clear red flags that he was in sympathy with the Jihadists.
Now the Senate Homeland Security Committee has released a 91 page report, A Ticking Time Bomb, which may be read here, and it is damning. Continue reading
Last Eye Witness to the Lincoln Assassination
We sometimes forget how brief American history has been in terms of the entire history of mankind. Samuel J. Seymour was five years old when he was taken by his godmother to Ford’s Theater in Washington to see the comedy Our American Cousin on Good Friday, April 14, 1865. Continue reading
Rejected John 3:16 Ad for Super Bowl
Hattip to commenter Joe Green. Fox has rejected the above Super Bowl ad, claiming that the ad violated company policy by ”advancing particular beliefs or practices”. After one stops laughing at that, it is a head scratcher why Fox went out of its way to face slap a large part of its audience.
Ethnic Nationalism and the End of History
One of the ideas which has, perhaps more than any other, led to war and suffering in the modern age, is the idea that countries should have clear ethnic/national identities which define their borders. This is something that we in the the US, which has been heavily defined by immigration and thus lacks a distinct ethnic national identity, but it is something which comes into stark relief when we look at conflicts in other parts of the world.
Of these, the one that gets the most press is, of course, the conflict over the Holy Land, where different factions insist that the same ground should belong to either a Jewish State or a Palestinian State. This leads to strife because obviously if the state in a given area is specifically intended to belong to one ethnic or cultural group, then members of other groups must either leave or see themselves as living in someone else’s country.
This would work very well if various ethnic groups had spontaneously generated from the soil of different regions, but this is not the case. (After all, if you trace it back far enough, we’re all Africans.) Recorded history is one long story of migrations, conquests and assimilations. Continue reading
ObamaCare and the Constitution in a Nutshell
Hattip to Neo-Neocon. I have been reading judicial decisions for over three decades and few of them are better reasoned and written than that of Judge Roger Vinson striking down ObamaCare. Go here to read his ruling. My favorite portion of the decision is below. ( To get the full impact of it, I suggest you have the John Adams intro video below playing while you read it.) Continue reading
Why We Fight
But, when necessity compels, not those only who are invested with power of rule are bound to safeguard the integrity of faith, but, as St. Thomas maintains: “Each one is under obligation to show forth his faith, either to instruct and encourage others of the faithful, or to repel the attacks of unbelievers.”(12) To recoil before an enemy, or to keep silence when from all sides such clamors are raised against truth, is the part of a man either devoid of character or who entertains doubt as to the truth of what he professes to believe. In both cases such mode of behaving is base and is insulting to God, and both are incompatible with the salvation of mankind. This kind of conduct is profitable only to the enemies of the faith, for nothing emboldens the wicked so greatly as the lack of courage on the part of the good. Moreover, want of vigor on the part of Christians is so much the more blameworthy, as not seldom little would be needed on their part to bring to naught false charges and refute erroneous opinions, and by always exerting themselves more strenuously they might reckon upon being successful. — Pope Leo XIII, Sapientiae Christanae, 14
For those of you who have been told to keep your mouths shut and the collection plates full while all around you occurs a cavalcade of impiety, sacrelige, and heresy;
For those of you who have been wrongly and falsely identified as prideful rebels for daring to challenge those who abuse their authority;
For those of you who are told to “tone down the rhetoric” lest others who are on the fence about critical issues join the fight;
For those of you who understand your duties as Christians, Catholics, and citizens in the face of errors and evils;
For those of you who have been subjected to the subtle academic propaganda that implies that any claim to truth is a form of extremism or oppression;
For those of you who have been called intolerant, insensitive, or divisive for refusing to submit to lies;
For those of you who love God more than you love the world and the opinions of men;
These words of one of the Church’s greatest popes are for you.
“Christians are, moreover, born for combat, whereof the greater the vehemence, the more assured, God aiding, the triumph…” (From the same section quoted above)
What Would Bush Have Done?
As I watched the situation in Egypt descend into chaos and violence, I started to think about how Bush would have handled these situations. Bush’s foreign policy was predicated upon a belief that America had a duty to spread democracy. I wonder if Bush would have been more quick than the Obama administration to side with the protesters. Although I appreciate that the US has a very delicate situation here, I wonder if now we’ve acted too late and not presented the positive pro-democracy face we could have to the people of the Middle East.
I also wonder if we need to reevaluate our appraisal of Bush. After all, Bush was mocked for believing that bringing democracy to Iraq would help spark the fire of democracy in the Middle East. While I still think the Iraq war did not meet the requirements of a just war, it is hard today to say that Bush was completely wrong. We’ve already seen Iran’s people rise up (though they failed) and today we see the people of Yemen, Egypt, and Jordan protesting. I don’t know if they’ll be successful, and I don’t know how much our presence in Iraq has helped or hurt democracy in the Middle East.
But it does seem clear that the Middle East is seeking more and more to be democratic and that the United States may need to rethink its strategy and partners not only to improve its image in the area, but more importantly help the Arab people secure a free and democratic government.
Groundhog Predicts an Early Spring
Happy Groundhog Day to all our readers! Punxsutawney Phil did not see his shadow so we may expect an early Spring, if one assumes that a particular individual of Marmota monax has predictive powers in regard to weather. Phil has an accuracy rate of 39% which I imagine is better than Al Gore’s weather related prognostications. Oh well, back to shoveling snow for me.
Environmental Predictions and the Goracle
Well, Central Illinois is experiencing its worst blizzard in many a year, and I am snowbound at home, dictating bankruptcy petitions and working on my taxes. We are keeping warm and toasty at stately McClarey Manor by occasionally tossing a copy of Al Gore’s tome, Earth in the Balance, into the fireplace. This exercise in heating through book burning was caused by Gore’s latest statement that the blizzards are caused by global warming. I do have to hand it to Mr. Gore: as he claims that any extreme weather event is caused by global warming, it becomes rather hard to refute a theory that purports to cause everything weather related. However, while shoveling the rather large snow drifts that clogged my driveway, courtesy of global warming no doubt, I became rather curious about predictions in regard to environmental matters made by Mr. Gore in the past. Here is what I have found.
1. Sea Levels: Mr. Gore predicted in An Inconvenient Truth that sea levels would rise by 20 feet by 2100. Well, if that is going to happen, the sea level better get on with it. The sea level rise over the last 18 years is 1.8 inches. In the 20th century the total increase in sea level was 8 inches. Over the past 10,000 years, the average increase in sea level per century has been 4 feet as glaciers from the last ice age have melted.
2. Ice Free Arctic Ocean: In 2009 Mr. Gore claimed that there was a 75% chance that the Arctic Ocean would be ice free by 2014. He cited climatologist Dr. Wieslav Maslowski as his source. Dr. Maslowski promptly rejected this, stating he had no idea how Gore had arrived at his prediction. Continue reading
Egypt Thought of the Day
Bryan Caplan asks, a propos of events in Egypt, why some revolutions end up making things better while others make things worse. His answer (which he admits is unconvincing) is that revolutions make things better when they are against totalitarian regimes and worse when they are against authoritarian regimes, because “the point of totalitarian regimes is to give people less freedom than the median voter wants, but the point of authoritarian regimes is often to give people more freedom than the median voter – or at least the median man of violence – wants.”
I don’t think that works. Marcos wasn’t a totalitarian, for example, and neither was Milosevic. When I consider which revolutions turned out badly and which turned out well, the thing that really jumps out at me is the degree to which the revolution in question was achieved by peaceful as opposed to violent means. There are exceptions, of course, but for the most part violent revolutions have tended to end badly (very often making things even worse than before), whereas largely non-violent revolutions have tended to make things better. Violent revolutions end up being led by violent men, and once in charge they have a tendency to turn their talents on others. Whereas the leaders of non-violent revolutions tend to be better at democratic politics (and if they aren’t they don’t try to hold onto power by killing their opponents).
Something to think about.
One pilgrim’s view of the March for Life
Christ is in our midst!
My oldest son and I went to the March for Life in DC this year. This was the first time for both us. What an amazing experience! I had heard about it and watched the news about this event for years, but this year was the first opportunity I’ve had to actually attend it thanks to the efforts of my local bishop, Bishop Finn, and our diocesan Respect for Life office. For their leadership and hard work to make this possible for so many, my son and I are deeply grateful. I can’t thank them enough. Continue reading
Rhett Butler: Why the South Was Bound to Lose
My favorite scene from Gone With the Wind in which Rhett Butler explains succinctly the disadvantages the South will encounter in any war with the North. Far sighted Southerners at the time also gave such warnings:
“To secede from the Union and set up another government would cause war. If you go to war with the United States, you will never conquer her, as she has the money and the men. If she does not whip you by guns, powder, and steel, she will starve you to death. It will take the flower of the country-the young men.”
Sam Houston Continue reading
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