Liberals: 'Emergency healthcare for all, except...'

Commentor KW, on the insistence by pro-life advocates that babies born alive during an abortion receive medical care:

Leave it to conservatives to support healthcare entitlement only for botched abortions. Screw everyone else.

Note to KW: another word for "botched abortion" is "birth".

Actually, the provision of emergency medical care in a hospital or clinic regardless of circumstance is mandatory. It's the law in all 50 states.

Leave it to liberals to exempt very young newborn babies from basic emergency medical care, if it interferes with their sacrament of abortion.

Conservatives, unlike liberals, support an entitlement to emergency healthcare for all.

What Gosnell did is what abortion is

News media: 'Abortions? What abortions?'
Photos of Gosnell's abortion clinic, from the grand jury report.

Allahpundit on the Gosnell abortion-murder media cover-up:

Something truly remarkable happened yesterday. After days and weeks of pushing by New Media and social media, the mainstream media has not only admitted that they should have covered the ongoing capital murder trial of abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, they have promised to immediately remedy that mistake… 

This is not the usual-usual from our media. Normally, like a game, the media will only admit to this kind of oversight long after it is too late to do anything about it. Worse still, the admission of the mistake is generally just a convenient excuse for the media to talk about its favorite subject — themselves.

Much of the speculation has been about why so many news outlets ignored the story. But perhaps the real story here is the way the trial became a national story without the help of the MSM—and arguably even despite its best efforts to ignore the trial. In the last century, there were a few central news gatekeepers who controlled what stories Americans heard. The internet and social media have changed all that; the people have swept aside the gatekeepers and ripped the gates from their hinges. 

The MSM is no longer in control; anyone and everyone now has the tools to call the media out and if the story is hot and compelling enough (and the trial of an accused multiple baby killer passes that test with ease), it will force itself into the national conversation. 

Good.

The liberal secular mainstream media is no longer the gatekeeper. They can and do lie and conceal and distort. But there is now a way around them. The blogsphere's coverage of the Gosnell trial is an example of the media's waning influence, at least among people who care about what is happening. Brian Williams and Diane Sawyer and Maureen Dowd may be silent about these murders, but there are thousands of bloggers who won't go along to get along and who won't shut up.

Let's make sure that everyone knows about the murders of these babies and the women in Philadelphia, and about the complicity of the authorities and abortion advocates in this atrocity, and that the Gosnell trial is just a glimpse into the daily murders of children in thousands of abortion charnel-houses in our nation.

Let's push the gatekeepers aside. Let's make sure everyone knows about what happened in Philadelphia. On our blogs, in conversations at home and at school and at work and at church. Let's write about it, and talk about, and warn about it, and pray about it.

Let's open the gates. And let's remind people again and again that what Gosnell did is what abortion is.

Moral realism and anti-realism

David Baggett at First Thoughts has a fine post on moral realism and anti-realism (with my commentary):

Watering down the categories

I have found a recent trend among a number of naturalistic ethicists and thinkers to be both interesting and mildly exasperating, but most of all telling. Both one like John Shook, Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Inquiry in Amherst, New York—and someone with whom I recently dialogued at the University at Buffalo—and Frans de Waal, author most recently of The Bonobo and the Atheist (to adduce but a few examples) seem to be gravitating toward functional categories of morality. Talk of belief and practice replaces talk of truth; references to moral rules exceed those of moral obligations; and prosocial instincts supplant moral authority. What is interesting about this trend is that the resulting picture is entirely consistent with the view of complete moral skeptics, even amoralists.

Moral realism and anti-realism are views that are at the core of the theist-atheist debate. If moral law is real-- if it is an objective thing that we discover-- then atheism is plainly untenable. Atheism inherently requires that our sense of moral law corresponds to nothing real outside of our minds. Atheism presupposes that moral law is something we create, but do not discover.

The Darwinist view is that moral law is something we create as an evolved adaptation-- a sense that something is right or wrong is necessary to our survival. Of course, such a view is anti-realist. It asserts that survival or non-survival is real, and that we adapt by applying moral categories to our survival tactics.

The flexibility of Darwinian "theory" is as always noteworthy. Fierce competition, and the tenderest cooperation, are both explained. Or not explained.

Take Joel Marks, for example, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of New Haven. A former Kantian ethicist, he has decided that the category of morality lacks an objective referent. He’s written a few books about it, one that came out just this month, but an op-ed in the New York Times encapsulated his view in succinct fashion. In brief, although he has retained his aversive feelings toward, say, animal suffering, he has grown altogether skeptical that his feelings point to moral reality. He still fights for a world more to his liking, but he has come to think that morality has precious little to do with it, because there is no such thing. Marks is an amoralist—a very nice fellow, from all accounts, but someone who has given morality up. Resonating with Marks are such naturalists as Sharon Street and Richard Joyce, who have insisted that an evolutionary development of our moral sense, on a naturalistic picture, gives us little reason to think that our moral beliefs and convictions correspond with moral truth. Rather they evolved to produce behaviors that conduced to reproductive advantage.

But evolved morality is no morality, but merely an adaptive strategy. Adaptive "morality" lacks an objective referent.

But then de Waal and Shook come along and insist, largely without argument, that, to the contrary, the success of evolutionary moral psychology to account for our feelings of empathy, altruism, and prosociality is not only consistent with morality, but sufficient to account for it. To project the appearance their argument works, though, they need to engage in some subtle sleight of hand, replacing categories of moral authority with moral instincts, categorical obligations with malleable rules, objective truths with shared beliefs. But in the debate about moral foundations, classical theism can account for the full range of moral truths in need of explanation, without watering them down or subtly replacing them with functional analyses—from intrinsic goodness to categorical oughtness to genuine moral agency. To the extent that our naturalist friends like de Waal and Shook appear to be retaining the thick language of morality to capture ideas thin enough that complete moral skeptics could endorse them, there appears something deeply confused at best or disingenuous at worst about their approach, fortifying my growing conviction that soon enough the real moral debate will feature classical theists on one side and moral anti-realists on the other.

If morality is an adaptive strategy, then morality is not real. It is a delusion. I think that Baggett is right. This debate will come down to classical theists (Christians mainly) vrs. atheists. Moral realists vrs. anti-realists.

I think that the prime motivating ideology of modern atheism is moral anti-realism anyway, so at least the debate will move in an honest direction.

New atheism has always been about morality, not science. Scientism is a tactic, not a motive, for atheist evangelism. 

"Failing to Mirandize Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is not, in and of itself, a violation of his rights. "

From Atlantic Magazine:

Here's what much of the media have missed: regardless of whether the public-safety exception applies, the government is not, under the fairest reading of current Supreme Court law, constitutionally obligated to Mirandize Tsarnaev -- or any suspect for that matter. In the furor over the exception and the Republican senators' dubious stance, the media have conflated the issue of (a) whether or not Tsarnaev has a constitutional right to be Mirandized with the issues of (b) whether or not the public-safety exception was properly invoked and (c) whether or not Tsarnaev may be treated as an enemy combatant. 

The issues are distinct. Miranda establishes that statements made by a suspect in custody in response to interrogation are not admissible against the defendant in court unless the defendant has been properly Mirandized. Reading Miranda, one would be forgiven for thinking that law-enforcement agents are required to issue the familiar warnings regardless of whether they intend to use the statements in court. The Warren Court in Miranda stated that a suspect in custody "must bewarned prior to any questioning that he has the right to remain silent" and so on (emphasis added). 

But as with many of the constitutional rights recognized by the Warren Court in the field of criminal procedure, the Supreme Court has chipped away at theMiranda doctrine in subsequent cases. In recent years, pluralities for the Court have clarified that the privilege against self-incrimination (the Fifth Amendment right that Miranda protects) is not violated by mere questioning; rather the right is only violated when, unwarned -- to Mirandize is, in effect, to warn -- statements are admitted at trial. 

In the 2004 case United States v. Patane, a plurality for the Court stated that "deliberate failures to provide the suspect with the full panoply of warnings prescribed in Miranda" would not violate the suspect's constitutional rights or Miranda. It made the same point in the 2003 case Chavez v. Martinez. While these cases may be discounted as not holding the same precedential weight as majority decisions, they represent the best understanding of the state of the law today. 

Thus, failing to Mirandize Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is not, in and of itself, a violation of his rights. The authorities are not constitutionally obligated to Mirandize Tsarnaev anyway, so long as they do not intend to admit Tsarnaev's statements at trial. What the public-safety exception does -- if and only if a court determines that the exception was properly invoked -- is render Tsarnaev's unwarned statements admissible as evidence where they otherwise would not be. And even where the public-safety exception applies, the substantive rights that Miranda protects don't disappear: due process is in effect; any coerced statements remain inadmissible; and Tsarnaev may not be denied access to an attorney if he asks for one (though the federal circuit courts have held that questioning may continue for some period of time under the public-safety exception even after the request for counsel, and statements remain admissible). 

The authorities handling Tsarnaev's case might reasonably determine that, even if a court ultimately disapproves their invocation of the public-safety exception and suppresses whatever statements they seek to admit, the costs of Mirandizing Tsarnaev (his possible noncooperation) far outstrip the benefits of doing so (being able to use his incriminating statements in court). 

Specifically, in a case such as this one, where it seems likely both that the government will have overwhelming evidence to convict (without relying on any post-arrest statements) and that Tsarnaev may be in possession of valuable information that implicates national security, the rationale behind the government's choice emerges: Even if the public-safety exception is determined to have been wrongfully invoked, this would not threaten the government's case in a meaningful way. One may certainly contest whether the Court's shifting onMiranda is correct or whether the government's choice not to Mirandize Tsarnaev is desirable as a policy matter. Nor have the media been wrong to question the government's broad interpretation of the public-safety exception. But it is misleading to paint the decision not to Mirandize as trampling Tsarnaev's constitutional rights as an American citizen...

That the rule of law governs Tsarnaev's prosecution is paramount. To that end, thinking clearly about what the rule of law requires is just as crucial. [emphasis mine]

Most of the public discussion of Tsarnaev's Miranda warning and his Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights has been idiotic. Miranda warnings are an aid to prosecutors, not suspects, and are not constitutionally required, if prosecutors accept that they cannot use the suspect's statement at trial.

It's not really a difficult concept.

Why, then, was Tsarnaev Mirandized? 

Miranda warning, not Miranda rights

It seems that the Boston bomber has now been read his Miranda warning, and liberals are happy now that his rights are being protected.

Assholes.

They don't understand what Miranda warning means.

In the Miranda ruling, the Supreme Court ruled in 1966 that in order to preserve the admissibility of a suspect's statements against him or her in a court, a criminal suspect must be warned of such. The purpose of the Miranda warning is to inform the suspect that, as of the time of the warning, his statements may be used against him in court.

That is, the Miranda warning marks the beginning of the suspect's legal jeopardy during interrogation. During the interrogation prior to the Miranda warning,  the suspect is not in jeopardy, because his statements cannot be used against him.

The suspect has a right to avoid self-incrimination and a right to counsel, guaranteed by the Fifth and Sixth Amendments. Those rights are protected by the Supreme Court's Miranda ruling, but they are not protected by reading the Miranda warning to a suspect. 

I'll say it again: reading a suspect his Miranda warning does not protect his rights. He has rights irrespective of whether the warning was read or not. Reading a suspect his Miranda warning informs him of the beginning of his jeopardy. His jeopardy begins with the warning.  If he is not read the warning, he is not in jeopardy. He can say anything he likes, and it cannot be used against him in court.

Thus, reading a suspect his Miranda warning does not protect his rights. It has, in fact, no bearing on his rights. He retains his Fifth and Six Amendment rights, whether he is read the warning or not. The warning merely informs the suspect that from that moment on his statements to police can be used against him in court.

So reading the Boston bomber dirtbag his "Miranda rights" does not protect his rights in any way. He retains his rights, whether the warning is read or not.

So, a thoughtful reader might ask, why read him the Miranda warning at all? Well, there is in fact no reason to do so, as long as the prosecution has enough evidence to convict without obtaining statements by the suspect. When there is abundant evidence without the subject's statement, there is no reason to read the Miranda warning at all. Without the Miranda warning, the suspect may provide valuable evidence that may help prevent or solve another crime, or may help protect the public from future terrorist attacks. Without the Miranda warning, those statements cannot be used against that suspect in court, but where there is abundant evidence otherwise, the suspect's statements are not needed to convict him.

The Left's bleating about the need to Mirandize bomb boy in order to 'protect Constitutional rights' is idiotic. These fools don't have the faintest idea what a Miranda warning actually means. While the Supreme Court's 1966 Miranda ruling-- by excluding from court a suspect's statements made before a Miranda warning-- does indeed protect Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights, the act of Mirandizing a suspect doesn't protect any rights at all. It actually places the suspect in greater jeopardy.

The Boston bomber was in much greater legal jeopardy after he was Mirandized-- then his statements could be used against him in court.

So why read the Boston bomber his Miranda warning? After all, they have him on videotape planting the bomb. They don't need his statements/confession to convict him. The only thing that is accomplished by reading him his Miranda warning is that it encourages him to shut up.

Why would they want a terrorist bomber to shut up?

A perspective on gun control

Pia De Solenni from National Catholic Register has a nice little factoid:

Despite media coverage, guns are overwhelmingly used for purposes other than unjust violence. Although we have no exact data on the number of firearms in the U.S., a conservative estimate puts it at about 250 million, not including those owned by law enforcement and government. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there were 11,078 homicides resulting from firearms in 2010. The total number of deaths from firearms, including use by law enforcement, suicide and accidents, was 31,672. That means that less than .000127% of privately owned guns resulted in any type of death. 

Please read the whole thing-- it's a fine discussion of gun control from the perspective of a Catholic theologian.

Let's compare the death rate from private gun ownership to the death rate from... ohh... the death rate from private car ownership... by... Senate Democrats.

Let's go back to 1950, to get a big enough N.

Assuming that the number of guns is fixed (stay with me) and the annual gun homicides is fixed, we have (63 x .000127% equals) .008% chance of any specific privately owned gun killing someone since 1950.

Assume that there have been roughly 300 Democrat Senators since 1950 (it's hard to count exactly without KKK membership rolls), and each Democrat Senator owned an average of 10 cars over that period. The number of Democrat Senator cars used in homicides since 1950 is 1. The chance that any specific privately owned Democrat Senator's car was used in a homicide since 1950 is .03%.

Since 1950, the likelihood of a Democrat Senator's car being used to kill someone was four times the likelihood of a private citizen's gun being used to kill someone.


:-/

"We need better immigrants"

Goodness gracious I love Ann Coulter.

From Larry O'Connor:

The connection between the terror attacks at the Boston Marathon and the push for "immigration reform" in the US Senate continues to play out in the media. The latest and most provocative statements came Monday night from Ann Coulter on Fox News' "Hannity" show.

When the question of whether there needs to be better "tracking" of foreign nationals in our country Coulter countered it "shows that we need better immigrants."

After showing dead terrorist Tamerlan Tsarnaev's wife wearing a hijab Coulter addressed the issue of assimilation and whether the current immigration policies are working. "Assimilating immigrants into our culture isn’t really working. No, they’re assimilating us into their culture."

Her observation that radical Muslim immigrants are are assimilating us, not the other way around, is perceptive. They are bringing the violence and hate of their homelands to our country.

Lib Dem Bob Beckel gets it right, for once:

Democrat Beckel Calls For Moratorium On Student Visas For Muslims

  It's just common sense.

Some terrorists are more equal than others

Being a Leftie terrorist-murderer-bomber with connections has its perks:

Tale of two terrorists 

Columbia job for Boston bomber? 

By JOHN M. MURTAGH

Somewhere near Boston early Monday morning, he packed a bomb in a bag. It was by all accounts relatively crude — a pressure cooker, explosives, some wires, ball bearings and nails . . . nails which, hours later, doctors would struggle to remove from the flesh of bleeding victims. 

His motive is unclear. His intent is not: It was to maximize injury, suffering, pain, trauma and, yes, death. 

Perhaps Monday’s bomber will be caught, perhaps not. 

Perhaps Monday’s bomber will be offered a teaching job at Columbia University. 

Forty-three years ago last month, Kathy Boudin, now a professor at Columbia but then a member of the Weather Underground, escaped an explosion at a bomb factory operated in a townhouse in Greenwich Village. The story is familiar to people of a certain age.

Three weeks earlier, Boudin’s Weathermen had firebombed a private home in Upper Manhattan with Molotov cocktails. Their target was my father, a New York state Supreme Court justice. The rest of the family, was presumably, an afterthought. I was 9 at the time, only a year older than the youngest victim in Boston. 

One of Boudin’s colleagues, Cathy Wilkerson, related in her memoir that the Weathermen were disappointed with the minimal effects of the bombs at my home. They decided to use dynamite the next time and bought a large quantity along with fuses, metal pipes and, yes, nails. The group designated as its next target a dance at an Officer’s Club at Fort Dix, NJ. 

Despite the misgivings of some, it is reported that Kathy Boudin urged the use of “anti-personnel bombs.” In other words, she wanted to kill people not just damage property. Before they could act, her fellows were killed in the townhouse explosion. The townhouse itself collapsed; Boudin fled. 

She reappeared over a decade later driving the getaway car for the rag tag mix of Weathermen and Black Panthers who held up a Rockland County bank in 1981, murdering three in the process. Survivors of the ambush along the New York State Thruway recount how Boudin emerged from the driver’s door, arms raised in surrender, asking the police to lower their guns. When they did, her accomplices burst from the back of the van guns blazing. 

As I said, people of a certain age remember this history. For those that don’t, Robert Redford is kindly about to release a movie recounting the Rockland robbery (albeit relocated to Michigan). By all accounts, the film lionizes the Weather Underground terrorists, Boudin and her accomplices. 

Perhaps to bring it full circle, Professor Boudin can soon guest-lecture at a film class at Columbia when the Redford movie is screened. 

Other than the passage of time, one can find no real distinction between the cowardly actions of last Monday’s Boston murderer and the terror carried out by Boudin and her accomplices. Yet today we live in a country where our leading educational institutions see fit to trust our children’s education to murderers and Hollywood sees fit to celebrate terrorists. 

The Web site of Columbia’s School of Social Work sums up Boudin’s past thus: “Dr. Kathy Boudin has been an educator and counselor with experience in program development since 1964, working within communities with limited resources to solve social problems.” 

“Since 1964” — that would include the bombing of my house, it would include the anti-personnel devices intended for Fort Dix and it would include the dead policeman on the side of the Thruway in 1981. 

Maybe, if he is caught, Monday’s bomber can explain that, like Boudin, he was merely working within the community to solve social problems. 

Perhaps Monday’s bomber will be caught, perhaps not. Perhaps, some day, Monday’s bomber will be offered tenure at Columbia University. 

John M. Murtagh is Of Counsel to the White Plains law firm of Gaines, Gruner, Ponzini & Novick, LLP. He lives in Westchester.

Professor Boudin has the right pedigree-- rich, white, connected, leftist. She is a cold-blooded murderer, terrorist, communist.

That's good for your c.v, in modern academia.

We are naive to the evil around us, the evil ensconced in academia, the press, and our government.

Gramsci prevails. 

'We're not Chechnya!'

This is for real:

Statement of the Ambassador of the Czech Republic on the Boston terrorist attack
19.04.2013 / 21:27
As many I was deeply shocked by the tragedy that occurred in Boston earlier this month. It was a stark reminder of the fact that any of us could be a victim of senseless violence anywhere at any moment.
As more information on the origin of the alleged perpetrators is coming to light, I am concerned to note in the social media a most unfortunate misunderstanding in this respect. The Czech Republic and Chechnya are two very different entities – the Czech Republic is a Central European country; Chechnya is a part of the Russian Federation.
As the President of the Czech Republic Miloš Zeman noted in his message to President Obama, the Czech Republic is an active and reliable partner of the United States in the fight against terrorism. We are determined to stand side by side with our allies in this respect, there is no doubt about that.
Petr Gandalovič
Ambassador of the Czech Republic

:-/

"What's wrong with the world"

Theologian Marguerite Shuster has a timely essay at Christianity Today:

Legend has it that G. K. Chesterton, asked by a newspaper reporter what was wrong with the world, skipped over all the expected answers. He said nothing about corrupt politicians or ancient rivalries between warring nations, or the greed of the rich and the covetousness of the poor. He left aside street crime and unjust laws and inadequate education. 

Environmental degradation and population growth overwhelming the earth's carrying capacity were not on his radar. Neither were the structural evils that burgeoned as wickedness became engrained in society and its institutions in ever more complex ways. 

What's wrong with the world? As the story goes, Chesterton responded with just two words: "I am." 

His answer is unlikely to be popular with a generation schooled to cultivate self-esteem, to pursue its passions and chase self-fulfillment first and foremost. After all, we say, there are reasons for our failures and foibles. It's not our fault that we didn't win the genetic lottery, or that our parents fell short in their parenting, or that our third-grade teacher made us so ashamed of our arithmetic errors that we gave up pursuing a career in science. Besides, we weren't any worse than our friends, and going along with the gang made life a lot more comfortable. We have lots of excuses for why things go wrong, and—as with any lie worth its salt—most of them contain some truth. 

Still, by adulthood, most of us have an uneasy sense of self. Whatever we try to tell ourselves, something in us knows that we don't measure up to our own standards, let alone anyone else's. Even if we think we've done rather well, all things considered, there remains a looming conclusion to our lives we cannot escape. Death will bring an end to all achievements and all excuses. And who among us can face the reality of final judgment with the conviction that we are altogether blameless? 

Maybe there is something to Chesterton's answer after all. In fact, theologian Reinhold Niebuhr was fond of saying that original sin—the idea that every one of us is born a sinner and will manifest that sinfulness in his or her life—is the only Christian doctrine that can be empirically verified. Everyone, whether a criminal or a saint, sins. Insofar as that dismal verdict is true, it's hardly surprising that there is a great deal wrong with the world...

The world of Genesis 3 is the world we live in. Seemingly insignificant choices, unbelief, and pride are key aspects of the Genesis account, and of our ongoing struggle. They have a sort of universal character to them. Yet the question remains: Why did God allow such a state of affairs in the first place? Why any serpent at all? Why, as theologian Karl Barth asked, place a DO NOT ENTER sign over an open door? Why not just close the door?

Please read the whole thing. It's so true that to understand the evil in the world, I must understand the evil in myself. What's wrong with the world is what's in me. I fight it, but I know it, intimately. The acts of the Boston bombers are horrendously cruel, and are something that (thank Goodness) very few of us do. But I know cruelty in my soul. Each of us knows it, if we're honest.

Why does God allow us to evoke such monstrous evil? It is because we are free. We are made in His image, and are thus free to choose good or evil. We are His sons and daughters, not machines. He values freedom more than involuntary obedience. He wants us to always freely choose good, but we sin, and He suffered and died to obtain for us the salvation of the sinless.

The possibility of human evil-- and of human good-- is His greatest gift to us, which is our creation in His image.

There is more that we can know about ourselves by reflecting on evil. The existence of horrendous human and natural evil and the suffering of innocents suggests that we are creatures of eternity. What we experience in our short lives is but preliminary to our eternal lives. Our suffering or joy here and now, as intensely as we experience it, is but a wisp of all that we will know and experience in eternity. We cannot yet imagine what He has in store for us, but it will dwarf what we have experienced in this life.

And for my atheist friends: your retort that the simplest explanation for evil is that there is no God, and that the universe is indifferent to our fate, is no retort at all. If there is no God, there is no real good or evil, but we just imagine things so.

But there is real good and evil-- look at Boston this past week-- and atheism, honestly understood, has nothing to say about absolute moral law. Yet moral  law-- violation of it and obedience to it-- was manifest in Boston in a way no sane person could deny.

Killing and maiming innocent people is evil, in a way that transcends human opinion. Helping innocent people in time of crisis is good, in a way that transcends human opinion.

Moral law exists. God exists.

The face of evil

This heart-breaking photo from a surveillance camera shows Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, bomber #2 (in red circle) and the bomb that he has just dropped (red circle), next to eight year old Martin Richard (blue circle) and his mom and little sister, who were gravely injured in the attack. Little Martin, who had come to the race with his family to watch his dad, was killed.

Pure evil. This bastard put the bomb right next to women and children. I hope by the time this post goes up that they've caught this scum.

It's hard to put my anger into words. This is perhaps the most disturbing photo I've ever seen. Such evil lurks in man.

Let's find 'em!

The FBI has released these photos of the suspects. Millions of people can be brought to bear on this. Hopefully we can identify and capture these guys asap.

A horrible explosion in Texas...

There's been a huge explosion at a fertilizer plant in Texas. Dozens are feared dead.

Please pray for the victims and their families. These are such tragic times.

In time of crisis, President reaches out to old friend for information

"Bill, it's Barry. Have you been watchin' the news?"

(Dissociated Press) With the nation reeling from horrendous terrorist bombings in Boston, President Obama knew whom to call first. Not the FBI director, not the Homeland Security Director, not the CIA director...

"I needed someone I could trust-- someone I knew well-- who was an expert on terrorist bombings." said the President, speaking to reporters gathered in the Oval Office for a news briefing. "So I reached out to a guy with a lot of experience setting off bombs intended for the public-- my first campaign bundler and Hyde Park buddy, 'Bombin Bill' Ayers."

The President grinned. "You might say that Bill was surprised to hear from me. Since 2007 he's been sorta' in the deep freeze. But we go back a long way. Decades. We worked together on boards, hit the party circuit together. He was my first campaign contributor-- threw my first fundraiser in his living room. Got me started in... um... public service. It was good to hear his voice. We talked for 15 minutes. He filled me in on all the latest bomb technology-- how to make shrapnel from nails, how to maximize the kill radius, how glass is invisible to x-rays, all that "Old-Time Bomber" stuff. I felt like I was back in his living room again, talking politics, jokin' about Semtex, scarfin' hors d' oeuvres"

"Billy is a real help in the investigation" the President said, with a wink. "It's nice to have connections".

The President smiled, thanked reporters, and strolled out of the Oval Office.

                                                                        ***

Following the news briefing, Press Secretary Jay Carney released a transcript of the President's chat with his old friend.

[Begin Transcript]


Ring... ring... ring...

Hello...

Hey Bill, ya ol dog! Guess who? Been doing any "pressure cookin" lately?

Barry! That you, man? Long time no see. Since 2007 man.

Hey. Sorry about the chill. A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. Fox was all over me.

It's copesthetic, man. I understand. What's up?

Got any ideas on this B-town blastin?

Shit, man, these dudes are amateurs. Amateurs. Only three bourgeois killed? C'mon, I mean, the bomb we detonated in Greenwich Village in 1970 killed three of my closest dudes-- includin' my roomate and my girlfriend-- and we was just puttin' it together! We had a frackin bomb factory dude-- a 37-mm antitank shell, 57 sticks of dynamite, four 12-inch pipe bombs packed with dynamite, 30 blasting caps, timing devices rigged from alarm clocks, maps of the tunnel network underneath Columbia University, dynamite wrapped in tape with nails embedded to act as shrapnel. If we'd popped that bourgeois-buster where we planned-- at a graduation dance for young soldiers and their dates at Fort Dix-- we'd have killed scores of little Eichmanns. It was full of nails and ball bearings and scrap metal and all kinds of good shit. I mean, we killed as many of ourselves accidently as these losers in B-town killed on purpose! Amateurs. 

What kind of bomb-making experience did these Boston guys have? Any clues there?

Gimme a break, Barry. I mean, these B-town boys ain't got no street experience. Bernadette and I set off seventy two bombs-- New York City Police headquarters, the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon, the U.S. State Department, the Haymarket police monument in Chicago, Chicago police cars, Marin County Courthouse, Long Island City Courthouse, Department of Corrections in San Francisco, Department of Corrections in Albany, 103rd precinct New York police headquarters, Harvard Center for International Affairs, MIT Research Center, draft and recruiting centers, ROTC buldings, ITT Latin America Headquarters, National Guard Headquarters in Washington, Presidio Army Base and MP station, San Francisco, and the Federal Offices of Health, Education, and Welfare in San Francisco. 

And, man, I feel we didn't do enough!

I forgot it was that many.

Hey, dude, you and me talked about it at the 4th of July party at my house in 2005. Don't you remember from all the news reports about you and me from the election campaign? ...Haa haa, haa, just kidding!  I guess all those background checks are for guns, not presidents. 

Heh. Do ya think we're gonna catch em, Bill?

Hope so, Barry! Columbia's got some faculty openings. Ha!

You always crack me up, Bill. Give my best to Bernadette, comrade. She was always a little firecracker!

Michelle too, Barry. KaBOOM! And don't be such a stranger. Remember: ya ain't got no reelection to worry about now. Come on over to Hyde Park, sometime. It'll be like old times. Hors d'oeuvres, jokin' about prilled ammonium nitrate and fuel oil, back slappin', lots of cash. Say hi to the old terrorists! 

Don't waste all your post-election flexibility on Mendeleev!

 [End Transcript]

Suspect Arrested in Boston Bombing!

'He was waiting to hug his dad at the finish line'

Among the three people killed at the Boston marathon bombing is 8 year old Martin Richard. He was waiting at the finish line to hug his dad, who was running in the race. His 6 year old sister reportedly lost a leg, and his mom underwent brain surgery for her injuries.

Please pray for Martin, his family, and all of the innocents killed and injured in this atrocity.

Let's hunt down the terrorist vermin who did this. And let's remember that there are people and institutions in this country who collaborate with terrorists, who send money and weapons to terrorists, and who hire terrorists.

We need to have zero tolerance for all of them-- terrorists, enablers and cronies alike.

                                                         ***

Some commentators on this blog have gotten the vapors over some anti-Obama satire I have posted over the past couple of days, related to the investigation of this atrocity.

So is my satire appropriate?

Extraordinary situations call for extraordinary commentary. I do not satirize the victims, or their families, or the heroic first responders.

I honor them and I pray for them all.

I satirize the President and a few senior government officials who, astonishingly, have actual close personal relationships with terrorist bombers (!) Let me restate that: the POTUS-- the POTUS-- actually has had close political and social ties to admitted serial terrorist bombers.

Seeing Obama on TV talking about "bringing the culprits to justice" made me want to vomit. If Obama was focused on bringing terrorist bombers to justice, he could have called 911 when he was snacking on hors d'oeuvres at Ayers' and Dohrn's 1995 fundraiser in the terrorist bombers' living room. Ayers and Dohrn were leaders of the Weather Underground. They carried out scores of bombings.

In a very real way, Obama's political career got started by the largesse of terrorist bombers.

And Obama and his underlings insisted for weeks, despite obvious evidence to the contrary, that the terrorist attack on our consulate in Benghazi that killed four Americans, including our ambassador, was triggered by... a YouTube video. They had the videographer arrested (he's still in jail, ostensibly on a parole violation).

Of course, the YouTube video had nothing to do with the terrorist attack, and Obama et al obviously knew it. But a presidential election was looming, and politics took precedence over the truth.

So Obama-- the terrorists' crony who lies about terrorist investigations-- is ultimately running this investigation into the Boston bombing, and reassuring us that he will bring the terrorists to... justice.

:-/

Satire is the least I can do, because you can't cry and pound the desk and pull your hair out on a blog. Satire can be quite effective, and as Obama's hero Saul Alinsky knew, accurate satire is very difficult to refute. You see with the Obamaphile commentors on this blog. All they can do is insult, curse and threaten.

Rest assured-- there's more satire in the pipeline.

                                                                   ***

So God bless the victims and their families, and the heroic and diligent investigators working to solve this horrendous crime.

And may God forgive America for electing the coterie of leftist bastards and frauds who run our country.  By their own association with terrorists and by their own lying about terrorist investigations, they bring such shame on all of us.

Administration officials: early evidence in Boston bombings points to YouTube videos

"We're scrutinizing all recent uploads"
announces Secretary of State Hillary Clinton

(Dissociated Press) Obama Administration officials were focusing the investigation into the horrendous Boston marathon bombings on a source that has proven indispensable to the investigation of previous terrorist attacks: YouTube videos.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced:

"Seconds prior to the bombings, drones showed a spontaneous demonstration erupting in outrage at recent unidentified videos. We are scrutinizing YouTube as we speak for phobic content. Rest assured that the culprits who uploaded those videos will be brought to justice."

Secretary Clinton has been appointed by President Obama to oversee the federal investigation into the Boston marathon terrorist bombings. Insiders speculate that Clinton may have been chosen by the President to lead the investigation based on her superb performance investigating the Benghazi consulate attacks in Libya.

As of 8:00 pm last night, federal investigators had personally viewed 113 million videos. Anonymous sources in the investigation reported that so far they have very few leads. Three videos satirizing the British were uncovered, and one video was dismissive of Armenians. "We're following them up" said the unidentified source.

Obama administration Press Secretary Jay Carney reassured reporters that, by delegating the investigation to Secretary Clinton, the President was not standing down from his personal responsibility as Commander-in-Chief to lead the investigation.

"The President is actively involved in the critical process of identifying all known terrorist bombers in this country" Carney noted. "He even has a couple of them on speed-dial."  

Politician who began his career at a fundraiser in the living room of terrorist bombers promises justice for terrorist bombers

Obama's friend, Weatherman terrorist bomber Bill Ayers:

"I wish I had done more...". 

Ayers' wife, Weatherman terrorist bomber Bernadette Dohrn:

"We'd do it again. I wish that we had done more. I wish we had been more militant."

The President's first campaign fundraisers were unrepentant terrorist bombers. Now he promises justice for... terrorist bombers.

Does he plan to apprehend them, take their donations, and make sure they get tenure?

Sure is a crazy world, huh?

Please pray for the people in Boston

As you no doubt know there have been two bomb explosions at the Boston marathon. It appears that many people are seriously injured, and there are some deaths.

Please pray for the victims, and their families, and please pray for justice for the perpetrators of this atrocity. 

The Atlantic on the media's Gosnell cover-up.

A photo of an aborted baby girl from Gosnell's clinic, from the Grand Jury report. 

Even Conor Friedersdorf at lefty The Atlantic magazine can't take it anymore.

Friedersdorf:

Why Dr. Kermit Gosnell's Trial Should Be a Front-Page Story 

The dead babies. The exploited women. The racism. The numerous governmental failures. It is thoroughly newsworthy.

... The grand jury report summarizes a more typical late-term abortion, as conducted at the clinic, concluding with the following passage: 

When you perform late-term "abortions" by inducing labor, you get babies. Live, breathing, squirming babies. By 24 weeks, most babies born prematurely will survive if they receive appropriate medical care. But that was not what the Women's Medical Society was about. Gosnell had a simple solution for the unwanted babies he delivered: he killed them. He didn't call it that. He called it "ensuring fetal demise." The way he ensured fetal demise was by sticking scissors into the back of the baby's neck and cutting the spinal cord. He called that "snipping."

Over the years, there were hundreds of "snippings." Sometimes, if Gosnell was unavailable, the "snipping" was done by one of his fake doctors, or even by one of the administrative staff.

But all the employees of the Women's Medical Society knew. Everyone there acted as if it wasn't murder at all. Most of these acts cannot be prosecuted, because Gosnell destroyed the files. Among the relatively few cases that could be specifically documented, one was Baby Boy A. His 17-year-old mother was almost 30 weeks pregnant -- seven and a half months -- when labor was induced. An employee estimated his birth weight as approaching six pounds. He was breathing and moving when Gosnell severed his spine and put the body in a plastic shoebox for disposal. The doctor joked that this baby was so big he could "walk me to the bus stop." Another, Baby Boy B, whose body was found at the clinic frozen in a one-gallon spring-water bottle, was at least 28 weeks of gestational age when he was killed. Baby C was moving and breathing for 20 minutes before an assistant came in and cut the spinal cord, just the way she had seen Gosnell do it so many times. And these were not even the worst cases.

Says Kirsten Powers in her USA Today op-ed, "Let me state the obvious. This should be front page news. When Rush Limbaugh attacked Sandra Fluke, there was non-stop media hysteria. The venerable NBC Nightly News' Brian Williamsintoned, 'A firestorm of outrage from women after a crude tirade from Rush Limbaugh,' as he teased a segment on the brouhaha. Yet, accusations of babies having their heads severed -- a major human rights story if there ever was one -- doesn't make the cut." 

Inducing live births and subsequently severing the heads of the babies is indeed a horrific story that merits significant attention. Strange as it seems to say it, however, that understates the case.

For this isn't solely a story about babies having their heads severed, though it is that. It is also a story about a place where, according to the grand jury, women were sent to give birth into toilets; where a doctor casually spread gonorrhea and chlamydiae to unsuspecting women through the reuse of cheap, disposable instruments; an office where a 15-year-old administered anesthesia; an office where former workers admit to playing games when giving patients powerful narcotics; an office where white women were attended to by a doctor and black women were pawned off on clueless untrained staffers. Any single one of those things would itself make for a blockbuster news story. Is it even conceivable that an optometrist who attended to his white patients in a clean office while an intern took care of the black patients in a filthy room wouldn't make national headlines? 

But it isn't even solely a story of a rogue clinic that's awful in all sorts of sensational ways either. Multiple local and state agencies are implicated in an oversight failure that is epic in proportions! If I were a city editor for any Philadelphia newspaper the grand jury report would suggest a dozen major investigative projects I could undertake if I had the staff to support them. And I probably wouldn't have the staff. But there is so much fodder for additional reporting.

There is, finally, the fact that abortion, one of the most hotly contested, polarizing debates in the country, is at the center of this case. It arguably informs the abortion debate in any number of ways, and has numerous plausible implications for abortion policy, including the oversight and regulation of clinics, the appropriateness of late-term abortions, the penalties for failing to report abuses, the statute of limitations for killings like those with which Gosnell is charged, whether staff should be legally culpable for the bad behavior of doctors under whom they work...
There's just no end to it. 

To sum up, this story has numerous elements any one of which would normally make it a major story. And setting aside conventions, which are flawed, thisought to be a big story on the merits. 

The news value is undeniable.

Why isn't it being covered more? I've got my theories. But rather than offer them at the end of an already lengthy item, I'd like to survey some of the editors and writers making coverage decisions.

Please read the whole thing, if you can stomach it.

Friedersdorf has his "theories" about the cover-up. "Why isn't it being covered more?"

Gee-- I wonder...

:-/

How about this theory: the media is populated by cowardly amoral left-wing bastards who are not journalists in any sense. They are advocates for abortion, and they don't believe that killing babies is a crime. But they understand that the P.R. fallout from the Gosnell trial is devastating to the abortion cause. So their approach to the Gosnell trial is not investigative journalism, but damage-control.

A few of the vermin in the media have enough of conscience left to raise questions-- hence this article in Atlantic. It will come to nothing. They will engage in damage-control about their cover-up of this crime, just like they engaged in damage-control about the crime itself.

The mainstream media is corrupt beyond redemption, and beyond shame.

But they no longer control the flow of information. This truth about abortion is being told.

A Womb with Three Views

A beautiful parable.

A Womb with Three Views 

by Donald DeMarco

It did not happen. But it could have happened. It is a matter of historical record that Plato was born in Ancient Greece, Aquinas in the Middle Ages, and Jean-Paul Sartre in the Twentieth Century. Yet it would not have been impossible, in the lottery of life, for all three of these talented thinkers to have been conceived by the same woman and, to stretch the imagination to its outer edge, to have been united in the womb as fraternal triplets.

What thoughts might these three extraordinary individuals have shared in their close quarters if they were as precocious in the womb as they were prolific in the world! As philosophers in the world, each of them dominated the intellectual climate of his day; each was a milestone in the history of Western thought. Together they summarize three radically different views of God and life: Plato represented pagan acceptance; Aquinas, Christian reception; Sartre, atheistic rejection.

If the notion of three embryonic philosophers dialoguing in the womb seems a bit fanciful, it may be worth noting that the small world of the womb has often been regarded as a prototype of the larger world outside. An ancient Jewish proverb states that in the womb man knows his cosmic connection, and after he is born, must rediscover it. Psychotherapist Rollo May claims the womb provides “a state of we-nests” which makes language and communication possible. Media guru Marshall McLuhan remarked that all our senses may very well be “specialized variants” of “womb-wise” touch. Thomas Merton compared the child in the womb with the cloistered religious when he referred to him as “Planted in the night of contemplation/Sealed in the dark waiting to be born.”

Furthermore, our imaginative dialogue is not altogether without historical foundation. Let us recall the Visitation recorded in Luke’s gospel, when Elizabeth’s child “leaped in her womb” at the recognition of another child in the womb—Jesus.

It is late in the prenatal development of our precocious and prolific trio. They have slumbered deeply for several months and now, having awakened from that long period of peace, begin to make observations, raise questions, and draw certain personal conclusions. The one who will be known as Plato proposes a most ingenious theory. He judges the womb to be a deprived environment where shadow has been separated from substance. He argues that the womb is but a prison and that outside it is a world infinitely richer and more real. “There is a being who is good and who sustains and nourishes us,” he reasons, “but we must find the courage to get out of our cave-like dwelling and enter the light so that we may come to know this being. If we continue to feast on shadows, we will remain entirely oblivious to reality.”

Aquinas listens intently as Plato waxes eloquent. But he is more patient. There is such a being, he agrees. And the life that awaits us when we are delivered from this exile is indeed more beautiful and more satisfying than anything we can imagine. “We must have hope. These ‘shadows,’ as you call them,” he explains to Plato in a confident tone, “are also real and have their own value and purpose. We must wait and hope, and in due time we will be delivered. We will finally meet the being who sustains and nourishes us, but only when the time is propitious.”

The third occupant, having listed attentively to the other two, shakes his head angrily. “Neither of you are being realistic in any sense! You do not have the courage to face the brute fact that this is a squalid and hopeless place. Because you cannot admit to the absurdity of our existence in this dismal and congested chamber, you imagine beautiful places that simply do not exist. You must accept the absurdity of your fate. Only then will you be free. Your wishful fabrications can only prevent you from being truly yourselves.”

Plato and Aquinas try very hard to explain the doctrine of cause and effect to their cynical sibling. They reason that since we are not the cause of our being, and since we are not the authors of our own life, spirit, and capacity to think, there must be some higher cause that produces these effects. If you follow the law of reason, they advise, you too will conclude that there must be an order of reality that transcends this gloomy confine and our humble mode of existence.

“All I know is what I see,” Sartre replies. “I can do without superstitious nonsense.” Then Aquinas, speaking very gently, says that he understands his brother’s doubts and that he has many doubts of his own, but whenever he is plagued by uncertainties, he prefers to believe in more reality than in less.

Upon hearing this, Sartre becomes even more enraged and shakes the umbilical cords so vehemently that he momentarily shuts off the air supply. “Don’t do that,” gasps Plato, after regaining his equilibrium. “You are acting like a being without reason.”

Aquinas antagonizes Sartre even further by lecturing him on the virtues of commutative justice and fraternal charity.

“Let me put it as bluntly as I can,” Sartre snaps. “There is no exit from this place. And what is more, I do not owe either of you anything. I belong to myself alone. And frankly, after listening to your verbal inanities, I am convinced more than every that man’s greatest trial is other people. In fact, if I may coin a phrase, ‘Hell is other people.’ And one more thing! These cords you seem to think are so important are really fetters. I shall cut them; only then shall we be free.”

“No!” Aquinas bellows. “These cords connect us with the source of our nourishment and love. We are dependent beings. If we sever our connections with the being who sustains us, we shall surely die.”

“If we remain attached to another,” Sartre retorts, “we cannot be ourselves, we cannot be the masters of our own destiny.”

“Our freedom lies in obedience,” Aquinas answers, “and in the wisdom to love and serve the one who is our Master.” “Knowledge will be our freedom,” adds Plato. Yet Sartre remains adamant: “Faith in anyone else is bad faith. I believe in myself. Now please leave me alone.”

Plato, in a more reflective mood, calls attention to the low, steady beats that reverberate throughout the womb. “These rhythmic sounds,” he muses, are the footsteps of the demiurge who assisted in our creation. He lingers awhile to be assured that we are all right.”

Sartre reproaches him one again: “These endless, repetitious sounds I hear overwhelm me with a feeling of nausea. They are as senseless as life itself and serve only to announce our impending doom.”

“I beg to differ with you,” Aquinas states, almost apologetically. “I believe these ever-present beats are a sign that we are under constant protection. Moreover, I believe that this protection is a natural emanation from a source of continual love.”

More time passes. The triangular dispute remains unresolved. Then the hour arrives when spasms occur and jostle the embryonic trinity. The walls of their fleshy incubator contracts and convulses with increasing severity. The trio are now tumbling and careening into each other. “What is happening?” they exclaim in unison. “We are dying!” answers Plato. “This is absurd!” shouts Sartre. “Have faith!” urges Aquinas.

Soon the spasms become more frequent and intensify to the point that they expel the three philosophers from their tiny hermitage and force them down through a narrow corridor.

“You see,” says Sartre. “It is just as I have maintained; life is utterly absurd and can lead only to even greater absurdities.” “Truly we are dying,” Plato moans. “No,” says Aquinas calmly: “In death we are born to life; the seed must die so that it may live to a higher life.”

The discussion is ended. With one last great spasm, the three are forced out into the world. They are chilled by the cold and confused by their first experience of weight. As they cry, air fills their lungs for the first time. And then they meet the being whom they both sought and denied, the being who sustained and nourished them.

Her name, however, is not “freedom,” or “first cause” or “demiurge,” but mother. And she is more tender and more beautiful and more loving than they could possibly have imagined. Now the philosophers live in an extra-uterine environment that none of them can possibly deny. Yet their quarrel persists and follows a familiar pattern. Plato is anxious to find his way out of this world of earthly shadows, while Sartre insists that this new environment is all there is. But Aquinas, still patient and full of faith and hope, continues to believe in even more reality.

"Can you imagine the coverage if it were dogs?"

This image is from JD Mulland of the Bucks County Courier Times, who is one of the few reporters covering the Gosnell abortion-murder trial. It's the reserved seating in the courtroom for the media.

Takes your breath away.

Erik Erickson asks "can you imagine the coverage if it were dogs?"

Dictator worship is a hallmark of state atheism, and is the antithesis of theocracy.

Jerry Coyne has a pretty low opinion of North Korea:

It’s a terrible state—the worst dictatorship in the world—and the citizens are best described as “starved prisoners.” Brainwashed from birth, forbidden to access the internet or news from other countries, many must surely swallow the propaganda forced down their throats daily, which makes them think that they are indeed a blessed people, that Kim Jong Un is a god, and that other countries, particularly the U.S., is constantly plotting to nuke them...

Well, at least Jerry's finally going to admit that atheism gives rise to some pretty brutal dictatorships. Oh, umm, well, maybe not...

The state is in many ways a theocracy, with its three last leaders seen as gods. Indeed, Kim il-Sung, who died in 1994, is still considered the country’s “eternal president,” and there are many miracle stories attending his birth, like birds singing his praises.

Sorry, Jerry. Believing crazy things about your atheist dictator doesn't make your atheist state a "theocracy". There was plenty of loon worship of Lenin and Stalin and Mao and Pol Pot. Atheists are prone to believing crazy shit about their dictators. But the Soviet Union and Communist China and Democratic Kampauchea were atheist to the bone. Just like the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

Theocracy is rule according to an actual religion. In actual theocracies, sovereignty is ascribed to God, and leader worship is sacrilegious. Saudi Arabia, Iran, Afghanistan, Mauritania, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, and the Vatican City are theocracies. Worshiping the pope in Vatican City will get you excommunicated. Worshiping the imam in Iran will get you hanged.

Leader worship isn't "in many ways a theocracy". It is not even analogous to theocracy. Leader worship is prohibited in theocracies. That's the point of theocracy: God, not man, rules.

Theocracy precludes leader worship. The cult of the dictator is the hallmark of state atheism.

"The Attorney General is seeking a permanent injunction forcing the flower shop to comply with the law – as well as $2,000 in fines for every violation."

From Todd Starnes at Town Hall:

State Sues Florist Who Refused to Decorate Gay Wedding
The State of Washington is suing a small flower shop after the owner declined to provide flowers for a homosexual wedding – based on her religious beliefs.

Barronelle Stutzman, the owner of Arlene’s Flowers in Richland, Wash., is facing thousands of dollars in fines and penalties for allegedly violating the state’s Consumer Protection Act.

“If a business provides a product or service to opposite-sex couples for their weddings, then it must provide same-sex couples the same product or service,” Attorney General Bob Ferguson said in a statement.

On March 1, a longtime customer asked Stutzman to provide flowers for his upcoming same-sex wedding. According to court documents, she told him that she would not be able to do so “because of her relationship with Jesus Christ.”

The Attorney General’s office sent a letter to the florist on March 28 giving her a chance to reconsider her position and sign an agreement indicating her intention to comply with the law. But Stutzman refused.

“Under the Consumer Protection Act, it is unlawful to discriminate against customers on the basis of sexual orientation,” the attorney general said.

In their letter to Stutzman, they told her the only way to avoid a lawsuit was to agree to provide services for homosexual weddings.

“This means that as a seller of goods or services, you will not refuse to sell floral arrangements for same-sex weddings if you sell floral arrangements for opposite-sex weddings,” the attorney general’s office wrote.

This is what gay marriage is about. Nothing else. It has nothing to do with actual marriage, obviously. It is a drive to provide a legal imprimatur for sandblasting practicing Christians from the public square.

It stands to be remarkably effective. We Christians don't realize yet what we're facing.

"But it does not mean global warming is a delusion."

Oops:

DEBATE about the reality of a two-decade pause in global warming and what it means has made its way from the sceptical fringe to the mainstream. 

In a lengthy article this week, The Economist magazine said if climate scientists were credit-rating agencies, then climate sensitivity - the way climate reacts to changes in carbon-dioxide levels - would be on negative watch but not yet downgraded.
Another paper published by leading climate scientist James Hansen, the head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, says the lower than expected temperature rise between 2000 and the present could be explained by increased emissions from burning coal. 

For Hansen the pause is a fact, but it's good news that probably won't last.
International Panel on Climate Change chairman Rajendra Pachauri recently told The Weekend Australian the hiatus would have to last 30 to 40 years "at least" to break the long-term warming trend. 

But the fact that global surface temperatures have not followed the expected global warming pattern is now widely accepted. 

Research by Ed Hawkins of University of Reading shows surface temperatures since 2005 are already at the low end of the range projections derived from 20 climate models and if they remain flat, they will fall outside the models' range within a few years. 

"The global temperature standstill shows that climate models are diverging from observations," says David Whitehouse of the Global Warming Policy Foundation.
"If we have not passed it already, we are on the threshold of global observations becoming incompatible with the consensus theory of climate change," he says. 

Whitehouse argues that whatever has happened to make temperatures remain constant requires an explanation because the pause in temperature rise has occurred despite a sharp increase in global carbon emissions. 

The Economist says the world has added roughly 100 billion tonnes of carbon to the atmosphere between 2000 and 2010, about one-quarter of all the carbon dioxide put there by humans since 1750. This mismatch between rising greenhouse gas emissions and not-rising temperatures is among the biggest puzzles in climate science just now, The Economist article says. 

"But it does not mean global warming is a delusion."

Global warming isn't "delusion". Sometimes the globe warms, sometimes it cools. Climate changes, continuously.

Man-made global warming isn't a delusion, either. It's a hoax. It is a willful misrepresentation of science, intended to increase funding and prestige for climate scientists, and to enact a socialist agenda that includes control over every aspect of life.

The hoax is unraveling at an impressive rate.

But honest people shouldn't assume that this is a decisive victory. Other hoaxes are in the pipeline. And don't count on the public learning anything from the AGW fiasco. Our semi-educated populace have the attention span of chiwawas. Much of the public will blink, and then wait for Brad Pitt to tell them what to be afraid of next.

Man-made global warming is merely the current science apocalypse, following the long grey line of eugenics, overpopulation hysteria, pesticide hysteria, etc.

The hysteria will continue, until the bastards get their way. 

P.C. liberals are more than three-fifths dumb

From Robert Weissberg:

Like many readers I recently encountered the sad tale of how James W. Wagner, President of Emory University, had to apologize for praising the Constitution’s three-fifths compromise (treating slaves as three-fifths of a person for purposes of congressional representation). 

A letter to Wagner from the Department of History and African American studies called his analysis “an insult to the descendants of those enslaved people who are today a vital part of the Emory University community and our nation.” 

Wagner’s apology, “To those hurt or confused by my clumsiness and insensitivity, please forgive me,” closely resembles a Soviet-era show trial where the already guilty defendant tries to save himself with a self-humiliating confession. 

Alas, this self-degradation is apparently insufficient and the College of Arts and Sciences faculty has formally censured president Wagner. Perhaps like Soviet show trial victims, he should immediately confess even more grievous sins so the faculty will spare his family.

Wagner was accused by the p.c. police of denigrating blacks by endorsing the legal concept that slaves were only three-fifths of a human being for the purpose of apportionment in the Constitution.

Nonsense.

It is the liberal inquisitors, not President Wagner, who take the slave owners' side in the argument.

The question facing the Consitutional Convention was: how do we account for slaves in the apportionment of representation on the House of Representatives? Northern abolitionist states insisted that apportionment of political power in the House be according only to the free population in states. They argued that it was immoral to count slaves for purposes of apportionment, because that would mean that the slaves-- who were not free to participate in the political process-- would add to the political power of their slave owners.

The Northern abolitionists' argument was that States should get votes in the House only in accordance with the number of citizens that they allow to freely participate in the electoral process. The Northern abolitionists wanted to reduce the power of the slave states, in order ultimately to eradicate slavery.

The Southern slave-owning states wanted slaves counted the same as free men, so the slave owners would benefit from the increased representation in the House of Representatives without having to allow slaves to participate in the electoral process. Counting slaves as free men for the purpose of apportionment would have greatly increased the power of the slave states in Congress. 

The three-fifths compromise allowed the Union to form, while giving the Southern slave-owning states as little legislative power as possible. 

The Constitutional apportionment of slaves as less than free men was part of an effort to abolish, not expand, slavery. 

The culpable ignorance of the politically correct prosecutors of this show trial is jaw-dropping. The little stalins of today's p.c. police, in their fervor to prosecute heresy, in fact make the slave-owners argument. Counting slaves as full citizens for the purposes of apportionment, while denying them political participation, would have enormously empowered the slave-owners. The purpose of the Northern abolitionists for not counting slaves (or for counting them as less than free men for the purpose of apportionment) was to fight slavery. 

The p.c. police-- including faculty who have a professional responsibility to know the facts in this matter, accuse the President of Emory University of racial insensivity, while at the same time idiotically making the argument that the slave owners made. 

Goodness gracious I can't stand liberals.