Several Supreme Court decisions came down in the last couple of days. As is the case with many Supreme Court decisions, you have the conservative wing (Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, and Alito) opposite the liberal wing (Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer). Therefore, Justice Kennedy seems to hold the key to what the court will decide, and he did in each of these cases.

District of Columbia v Heller - The Supreme Court finally analyzed whether or not the "right to keep and bear arms" applies to the government or to individuals. Of course, no other right in the Bill of Rights was applied to the government. The Bill of Rights essentially either places restrictions on government by securing to rights to individuals. Liberals have been arguing for years that the "right to keep and bear arms" wasn't on par with freedom of speech, press, or religion. The conservative wing of the court was joined by Justice Kennedy to provide a sensible, plain interpretation of the 2nd amendment.

Kennedy v Louisiana - The Supreme Court decided that states cannot provide the death penalty as an option for punishment of those convicted of child rape, saying that this violates the "cruel and unusual punishment" clause. Look, either the death penalty is cruel and unusual or it isn't. The Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld the death penalty (even as recently as two months ago!), but it seems like the court (at least the liberal wing of it) wants to micromanage exactly how it can be used. Justice Kennedy joined the liberal wing of the court.

Boumediene v Bush - The Supreme Court said "just kidding" (according to Scalia's dissent) and required the executive branch to grant all detainees at Guantanamo Bay full habeas corpus rights. (Previously, the court instructed Congress to outline a process for the military to apply to consider a detainee's request for release, which was passed as the Military Commissions Act of 2006. This ruling basically makes that act of Congress worthless.) Essentially, the judicial branch is now determining how the executive branch should wage war, including what rights it must grant upon enemy combatants captured in the field of war. Judicial activism at it's finest. Justice Kennedy again joined the liberal wing of the court.

The point isn't whether you personally agree with the liberal or conservative view of any of these decisions. The question is whether the decision was based on a principle of the separation of powers, and whether a right is explicitly defined by the Constitution or not.

For instance, the "right to keep and bear arms" is explicitly in the 2nd amendment, and residents of Washington, DC have been denied that right for some time. The liberal wing of the court wanted to continue to deny them of that right. The conservative wing of the court sees that the 2nd amendment was passed by legislative and democratic processes, and that it is outside of the government's power to completely deny them a right specifically guaranteed to them.

In terms of capital punishment, a case could be made that the death penalty is "cruel and unusual" - however, the court has repeatedly upheld this as a form of punishment. In what circumstances a punishment should be applied is open to interpretation, but it is exactly this kind of interpretation that was destined for legislatures to debate through democratic processes. Instead, the liberal wing of the court likes to look for "evolving standards," "national consensus," and making their own decisions about what is an acceptable "proportional punishment." These types of decisions were never meant to be decided by unaccountable judges, only by elected officials.

With regards to enemy combatants, the power to wage war is vested in one individual, the commander-in-chief. Congress declares war, but the president wages it. And the president is accountable, as an elected official. As the Supreme Court enters into the issue, our ability to wage war must now be held against standards set by an unaccountable, unelected branch of government. Congress is given the power to set the jurisdiction of the courts, which is what it did in the Military Commissions Act of 2006. But for some reason the Supreme Court can just decide that this law is worthless, and instead of allowing the president to wage a war that was declared by the Congress, it has stepped in and declared that enemy combatants have the same rights as citizens under the Constitution (at least with respect to habeas corpus).

The liberal wing of the court likes to accomplish by judicial fiat what cannot be accomplished through legislative means. Protecting judges from political pressure is not supposed to be a blank check to enacting whatever changes they desire. But in a world where the Supreme Court is the most politically active and most politically powerful institution in the land, we should not be surprised that nominations and confirmation hearings are as politically charged as they have become since the Democrats made a mockery of the process with Robert Bork. (The slanderous accusations made by Ted Kennedy led to Bork's defeat, and to today's situation of Justice Kennedy as the swing vote.)

Conservatives desire justices who read the laws, interpret, and apply them. Liberals desire justices who will continue to uphold the court's liberally activist past, while forging ahead into new frontiers of liberal activism impossible to pass legislatively.

All of this becomes extremely important when deciding who to vote for this November for president.

UPDATE: Larrey Anderson dealt with this same topic in Justice Anthony Kennedy and Our Schizophrenic Supreme Court, and summed the problem up well: "Your personal right to firearms was one vote away from being thrown on the ash heap of history. And it still is. Cities, like New York, with strict gun control laws, will be sued in federal court using the holding from Heller. Justice Kennedy could change his mind tomorrow." Ann Coulter also handled this topic mightily in last week's column, Justice Kennedy: American Idle.

Labels: politics

In 10 Concerns about Barack Obama, Bill Bennett and Seth Leibsohn outline ten reasons to be very concerned about Obama. Head over to the article for the full reasoning, but here's the list, with my comments:

"Barack Obama’s foreign policy is dangerous, naïve, and betrays a profound misreading of history." He likes to compare his desire to meet with our enemies to Reagan meeting with Gorbachev - which only happened after Gorbachev began making changes and revealed himself as a different kind of leader. And also only happend AFTER Reagan called the Soviet Union out as an "evil empire." Reagan's views were best summed up as "peace through strength" and "trust but verify."

"Barack Obama’s Iraq policy will hand al-Qaeda a victory and undercut our entire position in the Middle East, while at the same time put a huge source of oil in the hands of terrorists." With all the progress made in Iraq in the past several months, Obama still hasn't changed his tune on this. Obama will simply hand Iraq to al-Qaeda on a silver platter.

"Barack Obama has sent mixed, confusing, and inconsistent messages on his policy toward Israel." Saying one thing to AIPAC one day and quickly backtracking from it the next, he's confused both supporters of Israel and those who desire to destroy it (Obama did receive an endorsement from Hamas).

"In the primary campaign, Barack Obama consistently campaigned against NAFTA, but has now changed his tune, as he has with other issues." They also point out his switch on public campaign financing. Along with his switches on support for Israel, it looks like the Democrats have picked another flip-flopper.

"Barack Obama’s judgment about personal and professional affiliations is more than troubling." Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers were bad enough, but the list keeps getting longer. These types of affiliations represent the types of people he will appoint for positions in his administration, as ambassadors, as judges, etc.

"Obama is simply out of step with how terrorists should be handled; he would turn back the clock on how we fight terrorism, using the failed strategy of the 1990s as opposed to the post-9/11 strategy that has kept us safe." Obama considers it no big deal that captured terrorists will have to be granted habeas-corpus rights under the recent Supreme Court ruling. He considers the first World Trade Center bombing to be a shining example of battling terrorists - wait until they bomb us, then arrest them and keep them in prison. That mentality didn't protect the country on 9/11, and a break from that mentality has kept us safer over the past seven years. Obama would return back to the "law enforcement" strategy that gave us a false sense of security.

"Barack Obama’s economic policies would hurt the economy." Obama wants to increase taxes on income, payroll, capital gains, dividends, and inheritance. His proposals would have a devastating affect on the economy, which is currently struggling. Add tax hikes on top of that, and you can bet that the economy will go into a full-blown recession.

"Barack Obama opposes drilling on and offshore to reduce gas and oil prices." Despite the way Democrats like to blame oil companies, the only way to reduce the price of a limited resource is to either reduce demand or increase supply. Better yet, do both. And while you're at it, keep money away from terrorist-sponsoring countries. That's not going to happen under Obama.

"Barack Obama is to the left of Hillary Clinton and NARAL on the issue of life." Like all liberals, Obama has a very weak argument for his position on abortion, voting against any abortion restriction he's had in front of him.

"Barack Obama is actually to the left of every member of the U.S. Senate." Kerry's heavy (and lengthy) liberal voting record hurt him greatly in 2004. Obama doesn't have that long of a voting record in the Senate, yet the record he does have has earned him the title of "the most liberal Senator in 2007." He received a score of 95.5 from the National Journal, higher than any other Senator.

So what good is inspiration if it is accompanied by all of this? If you're a liberal through and through, I can see why you're excited about Obama. For the first time since 1996, you have a presidential candidate that represents your views who is more expressive than a doorknob. But for the rest of you Obama supporters out there, why does a candidate's inspirational voice mean that you can gloss over all of these serious problems?

Labels: politics

There are so many lessons of the failure of socialism during the 20th century that the left refuses to learn from. 120 years ago, socialism was a bright idea that many wanted to try out and experiment with. America weathered that storm, in some ways, despite the socialist influences present in the New Deal and the entitlement programs that followed. But liberals still crave more and more socialism, believing that while every nation to try socialist principles has failed, they will be the ones to finally get it right.

There was an awesome opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal today about Argentina, titled From Breadbasket to Basket Case. In it, Mary Anastasia O'Grady describes Argentina's "ballooning entitlements, class warfare, hostility toward producers, capital and private property, protectionism and subsidized central-planning." Argentina has been going through political upheaval in the past decade, repeating the benefits of nearly 90 years of of socialist experimentation.

If America is not cautious, we will be in a similar problem. The dollar is already having trouble on the world market. Democrats find it easy to get the spotlight by blaming just about any problem on companies that are turning a profit. Entitlements are already out of control - Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are all in serious danger and are growing at unsustainable rates, but all Democrats want to talk about is adding a huge new entitlement in the form of "universal health care." Just this past week some congressional Democrats expressed their desire to have the government take over oil refineries. The sad thing is, 37% of Democrats think the oil industry should be nationalized.

Socialists knew that this would happen in America.

The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism. But, under the name of "liberalism," they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program, until one day America will be a socialist nation, without knowing how it happened. -- Norman Thomas, U.S. Socialist Party presidential candidate 1940, 1944 and 1948

This situation should not be surprising to us. In a climate where few people understand the basic principle of supply and demand, because of the lousy state of government education, it is easy for an eloquent, inspiring speaker to come along and talk about "change" and pull on people's heartstrings, while promoting what is, more or less, a socialist agenda. Few people understand the principles behind this inspiration, and what the long-term effects on the government and our economy could very well be.

In many, many ways, it's 1976 all over again. My mom recently admitted to me that she voted for Jimmy Carter in 1976. My mother is no fool, but she was convinced that this was a really nice man who would be a great president. She was wrong. And it took the mistake of Jimmy Carter for us to get Ronald Reagan (who my mother voted for twice).

Does America have to make a mistake again in 2008? Or will it learn from the thousands of mistakes made by socialist governments and leaders with socialist leanings over the past century?

We'll know the answer to that in November.

Labels: politics

From NASA:

For about 300 years Jupiter's banded atmosphere has shown a remarkable feature to telescopic viewers, a large swirling storm system known as The Great Red Spot. In 2006, another red storm system appeared, actually seen to form as smaller whitish oval-shaped storms merged and then developed the curious reddish hue. Now, Jupiter has a third red spot, again produced from a smaller whitish storm. All three are seen in this image made from data recorded on May 9 and 10 with the Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2. The spots extend above the surrounding clouds and their red color may be due to deeper material dredged up by the storms and exposed to ultraviolet light, but the exact chemical process is still unknown. For scale, the Great Red Spot has almost twice the diameter of planet Earth, making both new spots less than one Earth-diameter across. The newest red spot is on the far left (west), along the same band of clouds as the Great Red Spot and is drifting toward it. If the motion continues, the new spot will encounter the much larger storm system in August. Jupiter's recent outbreak of red spots is likely related to large scale climate change as the gas giant planet is getting warmer near the equator.

First Earth, then Mars. Now Jupiter. There are other reports of warming on Saturn, Neptune, Pluto, and various moons of other planets. When will the madness end? Pretty soon "global warming" (oh, I'm sorry, "climate change") will affect all of the planets in our little corner of the universe.

Of course, you'd think some people would make the connection about what is common between all these planets warming up.

Government education at work.

Labels: politics

This is one of Bush's best speeches ever:

There are good and decent people who cannot fathom the darkness in these men and try to explain away their words. It's natural, but it is deadly wrong. As witnesses to evil in the past, we carry a solemn responsibility to take these words seriously. Jews and Americans have seen the consequences of disregarding the words of leaders who espouse hatred. And that is a mistake the world must not repeat in the 21st century.

Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: "Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided." We have an obligation to call this what it is--the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.

Some people suggest if the United States would just break ties with Israel, all our problems in the Middle East would go away. This is a tired argument that buys into the propaganda of the enemies of peace, and America utterly rejects it.

Why is it that in the best speeches Bush has ever given, he sounds almost exactly like Reagan? Actually, come to think of it, that's not really a surprise at all.

And when Obama complained that this was a political attack against him, he misunderstood who Bush was criticizing, I think. If you read Bush's words carefully, he's obviously criticizing Jimmy Carter. That Obama misunderstood it as a criticism of himself just further entrenches my belief that an Obama presidency would be as much of a disaster as a Carter presidency (and worse, that an Obama ex-presidency would be just as bad as a Carter ex-presidency). Which might be unavoidable, and it actually might be necessary for the country before we can turn to another Reagan-quality president. But still disconcerting nonetheless.

I think it is truly a proud position to believe that one can carry some type of "ingenious argument" that will "persuade them they have been wrong all along." Any would-be president who doesn't understand the principle here -- the problem with "the false comfort of appeasement," needs to take a few more history lessons.

Labels: politics

This is from a letter from Senator McCain to Senator Obama, dated February 6, 2006, on the issue of developing a bipartisan plan for lobbying reform:

Dear Senator Obama:

I would like to apologize to you for assuming that your private assurances to me regarding your desire to cooperate in our efforts to negotiate bipartisan lobbying reform legislation were sincere. When you approached me and insisted that despite your leadership's preference to use the issue to gain a political advantage in the 2006 elections, you were personally committed to achieving a result that would reflect credit on the entire Senate and offer the country a better example of political leadership, I concluded your professed concern for the institution and the public interest was genuine and admirable. Thank you for disabusing me of such notions with your letter to me dated February 2, 2006, which explained your decision to withdraw from our bipartisan discussions. I'm embarrassed to admit that after all these years in politics I failed to interpret your previous assurances as typical rhetorical gloss routinely used in politics to make self-interested partisan posturing appear more noble. Again, sorry for the confusion, but please be assured I won't make the same mistake again.

...the American people do not see [lobbying reform] as just a Republican problem or just a Democratic problem. They see it as yet another run-of-the-mill Washington scandal, and they expect it will generate just another round of partisan gamesmanship and posturing. Senator Lieberman and I, and many other members of this body, hope to exceed the public's low expectations. We view this as an opportunity to bring transparency and accountability to the Congress, and, most importantly, to show the public that both parties will work together to address our failings.

As I noted, I initially believed you shared that goal. But I understand how important the opportunity to lead your party's effort to exploit this issue must seem to a freshman Senator, and I hold no hard feelings over your earlier disingenuousness. Again, I have been around long enough to appreciate that in politics the public interest isn't always a priority for every one of us. Good luck to you, Senator.

Sincerely,

John McCain

Ouch.

My respect for John McCain just went up tremendously. This reads like something Reagan would have written. Read the full letter here.

Labels: politics

From The Democrats' Ex-Presidents at AmericanThinker.com:

Carter was indirectly responsible for putting the mullahs in power in Iran (kicking off the violent confrontation between Jihadism and the West in the process). He was directly responsible for handing Nicaragua to the Sandinistas (Carter refused to sign off on a plan to replace the dictator Somoza with a government of moderates) and Zimbabwe to Robert Mugabe. (Abel Muzorewa, the centrist opposition figure first elected president, was pushed aside with Carter's acquiescence and a new election arranged that Mugabe was guaranteed to win.)

Carter's weakness for goons has had horrendous historical consequences. Khomeini's takeover of Iran led to a major war in which millions died, the birth of two terror organizations dedicated to the annihilation of Israel, the deaths of thousands of others across the world -- including hundreds of Americans -- and the encouragement of the Jihadi terror movement. The Sandinista takeover resulted in chaos across Central America for over a decade and the slaughter of thousands of Nicaraguans, including a large number of Miskito Indians in a process indistinguishable from genocide. Zimbabwe, once one of the richest states in Africa, is today an economic basket case suffering chronic famine and one the lowest life expectancies in the world. The end game is being played out now, with a distinct possibility of a climax to rival in horror and blood those of Rwanda and Cambodia.

Carter learned nothing from this, nothing even from his own unprecedented humiliation by the mullahs he helped put into power, who waited until the exact hour of Ronald Reagan's inauguration to release the American hostages they had held for the better part of Carter's last two years in office. To this day, he continues embracing killers, repeating the process endlessly as if, eventually, it'll come out the way he pictures it in his heart of hearts, in some impossible lion-and-lamb reconciliation. But it always ends otherwise, in disgrace for himself and misery for third parties. Yet he cannot see it.

Labels: politics

Carter: Hamas is willing to accept Israel as its neighbor (12:16 ET - April 21, 2008):

Former President Carter said Monday that Hamas — the Islamic militant group that has called for the destruction of Israel — is prepared to accept the right of the Jewish state to "live as a neighbor next door in peace."

Meanwhile: Hamas leader says militant group won't recognize Israel (12:00 ET - April 21, 2008):

Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal says his militant Islamic group will not recognize Israel. But Mashaal says Hamas will accept a Palestinian state on Palestinian territories occupied by Israel in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

Not sure what Carter is reading, but it sure isn't the Associated Press.

People like to blame Israel for all of this. I hear people characterize Israel's actions against Hamas to be terrorism. But consider this AP article from this morning, Hamas says it's willing to accept Gaza Strip cease-fire:

Hamas has softened its position and is willing to accept a cease-fire in just the Gaza Strip, dropping a demand that the truce immediately include the West Bank, the group's senior representatives said Tuesday.

The move marked a significant concession by Hamas as Egyptian mediators try to halt fighting between Palestinian militants and the Israeli army in Gaza. For weeks, Hamas insisted on a mutual cease-fire in both the West Bank and Gaza Strip....

Israel regularly carries out airstrikes and military incursions against Palestinian rocket squads in Hamas-controlled Gaza, a strip of land bordering southern Israel. While Israel is conducting peace talks with the rival Palestinian government in the West Bank, the Israeli army continues to carry out arrest raids in that territory as well...

Israel has repeatedly said it isn't negotiating with Hamas, a group that has carried out numerous suicide bombings and remains committed to Israel's destruction. A government spokesman said Tuesday that Israel would keep up its military pressure on Hamas as long as the group threatens Israeli civilians.

"Israeli defense measures are necessary because of the ongoing terrorism launched by Hamas-controlled elements in Gaza. If there were no terror activities there would be no need for Israel's military activity," spokesman David Baker said...

Hamas has softened its position and is willing to accept a cease-fire in just the Gaza Strip, dropping a demand that the truce immediately include the West Bank, the group's senior representatives said Tuesday.

The move marked a significant concession by Hamas as Egyptian mediators try to halt fighting between Palestinian militants and the Israeli army in Gaza. For weeks, Hamas insisted on a mutual cease-fire in both the West Bank and Gaza Strip...

Mashaal said Hamas would accept a peace deal with Israel, provided it is approved in a referendum of all Palestinians, and also offered a 10-year truce if Israel withdraws from the West Bank and Jerusalem. He offered no recognition of Israel and turned down a request from Carter for a halt to rocket fire.

Amos Gilad, a senior Israel Defense Ministry official involved in the negotiations with Egypt, said Tuesday that Mashaal had offered nothing of significance and that his comments were meant only to give Hamas time to rearm.

There's a lot to that article that is very telling -- I tried to get the main points quoted. But notice several things.

First, that Hamas has no intention to recognize Israel. Perhaps Carter has had some positive influence on their shift this week to offer a cease-fire, but for Carter to go around and mischaracterize this in the press is counterproductive, at best. At worst, the statement is designed to make Carter look good, and to make Israel look bad when this deal falls apart. Which it will (see points #3 and #4). It seems that most of the leaders Carter tries to influence only abuse the opportunity and seek their own tactical advantage.

Second, the most important thing to determine here is this - who is the aggressor? Hamas squads fire rockets indiscriminately into Israel (just as Hezbollah did). Israel fights back, targeting the rocket squads. The easiest way to determine the aggressor is to figure out what would happen if one side stops fighting. If Israel stops fighting, they would be destroyed (pretty easy to determine since this is Hamas' stated goal). If Hamas stops fighting, Israel has stated that their military actions would cease.

Third, the Palestinians are still playing by the same playbook that Arafat played by. That is, to attack until Israel bumps up the pressure, then cry foul, negotiate a cease-fire, get the borders open again, and resupply for the next round. And remember, Carter was in the middle of all of the deals with Arafat as well. This is a classic example of how diplomacy can easily fail, especially when the aggressors are very motivated, and very patient. Ten years to re-arm isn't a bad deal for Hamas at all.

Fourth, the offer includes a demand that Israel simply won't accept - complete control of Jerusalem. I believe this is intentional - Hamas can say "we offered peace but Israel rejected it!" It's a political move that ensures that Israel will reject the offer and look like the bad guy. These guys are more ruthless than you might think. And they use the meeting with Carter (and Carter's press statements) to further push Israel's reputation in the mud. All while Hamas is the true aggressor.

Finally, many liberals will complain about the U.S. support of Israel and how this encourages their "terrorism." I think the opposite is true - that one of the few restraints on Israel is the support of the U.S. Without our support, I believe that Israel would take a much harder line against the Palestinians and these terrorist groups, and other mideast nations in general. If you're being told daily by foreign governments, and the terrorist groups they support, that you're going to be wiped off the map, your response is not going to be measured. Support from the U.S. means that they know that they have an ally if anything really bad were to happen, so they can take a more measured response to the "smaller" terrorism issues that they face daily. And they know that if they just wiped the Palestinians out of the West Bank and Gaza (which I'm pretty sure many Israelis would love to do) they'd lose U.S. support in a heartbeat. So in the interest of peace, we should be thankful that the U.S. has supported Israel.

The moral of the story? Don't trust terrorists. Like snakes, they're patient and cunning. And it's hard to trust politicians (including ex-presidents) who go around trying to put a positive spin on them, too.

Labels: politics

Happy tax day, once again. And remember: with the FairTax, today could be just like any other spring day.

By the way, over at the FairTax site they have a little petition going on that they're sending to Congress today. Head on over to sign it if you're tired of the overly complicated way the federal government taxes you.

Now that's change I can believe in...

Labels: politics

I just think that this is too darn funny:

You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not.

And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or antitrade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

Not that it's surprising to hear a liberal presidential candidate talk this way, honestly. It's just funny because Obama is supposed to be this post-racial, post-partisan, savior-of-the-free-world messiah of a presidential candidate. And like how he stepped in it recently over Jeremiah Wright and proved that he's a liar just like all the other politicians out there (just not as good of one), now he shows that he's just as disdainful of the regular folks your run-of-the-mill liberal.

Surprise, surprise, Obama. Not everyone wants sex education for five-year-olds. "Post-racial" candidates shouldn't even use terms like "typical white person" and talk about how they are inherently racist for being concerned when passing someone on the street. Not everyone believes you when you say you've been going to a church for 20 years and had no idea that your pastor was so anti-American. And most of the country doesn't agree with you that support for gun rights or devotion to a religion are products of bitterness over economic conditions. (Both specifically mentioned in the Bill of Rights, the last time I looked, so they must have been pretty bitter way back in 1791!)

For all the promise of the Obama campaign, it looks indeed to be all fluff. When you finally get past all the talk about coming together and believing in change, as I believe we are beginning to, what you really find is your run-of-the-mill liberal.

The only Democrat to be elected president in the last 30 years did so by pretending he was a conservative. I don't consider 2008 to be a sure-win for conservatives in any way, but one thing is for sure - liberals have a lot to learn.

Labels: politics

From Who's Right? by Neal Boortz:

Among the rights guaranteed (not “given” as Bill Clinton believes) to you in our Constitution are:

• Freedom of religion
• Freedom of speech
• The right to peaceably assemble.
• The right to petition the government
• The right to keep and bear arms
• The right to be free of unreasonable searches and seizures
• Protection from double jeopardy
• Due process
• A speedy and public trial by jury
• The right to legal counsel when charged with a crime

With one exception, the right to representation in court and a trial by jury, these rights require nothing of any other citizen but that they recognize your rights and not interfere with them.

Your “right to health care” would require some other person to give up a portion of their life or their property to either treat you or to provide you with drugs or medical implements. The Constitution does not provide for another individual to be indentured to you in this manner.

Therefore, you have no “right” to health care.

Even in the case of representation in court, and a trial by jury, these rights only have to be provided by society if society charges you with a crime. Quite a different thing from indenturing other individuals to meet your basic, everyday needs.

Why has our society dwindled into such an entitlement mentality? Why is it the government's job to provide? And why do some Christians support the idea of the government using the police power of the state to do the job they're neglecting?

Labels: politics

OK, just watch this and tell me that Obama isn't lying. Watch him stumble and try to explain his way out of this mess.



You mean you've been attending this guy's church for nearly 20 years and you had no idea this guy was so incendiary?

At least Clinton was a believable liar. Talk radio hosts (like Hannity, including on his TV show) have been covering this issue for months. Obama didn't publicly denounce this stuff until the major media outlets began covering it.

Give me a break.

The good news? Right now Zogby has McCain leading Clinton or Obama, when factoring Nader into the race. Should be a fun seven months.

Labels: politics

Boortz and Linder recently came out with another FairTax book, called FairTax: The Truth: Answering the Critics.

It's been billed as their effort to "answer the outspoken and misinformed critics" of the FairTax. The main disappointment I have with the book is that it really only does that for about two chapters.

The book is still good, though, including more history about how the FairTax developed. The book does a good job of dealing with criticisms, even if it's a little short on explanations here and there. It does not assume that you've read their first FairTax book, nor does it assume you're familiar with all of the aspects of the FairTax. Between giving some history on the FairTax, and explaining most of its basic concepts, it's not until about halfway through the book before they really take on the critics.

Perhaps the best stuff in the book is towards the end, though. There's a great section where they describe what it would be like to have lived under the FairTax all of your life - receiving your entire paycheck. No payroll taxes. Knowing exactly what government is costing. Not having to base business or investment decisions on their tax consequences. And then they describe a politician trying to come and sell the current system as an improvement. Taxing your income. Taxing business profits, so there's a hidden tax cost in everything you buy. Taxing investments. Even taxing death.

It's a very interesting way to look at it, and it really helps to make it clear how much simpler the FairTax is, and how it removes government from more day-to-day business and personal decisions.

If you've been suspicious of the FairTax, I highly encourage you to pick this book up. It's less technical than the first one, in some ways, and more visionary in tone. And many of your questions and concerns about the FairTax are probably dealt with in this book.

One criticism I felt like they should have dealt with better is the progressive nature of the FairTax. They explain the prebate well, and how that prevents anyone from paying taxes on the basic necessities of life (defined by the poverty level), and they explained how this makes the FairTax progressive. They also talked a good bit about net effective tax rates under the current tax system. But I think they could have talked more about net effective tax rates under the FairTax. I've left comments about this over at FairTaxBlog.Com, and I'll probably work on a post about this particular issue in the future. It's really important to consider net effective rates when people initially react to the idea of a 23% inclusive consumption tax.

(Actually, if you have serious questions or concerns about the FairTax, check out FairTaxBlog.Com. There are a lot of supporters and critics that can support their points very well there.)

I think this quote does a good job of describing the overall goals of tax reform, and what the FairTax will enable.

Under the FairTax Vision for Tomorrow, every time an American buys a loaf of bread or a new car, he'll know, to the penny, how much of that money is going to the federal government.

Our vision for tomorrow sees a government that's a partner with the business community and the people, not an adversary; a government with a tax system that encourages economic development and the creation of the new business, rather than a government and a tax system that chases valued businesses to foreign shores.

Our vision for tomorrow is one where governance returns to the local level; were communities are allowed to make the important decisions regarding their government and their schools. No longer will politicians be able to hide regulations and programs that control every aspect of our lives in 9 million words of confusing and draconian codes and regulation. The FairTax will demand political honesty...

Our vision for tomorrow sees an America where jobs are insourced, not outsourced... sees America becoming the safest and most secure tax haven for trillions of dollars currently languishing offshore... sees an America that will enjoy a virtual $400-billion-per-year tax cut... an exporting powerhouse, selling goods and services into a global economy unburdened by the 22 percent tax component now burdening our price system...

People see all of this and say, "how can a different tax system do that?" One point that I haven't seen made clearly enough, is that the FairTax wouldn't be responsible for any of this. The truth is that these "benefits" would not be due to enacting the FairTax, they would be due to completely getting rid of all of the oppression of the current tax structure on our economic decisions, while still funding our government. It is not the FairTax that would produce such wonderful results - it would be the American people, unencumbered by an oppressive tax system. How can you disagree with that?

Labels: books, politics, reviews

From Temperature Monitors Report Widescale Global Cooling:

All four major global temperature tracking outlets (Hadley, NASA's GISS, UAH, RSS) have released updated data. All show that over the past year, global temperatures have dropped precipitously... The total amount of cooling ranges from 0.65C up to 0.75C.

So first we heard that global warming had nothing to do with carbon emissions. Now this. Can someone please explain to me why it's wrong to be skeptical of "science" that's pushed onto the public by politicians?

And can someone explain to me how long the mainstream media can possibly avoid covering this accurately?



I just can't wait for Al Gore to do a sequel and include all of the updated figures into another movie. Then again, maybe I shouldn't hold my breath.

Labels: politics

From John Stossel in Guns Save Lives:

How many shootings at schools or malls will it take before we understand that people who intend to kill are not deterred by gun laws? Last I checked, murder is against the law everywhere. No one intent on murder will be stopped by the prospect of committing a lesser crime like illegal possession of a firearm. The intellectuals and politicians who make pious declarations about controlling guns should explain how their gunless utopia is to be realized.

While they search for -- excuse me -- their magic bullet, innocent people are dying defenseless.

That's because laws that make it difficult or impossible to carry a concealed handgun do deter one group of people: law-abiding citizens who might have used a gun to stop crime. Gun laws are laws against self-defense.

Criminals have the initiative. They choose the time, place and manner of their crimes, and they tend to make choices that maximize their own, not their victims', success. So criminals don't attack people they know are armed, and anyone thinking of committing mass murder is likely to be attracted to a gun-free zone, such as schools and malls.

Why do liberals insist on creating gun-free zones? Do they not see that this creates an obvious place for criminals to go on mass murder sprees?

It's actually quite typical of the liberal mindset - focus on ideas that sound good. And implement them without any thought to the ramifications. "Ban all the guns! They're evil!" You know, if you could really ensure that all of the guns in the universe were destroyed, and that nobody could ever create another one, then sure, it'd be a good idea. But liberals neglect the fact that criminals will always have the ability to secure lethal weapons, including guns. And the most efficient way to stop a crazy gunman is with a law-abiding citizen carrying a gun.

Labels: politics

I do a lot of commenting around the web, but really mostly on Josh Brown's blog. Something about the discussions there just sucks me right in.

So I decided to start quoting myself every now and then. Kind of vain, I know. But every now and then I just say something that I think, "I should write a blog post about this." Due to my laziness, I'll just give you the back-of-the-book quotes.

If people were half as worried about babies getting their brains sucked out of their head while being halfway through the birth canal, I’d take liberals a little more seriously in their concerns about waterboarding. (from Huckabee Is An Idiot)

The whole process of picking a president was never supposed to be this way. Presidents, initially, were chosen by electors who were chosen by state legislatures. So none of this beauty contest type of thing. Presidents (and senators, for that matter) were chosen by the states. I would really love to see someone push for a more simple system like that again. It would give the national news media a LOT less to talk about. (from Oh Politic Where Art Thou?)

I think the ideas of transforming culture, and us redeeming the world, are very appealing. But therein lies their danger. They make us important. Following what Christ personally did, and what He commanded His followers to do, will not really help us transform the world. It’s too radical. Too crazy. Too dismissive of worldly systems. When we become followers in God’s kingdom, we’re aliens here. I don’t know, I just see so much in scripture that goes against the idea of us redeeming the world, whereas I think you have to try really hard to read those ideas into scripture.

Look, we have a hard enough time following Christ’s explicit commands. Trying to obediently serve my place in the kingdom of God is simple, yet really, really hard to do. I don’t think Christ burdened the entire church with the transformation of the world into God’s original vision of it - something that is described in scripture, but something that is described as God doing, not the church. (from Oh Politic Where Art Thou?)

Compassion means “to suffer with.” If our efforts are based on funneling money from the “evil rich” to the poor with no interaction between them except for a cold, soul-less government, it’s very little service to anyone. I think it’s perhaps the most heartless form of ministry imaginable. (from The Politics of Heaven)

When Jesus is telling us to sell our possessions and give to the poor, I don’t think he was suggesting that we encourage the government to do so by force. To me, that sounds like a joke - if I could only figure out how to turn it into a punchline. (from The Politics of Heaven)

Good comments from the other side on each of those posts as well, lots of stuff to think about.

Labels: church, politics

Check out this article by David Evans: Are Carbon Emissions the Cause of Global Warming? This is very revealing, but I can guarantee that you won't see much of this research in the media.

Ice Core Data Reverses — 2003

It was the early, low resolution ice core data first gathered in 1985 that convinced the world that CO₂ was the culprit: CO₂ levels and temperature rose and fell in lockstep over the last half a million years, to the resolution of the old ice core data (results from 1985–2000, data points over a thousand years apart). It was assumed (bad assumption #1) that CO₂ levels controlled the world's temperature.

After further research, new high-resolution ice core results (data points only a few hundred years apart) in 2000–2003 allowed us to distinguish which came first, the temperature rises or the CO₂ rises. We found that temperature changes preceded CO₂ changes by an average of 800 years. So temperature caused the CO₂ levels, and not the other way around as previously assumed. The world should have started backpedaling away from blaming carbon emissions in 2003.

Greenhouse Signature Missing — 2007

Second crucial point, August 2007: There are several possible causes of global warming, and they each warm the atmosphere at different latitudes and altitudes — that is, each cause will produce a distinct pattern of hot spots in the atmosphere, or "signature." The greenhouse signature is very distinct from the others: warming due to greenhouse would cause most warming in the tropics at about 10 km up in the atmosphere:

Theoretical Greenhouse Signature (UN climate models)

As of August 2007, we've measured where the warming is occurring in a fair bit of detail, using satellites and balloons. The observed signature is nothing like the greenhouse signature. The distinct greenhouse signature is entirely missing:

Observed Warming (Hadley Centre radiosonde observations 2006, confirmed by more measurements published in 2007)

There is no hotspot in the tropics at 10 km up, so now we know that greenhouse warming is not the (main) cause of global warming — so we know that carbon emissions are not the (main) cause of global warming.

Evans then goes on to describe why the original models were wrong - it was assumed that higher temperatures would mean more rainfall, and more high cloud cover that would intensify the warming effect. Instead, observations reveal that this cloud cover has actually lessened.

He also presents data that shows that the warming trend has waned since 2001. I have heard this from other sources as well, including climatologists who have predicted a natural cooling period will occur within the next 10 years.

To those who believe that the currently predominant global warming hysteria is accurate: please consider that there is more scientific evidence coming out that is contradicting the old evidence that the global warming hysteria is based on. The scientific landscape surrounding this is changing, despite Gore's claims that it is "settled."

Labels: politics

I can't seem to have time to do a lot of blog writing, but it ends up I'm still contributing to the web at large. James Taranto (WSJ's Best of the Web, one of my daily reads) has been criticizing the FairTax lately, as well as Mike Huckabee (who is a strong, vocal supporter of the FairTax). On Tuesday he finally gave a list of reasons why he's critical of the FairTax, and over at the FairTax blog I posted a comment about it that they ended up reposting as a post all in itself. I'm flattered. You can read my response and well as take a peek at the original post that quotes Taranto's criticism.

Just about any criticism of the FairTax can be met with a reasoned, logical response. Maybe that's one of the reasons I like it. All Taranto needs is some time with some FairTax supporters who can answer his criticisms.

Labels: politics

If there's a running theme to these quotes, it's that modern-day liberals are basically socialists who don't believe in personal freedom, unless it involves not removing someone who has committed perjury from the office of the presidency.

John Stossel: Control Your Own Health Care

If people paid their own bills, they would likely buy high-deductible insurance (roughly $1,000 for individuals, $2,100 for families) because on average, the premium is $1,300 cheaper. But people are so conditioned to expect others to pay their medical bills that they hate high deductibles: They feel ripped off if they must pay a thousand dollars before the insurance company starts paying...

Whole Foods puts around $1,500 a year into an account for each employee. It's not charity but part of the employee's compensation. It's money Whole Foods would have otherwise spent on more-expensive insurance. Here's the good part for employees: If they don't spend the money on medical care this year, they keep it, and the company adds more next year...

Most important, since employees control the money, their behavior changed. Whole Foods workers started asking "how much things cost," Mackey said. "They may not want to go to the emergency room if they wake up with a hangnail in the middle of the night. They may schedule an appointment now."

There was no need to ask about costs before because the insurance company seemed to pick up the tab. But that drove up costs for everyone. Now, saving money makes sense to employees because the money belongs to them.

HSA critics ask whether individual accounts will encourage people to save money at the expense of their health.

Mackey has the right response. "The premise in those kinds of questions is that people are stupid. They're not smart enough to make these decisions for themselves. It's sort of an elitist attitude. The individual is the best judge of what's right for the individual."

Well, of course, liberals (and socialists) always believe those in power know better than you do, as long as they're the ones in power. They have no concept of true freedom. They have no concept of the free market. They believe that if a situation is to improve, the government must intervene. The idea of individuals taking control of their healthcare frightens them.

John Stossel rules, by the way. John Stossel for president!

C.S. Lewis on Government Education:
OK, it's not specifically about government education, but our current government education exactly matches what C.S. Lewis was complaining about. Boortz quoted this earlier this week, and it's worth re-quoting.

What I want to fix your attention on is the vast overall movement towards the discrediting, and finally the elimination, of every kind of human excellence -- moral, cultural, social or intellectual. And is it not pretty to notice how 'democracy' (in the incantatory sense) is now doing for us the work that was once done by the most ancient dictatorships, and by the same methods? The basic proposal of the new education is to be that dunces and idlers must not be made to feel inferior to intelligent and industrious pupils. That would be 'undemocratic.' Children who are fit to proceed may be artificially kept back, because the others would get a trauma by being left behind. The bright pupil thus remains democratically fettered to his own age group throughout his school career, and a boy who would be capable of tackling Aeschylus or Dante sits listening to his coeval's [of the same age] attempts to spell out A CAT SAT ON A MAT. We may reasonably hope for the virtual abolition of education when 'I'm as good as you' has fully had its way. All incentives to learn and all penalties for not learning will vanish. The few who might want to learn will be prevented; who are they to overtop their fellows? And anyway, the teachers -- or should I say nurses? -- will be far too busy reassuring the dunces and patting them on the back to waste any time on real teaching. We shall no longer have to plan and toil to spread imperturbable conceit and incurable ignorance among men.

It is quite amazing how accurate his analysis was.

Coulter on Why She Doesn't Support Fred Thompson:

In 1999, Sen. Fred Thompson joined legal giants like Sens. Jim Jeffords, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins to vote against removing Bill Clinton from office for perjury.

Thompson, whom President Nixon once called "dumb as hell," claimed to have carefully studied the Constitution and determined that perjury by the president of the United States did not constitute "high crimes and misdemeanors." He must have been looking at one of those living, breathing Constitutions we've heard so much about.

When the framers chose the phrase "high crimes and misdemeanors" for the Constitution, they were using a term taken from British parliamentary impeachments. There's a 600-year history of what this phrase means -- and Clinton met it about a dozen times before he gave a single statement under oath or suborned a single witness's testimony...

But, as The New York Times recently said, Thompson "agonized over what he saw as two 'bad choices...'"

So Thompson could either: (1) Follow the Constitution and make his constituents happy or, (2) disregard the Constitution and make his Hollywood friends happy...

This isn't the time to be toying with any Republican who had a Clinton in his sights and ended up shooting himself in the foot.

Speaking of Ann Coulter, I just got her new book. There are a few choice quotes from that book that I'll be sharing once I'm done with it.

Boortz on Hillary:

Watch this woman. All she seems to be doing lately is coming up with ideas for government entitlement programs ... and government entitlement programs are nothing more than wealth redistribution programs. Check your scorecard we have:

* Nationalized Health Care.
* The Baby Bonus
* American Retirement Accounts
* Hillary's idea of government involvement in our children's education even before kindergarten!

In the meantime ... have you heard one single idea from Hillary that would increase your personal freedom? Have you heard one single idea that would decrease the intrusiveness or the power of the Imperial Federal Government? How about one idea that would promote competition in the free market?

You're right ... you haven't.

You haven't because Hillary Clinton worships the God of Government. This is a woman who feels that there are only a select few in this country who are capable of ordering and living their own lives without guidance from those smarter and more capable than they. This is a woman who believes to the depth of her soul that you can't exist without embrace of government guiding your every step and picking you up every time you stumble.

The further we get into the presidential race, the more I'm sure that Hillary will get the nomination. Why, then, is she making this so easy for the Republicans? She keeps offering new entitlement programs, hoping to buy more votes. If the Democrats' type of pandering is successful, our form of government cannot withstand much longer. Most of the voting public is intelligent enough to see through her desparate attempts to buy votes. Let's just hope that it stays that way.

It's interesting that as socialism is receding throughout the world (with the notable exception of Cindy Sheehan's best friend, Hugo Chavez), Democrats are still trying to get Americans to participate in a bold socialist experiment. They are patient, though, and are more than willing to expand the socialist ideal one step at a time.

Labels: politics

There's been so much going on, and I've read a lot of stuff I've wanted to link to and make some comments about. I figured I'll just rattle a bunch off and get on with it...

Sun still main force in climate change:

Over the past 20 years, however, the Danes argue, the solar cycle remains fully apparent in variations both of tropospheric air temperature and of ocean sub-surface water temperature.

"When the response of the climate system to the solar cycle is apparent in the troposphere and ocean, but not in the global surface temperature, one can only wonder about the quality of the surface temperature record," Svensmark and Friis-Christensen say.

The surface air temperature, they argue, is "a poor guide to sun-driven physical processes that are still plainly persistent in the climate system."

The researchers explained it's "customary to attribute to greenhouse gases any increase in global temperatures not due to solar changes."

"While that is reasonable," they say, "one cannot distinguish between the effects of anthropogenic gases such as carbon dioxide and of natural greenhouse gases."

Increased evaporation, for example, means "infrared radiation from water vapor, by far the most important greenhouse gas, will tend to provide positive feedback for any global warming, whether driven by anthropogenic or solar forcing."

Come on, people. The sun provides all the energy for our planet. Without it, our temperature would drop rather drastically. Surely anyone would have to admit that variance in solar output would result in changes in temperatures on earth (among other planets, as studies are also showing). Why do proponets of the man-caused global warming theory simply want to dismiss this?

And when they say that they "wonder about the quality of the surface temperature record," you can take a look at a site like this surfacestations.org to see examples of stations recording temperatures that are located in areas that are nowhere near giving an accurate temperature reading. Located by air conditioners, in parking lots, beside a lightbulb, all sorts of stuff. And these are the readings that are contributing to the data that makes everyone believe that "global warming" exists.

Questioning 20th Century Warmth:

Gerd Bürger of Berlin’s Institut für Meteorologie decided to revisit the work of Osborn and Briffa, and his results raise serious questions about the claim that the 20th century has been unusually warm. Bürger argues that Osborn and Briffa did not apply the appropriate statistical tests that link the proxy records to observational data, and as such, Osborn and Briffa did not properly quantify the statistical uncertainties in their analyses. Bürger repeated all analyses with the appropriate adjustments and concluded “As a result, the ‘highly significant’ occurrences of positive anomalies during the 20th century disappear.” Further, he reports that “The 95th percentile is exceeded mostly in the early 20th century, but also about the year 1000.”

In other words, this whole idea of the 20th century being quite an anomoly is quite possibly total bunk. Why? Because proponets of the man-caused global warming theory fail to use the right statistical methods when doing their research, and the media laps up the results regardless of the methods, since the result promotes hysteria.

CNN Meteorologist: ‘Definitely Some Inaccuracies’ in Gore Film:

CNN Meteorologist Rob Marciano clapped his hands and exclaimed, "Finally," in response to a report that a British judge might ban the movie "An Inconvenient Truth" from UK schools because, according to "American Morning," "it is politically biased and contains scientific inaccuracies..." Marciano also sarcastically said, "the Oscars, they give out awards for fictional films as well."

It must be getting a little cool down in the eternal dungeon, if someone at CNN is being critical of Al Gore. And on that note...

Boortz Responds to Al Gore's Peace Prize:

With few exceptions, the Nobel Peace Prize has always been awarded to someone with both feet firmly planted in the world of liberalism. I know a lot of leftists and anti-capitalists around this country and the world will be celebrating, but when you consider that this prize was once awarded to that murderous Muslim Yassir Arafat, it's hard to be impressed.

The peace prize has been a joke for years. Giving it to Yassir Arafat simply made it official. After that, giving it to Al Gore just gives you a good chuckle.

Labels: politics

The website I'm about to tell you about is extremely important. I've talked about abortion before, and it's even the topic of one of my critical posts. But this time it's a little different, and much more extreme.

The website is Abort73.com, and they are basically reaching out, primarily to teens, to educate about the violence and horror of abortion.

I can't sum up their site in a sentence or two, other than just to say you should view it. If you're against abortion, viewing their videos and reading their literature will only strengthen your courage to take a stronger stand against abortion. If you're "pro-choice," you simply have to watch their videos. If you're still "pro-choice" after viewing them, then you have no heart and are morally bankrupt. Sorry to be blunt, but it's the truth.

Abortion is simply the extension of America's propensity for violence. Not violence around the world, but violence against our own members. Those who have the least legal status get the most brutal treatment. And it continues today, all under the banner of "choice."

Take some time at Abort73. Most of all, if you look at one thing, view the video at The Case Against Abortion. WARNING: it is extremely graphic. But if you've never seen anything like it before, then all of your opinions about abortion are based on ignorance. It's take to take responsibility and understand what it is that America is willingly turning a blind eye to.

Labels: church, politics

I've spent some time developing a defense of the FairTax against common criticisms, in How FairTax Critics are Always Wrong. Head on over to the Conservative Rant to check it out.

Labels: politics

There's a great article in Christianity Today this month by Mark Galli titled On Not Transforming the World. The subtitle is "we have better and harder things to do than that."

We are certainly responsible for going to the ends of the earth and making disciples from people of every nation. There is plenty in Scripture about doing justice and loving mercy and feeding the hungry and caring for the widow and orphan. But I find little or nothing about us having the task of transforming the culture.

Britt has talked about how Changing the World is something that isn't found in scripture. At least not something that is assigned to us.

Galli's article touches on how service is our number one task, in terms of transforming the world:

Servants aren't about world-changing initiatives as much as about washing the dirty feet of the travelers sitting at their kitchen table. Jesus never tells us to do anything because it will transform the culture. Surprisingly, he didn't seem interested in transforming the Roman Empire, one of the most oppressive and unjust cultures in history. He seemed rather to think that society would always have economic disparity, and that not only should changing Rome not be a priority, but also we should not even object to underwriting it with our taxes...

I remain puzzled as to why we're so bored with the very things Jesus asks us to do, like picking that foreigner up out of the ditch, giving away our goods to the poor, going to court with a young man who's being railroaded by the system, taking an orphan into our home, going the extra mile with the oppressive and manipulative, forgiving the offender, baptizing, and witnessing. I find these things really, really hard to do. I fail all the time. If I can't even do these things well, why would I believe that I could transform my culture, let alone change the world?

Despite my political rants and opinions, I've been learning more and more that it is not our job to make political systems reflect the church. Does that mean we should be apathetic towards politics? I don't think so. But it makes it all the more difficult to discern when we are pushing our own religious agenda into politics.

People tend to think that Christ's mission was about transformation, and that in today's culture, we should redeem the culture (by keeping it sanitary), transform social politics (by enforcing charity), or other high ideals. But by doing so, we are trying to place a significance onto ourselves that simply isn't rooted in scripture. Galli says "we all face the common temptation of Adam and Eve. We want to feel significant."

Scripture is clear that Christ's mission was about service, and that this is our mission also. In today's culture, I think the targets of that service are clear. While it is hard, it is not a complicated thing to fulfill what the scriptures have required of us. And it is about doing it ourselves, not about creating a governmental structure to force everyone else to do it our way.

Labels: church, politics

Church - I led worship and teaching at house church Sunday night, which was fun. I did a few songs I had never led before, including "Salvation is Here." You wouldn't think it would work in a more intimate setting, but actually it was great.

Baby Watch - We're nearly there on a name. I think we're down to two middle names. Amy had her final baby shower on Saturday, so now we're getting the last few things we know we'll need. Including furniture. We have our crib (actually, I'll be getting it back from my brother soon), but we need a dresser, and we're also thinking about getting a daybed so the baby's room can still double as a guest room.

Home Improvements - That shower door did get installed, but it was two inches lower than what we ordered, so the new one will be installed on Wednesday. Figures. This project has taken longer to wrap up than we anticipated!

Conservative Rant - I forgot to mention my post last week, called Obama Wants Sex Education for Five-Year-Olds. Another great example why I won't trust the government to educate my children.

Labels: life, politics

I decided to start a new series of posts, just wrapping up every week the major things that have been going on in the past week. This is partly to just share with folks what's up with the Mooneys, but also because I often have smaller thoughts to share that just don't warrant an entire post.

Fourth of July - we hosted a big family event for the 4th. Took the kids out for fireworks afterward. They loved it! I also got to try to explain to McKenna what "Independence Day" means.

Worship - I got to play bass today for the first time in a LONG time. My bass is showing some neglect - it desperately needs new strings. I was asked to fill in today on bass at a church where I've been leading worship occasionally for the last couple of months. I had a blast!

Movies - we took the kids to see Ratatouille yesterday. They loved it, though it didn't keep their attention as much as some of the other Pixar movies do. It was Jeremiah's first time seeing a new big screen movie. Amy tried taking him to see a free movie last summer and it was an awful experience. But he did pretty well yesterday, especially considering the movie was almost two hours. And for those who are budget conscious, the AMC Theaters around here have all shows at $5 before noon on weekends.

I also saw Transformers last Monday. I was a big Transformers fan as a kid, and this movie did not disappoint. But I think even folks who weren't Transformers fans as kids would enjoy it. Just don't take your little kids to go see it - the violence wasn't bad, but there were a few jokes that were not appropriate.

And while this isn't news about the past week, I'm currently taking part in Conservative Rant, a political blog started by my good friend Andy. My goal is to contribute to that site once a week, but it'll probably only be twice a month for the next couple of months. My first post there was Why I’m Conservative (or, Why I’m Not Liberal) and my most recent post is How Pacifism Leads to War. I plan on using that site for most of my political-oriented posts from now on, but I'll mention them here from time to time.

Labels: church, life, movies, politics

You know the line. Doomed to repeat it and all of that. Personally, I'm not interested in the idea of the United States getting involved in another war. Yet the parallels between Iran today and Germany before World War II are nothing but stunning. And the parallels between the "diplomacy first" crowd today and the appeasement crowd in the 1930's are equally stunning. How can you not look at the similarities and see tragedy looming on the horizon?

From The Case for Bombing Iran:

By 1938, Germany under Adolf Hitler had for some years been rearming in defiance of its obligations under the Versailles treaty and other international agreements. Yet even though Hitler in :"Mein Kampf" had explicitly spelled out the goals he was now preparing to pursue, scarcely anyone took him seriously. To the imminent victims of the war he was soon to start, Hitler's book and his inflammatory speeches were nothing more than braggadocio or, to use the more colorful word Hannah Arendt once applied to Adolf Eichmann, rodomontade: the kind of red meat any politician might throw to his constituents at home. Hitler might sound at times like a madman, but in reality he was a shrewd operator with whom one could--in the notorious term coined by the London Times--"do business." The business that was done under this assumption was the Munich Agreement of 1938, which the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain declared had brought "peace in our time."

It was thanks to Munich that "appeasement" became one of the dirtiest words in the whole of our political vocabulary. Yet appeasement had always been an important and entirely respectable tool of diplomacy, signifying the avoidance of war through the alleviation of the other side's grievances. If Hitler had been what his eventual victims imagined he was--that is, a conventional statesman pursuing limited aims and using the threat of war only as a way of strengthening his bargaining position--it would indeed have been possible to appease him and thereby to head off the outbreak of another war.

But Hitler was not a conventional statesman and, although for tactical reasons he would sometimes pretend otherwise, he did not have limited aims. He was a revolutionary seeking to overturn the going international system and to replace it with a new order dominated by Germany, which also meant the political culture of Nazism. As such, he offered only two choices: resistance or submission. Finding this reality unbearable, the world persuaded itself that there was a way out, a third alternative, in negotiations. But given Hitler's objectives, and his barely concealed lust for war, negotiating with him could not conceivably have led to peace. It could have had only one outcome, which was to buy him more time to start a war under more favorable conditions. As most historians now agree, if he had been taken at his own word about his true intentions, he could have been stopped earlier and defeated at an infinitely lower cost.

Which brings us back to Ahmadinejad. Like Hitler, he is a revolutionary whose objective is to overturn the going international system and to replace it in the fullness of time with a new order dominated by Iran and ruled by the religio-political culture of Islamofascism. Like Hitler, too, he is entirely open about his intentions, although--again like Hitler--he sometimes pretends that he wants nothing more than his country's just due. In the case of Hitler in 1938, this pretense took the form of claiming that no further demands would be made if sovereignty over the Sudetenland were transferred from Czechoslovakia to Germany. In the case of Ahmadinejad, the pretense takes the form of claiming that Iran is building nuclear facilities only for peaceful purposes and not for the production of bombs.

If one thing is true about George Bush, it is that he has recognized how the war on terrorism has changed everything, and how countries like Iran represent a serious threat. Yet he cannot act alone. The current political climate regarding Iraq has weakened his ability to act. Some say that's appropriate, and perhaps it is. Yet history will judge us not based on the validity of a single piece of information - whether the US intelligence was right about Iraq's capabilities - but history will judge us based on our ability to forsee grave threats and our willingness to preempt them.

History does not remember Neville Chamberlain in a positive light. Because if those who disagreed with him had been able to direct things, Hitler's plans of conquest, destruction, and genocide would have been averted. How will history remember us today? Even if George W. Bush's approval rating is the lowest ever, that has nothing to do with how history will remember him.

Indeed, (President Bush) has gone so far as to say that if we permit Iran to build a nuclear arsenal, people 50 years from now will look back and wonder how we of this generation could have allowed such a thing to happen, and they will rightly judge us as harshly as we today judge the British and the French for what they did and what they failed to do at Munich in 1938.

Labels: politics

Yesterday's shootings at Virginia Tech were a horrible tragedy. One thought remained in my mind the entire time I learned more about it.

What if students, faculty, or administrators at Virginia Tech had been allowed to carry firearms using a concealed weapon permit?

Predictably, the gun control lobby was out in full force yesterday, calling for stricter gun control laws. But this is a great case in point of how gun control makes people vulnerable.

Just a few months ago, the Virginia General Assembly considered a bill that would have allowed students, faculty, and administrators who have a concealed weapon permit to carry weapons on state university campuses. It died in subcommittee. The state of Virginia ensured that no one on that campus would have the ability to defend themselves with lethal force when confronted with yesterday's assault.

Cho Seung Hui, the 23-year-old senior who killed 32 people yesterday, didn't bother to follow the law. But the fact is, all of his victims did. If one of his victims, or any of the other people within hearing range of the gunshots, had been in possession of a gun the massacre could have ended much sooner. It only takes one criminal with a gun to cause a massacre. It only takes one hero with a gun to end it.

When the bill that would have allowed concealed weapons on campus was defeated, the Roanoke Times reported that Larry Hincker, spokesman for Virginia Tech, announced that "I'm sure the university community is appreciative of the General Assembly's actions because this will help parents, students, faculty and visitors feel safe on our campus." No word yet from Larry Hincker that he wants to retract that statement.

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Boortz' Comments Today: He rightly takes to task the gun control lobby, the "blame and fire" crowd, and the Virginia legislature. He also points out that "Do you know, for instance, that at least three shootings in high schools were stopped by civilians with guns? Civilians, not law enforcement."

Gun Bans Are The Problem, Not The Solution: "When will we learn that being defenseless is a bad defense? All the school shootings that have ended abruptly in the last ten years were stopped because a law-abiding citizen -- a potential victim -- had a gun."

A Disarmed Campus: "Perhaps some school administrators still think that declaring a 'gun-free zone' makes a campus safer; that was what legislators thought when they started passing gun bans at high schools in response to the late-'80s youth-crime spike. But it's likely that at the college level, fear of litigation plays a large role in shaping such policies."

Labels: politics

An excellent column today on OpinionJournal.com, Climate of Opinion: Why we believe in global warming.

In any case, evidence of warming is not evidence of manmade warming.

It would surprise the public, and even the Supreme Court, to know how utterly the science of global warming offers no evidence whatsoever on the central proposition. What fills Mr. Gore's film, books, speeches and congressional testimony are scientific observations and quasi-scientific observations, all right. They concern polar bears, mosquitoes, hurricanes, ice packs and everything but whether humans cause global warming.

Some of this evidence may suggest, weakly or strongly, the existence of warming trends in particular parts of the world (such local trends, both cooling and warming, have been observed in many places and many times). More dubiously, some may indicate a generalized warming. But none offers any evidence that carbon dioxide is causing warming. Mr. Gore's method is the equivalent of trying to prove that Jack killed Jane by going on and on about how awful it was that Jane was killed.

Polemicists in favor of human-caused global warming liken skeptics to tobacco lobbyists who denied the link between smoking and lung cancer. In fact, it makes a useful analogy.

Suppose the world consisted of exactly one smoker who could be observed only from a distance to test the theory that smoking causes lung cancer. If he died of cancer, it wouldn't prove smoking causes cancer. If he failed to die of cancer, it wouldn't prove smoking doesn't cause cancer.

The link between smoking and cancer is made by observing millions of smokers and nonsmokers. Indeed, what led scientists to seek systematic evidence of a link in the first place was anecdotal evidence that smokers, of whom there have been millions, appeared to die in unusual numbers from lung cancer.

Nothing remotely similar has been involved in developing the hypothesis that carbon dioxide creates warming. The relevant observations are a mess: Measured global temperature has both risen and fallen for considerable periods during the past century, even as CO2 has risen steadily. The geologic record suggests the world was much cooler in the past despite CO2 concentrations higher than today's. Unlike smoking and cancer, there's no anecdotal observation for the hypothesis that CO2 causes planetary warming. It may or may not be true, but to believe it is a "scientific truth" is to make a leap of faith, not science.

The consensus that human activities are causing global warming is purely a social invention--there's no way of showing it to be so, and no self-evident reason for preferring to believe it's so. The "consensus" is, in truth, a product of itself.

I'm becoming more and more encouraged by the amount of rational, reasoned discussion that is going on about global warming, despite the number of alarmists there are out there. It is very true, as the column says, that "many people believe in manmade global warming because many people believe in manmade global warming." It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. The "consensus" is that "everybody" knows it is true. That's a complete fallacy. The fact that most people can't spot it as such is likely the byproduct of another favorite topic of mine, the failure of government-led education.

Labels: politics

From National Geographic News:

Mars, too, appears to be enjoying more mild and balmy temperatures.

In 2005 data from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor and Odyssey missions revealed that the carbon dioxide "ice caps" near Mars's south pole had been diminishing for three summers in a row.

Habibullo Abdussamatov, head of the St. Petersburg's Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory in Russia, says the Mars data is evidence that the current global warming on Earth is being caused by changes in the sun.

"The long-term increase in solar irradiance is heating both Earth and Mars," he said.

Abdussamatov believes that changes in the sun's heat output can account for almost all the climate changes we see on both planets.

Mars and Earth, for instance, have experienced periodic ice ages throughout their histories.

"Man-made greenhouse warming has made a small contribution to the warming seen on Earth in recent years, but it cannot compete with the increase in solar irradiance," Abdussamatov said.

By studying fluctuations in the warmth of the sun, Abdussamatov believes he can see a pattern that fits with the ups and downs in climate we see on Earth and Mars.

CO₂ constitutes a small percentage of atmospheric air - less than half of a percent. Which do you think is more probable - that a minor increase of a minor atmospheric gas would cause global warming, or that increased solar activity would cause global warming? Given that climate change is a reality, and has been a reality for all of earth's history, which do you think is more likely to have been a factor in climate change in the past, and is more likely to be a factor in climate change right now?

And if it's probable that solar activity is the primary cause of global warming, why would we not want to comprehensively study that before making sweeping government-mandated changes that would adversely affect billions of people?

Labels: politics