Biology 101

Maybe the reason many Americans support embryonic stem cell research is because they have no more idea what an embryo is than does former president Bill Clinton. What the ex-president doesn't seem to grasp, and for all I know the current president doesn't understand either (though it probably wouldn't make any difference in his decision to rescind George Bush's ban on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research even if he did), is that an embryo wouldn't be an embryo had it not already been fertilized:

How does it happen that people this benighted are allowed to make critical life and death decisions for millions? How did it happen that an ostensible "journalist," a medical man who had been considered for the post of Surgeon General in Obama's cabinet, didn't politely correct President Clinton after about the twentieth time he repeated the gaffe?

As an aside, can you imagine the media hilarity that would have ensued had George Bush said something this ill-informed?

RLC

The Scientific Status of Intelligent Design

Thomas B. Fowler has written an outstanding and disinterested analysis of Intelligent Design theory for Catholic Culture. It is, for the most part, very accessible to those with a modicum of philosophical and scientific background knowledge and I recommend it to anyone who wishes to gain a better understanding of the scientific status of ID and an appreciation its strengths and weaknesses.

Fowler also does a fine job of summarizing ID's chief competitors including Creationism, Neo-Darwinism, and Meta-Darwinism.

His conclusion gives us a good idea of the terrain he covers in the main body of the discussion:

Intelligent Design has been proposed as a new scientific hypothesis about the possibility of certain types of transitions occurring naturally. The thrust of its proposal is that biological (and other) entities may be partitioned into groups or classes within which transitions are possible, but between which they are not. This is an empirically testable hypothesis, one which contradicts a key assumption of Neo-Darwinism. As yet, only preliminary steps have been taken to formulate and test this hypothesis: Behe's irreducible complexity and Dembski's Design Filter. So no definitive statement about its truth can be made as yet.

Of course, there is no guarantee that the Intelligent Design school will be able to reach its goals; nature may not be the way the theory postulates that it is. The notion of an "Intelligent Designer," for which the school is perhaps best known, is not part of its scientific basis, but rather an inference from it, or rather, an inference about reality based on the physical limitations in nature that the theory proposes. The school is, in some ways, its own worst enemy by not clearly distinguishing its scientific hypotheses from the extra-scientific inferences it draws.

Intelligent Design does not deny naturalism - that is, it does not require science to begin utilizing non-natural forces and entities. It does dispute metaphysical naturalism, which asserts that all phenomena can be explained by science and that there is no other reality. But the latter assertion is a metaphysical inference from the former, which is itself an extra-scientific assumption. The common attacks on Intelligent Design, accusing it of being Creationism in disguise, a Trojan Horse, and of injecting theology into science, are completely baseless. Its critics should therefore concentrate on the scientific issues raised, ignore the metaphysics and eschew the propaganda arguments, however satisfying these may be. But Intelligent Design must also deliver on the science.

Thanks to Bradford at Telic Thoughts for the link.

RLC

Heads Should Roll

Camille Paglia is a fiercely independent gadfly - usually. In this piece she gives us an inadvertant glimpse of an interesting phenomenon emerging among our chattering classes. People who are paying attention are growing increasingly disenchanted with the Obama administration, but they're aiming their barbs everywhere but at the man ultimately responsible for their distress. Like some Civil War general Obama sits tall in the saddle on the battlefield while the opposition directs its fire, strangely enough, at everyone in his army but him.

Those who fell in love with candidate Obama during the campaign cannot bring themselves to believe that they made a misjudgment. That would mean they'd have to admit that those rubes on right-wing talk radio were more politically perspicacious than they were.

So, rather than admit that to themselves, like a lovestruck teenager they simply refuse to see what was, and is, in plain sight about the guy. It was clear during the campaign that Barack Obama was a left-wing radical who was going to do precisely what he has done. The surprise is that people are surprised.

In the midst of their swoon a lot of people refused to believe that he could be anything but the best thing that's happened to this country since the Bill of Rights. They were so hostile to the Bush/Republican agenda McCain embodied that Obama was, by comparison, a demi-god in their starry eyes. They became so emotionally invested in him that now they find it difficult to think that anything he does is wrong, and they certainly don't believe that he might have misshapen motives for anything he does. Like the teenager whose boyfriend can do no wrong, no matter how much wrong he does, they're smitten with infatuation, and it's taking time for the pixie dust he's sprinkled in their eyes to wear off.

Paglia's essay is a good example. She faults everyone around Obama for the series of embarrassments he has suffered these first months of his presidency, but she doesn't fault him. Anyway, read her essay. Other than her eagerness to absolve the President of recent gaffes and clumsiness, it's a good summary of this administration's maladroitness.

Thanks to Jason for the link.

RLC

A Trillion Dollars

Bill sends along a link to a page that helps us grasp the sheer magnitude of the money our government is spending (and the debt it's piling up). Check it out.

RLC

Neither Rush Nor Frum

Patterico, a well-known conservative blogger, explains why neither Rush Limbaugh nor David Frum speak for him. It's a calm, cogent analysis and one with which I largely agree.

RLC

Unprincipled

Eight Republicans voted to pass the pork-laden $410 billion spending bill yesterday and seven of them had millions of dollars of earmarks in the bill themselves. This is really quite beyond loathesome. It's precisely the sort of unprincipled behavior that cost the GOP congressional control in 2004, and it's the sort of behavior which will prevent them from recovering the voter's trust in 2010.

The voters won't punish Democrats for this sort of recklessness because when Democrats vote to waste taxpayers' money they're just doing what Democrats do, and no one expects or demands of them that they behave responsibly. Republicans, on the other hand, are supposed to have a higher ethical standard and be more fiscally mature.

Kudos to the three Democrat senators who did vote against it - Russ Feingold, Evan Bayh, and Claire McCaskill bucked their party leadership and their president and voted nay. The bill passed nevertheless, on the strength of the support of the eight Republicans.

RLC

Creeping Secularization

The American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) results for 2008 have been released and the summary contains some interesting data. Those who suspect that our nation is growing increasingly secular will have their (pick one) hopes or fears confirmed. The survey collected answers from 54,461 respondents. Here's an overview:

The American population self-identifies as predominantly Christian but Americans are slowly becoming less Christian. 86% of American adults identified as Christians in 1990 and 76% in 2008.

The historic Mainline churches and denominations have experienced the steepest declines while the non-denominational Christian identity has been trending upward particularly since 2001.

The challenge to Christianity in the U.S. does not come from other religions but rather from a rejection of all forms of organized religion.

34% of American adults considered themselves "Born Again or Evangelical Christians" in 2008.

The U. S. population continues to show signs of becoming less religious, with one out of every five Americans failing to indicate a religious identity in 2008.

The "Nones" (no stated religious preference, atheist, or agnostic) continue to grow, though at a much slower pace than in the 1990s, from 8.2% in 1990, to 14.1% in 2001, to 15.0% in 2008.

Asian Americans are substantially more likely to indicate no religious identity than other racial or ethnic groups.

One sign of the lack of attachment of Americans to religion is that 27% do not expect a religious funeral at their death.

Based on their stated beliefs rather than their religious identification in 2008, 70% of Americans believe in a personal God, roughly 12% of Americans are atheist (no God) or agnostic (unknowable or unsure), and another 12% are deistic (a higher power but no personal God).

America's religious geography has been transformed since 1990. Religious switching along with Hispanic immigration has significantly changed the religious profile of some states and regions. Between 1990 and 2008, the Catholic population proportion of the New England states fell from 50% to 36% and in New York it fell from 44% to 37%, while it rose in California from 29% to 37% and in Texas from 23% to 32%.

Overall the 1990-2008 ARIS time series shows that changes in religious self-identification in the first decade of the 21st century have been moderate in comparison to the 1990s, which was a period of significant shifts in the religious composition of the United States.

This chart shows that when asked about the existence of God less than 70 percent of Americans now believe in the traditional theological concept of a personal God. This question was not asked in 1990 and 2001 so it's hard to draw conclusions from it. Nevertheless, if it is the case that fewer people believe in the existence of a personal God today than did twenty years ago, I wonder if this isn't due to a failure on the part of many churches to teach their young that Christianity is a more rational and coherent worldview than any of the alternatives. In many churches young people rarely get much instruction, especially from knowledgeable teachers, after they move beyond their elementary years. Thus, when challenges arise many of these kids are as vulnerable as 17th century Native-Americans exposed to European diseases against which they had no immunity. Their "beliefs" just get wiped out.

RLC

Overwhelmed

This is not at all reassuring. The Telegraph U.K.,trying to put the best face on the administration's dissing of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown last week, tacitly concludes that the president is overwhelmed by his duties and is simply not up to the job. I don't know if their assessment is accurate, but if it is, it should surprise no one. President Obama came to the White House with zero executive and administrative experience. That he feels overwhelmed is perfectly understandable, even if dismaying, given that he's never been in a position where he's had to keep so many bowling pins in the air before:

Sources close to the White House say Mr Obama and his staff have been "overwhelmed" by the economic meltdown and have voiced concerns that the new president is not getting enough rest.

British officials, meanwhile, admit that the White House and US State Department staff were utterly bemused by complaints that the Prime Minister should have been granted full-blown press conference and a formal dinner, as has been customary. They concede that Obama aides seemed unfamiliar with the expectations that surround a major visit by a British prime minister.

But Washington figures with access to Mr Obama's inner circle explained the slight by saying that those high up in the administration have had little time to deal with international matters, let alone the diplomatic niceties of the special relationship.

Allies of Mr Obama say his weary appearance in the Oval Office with Mr Brown illustrates the strain he is now under, and the president's surprise at the sheer volume of business that crosses his desk.

A well-connected Washington figure, who is close to members of Mr Obama's inner circle, expressed concern that Mr Obama had failed so far to "even fake an interest in foreign policy".

The American source said: "Obama is overwhelmed. There is a zero sum tension between his ability to attend to the economic issues and his ability to be a proactive sculptor of the national security agenda.

"That was the gamble these guys made at the front end of this presidency and I think they're finding it a hard thing to do everything."

The real views of many in Obama administration were laid bare by a State Department official involved in planning the Brown visit, who reacted with fury when questioned by The Sunday Telegraph about why the event was so low-key.

The official dismissed any notion of the special relationship, saying: "There's nothing special about Britain. You're just the same as the other 190 countries in the world. You shouldn't expect special treatment." The apparent lack of attention to detail by the Obama administration is indicative of what many believe to be Mr Obama's determination to do too much too quickly.

The Sunday Telegraph understands that one of Mr Obama's most prominent African American backers, whose endorsement he spent two years cultivating, has told friends that he detects a weakness in Mr Obama's character.

"The one real serious flaw I see in Barack Obama is that he thinks he can manage all this," the well-known figure told a Washington official, who spoke to this newspaper. "He's underestimating the flood of things that will hit his desk." A Democratic strategist, who is friends with several senior White House aides, revealed that the president has regularly appeared worn out and drawn during evening work sessions with senior staff in the West Wing and has been forced to make decisions more quickly than he is comfortable.

This all may be exaggerated or it may be accurate, who knows? We do know, though, that President Obama likes to compare himself to Presidents Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt, but both of these men struggled with much worse than Mr. Obama is facing, and FDR was further handicapped with the after-effects of polio. If it is true that President Obama feels overwhelmed now what will he feel like if a terrorist attack is thrown into the mix or if the media should turn on him and subject him to the same relentless daily criticism to which George W. Bush was treated. It'll doubtless be enough to drive him back to the cigarettes.

The nation's voters took an accomplished high school quarterback and put him directly into the Super Bowl. The results have so far been predictably unpretty. The White House is no place for on-the-job training - not even for a candidate who can seduce a nation with mellifluous promises of Hope and Change. Nevertheless, we're still only in the opening minutes of the game. Things might get much better for Barack Obama just as they did for Bill Clinton after a shaky start. Or, it may be that the President is indeed out of his depth, in which case we're in for a turbulent four years.

RLC

Credit Where It's Due

Want to know why it happened that the financial industry was allowed to conduct the massive ponzi scheme that eventuated in the collapse of both it and the rest of our economy? The no frills explanation can be found here.

As Steven Hayward says at No Left Turns, if the Republicans could turn this into a 30 second commercial they'd sweep the congressional elections in 2010.

RLC

Corruptocrats

Hot Air's Jason Mattera conducts another on the spot interview, this time with congressional "corruptocrat" Charles Rangel the chairman of the House Ways and Means committee, which writes the tax laws for the nation. Congressman Rangel writes the laws the rest of us must follow but doesn't pay taxes himself, at least not all of them.

Mattera asks him why, and Rangel's response is interesting. Apparently he doesn't think it's a citizens' business how his tax dollars are being spent by our congressional kleptocracy:

See the link for more examples of Mattera's fine work.

While we're at it you might want to watch how citizens get treated by their aldermen in Chicago. Warning: R-rated language from the alderman:

See Michelle Malkin for an explanation of what's going on here.

By the way, in the spirit of "moral equivalency" I should say that Republicans probably act the same way toward their constituents - or at least I should say it if I could find any examples of it. As far as I know, however, there aren't any. Can anybody help me?

RLC

Future Tech

Apparently this is on the way:

And I'm still stuck on trying to figure out how to use my cell-phone.

RLC

Take Your Pick

Charles Krauthammer believes that President Obama is intentionally deceiving the American public in trying to convince us that the root cause of our economic woes is the lack of nationalized health care, weak schools, and dependence upon petroleum. Here's the crux of Krauthammer's column:

The logic of Obama's address to Congress went like this:

"Our economy did not fall into decline overnight," he averred. Indeed, it all began before the housing crisis. What did we do wrong? We are paying for past sins in three principal areas: energy, health care, and education -- importing too much oil and not finding new sources of energy (as in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the Outer Continental Shelf?), not reforming health care, and tolerating too many bad schools.

The "day of reckoning" has now arrived. And because "it is only by understanding how we arrived at this moment that we'll be able to lift ourselves out of this predicament," Obama has come to redeem us with his far-seeing program of universal, heavily nationalized health care; a cap-and-trade tax on energy; and a major federalization of education with universal access to college as the goal.

Amazing. As an explanation of our current economic difficulties, this is total fantasy. As a cure for rapidly growing joblessness, a massive destruction of wealth, a deepening worldwide recession, this is perhaps the greatest non sequitur ever foisted upon the American people.

At the very center of our economic near-depression is a credit bubble, a housing collapse and a systemic failure of the entire banking system. One can come up with a host of causes: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pushed by Washington (and greed) into improvident loans, corrupted bond-ratings agencies, insufficient regulation of new and exotic debt instruments, the easy money policy of Alan Greenspan's Fed, irresponsible bankers pushing (and then unloading in packaged loan instruments) highly dubious mortgages, greedy house-flippers, deceitful homebuyers.

The list is long. But the list of causes of the collapse of the financial system does not include the absence of universal health care, let alone of computerized medical records. Nor the absence of an industry-killing cap-and-trade carbon levy. Nor the lack of college graduates. Indeed, one could perversely make the case that, if anything, the proliferation of overeducated, Gucci-wearing, smart-ass MBAs inventing ever more sophisticated and opaque mathematical models and debt instruments helped get us into this credit catastrophe in the first place.

And yet with our financial house on fire, Obama makes clear both in his speech and his budget that the essence of his presidency will be the transformation of health care, education and energy. Four months after winning the election, six weeks after his swearing in, Obama has yet to unveil a plan to deal with the banking crisis.

So far from seeking to solve the current crisis, Krauthammer implies, the president is seeking to exploit it to promote an ideological agenda that destroys capitalism and establishes socialism. Whether this is true or not, it's certainly the case that our financial crisis has nothing to do with schools, health care, or energy. By focusing on these things rather than the banking and stock market collapse Obama exposes himself either to Krauthammer's withering charge of willful deceit or the more charitable charge of gross incompetence.

RLC

Mano a Mano

Two titans in the field of philosophy, Alvin Plantinga and Daniel Dennett, squared off in an exchange at the recent meeting of the American Philosophical Association. Prosblogion has a minute by minute account of the exchange recorded by a philosopher in the audience. The account won't be of general interest but will be of interest to those acquainted with the work of either of these well-known scholars.

According to the anonymous and self-described biased recorder (his/her reasons for wishing to remain anonymous are interesting in themselves), Dennett embarrassed himself and Plantinga won the field.

The readers' comments are also worth perusing.

RLC

620 Fewer Hospitals?

A showdown is looming between the Catholic Church and the Obama administration over the pending Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA).

When it last was introduced into the legislature, FOCA defined abortion as a "fundamental right" that no government can "deny" or "interfere with." That language, FOCA's opponents warn, would help overturn abortion restrictions such as parental notification, laws banning certain procedures and constraints on federal funding. It would also appear to require hospitals to offer abortions to their patients, even hospitals that believe that killing unborn children is a terrible evil.

There are some 620 Catholic hospitals in the United States. They will either refuse to comply with the law - if it has no exception for conscience - or they will close their doors.

How many jobs will this cost? How many suffering patients will be unable to find treatment if the hospitals close down? And for what? So that some leftist ideologues can shove their values down everyone else's throats?

This is not a pro-life/pro-choice issue. Pro-lifers will oppose FOCA, of course, but so, too, should every pro-choicer who has ever argued that a woman should have the right to decide on the basis of her own conscience whether to have an abortion. If the decision to have an abortion is a matter of conscience which should be respected then so, too, is the decision to decline to perform them. FOCA, as it is currently believed to be written, is indeed a flagrantly anti-choice bill.

The Obama administration has already seen the stock market plummet on its watch and with it the retirements of millions of people. Now it is poised to force Catholic hospitals out of business. These are not hopeful trends.

For more on the FOCA showdown see here.

RLC

Mutineers

The most brilliant satirist on the internet, or anywhere, is how the Weekly Standard describes Iowahawk, and surely his latest effort justifies the description. For those who may not be paying much attention a little background is in order. Last year a number of prominent right-leaning journalists spoke rather rapturously of Barack Obama's candidacy and disparagingly of people like Sarah Palin, Joe Werzelbacher (Joe the Plumber) and Rush Limbaugh. In the minds of these mutinous pundits such populist heroes are declassé and faintly disreputable. The newly-elected president then charmed some of them even further by joining them for an exclusive dinner at the home of columnist George Will.

Now Iowahawk takes up his pen to skewer the elitist pretensions of these writers and their mystification and alarm at the influence the "lower classes" have achieved in the party that was once the private domain of the "better breeds." It's an amusing parody and can be read here.

RLC

You're Getting <i>Very</i> Sleepy

Ralph Peters thinks that Obama's speech promising a pullout of all American combat troops from Iraq by the summer of 2010 is "all flash and no bang." Me too.

Peters writes:

Will the 50,000 troops he intends to leave in Iraq, the trainers and maintainers, be forbidden to defend themselves? Are they just going to hang out? If terrorists or the Iranians skunk us, are we just going to ask for more?

We're not going to leave 50,000 support troops in Iraq without combat units to protect them. We'll just ban the word "brigade" and call our shooters "task forces."

Why the rush to get out anyway? American troops are no longer dying in Iraq and they're doing much good preserving stability, training the Iraqis, and rebuilding the country. Perhaps the president simply wants to use them in Afghanistan (or, as is becoming increasingly likely, on the Mexican border), but, as Peters writes, he sounds like he's just trying to mollify the lefties who helped elect him because they understood that he was going to bring our troops home immediately.

Obama's dilemma is this: Iraq is all but won while Afghanistan had been won but is now beginning to slide back toward chaos. If either of those theaters in the war on Islamic terror goes sour there'll be no blaming Bush or the Republicans for the collapse. The American people will see the loss as Obama's fault. He certainly doesn't want that to happen, so his challenge is to appease the left-wing, some of whom would be delighted to see it happen, while doing what he can to preserve the gains made by the Bush administration. And he wants to do all this, presumably, while being careful not to give the Bush administration any credit for those gains.

It'll be interesting to watch how he navigates this tightrope. The trick will be to ignore what he says as he swings the watch back and forth in front of our eyes and soothingly tells us that we're getting sleeeepy. Instead, we need to focus on what he does. As with earmarks, the two could well be very different.

RLC

Re: Good Intentions

Byron has focused my attention on an error in a post on the $900 million that has been proposed for rebuilding Gaza. I assumed the money would be funneled through Hamas and that it would therefore be diverted, at least in part, to fund Hamas' war effort against Israel. I concluded from this that the Obama administration appears more concerned about doing something that looks compassionate than doing something that actually helps the Palestinian people.

As Byron notes, it's not yet clear that Hamas will in fact receive the money. They're apparently jousting with the Palestinian Authority for the funds and the outcome of that contest is still in doubt.

I was hasty to assume that Hamas would almost inevitably control the $900 million, and it was thus unfair, or at least premature, to have assumed that the administration was determined to give away the money regardless who gets it or to what purpose it's ultimately put.

RLC

Ethical Standards and the APA

The culture wars appear to have landed on the desk of the American Philosophical Association. Byron forwards this post by Keith Pavlischek at First Things:

A group of unhappy professional academic philosophers have submitted a petition to the American Philosophical Association. What are they up in arms about? The opening paragraph of the petition tells it all:

"Many colleges and universities require faculty, students, and staff to follow certain 'ethical' standards which prohibit engaging in homosexual acts. Among these institutions are Azusa Pacific University, Belmont University, Bethel College, Biola University, Calvin College, Malone College, Pepperdine University, Westmont College, and Wheaton College. All of these institutions advertised in 'Jobs for Philosophers' between 2006-2009. Further, none of these institutions were listed as censured institutions."

The petition calls on the APA either to "(1) enforce its policy and prohibit institutions that discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation from advertising in 'Jobs for Philosophers' or [to] (2) clearly mark institutions with these policies as institutions that violate our anti-discrimination policy." One can assume that "marking" these institutions would be to censure them.

But there is a counter-petition signed by a number of notable philosophers, including Alasdair McIntyre, Alvin Plantinga, Germain Grisez, Robert P. George, John M. Finnis, Roger Scruton, and many others. The petition argues:

"Institutions can require their faculty to agree to abide by ethical standards that forbid homosexual acts while not ipso facto discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation. The conceptual distinction between a certain kind of act and a disposition to perform that kind of act is one that no philosopher would fail to acknowledge in other ethical contexts. We fail to see why it should be ignored in this one."

And then they turn the tables on the original petitioners accusing them of advocating a policy that itself would discriminate against religious institutions:

"But the policy recommended attempts to segregate and penalize religious institutions for abiding by their long-standing and coherent ethical norms. Moreover, this policy would foster an environment that would encourage discrimination against philosophers whose religious, political, or philosophical convictions lead them to disapprove of homosexual acts."

Most, if not all, of the colleges named in the first petition are religious schools. The signers of that petition are essentially demanding that these schools forfeit their religious convictions about right and wrong conduct or else be penalized by the APA.

This is illustrative of how the culture war works. The goal appears to be to intimidate by creating the expectation that one will be punished, either by law or other sanction, for saying (or even believing) that homosexual behavior is morally problematic. What will be punished next? Opposition to abortion? Euthanasia? Pederasty?

RLC

Mad Money

Jim Cramer is an Obama supporter and, indeed, advocates almost all of the President's agenda for America, but he writes nevertheless that Obama's economic plans are an unmitigated disaster. Cramer is the host of CNBC's financial show Mad Money, and argues that Obama's policies are destroying the retirements and life savings of millions of Americans. In Cramer's view, now is the worst possible time to try to implement Obama's economic agenda of higher taxes and massive spending and borrowing. Here's Cramer talking about his disillusionment on his show:

President Obama got elected because he had a lot of support from an obsequious media during the primaries and presidential campaign. The media rarely held the candidate's feet to the fire and scarcely asked questions which could embarrass him. He will continue to enjoy support from the mid to far left, but a lot of other MSM reporters and pundits are themselves heavily invested in the stock market. As they see the value of their own investments evaporate I suspect many of them are going to become increasingly antagonistic toward this administration and may well begin to ask those hard questions.

One they could start with is what ever happened to Timothy Geithner, the indispensable man we had to have as Secretary of the Treasury no matter how much of a tax cheat he is? Geithner was supposed to have a plan to get us out of this mess, but he seems to have fallen off the face of the earth. Is anybody in the administration working on this problem? Does anyone there really care about the stock market?

Thanks to Hot Air for the video link.

RLC

Shattering Illusions

During the presidential campaign a number of left-leaning pro-life folks (Jim Wallis at Sojourners and Douglas Kmiec come to mind) made the argument that Barack Obama was the real pro-life candidate in the race. Despite his consistent record of support for even the most extreme pro-choice positions, Obama's policies, particularly universal health care, would actually result in fewer abortions because they would give poor women the economic means to see their pregnancies through.

Well, this remains to be seen, but his appointment of Kansas governor Kathleen Sebelius as his Secretary of Health and Human Services is hard to reconcile with the rosy scenarios Sojourners painted for us. My friend Jason links us to an article by George Weigel that illuminates Sebelius' radicalism on this issue. Here's an excerpt:

[Governor Sebelius] has routinely opposed or vetoed several abortion-accountability bills, including medically-supported clinic regulation legislation which she vetoed in both 2003 and 2005. The need for this critical legislation was predicated, in large part, on evidence of shocking conditions in Kansas abortion clinics. For example, two inspections of the same Topeka abortion clinic discovered fetal remains in the same refrigerator as food; a dead rodent in the clinic hallways; overflowing, uncovered disposal bins containing medical waste; unlabeled, pre-drawn syringes with controlled substances in an unlocked refrigerator; improperly labeled and expired medicines; carpeted floors in the surgical procedure room; and visible dirt and disarray throughout the clinic. Dr. Krishna Rajanna, who operated the unsanitary clinic, also consistently violated the practice guidelines for conscious sedation.

Recently, in 2008, she vetoed a measure that would have strengthened the state's existing parental notification law by 1) requiring that any adult accompanying a minor show identification, declare in writing their relationship to the minor, and identify the father of the unborn child; 2) require the minor to show some form of photo identification providing identity and place of residence; and 3) if the minor chooses to seek a judicial waiver, prohibiting any employee of an abortion provider or clinic from assisting her with the requisite court filings and proceedings.

More shocking, however, is her continuing and unyielding support for late-term abortions, including post-viability abortions. Over the past three years she has vetoed measures requiring explicit medical reasons for late-term abortions; requiring abortion providers to report the diagnosis or the nature of the condition which necessitated a post-viability abortion; and permitting injunctive relief for either a completed or about-to-be-performed illegal late-term abortion and adding certain prosecutors (in addition to the Attorney General) to prosecute violations of existing prohibitions on late-term abortions.

Whatever you think about abortion, very few people, other than those who get paid to perform them, wish to see the number of abortions increase. Yet it's hard to see how, with extremists like Sebelius in the president's cabinet, that will be avoided.

RLC