Unimaginable Debt

The Washington Post offers a graphic illustration that compares the projected deficits under President Obama to those under President Bush. It's pretty stark ... and frightening. Imagine that you owed far more on your credit card than you could ever pay and every month the interest kept increasing the total. Your credit rating falls as you fail to pay your bills, you lose your home, car and insurance coverage, you're unable to buy clothes or food for your children and no one will lend you any more money.

This is the situation we will soon be in as a nation when the bills start arriving from President Obama's great spending spree. Astonishingly, he himself admitted last week that our debt is unsustainable. Here's part of the Bloomberg story:

President Barack Obama, calling current deficit spending "unsustainable," warned of skyrocketing interest rates for consumers if the U.S. continues to finance government by borrowing from other countries.

"We can't keep on just borrowing from China," Obama said at a town-hall meeting in Rio Rancho, New Mexico, outside Albuquerque. "We have to pay interest on that debt, and that means we are mortgaging our children's future with more and more debt."

Holders of U.S. debt will eventually "get tired" of buying it, causing interest rates on everything from auto loans to home mortgages to increase, Obama said. "It will have a dampening effect on our economy."

Earlier this week, the Obama administration revised its own budget estimates and raised the projected deficit for this year to a record $1.84 trillion, up 5 percent from the February estimate. The revision for the 2010 fiscal year estimated the deficit at $1.26 trillion, up 7.4 percent from the February figure. The White House Office of Management and Budget also projected next year's budget will end up at $3.59 trillion, compared with the $3.55 trillion it estimated previously.

It makes me wonder if Mr. Obama suffers from multiple personality disorder. Who does he think is responsible for plunging us into this debt? Is he battling some other personality for control of his spending impulses? Is there no one in his administration who can urge him to be more responsible? Is there no one who could manage the equivalent of taking a scissors to his credit cards?

The man should be attending meetings of the governmental equivalent of shoppers anonymous, but instead he keeps running up massive debt while warning us that we just can't afford it any more. This is how an alcoholic behaves. The addict keeps on drinking while bemoaning the fact that he's ruining his life and killing his body.

In the President's case, however, it's not his life he's ruining. It's our children's lives which are being devastated by his profligacy. This is what one gets when one votes for someone just because he promises Hope and Change.

RLC

Holder's Tortured Logic

Andrew McCarthy at NRO offers up a devastating critique of Attorney General Eric holder's testimony before the House Judiciary Committee last week. Apparently, Holder was either ignorant of the law on torture or he is willing, as McCarthy says, to misstate it.

Here's what happened. Holder was being questioned by two congressmen, Dan Lungren and Louie Gohmert, on the question of whether the CIA committed torture of detainees under the Bush administration.

The two congressmen highlighted a fatal flaw in Holder's theory. Moreover, they demonstrated that - despite having accused the CIA and the Bush administration of war crimes by cavalierly branding waterboarding as "torture" - the attorney general has still not acquainted himself with the legal elements of a torture offense, particularly the required mental state. This is remarkable, given that Holder's own department explained these elements less than a month ago in a federal appeals court brief.

Rep. Lungren pointed out that if the attorney general truly believes "waterboarding is torture," he must also think we torture our own Navy SEALs and other special-operations personnel when we waterboard them as part of their training. "No . . . not in the legal sense," countered Holder. You see, said he, it's "a fundamentally different thing," because...

"...we're doing something for training purposes to try to equip them with the tools to, perhaps, resist torture techniques that might be used on them. There is not the intent to do that which is defined as torture - which is to inflict serious bodily or mental harm. It's for training. It's different."

But it's not different because "it's for training." Look at the torture statute (Sections 2340 and 2340A of the federal penal code) and try to find a "training" exception. There isn't one. What removes an act from the ambit of torture (besides lack of severe pain) is intent. Lungren pressed this point, and Holder admitted that the training was "not torture in the legal sense because we're not doing it with the intention of harming these people physically or mentally." Intent, he acknowledged, was the key question.

Then, Lungren pounced. The CIA interrogators who questioned top al-Qaeda captives like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah intended no more harm to them than Navy instructors intended to their SEAL trainees. In fact, we know that the CIA went to great lengths, under Justice Department guidance, precisely to avoid severe harm. Their purpose, Rep. Lungren observed, was to "solicit information," not to inflict torture.

Read the rest of this at the link if this is an issue that you're concerned about.

Meanwhile, here's the position Obama and the Democrats find themselves in as they obsessively strive - like Javert pursuing Jean Val Jean in Victor Hugo's Les Miserables - to land Bush administration officials in prison for having ordered that terrorists be waterboarded to elicit information from them:

They have to contend with the fact that their own President Clinton used extraordinary rendition which resulted in real torture to those who were sent to countries like Egypt and Yemen for interrogation. They have to finesse the fact that Democratic congressional leadership, including the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, knew about the methods being used and condoned them. They have to explain the fact that President Obama refuses to release CIA memos which would settle the question of how effective these methods were, and now they have to somehow circumvent the fact that their own Attorney General has tacitly admitted that according to U.S. law waterboarding, as practiced by the CIA, is not really torture.

I suspect that most Democrats are regretting that they tried to crucify the Bushies on this issue and are right now wishing that the whole matter would just go away. I'll be surprised if they continue to pursue it. If they do I'll have to change the literary analogy from Javert to Melville's Captain Ahab.

RLC

A Minor Point

I don't want to nitpick the President's speech at Notre Dame, but in it he made a statement that perpetuates a misunderstanding. He said this:

Those who speak out against stem cell research may be rooted in an admirable conviction about the sacredness of life, but so are the parents of a child with juvenile diabetes who are convinced that their son's or daughter's hardships can be relieved.

The President in these lines refers to a class of people which doesn't exist. No one that I know of speaks out against stem cell research. Not even President Bush spoke out against stem cell research. What many people oppose is embryonic stem cell research because it kills a living embryo. There are other ways of creating stem cells and everyone is hopeful that these will bear fruit.

Personally, I wonder about the consistency of those who oppose embryonic stem cell work. I agree that we should not be creating embryos simply to harvest their cells, but I'm not sure how people can object to using surplus embryos produced in a fertility clinic for research purposes but not object to the production of the surplus embryos in the first place.

In other words, fertility clinics produce more embryos for a couple than what they eventually implant in the mother's womb. The surplus is ultimately destroyed. Yet at most there is muted criticism of this practice from the pro-life community. If there are not objections to the way fertility clinics help mothers have children then why make an issue of using the doomed embryos to help others have a better life?

The embryos will ultimately die. To harvest their cells is almost like harvesting organs from an organ donor. If this is morally problematic then surely producing extraneous embryos is also problematic, but if producing extraneous embryos is acceptable then so, too, should harvesting their cells be acceptable.

Having said this, I thought President Bush's ban on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research was wise. He didn't oppose stem cell research nor did he end embryonic stem cell research. He merely decided that, given the moral concerns of many Americans, it's best to leave such research to the private sector and not use taxpayers' dollars to fund the destruction of those embryos.

RLC

Campus Fascists

Edward Olshaker at American Thinker asks us to....

Imagine it's 1940, and picture Adolf Hitler speaking at a US university, receiving a polite reception, while Winston Churchill is barred from speaking because his safety cannot be guaranteed.

It's unthinkable, yet the very same pro-fascist dynamic is a reality in 21st Century America.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu comes to America knowing he is a second-class citizen who is denied the free-speech rights enjoyed even by prominent jihadists, having been violently prevented from speaking on campuses in the US and Canada in recent years.

Protestors at Berkeley, the campus once synonymous with the term "free speech," forced the cancellation of Netanyahu's speech there, as well as two subsequent speeches, in November 2000.

And yet Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a vicious anti-semite and homophobe, gets a polite reception at Columbia a year and a half ago. So what lesson does this travesty invite us to draw?

Perhaps one lesson is that if you're an ally of the U.S. and the leader of a democracy where people are free to select their government the Left will fight tooth and nail to keep you from being heard, but if you're tyrant and dictator and an enemy of the U.S. then you're more than welcome to present your case on American campuses.

Olshaker is right. Today's Left are the new fascisti. Read the rest of his column at the link.

RLC

Atheists Intrigued by Design

It's difficult for many people, including people in the media, to grasp the idea that intelligent design is not a theory held solely by theists. To be sure, most of its adherents are theists of one sort or another, but there are also a number of atheists who find themselves charmed by the idea that intelligence is somehow responsible for the universe. One example is the philosopher Bradley Monton author of Seeking God in Science: An Atheist Defends Intelligent Design. Mike Gene talks about an exchange Monton had with another atheist philosopher in which Monton says this:

...atheist-minded philosophers are unhappy with how some intelligent design opponents seem more focused on emotion and rhetoric than argument - they expect better of people (especially philosophers) who are engaging in this debate. For example, I recently got an email from a philosopher of science at a top philosophy program, which read in part:

"I'm also an atheist who thinks that the arguments for ID are far more interesting than philosophers tend to appreciate. I think it's lamentable that the climate now is such that you can't seriously discuss such things without attracting ill will from well-meaning opponents of the religious right.... Writing a book like yours is a brave thing to do and it might make the world a better place."

Gene goes on to discuss the constraints scientists are placing upon themselves in their writing and research in order to avoid giving credence to intelligent design. It's a fascinating post.

Part of the reason why, perhaps, so many think that ID is a religious hypothesis is that they don't understand what a religious claim is. To be religious a claim about reality must go beyond existential assertions about what exists ultimately and assert certain obligations toward that ultimate reality (i.e. worship, devotion, fealty, etc). In other words, the claim that God exists is a metaphysical claim as is the Darwinian claim that whether He exists or not, God is irrelevant to the diversification of life. Both of these claims have religious implications but neither of them is itself a religious assertion.

Philosopher Roy Clouser in his book The Myth of Religious Neutrality puts it differently. He says that what all religions share in common, the core that makes them "religious," is that they all hold that there is something ultimate which depends upon nothing else for its existence and upon which all else depends. According to this definition every thinking person has a religion. For most atheists the religion is materialism, the belief that matter is the self-existent primal source of all that is. For many others it's theism, the belief that the ultimately real is an intelligent, personal mind.

So, here's the point: either ID is not religious because it imposes no duties toward the Designer upon anyone, or, if Clouser's definition be accepted, it's no more religious than is its rival, materialistic Darwinism. Either way, the claim that ID doesn't belong in public school classrooms because it's religious (there may be other legitimate reasons for excluding it, though I can't think of any) is a canard that few who think about the issue in an unbiased fashion will find tenable.

Thanks to Bradford at Telic Thoughts for the links.

RLC

Macho Men

The American Thinker's George Joyce recounts for us an incident on a recent edition of the NPR show "Wait, Wait ...Don't Tell Me":

On Thursday evening's NPR quiz show "Wait Wait . . . Don't Tell Me" senior Obama advisor David Axelrod made reference to Miss California Carrie Prejean as a dog. Politico is reporting that when Axelrod was asked on the show if he had helped the Obama's choose their recently acquired dog Axelrod replied:

"I was only called in for the final three, and one was Miss California."

When a senior advisor to the President of the United States refers to a courageous, twenty-one year old Christian woman as a dog it's a sign that conservatives have finally found a crack in the Obama administration's armor. Axelrod's remark is also an indication of the off-the-charts sense of superiority that characterizes many of those on Obama's staff.

How much longer will this country be able to endure the utter contempt these progressives have for traditional American values? When will conservatives begin to stand up for this young woman and the values she is defending?

I second Joyce's questions and raise him a couple: How is Axelrod's calling a 22 year-old college student a "dog" any more acceptable than Don Imus calling the Rutgers girls basketball team "nappy-headed 'hos"? For that matter, why doesn't Axelrod call his boss a dog? Prejean's views on gay marriage, the ostensible trigger for the abuse she has received from the left, are precisely those of Barack Obama, at least they are if Obama was telling the truth when he announced his views on the subject.

Why do people on the left (e.g. Bill Maher) feel compelled to insult a young woman who merely gave an honest answer to a question from a judge in a beauty pageant? Is it because she stumbled a bit in her delivery? Is it because her answer is what the majority of people in this country believe about marriage? Is it because she's a Christian and nevertheless posed for some less than Christian photos? Or is it just that she's a Christian, period?

Maybe it's because Axelrod, Maher, Keith Olbermann, Perez Hilton, Michael Musto, et al are arrogant, adolescent bullies who, like prebuscent middle school boys huddling in the lavatory, think it's cool to insult and laugh at people who're better than they are. It's amusing to consider that these heroic, stalwart specimens of left-wing masculinity would never do to, say, a Muslim man what they're eager to do to a gentle Christian college girl.

But perhaps I'm wrong. Perhaps these macho tough guys have indeed scoffed at the beliefs of Muslims who hold to much more extreme views on gay marriage than does Carrie Prejean. Perhaps they've courageously laughed with public derision at Islamic law and the Muslim belief in the Prophet. Perhaps they've roundly ridiculed the Muslim's belief that Allah regards homosexual behavior as an abomination worthy of public execution.

Or maybe not. Maybe their courage only extends to mocking harmless young women. It is, after all, much easier to beat up on a co-ed beauty pageant contestant than to take on grown men who are likely to exact a steep price for their insolence.

Anyway, here's the last question: When is the National Organization for Women going to step in and defend this woman from the rhetorical assault these "men" are waging against her?

Okay, you're right. That's a silly question.

RLC

Thought for a Sunday

Among other things, I see this as interesting support for Predestination as opposed to Free Will. But even beyond that, it should cause one to take pause.

And so pride, the loss of humility, is the root of every sin and evil. It was when the now-fallen angels began to look upon themselves with self-complacency that they were led to disobedience and were cast down from the light of heaven into outer darkness. Likewise, it was when the serpent breathed the poison of his pride - the desire to be as God, into the hearts of our first parents, that they too fell from their high estate into the wretchedness to which all humankind has sunk. In heaven and on earth, pride or self-exaltation is the very gateway to hell.

...

The life God bestows is imparted not once for all but each moment by the unceasing operation of His mighty power. Humility, the place of entire dependence upon God, is from the very nature of things the first duty and the highest virtue of His creatures.

...

Humility is a virtue that only comes in power when the fullness of the Spirit makes us partakers of the indwelling Christ and He lives within us.

Andrew Murray, Humility - The Journey Toward Holiness

Contingency Plan

The big fear in the Middle East right now is that the Taliban will topple the current regime in Pakistan and gain control of their nuclear weapons. It's hard to imagine a more frightening circumstance than Islamic terrorists armed with nukes.

To prevent this the military has been training a special ops unit to insert itself into Pakistan, if the Taliban seems on the verge of overrunning it, and to secure the weapons and transfer them to a safe location. Here are excerpts from the Fox News report on this program:

The United States has a detailed plan for infiltrating Pakistan and securing its mobile arsenal of nuclear warheads if it appears the country is about to fall under the control of the Taliban, Al Qaeda or other Islamic extremists.

American intelligence sources say the operation would be conducted by Joint Special Operations Command, the super-secret commando unit headquartered at Fort Bragg, N.C.

JSOC is the military's chief terrorists hunting squad and has units now operating in Afghanistan on Pakistan's western border. But a secondary mission is to secure foreign nuclear arsenals -- a role for which JSOC operatives have trained in Nevada.

The mission has taken on added importance in recent months, as Islamic extremists have taken territory close to the capital of Islamabad and could destabilize Pakistan's shaky democracy.

"We have plans to secure them ourselves if things get out of hand," said a U.S. intelligence source who has deployed to Afghanistan. "That is a big secondary mission for JSOC in Afghanistan."

The source said JSOC has been updating its mission plan for the day President Obama gives the order to infiltrate Pakistan.

"Small units could seize them, disable them and then centralize them in a secure location," the source said.

A secret Defense Intelligence Agency document first disclosed in 2004 said Pakistan has a nuclear arsenal of 35 weapons. The document said it plans to more than double the arsenal by 2020.

What makes the Pakistan mission especially difficult is that the military has its missiles on Soviet-style mobile launchers and rail lines. U.S. intelligence agencies, using satellite photos and communication intercepts, is constantly monitoring their whereabouts. Other warheads are kept in storage. U.S. technical experts have visited Pakistan to advise the government on how to maintain and protect its arsenal.

Also, there are rogue elements inside Pakistan's military and intelligence service who could quickly side with the extremists and make JSOC's mission all the more difficult.

"It's relatively easy to track rail-mounted ones with satellites," said the intelligence source. "Truck-mounted are more difficult. However, they are all relatively close to the capital in areas that the government firmly controls so we don't have to look too far."

JSOC is made up of three main elements: Army Delta Force, Navy SEALs and a high-tech special intelligence unit known as Task Force Orange. JSOC was instrumental in Iraq in finding and killing Abu Musab Zarqawi, the deadly and most prominent Al Qaeda leader in the Middle East.

This seems like our best option in Pakistan should Islamist seizure of the weapons appear imminent. So, what is the plan for Iran?

RLC

Trickle Down

The Washington Post reports that GM will be cutting 2400 of its 6000 dealerships by the end of next year and Chrysler is closing 789 of its 3181 dealerships. Think for a moment the effect these layoffs will have. The corporation gets itself into financial trouble and the problems ramify all the way down to the mechanics working in the service bay and the stockboys working in the parts department. Many of these workers will lose their jobs so they'll have no money to spend in the communities in which they live. There'll be less money spent in restaurants, movie theaters, on home maintenance, etc. which means that those businesses will suffer also. Moreover, when the dealership goes out of business the local community takes a huge hit in its tax revenue. Thus the devastation trickles all the way down to minimum wage workers in every business in the local municipality.

This all seems pretty obvious so why mention it? Because there has been in our country over the last couple of decades a lot of derision leveled at the idea of "trickle down" economics, the idea that what helps businesses at the top helps everyone all the way down the economic ladder. The left misses no opportunity to mock this notion which is a key element in the justification for tax cuts in the midst of difficult economic times. When the corporation has more money to spend everyone all the way down to the waitress in the local restaurant benefits even though they're unaware of it. A rising tide does indeed lift all boats as Ronald Reagan used to say, much to the scorn of his critics.

It's amazing that people have no difficulty seeing that economic malaise is a trickle down phenomenon, but they refuse to acknowledge that economic vigor also cascades through the society and lifts everyone up. When taxes are cut on corporations they have more money to invest in the business and that provides jobs not only for their own employees but, as in the case of the car industry, also for the dealerships and thus for communities all across the nation. Tax cuts also enable the business to keep their prices lower so their customers have more money to spend on other businesses in their town and a prosperous business is a source of tax revenue for the local municipality.

It all seems so obvious that it astonishes me that the left has been so successful in persuading people that the best way to achieve prosperity is to raise taxes on business, increase their costs, and diminish the amount of wealth available to the hundreds and thousands of people who are effected by that business's economic health.

"Trickle down" is almost a law of economics, whether it's trickle down malaise or trickle down prosperity, and what's happening right now at Chrysler and GM should convince even the most otiose of its inexorability.

RLC

Milestone

Tomorrow is a special day here at Viewpoint. It was five years ago, May 16th, 2004 that my brother Bill and I launched this humble venture. It was born out of the conviction that there had to be a better way to share ideas with friends and family than by bombarding them with articles and e-mails. Not only was it annoying to the recipients but it was getting a little cumbersome because among my acquaintances there were different audiences for different topics, and I didn't think that most people had the time to read a lot of the stuff anyway.

I wondered if it might not be more effective to just have a site where people could come if they were interested and find commentary on current events, religion, science, and philosophy - the topics that most interest me. I had no idea how to go about creating such a site, but Bill said that it was fairly easy and set about doing it. Viewpoint is what emerged from his efforts.

Since then we've churned out over 5160 posts on a variety of topics and had over 347,450 hits, averaging around 7500 hits a month over the last three years.

Surely it's a conceit to think that one has something to say that others might wish to read or hear, but I suppose that it's a conceit shared by everyone who writes, teaches or preaches so I don't let myself feel too guilty about it.

I do wonder sometimes, though, how long I'm going to keep it up. It does take time to put a day's posts together, and I often wonder if there aren't other ways I should be spending that time. Then I get an e-mail like the following from a reader named Dave, and I'm energized to keep going for another couple of months.

Dave wrote:

I just wanted to take a moment to thank you for your website. I am relatively new to it, but I look forward to checking it every day. I love the range of topics you post on; it all is very interesting and thought-provoking to me. I am a recent college grad (I grew up in York) now living in Philadelphia, so as you can imagine with the liberal way-of-life out here, it is very refreshing to hear common sense ideas and rational, well-informed thinking.

Your archives and search capabilities are great tools for learning more about specific topics. In fact, since earlier today I overheard people talking about gay marriage, I searched for that on the website and just finished reading nearly all of your posts about it. I now feel as though I have a much more tenable, and convincing, stance should I ever find myself debating someone.

Finally, I feel I must comment on your communication skills. Your command of vocabulary is top-notch. Sometimes I find myself going back and forth between the dictionary and your posts, only to find you've chosen the exact word needed for your idea. In this day of cryptic internet abbreviations and phrases, it is a welcomed change to read your polished writing. It has certainly helped me add to my own vocabulary.

In sum, I really appreciate and admire your site. Keep up the fantastic work.

On behalf of Bill and myself I want to thank Dave and all of you for your readership. It's knowing that you think it's worth your time to come here that makes our time and effort all worthwhile.

Thanks again,

Dick Cleary

Letter of Amends

Robin is a self-described "recovering liberal from Berkeley" who writes her family and friends a letter of apology for all the unpleasantness she put them through before the scales fell from her eyes. It's good, especially the second half where she explains what brought about her epiphany.

Here's the nut of it:

In February of 2008, I saw a new client, a bright and sensitive young woman who came in looking like she just escaped a war zone. In some ways she had; she had innocently shared with others at her job that she voted for Hillary rather than Obama. Immediately she was being targeted for abuse that put her in fear for not only her job, but her life.

We both suddenly became aware that something had grown really dark in the Democratic Party. I started hearing about many other incidents where loyal Democrats were being physically and emotionally threatened for supporting Hillary. A woman in Berkeley had her front window broken because it displayed a poster of Hillary. Randi Rhodes, an Air America talk show leftist, called Hillary a f______ witch. (Rhodes was recently promoted to a national talk radio show, illustrating another disturbing trend: the deafening silence about what Rush Limbaugh has dubbed the new "thug-ocracy.)

An acquaintance had her car broken into, and the only item stolen was a NoObama bumper sticker. A South Park episode featured an episode where a nuclear weapon was being aimed at Hillary's genitals. My local greeting card store sold very flattering cards about Obama, insulting ones about Hillary, and a Hillary "nutcracker." When I complained, the young male manager literally laughed in my face.

Things went from bad to worse when Sarah Palin entered the scene. When Geraldine Ferraro ran for Vice President, there was no debasement of her character, no sexual threats. But with Palin, a full scale "wilding" ensued that chillingly reminded me of the random sexual attacks on women by gangs of men in New York. She was called every vile name in the book by both male and female liberals.

Actress Sarah Bernhardt hoped a gang of black males would rape her. When Palin's church was torched with children inside, the press was missing in action (somehow I imagine the press would have been all over this if Obama's church were torched). Not only was the misogyny disgusting, but the classism was abhorrent. The Democrats, by ridiculing Palin's voice and her education, were acting like arrogant snobs. The party had changed, I had changed, and the differences looked irreconcilable.

The final straw for me was when a close friend flew into a rage at me when she learned I wasn't supporting Obama. The political became personal when she began impugning my character. Worse yet, she tried to intimidate me into changing my mind by threatening to dump me.

Suddenly a light went on. The peace and love and flower power of the old left was dead and gone (if it even existed to begin with except in my imagination). The Democrats had morphed into a power hungry Thought Police, and I was done with them. My new motto in life: don't PC on me.

Robin concludes with these questions:

But now the problem is: how in the world does one be a conservative these days? How to stay brave and committed when conservatives are being targeted, punished, and shunned on a daily basis? How to sleep at night knowing that the country I have finally come to love may be destroyed from within by a massive Big Brother government?

Maybe one reason the Democratic party has shifted so far toward the hard left is that a lot of intelligent people like Robin, people who sincerely believed that liberalism held the answers to our problems, have been so repulsed by the tactics of the ACORNs and the antics of the Keith Olbermanns that in order to preserve their own sense of self-dignity and integrity they just have to dissociate themselves from it all and leave the party to the leftists. Maybe.

RLC

Agile or Indolent?

Changing one's mind is indicative of one of two things: intellectual nimbleness (i.e. the ability to change course in light of new evidence) or intellectual laziness (a failure to think matters through in the first place). When the change of mind occurs only occasionally we may assume the cause is an agile mind. When it happens frequently it's more likely due to the latter cause. In the president's case I'm not sure yet which it is, but his switches seem to be occurring with uncomfortable frequency, at least in matters bearing on national defense.

We noted earlier Mona Charen's recitation of some of them, and now Jake Tapper of ABC informs us that Obama has had yet another change of heart.

President Obama defended his decision to fight the release of photos showing detainee abuse Wednesday afternoon, saying it would only put American troops in harm's way and create a backlash against Americans.

"The most direct consequence of releasing them, I believe, would be to further inflame anti-American opinion and to put our troops in greater danger," the president said before departing on his trip to Arizona. "Moreover, I fear the publication of these photos may only have a chilling effect on future investigations of detainee abuse."

The move is a complete 180. In a letter from the Justice Department to a federal judge on April 23, the Obama administration announced that the Pentagon would turn over 44 photographs showing detainee abuse of prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq during the Bush administration.

In other words, the Obama administration is going to fight against releasing the photos even if it means going to court and even if it means opposing the ACLU.

This is a good decision. Indeed, in almost every instance where the president has flipped I think he's come down on the side of doing the right thing, but it's worrisome that he could not see it was the right thing until after he had made so much political hay promising the left he would do the wrong thing. Did he really think through those promises before he made them or was he just iterating the knee-jerk positions of his leftist constituency? Do his tergiversations suggest that the president is intellectually gifted or intellectually lazy?

If it is the first we have cause to be hopeful. If it's the second we have cause to be alarmed.

RLC

SCOTUS Pick

There's been much speculation as to who President Obama will pick to replace David Souter on the Supreme Court. There seems to be agreement that the nominee will probably be a woman, an African-American, someone relatively young with legal experience and leftist views of the importance of the Constitution.

Given all this there's one obvious candidate who meets all the criteria and who would have the nomination simply by asking, yet her name has never been mentioned: Mrs. Obama. You heard it here first.

RLC

Saving What's Left

New Scientist comments upon the parlous state in which many species of birds find themselves due primarily to the loss of their habitat:

Darwin would not be amused. A bird native to the Galapagos islands, the medium tree-finch, this year joined 191 other bird species newly added to the critically endangered list, the roster of the world's most threatened species.

But while the medium-tree finch is in jeopardy because of parasitic flies introduced to the islands, most of the species on this year's red list of threatened species are imperiled by inexorable loss of their habitat.

There was some good news, however, with six critically endangered species downgraded to "endangered". Some owed their reclassification to successful conservation programmes. The threat to the Mauritius Fody, for example, was lifted by moving the remaining birds to an island off Mauritius free of predators.

Another success story is Brazil's Lear's macaw, named after the English nonsense poet Edward Lear. The spectacular parrot has increased fourfold in number through a joint programme involving the Brazilian government, local landowners and conservation organisations.

Aside from habitat loss and predation, the other ominous factor is the impact of climate change, says Fowlie. Mountain-living birds, for example, would die out if the climate they rely on shifts north or south to non-mountainous zones.

Lear's Macaw

I confess to being very conflicted every time I drive around my county and see the huge swaths of land being gobbled up for housing, highways and shopping malls. I find myself having to fight the temptation to be inwardly pleased that the economy is slowing down and housing starts are depressed. I keep asking myself if it isn't wrong to view the reduced pace of the loss of natural lands as a silver lining to the economic crisis.

I know the economic slump is costing people jobs, and that's the source of my inner conflict. I don't want anyone to be out of work, but neither do I want to see our beautiful countryside and crucial habitat buried under vast deposits of asphalt and cinder block.

If I had my way I think I'd preserve it all and require that all new building be done in areas that are already developed, like our cities and the empty malls that long ago closed their doors.

Don't bother to write to tell me how impractical that is. I know it is. That's why I'll never have my way.

RLC

Chuck Defarge

Here was Democrat senator Chuck Schumer in 2004 when the sobriety imposed upon our political class by 9/11 still had some residual influence:

"Do what you have to do." Gosh. That sounds like Senator Schumer is saying that if the government has reason to believe that a catastrophe can be averted by squeezing information out of a terrorist then most of his colleagues and he himself would advocate extreme methods of interrogation, methods much more gruesome, one assumes, than waterboarding or sleep deprivation.

But that was then. Now the Madame Defarges of the Democratic party, as Michael Barone aptly refers to them, are cackling with glee at the prospect of Bush officials being carted off to the guillotines. So here is the same Chuck Schumer a month ago:

Let's be charitable and decline to call this hypocrisy. Let's just think of it as moral and logical incoherence. Chuck Schumer like Nancy Pelosi and a host of others in their party were in favor of "enhanced" interrogation before they were against it.

So what's different now from then? The chance to avenge themselves on the Bush administration has presented itself to the Democrats who have gained congressional majorities and control of the White House, so they're seizing the opportunity. They've got their knitting needles working furiously, weaving into the sweater as many names of the people they hate as they can.

Thanks to Hot Air for the videos.

RLC

Thirteen Mysteries

If you're into science you might find this article by Michael Brooks at New Scientist interesting. Brooks lists thirteen mysteries that have (mostly) cosmologists and physicists baffled. To give you a sample here's #9:

It's one of the most famous, and most embarrassing, problems in physics. In 1998, astronomers discovered that the universe is expanding at ever faster speeds. It's an effect still searching for a cause - until then, everyone thought the universe's expansion was slowing down after the big bang. "Theorists are still floundering around, looking for a sensible explanation," says cosmologist Katherine Freese of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. "We're all hoping that upcoming observations of supernovae, of clusters of galaxies and so on will give us more clues."

One suggestion is that some property of empty space is responsible - cosmologists call it dark energy. But all attempts to pin it down have fallen woefully short. It's also possible that Einstein's theory of general relativity may need to be tweaked when applied to the very largest scales of the universe. "The field is still wide open," Freese says.

I have to say that I think cosmologists are much more confident that dark energy is the culprit than what this article suggests. I wrote about this phenomenon last December. After discussing what dark energy is believed to be doing to the universe I mentioned that the most fascinating thing about it is this:

Scientists have determined that the amount of dark energy present in the universe cannot vary from the actual value by more than one part in 10(120). That's a one with 120 zeroes after it. If it did deviate from its actual value by more than this amount life would not be able to exist in the universe that would result. That is an unimaginably precise setting. It's the equivalent of the mass of a billionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of the mass of a single electron.

What an amazing thing that this dark energy is calibrated to just the right value to allow life to survive. What an extraordinary amount of blind faith it takes to think that it's just a lucky accident.

The biggest mystery about dark energy, it seems to me, is not what it is but rather how it came to be so exquisitely calibrated. Or maybe that's only a mystery for materialists.

RLC

Wouldn't You Know

Okay. I knew it would happen. As soon as I made the comment that I hadn't heard of any conservative making a joke about killing those in the political opposition, or words to that effect, along comes the first instance of it in my memory and puts egg on my face.

A sportscaster told an unfunny and pathetic "joke" and conservative radio talk show host Mark Davis allegedly repeated it with alleged approval. I use the qualifier "alleged" because I didn't hear it myself, but am relying on Camille Paglia's description:

Two days after watching "Seven Days in May," I was utterly horrified to hear Dallas-based talk show host Mark Davis, subbing for Rush Limbaugh, laughingly and approvingly read a passage from a Dallas magazine article by CBS sportscaster David Feherty claiming that "any U.S. soldier," given a gun with two bullets and stuck in an elevator with Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Osama bin Laden, would use both bullets on Pelosi and strangle the other two. How have we come to this pass in America where the assassination of top government officials is fodder for snide jokes on national radio?

Paglia is right to be upset by this. So am I. This sort of talk should have no place in our public discourse. Wishing or even joking about the suffering and/or death of one's opponents is reprehensible and disgusting whether it's Wanda Sykes telling the sick joke or David Feherty (whoever he is). Moreover, those who laugh at these gibes, whether it's Barack Obama and the Washington press corps, or a conservative talk show host, evince a serious and unpleasant character flaw that should invite our disdain for the flaw and our prayers for the offender.

RLC

Hope He Dies

In 1994 a journalist named Julianne Malveaux distinguished herself by admitting that she hoped Clarence Thomas would develop heart disease and die. More recently Bill Maher lamented that an assassination plot against Dick Cheney during a visit to Afghanistan had been foiled. During the Bush years a a novel was written that fantasized his assassination. Now an alleged comedienne named Wanda Sykes not only calls Rush Limbaugh a traitor and a terrorist, which trivializes both, but adds that she wishes he'd suffer kidney failure.

The remark was despicable enough, but did our president and the audience have to laugh at it? What kind of people are these that they find talk of the death of their political opponents so hilarious?

I know I ask this question a lot, but this video clip just demands that I ask it again. Can you imagine the press reaction had a conservative said something this vicious, this stupid, this cruel about a Democrat? Have you ever seen a Republican president laugh when someone says in his presence that he hopes some Democrat suffers a fatal illness? Come to think of it have you ever heard a conservative say anything like this? Me neither. It's not that conservatives have so much class, it's that liberals, are at least too many of them, have so little.

For more on this see Kathryn Lopez at NRO.

RLC

Power of the Happy Man

Jason sent us a link to an essay by Peggy Noonan on the late Jack Kemp. Like much of what Noonan writes it is graceful and touching. Kemp was a political role model, one who is emulated too infrequently but whose example, if followed, could have a powerful impact on an electorate that seems to be wearying of the politics of humorless viciousness.

Kemp was driven by two things: the power of ideas and a genuine concern for the poor. He believed that the way to help the poor was not just by giving them stuff, which never works, but by giving others the incentive to offer opportunities for the poor to work their way out of their poverty.

Here are a couple of paragraphs:

Kemp was the kind of person politics wants more of, the kind who remind us that it is a great profession, that at its best it is a calling, an actual vocation. We all know politicians who are cynical, and whose interaction with the public leaves them convinced of their superiority. Kemp was the opposite. As his son Jimmy said this week, "My father didn't think people were the problem but the solution." He believed people had talent, dynamism, brilliance and hunger, and a good government was one that did not thwart but helped them, through sound policy, to become what God built them to be.

Jack knew how to lead. He spoke of ideas with affability and authenticity. He wasn't angry and dark and simmering, didn't glower. He had the power of the happy man. "Sometimes now the cost of admission into politics is bitterness, bile and guile," said the pollster Kellyanne Conway. He was old-style, and humane. Ms. Conway got her first job in politics as an intern in Kemp's office. "Who are you?" he once said. "I'm just an intern here," she said. "No one is just an intern here," he replied. He saw politics as a team sport, assigned, delegated and promoted from within. In all the years Ms. Conway knew him, she never heard him ask what the polls were saying. When he ran as Bob Dole's vice presidential nominee in 1996, he flopped as a hatchet man. It wasn't in his DNA.

I hope you'll read the rest of Noonan's column. It paints an image of a man we might wish all our political leaders would pattern themselves after.

RLC

Flip Flops

Mona Charen tells us that the Obama administration is reversing itself on many of the national security positions it took during the campaign. Having soundly and frequently rebuked the Bush administration for warrantless surveillance, Guantanamo, denial of trials to detainees, military tribunals, and other assorted crimes against humanity, it looks like Obama is quietly pursuing the same policies, and may even decide to keep Gitmo open for business:

You won't find it on the front pages, but the Obama administration has been walking back its position on many national-security questions. Attorney General Eric Holder has asserted that the U.S. has the right to hold suspected terrorists without charges. Solicitor General Elena Kagan has reiterated that position. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates recently told Congress that military commissions were "still very much on the table," and rumor has it that the Obama administration will soon formally reverse itself on Guant�namo.

The New York Times reported that "Officials who work on the Guantanamo issue say administration lawyers have become concerned that they would face significant obstacles to trying some terrorism suspects in federal courts. Judges might make it difficult to prosecute detainees who were subjected to brutal treatment or for prosecutors to use hearsay evidence gathered by intelligence agencies." No kidding? Not only that, but not a single detainee was read his Miranda rights when he was taken into custody.

Additionally, Congress is balking at letting Guantanamo's inmates anywhere near their hometowns. Sen. Dianne Feinstein even put Alcatraz off limits. "It's a national park and tourist attraction," she explained.

Former senator Rick Santorum, now with the Ethics and Public Policy Center, has been keeping an eye on other national-security flips by the new president. Remember how Obama had lambasted the Bush administration for relying on the "state secrets" privilege? The Obama Justice Department has already invoked the doctrine twice - most recently to defend the National Security Agency's surveillance of communications. The Justice Department explained that "attempting to address the allegations in this case could require the disclosure of intelligence sources and methods that are used in a lawful manner to protect national security. The administration cannot risk the disclosure of information that could cause such exceptional harm . . . " Query to the ACLU: Does that mean the Obama administration is "shredding the Constitution"?

It would be a lot easier to commend the president for bending to reason and choosing to follow the Bush polices were it not for the fact that he has been so contemptuous of those very policies and the people who implemented them. Instead of seeming wise he comes across like a callow teenager who takes shots at his elders on matters he scarcely comprehends and then is startled to learn that the most sensible course is to do the very things he condemned and derided others for doing.

A bigger man would publicly acknowledge his misjudgment and admit that Bush was correct after all.

RLC

Suspicious Minds

Uh oh. There's something fishy about that $328,000 photo of Air Force One over New York. Actually there are several things fishy. The folks here are saying that for some reason the White House's story doesn't add up and that the Obama administration isn't being straight up with us about this fiasco. Imagine that.

I don't know whether there's more to this that we aren't being told - after all this is the most transparent administration in history - but I have to say that there are some puzzling questions being raised, some of which had occurred to me but which I never really thought much about (Like why did the photo have to be done when it was and why is it of such amateurish quality?).

Anyway, check it out. It'll satisfy your minimum daily requirement for suspiciousness.

RLC

Unconditional Love

Dennis Prager is always worth reading and this recent column is no exception. In it he discusses the significance of the fact that English is the only major language that has the concept of "to earn":

One of the reasons for the ascendance of the English-speaking world has been that the English language is almost alone among major languages in having the word "earn." Those of us whose native language is English assume that the phrase "to earn a living" is universal. It isn't. It is almost unique to English. Few languages have the ability to say this.

In the Romance languages, for example - a list that includes such major languages as Spanish, French, and Italian -- the word used when saying someone "earns" money, is "ganar" in Spanish, "gagner" in French. The word literally means "to win." In Hebrew the word "marveach" means "profits." In German, the word "verdient" means "deserves."

Obviously, it is very different to "win" or to "deserve" or to "profit" than to "earn."

Since the 1960s-'70s, a concerted effort has been made to weed the word, and therefore the cultural value, of "earning" from American life. Increasingly little is earned. Instead of earning, we are increasingly owed, or we have more rights, or we are simply given.

Many American kids no longer earn awards or trophies for athletic success. They are given trophies and awards for showing up. These trophies are not earned, just granted -- essentially for breathing.

This is a good insight and I think there's a lot to it. Prager then builds on the idea of "earning something" by launching an interesting disquisition on the concept of unconditional love:

Another increasingly widespread concept that undermines the notion of earning is "unconditional love." The term, which was barely used prior to the 1960s, is now ubiquitous. It is a prominent goal, a human ideal to strive for. The idea of having to earn love is more than unheard of today; it would strike most moderns as morally suspect.

We expect unconditional love not only from parents to babies and toddlers, but to children of any age, no matter how they act. Parental unconditional love means that all people, no matter how disgracefully they act --- even toward a parent -- and no matter how old they are, must be shown infinite love from their parents. Parental love is never to be earned, always to be given.

We expect God to show unconditional love to all people, again no matter how they act. According to the doctrine of divine unconditional love, God loves sadists as much as He loves the kindest individuals. No one earns God's love; we receive it, like sports trophies, for breathing. Many fine people believe this about God, but I think it is religio-cultural-specific, and non-biblical. In 15 years of study in a yeshiva I had never heard the phrase, and it would have struck me, as it still does, as quite odd. It depicts God as a love machine who, like an air-conditioner that emits the same amount of cold air no matter how the inhabitants of a house act, emits the same amount of love no matter we act. It means that we in no way influence God's love for us. I don't find that comforting. And it is certainly no more likely to induce decent behavior in human beings than a God who does show conditional love based on human decency.

Here I think Prager slips. The Christian doctrine of the atonement is, I think, a paradigmatic example of unconditional love. It's predicated upon nothing that man deserves. God suffers and dies in Christ as a profound demonstration of his love for us and to pay the price for man's betrayal and infidelity. As a consequence each person is offered the gift of forgiveness and reconciliation to God. That seems to me to be an act of pure agape, or unconditional love. Of course, whether we accept that gift is up to us, and many people choose to reject it. God doesn't force it on them, but that He nevertheless makes it available to them is an act, I think, of pure unconditional love.

Prager has more to say about this, which you can read at the link, but the matter of forgiveness leads into the next part of his essay.

We also expect forgiveness to be given without being earned. Many people believe in what I call automatic forgiveness -- the obligation to forgive anyone any crime, committed against anyone, no matter how many victims and no matter how removed from my life. Thus the pastor of a church attended by then-President Bill Clinton told the president and all others at a Sunday service that all Christians were obligated to forgive Timothy McVeigh, the terrorist murderer of 168 people. Did McVeigh earn this forgiveness? Of course not. So where did the notion of unearned forgiveness come from, especially unearned forgiveness from people who were not the victims of the evil being forgiven? It is one thing for me to forgive those who have hurt me; it is quite another for others to forgive those who have hurt me. God Himself demands that we earn forgiveness. The term for that is repentance. No repentance, no forgiveness.

Here I think Prager is exactly right. Few things sound sillier to me than someone who lost nothing and no one in the 9/11 terror proclaiming that they forgive the terrorists. Who do such people think they are?

What does it mean to forgive someone who has done you no harm, anyway? To forgive a person does not mean to forget what they did, it means to not hold what they did against them - to not demand retribution. If someone murders another person's loved one it's simply absurd for a third individual, who had no connection to any of the people involved, to say that he forgives the murderer.

Finally, the increasingly powerful culture of entitlement and rights further undermines the value of earning anything. The more the state gives to its citizens, the less they have to earn. That is the basic concept of the welfare state -- you receive almost everything you need without having to earn any of it. About half of Americans now pay no federal income tax -- but they receive all government benefits just as if they had paid for, i.e., earned, them.

America became a great civilization thanks to a culture based on the value of having to earn almost everything an American got in life. As it abandons this value, it will become a mediocre civilization. And eventually it will not be America. It will be a large Sweden, and just as influential as the smaller one.

I think Prager is right about this, as well. We should be compassionate with those less fortunate, but it should be made clear to everyone involved that our largesse is the fruit of compassion and is not an entitlement. When people think they're entitled to the contents of your wallet the desire to help them dwindles as rapidly as resentment toward them rises.

It's a major difference between conservatives and liberals that conservatives see a sense of entitlement as a serious flaw in social welfare programs and liberals seem to be relatively unconcerned about it. Most liberals would be indifferent to your right to decide whether to keep and how to dispose of what you earned and they're much more inclined to think that those who have earned little are somehow entitled to have a share of what you have worked hard for.

RLC

About Time

An article at Foreign Policy by Christian Brose notes that Australia has gazed at the tea leaves and concluded that the United States, especially under the current administration, is no longer much inclined to use military force to protect its allies and that it's time for Australia to start building up its defenses.

After listing the upgrades Australia is undertaking (and under a very leftist prime minister, no less) Brose goes on to write:

But why is it a bad thing for our allies to strengthen their defenses? .... I see the Australian white paper as a reason to be optimistic that America's relative decline can be managed in a smart way that leaves us in a good strategic position. Westhawk puts his finger on one reason why:

"If the Australian defense ministry can reach these conclusions [that the U.S. is a declining power], why shouldn't the Japanese, South Korean, Taiwanese, Indonesian, Vietnamese, Singaporean, Indian, and Russian defense ministries also formulate these same planning assumptions?.... The greatest loser from such a chain reaction would be China."

I'd go even further. The United States should want the Indians, and the Japanese, and the South Koreans, and the Indonesians to reach the same conclusions. We should actively encourage them to reach the same conclusions. And that goes for our NATO allies as well. (The Russians, not so much.) We should work to get more and more of America's like-minded allies investing in the capabilities to shoulder a greater share of our collective defense. And to that end, the perception that the "unipolar moment" is passing can actually play in our favor, as will the fact that China's "peaceful rise" remains an open question at best.

Brose is right, I think. It is time our allies started carrying more of the burden of our common defense. Europe, for example, has evolved into a continent-wide welfare state largely because they've had the luxury of not having to spend large sums of money on their militaries as long as the U.S. was guaranteeing their safety. It's time, though, that Europe stopped acting like the guy who mooches off his parents well into his thirties and never moves out on his own. Let the Europeans follow Australia's example and provide for their own security. Except for Britain and Poland they haven't been much help to us when we needed them anyway.

HT: PostModern Conservative

RLC

Post-Christian?

Stephen Prothero, chair of the Department of Religion at Boston University, argues that claims that the United States is a "post-Christian" nation are simply false.

He points out that the vast majority of people in this country self-identify as Christian:

What the data do not tell us is that the United States is becoming "post-Christian." If you meet a random American walking down the street, the odds are only one in 62 that he or she will self-identify as atheist or agnostic. And even if we accept the ARIS survey as gospel, the United States today has more Christians than any other country in human history. The current U.S. population is more Christian than Israel is Jewish and Utah is Mormon. Meanwhile, Christianity remains, for good or for ill, a vital political force, not just on the right but also on the left, and the Christian Bible remains the scripture of American politics, invoked thousands of times a year on the floor of the U.S. Congress.

[B]orn-again Christians,... now constitute 34% of the U.S. population. The "non-denominational Christian" category that populates U.S. megachurches has exploded from under 200,000 in 1990 to 2.5 million in 2001 to in excess of 8 million today.

The problem, though, is that whether this nation is Christian or post-Christian should not be measured by the religious sentiments of the masses. The religious status of this country is actually a function of the attitudes of its cultural elite. The university professors, artists, scientists, media personalities, the people who make our movies, our music, and write our books, politicians, professionals (doctors, lawyers, journalists, clergy) and wealthy businessmen.

The elite shape the culture and put their stamp upon it. It's their religious sentiments that matter and any attempt to determine the extent of religious influence in this country that focuses on the beliefs of the common folk is pretty much beside the point. As far as I know the cultural elite have never been subjected to the kind of analysis that would tell us definitively what their views are. Nevertheless, I think that if we look even cursorily at the products our culture is turning out it would be pretty hard to think that the U.S. is still a Christian nation.

Consider the hostility of the pop culture to anyone who on religious principle takes a stand that conflicts with progressive orthodoxies. Look at how the culture has savaged Carrie Prejean and Sarah Palin. Consider how people who embrace "traditional" values, who are pro-life, opposed to gay marriage, sympathetic to intelligent design, and who actually go to church on Sunday are depicted by the entertainment media.

There is, furthermore, reason to believe that the ground is being prepared in much of the Western world, and even here in America, to make Christian conviction an automatic disqualification for engagement in the public square.

But beyond all that, I wonder how many, even among the masses, are serious about their religious affiliation. Being a Christian is more than just being a CHINO (Christian In Name Only). Most people when asked about their affiliation will name the church they had their children baptized into, but that identity makes no real difference to them in the decisions of their everyday life. For many people, God is like a parent who lives on the other side of the country and who one gets to see maybe at Christmas and Easter but who has little input into how they manage their daily affairs.

At any rate, a survey of American religious convictions that fails to go beyond a simple affiliation question is neither informative nor useful.

RLC

Which Party Is More Ideologically Diverse?

Former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum has an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer in which he challenges the media meme that the GOP is too narrow and intolerant of diverse views to be a national party. Santorum points out some inconvenient truths:

According to the American Conservative Union, in 2008, only two of the 51 Senate Democrats had conservative ratings above 25 percent. But 21 of the 49 Republican senators had conservative ratings of 75 percent or less.

This means that the senate Republicans are much closer to the ideological center than are the Democrats. Here's further confirmation that the most ideologically rigid party is the Democrat party:

Furthermore, 12 Democrats had a conservative rating of zero, while an additional 25 scored under 10 percent. By contrast, only one Republican scored a perfect 100, and a scant seven others scored above 90 percent. (Note that Pennsylvania's other "moderate" senator has a conservative rating of 8 percent.)

I spent 12 years in the Senate. It has one doctrinaire, narrow, intolerant caucus, and Specter just joined it.

In fact, Specter's ACU rating of 44% makes him the most conservative Democrat in the senate. It's amazing that despite the obvious ideological imbalance in the Democratic party the media and others are insisting that it's the Republicans who need to become more diverse. It'd be nice if they'd check the relevant facts and figures once in a while before they write their stories.

RLC

Those Anti-Intellectual Republicans

This video shows why people have so little respect for both politicians and media talking heads. Republican Congressman Mike Pence, an otherwise admirable man, simply doesn't know how to answer a question that probably 99% of people in Congress wouldn't know how to answer, but instead of admitting that he hasn't really given the matter much thought he bobs and weaves and temporizes hoping that the clock will run out and rescue him from Chris Matthews' hectoring. It's not his finest hour.

Matthews, on the other hand, doesn't know any more than Pence, and probably wouldn't understand a reasonable answer to his question if Pence had given him one. The host of Hardball claims that there are people in the GOP who oppose stem cell research, but I challenge him to name one. His assertion is completely uninformed. There are people who oppose embryonic stem cell research, to be sure, but that's hardly the same thing as opposing stem cell research. He later avers that some Republicans believe that liberal scientists have "planted" fossils in order to provide confirmation of evolutionary theory, a notion that is certainly a revelation to me. I have never heard of anyone who believes such a ridiculous hypothesis except, of course, for those scholars who freely acknowledge that exactly this was done in the case of the Piltdown hoax (c.1912).

Anyway, I was hoping Pence would ask Matthews to define "evolution." That would have ended the matter right then, I suspect, because I doubt that Matthews could have given a non-trivial response to the request. Anyone who believes that the debate today over evolution is between science and religion, as Matthews apparently does, simply doesn't understand the issues. If Matthews was able to give an adequate definition of what he meant by evolution he would have had to define it in such a way as to make Pence's objections to it seem perfectly reasonable to the majority of his viewers. But, alas, Mr. Pence didn't ask for the definition. Too bad. It would've been fun to watch.

It would've been even more fun if Pence had thought to ask Matthews, who is a Catholic, if he believed in transubstantiation, the immaculate conception, the assumption of the virgin Mary, or papal infallibility. If Matthews affirmed these doctrines of his Church Pence might have then asked his audience to judge whether such beliefs are more scientifically plausible than the belief that the universe and life show evidence of intentional engineering.

RLC

Man Without Conviction

Remember the old Boy George tune, Karma Chameleon? It could've been written about Arlen Specter.

It must be plain by now even to someone who has been on a space voyage for the last twenty years that the senator is a man without principles. He announced Tuesday that he wanted the courts to declare Minnesota senator Norm Coleman the winner in his prolonged contest with Democrat Al Franken and then realized that this wouldn't set well with his new brethren in the Democratic party, so before you could say "so long seniority" he started backpedalling.

It didn't matter, though. His new friends in the Democratic party stripped him of his seniority anyway, and now poor Arlen is about as consequential as a midget in the NBA.

Senator Specter's explanation for his moonwalk away from Coleman is precious:

"In the swirl of moving from one caucus to another, I have to get used to my new teammates," Specter said. "I'm ordinarily pretty correct in what I say. I've made a career of being precise. I conclusively misspoke."

In other words, he's made a career of knowing what to say and what to do in order to get himself elected, but somehow in this instance he lost his focus. We can be assured it won't happen again.

RLC

Gay Marriage and Black Outrage

African-American ministers are incensed at the decision of the District of Columbia City Council to recognize gay marriages performed elsewhere - Marion Barry, succumbing to the temptation to hyperbole, predicts a "civil war" - but I don't know why these gentlemen are blaming the Council. They should be incensed at their own parishioners. Blacks vote Democratic at rates in excess of 9 to 1. If African-Americans are going to vote for liberals they can hardly fault them for doing what liberals do. Until socially conservative blacks realize that the Democratic party is the very last organization that will defend socially conservative policies black ministers are going to find themselves with lots to keep their outrage occupied.

RLC

Momentous Day

Israel's prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu is scheduled to meet with administration officials on May 18th and it's expected that there will be fireworks. According to DEBKAFile President Obama intends to radically restructure our relationship with Israel in ways that the Israelis are almost certain to find objectionable.

There's cause for concern in this. If Israel refuses to accept American terms for accommodating Arab demands President Obama may well set the Israelis off on their own, leaving them vulnerable to an Iranian attack through their Hezbollah and Syrian proxies.

His glowing press notwithstanding, the president has yet to accomplish anything of substance abroad, so a lot rides on the upcoming talks, both for the U.S. and for Israel. Indeed, the paramount concern is that the sixty year friendship we've had with each other is suddenly, with the advent of the new administration, on the rocks.

May 18th could be a momentous day in the history of that relationship.

RLC

Barack Soprano

According to this report by John Carney Barack Obama is a smooth-talking version of a crime boss. I don't know if these allegations are true, but they're very serious and they come from several sources, all of whom voted for Obama:

Creditors to Chrysler describe negotiations with the company and the Obama administration as "a farce," saying the administration was bent on forcing their hands using hardball tactics and threats. Conversations with administration officials left them expecting that they would be politically targeted, two participants in the negotiations said.

Although the focus has so far been on allegations that the White House threatened [the firm] Perella Weinberg, sources familiar with the matter say that other firms felt they were threatened as well. None of the sources would agree to speak except on the condition of anonymity, citing fear of political repercussions.

The sources, who represent creditors to Chrysler, say they were taken aback by the hardball tactics that the Obama administration employed to cajole them into acquiescing to plans to restructure Chrysler. One person described the administration as the most shocking "end justifies the means" group they have ever encountered. Another characterized Obama as "the most dangerous smooth talker on the planet- and I knew Kissinger." Both were voters for Obama in the last election.

One participant in negotiations said that the administration's tactic was to present what one described as a "madman theory of the presidency" in which the President is someone to be feared because he was willing to do anything to get his way. The person said this threat was taken very seriously by his firm.

The White House has denied the allegation that it threatened Perella Weinberg.

Last week Obama singled out the firms that continue to oppose his plan for Chrysler, saying he would not stand with them. Perella Weinberg says it was convinced to support the plan by this stark drawing of a line between firms that have the president's backing and those that did not. They didn't want to be on the wrong side of Obama. Privately, administration officials have expressed confidence that other firms will switch sides for this reason.

These allegations add to the picture of an administration willing to use intimidation to win over support for its Chrysler plans--and then categorically deny it.

As I understand this these firms are holding debt that Chrysler owes and the Obama administration is strong-arming them to eat the debt so that Chrysler can survive and its union employees can keep their the pension and health care benefits that are largely responsible for driving Chrysler to the brink of insolvency in the first place. In other words, the lending institutions have to shaft their stockholders so that Obama's supporters in the UAW don't get hurt. If they don't then Obama can't guarantee their safety, so to speak.

Isn't anyone in the major media concerned that a president of the United States would abuse his power to coerce private citizens by threatening them with public embarrassment if they don't go along with his policies? Can you imagine the outcry had Bush done something like this?

I repeat that I don't know whether these allegations are correct, but if they are it should cause us to be deeply concerned about the kind of man we've elected to the Oval Office. Recall during the campaign when candidate Obama called for the creation of a civilian security force that would be, in effect, his own private army. The media almost completely ignored this bizarre suggestion, but in light of the tactics he's allegedly using to gain control of the private sector there certainly seems to be reason to wonder whether this man is what most of those who voted for him thought he was.

RLC

Two Philosophies

The back-and-forth over Senator Arlen Specter's party switch has stirred a couple of thoughts on the matter of how we should look at politics and what our philosophy of governance should be.

Basically, there are two ways to view politics: We can look at it as a game in which two sides compete for the prize of wielding power and garnering benefits for their team, or we can look at it as a moral calling to do what's in the best interests of the people of the United States. Much of the media commentary in the wake of Specter's jump to the Democrat party gives the impression that most people think of politics in the first way rather than the second. This, I think, is unfortuante.

People are saying the GOP needs to be broader in order to attract more young people, more pro-choicers, more blacks, etc. A party that has no room for an Arlen Specter, we're told, doesn't have a very big tent and is on the road to irrelevance and eventual extinction.

This strikes me as exactly wrong. In the first place there's no call from the media for Democrats to cast a wider net to attract conservatives into their party. How much diversity of opinion is there among congressional Democrats? How many social and/or fiscal conservatives are among that party's leadership?

But set that aside. The claim that needs to be addressed is that Specter's defection shows the Republican party must, if it is to save itself, become more like the Democrat party. In other words, what matters to those who are calling for the GOP to broaden their base of support is not principles but electoral success. When we unpack the arguments what we find is an appeal to Republicans not to let their convictions stand in the way of political expediency.

Not just liberals in the media but even many Republicans are saying that the party must get over it's infatuation with the policies of Ronald Reagan and get rid of Sarah Palin and other social conservatives. The party needs to drop its opposition, it is insisted, to abortion on demand and gay marriage, and it has to stop trying to mollify Christians. As long as these people have a say in deciding what the party stands for the party will never attract young people, blacks, or gays.

I think this is all shamefully wrong-headed. Political parties should stand for distinct philosophies of governance, and their differences should be clear to the voters. The electorate should be able to choose between clear alternatives which set of principles they wish to be governed by. If the people decide that they prefer liberal social, economic, and foreign policies to those advanced by conservatives, or vice-versa, they should know which party's candidates are most likely to stand for those policies.

That's how a republic works. We should be disgusted by politicians who say one thing to get elected and then govern differently. We should be disgusted by politicians who masquerade as people who hold one set of principles but really hold another. Some say that the people will always vote for those who promise to ease their way through life by showering benefits upon them rather than those who tell them the truth and insist they "take their medicine." They argue that if the GOP does the latter it will go the way of the Whig party. Maybe so, but if our electorate has degenerated to the point where all it wants is a government that usurps the freedoms that have been our birthright in exchange for pampering us from cradle to the grave, if the American people are that uneducated and self-centered that they will vote for whoever promises them the most goodies, then our democracy is on life support in any event.

Arlen Specter has always been moderate to liberal. As such he belongs in the Democratic party. If his switch hurts the GOP, and it does, so be it. Let's be principled and let's be honest. Deceiving the voters cannot be good for the health of our system of government. Let's have parties that clearly stand for something and let's not blur the distinctions. Least of all let's not yield to those who tell us that winning elections is more important than what we believe in.

RLC

Notre Dame and the Value of Life

Notre Dame alum Lacy Dodd offers a poignant autobiographical account of a young woman's anguish over an unwanted pregnancy. It's the kind of story that doesn't receive much publicity in the Big Media, but it should. It's also a story, though it hardly mentions it until the end, about Notre Dame's decision to invite Barack Obama to give the commencement address this year and confer upon him an honorary Doctor of Laws degree.

Here's her opening:

For many members of the Notre Dame Class of 2009, the uproar surrounding the university's decision to honor Barack Obama with this year's commencement address, and to bestow on him a doctorate of laws, has provoked strong feelings about what the ensuing conflict will mean for their graduation.

I know how they feel. Ten years ago, my heart was filled with similar conflicts as we came closer to the day of my own Notre Dame commencement and my commissioning as an officer in the United States Army.

You see, I was three months pregnant.

Dodd's last paragraph is like a stilleto to the heart of the rationale for extending an invitation to President Obama to be honored by the university. Give it a read.

RLC

Imposing Morality

Former CIA agent Michael Scheuer spares neither Bush nor Obama in this hard-to-argue-with assessment of President Obama's decision to remove "harsh interrogations" from that diminishing set of tools we use to protect our children from the grisly deaths that Islamic terrorists have in store for them:

Americans should be clear on what Obama has done. In a breathtaking display of self-righteousness and intellectual arrogance, the president told Americans that his personal beliefs are more important than protecting their country, their homes and their families. The interrogation techniques in question, the president asserted, are a sign that Americans have lost their "moral compass," a compliment similar to Attorney General Eric Holder's identifying them as "moral cowards."

Mulling Obama's claim, one can wonder what could be more moral for a president than doing all that is needed to defend America and its citizens? Or, asked another way, is it moral for the president of the United States to abandon intelligence tools that have saved the lives and property of Americans and their allies in favor of his own ideological beliefs?

Before enthroning Obama's personal morality as U.S. defense policy, of course, some dirty work had to be done. Last Sunday, Obama's hit man and White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel led the charge by telling the American people that the interrogation techniques are a major recruiting tool for al-Qaeda and its Islamist partners. Well, no, Mr. Emanuel, that is not at all the case. The techniques surely are not popular with our foes and their supporters -- should that be a concern in any event? -- but they do not even make the Islamists' hit parade of anti-U.S. recruiting tools. That list is headed by Washington's support for Arab tyrannies in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, its presence on the Arabian Peninsula and its unqualified support for Israel.

Still, Emanuel's statement surely sounded plausible to Americans who have received no education about our Islamist enemy's true motivation from Obama, George W. Bush, Clinton or George H.W. Bush.

True enough. It's ironic that among the favorite complaints of the Left about the religious Right is that they seek to impose their morality upon the rest of us and have no business doing such a thing. Yet Obama ratchets up the danger to all Americans by imposing his moral beliefs concerning the proper treatment of terrorists, and that's evidently just fine with the Left. I guess whether shoving one's beliefs down the throats of others is acceptable or not depends on the belief and who's doing the shoving.

Read the rest of Scheuer's blistering column at the link.

RLC

Why Women Should Marry Young

I read once that the divorce rate for teen-age marriages is asymptotically close to 100%. I don't know if this is true, but I'm sure the rate is high nonetheless. Even so, Mark Regnerus, a sociologist at the University of Texas, argues compellingly that we should marry young (though not that young) and that the trend toward waiting until the late twenties or thirties has several liabilities:

The average age of American men marrying for the first time is now 28. That's up five full years since 1970 and the oldest average since the Census Bureau started keeping track. If men weren't pulling women along with them on this upward swing, I wouldn't be complaining. But women are now taking that first plunge into matrimony at an older age as well. The age gap between spouses is narrowing: Marrying men and women were separated by an average of more than four years in 1890 and about 2.5 years in 1960. Now that figure stands at less than two years.

One obvious reason for not postponing marriage is that it gets harder for women as they get older to attract men whereas it actually gets easier for older men to attract younger women.

[A]ccording to social psychologists Roy Baumeister and Kathleen Vohs, women's "market value" declines steadily as they age, while men's tends to rise in step with their growing resources (that is, money and maturation). Countless studies -- and endless anecdotes -- reinforce their conclusion. Meanwhile, women's fertility is more or less fixed, yet they largely suppress it during their 20s -- their most fertile years -- only to have to beg, pray, borrow and pay to reclaim it in their 30s and 40s.

These are just two of the reasons Regnerus offers in support of his thesis that it's in a woman's interest to marry young. You'll have to read his essay to learn the others.

Meanwhile, I should mention that one of the best books I've read on this topic is George Gilder's Men and Marriage, a work published back in the 80s and one I can't recommend highly enough to anyone interested in the sociology of marriage. Gilder argues convincingly that the revolution in sexual mores of the last fifty years has actually devastated many young women and ruined their chances of a happy marriage. It's good stuff, as is the Regnerus article.

RLC

Pigs Fly

A student sent along this pun: Fifty years ago skeptics said that a black man would be elected president when pigs fly. Well, Barack Obama got elected president and three months later.......swine flu.

Okay. I apologize.

RLC

Jack Kemp, 1935-2009

Former professional quarterback, Congressman, cabinet secretary, vice-presidential candidate, and conservative theoretician Jack kemp died today after a long illness. He was 73.

Ed Morrissey says this: "Kemp had the courage to move beyond the usual issues for conservatives, choosing to work on poverty and housing issues, and challenging his fellow conservatives to make conservatism work across the board. It's one of the reasons why Kemp will be missed."

Kemp was the original "compassionate conservative" and many of his ideas for lifting the poor out of poverty are just as appealing today as ever.

RLC

Carrie Prejean Meets the New Fascists

There is a type of human being who delights in tearing down others, especially those who can't really fight back. These people are bullies, to be sure, but worse than that, they're people with rancid, hate-filled souls who make themselves feel good by smearing anyone better than themselves. The following video offers us two such specimens mocking a young woman who is not a politician, who didn't lie to the American people, who didn't cheat on her taxes, who didn't cause the economic crisis, who didn't thrust this nation into levels of debt it will never be able to pay. She's just a girl who was asked a bone-headed question in a beauty contest and attempted to give a polite, honest answer.

For this she was insulted, not only by the questioner, an epicene creature who fancies to call himself Perez Hilton, but also by two individuals on MSNBC whose emotional maturation seems to have come to a halt back when they were prepubescent 7th graders.

Imagine that this was your daughter these two exemplars of the modern Left were trashing and dragging through the slime on national television. If your daughter were asked her opinion of gay marriage and gave an answer like Miss Prejean's it very well could be.

We're beginning to see a pattern here from the Left. Joe the Plumber, Sarah Palin, the Tea Party-goers, Carrie Prejean, anyone, for that matter, who seems to be either a regular guy or have convictions based in Christian belief, can expect to be savaged by giggling, leering losers in the most vile and vicious manner on the Left-wing cable outlet, MSNBC. It really is contemptible, but that's more and more how the Left chooses to treat those with whom they disagree, especially on this station. All their enemies must be utterly destroyed. No one merits any respect who deviates from their progressive orthodoxy:

This is evidently how Leftist homosexuals like Musto and Hilton treat those who don't share their view of what marriage should be. Watching the video, a simple question popped into my mind: Would the world be a better place with more people like Carrie Prejean or more people like Michael Musto, Keith Olbermann, and Perez Hilton?

Here are a couple more questions: Has anyone heard any outrage from feminists over the treatment of this girl? No? Gee, wonder why. Can you imagine the sheer magnitude of the outrage had, say, Rush Limbaugh said something even a tenth this vile about some innocent young woman?

Lastly, if what Don Imus said about the Rutgers girls basketball team was bad enough to get him fired from his job what's Keith Olbermann doing still working for MSNBC? At MSNBC, apparently, no degree of vulgar effrontery is deemed inappropriate as long as it's directed at someone who holds opinions unacceptable to progressive sensibilities.

RLC

Irreconcilable Differences

There are some among the Darwinists who wish to affect a rapprochement between Darwinism and "Religion." They believe that religious people must be persuaded that they have nothing to fear from Darwinism so that they'll stop opposing it.

Now remember that "Darwinism" is not a synonym for "evolution," rather it's a synonym for materialistic or naturalistic evolution. It's the view that all of life can be completely explained in terms of unguided, unintelligent natural processes and forces.

The more militantly atheistic Darwinians are having none of what they see as an unnecessary appeasement of religious believers. I actually agree with the atheists and with Logan Gage at Evolution News and Views on this point. Darwinism, properly understood is simply incompatible with any notion that a supernatural mind played any role whatsoever in the emergence of life and its subsequent radiation, and the attempt to somehow reconcile naturalism with some version of theism is doomed to disappoint members of both camps.

If religious people wish to accommodate themselves to Darwinism they pretty much have to give up theism in favor of some sort of vague deism, and if atheists wish to suggest that Darwinism allows for a role for God, no matter how restricted, they have to change their definition of Darwinism. No theory that renders God irrelevant to the universe can be reconciled with theism and no theory that allows purpose and intelligence a role in the creation can be reconciled with naturalism or materialism.

I understand the desire to find a middle ground, but really there doesn't seem to be one. Either the universe is a contingent entity ultimately dependent upon a necessary being outside of itself, or it's not. That seems to exhaust all the possibilities.

RLC