The Quantum and Consciousness

Denyse O'Leary links us to this article on the quantum and this one on the intellectual inadequacy of materialism.

RLC

Cheap Labor

A local talk show host read this on air the other day. He claimed that it was written by a Californian of Hispanic ancestry, but I could find no corroboration of that. It doesn't matter, though, because the argument stands on its own merits. I've edited it slightly:

As you listen to the news about the student protests over illegal immigration, there are some things that you should be aware of.

I am in charge of the English-as-a-second-language department at a large southern California high school which is designated a Title I school, meaning that its students average lower socio-economic and income levels. Most of the schools you are hearing about, South Gate High, Bell Gardens, Huntington Park, etc., where these students are protesting, are also Title I schools.

Title I schools are on the free breakfast and free lunch program. When I say free breakfast, I'm not talking a glass of milk and roll, but a full breakfast and cereal bar with fruits and juices that would make a Marriott proud. The waste of this food is monumental, with trays and trays of it being dumped in the trash uneaten.

I estimate that well over 50% of these students are obese or at least moderately overweight. About 75% or more have cell phones. The school also provides day-care centers for the unwed teenage pregnant girls (some as young as 13) so they can attend class without the inconvenience of having to arrange for babysitters or having family watch their kids.

I was ordered to spend $700,000 on my department or risk losing funding for the upcoming year even though there was little need for anything; my budget was already substantial. I ended up buying new computers for the computer learning center, half of which, one month later, have been carved with graffiti by the appreciative students who obviously feel humbled and grateful to have a free education in America.

I have had to intervene several times for young and substitute teachers whose classes consist of many illegal immigrant students here in the country less then 3 months who raised so much hell with the female teachers, calling them "putas" (whores) and throwing things that the teachers were in tears.

Free medical, free education, free food, day care, etc. Is it any wonder they feel entitled to not only be in this country but to demand rights, privileges and entitlements?

To those who want to point out how much these illegal immigrants contribute to our society because they like their gardener and housekeeper, and they like to pay less for tomatoes: spend some time in the real world of illegal immigration and see the true costs.

Higher insurance, medical facilities closing, higher medical costs, more crime, lower standards of education in our schools, overcrowding, new diseases, etc. For me, I'll pay more for tomatoes.

We need to wake up. The guest worker program will be a disaster because we won't have the guts to enforce it.

Does anyone in their right mind really think [illegals] will voluntarily leave and return?

There are many hardworking Hispanic/American citizens that contribute to our country, and many that I consider my true friends. We should encourage and accept those Hispanics who have done it the right and legal way.

It does, however, have everything to do with culture: A third-world culture that does not value education, that accepts children getting pregnant and dropping out of school by 15, and that refuses to assimilate, and an American culture that has become so weak and worried about "politically correctness" that we don't have the will to do anything about it.

Cheap labor?

Isn't that what the whole immigration issue is about?

� Business doesn't want to pay a decent wage.

� Consumers don't want expensive produce.

� Government will tell you Americans don't want the jobs.

But the bottom line is cheap labor. The phrase "cheap labor" is a myth, a farce, and a lie. There is no such thing as "cheap labor".

Take, for example, an illegal alien with a wife and five children. He takes a job for $5.00 or $6.00/hour. At that wage, with six dependents, he pays no income tax, yet at the end of the year, if he files an Income Tax Return, he gets an "earned income credit" of up to $3,200 free.

� He qualifies for Section 8 housing and subsidized rent.

� He qualifies for food stamps.

� He qualifies for free (no deductible, no co-pay) health care.

� His children get free breakfasts and lunches at school.

� He requires bilingual teachers and books.

� He qualifies for relief from high energy bills.

� If they are, or become, aged, blind or disabled, they qualify for SSI.

� Once qualified for SSI, they can qualify for Medicare. All of this is at (our) taxpayer's expense.

� He doesn't worry about car insurance, life insurance, or homeowners insurance.

� Taxpayers provide Spanish language signs, bulletins and printed material.

� He and his family receive the equivalent of $20.00 to $30.00/hour in benefits.

� Working Americans are lucky to have $5.00 or $6.00/hour left after paying their bills.

� The American taxpayers also pay for increased crime, graffiti and trash clean-up.

Cheap labor?

Whew. And people are called racist and xenophobic for wanting to do what's necessary to put an end to this?

RLC

$22.5 Million to Catholic Education - From Atheist

How bad must the public school system be if an atheist is willing to bequeath $22.5 million so that kids can afford to attend Catholic schools? Here's the story:

Philanthropist and retired hedge-fund manager Robert W. Wilson said he is giving $22.5 million to the Archdiocese of New York to fund a scholarship program for needy inner-city students attending Roman Catholic schools.

Wilson, 80, said in a phone interview today that although he is an atheist, he has no problem donating money to a fund linked to Catholic schools.

``Let's face it, without the Roman Catholic Church, there would be no Western civilization,'' Wilson said. ``Shunning religious organizations would be abhorrent. Keep in mind, I'm helping to pay tuition. The money isn't going directly to the schools.''

My opinion is that the future of public schools in America is bleak. As Denyse O'Leary says, public schools used to be the protestant alternative to Catholic schools and they inculcated protestant virtues and discipline into students. In the last fifty years, however, they have almost completely abandoned this role and in many places they are little more than holding-pens. There's very little discipline, very little, if any, moral instruction, and precious little education taking place, at least among the lower academic half of the school population.

Unless the trajectory of the public schools is miraculously reversed parents in the years ahead will increasingly turn to private schools for their children's education, leaving public schools to devolve into day care for the poor and dysfunctional.

If liberals think there's an unjust disparity between rich and poor today, wait until they see what it'll be like after a couple of generations from now. In twenty to forty years almost the only people who will be getting an education will be the children of families who have the means to send them to private schools, and the irony will be that since almost all the problems besetting public schools are due to liberal innovation and policies, beginning in the late sixties, the radical divide between socio-economic classes will be one of their own making.

RLC

Reviewing the Review

The reviews of Michael Behe's new book The Edge of Evolution are starting to appear, and some of those coming from the Darwinians are vitriolic. This is not unexpected, of course, since Darwinists are often people of the ideological left, and the left can't seem to engage people in intellectual debate without taking every opportunity to demean, degrade, and insult.

A good example of this polemical slash and burn tactic is a review by computer scientist Mark Chu-Carroll.

Despite his considerable intellectual gifts Mr. Chu-Carroll has the emotional maturity of a fifth grader, and he's not shy about proving it. Here's his concluding paragraph:

[Behe] seems to be incapable of actually really thinking about an argument in any way deeper than asking "Does this agree with my conclusion?"; and even then, he doesn't seem capable of recognizing when an argument doesn't support his conclusion. It's really appalling. Frankly, I'm really shocked that this guy ever managed to get tenure anywhere - judging by his writing, he's not particularly bright; he's a remarkably disorganized and muddled thinker; and he's incapable of comprehending or responding to arguments made by other researchers.

This is typical of his style throughout the review, but the substance of his critique also leaves us wondering how carefully he read the book. He takes Behe to task, for instance, for stating that "there is strong evidence that random mutation is extremely limited" in what it can accomplish. Chu-Carroll says:

What I found astonishing here is that he asserts his conclusions in this paragraph as settled fact, without even attempting to cite any evidence. It's typical, but pathetic...But this incredible statement: that "there is strong evidence that random mutation is extremely limited", he doesn't even attempt to support.

But the entire book is given to providing the evidence for this claim, and remarkably enough, after having excoriated Behe for not citing the evidence, Chu-Carroll acknowledges that very fact:

The rest of the book focuses an [sic] this alleged problem: that random mutation is somehow constrained, and can't produce the necessary changes to explain the diversity of life.

It's not clear that Chu-Carroll has even read himself, let alone Behe.

Anyway, being a mathematician, Chu-Carroll chooses to focus the bulk of his criticism on Behe's use of fitness landscapes in chapter three of The Edge. I have no expertise in such matters and don't know whether Chu-Carroll is being fair to him or not, but the previous passage doesn't inspire confidence that he is. Nor do I really know how crucial the landscape models are to Behe's overall argument, but Chu-Carroll evidently thinks that if he's mistaken about this the whole Edge argument falls apart. I'm not so sure, but I'll leave it to others to do the math.

Meanwhile, one of my favorite passages in Chu-Carroll's critique was one in which he blasts Behe for resorting to the huge improbabilities of mutations causing increasing and permanent fitness:

What's the favorite b******t mathematical argument of creationist a******s worldwide? Why big numbers, of course!

This is fun because it's a game two can play: What is the favorite [substitute your own pejorative here]reply of naturalists worldwide to the argument from cosmic fine-tuning? Why it's big numbers, of course! There must be a near infinite number of universes, we're told, which would mean that almost every possible universe would exist and ours would not then be unexpected no matter that it is so astonishingly unlikely.

And what is the Darwinian answer to critics like Behe who say that random mutation simply could not do the job of producing all the variety and complexity of life we see? Why big numbers, of course! Given billions of years and given uncountable trillions of mutations evolution from molecules to man is inevitable.

I wonder what epithets Chu-Carroll applies to people who employ big numbers in the service of naturalistic materialism. He probably calls them deep-thinkers.

The particular big number that has Chu-Carroll's adolescent juices flowing is Behe's calculation that the chances of mutations arising that would enable two proteins to bind together is 10 to the 20th power. Chu-Carroll thinks this is too high, but doesn't give us much of a reason for rejecting it. He then grants it for the sake of argument:

What's particularly astonishing about this is that even this rotten argument - taking an artifically inflated probability number based on the peculiarities of the biochemistry of one specific organism, and applying it to a completely different organism (waving hands furiously to try to distract from the fact that it's just nonsensical to cross that way), contains its own refutation. Yes, perhaps the odds of this happening are similar to the odds of winning at powerball. But the fact is someone wins the powerball lottery. He wants to pretend that it's unlikely by pointing at you specifically, and saying that it's like you winning the lottery. But in fact, the power of evolution is that it doesn't just try one thing. It's not a process of one mutation, wait and see if it works out and fixes in the population; it's not a process with a predetermined destination. It's a process of countless mutations happening at the some time - some propagate, some don't - and if any of them work, then they take over. The real chance of evolution producing something are like the chances of someone winning the lottery. The chances of them producing humanity taken a priori are like the chances of you winning the lottery; but since humanity was not a predestined result, the chances of the evolutionary sweepstakes producing something is like the chances of someone winning the lottery - i.e., virtually inevitable.

It's not exactly clear to me what Chu-Carroll is trying to say here, but I take him to be asserting that Behe is wrong because even though a double mutation might be highly improbable, the fact is that something will result from whatever mutations do occur.

Well, yes, but that hardly refutes Behe's point which is that beneficial double mutations are at the edge of what evolution can accomplish. The way to refute that claim is not by insisting that mutations produce genetic changes, it's by showing that Behe's figure of 10(20th) is unreasonable and this Chu-Carroll fails to do.

He continues:

Finally, I said that not just is Behe's book bad science and bad math, but it's bad theology. Behe claims to believe in an all-knowing, all-powerful God. But at the same time, his entire book is based on the argument that God created life on earth, and got it all going using an evolutionary process. But then, according to Behe, over and over again, his creation was woefully inadequate of facing [sic] the actual challenges that it would face, and so his all-powerful creator needs to constantly intervene, and tweak things in order to make them work. His God is a buffoon - a bumbling fool who isn't capable of creating worlds in a way that works. Reading his book, I'm actually shocked that he's a religious person: he's clearly never bothered to think through his beliefs, and what his theories say about them. Again and again, reading the book, I kept finding myself saying two things: "How can this guy call himself a scientist, when he argues so sloppily?", and "How can this guy be religious when he apparently believes that his creator isn't capable of getting anything right?" Following Behe's argument, it seems like it should be impossible for Behe's god to have done the things Behe claims that he did, because they're too hard for such a bumbler.

Aside from the silly, childish hubris of calling a being which could create a finely-tuned universe and the incredibly complex machinery of a cell "a bumbler," this criticism is completely unfair to Behe. Behe doesn't say that the Designer constantly intervenes. He allows for the possiblity that the Designer set the conditions necessary for evolution to proceed in the general direction it has at the outset, and that by bringing the universe into being He set the whole process going. In other words, Behe holds that some aspects of evolution could unfold along certain pre-selected paths from the initial conditions that the Designer established, but it is obvious to Behe that these conditions, and the phenomena they produce, would not exist were it not for the Designer's purposeful pre-planning.

Whatever its other merits and deficiencies might be, Behe's book will accomplish at least two things: It will expose as a canard the Darwinians' claim that one can believe in God and also in evolution. Behe believes in evolution. He believes that man evolved from primates, that the world is 4.5 billion years old, and all the rest. He also believes that natural selection plays a role in evolution. The only thing he rejects is that the emergence of living things and the appearance of higher life forms is the result of random, mechanistic chance. He believes the mutations that produced genetic variation were somehow intelligently planned. For this deviation from materialist orthodoxy he is flayed by emotionally stunted basket-cases like Chu-Carroll.

The second thing his book will surely accomplish is lay to rest the charge that Intelligent Design is the same thing as creationism. No creationist will agree with much of anything Behe believes except his claim that there is a limit to evolution and that life and the cosmos are intentionally designed.

RLC

Why We Can't Leave

Peter Rodman and William Shawcross make part of the same argument in the New York Times that we have been trying to make here at Viewpoint as to why we simply cannot do as some Democrats insist and leave Iraq. They write:

As in Indochina more than 30 years ago, millions of Iraqis today see the United States helping them defeat their murderous opponents as the only hope for their country. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have committed themselves to working with us and with their democratically elected government to enable their country to rejoin the world as a peaceful, moderate state that is a partner to its neighbors instead of a threat. If we accept defeat, these Iraqis will be at terrible risk. Thousands upon thousands of them will flee, as so many Vietnamese did after 1975.

The new strategy of the coalition and the Iraqis, ably directed by Gen. David Petraeus, offers the best prospect of reversing the direction of events - provided that we show staying power. Osama bin Laden said, a few months after 9/11, that "when people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature they will like the strong horse." The United States, in his mind, is the weak horse. American defeat in Iraq would embolden the extremists in the Muslim world, demoralize and perhaps destabilize many moderate friendly governments, and accelerate the radicalization of every conflict in the Middle East.

Our conduct in Iraq is a crucial test of our credibility, especially with regard to the looming threat from revolutionary Iran. Our Arab and Israeli friends view Iraq in that wider context. They worry about our domestic debate, which had such a devastating impact on the outcome of the Vietnam War, and they want reassurance.

When government officials argued that American credibility was at stake in Indochina, critics ridiculed the notion. But when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, he and his colleagues invoked Vietnam as a reason not to take American warnings seriously. The United States cannot be strong against Iran - or anywhere - if we accept defeat in Iraq.

Of course, there are many more terrible consequences to pulling out than just those these writers mention in this column. You can read our thoughts on what would likely ensue from premature pullouthere.

RLC

Teddy on Immigration

No, not Teddy Kennedy - the one on Mount Rushmore:

"In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person's becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American...There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag... We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language... and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people."

Theodore Roosevelt 1907

That pretty much sums it up, I think.

RLC

Europe's Fight Against Christianity

Paul Belien has a very insightful column in The Washington Times titled Europe's Culture War. Here are the first few graphs:

Europe is in the middle of a three-way culture war, between the defenders of traditional Judeo-Christian morality, the proponents of secular hedonism and the forces of Islamic Jihadism. In Western Europe, the fight between Christians and secularists is all but over. The secularists have won. Now, the religious vacuum left by the demise of Christianity is being filled by the Muslims. Since one cannot fight something with nothing, the European secularists are no match for Islam.

Meanwhile, the dark forces of secularism, such as the European Union (EU), are waging war in Central and Eastern Europe, where they target countries such as Poland, Slovakia and the Baltic states.

On April 25, the European Parliament (EP), the EU's legislature, adopted a resolution condemning "homophobia." With 325 votes against 124 and 150 abstentions, the EP warned Poland that it will face sanctions if it adopts a law barring the promotion of homosexuality in schools. Churches, too, were reprimanded for "fermenting hatred and violence [against homosexuals]." Poland's prime minister, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, commented on the resolution: "Nobody is limiting gay rights in Poland. However, if we're talking about not having homosexual propaganda in Polish schools... such propaganda should not be in schools." Cardinal Angelo Scola of Venice retorted: "There is no homophobia in the Catholic Church and it is time that all this [recrimination of Christians in the European Parliament] ended."

It is not likely to end. The fight against "intolerance" -- i.e. adherence to traditional Christian morality -- is intensifying. On May 3, the European Court of Human Rights found Polish President Lech Kaczynski guilty of violating human rights because he banned a "gay pride" parade in Warsaw in 2005. Last March, the same court ordered Poland to compensate a woman who was denied an abortion. Last year, Poland was denounced by the Council of Europe because it prohibited the distribution in schools of a leaflet about homosexuality.

How long will it be before it is illegal in Europe to hold the moral beliefs that almost every Christian has held for the last two thousand years? How long will it be before the same oppression emigrates to our shores?

RLC

Lower Than Whale Dung

The MSM is constantly reminding us that the President's job approval hovers around 34 %, but what they don't tells us is that Bush is standing on Mt. Everest compared to the highest ranking Democrat in the Senate, Harry Reid. Senator Reid has a favorability rating of only 19%. That's almost as low as one can go. Scooter Libby is also at 19% and Paris Hilton is only a few points lower at 12%. By comparison, Vice-President Dick Cheney has a favorability rating of 38%.

You'd never know this if you only get your news from network television or most print media.

RLC

Miller's Bile

Dennis Miller can sometimes be funny, but this screed against Senator Harry Reid is neither amusing nor entertaining. It is, in fact, tasteless and repugnant. I have no fondness for Reid whom I consider to be a great liability to the Senate and the nation, but Miller's brand of political discourse has no place in a civil society, nor should conservatives, of all people, be touting his "smackdown" of Reid. His job is to be funny, and he fails, at least in this instance, because hatred and viciousness is never funny to emotionally and morally mature people which conservatives should aspire to be. If this is Miller's idea of political humor he needs to get retrained in some other line of work.

RLC

Topoisomerases, etc.

Bear in mind that the conventional wisdom is that blind, natural, purposeless forces are all that's necessary to explain how this system came to exist. Darwinians have been selling us the biological equivalent of swampland real estate for over a hundred years and we keep buying it. At some point, though, we need to stop and ask exactly what it is they're asking us to believe.

In this case, one of perhaps thousands which could be cited, they're asking us to accept that unguided random chance could have solved the problem of DNA supercoiling very early on in evolutionary history. In other words, systems like this, of which there are hundreds if not thousands in living cells, arose through pure accident, we're told. Uh huh. And the gullible among us say it must be so for nop weightier reason than that Richard Dawkins says it is.

For another astonishing glimpse at the complexity of cellular micro-structure check out this video simulation of protein translation and remember that what is being shown is only a fraction of the complexity of the system that works continuosly in every cell in every living thing in the world.

It's literally breathtaking.

RLC

Hobgoblin of Little Minds

Tony Blankley highlights the inconsistency of the arguments made by those who oppose the war in Iraq and who favor the late and unlamented immigration reform bill. After a zinger or two aimed at the puzzling inconsistencies of John Edwards and Al Gore, Blankley asks us to:

Consider the current arguments about the immigration bill. For oh so long, the supporters of the bill have been making two points: 1) It is impossible for the U.S. government to actually identify and round up all the illegals in the country; and, 2) a fence on the border is bound to be ineffective as well as being immoral. Indeed opponents of the fence have idiotically compared it to the Berlin Wall - although one protects a free country from illegal intrusion, while the other kept enslaved people from escaping their slavery.

Now, suddenly, these same people claim that the same previously nitwit bureaucracy will not only be able to find all 12 million (or 20 million) illegals, but will be able to flawlessly run background checks, positively identify each individual, as well as monitor all American businesses to make sure no new illegals are being hired and the newly legal are in perfect compliance with their limited status. Oh, yes, and they also will be able to test all 12 million to assure us they can all speak the Queen's English at least as well as does William F. Buckley Jr.

Also, suddenly, they have lost all their moral outrage about the fence: "You want a morally offensive fence, no problem, you got a fence. What, me worry about moral consistency?"

Of course, it has to be pointed out that those of us who have called for strict enforcement of existing law are now putting forward the argument that the bureaucracy that we used to think could protect the country if only the federal government would let them do their job now insist that there is no way our federal bureaucrats could possibly enforce the proposed new law.

Regarding the fence, the supporters of the new immigration law, are, with the exception of the president and Sen. McCain, mostly people who oppose the Surge in Iraq. Yet, while they require that the Iraqi surge have specific performance measures to justify continued funding (e.g., perfectly functioning Iraqi government, no more violence, etc.), they are perfectly happy to measure the success of the new proposed Mexican border fence by inputs - rather than results.

That is, once the 5,000 new border agents and the new fences are in place, they will deem the border secure, thus triggering the Great Amnesty of 2007-8. They would hardly apply that logic to Iraq. If they did, they would have to deem Iraq a success as soon as the five new surge battalions are equipped and deployed to Iraq. (Obviously, they don't care whether the border fence works or not - they just want the amnesty - and the voters that follow. And they don't want success in Iraq, so they will tightly define success with performance criteria that would measure WWII an utter failure.)

Emerson famously noted, Blankley reminds us, that being consistent can be taken too far, and can become a "hobgoblin" for small-minded people - an excuse for ceasing to think. If so, however, utter inconsistency and special pleading are frequently the hobgoblins and calling cards of demagogues more interested in political victory than in the welfare of the nation.

RLC

Albania Loves Bush

Bush is despised by the pampered sophisticated elites in the West, but he is adored by people who have recently emerged from the darkness of oppression, or are still toiling in its grip. We might ask why that is. What do people who have known soul-grinding tyranny see in George Bush what left-wing secular elites don't?

No doubt part of the Albanians' enthusiasm for Bush is explained by the fact that he represents the United States, which, under Bill Clinton, acted to relieve the horrible nightmare that ethnic Albanians were experiencing under the Serbs in Kosovo. The Albanian gratitude to the U.S. is expressing itself in declarations of love for its President. Surely that's part of it.

But in addition perhaps another part is that those who have been ground down by the boot of the tyrant see in George Bush someone who will actually do something about their misery other than just talk about it. No world leader in history has liberated more people from oppression than has George Bush - 50 million in Afghanistan and Iraq - and, while most of the world seems indifferent to the misery of those who suffer under dictators of various sorts or content themselves with passing meaningless resolutions, Bush gives hope to the shackled masses throughout the globe that they may be next.

Bush symbolizes hope to a greater extent than any European or Middle Eastern leader, and people who give others a reasonable hope exert a powerful pull upon their affections.

RLC

Richard Rorty (1931-2007)

Richard Rorty, Stanford University philosopher and professor of comparative literature, and the man who once declared that "Truth is whatever your peers will let you get away with saying," is dead at age 75 of pancreatic cancer.

Rorty was also known for his idea of "liberal irony," the term he used to describe our attempt to justify our belief in human rights which, as an atheist, Rorty recognized could not be justified. Nevertheless, he suggested that liberal institutions were superior to other forms of government because they reduce cruelty in the world, even though he had no basis for saying that cruelty ought to be reduced.

Rorty was a good example of what happens to a man's philosophy when he starts from the assumption of atheism and seeks to draw consistent conclusions from its implications.

RLC

Materialism and Iron Spikes

Michael Egnor employs the strange case of Phineas Gage to argue that materialism is self-refuting. He observes, for example, that:

Brain matter cannot be the complete cause for ideas because matter and ideas share no properties. Cause and effect can't be 'linked' between substances that have no properties in common.

I believe that materialism is incapable of providing an adequate explanation for the mind. Clearly ideas can influence the movement of matter (via the brain), and vice-versa, but materialism alone is inadequate to explain the link. The link between the mind and the brain must involve agency that has such non-material properties as purpose and judgment, and, as such, an adequate explanation for the mind must necessarily be open to immaterial causes.

Egnor makes an interesting argument for what philosophers call substance dualism, the belief that reality is comprised of two disparate essences, mind and matter. Materialists, of course, believe that matter is all there is. His essay can be read at the link.

RLC

Yielding to the Gentleman

In Alabama they still settle disputes in the state legislature with, uh, body language. When one senator took offense to the words of a colleague a third observed that, "It's certainly a black eye on the Legislature and the Senate in particular."

Yes, and to one of the senators most particularly, it appears.

You can watch the video here.

RLC

Killed Bill

John Hawkins of Right Wing News has a post based on information he was given by a congressional aide on why the Immigration Reform Bill was killed. He says in his piece that:

I asked my source if his boss has been hearing from his constituents on this bill and what the for and against ratio was. He said that they have received thousands and thousands of calls and the ratio was something like 95%-98% against the bill.

I also asked my source why he thought so many Republicans had been supporting such an incredibly unpopular bill. He gave three reasons:

First off, there was what he referred to as the "Rovian School of thought," which says that passing this bill would capture the Hispanic vote for the GOP for decades to come.

Next up, there's the "Chamber of Commerce" vote. He says these Republicans were heavily influenced by business groups that want cheap labor no matter what the cost is for the rest of the country.

Then there was the last group, the smallest group in his opinion, who were willing to sign onto a terrible bill just so they could say they were part of a big reform that had bipartisan support.

Is there a noble reason in there anywhere? Makes one proud to be a Republican, doesn't it?

RLC

The Witch is Dead

The immigration reform bill that would have, in effect, provided amnesty to illegal aliens, cost American taxpayers literally trillions of dollars, and likely done next to nothing to stop the flow of illegals, is dead for now.

Senate majority leader Harry Reid tried to end debate last night and bring the bill to a vote, but his attempt to call cloture failed and the bill has been withdrawn from the floor.

Michelle Malkin has the details, including the roll call on the vote.

RLC

Horrific Beauty

We would not be surprised to learn that this is Mahmoud Amadinejad's favorite video. Indeed, it wouldn't be surprising to learn that he had it made. Who else would want to depict nuclear explosions in such beautiful scenes?

We might visualize him rubbing his hands together in rapturous glee as he watches and imagines American or Israeli cities under those mushroom clouds.

RLC

Senator Cheney?

Republican senator Craig Thomas died Monday night after a lengthy battle with leukemia. There's now talk around Washington that his replacement may be Lynne Cheney, wife of Vice-President Dick Cheney.

Apparently, Wyoming law prohibits the governor, who is a Democrat, from appointing someone from the opposite party of the man being replaced, so he has to appoint a Republican.

Ms Cheney would be an excellent choice, and we hope she is indeed selected.

RLC

Eurabia

The most popular name given to baby boys in England this year? Mohammed.

RLC