Persistent Confusion

Uncommon Descent presents a video made by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) which seeks to discredit intelligent design (ID). The video features remarks made by biology teachers from the Dover Area School District as well as Francis Collins, noted head of the human genome project. These people share in common two things: They're all theistic evolutionists (TE), and they're all confused about what ID is.

Theistic evolutionists believe that God used natural processes like evolution to bring about the diverse forms of life we find on our planet but that there is no empirical evidence of his having done this. One can know that God is the creator through the eyes of faith but not through empirical investigation, according to TE.

ID, on the other hand, says that however life came about, it's the product of intelligent purpose and that there are marks of that intelligent agency in the design of both the cosmos as a whole and of life in particular.

With all that in mind watch the video and see how many confusions find voice in the words of the speakers:

One Dover teacher says that God created the world but he did it through evolution. She looks for natural causes, she tells us, of the phenomena she observes. Yet she seems unaware that there's no conflict between what she says and what a proponent of ID would say. The teacher seems to think that the belief that God uses natural causes entails the further belief that there is no evidence of intelligent agency in the effects of those causes, but of course it does not.

Francis Collins claims that it's a great tragedy of the ID "furor" that it gives the impression that you have to be in one camp or another. This is a terrible position to put people in, he laments, but what he says is simply untrue. There are in the ID camp evolutionists, atheists, agnostics, deists, Jews, Muslims and Christians. The only camps that ID divides people into are those who believe that there's empirical evidence of intentional design in the creation and those who believe that there isn't. For someone who accepts the bible as authoritative, as theistic evolutionists often do, to balk at the proposition that the cosmos shows evidence of having been intentionally designed is curious since the bible itself makes the same claim (see, for instance Psalm 19:1 and Romans 1:20).

Another Dover teacher states that he "Never had a problem seeing how God's hand works in nature", a claim that puts him comfortably in the ID camp - although ID doesn't identify the designer as the teacher does - but is an awkward position for a theistic evolutionist to take. I doubt that this teacher realizes that by seeing "God's hand" in nature he's closer to the dreaded ID position than he is to his fellow theistic evolutionists.

It's also stated in the video that ID isn't science because it's not testable and invokes supernatural explanations. Both claims misconstrue ID. There are predictions made on the basis of ID assumptions which can be tested. For example, ID'ers argue that so-called "junk DNA" will be found to have function. This, in fact, is starting to be born out, but even if ID cannot be tested that doesn't make it any less legitimate as a topic of discussion in a science classroom than, say, the many-worlds hypothesis.

ID says that natural processes alone are inadequate to account for the multiplicity and complexity of biological information. That fundamental claim enjoys the same level of testability as the contrary assertion that natural processes are adequate to account for the world. If the latter is a legitimate claim of science then so is the former.

Another claim made in the video is that ID proposes that evolutionary theory has gaps and that the gaps are filled by God. This too is false. ID does not identify God as the designer, although he is certainly a possible candidate.

Nor does the designer, whoever or whatever it is, "fill" the gaps. The gaps result from the sheer implausibility of natural processes being able to explain, for example, how living things arose in the first place. Just as intelligent scientists may someday be able to direct such processes so that they can do under direction what they could never do by themselves - i.e. organize themselves into an independent living cell - so too, intelligent input is posited by ID to help natural processes and laws bridge other apparent gaps in the development of living things.

Finally, it's claimed in the video that ID pits science against religion, but, on the contrary, ID has no formal religious component whatsoever. A designer of the universe is not necessarily an object of worship or the object of religious devotion. ID itself (as opposed to some of its advocates) has nothing to say about religion just as evolution (as opposed to some of its advocates) has nothing to say about religion. Indeed, TE is more religious than ID since theistic evolutionists believe that God exists and created the world. ID does not make any claims about who the designer is, which is why one can be an atheist and still embrace ID.

Here's the point that needs to be repeated, apparently, over and over: Intelligent design is not in conflict with evolution. It's in conflict with the claim that natural processes are adequate by themselves to account for evolution, and it's in conflict with the claim that there's no empirical evidence of any intelligent agency in the design of the universe or of living things.

I'm beginning to think that the failure to understand ID, or at least to represent it correctly, is a kind of metaphysical blindness. Like any blindness you can't heal it by simply describing the things the blind person can't see. These people are persistently confused, and their inability to grasp the simple claims of ID borders on being a kind of philosophical or intellectual handicap.

RLC

Colin Powell for Veep?

Would he accept an offer from McCain to serve? Would rank and file Republicans accept a pro-choicer on the ticket? The answer to both questions is unclear, although he would probably be more acceptable to them than either Joe Leiberman or Tom Ridge, two other pro-choicers being mentioned as veep candidates.

One thing is clear, though, Powell would cancel whatever advantage Obama's selection of Biden gave him with moderates and independents, and may even cut slightly into Obama's dominance among black voters.

It's disappointing that there are so few conservatives of national stature in the GOP that every major candidate in the primaries, and every name being bandied about for VP, is a "moderate". Where have all the Reagans gone?

Ed Morrissey has some additional thoughts on a Powell selection at Hot Air.

RLC

Antisemitism in the DNC?

Is the Democratic National Committee anti-semitic? Ed Morrissey at Hot Air says they certainly cause one to wonder.

RLC

Woody's Sad Worldview

Everyone knows someone with whom they feel a kind of intellectual resonance. For me one such person is Woody Allen. Allen is a very successful contemporary filmmaker who's among the seemingly small group of individuals who sees clearly the existential predicament of modern secular man. His films, like those of his hero Ingmar Bergman, consistently drive home the message that, as he has a character say in Hannah and Her Sisters, "The only absolute knowledge attainable by man is that life is meaningless. I don't want to go on living in a Godless universe." Allen is himself an atheist and, unlike most atheists, Allen sees clearly that his atheism offers him no comfort or peace in life. Nor does he try to paper over the awful implications of his worldview.

Newsweek's Jennie Yabroff interviewed Allen recently. Here are some excerpts:

Allen has devoted his career to making films that consistently assert the randomness of life. That they do so in a variety of genres - comedy, drama, suspense, satire, even, once, a musical - only partially obscures the fact that, in Allen's eyes, they're all tragedies, since, as he says, "to live is to suffer." If there were a persistence-of-vision award for life philosophy, Allen would be a shoo-in.

At 72, he says he still lies awake at night, terrified of the void. He cannot reconcile his strident atheism with his superstition[s] ..., but he knows why he makes movies: not because he has any grand statement to offer, but simply to take his mind off the existential horror of being alive. Movies are a great diversion, he says, "because it's much more pleasant to be obsessed over how the hero gets out of his predicament than it is over how I get out of mine."

So why go on? "I can't really come up with a good argument to choose life over death," he says. "Except that I'm too scared." Making films offers no reward beyond distracting him from his plight. He claims the payoff is in the process - "I need to be focused on something so I don't see the big picture"

When it is suggested that others may get a great deal out of his films - that there are fans for whom an afternoon watching "Love and Death" or "Manhattan" provides solace in the way a Marx Brothers film soothes a depressed character in "Hannah and Her Sisters" - he resists the compliment. "This can happen, and this is a nice thing, but when you leave the theater, you're still going back out into a very cruel world."

"Your perception of time changes as you get older, because you see how brief everything is," he says. "You see how meaningless ... I don't want to depress you, but it's a meaningless little flicker."

"You have a meal, or you listen to a piece of music, and it's a pleasurable thing," he says. "But it doesn't accrue to anything."

I said above that I find Allen's view of the world oddly sympathetic. The reason is that I believe that his pessimism is precisely right given his assumption that there is no God. Were I not a Christian, I would feel exactly as he does. Indeed, I feel exactly as he does anyway about a lot of what he says, even though I think he's wrong about life having no meaning. It does have meaning, of course, but only because death is not the end.

It's very sad that Allen seems to have foreclosed the only escape from his despair that's available to him, or anyone -the existence of a God who created us to be happy and fulfilled forever.

RLC

Racist America

The only reason Obama would lose the election is white racism. At least that's what Jacob Weisberg at Slate thinks. For such addled minds as Weisberg's a vote for McCain is proof of one's racism. Here are a couple of excerpts:

But let's be honest: If you break the numbers down, the reason Obama isn't ahead right now is that he trails badly among one group, older white voters. He does so for a simple reason: the color of his skin.

Is that the main reason he trails among older whites? Is it even a significant reason? Could it not be that older whites are generally wiser, more educated and more conservative than young people and they just don't like Obama's lack of experience, his arrogance, his ideas, his ability to take all sides of an issue, his affiliations with people like William Ayers, Jeremiah Wright and Tony Rezko, his support for infanticide, his threat to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in Iraq, his wife who believes that this is a "downright mean country", his refusal to drill for oil in the U.S., his promise to raise taxes, and on and on?

Is it not possible that older whites actually vote on issues rather than on a candidate's charisma and rhetoric? Weisberg seems unable to comprehend that people might actually do such a thing:

Many have discoursed on what an Obama victory could mean for America. We would finally be able to see our legacy of slavery, segregation, and racism in the rearview mirror. Our kids would grow up thinking of prejudice as a nonfactor in their lives. The rest of the world would embrace a less fearful and more open post-post-9/11 America.

You could replace Obama's name in the above paragraph with that of Clarence Thomas or Condi Rice and much of what Weisberg says would still be true, but I'd bet my house that Weisberg wouldn't vote for either of them. Does that make him a racist?

He then embarrasses himself with this bit of witless treacle:

But does it not follow that an Obama defeat would signify the opposite? If Obama loses, our children will grow up thinking of equal opportunity as a myth. His defeat would say that when handed a perfect opportunity to put the worst part of our history behind us, we chose not to. In this event, the world's judgment will be severe and inescapable: The United States had its day but, in the end, couldn't put its own self-interest ahead of its crazy irrationality over race.

Notwithstanding Weisberg's lachrymose hand-wringing what an Obama defeat would signify is that the Democrat party can not win the presidency by running a far-left elitist as a candidate. Every time they've tried since 1950 (McGovern, Gore, Kerry) they've lost. Every Democrat president elected in the last fifty years has run as a moderate.

Weisberg thinks we should vote for Obama no matter how bad we may think his policies so that we can make some sort of feel-good social statement. That's very liberal of him and very shallow. Weisberg has things exactly backward: If Obama loses it would be because the American voter decided to put our national interest ahead of our crazy irrationality over race.

RLC

The Breakenridge Gambit

Rob Breakenridge, a Canadian talk radio host, submits a rather puerile column to The Calgary Herald in which he voices his dismay that so many Albertans are skeptical of Darwinian explanations of the origin of man. As is so often the case among Darwinian critics of those who are skeptical of their Darwinism, he gives little reason why they should think otherwise beyond some standard name-calling and other insults directed at creationists and intelligent design proponents.

Denyse O'Leary responds to Breakenridge in a column which she wrote for the Herald and which she also posts at Uncommon Descent. The heart of her reply is this:

Breakenridge hopes that we can enlighten backward Albertans by teaching more "evolution" in Alberta schools. But that won't help. Textbook examples of evolution often evaporate when researchers actually study them (instead of just assuming they are true).

For example, the peacock's tail did not evolve to please hen birds; hens don't notice them much. The allegedly yummy Viceroy butterfly did not evolve to look like the bad-tasting Monarch (both insects taste bad). The eye spots on butterflies' wings did not evolve to scare birds by resembling the eyes of their predators. Birds avoid brightly patterned insects, period. They don't care whether the patterns resemble eyes. Similarly, the famous "peppered moth" of textbook fame has devolved into a peppered myth, featuring book-length charges and countercharges.

And remember that row of vertebrate embryos in your textbook years ago? It was dubbed in the journal Science one of the "most famous fakes" in biology-because the embryos don't really look very similar. And Darwin's majestic Tree of Life? It's now a tangleweed, or maybe several of them.

We seldom see evolution happening. Michael Behe's Edge of Evolution (2007) notes that for decades scientists have observed many thousands of generations of bacteria in the lab. And how did they evolve?

Well, they didn't. Worse, when evolution is occasionally observed (and widely trumpeted), it often heads the wrong way. For example, bacteria evolve antibiotic resistance by junking intricate machinery, not by creating it. Cave fish lose their eyes. But we don't need a theory for how intricate machinery gets wrecked. We need a theory for how it originates and how it develops quite suddenly. Evolution, as we understand it today, apparently isn't that theory.

This last point is worth dwelling upon. So much of the evidence that is adduced to support the belief that man has emerged out of the primordial soup is really not an example of evolution at all. Rather it's an example of devolution. Christopher Hitchens was all aquiver at having hit upon the cave salamander example of this phenomenon a few weeks back, but the cave salamander is nothing that a Darwinian can take solace from. The problem for the Darwinian is not why the blind salamander lost the eyes it had but trying to come up with a plausible explanation of how eyes evolved by random chance in the first place.

Breakenridge, of course, doesn't even try. He's content to simply insult people who are skeptical of the Darwinian just-so stories, but he hasn't the intellectual wherewithal to explain why they're wrong. Name-calling is just so much easier.

RLC

Obama's Choice

I guess this'll be tough to explain away:

HT: Hot Air

RLC

Obama's Pick

Obama has shown his gratitude to Joe Biden for having declared him "articulate, bright, clean and nice-looking" by selecting him for his running mate. Perhaps now the media can get about the important business of finding out whether the Chinese gymnasts were really old enough to compete.

RLC

Possible Cure

Here's good news on the medical front:

A new study conducted by researchers at Children's Hospital & Research Center Oakland shows that a century-old drug, methylene blue, may be able to slow or even cure Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. Used at a very low concentration - about the equivalent of a few raindrops in four Olympic-sized swimming pools of water - the drug slows cellular aging and enhances mitochondrial function, potentially allowing those with the diseases to live longer, healthier lives.

One of the study's co-authors, Bruce Ames, PhD, a senior scientist at Children's and world-renowned expert in nutrition and aging, says that, "What we potentially have is a wonder drug. To find that such a common and inexpensive drug can be used to increase and prolong the quality of life by treating such serious diseases is truly exciting."

Read the rest of the story at the link. If this drug pans out it would be an incredible development.

I wonder how a working knowledge of evolution led to the discovery.

RLC

The Other Front

Stephen Brown gives us an encouraging report on the war in Afghanistan at FrontPage.com. It's not the sort of thing you're likely to read in the MSM, but then the MSM isn't widely known for providing encouraging news about American attempts to keep people free from oppression.

After lamenting media negativism and recounting coalition successes and Taliban failures, Brown notes that the Taliban has achieved some success:

Indeed, just about the only area where the Taliban has enjoyed success is in its attacks on undefended schools. A German report shows that Taliban fighters staged 44 raids on schools last year alone and 440 such attacks have been registered since 2004. According to the report, such attacks have become a weekly occurrence. "It is better for my children if they live, even if they have to be illiterate," one fearful father was quoted as saying. Having failed to drive out coalition forces, the Taliban is training its sights on that other threat to its theocratic vision: schoolchildren.

These are the people we're fighting throughout the Middle East, people who murder children whose only offense is that they're alive. Come to think of it isn't something similar happening in Illinois hospitals with the complete connivance of the Democratic candidate for President (see following)?

Read Brown's whole essay at the link.

RLC

Change We Can Believe in

During the Saddleback interview with pastor Rick Warren Barack Obama quoted the passage from Matthew where Jesus says that "whatsoever you do for the least of these my brothers you do for me" in order to illustrate his view of social justice.

Unfortunately, while Democrats everywhere check their cell phones to see if the glorious text message has arrived heralding the senator's choice for running mate, and the television networks are giddy with speculation about who it will be, few among them seem to be able to find the time to ask the question how Obama has applied this verse in his own life. How does a millionaire who lectures us on alleviating the suffering of our brothers allow his own brother to live on a dollar a week? How does a man who expresses compassion for the least of us, the weakest, the most vulnerable, vote against a bill that would protect children born alive after a failed abortion? These questions don't seem to have occurred to those in the media whose hearts pound with excitement over The Text Message, but they have occurred to Andy McCarthy at National Review Online.

McCarthy lays out Obama's history of protecting the weakest among us in Illinois:

In the Illinois senate, he opposed Born-Alive [the bill that would have made it illegal to allow infants to perish from inanition] tooth and nail.

The shocking extremism of that position - giving infanticide the nod over compassion and life - is profoundly embarrassing to him now. So he has lied about what he did. He has offered various conflicting explanations, ranging from the assertion that he didn't oppose the anti-infanticide legislation (he did), to the assertion that he opposed it because it didn't contain a superfluous clause reaffirming abortion rights (it did), to the assertion that it was unnecessary because Illinois law already protected the children of botched abortions (it didn't - and even if it arguably did, why oppose a clarification?).

What Obama hasn't offered, however, is the rationalization he vigorously posited during the 2002 Illinois senate debate. When it got down to brass tacks, Barack Obama argued that protecting abortion doctors from legal liability was more important than protecting living infants from death.

McCarthy adduces into evidence the transcripts of the senate debate and concludes that Obama's rationalization then and now is indefensible morally and logically. Read the entire piece at the link, and ask yourself whether the media would be so disinterested had John McCain voted, say, to allow torture at Guantanamo.

Senator Obama offers hope and change for the weakest among our brothers but he offers little hope or change for his brother George languishing in a hovel in a Nairobi slum, and he offers no hope or change for children dying a slow death of thirst and hunger in hospital closets. Given the chance to choose to protect the lives of poor infants or the convenience of wealthy doctors he chose to sacrifice the children so that the doctors wouldn't have to miss their tee times and wouldn't have to be pestered by lawyers.

I suppose for his devoted followers that's the sort of change you can believe in.

RLC

Sloth or Gluttony?

Everyone has heard that we've become a nation of fatties, but what's the reason for this? Some say we're slothful layabouts who get too little exercise. Others say that it's our diet that's the culprit. It turns out that people burn as many calories, on average, today as they did twenty five years ago. The problem is, apparently, that we just eat too much.

I don't think it took a study to arrive at this conclusion, but there you have it.

RLC

Since You Bring it up

Senator Obama recently made merry over Senator McCain's apparent inability to recall how many houses he owns. Obama suggested in an ad that McCain was so wealthy as to be out of touch with the common man. Actually, it's his wife, Cindy, who owns their properties, and I don't recall Democrats thinking one's wife's wealth was a problem for John Kerry, but anyway here's the ad:

Well, Senator Obama might be sorry he brought up the matter of houses:

David Freddoso reminds us in a passage quoted at NRO that:

In October 1998, Obama wrote city and state officials, urging them to give Rezko $14 million to build an apartment complex outside of Obama's state Senate district. The Chicago Sun-Times noted last year that Obama's request included $855,000 in "development fees" for Rezko and for another developer, Allison Davis, who happened to be Obama's old law-firm boss. Obama's spokesman said it was just a coincidence that the state senator wrote letters to obtain millions of dollars for his two longtime friends.

In fact, Obama was a dependable ally of subsidized developers in the Legislature, giving Rezko and others broader help as well. In "The Case Against Barack Obama," I identify and parse six housing bills with which Obama was closely involved.

No wonder Rezko helped Obama get a house below market value.

HT: Hot Air

RLC

Ouch

Some McCain supporters not affiliated with his campaign have obviously decided, rightly, in my view, that the American people need to know more about the man forty-some percent of them intend to vote for:

Obama aide Tommy Vietor calls the ad "despicable", but it's only despicable if it's in some way false. If it is false then the Obama campaign should explain exactly what about it is incorrect and what exactly Obama's relationship with Ayers is. As matters stand the records of the board on which they served together have been sealed and no one can get access to them. Why doesn't Senator Obama allow them to be released?

Speaking of ads, this one is getting some notice. It's kind of funny, actually:

According to Hot Air more such ads are on the way. Let's hope so.

RLC

Olby Daft on the Draft

Keith Olbermann strove mightily last night to make something significant out of an answer John McCain gave at a town hall meeting yesterday in which a lady made a lengthy plea to do something about the deplorable state of the Veterans' Administration. She concluded her petition by saying, almost inaudibly, that she doesn't see how we'll be able to attract enough young people to military service to get bin Laden unless we reinstate the draft. McCain responded to the woman that he didn't disagree with anything she said and then proceeded to give an equally long response to her complaints about the VA. In other words, he was clearly affirming her critique of the VA, not her coda about the draft, which he appears not to have even heard.

Nevertheless, Olbermann declared that McCain obviously plans to reinstitute the draft, and the MSNBC talk host wanted to be sure every young person and parent knew this so that they'd punish McCain on election day.

Well, here's the video of the woman's question and McCain's response. You decide whether you think McCain is saying he intends to resurrect the draft:

It's just bizarre that Olbermann would see this as anything more than something which might merit requesting a clarification. To assert in confident tones that he has espied in McCain's words an intention to reinstate the draft is absurd. It strikes me as an interpretation born of desperation to find some way to reverse McCain's rise in the polls. It also strikes me as fundamentally dishonest, especially in light of McCain's previous insistence that he has no intention of calling for a draft short of world war III.

HT: Hot Air

RLC

Obama's Compassion

The controversy over Senator Obama's vote against a bill that would have protected infants from being allowed to die subsequent to having survived an attempt to abort them continues despite the fact that the MSM has had almost nothing to say about it.

Ramesh Ponnuru adds some thoughts in his column at NRO. He writes:

Nurse Jill Stanek said that at her hospital "abortions" were repeatedly performed by inducing the live birth of a pre-viable fetus and then leaving it to die. When she made her report, the attorney general said that no law had been broken. That's why legislators proposed a bill to fill the gap.

Obama did not want the gap filled. He did not want pre-viable fetuses/infants to have any legal protection. In the Illinois legislature, he argued that providing them with legal protection would both be unconstitutional in itself - a violation of the Supreme Court's abortion jurisprudence - and undermine the right to abortion.

Obama was wrong about these points. The Supreme Court's abortion jurisprudence treats the location of the young human organism, not its stage of development, as the key factor in whether it can be legally protected.

It's not clear yet how many people are aware of Obama's stand on infanticide since the MSM seems disinclined to inform the public about it, nor is it clear how much the public will care even if they do know. One thing we can say for sure, though, is that the issue certainly won't help him.

Meanwhile, the candidate who reminds us that we are our brother's keeper turns out to have a brother living in abject penury in a six foot by nine foot shack on the outskirts of Nairobi. Surely, some of the ample proceeds from Obama's book could have been diverted to helping this suffering brother. Evidently they weren't.

RLC

The Mystery of Consciousness

Denyse O'Leary at The Mindful Hack relates an interesting passage from a book by philosopher Roger Scruton. Scruton, writing about the mystery of consciousness, says this:

Consciousness is more familiar to us than any other feature of our world, since it is the route by which anything at all becomes familiar. But this is what makes consciousness so hard to pinpoint. Look for it wherever you like, you encounter only its objects - a face, a dream, a memory, a colour, a pain, a melody, a problem, but nowhere the consciousness that shines on them. Trying to grasp it is like trying to observe your own observing, as though you were to look with your own eyes at your own eyes without using a mirror. Not surprisingly, therefore, the thought of consciousness gives rise to peculiar metaphysical anxieties, which we try to allay with images of the soul, the mind, the self, the 'subject of consciousness', the inner entity that thinks and sees and feels and which is the real me inside.

To be conscious is to be aware of a world outside oneself, but how does this awareness come about? What, exactly, is it? The brain is a lump of matter. How does such a thing give rise to the experience of green or of a sweet flavor? And the greatest mystery of all is how blind, purposeless processes could ever have conferred upon matter this astounding ability.

Materialistic atheism cannot give us even the beginnings of an explanation. Why then does it scoff at the hypothesis that our conscious minds are derivatives of another conscious Mind, a Mind that is the ontological ground of all reality?

RLC

Gentle Persuasion

Being armed certainly made a difference for this 85 year old lady:

An 85-year-old woman boldly went for her gun and busted a would-be burglar inside her home, then forced him to call police while she kept him in her sights, police said.

"I just walked right on past him to the bedroom and got my gun," Leda Smith said.

Smith heard someone break into her home Monday afternoon and grabbed the .22-caliber revolver she had been keeping by her bed since a neighbor's home was burglarized a few weeks ago.

"I said 'What are you doing in my house?' He just kept saying he didn't do it," Smith said.

After the 17-year-old boy called 911, Smith kept holding the gun on him until state police arrived at her home in Springhill Township, about 45 miles south of Pittsburgh.

In an ideal world there'd be no need for guns. Unfortunately, this isn't an ideal world.

RLC

Bangkok on the Pacific

This essay in the San Francisco Chronicle by Deb Saunders paints a grisly picture of where the sexual revolution is taking us. San Francisco voters will decide a ballot measure in November that would essentially decriminalize prostitution, but the wording of the measure would mean that children exploited for sex would be less protected than before and those who traffic in the sex trade will be more protected. Saunders writes:

Yet the San Francisco ballot measure completely ignores the prostitution of children. The measure simply states, "Law enforcement agencies shall not allocate any resources for the investigation and prosecution of prostitutes for prostitution." Astonishingly, there's no exemption that encourages police to enforce the law for minors.

If the measure passes, the city is likely to become an international haven for pimps who peddle girls and boys, and perverts seeking sex with minors.

The other big problem: The measure prohibits city law enforcement from applying for grants to prosecute human traffickers. That's right, this measure gives a free pass to the human sex-slave trade -- in a city that is a central stop for international sex-trade rings.

This may strike you as terrible news but look at the bright side. Think of what it'll do for tourism.

You can read Saunders' entire piece at the link.

HT: Byron

RLC

Never Forget

This ship, the USS New York, is designed for anti-terrorist operations and carries a crew of 360 plus 700 combat-ready Marines who can be delivered ashore by helicopter or assault craft. It's the fifth such ship in its class, but it's nevertheless unique. The USS New York was made with 24 tons of steel from the World Trade Towers. It's motto is "Never Forget".

HT: Carol

RLC