Haiti Update

My friend Andy is a missionary in Haiti and has been sending us regular updates since the earthquake. Here's his latest:

Haiti is a strange place. Stories (a.k.a. lies) are flying around this island. One story says that the Americans set off a bomb underneath Haiti. They want to take it over and occupy it because they saw on a computer somewhere that USA doesn't exist in 2012. That's funny.

Other stories aren't so funny. The news I sent about a nearby hospital falling over? A lie. Sorry I forwarded it without confirmation.

I heard a lady on the radio who lost her daughter when people took off running because a tidal wave was coming. There was no wave, but she still hadn't found her daughter. Not so funny.

Yesterday I visited our former teacher who lost his son in the quake. The details are so sad. The boy never came home from school that day. He was attending afternoon classes, so he should have been in the school when the quake hit. The school collapsed, and the father (our former teacher) went there two days later. He saw only parts of people sticking out of the rubble. The building was flat. We can only believe his son's body is in there.

Many, many buildings have yet to be 'cleaned up'. Who knows how long it will take. No closure for those poor parents. The boy's mother still holds a hope that somehow, someday.... I left some cash with them, and hope to send some more before long. Your gifts for this situation are blessing lots of people in moments of real need.

Then today we got word that Wilphar and Emmanuel's father died in Port yesterday. He had been sick before the quake. Since the quake he was living in the street. We sent him some money last week. He was being moved around in a wheel barrow since the quake hit. His other children called to inform Wilphar that they needed to bury him. After some 24 years of fatherly neglect, the other children reminded Wilphar that he's the oldest child, and the funeral weight is on him. We'll be able to help them because of gifts from folks like you.

More to come....

If you'd like to help Andy meet the needs of these suffering people you can send a check to Andy Stump c/o Christ Lutheran Church, 126 West Main St., Dallastown, PA 17313. Our church sponsors his work.

RLC

The Will to Disbelieve

The recent passing of far-left historian Howard Zinn reminded me, in a circuitous sort of way, of a piece Mary Eberstadt wrote a year ago for First Things. I thought it'd be worth sharing. The article was titled The Will to Disbelieve, a take-off on philosopher William James' famous essay The Will to Believe.

Eberstadt begins by reminding us of the willful imperviousness of the intellectual left (e.g. Zinn) to the evidence of the crimes of communism in the twentieth century and goes on to compare that will to disbelieve with the cultural elite's similar refusal to see the evidence of the tragic effects of the sexual revolution. She writes:

Such a lack of consensus is interesting, because the empirical record by now weighs overwhelmingly against the liberationists - again, quite similarly to the way in which the moral record of communism weighed against the communists, even as many intellectuals in the West continued to deny it.

To say as much is not to say that the sexual revolution has caused anything like the Gulag archipelago or some of the other more dramatic legacies of communism (which apologists used to call "excesses"). It is not to say that the sexual revolution is the root of all evil, any more than any other single momentous historical development is the root of all evil. It is to say, however, that the similarities between today's intellectual denials of the costs of the sexual revolution and yesterday's intellectual denials of the costs of communism are striking - and for those who are not in denial about what's happening, the similarities between these two phases of intellectual history line up uncannily well.

Consider just a few of the likenesses between these two epochal events in modern intellectual history. In both cases, an empirical record has been assembled that is beyond refutation and that testifies to the unhappy economic, social, and moral consequences. Yet in both cases, the minority of scholars who have amassed the empirical record and drawn attention to it have been rewarded, for the most part, with a spectrum of reaction ranging from indifference to ridicule to wrath.

Eberstadt proceeds to lay out her case, a case which would seem to be obvious, to quote Pascal, to anyone who is not dead set against it. Here's part of her argument:

Or consider more recent evidence of the revolution's toll. One is an interesting book published a few years ago by Elizabeth Marquardt entitled Between Two Worlds: The Inner Lives of Children of Divorce. Based on a 125-question survey administered with her coresearcher Norval Glenn to two groups - those who had grown up in divorced homes on the one hand, and those from intact homes on the other - Marquardt's results show clearly the higher risks of dysfunction and disturbance that follow many of her subjects into adulthood.

This brings us to the moral core of the sexual revolution: the abundant evidence that its fruits have been worst for women and children. Even people who pride themselves on politically correct compassion, who criticize conservatives and religious believers for their supposed "lack of feeling," fail to see the contradiction between their public professions of compassion in other matters and their private adherence to a liberationist ethic.

This resolute refusal to recognize that the revolution falls heaviest on the youngest and most vulnerable shoulders - beginning with the fetus and proceeding up through children and adolescents - is perhaps the most vivid example of the denial surrounding the fallout of the sexual revolution. In no other realm of human life do ordinary Americans seem so indifferent to the particular suffering of the smallest and weakest. Our campuses especially ring with the self-righteous chants of those protesting the genocide in Darfur, or wanton cruelty to animals, or gross human rights violations by oppressive governments such as China's. These are all problems about which real students shed real tears. I'm not saying their compassion is wrong. I'm just saying that it's selectively deployed. People who in any other context would pride themselves on defending the underdog forget just who that underdog is when the subject is the sexual revolution.

Think about those who are the most stalwart defenders of laissez-faire sexuality in the public square: libertarians, many of them young men, almost all of them...single. This is the demographic in which liberationism thrives, among those generally strongest, in the prime of their lives and operating on the assumption only of the revolution's benefits for themselves.

The whole essay is very much worth reading whether one is concerned about the consequences of the tectonic shift in our sexual morality since WWII or is interested in trying to understand how anyone could possibly have been sympathetic to twentieth century communism, or both.

RLC

Honoring Mother Teresa

Comes word that some atheists are in a snit because the U.S. Postal Service is going to put Mother Teresa on a stamp:

An atheist organization is blasting the U.S. Postal Service for its plan to honor Mother Teresa with a commemorative stamp, saying it violates postal regulations against honoring "individuals whose principal achievements are associated with religious undertakings."

The Freedom from Religion Foundation is urging its supporters to boycott the stamp - and also to engage in a letter-writing campaign to spread the word about what it calls the "darker side" of Mother Teresa.

The stamp - set to be released on Aug. 26, which would have been Mother Teresa's 100th birthday - will recognize the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize winner for her humanitarian work, the Postal Service announced last month.

But Freedom from Religion Foundation spokeswoman Annie Laurie Gaylor says issuing the stamp runs against Postal Service regulations.

"Mother Teresa is principally known as a religious figure who ran a religious institution. You can't really separate her being a nun and being a Roman Catholic from everything she did," Gaylor told FoxNews.com.

Well, that's true enough. What one does with one's life is often inseparable from what one most deeply believes, which is, I suppose, why there are no atheist charitable organizations to speak of. Nonetheless, it's asinine to think, as Ms. Gaylor evidently does, that because one is inspired by religious beliefs to live a life of altruism that that life should not be recognized simply because of the motives which inspired it.

Indeed, when Ms. Gaylor was asked why her organization didn't oppose stamps honoring Malcolm X and Martin Luther King she gave a very puzzling reply:

Gaylor said the atheist group did not oppose stamps for King and Malcolm X, because, she said, they were known for their civil rights activities, not for their religion.

Martin Luther King "just happened to be a minister," and "Malcolm X was not principally known for being a religious figure," she said.

"And he's not called Father Malcolm X like Mother Teresa. I mean, even her name is a Roman Catholic honorific."

Perhaps the most gracious thing to do here would be to politely avert one's eyes from such a towering display of embarrassing fatuity. Surely Ms Gaylor doesn't intend to be taken seriously. Has she never read the Biography of Malcolm X and how his conversion to Islam shaped his subsequent life? Has she never read the writings of Martin Luther King, who, be it noted, was almost always referred to as "Reverend" King (not to mention that he carried the name of the great protestant reformer)? Is she oblivious to how both his sense of justice and his courage were rooted in his faith in God? If she hasn't, I urge her to pick up a copy of his I Have a Dream speech or his Letter From a Birmingham Jail.

But the deeper question is this: Since when do church/state considerations make it somehow illicit for the government to honor people who do great things from religious motivation? Would Ms. Gaylor have opposed the issuance of the stamp in 1948 which honored the four chaplains aboard the torpedoed USAT Dorchester - one of whom was a priest and presumably bore the honorific of "Father" - who, motivated by their mutual love for God, gave their life vests to others as the boat sank?

Here's the irony in Ms. Gaylor's position, however: In a world in which people acted consistently with their assumptions about ultimate reality there's absolutely no reason an atheist would have for acting altruistically. On atheism acts of great personal sacrifice are utterly inexplicable. People may engage in them, as does Dr. Rieux in Camus' The Plague, but the choice to do so is non-rational. Atheism leads to an egoistic ethic. Great sacrifices for others are incomprehensible in a world without God. People like Mother Teresa, on the other hand, and the four chaplains were motivated by their love for, and gratitude to, God and the conviction that God wanted them to give of themselves for others whom He loves. Grant Ms. Gaylor her Godless world and all we're left with is a life in which no one has any reason to do anything other than look out for his own self-interest - a Hobbesian war of every man against every man.

The Postal Service would struggle in such a world, the world Ms Gaylor would have us live in, to find anyone worth honoring with a stamp.

RLC

Clarification

Jason writes to urge readers who may have visited the links to the remembrances of Howard Zinn to be sure to check the Update at David Horowitz's site. Horowitz (and Jason) was afraid that readers might construe his contempt for Zinn's ideas as contempt for Zinn the man, and he clarifies his position at the Update.

Indeed, Howard Zinn was by all accounts a fine man.

RLC

Laughing at Olby

Jon Stewart wearies of the relentless name-calling by MSNBC's Keith Olbermann and does a masterful parody of Olby in this skit. This'll be especially funny for anyone who has ever watched Olbermann for more than five minutes:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Special Comment - Keith Olbermann's Name-Calling
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

An eager readiness to personally insult another individual is a good indicator of what sort of character a man has. In Olbermann's case his disagreements over politics often degenerate quickly into the vilest sort of attacks on his opponents' very humanity. Dehumanization has been Olbermann's hole card for a couple of years now, but his ratings may reflect that his viewers, all but the hardest core, perhaps, are getting tired of it. Certainly when entertainers like Jon Stewart, who are on Olbermann's side on just about every substantive policy matter, begin to ridicule his persona, it's time to rethink the persona.

After this edition of the Daily Show it'll be awfully hard for Olbermann to insult anyone without reminding his viewers how creepy and silly Stewart made him look, and when viewers start thinking of a public man as a joke he very quickly loses his ability to influence their opinions.

RLC

Time to Go

You've no doubt heard that President Obama has decided that trying Khalid Sheik Mohammed in New York City was a political albatross he didn't need hanging around his neck going into the 2010 elections and has overruled his Justice department's plans for a Manhattan media spectacle. The White House insists that KSM will still be tried in civilian rather than military court although the venue has yet to be determined. Bill Burck and Dana Perino at National Review Online give eight reasons why, on the contrary, the trial will indeed be held before a military tribunal and will be held in, of all places, Guantanamo Bay.

Meanwhile, it seems likely that Attorney General Eric Holder will soon "resign" from his office. Overruling his decision to hold the trial in civilian court in NYC will surely be received by him as a slap in the face and an expression of no confidence. Indeed, the man has been a constant source of distraction and embarrassment to the Obama administration since he took over the post. Burck and Perino remind us of some of his most infelicitous decisions:

It is a remarkable turn of events [being overruled on the KSM trial] for Attorney General Eric Holder, who, the White House has said for months, made the decision alone and was running the show. The White House tired, far more quickly than many expected, of the AG's bungled plan and realized that public opinion had turned decisively against the trial. Maybe the White House grew frustrated with the AG's mistakes on national-security matters, from releasing the CIA interrogation memoranda last spring over the vociferous protests of former CIA directors who served under Presidents Bush and Clinton, to commencing a criminal investigation of CIA interrogators who had previously been informed by career prosecutors that they would not be subject to prosecution, to deciding to Mirandize the Underwear Bomber without consulting the intelligence services and charge him as a criminal defendant with all the rights of an American citizen.

To these I would add his decision to not prosecute, against the advice of top Justice officials, the New Black Party thugs who were intimidating voters at a Philadelphia polling place in the 2008 election. I might also add his impolitic accusation that we are a nation of cowards about race, a claim that won him few admirers among the general public.

Eric Holder is a liability to the administration and patience with his missteps and pratfalls will, I think, soon run out. The last thing the Democrats need going into November is yet another Holderism sucking up media oxygen and forcing Democrat candidates to defend the indefensible. It certainly has been difficult for the White House to project an air of competence with Eric Holder running the Justice Department.

RLC

Ooh, Boy

As if the proponents of AGW (anthropogenic global warming) hadn't suffered enough damage to their credibility of late, now comes word of even more bad news. You might have heard that predictions of glacial retreat in the Himalayan mountains were based on rather tenuous evidence, and had to be retracted. Now we read a new revelation in the Telegraph U.K.

Here's the lede:

The United Nations' expert panel on climate change based claims about ice disappearing from the world's mountain tops on a student's dissertation and an article in a mountaineering magazine.

The revelation will cause fresh embarrassment for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which had to issue a humiliating apology earlier this month over inaccurate statements about global warming.

The IPCC's remit is to provide an authoritative assessment of scientific evidence on climate change.

In its most recent report, it stated that observed reductions in mountain ice in the Andes, Alps and Africa was being caused by global warming, citing two papers as the source of the information.

However, it can be revealed that one of the sources quoted was a feature article published in a popular magazine for climbers which was based on anecdotal evidence from mountaineers about the changes they were witnessing on the mountainsides around them.

The other was a dissertation written by a geography student, studying for the equivalent of a master's degree, at the University of Berne in Switzerland that quoted interviews with mountain guides in the Alps.

Perhaps it's time for the world's climatologists to restore some respectability to their science and explain exactly what the empirical, rather than the anecdotal, data is for man-caused global warming, and exactly how that data has been attained, and precisely how they have arrived at their conclusions.

It would also be inexcusably irresponsible of us to pass any legislation, like cap and trade, that would jeopardize our economic well-being until we know exactly what's going on in the earth's atmosphere. That the glaciers are retreating seems pretty clear - I've seen it myself in Alaska. What's not at all clear is what's causing that retreat.

I know Al Gore has said that the science is settled and the debate is over, but a student's Master's thesis and a mountaineering article are not the sort of thing most people think of when they think of settled science.

RLC

Talking About Justice

A former student, Anthony, links us to an interesting promo for a class on ethical issues related to the doing of justice. The class is being offered at Harvard by Michael Sandel, and interested readers can watch any or all of Professor Sandel's classes at the link:

It looks like this would be a very stimulating class for undergraduates, but I wonder whether Prof. Sandel ever asks his students the really important questions: Why, exactly, do they hold the opinion they do on any of the matters they discuss? What is the ground of their moral opinions? Do they have one or are their opinions purely arbitrary preferences that are no more rooted in anything than is their preference for pepsi over coke?

The fundamental ethical questions are these: Do ethical judgments stand on anything or are they simply matters of personal preference? Is there moral obligation or duty and, if so, what is it that obligates us? What is it that makes an act morally right or obligatory?

Until these questions are settled talking about what's right to do in a particular situation is like speculating about whether blue is prettier than green. It's not really worth debating. Moreover, these are questions for which naturalism, at bottom, must answer: Personal preference, No and Nothing, and Nothing. If we are, after all, simply the effluvium of blind, impersonal forces then it's impossible to avoid the conclusion that, as atheistic philosopher Michael Ruse puts it, ethics is just an illusion, an evolutionary ploy to suit us for survival in the stone age.

Remember Ruse the next time you hear an atheist or secularist make a moral judgment - for example, when they insist that we have a moral duty to help the poor. What they're telling you when they say that "X is right (or wrong)" is nothing more than "I like (or don't like) X." to which the appropriate rejoinder is, "So why should anyone care?" Ethics is pretty much literal nonsense unless there is a transcendent, personal, moral authority who serves as a source of objective moral obligation. The atheist who denies the existence of such an authority is only speaking gibberish when he proclaims that "we should do X" or that "X is a moral duty."

Hopefully, Professor Sandel points all this out to his students, but since he's at Harvard I suppose I shouldn't count on it.

RLC

Howard Zinn (RIP)

Howard Zinn died last week at age 87. Most readers have probably never heard of Mr. Zinn, but he was a man of some consequence in the ideological struggles of the last half century. A historian and far-left activist he had many admirers on the left and many detractors on the right. In the wake of his passing two remembrances are worth checking out. From the left there's Bob Herbert's piece in the New York Times, and from the right there's a column written by converted radical leftist David Horowitz at Front Page Mag.

Check them out and decide for yourself whether Zinn's life and work merits praise or regret.

RLC

Mischaracterizing ID

In the course of a review in First Things (subscription only) of Richard Dawkins' latest book theologian David B. Hart tarnishes an otherwise estimable critique with an unfortunate characterization of intelligent design (ID). He writes:

The best argument against ID theory, when all is said and done, is that it rests on a premise - "irreducible complexity" - that may seem compelling at the purely intuitive level but that can never be logically demonstrated. At the end of the day it is - as Francis Collins rightly remarks - an argument from personal incredulity....the mere biological complexity of this or that organism can never amount to an irrefutable proof of anything other than the incalculable complexity of that organism's phylogenetic antecedents.

It was hard for me to get past the fact that this muddled paragraph came from the same mind which penned Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies, a book I deeply admire.

Let's take Hart's assertions in order:

The best argument against ID theory, when all is said and done, is that it rests on a premise - "irreducible complexity."

This is simply false. ID rests on much more than irreducible complexity. It is based upon the concept that complex specified patterns, i.e. information, fills the biosphere and yet never have we ever seen such information generated by anything other than a mind. We've certainly never seen it produced by random natural forces. ID is also based on the exquisite fine-tuning of the forces, constants, and parameters of the universe. Dozens, perhaps more, of these had to be set to values so precise that had they deviated by, in some cases, the mass of a single atom relative to the mass of the universe, the universe would not have existed much less have given rise to life. To claim that ID rests solely on irreducible complexity is to reveal a grave lack of undertstanding of the matter about which one is writing.

[ID] can never be logically demonstrated.

This is true but what of it? Science is not about logical demonstrations, it's about coming up with the most plausible explanation for the available facts. To criticize ID because it doesn't lend itself to some sort deductive proof is, by extension, to criticize virtually the entire scientific enterprise.

[T]he mere biological complexity of this or that organism can never amount to an irrefutable proof of anything other than the incalculable complexity of that organism's phylogenetic antecedents.

Hart seems to be saying that unless a scientific theory can be proven beyond any possibility of refutation it is somehow unworthy of consideration. If this were true then all of Darwinism would have to be thrown on the scrap heap. Scientists do not seek proof, they seek explanations that account for a lot of data and which can resist falsification. Proof is left to mathematicians and logicians.

I trust that since Professor Hart's article was published in FT last month a lot of people who know better have quietly informed him that in this paragraph, at least, he dabbled in matters he would have been better advised to leave alone.

RLC

This We Know Is True

Cornelius Hunter notes at his blog that whatever the 21st century theory of the origin of life turns out to be it will still be called "evolution" and it will still be true, no matter how incompatible it may be with the evidence:

Evolution may make no sense, but it will always be true. It must be, for god would never make this world. So evolution will flit from nonsensical idea to nonsensical idea in its never ending attempt to make sense. Who knows what the theory of origins will be in the future, but it will be called evolution. And it will be true. Religion drives science and it matters.

Hunter arrives at this conclusion after commenting on a book written by two atheistic evolutionists titled What Darwin Got Wrong. In the book the authors essentially claim that none of the current theories of abiogenesis make any sense, that they are, in Hunter's words, a melange of false predictions and unfounded speculations, all contrived in the absence of any credible mechanisms. But that nevertheless we know it happened.

And how do we know it happened? Because since there is no God there's no other way it could have happened. As Hunter says: Evolution may be all wrong, but it is still true. That we know.

RLC

Welcome to Haiti

Scott Lewis, the head of a U.S. disaster relief organization, undertook last week to deliver a convoy of rice and beans to hungry Haitians unable to find food in the environs of Port-au-Prince. Unfortunately, he ran smack up against the chaos, confusion, and calamity that is Haiti today. Here's the the Wall Street Journal's lede from the account of his odyssey through the streets of the Haitian capital:

Scott Lewis hoped to deliver more than one million meals to Haitians on Wednesday via a 15-truck convoy brimming with beans and rice.

Instead, "It was the convoy to nowhere," Mr. Lewis said. Well after dusk, the 52-year-old founder of a U.S. disaster-relief organization had barely delivered any food, other than some bags left at a missionary hospital, and a few more bags that got looted from the convoy as it crawled along crowded streets.

Trucks conked out. Communication with the U.S. military broke down. Traffic snarled the streets. Hungry crowds made handing out food unsafe.

It's not typical for so much to go wrong on a major operation like this-in fact, on Thursday, the Army successfully delivered the cargo, in the largest single-day food distribution here. But a diary of Wednesday's journey reads like an anthology of the obstacles stifling efforts to deliver aid since an earthquake turned the Haitian capital to rubble two weeks ago.

"The whole world wants to know why we can't get food to the Haitian people," said Ed Minyard, a 59-year-old former U.S. Army Ranger running the convoy, after Wednesday's debacle. "Well, you just saw why."

Read the whole story. To people involved with trying to bring relief to this the poorest country in the western hemisphere, the frustrations must be enormous.

RLC

The Collapse of Venezuelan Socialism

The WaPo's Jackson Diehl analyzes the collapse of Hugo Chavez's socialist dream for Venezuela:

While the world has been preoccupied with the crisis in Haiti, Latin America has quietly passed through a tipping point in the ideological conflict that has polarized the region -- and paralyzed U.S. diplomacy -- for most of the past decade.

The result boils down to this: Hugo Ch�vez's "socialism for the 21st century" has been defeated and is on its way to collapse.

During the past two weeks, just before and after the earthquake outside Port-au-Prince, the following happened: Ch�vez was forced to devalue the Venezuelan currency, and impose and then revoke massive power cuts in the Venezuelan capital as the country reeled from recession, double-digit inflation and the possible collapse of the national power grid. In Honduras, a seven-month crisis triggered by the attempt of a Ch�vez client to rupture the constitutional order quietly ended with a deal that will send him into exile even as a democratically elected moderate is sworn in as president.

Last but not least, a presidential election in Chile, the region's most successful economy, produced the first victory by a right-wing candidate since dictator Augusto Pinochet was forced from office two decades ago. Sebasti�n Pi�era, the industrialist and champion of free markets who won, has already done something that no leader from Chile or most other Latin American nations has been willing to do in recent years: stand up to Ch�vez.

The list of socialist success stories is not noted for its length. Indeed, it's hard to think of a nation which has tried socialist nostrums and subsequently enjoyed economic prosperity. Most of those which have experimented with socialism have wound up abandoning it in favor of free markets. Given that fact, one wonders why our political leadership seems so determined to impose socialist-style reforms, or at least reasonable facsimiles thereof, on us. Where and when has it ever worked?

There's a lot more to this story at the link.

RLC

Another Stem Cell Breakthrough

Stem cell researchers continue to make breakthroughs that hold out the promise of one day being able to treat all manner of diseases and physiological dysfunctions. An article in Science Daily brings us up to speed on the latest development, but first a little background gleaned from the article:

Until recently, it's been thought that the destiny of a cell was fixed early on in development. Pluripotent embryonic stem cells give rise to all the cell types in the body, but as the daughter cells become more specialized, they also become more biologically isolated. A skin cell could not become a nerve cell, etc.

That view began to change when Dolly the sheep was cloned from an adult cell in 1997, showing that, under certain conditions, a specialized cell could shed these restrictions and act like an embryonic stem cell.

And in 2007, researchers announced the creation of induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells, from human skin cells by infecting them with four stem-cell-associated proteins called transcription factors. This was like returning them to their embryonic state. The process was often described in concept as moving the skin cells backward along the differentiation pathway and then guiding them forward again along a different branch into a new lineage. Thus skin cells could, through a painstaking process, be developed into nerve cells.

Finally, in 2008, Doug Melton, a co-director of Harvard's Stem Cell Institute, showed it was possible in adult mice to reprogram one type of cell in the pancreas to become another pancreatic cell type by infecting them with a pool of viruses expressing just three transcription factors.

As a result, scientists began to wonder whether it was even necessary to walk the cells back to the pluripotent stage and began to look for ways to convert one kind of cell directly to another kind.

Here's the fascinating part. Scientists at the Stanford University School of Medicine have now succeeded in transforming mouse skin cells in a laboratory dish directly into functional nerve cells with the application of just three genes. The cells make the change without first becoming a pluripotent type of stem cell.

According to Science Daily:

The finding could revolutionize the future of human stem cell therapy and recast our understanding of how cells choose and maintain their specialties in the body.

"We actively and directly induced one cell type to become a completely different cell type," said Marius Wernig, MD, assistant professor of pathology and a member of Stanford's Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine. "These are fully functional neurons. They can do all the principal things that neurons in the brain do." That includes making connections with and signaling to other nerve cells -- critical functions if the cells are eventually to be used as therapy for Parkinson's disease or other disorders.

The implications of this, not only for Parkinson's and Alzheimer's sufferers, but also for paralytics and perhaps diabetics would seem to be immense. This is truly exciting stuff. It should be mentioned also that, unlike earlier stem cell research, none of this current work involves sacrificing human embryos. This removes a great moral impediment to proceeding with the development of medical applications for stem cells.

RLC

Caught Up in the Moment

MSNBC's Chris Matthews, the man who gets a thrill up his leg at the sound of President Obama's voice, can say more goofy things in five minutes than some people say in a lifetime. What, for example, did he mean last night when, in reference to the State of the Union speech, he confessed that for an hour he forgot that Barack Obama is black:

Isn't this the same sort of maladroit, liberal chatter about race that got Harry Reid in trouble, or is this something more sinister? What is Matthews implying? Is he saying that, boy, Obama was so good that for an hour there I thought I was listening to a white man?

My guess is that Matthews didn't intend anything particularly offensive. It was just Matthews being his normal racially obsequious self, but then I could be wrong. I just wonder what the reaction would have been had, say, Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck said what Matthews said.

UPDATE: It's been observed that many people continue to live their lives in the decade in which they came of age. At least that seems true of Chris Matthews as he tries to clarify his comment about President Obama:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Whatever. Is this what a case of "liberal guilt" sounds like?

RLC

The Blue Is Fading

James Carville once said of my home state that from a Democrat's perspective Pennsylvania is Philadelphia in the east, Pittsburgh in the west, and everything in between is Alabama. In recent elections the metropolitan areas have indeed been sufficient to carry the state for the Democrats and turn Pennsylvania blue. If recent poll results are reliable, however, that may soon be changing:

Mr. Obama's job approval rating among state residents is at the lowest of his year-old presidency, and residents view him less favorably than ever, according to the Franklin & Marshall College poll co-sponsored by Times-Shamrock Newspapers and other media outlets.

The poll also shows U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter far ahead of his challenger for the Democratic nomination, U.S. Rep. Joe Sestak. Both badly trail Republican former Rep. Pat Toomey.

A month after Mr. Obama took office, the F&M poll showed 55 percent thought he was doing a good or excellent job and 36 percent said he was doing a fair or poor job. In the latest poll, that was down to 38 percent good or excellent and 61 percent fair or poor.

The way Pennsylvanians view the president personally also dimmed. In February, 56 percent had a favorable view and 23 percent an unfavorable view. In the latest poll, 44 percent each had favorable and unfavorable views. In October, it was 45 percent favorable, 39 percent unfavorable.

As for Mr. Specter, who switched from Republican to Democrat last April, the poll shows many Democrats have yet to warm up to him. Half said they don't know enough about either Mr. Specter or Mr. Sestak.

His other poll numbers are less encouraging.

But among 395 likely voters, Mr. Toomey led Mr. Specter 45 to 31 percent. Mr Toomey led Mr. Sestak by 41 to 19 percent. The pool of likely voters had a margin of error of plus or minus 4.9 percentage points.

Six in 10 voters think it is time for a new senator.

I would not be at all surprised, should Senator Specter's numbers stagnate at these dismal levels, to see him join the growing list of Democratic retirees sometime prior to the November election.

RLC

The Odd Couple

That he might once again somehow advance science by flagellating Christianity, atheist Richard Dawkins seizes upon the negative reaction to Pat Robertson's intemperate remarks about the Haitians' alleged "pact with the devil" and how those long-suffering people are reaping the bitter fruits of that infernal bargain. Dawkins argues that Robertson's position that the earthquake is God's judgment upon Haiti accurately represents, or should accurately represent, that of the Church, and, in his characteristically charming, genteel way, he chides Christians for dissociating themselves from Robertson's remarks. It's rather amusing to see Dawkins actually defend Robertson against his fellow Christians, even if it's only a tactical ploy:

Loathsome as Robertson's views undoubtedly are, he is the Christian who stands squarely in the Christian tradition. The agonized theodiceans who see suffering as an intractable 'mystery', or who 'see God' in the help, money and goodwill that is now flooding into Haiti , or (most nauseating of all) who claim to see God 'suffering on the cross' in the ruins of Port-au-Prince, those faux-anguished hypocrites are denying the centrepiece of their own theology. It is the obnoxious Pat Robertson who is the true Christian here.

Where was God in Noah's flood? He was systematically drowning the entire world, animal as well as human, as punishment for 'sin'. Where was God when Sodom and Gomorrah were consumed with fire and brimstone? He was deliberately barbecuing the citizenry, lock stock and barrel, as punishment for 'sin'. Dear modern, enlightened, theologically sophisticated Christian, your entire religion is founded on an obsession with 'sin', with punishment and with atonement. Where do you find the effrontery to condemn Pat Robertson, you who have signed up to the obnoxious doctrine that the central purpose of Jesus' incarnation was to have himself tortured as a scapegoat for the 'sins' of all mankind, past, present and future, beginning with the 'sin' of Adam, who (as any modern theologian well knows) never even existed? To quote the President of one theological seminary, writing in these very pages:

"The earthquake in Haiti, like every other earthly disaster, reminds us that creation groans under the weight of sin and the judgment of God. This is true for every cell in our bodies, even as it is for the crust of the earth at every point on the globe."

You nice, middle-of-the-road theologians and clergymen, be-frocked and bleating in your pulpits, you disclaim Pat Robertson's suggestion that the Haitians are paying for a pact with the devil. But you worship a god-man who - as you tell your congregations even if you don't believe it yourself - 'cast out devils'. You even believe (or you don't disabuse your flock when they believe) that Jesus cured a madman by causing the 'devils' in him to fly into a herd of pigs and stampede them over a cliff. Charming story, well calculated to uplift and inspire the Sunday School and the Infant Bible Class. Pat Robertson may spout evil nonsense, but he is a mere amateur at that game. Just read your own Bible. Pat Robertson is true to it. But you?

Educated apologist, how dare you weep Christian tears, when your entire theology is one long celebration of suffering: suffering as payback for 'sin' - or suffering as 'atonement' for it? You may weep for Haiti where Pat Robertson does not, but at least, in his hick, sub-Palinesque ignorance, he holds up an honest mirror to the ugliness of Christian theology. You are nothing but a whited sepulchre.

Russ Douthat offers a theological response to Dawkins in the New York Times which I commend to you.

Meanwhile, I wonder why Professor Dawkins focusses his attack on the belief of some Christians that the earthquake was somehow a judgment on Haitian sin rather than wonder what it is about Christianity that motivates so many to sacrifice so much to bring succor to the Haitian people. Aside from government relief efforts, I suspect most of the work being done on the ground to relieve the suffering of these wretched people is being done by, and financed by, Christians. Maybe the American Humanist Society has medical and rescue teams on the ground that I haven't heard about. Maybe there are orphanages in Port-au-Prince run by the Sisters of Atheism that have been ministering to abandoned children and placing them with eager atheist families stateside. Maybe there are hundreds of atheists throughout rural Haiti running schools and medical facilities in the name of atheism, laboring, with the support of thousands of atheists in the U.S., to meet the day to day needs of the poorest people in the western hemisphere.

All this is possible, I suppose, but I doubt that it's happening. Atheists are too busy doing the much more important work of attacking Christians for believing that God gave Himself for us, and that we should therefore give ourselves for those He loves, to actually do much to help those people themselves.

RLC

Denial of Service

Of course, this would never happen here because, well, our congress would never let it:

Remember the whole controversy over "death panels" - the idea, as President Obama dismissively put it, that greater government control over medicine would cause bureaucrats to "pull the plug on grandma"? Well, for weeks now Britain's newspapers have been filled with articles about the National Health Service pulling the plug on grandma.

The latest is the story of a woman who had to fight her doctors for weeks after they withdrew care from her 80-year-old mother. According to the London Times:

Hazel Fenton, from East Sussex, is alive nine months after medics ruled she had only days to live, withdrew her antibiotics, and denied her artificial feeding. The former school matron had been placed on a controversial care plan intended to ease the last days of dying patients.

Doctors say Fenton is an example of patients who have been condemned to death on the Liverpool care pathway plan. They argue that while it is suitable for patients who do have only days to live, it is being used more widely in the NHS, denying treatment to elderly patients who are not dying.

Fenton's daughter describes the NHS system for dealing with very ill elderly patients as "a subterfuge for legalized euthanasia of the elderly." In other words, a death panel.

There are more such accounts at the link of how the government health system in England churns out one horror after another. This is the fate to which the cheerleaders for a public option would consign us. After all, why should the English be the only ones to enjoy such blessings?

Then there's British literary figure Martin Amis who wants euthanasia booths on every street corner:

The novelist Martin Amis has called for euthanasia booths on street corners, where elderly people can end their lives with "a martini and a medal".

The author of Time's Arrow and London Fields even predicts a Britain torn by internal strife in the 2020s if the demographic time bomb of the ageing population is not tackled head-on.

"How is society going to support this silver tsunami?" he asks in an interview in The Sunday Times Magazine today.

"There'll be a population of demented very old people, like an invasion of terrible immigrants, stinking out the restaurants and cafes and shops. I can imagine a sort of civil war between the old and the young in 10 or 15 years' time."

How big a step is it from making euthanasia available to "stinking, demented old people" to demanding that they avail themselves of it? It's chilling to think that when government runs health care faceless bureaucrats will ultimately decide who receives care and who doesn't. It's not hard to imagine a lot of those bureaucrats sharing the opinions of Mr. Amis. After all, several of President Obama's advisors have already gone on record with views not far removed from those of Mr. Amis.

It's a Brave New World we are embarking upon under our HopenChange political leadership.

RLC

Wedge Strategy

CNN reports that the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) is circulating a series of questions to their senatorial candidates and are encouraging them to pose these questions to their Republican opponents. The hope is that by forcing the Republicans to answer these queries a wedge will be driven between the candidate and at least some of his or her base.

Here are the questions:

1. Do you believe that Barack Obama is a U.S.citizen?
   
2. Do you think the Tenth Amendment bars Congress from issuing regulations like minimum healthcare coverage standards?
   
3. Do you think programs like Social Security and Medicare represent socialism, and should never have been created in the first place?
   
4. Do you think President Obama is a socialist?
   
5. Do you think America should return to a gold standard?
   

I don't think these challenges are very well-framed, but nevertheless, here's an attempt to answer them:

1. Who knows? He says he is, but he refuses to produce a genuine birth certificate so it's difficult to be anything but agnostic on the matter.
   
2. If by minimum standards is meant that congress has the right to demand under penalty of law that you purchase health insurance then no, I don't think the constitution grants that right.
   
3. They are programs that are consistent with a socialist economy, but to ask whether we would be better off had they never been created is like asking whether we would be better off if we never developed a fondness for sweets. The fact is that our society has adapted to these programs and has come to depend upon them so it would be extremely wrenching to change at this point. But that doesn't mean it was the best way at the time to solve the problem of how to provide for retirees. It should be noted, too, that when these programs were created they were not intended to be the huge bureaucratic leviathans they have since become.
   
4. He certainly has socialist predilections and sympathies. Whether he would, in a moment of candor, actually call himself a socialist or not, what he would create in this country were he given free rein would doubtless be indistinguishable from Euro-socialism.
   
5. If the question is asking whether we should have a sound currency, it answers itself. Whether the gold standard is the only way, or the best way, to achieve that, I don't know, but if it is, then surely we should adopt it.
   

In response another set of questions has been provided to Republican candidates by the National Republican Senatorial Committee to pose to their Democratic opponents. It'd be interesting to hear how a Democrat candidate would reply to them:

1. Do you believe the $787 billion "stimulus" bill worked?
   
2. Would you support a second so-called "stimulus" bill, even though the first failed to create much-needed jobs? Or do you believe the unspent money should be returned to the taxpayers?
   
3. Are you willing to hold open discussions to reach an agreement on bipartisan health care reform, or will you continue to support backroom deals - such as the Cornhusker Kickback - in order to ram an unpopular and costly government-run health care bill through Congress?
   
4. Do you support the half-trillion dollars in Medicare cuts proposed in the Democrats' health care bill, and do you believe that those cuts will strengthen Medicare? If so, would you support a stand-alone bill to "strengthen" Medicare by cutting a half-trillion dollars?
   
5. Do you support the almost half-trillion dollars in new taxes contained in the Democrats' health care bill? If so, do you believe raising taxes during a recession is the right thing to do?
   
6. Do you support increasing the nation's debt limit by yet another $2 trillion?
   
7. Do you support the contentious and costly cap-and-trade legislation, or will you stand up for families, seniors, and small business owners who cannot afford to pay for a costly tax increase every time they turn on their lights or go about their day-to-day lives?
   
8. Do you believe the Obama Administration was correct when they gave the Christmas Day bomber a lawyer and the right to remain silent before our intelligence professionals had the opportunity to question him about other potential attacks on the United States?
   
9. Do you agree with the Obama Administration that terrorists should be afforded the same rights as American citizens, tried in American courtrooms, and ultimately held on American soil?
   

I think I would rather be a Republican who had to answer the Democrats' questions than a Democrat who had to answer the Republicans' questions.

RLC

Hatchets and Scalpels

President Obama is expected to propose an across the board three year spending freeze during his State of the Union message tomorrow evening. This despite having consistently and vigorously opposed throughout the campaign exactly what he now will be proposing:

Of course, a president should be allowed to change his mind, but this president has taken that prerogative to an entirely new level and has lost one of the most important assets a leader can have - his credibility. A lot of voters are coming to believe that they were snookered into thinking they were going to get a new kind of governance if they voted for Obama only to find a year later that the new boss is the same as the old boss. Even Evan Thomas, the Newsweek columnist who gushed during the campaign that Obama was a "sort of god" bestriding the world, is now insisting that, on the contrary, Mr. Obama has been fundamentally dishonest as president:

Perhaps in the future we'll have wised up enough to refrain from voting for someone for no loftier reason than the color of his skin and a mellifluous voice. Perhaps we'll take the obligation of voting seriously enough to actually examine the candidate's past thoroughly enough to discern what he's likely to do if he's elected.

Thanks to Breitbart for the link.

RLC