Don't Mess With Texas (Ladies)

This will bring tears to your eyes. It's a voice mail recording of a call from a motorist who witnessed a fender bender and the subsequent kerfuffle. Make sure your sound is turned on.

Thanks to Little Green Footballs for the tip.

Roper v. Simmons

The Supreme Court has ruled 5-4 in Roper v. Simmons that it is cruel and unusual punishment to execute people for murders committed before they turned 18. They maintain that because many foreign nations don't execute those under 18 and because many states have banned the practice that therefore it is "cruel and unusual."

For the most part, however, the reasoning of the Court is based on precedents (e.g. Atkins, 2002) which found that the diminished capacity of juveniles is similar to that of the mentally retarded. Like mentally retarded criminals, juveniles lack a fully-developed sense of right and wrong and therefore are not as responsible for their crimes as adults and should not be subject to capital punishment, or so the argument went:

[T]oday society views juveniles, in the words Atkins used respecting the mentally retarded, as "categorically less culpable than the average criminal..."

Justice Scalia's dissent eloquently filets the majority's flimsy rationale for their decision. He writes, for instance, that:

In other contexts where individualized consideration is provided, we have recognized that at least some minors will be mature enough to make difficult decisions that involve moral considerations. For instance, we have struck down abortion statutes that do not allow minors deemed mature by courts to bypass parental notification provisions. ... It is hard to see why this context should be any different. Whether to obtain an abortion is surely a much more complex decision for a young person than whether to kill an innocent person in cold blood.

There are other flaws in the Court's ruling, as well. Among them, it sets a precedent for lawyers whose adult clients have committed murder that would enable them to escape the death penalty simply by showing that the client didn't really understand that murder is wrong. The lawyer could argue that his client was perhaps unduly influenced by the Nietzschean plea to transcend the concepts of good and evil, or believed that some murders are not bad acts, or that had the emotional maturity of a teenager, etc. It is, after all, not his age which exculpates the juvenile but the emotional and rational disabilities the majority sees as inherent in his age. But these "disabilities" are not unique to teenagers. By what logic, then, will the Court be able to deny to others the protection those "disabilities" confer on juveniles?

The decision also establishes the premise for effectively banning any long-term punishment for juvenile killers. If they should not receive the same penalty as would an adult what justification is there then for life sentences? If they're just kids, why not simply get them counseling and keep them out of prison altogether? The Court's decision, written by Justice Kennedy, says this:

Three general differences between juveniles under 18 and adults demonstrate that juvenile offenders cannot with reliability be classified among the worst offenders. Juveniles' susceptibility to immature and irresponsible behavior means 'their irresponsible conduct is not as morally reprehensible as that of an adult.' ....Their own vulnerability and comparative lack of control over their immediate surroundings mean juveniles have a greater claim than adults to be forgiven for failing to escape negative influences in their whole environment....The reality that juveniles still struggle to define their identity means it is less supportable to conclude that even a heinous crime committed by a juvenile is evidence of irretrievably depraved character. The Thompson plurality recognized the import of these characteristics with respect to juveniles under 16....The same reasoning applies to all juvenile offenders under 18. Once juveniles' diminished culpability is recognized, it is evident that neither of the two penological justifications for the death penalty - retribution and deterrence of capital crimes by prospective offenders,....- provides adequate justification for imposing that penalty on juveniles.

The above, of course, makes it sound as if these juvenile murderers are just a bunch of scamps out soaping car windows. In fact, they are often hardened, cruel savages. Here's the account of Mr. Simmons' crime:

At the age of 17, when he was still a junior in high school, Christopher Simmons, the respondent here, committed murder. About nine months later, after he had turned 18, he was tried and sentenced to death. There is little doubt that Simmons was the instigator of the crime. Before its commission Simmons said he wanted to murder someone. In chilling, callous terms he talked about his plan, discussing it for the most part with two friends, Charles Benjamin and John Tessmer, then aged 15 and 16 respectively. Simmons proposed to commit burglary and murder by breaking and entering, tying up a victim, and throwing the victim off a bridge. Simmons assured his friends they could "get away with it" because they were minors.

The three met at about 2 a.m. on the night of the murder, but Tessmer left before the other two set out. (The State later charged Tessmer with conspiracy, but dropped the charge in exchange for his testimony against Simmons.) Simmons and Benjamin entered the home of the victim, Shirley Crook, after reaching through an open window and unlocking the back door. Simmons turned on a hallway light. Awakened, Mrs. Crook called out, "Who's there?" In response Simmons entered Mrs. Crook's bedroom, where he recognized her from a previous car accident involving them both. Simmons later admitted this confirmed his resolve to murder her.

Using duct tape to cover her eyes and mouth and bind her hands, the two perpetrators put Mrs. Crook in her minivan and drove to a state park. They reinforced the bindings, covered her head with a towel, and walked her to a railroad trestle spanning the Meramec River. There they tied her hands and feet together with electrical wire, wrapped her whole face in duct tape and threw her from the bridge, drowning her in the waters below.

By the afternoon of September 9, Steven Crook had returned home from an overnight trip, found his bedroom in disarray, and reported his wife missing. On the same afternoon fishermen recovered the victim's body from the river. Simmons, meanwhile, was bragging about the killing, telling friends he had killed a woman "because the bitch seen my face."

I wonder if the victim's family feels that this young man "has a greater claim than adults to be forgiven for failing to escape negative influences in [his] whole environment." I wonder if the family is concerned about the awful "reality that juveniles still struggle to define their identity" or if they much care that Mr. Simmons might not be "irredeemably depraved." I wonder about the fear of the poor woman who probably knew she was about to die in this completely senseless act of unspeakable barbarism and cruelty. I also wonder if Justice Kennedy and the rest of the majority would have written these words and decided as they did if that had been their wife or daughter who was thrown off the bridge. Somebody should ask them.

Is Increased Longevity Good?

Here's some good news to cheer you:

Average life expectancy in the United States rose to a record 77.6 years in 2003 from 77.3 years in 2002, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Although women on average still lived longer than men in 2003 - 80.1 years versus 74.8 years - the gender gap in mortality narrowed, continuing a 25-year trend, the CDC said in a report.

The Atlanta-based agency, which is responsible for monitoring and responding to health threats, attributed the improvement in life expectancy to corresponding drops in eight of the 15 leading causes of death. Chief among them were significant declines in mortality from heart disease, cancer and stroke, the three biggest killers. Death rates for these conditions fell between 2.2 percent and 4.6 percent.

An odd thing about this is that when I've asked students whether a pill which would enable users to live forever would be a good thing, they almost invariably answer in the negative. Even Christian students who fully expect to live eternally often say they wouldn't wish to live in a world in which there was no death (until I ask them what on earth, then, the attraction of Christianity is for them. Then they realize the strangeness of their reply and change it.). Yet the news that life expectancy is increasing will be universally acclaimed as positive.

Why is that? Do people want to live longer and longer life spans but just not too long? Why not, as long as the extra years are robust and not stretched out debility?

Anyway, three cheers for longevity!

Watching Our Kids Self-Destruct

Rebecca Hagelin recounts her experience as a substitute teacher in her local middle school. It's pretty depressing stuff. Perhaps most disturbing are these words:

Could it be that our kids are searching for meaning? Could it be that they are so numbed by the anything-goes society that they are pushing the envelope just to feel alive? Take cutting. It's a phenomenon now prevalent in even the best schools, and it's exactly what you're hoping it isn't: self-mutilation. Kids casually cut themselves with knives, safety pins and razor blades - just because. In Michelle Malkin's column of February 23, she refers to a school counselor telling the parent of a middle school student, "70% of the kids here cut or know someone who does. It's cool, a trend, and acceptable."

In a February 28, 2005 article entitled, "Left Behind, Kids Have Too Little to Respect" for The American Conservative, substitute teacher Marian Kester Coombs observes, "Those who give speeches about higher standards and more teachers typically lunch in places like the Senate dining room. They would do well to spend a noon hour in the cafeteria of a public school. Kids in super-tight or droopy jeans and t-shirts reading "Yes - but not with you" or "You forgot to ask if I care" shuffle through food lines that feature tater tots, fries, chips, pizza, Pepsi, and Little Debbie dessert squares. Ritalin offsets the sugar high." As Coombs says, "But bad fashion and worse nutrition are not these children's only common denominators. Their more defining trait is the forlorn look they share."

Kids often find themselves in an ironic situation. They may have everything they think they want but very little of what they really need. Too often their lives are barren, loveless, and meaningless. They're not aware of it, of course, youngsters not being capable of the degree of introspection and self-diagnosis necessary to perceive an existential vacancy, but they suffer from it nonetheless. These kids drift through school like they drift through life. Uncaring and unmotivated, their lives are burdened with a terrible loneliness and an awful sadness.

They cut their bodies because they see themselves as worthless and everything they do as pointless. They are the by-product of their parents' rejection of traditional views of marriage and of the purgation of all vestiges of an emotionally and intellectually rich religious heritage from our public culture. The one refuge where these tragic kids could find meaning and purpose for their lives, the one place where they could find true worth and dignity, is the one place they're not allowed to look and the last place they'd consider trying.

An obsessively secular culture has essentially removed from their reach the thing they most need and thinks it can compensate for the lack by imposing more rigorous academic standards and requiring them to take tougher courses in their schools. To paraphrase Mark Twain, there are thousands hacking at the branches of the problem for every one who is cutting at the root.

Society will not address the root of the malaise which afflicts so many youngsters because it would require that we recognize what the root of the problem is and there is little evidence that we do. Even if we did, to apply ourselves to the root would require a complete reversal of the secularizing trend of the last forty years, and an admission of its utter folly. Instead, oblivious to the harm we are doing, we continue to banish the only hope many of these kids have from our public places, intent on making our schools as sterile and barren as the hearts and minds of the young people most in need of that which is being put off-limits.

Putin's Understanding of America

For a former KGB guy Vladimir Putin has a very attenuated understanding of how things work in the U.S. as this MSNBC/Newsweek report makes painfully clear:

Four years earlier, in another castle in Central Europe, George W. Bush looked Vladimir Putin in the eye and saw his trustworthy soul. But what he saw inside Putin last week was far less comforting. When Bush confronted his Russian counterpart about the freedom of the press in Russia, Putin shot back with an attack of his own: "We didn't criticize you when you fired those reporters at CBS."

It's not clear how well Putin understands the controversy that led to the dismissal of four CBS journalists over the discredited report on Bush's National Guard service. Yet it's all too clear how Putin sees the relationship between Bush and the American media-just like his own. Bush's aides have long feared that former KGB officers in Putin's inner circle are painting a twisted picture of U.S. policy. So Bush explained how he had no power to fire American journalists.

If this is a measure of how well-informed the Russian president is about how things work in the U.S. one wonders how, with agents such as Mr. Putin in its employ, the old KGB scored any successes at all during the cold war.

Time's Running Out for Zarqawi

An Australian news agency has this story predicting the imminent capture of Abu al Zarqawi:

Iraq's interim Government says security forces were closing in on Al Qaeda frontman Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, 24 hours after announcing the arrest of another top aide of the Jordanian militant.

"We are really close to Zarqawi," national security chief Kassem Daoud told reporters in the Shiite Muslim pilgrimage city of Najaf. "You will hear very good news soon," added the secular Shiite, who was elected a Member of Parliament on the same ticket as outgoing prime minister Iyad Allawi in the January 30 elections.

Mr Daoud was speaking after talks with Iraq's Shiite spiritual leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who backed the main Shiite bloc that romped home to win 140 out of 275 seats in the new Parliament.

On Friday, the Iraqi Government said a senior Zarqawi aide had been arrested on Monday, along with a man who had acted as the militant's driver, west of Baghdad. It gave no reason for the delay in the announcement.

Zarqawi, Iraq's most-wanted man, has a $US25 million reward for his death or capture.

No one should get their hopes up too high, of course, but we certainly may hope that Mr. Daoud knows something of the matter about which he speaks. If he does it'll be interesting to see if Zarqawi allows himself to be taken alive.

Hollywood Narcissism

We took our yearly pass on the Oscars tonight. No doubt somebody cared about this annual celebration of Hollywood narcissism and tastelessness, but it wasn't us.

How You CanTell

IMAO lists ten indictors that you may be left of liberal. There's a chuckle or two in the list. Thanks to Cheat Seeking Missiles for the tip.

Rescuing Our Schools

American high schools are obsolete says Bill Gates, but this is really not news. That schools aren't doing the job we'd like has been common knowledge for decades. The question is why, and what can we do to fix them:

The nation's governors offered an alarming account of the American high school Saturday, saying only drastic change will keep millions of students from falling short. "We can't keep explaining to our nation's parents or business leaders or college faculties why these kids can't do the work," said Virginia Democratic Gov. Mark Warner, as the state leaders convened for the first National Education Summit aimed at rallying governors around high school reform.

Most of the summit's first day amounted to an enormous distress call, with speakers using unflattering numbers to define the problem. Among them: Of every 100 ninth-graders, only 68 graduate high school on time and only 18 make it through college on time, according to the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education.

Once in college, one in four students at four-year universities must take at least one remedial course to master what they should have learned in high school, government figures show.

The most blunt assessment came from Microsoft chief Bill Gates, who has put more than $700 million into reducing the size of high school classes through the foundation formed by him and his wife, Melinda. He said high schools must be redesigned to prepare every student for college, with classes that are rigorous and relevant to kids and with supportive relationships for children.

"America's high schools are obsolete," Gates said. "By obsolete, I don't just mean that they're broken, flawed or underfunded, though a case could be made for every one of those points. By obsolete, I mean our high schools - even when they're working as designed - cannot teach all our students what they need to know today."

Summit leaders have an ambitious agenda for every state: to raise the requirements of a high school diploma, improve information sharing between high schools and universities, and align graduation standards with the expectations of colleges and employers. Governors say they're in a position to unite the often splintered agendas of business leaders, educators and legislatures.

But such changes will take what Gates singled out as the biggest obstacle: political will. Requiring tougher courses for all students, for example, could face opposition from parents and school officials, particularly if more rigor leads to lower test scores and costly training.

Gov. Mike Huckabee, R-Ark., said the most reliable predictor of success in college is a student's exposure to challenging high school courses - and that governors know they must act.

Unfortunately, if the question is why schools are broken and what can we do to fix them, then the governors' summit was like a meeting of the band on board the Titanic to discuss which songs to play as the ship sinks into the sea. The problems which beset high schools are not problems either high schools or state governments are equipped to solve. Student learning is a function of student attitude which in turn is shaped by the culture in which students live. We can redesign and restructure schools to our heart's content, just as an aquarium staff can create a beautiful coral reef for their tropical fish, but if the water the fish swim in is toxic, they will not thrive.

Collapsing family structures, a depauperate entertainment culture, both affluence and poverty, an inability on the part of schools to set and enforce high standards of discipline, a legal system eager to haul an administrator or teacher into court at the slightest provocation, and a society which views education as the least important task that schools perform, all poison the cultural water in which our children swim and make it exceedingly difficult for schools to do their job.

Until we change the water, all the expressions of concern, all the tough tests and challenging courses the schools can muster, all the changes Bill Gates and others envision, are just so many fingers in the dike. The problem is not with our schools, it is with our culture, and any reform efforts which fail to recognize this fact will simply be a waste of time and money.

Skewering Academic Feminists

Harvard professor Harvey Mansfield has written an eloquent indictment of contemporary feminism, especially as it is encountered at the university, and particularly as it has been manifest in the events surrounding the Larry Summers faux pas. We offer you a few excerpts with hopes that you will want to read the whole essay:

Summers has supporters, and not all the faculty joined in the game of making him look sick. But the supporters, like Summers himself, were on the defensive, making concessions, and the critics were not. The critics consist of feminist women and their male consorts on the left. But since the left these days looks opportunistically for any promising cause, it is the feminists who are the core opposed to Summers. Together the feminists and the left make up perhaps half the faculty [at Harvard], the other half being moderate liberals who are afraid of the feminists rather than with them.

His accusers were relentless and, as always with feminists, humorless. They complained of being humiliated, but they took no care not to humiliate a proud man. They complained...of being intimidated, but they were doing their best to intimidate Summers - and they succeeded.

Summers lives by straightforward argument. He doesn't care whether he convinces you or you convince him. He isn't looking for victory in argument. But his forceful intelligence often produces it, in the view of those with whom he reasons. Sometimes the professors he speaks with come out feeling that they are victims of "bullying," as one of his feminist critics stated. As if to reason were to bully.

But feminists....insist on a welcoming atmosphere of encouragement to themselves and to their plans. If they do not get it, they will with a straight face accuse you of intimidating them even as they are intimidating you.

It takes one's breath away to watch feminist women at work. At the same time that they denounce traditional stereotypes they conform to them. If at the back of your sexist mind you think that women are emotional, you listen agape as professor Nancy Hopkins of MIT comes out with the threat that she will be sick if she has to hear too much of what she doesn't agree with. If you think women are suggestible, you hear it said that the mere suggestion of an innate inequality in women will keep them from stirring themselves to excel. While denouncing the feminine mystique, feminists behave as if they were devoted to it. They are women who assert their independence but still depend on men to keep women secure and comfortable while admiring their independence. Even in the gender-neutral society, men are expected by feminists to open doors for women. If men do not, they are intimidating women.

Feminists do not like to argue, and they consider you a case if you do not immediately agree with them. "Raising consciousness" is their way of getting you to fall in with their plans, and "tsk, tsk" is the only signal you should need and will get. Anyone who requires evidence and argument is already an enemy because he is considering a possibility hurtful to women.

Mansfield's pellucid analysis of university feminism will resonate with many academics all across the land, we're sure.

Peter Schramm at No Left Turns, who tipped us to this essay, adds this interesting anecdote:

A colleague, a reasonable and quiet gentleman, and I recently met with another professor on a curriculum issue. We engaged in perfectly balanced and quiet conversation for about an hour. Our interlocutor then made clear that the next time we make our case to anyone else (or a committee on campus) we should be less "bullying," less "intimidating." After we left the meeting my colleague and I spent a half an hour trying to figure out what she could have meant since we were certain we did not bully. We concluded that to give reasons for something was to bully, according to our interlocutor. It was a bit of a revelation, I'll admit. But it was true. Mansfield clarifies this problem, and it is a much larger problem than feminists running amok, or mere political correctness, and I thank him for it.

I might add that I have from time to time had students (in each instance they were female)comment that they felt somewhat intimidated by my insistence that they defend claims that they make in class or views that they hold. It always astonishes me that students in a philosophy class would assume that they should be able to say whatever strikes their fancy without being challenged to defend it and that if they are challenged, no matter how gently and politely, they should think this to be somehow intimidating and out of place.

It is not the tone or the demeanor that puts them off, mind you. It is the insistence that they be able to state the reasons behind their opinions, the premises supporting their conclusions, that makes them uncomfortable. In their view, all opinions should be respected and accepted, and to question their claims is to make them feel almost like they have been personally assaulted. It would be amusing were it not so sad.

A Caution and a Hope

Do you have children who will be selecting a college in a year or two? If so, Viewpoint recommends the following two reading assignments. The first is the new novel by Tom Wolfe titled I Am Charlotte Simmons. Wolfe's writing is always superb, and in this novel he is at his best, but that's not why the college parent-to-be should spend time with this particular story. It should be read because it details exactly what our precious sons or daughters are in for after waving goodbye on that first day when they're all moved into their new residence. I Am Charlotte Simmons may only be a novel, but it's not exactly fiction. It will send chills up the spine and knots into the stomach of any parent of a prospective college student.

The second reading is this essay in The American Enterprise written by Naomi Riley and titled God in the Quad. Riley offers hope for those parents who would prefer not to shell out twenty five to thirty grand a year to have their child exposed to the sorts of influences Wolfe describes. For many Americans, secular schools, no matter how highly rated, cannot be considered a viable option for their children, not if they care more for their hearts and minds than they do for the name of the school on their child's diploma.

Taken together the two works issue a caution and a hope. Wolfe lays bare the utter decadence that has befallen so many secular universities and how young people get ground up in them. Riley assures us that there is another, better, option for our children at the more than 700 religious colleges in North America.

Read them both if you can, but read Riley's essay regardless.

Canadian Veto

Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin said yesterday that if there are missiles aimed at the United States flying over Canadian airspace the United States must get permission from Canada before it attempts to intercept them.

This is not a serious man. If he honestly thinks that the United States will waste precious seconds trying to track down Prime Minister Martin while he dines at some fashionable restaurant or is indisposed in the men's room for several minutes while missiles are bearing down on American cities, then he's got some loose wiring somewhere.

It may make the Canadians feel all full of themselves to strut around saying that the Americans have to ask their permission in order to save American lives, but if that awful day ever comes no president is going to wait around until he receives, or is refused, permission from the Canadian Prime Minister to shoot down those missiles. If this reality offends Canadian pride, they'll just have to live with it.

The whole idea of insisting that permission be sought in the midst of some future crisis is silly anyway. Either permission would be granted or it would not. If there is any chance that the Canadians would refuse us permission to intercept an attack upon our territory, then not only should we regard them as a threat to our national security and treat them accordingly, but any refusal should, and would, be ignored.

If, on the other hand, the Canadians assure us that they would certainly grant permission, then why wait until the missiles are in the air to do it? Why not just agree with Washington now on the criteria for interception, etc. and be done with it?

By stating that permission must be obtained before the U.S. can save its nation and its people, Prime Minister Martin looks like either a fool or a grandstander. Maybe he's both.

Life on Mars

Is there life on Mars? Many scientists hope so.

Three-dimensional images from the Mars Express spacecraft of the European Space Agency suggest that flat, fractured plates near the Martian equator are remnants of ice that floated on a sea just a few million years ago, scientists said on Monday.

The ice, if it turns out to be ice, would fit with assertions that bacteria continue to live on Mars. Liquid water close to the surface, warmed by geothermal energy, could provide an environment for microorganisms.

Scientists are anxious to find life elsewhere in the galaxy because they keenly sense the problem that the uniqueness of the earthly biosphere poses for their philosophical embrace of metaphysical naturalism. If life can be shown to have emerged on other planets then it would lend support to the view that as improbable as a naturalistic origin of life may seem it is not so unlikely as to be uncommon or rare.

The problem is that finding simple life-forms on Mars would prove nothing about the origin of those life forms. Many astronomers believe that a meteor impact of sufficient magnitude on the early earth could have blasted trillions of encysted bacterial or algal spores into space. Some of those may well have rained down upon and colonized Mars and even thrived there for a time so that any life we find there may, for all we know, have originated on earth.

In other words, finding single-celled life forms on Mars would solve none of the intractable difficulties faced by naturalistic theories of the origin of life on earth.

Bush's Immigration Plan

Tamar Jacoby has written an excellent piece in the Weekly Standard on the immigration problem and argues cogently, if not quite persuasively, for the acceptance of George Bush's plan to deal with the problems of our southern border. Jacoby writes:

The Bush plan has two key components: a guest worker program and a transitional measure that would allow illegal immigrants already here and working to earn their way onto the right side of the law and participate legally in the U.S. labor market. Conservative critics lambaste both elements, not just as bad policy, but as inherently un-conservative--out of keeping with core principles and detrimental to Republican interests.

The impulse behind the challenge is understandable. Conservative criteria are different: not just security, but the rule of law, traditional values, and national cohesion--not to mention the interests of the GOP. It's also true that the president often touts his proposal in terms designed to appeal across the political spectrum. He talks about "compassion" and a desire to reward "goodhearted" workers, and sometimes this emphasis obscures the hardheaded, conservative case for his approach--a case that begins but does not end with America's economic interests. In reality, though, demonized as it has been on the right, the Bush plan meets every conceivable conservative criterion--with flying colors.

Jacoby goes on to explain why Bush's plan is the best possible solution. I'm not convinced. Bush's plan essentially allows millions of illegals to continue to burden the rest of society in terms of the goods and services they need and demand. They place an incredible strain on the tax base in southern California and elsewhere, and to say that we just have to accept their presence sounds like a call to surrender to an intolerable situation.

Immigration reform is a natural issue for Democrats who are sensitive to the impact of illegal labor on competition for jobs, and the Democrat that can run to the right of Republicans on this issue in 2008 could take Arizona, New Mexico and maybe even Florida. If that had happened in the last election George Bush would be a rapidly fading footnote to history right now.

The Mercy and Compassion of Islam

BBC News has yet another example of what passes for justice in the Islamic Republic of Iran:

A teenage girl and two young men in Iran have been sentenced to lashes for having sex. The court dismissed the girl's claim that she was raped. It said she had sex of her own free will, the official Iran Daily newspaper reported.

The girl was sentenced to 100 lashes because her accusations of rape and kidnap could have landed her partners a death penalty, the Tehran judge said. Sex outside marriage is illegal in Iran and capital punishment can be imposed. The young men in the case were sentenced to 30 and 40 lashes each.

The Iran paper quotes the girl, who has not been named, as confessing: "I trusted one of these young men, whom I got to know by phone, and went to his place. "But because he betrayed me, I filed the case against him and his friend out of revenge."

International concerns continue to be raised about women's rights in Iran. In December the UN General Assembly voted to censure Iran for human rights violations, including discrimination against women and girls. Tehran rejected the criticism as propaganda.

Under Iranian law, girls over the age of nine and boys over 16 face the death penalty for crimes such as rape and murder, while capital punishment can be imposed in certain cases of illegal sexual relationships.

That lashings were administered to the young girl in this case is horrifying enough, that she received two and a half to three times the number that the boys did is symptomatic of a mindset so depraved that we lack the words to describe it. If this is Islamic law one wonders what in the world the appeal of Islam is to anyone with a shred of human decency or compassion. One also wonders whether the world can afford to permit nuclear weapons to fall into the hands of men who think like these mullahs do.

Cult of Death

A Muslim calls on his co-religionists to "wake up." Kamal Nawash may be a voice crying in the wilderness, but American Muslims would do well to heed his words especially the last few paragraphs:

With all the evidence that Islam is facing a crisis, one wonders what it will take for Muslims to realize that those who commit mass murder in the name of Islam are not just a few fringe elements. What will it take for Muslims to realize that we are facing a crisis potentially more deadly than the AIDS epidemic? What will it take for Muslims to realize that there is a large, evil movement that is turning what was a peaceful religion into a death cult?

Will Muslims wake up before it is too late? Or will we continue blaming an imaginary Jewish conspiracy and entities like The Dallas Morning News for all our problems? The blaming of all Muslim problems on others is a cancer that is destroying Muslim society. And it must stop.

Muslims must wake up, look inward and put a stop to many of our religious leaders who spend most of their sermons teaching hatred, intolerance and violent jihad. We should not be afraid to admit that as Muslims we have a problem with violent extremism. We should not be afraid to admit that so many of our religious leaders belong behind bars, and not behind a pulpit.

Only moderate Muslims can challenge and defeat extremist Muslims. We can no longer afford to be silent. If we remain silent to the extremism within our community, then we should not expect anyone to listen to us when we complain of stereotyping and discrimination by non-Muslims. We should not be surprised when the world treats all of us as terrorists. And we should not be surprised when we are profiled at airports.

Simply put, not only do Muslims need to join the war against extremism and terror, we need to take the lead in this war.

It's not unrelated to Nawash's plea to note that the high school valedictorian who has been charged with plotting to assassinate the President was a Muslim citizen of the U.S. who studied in a Saudi madrassa in Virginia, a school which inculcates into its students a bitter hatred for the U.S. and Israel. Where are the moderate Muslims demanding that "schools" like this be shut down?

Keeping Tabs on the Left

For those who share our concern here at Viewpoint that the secular Left is the second greatest threat to freedom in the world today (second to Islamo-fascism with which it is often in covert sympathy) here is a new site you may wish to bookmark. It's called Discover the Network.org and its mission is to identify and track the people, agenda, ideas, tactics, and institutions that comprise the contemporary Left.

See here for a more detailed explanation of the purpose of this new site which may well become one of the most frequently consulted political sites on the web.

Korn

This note is for those of our readers who may be Korn fans:

A founding member of the popular hard rock band Korn has announced he accepted Jesus as his Savior and is leaving the band.

See here for details.

Argument From Personal Incredulity

Those who are unpersuaded by the Darwinian creation myth that blind, purposeless forces could randomly produce a strand of DNA and the biochemical machinery that attend it in the trillions of cellular factories that make up a living organism are often derided for their lack of imagination and for their childish capitulation to the argument from personal incredulity.

The argument from personal incredulity is a syllogism which concludes from one's inability to imagine that impersonal nature could accomplish such astonishing wonders as the machinery which carries out protein synthesis, for example, that therefore these machines and processes must have been the work of an intelligent Creator. The argument occasions much merry-making among the sophisticates in the Darwinian establishment at the expense of the incredulous, simple-minded folk who hold to it.

Ironically enough, however, the sophisticates often resort to the same argument from personal incredulity themselves when it comes to belief in God. They argue that they can't imagine a Being possessing the capacities of omnipotence and omniscience, that they can't imagine a genuine miracle such as the revivification of a dead man actually happening, and therefore they don't believe such a Being or such phenomena exist.

Lest the reader think we exaggerate by suggesting that there are otherwise intelligent people who think this way consider this passage from Albert Einstein which recently crossed our desk:

"I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the kind that we experience in ourselves. Neither can I nor would I want to conceive of an individual that survives his physical death; let feeble souls, from fear or absurd egoism, cherish such thoughts."

Set aside the question of whether the characteristics which Einstein associated with God are accurate, there is something very peculiar about the mind which thought up the near-incomprehensible implications of the theory of general relativity admitting that it cannot imagine individuals surviving physical death or conceive of a deity which possesses certain traits similar to those which humans possess. These are conceptions, after all, which mere mortals of average intelligence have been conceptualizing for thousands of years with little difficulty.

What, exactly, was Einstein's problem? It's not as if a personal God endowing the creation with some of the characteristics of His own Being is somehow logically contradictory, like the idea of a square circle. Nor, for that matter, is it like being asked to believe something akin to the claim that given enough time and resources the laws of physics, unaided by any intelligent input, could produce a computer with a Windows operating system.

We admit that we have a lot easier time imagining what Einstein could not than imagining what modern Darwinists apparently find so easy to conceive and believe. But then we're just simple-minded guys who find incredible things to be, well, incredible.

A Plea for the Life of Terri Schiavo

Bob Schindler, the father of Terry Schiavo, has an open letter at Newsmax.com in which he pleads for help to save his daughter's life. Because there may be some who don't know the background of this case we reproduce the letter here. If you'd like to respond just click on the link to Newsmax.

Dear Friend of Life,

By now you have probably heard about a young woman who is threatened with starvation in Florida. That young woman is my daughter, Terri. In 1990, through circumstances which are shrouded in mystery (and may involve a criminal act by Terri's estranged husband), my daughter was left severely brain-damaged.

But before I go any further, I must put an end to the lies and misinformation that are circulating around the country through the media concerning my daughter's condition. Contrary to anything you may have heard, Terri is NOT brain dead; Terri is NOT in a coma; she is NOT in a "persistent vegetative state;" nor is she on ANY life-support system.

Terri laughs, Terri cries, she moves, and she makes child-like attempts at speech with her mother and me. Sometimes she will say "Mom" or "Dad" or "yeah" when we ask her a question. When I kiss her hello or goodbye, she looks at me and "puckers up" her lips. This may not seem like much to you, but it means everything to Terri's mother and me. It tells us she is still here, she still knows us, and with therapy and time she can have some level of recovery.

I know that there are some hard hearted people who believe that due to my daughters condition, she is better off dead. Words cannot describe the pain and anger such sentiments cause us. This is our daughter, our little girl, and even in her disabled condition, she still has the right to life and the right to be loved and cared for by her family.

Why, you may ask, is Terry in danger of death by starvation? It is a long and outrageous story, but I'll give it to you as briefly as I can.

After the "incident" that left Terry in this condition, her husband Michael Schiavo sued various members of the medical community for money, saying that they did not treat or diagnose her properly at an early stage, and that he needed this money to provide for Terri's therapy and rehabilitation and care.

After lengthy court battles, he finally won upwards of $1.7 million under the guise of caring for our daughter, and then to our horror, he immediately began spending the money on himself and his Playboy lifestyle. Terri's estranged husband Michael Schiavo has been living with another woman for years, and has two children by her. He is determined to see Terri dead. Why? We believe it's because he gets to keep whatever money is left... and he may have even darker motives than that.

To add insult to all of this injury toward my daughter, Michael Schiavo is still her "legal husband" and therefore is her "guardian." And since they are not legally divorced, he controls whatever health care she will and will not get. We are not even allowed to know if she is getting aspirin.

In 1993 my family initiated litigation against Michael Schiavo solely for the purpose of acquiring medical, physical and neurological assistance for our daughter Terri. The litigation escalated in 1998 when Michael Schiavo petitioned the court to stop Terri from receiving food and water, thereby starving her to death.

In filing this legal action, he retained the services of a high profile euthanasia attorney and the financial backing of powerful euthanasia organizations. He also used Terri's medical rehabilitation money to underwrite much of the legal expenses associated with his effort to starve our daughter to death. We know that he has spent nearly $500,000 of Terri's money in attorney's fees for just one attorney trying to obtain a court order to have Terri starved to death. The very money that was supposed to be used for Terri's rehabilitation is being used to have her killed.

We very quickly discovered it was impossible for us to compete with the abundance of financial and legal resources the pro-death organizations were providing Michael Schiavo in their effort to kill Terri. They are pouring time and effort into her starvation because they want to use this case to further the agenda of legalized euthanasia.

My wife and I are not wealthy people. Throughout those years, we did not have any large organizations trying to help rescue our daughter. Consequently, we had to rely on the generosity of attorneys who were willing to offer their legal expertise at no cost or at reduced fees. The bottom line is that we are in the final weeks or months of our struggle to rescue our daughter from an untimely death by starvation. Death by starvation is very slow, and extremely painful. As you must know, it is against the law to deliberately starve an animal to death. There are members of the Florida court who would not treat a dog the way they plan to treat my daughter.

At this point we must pull out all the stops in our fight to rescue our daughter. As parents, we are desperate to save our daughter's life. As people who love life, we are determined to deprive the euthanasia advocates of successfully legalizing this form of homicide. We believe that their efforts to kill Terri are designed to set a precedent for the future eradication of defenseless disabled human beings. I was alive when Americans fought the Nazis; I do not want my daughter to meet the same fate of thousands of disabled people in Nazi Germany, and I do not want our country to go down that same dark path.

Friend, though we have never met, I'm asking you for your help. We desperately need your financial assistance to help our family continue the battle to keep our daughter from being starved to death. There are so many expenses in a case like this it is mind-boggling and overwhelming. Please click below to make a contribution now:

https://secure.cartlight.com/merchant/terri/?afid=maxb

Our adversaries believe that by our family's financial attrition and difficulties, they will attain their objective of killing our daughter. Presently, Terri's starvation may only be a few weeks away, unless we find the financial resources to prevent this atrocity from becoming a reality. I implore you to please help us. We are writing to you, because we believe you have a heart for justice and mercy. I'm asking you to put yourself in my shoes, and then do whatever you can to help our family. Whether it is $10 or $1000, we are desperate for the resources to fight this battle for our daughter's life at this critical juncture.

Please do whatever you can, and forward this e-mail to any friends or family that you have who you think might be interested in saving Terri's life. I thank you for your time, your concern, and I solicit your prayers for Terri and our entire family. These have been very trying times for us all.

Sincerely,

Bob Schindler Sr.

It's hard to believe that the courts are prepared to grant Michael Schiavo his wish to remove his wife's feeding tube, especially since there's some reason to believe that her condition may have been brought on by an act of physical violence by Schiavo himself. Schiavo has refused to divorce Terri so that her parents could take over her care and instead, with the help of various right to die groups, has decided that she is better off dead. One can only wonder at his motives. The culture of death has found some useful allies in the Florida legal system.