Good morning.

1. In the zone, with others in the same place.
2. One categorization of “two kinds of people” … I like the adage “there are two kinds of people, those who think there are two kinds of people and those who don’t.”
3. Them wimpy gymnasts. Or not.
4. So … off the radar or just hidden motivations. We have a President who is keen on not revealing his actual reasons.
5. On good faith in discussion and actions.
6. See. The compromise that wasn’t wasn’t even.
7. Pointing at self in Lent (by self I mean myself not the author).
8. Oh, heck, on the use of expletives which generally just demonstrate the lack of intelligence and education on the part of the speaker.
9. Oh, honey … he won’t call you … you’re a conservative so you’re not really a woman.
10. Why does this question even get asked? Isn’t the answer completely obvious.
11. Touching in part on the question (recently discussed) on the relationship between Christianity and Greek Philosophy, to whit “unless contemplated through philosophy …”
12. Statistics.
13. Whence liberty and Mr Santorum?
14. How close to that are we here?

Good morning.

1. Apparently the Wash Post is reviewing last summer’s debt negotiations.
2. Chesterton apparently didn’t anticipate Mr Hofstadter’s Godel, Escher, Bach and his the dialogs. I defy anyone to come up with a “truth” stranger than “subjunctive TV” set to “how would that (football play) have gone if … thirteen wasn’t prime?”
3. A challenge for the left wing spin monkeys.
4. Free market healthcare.
5. No silly, he won’t help pay for it because she doesn’t want him to, the primary criterion for her selection of law school was lack of coverage for contraception. A point which completely escapes people like this.
6. And, here’s a summary of the kerfuffle.
7. Oddly enough my wife didn’t find this as funny as my daughters and I.
8. Back in the day, our President speaking in Cairo talked about how much he enjoys and seeks to read history. Apparently very little of what he reads remains with him. I mean, geesh … is there anything historically correct that he asserts?
9. Speaking of getting history wrong, here’s some of that atheist religion-hates-science getting it wrong (repeatedly) in a continuing won’t die-meme, i.e., Hypatia.
10. This kid is very good.
11. Global warming skeptics and the typical straw men arguments hoisted in their vicinity.

Good morning.

1. Inequality and crises.
2. Shot “something” … likely piece of paper or clay pigeon. The horror! (gun tech vid here)
3. Iranian nukes, for big or little “satan”.
4. Of Uganda and Columbia.
5. Failure of imagination … gosh is there any difference in the family past between GOP candidates and Mr Obama? Hmm, one has a foreign parent, no reason to imagine that might make a difference, eh?
6. A primer for the arguments in the upcoming Obamacare SCOTUS discussion.
7. Feminists against porn.
8. Two for Lent, St. Basil on sin and
9. for this Sunday … the cross.
10. Marking inconsistencies … or consequences of ownership?
11. In short, no.
12. Ooooh, Obamacare not as insolvent as suspected, with a windfall of unanticipated fines and taxes. And that’s a good thing?
13. A local hero and her bike(s).
14. Student given life sentence for burning “To Kill a Mockingbird”  … oh, wait.
15. Tea party and Hunger Games.

That’s the title of a post by Michael Stokes Paulsen at the Public Discourse website. He starts out with a statement of the facts.

Vanderbilt University has decided that Christian student groups that hold traditional Christian religious views are not welcome on campus. They will no longer be recognized as valid student organizations. Vanderbilt’s reason is that such groups require that their leaders be Christian—that is, that their leaders embrace certain core principles of Christianity and try to live according to these principles. In Vanderbilt’s view, religious beliefs and standards “discriminate” against those students who do not subscribe to them. Therefore, student religious groups with religious beliefs and standards are banned.

This from an institute that (allegedly) encourages debate and the free exchange of ideas. All ideas are welcome, except those that aren’t. Behavioral standards will not be tolerated in student organizations. You cannot hold to a belief system and, at the same time, expect that belief system to be held to by the members.

I wonder if a women’s rights organization could be run by a woman, or a man, who thinks women are second-class citizens. She or he doesn’t agree with the group’s beliefs, but if they don’t allow for someone like that to lead the group, should they, too, be banned? But see that’s a belief system that Vandy doesn’t have a problem with. No matter how they paint it, it’s a case of discrimination based on beliefs.

And thus, in a huge bit of irony, Vandy wishes to exercise a right that they themselves deny to the student groups!

As Paulsen notes, Vandy is well within its rights to do this.

As weird as it may sound—and as ridiculous as Vanderbilt’s actions may be—this is entirely within Vanderbilt’s constitutional rights: Vanderbilt has the right to be as hostile to orthodox Christianity and to suppress its faithful exercise on its campus as it wishes. Vanderbilt’s status as a private university gives it the First Amendment right to take whatever position it wants on the exercise of religion within its university community. Vanderbilt University has the right to despise Christianity (and other faiths, too) if it so chooses.

Of course, having a right to do something does not make it the right thing to do. And Vanderbilt’s policy is, undeniably, an embarrassing example of political correctness run horribly amok, of intellectually incompetent administrators, and of institutional hypocrisy. But in Vanderbilt’s bad example lies a parable rich in irony about constitutional freedom under the First Amendment.

Worth reading the whole thing. This isn’t about rights; it’s about hypocrisy, and how it and religious intolerance is being taught to the next generation.

Good morning.

1. A real long historical correlation=causation stretch.
2. Philosophical patterns … and I think I have to look up the word lacunae.
3. The DC Regulatory menace, killing fun and profit everywhere it stomps.
4. Google’s next search move.
5. Aside from the academic knee-jerk gratuitous insult, the left finally moves against Soros and company.
6. More on the slut/Fluke kerfuffle.
7. Liberal blind spots and health care reform.
8. 2%? Hmm. Of oil, ignoring oil shales, oil sands and other fossil fuels. Lie, damned lie or statistics?
9. Grist for the stupid party.

A la carte Catholics need a la carte priests
Or, Doctrinal statements are there for a reason.

Remember the recent incident where a lesbian was denied Holy Communion at her mother’s funeral? From the OC Register comes an example of personal preference attempting to force its way into Christian belief. In Do Catholics love and accept others? Not this priest, we read (emphasis added),

I’m what you’d call an a la carte Catholic.

Too convenient? Maybe.

Especially in times like these, when a priest like Rev. Marcel Guarnizo uses his position in the church to deny someone like Barbara Johnson, who happens to love another woman instead of a man, communion during her own mother’s funeral.

Now, there are many reasons I’m an a la carte Catholic, one of which is that I see nothing wrong with homosexuality; nor do I believe in a God who would turn his back on his own children just because of their sexual orientation. Dare I say that a large portion of the heterosexual marriages among us don’t put the whole man-woman union thing in the best light. Besides, who are we to deny anyone the experience of looking at their husband or wife 10 years in and wondering, “Was I high as a kite the day I committed my life to you?”

And captioning a photo of the Holy Sacraments (emphasis added),

To me, Holy Communion is symbolic of God’s love for us; a priest has no right to deny that to anyone who comes searching for it

Now, the writer of this piece is certainly entitled to her own beliefs. And she’s certainly entitled to attempt to push her beliefs on others. But she’s sorely lacking doctrinal knowledge and clear thinking by proposing that Catholics – or even this particular Catholic priest – do not love others simply because they follow the tenets of their faith. That she disagrees with the tenets of the Catholic faith is irrelevant.

You see, the issue of faith – religious faith – in our culture has become not one of objective reality but of subjective experience. When someone makes claims or statements such as “I see nothing wrong with…” or “nor do I believe in a God who…” or “who are we to deny…” or “To me…” we are seeing the expression of personal preference as the determining factor in one’s belief system. As I stated above, there is nothing inherently wrong with such a worldview and, as the tolerant individual I am, I believe people are certainly free to think that way.

But if they consider themselves to be tolerant, then they need to stop pushing their views into realms that are inconsistent with their own. The Catholic church, via the Word of God, has declarative statements on the meaning of Holy Communion. What you or I happen to want it to mean is irrelevant. Taken a step further, God, through His Word, has made declarative statements regarding His character, who he is, what he is owed, etc. Whether or not you or I agree with him, or would want to believe in a God like him again, is irrelevant.

UPDATE:

Lo and behold, the priest in question has come forward with his account of what transpired. From Crisis Magazine (HT: Joe Carter),

A few minutes before the Mass began, Ms. Johnson came into the sacristy with another woman whom she announced as her “lover”. Her revelation was completely unsolicited. As I attempted to follow Ms.Johnson, her lover stood in our narrow sacristy physically blocking my pathway to the door. I politely asked her to move and she refused.

…

If a Quaker, a Lutheran or a Buddhist, desiring communion had introduced himself as such, before Mass, a priest would be obligated to withhold communion. If someone had shown up in my sacristy drunk, or high on drugs, no communion would have been possible either. If a Catholic, divorced and remarried (without an annulment) would make that known in my sacristy, they too according to Catholic doctrine, would be impeded from receiving communion. This has nothing to do with canon 915. Ms. Johnson’s circumstances are precisely one of those relations which impede her access to communion according to Catholic teaching. Ms. Johnson was a guest in our parish, not the arbitrer of how sacraments are dispensed in the Catholic Church.

###

And, the rest of the Lesbian vs. Catholic Church story
Not an Only in California story, but related. It seems that the lesbian-denied-holy-communion is a practicing Buddhist as well as a gay rights activist. Hmmm.

Medical technology is reducing the need for stem cells.

In the laboratory skin cells were treated with a virus, which was modified to ‘infect’ them with agents that function to convert the skin cells into precursors to brain cells. These cells can specialise into the three types of brain cell: neurons, oligodendrocytes and astrocytes. After laboratory research was carried out, the converted cells were injected into the brains of mice. These mice were bred to lack the protein myelin, which is important in aiding the transmission of messages in the brain. 10 weeks later, the precursor cells had specialised into oligodendrocytes, which made the myelin that the mice lacked.

Skin cells directly to brain cells, do not pass Go, do not create ethical issues. (And creating myelin, which is something that someone like me with MS raises their antennae over.)

Good morning.

1. Car tech of interest.
2. So is the White House inconsistent or biased? Or is there another narrative?
3. What is this “poor in spirit” thing.
4. Slavery or taxation in a barter economy?
5. Progress of progressivism? Or consequences of Ms Delsol’s Unlearned Lessons.
6. Perhaps further context is required … after all Mr Biden might have continued by noting that “… and neither, of course, do we.” But I tend to doubt it.
7. Speaking of progressivism … future medical mandates?
8. A few interesting moments might be spend considering the nature of intelligent life on that planet, eh?
9. TARP and expense, or hide the cost.
10. Short answer … no.
11. No problem? Does this mean a new war/wag-the-dog is planned for the late summer?
12. Grist for the conversation going on right now in the comment trail on women and men and their power struggle.
13. Iran and demographics.
14. Speaking of demographics.
15. Some verse.
16. I don’t think the term “McCarthyism” makes a bit of sense in that context. McCarthy and the red scare was about painting with little evidence members of industry and government as “red” and banning them thereby from their position and place work. What parallel is pretended?
17. Of States and immigration.
18. Ten! Just ten and they’re “on track?” On track for what?
19. Training priests and/on abortion.
20. Liberal vs conservatives and one measure of tolerance.

You’re probably well aware by now of the murderous attack that left 15 people dead in Pakistan.

What? You thought it was 16 people in Afghanistan who were killed? Well, certainly that news is making the headlines on newswires across the world. But I’m referring to a suicide attack on mourners at a funeral in Pakistan. From Bill Roggio, at The Long War Journal,

A suicide bomber killed 15 people and wounded dozens more in an attack at a funeral in the Pakistani city of Peshawar today. The attack appears to have targeted a senior provincial government official who has raised an anti-Taliban militia in the area.

Pakistani officials confirmed that a suicide bomber carried out today’s attack as mourners were offering prayers for a woman during a funeral in the Badaber area of Peshawar.

Had you heard about this? If you had, was it a news headline or merely another one-of-many filler stories?

In a way, perhaps the fact that such stories get so little airplay, and stories of U.S. military personnel committing crimes get so much airplay is an indication of the very difference between our moral high ground and the terrorist enemy’s.

Consider the following account of Muslim on Muslim killings, per The Long War Journal.

Over the past five years, the Taliban and allied Pakistani terror groups such as the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and the Punjabi Taliban have shown no reservations about striking inside mosques and other religious sites, as well as during religious processions and events. There have been 36 major attacks on mosques and other Islamic institutions in Pakistan since December 2007, according to information compiled by The Long War Journal.

One of the most brazen attacks took place on Dec. 4, 2009, when a suicide assault team stormed a mosque frequented by military officers in Rawalpindi. Two senior generals were among the 40 people killed.

Another major attack took place on July 1, 2010, when suicide bombers struck the Data Ganj Bakhsh shrine in Lahore, killing 41 people and wounding more than 170. Three suicide bombers detonated their vests at the shrine at a time when it was most frequented, in an effort to maximize casualties.

The last major attack against religious targets took place on Sept. 15, 2011, when a suicide bomber killed 31 people in an attack at a funeral in Lower Dir.

All told, The Long War Journal lists 36 major attacks since December 2007 (in Pakistan alone), resulting in 805 people killed. That’s an average of 22 people killed per attack – attacks at mosques and other Islamic institutions.

Try to find that on CNN.

Good morning.

1. Gosh, liberal aghast Romney using the Obama camp SOP. Watch and wait, pretty soon Romney will have a catchy meaningless slogan like Hope/Change.
2. Why is the government solution to everything “hand out bags of money” and wait for the bubble to bust and make everything worse?
3. When you get banned from a comment “for profanity” it works better if the banned content contains actual profanity.
4. The Buddhist banned from communion still in the news. Truth is stranger than fiction.
5. An attempt to help the poor.
6. Unintended consequences.
7. Naivete as argument, there (apparently) is not “a variety of facts.” “Fact” has only one “kind” … the fact that you love your wife, that the revolutionary war was about taxation, that you are conservative (or liberal), and that the mass of the electron is .5 Mev are exactly the same sort of facts. Riiiight.
8. Here’s the memo. Not getting the memo … for example here. What part of “dead relatives” do people not get? Or is she angry that she’s related to Mormons?
9. Mr Gore now encourages electoral fraud.
10. So, do you wish you were there?
11. Grist for the insurance and coverage debate (follow the two linked links).

[Please click here for part 1, as this just picks up where that left off. Also, another blogger found the article again at a new URL on the same site. I’d searched using their advance search form with no success, but glad that it’s back so people can read the whole thing.]

The newborn and the fetus are morally equivalent

The authors, Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva,  start this section with their definition of personhood.

Both a fetus and a newborn certainly are human beings and potential persons, but neither is a ‘person’ in the sense of ‘subject of a moral right to life’. We take ‘person’ to mean an individual who is capable of attributing to her own existence some (at least) basic value such that being deprived of this existence represents a loss to her.

Thus, to be a person, you have to know you’re a person and be able to value it. The state of not knowing, however, lasts quite a bit beyond newborn status. The authors, again, fail to address this. More than fail to, actually, they refuse to address it, as we shall see.

Merely being human is not in itself a reason for ascribing someone a right to life. Indeed, many humans are not considered subjects of a right to life: spare embryos where research on embryo stem cells is permitted, fetuses where abortion is permitted, criminals where capital punishment is legal.

The equivalence here is somewhat flawed, not the least because they start to blur the moral right to life with the legal right to life. Further, they equate giving up your legal right to life (by, for example, murdering someone else) with a fetus or embryo being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Depending on your morals, all three examples have a moral right to life, it’s just in the last case it was actively forfeited.

Read the rest of this entry

Thinking Sheriffs Dept offer free CCW classes for women
From WISTV,

The Kershaw County Sheriff’s Department says a gruesome crime lead them to open up a free concealed weapons class for women.

According to Sheriff Jim Matthews, the department opened up the course and waived an $80 fee to sign up in response to the brutal murder of Beverly Hope Melton.

###

Thinking Canadians end government waste
By ending long-gun registration. From John Lott,

Despite spending a whopping $2.7 billion on creating and running a long-gun registry, Canadians never reaped any benefits from the project. … Even though the country started registering long guns in 1998, the registry never solved a single murder. Instead it has been an enormous waste of police officers’ time, diverting their efforts from patrolling Canadian streets and doing traditional policing activities.

###

Non-thinking gun-control advocate San Francisco Sheriff arrested for domestic violence
AND he surrenders over 3 of his handguns. From David Codrea,

“Although San Francisco Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi was a strong advocate of gun control while on the Board of Supervisors, he surrendered 3 handguns when police recently booked him on misdemeanor domestic violence charges,” KCBS reports.

Mirkarimi apparently owned them while sponsoring legislation last summer to bolster San Francisco gun control laws against a lawsuit by the National Rifle Association.

What was that about trusting only the police with possessing firearms?

###

No! 4 year-old shoots his 3 year-old brother to death
Gun Safety. Gun Safety. Gun Safety. From KDFW,

Police say the woman had put the handgun on top of a chest of drawers, thinking the weapon was out of the children’s reach.

Police say the 4-year-old boy managed to get the gun and shoot his little brother.

Have a firearm and have kids? Then you make sure that the firearm is secured at ALL times (which either means locked away or secured on your person). Kids WILL find a way to the firearm. Also, you teach children about firearms – especially the kid’s rules of gun safety if they happen across an unattended firearm:  STOP! Don’t touch! Leave the room! Tell an adult!

###

ND = Negligent Discharge. In this case, deadly.
From FoxNews,

Authorities say a Florida pastor’s daughter who was accidentally shot in the head in a church died Saturday at a hospital.

The round came from a gun owned by a CCW carrier in the church. From the article (emphasis added),

Investigators have said Moises Zambrana was showing his gun in a small closet to another church member interested in buying a firearm. The St. Petersburg Times reports that the other church member, Dustin Bueller, was Hannah Kelley’s fiancee.

Zambrana reportedly removed the magazine from the Ruger 9mm weapon but did not know that a round was still in the chamber. The gun went off, firing a bullet through a wall. Kelley was struck in the head.

Guns don’t just go off. The firing pin or hammer of the handgun must strike the chambered cartridge and that happens when the trigger is pressed, either by one’s finger or by any object that is situated inside the trigger guard.

###

Stupid
And stupidity is not limited to those “trained” to work with firearms.

Good morning.

1. A narrative of why the current President has continued so many policies of the former with which he allegedly strongly disagreed … this one claims he still disagrees but his hands are tied by the Constitution.
2. Uncertainty primer.
3. Methodist theology and the early Church Fathers.
4. The end of the status quo in the US, might not be gradual.
5. Which needs to confront this notion.
6. Freedom and the left.
7. Yah, they don’t watch FOX, they don’t actually listen to Mr Limbaugh … they just bang the echo chamber drum (whilst complaining about the right wing echo chamber and not noticing that they do the same thing).
8. Logic.
9. Arab Springly thinking.
10. So, is he right? Would ABC run the alternative?
11. A question for the Fluke/contraceptives-for-free supporters.
12. A question about options and Iran.
13. The kindness of strangers in flyover land.

[FYI, Part 2 of my "after-birth abortion" article will appear Monday, for both of you waiting for it. ]

Obama: ‘Drill Drill Drill won’t work. And you can thank Me that it did.’

America’s per capita debt is worse than Greece. And Greece’s credit rating is in the basement.

BBC: We’ll Mock Jesus But Never Mohammed. (Because Christians won’t cut off their head or burn things.)

For all the talk about crude names called at Sandra Fluke, the war on conservative women goes merrily unreported. Meryl Yourish refers to this as the new Exception Clause.

No wonder liberals think their unconstitutional ideas are constitutional. They don’t understand the document’s intent.

Like all generalizations, it’s not true of every single case, but James Q. Wilson asks an interesting question: Why Don’t Jews Like the Christians Who Like Them?

Just as Jews were once expelled from Arab lands, Christians are now being forced from countries they have long inhabited.

And finally, the return of the political cartoon to Friday Link Wrap-ups.

Good morning.

1. Economically speaking.
2. Putin and the Russian Republic election.
3. A car, which appears to be designed to blow up when it hits a speed-bump. But, it looks kewl, eh?
4. Rockwell meets Lucas.
5. Interesting locution there, mocking the ivory tower distance on the one hand and at the same time figuring the term “medical zombies” is about creatures you have to run away or shoot (in real life).
6. A look behind a faux controversy.
7. I’ll bet dollars to donuts this wasn’t what you were taught in school about that little narrative. Heh.
8. I know it’s all traditional and everyone just loves that color, but I’ve never liked overmuch.
9. Becoming human?
10. Least worst … kind of like how we view democracy (vs the other forms of government) in a nutshell.