From Politico (HT: Holycoast), former Governor Mark Sanford writes,

Immediately after all this unfolded last week I had thought I would resign – as I believe in the military model of leadership and when trust of any form is broken one lays down the sword. A long list of close friends have suggested otherwise – that for God to really work in my life I shouldn’t be getting off so lightly. While it would be personally easier to exit stage left, their point has been that my larger sin was the sin of pride. They contended that in many instances I may well have held the right position on limited government, spending or taxes – but that if my spirit wasn’t right in the presentation of those ideas to people in the General Assembly, or elsewhere, I could elicit the response that I had at many times indeed gotten from other state leaders.

Well, Sunday afternoon I worked for a while on this essay, tonight I’m returning to it to flesh out the missing paragraphs. The first draft is now complete … editing will now commence. It’s a little long soooo … below the fold Read the rest of this entry

Jump over to La Shawn Barber’s Corner and watch the latest in a long line of videos catching Planned Parenthood in the cover-up of statutory rape. 

Again I ask, how long before these places get investigated on a nationwide level? 

Front-page Daily Kos writer SusanG is exuberant about the energy bill that recently passed in the House.

In an unprecedented move, the White House retracted yesterday the embargoed text for the president’s usual weekly address, which it generally sends to news outlets the evening before the official Saturday remarks are posted on the White House website. The first address sent was focused on health care reform; the replacement discussed—and praised to the heavens—the energy bill that passed the House yesterday afternoon.

Clearly, the measure’s passage prompted a nimble switch in presidential priorities for the address, which President Obama often uses as the first salvo in setting messaging for the coming week—and for putting friend and foe alike on notice about what’s on the administration’s upcoming agenda. In fact, he’s so adamant about pushing his slant on the energy bill that today’s weekly address is mostly a reprise of a speech he gave earlier in the day yesterday, with a framing he clearly wants to drive home:

It’s all about the jobs, baby.

In the very first sentence, in fact, the President doesn’t just refer to the measure as an energy bill—it’s a piece of legislation that "will open the door to a clean energy economy." In fact, this is—make no mistake, he says—a jobs bill.

Yup, he talked about jobs.  He called it a "jobs bill".  And merely saying that makes things all golden.

‘Cept he said the same thing about the stimulus package, and we all know how that turned out.  A reminder:

Yeah, the President called the energy bill "a jobs bill".  After the last "jobs bill", unemployment rose to a point higher that he said we’d hit if we did nothing. 

But hey, he said this would be a "jobs bill".  For the Left, it appears that’s all that really matters.  Results?  Meh.  Intentions are everything.

• Bias.
• In which “Decades of affirmative action have done little to fix that” … where a thing not working don’t result in the obvious questioning of the method. Einstein had a pithy remark on that sort of thinking.
• I think it’s a mistake too if he’s recovered from his injury.
• Konkatsu.
• On Russia. More here.
• St. Paul’s relics dated plus unintended consequences of birth control medication.
• Can’t admit them as being evil if you want to negotiate … history repeats? Likewise.
• Economic foundations.
• That’s funny.
• Aging.
• Projections. And remarks on the same … or all they just lies, damned lies and you know … statistics.
• Race ya (dad?)!
• Pedophilia and numbers.
• Honduran considerations.
• Of Dickens and Trollope.

1. Climate anyone?
2. Credit and the meltdown.
3. Heh.
4. Art, modern.
5. On marriage vows.
6. Brandon has some good links.
7. Race and the court.
8. A shirt.
9. Favorite heresies?
10. Interesting ink.
11. A cricket race.
12. Iran and the view from the right.
13. Reading a book of note.
14. Almost colliding with the privacy/personal space contradiction of the pro-choice crowd.
15. On Mr Jackson, two links … one and two.
16. That GOP war on science.

This is the first draft of an essay for our parish newsletter. The topic is on “science and religion.” Given my short “dread bullet list” of ideas on the essay of last week, Brandon (of Siris) suggested helpfully that I try to make clear in the essay what specifically of “religion” and “science” I’ll be trying to identify and discuss, as both topics are huge and more than a little slippery. There was another suggestion that the “three stages” seen so far in our understanding of nature (the second bullet list item) was the most interesting. So without more ado, here is a preliminary draft, i.e., it is a little incomplete … however I offer it at this point for additional comments. It’s a little long so find it below the fold. Read the rest of this entry

Remember when candidate Barak Obama said that he wouldn’t raise taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year?  That promise may not last 6 months into President Obama’s tenure.  George Stephanopoulos reports:

White House senior adviser David Axelrod said the president won’t rule out a health care reform bill that includes a middle-class tax hike.

"The president had said in the past that he  doesn’t believe taxing health care benefits at any level is necessarily the best way to go here.  He still believes that," Axelrod told me on This Week, "But there are a number of formulations and we’ll wait and see.  The important thing at this point is to keep the process moving, to keep people at the table, to the keep the discussions going. We’ve gotten a long way down the road and we want to finish that journey."

I pressed Axelrod on whether Obama will draw a line in the sand and veto any bill that funds health care reform with tax hikes for people making under $250,000 a year — despite a pledge Barack Obama made during the 2008 presidential campaign not to raise taxes on the poor and middle-class.

"One of the problems we’ve had in this town is that people draw lines in the sand and they stop talking to each other.  And you don’t get anything done.  That’s not the way the president approaches us.  He is very cognizant of protecting people — middle class people, hard-working people who are trying to get along in a very difficult economy.  And he will continue to represent them in these talks," Axelrod said.

So if you expect Obama to keep his promises, you’re just a stick-in-the-mud.  According to Axelrod, any line drawn stops the talks, and thus everything is negotiable. 

Well, at least we know where the administration stands now.  All the tough talk and "yes we can" talk were all just suggestions.  Hope for change, and such.

In 1935, a color reversal film (i.e., “slides”) was introduced by Kodak. Kodachrome, as it was named, not only provided brilliantly accurate color rendition, but would retain such accuracy over an archival period of fifty years. Since 1935 you have certainly seen many an image, shot on Kodachrome (ref. the iconic Afghan Girl).

Last week, Kodak announced that it would soon be retiring production of Kodachrome.

While the increasing viability of digital photography played a major role in Kodak coming to this decision, truth be told, the introduction of newer varieties of color reversal films, films with much more saturated colors, is probably what initially catalyzed photographers to move away from the Kodachrome standard.

A photographer friend of mine still refuses to move to the digital realm. He likes to say that, “when the automobile was introduced, they didn’t go out and shoot all the horses, did they?” Well, no they didn’t, but I haven’t seen a horse on the freeway lately. In the same manner, it is unlikely that film production will completely disappear but, rather, move towards a more esoteric and artistic venue.

As for me, I shot my last roll of Kodachrome probably in the early 1990s, and my last roll of film in 2004.

Time, and technology, marches on.

This is a great article from the Washington Times regarding the persecution of Christian in communist Vietnam, and our government’s complicity in it.

You can’t engage in diplomacy with an enemy would simply will not be negotiated with.  Case in point:

The [Iranian] government appeared to fall back on a familiar playbook: trying to rouse Iranians through populist appeals against outside interference and dark accusations of foreign conspiracy. Mr. Rezai’s aides said the authorities did not even bother to conduct the limited recount they had agreed to. Mr. Ahmadinejad stepped out of the shadows to lash out at President Obama, who said Tuesday that he was “appalled and outraged” by the crackdown on protesters.

On Thursday, Mr. Ahmadinejad said: “We expected the British and European countries to make those kinds of comments. But we were not expecting Mr. Obama, who has talked about change, to fall in the same trap and follow the same path that Bush did.”

All Obama did was express his opinion on the treatment of protestors, and even that was too much for Ahmadinejad.  And comparing him to Bush; that must have hurt.  >smile<

And you know you got our President mad when he disinvites you from the July 4th wienie roast.  The invitation was rescinded supposedly because of recent events.

On Wednesday, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who had authorized diplomatic posts earlier this month to invite Iranians to their Independence Day parties, sent out a cable rescinding the invitations.

“Unfortunately, circumstances have changed, and participation by Iranian diplomats would not be appropriate in light of the unjust actions that the president and I have condemned,” she said. Embassies that had already invited Iranian diplomats were instructed to disinvite them.

So the past 30 years of "unjust actions" were OK, but this crossed the line?  C’mon, folks!  This simply shows that the Obama crowd is far too naive to be in charge of the really important decisions.  No Iranians had accepted the invitation anyway.  They simply do not wish to be engaged, and no amount of mustard and relish, or strongly worded letter from the UN, will change that. 

Don’t you just hate it when it’s the insurance company making your healthcare decisions rather than you or your doctor?  Well, when it’s the government insuring you, this is what you can expect.

President Obama suggested at a town hall event Wednesday night that one way to shave medical costs is to stop expensive and ultimately futile procedures performed on people who are about to die and don’t stand to gain from the extra care.

In a nationally televised event at the White House, Obama said families need better information so they don’t unthinkingly approve "additional tests or additional drugs that the evidence shows is not necessarily going to improve care."

He added: "Maybe you’re better off not having the surgery, but taking the painkiller."

Obama advertises that you’ll be able to choose your own doctor, but if neither of you have a say in your healthcare that’s just a bunch of misdirection.  Indeed, sometimes that happens even now, but if you think that the government option will somehow be fundamentally different, you’re gravely mistaken. 

And after the trillions spent on providing this, the desire to cut costs will be great.

1. Mr Kerry in the news.
2. Posner on foreign law.
3. Rights.
4. Reality strikes liberal foreign policy.
5. Microsoft has a saying “eat your own dog-food”, using your own product, if Congress sics government controlled healthcare on us … they should be required to use it.
6. Booom.
7. Prayer.
8. LOTR hits Iran. More here.
9. Booze.
10. Hypocrisy.
11. To be relevant to sinners.
12. Rugs.
13. Ageless.
14. And so passed into proverb.
15. Why is that the left fails to realize that private insurance is the medical care an individual has paid for with their own money? It’s either ignorance or if not, then it’s perfidy.
16. A book recommended.

Mr Westmoreland-White here offers an “explanation” for why the GOP reacts differently to scandal than the Democrats. One wonders if he knows any conservatives or republicans. He could, you know, ask one or two what their reason for caring about scandal,  unlike the Democrats who apparently don’t. The point is, I’m a conservative. The reason I’ve given and heard from other conservatives why personal scandal matters for politicians is the same every time. And it’s not the reason he gives, to whit:

It seems to me that the difference is the hypocrisy factor.  The Democratic Party in the U.S. has not tried to set itself up as the “morality police.”  Democrats sometimes campaign as “strong family people,” but this is seldom the center of the campaign.  They don’t claim to be morally superior.  They don’t try  to claim that voting for them is the only way to save the American family.  Republicans do make such claims–usually by implication, but sometimes in almost those very words.  Further, Republican politicians loudly call for Democratic politicians to resign if they get caught in sex scandals–and claim that voting for them is a way to restore the moral fabric of the nation.

This is uncharitable. It is not any reason that he, I suspect, or I have ever heard given. So that liberals and progressives get this straight, here is why the GOP (in office and out) call for Democrats caught in sex and other scandals to resign from public office.

Conservatives believe that private dishonest is reflective of personality. That a person who is dishonest in his personal affairs will also be dishonest in public and is not worthy of public trust. Cheating on a spouse affects a number of people, the wife, the children, and the social community in which the person resides. It is at the core, a breaking of trust. Conservatives believe that a person who is dishonest in these things will cannot be trusted in other things. That dishonesty of this sort disqualifies one from public office where great trust over money and power is given to a person for whom integrity is important.

The question then redounds to the liberal side. Why do they for their part feel that a person who lacks personal integrity is worthy of public office? I might suggest reasons why I might think that liberals like Mr Westmoreland-White might feel that personal integrity is unimportant to those in public office, but unlike him I fear that any reason I might sugggest would be uncharitable. So … I’ll await suggestions from him and from other liberal/progressive readers to answer that question defending the notion that personal integrity is unimportant.

…and using the United Nations as the club.

British homeschoolers may no longer be able to teach independently. Children’s Secretary of Britain accepted a report in full last week that could change the face of homeschooling in Britain indefinitely. In the report, the author, Graham Badman, Chair of the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (BECTA), argues for an end to homeschool freedom.

"While it’s disgraceful that the British government would even entertain this report it’s particularly troubling for American parents because the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) was used as the justification for this action," said Michael Farris, Chairman of HSLDA and President of ParentalRights.org.

The Badman report uses Articles 12 and 29 of the UNCRC to justify registering the estimated 80,000 homeschooling families in Britain, forcing them to provide annual reports regarding their homeschool, granting government officials the right to enter the home and interview the children alone as well as reserving the choice of curriculum to the state.

HSLDA has been warning that the UNCRC could bring an end to homeschool freedom in the U.S., if the treaty was ever ratified by the U.S. Senate because Article VI of the U.S. Constitution says that treaties become the supreme law of the land.

OK, first I have to admit that I snickered a bit when I read the phrase "The Badman report".  But getting beyond that…

I’m wondering if the UNCRC says or implies that children can be used as witnesses against their parents without a lawyer present.  I mean, why would any government official be granted exclusive access to a homeschool child other than to find out what’s really going on?  Somehow, without all this invasiveness, homeschool children are, on the whole, doing better academically than their public-schooled peers.  Part of the reason people homeschool is precisely to avoid the problem with government-chosen one-size-fits-all curriculum.

Do people misuse the opportunity?  Indeed they do, but it is such a small minority that this is akin to burning down the forest to kill the mosquitoes.  Parents, on the whole, are doing just fine thankyouverymuch educating their own children.  (One wonders how we learned anything prior to the 19th century.)