Category: Current events

More disinformation coming from Planned Parenthood; Nebraska bills force the issue

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Does this look like a baby to you?

To a counselor in the latest undercover video done by Liveaction.org, “There is no legs, no arms, no head, no brain, no heart. … There’s not a baby at this point.”

This is the kind of disinformation that is being pumped out by this taxpayer-funded organization. Watch the video below:

Meanwhile, the state of Nebraska has pushed the fight on the pro-life side with the signing of two important pieces of legislation by Gov. Dave Heineman, one barring abortions at and after 20 weeks of pregnancy and the other requiring women to be screened before having abortions for mental health and other problems. Both sides of the abortion debate say the laws are firsts of their kind in the U.S.

Take it outside: Twins win in home opener at Target Field

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Jason Kubel's seventh-inning home run for Minnesota was the first one hit at Target Field.

The first day at the ballpark (and we won’t count those exhibition games against St. Louis) turned out pretty good for the Minnesota Twins and their fans. The Twins beat the Boston Red Sox 5-2 before a sellout of 39,715 (the announced crowd was 38,145). While not every seat was ideal, the fans who were there felt like the lucky ones as they got to watch a good team play a good game on a great day.

Even though I don’t live there any more, I was thrilled to watch the game on TV and soak in as much atmosphere as I could that way. Here is one fan’s video and the the official highlights of the game. Summer is on its way, and baseball is the surest sign of it.

Here is one fan’s video of what it was like roaming Target Field on the first day:

And here are the highlights of the game itself:

Stepping aside for a time: John Piper is at war

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Today, it was announced on the Desiring God site that John Piper — with the approval of the elders — will take a leave of absence from May 1 to December 31 this year. It was a remarkable letter in that he was very open and humble about the concern he had for the ministry at Bethlehem.

I asked the elders to consider this leave because of a growing sense that my soul, my marriage, my family, and my ministry-pattern need a reality check from the Holy Spirit. On the one hand, I love my Lord, my wife, my five children and their families first and foremost; and I love my work of preaching and writing and leading Bethlehem. I hope the Lord gives me at least five more years as the pastor for preaching and vision at Bethlehem.

But on the other hand, I see several species of pride in my soul that, while they may not rise to the level of disqualifying me for ministry, grieve me, and have taken a toll on my relationship with Noël and others who are dear to me. How do I apologize to you, not for a specific deed, but for ongoing character flaws, and their effects on everybody? I’ll say it now, and no doubt will say it again, I’m sorry. Since I don’t have just one deed to point to, I simply ask for a spirit of forgiveness; and I give you as much assurance as I can that I am not making peace, but war, with my own sins.

You can read the complete letter here. We can do no better than to do what he asks and remember the Pipers, Bethlehem Baptist and the ministry team at Desiring God in prayer. And, like Piper, we need also to continue daily to go to war with our owns sins.

The executive order is bogus: More hypocrisy from Obama

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Andrew McCarthy at The Corner blog at National Review Online summarizes the final bit in a long line of trickery in the effort to ram the Obama health care monstrosity on America. The latest is an executive order to pacify pro-life Democrats (do those even exist any more?) to vote yes on the measure in the House of Representatives:

We spent the eight years through January 19, 2009, listening to Democrats complain that President Bush had purportedly caused a constitutional crisis by issuing signing statements when he signed bills into law. Democrats and Arlen Specter (now a Democrat) complained that these unenforceable, non-binding expressions of the executive’s interpretation of the laws Bush was signing were a usurpation Congress’s power to enact legislation.

But now Democrats are going to abide not a mere signing statement but an executive order that purports to have the effect of legislation — in fact, has the effect of nullifying legislation that Congress is simultaneously enacting?

The Susan B. Anthony List observation that EOs can be rescinded at the president’s whim is of course true. This particuar EO is also a nullity — presidents cannot enact laws, the Supreme Court has said they cannot impound funds that Congress allocates, and (as a friend points out) the line-item veto has been held unconstitutional, so they can’t use executive orders to strike provisions in a bill. So this anti-abortion EO is blatant chicanery: if the pro-lifers purport to be satisfied by it, they are participating in a transparent fraud and selling out the pro-life cause.

But even if all that weren’t true, how do we go from congressional Democrats claiming that signing statements were a shredding of the Constitution to congressional Democrats acquiescing in a claim that the president can enact or cancel out statutory law by diktat?

The dissent of the populace: When does Romans 13 not hold?

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Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for  he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God’s wrath but also for the sake of conscience. For because of this you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, attending to this very thing. Pay to all what is owed to them: taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom honor is owed. — Romans 13:1-7

Douglas Wilson, over at Blog and Mablog, is about to do a series of posts looking at Romans 13. It is hard to sit by and watch the way our government is working in ways that is highly objectionable. Indeed, in ways that seem criminal. Yet, as Christians, we are to look to God’s word as our guide. We are Christians first and then citizens. Wilson takes up the issue in part:

(Evangelicals) have come to believe that “not allowed” is the necessary meaning of — all together now! — Romans 13. When you get back to the Shire, whatever the sallow-faced thug leaning against the gate says you have to do, you have to do. He is leaning against the gate, isn’t he? I know there is nothing in the Constitution about that, but the Supreme Court said there was. And they are leaning against the gate too.

The doctrine is a convenient one, and it comports well with those who would make cravenness into a theological virtue. A great deal can be said about Romans 13 (which I hope to do, Lord permitting, in the weeks to come), but in the meantime, let this suffice.

Although the populations of different nations and cultures have different threshholds for what they will put up with, the consent of the governed is still a bedrock principle. At a certain point, it becomes obvious that the “consent of the governed” is not an ideal for democracies to strive for, but is rather an unalterable reality under every form of government.

Read the rest of Wilson’s post. I look forward to what he has to say. In the meantime, we will see which way our government proceeds with our business.

The tax in sheep’s clothing: How abortion funding sneaks into the health care bill

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Charmaine Yoest, the President and CEO of Americans United for Life, recently wrote an editorial in the March 4 edition of the Wall Street Journal about the health-care proposal that is headed for a Sunday vote in the House of Representatives. One of the reasons the bill has been delayed in its return to the House is that a group of Democrat senators are withholding their approval based on the bill’s abortion language. As you may recall, when the bill passed in the House earlier this year, attached to it was a provision known as the Stupak Amendment. In simplest terms, it said that no federal funds would be used to pay for abortions. This amendment was proposed by Michigan representative Bart Stupak, a Democrat.

When the bill went to the Senate and was approved there, the Stupak amendment was not part of the bill. Another form of that amendment, not as strong in its terms, was a part of the bill. Likewise, the reconciled bill, written by the White House, has language similar to the Senate version. In her editorial, Yoest argues that this kind of deception is deliberate by President Obama and his administration:

Over the past year, language similar to the Hyde Amendment [banning federal funding for abortions] was crafted by Reps. Bart Stupak (D., Mich.) and Joe Pitts (R., Pa.) and inserted into the health-care bill that passed the House. When asked about the Stupak-Pitts Amendment in November, Mr. Obama talked around the issue. He said that “there is a balance to be achieved that is consistent with the Hyde Amendment.” When asked if Stupak-Pitts struck this “balance,” the president replied “not yet.”

That’s an odd reply. The question of abortion funding doesn’t have any Zen to it: The funding is either prohibited or it’s not.

In November, presidential adviser David Axelrod, on CNN’s “State of the Union,” also talked around the Hyde Amendment, saying that the president “doesn’t believe this bill should change the status quo as it relates to the issue of abortion.” But then Mr. Axelrod claimed that “this shouldn’t be a debate about abortion” before concluding that there were discussions in Congress about “how to adjust [the abortion language bill] accordingly.”

Apparently, his definition of “adjust” means opening up the spigot for the abortion lobby. The president’s latest proposal mirrors legislation that has passed the Senate, which doesn’t include a Hyde Amendment, and would inevitably establish abortion as a fundamental health-care service for the following reasons:

• It would change existing law by allowing federally subsidized health-care plans to pay for abortions and could require private health-insurance plans to cover abortion.

• It would impose a first-ever abortion tax—a separate premium payment that will be used to pay for elective abortions—on enrollees in insurance plans that covers abortions through newly created government health-care exchanges.

• And it would fail to protect the rights of health-care providers to refuse to participate in abortions.

The president’s plan goes further than the Senate bill on abortion by calling for spending $11 billion over five years on “community health centers,” which include Planned Parenthood clinics that provide abortions.

The president, in his zeal to get this bill passed, feels comfortable saying that there is a lot of misinformation out there. Perhaps that’s the information coming from the president. At the AUL Web site, there is a chart that explains how your tax dollars can be used to fund abortions even without having them go directly to abortion services (click on the image to see it larger).

Yoest, in an interview below last week on the Albert Mohler radio program, goes on to explain how this can all take place under the new legislation. This may seem hysterical to some, but there are some principles that are too important to be brushed aside, even for something that may be considered worthwhile. And this health care bill is hardly worthwhile.

http://idisk.mac.com/thebrott4-Public/CharmaineYoestinterview.mov

The daily earthquake of abortion is right in your back yard

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On Jan. 12, 2010, a deadly earthquake hit Haiti. It has been estimated that anywhere from 150,000 to maybe up to 500,000 people lost their lives in this tragedy. There is still much suffering as many who have survived have been left homeless. There are many ways you can help beyond being there physically. Among many choices you can consider I would offer Compassion International, which works with children and their families, and Food for the Hungry. I cannot strongly enough urge you to help in whatever way you can.

Since that day when the major quake hit Haiti, there has been an equally devastating human tragedy that has hit among the most defenseless people in our society. I am talking about abortion. There are some estimates that 3,000 babies in the United States and 130,000 babies worldwide are killed by abortion. John Piper puts it in perspective in his sermon on his observance of Sanctity of Human Life Sunday yesterday at Bethlehem Baptist Church.

There are about 3,000 abortions a day in the United States and about 130,000 a day worldwide. Which means that the horrific, gut-wrenching reality of Haiti’s earthquake on January 12 happens everyday in the abortion clinics of the world. And it is likely that if the dismemberment and bloodshed and helplessness of 130,000 dead babies a day received as much media coverage as the earthquake victims have—rightly have!—there would be the same outcry and outpouring of effort to end the slaughter and relieve the suffering.

Americans have been giving 1.6 million dollars an hour for Haiti Relief for the last ten days—a beautiful thing. I hope you are part of it. It is so unbelievably easy to give with phones and computers. But the funding and resistance to the suffering of the silent, hidden destruction of the unborn is not so easy. So the 3,000 babies who are crushed to death every day in America by the earthquake of abortion go largely unnoticed.

If you have been compelled to perhaps adopt a Haitian child because they have been left orphaned, how much more so should you consider adopting a child that may be aborted. Is there really any difference? The point is not that we should do less for situations like the one in Haiti, but rather that we should not ignore a far greater tragedy in our society. As I sat in my own church on Sunday I couldn’t help but feel disappointed that nothing was mentioned about this tragedy. It is much safer to be concerned about Haiti. I hope we can muster our courage to change that.

Another controversial person: Sarah Palin. Why’d she quit?

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John Fund, who writes the Political Diary for the Wall Street Journal online, writes that people misunderstand when they think that Sarah Palin’s decision to leave her role as governor of Alaska was a recent one. He contends that the people who hated her and what she stands for turned her job into a quagmire. In driving her from office they made it clear that she was not one of them:

She made many mistakes after being thrust into the national spotlight last year, but hasn’t merited the sneering contempt visited upon her by national reporters. She simply was not their kind of feminist — and they disdained the politically incorrect life choices she had made.

What kind of “sneering contempt,” you say? The kind that David Kahane writes about in National Review Online:

Did Sarah stand for “family values”? Flay her unwed-mother daughter. Did she represent probity in a notoriously corrupt, one-family state? Spread rumors about FBI investigations. Did she speak with an upper-Midwest twang? Mock it relentlessly on Saturday Night Live. Above all, don’t let her motivate the half of the country that doesn’t want His Serene Highness to bankrupt the nation, align with banana-republic Communist dictators, unilaterally dismantle our missile defenses, and set foot in more mosques than churches since he has become president. We’ve got a suicide cult to run here.

And that’s why Sarah had to go. Whether she understood it or not, she threatened us right down to our most fundamental, meretricious, elitist, sneering, snobbish, insecure, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders bones. She was, after all, a “normal” American, the kind of person (or so I’m told) you meet in flyover country. The kind that worries first about home and hearth and believes in things like motherhood and love of country the way it is, not the way she wants to remake it.

So, Fund writes, because she was so controversially “normal,” her critics relentlessly attacked her and paralyzed her in her role as Alaska governor. But the message they sent is not a good one, he says:

In helping to convince Sarah Palin that her road forward in national politics would demand even more sacrifices and pain than exacted from most politicians, the media did nothing to encourage women or people of modest means to participate in politics. By sidestepping her critics, Sarah Palin is now moving to another playing field where she has more control over the rules of the game. Her friends say her critics may call her a “quitter” now, but they should wait and see what new role she decides to fill. She may wind up having the last laugh.