This is also the same guy, by the way, who spent $150 million on his inauguration.
Category: Current events
In case you’re obsessed about swine flu
Here are some things for you to check out in case you don’t get enough of this on cable television:
Track the Swine Flu Outbreaks on Google Maps
Hysteria about torture answered soberly
Porter Goss, who served as director of the CIA from September 2004 to May 2006 and was chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence from 1997 to 2004, wrote Saturday in the Washington Post about the current political climate concerning perceived torture by U.S. interrogators dealing with al-Qaeda suspects:
A disturbing epidemic of amnesia seems to be plaguing my former colleagues on Capitol Hill. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, members of the committees charged with overseeing our nation’s intelligence services had no higher priority than stopping al-Qaeda. In the fall of 2002, while I was chairman of the House intelligence committee, senior members of Congress were briefed on the CIA’s “High Value Terrorist Program,” including the development of “enhanced interrogation techniques” and what those techniques were. This was not a one-time briefing but an ongoing subject with lots of back and forth between those members and the briefers.
Today, I am slack-jawed to read that members claim to have not understood that the techniques on which they were briefed were to actually be employed; or that specific techniques such as “waterboarding” were never mentioned. It must be hard for most Americans of common sense to imagine how a member of Congress can forget being told about the interrogations of Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed. In that case, though, perhaps it is not amnesia but political expedience.
Let me be clear. It is my recollection that:
- The chairs and the ranking minority members of the House and Senate intelligence committees, known as the Gang of Four, were briefed that the CIA was holding and interrogating high-value terrorists.
- We understood what the CIA was doing.
- We gave the CIA our bipartisan support.
- We gave the CIA funding to carry out its activities.
- On a bipartisan basis, we asked if the CIA needed more support from Congress to carry out its mission against al-Qaeda.
I do not recall a single objection from my colleagues. They did not vote to stop authorizing CIA funding. And for those who now reveal filed “memorandums for the record” suggesting concern, real concern should have been expressed immediately — to the committee chairs, the briefers, the House speaker or minority leader, the CIA director or the president’s national security adviser — and not quietly filed away in case the day came when the political winds shifted. And shifted they have.
Related to that, in the video below, Liz Cheney absolutely destroys MSNBC’s Norah O’Donnell as O’Donnell tries to feed more slop about the whole torture debate. Watch as Cheney uses sound argument to head off hysterical bluster.
Understanding the magnitude of our spending hysteria
Millions protest abortion. News? What news?
World Net Daily got the scoop on The Associated Press and countless other “big” news organizations with this story which you probably didn’t hear about:
The White House mail office has confirmed it received a “deluge” of as many as 2.25 million red envelopes symbolizing the empty promise of lives snuffed out in abortion in a massive campaign that was larger than most White House mailing movements in the last 35 years.
White House mail worker “Steve” has handled letters for 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. for more than three decades. Every single package and letter destined for the White House goes through his office.
Asked if he has seen a flood of red envelopes bound for the White House, Steve chuckled.
“Uh, yes,” he said emphatically. “Believe me, they made it here.”
Steve said while Obama has been occupied in Europe, his administration has noticed millions of red envelopes on behalf of aborted children.
“Quite frankly, there was definitely a deluge of mail coming through,” he laughed. “I had to handle them all.”
“I’ve been here 35 years, so I’ve seen presidents come and go,” Steve told WND. “This campaign ranks up there with the big ones.”
The Red Envelope Project is an idea sparked in the mind and prayers of a Massachusetts man, Christ Otto, who envisioned in January thousands of red envelopes sent to the White House, a visual expression of moral outrage over the president’s position on abortion.
On the backs of the envelopes, senders wrote a message Otto composed: “This envelope represents one child who died in abortion. It is empty because that life was unable to offer anything to the world. Responsibility begins with conception.”
Tyranny of the minority in Iowa
This article points to what the decision last week in Iowa comes down to:
The problem with the Iowa decision is that there isn’t a strong legal rationale for this decision. The Iowa Constitution cannot require the recognition of gay marriage because gay marriage was not acceptable at the time that the Iowa Constitution was written. In essence, the judges are reading their own personal feelings into the law. While the Iowa Constitution is more broadly worded than the federal Constitution, there is still no plausible argument that it was designed to allow for same-sex marriages. What the Iowa Supreme Court has done amounts to going back and changing the words of the Iowa Constitution to mean something that it never was intended to.
Even those who want gay marriage should be troubled by this. There are seven members of the Iowa Supreme Court. There are nearly 3 million Iowans. In a democratic state, 7 people should not be presumed to have the power to set sweeping social policy for the other 2,999,997 people.
Yet that is what happened. The Iowan people did not vote to have gay marriages recognized in their state. In fact, a clear majority of Iowans oppose gay marriage. Yet the voice of the people have been overruled by just 7 people. That is troubling, not only from a standpoint of separation of powers, but because it ultimately hurts the cause of gay marriage. The likely outcome of all of this will be another Prop 8, and even if the Iowa Constitution’s amendment process means that the vote won’t take place until 2012, having this decision essentially forced upon the people of Iowa will not make gay marriage more popular.
This is a clear case of judicial activism. Judges should follow the law, and avoid legislating from the bench. The legal case for gay marriage presented in this opinion is woefully thin—rather the judges decided to enforce a set of social norms on Iowans by their will rather than the legislative process. Even those who support gay marriage should be troubled by that. This is an example of the tyranny of the minority, where the few use judicial overreach to enforce their views in a way they otherwise could not. No matter what the outcome, that kind of circumvention of the democratic process is wrong. The very foundation of our government is based on fundamental values like separation of powers and the consent of the governed. The Iowa Supreme Court has made a sweeping change to Iowa’s social policies and laws without the consent of the people. If such a thing were to stand, it would mean that states are governed not by voters, but by the few.
MacArthur’s answer on gay marriage
This was John MacArthur’s answer after the California court ruling last year (which was later amended by California voters), I think it still applies after the ruling in Iowa today regarding gay marriage:
As you interact with homosexuals and their sympathizers, you must affirm the Bible’s condemnation. You are not trying to bring damnation on the head of homosexuals, you are trying to bring conviction so that they can turn from that sin and embrace the only hope of salvation for all of us sinners—and that’s through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Homosexuals need salvation. They don’t need healing—homosexuality is not a disease. They don’t need therapy—homosexuality is not a psychological condition. Homosexuals need forgiveness, because homosexuality is a sin. …
What should be your response to the homosexual agenda? Make it a biblical response—confront it with the truth of Scripture that condemns homosexuality and promises eternal damnation for all who practice it. What should be your response to the homosexual? Make it a gospel response—confront him with the truth of Scripture that condemns him as a sinner, and point him to the hope of salvation through repentance and faith in Jesus Christ. Stay faithful to the Lord as you respond to homosexuality by honoring His Word, and leave the results to Him.
Don’t put your faith in science
To me, it is deeply disturbing when the president puts his faith in scientists, saying things like “promoting science isn’t just about providing resources — it is also about protecting free 
and open inquiry. It is about letting scientists like those here today [on March 9] do their jobs, free from manipulation or coercion, and listening to what they tell us, even when it’s inconvenient — especially when it’s inconvenient. It is about ensuring that scientific data is never distorted or concealed to serve a political agenda – and that we make scientific decisions based on facts, not ideology.”
To divorce any kind of ideology from science is to give science a free rein that leads to frightening results. In a review of Pamela Winnick’s book “A Jealous God: Science’s Crusade Against Religion,” Wesley Smith points out what kind of work scientists are capable of when human life is disregarded. From his review published in the Discovery Institute’s First Things:
Early on, Winnick wrenchingly demonstrates the potential antihuman consequences of pursuing scientism’s view of scientific research. During the late 1960s and into the 1970s, scientists conducted human experiments on living fetuses, justified by the philosophical assertion that fetuses are only “potential” human life.
One such experiment, which won the Foundation Prize Award from the American Association of Obstetrics and Gynecology, is described by Winnick in sickening detail: “In a 1968 study called the ‘Artificial Placenta,’ a twenty-six-week-old fetus, weighing more than a pound, was obtained from a fourteen-year-old girl, presumably from a therapeutic abortion. Along with fourteen other fetuses, it was immersed in a liquid containing oxygen and kept alive a full five hours.” The study itself explains that the fetus made”irregular gaspmg movements, twice a minute, … but there was not proper respiration.” Once the pumping of oxygenated blood was stopped, however, “the gasping respiratory efforts increased to 8 to 10 times a minute …. The fetus died 21 minutes after leaving the circuit.”
So, for those of you who feel squeamish or think I’m overstating it when I mention Nazi doctors in regard to therapeutic stem cell research, I’d ask you to read that last paragraph again and remember that we’re talking about 1960s America and not 1940s Nazi Germany. Smith notes that the experiments were stopped when an outraged public and Congress — led by Ted Kennedy — demanded they be stopped. But we live in a different age where the drumbeat call for cures has drowned out any thought of human exceptionalism. In other words, it matters not that embryos are human, it only matters what cures can (possibly) be found.
The idea that science is somehow benign and trustworthy left untethered from any kind of ideological guidelines is naive and will lead to situations like the one described above. Smith, in his review of Winnock’s book, says science of is not the target in “A Jealous God” but rather a belief (scientism she calls it) that “promotes a stark materialistic utilitarianism as the way to achieve progress.” Science is not our savior, and we can never forget that.
When all hope fails, God stands
Keep the people of Fargo in your prayers these next days, as they face disaster:
North Dakota’s largest city moved to the brink of potentially disastrous flooding Thursday, with earlier optimism fading as officials predicted the Red River would reach a record-high crest of 41 feet by the weekend.
Thousands of volunteers who have been piling sandbags for days scrambled to add another foot to Fargo’s dike protection, and official briefings lost the jokes and quips that had broken the tension earlier in the week. Instead, Thursday’s meeting opened with a prayer.
“We need all the help we can get,” Mayor Dennis Walaker said.
The city of 92,000 unveiled a contingency evacuation plan Thursday afternoon, but at least four nursing homes already had begun moving residents by then.
And here is some place you can help if you can’t fill sandbags:
One little problem for Obama: Dickey Amendment
The other day I posted about President Obama’s executive order on March 9 overturning restrictions on embryonic stem cell research put in place by former President Bush. In it, I said that Obama had carefully constructed his words to allow for the scientific destruction of embyos (killing of humans) for research.
A reader pointed out that, two days later, Obama signed an omnibus spending bill containing a clause which seemed in direct contradiction with his executive order. Like others, I wondered what this meant since the president’s words on March 9 were explicit about where he stood.
After his press conference last night, when he was asked about stem cell research he seemed ready to leave the issue to scientists — that is, those who are strongly in the embryonic stem cell research corner. What is clear is that, despite his words, the only thing he’s wrestled with is on this issue is with what political constituency he wants to keep his allegiances .
The complicating part is the Dickey amendment, which was part of the Omnibus bill. Found of page 280 of the bill, its says:
SEC. 509. (a) None of the funds made available in this Act may be used for—
(1) the creation of a human embryo or embryos for research purposes; or
(2) research in which a human embryo or embryos are destroyed, discarded, or knowingly subjected to risk of injury or death greater than that allowed for research on fetuses in utero under 45 CFR 46.204(b) and section 498(b) of the Public Health Service Act (42 U.S.C. 289g(b)).
(b) For purposes of this section, the term ‘‘human embryo or embryos’’ includes any organism, not protected as a human subject under 45 CFR 46 as of the date of the enactment of this Act, that is derived by fertilization, parthenogenesis, cloning, or any other means from one or more human gametes or human diploid cells.
The White House said the amendment, which has been in appropriations bills since 1996, only means that federal funds can’t be used for the killing of embryos, it can still be used for research on embryos that are killed with private funds. Others, however, say that it’s not that simple. Douglas Johnson, legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee, told CNSNews.com the White House is too narrowly defining the amendment:
It does not merely say you can’t use federal funds to kill an embryo, it’s much broader than that. It says the federal government can’t fund research in which embryos are harmed. We should interpret that to mean the federal government can’t fund any research project if that project involves or requires harm to human embryos.
It is not consistent with the Dickey amendment for NIH to say, ‘OK, we’re going to approve this study, which involves taking 100 embryos out of the freezer in some in vitro lab and killing them and taking their stem cells, and using their stem cells in the federally funded study, and by the way, we’re going to pay for all of that, and we approve it in advance. The only part we’re not going to pay for is the part where you kill the embryo.’ That’s not what the Dickey amendment says.
And, because there is this doubt out there and actual law is at stake, Congress has already started acting on the possibility of repealing Dickey. Already this month, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) has said lawmakers may look at passing a stem cell research bill before the April 4 recess. You can bet that getting rid of Dickey will be part of that measure, as Colorado Democrat Diana Degette told the N.Y. Times that they will look at how Dickey restricts research. In other words, it would mean the government could once and for all pour money into research that kills humans for the sake of science. Again, Josef Mengele would approve.
Rockstanding 
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