Apr 29 2013
When it comes to abortion, is there anything the left won’t tolerate?
James Willis makes some points about the Gosnell baby-killer case, what it means regarding media coverage, and our general attitudes towards that coverage.
Kermit Gosnell is not a particularly attractive man, nor has he any celebrity status. His patients, otherwise known as victims, were mostly young, poor black women or girls whose names have never been mentioned on Entertainment Tonight. We don’t know if any of his youngest victims would have looked like Barack Obama. Gosnell didn’t use an AR-15 to kill these children, he just used scissors.
Although the trial has finally gotten some media attention, the lack of coverage has gotten perhaps more air time than the trial itself. Perhaps I am wrong about the trial being ignored because of a lack of glamour; I suppose it is entirely possible that the media doesn’t want to cover it because they don’t want to bring negative attention to the abortion industry. To be honest, while both factors are probably involved, the latter is most likely the driving force.
Let’s assume, just for the sake of discussion, that the left held the abortion industry in the same level of contempt as they do the gun industry. By now coverage of the trial would be wall-to-wall, with after action reports coming at the end of each day to recap the day’s events and to speculate on the next moves by both the defense and the prosecution. We would have seen leaked photos of the jars containing the severed feet of the infants murdered at Gosnell’s butcher shop, kept like trophies, and of the cat food containers used to store the remains of the dead babies.
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There is much more, and it’s all worth reading here, and pondering. Exactly how depraved have we become that we can tolerate this in our society? That we allow people into our homes via the television who support the abortion culture, and actually find them to be trustworthy guides to the news and our society? That we elect politicians who will block every attempt to save the unborn? That we pretend that our concern for the poor (expressed as support for the left) somehow trumps our concern for killed babies?
It seems to me that too many Christians want so much to be “civil” or “nonjudgmental” or “relevant” or just “cool” that they are willing to abide almost anything in the name of some kind of “peace” with the left.
As I said here, on the occasion of Obama’s address at Notre Dame, our willingness to submerge our beliefs and moral assessment for the sake of some kind of cultural relevance, to be “bridge-builders” and “peace-makers,” is essentially a denial that there is evil in the world, evil that we must resist, evil that we must not simply tolerate for the sake of civility and getting along with the powers that be.
h/t: Powerline
Aug 19 2012
Ruby Ridge, for those of you too young to remember it
Randy Weaver moved his family to northern Idaho in the 1980s to escape what he saw as a corrupt world. Over time, federal agents began investigating the Army veteran for possible ties to white supremacist and anti-government groups. Weaver was eventually suspected of selling a government informant two illegal sawed-off shotguns. To avoid arrest, Weaver holed up on his land. On Aug. 21, 1992, a team of U.S. marshals scouting the forest to find suitable places to ambush and arrest Weaver came across his friend, Kevin Harris, and Weaver’s 14-year-old son Samuel in the woods. A gunfight broke out. Samuel Weaver and Deputy U.S. Marshal William Degan were killed. The next day, an FBI sniper shot and wounded Randy Weaver. As Weaver, Harris and Sara ran back toward the house, the sniper fired a second bullet, which passed through Vicki Weaver’s head and wounded Harris in the chest. During the siege, Sara Weaver crawled around her mother’s blanket-covered body to get food and water for the survivors, including the infant, until the family surrendered on Aug. 31, 1992. Harris and Randy Weaver were arrested, and Weaver’s daughters went to live with their mother’s family in Iowa. Randy Weaver was acquitted of the most serious charges and Harris was acquitted of all charges. The surviving members of the Weaver family filed a wrongful death lawsuit. The federal government awarded Randy Weaver a $100,000 settlement and his three daughters $1 million each in 1995.
The main thrust of the story is that one of the daughters of the slain woman has “forgiven” the government killers of her mother. I’m all for forgiveness, of course.
One wonders, though:
Did those killers ever ASK for forgiveness?
Did they keep their jobs?
Did they ever serve time for pre-meditated murder under the color of authority?
Here’s a very basic fact: if Randy Weaver was the person they thought he was when they shot him and killed his wife, the “authorities” who murdered his wife would not now be alive, would they? After all, Mr. Weaver has had all the time he needed to plot any revenge, and carry it out, that he could possibly have needed.
This is one of the darkest of several very dark spots in the Clinton administration, with Janet Reno at the helm of Justice at the time, and Clinton, of course, claiming he didn’t know anything about it.
Just to be clear: today (and for that matter, all through the Clinton administration), the inner cities of America are/were rife with constant sales/possession of illegally sold and owned firearms. These aren’t firearms in the possession of people who are situated remotely and simply wish to be left alone. They are firearms in the hands of criminals, drug dealers and their employees, gansters of several stripes, illegals of all kinds, you name it. These firearms are constantly used to commit crimes, including murder, which is why Chicago and Detroit are more dangerous places to live than Baghdad or Kabul.
What would be the reaction, do you suppose, if the FBI planted snipers on the rooftops of tenements in Chicago, and waited for known criminals to appear, and simply shot them… and then their wives (if they had any…)?
Let’s put it another way: if something like this was done in inner-city Chicago 20 years ago, there would be a national commemoration of it, national introspection about how out of control our government and authorities were, etc.
But unless you were an adult in 1992, who read newspapers, there’s an excellent chance that you have never heard of the FBI murdering civilians at Ruby Ridge. Why do you think that is?
Jul 14 2012
Britain, R.I.P.? Part Eight
The previous post in this series is here.
John Terry, a soccer player, has been found “not guilty” of racist speech in a criminal trial in merry old England.
Chief Magistrate Howard Riddle delivered his verdict after a five-day trial at Westminster Magistrates Court in London.
He said the case was not about “whether Mr Terry is a racist in the broadest sense of the word”, telling the court he had heard “a great deal of evidence to show that he is not”.
“It is understandable why Mr Terry wants to make this point – his reputation is at stake,” he said.
He was accused of racially abusing Ferdinand during a match between QPR and Chelsea at Loftus Road in October. He was investigated and charged after a complaint from an off-duty policeman.
Riddle said Terry was a “credible witness” and “nobody has been able to show that he is lying”. He told the court: “There is no doubt that John Terry uttered the words ‘f****** black c***’ at Anton Ferdinand.
So, it seems that losing control a bit and uttering an epithet or two in the heat of battle is a criminal offense in the land that brought us the Magna Carta and the Glorious Revolution, not to mention John Locke and Edmund Burke.
Details are here, but the reason for the not guilty verdict, given that Terry did say the words, is that he claimed to be repeating back an accusation from the “victim,” Anton Ferdinand, and this produced just enough question about Terry’s intent and motivation to create “reasonable doubt.”
I have reasonable doubts that Britain is any longer anything remotely resembling a free nation. And consider: the USA’s founding fathers thought of themselves as fighting to keep “the rights of Englishmen” which they thought they had been denied.
It would seem that Englishmen lost them some time back, too.
In the meantime, consider that this five day trial has to have cost the state considerable money, which might have been better spent other ways, perhaps not withholding necessary treatment to the elderly and infirm.
Just call it an informal death panel.
Jul 09 2012
Death by political correctness
Here is a story about the death of a beautiful, intelligent young woman, a high school student, herself an immigrant, due to the incredible incompetence and immoral laxity of our federal and state governments at simply enforcing US law.
Feb 14 2012
Rep. Darrell Issa’s letter to Eric Holder
This post is a summary of the Fast and Furious scandal. We now have this letter from Rep. Darrell Issa to Attorney General Eric Holder.
It’s very hard for me to see how the media can let this slide. Holder should resign. But the media is mostly looking the other way. Imagine if a parallel scandal in a Republican administration happened. The media feeding frenzy would be incredible.
The movie Media Malpractice told the story of how the media essentially acted as an arm of the Obama campaign in the 2008 election. It’s gearing up to do the same in 2012, it seems. Actually, I’m not sure it ever stopped.
In any case, pretending that Eric Holder is an honest man who deserves to stay in office is just par for the course.
Read the letter to Holder from Rep. Issa and draw your own conclusions. Holder is clearly stonewalling, hiding, and using every device of his consider power to keep the truth from coming to light. Will the media finally start giving this the coverage it deserves? Only if it’s embarrassed into it…. which has happened before, for example in the Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky scandal, and the case of Dan Rather and cronies reporting fake news about George Bush.
Feb 11 2012
Attorney General Eric Holder’s stonewalling on “Fast and Furious”
I posted this earlier, but it accidentally went to a PAGE instead of a POST. I’m fixing that now.
KUHNER: Obama’s Watergate – Washington Times
A year ago this week, U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was murdered. He died protecting his country from brutal Mexican gangsters. Two AK-47 assault rifles were found at his death site. We now know the horrifying truth: Agent Terry was killed by weapons that were part of an illegal Obama administration operation to smuggle arms to the dangerous drug cartels. He was a victim of his own government. This is not only a major scandal; it is a high crime that potentially reaches all the way to the White House, implicating senior officials. It is President Obama’s Watergate.
Operation Fast and Furious was run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and overseen by the Justice Department. It started under the leadership of Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. Fast and Furious enabled straw gun purchases from licensed dealers in Arizona, in which more than 2,000 weapons were smuggled to Mexican drug kingpins. ATF claims it was seeking to track the weapons as part of a larger crackdown on the growing violence in the Southwest. Instead, ATF effectively has armed murderous gangs. About 300 Mexicans have been killed by Fast and Furious weapons. More than 1,400 guns remain lost. Agent Terry likely will not be the last U.S. casualty.
Mr. Holder insists he was unaware of what took place until after media reports of the scandal appeared in early 2011. This is false. Such a vast operation only could have occurred with the full knowledge and consent of senior administration officials. Massive gun-running and smuggling is not carried out by low-level ATF bureaucrats unless there is authorization from the top. There is a systematic cover-up.
Congressional Republicans, however, are beginning to shed light on the scandal. Led by Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Rep. Darrell Issa of California, a congressional probe is exposing the Justice Department‘s rampant criminality and deliberate stonewalling. Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer, who heads the department‘s criminal division, helped craft a February letter to Congress that denied ATF had ever walked guns into Mexico. Yet, under pressure from congressional investigators, the department later admitted that Mr. Breuer knew about ATF gun-smuggling as far back as April 2010. In other words, Mr. Breuer has been misleading Congress. He should resign – or be fired.
Instead, Mr. Holder tenaciously insists that Mr. Breuer will keep his job. He needs to keep his friends close and potential witnesses even closer. Another example is former acting ATF Director Kenneth Melson. Internal documents show Mr. Melson directly oversaw Fast and Furious, including monitoring numerous straw purchases of AK-47s. He has admitted to congressional investigators that he, along with high-ranking ATF leaders, reassigned every “manager involved in Fast and Furious” after the scandal surfaced on Capitol Hill and in the press. Mr. Melson said he was ordered by senior Justice officials to be silent regarding the reassignments. Hence, ATF managers who possess intimate and damaging information – especially on the role of the Justice Department – essentially have been promoted to cushy bureaucratic jobs. Their silence has been bought, their complicity swept under the rug. Mr. Melson has been transferred to Justice’s main office, where he serves as a “senior adviser” on forensic science in the department‘s Office of Legal Policy. Rather than being punished, Mr. Melson has been rewarded for his incompetence and criminal negligence.
Mr. Holder and his aides have given misleading, false and contradictory testimony on Capitol Hill. Perjury, obstruction of justice and abuse of power – these are high crimes and misdemeanors. Mr. Holder should be impeached. Like most liberals, he is playing the victim card, claiming Mr. Issa is a modern-day Joseph McCarthy conducting a judicial witch hunt. Regardless of this petty smear, Mr. Holder must be held responsible and accountable – not only for the botched operation, but for his flagrant attempts to deflect blame from the administration.
Mr. Holder is a shameless careerist and a ruthless Beltway operative. For years, his out-of-control Justice Department has violated the fundamental principle of our democracy, the rule of law. He has refused to prosecute members of the New Black Panthers for blatant voter intimidation that took place in the 2008 election. Career Justice lawyers have confessed publicly that Mr. Holder will not pursue cases in which the perpetrators are black and the victims white. States such as Arizona and Alabama are being sued for simply attempting to enforce federal immigration laws. Mr. Holder also opposes voter identification cards, thereby enabling fraud and vote-stealing at the ballot box. What else can we expect from one who, during the Clinton administration, helped pardon notorious tax cheat Marc Rich and Puerto Rican terrorists?
Mr. Holder clearly knew about Fast and Furious and did nothing to stop it. This is because the administration wanted to use the excuse of increased violence on the border and weapons-smuggling into Mexico to justify tighter gun-control legislation. Mr. Holder is fighting ferociously to prevent important internal Justice documents from falling into the hands of congressional investigators. If the full nature of his involvement is discovered, the Obama presidency will be in peril.
Fast and Furious is even worse than Watergate for one simple reason: No one died because of President Nixon’s political dirty tricks and abuse of government power. But Brian Terry is dead; and there are still 1,500 missing guns threatening still more lives.
What did Mr. Obama know? Massive gun-smuggling by the U.S. government into a foreign country does not happen without the explicit knowledge and approval of leading administration officials. It’s too big, too risky and too costly. Mr. Holder may not be protecting just himself and his cronies. Is he protecting the president?
Nov 26 2011
From Conception to Birth
It is a rather amazing fact that the more science learns the harder it is to deny a Creator. We are now able to look inside the womb in ways that have never before been known. What is being revealed is but a confirmation of those words penned a very long time ago, “I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well” (Psalms 139:14). What the author, King David, clearly understood is being underscored for us now through science. And if the case is so clearly made then it demands of us to reassess what we believe to be true about life and ending life though abortion. This is, as Alan Keyes so often states, an absolute moral imperative. But before the issue can become an imperative for our society it must become one for us as individuals. I hope you will consider this while watching and listening to this video.
Aug 19 2011
Britain, R.I.P.? Part Seven
The previous post in this series is here.
Powerline has a brilliant article by Professor Malcolm from George Mason University Law School. Normally, in these series, I don’t merely link, and I try to provide some original content and analysis.
But this article so perfectly captures the supine British attitude towards evil that I had to include it here.
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