Faith, the Founding, and Obama

Compare this:

Pentagon May Court Martial Soldiers Who Share Christian Faith

The Pentagon has released a statement confirming that soldiers could be prosecuted for promoting their faith: "Religious proselytization is not permitted within the Department of Defense...Court martials and non-judicial punishments are decided on a case-by-case basis...”.

[Thus] President Barack Obama’s civilian appointees who lead the Pentagon are confirming that the military will make it a crime--possibly resulting in imprisonment--for those in uniform to share their faith. This would include chaplains—military officers who are ordained clergymen of their faith (mostly Christian pastors or priests, or Jewish rabbis)--whose duty since the founding of the U.S. military under George Washington is to teach their faith and minister to the spiritual needs of troops who come to them for counsel, instruction, or comfort.

This regulation would severely limit expressions of faith in the military, even on a one-to-one basis between close friends. It could also effectively abolish the position of chaplain in the military...

With this:


Something has gone woefully wrong in this country.

Finally: a bumper-sticker guaranteed to kerplode the progressives' tiny, prehensile brains

Best bumper-sticker ever?


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Time to break the #Gosnell news blackout

William Jacobson at Legal Insurrection is on it:

The mainstream media is ignoring Kermit Gosnell’s abortion shop of horrors.

In addition to the near total blackout at newspapers like The NY Times and Washington Post and all major networks except Fox News, mainstream news sites like Politico are silent, with not a single story as of this writing. Compare that to when Politico turned over almost its entire homepage for a month to Herman Cain’s alleged paramours.


Starting At Noon today and continuing all day we are asking people to Tweet using the #Gosnell hashtag. You can Tweet this post using the link button above, or send the Broadcast tweet from the top of the sidebar.

There also is a Facebook page to Break the Blackout.

Send This Tweet Now!

Break #Gosnell news blackout @nytimes @washingtonpost @politico @latimes @msnbc @cbsnews @abcnews etc http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2013/04/time-to-break-gosnell-news-blackout.html

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IF IT BLEEDS, IT LEADS: Except for Kermit Gosnell's Fourth Trimester Abortions and Other Stories of the Amoral Left

The timeless editor's truism is no longer timeless nor much of a truism in a world where ostensible journalists exist only to parrot the Statist's press releases. Case in point: abortionist Richard Gosnell's House of Nazi-esque Horrors, a story virtually ignored by antique media:

• Gosnell Worker: Baby "Jumped" When I Snipped Her Neck in Abortion

• Jury Sees Photos of Unborn Babies Kermit Gosnell Stabbed in the Neck

• Planned Parenthood: Baby surviving botched abortion can legally be executed

• Gosnell Joked: 'This Baby Is Big Enough to...Walk Me to the Bus Stop'

• Gosnell employee: baby screamed during live-birth abortion

Perhaps the "progressives" can describe the limits of this "woman's right to choose": we already know what Barack Obama thinks.

But, in general, perhaps the fourth-trimester abortion crowd can tell us how long a baby can live outside its mother's womb before it becomes illegal to execute it?

Another horrifying assertion by Planned Parenthood

No matter where you stand on the issue, the allegation that a baby surviving a botched abortion can legally be executed is noxious, repellent and -- yes -- evil. Yet this is the position of Planned Parenthood.

Florida legislators considering a bill to require abortionists to provide medical care to an infant who survives an abortion were shocked during a committee hearing this week when a Planned Parenthood official endorsed a right to post-birth abortion.

Alisa LaPolt Snow, the lobbyist representing the Florida Alliance of Planned Parenthood Affiliates, testified that her organization believes the decision to kill an infant who survives a failed abortion should be left up to the woman seeking an abortion and her abortion doctor.

"So, um, it is just really hard for me to even ask you this question because I’m almost in disbelief," said Rep. Jim Boyd. "If a baby is born on a table as a result of a botched abortion, what would Planned Parenthood want to have happen to that child that is struggling for life?”

"We believe that any decision that's made should be left up to the woman, her family, and the physician," said Planned Parenthood lobbyist Snow.

...Rep. Jose Oliva followed up, asking the Planned Parenthood official, "You stated that a baby born alive on a table as a result of a botched abortion that that decision should be left to the doctor and the family. Is that what you’re saying?”

Again, Snow replied, “That decision should be between the patient and the health care provider.”

“I think that at that point the patient would be the child struggling on the table, wouldn’t you agree?” asked Oliva.

"That’s a very good question. I really don’t know how to answer that," Snow said. "I would be glad to have some more conversations with you about this.”

David Steinberg is as nauseous as I am.

...there is no daylight between her testimony and an advocacy of decriminalizing murder.

If a child brought into the world under such circumstances is unworthy of life via the intentions of the mother, logic dictates that the child would be placed in such limbo indefinitely, until such time as the mother chooses to kill it. Two minutes later, twenty-five years later: if this monstrous woman could shape a society according to her testimony, then the mother would necessarily have a permanent right to slaughter her child.

But Todd Akin is the extremist, don't ya' know?

Which brings me to Kermit Gosnell.

And one Illinois State Senator Barack Obama.

Thoughts on Gay Marriage

The bedrock of Western Civilization is the family unit. That is, a man and a woman together forming a bond for the purposes of procreating and raising a family. The pairing of a man and a woman is the only way that the human species can perpetuate itself (various modern biotech and medical experimentation notwithstanding). And the notion that the law should provide formal recognition of this pairing is a concept that is centuries, if not millenia, old.

To insist that legal constructs recognize other types of unions -- based upon behavioral preference, religious belief, or genetic predisposition -- serves only to diminish the family unit. Once lawful status has been granted to same-sex marriage, where does this "right" end? Would polygamists someday lobby for their "civil rights"? Couples engaging in incestuous relationships? Perhaps progressives can outline for us the contours and limits on this new "right" as it pertains to marriage and the law.

I can hear the critics now. "But, Doug," they might say, "That's ridiculous. You're conflating same-sex marriage with all sorts of other types of unions that no civilized society could endorse."

Perhaps so. But the state of California, just four years ago, voted overwhelmingly to reject same-sex marriage. Many observers say that it would pass today. In other words, societies morph. They change. But still they must operate under their existing legal frameworks.

Our framework, tattered though it may be by political infidelity, had its genesis in a moral certitude codified with the motto, "In God We Trust", which has appeared on United States coinage since the Civil War. To reject that framework is to reject the very principles that created our nation. The religious underpinnings of this nation's founding are indisputable. And those same Judeo-Christian principles have overwhelmingly refused to sanctify same-sex marriage.

Furthermore, to reject the legal protections offered only to the heterosexual family is to embrace collectivism. Simply put, arbitrary collections of individuals could claim to represent a family unit and demand such protections and benefits. Is this healthy for the civil society? Does it open the door to an ultimately destructive form of collectivism (e.g., "It takes a village")?

And for those who make the tangential claim that same-sex spouses deserve the health insurance benefits and other perquisites afforded their heterosexual counterparts, I argue simply that the federal government is responsible for the vagaries and distortions of our current health care system, not our concept of marriage. Every intrusive step taken by the government -- from employer-based coverage to Medicare's price controls -- has served only to make health insurance more expensive and treatment harder to find. In other words, just because the federal government broke the health insurance system doesn't mean that it can similarly deconstruct the family unit.

It truly is a case of "In God We Trust" versus "It Takes a Village". Which do you choose?


This post began as a comment on Ann Althouse's blog.

Florida Atlantic University Prof Makes Students ‘Stomp On Mohammed’

The cojones on this guy!

Prof Deandre J. Poole, Florida Atlantic Univ Makes Students ‘Stomp On Mohammed’

(Fox) – A Florida Atlantic University student said he was punished after he refused a professor’s directive to stomp on a piece of paper with the word “Mohammed” written on it. The university, meanwhile, is defending the assignment as a lesson in debate.

“I’m not going to be sitting in a class having my religious rights desecrated,” student Ryan Rotela told television station WPEC. “I truly see this as I’m being punished.”

Rotela, who is a devout Mormon, said the instructor in his Intercultural Communications class told the students to write the name “Mohammed” on a sheet of paper. Then, they were told to put the paper on the floor.

“He had us all stand up and he said ‘Stomp on it,’” Rotela said. “I picked up the paper from the floor and put it right back on the table.

The young college student told the instructor, Deandre Poole, that the assignment was insulting and offensive.

“I said to the professor, ‘With all due respect to your authority as a professor, I do not believe what you told us to do was appropriate,’” Rotela said. ‘I believe it was unprofessional and I was deeply offended by what you told me to do.’”

Rotela took his concerns to Poole’s supervisor – where he was promptly suspended from the class.

...A university spokesperson told they could not comment about Rotela’s case due to student privacy laws... However, the university is defending the instructor’s assignment to stomp on the name of Mohammed.

CORRECTION:

Oh, wait: did I say "Mohammed"?

Because I meant to say "Jesus". Sorry about that, the dogs were barking.

DUDE: Astrobiologists may have confirmed extraterrestrial life

This news appears, eh, somewhat important:

Researchers in the United Kingdom have found algae-like fossils in meteorite fragments that landed in Sri Lanka last year. This is the strongest evidence yet of cometary panspermia — that life on Earth began when a meteorite containing simple organisms landed here, billions of years ago — and, perhaps more importantly, that there’s life elsewhere in the universe.

In December 2012, a fireball was seen over the skies of Polonnaruwa, Sri Lanka. Over the following few days, fragments of the fireball were collected and sent to Sri Lanka’s Medical Research Institute, where initial microscopic analysis revealed siliceous microalgae known as diatoms. As you can imagine, with this being the first ever evidence that life might’ve arrived on Earth via a meteorite, the scientific community was skeptical of the results — and so some fragments were sent to Cardiff University in Wales for further analysis. The researchers at Cardiff are now reporting that they’re sure that these fragments come from an extraterrestrial meteorite — and that there are definitely “fossilized biological structures” within them. Panspermia, it seems, is a go.


There are a few competing theories for how life began on Earth. Panspermia, where life arrived on the back of a comet or asteroid, is one. Abiogenesis, the theory that life spontaneously erupted from inorganic molecules in Earth’s primordial soup, is another. Directed panspermia, where an alien race intentionally sent an asteroid or spacecraft loaded with living organisms to Earth, is another slightly more exotic theory. As for which theory is correct, we’ll probably never know — but the Polonnaruwa meteorite definitely puts the odds in panspermia’s favor...


These findings aren’t a slam dunk, though. According to our in-house biologist John Hewitt, there’s a strong possibility that the fossils aren’t actually biological in nature — they simply look biological. “This is kind of like finding a Q from Scrabble floating in space; it may be worth 10 points, but finding a few Es first would be a bit more convincing,” Hewitt says. There’s also the fact that the research was published in the Journal of Cosmology, a peer-reviewed journal that has come under critical scrutiny numerous times since it was established in 2009. The journal faced a lot of controversy when it published a paper by NASA engineer Richard Hoover claiming to have found fossils “similar to cyanobacteria” in meteorites...


...One thing’s for certain, though: For this to actually become science — for Chandra Wickramasinghe’s dream of panspermia to become a reality — this work will need to be replicated by many other groups around the world. It would be very, very exciting indeed if biological fossils have been found on an extraterrestrial meteorite. It would be proof that there’s life on other planets — and essentially a guarantee that the universe is full of life. But, as always, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Indeed. There are plenty of physicists expressing skepticism, so it may be a tad premature to abandon literal interpretations of religious texts.