That's Raciss

Very well done, and a great ending.

Link

Good Quotes

Both from Mark Shea (here and here):

Likewise, exalting reason and science as the only true things in the universe, while declaring them to be the epiphenomena of exactly the same mindless forces that also give us wind, weather, and driftwood does not seem to me to be a credible way of arguing that one’s thoughts are superior to those of a theist who roots human reason in the Divine Mind. But this is the method of countless atheists.

...

Someday, the web will consist of blogs written by spambots, then spammed by spambots, and data mined by other spambots, and surveilled by security spambots looking for dangerous signs of terrorist spambots who may pose a threat to innocent spambots.

They will be using us as batteries in the Matrix by then.

Look, It's Really Not That Difficult

If asked about whether abortion should be illegal in the case of rape or incest, the proper answer is along the following lines:

"If by asking that question you are implicitly agreeing that abortion should be illegal in the 99% of cases having nothing to do with rape or incest, then this is great news. You and I have plenty of common ground to cooperate in ending the scourge that is abortion. In that case I would ask you what is your principle for saying that abortion should be illegal in the 99% of cases and why doesn't this principle apply to the innocent children conceived by rape or incest? In any event, surely you agree that it would be barbaric to sacrifice the innocent children in the 99% of cases we do agree on simply because we cannot in the meantime agree on what to do for the cases of rape or incest?"

 "Now if you are asking this question but see nothing wrong with abortion in the 99% of cases having nothing to do with rape or incest, then your question is, logically speaking, wholly irrelevant. Depending on your motives for asking, the question also may well be cynical, manipulative, and, quite frankly, insultingly demagogic, and I can give no answer other than to note these facts."

"A Country Of Free Men Or A Country Of Free Things"

Outstanding essay.

You Have Got To Read This

My thinking on this whole question continues to rapidly evolve.

Today I Googled "Marbury Madison usurpation" and found this.

Anybody who wonders about the way out of the morass of unconstitutionality we are faced with needs to go to the link and peruse all of its associated links. This is the way the Gordian Knot needs to be cut.

I would not be exaggerating if I said that this has awakened me from my dogmatic slumbers vis a vis the whole question of constitutionality and how it is to be decided, and by whom.

Conservatives continue to be bogged down in hurling recrimination and blame that a court whom we  came begging to to secure our rights did not give them to us--all the while failing to notice that this selfsame court in actuality has no constitutional authority concerning these questions to be begged to. Until this root issue is squarely recognized, conservatives are just spinning their wheels and dancing to the statists' tune.

If you think that the judiciary (or Congress) is the place for these issues to be decided, you've already lost the game.

In fact, you've already chucked the Constitution out the window before the game even begins.

Please spread the word.

Roberts Actually Did The Right Thing, And I Approve

After spending a couple of days almost physically ill with a kind of rage against the Obamamcare decision, I decided on a whim to see what Jerry Pournelle might have had to say about the whole thing. I read this, and really started a deep rethink on the whole thing.

In a nutshell, Will and Krauthammer and whoever else wants to chalk this up as a hidden victory that will in the future place any kind of judicially imposed limits on the power of Congress are absolutely wrong. And those, such as Levin, Limbaugh and most conservative blog commenters are absolutely right that Roberts recognized and judicially opened the door to a greatly increased Congressional power via using taxation as the new escape clause. What almost nobody has recognized, however, is that Roberts is the sole justice actually upholding the Constitution in any of this. Consider the following dialog as a follow-on/rebuttal of this prior one (the prior one was written when I was still spitting nails).

-------

We The People: Chief Justice, help us, help us! Congress has passed a wicked law decreeing that "Three times a day citizens have to go to the nearest street corner, get on all fours, and bark like a dog! After this, they have to eat a Milk-Bone dog biscuit out of a special bowl. Then they're required to beg for another one! Milk-Bone dog biscuits build strong teeth and promote a shiny coat!"

Roberts: Okay. That's clearly unconstitutional but because there is a fine associated with it this falls under the general taxation power of Congress I will not strike down the law.

We The People: THIS IS AN OUTRAGE!!!! WHY ARE YOU FAILING TO UPHOLD THE CONSTITUTION, YOU TRAITOR?!?

Roberts: Look, you folks are going to have to decide: Do you really believe in what the Constitution says, or don't you?

We The People: We do!!

Roberts: Then let me ask you something: Where in the Constitution is the Judiciary given veto power over acts of the Legislature? Where in the Constitution is the Supreme Court given power as the final arbiter/guarantor of Constitutionality? Where in the Constitution does it say that all contentious political issues are to be ultimately decided by black-robed Philosopher Kings?

We The People: Marbury v. Madison?

Roberts: Marbury v. Madison is not in the Constitution. Look at Article III of the Constitution. This stuff simply isn't there. The idea that I should strike down and nullify laws passed by the Legislature is blatantly unconstitutional in and of itself. If you are willing to go against the Constitution via not acknowledging this, then how can you possibly complain when other unconstitutional things happen?

We The People: But not only did you not strike down the law, you also opened the door to even greater abuses of Congressional power via your cockamamie, cooked up, ridiculous doctrine that "if a tax is involved, Congress can do it"!

Roberts: I did not give Congress one iota more power than it already has. Legislative power is not the Judiciary's to bestow or withhold. After all: this country, its Constitution and its Judiciary and Executive were all called into being via legislative power. But I do agree with you on this: the idea that Congress can do whatever the hell it can make an excuse for is, in fact, horrifying, tyrannical and essentially unconstitutional.

We The People: Then why don't you DO something about it?!?

Roberts: If Congress over the last century has become a lawless, tyrannical crime syndicate--whose only difference from the Mafia is that the Mafia has a more honest self-image--well then: who permitted it? Who begged for it? Who re-elected these people year after year, decade after decade? Who shrugged and perhaps even cheered when unconstitutional power grab after unconstitutional power grab was inflicted over the decades (Social Security, Medicare, The Department of Education, etc, etc). Who enthusiastically fell for fiscally impossible con after fiscally impossible con? In short, who drank the Kool-Aid?

We The People: We did.

Roberts: So whose responsibility is it to clean house and bring the tyrants back in line with their Constitutional limits?

We The People: Us?

Roberts: You're beginning to get the picture. If what I have done has frightened you even more that government is an unstoppable, unaccountable monster, then good for you. It is about time that We The People sobered up and started exercising his sovereignty over this monster. Mark it well: There is no Daddy in a black robe who is going to rescue you from yourselves. I cannot promise you success, but I do tell you this: it is entirely up to you. And no one else. Godspeed.

The Logic Of Roberts

Roberts: Hey, Congress, tell me about your shiny new law!

Congress: Well, under this law, three times a day citizens have to go to the nearest street corner, get on all fours, and bark like a dog! After this, they have to eat a Milk-Bone dog biscuit out of a special bowl. Then they're required to beg for another one! Milk-Bone dog biscuits build strong teeth and promote a shiny coat!

Roberts: Now, wait just a gosh darned minute, Congress! Under the Constitution we have a government of strictly limited, enumerated powers! Where do you find the authority to force citizens to do such a thing?

Congress: Uhhh...wait a sec....uhhhhhhh.....The Commerce Clause! If citizens don't eat their dog biscuits, that negatively affects the puppy snack/chew toy industry. As you know, puppy snacks are at the very focus of the President's vision!

Roberts: Dude, WTF? Are you serious, are you serious? You can't use the Commerce Clause as cover for any tyrannical, cockamamie thing you want to force the citizenry to do! Those days are now officially over! There's a new sheriff in town, bitch! Get out of my courtroom!

Congress: oh. sorry. you know, we were going to levy a fine and everything against anyone who wouldn't bark like a dog and eat their biscuit. But maybe you're right, I guess....

Roberts: A fine? SHOOT, AMIGO, THAT'S ALL YOU HAD TO SAY!!! You see, a fine is just a tax, and you guys are allowed to tax! Your law now has the Supreme Court Seal of Approval (machine washable and suitable for framing)!! Give the citizens their bowls and have a nice day!

Congress: ???

Roberts: Woof! Woof!

Congress: ?

Roberts: Woof!

Congress: Good Doggie!

Absolutely Brilliant

This is by far the best and most concise takedown of global warming hysteria/disingenuity that I have ever seen.

Link

If You Like Zeppelin, You'll Like This

I have no idea who Chad Smith is, or what the event was, but this is some serious fun. Link

Alan Roebuck

Over at Stan's place I ran across a link to this excellent post by Alan Roebuck, a writer I had not previously encountered. A Google search also turned up this very good interview.

Hear, Hear

Excellent Mark Shea post you'll want to check out, that is, assuming my blog still has any readers. So much of news and blog reading recently, while being informative, hasn't been noteworthy enough for me to post. That, and spending a lot less time on the interwebs and doing other stuff (like working on finally getting decent at electric guitar), has resulted in a major lack of posting here.

Exactly

Some outstanding Mark Shea:

A reader writes:

One of my atheist/anti-Church friends posted a sign by American Atheists quoting Colossians 3:22 (Slaves, obey in everything those who are your earthly masters, not with eyeservice, as men-pleasers, but in singleness of heart, fearing the Lord.”) (Funny how they always jump on the controversial stuff but never quote “Love your enemy as yourself”). This prompted a Google search on my part to try and find a suitable explanation of this and other references to slavery in the New Testament that would not make the Church look awful, but I couldn’t find anything really very helpful. What are your thoughts?

I think that atheists like your friend really need to break free of fundamentalist magical thinking and learn to read books written by and for grownups.

It’s curious to me that so many atheists simultaneously deny the existence of God and insist that believers have to learn to live in the real world—and then complain that he does not do magical things. One of the things grownups understand is that things like the epistle to the Colossians were not written by a wizard who could wave a wand and eradicate an institution that had existed absolutely everywhere the fallen human lived since the dawn of time. He was the messenger of a small, harrassed religious sect which possessed absolutely no political power in either the Roman empire to which he went, nor in the tiny Jewish country from which he hailed. His mission was not to be a second Spartacus, but to announce the death and resurrection of the Son of God. Much as normal people have always done, he worked within the granite “givens” of his culture. So just as nobody holds it against, say, President Obama because he neither claims to be able to eradicate all war from the human condition forever (and would, indeed, regard him as a utopian loon if he did make such a claim), so neither Paul nor his audience had in view some proposal for eradicating the immemorial institution of slavery. He was not a political reformer. And even if he had been, such reforms would not be possible for centuries. Holding Paul’s attitude toward slavery as one of the “givens” of the culture in which he was obliged to work as though it were some sort of crime on his part is like complaining that Gandhi “refused” to end all war on planet earth. It’s a childish complaint.

Not that Paul was not hostile to slavery. People who read the Bible looking for more than Selected Ammunition Verses, would realize that contained within the New Testament is, ultimately, the only thing that succeeded in finally extirpating slavery: namely, the insistence that man is made in the image and likeness of God and that Christ loves the slave as much as the master. The mystical dogma of human equality in the eye’s of God (and that is what it is, not an empirical observation based on reason) is the only thing that has ever succeeded in killing the dragon of slavery. Of course, the New Atheists are stone blind to this in their deep ignorance and arrogance and so fail to realize that the first result of extirpating Christianity is the return of slavery: a practice which goes on unabated outside of all the spheres of the world untouched by the Christian tradition and soon to return to the West if the New Atheists succeed in suppressing the Christian tradition.

Great Little Quote

From an Althouse commenter:

I'm always amused when people who advocate no limits to sexual behavior, no limits to 'family' structure, no limits to gender definitions, no limits to aborting fetuses, no limits to government borrowing or spending, no limits to government power, no limits to personal freedom get all bothered because someone said something that was 'over the line.'

They've been regularly eating camels for decades, then some gnat flies in their mouth and they need the Heimlich maneuver.

Hard-Hitting Words From Noonan

Here:

Something's happening to President Obama's relationship with those who are inclined not to like his policies. They are now inclined not to like him. His supporters would say, "Nothing new there," but actually I think there is. I'm referring to the broad, stable, nonradical, non-birther right. Among them the level of dislike for the president has ratcheted up sharply the past few months.

It's not due to the election, and it's not because the Republican candidates are so compelling and making such brilliant cases against him. That, actually, isn't happening.

What is happening is that the president is coming across more and more as a trimmer, as an operator who's not operating in good faith. This is hardening positions and leading to increased political bitterness. And it's his fault, too. As an increase in polarization is a bad thing, it's a big fault.

The shift started on Jan. 20, with the mandate that agencies of the Catholic Church would have to provide services the church finds morally repugnant. The public reaction? "You're kidding me. That's not just bad judgment and a lack of civic tact, it's not even constitutional!" Faced with the blowback, the president offered a so-called accommodation that even its supporters recognized as devious. Not ill-advised, devious. Then his operatives flooded the airwaves with dishonest—not wrongheaded, dishonest—charges that those who defend the church's religious liberties are trying to take away your contraceptives.

What a sour taste this all left. How shocking it was, including for those in the church who'd been in touch with the administration and were murmuring about having been misled.

Events of just the past 10 days have contributed to the shift. There was the open-mic conversation with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in which Mr. Obama pleaded for "space" and said he will have "more flexibility" in his negotiations once the election is over and those pesky voters have done their thing. On tape it looked so bush-league, so faux-sophisticated. When he knew he'd been caught, the president tried to laugh it off by comically covering a mic in a following meeting. It was all so . . . creepy.

Next, a boy of 17 is shot and killed under disputed and unclear circumstances. The whole issue is racially charged, emotions are high, and the only memorable words from the president's response were, "If I had a son he'd look like Trayvon" At first it seemed OK—not great, but all right—but as the story continued and suddenly there were death threats and tweeted addresses and congressmen in hoodies, it seemed insufficient to the moment. At the end of the day, the public reaction seemed to be: "Hey buddy, we don't need you to personalize what is already too dramatic, it's not about you."

Now this week the Supreme Court arguments on ObamaCare, which have made that law look so hollow, so careless, that it amounts to a characterological indictment of the administration. The constitutional law professor from the University of Chicago didn't notice the centerpiece of his agenda was not constitutional? How did that happen?

Maybe a stinging decision is coming, maybe not, but in a purely political sense this is how it looks: We were in crisis in 2009—we still are—and instead of doing something strong and pertinent about our economic woes, the president wasted history's time. He wasted time that was precious—the debt clock is still ticking!—by following an imaginary bunny that disappeared down a rabbit hole.

The high court's hearings gave off an overall air not of political misfeasance but malfeasance.

All these things have hardened lines of opposition, and left opponents with an aversion that will not go away.

...

More good writing follows. H/T Rick.

This Kicks Ass

Whole Lotta Love/Helter Skelter mashup!

It Doesn't Get Any Clearer Than This

Good illustration of what should be an easily graspable point.

The Alleged Experts On Evidence Cannot Even Agree On The Very Nature Of Evidence

Excellent observation made here.

The Dynamic

Well said (in a comment to the linked post):

The old joke goes, "Once black, never back." Well my spin is "Once abort, you're in the cohort" Once you've crossed the line into an abortion, or know friends who have had abortions, or have been the sperm donor to a female who was obliged to have an abortion, you're pretty much hooked into the lib thinking system, because the only alternative is to believe you just killed your own child.

And the longer liberalism persists, the bigger this problem grows because one of the fundamental arguments of conservatives becomes more and more unbearable to contemplate -- that you are part of a movement that has killed 50 (soon to be 55, then 60) million babies for NO REAL REASON!

And that is why liberals have to shred the past and all previous norms of decency and even reason itself. Because as long any of these things stand, liberals stand accused of perpetrating one of the ghastliest crimes in all of history.

Great Little Essay

From a Hollywood insider inspired by Breitbart.

Through The Looking Glass

J.E. Dyer:

It’s a useful distinction to consider. A particular moral idea governs left-wing views on social and health matters, and the left’s purpose with political advocacy is to put the power of government behind that view. By examining the left’s very different policy approaches to eating and sex, we can discern the features of the morality at work.

The left’s governmental approach to sex today involves, among other things, the following:

...

The suite of policies advocated by the left is designed to encourage sex but limit procreation and STDs. The social “good,” therefore, is deemed to be unfettered sex, while the social “ills” are the birth of children and the suffering (and infectiousness) incident to STDs.

Let’s compare this moral view and its program construct to the left’s policy attitude toward eating. In this latter realm, the social “ills” are thought to be obesity and the medical problems that come with it. But what is the social “good”? Is there one? It’s hard to say, because eating – which can be a most enjoyable activity, and far less avoidable than sex – is not, in the left’s moral view, considered a “good” to be promoted on whatever terms the individual prefers.

The left’s governmental treatment of eating is very different from its treatment of sex. It runs on these lines:

...

It is hard to make the case that eating a lot is worse than having a lot of sex outside of commitment and marriage. At the very most, the two practices are a moral wash, one no worse than the other. Both involve doing discretionary things with one’s body. Both involve courting well-known consequences. Both involve the strong potential for inconvenience to oneself and the larger community. It is making an arbitrary moral judgment, to insist that what causes obesity should be dealt with through coercion and the limiting of options, while what causes unwanted pregnancies and STDs should be the object of solicitude, and public programs based not on denial but on mitigation.

We know that eating in moderation and limiting certain foods generally results in better health than eating, indiscriminately, lots and lots of things we enjoy for only a brief moment.

But we also know that not having sex prevents pregnancy and STDs with unparalleled effectiveness. We know, moreover, that disciplining our sex drives, keeping sex within marriage, welcoming the children that come from it, and raising them with a father and mother are substantially more effective in preventing STDs, “unwanted” children, poverty, delinquency, addiction, and hopelessness than are government programs to distribute condoms and subsidize abortion providers.

If government treated obesity the way it treats sex, it would encourage schoolchildren to explore their enjoyment of Twinkies, Oreos, and moon pies; it would employ professionals to devise ways of suiting government policies to the principle that our bodies belong to us and we can put whatever we want in our stomachs; it would hold legislative hearings on the overriding importance of the freedom to eat what we want; it would resist the very idea of remedies that involve the individual eating less, or eating different things; it would pay for liposuction, cholesterol drugs, heart surgery, and diabetes-mitigation measures but not for programs of diet and exercise; it would encourage the development of drugs that could prevent fat formation regardless of what one eats; and it would make it a basic human right to be able to eat whatever one wants and have the consequences mitigated by the public.

There really is no case to be made that government should not do this. If, that is, we accept that government’s current approach to sex and its consequences is appropriate and warranted.

Ultimately, no discussion of these issues would be complete without the observation that if government – and the federal government in particular – wasn’t involved in them in the first place, it wouldn’t matter nearly as much when the people’s opinions and our moral perspectives on them differed.

Wow. Just Wow.

David Stockman minces no words. I am in 100% agreement with him (at least his caution, analysis, and pessimism).

Link

Nothing Bigoted About The Left

But don't worry you humor-impaired fools, it's satire. Satire, and all in good fun.

Quote From An Anti-Science Extremist

Here:

In discussions with biologists I met large difficulties when they apply the concept of ‘natural selection’ in a rather wide field, without being able to estimate the probability of the occurrence in a empirically given time of just those events, which have been important for the biological evolution. Treating the empirical time scale of the evolution theoretically as infinity they have then an easy game, apparently to avoid the concept of purposesiveness. While they pretend to stay in this way completely ‘scientific’ and ‘rational’, they become actually very irrational, particularly because they use the word ‘chance’, not any longer combined with estimations of a mathematically defined probability, in its application to very rare single events more or less synonymous with the old word ‘miracle’.

--Wolfgang Pauli

John C. Wright

Gives the devil-deniers what for. Excellent stuff.

A taste:

Happy Ash Wednesday, if that is the proper greeting for the advent of the season of repentance in ashes and mourning for our sins.

On the radio this morning, I heard what I thought was a Twilight Zone episode about a parallel universe in which the human race had never heard any Bible stories, fairytales, pagan epics, nor seen the movie TIME BANDITS nor read even a single history book of the long and sad and terrible history of the human race, and so had no idea that evil was real.

In this deliriously naive parallel world, the radio was chattering nervously about some politician who made a speech a few years ago, and made reference to the Supreme Being, and also to His adversary.

...

Has the Prince of Darkness already won so many hearts and souls that the slightest mention of reality, and of the real war between darkness and light that rages every day in every life, as well as in the life of a great nation, is to greeted with shock and disbelief? Is all truth, and everything interesting, or exciting, or dangerous, to be scrupulously and fastidiously expunged from the public forum?

At least one liberal commentator says yes. Truth is too judgmental, too moralistic. At least one conservative commentator says yes. Truth is not a pocketbook issue: voters are more worried about their keeping their jobs and making their mortgage payment than they are about the nosedive of this once-great nation into the outer darkness of pride, vanity and sensuality, the cold and colorless treason of the intellectuals, the shambles of the scattered flock of Christ.

Meanwhile, back in reality, in the bright sunlight far from the Twilight Zone, today is a day to initiate the season of fasting and repentance. Perhaps the first thing for which we the people should repent was letting ourselves be led so far astray, to have forgotten both the light of heaven so completely and the darkness of hell, that any mention of such high things or profound strikes the ear not merely as odd, but ugly.

Have we forgotten Christ so completely that the mere mention of His name sounds like a faux pas to us, a breach of etiquette, a curse? Or the mere mention of the name of His adversary?
Let us by all means repent in ashes that we have allowed our nation to descend into such a swamp of worldliness that even to speak as all Christians always and everywhere have spoken is thought not merely impolite, but extraordinary.

If Christ indeed is forgotten so completely, ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?

Signed, Epstein's Mother

Fake as all get out, Powerline explains why.

Perzactly

Classical Values:

Over the last few days it’s been impossible for me to log on to the Face Book without being assaulted by postings on the “Republicans War On Women” from my female Face Book Friends most of whom are educated and many of whom work in a profession that, at least in broad theory, requires them to have the capacity for original or individual thought.
...

But no one is discussing banning contraceptives or even abortion.  The contraceptive issue was introduced in a Republican debate by George “Supine” Stephanopoulos as a means of painting Republicans as being against contraceptives.

...


The republicans PROPERLY have pointed out this is a violation of the freedom of religion secured to us by the constitution.  BUT because they oppose taking the founding document of the United States out in the backyard and screwing it like a two bit whore, they’re being accused of starting a war on women.

Because, the Catholic church changed its doctrine yesterday, to refuse you free contraceptives, ladies.  Yep, that’s the truth.  And those mean, nasty, awful Republicans are conniving with the mean, evil nasty papists.  And, yep, they are going to refuse to pay for your contraceptives EVEN IF YOU DON’T work for them, as the vast majority of women who in the US don’t.  How nasty is that?

What kind of enormous, unyielding, painful daddy issues have you got to have to think that Uncle Sam has to force a CHURCH to pay for your contraception?  Are you really that infantile?  That conflicted about your sexual being?  Society must cover your contraception because… you were born with a vagina and that makes you speshul?  Because that absolves you of your guilt in having sex?  Society must provide for your abortions because… then it’s not your fault?

Poor wittle girly-girls.  Did the devil make you do it?

And this is a war on women because…

Because…  When the Romans took over Carthage, they immediately refused to pay for Carthaginian birth control, OR Carthaginian  abortions.  As we all know, this immediately reduced Carthaginians to a state of slavery.

Is THAT what you think?  Do you realize that actually invaders usually try to reduce the occupied population?

Let me tell you what war on someone means: It means that you and your children can’t keep what you work for.  It means that you are killed for the convenience of the occupiers.  It means you can’t worship as you please.  It means you can’t eat, buy or wear what you wish.  It means you can’t travel where you wish.  It means you can’t afford to have children when you want them.

In fact, a war on women, at least that portion of women who are American resembles very much what we are seeing happen right before our eyes, with a staggering deficit and an intrusive government.  Your children – and you – will be enslaved to pay for the debt the government is incurring.  This will greatly reduce your ability to live your life as you wish.  A war on women is what we’re seeing, when you won’t be able to educate your daughters (or your sons, but do you care?) because we’re flat stone broke.  A war on women resembles the restrictions on travel (through ridiculous, uncalled for constrictions of our energy supply – like the refusal of the pipeline from Canada) that are already being imposed on us, and that will get much much worse if you give these clowns another chance.

A war on women – a war on everyone – means forcing people to pay for things they believe are a sin, and which they think will cost them eternal torment.  (And it doesn’t matter if you don’t believe it. Freedom of religion is supposed to prevent the majority from violating the rights of religious minorities, no matter if their beliefs make you fall down howling with laughter.  No.  PARTICULARLY if their wishes make you fall down howling with laughter.  Force Roman Catholics to pay for your abortion today, force Jews to sell bacon tomorrow, force Mormons to drink wine.  It’s all the same.)

War is forcing people to do what the invaders want them to, exactly in the way the invaders want.

The Democratic government is at war with America.  And they hope you won’t notice.

Worse, their campaign of war has been incredibly successful in reducing us to a population of slaves.  They hope you don’t notice that either.  Instead, they wave the false flag of contraceptives and “War On Women” and all these supposedly liberated SUPPOSEDLY rational women fall for it.

So far, the Democrats War on Reality is massively successful.

Chutzpah

Mark Shea:

It is imperative for the blogosphere to make noise here, because the MSM is largely in the tank for Obama and is, with malice aforethought, deliberately lying to make it appear that this is merely some dumb bishops with hangups about sex trying to impose their will on defenseless people who just want health care coverage.

The amazing chutzpah of those who say, “Whether I contracept is none of your business” while holding a gun to our heads and demanding we pay for their contraceptives is truly breathtaking, particularly since they are not only robbing us, but forcing us to violate our consciences while they do it. Contraceptives are cheap as dirt and common as water. Let those who want them get them themselves and not gratuitously force those who think them immoral to pay for them. Painting this as “the Church imposing its morals” on them is like accusing the pistol-whipped victim of armed robbery of lack of charity. This is an act of war against Catholic conscience and religious liberty and a naked act of malice from the Obama Administration. There must be no compromise. It must be utterly defeated.

Quote

By Michael Egnor:

The Gay Marriage Clause of the Constitution is right there next to the Abortion Clause of the Constitution and the Separation of Church and State Clause of the Constitution. Those parts of the Constitution are difficult for ordinary Americans to find, even with diligent search of the venerable document. It's analogous to the difficulty that leftist judges have in finding the 2nd and 10th Amendments, which are actually there.

The Constitution was written by men who would have responded to the assertion that "by a vote of 2 to 1 a panel of judges ruled that the Constitution and its Amendments subsume habitual buggery with sacramental marriage-- thereby nullifying the direct vote of millions of American citizens--" by reminding us that certifiably insane judges shouldn't issue rulings when drunk.

Mostly Correct

Not all, but essentially (Denninger):

Of course in the world of government none of these rights exist. This is, in fact, the trap the Catholic Church fell into originally, but it wasn't an accident. It was in fact their intentional throwing off of obligations that the Church has maintained for hundreds of years onto the State that led to this problem.

The Church loved this when it all worked their way. Rather than being the source of beneficience and charity, it has shoved off that onto state programs, thereby taking what was a voluntary act of donation and turning into a compulsion enforced by government with literal guns-up-the-nose through the power of taxation.

Turning tithing into taxation was the literal Holy Grail for the Church -- it was able to codify as a matter of law what was religious dogma. This, when it worked their way, was praised from the pulpit on Sunday and not one word was breathed about Establishment and its problems.

Of course that sort of tricksterism is the hallmark of Satan.

When you sleep with the Devil it rarely works out well.

The Church has never given a damn about the First Amendment's establishment clause when willfully ignoring it was to their benefit! By tossing off literal billions of dollars of annual expense in the United States alone that used to be allocated to charity works, from feeding the poor to running charity hospitals that provided care to people who had no money, The Church was the historic source of these good works for the poor, funded entirely from voluntary donations.

...

The Church in fact took what was a uniquely private institution -- provision of charity through hospitals (run by the Church), food banks (ditto), soup kitchens and provision of shelter for homeless people and others in dire straights and preached for literal decades that the forced taking of money from the congregation, along with non-believers, was not only justified but a moral imperative, thereby relieving what was a consensual act of charity and turning it into a legal obligation.

This burst of authoritarian jackboot application in fact met with the Church's explicit approval, not just silent assent. That same approval was voiced when EMTALA was passed in the 1980s when forced provision of care to the indigent came into law in the United States, taking what was a voluntary act and turning into a legal imperative. The very same position -- that of forced provision of cost-shifted care, has been considered a laudable goal for literal decades by The Church when it comes to Medicaid and Medicare, both of which effectively force private payers and working people to subsidize medical care for those who are either indigent or retired and have saved nothing of their own.

Then, having championed this organized theft from the citizens at literal gunpoint The Church stepped up to the trough and lapped up its share of hard-wrought blood from the people, attaching itself to the federal tit and drawing mightily upon tax benefits and transfer payments for its institutions (such as hospitals) that were once funded instead by the generosity of those who decided to tithe on Sunday.

In short the Church has, for decades, supported the entirety of the legal framework and the Democratic Left's position that the provision of charity, which was once provided for through voluntary tithe, was "best" provided instead in large part through mandatory taxation.

The very same Church that now bleats about the chains imposed by government, in short, was more than happy to help that very same government apply the chains of both fiscal and moral bondage to your neck.

The Bishops all need to drink a great big chalice of Shut-The-****-Up until and unless they reverse, in public, their explicit endorsement of Medicaid, Medicare, EMTALA and the rest of the blatantly unconstitutional and outrageous cost-shifting and forced charity that they have all supported for the last 50 years.

I've Got To Agree With Denninger

They shouldn't be at all surprised when Leviathan turns on them.

Probably Something To It

Fascinating speculative post at A.J. Strata's.

Some Brilliant John Oliver

Don't miss this.

Good Point

Jay Richards:

Here's the whopper. He says:

Just as the findings of Copernicus and the astronomers that followed him revealed that the earth is not the hub of the universe, Steno's revolution dislodged humanity from the center of our planet's history.

This trope functions like a keyboard macro when journalists write about the history of science. But it's pure mythology. In pre-Copernican cosmology, the earth was not seen as the hub of the universe, but as the bottom, the place to which heavy, mutable things fall. The very center of the universe, it was supposed, was Hell -- hardly a place of privilege. This idea that the center must be the place of privilege is modernist misinterpretation of the history of science. Copernicus most assuredly did NOT "dislodge humanity" for the imagined hub of the universe. And neither, of course, did Steno. How exactly does the moment we arrive on the scene settle questions about our importance? If a bride arrives at her wedding in the last hour, even though preparations have been underway for a year, does that mean she's insignificant?

The take home lesson is this: The significance of the earth and humanity, or our insignificance, does not hinge on age or "central" location.

Tear It Down

Denninger tells it straight.