by Samuel Gregg -
There is no moral truth and Rawls is his prophet.

If there was ever any doubt about one of the Obama Administration’s key philosophical commitments, it was dispelled on Jan. 20 when the Department of Health and Human Services informed the Catholic Church that most of its agencies will be required to provide employees with insurance-coverage for contraceptives, sterilization, and abortifacient drugs: i.e., products, procedures, and chemicals used to facilitate acts which the Church and plenty of others consider intrinsically evil.

Alas, it’s not a question of the administration being tragically “tone deaf,” as one American Jesuit claimed, to specifically Catholic concerns. Nor is the bedrock of President Obama’s position, in the end, a commitment to “women’s health.” Outside the ghoulish world of Planned Parenthood, pregnancy does not qualify as a disease. A fertile womb is no threat to human life.

No, this is all about the absolutization of choice for the sake of choice. It’s also about creating a society in which any discussion of the actual ends we choose is considered unacceptable in public debates about law and morality. more »

The Washington Times -

The White House hyped the news Friday that January payrolls had risen by 243,000. The hitch is the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) also dropped 1.2 million from the calculated workforce. Somehow this net loss of a million workers in a single month was transformed into an improvement in the unemployment rate. As the old saying goes, figures don’t lie, but liars can figure.

“Job growth was widespread,” the BLS reported, but most Americans sense that something isn’t quite right with the numbers. The most important change was the deep decline in the workforce. While the overall population jumped an 1.6 million in January, the workforce declined a record-setting 1.2 million. This figure represents those who out of sheer frustration or for other reasons have dropped out of what the government defines as the active labor pool. They are worse than simply unemployed; they are both jobless and hopeless. more »

by Michael Bargo Jr. -
Thank you Mr. President, for bringing up the issue of fairness. I’m sure that’s important to many people. One curious thing, though, with regard to the application of “fairness” it seems that all the recommendations you have, are decided by the government. Who decides what is fair?

Here’s some suggestions:

The average Federal employee can be paid no more than the average American employee, currently $42K a yr. Wouldn’t that be fair? And the highest amount paid to any retired Federal employee should be no more than the highest Social Security monthly amount. Wouldn’t that be fair?

In the past few years, average Americans have lost ten percent of their income. All Federal employees shall receive ten percent pay cuts, and only receive increases when the average American earns more. Isn’t that fair? more »

by Peter Heck -
The left’s logical case for abortion rights had officially collapsed. We can thank CNN’s Piers Morgan for administering last rites when he resorted to the tired, sensationalized, “Yeah, well, what if your daughter was raped?” argument with Rick Santorum in a televised interview (video).

There’s a reason why anytime we seek to settle a bitter dispute between two feuding parties, we turn to a disinterested third person to act as the arbiter. There’s a reason why courtroom litigants plead their case before an unbiased, dispassionate jury of their peers. There’s a reason why the president and the public evaluate the temperament of judges before appointing or electing them to office. The reason is because we know that when attempting to come to a clear, rational, sound conclusion about serious and many times controversial issues, emotional connections to either side can cloud our judgment and confuse our thinking. more »

by Johnny Alamo -
After years of puzzlement and curiosity observing modern day Democrats, I think I have finally figured them out.

I’m constantly amazed that modern Democrats have evolved beyond living in caves. I mean what other animal on this planet can disregard all common sense and logic and survive? Scientists have recently discovered that even giant sea slugs that do not possess a brain as such can learn from past experiences. That puts them a leg up over the current crop of liberals in this country. I used to subscribe to the adage that liberalism was a mental disorder, but even Rainman would have a hard time buying into the standard mantra of the present day Democratic Party. In order to believe that Democrats have the answer today, you would have to believe:

That you can grow the entitlement class beyond the taxpayer class and never hit critical mass where there is no money left. more »

by Kathleen Gilbert -

After being deluged with complaints from outraged religious groups, Obama’s health department has dug in its heels, saying its decision to force employers to provide abortifacient birth control drugs will continue as planned – although faith-based groups will be given a year reprieve. In response, U.S. Catholic bishops have not minced words, vowing to fight the order as “literally unconscionable.”

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced Friday that faith-based entities like hospitals and universities will have until August 1, 2013 to provide employees with free birth control as part of their insurance packages. The mandate will also force such groups to pay for sterilizations and, because the FDA has approved abortifacient drugs such as Ella as “contraception.”

The mandate is being implemented as part of the new health care legislation that was passed in March 2010 despite vigorous opposition from U.S. Catholic bishops, who called it dangerously open to being used as a means of spreading abortion. more »

by Dennis Prager -
Only a fool believes that all those with whom he differs are bad people. Moreover, just about all of us live the reality — often within our own family — of knowing good and loving people with whom we strongly differ on political, religious, social and economic issues.

That said, I have come to believe that the more committed one is to leftism, the more likely one is to become meaner.

Two examples in just the past week offer compelling evidence.

Prominent left-wing commentators used the way in which Rick Santorum and his wife handled the death of one of their children to attack — make that mock — the former Pennsylvania senator.

In a lifetime of observing and participating in political debate, I have seen a lot of meanness. But one just assumes that some things — not many, just some — are off limits to political pundits and activists.

Among these few things, one has to believe, is the death of a child. But I was wrong. more »

by Bruce Walker -

On January 2, Alan Colmes on Fox News mocked presidential hopeful Rick Santorum and Santorum’s wife for bringing their critically ill newborn son, Gabriel, into the world and then bringing him home.  Gabriel died 16 years ago, and Karen Santorum wrote a heartrending book, Letters to Gabriel, which describes how the couple dealt with the grief of his death.  Mother Teresa wrote the foreword for the book.

Although Colmes has quickly retreated from his remarks, his crudeness shows how the left really thinks.  When Sarah Palin brings Trig, a child with Down Syndrome, into the world, and he is cherished and loved, the left spins its head — why not just waste the kid before he was born?  This mockery did not end with the 2008 campaign: Family Guy in 2010 made fun of Trig, and in April, another leftist goon mocked the young child on his third birthday.  The left’s heart of darkness is so dreadful that appalling bile seems normal to its minions until normal, moral people object. more »

by David Chilton –
Every year about this time, there rises a hue and cry about the “commercialization” of Christmas, accompanied by impassioned pleas to get back to the “real meaning” of the celebration. Too much time and money, we hear, are spent on the public side of the holiday — the hustle and bustle of shopping, the lavish decorations, and the often insincere displays of seasonal piety. Meanwhile, the true spirit of Christmas gets left behind. Some even argue that all public displays of Christmas are inappropriate.

Every Christmas season seems to spawn a new series of lawsuits charging that the First Amendment is imperiled by the appearance of manger scenes on civic property, or by the singing of carols by the local high school choir. I recall hearing a spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union claim that the very message of Christmas itself was being violated by any public recognition of its existence. What we need, he said, is to remove Christmas from public life completely, and allow it to become once again a private, personal expression of religious sentiment and family values. more »

by Mark Steyn -
Christmas in America is a season of time-honored traditions – the sacred performance of the annual ACLU lawsuit over the presence of an insufficiently secular “holiday” tree; the ritual provocations of the atheist displays licensed by pitifully appeasing municipalities to sit between the menorah and the giant Frosty the Snowman; the familiar strains of every hack columnist’s “war on Christmas” column rolling off the keyboard as easily as Richard Clayderman playing “Winter Wonderland”…

This year has been a choice year. A crucified skeleton Santa Claus was erected as part of the “holiday” display outside the Loudoun County courthouse in Virginia – because, let’s face it, nothing cheers the hearts of moppets in the Old Dominion like telling them, “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus – and he’s hanging lifeless in the town square.” Alas, a week ago, some local burghers failed to get into the ecumenical spirit and decapitated him. Who are these killjoys? more »

by Victor Volsky -
For the life of me, I can’t figure out why conservative pundits, even such stalwarts as Rush Limbaugh, when discussing the virtually inexhaustible supply of liberal follies and blunders, hasten to express their confidence that the perpetrators are “well-intentioned.” Why do conservatives hew mindlessly to the conventional line that far-left radicals are necessarily high-minded and motivated by the best of intentions? Why aren’t liberals challenged when they generously absolve themselves of any wrongdoing on the grounds of their good intentions?

“Good intentions cannot compensate for evil works,” advises the Torah (Hebrew Matthew 3:1); “[b]y their fruits ye shall know them,” avers Scripture (Matt. 7:16). St. Francis de Sales warned that “Hell is full of good intentions or desires.” Shakespeare wrote, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” Sir Jonathan Sacks, chief rabbi of Great Britain, in his writings discusses “the tragedy of good intentions.” more »

by Peter Ferrara -
His mother was an unabashed hippie from 1960s central casting. His father was an openly avowed Communist from Kenya. While his father wasn’t around much, his devoutly progressive grandparents arranged for him to be mentored during his adolescent years by a dues paying member of the U.S. Communist Party, Frank Marshall Davis.

When he went to college, he was attracted to the Marxist professors and student activists, according to his own published memoirs. When he graduated, he moved to Chicago and became an instructor for the left-wing extremist organization ACORN in the social manipulation methods of radical Marxist agitator Saul Alinsky. He attended for close to two decades the Trinity United Church of Christ, which practiced neo-Marxist Black Liberation Theology. That church was headed during those years by the openly socialist Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who declared that the 9/11 terrorist attack on America was “America’s chickens coming home to roost.” He also famously preached from his pulpit, “Not God bless America, God damn America….” more »

by Bruce Walker -

The latest Gallup Poll confirms what most of us had suspected all along:  the rich — that top one percent, the folks whom radical leftists like OWS rail against — are not as conservative as the rest of us.  The greater conservatism of the 99% rest of us is slight — one percentage point — but it does bring home the fact that many of those with wealth are rather happy with the struggling middle class keeping to its place.

Wealth is not income.  The income of the middle class comes from hardworking folks; often husband and wife both hold full-time jobs, trying to reach a level of security, comfort, and leisure which people like leftist Senator Jay Rockefeller or Senator John Kerry have always taken for granted.  These leftists do not need to earn money.  They simply preserve their acquired wealth. more »

by David Catron -
The Secretary of Labor, Hilda Solis, visited Capitol Hill last week and claimed that the unemployment rate will increase if Congress fails to extend the eligibility period for federal unemployment benefits. My first reaction to this Orwellian assertion was a quiet chuckle. Then it dawned on me that most Democrats will believe this nonsense. These are, after all, people who believed that health care would be made cheaper by a law that increases demand for medical services while reducing the supply of health care providers. Most would agree with the claim, made by journalist-cum-cheerleader Jonathan Alter, that Obama’s economic stimulus package “prevented another Great Depression.” I realized, in other words, that ignorance about economics is so pervasive among Democrats that it is less funny than dangerous.

That Democrats are generally illiterate about basic economics is not a matter of mere conjecture. In 2010, Daniel B. Klein and Zeljka Buturovic analyzed answers provided by a random sample of 4,835 Americans to a list of eight questions about economics. The results, which noted the party affiliation of the respondents, were not flattering to our friends on the left. more »

by Karin McQuillan -

Global warming became a cause to save life on earth before it had a chance to become good science.  The belief that fossil fuel use is an emergency destroying our planet by CO₂ emissions took over the media and political arena by storm.  The issue was politicized so quickly that the normal scientific process was stunted.  We have never had a full, honest national debate on either the science or government policy issues.

Everyone “knows” that global warming is true.  The public has no idea of the number of scientists — precisely one thousand at last count of a congressional committee — who believe that global warming is benign and natural, and that it ended in 1998.  We have not been informed of the costs to our economy of discouraging fossil fuel development and promoting alternatives.  The public need to know the choices being made on their behalf, and to have a say in the matter.  We are constantly told that the scientific and policy debate on global warming is over.  It has just begun. more »