Politics

Parents take another hit in the culture wars

TownHall.com Kathleen Parker November 6, 2005

Parents increasingly at war against a culture they find aggressively sexualized just lost another battle. This time against the local school board.

In a recent ruling, a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals (that be the Left Coast) determined that parents do not have a fundamental right to control when, where and how their children are taught about sex.

Rather the state — in its far greater wisdom about what’s right and wrong — has ultimate power over your kids.

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Liberal hypocrisies

  • Filmmaker Michael Moore insists that corporations are evil and claims he doesn’t invest in the stock market due to moral principle. But Moore’s IRS forms, viewed by Schweizer, show that over the past five years he has owned shares in such corporate giants as Halliburton, Merck, Pfizer, Sunoco, Tenet Healthcare, Ford, General Electric and McDonald’s.
  • Staunch union supporter Rep. Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) has received the Cesar Chavez Award from the United Farmworkers Union. But the $25 million Northern California vineyard she and her husband own is a non-union shop.

    The hypocrisy doesn’t end there. Pelosi has received more money from the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees union than any other member of Congress in recent election cycles.

    But the Pelosis own a large stake in an exclusive hotel in Rutherford, Calif. It has more than 250 employees. But none of them are in a union, according to Schweizer, author of “The Bushes: Portrait of a Dynasty” and a regular contributor to the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and other periodicals.

    The Pelosis are also partners in a restaurant chain called Piatti, which has 900 employees. The chain is – that’s right, a non-union shop.

    • [Read more…]

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The difficulty of intellectually engaging the left

World Net Daily Dennis Prager

One of the more appealing aspects about being on the Left is that you do not necessarily have to engage your opponents in debates over the truth or falsehood of their positions. You can simply dismiss your opponent as “anti.”

Anti-worker: It all began with Marxism. If you opposed communism or socialism, you were not merely anti-communist or anti-socialist, you were anti-worker. This way of dismissing opponents of leftist ideas is now the norm. Anyone, including a Democrat, who raises objections to union control of state and local politics is labeled anti-worker: “anti-teacher,” “anti-firefighter,” “anti-nurse,” etc. This is how the unions are fighting California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s attempts to rein in unauthorized union spending of members’ dues to advance leftist political goals. He is depicted as an enemy of all these groups.
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Internet Rules: The Miers denouement shows the power of the new media

Wall Street Opinion Journal John Fund Monday, October 31, 2005 12:01 a.m. EST

As President Bush prepares to make a new appointment to the Supreme Court, the lessons of the failed Miers nomination are still being absorbed.

One that deserves study is how a lightning-fast news cycle, a flat-footed defense and the growth of new media such as talk radio and blogs sank Ms. Miers’s chances even before the megabuck special-interest groups could unload their first TV ad. Ms. Miers herself has told friends that she was astonished at how the Internet became a conveyor belt for skeptical mainstream media reports on her in addition to helping drive the debate.

The rapidity with which Supreme Court nominations can become full-scale political contests would astonish previous generations. While one out of five previous nominees to the highest court failed to be confirmed, the battles used to be far more gentle. Nominees didn’t even show up at confirmation hearings until 1925.

But the role of the Supreme Court has changed since then. Many Americans now view it as a kind of superlegislature, micromanaging the abortion laws of 50 states, declaring state ballot measures invalid, and redefining the powers of eminent domain. So long as the court wields that much power, battles for each vacancy–the only opportunity Americans have to influence the direction of the courts–will be intense and divisive.

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Back online after Wilma.

Phone service was restored today at my home (no power or phone yet at the Church) so I can blog, post, and do all the necessary things we cyber-types do. Yesterday was a good day especially when I heard of Mier’s withdrawal. By all appearances she was a good woman but out of her league. I’m glad she withdrew.

Someone sent me this quote from Ann Coulter. It hits the nail on the head.
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Back from Wilma’s wrath — sort of

Wilma unleashed its fury Monday night cutting a swath through southern Florida leaving a considerable amount of damage in its wake. Naples got hit hard, particularly downtown as well as points south. The forecasts were relatively accurate and most people were prepared before it arrived. The winds blew all night long and well into the next day. They started abating around noon. Then the temperature dropped (a gift given that all the power was out; after Charlie we sweltered for days), and the sky cleared. No rains.

I sustained little damage on my house, mostly because it was built after Andrew hit Florida causing a massive revamp in building codes. Trees are uprooted all over the place but by today all roads are clear except in the hardest hit areas. Stop lights were ripped from their posts but everyone is a bit more civilized in the hardship and traffic moved smoothly overall. Some of the major intersections still have police officers but other areas are already fixed. Power is being restored except in the hardest hit areas (mine came back this morning), but phone service except for cell phones is still down in many areas. (I’m writing this at a coffee and sandwich place with free wi-fi.)
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So That’s the Reason: A scientist blames America’s problems on religion.

Wall Street Opinion Journal THEODORE DALRYMPLE Friday, October 14, 2005

The Victorian militant atheist Charles Bradlaugh, who went on tub-thumping speaking tours, used to stride onto the stage, take out his pocket watch and challenge God to strike him dead in 60 seconds. His survival at the end of the minute was, for him, proof positive that God did not exist.

Very much in the same tradition, Gregory S. Paul, writing in the Journal of Religion and Society, attempts to prove that religious belief, far from contributing to the moral fiber of society, actually causes social disintegration. Mr. Paul is a paleontologist whose previous works have included “Predatory Dinosaurs of the World” and “Dinosaurs of the Air.”

He finds that highly developed countries with the lowest levels of belief in God also have the lowest levels of social pathology and the best physical health; and that the U.S., with its uniquely high level of religious belief, “is so inefficient that it is experiencing a much higher degree of societal distress than are less religious and wealthy, prosperous democracies.”

It is interesting that Mr. Paul’s paper makes no mention of Russia, whose 70-year experiment with enforced atheism did not create a society altogether lacking in social pathology, to put it mildly, and where the life expectancy of men is now appreciably lower than that of credulous countries such as Guatemala.

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How She Slipped Through

Wall Street Opinion Journal John Fund Thursday, October 13, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT

Harriet Miers’s nomination resulted from a failed vetting process.

“There’s a standard vetting process that we go through with all nominees.”–White House spokesman Scott McClellan

“The president is very, very confident in his judgments about people, and he likes to reward loyalty.”–Brad Berenson, an associate White House counsel in the first Bush term.

The vetting of Harriet Miers leaves questions that demand answers, not more spin or allegations that critics are “sexist” or “elitist.” It was so botched and riddled with conflicts of interest that it demands at a minimum an internal White House investigation to ensure it won’t happen again.

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Miers Remorse: Conservatives are right to be skeptical

Wall Street Journal John Fund Monday, October 10, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT

I have changed my mind about Harriet Miers. Last Thursday, I wrote in OpinionJournal’s Political Diary that “while skepticism of Ms. Miers is justified, the time is fast approaching when such expressions should be muted until the Senate hearings begin. At that point, Ms. Miers will finally be able to speak for herself.”

But that was before I interviewed more than a dozen of her friends and colleagues along with political players in Texas. I came away convinced that questions about Ms. Miers should be raised now–and loudly–because she has spent her entire life avoiding giving a clear picture of herself. “She is unrevealing to the point that it’s an obsession,” says one of her close colleagues at her law firm.

White House aides who have worked with her for five years report she zealously advocated the president’s views, but never gave any hint of her own. Indeed, when the Dallas Morning News once asked Ms. Miers to finish the sentence, “Behind my back, people say . . .,” she responded, “. . . they can’t figure me out.”

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