Would you believe that here in the United States, someone would suggest that religious freedom and parental right undermine the public school system? It’s happened. A US District Judge has used that as part of his reasoning in a recent ruling.

A federal judge in Massachusetts has ordered the “gay” agenda taught to Christians who attend a public school in Massachusetts, finding that they need the teachings to be “engaged and productive citizens.”

U.S. District Judge Mark L. Wolf yesterday dismissed a civil rights lawsuit brought by David Parker, ordering that it is reasonable, indeed there is an obligation, for public schools to teach young children to accept and endorse homosexuality.

Wolf essentially adopted the reasoning in a brief submitted by a number of homosexual-advocacy groups, who said “the rights of religious freedom and parental control over the upbringing of children … would undermine teaching and learning…”

This started in 2005 when David Parker objected to the fact that he couldn’t get his kindergarten child opted out of, or even notified of, same-sex household issues when they were brought up. The judge’s ruling gives them three options; private school, home school, or vote in enough School Committee members to get things changed. Fair enough, but can you imagine a court telling a black man that if he doesn’t like being forced into blacks-only restrooms and schools that these are his only choices? It would be unthinkable, but religious freedom, written quite plainly into the Constitution, is being afforded less protection than civil rights laws.

We are losing our constitutional rights at the hands of the judicial branch of government, and few notice, care, or even agree that it’s being eroded. The folks with the latter view are the most blind.

Technorati Tags: education, homeschool, Judge Mark Wolf, David Parker, Massachusetts, Christianity, homosexual

Agencies run by churches in the UK can no longer practice what they preach.

Roman Catholic adoptions agencies yesterday lost their battle to opt out of new laws banning discrimination against homosexual couples when Tony Blair announced that there would be “no exemptions” for faith-based groups.

The Prime Minister said in a statement that the new rules would not come into force until the end of 2008. Until then there would be a “statutory duty” for religious agencies to refer gay couples to other agencies.

Why can’t that “statutory duty” be good enough? Why is government coercion trumping religious freedom? Predictably, the results of an attempt at “fairness” will chase off the principled.

Last week the leader of Catholics in England and Wales, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, warned that the agencies would close rather than accept rules that required them to hand over babies to gay couples.

One wonders if, in some quarters, that’s the whole objective. I mean, given a situation where there are choices, and there usually are, why would a gay couple seek out the Catholic Church for an adoption agency when there are others that have no qualms about it. It’s kind of like the standard answer you hear when folks complain about the content of TV programming. “Just change the channel”, the Left dismissively says. But when it comes to their preferences, they won’t “change the channel” themselves–choose a different agency–and instead insist that government sanction their choices and force it upon everyone to accommodate it.

Technorati Tags: England, UK, adoption, Catholic Church, Tony Blair

According to Power Line, no walking the walk though.

Last week, we discusssed the Gregg Amendment, a measure that would have allowed the president to send earmarks back to Congress for reconsideration. By highlighting questionable spending bills that Congress sneaks through, the president would force Congress to take a serious look at these provisions under some public scrutiny.

Senator Gregg originally proposed this idea as an amendment to ethics reform. The Democrats blocked that and the Republicans agreed to re-propose it later. Gregg did so this week, but the Dems (led by ultimate porker Robert Byrd) filibustered. Today, they succeeded in preventing the Gregg Amendment from receiving a yes-or-no vote.

Read the whole thing for a list of Democrats that were for such a proposal in 1995. They continue to appeal to the short attention span voter.

Technorati Tags: Gregg Amendment, earmarks, Democrats, Robert Byrd

Tom Maguire at Just One Minute has been pulling out the details from the Libby trial and the Plame kerfuffle for quite some time. As much as they have covered it, if you get your news from the TV or the paper, you may not have heard much about some of these nuggets. Example from yesterday

Ted Wells drops the news that David Gregory of NBC received a leak about Plame from Ari Fleischer on July 11:

Now shows Ari dislcoses [sic] to David Gregory on July 11 that Ambassador Wilson’s wife worked at the CIA. Fleischer tells that before Libby was ever indicted. “I told David Gregory.” Talks about time difference, says Ari leaked to Gregory first.

Now let’s flash back to October 29, 2005, just after the Libby indictment. Russert has gathered the Washington Bureau to discuss the case on CNBC’s “Tim Russert Show”. At the time, I excerpted the transcript and suggested they were rehearsing their cover story. So let’s cut to David Gregory:

GREGORY: And it is interesting–it’s also interesting, I should just point out, that nobody called me at any point, which is unfortunately…
WILLIAMS: Apparently not.
GREGORY: …not the point.
RUSSERT: Does anybody ever?
GREGORY: But I just wanted to note that.
RUSSERT: I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that.

Basically, given this and other discrepancies, it looks like the journalists haven’t been completely upfront with what they knew and when they knew it. And Libby is the fall guy. Joe Wilson wanted to see Karl Rove frog-marched for what Joe thought was Karl’s role in the leak (a leak that, still, no one has been indicted for), but perhaps we should be marching some reporters.

(Keep up with Just One Minute. Tons of good information on the Libby trial and the misinformation coming out of it.)

Meanwhile, there’s been little to no coverage on the Sandy Berger story. If you have to ask, “Sandy who?”, you’re forgiven. Libby is being tried for an alleged lie to investigators in a case of the “leaking” of the name of a CIA employee who worked at CIA headquarters every day. Berger didn’t do much, really, which explains the lack of interest by the media. All he really did is steal classified documents from the National Archives, hide them in his pants, destroy them, and keep potentially damaging information about President Clinton from reaching the 9/11 Commission. No big deal, right? Especially for those reporters for whom this really goes against the narrative.

Now Sandy reached a plea deal that kept him out of prison, but there’s still the matter of knowing what he took. Part of that plea deal included a lie detector test to find out what he took, as a number of those documents were originals that had no copies. The Justice Department is dragging its feet, but some Representatives are trying to get this moving again.

Eighteen House Republicans have urged the Justice Department to proceed with a polygraph test for Samuel R. Berger, the former national security adviser who agreed to take the test as part of a plea of guilty of stealing documents from the National Archives.

“This may be the only way for anyone to know whether Mr. Berger denied the 9/11 commission and the public the complete account of the Clinton administration’s actions or inactions during the lead-up to the terrorist attacks on the United States,” the congressmen said in their letter to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales.

The congressmen — led by Rep. Thomas M. Davis III of Virginia — said a prompt lie-detector test is needed to determine the extent of Mr. Berger’s thievery, especially because the former Clinton administration adviser reviewed original documents for which there were no copies or inventory.
…
Mr. Davis, former chairman and now ranking Republican on the House Government Reform Committee, released a report by his staff on Jan. 9, saying a Justice Department investigation of Mr. Berger’s admitted document theft was “remarkably incurious.”

The report said the theft compromised national security “much more than originally disclosed” and resulted in “incomplete and misleading” information to the September 11 commission. It said Mr. Berger was willing to go to “extraordinary lengths to compromise national security, apparently for his own convenience.”

In October, Mr. Davis led an effort to hold hearings to determine whether any documents were “destroyed, removed or were missing” after visits by Mr. Berger to the Archives. He said the full extent of Mr. Berger’s document removal “can never be known” and the Justice Department could not assure the September 11 commission that it received all the documents to which Mr. Berger had access.

In an attempt to get some more attention to the Berger situation, Bill Bennett asked listeners to his radio show, “Morning in America”, to come up with songs about it. (You can hear some excerpts of the entries and the well-done winner here.) This just hasn’t garnered a lot of press, but with all the talk about implementing all most of the 9/11 Commission’s recommendations, wouldn’t everyone want to make sure that the commission had all the facts? And therefore wouldn’t getting full disclosure be a top priority of those wanting to implement them? Then why is it that only Republicans are pushing to get the whole story?

And why isn’t more being reported on this? (OK, that question’s rhetorical.)

Technorati Tags: Scooter Libby, Sandy Berger, media, Tom Maguire, David Gregory

Rev. Sensing has a must-read post on how punishing oil companies winds up punishing those consumers of oil.

Which is basically all of us.

The QandO blog has a post commenting on this Fox poll (PDF file). The results of one particular question are troubling.

Do you personally want the Iraq plan President Bush
announced last week to succeed?

16-17 Jan 07
------------------Yes-No-(Don't know)
Average-----------63%-22--15
Democrats---------51%-34--15
Republicans-------79%-11--10
Independents------63%-19--17

This is shocking. On average, 1 in 5 Americans want the troop surge to fail. I can understand disagreements on policies and methods, but hoping for failure is simply beyond the pale.

One wonders where the 1 in 3 Democrats are coming from who hope for failure. Is Bush-hatred become so all-consuming for them that they’re hoping our troops can’t get the job done and the the Iraqis are unable to work up a stable democracy and the insurgency manages to destabilize the region? That’s what a failure to curtail the current problems would mean. This is tantamount to wishing harm on their own soldiers (but please don’t question their patriotism).

Technorati Tags: Fox News, polls, troop surge, Democrats

Hugo Chavez, with the backing of his guys in the Venezuelan Congress, continues to consolidate his power.

CARACAS (Reuters) – Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was sworn in on Wednesday for a new six-year term that he vowed to use to press a radical socialist revolution including nationalizations that have roiled financial markets.

Emboldened by his landslide re-election win, the typically combative anti-U.S. leader has gone on the attack, deciding to strip a private opposition TV channel of its license and take over some major companies owned by foreign investors.

“Fatherland, socialism or death — I take the oath,” Chavez said.

The man who calls Cuban President Fidel Castro his mentor changed tradition by draping the presidential sash from his left shoulder instead of his right in what he says is a symbol of his socialist credentials.

Legislators at the ceremony in Congress chanted “Long live socialism.”

Investors took fright this week at the leftist drive that further consolidates power in the hands of a former coup leader who already controls Congress, the courts and says he has total support in the army and the giant state oil company.

As the United States criticized Chavez’s moves against private property, the stock market lost almost a fifth of its value on Tuesday, debt prices tumbled to a six-week low and the currency changed hands at nearly twice the official rate

But he’s not worried.

Still, buoyed by strong oil revenues and high popularity, Chavez is expected to ride out any economic and political storm.

Something tells me that there’s a high correlation between “strong oil revenues” and “high popularity”. If he’s buying the latter with the former, like he’s doing in Harlem, it’s no wonder he keeps getting re-elected.

In the meantime, he’s planning on holding on to this power for as long as he can make it last, never mind term limits.

A leading anti-U.S. voice in the world and in the vanguard of a shift to the left in Latin America, Chavez now wants to scrap presidential term limits and lead the OPEC nation for decades.

Chavez, who rode to Congress for the swearing-in ceremony in an open-top car waving at crowds of supporters, has said his new term’s plans include stripping the central bank of its autonomy and taking on special legislative powers.

…

Chavez’s nationalization plans remain hazy and the utilities and foreign investors want to know whether he plans to take a 51-percent governing stake or seize all of their enterprises.

Chavez has already confiscated large cattle ranches. But his decision to nationalize the country’s biggest telecommunications company CANTV and power firms represents a bold new policy.

Calling him a dictator may not be technically correct, but in word and deed he is most certainly consolidating his hold over the country and ensuring it continues, stealing entire business sectors if need be.

Next time you see a Sheehan or a Belafonte plant a big wet one on him, just remember who supports him and who his useful idiots are.

Technorati Tags: Hugo Chavez, Venezuela, Democrats, Cindy Sheehan, Harry Belafonte, Jimmy Carter

Thus is the title of Danny Carlton’s description of how dealing with a little discomfort in the short term leads to a better outcome in the long term, if you have the maturity to both stop licking your lips and stop raising taxes. Democrats have made it easier for Congress to raise taxes (surprise, surprise) enabling what he calls Chapped Lips Syndrome as applied to society.

Attacking the wealthy feels good in a myopic, class-envy, immature way, but makes the economy suffer. If the economy suffers, those with less will inevitably suffer more. A mature, intelligent society will encourage business (within reasonable restrictions) and solve the problem. The immature society will continue to attack the rich and make the economy continue to slide downhill.

Technorati Tags: taxes, economics, Democrats

…or not.

House Democrats intend to pass a raft of popular measures as part of their well-publicized plan for the first 100 hours. They include tightening ethics rules for lawmakers, raising the minimum wage, allowing more research on stem cells and cutting interest rates on student loans.

But instead of allowing Republicans to fully participate in deliberations, as promised after the Democratic victory in the Nov. 7 midterm elections, Democrats now say they will use House rules to prevent the opposition from offering alternative measures, assuring speedy passage of the bills and allowing their party to trumpet early victories.

I certainly don’t begrudge the Democrats of using their new majority, but the next time you hear them talking about “bipartisanship” or “working together”, just remember this. Partisanship has a long history in Washington, on both sides. Nothing’s changed.

Technorati Tags: bipartisanship, Democrat

From James Taranto comes word that indeed we may have a Diebold lawsuit after all. One guess which side wants to sue.

One advantage of Democrats winning last week’s elections is that we’ve been spared all the complaints about “stolen” elections. Well, almost all of them. In Florida’s 13th District, vacated by Rep. Katherine Harris for her ill-starred Senate run, Republican Vern Buchanan eked out a victory by about 400 votes. Angry Left teen idol Markos “Kos” Moulitsas is crying foul:

Down in Florida, an epic battle is brewing over the electronic Diebold voting machines that ate 18,000 votes for Democrat Christine Jennings in FL-13 and cost her the election.

Not only is an expensive recount in the cards, but campaign and DCCC [Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee] lawyers are flocking down, demanding the state freeze the machines for inspection.

These are the opening salvos in what will be the battle to end Diebold.

But only 36 people have given via our Blue Majority Act Blue page for the legal battles ahead.

To put it bluntly, to anyone who has ever complained about Diebold, this is your chance to put your money where your mouth is. No more talk needed. No more advocacy needed. This is a real-world, legal frontal assault on those electronic voting machines.

If we win this battle, you’ll be able to kiss Diebold goodbye.

A little later in the day, Kos had an update:

Update II: Machines in FL-13 were made by ES&S. Same difference.

Taranto notes that ES&S, Electric Systems and Software, Inc, is a Diebold competitor. Again, it’s the Left putting up a heads-I-win-tails-you-cheated scenario, even if the “evil” Diebold isn’t involved. How unserious and knee-jerk can you get?

Technorati Tags: election, Diebold, Daily Kos, Markos Moulitsas, Florida