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

Canadian kids can legally have 3 parents.

(Toronto, Ontario) An Ontario boy can legally have two mothers and a father, the province’s highest court ruled Tuesday.

The same-sex partner of the child’s biological mother went to court seeking to also be declared a mother of the boy.

After hearing arguments in 2003, Superior Court Justice David Aston dismissed the application saying he didn’t have the jurisdiction to rule in the case.

Court was told the child has three parents: his biological father and mother (identified in court documents as B.B. and C.C., respectively) and C.C.’s partner, the appellant A.A.

Once this is a legal precedent after the fact–after the child-bearing arrangement–it’s a very small slip to allow this at the beginning–marrying 3 people at a time. Talk about taking a village to raise a child!

Those of you who thought that allowing same-sex marriage wouldn’t open up any uinintended doors, is the slippery slope coming into focus just a little bit more?

(Hat tip to Stop the ACLU.)

Technorati Tags: Canada, same-sex marriage, parenting

One more reason that the ethical issues with embryonic stem cells don’t have to ignored to advance science.

New research released Sunday strongly suggests the success of a third category of stem cells that carry with them less political baggage. The two previously best-known sources for stem cells have been fetuses and adult tissues. The newly discovered stem cells are amniotic-fluid stem cells that reside in the placenta and the liquid around human fetuses in the mother’s womb.

The new cells are nearly as adaptable to multiply and change into many different cell types as the other strains. The potential is huge, using this technology body tissue can be renewed, or used to treat a range of diseases. They may also allow physicians and technicians to grow new organs in a laboratory for later transplantation.

All these sources of stem cells do not require an advancement of the culture of death. This is the path we should be taking, in a big way. Destroying embryos doesn’t even have to be on the table.

Technorati Tags: amniotic fluid stem cells, ethics, science

The New York Times asked, “Are we cheap?” Liberals give their opinions on that.

“Yes,” they say. Former President Carter recently said the rich states “don’t give a damn” about people in poor countries. And when it comes to helping the needy in poor countries, U2 singer Bono says, “It’s the crumbs off our tables that we offer these countries.”

Crumbs because many other countries, such as Norway, Portugal and Japan, give a larger share of their wealth to needy countries.

The United States gave out $20 billion in foreign aid last year, but as a percentage of our wealth, we rank 21st out of the 22 major donor countries.

Actress Angelina Jolie is horrified by it.

“It’s disgusting. It really is disgusting,” she said. “I think most American people, you know, really do think we give more. And I know that they would if they could understand how little they give and how much more we can afford to give, absolutely, without even noticing it.”

But what these folks are ignoring is that America is one of the most generous countries in the world when you look at how we take personal responsibility for our charity. As much as the general consensus has inched more and more towards the idea that it’s the government’s job, a very large segment of our population understands that “rugged individualism” not only means being personally independent but also means taking personal responsibility for the needy, and not shoving it off onto some other group or institution. Predictably however, those who do gauge things by institutional or governmental charity are blind to the reality of the generous America.
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Pastor Todd DuBord got a bit of a shock when he did the DC tour recently. When they got to the Supreme Court building, revisionism was readily apparent.

He was most disturbed by what appears to be revisionism in the presentations given to visitors at the Supreme Court. There, he said, his tour guide was describing the marble frieze directly above the justices’ bench.

“Between the images of the people depicting the Majesty of the Law and Power of Government, there is a tablet with ten Roman numerals, the first five down the left side and the last five down the right. This tablet represents the first ten amendments of the Bill of Rights,” she said.

The ten what? was DuBord’s thought.

Indeed, Pastor DuBord has done his research (click here for the PDF of his letter, containing all his information about this and other places history is being erased). The thing is, it’s not just a matter of ignoring Christian figures and influences, it’s being actively denied,

He then asked, “If there are no other depictions of Moses or the Ten Commandments on the building except on the South Wall Frieze in the U.S. Supreme Court, then what about on the east side of the building where Moses is the central figure among others, holding both tablets of the Ten Commandments, one in each arm?”

“Her response shocked me as much as the guide inside the Court chamber. ‘There is no depiction of Moses and the Ten Commandments like that on the U.S. Supreme Court,'” DuBord said he was told.

He asked if there were any pictures of the representation, and she pulled one out.

“Her eyes widened in surprise. There was Moses in photo and description as the central figure, holding the Ten Commandments (tablets), one in each hand,” DuBord wrote.

Although there are six depictions of Moses and-or the Ten Commandments at the Supreme Court, the tour guides had been trained to admit to only the one on Moses, he said.

DuBord has traced at least one of the reasons this change has been taking place. Read the whole article or his message to the Court to learn about the letter from the sculptor saying it was the 10 Amendments, but also why this letter’s authenticity is dubious (and also about the other letters this same sculptor wrote about similar depictions of his specifically about the 10 Commandments around DC).

One has to wonder why our country’s Christian heritage and influence has to be “sanitized”, and who’s responsible for it.

Technorati Tags: Ten Commandments, Todd DuBord, Supreme Court, Christianity

In Britian, they want to open up the discussion on whether abortion can happen sometime after the baby has already been born.

Doctors involved in childbirth are calling for an open discussion about the ethics of euthanasia for the sickest of newborn babies. The option to end the suffering of a severely damaged newborn baby – who might have been aborted if the parents had known earlier the extent of its disabilities and potential suffering – should be discussed, says the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists in its evidence to an inquiry by the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, which examines ethical issues raised by new developments.

The college says the Nuffield’s working group should “think more radically about non-resuscitation, withdrawal of treatment decisions, the best-interests test and active euthanasia as they are means of widening the management options available to the sickest of newborns”.

The inquiry is looking into “the ethics of prolonging life in foetuses and the newborn”. Euthanasia was not originally on the agenda, because of its illegality. But the RCOG submission has persuaded the inquiry to broaden its investigation, although any recommendation favouring euthanasia for newborns is highly unlikely before a change in the law.

Once one envelope has been successfully pushed aside, the next lies not that far away. The question of extraordinary lifesaving steps is one thing, but “active euthanasia” brings the matter into a whole new light. One has to wonder where the ethics and morality of those wanting such discussions to take place have gone.

And here’s an interesting attempt at selling the idea.

The college ethics committee tells the inquiry it feels euthanasia “has to be covered and debated for completion and consistency’s sake … if life-shortening and deliberate interventions to kill infants were available, they might have an impact on obstetric decision making, even preventing some late abortions, as some parents would be more confident about continuing a pregnancy and taking a risk on outcome.” It points out that a pregnant woman who discovers at 28 weeks that her baby has a serious abnormality can have an abortion. Parents of a baby born at 24 weeks with the same abnormality have no such option.

“See, if this were an option, then we’d have more babies carried to term. Isn’t that wonderful? Only then would be bother with the eugenics. And really now, isn’t killing an already-born preemie just the same as a late-term abortion anyway?”

Abortion, being commonplace in our society, is now the foundation on which we start removing the infirm and the helpless. A comment on the Redstate post that gets the hat tip notes this:

I remember fairly recently they just uncovered a mass grave filled with Hitler’s first victims. They weren’t Jews, Gays, Gypsies or any other people group. They were the disabled and infirm. Now the reason they were killed was for the perfection of the race, but I also don’t swallow the “it is for their own good” argument-especially when those who are being put out of the misery may not have a voice or a choice.

Unfettered abortion, embryonic stem cell research, euthanasia and eugenics are all faces of the same thing; a lack of respect for life.

Technorati Tags: euthanasia, Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, abortion, Nuffield Council on Bioethics, eugenics

As of now, Democrats have been given control of the House of Representatives, and there are two outstanding races in the Senate that will determine who controls that chamber. This is definitely going to make it harder for Republicans to get their initiatives through, to be sure, but let’s look a little closer.

As Michelle Malkin notes, Republicans may have lost but conservatism did not. She lists a number of indicators.

Property rights initiatives limiting eminent domain won big. MCRI, the anti-racial preference measure, passed resoundingly. Congressman Tom Tancredo, the GOP’s leading warrior against illegal immigration–opposed by both the open-borders Left and the open-borders White House–won a fifth term handily. Gay marriage bans won approval in 3 states. And as of this writing, the oil tax initiative, Prop. 87–backed by deep-pocketed Hollywood libs, is trailing badly in California.

While an AP article headlines 3 items that could be considered conservative setbacks–rejection of SD abortion ban and AZ gay marriage ban, and approval of stem cell research in Missouri–it lists later on in the article all the items that could be considered conservative wins, and on balance conservatism did very well. Written after Malkin’s post, it notes 8 states that banned gay marriage, as well as the aforementioned sunsetting of affirmative action in Michigan, and a number of anti-illegal-immigration initiatives in Arizona. (And the Missouri stem cell amendment, as I noted previously, was passed with a margin that could suggest that if it had been worded honestly, it may not have passed at all.)

Also, as ScrappleFace notes, the win for Lieberman and the loss for Lincoln Chafee could be considered a gain of 2 seats for Republicans. >grin< So unlike Democrats after previous elections, you won't find Republicans hiding under the covers for days, packing for their move to Canada, or suing Diebold. (Gee, where did all those Democrats go that insisted that Diebold machines were “fixed”? Is it OK when they’re “fixed” for Democrats? Love the choice; either Democrats win, or someone cheated.) The victory for Democrats was more a typical 6-year-itch midterm result mixed with some “throw the bums out” mentality with some hope by Republican voters that this may wake up the Republican lawmakers, as I noted in this thread. I think that there was plenty of deserved anger with Republican lawmakers, but this, in my opinion, wasn’t the way to express it.

And don’t forget all the moderate to conservative Democrats that were elected, including many former Republicans like Webb in Virginia (though the “elected” part has yet to be determined there).

What will they do with that platform?

Will they try, for instance, to impeach the president? Or will they stick to Ms Pelosi’s stated goal of leadership?

Probably the latter. Many of the new intake are moderate Democrats, conservatives even, who are not looking for an ideological fight.

Could they have won without pro-Iraq-war, anti-abortion Democrats? Given some of the margins of victory, it would have been interesting to see what would have happened if they’d all looked more like Ned Lamont.

So Republicans should not, and most likely won’t, go sulking around your office. Yeah we’re disappointed, and we deserved much of what we got. On the other hand, apart from party label, this election shows that the American public in general still leans conservative.

Technorati Tags: election, republican, democrat, conservative, government, congress

Rev. Ted Haggard, the president of the National Association of Evangelicals, has left his post while allegations of homosexual sex and meth use are being investigated.

The Rev. Ted Haggard resigned as president of the 30 million-member association Thursday after being accused of paying the man for monthly trysts over the past three years.

Haggard, a married father of five, denied the allegations, but also stepped aside as head of his 14,000-member New Life Church pending an investigation.

“I am voluntarily stepping aside from leadership so that the overseer process can be allowed to proceed with integrity,” he said in a statement. “I hope to be able to discuss this matter in more detail at a later date. In the interim, I will seek both spiritual advice and guidance.”

Carolyn Haggard, spokeswoman for the New Life Church and the pastor’s niece, said a four-member church panel will investigate the allegations. The board has the authority to discipline Haggard, including removing him from ministry work.

The acting senior pastor at New Life, Ross Parsley, told KKTV-TV of Colorado Springs that Haggard admitted that some of the accusations were true.

“I just know that there has been some admission of indiscretion, not admission to all of the material that has been discussed but there is an admission of some guilt,” Parsley told the station.

If true, this is another case of a fallible human being getting caught in sin. The question will be how this is dealt with; how the church and Rev. Haggard deal with the situation. Charges of hypocrisy may be reasonably levelled, but at the same time, all of us, at one time or another, do things we ourselves think to be wrong, whatever our code of ethics. One classic quote from C. S. Lewis in his book “The Problem of Pain” deals with this.

“The moralities (codes of right and wrong) among men may differ – though not, at bottom, so widely as is often claimed – but they all agree in prescribing a behaviour which their adherents fail to practice. All men alike stand condemned, not by alien codes of ethics, but by their own, and all men therefore are conscious of guilt.”

We’ve all failed our own consciences. So levelling a charge of hypocrisy may be correct, but it’s just as true of the accuser as of the accused. If the underlying charges are true, then Rev. Haggard should step down from his position of authority, at the very least for the time being and deal with this sin.

What this is not a case of is whether what he preached is the truth or not. It is also not a matter of politics. However, the accuser is trying to cover both those bases.
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[Psst. Welcome Clayton Cramer readers, where he gives a bit more insight into why Hollywood does what they do.

And welcome to any folks coming from Usenet, where someone copied this.  FYI, I don’t mind this sort of copying as long as the link is provided, which it was in this case.  Some discussion over there on this, and some…shall we say, tangents.  But that’s what Usenet does best. >grin<]

Last TV season, I thought my kids would like to get into a show that was rather science fiction in nature called “Surface”. I’m a big sci-fi fan (mostly TV, don’t read it much) and my kids have shown an interest in it (my sister introduced them to her Star Wars videos), and it’s rubbed off a bit onto the kiddos. “Surface” looked like an interesting story, so we started watching it. (Unfortunately, it didn’t last past the first season.)

Well, actually, how it happened was that I started taping and watching it myself, and after a couple of episodes thought it would be OK for the kids…except for the occasional thing here and there. And that annoyed me a bit. There would be occasional questions to one of the main characters, Miles, from his father and his friend from the marina about whether or not he was surfing the Internet for porn on the occasions they walked into his room while he was doing some research. That may be happening on home computers in a lot of homes in America, but must it be brought up in a TV show going into homes where that curiosity and potential addiction hasn’t been started? Even in homes where it may be starting, the references were light-hearted, in almost a “no big deal” way, which would give the impression to a kid that everyone’s doing it so how bad can it be.

Later on, Miles is urged by his neighborhood friend to fondle a bikini-clad girl who was giving him a kiss. In one scene, Dr. Laura Daughtery, needing to swim out in cold ocean waters to a nearby boat, stripped off all her clothes, leaving only underwear, oiled up (to stave off the cold) and dove in. Sure this might have been a bit of realism, but in a show about sea monsters and other genetically manipulated animals, quite a number of other bits of accuracy were certainly sacrificed for the sake of the story. Missing this one wouldn’t have made one bit of difference to the story.

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Jay Tea over at “Wizbang!” isn’t liking the trend he’s seeing wherein discussion is stifled because of who’s making a point. His most recent case in point is Michael J. Fox on embryonic stem cell research. When Fox makes the point, then arguing against it makes it sound like you don’t want to cure him…that guy, right there on the TV.

Another example is Cindy Sheehan, whom the press and the Left (but I repeat myself) continue to hold up as a representative war mom, even though there are plenty of other parents of dead soldiers that still support the war. No one else is covered on the news with nearly the same level of publicity when they speak out because Mother Sheehan is the last word, not because of her point, but because of who she is. End of discussion. One of the post’s commenters notes that only war moms who were critical of the war were said to have “moral authority”, with the others had other, not so nice names given to them.

Jay gives some great examples in the other direction, such that if we were to get rid of anything conceived by someone who’s actions we found repugnant, we’d have to toss out all our Volkswagon Beetles and computer transistors. His point is that ideas should stand on their own merits, no rely on or be buttressed by who agrees with them.

I’m not sure I’m quite the absolutist as Jay is about this. I do think that people with certain life experiences can give us more insight. But the notoriety or the sympathy of a person should not stop the discussion.