Government in nation's capital will pay for abortion but not a decent education

Excerpt from Bill Donohue's latest:

Here’s what it comes down to: indigent African American pregnant woman in D.C. will be told that if they decide to abort their baby, the government will pay for it. But if they persist in bringing their baby to term, the government will not help them to avoid the same lousy public schools that Barack and Michelle shunned for Sasha and Malia.

Either way, this sounds like a death warrant. That this cruel concept of choice—public funds for aborting the children of the poor but not a dime for school choice—is coming from the “champions” of the poor is all the more despicable. By contrast, they make ordinary rednecks look positively harmless.

Yeah, why don't the Obama's send their kids to the public schools? One of them has allergies--maybe that's it.

Maybe not "racism", but "racialism"

In the current Barbara Boxer kerfuffle, she is probably more guilty of racialism than racism. There's a difference in usage if not etymology; the American Heritage Dictionary defines racialism as

a. An emphasis on race or racial considerations, as in determining policy or interpreting events.
b. Policy or practice based on racial considerations.

This appears to be the correct word to use, even those it is suppose to mean the same thing. This is the core fallacy of the racial identity politics of the left which–encountering a member of an ethnic group–pushes all considerations aside other than his or her membership in a voting bloc. Racialism of this sort may seem kinder and gentler than cross-burning, but it is objectification of a person nonetheless.

Barbara Boxer Revealed as Another Liberal Racist

THIS IS A FREAKING MUST-SEE!!

Comment of the Week (so far)

In a new post entitled "Michael Jackson on Fire", Rod splains how you can hardly blame Michael Jackson for becoming addicted to perscription drugs.

I cannot imagine enduring the pain from this burn. The poor guy. If you think he was just some sort of dope fiend, imagine having to live with the pain from this thing, and what risks you would take to achieve deliverance from it.

I'll leave it to my wise readers to decide whether or not the title "Michael Jackson on Fire" is designed to generate web hits. But you've got to feed the beast, and Beliefnet is a beast. Anyway, my favorite comment comes from Phreeque Showe:

Phreeque Showe
July 15, 2009 6:15 PM
And no doubt going so close to the bone created his desire to own the Elephant Man's skeleton. And the connections between our biology and that of other primates created the whole Bobo the Chimp situation.

Priceless. I'll bet a really smart person could tie many things to Michael Jackson's hair cathcing fire, possibly even 9/11. At least it provides us a little break from the even more cartoonish world of the Sotomayor hearings.

Benedict and Sacks on the Moral Economy

Here's an insightful piece on the new encyclical aided by comparison with the reflections of Britain’s Chief Rabbi, Lord Jonathan Sacks. It's short; it can only be a good thing to find a commentator on Caritas in Veritate who has not yet succumbed to hypergraphia. Excerpt:

According to Sacks, one effect of this relativism is that we tacitly and increasingly rely upon the state to regulate our behavior. Nature abhors a vacuum, but especially moral voids. Thus instead of an all-seeing God to whom we must eventually account for all our choices, we have video surveillance. “The result,” Sacks claims, “is that we have created the most regulated, intrusive society ever known.”

In Caritas in Veritate, Benedict XVI makes a similar point. It is good, he writes, that people care about the environment. But, Benedict comments, “Human beings interpret and shape the natural environment through culture, which in turn is given direction by the responsible use of freedom, in accordance with the dictates of the moral law.” It follows that if we ignore this moral law, we are likely to treat nature as “a heap of scattered refuse” or, conversely, embrace “attitudes of neo-paganism or a new pantheism.”

Like the conclusion very much as well:

None of this is to suggest that Benedict and Sacks are knee-jerk anti-moderns. Their respective faiths affirm that people have lied and stolen from history’s beginning. All of us, they say, are sinners. Hence the good achievable by fallen humanity, Benedict notes, “is always less than we might wish”.

What the pope and the rabbi question are those who limit morality to politically-correct causes and the associated refusal of many working in our economies to acknowledge, in the rabbi’s words, that “Without a shared moral code there can be no free society”.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Racist?

From The Catholic League's post on Ginsberg's controversial remark about culling the human herd.

Excerpts of a New York Times Magazine interview with Ruth Bader Ginsburg, which will appear on July 12, include the following quote by the Supreme Court Justice about the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion: “Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of.”

By contrast, consider what Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, said about this subject:

· “Eugenic sterilization is an urgent need... We must prevent Multiplication of this bad stock.”
· “Birth control must lead ultimately to a cleaner race.”
· “Today eugenics is suggested by the most diverse minds as the most adequate and thorough avenue to the solution of racial, political and social problems.”
· “We are paying for, and even submitting to, the dictates of an ever-increasingly spawning class of human beings who never should have been born at all.”
· “We don’t want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population.”

There is another reason why Ginsburg needs to clarify her remark. Before she was seated on the Supreme Court in 1993, she hired 57 law clerks over a period of 13 years. All were white. Now if Antonin Scalia, for example, were associated with her disturbing remark, and if he had never hired a single African American, he already would have been branded a racist. At the very least, Ginsburg should be questioned about her explosive comment.

We shouldn't be too quick to call her a racist. Maybe she just doesn't like black people.

Dirty "Secret"

Interesting poll on attitudes toward abortion. Here's a telling part:

Additionally, the data showed that since October nearly every demographic sub-group had moved toward the pro-life position except for non-practicing Catholics and men under 45 years of age.

The feminists should be honest and admit that men are the real beneficiaries behind abortion. Abortion means empowerment for men who want to be able to screw without consequences. Reminds me of that great quote from Dolores O'Riordan of the Cranberries: "It's not good for women to go through the procedure [abortion] and have something living sucked out of their bodies. It belittles women.... every time a woman has an abortion, it just crushes her self-esteem smaller and smaller and smaller."

Men over 45 are probably more likely to have daughters of childbearing age. That experience might change an attitude or two.