Ann Coulter's Modest Proposal

Speaking of Laura Ingraham, I remember when I used to listen to her show almost every day she'd often ask abortion supporters, "If there is a right to abortion then why don't we celebrate it like our other rights? For example, Bill Clinton said abortion should be 'safe, legal and rare'. We don't want free speech to be a right rarely exercised, so why abortion?"

The answer is obvious. Abortion is so horrible that even it's defenders have to euphemize the act with phrases like "reproductive rights" and "the right to choose" and scurry away from any direct talk about the actual thing. It's no wonder that both Pew and Gallup are now reporting that the public is becoming even more disenchanted with this "right". My speculation is that it might be an effect of President Obama overplaying his radical abortion cards. After all, a lot of people "in the middle" voted for Obama and they want him to be "in the middle" on this issue. And he is most decidedly not, as can be demonstrated by his policy decisions.

Anyway, enter Ann Coulter with her new sarcastic column where, as usual, she takes the rhetoric about 5 or 6 notches up the incendiary scale:

How about for next year's graduation ceremony Notre Dame have an abortionist perform an abortion live on stage? They could have a partial-birth abortion for the advanced degrees.

According to liberals, the right to kill babies was enshrined by the Founding Fathers in our Constitution -- and other constitutional rights are celebrated in public.

The right to bear arms is honored in 21-gun salutes, turkey shoots, Civil War re-enactments, firearms demonstrations and, occasionally, at Phil Spector's house.

Ouch.

The right to petition the government for redress of grievances is celebrated at political rallies, tea parties, marches, protests and whenever Keith Olbermann has a fight with his cat.

The free exercise clause is observed in church services, missionary work, peyote-smoking Indian rituals, and for a few days after every time Bill Clinton gets caught having an extramarital affair.

Viva Viagra, I guess.

So instead of inviting a constitutional lawyer to yammer on about this purported constitutional right, why not show it being practiced?

How about a 21-vacuum hose (D&C) salute? Maybe have the Notre Dame marching band form a giant skull-piercing fork? How about having the president throw out the ceremonial first fetus, like on opening day in baseball? I'm just brainstorming here, folks -- none of this is written in stone.

Being such a prestigious institution, Notre Dame could probably get famed partial-birth abortion practitioner George Tiller to do the demonstration at next year's graduation. Obama could help -- inasmuch as Tiller the abortionist is a close friend of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.

This is a "constitutional right" like no other.

This might be a little rough to hear for the pro-abortion crowd or for those with sensitive souls, or stomachs, but the original Modest Proposal is read by modern-day high-school students. So try to give it some time to lose its shock value.

She goes on:

Even its supporters are embarrassed by the exercise of this right. They won't practice the right in public -- they won't even call abortion by its name, preferring to use a string of constantly changing euphemisms, such as "reproductive health" and "choice."

It would be as if gun owners refused to use the word "gun" and the NRA's motto were, "Let's all work together to keep hunting safe, legal and rare."

Liberals were awestruck by Obama's statesmanlike speech at Notre Dame, but whatever he says about abortion is frothy nonsense because we're not allowed to vote on abortion policy in America. If it's a "constitutional right," we can no more vote on abortion than we could vote on free speech.

With Roe v. Wade, abortion supporters ripped the issue out of the democratic process -- limb from limb, you might say -- and declared their desired outcome a "constitutional right." They have hysterically defended that lawless decision for the last quarter-century.

All of Obama's soothing words about joining hands and not demonizing one another are just blather as long as that legal monstrosity remains the law of the land.

Yeah, I'm getting a little bit tired of being told I'm not allowed to be passionate about opposing smashing babies skulls and sucking out their brains. If that is part of a "tired, worn out rhetoric" as Obama is always claiming then maybe "Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty I'm free at last!" is getting a little stale as well. Obviously, neither is out-of-date because truth is timeless.

Showing his open-mindedness, Obama asked, "How does each of us remain firm in our principles ... without demonizing those with just as strongly held convictions on the other side?" (What do I have to do to get you murderers and you non-murderers to shake hands and be friends?)

A good start would be letting us vote.

Liberals can be all sweet reason as long as their preference for abortion on demand is lyingly called a "constitutional right," immutable to the tiniest alteration by the voters.

In the minuscule areas where abortion policy can be affected, Obama has shown his passion for compromise by always taking the most extreme pro-abortion position.

On his third day in office, Obama overturned the "Mexico City Policy," which prohibited U.S. taxpayer money from being spent on overseas organizations that perform or actively promote abortion as a method of family planning.

Obama has filled his administration with Planned Parenthood veterans and friends of partial-birth abortionists.

Voting on this issue at a state level has got to me the scariest nightmare imaginable to the pro-aborts. To me, this is the essence of modern American liberalism: going on about "coming together" and having an agreement at all costs while with your actions you disrespect absolutely everything about the opposing view. In reality, all the president's speechifying is worthless to explain his radical stubbornness on the abortion issue. Obama knows abortion is indefensible, so he should really just go back to his old standby: "I won." And continue to suppress voting in any way possible.

As an Illinois state senator in 2002-2003, Obama repeatedly blocked and voted against the "Born Alive Act," which would have allowed doctors to give medical care to babies who somehow survived abortions and remained alive, wholly apart from their mothers.

Even the extremist National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League declined to take a position on the bill. The same bill in the U.S. Senate passed unanimously--and that means that abortion-happy nutcake Barbara Boxer voted for it.

But Obama apparently thought it was important to affirm a woman's critical right to fourth-trimester abortions.

For you bachelors out there, there are only three trimesters to each human pregnancy.

Here's my idea for how we can "live together as one human family," as Obama proposed at Notre Dame: Go ahead, demonize pro-lifers, Obama--call us "right-wing ideologues." But just once, support one little policy that will save a single unborn child.

I suppose that when Barack Obama uses the word "family" he means it in the sense of a Sicilian Mafia family since they knock off other members who get in their way.

"You can no longer dismiss this as Catholic or right-wing"

Great news on the common sense approach to educational reform known as school vouchers. I blogged on this before. Obama has got to pay his union buddies, but the public is unconvinced. Maybe it's because he can afford to send his kids HERE?

Here are some excerpts:

"You can no longer dismiss this as Catholic or right-wing," says Jeanne Allen of the Center on Education Reform, a Washington think tank.

Allen has pushed for vouchers and charter schools for decades. She originally thought the shift was generational. "But I actually think it has more to do with more-principled people who understand and have seen how badly the existing system has hurt minority kids."

While Chavous and others say vouchers are far from the perfect solution, they're worth offering to students in the nation's bleakest public schools. Urban Democrats, he says, "see that what's happening to our kids in these schools just is unacceptable — we need to look at all options."

It's the kids, stupid.

The party split will be on display Wednesday when former Democratic Sen. Joseph Lieberman, now an independent, chairs a hearing on Washington, D.C.'s federally funded Opportunity Scholarship Program. It's perhaps the most high-profile voucher hearing of the past five years, coming a few days after two prominent Democrats, Dianne Feinstein and Robert Byrd, joined a handful of Republicans to criticize President Obama for letting funding for D.C.'s program lapse.

Lieberman's Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee is scheduled to hear testimony from families whose children attend private schools through the program. He'll also hear from Williams and Bruce Stewart, head of Sidwell Friends School, where Obama's two daughters are enrolled.

I was thinking: if Bill Clinton was the first black president, maybe Barack Obama is the first Uncle Tom president? Just a thought.

Mary Lord, a member of the D.C. State Board of Education, says the statistics may be misleading because many of the voucher kids attend the city's worst schools. She says the voucher, which provides up to $7,500 a year, gives "enormous bang for the buck," considering that the city's per-pupil budget for year is, by one estimate, nearly $17,000 per student.

"It's a no-brainer to me," she says.

The difference is $9,500.00 per kid. I did that in my head, aren't you impressed. It's a no-brainer for both Ms. Lord and me, but for the tired old NEA-whipped politicians, math is hard.

John Zmirak's Quip on Dorothy Day

John Z comments on his own article in which he'd mentioned Dorothy Day in passing:

Well, I can't quite give you a full answer, since I found D.D.'s book so unpleasant I couldn't get through it. But what I have read of her, and seen of her movement, makes me queasy. To put it briefly, she seems to me the mirror image of Ayn Rand, and equally insufferable. I'm planning to slog through her book in pursuit of an article about her and Rand.

It strikes me that she didn't love the poor so much as poverty, and that her objections to the market economy were precisely that it produced wealth and middle-class comfort, which she seemed to detest. I'm reminded of Christopher Dawson's profoundly mistaken essay on Catholicism and the Bourgeois Ethic, and Amitore Fanfani's equally off-putting book on Catholicism, Protestantism, and Capitalism. I'm reminded of the Spiritual Franciscans, and all those who hold up ordinary Christians to monastic standards--goading them in the short run perhaps to heroism, and in the long run to despair or cynicism.

In general, any AUTObiography that makes me "feel unworthy to call myself a Christian" compared to the AUTHOR makes me deeply suspicious.

Any religious movement which becomes almost 100% heretical in the lifetime of its founder was probably built on sand.

But again, I'll have to goad myself to finish her book, with the promised reward of the essay: "The Two Insufferables: Ayn Rand and Dorothy Day." Stay tuned....

This is as humor-filled as any Zmirak essay, and in it he pinpoints what has always troubled me about Day. Like many leftist radicals, her left-anarchist followers seemed to believe that any system is preferable to the present one, therefore let us tear it down. Whereas her followers who are not as radical are continually in a sheepish "well-what-she-really-meant-was" mode. Neither one of these interpretations of Day's teachings strikes me as Catholic nor even coherent and is therefore most likely an utter waste of time in a world filled with great Catholic classics which I yet need to read.

Anyone enamored of Day from her writings would advise me to read them. What I have read of her comes across as the tedious rantings of an insufferable scold. If she was great for what she accomplished, then I've known many great people. If she was great as a writer, then I've read books by greater people and much better communicators. And maybe I should start my line of Pauli-brand books.

Father Corapi On Notre Dame's Mistake

Giorno Perfetto

Is Obama a Gangster?

Michael Barone presents the evidence.

Left-wing bloggers have been saying that the White House’s denial of making threats should be taken at face value and that Lauria’s statement is not evidence to the contrary. But that’s ridiculous. Lauria is a reputable lawyer and a contributor to Democratic candidates. He has no motive to lie. The White House does.

Think carefully about what’s happening here. The White House, presumably car czar Steven Rattner and deputy Ron Bloom, is seeking to transfer the property of one group of people to another group that is politically favored. In the process, it is setting aside basic property rights in favor of rewarding the United Auto Workers for the support the union has given the Democratic Party. The only possible limit on the White House’s power is the bankruptcy judge, who might not go along.

Michigan politicians of both parties joined Obama in denouncing the holdout bondholders. They point to the sad plight of UAW retirees not getting full payment of the health care benefits the union negotiated with Chrysler. But the plight of the beneficiaries of the pension funds represented by the bondholders is sad too. Ordinarily you would expect these claims to be weighed and determined by the rule of law. But not apparently in this administration.

Money quote is "Nice little bank ya got there, wouldn’t want anything to happen to it." At least 3.5 more years of Alinsky thuggery on its way, so listen to the man or y'all be sleepin' with the fishes, dog.

Miss Piggy Succumbs To Swine Flu

Hilarious. Via Dianonymous.

"Whoever enters through me will be saved"

I like reading the commentaries on the Mass scriptures at Daily Gospel. Today's is from St. Thoms Aquinas and is really good, as the Aneglic Doctor always is.

"I am the good shepherd." It is obvious that the title of 'shepherd' is appropriate for Christ. For just as a shepherd leads his flock to pasture, so Christ refreshes the faithful with the spiritual food of his own body and blood... On the other hand, Christ has said that the shepherd goes in by the door and that he himself is that door. So from this we must understand that it is he who goes in through himself. This is certainly true. It is indeed through himself that he enters in. In his own self he reveals himself and it is through himself that he shows he knows the Father, whereas we, on our part, go in through him and it is he who gives perfect happiness to us.

The door is none other than he for none other is "the true light which enlightens everyone" (Jn 1,9)... That is why no one says of themselves that they are the door; to Christ alone is this name reserved as belonging to him by right. The title of shepherd, however, he has passed on to others, having given it to certain of his members. Thus Peter also has it (Jn 21,15f.) and the other apostles, as also all bishops. Scripture says: "I will appoint over you shepherds after my own heart," (Jer 3,15)... No shepherd is good unless he is united to Christ by charity, thus becoming a member of the true shepherd.

For the good shepherd's office is charity. That is why Jesus says that he "lays down his life for the sheep" (Jn 10,11)... Christ has set us an example: "he laid down his life for us; so we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers» (1 Jn 3,16).