Category Archives: United States

Opposition to Abortion Growing

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Light on the horizon?….Michael Novak amazed at the numbers in the latest Pew Research survey showing opposition to legal abortion in growing.

The latest Pew Research survey (April 30) shows an amazing drop in support for legal abortion since August 2008, and a corresponding jump in numbers of those who now hold that abortion should be made illegal in most or all cases. This trend shows an astonishing rise in resistance to abortion among people of all ages, and an eye-catching jump in opposition to abortion among moderate and liberal Republicans.

Read the entire report here.

Civil Rights At the Heart Of Abortion

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A question of truth, a question of conversion; the Anchoress asks can Obama be converted on abortion?  I ask, and I think posterity will ask, how can this black man, who knows the Black Man’s pain of Slavery, the history of popular resistance to change, who knows the history of  a Stephen Douglas ignoring an Abraham Lincoln, Lincoln who finally pricked Douglas into debate by clubbing him verbally, until, as Edward T. Oakes, S.J. says, “Douglas finally had to take notice of Lincoln’s ceaseless hammering away at Douglas’ ‘pro-choice’ platform (which said, in effect, ‘I’m personally opposed to slavery but can’t impose my choice on other states, including other Norther states.’),” not only ignore but side against so utterly defenseless a part of American humanity? ” How can such a man, now President of a country, founded on the principal that all men are created equal, now consent in his heart of hearts to  discriminate against the obviously created human person growing from day to day, as all men grow, just because he/she is still under the protection of a mother’s womb.

How can this President, the citizen of the greatest free nation, ever, be content while people conspire to deprive the weakest most dependent members of their civil rights; when to steal or negate life, black,white, red,yellow, male, female,old or young, is intrinsically evil and morally wrong?  How can this be-gifted man standby, a blind, deaf, and mute creature, while this glaring, screaming, appealing and appalling issue of Civil Rights is left to cry in the arms of Lady Justice?

The questions continue, nagging and still unanswered.  How can a professor, a teacher, a sworn defender of the Constitution, forget the cries of these similarly beleaguered, disenfranchised, these who endure discrimination, these forgotten and forbidden human beings? Is it simply that they have no power, but the power to be, while Obama,  himself, who knows the benefits of life, and the gifts of God and has sworn an oath in the Creator’s Name, forsake his power refusing just consideration? Could he not use his powers of rhetoric to acknowledge our posterity and his power of intellect to comprehend their potential? How can such a man claim his “pay grade” justifies the “choice” not to chose life or engage his own reason and heart and soul?

The buck Mr. President not only stops here but demands you at least use the means you possess; ears, eyes and brain to watch a simple, state of the art and science, video of life in the womb. The thumb-sucking, kicking, jumping, hiccupping creature you see before you may well declare the reality; “I am here, now.  I am alive, unless you allow my life to come to naught.”

What price freedom; what price honesty? History begs you not to hide behind polls and politics.  Don’t ask people with vested interests in the abortion industry, or who purchase human parts for research, who like slave owners count it lose if right prevails. Ask Martin Luther King, Jr. when you should stand for the civil right SIMPLY TO BE!

Seuter to Retire

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NPR says it’s out of the bag.  Justice Souter will retire.  President Obama will have his chance to change things once again.  Hopefully he’ll be more circumspect in his appointment.  Souter was appointed by Bush but proved to be something of a surprise with liberal leanings.

Michelle Malkin writes, “Now, we’ll get an out liberal as opposed to a stealth one.”

What’s next?  Will Obama shape the court in his image?

Pray,pray,pray! Crying come naturally!

Allah simply groans.

Glenn Reynolds points us here for an interesting take by Legal Insurrection highlighting Prof. Michael Dorf and rewritten 2 days before the retirement announcement:

Does Arlen Specter’s defection from R to D strengthen the President’s hand in Congress? Perhaps overall but not on judicial appointments because breaking (the equivalent of) a filibuster in the Senate Judiciary Committee requires the consent of at least one member of the minority. Before today, Specter was likely to be that one Republican. Now what?

High Ground – High Rhetoric – Short Memory

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In his third press conference on his 100th day in office,  President Obama stood by his conviction that torture is wrong, that water-boarding is wrong. Basically he said it was wrong making the argument that we don’t need it.  Obama claims the high ground in protecting sworn enemies of this country from harsh procedures. “It corrodes the character of a country.” Here is the text of exchange:

OBAMA: Jake? Where’s Jake? There he is.

Q: Thank you, Mr. President. You’ve said in the past that waterboarding, in your opinion, is torture. Torture is a violation of international law and the Geneva Conventions. Do you believe that the previous administration sanctioned torture?

OBAMA: What I’ve said ? and I will repeat ? is that waterboarding violates our ideals and our values. I do believe that it is torture. I don’t think that’s just my opinion; that’s the opinion of many who’ve examined the topic. And that’s why I put an end to these practices.

I am absolutely convinced it was the right thing to do, not because there might not have been information that was yielded by these various detainees who were subjected to this treatment, but because we could have gotten this information in other ways, in ways that were consistent with our values, in ways that were consistent with who we are.

I was struck by an article that I was reading the other day talking about the fact that the British during World War II, when London was being bombed to smithereens, had 200 or so detainees. And Churchill said, “We don’t torture,” when the entire British ? all of the British people were being subjected to unimaginable risk and threat.

And then the reason was that Churchill understood ? you start taking shortcuts, over time, that corrodes what’s ? what’s best in a people. It corrodes the character of a country.

However, this same man, President Obama, supports, allows and has helped restore and implement legislation that allows the arms and legs to be severed from the bodies of  pre-born infants not only in this country but around the world. (Harsh words, harsh procedures! Saline abortions are worse than corrosive, they are caustic, for the infant.)

The pre-born children of this Nation are our future citizens.  Every fragment of their being was conceived and formed while their mothers breathed the air of American freedom and protection. Obama has in the past stood side by side with those who sanction collapsing the skulls of fully formed infants making sure they never draw their first breath.

The key to his position may be one of pragmatism rather than morality.  Has he forgotten that he indicated that the destruction of his own future grandchildren was preferable to him rather than for his own daughters to bear his grandchild in an untimely manner;  His words on the subject, “if they make a mistake. I don’t want them punished with a baby.” This is part of what Obama calls teaching “morals and values to make good decisions.” This President hasn’t a moral leg to stand on.

Amy Welborn here points to Mary DeTurris Poust of OSV who wrote in Corroding the Character of Our Nation:

“We have seen the tragic results of what happens when one life is considered less important than another. It’s unfortunate that the president can recognize that fact when it comes to terror suspects and prisoners of war but not when it comes to his own countrymen still in the womb. President Obama said in his press conference last night that he believes that the abortion decision is best left in the hands of women, who he believes struggle with what they choose to do. Well, we would hope that women struggle with the decision to end a child’s life, but the reality is that with each passing year people seem to become more and more desensitized to the plight of the unborn. Why? For the exact reasons the president stated: Over time, bad but easy choices corrode what’s best in a people.”

Obama’s First 100 Days Counter to Glendon’s Life Work

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Elizabeth Lev, daughter of Mary Ann Glendon has responded to this written by Kaitlyn Riely at Politics Daily.  Riely,speaking of Mary Ann Glendon, the former U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, says:

“But Glendon has been trained in diplomacy. Shouldn’t being in the same place and engaging someone of an opposing view be right up her alley? Wouldn’t the better decision be to use her platform — or at least her proximity — to persuade Obama to change his views? Her diplomatic style seems to be less suited for U.S.-Vatican relations and more for U.S.-Cuba relations.”

Reponse by Elizabeth Lev, Mary Ann Glendon’s daughter:

“The Laetare Medal is the highest honor conferred on Catholics in the United States. For a Catholic, it has greater prestige than a Nobel Prize for a scientist or an Academy Award for an actor, as the award is given for career-long achievement, for “staying the course” in the words of St. Paul. It doesn’t just showcase a single discovery or film role.


To renounce it, therefore, is not the lightest of matters. Professor Glendon has spent a month thinking, consulting, and given her deep faith, praying about this decision. (This, for those of you who don’t know, means asking God to help one put aside one’s own personal concerns and act in the way that will produce the greatest good). (Kaitlyn) Riely’s dismissive “thanks, no thanks” rendering of her decision, while pithy, is reductive.

Professor Glendon was to have been honored for not only for her scholarship, but for her second career, her pro-bono work — ranging from the civil rights movement of the 1960s to the great civil rights issues of the present day — namely, the defense of human life from conception to natural death. Her concerns range from the aging and dying population to the unborn to the well-being and dignity of every life, regardless of race, religion, or economic status. Her outstanding work in this field has earned her the respect of the most brilliant minds of the international community, regardless of whether they agree with her position. So again, to see her merely as “strongly anti-abortion” instead of as a tireless defender of the dignity of life, is to reveal not only a lack of understanding of the subject’s work, but also the writer’s real interest in this question.

Furthermore, during his first 100 days in office, President Obama has worked tirelessly to undermine Professor Glendon’s lifetime of work; he is funding abortion out of the bailout package and planning to suppress the protection of conscience for health care workers.

Your notion that her “training in diplomacy” might somehow ease this situation does not take into account that she has a five-minute acceptance speech and he will have a lengthy commencement speech. There is no “engaging” here. Diplomacy generally teaches that if you have a rapier and your opponent has a missile launcher, try not to engage.

That Professor Glendon “did not like that Notre Dame was claiming her speech would serve to balance the event” is again facile and simplistic. What is there to like in being the deflector screen for inviting a profoundly divisive figure to give the commencement speech? What is likeable about a Catholic University named for the most important woman in Christianity exploiting a woman who has already dedicated her life to protecting the Church’s teaching by turning her into a warm-up act for a grotesque twist on a reality show?

Finally, after 50 Catholic bishops condemned the university for its direct defiance in honoring a man in open conflict with the Church’s teaching, it is right that Professor Glendon let her silence speak louder than her five-minute allotment of words would have.
Readers might be wondering how I know all this. Well, for one I am her daughter, but more to the point, I read her letter with the careful consideration it deserves.”

Elizabeth Lev is an art historian and writer based in Rome, where all of her three children were born… more

Michelle Malkin sums up Obama’s first 100

Unarguably Founded On Christian Principles

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I needed solid footing and balance after the bombardment of an aberrant President and press. Stephen Prothero writing for USA Today says:

Now comes President Obama, who in January in his inaugural address spoke of this country as “a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus — and non-believers.” On April 6 in Turkey, Obama added that the United States “does not consider itself a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation” but “a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values.

It was just such that drove me in search of visual confirmation in Washington D.C.  Now home from our Nation’s capital, I feel again on the cutting edge of a clandestine warfare coming of age and to light.  Washington D.C. did indeed confirm that the United States of America was unarguably founded as a Nation established on Christian principals as document after document, monument of monument, Statesmen and heroes alike, testify to, in stone, and marble,valor and blood, recorded there for posterity, dramatically and historically.  Homecoming, however, is returning to the fray.  It is waking up each day to being unceremoniously attacked by the daily news of the madness that is Obama.

However, it not just Obama, that drives me to distraction, it’s the incessant kowtowing menagerie of his Orwellian Animal Farm. George Orwell, to his chagrin, aside from being proved right, can now see his book lived out in the American experiment.  Eric Blair’s (George Orwell’s) satire is on parade for all to see and most of the animals are oblivious to the part they are playing in the threatening demise of our Nation as a Republic” of the People, by the People and for the People.

Americans are not perfect people.  We are like all people, flawed; and, as foreseen by the Founding Fathers, we need our checks and balances to curtail our greed and self- centeredness, to keep an eye open and watch our backs as a People.  Our checks and balances are gone. Our press is the servant of the President, our Congress is the servant of our President and our people seem content to worship at his feet.  So much for balance.

Our weaknesses as individual’s who are capable of resenting one group or another within the American system are being used against us.  We are being set against imagined “masters” despite the fact that our nation is the free-est on earth. All the “animals” set free by Obama’s Hope Machine, with childish idealistic and idyllic dreams can now High Five one another in the name of justice and progress, oblivious to the new chains being forged for their piggy hands and feet.  Yes, power-hungry pigs, like Orwell’s, Napoleon, are on the prowl ready to become their new totalitarian dictators. The little happy piggies will some learn on their Animal Farm that “All Animals Are Equal  But Some Are More Equal Than Others.” Oppression, call it what you will, even “the Audacity of Hope” is no less oppression. Martin Luther Jr.’s “I have a dream.” is being replaced by Obama’s dream which it best described as, “I have a nightmare.”