On Monday, August 18, the California Supreme Court ruled that doctors may not follow their consciences when deciding whether or not to participate in the artificial insemina-tion of a female homosexual. Instead, medical institutions are obliged to either quit offering fertility services or to participate in a process whose goal is to produce a child within a fatherless, same-sex household.
The ruling was delivered in a case brought by an Oceanside woman who, in 2001, was offended when doctors at the Vista-based North Coast Women’s Care Medical Group referred her to a facility that didn’t exhibit moral scruples about bringing children into the world under the aforementioned circumstances. From now on that same moral indifference to marriage and child welfare has become mandatory in California.
News stories generally portrayed this ruling as a “civil rights” victory for gays and minimized or ignored the religious freedom and child welfare issues. “Docs can’t refuse gay patients” is a headline that fits this template—as if doctors weren’t treating sick individuals because they were gay or as if a potential child (as abortion absolutists would have it) falls in the same category as a malignant tumor.
A similar state court ruling was handed down over two years ago in Massachusetts. In that case Catholic Charities of Boston was given a drop-dead ultimatum that required the charity to offer gay adoptions or to get out of the business. The 100-year-old organization chose the latter option—to the detriment of special-needs kids the group regularly placed in caring homes.
The basis for the California Court’s unanimous ruling against individual conscience was state legislation that “imposes on business establishments certain antidiscrimination obligations.”
Observers who applaud the court’s interpretation of state law typically equate this judgment with rulings against racial discrimination. This analysis clearly ignores natural and complementary differences between males and females that don’t correspond to superficial racial distinctions. To an unprejudiced eye, these sexual differences demand respect—especially when it comes to child-rearing.
Political correctness, however, demands that we close our eyes to the obvious for the sake of “tolerance.” This “tolerance,” however, requires inflexible acceptance of the view that men and women are essentially interchangeable, that marriage is no big deal, and that fathers, in particular, are irrelevant when it comes to a child’s psychological development.
In short, modern tolerance is “intolerance.” Accordingly, the state won’t allow professionals to act on defensible moral principles contrary to the feels-good secularism that’s become an unofficial state religion—a faith promulgated relentlessly by our pop-culture.
Thus, the “free exercise” of religion in California now means the freedom to believe what you want, provided you leave those beliefs in the pew. At work, as the state Supreme Court bluntly put it, those convictions may be ignored as “incidental” conflicts with Sacramento’s social engineering project.
The licentious state religion that now permeates public schools will be intolerantly enforced throughout society (even among private organizations) if Californians no longer give a rip about freedom of conscience.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Joe Biden on Barack Obama
Barack Obama doesn't have the experience to be President. So says his V.P. pick, Joe Biden, in this You Tube McCain ad.
Barack's Boners
A good article that documents a few (not all) of Barack's boners! This guy makes the much-maligned Dan Quayle look like a genius.
Friday, August 22, 2008
MICHAEL BARONE AND THOMAS LIFSON ON THE CLOSE TIES BETWEEN BARACK OBAMA AND TERRORIST WILLIAM AYERS
Here is a link to Michael Barone's piece on the CLOSE association between Barack Obama and terrorist William Ayers. And here is another piece on the same topic in The American Thinker.
Monday, August 18, 2008
CALIFORNIA DREAMIN' OR CALIFORNIA DRILLIN'
A recent Public Policy Institute poll shows that Californians now favor (by a 51-45 percent margin) drilling for oil off the state’s coastline. What many Golden Staters may not realize is that offshore production has been going on for decades. What’s currently verboten is new drilling.
In 2005, for example, state and federal offshore wells accounted for more than 40 million of the 255 million barrels of petroleum produced statewide. By the way, those on-shore wells include some discretely camouflaged rigs in Beverly Hills.
The 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill was the event that transformed offshore drilling from a profitable state enterprise (one that contributed significant revenues to Governor Pat Brown’s budgets) into an industrial pariah.
I recall walking along a beach near the University of California campus in Santa Barbara in 1991 and being astounded that my sneakers were thoroughly coated with tar—a remnant, I thought, of the ecological disaster of ’69. In point of fact, those tiny pellets were (and are) the result of natural forces—an oozing up of the black gold that lies untapped beneath the surface.
Obviously Mother Gaia hadn’t gotten the memo that these geological excretions don’t fit her recently cultivated image. Indeed, these mini-tar pits are reminiscent of the vision of nature offered by writers like Jack London—namely, indifference.
Whether nature cares about mankind or not, it’s clear that Californians aren’t indifferent to gasoline at and over four dollars a gallon. The good news is that drilling technology has improved greatly over the last four decades—as indicated by all those rigs in the Gulf of Mexico that withstood hurricanes Katrina and Rita without significant spills.
The billions of barrels of oil and trillions of cubic feet of natural gas that lie restively off California’s shores represent a boon both in terms of private economic stimulus and public revenue. (Texas and Alaska both sport significant state surpluses.) Moreover, some experts believe these resources can be accessed within a year of lifting existing moratoria.
Equally significant is the fact that increased American production means fewer dollars going abroad to hostile and unstable regimes in Venezuela and the Middle East.
The ace-in-the-hole for anti-drilling forces is the global warming argument—the assertion that petroleum production and consumption harms the planet via its “carbon footprint.” Columnist Charles Krauthammer, however, provides a cogent ecological response to that objection.
Krauthammer notes that sweeping restrictions on domestic drilling or shale oil development inevitably promote environmentally unfriendly exploration (or devastating biofuel production) in areas like the Niger Delta or the Amazon rainforests. Russians, he observes, won’t be concerned about caribou when they start drilling in the Arctic.
HR-6566, a comprehensive energy bill co-sponsored by Rep. Darrell Issa, includes measures that expedite deep-water drilling in federal waters off California’s shore. The billion barrels off San Diego’s shoreline, however, remain off limits as long as the state legislature continues to dream about how optimum tire pressure can offset burgeoning oil demand in China and India.
In 2005, for example, state and federal offshore wells accounted for more than 40 million of the 255 million barrels of petroleum produced statewide. By the way, those on-shore wells include some discretely camouflaged rigs in Beverly Hills.
The 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill was the event that transformed offshore drilling from a profitable state enterprise (one that contributed significant revenues to Governor Pat Brown’s budgets) into an industrial pariah.
I recall walking along a beach near the University of California campus in Santa Barbara in 1991 and being astounded that my sneakers were thoroughly coated with tar—a remnant, I thought, of the ecological disaster of ’69. In point of fact, those tiny pellets were (and are) the result of natural forces—an oozing up of the black gold that lies untapped beneath the surface.
Obviously Mother Gaia hadn’t gotten the memo that these geological excretions don’t fit her recently cultivated image. Indeed, these mini-tar pits are reminiscent of the vision of nature offered by writers like Jack London—namely, indifference.
Whether nature cares about mankind or not, it’s clear that Californians aren’t indifferent to gasoline at and over four dollars a gallon. The good news is that drilling technology has improved greatly over the last four decades—as indicated by all those rigs in the Gulf of Mexico that withstood hurricanes Katrina and Rita without significant spills.
The billions of barrels of oil and trillions of cubic feet of natural gas that lie restively off California’s shores represent a boon both in terms of private economic stimulus and public revenue. (Texas and Alaska both sport significant state surpluses.) Moreover, some experts believe these resources can be accessed within a year of lifting existing moratoria.
Equally significant is the fact that increased American production means fewer dollars going abroad to hostile and unstable regimes in Venezuela and the Middle East.
The ace-in-the-hole for anti-drilling forces is the global warming argument—the assertion that petroleum production and consumption harms the planet via its “carbon footprint.” Columnist Charles Krauthammer, however, provides a cogent ecological response to that objection.
Krauthammer notes that sweeping restrictions on domestic drilling or shale oil development inevitably promote environmentally unfriendly exploration (or devastating biofuel production) in areas like the Niger Delta or the Amazon rainforests. Russians, he observes, won’t be concerned about caribou when they start drilling in the Arctic.
HR-6566, a comprehensive energy bill co-sponsored by Rep. Darrell Issa, includes measures that expedite deep-water drilling in federal waters off California’s shore. The billion barrels off San Diego’s shoreline, however, remain off limits as long as the state legislature continues to dream about how optimum tire pressure can offset burgeoning oil demand in China and India.
Monday, August 04, 2008
THE AUDACITY OF WISHFUL THINKING: THE NINE-POINT OBAMA ENERGY POLICY
In an off-the-teleprompter comment from Springfield, Missouri, the less-than-one-term Illinois Senator, Barack Obama, recently remarked that Americans could save as much fuel as might be obtained from offshore drilling merely by tuning up their cars and keeping tires properly inflated.
Since the MSM hasn’t seen fit to accurately publicize this amazing insight, I must insist that the senator’s complete Obama-fuels program be immediately broadcast to the nation. This bold nine-point initiative will make both oil imports and new domestic drilling completely unnecessary by the end of Barack’s eight-to-ten-year presidency.
In addition to tune-ups and tire inflation, Senator Obama also proposes the following transformative energy measures:
Point two: Diet and exercise. If Americans lose, on average, ten pounds per person, each national car trip will be lighter by three billion pounds—saving enough fuel in a year to offset weeks of ANWR oil production. This healthy-choice initiative will also allow Michael Moore and Al Gore to make outsized personal contributions to energy independence.
Point three: Turn off the auto A/C. Car trips made without activating the air compressor not only save barrels upon barrels of petrol, they also contribute to national fitness targets—especially in Southern states where drivers and passengers can only obtain sauna relief by rolling down their windows.
Point four: Don’t roll down car windows. This simple aerodynamic tip, if followed religiously in gun-toting and bible-clinging regions, will not only marginalize the oil output of a “tiny country” like Iran, it will also bring home to Sunbelt motorists the mortal dangers of global warming.
Point five: Kill the motor when sitting in a drive-through queue and plan half as many trips to fast-food restaurants. This two-pronged fuel- and weight-reduction strategy will make Hugo Chavez’s oil reserves seem as trivial as the ten-year national supply that lies untapped off America’s own shores.
Point six: Roundabouts and tap-the-brake intersections. By transforming busy cross-streets into roundabouts and employing “California stops” at other interchanges, inertial fuel savings throughout the 58 states will more than compensate for the trillion barrels of oil shale available in Utah, Wyoming, and Colorado. Moreover, accidents resulting from these traffic modifications will decrease driving hours in damaged vehicles—further reducing the need for new domestic production. Drivers should remember, however, to kill their engines while waiting for collisions to clear.
Point seven: Charge for petroleum-based water bottles distributed on airplane flights. Fortunately, airlines have already begun to institute this “change we’ve been waiting for.”
Point eight: National Ride-your-bike-to-work Day. Even with only fifty percent compliance, this program could save almost half-a-day’s supply of gasoline—enough to fuel all the cars in America for about thirty minutes. Imagine the extra savings if Al Gore and Michael Moore participate. Moreover, if only twenty percent of Americans make this fitness activity a regular choice, it won’t matter what country decides to drill for the stuff that’s killing us only sixty miles off the coast of Florida.
Point nine: Subsidies for fuel-savvy driving. By going with the gravitational grain, the nation’s auto fleet can get vastly better mileage than by defying Mother Nature. Indeed, experts have estimated that if all auto trips were downhill, Americans could travel in open-air soapboxes and eliminate oil imports in a matter of days.
This extraordinary program represents the kind of visionary thinking that no typical politician has had the audacity to propose. It’s a vision that looks different from the economic policies and presidents of the past. It’s a “yes, we can” initiative that brings all Americans together around the goal of energy independence without drilling for oil, without importing oil from hostile countries, and without constructing CO2-free nuclear reactors. To all those grim alternatives President Obama isn’t about to say, “Merci beaucoup.”
Combined with a global warming policy that includes breath retention, antacids for cows, and Jimmy Carter snuggle sweaters, this incredible “energy package we can believe in” will make Americans, for the first time in their miserable lives, “really proud” of their country—proud of a trim, sweaty, bicycle-riding, non-nuclear, petroleum-averse, inertia-loving, nature-respecting America that’s only going downhill.
Since the MSM hasn’t seen fit to accurately publicize this amazing insight, I must insist that the senator’s complete Obama-fuels program be immediately broadcast to the nation. This bold nine-point initiative will make both oil imports and new domestic drilling completely unnecessary by the end of Barack’s eight-to-ten-year presidency.
In addition to tune-ups and tire inflation, Senator Obama also proposes the following transformative energy measures:
Point two: Diet and exercise. If Americans lose, on average, ten pounds per person, each national car trip will be lighter by three billion pounds—saving enough fuel in a year to offset weeks of ANWR oil production. This healthy-choice initiative will also allow Michael Moore and Al Gore to make outsized personal contributions to energy independence.
Point three: Turn off the auto A/C. Car trips made without activating the air compressor not only save barrels upon barrels of petrol, they also contribute to national fitness targets—especially in Southern states where drivers and passengers can only obtain sauna relief by rolling down their windows.
Point four: Don’t roll down car windows. This simple aerodynamic tip, if followed religiously in gun-toting and bible-clinging regions, will not only marginalize the oil output of a “tiny country” like Iran, it will also bring home to Sunbelt motorists the mortal dangers of global warming.
Point five: Kill the motor when sitting in a drive-through queue and plan half as many trips to fast-food restaurants. This two-pronged fuel- and weight-reduction strategy will make Hugo Chavez’s oil reserves seem as trivial as the ten-year national supply that lies untapped off America’s own shores.
Point six: Roundabouts and tap-the-brake intersections. By transforming busy cross-streets into roundabouts and employing “California stops” at other interchanges, inertial fuel savings throughout the 58 states will more than compensate for the trillion barrels of oil shale available in Utah, Wyoming, and Colorado. Moreover, accidents resulting from these traffic modifications will decrease driving hours in damaged vehicles—further reducing the need for new domestic production. Drivers should remember, however, to kill their engines while waiting for collisions to clear.
Point seven: Charge for petroleum-based water bottles distributed on airplane flights. Fortunately, airlines have already begun to institute this “change we’ve been waiting for.”
Point eight: National Ride-your-bike-to-work Day. Even with only fifty percent compliance, this program could save almost half-a-day’s supply of gasoline—enough to fuel all the cars in America for about thirty minutes. Imagine the extra savings if Al Gore and Michael Moore participate. Moreover, if only twenty percent of Americans make this fitness activity a regular choice, it won’t matter what country decides to drill for the stuff that’s killing us only sixty miles off the coast of Florida.
Point nine: Subsidies for fuel-savvy driving. By going with the gravitational grain, the nation’s auto fleet can get vastly better mileage than by defying Mother Nature. Indeed, experts have estimated that if all auto trips were downhill, Americans could travel in open-air soapboxes and eliminate oil imports in a matter of days.
This extraordinary program represents the kind of visionary thinking that no typical politician has had the audacity to propose. It’s a vision that looks different from the economic policies and presidents of the past. It’s a “yes, we can” initiative that brings all Americans together around the goal of energy independence without drilling for oil, without importing oil from hostile countries, and without constructing CO2-free nuclear reactors. To all those grim alternatives President Obama isn’t about to say, “Merci beaucoup.”
Combined with a global warming policy that includes breath retention, antacids for cows, and Jimmy Carter snuggle sweaters, this incredible “energy package we can believe in” will make Americans, for the first time in their miserable lives, “really proud” of their country—proud of a trim, sweaty, bicycle-riding, non-nuclear, petroleum-averse, inertia-loving, nature-respecting America that’s only going downhill.
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