Intelligent Design Might Be Meeting Its Maker

Laurie Goodstein wrote in NYT To read the headlines, intelligent design as a challenge to evolution seems to be building momentum.

I hope so.

In Kansas last month, the board of education voted that students should be exposed to critiques of evolution like intelligent design. At a trial of the Dover, Pa., school board that ended last month, two of the movement's leading academics presented their ideas to a courtroom filled with spectators and reporters from around the world. President Bush endorsed teaching "both sides" of the debate - a position that polls show is popular. And Pope Benedict XVI weighed in recently, declaring the universe an "intelligent project." Intelligent design posits that the complexity of biological life is itself evidence of a higher being at work. As a political cause, the idea has gained currency, and for good reason. The movement was intended to be a "big tent" that would attract everyone from biblical creationists who regard the Book of Genesis as literal truth to academics who believe that secular universities are hostile to faith. The slogan, "Teach the controversy," has simple appeal in a democracy. Behind the headlines, however, intelligent design as a field of inquiry is failing to gain the traction its supporters had hoped for. It has gained little support among the academics who should have been its natural allies.

That is because the MSM has been fooling the academics as to what ID really is, and what it is not. For example ID and the parts of Evolution that can be proven scientifically are completely consistent. A higher intelligence can well have created species that can change, or evolve, to fit niches in their environment. But the part of Evolution which has not, and can not be proven scientifically, is that the same procedure accounts for the creation of new Species. ID just holds that completely new species were created by the intelligent designer.

And if the intelligent design proponents lose the case in Dover, there could be serious consequences for the movement's credibility. On college campuses, the movement's theorists are academic pariahs, publicly denounced by their own colleagues. Design proponents have published few papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals.

That is because ID challenges the Secular Humanist version of the creation of new species. There have been no papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals showing how one can cause one species to "evolve" into a completely different species.

The Templeton Foundation, a major supporter of projects seeking to reconcile science and religion, says that after providing a few grants for conferences and courses to debate intelligent design, they asked proponents to submit proposals for actual research. "They never came in," said Charles L. Harper Jr., senior vice president at the Templeton Foundation, who said that while he was skeptical from the beginning, other foundation officials were initially intrigued and later grew disillusioned.

Which is not surprising. If scientists can't create a new species rom an existing species, how could a scientist be expected to create an experiment which shows God creating a new species?

"From the point of view of rigor and intellectual seriousness, the intelligent design people don't come out very well in our world of scientific review," he said. While intelligent design has hit obstacles among scientists, it has also failed to find a warm embrace at many evangelical Christian colleges. Even at conservative schools, scholars and theologians who were initially excited about intelligent design say they have come to find its arguments unconvincing. They, too, have been greatly swayed by the scientists at their own institutions and elsewhere who have examined intelligent design and found it insufficiently substantiated in comparison to evolution.

That is because they are expecting it to be ID or Evolution. The truth is that it is ID and Evolution. ID accounts for the creation of new species, and Evolution accounts for the adaptation of a species to its environment

"It can function as one of those ambiguous signs in the world that point to an intelligent creator and help support the faith of the faithful, but it just doesn't have the compelling or explanatory power to have much of an impact on the academy," said Frank D. Macchia, a professor of Christian theology at Vanguard University, in Costa Mesa, Calif., which is affiliated with the Assemblies of God, the nation's largest Pentecostal denomination. At Wheaton College, a prominent evangelical university in Illinois, intelligent design surfaces in the curriculum only as part of an interdisciplinary elective on the origins of life, in which students study evolution and competing theories from theological, scientific and historical perspectives, according to a college spokesperson.

That sounds like where it belongs.

The only university where intelligent design has gained a major institutional foothold is a seminary. Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., created a Center for Science and Theology for William A. Dembski, a leading proponent of intelligent design, after he left Baylor, a Baptist university in Texas, amid protests by faculty members opposed to teaching it.

Intelligent design and Mr. Dembski, a philosopher and mathematician, should have been a good fit for Baylor, which says its mission is "advancing the frontiers of knowledge while cultivating a Christian world view." But Baylor, like many evangelical universities, has many scholars who see no contradiction in believing in God and evolution.

I agree with them.

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Islamic radicalism vs communism

WaPo reported In a series of recent speeches to the American people, President Bush has sought to equate the current terrorist threat with the 20th-century menace of communist totalitarianism. His case is that the terrorist challenge is global in scope, "evil" in nature, ruthless toward its foes, and eager to control every aspect of life and thought. Thus, he argues, the battle against terrorism demands nothing "less than a complete victory."

In making this case, the president has repeatedly invoked the adjective "Islamic" when referring to terrorism and he has compared the "murderous ideology of Islamic radicalism" to the ideology of communism. Is the president historically right in his diagnosis of the allegedly similar dangers posed by Islamic extremism and by totalitarian communism? The differences between the two may be more telling than their similarities. And is he wise to be expounding such a thesis?

Yes

By asserting that Islamic extremism, "like the ideology of communism . . . is the great challenge of our new century," Bush is implicitly elevating Osama bin Laden's stature and historic significance to the level of figures such as Lenin, Stalin or Mao.

Or lowering him to their level, since I don't have any respect for Lenin, Stalin, or Mao either.

And that suggests, in turn, that the fugitive Saudi dissident hiding in some cave (or perhaps even deceased) has been articulating a doctrine of universal significance. Underlying the president's analogy is the proposition that bin Laden's "jihad" has the potential for dominating the minds and hearts of hundreds of millions of people across national and even religious boundaries. That is quite a compliment to bin Laden, but it isn't justified. The "Islamic" jihad is, at best, a fragmented and limited movement that hardly resonates in most of the world.

Then where are the recruits that keep pouring into Iraq as soon as we kill the last batch coming from?

Communism, by comparison, undeniably had worldwide appeal.

At least in countries where it was not in control of the economy. But if it had so much appeal, why did they have to build the Berlin Wall to keep East Germans from going into West Berlin.

By the 1950s, there was hardly a country in the world without an active communist movement or conspiracy, irrespective of whether the country was predominantly Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, Buddhist or Confucian. In some countries, such as Russia and China, the communist movement was the largest political formation, dominating intellectual discourse; in democratic countries, such as Italy and France, it vied for political power in open elections.

The only real difference between Islamic radicalism vs communism is in the area of religion. Islamic radicalism involves a warped interpretation of Islam, which Communism was an athiestic concept. But both involve a totalitarian control of the citizens of any country where it gets into control.

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Commercialize Christmas

Adam Cohen wrote in NYT/a> Religious conservatives have a cause this holiday season: the commercialization of Christmas. They're for it.

That is not precisely true. We would prefer that people recognize that the real reason for the celebration is celebrating the birth of Christ, but it unrealistic to expect that businesses spend their money to promote that. They are going to spend their money to try to get us to come to their stores to buy gifts. But if they want me to buy my gifts in their stores, I expect them to at least recognize that the holiday is called Christmas. By saying Happy Holidays rather than Merry Christmas they are secularizing the season, and I object to that. I have absolutey no problem if they also say Happy Hannukah, because that is also a recognition of the religious nature of the holiday season, for Jews. But if they dont have signs saying Merry Christmas, I will shop at another store that does. And if they really want to attract me to their store, they will have a Nativity Scene in addition to Santa Claus and reindeer.

The American Family Association is leading a boycott of Target for not using the words "Merry Christmas" in its advertising. (Target denies it has an anti-Merry-Christmas policy.) The Catholic League boycotted Wal-Mart in part over the way its Web site treated searches for "Christmas." Bill O'Reilly, the Fox anchor who last year started a "Christmas Under Siege" campaign, has a chart on his Web site of stores that use the phrase "Happy Holidays," along with a poll that asks, "Will you shop at stores that do not say 'Merry Christmas'?"

Good for them.

This campaign - which is being hyped on Fox and conservative talk radio - is an odd one. Christmas remains ubiquitous, and with its celebrators in control of the White House, Congress, the Supreme Court and every state supreme court and legislature, it hardly lacks for powerful supporters. There is also something perverse, when Christians are being jailed for discussing the Bible in Saudi Arabia and slaughtered in Sudan, about spending so much energy on stores that sell "holiday trees."

What is less obvious, though, is that Christmas's self-proclaimed defenders are rewriting the holiday's history. They claim that the "traditional" American Christmas is under attack by what John Gibson, another Fox anchor, calls "professional atheists" and "Christian haters." But America has a complicated history with Christmas, going back to the Puritans, who despised it. What the boycotters are doing is not defending America's Christmas traditions, but creating a new version of the holiday that fits a political agenda.

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McCain-Lieberman '08?

Mark Noonan blogged It just occured to me yesterday, or maybe the day before. While McCain is about my least favorite Republican and Lieberman is my favorite Democrat, this would make some political sense: First off, it would just crush anyone else who was running.

Personally I would prefer to see Condi run, because a black woman would draw enough black votes and hold enough women votes to counter even Hillary, but it is an interesting idea.

Aside from that, by taking the centrist Democrats out of the Democratic voting bloc, it would allow the left to become even more powerful within the Democratic Party and thus ensure that a really far-out, freako-leftist was nominated in 2008.

The problem with that is that by the time the Republican slate was known, the Dems would have had enough primaries and caucuses that their party's nominee would be determined, and I fear it will be Hillary, and that the MSM will help her appear to be a centrist.

It is my view that the most important thing in politics right now is to destroy the Democratic Party as an institution - this is necessary because as long as that rag-tag collection of Greens and socialists who make up the Democratic base can continue to apply the still-honored name fo Democrat to themselves, there is a danger those lunatics might actually get into power. Much better to just finish off the Democratic Party and allow the sensible left to form a new political Party stripped of the far left lunatics.

The far left lunatics are the ones in control of that party. What we really need to do is attract more of the centrist and moderate Dems to come over to the Republican party.

While McCain wouldn't be a boon to conservatism, he would likely concentrate the conservative mind wonderfully - in order to prevent a President McCain from playing to the MSM gallery, the conservative GOP base would have to remain united and active to exert sufficient political pressure to keep a President McCain up on the rails

That depends on what happens in 2006. If we are able to preserve what we have in both the House and the Senate, and perhaps even improve our position in both houses, and if we can replace some of the spineless RINOs with conservatives, then the legislature might well be able to keep McCain under control, but if we lose ground in either or both houses, I think we need someone more reliable than McCain

...meanwhile, we'd be carrying out the first duty of conservatism, which is to preserve that which is good: America is worth preserving, and we must protect America from those people who would destroy it from within. What do you think?

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Blanco Releases Katrina Records

WaPo reports Thousands of documents released by Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco Friday night shed new light on clashes between state officials, New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin and the Bush administration as they struggled to respond to Hurricane Katrina.

If she really wants to clear everything up, then why has the New Orleans Disaster Plan, which was here right after the hurrican hit (and which they ignored) disappeared from their website, and why has the State of Louisiana plan which used to be here and here also disappeared?

I thought this sort of rewriting history might take place, so if you want to see the New Orleans plan as it existed the day the hurricane hit, it is here, and if you want to see the Louisiana plan as it was when the hurricane hit, it is here and here

Among the more than 100,000 pages of newly released records, which ranged from after-action reports to hand-scrawled notes written at the height of the storm, are memos showing Blanco frustrated and angered over delays in evacuations and the slow delivery of promised federal aid.

"We need everything you've got," Blanco is quoted in a memo as telling President Bush on Aug. 29, the day Katrina made landfall.

hat sounds like she was already in a panic, and such an ambiguous request is hard do respond to. President Bush is Commander in Chief of the nation's military. Was she asking him to send the military in, and if so had she signed the proper documents to satisfy Posse Comitatus? President Bush's Justice Department includes the FBI. Was she saying that the Louisiana Justice Department and/or the New Orleans Police Department was unable to maintain public law and order, and was she offerring to turn things over to the FBI? She should have been much more specific with her requests.

But despite assurances from the Federal Emergency Management Agency that 500 buses were "standing by," Blanco's aides were compelled to take action when the FEMA buses failed to materialize, documents show. "We need buses," Andy Kopplin, chief of staff to Blanco, said in an e-mail to Blanco staffers late on Aug. 30, the day after the storm hit.

Did you use the 600 school buses Mayor Nagin had at his disposal, and did not use to evacuate people prior to the hurricane's arrival? Why not use what you have before asking the Feds to send it in?

"Find buses that can go to NO [New Orleans] ASAP."

I believe New Orleans had flooded by then. So where do you think FEMA could find 500 buses that would float, or how else were they supposed to get them there?

Two days later, on Sept. 2, Blanco complained to the White House that FEMA had still failed to fulfill its promises of aid. While cloaked in customary political courtesies, Blanco noted that she had already requested 40,000 more troops;

Did she call up her own National Guard, and did she activate the sharing agreements governors have with other governors for borrowing some of their National Guard forces, or did she want Bush to Federalize the National Guard, and if so was she willing for them to be under federal control?

ice, water and food;

Which the Red Cross had available, but was not allowed to bring to the SuperDome because Nagin did not want to encourage people to stay there, and he felt that if he withheld food and water they would not stay.

buses, base camps, staging areas, amphibious vehicles, mobile morgues, rescue teams, housing, airlift and communications systems, according to a press office e-mail of the text of her letter to Bush.

Rantingprofs blogged But look at this tidbit buried in paragraph 22: Overnight the crisis deepened. Although FEMA and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers personnel in New Orleans reported witnessing a massive break hundreds of feet long in the 17th Street Canal levee that afternoon -- effectively dooming the city -- the first report of the collapse in the state police log came at 3 a.m. the next day, Aug. 30. (My emph.)

Oh, let me guess. That wasn't the state being out of it, that was more evidence of a failure of communication.

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Statement of Governor Kathleen Blanco

Governor Kathleen Blanco released approximately 100,000 pages of documents to Congress and to the working media through a web based document management system at the Louisiana Department of Justice in attempt to show how she did everything right during Katrina, and how it was all George Bush's fault. Her website says In order to gain access to this system, please send a public records request on your news organization's letterhead including your name, address, telephone number and email address to the Governor's Press Office via personal delivery (4th floor, Louisiana State Capitol), email (pressoffice@GOV.STATE.LA.US) or fax (225-342-6003). Once the authenticity of the letter has been verified, you will receive an email from the Department of Justice giving you instructions on the next step which includes receiving a personal pin number for clearance.

If these documents really exhonorate the governor, why are they not available for public inspection, like the New Orleans Disaster Plan here (which they ignored), and the State of Louisiana Disaster Plan here and here (which they also ignored).

From the reports on the news, it sounds like she sent Bush an email the day the storm hit saying send us everything you have. That sounds like she was already in a panic, and such an ambiguous request is hard do respond to. President Bush is Commander in Chief of the nation's military. Was she asking him to send the military in, and if so had she signed the proper documents to satisfy Posse Comitatus? President Bush's Justice Department includes the FBI. Was she saying that the Louisiana Justice Department and/or the New Orleans Police Department was unable to maintain public law and order, and was she offerring to turn things over to the FBI? She should have been much more specific with her requests.

The news reported that early on she requested 500 buses. What about the 600 school buses Mayor Nagin had at his disposal, and did not use to evacuate people prior to the hurricane's arrival. Why did she and Mayor Nagin send people to the Super Dome and the Convention Center, when they knew they had not made arrangements to have food, water, medical care, and portable toilets there?

If these documents really show she did the right things at the right time, they should be made available to the public, so we can see what they show.

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An Army Broken?

Major John blogged With all the eagerness of a dog returning to something it has vomited up, the conventional media has latched onto Rep. Murtha's rambling discourse about the Army being "broken" and "has done all they can." Unmitigated crap. And I don't say this out of defensiveness or service pride - I'll tell you about how far we have had to come in a bit. First, though, a little material for you to mull over.

The US Army is quite open about how it works, what it sees for its future, what it has been told to do in the future by the civilian authorities we serve. You can see its budget, strength, recruiting, retention, doctrine and philosophy. And not just official sources. US Army Soldiers tell the world about things that go right and wrong. Also, what we do on our own. We are our own strongest critics and staunchest defenders.

You criticize yourselves when criticism is earned, but you don't do like the MSM and people like Rep. Murtha do, and that is criticize the military unfairly, in an effort to harm the country.

What really infuriates me is that someone like Rep. Murtha knows better. Ask any veteran who served between 1975-1982/3 what the Army (or the rest of the Armed Forces for that matter) were like. Drugs everywhere, low pay, morale was non-existent, equipment was falling behind or scarce, there was no great sense of mission or purpose. Only the heroic measures of a few dedicated officers and NCOs saved us from absolutely bottoming out. We needed the Reagan Era build up (hell, even Jimmy Carter, not the brightest or strongest to even stumble across the White House threshold, realized things had gone down too far, too fast, by the last two years of his miserable term in office) but almost as important, we got our elan back - we were told we mattered, we were the shield of liberty against Soviet totalitarianism. I felt that deeply, and in March of 1985 I walked straight into a recruiter's office and signed up.

And let me thank you for your service.

Oh my Lord - I had joined an Army National Guard that was about to get dragged into readiness, professionalism and competence, whether it willed or no. The first field exercise I went to featured Miller High Life to wash down the first generation MREs. By 1988, things were WAY different. I remember taking a 14 hour convoy from central Illinois up to Ft. McCoy, WI. We went straight to the field site, tactically, and didn't come out for 12 days. When we did come out, it was just in time to take a strictly graded Physical Fitness Test, clean up, pack and convoy home the next morning. The look on some of the old-timer's faces was something I will NEVER forget.

But the Gulf War (I) showed that we still had a ways to go. The National Guard Brigade called up to go fight in Desert Shield/Desert Storm never made it. We still had work to do. Bosnia, 1996-onward showed that we were awfully close. I was part of the Army Reserve serving in Operation Joint Guard/Joint Endeavor (my time was FEB 1997-NOV 1997). We didn't do too badly - even the Regular Army folks said as much. But we weren't finished yet.

The Guard and Reserve had been getting shoved through two of the worst places God made (to steal a line from Lawrence of Arabia) JRTC and NTC. I thank the Almighty I only had to go through JRTC, and not both. The same beat-you-to-your-knees-training that the Regulars had to do. It helped. You never get so good an insight into your strengths and weaknesses as when you have been worn down to exhaustion, attacked constantly and been living in a frickin' bayou the whole time...in July.

As anyone who has read this blog knows, The Inner Prop and I served in Operation Enduring Freedom V (Afghanistan, March 2004-March 2005). We stood at the end of the longest sustained supply line in the history of human conflict. We were in war-torn Central Asia. Af-frickin'-ghanistan. We had decent food, e-mail, phone (OK, sometimes they weren't always working, but almost all the time) excellent medical support, good pay, regular (if slow) mail. We had a PXs at most of the larger bases, and coffee places sprang up too. We had so damned much ammunition that we needed to build a bigger ammunition supply point at Bagram, AF. We had so many vehicles that we were constantly squabbling over where to put them all - and we had enough up-armored ones too. Our supply warehouses were stuffed with clothing, boots, body armor and the like. "Living hand to mouth" is the worst lie of the bunch.

The constant stream of re-enlistments was a revelation to me. When I was the Executive Officer of the garrison at Bagram Airfield (a job I gladly traded away after 5 months) I had to find room to more than double the size of the Retention Office. I personally administered the oath of re-enlistment to an E-5 and an E-7. The E-5 was a mother of two young children and the E-7 was eligible to retire when we got home!

The constant stream of re-enlistments tells me that our military knows they are doing a good job, and a job worth doing. The lies the MSM has been spreading here may have hurt recruitment some (although as I understand it, all but the Army is above quota even with recruiting here, and the Army is not that far behind quota).

Broken? Hardly. Is it difficult work? Yes.

And you are doing a fantastic job. Thank you again for your service.

Do not mistake hard work for foundering. Respectfully, Rep. Murtha - you are wrong. Dead wrong.

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Worst President or Best President

Richard Reeves wrote in Yahoo! News The History News Network at George Mason University has just polled historians informally on the Bush record. Four hundred and fifteen, about a third of those contacted, answered -- maybe they were all crazed liberals -- making the project as unofficial as it was interesting. These were the results: 338 said they believed Bush was failing, while 77 said he was succeeding. Fifty said they thought he was the worst president ever. Worse than Buchanan.

This is what those historians said -- and it should be noted that some of the criticism about deficit spending and misuse of the military came from self-identified conservatives -- about the Bush record:

• He has taken the country into an unwinnable war and alienated friend and foe alike in the process;

  Actually we are winning the war; that is why the Dems are trying so hard to fool people into thinking Bush lied to get us into the war, and to force an immediate pullout so we won't win

• He is bankrupting the country with a combination of aggressive military spending and reduced taxation of the rich;

  The rich now pay a higher percent of the income taxes paid than they did before the tax cuts, and the tax cuts are responsible for the extremely good economy we are experiencing

• He has deliberately and dangerously attacked separation of church and state;

  All he has done is say that faith based organizations should have an equal chance of bidding to do jobs that secular non profit organizations bid to do.

• He has repeatedly "misled," to use a kind word, the American people on affairs domestic and foreign;

• He has proved to be incompetent in affairs domestic (New Orleans)

  It was the Democratic Mayor and the Democratic Governor that were the most incompetent in New Orleans

  and foreign (
  Iraq and the battle against al-Qaida);

  We are winning the war in Iraq; they elected an interim government, wrote and approved a constitution, and are about to elect a 4 year government under that constitution, and we keep killing al-Qaida leaders, and have not had an attack on our soil since 9/11, while many other countries have been attacked.

• He has sacrificed American employment (including the toleration of pension and benefit elimination) to increase overall productivity;

  Unemployment is very low.

• He is ignorantly hostile to science and technological progress;

  Baloney. He just does not accept pseudo-scientific claims that have not been proven.

• He has tolerated or ignored one of the republic's oldest problems, corporate cheating in supplying the military in wartime.

  The government is cracking down on overcharging, even by Halliburton.

Quite an indictment. It is, of course, too early to evaluate a president. That, historically, takes decades, and views change over times as results and impact become more obvious

At which time I suspect he will be found to have been one of the best presidents we have ever had.

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Videophone Calling Is Starting to Look Better

Los Angeles Times reported Skype Technologies, the Luxemburg company famous for its free Internet telephone calls, last week launched an update that brings us closer to an elusive technological dream: the videophone. The Skype 2.0 software offers the ability to see as well as hear computer-to-computer callers — provided that both parties have webcams. Video chats, as part of instant messaging services such as one sponsored by Yahoo Inc., have been around for years, but they offer only jerky, pixelated, postage-stamp-sized video that looks like it was transmitted from Jupiter during a sunspot eruption. They seem to be popular mostly among the cyber-sex crowd, but I'm not sure how those people can see anything well enough to get excited. With the Skype 2.0 update, the picture is far clearer, larger and more stable. So much so that this may be the long-awaited application that brings video telephony to the masses, especially now that webcams can be bought for as little as $30. It doesn't hurt that the software is free, like the computer-to-computer calls that allowed Skype to build up a subscriber base of more than 60 million. (The company makes money by selling other services, including prepaid plans for computer-to-traditional telephone calls at low rates.) Version 2.0 — which so far is available only for Windows PCs — retains the Skype desktop contact list that can be used to store information on people with whom you regularly Skype (like Google, the name has reached the status of a verb). If someone on your call list has the updated software and a webcam plugged in, a little video camera icon shows up beside his or her name. You double-click the name and, if your call is accepted, you'll see in a few seconds live video of the person you called, and that person will see you. At first, the image, although clear, is a tad disappointing — nearly as small as those on the instant message sites. But you can drag the image onto the desktop and enlarge it with no serious loss in visual fidelity. I found that I could expand the picture window to about 5 inches wide and 4 inches high for comfortable viewing. The audio quality, always good on Skype, remains excellent — sometimes better than even on a land-line phone.

I have not tried the video on Skype 2.0, but I agree about the audio quality. I have spoken to a friend in Australia, and you would have thought he was just next door.

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IE Design Flaw Lets Hacker Crack Google Desktop

Eweek reported An unpatched design flaw in Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer browser could give malicious hackers an easy way to use the Google Desktop application to covertly hijack user information. Matan Gillon, a hacker from Israel, discovered the vulnerability in the cross-domain protections in Internet Explorer and published a proof-of-concept exploit to show how Google Desktop can be cracked. "The proof of concept works on a fully patched IE browser (default security and privacy settings) with Google Desktop v2 installed," Gillon said in a note sent to Ziff Davis Internet News. He also published a detailed explanation of the vulnerability and warned that an attacker simply needs to lure a target to visit a malicious Web page. "Much like classic XSS (cross site scripting) holes, this design flaw in IE allows an attacker to retrieve private user data or execute operations on the [user's] behalf on remote domains," Gillon explained. A spokeswoman for Microsoft acknowledged the flaw in a statement and said the company was unaware of active attacks against IE users.

Another reason to use Firefox. Microsoft is aware of the problem, but just is not aware of any active attacks being launched. Perhaps they should fix the problem BEFORE the attacks are launched.

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A Vatican Retreat on Homosexuality

Ellen Goodman wrote in WaPo Somewhere along the way the dividing line over gay issues picked up and moved. It's no longer between red and blue states, or left and right wings, but between nature and nurture. Or, to be more precise, between those who believe that homosexuality is a choice and those who believe that homosexuality is innate. Remember the moment in the 2004 debate when CBS's Bob Schieffer asked George W. Bush and John Kerry whether they thought homosexuality was a choice? The president answered, "I don't know," and the senator replied, "We're all God's children." Well, it turns out that the more you believe homosexuality is innate, the more accepting you are of gay rights. A full 79 percent of people who think human beings are born with a sexual orientation support gay rights, including civil unions or marriage equality. But only 22 percent of those who believe homosexuality is a choice agree. The same line can be found in the religious world between those who regard homosexuality as a (bad) choice and those who see it as (biological) trait.

Even if it is a biological trait, could it not be a bad biological trait?

The most conservative Protestant churches that talk about the homosexual "lifestyle" prohibit gay men and lesbians from being ministers. Religious liberals who see sexual orientation as an inborn trait are more open to gays in the pulpit. All in all, Americans seem reluctant to condemn people simply for who they are.

I condem murderers and pedophiles for who they are? Don't you?

What, then, do we make of the Catholic Church's banning -- and perhaps purging -- of gay priests? On Tuesday the much-leaked and much-awaited document from the Vatican said the church "cannot admit to the seminary or to holy orders those who practice homosexuality, present deep-seated homosexual tendencies or support the so-called 'gay culture.' " What was painful to many Catholics was the obvious scapegoating of gays for the church sexual abuse scandal.

Why shouldn't they have been blamed (or scapegoated) for the sexual abuse scandal? Do you blame the children they abused? Were they "asking for it"

But there was something less obvious. Thirty years ago the Catholic Church accepted the view that some were definitively gay. Church teachings said that "they do not choose their homosexual condition." Nevertheless, the new document doesn't just ban gays who "practice" homosexuality, breaking the vows of celibacy. It bans all those with homosexual "tendencies."

Because they don't want any more priests abusing young children.

In the strange new backsliding language of the Vatican, homosexuality is a "tendency." The church doesn't define tendency, nor does it say whether such a tendency is biological. Voluntary or not, it marks a man permanently. As Matt Foreman, a gay activist who was raised Catholic, says, "Doesn't matter what you do or believe or practice. If you are gay there is no making that better in the eyes of the church." Ironically, the only exemptions are offered to men who were not "real" homosexuals but "transitory" ones. They're given a pass, in the words of a Vatican cardinal, for "some curiosity during adolescence or accidental circumstances in a state of drunkenness or particular circumstances like someone who was in prison for many years." A drunk or ex-con is okay; a chaste gay seminarian is not.

Actually I believe that if the seminarian has been chaste for a certain period of time (3 years) they let him stay.

Mean Dean blogged All this energy and hyperbole when in fact all that really recently happened was the Vatican extended its prohibition on sexually active priests and seminarians to include homosexuals.

Jimmie blogged To be nice, I’ll assume that Goodman is having problems reading, as opposed to purposefully deceiving you and slandering the Church. Read the Vatical sttement again and pay special attention to the verbs in the sentence: practice, present, support. Those are action words. They indicate an activity, not a state of being. Simply put, what the Vatican is prohibiting in its priests are homosexual acts, not the state of being of homosexuality.

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Greta's views on Christmas

Hooah Wife blogged This Jews Views on Christmas

• DON'T assume everyone in the world celebrates Christmas

  I have never assumed that. If I was in Israel, I would expect the primary emphasis would be on Jewish holidays, and I would be grateful for the ability to have any ceremony in Bethlehem on December 25. And if I was in Saudia Arabia, I would expect that the main holiday celebrated would be at the start and end of Ramadan. But this is the United States, where 80 percent of the people claim to be Christian, and here I expect to be able to celebrate Christmas

  
• I did not grow up with a Christmas tree in my house, Santa coming down the chimney or presents on Christmas morning and I am normal (well you be the judge)
• Hanukkah is NOT the Jews equivalent to Christmas

  As I understand it is a minor Jewish Holiday celebrating the the miracle of the oil lasting 8 days, and holidays like Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Purim, and Pesach (Passover) are much more important; Hanukkah just happens to come around the same time as Christmas. This year it is December 25 - January 1 (or is it Dec 26-Jan 2)

• Having married a goy (gentile) I now decorate my house with a tree and lights for him - I would not take that away from him

  God Bless You

• Just because I have a tree doesn't mean I accept Jesus as the savior - nope - still a Jew-one God - yada yada yada

  Christians just have one God as well, but this may not be the proper place for a discussion of the Trinity

• I am NOT afraid of Christmas parties at school or holiday Christmas musicals that my kids participate in - but that is going back to number 1 - don't assume

  I would not fear a celebration of Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Purim, or Pesach (Passover) either.

• If you want to have a Christmas party at school or call it a "holiday party or end of semester party" I don't give a rats ass. School is for learning, socializing, being aware of other cultures

  I agree completely. That is why I would not object to a celebration and/or lesson on the true meaning of Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Purim, and Pesach, or an explanation of what the festival of lights (Hanukkah) is all about or the Secret of the Driedel. Learning about another faith does not mean you are being pressured to join that faith. But I would like to see Christian children allowed to know that the reason they get off from school on December 25 is because it is Christmas, not the "Winter Holiday" and that they should be permitted to have religious songs along with the secular songs about Santa and his reindeer (as the Supreme Court has ruled)

  and people outside your own little family and if you choose to make religion a part of a "government school" and think that it is OK and written in the Constitution

  It is. The first amendment reads: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;....

  then I don't really feel bad when the ACLU comes breathing down your back
• Marketing the holiday - dumbass stores going PC is just plain stupid. It is the equivalent of shooting yourself in the ass. For crying out loud, Christmas sales can make you or break you, don't worry about being PC and wishing me a Happy Hanukkah.

  I do wish you, and every other Jew I know a very Happy Hanukkah.

• Merry Christmas is a holiday greeting to me - it does not and should not offend me. If it does, then I need to re-examine my own values.
• If I boiled your blood in any way - GOOD (evil laugh inserted here)!
• FESTIVUS FOR THE RESTOFUS!

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The unheralded Islamist assault on free speech

Daveed Gartenstein-Ross wrote in Weekly Standard Last month, Islamic radicals threatened to kill actor and Muslim convert Omar Sharif. Sharif had recently played St. Peter in an Italian TV film and spoke highly of the role, saying that he "seemed to hear voices" during filming and that "it will be difficult for me to play other roles from now on." Although Sharif's comments seem innocuous, they prompted a death threat. According to the Adnkronos International news agency, a message on a web forum which has been used by al Qaeda in the past linked to another website that threatened Sharif's life. The website containing the threat said, "Omar Sharif has stated that he has embraced the crusader idolatry. He is a crusader who is offending Islam and Muslims and receiving applause from the Italian people. I give you this advice, brothers, you must kill him."

And it shows yet again what a threat Radical Islam is.

This incident is relatively minor in the grand scheme of the war against radical Islam, but telling. It provides another glimpse into the Islamists' single-minded fanaticism and their willingness to punish any type of ideological non-conformity. The threat against Sharif largely fell below the media's radar. Indeed, aside from a few high profile examples--such as the fatwa directed at Salman Rushdie after he published The Satanic Verses and last year's slaying of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh--the mainstream media has given little coverage to the widespread Islamist assault against free speech.

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Leaking At All Costs

John Hinderaker wrote in Weekly Standard The CIA's war against the Bush administration is one of the great untold stories of the past three years. It is, perhaps, the agency's most successful covert action of recent times. The CIA has used its budget to fund criticism of the administration by former Democratic officeholders. The agency allowed an employee, Michael Scheuer, to publish and promote a book containing classified information, as long as, in Scheuer's words, "the book was being used to bash the president." However, the agency's preferred weapon has been the leak. In one leak after another, generally to the New York Times or the Washington Post, CIA officials have sought to undermine America's foreign policy. Usually this is done by leaking reports or memos critical of administration policies or skeptical of their prospects. Through it all, our principal news outlets, which share the agency's agenda and profit from its torrent of leaks, have maintained a discreet silence about what should be a major scandal.

The CIA is famous for the Coup D'etats it has initiated in foreign countries to remove their leaders or replace their government; I believe the CIAs actions here represent a Coup D'etat attempt against the Bush Administration.

Recent events indicate that the CIA might even be willing to compromise the effectiveness of its own covert operations, if by doing so it can damage the Bush administration. The story began last May, when the New York Times outed an undercover CIA operation by identifying private companies that operated airlines for the agency. The Times fingered Aero Contractors Ltd., Pegasus Technologies, and Tepper Aviation as CIA-controlled entities. It described their aircraft and charted the routes they fly. Most significantly, the Times revealed one of the most secret uses to which these airlines were put:

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Republicanism in decline

Tony Snow wrote in Townhall When Democrats gibber about Republicans' writhing in a culture of corruption, they're on to something -- but not what they think. The Republican Party in Washington is in trouble not because it's overrun by crooks, but because it's packed with cowards -- and has degenerated into a caricature of the party that swept to power 11 years ago promising to take on the federal bureaucracy and liberate the creative genius of American society.

That is absolutely true. Legislators elected on promises to cut spending now increase spending because they think they must to get reelected. They need to be challenged in the primaries by people who will really cut spending and push for smaller government.

The collapse stems from the simplest and most natural of causes, the survival instinct. Within months of seizing power in 1995, Republicans began backing away from Big Ideas, from tort reform to the necessary overhaul of the Social Security system. They started consulting pollsters to assay "correct" issues and positions. They played it safe -- or so they thought. Over time, imagination-grabbing ideas melted away. Gone was the Reaganite breadth of vision, and in its place stood the musty idol of Incumbency. Republicans drew the wrong morals from the decline and fall of Newt Gingrich. They thought his boldness got him in trouble, and chose to crib plays from the Bill Clinton playbook -- tacking left, at least oratorically, so as to appease, rather than confront, their critics.

They need to return to their roots. The extreme left does not allow Democrats to stray far from their extreme politics; why does the extreme right allow Republicans to grow spineless on matters important to the Republican Party

Hence, George W. Bush's "compassionate conservatism" -- a slogan that exceeded skeptics' worst expectations. That phrase, aimed at reassuring suburban white moms and queasy left-wing Republicans, became a white flag on the core issue of government size and might. Bush insiders even began boasting about "big government" conservatism -- oblivious to the fact that big government does not conserve or preserve; it crushes and digests, devouring institutions that challenge its supremacy. Leaders in the Party of Lincoln stopped talking about people, and started talking about programs and expenditures. They justified head-snapping shifts in policy by claiming the need to take issues "off the table." The multi-trillion dollar Medicare "reform" is a case in point. It was designed less to save a system than to deny Democrats a talking point. Yet, the only things Republicans really took off the table were their moral authority and the loyalty of their partisans.

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Hil used to be strictly for the war

New York Daily News reported Sen. Hillary Clinton left one thing out this week when she tried to explain her views on Iraq - namely that she used to agree almost completely with President Bush, even after the war took a nosedive.

That is true, but she is worried that the extreme left of her party may support someone like Kerry, Dean, or Gore in the primaries, so she has to move back to the left, while still hoping to keep one foot in the center.

On Tuesday, Clinton wrote in a 1,600-word letter to supporters that her 2002 vote for war in Iraq was based on "evidence presented by the [Bush] administration." "The 'evidence' of weapons of mass destruction and links to Al Qaeda turned out to be false," Clinton wrote.

Is she talking about Bush saying "Saddam has chosen to spend his money on building weapons of mass destruction and palaces for his cronies."? Oh wait, that was said by Madeleine Albright (Nov 10, 1999). Is she talking about Bush saying "Iraq's search for WMDs has proven impossible to deter... it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power"? Oh wait, that was said by Al Gore (Sept 23, 2002). Is she talking about Bush saying "We know that he (Saddam) has stored nuclear supplies, secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons"? Oh wait, that was said by Al Gore (Sept 23, 2002). Is she talking about Bush saying "Saddam Hussein has engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology, which is a threat to countries in the region, and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process"? Oh wait, that was said by Nancy Pelosi (Dec 16, 1998). Is she talking about Bush saying "If Saddam rejects peace, and we have to use force, or purpose is clear: We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program"? Oh wait, that was said by Bill Clinton (Feb 17, 1998).

But just months after the bombs started falling, Clinton (D-N.Y.) called a Daily News reporter to insist she had no second thoughts about her vote for war. The war was worth it just to remove Saddam Hussein from power, she said. Clinton emphatically told The News in her 2003 call, "I felt that it was appropriate under the circumstances, which really went back to 1998 under the Clinton administration's conclusion that the regime had to change, that the President [Bush] had authority to pursue that goal." "Why was the intelligence consistent from the Clinton administration to the Bush administration?" Clinton added. "The intelligence was consistent for over a decade." On the eve of war, even the senator's aides echoed Team Bush's confidence in a swift victory, including one who boasted, "It's going to be a cakewalk."

All of that is true, but you must understand, to a Democrat, truth is whatever you need it to be at the moment, and at this moment, she is worried about the rabid anti-war wing of her party.

At the time of the 2003 phone call, the insurgency had blossomed and the White House had finally backed off claims that Iraq had rebuilt its nuclear bomb program. Some experts don't fault Clinton for her omission, but admit she is clearly "feeling the heat" over Iraq. "If the tide shifts, she's on the wrong side of the sea wall," said Baruch College political scientist Doug Muzzio.

That is why she is sitting on the sea wall, with one foot on one side, and one foot on the other.

Flustered Clinton aides yesterday sidestepped the question of why the senator's letter ignored the intelligence from her husband's administration.

If you can't answer it, ignore it.

Spokesman Philippe Reines said she "laid out a thoughtful explanation to her constituents of her position on Iraq, reiterating her disagreement with the way the President has used the authority granted to him."

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CIA missile strike kills al-Qaida No. 3

MSNBC reports The operational commander of al-Qaida and possibly the No. 3 official in the terrorist organization, Hamza Rabia, was killed early Thursday morning by a CIA missile attack on a safehouse in Pakistan, officials told NBC News.

This is good news. Earlier reports I saw indicated he had been blown up making a bomb, but as the photo indicates "Pakistani tribesmen are seen on Thursday displaying a piece of a U.S. made laser guided missile, found in the debris of a house which was destroyed after alleged American Predator aircraft, which flew from bordering Afghanistan, fired on the house, killing five people including a senior al-Qaida commander identified as Abu Hamza Rabia." I am happy that the CIA has good enough intelligence to know what house to target with an unmanned Predator, and that they can use this technology so they don't have to endanger American agents.

Pakistan's president later confirmed the militant leader's death. “Yes indeed, 200 percent. I think he was killed the day before yesterday if I’m not wrong,” President Pervez Musharraf told reporters as he arrived in Kuwait on an official visit on Saturday. While Pakistani officials publicly said Rabia died in a blast caused by explosives stored in a house for bomb-making, officials speaking on condition of anonymity told NBC News he was killed by a CIA missile strike carried out by an unmanned Predator airplane. Pakistan's government has always been reticent to admit that Predators are used in Pakistani airspace to hunt down al-Qaida operatives. The sources told NBC News Rabia was one of five men killed at a safehouse located in the village of Asorai, in western Pakistan, near the town of Mirali.

CAYankee blogged At Winds of Change, Dan Darling offers more about the significance of getting Rabia, as well as the capture of capture of Mustafa Setmariam Nasar and the suicide of Abu Omar al-Saif in Dagestan. This is another significant victory in the War On Terror.

Dan Darling blogged One thing that'll be interesting to learn is whether or not the US had anything to do with assisting the Russians in locating al-Saif, given both the precedent of our helping them to hunt down Ruslan Gelayev and al-Saif's status in al-Qaeda. Either way, the capture of Nasar and the deaths of Rabia and al-Saif represent both a potent blow to the enemy and an impressive counter-terrorist victory for the US and its allies.

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Progress in The Mideast

Charles Krauthammer wrote in WaPo Because we Americans tend to gauge Middle East success by White House signing ceremonies complete with dignitaries, three-way handshakes and pages of treaty provisions, no one seems to have noticed how, in the absence of any of that, there has been amazing recent progress in defusing the Arab-Israeli dispute. First, the more than four-year-long intifada, which left more than 1,000 Israelis and 3,000 Palestinians dead, is over.

Due in a great part to the death of Arafat

And better than that, defeated. There's no great Palestinian constituency for starting another one. In Israel, tourism is back, the economy has recovered to pre-intifada levels, and the coffee shops and malls are full again.

Due in great part to the Wall.

Second, the Gaza withdrawal was a success. On the Israeli side, it was accomplished with remarkable speed and without any of the great social upheaval and civil strife that had been predicted. As for the Palestinians, without any fanfare whatsoever, their first-ever state has just been born. They have political independence for 1.3 million of their people, sovereignty over all of Gaza and, for the first time, a border to the outside world (the Rafah crossing to Egypt) that they control.

Now let us see what they do with their sovereignty - build a country, or import weapons to attack Israel.

Third, on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian line, vigorous electoral campaigns are underway. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has abandoned Likud, established a new centrist party that leads all others in the polls, effectively marginalized those remaining Israelis who want to hold on forever to all the territories, and set Israel on a path to a modest and attainable territorial solution to the century-old conflict.

As a result, Israel's regional isolation is easing, as Islamic countries from Pakistan to Qatar to Morocco openly extend or intensify relations, while anti-Israel rejectionists such as Syria and Hezbollah are isolated and even condemned by name in the U.N. Security Council. How did this come about? Israeli unilateralism and Palestinian maturation. After a year and a half of unparalleled terror, culminating with the Passover massacre of 2002, the Israelis finally decided that they had to give up the illusion of a Palestinian peace partner and take things into their own hands. They did. Israel reoccupied the West Bank cities it had ceded to Yasser Arafat, who had used them as havens of terrorism; began an extremely effective campaign of targeted assassinations of terrorist leaders that ultimately induced their successors to declare a truce with Israel; and, most important, decided to unilaterally draw the border between Israel and Palestine.

Gaza is now 100 percent Palestinian. The security fence Israel is building in the West Bank will, in effect, create a second Palestinian sovereignty on 92 percent of that territory. Everyone knows what that fence means. Israelis on the Palestinian side of the fence will ultimately leave one way or the other. And, in a final settlement -- if and when the Palestinians ever decide to make their peace with a Jewish state -- that remaining 8 percent could be exchanged for pieces of Israel transferred to Palestine. (The New Republic of Nov. 28 has a must-read article on the land swaps that could once and for all end the Arab-Israeli dispute.)

The other great watershed has been the maturation of the Palestinian national movement. Arafat was a revolutionary who disdained nation-building. Revolutionaries destroy the old order. His mission was to destroy Israel. Which is why, to the consternation of his Western admirers, in 10 years he built not a single schoolhouse, hospital or road in the territory he controlled. Instead, he built a dozen private militias and a state propaganda machine designed to poison the new generation against Israel. Now that he is gone, the Palestinian cause can begin the demystification from revolution to nation-building.

The other demystification was Gaza. The Gaza Palestinians have just received exactly what they wished for: self-government, borders, openings to the outside world and an absence of any Jews. As a result, however, they are now faced with the distinctly unromantic task of creating their new state. It's not that many Gazans would not like to continue the romance of revolutionary terrorism and jihad. But they no longer have the means. The separation fence makes it almost impossible to launch attacks into Israel. And rockets launched into Israeli towns are met by retaliatory Israeli artillery barrages that make the rocketeers rather unpopular at home. A similar equilibrium will be achieved on the West Bank when the fence is completed next year.

Sharon represents the majority of Israelis bent on achieving that equilibrium. It will not only bring stability and relative peace, but it also offers the contours of an ultimate settlement. That's why even old regional antagonists see the promise of this moment -- all achieved, mind you, without a single Rose Garden ceremony.

Happy Carpenter blogged Good fences make good neighbors - The fence is working. Whodathunkit? Keep this in mind the next time a Lefty tells you your ideas are "simplistic". A long concrete fence achieved in months what nuanced diplomats could not in decades. A fence, and the will to build it.

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Breech of Trust

Deroy Murdock wrote on National Review Online Politicians here should not undervalue two finite resources: first, the goodwill of Americans and their federal representatives, and second, taxpayer dollars. Maintaining the former boosts the odds of seeing the latter. Thus, Louisiana policymakers must recognize that news of local graft, favoritism, and incompetence will evaporate this city’s reservoir of empathy more swiftly than New Orleans flooded in the first place. Reverting to pre-Katrina mischief would condemn this area to rebuilding without much help from an exasperated Congress and appalled citizens. “In Louisiana, they don’t tolerate corruption; they insist on it,” laughs Louisiana native Fred Smith, president of the Washington, D.C.-based Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Then they should come up with ALL of the money to rebuild any levees or do any other infrastructure work from Louisiana citizens. No federal money should be spent unless

1. We are sure that it will be properly accounted for, by people that are not in Louisiana, and
2. No money should be spent either on construction in land that is 7 to 15 feet below sea level, or to protect such below sea level land from flooding

In that spirit, St. Tammany Parish councilman Joe Impastato was arrested in a November 15 FBI sting for allegedly accepting two cashiers’ checks totaling $85,000, after arranging for OMNI Pinnacle, LLC, to dump storm debris on a local businessman’s raw land. Despite facing federal extortion charges, Impastato told reporters on November 18 that there was nothing unusual about his Tammany haul. This was “no different than any other business deal,” he said, adding that he acted as a private citizen, not as a local official.

Regardless, he should go to jail.

OMNI’s influence stretched past St. Tammany, which is just north of New Orleans. In fact, New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin rejected an experienced firm’s lower bid to discard storm debris and accepted OMNI’s pricier bid the day before Katrina struck. OMNI is perfectly connected. OMNI attorney Charles Rice was the city’s chief administrator until June. Rice’s brother, Terrance, has met with officials of the city and the Army Corps of Engineers. As municipal sanitation director, Veronica White oversees contract bids. She originally was hired by a former city official named Charles Rice.

Nagin and the others should join him in jail.

“People with familiar names and faces are making money — often in areas where they seemed to have no particular expertise before the storm,” the New Orleans Times-Picayune reported on November 20. “Perhaps the Louisiana way wasn’t washed away with the storm’s floodwaters.”

Although it only recently acquired a new trailer sales license, Bourget’s of the South, a motorcycle shop, scored three contracts, worth $108 million, to provide FEMA with 6,416 trailers. Bourget’s owners are the father and uncle of the company’s registered agent, state representative Gary Smith, a member of the house’s Special Committee on Disaster Planning, Crisis Management, Recovery, and Long-Term Revitalization.

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The 1,000th Victim

Nikolas T. Nikas wrote in National Review Online Early this morning, December 2, 2005, probably just a few hours before most readers were arriving at work or school, the 1,000th victim died, the result of a highly controversial Supreme Court ruling from the 1970s authorizing the application of deadly force to a human being. Despite the opposition (and for sound reasons) of many, the judicially sanctioned execution took place in a routine manner, just like the 999 deaths that preceded it. Despite the evidence of the natural and social sciences, establishing that such acts — besides the most-significant morality issues — only serve to corrupt civil society and do nothing to solve the nation’s most pressing social concerns, the relentless engine of death continued this day, like it has many times in the past, to reap its deadly toll of human life. Despite the long-established ethical principle that health-care workers should first “Do No Harm,” the instruments of medicine were used Friday morning, not to save a human life, but to take one. And, tragically, horribly, before the day is done, another 2,500 more human beings will be destroyed.

I am not talking about the execution this morning of the convicted North Carolina murderer, who became the 1,000th victim of capital punishment since its restoration by the Supreme Court in 1976, but about the 1000th victim of abortion on demand authorized by the infamous Roe v. Wade case in 1973. But it did not take almost 20 years to reach the gruesome milestone of 1,000 dead from abortion, for such a number is reached every day;it is reached several times a day.

I knew the number was high, but I did not realize it was that high.

For as bad as the execution of a convicted murderer may be, (and I realize that to many there is a fundamental difference between the destruction of the innocent unborn and the putting to death, after trial and appeal,

Not just one appeal, but years of appeal after appeal after appeal

of a convicted killer), the stark, almost-too-horrible-to-contemplate, reality is that, if averaged out over a 24-hour period, the 1,000th victim of abortion occurs approximately every 7 hours, of every day, 365 times a year.

And none of them got even a single appeal.

The math, a terrible calculation, is simple. Assume, conservatively that 1,300,000 abortions occur every year. (We don’t really know for sure what the total number is because of the lack of mandatory reporting requirements in many states, but even the pro-abortion side of this most important of all issues seems to accept that this number is not an exaggeration). If one divides that number by 365 days a year, the result is that everyday approximately 3,500 unborn children are killed.

Divide further the 3,500 abortions a day by 24 hours and the result is that every hour approximately 146 unborn boys and girls are deprived of the most basic of all human rights: the right to exist. And dividing 1,000 by 146, gives the ghastly statistic that the 1,000th victim of abortion is reached every 6.8 hours of every single day.

2.4 innocent lives every minute. No appeal. No DNA test. Not even a trial. Just execute them to preserve a woman's right to choice.

Almost four times in each and every day, a 1,000th-victim is offered up for destruction on the altar of desperation or convenience or radical autonomy. So, if 1,000 dead from capital punishment since 1976 deserves to be marked, what should we as a society do to mark the approximately 37,000,000 dead from abortion in that same period?

Apparently the left feels it should do anything it can just to prevent the confirmation of a Supreme Court Justice who MIGHT vote to overturn Roe, even though if it was overturned, I am sure the legislatures in at least all of the blue states would legalize abortion in their states.

If capital punishment should be abolished for ending the life of 1,000 human beings, then what should we do about a practice that ends millions of lives? It's something to think about.

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