Conservative Donnybrook

Abdullah Saleh al-Ajmi, a former detainee of the United States military who was once housed at our facility at Guantanamo Bay, was released to the custody of Kuwaiti authorities on November 3, 2005. He, along with four other codefendants, was tried in Kuwait:

The defendants pleaded innocent when the trial opened in March. Their lawyers argued there was no evidence to convict them and that Kuwaiti courts had no jurisdiction to try them because they had not done anything illegal in Kuwait.

Defence attorneys also said testimonies provided by the US could not be used in a Kuwaiti court because they did not have the signatures of the detainees or interrogators.

The Kuwaiti court found all five of the men innocent as charged and they were released.

On April 26, 2008, three suicide bombers detonated themselves in Mosul, Iraq killing nine innocents and injuring 31 others. Abdullah Saleh al-Ajmi was one of the terrorists in the attack.

Meanwhile, Amnesty International is calling for the closure of Guantanamo Bay and the repatriation of the detainees there. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 enemy combatants are currently held at Gitmo. I don’t relish the idea of 500 radical terrorists making their ways to Mosul and Baghdad and Kirkuk. The potential death toll in killed bystanders is just too high.

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Mr. Cubbedge has been (very) subtly goading us into taking up this story. For instance, he has posted on his website that “Conservative Donnybrook picks up the story” and has posted comments on this website about the story in unrelated topics. We only wish he’d come out and say that he thinks we should write about this issue instead of beating around the bush so much. In the face of all this indirect pressure, what can I do?

Let me say a few words about the sudden rash of “conservatives” advocating for Obama.

Just to catch everyone up on the story:

Doug Kmiec wrote the following piece for Slate.
Deal Hudson found it less than impressive.
Kmiec shot back with this retort. (Notice the insinuation that bloggers are not regular, butts-in-the-pews churchgoers who pray on a regular basis).

And then the piling on began…

Cubbedge…
Ramesh…
Kmiec answered Ramesh, but not Cubbedge (What’s up with that, Will?). Continue Reading »

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I was sort of waiting for Bill to take up this story over on Will Cubbedge’s website, Fish in a Barrel. However, Will was forced to comment off-topic and I thought I would simply promote his comment to a full-fledged post:

This is off topic, but of interest to lawyer types:

The former dean of my Law School, a prominent pro-lifer and Catholic apologist for Romney, has written favorably of Obama, and Deal Hudson has taken him to task:

Catholic Jurist Equivocates for Obama

WAC

This allows me to clean up the off-topic comment and allows you a chance to go check out FIB’s new look.

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The Muscular Dystrophy Campaign, a London-based charity, has funded “research” in which ten human embryos were created with genes from two women and one man.  Some in the scientific community worried that the research could lead to the creation of genetically modified babies.  To prevent such worries, the scientists destroyed the embryos after five days. 

The research is designed to allow parents to swap out bad genes, that could result in a diseased baby at birth, for good genes from another woman.  Of course, these embryos were never given the chance to live a normal life.  Francoise Shenfield, a fertility expert with the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology noted:

“If successful, this research could give families who might otherwise have a bleak future a chance to avoid some very grave diseases…”

And if all else fails, destroy them after a few days…right doc?

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Yesterday, a report was released on the fertility rate in the United States and for the first time since 1972, Americans are reproducing as fast as they are dying. This is significant news for a country that relies so heavily on socialistic programs and income redistribution schemes for the benefit of the elderly, indigent and lazy.

The story had a few interesting items that I will share.

First, the REALLY good news is that “[r]ed states tend to have both more religious people and higher fertility rates.” I take that to mean that if we just keep doing what we’re doing here in fly-over country for the next 18 years or so, we may be able to take back both houses of Congress and the presidency.

Second, “[s]ome of the increase is explained by immigration. Hispanics have the highest fertility rate — about 2.9 — followed by blacks (2.1), Asians (1.9) and whites (1.86). But Hispanics do not represent enough of the population to fully explain the trend, and the fertility rate of U.S. whites is still higher than that of other developed countries.” This is interesting because it reveals that the complexion of America will be slowly changing over time. If these rates continue, even if the borders are completely shut down, America will become more Hispanic, the proportion of black Americans will remain more or less the same (the replacement rate is 2.1), and America will become less white and Asian. Politically, and after all, this is a political blog, what that means is that whoever captures the Hispanic vote will have captured a rising proportion of the population and, presumably, an ever greater proportion of the vote.

Finally, I love the fact that the life-haters are alarmed by this news:

But not everyone sees that as encouraging, given that the United States remains a leading consumer of increasingly scarce natural resources.

“The world is now consuming resources faster than the Earth can sustain over the longer term,” said Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute. “Forests are shrinking. Fisheries are collapsing. Water tables are falling. Large parts of the world’s grasslands are deteriorating. The U.S. is already disproportionately responsible for that because of our very high consumption levels.”

It would seem that the folks over at the Earth Policy Institute see human life on this planet as some sort of dire threat. Seems to me that the gradual extinction of human beings itself is a threat, but maybe I’m being dramatic.

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Well now is your chance. Come up with a “hot new t-shirt design” for Planned Parenthood and win a new iphone (wonder if Apple knows about this). Aborting babies doesn’t seem to be a them they want emphasized in their new t-shirt. Who would have thought? Anyone have any ideas for a slogan?

Even more ridiculous, if that’s possible, is the “Holiday” Cards you can buy from Planned Parenthood. Health, Cheer, Justice, Safety, Prevention (abortion missing yet again). Just what I think of when I think of Christmas.

With thanks to Marquette Warrior for this story.

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This story in the Daily Mail absolutely repulsed me.  It concerns a new breed of ecowarrior that refuses to have (or outright aborts) children because they’re simply not ecofriendly.

We meet Toni, an environmentalist who aborted her child ten years ago ”in the firm belief she was helping to save the planet.”  The absurdity of the statement in and of itself shocks the conscience, but when one contemplates it for some time (if one can stomach such an exercise) the truth reveals itself. Continue Reading »

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By endorsing Fred Thompson, the National Right to Life Committee is the latest to betray the Christian Right. At a time when Mike Huckabee, the only truly committed and consistent friend to life, is tracking down Romney in the polls in Iowa. According to Huckabee, “For those of us for whom this is a moral question, you can’t simply have 50 different versions of what’s right,” he said in an interview on “Fox News Sunday.” This argument sounds very similar to one espoused on this very blog.

“It’s the logic of the Civil War,” Huckabee said Sunday, comparing abortion rights to slavery. “If morality is the point here, and if it’s right or wrong, not just a political question, then you can’t have 50 different versions of what’s right and what’s wrong.” Why has the National Right to Life Committee suddenly forgotten this point?

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In medicine, many licensing agencies will revoke a physician’s license for offending the moral of a community.  In West Country England, a female doctor has so betrayed her Hippocratic oath that she may soon find herself out of a job.  The British General Medical Council is questioning the moral turpitude of Dr. Tammie Downes, a British doctor who has proven “instrumental in helping many women patients decide to continue to carry their children to term.”

The Catholic News Agency is reporting that Dr. Downes may soon lose her right to practice medicine after being denounced by Parliament’s most vigorous abortion crusader, Dr. Evan Harris, who has called on Health Minister Dawn Primarolo to investigate the situation.

Dr. Downes, unlike the pro-death Harris, is far from a crusader.  She inststs, rather, that “whatever her personal beliefs, she feels her duty as a doctor is to help navigate women through the fraught moral and emotional maze of an unwanted pregnancy.”  Refusing to categorize herself neatly within the pro-life/pro-choice dichotomy, Dr. Downes styles herself as being “pro informed choice.” 

The label is fitting.  Downes often takes on the role of counselor, asking the women who enter her office, “What would have to change to make you see things differently? What would help you to see this baby as good news and not bad news?”  Far from being forceful, Downes wants these young, emotionally distraught women to weigh carefully the option of ending an unwanted pregnancy.  By and large, it seems that her approach has had nothing but a positive impact on the lives of her patients:

[W]ith her guidance, many of those who have come to see Dr Downes determined to have a termination have been persuaded to think differently. And none of them, it seems, has regretted it.

Thank you, Dr. Downes.  We hope you continue to foster a culture of life for many years to come.

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According to The Guardian, Professor Ian Wilmut, the pioneering research scientist who cloned Dolly the sheep from an adult cell, has decided “to abandon cloning in favour of a new technique that can create stem cells without an embryo.”

Wilmut, influenced by a new, less controversial technique being developed in Japan, says he will not use the embryonic cloning license bestowed upon him two years ago, instead opting to work with this newer method that utilizes only skin fragments.

Wilmut’s colleagues aren’t exactly cheering over the defection:

The news will come as a blow to scientists who believe that the use of embryos to create stem cells is the best way to develop treatments for serious medical conditions such as stroke, heart disease and Parkinson’s disease.

Theoretically, the new technique will allow for the harvesting of a patient’s own cells, which can later be reinjected into the body to cure disease.

 Human embryonic stem cell research is particularly controversial because, with the present state of technology, starting a stem cell line requires the destruction of a human embryo.  Many opponents of stem cell research argue that the technologies are a slippery slope to reproductive cloning, and therefore devalue human life.  Pro-life opponents argue that the destruction of a human embryo is the destruction of a human life.

Hopefully Wilmut will be able to convince some of his colleagues to follow suit and bring a halt to this latest installment in the culture of death.

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This story about a recent dust-up at the once-reliable bastion of conservative Protestant orthodoxy, Christianity Today magazine, says a lot about the state of modern American Evangelicalism.

To me, it reinforces doubts about much-vaunted Scriptural literacy among evangelicals. It also raises again questions about feminization of the church, particularly as two of the mega-church pastors mentioned are women. Similar attitudes have been documented among Eastern Orthodox (with its recent accomodations to divorced persons and blessing of second marriages) and Catholics, so don’t think I’m lobbing grenades in a triumphalist fashion.

The fact is, divorce needs the stigma reattached. People need to be made to be far more cautious about entering into marriage. Societal breakdown stems from the antipathy or apathy toward the traditional bonds and beliefs.  

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A story in the Daily Mail tells of little Gabriel who, after repeated abortion attempts, bucked the odds and survived. Doctors had told Mrs. Jones, the twins’ mother,

[Gabriel’s] heart was three times normal size and it was likely he would have a heart attack or a stroke in the womb.

Mrs Jones said: “They told us that if he died, it could be life threatening for his [twin] brother.

“We had to decide whether to end his life and let his brother live, or risk them both.”

They said it would be impossible to keep him alive afterwards as he was so poorly.

It would be kinder to let him die in the womb with his brother by his side than to die alone after being born.

“That made my mind up for me. I wanted the best thing for him.” (outraged emphasis added.)

In this case, “the best thing for him” was deemed to be killing him in the womb so that he could die by his brother’s side.

I take the moral of this story to be two-fold. First, life is indomitable. It has a will to continue and even the sickliest tend to cling to the gift of life. When doctors say that all hope is lost, they often lose track of this truth. Second, doctors are not always right about these life-and-death decisions. When they advise pulling the plug, or removing the feeding tube, or aborting one child because it is “in his best interests,” we should err on the side of life.

See awb’s recent post about people who recover after their feeding tubes are removed.

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This past March marked the two year anniversary of the death (some might say murder) of Terry Schiavo. Since then several individuals who were once thought lost like her, with helpful ardent advocacy by ones who loved them (much like Ms. Schiavo’s loving parents), have survived serious brain injury only to get progressively better. It is a shame that these stories have not made nearly the same amount of headlines that Ms. Schiavo’s situation made. Maybe then people across this country would see that even individuals who are seemingly all but dead can and do survive and get better and we can replace the culture of death with one of life. These people cannot and should not be simply eliminated when hope is lost. Such is the hallmark of the culture of death. Rather, their inherit human dignity demands that, in the absence of a personal request to pull the plug, every opportunity be given to them to recover.

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Here, here, here, and here your friends at CD discussed the possibility of voting for a socially conservative third party candidate should Benito Giuliani get the nod from the GOP in ‘08.  According to Catholic News Agency, that third party candidate will definitely not be the conniving Sam Brownback, who is in “talks” to endorse Benito.

For some Catholics who hate Hillary just enough to vote for Benito, this “back door” endorsement would serve as a fine conscience cleanser.  As Brownback himself seems to explain away:

I’m going to meet with him and I’m going to talk to him and hear what he is specifically saying now because he’s changed on a number of the abortion issues…He’s changed on partial-birth [abortion] and he … has said he would appoint strict constructionists to the Supreme Court.

Apparently, Brownback feels “much more comfortable” with the credentialed abortionista.  But, as Charles Karauthammer noted, Rudy’s definition of strict constructionism is so muddled that his appointment of a strict constructionist might result in more of the same penumbras and emanations that have enveloped society for nearly 35 years.

Brownback is clearly maneuvering for his post in Benito’s administration, but his endorsement would serve Giuliani well.  It seems his own Faustian bargain might eliminate one for a lot of Catholics on election day: “Well, Brownback supports him and he’s pro-life.”  I’d like to think people are incapable of bringing this puerility into the voting booth, but then again Karl is thinking about voting for Huckabee in the primary.

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Marquette Warrior: Elderly Man Killed by Hit-and-Run Driver — Crowd Doesn’t Help, Steals His Groceries.

It astounds me that people could be so callous as to steal a man’s groceries as he lays dying in the street. Stories like this really push home the need for wholesale change in the way we view life in this society.

The comments to the linked story pose the question of whether the driver was legally inside the United States and it does seem a pertinent question since it seems that we hear of one story after another in which an illegal immigrant is involved in a hit-and-run. While there currently does not seem to be any evidence of Mr. Flores-Ocon’s citizenship status, there is plenty of evidence cropping up about his past criminal history (here and here).

h/t Marquette Warrior

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