Now It's Eugenics from the Science Czar

As if Ruth Vader Ginsburg wasn't bad enough, now we find out that Obama's Science Czar advocates eugenics on a broad scale. This is horrifying. Michelle Malkin has more:

Looks like Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg isn’t the only one who’s been channeling abortion champion/eugenicist Margaret Sanger.

Internet sleuth Zombie has a new report on John Holdren, President Obama’s science czar:

Forced abortions. Mass sterilization. A “Planetary Regime” with the power of life and death over American citizens.

The tyrannical fantasies of a madman? Or merely the opinions of the person now in control of science policy in the United States? Or both?

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Humorous Picture of the Day

Suzanne Temple is the mother of boys. Heaps of them. I think she's on like her 40th kid or something. But the picture one of them drew along with Suzanne's caption got a chuckle out of me.

Sometimes it is a small comfort to realize that "we're all in the same boat."

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Reporter: "We took sides"

What?! Journalists took sides against Sarah Palin? Yeah, I know. It's news because for the first time a journalist is actually admitting it. Tim Graham has more:

On AOL Politics Daily, long-time White House reporter Carl Cannon bluntly declared that the political press gave Sarah Palin a raw deal in the 2008 campaign, and seriously failed to scrutinize Joe Biden, especially his fact-mangling and odd statements in the vice presidential debate.

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Trig Palin was Mocked?

Sally Quinn blames Sarah Palin for...everything. Jim Geraghty has the ugly truth:

The Washington Post's Sally Quinn: "One of the reasons, Palin said, was because they were upset that their 14-month-old brother Trig, who has Down Syndrome, was 'mocked and ridiculed by some pretty mean spirited adults.' I'd like to know the names of those mean-spirited adults who mocked and ridiculed her special needs child. I don't believe it for a second."

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Newsweek: Obama 'More Catholic' Than Pope

From Newsbusters

Newsweek took their criticism of Pope Benedict XVI to the next level on Thursday- not only did guest columnist Kathleen Kennedy-Townsend affirm that the pontiff could learn from President Obama (something Newsweek and their partners at the Washington Post agreed upon back in April), but also blasted the Bishop of Rome and the Catholic hierarchy for their supposed “disdain” towards women and homosexuals.

The former lieutenant governor of Maryland began her column, titled "Without a Doubt: Why Barack Obama represents American Catholics better than the pope does," with the context of the pope’s upcoming meeting with the American president, and how it was “much anticipated and in some circles frowned upon by American Catholics in the wake of Obama’s controversial Notre Dame commencement speech in May.” She then laid out her central thesis about these two leaders: “In truth, though, Obama’s pragmatic approach to divisive policy...and his social-justice agenda reflect the views of American Catholic laity much more closely than those vocal bishops and pro-life activists...[T]hey’ll politely disagree about reproductive freedoms and homosexuality, but Catholics back home won’t care, because they know Obama’s on their side. In fact, Obama’s agenda is closer to their views than even the pope’s.”

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Rock Star Dion Comes Home

Patrick Madrid has this great story one of the great rockers of the 20th century coming home to the Church:

I was about as cold as I’d ever been. The Midwest was in the midst of a bitter winter in February, 1959. The wind was punishing, trees were freezing up and snapping, and the little yellow school bus I was riding in with Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper had been breaking down.
After our "Winter Dance Party Tour" appearance in Duluth, Minnesota, our bus broke down again. Buddy had had enough. He talked the club manager into chartering a plane to fly the headliners to our next show in Fargo, North Dakota, and tried to recruit us to get on board.

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Is the Pope for a New World Order?

I'm still going through the new encyclical but I'm always fascinated by the reactions people have to each one, especially with this one:

Chatter abounds around the web about a paragraph calling for a “world political authority” in Pope Benedict’s new encyclical, Caritas in Veritate. John Zmirak writes that it is the only paragraph that he finds troubling. George Weigel concludes that this section and a whole variety of other statements he finds unacceptable are the result of intra-Vatican quibbling and the influence of the supposedly ideology-driven Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. Weigel suggests that statements influenced by PCJP (as identified by “those with advanced degrees in Vaticanology”) are inconsistent with the rest of the “Benedictine” text. The implication is that we can ignore passages some might find troublesome, such as the “world political authority” section, where the strong language understandably has so many upset.

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Carville: We're All Cafeteria Catholics Now

James Carville obviously doesn't understand Catholicism or just didn't read the Pope's encyclical carefully. But ignorance never silenced him before so I'm sure it won't now. Media blog has the quotes:

Pope Benedict's new encyclical put James Carville in a typically swaggering mood on CNN Wednesday afternoon, suggesting to conservative Catholics "welcome to the cafeteria" now that Benedict has embraced European economics in his new encyclical:

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How Not To Read An Encyclical

Mark Shea explains why we shouldn't depend on journalists to explain what the Pope wrote:

Jounalists: Our Moral and Intellectual Superiors. A reader writes:

I don't know, this just strikes me as odd. This site at CNN is headlined, "Pope Challenges Capitalism Ahead of G-8". The thing is that I have the encyclical on a Word Doc and when I do a word search of the entire thing, "Capitalism" never comes up.

My reader fails to appreciate the sport of encyclical reading.

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It Was Never About Leftover Embryos

I can't believe my ears. Is Wesley J. Smith really saying that the same people who are cool with destroying human life are now ok with lying too?

I have been saying for years that the great stem cell debate isn’t really about leftover embryos due to be destroyed anyway. That was just the pretext, an opening gambit intended to desensitize people to the idea that nascent human life can be treated as nothing more than a corn crop. The real goal is human cloning, first for stem cells and later for use in genetic engineering experiments, fetal farming, and eventually, reproductive cloning.

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Who Killed California's Economy?

As American economic policy essentially mirrors all the errors of California this video interview from Instapundit is worrying:

INSTAVISION: Who Killed California’s Economy? I talk with Joel Kotkin, author of The City: A Global History, about “gentry liberalism,” media bias, and California’s disastrous economy. Plus, what it means for the rest of America.

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Danielle Loves New Pixar Short

Danielle Bean has the new Pixar short and she loves it:

Partly Cloudy is the Pixar short that precedes the popular Pixar movie Up currently in the theaters.

Can I just say I LOVE this little story? It’s not only funny and creative, it’s positively enchanting. And it has a powerful message too.

I don’t mind telling you that, as a mom who struggles to embrace some of the more “painful” aspects of her vocation, the inspiring message behind this bitty film left me teary-eyed in the darkened theater.

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Enviros Deface Rushmore

Since they don't have science on their side, why not try a little vandalism. Gateway Pundit has video:

Greenpeace activists desecrated Mt. Rushmore this week-- Activists climbed the cliff and hung a banner urging Barack Obama to fight non-existent global warming:

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I Was a Pro-life Atheist

The issue of sex converts a pro-life atheist.

Pro-life atheism? Most people would call that a contradiction in terms. But it isn’t. I was one, and there are more.

Although I was raised Catholic, Catholic grade school and high school filled me with an enormous disdain for the Faith. As a teenager, I realized that none of my teachers were able to answer any serious questions about the Faith.

“It’s a mystery!” they would say, which I soon realized simply meant "Shut up, please."

“You just have to believe!” they would say. “No, actually, I don’t,” I would think.

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Media Spins Pope's Encyclical

This was pretty inevitable:

Two major wire services- AP and Reuters- cherry picked excerpts from Pope Benedict XVI’s latest encyclical (a teaching document of the Catholic Church) on Tuesday to support left-wing economic and political positions, and all but ignored the pontiff’s traditional stances on the family, bioethics, and the environment. The AP also went so far to bring up “the state of the Vatican’s own [financial] books.”

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My First Abortion Party

Sickest thing I've read in days. And let me tell you folks that in doing research for this blog I come across a lot of sick stuff. But CMR thanks to Mark Hemingway of NRO for finding this one to ruin our day. Thanks Mark. Thanks a lot:

Via Alternet:

"What are you going to do?" Unnecessary question, really — a conversational life vest, used when you’re sputtering for something to say. We knew the answer. Maggie, a 22-year-old college senior with no intention of bringing a child into the world yet, was going to have an abortion. She told us that she had already made up her mind; she had even determined the time, date and location. A better question might have been, "How are you going to pay for it?"

She answered that one before we had a chance to ask. "We’re having a party Friday to raise money," Maggie said. "You guys are obviously invited."

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Gallup Poll on the Morally Objectionable

Some surprises here.

Gallup apparently got the idea to conduct this survey from the Mark Sanford mess, but beyond that, the data presents some interesting comparisons. Are there any taboos left in American life on which we can have broad agreement? Yes there are, although surprisingly few. Here are the taboos still getting majority agreement:

Married men and women having affairs: 92%
Polygamy: 91%
Cloning humans: 88%
Suicide: 80%
Cloning animals: 63%
Abortion: 56%

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Preventitive Care Prevents Nothing?

From Mark Steyn at NRO

One of President Obama's arguments for "reforming" health care is that "preventive" care - more tests, more screening - will help control costs. Really? A propos cancer, Professor H Gilbert Welch of Dartmouth Medical School notes:

For starters, the majority of folks who are screened receive no benefit. That's because, despite scary statistics, most people will not get cancer. Let's look at breast cancer as an example.

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Amy on Caritas

I still haven't gotten to read it as I'm still getting ready to take the kids to the zoo so I'll point you over to Amy who's a heck of a lot smarter than me anyway:

Preparatory reading Populorum Progressio, Paul VI's 1967 encyclical, which is a primary reference point in this one.

I have to say right out that I am never sure what the ultimate point and effect of an encyclical like this is. It is a mix between analysis of very specific global situations ranging from the financial crisis to migration to unions to the welfare state and some quite wonderful, clearly Benedict-written passages about the nature of human life, especially human life in community.

I wonder if arguments about the former - about the accuracy of the analysis, the sufficiency of the evidence and data - will overwhelm the latter, which is really what we should be looking to a Pope for. Don't think I'm saying religious figures - Popes included - shook stick to the "purely religious" stuff - whatever that means.

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Adopting HIV Positive Children

Wonderful interview from Jen F. at Conversion Diary:

A few weeks ago I met a wonderful couple named Kimberly and Jimmy who are in the process of adopting two HIV-positive children from Ethiopia. I enjoyed talking with them so much that I asked if I could interview them for my blog to share their story with you. The following is the first of a three-part interview, written by Kimberly. It's a long post but I hope that you will find, as I did, that it is well worth your time to read the whole thing...

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