Found my first op-ed article for my college's newspaper

The other night I was trying to locate something regarding my alma mater Elon University (though it was still "Elon College" when I was there).  During the search I came upon something truly wonderful: an archive of just about every issue of Elon's weekly student newspaper The Pendulum.

I got involved in the The Pendulum early in my first semester at the school.  At first I was a reporter, writing articles about the new food court and elections in the town of Elon.  But increasingly I realized that I could be a journalist... but what I really wanted was to write opinion pieces.  I had already been writing letters to the region's largest newspaper and more often than not they got published.  Carrying that passion to my college's newspaper would be seriously putting myself out there, with immediate feedback when the issue hit the stands.  This was my true calling as a writer: to encourage people to think just a little extra.

My first essay for the paper was published in March of 1996.  And it was about the true cost of abortion.  It was a quote from Mother Teresa that had me pondering some things.  It was as good as anything to write about.  I definitely was going in guns blazing.  It certainly did precipitate a response.  By the time the next issue hit I had received five death threats.  And then there was the female student who got in my face and said "You stupid pro-life f-cking piece of sh-t."

Anyhoo, the other night I went looking for some of my pieces.  And I found the one about abortion.  I took a screenshot of it.  Which included the worst photo of me that's ever been taken.  Seriously, what happened?!?  I look terrible.  Thankfully a better photo was taken for future articles.  But this one... wow.

So here is my first op-ed essay for The Pendulum.  Click on the image to enlarge it big enough to read comfortably:

The other pieces, I'll try to post those too in the near future.  But this gives you an idea of what I was up to in college.  Which, was one of the few aspects about my life as a student that made sense.  But that's something for another time.

Yes, feel free to make snarky remarks about my photo here.  I certainly do :-)

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Roe v Wade... is DEAD!

Today is the REAL "Juneteenth".

Behold the wild celebration outside the United States Supreme Court a few hours ago, as pro-life activists uncorked the champagne and raised a toast to the overturning of Roe v Wade:

This gentleman is Scott Stewart.  He is the Solicitor General for the state of Mississippi.  He is the attorney who argued before the Supreme Court that Roe should be overturned in the case of Dobbs v Jackson Women's Health:

Well done, counselor!

 

This is Nancy Pelosi.  She claims to be a good Catholic but she's not really.  Why?  Because she believes unborn children can be killed in the womb.  Here you see her weeping bitter tears after the Dobbs decision was handed down:

 

 

I'm not going to bother posting a picture of President Biden.  He's not a real president anyway.

This is the man who sent three justices to the high court, who voted to get rid of Roe:

And see this guy?  This man here?  That's Clarence Thomas.  Today is the biggest day he's had on the court since he came onto it more than thirty years ago:

This is your victory as much as anybody's, Justice Thomas.  Enjoy :-)

EDIT 5:28 pm EST: a good friend found this on Facebook and it was too good not to share...

 

Happy Birthday Justice Thomas!

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What the leaked majority opinion REALLY does

 I'm seeing a lot of outrage about the leaked draft of the majority opinion overturning Roe v Wade. Much anger about destroying a "right" to abortion. But for all their screaming these people are showing us that they have NO grasp whatsoever of what they are screaming about.

Justice Alito's draft does NOT end the right to abortion. It does however articulate that the federal government has no standing in establishing such a right. The opinion is of the belief that Roe erred when it legislated into being a notion that the federal government had no constitutional basis in creating.

 

All that the majority opinion is arguing, if it is indeed the final say in the case at hand, is that the issue of abortion is one that per the Tenth Amendment is the sole province of the individual states. Which is exactly where it should have been given to almost fifty years ago.

 

So now it is going to be up to state legislators, who have been voted into office and who are beholden and accountable to their constituents (i.e. the voters), to decide if abortion will be legal in their respective states. It will NOT be a "right" whipped out of thin air by a judge or group of justices who do not answer to the people, but instead act upon their own politics.

 

This is a return to the balance of powers established in the original Constitution and then the Bill of Rights. Nothing more and nothing less.

 

This is stuff we were supposed to have learned in ninth grade civics class.

 

But I suppose too many politicians, and celebrities, and "useful idiots" in the streets, never paid attention to.

 

 

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My first op-ed piece was about abortion. This is what happened...

During the four years I spent (of my seven year undergraduate career... ehh, family tradition you might say) at Elon, I was on the staff of the student newspaper The Pendulum.  First as a reporter but mostly as an op-ed writer.  It was a continuation of all the letters to the editor I had been sending the bigger newspapers.  I figured that being an essayist for my school's paper would provide for constructive feedback.  Well, that and also having a more captive audience.

 

My first column was published in March of 1996.  And for the subject I chose abortion. Mainly, why it was destroying our capacity for the value of the human soul.  The heartmeat of the argument was that we were numbing ourselves to the sanctity of human life, and I kicked the piece off with a quote from Mother Teresa.  It was, I thought, a solid essay.

 

Naturally, it touched some nerves. This being a fairly liberal private school (albeit one with a sizable evangelical Christian presence).  A number of people contacted me and said they were glad somebody was standing up for the unborn.

 

But there was hate also.  By the end of that weekend I think three or four death threats had come my way.  I took it all in stride.  To me, it only meant that three or four additional people had read my essay and took it seriously.

 

But then, there's what happened the week after that issue ran.

 

I had come down with the flu, with a 102 degree fever and of course like an idiot, I was walking around campus.  I was with two friends that day, and we were going into the library.  The original building that is, before Elon's new one a few years later.

 

Two people were coming out of the building and, to this day I can still hear the voice of one of them as she got into my face and said:

 

"You stupid pro-life fucking piece of shit."

 

I was so feverish that it took several seconds for what she said to fully impact me.  I asked one of my friends if he heard that and he said yes.  Our other friend hadn't been able to make out what she had said, so we told him.  He immediately wanted to go and confront her, but we dissuaded him.

 

Here it is twenty-six years later, and I still see the face of that young woman, warped with anger and hatred.

 

If she had only kept her thoughts to herself, I would likely not be as I am today: someone who sees the pro-abortion movement as one composed of some very ugly people.  Ugly in heart, ugly in thought, and ugly in face.

 

Have you ever looked at pro-abortion protestors?  They don't smile.  Not smile like normal people do.  Their faces aren't filled with love and light as are the faces of pro-lifers.  Instead the pro-abortion protestors are angry, dour, mean and filled with hatred.  The two could not be more unlike each another.

 

If only that fellow student (no, I don't know her name and don't really care to either) had not confronted me as she did, I might be able to give the pro-abortion side the courtesy of hearing them out.  But that possibility has long passed.  There is no courting civility with people so dark and rife with rancor.

 

A quarter century later, and I am no closer to communion with people who so blatantly advocate terminating the life of an unborn child for "convenience" sake.

 

Be mindful of the impression you make.  It persists, and maybe longer than you ever mean for it to.

 

 

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New children's book asks: what is an abortion?

Big League Politics posted a story yesterday about a children's book titled - and I am not making this up - What's An Abortion, Anyway?

Does anyone else catch the irony about this?

A book for children.

About abortion.

As if our kids aren't having enough of their childhood taken away from them already.  Now comes this.

(And I can't even find a literary agent for the book I wrote about a little girl and her doggie...)

I remember the first time I learned what an abortion is.  I was nine years old.  I asked one of my parents "what's an abortion?" after seeing it mentioned on the six o'clock news.  I will never forget the answer, it chilled me to the bone so coldly: "It's when a mother kills her child before it's born."

Why?  Why would a mother do that?

Almost forty years later, I still can't understand.  Oh, I know the rationale about it even if it goes unsaid: that some human life is "inconvenient" enough to be deemed disposable.  But I just can't wrap my brain about how someone can carry an unborn child within her, to feel that kind of LIFE growing and being nurtured, only to have it vacuum aspirated out of existence.

If a book really wants to inform small children about what an abortion is, it should show them the photos I have seen of actual aborted fetuses.  They should see the tiny lifeless bodies with faces and fingerprints of their own, chopped up into pieces on cold metal dishes.  They should be told the real cost of an abortion: the regret that many women come to feel after having their babies butchered within their womb.

Books such as this, and too many materials in our (almost always public) schools, are placing an enormous and inappropriate burden on our children.  They are expecting children to have a grasp of adult concepts, at an age when they should be enjoying being innocent of such things.  I asked about what is an abortion because I sincerely wanted to know.  If I was too young at the time, I trust my parents would not have told me.  They would have said "you'll understand someday" if they thought I couldn't handle it.  As it was, I had already learned about human reproduction at age seven.  I was curious so I read about it in the World Book Encyclopedia.  Interestingly, that article never mentioned abortion.

If we are going to teach children about abortion and make it sound safe and sanitary and routine, then we had also better be prepared to teach them about other "adult concepts", like God and theology and the notion that there is absolute good and evil in this world.  Let's do that and let the children decide for themselves about the "sanctity" of abortion, if it's so unassailable an idea.

Would "progressives" be that accommodating?  Somehow, I doubt it.

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Why are pro-life people so incredibly beautiful?

The annual March for Life is this weekend, albeit accommodating for the current COVID-19 situation.  Some turned out for the main event in Washington D.C. but in large part it's been a local affair.

Something I've noticed, and have for quite a long time now.  Here are some photos from today's events and one or two from last year's:

 

 

Notice anything about these pro-life people?  The biggest thing each of them has in common across these photos?

They are smiling.  They are joyful.  They are beautiful.

They look genuinely happy.

Now let's be clear about something.  They are together in common purpose: to end the most barbaric practice that this country and too many others sanction.  As Mother Teresa said when she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, "the greatest destroyer of peace is abortion because if a mother can kill her unborn child, what is left between you from killing me or me from killing you?  There is nothing between."

These people understand that better than too many others may care to.

But look at how beautiful they are.

Look at the light in their faces.

What is it that unites them together, above all else?

I will tell you.  It is love.  Love for one another but also, love for those they will probably never know.  Love for innocent life.

I see their faces and they are pure loveliness to behold.

And then I think back, to four years ago.  What I saw in San Diego on the day after Donald Trump was inaugurated as President of the United States.  There were "pro-women" marches in many cities.

What did I see?

It was something like this:

Let's ignore the brazen vulgarity of the signs being held aloft.  Although trust me, what I saw that day in San Diego was far worse.  There were also the women dressed in vagina costumes, but that's as far as I'm going to go in describing the spectacle.  It was NOT something that a sane person would want small children to be confronted with.

Look at the faces of these people.  How dour and downcast, and bitter, and empty of all joy they look.  If there is any emotion to be seen at all, it is anger.  They look drained and without sympathy or care.

There is no love that I see in their faces.  There is instead, well... hatred.

Hatred for others?  Could it be hatred of self?

There is darkness in those faces.

There is none of the joy and care and beauty among these pro-abortion activists, that there is in the faces of those who are pro-life.

On the basis of these photos and more like them, just by those alone... I know that I would much prefer to be counted among the pro-lifers.

Indeed, I do count myself as among them.  And I am not ashamed of that.

Because I do try to love others as I love myself.  Because I don't want anyone to be hurt by the grief and anguish of abortion.  Because I don't want the most innocent of lives to be ended within the womb.

I want my own face to be among those of the beautiful, however weary and weathered it may be.

Maybe next year I'll get to march alongside those who go forth in peace and joy, bound in the common purpose of seeing to it that all lives matter.  Because, they do.  Even the unborn.

Physical appearance, doesn't matter.  Not when there is that brilliant light in the eyes, in the smile.

I choose to do my best to have that light in my own eyes.

And I like to believe, dear reader, that however deep down, you want that light in your eyes, too.

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Kermit Gosnell has chosen life

And by that I mean, Kermit Gosnell has chosen life in prison.

He could have chosen death.  Gosnell dropped his appeals in exchange for life, not death.

I'm not the first to note the irony that given a choice, Gosnell chose life.

If only his victims had been given the same choice...

Kermit Gosnell: He chose life for himself, death for babies.

Kermit Gosnell, abortion "doctor", found guilty yesterday of murdering three babies (he had been charged with killing four) during botched abortions at his "clinic". Gosnell was quoted as remarking that Baby A was "big enough to walk around with me or walk me to the bus stop."

You may not have heard much about Kermit Gosnell. In fact, you might not have heard anything at all about him. The mainstream media was curiously quiet about his case. I don't know whether it was because the details about went on in Gosnell's slaughterhouse were so gory and horrific, or because it was a story that exposed abortion for the obscenity that it is.

(You can click here to read more about the case. Much of which is about how Gosnell's primary M.O. was jabbing the babies' necks with scissors and snipping and twisting the spinal cords.)

Last week I wrote about how Ariel Castro is facing "aggravated murder" from allegedly causing the deaths of at least one unborn baby during the ten years that he and his two brothers held three women hostage in Cleveland.  The only person who was killed in that case was an unborn baby.  Not a "fetus".  Not an "unviable tissue mass".  A human being.

Kermit Gosnell is going to prison because he killed human beings.  They were humans at their most helpless and most in need of love and compassion.  Kermit Gosnell butchered them, laughed about it and made money from it.

Kermit Gosnell is not a doctor.  A doctor takes an oath to defend life.  Gosnell took innocent life.  Again and again and again.

So what's it going to be, ladies and gentlemen?  Either an unborn child is a human accorded all the rights as any other, including the right to live.  Or it is not, and Kermit Gosnell has not committed murder at all.

As I said last week: We can't have it both ways.

(By the way, that was Troy Newman of Operation Rescue who first noted the supreme irony of Gosnell choosing life in prison over the death penalty.)

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The Cleveland kidnappings and abortion

Like many others, I have been watching the news out of Cleveland this week: the three young women who escaped after more than a decade of captivity, rape, torture and other abuse.  There is a lot to be said about this story, but most of that has been discussed at considerable length already.

However, tonight I happened to catch something that has led me to articulate some thoughts aloud...

Apparently, at least one of the women became pregnant because of the Castro brothers (Ariel, the eldest, is still being held but his brothers are free for now).  It's being reported that at least one child was born but the others were killed as a result of induced miscarriages.

Ariel Castro, the "leader" of the three brothers charged with the kidnappings and torture, now faces the possibility of the death penalty if tried and convicted.  That is, if it is determined that he is responsible for purposefully causing one of the five miscarriages that hostage Michelle Knight suffered.  Knight was reportedly starved for more than two weeks and then Ariel Castro "repeatedly punched her in the stomach until she miscarried".

Here is what prosecutor Timothy J. McGinty told reporters earlier today...

“Based on the facts, I fully intend to seek charges for each and every act of sexual violence, rape, each day of kidnapping, every felonious assault, all his attempted murders and each act of aggravated murder he committed by terminating pregnancies” during the years the women were held, McGinty said.

"My office of the county prosecutor will also engage in a formal process in which we evaluate whether to seek charges eligible for the death penalty," he said. "The law of Ohio calls for the death penalty for those most depraved criminals who commit aggravated murder during the course of a kidnapping."

That is what Castro's alleged crime is being legally defined as: "aggravated murder".   McGinty made it clear that Castro's actions were "attempted murders" and "murder he committed by terminating pregnancies".

And for his heinous actions, Ariel Castro could be put to death.

But how is what Ariel Castro has reputedly done any different from abortion: something that has long enjoyed legal protection?

If Michelle's children were conceived as a result of Ariel raping her, and he is biologically the father and he didn't want any of them well... isn't that what happens thousands of times each day across America?  When a parent does not want a child?

How is it possible to defend the killing of unborn children as a legal "right" on the basis that they are not yet full-born human beings but rather an "unviable tissue mass", yet murder charges can be pressed against a man who likely killed at least one unborn child on the basis that these were humans he exterminated?

Logically, it is not possible.  Logically, it does not make sense.

How is the same act of killing someone a "protected right" in one situation and "aggravated murder" in another?

Want to know something?  I would bet real money that if Ariel Castro is charged with murder, the pro-abortion crowd is going to be sorely tempted to come out guns blazing against those charges.  Because if unborn children can be legally defined as having the right to live and that said right being denied is grounds for capital punishment, then the entire legal basis of abortion collapses.

It will have to.  There can be no prosecution for the murder of five innocent unborn children in one matter and a rigorous defending of "the right to choose" and "the right to privacy" so as to put to death unborn children in another.

We can't have it both ways.

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Planned Parenthood official sez: there is a right to POST-BIRTH abortion

God have mercy on us.

Alisa LaPolt Snow, a lobbyist representing Planned Parenthood in Florida ("Planned Parenthood"?  Now there's a contradiction in terms...) testified before that state's legislators this week that babies who are born after an attempted abortion should be killed at the discretion of the mother and her doctor.

Killing a baby.  After it has been born.

Back in the old days, we used to call that "infanticide".  Something that King Herod and certain pharaohs were fond of.  Y'know: murdering infants.

The Weekly Standard has more of the story and here's the actual video of Snow advocating putting to death babies who have taken their first real breath of life...


Folks, this blog's longtime readers know something about me: I am really, really careful about the language I use.  There is a certain word which has appeared on The Knight Shift but only as part of quotations from other sources.  It has been used only ONE time by my own volition.  It happened four years ago and it was the first time in my entire life that I had ever used it in publication.  At the time it was about a man being driven to suicide by hostile agents of the government.

There were no words in polite language that could have possibly conveyed my rage, my frustration and my lust for justice in that situation.  I'll never use that word unless it's absolutely, positively necessary.  When all other linguistical tools have failed.

For only the second time in my life, it has come to that again.

I don't care if my language here offends people.  At this point, I cannot find any other words that could telegraph my disbelief and horror at what we've come to:

We are fucked.  We are literally God-damned, for letting things come to this.  And damn if we don't deserve it.

One friend has noted that Mizz Snow's argument will never be allowed to pass into law or regulation.  Perhaps so.  But that it has even been seriously suggested at all screams volumes about how far we have fallen as a society.

We are on a very slippery slope down.  This will not end well.

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Bias in mainstream press? WHAT bias?! (anti-gun vs. pro-life)

The apparently big story right now is about the estimated fewer than 1,000 who marched in Washington D.C. today against the Second Amendment. I understand that this has made all of the major evening new broadcasts: CBS, NBC, CNN etc.

To the very best of my understanding, there was NO such coverage at all of yesterday's March for Life, which many have calculated drew more than 500,000 to the Mall to protest abortion -the premeditated murder of unborn children - on the fortieth anniversary of Roe v. Wade.

Now, applying some logic here, you would think that a story regarding half a million people would dwarf that of an event which drew, at most, several hundred.

But I suppose when it comes to stories and their coverage from big media, some of them just don't fit the expected narrative...

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Forty years of silent screaming

The moment is still seared into my memory. Indeed, I can still feel the revulsion that was far too much for a little child to have to grasp.

It was this day in 1983. I had seen on the news about something called "abortion". Seems that it was the tenth anniversary of it being allowed. So I asked Mom what "abortion" means.

"It means a mother kills her baby before it's born."

A chunk of my childhood died that day. There are some who would think of it as "no big deal". But to me it was the beginning of a loss of innocence. The first bricks of the wall of naivety that had secured this small child away from the madness of man's own making, come crumbling down to Earth.

"It means a mother kills her baby before it's born."

My God.

And then some years later as a foolish teenager who thought himself wise, I was stupidly defending abortion. It seemed the "enlightened" thing to do, I thought. Thankfully that phase didn't survive my high school years. I'm hoping that twenty years of writing in opposition of abortion has helped me atone for it.

I made an attempt to do it as a columnist on our student newspaper at Elon, the first spring that I was a student there. My first piece as a columnist was about abortion: how it was destroying our culture, our sense of morality.

One week later while walking around with the flu and a 104-degree temperature (what an idiot) a female student walked up to me and said into my ear "You stupid pro-life fucking piece of shit."

I received some death threats too. I took a pro-life position and people claimed to want me dead for it. I'll always take perverse pride in knowing that at least a few people read my premiere essay and took it seriously...

And now, here we are: the fortieth anniversary of Roe v. Wade. The Supreme Court decision that established a "right" to terminate an unborn child.

Funny thing: we admit that human life ends when the heartbeat stops. Why then shouldn't human life begin when a heartbeat starts?

And there is a heartbeat there. In fact, there have been roughly fifty-five million hearts that have stopped beating since this day in 1973.

See those photos on the right? Ultrasound imaging has been refined to the point where high-definition 3D pictures can be made of the unborn child within the womb of his or her mother. We can now chronicle in stark detail the development of a baby for practically its entire nine months of gestation.

Look at those pictures.

Do any of those look like "unviable tissue mass" to you?

Does a mere clump of cells within the body possess a face? Fingers? Toes?

Can a benign tumor yawn? Can it smile?

Does an appendix scream in pain when it is ripped open during a "medical procedure"?

Yes, there are screams. The first of many. There have been abortionists who halted their "practice" at once when they heard the sound of an unborn baby's agony. Too often there are other screams too. The screams of those who realize sooner or later "Dear God, have mercy on me for what I have done..."

Fifty-five million hearts silenced. Fifty-five million people. Killed without being allowed to draw breath beyond the comforting warmth of their mothers' wombs.

Now think about what we have lost in those forty years...

We have lost great scientists.

We have lost great physicians.

We have lost great artists.

We have lost great athletes.

We have lost great leaders, great statesmen.

I've been dabbling in filmmaking for several years now. How many directors, writers, actors, cinematographers have we been robbed of? Their gifts never to see the light of day, the flicker of the big screen.

Fifty-five million people, dead before they were born. The Nazi regime murdered 12 million.

And yet some dare to wonder why there is such violent in our streets. In our homes. In our schools.

How the hell can we possibly claim to value the preciousness of human life we see every day, when we don't give a damn about the preciousness of human life when it is at its most vulnerable?

I... don't see how that is possible at all.

"But Chris, it's a woman's body."

Bullshit.

Yeah, I said "bullshit".

It's not a "woman's body". It's the body of a whole another person. A person with his or her own chromosomes and brain activity. If a woman doesn't want to be bound to one body, she shouldn't be reckless with her own. If she is, then there are alternatives. There are thousands of barren couples in this country who are desperate to have a child in their life. Let them have that opportunity.

Fifty-five million children dead. Across the span of forty years.

Forty is the biblical number of completion. God made the children of Israel wander in the wilderness for forty years. From that weak and timid band of refugees came a strong and hardened people who took back the land promised their fathers. Forty is the age of full maturity, in body and mind and spirit.

What have we come to, in the forty years that God has mercifully allowed us since this day in 1973?

Can we say honestly proclaim that four full decades of abortion have nurtured within us a better heart and soul?

Or maybe it is that we no longer have that soul. Perhaps, we don't deserve it. Forty years is an awful long time to look back upon an error and repent of it. For one individual or for a people entire.

More laws will not restore the soul of our culture. Taking guns away won't replenish it. Not all of the politicians and psychologists and pop culture icons put together will bring back a thing that God has given us but we have chosen to let fall away.

President Barack Obama surrounded himself with children last week when he signed his executive orders pertaining to gun laws. Imagine how many more could have been there if he and those like him and allowed those children to live.

Don't talk to me about the violence on the evening news when we let the greatest violence of all happen in the clinical sterility of a "clinic".

Forty years.

How far we have come.

I don't know of any better way to wrap this up than to defer to the wisdom of one of the most beloved people of the modern era...

"The greatest destroyer of peace is abortion, because if a mother can kill her own child what is left for me to kill you and you to kill me? There is nothing between." -- Mother Teresa

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"Unborn Grace" music video brought Chris to tears!

Got word tonight that the new music video for Faye Smith's song "Unborn Grace" stars a friend from my college days, the incredibly talented and exceedingly beautiful Candice Irion!

So I hit the link and watched it.

And this is only the second music video to ever make me cry. I'll let it be an exercise for the reader about what the first one was.

From the album Deeper Still and gorgeously directed by Mark Blitch, here is "Unborn Grace"...

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An observation about Susan G. Komen For The Cure and Planned Parenthood

Planned Parenthood shouldn't be complaining one measly bit about Susan G. Komen For The Cure dropping its funding.

After all, Planned Parenthood became something not wanted or needed... and so Komen gave it an abortion.

What? I thought Planned Parenthood was pro-choice. Komen made a choice. It chose to abort its relationship with Planned Parenthood. Komen has the right to choose, doesn't it?

And now a dozen or so senators are condemning Komen for what it has done to Planned Parenthood. I thought the government was supposed to stay out of people's private lives where pro-choice is concerned. Guess I was wrong.

Personally, I don't see how anyone with a shred of conscience can support Planned Parenthood. Its founder Margaret Sanger was a notorious racist and believer in eugenics. This has been well documented. Planned Parenthood was an organization intended to kill off minorities, the mentally ill and everyone else who didn't measure up to Sanger's ideal of humanity. How could anybody possessing a soul at all defend such a ghoulish group?

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Bachmann and Romney mad at each other or something about pro-life "pledge"

sigh...

Every time I come across a story like this about how inane our "political process" has become, I can't help but think of that line from Battle for the Planet of the Apes: "Ape has killed ape!!!"

So newly-announced candidate for President of the United States Michele Bachmann is feigning righteous wrath (I know of no other way to put it) at fellow candidate Mitt Romney because he hasn't signed something called the "Susan B. Anthony pro-life pledge".

Here's what the pledge is about, according to the story at LifeNews.com:

The pledge has the candidates promising to support only judicial nominees who won't interpret the Constitution in a way that supports Roe v. Wade, select pro-life Cabinet members on positions affecting abortion policy, supporting legislation to stop taxpayer funding of abortions and Planned Parenthood, and to support a fetal pain bill that would ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy.

Y'know, every single item listed here, I agree with. In a lot of ways my personal beliefs about abortion are even more legally stringent. For one thing, Roe v. Wade is atrocious legislation from the bench, and not even something that should have reached the Supreme Court. It should have always been a states issue... and that is why so many abortion "rights" supporters have done their damndest to keep this a federal matter. Because they know that left to the individual states, that abortion would go down in flames in this country. But I digress from my line of thought...

It just seems to me that if a candidate knows what he or she stands for, then that candidate won't need to sign any "pledge" at all. Congressman Ron Paul has apparently signed it. But even if he didn't, it wouldn't bother me: having read his record for myself, I know he has an adamant pro-life position. That's something that can't be "earned" by the stroke of a pen on a pledge that at election time are a dime a dozen.

Here's what I'm getting at, folks: a person's values and virtues, ultimately aren't something that can be defined or not defined by whether or not that person signs this or that statement. That only serves to cheapen the candidate and it even cheapens the impact of such statements when they can be instruments of weight and worth.

And they cheapen us and what we should be expecting and demanding from those who offer to serve us in public office. If I vote for a man or woman for President, I don't want to be voting for a party automaton. I will and always shall vote for a person, not a product. Y'know: someone who can think and hold on to a position and understand why that position is held!

Or maybe I'm just asking for a little too much enlightenment from our political process...

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Monsignor Charles Pope contemplates "the Strength and Resilience of the Human Person"

In the wake of last week's tragic incident in Tuscon there have been reams of pages written about human nature, with one spin or another on the subject.

I haven't read anything that is as poignant and beautiful as what Monsignor Charles Pope - pastor of Holy Comforter-St. Cyprian - has composed on his blog hosted by the Archdiocese of Washington.

Here's an excerpt "Life is Worth Living: On the Strength and Resilience of the Human Person"...

One of the rights our modern age demands is the right to declare that certain lives are not worth living. In utero testing sometimes reveals the possibility or even the certainty of birth defects. Abortion is often recommended to mothers who carry "defective" children and sometimes that recommendation becomes pressure. It is said that almost 90% of families who receive a poor pre-natal diagnosis choose to abort.

And yet there are so many stories of people who have overcome enormous obstacles and who live full and rich lives. Some are missing limbs, others are blind, still others struggle with disease. Some have overcome poverty and injustice, others paralyzing accidents or great tragedies. And they are living witnesses to us that we ought never be the judge of what lives are worthwhile and what lives are “not worth” living. It is true that none of us would wish to be born missing limbs, or blind or in poverty, or with chronic conditions. But we must reverence those who are, learn to appreciate their gifts, and summon them to courage and greatness.

We must declare with great certitude that there is no such thing as a life not worth living. We say this not as some politically correct slogan but rather with firm conviction that every human life is willed by God. We were willed before we were made for the Scriptures say, "Before I ever formed you in the womb I knew and I appointed you..." (Jer 1:4). None of us is an accident nor are our gifts and apparent deficits mistakes. We exist as we are, the way we are for a purpose, a purpose for us and for others. We all have an irreplaceable role in God's kingdom and show forth aspect of His glory uniquely. Every human life is intended and is worth living because God says so by the very fact that we exist.

It's well worth reading in its entirety. Not only because of the good padre's own articulation but also for the videos he has included demonstrating several individuals who have triumphed in spite of the physical obstacles they were born with.

(Big tip o' the hat to Mike Casteel for this terrific find!)

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Study finds link between autism and vaccines using cells of aborted children

Good. God.

How something like this has escaped my knowledge until now, I've no idea.

Did you know that two widely-used childhood vaccines were manufactured with cells taken from aborted fetuses?

I didn't either, until I read this article from LifeNews.com. It's about a just-published research study that has found a connection between the MMRII and chickenpox vaccines, and the dramatic rise in the rate of diagnosed autism.

From the article...

A new study conducted by the Environmental Protection Agency shows a correlation between the use of cells from babies in abortions in vaccines to an increase in autism rates. The study provides another problem from pro-life advocates who are already concerned about the abortion-vaccine tie.

The study, published in February in the publication Environmental Science & Technology, confirms 1988 as a “change point” in the rise of Autism Disorder rate.

"Although the debate about the nature of increasing autism continues, the potential for this increase to be real and involve exogenous environmental stressors exists," the study says.

The 1988 date is significant because, as pro-life blogger Jill Stanek notes, the Sound Choice Pharmaceutical Institute indicates that's when the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices added a second dose of the MMR vaccine, containing fetal cells from aborted babies, to its recommendations.

The study found two other change point dates: 1981, two years after MMRII was approved in the United States with fetal cells, and 1995, when SCPI says the chickenpox vaccine using aborted cells was approved.

Jim Sedlak, vice president of American Life League, said today that his group is joining SCPI in calling for a Fair Labeling and Informed Consent Act to let people know of this link and the use of cells from babies victimized by abortion.

“For years the evidence has pointed toward the link between vaccines using DNA from aborted babies and the rise of Autism Disorder rates,” he said. “Parents need and deserve to know the risks associated with vaccinations made from lines derived from the bodies of aborted children.”

After all these years and several court cases focusing on the mercury in vaccines as being the accused source of cases of autism, now it turns out that it was possibly something far, far worse that might have been behind the climb.

How does it feel, knowing that we have had our children "inoculated" with the dead remains of innocent babies?

I doubt that even Edgar Allan Poe, in his most feverish nightmare, could have come up with so horrific a thing.

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Scott Brown, the Republican Senator-elect, favors abortion "rights"

Read about it here.

How the hell is this going to make him any different than Ted Kennedy?

"But Chris, he couldn't get elected in Massachusetts if he were pro-life!"

There are more important things in this world than "getting elected".

I have said it before and I will say it again: the vast majority of the Republican party's leadership and elected officials do not care one iota about the abortion issue. And if they do, it's only because it never ceases to provide a carrot that gets to be dangled in front of "the faithful" to keep them voting GOP in elections.

It just so happened that this time the carrot was "health care reform", and that to many people that is more important than the abortion issue. Rather telling also, that Brown has publicly said he doesn't want the Supreme Court to overrule Roe v. Wade... and that alone tells me how much regard Brown has for the Constitution. A wiser person would have said that Roe v. Wade is the worst "legislation from the bench" ever and that abortion must be decided by the states for themselves and not the federal judiciary.

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The most horrific news story I have read all year

A Campbell County, Virginia woman gave birth and smothered her newborn child to death. But she won't face murder charges because the umbilical cord was not yet cut so legally it's not murder but abortion.

Officials say that the loophole in the law keeps them from pursuing charges.

God help us.

Read the story here at WSLS if you have the heart for it.

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New Republican head Steele: GOP should embrace pro-choice views, "gay marriage"

The only reason I'm really posting this is to illustrate something that I and many others have screamed ourselves hoarse about during the past several years: that there is no damned difference at all between the Republican and the Democrat parties in the United States.

In an interview with Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday, new Republican National Committee chairman Micheal Steele said that it was "important" for the Republican Party to "reach out" and embrace candidates who are pro-abortion and pro-"gay marriage".

(Incidentally, I have my own thoughts about that and I might articulate them someday in the near future, suffice it to say it's a perspective that's neither "conservative" or "liberal"... and a lot of my fellow Christians might find it a bit surprising.)

I think that this elicits a lot of questions. Obviously, how is what Steele suggesting for his own party, any different at all from the Democrat party? Why should anyone who is, say, very much pro-life believe that his or her stance is going to be represented by the Republican Party anymore, if it is willing to compromise itself on this issue? How does this demonstrate that the Republicans are out for anything other than political capital?

And I for one would like to pose a question to certain "conservative Christians" who I know are reading this blog (yeah I'm looking at you Ron Baity, Jeff Baity and the others from Berean Baptist in Winston-Salem): how in the world, in light of this, do you still maintain that you have to owe loyalty to the Republican Party, when it clearly no longer cares at all about you and other "evangelicals" or what values you hold to?

Maybe the United States owes the old Soviet Union an apology. At least communist Russia was honest about being run by a single political party. In America, most rubes are convinced that there are two parties and that somehow, they're "making a difference" by belonging to one or the other.

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A commercial you won't see during the Super Bowl tonight

CatholicVote.org attempted to buy airtime to run this thought-provoking spot during the Super Bowl tonight. But NBC refused, on grounds that the commercial time isn't for "political advocacy or issues". CatholicVote.org is quick to point out that People for Ethical Treatment of Animals already received approval for a racy and suggestive promo it created.

Here's the spot that CatholicVote.org came up with. I find it to be exceptionally powerful, and well within the bounds of good taste. And in my mind, there is no reason at all why NBC should have refused to run it...

Thanks to Geoff Gentry for the heads-up.

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