Life Is Hard...

Eye Opening Abortion Reading...

... Can be found here. Superb excerpts:

"Every child should be a wanted child." Now that Roe is 30 years old, every person in America under the age of 30 could have been aborted. Every child is a wanted child - the unwanted ones were all aborted, to the tune of one abortion for approximately every three live births. So how come the rate of reported child abuse is so high? In the early years after Roe there were 60,000 cases of child abuse reported annually. Today there are three million cases reported annually, a fifty-fold increase. The reasons for this increase are debatable, but one thing's for sure, abortion didn't prevent it. Aborting "unwanted" children hasn't helped. Instead, it's taught us that an unwanted person has no right to live. A child might be wanted very much during pregnancy, and not-so wanted a few months later when she's crying in the middle of the night. But abortion has taught us that a child deserves to live only if her parent wants her. It's a bizarre principle for feminists to endorse, who were vigorously fighting on another front against the idea, "I'm nothing unless a man wants me."

"It's so small." When I first began to lean toward pro-life convictions, I had a hard time getting over how tiny the unborn is. How could something so little deserve human rights? I came to realize that that is an irrelevant, and even pernicious, consideration. Do children deserve less protection than adults, because they're smaller? Why would feminists advocate such a view? Most women are smaller than most men. Should a tall guy get to vote twice?

Futility of Drug War Made Manifest

According to this article in the New Jersey Star Ledger, heroin can now be brought into the United States almost undetectably. The new technology allows heroin to be saturated into clothing and then later extracted. After saturation, the clothing looks the same as normal, except for a slight increase in stiffness.

Stop The Madness: Decriminalize Now.

Fred: The Saga Begins...

Although this is my first Fred posting on this site, the people who count will already know who Fred is, and so I won't go into the details. Suffice it to say that the Adventures of Fred are something special, and worthy of being recorded for posterity. So here's the latest:

Apparently, when Fred was house hunting for a condo, he found a unit that he really liked. But, in typical Fred fashion, he was unable to commit to the purchase without hemming and hawing and eventually he walked away without making an offer. However, after thinking it over he decided to go ahead and buy the condo. Only, there was this little problem: the unit he wanted had been sold to someone else while he delayed!

But this is Fred we are dealing with, so we know that the story doesn't end here. Fred consulted the city records to figure out who had bought the condo he wanted, and then contacted her and made an offer to buy back the condo from her for several thousand more than what she paid for it! And she accepted!

This is actually watershed Fred behavior, because historically Fred can't work up the will to spend more than $300-$400 at a time. But apparently, when he really wants something he is willing to go all out.

Fascinating, really.

Isn't it about time?

DefenseTech has a link: More than 300 people trying to enter the country illegally have been stopped by a new fingerprint-scanning program. The program took effect in Semptember of 2002. Now why weren't we doing this all along?

Real Evidence of Discrimination

This is the most interesting evidence I have seen lately that discrimination is still alive. [CNN article on discrimination delisted. Abstract: A study found that job applicants with traditionally 'black' sounding names were less likely to get an interview than job applicants with 'white' sounding names. Otherwise, the submitted resumes were identical. -ed.] I don't know if there is any lesson to be learned, except maybe that I am less likely than ever to name my kids "Latisha" or "Beon."

Hillary Deserves a Break

According to this news wire story, the Canadian government want Hillary Clinton to apologize for comments she made about Canadian border security. The comments were in relation to the FBI manhunt for five potential terrorists, which as most of us know turned out to be a wild goose chase.

Well I'm on Hillary's side. Let there be no illusions about the security of our northern border: there is none. It was only a lucky chance that Ahmed Ressam was arrested before he could blow up Los Angeles Aiport. If Canada continues to welcome terrorists with open arms, then we need to rethink our relationship with our northern neighbor.

Hillary deserves credit for raising the issue, and the Cannucks can go soak their heads, eh?

Bush Has No Ill Effects From Smallpox Vaccine

See the report here.

Oldie but Goodie

This article from several months ago outlines the final findings of the SEC investigation into the Clinton / Gore fund raising scandals. Here are some salient excerpts:

The DNC was fined $115,000, the Clinton-Gore campaign $2,000, and the Buddhist Progress Society $120,000. In the conciliation signed by DNC lawyer Joseph Sandler, the party agreed to pay the fine and to "disgorge [another] $128,000" to the U.S. Treasury, representing illegal contributions that were not returned to donors.

In a separate document, the FEC said it decided to drop cases against contributors of more than $3 million in illegal DNC contributions because the respondents either are "out of the country and beyond our reach, or corporations that are defunct."

Race Baiting: A How-To Guide by the Democrats

Thank you, Deroy Murdock for this invaluable guide. My favorite line:

Governor Clinton was among three state officials the NAACP sued in 1989 under the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965. "Plaintiffs offered plenty of proof of monolithic voting along racial lines, intimidation of black voters and candidates and other official acts that made voting harder for blacks," the Arkansas Gazette reported December 6, 1989. It added: "the evidence at the trial was indeed overwhelming that the Voting Rights Act had been violated."

A three-judge federal panel ordered Clinton and Arkansas's then-Attorney General Steve Clark and then-Secretary of State William J. McCuen to redraw electoral districts to maximize black voting strength.

Even Arafat Knows

Touche, Calomino!

Even Arafat knows that the Palestinian conflagration is niether the cause nor the motivation for bin Laden and Al Quada.

(Exploiting the Palestinians: Everyone's doing it.
by Max Boot 01/13/2003, Volume 008, Issue 17 )

IN AN INTERVIEW LAST MONTH with Britain's Sunday Times, Yasser Arafat rebuked Osama bin Laden for seeking to exploit the Palestinians' cause for his own ends. "Why is bin Laden talking about Palestine now? . . . He never helped us. He was working in another, completely different area and against our interests," Arafat was quoted as saying. "I'm telling him directly not to hide behind the Palestinian cause."

But for the really good part, skip a few paragraphs:

On December 2, the Tel Aviv daily newspaper Ma'ariv printed a fascinating interview with a businessman and former military intelligence officer named Ozrad Lev. He claimed that he and his former business partner, Yossi Ginossar, had undertaken extensive and lucrative dealings with Muhammad Rashid, Arafat's chief financial adviser. In return for fat management fees, they set up Swiss bank accounts into which Rashid transferred more than $300 million of PA money, with Arafat's apparent authorization.  Lev said he decided to go public after $65 million mysteriously disappeared.

Who is Yossi Ginossar? ...Ginossar is a leading "dove" who sits on the executive board of the Peres Center for Peace... Ginossar's position as envoy to the Palestinians allowed him privileged access to the highest councils of power. He participated in the 2000 Camp David talks, where he pushed Barak to make greater concessions. And, according to the Jerusalem Post, when the Gaza Strip was declared a military zone and closed to Israeli travelers, Ginossar was chauffeured to Arafat's office in Shin Bet armored cars.

And people think I'm cold hearted because I oppose spending on foreign aid! I have to give Bush and Powell credit for wanting to establish some written qualification parameters. Enough with the unsupervised hand-outs.

Once again, tolerance for only "approved" speech

A newspaper reporter has been suspended for a week without pay in Florida, for saying the following:

"Except for Jordan and Egypt, no Arab nation has a peace treaty with Israel. They've had 54 years to get over it. They choose not to."

and also...

"I don't give a damn if Israel kills a few in collateral damage while defending itself. So be it."

The editor of the paper, in commenting on the suspension, had this to say: "[the comments] run counter to many of the values we hold dearest, among them tolerance, diversity and inclusiveness." (emphasis mine.)

Here we see true censorship at work, as political correctness wins out over speech that dares to be different.