Posting from the Apple store using an iPod Touch. This whole wireless handheld internet thing is pretty awesome.

Takes a while to type, though, although I'm already getting better with the interface...

Jonah Goldberg notes this particularly thick and rich passage of media gushing over Obama and the "Kennedy legacy":

“With a voice filled with vigor and that unmistakable cadence, Ted Kennedy reached back to the 1960s and said the same sense of possibility and hope that carried his brother to the White House had found a new standard bearer....In the civic religion that is Democratic politics, the most treasured covenant was passed to the young Senator from Illinois.”

That almost qualifies as public indecency, doesn't it? And how interesting to see Democratic politics referred to as a "civic religion." That'll go a long way toward giving you a sense of what the Dems see as the role of the state. Liberal Fascism, indeed...

It turns out that Ezra isn't the only Levant to have been harassed by a Canadian "Human Rights Commission"...

Amidst the flurry of hype and hope over Obama, Allahpundit points out what may just end up being the Dems' Achilles heel in 2008:

In case you were wondering why his message is 10 parts gassy “change” to every one part specific policy proposals, here’s why. So successful has the Messiah been in focusing attention on his own charisma, oratory, and “narrative” and away from his actual record that even 20% of the readership of a site like this is willing (momentarily) to vote for him over McCain. How doctrinaire is he? He’s to the left of Russ Feingold. And moving leftward every year relative to his colleagues: He was the 16th-most liberal senator in 2005, 10th-most in 2006, and number one with a bullet now.

I suppose that the silver lining in the whole Fred-flameout and rise of McAmnesty thing is the fact that whoever the Republicans nominate will be running against one of the two most liberal senators the Dems have to offer. That's handing us some free ammo. We should send that party a fruit basket or something...

Note, if you will, a new link banner over in the sidebar to a site called Abort73.

The Sunday prior to last was Sanctity of Human Life Sunday in many churches in the US. I ran across that link while browsing through some resources that my church had made available to members of the congregation on the issue of abortion, including a little booklet from Abort73.

I'm about as pro-life as they come, and I'm pretty passionate about the debate once it gets going. I've long felt that the argument over abortion in America has been framed incorrectly from a moral standpoint. The pro-abortion side has, for a very long time, been quite successful in focusing attention on their buzzword of "choice," as if the choice made by a pregnant woman about whether or not to keep her baby was far more important than the life of the baby itself. And as long as the debate is focused on concepts like women's rights and the virtue of being able to make free choices, the pro-abortion side will always win - after all, who wants to oppress women, and who doesn't love freedom and the ability to make free choices?

And while in general, the right of free choice is important, it is not more important than the right to life. For instance, if you offend me, inconvenience me or wrong me in some way, I am not free to choose to kill you in response because the value placed on your life is (or should be) much higher than the value placed on my ability to choose a course of action to right the perceived offense, inconvenience or wrong. There is such a thing as a hierarchy of rights, because some rights are dependent upon others, and thus some rights trump others: The right to choose (or, put another way - the right to pursue happiness) is meaningless if you don't have liberty. And liberty is meaningless if you don't have life. Ultimately, all of our rights depend upon the fundamental right to life.

And so, since life is the most important fundamental human right upon which all other rights depend, the ultimate question in the debate over abortion must be this: when does human life begin? If abortion is a transaction that involves, as the pro-abortion crowd constantly claims, only a woman and her doctor, and the fetus is nothing but a non-human clump of cells and not a separate, living human person, then there's no problem. But if that fetus actually is a separate human life, we have a holocaust on our hands.

And that's exactly what the situation is. The only reason abortion is not recognized as a holocaust is because of the way the debate has been framed. The intrinsic value of the unborn child's life and the horrifying injustice of abortion have been obscured by all the talk of "women's rights" and "choice." And let's be frank: because abortions generally happen out of sight, and because a fetus doesn't necessarily "look human," and because we've never met the fetus and never will, well, it's easy to just not think about it too much.

The more I think about the abortion issue, the more chilling it becomes. And not only because of the millions of lives lost to the procedure, but also because of the corrosive effect that it has had on our society. When the Supreme Court made its huge error in legalizing abortion on demand, proponents of the procedure argued that there was no slippery slope, that this would not lead to legalization of assisted suicide and eventually active euthanasia, that abortion would never be taken so lightly as to become little more than a method of birth control, and so on. And yet, today abortion is primarily viewed as a method of birth control, assisted suicide is available in some jurisdictions and has many advocates, and medical professionals are even starting to talk about active involuntary euthanasia.

Back in 1995, I wrote the following:

We hear a lot in our society about the importance of “death with dignity.” Often this phrase is used in the promotion of physician-assisted suicide by people who argue that those with terminal illnesses should have the right to “hasten their death” in the face of suffering. In so arguing, however, advocates of assisted suicide reinforce the idea that those who suffer have no intrinsic value as human beings that would cause society to favor sustaining their life; and as a result they strip those who suffer of any dignity at all. They seem to say that the terminally sick and aged have no inherent dignity - but it can be earned by choosing suicide.

The assisted suicide movement - like so many well-meaning “compassionate” efforts - fails because it does not recognize the inherent worth of every man, woman, and child. Dignity and value are not commodities that rise and fall on some moral market in response to the fluctuations of human frailty. They are intrinsic to what we are as humans. They are a part of our very nature, as real a part of us as the blood that flows in our veins.

These thoughts come to mind as I read of the passing of Dame Cecily Saunders, the founder of the modern Hospice movement. Her life’s work has allowed countless individuals to face the end of their life with some amount of physical comfort, often in their own home surrounded by their loved ones. There is a profound truth at the core of the movement that she founded: that dignity in death comes not through the act of dying, but through the act of living one’s life to the fullest until death.

One of the most important concepts in Western society is that individuals are not granted rights by a government, but that individuals have been endowed with certain rights by their Creator. Because we are created in the image of God, we each have intrinsic value from the very first moment of our life to the very last. To chip away at that idea is to do damage to - and potentially to destroy - the foundation of every other right that we have. Abortion is nothing more than a chisel, chipping away at and cracking this fundamental foundation of our rights. It has been incredibly damaging to our society, and it will continue to do damage until we have the courage to see it for what it really is. Go look. How comfortable are you?

Dissecting Leftism notes this interesting passage in an editorial from Investors Business Daily:

We're so used to Democrats pushing tax hikes as the answer to all of America's problems that we were taken aback to find the following words buried in Pelosi's release on the stimulus deal: "Economists estimate that each dollar of broad tax cuts leads to $1.26 in economic growth."

Gee, that sort of sounds familiar. It's almost, though not quite, like what the much-reviled supply-side economists have been saying for, oh, 30 years or so.

Pelosi, and other Democrats now suddenly touting tax cuts, may be on to something. We might demur on the notion that all tax cuts must be "broad" to be effective. Evidence really lies more strongly with giving tax cuts to those who would start new businesses or expand old ones. But it's refreshing to hear a Democrat admit the obvious — that tax cuts work.

Also noted - this wonderful encapsulation of the whole stupid business:

"It's like taking a bucket of water from the deep end of a pool and dumping it into the shallow end. Funny thing -- the water in the shallow end doesn't get any deeper."

That's how George Mason University economist Russell Roberts describes the logic -- rather, illogic -- of the economic "stimulus" proposals that everyone and his uncle are proposing.

In the end, sure - I'll take my money back from the idiots in Washington. It's just too bad that they take it in the first place to do moronic things like this "economic stimulus package."

Since Fred dropped out of the race, I've moved over to the Romney camp. I'm not thrilled at all with the choices available to us this year in the presidential race, Mitt included, but at least he's better than McCain, who has conservatives wary because of stuff like this:

"Wouldn't it be great if you get a chance to name somebody like Roberts and Alito?" one lawyer commented. McCain replied, "Well, certainly Roberts." Jaws were described as dropping. My sources cannot remember exactly what McCain said next, but their recollection is that he described Alito as too conservative.

Meanwhile, anti-tax activist Grover Norquist is worried because a prominent journalist informed him that a few years ago McCain said to him, off the record, that as president he would have to raise taxes. More recently McCain has told me, on the record, that he would never support a tax increase and, consequently, favors making the Bush tax cuts permanent.

This election is going to be a massive mess no matter who wins, I fear...

Thanks to my pseudo-webmaster Jonathan, I've managed to add a tag cloud to the sidebar, which makes me happy.

The New York chapter of NOW has this to say about Teddy Kennedy and his choice to endorse Obama:

“This latest move by Kennedy, is so telling about the status of and respect for women’s rights, women’s voices, women’s equality, women’s authority and our ability – indeed, our obligation - to promote and earn and deserve and elect, unabashedly, a President that is the first woman after centuries of men who ‘know what’s best for us.’”

HISSYFIT! Via Ace.

Update: gang rape?!?

Nearly perfect:

It'd been a while since I'd seen this...

Specifically, letters from lawyers demanding retractions. Fortunately, Ezra also responds to said letters:

3. I am not a physician, but I can assure you that my discovery of Soharwardy will be fairly described as proctological.

All that in a good post on the media and defamation law...

This is what I call a target rich environment.

Iowahawk got ahold of Ezra Levant's interrogation report from the AHRC:

Defendant says some snippy remark about "irony of 'Human Rights' Commission." I tell him he is entitled to his opinion. He says "I wish that were a fact," all smart-alecky. I hand him AHRCC Pamphlet 7401, "Your Canadian Rights To Keep Your Opinion To Yourself."

There is, of course, a big debate going on in DC right now about an "economic stimulus" package that will supposedly include a bunch of rebate checks for all of us poor lil' taxpayers out here that we will then turn around and spend, thus stimulating the economy. And naturally, there is now a major bare-knuckle brawl over who exactly will be eligible to receive a "rebate":

Bush’s tax cuts means that no taxes are paid by, in Hillary’s words, “the 50 million Americans who most need an economic shot in the arm.”...

...Actually, not only did the Bush tax cuts shift the burden of taxation from the poor to the rich, but President Bush pushed 50 million working Americans off the federal income tax rolls entirely.

That’s double the number of workers who paid no federal income tax at the end of her husband’s term.

And under Bush, the child tax credit doubled, meaning millions of Americans pay a negative income tax.

How do I know this? From the anti-Bush rhetoric from Mrs. Clinton this weekend. Although the details of the stimulus package have not been made public, Bush apparently cut a deal. His tax cuts will be made permanent in exchange for a tax rebate.

But that will be an income tax rebate.

But 50 million Americans pay no income taxes. A few of them are in the upper half of workers, I suppose, but the alternative minimum tax is supposed to catch them.

Most are in the bottom half of earners.

Which explains the weekend demagoguery by Mrs. Clinton.

“For the White House to propose spending over $100 billion to jumpstart the economy, while shortchanging assistance to the 50 million families who are struggling the most and are most likely to inject those funds into the economy makes no sense,” she said in a press release. “The Bush approach would fail to fully help the millions of lower income senior citizens who live on fixed incomes and are under enormous financial stress. And it would disproportionately leave out African American and Hispanic families who have, on average, lower incomes than white families.”

The reason [they] get no rebate is they pay no federal income taxes.

Emphasis mine. Remember, if you don't pay taxes, you don't get a "rebate" check from the government. You get welfare. Or, put another way, you get a bribe. It is, after all, an election year.