Here's a charming story.

Dr. Steven Brigham, 55, of Voorhees, N.J., lost his New Jersey medical license in 2010 after regulators discovered an arrangement under which he would begin second- and third-trimester abortions in New Jersey, and then have the patients drive themselves to Maryland the next day to complete the procedures.

In this case "begin" an abortion means killing a late-term baby in utero. But it must be okay, because Dr. Brigham is a licensed health care professional, right? Not so much.

Over two decades, Brigham’s medical licenses in at least four states have either lapsed or been taken away, amid complaints about botched late-term abortions, according to published reports.

Incredibly his lawyers say Maryland has no jurisdiction over this butcher, because the babies died in New Jersey. Not surprisingly, Brigham's New Jersey license prohibits him from performing late-term abortions, hence the drive to Maryland. Incredibly, his lawyers go on to argue that Maryland's law against fetal murder doesn't apply, because it leaves the final judgement of a baby's viability in the hands of the medical professional. So this doctor, who kills babies in one state, then has the mother drive them several hours for extraction the next day, is using his own "medical judgement" as his defense against his own lawlessness.

Occupy Oakland "Peace" Movement Continues

On January 14th, Occupy Oakland protesters initiated a series of weekly marches. The press characterized them as "mostly peaceful" but being mostly peaceful is kind of like being a little pregnant. Witness the strategy for the marchers:

In a statement before the march, the Occupy Oakland Tactical Action Committee had called property such as police and media vehicles and equipment fair game for destruction by their followers "if you really must risk your freedom by doing something of that nature."
The group did ask its followers to refrain from damaging private property of any kind, including Oakland's small businesses, or conducting any frontal assaults on police such as throwing bottles. The group added that "fire is fun," and encouraged its followers that "if you want to burn something in the street (that isn't someone's car), more power to you."

Since the 14th, it seems the protesters have gotten even more peaceful. Check out this report from last night, when 200 people were arrested:

"Officers were pelted with bottles, metal pipe, rocks, spray cans, improvised explosive devices and burning flares," the Oakland Police Department said in a statement. "Oakland Police Department deployed smoke and tear gas."

It wasn't even spontaneous violence. These clowns came prepared with flares, pipes, and IEDs. Calling them "mostly peaceful" is like calling a serial killer "mostly law-abiding" because he drives under the speed limit.

Update: Here's a more complete piece. Apparently, the protest went on all day and into the night, and there were more like 300 arrests.

"These demonstrators stated their intention was to provoke officers and engage in illegal activity and that's exactly what has occurred today," Santana said. [...]

Quan said that at one point, many protesters forced their way into City Hall, where they burned flags, broke an electrical box and damaged several art structures, including a recycled art exhibit created by children.

She blamed the destruction on a small "very radical, violent" splinter group within Occupy Oakland.

"This is not a situation where we had a 1,000 peaceful people and a few violent people. If you look at what's happening today in terms of destructing property, throwing at and charging the police, it's almost like they are begging for attention and hoping that the police will make an error."

These morons aren't even making any demands, beyond that they be allowed to continue pillaging. It's simply violence and vandalism for the sheer amusement of it all.

Another great moment for the "Occupiers."

A while ago I posted this summary of the extracurricular activities of the occupy Wall Street "community." Well, since being evicted from the public parks, they have apparently taken up residence in various houses of worship. And how are the beloved occupiers treating their new hosts? Not well. Not well at all.

Holy vessel disappears from church housing Occupy Wall Street protesters

There’s no longer room at the inn at a Manhattan church that’s sheltering Occupy Wall Streeters after a holy vessel disappeared from the altar last week. [...]

In Brooklyn, at another church housing OWS protesters, an occupier urinated on a cross, according to Rabbi Chaim Gruber, who has angrily abandoned the OWS movement.

Theft of Holy Relics and desecration. This is how the OWS movement treats the people helping them! Douchebags.

Image stolen from Ace of Spades. I got a kick out of it.

Two Presidents in One

"President Obama’s jobs council called Tuesday for an “all-in approach” to energy policy that includes expanded oil-and-gas drilling as well as expediting energy projects like pipelines."

(T)he U.S. State Department plans to announce it won't approve the controversial Keystone oil pipeline from Canada to Texas.

Shut up, he explained

This is what drives me nuts about the New York Times. Here's a piece in which the author attempts to find a few tidbits of virtue in conservatism:

What insights, principles, and analyses does this movement have to offer that liberals and Democrats might want to take into account?

I recently posed a question to conservative think tanks: If given a free hand, how would conservatives deal with the unemployed, those dependent on government benefits (food stamps, Medicaid), and, more generally, those who are losers in the new economy — those hurt by corporate restructuring, globalization and declining manufacturing employment?

He received links to five Heritage position papers and a recommendation that Paul Ryan's budget clearly demonstrates EXACTLY how a conservative might govern. But the author didn't like that, so he transmitted none of it, choosing only to provide links for readers to follow. No analysis, no insight, no conservative contribution to his thinking at all. Instead, he decided it would be better to ask liberals what they think of conservatives:

All the answers evaded the question posed and, in my view, amounted to ideological pap.

I decided it might be better to ask liberals what they liked about conservatism. I submitted a new question to a small group of academics and activists on the left: what does the right get right?

This is how conservatives are "understood" by the left. When we speak for ourselves, it is dismissed as "idealogical pap." Instead of actually listening to our pap, they choose to gather together more liberals and ask them what to think about us. It's a thoroughly intellectually shallow circle jerk, but I suppose it is more appealing to liberals than actually listening to the words and ideas of conservatives.

The Few. The Proud. The Cetaceans.

The Navy is sending in their trained dolphins to keep the Straight of Hormuz open:

"We've got dolphins," said retired Adm. Tim Keating in a Wednesday interview with NPR. Keating commanded the U.S. 5th Fleet in Bahrain during the run-up to the Iraq war. He sounded uncomfortable with elaborating on the Navy's use of the lovable mammals but said in a situation like the standoff in Hormuz, Navy-trained dolphins would come in handy

In this post I opined that left-wing mockery of the Santorum's grieving their premature child's death is rooted in defending their pro-abortion ideology:

This nonsense is all about abortion, folks. Even though the Santorums didn't have an abortion, the "pro-choice" crowd has become so invested in defending abortion rights by not recognizing an unborn child as a human being that they find it politically necessary to mock those that do.

Well, a couple hours later James Taranto at the Wall Street Journal came to the same conclusion:

Our surmise is that pro-abortion extremism is at the very root of the mockery. Under Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, a woman 20 weeks pregnant has a pretty much unlimited legal right to abort her child. That it should be so is an almost unquestionable tenet of contemporary liberalism.

To remain comfortable while adhering to this position, it is necessary to dehumanize such children--even to devalue them totally, treating them as having less moral standing then a pet. The reason "some" mock the Santorums' mourning of their very young child is to conceal from themselves the monstrousness of their own convictions.

Indeed.

The story of Rick Santorum's premature baby, who sadly died only a few hours after birth, is tragic. One can only imagine that sort of grief. What's disgusting and infuriating, though, is what his political enemies are saying about how Mr. Santorum and his family expressed their grief. First Alan Colmes:

In a discussion with National Review’s Rich Lowry about the political rise of Rick Santorum, Colmes refers to some of the “crazy things [Santorum has] said and done, like taking his two-hour-old baby who died right after childbirth home and played with it for a couple of hours so his other children would know that the child is real.”

Then Eugene Robinson:

"He's not a little weird, he's really weird," Robinson said of Santorum. "And some of his positions that he has taken are just so weird that I think that some Republicans are off-put. Not everybody is not going to be down, for example, with the story of how he and his wife handled the stillborn child. It was a body that they took home to kind of sleep with it, introduce it to the rest of the family. It's a very weird story."

This nonsense is all about abortion, folks. Even though the Santorums didn't have an abortion, the "pro-choice" crowd has become so invested in defending abortion rights by not recognizing an unborn child as a human being that they find it politically necessary to mock those that do. Even though this baby was actually born and managed to live for 2 hours, the Santorums are derided for grieving and treating it with dignity. Patterico is rightfully disgusted:

What Robinson has done, and what Colmes did the other day, is indecent. These men would never say such a thing to Santorum’s face. (Or maybe they would — which is possibly even worse.) What sickness has invaded our body politic that people feel free, not only to act the cretin, but to do so on national television while sporting insufferable, supercilious, self-satisfied smirks like those we have seen on the mugs of Colmes and Robinson in recent days?

In short: how dare they? How dare they?!

There is something wrong with a system that expects people to undergo such indignities to attain high office. I’m not a fan of Rick Santorum as a candidate, but the treatment he has received in recent days regarding an intensely personal decision is a disgrace.

Peter Wehner is similarly incensed, and makes the abortion connection as well, though from a different angle:

Robinson seems completely comfortable lampooning a man and his wife who had experienced the worst possible nightmare for parents: the death of their child. It is one thing to say you would act differently if you were in the situation faced by Rick and Karen Santorum ; it’s quite another to deride them as “crazy” and “very weird,” which is what commentators on the left are increasingly doing, and with particular delight and glee.

We are seeing how ideology and partisan politics can so disfigure people’s minds and hearts that they become vicious in their assaults on those with whom they have political disagreements. [...]

(I)t tells you something about the culture in which we live that in some quarters those who routinely champion abortion, even partial-birth abortion, are viewed as enlightened and morally sophisticated while those grieving the loss of their son, whom they took home for a night before burying, are mercilessly mocked.

A father's love

During my first 48 years, I never would have fully understood this story. Now, it brings tears, mostly of joy, to my eyes. Finally, I realize, I can understand and appreciate my own father more than ever before.

“A father puts others ahead of himself,” the Rev. Vander Woude said. “That was his belief. He never said that. He just did it. He loved being a husband and being a father. Pride, pleasure and possessions are where people go for happiness. But my father first thought of God, and the devotion to the family, the love, comes naturally from that.”

Comments Section

When I first started this blog, Blogger.com had a terrible commenting system. A popular workaround at the time was a system called "Haloscan," which provided a comments section and trackback feature that was a big deal back then. The code for Haloscan was embedded into the blog template automatically by their website.

Over the years, Haloscan was bought out and became terrible itself. Meanwhile, Blogger was bought by Google, who instituted a fairly good commenting section. But I was too lazy to change, because it involved going back into the template code and removing the Haloscan stuff while adding back the Blogger code that Haloscan had removed. I was afraid I would "break" the thing, which had become pretty stable and looked like I wanted.

Well, today I sucked it up and removed Haloscan. Blog comments are now hosted by Blogger, a part of the Google empire. I hope that makes things easier for those that might be inclined to leave a note. Thanks for reading.

Another Great Moment in Government

It's amazing anybody can run a business at all these days. Check out this government edict:

Employers are facing more uncertainty in the wake of a letter from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission warning them that requiring a high school diploma from a job applicant might violate the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The development also has some wondering whether the agency’s advice will result in an educational backlash by creating less of an incentive for some high school students to graduate.

Is there anything a government bureaucrat won't dictate?