What has it got in its pocketses? The Truth in Filibuster Polling

Did you ever hear poll results, and ask yourself, "Who the hell are they asking?" Get the feeling there must be something wrong with this picture? Brian at The Blue State Conservatives is exploring polling . . .tricksy polling. . .

Pure Genius: Cox & Forkum Editorial Cartoons

Take a look at Cox & Forkum today. Go now, and browse. You'll thank me.

Kyoto Protocol - Maybe We're Not Dooooomed After All

There's been a fair bit of discussion lately about the monotonously singular nature of political discourse at universities. Guess the scientific community is infected with the same drone-like mentality on the issue of global warming. If you think you might adopt the "let us eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die" strategy for dealing with our impending demise, you may want to pop over to Right Wing Nut House and take a look at what we've been missing - and why. There's more at LGF.

Escalating Viciousness of Anti-Christian Rhetoric

It was irritating enough before, this anti-Christian flap, what with police dramas depicting every ax-murdering wife-beating kidnapping pedophile as a twisted "Christian", quoting the Bible for justification. Or documentary "revelations" of "recent discoveries" of the secret sex life of Jesus Christ. And, of course, the sniggering attitude of superiority of a seeming hoard of news commentators presenting Christians as pitiable and addled. But lately, well, in case you've lived in some extraterrestrial place for the last year or so, here are some snippets:

Religious Divide In Politics Grows Venomous,
Richard N. Ostling shares this little gem in what is (in my opinion) a very fair-minded article in The Day (New London, CT). He's referring to the academic conference at the City University of New York on the real agenda of the religious far right:

At the CUNY conference, the central threat speakers raised was theocracy...Though one speaker lamented Roman Catholicism's new fundamentalist pope, the weekend's chief targets were evangelical Protestants whose tactics were compared with those of Machiavelli, Hitler, Stalin and Jim Jones of mass suicide fame.

HUMANISTS: US = DANGEROUS THEOCRACY = LIKE TALIBAN
J. Grant Swank, Jr. of MichNews.com puts his take on this new wave of left-leaning hysteria this way:

The United States is on the verge of destruction because of Christians. Christians are now the concerted enemy out to do in the nation. There is no doubt about it. Five hundred humanists gathering in New York said so. They are vehement. They are frightened.

I know. You picture the gentle and frail octogenarians on the steps of your local church, and you're tempted to laugh. But this is more than liberal looniness. Another snippet:

The Enemies of Religious Liberty, James Hitchcock:

The liberal state, Sadurski argues, should discriminate among religious groups on the basis of how progressive each is thought to be, and Rogers Smith insists in Liberalism and American Constitutional Law (1990) that religion can only enjoy constitutional liberties if it undergoes a basic transformation to make itself more rational or self-critical. Going further, Steven Macedo, who explicitly identifies his view as comprehensive, defines liberalism in The New Right Versus the Constitution (1987) as a permanently educative order for the preservation of liberal values and argues that the power of government can be legitimately used against illiberal churches because doing so promotes greater overall freedom.

Along the same lines, Smith asserts that society may overide people's commitments to particular religious groups if these commitments seriously restrain their members capacities and opportunities for reflective, independent choice. In other words, some private organizations, such as churches, should be restricted because their beliefs can be a danger to liberal values.

Aaahh. So the pointy-eared, dripping-fanged Christians aren't the only ones with an agenda, it seems.

The Left's "Dominionist" Demons
Don Feder of FrontPageMag.com reports Ken Salazar's revelation on the identity of the beast:

Last week, Colorado Senator Ken Salazar (a Democrat, naturally) told a radio interviewer that Dr. James Dobson and Focus on the Family "are the Antichrist of the world" for urging citizens to demand their senators vote to end the filibuster of Bush judges. (Aside: Imagine the furor if Jerry Falwell had called Hillary Clinton "the Antichrist.")

Salazar later amended himself to say Focus and Dobson's "approach was un-Christian, meaning self-serving and selfish." In effect, Salazar is saying that for a Christian group to attempt to get government to reflect Christian values is "un-Christian." If you say so, Senator....

And then Mr. Feder says something that I've been saying for awhile (only he says it better):

What The Protocols of The Learned Elders of Zion meant to anti-Semitism, Dominionism and Christian Reconstructionism are for the anti-Christian Left an attempt to stir up hatred by seeking to convince the unwary of a dark plot to take over the world or nation.

I've wondered which will happen first - outbreaks of violence against Christians, or revulsion on the part of fair minded people. So, needless to say, I was encouraged (and comforted, for the sake of the gentle and frail octogenarian on the steps of the local church) by James Taranto's column in the OpinionJournal, Why I'm Rooting for the Religious Right. He says he is neither a Christian, nor religious at all, and lays claim to the political middle. But in his column I heard - yup! - outspoken revulsion. Here he's speaking of the use of the filibuster to subvert the voting process for judicial nominees:

After following long-established rules for at least a quarter-century, they [Christian conservatives] can hardly be faulted for objecting when their opponents answer their success by effectively changing those rules.
This procedural high-handedness is of a piece with the arrogant attitude the secular left takes toward the religious right. Last week a Boston Globe columnist wrote that what he called "right-wing crackpots--excuse me, 'people of faith' " were promoting "knuckle-dragging judges."

So why is he rooting for the religious right? He says,

I am put off by self-righteousness, closed-mindedness, and contempt for democracy and pluralism--all of which characterize the opposition to the religious right. . . And the religious right includes not only Christians of various stripes but also Orthodox Jews and even conservative Muslims. Far from the sectarian movement its foes portray, it is in truth a manifestation of the religious pluralism that makes America great. Therein lies its strength.

Do you remember what it was like to have a dialogue, a stimulating and spirited exchange of opposing ideas, instead of this mindless and potentially dangerous escalation of hate? I hope this is the beginning of a trend, don't you?

Chinese Christians and the UNCHR

An article by Jason Lee Steorts in the NRO today demonstrates what is surely an abysmal - and instructive - lapse for the U.N. Commission on Human Rights. Christians in China have been persecuted for their faith for many years. I'm talking about the old-fashioned definition of persecution, not the current American one. That is, they are being arrested, jailed, tortured, or killed, not being disagreed with, made fun of, or ignored. But Bob Fu, the president of the China Aid Association, got a taste of UNCHR-style persecution when he gave a presentation at their 61st session in Geneva. Mr. Steorts writes:

One of the Chinese police's favorite torture devices, and one that has probably been used repeatedly on Cai Zhuohua is a kind of electric baton. Bob Fu owns such a baton, smuggled out of a Chinese prison. He took it to Geneva after obtaining permission from the secretary of the UNCHR to conduct a demonstration of it during his testimony. This demonstration consisted of Fu's holding it in the air over his head and turning it on for six seconds.

Predictably, the Chinese delegation went berserk, its members claiming that the demonstration made them feel threatened. (One is left to wonder how they would feel if the baton were actually used against them.) They then demanded that Fu be booted from the proceedings. The commission's chairman, obliging chap that he is, agreed. Fu was escorted from the building and stripped of his U.N. badge. His baton was also seized, and has not been returned.

[Cai Zhuohua is a pastor jailed for printing Bibles without Chinese government permission.]

According to a news release on the China Aid website, the Chinese delegation was "insulted". Well, there are worse things. Like the things that hoppened to Bob Fu, for example. From a press release on China Aid, in which Mr. Fu describes the incident, and addresses the chairman of the UNCHR:

Mr. Chairman, as a former Chinese Christian prisoner, I have held great respect and high expectations upon the UNCHR which is supposedly the highest authority and institution on this earth with the stated mission "to protect and promote human rights for all". However, given what I have experienced and testified, I think that certain countries with the poorest of human rights records and worst violators have managed to seize control of and cripple the functionality of the UN Commission on Human Rights and its Secretariat. The issue of reform of various UN bodies is being discussed in the U.S. and internationally. The time is ripe to consider fundamental reforms to restore the focus of this Commission to its original purpose and to remove control of the Commission from the worst violators.

Mr. Chairman, about nine years ago, I was forced into a police car and taken from my home to prison by the Chinese Public Security Bureau in Beijing for alleged "illegal religious activities." Sadly, this is the second time I have been put into a police car and it was done by UN security guards. The only reason I was treated like that was because of a complaint filed by representatives of torturers. That very torture device is being widely used even today, at this moment, against hundreds of thousands of victims of conscience. As the device is described in its specifications it is an "an ideal tool for the Chinese law enforcement officials."

Human rights violations, including torture against those prisoners of conscience and religious beliefs in China, should be stopped immediately. Before we can accomplish that, we must first reform the very institution designed to protect human rights for all. An institution that even now is intolerant of demonstrating the torturers' cruel device.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
­­­­­­­

In all my life, I've never heard a 'thank-you' that has reverberated with more irony than that one.

lgf: France Backs China on Taiwan

Just when you thought you'd run out of reasons to dislike the French...
France Backs China on Tiawan. Well, business isn't so good in Iraq these days. Guess Reffarin's trying to drum up new unholy-alliance weapons deals. But, of course, the fault will be with the U.S., no?

Filibuster for the "Protection of Minorities"?

Only when it's convenient, evidently. According to Robert Novak of the Chicago Sun Times:

Liberal Democrats, who now extol the filibuster to protect minorities, were in the forefront advocating strict majority rule through most of my nearly 48 years as a reporter covering Congress. As recently as 2000, architects of the filibuster strategy to block President Bush's judicial nominees -- with Democrat Bill Clinton still in the White House -- were demanding straight up-or-down votes on judges.

(Via RealClearPolitics)

(True confession: I used to have a big dog. Every so often, I'd go to the yard to pick up dogshit. No matter what you do, if you have a dog, there it is, this distasteful chore. In the same way, I'm finding it hard to attend to the blatently self-serving, hypocritical, character assassinating lies of the left. The difference? Well, there's the obvious upside to having a dog, and on balance, dogshit is only moderately offensive.)

More Minuteman Project Fuss: The Rottweiler Sniffs Out ACLU Antics

The Minuteman Project, ("a citizens' neighborhood watch along our border") has had its share of opposition, including threats from terror-connected gangs. Now there are accusations, albeit unsubstantiated, that volunteers for the ACLU, having decided to "monitor" the Minuteman Project at the border, is actually assisting those attempting to cross the border. See The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: More ACLU Antics. (Question: Now that the ACLU is concerned with Mexican civil rights vs. the interests actual American citizens - do we call 'em the MCLU?? Or maybe the A in ACLU referred to the continents of the Americas and not the U.S? The C./M./U.S./S.A.CLU? Oh, nevermind.)

Cuban "Healthcare" - Viewer Discretion Advised

The Black Informant exposes a very different view of Castro's so-called "excellent [free] healthcare" than the official Cuban description leads us to believe, in The miseducation of American Negroes on Cuba. (The photos are shocking. Brace yourself.)

On the Subject of Anti-Christian Bigotry (again)

Hugh Hewitt is looking for outbreaks of "religiousrightitis", a term evidently coined by Mr. Hewitt himself (I may be wrong about this - if so, comments are open) to describe the vitriolic verbiage aimed at Americans who dare to adopt a Judeo-Christian value. Surely you know the kind of thing he's talking about, but in the event that you don't, he gives examples. I'm not quoting any of it, because I want you to GO READ HIS POST! (Pushy, no?)