No protection for conscientious objectors

President Obama wants to rescind a Bush administration rule that strengthened job protections for doctors and nurses who refuse for moral reasons to perform abortions.

A Health and Human Services official said Friday the administration will publish notice of its intentions early next week, opening a 30-day comment period for advocates, medical groups and the public. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the notice has not been completed.

The Bush administration instituted the rule in its last days, and it was quickly challenged in federal court by several states and medical organizations. As a candidate, Obama criticized the regulation and campaign aides promised that if elected, he would review it.

The news that he was doing so drew praise from abortion-rights supporters and condemnation from groups opposed to abortion.

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On Hope - FDR or BHO?

"Throughout the nation, men and women, forgotten in the political philosophy of the government of the last years look to us here for guidance and more equitable opportunity to share in the distribution of national wealth. On the farms, in the large metropolitan areas, in the smaller cities and in the villages, millions of our citizens cherish the hope that their old standards of living and of thought have not gone forever. Those millions cannot and shall not hope in vain." - FDR (1932)

California dreamin' may become a nightmare

Sen. Barbara Boxer is urging the U.S. to ratify a United Nations measure meant to expand the rights of children, a move critics are calling a gross assault on parental rights that could rob the U.S. of sovereignty.

The California Democrat is pushing the Obama administration to review the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, a nearly 20-year-old international agreement that has been foundering on American shores since it was signed by the Clinton administration in 1995 but never ratified.

Critics say the treaty, which creates "the right of the child to freedom of thought, conscience and religion" and outlaws the "arbitrary or unlawful interference with his or her privacy," intrudes on the family and strips parents of the power to raise their children without government interference.

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Embryos are fair game

WASHINGTON -- Expect an executive order soon from President Barack Obama on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research.

That's the word from White House adviser David Axelrod.

Under President George W. Bush, federal money for research on human embryonic stems cells was limited to those stem cell lines that were created before Aug. 9, 2001. No federal dollars could be used on research with cell lines from embryos destroyed from that point forward.
Federal rules do not restrict embryonic stem cell research using state or private funds.

Obama made it clear during the campaign he would overturn Bush's directive.

Axelrod tells "Fox News Sunday" that Obama right now is considering an executive order lifting the federal ban on funding.

Stem cells are the building blocks that turn into different kinds of tissue.

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Depression watch

The stock market crashed. Wall Street panicked. People stashed silver and gold under mattresses while businesses shut doors across America. We're talking, of course, about the Great Depression ... of 1873.

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Is independence from federal control - racist?

I was asked after the November elections if I thought that Obama's election would help race relations in the United States. At the time, I said no.

This was the kind of stuff I was afraid of:

COLUMBIA, S.C. -- The highest-ranking black congressman says opposition to the federal stimulus package by southern governors is "a slap in the face of African-Americans."

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A nation of cowards

WASHINGTON -- Eric Holder, the nation's first black attorney general, said Wednesday the United States was "a nation of cowards" on matters of race, with most Americans avoiding candid discussions of racial issues.

In a speech to Justice Department employees marking Black History Month, Holder said the workplace is largely integrated but Americans still self-segregate on the weekends and in their private lives.

Is their something wrong with voluntary, self-segregation? Are black Americans who attend historically black universities (e.g., Howard University) "cowards"?

A fool's mouth is his ruin, and his lips are a snare to his soul. - Proverbs 18:7

Tomorrow, I'm sure we will be told what he "really" meant.

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Better late than never...

Since we started this blog late, we hadn't posted this action on abortion.

President Obama on Friday [January 23, 209] lifted a ban on federal funding for international groups that promote or perform abortions, reversing a policy of his predecessor, George W. Bush.

Obama signed the executive order one day after the 36th anniversary of the landmark Roe v. Wade Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion in all 50 states.

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Deuteronomy 11:19

The nomination of David Ogden for deputy attorney general should concern homeschooling and any other Christian parents:

The most important reason to oppose Ogden’s nomination is his belief that the rules found in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child are already binding on the United States under the doctrines of international law.

In the Supreme Court case of Roper v. Simmons, 543 U.S. 551 (2005), Ogden argued in a brief that the rules banning the juvenile death penalty contained in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child were customary norms of international law “binding on all states.”

...

This means that Ogden believes that the legal rules contained in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child are already binding on the United States, even though this treaty has never been sent to the U.S. Senate for ratification.

Homeschoolers have long understood the dangers of this international treaty, which contains the core principle that the government may decide what it believes is best for each child without any proof of wrongdoing by the child’s parents. Ogden promoted the use of this UN treaty in the Supreme Court to reach the conclusion that America’s courts have the power to overrule state law, using international law as their guidepost for constitutional interpretation. Unfortunately, he was successful in doing so in the Roper case.

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If does make good economic sense, right?

This is from the February 9th townhall meeting that President Obama held in Indiana. My emphasis is added: Is the President talking about the families without money or the government that doesn't have the money?

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OBAMA: Now, that’s not just our moral…

(APPLAUSE)

That’s not just our moral responsibility to lend a helping hand to our fellow Americans at a time of emergency. It makes good economic sense. If you don’t have money, you can’t spend it. And if you don’t spend it, our economy will continue to decline.Now, for that same reason, the plan includes badly needed tax relief for middle-class workers and families.

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"Let your yes be yes"

At the very end of the presidential campaign Obama “proposed a $175 billion plan with tax-rebate checks for consumers as well as spending on school repairs, roads and bridges, aid to states, and tax credits for job creation.”

The current bill is not only spending 4.7 times what he promised in November, but gone are the tax-rebate checks and tax credits for job creation. The new additional programs have nothing to do with roads and bridges. Yet, a package that Obama never hinted at a couple of months ago is now considered sacrosanct. The Associated Press described Obama’s position on the stimulus plan this way: “Stopping just short of a take-it-or-leave-it stand, Obama has mocked the notion that a stimulus bill shouldn’t include huge spending.”

Take an emphatic promise that Obama made just a month ago, well after the heat of the presidential campaign had passed: “We are going to ban all earmarks — the process by which individual members insert pet projects without review.” That wasn’t a new promise. During the third presidential debate on October 15, 2008 Obama bluntly promised: “they need to be eliminated.”

But now take Obama’s testy defense of those same earmarks last Friday. Obama reportedly “also defended earmarks as inevitable in such a package.”

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In whom do we put our trust? God or man?

“A problem that was created by building up of too much debt will not be solved with yet more debt,” Gov. Mark Sanford said Sunday, making a reference to the federal deficit spending that will likely finance the federal stimulus package.

“We’re moving precipitously close to what I would call a savior-based economy,” Sanford also said Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union."

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Justice is served?

Obama recently signed an executive order that will close a military detention center at Guantanamo Bay (GITMO) within one year. Obama then met with families of some of the victims of terrorist attacks on our country telling them that, "closing Guantanamo will make our nation safer and help ensure that those who are guilty receive swift and certain justice within a legal framework that is durable."

Two questions:

1. Is our military court system not durable enough to handle war criminals?
2. How will granting terrorists the same rights to our legal system as American citizens make us safer?

Proverbs 21:15 notes that, "When justice is done, it is a joy to the righteous but terror to evildoers." I don't get the sense that there is joy among the righteous over this decision nor that the evildoers in this case are shaking in their boots over the terror of being subjected to our justice system.

Enslaved to Debt

Obama rejected calls for more tax cuts and significant slashing of the bill's more than $800 billion price tag, and said complaints the package was a spending bill rather than a stimulus bill were off base.

"What do you think a stimulus bill is?" he said. "That's the point."

To critics who argue that the government shouldn't be spending billions with a large and growing deficit, Obama said, "I found this national debt doubled, wrapped in a big bow waiting for me as I stepped into the Oval Office."

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Justice in the Justice Department?

The condemnation of Justice Department nominee David Ogden, who would be deputy to Attorney General Eric Holder, comes from Fidelis, a consortium of organizations working to promote religious freedom, values of human life and the institutions of marriage and the family.

"Ogden is an abortion-on-demand absolutist. He opposes common sense restrictions on abortion, including policies that have significant support from the American people, such as parental notification by minors," the organizations said in a report today.

Also, "Ogden is an absolutist on pornography and obscenity. He opposes common sense restrictions on the ability of pornography peddlers to sell their products. He believes pornography users have a constitutional right to view pornography at a public library."

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No money for prayer

Democrats in Congress have declared war on prayer, say conservative groups who object to a provision in the stimulus bill that was passed by the House of Representatives last week.
The provision bans money designated for school renovation from being spent on facilities that allow "religious worship." It has ignited a fury among critics who say it violates the First Amendment and is an attempt to prevent religious practice in schools.

Here's the full story.