a long lonely lonely time...

I've been AWOL for a long time, so I'm going to post a long, rather rambling, commentary here.

This one post will couple several of the things I've noticed over the past 10 days.

This article discusses the wooing of Bob Casey Jr. Kate Michaelman’s quote is amazing.

"It is a problem when leading Democrats publicly recruit candidates who do not share the core values of the party," Democratic consultant Kate Michelman, the former head of the abortion rights group NARAL, said Thursday. "I don’t think you ever win in the long term by sacrificing core principles. The right wing has never done that."

Really? This, this, and this, to name a few, must be my imagination.

But seriously, she promotes abortion on demand as a "core value"? Wow. That should win votes in national elections.

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Richard Cohen wonders how "Scalia himself would feel if, instead of the Ten Commandments, a representation of another religion were placed in the courthouse lobby."

Gee, I wonder if we could look around the United States and find an example....

Well, how about a state with a religious symbol on its flag, state seal, police cars, etc.?

It’s called Utah, and the religious symbol is a beehive.

If you can find one example of Scalia suggesting that, despite the historical relationship between Mormonism and Utah, the beehive needs to be removed from state property because it may cause other denominations to feel excluded or offended, I’ll send a donation to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

In fact, if you read the Smith decision it is quite easy to draw a corollary to Catholicism and presume the rationale would hold true if a priest were to be prosecuted after serving alcohol to a minor at Mass.

Scalia’s jurisprudence is not easily pigeonholed as "If I want it badly enough, it must be written in the Constitution" and it is unfair for Mr. Cohen to presume it is. Perhaps this assumption on his part says more about his views of how a judge thinks than how Scalia actually does think.

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Teresa Heinz Kerry is back in the news. It is worth reading the whole article and realizing that Jon Stewart actually said it would be harder to make jokes about the administration if Kerry won the election. Come on! Mrs. Kerry gives three nights of material every time she opens her mouth.

Frankly, I thought marrying her was one of the most endearing things Senator Kerry has done.

Seriously. I’m not poking fun at her.

Anyway, she is quoted in the article complaining that "You cannot have bishops in the pulpit -- long before or the Sunday before the election -- as they did in Catholic churches, saying it was a mortal sin to vote for John Kerry."

Of course, that quote has to be out of context, right? Or maybe garbled. We "cannot"? Why?
Mrs. Kerry seems to have meant it, and she gives an answer: "The church has a right and obligation to teach values," Heinz Kerry declared. "They don't have a right to restrict freedom of expression, which they did."

So by speech (and only through speech - unless there is an incident where Kerry was actually turned away from the Communion rail that I missed), the Church has found a way to "restrict freedom of expression."

But interestingly, saying the Church must not say these things is not a restriction of their freedom of expression? Mrs. Kerry is free to say the Church must not speak against her husband’s stance on abortion, but she may speak against the Church’s speech on her husband?

That hardly seems fair, does it?

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OK, I stand corrected, not everything is a moral issue.

But procedural rules changes could be the exception that proves the rule...

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Here’s some interesting polling info on what is the "moral climate" - and posits that the red/blue divide may not be all there is to it.

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Why do I get the feeling that the far left feels it is OK to photograph these soldiers going for medical treatment to protest the war, but it is not OK to photograph, say, women going into an abortion clinic to protest abortion? I’ll be consistent and say that neither should be photographed.

But strange how folks who stand up for "privacy" are so willing to see it thrown away when convenient.

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This article calls for Democrats to embrace the moral values the right has sacrificed. Some of this article resonated with me, because (for example) compassion for the poor is something that the Republican party seems to have trouble evidencing (especially the "social liberals" who are "fiscally conservative"). But the he goes and blows his case with this comment:

"Jesus preached inclusion and compassion and included people who were considered outcasts in his society, such as lepers and prostitutes, among his followers. I am sure that he would have had compassion on gays and lesbians and would have condemned the recent effort to use the law to restrict their full rights as citizens."

Jesus did include lepers and prostitutes in his followers. But interestingly, they did not remain lepers and prostitutes. Mary Magdalene quit hooking. Lepers were cured. Tax collectors quit cheating people. Jesus taught that God’s love was open to all, yes. But God’s love did not excuse wrongs, rather it gave the strength to overcome wrongs.

Accepting this comparison of homosexuality and leprosy and prostitution for the moment (a disease and a lifestyle choice? Imagine if a conservative made this comparison! The gay rights movement would be on him or her in a heartbeat!), Jesus would have compassion on them, and expect what?