The Right Lane updaate 5.04.13

The pursuit of Constitutionally grounded governance, free markets and individual liberty

"There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily." --George Washington

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Charles Krauthammer: The embarrassing fall of President Obama By Charles Krauthammer

Fate is fickle, power cyclical, and nothing is new under the sun. Especially in Washington, where after every election the losing party is sagely instructed to confess sin, rend garments and rethink its principles lest it go the way of the Whigs. And where the victor is hailed as the new Caesar, facing an open road to domination. And where Barack Obama, already naturally inclined to believe his own loftiness, graciously accepted the kingly crown and proceeded to ride his re-election success to a crushing victory over the GOP at the fiscal cliff, leaving a humiliated John Boehner & Co. with nothing but naked tax hikes. Thus emboldened, Obama turned his inaugural and State of the Union addresses into a left-wing dream factory, from his declaration of war on global warming (on a planet where temperatures are the same as 16 years ago and in a country whose CO2 emissions are at a 20-year low) to the invention of new entitlements -- e.g., universal preschool for 5-year-olds -- for a country already drowning in debt. To realize his dreams, Obama sought to fracture and neutralize the congressional GOP as a prelude to reclaiming the House in 2014. This would enable him to fully enact his agenda in the final two years of his presidency, usually a time of lame-duck paralysis. Hail the Obama juggernaut. Well, that story -- excuse me, narrative -- lasted exactly six months. The Big Mo is gone. It began with the sequester. Obama never believed the Republicans would call his bluff and let it go into effect. They did. Taken by surprise, Obama cried wolf, predicting the end of everything we hold dear if the sequester was not stopped. It wasn't. Nothing happened. Highly embarrassed, and determined to indeed make (bad) things happen, the White House refused Republican offers to give it more discretion in making cuts. Bureaucrats were instructed to inflict maximum pain from minimal cuts, as revealed by one memo from the Agriculture Department demanding agency cuts that the public would feel. Things began with the near-comical cancellation of White House tours and ended with not-so-comical airline delays. Obama thought furious passengers would blame the GOP. But isn't the executive branch in charge of these agencies? Who thinks that a government spending $3.6 trillion a year can't cut 2 percent without furloughing air traffic controllers?

Looking not just incompetent at managing budgets but cynical for deliberately injuring the public welfare, the administration relented. Congress quickly passed a bill giving Obama reallocation authority to restore air traffic control. Having previously threatened to veto any such bill, Obama caved. He signed. Coming immediately after Obama's spectacular defeat on gun control, it marked an administration that had lost its "juice."  For Obama, gun control was a political disaster. He invested capital and got nothing. An assault-weapons ban lost 60-40 in a Senate where Democrats control 55 seats. Obama failed even to get mere background checks.  All this while appearing passive on the world stage. On Syria, Obama was nervously trying to erase the WMD red line he had so publicly established. On Benghazi, he stonewalled accusations that State Department officials wishing to testify are being blocked. He is even taking heat for the Boston bombings. Every day brings another revelation of signals missed beforehand. Now, the screw will undoubtedly turn again. If immigration reform passes, Obama will be hailed as the comeback kid. This will overlook the fact that immigration reform has little to do with Obama and everything to do with GOP panic about the Hispanic vote. Nonetheless, whatever happens, the screw will surely turn again, if only because of media boredom. But that's the one constant of Washington political life: There are no straight-line graphs. We live from inflection point to inflection point. And we've just experienced one. From king of the world to dead in the water in six months. Quite a ride.

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How Can You Punish an Evolved Criminal?

Left-leaning scientists have never given up on the 19th century notion that criminals are born, not made.  Other evidence suggests “innate tendencies” can be overcome. PhysOrg says, “Evil gene would make punishment a tricky business.”  But is there really a gene for evil?  Someone is making that case again. Are there evil genes or is it only people who can be evil? A recent story in The Age (“Deep Divide of ‘Evil Genes’”) raised the question of whether criminals might evade responsibility for their crimes by blaming their genes.

Acknowledging this is a “troubling notion” because it might excuse the Nazis, PhysOrg nevertheless gave author Julia Llewelyn Smith space to propagate an old view that criminals have genetic tendencies that make them more likely to turn to crime than others.  In this case, the gene in question has a name:

An example of a so-called “evil gene” might be the low activity MAOA gene. MAOA is a neurotransmitter in the brain and some research has suggested that those males who have low levels of the substance are particularly vulnerable to the effects of being maltreated when young.

The article wallowed in notions of criminal law and free will, but made it seem like society has no right to punish those who have genes that incline them toward crime.  Science Daily, similarly, claimed that psychopaths are “not neurally equipped to have concern for others.”  That may be, but if it’s due to a physical cause in the neurons, it is not mental illness. PhysOrg then posted another article by two evolutionists, Jason Roach and Ken Pease, who wrote a book titled Evolution and Crime that tries to use evolutionary theory to explain criminal behavior. An understanding of the evolutionary process – who we are as a species and where we have evolved from – can also explain how and why legal systems have developed, as a means of regulating competition between individuals. Dr Roach has also explored empathy and altruism – unique to human beings – and how they function as protective factors to mitigate anti-social behavior. Another article posted the same day on PhysOrg, however, called into question the models evolutionary behaviorists use to evaluate altruism.  Experiments with human subjects playing games often ignore other factors that bias the results, thus casting doubt on Roach’s confidence about “understanding of the evolutionary process.”

Notions that criminals are born, or that they evolved according to social game theory, fail to acknowledge the power to change.  Science Daily wrote, “Faith in God Positively Influences Treatment for Individuals With Psychiatric Illness.”  If psychiatric illness is innate like the “evil gene,” why would faith in God help?  But it does: “Belief was associated with not only improved psychological wellbeing, but decreases in depression and intention to self-harm,” a psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School said. Evolutionists need to get out of their ivory towers in academia and visit a church.  If they really want to see the power of God to change lives, they should look into some of the dynamic prison ministries conducted by Bible-believing churches.  The vibrant prison ministry at Grace Baptist of Santa Clarita, California is just one example.  The results of their bringing the gospel of Jesus Christ into minimum– and maximum-security prisons are so astonishing, city officials welcome them into the jails and want their efforts to expand all around Los Angeles.  Guards watch in amazement as former riotous, dangerous inmates turn meek as lambs, truly repentant for their crimes, hungry for the word of God, eagerly listening to the preachers and inviting their fellow inmates to come.  When they get out, most of them stay out, without the high recidivism rates that plague secular programs.  Lives are being transformed by the gospel every day. Even today, April 26, Grace Baptist church is helping reconcile inmate fathers with their children, bring tears of joy to broken families. The late Chuck Colson with his Prison Fellowship ministry saw similar results around the world, in some of the worst prisons.  One particular prison in South America, known as a hopeless death trap, turned into a cathedral of light when the gospel came.  These stories were told by Colson and Nancy Pearcey in How Now Shall We Live?   Need proof of God’s existence?  Watch His power to make saints out of sinners through His gift of salvation and the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit.

What does evolution offer, by contrast?  “Tough Luck.  They can’t help themselves.  They’re genetically conditioned to do what they do, so don’t hold them responsible.  They’re pawns in evolutionary games.  It’s all just a big game anyway.  Turn ‘em all loose.”  Failed evolutionary theories have left a long trail of suffering that blames society, leaves the victims heartbroken and angry, and offers no hope for the perpetrators.  You can read about the history of these useless, harmful, ugly theories and their bitter consequences in Darwin Day in America by John West. Scientists can test physical laws in the lab, but they cannot fathom the human heart.  While evolutionists continue to write useless, speculative books about what they don’t understand, doing no good to anyone, Christian ministers are bringing the power of God into prison and are seeing miraculous results.  It makes sense that the Maker knows what man needs.   Darwin or Christ: choose you this day whom you will serve.

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Here They Go Again: Leftists Victims of Self-Manufactured ‘Hate Crimes’ By Teri O'Brien

Here’s some stunning news. The most recent “hate crime” against a liberal activist, this time against some woman named Meg Lanker-Simons was committed by – wait for it – Meg Lanker-Simons. What are the chances, not only that some lefty wackjob would have one of those goofy hyphenated names, but that she would make stuff up? From the Daily Caller: “A student at the University of Wyoming has been charged with interference with a police investigation after she allegedly posted on an anonymous social media page that she would like to engage in angry sexual intercourse with someone named “Meg Lanker Simons.” It gets better. Also from the Daily Caller:

The Casper Star-Tribune reports that Lanker-Simons and Weather Underground radical Bill Ayers (emphasis mine) sued the University of Wyoming after school officials decided to cancel a speech by Ayers. The same story suggests that Lanker-Simon admitted to pointing a gun at her employer in 2005. A blog apparently belonging to Lanker-Simons, entitled Cognitive Dissonance, received an award nomination from the leftist website ThinkProgress for her work liveblogging the entire GOP primaries. The Pinterest page for Lanker-Simons describes her as “a 28-year-old undergrad at the University of Wyoming.”

Bill Ayers? He’s everywhere! Apparently, Barack’s mentor, the unrepentant domestic terrorist and probable author of Dreams from My Father, has his dirty fingers in every leftist pie in the country. That’s not surprising, of course. He’s a respected “educator,” whose Amerika-hating philosophy has infected virtually every institution of higher learning in the country. One of his cohorts, cop killer Kathy Boudin, was recently rewarded with a teaching post at Columbia University.  But I digress. Why would Ms. Wanker–I mean–Lanker-Simons, so outstanding a liberal that she was nominated for an award for her fabulous activist journalism, perpetuate this silly hoax? That’s really the wrong question. Given liberals’ propensity for faking “hate crimes” against themselves, the real question is what took her so long? Concocting wacky, and sometimes very creative, scenarios in which they are victims of hideous racist, “homophobic,” or sexist “rape culture” – enabling attacks, and then doing their best to present them in a convincing fashion is one of the Left’s favorite plays. It’s as predictable as Joe Biden’s next gaffe, but every time it happens, the drill is the same: the Left’s comrades in the Lame Stream Media, collectively rendered as dumb as a box of rocks by years marinating in mind-destroying political correctness, take each of these incidents seriously, and dutifully recount each horrid detail, only to have to report a few days or weeks later that the whole thing was a crock. Maybe I am giving them too much credit. Maybe they are simply being good little apparatchiks, helping to serve the cause. Usually, these scams are motivated by the irresistible leftist impulse to manufacture evidence for what they “know” to be true. “Everybody knows” America is “racist, sexist, homophobic,” but in the absence of any actual proof, it must be constructed out of whole cloth. Think Dan Rather’s “fake but accurate” documents. Dan and his peeps knew, and still know, that George W. Bush was a draft-dodging, lying chicken hawk. What’s a few forged documents in the service of proving that undeniable fact? Regardless of the reason, these hoaxes happen with a ridiculous degree of regularity. Consider the following list, which is by no means exhaustive, of leftwing loons who claimed to be victims of “hate crimes,” only to be exposed as the perps:

·       Stripper Gate: Duke LaCrosse Case

·       That’s Noose to Me: The Plagiarizing Prof Cries Racism
Professor Madonna Constantine supposedly found a noose on her office door. No, actually, she did. The problem is that she put it there.

·       I’ve Fallen and I Can’t Get Up: Tawana Brawley
Of course no one could forget the case the helped Rev. Al Sharpton make his bones, in which 15 year-old Tawana Brawley was allegedly raped, smeared with feces and covered with racist slogans. Despite the fact that the “crime” was demonstrated to be a hoax,

·       Daddy, I Hate This School! It’s Full of Scary Racists (Like Me)!
Chicago native Alicia Hardin, 19, an African American woman, was charged with a hate crime and disorderly conduct after confessing to sending three letters that contained racial slurs and threats against minority students at Trinity International University in Deerfield, Illinois.

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Sex Ed: Education or Indoctrination? By Wes Walker

Whether you think this social experiment has been successful must depend upon what you think their goal was. But taken at face value, Sex Ed has been an abject failure. Wasn’t “clarity” the original argument for Sex Ed?  Clarity, to keep little Mary from believing she’d be “with child” from kissing a boy or using a public restroom?  Clarity, in the cause-effect relationships between coitus, pregnancy and certain diseases; so that someone would understand the stakes before they “get busy”? Wasn’t it supposed to serve as a source of reliable information so that kids don’t rely on schoolyard whispering, bawdy jokes, and contraband magazines if their parents were unwilling (or unable) to properly instruct children concerning sexual maturity and practice.  Don’t forget, these classes began long before a few mouse-clicks on the internet could provide such answers. If the role and extent of “Sex Ed” were to simply teach in a classroom the sorts of facts that any farm kid would already understand, there wouldn’t be much controversy.  But that isn’t really what is happening anymore, is it? In a time when students can barely function in mathematics or language arts, when science is praised, but poorly taught, and when students have a weaker grasp of their founding documents than many naturalized citizens, shouldn’t we be demanding answers about how sex became “the” issue of primary importance in education?

USA has an abortion every 46 seconds; sexually-transmitted infectious diseases are becoming drug resistant. With all the talk about “safe sex”, people are still unaware that condoms are useless against HPV. Teenage moms are neither shocking nor rare.  Many children are raised without a father in the home.  The FBI estimates that nearly 300,000 youths are used in sexual slavery within the United States alone.  In Ottawa, three teenage girls face 74 charges — for forcing nine girls (ages 13-17) into prostitution. What has gone wrong?  Since the implementation of this Education Program, traditional categories of “male” and “female” have derailed, sexual disease and teen pregnancy (born alive, or aborted) is still frequent, massive numbers of youth are victimized by sexual predators.  Even the idea of sex as covenant intimacy between man and wife has been replaced by a cheapened understanding of sex, centered on physical pleasure. Teachers telling children what they “should” believe about sex is a flagrant abuse of their authority and privileged relationship; on par with telling a kid what religion they should or should not practice, without their parents present.  Sex ed has become less an exercise in education, and more an exercise of iconoclastic indoctrination.  Such clarity!  Now kids don’t even know which bathroom to pee in.  With this Sex Ed track record, kids could have better clarity by just watching the animals on a farm.

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Weekly Standard Publishes Benghazi 'Talking Points' Smoking Gun by Joel B. Pollak

The Weekly Standard has obtained "a timeline briefed by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence detailing the heavy substantive revisions made to the CIA’s talking points"--evidence that the talking points used by UN Ambassador Susan Rice were heavily edited by senior members of the Obama administration to hide the role of Al Qaeda in the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya on the evening of Sep. 11, 2012. Already, the House of Representatives report on the Benghazi attack referred to a series of emails "between top administration and intelligence officials" that were not included in the report itself but that were merely referred to, as part of a deal with the Obama administration to secure the confirmation of new CIA Director John Brennan. The emails reveal that officials "engaged in a wholesale rewriting of intelligence assessments." As Weekly Standard senior writer Stephen F. Hayes notes, the emails are evidence that the administration knew from an early stage--two hours into the attack--that "al Qaeda-linked terrorist group operating in Libya" was responsible. That information was known throughout various government agencies. And yet, by Sunday, Sep. 16, the story had been transformed into the now-infamous lie about an anti-Islam YouTube video.

Hayes presents three versions of the talking points to show the editing process. The first version, prepared by the CIA’s Office of Terrorism Analysis on Sep. 14, suggested that the attack was a "spontaneous" response to the protests at the U.S. embassy in Cairo, Egypt but added that "we do know that Islamic extremists with ties to al Qa'ida participated in the attack" and mentioned several other recent attacks in Benghazi. The CIA made some modifications to that draft to tone down references to Al Qaeda. Yet a State Department official--who the Weekly Standard claims was spokesperson Victoria Nuland--raised concerns. More changes were made, but Nuland was not satisfied, and White House officials--including presidential adviser Ben Rhoades, according to the Weekly Standard--became directly involved in the editing process. The second draft--prepared on Sep. 15, the Weekly Standard says, by CIA Deputy Director Mike Morrell--eliminated the references to "jihadists" and "Islamic extremists," as well as references to previous attacks in Benghazi. The changes removed any hint of the administration's possible failure to ignore previous warnings of the danger in eastern Libya, as well as any sense that the government knew Al Qaeda had been involved. The third and final draft, circulated later that day, suggested that "extremists" had participated in the attack on the consulate but described their involvement solely as a result of protests inspired by the protests in Cairo, leaving no indication that the attack was connected to terror organizations or previous assaults. It was that version, apparently, that allowed the White House to fill in the gap with the false video alibi. Later, Hayes recounts, when the video story began to unravel, the administration issued a statement through the Office of the Director of National Intelligence that suggested that new information had come to light about the role of terrorists in the attack. Yet the information was not new; it had been known from the very earliest stages of the attack. The Weekly Standard's report suggests a deliberate attempt to deceive the nation. The Obama administration has not yet made the email record of its discussions of the talking points fully available to Congress. Contrary to the protestations of former Secretary of Defense Hillary Clinton, those emails make a great difference to determining what went wrong on Sep. 11, how to fix it--and whom to hold responsible.

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"I now make it my earnest prayer, that God would have you, and the State over which you preside, in his holy protection, that he would incline the hearts of the Citizens to cultivate a spirit of subordination and obedience to Government, to entertain a brotherly affection and love for one another, for their fellow Citizens of the United States at large, and particularly for their brethren who have served in the Field, and finally, that he would most graciously be pleased to dispose us all, to do Justice, to love mercy, and to demean ourselves with that Charity, humility and pacific temper of mind, which were the Characteristicks of the Divine Author of our blessed Religion, and without an humble imitation of whose example in these things, we can never hope to be a happy Nation." --George Washington, circular letter of farewell to the Army, 1783

"[America's] glory is not dominion, but liberty. Her march is the march of the mind. She has a spear and a shield: but the motto upon her shield is Freedom, Independence, Peace. This has been her declaration: this has been, as far as her necessary intercourse with the rest of mankind would permit, her practice."

--John Adams, Speech on Independence Day to the House of Representatives, 1821

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