Well, really, its far more than a phrase – its a rather long quote. But given that we are about to have a debate over Sotomayor and this, in turn, is bound to bring up Roe and the overall Life issue, it is worthwhile to step back in time when the issue wasn’t whether or not we should rip unborn babies to pieces, but whether or not we should use methods to prevent pregnancy:

…I despise Birth-Control because it is a weak and wobbly and cowardly thing. It is not even a step along the muddy road they call Eugenics; it is a flat refusal to take the first and most obvious step along the road of Eugenics. Once grant that their philosophy is right, and their course of action is obvious; and they dare not take it; they dare not even declare it. If there is no authority in things which Christendom has called moral, because their origins were mystical, then they are clearly free to ignore all the difference between animals and men; and treat men as we treat animals. They need not palter with the stale and timid compromise and convention called Birth-Control. Nobody applies it to the cat. The obvious course for Eugenists is to act towards babies as they act towards kittens. Let all the babies be born; and then let us drown those we do not like. I cannot see any objection to it; except the moral or mystical sort of objection that we advance against Birth-Prevention. And that would be real and even reasonable Eugenics; for we could then select the best, or at least the healthiest, and sacrifice what are called the unfit. By the weak compromise of Birth-Prevention, we are very probably sacrificing the fit and only producing the unfit. The births we prevent may be the births of the best and most beautiful children; those we allow, the weakest or worst. Indeed, it is probable; for the habit discourages the early parentage of young and vigorous people; and lets them put off the experience to later years, mostly from mercenary motives. Until I see a real pioneer and progressive leader coming out with a good, bold, scientific programme for drowning babies, I will not join the movement. – G K Chesterton

Chesterton was, of course, being tongue in cheek at the last, but the truth he wrote all those years ago about so-called birth-control applies to the issue of abortion – or, of course, “choice”, as our cowardly progressives of 2009 term it. Just as back then, so today: if there is no divine law against killing unborn children – and there must not be, if we are to do it – then the entire concept of inherent human dignity and rights goes right out the window…and why, then, should we allow any but the most physically and mentally fit to breed? As Chesterton asked, are we not likely allowing our best human specimens to eschew breeding and leaving the creation of the next generation to the weakest among us?

Human life is either inherently valuable and endowed by God with certain, unalienable rights, or it’s not. If you hold to the view that elective abortion is licit, then you are holding to the view – even if you don’t want to admit it – that there is no such thing as a human right…merely human privileges, revocable by the group at will.

About time this particular battle is joined in earnest:

The apologetics organization Catholic Answers has filed suit against the Internal Revenue Service claiming the federal tax collection agency has “intimidated” churches and non-profit groups into silence on politically controversial moral issues.

In an announcement posted at the organization’s web site, Catholic Answers president Karl Keating explained that the IRS fined the group for a 2004 e-letter it wrote saying that Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry should not be allowed to receive Holy Communion.

Keating charged that Francis Kissling, then-leader of the pro-abortion front group “Catholics for a Free Choice,” had instigated the IRS action with a complaint.

He said Kissling “hated” Catholic Answers’ “Voter’s Guide for Serious Catholics,” which aimed to educate Catholics on issues such as abortion. However, the guide did not mention any candidates or political parties and was cleared of any violations by the IRS.

According to Keating, the IRS did rule that the e-letter’s remark about Sen. Kerry was “intervening” in the election, a charge Keating called “preposterous.”

He said the IRS has been using “very vague criteria” to “intimidate” churches, non-profits and ministries into “silence” on controversial moral issues.

“The intimidation has become so bad that nowadays, most churches and non-profits in America are scared to death even to talk about moral issues that are deemed ‘political’ (such as abortion).”

Especially now that we have a Democrat in the White House – and a long and troubling history of Democrat Presidents using the IRS to attack opponents – we must ensure that religious groups, as religious groups, are able to speak out on issues of the day. Religious groups must have full freedom of speech – able to speak out about candidates, parties and issues without let or hindrance from any government entity. We’ve gone far enough in forcing religion out of the public square and it is time we allowed it back in – part of our problem in 2009 is that our religious groups have to be extra careful in how they preach in public, lest they run afoul of anti-religious bureaucrats and politicians.

From North Dakota:

Snow falls in western ND, in June

Snow has fallen in Dickinson in June, the first time in nearly 60 years the city has seen snow past May.

National Weather Service meteorologist Janine Vining in Bismarck says there were unofficial reports of a couple of inches of snow in Dickinson on Saturday.

Vining says snow in North Dakota in June is uncommon, though it’s not unheard of. She says other parts of the state have seen June snow within the past 10 years.

Williston and Bismarck had received only rain as of mid-Saturday, but Vining said snow was possible in those cities later in the day.

It will be 84 degrees in Las Vegas tomorrow – that is rather toasty for most of you, but it is 12 degrees below normal.

Victor Davis Hanson tells a personal tale and illuminates just what is wrong with Obama’s world view. You. Must. Read. This.

Spengler brings up the question:

..In countries where torture is habitual, unexceptionable and embedded in everyday life, it is foolish to imagine that our armed forces might conduct successful operations without employing torture as a matter of normal practice. That is why we cannot hope to intervene in civil societies in the Middle East. On April 4, the London Times published a video of Taliban soldiers publicly torturing a teenaged girl in Pakistan’s Swat Valley, reportedly for the crime of stepping out of her house unaccompanied. It is hideous; men hold the girl down while one beats her with a leather strap. The girl screams in pain. Around her a large circle of men watch…

…This observation came in Pipes’ recent commentary on a remarkable report of the torture of a businessman by a prince of the United Arab Emirates over a commercial dispute. Videotapes of Sheikh Issa bin Zayed al Nahyan torturing a grain dealer over a $5,000 delivery were aired April 22 on ABC News.

The Sheikh begins by stuffing sand down the man’s mouth, as the police officers restrain the victim. Then he fires bullets from an automatic rifle around him as the man howls incomprehensibly. At another point on the tape, the Sheikh can be seen telling the cameraman to come closer. “Get closer. Get closer. Get closer. Let his suffering show,” the Sheikh says.

Over the course of the tape, Sheikh Issa acts in an increasingly sadistic manner. He uses an electric cattle prod against the man’s testicles and inserts it in his anus. At another point, as the man wails in pain, the Sheikh pours lighter fluid on the man’s testicles and sets them aflame. Then the tape shows the Sheikh sorting through some wooden planks. “I remember there was one that had a nail in it,” he says on the tape. The Sheikh then pulls down the pants of the victim and repeatedly strikes him with board and its protruding nail.

Sometimes ignorance and prejudice reinforce a hostile view of peoples or countries. In the case of the Middle East, the vast majority of Americans have no clue as to the degree of ambient cruelty. Leave aside that between 50% (lowest estimate) and 90% (highest estimate) of Egyptian girls are subjected to genital mutilation, the horror of everyday life in what President Obama calls “the Muslim world” is more than the American mind can absorb.

Which regimes in the Western world have been most notorious for a high level of ambient cruelty? Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, Castro’s Cuba, etc. What do these regimes have in common? All of them completely suppressed freedom. The only way Sheikh Issa can get away with his monstrosity is because he figures no one would ever find out – at least, no one who can possibly over throw him will find out, because he won’t allow anyone to freely inquire into his doings. So it was with Hitler, Stalin and Castro – these men behaved in the most beastly manner possible towards their fellow human beings, but it didn’t matter because there was no one within their nations who could expose it to the general public and thus provoke a reaction against the barbarism.

Moslems, being people, are no different from any other people, on the whole. Certainly, due to their religious background they have some different view points from us, but the fundamentals of humanity are the same everywhere…Fallen Man is capable of horrific acts of evil, but the nature of evil deeds makes all but the most depraved unwilling to do them before the general public. The reason Issa – or Hitler, Stalin or Castro – can do the horrible deeds is because their societies are unfree, and thus there is no one to call them to account. Thus it goes throughout Moslem-majority areas of the world…outside of Iraq and Afghanistan (and, as yet, very imperfectly, even there), there is no place a Moslem can live in surrounded by Moslems where there is the freedom to criticize the government. And so the government’s are able to act in an unjust manner, and this tends to mean that the most ruthless tend to run the show.

Obama is, indeed, far too starry eyed about Islam – and most Americans also don’t have a full appreciation of the sort of people who run the Moslem nations. But we cannot and must not seal ourselves off from Islam – we must engage, by war and diplomacy, in order to press Islam into becoming free. Once the Moslem people are free, they will take care of their own savages, just as we take care of ours.

A word to you liberals who are mad at us for attacking The One:

Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things. – Winston Churchill

The absurd lengths some people will go to in order to keep any mention of God out of the public square:

A professor at the government-funded University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) has prohibited a graduating student from saying “I want to thank my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ,” in her own graduation speech.

Christina Popa just posted the proof emails on her facebook page, showing how other students are permitted to have their speeches read aloud at a pre-graduation ceremony, and Christina would also be allowed, but only if she didn’t mention Jesus.

Instead, UCLA Biology Professor Dr. Pamela Hurley deliberately censored Christina’s proposed speech, and emailed back to Christina saying: “UCLA is a public university where the doctrine of separation of church and state is observed,” and the professor proposed a censored version of Christina’s proposed speech, deleting any reference to Jesus Christ.

When Christina objected, Dr. Hurley threatened, “If you prefer, Christina, I can read none of what you wrote. I am very sorry that this is a problem for you.”

Dr. Hurley would probably be the first to assert she’s a stout defender of academic freedom…

I mean, you wanted DeLay’s head on a pike for a lot less than this:

Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., steered millions of dollars in defense work to a campaign donor and the Pentagon went along with it, even though two convicted drug dealers had been deeply involved with the company.

Records filed in U.S. District Court in Pittsburgh starting in 2005 raise questions about whether the government ever checked into the background of William Kuchera of Windber, Pa., a Murtha constituent who has been doing government work for over 20 years.

He’s corrupt, liberals – and he’s your hero. But it is time for you to hold your side to the same standard you hold ours. Unless, that is, you’re just a bunch of chicken-poop creeps.

The army has a video presentation on the battle. As a personal note, my maternal grandfather was there.

Wow:

Labour slumped to a record low in yesterday’s local council elections as it was swept from power in its last four counties.

The party faced losing more than 300 seats as its projected share of the vote plummeted to 23 per cent, leaving it trailing in third place in the last big test of public opinion before a General Election.

Gordon Brown admitted the party had suffered a ‘painful defeat’…

…In one extraordinary snapshot of the anger felt by voters, a Monster Raving Loony Party member trounced two Labour candidates in St Ives, Cambridgeshire.

One wonders if Britain’s ridiculous Liberal-Democrat Party (successor to the Liberal Party, last ran Britain’s government in 1922) might come in second in the upcoming general election?