Seems that the UN is so doing:

New York, Nov 19, 2007 (CNA).- The president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Cardinal Renato Martino, said this week the recent resolution adopted by the UN General Assembly calling for an international moratorium on the application of the death penalty is a “relevant step” in the defense of life, although it only has “symbolic value” since it is not “an agreement that binds countries.”

The resolution, which was supported by 99 countries, with 52 voting against and 33 abstaining, “is very important, and it is gratifying that so many Catholic organizations have worked for this and thus they have the right to be pleased.”

“I am very happy,” Cardinal Martino said. “I was the Holy See’s representative to the United Nations for more than 16 years and during that time I collaborated in two efforts during the 90’s to achieve this moratorium: we worked very hard and we were discouraged when the votes were tallied, the project had to be withdrawn because the numbers were just not there. This time the numbers are there and for this reason I am very pleased.”

Mario Marazzit, a spokesman for the Sant’Egidio Community, said, “The vote is historic, because it is very strong moral pressure and it points to a standard that has become important for all of the countries that do not use the death penalty yet.” He said he was hopeful the resolution would have an impact on the laws in individual countries.

One does question the actual motivations of the UN in lining up against the death penalty – but more importantly, it allows us to ask the basic question of the anti-death penalty forces worldwide: Why do you want the death penalty banned?

I know, it seems obvious – because killing people isn’t the answer. The problem is that most people who want to spare the lives of guilty criminals are also in favor of ending the life of innocent, unborn children. This is especially true of the UN, which has essentially taken the pro-abortion fanatic line on how available abortion should be – on demand. If killing is wrong, then abortion is wrong – but that seems to be something the anti-death penalty movement almost entirely misses.

As for me, it is easy – I’m opposed to abortion, and the death penalty. The reason I’m opposed to it is because one can never be 100% sure of what a person deserves to have happen to him. Certainly, the guilt of those on death row is not in doubt – the mental gymnastics some people go through to try and claim that an innocent man is on death row are rather bizarre, and pathetic. But even the guilty have a claim upon our mercy – a small claim, to be sure, but still very real. I don’t support an outright ban on the death penalty because there may always be that circumstance where it is the only thing we can do in the name of justice, but on the whole I would see these men and women sentenced to a life in prison – and really in prison. I’ve got a prison regimen ready for them which will make them wish they were dead…unless, of course, they start to think about it and understand the debt they owe; such people will come to love their regimen as the basis of their path to salvation…those who don’t get it will, then, get nothing but misery, and that is just.

I doubt that most anti-death penalty people can give a strong defense of their view – they can mostly shout slogans and appeal to emotion, but I’ve yet to see a carefully reasoned justification for ending the death penalty except by those opponents who are also of the Culture of Lfe, and thus also opposed to abortion, infanticide, assisted suicide and euthanasia. During the 2000 campaign you migth recall how the left tried to cook up a death penalty case to embarras then-governor Bush – Bush couldn’t actually commute the man’s sentence (per Texas law), but that didn’t matter…the “heartless Republican” narrative was too dear to the left to allow facts to get in the way. So, they raised up a death row inmate as an exemplar of what is wrong with the death penalty. The only trouble was that even if the man wasn’t guilty of the particular crime he was eventually executed for, he had done enough horrid things (rape, attempted murder, etc) to make one commentor coldly, but accurately, note that he could choke in hell on the irony of it all if he was, indeed, innocent of the murder.

In the unwillingness of most death penalty opponents to embrace the full Culture of Life is their fundamental weakness – but this weakness, in and of itself, would be surmountable if the anti-death penalty people would stop trying to generate sympathy for entirely unsympathetic people. If anyone really wants to seriously curtail and eventually end the application of the death penalty in the United States, the first step would be to reform our prisons to the point where life in prison really meant life in prison – and was under a rule of extraordinary strictness and austerity. The argument will always be lost as long as killers are portrayed as victims – portray them as they are, insist upon their punishment, and appeal to the sense of mercy of the American people – that would be the way to take a stand against the death penalty in the United States.

In re: the “lady” who wore a trampy outfit on the plane and now is doing a Playboy spread:

It never ceases to amaze me how some ‘modern’ women choose to ‘celebrate’ their femininity – by posing nude in the pages of Playboy magazine in desperate attempts to extend their 15 minutes of fame. The latest dingbat to bare all is Kyla Ebbert, the gal who was asked back in July by a Southwest Airlines flight attendant to ‘adjust’ her revealing attire – or leave the plane. What’s the title of the pictorial spread? “Legs in the Air.”

Oh my. How original (eye roll)…

…Seriously, what is wrong with people today? And why the hell would her boyfriend support her decision to do this? Wouldn’t a boyfriend who truly loved his significant other put his foot down over something like this? And before any uber-fems start screaming, yes, I know ultimately it’s the woman’s choice but I can tell you right now if I had a b/f, and he came over to the house and announced, “Honey, I’m going to pose in Playgirl. What do you think?” he’d get an earful, and if, in the end, he decided he was still going to go through with it, it’d be time to say adios.

There are some things that you just don’t do, and sharing your body with the world – whether it’s through pictures or sleeping around – is one of those things. This has nothing to do with prudishness and everything to do with possessing a strong sense of propriety, not to mention self-respect. Your body is your temple, and should be reserved only for the person you intend to marry or are married to.

Does all this mean ST would support a ban on smut mags? Of course not. We, thankfully, live in a free society, the Constitutional rights of which I fully support. Not only that, just because I don’t like something doesn’t mean I want to see it done away with. I’m just expressing my opposition to women who, in my view, take their freedom to express themselves to extremes. Who was it that said with freedom comes responsibility?

Now, for anyone who wants to take a stab at the good Sister: keep in mind that she’s exceptionally smart and drop-dead gorgeous. As Winston Churchill once observed, you can’t snub a beautiful woman – the snub recoils, and the woman remains beautiful.

Anyways, Sister is right – one of the things I find exceptionally tiresome is the old-fashioned, worn out notion that we need sexual liberation in order to get things right in our world. That if we would just be more free and open about our sexuality, we’d all be happier..I can’t imagine how we can get more open about it than we are now, but I can say that nothing has become more boring over the past half century than sex. Clue: when you do a thing a lot and talk about it a lot, you’ll swiftly run up against the dregs of it…such as some nitwit of a gal parlaying her horrid fashion sense into a nude spread for a magazine catering to foolish boys and dirty old men (and anyone who isn’t creeped out by Hefner these days is just plain weird, in my view).

What would have been avant garde here is if the woman had learned how to dress and started a campaign to de-ho the fashion sense of young women (and before you get started; yes, we need a campaign to de-gangsta the fashion sense of young men). That would have taken some intellect and some moral courage – dropping her drawers is something a trained monkey could do.

This is standing up for the Culture of Life in a very public manner:

Boston, Nov 15, 2007 (CNA).- The U.S. Bishops have issued their strongest condemnation yet of pro-abortion views with their “Faithful Citizenship” document issued yesterday. Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston also has added his disapproval of pro-abortion candidates in comments to the Boston Globe saying that the support of Catholics for these politicians “borders on scandal”.

Cardinal O’Malley voiced a sentiment that the bishops’ latest citizenship document includes, namely that, despite his differences with the Republican Party over immigration policy, capital punishment, economic issues, and the war in Iraq, he views abortion as the most important moral issue facing policymakers.

Noting that many Catholics traditionally support Democrats, O’Malley reamed the Democratic Party for being “extremely insensitive to the church’s position, on the gospel of life in particular, and on other moral issues.”

When the cardinal was asked about the many voters who support Democrats who are in favor of abortion, O’Malley said, “I think that, at times, it borders on scandal as far as I’m concerned.”

Abortion is the central moral issue of the modern world – on it hangs all of the associated issues we catagorise as “social issues” in our political debates. If abortion is ok, then so is euthansia; if abortion is ok, then so is same-sex marriage; if abortion is ok, then so is widespread pornography; if abortion is ok, then so is pre- and extra-marital sex; if abortion is ok, then its ok to lie if its for a ‘good cause’…on and on it goes, with abortion being the barometer of our moral disintegration. On the other side of the issue, how can someone in favor of abortion argue against the death penalty? Argue against the war? Argue in favor of open borders? You can be on firm moral ground, or you can be in favor of abortion – you can’t be both.

What the Bishops are addressing here is the way in which people try to keep things in separate boxes – Democrat A is ok because of his support of Issue A and Issue B, and we’ll just ignore his pro-abortion fanaticism. This can’t be done – if you are backing a man who advocates evil because he’ll also throw you a bone on your pet cause, then you are polluting your pet cause, and dishonoring yourself into the bargain. Might as well support a gangster if he’ll throw a donation to Greenpeace.

The reason we are in such a contentious political climate is because of this fundamental disagreement – a disagreement as fundamental as that between the pro- and anti-slavery forces of the 1850’s. There is no way to bridge this gap – you are either on the side of the angels, or on the side of the wicked when it comes to this crucial issue of abortion. Tap dancing around it might make a person feel better about themselves, but the issue remains – the division is still there, and will continue to poison the debate until the matter is permanently settled one way or the other. The US Bishops are calling it as it is – anyone who by act or omission permits the unfettered action of abortion is unworthy of support, and anyone who lends such a person support is engaging in scandalous behaviour. In order to support a candidate, there must first be something in them that will aid an end to the evils of our day, with abortion as the primary evil needing to be ended.

I did debate that in my mind a bit – do I start with a whole new series of “What Media Bias?” posts, or do I keep up the old series? As a conservative, the answer came pretty quickly – adhere to tradition. So, here we go.

As we have been saying for some time, we’re winning the campaign in Iraq – though, to listen to the MSM (not to mention the Democrats and the kook left), there has been nothing but a continuing disaster in Iraq. Rich Lowry over at NRO writes of the quiet victory the MSM is ignoring, and quotes from an excellent article in the Weekly Standard on the untold story:

The surge of operations that American and Iraqi forces began on June 15 has dramatically improved security in Baghdad and throughout Iraq. U.S. commanders and soldiers have reversed the negative trends of 2006, some of which date back to 2005. The total number of enemy attacks has fallen for four consecutive months, and has now reached levels last seen before the February 2006 Samarra mosque bombing. IED explosions have plummeted to late 2004 levels. Iraqi civilian casualties, which peaked at 3,000 in the month of December 2006, are now below 1,000 for the second straight month. The number of coalition soldiers killed in action has fallen for five straight months and is now at the lowest level since February 2004. These trends persisted through Ramadan, when violence had typically spiked. “I believe we have achieved some momentum,” General Raymond T. Odierno, commander of coalition combat forces in Iraq, said modestly in his November 1 press briefing.

The MSM story line of the last week or so? That 2007 has been a bloody year for US troops in Iraq. Indeed, it has; and we must never forget those men and women who literally gave everything they have for the cause of freedom. But death comes to us all in the by and by, and what is more important than our deaths is how we lived – and those troops who have given their lives in this war have lived a life far better than almost all of us. While the MSM wrings its hands over the number of dead (and the MSM loves statistics – true or false, it doesn’t matter; given them a poll or a statistic and they’ll love you for the fact that they can make the story about the stat, rather than about what happened…which would require all that tedious legwork to get at the truth), the real story is what they who died accomplished. And what they have accomplished is a revolution in human affairs.

It is the end of “realism” in world affairs – that alleged realism which was first crystallised by Bismarck in the 19th century which really just boiled down to a cruel indifference to the fate of others. The first example of this was the way Bismarck turned over Polish rebels to be executed by their Czarist oppressors in the 1860’s. From that time to this, the realists have continually found reasons for allowing our brothers and sisters to suffer in the name of a false peace and/or a bogus stability. Poles, Jews, Czechs, Cubans, Cambodians, Rwandans, Sudanese, Tibetans, North Koreans, Vietnamese…on and on the list goes of bludgeoned nations who we helped into oppression because it was “realistic” and it helped “peace” and “stability”. Not any more – stability isn’t our ideal; freedom is.

The fact that the MSM is resolutely failing to see this just shows how incredibly biased they are – as well as how ignorant and downright useless they are becoming as transmitters of information. The old-line MSM (newspapers and network news) is already starting in on its death rattle, and its extinction cannot come soon enough.

Well, as Matt has announced over at Blogs for Bush, we have now officially launched the new blog. What I wanted to do here is express myself on this new world of our blogging.

I’ll never forget the more than four years I Blogged for Bush. I’d like to take this moment to once again thank Matt for inviting me to blog all those years ago – it has been my entry into the world of political commentary (other than just boring my friends and family with it), and no matter how long I live or how far I go, I’ll always retain a soft spot in my heart for those rather seat-of-the-pants days of 2003 and 2004 where Matt and I just jumped into the battle and had at it.

Blogging for President Bush over these past few years has been a pleasure and a challenge – pleasure in supporting policies strongly agreed with, challenging in answering the unending, and almost entirely unfair, attacks upon President Bush and his policies. There are fair attacks which can be made on President Bush – and, indeed, Matt and I have made them from time to time when we’ve disagreed with this or that action of the President; but we’ve very rarely seen well thought out and reasonable dissent from President Bush’s policies. In short, what Matt and I (as well as the rest of the people who have written for the blog) have experienced in the opposition has most been a tale of regurgitated lies coupled with some rather fantastic expressions of hatred. For those opponents who have given us a good argument, we wish to express our heartfelt thanks and we hope you continue with your vigorous opposition here on the new blog.

Because, of course, it is a time for a change. Actually, we had thought of changing sooner, but it has been fun keeping up Blogs for Bush…the more unreasonable and out of touch the anti-Bush sentiment, the more strongly we felt our duty to continue to support the President in a very public and steadfast manner. But the Bush Administration does draw to its close – come what may, a little less than a year from now we choose his successor, and just a little more than a year from now we’ll swear in the next President of the United States.

With this change comes a whole new set of battles – as Matt has noted in his entry above. There is still much to do in America and we have a lot of battles yet to be won – we must win the war, we must keep the current crop of Democrats out of the White House and out of power as much as possible. We have the ongoing battles over life issues, judicial appointments, taxation and public morality, and they must all be won. Matt and I intend to continue those fights.

We hope you enjoy the new blog, and will join us in this fight for the best America we can make.