25 April 2013

Uncommon Commentary #337: Terror and Error (or: Post # 400!)

President Obombast evidently drew a lesson from the controversy over his administration's humorless farce of a response to the assault on our diplomatic post in Benghazi, for, in his first address regarding the bombings at the Boston Marathon, he pronounced the tragedy to be the result of "terror".  The lesson appears not to have been the right one, however, for at the time when he spoke, very shortly after the incident, there was no way to know whether it was terrorism.  Adam Lanza, who committed many times the number of murders as did the guilty party in Boston, wasn't a terrorist but merely a person suffering from mental illness; that he used a gun instead of homemade explosives is irrelevant.  It seems that our president (whose underlings still classify Nidal Hasan's rampage at Ft. Hood as "workplace violence", even though Maj. Hasan began his personal jihad by shouting "Allah Akbar!", the same cry that the hijackers uttered as they flew airplanes into the World Trade Center building) remains concerned not with factual accuracy but rather with giving the public a favorable view of himself, so that he can continue to try to push the items on his political agenda.  I have no objection to giving the Devil his due, but in this case no credit is due.

17 April 2013

Uncommon Commentary #336: Boxer Rebellion

North Dakota has now banned the inducing of abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy, on the basis that the foetus is by then able to feel pain. (Murder is, of course, wrong irrespective of whether the victim feels pain.  How would you react toward someone, who had intentionally killed with asphyxiation or with suffocation, justifying his crime on the basis that the person whom he killed did not suffer?)  The enacting of this legislation is a positive step, unless merely restricting and regulating the practice of foeticide fully satisfies anti-abortion sentiment.  After all, if human life is human throughout all nine months of its prenatal development, which science and reason both tell us that it is, then isn't it logical to defend it throughout those nine months?  Anyway, the North Dakota law isn't really so severe as its opponents would have people believe; human gestation lasts an average of 274 days, or 39 weeks and one day, and so foeticide even in the Peace Garden State will still be legal during the majority of a pregnancy.
I'll end this uncommon commentary by noting that when (only about a decade back) the US Senate was debating what would become the Born Alive Act (which compels hospitals to care for children who exit the womb safely despite attempts to abort them), Barbara Boxer spoke in favor of the bill; she noted correctly that it would confer no protection whatsoever on a child not yet born, and thus would not interfere with abortion "rights".  By contrast, a week or two before now, this same senatrix (female senator) actually said that a baby does not become a person until brought home from the hospital!  This reversal shows that, even if the public at large is indeed turning against induced abortion, the truculence of those who are still pro-"choice" may be growing worse.

13 April 2013

Uncommon Commentary #335: You Probably Feel that This Posting Is Entitled to a Title

The real reason why the Left gave us "universal" health "care" may be the mere fact that it's a new entitlement, which renders people beholden to government to a greater extent than ever before.  Once you convince people that they have an innate "right" to something, it's very hard to disabuse them of that conceit.

08 April 2013

Uncommon Commentary #334: Putting Immigration on ICE

There have been many valid arguments against the seemingly permanent recurrence of amnesties for illegal aliens, e.g., the fact that effectively rewarding someone for having spent years evading ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents is an insult to those of the foreign-born who have undergone the licit immigration process; one argument that I don't recall ever being made, but which ought to be, is that a period of persistently high unemployment is the worst time for "immigration reform".  With dozens of millions of US citizens either not employed at all or forced to settle for part-time work, how can anyone in his right mind want to increase competition for scarce jobs by offering citizenship to 11 million persons who don't even belong in this country?