Juridics USA: Supreme Court's sociology: Catholics 6, Jews 3, Protestants 0

Elena Kagan, nominee to SCOTUS

Will Herberg enshrined the concept "Protestant Catholic Jew" in his 1955 book of that title (Protestant--Catholic--Jew: An Essay in American Religious Sociology).

Recalling to my mind his sociology of American religion, Christianity Today recently published an article by Elesha Coffman, "6 Catholics, 3 Jews" which resonates and updates the Herbergian observation of yesteryear. Coffman's piece is food for serious thawt, especially at this moment of USA President Obama's nomination of Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court of the day. Because the Senate has to confirm his nomination of her, she is, of course, being raked thru the coals by some sectors of the newsmedia, where her presumed sociological profile is being juxtaposed by many to illuminate her stands on specific issues in which in times past she interjected herself politically. This current feeding frenzy on Kagan biography is fueled, it is claimed, by the thin gruel of her "paper trail," her lack of a thick stack of juridical judgments and books. Apparently, media responsibles can't do their job critically, because there are so few texts to examine, texts from Kagan's juridical mind and hand.

But the lack of court decisions and books written by her has been challenged as a reason for claiming she is a virtual unknown. There are other sources, a huge stack of them has been supplied recently by the White House to the appropriate Senate investigators (Senate Judiciary Committee and its staff).

Again, I update with a fifth citation from the Volokh Conspiracy blog. I quote Jonathan Adler (May 15):

Elena Kagan’s Paper Trail
Posted: 15 May 2010 03:09 PM PDT
(Jonathan H. Adler)

Some commentators have suggested that Elena Kagan is a nominee without much of a paper trail. I think this is overstated on two counts. First, her academic writing is more substantive than some have given her credit for (see here and here). Second, there appears to be a substantial amount of material from her time in the Clinton Adminsitration for the Senate Judiciary Committee to review. Documents from her tenure at the Domestic Policy Council have already been released. As Byron York reports, this is only the tip of the iceberg. There are many more documents from her time in the White House Counsel’s office — documents Senators are certain to demand, citing the release of papers from John Roberts tenure in the Reagan Administration as precedent. These records will shed more light on Kagan’s approach to legal and policy questions, even if they don’t reveal how she is likely to approach (let alone vote upon) specific issues.

In the meantime, a picture of her in Wall Street Journal at bat on some baseball diamond suddenly is squeezed to yield up an ostensibly damning meaning, a semiotic significance that she be a Lesbian (she opposed "Don't ask, don't tell," the rubric of the American military established under President Clinton, in whose administration she served). Kagan whatever her sexual identity used her position to back this abolitonary demand upon military sexual morality and policy, as ferociously attacked by the Gay-agenda activists. She also opposed USA military recruitment on the Harvard University campus while she was Dean of the Law School there, while on other matters she has been respectful and supportive of the American military. The precise views mentioned were foolish and injudicious stances, in my view.


I saw a pix from WSJ on TV of Elena Kagan up to bat, but coudn't get to it to grab; so I had to settle for this one of her at some basebal diamond for a pickup game in Chicago when she was a prof there. I'm now unsure of the source of this one. Sorry!

But that some of her inquistors and naysayers extrapolate to a sociological designation of "Lesbian" is beyond belief and common decency. To hell with that vile nonsense. Indeed, were she a Lesbian, shoud she become a SCOTUS Judge, she coud participate in the bench's dialogue with contestants were the Court to hear a case, for instance, on so-called "gay marriage." At the same time, she coud recuse herself from the actual SCOTUS vote deciding the case, because of a self-acknowledged bias aforehand and perhaps a personal stake in the actual decision. Were her fellow justices curious, she coud explain herself confidentially to them. Her choice.

The issue of her potentially deciding a "gay marriage" case has been raised by some learnèd honchos who I presume to be afflicted with extreme r+twing blinkers on this matter. Full disclosure: I'm homo and celibate and principially opposed to deflationary views of marriage, so that other creationally-differentiated kinds of intimate unions are not treated as unique and distinct from marriage. And unique from one another (an erroneous conflation that happens around the rubric and pseudoconcept of "same-sex marriage," a self-contradictory neologism to be sure). But, what a confusion is spread by Elena Kagan and her bipolarized opponents alike in their reductionist either/or binomial logic, held in common.

Having said all that, on the Internet I've found some posts -- "I Should Note for the Record" (May12,2k10) and "Bisexual Erasure" (also May 12) by lawyer Eugene Volokh and another by Orin Kerr ("Why Catholics and Jews?" May 14) and, updating this blog-entry, yet another by David Bernstein, "Why Jews and Catholics on the Supreme Court?" (May 14) -- all four posted on that most lawyerly blog, The Volokh Conspiracy -- again, with these blog-entries well in mind, the sexual-identity sociological factor and the religious-sociological factor are both addressed principially and with r+t good humour by the lawyers / bloggers mentioned. Thank God for this particular blog Conspiracy!

Even so seasoned, nevertheless, philosophy of law itself cannot solve the problems of political and juridical practice by any direct route. There woud have to be a Dooyeweerd-aware Justice on the Supreme Court for me to make an argument today that at least my hypothetical SCOTUS justice coud understand. Neither Catholics nor Jews -- in the present lack of inter-religious depth-dialogue in law, its philosophy, and its American sociology -- shoud be expected to understand an essentially Protestant approach of Dooyeweerd's kind where there is today in America no cultural context for such an understanding.

In all these considerations, pertaining to the case at hand, the amusing irony is that nominee Elena Kagan, contrary to her own previous politics and activist stance (but she was not an activist judge!), regarding her sexual orientation, whatever that may be, shoud be governed by the rubric she earlier rejected as a Harvard law-school dean: Don't ask, don't tell. It's none of our business as to whether or not she's a Lesbian, a Bisexual (as Volokh discusses ... there are already 123 comments regarding his post), or a 100% Hetero.

What's more, Protstants in the USA and Canada have a unique stance to contribute eventually some day in regard to the philosophy of law. That future contribution may be found in the importation of translated scholarly work by Herman Dooyeweerd (1894-1977), a professor of jurisprudence at the Free University of Amsterdam (VU Amsterdam) in the immediately preceding generation. His general philosophy is expressed in the 3-volume New Critique of Theoretical Thought, long available in English and now undergoing textual revision at the Dooyeweerd Centre, Redeemer University College, Ancaster, Ontario, Canada. However, his magnun opus in philosophy of law as such, Encyclopedia of the Science of Law, is only slowly being realized in translation, only one of its several volumes having already been published and a second volume in translation currently. Graduate law faculties at Protestant institutions of h+er learning, however, are barely aware of the existence and development of the publication of this vitally important work for the philosophy of law. The existing and forthcoming volumes in English of these works shoud be de rigeur at said institutions (to further such a long-term cultural diffusion, perhaps we shoud compile a list of the Protestant-identified law schools in the USA, altho even there the preconceived notions and biases of the guilds and faculties will be strong in resistance to Dooyeweerd's innovative and demanding conceptualizations).

Yet, for the present, the term "Protestant" has no intrinsic meaning for jurisprudential theoretics in America (to say nothing of any future influence on functioning justices, judges, lawyers, and politics -- except thru the lens of some of us followers of Dooyeweerd's legal-thawt leadership, those of us who have critical affinities for American originist and constitutionalist historical foundations with their massive Protestant Christian element.

Also important from the Dutch are the works of Dooyeweerd's student and succesor at the VU law faculty, Prof Dr H J van Eikema Hommes. Some of the works of Hommes are translated, like his 1979 chapter in Major Trends in the History of Legal Philosophy (Chapter 15). Another of Dooyeweerd's graduate students, Johan Mekkes wrote his "voluminous" 1940 doctoral dissertation on "the development of the humanistic theories of the law-state," theories toward which Dooyeweerd took a somewhat antithetical stance. This work of Mekkes needs to be translated and published and made readily available in the USA (and other English-speaking countries). A later student of this element of the VU law-faculty heritage is R D Henderson (now teach at Dordt College, Iowa), Illuminating Law: The Construction of Herman Dooyeweerd’s Philosophy (Free University: Amsterdam; 1994). Another is David Caudill, Christian Legal Theory: The Example of Dooyeweerd's Critique of Romanist Individualism and Germanic Communitarianism in Property Law , 5 Georgetown Journal of Law & Public Policy 531-560.

The biblios of American law-philosophers Henderson and Caudill I have gleaned from Steve Bishop's bibliography (2007) on reformational wiki.

Two law philosophers born in South Africa and now teaching in the USA shoud also be mentioned here: John Witte, and Johan van der Vyver (both at Emory Law School at some time).

Alan Cameron of New Zealand also belongs to this list; he is recently retired from his longtime post at Victory University of Wellington where he tawt the law of accountancy and contributed internationally to Dooyeweerd studies in law, a principal in translating the Encylopedia.

The UK scholar of Dooyeweerd studies, Jonathan Chaplin, will have his long-awaited book on Dooyeweerd's thawt published by Notre Dame University Pres in early 2011. Dr Chaplin is director of the Kirby Lang Centre for Christian Ethics, Tyndale House, Cambridge, England. He is an expert on the comparison of Dooyeweerd's concept of sphere sovereignty with the Catholic magisterial concept of subsidiarty; Chaplin aims toward a rapprochement, even synthesis perhaps. This is an effort for depth-dialogue between Catholics and Protestants relevant to the philosophy of law.

Returning to the main topic of this blog-entry, may I note at length a recent text from Washington Post via First Amendment Center website, "No Religious Test Means No Religious Test," a blatant begging of the question at hand, a matter which actually turns on diversity and pluralism in the composition of the court (you know, like race, gender, and other considerata of sociological enrichment of the Supreme Court's nomination process). The article was written by Charles C. Haynes who is the Director of the Religious Freedom Education Project.

Q: If Elena Kagan is confirmed to replace retiring Justice John Paul Stevens, the Supreme Court would for the first time in its history be without a justice belonging to America's largest religious affiliations — the Protestant traditions. If Kagan is confirmed, six of the justices will be Roman Catholic and three will be Jewish. Should the Supreme Court be more representative of America's religious traditions? Does religion matter in the mix of experience and expertise that a president seeks in a Supreme Court nominee?

The current makeup of the Supreme Court — and the nomination of Elena Kagan to replace Justice Stevens — may well signal that religious affiliation is no longer a consideration in the process of selecting justices for the high court. If that is true, it would be cause for civic celebration. We may finally be living up to what we say we believe as a nation.

After all, Article VI of the U.S. Constitution requires that "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States." That means it is unconstitutional for the president or Congress to make religious affiliation a factor in either the nomination or confirmation of Supreme Court justices.

But in the real-world history of American politics, religious affiliation has often mattered. It is no accident that 91 of the 112 nominees to the Court have been Protestants. And students of Court history are aware of past behind-the-scenes maneuvers to fill a "Catholic seat" or to keep a "Jewish seat."

The fact that all of the seats on the Supreme Court may soon be filled by Roman Catholics and Jews is a fitting, if somewhat ironic, end to the religious tokenism of the past.

Given the ugly strains of anti-Catholic nativism and anti-Semitism in American history — strains that persist to the present day — it is heartening that the current religious affiliation of justices stirs so little comment and almost no controversy. As far as I can tell, the fact that Kagan is Jewish has been greeted with a collective shrug by most of the public.

Of course, we still have some distance to go. Jews and Catholics may have arrived at the Court, but Muslims, atheists and others are unlikely to be nominated anytime soon. In judicial nominations as in electoral politics, religious tests often still apply.

As for the departure of the last Protestant on the Court, I think it is fair to say that most evangelical Protestants will be happy to see him go just as many liberal Protestants will mourn his loss. What matters in a Supreme Court nominee for many religious people on the Right and Left is not religious affiliation but core principles and judicial philosophy, especially as applied to such issues as abortion, same-sex marriage and the separation of church and state.

Future Supreme Court nominees will no doubt include Protestants as well as some of the many other faith traditions in what is now the most religiously diverse country on earth. But I believe it would be the mark of a mature and healthy democracy if no one really noticed.

-- Charles C. Haynes is director of the Religious Freedom Education Project at the Newseum, 555 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20001. Web: firstamendmentcenter.org. E-mail: chaynes@freedomforum.org.

There is an absurdist streak in this insouciance, amounting to literal carelessness. It is impossible that no one really noticed, because it is the task of sociology to notice such difference, diversity, and any particularist evaluations thereof. The logical expansion of Haynes' presumptuous idea here is that diversity does not include religious-cultural difference in the religious and cultural mosaic of America. Indeed, some Catholics appear as different in legal philosophy due to the prioritization in Catholicism of the "consistent ethic of life," a perspective that is tawt at law schools that self-identify as Catholic, also at many of those that self-identify as Evangelical and/or Pentecostal -- that is, at law schools that self-identify as Protestant.

This further relates to the empirical sociological fact that the law school of origin of most SCOTUS nominees does figure into both the nomination and confirmation processes of candidates put forward for elevation to the Supreme Court bench. Perhaps only one graduate of Harvard Law School shoud be elevated to that bench, at a time. And nominees from a wide diversity of law schools shoud be encouraged. If a nominee is chosen from business, unions, or other professions but where there is a paper trail giving evidence of respected law-thinking by a non-lawyer, non law-academic, non-judge, thinking other than that of lawyers and judges, still the rule of thumb shoud be only one at a time from any given law school (the USA has hundreds of them) or from any particular state (the USA has 50 states). Haynes seems rather scatterbrained, in his nostrum that he can beg the primary question posed by a religion-saturated history and culture such as that of the USA. He should go back and read Herberg, as a starter in his re-education. Then maybe he should read Dooyeweerd's Encylopedia of the Science of Law.

-- Lawt

Further Sources:
'Should' and 'supposed to' when it comes to Supremes

UK Politics: Coalition Govt: 1st cabinet meeting of new regime

An important news report by Sarah Lyall appears in New York Times today, under the title "New Hybrid British Cabinet Holds First Meeting" (all those damn caps in a title over a news piece in a print newspaper, ugh!)

Since NYT gives no actual list of the members of the new Cabinet, I turned to the Murdoch-owned newspaper Telegraph where, again no straitforward list, but again disappointingly a text that gives neither a total of the cab's membership nor an indication that those mentioned in the article's text are the sum total thereof ("David Cameron begins first coalition Cabinet since 1945" by Alastair Jamieson and Ben Leach). So, fiting a feeling of this further article's incompletenes, I quote a patch of text from said daily press:

The Prime Minister sat next to William Hague, the new Foreign Secretary, and opposite George Osborne, the Chancellor, and Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister.

Vince Cable, the Lib Dem Business Secretary, arrived with his Tory [Business] deputy David Willetts and Liam Fox, the new Defence Secretary, pausing briefly at the door of No 10 before going inside.

Ken Clarke, the new Justice Secretary and one of the few to have any previous ministerial experience, arrived with Mr Hague.

Later, Mr Cameron is expected to fill out the middle-ranking and junior roles in the Conservative-Lib Dem administration as well as adding detail to their joint policy proposals.

The new Cabinet features five Liberal Democrats: Mr Clegg and Mr Cable; Chris Huhne the Energy Secretary;David Laws the Chief Treasury Secretary and Danny Alexander, the Scotland Secretary.

Iain Duncan Smith, the former Tory leader, has also been awarded the job of Work and Pensions Secretary in what was being seen as a sop to the right of the party amid concerns about the alliance with the Lib Dems.

The appointments meant some senior Tories were not given full Cabinet positions, including Chris Grayling, Dominic Grieve and Theresa Villiers.

An immediate priority task of the new govt will be to achieve financial stability, both of the govt and of the United Kingdom's economy as a whole. The latter task feeds directly into another: how to manage financially the impact of Europe's nitemare socialist economic breakdown (Greece †, yesterday Spain's belated austerity program, today Portugal's). German banks and the International Monetary Fund (of which UK is a stalwart member and underwriter) are expected to have to pony-up the money for all the spending that has brawt ruin or near-ruin to these countries and others in the European Union. Britain, Canada, and the USA woud each be wise to insulate themselves as much as possible from continental socialist-economic contagion, as the current term pinpoints the matter.

A second priority comes to mind: national security. Already PM David Cameron had held his first meeting of the committee with operational management of security matters. So, he's off to a good start apparentlty on that.

-- Politicarp

Politics UK: Coalition govt: Conservs & LibDemocrats form new regime

UK's new Prime Minister makes first address at 10 Downing Street, London, recorded by Russia Today. Rumour has it that the LibDems, third-place party in the vote, will get 6 seats in the Cabinet. Nick Clegg is the LibDem leader. The outgoing Labour Party had been in power for 13 years under former Prime Ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

I dug up a brief political-orientation piece, by Rudi Hayward, written back in Sept29,2007. "What are elections for?" Rudi makes a probing analysis, appropriate to the United Kingdom's voting procedures for its parliament, a vote that comes after an election is called by the sitting govt (not on a system of fixed dates and terms, as in the USA). In this respect, Canada follows the UK system. Rudi succinctly illuminates how the timing of a new election feedsback into the govt's calculations of its re-electability. Very helpful for those of our readers who are unfamiliar with the UK's and Canada's type of parliamentary voting and its timing.

UPDATE (May18,2k10): I found this tidbit on the Jubilee Centre UK website, where my friend Jeremy has posted the following comment >

Apart from those in Witney or Sheffield, none of us voted for either; and there were many in those constituencies who cast their votes for other candidates. This is not the basis on which we are to obey our government, even if it were an autocracy, as in the Roman Empire when the early Christians were told to pray for their government. You are right, we must pray for our constituency MPs and our new Governement. However, this does not stop us from working for a fairer and better representative electoral system, regardless of whether or not we support this Government, which, by the way, has engaged in principled discussion and co-operation between the parties -- an excellent start to a new politics. -- Jeremy Ive 13 May 2010

Dr Ive is a reformational Anglican, priest of the Anglican Church, and a theological scholar writing on Trinitarian foundations of faith and theology.

-- Politicarp (back from Sabbatical)

JuridicsUSA: New Jersey: 'Gay marriage' defeated

David Kocienniewski, New York Times (Jan7,2k10) reports defeat yesterday of the latest onslawt of sexpol activists trying to change the definition of marriage in New Jersey, until now considered among the most tolerant states of the 50:

New Jersey Senate Defeats Gay Marriage Bill

Trenton, NJ — The State Senate on Thursday rejected a proposal that would have made New Jersey the sixth state in the nation to allow marriages involving same-sex couples. The vote was the latest in a succession of setbacks for advocates of gay marriage across the country.

I have argued at length in the past against the idiocy of changing the traditional definition of marriage as state recognition of the special relationship of intimacy, reciprocity, and mutuality that can exist between one woman and one man. I'm tired of commenting, but I used to live in New Jersey before immigrating into Canada many decades ago. I'm homo, vowed celibate, old, with a very low libido. But I'd support and do support now at a distance the decision of the state's Senate. I opposed Canada's ignorant courts and federal law-making around a specious theory of sameness dumbed down to what prevails here now.

I think the various lesser jurisdictions -- the provinces (Canada) and states (USA) shoud be able by democratic means to recognize one, two or three kinds of intimate unions: but without altering the special status of heterosexual unions which are distinctive because the members of each marriage negotiate the difference within the relationship of the two genders. A month back New York said No; and last November the state of Maine repealed its short-lived 'gay marriage' law in a referendum. New Jersey already approves so-called "civil unions" for homos of both stripes; but the notion of civil union does not recognize the difference of lesbian unions in contrast to gaymale unions, so for me, it's also quite absurd. These three are irreducible to one another, shoud have distinctive legal names, and do not depend on the state for their existence.

-- Lawt

PoliticsNigeria: Senate: Threatens retaliation for being placed on terrorism watchlist

According to Amos Dunia (Abuja), "Terrorism: Senate threatens to take action against US" (Jan6,2k10), the Nigerian Senate leadership is furious at USA's placing the country's international travellers on a watchlist of 14 countires, simply on the basis of nationality.

“We also want to advice America that it is in their own best interest to conduct this matter very well in a manner that will not result into diplomatic row between America and Nigeria because Nigeria has never been found wanting in her dealings with America. So, for them to embarrass this country with this kind of classification for no justification is completely unacceptable.

“It is not America alone that has citizens to whom the government is responsible, we also have citizens and we are responsible for them, we will not allow Nigerians to be molested wherever they go. I think that this message should be put out clearly that when we resumes, if the situation is still there, it is going to be one of the major issues that we are going to tackle and the Senate president has told me to state categorically that he is unhappy about this and being the chairman of the National Assembly, it means also on behalf of the National Assembly.”

So says Senator Ayogu Eze, speaking apparently for the President of the Senate, David Mark. The Nigeria National Assembly is bicameral, but the present initiatve in the diplomatic war of words with the Obama Administration is being launched by upper chamber, Nigeria's Senate.

-- Politicarp

EconomicsUSA: Recession: Over, proclaims self-aggrandizing CEO

Screaming headline on Yahoo! Finance's TechTicker where, on video, Barry Ritholtz, CEO of Fusion IQ claims potvaliantly "The Great Recession is Over...." despite ongoing "weak employment, weak housing and the continuation" of chronic recession ("what he describes as a mild recession"). Note, "a" in the term "a mild recession." It seems to me that this not a single recession but a series of multiple recessions which will continue to back up on one another but which individually are incapble of peaking and self-resolving in the manner outlined by neo-classical market theory (perhaps a chronic unresolvability due to over-interference of socialist initatives of govt). Note, even Ritzholtz is saying continuation of mild recession will be continued to be accompanied by heavy unemploment, no homes for woud-be buyers.

-- EconoMix

Middle East: Islam: Pakistan, Iran, and Yemeni terror cell aflame simultaneously

While a lone scion of Nigeria's leading banker, a Muslim, travelled from Lagos to Schipol (Amsterdam's international airport), to Detroit (where the traveller tried to explode a bomb); in Pakistan, annual Shi'ite celebrants who consitute 20% of the population) came under attack of the majority Sunni Muslims; and in Iran, where Shi'a are by far the majority, the Shi'a theocrats were protested by the growing movement for more democracy, also largely Shi'ites.

I suspect there's a moral to this unfolding of events: the Al Quaeda in the Arabian Penninsula movement which apprently prepared the Nigerian 23-yr-old in Yemen for his woud-be heroics, wanted to affirm a different direction to co-religionists in Pakistan and Iran. In so many words, they were saying We shoud be f+ting the West, especially America, not one another at this moment. In the past certain Al Quaeda leaders (especially in Iraq) have been fiercely authorian Sunnis who wanted to force Shi's to leave their historic commuity and convert to Sunnism (Wahabbi sect, or Salafis), or die!

I commiserate with all Muslims who want to lead a peaceful life and contribute to the well-being of fellow humans, without religious coercion or terrorism.

-- Politicarp

Canada: Free Press: Supreme Court welcomes bloggers under protection of free speech

Globe & Mail's justice reporter Kirk Makin reports a very important decision of Canada's Supreme Court regarding journalism and the media, a judgment that eases the burdens of defense against overbearing libel accusations aimed at a reporter, or a team of reporters "on assignment."

Top court transforms press freedom with new libel defence

Updated law extends defence to new media

The Supreme Court of Canada transformed the country's libel laws yesterday with a pair of decisions that proponents say will expand the boundaries of free speech. The court ruled that libel lawsuits will rarely succeed against journalists who act responsibly in reporting their stories when those stories are in the public interest.

It also updated the laws for the Internet age, extending the same defence to bloggers and other new-media practitioners.

Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin [God bless her! and her colleagues who voted 9-0 for this protection of bloggers when they function as reporters!] said that Canada needs to keep in step with several other Western democracies that have provided greater protection to the media.

The point around which future libel-accusers are liable to gravitate are the words "when those stories are in the public interest" (this may not be the actual wording in the Court's ruling, as the reporter has the task of selecting quotes and summarizing the text -- possibly dense with legalese). In any case, in future judges of libel cases are alerted to be fair to both accuser and the reporter/s accused.

Dean Jobb, a journalism professor at University of King's College in Halifax, said that a revamping of the libel laws was long overdue.

"The court has recognized that the definition of 'journalist' is expanding in our online world," Prof. Jobb said. "Bloggers and anyone else publishing information on matters of public interest can claim the defence, provided the way they gather and present the news conforms with the ethical standards of journalists.

The vocation of journalist is definitely enhanced (what is termed "updated"), enabled to function more effectively in today's advanced-technical world with Internet, widespread blogging, and the use of other media. This reality is part of the washback problem of info-saturation that some experience in pursuing the tasks of blogging and reporting.

At the moment in the USA, an exposé-film maker, who outed the "community organizer" nationwide group, ACORN: the movie producer secretly filmed and hit a wall of govt indifference when they presented their evidence, then after being stonewalled govt, they released to national television the recorded evidence they had of the Obama-orbit org's officials counselling prostitution (this was only at one of the ACORN locations they infiltrated for the purposes of their sting opertation. The govt has the film documentation, but instead of going after ACORN's B-porn propensity and other legally-dubious actions, the bureaucrats at the FBI or some attorney general in some state capital or wherever -- instead have announced they will prosecute the whistle-blowing movie folks. Mum's the guvt's word about the sordid Obamites of ACORN. Of course, the President himself had nothing to do with the patterns of criminality that seem to plague ACORN across the country. It's a case of supporters having their own agenda, and dragging their "hero" into the mud of their own mischief.

Too bad something like Canada's recent decision hasn't already squelched the ploy of the criminal practices of ACORN in the USA, that the whistle-blowers uncovered for the whole nation to see. Many observers seem to feel that ACORN is just too big to be taken down by any functionary of the Obama administration, or even state attorneys general in that camp.

-- Lawt

Enviro: Climate Data: Battle for climate data approaches tipping point, says NS

 Battle for climate data approaches tipping point (Dec16,2k9) New Scientist.

[University of East Anglia] UEA's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) turned down freedom of information (FOI) requests for its temperature records. Last week, the UK's Met Office attempted to quell the growing anger at its lack of openness by "releasing" data from 1700 weather stations around the world. The move was a token gesture. The Met Office has admitted to New Scientist that those figures were already publicly available through the World Meteorological Organization.

But that's only top of the now-opening can of worms.  More later.

-- Politicarp

EconomicsUSA: Environment: Mega-Corps will work to re-balance world's ecology, says geographer

New York Times (Dec5,2k9) Op-Ed reported by Olga Orda (Dec17,2k9) for the ecology website Green Options. Dr Jared Diamond, professor of geography and physiology at the University of California at Los Angeles, is the author of Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (1997) (which I've read and deeply appreciate) and Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive (2005):

[Diamond's] article struck me as unusual -- both with its street smarts and nuanced analysis -- for two reasons.

One, the author ... [has] a real ear to the street and clearly, the boardroom, [and, of course, he is now a target whom] stoic environmental advocates immediately write off as nothing but “greenwash”. [Err, "greenwasher," shoud I re-write? -- rW]

I am talking about household names like Coca-Cola, Chevron and Wal-Mart that the author says [is a corporation] “many critics of business love to hate, in my opinion, unjustly.”

In the case of Chevron: “Not even in any national park have I seen such rigorous environmental protection as I encountered in five visits to new Chevron-managed oil fields in Papua New Guinea [on the geography-attuned anthropological history of which Diamond is a/the leading expert - rW]. (Chevron has since sold its stake in these properties to a New Guinea-based oil company.) And, the publicly traded company gives five savvy reasonson why it needs to care and is spending the money to prove it cares.

And then there is Wal-Mart, for whom scale is both a beast and blessing. Case in point: “This is what Wal-Mart did with fuel costs, which the company reduced by $26 million per year simply by changing the way it managed its enormous truck fleet. Instead of running a truck’s engine all night to heat or cool the cab during mandatory 10-hour rest stops, the company installed small auxiliary power units to do the job. In addition to lowering fuel costs, the move eliminated the carbon dioxide emissions equivalent to taking 18,300 passenger vehicles off the road.”

Second, Diamond states exactly what underpins and is attractive about the whole "sustainability means consuming less" argument. It is that consumption rates and standards of living are only loosely correlated, because so much of our consumption is wasteful [the waste does not meet the norm of optimality; see Hendrik Hart, Understanding our world: An integral ontology (1983, subsequent editions) - rW] and doesn’t contribute to our quality of life. Hello, Western Europe with less of our American stuff and more happiness due to more access to medical care, financial security after retirement, infant mortality, life expectancy, literacy and public transport. So, happiness is more complex than that, but definitely the social foundation matters.

Third, Diamond spoke with striking clarity on some of the actions Washington, D.C. can take to stimulate more businesses to adopt sustainability practices that keep the planet healthy. Namely:

“My friends in the business world keep telling me that Washington can help on two fronts: by investing in green research, offering tax incentives and passing cap-and-trade legislation; and by setting and enforcing tough standards to ensure that companies with cheap, dirty standards don’t have a competitive advantage over those businesses protecting the environment.”

So, if you have not already, read Diamond’s article. It will grab your attention too.

I join her in urging you to read it, and to click on and read Ordo's own write-up in Green Options (see above for the live-link to her article).

The fact that Diamond's main book is atheist historiography, is no obstacle to recommending that author to those who are, like me, of Christian faith or other non-atheist religions (atheism is equally religious in its own ways, and there are several varieties incompatible with one another -- that is, atheism actually is several religions, all of which  have arisen in history, in future some may die and others may be born). I discount the unrelieved atheist undertone as I read Diamond, which may not be possible for all readers. It is work to do so.

My biblical interpretation, unlike that of so-called "creationists," proceeds from Creator and a law-order for His creation (also a creation law-order for the creatures which appear over time, in a Christian evolutionary way of thinking, which is quite different from evolutionism and its atheist religions).   No to atheistic theories of cosmic, earthic, and humanic evolution(ism).  Yes to Christian philosophical explanation to bridge the narratives in the Bible and various sciences relevant to evolution.  But, at the same time, in my view these stories cannot be fruitfully and integrally reduced to one another.  I think this is the mistake, however much a valiant one, as introduced to reformational thawt by Roy Clouser's The myth of neutrality: An essay on the hidden role of religious belief in theories (2005 rev ed, paperback) which seeks to meld these two different narratives, but which Christian philosophizing shoud first respect in their distinct ownnesses (eigenheiden) in accord with a philosophic explanatory bridge-analysis of both.

This has taken us far from focus on the role of mega-corporations in "saving" the world from ecological collapse, but to Christians who have biblistic-historistic tendencies of thawt and who thus tend to over-historicize these chapter of Genesis -- it must be said that neither the hermeneutics of confession (Spykman), covenant (classical and new), nor the classical historical-literary hermeneutics, has offered us sufficient grounds to faith-affirm the ecological-cultural mandate for human maintenance of a genuine human stewardship over Earth as commanded in Genesis 1-3 (thus, the ecological element that shoud be powerfully motivating in our reformational reading of Scripture and our reformational ecological organizations).  Reviving the confessional hermeneutics approach more recently, Craig Bartholmew tends to the "problem" of the rise of yet another hermeneutical approach Scripture, called "Canon Criticism" (Brevard Childs and Bernhard Anderson).  Albert Wolters seems to be of this view, as well.  But I have not yet acquired the necessary books to read these latter writers on the subject.

-- EconoMix

Global Climate: Copenhagen Confer: Cl+mate change negotios workin' thru th n+t in Cpnhgn to rescue conference from collapse

BBC News online "Copenhagen negotiators struggle to save talks" (Dec15,2k9)

Climate change negotiators have been working through the night in Copenhagen to try to rescue plans for a global agreement from collapse.

Activists from Climate No Borders demonstrate[d] on 14 December in Copenhagen
There are only [a few] days left before the conference closes on Friday. ...

Heads of state start to appear in the Danish capital later in the day, ahead of a hoped-for signing on Friday.

But several issues remain to be solved ahead of the summit's climax.

Correspondents say suspicions among poor countries that rich ones are ganging up on them - which prompted a walk-out on Monday - remain strong.

They say that with the end of the conference looming, the general hope is that minds will increasingly become concentrated and real concessions emerge from both sides.

I'm intensely curious what will come out of this year's annual Environment assembly, a UN-sponsored event on the sciences of climate change, which, even if misguided, is the best info hub, and theorizing hub, regarding the overall interacting forces in weather and climate change.

So, again, even if there has been perfidy in the guildism, the betrayal of science by means of massaging the data / statistics, repressing anomalies from functioning in the paradigmatic self-corrections, blacklisting scientific authors with views that dissent from the current AlGore-herd mentality. Itll take a while before I can sort thru the debris of opinion and factoids from the ongoing conference, with over 1,000 arrests of "anarchists and leftwing activists," sort thru and then research certain themes as most outstanding and pressing.

-- Politicarp

Latin America: Chile: Political scene with former leftist winning space for his small independent centrist party

"Chile vote exposes fatigue with ruling center-left alliance," by Sara Miller Llana (Dec13,2k9) Christian Science Monitor.

Mr. Piñera will not receive the 50-plus percent of votes needed to avoid a runoff. He faces former president Eduardo Frei of the ruling party, who is in second place. But Enriquez-Ominami, in third, has surged in polls in recent weeks. ..[T]he split in the left created by Enriquez-Ominami´s departure is the biggest change to the nation´s political scene.

Eduardo Frei is formerly a leader of the Christian Democratic Party in Chile.

Another CSM dispatch by Sara Miller Llana (Dec13,2k9) reports "Chile vote latest vote is sign of region's shift to the center."

A Wikipedia article gives a fine overview of Eduardo Frei's Christian Democratic Party of Chile, a particpant with the Socialist Party in the coalition government called the Concertacion.
-- Politicarp

Climate Change: Copenhagen Conference: 192 countries negotiate, as 1,000 anarchists arrested

"...[S]o far officials from 194 countries have failed to make any substantive agreements on even the most basic goals."


London, UK's Telegraph carries keen article, "Copenhagen climate summit: 1,000 anarchists arrested," by Colin Freeman (10:49pm GMT Dec12,2k9), is accompanied by a great newsvideo "Riots break out at Copenhagen climate march" (the vid counts only 21 of the "anarchists and left-wing activists" (footage probably taken early in the arrest count).

-- Politicarp

Climate Change: Copenhagen 09: Semiotics of violence at Climate Change conference

The image immediately called to mind the "ultra-violent" in A Clockwork Orange, a 1971 film by Stanley Kubrick, adaoted from the novel by Anthony Burgess (1962).

Even the UN's annual Climate Change conference in Copenhagen, Denmark--a tidy little country with a tiny intellectual elite that enjoys insulting religions, authoritarian and otherwise, with cartoons in the public press--is the site of purveying violence.  Emma Alberici details this component of the overall Copenhagen symbolism, viral-spiralling its meme out around the world on the wings of bureaucracry and political slosh&slop funding.  And, 'ganda in a multitidue of media. This time, the bureaux-funded media scenario includes money-voracious executive scientists who have cooked the books, massaged the data, bullied, and propagandized by capturing "peer reviewing" processes in the elite scientific journals for their own biases.   As to the violence symbolism:

Danish police raided an apartment complex housing a group of climate campaigners detained 200 activists.

About 200 police carried out the raid in the centre of Copenhagen in the early hours of the morning.

Activists were locked in the building for two hours while officers searched the premises and seized items they claimed could be used for acts of civil disobedience.

Campaigners say the police confiscated a power drill, an angle grinder, some pieces of timber, paint bombs and 193 riot shields.

The accommodation centre is one of a handful provided by the Danish Government for the protesters.

About 30,000 or 40,000 protesters are expected to arrive in the capital over the next week.
Police fear an international extremist group may also be on its way to Copenhagen to commit acts of violence.

Hasn't the crisis of leaked/purloined emails and docs from the Climate Research Unit,  University of East Anglia, UK (which was but one instance of several leakouts/stolen exposé-quality Green shenanigans) -- again, hasn't the crisis of leaks and clepts been devastating enuff to official climate-change science's crediblity?  Now, this other visage of violence on the same scene, threatening raw and ruthless, clouds our perceptions.

-- Politicarp

I'm 'issed off that Adsgoogle or whatever has placed an abortion ad on my blog

It's a real violation that Ads by Google woud put a sales contact for abortions, on my blog,  and then like a digital lottery it comes from Google's alogarithms into the set of ads Google is sending me per our agreement.  Well and fine to run a wide range of ads-buying customers' content and then run them on my little blogging institution read by my millions of readers.  But these sleazers (the abortion businesses) are dealt out to  me and my blog. In the past, there's been occasions when Google dealt out porn or near-porn ads.   Google and Ads by Google surely coud program their alogarithmic ad-digits to keep out stuff that is clearly against our sphere-sovereignty of publication, our policy of appropriateness.  I do not have to accept their exceptionable content, and they nowhere gave me an advance chance to knock out types of ads that are editorially unacceptable. 

To add insult to energy, this complex ad-dealing shuffle poops onto my screen an Abortion item arrived first at the top of the list in this particular set of assorted ads from the Google Adder.  As time went on, the Abortion sales ad shifted down the list, until it was last in line and was backed up, in the Ads by Google, to my previous blog-entry, Advent and Christmas 2009.

On the face of it, Ads by Google is viciously changing the very meaning of my blog in one darned respect without respect for the the publisher's efforts to build up his own meaning for this blog!

-- Albert Gedraitis, publisher
for the whole refWrite team

Religious Freedom: Switzerland: The ban on minarets [reWr+t]

Bloomberg News via NYT -- Letter from Europe: Minarets and Slender Arguments -- reports the religious-freedom brouhaha in Switzerland, which has found it just can't accomodate a mosque with minaret/s to its sensibilities, religious and/or otherwise.

If it did nothing else, Switzerland’s vote to ban the building of minarets drew attention to Europe’s identity crisis. The Swiss — like the French, or the Germans, or the British for that matter — are clearly worried about the Muslims living among them.

The Swiss vote (which may end up getting knocked down by the European Court of Human Rights) has succeeded in shifting the focus away from the social and economic problems of immigration and toward religion. To put the full weight of Europe’s cultural identity crisis on a slender spire of traditional architecture meant risking a dangerous debate, which has now erupted, and not only in Switzerland.

Previous debates about the role of Islam in Europe involved issues other than religion. The 2004 French ban on head scarves in schools was about the submission of women; the 2005 publication of Danish cartoons lampooning the Prophet Muhammad was about free speech.

A minaret, by contrast, is no more and no less than a symbol. Other religious symbols draw protest — a nativity scene in front of City Hall, say, or a cross on a mountaintop — but they, unlike the minaret, are not part of a house of worship.

Yet the minaret is being outlawed in the heart of Europe — to scattered applause in neighboring countries.

A h+er quality of information is available from Al-Jazeera, which of course has an intense curiosity about this case. The article mentioned "Europe's waning liberalism" (Dec5,2k9) by John L. Esposito.

Dr Esposito is a professor of Religion and International Affairs, professor of Islamic Studies and founding director of the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Centre for Muslim-Christian Understanding at the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.

He is the editor-in-chief of the six-volume The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Islamic World, and has written more than 35 books including 'Who Speaks for Islam?', 'What a Billion Muslims Really Think', and 'The Future of Islam'.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.

-- Politicarp

Climate Change: Copenhagen Conference: Alternative views at 'skeptics" meet

Among other luminaries the first day of the alternative research-views assemblage consisting of some 50 scientists, businesspersons, and lobby groups were these:

• Professor Henrik Svensmark, a physicist at the Danish National Space Center in Copenhagen

• Professor Nils-Axel Morner, geologist from Stockholm University

• Professor Cliff Ollier, geologist from the University of Western Australia

• Professor Ian Plimer, from the University of Adelaide

The meeting on the eve of the UN Climate Conference of 15,000, was organised by Danish group Climate Sense and the lobby group Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT).

Go to Louise Gray, "Global warming 'caused by sun's radiation' (Dec8,2k9) Telegraph, London UK

Abraham Kuyper instructed us always to show due respect to the qualified dissenters whenever the academy is monolithic on a given analytic/theoretical problem or recalcitrant societal issue.

Apparently not among the dissenters but certainly a very useful webs+t during the UN Climate annual meeting, this year Dec7-20, Copenhagen is the webs+t, The Green Dectectives. If you have any trouble with technical terms of latterday climatology, there's a great Decoder which is video-supported.

EnviroMedia Cofounders to Participate in United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Copenhagen, Denmark.

AUSTIN, Texas–More than half of Americans say they’ve never heard of cap and trade. But a new Web site, GreenDetectives.net, launched today to raise awareness of cap and trade and other complex climate change issues in advance of Copenhagen’s historical United Nations climate change conference.

In a few days, negotiators from 192 countries will meet in Copenhagen, Denmark, to work toward a treaty to replace the current global pollution reduction agreement, the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. The 15th annual Conference of Parties (COP 15) will address global economic and humanitarian challenges, and may set in motion huge changes that affect an uninformed public.

“Between new Pew Center research illustrating low awareness and concern about climate change, and the millions of dollars invested in ‘debunking’ beliefs that it even exists, America has a real problem as we head into COP15 in Copenhagen,” says Valerie Davis, CEO of EnviroMedia, a firm that focuses on authentic green marketing.

EnviroMedia President Kevin Tuerff added, “Valerie and I have spent our careers researching and explaining air, water and waste pollution challenges to consumers. Global climate change is by far the most complex issue we’ve taken on, but we have faith Americans will contribute to the solution if they take time to understand the connection between our everyday lives as consumers, and important issues like cap and trade being discussed in Copenhagen at the United Nations climate change conference.”

I haven't explored deeply enuff, but so far I haven't met blatant cap and trade ideology, or outr+t climate-crisis triumphalists.

--Politicarp

Calendar: Advemt Season for Protestants and Catholics

TelecomsUSA: Mega-Corp Shuffle: Comcast grabs 51% of GE's NBC aims at 'real TV' on Internet

I''m intending to write-up a semiotics analysis of visualizing / formatting a digital page in order to advertize, etc, certain commodities and/or causes, etc -- to the end purpose of gaining at least some pedestrian ins+ts into how a layer-enriched digital page "signifies."

I hereby commit myself to at least one re-wr+t and expansion of the foregoing ... now seg to the news I was researching,

The news-story in question told the tale of how Comcast leveraged itself to 51% ownership of what was previously General Electric's (Immelt of infamy!) ownership of the TV broadcast mainline channel, NBC [National Broadcasting Corporation USA].  NBC has been in decline for some time in the all-channel competition for viewers, but the line of infamy from Immelt ownership to NBC's satellite, MSNBC which wears down its own extreme Left ideology into a new lapdog boosterism for the Obama Presidency.

NBC has a great logo, it's famous Peacock multi-colored tailfeathers.

But that ad isn't first in the hierarchy of visual targets that your reading eye is busy picking out to pause and focus.  Because this page is allegedly a newspage, presumably a newspage, the text is carefully displayed with a heavy headling leading the way, but all falderall with Google sub-headlines for its ads,  the eye-focus drops out from under you and bops to the ad  external subhead, internal head "Watch TV Shows Online" from Rogers On Demand, a Toronto-hubbed Canadian communications mogul-corporation., and then bops again to "Nortel - Customer Update."  Both are live-linked.

Normally, the space between the headline matter and the main body of newstext, if subjected to such a particular display of this sort on such a sales-focussed (hooks) news-windowdressing (bait) webpage,  woud cut the news-story's flow, due to the fact of reading display is that the experienced reader's eye woud anticipate an outline of two parts in such  a subhead-size headling and organized placing.  No such thing!

My Blogger copy-up of this page, took everything on the page, but rearranged it, so the following does not precisely preproduce the fine niceties of original webpage online aesthetics.  So, even more than in the original webpage, the body of newstext consisting of authentic reportage, however opinionated  can only be found by using the scrollbar to zip past all the perhaps tempting visual bric a brac, bric a brac that one is peripherally already aware of, as the reading eye sticks to the text, the drivers must stick to the road, while the passengers can watch the countryside zip by, bye bye.
Finally, the report.

Comcast controls majority of NBC

Topic: Technology News

Posted on Thu, 3 Dec 2009 11:41:05 CST | by Robert Evans

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The entertainment landscape changed once again today, as Comcast announced a joint venture with GE's NBC Universal. As a result of the deal, Comcast will merge their cable channels with NBC and contribute $6.5 billion to the deal, in exchange for 51% control of the venture. Bloomberg.com states that the total worth of both entertainment units before the merger was $30 billion for NBC, and $7.25 billion for Comcast.

As you may recall, Comcast is currently working to make real WebTV a reality. Under their plan, all Comcast customers will be able to watch any TV programs from Comcast channels over the Internet. Currently CBS, Time Warner, Liberty Media, Scripps, Rainbow, and A&E have agreed to join Comcast.


It's not known if this merger means that NBC will also throw its hat into the ring for Comcast's On Demand Online service, but it is highly likely. It's hard to imagine Comcast going to the trouble of gaining a controlling interest in NBC and not trying to add it to their Web TV scheme.

Before you get to the bottom of the newstext, you encounter three live-links on your reading way: Bloomberg.com (the news source online), Comcast (which seeks to make "real TV viewed on the Internet," apparently movies and all, and then one of those hyper-links that brings up, first of all, an ad "AT&T Business Solitions."  The labyrinth of telecommunications and digitry!

Climate: Copenhagen, Denmark: Conference expectations peaked/piqued, large downturn

"Updated December 02, 2009

Obama's 'prestige' on the line in Copenhagen,

With Climate Deal far from certain

FOXNews.com

Analysts say that while President Obama might help strike a broadly worded climate change deal in Copenhagen, a legally binding replacement for the 1997 Kyoto Protocol may be just as unlikely after his visit as before."

I don't think the question is so much one of Obama's prestige that's on the line, rather it's the whole totalitarian mindset of Dr Phil Jones, head of UK's now-notorious Climatic Research Unit, at the University of East Anglia, it's his mindset that overshadows the two-week Copenhagen assemblage, Dec7-182k9.

The official British wording for "Climatic Research Unit" doesn't quite make sense in North America where "climatic" has hovering in that portion of its semantic web which is sound-based, the sound-connotation of of "climaxic" or "climactic  In this case perhaps we shoud think of "anti-climaxic research unit" 

The apparently culpable CEO of which aforementioned Unit got himself "temporarily" fired today. And his Big Green  collaborator at Pennsylvania State University has been put under the lens for his contributions to the purloined (hacked, leaked) emails. Who next? Who was that third guy? How many more are there?  Who's been shredding docs and emails around the world.

Meantime, the more authoritative critics of Cap 'n Trade, 1997 Kyoto Accords, and their extension / replacement by the hoped-for 2009 Copenhagen Accords presumably to have been result of the conference, are quite vocal at the moment.

Patrick Michaels, former president of the American Association of State Climatologists and environmental fellow at the Cato Institute, said he has his doubts.

"The president is carrying nothing credible in his pocket, so how can he compel people to do something credible?" he said, referring to the fact that Congress has not passed its cap-and-trade bill.

The President may well weave certain testimonials into the fuller fabric of his diplomacy, compared to what is said to be his usually only-pragmatic approach.

-- Lawt

EconomicsCanada: Recession: We've been exorcized! -- Let the good times roll ...

Globe & Mail, Toronto (Dec2,2k9),  "At noon, Go Canada Go,"  by David Parkinson.

G&M's Global Investor blogs has featured a Market Blog special cheerleading report, weited heavily toward the successes of the gold mining and refining industries

Canadian stocks are pushing their way higher in midday trading, thanks to the strength of gold and base-metal prices, while U.S. markets continue to struggle for traction.

Shortly after noon ET, the S&P/TSX composite index was up 30 points at 11,737. The Dow Jones industrial average was down 43 points at 10,429, while the S&P 500 was off 3 points at 1,106. The Nasdaq composite index was up 2 points at 2,178.

In Toronto, six of 10 industry sub-indexes were higher, led by materials, up 2.3 per cent. Consumer staples were off 1.1 per cent, while the heavily weighted energy sector was down 0.6 per cent on lower oil prices.

Gold is up $12 (U.S.) at $1,212.20 an ounce in New York, after pushing to another record high of more than $1,218 in early trading. Bullion was initially fuelled by renewed weakness in the U.S. dollar, but has retained much of its strength despite a recovery in the greenback, which is now showing mild gains against the euro.

The Canadian dollar is off one-third of a cent at 95.25 cents (U.S.)

Crude oil is down nearly $2 at $76.39 a barrel.

With little significant economic or corporate news scheduled Wednesday, investors are already looking ahead to Friday's U.S. and Canadian employment reports.

Gold blocks and "candy bars" are sold regularly on TV here.

-- EconoMix, with hat tip to

Ecology: Climate Change: 'Peer-reviewed studies' on alleged global warming jinxed by EcoloScis

Mark Steyn flails Climate Research Unit docs.  "[T]he global warm-mongers have wholly corrupted the 'peer-review process', says National Review to introduce it's contributor on the topic of drudgery and skullduggery in the eco-biz of climate documents. "The CRU global-warming scandal," Mark Steyn, National Review Online (Nov28,2k9).

Steyn himself comes up with the prize-winnable phrase, "the Climategate / Climaquiddick scandal" -- except, why squeeze deceased Senator Ted Kennedy into this discourse, citing a tragedy of causing another's death while driving drunk. Is Steyn trying to imply that the CRU document/emails generators killed a dissenting colleague while they were driving drunk? For shame! to demand a reader fathom what actually is fancy gibberish logically, but perhaps effective rhetorically. In wr+ting too, "s+multaneity of norm-realization" (Bernard Zylstra) is often required.

Rather, we woud-be rhetoricians, coud we work up some embellishment to a better metaphory-rich formulation around the organized deceit of scientists leading the earth-is-warming alarmists. But not all who worry or, even, protest against perceived warming are alarmists and, therefore, somehow mindless.

Need I add, the Ecology Scientists par excellence (we were told) have now been outed as professional deceivers--impacting, not least of all, their believers who will never understand the actual science or the emails and other docs. Still, a modified version of a scientific understanding of human contribution/dominance in climate change coud yet well prove correct, at least somewhat correct. It's unsettling that the science is still unsettled, especially now complicated by the gurus of deceit who have lost their credibility as scientists, become mere "gurus", leading environment-concerned fowks in all their doability and generosity (and sometimes hypocrisy, as in all causes movements and churches, and current atheist movements / advertizing).

-- Politicarp

Politics: China: Censures Iran nukes, persecutes Christian megachurch

World of wonders!, just after a week or so of twists and turns in official Chinese govt (however, of more than one governmental tier) policy/practice toward Christians outside the official govt-system of Church-registration; lo and behold, Iran overleaps China's previous tolerance on the world nuclear front. In reaction to "Iran's defiance of the International Nuclear Agency to desist its development," China, with fellow stalemate Russia, suddenly reverse their stances on the board of IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) to join USA, UK, and France in condemning Iran's dramatic announcement of plans to build 10 more uranium-enriching plants useable in missiles bearing nuclear weapons of mass destruction. Of course, Iran declared it wanted nuke facilities for peaceful purposes only. Raymond J. Learsy, "With Russia and China on board, Iran can now be stopped," Huffington Post (Nov30,2k9)

The game changer in this vote was that Russia and China joined the U.S. and its allies in the majority. With Russia and China on board, swift and immediate action becomes possible.

Some 80% of Iran's export earnings come from oil. Oil sale revenues are the paymaster of more than 50% of the government's budget, including the salaries and financing of the Mullah's goon brigades brutally oppressing Iran's brave citizenry.

Iran's oil exports have been ranging in the vicinity of 2.1 million barrels a day, with Japan and China as Iran's largest buyers, each pulling some 500,000 bbls /day. Other major destinations for Iranian oil are India (375 mm/bbls) and South Korea (250 mm/bbls) with South Africa, Italy, France, Spain and Greece all with over 100mm bbls/day each.

An entente between Russia, China, the United States and some friendly persuasion by Saudi Arabia could bring this offtake [the aforementioned importers] -- shipments that are the lifeblood of Iran's renegade regime -- to a halt almost overnight.

There are other interests involved, for instance the industrial boom

of Chinese corporations in countries like Papua New Ginuee and thru-out the world, "The World of China Inc.," Time mag Dec7,2k9.

There are other simultaneous focii in the news from/about China these days. One newsworthy focus is the sometimes-sly, sometimes-brazen suppression of the Christian minority which has been indigenous to China for six millenium (at least since the 7th Century AD).

"China sentences megachurch leaders to prison," by Michelle A. Vu,

--------------

"WEA leadersvisit fast-growing Chinese megachurch," Christian Post (online) Nov27,2k9

Science: Climate Change: Email hack exposes flank of UN Climate Change brains

Three climate-change doctrinalists who will figure largely in the looming Copenhagen Conference, have been cawt up short. Dr Richard Somerville, Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Dr Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University, and Dr Eric Steig, University of Washington have suddenly been put on the defensive as a result of what's being called ClimateGate, exposed by an unknown hacker stealing their emails from UK University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit.

Somebody will rake thru the emails and float up whatever evidence there is that they "cooked the science to make this thing look as if the science was settled...." At some point, anyone interested will have to decide for her/himself whether ClimateGate is a hoax or the real deal.

As for the Copehagen Conference, we wish conferees the best to the extent that their intent remains to arrive at the truth as best they can know it in their scientific capacities.

In the end, most of us simply cannot master the actual science of those now claiming the stealing of the emails is a "smear campaign" because the email texts will be "cherrypicked' for use against them. Too bad! These doctors of science have to be vetted by other means than being voted authorities par excellence by some mass of their peers who can follow the actual science ... to some extent ... usually. Obviously, there are marginalized scientists who can understand the Troika (but perhaps not replicate the Troika's findings, a requirement). The important thing is to bring qualified scientists who are the dissenters on this crucial matter (given established Science's churchlike absolutes about their empirical-statistical findings, and in dependence on their particular thoeretical models).

So we have also dissidents in the political realm, who cannot perhaps follow "the science", but have an immense responsiblity to explore and investigate the conditions under which these conclusions have become definitive to the apparent-majority of established Science, establishing the Orthodox Doctrine of Science on Climate Change: namely, Human-created Natural Collapse of Earth as a Human Habitat.

For instance, Sen James Inhofe (Republican, Oklahoma) is known as a GlobalWarming skeptic. He has every reason of public justice to call for an investigation of the emails to make a good sounding toward determination public-justicially into the conditions whereby UN climate change research was conducted, directed, and promulgated. Ihnofe's way of knowing is politic/al, not scientific/al.

Then, there's the relatively "naive" way of knowing typical of those of us who can't know sphere-specifically in either Science or Politics, and certainly can not replicate the science (both the particular theoretical models Climate-doctrinaire scientists are using, and everything the official models cherrypick as "facts" -- what the model itself elicits/constitutes as a relevant fact to the instituted model and the measuring instruments with their imposed metric (a primal element in the mathematization of science (Cassirer) -- such field-indigenous facts must be shattered out from the terrible wholeness of the reality on Earth of climate, however from the hand of the Creator thru evolution, or due to human need, greed, and hubris.

If we can acknowledge at least three different ways of knowing being necessarily operative in the determination of public order regarding climate change, then we can begin to face up to how most of us must live by faith in the sources we trust.

I'd like to see these purloined emails being vetted forensically, something of the actual historical process of reaching the floodtide of climate-changism we are now in. But in any case Copenhagen will push climate-change triumphalists further along to the destination they intend for all of us. I'm curious as to just how our #1 American Salesman will do in his return to the Danish capital for the upcoming conference. Wow!, it occurs to me that since this is an international conference, some groups may wish to occasion a protest. Please, all, no violence!

JuridicsUSA: Lawmaking Process: Healthcare Insurance Reform reaches the Senate Floor

Senate Majority leader Harry Reid (Democrat, Nevada) has entered a peak moment of his longtime public service, having successfully herded his majority to group-write a Senate version of a Healthcare Insurance Reform bill.  He deserves credit for getting the law out of committee and onto the full Senate floor for debate, and ultimately passage or failure in just that attempt.  The vote was 60 for bringing the committee's draft to the floor for debate, while 36 opposed. 

A handful of Democrat centrists say they can't support the government-sponsored health-insurance plan -- known as the public option -- that is included in the bill. And Democrats are divided over abortion, an issue that nearly derailed the House earlier this month when it narrowly passed a health bill that blocked abortion coverage from federally subsidized insurance plans [the Stupak Proviso], including some run by private insurers.

The timing of the Manhatten Declaration signatories -- piloted thru the political waters by nonother than Chuck Colson, in creating a new social-conservative moralistic alliance led by Roman Catholic prelates, evangelical preachers, and even some Orthodox hierarchs--has been quite breathtaking.  Christian ecumenicity around anti-abortion, anti-Gay extremism (they want to crush 2women unions, and 2men unions -- whether or not any given state of the Union wants non-marriage recognitions of other kinds of actually existing intimate unions, in need of legal reception and regulation instead of endangered in some legal twil+t zone.  These types of law shoud be determined regionally, not one type for all 50 states.

To my mind, a more porous overall pattern shoud obtain so that the country itself becomes self-aware as a pluriformity of mores (as evidenced by morally-differentiated communities) with some regional variation of population densities, so as to occasion some refuge somewhere for its "deviant" nativeborn, resultantly acknowledging a morally-differentiated society that consists, in part,  of different moral communities.   Somewhere in the overall pattern there have to be geographical sociographical locations where alternative mores are permitted full expression and may set the public tone there in those places, as in Cape Cod, the Florida Keys, and neiborhoods in San Fransisco.  The malingering problem is that states/Federal division of powers and responsibilities, as provided in the US Constitution, needs to be rethawt in terms that acknowledge who actually is born into and immigrates into our country and exists in the overall empirical diversity of our society.

Another growing concern even as the bill progresses is the political heat on Democrats over expanded government spending amid rising unemployment and deficit concerns.  "We simply cannot ignore the growth in the federal government," said Sen. Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, one of those centrists. She was the last Democrat ahead of the vote to declare her support, ensuring Democrats would have the 60 they needed to overcome Republican stalling tactics. But she and other holdouts warned that doesn't mean they'll support final passage.

The latter point is quite reasonable, since there doesn't yet exist a final text.  The group-writing process of our democratic-republican lawmaking is just now going into action in the full US Senate, or has that process been put off, to sometime after Thanksgiving?, or after Christmas and New Year's.

Finally, there's the problem of the double jeopardy into which Lesbian couples are put by the anti-woman bias in American medicine, most recently signalled by the proposed rationing of mammographs to certain age levels of women.  

-- Lawt

PoliticsUSA: Moralistic Politics: 'Manhattan Declaration' a 'reactionary reflex' otherwise historically reasonable

Rewritten by Politicarp and Lawt, Nov25,2k9

 The Manhattan Declaration that was issued last week (but apparently long in the making) is an instance of moralistic politics in a morally-differentiated society, a working moralistic politics launched to crystallize an active resistance to the humanist-hegemonic exclusions that are prophetically perhaps anticipated by these notable prelates and preachers. 

A morally-differentiated society needs mechanisms that satisfy the communities that form and come to visiblity in the public square,  perhaps in two opposing moral doctrines / systems, perhaps facing-off as presently around the Stupak Proviso in the healthcare reform bill sent up to the Senate by the US House of Representatives, will the Stupak Doctrine also become embedded in the Senate's Healthcare Reform bill about to be debated?  It's certainly an American problem, but so is it also a problem in many national societies around the globe. 

The solution suggested by rW has centered on the co-op idea, thus different from the public option (as called for by Pres. Obama) but different as well from the present scalding greediness of the leading medical-insurance megacorporations.

There's some possibility that in the final legislation there is no distinction between mutual insurance companies (forprofit, perhaps; but at least owned by the policyholders, not stockholders -- of which there are none, apparently) -- as we were saying, no distinction between mutuals and the stockholder-owned/publically-traded "greed corporations" we mentioned critically elsewhere [following Ungar]). I wonder if the proposed text of the forthcoming law sufficiently was mindful of different forms of corporations, companies, ownership structures -- wherein profits and nonprofits, curtailed greed corporations and mutuals, etc., will all be encouraged to enter the competition sawt in the govt reconstellation of the market -- to make only one point here, by not disincentivizing the mutuals, the nonprofts, the differentiated-moral-community stances among hospitals, doctors, nurses, pharmacists and healthcare insurers. It's the competitive mix of all the firms in the healthcare insurance industry that has the best chance of undercutting the industry ethos at present -- the immoral ethos of driving prices skyh+ repetitively to the hurt of the customer / consumer / patient.

Somewhere in, at least, the detritus of the present bill,  there is apparently somewhere a conscientious-objector provision for two nonprofit co-ops, one for those policyholders / premium-payers who choose not to pay any premiums any portion of which is deployed to cover any medical insurer's actuarial cost-increases due to financing abortion procedures; that's the first of the two.

And, second, another nonprofit co-op for those who choose to pay (presumably larger) premiums to cover abortions that may occur in the family and the society, along with their general medical needs (which conceivably may otherwise be identical to those insuring medically thru the other national co-op, the one for abortion-support refuseniks. It coud be that the bulk of abortion-providing  medical insurance policies in which premiums cover abortions are held by employers in co-operation with employees under union labor-contracts: a workers spouse in the female instances presumably coud have an abortion on the breadwinner's policy at work under, say, the United Auto Workers or corporation-specific affiliate thereof, say, the Chrysler UAW.   The buried govt 2 co-ops approach is anticipated to attract only a small percentage of insurance policyholders, many of them buried in unions which a while ago adopted abortion-coverage demands of the union in negotiations.

Where perhaps the dual nonprofit co-op approach is conceded in the present draft of the bill, one hopefully is not exceptionally jaundiced because one entertains the notion that the legislative drafters assume the overwhelming number of people will stay put where they are, holding onto their traditional policies of healthcare insurance, rather than risk one of these new-fangled morally-differentiated nonprofit co-ops for medical insurance. I suspect they expect that the dual nonprofit co-op system based on morally-differentiated communities woud remain utterly marginal in the great scheme of insurance medical under the new Healthcare Reform law.

It seems that the new coalition of the Manhatten Declaration feels the necessity of prioritizing three issues at their basics, forming them into a moral-doctrinal list as relevant to the public square. In contrast, ours is a public justice approach that takes seriously the strong moral differences (differences of moral behaviors and moral systems).  In it's way, rW's proposal is moderate.  Presumably it is unacceptable to the R+twings of both Democrats and Republicans.

But anything from the American r+t is in turn largely suspect by the media and intellectual elites, especially when the "anything" is delivered by clerics -- a dozen or so Catholic prelates, several Evangelical Protestant big-timers with Chuck Colson  starring (you know him: Watergate, prison, did his time, started Prison Fellowship to bring parishioners into the prisons to initiate and maintain supportive contact with the incarcerated).  Along his way, Colson found a mentor in Francis Schaeffer's writings and linked up with a leading neo-schaefferian Nancy Pearcey, a student of Albert Wolters, professor recently retiring from Redeemer University College, Ancaster, Ontario).

And notably participating in the number of Declaration signatories, 125 or so at the start, were also some Orthodox prelates.

They collectively tried to create space for future dissidents who refuse to facilitate taking policyholder or government monies to pay the costs of abortions, and thus refuse to help pay salaries to abortuary doctors.  In the meantime, the signers baffled pro-abortion people who coudn't/can't comprehend how the hamfist of the law is likely to come down on such future Christian refuseniks, who may have to face negative professional consequences  and even future suffering as a result of what woud amount to blacklisting.

As sociologically inevitable as it seems upon examination of American demographics, still, the Manhattan Declaration is a 'reactionary reflex' -- again, altho otherwise historically-sociologically reasonable.  Anyone who appreciates the seething surface of largely unorganized moral communities in America, realizes that fault-lines can sometimes turn out to be entities with blendable borders, pastels blurring slowly into one another and out the other,  rather than only hard-edged lines and sharply contrasting continuous spaces.  The sociology of these tensions and blends means we must find  a public legal justice for all.

The Manhattan Declarers are telling us that they have enuff moxy to join an anti-abortion stance with an anti-GayAgenda stance (no recognition of same-sex/gender intimate unions with cohabitancy).  To me that's a big leap.  I oppose same-sex marriage, as well as does any Archbishop or Preacher Man, but it's ridiculous to deny all USA states room to recognize other than marriages.  Reserve marriage to its traditional 1woman1man definition, but allow room to the states to decide more regionally the recognition or nonrecognition of intimate unions between either 2women or 2men.

Anti-abortion + anti-homo + religiousFreedom

I'm afraid this combined Defense of the Alamo and Custer's Last Stand was belatedly finalized and issued by this coalition to define and crystallize organizationally an alignment to fite against new forces bent on forcing members of these moral communities to become complicit in abortion-support and destruction of the family's once-distinctive legal status. Also, there's the importance of marriage generally to the reproduction of the species and the civilization (Stafleu), and the production of a new human being, making a baby with both parents ready to cradle and educate till the kids grow up join the workforce or finish college.

The debate, however, has gone too far in its polarizing rhetoric and selective logics.  In the meantime, we have to make peace in the society, whether some women are having an abortion or not.  The state shoud not finance abortions, but shoud not outlaw women from having the abortion she intends and (with allied men) establishing connections with healthcare insurers and medical facilities ready to co-operate within the pro-abortion ethos.  The state shoud provide the public-legal framework to achieve justice for both morally-differentiated communities, and the precise healthcare insurance as variously appropriate to each.

There is much more to think about in the Declaration.  It green-lited the start of a nonviolent civil disobedience movement invoking Martin Luther King, Jr.  one of us will get back to that in a later blog-entry.

At the same time, the Declaration was/is, powerfully, both prophetic and martyrological, a centuries-distant experience in the Church/es, a tradition that has been renewed again and again but never so drastically  in the USA as now.  These prelates and preachers will be joined by many more over the next months, but that move will be pondered, in that it woud require a signer to preach the calling to people whose moral witness is presently being compromised by the demands of unions and employers to insinuate and implicate their financial complicity thru their tie-in with the abortion medical infrastructure. 

-- Politicarp

Further Research:

"No compromise," Worldevnglcl mag, by Joel Belz.

The Manhattan Declaration, by Timothy George, guest writer, WaPo.

Under God: Catholic, Evangelical leaders team up to fite abortion, same-sex marriage, by Michelle Boorstein.

Religious leaders warn of civil disobedience by Tark Tarkas at Forums >SomethingAwful

Signers of the Declaration pledge to "...not comply with any edict that purports to compel our institutions to participate in abortions, embryo-destructive research, assisted suicide and euthanasia, or any other anti-life act,” nor will signers “bend to any rule purporting to force us to bless immoral sexual partnerships” or “treat them as marriages.” The list of backers reads like a who’s who of the pro-life movement, and the document essentially argues that supporters of the movement deserve conscience rights.

What does noncompliance look like? Nonviolent civil disobedience. "Dr. King was very clear about nonviolence and we are committed to nonviolence,” said Robert George, drafting committee member and jurisprudence professor at Princeton University. He listed some examples of what religious civil disobedience might look like, such as a pharmacist quitting before providing abortion drugs or a physician changing jobs before performing an abortion or taking part in an assisted suicide. “There are limits to what can be asked of people,” said George, who was flanked by 15 religious leaders, including the Archdioceses of Washington and Philadelphia and evangelical leaders like Chuck Colson and Tony Perkins.Addressed not only to Christians, but to President Obama, Congress, and civil authorities, the treatise will be available online for individuals to sign as well. When asked whether nonpayment of taxes would be an acceptable form of protest, George, who is also a lawyer, said he was currently representing a West Virginia taxpayer who is refusing to pay the small percentage of her bill that might go toward state-funded abortions (“Litigation is still pending,” said George). Institutions were also called on to participate in the civil disobedience if, for example, if a Catholic hospital is under pressure to provide services that go against Catholic beliefs. Although conscience protections do exist for many institutions already, there are areas, cited on Friday, such as when the Catholic Charities of Boston halted adoption services, rather than comply with state law and allow children to be adopted by homosexual couples.

According to the Declaration, “We must be willing to defend, even at risk and cost to ourselves and our institutions, the lives of our brothers and sisters at every stage of development and in every condition.” Yet similar documents, such as last year’s Evangelical Manifesto, have been unveiled with great fanfare but little consequence. Civil disobedience, especially giving up a job, is a lot to ask in the current economy and is a hard notion, even for some signers of the Declaration.

-- Politicarp,
with rewrite assistance and research by Lawt