Commentary

Scott Klusendorf confronts a “pro-life” nun who voted for Obama

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Pro-life debater Scott Klusendorf wrote this article on the Pro Life Training web site.

Excerpt:

Nun: If only our students were completely pro-life on all issues.  I am consistently for life, and that’s why I’m voting for Senator Obama.

Me: Sister?

Nun: That’s right, I’m for Obama.  He’s the real pro-life candidate.  Most people focus too much on abortion.  I’m pro-life and care about all life.  So does Obama.

Me: What do you mean people focus too much on abortion?1

Nun: I mean Bush with the war in Iraq has killed so many people there is no way I could vote for someone like Senator McCain, who will do the same thing.  How can any person who cares about life vote for such a man?

Me: Are you suggesting the President unjustly killed innocent people?  If so, how?

Nun: Yes I am!  Think of all those innocent women and children killed in Iraq—over a million of them since we invaded the place six years ago.

Me: Did you say over a million?  How did you come up with that number?

Nun: I heard it someplace.  Besides, war is a pro-life issue like abortion and right now it’s even worse than abortion.

Me: To be worse than abortion, how bad would an unjust war have to be?

Nun: Abortion, war, poverty—they are all bad.

I’m sure you all recognize the tendency of some people to refuse to make judgments like “greater than” and “less than” when they are debating – because to put numbers to different things and admit that one thing is much worse than another (or more likely) would undermine their view.

The fact of the matter is that 30,000 innocent civilians TOTAL being killed in the process of liberating an entire country and deposing a dangerous tyrant, is NOT the same as 1.2 million unborn babies being killed PER YEAR because their parents refuse to be inconvenienced by the consequences of their own  hedonistic behavior.

And not only are the numbers different but the justification for the taking of a life is different in each case, too. Just wars are fought because the loss of civilian lives is not as bad as the failure to restrain a more dangerous threat to peaceful democratic nations. For example, the deaths of innocent civilians in the fire-bombing of Dresden in order to defeat the tyrant Hitler. But in the case of abortion, the justification is just that the selfish pursuit of pleasure of the parents justifies the killing of an innocent unborn child.

I have always been concerned by naive pro-lifers who think that big government socialism would someone be the answer to the problem of what to do with helpless unborn children. “Social justice” they call it. Well “social justice” won the election in 2008, and now we have taxpayer-funded abortions. Why? Because the people who voted to grow the government didn’t want to be inconvenienced with children. But the unborn children never got to vote – they were just too small to count.

News

Obama administration will sue Arizona for enforcing immigration law

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Story here from CBS News. (H/T Michelle Malkin)

Excerpt:

As Hotsheet reported yesterday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in a television interview in Ecuador this month that the Obama Justice Department “will be bringing a lawsuit” against the controversial Arizona immigration measure signed into law earlier this year.

The comment was striking because both President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder had said only that the administration was considering a suit. Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, who signed the law, called Clinton’s comments stunning and added that “to learn of this lawsuit through an Ecuadorean interview with the secretary of state is just outrageous.” She has said in the past she is prepared for a court fight.

It was unclear yesterday whether Clinton’s comments were simply a prediction or mistake or whether instead she was getting ahead of a planned announcement by the administration.

Now a senior administration official tells CBS News that the federal government will indeed formally challenge the law when Justice Department lawyers are finished building the case. The official said Justice is still working on building the case.

Contacted about Clinton’s comments today, State Department spokesman PJ Crowley said they reflected her beliefs.

Oh he’s going to lose bad in 2010. The secular leftists are more interested in punishing law enforcement and American states than they are in punishing terrorists and rogue regimes like Iran.

News

Obama flip-flops on health care mandates – now it IS a tax

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Here’s the deal. In order to get the health care bill to pass, Obama had to trick people into thinking that it was not going to result in higher taxes.

So, you would see him on ABC News before the bill was passed saying that forcing people to buy things they don’t want is not a tax:

OBAMA: No. That’s not true, George. The — for us to say that you’ve got to take a responsibility to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase.

…

OBAMA: My critics say everything is a tax increase. My critics say that I’m taking over every sector of the economy. You know that. Look, we can have a legitimate debate about whether or not we’re going to have an individual mandate or not, but…

STEPHANOPOULOS: But you reject that it’s a tax increase?

OBAMA: I absolutely reject that notion.

So forcing people to buy health insurance and fining them if they don’t is NOT A TAX, he says.

And so the bill was passed.

But the thing is, the government can’t legally force people to buy health care coverage – it’s unconstitutional! And people are suing them for having passed an unconstitutional law. So now the Obama regime has to argue in court that it really is a tax in order to escape court challenges that they overstepped their bounds by passing a health care mandate.

The American Spectator explains. (H/T Hot Air)

Excerpt:

In order to protect the new national health care law from legal challenges, the Obama administration has been forced to argue that the individual mandate represents a tax — even though Obama himself argued the exact opposite while campaigning to pass the legislation.

Late last night, the Obama Department of Justice filed a motion to dismiss the Florida-based lawsuit against the health care law, arguing that the court lacks jurisdiction and that the State of Florida and fellow plaintiffs haven’t presented a claim for which the court can grant relief. To bolster its case, the DOJ cited the Anti-Injunction Act, which restricts courts from interfering with the government’s ability to collect taxes.

The Act, according to a DOJ memo supporting the motion to dismiss, says that “no suit for the purpose of restraining the assessment or collection of any tax shall be maintained in any court by any person, whether or not such person is the person against whom such tax was assessed.” The memo goes on to say that it makes no difference whether the disputed payment it is called a “tax” or “penalty,” because either way, it’s “assessed and collected in the same manner” by the Internal Revenue Service.

It actually is a tax, and just another one of the many ways that Obama broke his campaign promise not to tax the middle class. How else is he going to pay for the trillion-dollar deficits he is creating? He has to raise taxes – or devalue our savings with inflation. There is no third way. The money has to come from somewhere – and if you tax the rich you just end up losing jobs.