Nathan Sheets

Oh Supreme Court, how you tear my heart so...

On the one hand, the fact that you overturned the Washington DC gun ban is wonderful and, indeed, Constitutional. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

But then, on the other hand, you want to outlaw the death penalty for the most evil people in our society, child rapists? How is injection cruel and unusual?

Oh that's right, because child rape isn't murder, and murder is apparently only thing that we can kill the guilty for, and even then only sometimes. Great.

I mean, just think about it: child rape. Why can't we, as Americans, have things that are so hated that everyone will know their punishment if they do it and are found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt? Hell, now you can go around killing people and, depending on the state you live in, just chill for the rest of your life. This is insane.

If you rape a child, you don't need to be in our society anymore. It's as simple as that. Ironically, it's often the people who shout "rape and incest" from the mountain side regarding the dismemberment of fetuses who are against the death penalty from those who actually commit the crimes. Apparently liberals care more about the criminals than both the fetus and the rape victim.

Even better, Obama says he disagrees with the Court's decision on the death penalty for child rapists, thus making him look moderate before an election. Not that I believe him. I'm still waiting to see what McCain says, though I'm kind of scared to find out.

LaShawn Barber, a black blogger who is prolife, writes today:

Barack Hussein Obama is an “articulate” infanticide-supporting liberal who doesn’t like being called a liberal.

And he’s going to be our next president.

I have no grand theories about why this is so. I just have a feeling he’ll be living in the White House come November. I feel no “racial pride” that he’s the first black major party nominee or that he’ll be the first black president of the United States, because values trump race in my world. Anyone who believes it’s OK for “doctors” to crush the heads of infants in the birth canal isn’t getting my vote. If you’re black and pro-life but feel “torn” between racial pride about his nomination and disgust for his pro-death stance, shame on you. Get your priorities straight.

Ouch. It should be noted that LaShawn is not a "pro-life only blogger". She blogs mostly about music and, when she does blog about politics, she covers a wide array of topics. Apparently some people just can't get past infanticide.

For the first time in a long time: Republicans win.

Mwahahahaha!

Clintonisms: The Amusing, Confusing, and Suspect Musing of Billary (edited by blogging friend Julia Gorin) is a book meant to amuse you, and yet it somehow also manages to make you wet yourself in nervousness at the prospect of Hillary Clinton becoming the next president of the United States.

Indeed, the nervous laughter emanating from my and other Republicans' mouths is not because Hillary Clinton could very well be cantering herself toward the White House as we speak, but rather because she and her husband could both be cantering toward the most powerful position on Earth.

Clintonisms is a collection of quotes by the being known as "Billary" as well as their friends, acquaintances, staff and people who randomly met them, with a wonderfully hilarious forward by Julia. And it will make your skin crawl thinking of Hillary entering the White House.

In the forward, Julia asks the tough questions: "If Bill Clinton was the first black president, would that make Hillary Clinton the second black president? Or is Bill Clinton a self-loathing brother who married a white woman and is a traitor to his race?" These are simply questions that must  be answered, and Julia is not afraid to go there.

Quick Snippets:

His Vivid and Painful Imagination
"I have vivid and painful memories of black churches being burned in my own state when I was a child." --Bill Clinton, about his childhood in Arkansas, where there weren't any church burnings in that time period, June 8, 1996...

...Can Be Like Cuba?
"I pledge allegiance to the America that can be." --Hillary Clinton, as recalled by Chris Matthews, "Hardball", November 2001...

Viva La Revolución
"We just can't trust the American people to make those types of choices. Government has to make those choices for people." --Hillary Clinton, to Illinois Rep. Dennis Hastert about health care, 1993

One particularly interesting chapter was entitled "A Note of Thanks for All You Do", in which we are exposed to the treatment of Hillary's immediate staff throughout the years. She would often use profanity toward them, demand that they do things that were prohibited by their job descriptions and just be a general grump. One Arkansas State Trooper said, "We all got used to her screaming, 'Just get the hell away from me.'", and a secret service agent got a book in the back of the head thanks to Hillary. I'm sure that temper of hers won't flair up when she becomes president, right? Perhaps we can count on her to throw books at the terrorists rather than using manly weapons.

We also get a view of the laws the Clintons have broken, the lies they have told, and the language they use to try to get around tough questions about their sketchy past actions.

I have recently been interested in the scandal involving Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky because only in recent years have I realized how strong of a case it really is. Liberals would have us believe it was "all about sex", but no, it wasn't. The president was a felon, and he lied under oath. With liberals proclaiming that we should all just "mind our own business", the fact remains that any question can be asked of you when you are under oath. You cannot lie, even if the question is "not the business" of the jury and judge.

Liar or Philosopher?
Q: Do you agree with me that the statement, "I was never alone with her," is incorrect? You were alone with Monica Lewinsky, weren't you?
A: Well again...it depends on how you define alone.

Classic.

Julia's book can be ordered from Amazon.com here. You can visit the book's website at Clintonisms.com.

If one were to say, "God help us all", it would not be in vain, nor over dramatic.

Update: Will I vote for Huckabee now? I don't know. He's a lot stronger on the life issue than McCain, but otherwise a liberal.

Update II: This is just another case of "We need to trust in God." It's hard when you are politically-minded and convinced that what you want is the best way. But God can work through people. The time to start praying for our next president--whomever he (or she!) will be--is now. Especially for the babies.

Pro-choicers will really be stepping it up come the next election. They are terrified that we may get a right-wing fanatic in the White House they may appoint "conservative judges" who will tear down Roe vs. Wade, sending women into alley ways by the droves.

The focus, of course, will be on the health of women, as if dismembering unborn children was on par with pre-natal treatment and brushing one's hair. This is the problem: by refusing to actually talk about abortion until they are absolutely forced to, pro-abortion groups can gin up support from know-nothing Americans.

I say "know-nothing Americans" to mean that the American people know nothing about abortion law. It's seriously a sad thing. The looks of shock I get when I inform someone that you can get an abortion in the third trimester are great in number. This is pro-choice and pro-life.

I consistently say that the pro-choice movement is a bunch of well-meaning people led by a group of lunatics. But they are holding their own in the public school system as well as the university front.

Politics, as we know, are only part of the solution to abortion. But it's hard to ignore politics when we are facing a presidential election in about 10 months, and a new president in the White House in about a year. So I say, until then, let's work to elect a pro-life president. (Hint: John McCain is not a pro-life president.)

While everyone in the pro-life movement seemed to be pretty happy with George W. Bush during his term for passing the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act, I need hardly point out that he did scant else. Yes, we got Robert and Alito on the court, but there was the Harriet Meyers incident, which frankly is a big deal.

We need someone more conservative and more pro-life than George Bush. I don't even care if he is personally pro-life and is just pandering to pro-lifers: so long as he acts pro-life with some enthusiasm. Passing bills is fine and good, but we need someone who is sure to appoint constructionist judges to the bench.

Now that Fred is out of the race, I suppose my next choice is Romney. *prepares for hate mail* While he's not the best we could have produced, I feel that he will be a good president should he be elected. I also feel that he will have the greatest chance of winning, besides John McCain, whom I won't even consider hypothetically on principle.

It's hard, though, when you are not enthusiastic about a candidate to get behind a campaign. I'll probably wait until we have a nomination. If we nominate McCain, I'll probably not support anyone.

Poll #1126348
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 10

Whom are you supporting now?

Fred Thompson is no longer in the race. Thoughts?

New York Republican Primary

Siena

McCain 36, Giuliani 24, Romney 10, Huckabee 7, Thompson 6

McCain +12

New York Republican Primary

WNBC/Marist

McCain 34, Giuliani 19, Romney 19, Huckabee 15, Thompson 6

McCain +15

New York Republican Primary

Zogby

McCain 24, Giuliani 21, Romney 14, Huckabee 7, Thompson 7

McCain +3

These are ALL of the available New York polls. What's the deal, Rudy?

Darrell Birkey, in one of the few pleasant e-mails I've received in the past week, addresses my point about Fred Thompson being against a Human Life Amendment. One hostile commenter (not Mr. Birkey) illiterately asked "WHAT PART OF A HUMAN LIFE AMENDMENT DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND?" as if I somehow missed that in my post about Thompson.

Firstly, it should be noted among the "personhood" crowd (as if the rest of us don't believe that fetuses are people too) that it really doesn't make sense to create a Personhood Amendment if the Constitution already protects people. (Not that I would be against such an amendment, but I'm just making the point.) The "let's stand on principle" thing doesn't really work that far, unless you are willing to "stand on principle" when the time comes and say, "We don't NEED a Personhood Amendment! It's already in the Constitution! Equal rights NOW!" Why have the redundancy? (This question is rhetorical, of course.)

But anyway, regardless of that, Darrell took slight exception to my statement that the president doesn't really have a role in the amendment process, saying that, actually yes, the president does have role: an influential role.

Well, yes. I agree with that. I was meaning an actual role laid out by the Constitution. But yes, the president can influence Congress and the states.

But Darrell, you also said that appointing judges was the least important thing that a president can do for the pro-life cause. I would totally disagree with that. But then again, I'm not going the amendment route, so our disagreement makes sense.

-N

Well, I've thought long and hard about whom I'm going to vote for, and, of course, we still have a while until Super Tuesday. (March) But I've decided that I'm going to go with my first gut feeling and vote for Fred Thompson.

My reservations with Fred rested on two major things: 1) he is divorced and remarried and 2) he isn't enthusiastic about a Human Life Amendment. I can live with the first one, I suppose, because no president is going to be morally perfect. Not that I expected that: it's just that there's something really sleazy about someone who leaves their first spouse to go start things "anew" with a younger, blonder woman. That's irritating to me, and I think that it says something about someone's character. That and the Bible calls it adultery. But that's another discussion.

I reconciled his statements about the Human Life Amendment by the simple fact that the president doesn't have an official influence over the amendment process, though you can be sure that it doesn't make one feel good to hear a person who claims to be pro-life say that they don't support a Human Life Amendment. Still, I do believe that he's pro-life.

I know this may not seem like an enthusiastic endorsement, but it is. I just want people to realize that I know we have reasons to have reservations about Fred. But I think that, once elected, he will be a great president and get things done. Presidents, in my opinion, are generally very limited in what they can do for the life issue, except, of course, they can appoint Supreme Court justices and federal judges. I think that Fred will appoint conservative judges or at least judges who will do less damage and actually consult the constitution before the NY Times.

What do you think? Have you decided whom you're voting for? If you don't live in the United States, do you have a candidate whom you like or lean towards?

I had a startling revelation the other day. It was that now that I'm an actual conservative, it's really, really hard for me to actually vote. When I was a pro-life liberal (the pro-choicers insist, by the way, that I never was liberal, and yet can never pinpoint a conservative belief of mine other than being anti-child-killing and being against enslaving blacks) I was able to easily vote for the candidate that I thought was the most pro-life. Or, in reality, since I voted democrat I couldn't vote for anyone at all in the primaries.

For president, it was either Kerry or Bush. Even then, while I obviously wanted Bush to win, I voted via absentee from Beautiful Switzerland for Donald Eugene Sheets of Clackamas County Oregon, a.k.a. my dad. This was on the principle that, at the time, pro-lifeness was the only thing that I agreed with Bush on (and allowing illegals to have amnesty, but I wasn't aware of this position of his until the switch had been made and I was thusly irritated by it) and I simply could not bring myself to vote for him.

But now here sit I, a total conservative, and I can't pick a candidate.

If I were to ignore the pro-life issue, for example, I would vote for either (in no particular order):

1) Giuliani: because he would beat Hillary
2) Thompson, because we share the most common beliefs though I am more conservative than he is

If I were to vote based only upon the pro-life issue (as I did back in Liberal Days) I would vote for either:

1) Mike Huckabee, who is pro-life
2) Fred Thompson, because I believe that he is at least vaguely pro-life even though he opposes a Human Life Amendment (and not for strategic reasons, either)

Now that I am factoring the two together, I get the following list:

1) EKLFj: Fkjweaerjhkl gag hrkajg

That, in case you can't decipher, is the result of me hitting my head against the keyboard.

It used to be really easy to vote (or not vote and yet still have someone who you secretly hoped would win, as was my case) because I knew that it was futile to hope for a candidate who was liberal and pro-life. The democrats wouldn't allow it. Now that I see things in reality, however, it's harder to vote because, while I obviously care about the abortion issue firstly, I am also extremely annoyed with Huckabee's position that I should be forced to feed homeless people with my income rather than be convicted by God to do it. Thompson also makes me a little nervous because he's divorced and remarried. Giuliani isn't even a conservative and barely a Republican.

If I were to take a shot in the dark, I would say that I will probably end up going for Thompson.

If you are informed about the candidates, please vote. If you aren't, please don't vote. You are not performing any service to our country to go in and aimlessly vote, regardless of what MTV tells you.

Gosh, at this point I may as well vote for Giuliani!

Brian Rohrbough, president of the new pro-life organization American Right to Life has recently issued a "Media Advisory". As I suspected from the inception of this new organization, ARL is going to be spending a lot of time criticizing National Right to Life.

It’s interesting to note, first of all, that when you go to the American Right to Life website you’ll find many cross words with NRLC but little explaining the “better” way to be pro-life. NRLC is constantly denounced by ARL as being worse than pro-choicers themselves, but yet the solutions to the “failed” stratagem of NRLC is no where to be found on the ARL website.

Oh wait, unless you want to pay $15, that is. That’s right: on the “Strategy” page which I eagerly clicked on in order to find out how ARL plans on ending abortion in twelve years very quickly blasts the “immoral” strategy of the National Right to Life and then tells us that we have to order a DVD in order to find out how we can stop being immoral. It's like those late night infomercials that promise us a way to earn one hundred-grand with minimal work...and we only need to buy a program to find out how!

I’m all for denouncing, by the way. Go ahead: attack the National Right to Life, call them baby-killing accomplices—but at the very least show us how to do things the right way without charging us money. It’s for the children, after all.

ARL peeps seem to think that should Roe vs. Wade become overturned and the choices of abortion finally go back to the states, NRLC will simply cease to be an organization. Ah yes, come the glorious day of the repeal of Roe vs. Wade they’ll brush off their hands, pack up their Washington DC office and go back home. ARL seems to think that the most important thing for the people at NRLC is to be all Libertarian about abortion and return power to the states, case closed.

And I’m not saying that National Right to Life is perfect—they aren’t. But I fail to see how creating an organization that will, over time, raise thousands of dollars for the sole purpose of attacking National Right to Life helps anything. That’s what American Right to Life is. Well, at least that’s all I can tell that they do via their webpage without paying $15 for the “strategy” that will end abortion in 12 years.

While it certainly is possible that American Right to Life will pass some kind of personhood bill in some small, conservative state, the fact remains that it will have to make its way up to the Supreme Court. And such a bill will be struck down by the Supreme Court. This is the realistic reality right now. We must continue to pray for God to touch the hearts of the people of this wicked nation, and He surely will do so. But 1) He will not force morality into their hearts, 2) abortion is the root of a greater spiritual problem and 3) we should be doing what we can and be at least trying to save some of the children. This is a point that ARL refuses to address.

ARL would rather 1.5 million children all be slaughtered than save, say, half of them. They have the position that it is unacceptable for even one child to die (which is a correct position) and that no children should be saved unless they all can be saved (which is a morally reprehensible position).

The ultimate goal of the ARL is to pass a Personhood Amendment. These days an Amendment is very, very hard to pass, requiring three-fourths of the States to ratify it. Yes, if abortion ever becomes viewed as slavery is now viewed, it may be easier, but it should be noted that that’s not how abortion is viewed. Should we go to war over the issue as we did with slavery? Maybe, but you’ll have to order the DVD to find out!

American Thinker writer Selwyn Duke wrote another great piece on Huckabee, expressing my exact concerns:

Belief can be a great thing, of course. Our Founding Fathers' unprecedented respect for liberty was born of their Christian belief that rights were bestowed by the divine king and not worldly ones. Mother Teresa's Christian beliefs inspired her to toil tirelessly to aid the destitute and dying in India.  But whereas the founders kept charity out of government and Teresa kept government out of charity, Huck conflates the two in a disastrous mix of bad theology and bad political science. Perverting Christianity's message and violating 2000 years of its tradition, he believes it is his Christian mandate to do good works through government.

This is exactly the thing I am seeing with Huckabee, and with evangelical Christianity in general. There is this idea and unrest growing among them that it is our government's duty to help the poor, rather than merely the Church's, and through this comes more liberal, Democraty Christianity. Eww.

Read the rest here, it's worth a read. Thoughts?

National Review, the nation's biggest conservative publication, endorsed Mitt Romney yesterday.

"Our guiding principle has always been to select the most conservative viable candidate. In our judgment, that candidate is Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts. Unlike some other candidates in the race, Romney is a full-spectrum conservative: a supporter of free-market economics and limited government, moral causes such as the right to life and the preservation of marriage, and a foreign policy based on the national interest. While he has not talked much about the importance of resisting ethnic balkanization — none of the major candidates has — he supports enforcing the immigration laws and opposes amnesty. Those are important steps in the right direction."
...
Uniting the conservative coalition is not enough to win a presidential election, but it is a prerequisite for building on that coalition. Rudolph Giuliani did extraordinary work as mayor of New York and was inspirational on 9/11. But he and Mike Huckabee would pull apart the coalition from opposite ends: Giuliani alienating the social conservatives, and Huckabee the economic (and foreign-policy) conservatives. A Republican party that abandoned either limited government or moral standards would be much diminished in the service it could give the country.
...
Fred Thompson is as conservative as Romney, and has distinguished himself with serious proposals on Social Security, immigration, and defense. But Thompson has never run any large enterprise — and he has not run his campaign well, either. Conservatives were excited this spring to hear that he might enter the race, but have been disappointed by the reality. He has been fading in crucial early states. He has not yet passed the threshold test of establishing for voters that he truly wants to be president.

This is pretty much where I am. While I think the National Review did a good job in sounding enthusiastic about Romney, they obviously had to think long and hard to choose which of the candidates to choose, since, in all reality, they are all a disappointment in one way or another.

I hope that if Romney becomes our candidate that he will be able to get everyone around him excited to oppose Hillary. I've said it in the past: I like Mitt, and he sure would make a much better president than Hillary, or, for that matter, any democrat.

Well, thank you Danna for mentioning my Facebook profile being out of date, which I didn't get to until today. I am horrified that no one else noticed this, considering I've been friending many people recently.

Please don't hold this against me...

I'm politically moderate. I'm a registered democrat in the rare case that there might be a pro-life one for whom I could vote--but that's yet to happen for me. I'm against the death penalty due to my respect for human life, as well as pro-immigration, pro-affirmative action and anti-war. I don't think that I am extreme on any of those issues, however, and I can see the points and logic that people who disagree with me present.

Let the snarky comments commence! :-D

Recently I was talking with my "connection" at National Right to Life (by "connection", I mean an old-coworker) and that got me to thinking about the current branches of the pro-life movement, about which I blogged just one entry ago.

If you look at the American Right to Life website, you will see that their goal is to end abortion in 12 years. And if they don't, they say, their entire leadership board will step down and replace it with new leadership. I wish they would have made this commitment in 1973 when Roe vs. Wade went through, because then they might have a little bit more of an appreciation for the road blocks ahead. I fail to find one way in which you can blame the NRLC for abortion still being legal. I defy anyone to produce a decent hypothesis.

But I was reminded about what former Oregon Right to Life president Dr. Ken Wilson said about abortion a few years ago in a promotional video. To paraphrase: Jeremiah went 30 years without a single convert.

American Right to Life apparently wants abortion to end now. But then again, who doesn't? The problem is there is a big difference between wanting something and attaining something. You can't just stick the abortion issue in the microwave and have it be done in 6 minutes. Abortion is a complex issue (though it shouldn't be) and abortion rights have been ingrained into the lives of Americans. You can't just take it away without resistance. And our resistance is strong: the pro-choice movement has the money. They have a lot of political power. They have the colleges and universities. All we really have is the truth and some great organizations like...National Right to Life.

I really can't stress enough that I am a total "on principle" pro-lifer. I never agree with abortion. This is why I'm a blogger and don't work for Right to Life—because as a Right to Life employee you have to be gracious with the "other side" in order to save babies. That's not my cup of tea. So I choose to blog and help Right to Life out any way I can as a volunteer. But I choose to save as many babies as possible as opposed to saving a principle. Making an exception for rape and incest doesn't approve of abortions in cases of rape and incest: it is saying "Fine, we'll give you this for the time being." Once we can save 90% of the babies we'll be able to work on the hearts of the mothers who want to abort a rapist's child.

Because I work a night job, I was able to watch the debate. And now, so you all can see things my way, I present to you my thoughts on last night's CNN/YouTube Debate. (WARNING: Not for the faint of heart!)

Mitt Romney was defensive the entire night, because people kept pointing out inconsistencies in his past. Some were valid, but he really shot down Fred Thompson's attack on him regarding Roe vs. Wade: he said that he would not apologize for becoming pro-life. Other than that he looked flustered, and while he got a lot of air time, I don't think he came out favorably.

Thompson did fairly well. Nothing too outstanding. His enthusiastic-o-meter as at a 2 out of 10, which, I guess, is better than last debate's 1 out of 10.

John McCain was, in my opinion, the "winner" of the debate, though he irritated me. I don't like McCain, and most Republicans don't. But if I were not me and some objective viewer, I would think that McCain handled himself well. He has an insane position on water boarding, but we aren't allowed to protest because he was a POW and thus is the moral authority on the matter, and don't dare cross him.

Ron Paul did well also, and I secretly hope he wins. I cannot vote for him because of his insane position on the war and his delusion that Muslim extremists will leave us alone if only we'd get out of Iraq. That's stupid. However, he is a very likeable person and knows what he is talking about on virtually every other issue.

Huckabee got a surprising amount of air time and did fairly well. Why Tancredo and that other guy (OK, OK, Hunter) are still in the race is beyond me.

Oh yes! I almost forgot. Rudy Giuliani did OK, though I don't think he was at his best. He probably was the winner of the top-tier candidates, if you don't count John McCain as a top-tier candidate.

Overall, the questions were actually very good. I think CNN knew that the Republicans didn't want to waste time on stupid questions as the Democrats did. The main people focused on, in my opinion, were Giuliani and Romney, with Thompson and McCain also talking a lot.

EDIT: Michelle Malkin has a different take:

So, who won?

Quick and dirty reaction: Romney looked strong and energetic, with one stumble on the Bible question. Huckabee didn’t harm himself, so he “wins” by not losing. McCain and Thompson were lethargic, with a few lucid moments each.