Reason #3 why I will not be voting for Barack Obama

Reason #3: When asked if there was any statement or vote that he would like to take back, Senator Obama could have mentioned his opposition to legal protection for babies born alive in a botched abortion (which happens to be my reason #1 for not voting for Senator Obama). Instead, he said that he regrets his very minor role in standing up for Terri Schiavo's right to life.

American Papist and the Christian Post have the details at the following links:

Obama's biggest regret? Not more energetically letting Terri Schiavo die
Obama Under Fire for Terri Schiavo Remark

Some background on Terri Schiavo:

Terri's Story: Timeline
Terri's Story: FAQ

Two recent articles on global warming (or is it global cooling?)

I'm already skeptical of claims about man-made global warming, especially when those claims are of the "doomsday" or "the sky is falling" variety. Here are two recent articles which give some possible reasons for such skepticism:

Forget global warming: Welcome to the new Ice Age
Temperature Monitors Report Widescale Global Cooling

The Myth of Religious Tolerance

I found this excellent article in Crisis Magazine quite a while back, and I'm just now getting around to linking it here. It explains the difference between religious tolerance and religious liberty or freedom, and gives a very detailed argument for why religious tolerance is not enough. Here is an excerpt:

The Myth of Religious Tolerance

Religion is a good to be embraced and defended—not an evil to be put up with. No one speaks of tolerating chocolate pudding or a spring walk in the park. By speaking of religious “tolerance,” we make religion an unfortunate fact to be borne—like noisy neighbors and crowded buses—not a blessing to be celebrated. . . .

The language of tolerance was first proposed to describe the attitude that confessional states, such as Anglican England and Catholic France, should adopt toward Christians of other persuasions (though no mention was made of tolerance for non-Christian faiths). The assumption was that the state had recognized a certain confession as “true” and put up with other practices and beliefs as a concession to those in error. This led, however, to the employment of tolerance language toward religion. The philosophes would downplay or even ridicule religion in the firm belief that it would soon disappear altogether. Thus, separation of church and state becomes separation of public life and religious belief. Religion was excluded from public conversation and relegated strictly to the intimacy of home and chapel. Religious tolerance is a myth, but a myth imposed by an anti-religious intellectual elite.

This “tolerant” mentality is especially problematic when applied in non-confessional countries—such as the United States—where an attitude of tolerance is not that of the state religion toward unsanctioned creeds, but of a non-confessional secular state toward religion itself. Language of religious toleration of Christianity in Saudi Arabia would be a marked improvement over present conditions, and consistent with a confessional Muslim state’s belief that Christianity is a false religion. In a non-confessional state, such language is more pernicious. . . .

Reason #2 why I will not be voting for Barack Obama

Reason #2: One of the most important jobs of the president is to appoint judges. Yet Senator Obama doesn't seem to understand a judge's proper role.

Again, Terry Jeffrey of Cybercast News makes the case:

Obama's Class-War Court

When the nomination of John Roberts to be chief justice of the Supreme Court came up in the Senate in 2005, Sen. Barack Obama argued that the role of a justice is to favor the "weak" over the "strong." . . .

So, in Obama's vision, who are the "weak" and who are the "strong"? Who deserves to win the "hearts" of Supreme Court justices? Who does not?

In contrast to his soaring campaign rhetoric about bringing America together, Obama's Senate speeches against Roberts and Alito revealed a polarizing vision of America. Minorities, women, employees and criminal defendants were among the weak, majorities, men, employers and prosecutors were among the strong. . . .

Rather than trying to get up-close-and-personal with Roberts, Obama should have listened more carefully to the judge's testimony in the Senate Judiciary Committee. It clearly explained why judges must not consider who is "weak" and who is "strong" in a case, or consult their personal sympathies in making decisions that must be based on the facts and the law.

"Judges are like umpires. Umpires don't make the rules; they apply them," said Roberts. "I will decide every case based on the record, according to the rule of law, without fear or favor, to the best of my ability. And I will remember that it's my job to call balls and strikes, and not to pitch or bat."

If Obama becomes president, he will try to stack the court not with umpires, but with players who put their heart in every game -- consistently pitching and batting for Obama's favorite teams.

So to continue with the baseball analogy, if Senator Obama were in charge of hiring umpires for a game between the New York Yankees and the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, would he hire only those umpires who agreed that all close calls should go in favor of the Devil Rays, simply because they have a much smaller payroll than the Yankees? Baseball isn't supposed to work that way. Is this the way our court system should work?

Nevertheless, I can understand how a person could say that court cases are much more important than baseball games, so we should give the benefit of the doubt to the little guy. And I can very much sympathize with that point of view. But the problem I see is this: Who is the little guy? And who gets to decide who is the little guy? Obama might see the little guy as minorities, or the poor, and I don't necessarily have a problem with that. But he clearly doesn't include unborn children in the "little guy" category, while I and others would put them at the top of the list.

So then how about appointing judges who will follow the law and the facts of the case as impartially as they can, rather than trying to tilt the balance toward whoever their particular favored groups happen to be? Wouldn't that be the most fair approach for everyone, since we're not all going to agree on who falls into the "little guy" category?

Is Barack Obama the Messiah?

Clearly the answer is no, but many people seem to be talking about him in messianic terms, as catalogued at this interesting blog.

Reason #1 why I will not be voting for Barack Obama

Reason #1: Senator Obama is radically pro-abortion, so much so that he opposed legislation to protect babies who are born alive during a botched abortion. I'm talking here about babies who have already been born, who are fully outside their mother's womb, who are breathing, crying, and struggling for life -- and who sadly had often been left to die in the absence of legal protection.

Terry Jeffrey at Cybercast News Service presents some details:

Obama Is the Most Pro-Abortion Candidate Ever

He is so pro-abortion that he refused as an Illinois state senator to support legislation to protect babies who survived late-term abortions because he did not want to concede -- as he explained in a cold-blooded speech on the Illinois Senate floor -- that these babies, fully outside their mothers' wombs, with their hearts beating and lungs heaving, were in fact "persons." . . .

State and federal versions of this bill became an issue earlier this decade because of "induced labor abortion." This is usually performed on a baby with Down's Syndrome or another problem discovered on the cusp of viability. A doctor medicates the mother to cause premature labor. Babies surviving labor are left untreated to die.

Jill Stanek, who was a nurse at Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn, Ill., testified in the U.S. Congress in 2000 and 2001 about how "induced labor abortions" were handled at her hospital.

"One night," she said in testimony entered into the Congressional Record, "a nursing co-worker was taking an aborted Down's Syndrome baby who was born alive to our Soiled Utility Room because his parents did not want to hold him, and she did not have the time to hold him. I couldn't bear the thought of this suffering child lying alone in a Soiled Utility Room, so I cradled and rocked him for the 45 minutes that he lived." . . .

Stanek testified about these bills in the Illinois Senate Judiciary Committee, where Obama served. She told me this week he was "unfazed" by her story of holding the baby who survived an induced labor abortion.

On the Illinois Senate floor, Obama was the only senator to speak against the baby-protecting bills. He voted "present" on each, effectively the same as a "no." . . .

The article goes on to explain how a similar bill passed the U.S. Senate (which Obama was not yet a member of at that time) by a vote of 98-0. Therefore, one could draw the conclusion that Obama's opposition to the essentially equivalent bill at the state level makes him more radically pro-abortion than just about any other member of the U.S. Senate.

Terry Jeffrey also has a follow-up piece here:

More on Obama and Babies Born Alive