Presidential Election Round-Up

Here are some quick links related to the upcoming election. Most of them are pretty serious, but the last two are somewhat light-hearted:

CatholicVote.com: Video

CatholicVote.com: Barack Obama on the Issues of Importance to Catholics

Fr. Thomas Berg: Expect Obama to Sign FOCA in the first 100 days

Associated Press: Obama's prime-time ad skips over budget realities

So Long, Democrats: A speechwriter for Obama, Edwards, and Clinton on why she's voting McCain

Domenico Bettinelli: Does campaign behind-the-scenes presage the administration?

Creative Minority Report: Obama's Secret Police

Rush Limbaugh: Don't Talk to Your Girlfriend Like Democrats Talk About America

Revelation: Obama May Have Been a Fetus

Catholic Bishops Speak on Abortion and Voting

This election season, it seems that a larger number of U.S. Catholic bishops have made clear and unambiguous statements on abortion and voting. Here are the statements that I have found so far:

USCCB Statement by Cardinal Rigali and Bishop Murphy
Archbishop Chaput
Bishop Robert Hermann
Bishops Farrell and Vann
Bishop Arthur Serratelli
Bishop Martino
Archbishop Chaput
Bishops Naumann and Finn
Bishop Robert Finn
Bishop Rene Gracida
Cardinal Rigali
Bishop James Johnston

Please note that this list does not include statements that deal with abortion in a more general way, without specifically addressing voting (such as Cardinal Egan's recent column), or those that seek to correct Catholic politicians who have misstated Catholic teaching on abortion (such as the statements listed here).

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

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