Legal vs. Moral

What do you say when someone throws the “But abortion is legal” mantra at you? Let me begin by telling you a little about a piece from the L.A. Times last Friday, February 17. It’s entitled “War Against a Woman’s Right.” Obviously, it is about abortion because women’s rights now pretty much focus on the issue of abortion. This is an editorial piece that reflects on some recent fires at abortion clinics. It makes a couple of comments.

1st Amendment Protects ‘Hurtful’ Speech, Court Says

The First Amendment protects free speech even if it is as hurtful as signs at a Marine funeral proclaiming “Thank God for Dead Soldiers,” the Supreme Court ruled Wednesday in a decision that was one of the court’s most significant on freedom of expression in recent years.

The Westboro Baptist Church celebrated the death of Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder in Iraq with signs such as “God Hates You,” along with antigay messages at his funeral in Maryland in 2006. The late Marine’s father sought damages for emotional distress, but the court ruled that he had no case.

Eric Holder’s liberal racism

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. should resign. He is a disgrace to his office and to his country.

Mr. Holder is a race baiter. On Tuesday, he testified during a House Appropriations subcommittee hearing on the voting rights case involving members of the New Black Panther Party. In the 2008 election, Black Panthers – dressed in military fatigues and wielding a club – threatened voters at a Philadelphia polling station. They denounced the voters as “crackers” and vowed those voters would not be allowed to help defeat then-candidate Barack Obama. Their goal was to bully and intimidate. This was a clear case of violation of voting rights. Such behavior may occur with impunity in banana republics – not in the world’s leading democracy.

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

Thomas Jefferson — author of the Declaration of Independence and the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, third president of the United States, and founder of the University of Virginia — voiced the aspirations of a new America as no other individual of his era. As public official, historian, philosopher, and plantation owner, he served his country for over five decades.

His father Peter Jefferson was a successful planter and surveyor and his mother Jane Randolph a member of one of Virginia’s most distinguished families. Having inherited a considerable landed estate from his father, Jefferson began building Monticello when he was twenty-six years old. Three years later, he married Martha Wayles Skelton, with whom he lived happily for ten years until her death. Their marriage produced six children, but only two survived to adulthood. Jefferson, who never remarried, maintained Monticello as his home throughout his life, always expanding and changing the house.

Top 10 Labor Union Outrages

With labor unions seeing a decline in membership, their agenda is becoming ever more desperate. Public-employee unions, with their lavish taxpayer-funded pensions, are driving governments to insolvency. No wonder approval ratings for unions are at an all-time low. Here are the Top 10 Labor Union Outrages.

‘Almighty God Hath Created the Mind Free’

Lord Acton, the great historian of freedom, understood that “liberty is the delicate fruit of a mature civilization.” The liberty of which he spoke embraced a broad scope of human freedom, including dimensions political, intellectual, economic, and, especially, religious. The civilization of which he spoke was the West, whose heritage of Greek philosophy, Roman law, and Christian faith indelibly marked it and inexorably pushed it toward the full panoply of liberties we enjoy today and to which the rest of the world looks. And the history he sought to express was the unfolding witness to the expansion, refinement, and richer application of the principles of liberty.