Ramblings of a Jackhole

SAM BROWNBACK: DON’T PRESSURE PARENTS TO ABORT DISABLED BABIES

The following is an adapted excerpt from Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback’s new book, “From Power to Purpose: A Remarkable Journey of Faith and Compassion“

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recently put out new guidelines recommending that all pregnant women be offered screening to determine whether their child may have Down syndrome. The college argues that it is more responsible to inform parents of their options beforehand so that they can decide whether or not to let the baby live.

This recommendation codifies a practice that has become all too common: direct or indirect pressure applied to parents by the medical establishment to end the lives of unborn children with disabilities, because these children are supposedly too much of a burden for their parents to bear.

About 80 percent of Down syndrome children are aborted today. But if these children are born, the Americans With Disabilities Act protects them and assures them of a certain level of accommodation by society. It’s one of the most highly touted pieces of legislation of the past 30 years. If you’ve got a disability, we want to help you.

The irony is that some people are working to make sure that babies with disabilities are never born. That’s such a shame.

Many Down syndrome children are the centerpieces of their families. They have amazing gifts and are full of affection. But apparently society thinks nothing about their death in the womb. I raised this question with my colleagues. I’ve also raised it during hearings on Supreme Court justices. But there’s still no support in favor of the life of a disabled child.

In legal circles they talk about the “effects test.” What’s the effect of the law? That’s how people will judge the validity of a law.

The effect of our abortion policy at this moment is that we are in the midst of a genocide of children with Down syndrome, cerebral palsy and other in utero genetic conditions that medical analysis can detect. If we think there’s a chance the child may have a disability, too often he or she is killed in the womb, and the system seems to push it.

The current system of analysis is a fallible process. Many times parents have been advised by their physician to abort their unborn child because the infant appeared to have a medical anomaly. I’ve had people tell me, “Our child tested positive for Down syndrome, but we went ahead with the pregnancy anyway, and it turned out he didn’t have Down’s at all.” I think most people would be shocked to know this happens.

This week I plan to introduce a bill to ensure that no parent would go through this process alone. The “Pre-natally and Postnatally Diagnosed Condition Awareness Act” provides that any family given a diagnosis of Down syndrome or any other condition would be connected with the necessary support structure. The bill ensures that each family would get sound and balanced information, connection to support services and information about the possibility of adoption so families would not be misled and children could be saved.

Wherever one stands on the abortion issue, the knowledge that 80 to 90 percent of those prenatally diagnosed with Down syndrome are aborted is deeply troubling. I am hopeful that we can embrace a culture that is pro-life and whole-life, a culture worthy of our good and compassionate society.

This was posted at http://www.charliedaniels.com/soapbox.htm on 4/3/2006.

Mexican Standoff

I don’t know how everybody else feels about it, but to me I think Hispanic people in this country, legally or illegally, made a huge public relations mistake with their recent demonstrations.

I don’t blame anybody in the world for wanting to come to the United States of America, as it is a truly wonderful place. But when the first thing you do when you set foot on American soil is illegal it is flat out wrong and I don’t care how many lala land left heads come out of the woodwork and start trying to give me sensitivity lessons.

I don’t need sensitivity lessons, in fact I don’t have anything against Mexicans, I just have something against criminals and anybody who comes into this country illegally is a criminal and if you don’t believe it try coming into America from a foreign country without a passport and see how far you get.

What disturbs me about the demonstrations is that it’s tantamount to saying, “I am going to come into your country even if it means breaking your laws and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

It’s an “in your face” action and speaking just for me I don’t like it one little bit and if there were a half dozen pairs of gonads in Washington bigger than English peas it wouldn’t be happening.

Where are you, you bunch of lilly livered, pantywaist, forked tongued, sorry excuses for defenders of The Constitution? Have you been drinking the water out of the Potomac again?

And even if you pass a bill on immigration it will probably be so pork laden and watered down that it won’t mean anything anyway. Besides, what good is another law going to do when you won’t enforce the ones on the books now?

And what ever happened to the polls guys? I thought you folks were the quintessential finger wetters. Well you sure ain’t paying any attention to the polls this time because somewhere around eighty percent of Americans want something done about this mess, and mess it is and getting bigger everyday.

This is no longer a problem, it is a dilemma and headed for being a tragedy. Do you honestly think that what happened in France with the Muslims can’t happen here when the businesses who hire these people finally run out of jobs and a few million disillusioned Hispanics take to the streets?

If you, Mr. President, Congressmen and Senators, knuckle under on this and refuse to do something meaningful it means that you care nothing for the kind of country your children and grandchildren will inherit.

But I guess that doesn’t matter as long as you get re-elected.

Shame on you.

Pray for our troops.

What do you think?

God Bless America

Charlie Daniels
April 3, 2006

On May 27, 1999 at the Rayburn House office building in Washington, D.C Darrell Scott, the father of Rachel Scott, a victim of the Columbine High School shootings in Littleton, Colorado, addressed the House Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee at their invitation. What he said to our national leaders during this special session of Congress is high poignant and painfully truthful.

While reportedly Mr. Scott’s message was not well received, I believe his message should be heard by all. Mr. Scott shared a very heartfelt and personal testimony to a seemingly hostile audience concerning what be views as the reason why his daughter’s life as taken a Columbine. Testimonies such as these are part of all ages and it is not uncommon for those in power to ignore them. However, hopefully, by reading and sharing this with others, each of us will not on listen to Mr. Scott’s message, but hear it as well.

The following is a portion of the transcript:

Since the dawn of creation there has been both good & evil in the hearts of men and women. We all contain the seeds of kindness or the seeds of violence. The death of my wonderful daughter, Rachel Joy Scott, and the deaths of that heroic teacher, and the other eleven children who died must not be in vain. Their blood cries out for answers.

The first recorded act of violence was when Cain slew his brother Abel out in the field. The villain was not the club he used. Neither was it the NCA, the National Club Association. The true killer was Cain, and the reason for the murder could only be found in Cain’s heart.

In the days that followed the Columbine tragedy, I was amazed at how quickly fingers began to be pointed at groups such as the NRA. I am not a member of the NRA. I am not a hunter. I do not even own a gun. I am not here to represent or defend the NRA, because I don’t believe that they are responsible for my daughter’s death. Therefore I do not believe that they need to be defended. If I believed they had anything to do with Rachel’s murder I would be their strongest opponent.

I am here today to declare that Columbine was not just a tragedy. It was a spiritual event that should be forcing us to look at where the real blame lies! Much of the blame lies here in this room. Much of the blame lies behind the pointing fingers of the accusers, themselves. I wrote a poem just four nights ago that expresses my feelings best. This was written way before I knew I would be speaking here today:

Your laws ignore our deepest needs,
Your words are empty air.
You’ve stripped away our heritage,
You’ve outlawed simple prayer.
Now gunshots fill our classrooms,
And precious children die.
You seek for answers everywhere,
And ask the question ‘Why?’
You regulate restrictive laws,
Through legislative creed.
And yet you fail to understand,
That God is what we need!

Men and women are three-part beings. We all consist of body, mind, and spirit. When we refuse to acknowledge a third part of our make-up, we create a void that allows evil, prejudice, and hatred to rush in and wreak havoc. Spiritual presences were present within our educational systems for most of our nation’s history. Many of our major colleges began as theological seminaries. This is a historical fact. What has happened to us as a nation? We have refused to honor God, and in so doing, we open the doors to hatred and violence. And when something as terrible as Columbine’s tragedy occurs politicians immediately look for a scapegoat such as the NRA. They immediately seek to pass more restrictive laws that contribute to erode away our personal and private liberties. We do not need more restrictive laws. Eric and Dylan would not have been stopped by metal detectors. No amount of gun laws can stop someone who spends months planning this type of massacre. The real villain lies within our own hearts.

As my son Craig lay under that table in the school library and saw his two friends murdered before his very eyes, he did not hesitate to pray in school. I defy any law or politicians to deny him that right! I challenge every young person in America , and around the world, to realize that on April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School prayer was brought back to our schools. Do not let the many prayers offered by those students be in vain. Dare to move into the new millennium with a sacred disregard for legislation that violates your God-given right to communicate with Him. To those of you who would point your finger at the NRA I give to you a sincere challenge. Dare to examine your own heart before casting the first stone!

My daughter’s death will not be in vain! The young people of this country will not allow that to happen!

Do what the media did not. Let the nation hear this man’s speech.

…The third thing I want to talk about very briefly is the genuine danger of terrorism, in particular terrorists using weapons of mass destruction and weapons of mass murder, nuclear and biological weapons. And I want to suggest to you that right now we should be impaneling people to look seriously at a level of supervision that we would never dream of if it weren’t for the scale of threat. Let me give you two examples.

When the British this summer arrested people who were planning to blow up ten airliners in one day, they arrested a couple who were going to use their six month old baby in order to hide the bomb as baby milk.

Now, if I come to you tonight and say that there are people on the planet who hate you, and they are 15-25 year old males who are willing to die as long as they get to kill you, I’ve simply described the warrior culture which has been true historically for 6 or 7 thousand years. But, if I come to you and say that there is a couple that hates you so much that they will kill their six month old baby in order to kill you, I am describing a level of ferocity, and a level of savagery beyond anything we have tried to deal with. And, what is truly frightening about the British experience is they are arresting British citizens, born in Britain, speaking English, who went to British schools, live in British housing, and have good jobs.

This is a serious long term war, and it will inevitably lead us to want to know what is said in every suspect place in the country, that will lead us to learn how to close down every website that is dangerous, and it will lead us to a very severe approach to people who advocate the killing of Americans and advocate the use of nuclear or biological weapons. And, my prediction to you is that either before we lose a city, or if we are truly stupid, after we lose a city, we will adopt rules of engagement that use every technology we can find to break up their capacity to use the Internet, to break up their capacity to use free speech, and to go after people who want to kill us to stop them from recruiting people before they get to reach out and convince young people to destroy their lives while destroying us.

This is a serious problem that will lead to a serious debate about the first amendment, but I think that the national security threat of losing an American city to a nuclear weapon, or losing several million Americans to a biological attack is so real that we need to proactively, now, develop the appropriate rules of engagement. And, I further think that we should propose a Geneva convention for fighting terrorism which makes very clear that those who would fight outside the rules of law, those who would use weapons of mass destruction, and those who would target civilians are in fact subject to a totally different set of rules that allow us to protect civilization by defeating barbarism before it gains so much strength that it is truly horrendous.

This is a sober topic, but I think it is a topic we need a national dialogue about, and we need to get ahead of the curve rather than wait until actually we literary lose a city which could literally happen within the next decade if we are unfortunate.

This is a very sober description of the Islamic terrorist threat we are faced with. We are NOW at war with a culture that wants, not to take over our land, but to KILL us.

In Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal Bernard Lewis wrote about his concern that August 22 might be a day to watch. In particular he states that August 22nd is also the 27th of Rajab, 1427 in the Muslim calander. This date,

by tradition, is the night when many Muslims commemorate the night flight of the prophet Muhammad on the winged horse Buraq, first to “the farthest mosque,” usually identified with Jerusalem, and then to heaven and back (c.f., Koran XVII.1). This might well be deemed an appropriate date for the apocalyptic ending of Israel and if necessary of the world. It is far from certain that Mr. Ahmadinejad plans any such cataclysmic events precisely for Aug. 22. But it would be wise to bear the possibility in mind.

So, is this just another nutcase predicting the end of the world? Not exactly.

First, note that he’s not saying this will be the start of Armageddon with the appearance of Gog and Magog, but it is certainly a date to watch.

Second, this just happens to be the date that Iran’s leader, Mr. Ahmadinejad, stated that he would “give his final answer to the U.S. about nuclear development.”

Third, this guy is not an idiot. Bernard Lewis is Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University, specializing in Musolim history. He has also been an advisor to multiple presidents in the area of the Middle East.

Of course Javier Solana could step in and save the day, but I’ll leaving discussing him for another posting.