Bible Thumping Creationists Right Again

From the UK Telegraph:

A second study has concluded that Neanderthals were much more like modern humans than had been previously thought, after finds from one of the most famous palaeolithic sites in Europe were re-examined by Bristol University archaeologist, Prof Joao Zilhao, and his French colleagues.

Naw, really?

Creation scientists have long said that the Neanderthals were a part of the human family, one probably suffering from rickets or something like that.

How could those Bible-thumping creationists have figured this out before the enlightened evolutionists?

Why Pro-Lifers Sometimes Question Scientists (and Media)

The media told us a few weeks ago that embryonic stem cells could now be harvested for research without killing the embryos. This was hailed as a great thing, and I too was cautiously optimistic.

While I can't endorse creating life in the lab for research purposes, I might be able to go along with limited research on those human embryos that have already been created in fertility clinics, etc. and have not been adopted--so long as the sanctity and dignity of human life was not compromised. Contrary to what secularists think of a "Bible thumper" like me, I believe scientific advances are a good thing...as long as we retain our ethics and respect for life in the process.

But I was cautious because, well, I've been lied to before. Countless times. Both by scientists with an agenda and by "objective media" sources with an agenda.

Then when George Will said that the report wasn't true, that all 16 embryos in the experiement had been destroyed, of course the Leftist media pooh-poohed Will.

It now seems Will has been vindicated. From the Philadelphia Inquirer and Mercury News:

The California biotech company that grabbed headlines last week for sparing human embryos while creating precious stem cells in fact destroyed all 16 embryos used in the experiments.

and

Normally, embryonic stem cells are extracted when they briefly appear in a 5-day-old embryo, which has about 100 cells. This kills the embryo.

Lanza's team intervened earlier, dismantling eight- to 10-cell embryos, then signaling the individual cells to transform into stem cells. This transformation was a breakthrough, but it was highly inefficient: Of 91 individual cells, only two ultimately made new stem-cell colonies.

See why people who hold life to be sacred are inherently suspicious when new "breakthroughs" are hailed?

The report does go on to say

Here is where the paper turned speculative: The 16 dismantled embryos might have survived if only one or two of their eight cells had been removed.

Indeed, infertility clinics occasionally perform ``embryo biopsy'' on an eight-cell embryo to screen for genetic diseases before letting the embryo grow to about 100 cells, the size normally implanted in a womb.

The Nature paper showed a picture of a 100-cell embryo that Lanza's lab had biopsied at the eight-cell stage -- implying that it was part of the stem-cell experiments rather than separate, related research.

Lanza's team wrote that the paper shows that single cells ``can be used to establish human embryonic stem-cell lines using an approach that does not interfere with the developmental capacity of the parent embryo.''

Wednesday, Lanza said he saw no reason to explain that they had not actually used that approach on the embryos from which stem cells were generated.

It sounds like from this report that stem cells have been successfully harvested in fertility clinics. But I have to ask: if it's been done successfully in fertility clinics, why have research scientists not adopted this technique?

I have to ask myself, based on experience, are they lying to me here, too?

Vandalism Against Pro-Lifers in Brookings

A church in Brookings was vandalized overnight.

I guess it was too much to ask of some in the pro-abortion community to be adults and act fairly in this important debate. Someone was so desperate to preserve abortion in South Dakota that they felt they needed to resort to a crime to do it.

For more information, go to VoteYesForLife.com.

The Waiting Game

The National Center for Policy Analysis has an interesting post on the state of socialized medicine:

The Vancouver-based Fraser Institute's "Waiting Your Turn" annual report has documented Canada's waiting-time crisis in health care for 15 years. In 2005 it found "total waiting time between referral from a general practitioner and treatment, averaged across all 12 specialties and 10 provinces, was 17.7 weeks."

Once when I lived in England, I got food poisoning. I had to wait something on the order of 2-3 hours in the waiting room before I got to see a doctor (which was actually pretty fast, for the NHS). Fortunately (?), I'd already yakked my guts out and no longer had anything harmful in my stomach by that time.

Our current medical system is a LONG way from perfect, but if you want to go from bad to worst, then go for socialized medicine...if you live long enough.

Wrong Party

CBS and others are reporting that it wasn't Libby, Rove or Cheney who "spilled the beans" about Valerie Plame:

Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage was the first Bush administration to reveal undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame's name, the New York Times reports.

Actually, Robert Novak says Plame was listed in a Who's Who listing anyway. Rather hard to be a secret agent when you're listed in Who's Who. But who cares: the secret agent story makes for more press...

Getting it in There

Newsbusters highlights the fact that while the liberal media had a block party when Florida Senate candidate Katherine Harris recently said that the myth of "separation of church and state" is a "lie"--which it is--, you can hear the crickets instead of the media howing over Rhode Island liberal Lincoln Chaffe's whopper:

Lincoln Chafee: "Rhode Island was founded on separation of religion, separation of church and state....'Full liberties of religious discernment,' I think is in our charter and, uh, when we wouldn't sign the U.S. Constitution, 1789, until we got the same liberties, the same separation of church and state, that we had here in Rhode Island, in the federal Constitution. It took us 13 months as Rhode Islanders, until we got in the First Amendment, first words of the First Amendment in the Constitution, separation of church and state."

But guess what? It just ain't in there, as they say down South. In fact, not only are those words not in the First Amendment, they aren't anywhere in the Constitution. It does have this unpleasant (to liberals) little part about not prohibiting the free exercise of religion, though.

Lies that suit the ideology of the Leftist media are acceptable, though. That makes all the difference.

Clear

It's an impossible task when the Left is going to try to distort everything you say, but let me be as clear as possible for anyone interested in the truth (which incidentally doesn't include the pro-abortion Left).

I do some blogging for VoteYesForLife.com. I don't work for them. I don't get paid by them, I'm not on staff, and I'm not on the board. Most folks can figure out what "I don't work for them" means, but as usual the extreme Left has trouble with meanings.

The rabid pro-abortionists are also trying to say there isn't any provision in Referred Law 6 for rape and incest, despite the fact that I've spelled it out so a 6 year old can understand it, so it must be a simple desire to say whatever they want, regardless of the facts. So I'll say it again here to be clear, and don't plan on "answering a fool" again: Referred Law 6 has a common-sense provision which gives a rape victim recourse to use emergency contraceptive (if she so desires) for several days after a rape (it's called Section 3--look it up).

A woman who's been raped needs immediate medical attention and law enforcement authorities need evidence of the crime right away so they can catch the perpetrator. None of these needs get met if the rape isn't reported for weeks.

Pro-abortionists don't want to see the truth because they just want an excuse to fool people into believing Referred Law 6 is an evil, cold-hearted bill. Their aim in defeating the bill is, of course, getting as much access to abortion as possible.

That means more dead children and more women whose lives will be wrecked when they have to deal with the consequences of what they've done.

Okay children (that means you radical pro-abortionists): school is out.

More Deception from Progressives

McChesney is telling more fibs. The latest blog post says my comments last night were posted in their entirety. Funny, I checked and even refreshed the page before making my response today...and they weren't there...but now they are. What a magic act!

I'll let my lastest comment speak for itself (hope it gets posted there):

You said you posted my comment in it's entirety, and while it's there now, it definitely wasn't there a few hours ago when I sent my response to you.

As if your attempts to throw dirt on the truth about Section 3 weren't enough, this latest lie proves the Left relies on lies when they're bereft of support for their arguments (which is most of the time).

The pro-aborts just can't handle it when people see through their obfuscation. Placing desperation to keep abortion on demand ahead of the health of a rape victim and the pursuit of justice for her is despicable

Mainstream or Leftstream?

Aberdeen News has a piece on the South Dakota Mainstream Coalition coming out in the open about where they stand on several issues.

Is it any surprise to anyone that the South Dakota "Mainstream" Coalition would be against:

- banning abortion
- stabilizing property taxes
- protecting marriage from homosexual activists

Response to Charge: No Rape Exception in Abortion Ban

Theron McChesney is claiming I said in a comment to the SD Progressive blog that there is no exception for rape in Referred Law 6.

That's not what I said. I said there were no "broader" exceptions (i.e. one that would make the bill meaningless. (Public school grads may want to look up the definition of the word "broader").

Since my comments were not posted to the Progressive blog in there entirety, I'm including them here so they can be taken in context, rather than misconstrued:

Section 3 isn't something that legislators "changed their tune" on; it was in the bill from the start. They didn't go back and stick it in there as the Left alleges. It was intentionally placed in the bill for a reason.

The abortion ban doesn't contain any unreasonable exceptions (i.e. ones you could drive a truck through, or ones that don't make any sense).

Why would a woman who's been sexually assaulted wait weeks to report that she's been raped? She needs medical care right away, not to mention counseling. And the perpetrator needs to be brought to justice; the longer she waits, the more evidence is lost.

It makes no sense that a woman would need more than a few days to report a rape.

Someone who is committing incest also needs to be brought to justice. Are we going to let the child sexual abuser just get rid of the evidence of his crime (and revictimize the child) with a convenient abortion

Section 3 of HB 1215 is a common sense provision that allows the woman who feels she needs EC to have access to it, while preventing any frivolous use of a broader rape exception. It also helps ensure that sex criminals are brought to justice.

Why does the pro-abortion crowd want to let rapists and child sexual abusers get away with their crimes, just to preserve abortion on demand?

My response to todays subsequent post which attempts to misconstrue what I said is as follows:

By the way I don't work for the VoteYesForLife.com folks. I just believe in what they're doing and try to help out where I can.

Why didn’t you post my entire comment so folks could take everything I said in context?

If pro-abortion folks aren't arguing that Section 3 wasn't in the bill from the beginning, why are they trying to make it sound like an afterthought, or something that pro-lifers "came up with" to respond to charges that the bill is "too extreme?" The implication can be nothing that Section 3 is some "rabbit out of the hat" that pro-lifers came up, and that it wasn't deliberately included.

The difference between conventional "birth control" and emergency contraceptives is that conventional birth control is something you use before or during intercourse, whereas EC is something which is used after intercourse. It's disingenuous to lump them together.

No one is saying Referred Law 6 allows you to have an abortion in the case of rape or incest. If you'll read again what I said instead of trying to misconstrue it, I said provides a common sense provision which allows recourse to a woman who has been raped to use emergency contraception within a few days of a rape. Why would a raped woman want to wait more than a few days to report a violent crime like rape anyway???

What the bill does not allow is some kind of broad "exception" that you could drive a truck through and essentially get an abortion on demand, simply by saying "I was raped" long after any evidence of the alleged crime is long gone. You would most likely see reported rapes go up considerably, but most would remain "unsolved" due to lack of evidence.

If pro-abortion folks are really interested in helping women who have been raped, they would be urging rape victims to report the crime immediately so they can (a) get the medical attention they need and (b) begin the investigation to bring the rapist to justice, instead of propagating some sort of lackadaisical attitude about rape which essentially conveys the attitude that rape isn't an urgent, serious matter which warrants immediate attention. By demanding access to abortion beyond any reasonable timeframe in which a rape victim would reasonably report the crime, they reveal that the true intent isn't some feigned concern for rape victims, but simply an excuse they hope will convince good people to vote against the bill and keep abortion on demand.

Pro-Abortion Vision for the World

The VoteYesForLife.com blog has a vision of the "Planned Parenthood Paradise." Beware: you too might be in the crosshairs...

Abortion Hides Sex Crimes?

That's what a probe in Kansas is investigating. Read more at the VoteYesForLife.com blog.

Respect for Life?

World Magazine reports on the kind of mentality we're dealing with in the abortion industry. It involves the Florida case of an 18 year old woman who walked into an abortion clinic to abort baby at 23 weeks development. While waiting for the abortionist, the woman instead gave birth to her child:

The girl delivered her baby, alive, moving, and trying to breathe. Clinic worker Belkis Gonzalez then allegedly cut the umbilical cord, stuffed the wriggling, gasping baby into a biohazard bag, and sealed the bag shut.

That is the story the baby's mother and at least one other witness told investigators, according to Hialeah Deputy Police Chief Mark Overton. The day the baby was born, police received a tip and searched the clinic, but found no body. Nine days later, acting on another tip, police searched A Gyn again. This time they found the infant, still in the biohazard bag, unrefrigerated and badly decomposed...

Meanwhile, Deputy Chief Overton said he believes the Hialeah clinic is liable for homocide. "My investigators are adamant about this case. I'm adamant about it and I think it's a tragedy . . . that they have this veil of late term abortion. . . . Once the baby was born alive, that changed the whole complexion. They can slaughter anyone they want according to the statutes before birth, but not after."

'Nuff said.