STEVE writes:

Colorado Speaker of the House Frank McNulty (R) last night finally stepped up and killed the Civil Unions Bill before it could go to the floor for a vote. Had the bill gone to the floor, most likely it would have passed because of the votes of moderate Republicans. The media reports on this entire process have been extremely biased. Read More »

JENNIFER LAHL at the Center for Bioethics and Culture reacts to the news that Mitt Romney’s eldest son, Tagg, hired a surrogate mother to bear twins, his fifth and sixth children, who were born last week. Lahl writes that she is “shocked and disgusted.” Surrogacy is commercial exploitation even if the hired mother is an enthusiastic client, she argues. Her words of reproach and horror are wonderful to read.

Tagg (Tagg?!) and his wife, Jen, had hired the same surrogate for the birth of their first child. It is unclear why. They also conceived their third child through IVF.

Surrogacy is fully legal in the United States. The Canadian Supreme Court ruled that surrogacy “devalues human life and degrades those who choose to participate.”

PAUL writes:

How could anything Ann Romney said in her speech Monday in any way be thought of as a retort to the feminist idea that women do not belong at home raising their children? It is not a retort but a full acceptance of feminism. Mitt Romney is going to get more and more liberal and lose.

His wife is not using a feminist goal against feminists. The feminist goal is not equality, as some assume. Read More »

FEMINISTS insist they are for freedom of choice, but they constantly push one choice: the life of masculine ambition for women. At a gathering of girls in Omaha yesterday, Michelle Obama wasn’t the woman who “had to work” anymore. Alicia M. Cohn at The Hill reports: Read More »

JANET BAIRD writes:

President Obama and the Department of Health and Inhuman Services, as you know, recently decreed that free sterilizations be available to all college-age women under Obamacare.

But the truth is even more sinister. Note the wording of the HHS regulation.

As reported at CNS news, ‘[a]ll Food and Drug Administration [(FDA)] approved contraceptive methods, sterilization procedures, and patient education and counseling for all women with reproductive capacity,’ as prescribed by a provider,” said the HHS description of the regulation. [emphasis added]

This clause caught my eye, “for all women with reproductive capacity.” Have you thought about the demographics included here? Girls obtain reproductive capacity these days as young as age nine or 10, but almost always by age 12 or 13. This is NOT just about college women.  Read More »

OVER at U.S. News and World Report, reaction to my op-ed piece on the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) continues. Read More »

RICK SANTORUM’S continuing success in the Republican race, with his victory in primaries in Mississippi and Alabama yesterday, is remarkable. Though Romney is still significantly ahead and took more delegates last night, Santorum has gained momentum. A candidate who has said that artificial contraception is harmful to women and society at large, who homeschools his large family, who is a devout Catholic and who receives an A plus [correction below] from Numbers USA on immigration policy has captured national attention and is holding it. If Santorum ran against Obama, opinions rarely voiced by major public figures would be aired.  That alone would be a great thing.

Truthfully, I am stunned by Santorum’s limited success. Santorum elicits intense hatred from liberals in Pennsylvania, where he lost the Senate race in 2008. But he also managed to alienate Republican centrist voters with his support for the war in Iraq. He is a flawed candidate, lacking in charisma, boyish in demeanour, but he is a man of principle. He will be hated – absolutely hated – by those on the left. But anyone who could change this country for the better would be despised.
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DANIEL S. writes:

While establishment feminism is often a force of left-wing social engineering and base power-mongering, it can all too often descend into an absurd narcissism that reveals how ridiculous, if still very dangerous, the movement is. Mark Steyn brings to our attention the following statement by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton: Read More »

HENRY McCULLOCH writes:

Thank you for another thought-provoking thread about contraception and politics. While you may have seen it already, I thought I should bring to your attention that a genuine expert on the subject has weighed in, in the Congress, no less. Testifying before the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health, HHS Secretary and “Catholic” Kathleen Sebelius assured the assembled Representatives that they really have nothing to worry about with respect to the costs of HHS’s mandate of free coverage of contraception and abortifacients arising from Obamacare.

You see, silly Congressmen, it is really all quite simple if only you will look at the matter from the social-engineering perspective of Ms. Sebelius: Read More »

LAMENTING the resignation of GOP Senator Olympia Snow, other liberals in the Republican party expressed disappointment yesterday that voters care about issues other than the economy. Gee, they ask, why is the basic breakdown of society such a big deal to these people? The New York Times reports:

Georgia Chomas, a cousin of the senator who described herself as more like a sister, said social conservatives and Tea Party activists in Maine were hounding her at home, while party leaders in Washington had her hemmed in and steered the legislative agenda away from the matters she cared about. Read More »

ONLY in an environment in which feminist orthodoxy prevails would a major sponsor of breast cancer research be forced to fund an organization that causes breast cancer. In the recent controversy over the Susan G. Komen Foundation’s support of Planned Parenthood – the foundation withdrew funding from Planned Parenthood and then restored it under public pressure —  evidence that abortion and contraception contribute to the incidence of breast cancer was ignored by the press.

Everything was said but the obvious. The Komen Foundation needed to stop subsidizing Planned Parenthood if it had any hope of integrity. Read More »

NEWT GINGRICH is repulsive. In his performance at last week’s Republican debate, his voice dripped with contempt when he spoke of enforcing the law on immigrants who have lived here illegally for decades. It was not his words alone. The look on his face was one of sneering condescension as he explained that some of these illegal immigrants belong to churches and have that Republican of all things – families. How could a nation such as ours, steeped in tolerance, be so heartless as to enforce the law against people who belong to churches, immigrants with families? The flagrant adulterer, the founder of the Church of Newt, lectured America on piety and family values.

If longtime immigrants are as virtuous as Gingrich suggests, shouldn’t he appeal to their consciences, not ours? After all, the possibility of deportation is caused by the unlawful immigrant, not the native. But, Gingrich calls on our tolerance, not the immigrant’s. It is our family values, our rightful sense of belonging, that he condemns while exalting the very same sentiments in the immigrant.

I highly recommend this speech by Lawrence Auster on Gingrich’s ideological roots. It is a compelling survey of the mental terrain of the grandiose, bobble-headed candidate, whose rise in the polls has caused pea-brained commentators enormous delight. Only outright deception or a mass case of Attention Deficit Disorder could explain these polls.

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LYDIA SHERMAN writes:

This is a few days late getting to you but it is tremendous. It is Herman Cain on Jimmy Kimmel Live responding to sexual harassment charges. I love the banter of this man, like the “real American” men used to speak, unself-conscious and without fear or PC, and, his elocution, enunciation, articulation, etc. are excellent. By the way, he is introduced in this way, “Our next guest has never held a public office, but he does know what is most important to Americans: pizza!” Read More »

LAWRENCE AUSTER writes on the vanity of female politicians:

If you have a society in which men are running things and enforcing male standards of conduct in the public sphere, you can have an occasional woman in high public office and it will not harm the society. But once the appointment of women to conspicuous political positions becomes routine and expected, and once female standards of public conduct become normalized, thus pushing aside male standards, then you have things like this.

I would add two points. One, a woman in power has more incentive to flaunt her physical assets precisely because they may be all she has left of her femininity. This is why we see more and more cleavage. The essence has vanished with the pursuit of power.

Second, a society’s understanding of authority also weakens when a significant number of women enter elective public office. Eileen Behr, pictured below, is running for sheriff in suburban Philadelphia. She seems like a perfectly nice, competent woman, but her face changes the very definition of the office. She looks too nice to write a parking ticket.

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LARRY B. writes:

Of all the conditions that Republicans put on their conservatism, I can’t think of one as maddening or outrageous as the caveat: “I am against abortion except in cases of rape or incest.” 

Since 1976 both parties have allowed federal funding of abortions in cases of rape or incest, and then the recent Hyde Amendment was also dropped by the Republicans, which would have curtailed such funding (not even ended it entirely).

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ALL OF THE artificiality and hollowness of mainstream conservatism in America is summed up in this recent photo, discussed at VFR, of the repulsive Newt Gingrich and his third wife.

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SEN. Harry Reid has called for an end to legalized prostitution in Nevada. He has argued it should end not because prostitution is wrong but because it is bad for Nevada’s image.

Brooke Taylor, a leading spokeswoman for the business, strongly objects, according to The New York Times:

“Here we are being safe and professional and earning a living, and he wants us to end it? Absolutely not,” Ms. Taylor said in an interview in her bedroom at the Bunny Ranch. “This is what I choose to do, and there is nothing wrong with it.” Read More »

NEW YORK Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who is divorced, has been living with his girlfriend, the Food Network celebrity Sandra Lee. Under Catholic canon law, that makes him guilty of “public concubinage” and he is not entitled to take communion. While many thousands of Catholics appear to be unaware of canon law, Cuomo cannot plead ignorance. As reported in The New York Times, Edward N. Peters, a consultant to Vatican court, has publicly criticized the governor for continuing to receive communion and has called for denying him communion. This is a positive development.

By the way, Cuomo took his young daughters to the gay pride parade in Manhattan last fall. He is an exemplary Catholic all around. Read More »