SEE the latest at Galliawatch, which also has posts on demonstrations on behalf of Iraqi Christians.

THESE cloistered nuns from Argentina specialize in dance routines.

ELAINE writes:

Has anyone heard of a ‘reveal’ party?  I heard about this about a year and a half ago. A pregnant woman gets together with friends and family and the sex of the child is revealed. There’s usually a cake, door prizes, etc. Of course, this phenomenon may not last long because of gender confusion.

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A piece in The New York Times about the surrogate motherhood industry focuses on an agency that was “unregulated.” In truth, no regulations or level of accountability can correct the abuses of gestational trafficking and the very existence of this business, which would be illegal in many countries, is a crime. Notice the sense of entitlement by those who pay for surrogacy:

Jonathan C. Dailey, a lawyer in Washington, wired Planet Hospital $37,000 in December 2013, the first installment on a contract for a single mother in Mexico to carry his child. He and his fiancée flew to Cancún to leave a sperm deposit at the clinic that would create the embryo and to visit the downtown house where their surrogate would live while pregnant. They picked a “premium” egg donor from the agency Planet Hospital sent them to. But nothing happened.

“It was just outright fraud,” said Mr. Dailey. “It’s like we paid money to buy a condo, they took the money, and there was no condo. But it’s worse, because it’s about having a baby.”

The emerging Planet Hospital story, which Mr. Rupak characterized as one of mismanagement rather than fraud, stands as a cautionary tale about the proliferation of unregulated surrogacy agencies, their lack of accountability and their ability to prey on vulnerable clients who want a baby so badly that they do not notice all the red flags.

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FROM Fox News:

A federal judge in the District of Columbia on Saturday overturned the city’s total ban on residents being allowing to carry firearms outside their home in a landmark decision for gun-rights activists.

Judge Frederick Scullin Jr. wrote in his ruling in Palmer v. District of Columbia that the right to bear arms extends outside the home, therefore gun-control laws in the nation’s capital are “unconstitutional.”

Click here to read the decision.

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ANTI-GLOBALIST EXPATRIATE writes:

I wouldn’t be surprised if the hospital where he worked tries to dismiss this heroic doctor, who quite literally saved lives by using his firearm.

My guess is that the doctor knew that the hospital staff were in danger from mentally unstable patients (including this specific patient with a history of violence against hospital personnel), knew that the hospital security staff were not likely to be able to provide adequate protection for the psychiatric staff, and made a conscious decision to defy the hospital’s stupid and dangerous policy in order to ensure that he and others would have a fighting chance when, not if, one of their disturbed patients went on a homicidal rampage.

ONCE again, we encounter the sheer insanity of putting men and women together on naval vessels, as if it is possible to remake human nature and prevent them from interacting, as well as the farce of a woman commanding a warship. From The Daily Mail:

Commander Sarah West, 42, took charge of the frigate HMS Portland in May 2012, but has been sent home from duty after claims she was having a relationship with a male officer on the same ship.

This would breach the Armed Forces’ Code of Social Conduct, which prohibits personnel from having relationships with subordinates if they compromise ‘operational effectiveness’.

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OBAMA, to his credit, says it’s okay if blacks act in a civilized way.

THE two men charged in connection with the apparent murder of Feng Liu, a University of North Carolina professor in Chapel Hill, both had extensive crime records. One of them was released from probation a few weeks ago. They are charged with hitting Liu with a rock so hard that he was found on the ground, unable to speak and with blood coming from his ears.

THIS image of Melinda Gates in a village in India comes from the Gates Foundation’s 2014 Annual Letter. It shows one of the richest philanthropists the world has ever known in face-to-face contact with the people she intends to help. The scene seems entirely benign. It appears filled with good will until one reflects on the hard, cold fact that Melinda Gates wishes there were fewer children in the Third World, like the child at left. She believes children — and human beings in general — are a hindrance to development. Gates is the world’s foremost promoter of anti-maternalism and Malthusian economics.

According to Human Life international:

At the UN’s 1994 International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, Western elites’ language of population control was officially changed to the language of “equality,” “sustainability” and “reproductive health.” The population control tactics, however, did not change.

From the Rockefeller Foundation to the Gates Foundation, Western billionaires have been pushing population control on foreign nations for many years now. One must sincerely question how much of this program is not philanthropy so much as cultural warfare. It is not easy to bring the developing world into conformity with modern economics, and its control by central banks and usury, with the traditional family structure of these countries. Gates’ partners, Marie Stopes International and International Planned Parenthood Foundation, were leaders in the early eugenics and population control movements.

Gates’s preferred contraceptive is the injectable drug Depo Provera. The long-term health effects are still under study, given that it has not been in use for very long, but there is no known chemical contraceptive that does not have significant negative health effects.

More important are the economic fallacies of this program. Prosperity is created by people and moral order, not by contraception, sexual freedom and the resulting family breakdown. A farmer flourishes by his submission to the natural order: the weather, the life of plants, the changes of the seasons. Human societies flourish by their submission to the natural order of the family. Much of the instability in the West today is the result of demographic decline. In Thailand, a country where the birthrate was once robust, widespread dissemination of contraception has caused demographic collapse and the inability to support an aging population. “Family planning” is inherently destabilizing.

A 2012 letter by the Nigerian woman Obianuju Ekeocha is a sober counterpoint to the Gates Foundation’s publicity material. Ekeocha talks affectionately of the importance of children, but also describes how contraception undermines marriage and family life:

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AT New Oxford Review, J. Jacob Tawney discusses the effects of Facebook on friendship. He writes:

The danger in the frequent use of Facebook lies in the devolution of the entire concept of friendship. The problem is not in keeping a list of contacts, but in thinking that one actually is in contact with a “friend.” It is telling that the creators of Facebook chose this word instead of a more appropriate one like contact. The word friend is more appealing to users due to the connotation of the word coupled with the natural need for this type of relationship. But those who are “friends” on Facebook have no obligation to act in a manner befitting authentic friendship.

THE UNITED STATES accepts more political refugees than any country in the world. Welcoming the persecuted is good. However, the definition of persecution has been abused, loosened and degraded (we now take victims of “LGTB” discrimination from Africa), partly through the influence of the “non-profit” refugee resettlement industry. Now, in response to the border crisis, Obama is proposing to further broaden the definition of a refugee.

At The American Thinker, Jonathan Moseley explains why the unaccompanied minors from Central America are not refugees in any legal or customary sense. He writes:

Clearly, none of those coming across our southern border illegally is facing “persecution” on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a social group, or political opinion. “Persecution” to qualify for asylum does not mean poverty or violence, like that breaking out in Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s Chicago, Illinois or in Detroit, Michigan. Read More »

Asclepias syriaca, a species of milkweed

POD OF THE MILKWEED
— Robert Frost

Calling all butterflies from every race
From source unknown but no special place
They ever will return to all their lives,
Because unlike the bees they have no hives
The milkweed brings up to my very door
The theme of wanton waste in peace and war
As it has never been to me before.
And so it seems a flower’s coming out
That should if not be talked then sung about.
The countless wings that from the infinite
Make such a noiseless tumult over it
Do no doubt with their color compensate
For what the drab weed lacks of the ornate. Read More »

THE Japanese possess a trait that is alien to most Westerners. Call it cultural self-esteem. Interestingly, they will not be accused of being racist for denying public benefits to foreigners, even though they clearly are flaming bigots.

HERE, from Associated Press, is a look at the “coyotes” who have been bringing mostly minors and women from Central America to the American Southwest and to cities across the United States. The smugglers are part of a multi-billion dollar organized crime industry. The recent upsurge from Central America was partly the result of a drop in business in Mexico, which led the smugglers to look for more opportunities in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.