Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Coleman gets one right…finally!

Today was to begin a series highlighting Senator Norm Coleman’s recent serious mis-steps. I’ll not fully abandoned that commentary but will put it aside for now after listening to Mr. Coleman discuss the Law Of the Sea Treaty (LOST) on the Hugh Hewitt show. While prior attempts by at least one blog yielded no answer to his position, Coleman told Hewitt that he is against the treaty and voted ‘no’ on referring it out of his committee today. Excellent!

Why is LOST so bad? Because it give the U.N., that highly corrupt organization, tremendous power of regulation over private enterprise and governments on sea/ocean commerce, sovereignty and security and state's rights. You can read much about it at www.rejectlost.org, but to summarize the worst:

- Any disputes, governmental, business, or military, would be subject to mandatory UN dispute resolution, without appeal.

- Requires the transfer sensitive military information.

- It would establish an international organization that could and would impose fees, royalties, and other payments to the U.N., in effect, a taxation on Americans without representation or redress.

- The U.N. would effectively be given the authority to administer and oversee 70% of the earth’s surface.

For those of you in public school civics, since this is a treaty it will take 67 senators to ratify the thing. Prior to today, Fred Thompson, and the GOP leadership were on record against it. With Coleman coming on board in opposition it will make getting 34 ‘No’ votes a bit easier, and defeat looks better.

So for today I can say ‘I come not to bury Coleman but to praise him,’ and send a ‘Thank you’ call to his office.

Tomorrow, however, could be a different story.


Tuesday, October 30, 2007

‘Pro-life’ goes ‘Pop Culture’

Bella’ is a movie. It won the People’s Choice award at the Toronto Film Festival, a ‘feeder’ for Oscars. It also embraces the pro-life side of unintended pregnancy (regardless of what Roger Ebert says, but he likes it anyway). I’m hoping that it achieves popular success and intend to find a theater that’s showing it (very limited release) and view it soon. So far the only metro area theater showing it is the Regal Eagan 16, and not until November 9th. Help me give this film some word of mouth.

The review at Inside Catholic makes an interesting point…this is not the first pro-life movie. Other recent such releases include Knocked Up, Waitress, and Children of God. An interesting development that I might explore…after I see the movie.

Other reviews can be found here and here.


Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Reasoned thinking illustrated

I have a bit of trouble with the group blog Anti-Strib (not the least of which is the Rolling Stone-like application of profanity). But Tracy’s recent post, “Tim and Tina Treehugger grow up,” has the right touch of Minnesota folksy brilliance:

I will try for the last time to squash the asinine idea that everyone could save tons of gas by just “moving closer to work”. I’ll try to do this buy showing how even people with good intentions end up commuting for very good reasons and often through no fault of their own. My mythical couple is Tim and Tina Treehugger. Every thing that happens to them has happened to me or friends of mine.

Click the link and read what follows. It’s an excellent illustration of why ‘social engineering’ doesn’t work. In this case, the inability of ‘anointed visions’ like 'live close to your work' (or for that matter, mass transit), to function within the reality of normal life-changes. As Tracy succinctly sums up:

If you are married with children, there are a lot of variables when it comes to where you live. The location of your work may be a factor when you buy, but over the next 30 years, work will become less and less practical as the #1 housing criteria.

I’ll demur on the feasibility of a young couple recently out of college being able to afford a downtown Minneapolis condo, but as to the rest, Bingo.


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