[Son of Jack]

Originally Posted by annabenedetti

I saw the above is written by Ross Douthat, the author of Bad Religion.

Also in the article:

Today, by contrast, the leaders of the Episcopal Church and similar bodies often don’t seem to be offering anything you can’t already get from a purely secular liberalism. Which suggests that perhaps they should pause, amid their frantic renovations, and consider not just what they would change about historic Christianity, but what they would defend and offer uncompromisingly to the world.

This, to me, is an important observation. What, for a progressive or liberal Christian, are the non-negotiables that can't be found in the secular world?

Right. It's just an application of Ockham's Razor. What exactly is that form of "Christianity" really offering you? They have no foundation, and so their adherents quickly realize that I can stay at home and believe the same thing.

[WizardofOz]

Villagers in Russia's south Urals region have stumbled upon a gruesome discovery – four barrels left in a forest containing 248 human fetuses

Nice

"The rude violation of medical ethics causes indignation," the ministry said in a statement. "It's inadmissible from both the moral and legal viewpoint." The Russian Orthodox Church used the incident to emphasize its opposition against abortions. Spokesman Vladimir Legoida said in a statement that it "highlighted the degradation of our society."

Indeed.
I wonder, if a fetus is found in the forest, is it first treated as a homicide?

It's bad if the fetuses are found in barrels in a forest but OK that they are killed to begin with. What's immoral about dumping them in a forest?

[WizardofOz]

NYPD

How embarassing

A building superintendent at an apartment complex just off the Rutgers University campus called the New Brunswick Police 911 line in June 2009. He said his staff had been conducting a routine inspection and came across something suspicious. "What's suspicious?" the dispatcher asked. "Suspicious in the sense that the apartment has about — has no furniture except two beds, has no clothing, has New York City Police Department radios." "Really?" the dispatcher asked, her voice rising with surprise. The caller, Salil Sheth, had stumbled upon one of the NYPD's biggest secrets: a safe house, a place where undercover officers working well outside the department's jurisdiction could lie low and coordinate surveillance. Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, the NYPD, with training and guidance from the CIA, has monitored the activities of Muslims in New York and far beyond. Detectives infiltrated mosques, eavesdropped in cafes and kept tabs on Muslim student groups, including at Rutgers.

Turns out, the NYPD is spying on Muslims well outside their jurisdiction....in New Jersey

At the NYPD, the bungled operation was an embarrassment. It made the department look amateurish and forced it to ask the FBI to return the department's materials. The emails highlight the sometimes convoluted arguments the NYPD has used to justify its out-of-state activities, which have been criticized by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and some members of Congress. The NYPD has infiltrated and photographed Muslim businesses and mosques in New Jersey, monitored the Internet postings of Muslim college students across the Northeast and traveled as far away as New Orleans to infiltrate and build files on liberal advocacy groups. In February, NYPD's deputy commissioner for legal matters, Andrew Schaffer, told reporters that detectives can operate outside New York because they aren't conducting official police duties. "They're not acting as police officers in other jurisdictions," Schaffer said. In trying to keep the 911 tape under wraps, however, the NYPD made no mention of the fact that its officers were not acting as police. In fact, Lt. Cmdr. William McGroarty and Assistant Chief Thomas Galati argued that releasing the recording would jeopardize investigations and endanger the people and buildings.

source

Cops make bad spies

Should the NYPD be spying on Muslims in New Jersey?

[WizardofOz]

Mitt Romney’s vice-presidential pick has largely come down to three men: former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, U.S. Sen. Rob Portman, and House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan. And it’s more than possible that Romney has already made up his mind. All three VP finalists bring something different to the table. Pawlenty is the loyal outsider, who would enable a Romney-Pawlenty ticket to run as former governors vowing to take on Washington; Pawlenty also potentially would add some blue-collar appeal to the ticket. Portman would be the insider, someone who knows the ways of Washington and who could help govern starting on Day 1. And Ryan would be the crusader, who wants to substantially transform America’s entitlement programs and who would excite a good portion of the GOP’s conservative base. source

Who should Romney choose as his running mate and why?

[Angel4Truth]

Originally Posted by WizardofOz

Who should Romney choose as his running mate and why?

Mike Huckabee, because then he might have a chance of getting elected.

[WizardofOz]

Originally Posted by Angel4Truth

Mike Huckabee, because then he might have a chance of getting elected.

Fair enough.

What if the choice comes down to former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, U.S. Sen. Rob Portman, or House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan?

Would you have a pony in the race then? Does any one of them sound better than the other two?

[Angel4Truth]

Originally Posted by WizardofOz

Fair enough.

What if the choice comes down to former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, U.S. Sen. Rob Portman, or House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan?

Would you have a pony in the race then? Does any one of them sound better than the other two?

No.

[WizardofOz]

Back to the abortion debate:

Pregnant teen dies after docs deny chemo over abortion ban

A teenager with leukemia has died after authorities refused, for nearly three weeks, to let her undergo chemotherapy because she was pregnant. The unnamed daughter of Rosa Hernandez was told by doctors she needed chemotherapy; however, there is a strict abortion ban in the Dominican Republic and the treatment was likely to terminate her pregnancy. At the time, she was 9 weeks along. The case spurred international outrage and, 20 days after being admitted, she finally got her treatment. However, the 16-year-old girl died on Friday and her mother, who had begged doctors to make an exception to save her life, says the system failed her. source

Should a pregnant teen be denied chemotherapy because it may harm her unborn child? Seems silly since she and the baby died in the end.

[WizardofOz]

Benefits of male circumcision reconfirmed

Evidence that male circumcision has health benefits is growing, even as the quick but often-controversial surgery becomes less common in the United States, say medical experts making new efforts to publicize the benefits. Sponsored Links In a study out Monday, researchers say falling infant circumcision rates could end up costing billions of U.S. health care dollars when men and their female partners develop AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections and cancers that could have been prevented. Separately, the American Academy of Pediatrics is about to issue a new policy statement that says infant circumcision has "significant" health benefits, replacing a statement that takes a more neutral stance. "We have a tremendous amount of information coming out about the benefits of male circumcision," says Aaron Tobian, a researcher at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine who is among the authors of the cost study. But rates among U.S. infants have dropped since the 1970s and are likely to keep dropping if more insurers follow 18 state Medicaid programs that have stopped covering the procedure, says the report from Tobian and his colleagues, published in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine. The researchers say that if U.S. rates dropped to 10% — the level seen in European countries where insurers don't cover circumcision — the results would include: •211% more urinary tract infections in baby boys. •12% more HIV cases in men. •29% more human papillomavirus (HPV) cases in men. •18% more high-risk HPV infections in women. The fallout also would include more cases of cervical and penile cancer linked to HPV, but the highest costs would be associated with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, the researchers say. Each skipped male circumcision would end up costing $313 in direct medical bills, and the total cost over a decade could exceed $4 billion, they say. Circumcision by the numbers • Rates peaked at nearly 80% in the 1970s and 1980s. • About 56% of newborns were circumcised in 2008, down from 64% in in 1995. • Infant circumcision rates in Europe average 10% and are as low as 1.6% in Denmark. Source: Johns Hopkins Hospital source

[WizardofOz]

It's no secret that Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio is a hip-hop fan--he's known to blast Snoop Dogg during long car rides on the campaign trail--but now he's revealed his rap favorites.

In an interview with GQ Magazine, Rubio said his three top rap songs are "Straight Outta Compton" by N.W.A, "Killuminati" by Tupac and Eminem's "Lose Yourself."

source

Going after the youth vote might alienate his conservative base. Good move in revealing this or bad PR?

[annabenedetti]

Originally Posted by WizardofOz

It's no secret that Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio is a hip-hop fan--he's known to blast Snoop Dogg during long car rides on the campaign trail--but now he's revealed his rap favorites.

In an interview with GQ Magazine, Rubio said his three top rap songs are "Straight Outta Compton" by N.W.A, "Killuminati" by Tupac and Eminem's "Lose Yourself."

source

Going after the youth vote might alienate his conservative base. Good move in revealing this or bad PR?

He's positioning himself for 2016?

[WizardofOz]

Originally Posted by annabenedetti

He's positioning himself for 2016?

Most likely. I'm just sure if naming 3 gangsta rap songs as your favorites helps or hurts

After all, he's not a democrat

[WizardofOz]

A news photographer who snapped images of a man about to be killed by a subway train was far from the only person who filmed the startling events at that scene. A subway rider recorded a heated altercation between victim Ki-Suck Han and Naeem Davis, the man accused of pushing him onto the subway tracks. As Han's body was pulled to the platform and a doctor tried unsuccessfully to revive him, people crowded in to take pictures and videos, said New York Post freelance photographer R. Umar Abbasi, whose photo of Han seconds before he was hit ran on the newspaper's cover. source

Should the photographer in question be chastised for not doing more (if anything could have been done) to save the individual pushed onto the tracks?

Cases like this come up because it is a natural instinct for a person viewing the photograph to question whether the photographer should be snapping a picture or helping the person in need. Many times, photographers justify their inaction by positing that taking that picture for the world to see will do more good in the long run.

In this case, the photographer says there is nothing that could have been done. I am inclined to agree as the train in bearing down on the victim when the picture is taken. There would not have been time to save the individual on the tracks.

Similarly, Kevin Carter came under fire for snapping the following photo, although he ultimately won a Pulitzer Prize for the tragic picture of a starving Sudanese child being stalked by a vulture:

In March 1993, photographer Kevin Carter made a trip to southern Sudan, where he took now iconic photo of a vulture preying upon an emaciated Sudanese toddler near the village of Ayod. Carter said he waited about 20 minutes, hoping that the vulture would spread its wings. It didn’t. Carter snapped the haunting photograph and chased the vulture away. (The parents of the girl were busy taking food from the same UN plane Carter took to Ayod). The photograph was sold to The New York Times where it appeared for the first time on March 26, 1993 as ‘metaphor for Africa’s despair’. Practically overnight hundreds of people contacted the newspaper to ask whether the child had survived, leading the newspaper to run an unusual special editor’s note saying the girl had enough strength to walk away from the vulture, but that her ultimate fate was unknown. Journalists in the Sudan were told not to touch the famine victims, because of the risk of transmitting disease, but Carter came under criticism for not helping the girl. ”The man adjusting his lens to take just the right frame of her suffering might just as well be a predator, another vulture on the scene,” read one editorial. Carter eventually won the Pulitzer Prize for this photo, but he couldn’t enjoy it. “I’m really, really sorry I didn’t pick the child up,” he confided in a friend. Consumed with the violence he’d witnessed, and haunted by the questions as to the little girl’s fate, he committed suicide three months later. source

[WizardofOz]

The last time Doris Freyre saw her 14-year-old daughter, Marie, alive was around 1 p.m. on April 26. She watched helplessly as the disabled girl was strapped to a stretcher and sent by ambulance to a nursing home in Miami -- five hours away from their home in Tampa, Fla. Florida child welfare authorities had deemed Freyre, a 59-year-old single mother with six herniated discs and carpal tunnel syndrome in both her wrists, unable to take care of Marie, who had cerebral palsy and suffered from life-threatening seizures. Marie, who was in state custody despite pleas from her mother that she could better care for her daughter at home, died alone just 12 hours later on April 27 -- dehydrated and not properly medicated -- of cardiac arrest, according to a Miami Herald investigation. Neither a nurse nor a social worker accompanied the screaming girl en route to the institution. And her mother was not allowed to ride with the girl, who could not talk and had a rigid medication routine. source

Are protective services too quick to remove children from parental care? Should the mother sue over what happened to her daughter?

Are herniated disks and carpel tunnel grounds for removing this girl from the care of her mother?

[WizardofOz]

West Point Cadet Labels West Point Officers "Criminals"

Military development. Academics. Athletics. Three pillars of Army values that cadets at America's most prestigious military academy live by. But West Point cadet Blake Page says there is one other unspoken pillar at the United States Military Academy: religion. That's why, with just five months left before graduation, Page quit. And he did it in a most public fashion – in a fiery blog post. "The tipping point of my decision to resign was the realization that countless officers here and throughout the military are guilty of blatantly violating the oaths they swore to defend the Constitution," wrote Page, 24, in The Huffington Post. "These men and women are criminals, complicit in light of day defiance of the Uniform Code of Military Justice through unconstitutional proselytism, discrimination against the non-religious and establishing formal policies to reward, encourage and even at times require sectarian religious participation. These transgressions are nearly always committed in the name of fundamentalist evangelical Christianity." Page said he felt discriminated against for being nonreligious. And that discrimination, he alleged, was systematic. In his letter of resignation, he said: "I do not wish to be in any way associated with an institution which willfully disregards the Constitution of the United States of America by enforcing policies which run counter to the same.” He said West Point made prayers mandatory and students who took part in religious retreats and chapel choirs were given extra passes. He said officers incentivized religious activities and there was generally open disrespect for nonreligious cadets. "The problem is a lot of people don't report it," Page said. The U.S. Military Academy confirmed that Page's resignation had been accepted and that he was being honorably discharged. However, spokesman Francis DeMaro Jr. said Page's claim that prayer was mandatory was not true. "The academy holds both official and public ceremonies where an invocation and benediction may be conducted, but prayer is voluntary," he said. "As officers, cadets will be responsible for soldiers who represent America’s great diversity in faith and ethnic background," he said. "The academy provides cadets the opportunity to foster an understanding regarding the fundamental dignity and worth of all." DeMaro said West Point has a Secular Student Alliance club to meet the needs of nonreligious students. source

Is Blake Page a whiny atheist or does he have a legitimate gripe?