Marriage is better than un-marriage

Why is it better to bring a child into a family with married parents than with unmarried? Because co-habitating couples are bound by nothing more than their present feelings, which only the extremely young or terminally adolescent imagine will never change. A vague disquiet of inpermanence and insubstantiality attends childhoods in such homes. But the best marriages, even in the present degraded era, have two sentries to guard them. They are Duty and Affection: two, so that if one goes AWOL, the other stands watch.

Farewell to the space shuttle

The space shuttle was the technological marvel of the age, operated by brilliant engineers and brave astronauts. I remember the mid 70s, when the first space shuttle Enterprise was being flight tested, mounted on the back of a modified 747. Crowds of people watched TVs in the store windows in the mall, as chase planes filmed the stubby craft separating from the 747 and taking wing on its own.

Still, I actually hope that the era of manned space flight is over, and its resources repurposed to unmanned missions. I haven't seen any numbers, but I'd be surprised if the reusable shuttle flights were really any cheaper than the old one-use Saturn launches. Plus, the unmanned missions--the planetary probes, the robotic landers, the space telescopes, have all been much more productive of scientific knowledge than lofting some elementary schools bean sprouts garden into zero gravity.

Yes, illegal immigration is a crisis

Here is the problem in miniature: There is in my town a soccer complex, next to which are apartment buildings full of illegals. The local soccer leagues pay registration fees to use the fields, and of course only use them when the fields are open. Not so the illegals! They hop the fences at night or out of season, tear up the fields having their own tournaments, todo gratis, por supuesto. Now expand that to include schools, hospitals, all other social services, and scale it up into the tens of millions.

Progressives love everything that America is not.

A great quote by someone named Michael R. Bowen, from a now-defunct blog some years back:

But why is it that conservatives, when they are unhappy with what our government is doing, wave the flag and declare themselves ashamed of our president, while liberals, when they are in the same position, burn the flag and declare themselves ashamed of America? [...] The conservative speaks of all the good things America is, and wants to defend them. The liberal loves all the things America is not: a nation with universal health-care, ever more "progressive" taxes, subservient to the United Nations; a nation with no guns in private hands, a nation you could traverse from coast to coast and never hear the name of God. If you love all the things America is not, and care more for them than for all the things she is, then, no: you don't love America. Not really.

Random Rock Bloggage: Peter Frampton Divorces

Too bad. Rock, with its promise of eternal youth, is not kind to its forefathers. Rockers, with their wish for eternal tomcattery, are not kind to matrimony. Why do they even bother?

"Transphobia", ugh!

Must every newly minted identity come with its own "-phobia", to automatically put straight society in the wrong and thereby wring concessions from it? A stable, democratic, conventionally moral society whose foundation is the nuclear family made up of one man, one woman, and their children is the precondition which makes all this Ziggy Stardust experimentation possible. The Taliban wouldn't put up with these people's existence for so much as a fortnight.

End military aid to Pakistan? Hell, why not!

What are they gonna do? Hide Osama bin Laden next door to their premier military academy? It's been noted that Pakistan heroically comes up with a big terrorist arrest, whenever a vote in Congress on their annual handout is in the offing. I suggest that we hold another vote, let them bag a few more Taliban and AQ, and then cut aid anyway. Any country in which OBL was able to buy protection or in which he was an honored guest is no friend of the U.S.

Anthony Weiner enters "treatment"

It won't work. Unlike certain other Democrats he doubtless has in mind, Weiner is not "an unusually good liar". Power is an aphrodisiac, though, and he probably has convinced himself of his own indispensibility. But, it won't work. He will not be able to brazen it out. He may finagle a sweet deal from the Dem leadership to be rid of him, but it'll soon be over.

Arrested for feeding the homeless

In Orlando.

Members of Orlando Food Not Bombs were arrested Wednesday when police said they violated a city ordinance by feeding the homeless in Lake Eola Park.

Jessica Cross, 24, Benjamin Markeson, 49, and Jonathan "Keith" McHenry, 54, were arrested at 6:10 p.m. on a charge of violating the ordinance restricting group feedings in public parks. McHenry is a co-founder of the international Food Not Bombs movement, which began in the early 1980s.

The group lost a court battle in April, clearing the way for the city to enforce the ordinance. It requires groups to obtain a permit and limits each group to two permits per year for each park within a 2-mile radius of City Hall.

Arrest papers state that Cross, Markeson and McHenry helped feed 40 people Wednesday night. The ordinance applies to feedings of more than 25 people.

"They intentionally violated the statute," said Lt. Barbara Jones, an Orlando police spokeswoman.

Sounds to me like they were more interested in making pets of these people rather than actually helping them, more interested in striking a pose against "pharaoh" than reaching out in humility and charity to those in need.

My standing response to progressive critics of the war on terror

We needn't listen to the weight loss advice of morbidly obese people. Nor to the financial advice of the chronically broke. Marriage counseling from people who are multiply divorced may be ignored with a clear conscience. And it is a matter of common decency to reject the national security advice of people who believe that America deserved 9/11. It's concern trolling at best, hypocrisy at worst.

Can't believe it took me ten years to come up with that simple retort...

Meanwhile, communist China is still unfree

Repressing a church is something any old dictatorship can do, the church being a rival center of authority and all. But it takes the boundlessly coercive impulse of communism to usurp the church from within:

Father Joseph Shen Guo’an is set to be ordained a bishop soon in Wuhan (Hankou) diocese, central Hubei province, despite there being no papal mandate for the move, ucanews.com has learned.

Church observers warned the authorities should not force an illicit ordination saying that it benefits nobody.

The ordination of Father Shen, 50, is tentatively set for June 9, according to Church sources. They said some diocesan priests who tried to keep up the Church principle are now suffering, as government officials have lobbied their support for the ordination.

Some bishops in neighboring provinces are also “under great pressure,” as officials asked them to ordain Father Shen, the sources continued.

Local Catholics say Father Shen is not a suitable candidate and does not have papal mandate. They say that it is not his will to become a bishop.

What lever did they find, to force this man to become a regime tool?