The Bosque Boys

From the Timesonline, pointed out by Jihadwatch:

"ONE of Britain’s most senior military strategists has warned that western civilisation faces a threat on a par with the barbarian invasions that destroyed the Roman empire.
In an apocalyptic vision of security dangers, Rear Admiral Chris Parry said future migrations would be comparable to the Goths and Vandals while north African "barbary" pirates could be attacking yachts and beaches in the Mediterranean within 10 years.
Europe, including Britain, could be undermined by large immigrant groups with little allegiance to their host countries — a "reverse colonisation" as Parry described it. These groups would stay connected to their homelands by the internet and cheap flights. The idea of assimilation was becoming redundant, he said." Read the entire article.

(cont.)

» Read More

At the denominational meeting I attended recently, about the last order of business was financial. We had to set "assessments," the per member amount each congregation pays in to the denomination for denominational ministries. The debate was classic: larger-scale programs done by the national denomination versus keeping the money at the level of the local congregations. On the one hand, some programs best can be done denominationally--most congregations cannot develop their own Sunday School materials. But on the other, most effective ministry is done at street level, by local people through local congregations. Set assessments too high and local ministry suffers. Set assessments too low, and denominational efforts dry up.

The debate set me to thinking about taxes and the nature of American society. Liberals seem to think that America is made up of the People and Government. So to meet needs Government needs money, therefore raise taxes. But, this is a false picture of America. We are a nation of the People and Government and a myriad of voluntary societies--churches, Kiwanis, Chambers of Commerce, volunteer fire companies, historical societies, cemetary associations, garden clubs, Big Brothers/Big Sisters, Scouting, 4-H, countless auxiliaries for this and that, hospital volunteers, Shriners, neighborhood watch, etc., etc., etc. If Government takes too much money from the People in taxes, the voluntary societies dry up.

And voluntary societies are an essential part of the health of America. Voluntary societies are the People responding to need, taking the initiative to make things better, actively bettering community life. If society becomes only the People and Government, the People will be passively dependent, waiting for Government to protect them and take care of them. Tax cuts don't just stimulate the economy; tax cuts stimulate active citizenship.

As I pointed out in this earlier post, one can find many examples of the links between Islam today and slavery. Here is an article from CNN (not a member of the VRWC) on child slavery and Quranic schools in Africa. From Jihadwatch.

Some may object that Christianity has a history with slavery. Yes it did. It now does not. Indeed, Christianity in the 18th and 19th centuries turned itself into a powerful force against slavery. Is Islam capable of reforming itself? If the past is prologue, the answer seems to be "no."

I think it maybe was me who stared the extensive discussion we have had on same-sex marriage. A discussion so extensive that Farmer has had to add a new category for it. In this first post I praised a Study Guide on the issue written by the Theology Commission of the Reformed Church in America and submitted to the General Synod (national meeting) this month for approval to be sent to the churches.

We voted to refer the Study Guide back to the Commission (mostly pastors) for the purpose of incorporating more specifically Reformed theology in their reasoning. The revised document is to come before the Synod of 07. I think it is a great document as is; and will only become better through mining the richness of our own tradition.

The full-text of the Study Guide is still available on the RCA website here though you will need to scroll a few pages to find it.

A good friend of the Bosque Boys, Baylor Law Professor Mark Osler, is on tour this week arguing before the 9th and 8th Circuit Courts (he argued before the 2nd two weeks ago). Although he is working in cahoots with the ACLU (he may even be a card-carrying member), we are nevertheless interested in Professor Osler's work and wish him well.

For some background on the case, which has to do with the old federal sentencing guidelines, which were deemed advisory rather than mandatory in the Booker case (January 2005), please see Douglas Berman's blog, Sentencing Law and Policy and, specifically, this round-up on Booker from the time of the decision.

The reassessment of Booker left open for reconsideration the statutory practice of sentencing crack cocaine possession at a ratio of 100:1 (100 times harsher) than powder cocaine possession. Among the multiple reasons why that ratio came into being, Professor Osler argues that race figured (and continues to figure) prominently.

For breaking news and background, again I recommend Berman's website: this post from Wednesday and the previous post from Tuesday and a whole host of links connected to those posts.

Good luck, Professor Osler. We are hoping that you will sit down at some point this summer and reflect on your experiences with these three circuit courts and share them with the Bosque Boys Community.

Back on March 2 (on the ancien regime blog--and before the current kerfuffle), I offered this brief assessment of Ann Coutler:

Quoting Myself: "I think she is often uproariously funny and sometimes very insightful, but I also think she can be crude and mean-spirited. Although I give her credit for outwitting Katie Couric (in all seriousness, that was a bravura performance), I think Coulter is something akin to our Maureen Dowd (funny, attractive, possessing a rapier wit but lacking compassion and judgment). Ann Coulter, for me, will forever be the woman who judged John Roberts unfit for the Supreme Court and attempted to reinvent Joe McCarthy as a great American hero."

My thoughts today: BUT COME ON!

Mark Davis makes a lot of good points in this column from yeseterday (Thursday), but here are some bullets:

1. Ann Coulter may not be your cup of tea.

2. But the firestorm surrounding Ann Coulter revolves around an inflamatory quote within her book--not the thesis of her book, which in itself makes her vociferous critics suspect.

3. "Broads" might have been a regrettable characterization of the 911 widows, but politics is a rough and tumble business. If you play the game, you are fair game.

I missed the Tonight Show with Jay Leno on Wednesday, billed as a showdown between Jay and Ann and George Carlin. But, judging from the New York Times ("The TV Watch: Leno vs. Letterman: A Battle of Wits With No Clear Winner," By ALESSANDRA STANLEY, June 16, 2006) who called the exchange "flubbed" and blamed Jay Leno for his "terrible" interviewing ability, once again Ann Coulter faced a media icon and delivered another trademark performance; these outings have become increasingly frustrating to the MSM.

Stanley laments: George Carlin "didn't make a peep. Mr. Leno didn't score a point." She also implies that Coulter ducked David Letterman, "far more experienced and deft at tangling with ideological divas." Presumably, Dave would have given her the Bill O'Reilly treatment, whom he "humorously, but acidly, put...in his place in January."

Stanley also offers this presupposition: "Ms. Coulter became a media star by portraying herself as a conservative gadfly tweaking the liberal hegemony, which is, of course, quite a revisionist feat. It may have been the case 30 years ago, but no conservative who came of age during the Reagan Revolution can credibly claim they are marginalized or unheard. When the J. K. Rowling of political invective decries what she describes as the "intolerance" of the mainstream liberal media, it's a little like the Soviet Union complaining about oppression from Finland."

Wow! What a window into the MSM mindset and the "martyr" complex through which the Times and its compradres view their mission to report all the "news that's fit to print."

I come back to Mark Davis's salient point: "[I]n the calls for Ms. Coulter's head, her critics have proved her right."

In the quote above, I compared Coulter to Maureen Dowd. How ironic that the New York Times, for whom Ms. Dowd works, reports that people see Coulter as a "'vicious,' 'mean-spirited,' 'despicable' 'hate-monger'" (see also David Carr, "Deadly Intent: Ann Coulter, Word Warrior," NYT, June 12, 2006).

Is Coulter over the line? Perhaps. Does she get way too much vehement calumny from the left-wing loonies? Absolutely.

To paraphrase Davis: The call for Ann Coulter's head makes her a much more sympathetic figure in my eyes.

From the June 13 edition of USA Today. The headline above the fold on the first page of section D seems even-handed: God and Gays: Churchgoers stand divided. Even the first sentence of the article shows no bias--"Every Sunday there's an intense struggle in the souls of some believers as one religious denomination after another battles over the rights and roles of homosexuals." But, (cont.)

» Read More

Police in Saudi Arabia have arrested four leaders of an underground Christian worship service. Two of the four are from Ethiopia, the other two from Eritrea. The worshippers were also foreign nationals. From Jihadwatch. Perhaps those who tell us how wonderfully tolerant Islam is would inform the Saudis.

Last week I criticized Charles Krauthammer in the comments section of my post, Same-Sex Marriage: What I Believe, which is not a comfortable or familiar position for me. I disputed his claim that state courts were on the verge of nationalizing "gay marriage--like quickie Nevada divorces--will have to be recognized "under the full faith and credit clause of the Constitution" throughout the rest of the U.S." (in full here).

I missed his subsequent column (June 9), A Ban We Don't (Yet) Need, which clarified his position:

"[I]t turns out that the Massachusetts experiment has not been forced on other states. No courts have required other states to recognize gay marriages performed in Massachusetts. Gay activists have not pushed it, wisely calculating that it would lead to a huge backlash. Moreover, Congress's Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) explicitly prevents the state-to-state export of gay marriage."

He went on to say that DOMA would need to be overturned by a federal court for state-sanctioned same-sex marriage to pose a national threat, which he (like me) sees as unlikely considering the composition of the Supreme Court at this point.

Krauthammer also pointed out the irony of removing the question from local sovereignty in order to promote popular sovereignty:

"The amendment actually ends up defeating the principle it sets out to uphold. The solution to judicial overreaching is to change the judiciary, not to undo every act of judicial arrogance with a policy-specific constitutional amendment. Where does it end? Yesterday it was school busing and abortion. Today it is flag burning and gay marriage."

Finally, I mention an obvious but important point (which Krauthammer made early on in the above essay) speaking to the question of same-sex marriage as a "divisive issue":

"As for dividing Americans, who came up with the idea of radically altering the most ancient of all social institutions in the first place? Until the past few years, every civilization known to man has defined marriage as between people of opposite sex. To charge with "divisiveness" those who would do nothing more than resist a radical overturning of that norm is a sign of either gross partisanship or serious dimwittedness."

Well done, Charles Krauthammer

The President mentioned a "Catch 22" in his press conference today (transcript here).

After expressing his desire to close Guantanamo, he said this:

"Part of closing Guantanamo is to send some folks back home, like we've been doing. And the State Department is in the process of encouraging countries to take the folks back. Of course, sometimes we get criticized for sending some people out of Guantanamo back to their home country because of the nature of the home country. It's a little bit of a Catch-22. But we're working through this."

The President makes an important point: many of the nations criticizing the United States for holding some of these "darned dangerous" people in Gitmo do not want them in their country. Also, many of the civilized nations who castigate Gitmo for ill treatment, do not want these inmates extradicted to their countries of origin because those states are nations who actually practice torture.

I believe the President when he says he wants to close Gitmo. I also believe him when he pleads poor options.

One More Item On the press conference: You heard right.

In addressing one of the reporters, the Presdient really did say "roger, Roger" (in the fashion of the 1980 comedy, Airplane!). After reading the transcipt, I went back and checked the tape. It is there; it was intentional.