Maggie's Farm

I am going to comment on some things our friend TigerHawk said here in his piece on government payment for abortions. Says he:

I do not believe that the Constitution can reasonably be read to confer a "right" to an abortion.

The US Constitution was not designed to "confer" rights: it was designed to circumscribe the power and jurisdiction of the Federal State by a group of independent states who, knowing human nature, were deeply suspicious about any expansion of Federal, centralized power after their experience with Britain. According to our founding documents, human freedom is conferred by God to us as individuals, not by man and not by government.

The "Bill of Rights" Amendments were not designed to confer rights either. They were added, on the insistence of the feisty New York delegation, just to make some of the implied meaning crystal clear (and I suppose they were wise to do so, but it makes it appear that unspecified freedoms - or "rights" - do not exist)... except for Amendments lX and X which were intended to cover almost all human actions:

Amendment IX

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Amendment X

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

Thus, in my view, abortion should have been ignored by the Supremes. Not a Federal case. It may be rightly a legal issue on the state level, and is certainly an individual moral issue.

The language of "rights" is tricky, easily abused and distorted, and I do not like it. As an American, I do not and should not need specified "rights" to anything - all I need is a clear delineation of the limit of the powers of government, and I will find a way to get on with it in life. 

I can bear arms - and do a million other things that aren't listed. But that doesn't mean that the government should buy me guns. So the question of who pays is another issue entirely. Insurance plans vary widely in the elective things they cover. Most people prefer less expensive plans which do not cover elective procedures, and clearly most people do not want to pay for other peoples' elective abortions.

They don't want to pay for other peoples' IVF either.

Am I right or wrong about all this? Just to be clear, this is not a pro-abortion post...

Most of our Tuesday morning links are here, but I have a few more to add:

This is your government on drugs

Coldest October in 115 years

 Obama Skips Anniversary of Fall of Berlin Wall, Sends a Video & Talks About Himself. Related, also at Gateway: Wash U Shuts Down Freedom Memorial on 20 Year Anniversary of End of Communism- It Was Too Offensive (Video)

Offensive to whom?

Re Hasan, the NYT says it:

The officials said the communications did not alter the prevailing theory that Major Hasan acted by himself, lashing out as a result of combination of factors, including his outspoken opposition to American policy in Iraq and Afghanistan and his deepening religious fervor as a Muslim.

I have never seen Glenn Beck, but he sure can sell books:

“Simon & Schuster, believes that Beck has become the only author in history to ever have #1 New York Times bestsellers debut on these four different lists: hardcover fiction (The Christmas Sweater), hardcover nonfiction (Arguing with Idiots and An Inconvenient Book), nonfiction paperback (Glenn Beck’s Common Sense), and now with The Christmas Sweater: A Picture Book, children’s picture books.”

This is the way it is, via Barnes at Weekly Standard:

If you don't like what we're offering, we'll give you more of it. Far more Americans oppose Obamacare than support it. Yet Democratic representative Gerald Connolly of Virginia said he "concluded" from last week's election that "we've got to pass health care .??.??. [and] give Democrats something to be excited about." It's "a matter of tangibles being delivered," said Democratic representative Jan Schakowsky of Illinois.

 "Tangibles." That captures it, doesn't it? Freedom is not a "tangible," is it?

Via Volokh:

The L.A. Parks Department offers an after-school day care program that provides a “neutering fun and safe environment.”

How nice of LA to neuter the boys. It just leaves more of the wholesome babes to the few remaining wholesome masculine boys who cannot resist cute gals. Speaking of which, here are a few Brazilian bed advts for the unneutered boys (a couple more below the fold).

Everybody knows about the Hubble, but the Spitzer is equally remarkable.

Photo of star formation clusters is from this Spitzer photo gallery.

Walker at Am Thinker begins:

Twenty years ago today an
architectural monument to human enslavement melted before the eyes of
the world:  The Wall, the horrific complex of barbed wire, mine fields,
police dogs, killing zones, and constant military guards was torn down
by East Germans who finally saw a chance for liberty. 

There was always something surreal about the Wall.  

Funny how Leftist utopias always require walls, thought police, machine guns and barbed wire. And thuggish dictators in control of everything. Read the whole thing.

Photo from this site.

Submission #4 from our Youth of Today Czar. Dr. Dog's My Old Ways

Dino. Says Steele: "You delivered a 2000-lb baby that nobody wants."

Mark 12:38-44

12:38 As he taught, he said,
"Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and to be greeted
with respect in the marketplaces,

12:39 and to have the best seats in the
synagogues and places of honor at banquets!

12:40 They devour widows'
houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers. They will receive the
greater condemnation."

12:41 He sat down opposite the treasury, and
watched the crowd putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large
sums.

12:42 A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which
are worth a penny.

12:43 Then he called his disciples and said to them,
"Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are
contributing to the treasury.

12:44 For all of them have contributed out
of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had,
all she had to live on."

I still have some roses in bloom despite the hard frosts. The corner of the house protects these from the wind and keeps them warm. Some years I have been able to cut roses for Thanksgiving, but not in the recent years of global cooling.

St Vincent with Actor Out of Work. One more from our highly-paid consultant, the Maggie's Youth of Today Czar:

There is nothing in the world like a USMC Drill Sargeant. The three guys here are great, but the third and final guy is the most musical. I could run all day listening to that.

This via Tiger, Jules, Villainous and many others who are drumming up support for Project Valour.

Sonnet XLIV

If the dull substance of my flesh were thought,
Injurious distance should not stop my way;
For then despite of space I would be brought,
From limits far remote, where thou dost stay.
No matter then although my foot did stand
Upon the farthest earth remov'd from thee;
For nimble thought can jump both sea and land,
As soon as think the place where he would be.
But, ah! thought kills me that I am not thought,
To leap large lengths of miles when thou art gone,
But that so much of earth and water wrought,
I must attend time's leisure with my moan;
   Receiving nought by elements so slow
   But heavy tears, badges of either's woe.

She is a fan of the group Grizzly Bear:

Jaune, Rouge, Bleu. 1925. Interesting fellow, Kandinsky. Degrees in Law and Economics.

A fine message from Rep. Mike Pence:

Hideki had quite a game, but is this guy immortal or what?

Apparently our posting of that Taylor Swift YouTube was just too much. Our unofficial Maggie's "Youth Of Today" Czar suggested Peacebone from Animal Collective. Stick with it, says she:

Big Al Gore, noted climate scientist, former VP of the USA, Nobel Laureate, budding Green Billionaire, owner of many large homes and SUVs, eater of meat, world-class carbon-emitter, and Man-Bear-Pig,  clears CO2 of most of the blame.

Hmmm. What next? And blame for what? Life on earth would cease to exist without CO2.

You won't believe these, at Big Government.

Have barf bag ready. Government teachers at government schools, paid for by us.

Surber. Rightly so. It's about time this was officially recognized.

Now let's separate church and state.

To speak, in contemporary society, of art and beauty in the same sentence, much less as realities integrally involved with one another, is to risk being laughed at. Perhaps Hans-Georg Gadamer was the first to theorize systematically how we must understand the aesthetic as a category of being or a mode of analysis independent of any talk of the beautiful, but his argument was founded on, and in redress of, the suspicion popular since the eighteenth century that beauty is a mere matter of subjective feeling or opinion; and so also were the fine arts believed to be, but they belonged to a different class of subjective phenomena. As such, chatter about beauty could be cast off as either manipulative rhetoric for the seduction of women or the expression of vain, vague, nostalgic longings for rustic landscapes, while talk of the aesthetic could remain serious—indeed, humorless—even as it grew impermeable to rational explanation and debate. We could trace a historical graph of the past couple of centuries showing that the falling fortunes of the idea of beauty bear an inverse relation to the ever more lofty or “professionalized” reputation of art and aesthetics: a yawning separation so great that the advent of cultural studies has made possible serious formal discussion, subsidized by extensive bureaucratic institutions, of some very unserious “art,” during which any reference to the standards or reality of beauty would be, at best, a cause of embarrassment and, at worst, occasion for an intricately formulated debunking of one more “bourgeois ideology.”

Read the whole good, thoughtful thing when you can find the time. It isn't a quick read. Links above.

Paul Mirengoff poses this one:

I have suggested, in connection with President Obama's dealings with Russia, that to call him a fool is to give him the benefit of the doubt. For Obama's hat-in-hand approach to Russia assumes that the thuggish, autocratic, expansionist Russian regime is more sinned against than sinning in its relations with the U.S. If Obama believes this, he is anti-American; If he doesn't believe this but elects to act as if it were so, then he is a fool.

Several views of the Bob Dylan Christmas album at Walking. I think Bob just does what he feels like doing, with a healthily quirky, inner-directed take it or leave it attitude. But I might be wrong.

Toon via S,C&A:

Our friend Right Wing Prof is now blogging about his cancer diagnosis - and even about where he might want to be buried - at his other site: Central Pennsylvania Orthodox.

God bless him for doing that.