Gene Edward Veith Jr.'s Blog, page 386

Defund Obamacare or shut down the government

Republicans in Congress say they will agree to stop the impending shutdown of the federal government only if Democrats agree to defund Obamacare.  Does this strike you as a disastrous strategy? From Government shutdown moves closer to reality as GOP goes after Obamacare funding – The Washington Post: The threat of a government shutdown intensified [Read More...]

The Left-Right coalition

The same Congressional coalition of Tea Party conservatives and far-left liberals that blocked an attack on Syria also came close to reining in the NSA surveillance program.  Washington Post political columnist Greg Sargent sees an on-going alliance coming together. From Alliance of Tea Party libertarians and anti-war Dems looks like the real thing: How real [Read More...]

Obamacare and confidentiality

One of the features of Obamacare is to require electronic medical records, which will supposedly save lots of money by allowing doctors of all types to plug into your medical history.  That creates, though, a vast network under government control that violates the principle, enshrined in the Hippocratic Oath, of physician/patient confidentiality.  And the required [Read More...]

Abortion Clinics Closing at Record Rate

The pro-life movement is winning some major victories on the ground.  The result is that abortion clinics are closing in record numbers. From Tom Strode of the Baptist Press in  Abortion Clinics Closing at Record Rate | Gleanings | ChristianityToday.com: This year, 42 clinics that provided surgical abortions have shut their doors, and two that [Read More...]

“A mind not a material process”

Intelligent Design scholar Stephen Meyer has a new book out, Darwin’s Doubt.  Emily Belz of World reports on a talk he gave in New York City in which he says that various scientists, from a purely secularist point of view, are challenging Darwinism and proposing alternative theories.  The issue, he says, is the growing evidence [Read More...]

Defining who gets Constitutional rights

A Senate committee approved a “media shield” bill designed to protect journalists from having to reveal their sources and giving them protection from government surveillance.  In doing so, the bill defines who gets to be a journalist.  To get these protections, you have to be a paid, professional employee of a recognized news organization.  Bloggers [Read More...]

13 die in Washington shootings

A gunman killed a dozen people in a Navy office building in Washington, D.C. The shooter, who was also killed, was a contractor named Aaron Alexis.  He does not seem to be an Islamic terrorist.  At first, authorities said there were three gunmen, but the word now is that there was only one. Still, there [Read More...]

An Explanation of the Divine Service

Bethany Lutheran Church in Naperville, IL, has in its pew racks a laminated explanation of the liturgy.  The Brothers of John the Steadfast has arranged with Bethany to make this resource more widely available.  It’s posted here, and my understanding is that anyone can download and print it freely. I’ve reproduced it after the jump.  [Read More...]

Cohabitation requires too much commitment?

The number of unmarried couples who are just living together skyrocketed in the last decades of the 20th century.  But since 2000 the cohabitation rate  has stalled.  Experts are saying that one reason may be that living together has become so common that it has become traditional, rather like marriage.  And, like marriage, living together [Read More...]

U.S. & Russia agree on Syria plan

So should Vladimir Putin get the Nobel Peace Prize?  Does this get President Obama out of the mess he was in, turning a fiasco into a victory? The United States and Russia agreed Saturday on a plan to bring Syrian chemical weapons under international control, a rare diplomatic victory in a brutal civil war that [Read More...]