Good News But Should It Have Been News At All?

A follow up on a story we brought you yesterday. Cpl. Carl Basham was initially denied in-state tuition because of the time he spent away from Texas in Iraq. Worldnetdaily follows up:

But today the college said Texas Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson, himself a former U.S. Marine, identified a state waiver provision for which Basham qualifies, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported.

“We are so delighted that he will be eligible for in-state tuition,” said Veronica Obregon, spokeswoman for Austin Community College.

Good job, Commissioner Patterson. This was quickly resolved because someone knew the law, not as Worldnetdaily implied because of a “nationwide public outcry.” The quick resolution of the story gave me pause. Is the media (both old and new) really doing the public a service when they push stories of misunderstandings into the national press. A local story, but the national press, I’m somewhat doubtful of.

WND ran the update on the top of their page, and I mentioned, but how many bloggers won’t? THe bad news makes the front page, the good news gets buried, so the college will have a pretty black eye still and not everyone will know this got resolved successfully.

Left View: Shallow Ambition Makes John Roberts a Good Choice for the Supreme Court

Dahlia Lithwick has a comentary on Slate on the nomination of John Roberts where he argues he’s been too much of a good guy to make waves on the court. She writes:

I am enormously confident, however, that John Roberts has never smoked pot.So, today’s Washington Times story on Roberts’ adolescence, including revelations by Roberts’ former roommate, is hardly surprising: “As far as engaging in the sort of nefarious activities stereotypical of teenagers, Mr. MacLaverty said, ‘In those days, the big thing was sneaking off into the woods to sneak a smoke. John was never anywhere near any of that…’ ”

And that’s why John Roberts doesn’t alarm me much. The same conservatism that leads him to decry judicial overreaching in the privacy and civil rights contexts is part and parcel of a larger conservatism that distrusts reckless grandiosity. The same quality, in short, that kept Roberts from sneaking off into the woods to smoke may be the same quality that keeps him from torching Roe v. Wade. The Clarence Thomases of this world—men unafraid of tearing down centuries of constitutional scaffolding in order to impose their own theories of constitutional construction—are far scarier to me. Those are the guys who probably did barf off the clock towers in college; guys with the hubris and drive to change the world without going through the confirmation process first. Scalia doesn’t care what anyone thinks of him, and Thomas is happiest when he’s provoking outrage. Roberts cares a lot about looking temperate, and that isn’t a bad thing in a judge.

There’s a couple things to talk about in the article. First is this idea that the only reason people are ever wholesome or decent is for political reasons. Its quite a jaded view of humanity (well then again its a professional reporter writing it). Some folks, particularly Christian folks as Roberts family clearly was live decent lives because they’re trying to serve God as best they can. Sometimes, they still fail, but they try.

The second idea is that the left should comfort itself because John Roberts has lived a good life, only for himself, only to look good, appear good, and put a good facade. If that were the case and I became convinced it was (and I have no way of knowing), I’d urge the Senate to give this guy the bum rush. People whose lives are all about the accumulation of power and keeping people happy are not cut-out for a job of being on the high court. Your job as the Supreme Court justice is to enforce the Constitution whether its popular or not.

That’s what Judge Roberts did in the infamous French Fry case. You can still be respectable while following great principles.

Finally, if Roberts has been gearing his life towards the Supreme Court, I wouldn’t necessarily be happy if I was on the left, because some people seek power for its own sake and some seek it for a cause. If Judge Roberts wants to bring back constitutional governance, it could very well explain his behavior.

Thus, Ms. Lithwick putting her bets on Roberts being a shallow hypocritical ambitious powermonger to preserve Roe v. Wade.

Conscience for $ale

On The Dawn Patrol Nick Vasallo, composer of that disgusting Planned Parenthood cartoon and an even more disgusting thriller called “Sinful Wives” defends his work:

I happen to be pro-life as well but I am not one to push my opinions or change others…they have to make that choice themselves and/or come to that realization.

Now you may wonder why a Pro-Lifer works on videos containing such subject matter…the answer is simple to me and hopefully you can see my POV. I work with art and create art. Art is a world that needs to be void of censorship and precognitive ideas where opinions rule….

I cannot discriminate who I work with based upon their beliefs…I would not turn down a project that consisted of a different culture or religion than mine (where social beliefs would be completely different).

I hope after reviewing both my music and videos that you see I work with all kinds of projects – , features, family cartoons, dramas, horror, classic films, etc. I am here to create…no more no less.

What total nonsense! Artists discriminate all the time. If I decided I wanted music done for a film and offered Mr. Vasello to compose a score for me for $50, would he accept it? After all he’s there to create no more. Of course, he wouldn’t take my offer because he’s there to make money and what he’s echoing on Dawn’s site is the moral excuses he tells himself for participating in these acts.

There’s degrees to this. I might operate a camera for a TV show I didn’t like, but to take contract work to help someone working for genocide and profit off that is despicable. I wonder what Mr. Vasallo would say if he’d been alive during the ’40s and been asked to work on Nazi propoganda film? Based on his response here, it’d be, “Hey, as long as they pay me.”

He concludes his comments with this statement:

And I truly hope you can all see that the content and subject matter of projects that use my music tell nothing of my person.

Sadly, it tells us quite a bit about you.

Comfort Beats the Bible

From Worldnetdaily fromt he Barna research institute:

Just one in six American adults say they make moral decisions based on the Bible, according to a new study…

Other common means of making moral choices, according to the study, include doing what feels right or comfortable, 24 percent; doing whatever makes the most people happy or causes the least conflict, 9 percent; and pursuing whatever produces the most positive outcomes for the person, 7 percent…

The research group’s founder, George Barna, said “most born again Christians hold a confusing and inherently contradictory set of religious beliefs that go unchecked by the leaders and teachers of their faith community.”

Its a pretty sorry situationm, particularly with the number of Evangelicals who are clueless. Of course, this bespeaks ill of Catholics and other groups. If we’re Christians and we’re not living by the Bible, we’re living on the basis of shifting sand.

It bodes ill for the American church as well as American society. The church is to be the conscience of the state and what kind of conscience are we if so many are following changing views based on what the situation is?