Congress Outdoes Itself

Congress Outdoes Itself

Amazingly, the United States Congress, an institution that has demonstrated that it has absolutely no ability to feel embarrassment, has gone over its previous level of self abasement, and has wasted an entire week on absolutely nothing of substance. Don't get me wrong though, as any week that the Congress does nothing is a week that the rest of us are protected from the evil that that institution does.

Of course, if you were Michael Schiavo, you would never agree that they have done nothing, in a week that saw them pass a bill of attainder that seeks to prevent Michael's wife from having her last wishes carried out. No matter that Terry Schiavo's brain has been replaced by spinal fluid, her parents' baseless hopes for her recovery, overruled by a process that has been reviewed by 17 judges in 6 courts, have been given new life by our fearless leaders in Washington. We can only pray to God that there is no longer a piece of her brain that survives that can perceive pain. Yet this exercise in the unfeeling abuse of power, masquerading as sensitivity, was only a side show to last week's display of craven pandering by the 535 power and ego driven fools.

No, the real show was the hearing, at the Committee of Government Reform, on Baseball. It is hard to understand what figleaf they plan to hide behind, but our legislators are threatening to legislate the use of performance enhancing drugs. No matter that most of these drugs are illegal already. No matter that baseball is an entertainment, rather than a strictly athletic, occupation. These brilliant thinkers are prepared to jump into Baseball with regulations, in order to slow down the advancement of the sport. I just have to ask: if Baseball wants to become more like professional wrestling, by what authority is the Congress empowered to stop them? Doesn't our constitution account for anything anymore? Exactly which enumerated power allows them to micromanage a SPORT?

Meanwhile, back in the real world, technology has advanced far beyond whatever it is that congress plans to regulate in any case. They can only regulate anabolic steroids but, while they were not looking, recombinant DNA technology has allowed pharmaceutical companies to manufacture metabolic steroids. That is, regular human chemicals without which we would die if we did not produce them in sufficient quantities. How do they propose to decide whether or not Mark McGuire has a naturally high testosterone level? And, how about the unmentionable: what if blacks really do naturally have more testosterone than whites? Does Congress want to stop white athletes from overcoming this racist bias?

And the steroid thing is passe anyway. New advancements in surgery have made inroads into sports, just as they have in other forms of the entertainment industry. If they make it illegal for a pitcher to have the "Tommy John" surgery, can Brittley Spears be banned from show biz because of her breast implants? Does Stallone's eye job make him inegible for an Oscar? Weighty questions for our deliberative body to sort out. I only hope that we can be protected from overly pretty, overly strong, and overly fast entertainers. What a farce!

Scrap the Violence Against Women Act

Scrap the Violence Against Women Act

It is now time to take a stand against the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). In an editorial at IFeminists.com, Ray Blumhorst puts the savage effects rendered by the gender feminists, using VAWA as fuel, into perspective.

The domestic violence industry clings tenaciously to a belief that it must manufacture more and more female victims to get more and more money. To do that, more and more men are fed into the domestic violence arrest system to meet the goals of the industry. Thanks to laws like "primary aggressor," and "mandatory arrest" the gender feminist trained police are coerced to manufacture, ignore, or destroy evidence to support their gender profiling prejudices. It appears from numerous sources the rate of false arrests is greater than one in three. False accusations can be just as devastating and occur much more frequently. In sum, it appears false accusations and perhaps false arrests exceed legitimate accusations and arrests, which are appalling by any measure.

While my regular readers will not find this surprising, the rest of the world is just beginning to come around to understanding just how badly radical feminists have abused our society in their lust for power.

Similarly Trudy W. Schuett has another editorial on the subject, also well worth reading. As she puts it:

Generally speaking, the radical elements who haven't yet realized their work is done are easily dismissed, and most often ignored. Malcontents in society will always be with us. It is only when we allow these malcontents to dictate public policy, and our government to fund programs to further their extremist philosophies that society puts itself in harm's way.

Now congress will have to consider whether to extend VAWA or not. It is to be hoped that the craven princelings on Capitol Hill can take their heads out of their asses long enough to hear both sides of this debate. When ideology trumps justice, freedom loses. When government mandates quotas of a maximum of 5% of arrestees can be women, when the science says the 50/50 is more like it, any idiot can see that we have a problem. Giving billions of dollars, and and the power that results in the incarceration of thousands of innocent men, to radical feminist lesbo-fascists, is a travesty that must be stopped. As I have detailed several times, single interest politics will result in this type of thing. After all, no one wants to condone violence against women, especially a craven vote seeking coward. But now that we have ten years of VAWA under our belt, and we have the opportunity to reexamine the results before reauthorization takes place, we owe it to our society to take a good look before we continue to move in this hateful, and counterproductive, direction.

Hat tip to Iguana at Silly Seattle for the link to the Schuett piece.

Why We Do the Things We Do

Why We Do the Things We Do

Since my teen years I have known that, to a large extent, we humans are passengers in our own bodies - that many if not most decisions we make are made on a level that we are not even aware of. The effect of the subconscious, the sense menory, and the eerie way that smell can catapult one back in time in an instant are all evidence of this. The autopilot function that allows us to walk and talk without ever thinking about our legs or our tongues is the clearest indication of this. Now U.S. News and World report has an article that sums up the state of our knowledge of that magnificent machine that is behind all of this. It

reveals an aspect of a rich inner life that is not a part of conscious, much less rational, thought. Today, long after Sigmund Freud introduced the world to the fact that much of what we do is determined by mysterious memories and emotional forces, the depths of the mind and the brain are being explored anew. "Most of what we do every minute of every day is unconscious, " says University of Wisconsin neuroscientist Paul Whelan. "Life would be chaos if everything were on the forefront of our consciousness."

Fueled by powerful neuroimaging technology, questions about how we make snap decisions, why we feel uncomfortable without any obvious causes, what motivates us, and what satisfies us are being answered not through lying on a couch and exploring individual childhood miseries but by looking at neurons firing in particular parts of our brains. Hardly a week passes without the release of the results of a new study on these kinds of processes. And popular culture is so fascinated by neuroscience that Blink, journalist Malcolm Gladwell's exploration of "thinking without thinking," has remained on the bestseller lists for four weeks.

Goes rather well with last Friday's post, don't you think? Keep reading....