Welcome to Lex Communis - the most respected blog in all of north-central Fresno County
I am a practicing business-litigation and plaintiff's employment law trial attorney. This site generally focuses on my interests, which include history, philosophy, religion, science, science fiction and law.
Fair Warning: I write with an unrepentant neo-Conservative, Catholic, pro-Western Civilization bias. If you find something interesting, challenging or provocative, let me know.
Honesty begins at home, so I should acknowledge that I had two abortions during my all-too-fertile years. You can call me a bad woman, but not a bad mother. I was a dollar-a-word freelancer and my husband a warehouse worker, so it was all we could do to support the existing children at a grubby lower-middle-class level. And when it comes to my children - the actual extrauterine ones, that is - I was, and remain, a lioness.
Note the singular condescending elitism in Ehrenreich's worldview - "a grubby lower-middle-class level" indeed. Some people dont consider a "grubby lower middle class level" not as an excuse to objectify inconvenient humans in their path, but simply as "life." Such people somehow - amazingly - are able to recognize the dignity of other human beings.
Not all people, certainly, but one of the odd things in my experience is that I find in my practice that the people - who are most attentive about seeing that I get paid, who actually worry about whether they can pay for a consultation - are those people at the "grubby middle class level." Wealthy people - people like Ehrenreich - are generally unconcerned with such matters. I find among such people the attitude that they are doing me a favor in condescending to bring their problems to me and I, as a member of the servitor class, should be satisfied with serving.
Ehrenreich seems to convey this attitude. She seems to gesture at the idea that everything is to be ordered to her wants. Her children, "extrauterine" or otherwise, are again extensions of her feeling and seem to exist only in that role.
But why shouldn't Ehrenreich feel that way. As Alasdair McIntyre points out in "After Virtue", our society has been shaped by the idea of the logical positivists and the emotivists for whom moral truths were reducible to "feelings." For them, the statement "Thou shalt not murder" reduced to "I don't like murder and you shouldn't either." Thus, we end up with Ehrenreich for whom the difference between the extrauterine child has immutable rights, and the intrauterine has no rights, is her feelings and nothhing more.
Hugo Swyzer posts his thoughts on what it means for a man to be "trapped into parenthood."
David Morrison finds the Ehrenreich column to be a lot more "callous" than he's used to for a woman who has had an abortion. Unfortunately, that's not been my experience.
According to this article the classified documents that Sandy Berger "inadvertently" purloined by "inadvertently" sticking them down his pants - and who in their right mind does such a thing? - include documents critical of the Clinton administration, and their still missing:
However, some drafts of a sensitive after-action report on the Clinton administration's handling of al-Qaida terror threats during the December 1999 millennium celebration are still missing, officials and lawyers told The Associated Press.
It's useful to note in this regard that Berger was NSA chief for Clinton and is an advisor for Kerry, so probably this is simply a fantastic bit of luck for all concerned.
By the way, doesn't the government keep copies of these kinds of thing? I know my secretary won't let me near an original lest I misplace the thing. And quite properly so.
Andrew Sullivan writes: "I was also struck by how much of the debate is being fostered by websites and blogs. They're the National Reviews of the new millennium. The future really is here, isn't it?" One can't help but notice--well, I certainly can't--that National Review understood that possibility even before the blogosphere was cool--which is why we have NRO today.
The monopoly media will be a footnote in a few years.
The New York Times Magazine runs an article about a woman who ordered that a needle be used to pierce two out of three of her unborn triplets because she doesn't want to have to sacrifice her walk-up in the East Village.
Of course, she's not married and the subject of marriage as an option isn't even considered. So, instead, it's a needle to the heart of the Lucky One's brothers. It could have easily have been any of them who lives because none of them are ontologically unique or important. Certainly not, when compared to the importance of a freelance lifestyle, having a boyfriend rather than a husband, and keeping a walk-up in the East Village. It's not like parenthood requires sacrifices after all....
I also like her explanation for being put into the position of having to murder two of her children - the pill made her "moody."
Unfortunately, in my experience this is the level of thinking that I've seen among the women I know who have had abortions - and the issue does come up when medical records are subpenad. But, then, why shouldn't it be this way? The jurisprudence of abortion focuses on the ontological significance of the women's life - the philosophy which sustains abortion makes the decisive moral moment the moment the pregnancy is disovered and considers only the negative effects that the child may have on the mother's lifestyle. The mother's free choices in causing the pregnancy have no moral significance and suggestions that they do or should are strictly off limits. The mother in this case does seem a far cry from the "rape/incest" victim who provides the paradigm of discussions about abortion.
One wonders what the survivor will think if he ever finds out about Mom's heroic decision to be herself first. Presumably the survivor will have the belief that he's important, that he's unique, that he's significant, that he's the apple of Mom's eyes.
But what if the doctor had started the "eenie, meenie, minie, moe" count at a different spot? Peter Sean Bradley 12:30 PM
Terror in the Skies, Part 2 - Taking the paranoia down a notch.
Donald Sensing offers a convincing explanation about why the Anne Jacobsen story smelled like an urban legend. Various comments and links suggest that the odd-behaving Middle-Eastern-looking passengers were an Arab culture musical band. A Donald Sensing update provides the name of the band.
Score another one for the Blogosphere. Story puffed and deflated before the mainstream media even noticed. Frankly, it would have been weeks before mainstream media finished with the "puffing" phase of the story.
The Corner links to this very funny "parody" from Scrappleface about "Hillary gulping for air":
Senator Hillary Clinton said today that the opportunity to introduce her husband at the Democrat convention in Boston this month "thrills me beyond words."
"When Senator Kerry asked me to be the warm-up act for former President Clinton, I was gulping for air," Mrs. Clinton said. "I started crying and yelling at him: 'Do you really mean it?'"
A Kerry campaign spokesman said Mrs. Clinton is a "logical choice to do the introduction, since she is among the dozen, or so, women who know Mr. Clinton best."
The junior senator from New York has embraced the assignment.
"This is so much better than being a keynote speaker in primetime," Mrs. Clinton said. "I was concerned that Senator Kerry might see me as a threat, and give me a marginal role at the convention or ask me to do something embarrassing or uncomfortable. But clearly this invitation shows that Senator Kerry respects me as an influential senator, best-selling author and one of the party's top fundraisers."
Ah, those crafty Democrats and their sensitivity to "women's issues."
In honor of Bastille Day - The First Modern Genocide.
Godspy has an article on the forgotten genocide in the Vendee.
More people have been killed in the name of the Godless State than for any other reason in history. Peter Sean Bradley 12:06 PM
Happy Bastille Day
Remembering that brave day in French history when a mob of drunken rioters overwhelmed an honor guard of approximately 30 men, hideously butchered the leader of those men (who had surrendered the place to prevent further bloodshed, placed the head of that humanitarian on a pike to parade down the street, tore down a historical landmark, freed seven prisoners, none of whom were political prisoners and narrowly missed the opportunity to liberate the Marquis de Sade.
Professor David Bellamy puts the subject of global warming into a common-sense perspective. As Bellamy points out:
The truth is that the climate has been yo-yo-ing up and down ever since. Whereas it was warm enough for Romans to produce good wine in York, on the other hand, King Canute had to dig up peat to warm his people. And then it started getting warm again.
Up and down, up and down - that is how temperature and climate have always gone in the past and there is no proof they are not still doing exactly the same thing now. In other words, climate change is an entirely natural phenomenon, nothing to do with the burning of fossil fuels.
Bellamy points out something I didn't know, but which may be very disorienting to True Believers:
In fact, a recent scientific paper, rather unenticingly titled 'Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Concentrations Over The Last Glacial Termination,' proved it.
It showed that increases in temperature are responsible for increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, not the other way around.
And that there is no consensus on the subject of human-caused Global Warming. In fact, like the correlation of CO2 and warming, the consensus is the reverse of what the conventional wisdom promotes:
Let me quote from a petition produced by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, which has been signed by over 18,000 scientists who are totally opposed to the Kyoto Protocol, which committed the world's leading industrial nations to cut their production of greenhouse gasses from fossil fuels.
They say: 'Predictions of harmful climatic effects due to future increases in minor greenhouse gasses like carbon dioxide are in error and do not conform to experimental knowledge.'
Yet, despite all of this, just go ahead to one of the leftoid science blog sites and try to suggest that there may be a dissenting view on whether Global Warming is a human-produced phenomena and you'll find yourself hooted at and jeered for collasal ignorance.
Headlines you will never see: "Senator Hillary Clinton, making no mention of the $100,000 she once made by trading cattle futures with astonishing perfection, told a cheering crowd of activists that President Bush's globalist economic policy is hurting poor people in other countries and costing American jobs."
By the way, Card writes for Ornery.org, which might be worth a bookmark.
Update: You have to hand it to Card - he's done the impossible and made a case for Prohibition in this column. The amazing thing is that I agree with him. Years ago, I would have prided myself on my correct attitude about the impossibility of prohibition ever working, but, really, it did. If you look at the social issues of the turn of the Century, you would find that the big issue was what should be done with the tremendously destructive energies of unattached men loosed on society by immigration and urbanization. This issue led to things like the YMCA and Prohibition.
This year has been particularly tough on my former libertarian instincts. I've been exposed to several instances of the destructive nature of drug usage. Drugs are insidious. They destroy people. They destroy lives. The destroy families. One has to perserve a uniquely academic distance from real life to maintain a libertarian perspective on the subject. Card has a strong point:
The drug-legalizers like to paint an idyllic picture of "harmless recreational drug use." But there is no such thing as harmless drug use. Long custom now makes it impossible to ban alcohol or smoking, but we also have long experience with the costs of unrestricted availability of substances that addict and destroy.
One thing is certain: If drugs are legalized, their use will increase vastly over what we have today. So, sure, maybe the drug kingpins will be put out of business; but the toll in broken homes, traffic accident deaths, unproductive workers, and dampened national creativity will more than take up the slack.
You want to know how to end the problem of drugs funding organized crime and provoking petty crime?
Stop tolerating drug use.
Don't leave it up to the police. If you know people who are using, then even if you don't report them, stop associating with them. When drugs are offered to you by someone, cut him off as your friend and ostracize him until he changes his ways.
The only reason drugs remain prevalent in our society is because ordinary citizens -- and, worse yet, opinion leaders -- either take part in drug use or refuse to report it when they see it.
California's 5th DCA has decided in Haney v. Aramark that an employee's testimony that he intends his legal action to benefit similarly situated employees does not allow a finding of pre-emption under the Collective Bargaining Agreement. Here's the testimony:
Aramark’s separate statement includes quotations from Haney’s deposition in which he answered “yes” when asked (1) if he felt he was voicing the complaints of other drivers, (2) if he complained on behalf of himself and his coemployees, and (3) if he felt he was being retaliated against for standing up for himself and the other drivers.
Bottom-line, this testimony doesn't create concerted action for the purpose of federal pre-emption. Peter Sean Bradley 2:36 PM
