[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gU7Jgkgk54&w=500&h=284]
Posted in economy, Ohio, politics
Tagged Election 2012, Govenor John Kasich, Mitt Romney, Republican Convention
Jim wallis, CEO of Sojourners, wrote a valuable article on the biblical perspective of the purpose and roles of government. His ultimate focus is on the government’s repsonsibility of care for the poor. Although I anticipated a liberal-leaning diatribe for welfare, what I read was an excellent defense for the common good. He argued not for equality of outcomes but rather for the justice of fair outcomes economically and otherwise. To get to that point, Wallis shows how governments are to defend their people against evil while promoting the good. He covers the responsibilities of executive, legislative and judicial aspects of government as well as business to protect and promote the well-being of all citizens. In so doing, Wallis offers readers an outline for a just and good society based on the biblical record.
“Caring for the Poor is Government’s Biblical Role” is worth reading.
By Susan Yoshihara, Ph.D.
(NEW YORK – C-FAM) South Korea’s highest court upheld that country’s 59-year abortion ban last week, amidst a surge of pro-life activism led by former abortionists. On Wednesday the government reversed a decision that would have lifted the prescription requirement for emergency contraception.
The Associated Press’ brief report on the court ruling, picked up by several major media outlets, omitted mention the pro-life influence in South Korea, pointing only to government concern over Korea’s low birthrate.
What dramatically changed dynamics in Korea was that the government, which had for decades encouraged doctors to perform abortion as a means of population control to foster economic growth, expressed official support for a pro-life doctor’s group. Because of that, “the political terrain of abortion politics in South Korea is changing drastically,” researcher Young-Gyung Paik said.
Young-Gyung’s 2012 paper showed that pro-life activism, long marginalized as “religiously driven,” suddenly gained prominence: “It was only after the formation of the group of doctors called ‘Pro-life Doctors’ in 2009 that the contentious issue of abortion started to gain public attention in South Korea.” “In [the doctors’] opinion, the South Korea’s low fertility rate has originated from its high abortion rate, which, in turn, was the result of the immoral and profit-oriented conducts of Korean medical doctors,” Young-Gyung found.
Whereas Korean media painted the pro-life activism as a “war between doctors,” Young-Gyung’s extensive interviews with both sides found it was fostered by the development of neo-natal medical technologies, decreased interest in embryonic stem cell research, the rise of disability activism, as well as concern about depopulation.
According to a paper by the Pro-life Doctor’s Association, the winners from the court’s decision are Korea’s women. “Most abortions used to be easily performed because doctors or women undergoing abortions were not prosecuted even though abortion was illegal,” the paper said. Even after the country had become economically successful, the “trend of encouraging abortion was prevalent in our society and as a result, women used to be compelled by social pressure to undergo abortion.”
“I bought into the government’s argument that it was OK to do this,” Shim Sang-duk told the Los Angeles Times in 2010. The doctor received death threats and took a significant pay cut after abandoning the practice of abortion. “[I thought] it was good for the country. It boosted the economy,” said Shim, who founded the Korean Gynecological Physicians’ Association to encourage other doctors to stop performing abortions and call on the government to enforce the law’s penalties.
An eight-judge panel needed six votes in to declare the law unconstitutional but only got four, which has spurred hot debate in the Korean media, a spokesman for the doctor’s association told the Friday Fax. An opinion piece in The Korea Times Thursday criticized the government on its decision not to allow emergency contraception to be sold over the counter as bowing to “doctors and religious groups.”
In 2010 a midwife who helped perform an abortion at 6 weeks gestation went on trial and then challenged the law’s constitutionality, especially the law’s maximum two-year jail term for medical practitioners. The constitutional court argued that a lighter punishment would only make abortion more rampant, Radio Australia reported.
Abortion has been illegal in South Korea with exceptions for rape, incest or severe genetic disorders since 1953, but the law has been routinely flouted.
Kwak Seung-jun, chairman of the Presidential Council for Future & Vision, told reporters in 2010: “There are few people who realize abortion is illegal. We must work to create a mood where abortion is discouraged.”
Susan Yoshihara is Senior Vice President for Research at the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute (C-FAM), a New York and Washington DC-based research institute (http://www.c-fam.org/). Her article was first appeared in the Friday Fax, an internet report published weekly by C-FAM.
By John W. Whitehead
It was a mere ten years ago that Steven Spielberg’s action film Minority Report, based on a short story by Philip K. Dick, offered movie audiences a special effect-laden techno-vision of a futuristic world in which the government is all-seeing, all-knowing and all-powerful. And if you dare to step out of line, dark-clad police SWAT teams will bring you under control.
The year is 2054. The place is Washington, DC. Working in a city in which there has been no murder committed in six years—due in large part to his efforts combining widespread surveillance with behavior prediction technologies—John Anderton (played by Tom Cruise), Chief of the Department of Pre-Crime in Washington, DC, uses precognitive technology to capture would-be criminals before they can do any damage—that is, to prevent crimes before they happen. Unfortunately for Anderton, the technology, which proves to be fallible, identifies him as the next would-be criminal, and he flees. In the ensuing chase, Anderton finds himself not only attempting to prove his innocence but forced to take drastic measures in order to avoid capture in a surveillance state that uses biometric data and sophisticated computer networks to track its citizens.
Seemingly taking its cue from science fiction, technology has moved so fast in the short time since Minority Report premiered that what once seemed futuristic no longer occupies the realm of science fiction. Incredibly, as the various nascent technologies employed by the government and corporations alike—iris scanners, massive databases, behavior prediction software, and so on—are incorporated into a complex, interwoven cyber network aimed at tracking our movements, predicting our thoughts and controlling our behavior, Spielberg’s unnerving vision of the future is fast becoming our reality.
Examples abound.
FICTION: In Minority Report, police use holographic data screens, city-wide surveillance cameras, dimensional maps and database feeds to monitor the movements of its citizens.
REALITY CHECK: Microsoft, in a partnership with New York City, has developed a crime-fighting system that “will allow police to quickly collate and visualise vast amounts of data from cameras, licence plate readers, 911 calls, police databases and other sources. It will then display the information in real time, both visually and chronologically, allowing investigators to centralise information about crimes as they happen or are reported.”
FICTION: No matter where people go in the world of Minority Report, one’s biometric data precedes them, allowing corporations to tap into their government profile and target them for advertising based on their highly individual characteristics. So fine-tuned is the process that it goes way beyond gender and lifestyle to mood detection, so that while Anderton flees through a subway station and then later a mall, the stores and billboards call out to him with advertising geared at his interests and moods. Eventually, in an effort to outwit the identification scanners, Anderton opts for surgery to have his eyeballs replaced.
REALITY CHECK: Google is presently working on context-based advertising that will use environmental sensors in your cell phone, laptop, etc., to deliver “targeted ads tailored to fit with what you’re seeing and hearing in the real world.” However, long before Google set their sights on context advertising, facial and iris recognition machines were being employed, ostensibly to detect criminals, streamline security checkpoints processes, and facilitate everyday activities. For example, in preparing to introduce such technology in the United States, the American biometrics firm Global Rainmakers Inc. (GRI) turned the city of Leon, Mexico into a virtual police state by installing iris scanners, which can scan the irises of 30-50 people per minute, throughout the city.
Police departments around the country have begun using the Mobile Offender Recognition and Information System, or MORIS, a physical iPhone add-on that allows police officers patrolling the streets to scan the irises and faces of suspected criminals and match them against government databases.
FICTION: In Minority Report, John Anderton’s Pre-Crime division utilizes psychic mutant humans to determine when a crime will take place next.
REALITY CHECK: The Department of Homeland Security is working on its Future Attribute Screening Technology, or FAST, which will utilize a number of personal factors such as “ethnicity, gender, breathing, and heart rate to ‘detect cues indicative of mal-intent.’” At least one field test of this program has occurred, somewhere in the northeast United States.
FICTION: In Minority Report, government agents use “sick sticks” to subdue criminal suspects using less-lethal methods.
REALITY CHECK: A variety of less-lethal weapons have been developed in the years since Minority Report hit theaters. In 2007, the Department of Homeland Security granted a contract to Intelligent Optical Systems, Inc., for an “LED Incapacitator,” a flashlight-like device that emits a dazzling array of pulsating lights, incapacitating its target by causing nausea and vomiting. Raytheon has created an “Assault Intervention Device” which is basically a heat ray that causes an unbearable burning sensation on its victim’s skin.
FICTION: A hacker captures visions from the “precog” Agatha’s mind and plays them for John Anderton.
REALITY CHECK: While still in its infancy, technology that seeks to translate human thoughts into computer actions is slowly becoming a reality. Jack Gallant, a neuroscientist at UC Berkeley, and his research team have created primitive software capable of translating the thoughts of viewers into reconstructed visual images.
FICTION: In Minority Report, tiny sensory-guided spider robots converge on John Anderton, scan his biometric data and feed it into a central government database.
REALITY CHECK: An agency with the Department of Defense is working on turning insects into living UAVs, or “cybugs.” By expanding upon the insects’ natural abilities (e.g., bees’ olfactory abilities being utilized for bomb detection, etc.), government agents hope to use these spy bugs to surreptitiously gather vast quantities of information. Researchers eventually hope to outfit June beetles with tiny backpacks complete with various detection devices, microphones, and cameras.
These are but a few of the technological devices now in the hands of those who control the corporate police state. Fiction, in essence, has become fact—albeit, a rather frightening one.
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. He can be contacted at johnw@rutherford.org. Information about the Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.
Tagged corporate police state, fiction, Minority Report, movie, reality
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMG7l-e1lX0&w=420&h=315]
On Friday, US District Judge Peter Economus ordered the State of Ohio to restore early voting until the Monday November 5. This will give Ohioans the weekend prior to the election to vote in-person at Board of Election offices and other designated locations. Democrats claim nearly 93,000 additional Ohioans voted because of this provision in 2008. Yet, the statistics the judge in part relied on did not actually present any numbers regarding the 3-day post-election period. The statistics only covered both the total 35 day and the 7-day pre- election period of early voting. (Source: Wall Steet Journal blog.)
In the past, there presumably was no uniform state law concerning the early voting period. Since 2008, the Republican-led executive branch under the leadership of John Husted implemented uniform policies for all local board of election offices. A 35-day period was set to begin on Monday and continue to the Friday before the election except those who are stationed overseas. They are allowed to submit their ballot until the Monday before period.
Although I agree with the Democrats that voting on the weekend (Saturday) would make it easier for many to vote, the State is already making it easier for all Ohioans to vote. Ohio law allows workers to vote during business hours without being penalized by employers. The State will be mailing all Ohioans information about how to register and vote by absentee ballot, not to mention in-person early voting already been scheduled for the voting public. The Secretary of State also is also responsible for implementing a multifaceted voter registration initiative.
Liberal leaning organizations like the Children’s Defense Fund are cheerleading Obama’s judicial campaign for weekend voting. They call Husted’s rather egalitarian voting policies suppression of poor people’s voting rights. Like the inconclusive U.S. General Accounting Office study, a 93,000 additional voter turnout in 2008 does not seem very effective especially when considering the state’s new efforts to enable every voter in the state to vote on or before election day.
One proposal to decrease the burden of the poor voter is prepaid mail-in ballots. To my knowledge, the proposal has not been implemented. Seeing Obama is providing those on public assistance as well as the working poor with cell phones, maybe he and his liberal associates would like to use taxpayer money to supplies federal postage stamps. That just might get him and other liberal Democrats a few more votes.
Liberal efforts to get more of the poor to vote also raises concern of voter fraud. The Voter Participation Center (VPC) has been sending out registration cards to pets, deceased voters, and other non-voters. The organization’s leadership includes previous leaders of the infamous ACORN, which was defunded by the federal government in 2008 because of similar voting fraud. The Judicial Watch reports the founder is one of the Democrats top political strategist with roots in the AFL-CIO and SIEU unions. It current director was Other ranking members of the Democratic Party and Pres. Clinton’s staff are involved in the organization as well. Bogus voter registration cards have been reported in Colorado, Florida, New Mexico, Missouri, Virginia, and Wisconsin. The problem is the VPC is mailing voter registration cards that are already filled-out to the deceased, children, those already registered, noncitizens, felons and even pets across the nation. Ohio is not being left out of the Democrat-led efforts to get out the vote.
Besides continuing to fight Obama's weekend voting lawsuit, Attorney General Mike Dewine should look into The Voter Participation Center's work in Ohio.
Posted in news, Ohio, politics
Tagged Democrats, Election 2012, The Voter Participation Center, voter fraud
by Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted
Labor Day marks the official end of summer and gives us an opportunity to celebrate the enduring American work ethic. It also means the election season is in full swing. This year, I am proud of the steps we are taking in each of the state’s 88 counties to ensure busy schedules won’t keep hard-working Ohioans from participating. In fact, starting on October 2, you can vote any hour of the day and without ever leaving your homes.
Just after the Labor Day holiday, registered voters should keep an eye out for an official absentee ballot application in the mail. This election marks the first time applications will be sent to all voters across the state. You’ll know it by the official Secretary of State seal and because it will have your name and address pre-printed, just as it appears in the voter file.
By simply completing the three security fields and mailing it back to your county board of elections in the envelope provided, you’ll be slated to receive your ballot in the mail. No juggling schedules. No waiting in line. Your kitchen table can be your voting booth and you’ll have more than 750 hours to complete your ballot at the time that works best for you.
Though many surrounding states don’t offer this method of voting, voting by mail has become increasingly popular in Ohio. It’s both convenient and secure. Completed ballots can be sealed and mailed back to be included in the Election Day tally, or, if you prefer, you can drop them off at your local board of elections (no later than Election Day on November 6, 2012).
If you are a voter that prefers going to the polls, there is also plenty of opportunity for you to cast a ballot both prior to, and on Election Day.
Starting October 2nd, all boards of elections will be open for voting Monday through Friday, including extended hours on October 9 (until 9 pm) and until 7 pm during the last two weeks before the election to accommodate working schedules. This provides for a total of 230 hours of voting time prior before Election Day. You can find a complete schedule online at www.MyOhioVote.com. And let’s not forget about Election Day itself, when polls will be open between 6:30 am and 7:30 pm like always.
This Labor Day, jobs are the number one issue on the minds of Ohio voters. We have important choices to make on the individuals who will best lead us to economic prosperity. In the meantime, my job is to make the voting process for electing those leaders uniform, accessible, fair and secure for all Ohioans. Learn more at www.MyOhioVote.com.
Rebecca Kiessling is a family law attorney who wrote several informative posts/articles about the origin and legal problems of legitimate and illegitimate rape in abortion and rape laws. Her articles show how liberals are distorting Congressman Akin’s “use of legitimate rape” for political advantage. In fact, Akin was not claiming some rapes to be legitimate but rather that it was his understanding that the medical profession made that distinction.
Kiessling’s post addressing the unfortunate remark by Congressman Akin is titled “Another Good100% Pro-Life Candidate Flubs on the Rape Question” and her article about the legal issues related to abortion and legitimate rape is titled “woman Who Cried Wolf: The Illegitimate Rape Claim Behind Roe v Wadw,” both are worth reading.
By now, the experience can only be called “commonplace.” You take your child to the doctor for a rash or a sore throat, and the next thing you know your child is fielding some unrelated questions: “Is there a gun in your home? Do you usually wear a seatbelt when riding in the car? What’s your favorite music?”
If you haven’t yet heard such a dialogue between your child and the doctor, that doesn’t mean this is not occurring. “Doctors are trained in residency how to gently steer the parent out of the room so that they can do an assessment,” reports pediatrician and ParentalRights.org board member Verlainna Callentine, M.D. “The mindset is that because so many adolescents stay healthy, there are few opportunities to have a medical impact on the child once they get out of the early years of development. When a child comes in for a particular complaint, the opportunity is seized to assess other risk factors in the child’s life.”
Dr. Callentine continues, “Absolutely, it can be intrusive. It is intentional. Some doctors may not want parents to know the kinds of questions being asked out of fear that the answers they will receive from the child will not be honest and truthful.”
This line of questioning is called a “psychosocial evaluation”. There are many of these evaluation tools used in pediatric offices. One such tool is the HEEADSSS assessment, and it has been around for years. HEEADSSS is an acronym for the myriad topics the probe is intended to cover: Home, Education & Employment, Eating & Exercise, Activities and Peer Relationships, Drug /Cigarette/Alcohol Use, Sexuality, Suicide & Depression, and Safety. Some will also include Spirituality, including questions like “Does your family affiliate with any faith community?” and “How often do you go to church/synagogue/mosque/etc.?”
You won’t believe some of the questions doctors are being urged to ask your child. Click hear to see one such questionnaire.
If government doctors were using this, there would be constitutional issues immediately. Private doctors, however, are not limited by the Constitution. So while some doctors in certain instances could possibly be held liable for invasion of privacy, the best defense is to be aware and prepared to avoid the problem entirely.
“Parents need to be educated and understand how to navigate the healthcare system with their child,” Dr. Callentine says. “They need to know they have the right to say, ‘No’ or to request to be present during the discussion so they can best partner with the healthcare provider. Parents are the advocate for their children. It is through a ‘healthy’ partnership with their pediatrician that parents and children can best be served.”
“We need to educate the parents,” Dr. Rosemary Stein, an adjunct teaching professor at the Children’s Hospital of UNC-Chapel Hill, agrees.
According to Dr. Stein, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) set up a committee several years ago to promote ratification of the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) in the United States. That committee is linked very strongly to medical teaching programs across the country, using its influence to see that the international model – including HEEADSSS assessments – is presented as “the way to practice medicine” in the U.S. (Dr. Stein was a fellow of the AAP until resigning over philosophical differences.)
The HEEADSSS assessment was first introduced by Americans G.M. Cohen and E. Goldenring in Contemporary Pediatrics in 1988. Obviously, then, it didn’t come from the United Nations. However, the implementation of HEEADSSS and of the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) can have striking parallels. That is because both include the notable presumption that parents are agents to be monitored rather than the natural safeguard for their children’s health and rights.
This shared premise makes it easy to employ the CRC and the HEEADSSS assessment together to impede parental rights around the world. The New South Wales (Australia) Center for the Advancement of Adolescent Health (NSW CAAH) has published a popular “Resource Kit” to help doctors learn to administer these assessments. According to their website, the NSW CAAH “believe[s] that all young people have the right to comprehensive health care,” a catch-phrase in international law signifying the “right” of teenagers to make health decisions– especially in the areas of drug use and sexuality (including abortion) – without parental oversight, input, or consent. Not coincidentally, this “right” is often called for by the Committee on the Rights of the Child, which consistently interprets Article 24 of the CRC to include this obligation.
The mindset is the same: parents are an obstruction that must be removed from the room so that the needs of adolescents can be met.
While it is true that there are rare instances where that is in fact the case, fit parents have the fundamental right to direct the care of their children – and that includes the right to grant or deny consent for a doctor to perform a “psychosocial assessment” of your child.
Sadly, the rise of electronic medical records and the drift toward government health care point to a day when the data collected through these assessments will find its way into the hands of the government. And the push to ratify the CRC could introduce a day when the assessment is seen as a legal necessity to fulfill the government’s obligation to ensure the best interests of every child.
For now, though, you do have the right to say, “No.” When the doctor asks you to leave the room for the sake of your child’s privacy, the two of you together – you and your child – have all the legal authority to protect your family against this intrusion. Many states allow the doctor to honor your teen’s wishes over your own, but not to insert the doctor’s own wishes over those of you and your child together.
The proposed Parental Rights Amendment to the United States Constitution will ensure that this right of parents “to direct the upbringing, education, and care of their child” will remain “a fundamental right.” It will prevent ratification of the CRC and halt the intrusion of the government into your home and privacy. It will also guarantee that no law is passed to take away your right to tell an intrusive doctor, “No.”
Source: August 28, 2012 parentalrights.org email.
Posted in family, health care, politics
Tagged amendment, Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), parental rights
Mormon Perspective on Ann Romney’s RNC Speech
Joann Brook’s is a a senior correspondent for Religion Dispatches Magazine. Oh, she’s also a Mormon and a woman.
Her article, titled “Ann Romney’s Big Night at the RNC” presents the feminine perspective of Romney’s ‘unpolitical’ speech.
Leave a comment
Posted in commentary, politics