This comes from CitizenLink.  I didn't write it, but I love what Scalia said so I want to post it.  It's about time somebody spoke truth the way truth really is to the ACLU.


Scalia Gives ACLU an Earful

Delegates to the American Civil Liberties Union's (ACLU) annual conference in Washington, D.C., heard from a conservative icon Sunday night — Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

Speaking to an audience of 1,500 civil libertarians during an hour-long debate with ACLU President Nadine Strossen, Scalia spoke out about abortion, same-sex marriage and religious freedom.

The conservative justice told the left - leaning lawyers group there is no basis in the U.S. Constitution for abortion or homosexual rights — and that controversial issues should be settled through the democratic process, not through the courts.

"What democracy means," he said, "is that, on controversial issues — even stuff like homosexual rights, abortion, whatever — we debate with each other and persuade each other and vote on it."

Scalia said America decides such questions by majority rule - either through legislatures or constitutional amendments in the states.

"(The) Bill of Rights was adopted by the majority," he said, "which is why it is proper in a democracy to have a Bill of Rights, because the majority adopted it."

Scalia said our forefathers never included abortion or homosexual activism in the Bill of Rights.

"Nobody ever thought that they had been included in the rights contained in the Bill of Rights," he said, "which is why abortion and homosexual sodomy were criminal for 200 years."

Scalia said it isn't the job of a judge — or the court — to decide if abortion or homosexual activism is a good idea or a bad idea.

"It is my job to say whether the Bill of Rights have taken it out of the realm of democratic debate," the justice said. "Just because you feel strongly about it, it isn't necessarily in the Bill of Rights."

Taking a firm stance on religious freedom, Scalia said it was clear that, throughout our history, no one thought the Constitution's First Amendment prevented the government from fostering religious practice, or being favorable towards religion.

"Our history is full of (appeals to religion)," Scalia told the lawyers. "The same Congress that proposed the First Amendment, directed George Washington to issue a proclamation of thanksgiving to God, 'for all His favors to the Republic.' "

In response to Strossen's defense of the ACLU's vision of the Constitution as a living — or evolving — document, Scalia said the question is whether we can live with an evolving Constitution.

"Once you say it evolves and it doesn't depend on what the people thought they were doing when they adopted it, somebody's going to have to decide how it evolves," he said. "Why in the world would you want nine people from a very uncharacteristic class of society — to wit, lawyers — to decide how the Constitution evolves?

"It would mean whatever they think it ought to mean."

Did Scalia change any minds? Probably not, given the audience.

Today, the ACLU's Gay and Lesbian Rights Project said it will continue to press for same - sex marriage. While the lawyers did say they will file only a few challenges if voters in nine states enshrine the definition of marriage in their constitutions next month as the union of one man and one woman — that doesn't mean the group is changing its stance on gay marriage.

The goal now is to educate the nation on "the equality issue" — to try to create an atmosphere in which legal challenges in favor of same-sex marriage may eventually work.

The plan is to train gay activists to take arguments in favor of same-sex marriage to every forum they can — from formal debates to presentations at the local Rotary or Kiwanis clubs.

"People's attitudes change significantly for the better when they know a gay person, and . . . know what it's like to be gay," said the ACLU's Paul Cotes. "That's what we need to be doing, is having those conversations."

Bruce Hausknecht, judicial analyst for Focus on the Family Action, said the announcement only goes to show the ACLU isn't about to give up pushing a liberal agenda.

"They see the Constitution as something that they think the court should use to impose 'new and enlightened' values upon the American public," he said.

Hausknecht added that it was good to see Scalia articulate for everyone why conservatives oppose the idea that the courts should be utilized to create "rights" that ought to be dealt with through the democratic process.

[end]


Why does the ACLU HAVE to deal with the courts?

Because by majority rule, they would lose every case they have.

Doesn't that say something? Why does the majority get squashed by the minority? Why is the majority forced to bend for the few?

This is an excellent article written by Francis J. Beckwith of Baylor University.  I can't say it better myself, so I want to spread it around.  I especially like the part about spousal abuse - is it right or wrong?  So here it is:

Who Are We and What Are We?  (What the Abortion Debate is Really All About)

by Francis J. Beckwith

Where Children Are Unwanted

We live in a political world,
Love don't have any place.
We're living in times where men commit crimes
And crime don't have a face …

We live in a political world
Where courage is a thing of the past
Houses are haunted, children are unwanted
The next day could be your last. …

We live in a political world
Turning and a'thrashing about,
As soon as you're awake, you're trained to take
What looks like the easy way out.

   — Bob Dylan, Political World (1989)

Abortion is an issue over which Americans are deeply divided, and there is little chance that this discord will be remedied anytime soon. Each side of this cultural divide consists of citizens sincere in their convictions. But the passions that fuel these convictions about abortion often distract us from understanding the issues that really divide us.

Now it may seem odd to say "the issues that really divide us," since it seems obvious to most people that what divides us is in fact only one issue, abortion. But that is misleading. After all, if abortion did not result in the death of an unborn human being, the controversy would either cease entirely or diminish significantly. So, what we disagree over is not really abortion. But rather, our disagreement is over the nature of the being whose life abortion terminates, the unborn.

But there is another issue that percolates beneath the abortion debate: What does it mean to say that something is wrong? Suppose, for example, you are arguing with a friend over the question of whether abortion should remain legal, and your friend says to you, "If you don't like abortion, then don't have one." Although this is a common response, it really is a strange one. After all, you probably oppose abortion because you think it is wrong, not because you dislike it.

This can be better understood if we change the issue. Imagine that your friend is a defender of spousal abuse and says to you, "If you don't like spousal abuse, then don't beat your spouse." Upon hearing those words, you would instantly conclude that your friend has no idea why you oppose spousal abuse. Your opposition is not based on what you like or dislike. It is based on what you have good reason to believe is true: one ought not to abuse a fellow human being, especially one's spouse. That moral truth has nothing to do with whether or not you like or dislike spousal abuse.

In the same way, pro-lifers oppose abortion because they have reasons to believe that the unborn are full-fledged members of the human community, no different in nature than you or me. And for that reason, the unborn has a right to life that ought to be enshrined in our laws. Thus, in order to defeat the pro-lifer's point of view, the abortion advocate must show that the unborn is not a full-fledged member of the human community. At the end of the day, the abortion debate is not about likes or dislikes. It is about who and what we are, and whether the unborn is one of us.

Is the Unborn One of Us? 

There is no doubt that the unborn is a human being from conception, the result of the dynamic interaction, and organic merger, of the female ovum (which contains 23 chromosomes) and the male sperm (which contains 23 chromosomes). At conception, a whole human being, with its own genome, comes into existence, needing only food, water, shelter, oxygen, and a congenial environment in which to interact. These are necessary in order to grow and develop itself to maturity in accordance with its own nature.

Like the infant, the child, and the adolescent, the unborn is a being that is in the process of unfolding its potential — the potential to grow and develop itself but not to change what it is. This unborn being, because of its nature, is actively disposed to develop into a mature version of itself, though never ceasing to be the same being. Thus, the same human being that begins as a one-cell zygote continues to exist to its birth and through its adulthood unless disease or violence stops it from doing so. This is why it makes perfect sense for any one of us to say, "When I was conceived ..."

Abortion advocates typically do not dispute that the unborn is a human being during all or most of its time in the womb. For example, philosopher David Boonin, in his book A Defense of Abortion (Cambridge University Press, 2002), writes:

"On the desk in my office where most of this book was written and revised, there are several pictures of my son, Eli. In one, he is gleefully dancing on the sand along the Gulf of Mexico, the cool ocean breeze wreaking havoc with his wispy hair. … In the top drawer of my desk, I keep another picture of Eli. The picture was taken September 7, 1993, 24 weeks before he was born. The sonogram image is murky, but it reveals clearly enough a small head tilted back slightly, and an arm raised up and bent, with the hand pointing back toward the face and the thumb extended toward the mouth. There is no doubt in my mind that this picture, too, shows the same little boy at a very early stage in his physical development. And there is no question that the position I defend in this book entails that it would have been morally permissible to end his life at this point." (xiii, xiv)

Why does Professor Boonin hold this view? Like some other philosophers, Boonin maintains that the unborn, though a human being, lacks characteristics that are necessary for it to have a right to life. These characteristics typically include having a self-concept, a particular level of higher brain activity, and/or a desire for a right to life. But there are problems with this approach.

Consider first this example. Imagine that your father was involved in a car accident that put him in a temporarily comatose state. His physician tells you he will awake from the coma in nine months. His conscious experiences, memories, particular skills and abilities will be lost forever and he will have no mental record of them. This means that he will have to relearn all of his abilities and knowledge as he did before he had any conscious experiences. But they would not be the same experiences and desires he had before. That is, he is in precisely the same position as the standard unborn child, with all the basic capacities he had at the beginning of his existence. Thus, if your father has a right to life while in the coma, then so does the standard unborn child.

Another problem with the Boonin-type view is that it provides no real moral reason to oppose seemingly immoral experiments on the unborn. Imagine that there is a scientist who is able to alter the unborn's brain development in such a way that the higher brain and its functions are prevented from arising. And thus, when the child is born, it never develops a self-concept or a desire for a right to life. In fact, its organs are harvested and donated to needy patients.

Suppose that this creation of "brainless" children becomes commonplace as a demand for donor organs increases. Yet, this seems deeply immoral, even if these children had not achieved the characteristics that Boonin and others believe are required in order to have a right to life. So, Boonin's view cannot account for the wrong of purposely creating brainless children. Only the pro-life view can do that. For, according to this view, human beings are persons by nature and therefore should not be unjustly deprived of those goods — including their brains — that they are designed to acquire.

Conclusion: It's All About Who and What We Are

In the July 9, 2000 edition of the Los Angeles Times (Orange County edition), abortion advocate Eileen Padberg claimed that an implication of the pro-life position is that the unborn child "has more rights than" our "wives, sisters, and daughters."

But that is not what follows from the pro-life position. What follows is that all human beings, including wives, sisters (born and unborn), and daughters (born and unborn), retain their dignity and rights as long as they exist, from the moment they come into being.

Ironically, by excluding the unborn from the human community, Ms. Padberg diminishes, and puts in peril, the very rights she jealously, and correctly, guards. For she is saying that the government may exclude small, vulnerable, defenseless, and dependent unborn human beings from its protection for no other reason than because others consider the unborn's destruction vital to their well-being.

But Ms. Padberg would surely, and correctly, protest a government policy that allows for the exploitation and destruction of wives, sisters, and daughters by powerful people who believe they will live better lives by engaging in such atrocities against these women. So, if the unborn is one of us, then whatever is true of our worth and dignity is true of theirs as well.

About the author
Francis J. Beckwith is Associate Professor of Church-State Studies, and Associate Director of the J. M. Dawson Institute, Baylor University. He has authored several books, including Politically Correct Death: Answering the Arguments for Abortion Rights (Baker Book House, 1994). His most recent book is To Everyone Answer: A Case for the Christian Worldview (InterVarsity Press, 2004).

www.francisbeckwith.com

"The Minutemen are the modern version of the KKK." - Nativo Lopez, Mexican-American Political Association.  Bill O'Reilly Show, October 6, 2006.

Did anybody see this?  Nativo Lopez actually compared the Minutemen to the KKK, whilst in another breath attacking anti-illegal immigration folks for hate speech.

Why are double-standards so acceptable these days? 

The KKK murdered people.
The KKK tortured people.
The KKK masked themselves in costumes that became synonymous with terror.
The KKK discriminated against American citizens just based on the color of their skin.
The KKK was financially and morally corrupt and controlled local populace with blackmail.

Okay, now would it be fair to say that Nativo Lopez, in his comparison of the Minutemen to the KKK, was saying that the Minutemen are:

- Killers
- Torturers
- Hiding themselves to avoid punishment and judgment
- Discriminating against American citizens based on the color of their skin
- Financially and morally corrupt and controlling local populace with blackmail

???

And would it be fair to say that such a comparison, since it is easily proven grossly untrue, is hate speech?  If I walked up to Nativo Lopez and called him a murderer, torturer, etc., the ACLU would be ALL over my butt suing me for every last dollar I have.  But no.  Not a Mexican!  Not a left-wing discriminator!  They have all the rights that I don't have. 

Okay.  That Nativo Lopez thing really was just for an opener.  It's not the meat of what I want to say here.  The meat relates to the title of this post, which is "Illegal Immigration NOT a Human Rights Issue."  It's not about the color of Mexican skin.  It's not about Mexicans.  Why the illegal immigration of Mexicans is WRONG really has nothing to do with Mexicans. 

If Canadians were tunneling underground and crawling over fences to get in here in massive numbers, I'd be against it.  It would be wrong.  If Irishmen were swimming over or rowing over in john boats, I'd be against it.  If Chinese people were sneaking in in rented submarines, I'd be against it!  It would be equally as wrong as illegal Mexican immigration.  So let me get that down right now - it's not about Mexicans.

Therefore, since it's not about Mexicans, any inference to discrimination or human rights is ridiculous.  Because remember, we could just as easily replace the word Mexican with Canadian or German or Namibian.  The only difference is - with respect to Canada, most Canadians don't care to come to America because the way of life in Canada is quite acceptable to most Canadians.  Plus they know that they could never get away with being an illegal Canadian here.  No one would hire them, right?  With respect to Germans or Irishmen or whoever - the only difference there is that their countries aren't sitting on our border.  So, to reiterate, it's not about Mexicans.

Further, to illustrate even more that it's not about Mexicans, how about we evaluate the immigration policies of other countries?  Say, Canada, or Russia, or South Africa, or hey, MEXICO.  What do they do with illegal immigrants?  I'll tell you what they do.  They send them back.  They don't take excuses.  To be a non-citizen in another country, you better have your travel identification and you better speak their language.  Otherwise you're up a creek without a paddle.

So, yet another double-standard.  Mexico and every other country in the world is allowed to inforce their border laws without getting screamed at, but America must be called horribly indecent for doing so.  And in other countries, it's not about Mexicans either, believe it or not.  It's not about any one particular group of people - it's about anyone.  Anyone who doesn't belong there.  In illegal immigration - the illegal refers to anyone who can't provide documentation of citizenship.  So, believe it or not, it's not about Mexicans.

But why, you ask?  Why is it not about Mexicans?  Here's why:

Because anyone coming to America in mass numbers who doesn't work or pay taxes, but still consumes resources, would cause the exact same detriment that illegal Mexicans are causing and have caused to this country. 

Okay, now let me add a disclaimer to that statement, because I'm sure people like Nativo Lopez would get stuck on one part of that sentence.  I said "anyone coming to America in mass numbers who doesn't work."  But Mexicans work!  You say.  Mexicans are a hard-working bunch of people!  Here's the truth, and I know it's true because I spent the last two years living in Phoenix, Arizona.  SOME Mexicans work.  SOME.  SOME, mostly men.  But the other SOME, and I won't say percentages because I don't know, of Mexican men, stand outside Wal-mart or Home Depot all day hoping someone will come hire them.  One Mexican man generally won't get hired every day either.  Now, as for the other SOME, meaning illegal Mexican women and children, they generally don't work at all.  A few of them do, but most of them aren't able to do the labor that the men do.  So they don't work.  The women have babies instead.  The kids go to school, of course. 

Alright, so what does all of this mean?  SOME Mexicans work, day laborers.  They make a little bit of under-the-table money, most of which goes back to Mexico and not to the U.S.  The women generally don't work, and the children generally don't work.  So, here we have three subgroups of people (men, women, children) who are not taxed and who contribute overall very little to the economy. 

And yet, they use TAXED resources, such as roads, schools, healthcare.  And since there are millions upon millions of them, they use a whole lot of resources. 

What does that mean for the taxpayer?  That means, if you live in an area with a lot of Mexicans, you aren't getting all that you pay for.  That 30-35% that you could sure use out of your paycheck - that's going to help pay for the vaccinations of Aurelio and Maria's 8th child.  That's going to help schools where they say the Pledge of Allegiance in Spanish.  That's going to welfare and Medicare and food stamps and what not for people who do not contribute to society and by and large refuse to even learn English.

But Mexicans DO contribute to society, you say.  They do hard labor jobs that most Americans wouldn't want to do.  Well, all I can say to that is, did all of these hard labor jobs suddenly just pop up in the last 20 years?  Did Americans not do them before?  Would those sitting on unemployment really turn such jobs down if they paid a decent wage?  The answer to that is of course not.

In fact, when Mexicans do work, what really happens?  They drive down wages for the rest of us.  They make business owners face an enormous challenge to compete - do I hire illegals and pay them less so that I can stay in business with my competitors, who already use illegals, or do I stick to my guns, do the right thing and lose my business?  Mexicans also contribute to the waning of the middle class.  In Los Angeles, did you know that 71% of the people there are either millionaires or they're making less than $15,000 a year, according to CNN? 

The middle class in Los Angeles has all but disappeared.  What happens when there is no middle class?  You get horrific situations like spawned the Communist Revolution in Russia. 

Why is the middle class disappearing?  When you're middle class, that 35% that gets taken from your paycheck every two weeks is a big deal.  To have that 35% go to something that you will actually have to just pay for again, because someone else is using it up and not paying for it, is disastrous.  That's the problem.  If you're very poor, you can depend on the government for everything - your life may not be the ritz, but you can have a place to live, food to eat, free education, free healthcare.  If you're rich, of course you can have a great life without much cramping in your style.  But if you're middle class - it's your responsibility to find housing, to find food, to find education, to find healthcare.  You make too much money to get handouts.  But the problem is - most of us who qualify as middle class DON'T always have enough money for housing, healthcare, education.

I could never have afforded a house in Phoenix, for instance, unless I'd been willing to do some crazy loan that I would have defaulted at any point that I or my husband worked less than overtime every week.  Where does a first-time homebuyer get $300,000 for a house?  Or how about those of us who work for a small business, or a business with crappy healthcare, which a lot of them are these days, and then we're paying the equivalent of a compact car to see a doctor?  Or how about the situation I'm facing - my husband doesn't make enough money to support me and a kid - but childcare is $700 a month where I live.  $700 would be more than two weeks pay for me. 

But I've diverted.  This isn't meant to hone in on the middle class crisis, but I want to show the impact that illegal immigration does have on the middle class. 

So the point of all this is - IT'S NOT ABOUT MEXICANS!  It's about the problems that arise when people use resources without contributing.  (Not even to mention that our leaky borders are also our biggest national security issue as well.) 

The reason I have endeavored to say all this is because I am so incredibly tired of being called a racist.  I'm tired of people spouting off about things that make no sense.  I'm tired of being attacked as a horrible person for wanting the best for this country and it's citizens.  I'm tired of people saying I discriminate, when I most certainly don't.  I learned more Spanish than most Mexicans in the U.S. know English - and I did that because I wanted to learn about them as a people, to befriend them.  I do want the illegal Mexicans to go home - but that's not because I hate THEM.  It's because I hate being last in line for privileges and rights that should be mine as a citizen. 

I would never go to Mexico and demand anything special.  I don't think most of us would.  And why?  Because that would be wrong.  So why can't we call a spade a spade and stand up for ourselves once in a while? 

I thought Ms. Kort, of Ms. Magazine, deserved a little email from me.  Doubt she read it,  but you know.  It's all about how shameful it is to applaud abortion the way her petition does.  Abortion - whether or not it should be legal - should never be applauded as a good thing.  It's a bad thing -  it takes a life, it messes up the mother psychologically and physically, many times.  It should be a last resort for those who would consider it.  I suggested that Ms. Kort make a petition saying, "I regret having an abortion."  I bet she'd get a lot more signatures!  Maybe some other magazine out there, one without so much of an agenda, should do that.  Suggestions, anyone?  Here's the letter: