CNS News did some investigating, and Ed Morrissey came up with this analysis:

At least ostensibly, this is an unfunded mandate on the states, which run the exchanges. What happens when no insurer in the state offers abortion coverage? At the moment, 87% of all abortions are purchased outside of third-party payers, so this is not an academic question. Do the feds intend to shut down an exchange that doesn’t offer an abortion plan? Or do they expect the states then to cover abortions instead?

… Once Congress stops re-enabling the Hyde Amendment, the mandates in Reid’s Section 1303 will force the federal government to supply the coverage for abortion where state exchanges have none. It will give the federal government an entree into broader health-insurance offerings, and that will have one ironic effect: it will crowd out those few private insurance plans that offer elective abortion coverage. Where Stupak’s opponents insisted that his language would create a “price signal” that would encourage private insurers to abandon abortion coverage, this would all but guarantee the same result, as private insurers would get undercut by the federal plan that would come into play.

This is nothing more than a mandate for federally-funded abortions. How long would it take a court to make that same determination? I suspect that Planned Parenthood and NARAL already have their legal counsel preparing for it.

It’s not exactly a surprise that the health care bill would include funding for abortion. Feminists have been howling about the Stupak amendment, the abortion lobby has been furious. Liberals were bound to cave in to their demands, and they were bound to try to hide it from the federal public. It is typical of liberals. And it’s infuriating to anyone with any kind of morals or respect for the sanctity of life. It’s bad enough that abortion is celebrated as some kind of right in this country, like it’s glorious for a woman to be able to go and kill her baby. Feminists in particular revel in it, like it’s some kind of sacred cow. Apparently, you have to be a member of the “I <3 Abortion" club in order to be a feminist in today's world. There are currently about 1.3 million abortions performed a year, and this isn't good enough for feminists. They not only want abortion to be free and legal, they want it to be paid for by Americans whether they like it or not. It has to be taxpayer-funded.

It's important that we all understand this. It's not good enough for feminists just to have abortion be legal and freely accessible. Any woman who wants to can get an abortion. And there is already $300 million a year in taxpayer subsidies for Planned Parenthood. There's plenty of federal funding for abortion, but feminists always want more. It isn't enough for abortion to be legal, it isn't enough for it to be federally subsidized. How much do they want? Does every single abortion performed need to be taxpayer funded so that any woman who wants one never has to pay for it out of her own pocket? It's a disgusting state of affairs. Half the country is morally opposed to abortion. But liberals are a special group of people. If they believe in something, then everyone must be for it and it must be federally mandated and subsidized. If they don't believe in something, then no one should believe in it and it must be totally banned. And so, thanks to this mental outlook and the carping of the feminist/abortion lobby, we are now looking at forcing half of the people in this country to fund something to which they are virulently opposed.

Burn up that switchboard today. You can find contact information for your senators here.

Cross-posted from Cassy’s blog. Stop by for more original commentary, or follow her on Twitter!

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One of the world’s most famous children’s toys, Barbie, has been given a makeover – wearing a burkha.

Wearing the traditional Islamic dress, the iconic doll is going undercover for a charity auction in connection with Sotheby’s for Save The Children.

More than 500 Barbies went on show yesterday at the Salone dei Cinquecento, in Florence, Italy.

Wait, was that about saving the children with a doll wearing clothing that is designed to be repressive in the Muslim world?

The company director of Laird Assessors from The Wirral, Cheshire, said: ‘Bring it on Burkha Barbie, I think this is a great idea.

‘I think this is really important for girls, wherever they are from they should have the opportunity to play with a Barbie that they feel represents them.

There are so many things wrong with that statement, I do not even know where to begin. I guess all the young girls will be able to learn what it is like to live in the coming European Caliphate. At one time, long ago when Arabs mostly lived in the desert, it might have made sense. Both men and women wore them to protect from the sun and sand, and so that it would be easier to hide who one was during warfare. Now, it simply stands for repression and subjugation of women.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove

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The health watchdog has blocked a critical liver cancer drug, saying it is too pricey for the state health service, leaving manufacturer Bayer vowing to appeal the decision.

Most people who get the aggressive form of cancer are diagnosed too late for surgery to help, meaning that the drug — Nexavar — is one of the only options left, and it has been shown to prolong life by almost four months on average.

The decision, announced on Thursday, is a setback for Germany’s Bayer and its partner Onyx Pharmaceuticals, which have already seen Nexavar turned down by the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) to treat kidney cancer.

NICE said in the final draft recommendation it would not recommend Bayer’s Nexavar to the National Health Service (NHS) for the most common type of liver cancer as it was too expensive…

In a free country, you can have whatever drug you want, provided you have arranged to pay for it. But no doubt bureaucrats know best when it’s time for us to die.

On a tip from Gore blimey, the sky is falling. Cross-posted at Moonbattery.

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The Catholic Archdiocese of Washington said Wednesday that it will be unable to continue the social service programs it runs for the District if the city doesn’t change a proposed same-sex marriage law, a threat that could affect tens of thousands of people the church helps with adoption, homelessness and health care.

Under the bill, headed for a D.C. Council vote next month, religious organizations would not be required to perform or make space available for same-sex weddings. But they would have to obey city laws prohibiting discrimination against gay men and lesbians.

Fearful that they could be forced, among other things, to extend employee benefits to same-sex married couples, church officials said they would have no choice but to abandon their contracts with the city.

“If the city requires this, we can’t do it,” Susan Gibbs, spokeswoman for the archdiocese, said Wednesday. “The city is saying in order to provide social services, you need to be secular. For us, that’s really a problem.”

Several D.C. Council members said the Catholic Church is trying to erode the city’s long-standing laws protecting gay men and lesbians from discrimination.

The clash escalates the dispute over the same-sex marriage proposal between the council and the archdiocese, which has generally stayed out of city politics.

Catholic Charities, the church’s social services arm, is one of dozens of nonprofit organizations that partner with the District. It serves 68,000 people in the city, including the one-third of Washington’s homeless people who go to city-owned shelters managed by the church. City leaders said the church is not the dominant provider of any particular social service, but the church pointed out that it supplements funding for city programs with $10 million from its own coffers.

“All of those services will be adversely impacted if the exemption language remains so narrow,” Jane G. Belford, chancellor of the Washington Archdiocese, wrote to the council this week.

The church’s influence seems limited. In separate interviews Wednesday, council member Mary M. Cheh (D-Ward 3) referred to the church as “somewhat childish.” Another council member, David A. Catania (I-At Large), said he would rather end the city’s relationship with the church than give in to its demands.

“They don’t represent, in my mind, an indispensable component of our social services infrastructure,” said Catania, the sponsor of the same-sex marriage bill and the chairman of the Health Committee.

The standoff appears to be among the harshest between a government and a faith-based group over the rights of same-sex couples. Advocates for same-sex couples said they could not immediately think of other places where a same-sex marriage law had set off a break with a major faith-based provider of social services.

The council is expected to pass the same-sex marriage bill next month, but the measure continues to face strong opposition from a number of groups that are pushing for a referendum on the issue.

The archdiocese’s statement follows a vote Tuesday by the council’s Committee on Public Safety and the Judiciary to reject an amendment that would have allowed individuals, based on their religious beliefs, to decline to provide services for same-sex weddings.

How pathetic. D.C.’s stance is basically that the Catholic Church should abandon its principles if it wants to keep working with the city, because this is going to pass whether they like it or not, and they have to make this awful choice — but they, of course, are the bad guys. This is, of course, the liberal meme, because anyone who is against gay marriage is prejudiced and backward and wrong and might as well be the KKK. Check out this explanation from Feministing:

The closing of a major homeless shelter and budget cuts have worsened the situation in a city already struggling to serve its poor and homeless residents. As someone who organizes for access to abortion I have obvious problems with gaps in the services provided by Catholic Charities. But that does not discount the vital work they do for the 68,000 D.C. residents who rely on Catholic Charities for shelters, health care, and food programs.

The Archdiosese is making a clear statement: it considers keeping rights from same sex couples more important than the needs of this city’s most vulnerable. Their willingness to use the lives and health of 68,000 people in need as pawns in their fight for the right to discriminate is unconscionable. D.C. needs more social services, not less. I hope the Archdiosese can put aside the politics of hate for a moment to recognize what I would think they would consider a moral obligation to do vital life saving work.

With all due respect, this isn’t a choice the church can fairly make. They didn’t ask for this bill, and their input was completely ignored when it came to amendments in the bill. The passage of this bill puts Catholic Charities in the worst kind of situation. For the Catholic Church, this isn’t a political situation, which is what liberals want to make it into. For the Catholic Church, this is a religious issue, it’s a moral one. The church cannot just abandon its principles, and that’s what liberals are forcing the church to do. And if the church caves on this, it won’t stop here. Liberals will start putting the pressure on about abortion, and performing gay marriages, and who knows what else. Where will it stop? It’s disgusting that liberals are putting the blame on the church here, when they are the ones being forced between a rock and a hard place. The church is not the one using homeless people as pawns; the city is. And it is wrong for the government to be legislating religious beliefs, which is basically what has happened here. This is, at its core, a subtle attack on our rights to religious freedom. And apparently, there is no one who is going to stand up for religion in this case.

If this is the change you voted for, then I hope you’re happy.

Cross-posted from Cassy’s blog. Stop by for more original commentary, or follow her on Twitter!

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Obama’s poor crisis leadership skills revealed themselves in June when Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad murdered Private William Long outside a military recruiting center in Little Rock. Two full days passed without even a word from the president. Finally, President Obama issued a terse statement of “sadness” and never mentioned the incident again. Quite a contrast to his swift, strongly worded response and his statement of “shock” and “outrage” at the “heinous” murder of abortion doctor, George Tiller, just days before in Wichita, Kansas.

In August, at the funeral for Sen. Ted Kennedy, again President Obama’s coldness and aloofness raised red flags. Others, like Peggy Noonan, have also noted Obama’s cold distance as he arrived, nodded, shook hands and spoke to the family and friends of the Kennedys. In watching the funeral, I was struck by how the president could simultaneously be so completely appropriate and so emotionally vacant. He was polite to be sure, but exhibited a total absence of warmth.

Last week, in his remarks via telecast, at the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, President Obama recognized no other presidents before himself and also failed to mention either Margaret Thatcher or Pope John Paul II . Worse still, he failed even to utter the words “communism,” or the “Soviet Union,” or “Russia.” A major moment arrives, the president speaks, and he whiffs entirely. He exhibits no knowledge of history, no sense of poignancy or America’s contribution to the world, and no passion for the freedoms that arrived with the fall of the wall. An utterly cold and vacuous moment.

Finally, the Islamic massacre at Ft. Hood occurs, and President Obama’s initial instincts are to warn us all “not to jump to conclusions.” He urges us to react in direct contrast to his own hasty reaction in Gates-gate at Cambridge, and his comments there that the police “acted stupidly.” More strikingly, Obama is unable to state the simple, obvious truth: we have had another incidence of Islamic terror on our own soil. Islamic terror does not occur in a vacuum; jumping to conclusions is very different from reading the pattern of having 63 other Muslim men charged, convicted, or sentenced on terror in our own country just in 2009. Obama again totally misses the point. His trademark coolness belies a glaring ignorance of the matter at hand and his total lack of passion for the American people.

Worse still, his remarks at the memorial service at Ft. Hood fell flat. Does anyone remember a word he said? Years later, I can still remember the warmth and grace exhibited by President Clinton in the aftermath of Oklahoma City. In contrast, Obama’s presence and comments at Ft. Hood were utterly forgettable. He failed to show up emotionally in any way. Were one to listen to the president’s comments regarding the terror deaths of 13 Americans on an American military base at the hands of an Islamic jihadist, one would notice no difference whatsoever in modulation, tone, or posture from any other speech he has ever given. They have all begun to sound the same. He is everywhere, speaking on everything, and thereby speaking on nothing. No one listens anymore. He speaks as if he is just passing through, a mere observer on the events of life. The hollowness is unsettling.

All in all, Obama’s impassioned speeches are reserved for fund-raisers and for healthcare addresses, for which he has no shortage of energy. Line up a pile of dead Americans, and he can barely muster an inflection or an exclamation point. Fill the room with wealthy donors, and the man comes alive. For a mercenary, that may be an admirable thing, but for a president, the vacancy is disturbing.

SOURCE

Posted by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don’t forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here

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A sampling of those from Jay’s post from last night: Smack Down of Obama Administration on KSM Trial Decision

And guess who celebrates this as some sort of victory for “justice?”

It’s no secret that the greatest threats to America on the international stage can depend on the ACLU’s extended hand of friendship. The ACLU, as the most dangerous threat to this country from within, has long been writhing around passionately with every enemy of this country like mating slugs at the end of a mucus thread. That the ACLU cheers this latest attack on American national security is no surprise. After all, they are up to their ear holes in making sure KSM and Da Boyz get sprung, although the MSM seems to be ignoring the ACLU role. Jay wrote last year at PJM about the execrable “John Adams Project” that undoubtedly played a lead role in securing three hots and a cot for KSM while he awaits his circus trial:

The ACLU has launched an initiative called the “John Adams Project.”…What is it? In a nutshell, the ACLU has assembled a “Dream Team” of attorneys with an $8.5 million budget to defend terrorists currently held at Guantanamo. Who’s the primary object of the ACLU’s affection? Khalid Sheik Mohammed.

The ACLU, true to form, impugns the professionalism and competence of men and women of infinitely more honor than their accusers by referring to tribunals as “kangaroo courts.” But could the ACLU really be so scandalized that this mass murderer will stand before a military tribunal? Could the ACLU truly be standing up for his “fundamental rights?”

What is the true purpose of a multi-million-dollar campaign to get KSM off the hook?

The ACLU explains: “The ACLU chose to focus on Mohammed’s defense, Romero said, because he appears to be “the government’s top priority in the prosecution. And whether or not they are able to convict Khalid Sheik Mohammed under these rules may well determine the fate of the almost 300 other men who are detained at Guantanamo.”

So that’s it. The ACLU wants to set KSM and 300 other terrorists free or at least make it impossible for the tribunals to serve their function. Because KSM is the worst of the worst, because he is the terrorist in custody most responsible for 9/11, the ACLU is his champion.
This PR stunt can only serve to undermine American credibility by creating the illusion – sure to be propagated by the mass media – that mass killers are somehow being denied “justice.” Think our enemies don’t appreciate the ACLU’s efforts on their behalf – on both legal and the PR fronts? Clearly, this will leave America more vulnerable to attack.

So is it really any surprise that the ACLU would be reaching around to pat itself on the back yesterday?

NEW YORK – In a major victory for due process and the rule of law, the Obama administration will announce today that the five defendants represented by the John Adams Project who have been charged in connection with the 9/11 attacks will be tried in federal court rather than in the Guantánamo military commissions. However, the administration will also announce that it will continue to use the illegitimate military commissions system to prosecute some Guantánamo detainees, including the defendant accused in the attack on the U.S.S. Cole. The American Civil Liberties Union has been working through the Project, a joint effort with the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL), to provide legal assistance to the five individuals accused of masterminding the 9/11 attacks and other military commissions defendants. The Guantánamo military commissions proceedings have been plagued from the start with legal challenges and international condemnation due to their disregard for basic due process rights.

“The transfer of cases to federal court is a huge victory for restoring due process and the rule of law, as well as repairing America’s international standing, an essential part of ensuring our national security. We can now finally achieve the real and reliable justice that Americans deserve. It would have been an enormous blow to American values if we had tried these defendants in a process riddled with legal problems,” said Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director of the ACLU. “However, it’s disappointing that the administration has chosen to prosecute some Guantánamo detainees in the unsalvageable military commissions system. Time and again the federal courts have proven themselves capable of handling terrorism cases while protecting both American values and sensitive national security information. Justice can only be served in our tried and true courts.”

This just didn’t seem to smell right, so I ran it through Babel Fish (translating from ACLUgandan to English) and here’s what came out:

BIZARRO CITY – In a major legal and propaganda victory for al Qaeda, the Obama administration will announce today that the five demented killers represented by the John Alan Muhammad Memorial Project who were responsible for the slaughter of nearly 3,000 innocent Americans will await acquittal in federal court by Leftists in New York rather than standing before the incompetent troglodytes who “serve” our country in the Armed Forces…The American Civil Liberties Union has been working through the Project, a joint conspiracy with the National Association of Criminals Disguised as Lawyers (NACDL), to provide legal assistance to the five individuals who’ve blessed us with the glorious 9/11 holiday. The Guantánamo military commissions are staffed by drooling fools in odd uniforms with weird oak leaves, eagles and stars on their shoulders and collars and who are despised by our international comrades.
“The transfer of cases to federal court is a huge victory for al Qaeda and is sure to threaten our national security. We can now finally achieve the real and reliable justice that Americans deserve, but we think should be applied to international terrorists, who until now have never in history been granted the constitutional rights that were once reserved for American citizens. It would have been an enormous blow to ACLU self-esteem and fundraising if we had tried these murderous thugs in a process that actually would have resulted in justice being done,” said Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director of the ACLU. “However, it’s disappointing that the administration has chosen to prosecute some terrorists using those idiots with really short haircuts. Time and again the federal courts have proven themselves willing to advance the ACLU agenda — truth, justice and national security be damned. This has us just tickled pink.”

As diabolical as this latest move by the Obamanable Administration is, even more demented is the symbolism of trying Mohammed mere steps away from the site of the greatest act of evil — an act of war, not the street crime the Obamanable Administration is treating it like — ever committed against America on our own soil. Miles, or even blocks, away from the husbands, wives, children, mothers and fathers who were left behind to mourn because of the act of terrorism directed by the very man who has now been extended all the protections of the American constitutional system by virtue of nothing but robbing so many innocent AMERICANS of the same, forever.

Say KSM goes free…the blood of all those innocents murdered, on 9/11 and by those aspiring future Islamist killers emboldened by our manifest lack of will and strength, will be splattered and smeared all over the walls of ACLU headquarters.

Update by Lobo: Just a point I want to get covered, but not enough for a post of its own.

The military commissions are obviously constitutional because Congress instituted them and that power is vested in them.

Article III

Section 1. The judicial power of the United States, shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. The judges, both of the supreme and inferior courts, shall hold their offices during good behaviour, and shall, at stated times, receive for their services, a compensation, which shall not be diminished during their continuance in office.

Section 2. The trial of all crimes, except in cases of impeachment, shall be by jury; and such trial shall be held in the state where the said crimes shall have been committed; but when not committed within any state, the trial shall be at such place or places as the Congress may by law have directed.

Congress set up the Commissions for the express purpose of trying enemy combatants. I can not find any vested power in the Executive branch to order ECs tried in federal courts.

I do find it amusingly ironic that for 8 years, liberals screeched about the US going into foreign countries and forcing “democracy” on it and now their leader is ordering foreign enemies be brought into a country they hate, filled with people they want to kill, and force a democracy they despise, on them.

You might want to check out a point that Levin made. (I couldn’t get to it from Google search and could backout)

he said something to the effect that the combatants weren’t “mirandized” and that will create a technicality right from the get go. I’d be willing to bet that Obama is counting on that one!

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But this hasn’t left the Left at a loss to explain Nidal Malik Hasan’s horrific killing spree. It was caused by all the things liberals don’t like — guns, for example. To quote Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, whose corrupt machine politics helped produce our Community Organizer in Chief:

Unfortunately, America loves Guns. We love guns to a point where that uh we see devastation on a daily basis. You don’t blame a group.

Likewise, it was America’s unfortunate love of air travel that caused Hasan’s colleagues to fly passenger airliners into buildings full of innocent people on September 11. You don’t blame a group, unless that group is normal Americans.

If anything good can come of the Islamic atrocity at Fort Hood, it is that liberals in both the government and the media have now squandered the absolute last of their credibility. It simply isn’t possible for them to deny any longer that their depraved ideology puts them on the side of the savages who are trying to destroy us.

On a tip from Charlie G. Cross-posted at Moonbattery.

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Last week Mary Fitzgerald argued that climate change is a feminist issue on the basis that population control is a way to prevent the situation spiralling out of control. And, she posited, this could be achieved by giving more women more autonomy over their own bodies, through improved access to contraception and abortion.

I’m not going to get into the arguments around whether population control is a good solution to climate change. Others have already done so; George Monbiot’s piece barely more than a month ago, for this newspaper, is a great place to start.

Ensuring all women have full reproductive freedom and reproductive justice is a necessary goal in its own right moving towards a more equal and just world. I get that it might be tempting to hitch this issue to climate change, which has so much political capital.

I thought she wasn’t going to get into that issue, which she discusses for two more paragraphs after the first three? Anyhow

But Fitzgerald is completely right that climate change is a feminist issue. Everyone stands to suffer if climate change is allowed to spiral out of control, of course, but a gender analysis of both the impacts and causes of climate change shows that globally women contribute less to the problem and yet are likely to be hit especially hard.

Poor people are likely to bear the brunt as the climate changes and 70% of the world’s poor are women. According to one estimate, 85% of the victims of climate disasters are women. Another study found 75% of environmental refugees are women. (Statistics from the Women’s Manifesto on Climate Change).

Gotta love the source of the study. Here’s a clue for you, Ms. Jesse McAbe: you enact all your crazy global warming plans, and the women in the poor countries will suffer way, way, way more.

After some more quibbling about how this is a feminsta issue, we end with

So, yes, climate change is a feminist issue; women are on the front lines of climate change impact and need to be part of creating solutions. And women all over the world are in dire need of access to full and real reproductive justice. But linking the two by advocating population control as a solution to climate change isn’t the way to achieve either of these aims.

Only in Liberal World can we link access to abortion around the world to globull warming. Sigh.

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Such thinking was once dominant in Anglo-Saxon philosophy schools but the great expansion of tertiary education in recent decades has meant that many less rigorous thinkers have been employed as philosophers, some even being third-rate enough to find enlightenment in the words of an obsolete economist called Karl Marx. So philosophy schools are now replete with people who seem to think they are being profound when they say: “There is no such thing as right and wrong” or “There are many realities”. To an Anglo-Saxon empiricist, such statements are simply confused.

Such confused thinking is usually described (rather fancifully) these days as “postmodernism” but for historical purposes it is probably best subsumed under the broad category of “existentialism” — and there were many prominent existentialist thinkers in the first half of the 20th century, particularly in Germany. And many existentialist thinkers at that time were sympathetic to National Socialism (Nazism), just as their counterparts today are solidly in favour of all sorts of Leftist thinking. So existentialist thinking and Leftism have always been intimately associated among many who call themselves philosophers. And it should therefore be no surprise that prewar existentialists sound very profound to existentialists today.

The Nazi connection is however embarrassing. Heidegger, Carl Schmitt, DeMan and others sound very good and wise and profound to Leftist philosophers today so how do you cope with the Nazi connection? Easy: In the traditional Leftist way of dealing with all inconvenient facts — by ignoring it.

One of the holier of today’s existentialists has however recently upset the applecart by pointing out that the great god Heidegger was a Nazi and calling for all Heidegger’s thinking to be denounced and renounced. Leftists are not letting go of such an inspiring (to them) figure as Heidegger, however. What Heidegger says is central to what they say, so to denounce Heidegger would be to denounce most of their own thinking. And there the matter rests at the moment. A small excerpt from a NYT story about the matter below. That Nazi thinking is one subset of socialist thinking is, of course, never acknowledged:

For decades the German philosopher Martin Heidegger has been the subject of passionate debate. His critique of Western thought and technology has penetrated deeply into architecture, psychology and literary theory and inspired some of the most influential intellectual movements of the 20th century. Yet he was also a fervent Nazi.

Now a soon-to-be published book in English has revived the long-running debate about whether the man can be separated from his philosophy. Drawing on new evidence, the author, Emmanuel Faye, argues fascist and racist ideas are so woven into the fabric of Heidegger’s theories that they no longer deserve to be called philosophy. As a result Mr. Faye declares, Heidegger’s works and the many fields built on them need to be re-examined lest they spread sinister ideas as dangerous to modern thought as “the Nazi movement was to the physical existence of the exterminated peoples.”

First published in France in 2005, the book, “Heidegger: The Introduction of Nazism Into Philosophy,” calls on philosophy professors to treat Heidegger’s writings like hate speech. Libraries, too, should stop classifying Heidegger’s collected works (which have been sanitized and abridged by his family) as philosophy and instead include them under the history of Nazism. These measures would function as a warning label, like a skull-and-crossbones on a bottle of poison, to prevent the careless spread of his most odious ideas, which Mr. Faye lists as the exaltation of the state over the individual, the impossibility of morality, anti-humanism and racial purity.

The book is the most radical attack yet on Heidegger (1889-1976) and would upend the philosophical field’s treatment of his work in the United States, and even more so in France, where Heidegger has frequently been required reading for an advanced degree. Mr. Faye, an associate professor at the University of Paris, Nanterre, not only wants to drum Heidegger from the ranks of philosophers, he wants to challenge his colleagues to rethink the very purpose of philosophy and its relationship to ethics.

At the same time scholars in disciplines as far flung as poetry and psychoanalysis would be obliged to reconsider their use of Heidegger’s ideas. Although Mr. Faye talks about the close connection between Heidegger and current right-wing extremist politics, left-wing intellectuals have more frequently been inspired by his ideas. Existentialism and postmodernism as well as attendant attacks on colonialism, atomic weapons, ecological ruin and universal notions of morality are all based on his critique of the Western cultural tradition and reason.

I go into some detail about the confusions of “postmodernist” thinking here

(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, DISSECTING LEFTISM, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena . List of backup or “mirror” sites here or here — for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is “down” or failing to update. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)

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IF ABORTION FUNDS ARE BANNED, THESE SHOULD BE BANNED TO….

The ban on federal funds for abortions is based on a religious morality, not science and certainly not any concern for women’s health. Where’s the concern for a woman carrying a baby with no brain stem, or some other incurable condition? If we are to allow women’s reproductive rights to be dictated by religious Christian extremists, then why not also allow the following:

Ban funds for vasectomies: These are birth control, and Catholics believe that’s a sin.

Prohibit money for Viagra: This encourages fornication, another sin. Accept impotence as God’s will.

No funds for implanting pig valves in human hearts: Muslims and Jews believe pigs are unclean creatures.

No circumcisions: Some religions don’t believe in this procedure, either.

No medical treatment for anybody at federal expense, since Christian Scientists don’t believe in medical care, period.

But let’s not stop there. How about cutting out funding for anything a religious or other minority doesn’t believe in – not just healthcare?

Quakers don’t believe in war. No more money for fighting them. (except that defense is actually in the Constitution, unlike abortion on demand)

Hindus don’t believe in eating beef. No subsidies for the cattle industry.

The Amish don’t believe in mechanization. No money for government-run fleets of vehicles or Amtrak.

Church of Christ members believe dancing is sinful, along with music from instruments other than the human voice. Stop funding wickedness through the National Endowment for the Arts.

Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t believe in celebrating holidays or birthdays. No more federal paid days off for Christmas, Thanksgiving, President’s Day, etc.

Deists believe the natural world is sacred. No more federal funds for destroying the earth – ban funds for logging, strip-mining, or anything that pollutes our holy earth.

Libertarians and neo-con Republicans believe public services should be privatized to save tax dollars. Stop funding firefighting, police protection, libraries and public schools.

Anarchists don’t believe in government. No more funding anything–not even salaries for Congress!

I started putting comments next to each one, then decided to leave Da Cwazy to stand on its own, except for one. Leave it to a DUmmie to completely miss the point and go truly overboard. And, of course, so many DUmmies commented with things like “great post!” and “yup, yup!” Though, I thought the one that said “BAN POSTS IN ALL CAPS, TOO!” was pretty awesome.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove

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