One of the dodges that you hear in these debates is that only women should decide what happens in a crisis pregnancy. This emotionally-satisfying stupidity presupposes that reason alone cannot establish the personhood of the nascent human, and that the difficulty of the situation determines the moral validity of choosing to abort the child. Even if we were somehow to accept this “reasoning,” it conveniently ignores all of the pro-life women, who dare to risk exile from the cool kids’ table, in order to stand up and say that killing an unborn child is not a morally praiseworthy act.
The state of Texas just passed a “heartbeat” bill, banning abortion procedures after the six week of pregnancy, when a fetal heartbeat can be detected. It also allows private citizens to sue abortion providers, and this is the part that has abortion advocates really concerned.
I join with our esteemed editor-in-chief in lamenting what has happened in Afghanistan. For the moment, I will leave the Christian reflection to him. For my part, I see the tragedy of Afghanistan as the unfortunate culmination of long-running battles in US politics, over US military involvement.
In a lot of places, your papers are everything. Which is why it was especially alarming to hear that Joe’s new best friends, the Taliban, have been seizing the passports of American citizens in Afghanistan. In the Mideast, as in some other parts of the world, your passport is your identity. Without it, you are at the mercy of those who might not have your best interests at heart. Seizure of your passport leaves you naked and vulnerable. Your comings and goings are now no longer your decision.
Probably all of us have some frustration with one or more of the Tech Giants who are being targeted by Rep. Pramila Jayapal’s “Ending Platform Monopolies Act.” It is tempting to cheer on efforts to offer a cure to common Big Tech disease, checking their power over us. But, like a layperson coming up with the wrong treatment for a serious illness, this and other similar proposals, dangerously operate on oversimplification that threatens to make our technology much worse while ignoring the genuine Big Tech problems staring us down.
Sometimes when the air is just right, its invisible ingredients comprising a particular admixture of humidity, pollen, fragrance, and who knows what, it is as if a person has been carried back in time.
The other day I was at the grocery store, grumbling that the house-brand refried beans, 69 cents for quite some time, are now 89 cents, an increase of more than 20 percent. Then I noticed that the house-brand dry-roasted peanuts, $1.99 since forever, have gone up by more than 10 percent.
In the spring of odd-numbered years, it’s my task to upgrade the operating systems on my computers. It sometimes goes uneventfully.
Jason Kettinger looks at the use and misuse of #Woke and #StayWoke and the real issues we need to concern ourselves with.
I suppose I should start with the bad news. No leader at this present time can deliver unity to a people, when the basis for that unity is not known, and agreed upon in common. This is the basis for the skepticism among many concerning the possibilities for actually working together to form a more perfect union.