Author: Sal

A letter to the Editor of the Washington Times form Laurie Letourneau, President, Life Action League of Massachusetts and Mass Voices for Traditional Marriage. You have to scroll down the page a bit.

Don’t miss the the other letters on the Federal Marriage Amendment. A pro-homosexual marriage advocate says Bush’s job “is to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution, not to change it and abuse it.” A premise he in no way substantiates or justifies.

Another reader says the defeat of the amendment is a victory for states’ rights. I think Eric mentioned there is litigation pending to recognize Massachusetts same-sex marriages in other states. Of course I could be mistaken. Regardless, the question of homosexual marriage is on an inexorable course for the federal judiciary system if it is not there already. What is left up the states now anyway? I think states’ rights ended with the War of Northern Aggression.

No, not in Mass, in the public schools.

I’m attempting to look up the abortion voting records or positions of all the prominent speakers at the Republican National Convention. I’m righteously steamed that the most notable ones, Schwarzenegger, Pataki, and Guiliani, are all pro-abort Republicans who call themselves Catholic. What about McCain? Not Catholic, but pro-abort, right?

Please post in the comments if you can point me in the right direction to find their stance on abortion, and let me know if I’m leaving any names out. I have never been a card-carrying Republican, and this is one of the reasons. The tent is too big if pro-lifers are marginalized in such an important forum.

Kate O’Beirne has some thoughts on the topic. Again, on NRO.

At the Big Apple convention, three Kerry Catholics will be representing the millions of faithful Catholics being aggressively courted by the Bush campaign. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist will likely be heard from as a congressional leader, but haven’t senators who have been on point on crucial issues like abortion, cloning, same-sex marriage, and international human rights earned primetime placement alongside their tormentor John McCain? Conservative Republicans should be asking why senators like Rick Santorum and Sam Brownback aren’t enjoying the same public embrace as the New York Times’ favorite Republican.

By Victor David Hansen over at NRO. In the midst of an election year, it’s important to have a historical perspective.

About this time 60 years ago, six weeks after the Normandy beach landings, Americans were dying in droves in France. We think of the 76-day Normandy campaign of summer and autumn 1944 as an astounding American success — and indeed it was, as Anglo-American forces cleared much of France of its Nazi occupiers in less than three months. But the outcome was not at all preordained, and more often was the stuff of great tragedy. Blunders were daily occurrences — resulting in 2,500 Allied casualties a day. In any average three-day period, more were killed, wounded, or missing than there have been in over a year in Iraq.

And an article by Philip Chase Bobbitt, linked to by Jonah Goldberg, published before the invasion of Iraq, states that we can’t measure future outcomes based on the present, but rather we must judge future outcomes based on other possible future outcomes. So the question, “Are we better off now than we were four years ago” is meaningless:

Or, consider the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan. Are we better off now than we were the day before we intervened? Probably not. Before that war we knew where Al Qaeda had its bases and it had not struck since Sept. 11; a number of American and allied soldiers who became casualties were then alive and unwounded; public opinion in Pakistan was less hostile to America; there was a greater measure of sympathy around the world for our losses in New York and Washington; our economy and confidence in our markets were stronger.
But let’s ask the relevant question: Are we better off today than we would have been if we had let the Taliban continue arming and sheltering our Qaeda enemies, many of whom we killed and captured in our intervention? Clearly, we are vastly better off for having acted.