Here is Senator Obama describing what he will look for in a judge if elected president:

[W]hat I do want is a judge who is sympathetic enough to those who are on the outside, those who are vulnerable, those who are powerless, those who can’t have access to political power and as a consequence can’t protect themselves from being being dealt with sometimes unfairly, that the courts become a refuge for justice. That’s been its historic role. That was its role in Brown v Board of Education.

Except for unborn babies, of course.

Those, you can kill with impunity (even after they’re born).

Reuters reports that Khartoum is stepping up its military presence in Kordofan amid concerns that the JEM rebels are preparing an attack, which the JEM denies:
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This recent speech by Senator John McCain is nothing less than outstanding. Here’s a taste (but please do read the entire speech):

There is a tendency in our age to accede to the spurious excuse of moral relativism and turn away from the harshest examples of man’s inhumanity to man; to ignore the darker side of human nature that encroaches upon our decency by subtle degree. There are many reasons for this. Blessed with opportunity, and intent on the challenges of work and family, our own lives often seem too full and hectic to take notice of offenses that seem distant from our own reality. There is also the threat in a society passionate about its liberty that we can become desensitized to the dehumanizing effect of the obscenity and hostility that pervades much of popular culture. It is in our nature as Americans to see the good in things; to face even serious adversity with hope and optimism. And yet, with so much good in the world, for all the progress of humanity, in which our nation has played such an admirable and important role, evil still exists in the world. It preys upon human dignity, assaults the innocence of children, debases our self-respect and the respect we are morally obliged to pay each other, and assails the great, animating truths we believe to be self-evident — that all people have a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness — by subjecting countless human beings to abuse, persecution and even slavery.

Confronting evil has never been easy — in our age or any other. But the failure to do so affects even those who are complacent with our own blessings and secure in our human rights. Accepting the degradation of values we believe are universal is to relinquish some of our own humanity. America was founded on the belief in the inherent dignity of all human life and that this dignity can only be preserved through shared respect and shared responsibility. We can retain our own freedom when others are robbed of theirs, but not the sense of virtue that made our revolution a moral as well as political crusade, and which recognizes that personal happiness is so much more than pleasure, and requires us to serve causes greater than self-interest.

That is beautiful and powerful prose, my firends. I am very impressed with both Senator McCain and his speechwriters. Well done, gents. 

Perhaps one of the funniest things I’ve seen in a while:

h/t TechRepublican

(In case you missed it, it’s a parody of this)

The Culture of Death marches on.

Tetris theme as performed on empty bottles.

The first digital camera.

“What every man whats in bed.”

There’s a pretty strong correlation between the success of a programming language and the amount of facial hair of the inventor.

Apparently Code Pink is having some trouble attracting participants to their ongoing protest in front of the Berkeley Marine Corps Recruiting Office. So much so that they have enlisted (pun intentional) the help of practitioners of the dark arts to foil Marine Corps recruitment and end the war. Read the article here.

“Women are coming to cast spells and do rituals and to impart wisdom to figure out how we’re going to end war,” Zanne Sam Joi of Bay Area Code Pink told FOXNews.com.

I am sure that wisdom is the last thing that will be imparted by this parade of horribles. Nevertheless, I look forward to the final score in this contest:

United States Marine Corps 1
Witches 0

Unbelievable.

In his column in today’s Journal, Karl Rove says that as of today, McCain leads Obama 241-217, with 80 votes rated a toss-up.   Alternatively, Clinton leads McCain 251-203, with 84 votes in the toss-up category.   Interesting.

Senator Chuck Grassley is apparently not a big fan of those who preach some variant of the “prosperity gospel.” In fact, this form of ministry troubles Grassley so much that this past winter he decided to use his considerable power as the “former chairman and now Ranking Member on the Senate Finance Committee” to launch a full-blown investigation into the operational affairs of six “prosperity-gospel” ministries: Without Walls International Church; World Healing Center Church, Inc./Benny Hinn Ministries; Joyce Meyer Ministries; World Changers Church International; Kenneth Copeland Ministries; and New Birth Missionary Baptist Church. (more…)

Today I give the McCain speech on judges a fairly good grade, but only after exercising my First Amendment right to wail and gnash some teeth for a while first.

If you missed Senator McCain’s “judges” speech, you can now watch it on his website here. 

But this kind of nonsense makes me want to send my son to TAC instead of Notre Dame (where I am confident there is little to no support for proabortion political candidates on campus).

So, as many of y’all know, I also blog at the biggest and baddest conservative blog there is: RedState. Well, one of the major perks of being a RedState contributor is that I am allowed to participate in the ever-so-exclusive RedState/VRWC email list. As you might expect, there are all sorts of interesting “conversations” that take place between the contributors on this email list, and today one of the fellas sent out an email listing “Ten Beautiful Films You May Not Have Seen.” With the permission of my co-blogger, Leon Wolf, I am publishing one snippet of our email exchange on this topic:

Feddie: Ooooh, and “The Mission.” Y’all simply must see the Mission. So very good. One of the best movies ever.

Leon: I also liked the movie, except that it left one with the impression that the Jesuits believe literally in Christ.

Heh. That cracked me up.

Courtesy of Professor Douglas W. Kmiec, whose head is now deeply buried in the proverbial sand:

“I do not understand Senator Obama to be pro-abortion . . . .”

Really?

Then perhaps you need to brush up on your research skills, professor.

This is one of the most moving, honest, and powerful posts that I’ve read in quite some time.

(LvC&EI!)

Reuters reports that the bombing reported by rebels in Darfur last week hit a school and marketplace and that the government is denying access to the site:
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Because there are some things that are much more important than politics.

Please pray for the people of Burma.

I have a McCain sticker on the back of my SUV and it has led to several of my conservative friends asking me why and expressing concern about whether Senator McCain is truly a conservative.  There are two main reasons why I am supporting Senator McCain.  First, I think he is the best candidate to defend us from those external forces that would do my family and my country harm.  This paragraph from a National Review editorial sums up the second reason why I am supporting Senator McCain:

The future direction of the Supreme Court is very much at stake in this November’s presidential election. The two or three justices most likely to depart the Court over the next four years — Justice Stevens, Justice Ginsburg, and possibly Justice Souter — are liberal judicial activists who routinely read their own policy preferences into the Constitution and who selectively regard their own favored precedents as sacrosanct. If a President Obama or a President Clinton names their successors, the slender operating majority on the Court for liberal activist results on most contentious political issues is likely to be preserved for at least another generation.

To those of you who were/are frustrated with Senator McCain because of his involvement with the Gang of 14, I offer you the following quote from Judge Charles Pickering:

There is no way you can look at that agreement as a Democratic victory. Two days after the Deal was announced, Owen was confirmed by the Senate. Two weeks later, Brown was confirmed, and the next day the Senate confirmed Pryor. These confirmations were exactly what President Bush and the Republicans had tried to accomplish for five long years and the Democrats had blocked.

The confirmation of Chief Justice Roberts and Associate Justice Sam Alito –two exceptionally capable and conservative jurists– were made relatively easy because of the “Gang of Fourteen Agreement.”

(h/t to RNLA - Judicial Blog)

This is awesome cubed. 

Erick has the details.

And I have the text of McCain’s excellent speech below the fold. (more…)

An excellent editorial by Fr. Roger J. Landry.

Ramesh reviews “Why Democrats are Blue: Secular Liberalism and the Decline of the People’s Party” for First Things.

The May issue of The New Criterion is concerned with education — mostly of the “higher” variety. Contributors include Roger Kimball, Alan Charles Kors, Robert Paquette, Victor Davis Hanson, James Piereson, and Charles Murray.

Interviewed by Peter Robinson on NRO’s Uncommon Knowledge.

Too funny.

You can read the inspiration for this website here.

The Sudan Tribune is reporting that rebels are accusing Khartoum of hiring former Iraqi pilots to bomb the region:
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Feddie and I have been having a discussion about this exchange from last week’s “60 Minutes” in which Antonin Scalia and Lesley Stahl discuss the constitutionality of torture and we decided to throw it open to the good readers here at SA to weigh in on just what Scalia is saying.

Is he saying, as I contend, that torture is not per se unconstitutional or is he arguing here, as Feddie contends, that Scalia is correct on the narrow question of whether or not constitution is prohibited by the 8th Amendment. Feddie says that while Scalia is correct on this point, torture is unconstitutional under a variety of other constitutional provisions, especially the 5th and 14th Amendments (at least that is my interpretation of Feddie’s argument - he is welcome to weigh in and correct it if I am mistaken), whereas I argue that Scalia is not making a narrow, technical argument at all and seems to believe that while it is perfectly fine for Congress to pass law banning torture, torture itself is not necessarily unconstitutional and that, if this specific question ever came before Scalia on the court, he would not hesitate to say just what he said here: torture is not unconstitutional.

So what do SA’s esteemed readers think Scalia is saying here and what you do think of his argument?

Video here - transcript below the fold
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Best. Superhero. Movie. Ever.

Update: Here’s the hidden ending that appears after the credits of the movie.