THE NEW CONSTITUTION

1st Amendment
Congress shall make no law. It is General Zod who gives orders.

2nd Amendment
A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, no longer has a purpose.

3rd Amendment
No soldier shall, in time of peace, be quartered in any house without the consent of the owner, who shall decide “yes, in the name of General Zod”.

4rd Amendment
The right of the people to be secure in the persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated. If my administration has a need to search your belongings, it is reasonable, is it not?

5th Amendment
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous, crime, except to General Zod.

6rd Amendment
The accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial in a proper kangaroo court.

7th Amendment
In suits at common law, where the value in controversy is significant, the property shall be bequeathed to the state in tribute to General Zod.

8th Amendment
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishment inflicted, unless by the new government.

9th Amendment
The enumeration in the constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage those that serve General Zod.

10th Amendment
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution rest with General Zod.

HT: Zod

A contrite Mayor Sam Adams apologized to Portland for lying about a sexual relationship with a male teenager he was mentoring, but asked the city to consider it an anomaly in two decades of public service.

“I screwed up. I blew it. There’s no way to sugarcoat it,” Adams said during a news conference at City Hall Tuesday.

Now, that’s a stimulus plan!

Next month, Union University in Jackson, Tennessee is holding a conference in honor of the 15th anniversary of the publication of George’s outstanding book Making Men Moral. The roster of speakers is quite good. In addition to Professor George, Hadley Arkes, James Stoner, Jean Bethke Elshtain, and many others will be in attendance. I’m not certain of it, but Francis Beckwith may also be there.

Richard John Neuhaus had been slated to attend before his death last week. I imagine most of those attending this conference will be his friends and admirers. Informal tributes may bloom.

For those who don’t remember, Union University is the school that rebounded so admirably from a devastating tornado strike last year.

Check out the website for the conference here.

We all know the story. The 1970′s had been hard on America. We were beginning to look like losers buffetted by economic uncertainty, high inflation and unemployment, the loss of prestige on the international stage, the looming threat of nuclear war . . .

We often point to Ronald Reagan’s election as where it all turned around, but that hockey game at the Olympics, a moment when Americans (college kids, no less) rose to the occasion against all expectations, seemed to be part of a comeback in the public consciousness.

I had a little of the same feeling this morning while listening to Mike and Mike on ESPN Radio interview a guy who was seated on the exit row in the US Airways plane that crash-landed in the Hudson River. He described a scene where people didn’t panic, but instead did what they needed to do in an orderly fashion to survive. Everyone, from the pilot to the crew to the passengers to the ferry operators and other rescuers, worked together to bring life out of a deadly situation.

This is a proud moment. It comes at a time when we’ve been smacked around by crisis and negativity. We have had a feeling of looming disaster. We walk around psychically hunched, braced for a hit. The actions of everyone involved in the miracle on the Hudson shows that we may be better suited to weather a storm and to rebuild than we thought.

I didn’t have anything to do with this wonderful story, but these people are my countrymen. I’m standing a little taller on the inside today. This may be the start of our turnaround.

I have long been troubled by the choice of many to be cremated. I far prefer the practice of Christian burial, which leaves the body intact as a sign of the dead person’s hope in resurrection by the Lord.

There are people in my family who are Christians and who prefer to be cremated. This disturbs me. I want to visit those who predecease me at their graves. I want to visit them where they lay, not look at some urn or think about how we scattered an incinerated body over a lake or something like that.

So, I have been trying to think about how to convince people not to be cremated. Some of my Christian relatives and friends are annoyed by my strong preference against the practice of incinerating the dead. They accuse me of having too little faith that God will raise whom he will raise regardless of the state of the body. He will raise even a body that has been burned into ashes.

I suspect they are right. I doubt God would refuse to resurrect or admit to the afterlife someone who requested and received cremation. Still, I think we call it Christian burial for a reason. It is a symbol, just like the wedding ring on a finger. We are signaling the world that we believe God has plans for us. He will resurrect the old body and transform it into an uncorruptible, glorified new body with a future we can only guess about.

But I titled this post “The Secular Case Against Cremation.” Here it is. You aren’t going to have to believe in anything more than the techological progress of man. If you are cremated and your physical body has been destroyed, then how are the incredibly advanced humans of the year 3500 going to reconstitute you by using your DNA? The graveyards are going to be an incredible bonanza of super advanced bio-archaeology. They’ll need a body or at least some old bones to work with! Then, you can hang around telling them about your world until the sun starts going supernova.

Chew on that for a while and see if you’re still so hot about making your final rest as a bunch of ashes in a coffee can. (I hope Heather Mac Donald and the rest of the “secular right” folks enjoy this exciting use of my secular reason.)

Cross-posted at my personal blog (www.hunterbaker.wordpress.com)

I’m rather pleased by the photo AmSpec used to accompany the article on their front page. See below.

I know it’s probably like spitting into the wind, but here I make the case for Obama to renominated Peter Keisler.
Then again, the Bush administration’s utter failure to use its Roger Gregory olive branch to better PR effect was a huge missed opportunity that helped make it more difficult to confirm people like Keisler in the first place.
Comments welcome.