Friday, March 29, 2013

they said it could never happen


Florida House Bill 1129 - Infants Born Alive
Provides that infant born alive during or immediately after attempted abortion is entitled to same rights, powers, & privileges as any other child born alive in course of natural birth; requires health care practitioners to preserve life & health of such infant born alive, if possible

Civil Justice Subcommittee
"So, um, it is just really hard for me to even ask you this question because I’m almost in disbelief," said Rep. Jim Boyd. "If a baby is born on a table as a result of a botched abortion, what would Planned Parenthood want to have happen to that child that is struggling for life?”

"We believe that any decision that's made should be left up to the woman, her family, and the physician," said Planned Parenthood lobbyist Snow."

what decision?... to provide healthcare?... or to kill a living infant?


source:
Video: Planned Parenthood Official Argues for Right to Post-Birth Abortion | The Weekly Standard

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

HuffPo logical fallacies

xkcd Comics

Causation vs. Correlation:
"Costco reported a profit of $537 million last quarter, up from $394 million during the same period last year, according to the Wall Street Journal. The healthy earnings report comes just six days after Jelinik urged lawmakers to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour."

One year of profit reports as opposed to six days following a comment.


Straw Man Fallacy
"Costco makes more than $10,000 in profits per employee, while Walmart takes home about $7,400 per worker, according to the Daily Beast (Walmart and Costco aren’t exactly the same type of business, however)."

Costco (X) makes Profit (a). Walmart (Y) makes Profit (b)

You propose X:Y::a:b, but that is not remotely true.

If X /= Y therefore you cannot make assumption of a=b

source:

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

and further down the slope we go

The Colorado legislature is considering the repeal of laws in the state that criminalize adultery or any act that would “promote sexual immorality.” According to Lynn Bartels of The Denver Post, the process of repeal is now well underway, with the House Judiciary Committee voting 8-3 to take adultery and sexual immorality out of the criminal code in Colorado.

Missing from the legislative debate, at least as reported in the media, is any acknowledgment of how such statutes entered the law books in the first place. Throughout most of human history, morality and law were united and in agreement when it came to the reality of adultery and the larger context of sexual immorality. Laws criminalizing adultery were adopted because the society believed that marriage was central to its own existence and flourishing, and that adultery represented a dagger struck at the heart of the society, as well as the heart of marriage.

Rep. Daniel Kagan (Democrat of Cherry Hills Village) seemed to be completely unaware that his own state had once considered adultery to be a sin of public consequence. “Adultery is a matter between a person and their spouse and their conscience and their minister, but not between a person and the full enforcement of the state of Colorado,” he said. He concluded: “Let’s keep the police out of our bedrooms.”

Well, the police have not conducted adultery raids in some time, Rep. Kagan. The law in Colorado criminalizes adultery, but includes no penalty. The law has been, at a bare minimum, a reminder of the public nature of marriage and the societal threat of adultery.

The sexual revolution and our cultural addiction to autonomous individualism has changed all that, but that moral shift should not go unnoticed. We are now reaping the inevitable result of treating marriage as a merely private affair, and adultery as a merely private sin. The action in the Colorado legislature is just a sign of what has already taken place in the larger culture.

source:
Adultery: When Law and Morality (used to) Agree by Albert Mohler on March 4, 2013