…and it ain’t public service.

Study after study shows that students who serve do better in school, are more likely to go to college, and more likely to maintain that service as adults. So when I’m President, I will set a goal for all American middle and high school students to perform 50 hours of service a year, and for all college students to perform 100 hours of service a year. This means that by the time you graduate college, you’ll have done 17 weeks of service.

Somebody please explain to Barack that pesky “correlation is not causation” thing. Students who do service on their own volition or at the urging of their parents or teachers, rather than under compulsion, and who also do well in school and go to college … hmmm … I’m trying hard to think of a reason … could it be they’re more highly motivated to begin with? Oh well, I’m too lazy to look for A Study proving that. When Obama’s education program has been running a few years, however, I’m sure the Studies will be overflowing with the puzzling, basically flat numbers of those who go to college and “maintain that service as adults.” Also the startling rise in the number of private schools that don’t take any federal funds at all.

Via Instapundit.

Thank you, soldiers, marines, air force pilots and personnel, sailors. Thank you.

(The good stuff, not that crap Barry O. is selling.)

I got this link at Hot Air, about bachelorhood. It starts out on how bachelors are likely to accomplish more and greater things in their lives than married men, and frankly, as a devotee of Dorothy L. Sayers and her commentary on that very truth as it applies to women, I was glad to read somebody’s approach to it for men. But still, as I read Christopher Orlet’s (what a great name, no?) list of the “architects of Western Civilization” who were single, I could only think one thing:

“But not Bach. Not Bach.”

Nor, in addition, any of the founders of our own American system of civilization, though of course they were working on and fleshing out premises that had been laid down by many in the list.

I have no trouble believing, generally, that accomplished single people will accomplish more than accomplished married people. But Bach. Bach is the spark of hope that it’s not all one way or the other.

I’ll see if I need to update after reading what is sure to be a twist on Orlet’s theme.

Update: The moral seems to be that this single formula works only if you are a highly accomplished person indeed. I can buy that too. Also, Mr. Orlet needs a competent copy editor or at the very least a good proofreader. Howling typos like “border” for “boarder” and “precidence” compete for attention with a notable lack of commas. Exactly the kind of thing a smart, sharp-eyed wife would prevent. (With apologies to Mr. Orlet’s wife if he has one.)

Or, Is Justice Stevens Smarter Than a Fifth-Grader?

Supreme Court overturns D.C.’s handgun ban 5-4.

Rachel Lucas points to a snotty, annoying, and oh yeah, completely off-rocker piece of rhetoric by Justice Stevens:

In dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote that the majority “would have us believe that over 200 years ago, the Framers made a choice to limit the tools available to elected officials wishing to regulate civilian uses of weapons.”

He said such evidence “is nowhere to be found.”

No evidence that the Framers would much rather have limited, and did limit, the actions of our elected officials rather than limit the actions of free, innocent citizens?

Has he ever read the Constitution? I Am Not a Lawyer (as everybody reading here has had plenty of evidence to show), but even I can parse this: Whatever the available tools may be, Justice Stevens, they do not include infringement. That word means exactly what everybody thinks it means, no matter how hard you and others of your ilk try to convince us otherwise. There are only four lights.

Even in our public schools, at least back when I was attending them, which was since D.C.’s gun ban was enacted, thanks, it was made perfectly clear from the moment we started studying the American Revolution that the Framers had every intention of limiting most widely the actions of our officials rather than the rights of citizens. Stevens still sucks.

One of my favorite atheist/agnostics points out that Obama chose poorly in using abortion to make the argument that those who have religion need to recognize that “because God says so” is not a sound basis for public policy.

Right on, he did, but it’s not surprising that he felt safe in doing so. The anti-abortion position is in no way limited to Christians, but any Christian who bases the anti-abortion argument on God is simply begging for marginalization. The argument must be predicated on the continual-line humanity of a person from conception to death in a nursing home for it to have legs in the battle against the pro-abortion position. The obvious relationship is that it is because humans are human no matter in what format or age that Christians are so well convinced that God views abortion as baby killing. The God part should be derivative, not foundational.

It seems by observation that another consequence of the self-marginalization that goes along with predicating the argument on the wrong keystone is that atheist/agnostics are hesitant to express outright pro-life positions because they find it difficult to formulate justification outside religion (and, as I was reminded after writing the post, because they fear being 1) lumped in with extremists; 2) lumped in with the religious who justify their positions on religion alone). Another of my favorite atheist/agnostics is not willing to see abortion banned but does admit she couldn’t do it herself and piles on a healthy dose of rage for those stupid enough to get themselves into positions where they think they have to.

Each of those times, even if the idea I might be pregnant only lasted for five minutes, I contemplated the possibility that there was a real live tiny human being inside my body, and I knew beyond any doubt that if it really were there, I could not kill it.

She goes right up to the idea that a human baby is a human baby from the very beginning but then backs off in the post to the point that every woman must decide for herself. I am in no way picking on Rachel here; I really liked that post as I like most of what she has to say. I’m just pointing to an example of a person who believes without religious foundation that a conceived fetus is a human baby and yet who will not go on to apply that as an objective standard. I think there’s a lot of that going around, and I think the marginalization of the pro-life as a religious position hastens others stopping short of applying that objective standard.

So Obama believes positions with religious origin or relationship must be shaped into cogent arguments not based on God or they have no place in public policy. As a Christian, guess what? I completely agree with that standard. Go tell it to the people who think “love your neighbor as yourself” and “turn the other cheek” are recipes for government instead of a standard of personal conduct–or rather, those Christians and non-Christians alike who use those passages as clubs against Christians who don’t believe that war is the greatest evil.

The more I read about public school systems and incidents that occur the more convinced I am that my son will never see the inside of one. Private schools may have as many dopey ideas, but at least if I remove him from one of them they will shrug their shoulders at the lost tuition and not bother me again.

** Out of their minds: Birth control without the consent of parents is wanted … because girls deliberately set out to get pregnant. So obviously, the problem was they couldn’t get birth control because of their parents!

** Out of money, they perpetually complain: Yet offering free meals to anybody under eighteen all summer long, no registration, no proving that your parents don’t feed you enough, no problem.

** Out of accountability and humanity: Parents, who sends their three-year-old child away on a bus? And then is left baffled when the child comes home with marks and bruises? My heart goes out to the child and may they find and punish the culprit, but parents, hello? Three years old! Can’t reliably tell where they’ve been, can’t clearly state who might have abused them, can’t fend for themselves in any way. Keep them out of places where parents don’t have direct supervision or control.

Get out, public schools. Get out of early childhood. Get out of the parenting business. Not needed, not wanted, not welcome.

Update: Shorter, corrected, clearer me: Either 1) IMO, Indiana’s standard of child abuse is too narrowly focused on the severity and longevity of bruises caused on the child to the exclusion of the emotional and psychological harm to the child through the mother’s causing such bruises in the first place or 2) The standard does include this kind of harm but the prosecutors failed to prove it in this case, which seems incredible to me based merely on the facts of the article. (Update x3: Also, my inner jury is still out on whether I think any punishment that results in bruises at all should automatically rise to the level of abuse and thus IN’s standard is too low to begin with, but I lean toward “of course, yeah.”) Xrlq has called bullshit on almost all of my amateur attempts to question the legal nuance here, and I defer completely to him on those points. I’d probably make a pretty crappy lawyer. But I stand by my conclusion that there is serious and permanent harm done to a child who understands that his mother is willing to bruise him and a radically ignorant mother who could not foresee such bruising based on the implement–whether belt or extension cord–that she chose to use to spank an 11-year-old boy.

***

Update x2: Anybody notice how I’m getting a swell series of little snapshot legal lessons by writing something inane and then inviting Xrlq over here to shred it for me? Pretty cunning, don’tchathink?

*** (more…)

So I’m gonna help him out. From the Evans-Novak Political Report:

4. What Republicans fear most is a genuine Obama rightward sidestep toward the middle of the road. The Democratic candidate has picked up some Republican conservative support (the “Obamacons”) without his making a single conciliatory ideological move. What further gains can he make if he shows a little leg on a non-economic issue, such as education and even school vouchers?

This is not what Republicans fear most, or maybe I should say this is not what Republicans with that dangerous little learnin’ fear most. I’d be more alarmed if Obama started blabbering about school vouchers, because what has the federal government to do with those? Nothing at all. Don’t cross the streams. You start messing with the federal tax structure to deal with what is and ought to be a local or at most state-level problem, you’re creating a bigger problem, hands down. That is not a rightward step; it is pandering, and silly pandering at that. As for a genuine Obama rightward step, I’ll believe it when I see it. I consider it flatly impossible.

But the real Novak-flummoxing is in the next point down:

5. The need in Republican ranks is for McCain to do something that generates a little confidence. Just exactly what, nobody is sure.

Oh my. Nobody is sure? “Well, let me enlighten you people.” Dear Senator McCain: Start talking up domestic drilling. Untie the hands of the oil developers. Stop comparing a frozen wasteland to a natural national treasure. Shut your mouth about interfering in the legal workings of corporations. And return to the concept of fixing the borders before considering amnesty. Wow, see how easy that is?

Protecting his younger brother from a knife-wielding thug.

Judging by some of the facts laid down in the story, it appears knives are becoming guns in Britain. Knives are a lot easier to use, people, and a lot harder to ban. Unintended consequences of gun bans go on and on.

I have a British friend, husband of a friend I love dearly, who during dinner at my house actually uttered the sentence “You Americans have too many freedoms. Like guns, and that.” I swallowed my rejoinders and acted the hostess. But thugs and crazies, inexplicably, it seems, continue to find a way, even in Britain. It is not our freedoms that are the problem. The Bible can be paraphrased: Outlaws and nuts you will always have with you. And that’s why we ought always to have our guns, as well.

RIP, Rob Knox.

If you know what I mean.

Square this circle: All of their friends are lawyers, yet every woman [Michelle Obama] knows is struggling to keep her head above water.

As usual, it depends on what the meaning of “water” is. C’mon, Allah, she didn’t mean monetarily … women just have it so tough since they have to both earn a living and do everything that is to be done regarding the household and child care–everything. Men, even the Obamessiah, are completely useless, but there she is, having to earn six figures anyway, even though it puts that final straw on that just might break her domestically minded back.

Oh wait, you mean … she does mean it monetarily? Lawyers making six figures apiece or more still couldn’t manage to pay off their student loans until midway through their forties? Wow. That’s chin near the waterline, all right. No wonder she has to break herself to do it all–clearly if she weren’t earning those six figures, it would have been ten more years or more before she could pay off those student loans, and then just imagine the level of Government Fixit she’d have to call for!

The assumption that people who vote Republican aren’t voting on “economic issues” is lunacy–lower taxes being pretty high on the list of a lot of people who make a living. So I guess you’re talking to “bitter” people who vote Republican–they must not be voting economic because why would anybody vote against somebody who promises them other people’s money? Oh yeah, that’s because of some principles and standards that support the idea that it’s better to make money than be given it, even if you have to, or choose to, eke it out in a small, dying town. You know, those very same principles and standards that lead them to embrace their families and their God, your accusation of xenophobia and your implication of religious delusion notwithstanding.

Some of the Obama crowd sees Diversity in Action:

While the crowd was indeed diverse, some students at the event questioned the practices of Mrs. Obama’s event coordinators, who handpicked the crowd sitting behind Mrs. Obama. The Tartan’s correspondents observed one event coordinator say to another, “Get me more white people, we need more white people.” To an Asian girl sitting in the back row, one coordinator said, “We’re moving you, sorry. It’s going to look so pretty, though.”

“I didn’t know they would say, ‘We need a white person here,’ ” said attendee and senior psychology major Shayna Watson, who sat in the crowd behind Mrs. Obama. “I understood they would want a show of diversity, but to pick up people and to reseat them, I didn’t know it would be so outright.”

H/t Hot Air headlines.

Allah wants to know how Obama defines victory. However he might define it, he’s not going to get it by keeping “a strike force” somewhere “in the region.” How is a strike force not an occupation? And if it is an occupation, how could he justify keeping it somewhere else, any more than he can in Iraq? But that’s beside the point that Obama and others of his ilk will always refuse to define victory, because the word presupposes a cause of action, one that might even be justified and whose success might be desirable. And that would wreck the whole foundation of their platform. Listen in vain–Obama will never say what would have defined success in Iraq because that presupposes a justification to be there, even while he proposes keeping an undefined body of troops in an undefined location to perform semi-defined tasks to a level of undefined success–because to define that success would imply that the other side has a perfectly good operating definition of their own.

Update: See?

McCain has not specified the number of troops he will keep in Iraq or the length of time they will be kept there. Obama has willfully distorted this position and implied that McCain wants to keep U.S. forces enmeshed in a century long war in Iraq. Fine. Distorting the other guys position is part of the game–or at least that’s how the “old politics” worked. But Obama can’t have it both ways. His Iraq plan also involves keeping an unspecified number of troops in Iraq for an unspecified length of time. The difference? McCain’s objective is victory. Obama’s objective, like the details of his strike force, remains unspecified.