Border fence challenge rebuffed by Supreme Court
Ross D. Franklin / Associated Press
A U.S. Border Patrol truck drives along a new section of road built by members of the 200th Red Horse Air National Guard Civil Engineering Squadron from Camp Perry in Ohio and other National Guard units in front of a five mile section of new border fencing at the border in Nogales, Ariz.
The justices decline to hear a petition from environmentalists, allowing the Department of Homeland Security to continue construction.
By David G. Savage, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
June 24, 2008
WASHINGTON -- The government's plan to build a 670-mile fence along the U.S.-Mexico border took another step forward Monday when the Supreme Court turned away a legal challenge from environmentalists.
The court's action clears the way for U.S. officials to press ahead with the project with little worry that judges will be able to stop it.
Three years ago, Congress gave Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff an unusual power to "waive all legal requirements" that could stand in the way of building the fence.
These requirements included the nation's environmental protection laws. The same congressional action took away the authority of judges to review Chertoff's decisions.
Last year, after Chertoff waived at least 20 laws and regulations to complete a section of the fence in Arizona, two environmental groups sued. They said it was unconstitutional to give a Cabinet secretary such sweeping power.
But a federal judge rejected that claim. And on Monday the Supreme Court without comment declined to hear a petition submitted by Defenders of Wildlife and the Sierra Club.
The high court's refusal is not a ruling, and it doesn't mean the justices won't reconsider the issue. But for now, Chertoff and his department have the go-ahead to proceed with the fence. Nearly half the barrier has been built.
Oliver Bernstein, a spokesman for the Sierra Club in Austin, Texas, called the court's action "unfortunate."
"This decision leaves one man -- the secretary of the Homeland Security -- with the extraordinary power to ignore any and all of the laws designed to protect the American people, our lands and our natural resources," Bernstein said. "Today's decision will allow the DHS to continue to waive key health, environmental and safety laws that have protected communities, wildlife, archaeological, historic and cultural resources."
Fourteen House Democrats and a group of law professors had urged the Supreme Court to take the case. They agreed with the environmentalists that it was unprecedented to give a Cabinet member so much power while also stripping judges of the authority to review the legality of his actions.
Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), a proponent of the law, called the court's action "a victory for the American people" and a milestone toward finishing the barrier.
"According to recent estimates, nearly half a million illegal immigrants cross the border annually," Smith said. "The court's refusal to hear the case . . . ensures that the DHS can carry out Congress' mandate to build a fence along the U.S.-Mexico border without legal restrictions or interference from environmentalists."
The project still faces legal challenges from landowners and tribal groups.
It is unclear whether judges have the authority to act on such claims.
............................................................................
SCOTUS has spoken...the fence is going up.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
SCOTUS Rebuffs Illegal Immigration Advocates
Monday, June 23, 2008
CARRYING FIREARMS
Posted from Las Animas
It is encouraging to find editorials in favor of armed citizens...h/t OpenCarry.org
THE GAZETTE
Colorado Springs
June 16, 2008
Our View - Monday
TAKING CARE OF BUSINESS
Carrying firearms a chance to educate public
Have you ever watched a Western movie and noticed the cowboy who looked out of place, but you couldn't figure out why? At some point in the movie it is pointed out that ol' Slim doesn't pack iron because he killed/nearly killed an innocent man/woman/child years ago and he swore he'd never touch another gun. How Slim deals with his demons is his own business; the point is that he stand out because he's not wearing a six-shooter.
These days the tables have turned and now most people are not seen with a handgun perched on their hip. When one sees someone carrying a gun, one usually assumes the armed person is either an off-duty police officer or someone up to no good.
Most likely both assumptions are wrong.
There is a growing cadre of law-abiding gun owners who use their everyday interactions with others to educate them about firearms and our rights. According to a Los Angeles Times story, most states allow people who aren't barred from owning or carrying firearms to carry them openly. That is the way things should work in a free society; what isn't specifically forbidden is allowed. And government must have a good reason to forbid something.
Open carry is legal in Colorado, except where specifically banned. Locally, open carry was the subject du jour in 2003 when a man began carrying a shotgun with him as he went about his business. When his business included attending City Council meetings, council members took notice and banned open-carry in city-owned buildings. El Paso County has a similar law. Other than government buildings, including public schools and post offices, carrying firearms openly is legal most places in the Pikes Peak region.
Property owners have the right to forbid customers to carry on their property. We'd urge them to err on the side of freedom.
When people see firearms owners as the friendly guy ahead of them in line at the grocery store or the woman sharing a joke with them at the coffee shop, they're likely to have a good opinion of firearms owners. Too often, the only thing non-owners hear about firearms is in connection to criminal activity. That unfairly casts legitimate owners in a bad light.
It's not just men packing iron these days, either. More women than ever before are attending firearms safety classes and carrying guns, openly or concealed. They know that firearms can be a safety factor for someone who knows how to use them. A 250-pound thug will think twice when he discovers his 130-pound intended victim is not inclined to do his bidding and has the ability to protect herself and her rights.
Firearms dealers and shooting clubs are presenting classes specifically aimed at educating women about firearms. Manufacturers are responding to this new market by rolling out firearms designed for women's smaller hands.
Open carry is not without its problems, though. Many police officers might not be aware of the legality of the practice and are apt to err on the side of caution when they come in contact with an armed citizen. Other people can feel uncomfortable in the presence of a firearm and might complain to management or call the police. Those who carry openly must be ready to explain their rights and let others know they don't present a threat.
It can be a dangerous world, and the recent budget cuts show there won't always be a police officer or sheriff's deputy around to protect everyone. Even if government had enough money to put an officer on every block, he could be at the other end of the block when some bad actor demands your wallet or kicks in your front door. Ultimately, each person is responsible for his or her own safety. And if gun owners can educate the public on positive aspects of firearms, everyone is better off.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
The Audacity of the Democrats
American Thinker
June 07, 2008
The Audacity of the Democrats
By Rocco DiPippo
There was a pre-Lewinsky time, before moral relativism blurred America's vision, when associating with people like Jeremiah Wright and William Ayers would have automatically excluded someone from attaining the highest office in the land. Back then, anyone with well known connections to such America-averse personalities would have been rejected by a super-majority of the electorate during primary season and almost certainly blocked by the Democratic Party before they could have gotten to within a mile of the White House. But those days -- when patriotic, true liberals like Joe Lieberman were considered typical Democratic Party politicians -- are gone. Now politicians like Lieberman are banished to the Party's periphery and leftists, not liberals, like Denis Kucinich, Bernie Sanders, Jim McDermott, John Kerry, (who served in Vietnam), Jim McGovern, Patrick Leahy, Richard Durbin, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have replaced them.
Until recently in our history, a President Barack Obama would have been an impossibility. But given the political and ideological climate that exists today in America, the ascension of a leftist like Barack Obama into presidential politics makes perfect sense. Beliefs like domestic terrorist William Ayers's and racist, anti-US preacher Jeremiah Wright's are no longer met with utter scorn or a trip to behind the woodshed, but are embraced, promoted and defended by many Americans. Think MoveOn, International ANSWER, think hordes of young neo-communists and their indoctrinating, puppet-master Marx-spouting professors. Think Michael Moore, Cindy Sheehan, Noam Chomsky, Ward Churchill and his acolytes. Think NYU, Columbia, The New School and Harvard. Most importantly, ponder the makeup and direction of the Democratic Party leadership. Like Barack Obama and his radical friends, it is appallingly far Left.
Ideological descendants of Marx and Rousseau now lead the Democratic Party and they have turned it into a disloyal opposition to an increasingly accommodating GOP. They have molded the Party into a force working stridently and unashamedly against a Commander in Chief during wartime. They have made it a den of treachery devoted to American defeat in Iraq. They preside over an institution advised and influenced by moneyed, non-governmental groups and individuals with unquestionably anti-US agendas who help make the Party a pseudo-intellectual sinkhole filled with perverse, tried-and-failed ideas repulsive to the majority of Americans. Those ideas are shaped into agendas which are then forced on the public by an activist leftwing judiciary and by a major media and arts consortium shot through with utter disrespect, indeed contempt, for traditional American values, religions and institutions.
The Democratic Party has devolved into a club for the illegitimately aggrieved, the self-absorbed, the self-hating and the perpetually pissed-off. It is a sanctuary where solipsistic malcontents and their disjointed causes find refuge and support. It has long ceased being an earnest gathering of broad minds where man's timeless problems are examined against the backdrop of the Constitution and solutions to them proposed based on the actual realities of the human condition. It is now the political province of the intellectually deceased, where frightened, lock-step ideologues and other small men and women concoct and promote divisive, destructive, weird and cowardly policies developed within a not-so-quaint, quasi-Marxist stricture of gender, class and race. (ital. added)
So what does all of that have to do with the propulsion of Barack Obama to within a whisker of the Presidency? Everything. It could not have happened without the existence of a substantial, organized, internal anti-US Left and the approval and guidance of the Democratic leadership I describe. Obama is in step with that radical element and with that leadership. His views reflect their views, and he is now a central figure in the deceptive, destructive strategy to restore the Democrats to power, a strategy that has been in play since the US Supreme Court declared Albert Gore the loser of the 2000 presidential contest. "Don't call me a liberal," says Obama. In a precise, lawyerly sort of way he is being honest - he truly isn't a liberal, but he is a leftist.
At a glance, Obama's quick rise in the world of presidential politics is puzzling. His background, including his personal and political associations, is antithetical to the historical stature of the American presidency. It could also be said that given his non-traditional upbringing, his schooling in radical politics and his seeming preference for friends and mentors who view America disdainfully, he is antithetical to the traditional American Experience itself. Obama is young and he has less than one Senate term under his belt. Neither quality is particularly presidential. Questions of patriotism dog him, as do questions about his religious and ethnic heritage. Many of the people who tutored and supported him through his personal and political journeys from the backwaters of Indonesia to the main stage of US presidential politics are contemptuous of the US. Some of them publicly express outright hatred of the country Obama now seeks to lead.
So why is so controversial a candidate even in the running to be president?
Because he reflects his Party's leftist agenda, has unique, prodigious manipulative talents and equally impressive Hollywood attributes. These are indispensable in closing out the dangerous, deliberate game the Democrats have been playing with America's security and its perceived stature in the world. It is a game that has been going on beneath our noses since the election of 2000. Its object is simple: the acquisition of power regardless of cost to the Nation. It is something the American people must be reminded of, made aware of, before they enter the voting booth in November.
(read the rest)
Saturday, June 14, 2008
Liberal Supreme Court Justices Invent Constitutional Rights - For The Enemy
NRO weekend
June 13, 2008, 1:50 a.m.
Supreme Disgrace
Thursday’s Guantánamo Bay decision was a power grab.
By Peter Wehner
I have now read through the Supreme Court’s decision, as well as the dissents, in Boumediene v. Bush, in which the Court held that foreign terrorism suspects held at Guantánamo Bay have constitutional rights to challenge their detention there in U.S. courts. In doing so, the Court, in Chief Justice Roberts’s words, “strikes down as inadequate the most generous set of procedural protections ever afforded aliens detained by this country as enemy combatants.”
It’s worth considering what needed to be done in order to achieve this outcome.
The Court decided that for the first time in American history, non-American enemy combatants detained abroad, in the course of an ongoing war, had a constitutional right to habeas corpus (a proceeding used to review the legality of a prisoner’s confinement in criminal cases).
In order to confer habeas-corpus rights on unlawful enemy combatants, the Court — in an opinion written by Justice Anthony Kennedy — had to break from precedent, including the 1950 case Johnson v. Eisentrager, in which the Court ruled that non-citizen enemies had no access to U.S. courts in wartime and that when captured and imprisoned abroad, they had no right to a writ of habeas corpus in a U.S. court.
The Court’s majority opinion includes a section in which Kennedy attempts to fundamentally reinterpret Eisentrager. The problem for the majority is that Eisentrager conclusively establishes the opposite of what the majority opinion held. In Justice Scalia’s words:
Eisentrager thus held — held beyond any doubt — that the Constitution does not ensure habeas for aliens held by the United States in areas over which our Government is not sovereign…. [The majority opinion] is a sheer rewriting of the case.… By blatantly distorting Eisentrager, the Court avoids the difficulty of explaining why it should be overruled.More broadly, and relevant to the Kennedy opinion, English common law has never held that the writ of habeas corpus extended beyond the sovereign territory of the Crown.
Among the practical effects of this ruling is that, according to Scalia:
The game of bait-and-switch that today’s opinion plays upon the Nation’s Commander in Chief will make the war harder on us. It will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed. That consequence would be tolerable if necessary to preserve a time-honored legal principle vital to our constitutional Republic. But it is this Court’s blatant abandonment of such a principle that produces the decision today… It sets our military commanders the impossible task of proving to a civilian court, under whatever standards this Court devises in the future, that evidence supports the confinement of each and every enemy prisoner.What Boumediene v. Bush is really all about, as Justice Roberts wrote, is control of federal policy regarding enemy combatants.
That is another way of saying this case was about power — and Thursday’s decision was a power grab.
And so it has come to this: The United States Supreme Court now routinely invents constitutional rights to support whatever social, political, and legal goals it deems desirable. It is so much easier to legislate from the bench than it is through the branches of government that were created by our Founders to do just that.
But if one is going to invent Constitutional rights out of thin air, it’s worth asking: What moral universe do Justices Kennedy, Breyer, Ginsburg, Stephens, and Souter inhabit when they are willing to manufacture constitutional rights for unlawful enemy combatants who want to slit the throats and watch innocent Americans bleed and die while at the same time uphold manufactured constitutional rights that allow people to abort innocent unborn children?
What the Court decided Thursday was an intellectual, jurisprudential, and moral disgrace, and if John McCain is wise he’ll make this decision a focal point of the presidential race.
Peter Wehner, former deputy assistant to the president, is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
Friday, June 13, 2008
Obama Is A Clear And Present Danger
(Obama refuses to pledge)
CSMonitor
Barack Obama – Muslim apostate?
For Al Qaeda, the answer – and the implication – is clear.
By Shireen K. Burki
from the May 19, 2008 edition
Stafford, Va. - Osama bin Laden must be chuckling in his safe house. After all, the 2008 campaign could very well give Al Qaeda the ultimate propaganda tool: President Barack Hussein Obama, Muslim apostate.
The fact that Senator Obama – the son of a Muslim father – insists he was never a Muslim before becoming Christian is irrelevant to bin Laden. In bin Laden's eyes, Obama is a murtad fitri, the worst type of apostate, because he was blessed by Allah to be born into the true faith of Islam.
There are two types of apostates according to sharia (Islamic law) and the Hadith (sayings of the prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him).
The first type is murtad milli, one who converted to Islam and later renounced the faith. The second, and most egregious, type is murtad fitri. It refers to a person born of a Muslim father who renounces his birthright. Two recent examples of the latter are Magdi Allam (a male Egyptian who converted to Catholicism in Italy) and Ayaan Hirsi Ali (Somali-born woman who's now an atheist). Both now face death threats.
According to Islamic jurisprudence, children of a Muslim father – even an apparently nonpracticing one, such as Obama's father, and irrespective of the mother's faith – are automatically Muslims. Most Muslims around the world agree: A child of a Muslim father is a Muslim. Period.
Should Obama become US commander in chief, there is a strong likelihood that Al Qaeda's media arm, As-Sahab, will exploit his background to argue that an apostate is leading the global war on terror (read: attacks against fellow Muslims). This perception would be leveraged to galvanize sympathizers into action.
Remember: Al Qaeda's ultimate goal is to restore the caliphate (the Islamic form of government that would preside over the community of believers) and expand Dar al Islam ("Abode of Islam"). Reaching it requires a long war against all – Muslim and non-Muslim – who don't share its extremist Wahhabi worldview.
Al Qaeda, though, has struggled recently to recruit volunteers for this jihad. While bin Laden retains significant support as someone willing to stand up for Muslim concerns, most Muslims abhor Al Qaeda's terrorist methods whose primary targets are innocent noncombatants.
But an apostate as head of the United States could change this equation. It would be a propaganda boost for Al Qaeda's mission. All one has to do is read Al Qaeda's public statements to recognize how frequently it makes baseless apostasy accusations against fellow Muslims who challenge its message or actions.
That's why Obama is bin Laden's dream candidate.
Once branded as an apostate, President Obama would face enormous difficulties in the foreign policy realm, especially in the fight against terrorism.
He's caught between a rock and a hard place. If he softens the US strategy against Al Qaeda and its ideologues, his apostasy might be an afterthought for Al Qaeda. But if he acts firmly in America's national interest to defeat the terrorist threat, he'd be vilified in an Al Qaeda propaganda campaign for reneging on his "true identity."
Furthermore, his administration would struggle to positively engage the Muslim world, where Islam isn't just a religion, it's the way of life. Conservative Muslim populations that are riddled with poverty and low literacy rates can be more readily swayed to join the cause against the "Great Satan" (the US) if their imams and mullahs shout that it is led by an apostate.
Diplomacy is highly personal. The leaders of America's Middle Eastern allies – such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Qatar – already feel besieged by jihadists and disgruntled citizens who see their governments as toadies of the West. The murtad card could intensify that pressure, so leaders of these countries might be compelled to distance themselves from Washington.
In short, an Obama presidency – which might be fine domestically – could have serious repercussions for US foreign interests at a time when it is especially vulnerable in a tight global oil market.
So far, Al Qaeda has been conspicuously quiet on Obama's candidacy. But that should not come as a surprise. Hoping Obama gets elected, they're probably waiting until he's taken the oath of office to begin branding him a traitor to the faith of his fathers.
Islamic terrorists know that the long road to success lies in stoking the "clash of civilizations." To reach their goal of restoring the Caliphate in a form that fits their worldview, they need massive numbers of Muslims to join their global jihad.
Bin Laden and his followers have already shown their willingness to exploit real or imagined religious schisms to expand their support base. So it's not hard to imagine bin Laden praying that Obama wins this November.
Shireen K. Burki is an adjunct professor of political science at the University of Mary Washington, in Fredericksburg, Va. The daughter of a Muslim father and a Christian mother, she spent her childhood in Islamabad, Pakistan, where she studied Islam at school.
www.csmonitor.com | Copyright © 2008 The Christian Science Monitor. All rights reserved.
Sunday, June 08, 2008
America's Moral Collapse
"So in 1922, the conspiracy was hatched at the Marx-Engels Institute in Moscow by Karl Radek, a power in the Politburo and the representative of Lenin, Felix Djerzhinski, head of the Soviet secret police, Georg Lukas, cultural commissar of the short-lived Hungarian Bolshevik revolution, and Willi Muenzenberg, the Comintern’s organizational genius. The seemingly modest instrument was the Institute of Social Research, planted in the prestigious Frankfurt University, and dedicated to neo-Marxism… ‘We will take over the intellectuals,’ Willi Muenzenberg boasted. ‘We will make America stink.’"
(a picture is worth 1000 words...)The plot against America exposed
From Renew America
Wes Vernon
November 27, 2006
The late Defense Secretary James Forrestal famously remarked that if our "leaders" only made mistakes, they would occasionally make one in our favor.
Ralph de Toledano has presented us with ample evidence of that. But Forrestal was referring to the post-World War 2 advance of world Communism, and the sellout to Stalin at the conferences at Yalta and Potsdam.
In his new book Cry Havoc, Toledano clearly demonstrates that when the Soviet empire collapsed, the Marxists and their allies in our midst did not just go away. In fact, their mission to bring down the United States by boring from within had long since made Soviet espionage quite unnecessary. In their drive to bring down Western Civilization, they made no "mistakes." Everything was well-planned.
It took us decades to nail down airtight rock-solid proof that the Communist Party USA was funded by the Soviet Union. We always suspected as much and had ample circumstantial evidence, but we did not have the "smoking gun" until the Soviet Union was disbanded.
By the same token, disciples of "neo-Marxism" do not need to have Communist party membership cards to be certified as "true believers" in Marx's aim of "the destruction of everything existing [Karl Marx in his own words]."
You may think it "just happened" that today's society is saddled with cultural rot.
You may think it "just happened" that many kids graduate from high school with atrocious grammar, poor writing skills, and ignorance of American history, or — in some cases — are barely literate.
You may think it "just happened" that so many of today's clean-cut kids enter college only to emerge spewing hatred for America, its traditions and customs.
You may think it "just happened" that the counter-culture of the Sixties was rooted in raw hatred, violence, and destruction.
You may think it "just happened" that today's establishment universities, establishment foundations, and establishment media march to the drummer of "political correctness" that (at the very least) downgrades our Judeo-Christian heritage, while condoning — if not celebrating — same-sex marriage.
None of these things "just happened."
Western Civilization itself has been under a concerted, planned attack for decades. The step-by-step erosion of the values that served so well as the underpinning of America's greatness — or "that shining city on the hill," as Ronald Reagan used to say — did not "just happen." They were planned.
Same-sex marriage and polygamist cults
WND
Posted: June 06, 2008
1:00 am Eastern
By Stephen Baskerville
© 2008
What does the California Supreme Court decision on same-sex "marriage" have to do with the seizure of over 400 children by social workers from a polygamist cult in Texas? Plenty, and it is much more than same-sex marriage opening the way to polygamy, real as that is. Together, these two news items illustrate how advanced and ubiquitous is the government's assault on the family. The fact that such matters now pervade our news should alarm and mobilize every American to understand and resist massive government machinery that threatens both marriage and parenthood.
First, same-sex "marriage" is a symptom, not a cause, of government's larger effort to redefine the family. Almost 40 years ago, with no public debate or consultation, government not only redefined but effectively abolished marriage as a legal contract through "no-fault" divorce.
Same-sex marriage advocates are correct when they point out that heterosexuals, not homosexuals, first weakened marriage.
"The weakening of marriage has been heterosexuals' doing, not gays', for it is their infidelity, divorce rates and single-parent families that have wrought social damage," observes the Economist. This argument is somewhat disingenuous, since the divorce revolution was itself driven by the same sexual radicalism that now pushes same-sex marriage. Still, the truth itself is undeniable.
"The problem today is not gay couples wanting to get married," claims Jonathan Rauch. "The threat to marriage is straight couples not wanting to get married or straight couples not staying married." Traditionalists' efforts to take the moral high ground have been seriously undermined by their inability to answer this point.
"People who won't censure divorce carry no special weight as defenders of marriage," writes columnist Froma Harrop. "Moral authority doesn't come cheap." Forthright marriage advocates, like Michael McManus of Marriage Savers, themselves point out that "divorce is a far more grievous blow to marriage than today's challenge by gays."
Yet, the implications cut both ways. For the corollary is that same-sex marriage is a symptom of the debasement of marriage, and gays want only debased marriage.
"Commentators miss the point when they oppose homosexual marriage on the grounds that it would undermine traditional understandings of marriage," writes family scholar Bryce Christensen. "It is only because traditional understandings of marriage have already been severely undermined that homosexuals are now laying claim to it."
Though gay activists cite their very desire to marry as evidence that their lifestyle is not inherently promiscuous, they also acknowledge that that desire arises only by the promiscuity permitted in modern marriage. "The world of no-strings heterosexual hookups and 50 percent divorce rates preceded gay marriage," Andrew Sullivan points out. "All homosexuals are saying ... is that, under the current definition, there's no reason to exclude us. If you want to return straight marriage to the 1950s, go ahead. But until you do, the exclusion of gays is simply an anomaly – and a denial of basic civil equality" (emphasis added).
Homosexual parenting is also rooted in the divorce revolution. Here is where the child abuse industry comes in, demonstrating how one threat to the family creates another. Just as divorce led to same-sex marriage, so it also created demands for parenting by same-sex couples.
Debates about gay parenting have centered on questions of children's welfare versus homosexual rights. Few have examined the politics whereby prospective gay parents obtain children. Granting gay couples the right to raise children by definition means giving at least one of the partners the right to raise someone else's children, and the question arises whether the original parent or parents ever agreed to part with them or did something to warrant losing them.
Not necessarily. The vast majority of children of gay "parents" are created not by sperm donors or surrogate mothers but by divorce. Under "no-fault" laws, they can be removed from one of their natural parents through literally "no fault" of that parent. The child with "two mommies" probably had his father forced out of the family by divorce.
Likewise, the explosion of foster care and the assumed but unexamined need to find permanent homes for allegedly abused children has provided perhaps the strongest argument in favor of gay adoption. Yet, this assumption is far from valid.
Child abuse overwhelmingly occurs in single-mother homes – homes of divorce or unwed childbearing. Yet we do not find child welfare officials encouraging intact families or the involvement of fathers. On the contrary, a profession dominated by feminists, child welfare is characterized by a huge anti-father bias, to the point where spurious child abuse accusations are routinely used to remove fathers during divorce proceedings. Children are then confiscated from single mothers on similar accusations, valid or exaggerated, and fed into the foster care system. The mass child confiscations in Texas are just one more manifestation of what happens when we empower armies of officials with a bureaucratic mission to seize other people's children.
This government-generated child abuse epidemic, and the mushrooming foster care business it feeds, have allowed government agencies to operate what amounts to a traffic in children. A San Diego Grand Jury reports that "the Department [of Social Services] is in the 'baby brokering' business." Introducing same-sex marriage and adoption into this political dynamic could dramatically increase the demand for children to adopt, thus intensifying pressure on social service agencies and biological parents to supply such children. Massachusetts Sen. Therese Murray, claiming that 40 percent of adoptions have gone to gay and lesbian couples, rationalizes the practice by invoking "children who have been neglected, abandoned, abused by their own families." But it is far from self-evident that these children are in fact victims of their own parents. What seems inescapable is that the very issue of gay parenting has arisen as the direct and perhaps inevitable consequence once government officials got into the business – which began largely with divorce – of distributing other people's children.
These items are only the beginning. California court decisions criminalizing homeschoolers and excluding parents from their children's public school education are further examples of state officials assuming family functions and replacing parents.
We need a much broader coalition of families prepared to resist the bureaucratic state's appropriation of marriage and children on all fronts. Otherwise, this dual trend will worsen: Marriage will continue to deteriorate, and parents will continue to lose their children.
