Who Cares ...

... what George W. Bush's or John McCain's daughters (or wives, for that matter) think about any subject? These women have done absolutely nothing to earn the public's attention regarding anything they wish to spout off about. Every time the Bush or McCain offspring (or wives, for that matter) opens their mouths, it makes me glad that Bush and McCain are basically done as prominent figures on the political scene.

Ladies, if I want your opinion about something, I'll elect you to some office suitable to your talents.

Bad Move, Dubya

Both in authorizing it to begin with, and now in admitting it unrepentantly.

If They're Going to Continue to Run Against Him, It Was Only a Matter of Time Before He Started Outpolling Them

"Shocker: Bush beats Obama 48/43 in poll".

The Left's New-Found Respect for "Bushitler"

The left needs W's "gravitas"
To bail out Barack's craven ass.

Nobel "Peace" Prize Officially a Joke

The Nobel "Peace" Prize has, to some extent, been a politicized joke for many, many years. The award of the prize to, first, Jimmy Carter and then to Al Gore as overt slaps at former President Bush by the Nobel Committee might have been the icing on the cake ...

... but for this ginormous pantload of leftist Euroweenie excrement:

President Barack Obama wins Nobel Peace Prize

OSLO (AP) - President Barack Obama won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples," the Norwegian Nobel Committee said, citing his outreach to the Muslim world and attempts to curb nuclear proliferation.

The stunning choice made Obama the third sitting U.S. president to win the Nobel Peace Prize and shocked Nobel observers because Obama took office less than two weeks before the Feb. 1 nomination deadline. Obama's name had been mentioned in speculation before the award but many Nobel watchers believed it was too early to award the president.

[...]

The committee chairman said after awarding the 2002 prize to former Democratic President Jimmy Carter, for his mediation in international conflicts, that it should be seen as a "kick in the leg" to the Bush administration's hard line in the buildup to the Iraq war.

Five years later, the committee honored Bush's adversary in the 2000 presidential election, Al Gore, for his campaign to raise awareness about global warming...

Nobel Prize officially "jumps the shark".

What a joke! Somebody please tell me we're celebrating April Fool's Day 6 months early.


UPDATE
So when do they change the name of this joke-of-an-award to "The Nobel Prize for Not Being George W. Bush"?

See also the excellent commentary at The American Catholic.


UPDATE #2
A commentator at The Times of London agrees:

Comment: absurd decision on Obama makes a mockery of the Nobel peace prize

The award of this year’s Nobel peace prize to President Obama will be met with widespread incredulity, consternation in many capitals and probably deep embarrassment by the President himself.

Rarely has an award had such an obvious political and partisan intent. It was clearly seen by the Norwegian Nobel committee as a way of expressing European gratitude for an end to the Bush Administration, approval for the election of America’s first black president and hope that Washington will honour its promise to re-engage with the world.

Instead, the prize risks looking preposterous in its claims, patronising in its intentions and demeaning in its attempt to build up a man who has barely begun his period in office, let alone achieved any tangible outcome for peace.

[...]

The committee said today that he had “captured the world’s attention”. It is certainly true that his energy and aspirations have dazzled many of his supporters. Sadly, it seems they have so bedazzled the Norwegians that they can no longer separate hopes from achievement. The achievements of all previous winners have been diminished.

UPDATE #3
Ding, ding, ding. We have a winner!

"Ann" gets the prize for "Pathetic Catholic Shilling on Behalf of the Indefensible by Someone Not Named Tony or Doug".

Pretty sad, but hardly surprising, that some Catholics are uncritically celebrating this turn of events. But other Obama supporters are, quite rightly, a little embarassed by what has taken place. I mean, even Obama idolator Michael Sean Winters is "ambivalent" about the award.


UPDATE #4
TIME Magazine on on the familiar-sounding "Nobel Prize for Not Being George W. Bush":

Congratulations to President Barack Obama, recipient of the 89th Nobel Prize for Peace, as well as the fourth Nobel Prize for Not Being George W. Bush.

The NPFNBGWB was first established in 2002, when the Nobel Committee awarded its Peace Prize to former Democratic President Jimmy Carter, ostensibly for monitoring elections in far-flung hellholes, but really for being the most prominent American critic of then President Bush's buildup to a war in Iraq. The NPFNBGWB returned after a short hiatus in 2005, when the prize went to the International Atomic Energy Agency and Mohamed ElBaradei for refusing to confirm the existence of Saddam Hussein's nonexistent weapons of mass destruction before the war in Iraq — in other words, for standing up to Bush. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change probably deserved the Nobel in 2007 for spreading the word about global warming, but the committee wouldn't have dreamed of adding former Democratic Vice President (and almost President) Al Gore if it hadn't wanted to contrast his advocacy with Bush's climate denial.

Apparently, it wasn't enough for the Nobel Committee to swerve off the road to run over Bush once, then back up to run him over twice more. Even though the official representative of Ugly American culture and cowboy diplomacy has remained graciously silent in retirement, the committee decided to stick it to him one more time by choosing his newly minted successor, who has been in office for only nine months but has made some of the right noises about rejecting some of his global policies. There will of course be some bogus cover story about Obama's vision for nuclear disarmament and Middle East peace and climate change, but the anti-Bush message couldn't have been clearer if the Nobel had gone to Keith Olbermann.

This ill-concealed crusade is clearly damaging the prestige of the Nobel; the winners are supposed to be honored for their achievements, not for symbolizing the committee's grudges. And it probably won't do Obama any favors; he wants to be a leader, not a symbol, and honoring him for his rhetoric about a new American approach to diplomacy only reinforces the meme of his critics that he's merely a man of rhetoric...

TIME (again, we're talking about TIME Magazine, not some right-wing outfit) also has some nifty photo shops of other awards that President Obama has "earned".

Tell-All Book: Bush Brags He "Redefined" Republican Party to Exclude "Conservative Movement"

I'm not big on "kiss and tell" books from insiders, but this is somewhat interesting. Ed Morrissey reports:

During the 2008 CPAC convention, George Bush only mentioned the word “conservative” once, in the closing — and apparently that was no accident. A new book by the man who wrote the speech for Bush, staffer Matt Latimer, retells the story in Speechless: Tales of a White House Survivor, and Byron York relates it in today’s Washington Examiner. When Latimer tried to include supportive language about the conservative movement, Bush attempted to set his speechwriter straight:

“What is this movement you keep talking about in the speech?” the president asked Latimer.

Latimer explained that he meant the conservative movement — the movement that gave rise to groups like CPAC.

Bush seemed perplexed. Latimer elaborated a bit more. Then Bush leaned forward, with a point to make.

“Let me tell you something,” the president said. “I whupped Gary Bauer’s ass in 2000. So take out all this movement stuff. There is no movement.”

Bush seemed to equate the conservative movement — the astonishing growth of conservative political strength that took place in the decades after Barry Goldwater’s disastrous defeat in 1964 — with the fortunes of Bauer, the evangelical Christian activist and former head of the Family Research Council whose 2000 presidential campaign went nowhere.

Now it was Latimer who looked perplexed. Bush tried to explain.

“Look, I know this probably sounds arrogant to say,” the president said, “but I redefined the Republican Party.”

I don’t think there’s any doubt about that last statement. Before Bush’s election, the Republican majorities in Congress had worked themselves into a role of fiscal responsibility and a check on Bill Clinton’s more expansive notions of government. After Bush took office, however, the two branches of government went on a spending spree, and not coincidentally a lobbyist lovefest, that threw out the GOP’s credibility on fiscal responsibility in six short years. Bush and his big-spending policies (and K Street strategy) set the stage for the Democrats to seize control of Congress in the 2006 midterms and a Democratic takeover of the White House last year.

Many of us admired Bush for his stalwart policies on national security and the war. But starting in 2002, we began to figure out that Bush was no conservative on domestic policy, but instead at best a centrist, and probably more of a Rockefeller Republican, with one big exception: abortion...

[Read the whole thing]

My Comments:
“I redefined the Republican Party.”

Yeah, how's that working out for ya there, Dubya? Better yet, how's that working out for your party. YOU are responsible for the largest Democrat majorities in Congress in decades, as well as for the current occupant of the Oval Office being one of the most liberal, and certainly the most pro-abortion, Presidents ever. That ALL comes back on you.

But you did do the "conservative movement" a huge favor. You showed, once and for all, that conservatives and Republicans are not the same thing. I will always admire your stalwart stands on life issues such as abortion and ESCR. And while you deserve credit for giving us a hopefully lasting legacy in Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito, we will never forget that you're also the master practitioner of cronyism who tried to pawn off Harriet Miers on us with your patented "Trust me."

If what this tell-all reveals is anywhere close to the truth, you have reaffirmed our refusal to just trust you on the Miers pick. Good riddance to you, Mr. President. Enjoy your retirement, and please never bother us again.


UPDATE
The Cranky Conservative offers his take: "This should go over well".

The Problem of 9-11 "Truthers"

Today, Jonah Goldberg and Dr. Krauthammer nail the left and the "mainstream" media on their 9-11 "truther" hypocrisy.

First, here's Goldberg writing at National Review:

Truthers vs. birthers.

By Jonah Goldberg

... which one is more believable [the "truther" scenario or the "birther scenario]? For the record, I don’t believe either. But it seems to me the “birther” hypothesis is vastly more plausible than the “truther” hypothesis. Politicians lie to advance their careers. You can look it up. Whole governments rarely orchestrate incredibly complex acts of physics, logistics, and mass murder all the while pinning guilt on others (who boast that they acted alone).

***
The question of which scenario is more plausible is neither academic nor trivial. This summer, a host of columnists, commentators, and activists, seemingly taking their cues from a White House and DNC public-relations offensive, declared that the rise of the “birthers” was a fatal indictment of modern conservatism and the Republican party. The refusal of the birthers to give up their cockamamie theory was proof that the GOP had succumbed to the “paranoid style.” Indeed, according to some liberal commentators, the birthers were the potential wellspring for a nascent Nazi movement in America. Never mind that the vast majority of leading Republicans and conservatives — from Newt Gingrich to Ann Coulter — rejected the birthers categorically.

***
In July, the popular left-wing website FiredogLake couldn’t let go of the birther bit. One post — titled “The Republican Party is the Birther Party, and it’s dragging them down” — made much of the fact that 28 percent of Republicans, according to one poll, do not believe that Obama is a natural-born citizen. This week, the site’s founder, Jane Hamsher, was disgusted that [now-resigned "Green Jobs Czar" Van] Jones was “thrown under the bus,” even though he subscribed to trutherism, a view that “35 (percent) of Democrats believed as of 2007.”

Got that? Belief in an implausible conspiracy is a cancer on the GOP. Even greater belief in an even more implausible conspiracy [by the Democrats] is proof that it’s mainstream.

Apologies for Jones and trutherism appeared instantly on the sites of the left-wing flagship magazines The Nation, The New Republic, and elsewhere. The New York Times and Newsweek deliberately distorted what the truthers believe in order to make Jones look more reasonable and his critics more unreasonable...

And now for Dr. Krauthammer:

... In the White House no more. Why? He's gone for one reason and one reason only. You can't sign a petition demanding not one but four investigations of the charge that the Bush administration deliberately allowed Sept. 11, 2001 -- i.e., collaborated in the worst massacre ever perpetrated on American soil -- and be permitted in polite society, let alone have a high-level job in the White House.

Unlike the other stuff (see above), this is no trivial matter. It's beyond radicalism, beyond partisanship. It takes us into the realm of political psychosis, a malignant paranoia that, unlike the Marxist posturing, is not amusing. It's dangerous. In America, movements and parties are required to police their extremes. Bill Buckley did that with Birchers. Liberals need to do that with "truthers."

You can no more have a truther in the White House than you can have a Holocaust denier -- a person who creates a hallucinatory alternative reality in the service of a fathomless malice.

***
No need to worry about Jones, however. Great career move. He's gone from marginal loon to liberal martyr. His speaking fees have just doubled. It's only a matter of time before he gets his own show on MSNBC.

But on the eighth anniversary of 9/11 -- a day when there were no truthers among us, just Americans struck dumb by the savagery of what had been perpetrated on their innocent fellow citizens -- a decent respect for the memory of that day requires that truthers, who derangedly desecrate it, be asked politely to leave. By everyone.

Amen.

Washington Post "Style" Writer Proves to be a Partisan Hack

Writing at The Weekly Standard blog, Mary Katharine Ham notes a telling double standard at the Nation's Capital's favorite brand of fishwrap:

Washington Post Style writer Robin Givhan has a reputation for occasionally channeling her political predilections in petty fashion critiques of certain Washington actors. George Bush's hair is a "dull gray thatch," but Kerry should "gloat" over his "silver" mop, and John Edwards' mane "demands to be nuzzled."

***
This week, the Pulitzer-winning critic waxes predictably poetic about the be-Dockered and deck-shoed style of the Kennedys, obviously nostalgic for the "look of rich tradition" and refinement embodied by the kids from Hyannisport. She bemoans the inability of the modern American politician to wear it without apology (or, rather, the American people's alleged inability to countenance a look of easy affluence).

She wasn't nearly as nostalgic in her pettiest of attacks, in 2005's "An image a little too carefully coordinated," which took aim at John Roberts, his wife, and his two knee-high children. What was their sin, you might ask? Flip-flops at the White House? Tony Hawk t-shirts and Ninja Turtle shorts? No, their transgression was apparently trying to achieve "refinement" without being Democrats. What was the look of rich tradition on the Kennedys became "syrupy nostalgia" on Roberts' family:

When President Bush announced his choice for the next associate justice of the Supreme Court, it was hard not to marvel at the 1950s-style tableau vivant that was John Roberts and his family.

On the Kennedys, such fashion was a "style of dress that might best be described as both aristocratic and democratic," a mix Givhan regrets is "virtually impossible today, at least on the political stage."

But when Roberts' son Jack wore an "ensemble that calls to mind John F. "John-John" Kennedy Jr.," Givhan declared it "not classic" but "old-fashioned. These clothes are Old World, old money and a cut above the light-up/shoe-buying hoi polloi."

The verdict, on the Kennedys: "The modern fashion industry has argued that clothes can make a man look rich. Those images of the Kennedys recall the days when it was assumed that a man did that for his clothes."

[More]

Perhaps I'm a "Boor" for Pointing This Out, But This Makes Bush's Disgusting "Joke" at the Expense of Karla Faye Tucker Seem Tame by Comparison

Details here and here.

And, just so you know, this story is not something manufactured by a detractor bent on speaking ill of the dead, but was related by a FRIEND of the late Senator - former editor of Newsweek and New York Times Magazine and author of the book Ted Kennedy: The Dream That Never Died, Ed Klein.


UPDATED



UPDATE #2
What's not to laugh at? The horrifying details.

Speaking of Propaganda ...

"... It indicts Mapes and by extension Rather (who apparently couldn’t be bothered to check on the documents or story on his own) in a plot to deliberately conduct a character assassination from a broadcast booth, in an explicit attempt to manipulate an election. It should be the final nail in the coffins of their credibility, and it will be interesting to see if anyone other than Goldberg reports it."

Peter Wehner and Michael Gerson Offer Their Recipe for "Republican Revival"

I suppose it should come as no surprise that these two key figures in the Bush Administration should offer more of the same shite that's responsible for getting the Republicans (and this country) into the mess they're currently in in the first place.

Nothing new to see here; just move right along.

A Double Standard on Faith-Based Initiatives

The Palin-hating elitist Kathleen Parker points out the media's double standard in how it has covered faith-based initiatives under Presidents Bush and Obama (I suppose even a stopped clock is accurate twice a day):

Oh, for those halcyon days when our biggest worry was whether the federal "faith-based" office might encourage a homeless person to find Jesus.

Remember that?

Hardly anyone talks much about the faith-based initiative begun by President George W. Bush and expanded by President Obama. And there was hardly a murmur about Obama's appointee to head the program, the Rev. Joshua DuBois, a 27-year-old Pentecostal preacher.

A comparison of how the media have treated the two presidents and their faith-based programs during the first six months of their administrations (2001 and 2009) is the subject of a new study by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

The findings suggest a very different standard applied to each president.

***
"Sure, there's always a lot going on in Washington with any new administration. But can you imagine the outcry if Bush had hired a 27-year-old Pentecostal preacher to run the faith-based office and surrounded him with a 25-member advisory board made up of people largely sympathetic to his policy agenda?"

In fact, Bush appointed University of Pennsylvania political science professor John DiIulio, a Democrat, to run his program. Cromartie maintains that the greater attention to Bush was because the media were suspicious that his faith-based initiative was an attempt to install a theocracy.

***
Obama, who, in fact, invokes Jesus in speeches more often than Bush did, according to an analysis by Politico, not only embraced his predecessor's initiative but has given it the loaves-and-fishes treatment by expanding the mission. As described by DuBois in a video posted on the White House blog, the office's mission extends even to "figuring out the role of faith-based organizations in combating global climate change."

Why does Obama get a pass?

In part, because he's not Bush. But also, perhaps, because the media are more approving of the issues and policies Obama wants to advance.

[More]

My Comments:
I'm actually surprised Parker gives a damn. You'd think that a well-educated sophisticate like her would know the difference between those safe liberal Christians like Obama and those dangerous far-right fanatical religious nutcases that supported George W. Bush.

Creative Minority Reports Exposes Hypocrisy of National Catholic Reporter

National Catholic Reporter is "outraged" that someone would say something mean about the President. However, such "outrage" is blatantly selective, given the publication's own past with making "outrageous" comments about the previous occupant of the Oval Office.

Matthew Archbold does the legwork to expose the hypocrisy that, apparently, no one at National Catholic Reporter imagined would be done. Not that it takes much work to expose that bunch as complete frauds.

But I must say that the way in which Michael Sean Winters pivots and turns what begins as a (perhaps deserved) blast against TV commentator Glenn Beck into a wholly gratuitous diatribe against Prof. Robert George is an impressive sight to behold. One doesn't aquire that knack for tenuous guilt by association without lots of practice. It has to be finely honed into the artform as practiced by folks like Mikey and his good friend Tony A. Indeed, it would seem that Mikey and his good friend Tu Quoque Tony must be comparing notes.

Obama Adopts Bush Policy of Indefinite Detention

For the Catholics who thought they were voting for "hope and change" (or, at least, who claimed to believe that's what we were getting):

... Obama has essentially endorsed the detention policies of George Bush without the courtesy of apologizing for slandering him over the last two and a half years. Obama and his allies screeched endlessly about indefinite detentions, and not just in Gitmo, either. They specifically railed against the holding of terrorists without access to civil courts in military detention facilities around the world, specifically Bagram, but in general as well. Not even six months into his term of office, Obama realized that Bush had it right all along.

Did he even have the grace to admit that? No. Instead, the White House took the cowardly method of a late-Friday leak to let people know that Obama had adopted the Bush policy all over again. Barack Obama just appeared at a press conference this last Tuesday to discuss Iran, energy policy, and ObamaCare, where he could have told the national press that he had changed his mind on indefinite detention. Instead, he kept his mouth shut, and had his media staff whisper it into phones to a couple of White House favorites in the press.

It’s a shameful performance, and the measure of the man in charge...

Kmiec Tells Another Lie in Service of Obama

Jill Stanek has the story:

During last night's "discussion" between pro-life/pro-Obama Prof. Doug Kmiec and pro-life/anti-Obama Prof. Robert George, Kmiec repeated a false statement.

Kmiec said the number of abortions went UP under President George W. Bush. On Fox News Sunday May 17 Fr. Richard McBrien, a pro-Obama Notre Dame theology professor, made the same erroneous claim in a debate with Fr. Frank Pavone of Priests for Life.

My friend, Professor (and statistical analyzer) Michael New, wants to correct the record:

The data do not bear this out. In fact the most recent data from both the Centers for Disease Control and the Alan Guttmacher Institute (research arm of Planned Parenthood) indicate that abortions fell during George W. Bush's presidency.

According to the Alan Guttmacher Institute between 2000 and 2005 the number of abortions declined from 1,312,990 to 1,206,200 (a decline of 8.1%, data obtained from all 50 states).According to the Alan Guttmacher Institute the abortion rate (abortions per thousand women between 15 and 44) between 2000 and 2005 declined from 21.3 to 19.4.

[More]

Previous Pro Ecclesia post on this subject:
Catholic News Agency: Catholics in Alliance "Abortion Reduction" Study Found to be Faulty - Social Welfare Policies Have Little Effect on Abortion

Archbishop Chaput: "Abortion Reduction Strategies" Ignore Half of the Problem [UPDATED]

Catholic World Report: "Douglas Kmiec and His Misinformation Offensive for Barack Obama"

Prof. Robert George: Notion that Obama's Policies Will Reduce Abortion is "Delusional"

National Catholic Register: "Pro-Life Candidates Save Lives" [UPDATED]

Archbishop Chaput: Kmiec Doing a "Disservice to the Church"

USCCB Sets Record Straight Re: Catholic Stance on Overturning Roe

Mainstream Media Compliant in Obama's "Faith Outreach" Pitch

Debate Over at Amy's: Should Catholics Work for Legal Restrictions on Abortion?

Bishop Blair Responds to Gaillardetz Opinion Regarding Roe v. Wade

Cardinal Rigali's Statement for Respect Life Sunday

Deacon Fournier Puts Smack Down on Prof. Kmiec

Abortion Rate Falls ... Again

Mark Stricherz: "Why the Democratic Abortion Strategy is Worse"

U.S. Catholic Bishops: "You Can't Reduce Abortions by Promoting Abortions"

Blackadder: "Would Overturning Roe Reduce the Abortion Rate?"

"Poverty and Abortion: A New Analysis"

Number of Abortions Lowest in Decades

National Review Online: Mainstream Media Continues to Distort on Abortion

Pro-Life Quote of the Day

Conservatives, Liberals, and Supreme Court Picks

Matthew Archbold asks "Dude, Where's My Judge?":

... now hardly anybody is talking about it in the Catholic or even conservative blogosphere. And there's a reason why. We have no doubt that whoever President Obama picks it'll be a stark raving pro-choice, anti gun, anti-constructionist, pro-eminent domain, anti-religious conscience liberal. Names? We don't need to know their names. Anyone who Obama picks is essentially the same to us. There might be some who are outside the bounds but for the most part we expect someone who is essentially the anti-Scalia in most things. Liberals are very unlikely to be disappointed in Obama's choice.

Now how come every time a Republican President gets a pick we're all on pins and needles wondering who it's going to be? It's like the scene in the movie where the hero has to decide whether to cut the blue wire or the red wire. It's because we don't trust Republicans to do the right thing by us. In fact, we're scared to death because so many times before, Republican Presidents have clipped the blue wire. AND KABOOM. Sandra Day O' Connor. Kaboom. Justice Souter. KA-FREAKING-BOOM. SO many times after a Republican picks a judges it leaves many of us saying, "Dude, where's my conservative judge?" In fact, the fact that Souter was a Supreme Court Justice at all is enough of a reason not to trust Republicans with judges.

***
So that's why I'm jealous of liberals. They sleep soundly never fearing the ka-boom of disappointment in a judge's nomination.

[More]

My Comments:
One additional thought: Not only do we on the right know that whoever Pres. Obama picks will be liberal, we don't really begrudge him that fact. He won the election, and elections have consequences. He is entitled to pick judges whose jurisprudence matches his own views of the law and the Constitution. We don't like it, but we recognize that that's his perogative.

What chafes me is that the left and the media don't believe conservative Presidents should have the same leeway in picking judges of their choosing. They apparently believe in "Heads I win, tails you lose", also known as the one-way ratchet view of constitutional jurisprudence whereby "conservative" precedents can and should be overturned, while decisions that embody liberal principles are sacrosanct. This view posits that when a Supreme Court Justice retires, the replacement cannot be anyone that is arguably to the "right" of the retiring Justice.

Moral Arrogance

ESCR proponent Charles Krauthammer explains why he is glad he declined President Obama's invitation to attend the signing ceremony for the Executive Order lifting President Bush's ban on federal funding of ESCR:

... the ostentatious issuance of a memorandum on "restoring scientific integrity to government decision-making" -- would have made me walk out.

Restoring? The implication, of course, is that while Obama is guided solely by science, Bush was driven by dogma, ideology and politics.

What an outrage. Bush's nationally televised stem cell speech was the most morally serious address on medical ethics ever given by an American president. It was so scrupulous in presenting the best case for both his view and the contrary view that until the last few minutes, the listener had no idea where Bush would come out.

Obama's address was morally unserious in the extreme. It was populated, as his didactic discourses always are, with a forest of straw men. Such as his admonition that we must resist the "false choice between sound science and moral values." Yet, exactly 2 minutes and 12 seconds later he went on to declare that he would never open the door to the "use of cloning for human reproduction."

Does he not think that a cloned human would be of extraordinary scientific interest? And yet he banned it.

Is he so obtuse as not to see that he had just made a choice of ethics over science? Yet, unlike Bush, who painstakingly explained the balance of ethical and scientific goods he was trying to achieve, Obama did not even pretend to make the case why some practices are morally permissible and others not.

This is not just intellectual laziness. It is the moral arrogance of a man who continuously dismisses his critics as ideological while he is guided exclusively by pragmatism (in economics, social policy, foreign policy) and science in medical ethics...

[More]

Previous Pro Ecclesia posts on this subject:
Obama Culture of Death Update™: President Lifts Ban on Federal ESCR Funding

President Bush to Veto Stem Cell Bill

Never Mind Church Teaching, Catholic Nancy Pelosi Says ESCR "a Gift of God"

Bush Vows to Veto Stem Cell Bill Passed in Democrat-Controlled Senate

Senate Approves Stem Cell Bill - Congress Still Short Votes Needed to Override President's Promised Veto

"These Boys and Girls Are NOT Spare Parts"

“Mr. President: Veto This Bill”

What a Bush Veto Would Mean for Stem Cells

Rove: Bush Will Veto Embryonic Stem Cell Bill

Meet the New Boss ...

... same as the old boss (except for the fact that the new boss has the additional attribute of being an unapologetic crusader for the culture of death).

A Farewell to President Bush [UPDATED]

At Catholics in the Public Square, Christopher Blosser links to George Weigel's piece at Catholic Exchange thanking President Bush (Chris has cross-posted at American Catholic, with the expected vitriol in response by the usual suspects):

... I should like to praise him for his steadfast support of the pro-life cause, domestically and internationally. Thanks to President Bush, we have two more Supreme Court justices who likely know that Roe vs. Wade was terrible constitutional judging, and dozens more federal district court and appellate court judges with similar convictions. Thanks to President Bush, the U.S. government drew an important moral line in stem cell research, even as the administration accelerated bioethically sound research strategies that have produced real results. Internationally, the Bush administration stood firm against the Gadarene rush to use international law to declare abortion an international human right and a necessary component of the emancipation of women; as one senior Vatican official put it to me, a year ago, “We know we’re never going to have another American administration as supportive of our core issues as the Bush administration has been.”

I should like to praise the President for his work to rid Africa of the plagues of AIDS and malaria and to relieve the suffering of those afflicted with those awful diseases. George W. Bush may be an object of ridicule in certain U.S. zip codes; he is the subject of veneration among those in the “bottom billion” whose lives his policies have saved or enhanced.

I should like to thank the President for offering Pope Benedict XVI such a warm welcome on the South Lawn of the White House on April 15, 2008 — a welcome that ought to have put paid, once and for all, to the notion that there is something incompatible between robust Catholic faith and a mature gratitude for the political miracle of American democracy.

I should like to thank President Bush for his personal decency, manifest in his (unpublicized) personal attention to our wounded and to the families of the fallen; in his refusal to become bitter in the face of outrageous slander; and in his calm amidst tribulations that most of us can’t imagine. I should like to thank him for his unapologetic confession of Christian faith, and for his testimony to the importance that prayer plays in his life. And I should like to thank him for not giving a hoot about the mockery that such a witness draws from a secularized mass media, from American high culture, from cranks like Michael Moore, and from Euro-secularist snobs who spent eight years sneering at the evangelical cowboy in the White House while their continent was dying from spiritual boredom.

[More]

UPDATE (20 January)
Christopher also adds this in the comments at Rich Leonardi's blog:

The blogger at Wheat & Weeds covers a list of President Bush's pro-life accomplishments during his two terms. Be sure to read as well her roundup: George Bush and the Least of These.

UPDATE #2 (20 January)
The Cranky Conservative adds his thoughts at "George Bush's America":

... There is much to admire about George Bush. From a character standpoint, he is top notch. He never allowed himself to be governed by the polls (perhaps he could have fared to do so a bit more). He always did what he honestly believed was best for this country. Pro-lifers have complained about his supposed lack of commitment to the cause, but it’s hard to think of a President who actually did more for the pro-life cause than President Bush. His Supreme Court appointments will most likely prove to be better than any of his Republican predecessors in the post-New Deal era. And while I sometimes cringe when I see people mention that there have been no terrorist attacks on US soil since 9/11 - well, there have been no terrorist attacks on US soil since 9/11. Make of that what you will.

His failings are obvious. Conservatives have every reason to be chagrined by his lack of conservative leadership. As Rush Limbaugh has pointed out countless times, he is not a movement conservative. His “big government” conservatism was not conservative in the traditional sense of the word. He failed to use the “bully pulpit” effectively. His stubborness was as much a failing as a virtue, as was his loyalty to his subordinates.

In the end, what strikes me most about the Bush presidency is how much it and the man himself are a reflection on America itself. His basic goodness, his idealism, his down-to-earth wisdom, and his sense of compassion are all reflective of the best of the American character. Bush’s failure, at least in terms of popularity, is a reflection of one of America’s less endearing characteristics. The very idealism that motivates Bush and motivates much of our country leads to disillusionment very swiftly when things don’t go right immediately. Americans expect everything, and they expect it now, and they expect it without experiencing a lot of pain or sacrifice. The same wild-eyed enthusiasm that prompted most Americans to support the Iraq war initially turned sour when Americans realized that there actually would be bloodshed. Instead of a bloodless war that ended with an Iraqi state full of blooming flowers and earthly grandeur, we got several thousand American soldiers killed, many thousands more innocent Iraqis killed (not to count thousands upon thousands of terrorists killed - that does not fit the established narrative), and a badly managed war that did not start going well until after most Americans had given up on it.

I have little doubt that history will treat Bush kindly. President Hopey Changey will turn out to provide a lot less hope and change than anticipated, and Bush won’t look so bad in hindsight. Whatever his failings, Americans always thought well of the man, and I’d expect an almost instant re-appreciation of George Bush the man. Heck, if we can speak well of an egotistical jerk like Carter after he left office, surely we can treat an actually decent human being well now that he is longer occupying the Oval Office.

[More]

UPDATE #3 (20 January)
The Anchoress says "Thank you, President Bush".


UPDATE #4 (20 January)
Ed Morrissey offers his appreciation in "Goodbye, Mr. Bush".

A Couple of Proclamations from President Bush [UPDATED]

From the blog for the Son Rise Morning Show:

Today's News...

President Bush has declared today Religious Freedom Day....

and he has proclaimed Sunday to be National Sanctity of Human Life Day

My Comments:
I wonder if we'll be seeing the same thing next year from President Obama? Maybe we'll see the first, bet I highly doubt we'll see the second at any point during the next 4 (and possibly 8) years.


UPDATE
From Fr. Z: "Will Pres. Obama react to Pres. Bush’s proclamation of “National Sanctity of Human Life Day”?"