Stephen Harper pockets communion wafer: “Worse than kidnapping”?

Canada’s Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, showed his ignorance of church etiquette by attending mass, putting his hand out for a wafer, then slipping it into his pocket and leaving the church with it. This is behavior that has been condemned by Catholics as being “Worse than kidnapping,” since they believe that the  magic cracker is now literally Jesus–at least that’s what they fulminated last year when a student taking a wafer back to his pew to show it to his seatmate was assaulted by other churchgoers in an attempt to make him drop the cracker.

Domestic terrorist murders doctor in Kansas

An anti-abortion terrorist with links to Operation Rescue has shot down a doctor in church. The irony is fairly thick, here. The religiously motivated murderer hits his unarmed target, who was an usher at his church while his wife was singing in the choir. The Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada responds to the news.

Dr. Tiller was one of the very few doctors in North America who was able to perform late abortions on women whose pregnancies had gone wrong, or whose lives depended on the ability to get an abortion at a later stage. Women travelled from all over, including Canada, to access his services. Dr. Tiller has long been a target of anti-abortion protests, mostly by “Operation Rescue.” He suffered continuous harassment, including death threats, baseless lawsuits, pickets at his clinic and staff residences, vicious slander, and a previous assassination attempt in 1993, when he was shot in both arms outside his clinic by anti-abortion protester Rachelle Shannon.

“I’m in shock, I’m completely devastated. He was a friend of mine,” said
Joyce Arthur, Coordinator of the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada. “Dr. Tiller was called a saint by many of his patients, and ‘Saint George’ by abortion providers across the nation. His incredible courage was inspirational.”

This was a doctor who performed abortions for women who were in danger of permanent injury if they continued the pregnancy or whose prospective child would have been damaged or suffering and perhaps doomed.There were three doctors in the U.S.; that’s one for every 50,000,000 women. And that should tell you how rare and non-frivolous a late abortion is. Most doctors won’t do one after four months because at that point, abortion is more dangerous than childbirth.

Outraged members of the public are sending money to support abortion, abortion funds for women who need financial help, and especially Medical Students for Choice, who opt to learn techniques of safe abortion in medical school.

Minnesotans call for Senator Franken to be seated.

ASSOCIATED PRESS Nancy Gertner (right) joins other Minnesotans at a … – Washington Times

Senator Nancy Gertner and other Minnesotans rally at St. Paul MN in May. She feels that Minnesota is under-represented on agricultural issues without both its senators.

The people are asking for Norm Coleman to drop his lawsuits and protests and let Senator Franken be seated after seven months of delays. Senator Franken won the election, the recount, and the count of votes that both parties agreed to include. Coleman now wants to count another small batch of votes, although they are unlikely to change the result. Coleman notoriously suggested that Franken concede the election before all the votes were counted. The narrow margin of Franken’s win triggered an automatic recount. Coleman asked Franken to concede instead, to save taxpayers’ money. Now that he’s losing, he wants to spend taxpayers’ money until the cows come home. Can we spell “S-O-R-E    L-O-S-E-R”?

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Great Global Warming Swindle exposed

This isn’t new, but someone has done a very nice job of dissecting a British documentary and showing its misinformation, fraudulent graphs, and false data: Great Global Warming Swindle complaint to the U.K. Office of Communications.

Among the breeches of the broadcasting code were misrepresenting the purpose of the film when interviewing; falsification of graphs or data or quotations from reports; selectively editing interviews to misrepresent the positions of the interviewees; making serious (and often false) allegations without giving those accused an opportunity to respond; use of logical fallacies “straw man,” “ad hominem,” and “non sequitur” by a public broadcaster; recycling of long-discredited myths; combining interview and narrator statements to make a misleading narrative; using data that is thirty years out of date; and making false statements.

Left, misrepresented data; right, actual global warming

Death for dishonor?

A woman being held in a prison in Laos has been told that if she says she was raped in prison, she will be executed by firing squad after the baby is born. Baby? What baby? She has been in prison for eight months and she is five months pregnant.

“British inmate must deny rape to live”

Samantha Orobator, who is five months pregnant, was arrested in the capital Vientiane in August for allegedly importing about 680g of heroin, the Daily Mail reports.

She was immediately transported to Phonthong prison, a squalid jail where guards are reportedly known to coerce female inmates into sex.

Laos authorities expect Orobator, who goes on trial this week, to testify that she was not raped inside the prison.

If she refuses, the London woman will be tried again after she has given birth — when she will not be immune from the death penalty because she is pregnant.

A Laos government spokesman appeared defensive when asked who fathered the baby, the newspaper reported.

“It is a mystery — maybe it is a baby from the sky,” the spokesman, Kenthong Nuanthasing, said.

“We don’t want the outside world to blame us.”

Orobator is said to have already written a letter stating she has not been raped or had sex while she was in prison.

Her lawyer Anna Morris flew to Vientiane last week but has so far been refused access to see her, the newspaper said.

Ah. So she has been convicted of carrying drugs. She might not have known that they were there. Or she might. I guess that can get you a death penalty in Laos. But, like a female pirate in the old days, she can “plead her belly” and serve time in prison. (I don’t know what that meant for pirates; maybe they survived only until the baby was born or maybe they raised a child in prison.)

However, Laos is jealous of its good reputation. So even though she was in Phonthong prison, and even if she doesn’t implicate anyone, if she says she was raped in prison she’ll be whisked off for a second trial on the same charges when the baby is born, and this time she’ll get the firing squad.

If that ever happens to me, I hope my country will ask to transfer me home to serve my sentence in a nice Canadian prison. But it’s not likely. I can just imagine our government saying, “You can have her! Not our problem. It’s your justice system — we wouldn’t dream of interfering.” Right, Mr. Harper?