I guess that's what you would expect after the death of meaning!

Call me ignorant and naive, but may I ask why the US is negotiating with Iran? Were we asked or delegated to do so, or are we just being the sucker who passes by and meddles in that which he has no business?

Aaron, I need to know where you got that story.

I am a former ER doctor who lives outside of Colville, WA, and worked in the Emergency Room there.

I think I know this woman!

No brainer: SCOTUS victory. It's all about the Constitution. In to the gap, SCOTUS!

It derives from the fact that during the post war years when Federal price controls were firmly in place over all industries, corporations were allowed to deduct health care premiums for employees as a business expense (i.e. paying these benfits in "pre tax" dollars). This allowed them to offer this "benefit" in lieu of a higher wage in order to attract a higher quality of labor. It is also why unions tend to have the richest insurance benefit packages.

Under current tax law individuals pay for insurance in "after tax" dollars. In order to level  the playing field for the individual, either the employed person who recieves benefits from the employer is taxed as if the benefit was a wage, or the self-employed or employed without benefits person gets to deduct some portion of their insurance costs from their taxes.

Clearly the point of the pro-life abortion anecdote is that religious conservatives are the worst kind of hypocrites and will just naturally apostasize when caught in their sin. There are those, no doubt, who would do so (and I am not one to judge knowing the depth of my own depravity) but the greater number would, I am sure, restrain their lusts in order to avoid such a pregnancy, or choose life and confess and expose their sin in order to not compound it.

Nice to know you're never to old to come out of the closet.

Bless you for standing up for and clearly articulating the principles of liberty. Well done.

 Let us not forget that at the time of the Constitution, and shortly thereafter when Tocqueville visited this nation, the general government was extremely limited in size and scope. Indeed, that great man pointed out that the vast majority of American citizens had no contact whatsoever with any agent of the "Federal" (as we now call it) government in their entire lifetime. We are much closer now to the France of Tocqueville’s day wherein at that time contact with the agents of the French government was an everyday occurrence.

For most Americans of that time, the State and County governments were the most immediate and important locus of power, and most of those jurisdictions required property ownership to exercise political rights.

I have been listening to a recent podcast on Liberty Law Talk featuring our own John Yoo discussing the issues of Transnationalism. Check it out here.

MFR: And neither Robert nor Aodhan is a dummy, so they must mean something by it.

Agreed. I hope they will explain.

MFR: But maybe my idea of aesthetics is different from the Leftist idea of aesthetics?

Is there a Leftist idea of asethetics? To have an aesthetic mustn't one have a concept of transcendence?

Like it!

Beautiful post, Robert; one of your best. But modern liberals are but the most recent manifestation of deniers of truth and good. One of my favorite verses from the Gospel of John, Ch 18:37:  Then Pilate said to him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.” Pilate said to him, “What is truth?”
(John 18:37ESV)

The question is, how do those of us who have faith in the good and truth sell that truth in the marketplace of ideas? My personal belief is that we make manifest this faith in our actions and pray for the Holy Spirit to move in society to open the eyes of the blind, by faith, to a transcendent God, in whom we live and move and have our being.

Acutally, God is in the Constitution: "Done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven."

"What to do about it?"... "run away, run away, run away".