Month: March 2017

Race, Gender and Class Take Precedence Over Justice (SCOTUS)

Published by Papa Giorgio

Chief Justice John Roberts and justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented:

  • “Today, with the admirable intention of providing justice for one criminal defendant, the court not only pries open the door; it rules that respecting the privacy of the jury room, as our legal system has done for centuries, violates the constitution,” [….] “it is questionable whether our system of trial by jury can endure this attempt to perfect it.” ~ Samuel Alito

Here is the WALL STREET JOURNAL article Dennis was reading from:

For 250 years U.S. law has protected jury verdicts from being overturned due to juror misconduct or bias. A liberal Supreme Court majority has now carved out an exception for racial bias, and in an ill-defined way with no limiting principle that is likely to damage the jury system.

After a Colorado jury convicted a Mexican man of sexual harassment, two jurors signed affidavits that a retired police officer on the jury had expressed racial animus during deliberations. The juror was reported to have stated that “nine times out of 10 Mexican men were guilty of being aggressive toward women and young girls,” among other slurs. The defendant’s counsel sought to overturn the conviction based on racial animus but was denied by the trial judge.

The Sixth Amendment guarantees a trial by an impartial jury, and the legal system affords numerous protections against juror bias and misconduct. Jurors can be screened for bias prior to selection. The judge and counsel can discipline juror misconduct during the trial, and jurors may report on their peers before a verdict is rendered. Any single juror’s bias can also be policed by 11 others. 

The no-impeachment rule rooted in English common law also shields verdicts from being challenged. As Justice Anthony Kennedy explained in the 5-3 majority opinion this week in Pena-Rodriguez v. Colorado, the rule “promotes full and vigorous discussion by jurors by providing considerable assurance that after being discharged they will not be summoned to recount their deliberations” or otherwise harassed. It also “gives stability and finality to verdicts.”

Yet Justice Kennedy joined the Court’s four liberals in Pena-Rodriguez to overturn that standard for accusations of racial bias. The Justice writes for the majority that racial bias is such “a familiar and recurring evil that, if left unaddressed, would risk systemic injury to the administration of justice.”

Pena-Rodriguez declares a new racial standard for overturning jury verdicts that was rejected by Colorado and has no constitutional basis. It also doesn’t establish a bright-line test of what constitutes unacceptable racial prejudice. Judges are apparently supposed to know it when they see it. “Not every offhand comment indicating racial bias or hostility will justify setting aside the no-impeachment bar,” Justice Kennedy concedes, but that ambiguous caveat won’t prevent endless complaints and appeals.

As Justice Samuel Alito muses in dissent, would a micro-aggression such as “this macho type” be permissible? How about positive racial bias? Take Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s famous comment that a wise Latina woman would “more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.” And what about religious prejudice or sexism that also receive equal protection under the Constitution?

“Although the Court tries to limit the degree of intrusion, it is doubtful that there are principled grounds for preventing the expansion of today’s holding,” writes Justice Alito. “Nothing in the text or history of the [Sixth] Amendment or in the inherent nature of the jury trial right suggests that the extent of the protection provided by the Amendment depends on the nature of a jury’s partiality or bias.”

Justice Kennedy counters that at least 16 jurisdictions have adopted a rule for racial-bias exceptions. But Congress explicitly rejected such an exception in 1975, and so have two-thirds of states. The Supreme Court had heretofore rejected exceptions to the no-impeachment rule.

The ruling is a step toward corrupting juries with political standards based on the progressive obsessions with race, gender and class. It also continues Justice Kennedy’s long march away from constitutionally neutral standards on race. “As this Court said some years ago,” Justice Alito concludes, “it is questionable whether our system of trial by jury can endure this attempt to perfect it.”

 

 

The Selectively -Perpetually Offended- Leftist

Published by Papa Giorgio

The “Sage” r-e-a-l-l-y got into his role as the “whinny liberal 3rd-person actor this episode. Very funny! The topic is Ben Carson and his comments about slavery, and slaves being immigrants that has caused all of the MSM and Hollywood into a dither. There is one problem with this however… NONE of this “outrage” was present during the 11-times Obama said essentially the same thing. What this does however is offer a stark example of the hatred by the Left… dare I say “selective racism/bigotry”… of conservative black persons.

The Women’s Strike About Communism, Not About Women

Published by Papa Giorgio

Dennis Prager discusses the issue of radical Leftism and the useful idiot that follow these people. The term “useful idiot” in political parlance means:

  • In political jargon, a useful idiot is a person perceived as a propagandist for a cause whose goals they are not fully aware of, and who is used cynically by the leaders of the cause

Dennis reads from a NEW YORK TIMES article where Tithi Bhattacharya, a member of the strike’s organizing committee, says the strike on Wednesday focuses on rejecting the “systemic violence of an economic system that is rapidly leaving women behind.” Continuing, she notes:

“This is the day to emphasize the unity between work done in the so-called formal economy and the domestic sphere, the public sphere and the private sphere, and how most working women have to straddle both,” says Ms. Bhattacharya. “Labor is understood to be work only at the point of production, but as women we know that both society and policy makers invisibilize the work that women do.” The strike calls for women to withhold labor, paid or unpaid, from the United States economy to show how important their contributions are.

The platform of the strike seeks to elevate the demands of the majority of women, not simply the demands of the loudest or most privileged women.

“The language of feminism in recent years has been used to talk about ‘Lean In’ feminism,” says Ms. Bhattacharya. “We do not want a world where women become C.E.O.s, we want a world where there are no C.E.O.s, and wealth is redistributed equally.” This, she explains, is why they decided to convey their “new international feminist movement” around the socialist philosophy of “Feminism for the 99 Percent.”…

Anti-Semitism Narratives Regarding Trump Voters Crumbling…

Published by Papa Giorgio

Just a couple stories to set the “record” straight (really #fakenews). While there are some credible vandalism, like in the Philadelphia cemetery (CNN), what hasn’t been shown is that they were done by anti-Semites. Or if they were by them, if they were Arab or not. In other words, as ours and other Western nations are letting in many Muslims from North Africa and the Middle-East… you will see more of this hatred directed towards Jews. ALSO note that what the media has not trumpeted as loud is the vandalism of a CATHOLIC cemetery as well in Philadelphia. T-h-a-t doesn’t fit the narrative against Trump… since straight white Protestant males are the spawn of the devil.

…Two weeks ago, about a dozen headstones were damaged at a Catholic cemetery in Philadelphia, the Philadelphia mayor’s spokeswoman Lauren Hitt told CNN.

[….]

The Catholic cemetery is about two miles away from the Jewish cemetery….

(CNN)

This seems like it is done by people who hate the Judeo-Christian worldview (like their professors), or may be drunk kids, or maybe Muslims from a Jewish and Christian hating culture, or may be religiously motivated by the occult… WHO KNOWS. At least CNN included this quote from someone they interviewed: “Maybe we’ll never know if this was an anti-Semitic act, but it’s a desecration of a holy site.”

Yep.

Part of the “rising tide of anti-Semitism” Trump is apparently inspiring is exemplified by threats against Jewish Centers. One St. Louis man was arrested for making several threats against Jewish Community Centers in the United States.

So did this man fit the profile of a racist Trump voter emboldened to express his hatred publicly?

Nope.

That fine looking gentleman to the right is a far-Leftist (communist), Bernie Sanders supporting, black man who was pissed at his ex-old-lady.

Another failed narrative is Jewish graveyard vandalism as somehow connected to Donald Trump’s election. Again, while some may be racially motivated, I would make a guess that some of it as well may be motivated by Islam. Or committed by some asshole teens bored and drunk. At any rate, here is an example of the narrative by Democrat leader, Chuck Schumer:

Unfortunately for good ol’ Chuckie Schumer, the NYPD got involved… (H-T Moonbattery)…

…But the NYPD investigated at the cemetery, and said later that the damage to the tombstones were old.

“It was old damage, years if not decades,” old, an NYPD spokesman said. The cemetery had issues with older tombstones in the past, he added.

A man who answered the phone at Washington Cemetery, who gave only his first name, Sam, confirmed there wasn’t vandalism at the cemetery.

“There was not vandalism, it is wrong information,” he said. 

(DNA INFO)

So this example used by Chuck Schumer was nothing of the sort.

The only other cemetery story I could find where there have been some arrests is in a case from Indiana… but it is unclear what their political affiliation was, if they were truly anti-Semitic, or what was the final motivation. I called and spoke with someone from the newsroom of this smaller newspaper… and asked this (roughly):

  • “Was it ever determined if these three perpetrated the crime for anti-Semitic viewpoints? I noticed in another story that there was a pentagram painted on one of the tombstones as well, was this maybe occult related? Or is the feed-back drunk dumb young persons?” 

The person responding called back and said this was just a bunch of dumb, bored young people with no known motive as of yet — other that social retardation (*my words*).

This could be just as much a hate-crime against the Judeo-Christian viewpoint or worldview — like in almost all the humanities classes in higher education. The headline, “UPDATE: Arrests made in anti-Semitic gravestone vandalism in Scottsburg,” seems a bit misleading to me and is named this maybe to try and grab the readers attention, not report the news. I wonder why only the Jewish cemetery stone is noted in most of the stories… but is James Hart a Christian? Why isn’t this an example of Christophobia, or a prime example of a theophobic hate crime? Anti-Judeo-Christian hate? There are plenty of crosses desecrated — probably weekly, across our nation.

As many of these stories as there are… I think the majority of them do not fit the narrative the mainstream media is trying to pawn off on us.

YES, there is a rise of threats against our Jewish bretheren… but most of this — I suspect — will have other sources than the ones the media is trying to get us to believe — i.e., emboldened Trump supporters. But never did I see a national outcry like this for the following story:

  • More than 100 churches swept for bombs after explosions in New Mexico (Salt Lake Tribune)

Remember, many of these “hate-crimes” end up not being hate-crimes at all, and have a more “innocent” explanation. But politics is the driver in this news cycle.

The Top Ten Scientific Facts in the Bible

Published by Papa Giorgio

If it’s true that the Bible contains scientific facts that were written thousands of years before man discovered them, the implications are staggering. These facts would be evidence that the Bible is the word of God, and its promise of Heaven and threat of Hell are therefore not to be mocked or ignored. A great video. Here is a quote to compliment #9:

  • “The Book of Leviticus in the Bible was probably the first recording of laws concerning public health. The Hebrew people were told to practice personal hygiene by washing and keeping clean. They were also instructed to bury their waste material away from their campsites, to isolate those who were sick, and to burn soiled dressings. They were prohibited from eating animals that had died of natural causes. The procedure for killing an animal was clearly described, and the edible parts were designated.” ~ Gwendolyn R.W. Burton and Paul G. Engelkirk, Microbiology for the Health Sciences, 6th Edition (New York, NY: Lippincott, Williams & Wilkins, 2000), 9.

Complexity of the Genetic Code Just Got More Complex

Published by Papa Giorgio

BEFORE getting to the main story meant to be read via PROSLOGION (click here to jump to it if you wish), the book mentioned is partly a book about how an evolutionary specialist came to believe in God. Some scientists/specialists in their field are convinced by science and complexity that God exists (studies from their own field), but yet others are influenced by other “arguments” — like in the case of Dr. Wayne Rossiter. He acknowledged the logical conclusions of his atheism, and was disturbed by them… here is a post about the book: ANOTHER ATHEIST WHO BECAME A CHRISTIAN

…but I did want to point out what I have found to be the most interesting part of the book so far: the conversion story of its author, Dr. Wayne D. Rossiter.

Dr. Rossiter earned his Ph.D. in ecology and evolution from Rutgers University in February of 2012 and is currently an assistant professor of biology at Waynesburg University. One thing I found so fascinating about his conversion story is that it is rather different from mine. Science caused me to doubt my atheism, and an investigation of the evidence led me to a belief in Christianity. For Dr. Rossiter, however, it was not science itself that caused him to doubt his atheism. Instead, what he saw as the consequences of atheistic science caused him to fall into the Savior’s arms. Here is how he begins his conversion story:

…I had developed into a staunch and cantankerous atheist by the time I got to Rutgers to pursue a Ph.D. This was aided by an equally atheistic advisor who was of Dawkins’s ilk. Advanced education at our best universities is surprisingly insular. Like bobbleheads, we tend to read and agree on the same things, and give little to no countenance to critics of our views. (pp. 3-4)

I couldn’t agree more with his take on the insular nature of advanced education in the U.S. I vividly remember several instances from my early years in academia where a “senior” member of a research group would make fun of a position with which he disagreed, and the rest of us would bob our heads in agreement without even trying to suggest that there might be good reason to at least examine that position seriously. At the time, I didn’t understand how anti-science such actions were, but now that I look back on them, I shake my head at the sorry state of our advanced education system.

What caused Dr. Rossiter to doubt his atheism? After achieving an important milestone in every academic’s life (publication in a major journal of his field), he and his wife celebrated. He stayed up after his wife went to bed, and he became plagued by the “big questions” about life:

On what rational grounds could I care about the state of the planet (or even my family) after I’m gone? And what did I even mean by “good” or “bad”? I couldn’t argue that any objective morality existed apart from our subjective experiences. Any moral laws that might objectively exist – whether or not anyone ascribes to them – would be beyond our grasp, and we would have no objective or rational reason to obey them if they did exist. Nothing mattered. This is Dennett’s “universal acid,” and Darwin’s ideas applied that acid to the human condition. If molecules led to cells, and cells to organs, and organs to bodies, then the “molecules-to-man” hypothesis was true. We really were just wet computers responding to external stimuli in mechanical and unconscious ways. No soul, no consciousness. Just machines. I was completely and utterly devastated. (pp. 4-5)

This led to some serious soul-searching, which included psychiatric counseling. His counselor was a Christian, and that intrigued him, so he read some intellectuals who found belief in God to be both rational and compelling. This caused him to doubt his atheistic view of science, and eventually, he became a Christian. The university at which he now teaches is a Christian university….

OKAY, here is the excerpt I wish to highlight, and mind you, the ENTIRE post is well worth reading. It is in regard to the supposition based on little evidence in the classic neo-Darwinian theory (which is crumbling mind you) that the genetic code is universal… as is discussed, it is not. Here is the introduction to the information from a group via Facebook:

  • Hi guys, this is an extremely interesting article and the links in there too, it shows that there is not a universal genetic code, but about 19 of them, that makes a universal common ancestor impossible, one of the links takes us to the NCBI website where all the codes are listed (by the way, two members of our group made comments there, Philip C. and Otangelo G.

Here is the post: UNIVERSAL GENETIC CODE? NO!

I am still reading Shadow of Oz by Dr. Wayne Rossiter, and I definitely plan to post a review of it when I am finished. However, I wanted to write a separate blog post about one point that he makes in Chapter 6, which is entitled “Biological Evolution.”He says:

To date, the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), which houses all published DNA sequences (as well as RNA and protein sequences), currently acknowledges nineteen different coding languages for DNA…

He then references this page from the NCBI website.

This was a shock to me. As an impressionable young student at the University of Rochester, I was taught quite definitively that there is only one code for DNA, and it is universal. This, of course, is often cited as evidence for evolution. Consider, for example, this statement from The Biology Encyclopedia:

For almost all organisms tested, including humans, flies, yeast, and bacteria, the same codons are used to code for the same amino acids. Therefore, the genetic code is said to be universal. The universality of the genetic code strongly implies a common evolutionary origin to all organisms, even those in which the small differences have evolved. These include a few bacteria and protozoa that have a few variations, usually involving stop codons.

Dr. Rossiter points out that this isn’t anywhere close to correct, and it presents serious problems for the idea that all life descended from a single, common ancestor.

To understand the importance of Dr. Rossiter’s point, you need to know how a cell makes proteins. The basic steps of the process are illustrated in the image at the top of this post. The “recipe” for each protein is stored in DNA, and it is coded by four different nucleotide bases (abbreviated A, T, G, and C). That “recipe” is copied to a different molecule, RNA, in a process called transcription. During that process, the nucleotide base “U” is used instead of “T,” so the copy has A, U, G, and C as its four nucleotide bases. The copy then goes to the place where the proteins are actually made, which is called the ribosome. The ribosome reads the recipe in units called codons. Each codon, which consists of three nucleotide bases, specifies a particular amino acid. When the amino acids are strung together in the order given by the codons, the proper protein is made.

The genetic code tells the cell which codon specifies which amino acid. Look, for example, at the illustration at the top of the page. The first codon in the RNA “recipe” is AUG. According to the supposedly universal genetic code, those three nucleotide bases in that order are supposed to code for one specific amino acid:methionine (abbreviated as “Met” in the illustration). The next codon (CCG) is supposed to code for the amino acid proline (abbreviated as Pro). Each possible three-letter sequence (each possible codon) codes for a specific amino acid, and the collection of all those possible codons and what they code for is often called the genetic code.

Now, once again, according to The Biology Encyclopedia (and many, many other sources), the genetic code is nearly universal. Aside from a few minor exceptions, all organisms use the same genetic code, and that points strongly to the idea that all organisms evolved from a common ancestor. However, according to the NCBI, that isn’t even close to correct. There are all sorts of exceptions to this “universal” genetic code, and I would think that some of them result in serious problems for the hypothesis of evolution….

Great stuff Maynard. Another blow to naturalistic theories and another gift to the ever growing catalog of the complexity of life.

Dr. Sommers Debunks The Gender Wage Gap – Yet Again

Published by Papa Giorgio

Is there a gender wage gap? Are women paid less than men to do the same work? Christina Hoff Sommers, Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, explains the data.

Via CHICKS on the RIGHT:

  • If you’re like me, every time some screechy feminist starts whining about the “wage gap,” your eyes glass over (or they roll right out of your head). I honestly don’t know how many times we have to explain basic math, economics, and sociology to these harpies before they understand that this wage gap nonsense is precisely that.