Potpourri: Some thoughts on current topics

 ** A liberal journalist has set aside his ideology and written something honest and positive about President Donald Trump. Vox senior correspondent Ian Millhiser, in an article examining the Trump judicial appointments and their likely effect on the courts, wrote, “In less than three years as president, President Trump has done nearly as much to shape the courts as President Obama did in eight years.”

But in what could be expected to be nothing more than a leftist lecture against Trump’s judicial selections, Millhiser gave this objective evaluation. “Trump hasn’t simply given lots of lifetime appointments to lots of lawyers. He’s filled the bench with some of the smartest, and some of the most ideologically reliable, men and women to be found in the conservative movement.”

And then, this: “In other words, based solely on objective legal credentials, the average Trump appointee has a far more impressive résumé than any past president’s nominees.”

** Poor Joe Biden. He’s failing in his bid for the Democrat presidential nomination, and unlike Bernie Sanders in 2016, he has no one to blame but himself. Uncle Gaffy continues to issue non-sequiturs at a dizzying pace, and recently he said that immigrants, legal and illegal, are “a gift” to America.

Immigrants have been, and can still be a gift to the country. But they must be here for the right reasons, and they must become true Americans and contribute positively to the country in order to qualify for that honored status. However, Biden does not understand, or ignores, that illegal immigrants are not “a gift,” and too often are dangerous.

** A criminal investigation that began nearly two years ago with a referral from the Justice Department’s inspector general’s office, which concluded that Andrew McCabe, former Deputy Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, had repeatedly lied about having authorized a subordinate to share information with a newspaper reporter for a 2016 article about an FBI investigation into possible crimes by Hillary Clinton. The DOJ has decided not to bring criminal charges against McCabe, despite the investigative conclusion that he lied to officials.

Many believe that the same result will apply to all those whose criminal behavior attempted to overturn the legitimate election of President Donald Trump.

** One of the most ill-advised actions taken recently by some Americans is the desire to remove things that remind them of events in times past that they dislike. One example is removing statues of people who represented the south during the Civil War.

Fortunately, some people still understand that while some things in the nation’s history are not proud moments, they still are part of its history, and therefore should not be destroyed. History is history, and we need to be reminded of both the good and the bad elements of it.

Thankfully, Virginia Circuit Court Judge Richard E. Moore has ruled that the statues of General Robert E. Lee and General Stonewall Jackson are now protected monuments and will remain standing. He said the way the statues made people feel did not change the fact the statues paid homage to the Civil War heroes.

“While some people obviously see Lee and Jackson as symbols of white supremacy,” Moore stated in his decision, “others see them as brilliant military tacticians or complex leaders in a difficult time.”

Moore is absolutely right.

** One of the most divisive topics in America today is abortion. The point at which life begins is an ongoing debate. And the question of when, if ever, it is okay to terminate a pregnancy is the major factor in the abortion debate. 

From the moment of conception, when the male and female reproductive cells unite, what occurs is the development of a new person over a nine-month period. The miracle of the birth of a new human being once was an almost universally valued event in our country.

Years ago, the result of passionate interludes between a woman and a man was the blessed event of a child, a new family member. Today, that result is regarded by many as an inconvenience to be corrected by ending the pregnancy through a medical procedure.

After millions of future children have been terminated before their birth, we find people who want to terminate children even after they have been born following a failed attempt at abortion.

Despite the desires of the mother, when a baby is born, that baby is a living person. It requires and is entitled to the same efforts by medical personnel to save its life as any other person in the ER, an OR, or in a patient room. Deliberately failing to provide that critical medical attention should be punishable as manslaughter, or murder.

Yet state legislators routinely defeat measures to assure that born-alive abortion survivors may be killed or allowed to die.

If a child’s life can be ended after a failed abortion on the basis of a weak rationalization based on the intent of the mother, can it be long before other rationalizations will be cited to end the lives of the elderly, or the infirm, or those with serious diseases?