The Warden

The day after Jon was born, a doctor told Jon’s parents that the first question for them was whether they intended to take Jon home from the hospital. Nonplussed, they said they thought that is what parents do with newborns. Not doing so was, however, still considered an acceptable choice for parents who might prefer to institutionalize or put up for adoption children thought to have necessarily bleak futures. Whether warehoused or just allowed to languish from lack of stimulation and attention, people with Down syndrome, not given early and continuing interventions, were generally thought to be incapable of living well, and hence usually did not live as long as they could have.

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., bowing to an unusual demand of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in New Orleans, made official the backpedaling of the past few days over remarks by President Obama about the Supreme Court’s coming ruling on the constitutionality of his health care overhaul. Mr. Obama said on Monday that it “would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step” for the court to overturn the law.

For those who don’t know, every time the University of Kentucky Wildcats have won the NCA A Men’s Basketball Championship, the Yankees have also gone on to take the World Series.

Their answer, of course, is that the baby should not live—-he or she should be killed if his or her parents desire it because they feel his or her existence is a burden to them and will harm their well-being or the well-being of the family. It doesn’t matter to the authors whether the baby is physically and psychologically healthy. As a mere “potential person” (sound familiar?), the infant has no right not to be killed at his or her parents will. Of course, most parents of healthy newborns won’t be interested in killing them (though they should have the right to). But parents who find themselves with a newborn afflicted with, say, Downs Syndrome, might find the child to “be an unbearable burden on the family and on society as a whole.” What if others are willing to adopt the baby so that he or she won’t be killed? Well, the parents might decide to give the child up, and that is certainly their right; but they may prefer to kill him or her, since they may find it psychologically difficult to have a child of theirs out there in the world somewhere.

[…]

Surely if respected philosophers were arguing for a right to kill members of a racial or ethnic minority group, as opposed to infant children, there would be denunciations from left and right alike. But the left’s having tied itself to the abortion license creates an obvious problem. Giubilini and Minerva, like Singer and Tooley before them, and like more than a few others in between, alas, really are simply following out the logic of their commitment to “abortion rights.” Or so it seems to them, and to me.

Emerging economies said it was time to break a decades-old tradition that has long shut out candidates from the developing world and kept an American at the head of the World Bank and a European leader at the International Monetary Fund.

The problem emerging economies face is finding a candidate willing to challenge the United States, which is the largest and most influential shareholder in the World Bank and IMF.

(via The Freeman)

A Chinese immigrant whose aunt worked for Foxconn wrote David Pogue about Foxconn’s factory conditions:

If Americans truly care about Asian welfare, they would know that shutting down “sweat shops” would force many of us to return to rural regions and return to truly despicable “jobs.” And I fear that forcing factories to pay higher wages would mean they hire FEWER workers, not more.

Anyway, now my aunt has been living in New York for one year after saving up money for a plane ticket and visa, and she is wonderfully happy to have escaped Asia and reunited with our family. None of this would be possible if it wasn’t for that “sweat shop.”

The “jobs” he refers to? Prostitution, which is what his aunt did before working for Foxconn.

Which is problematic because, you know, the whole mandate issue is framed as a tax issue for constitutional purposes.

Mr. Zients: “Well, this is—” Mr. Garrett: “A moment ago you said there’s no tax increase.” Mr. Zients: “There aren’t.” Mr. Garrett: “So that’s not a tax?” Mr. Zients: “No.” Mr. Garrett: “That’s not a tax. Okay. I just want to be clear on that because that’s not the argument the Administration is making before the Supreme Court.”

New York City does not want churches and other religious groups meeting in public schools because they are concerned that impressionable youth will be confused and wrongly think that the public school endorses the church meeting there on Sunday mornings.

So it greatly surprised me to learn that the NYC Department of Education rents Roman Catholic schools to hold public school classes. On Sunday morning, I learned about P.S. 133 in Brooklyn, a public school that meets in a Catholic parochial school building. I was so surprised to learn of this, that I walked over to the school to see it for myself. This building has large crosses extending from the edges of the roof, yet NYC public schools hold classes there for children of all faiths.