Here's an article my sister directed me to; it's regarding the television news coverage of the Old Fire in my home communities, featured in our local papers, the Crestline Courier-News and the Mountain News, appropriately titled "Get Out of Our Mountains." Enjoy.

I'm still trying to understand exactly how the lawmaking process works. I'm a bit frustrated by the blocking of the new Partial-Birth Abortion ban by a number of federal judges, and I'm wondering exactly how this affects the entire process of making the new law. I'm researching the subject a bit right now... Here's praying that the law goes through. I'm pleased that Ashcroft is considering this a Civil Rights issue, as well, since it makes people treat unborn babies as living human beings with all the same rights to life as anyone else rather than "tissue." This is a pivotal thing; every Pro-Choice argument entirely depends on the concept that the unborn are not human beings. The moment the unborn are considered human, the Pro-Choice argument legally becomes Pro-Murder (which doesn't change how I see it, but then the law backs me up).

How people can simultaneously lobby for minority rights, women's rights, and even animal rights on one hand, and then abortion on the other is completely beyond me. I don't understand the logic behind it. The most common argument I hear is that anti-abortion laws compromise a "woman's right to choose;" as the bumper sticker goes, "Keep Your Laws Off My Body."

As though there were no laws concerning what a person can and can't do with their body. You can't get drunk and drive. You can't take certain drugs. Of course, this is besides the point - it's not a woman's body we're deciding the fate of, it's a child's body. The child just happens to be inside the woman. No matter what angle I look at this from, all I can see is an innocent life being taken over a matter of convenience. The "Mother's life is in danger" hypothetical situation is often quoted by Pro-Choicers, but how often does this actually happen? Rape is another situation brought up (additionally, I've read that pregnancy from rape is exceedingly rare), but if I may be so indelicate, let me suggest this: Should this child be killed because it was born of rape? Does it make murder of the innocent justifiable if the circumstances of the child's conception are traumatic? Again, while rape is nothing to be taken lightly (from what I read and hear from women, it's one of the worst things that can happen to a woman), allowing abortions in cases of rape is still, in essence, a selfish act. It doesn't take into consideration that this child has a right to live, and feeds back into this primary philosophy in the Pro-Choice stance, the issue that keeps me from ever accepting such a policy.

As I've been told by a Real Live Woman, "Aborting a child conceived of rape doesn't seem like a viable choice, either - it seems as if it would only add to the trauma of the rape experience, not lessen it."

On a somewhat lighter note, NPR has been doing a series of stories under the title "Whose Democracy Is It?" with stories about different kinds of democracy throughout society, people's views of democracy (which, if you listen to NPR's reporting, is overwhelmingly "Dude, I don't think it's working." No reasons given, of course), and the assembly of a hypothetical "Library of Democracy" that NPR has been keeping a tally of - people apparently have written in to suggest what books should be in such a library. Given that some of the books they've mentioned on the air have been "Origin of Species" and "Atlas Shrugged," I weep for the future. I guess I'd better suggest some books...