This is an archive of the old Stones Cry Out site. For the current site, click here.
October 05, 2007
Changes On The Way
This weekend, the Stones Cry Out blog will change web hosts. For almost 3 years, it has been hosted on a machine owned by Foundation Stone(tm) Rick Brady. Starting this weekend, it'll be hosted on a commercial web host that I use for my web sites. During the transition, it's a matter of luck which site you'll see while the pointer to the new host percolates throughout the Internet. Hopefully by Monday, you'll all be seeing the new site, but it takes 24-72 hours typically.
With this move, Rick officially bows out of the blogging biz. We here at Stones Cry Out are thankful for his time and efforts getting the blog going and keeping it going. While he's not been posting much of late, it was his system that kept the site going. He will be greatly missed (but I'm giving him a user on the new system just in case he changes his mind >grin<). And many thanks to his father-in-law, who was the techie behind the scenes. He helped make this move a smooth one.
We're going to be adding a few features to the blog which I'll enumerate on the first post at the new site. Also, access to all our old posts will (hopefully) be retained, if I do all this right.
See you on the other side of the move!
Posted by Doug at 03:02 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 04, 2007
The Ends Justify the High-Tech Lynching
James Taranto, in his "Best of the Web Today" today, notes that the accusations of "anger" against Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas seem to be unfounded. But building on that is the idea that, since the travesty that was his confirmation hearing didn't manage to keep him off the bench, he shouldn't be upset about those accusations. "Hey, you made the highest court in the land. So what about the politics of personal destruction?"
Taranto has a great rundown of all the shenanigans that took place back then, including the observation that
"...Thomas's political foes managed to violate the integrity of the FBI, the Senate and the D.C. Circuit--that is, of all three branches of government. This behavior was unethical, unconscionable and possibly criminal, and no one has ever been held to account for it."
Thomas was treated unfairly, as well as illegally, but that didn't matter to the Democrats that opposed him.
Thomas's opponents believed that the end justified the means, as a former foe tells the justice's wife on page 232:
Years later a young woman who had worked for one of the many groups opposed to my nomination approached Virginia. "We didn't think of your husband as human, and I'm sorry," she said, tears streaming down her face. "We thought that anything was justified because our access to abortions and sex was at risk." The woman went on to explain that she had subsequently had a religious conversion and now felt that it was her duty to apologize to us.
Now, those who remain unrepentant are reduced to arguing, pathetically, that Justice Thomas--and the rest of us--should countenance the means because they failed to realize the end.
Taranto's analysis is why "BotWT" is a daily e-mail I never miss.
Posted by Doug at 04:49 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 03, 2007
The Limbaugh "Phony Soldiers" Kerfuffle
The crew at the Blogometer have a good round-up of the controversy surrounding Rush Limbaugh's "phony soldiers" phrase. What I find interesting, and sad, is how the Left has left the concept of "context" way behind them. When Media Matters criticizes Limbaugh, they lead one to believe that something said less than 2 minutes later, never mind the day before, is irrelevant to context.
Limbaugh himself suggests (and not without a little self-serving promotion) that you need to listen to his show for 6 weeks before you can get a good feel for it, especially his schtick. Media Matters and its liberal lemmings want to believe, at least for the moment, that Limbaugh began broadcasting yesterday, which is the only way they can say that he is abusive to the troops.
Posted by Doug at 03:32 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
October 02, 2007
Two-Party System, Like It or Not
Rudy Giuliani is not my first pick for Republican presidential nominee. He's got some troubling stands on some issues that are important to me. But whatever those disconnects, he'd be far better than anything the Democrats have to offer.
Except that's not what a number of conservative Christians are saying.
Some of the nation's most politically influential conservative Christians, alarmed by the prospect of a Republican presidential nominee who supports abortion rights, are considering backing a third-party candidate.More than 40 Christian conservatives attended a meeting Saturday in Salt Lake City to discuss the possibility, and planned more gatherings on how they should move forward, according to Richard A. Viguerie, the direct-mail expert and longtime conservative activist.
Rudy Giuliani, who supports abortion rights and gay rights, leads in national polls of the Republican presidential candidates. Campaigning in New Jersey on Monday, Giuliani brushed aside talk of an upstart effort by religious conservatives.
"I'm working on one party right now _ the Republican Party," Giuliani said. "I believe we are reaching out very, very well to Republicans. The emphasis is on fiscal conservatism, which brings Republicans together."
Other participants in the meeting included James Dobson, founder of the Focus on the Family evangelical ministry in Colorado Springs, Colo., and, according to Viguerie, Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council, a conservative policy group in Washington.
The problem with this approach is that if they act on this threat, they ensure the election of someone even further from their beliefs than Rudy. And they have to know this, which means they'd rather have someone in Planned Parenthood's back pocket, never mind all the other nanny-state, anti-growth policies that would get introduced and implemented, than someone with whom they could at least agree on most of the time. If you have a Republican in the White House, you at least have someone who'll give conservative Christians a fair hearing rather than just lip service.
Betsy Newmark has a better suggestion.
There is a candidate in the race right now who fits all the needs of these cultural conservatives - Mike Huckabee. They could be mobilizing behind him. If Huckabee started moving in the polls and surpassing expectations in the early states, these conservatives might be able to convince Giuliani (if he were to win the nomination) to put Huckabee on the ticket to alleviate some of this cultural conservative angst.
How much influence a VP would have is a matter of debate, as Betsy notes, but rather than bailing out, engage.
Posted by Doug at 01:36 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack