As for Mr. Hruby, I respect his service to our country, however service to country doesn’t necessarily make for an able candidate. (See Vaughan Ward in 2010) Nor does it necessarily make for a strong conservative. (see John McCain.)

Mr. Hruby may be many things I would like in a candidate, Mr. Bolicek is and that’s why I can personally recommend Brad Bolicek

I whole-heartedly support John Hruby for District 18, House Seat B.

Pat Taylor

I have a Lot of potentially interesting / relevant information about Idaho Politics & Law, as well as a host of other potentially useful skills and background – and am always looking for another way to do some good.

If you have a private email that can handle files I can send you some samplers – FYI

Take Care & Be Well
McD

I also agree that the ESV is probably the best modern language that sticks close to the original language as a direct translation. Others claim to be, but often drift into paraphrase to sacrifice accuracy for readability. Then there’s the easy reading versions like the Good News Bible, or Bible in Basic English. Great translations where, if your reading level is low, they are fairly accurate, and use a simplified word base.

I enjoy a paraphrase bible, especially the ones that claim to be a paraphrase. Very readable, but if questions arise, don’t rely on them for total accuracy. The paraphrasing author has put a lot of themselves into the transliteration, whether they intended to or not.

When you look under the hood, and compare original language texts, the KJV is still the most accurate, and the ESV is too. Because of that, the KJV will always remain a touchstone, or a ruler to base any future translation on. When in doubt, consult it, be forgiving of those old words, and realize that some word definitions have come to mean something slightly different in the passing of time and usage.

One example is in the way the word conversation is used. Today we think of talking to someone, having a dialog. Back then it meant more on par with our modern use of the word behavior. Actions that we do, but in particular actions done to each other.

My best advice for figuring out if a word or phrase has come to mean something different is to compare it to qa good modern version. The more the better. When a word is rendered differently, it’s often that the original word could have different meanings, a depth of meaning that is all those varients together, or the word has shifted a little in the way we use it today.

Good article.

That part is certainly true. Marriage is valuable. It benefits the individuals involved and benefits society at large by promoting strong, stable family units.

“That’s not proven when it comes to homosexual relationships.”

That is where you are, quite spectacularly, wrong. That gay people exist, and that their relationships are as legitimate and emotionally real as straight relationships, is self-evident at this point. Reputable science and experts are basically unanimous in recognizing that gay relationships and gay families do just as well as their straight counterparts.

Most people do not feel that gay couples should be denied the same basic rights that heterosexual married couples take for granted (the right to take medical leave to care for a seriously ill partner, the right to have hospital visitation rights, the right to make end-of-life decisions, and so on). In fact, a lot of people would probably call denying those kind of basic rights to be senseless and cruel. That’s why you see recent polling done on this issue see overwhelming majority support for at least some legal recognition of gay relationships.

However, there remain many Americans (although they are now a minority) feel that the term – or the “magic word,” as you say – of “marriage” is special and should remain the exclusive province of heterosexual couples. That makes civil unions a widely accepted and popular compromise – gay couples receive the rights they deserve while the designation of “marriage” remains unique to straight relationships. Obviously, gay rights advocates continue to desire the word “marriage” as well, but for Huntsman and other candidates civil unions allows one to appeal to the large majority who favor some rights for gay couples, while not alienating those who continue to believe in “marriage” as special and for straights only. That’s a big political upside with little downside – as the minority who continue to oppose any rights for gay couples is small and continues to dwindle.

It seems like a no-brainer, and it would be a big turn-on for independents in the general election. Huntsman makes the right call here.

At best, it’s sophistry. We’re going to give gays and lebsians the exact same marriage rights as Hetrosexuals, but we’re not going to call it marriage, that’ll remain the magic word.

The principle of why we don’t have gay marriage is that we recognize the relationship of marriage in its best form as furthering and benefiting society. That’s not proven when it comes to homosexual relationships.

Civil Unions is not a solution or compromise because the gay rights groups aren’t interested in accepting it. And in fact in every state where civil unions have been passed, they’re still pushing for marriage.

Finally, if you do recognize a state interest in recognizing relationships between homosexuals and lesbians, you’re legally setting yourself up for same sex marriage. If you conclude that gay relationships should be recognized by the state, and are just as beneficial to society, you’re likely to create a situation where you get a lawsuit for having a law the creates a “seperate but equal” marriage. Whereas, if you say that only traditional marriage is beneficial to the society and worhty of recognition, you have a better shot in court.

As to Huntsman, I know his gratuitous embrace of civil unions and his obsessive environmentalism are big turn off. Also Huntsman supported the President’s Stimulus and in fact said we needed to spend more money. That’s not the type of guy I want as President in a time of fiscal crisis.

Some good points on Huntsman: He did a very good job as Governor of Utah. During his term Pew rated Utah as the best managed in the nation, and following his governorship Utah was rated as the best or one of the best states for business. He has also taken fairly centrist positions on gay rights and environmental issues, and he would be hard for the media to caricature into something ridiculous like they did with McCain (and Palin) and Bush. All of that would help immensely helpful in the general election. In fact, I’d say Huntsman would probably be the most formidable against Obama, provided he could get past the primary.

I was clearly talking in a large context than one show. I was talking about the entire way our popular culture is eating away at our nation’s soul.

The future of our civilization depends ultimately depends on more parents choosing to find the courage to be counter-cultural.

More parents need to stop letting their kids watch a dumb show like Family Guy or our civilization is doomed? That seems a tad dramatic.

If “pro-life” means trying to prevent as many abortions as possible, then Senator Manchin is most certainly pro-life.

Not so. John McCain stated explicitly during the 2008 campaign that he would not go after bin Laden in Pakistan even if he knew where he was hiding. Elections do indeed have consequences.

In fact, Manchin’s “yes” vote was probably more pro-life than a “no” vote would have been. Funding access to contraception through Planned Parenthood provides a means of reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies, particularly among low-income women, and therefore the number of abortions.

I hope that you do not find “pragmatism” to be a dirty word.

Second point, liberals could say that and that would be idiotic, because there’s a fact. The problem is spending. A balanced budget using only spending cuts is in no way impossible other than potentionally in the political sense.

I realize you were in need of a simile but this was a rather poor choice. There have never been any ‘agreements’ between Israel and the PA or PLO regarding the cessation of terrorism or strikes against Israel. This kind of statement merely perpetuates negative stereotypes about Palestinians, which of course is hugely counterproductive to the peace process.

Until the politicians are ready to check their ability to cut taxes, the idea of spending decreases is little more than a scam. They will cut spending and then when the deficit goes down, they will cut taxes. And then when the economy has a downturn, they’ll want to cut spending again, and when the deficit falls, they’ll cut more taxes. And so on.

Preemptively taking any and all tax increases (or even letting current tax cuts expire) off the table before negotiations even begin makes you about as unserious as liberal Democrats who say any cuts in spending are out of the question. A conservative genuinely interested in cutting the deficit (like myself) would acknowledge the reality that a balanced budget borne purely out of spending cuts is probably impossible right now. The real mission, then, is to fight to make the share of deficit reduction composed of spending cuts as big as possible.

That’s not to say that we should surrender right out of the gate. Indeed, the Ryan plan is a great point from which to start negotiations (the RSC plan would have been even better). But we should accept that a final deficit-reduction package is probably going to include some tax increases (or tax-cut expirations). We should be willing to vote “yes” on that plan if it means finally getting the debt under control.

When a party nominates by convention or caucus, and all the candidates for a particular office are in that party, grassroots citizens do not get to vote for that office.

Left to their own devices, parties would not hold primaries, since they cannot afford the expense. Thus states will continue to mandate and pay for party primaries… citizens are accustomed to primaries!

I strongly suggest that you read the US Supreme Court’s ruling in California Democratic Party v. Jones.

~~ Steve Rankin
Jackson, Mississippi
http://southerncrown.blogspot.com/

Also, if the GOP is a private group as has been affirmed in this decision, what is the argument for funding its primary with public money? I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on that question.

I would agree that defining people based on their sexuality alone is not a conservative value. However one must realize that religious ‘conservatives’ take no trouble defining many Americans based purely on their sexuality, even going so far as to exclude them from things like marriage because of their sexuality. Some, like your friend Bryan Fischer, think people should be ineligible for public office based solely on our sexuality. Would you label Mr. Fischer “fringe” as well?

Furthermore, as distasteful as we (rightfully) find identity politics that are so popular on the left, GOProud serves a useful purpose in co-opting liberals’ message and showing LGBT Americans that there are choices in politics and that conservative values are gay values as well. Imagine how many gays like myself may be brought into the movement who otherwise may have assumed that liberalism was their only option. We don’t have to like it, but beating the left at their own game as much as we can is a positive thing for winning future electoral and political battles.

I also thought your podcast was somewhat misleading in its implication that the inclusion of GOProud is what caused the Family Research Council to skip CPAC, when they haven’t been attending for three years – one longer than GOProud has been in existence.

So the APA’s shift in position was based in science, not politics.

I don’t pretend to be qualified to speak to the causes or psychological status of homosexuality, other than to say that as a gay person I never made a conscious choice to be gay nor do I feel that being gay has any negative effects on my happiness or overall well-being. (To the contrary, since I came out of the closet I am much happier than I was beforehand.) So I defer to those who presumably are qualified, namely psychologists, psychiatrists, and so on. These professionals certainly aren’t infallible, but I’d need to see some serious contradictory evidence to discount their opinions. Could you point me to where such evidence exists?

Two, the APA’s conclusion on homosexuality and it’s shift from viewing it as mental illness in the 1970s was a matter of politics, not science. Aside from that, what is problematic to me is the entrapment angle where this man took advantage of the therapist’s kindness, pleaded for her help for a service she wasn’t advertising and was really trying to destroy her.

Regarding the therapist story, the American Psychological Association says that “same-sex sexual and romantic attractions, feelings, and behaviors are normal and positive variations of human sexuality” and that “efforts to change sexual orientation are unlikely to be successful and involve some risk of harm.” Given these facts, why shouldn’t a therapist be professionally disciplined for agreeing to engage in practices that carry a significant risk of harm to the patient’s mental health?

I’m not sure we have less in common now than any previous time, but what matters is we believe it, and that’s where the media comes in. It had us believing in a common culture in the 50′s. People tend to do what we think everyone else is doing, and the media told us we all agreed. If you didn’t you felt deviant and wouldn’t want to broadcast it. Now it tells us how much we disagree, and lots of shows encourage us to feel outraged.

The partisanship of many “news” shows is problematic in two ways. It makes it look ok to yell at others and interrupt, hardly civil. It also can lead to us seeing things in black and white terms, so that the other side isn’t just wrong but evil, and when people are evil, they’re not fully human. There’s lots of interesting psychological tendencies to explain how ideology works. I’m hoping to get to it in my blog soon (Civilido.net).

I like your point about the definition of evil being ramped way up by WWII, although I sure wish people would give the Hitler comparisons a rest. They work against civility. We believe that we don’t have to respect evil people or see them as human, so we don’t have to treat them civilly. Much better to just view everyone as human.

I think politicians are less civil for some additional reasons. The demands of raising campaign funds mean that more politicians don’t bring families to Washington and spend weekends back home. This means they don’t get to know the opposition as people. In the olden days, their kids went to school together and opposition parents knew each other through that and other social activities. That has pretty much ceased, and it’s easier to treat others rudely when you don’t have to deal with them later in a social atmosphere where you share common interests and friends.

Do you have any ideas on what could make civility cool? All I can think of is an all out social norms marketing venture by the media, and I’m not betting that will happen. I’m somewhat comforted by the idea that historically things tend to swing too far one way then over correct by going too far the other way. But I don’t think it’s possible to be too civil!

https://www.completecampaigns.com/public.asp?name=LabradorRaul&page=1