HAMSTRUNG BY AN AMENDMENT

The Supreme Court is going to hear a case that says lethal injection of a condemned murderer is cruel and unusual punishment. In the state of Tennessee, a Federal Judge has declared lethal injection to be unconstitutional. What is so amazing about all this is how they have been doing these executions by this method since 1976 and 41 years later it is now unconstitutional?

I suppose that if the Supreme Court declares lethal injection unconstitutional they will also have to throw out those cases where this method of execution was used. How is it to be redressed in regard to the executed?

With regard to the Federal Judge that declared the Tennessee law unconstitutional, he is biased against capital punishment. What does it matter whether or not a convicted murderer feels any pain when he dies? The end result is he is dead and cannot report back whether or not he suffered anything. We do not care for his welfare. He has forfeited his right to life when he took someone else’s life from them.

What is forgotten in all of this legal wrangling is the original victim or victims of murder. All murderers are cowards. This whole affair of using the judicial process to delay their executions proves this. They have no regard for anyone else’s life other than their own. They are selfish in the extreme.

Let us go back to the original victim. Did they suffer and feel any pain while they were being murdered? Suppose that they survived an initial attack by several days and then died. Were they suffering pain during this time period? On top of this, these murderers gave the death penalty to the innocent. The government is to give the death penalty to the guilty.

God’s method of capital punishment is death by stoning. Does being stoned cause any pain to the convicted criminal? Obviously, God cares little about the comfort of the murderer. He actually wants them to feel pain. He wants them to know that they deserve this violence and it is also designed as a deterrent to keep others from doing the same thing because being stoned to death will be the result.

An example is found at Deuteronomy 21:18-21, "If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them: 19Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place; 20And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard. 21And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die: so shalt thou put evil away from among you; and all Israel shall hear, and fear."

Evil is to be done away with. The men are to be the ones that carry out the actual punishment. Those who do like things will get the same treatment. There is no appeal to a Supreme Court that lethal injection is cruel and unusual punishment. Stones would hurt much worse and the pain would be longer than with lethal injection. So our government has more concern for the welfare of murderers than God does. This shows how far from the Bible this country is.

Justice is being hamstrung by this lethal injection argument and what is being used is the humanist document, the Constitution’s Eighth Amendment. God has given the appropriate punishment for each crime in the Bible. All government’s punishments are to conform to this pattern, not to man’s failed attempt at justice.

A case law found at Deuteronomy 19:16-21, "If a false witness rise up against any man to testify against him that which is wrong; 17Then both the men, between whom the controversy is, shall stand before the LORD, before the priests and the judges, which shall be in those days; 18And the judges shall make diligent inquisition: and, behold, if the witness be a false witness, and hath testified falsely against his brother; 19Then shall ye do unto him, as he had thought to have done unto his brother: so shalt thou put the evil away from among you. 20And those which remain shall hear, and fear, and shall henceforth commit no more any such evil among you. 17Then both the men, between whom the controversy is, shall stand before the LORD, before the priests and the judges, which shall be in those days; 18And the judges shall make diligent inquisition: and, behold, if the witness be a false witness, and hath testified falsely against his brother; 19Then shall ye do unto him, as he had thought to have done unto his brother: so shalt thou put the evil away from among you. 20And those which remain shall hear, and fear, and shall henceforth commit no more any such evil among you. 21And thine eye shall not pity; but life shall go for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot."

God’s punishments are appropriate to the crime. The Federal Judge that declared the lethal injection unconstitutional in Tennessee is showing pity to the murderer. He is doing what God has forbidden. The Bible is clear that the punishment for murder is the death penalty. This is the concept of life for a life. This punishment fits the crime perfectly. It matters little the method as long as the death of the murderer is carried out.

What is being argued about here is a method and not about the substance of what the murderer has done. Rehearse over and over again about what the murderer has done. Noah Webster’s 1828 Dictionary defines "cruel" as, "Disposed to give pain to others, in body or mind; willing or pleased to torment, vex or afflict; inhuman; destitute of pity, compassion or kindness; fierce; ferocious; savage; barbarous; hardhearted." This definition is the epitome of a murderer. If anyone is guilty of cruel and unusual punishment, it is the murderer.

Why was the eighth amendment put in the Constitution in the first place? I believe that if you answer this question, you will find that it was to overcome Biblical punishments that were in force at that time in history. Fallen man hates God and His law and His punishments. Fallen man is more concerned with the comfort of convicted murderers rather than for their victims. This amendment has made justice lame.

MORALITY TURNED UPSIDE DOWN

Morality no longer plays an important role in our society. Because of secular psychology, no one is responsible for their actions. Of course, this goes back to the Garden of Eden when Adam blamed the woman and the woman blamed the serpent. It is fallen man’s nature to blame someone else for one’s own actions. These people act as if they were robots and programmed to do what they did.

Or they claim that it is out of character. It just happens that this time they got caught. How many other times did they do it and not get caught? Usually, there has been a pattern formed prior to the actual act. Whether it was in the thought or in both thought and deed, people do not just one day act out something that they have not been stewing about for a period of time.

You can hear the secularist claiming that you cannot legislate morality. Then what gets legislated and why have a legislature? What they mean by this is they do not want Christian morality only secular morality, which is really immorality. On the death penalty issue, they will say that the government does not have the right to take the life of a convicted murderer. The murderer has the right to take life, but the government does not. The murderer gives death and gets sentenced to life. Does this make sense?

Yet at the same time, they believe in the death penalty, not for the guilty, but for the innocent via abortion and euthanasia. The guilty must be protected at all costs and the innocent lose their rights under this moral system. These are the same individuals who call for gun control and act as if the gun killed people. Guns have never killed anyone by themselves. People kill other people using guns. This is typical of secularists who cannot tell the difference between a cause and an effect. They will seek legislation against the effect and wonder why murders continue to escalate. They will blame it on gun owners rather than upon criminals.

The most blatant of morality being turned upside down is in the Mary Winkler case. She was convicted of voluntary manslaughter in the killing of her husband Matthew Winkler, who was a Church of Christ minister. She had originally been charged with first degree murder.

Her defense in this case was predictable. She claimed to have suffered as an abused spouse. There was no way of verifying her story. Matthew Winkler was put on trial instead of Mary Winkler. He was not alive to defend himself against her accusations. If she was being abused by him, why did she not go to the authorities and take out charges against him? Her story would have been believable then.

Even if Matthew Winkler abused her, she did not have the right to murder him in his sleep. She did not give him the opportunity for self-defense which tells us about the character of Mary Winkler. Mary Winkler became a vigilante. She had options in dealing with this situation but she chose to take matters into her own hands. She claimed that the gun went off accidently. If this is so, then why did she flee to the gulf coast of Alabama with her three daughters? Why did she not call the police and say I accidently shot my husband? Her actions make her story questionable.

Juries are unpredictable. How many women get the death penalty when they commit murder as opposed to men? There is a double standard here. Women are not held to the same standard as a man. They can kill their own children with impunity. They will be declared insane. This is almost automatic and very predictable.

Mary Winkler’s defense was that she was a victim. She was presented in this way rather than the true victim, Matthew Winkler. This case has drawn national attention because of the individuals involved, a pastor and a pastor’s wife. Her story appears in national magazines as if she was justified in what she did. This is designed to give her credibility when she has none.

What is the most outrageous thing about this sordid affair is her appearing on the Oprah Winfrey show. I am not advocating that she cannot appear on this show. I do not have the power to stop her from appearing. It is Oprah Winfrey’s show and she can have on whom she desires. However, I can speak against the circumstances involved. When someone does something publicly, they are open to public criticism.

Let me say up front: it is never right for a man to hit or physically abuse a woman and it is never right for a woman to do the same to a man.

Mary Winkler is going to discuss Battered Women’s Syndrome on the show. This is psycho babel. Question, does shooting your husband in the back while he is sleeping qualify as Battered Man’s Syndrome? Why is this only a women’s issue? Do women never abuse their spouses? The Battered Women’s Syndrome is borne out of feminism, which sees men as oppressors.

It is claimed that those who suffer from this syndrome have low self esteem, whatever that is, and believe that the abuse is their own fault. You will find in the vast majority of these cases that this syndrome will be based upon self reporting. Self reporting is one of the least accurate ways of gaining information because it is subjective and not objective. Psychology relies heavily upon subjectivism rather than objective statistics.

Mary Winkler has now become the poster child for Battered Women’s Syndrome. She hopes to "advise the public of the dangers of not recognizing and addressing the symptoms associated with BWS in hopes of averting further tragedies." (AP). Question, averting further tragedies for whom? For herself or for supposed abusive husbands who are asleep and get shot in the back? What credibility does a convicted felon have as an advisor? Mary Winkler has demonstrated no remorse for her actions, which further damages her believability as a self reported victim.

I do predict that she will gain an audience among the feminists who hate men anyway. Some of us are morally outraged by her actions and believe that justice has been perverted. I, unlike her, do not need to take matters into my own hands. God will judge her for her actions.

ANOTHER UNNECCESSARY STUDY

Just when you thought that studies had hit an all time useless low, another one comes along and out does it. It is amazing that people actually spend their time studying the most inane things and actually get paid to do it. Most of the time these studies are carried out at taxpayer’s expense because no one in the profit seeking area would risk their money on something so utterly devoid of anything useful.

Presuppositions have consequences. Where someone starts is also where they will end. If your premises are wrong, your conclusion will follow suit. Those who believe that the world exists by random chance will be led on all kinds of wild goose chases and then call their research profound.

Profound for who? The newspaper article’s title is APE vs. TODDLER- "Study indicates child, 2, possesses better learning skills than counterparts." Well if that is not a revelation, I will put in with you. This could have been told to these researchers free of charge. There is nothing earth shattering here. Had these researcher’s presuppositions been correct from the beginning there would have been no need for their ridiculous study.

What is astounding is the article writer actually reports it as though it is important. In my local newspaper, it appears on the front page of all places. This demonstrates how poor journalism really is. This is another attempt to foist evolution upon the public. Even though evolution has never been proved, it is reported as if it is absolute fact. This comes from people who advocate that there are no absolutes, just the absolute of evolution.

What makes this study so mindless is that it attempts to compare the learning habits of a two year old human and an ape. The presupposition here is that a toddler is no different than an animal. Humans are different than animals because we are not animals. We were created in God’s image and we are to have dominion over God’s creation which includes the apes.

We are in no way related to the apes. We did not evolve from them. Question, if we did evolve from them, how come we do not still see apes turning into humans? No we see the law of reproduction as stated in the first chapter of Genesis of likes begetting likes. Humans reproduce humans. Apes reproduce apes. Let’s try and get this elementary point across to our researchers.
The head researcher, Esther Herrmann concluded that "human children are not overall more intelligent than other primates, but instead have specialized skills of social cognition." What does this mean and what relevance does it have to anything? This is pure drivel. Human children are not primates. This is her classification and it is wrong.

How many people do you know that you talk to about your being a primate? I have never in my almost 50 years ever talked about being an ape. I wonder why that is? I know why because it is stupid to even think about something so far from reality.

Esther Herrmann is an evolutionary anthropologist, therefore it is easy to see where she is going to go with any study she conducts. She accepts as an absolute fact the principles of evolution. I wonder if she used the evolutionary principle of random chance in her studies or if she carried them out according to orderly principles?

If apes are so smart, where is their published body of literature? If they are so intelligent, why have they not constructed homes to live in rather than living primitively in the jungles for so many centuries? Why have we not see them become civilized if they are as intelligent as human children? Why have apes not developed a sophisticated language system? Is all this because they are incapable of performing such feats?

Do apes possess intelligence? Yes, they do, as do all the animals. God created them with intelligence to perform the tasks that are inherent in each of them. The reason that apes have been doing what they have doing for centuries and will continue to do, is because this is the way that God created them. They are hardwired and are not capable of any change. They do not need to. They do all that is and ever will be required of an ape.

Maybe I need to hire some apes to help me around the house. Do you think that I will succeed in having them mow my lawn? Think how cheap I can get by on a giving them a few bananas. I have yet to see an ape do any task that I would find useful. They may make a good pet but I think I will hire a young man to mow my lawn. At least it would get done.

This article also talked about a well-known expert in primate cognition named Dr. Frans de Waal. I wonder how marketable primate cognition is? Who really cares? He works at Emory University’s Yerkes National Primate Research Center. This means that he is taxpayer funded and not subject to the market. This kind of research has no market value. It is not even a penny stock, it is so useless.

It does not matter what I think about their research. All that matters to these people is that they are hailed as brilliant by their peers. How many people are going to sit down and read their research report? There are far more important things going on the world than to have to be subjected to this type of supposed knowledge.

The crux of their study is to try and shed light on the evolution of human cognition. I could save them a lot of time. Man when he was created, was a rational thinking being from the beginning. There was no evolution of human cognition. This is a myth.

So what did our taxpayer dollars give us from this study? Absolutely nothing. A two year old is undeveloped in so many regards. For one, they lack the ability to focus. How can this further our knowledge about the way that children learn by watching apes? A two year old does not stay a two year old. They grow up and their capacity will far outpace any ape.

It is about time to strip these nonsensical studies of any taxpayer support. There is nothing in them that has any value other than continuing to perpetuate the myth of evolution. How many more fruitless studies must we endure?

IS OBESITY THE CONCERN OF THE GOVERNMENT?

Whose responsibility is it to solve problems? Most people in our day look to the government to take the lead in solving all of life’s problems. This is because the money expended is not personal to those advocating government involvement. They must think that government needs to be bigger.

There was a recent article in the newspaper about obesity rates going up in many states. The data was gathered from a survey of height and weight conducted by state health departments by telephone. Question, what was asked in this survey? How tall are you and how much do you weigh? My response to that would have been none of your business. That is personal information, not for public consumption.

Apparently some people must have answered these personal questions and from this those calculating the rates were able to see that the numbers were up for 2004-2006 from 2003-2005. How accurate are the calculated obesity rates? It is at best a very poor estimated guess. Of course, these are the things that government policy thrive upon.

These obesity rates are being called a public health crisis. Because of this, there are those who are wanting the government to take a larger role in preventing obesity. This means more government funds allocated to obesity. The ultimate goal backing the call for government involvement is socialized medicine. The thought is the government must take to policing people’s eating habits upon itself. A new department will have to be instituted called the Federal Food Police (FFP).

This police force will be put in place to monitor obese people from eating too much. The government is to now take away the responsibility of obese people from eating too much. The government is to step in and take the role of a parent because these people are incapable of controlling themselves.

Government intervention for obesity is unnecessary. Our weight is our responsibility. Who best to control our eating habits than ourselves and at no cost to the taxpayer.

Is obesity a health problem? The answer is affirmative. When someone is obese it taxes their heart. The heart must pump harder because of the extra weight. This means that it will shorten its useful life. Diabetes and other diseases are prevalent among the obese. When they seek treatment for their ailments, it does drive up health costs.

Does something need to be done to combat obesity? The answer is again, yes. Weight loss is a matter of simple math. If you take in more calories than you expend, you will gain weight. The key to losing weight is to take in less calories. Obesity can also be linked with being inactive. Physical exercise is a must for anyone desiring to lose weight.

As I have gotten older, my weight has increased to a level that I could no longer accept. I exercise regularly but I realized that I had to cut my calorie consumption, as well. I have lost 16 pounds over the last three months. I want to lose 7 to 12 more pounds. The key here is to lose weight gradually. This helps to keep the weight off for good.

There are many physical activities that someone can do. I prefer running and weight lifting. I have had many people tell me that they cannot run for various reasons. I tell them that walking is good exercise. As with all exercise programs, begin small and work your way up. Exercise does a myriad of things for us. It improves our mental as well as physical health. After exercising, you will feel much happier and more alive.

Obesity and lack of exercise go hand in hand. One will cause the other. Many people’s employment is not related to physical labor. Therefore, they are sedentary and this will cause weight gain. This can be remedied by exercise.

Let us be quite honest and frank. Obesity is also caused by a lack of discipline or self-control. They do not regulate their food intake. If they see something, to eat it they eat it. Besides learning to do push ups, they should learn to do push outs. Okay now, push out from the table. Do not take that extra piece of pie. Eat more nutritious food. Do not take that extra scoop of ice cream with chocolate topping and nuts. The key here is learning to be moderate in eating.

Let’s face it, eating is an emotional experience. The obese live to eat and not eat to live. People eat too much for emotional reasons rather than health. They find comfort in food. It makes them feel better about themselves for a short period. The emotional aspect of food is what will have to be broken if obesity rates are to plummet.

There has been more of an acceptance of obesity in our day. This is because there has been a change in theology. The Bible teaches self-control and moderation. The world teaches indulgence and instant gratification. These two systems are at odds. If obesity rates are increasing, then we see who is winning the battle at this point.

Since there are health risks associated with obesity, the obese will have to pay higher health insurance premiums. Insurance is calculated on probabilities. The probability of obese people developing a health problem is very high. It is not a matter of if, but when.

Obesity rates are supposed to be higher in states that are considered to be the poorest. This is would be attributable to those buying cheaper food products that are boxed and those with high fat contents. Also, some of these people may not be health conscious. In other words, they do not understand cause and effect. They do not see a correlation between what you eat and your physical health. They may believe that going to a doctor makes you well and taking some medicine is what makes you healthy.

Medical professionals could play a key role for the obese. The problem here though is the medical profession, in general, does not teach prevention. To an extent, their livelihood depends upon treating sick people. Healthy people do not need a physician. There is not an incentive here for them to teach prevention.

If there is an obesity crisis, its solution is for individuals to take responsibility for themselves. This is not a function of government. Encourage yourself to take steps in reducing your weight if you need to.