Long ago, German philosopher Immanuel Kant wrote about the perennial human tendency to find exceptions to moral rules when the rules bind a bit too tightly on us: "Hence there arises a natural ... disposition to argue against these strict laws of duty and to question their validity, or at least their purity and strictness, and, if possible, to make them more accordant with our wishes and inclinations, that is to say, to corrupt them at their very source, and to entirely destroy their worth."

I believe this is the best explanation for what is happening with the issue of torture in our nation. We are tempted to follow the logic of a July 11, 2005, Time magazine cover story that said, "In the war on terrorism, the personal dignity of a fanatic trained for mass murder may be an inevitable casualty."

Yet we are queasy enough about this "inevitable casualty" that we do not want to call torture what it is. We do not want to expose our policies, our prisons, or our prisoners to public view. We deny that we are torturing, or we deny that our prisoners are really prisoners. When pushed against the wall, we remind one another how evil the enemy is. We give every evidence of the kind of self-deception that is characteristic of a descent into sin.

It is past time for evangelical Christians to remind our government and our society of perennial moral values, which also happen to be international and domestic laws. As Christians, we care about moral values, and we vote on the basis of such values. We care deeply about human-rights violations around the world. Now it is time to raise our voice and say an unequivocal no to torture, a practice that has no place in our society and violates our most cherished moral convictions.

[I]t's worth noting that science is being defined flexibly. If someone says -- "The fossil record does not actually indicate that species evolved into other species, and evidence of the necessary transitional species has not been found, but we assume that those species did exist because our theory requires it" -- this, of course, is science. And if someone says -- "We have no idea how the single bacterium from which all other species allegedly evolved could have emerged from inanimate matter, but we assume that it must have" -- this too is science, to be taught to children as established fact. It is, after all, a "naturalistic" explanation, hence true, hence science....The other claim against ID is that it is "not falsifiable." First of all, the term is, once more, flexible. The statement that "Even if we don't currently understand how evolution via random mutation and natural selection could have produced the species existing in the world, we will eventually" -- is also not falsifiable but, rather, an expression of faith. Second, two Discovery Institute fellows, while acknowledging "that there's no way to falsify the bare assertion that a cosmic designer exists," demonstrate here that "the specific design arguments currently in play are empirically testable, even falsifiable, and involve testable predictions."

And as for that "bare assertion," if it were true that nature had been designed, and if science has now grown sophisticated enough to detect evidence of the designer, then it could, logically and conceivably, also be the case that the assertion is not falsifiable because it is not false.

Interesting questions, calling for further research and open minds. So interesting we might even let children know about them.

For me, the frightening bit about assisted suicide is, of course, the possibility that I might change my mind. I see myself sitting in the pizza parlour for that final family meal, surrounded by the beaming faces of my many descendants, their expressions contorted into a finely judged blend of agony and supportiveness....Every day, in NHS wards, the merciful doctors use such quantities of morphine to ease the pain of their patients that their respiration is suppressed, and quite right, too. No one would dream of depriving people of this final palliation of their suffering; but we should be in no doubt about what is happening. The doctors are taking an action that leads to the patient's death. To put it bluntly, they are killing them.

What is the difference between that and assisted suicide? Only that assisted suicide takes place earlier, and with the patient's consent. The closer I study Lord Joffe's Bill, the more inclined I am to think it reasonable. It is full of restrictions - notably that death must be only a few months away at most; and all sorts of attestations are demanded from doctors and solicitors.

I can see all the disadvantages, and if the law were to be changed, then it would need careful review, to make sure that people were not coming under any pressure whatever to take their lives. But I think it might be better than seeing increasing numbers of British people forced to take their lives in a foreign country.

Contrary to initial responses, Hamas's projected victory in the Palestinian parliamentary elections is a positive development. Not, as its apologists claim, because the proximity of power will favor a process of cooptation into parliamentary politics, and therefore strengthen the pragmatic wing of Hamas. There is no pragmatic wing in Hamas, and all differences within the movement -- the armed wing and the political wing, Palestine Hamas and Hamas in Syria -- are arguably tactical differences. No, the reason is, as Vladimir Ilich Lenin would put it, "worse is better."

Hamas's favored outcome was not victory, but a strong showing that would leave Hamas with the best of both worlds: It would remain in opposition (or would be invited to join a coalition as a junior partner) but would impose severe limitations on the Fatah-led government on how to manage its relations with Israel. Hamas could thus claim to reject Oslo, decline to recognize the Palestinian Authority and its commitments under the Oslo accords and the roadmap, and continue to use its rising political clout and its military strength to sabotage any effort to revive the moribund peace process.

What victory does to Hamas is to put the movement into an impossible position....They will have to show their true face now: No more masks, no more veils, no more double-speak. If the cooptation theory -- favored by the International Crisis Group and by the former British MI-6 turned talking head, Alistair Crooke -- were true, this is the time for Hamas to show what hides behind its veil.

Anne Turner was the 42nd Briton to seek medical help from Dignitas to end her life. Her case will cause controversy because she was diagnosed only last summer and as yet had relatively few symptoms of the brain disease, progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP).

Yesterday the UK organisation Dignity in Dying, which used to be known as the Voluntary Euthanasia Society, said Dr Turner's story showed British law was shortening lives and called for assisted suicide to be legalised.

"This case is truly heartbreaking," said its chief executive, Deborah Annetts. "The government must make time in parliament for the assisted dying for the terminally ill bill. Only this bill could have prevented Anne Turner from taking her life early. If this bill had been law, Anne would not have been forced to go to Zurich while she was still able to travel, for help to die. She would be alive today."

Dr Turner, who would have been 67 today, said in an interview shortly before her death that she did not want to reach the point where she could not travel to a country where assisted suicide is legal. "I think it's dreadful that somebody like myself has to go to Switzerland to do this, which is an awful hassle," she said.

The paramount pro-life message on Jan. 22 should of course be, "Choose life." But pro-choicers are right to say that our parallel message has to be, "Abstain from sex outside marriage." A few married couples choose death for their unborn children, but the overwhelming majority of abortions come when the father and mother are not married to each other. We can lower the abortion rate by offering compassionate help and developing laws that protect the unborn, but the front line is abstinence from extra-marital sex -- and older adults need to set a good example.

Evangelical pro-life efforts suffer when only 22 percent of non-Christians have a positive view of evangelicals generally. Part of the animosity can be laid at the feet of press bias, but many wounds are self-inflicted by actions that seem hypocritical. Societal reform always begins at home. Justin Martyr reported in the second century that conversion to Christ made a difference: "Those who once delighted in fornication now embrace chastity alone."

If sexual life inside the church isn't distinctive from that outside, we have little hope of stopping abortion.

On this anniversary, Christians must resolve to go on fighting, not only on behalf of the unborn, but addressing a broader question: Does our society have the capacity to rule itself according to what is the common good, adhering to its founding principles of the protection of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Or will it be swept up in the notion that the only thing that matters is that individuals can choose for themselves whatever they want?

Don't give up this struggle. We must resolve to fight smarter and harder -- for as long as it takes.

Principle 1 is to beware value judgments disguised as fact or reason. In Casey, Scalia derided his colleagues for reaffirming Roe v. Wade. He accused them of invoking "what the Court calls 'reasoned judgment' ... which turns out to be nothing but philosophical predilection and moral intuition." In Stenberg, he faulted the other justices for applying a standard that "can not be demonstrated true or false by factual inquiry or legal reasoning. It is a value judgment."

That was Scalia's principle on abortion. On assisted suicide, however, the principle gets in his way. The latest case, Gonzales v. Oregon, involves a law, directly approved twice by Oregon voters, that lets doctors prescribe drugs so terminally ill people can kill themselves. Years ago, then-Sen. John Ashcroft of Missouri asked then-Attorney General Janet Reno to block the law. She refused, citing states' rights. Ashcroft asked his Senate colleagues to pass legislation to block the law, but they refused, too. So, when President Bush took office, Ashcroft got Reno's job, ordered up an in-house legal memo that said assisted suicide wasn't a "legitimate medical purpose," and declared that the Controlled Substances Act of 1970 gave him authority to strip the license of any doctor who prescribed lethal drugs under the Oregon law.

Six of Scalia's colleagues conclude that what counts as a "legitimate medical purpose" is a value judgment and that on such questions, a 30-year-old law aimed at hippie stoners doesn't authorize the U.S. attorney general of 2001 to superimpose his moral intuition on the assisted-suicide-policy decision of Oregon voters. Scalia, however, says Ashcroft's definition of "legitimate medical purpose" isn't a value judgment; it's pure reason. He repeatedly calls it the "most natural" and "most reasonable" interpretation of that phrase.

The assisted-suicide case divided the court in a way that the abortion ruling did not, with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. casting his first dissent along with Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. The case concerned the Bush administration's effort to invalidate an Oregon law, the only one in the nation, allowing doctors, in carefully limited circumstances, to prescribe lethal doses of painkillers to terminally ill patients.

The administration argued that the federal drug control law, which regulates such painkillers and requires that they be prescribed "for a legitimate medical purpose," prohibited such physician-assisted suicide -- this despite the administration's supposed commitment to federalism, the long-standing state role in regulating the practice of medicine, and the central purpose of the federal law to prevent drug abuse and illegal trafficking.

The court, in a ruling written by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, agreed with two lower courts that the law did not empower this "radical shift of authority from the states to the Federal Government to define general standards of medical practice in every locality." We agree, and we were sorry to see the dissenters willing to let the administration stretch the reach of federal law.

The Supreme Court smacked former Attorney General John Ashcroft and the Bush administration when it ruled 6 to 3 that the Justice Department had gone beyond its authority in trying to undermine an assisted-suicide law in Oregon. The only disquieting note was that the new chief justice, John Roberts Jr., who had assured senators that he believed people had "the right to be let alone," nevertheless joined the dissenters in arguing that the federal government had the power to block Oregon's pioneering effort to let terminally ill patients end their own lives humanely.

The decision was notable because it rejected Mr. Ashcroft's attempt to impose his religiously conservative ideology on a state whose voters had decided differently. Oregon's law allowing physician-assisted suicide was approved narrowly in 1994 and reaffirmed by a thumping 60 to 40 percent vote three years later. Congressional conservatives, including Mr. Ashcroft when he was a senator, failed to push through a federal law to overturn it.

A severely brain-damaged 11-year-old beating victim has shown some "responses," and the Department of Social Services will not order her feeding tube removed until doctors determine whether the girl's permanent vegetative state could improve.

"The DSS team met with doctors to make sure there was no change in her condition. There is a change in her condition," DSS spokeswoman Denise Monteiro said. "She's having some responses."

Monteiro said doctors may finish testing the girl, Haleigh Poutre, today or tomorrow.

It was not the court's job to override the work of the New Hampshire Legislature by trashing the statute in its entirety, O'Connor wrote in the rare unanimous opinion.

Several justices had wondered during oral arguments in November why the lower court did not instead block application of the law in medical emergencies, which could have forced New Hampshire lawmakers to amend the Parental Notification Prior to Abortion Act.

"We try not to nullify more of a legislature's work than is necessary, for we know that '[a] ruling of unconstitutionality frustrates the intent of the elected representatives of the people,'" O'Connor wrote, citing court precedent.

"The lower courts need not have invalidated the law wholesale," O'Connor continued. "So long as they are faithful to legislative intent, then, in this case, the lower courts can issue a declaratory judgment and an injunction prohibiting the statute's unconstitutional application."

Massachusetts' officials and doctors were deciding on Wednesday when to end life support for an 11-year-old girl beaten into a vegetative state, following a court ruling that she had a right to die.

Doctors will run tests on Haleigh Poutre after the Supreme Judicial Court, the state's top court, decided on Tuesday that her breathing machines and feeding tubes could be disconnected.

The court's decision adds fuel to America's divisive "right to die" debate and could lead to murder charges against her stepfather, Jason Strickland, a 31-year-old auto mechanic accused of battering Poutre.

Some critics are calling social conservatives hypocrites for opposing Roe v. Wade and siding with the federal government in Gonzales v. Oregon, the assisted suicide case heard by the Supreme Court in October. You can't be for states' rights in one case and against them in the other. Or both for and against "judicial activism."

Though we often argue cases using political and legal reasoning, critics need to realize that these are not the central issues for us. We're against Oregon's law because it promotes taking human life, radically demeans personhood, and ultimately and idolatrously deconstructs the image of God that we as humans bear. And we need to be clear about that....

As important as politics is, though, we need to regularly lift up moral issues involved. Yes, some reply, but isn't it better to speak Washington's indigenous language of power and rights than to speak about transcendent truths that may be dismissed as irrelevant in a pluralistic society? And isn't there a trend to write off "moral disapproval" as not just irrelevant to policy, but also as an unconscionable sign of "animus"?

Yet by speaking only in terms of power and rights—states' rights, the rights of the attorney general, doctors' rights, the right to life -- we do a tremendous disservice to justice and to God.

The good news is that underneath all this mess, stellar science really is happening. Stem cells have proved even more captivating than we could have imagined, and understanding the process by which a stem cell progressively differentiates into a specialized cell such as a neuron or a pancreas beta cell is perhaps the most compelling biology question for our generation. Stem cells have sparked our interest for good reason.

But we're not going to figure out how they work overnight; it will take a very long time and require our best minds, as well as our collective effort (and, ideally, our collective dollars). Translating this knowledge into clinically meaningful applications is certain to take even longer and present still more challenges -- yet it should be achievable. If the current controversy were to cause us to precipitously abandon this exciting area, it would be a catastrophic shame.

What we really need is to refine our expectations for this research. This doesn't mean we should scale back our ambitions or demand less of our researchers. Rather, we need to recognize just how arduous and painstaking good science usually is and remind ourselves that data do not become dogma when published, but only when independently validated.

Difficult or not, good research is the only responsible way to proceed. If the promise of stem cells is to be fulfilled, the pursuit will require a solid scientific foundation, one grounded in reliable, reproducible facts and not simply supported by hype and hope.

Alito edged closer to suggesting that he might be willing to reconsider Roe if he is confirmed to the high court, refusing, under persistent questioning by Democrats, to say that he regards the 1973 decision as "settled law" that "can't be reexamined." In this way, his answers departed notably from those that Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. gave when asked similar questions during his confirmation hearings four months ago.

Yesterday, Alito said that Roe must be treated with respect because it has been reaffirmed by the high court several times in the past three decades.

But when Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) peppered Alito with questions about whether the ruling is "the settled law of the land," the nominee responded: "If 'settled' means that it can't be reexamined, then that's one thing. If 'settled' means that it is a precedent that is entitled to respect . . . then it is a precedent that is protected, entitled to respect under the doctrine of stare decisis." Stare decisis is a legal principle that, in Latin, means "to stand by that which is decided."

When it comes to cloning, all anyone can talk about lately -- and understandably so -- is recently disgraced South Korean scientist Hwang Woo-suk. One of Time's most influential people of 2004 could prove to be one of the most influential people of 2006, too -- but in ways he never intended.

Hwang, whose cloning claims have been unraveling in recent weeks, has been exposed as a liar. At first, he delusionally thought he could save himself from public disgrace, trying to talk his way out of revelations about unethical egg-procurement practices. But soon we learned that he faked research, too -- even though he tried to claim innocence and cry sabotage. And before 2005's end we learned that in his most celebrated "success," Mr. Stem Cell had never, in fact, created any embryonic stem cells from cloned embryos.

This is actually good news. Cloning -- even under frequently used euphemisms: somatic-cell nuclear transfer, therapeutic cloning, and simply "stem-cell research" -- would be a giant leap for mankind, and not a good one. To create a life in order to destroy it, as so-called therapeutic cloning would do, is a brave new world for us. A world that, although some states even here have already invested money in pursuing, we have not quite arrived at. Phew.

Supporters of intelligent design lost a court fight in Pennsylvania last month that both sides had seen as a test case. U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III rejected the Dover, Pa., school board's decision to teach intelligent design as part of a science course, ruling that design was "an interesting theological argument, but ... not science."

In this case, the parents say in their suit that school officials in Lebec -- a town of about 1,300 just west of Interstate 5 in Kern County and about 63 miles north of Los Angeles -- designed their course as a way of getting around that decision....

The Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which is representing the plaintiffs, said the course is "the wave of the future throughout the United States," for backers of intelligent design.

"It is my understanding that this school district has been approached by other school districts to clone this course and use it elsewhere. That is why this is of national significance. We would like to build a retaining wall against that wave in this case," he said.

It seems pretty clear that ID, as a public teaching, is going to meet the same fate as creation science. This modern update of an older understanding will not soon be taught as part of the science curriculum in our public schools. And this may be a good thing, in so far as it isn't really "science" anyway. What's unfortunate is that the ideology of Darwinism--that is, the mistaken notion that Darwin defeated God--not only reigns culturally supreme, but also apparently increasingly has the legal backing of the state.

The policy question 80 years ago, in the famous Scopes trial, was whether a public school teacher ought to be allowed to teach students about Darwin's theory of evolution. The question of today is nearly the opposite--whether anything other than orthodox Darwinism will be taught in the public schools. This marks not so much enlightenment's progress as a narrowing of our intellectual horizons.

For proof that criminalizing abortion doesn't reduce abortion rates and only endangers the lives of women, consider Latin America. In most of the region, abortions are a crime, but the abortion rate is far higher than in Western Europe or the United States. Colombia - where abortion is illegal even if a woman's life is in danger - averages more than one abortion per woman over all of her fertile years. In Peru, the average is nearly two abortions per woman over the course of her reproductive years.

In a region where there is little sex education and social taboos keep unmarried women from seeking contraception, criminalizing abortion has not made it rare, only dangerous. Rich women can go to private doctors. The rest rely on quacks or amateurs or do it themselves. Up to 5,000 women die each year from abortions in Latin America, and hundreds of thousands more are hospitalized.

Abortion is legal on demand in the region only in Cuba, and a few other countries permit it for extreme circumstances, mostly when the mother's life is at risk, the fetus will not live or the pregnancy is the result of rape. Even when pregnancies do qualify for legal abortions, women are often denied them because anti-abortion local medical officials and priests intervene, the requirements are unnecessarily stringent, or women do not want to incur the public shame of reporting rape.

Munich is a well-crafted movie, but it is a deeply and disturbingly dishonest one. Many moviegoers were not even born in 1972, and many who were alive will scarcely remember the details. Do moviemakers owe nothing to them? Do they owe nothing to the truth? This is not Oliver Stone's JFK, but for that reason its effect may be more insidious. The film looks like history but it is a morality play of the artist's imagination. Spielberg uses real historical figures like Golda Meir as props, putting words in their mouths that they not only did not say, but would never have said. During the opening credits, the audience is informed that the film is "inspired by real events." That could mean anything - but movie audiences probably will not parse the words with lawyerly care. They will read it in the context of a film that offers generous servings of verisimilitude. There are clips of sportscaster Jim McCay reporting from the Munich Olympics in 1972, as well as the voice of Peter Jennings narrating the harrowing events. Some of the details of the kidnapping and murder of the eleven Israeli athletes are well-researched. But as CC Colton warned, "Falsehood is never so successful as when she baits her hook with truth."...

Though the film portrays the violent brutality of the Palestinian terrorists at Munich, it does not even begin to convey the context. One of the themes of Munich is that vengeance begets vengeance in an endless cycle of pointless violence. Yet the murder of the Israeli Olympic team was utterly unprovoked - unless one is willing to accept the terrorists' logic that the very existence of Israel represents provocation enough. Following the murders of eleven Israeli athletes on German soil a mere 27 years after the Holocaust, the Olympic Games were suspended for a day. The Olympic flag and the flags of most competing nations were lowered to half-staff. But the Arab nations insisted upon flying their flags at full mast. Avery Brundage, president of the International Olympic Committe, praised the Olympic movement in a speech after the massacre, but said not one word about the dead Israelis.

Sharon attempted to cut through this Gordian knot by shocking the world out of its refusal to recognize Israel's readiness for peace and its corollary, that the Palestinian jihad had become the true obstacle to Palestinian statehood. As the chief architect of the settlement enterprise, he was in a unique position to embody the dramatic Israeli evolution from seeing a Palestinian state as an existential threat to something closer to a necessity to preserve the nation's Jewish and democratic character.

Sharon's incapacitation deprives our new national strategy of its leader, but does not eliminate the constituency that strategy built. The new party Sharon founded, Kadima -- after he failed to persuade another party he founded, the Likud, to adopt his path -- was poised to become Israel's leading party. Kadima has attracted a number of senior politicians from the Likud and Labor. If Sharon's heirs minimize infighting among themselves, they are likely to garner fewer votes than they would have under their fallen leader, but still become a major, and perhaps the largest party.

In any case, the constituency for Sharon's legacy -- fighting terrorism while remaining open to major concessions for true peace -- will not disappear, and will be reflected in whatever constellation of parties emerges. Ehud Olmert, the finance minister and former mayor of Jerusalem who became Sharon's alter-ego, is now acting prime minister.

"Israeli policy is going to go nowhere and as a consequence American policy goes into suspended animation," said Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East program at Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Sharon, who clung to life on Thursday after a severe stroke, has been Bush's top Middle East ally. The president's policy generally has followed what Palestinians assail as the 77-year-old Israeli leader's unilateral moves.

Now Washington will likely focus on just trying to preserve one of Sharon's boldest initiatives, the withdrawal of Israeli settlements from the occupied Gaza Strip, by containing violence that has flared since the pullout ended in September.

"In real terms, all U.S. policy likely comes down to now is making sure the violence in Gaza does not spill over," Alterman said.

Israel's prime minister, Ariel Sharon, has suffered a massive brain hemorrhage; at the very least, his long political career appears to be over. What does that mean for Israeli politics and for Arab-Israeli relations?

Basically, it signals a return to business as usual.

Since the State of Israel came into existence in 1948, two points of view on relations with the Arabs have dominated its political life, represented by (as they are presently called) Labour on the left and Likud on the right...Turning to Israeli relations with the Palestinians, Sharon made monumental mistakes in recent months. In particular, the withdrawal of all Israelis from Gaza confirmed for Palestinians that violence works, prompting a barrage of rockets on Israeli territory and an inflammation of the political temperature.

As Israel settles back to a more normal state, with no politician enjoying Sharon's outsized popularity, governmental actions will again come under closer scrutiny. The result is likely to be a less escapist and more realist set of policies toward the Palestinians and perhaps even some forward movement toward a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian war.

Things have gone awry when a next-door neighbor must ship in Minnesota doctors to perform a procedure local physicians could easily undertake. That's what has happened in South Dakota, where the fight over reproductive rights has grown so heated that getting an abortion is just this side of impossible.

Hence the flying Minnesota doctors -- four of them, who take turns showing up at South Dakota's only abortion clinic to provide a service that no doctor in the state dares to offer. Never mind that the procedure is legal -- and that the U.S. Supreme Court has declared its availability a constitutional right. South Dakota's abortion foes have rendered those facts nearly irrelevant by branding as a "baby-killer" any doctor willing to perform abortions. Not surprisingly, no doctor remains willing. South Dakota has become one of the three states in the nation where getting an abortion is most difficult.

Surely Minnesotans shouldn't resent lending out a few doctors. But they ought to take real umbrage at the movement that makes the arrangement necessary. South Dakota has long been in the vanguard of the quest to fulfill by intimidation a goal lawmakers and courts have so far declined to deliver: an abortion embargo.

There is one group that has taken particular delight in Hwang's fall from scientific grace -- those who have opposed embryonic stem cell research ever since they learned that human embryos were involved. The pages of conservative magazines and blogs have erupted in a frenzy of we-told-you-so's as the anti-stem cell lobby strains mightily to use Hwang's fraud to impugn the entire field of stem cell research. And the press releases of conservative Catholic and Evangelical Christian groups show no hesitancy in attempting to profit from the misfortune of others. They too are now prattling on about how Hwang's deceit shows that every embryonic stem cell researcher and research proponent has long wallowed in sin...

Fraud, while terrible, is not a sin that adheres to a theory or to a field of research. It is a problem that clings to an individual, not a line of scientific inquiry. Those writing that Hwang's fraud spells the end for stem cell research, and most of them have almost no knowledge of what science is or how it really works, are whistling in the dark of their own ignorance....Science like all other human endeavors such as the professoriate, the priesthood or the military is only as strong as its weakest links. And that will be true long after the critics and the proponents of embryonic stem cell research find out whether it really can do anyone any good.