“They agree on little else, but the heads of Northern Ireland’s four main parties are united in their determination to deny their countrywomen access to free abortion at home.” So says an outraged correspondent for The Economist, reporting on the failure of an initiative to extend Great Britain’s liberal abortion laws to Ulster.

The piece is an excellent specimen of that familiar synthesis of journalism and advocacy. The opponents of liberalization, you see, are not motivated by an obligation to defend the innocent but by some unaccountable desire to thwart the legitimate desires of “their countrywomen.” Since the legislators gave more weight to the rights of the unborn than to the safety of women who choose to break the law, all reasonable readers will dolefully shake their heads to see that “medical arguments were trumped by political ones.” We can only hope that the slow-tide of “tolerance” will wash away all the backward “attitudes” impeding reform.

This sort of transparent question-begging (which is clearly too blithe to be deliberate) shows how completely some cultural elites of have internalized the idea that abortion is a human right. But, more encouragingly, the consensus against abortion among Northern Ireland’s warring factions shows how widely intelligible is the claim that all human life, from conception to natural death, deserves the protection of the laws.

This week we’ve pointed out a couple instances of the confusion surrounding the global-warming debate. If you’re looking for a clear and constructive forum on the topic, you should check out the website Climate Debate Daily, which compiles articles and news stories both for and against the theory of anthropogenic global warming.

The site is edited by Denis Dutton, founder of Arts & Letters Daily, who believes that “the best way for science and public policy to proceed is to keep assessing evidence pro and con for anthropogenic global warming.”

Why does a man who describes the French left as a “great backward-falling corpse” continue to associate himself with it? This is the question Fred Siegel tackles in his review of Left in Dark Times: A Stand Against the New Barbarism by Bernard-Henri Levy. Even at its most exasperatingly fatuous, the world of French politics has a certain alluring romance–many readers will value the poetical reflections of one of its most prominent figures.

Scientists from UCLA have found an unexpected–not to mention cheap–way to produce x-rays: Scotch Tape.

Just two weeks after a Nobel Prize highlighted theoretical work on subatomic particles, physicists are announcing a startling discovery about a much more familiar form of matter: Scotch tape. It turns out that if you peel the popular adhesive tape off its roll in a vacuum chamber, it emits X-rays. The researchers even made an X-ray image of one of their fingers. . . .

“We were very surprised,” said Juan Escobar. “The power you could get from just peeling tape was enormous.” . . .

He suggests that with some refinements, the process might be harnessed for making inexpensive X-ray machines for paramedics or for places where electricity is expensive or hard to get. After all, you could peel tape or do something similar in such machines with just human power, like cranking.

Ryan T. Anderson has already noted George Weigel’s exchange with Obama’s ostensible pro-life Catholic supporters. Weigel’s most recent rejoinder is, indeed, simply devastating.

But there was one particular attack on Weigel that was not addressed, but is worth highlighting:

Weigel may also wish to engage in a theoretical debate about hypothetical public support for the funding of abortion, and whether that results in improper moral complicity with an evil act. That is a worthy seminar topic, but we recommend he start by asking the same question of himself in terms of coerced taxpayer support for an unjust and unjustifiable war in Iraq costing over $10 billion a month and thousands of Iraqi and American lives, which Weigel aided and abetted with his vocal support, contrary to the express prayers of the Holy Father he called “a witness to hope.”

The authors seem to be suggesting here that if political advocacy for public funding of abortion “results in improper moral complicity with an evil act,” then political support for the war in Iraq should be similarly understood as “improper moral complicity with an evil act.”

The not so implicit suggestion is that if a Catholic politician were to receive ecclesiastical sanction (e.g., excommunication, withholding the sacraments) for advocating (or voting for) government funding of abortion, so should those Catholic politicians who supported the Iraq war (and who voted to fund it). Conversely, the suggestion seems to be that if you are not willing to sanction Catholic politicians who supported the war, you should not be willing to sanction Catholic politicians who support funding for abortion.

That’s one version of the “seamless garment” position, I suppose. The unfortunate implication of this position would be to render even an otherwise impeccable pro-life Catholic politician (e.g., our colleague Rick Santorum who voted in favor of the Iraq War and who continued to support funding the war) as morally suspect and as subject to ecclesiastical sanction as those who support public funding abortion or those who defend partial birth abortion. Do these guys really want to suggest that a Catholic politician’s support for the Iraq war makes him morally complicit in promoting and supporting intrinsically evil acts, just as if he had voted to fund abortion (perhaps by advocating repeal of the Hyde amendment) or had he supported partial-birth abortion?

Still, it might be instructive to think about how their argument (if we may call it that) might be salvaged from complete incoherence. Absent a full-throated defense of absolute pacifism (which would render Obama’s support of the “good war” in Afghanastan equally subject to condemnation) the bishops could declare that selective conscientious objection to the Iraq war is the only morally permissible option for Catholics. On the assumption that the Iraq war is manifestly “unjust and unjustified,” the bishops could simply declare, that no Catholic may permissibly serve in Iraq as a soldier sailor, airman, or Marine. Such service would, they might argue, involve a Catholic not merely in moral complicity in evil acts but with direct involvement with evil (killing in an unjust war). They might then extend a similar judgment to Catholic politicians who support funding of the Iraq war.

Now I doubt the authors would be so foolish as to suggest something like this, even in an academic seminar, not least because pretty good moral arguments can be mustered in defense of the just use of military force in Iraq. They may even be willing to dismiss such a line of argument as risible. In which case, they would be right. But apart from something very much like this, their argument for the moral equivalence between supporting the Iraq war and supporting funding for abortion is equally risible, and a rhetorical cheap shot.