The Democrats fumed over the successful confirmation of Judge Alito with characteristic pettiness. There was angry talk of not using the "knives" with sufficient zeal. I shudder to think what that would mean in action.

Of course, we do get an indication of it with their zeal over legalized elective abortion. That was and will remain a key issue in any judicial nomination from now on, particularly if any more Supreme Court positions become vacant. It irks me that they view legalized elective abortion as a just and merciful option for women. So what if our feminist foremothers were against it and viewed it as an assault on women and children, a sign of the heartlessness of the men who oppressed and exploited them? They like to cry, "What are you doing to help them?"

My answer: "What are you doing to help them truly have a choice? Where are your federal programs supporting needy pregnant women through their pregnancies so they have as much social support to bear their children as to raise the ones who survive the abortion snare?"

Where are those federal programs, anyway? Why isn't there a well-established and well-publicized social safety net for pregnant women who need assistance during their pregnancy and help in placing the child for adoption if she chooses that option? Before legalized abortion, we had private homes for unwed mothers which compassionately cared for them until the babies were born and they could return to their previous lives. Why wasn't this turned into a federal program to deal with the rise in unwanted pregnancies from the sexual revolution?

Because elective abortion to legally kill an unwanted child was an integral part of the sexual revolution, that's why. That was the whole point of it. It was supposed to free women from unwanted pregnancies and the burden of caring for those children. Of course, it really freed the sperm donors from that responsibility, too. They wanted to talk the women into sexual irresponsibility in exchange for the votes to support women's rights, but they had to be sure they had a solution for those unwanted children that resulted when imperfect birth control failed. They had enough support from some like-minded vote-hungry feminist leaders to disguise the underlying agenda.

We now have a social myth that women can and should have sex as "freely" as men and solve any incidental "problems" with an abortion as needed. Never mind that it damages her body and emotions if she makes that choice. Never mind that they've cleverly limited her choices by eliminating social support for pregnant women to carry their babies as much as possible.

If she makes the wrong choice for her good and conceives a child as a result, she is literally psychologically herded towards the abortion clinic because she thinks she has no other choice. That is exploitation of women and children, and we shouldn't fail to point this out to the "sensitive" liberals who conveniently overlook the warnings of the founders of the women's liberation movement in America on the subject in favor of their male-benefiting politically correct myths! Women and children deserve better than this.

We had a wintry blast of snow this weekend, dumping three inches of snow in a matter of hours as the storm front swept through. The streets were warm enough to melt the snow fairly quickly overnight, but the yards are still largely frosted with soggy snow. Time will tell if the cold nailed the daffodils. So far, the plants look okay but the night temperatures did dip into the mid 20's degree F, yet we are expecting to return to spring-like temperatures in a few days with cold rain.

I attended my first ABWA Cotton Belles chapter board meeting and dutifully took the meeting minutes. The president has big plans for the upcoming months. We have the national ABWA spring membership drive starting in March, an upcoming Southern Women's Home Show she wants the chapter to participate in for publicity and more ideas to bring in more members, and an ABWA Spring Conference season opening soon with one conference that she is particularly interested in.

I finished another child's sweater and started on one in a bulky boucle twist yarn. I had to do a little figuring to adjust the pattern for a much heavier yarn on larger needles and have one nearly finished in a size 2. It is a very pretty teal and blue shaded yarn and feels like a fuzzy teddy bear once knitted.

I also got another cotton lace towel finished and started another pattern in the series. I got into a discussion of the Flower Buds pattern in the Knit & Chat 5th Yr Delphi forum which hosts the series and ended up making it as a square cloth in the original stitch and in a variation of the stitch to explore the texture of the pattern.