‘The Hand of Hope’

By Jennifer J. Foster

You probably don’t recognize the name of Samuel Armas. But chances are, you’ve seen his hand.

It’s been almost 10 years since a freelance photographer working for USA Today stood by and took pictures as doctors performed a new kind of surgery at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tenn.

But this surgery was different. Doctors were hoping to correct a case of spina bifida, a condition in which the spine fails to close properly during pregnancy—and their patient was in his 21st week in the womb.

In the midst of the procedure, the hand of the tiny baby wrapped around a single finger of the doctor leading the effort, and the photographer snapped his shutter.

That photographer was Michael Clancy, and that tiny hand belonged to Samuel Armas.

“It’s just a miracle picture, a miracle moment,“ Clancy told FOXNews.com. “It shows the earliest human interaction ever recorded.“

The stunning picture appeared in USA Today in September, ahead of Samuel’s birth in December. As Fox reports, it quickly “spread across the globe as proof of development in the womb and was later cited during congressional debates on the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, which passed in 2000.“

To mark the upcoming 10-year anniversary of that amazing photograph, a FoxNews.com reporter caught up with the boy “born famous” and the photographer who made him so. The story provides a window into Samuel’s life and the incredible impact Clancy’s photo has had on it.

Here’s an excerpt:

“When I see that picture, the first thing I think of is how special and lucky I am to have God use me that way,“ Samuel told FOXNews.com. “I feel very thankful that I was in that picture ...

“It’s very important to me,“ Samuel said of the photograph. “A lot of babies would’ve lost their lives if that didn’t happen.“

Samuel, now 9, still suffers some lingering effects from the spina bifida, but his life is much like those of his contemporaries; he’s a decorated Cub Scout. He is an accomplished swimmer. He digs animals and has an impressive bug collection.

He’s also changing lives. Topping the list? Michael Clancy.

Clancy says he was pro-choice before the surgery. His eyes were opened, he says, after seeing that hand and the undeniable proof of the existence of life.

The ex-photographer now works as a motivational speaker at pro-life events.

“And that’s what I’m going to do, keep telling this story,“ Clancy said. “It can change people’s hearts. What started off as an assignment turned into a responsibility to keep telling the story behind it.“

How many people can say they were changing the lives of complete strangers before they were even born?

There is some controversy about whether Samuel reached out from the womb of his own volition, or if the doctor maneuvered his hand out when positioning him for surgery.

Samuel’s mom doesn’t think it matters.

“The fact of the matter is it’s a child with a hand, with a life, and that’s meaningful enough,“ she said.

Click here to read the rest of the article and see the famous photograph, along with other, more recent pictures of Samuel.

What an amazing story.

Blame McConnell

By Jennifer J. Foster

I’ll be honest: I’m no fan of Mitch McConnell.

I have long thought that the tactics, the aloofness and—well, quite frankly, the pompous attitude—of the Senate minority leader are responsible in large measure for the disorganization and ineffectiveness of Republican senators in Washington.

I absolutely abhor his position on money in politics, and that would be enough for me to hope for his defeat on its own. But every time I turn around, the guy is making a muddled mess out of something else.

SIDEBAR: A couple of months ago, when the Senate axed the e-Verify citizenship verification program from the economic stimulus package, I went around asking what had happened to it in conference. It had bipartisan support in both chambers, and while it didn’t make the House version of the bill, it did come to conference in the Senate’s version.

Somehow, it was dropped from the bill in conference, and I wanted to know why.

I found a Senate leadership aide willing to answer my questions. One by one, I eliminated all other potential powerbrokers but one as the culprit.

Guess who it was?

Is McConnell the guy? I asked. Is he responsible for the elimination of an important provision that would help ensure that American tax dollars would be used to employ American workers to help the American economy?

The yeses and nos dried right up. “It is what it is,“ the source said plainly.

Make of that what you will. I sure did. END SIDEBAR

So, I will readily admit that I’d like to see McConnell return to private life.

U.S. Sen. Jim Bunning would, too.

Bunning is the other senator from Kentucky. Like McConnell, he is a Republican.

Beyond that, they don’t have much in common.

McConnell has been undercutting Bunning for a long time, basically trying to push him into retirement. After winning a close race of his own last year, McConnell made it clear that he doesn’t think Bunning is up to his own re-election challenge.

Bunning has apparently finally had it with being kicked around, so he arranged a little conference call yesterday. From the tell-us-what-you-really-think department via RCP:

“Do you realize that under our dynamic leadership of our leader, we have gone from 55 and probably to 40 (Senate seats) in two election cycles, and if the tea leaves that I read are correct, we will wind up with about 36 after this election cycle,“ the Louisville Courier-Journal reports Bunning said. “So if leadership means anything, it means you don’t lose ... approximately 19 seats in three election cycles with good leadership.“

(I love sarcasm; don’t you?)

I don’t like McConnell. McConnell doesn’t like Bunning, and the feeling is mutual.

But the numbers don’t lie.

Remember what happened to Newt Gingrich? He was forced to resign the speakership in 1998 because the GOP performed poorly in midterms that year.

How poorly?

They lost five seats. FIVE.

I’m no math whiz, but I know that 15 is more than five, and 19 is more than 15. And as an overall percentage, those losses are WAY worse than what Gingrich lost in ‘98.

Come on, Senate Republicans. Wanna get serious about change? Dump McConnell.

Oh, wait; I forgot ... McConnell is one of those old white guys you have on the National Council of the National Council for a New America.

*Sigh*

And here I thought that group was all about new ideas.

Never mind.

Apology in Auburn

By Jennifer J. Foster

You might have heard about the little dust-up here in Auburn about a week and a half ago when a city councilman removed some decorations from graves in the city’s oldest cemetery.

It would have been just another local issue, except for two things: The councilman, the Rev. Arthur Dowdell, is black, and the decorations were Confederate flags.

I’ve held off discussing this controversy in this space for a couple of reasons, not the least of which is that I don’t think there’s any defense for what Dowdell did.

You can read the details of what happened on the Opelika-Auburn News’s web site; the paper has had excellent coverage of this issue from the day it happened.

Well, at a packed City Council meeting last night, Councilman Dowdell did what he should have done from the beginning: He apologized for his actions. (Read the story and see the video here.)

I understand that the Confederate flag is a controversial symbol. I have heard some folks compare it to the Nazi flag, which, because of the ugly history associated with it, Germans can only display in museums.

Germany doesn’t have the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Americans do.

We don’t have to like our neighbors’ choices. But as long as they aren’t hurting others, in America, we do have to respect them.

But however inflammatory the symbol itself may be, its nature is irrelevant in this case.

According to city officials, the gravesites at Pine Hill Cemetery are deeded to residents. The city performs maintenance and upkeep duties at the cemetery, but the graves themselves are private property. On this there can be, and there is, no question.

The city also has an ordinance that regulates the nature of gravesite decorations. But those regulations apply only to the more modern cemeteries, not to Pine Hill, which is the city’s oldest graveyard.

Of course, all the Confederate soldiers in Auburn are buried at Pine Hill; the modern cemeteries weren’t around yet when those soldiers needed them.

So this was the stage for the observation of Confederate Memorial Day, which is a state holiday here in Alabama. Two weeks ago, members of a local historical organization placed small Confederate flags on the graves of the dead Confederate soldiers for the observation, just as they have done for 50 years.

Then Councilman Dowdell arrived.

What happened next? Dowdell didn’t like that the flags were there, so he pulled several of them up, in the presence of two members of the historical organization that had placed them. He broke at least one in half, whether intentionally or unintentionally, and when a reporter asked him about it later, he said of the flag, “It might have snapped itself. If it did, so what? If I had my way, I would have broke them all up and stomped on them and burned them. That flag represents another country, another nation.”

SIDEBAR: Dowdell said last night that he didn’t just go pull up the flags. He said that when he was made aware of the flags in the cemetery, he contacted both the assistant city manager and the mayor of Auburn and was told by both men that they didn’t know who placed the flags on the graves in Pine Hill. Dowdell then said that had he known it was the historical group, “then you probably wouldn’t be here tonight,“ insinuating that he wouldn’t have pulled them up.

Two problems with that. One, in the first story about this controversy, there is no mention of either of Dowdell’s conversations with city officials about who placed the flags. Dowdell says only that he fielded complaints from people at Auburn Junior High School that the flags were up. Two, News reporter Katie Stallcup reported in that first story that Mary Norman, a member of the historical group that placed the flags, was in the cemetery when Dowdell arrived and that Norman said Dowdell asked her who placed the flags in the cemetery.

See what I’m getting at here? END SIDEBAR

Remember a couple of weeks ago when I said that people in this country had forgotten how to disagree with one another respectfully? As it turns out, that column appeared in our newspaper five days before this incident occurred.

As I said, we have the freedom of speech in this country, and Dowdell’s actions were an infringement on that freedom. It was made worse because he is a city councilman, and he told the newspaper that he would see to it that “I’m going on the record that (the placement of Confederate flags) will never happen again. This will never happen again as long as I’m on the city council.”

So here you have a man who is violating private property, desecrating gravesites, infringing on the freedom of speech and arbitrarily making city policy all by himself.

Needless to say, the rest of the members of the City Council were ... less than thrilled.

Dowdell explained that he wasn’t surprised that they disapproved of what he did. After all, he said, “I’m the only black man on the city council, why would they agree with me? They’re all white. They don’t understand.”

Gubernatorial candidate Artur Davis came to town two days after this news broke. Davis is black, so Dowdell might have been expecting that Davis would defend his actions.

Nope.

“I respect all cemeteries and people have a right to honor the dead in the way that they want,“ Davis said.

And then Davis said this:

“We have to live with each other no matter what our differences and no matter what our history. We’re simultaneously the capital of the civil rights movement and the capital of the Confederacy,” he said. “Neither one of those parts of our past is going to disappear, and whoever is governor of this state has a moral obligation to respect all Alabamians ...

“There are undoubtedly people who are offended by the Confederate flag, and they every right to be. And there are undoubtedly people who venerate the Confederate flag and honor it, and they have every right to do that, too,” he said. “The question is are there things we have in common?

“The fact that my ancestors were on one side of the Civil War and some of my constituents’ ancestors were on the other side doesn’t mean we can’t work together and find a common ground.”

This is why Davis is a serious candidate for governor and Dowdell ... isn’t.

So what did Dowdell think of Davis’s remarks?

“I don’t care whether a congressman came to town. I don’t vote for him,“ he said.

I’m sure there are some folks in Auburn who support what Dowdell did. But the majority of citizens who have engaged with the newspaper on its web site and written letters to the editor believe he was wrong.

So the City Council asked him tonight to apologize. And, to his credit, that’s exactly what Dowdell did.

It couldn’t have been an easy thing to do. It would have been much easier to dig in and wage a protracted battle about a symbol, a battle that would have likely ended up in court and cost this city many thousands of taxpayer dollars to wage. But Dowdell recognized that he was wrong, and he said so.

That’s a step in the right direction.

Dowdell said in his statement before the packed council chambers last night that it was not his intention to hurt anyone’s feelings and that his actions were the result of “miscommunication” and “ignorance.”

“I’m sorry this happened,” Dowdell said. “I hope we can get past it.”

On those points, Councilman Dowdell and I agree.