As I had said was going to happen, WORLD’s sub-blogs have had to find new homes. It’s kind of a good feeling, in this era of virtual real-estate to have my own domain! (Seinfeld jokes, at this point, are not allowed.) I went ahead and gave it my own name, for various reasons, but it’s still the Cranach blog, independent and unbound!

This means that this old dog has to learn a new system, so please be patient. Yes, I’m working with a template so the design might be a little clunky at first. I’m not REALLY Lucas Cranach, so my artistic gifts are lacking. But I’m going to ask for help. And I need to, as they say, “populate” this new site, re-doing the blogroll and (most importantly) moving the archives here. The site also apparently looks different on different browsers. The point is, please be patient as we move into our new home.

This new site has some advantages. It looks like I’ll be able to do more with images than I could before. The software seems better and easier to use, once I figure it out completely. I’m hoping the comments work smoothly for you. I believe you have to “register,” but that is really not a big deal and I hope that doesn’t inhibit anyone from joining our conversations.

The old site at WORLD will still be up for awhile, as discussions there continue to rage, but please set your bookmarks to this site and we’ll start some new ones.

And a big tip of the hat to Rich Shipe for helping me do this.

Halloween used to be a holiday that centered on little kids getting dressed up and going trick-or-treating. Now, adults have taken over the day, knocking down the children and turning Halloween into a gore-fest. Adults have injected both sex and violence into the day, with one-up-manship centered on how to outdo one’s neighbors in images of sado-masochistic horror.

That’s not just me talking, it’s “The Washington Post.” Read Terri Sapienza’s article entitled When Did Halloween Get So Gruesome? A sampling:

Next to the standard witches, ghosts and black cats, many specialty stores and catalogues are selling creepily realistic corpses, severed limbs and butchered body parts. One catalogue advertises an animated ghoul who can vomit into a barrel on cue (special order only, $2,750). An online company sells a Tortured Torso Prop (for $149) you can lean near your front door to welcome trick-or-treaters. . . .

Horchow, the high-end Neiman Marcus affiliate, sells fake buzzards and chocolate coffins. Target sells a 15-piece cemetery kit, a hanging grim reaper and an oversize maggot. Spirit Halloween, a Spencer’s specialty store, sells the Tortured Torso Prop and a child’s costume called Sailor of Death. Fright Catalog, seller of the Vomit Barrel, also serves up John Doe, a latex corpse with a hollow chest cavity for displaying a food buffet inside.. . .

Halloween has become much more adult-driven and sexualized, according to Paul J. Donahue, a clinical psychologist and the founder and director of Child Development Associates, a group practice that works primarily with children and families in Scarsdale, N.Y. Costumes sexual in nature have become more popular.

“We’re a culture of extremes,” Donahue said. “We have to push things. At Halloween it becomes a competition among adults to outdo and go further and further.”

The technical term for this is “decadence,” a sign of a culture in dissolution.

The pro-life movement has a hero in Phill Kline, the former Attorney General of Kansas, who crusaded, among other things, against Wichita’s notorious abortion clinic that specializes in late-term, partial-birth abortions (that is to say, infanticide). Columnist Robert Novak tells about how the abortion industry targeted him for defeat:

That industry pumped an estimated $1.5 million into the 2006 campaign of Paul Morrison, the pro-choice Republican Johnson County district attorney who turned Democratic to run against Kline for attorney general. Tiller contributed $121,000 to his own ProKanDo PAC, which spent $322,680 in the campaign. An affiliated nonprofit group, Kansans for Consumer Privacy Protection, spent more than $400,000 on “educational mailings” obviously targeting Kline. Badly outspent, Kline relied on an old-fashioned handshaking campaign and was swamped at the polls.

Then came a bizarre event worthy of Shakespeare. Since Morrison had been elected district attorney as a Republican, under state law his replacement was selected by the GOP’s precinct committeemen. They chose Kline. The abortion lobby’s campaign against him had made him unelectable to any office, ruling out election to a full term as district attorney next year. With time short, he immediately set to work.

From this post in suburban Kansas City, Mr. Kline has opened up a new tactic in the abortion wars: going after the biggest abortion-cliinic franchiser, Planned Parenthood. Kline is charging the group with a multitude of offenses:

His 107 charges against Planned Parenthood include allegations of “unlawful late-term abortions,” “unlawful failure to determine viability for late-term abortion,” “making false information” and “unlawful failure to maintain records.” Antiabortion activists see Kline’s prosecution as the springboard for a national campaign. Forty other states have abortion laws similar to the Kansas statute that says abortion is legal only when the fetus cannot live independently outside the mother’s womb — that is, when it is not “viable.”

That is a big opening, since medical science is pushing back that time further and further. Phill Kline is a reminder that pro-lifers must never give up, that defeats may not be permanent and that new fronts in the battle are always opening up. And, I would add, that God has a hand in all of this.