Researchers at Wake Forest have used two types of adult progenitor cell to form miniature functioning livers in the laboratory.

The research will be presented today at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases. To construct the liver pieces, the scientists stripped all of the cells off of animal livers, then seeded the remaining collagen skeleton with human liver progenitor (precursor) cells and human endothelial cells (which line and create blood vessels.) The remade liver construct was grown in a bioreactor in the lab, and after a week demonstrated human liver tissue growth and function.

Senior author Shay Soker noted:

“We are excited about the possibilities this research represents, but must stress that we’re at an early stage and many technical hurdles must be overcome before it could benefit patients”

The bioengineered human livers made from adult cells could have utility for drug testing as well as transplantation.

Soker was part of the team that previously generated functional bladders for patients and found multipotent adult stem cells in amniotic fluid.

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Here’s how an article in the Washington Post today began:

“A majority of active-duty and reserve service members surveyed by the Defense Department would not object to serving and living alongside openly gay troops, according to multiple people familiar with the findings.

“The survey’s results are expected to be included in a Pentagon report, due to President Obama on Dec. 1 . . . .”

The sources who leaked this information, or the reporter who wrote it, or both, are highly biased in favor of the pro-homosexual position on this issue. How can I tell? Because I have seen the survey, and it never asks, “Would you object to serving and living alongside openly gay troops?”

FRC will soon be releasing a more detailed analysis of the weaknesses of the two surveys (one of service members and one of their spouses). But ever since the surveys were announced and their contents were—again—leaked, we have been criticizing them for failing to ask the most fundamental question of all—“Do you believe that the current law on homosexuality in the armed forces should be repealed?” Instead, the surveys (and the entire study by the “Comprehensive Review Working Group”) have been premised on the idea that the law will be repealed, and they seek to determine only how such a change should be implemented.

The military is a hierarchical, command-based structure. Therefore, when the Congress, the Commander-in-Chief, possibly the courts, and one’s immediate superiors all say that you must serve and live “alongside openly gay troops,” to “object” is not an option. You either obey, or you leave.

On that point, the story goes on to say:

“Some troops surveyed – but not a majority – objected strongly to the idea of serving with gays and said they would quit the military if the policy changed . . .”

Is this how they concluded that “a majority . . . would not object?” It’s certainly a relief that a majority would not leave, because our armed forces would be destroyed if that happened. But if even ten percent were to leave (as one earlier poll suggested), it would have a devastating impact on our military.

Check frc.org for our more detailed critique of these surveys in coming weeks.

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Check out this new video from the Population Research Institute showing a factual explanation of how President Obama’s health care plan will expand abortion coverage in the United States.

Tags: Abortion, Health Care, President Obama

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Today is the 223rd anniversary of the publication of the first of what became known as The Federalist Papers. Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, intellectual luminaries whose brilliance shines across the years, produced 85 treatises on the newly-proposed Constitution.

The Federalist Papers were designed to persuade their fellow citizens that a Constitution that defines, empowers and constrains the federal government was worth enacting. They succeeded in their project.

In our time, we are confronted by judges who believe the Constitution is not the carefully crafted text the Founders gave us but, rather, political putty onto which they can impress their personal beliefs and political vision. As Thomas Jefferson predicted, the Constitution has become, for those believe in legislating while presiding in a court, “a mere thing of wax in the hands of the Judiciary, which they may twist and shape into any form they please.”

Defenders of the activist courts claim that those who wish to constrain judicial overreach want to erode the independence of the judiciary. To the contrary:

• When a judge overturns the result of a state ballot election vote declaring what we have always known – that marriage is between a man and a woman;
• When a judge says that the National Day of Prayer is unconstitutional;
• When a judge believes she has the expertise to scrub multiple academic studies, not to mention the whole history of the Armed Forces’ warrior culture, in order to declare that military service for homosexuals is a “right,” and;
• When a panel of judges declares that same-sex marriage is a constitutional “right,”

those rejecting the right of judges to make such rulings are attacking not an independent judiciary but that judiciary’s willful rejection of that which it is sworn to uphold, the Constitution itself.

An independent judiciary does not mean judges should be untethered from the nation’s charter text, becoming laws unto themselves, legislating at will through the vehicle of judicial edicts. It means that when a judge or panel of judges rules consistent with the original meaning of the Constitution, they should not be bullied into unconstitutional jurisprudence. This is why federal judges have lifetime appointments; from the early days of the Republic, such appointments have been viewed as safeguards against political pressure.

In our time, many judges have become bullies, insistent on imposing their will upon our system of representative self-government and the people themselves. Thus, Justice Scalia’s assertion that the Constitution “means what it meant when it was written” is a shocking, retrograde, near-barbaric affront.

With the men who gave us The Federalist Papers, let us stand for an independent judiciary — independent from political shoving and pulling, but never independent from that which gives the judges themselves the right and power to serve: The Constitution.

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Today is Theodore Roosevelt’s birthday. T.R. was much beloved in his own day, but he has caught some flak recently. In many ways, it is true, Roosevelt was not a conservative.

He ran, after all, on the Progressive party line in 1912.

That “Bull Moose” candidacy was arguably T.R.’s worst mistake. By splitting the vote between himself and Republican William Howard Taft, T.R. let Woodrow Wilson come in as a minority President. Many of the disasters of the twentieth century, including the rise of Hitler, can fairly be laid at Wilson’s feet.

Theodore Roosevelt pushed for a number of laws that we constitutional conservatives would not challenge today. Do we disagree with the Pure Food and Drug Act? We certainly must disagree with a Food and Drug Administration that approves lethal, abortion-producing drugs like RU-486 and Ella. But the basic premise that our food and drugs should be safe for human consumption is not one that we would want to do away with.

Child labor laws have been too stringently enforced. Young people need to have experience of the work place from co-op programs and the like. But few of us constitutional conservatives would like to see 10-year olds going down into the coal mines.

Continue reading »

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Sad news has come in from Germany. Paul the Octopus is dead. He had gained world-wide attention for his uncanny ability to pick winners in the World Cup soccer match-ups. He was only 2 ½ years old and seems to have died of natural causes.

Paul was a Progressive, of course. How can I tell? Octopuses are highly intelligent. They have eight arms. They’re well-equipped by nature for taking our wallets. European outlook. Soccer fan. A perfect fit.

I’ve often wondered why liberals and conservatives don’t have animal mascots, just like Democrats and Republicans do. The famous donkey and elephant symbols came from the talented pen of Thomas Nast, a nineteenth century cartoonist. It’s hard to believe it, but Nast’s animal symbols date only from the 1870s. Abraham Lincoln and U.S. Grant, the first two Republican presidents, never ran with the elephants.

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Tomorrow night, October 26th at 9:00 p.m. ET, Students for Life will host a short audio webcast on ella, the abortion drug, “What They Won’t Tell You About Abortion.”

Family Research Council is co-sponsoring the event, as well as Concerned Women for America, LifeNews and the Breast Cancer Prevention Institute.

Speakers include Kristan Hawkins from Students For Life, Wendy Wright from Concerned Women for America, Dr. Angela Lanfranchi from the Breast Cancer Prevention Institute, and me. I will be discussing the ella pharmacy education campaign.

To register and/or for more information visit the registration page.

Tags: Ella

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Bob Guccione, founder of Penthouse magazine, has died.  His pornography empire was built upon a premise: The viler and more graphic, the better.

News reports tell us that his publications featured every imaginable form of deviancy capable between human beings.  I will not use this space further to describe the horror — I use that word most intentionally — that Guccione brought to thousands of young women and to those who viewed his debasing exploitation of them.

Yet in the stories about his life, his obituaries in the mainstream media give us a remarkable window into the way the secular Left thinks about such things as truth, decency, and honor.

National Public Radio tells us that Guccione kept “pushing the limits of porn” and “getting edgier.”

The Washington Post seems almost celebratory: According to its obituary, Guccione “revolutionized the adult entertainment industry.”

And the New York Times argues that Guccione “broke taboos” and “outraged the guardians of taste,” to which it might as well have added, “and good thing, too.”

None of these obits describe what Guccione wrought as wrong, cruel, deviant, the very essence of cultural debauchery.  To do so would imply objective moral standards exist. To affirm this belief would be an affront to the sensitivities of our age.

Let me see if I have this straight: We can be “edgy” — i.e., prurient and self-destructive — when it comes to sex.  We cannot be “edgy” — i.e., honest and straightforward — about what is good and right.

As to the New York Times’ phrase, the “guardians of taste:” Yes, the vast majority of the American people, sickened by seeing young women used for perverse sexual pleasure in the most vivid and shocking of ways, do have a sense of guardianship toward obvious assaults on human dignity.

This is not about “taste” or “edginess.”  It’s about whether or not women are made in the image of God.  About whether some things are right and others wrong, and about whether liberty can be reduced only to issues of privacy and consent, while excluding virtue and restraint.

If we lose our virtue, and as a society, we’re well on our way, moral chaos will reign.  Widespread personal moral collapse leads to social disintegration, which leads to desperate pleas for order and security.  Whereby a dictator arises, and liberty is lost.

Family Research Council’s friend Pat Trueman has written, “To equate the free and robust exchange of ideas and political debate with commercial exploitation of obscene material demeans the grand conception of the First Amendment and its high purposes in the historic struggle for freedom. It is a misuse of the great guarantees of free speech and free press’.”

Guccione’s career was based on the abuse of women and the misuse of liberty.  He gained much that the world has to offer: Great wealth, sexual wantonness, a massive art collection, etc.  But what, in eternity, has he lost?

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Mark Thompson has posted a piece on Time magazine’s “Swampland” blog regarding the possible overturning (which he considers “inevitable”) of the current law against homosexual conduct in the military.

Such a radical change in military policy is hardly “inevitable.” Legislation to repeal the law is on life support following last month’s Senate vote to block it, and Judge Virginia Phillips’ muddled ruling that the law is unconstitutional ignored so much existing precedent that it is unlikely to be upheld.

Thompson, however, has delved into the archives of military history and relates findings about how African Americans were integrated within the armed forces without major difficulty. He concludes that the “integration” of homosexuals would take place just as smoothly.

One key difference, of course, is that blacks had long been eligible to serve in the military, but had served in segregated units. In contrast, homosexuals have always been considered ineligible for military service at all. (The popular misnomer “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” misleads many into believing that active homosexuals are currently welcomed by the military as long as they stay in the closet. The truth is the opposite—the 1993 law mandates, with very limited exceptions, the discharge of any servicemember who “has engaged in, attempted to engage in, or solicited another to engage in a homosexual act or acts.”)

Furthermore, Thompson simply assumes the answer to two critical threshold questions:

1)      Is being “gay” like being black?

2)      Is sexual conduct relevant to military effectiveness?

The logical answer to #1 is no. Homosexuality is a behavioral characteristic; being black is a superficial matter of skin color. The racial integration of the military was successful precisely because it proved that the behavior of black soldiers did not differ from that of whites. But with homosexuality, a difference in behavior is what defines the issue. Do not be fooled by vague references to “sexual orientation” as though it were an innate characteristic—what homosexual activists now seek is the right to continue engaging in homosexual acts while in the military .

Homosexual activists compare “sexual orientation” to race in order to obscure the important differences between sexual attractions, behavior, and self-identification. Only the attractions are, like race, involuntary; but none of these elements of “sexual orientation” are (like race) inborn, immutable, innocuous, and in the Constitution.  The 1993 law which homosexual activists seek to overturn is focused on homosexual conduct, and treats attractions or self-identification as relevant only because they are evidence of “a propensity or intent to engage in homosexual acts.”

So does the military have a legitimate interest in regulating the sexual conduct of its members? The answer has always been yes, with respect to heterosexual conduct as well as homosexual. Adultery, for instance, remains a crime in the military, at a time when the civil law has long since become indifferent to it. As Congress found in 1993, “high standards of morale, good order and discipline, and unit cohesion . . . are the essence of military capability,” and there is no doubt that sexual conduct can threaten those standards and harm that capability.

Sexual tension, sexual harassment, and sexual assault are problems that exist among heterosexuals in the military—but those problems would increase if homosexuals were allowed to serve, because it would be impossible to separate homosexuals the way that men and women are separated in their most intimate settings (showers, sleeping quarters, etc.). Increased health problems among homosexuals (in particular, dramatically higher rates of sexually transmitted diseases such as HIV among men who have sex with men) would pose a direct challenge to military readiness.

The analogy to the racial integration of the military, even if it had any validity, would apply only to the concern that homosexuality in the military would damage recruiting and retention of personnel. But those are only two out of the nine likely negative consequences of repealing the current law that were identified by Col. Robert Maginnis in the FRC booklet Mission Compromised.  The others are:

• Damage to unit effectiveness.
• Health consequences with high cost.

• Threats to freedom of those who morally object to homosexuality.
• Special protections for homosexuals.
• Taxpayer-funded benefits to homosexual partners of servicemembers.
• Possibility of costly new living arrangements to protect privacy.
• Changes to military law and regulations regarding sexual offenses.

The argument that, as the “gay” newsmagazine The Advocate recently declared on its cover, “Gay is the New Black,” is one that most blacks resent, and that simply cannot stand up to serious scrutiny.

Tags: Don't Ask Don't Tell, Homosexuality, Mark Thompson, Military, Virginia Phillips

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Nature blogs notes that the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) has been sued because they have failed to put forward recommendations to ensure scientific integrity in government, as directed by a Presidential memo. The recommendations are getting close to a year-and-a-half past due.

The Presidential memorandum issued March 9, 2009 says:

“Within 120 days from the date of this memorandum, the Director shall develop recommendations for Presidential action designed to guarantee scientific integrity throughout the executive branch”

Back in June 2010, already a year past due, presidential science adviser John Holdren had said the report would be delivered “in the next few weeks.” Maybe the dog ate the homework. Seems there’s a little lack of integrity in the science office.

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The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) again seems to realize that adult stem cells have a distinct advantage over embryonic stem cells, including the best opportunity of helping patients. CIRM is spending $3 billion of California taxpayers’ money (a $6 billion payback with the interest) on stem cell research. Their reason for existence originally was to fund embryonic stem cell and cloning research.

This week they approved funding for 19 grants worth $67 million; the funding is “its second round of awards designed to move good ideas out of the lab and into the clinic.” (A complete list of applications including those not funded is posted.)

Only 5 of the 19 funded grants involve embryonic stem cells. Zero grants on cloned embryos.

Last year the CIRM funded 14 “Disease Research Team” grants designed to move to the clinic, with only 4 of the 14 grants used embryonic stem cells, and zero grants on cloned embryos.

The funding continues to emphasize the pragmatism noted by CIRM president Alan Trounson:

“If we went 10 years and had no clinical treatments, it would be a failure.”

Trounson has recently said that CIRM provides the “most significant source” of dollars available for hESC research in the U.S.

More funds for adult stem cells is welcome news, since adult stem cells are saving lives and improving health of thousands of patients now.

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TIME Magazine’s former Asian Bureau Chief, David Aikman, addressed a packed lecture room at the U.S. Naval Academy this week. His topic: “Jesus in Beijing.” He led off with a remarkable story, one that would be unlikely to appear in TIME Magazine today. In TIME past, however, the national newsweekly’s founder, Henry Luce, would have jumped on this story, since he was from a family of Christian missionaries to China.

Prof. Aikman described a group of eighteen tired U.S. tourists in China. They had spent long days re-tracing missionary routes. Finally, they were brought to Beijing for a lecture by a senior scholar of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Tired and not a little bored, they weren’t sure they were up for a long and tedious lecture. But, this one was different. The Chinese secular scholar said they had studied the West, seeking the source of its predominance. “We did not find it in your guns, your wealth, even your natural resources. We find the secret in your religion: We believe Christianity is central to the rise of the West.”

Dr. Aikman puckishly pointed out that you have to go to Beijing, halfway around the world, to hear a secular academic speaking for what is, officially at least, an atheist, Communist regime to get the truth. He did not think a reporter for the New York Times

would agree with that statement.

Aikman said that huge numbers of Chinese are converting to Christianity. One of his friends, ironically an editorial writer for the official party organ, The People’s Daily,

Predicts that within 20 years, between 25 and 30% of all Chinese will be Christians.

But, warns Dr. Aikman, it may not happen. “People have made careers out of being wrong about China.” My friend Steve Mosher, who was kicked out of Stanford for his reporting on forced abortions in rural China, goes further. Steve says that if you are an engineer, and every bridge you design collapses with thousands of people killed, you lose your P.E., your Professional Engineer’s certificate. But if you’re a China scholar, and you manage to overlook the deaths of millions of people, you get tenure.

Prof. Aikman shows the horrific consequences of Mao Zedong’s communist revolution. Between 42 and 47 million Chinese died in the “Great Leap Forward” of the 1950s. That’s when Chairman Mao thought it would be swell for everyone to make steel in his own backyard.

During the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, beginning in 1966, all houses of worship were closed. People were harassed, many even killed, for owning a Bible or a Koran. But the Cultural Revolution did something else: It destroyed the Chinese people’s belief in the legitimacy of the Communist Party.

Aikman says he searched and searched during his years in China and could find only five Chinese among the party cadres who actually believed in Marxism-Leninism. With China, though, as anywhere, a philosophical vacuum cannot exist. Something will take its place.

For millions, says Dr. Aikman, who is today a distinguished professor at Patrick Henry College, that vacuum is being filled by Christianity. He related an amazing story of young Chinese Christians, averaging 19 years old, being sent out, two by two, all over rural China. Shunned in some of the cities, they nonetheless found a receptive audience among the Chinese peasantry.

Has anything like this ever been witnessed in the Middle Kingdom before? Dr. Aikman knows his Chinese history well. Yes, he says. He cites the 16^th Century Italian Catholic priest, Matteo Ricci. Fr. Ricci, a Jesuit, astonished his Chinese friends with his amazing intellectual gifts. He could hear a 20-line T’ang Dynasty poem once and repeat it verbatim.

For Protestants, Robert Morrison an English missionary of the early 19^th Century is a cherished memory. (He is no relation, although I wish he were.) Another revered missionary was Hudson Taylor. He went to China as a young man, determined to live and work among the Chinese people, not among the wealthy merchants and powerful military and diplomatic elites of the British Treaty Ports in China. Taylor founded China Inland Missions, one of the greatest tools for the spread of the Gospel. Taylor famously said:

“China is not to be won for Christ by quiet, ease-loving men and women”

Is that not equally true of America, Britain or France? Reading about Hudson Taylor, we are reminded of Patrick, the Evangelist of the Irish. Patrick risked his life daily, as do threatened missionaries throughout the world today.

Even today, there is danger and resistance in China. Some Communist Party cadres welcome Christians because they want sober, hard-working, obedient people in their regions. Other party chiefs are equally determined to enforce China’s brutal forced abortion practices and put down all resistance to Beijing’s authority. They want to stamp out these “Jesus Nests.”

We can all take inspiration from the teaching of such a great writer and scholar as David Aikman. And we can resolve to make our homes, our schools, our workplaces “Jesus Nests.”

Tags: Beijing, David Aikman

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Click here to subscribe to The Social Conservative Review

Dear Friends,

Welcome to this edition of the Social Conservative Review. This week, in addition to our usual compilation of articles and stories relevant to conservatives, we want to highlight a recent debate in which FRC Special Counsel and Director of the Center for Religious Liberty, Ken Klukowski, participated at the University of Michigan School of Law.

A frequent lecturer at law schools around the country, in these debates Ken makes a compelling case that Left-wing activist groups lack standing to bring lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of prayer at public functions. Click here to listen to Ken debate UM law professor Don Herzog on this important religious liberty issue.

Family Research Council is working to advance and protect religious liberty for all Americans. That’s our ongoing and unwavering commitment to you and your family. Thank you for standing with us.

Sincerely,
Rob Schwarzwalder
Sr. Vice President, Family Research Council

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Watch FRC’s important new Webcast on the danger imposed by upcoming tax increases, ‘The Taxman Cometh,’ featuring FRC President Tony Perkins, Congressmen Tom Price and Jim Jordan, and leading tax and fiscal policy experts.

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Educational Freedom and Reform

• “Worldview Conflicts in Education: Revisiting “The Closing of the American Mind”,” The Colson Center
• “LA mayor: Unions will not stop school reform moves,” Christina Hoag, Business Week
• “Speak Up on D.C. Schools, Mr. President,” William J. McGurn, The Wall Street Journal
• “The Erosion of American Higher Education,” Bill Costello, American Thinker
• “Job security,” Alisa Harris, WORLD Magazine
• “President Obama No Superman for Schoolchildren,” Rachel Sheffield, The Heritage Foundation
• “Teachers Unions and Civil Rights Groups Block School Choice for Black Students,” Anthony B. Bradley, The Acton Institute
• “Teaching Students or Subjects?,” Hayden Butler, The Examined Life

Environmental Issues

• “The UN carbon fiasco,” Terence Corcoran, Financial Post
• “Kill a schoolchild. How hilarious,” Dominic Lawson, The Independent
• “Greens shackle national security — and renewable energy,” Paul Driessen, CFACT
• “Black Crosses and black deaths,” Bishop Harry Jackson and Niger Innis, Canada Free Press
• “California’s Green Nightmare,” Stephen Moore, Environment and Climate News

Faith and Policy

• “A Window Into Barack Obama’s Theology,” Rob Schwarzwalder, Family Research Council
• “Walking away from church,” Robert D. Putnam and David E. Campbell, Los Angeles Times
• “Federal authorities defend Tennessee mosque,” Kristen M. Hall, OneNewsNow
• “What are Christians known for?,” Marcia Segelstein, OneNewsNow
• “Social Darwinism and the Left,” Jay Richards, The American

Health Care

• “How to Reform ObamaCare Starting Now,” Scott Gottlieb and Tom Miller, Wall Street Journal
• “New England Journal of Medicine Pushes NICE-Style QALY Health Care Rationing,” Wesley Smith, Secondhand Smoke
• “Politics of health,” Edward Lee Pitts, WORLD Magazine
• “Don’t forget Obamacare,” Marvin Olasky, WORLD Magazine
• “How Best to Monitor Health Care” Tevi Troy, NRO Corner Blog
• “States Permitted to Continue Part of Their Challenge to Healthcare Law,” Liberty Counsel
• “ObamaCare Already Hurting Businesses and Infringing on Liberty ,” Liberty Counsel
• “What’s the Worst That Could Happen With The New Health Law?,” Rea Hederman, The Heritage Foundation
• “Medical Innovation in Peril,” Scott Gottlieb, American Enterprise Institute
• “ObamaCare, for Some,” Editorial, The Wall Street Journal
• “Would the Supreme Court Dare Undo the Mandate?,” Megan McArdle, The Atlantic

Homosexuals in the Military

• “Federal Judge Ignores the Constitution, Military Leaders On ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’,” Press Release, Family Research Council
• “Unexpected Turns for Suit Over ‘Don’t Ask’ Rule,” Lizette Alvarez, New York Times
• “Don’t Defend, Don’t Tell: The Obama Administration has chosen to place political considerations over a proper defense of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell law,” Ed Whelan, The Public Discourse
• “Christian compassion requires the truth about harms of homosexuality,” Tony Perkins, The Washington Post
• “Study: Gay Parents More Likely to Have Gay Kids,” Paul Kix, AOL News
• “What homosexual-run military could lead to,” Chad Groening, OneNewsNow

Judiciary

• “The Rot at the Department of Justice,” Chris Gacek, Family Research Council
• “The Supreme Court and Religious Liberty,” Allen D. Hertzke, The Weekly Standard
• “California 2010: The Courts and the Economy, White Paper on the California Supreme Court,” The Federalist Society
• “Supreme Court Starts Term With 51% Approval,” Lydia Saad, Gallup

Marriage and Family

Family Economics

• “The Family GDP: How Marriage and Fertility Drive the Economy,” Patrick F. Fagan, Family Research Council
• “‘Culture of Poverty’ Makes a Comeback,” Patricia Cohen, New York Times
• “ACSTO: Is the government’s decision not to tax every dollar you make the same as taxing and spending it? The ACLU seems to think so.,” David Cortman, Alliance Defense Fund
• “The 2010 Spending Record,” Editorial, The Wall Street Journal
• “2010 Sets Record for Cost of Government,” Mattie Corrao, Budget and Tax News
• “Liberals Reexamining the Culture of Poverty? Guess Again,” Robert Rector, National Review
• “Americans Prefer Social Security Upper Income Benefit Reductions to Tax Hikes,” Conn Carroll, The Heritage Foundation

Marriage

• “Marriage and the Law of Tradition,” RJ Snell, The Public Discourse
• “GAO: Defense domestic violence tracking remains flawed,” Norah Swanson, Government Executive
• “Is America in a ‘Father Absence’ Crisis?,” Ryan O’Hanlon, Good Feed Blog
• “Ads Urge Fathers to ‘Take Time’ to Be a Dad,” Jane L. Levere, New York Times
• “Marriage Goes Down, Poverty Goes Up,” Rachel Sheffield, The Heritage Foundation
• “D.C. City Council Attacks Marriage Again,” Bishop Harry Jackson, Townhall

Pornography

• “A front for sex trafficking in U.S.,” Charlie Butts, OneNewsNow
• “Library to block porn on kids’ computers,” Amanda Lehmert, Greensboro News and Record
• “Porn-Free Vision,” Jim Graves, National Catholic Register

Religious Liberty

• “Secularists Unite to Destroy Parental Authority and Religious Liberty,” Alan Sears, Alliance Defense Fund
• “Religious Speech Vital to Democracy,” Kevin Theriot, Alliance Defense Fund
• “Historic Turnaround in Europe Preserves Conscience Rights,” Terrence McKeegan, C-FAM
• “What the Wilders Trial Means ,” Editorial, National Review
• “Who Says Islam Is Totalitarian? Not long ago, Bernard Lewis sounded almost like Geert Wilders,” Andrew C. McCarthy, National Review
• “Christians in Turkey Acquitted of ‘Insulting Turkishness’,” Damaris Kremida, Compass Direct News
• “Study: Religious diversity increases in America, yet perceptions of Christian nation intensify,” PhysOrg.com

Sanctity of Life

Abortion

• “What is the effect of “Ella” on a teenage woman’s body?,” Jeanne Monahan, Family Research Council
• “Fatal Clostridium sordellii Infections after Medical Abortions,” Elissa Meites, M.D., Suzanne Zane, D.V.M., and Carolyn Gould, M.D., New England Journal of Medicine
• “Mildred Jefferson, 84, Anti-Abortion Activist, Is Dead,” Dennis Hevesi, New York Times
• “Health-care overhaul: Does it provide tax dollars for abortions?” N.C. Aizenman, The Washington Post
• “No Truce on Abortion” Fr. Frank Pavone, The Washington Times
• “A Champion For Maternal Health,” Amanda Pawloski, C-FAM
• “In Memory of the Greatest Pro-Life Orator,” Cal Thomas, Crosswalk
• “Amnesty Demands Abortion Decriminalization in Latin America,” Seana Cranston, C-FAM
• “Critics Call New Maternal Death Report Faulty,” Susan Yoshihara, C-FAM

Adoption

• “Appeal in ‘gay’ adoption ruling uncertain,” Charlie Butts, OneNewsNow
• “Pastor, church embrace adoption,” Alyssa LaRenzie, Forsyth County News

Bioethics

• “Twins Socialize in the Womb,” Rob Schwarzwalder, Family Research Council
• “Sacred cells? A reply to Peters, Lebacqz, and Bennett,” Gary S. Elkins, Ethics & Medicine
• “Twin fetuses learn how to be social in the womb,” Lin Edwards, PhysOrg.com
• “Commercial Surrogacy is Human Trafficking: Biological Parents to Birth MotherAbort Down Fetus!“, Wesley J. Smith, Secondhand Smoke
• “A Noble Nobel?“, Jennifer Lahl, The Center for Bioethics and Culture Network
• “Oregon Hospices Right Not to Cooperate With Assisted Suicide,” Wesley J. Smith, The Center for Bioethics and Culture Network
• “Science Cannot Teach Us Right From Wrong and Distinguish Good From Bad,” Wesley J. Smith, Secondhand Smoke
• “Stem-cell research lacks basic ethics,” Letter to the Editor, Jonathan Embody, The Washington Times

Cloning

• “Federal Funding for Human Cloning?,” Wesley J. Smith, National Review
• “Double Trouble: ‘Never Let Me Go’ is really about cloning, no matter what they say,” Gina R. Dalfonzo, The Weekly Standard

Stem Cell Research

Articles by Dr. David Prentice

• “Adult Stem Cells-Best-Kept Secret, Treating Juvenile Diabetes,” David Prentice, Family Research Council
• “Parents and Patients Welcome Maryland Cord Blood Bank,” David Prentice, Family Research Council
• “Geron Begins Questionable Human Experiments,” David Prentice, Family Research Council

Other Stem Cell Research Articles

• “What Do 30 Pieces of Silver Buy You Today?,” Jennifer Lahl, Center for Bioethics and Culture
• “How much respect do we owe the embryo? Limits to embryonic stem cell research,” Dennis L. Sansom, Ethics & Medicine
• “Stem Cell News: Hype Over Science,” Michael Fumento, AOL News
• “More court deadlines set in stem cell case,” Meredith Wadman, Nature

Other News for Social Conservatives

• ““The World Turned Upside Down”–Or, Why Americans Don’t Bow to Kings,” Robert Morrison, Family Research Council
• “Vote Yes on Slots? Here are some Why Nots,” Robert Morrison, Family Research Council
• “Modern Hollywood’s Love Affair With Satanism,” Leo Grin, Big Hollywood
• “Reinter the Death Tax,” Robert Knight, The Washington Times
• “Politics as a Profession,” Roger Scruton, The American Spectator
• “Atheists Debate How Pushy to Be,” Mark Oppehneimer, New York Times
• “Europe’s Choice on Conscience Protection,” Matthew Schmitz, The Public Discourse
• “The Credentialed Gentry and the Unpersuaded Yahoos,” Elizabeth Scalia, First Things
• “The Presidency and the Constitution,” Rep. Mike Pence, Imprimis
• “The Cult of Multiculturalism: This modern obsession has created problems so obvious that only the intelligentsia could fail to see them,” Thomas Sowell, National Review

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The red-coated army band played “The World Turned Upside Down” as they marched out of their entrenchments. They were about to surrender to the victorious American and French forces at Yorktown, Virginia. The British army commander, Lord Charles Cornwallis, had been trapped with his back to the York River for three weeks.

When the French fleet under Admiral Comte de Grasse defeated the British fleet in the Battle of the Capes, Cornwallis’ escape hatch was slammed shut. The surrender ceremony for Cornwallis’ army took place on this day, October 19, 1781. Gen. George Washington’s Yorktown victory effectively ended the six-year American Revolutionary War.

To be sure, we date our independence from the signing of the great Declaration. Our country’s birthday is rightly July 4, 1776. But without Washington’s military success against British and Hessian forces, the Fourth of July might have been only a stumper question in a British Commonwealth game of Trivial Pursuit.

The Declaration that Congress approved, as drafted by Thomas Jefferson, with some amendment, contained lofty ideals and immortal words, to be sure, but that Declaration required men brave enough to risk their lives in order to give it force. Gen. Washington, Gen. Lafayette, Gen. Rochambeau, and a combined force of Americans and French soldiers were just brave enough to give it force.

Giving it force is what happened on this day 229 years ago. From that time, America has been free of kings, free of the need to bow down before any hereditary monarchs, free at last.

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From the “Gates of Vienna” blog — one finds a story that has received very little attention in the United States:  on Friday, October 15th, Amsterdam prosecutors asked a court to acquit Dutch politician, Geert Wilders, of the charge of incitement to hatred against Muslims.  The case has tested the bounds of freedom of speech in Europe.  However, according Wilders’ website the case is not over:

But his trial continues: the prosecutors’ decision is not final. A judge will issue a ruling on November 5, and he doesn’t have to follow the prosecutors’ recommendations. So the freedom of speech still hangs in the balance in the Netherlands, as well as in Europe and the West in general.

Stay tuned for further developments, but this is a good sign.  Previously, the same prosecutors had told the court that Wilders was not guilty of insulting Muslims — something for which had also been charged.   (Apparently, the prosecutors have asked that all charges be dismissed.)

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This past week saw the launch of the first public cord blood program in Maryland. The free program was launched October 11, 2010, at Mercy Medical Center in Baltimore in partnership with Community Blood Services of New Jersey. Women giving birth at Mercy will be given the option of donating their babies’ umbilical-cord blood to be listed on the National Marrow Donor Program registry for use by patients in need of life-saving transplants.

This new collaboration is the culmination of a year’s research and planning by the Maryland Catholic Conference to identify partnerships between Maryland hospitals and blood banks across the United States. St. Agnes Hospital in Baltimore will be joining the partnership soon and additional Catholic hospitals in Maryland may form other partnerships in the near future.

Umbilical cord blood is rich in non-controversial adult stem cells that can be used to successfully treat dozens of diseases, including sickle cell anemia. Thomas R. Mullen, Mercy’s president and CEO, said there are tens of thousands of people around the world who need stem-cell transplants. One of the major goals of Mercy’s involvement in the partnership is to increase the number of cord blood donors who are African-American and who are underrepresented in the donor population. That will help people like Joseph Davis, Jr.

Cord blood donation has already helped little Mason Shaffer. Mason and his parents were on hand to celebrate the opening of the cord blood bank at Mercy Medical Center. Mason had been diagnosed with a severe bone disease, osteopetrosis. His life was saved through a transplant of adult stem cells obtained from umbilical-cord blood donated to a public collecting bank. His mother, Sarah Shaffer, says “He’s cured. He’s completely normal. For me, it’s exhilarating.” Organizers of the new cord blood bank believe it has the potential to save the lives of many children and adults like Mason.

Adult stem cell research is far ahead of embryonic stem cells. With over 50,000 adult stem cell transplants each year taking place around the globe, we need to focus on the patients first. Cord blood banks like the new one in Maryland are one of the answers.

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During the presidential campaign, then-Sen. Barack Obama famously told Pastor Rick Warren that determining when human personhood began was “above my paygrade.”

A professing Christian, he could not bring himself to concur with the plain teaching of the Bible that from the moment of conception, human life in all its biological fullness begins at conception.

An educated man, he could not sufficiently evaluate the clear scientific evidence that with the entire DNA any person ever possesses present within the embryo from conception onward, personhood starts at conception.

A father, he could not affirm that his precious daughters deserved legal protection in their mother’s womb, from conception until birth.

Since then, his income must have dramatically changed, as he has initiated a nationwide health care mandate that funds and subsidizes abortion-on-demand, exported abortion overseas through American funding thereof, and even sought to have taxpayers subsidize abortion on our military bases.

As President of the United States, Barack Obama has been a deliberate, systematic evangelist of the culture of death.

Yet despite his professed theological mystification regarding the sanctity of unborn life, President Obama has no moral or intellectual difficulty in asserting that homosexuality is not a choice but the result of “people being born with ‘a certain make-up’.”

At a televised event targeting the nation’s youth,

… (when) asked directly if gay or transgender people have a choice or are born that way, Obama told a town-hall style event with students that he was no expert, then added: “I don’t think it’s a choice. I think people are born with a certain make-up.”

“We’re all children of God,” Obama said. “We don’t make determinations about who we love. That’s why I think discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is wrong.”

The President is wrong: Biology offers no sanction to the view that homosexuality is genetic, nor does Christian theology applaud or passively accept same-sex intimacy.  The God of love is also the God of truth Whose Word teaches that any kind of sexual intimacy other than that experienced by a man and a woman within marriage is offensive to Him.

No pay-level is needed to affirm these things: They are obvious from science and Scripture.

President Obama might be, as the Leftist religious commentator Jim Wallis asserts, “almost a public theologian.”  He is just not a very biblically faithful one.

The Bible tells Christians to pray for their political leaders.  This includes, of course, President Obama.  May we pray that this man who so obviously cherishes his own wonderful family sees that abortion and homosexuality are not morally neutral choices to be facilitated by a government founded on the principle that the “right to life” is a gift of the Creator.

Tags: Abortion, Barack Obama, Homosexuality, Theology

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Adult stem cells have already shown amazing progress treating Type I (juvenile) diabetes, as Dr. Jean Peduzzi Nelson noted in her September Senate testimony. As reported in 2009 in the Journal of the American Medical Association, 20 of 23 patients became insulin-independent after treatment with their own bone marrow adult stem cells. The authors note in the paper that this adult stem cell treatment “remains the only treatment capable of reversing type 1 diabetes in humans.” Their initial success with this adult stem cell treatment had been published in 2007; some patients are still insulin-independent.

Jaider Abbud, a young dental surgeon in Brazil, is one of the first patients ever to be treated for Type I Diabetes using adult stem cells (Jaider, on the right, is pictured with Dr. Julio Voltarelli, one of the doctors who treated him.) He was testing his blood and taking multiple insulin shots every day. In a talk he gave on Capitol Hill in 2007, a year after his treatment, Jaider described his diagnosis and life with juvenile diabetes, and how he hadn’t taken insulin or any medication since receiving his adult stem cell transplant.

See more examples of how adult stem cells, validated by published science, are helping thousands of patients with dozens of diseases right now.

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I had the ineffable joy of introducing our 20-month old grandson to the Washington Zoo this past weekend. We had talked to him about all the wonderful animals he might see there. Gorillas and orangutans, the famous panda, lions and tigers, all of these could be seen just an hour from our Annapolis home. The zoo is free, but it costs to park. For the people of Washington, however, this wonder is just a short Metro hop from downtown.

When Congress is in recess, as it is now, the zoo is the best show in town.

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As the father of twins, this story about how twins socialize in the womb caught my eye. It is noteworthy that if unborn children can socialize — if they are, in fact, “people,” as noted in the last line of this story — they are, in fact, persons, human beings meriting the protection of law.

From the time they were tiny, my boys have been incredibly social with one another and with others. “Never met a stranger” could have been coined about my sons. Since infancy, they also have always been highly engaged, physically and verbally, with one another.

My sons continue to socialize at the age of 12. Sometimes this involves extensive wrestling, wearing one another’s clothes, invading one another’s space, and merciless teasing. Which means their mother and I have to intervene and prevent such “socializing” at times. In the womb, out of the womb: Twins are twins.

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