The housing market continue to sink according to economic data released today.  As the New York Times article by David Streitfeld put it:

Housing prices fell in March to their lowest point since the downturn began, erasing the last little bit of recovery from the depths plumbed two years ago, according to data released Tuesday.

The Standard & Poor’s Case-Shiller Home Price Index for 20 large cities fell 0.8 percent from February, the eighth drop in a row. Prices are now down 33.1 percent from the July 2006 peak.

“Home prices continue on their downward spiral with no relief in sight,” said David M. Blitzer, chairman of the S.& P. index committee.

The continuing slide in prices has created enough economic agony that fundamental home ownership patters may be changing.  In 2004, the “homeownership rate” (share of occupied homes in the U.S. that are owner-occupied) peaked at 69.2%, the rate now stands at 66.4% in the first quarter of 2011.  Apparently, that is an extremely rapid retrenchment given the illiquid and long-term nature of the housing market.  Streifeld observes that this is an ownership rate that has fallen back to the level of 1998 – with some experts believing that a decline to 1980s or earlier levels may be possible.  Housing prices have now fallen to mid-2002 levels.

Many families are upside-down on their mortgages, and that fact prevents geographical mobility as homeowners cannot leave an area for better paying positions elsewhere.  With large college loans outstanding and collapsing housing prices, it is not surprising that families in such circumstances are under tremendous economic pressure.  It is hard to imagine that this will not have a great impact on the 2012 election in addition to the traditional economic variables like the unemployment rate.

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…or flat-screen, or big screen — whichever size screen your television happens to be! After spending the week with over 500 pastors for FRC’s Watchmen on the Wall conference in D.C., appearances on Fox News and Fox Business, Tony has a busy upcoming Memorial Day week — here are some upcoming TV appearances:

Life Today with James Robison

Find station listings here:

Monday, May 30
Tony Perkins
Freedom and Religion
The president of the Family Research Council lays out remedies for our spiritual and a moral crisis.

Thursday, June 2
Tony Perkins & Jacob Aranza
God’s Kingdom in You
The president of the Family Research Council and a longtime church pastor encourage believers to be involved in every sphere of life.

Watch Tony’s May 26 Fox News segment below:

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Scientists at Stanford report that they can turn human skin cells directly into functioning nerve cells in the lab dish. The process does not involve an intermediate step of forming a stem cell, but directly converts skin cells into neurons. Last year this group showed that they could accomplish this direct conversion with mouse cells. The new results, reported in the journal Nature, accomplish this conversion for the first time with human cells by adding four genes to the skin cells. Other researchers have obtained similar direct conversion results in the formation of blood, heart, and insulin-secreting cells.

The direct conversion technique is similar in some respects to the method used to create induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells), in which genes are added to normal cells to convert them to stem cells that behave similarly to embryonic stem cells. But pluripotent stem cells such as embryonic stem cells also have a significant risk of tumor formation. This out-of-control growth problem with pluripotent stem cells makes the direct conversion technique preferable when it comes to deriving new cells from normal cells. Likewise, using native adult stem cells is both safer and effective, e.g., in repair of stroke damage.

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Dear Friends:

In an era when divorce rates are high and 55 percent of America’s children live in homes missing at least one biological parent, the imperative of strong marriages — of one man and one woman becoming “one flesh” — has never been higher. Family Research Council is committed to strong marriages, which is why the work of our Marriage and Religion Research Institute, led by internationally recognized scholar Dr. Pat Fagan, is so important.

As Dr. Fagan has written, “the overwhelming majority of social science data supports the premise that the intact married family that worships weekly is the greatest generator of human and social goods and the core strength of the United States.”

Take a few moments to visit the MARRI Web site to find a trove of materials demonstrating why worship, marriage, and family are so vital to one another and to society. A strong, vibrant America needs strong, vibrant marriages. There are no substitutes.

Sincerely,
Rob Schwarzwalder
Senior Vice President
Family Research Council

P.S. Read FRC scholar Peter Sprigg’s executive summary of his thoughtful and compelling publication, “The Top Ten Harms of Same Sex Marriage,” here. You can download the entire booklet, at no cost, at this same site.

Educational Freedom and Reform
Homeschooling

• “School District Targets Homeschooled Students for Money,” Home School Legal Defense Association
• “Clamp Down in the Mountaineer State?,” Christian NewsWire
• “Home-schooling on the rise for a good reason, say advocates,” Craig Crosby, The Morning Sentinel

Continue reading »

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Caroline Glick most recent column in the Jerusalem Post contains important demographic data.  In his speech last week, President Obama stated, “The number of Palestinians living west of the Jordan River is growing rapidly and fundamentally reshaping the demographic realities of both Israel and the Palestinian territories. This will make it harder and harder – without a peace deal – to maintain Israel as both a Jewish state and a democratic state.”

Glick calls this the “demographic time bomb story,” and she says it is demonstrably false.  I will let her provide the details:

“The demographic time bomb story is a Palestinian fabrication. In 1997, the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics published a falsified Palestinian census that inflated Palestinian population data by 50 percent.

“The Israeli Left adopted this fake report as its own when Palestinian terrorism and political warfare convinced the majority of Israelis that it was unwise to give them any more land and that the peace process was a lie.

“Since 2004, repeated, in-depth studies of Jewish and Arab birthrates and immigration/ emigration statistics west of the Jordan River undertaken by independent researchers have shown that the demographic time bomb is a dud. In January, the respected demographer Yaakov Faitelson published a study for the Institute of Zionist Strategies in which he definitively put to rest the tale of pending Jewish demographic doom.

“As Faitelson demonstrated, Jewish and Arab birthrates are already converging west of the Jordan River at around three children per woman. And whereas the fertility rates of Israeli Arabs, Gazans and residents of Judea and Samaria are all trending downward, Jewish fertility is consistently rising. Moreover, whereas the Arabs are experiencing consistently negative net immigration rates, Jewish net immigration rates are positive and high.”

“Faitelson based his multiyear projections on current population numbers in which Jews comprise 58.6 percent of the population west of the Jordan River and Muslims constitute 38.7% of the overall population. Non-Jewish, non-Muslim minorities comprise the other 2.7%. Using assessment baselines for Jewish net immigration well below current averages, Faitelson showed that in the years to come, not only will Jews not lose our demographic majority. We will increase it.

“Faitelson’s study, like the studies published since 2004 by the American-Israeli Demographic Research Group show that from a demographic perspective, Israel is in the same situation as many Western states today. Namely, it has to develop policies for dealing with an irredentist minority population.”

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On Friday, May 20^th the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group (BLAG) of the U.S. House of Representatives filed a “Motion for Leave to Intervene….” with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in two cases that had challenged the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act (DoMA).   For a copy of the filing, go here [PDF].  The lead attorney defending DoMA for the House is Paul Clement, former Solicitor General of the United States.

In its filing, the House states that “the Department [of Justice] now refuses” to defend the statute from the equal protection and due process challenges to DoMA’s constitutionality (pp. 9-10).  Thus, unless the House is permitted to intervene in the case, the desire of the House to have a constitutional defense of DoMA offered to the court will not be met.  The Court of Appeals will now have to rule on whether it will grant the House’s motion.

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Earlier this month, a coalition of Christian leaders in China drafted and sent a petition to the Chinese government calling for the religious liberty the Chinese Constitution claims to provide. “For the last six decades, the rights to liberty of religious faith granted to our country’s Christians by the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China have not been put into practice,” wrote the 19 brave original signatories of the document.

The petition was generated by the growing crackdown on “unofficial” churches in China. As noted in this blog space in April, the Easter crackdown on the Shouwang Church in Beijing is part of a larger, nationwide campaign in which “unofficial” churches — those that meet independent of government sanction — are being targeted for repression, and their leaders for arrest.

Up to 70 million believers are part of the “unofficial” Christian movement in China. According to China scholar Dr. William Jeynes in a lecture last week at FRC, the Chinese government is pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into the construction of officially-recognized churches and seminaries, but the “unofficial” churches remain targets of the central Communist government. Why? Because, notes Jeynes, the government recognizes that Christianity leads to morality and productivity, but is also grounded in the idea that government’s authority is not final. This makes the Communist leaders in Beijing “nervous,” says Jeynes.

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U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth has granted the request for supplemental briefs to be filed in the Sherley v. Sebelius case.

Each side’s 10-page supplemental brief will be due on or before June 24, 2011.

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In October 2010, the Australian Human Rights Commission published a “discussion paper” on “discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and sex and/or gender identity.”  According the Commission, there are the categories of “LGBTI” – lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexuals and intersexuals.  That would seem rather comprehensive, but the Commission is only beginning:

“Gender can be understood as a person looking, dressing or acting as male or female. Some people do not have a gender identity that is either exclusively male or female. Some people do not have a gender identity that is linked to their sex.  The phrase sex and/or gender identity is used in this paper as a broad term to refer to diverse sex and/or gender identities and expressions. It includes being transgender, trans, transsexual and intersex. It also includes being androgynous, agender, a cross dresser, a drag king, a drag queen, genderfluid, genderqueer, intergender, neutrois, pansexual, pan-gendered, a third gender, and a third sex. It also includes culturally specific terms, such as sistergirl and brotherboy, which are used by some Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.”

Whatever these various terms mean, biologically, there are two sexes.  On very rare occasions, according to the Encyclopedia Brittanica, hermaphroditism can occur, but this can be corrected surgically and through hormonal treatments.

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In the latest update regarding Sherley et al. v. Sebelius et al., the lawsuit challenging federal taxpayer funding of human embryonic stem cell research, a Motion was filed on May 18, 2011, to allow both sides to file supplemental briefs with the U.S. District Court. This motion to provide additional information to the Court was agreed upon by both sides. A similar previous motion filed on May 9 was opposed by the Department of Justice. The motions follow the April 29 decision by the Appeals Court to vacate the preliminary injunction issued by U.S. District Judge Lamberth in August 2010. While the Appeals Court ruling maintained the status quo regarding the flow of federal taxpayer funds for embryonic stem cell research, there are still a number of issues to be resolved, awaiting the decision of Judge Lamberth.

If the new motion is approved, both sides would be allowed to provide supplemental information in briefs due on or before June 24, 2011, and limited to 10 pages.

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There is some good news today for the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).  Judicial Watch (JW) has announced that it filed suit on April 29, 2011, to compel the Department of Justice to comply with a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.  In this instance, Judicial Watch was seeking documents and records relating to Attorney General Holder’s February 23, 2011 decision to no longer defend DOMA.  Related to this was the suspicious timing of Mr. Holder’s announcement and a filing by the anti-Prop 8 litigants before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.  As you may recall, FRC filed a similar FOIA request in late February.

Judicial Watch is a public interest law firm that specializes in FOIA litigation.  JW’s litigation expertise should produce the release of documents relevant to all the individuals and groups who filed overlapping FOIA requests.  Good luck, Judicial Watch.  Unfortunately, we don’t expect the Administration to be very cooperative.

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Christianity Today’s Politics Blog featured an article on May 13 by Tobin Grant with the unfortunate headline, “Is Same-Sex Marriage Legal Under Federal Law? Maybe. Sometimes.”

This headline is entirely wrong. Same-sex “marriage” is absolutely, unequivocally not legal under federal law. Ever. At any time.

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The story of the “Berlin Patient”, Timothy Ray Brown, has popped up again in the news, as we approach the 30th anniversary of the discovery of HIV, the AIDS virus. The story is indeed captivating–Brown has experienced a functional cure of his AIDS due to a targeted adult stem cell transplant.

The story first broke in 2008, and initial transplant results were published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Brown was treated for leukemia with an adult stem cell transplant, which is becoming a standard treatment. But the doctors, knowing that Brown had AIDS, used specific adult stem cells from a donor selected because the donor’s cells lacked a key protein, CCR5, that the AIDS virus must bind to infect a cell. Not only did Brown recover from his leukemia, but the AIDS virus seemed to disappear from his system.

More recently in late 2010, Mr. Brown was identified as the patient and the doctors put forth a tentative claim of a cure. The most recent paper, “Evidence for the cure of HIV infection by CCR5Δ32/Δ32 stem cell transplantation“, was published in the journal Blood.

It would be difficult to find a matching CCR5-negative adult stem cell donor for every AIDS patient, and the current treatment protocol can be rough, so this particular technique wouldn’t be generally applicable to every AIDS patient, but the results provide a proof-of-principle for using adult stem cells lacking the virus target molecule, CCR5. Indeed, other researchers are working on altering a patient’s own adult stem cells to resist HIV infection, and a few patients have participated in an initial clinical trial to test engineered adult stem cells as a potential treatment for AIDS.

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In order to avoid become a cynic in my old age, I try to apply what I call the Gary Hart Principle to public statements of public figures. That principle is this: Let’s suppose they are telling the truth.

The principle derives from Sen. Gary Hart’s experience back in 1987. He was running for president, you’ll recall, and he dared the reporters to tail him if they doubted his fidelity to his marital vows. They did. Uh-oh. Soon, poor Hart was seen coming out of his Capitol Hill townhouse in the presence of a fetching young lady not his wife.

Not to worry, said the embarrassed senator. He had been up all night discussing U.S.-Soviet relations with this bright young college student. In those days, before Bill Clinton, actually getting caught in such circumstances was not considered job-enhancing.

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Dear Friends,

In May 1607, the first Anglican service ever held in North America took place in the nascent colony of Jamestown, Virginia.

This reminds us that from our earliest days, religious liberty has been the cornerstone of all our freedoms. Why? Because if our rights come from God, then it is safe to assume our first duty is to Him — and, thus, that religious liberty is the foundation of all other liberties.

Yet just this week, the Department of the Navy sought to require its chaplains either to perform same-sex unions or refer those desiring them to someone who would. As FRC president Tony Perkins commented, “Opening the military to same-sex weddings would not only violate federal law but also seriously threaten the religious liberty of military chaplains. If the Navy enforces its referral policy, any chaplain declining to perform a same-sex wedding would be required to find someone who would perform the wedding.”

Thankfully, the Navy has backed away from its plan, and the House Armed Services Committee has passed a measure that states, in the words of the bill’s author, U.S. Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO), ” U.S. military bases may not be used to solemnize same-sex unions, nor may military chaplains perform these unions in the course of their official duties.”

In 1776, Princeton theologian and Declaration of Independence signer John Witherspoon wrote, “There is not a single instance in history in which civil liberty was lost, and religious liberty preserved entire.” He was right, and the implication of his observation is profound: The defense of religious liberty is essential.

That’s our challenge and our calling. Thank you for joining Family Research Council in working to fulfill it.

Sincerely,

Rob Schwarzwalder
Senior Vice President
Family Research Council

Educational Freedom and Reform

Homeschooling

• “School District Says Parent Needs License To Homeschool,” Home School Legal Defense Association
• “Bill to ease homeschool restrictions gets support,” Tom Humphrey, Knoxville News-Sentinel

Continue reading »

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Jim Wallis’s Sojourners’ magazine has decided not to publish an ad by “Believe Out Loud,” an organization which describes itself as follows:

We believe Jesus’ message compels us to welcome all, regardless of sexual orientation and gender identity. Show the world that you can be Christian AND believe in LGBT equality. Join the movement to unite a million Christians for LGBT equality in the church and beyond.

Although in past years, Sojourners has taken stridently liberal positions on all manner of hotly-contested issues, tacitly endorsing homosexuality is, apparently, too far a stretch.  “Sojourners’ constituency, board, and staff are not of one mind on all of these issues,” wrote Wallis at the Sojourners blog this week.

This indubitably is true: At least one of the publication’s Board members, Ron Sider, is a signer of the Manhattan Declaration, as is contributing editor Samuel Rodriguez of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference.  In signing the Declaration, they  joined other signatories (including this author) in affirming that “we pledge to labor ceaselessly to preserve the legal definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman and to rebuild the marriage culture. How could we, as Christians, do otherwise?”  How, indeed.

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Geron has announced that the second patient has been injected with embryonic stem cell derivatives. This spinal cord injury patient was injected Saturday at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. The embryonic stem cell protocol requires that the patient be injected within 7-14 days after the injury, because a previous lab rat study showed the embryonic stem cells were not effective beyond that time. The cells that are injected (termed oligodendrocyte precursors) are derived from embryonic stem cells in a way that scientists hope will limit the cells’ ability to grow and specialize. Normally, embryonic stem cells tend to grow without limitations, producing tumors. The first patient was injected with embryonic stem cells in October 2010. Dr. Richard Fessler of Northwestern noted:

“The first recipient receiving the injection of oligodendrocyte progenitor cells more than six months ago has not experienced any serious adverse events attributed to the stem cell transplant to date. It remains too early in the trial to determine improvement in neuromuscular control or sensation.”

Indeed, it is too early to tell whether the first patient will have problems in this safety trial, but Geron has committed to following these patients for 15 years because of the significant risk of tumor development. And it may never be possible to know whether any improvement noted is due to the injected cells. The design of the experiment, injecting within the first two weeks after injury, leaves open the fact that a significant number of suich patients show some spontaneous improvement within the first year after injury.

Meanwhile, ethical and successful adult stem cells continue to help patients with spinal cord injury improve, even years after injury. Adult stem cells are helping thousands of patients with dozens of different conditions every year. Adult stem cells save lives and improve health now.

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The images from that two-story slum of a compound are eerily familiar. Osama bin Laden appears, wrapped in a blanket, hunkered down in his bunker, remote in hand, and watching re-runs of his greatest hits. How squalid. How very predictable.

Readers of James Swanson’s outstanding history, Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer, will recognize the scene. In that book, Swanson relates how John Wilkes Booth was holed up in the woods in southern Maryland a full week after he assassinated the president. Dirty, unshaven, hungry, and suffering acute pain from his broken leg, Booth craved one thing above everything else: newspapers. Like the famous actor he was, he wanted to read the reviews of his most spectacular “performance.”

That Booth would kill Lincoln in a crowded theater tells us volumes about the mindset of these assassins. John Wilkes Booth might have presented his calling card to the White House usher any day of the four years that Lincoln was president. As one of the most famous Shakespearean actors in America, Booth would doubtless have been admitted to the president’s office. Lincoln, after all, was an avid theatergoer and he could quote long passages from Shakespeare. John Wilkes Booth might then have pulled out his bulldog derringer from his waistcoat and shot the president as he sat at his desk.

But that would not have served Booth’s craving for attention. Imagine the horror this young man felt as hid in those bushes and read his notices in the newspapers. He found himself condemned, not just in the Northern newspapers, but roundly condemned by the Southern papers, too.

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Back on February 23^rd when Eric Holder announced that the Department of Justice would no longer defend the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act (DoMA) he stated that the Administration would continue to enforce the law.  Well, Holder has shown that to be not true in less than three months.  On May 5^th, the Attorney General issued an immigration decision (Matter of Paul Wilson DORMAN, 25 I&N Dec. 485 (A.G. 2011)) ordering the Board of Immigration Appeals, located in the Justice Department, to vacate a deportation order that was based on the immigrant’s not being married under DoMA.  (The Irishman in question entered into a New Jersey civil union with another man in 2009, so he was never even married under New Jersey law.)

Here is the relevant text in which Holder contrives all sorts of additional questions for the Board – some relating to DoMA – which it must now answer:

In the exercise of my review authority under that regulation, and upon consideration of the record in this case, I direct that the order of the Board be vacated and that this matter be remanded to the Board to make such findings as may be necessary to determine whether and how the constitutionality of DOMA is presented in this case, including, but not limited to: 1) whether respondent’s same-sex partnership or civil union qualifies him to be considered a “spouse” under New Jersey law; 2) whether, absent the requirements of DOMA, respondent’s same-sex partnership or civil union would qualify him to be considered a “spouse” under the Immigration and Nationality Act; 3) what, if any, impact the timing of respondent’s civil union should have on his request for that discretionary relief; and 4) whether, if he had a “qualifying relative,” the respondent would be able to satisfy the exceptional and unusual hardship requirement for cancellation of removal.

Take a look at Ed Whelan’s commentary on this maneuver (NRO Bench Memos, May 9, 2011) here.  The New York Times reports that an immigration judge in Newark, New Jersey, has already used the Holder action to suspend deportation proceedings against a Venezuelan.  As the Times’ Julia Preston noted Holder’s action is “an unusual signal this week from the Obama administration that it is exploring legal avenues for recognizing same-sex marriages in immigration cases.”

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A story from Saturday’s Australian carried the headline “Abortion Pill ‘Less Safe than Surgery’” and described an “audit” of nearly 10,000 abortions performed in South Australia in 2009 and 2010 using either RU-486 or surgical abortion.  For many years, FRC and the American Association of Pro Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG) have been making the point that chemically-induced abortions are more dangerous than surgical abortions.

Here are some alarming statistics comparing first trimester RU-486 and surgical abortions:

• 3.3% of the women who used RU-486 in the first trimester of pregnancy reported to an emergency room compared with 2.2% who used a surgical method;
• 5.7% of the women who used RU-486 had to be re-admitted to hospitals compared with 0.4% of surgical abortion patients.  That is 1 in 18 patients.

Here are two statistics relating to second trimester RU-486 abortions:

• 33% (16/49) who had second trimester RU-486 abortions required some form of surgical intervention;
• 4% of the second trimester RU-486 abortions had “significant haemorrhage;” one of the two patients in this category required a transfusion.

For more information, the complete “audit” may be found here.

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