It’s March for Life day here in the nation’s capital, and FRC’s ProLifeCon is at hand. You can watch it all below:

Follow the conversation live on Twitter: #ProLifeCon.

Here’s the schedule:

• 8:30 – 8:35 a.m.: Tony Perkins, President, Family Research Council
• 8:35 – 8:40 a.m.: Jill Stanek, JillStanek.com
• 8:40 – 9:05 a.m.: Michael Clancy, Photographer, “Hand of Hope” photo
  Julie and Samuel Armas, Subjects of the photo
• 9:05 – 9:20 a.m.: Gerard Nadal, Blogger, Coming Home
• 9:20 – 9:35 a.m.: Lila Rose, President, LiveAction
• 9:35 – 9:50 a.m.: Ryan Bomberger, Chief Creative Officer, The Radiance Foundation
• 9:50 – 10:00 a.m.: Intermission: ‘I’m Pro-Life Because’ photo montage
• 10:00 – 10:20 a.m.: Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.)
• 10:20 – 10:40 a.m.: Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-Mo.)
• 10:40 – 10:55 a.m.: Collin Raye, Spokesman, Terri Schiavo Life & Hope Network
• 10:55 – 11:10 a.m.: Kristan Hawkins, Executive Director, Students for Life of America
• 11:10 – 11:25 a.m.: Jeanne Monahan, Director, Center for Human Dignity, Family Research Council, Karen Snuffer, Executive Director, CareNet Pregnancy Resource Centers: Manassas, Woodbridge, and Warrenton
• 11:25 – 11:30 a.m.: Tom McClusky, Senior Vice President, FRC Action

Special thanks to our cosponsoring bloggers:

• Liberty Generation
• Owen Strachan
• RJ Moeller
• Alexa Shrugged
• ChiselSeason.com
• Jill Stanek
• Remnant Culture
• The Radiance Foundation
• Little Bytes News
• Amanda Read
• Reagan Rex

Be sure to follow our featured Tweeters:

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Yesterday here at FRC headquarters, a sobering panel of religious freedom & foreign policy experts looked at the past, current, and potential impact of U.S. foreign policy upon religious freedom around the world.

Watch the panel below, or visit the event page for audio and embed code.

Participants included:

• Elyse Anderson, Foreign Policy Director for Congressman Frank Wolf (R-Va.)
• Ann Buwalda, Executive Director, Jubilee Campaign
• Dr. Thomas Farr, first Director of the State Department’s office of international religious freedom and Director of the Religious Freedom Project at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs and Visiting Associate Professor of Religion and International Affairs at Georgetown’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service
• Emmanuel Ogebe, Nigerian attorney and human rights leader
• Tina Ramirez, Director of International and Government Relations, The Becket Fund

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In an explosive new, not-quite-Oprah-style interview with LiveAction‘s undercover investigators, a Planned Parenthood clinic worker reveals her clinic’s wide range of services:

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We’ve got a great lineup of speakers this morning for ProLifeCon, FRC’s Pro-Life Conference designed to educate bloggers and social media users on the cutting edge of the pro-life movement and to equip them to take action. You can watch the live stream from 8:30 – 11:30 a.m. EST, and follow the Twitter stream using the hashtag #ProLifeCon.  An archived webcast will be made available a few hours after the event concludes. Schedule is below:

• 8:30 – 8:35 a.m. emcee Jill Stanek: Welcome & Introduction
• 8:35 – 8:50 a.m. Abby Johnson (Author, Unplanned)
• 8:50 – 9:05 a.m. Lila Rose (Live Action)
• 9:05 – 9:25 a.m. Panel: Taking the Pro-Life Message to Urban Audiences Online: Dean Nelson (Care Net) & Ryan Scott Bomberger (The Radiance Foundation)
• 9:25 – 9:35 a.m. Michael J. New, Ph.D.
• 9:35 – 9:50 a.m. Rep. James Lankford (R-Okla.)
• 9:50 – 10:05 a.m. Special Announcements
• 10:05 – 10:15 a.m. Tony Perkins (Family Research Council)
• 10:15 – 10:30 a.m. Terrence McKeegan (C-FAM)
• 10:30 – 10:45 a.m. Kristan Hawkins (Students for Life)
• 10:45 – 11:00 a.m. Jeanne Monahan (Family Research Council)
• 11:00 – 11:15 a.m. David Bereit (40 Days for Life)
• 11:15 – 11:30 a.m. Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.)

If you want to embed the live feed into your own blog, use the code found here.

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If you’d like to display Monday morning’s live feed (8:30 a.m. — 11:30 a.m. EST) of ProLifeCon on your blog or website, paste the embed code below into your site. (We’ll start the webcast about 10 minutes before the event, so before then you won’t get much):

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height="260" bgcolor="000000" allowscriptaccess="always"
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/></embed></object>

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In a Breakpoint commentary, Chuck Colson’s comments on the recent attacks upon FRC by the SPLC, along with Apple’s pulling of the Manhattan Declaration app from the iTunes store:

Some in the gay community aren’t angry at the signers of the Manhattan Declaration because we hate them—we don’t! I’ve cradled many prisoners dying of AIDS in my arms. They’re angry at us because we disagree with them. But civil, open discourse is what keeps our society free. We can air our disagreements in public. That’s what democracy is all about. And it’s tragic that a leading culture-shaper like Apple would suppress that kind of discussion.

Listen to the full commentary…

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Watch the archive webcast below:

WASHINGTON, D.C. –

WHAT: News Conference of organizational leaders and military experts in support of the current law on homosexuality in the military, commonly referred to as “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” The speakers will discuss the release of the report by the Pentagon’s Comprehensive Review Working Group (CRWG) on the issue of open homosexuality in the military as well a new survey showing 63 percent of military families oppose overturning the current law. An amendment to the Defense Authorization Act that would turn military medical facilities into abortion clinics will also be discussed.

WHO:

* Tony Perkins, Marine Corps Veteran and President, Family Research Council
* Retired Colonel Dick Black
* Lt. Colonel Bob Maginnis, FRC’s Senior Fellow for National Security
* John Hagan, former Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy
* Frank Gaffney, President, Center for Security Policy
* Elaine Donnelly, President, Center for Military Readiness
* Rep. John Fleming, M.D. (R-La.), former Lieutenant Commander of the Navy
* Charmaine Yoest, President and CEO, Americans United for Life

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If you’re interested in a legal presentation on what’s wrong with Obamacare, FRC’s own Ken Klukowski delivered a lecture to The Federalist Society of Syracuse University — which is now online in four parts:

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

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Below is video for panel held today at FRC headquarters with Ross Douthat, Lawrence Reed, and Bob Patterson:

Below is the lowdown, and you can find embed code for the video and an audio download here:

Are social and economic conservatism at odds? According to political journalists Jonathan Martin and Ben Smith, … the battles over morality-based cultural issues such as gay rights, abortion and illegal drugs that did so much to drive the conservative movement and dominated the political conversation for more than 30 years have abated, giving way not just to broad economic anxiety but to a new set of emotionally charged issues. (Politico, August 20, 2010 )

Are they right? To answer that question, Family Research Council is hosting an important symposium on the relationship between economic and social conservatism featuring three of the nation’s leading observers of the political scene.

New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, formerly a senior editor at The Atlantic, has written extensively about religion, family, and public life. Douthat is the co-author, with Reihan Salam, of Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream (Doubleday, 2008).

Lawrence Reed is president of the Foundation for Economic Education and formerly led the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. Under his leadership, the Mackinac Center emerged as the largest and one of the most effective and prolific of over 40 state-based free market-oriented think tanks in the country.

Bob Patterson is a adjunct research fellow at the Howard Center for Family, Religion & Society of Rockford, Ill. and editor of The Family in America, which recently published his important article, “Fiscal Conservatism is Not Enough: What Social Conservatives Offer the Party of Lincoln.”

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Below is video of Bishop Harry Jackson’s press conference hosted yesterday (September 20, 2010) at FRC Headquarters in Washington, D.C.:

Participants:

Bishop Harry Jackson, Chairman, High Impact Leadership Coalition

Pastor Aubrey Shines, Tampa, FL

Pastor Christopher Brooks, Detroit, MI

Bishop Leon Benjamin, Richmond, VA

Reverend Dean Nelson, Washington, DC

Austin Nimocks, Senior Counsel, Alliance Defense Fund

Tony Perkins, President, Family Research Council

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FRC Senior Fellow for Life Sciences David Prentice, comments on this week’s court injunction against federal funding of embryonic stem cell research in an op-ed at AOL News:

(Aug. 25) — The U.S. District Court injunction that stops federal taxpayer funding of human embryonic stem cell research should make patients happy.

The judge ruled that federal funding for embryonic stem cell research violates a current law, passed annually since the Clinton administration, prohibiting government funding for research that involves the destruction of human embryos.

He added that there is a limited amount of federal funding for stem cells, and funding embryonic stem cells competes with adult stem cells. But only adult stem cells are treating people. The good news is that this ruling should free up more funding for adult stem cell research — which is legal, uncontroversial and already helping treat thousands of patients.

Here are just a few examples of the published scientific successes of adult stem cells:

• Italian doctors used patients’ own adult stem cells to grow new corneal tissue to restore sight to people blinded by chemical burns, including one patient who had been blind for 50 years.
• German doctors reported in June the results of a five-year study on patients with chronic heart failure. The 191 patients treated with their own bone marrow adult stem cells showed significant improvement in heart function, with decreased death and no side effects.
• Another recent Italian success involved growing new windpipes for cancer patients. Doctors used cadaver windpipes stripped of their cells, bathed the cartilage with the patients’ bone marrow stem cells and then transplanted the reconstructed windpipes. The two young women were released from the hospital just weeks after their surgery, and are now in good condition.
• In August, University of Minnesota scientists transplanted donor adult stem cells into children with a fatal genetic skin disease and repaired the damage. The scientists said regarding adult stem cell treatments, “Patients who otherwise would have died from their disease can often now be cured. It’s a serious treatment for a serious disease.”

Read the rest at AOL News…

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CNN’s Belief Blog has published FRC President Tony Perkins’ op-ed today on the effect the current administration has had on religious freedom in America:

President Obama has shifted centuries of U.S. diplomatic parlance. We no longer speak of freedom of religion; now, it is only freedom of worship that our government defends.

This is a radical departure, one that threatens to make true religious liberty vulnerable, conditional and limited. As some have said, it is a freedom “only within four walls.” That is, you are free to worship within the four walls of your home, church or synagogue, but when you enter the public square or go abroad, leave your religion at home.

In international forums, President Obama and Secretary Clinton repeatedly have retreated to this “freedom of worship” formulation. This is no accident.

Read the rest at CNN…

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FRC President Tony Perkins appeared on CBS’s “Face the Nation” Sunday (8/8/10) to discuss the implications of the federal court ruling striking down California’s “Proposition 8.” Here’s a clip of the interview below, followed by links to other media coverage of the interview:

OFFICIAL TRANSCRIPT (CBS) [PDF]

Same-Sex Marriage Decision: “Far From Over” (CBS)

Family Research Council compares Prop. 8 to Roe; says fight not over (The Hill)

Perkins: We hope ‘sanity will reign’ on gay marriage ban (Politico)

Activists Gear Up for Next Round on Gay Marriage (CQ Politics)

Gay-Marriage Ruling Should Be Upheld, Ex-Solicitor General Ted Olson Says (Bloomberg)

Prop 8 attorneys Theodore Olson and David Boies say judge’s ruling is ‘constitutionally sound’ (NY Daily News)

Olson backs gay marriage ruling (Boston Globe)

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In addition to being Wednesday, today is also the birthday of FRC’s Washington, D.C. neighbor, President Obama. To mark the occasion, our neighborly FRC Senior Fellow Robert Morrison penned the president a greeting that turned out a tad too long for a Hallmark card, so our friends at The American Thinker have kindly agreed to publish it:

Today, August 4th, is your forty-ninth birthday, Mr. President. You share your special day with the U.S. Coast Guard. When I served in the Coast Guard as a Russian interpreter, I learned this birthday greeting: Sto lyet. May you live a hundred years!

The Coast Guard recently distinguished itself in attacking the BP oil spill. Although a few are grousing about the Coast Guard authorizing the use of chemical dispersants, my guess is that the embattled folks of the Gulf shore are cheering the Coast Guard. They certainly cheered the Guardsmen back at the time of Hurricane Katrina. The Coast Guard is one of the few federal agencies that nobody is mad at.

Birthdays are a good time for self-reflection. You must be wondering how things seem to have gone awry for you and your administration. You came in promising that the oceans would cease to rise, that the planet would begin to heal. You promised this, only to have billions of gallons of oil spilled on your watch. That BP, the perpetrator, was one of the major supporters of your presidential campaign hardly seems fair.

Read the rest of Bob’s birthday greeting at The American Thinker…

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My (relatively) new FRC colleague Ken Klukowski has the lowdown over at Townhall.com:

The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia denied the Obama administration’s motion to dismiss Virginia’s lawsuit against Obamacare. Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli filed one of the three major lawsuits against President Obama’s healthcare law, focusing on the issue that the individual mandate, requiring every American to purchase health insurance, is unconstitutional.

For the reason my coauthor and I explained in the Wall Street Journal in January and last month, the Obamacare individual mandate is clearly unconstitutional. In researching this issue for our book, The Blueprint: Obama’s Plan to Subvert the Constitution and Build an Imperial Presidency, Ken Blackwell and I found that commanding Americans to buy insurance is not authorized by even the most liberal precedents of the Supreme Court interpreting the Commerce Clause, the Taxing and Spending Clause, or the General Welfare Clause.

Read the whole thing…

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National Review‘s Ramesh Ponnuru readily answers that question and others on family tax policy at a lecture entitled “The Case for Pro-Family Tax Reform” held at FRC headquarters earlier this week:

[If you can't see the video above, click through to the post to watch.]

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From the May 21, 2010 edition of Washington Watch Weekly:

TONY PERKINS: Since President Obama announced his plans to force open homosexuality in the military, liberal members in Congress have been chomping at the bit to force the change, even though the military is in the midst of a six month review of how to impellent this change without hurting military readiness, and which numerous studies have shown that it would. Well the study is to be presented to Congress the first of December, but a Michigan senator, Carl Levin, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, hopes to amend the Defense Authorization bill next week. Joining us from Capitol Hill is Senator John McCain who represents Arizona; he’s been representing Arizona since 1982. He’s a true American hero, having served twenty-two years as a naval aviator, a survivor of the North Vietnamese prisoner of war camp in Hanoi. I have to tell you his fighting spirit is well known and respected on Capitol Hill – Senator McCain, thanks for joining us on Washington Watch Radio.

SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN: Thank you Tony, and again thanks for all you do for the men and women in the military, for our nation’s security and the values that we hold dear.

TONY PERKINS: Well thank you Senator and I didn’t mention that you’re also the ranking member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, so you’re right on the front lines of this fight over the military. Now we’re expecting Senator Levin the chairman to try and amend a military authorization bill which is a spending bill. This gives money to the military is that correct?

SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN: Yes, and it does authorize, it would be – if you thought it was appropriate – it would be a vehicle that would contain a policy change. But the fact is as you mention there is a study going on. The secretary of defense recently openly stated that they should allow the study to be completed before any congressional action should be taken. By the way I have a big problem with the study itself. The study should be on the impact on battle effectiveness on morale in the military if the policy of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” – the law, not the policy – the law of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” were repealed. Instead Secretary Gates, to my great disappointment, is conducting a study as to how best to implement it – in other words it’s a fait accompli because of no other reason than President Obama’s campaign promise. The military is at its highest level of effectiveness, morale, equipment, training, professionalism, and why we would want to disrupt that when we’re in the middle of two wars is something that I find very, very wrong.

TONY PERKINS: Yeah, it’s a very important distinction to make and you have made that both in committee and in correspondence to the Secretary of Defense, and I think the public needs to be aware that the review that is taking place is how to implement this change, not if the change should be made. However, in the process, and I know this from some meetings over at the Pentagon with those that are doing this review, that they’re uncovering some problems that they did not anticipate. Can not Congress when they come back with this review in December then explore more deeply into these issues that have come up and come to its own conclusion that this is not the best approach for the military?

SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN: Well, obviously Congress plays a role, but I don’t think it should play a preemptive role. We should assess the impact of change in this law on battle effectiveness – we have a military for only one reason, and people join the military for only one reason and that is to fight. And it’s our obligation – and defend our nation’s security – and we have an obligation it seems to me to make sure that we don’t do anything that would disrupt or diminish that capability, especially when we are in two wars, in order to carry out a campaign promise of the President of the United States, not because there is any movement, any outcry, any request for the change to be made. The Commandant of the Marine Corps has come out flat out saying he opposes repeal – in fact the Commandant of the Marine Corps said that they would have to look at living arrangements that the Marine Corps has, so the implications of this change in law has to be assessed carefully. Instead apparently the Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi who said today, it’s carried in the news today, that “‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy will be nothing but a memory by year’s end, Speaker Nancy Pelosi declared Wednesday.” So I think it’s good that we review every policy no matter what it is from time to time and review of the policy is something that I know, Tony, you and I would agree on, but a preemptive repeal without any study, without any assessment on the impact of battle effectiveness is in my view putting our social agenda, or the liberal social agenda, ahead of national security.

TONY PERKINS: Well Senator McCain that brings up a question, or an observation: those that are really pushing this agenda to essentially use the military to advance their social agenda-

SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN: That’s it-

TONY PERKINS: How many of them have actually served in the military?

SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN: (laughter) I don’t know of any. There may be a few – Congressman Sestak has, I don’t know his position on the issue, I haven’t heard it yet – but the point is that the people that I talk to and know, Veterans of Foreign Wars, American Legion, have both come out strongly against the repeal, and certainly even more strongly against a process that would preemptively address an issue which, could, could, I emphasize could – we haven’t done the study – could adversely affect the morale and battle effectiveness of the United States military, the by far and head and shoulders above and better than any other in the world today.

TONY PERKINS: Absolutely, without question – I know a lot of people point to militaries that have allowed homosexuality within the ranks – there’s twenty-five of almost two hundred nations but the top militaries in the world do not allow homosexuality to be openly engaged in, in the military – I mean, if you want a military that just does parades and stuff like that then I guess that’s okay.

SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN: Could we also emphasize a point that’s lost in this debate sometime, particularly by the liberal media – we don’t, we do not tell someone who is homosexual that they can’t join the military – we don’t tell them that-

TONY PERKINS: Right.

SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN: We, in fact, we appreciate the fact that all Americans would want to join the military. What we are saying is that that sexual orientation they’re kept quiet about, and they can have the whatever orientation they choose; because in 1993 we passed the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy because we thought that was the best way to maintain morale and battle effectiveness in the United States military.

TONY PERKINS: The focus-

SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN: So it’s not discriminatory and no one forces anyone to join the military and if they wanna have a sexual orientation we don’t keep them from having that orientation.

TONY PERKINS: Well it’s all focused on behavior and the same standards apply to heterosexuals who are-

SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN: Right.

TONY PERKINS: Cannot engage in adultery – that’s a crime in the military – and people don’t realize that, that there is a higher standard for the military for the very purposes that you outlined, Senator.

SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN: Well I hope our listeners will take an interest in this issue. And I know that there’s a whole lot of other issues out there, the economy, joblessness, Iranian nuclear buildup, immigration, there’s a whole lot of other issues, but this issue has significant long-term implication for our ability to defend this nation. So I hope listeners of this show, Tony, will take an interest. Contact Family Research Council for more information, contact our office and weigh in on this issue because it really does have significant long-term implications.

TONY PERKINS: Senator I couldn’t, I could not agree with you more. Senator John McCain, thanks for joining us.

SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN: Thank you, Tony.

Listen to the audio:

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Mary Eberstadt’s must-read essay in this month’s First Things, “The Weight of Smut,” covers the far-reaching effects that pornography has on American life:

The notion for starters that those in the “industry” itself are not being harmed by what they do cannot survive even the briefest reading of testimonials to the contrary by those who have turned their backs on it, among them Playboy bunnies (including Izabella St. James, author of Bunny Tales). It is a world rife with everything one would want any genuinely loved one to avoid like the plague: drugs, exploitation, physical harm, AIDS.

Nor can that defense survive the extremely troubling—or what ought to be extremely troubling—connections between pornography and prostitution. New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof has notably taken the lead in investigating and throwing light on the sordid phenomenon of “sex trafficking,” both here and abroad. Yet trafficking, as the Department of Justice and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children have both noted, is often associated with pornography—for example, via cameras and film equipment found when trafficking circles are broken up. Plainly, the reality of the human beings behind many of those images on the Internet is poorer, dirtier, druggier—and younger—than pious appeals to “consenting adults” can withstand. Is this world really what the libertarian defenders of pornography want to subsidize?

Once again, who even needs all that social science? Perhaps the most telling response to the “pictures” defense is rhetorical. Ask even the most committed user whether he wants his own daughter or son in that line of work—and then ask why it’s all right to have other people’s daughters and sons making it instead.

Read the whole thing for a good perspective on just how burdensome the porn epidemic has become. Eberstadt quotes my colleague Cathy Ruse on the vitriol that defenders of pornography have against its critics.

For more, read the report of another colleague, Patrick Fagan, who has studied in-depth the effects of pornography on individuals, marriage, family, community.

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Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.) discusses with Fox News his investigation into the dis-invitations of Tony Perkins and Franklin Graham from military speaking events. See FRC’s press release here, and watch the clip below:

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Clip of Tony Perkins appearance today Fox News regarding the recent “dis-invitations” of both himself and Franklin Graham from speaking at military events:

[If you're reading the post through a feed reader, click through to watch.]

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