The Social Conservative Review: September 18, 2013

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Dear Friend:

On Tuesday, we celebrated Constitution Day, when our nation annually is called to remember that our country is grounded in a written text that defines and confines the federal government.

The Constitution's fixed meaning was clear to those who drafted and approved it, and should be to us. Why else would the Founders have included a provision to amend it -- if you can expand or redefine the meaning of words as you will, why bother amending them? And why have a Tenth Amendment, which states: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution ... are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." Is this so mystifying that the Left can't quite get it?

My colleague, FRC Senior Fellow Bob Morrison, a historian, earlier this week wrote a compelling piece titled, "The Constitution: What Difference Does it Make?" Take a few moments to consider Bob's wise observations, and then give thanks for our Constitution. It's worth preserving, protecting, and defending, always.

Sincerely,

Rob Schwarzwalder
Senior Vice President
Family Research Council

P.S. Be sure to order or download (at no cost) our most recent publication, "Social Justice: How Good Intentions Undermine Justice and Gospel," by Dr. Cal Beisner. And join us, in person or via the Internet, for our next FRC lecture, "Common Core: The Dangers of Federal Power in Education" this coming Wednesday, September 25.

Educational Freedom and Reformb
Homeschooling

• "German Children Seized From Parents for Crime of Homeschooling," The American Conservative
• "From homeschooling to home alone," WORLD Magazine
• "U.S. Department of Education: Homeschooling Continues to Grow!," Home School Legal Defense Association

Legislation and Policy Proposals

• "The Federal Government Attacks Louisiana School Choice," The Acton Institute
• "Christian Schools & Racial Realities," Touchstone Magazine
• "How to Make School Better for Boys," The Atlantic
• "Private Enterprise & Public Education," Education Week
• "Reassessing Obama's "Race to the Top"," AEIdeas.org

College Debt

• "Federal Student Loans: A Problem of Subsidiarity," The Acton Institute
• "Four in Ten College Grads Don't Need a Degree for Their Work," The American Interest
• "Pay for College Without Taking on Student Loan Debt," U.S. News and World Report
• "New College Rankings: Did US News ignore Debt, Jobs?," WebProNews

Government Reform
Regulation

• "Government benefits: You can't have it all," AEIdeas.org
• "Poll: Most say government did little to help poor after downturn," The Los Angeles Times

Waste/Fraud/Abuse

• "A Fascinating Report from the Government Accountability Office," The American
• "10 charts on federal spending from The Heritage Foundation," The Washington Examiner
• "Fraud at Obamaphone, Inc.," National Review Online
• "Audit Finds IRS Employees Don't Follow Their Own Rules," Reason.com

Health Care
Abstinence

• "NC school board approves abstinence grants," Raleigh News & Observer
• "Abstinence with an attitude," The Baltimore Sun
• "Tackling Teen Pregnancy," The Daily Beast

Health care reform: ACA/Obamacare

• "Too Bad ObamaCare Works as Intended," Commentary Magazine
• "Obamacare: Destined to Flop? Part I," The American
• "Health Exchanges just a Step in Government Take-Over of Health," The Galen Institute
• "Congress's Exemption from Obamacare," National Review Online
• "Health Facts: Confused about health care reform's impact? Here's help," Crain's Detroit Business

Homosexuality

• "Craig James's Views on Homosexuality Shouldn't Cost Him a Fox Sports Job," The Atlantic
• "If the natural ties don't matter then why was this decision made?," The Iona Institute
• "CDC: 94 to 95 percent of HIV cases among young men linked to gay sex," LifeSiteNews.com
• "Why Science Doesn't Support Orientation-Change Bans," First Things

Human Life and Bioethics
Abortion

• "The wisdom of waiting periods for tattoos and abortions," The Washington Examiner
• "Pro-Life Clinics as Missional Ministry," The Gospel Coalition
• "RU-486 at the Supreme Court," National Review Online
• "U.S. Congressional Hearing Examines Gendercide in India," C-FAM
• "Population Control Goes Out with a Whimper," Turtle Bay and Beyond
• "Abortion Clinics Closing at Record Rate," Christianity Today
• "The female holocaust," WORLD Magazine
• "Sex-Selective Abortions Linked To Abuse Of Females," The Acton Institute
• "The painful quest of fertility junkies," LifeSiteNews.com
• "File Under False: "Pro-Lifers Don't Really Care About the Unborn"," LifeNews.com
• "Since when did abortion trump the rule of law?," MercatorNet

Bioethics and Biotechnology

• "A Person is a Person No Matter How Small: Dealing With IVF's Ethical Questions," LifeNews.com
• "Big Fertility's Dark Side," National Review Online
• "The Overlooked Ethics of Reproduction," Christianity Today
• "Jerry Brown Vetoes Sales of Human Eggs in California," National Catholic Register

Euthanasia and End of Life Issues

• "Nitschke continues to sell suicide over the internet.," LifeSiteNews.com
• "'Babies don't need to die like this': The argument for child euthanasia," The Independent
• "Prison systems should implement euthanasia," Washington Square News

Stem Cell Research
To read about the latest advances in ethical adult stem cell research, keep up with leading-edge reports from FRC's Dr. David Prentice, click here.

• "Less Conflating "Ethics" and "Science"," National Review Online
• "Embryonic stem cells produced in living adult organisms," Phys.org
• "Scientists grow new stem cells in a living mouse," Reuters

Human Trafficking

• "Keeping Watch Over Schools," Shared Hope International
• "Hotel chain ends porn channels over human trafficking link," Catholic News Agency
• "Organ trafficking is still a protected crime," MercatorNet

Marriage and Family
Adoption

• "International adoptions in decline as number of orphans grows," CNN
• "Overseas Adoptions Rise - for Black American Children," CNN

Family Economics

• "The Necessity of Distinguishing Relief and Development," What's Best Next
• "Five Insights About Private Property from Aquinas," Institute for Faith, Work, and Economics
• "A Dearth of Investment in Young Workers," New York Times
• "Can Smart Economics Turn Us Into Better Parents?," The Atlantic
• "Work Is a Glorious Thing," DesiringGod
• "God and the Minimum Wage," The American Spectator

Family Structure

• "A Grown-Up, Not Sexed-Up, View of Womanhood," Christianity Today
• "Callings and the Childfree Life," The Acton Institute
• "Is It Good News That Cohabitation Rates Are Stalling?," Moore to the Point
• "Treating marriage like a car lease," Fox13
• "Marriage, Community, & Kinship," The Public Discourse
• "Marriage Is What It Is," The Catholic Thing
• "How to Destroy Your Marriage Before It Begins," The Gospel Coalition
• "Six Questions That Will Radically Change Your Marriage," RefineUs
• "Children: Burden or Blessing?," Intercollegiate Review

Media
Pornography

• "Finally Free: A conversation on conquering Pornography," Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission
• "Hotels and the Pornography Plague: An Example of Moral Responsibility from Scandinavia," The Public Discourse
• "The Detrimental Effects of Pornography on Small Children," PornHarms.com
• "Are libraries giving kids their first exposure to porn?," WORLD Magazine

Religion and Public Policy
Religious Liberty

• "Christian Leaders Meet with Pentagon on Religious Liberty Violations," Breitbart.com
• "Protecting Religious Diversity, Even at the Mall," The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty
• "Pledge's 'under God' phrase faces Mass. court scrutiny," Baptist Press
• "Christian Commercial Photographers Ask SCOTUS to Protect Their Traditional Marriage Views," The FedSoc Blog

Religion in America
Check out Dr. Kenyn Cureton's feature on Watchmen Pastors called "The Lost Episodes," featuring how religion has had an impact on our Founding Fathers.

• "CS Lewis as many have never heard him.," Archdiocese of Washington
• "Dear Parents With Young Children in Church," The Huffington Post
• "Charity with a Conscience," The Public Discourse
• "Getting a buzz from God," The Washington Times

Secularism

• "Bullied for Not Believing in God," The Atlantic
• "Putting God in its Proper Case," First Things
• "The Secularization of Sunday: Should Churches Change to Accommodate Sports?," The Christian Post

International
Israel

• "Losing the Middle East to Putin Isn't Victory," Commentary Magazine
• "Israel's twenty year nightmare," CarolineGlick.com
• "Countering Anti-Israel Evangelism," The American Spectator
• "The day Tel Aviv stood still," Jewish Journal

International Economy and Family

• "The Wake of Joblessness," Values & Capitalism
• "Should Governments Try to Make Us Happy?," The Atlantic
• "Rising China, sinking Russia," The Economist

Religious Persecution

• "Bolivia Imposes Animist Worldview on Christian Churches," Christianity Today
• "Fueling Evangelism in Southeastern India," The Gospel Coalition
• "The Devil They Know," Commonweal Magazine
• "The Church in China Asks the U.N. to "End Religious Repression in China," Persecution.org

The Courts
Constitutional Issues

• "Conscience Freedoms Denied by Liberal Courts," Crisis Magazine
• "The Last Stand: The Fight of State Attorneys General to Preserve Federalism," The Heritage Foundation
• "'In God We Trust' suit dismissed by court," Baptist Press
• "How to Avoid an Unconstitutional War: A Beginner's Guide for Presidents and Congresses," The Public Discourse
• "The U.S. Constitution Needs You," The Atlantic

Other Issues

• "What Will Become of Equal Protection for Women?," The Public Discourse
• "Why Millennials Won't Turn 'Conservative,'" American Thinker
• "A Different Approach to Approaching Millennials," Intercollegiate Review
• "Bad sports: Virtue & vice at the ballpark," The Center for Vision and Values

Book reviews

• "The Prosperity Gospel Is Surprisingly Mainstream," Christianity Today
• "Peter Greer on the 'Spiritual Danger' of Service and Charity," The Acton Institute
• "Resisting Gossip," Challies.com
• "Theory of Evolution," Claremont Review of Books