The Social Conservative Review: November 14, 2013

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Dear Friends,

Adult stem cells are living evidence that we are "fearfully and wonderfully made" (Psalm 139). FRC's prestigious Dr. David Prentice, who leads our adult stem initiative, has just released a moving new video, "Adult Stem Cell Success Story - Terry Killman."

Terry was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia almost three years ago. Even though Terry's cancer was diagnosed early, it escalated dramatically.  At one point, his oncologist told him he had to start treatment immediately or be dead within days.

An adult stem cell transplant from Terry's brother, Vic, saved his life. Terry's wife, Michelle, says "And to know now what they're doing with adult stem cells is absolutely amazing." Now the former Navy engine man is back to college studying to be a teacher, and fishing with his grandson. As Terry says, "If it wasn't for the love of my family, I wouldn't be here. We're very tight. You trust in God to carry you through, because between family and faith, you've got to have both to survive."

We can save lives through ethical adult stem cell research and treatment. Join FRC in this vital effort by going to StemCellResearchFacts.org.

Sincerely,

Rob Schwarzwalder
Senior Vice President
Family Research Council

P.S. Watch Tennessee Congressman Phil Roe describe a conservative alternative to Obamacare, which he shared at FRC this week.

Educational Freedom and Reform
Homeschooling

• "Common Core Testing Affects Homeschoolers this Year," Home School Legal Defense Association
• "State Ed Department to rethink changes to home-school rules," JournalStar.com
• "More Military Families Are Home-Schooling," KCEN

Legislation and Policy Proposals

• "'I Don't Know Anything': Why M. Night Shyamalan Wrote a Book on Education," The Atlantic
• "Do parents pick schools based on test scores?," AEIdeas.org
• "New Study Completely Undermines DOJ's Anti-School Choice Lawsuit," EducationNext
• "Lots of school choices, and so little information about them," Thomas B. Fordham Institute
• "Tennessee and D.C. lead education reform," USA Today
• "Why Our Reach Exceeds Our Grasp in Ed Reform," Education Week
• "Cross Purposes: Catholic Schools and Common Core," Crisis Magazine

College Debt

• "Obama's college rating plan: Who gets the carrot, and who gets the stick?," AEIdeas.org
• "More and more, students having trouble paying back their college loans," Akron Beacon Journal
• "Student Loan Debt Owed to Federal Government Up 463% Under Obama," CNSNews.com
• "When Did College Education Reduce To Making Money?," The Acton Institute
• "How Getting into College Became such a Long, Frenzied, Competitive Process," The Atlantic

Government Reform
Regulation

• "Trans Fat Doesn't Stir Much 'Nanny State' Debate," ABC News
• "Stop the dictatorship: A war on regulations," The Washington Times
• "A Relational Limited Government Politics," First Things

Waste/Fraud/Abuse

• "The Biggest Waste of All," The Huffington Post
• "Government at Work: Handing Out Billions in Tax Refunds to Con Artists," Reason.com
• "Study: Quantitative easing has saved US $1 trillion in debt," The Washington Examiner

Health Care
Abstinence

• "(No) Condom Culture: Why Teens Aren't Practicing Safe Sex," Time
• "This Program Contributes to Teen Pregnancy, So Why is the Government Funding It?," PolicyMic

Health care reform: ACA/Obamacare

• "Building an Obamacare website isn't rocket science," The Daily Caller
• "Who Sabotaged ObamaCare?," The Wall Street Journal
• "The Global Impact of the Obamacare Lie," The American Thinker
• "Fantasy Despot Syndrome and Healthcare.gov," The American
• "At least 27 significant changes already have been made to ObamaCare," The Galen Institute
• "It's Already Too Late to Avoid the Train Wreck," E21
• "Et Tu Bill? Clinton: Obama Should Honor Health Care Pledge," Caffeinated Thoughts
• "The Obamacare Exchange Scorecard: Around 100,000 Enrollees And Five Million Cancellations," Forbes
• "Obamacare Victims and Israel," The Jerusalem Post

Homosexuality

• "Parents sue NJ over ban on gay conversion therapy," San Francisco Chronicle
• "Same-Sex Marriage, Religious Liberty Collide in Case Presented to Supreme Court," Breitbart.com
• "Same-sex marriage has an unexpected foe," MercatorNet
• "When Government Keeps Teens from Seeing the Therapist," The Public Discourse
• "Asylum: Will Europe Soon Be Flooded with Wannabe Homosexuals?," Turtle Bay and Beyond
• "The ENDA Game," Religion Today

Human Life and Bioethics
Abortion

• "Planned Parenthood messed with Texas and lost, for now," The Daily Caller
• "NYC Mayor-Elect DeBlasio Promises to Wipe Out Crisis Pregnancy Centers," Breitbart.com
• "Jessica Valenti's Very Human Response to Her Abortion," Acculturated
• "They Said No," Alliance Defending Freedom
• "Gay Activist: 'Abortion Should Be Mandatory for About 30 Years'," CNSNews.com
• "School of Social Work parts ways with National Association of Social Workers over abortion promotion," Live Action News
• "African Women Beware - Harmful Contraceptive Coming Your Way in Bulk!," Turtle Bay and Beyond
• "Abortion Advocates Vocally Frustrated at the UN," C-FAM
• "'Heartwarming' evidence in support of the unborn," WORLD Magazine
• "What We Talk About When We Talk About Abortion," The Federalist
• "Does the Pro-Life Movement Have a Prayer?," Religion Today

Bioethics and Biotechnology

• "A Welfare Argument for Limiting Animal Research," National Review Online
• "We Need Two Kinds of Truth: Why I Don't Want Science or Religion to Win," Big Think
• "Are we educating doctors to participate in torture?," MercatorNet

Euthanasia and End of Life Issues

• "Imagine Pain Knowing of Own Dehydration!," National Review Online
• "Right-to-die advocate pushes new frontier," Arizona Daily Star
• "Euthanasia for children is wrong," Careful!
• "Euthanizing the Unhappy: The Urgent Need for Love," The Public Discourse

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.

• "Un-junking junk DNA," Phys.org
• "Epithelial Plasticity: A Common Theme in Embryonic and Cancer Cells," Science
• "Human Stem Cells Used to Reveal Mechanisms of Beta-Cell Failure in Diabetes," ScienceDaily

Human Trafficking

• "Washington lawmakers earns high rating for fighting sex trafficking," The Columbian
• "Patrol raises awareness to stamp out human trafficking," The Marion Star
• "States toughen laws against child sex trafficking," Christian Science Monitor
• "Enlisting the Private Sector in the Fight against Human Trafficking," The Acton Institute

Marriage and Family
Adoption

• "'Children of the market' face US adoption nightmare," RT.com
• "Older Children Often Overlooked For Adoption," WILX.com
• "A surrogacy and an adoption case reveal the Government's double standards," The Iona Institute
• "9 Things You Should Know About Orphans," The Gospel Coalition

Family Economics

• "Is Econ 101 Conservative Propaganda?," Values & Capitalism
• "How Does the Economy Actually Work?," The Acton Institute
• "The Jubilee and Land Ownership," The Calvinist International
• "Separate Assets, Joint Problems," The Wall Street Journal
• "Minimum Wages, Raising Rivals' Costs, and Press Releases," Library of Economics and Liberty
• "Most Americans Favor Raising the Minimum Wage, Unless it Costs Something," Reason
• "Of Dave Ramsey, Babies, and Birth Control," Crisis Magazine

Family Structure

• "Our Grandfather, which art in Heaven," Patheos.com
• "The Single Woman Society," Red State
• "Abolishing the age of consent," MercatorNet
• "A divorced father tells his story," The Iona Institute
• "Feds push new daycare regulations," WORLD Magazine
• "5 Reasons Not to Give Up on the Marriage Debate," The Gospel Coalition
• "When a Man loves a Woman (Defending Marriage)," Claremont Review of Books
• "Love Appropriate to Form," First Things
• "Be the Smile of God to Your Children," Desiring God
• "Modesty Matters: What Not to Wear," Challies.com

Media
Pornography

• "Kendall Jenner and the New Pornographic Normal," Acculturated
• "The Secret Web: Where Drugs, Porn and Murder Live Online," Time
• "'Why Do We Watch Porn?' Lecture Featured at Yale," National Review Online
• "Porn & Public Policy," National Catholic Register

Religion and Public Policy
Religious Liberty

• "A high-minded threat to personal liberty," The Washington Times
• "ENDA, Pathetic Amendments, and the End of the Fight for Religious Liberty," RedState
• "Supreme Court Likely to Restore Freedom to Pray at Public Events," Breitbart.com
• "New Yorkers seek to stop 'Jesus' prayer at town council," Christianity Today
• "Cardinal Timothy Dolan On International Religious Freedom," The Acton Institute
• "Waiting for the Supreme Court to rescue religious freedom," MercatorNet
• "The End of Religious Liberty in the Land of Lincoln," Real Clear Religion
• "Here we stand: Southern Baptists and the HHS Mandate," Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission

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.

• "God and the I.R.S: What the Bible can teach us about tax policy," The Washington Post
• "How Churches Can Help Without Hurting After Super Typhoon Haiyan," Christianity Today
• "Missionaries say God reoriented their lives," Baptist Press
• "On What Is Impossible to God," The Catholic Thing
• "The Two Wings of Evangelicalism," First Things
• "How should Christians engage with technology?," Geero.net

Secularism

• "Do Libertarians Need God?," The Christian Post
• "The Secular Warrior and the Kingdom of God," The Acton Institute
• "How many atheists does it take to form a 'megachurch?'," GetReligion

International
Israel

• "Israelis: Defend Yourselves and Us!," The Christian Post
• "Israel's Arab Christians and Jews: Brothers in Arms?," Christianity Today
• "How Much Hatred of Israel Is Too Much?," Frontpage Mag
• ""Salvation is from the Jews" -- Even in a Worldly Sense," Townhall.com

International Economy and Family

• "Norway rethinks its acceptance of divorce," Family Edge
• "Philippine typhoon: 'a call to action' for global compassion," Baptist Press
• "The crumbling Kremlin?," The Economist

Religious Persecution

• "North Korea Executes 80 Citizens," Breitbart.com
• "The Church Must Respond to Religious Persecution," The Manhattan Project
• "The Global War on Christians," The Catholic Thing

The Courts
Constitutional Issues

• "Cornelia Pillard is unfit for the D.C. Circuit Court," The Hill
• "Fox journalist to ask New York's top court to protect free press," Fox News
• "Orrin Hatch: Obama's Power Grab in Judicial Nominations," The FedSoc Blog

Other Issues

• "Cincinnati Must Face the Crisis that Sealed Detroit's Fate," Townhall.com
• "The unseen scars are often as painful as the ones seen," The Center for Vision and Values
• "Safe Streets Ahead?," City Journal
• "What the Republican Party Can Learn From Pope Francis," The Atlantic

Book reviews

• "10 Children's Books Worth (Re)Discovering as an Adult," Relevant Magazine
• "You Were Made for More Than Safety," Christianity Today
• "Walking The Wire Between Constitutional Law and Hopelessness," The Library of Law and Liberty
• "For God and Country," Claremont Review of Books
• "Apostles of Reason," The Gospel Coalition
• "Go Deep in the Grace of God," Desiring God