The Social Conservative Review: January 30, 2014

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Dear Friends,

On Tuesday evening, U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) gave a moving address about the hope and opportunity all Americans share. Responding to the President's State of the Union message, she spoke of the grandeur of "a nation where a girl who worked at the McDonald's Drive-Thru to help pay for college can be with you from the United States Capitol."

She also talked about her wonderful son Cole, a little boy with Down Syndrome. She described him as "a 6-year old boy who dances to Bruce Springsteen; who reads above grade level; and who is the best big brother in the world. We see all the things he can do, not those he can't. Cole, and his sisters, Grace and Brynn, have only made me more determined to see the potential in every human life -- that whether we are born with an extra 21st chromosome or without a dollar to our name -- we are not defined by our limits, but by our potential."

Last summer, Rep. McMorris Rodgers' former staffer, now-U.S. Rep. Jaime Beutler Herrera (R-WA), gave birth to a little girl with Potter's Syndrome, "a kidney and lung condition that's typically fatal." Both of these brave women have shown that every child is a precious gift. One week after the March for Life, let's keep remembering that.

Sincerely,
Rob Schwarzwalder
Senior Vice President
Family Research Council

P.S. FRC's Executive Vice-President, Lt. Gen. (ret) Jerry Boykin, earlier this week submitted eloquent testimony to the House Armed Service's Military Personnel subcommittee regarding "Religious Accommodations in the Armed Services." Read the full text of his timely comments here.

Educational Freedom and Reform
Homeschooling

• "Superintendent Says Homeschoolers Must Show Equivalent Instruction," Home School Legal Defense Association
• "Virginia lawmaker seeks to clarify education law on religious exemptions," The Washington Post
• "Why It's So Hard To Come Out of the Homeschool Closet," The American Conservative

Legislation and Policy Proposals

• "Voucher Programs, Private Schools, and State Tests," Education Week
• "Schooling Rebooted," EducationNext
• "Public accountability & private-school choice," Thomas B. Fordham Institute
• "How Teachers Can Best Use Tech," The American
• "Why Catholics Should Oppose the Common Core," CatholicVote

College Debt

• "Money Is a Terrible Way to Measure the Value of a College Major," The Atlantic
• "Student Loan Debt (Still) Hindering Vocations?," CatholicVote
• "The Price of College Has Increased 1120 Percent Since 1978, So Is It Worth It?," The Daily Beast
• "These colleges will pay your student loan bills," CNNMoney

Government Reform
Regulation

• "Bureaucracy and Efficiency-Posner," The Becker-Posner Blog
• "The Recipe for Good Government," The American
• "Recovering The Habits Of Self-Government," The Federalist

Waste/Fraud/Abuse

• "Congress Feasts On Vegan Pork Despite Earmark Ban," Time
• "Government Waste ... and Squirrels," Commentary Magazine
• "'Era of Big Government' is back?," Fox News

Health Care
Abstinence

• "Explicit sex ed poster part of 'abstinence' curriculum," WORLD Magazine
• "LifeWay Relaunches Abstinence Program to Fight Culture Where 80% of Unmarried Christians Have Sex," The Christian Post
• "Sex, schools and social suicide," MercatorNet
• "Kissing and Communicating," The Catholic Thing

Health care reform: ACA/Obamacare

• "FRC Submits Brief to Supreme Court in Hobby Lobby, Conestoga Wood Cases," Family Research Council
• "Our Fierce Urgency of Now," Townhall.com
• "How Republicans Should Handle The Inevitable ObamaCare Implosion," Investor's Business Daily
• "Target Joins Home Depot, Walmart, Others In Cutting Health Care For Part-Timers, Citing Obamacare," Forbes
• "The ObamaCare Carnival of Perverse Incentives," The Wall Street Journal
• "HHS Mandate: Hobby Lobby Explains Its Stance," The Acton Institute
• "33 Changes to ObamaCare ... So Far," The Galen Institute

Homosexuality

• "Oregon: Christian Businesses Must Follow Demands of Gay Customers," Townhall.com
• "Federal Judge Strikes Down Oklahoma Same-Sex Marriage Ban," Religion Today
• "New Homophiles: Stories Without a Who or What," First Things
• "Kansas considers response to uncertainty on gay marriage," The Kansas City Star
• "Are "marriage equality" and gender segregation compatible?," MercatorNet
• "The New Homophiles: A Closer Look," Crisis Magazine

Abortion

• "A Better Way to Fight Abortion," Relevant Magazine
• "The Pro-Life Movement, Forty-One Years After Roe," The Public Discourse
• "His Will Be Done," First Things
• "Planned Parenthood caught covering up child rape in Philadelphia," Live Action News
• "Successful state strategies saving babies," WORLD Magazine
• "Worthy of Life," Touchstone Magazine
• "Guttmacher Study Shows Pro-life Success in Swing States," National Review Online
• "Crucial Progress in the Ongoing War against Abortion," Alliance Defending Freedom
• "Can You Guess What Happens to Teen Pregnancy Rates When Planned Parenthood Leaves Town?," CatholicVote
• "A Compelling Commentary on Abortion," Commentary Magazine
• "Dodging Haymakers Outside the Abortion Clinic," The Gospel Coalition
• "The Pawnshop Abortion Doctor," The Atlantic
• "The Supreme Court: Evading Fetal Pain," The Catholic Thing

Bioethics and Biotechnology

• "Sorry USA Today, Evolution Isn't "Settled" Science," Crisis Magazine
• "Brain Death: Making the Distinctions," The Catholic Thing

Euthanasia and End of Life Issues

• "Euthanasia Critic: Learn a Lesson From Abortion Law," Charisma News
• "French bishops issue statement against euthanasia," CatholicCulture.com

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.

• "New Stem Cell Procedure Gives Hope To Pain Sufferers," CBS Pittsburgh
• "Born Babies Save Lives-Their Own and Others by Their Umbilical Cord Stem Cells," National Right to Life News
• "Mayo Clinic to test adult stem cells to treat heart failure," UPI
• "Stem Cell Therapy Following Meniscus Knee Surgery May Reduce Pain, Restore Meniscus," ScienceDaily
• "'Stem cells' created in less than 30 minutes in 'groundbreaking' discovery," The Telegraph

Human Trafficking

• "Rescuing Someone from Human Trafficking is Harder Than It Seems," Relevant Magazine
• "How One Church Harms Human Trafficking Victims," Crisis Magazine
• "Rep. Noem Talks Sex Trafficking In SD," KDLT.com
• "Chinese Doctor Guilty of Selling Babies to Human Traffickers," Religion Today
• "Super Bowl XLVIII and Human Trafficking: An Outdoor Campaign Connects the Two," Forbes

Marriage and Family
Adoption

• "March for Life Focuses on Adoption as Best Option," The Christian Post
• "48 Hours: Tougher Laws At Hand For International Adoption," CBS News
• "Adoption: The period to the pro-life sentence," Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission

Family Economics

• "Is There a Moral Basis for the Free Market?," The Public Discourse
• "Alone in the New America," First Things
• "The rise of the self-made man, from Don Draper to Li Ka-shing," Financial Times
• "Save up to marry or marry to save up?," MercatorNet
• "To Combat Inequality, We Need Solidarity," Family Affairs
• "The Morality of the National Debt," Institute for Faith, Work, and Economics
• "Beyond Social Work: Reflections on Poverty Alleviation," Patheos.com
• "Economists: Your Parents Are More Important Than Ever," The Atlantic

Family Structure

• "Congress Should Protect States' Right to Define Marriage," The Washington Times
• "Boys Are at the Heart of the Family Stability Problem," National Review Online
• "Truancy down when teens eat with parents, says OECD," BBC News
• "Findings on Red and Blue Divorce Are Not Exactly Black and White," Family Studies
• "Why Do We Support Marriage as a Union of One Man and One Woman?," CatholicVote
• "Women and Children First," The Public Discourse
• "Stay-at-Home Moms with Missionary Hearts," Desiring God
• "How family structure impacts college attendance," MercatorNet
• "Parenting in the Haze of Legalized Marijuana," Christianity Today

Media
Pornography

• "Supreme Court weighs how much one person should pay pornography victim," The Washington Post
• "Can't block pornographic sites on our own: Internet Service Providers tell Supreme Court," The Economic Times

Religion and Public Policy
Religious Liberty

• "The Philosophical Basis for Religious Liberty," Crisis Magazine
• "Dietrich Bonhoeffer on the Search for Christian Freedom," The Acton Institute
• "Religious Freedom Day Highlights Increased Restrictions," Religion Today
• "U.S. Military Issues New Policy On Religious Accommodation," Religion Clause
• "Our First Freedom," RealClearReligion
• "Five Cases to Watch in 2014," Alliance Defending Freedom
• "Polygamy and the Future of Religious Liberty," The Catholic Thing

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.

• "Examining Ourselves to Death: Evangelicalism's Preoccupation with Itself," Canon & Culture
• "The Most and Least Bible-Minded Cities in the U.S. in 2014," Barna
• "God Doesn't Want Christian Clones," Christianity Today
• "The Great Decline: 60 years of religion in one graph," Religion News Service
• "Has 'Authenticity' Trumped Holiness?," The Gospel Coalition
• "Why Doesn't God Answer My Prayers?," Trans.formed
• "The Death of Witnessing," Reformation21
• "Your Grammy's Church," TruthXchange.org

Secularism

• "Religion As Magic," The American Interest
• "In our opinion: Human Rights Campaign dead wrong in concerns about religion," The Deseret News
• "Biblical Illiteracy is a Sign of Ignorance of Religion, History, Literature, and Art," Patheos.com

International
Israel

• "The EU's Double Threat to Israel," Commentary Magazine
• "Too optimistic?," The Economist
• "America's Complicated Support for Israel," Religion Today
• "Israel's Abortion Expansion," National Catholic Register

International Economy and Family

• "Europe's Outlook in 2014," The American
• "Rural Cuba and the Tragedy of the Commons," The Acton Institute
• "Human Rights Improving in China?," Religion Today
• "Liberté, Egalité, Jihad," City Journal

Religious Persecution

• "As Geneva Talks Begin ...," America
• "The Elephant in the 'Christian Persecution' Room," Front Page
• "The World's War on Christianity," The Huffington Post
• "New Egypt constitution nudges Christian hope," Baptist Press

The Courts
Constitutional Issues

• "Judicial activism isn't a bad thing," The Washington Post
• "Opinion Analysis: Justices Unimpressed with Federal Circuit's Mastery of Federal Procedure," The FedSoc Blog
• "He Has a Pen, We Have a Constitution," The Acton Institute
• "Conservatives and the Constitution," The Public Discourse

Other Issues

• "The Humanities and Us," City Journal
• "Government's role in charity: A response and an invitation to further dialogue," The Center for Vision and Values
• "Snuff Boxes and Spittoons, but No Laptops?," The American Spectator
• "Millennial Insecurity Runs Washington D.C.," Mere Orthodoxy

Book reviews

• "In the City We Trust," Books and Culture
• "My Take on Duncan and Murnane's New Book: Restoring Opportunity," Education Week
• "Books vs. Literature," The American
• "To Rule and Be Ruled," Claremont Review of Books
• "The Locust Effect: Why the End of Poverty Requires the End of Violence," Mere Orthodoxy