Today Australia faces a moral question for our age. This time it isn’t desperate European Jews searching for a sanctuary, it is desperate Iranians fleeing one of the world’s most repressive regimes. It is Iraqi Christians who have been murdered, bombed and beaten unmercifully since the invasion that we were a part of. It is shell-shocked Syrians caught between a despotic ruler on one side and jihadists on the other.
The Firebrand: The Dangers of Speaking Truth to Power (Liberty Magazine)
The story of Savonarola is not a lesson in the necessity of violence for a successful revolution, but rather a lesson in the dangerous consequences of speaking truth to power.
Serious Commitment to Faith is Par for the Course for 2013 UC Davis Athletics Hall of Fame Inductee
Although Bishop was the UC Davis scholar-athlete of the year in 2007, and was phenomenally successful on the course, even without Saturday play, he eventually gave up a promising career as a professional golfer in favor of a medical career because he knew that he could not continue to keep the Sabbath from sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday and participate in professional tournaments.
Down Syndrome Births Drop in U.S. as More Women Abort – ABC News
Excerpt: “An estimated 92 percent of all women who receive a prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome choose to terminate their pregnancies, according to research reviewed by Dr. Brian Skotko, a pediatric geneticist at Children’s Hospital Boston. http://abcnews.go.com/m/story?id=8960803&ref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F
What Changed? Will the Court’s Same-Sex Marriage Cases Affect You?
Neither Hollingsworth nor Windsor demand that any church, even in states that allow gay marriage, be forced to conduct gay weddings. Moreover, these decisions do not affect the ability of churches to decry homosexuality or homosexual conduct as immoral.
No upside for babies – NIH should withdraw funding for research on cannabis use during pregnancy
An NIH-funded study at the University of Washington is intended to determine whether there are adverse effects of cannabis use by pregnant women on infants. The best case scenario is if the baby develops normally to the point of matching the “control group” that was not exposed to marijuana. At worst, they might be born underweight, have cognitive and behavioral disorders, or develop physical brain abnormalities identified in imaging studies, or fail to survive.
Two Supreme Court Decisions Narrow Scope of Employers’ Title VII Liability
By Michael Peabody – On Monday, June 24, 2013 the U.S. Supreme Court issued two 5-4 decisions that will make it more difficult for plaintiffs to prove that their employers violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Title VII is the federal law designed to protect employees from discrimination on the basis of factors such as race, sex, and religion.
Down the Rabbit Hole: What’s Really at Stake With Domestic Surveillance? (Huffington Post)
Ryan J. Bell writes the following for the Huffington Post, excerpted briefly below. Click here to read the full article. EXCERPT: [box]We know that PRISM is not a surveillance program but a massive computer system used to crunch data. But the claim that anyone who refers to PRISM as a data-mining program should not be trusted cuts…
Grow Together: Lessons from the Wheat and Tares
By Jason Hines – The parable of the wheat and tares teaches Christians a simple lesson: That we should not be eager to rip up the “tares” and destroy them (or at best separate from them) before the appointed time.
Prayers, Parks, and Monuments: Litigation Over Religious Symbols in America
By Jason Hines – Now the clock is ticking for the group because there are KY tourism tax incentives for the project that are set to expire in May of 2014. The longer it takes to open the park, the less the group can receive in rebates. Under the current plan, the group can receive up to 25% of the cost of the project over ten years.