What’s interesting in the news today?
First up, some good news. 🙂
From ChristianityToday “For Abby Johnson, the closing of a single Planned Parenthood center demonstrated her dramatic reversal from abortion clinic director to leading pro-life advocate.
But for pro-lifers throughout the United States, it marked another exhibit in a hopeful trend—abortion centers are shutting down at an unprecedented rate. The total so far this year is 44, according to a pro-life organization that tracks clinic operations.
None was more telling for Johnson than the mid-July closing of the Planned Parenthood center in Bryan, Texas. It came less than four years after Johnson, burdened by her involvement with abortion, walked out of that clinic as its director and into the offices of the Coalition for Life.”
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Needless to say, some aren’t as happy about it.
From HuffPo “At least 54 abortion providers across 27 states have shut down or ended their abortion services in the past three years, and several more clinics are only still open because judges have temporarily blocked legislation that would make it difficult for them to continue to operate. Nebraska and Massachusetts have each added one clinic since 2010, and the other 21 states and the District of Columbia, most of which have not passed new anti-abortion laws since 2010, were unable to accurately count their clinics because their health departments do not license abortion providers separately from other kinds of medical providers. The Huffington Post’s tally did not include hospitals that provide abortions.
“This kind of change is incredibly dramatic,” said Elizabeth Nash, state issues manager at the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive health research organization. “What we’ve been seeing since 1982 was a slow decline, but this kind of change … [is] so different from what’s happened in the past.””
“This has turned into a nightmare,” said Kat Sabine, executive director of NARAL’s Arizona affiliate. “The kind of efforts the women have to take to get family planning or abortion services are just incredible, and you can only get care if you can get out of the community to do it. If you’re on a reservation or rural part of the state, unless you have reliable transportation, you’re not going to get care.”
And then doom and gloom scenarios end exactly where you would expect them to.
Yep. Cries of a “War on Women” by Republicans. Yeah, we didn’t see that comin’……
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Next, the DC Navy Yard shooting.
From TheWaPo “At least 13 people are dead and 14 others were injured after a gunman opened fire at the Washington Navy Yard on Monday, Navy officials said, spreading fear and chaos across the region as authorities sought to contain the panic.”
“D.C. Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier and Mayor Vincent C. Gray announced the mounting number of casualties in a series of news conferences. The suspected shooter, identified by the FBI as Aaron Alexis, 34, living in Fort Worth, is among the 13 dead. Alexis was a military contractor, one official said.”
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Why does this not surprise me?
From NYPost “‘Are you sexually active? If so, with one partner, multiple partners or same-sex partners?”
Be ready to answer those questions and more the next time you go to the doctor, whether it’s the dermatologist or the cardiologist and no matter if the questions are unrelated to why you’re seeking medical help. And you can thank the Obama health law.
“This is nasty business,” says New York cardiologist Dr. Adam Budzikowski. He called the sex questions “insensitive, stupid and very intrusive.” He couldn’t think of an occasion when a cardiologist would need such information — but he knows he’ll be pushed to ask for it.
The president’s “reforms” aim to turn doctors into government agents, pressuring them financially to ask questions they consider inappropriate and unnecessary, and to violate their Hippocratic Oath to keep patients’ records confidential.”
But we’ve always been told it’s Republicans who stick their noses in what happens in private bedrooms and other people’s sex lives. Who knew? :roll:.
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Like I said last night, it’s good to be part of the exempt ruling class huh?
From NationalReview “Prostitution. Bribery. Blackmail. Thuggery. Hypocrisy.
Those were just some of the incendiary words thrown around the U.S. Senate last week, and that doesn’t count what people said in private.
The Senate may still have a reputation as a genteel club, but lawmakers seemed to abandon rules of decorum completely last week in arguments about whether Congress should be treated like the rest of the country when it comes to Obamacare.
Senator David Vitter, a Louisiana Republican, has demanded a floor vote on his bill to end an exemption that members of Congress and their staffs are slated to get that will make them the only participants in the new Obamacare exchanges to receive generous subsidies from their employer to pay for their health insurance. Angry Senate Democrats have drafted legislation that dredges up a 2007 prostitution scandal involving Vitter. The confrontation is a perfect illustration of just how wide the gulf in attitudes is between the Beltway and the rest of the country — and how viciously Capitol Hill denizens will fight for their privileges.”
It’s their “Precious.”
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We’ll finish today with a story related to yesterday’s on “Common Core Curriculum.” Or, if you prefer, you can call it what I do. Just another reason to home school.
From TheDC-Clothesline “I am a high school English teacher. I became a teacher because I believe that literacy, which goes beyond just reading the words on the page, is an absolute necessity for maintaining our Republic. Proof of that is found in the many laws against reading certain texts, or against reading altogether, that have been passed down by every tyrant since literacy became available to the general population. A few examples of such tyrannical laws are the Taliban banning reading for any female or laws against teaching slaves to read or the Soviet Union’s banning of such books as A Wrinkle in Time, Where’s Waldo, and To Kill a Mockingbird. The communist Khmer Rogue in Cambodia so hated literacy that just wearing glasses was cause for execution. Literacy leads to freedom and tyrants know it.
I have been teaching for over twenty years. Generally, I have been given either no curriculum or curriculum that was focused on skills, not specific texts. I would have to get those skills taught in whatever way I wanted to get there. Sometimes I was given more direction and that direction was generally pretty good including texts, key terms, supplemental stories, and suggested writing assignments. These directions were created at a school level by the teachers in the school. I helped write some myself. Mostly, I have had a lot of freedom in how I could achieve the learning goals. Not anymore.
Today I was in a professional development session for my school district. Our school system has swallowed the Common Core curriculum whole. Why wouldn’t they? The federal system has said that it is “voluntary”, but “voluntary” means that the district gets cut off from major federal funding if it does not adopt the standards, so “voluntary” is subjective. Here is what the Washington Post reported Sen. Charles Grassley has to say about Common Core:
Current federal law makes clear that the U.S. Department of Education may not be involved in setting specific content standards or determining the content of state assessments. Nevertheless, the selection criteria designed by the U.S. Department of Education for the Race to the Top Program provided that for a state to have any chance to compete for funding, it must commit to adopting a “common set of K-12 standards” matching the description of the Common Core.”
She then goes on to expose the ugly heart of Common Core. It’s a liberal educator/indoctrinators dream come true.
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Wandering Views 
Thanks so much Aj, for beginning with some encouraging prolife news. 🙂
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You’re welcome. 🙂
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I am whole heartedly a gun rights person. I believe when we make it a crime to have guns only criminals will have guns. I believe I have a right to own guns if I want and to be able to protect myself in my own home, BUT what in the blue blazes is WRONG with people???
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Kim, what is really wrong is that he got inside a secure area with a weapon. I was ready to say that he never would have gotten into our facility. But I don’t know for a fact that our several guards had weapons. They didn’t have them visible. That would matter.
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Chas,
None of those killed appear to be military. Looks like he targeted civilian workers. He also appears to have taken additional weapons off those he killed.
http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/Confirmed-Shooter-at-Navy-Yard-One-Person-Shot-223897891.html
“When it was over, the suspected gunman lay dead amid an armload of weapons. Sources told News4 that surveillance footage showed that he began his attack with a shotgun, but was found with a 9mm pistol and an AR-15 assault rifle.
NBC News correspondent Pete Williams is reporting Alexis purchased a shotgun in Lorton, Va. during the past week or so.”
” The suspected gunman appeared to have seized firearms from two of his victims as he moved through the building along the Anacostia River in southeast Washington, where 3,000 Navy employees go to work each day, many of them carrying authorized firearms.”
I don’t think as many people were armed as NBC would like you to believe.
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And this may or may not be relevant, but I always thought it was a bad idea.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/nov/11/end-clinton-era-military-base-gun-ban/#ixzz2f69fs4eZ
“Time after time, public murder sprees occur in “gun-free zones” – public places where citizens are not legally able to carry guns. The list is long, including massacres at Virginia Tech and Columbine High School along with many less deadly attacks. Last week’s slaughter at Fort Hood Army base in Texas was no different – except that one man bears responsibility for the ugly reality that the men and women charged with defending America were deliberately left defenseless when a terrorist opened fire.
Among President Clinton’s first acts upon taking office in 1993 was to disarm U.S. soldiers on military bases. In March 1993, the Army imposed regulations forbidding military personnel from carrying their personal firearms and making it almost impossible for commanders to issue firearms to soldiers in the U.S. for personal protection. For the most part, only military police regularly carry firearms on base, and their presence is stretched thin by high demand for MPs in war zones.
Because of Mr. Clinton, terrorists would face more return fire if they attacked a Texas Wal-Mart than the gunman faced at Fort Hood, home of the heavily armed and feared 1st Cavalry Division. That’s why a civilian policewoman from off base was the one whose marksmanship ended Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan’s rampage. ”
This policy added to the death toll at Ft. Hood, and may have here as well. It looks like a few security guards were armed, but not the military personnel on site.
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I’m in favor of reasonable restrictions and background checks for gun ownership. But there’s a lot more going on here than simply gun availability.
While it’s easy to say, “Oh, just another random nutcase,” these mass shootings are becoming all too common — it makes me wonder if it won’t be one piece of the puzzle (in terms of the many symptoms we’re seeing multiply of late) that historians will include when writing the epitaph of the USA someday in the future.
We seem to be imploding, crumbling from within in so many ways right now. It’s like we’re having a corporate meltdown.
(And so much of what I saw on Twitter yesterday, of course, were the two political sides sniping at one another all day long. Sigh. We can’t seem to give nasty partisanship a rest, ever.)
As for government health care, get ready for the nanny state to kick into full gear.
But don’t mind me. I seem to be in a discouraged mood today. 😉
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Aaron Alexis was being treated by the VA for hearing voices in his head. The guy given a secret security clearance. He had Non Judicial Punishment hearings in his service record for “anger management and obeying orders” He had run ins with the Law twice for firearm related incidents and still he was given a Secret Security Clearance. Oh and By the way, he did not use an AR-15 as the Liberal News media tried to spin, he used good ole Uncle Joe Biden’s shotgun and a couple of handguns that he stole off officers he shot. HIPPA prevented authorities from getting the straight skinny on this guy and now we see the results of this train wreck.
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http://www.albertmohler.com/2013/09/17/can-evangelical-chaplains-serve-god-and-country-the-crisis-arrives/
From Mohler today:
“Can chaplains committed to historic biblical Christianity serve in the United States military? That question, though inconceivable to our nation’s founders, is now front and center, and the answer to that question will answer another, even more important question — can religious liberty survive under America’s new moral order? …
As for the chaplain question, he says: “The answer, at least from the advocates of the moral revolution, is that evangelical Christian chaplains must go — and Southern Baptist chaplains must go first. … “
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And hey, the next ligonier conference looks timely:
http://www.ligonier.org/events/2014-national-conference/
(They usually offer the DVDs — and I’m thinking maybe they also provide live stream from the conference sessions now, too, seems like I’ve listened to some that way.)
From Sproul: On March 13–15, 2014, we will host our annual conference in Orlando, Fla. Our theme is “Overcoming the World: Being a Christian in a Post-Christian Culture,” and Voddie Baucham, Sinclair Ferguson, Robert Godfrey, Steven Lawson, Albert Mohler, Stephen Nichols, R.C. Sproul Jr., and Derek Thomas will join me in considering how we can overcome a world that wants to overcome us.
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Abby Johnson will be our speaker at the PCC dinner on November 1. Contact me if you want to sit at our table . . . 🙂
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One of the friends of Aaron Alexis is saying that Aaron Alexis was a big Obama support. If memory serves me correctly so was Loeffer who shot Gabby Giffords and so was James Holmes who shot up the Aurora Movie theater. Does anyone see a pattern here?
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And of course, police warned the Navy about Alexis’ instability 6 weeks before the Navy Yard incident.
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Abortion — I wonder if these closures resulted in a reduction of abortions or merely resulting in more business for an other center or more cross-state travel. Even without these closures, the abortion rate has flat lined or has even gone done. However, its still much higher than western Europe. Perhaps if the US adopted the same pro-child policies as Europe (free health care, child care, etc) the rate will be even lower.
Obamacare — Collecting data on health services rendered makes it easier to plan ahead. I know each time I access Ontario health care, my information is being retrieved but health care workers can only access this information if I give them my health card. The gov’t collects information but only in terms of total services rendered not who received what treatment.
Personally I’d be more worried about private insurance companies keeping my health records. They have a profit incentive to share this information.
As for specific questions, the ACA will require doctors to ask I didn’t think the article was too authoritative.
Common Core — A common curriculum is a good idea. Its impossible for universities and colleges to compare applicants if they’ve been taught using different criteria and material. The teacher’s complaints are remarkable similar to those who voiced by teachers in the late 90s in Ontario when a conservative gov’t hoisted a common curriculum on unappreciative teachers, school boards and unions. All complained that they had previously devised curriculum based on local needs and centered on skill acquisition and not memorizing data, reciting facts, etc. Despite my leftist inclinations and distrust for that particular gov’t, I understood the need for a common knowledge base as children move through the education system and/or move around the province. A strong province wide curriculum has helped Ontario become one of the best systems in the world (the current Liberal gov’t also deserves credit for continuing the standards and supplying the resources.
The teacher writing in the blog seems to have misunderstand the assignment and the stories. Plus she seems to have forgotten its her job to lead the students in their understand the nature of the stories and how to compare and contrast. Yes its a difficult assignment (but don’t conservatives want rigor) but grade nine students in the academic stream can do it. Her whining isn’t any different than the whining left wing teachers expressed here in the late 90s — its the fear of change and new standards.
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The Navy shooting seems to illustrate a different lesson for me. The shooter started with a shotgun and was able to supplement this with more weapons as he killed people. Doesn’t this demonstrate the problem of an armed populace — it just gives the killer more firepower?
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hwesselli –
The common core article was great. The best part was the comments – she never does say what standard she objects to – indeed, it seems she objects to the very idea of standards!
Melanie Dunstan just absolutely devastated her by asking for actual facts and highlighting the original posters misunderstanding of the assignment. Her blog at Calming Common Core-aphobia is wonderful!
I’m on the board of directors for one of the most successful charter schools in my city. Our teachers and school director work VERY hard designing our curriculum, aligning it to relevant state and common core standards. But it is distinctly our own. When we do use a curriculum developed outside, Everyday Math, Saxon Math, Accelarated Math, Open Court Reading, whatever, we adapt it to our school and our needs, not just blindly following a script.
When bad curricula, especially bad scripted curricula, are used, I tend to blame lazy administrators and school boards, not the standards.
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