* "Top Ten Hints for a Successful Marriage" (Denny Hartford, Vital Signs Blog)
* "Girling the Boy Scouts" (An outstanding, disturbing 6-minute video by Heather MacDonald for Prager U)
* "Test Scores Take Another Dive As Schools Pocket $ Billions" (Editorial Board, Issues & Insights)
From the article -- Another year, another disastrous National School Report card, the annual checkup on American students’ test scores. Yes, it’s bad. After predictably plunging during the COVID school-shutdown years, scores show no signs of snapping back. This is child abuse on a national level...And the test scores remain abysmal, with no improvement. Average reading scores for 8th graders (America’s future workforce, mind you) have fallen from 263 in 2019 to 258 in 2024, erasing 33 years of slow improvement in reading. Math is just as bad, if not worse. True, the 274 level is the same as in 2022, but it’s way below the level five years ago.
Despite the massive, unprecedented infusion of $190 billion in federal funds into schools under the guise of COVID recovery, outcomes have worsened – but the spending has enriched and empowered teachers unions while also giving inept school administrators greater power over students’ learning.
Parents are fleeing the system (but still pay taxes for it), while the teacher-administrative complex wants even more. Not surprisingly, since 2019, the National Center for Education Statistics shows, the number of children attending U.S. schools has dropped by 1.3 million, while the number of teachers and administrators has surged 351,000. That’s doubling down on failure.
* "It’s Time to Repeal the FACE Act: The law rests on shaky constitutional ground and has been unevenly applied." (Erik Baptist, Alliance Defending Freedom)
From the article -- As a devout Catholic, Mark Houck believes every human life is precious, created by God, and worthy of protection. It was this belief that led him to often pray with his 12-year-old son outside a Philadelphia abortion facility.
In October 2021, a Planned Parenthood escort repeatedly got in the face of Houck and his son while making vulgar comments toward them, witnesses said. Houck allegedly responded by pushing the abortion escort in an effort to protect his son. While state and local authorities found no cause to prosecute Houck over the incident, the Biden Department of Justice felt differently.
When Houck learned that he may be prosecuted, he offered to turn himself in if he were indicted for any crimes. Instead, his attorney said, the FBI sent “twenty heavily armed federal agents” to Houck’s house in the early morning hours, pointed at least five guns at him, his wife, and his children, and then arrested him. The FBI later attempted to quell concerns about the report by claiming it was an “overstatement” and that the tactics used were “in line with standard practices.”
A federal jury took less than three hours to find Houck not guilty of the charges brought against him. Unfortunately, many pro-life advocates prosecuted under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act haven’t received such good news.
* "The Democrats’ Governance Problem: They’re bad at it and getting worse." (Ruy Teixeira, The Liberal Patriot)
From the article -- Think about it. If you wanted safe streets and public order would your first impulse be to turn to…a Democrat? Or if you wanted a secure, actually-enforced border? How about efficient, effective delivery of public services? Or rapid completion of public projects and infrastructure? Or non-ideological public administration?
I don’t think on any of these fronts the reaction of a typical voter would be: “Democrats! Of course, I need Democrats to do all these things because they’re so good at them!” On the contrary, it seems like over time Democrats—both nationally and in many localities where they dominate—have become worse and worse at delivering in these areas. That’s a huge problem because why should voters take Democratic plans to improve their lives seriously if Democrats persist in running government so poorly? Democratic governance is their advertising and the advertising makes the Democratic “product” look pretty bad. So voters don’t want to buy it.
* "Sooner or later, babies will be too precious to abort" (Michael Cook, Mercator)
From the article -- The latest year for which data is reasonably complete is 2021. That year there were about 68 million deaths in the world, according to WHO... Also in that year there were about 73 million induced abortions worldwide according to the WHO. So not only is abortion the leading cessator of human life globally, it accounts for more than all other cessators of human life combined – about 52 percent of all cessations of human life every year. Is this just a debating point? A moment for pro-lifers to gasp with horror? No, it’s the reason why abortion will eventually be banned everywhere in the world. Look at it this way. Around the world, most countries in the West and East Asia are being depopulated. Sooner or later, people will compare the decline in population to the number of abortions and conclude that this makes no sense at all. In a world where every baby is a precious asset, abortion will be taboo. It will be stark, raving mad.
(Denny notes -- "I wonder. When mankind's collective mind is darkened by sin and reckless self-will, will even the truths of this article matter?") Related to this article is "You can’t stare down reality: population collapse has begun" by Louis T. March, also published in Mercator.)
