So much for civil discourse in our highest chambers of power:

Here is the third installment in our series of videos explaining the work and mission of our Preserve Innocence project.

Emmett McGroarty, Director of Preserve Innocence, talks about the problems in the math portion of the Iowa Core Curriculum.

The Iowa Core Math program and the elitism and adherence to education fads seen in its adoption are the subject of a recent Innocence Report:

If the video does not work, you can also view it directly on YouTube here.

This ad is brilliant in its simplicity:

H/T: HotAir.

Rick Garnett asks (and answers) this important question in the pages of USA Today:

To no one's surprise, Solicitor General Elena Kagan displayed intelligence and charm during the hearings in the Senate Judiciary Committee on her nomination to the Supreme Court. In addition, and also as expected, she avoided with impressive discipline sharing specific answers to senators' questions about the Constitution and the judicial role.

She did, however, provide, a few clues. In her opening statement, Kagan said that the court "has the responsibility of ensuring that our government never oversteps its proper bounds or violates the rights of individuals," but "must also recognize the limits on itself and respect the choices made by the American people." A justice, she said, must be a vigilant "trustee" of the "blessings of liberty," but also "properly deferential to the decisions of the American people and their elected representatives."

Among our most cherished "blessings of liberty" is the freedom of religion, our "first freedom." In the words of James Madison, the "father of the Constitution," America's experiment in religious liberty has brought "lustre to our country."

What, in Kagan's view, is the role of the court in this experiment? When it comes to questions of religious liberty and church-state relations, does she think a justice should show vigilance or deference?

[Click here for the answers.]

Ashley Samelson comments on the latest episode in the Arizona imbroglio - proof positive that bad federal law, mishandled, brings about additional legal paradoxes at the state level.

An Institutionalized Oxymoron

The federal government has done some serious judicial dentist work on the Arizona immigration law. Specifically, U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton has removed the bill’s sharpest teeth, rendering Arizona’s latest effort to deal with its illegal immigration crisis lifeless.

The Politico Newsbreak announcing the development stated:

"A federal judge has blocked key provisions of a controversial Arizona law aimed at illegal immigrants. The judge blocked a requirement that police have to check the immigration status of detainees they reasonably suspect of being in the country illegally, and stopped part of the law that makes it a crime for immigrants to be in the state illegally.”

Can you read that without your head spinning? So police can detain someone they “reasonably suspect of being in the country illegally” and then what, have coffee with them? Because it’s no longer “illegal” to be in this country “illegally?”

In her ruling, Bolton writes, "Requiring Arizona law enforcement officials and agencies to determine the immigration status of every person who is arrested burdens lawfully-present aliens because their liberty will be restricted while their status is checked.”

Sign me up to be the first person who, if arrested, spends an extra two minutes while my legal citizenship is confirmed.

Much like the concept of a legal Cuban cigar, this federal ruling is little more than institutionalized oxymoron in the place of good rule of law. American citizens and the many hardworking legal immigrants in this country deserve better than that.

Ashley Samelson blogs about faith, feminism, and politics at www.rogueinrouge.com.

Photo Credit: Fred Smith

More signs that the culture of life is making progress in this country:

The Sunday New York Times Magazine featured an interesting article entitled “The New Abortion Providers,” which details efforts by supporters of legal abortion to cultivate a new generation of physicians who perform abortions. Unsurprisingly, the article painted a very sympathetic picture, but it still makes interesting reading for pro-lifers, because it demonstrates that the pro-life movement has been quietly effective in ways that often receive little media attention. It also shows that the effort to encourage young physicians to perform abortions may well achieve little success.

One unheralded success of the pro-life movement is that it has convinced many Americans that abortion is wrong. Now, obviously, not everyone wants to see abortion banned. Some individuals see abortion as a necessary evil; others think that keeping abortion legal reduces the amount of misery and suffering in the country. But the fact that many Americans think abortion is immoral has paid some important dividends. [National Review]

Latinos and the progressive agenda are an odd political combination because they do not agree on fundamental issues - such as the right to life, traditional marriage, and entrepreneurship. 

The stress between the goals of progressivism and the aims of the Latino community are beginning to become more evident. Allow me to show a couple of examples:

The Associated Press reports that a new "Poll Shows Cracks in Obama’s Hispanic Support":

President Barack Obama's once solid support among Hispanics is showing a few cracks, a troubling sign for Democrats desperate to get this critical constituency excited about helping the party hold onto Congress this fall.

... the survey ... shows Obama gets only lukewarm ratings on issues important to Hispanics -- and that could bode poorly for the president and his party.

What sort of issues, you may ask? That's not hard to guess: "An unfulfilled promise to overhaul the nation's patchwork immigration system, which Hispanics overwhelmingly want to see fixed, also may be to blame."

Even a Washington Post journalist, attempting to highlight the challenges to conservatives in winning over Latinos, cannot sugarcoat the relationship between the Latino community and the White House:

Last month, Obama invited a small group of influential Latino activists to the White House and reassured them that he is committed to reform. But to succeed, he said, they had to stop their public complaining about how slowly he was moving and instead direct their fire at Republicans.

The activists came away from their presidential audience still convinced that he could be doing more to push the issue. But their discussion with Obama -- and a lengthier one with adviser Valerie Jarrett after he left the room -- made one thing clear to them: The White House plans to use the immigration debate to punish the GOP and aggressively seek the Latino vote in 2012.

Using an issue as a carrot to keep Latinos in a coalition seems hardly fair, especially as Latino influence grows in the electorate. Once Latinos realize they do not need the progressive agenda to achieve their goals, why will they stay with an agenda so foreign to their values?

Our founder Robert George signed the letter mentioned below as an individual (this is not an officially-sponsored APP activity:

A coalition of pro-life groups is sending a letter to the FDA and Drug Administration asking it to not approve the new abortion drug Ella that backers have mislabeled as a morning after pill. The drug works days after conception to essentially cause an abortion of a unique human being.

In June, the FDA Advisory Committee for Reproductive Health Drugs gave its approval to the early abortion drug on two 11-0 votes. [LifeNews]

Pro-abortion groups are so fixated on inventing new ways to provide abortifacients and contraceptives to women that they will even collude with those willing to ignore responsible medical testing and practice to achieve their ideological goals.

Our sister organization American Principles in Action is undertaking an independent expenditure in the race for Barbara Boxer's Senate seat in California this November:

Conservative Hispanics Launch $1 Million "Tus Valores" Campaign

The Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles, an organization of conservative Hispanics, today announced the details of a $1 million campaign in support of California Senate candidate Carly Fiorina at a press conference in downtown Los Angeles on Tuesday, July 27.

The press conference is taking place right now. You can visit the official website for the campaign here. The campaign is being coordinated by our Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles, in collaboration with the Susan B. Anthony List and the National Organization for Marriage.

The innitiative has already received attention from Politico and the Washington Independent. Below is the press release (in English and Spanish):

APP founder Dr. Robert George will be on the Bill Bennet show tomorrow morning at 8:30AM (July 27) to discuss the new information on the release of the Lockerbie bomber and the Obama administration's actions.

As I blogged earlier today, new reports have surfaced recently claiming that the "White House backed release of Lockerbie bomber Abdel Baset al-Megrahi."

Please plan to tune in!

Alfonso Aguilar, the Executive Director of our Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles, is featured in a new APP video this week discussing Gov. Charlie Crist's record on abortion:

On a related note, you can expect some exciting news from the Latino Partnership tomorrow!

A possible preview of the President's fall pitch to the nation:

President Barack Obama, who rocketed to the White House promising "change you can believe in," is now telling voters they shouldn't change a thing.

His message for the fall elections, which are looking ominous for his Democrats, is that Republicans caused the nation's economic troubles, but he and the Democrats are starting to fix them. So stick with the Democrats and don't go back to the GOP.

"This is a choice between the policies that led us into the mess or the policies that are leading out of the mess," Obama said recently in Las Vegas.

Trouble is, it's a tough sell to voters who've seen little progress.

Unemployment is stuck near double digits and polls show many voters have decided Obama's policies are to blame, not his predecessor's. (AP)

Principles that are sound do not change with the times; therefore they provide a sure foundation even in the most hazardous of episodes. In other words, the President is asking the nation not to believe in "change", but rather to change but they believe in.

That appears to be no solution to the problems facing our country, whatever time it is.

Gregory Sullivan writes at The Public Discourse that "in a series of recent cases, the Supreme Court’s conservative justices have abandoned judicial restraint":

As expected, the U.S. Supreme Court nationalized the right to bear arms in the recent case McDonald v. City of Chicago. They did this by “incorporating” the Second Amendment—that is, by requiring the states to abide by the restrictions in the Second Amendment that originally bound only the federal government.

Although gun-rights enthusiasts are understandably elated by this result, anyone who views original understanding in constitutional interpretation and modesty in the exercise of judicial power as quintessential judicial virtues must be deeply troubled. The Court’s plurality opinion, written by Justice Alito, eschews original understanding and reflects a lack of fidelity to text. The concurrence by Justice Thomas illustrates the peril of jurists misconstruing complex historical materials.

[Read the rest here.]

Remember months and months ago when APP was urging the administration to act with transparency regarding the release of the Lockerbie bomber?

Recently we have been reading that our suspicions were accurate:

Correspondence obtained by The Sunday Times reveals the Obama administration considered compassionate release more palatable than locking up Abdel Baset al-Megrahi in a Libyan prison.

The intervention, which has angered US relatives of those who died in the attack, was made by Richard LeBaron, deputy head of the US embassy in London, a week before Megrahi was freed in August last year on grounds that he had terminal cancer.

The document, acquired by a well-placed US source, threatens to undermine US President Barack Obama's claim last week that all Americans were "surprised, disappointed and angry" to learn of Megrahi's release.

Scottish ministers viewed the level of US resistance to compassionate release as "half-hearted" and a sign it would be accepted.

The US has tried to keep the letter secret, refusing to give permission to the Scottish authorities to publish it on the grounds it would prevent future "frank and open communications" with other governments.

[Read more from The Australian.]

I found this story particularly touching because I have had the occasion to walk by this demonstration - yes, the very same picket as the one pictured above - that is mentioned in this Wall Street Journal article several times since APP moved its offices:

Billy Raye, a 51-year-old unemployed bike courier, is looking for work.

Fortunately for him, the Mid-Atlantic Regional Council of Carpenters is seeking paid demonstrators to march and chant in its current picket line outside the McPherson Building, an office complex here where the council says work is being done with nonunion labor."

For a lot of our members, it's really difficult to have them come out, either because of parking or something else," explains Vincente Garcia, a union representative who is supervising the picketing.

So instead, the union hires unemployed people at the minimum wage—$8.25 an hour—to walk picket lines. Mr. Raye says he's grateful for the work, even though he's not sure why he's doing it. "I could care less," he says. "I am being paid to march around and sound off."

Protest organizers and advocacy groups are reaping an unexpected benefit from continued high joblessness. With the national unemployment rate currently at 9.5%, an "endless supply" of the out-of-work, as well as retirees seeking extra income, are lining up to be paid demonstrators, says George Eisner, the union's director of organization. Extra feet help the union staff about 150 picket lines in the District of Columbia and Baltimore each day.

Did you catch that figure? One-hundred and fifty picket lines in this area alone! Now, obviously, there are probably more in this area than anywhere else in the country; but it is still astonishing how many people are being paid to work because a union refuses to work.

And we wonder why the economy is having a difficult time recovering!

Public polling firm Gallup has revealed that American confidence in Congress is at a new historic low:

The current Congress is made up of a large majority of Democrats in the House, and an almost-supermajority of Democrats in the Senate.

The fastest way to reestablish faith in our public institutions is for those institutions to operate according to the principles established by our American founding, and to cease pursuing progressive goals which are deeply at-odds with the sensibilities and values of the American people.

Oh, and what institutions do Americans have the most faith in? The military (76%) and small business (66%), both of which have been the subject of congressional harassment and marginalization in this session.

One doesn't have to look far these days to find examples of religious freedoms being curtailed by our society and government, whether it is a student being told to change their beliefs or face expulsion from school, or teenagers being told they cannot pray on the steps of the Supreme Court.

Last week in the American Spectator, Ken Blackwell writes that Robert George, the founder of our American Principles Project, is "emerging as a leader in today's movement for [religious] freedom":

Hailed as "this country's most influential conservative Christian thinker," George was recently featured in a long profile in the New York Times. He is considered a bridge between academia, policy, and religion. Politicians, including several presidential contenders, seek his scholarly insight and religious leaders seek his political acumen. As Rev. John Myers, Archbishop of Newark, has put it, "Whenever I venture out into the public square, I would almost invariably check it out with Robby first."

George does not shy away from the culture wars. In fact, he seems to relish confronting the "secularist orthodoxy" of today's liberals. He sits squarely on the side of the so-called Religious Right, though that would be a far too simplistic characterization of his dogma.

At the center of George's philosophy is the premise that the principles of morality are not necessarily divined through faithful revelation; they are born of right reason and natural law. In spite of this seeming dissociation with faith -- or perhaps because of it -- George passionately defends the right of every person to pursue his relationship with his Creator in the way that suits his conscience.

Dr. George believes in putting these principles into action, as Blackwell writes:

And Washington better start listening. As George recently said: "The moral foundations of economic conservatism are precisely those of social conservatism, namely, respect for the human person, which grounds our commitment to individual liberty and the right to economic freedom and other essential civil liberties…."

The mainstream media and the political elites may not have made the connection yet, but freedom is at the heart of this grassroots insurrection. And they are ignoring this at their own peril.

To copy the article headline from Blackwell, "It's Not Only About the Economy, Stupid."

I've written before about my regard for Sam Gregg's scholarship. Yesterday, writing for the Public Discourse, he writes "In charting our future monetary policies, we should remember the trade-offs of competing alternatives." Let's take a look at what he means:

In recent months, we have witnessed fierce arguments between, on the one side, those who defend the current system of “fiat money,” in which, as John Maynard Keynes stated, money “is created and issued by the State, but is not convertible by law into anything other than itself, and has no fixed value in terms of an objective standard,” and, on the other, those who support a return to the gold standard or even privatized money.

It is important to remember that monetary policy reflects the state’s choice to prioritize one set of economic possibilities (e.g., long-term monetary stability) over other options (e.g., the government’s ability to use its money-supply monopoly to bolster employment during recessions). These trade-offs, however, don’t just involve technical economic arguments. They also come down to questions of principle. [Read more.]

"... under the pre-1914 gold standard, modern China could not have built up and maintained its presently large currency reserves. Similarly, neither the Bush nor Obama Administrations would have been able to run huge deficits. Nor would it have been as easy for American consumers to acquire such irresponsibly high personal debt levels."

Even before 1914, governments knew that abandoning the gold standard would allow an expansion of credit and public spending not possible under the pre-1914 gold standard.

This situation was exacerbated by two factors. First, in the conditions of democracy, monetary authorities became more susceptible to popular pressures to use monetary policy to provide short-term fixes to immediate economic problems. Second, the rise of neo-Keynesian economic theories encouraged politicians and central bankers to adopt monetary policies and interventionist strategies that routinely violated the gold standard’s disciplinary boundaries.

Gregg's conclusion:

[It] cannot, however, be denied [...] that the case for the gold standard goes beyond efficiency arguments. It embodies an emphasis on limiting arbitrary state action, promotes the longer-term economic well-being of less powerful groups, encourages prudence and a concern for lasting stability over urges “to just do something” (however ineffective or counterproductive), and generates a concern for the national and international common good over more narrow sectional interests. Such principles and commitments should surely be demanded of any monetary system.

Read the full essay at the Public Discourse.

[This entry has been cross-posted to our Gold Standard 2012 blog.]

Last week the National Right to Life Committee charged that the high-risk government health care plan proposed in Pennsylvania would pay for elective abortions.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services issued a statement saying this was not the case, and that abortions will not be paid for in any state exchange (except in cases of rape or incest, or when the life of the mother would be endangered).

The Associated Press called this a "win" for pro-life forces, admitting that this HHS policy was in fact more restrictive than the legislation signed into law by President Obama earlier this year.

Other states are quickly changing the language of their plans, removing the coverage for elective abortions that they originally contained. New Mexico is the clearest example of this switch to date.

Proponents of the health care overhaul are saying these changes are the result of the President's executive order, or that this change proves that the legislation does not allow for the federal funding of abortions.

But of course this cannot be true. If the President's executive order were effective, and if the legislation did rule out federal funding of abortions, these state plans would never have been able to include abortion funding in the first place. It is only the close monitoring of these individual plans by national pro-life groups that is forcing the administration to crack down on these individual plans. Kathryn Lopez writes that of the five state plans the NRLC has examined so far, three contained abortion funding (PA, New Mexico and Maryland).

In other words, if pro-lifers are not vigilant, streams of abortion funding will open up under Obamacare. Consider Doug Johnson's words to LifeNews:

"The available evidence indicates that the Obama Administration bureaucrats had no intention whatever to impede the funding of abortions through the new federal program to establish high-risk insurance pools -- until NRLC sounded the alarm and put the spotlight on what they were up to," he said.

"Regrettably, there are many other programs and authorities in the 2,000-page health care law that will provide the Obama Administration with additional opportunities to expand abortion -- and we can expect that they will try to do so, particularly when they think they can accomplish something under the public's radar," Johnson continued.

Kathryn Lopez sums it up best: "[This] means the lie is up: Obamcare never prohibited abortion funding. It's a matter of administrative discretion."

Even the other side of this debate admits what pro-lifers were saying during the final days of the debate: "nothing in federal law actually restricts the use of federal or state money for abortion in PCIPs." This line was taken from a rabidly pro-abortion advocacy website.

So, does Obamacare allow abortion funding? Of course.

This means Americans must continue to remain vigilant lest their tax dollars find their way into one of these many new streams of abortion funding created by Obamacare.

Now why on earth did the Democrats decide to tuck this amendment into their health care overhaul legislation?

Those already outraged by the president’s health care legislation now have a new bone of contention — a scarcely noticed tack-on provision to the law that puts gold coin buyers and sellers under closer government scrutiny.

… Section 9006 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act will amend the Internal Revenue Code to expand the scope of Form 1099. Currently, 1099 forms are used to track and report the miscellaneous income associated with services rendered by independent contractors or self-employed individuals. (ABC News)

I would like to see those who offered the amendment defend why they believe Americans ought to report their gold transactions to the government. What does the government have to fear if Americans choose to hold gold, except that its citizens may have something of intrinsic value in addition to their greenbacks?

[This entry has been cross-posted to our Gold Standard 2012 blog.]