Many thanks to all of the bloggers who were our guests today at FRC for the 2008 Blogs for Life conference. It was a great event, and FRC gives special thanks to all of our excellent speakers, and bloggers who made it a success.
I’m sure that I’m leaving many people out, so if you were here today, make note in the comments and I’ll highlight you.
We had some “technical difficulties” with the webcast initially (Murphy’s Law plays when most convenient), which were thankfully sorted out before the event’s conclusion. Our apologies to those who had problems.
If you missed the event, check back here later this week for archived footage.
Just when I thought CNN was starting to treat Evangelicals fairly they let Jack Cafferty out of his cage. On Thursday he went on a tear accusing Republican Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee of wanting to put more God-like stuff in the Constitution. The God-like stuff that he was referring to was amending the constitution to ensure the right to life and to prevent the courts from redefining marriage. Cafferty went on to say that Evangelicals are the reason George Bush was in office for eight years and, therefore, they are responsible for all of Americas troubles. Cafferty then said that Huckabee is trying to bring out those Evangelical voters, to get them to the polls by using the God-like stuff talk. Cafferty didnt even try to cloak his disdain for Christians, leaving me to think he would much rather be reporting on bringing out the lions or staking Christians to the poles instead.
This all started when Mike Huckabee, in a speech last Monday night in Michigan, said he supported a Constitutional amendment ending abortion. [I]ts a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God and thats what we need to do, is to amend the Constitution so its in Gods standards, rather than try to change Gods standards. Huckabee made a similar comment about his support for a marriage amendment several weeks ago, but not being a front-runner at the time little was said about that statement.
Yesterday in the Washington Update I wrote about the fact that Republican voters, including evangelicals, are distributing their votes among three leading candidates Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, and John McCain handing them victories at the ballot box in the hope that one or more of the GOP candidates will fully embrace all three parts of the conservative coalition social, economic, and defense.
On the eve of the voting in South Carolina, the race may be wide open, but the base is not wide open about its agenda for unity. Not everyone is sounding this theme. Yesterday the economic conservative Club for Growth assembled a team led by former House Majority Leader Dick Armey that crisscrossed the Palmetto State attacking Mick Huckabee as, in Armeys words, a misguided populist.
The candidates themselves seem to be trying harder to generate unity. Huckabee used a speech in Tigerville, South Carolina, to emphasize his nine-point immigration plan that one anti-illegal immigration group hailed as the strongest no-amnesty, attrition plan of any of the candidates.
McCain took the opportunity to personally address the sanctity of life in Greenville, South Carolina, saying, “Im proud of my pro-life record in 24 years in the United States Congress … and I believe that some of the most sacred words ever uttered were that all of us were created equal … and that applies to the unborn as well as the born. He also said that the best way to protect the family and the unborn is “to appoint judges who strictly interpret the Constitution, and that he would “nominate the closest thing to a clone of (Chief) Justice John Roberts as I can find.”
FRC will host the third-annual Blogs For Life conference on January 22nd, 2008 at Family Research Council Headquarters in Washington, D.C. beginning at 8:00a.m. This event will precede the March for Life, which will mark the 35th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision.
A webcast will be available for those who can’t make it to D.C..
We’re happy to congratulate Witherspoon alumnus David Crater (a Witherspoon Fellow in the Summer of 2001)on his success in Germany. We will always be gratified by the successes of the students whom we have had the privilege of knowing here at FRC.
A team of University of Colorado at Boulder MBA students beat 80 other teams to win an international competition that required participants to develop a business plan to distribute solar energy technology in Africa.
The winning team included CU-Boulder Leeds School of Business graduate students (left to right in photo) Tetyana Hinkson (MBA ‘08), David Crater (MBA ‘08), and Kristin Apple (MBA ‘08). The trio competed in the Business Masters 2007 International Case Studies Competition finals in Karlsruhe, Germany, on Nov. 21 through Nov. 23.
The team beat competitors from other leading business schools around the world with a plan that would provide an affordable, environmentally friendly solar energy system in East Africa to irrigate crops, increase food production and generate more income for the region’s farmers and entrepreneurs.
A couple studies have been published that have ended the debate over human embyronic stem cell research, because scientists showed how to get embryonic-like stem cells without harming or destroying embryos or cloning human embryos for research. For a summary, continue reading below.
Yesterday, FRC was treated to a Witherspoon Fellowship Lecture by William J. Bennett. If you weren’t able to come in person, or missed the webcast, you can now view the video of the lecture below:
Coontz misstates the historical record to give the impression that marriage has typically not been a province of law and only became such in an effort to preserve the narrow interests of certain powerful sects of society: wealthy parents in requiring parental consent, Catholic authoritarians in proscribing divorce, and Southern racists in preventing miscegenation. This could not be further from the truth. As a rule, the more marriage was enshrined in law, the more freedom under the law was given to men and women who sought marriage. This was often the case in the ancient world, and emphatically the case in the medieval world.
Join FRC in welcoming William J. Bennett. Dr. Bennett will speak on what our students know, do not know, but should know about our country’s history. Bill Bennett is a leading cultural figure in this country. He served in the Reagan administration as Secretary of Education and under the first President Bush as Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy. Bill Bennett is the author of The Book of Virtues which sold over 2.4 million copies and has been translated into twelve languages. Bennett’s two-volume history of the United States, America: The Last Best Hope, is a New York Times Bestseller.
Join us today, December 6, at 12:00 noon EST for the lecture. The event will also be available via live webcast.
