Firm Foundation

There it was, the Hebrew Ten Commandments engraved in stone on a mountain.

No, not Mount Sinai in the Middle East. Rather, a mountain known by Indians as the “Cliff of Strange Writings” and now often called Mystery Mountain or Hidden Mountain, west of a small town called Los Lunas about 22 miles south of Albuquerque, New Mexico.

We of the Foundation for Moral Law believe the Ten Commandments are the moral foundation of our legal system. I had heard of the Los Lunas Mystery Stone (left). Skeptical but curious, I researched the stone on the internet and communicated with several archeologists to gain their perspectives. And last week, 25 February 2010, I hiked up the mountain to see for myself.

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Continue reading Col. Eidsmoe’s investigative report of the Los Lunas Ten Commandments inscription here.

Yesterday the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the Haskell County, OK Ten Commandments monument.  This is neither an up or down vote on the monument, but since the 10th Circuit (in a 6-6 vote) did not uphold the monument as constitutional, this is the legal end-of-the-road for Haskell County.  For nearly every other Ten Commandments display, however, the treacherous road goes ever on and on.

Since the Court will not be reviewing the Ten Commandments, may I suggest it use the extra time to review the first Ten Amendments? They are not suggestions either.

An Associated Press report released today starts off with great news:

Some of mankind’s most devastating inherited diseases appear to be declining, and a few have nearly disappeared . . . .

But the rest of the sentence contains the disturbing reason: “because more people are using genetic testing to decide whether to have children.” Thus begins an article, titled “Testing curbs some genetic diseases,” that only the most hard-hearted eugenicist would thoroughly enjoy reading.

Pregnant women are increasingly choosing to have their unborn babies tested for genetic disease such as cystic fibrosis or Tay-Sachs and, according to the article, “many end pregnancies when diseases are found.”  Moreover, “a growing number [of couples] are screening embryos and using only those without problem genes.”

The article then relates the stories of several couples, some of whom test their own genetic makeup to determine if they are more likely to pass along a genetic problem, but other couples explained why they “screened” embryos:

In the Canadian city of Vancouver, Jeff and Megan Carroll screened embryos to have two children free of the Huntington’s disease gene Jeff has. “I felt very strongly that I didn’t want to pass on this,” he said. Huntington’s “is done killing people in my family when I am gone.”

While Jeff’s concern for his children’s risk of sharing his disease is understandable, his remedy is not. If diseased embryos were killed in utero because they were not healthy enough for the Carrolls’ liking, then Jeff is technically correct that Huntington’s “is done killing people” in his family. Instead, he and his wife are the ones doing the killing of those in his family with Huntington’s.

As prenatal screening grows in popularity, so does aborting those babies considered too sick to be allowed to live:

In California, Kaiser Permanente, a large health maintenance organization, offered prenatal screening. From 2006 through 2008, 87 couples with cystic fibrosis mutations agreed to have fetuses tested, and 23 were found to have the disease. Sixteen of the 17 fetuses projected to have the severest type of disease were aborted, as were four of the six fetuses projected to have less severe disease.  Comparisons to couples not given prenatal screening suggested that screening had cut births of babies with severe disease in half, researchers reported at a genetics conference in 2008. Studies in Canada, Italy, Australia and in Europe also found that cases dropped after screening began.

The tenor of the article continues with the same general justification: look how much killing sick babies has lowered the numbers of diseased children!

This is akin to reporting that the AIDS rate is declining because doctors are increasingly killing their AIDS patients in their beds. Or reporting that the death rate from AIDS is decreasing because the patients are being executed instead.

Thankfully, some parents still value life even if that life has a risk of disease.

Beth Meese, the Cleveland nurse who discovered from prenatal tests that she and her husband are carriers, wishes they had been screened before pregnancy. By the time they learned of their risk, they had seen an ultrasound and decided to have the baby no matter what its tests showed.

“We saw the baby, saw it moving,” she said. “It makes that decision that much more difficult to make.”

It is always difficult for a parent to learn that their child is sick, or even has the potential for contracting a disease. But what should not be difficult is whether the child, sick or not, has the right to live.

For all the talk of lowering disease rates, though, what it boils down to is not that children are healthier, but that parents are killing their own to avoid the challenges of raising a child with disease (or even a higher-than-normal risk thereof).  According to Jeff Carroll, however, it’s “unconscionable” not to kill your sick babies:

Jeff Carroll, the Canadian who, with his wife, screened embryos because he carries the Huntington’s gene, said it is “unconscionable” to procreate without taking steps to prevent passing on the disease. “Having my test result has immensely improved my life. I was able to make reproduction decisions that ended HD in my family,” and to launch a career as a biologist researching the disease, he said.

Mr. Carroll, unfortunately, did not end Huntingdon’s in his family: he simply ended the lives of those with the disease so that his life could be “immensely improved.” That is unconscionable.

And what does it say about the lives of those born with genetic diseases? Is their right to life diminished because their health is?  If a 1-year-old was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis and then “screened” (killed) would the AP try to justify that murder? Probably not (yet).

Prenatal screening as a scientific tool is, like a gas chamber, morally neutral.  But if the testing is used as a Malthusian human “weeder” to destroy young lives that the already-born consider undesirable, then we as a society are lowering disease and growing more “sick.”

This Friday the U.S. Supreme Court will decide whether it will review the constitutionality of a Ten Commandments monument erected at the Haskell County, Okla. Courthouse.  A federal district court, in a rather entertaining opinion, upheld the monument in 2006 against an attack by the ACLU.  But last year, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed because the Court said the monument “had the impermissible principal or primary effect of endorsing religion in violation of the Establishment Clause.”

This result was particularly disappointing to the Foundation for Moral Law because we filed an amicus brief with the appeals court explaining that the Ten Commandments monument was constitutional under the original meaning of the Establishment Clause.  Thankfully, Haskell County continued to stand by its monument and is asking the High Court to hear the case.

But didn’t the Supreme Court already decide the Ten Commandments issue? The answer is something like this: Yes, twice, but only for those two cases.

Five years ago the Supreme Court ruled on two Ten Commandments cases, McCreary County and Van Orden, yielding two different results. In McCreary, the Court held that a Kentucky county violated the Constitution because it initially (and recently) put the Ten Commandments up alone to acknowledge God, and despite later displays that surrounded the Commandments with other documents, the county’s display was impermissible. Simultaneously, the Court ruled in Van Orden that the Texas Capitol could keep a monument of the Ten Commandments on its lawn because it had been around for 40+ years and was surrounded by 17 other monuments on the capital lawn that comprised an acceptable “museum setting.”

Like most rulings by the Court on the Establishment Clause, these opinions did not actually clarify the meaning of the law, they only provided two competing fact patterns into which the Haskell Counties of the world try to fit themselves. An analytical tug-of-war ensues.  The ACLU tries to portray the new Ten Commandments display as just another “unconstitutional” McCreary county display, while the government entity and their attorneys (usually our friends at the Alliance Defense Fund or the like) try to pull the display into the “constitutional” Van Orden example.  Those with the most Van Orden-like qualities win . . . until another judge looks at the same facts.

The first problem with Establishment Clause cases rendered today, therefore, is not that the courts are getting the law wrong; it’s that they’re not even looking at the law.  We certainly hope the Court takes the Haskell County case and reverses the wrong decision of the 10th Circuit.  Most likely we will file a brief telling the Court to uphold the monument, too.

But more important than hearing the case is that the Supreme Court turn back to the “supreme law of the land”—the Constitution—as the objective guide for Ten Commandment display cases. Otherwise, reviewing this case will simply triangulate the legal tug-0f-war and add “the Haskell County case” to the muddled mix.

The Birmingham Planned Parenthood that was caught covering up an allegation of statutory rape last year has been put on probationary status by the Alabama Department of Public Health.

As you may recall, last year a pro-life group called Live Action sent into the Birmingham Planned Parenthood clinic two undercover actors, one of whom posed as a 14-year-old girl who claimed to be pregnant by an older man.  A clinic employee told them that the clinic sometimes would “bend the rules” about reporting such information to the authorities, even though such disclosure is required by law.

And it was all caught on an audio recording.

When the story broke, Planned Parenthood laughably announced that it would conduct “an internal, fact-based review” of the matter. It is good to see that the state health department decided to lend a more objective look into this potentially criminal act, too.  Probation for this clinic is a good start, but it is probably not enough to stop the annual lawlessness of Planned Parenthood.

Like most clinics in Alabama, almost every annual investigation by the health department yields a deficiency report spelling out multiple violations of the health code. Follow this link to view every deficiency report for every Alabama abortion clinic, including Planned Parenthood of Birmingham.  (Hint: It will take you awhile to get through them.)

Health code violations: coming to an abortion clinic near you, every year.  Is it any wonder that a business that sells death is also a site of deficient health standards?

We urge the health department to continue to enforce the health code that Planned Parenthood and Alabama’s other abortion clinics so routinely and cavalierly disregard.

But we also heard from the Attorney General and the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office when this story broke . . . in June of 2009.  As far as we know there have been no prosecutions at this clinic regarding this alleged rape cover-up.  Hopefully this move by the health department will spur on any pending criminal investigations.

The much anticipated/maligned Tim and Pam Tebow advertisement was revealed last night during Super Bowl XLIV.  It was even more unassuming than any pro-life or “pro-choice” activist could have expected.

Watch it here if you have not yet seen it:

Other than a reference to “so many times when I almost lost him,” Pam Tebow never explains the details of their story nor does she refer to the doctor’s recommendation of abortion that she rejected.  The ad takes a humorous turn when Tim enters the picture, playfully “tackling” his mom.  A link at the end of the ad sends you to Focus on the Family’s website for the full story.

We have NOW, Planned Parenthood, and other pro-abortion extremists to thank for their knee-jerk, premature overreaction last week that both demonstrated their blind animus for anything promoting the choice of life and, at the same time, brought attention and anticipation to the ad that Focus on the Family could never have engendered itself.  This morning, most people—even those who were anticipating being offended—are scratching their heads thinking, What was all the fuss about?

I was rather underwhelmed by the Tebow ad, as sweet and playful as it was.  This is no doubt partially the fault of the pro-abortion’s reaction and the media attention the ad received before it had ever erred.  But not entirely.

I can’t help but wonder: What if Focus on the Family had run the Tebow ad that NOW & Co. thought Focus was going to run?

We have learned, at least, that pro-abortionists are going to throw a “Super” tantrum no matter what the content of an ad if they so much as suspect a pro-life inference, not to mention an overt message for life. We know their stance and their hypersensitivity to a true story whose telling might undermine their message.  They effectively communicated their counterpoints last week, but in pre-response to an ad that never made one anti-abortion point.

We have also learned that CBS, and presumably other networks, are willing to stand by the decision to run an ad in the face of intense pressure from the pro-abortionists.  Of course, CBS knew the benign nature of the real Tebow ad, and were probably counting on its banality to diffuse the controversy that has, indeed, evaporated.  The pre-airing kerfuffle only raised interest in a CBS ad (and probably other commercials, too), something any CBS executive is thanking the Tebows’ God for today.

Maybe we pro-lifers have also learned that we ought not pull punches in this debate, and that a forthright commercial celebrating the choice of life instead of abortion (even without saying the word), would have been more effective.  Maybe Pam Tebow should have explained a little more of the details of how she “almost lost” Tim and how she did not take his life. I applaud the Tebows for putting themselves and their powerful story out there like they did; I just wish we could have actually heard some of the story last night.

Focus on the Family is full of smart and godly people, so maybe this is just a strategic first shot to soften up the defenses for the next ad like this, maybe to air at the next Super Bowl or some other highly-watched TV event.  If so, it might just be a brilliant marketing strategy for life.  But it seems more likely that all this attention took Focus by surprise, too.

Perhaps next time Focus, the Tebows, or whichever person or organization has an opportunity to promote the cause of life will send a clearer, more direct message against abortion, while still being as wise as serpents and, of course, acceptable to the TV network.  (There is no ad if the network rejects it.)  We know how the opposition will react—so next time let’s give them an ad worthy of their wrath and, more importantly, worthy of the high cause of promoting the sanctity of life.

Hell hath no fury like pro-abortionists faced with the truth.

Pro-aborts like the National Organization for Women are throwing public tantrums over CBS’s decision to run an ad featuring Univ. of Florida quarterback and evangelical Christian Tim Tebow and his mom Pam during the Super Bowl this Sunday. Pam tells how, when she became ill in the Philippines while pregnant with Tim, she rejected a doctor’s recommendation that she abort her child. The Super Bowl ad, financed by Focus on the Family, tells this life-affirming story that, with good reason, has NOW and the like worried.

One of the best takes on this tempest-in-a-TV-spot comes from Sally Jenkins, a “pro-choice” staff writer at The Washington Post. In  Tebow’s Super Bowl ad isn’t intolerant; its critics are, Jenkins takes apart Tebow’s feminist critics and the “group-think, elitism and condescension of the ‘National Organization of Fewer and Fewer Women All The Time.’” Jenkins thinks the Tebows’ story is a good one, and notes that NOW & Co. are revealing themselves to be not pro-choice, but pro-abortion. After all, they’re trying to shut down a story of a women making a choice about abortion. Jenkins notes:

Apparently NOW feels this commercial is an inappropriate message for America to see for 30 seconds, but women in bikinis selling beer is the right one.

Jenkins even praises Tebow for his chastity and self-control, a rarity even in college sports that has largely earned him unbelieving snickers. You really should read this entire column.

Jenkins should be applauded for standing up for Tebow’s message, even if she admits she disagrees with many of his beliefs. What she does not understand, however, is that radical, pro-aborts cannot afford to have the truth about life exposed in such a public forum (and the threat that the “choice” of abortion poses to lives like other future Tim Tebows of the world).

Even The New York Times editorial board opposes the censorship that NOW & Co. are calling for in this case:

The would-be censors are on the wrong track. Instead of trying to silence an opponent, advocates for allowing women to make their own decisions about whether to have a child should be using the Super Bowl spotlight to convey what their movement is all about: protecting the right of women like Pam Tebow to make their private reproductive choices.

In the end, CBS is standing by its decision, and the opposition to the Tebow ad has only raised awareness and support for it nationwide.

Strategically, NOW & Co. might have been smarter to ignore the ad rather than try to abort it, but, you see, it’s not in the abortion industry’s DNA to allow truth or accurate information to see the light of day, especially a day like Super Bowl Sunday.

The Times’s suggestion of an opposing ad promoting “the right of women like Pam Tebow to make their private reproductive choices” is more fair than censorship, but it also (necessarily) ignores the point of the Tebow ad: there would be no Tim Tebow if Pam had made a different choice. Tim’s life, from conception onward, is precious and sacred, no more and no less than Pam’s or any other unborn child’s. No thanks to NOW, women and pregnant mothers around the nation will get to see that message during the Super Bowl.

In the end, maybe NOW should run its own ad: one that shows what would have happened to Tim if his mother had made a different choice.

President Obama is making history again, this time with his record-breaking new budget of $3.8 trillion, which includes a record-breaking deficit of $1.3 trillion.

For those of you trying to squeeze that into your calculator, that’s spending beyond our means of $1,300,000,000,000.00!

In one year.

It’s no surprise that our big-spending President is asking our big-spending Congress to spend some more.  And there will be many specifics of this budget that will and should be subject to criticism.  One of particular concern, however, is the hidden penalty on charitable donations by American families.

Obama’s new budget will slash the tax deductions by families earning more than $250,000.  The government hopes to reap an additional $291 billion over the next decade with this change, while the estimated loss to charities will be $10 billion every year. In a time when the economy and charitable organizations particularly are suffering, this additional diversion of funds into Caesar’s coffers threatens to do more significant harm.

Non-profit groups like the Foundation for Moral Law rely on these charitable donations given by people who in turn hope to write some of it off on their taxes.  (Insider trade “secret”: those making over $250,000 are able to give more.) This is nothing more than a disincentive for charity.

We are an enormously charitable nation, as any domestic need or foreign disaster (like Haiti) will always demonstrate. And those among us that are “wealthy” are obviously able to give more, and do.  Obama continues to demonize and penalize the “wealthy” who in turn are less able to give to, hire on, invest in, and spend on others. Obama’s budget simply robs Peter to pay Caesar.

I have no doubt that Obama believes the government should be the one to dole out charitable donations in the form of wealth redistribution bureaucracies. In fact, he’s continually fighting for more and bigger welfare apparatuses. He may even believe this is the best way for a nation to be charitable toward the least of these, although the effect is simply to create more people in need of charity.

But the government or its many bureaucratic arms and employees can give handout after handout with our tax dollars but it will never be real “charity.” Noah Webster defined “charity” in 1828 as:

3. Liberality to the poor, consisting in almsgiving or benefactions, or in gratuitous services to relieve them in distress.

4. Alms; whatever is bestowed gratuitously on the poor for their relief.

Webster also defined “gratuitously” as “Freely; voluntarily; without claim or merit; without an equivalent or compensation; as labor or services gratuitously bestowed.”

Tax dollars are not raised by direct mail solicitations or tele-thons; rather, they are coerced from the people by threat of fine or imprisonment. And to a certain extent, government has the legitimate power to raise taxes. But that money it has raised was not “bestowed gratuitously” upon the IRS, let alone the poor and needy.  The taxpayer is in the position of giving up that money but without the choice of giving it. And the recipient of that money will probably receive it not from a cheerful giver but from the cold, faceless agencies of government—probably by a check in the mail.

It is only when a gift or service is rendered freely that the giver can be acting out of charity, which is another word for “love.”  Webster’s first definition of charity read like so:

1. In a general sense, love, benevolence, good will; that disposition of heart which inclines men to think favorably of their fellow men to think favorably of their fellow men, and to do them good. In a theological sense, it includes supreme love to God, and universal good will to men.1 Cor. 8. Col. 3. 1 Tim 1.

If I earned $100 and the government takes $20 of it, then regardless of where that money ends up (and most will be siphoned off to pay the bureaucracy that is processing it), it will not be given or received in a spirit of charity. The government has robbed my ability to be freely charitable with that $20 and robbed a potential recipient of the joy and blessing of receiving a gift out of love.

It is no virtue for those in government to take someone else’s money and give it to a third party (although it’s a great way to buy votes and influence). So let’s stop pretending redistribution of wealth is in any sense “charitable.”

Obama has clearly rejected this truth, but this does not mean he needs to start chipping away at those voluntary charitable donations that Americans may still want to give.  And to divert such funds to the public coffers to fuel more reckless spending is the height of uncharitable hubris, not to mention deeper economic error.

When the Pharisees tried to trap Jesus by asking Him whether they ought to pay tribute to Caesar, Jesus responded, “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.” While Caesar had jurisdiction and power over certain things, including even limited taxation, he did not have authority over that which is God’s alone.  Jesus endorsed separation of church and Caesar, as it were, and even endorsed paying taxes.

Obama’s charitable donation tax increase would necessarily divert more of what is, at least for religious organizations, God’s or God’s people’s and render it instead unto “Caesar.” Thankfully, Congress rejected this attempt by Obama last year and will hopefully brook no such anti-charity policy in this election year.

Like his obscenely bloated proposed budget and deficit, Obama’s tax on charity is yet another proposal that Americans cannot afford to bear.

In this week’s State of the Union Address, President Obama said:

“We find unity in our incredible diversity, drawing on the promise enshrined in our Constitution: the notion that we are all created equal….”

Wrong founding document, Mr. President.   The word “equal” did not enter the Constitution until the ratification of the 14th Amendment in 1868.    It is in our Declaration of Independence that we read:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

And this is the same guy who used to teach constitutional law and who lectured the Supreme Court moments earlier in the same speech!

Anyone can make a mistake.   But the State of the Union Address is the President’s major speech of the year, the only speech expressly required by the Constitution (Article II § 3).  It is carefully crafted and carefully screened.  It says something about Obama’s advisers and speechwriters that none of them knew or cared enough about the Constitution to catch this error.

And how many in the media caught and reported the error?  Would it have been different if President Bush had made the mistake?  Or Dan Quayle?

Happy Birthday to Thomas Paine, born either today (Jan. 29) or. as some historians believe, on Feb. 9. It is fitting that he should bear “dual” birthdays, for he was a patriotic paradox all his own.

Paine’s passionate and powerful writings, most notably the pamphlet “Common Sense,” inflamed the hearts of liberty-loving American patriots and truly helped steel the resolve and determination of the Founding generation.  General George Washington even ordered Paine’s pamphlet “The American Crisis” to be read to the troops for some necessary inspiration.

But this same Paine would later be labeled by John Adams as an “insolent Blasphemer of things sacred.”  His fame turned to infamy when he embraced French enlightenment theory and aimed his sharp pen against Christianity in his infamous work “The Age of Reason.”

In an op-ed featured at WorldNetDaily today, Thomas Paine: Involuntary Christian witness?, John Eidsmoe and I explain how even the writings of the double-minded Paine demonstrate the Christian heritage of the Founders who first read his works.  Follow the link to see how this “Blasphemer” applied Biblical stories and principles to the American cause in “Common Sense,” probably with more skill than most Christians could do today.

Indeed, it is hard to read “Common Sense” and believe that a work so full of Biblical analysis and examples could be written by a staunch opponent of Biblical Christianity. Paine knew his audience, at least, and the common sense of appealing to a Christian people using Christian and Biblical reason to support the cause of liberty.