Recent Viewpoints

by  Kerby Anderson “If this is a sign of how religious liberty claims will be treated in the years ahead, those who value religious freedom have cause for great concern.” That is the chilling statement from Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito in his critical dissent. He is troubled that the Supreme Court decided not to hear an important case involving religious freedom of conscience. The case involved a Christian-owned pharmacy that did not want to dispense abortion-causing drugs such as…

by Kerby Anderson Voters are discovering that the political elites are passing laws and making policies that only affect the common folk. Put another way elites don’t have to live under the laws they pass and policies they make. The vote last month on Brexit illustrates this. Victor Davis Hanson reminds us in a column that: Anti-Brexit Elites Aren’t the Ones Who Suffer from Their Policies. He says that the bureaucratic class that runs Europe from Brussels and Strasbourg will…

By Penna Dexter In 1960 5.3 percent of all births in America were to unmarried women. In 2015 40.2 percent of births were out of wedlock. These facts are pretty persistent recently and — well — they’re just disturbing — and depressing. Among non-Hispanic blacks the out-of-wedlock birthrate is 70.4 percent. Hispanics had a 52.9 percent out-of-wedlock birthrate for 2015. And among non-Hispanic whites, it’s 29.2 percent.     These statistics represent children mostly being raised in far less-than-ideal circumstances. Co-habitation has…

by Kerby Anderson When Congress returns from a summer break, you have to wonder whether protest politics will once again be on display. Two weeks ago several House Democrats literally sat on the floor of the House of Representatives and demanded a vote on gun control measures that could not be passed in the U.S. Senate. What started with about 40 members grew to more than 170 including Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. We have seen this before in other legislative…

by Kerby Anderson Pro-life groups and legislators wonder what they can do next in light of the Supreme Court decision last week. The 5-3 decision that struck down the legislation in Texas left little room for any future pro-life legislation. The court’s ruling prevented the state of Texas from regulating the health and safety standards of abortion clinics. It also struck down the common sense requirement that a physician performing an abortion also have admitting privileges in a hospital within…

by Kerby Anderson Do we have evidence that strict gun control laws reduce the murder rate? This is a question economist Thomas Sowell asks us to contemplate. He explains that this “is not an esoteric question, nor one for which no empirical evidence is available.” After all, we have crime statistics from all 50 states that have very different gun control laws. The fact that you rarely hear a gun control advocate cite such data should tell you something. Sometimes…

by Penna Dexter I resonated with a column by Washington Post economic columnist Robert Samuelson about Americans’ love-hate relationship with vacation. He writes: “In theory we love it; in practice we often dread it.” He nails it when he says, “So much expectation is heaped in a few weeks of free time that disappointment, if not inevitable, is common. Worse, our escape from the job and daily routine fills us with anxiety that, somehow, this interlude will inflict a gruesome…

by Kerby Anderson Superhero movies aren’t what they used to be. They are bigger, bolder, but also more adult-oriented. That is not good news for parents who have kids that want to go to all of these movies. Christopher Gildemeister (Parents Television Council) was on my radio program to talk about his article, Many Superhero Movies Not for Kids. He reminds us that originally superhero comics were for young children but later were able to attract older teens and even…

by  Kerby Anderson Earlier this month was a celebration of “World Refugee Day.” While immigrant activists were talking about the need to provide safe places for refugees, other commentators reminded us that many diseases were making a comeback in America. The returning diseases are: tuberculosis, mumps, measles, whooping cough, scarlet fever, and the bubonic plague. It is probably safe to say that many doctors may not have even seen some of these diseases until now. My grandfather’s doctor saw many…

by Kerby Anderson A federal subsidy, often called “the Obamaphone,” could be losing nearly $500 million annually. That is the accusation made by one FCC Commissioner in a letter sent to the Universal Service Administrative Company. The company is a nonprofit organization that administers a fund that provides a monthly $9.95 subsidy for telecom service to low-income consumers. The subsidy has expanded beyond its initial purpose. It was originally established to help low-income consumers in rural areas obtain access to…

by Kerby Anderson In a recent column, Mollie Hemingway documents that “religious illiteracy among journalists is reaching crisis levels.” She mentions a column from a number of years ago by Terry Mattingly with the title, Reporters, crow’s ears, and Karma Light nuns that provides some humorous examples of reporters who obviously know nothing about Christianity in general or Catholics in particular. She also reminds us of reporters who thought Jesus was buried in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and…