DUTCH TREAT- Cal Fox's Blog

If we’re serious about curtailing future Columbines and Newtowns, everything — guns, commitment, culture — must be on the table. It’s not hard for President Obama to call out the NRA. But will he call out the ACLU? And will he call out his Hollywood friends?

The irony is that over the last 30 years, the U.S. homicide rate has declined by 50 percent. Gun murders as well. We’re living not through an epidemic of gun violence but through a historic decline.  Except for these unfathomable mass murders. But these are infinitely more difficult to prevent. While law deters the rational, it has far less effect on the psychotic. The best we can do is to try to detain them, disarm them, and discourage “entertainment” that can intensify already murderous impulses.

But there’s a cost. Gun control impinges upon the Second Amendment; involuntary commitment impinges upon the liberty clause of the Fifth Amendment; curbing “entertainment” violence impinges upon First Amendment–protected free speech.  That’s a lot of impingement, a lot of amendments. But there’s no free lunch. Increasing public safety almost always means restricting liberties.

Source: Charles Krauthammer  http://www.nationalreview.com/author/200446/latest

The term “minority,” at least as used to describe racial and ethnic groups in the United States, may need to be retired or rethought soon: by the end of this decade, according to Census Bureau projections released Wednesday, no single racial or ethnic group will constitute a majority of children under 18. And in about three decades, no single group will constitute a majority of the country as a whole. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/13/us/us-will-have-no-ethnic-majority-census-finds.html?hp&_r=1&

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/12/the-world-in-2030-wont-look-anything-like-you-think/266108/

http://www.npr.org/2012/12/10/166895624/the-world-in-2030-asia-rises-the-west-declines

"On his first night of rotation at a Delhi hospital, Puneet Bedi was assigned to the obstetrics ward. A wide-eyed 20-year-old medical student, he was excited by the prospect of becoming a doctor responsible for human life. He hoped to witness a birth that night.  Minutes after catching a glimpse of the labor room, Bedi was intercepted by a cat with something bloody dangling from its mouth. It wasn't until he saw a five-month-old fetus discarded on an uncovered tray, lying in a pool of blood, that he realized what the cat had eaten.

"As the night wore on, Bedi witnessed more abortions than births. All of them were performed on women who were at least four months pregnant. When he worked up the nerve to ask why so many fetuses were being discarded, and why he had seen a cat eat one, a staff member explained tersely: "Because they are girls."

"Three decades later, Bedi, an ob-gyn consultant at a New Delhi hospital, recounted this experience to Mara Hvistendahl, who last year persuasively demonstrated a chilling reality in her Pulitzer-nominated book, Unnatural Selection: There's a gender-based genocide afoot the world over, and it's having profound implications—none of them good."

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2012/december/genocide-in-shades-of-pink.html?utm_source=ctdirect-html&utm_medium=Newsletter&utm_term=11430839&utm_content=147463482&utm_campaign=2012

Christians in Iran have challenged news reports that the death penalty for pastor Yousef Nadarkhani has been annulled, saying that in reality the country's supreme court appears to have added a precondition requiring him to renounce his faith or face execution.

"There has still been no written confirmation of the court's decision on Pastor Nadarkhani's appeal against a death sentence for apostasy, despite efforts to source this," according to a July 5 statement from Christian Solidarity Worldwide, a human rights organization.

Nadarkhani was arrested in October 2009 while attempting to register his church. His arrest is believed to have been due to his questioning of the Muslim monopoly on the religious instruction of children in Iran, the CSW statement said. He initially was charged with protesting; however, the charges against him were later changed to apostasy and evangelizing Muslims. 

update:  http://anglicanink.com/article/yousef-nadarkhani-re-arrested

http://dynamic.csw.org.uk/article.asp?t=news&id=1364&search=

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, speaking at Princeton University, said some of the most controversial questions in today's culture are among the easiest to solve according to the Constitution.

At Princeton Dec. 10, a freshman from San Francisco identified himself as homosexual and asked Scalia why he equates banning sodomy with banning bestiality and murder. The student was referring to Scalia's dissent in Lawrence v. Texas, which struck down an anti-sodomy law, according to The Daily Princetonian.

http://www.bpnews.net/bpnews.asp?id=39370

An ongoing series profiling couples who have been married for at least 35 years. As sociologist Mark Regnerus writes, “Young adults want to know that it’s possible for two fellow believers to stay happy together for a lifetime, and they need to hear how the generations preceding them did it.” It is also important to see that marriages are not always happy all the time, but commitment is crucial.

http://www.worldmag.com/topic/marriage_longevity/

UNICEF estimates there are about 740,000 children not in parental custody in Russia while about 18,000 Russians are on the waiting list to adopt a child. The U.S. is the biggest destination for adopted Russian children -- more than 60,000 of them have been taken in by Americans over the past two decades.
President Vladimir Putin on Friday signed a bill banning Americans from adopting Russian children, part of a harsh response to a U.S. law targeting Russians deemed to be human rights violators.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-202_162-57561074/putin-signs-bill-barring-adoptions-of-russian-children-by-americans/