Good Morning:
The author Ray Merritt once observed:
“Old men can make war, but it is children who will make history.”
We begin with news of the suffering in Ukraine and the ongoing plight to save the next generation of Ukraine:
- Humanitarian Aid Expert Reveals Dramatic Rescue of Children from Ukraine to Safety
From Fox News:
Yael Eckstein, founder and president of The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ), told Fox News Digital via an email exchange this weekend amid her latest trip to Europe that she “thought she had seen it all.”
She elaborated, “I have worked in the humanitarian aid field for over 16 years. I thought I had seen it all. But in the past seven days,” she added — referring to Russia’s assault on Ukraine — “I have witnessed suffering and desperation that I have never seen in my lifetime.”
Eckstein said that for her, “the most heartbreaking thing was seeing orphans whom The Fellowship supports [caught] in the middle of a war zone.”
Amid that suffering and desperation, however, comes a dramatic story of planning, escape, care and — at least for now — a semblance of calm during the storm that is most of Ukraine right now. And it wouldn’t have happened if not for the support, the prayers and the help of many people, including those who have donated to important charities over the years.
RELATED:
This Is a Spiritual Moment’: Polish Pastor Opens Church to Ukrainian Refugees Seeking Safe Haven Amid Russian Invasion
From CBN News:
The moment he heard about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Polish Pastor Henryk Skrzypkowski and his church began purchasing beds, blankets, and other supplies for the impending influx of refugees.
“It was a step by faith,” the pastor told Faithwire, sitting alongside Dr. Paul Chitwood, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s International Mission Board. Now, he said, Chelm Baptist Church is, on any given day, housing more than 200 refugees who have crossed the Ukrainian border into Poland.
Skrzypkowski’s church — along with many other congregations in the region — is serving as a receiving line for those fleeing the unfolding war in Ukraine, most of whom are women and children, as men have been told to stay behind to fight Russian forces. On Tuesday alone, the church helped a handful of families relocate to Gdańsk, Poland, Germany, and Belgium.
RELATED:
Refugees Fleeing Ukraine Now Represent Biggest Movement of People in Europe Since World War II
From the Wall Street Journal:
More than 1.45 million people have left Ukraine since Russia invaded the country nine days ago, the International Organization for Migration said on Saturday, sparking what the United Nations agency described as the fastest and largest displacement of people in Europe since World War II.
Since Russia invaded Ukraine last week, large numbers of Ukrainians have fled, most heading west and toward eastern members of the European Union—Poland, Romania, Hungary and Slovakia—that have pledged assistance.
- Goya Foods to Deliver Thousands of Pounds of Food to the Ukrainian People
From The Daily Citizen:
Goya Foods has announced that it will deliver hundreds of thousands of pounds of food to the Ukrainian people amidst the ongoing Russian invasion of the nation.
“#GoyaEuropa, the European arm of #goyaFoods Inc., will distribute hundreds of thousands of pounds of food to the people of #Ukraine in response to the international call for critical aid of food, fuel, and medicine,” Goya Foods tweeted on February 28, 2022.
In a lengthier Facebook post, the company added that because of the company’s facilities and distributors throughout Europe, “Goya is positioned to provide humanitarian aid and is quickly mobilize [sic] products to Ukraine and Poland, where many refugees are fleeing.
“Through our Goya Gives global initiative, Goya has always been at the forefront of disaster and humanitarian relief efforts, however, this is a historic attack and genocide on innocent civilians and we cannot sit back and do nothing. We are blessed to have a presence nearby and we are fortunate to be able to answer the call for help.
- Fourteen States Sue Administration for Targeting Parents as ‘Domestic Terrorists’
From The Daily Citizen:
Fourteen states, led by Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita, have sued the federal government to find out if the administration colluded with the National School Boards Association (NSBA) last fall to create a pretext for the Department of Justice to investigate parent protests at school board meetings as “domestic terrorism and hate crimes.”
The last couple years have marked a significant rise in parental concern over what’s happening in schools around the country. Everything from teaching critical race theory (CRT) and pushing policies that promote gender confusion, to questionable sex-ed curriculum choices, to masks and remote learning related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Much of the parental angst boiled over into angry school board meetings.
The Mama Bear Movement has sparked a growing presence of concerned parents at school board meetings, which typically pits conservative, often Christian, parents against leftist and woke ideology of left-leaning school board members.
Things came to a head on October 4, 2021, when U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland wrote a memo to the director of the FBI and various federal prosecutors around the country authorizing investigations into parent protests, equating them with harassment, intimidation and threats of violence.
4. Raising Girl Athletes in a Transgender World
From the Gospel Coalition:
Allowing biological males to compete in women’s sports is nothing less than an assault on women’s athletics. Ignoring the reality of biological sex in athletics harms all of us, but make no mistake, it disproportionally harms women. Acknowledging biological differences in athletic competitions is as necessary as acknowledging differences of age in youth sports or school size in team sports competitions. We all know this. This is why we don’t consider classifications in high school sports, age requirements in youth athletics, or weight classes in boxing as forms of discrimination. In fact, they’re the opposite: ways of protecting and empowering opportunities for achievement and success.
I’m a Christian husband, father of eight children (three boys and five girls), pastor, and a seminary professor. I hold unapologetically to biblical morality and ethics regarding the sinfulness of homosexual behavior, and I oppose the legalization of same-sex marriage. But I also think the absurdity of allowing biological males to compete against girls and women is so clearly wrongheaded it doesn’t demand a Christian worldview to point out its folly. Former women’s tennis legend and LGBT+ activist Martina Navratilova recently tweeted, “It is not fair for women to race against transgender Lia Thomas.”
This kind of gender chaos is a war on reality. But if we play along, the result will be the end of girls’ and women’s sports. No amount of 5 a.m. serve practices would have helped my daughter to compete with biologically male tennis athletes for college tennis scholarships.
- When Evil is Called Good
From First Things:
Last week, three news stories threw into sharp relief the ambitions of the sexual revolutionaries who govern the United States. First, there was the predictable outrage from the usual elites concerning Florida’s Parental Right in Education Bill, which would significantly restrict the teaching of LGBTQ+ ideology to schoolchildren. Second, it emerged that Washington State has a policy preventing teachers from revealing a child’s gender transition to parents. And third, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki condemned a directive from Texas governor Greg Abbott that calls on state agencies to protect Texas minors by investigating cases of children receiving “abusive gender-transitioning procedures.”
Each story reveals a particular aspect of the current sexual revolution. The criticism of Florida shows just how deeply the progressive elites have imbibed the notion of expressive individualism. Actress Kerry Washington condemned the Florida law, declaring that “Children deserve to be who they want to be. To be their true selves.” That such a statement makes sense to her and presumably to many of her 5.5 million Twitter followers testifies to how the notion of authenticity, tied to a sexualized notion of childhood, is now unquestioned orthodoxy in our culture.
Washington State’s policy is a reminder of how deeply government agencies have bought into trans ideology, and how they are using it to drive a wedge between parents and children. By the state’s own philosophy, the child is the gender he or she claims to be. So the state holds that the child defines who he truly is, but that the child’s parents have no right to know. That is disturbing in the extreme.
As to the Biden administration’s attitude toward the Texas directive, the president and his entourage seem to believe it is inappropriate, and indeed morally disgusting, to investigate institutions involved in gender transition to see if they conform to current Texas law. Psaki said that Abbott’s guidance was “designed to target and attack the kids who need support the most.” Our administration believes that loving and caring for trans kids apparently means enabling them to do irreparable damage to their bodies at an age when they have no idea what the consequences will be later in life. The lobbyists have so perverted the narrative, and the current administration has so enabled that perversion, that yes, evil is called good and good is called evil.
6. Jackson’s reversal rate will be under fire at her SCOTUS confirmation hearing
From the Washington Times:
Despite her successful appointment to the second most important court in the country, a confirmation to a court of appeals does not compare to the high stakes of the Supreme Court. Even Republicans who supported her the first time around will likely subject her to more heightened scrutiny before voting to confirm her to replace Justice Breyer.
Although Mrs. Jackson’s placement on the court will not change the 6-3 conservative majority, Republicans are likely to highlight her liberal judicial philosophy and her most vulnerable point of weakness: her reversal rate.
While serving on the D.C. Circuit, Mrs. Jackson has authored only two written opinions, but she wrote nearly 500 orders as a federal district judge. According to my law firm’s research, the D.C. Circuit overturned her appealed decisions 11.9% of the time. Compared to the 21 current district judges on the D.C. District Court for whom data are available, Mrs. Jackson’s reversal rate rank places her in the bottom 36.4%.
This is notable because the D.C. Circuit is one of the more liberal courts of appeals in the nation, with the majority being Democrat appointees. Mrs. Jackson’s poor reversal rate among judges who share her ideological orientation will strike many Republican senators as an indication of low judicial competence and strong judicial activism.
7. NFL greats rally behind high school coach fired for postgame prayer amid Supreme Court battle
From the Christian Post:
NFL players, hall of famers and former coaches have joined former U.S. attorneys general in urging the U.S. Supreme Court to rule that a Washington school district acted unlawfully when it fired a football coach for praying on the field after games.
Numerous “friend-of-the-court” briefs have been filed in the case Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, in which former Seattle-area football coach Joe Kennedy is seeking to reverse a lower court decision that allowed the school district to fire him because fans and students could see him take a knee in silent prayer at the 50-yard line after football games.
Those who have filed the briefs include several current and former NFL players, including Minnesota Vikings quarterback Kirk Cousins, former Super Bowl MVP Nick Foles, hall of famers Darrell Green and Steve Largent.
Others include coach Tommy Bowden, the son of legendary football coach Bobby Bowden, former college and NFL coach Lou Holtz, 56 members of Congress, six former U.S. attorneys general and 60 state legislators.
8. Remembering Alice von Hildebrand, Pro-Life Philosopher, Dead at 98
From The New York Times:
Dr. von Hildebrand went on to a storied career as a philosophy professor and an interpreter of the work of her husband, Dietrich von Hildebrand, himself a renowned Catholic philosopher at Fordham University; later still, she became something of a celebrity within conservative Catholic circles for her critiques of feminism.
Men, she explained, had fallen victim to the traps of materialism and utilitarianism, but women were not yet lost, and had a chance to extricate humanity from the clutches of modernity. In that framework, she saw feminism as her great opponent, a secularist, materialist attempt to eradicate everything that made women different and virtuous.
“What is it that is so incredibly important about women today?” she said in a 2015 commencement address at Christendom College, in Front Royal, Va. “The answer is very simple: the vicious attacks made by feminists on the beauty and dignity of being a woman, and the incredible mission that women have in this world today.”
She was equally critical of abortion rights, gay rights and cultural relativism, stances that put her outside parts of the Catholic mainstream but that attracted countless followers. Her message resonated especially with many young Catholic women who felt trapped between retro feminine ideals and the press of secular feminism.
“If you want to know what is the pulse of the country, go to the university and find out if they teach the students truth,” she said in a 2018 interview with WCAT Radio. “Believe me, relativism is a poison that basically leads a country to its destruction.”
- Promising New Research Promises to Eradicate Advanced-stage Ovarian and Colorectal Cancer
From Rice University:
Rice University bioengineers have shown they can eradicate advanced-stage ovarian and colorectal cancer in mice in as little as six days with a treatment that could be ready for human clinical trials later this year.
The researchers used implantable “drug factories” the size of a pinhead to deliver continuous, high doses of interleukin-2, a natural compound that activates white blood cells to fight cancer. The drug-producing beads can be implanted with minimally invasive surgery. Each contains cells engineered to produce interleukin-2 that are encased in a protective shell.
Nash said the same general approach used in the study could be applied to treat cancers of the pancreas, liver, lungs and other organs. The drug factories could be placed next to tumors and within the linings that surround those organs and most others, she said. And if a different cytokine is needed to target a specific form of cancer, the beads can be loaded with engineered cells that make that immunotherapeutic compound.
10. Agreeableness may be the key to success in life
From Study Finds:
To get ahead in life, the most successful person is a team player. New research reports having the personality trait agreeableness can improve your job performance and help you win in life.
The authors studied how personality affects job performance, focusing especially on agreeableness. They took several variables into account, including psychological health, physical health, personal relationships, leadership effectiveness, and performances across both educational and organizational environments.
Their findings showed agreeableness offers “a desirable effect on hundreds of physical, psychological and occupational metrics” impacting both career and overall life success. One important finding was that people who had high levels of agreeableness had a 93% success rate in the above categories.