Good Morning! 

Hanging on a wall in Justice Clarence Thomas’ office at the Supreme Court is a prayer known as the “Litany of Humility.”  He says it’s his favorite.

“That having been humbled, I have every reason to be humble,” he reflected. “It starts with humility.” 

Humility is becoming a lost quality, superseded by arrogance and pride, especially at the Department of Justice: 

  1. Concerned Parents Sue Attorney General Over Threats to Investigate Them for Criticizing School Boards 

From The Daily Citizen: 

It’s no secret that public school board meetings across the country have been tumultuous of late, with concerned parents showing up to criticize board policies that cover topics such as mask mandates, transgender bathrooms, preferred pronouns, sex ed curriculums and the teaching of Critical Race Theory (CRT). 

Loudoun County, Virginia, in particular has been a flashpoint for parent protests against objectionable policies imposed by a progressive school board. One parent was arrested at a board meeting concerning a proposed transgender policy when he attempted to voice his concerns about the alleged rape of his daughter in the girls bathroom by a gender-fluid boy wearing a skirt. A physical education teacher was suspended for speaking his mind about forcing school employees to use preferred gender pronouns for students not in keeping with their biological sex, while another resigned from her position in protest over proposed board policies concerning CRT. 

On October 4, the United States Attorney General (AG), Merrick Garland, sent a “memorandum” to the directors of the FBI and the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys, as well as to the head of the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Criminal Division and all federal prosecutors, instructing them to use all of the DOJ’s “authority and resources” to discourage “threats of violence or efforts to intimidate individuals based on their views.” 

  1. Your Child’s Education is a Holy Obligation 

From RCC: 

In Judaism, education is a holy obligation. Referring to the words of the Five Books of Moses, Deuteronomy instructs, “You shall teach them fluently to your children, and you shall speak of them when you sit in your home, when you go upon the way, when you lie down and when you rise up.” This is a family responsibility, transmitting knowledge from parents to children, one generation educating the next. As the Book of Proverbs adds, “Heed, my son, your father’s guidance, and do not forsake your mother’s instruction.” 

Why would anyone want to cut parents out of the education of their children? The answer can be found in Proverbs 22:6: “Train a child in the way he should go, and even when he ages he will not swerve from it.” This principle is true, whether used for good or evil. An indoctrinated child will often remain an indoctrinated adult. 

Today, the long and powerful arm of government is not satisfied with total control over public schools. It even wants robust jurisdiction over private and parochial institutions. If this trend continues, no child in America will be educated in a manner determined by their parents, rather than government. 

The future of America is at stake. Sending a child off to school in the morning is not tantamount to relinquishing parental rights. Citizens must reassert their right to set the content and parameters of their kids’ education in order to ensure the continuity of our civilized society. That is a right as ancient and as foundational as Jewish scriptures themselves. 

  1. CDC Director Says Children Should Continue To Wear Masks In School, Even When Vaccinated 

From the Daily Wire: 

Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Dr. Rochelle Walensky, said Wednesday that she believes children should continue to wear face masks in school even after they have been vaccinated against COVID-19, even as the Biden administration ramps up a national effort to roll out the vaccine to children between the ages of 5 and 11 as soon as the federal Food & Drug Administration (FDA) gives emergency use approval. 

“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will continue recommending children wear masks in school going into the winter months even if COVID-19 vaccines are approved for more school-age children, Dr. Walensky announced Wednesday,” Sinclair Media noted following a press conference. 

“The entire point of the vaccines is to get back to normal, and the CDC this morning really has not been messaging confidence in these vaccines,” Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease expert at the University of California, San Francisco, told the outlet, adding that she was “surprised” at Walensky’s guidance. 

  1. Teen Girls Are Developing Tics. Doctors Say TikTok Could Be a Factor. 

From the Wall Street Journal: 

Teenage girls across the globe have been showing up at doctors’ offices with tics—physical jerking movements and verbal outbursts—since the start of the pandemic. 

Movement-disorder doctors were stumped at first. Girls with tics are rare, and these teens had an unusually high number of them, which had developed suddenly. After months of studying the patients and consulting with one another, experts at top pediatric hospitals in the U.S., Canada, Australia and the U.K. discovered that most of the girls had something in common: TikTok. 

According to a spate of recent medical journal articles, doctors say the girls had been watching videos of TikTok influencers who said they had Tourette syndrome, a nervous-system disorder that causes people to make repetitive, involuntary movements or sounds. 

No one has tracked these cases nationally, but pediatric movement-disorder centers across the U.S. are reporting an influx of teen girls with similar tics. Donald Gilbert, a neurologist at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center who specializes in pediatric movement disorders and Tourette syndrome, has seen about 10 new teens with tics a month since March 2020. Before the pandemic, his clinic had seen at most one a month.  

5.   The Married Will Soon Be the Minority 

The New York Times acknowledges the troubling trend – but then idiotically suggests we should stop promoting policies that reward marriage: 

The year I was born, 1970, the percentage of Americans between the ages of 25 and 50 who had never married was just 9 percent. By the time I became an adult, that number was approaching 20 percent. 

Some people were delaying marriage. But others were forgoing it altogether. 

This trend has only continued, and we are now nearing a milestone. This month, the Pew Research Center published an analysis of census data showing that in 2019 the share of American adults who were neither married nor living with a partner had risen to 38 percent, and while that group “includes some adults who were previously married (those who are separated, divorced or widowed), all of the growth in the unpartnered population since 1990 has come from a rise in the number who have never been married.” 

This came on the heels of data released by the National Center for Health Statistics last year, which showed that marriage rates in 2018 had reached a record low

We are nearing a time when there will be more unmarried adults in the United States than married ones, a development with enormous consequences for how we define family and adulthood in general, as well as how we structure taxation and benefits. 

Of course, the unmarried and unpartnered portions of the population vary among demographic groups. As Pew pointed out: 

Among those ages 25 to 54, 59 percent of Black adults were unpartnered in 2019. This is higher than the shares among Hispanic (38 percent), white (33 percent) and Asian (29 percent) adults. For most racial and ethnic groups, men are more likely than women to be unpartnered. The exception is among Black adults, where women (62 percent) are more likely to be unpartnered than men (55 percent). 

As a society, we have to start asking ourselves whether it is fair and right to continue to reward and encourage marriage through taxation and policy when fewer people — disproportionately Black ones — are choosing marriage or finding acceptable partnerships. 

  1. San Francisco In-N-Out Burger Temporarily Shut Down for Refusing to Check Customer’s Vaccine Status 

From The Daily Citizen: 

San Francisco’s only In-N-Out Burger restaurant was temporarily closed by the city’s Department of Public Health for refusing to check customers’ vaccination status. The restaurant was later allowed to reopen – but with no indoor dining. 

In-N-Out said, “We refuse to become the vaccination police for any government,” adding that it found the city’s vaccine mandate “intrusive, improper, and offensive.” 

7.   Should Christians Relocate to Conservative Areas? 

From the Gospel Coalition: 

Political polarity in the U.S. is expressing itself geographically—people want to live where they feel their values are affirmed. As a California resident, I’ve watched neighbors move away in droves. Many are Christians who see their move as providential—they feel God wants them to relocate to places more friendly to their beliefs. 

As Americans, we certainly have the freedom to move at will. But as Christians, there is much to consider before making any move

The first consideration is: how comfortable and “at home” should Christians be in this world? 

Scripture says we’re exiles in society, not homebodies (Heb. 11:131 Pet. 2:11). Jesus declared his sheep misfits on this earth (John 15:18–25). Discipleship with Christ means dissonance with the world. We’re countercultural, not comformists (Rom. 12:2). 

God sees every act of faithfulness, rewards obedience, and guarantees justice. Do we actually trust God to deliver those promises, or do we scan Zillow looking for our own promised land? An address is more than some numbers and letters, or a pin on a map. Sometimes it’s a statement about who we believe God is. 

Somewhat Related: US News & World Report: Best Places to Retire in America 

8.   ‘Outrageous Evidence’: Eric Metaxas Says Science, Archaeology, History All Point to Existence of God 

From CBN: 

Is Atheism Dead? Yes, says best-selling author and radio host, Eric Metaxas. Not only that, he says science, archaeology, and history all point to a divine Creator now more than ever.  

From his books on Bonhoeffer and Amazing Grace to Martin Luther, Metaxas is out with his newest book, Is Atheism Dead?  

“I have literally never been as excited about a book,” Metaxas told CBN News. “I’m not really particularly taking on atheism. That’s a part of the book, but I’m framing it in the way that I do with the title Is Atheism Dead? particularly because in 1966 Time Magazine had this infamous cover article that said, “Is God Dead?”  

  1. Viking Artifacts Give Precise Date for Europeans’ Earliest Presence in North America

From the Wall Street Journal: 

A new look at wooden artifacts found amid the ruins of an ancient homestead shows that Vikings had crossed the Atlantic Ocean and settled in North America as far back as 1021—exactly 1,000 years ago and almost five centuries before Columbus’s famous voyage. 

The finding represents “the first, earliest evidence for Europeans in the Americas and the first evidence that the Atlantic has been crossed in all of human history,” said Michael Dee, an expert on dating techniques at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands and the senior author of a paper about the finding published Wednesday in the journal Nature

The artifacts—including a tree stump, a branch and a block of timber all splintered by the swing of a metal ax—were found at L’Anse aux Meadows near the northern tip of Newfoundland, the only verified Viking settlement on the continent, and analyzed via a new radiocarbon dating technique.  

10. After 19 miscarriages, mom gives birth to healthy 14-pound baby 

From Today: 

Cary and Tim Patonai were expecting a large baby. But the Arizona couple got the surprise of their life when their son Finnley was born two weeks early, weighing 14 pounds, 1 ounce — about double the size of an average newborn. He was also tall, measuring 23.75 inches. 

“Finnley was a little celebrity at the hospital. Everyone wanted a selfie with him,” Cary, 36, told TODAY Parents. “The OB/GYN who performed the C-section said that in 27 years he had never seen a newborn that size. There was so much excitement in the delivery.”