Good Morning!
In The Last Battle, C.S. Lewis writes:
“All their life in this world and all their adventures had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever; in which every chapter is better than the one before.”
We hope and pray today marks the beginning and reclamation of a great story here on earth surrounding the liberation of women and the protection of every preborn life under law.
NOTE: To listen to oral arguments today, click here.
- It is Time to Right an Historic and Evil Wrong
Focus on the Family president Jim Daly writes:
It is time.
In fact, it’s way past time.
For nearly a half-century, abortion on demand has been legal in all fifty states leading to the tragic holocaust of over 60 million innocent babies.
It is time to right an historically devastating and evil wrong and overturn the fatally flawed Roe decision from 1973.
I’m in Washington, D.C., and will be closely following today’s hearing of the Mississippi Dobbs case inside the Supreme Court. Due to the pandemic, the courtroom will be closed to spectators, but the audio of the proceedings will be available in real time. I hope you will listen. We all must pray.
The wickedness of 1973’s 7-2 decision is impossible to overstate. It joins the High Court’s horrific Dred Scott ruling, which deemed African-Americans as less than whole people, as the most consequential and depraved of all judicial cases.
Think about it – seven unelected men on that cold January day sentenced over 63 million children to death. Generations of boys and girls lost forever this side of eternity.
There is no middle ground when it comes to this issue. Today’s hearing is a matter of life and death – literally.
In the hours following the Burger court’s 1973 ruling, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) declared, “We trust that this is the beginning of the end for state efforts to interfere with the rights of women to secure medical abortions.”
It’s taken nearly fifty years, but it now should be the beginning of the end of restricting state efforts to protect innocent human life.
As Christians, we must continue praying for justice and that a majority of justices will have the courage to do the right thing.
It is time for Roe to go. It is time for Roe to be relegated to the dust heap of history. It is time to uphold Mississippi’s law that protects innocent life.
RELATED:
Could This Be the End of ‘Roe v. Wade’?
From The Daily Citizen:
How might the Court overturn Roe?
First, the Court could leave the framework of Roe and Casey in place but essentially gut it by recognizing that states have interests that trump other rights and can restrict abortion before viability to protect preborn human life.
Second, and the route we hope they take, the Court could admit that Roe and Casey were bad constitutional law and should be tossed out. If a majority of the Court looks at the caselaw through the lens of a Constitutional originalist or a textualist (meaning they interpret the Constitution according to its original meaning), then it is much more probable that the Court could overturn Roe.
Five Things to Listen for During the Dobbs Oral Argument
From The Daily Citizen:
If you’ve never sat through or listened to an appellate court hearing before, it can be highly technical and loaded with legal buzzwords, so here are five things to listen for to help you understand what’s going on behind the questions in this case.
- Count to Five
- Overturning Precedent
- Viability
- Undue Burden
- The Court’s “Legitimacy.”
Mike Pence Urges Supreme Court to ‘Make History’ and Overturn ‘Roe v. Wade’
From The Daily Citizen:
Former Vice President Mike Pence is predicting the demise of Roe v. Wade and urging the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn Roe. Pence made the remarks in a speech he gave at the Life is a Human Right event hosted by the Susan B. Anthony List at the National Press Club on Tuesday.
“When the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade — and I believe with all my heart that day will come, either now or in the near future — it will not come as a surprise to anyone. It will simply be the culmination of a 50-year journey whose course and destination have been set by the will of the American people,” Pence said in his remarks.
“Every serious legal scholar in America knows that the Roe decision was manufactured out of whole cloth to achieve a predetermined political and ideological goal. Even the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg once wrote that the Court’s decision in Roe was ‘heavy-handed judicial intervention that was difficult to justify.’ Now our Supreme Court has a chance to right that historic wrong once and for all.”
John Roberts and the Abortion Precedents
Ed Whelan writes in the Wall Street Journal:
The immediate aftermath of the overruling of Roe might well be messy and contentious. But unless concerns over the court’s legitimacy are mere camouflage for the court’s self-aggrandizement, a sound institutionalism must also respect the legitimacy of the state legislatures that our Constitution leaves with primary authority over abortion policy.
Bereft of meritorious legal arguments, some supporters of Roe have tried to intimidate the justices by threatening to pack the court. Yielding to that threat would politicize the court beyond measure and invite endless bullying. And court-packing is deeply unpopular. The flagrant wrongness of Roe and Casey and the deep discomfort that many Democratic voters have with their party’s radical agenda on abortion make the overturning of Roe an improbable occasion for a blatant attack on the court to succeed. By winning this battle, Chief Justice Roberts would secure his legacy as a champion of the court’s independence from politics.
- $2.5M pro-life ad campaign launched ahead of Supreme Court abortion arguments
From The Christian Post:
A pro-life grassroots organization has launched a $2.5 million advertising campaign urging the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse its landmark 1973 ruling in Roe v. Wade as the justices are slated to hear oral arguments in a major abortion case next week.
Last week, the Susan B. Anthony List released three ads as part of its “Modernize our Law” campaign ahead of the case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. One ad focuses on a young woman who was adopted, while another features a doctor who regrets performing abortions. The third ad features a doctor who cares for pregnant mothers and children.
The ads will air on local news and cable stations in the Washington, D.C. media market, including CBS, ABC, NBC, Fox News, Newsmax, CNBC and CNN. Additionally, the ads will air in nine battleground states through a targeted digital campaign.
Susan B. Anthony List has committed $10 million overall to its ad campaign ahead of the Dobbs hearing, which could present an opportunity to the conservative-leaning high court to revisit earlier rulings that have set a precedent for legalizing abortion access nationwide for decades.
3. Teacher fired by Catholic school over same-sex marriage wins appeal to continue lawsuit
From America:
The Indiana Court of Appeals ruled Nov. 23 that an Indiana trial court “committed reversible error” when it dismissed a former teacher’s lawsuit against the Archdiocese of Indianapolis earlier this year.
The unanimous decision by the appellate court’s panel allows the initial lawsuit filed by the teacher, who was fired from a Catholic school, to move forward.
The case involves Joshua Payne-Elliott, a former world language and social studies teacher at Cathedral High School in Indianapolis who was fired in June 2019.
- How to Break Up Like a Grown-Up
Focus’ Lisa Anderson writes in the Chicago Tribune:
December 11 is statistically the most common day of the year to break off a romantic relationship. Yes, people have legitimately done the math on this.
I shouldn’t be surprised. I’ve been dumped — twice — on Christmas Eve. Both guys dumped me via email. One chirpily said he’d found someone else; the other straight-up admitted his desire to stay single. Neither apologized for ruining my Christmas.
Here are a few ways do the deed but still respect your soon-to-be-ex, keep your dignity, and be a good human in the process:
Do it in person or (at the very least) over the phone.
Be kind.
Be concise.
Don’t argue or blame.
Give your ex space.
Don’t talk bad about your ex in front of others.
Don’t rebound.
- Another Federal Judge Deals Blow To Biden’s Vaccine Mandate, Issues Nationwide Injunction
From The Daily Wire:
A federal judge in Louisiana blocked Democrat President Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate for health care workers on Tuesday, issuing a nationwide injunction on Biden’s order.
The Daily Advertiser reported:
Louisiana Western District U.S. Judge Terry Doughty’s decision follows an identical ruling Monday from Missouri U.S. District Judge Matthew Schelp, but Schelp’s decision only covered 10 states.
Doughty ruled on the lawsuit led by Republican Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry and joined by 13 other states, but Doughty added a nationwide injunction in his ruling.
“If the separation of powers meant anything to the Constitutional framers, it meant that the three necessary ingredients to deprive a person of liberty or property – the power to make rules, to enforce them, and to judge their violations – could never fall into the same hands,” Doughty wrote. “If the executive branch is allowed to usurp the power of the legislative branch to make laws, two of the three powers conferred by our Constitution would be in the same hands. If human nature and history teach anything, it is that civil liberties face grave risks when governments proclaim indefinite states of emergency.”
- Canada’s Court of Appeal Suspends Sentence for Pastor Ordered to Recite Government’s Views About COVID
From The Daily Citizen:
Canada’s Court of Appeals suspended a judge’s order that required Pastor Artur Pawlowski, his brother Dawid and restaurant owner Chris Scott to state the government’s views about COVID-19 whenever they spoke out against Alberta Health Services (AHS) Covid restrictions or vaccine mandates.
According to Rebel News, which first reported the news, “The stay is pending an expedited appeal of Germain’s original judgement that also levied steep fines, fees and community service as punishment for the trio. That appeal will be heard on June 14, 2022.”
- Matt Walsh’s Children’s Book Hits Number 1 On Amazon List Hours After Launch
From The Daily Wire:
Within hours of its publication, “Johnny the Walrus,” penned by Daily Wire host Matt Walsh, has been ranked among the top-selling books on Amazon.
The book, which tackles the issue of radical transgender ideology foisted on children, hit the number one spot on the Amazon Movers & Shakers list, which highlights the site’s biggest gainers in sales rank and is updated every hour.
“Embracing my true calling as a children’s author, I have written ‘Johnny the Walrus,’ a tale about an imaginative young boy who pretends to be a walrus,” Walsh told The Daily Wire.
“The success of the book proves that people are tired of the children’s book market being dominated by left wing propaganda,” he added. “Also, it indicates perhaps that there is a mostly untapped interest in walruses.”
The book will teach children that there is a difference between reality and make-believe, and parents will learn that a child’s imaginative whims should not be turned into a full blown identity crisis, noted Walsh.
“There are dozens of children’s books brainwashing kids into the gender identity cult where they are taught that identity is malleable and biology is meaningless,” the author said. “This book is meant to be an antidote to that madness.”
8. How Americans stand out in surveys on what makes life meaningful
From the Deseret News:
If you were to be asked what gives your life meaning, what would you say?
I’m going to guess you’d point to your family, since that was the most popular response in 14 of the 17 countries recently surveyed by Pew Research Center.
I feel safe assuming that faith didn’t immediately come to your mind, especially if you’re from outside the United States. Responses related to religion or spirituality beat out only pets when Pew ranked the popularity of commonly cited sources of meaning.
“Outside of the U.S., religion is never one of the top 10 sources of meaning cited — and no more than 5% of any non-American public mention it,” researchers wrote.
Inside the U.S., however, faith makes it into the top five. Fifteen percent of American respondents named God or religion as a source of meaning, putting faith behind only family, friends, material well-being and work on the country-specific ranking.
Faith is even more popular among U.S. Republicans. It’s the second-most common answer for members of this group. (Family and children came in first.)
- The Friendship of Lewis and Tolkien
From Desiring God:
The two had met for the first time three and a half years earlier at an English faculty meeting. Not long afterward, Tolkien invited Lewis to join the Kolbitar, a group that met to read Icelandic sagas together. But Lewis’s suggestion that Tolkien come back to his rooms at Magdalen on that blustery December night marked a pivotal step in their friendship.
During their late-night discussion, Tolkien came to see that Lewis was one of those rare people who just might like the strange tales he had been working on since coming home from the war, stories he previously considered just a private hobby. And so, summoning up his courage, he lent Lewis a long, unfinished piece called “The Gest of Beren and Luthien.”
Several days later, Tolkien received a note with his friend’s reaction. “It is ages since I have had an evening of such delight,” Lewis reported.3 Besides its mythic value, Lewis praised the sense of reality he found in the work, a quality that would be typical of Tolkien’s writing.
At the end of Lewis’s note, he promised that detailed criticisms would follow, and they did — fourteen pages where Lewis praised a number of specific elements and pointed out what he saw as problems with others. Tolkien took heed of Lewis’s criticisms, but in a unique way. While accepting few specific suggestions, Tolkien rewrote almost every passage Lewis had problems with. Lewis would later say about Tolkien, “He has only two reactions to criticism: either he begins the whole work over again from the beginning or else takes no notice at all.”
- John Rich, Mike Rowe debut new Christmas song on ‘Fox & Friends’
From Fox News:
FOX Business’ Mike Rowe, narrator and Executive Producer of “How America Works” and country music star John Rich and teamed up with the Oak Ridge Boys to release a new Christmas song highlighting Santa’s “dirty job,” while also giving back to the community this holiday season.
The pair appeared on “Fox & Friends” Tuesday to debut “Santa’s Gotta Dirty Job,” which funnels proceeds to Folds of Honor, an organization that provides scholarships to military families, and the mikeroweWORKS Foundation, which promotes trades and apprenticeships.
“It is a very catchy song, and we want to try to raise as much money for both of your charities as possible,” said co-host Steve Doocy.
John’s charity is doing amazing work with families of vets who didn’t make it back,” Rowe stated. “We’re doing what we can at mikeroweWORKS, but putting this song out here on this show like this, I know I speak for John, we’re both super grateful. Thank you.”
“America’s not having a great time right now and maybe a song like this… can help put a smile on her collective face,” Rowe added.
