Surgery on Madonna's Biceps?

Not sure if it would be covered under ObamaCare, and yes the headline is a blatant attempt to drive traffic to this blog by capitalizing on today's hot Google trends. Nevertheless, as long as you're here, my point is that ObamaCare won't pay for gramps's surgery, but it will pay for abortions. Take a look:

ObamaCare: The Most Serious Attack on Life Since Roe

Overpopulation Is a Myth

Against Sotomayor

In a letter to members of the United States Senate, which I signed along with 155 others, we make the point that "Judge Sotomayor's rulings, whether dealing with the 1st Amendment, 2nd Amendment, private property rights, criminal law, use of foreign law, race, equal protection, and other areas of law, demonstrate that if she is consistently 'empathetic' at all, it is in favor of government power, even beyond constitutional constraints."

Scrawny Little Thing

Yesterday's mail brought the latest issue of Sports Illustrated. And though the football fan in me is hoping for an assist from the SI cover jinx, the dad in me is loving this story from Tim Tebow's dad. "Have you heard the story of Timmy's birth?" Bob Tebow asks.

"When I was out in the mountains in Mindanao [in the Philippines], back in '86, I was showing a film and preaching that night. I was weeping over the millions of babies being [aborted] in America, and I prayed, 'God, if you give me a son, if you give me Timmy, I'll raise him to be a preacher.'" Not long after, Bob and Pam Tebow conceived their fifth child. It was a very difficult pregnancy. "The placenta was never properly attached, and there was bleeding from the get-go," Bob recalls. "We thought we'd lost him several times." Early in the pregnancy Pam contracted amebic dysentery, which briefly put her in a coma. Her doctors, fearful that medications they had given her had damaged the fetus, advised her to abort it. She refused, and on Aug. 14, 1987, Pam delivered a healthy if somewhat scrawny Timothy Richard Tebow.

"All his life, from the moment he could understand, I told him, 'You're a miracle baby,'" Bob recalls. "'God's got a purpose for you, and at some point I think He's going to call you to preach.'

"I asked God for a preacher, and he gave me a quarterback."

No Use Counting Chariots

Posted above is the most recent picture of our daughter, taken yesterday in Houston. She's about 27 weeks along, and weighs 2 pounds 5 ounces.

As some of you know, baby has what's called a congenital diaphragmatic hernia (CDH). The diaphragm is the breathing muscle – a sheet of muscle that separates the chest cavity from the abdominal cavity. The picture on the left shows what a normal chest cavity looks like.

For reasons we don't understand, baby has a hole in her diaphragm. So, some of the contents of her abdomen (stomach, intestines, etc.) have taken the opportunity to move through the hole and into her chest. As you might surmise from the picture on the right, this overcrowding in the chest cavity is a problem, mainly because it impairs the development of the lung, which leads to pulmonary hypertension and other problems. Right now baby's just fine. She has no idea anything is amiss. But once that cord is cut, she's going to have a heck of a time breathing.

Yesterday in Houston, Susie and I met with an obstetrician, a radiologist, a cardiologist, and a pediatric surgeon. Going into these meetings, we had read enough to know that if baby's lung-to-head ratio is such and such, and the liver is down in the abdominal cavity rather than up in the chest cavity, then the baby's chance of survival is such-and-such percent. So of course we were hoping that the ultrasounds, MRI, etc. would bring good news.

Well, it turns out baby's lung-to-head ratio is 1.3. That's pretty good. But her liver, at least part of it, is up in the chest cavity. That's not so good. Total lung volume? Not great, but could be worse. This indicator, so-so. That indicator, fair to partly cloudy. It's just hard to get a handle on it, and harder still to predict what's going to happen. The doc suspects baby will spend at least six weeks in the hospital. He estimates her chance of survival at 65 to 80 percent.

But let's say the doc had given us terrific news yesterday. Let's say he had pegged baby's chance of survival at 95 percent. Is that really something to hang one's hat on? John Piper has an excellent article entitled "Don't Waste Your Cancer." Below I've taken the liberty of substituting CDH for cancer.

The design of God in your [CDH] is not to train you in the rationalistic, human calculation of odds. The world gets comfort from their odds. Not Christians. Some count their chariots (percentages of survival) and some count their horses (side effects of treatment), but we trust in the name of the Lord our God (Psalm 20:7). God's design is clear from 2 Corinthians 1:9, "We felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead." The aim of God in your [CDH] (among a thousand other good things) is to knock props out from under our hearts so that we rely utterly on him.

And honestly now, isn't this true of life generally – for all of us? I mean, I could get hit by a truck tomorrow – and so could you. One of my other children could contract a fatal disease tomorrow – and so could yours. Baby could have a 95 percent chance of survival, but then as a toddler could get struck by lightning. The whole of the Christian life involves walking by faith and not by sight. There's no getting around it.

So although I'm interested in ratios and volumes and percentages, I'm not getting bogged down in them. Good percentages can suddenly go south. Bleak prospects can quickly brighten. Life is a marathon, not a sprint, and God is in complete control of every step. Here's Andrée Seu, writing to her 7-year-old daughter:

Let's play this out; how are you at seeing around corners: hated by your brothers, sold like an old Beanie-baby, orphaned like a kitten, a teenage slave. Isn't that bad, darling?

No, it's good! He ends up the household manager of Pharaoh's captain of the guard!

Isn't that good, Aimée? No, it's bad: Potiphar's wife frames Joseph and he lands up back in jail.

Isn't that bad, Aimée? No, it's good! In jail he hears important dreams that land him as Pharaoh's vizier. Strands of history and geography woven together by a skillful hand, and Joseph saves his dad and brothers, and counts his former troubles but a pittance on the scales.

"The end of a matter is better than its beginning" (Ecclesiastes 7:8). The last chapter is what counts, isn't it? Between the covers of the book, knights will fall, pawns will be sacrificed, bishops will topple and be toppled, rooks will come and go – all those great upheavals and reversals Mary saw in the Spirit, singing her Magnificat.

The faithfulness of God is why the perseverance of man (and little girls) is so important. What you're seeing now is middles, freeze frames, the crest of the curve and not its falling arc, the ball as it looked snapped in mid-air by your Polaroid. But "You have heard of the perseverance of Job and have seen what the Lord finally brought about. The Lord is full of compassion and mercy" (James 5:11).

Church Polity Done Right

Susie and I were in Houston this week, and look what was right down the street from our hotel. You guessed it.


Now I realize that Christ is the head of his church and that he's not keen on sharing his glory with another. But this looks perfectly healthy to me.

In the End It's Right

Well, this isn't the way I would have drawn it up.

But it is the way God, in his unsearchable wisdom, has drawn it up, and so here we go. Susie, baby girl, and I are headed to America's fourth-largest city today for ultrasounds, an MRI, an echocardiogram, consultation with a surgeon, and all sorts of exciting adventures.

It will be an interesting journey, these next several months. My prayer from day one has been, and continues to be, that Jesus Christ of Nazareth -- the same yesterday, today, and forever -- will rearrange the child's organs and knit together a perfect diaphragm for her. Christ may or may not see fit to answer that prayer. In the meantime, we will also pray for wisdom and success for the doctors and the other medical professionals.

Whatever comes to pass, one thing is certain: God is working all things together for our good and his glory. In the words of the great Reformed hymn writer of old (or maybe it was a bisexual Obamatron, I forget which):

So make the best of this test, and don't ask why
It's not a question, but a lesson learned in time
It's something unpredictable, but in the end it's right
I hope you had the time of your life

TCB

"With U.S. unemployment at a 20-year high, some Americans are working for free," Reuters reports.

Hey, it's not like it's unprecedented.

Be Patriotic: Make Do with Less

Sen. Gumm's Rearguard Action

Forty-six summers ago, a certain Southern Democrat stood blocking the schoolhouse door to prevent some students from entering. Today, certain politicians stand blocking the schoolhouse door to prevent students from leaving.

And make no mistake, many Oklahomans would leave if they could. As I wrote last Sunday in The Oklahoman:

Here at home, a survey of 1,200 likely Oklahoma voters (margin of error of +/- 3 percent) asked the decidedly unloaded question: "If it were your decision and you could select any type of school, what type of school would you select in order to obtain the best education for your child?"

Seventeen percent said they would choose a regular public school. Eighty-three percent said they would choose something else.

That's not a misprint. Only 17 percent said they would choose a regular public school. The rest would choose a private school (41 percent), home school (19 percent), charter school (17 percent), or virtual school (6 percent).

Today in The Oklahoman, state Sen. Jay Paul Gumm (D-Durant) refuted the survey wisely didn't attempt to refute the survey. He's been around politics long enough to know that a sample size of 1,200 is uncommonly large for Oklahoma, and that there's not much point in questioning the accuracy of a poll from a national firm whose polls have been used by MSNBC, Time, Newsweek, and USA Today, and have been cited as some of the nation's most accurate by National Journal's "Hotline" and Survey USA.

No, Gumm pretty much acknowledges that public schools are about as popular today as Stewart Cink. But he can explain it. You see, those of us who argue for school choice do so in order "to weaken people's confidence in public schools."

Dutcher cites opinion polls suggesting Oklahomans are losing confidence in public schools. No wonder, given the relentless attacks on public schools repeatedly launched by him and others who share his view.

Did you catch that? Sure, the people are losing confidence in public schools. But it's not because they are discerning consumers and are wise enough to know what they know. It's not because the product is defective; it's because some taxpayers have the temerity to point out that the product is defective. The 400-pound woman has heart disease not because she inhales Big Macs and bon bons, but because her doctor has the audacity to diagnose her problem and give it to her straight.

Gumm is wrong on other points also. He criticizes "voucher schemes" in which "taxpayer dollars are stripped from public education and transferred to private schools." But as Gumm (hopefully) knows, vouchers are unconstitutional in Oklahoma. I oppose them. I favor solutions in which no taxpayer dollars are involved.

Gumm implies that public schools must take all comers. But that's just not so.

Gumm also writes:

I am reminded of the words of President Harry Truman, "Any jackass can kick down a barn, but it takes a carpenter to build one." It takes "carpenters"—including parents, teachers and community leaders—to build public schools and truly improve educational opportunity for all, which should be our focus.

Actually, it doesn’t take carpenters to build public schools. It simply takes politicians who have the power of the sword, who use force to provide public schools with the money and the students they could never attract on their own. (Repeat after me: 83 to 17.) Now as it happens, some of us have actually helped to build schools. From scratch. Rather than simply taxing, spending, regulating, and press releasing, some people actually roll up their sleeves and build schools.

Gumm says school choice "would lead to the creation of an academic elite based on the wealth of parents rather than the talent of children. Such an elitist system [is] at odds with our national value of 'all are created equal.'" But of course, Gumm is describing the system we currently have. A system "based on the wealth of parents." That's the very injustice that people like Gumm's colleagues Judy Eason-McIntyre and Jabar Shumate (elitists?) are trying to rectify.

Look, with numbers like 83 to 17, defenders of the status quo have no choice but to use force. They must block the schoolhouse door to keep the children trapped inside. David Boaz puts it well in his book The Politics of Freedom:

Every argument against choice made by the education establishment reveals the contempt that establishment has for its own product. School boards, superintendents, and teacher unions are convinced that no one would attend public schools if they had the choice. Like Fidel Castro and former postmaster general Anthony Frank, they have a keen sense of the consumer demand for their product and are fighting a rearguard action to protect their monopoly.

But school choice marches on, and history won't look kindly on those who attempted to block the door, denying some children their only shot at the American dream. As Cato's Adam Schaeffer writes, "Choice opponents are on the wrong side of right and the wrong side of history."

Cross-posted at Choice Remarks

State Government Needs Your Help

News reports tell us that a revenue shortfall is likely for state government during the current fiscal year. Reduced allocations to state agencies are probable.

No word yet on what Oklahoma's taxpayers -- who have no idea what it's like to experience revenue shortfalls in their family budgets -- think of this catastrophic development. Granted, Oklahoma has 66,084 too many state and local government employees when compared to the national average, but my guess is that taxpayers -- none of whom have lost their jobs recently -- will want to do everything possible to make sure government payrolls remain intact.

Even though a tax hike is pretty much a nonstarter in Oklahoma, all is not lost: Oklahoma law allows citizens to make voluntary contributions to state government. The statute (§60-383) says that "gifts of cash or the equivalent of cash shall be made to and receipted for by the Director of State Finance." So please, write the most generous check possible and send it to the Office of State Finance, 2300 N. Lincoln Boulevard, Room 122, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma 73105.

Together, we can make a difference.

Happy 70th Birthday, Dad

'They Make Idols for Themselves to Their Own Destruction'

Your Tax Dollars at Work

Last night NewsChannel 4 reported on "Taxpayer Trinkets," miscellaneous gewgaws that Oklahoma bureaucrats see fit to purchase. But as I pointed out to reporter Lance West, the money for these items doesn't appear out of thin air.

Ed in the Sand

Is it possible, I asked yesterday in The Oklahoman, that the monopoly school system is insulating itself from unpleasant facts?

'To Fundamentally Transform the United States of America'

"How dare the Republicans proffer this déclassée piece of Wasilla trailer trash whose only claim to fame was that she didn't exercise her right to choose?" David Kahane writes ("I Still Hate You, Sarah Palin").

Where were her degrees from Smith or Barnard, her internships at PETA, the Brookings Institution, or the Young Pioneers? We were also outraged that the Stupid Party had just nominated a completely unqualified candidate nobody had ever heard of, a first-term governor of Alaska whose previous experience consisted of a small-town mayoralty. As opposed to our guy, Barry Soetoro of Mombasa, Djakarta, and Honolulu, a first-term senator nobody had ever heard of, whose previous experience had been as a state senator (D., Daley Machine) in Illinois.

"Maybe now you're beginning to understand the high-stakes game we're playing here," Kahane continues.

This ain't John McCain's logrolling senatorial club any more. This is a deadly serious attempt to realize the vision of the 1960s and to fundamentally transform the United States of America. This is the fusion of Communist dogma, high ideals, gangster tactics, and a stunning amount of self-loathing. For the first time in history, the patrician class is deliberately selling its own country down the river just to prove a point: that, yes, we can! This country stinks and we won’t be happy until we've forced you to admit it.

In other words, stop thinking of the Democratic Party as merely a political party, because it's much more than that. We're not just the party of slavery, segregation, secularism, and sedition. Not just the party of Aaron Burr, Boss Tweed, Richard J. Croker, Bull Connor, Chris Dodd, Richard Daley, Bill Ayers, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, and Emperor Barack Hussein Obama II. Not just the party of Kendall "Agent 202" Myers, the State Department official recruited as a Cuban spy along with his wife during the Carter administration. Rather, think of the Democratic Party as what it really is: a criminal organization masquerading as a political party.

I Beg Your Pardon, Kind Sir, But My Paternity Is Impeccable

National Education Association general counsel Bob Chanin addressed the NEA Representative Assembly last week. He asked, to raucous applause from your children's schoolteachers, "Why are these conservative and right-wing bastards picking on NEA and its affiliates?"

One Way to Help Special-Needs Students

The Edmond Sun's Patty Miller reports on the new school-choice idea unveiled by the Friedman Foundation and OCPA. Final graf:

"Tax-credit programs provide a much more efficient mechanism to direct dollars to education than increasing state aid," said Brandon Dutcher, OCPA's vice president for policy and an Edmond resident. "But more importantly, the kind of program we are talking about here increases parental satisfaction and reduces the inherent conflicts and confrontations that play out countless times each year between parents of special-needs students and public school districts."

Whoa Canada!

The lad appears to be enjoying himself north of the border.

'Let's Do It. Let's Start Our Own Country.'

Before there was Rufus Fears, there was this gentleman. Not a bad way to tell a child about Independence Day.

Tulsa Pics

More Choices for Special-Needs Children

School choice could help special-needs students while saving money for taxpayers, according to a new study published by the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice and OCPA (press release here).

At a state capitol press conference on Tuesday, OCPA and Friedman were joined by three state legislators who are extremely knowledgeable and passionate about this issue: Rep. Jabar Shumate (D-Tulsa), Sen. John Ford (R-Bartlesville), and Sen. Clark Jolley (R-Edmond). The OETA report is posted above. The News9 coverage is here. The Oklahoman's story is here, and the KOSU podcast should be posted soon. And our good friends at the Tulsa World, God love 'em, chose the benign headline "Scholarship program idea assailed as voucher scheme" to frame their reportage of the issue.

The World quoted the president of the state's most powerful labor union as saying, "Oklahoma families don't want voucher schemes." But the funny thing is that, umm, they actually do. A recent scientific survey of 1,200 likely Oklahoma voters made that clear. And it's small wonder: when asked simply "what type of school would you select in order to obtain the best education for your child?" a mere 17 percent said they would choose a regular public school. That's not a misprint. A full 83 percent would choose something else.

Tick, tick, tick. A sea change is coming at 23rd and Lincoln, and I think the unions sense it. And if all they can do is keep their heads in the sand, mindlessly reciting their talking points, choice will get here sooner rather than later.

Is the Honeymoon Over?

Just a Pound and a Half This Morning ...

... but lookin' good.