DOING THE RIGHT THING Week 2013 is a nation wide university initiative to focus on a discussion of the foundation of morality, how do we determine what is right and wrong, and what it means to live ethically. These are questions that every college student, indeed every person on the planet, must grapple with as the answers affect government, society, our families, and ourselves.
Monday:
SEPT. 30, 2013 | 6:30 PM EDT
TRUTH, JUSTICE, & THE RESTORATION OF REASON | GEORGIA TECH
DR. MICHAEL MILLER, Acton Institute
PHYSICAL LOCATION: Student Center Theater
Tuesday:
OCT. 1, 2013 | 8:00 PM EDT
SEXUALITY & MARRIAGE: WHAT’S ETHICS GOT TO DO WITH IT? | RUTGERS UNIVERSITY
KELLIE FIEDOREK, Alliance Defending Freedom | RYAN T. ANDERSON, Heritage Foundation
PHYSICAL LOCATION: Cook Campus Center Multipurpose Room
Wednesday:
OCT. 2, 2013 | 8:00PM EDT
The History of American Eugenics: Lessons for the Second Genetic Century | OHIO UNIVERSITY
DR. CHRISTOPHER HOOK, Mayo Clinic
PHYSICAL LOCATION: Baker University Center, Ballroom A (8 PM EDT)
Noon Panel Discussion:
OCT. 2, 2013 | 12:00PM EDT
Can We Safely and Successfully Re-Engineer Humanity?
DR. CHRISTOPHER HOOK, Mayo Clinic; Scott Carson, Professor of Philosophy, Ohio University; & Scott Robe, Attorney, Athens, Ohio; TIM SHARP , News Director of WOUB, will facilitate
PHYSICAL LOCATION: WOUB Studio A (Noon – 1:30 EDT)
Thursday:
OCT. 3, 2013 | 8:00PM EDT
DOES NATURAL LAW REQUIRE A MORAL LAW GIVER? | TEXAS A&M
DR. FRANCIS BECKWITH, Baylor University
PHYSICAL LOCATION: Rudder Theater
Friday:
OCT. 4, 2013 | 7:00PM EDT
DOING THE RIGHT THING AT THE BEGINNING OF LIFE | UC IRVINE
DR. SCOTT RAE, Biola University
PHYSICAL LOCATION: UCI Student Center, Pacific Ballroom C
Increasing Access to Portable, Affordable Health Insurance
Improving Access to Insurance for Vulnerable Americans
Encouraging a More Competitive Health Care Market
Reforming Medical Liability Law
Respecting Human Life
I am a big supporter of making healthcare more consumer driven and less expensive, and of not violating conscience rights of medical workers. Does this bill do any of these things?
Section 4 addresses the need to make health care consumer-driven:
Our bill would take steps toward creating a competitive health care marketplace. This legislation would take steps to address this problem by, most notably, allowing Americans to purchase health insurance products across state lines and by permitting small businesses to pool together to negotiate better rates.
Other pro-patient reforms include amending the McCarran-Ferguson Act to ensure that federal anti-trust law applies to health insurance, making Medicare claims and payment data publicly available so that patients and taxpayers alike can better understand what they are being charged, helping states develop transparency portals with useful information on insurance plans, and stopping the federal government from denying coverage for health care services based upon comparative effectiveness data.
Just like with any area of the free market, increasing competition among sellers reduces prices and increases quality.
Section 5 caps non-economic damages in medical liability lawsuits at $250,000:
This bill attempts to address the medical liability crisis that has played a role in the escalating cost of health care by implementing meaningful legal reforms that include caps on non- economic damages and limits to attorneys’ fees. These provisions set no caps on economic damages, which are often the largest component of liability awards, thus patients will continue to have their rights to economic damages protected.
Why didn’t Obamacare take that step? Because trial lawyers pressured them not to do it.
Section 6 should be of interest to anyone who believes in protecting the unborn:
Provides that nothing in this act requires health plans to provide coverage of abortion services, or permits any government official to require coverage of abortion. Prohibits federal funds authorized or appropriated by this act from covering abortion, except in the case of rape, incest, or when the life of the mother is jeopardized. Ensures that no state pro-life or conscience protection laws will be preempted.
Pro-abortion groups made sure that Obamacare would offer free condoms and free abortion-causing drugs. That needs to be fixed.
So that’s what health care reform would look like if Republicans did it. You can click here to find out more about the bill.
On this week’s edition of Washington Watch Weekly, I will be joined by veteran sportscaster, Craig James, who will tell us why he was sacked by Fox Sports and why he is fighting back, not only for himself, but for all Christians. The media continues to say that Republicans and Conservatives who are against Obamacare are ignoring the problems in our health care system and really don’t care about the uninsured. Short response: they’re wrong. Rep. Phil Roe (R-Tenn.) tells us why. Also, Tom Fitton with Judicial Watch tells us about the latest lawsuit against the Obama administration, who tries to say they are transparent. Well, this time, Tom and his team are suing the Pentagon over their relationship with the anti-Christian crusader, Mikey Weinstein.
Christians in the Middle East and Africa are being slaughtered, tortured, raped, kidnapped, beheaded, and forced to flee the birthplace of Christianity. One would think this horror might be consuming the pulpits and pews of American churches. Not so. The silence has been nearly deafening.
As Egypt’s Copts have battled the worst attacks on the Christian minority since the 14th century, the bad news for Christians in the region keeps coming. On Sunday, Taliban suicide bombers killed at least 85 worshippers at All Saints’ church, which has stood since 1883 in the city of Peshawar, Pakistan. Christians were also the target of Islamic fanatics in the attack on a shopping center in Nairobi, Kenya, this week that killed more than 70 people. The Associated Press reported that the Somali Islamic militant group al-Shabab “confirmed witness accounts that gunmen separated Muslims from other people and let the Muslims go free.” The captives were asked questions about Islam. If they couldn’t answer, they were shot.
In Syria, Christians are under attack by Islamist rebels and fear extinction if Bashar al-Assad falls. This month, rebels overran the historic Christian town of Maalula, where many of its inhabitants speak Aramaic, the language of Jesus. The AFP reported that a resident of Maalula called her fiancé’s cell and was told by member of the Free Syrian Army that they gave him a chance to convert to Islam and he refused. So they slit his throat.
Nina Shea, an international human-rights lawyer and expert on religious persecution,testified in 2011 before Congress regarding the fate of Iraqi Christians, two-thirds of whom have vanished from the country. They have either been murdered or fled in fear for their lives. Said Shea: “[I]n August 2004 … five churches were bombed in Baghdad and Mosul. On a single day in July 2009, seven churches were bombed in Baghdad … The archbishop of Mosul, was kidnapped and killed in early 2008. A bus convoy of Christian students were violently assaulted. Christians … have been raped, tortured, kidnapped, beheaded, and evicted from their homes …”
Well, we are pulling out of Iraq, so there is nothing we can do to protect anyone once we are gone.
Has anyone done anything about this?
Yet so many Western Christians are silent. In January, Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) penned a letter to 300 Catholic and Protestant leaders complaining about their lack of engagement. “Can you, as a leader in the church, help?” he wrote. “Are you pained by these accounts of persecution? Will you use your sphere of influence to raise the profile of this issue—be it through a sermon, writing or media interview?”
There have been far too few takers.
Wolf and Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-CA) sponsored legislation last year to create a special envoy at the State Department to advocate for religious minorities in the Middle East and South-Central Asia. It passed in the House overwhelmingly, but died in the Senate. Imagine the difference an outcry from constituents might have made. The legislation was reintroduced in January and again passed the House easily. It now sits in the Senate. According to the office of Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO), the sponsor of the bill there, there is no date set for it to be taken up.
Wolf has complained loudly of the State Department’s lack of attention to religious persecution, but is anybody listening? When American leaders meet with the Saudi government, where is the public outcry demanding they confront the Saudis for fomenting hatred of Christians, Jews, and even Muslim minorities through their propagandistic tracts and textbooks? In the debate on Syria, why has the fate of Christians and other religious minorities been almost completely ignored?
The House passed the bill, the Senate is blocking it. The House is controlled by Republicans, the Senate is controlled by Democrats. You might think that the United States would be concerned about Christians – there are so many of us who claim to be Christians. But not everyone who claims to be a Christian has thought about how foreign policy affects the lives of Christians in other countries. Sometimes, they are more concerned about empowering the government to steal from their neighbor and give it to them. It really is that simple.
WINTERY KNIGHT 