Scrolling around...February 11, 2013

The Absentee Commander in Chief
The Defense secretary told the president that Americans in Benghazi were under attack.
Then: nothing.

Mother and Baby Killed By Notorious Maryland Abortionist
...Reports state that 29-year-old Jennifer McKenna Morbelli of New Rochelle, New York died on Thursday following complications from a botched abortion. Morbelli was 33 weeks pregnant with a baby girl that had been named Madison Leigh.

According to sidewalk counselors outside of abortionist LeRoy Carhart’s Germantown Reproductive Health Center in Maryland, Morbelli had traveled to the abortion facility the previous weekend for a late-term abortion. It is believed that the woman had been informed that her 8-month-old daughter suffered from fetal anomalies, and opted to end the child’s life. She traveled from New York to Maryland to have the procedure performed, with members of her family accompanying her...

A warning to college profs from a high school teacher
...If you, as a higher education professional, are concerned about the quality of students arriving at your institution, you have a responsibility to step up and speak out. You need to inform those creating the policies about the damage they are doing to our young people, and how they are undermining those institutions in which you labor to make a difference in the minds and the lives of the young people you teach as well as in the fields in which you do your research.

You should have a further selfish motivation. Those who have imposed the mindless and destructive patterns of misuse of tests to drive policy in K–12 education are already moving to impose it on higher education, at least in the case of the departments and schools of education that prepare teachers: they want to “rate” those departments by the test scores of the students taught by their graduates...

California lacks doctors to meet demand of national healthcare law  As the state moves to expand healthcare coverage to millions of Californians under President Obama's healthcare law, it faces a major obstacle: There aren't enough doctors to treat a crush of newly insured patients.

Some lawmakers want to fill the gap by redefining who can provide healthcare.

They are working on proposals that would allow physician assistants to treat more patients and nurse practitioners to set up independent practices. Pharmacists and optometrists could act as primary care providers, diagnosing and managing some chronic illnesses, such as diabetes and high-blood pressure...

China Eclipses U.S. as Biggest Trading Nation
China surpassed the U.S. to become the world’s biggest trading nation last year as measured by the sum of exports and imports of goods, official figures from both countries show...

Boy Scouts Flirt With Calamity
...In backing away from the proposed membership change, the Boy Scouts at least temporarily averted calamity. If the committee had rammed through the change in membership policy, it would have dealt a serious blow to the Boy Scouts of America on several fronts...

Boy Scouts of America and the dismantling of core values
...But it seems the BSA has confused delay and distance. Why? Perhaps because the very question up for debate is, “What are our core values?” If you no longer know what you believe, ethics can’t guide your decision-making...

Get the Federal Government Out of the Natural Gas Business
...Loris notes that the United States has more than a century’s worth of natural gas beneath its soil at current consumption rates. With more than 12 million Americans out of work, you would think that an economic boom like this would be welcomed—but once again, the federal government is standing in the way...