Scrolling around...May 30, 2013

Expert discovers ancient Torah scroll in plain sight
An Italian expert in Hebrew manuscripts said Wednesday he had discovered the oldest known complete Torah scroll, a sheepskin document dating from 1155-1225. It was right under his nose, in the University of Bologna library, where it had been mistakenly catalogued a century ago as dating from the 17th century.

The find isn't the oldest Torah text in the world: the Leningrad and the Aleppo bibles - both of them Hebrew codexes, or books - pre-date the Bologna scroll by more than 200 years. But this is the oldest Torah scroll of the Pentateuch, the five books of Moses, according to Mauro Perani, a professor of Hebrew in the University of Bologna's cultural heritage department...

72,600,000: Record Number on Medicaid in 2012; Outnumbers Populations of France and UK
...In fiscal 2008, the last full year before President Barack Obama took office, there were 58,794,000 Medicaid enrollees. Since then, Medicaid enrollment has expanded by more than 23 percent...

Anti-Christian Discrimination in Europe
A recently released report by the Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination against Christians (a nonprofit group based in Austria) supplements and confirms Paul Coleman’s article in our June/July issue about discrimination against Christians in Europe....

Evolution and the Eye Test
...Darwin is clearly aware—and bothered by the fact—that his theory of evolution through natural selection is not only unsupported by, but actually contradicts, the reports given to us through our senses, as well as the “common sense” we gain from these reports over time. So he argues, in response, that this common sense is founded on mere “imagination” rather than “reason,” and with a Kantian determination he asks that we repress our “empirical” impressions in favor of our abstract theoretical convictions.

Yet why, we can ask, should we trust Darwin’s theory more than our own eyes? As persuasively as this theory explains many phenomena of nature and archeological discoveries, is its acceptance worth having to admit that the world is actually nothing like our experience of it? If a theory that the earth rests on the shell of a giant sea turtle explained enough phenomena, would it similarly command our assent?...

List of churches cutting ties with Boy Scouts

Cross-Dressing Day Causes Stir at Milwaukee Elementary School
A Milwaukee, Wis., elementary school has come under fire from parents for encouraging children as young as five years old to cross-dress in celebration of an event billed "Gender-Bender Day" at the school last Friday...

Planned Parenthood Nurses to Testify About “Ridiculously Filthy” Abortion Clinic
Joyce Vasikonis and Jayne Mitchell-Werbrich will testify before the Delaware state Senate to recount the unsafe, unsanitary conditions which led them to quit their jobs. Last month, the women told WPVI-TV ABC News of the “meat-market style of assembly-line abortions” occurring inside the clinic.

More Gosnell horror: pro-life speech law would allow gov’t to regulate speech of pregnancy resource centers   “The bill itself acknowledges that the commission has no authority to regulate the free speech of local non-profits. But the lawmakers who sponsored this bill want to order the commission to do so anyway in their brazen attempt to harm the efforts of pro-life charitable organizations.”
Gosnell Staffer Who Snipped Neck of Baby Struggling in Toilet Released on Probation

FBI Targets Pregnancy Center That Saved 42,000 Babies From Abortions
“President Obama has put the FBI on me, and they have politely invited me to headquarters to “talk” this week,” he said. “Domestic terrorism agents have called me in to answer their questions this week, as they launch an absurd case to intimidate us.”

New York attorney general subpoenas crisis pregnancy center leader
...Not only is the state trying to get women away from pregnancy centers, but it's trying to keep protesters away from abortionists. EMC maintains a mobile ultrasound unit outside a South Bronx abortion facility. Also “coincidental with the attorney general subpoena,” Slattery said the NYPD chose to “post one to three armed New York City police officers there, in addition to one to three security guards that they already have.”...

House bill responds to Gosnell horror by attacking pro-life speech
Proposed law would allow federal gov’t to regulate speech of pregnancy resource centers...