In Michigan a bill just hit the House floor that would ban all D&E abortions within the State. D&E abortions tear a living child apart limb from limb, when it is likely they can feel pain. D&E abortions are the most common abortions in the second trimester, although it is known that children can feel pain in the womb at 20 weeks, it is assumed they can feel as early as 12 weeks. 

Roe vs. Wade only legalized abortion, it never specified that all types of abortions had to be legal. Indeed SCOTUS has already ruled that banning Partial Birth Abortion (D&X) was constitutional, because it was not a ban on abortion itself. Therefore it is permissible to ban types of abortion. 

HB 4833 has now passed the Committee on Criminal Justice and is at the House floor.

To learn more click here.

During last week's GOP Debate, Marco Rubio stated that "welders make more money than philosophers." Many in the media took this as an opportunity to pounce on Rubio, pointing out that philosophy professors earn a higher mean wage than welders. While this is indeed true, it distracts from the point Rubio was attempting to make. For starters, it fails to take into account the vast difference in workforce size between welders and philosophy professors, and the fact that most philosophy majors don't go on to become professors in that field.

As Rubio said, vocational careers have largely been belittled by modern American society. Considering that many jobs for skilled workers offer comparable pay to those requiring bona fides from academia, this is incredibly unfortunate. Take my family's own industry, electrical construction, for example. Due to the shortage of available labor, you can find an electrician earning $80,000 a year relatively easily, and making upwards of six figures in a market such as Washington, DC is not unheard of.
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In short, you are a heck of a lot more likely to find work as a skilled tradesman than trying to become a professional chin scratcher--and that was the core point of Rubio's statement. In the words of Mike Rowe, "I don’t think we need fewer philosophers. I think we need more philosophers who can weld. Or better yet, more welders who can philosophize."

Yesterday, France became the target of one of the largest terrorist attacks in a Western nation since 9/11.  ISIS has claimed responsibility, and is threatening to continue the attacks.  In Washington, DC, policymakers are debating the best U.S. response. 

In response, social media has been flooded with profile pictures in the colors of the French flag, words of sympathy and solidarity for the French people, and "Pray for Paris" images. 

Even as I shared one of these pictures on our Facebook page, I realized how easy it is to click "share," write up a sympathetic post, and leave it at that.  Spreading awareness and showing sympathy is great, but one major step was left out of that sequence I just described.  Prayer.

Christians, take some time and pray for the people of Paris.  Pray for those who have lost loved ones, pray for those who were wounded in the attacks.  Pray that even in this time of sorrow, hearts in the City of Light would be turned to the Light of the World -- Jesus Christ.  Don't settle for just sharing a meme -- we can and we must plead the case of these people before the throne of our Lord.    

Pray for Paris.