SO - WHAT DID REAGAN ACTUALLY ACCOMPLISH?

For story, see www.gerrycharlottephelps.com.

REAGAN VOTED 'GREATEST PRESIDENT'

But somehow in their article on his achievements, Discovery 'forgot' to mention his historic role in ending 45 years of the Cold war, mentioning only 'Reagonomics' and 'the Great Communicator.' Hmmm.

See story at www.gerrycharlottephelps.com.

WILL COURT DECISION POP HOUSING BUBBLE?

Thursday's Supreme Court's Kelo decision will lead to lower property prices all over the country.

For rest of story, visit www.gerrycharlottephelps.com.

COURT PUTS YOUR HOME AT RISK

Until yesterday, private property could be taken by eminent domain for public use only. Now it can be taken for private use as well.

For rest of story, see www.gerrycharlottephelps.com.

KARL ROVE - RESIGN? OR SHAKE HEAD?

Senator Dick Durbin had to apologize for comments comparing our Guantanamo military to guards at Hitler's death camps, the Soviet Gulag death camps and Pol Pot's death camps in Cambodia.

Now the Democrats are demanding apology or resignation from Karl Rove for criticizing U.S. liberals.

What's the difference? See rest of the story at www.gerrycharlottephelps.com.

IRAQ SAID TO BE MORE 'NORMAL' NOW

Karl Zinmeister, editor of The American Enterprise, was embedded in Iraq in 2003 and 2004. He just returned from another embedded tour April-May 2005, and said this in www.taemag.com:

"Contrary to the impression given by most newspaper headlines, the United States has won the day in Iraq...It will take some time, but Iraq has begun the process of becoming a normal country."

See rest of story at www.gerrycharlottephelps.com.

MUCH GOOD FLOWS FROM IRAQ WAR

Freedom has spread to at least three more countries because of it. Free countries will not attack us. Their freedom helps protect ours.

For story, see www.gerrycharlottephelps.com.

SENATOR DURBIN - DIG IN OR DIG OUT?

Looks like a big day in the Senate today. See article at my new blog, www.gerrycharlottephelps.com.

FATHERS ESSENTIAL FOR HEALTHY SOCIETY

There are few things in life that I appreciate more than seeing a good father with his children. Partly that is because it is a beautiful, heart-warming sight. And partly it is because my past work in getting some thousands of homeless families out of homelessness, and welfare families into jobs and out of dependency, taught me some radical things about how essential good dads are.

These facts are well-known to researchers in the Social Sciences. But there is great reluctance to use them, or talk about them, because the political implications point to the need to encourage and protect marriage much more strongly than we do now.

Here are those facts:
1. Fatherlessness is the most reliable predictor of poverty. (Most of the poor are never-married mothers and their children.)
2. Fatherlessness is also the most reliable predictor of violent crime. (70% of the most violent young offenders in our prisons are fatherless.)

These facts DO NOT mean that most fatherless children will be poor, much less be violent criminals. The fact is that most fatherless children have valiant single moms who will see to it that neither of these things happen. What they do mean is that most of the poor, and most violent criminals, will come out of the pool of fatherless children. That shows the value of fathers in stark terms. (For more facts on how fathers make societies better, and keep them from being worse, see today's article "Father is the Best" at NRO online here.)

But fathers do much more than keep their children from poverty and from a life of violent crime. For one thing, they supply the model their sons will imitate, and that their daughters will search for in choosing a husband. Daughters learn from good fathers to look for a man like them, who thinks they are precious and to be cherished, not exploited. Because of their dads, they also learn to respect men, and to choose a good man and appreciate him once they get him. Because they see their dads do so, sons learn to respect and appreciate women, and to protect women and children.

Through fathers' relationship with their wives, they model for their sons and daughters what a marriage is, and what a man's role is in it. By their support of, and protection for, their wives and children, they live out the highest teachings of a good society. And even without words - they may not use much of those - they teach by their actions. Their children learn from watching them, just as they learn from watehing TV and movies.

Thanks largely to radical feminism and the sexual revolution, fathers have become, not only an endangered species, but a group under attack. How sad! Fathers are more precious, more valuable than we ever knew before we lost so many of them. Hooray for fathers! Long may they live and prosper. And multiply.

POST MORTEM ON TERRI SCHIAVO

Recently an autopsy on Terri Schaivo showed irreversible brain damage, that she did not die of starvation, and there were no signs of abuse. Those facts are being used to give the impression that her defenders were wrong on the facts. But these are not the only facts of her case.

Of course she did not die of starvation: she died of thirst. That happens weeks before death from starvation, when someone is deprived of both water and food. Dehydration kills first.

The finding of no signs of abuse may have resulted because normal autopsies do not ordinarily include X-Rays. Claims of abuse arose from stories of friends of Terri, and also because almost an hour elapsed between her collapse and the phone call to ER. Most of all, they came from X-Rays taken 18 months after her collapse, showing healed fractures in many bones. She had never been known to have bone fractures before then, opening the possibility that the fractures resulted from a beating on the day of her collapse. Also, at least one MD who saw her noted that when she was admitted to the hospital, she had the kind of extremely stiff and rigid neck typical of someone who had been strangled - another possible cause of the lack of air that caused her brain damage. The fact that the autopsy showed no abuse did not show that there was no abuse.

The autopsy did not address at all the main issues of her case. As former federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy writes today here, those questions were not answered by the autopsy. Today's short editorial in National Review Online sums up those unanswered issues here. Money quote below:

"About the main arguments against killing Terri Schiavo, the autopsy had nothing to say. Many people believed that it is wrong deliberately to bring about the death of innocent human beings, whatever their condition; that it is especially wrong when there is doubt about what that person wanted, and when her family members are willing to provide care for her; that Mr. Schiavo was too compromised to make this decision; that a law enabling the killing of people in a “persistent vegetative state” should not be stretched to cover people who might be “minimally conscious”; and that the Supreme Court should not have established the current lax standards for denying incapacitated people food and water. Nobody who believed these things has any reason to change his mind based on this week’s evidence. — The Editors"

We should not forget Terri. Her killing, and the reasons it disturbed a country so much, still needs to be addressed.