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NewsVineA Good Night's Sleep
By Penna Dexter
In a nationwide survey of 1005 adults, Barna Research found that seven of ten adults, 71 percent, placed a good night's sleep at the top of a list of things they look forward to. Born again Christians were even more interested than non-believers in getting a good night of rest. We're tired and the study's director, George Barna, says it's our own fault. We're filling our schedules and failing to institute proper boundaries in our lives. We're busy because, "we have not learned to say 'no' to appealing opportunities."
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ShareToward European Health Care
By Penna Dexter
Right in the thick of the debate about establishing a federally controlled health care system in this country, my daughter, studying in Rome, ran smack into European health care. It started out not to be an emergency, but after a couple of days and several contacts with the system, it became one. Once they took the problem seriously and hospitalized her, she got wonderful care.
Health Care Overhaul vs. Seniors
By Penna Dexter
One of the realities permeating the health care debate is that the bulk of medical spending occurs in the last few years...sometimes the last few months....of people's lives. That's why the idea of government-run health care raises not-unreasonable fears of rationing, the dreaded death panels. We are on the threshold of a tidal wave of baby boomers entering their peak healthcare-consuming years. Medicare is already facing its own financial crisis. Proposed healthcare legislation funds itself, in part, by cutting Medicare further just as the boomers turn 65 and increase enrollment in the program by thirty percent.
ENDA vs Religious Liberty
By Penna Dexter
Could the United States government think of any more ways to control businesses in this country? It is already a major owner of over 600 financial institutions, two auto makers and an international insurance conglomerate. The leading proposals to overhaul health care and revamp energy consumption will place all kinds of mandates on businesses, costing them plenty. Planned changes in ta...
GAY DIVORCE WOULD UNDERMINE MARRIAGE
By Penna Dexter
Homosexual activists, fighting to attain legal same sex marriage, are creating an unlikely battleground: divorce courts. In the latest skirmish, a Dallas judge, Tena Callahan, has ruled that her court has jurisdiction to hear the "divorce" case of two men "married" in Massachusetts in 2006 and now living in Texas.
HANNAH GILES' IDEA
By Penna Dexter
The widely criticized community activist group, ACORN, has been a "tough nut to crack." Accusations of criminal activity including misuse of money, tax evasion and voter registration fraud have dogged the organization for years. ACORN tactics against banks, like street demonstrations and boycotts, aimed at lowering standards for home loans, were found to be a prime contributor to the subprime mort...
The University vs. Christian Belief
By Penna Dexter
My daughter, Alyson, took a semester away from her nominally Christian university to study abroad. Emails describing the first few days of classes had a common theme. "I'm the only conservative and they hate Christians." One professor says 'Jihad is tame compared to 13th century Christians.' There's the obligatory Sarah Palin bashing complete with sexual innuendo. Another prof was... "totally ripping on Columbus."
Revising Social Studies
By Penna Dexter
The state of Texas is in the midst of a mandatory, every-ten-year review of its social studies curriculum for public schools. This is important to the whole country because textbook publishers develop material based on their largest market, Texas.
FEMINISTS' STIMULUS SELFISHNESS
By Penna Dexter
The Stimulus Package was sold with promises of millions of "shovel ready" jobs. Americans envisioned men who had lost jobs in the construction industry getting work repairing roads, bridges, and the electrical grid. Even the skeptical were glad, at least, that long-needed highways and schools would be built. But not the feminist groups. They demanded that half the stimulus jobs b...
The Abortion Reporter
By Penna Dexter
The late August edition of Newsweek profiles someone they call "The Abortion Evangelist." Leroy Carhart of Omaha, Nebraska was a colleague and also a friend of notorious and recently-murdered late term abortionist George Tiller. The two were confidants. They'd call each other to discuss tough patients. Carhart says, "We became each other's therapists." In their line of work you'd need therapy.
Keep Taxpayer-Funded Abortion Out of Health Care
By Penna Dexter
A recent article in Advertising Age deals with the Obama Administration's push for health care reform. Writer Michael Bush begins this way: "For a president and an administration that seemed to play the PR and communications game better than almost any that preceded them, President Barack Obama and his staff appear to have lost control of the messaging in the health-care reform debate,...
HEALTH CARE REFORM WOULD FUND ABORTION
By Penna Dexter
CBS News Anchor Katie Couric asked President Obama last month whether he advocates federal funding of abortion in government-subsidized health care. The president answered that he'd "rather not wade into" the issue. He mentioned a "tradition" of excluding funding for abortions but did not say whether or not he supports that tradition. In recent days, his Administration created a website to debunk the opposition's arguments against current plans for health care reform. Notably missing from the site is any mention of the criticism that the plan will lead to federal funding of abortion.
Recession and Divorce
By Penna Dexter
A recent front page Wall Street Journal story is titled "What God Has Joined Together, Recession Makes Hard to Put Asunder." Writer Jennifer Levitz details the ways in which couples on the verge of divorce are coping with the fact that...they just can't afford to split. She reports that "many couples are delaying the decision to dissolve marriages" because they've run the numbers and t...
We Don't Need NICE Healthcare
By Penna Dexter
True believers in the proposition that nationalizing health care will save money seemed a bit shell-shocked recently by cost estimates from the Congressional Budget Office. Even as Congress reaches for ways to pay for the plan, defenders of quick action on health care inexplicably continue repeating the argument: "We've got to do this quickly to reduce costs for businesses and to speed the recover...
Abstinence Education Funding Should Be Restored
By Penna Dexter
Teenage girls in Greensboro, North Carolina are being offered a dollar a day for not getting pregnant. A group called College Bound Sisters was founded at the University of North Carolina by Hazel Brown, a maternity nurse. Each 12-to-18-year-old girl in the program is paid one dollar per day to remain pregnancy-free and attend weekly meetings. College Bound Sisters' participants pursue three goals...
Don't Weaken Don't Ask,Don't Tell
By Penna Dexter
Recently President Obama hosted a gathering of homosexual leaders in the East Room where previous presidents celebrated the National Day of Prayer. "Welcome to our White House," was his greeting to enthusiastic applause. The crowd got quieter as the president addressed his administration's lack of progress on the gay lobby's key demands. "There are unjust laws to overturn and unf...
LGBT Gains
By Penna Dexter
For years the homosexual community has celebrated Gay Pride during the month of June. This year, for the first time, there was an official presidential proclamation declaring June Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Pride Month. In his June 1st Proclamation, President Obama committed his Administration to aggressively support the top items on the homosexuals' wish list. Gay advocacy groups have publicly complained about the pace at which this administration has addressed their issues. In June, the president took some steps to remedy that situation.
Safeway's Health Plan
By Penna Dexter
As lawmakers debate healthcare in Washington D.C., businesses across America are wondering how the promised legislation will affect their bottom lines. One CEO is charging into the debate. He hopes that, rather than nationalize healthcare, Congress will consider what his company, Safeway Incorporated, has done to hold its per capita healthcare expenses flat over the past four years. This includes expenses for both employer and employee. During the same time period, these costs for corporate America as a whole have risen forty percent.
"Safe Schools" Czar
By Penna Dexter
One of President Obama's appointments needs to be discussed... with parental discretion advised. The president has tapped Kevin Jennings to be Assistant Deputy Secretary of the Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools. Jennings will operate as a sort of Safe Schools Czar. Safe for whom? In particular, for open homosexuals and transgendered students.
We Should Not Centralize Education
By Penna Dexter
Recently forty-six states and the District of Columbia announced an effort to establish common standards for what children should learn each year, from kindergarten through high school. This push towards a national yardstick is led by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers. Once the standards are agreed upon, participation is supposed to be voluntary. But for how long? Only the governors of Texas, Alaska, Missouri, and South Carolina have not signed on and three of these leaders are known skeptics of national mandates.
Defunding Planned Parenthood
By Penna Dexter
When the movie Juno received four Academy Award nominations and actually won the Oscar for best screenplay, former Planned Parenthood President Gloria Feldt was worried. In the film, Juno, a pregnant teenager, decides against an abortion partially due to her experience at an abortion clinic. Ms. Feldt admits, "The clinic in Juno is terrible." But, she adds: "It's a terribly untru...
Reshaping the Right
By Penna Dexter
The party switch by Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter is the latest development that has various politicians and party elites calling for a new Republican brand. That, they say, involves somehow reshaping and redefining conservatism. It can't be done. Conservatism is a philosophy and a way of living. Political image-shapers can take it or leave it. They can't change it. And they shouldn't. On the...
Hate Crimes Law Threatens Religious Speech
By Penna Dexter
Today two members of Congress and leaders of several Christian pro-family organizations are holding a press conference in Washington D.C. about a vote this week that could usher in a big chill on religious speech. I hope lots of media outlets cover it. (Christian news outlets like the Christian Post and some Christian radio shows are reporting on it. I was on a panel last Friday on Point of ...
After the Tea Parties
By Penna Dexter
AFTER THE TEA PARTIES
I went to one of those TEA Parties. You know: Taxed Enough Already. I showed up at an intersection near where I live. There was no program; no speakers. Just hundreds of people with homemade signs and flags. Lots of cars and trucks passed by, honking their enthusiasm. The rallies across the country on April 15th were not simply about taxes. They...
Iowa Marriage
By Penna Dexter
Proclaiming a "rainbow over Iowa, " Evan Wolfson, leader of the group Freedom to Marry says, "equality in marriage has come to America's heartland." No...marriage equality has existed in Iowa since before the first official American settlers moved there in 1833. All adults, gay and straight, are free to marry. Proponents of same sex marriage are attempting to change t...
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Penna Dexter is a mother, activist, and radio professional.
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