Last Friday the Supreme Court announced their acceptance of two cases related to same-sex marriage. Scholar Lyle Denniston of SCOTUSBlog anticipates that hearings for both cases will occur in March. Joe Carter of the Acton Institute breaks down the possible outcomes:

1. Overturn the 9th Circuit ruling and uphold Prop. 8. This outcome would leave the definition of marriage to the individual states and its voters.

2. Uphold the 9th Circuit ruling, but do so in a way that limits the ruling to California’s Prop. 8 legislation.

3. Dismiss the appeal on the grounds that the sponsors of Proposition. 8 had no legal standing to defend it in court. This outcome would prevent the Supreme Court from ruling on the merits of the case. It would also leave the outcome of the legislation unclear since it would also vacate the 9th Circuit’s ruling.

Continue Reading…

Daniel Henninger, reporting in the The Wall Street Journal:

“In an interview preceding the succession announcement, Sen. DeMint said he is taking the Heritage job because he sees it as a vehicle to popularize conservative ideas in a way that connects with a broader public. “This is an urgent time,” the senator said, “because we saw in the last election we were not able to communicate conservative ideas that win elections.” Mr. DeMint, who was a market researcher before he entered politics, said he plans to take the Heritage Foundation’s traditional research plus that of think tanks at the state level and “translate those policy papers into real-life demonstrations of things that work.” He said, “We want to figure out what works at the local and state level” and give those models national attention.”

Read the whole thing.

Dr. Albert Mohler interviews Dr. Charles Murray about his new book, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010. You can read, listen, or download the interview. The publisher’s description:

In Coming Apart, Charles Murray explores the formation of American classes that are different in kind from anything we have ever known, focusing on whites as a way of driving home the fact that the trends he describes do not break along lines of race or ethnicity.Drawing on five decades of statistics and research, Coming Apart demonstrates that a new upper class and a new lower class have diverged so far in core behaviors and values that they barely recognize their underlying American kinship—divergence that has nothing to do with income inequality and that has grown during good economic times and bad.

Continue Reading…

This looks like a very interesting new book. Sean Blanda sets up an interview with author Paul Tough:

From 1962 to 1967 researchers selected students with low-income and low-I.Q. parents at the Perry Preschool in Ypsilanti, Michigan and divided them into two groups. One group received a special high-quality education, while the control group used the school’s normal curriculum.

The students that received the high-quality education showed short-term gains in I.Q. but by the third grade, they were again even with the control group. The experiment was seen as failure – until the researchers followed back up with the students later in their lives. The students that received the high-quality education were more likely to graduate high school, more likely to be employed at age 27, and more likely have a salary over $40,000 at age 40. If the gains in I.Q. didn’t stick, then what happened to make the students more successful?

Continue Reading…