Twenty-Five Things That Caught My Eye: Iraq, Foster Care & More

1. Mainstream Media is Erasing Middle Eastern Christians 

2. ISIS never conquered Rome, but this month a Roman pontiff conquered Iraq

3. Biden’s COVID-19 Plan: Force Taxpayers To Pay For Abortions

4. Seven arrested for ‘torturing man with learning disabilities’

5. Rebecca Masterson: Our nation’s foster kids shouldn’t be invisible — here’s one thing that must happen now

6. Tulsi Gabbard compares cancel culture to terrorists

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8. Sally Satel & John F. Kelly: As Overdoses Reach New Highs, Messaging on Addiction Needs More Nuance

9. Linda Chavez: The Border Crises Won’t Stop Until Our Immigration System Is Fixed

10. Andrew Cuomo may get MeTooed, but please let us not forget this reason for him to resign existed already:

Reason: Cuomo’s Office Covered Up Nursing Home Death Toll Last Summer

When Cuomo finally released the data this year, he blamed the delay on concern that the Trump administration would play politics with the information. But according to the Times, “Cuomo and his aides actually began concealing the numbers months earlier, as his aides were battling their own top health officials, and well before requests for data arrived from federal authorities, according to documents and interviews with six people with direct knowledge of the discussions, who requested anonymity to describe the closed-door debates.”

Cuomo’s office told the Times this week that they excluded the data because they “could not confirm it had been adequately verified.”

11. Mary Hallan FioRito: Xavier Becerra is a poor choice for HHS secretary

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13. Archbishop Charles J. Chaput: Dulce et Decorum Est: In Defense of Healthy Patriotism

The things we’re willing to die for are tied to what we hold as sacred. In fact, the willingness to die for something also consecrates it as sacred. We need to entertain the possibility that love for our country might lead us to sacrifice greatly, even radically, in order to preserve the best that remains in it.

14. Rod Dreher: Why ‘When Harry Became Sally’ Matters

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16. Hans Boersma:

Lent is a good time to think about COVID-19. Both bring suffering. True, Christ’s passion on the cross infinitely exceeds the turmoil, hardship, and death of the pandemic. But Christ’s suffering is what allows us to make sense of our suffering, and there’s a direct tie between our response to COVID hardships and our reaction to the cross of Christ.

17.  Tim Keller: Growing My Faith in the Face of Death

18. Jason L. Riley: Why Did Amazon Cancel Justice Thomas?

“The spectrum of thought amongst African-Americans is and has always been much broader and multifarious than commonly perceived,” the black legal scholar Randall Kennedy wrote in a recent essay for Heterodox Academy. “Fervent debates about scores of subjects—indeed every imaginable subject—have roiled African-Americans ideologically: accommodation versus protest; interracial socialism versus black nationalism; Gandhian non-violence versus ‘by any means necessary,’ support for affirmative action versus detestation of ‘lowered standards,’ ‘integration’ versus ‘black power.’ ”

One reason for this misperception is Black History Month, whose emphasis is on celebrating the achievements of blacks who fit a liberal narrative while ignoring or minimizing the achievements of those who don’t. If you are a prominent black figure who has been more focused on black development than on black victimhood (Clarence Thomas, Shelby Steele, Robert Woodson ), or someone who is more interested in the results of a policy than in its intentions (Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams ), there is an attempt to write you out of black history. Wittingly or not, Amazon has used its power to abet this effort.

19.  National Coalition Against Censorship: Statement on Amazon’s Removal of ‘When Harry Became Sally’

While the book’s arguments anger many people, they are part of the public debate over gender identity.  Amazon’s decision to stop selling it threatens the marketplace of ideas.

. . .

Amazon is not like other booksellers.  It sells more than half of all print books and a significant share of e-books and audio books in the United States.  This gives the company an outsized role in shaping opinion and discourse.  When Amazon decides to remove a book, it matters not only to the author and their publisher, but to the entire public sphere.

20. Bradford Wilcox: Why parents need the flexibility of cash payments more than universal child care

Vox, by no means a conservative organ, summarized the policy’s ill effects this way: “Quebec gave all parents cheap day care — and their kids were worse off as a result.” To be clear, not every child care policy is designed equally. And Quebec’s program was explicit about raising the rate of mothers participating in the labor force. There are other programs that aim to give parents more options. That’s why some view cash payments, which allow for maximum flexibility (parents can simply spend the money on day care if they choose) as a better way forward than government incentives nudging parents into work rather than being with their kids.

21. Track Athlete Resists Being Forced to Compete Against Biological Males

Alanna Smith, a high school track athlete from Connecticut, has been forced to compete against biological males who say they identify as females. In her state, two biological males have won 15 championship titles in girls track, depriving Smith and other girls of medals, athletic opportunities, and potential scholarships.

Smith and three other female competitors in high school track are taking a stand for fairness in girls and women’s sports. They filed a federal lawsuit challenging the Connecticut policy that allows transgender students to compete in girls athletics.

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23. Leigh Stein in the New York Times: The Empty Religions of Instagram

24. Father Roger Landry: Start Acting More Like Christ — Even (and Especially) When Others Do Not

St. John the Apostle wrote to the early Christians, “Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer,” and added, “Anyone who says, ‘I love God,’ yet hates his brother, is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.” Dorothy Day had a harrowing saying based on these words: that we love the Lord to the extent that we love the person we like the least. Often, in the least of Jesus’ brethren, we treat him about as well as the Roman soldiers did on Good Friday.

25. Catholic Standard: Deaf priest begins serving as chaplain at Gallaudet University and ministering to Deaf Catholics in the Archdiocese of Washington