Good Riddance to 2013

"Put simply, most Americans are happy to see 2013 go," reports the latest Economist/YouGov poll:  69% consider 2013 a "bad year" (15% 'very bad'; 54% 'bad'); 31% a "good year" (3% 'very good'; 29% 'good').

USA Today writes that people "aren't reluctant to wave goodby on New Year's Eve, a new AP-Times Square poll says, reflecting anxiety stretching from the corridors of power in Washing to corporate boardrooms, statehouses, and city and town halls. ... All told, 32% say 2013 was a better year for them than 2012, while 20% say it was worse and 46% say the tow years were really about the same."

Top-10-Lists, from movies to the Middle East

A roundup of the top 10 "Top 10 Lists" by Scott Johnson at Powerlineblog:

I thought readers might appreciate a sampling of the best, with only a little cheating on my part. Let’s take it from the top:

1. Ilya Shapiro Obama’s top 10 constitutional violations of 2013.

2. Peter Wood, The highs and lows of 2013: NAS picks higher ed’s top 10 stories.

3. D.G. Myers, 10 worst prize-winning American novels of all time.

4. David Swindle, Top 10 conservative columnists of 2013.

5. Kyle Smith Top 10 conservative books of 2013.

6. Jason Gay, Top 10 sports list for 2013 [subscription required].

7. Lee Smith, Middle East winners and losers 2013.

8. Dave Wiegand, Top 10 TV shows of 2013.

9. A.O. Scott, Top 10 movies of 2013.

10. Time staff, Top 10 everything of 2013.

What Conservatives Learned in 2013

Conservatives "thought that the most efficient method to evangelize the unconverted was to write and speak, exhorting those still shrouded in darkness to read conservatism's most light-shedding texts," writes George Will. "Now they know that a quicker, surer way is to have progressives wield power for a few years."

Will skips lightly through a few key debacles in liberal-progressives' rule over the last 75 years or so to remind readers that this isn't the first time they've been bitten by their arrogant overreach. His modern day examples—from Obamacare's Pajama Boy to Al Gore's global warming predictions—should bring a smile. Yet his point is serious and even uplifting:

Worries about the NSA's collection of metadata occurred in a context of deepened suspicions about government because of this year's revelations that the administration has corrupted the Internal Revenue Service, the most intrusive and potentially the most punitive domestic institution. Conservatism is usually served by weariness of government.

Stephens: Obama's Envy Problem

"As he came to the end of his awful year Barack Obama gave an awful speech," writes Bret Stephens at the Wall Street Journal. "The president thinks America has inequality issues. What it has—what he has—is an envy problem."

In 1835 Alexis de Tocqueville noticed what might be called the paradox of equality: As social conditions become more equal, the more people resent the inequalities that remain.

"Democratic institutions awaken and foster a passion for equality which they can never entirely satisfy," Tocqueville wrote. "This complete equality eludes the grasp of the people at the very moment they think they have grasped it . . . the people are excited in the pursuit of an advantage, which is more precious because it is not sufficiently remote to be unknown or sufficiently near to be enjoyed."

One result: "Democratic institutions strongly tend to promote the feeling of envy." Another: "A depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom."

That is the background by which the current hand-wringing over inequality must be judged. Inequality is not a problem simply because the rich get richer faster than the poor get richer. It's a problem only when the rich get richer at the expense of the poor [emphasis added].

Stephens argues that Mr. Obama's numbers (comparing present-day income with that of 1979) are simply wrong:

What Comes After Obamacare Fails

"The unraveling of the Affordable Care Act presents a historic opportunity for change," writes John H. Cochrane. "Its proponents call it 'settled law', but as Prohibition taught us, not even a constitutional amendment is settled law—if it is dysfunctional enough, and if Americans can see a clear alternative."

The Affordable Care bets ... that more regulation, price controls, effectiveness panels, and "accountable care" organizations will force efficiency, innovation, quality and service from the top down. Has this ever worked? Did we get smartphones by government pressure on the 1960s AT&T phone monopoly? Did effectiveness panels force United Airlines and American Airlines to cut costs, and push TWA and Pan Am out of business? Did the post office invent FedEx,UPS and email? How about public schools or the last 20 or more health-care "cost control" ideas?

Cochrane argues that the clear alternative is a free market solution in which health insurance is:

Killer Drones & Spying on Americans

The seriousness of law professor Jonathan Turley, followed by the humor of Jon Steward. Hurley argues that, with respect to using drones abroad for targeted killing purposes, "President Barrack Obama is at war with the rule of law." Steward "busts Obama on his lies about surveillance."

New 2014 Obamacare Taxes and Fees

"The cost of President Obama’s massive health-care law will hit Americans in 2014 as new taxes pile up on their insurance premiums and on their income-tax bills," reports the New York Post. "Most insurers aren’t advertising the ObamaCare taxes that are added on to premiums, opting instead to discretely pass them on to customers while quietly lobbying lawmakers for a break."

Among the new taxes and fees:

• a 2% levy on every health plan, which is expected to net about $8 billion for the government in 2014 and increase to $14.3 billion in 2018.
• a $2 fee per policy that goes to a fund called the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute.
• a 3.5% user fee paid by insurance companies to sell medical plans on the HealthCare.gov web site.
• a 2.3% medical-device tax that will inflate the cost of items such as pacemakers, stents, and prosthetic limbs.
• a 0.9% increase on the 1.45 percent Medicare payroll tax for single earners of $200,000 and families over $250,000, as well as an extra 3.8% Medicare tax on unearned income such as investment dividends, rental income and capital gains.

The 'No Names-Just Metadata' NSA Lie

"In defending the NSA's telephony metadata collection efforts, government officials have repeatedly resorted to one seemingly significant detail: This is just metadata—numbers dialed, lengths of calls," writes the Atlantic. "No names; just metadata. New research from Stanford demonstrates the silliness of that distinction. Armed with very sparse metadata, Jonathan Mayer and Patrick Mutchler found it easy—trivially so—to figure out the identity of a caller."

They write:

We randomly sampled 5,000 numbers from our crowdsourced MetaPhone dataset and queried the Yelp, Google Places, and Facebook directories. With little marginal effort and just those three sources—all free and public—we matched 1,356 (27.1%) of the numbers. Specifically, there were 378 hits (7.6%) on Yelp, 684 (13.7%) on Google Places, and 618 (12.3%) on Facebook.

What about if an organization were willing to put in some manpower? To conservatively approximate human analysis, we randomly sampled 100 numbers from our dataset, then ran Google searches on each. In under an hour, we were able to associate an individual or a business with 60 of the 100 numbers. When we added in our three initial sources, we were up to 73.

How about if money were no object? We don’t have the budget or credentials to access a premium data aggregator, so we ran our 100 numbers with Intelius, a cheap consumer-oriented service. 74 matched.¹ Between Intelius, Google search, and our three initial sources, we associated a name with 91 of the 100 numbers.

Their results weren't perfect (and they note that the Intelius data was particularly spotty), but they didn't even try all that hard. "If a few academic researchers can get this far this quickly, it’s difficult to believe the NSA would have any trouble identifying the overwhelming majority of American phone numbers," they conclude.

It's also difficult to believe they wouldn't try. As federal district judge Richard Leon wrote in his decision last week, "There is also nothing stopping the Government from skipping the [National Security Letter] step altogether and using public databases or any of its other vast resources to match phone numbers with subscribers."

Obama's Top 10 Constitutional Violations in 2013

"It was hard to limit myself to 10 items," writes Ilya Shapiro, editor-in-chief of the Cato Supreme Court Review, "but these, in my judgment, represent the chief executive’s biggest dereliction this year of his duty to 'preserve, protect, and defend' the Constitution, and to 'take care that the law be faithfully executed':”

1. Delay of Obamacare's Out-of-Pocket Caps. The Labor Department announced in February that it was delaying for a year the part of the health care law that limits how much people have to spend on their own insurance.
2. Delay of Obamacare's Employer Mandate. Delayed requirement that employers of at least 540 people provide complying insurance or pay a fine.
3. Delay of Obamacare's Insurance Requirements. Following millions of insurance cancellations, delayed requirement that people purchase Obamacare-approved insurance plans.
4. Exemption of Congress from Obamacare. The requirement that Congressmen and their staff get insurance on Obamacare exchanges was quietly 'reinterpreted' in August to allow Washington elite to maintain their generous congressional benefits instead.
5. Expansion of the Employer Mandate Penalty Through IRS Regulation. The law has no penalties for employers in states that don't set up health care exchanges, but so many states refused to create health care exchanges that IRS rewrote regulations to impose penalties on employers in non-participating states anyway.
6. Political Profiling by the IRS. IRS continued to target tax-exempt organizations (begun in 2010) that referenced any of the following in their missions:  Tea Party, Patriots, Israel, government spending, debt, taxes, Constitution, and Obamacare.
7. Outlandish Supreme Court Arguments. Between January 2012 and June 2013, the Supreme Court unanimously rejected the Justice Department's extreme positions 9 times in cases ranging from criminal procedure to property rights, religious liberty to immigration, securities regulation to tax law.
8. Recess Appointments. Obama appointed three members of the National Labor Relations Board, as well as the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, while Senate was in session.
9. Assault on Free Speech and Due Process on College Campuses. The Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights created a national 'blueprint' for tackling sexual harassment that urges a crackdown on 'unwelcome' speech and requires complaints to be heard in quasi-judicial procedures that deny legal representation, encourage punishment before trail, and convict based on a mere "more likely than not" standard.
10. Mini-DREAM Act. President Obama, contradicting his own previous statements claiming to lack authority, directed the Department of Homeland Security to issue work and residence permits to the so-called Dreamers.

Merry Christmas!

Oh, joy! Feminists Shellacked!

Camille Paglia aims a broadside at the feminist culture in a thoroughly enjoyable piece, It's a Man's World, and It Will Always Be!

A peevish, grudging rancor against men has been one of the most unpalatable and unjust features of second- and third-wave feminism. Men’s faults, failings and foibles have been seized on and magnified into gruesome bills of indictment. Ideologue professors at our leading universities indoctrinate impressionable undergraduates with carelessly fact-free theories alleging that gender is an arbitrary, oppressive fiction with no basis in biology. [snip]

When an educated culture routinely denigrates masculinity and manhood, then women will be perpetually stuck with boys, who have no incentive to mature or to honor their commitments. And without strong men as models to either embrace or (for dissident lesbians) to resist, women will never attain a centered and profound sense of themselves as women.

Paglia argues that ...

• "[M]any ambitious professional women" in other nations "seem to have found a formula for asserting power and authority in the workplace while still projecting sexual allure and even glamour. This is the true feminine mystique, which cannot be taught but flows from an instinctive recognition of sexual differences."
• "[M]en are absolutely indispensable right now, invisible as it is to most feminists, who seem blind to the infrastructure that makes their own work lives possible. It is overwhelmingly men who do the dirty, dangerous work of building roads, pouring concrete, laying bricks, tarring roofs, hanging electric wires, excavating natural gas and sewage lines, cutting and clearing trees, and bulldozing the landscape for housing developments. It is men who heft and weld the giant steel beams that frame our office buildings, and it is men who do the hair-raising work of insetting and sealing the finely tempered plate-glass windows of skyscrapers 50 stories tall."
• The modern economy's "is a male epic, in which women have found a productive role — but women were not its author. Surely, modern women are strong enough now to give credit where credit is due!"

Read and enjoy her full article at Time magazine.

Contraception Mandate Struck Down

"Yesterday, Judge Brian Cogan of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, not only struck down Obamacare's contraception mandate as applied to religious non-profit organizations, but also sent a strong signal that federal courts were losing patience with President Obama's many stitches of executive power," writes Conn Carroll.

Previous courts had ruled against President Obama's contraception mandate as applied to for-profit entities (see Sebelius v Hobby Lobby), but this was the first court to hold that participating in Obama's scheme to provide free birth control is a substantial burden on the free practice of religion (specifically the Catholic Archdiocese of New York and its affiliate organizations).

The contraception mandate "directly compels plaintiffs, through the threat of onerous penalties, to undertake actions that their religion forbids," Cogan wrote. "There is no way that a court can, or should, determine that a coerced violation of conscience is of insufficient quantum to merit constitutional protection."

The court "forcefully rejected three key Obama defenses of the mandate:"

• that there was a compelling interest in uniform enforcement of the contraception mandate;
• that Obamacare's contraception mandate, as implemented for religious organizations, id not, in face, mandate contraception; and
• that Obama's failure to convince Congress to "fix" Obamacare authorized him to enforce his contraception mandate in the manner he did.

Read more in Federal Judge Calls Obamacare "Totally Ineffective" While Striking Down Contraception Mandate.

Is Pope Francis Promoting Sin?

That's the gist of an article by Harvard School of Government professor Lant Pritchett, and his thought-provoking argument will resonate with many conservatives and make a few liberals angry.

By dwelling on inequality, the pope is promoting envy. The Catholic Church, I had always understood, disapproves of envy, deeming it one of the seven deadly sins. I would have expected Francis to urge people to think of themselves in relation to God and to their own fullest potential. Encouraging people to measure themselves against others only leads to grief. Resenting the success of others is a sin in itself.

Pritchett cites chapter and verse to buttress his argument on the sin of envy, among them references to Cain and Abel, the Ten Commandments, and Annanias and Sapphira. The self-described "full-time preacher of economics" continues:

I am all for reducing poverty. I’ve spent most of my career working on that issue. I’m all for economic growth that’s inclusive and that raises the productivity and incomes of the poorest. I’m for social justice and attacking inequities. I’m against the privilege and corruption that denies opportunities to others. I am all for fairness, not least in economic affairs, and for state intervention when necessary to serve that purpose.

What I’m against is talking about “inequality” as if that term denoted any of those concerns. Poverty matters; injustice matters. Mere inequality is beside the point. [snip]

It’s argued most wealth ... comes not from creating value in a competitive market but from abuse of power, manipulation of markets or the entrenched advantages of inherited wealth. A lot of wealth surely does arise in that way. But this isn’t an argument against my point; it’s precisely my point. When we complain about inequality in the abstract we aren’t thinking about what is or isn’t fair or just or equitable. Those distinctions turn on the process that caused the inequality. So let’s stop talking about inequality and talk directly about the things we ought to care about: absolute deprivation, abusive power, rigged markets and unearned privilege.

Read his full article, Why is Pope Francis Promoting Sin?

Women Wrong to Think Workplace Unfair

So argues Naomi Schaefer Riley:

No matter how well women are doing relative to men, it doesn’t matter. They’re still the victims of discrimination — or so they think.

This, when women today earn more college degrees and advanced degrees than men, and have lower rates of unemployment. How are the decks are still stacked against them?

The new Pew Social Trends survey reports that “Millennial women . . . are just as likely as older generations to believe that women face an uphill climb in terms of being treated equally by society and by employers.” Indeed, “Fully three-quarters of Millennial women compared with 57 percent of Millennial men say the country needs to do more in order to bring about workplace equality.”

On the other hand, Pew found that among workers between the ages of 25 and 34, women’s hourly wages are 93 percent of men’s. And Kay Hymowitz, author of “Manning Up: How the Rise of Women Has Turned Men Into Boys,” says that she suspects that gap would disappear completely were the data disaggregated between women who had children and women who did not. In fact, a 2010 study by Reach Advisors found that young, single, childless women earned more than their male counterparts in most metro US areas.

Having children clearly makes all the difference. Hymowitz says the “whole way the conversation is framed is wrong.” Feminists and policy makers, she notes, say that they want “absolute parity and that anything less represents real discrimination and injustice.” In fact, though, the lack of parity is largely the result of the choices so many women make for the sake of the next generation — working part time, taking time off to raise kids, asking for less demanding assignments, etc.

For instance, 34 percent of Millennial women told Pew they’re not interested in becoming a boss or a top manager, compared to only 25 percent of men. The reason seems obvious: Some of the Millennial women may already be parents, and many of the rest are still thinking about how to balance these issues down the line. [snip]

Maybe, but it’s the constant media drumbeat about supposed unfairness that’s making women think the decks are stacked against them at all. Consider, even though many women seem to believe the playing field isn’t level when it comes to wages and hiring, Pew finds that “relatively few working adults report these types of gender biases at their own workplace.”

In other words, the impression isn’t driven by what we actually experience, but by what we’re constantly told by others.

Read her full article, Women Think the Workplace is Unfair ... This is Why They're Wrong."

Real Unemployment Rate 11%

"The official unemployment rate has fallen to a five-year low of 7%," writes Ed Carson in Investor's Business Daily. "But put away the champagne. That gradual decline reflects a historic drop in labor force participation. Without that drop, joblessness would be 11.3%, holding at 11% or higher in every month but one in the last 50 months."

Obama 'Legalizes' IRS Abuse of Tea Party Groups

Attorney Cleta Mitchell, who represents several conservative organizations abused by the IRS, told attendees at the Institute's 2013 summer DC Intern Seminar:

I'm not surprised that the agents in the IRS decided it was completely appropriate to single out and target, terrorize, and harass conservative organizations. I think we will learn — because I've had enough conversations with conservative and tea party leaders around the country who were visited by the FBI ... I think it will come out at some point that the FBI classified the tea party groups as domestic terrorists, or at least were investigating them to see if they were domestic terrorists.

Yesterday, in an article titled IRS Targeting, Round Two, Kim Strassel @ Wall Street Journal wrote that the Obama "Treasury and IRS are back at it — this time in broad daylight."

In the media blackout of Thanksgiving week, the Treasury Department dumped a new proposal to govern the political activity of 501(c)(4) groups. The administration claims this rule is needed to clarify confusing tax laws. Hardly. The rule is the IRS's new targeting program—only this time systematic, more effective, and with the force of law.

That this rule was meant to crack down on the White House's political opponents was never in doubt. What is new is the growing concern by House Ways and Means Committee investigators that the regulation was reverse-engineered—designed to isolate and shut down the same tea party groups victimized in the first targeting round. Treasury appears to have combed through those tea party applications, compiled all the groups' main activities, and then restricted those activities in the new rule.

Flynn: Progressives Took Our Booze

Progressives have an unquenchable desire to rule other peoples' lives. Today it's Obamacare. Nearly 100 years ago, it was Prohibition; and that didn't turn out well for them either.

Eighty years ago today [Dec 5th], progressives woke up groggy after their fourteen-year bender in state-imposed sobriety.  ... In the throes of a throbbing political hangover, they blamed the disaster on everybody but themselves.

Progressives may remain oblivious to their boorish behavior when they crashed the party and stayed for 13 years, 10 months, 19 days, 17 hours, 32 minutes, and 30 seconds (surely parched Americans marked the days as though trapped on a desert island). But Americans need not indulge their collective amnesia on today’s anniversary.

Eight decades later, progressives, inebriated by the righteousness of their ideology, blame everyone else for the sins of their forefathers. Projecting one’s errors upon others ensures a repetition of those errors. This may not today manifest itself in relation to alcohol. But the crusading spirit to sterilize their fellow man of impurities — of tobacco and transfats, Big Gulps and Big Macs, and so many delights that make life worth living — surely remains.

Read Daniel J. Flynn's full article, Progressives Took Our Booze: 80 Years Ago Today Americans Took it Back, at the American Spectator.

We can only hope Obamacare goes down in equally glorious flames.

Progressives' Religious Fervor

With Obamacare, "the American people have had an unfiltered look at what progressive policy means to them, and they don't like it," writes Derek Hunter, adding "desperate times require desperate measures. Enter the religious appeal."

In a column reeking of desperation on par with a kid hoping for a unicorn under his Christmas tree, the Washington Post’s Ryan Cooper compiled a list of reasons “Why millennials will come around on Obamacare.” Aside from a desperate lack of understanding of health policy and how people work, the second reason Cooper lists stands out. He writes, “Going without health insurance is morally wrong.”

I’ll give you a minute to let that sink in.

But wait, writes Hunter (after citing two other recent examples of progressives' moral guilt-tripping**),

These are the same people who spent the better part of the last half-century proclaiming “government can’t legislate morality” on any issue remotely moral. [snip]

Harvard: Younger Millennials would "Throw Obama Out"

"The most startling finding of Harvard University's Institute of Politics [study]: A majority of Americans under age 25—the youngest millennials—would favor throwing Obama out of office," writes Ron Fournier @ National Journal.

Obama's support among Millennials has dropped to 41 percent, down 11 points in a year, according to Harvard's study of 2,089 Americans ages 18 to 29 conducted Oct. 30 through Nov. 11.  Younger MILs ages 18-24 are more critical than older MILs.

When asked if they would want to recall various elected officials, 45 percent of millennials said they would oust their member of Congress; 52 percent replied "all members of Congress" should go; and 47 percent said they would recall Obama. The recall-Obama figure was even higher among the youngest millennials, ages 18 to 24, at 52 percent.

This age group offers little support to Obamacare, the health care law that depends on youthful exuberance and financial support to succeed.

According to the poll, 57 percent of millennials disapprove of Obamacare, with 40 percent saying it will worsen their quality of care and a majority believing it will drive up costs. Only 18 percent say Obamacare will improve their care. Among 18-to-29-year-olds currently without health insurance, less than one-third say they're likely to enroll in the Obamacare exchanges.  [snip]

In addition to health care, domestic spying is an issue that puts Obama on the wrong side of the rising generation. While split on whether Edward Snowden is a "patriot" or a "traitor" for revealing Obama's surveillance programs, strong majorities of 18-to-29-year-olds oppose the government collecting information from social networks, Web-browsing histories, email, GPS locations, telephone calls, and text messages.

Fournier adds that the "results conform with a story I did this summer with the help of the Institute of Politics (The Outsiders: How Can Millennials Change Washington If They Hate It?), arguing that while Millennials are deeply committed to public service they don't see government as an efficient way to improve their lives or their communities."

The full Harvard study is here.

Health Care: Conservative Alternatives

Despite the Left's claim, conservative-leaning legislators have "introduced at least four comprehensive alternatives to Obamacare," argues Ashe Schow, and he lists them ... for the record.

The Patients' Choice Act, introduced on May 20, 2009, in the House by Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and in the Senate by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla. [Key features included: create a health care market through state-based exchanges, penalties for insurance companies that didn't accept patients with pre-existing conditions, and expand Health Savings Accounts.] There is no Congressional Budget Office score for this plan, so claims should be taken with a grain of salt, just as with Obamacare.

The Empowering Patients First Act that was introduced on July 30, 2009, by Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga, would first repeal Obamacare and replace it with a "patient-centered" solution that would provide tax incentives for purchasing health insurance, improve HSAs [Health Savings Accounts], allow health insurance pooling among individuals and small employers, allow insurance to be purchased across state lines [and more].  Again, there's no CBO score for this bill, but it's an alternative nonetheless.

The Patient OPTION Act was introduced on Aug. 1 by Rep. Paul Broun, R-GA., and would first repeal Obamacare and then focus on a patient-centered solution that would allow individuals to deduct all health care expenses, including insurance, increase contribution limits for HSAs, move Medicare to a "premium assistance program," allow for health insurance polling by small businesses [and more]. There is no CBO score for this bill either.

The American Health Care Reform Act was introduced on Sept. 18 by Rep. Phil Roe, R-Tenn., and would also fully repeal Obamacare. The law would then increase access to portable, affordable health insurance, expand federal support for state high-risk pools and cap premiums of those pools, allow people with pre-existing conditions to move between markets so long as they maintain continuous coverage, introduce tort reform [and more]. This bill does not have a CBO score either.

Liberals Facing a Tough 2014

Liberals are "praying that this weekend’s relaunch of the Obamacare Web site will save them from an electoral bloodbath in 2014. Their hopes are misplaced. Here are five numbers that suggest that public anger over Obamacare will only grow as Election Day 2014 approaches," writes Marc Thiessen in the Washington Post.

• 5.5 million - That is how many people the administration needs to sign up in just 23 days because Obamacare drove them out of their health-care plans.
• 50 million - That is how many Americans will be surprised to find their employer-based health plans dropped or substantially changed next year because of Obamacare.
• 53 - That is the percentage of Americans who now say that President Obama is not 'honest or trustworthy'.
• 12 - That is the number of Senate Democrats up for reelection in 2014 who are complicit in Obama's lie.
• 7 - That is the number of states with vulnerable Democratic-held senate seats that also have Republican governors.

Meta-Analysis: Abortion-Breast Cancer Linked

China's one-child policy has yielded a huge data base of information about the effects of abortion:  China has "an average 8.2 million pregnancy terminations ever year, and 40 abortions for ever 100 live births," writes Dr. Mary L. Davenport, immediate past president of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

In the US we are used to abortion advocates claiming that the risk of elective abortion is relatively trivial, and major medical organizations denying any link between abortion and breast cancer.

Now a powerful new study from China published last week by Yubei Huang and colleagues suggests otherwise. The article, a meta-analysis pooling 36 studies from 14 provinces in China, showed that abortion increased the risk of breast cancer by 44% with one abortion, and 76% and 89% with two and three abortions.

Huang's study shows an even stronger increase than the 30% higher risk found in the 1996 meta-analysis by Joel Brind and colleagues on abortion as an independent risk factor for breast cancer. The Brind meta-analysis, combining the results of 23 studies, gave a more complete view than any single study. But even though it was the most comprehensive study on the topic at the time, it was disregarded by establishment medical groups.

Dr. Davenport argues it is a "disgrace that a more honest discourse about difficult medical topics can be found inthe People's Republic of China than in the USA."

Chinese researchers and physicians are unencumbered by abortion politics, and do not cover up data showing long term effects of induced abortion, as do their US counterparts in governmental, professional and consumer organizations.

Full study available here.

Study: Men and Women's Brains Different

"Scientists have found that the female brain is 'hard-wired' to be better at multitasking," reports UK Daily Mail of a study involving MRI images of 949 young men and women's brains.

The researchers discovered that women have far better connections between the left and right sides of the brain, while men display more intense activity within the brain’s individual parts, especially in the cerebellum, which controls motor skills.

Men also have better connections between the front and back of the brain, giving them a better ability to quickly perceive information and use it immediately to carry out complex tasks.

This means they are better at things such as learning to swim or, as the old bone of contention has it, parking a car. Women are better at, for example, remembering a face, which means making connections between different parts of the brain. [snip]

The report said: ‘The results showed fundamental sex differences in the architecture of the human brain.

‘Male brains facilitate connectivity between perception and co-ordinated action, whereas female brains facilitate communication between analytical and intuitive processing modes.'

The images below show the brain mapping that occurred in men (upper set) and women (lower set):