Rotundus.com

To save the lives of more unborn Americans we should see how our pro-life predecessors succeeded in the past—and by the past I don't mean only the past three decades but the past two centuries. It's conventional to think of the abortion horror as a product of the Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, but research I've done at the Library of Congress shows that abortion on the eve of the Civil War was more frequent, in proportion to the U.S. population, than it is now.

You have not just read a misprint. Roughly 160,000 abortions occurred in 1860 in a population of 30 million. Probably about 1.2 million abortions (13 percent of them through RU-486) occurred last year in a population estimated at around 307 million. The horrific current number is obviously no cause for self-congratulation, but reputable forecasters at the time of Roe v. Wade were predicting a butcher's bill of more than 4 million abortions annually by now.

With everything we're doing wrong, are we doing something right to fall far short of that 4 million prediction, and to have witnessed a decline during the past decade from 1.6 million to 1.2 million? I believe we are, and not for the first time in American history: The number of abortions in America, in proportion to the population, declined by at least 50 percent during the 50 years from 1860 to 1910. How did that happen? And is the current decline likely to continue?

Excerpted from: World Magazine

Mike Wittmer summarizes the article up fairly well, arguing that "The number one cause for the decrease in abortions was churches and Christian organizations who educated and cared for pregnant women and their babies" and that "while laws against abortion were not the main focus of the 19th century prolife movement, yet they did assist in the effort."

I've been in church that are rather particular about dress, but thankfully stuff like this generally doesn't happen:

Baltimore police say a 58-year-old man stabbed his teenage son who refused to take off his hat at church earlier in the day.

Excerpted from myfoxdc.com

One study, for example, argues that quite a lot of money is used to subsidize driving. It comes up with a figure of 5.6 cents per mile from general revenue after removing from consideration taxes gathered expressly for that purpose.

The New York Times also crunched some numbers, coming up with a higher subsidy even when ignoring some of the factors included in the above study. Here's a brief excerpt of what it had to say:

What are the negative externalities of driving? To name just three: congestion, carbon emissions and traffic accidents. Every time Arthur gets in a car, it becomes more likely that Zelda — and millions of others — will suffer in each of those areas.

Which of these externalities is the most costly to U.S. society? According to current estimates, carbon emissions from driving impose a societal cost of about $20 billion a year. That sounds like an awful lot until you consider congestion: a Texas Transportation Institute study found that wasted fuel and lost productivity due to congestion cost us $78 billion a year. The damage to people and property from auto accidents, meanwhile, is by far the worst. In a 2006 paper, the economists Aaron Edlin and Pinar Karaca-Mandic argued that accidents impose a true unpaid cost of about $220 billion a year. (And that’s even though the accident rate has fallen significantly over the past 10 years, from 2.72 accidents per million miles driven to 1.98 per million; overall miles driven, however, keep rising.) So, with roughly three trillion miles driven each year producing more than $300 billion in externality costs, drivers should probably be taxed at least an extra 10 cents per mile if we want them to pay the full societal cost of their driving.

[William Shatner, t]he 'Star Trek' actor, who played Captain Kirk in the hit sci-fi TV show, is planning to make a dramatic career change and help lead his native country.

The 77-year-old star said: "My intention is to be Prime Minister of Canada, not Governor General, which is mainly a ceremonial position."

Source: Stuff.co.nz