Pelosi's Tortured Chamber

In Speaker Nancy Pelosi's (D-Calif.) House, policymaking has given way to excuse-making. The chamber's top Democrat continues to bumble her way through the questions about what she did and did not know about the C.I.A.'s waterboarding practice. Earlier this month, Pelosi insisted that she was never briefed about the interrogation of suspected terrorist Abu Zubaydah, specifically that the C.I.A. "misled" her on their torture techniques.

Asked last week if she was accusing the C.I.A. of lying, Pelosi said, "Yes." The agency's new director, Leon Panetta, fired back with documents suggesting that the Speaker was "briefed truthfully" in 2002. Records also show that a Pelosi staffer was briefed again in 2003. "It is not our policy... to mislead Congress," said Panetta. "That is against our laws and our values."

In the days since Pelosi's disastrous press conference last Thursday, when she left the podium twice to try to get her facts straight, her selective memory loss seems to have abated long enough for the Speaker to concede that she did know more in 2003 than she let on. This matters for several reasons. First, as Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) points out, Speaker Pelosi is discrediting the brave men and women of the C.I.A. while Americans are fighting two wars. Secondly, she has called repeatedly for a "truth commission" to hash out whether the Bush administration was justified in torturing suspects. Obviously, this is problematic if she knew about the tactics years ago and did nothing to stop them.

Regardless of how it may damage her personally, Pelosi owes it to the C.I.A. and her country to set the record straight and apologize. As the second in line for the presidency, the American people need to know that they can trust her. If she refuses to share in the responsibility, then it's up to the House Ethics Committee to move quickly in launching its own "truth commission." Interestingly enough, Speaker Pelosi (despite her vow to "clean up Washington") continues to block the ethics investigations of her liberal colleagues. As this latest scandal suggests, Pelosi continues to be more preoccupied with political security than national security.

New Ice Cream Flavor

In honor of the 44th President of the United States, Baskin-Robbins Ice Cream has introduced a newFlavor: "Barocky Road. "Barocky Road is a blend of half vanilla, half chocolate, and surrounded by nuts and flakes.The vanilla portion of the mix is not openly advertised and usually denied as an ingredient. The nuts and flakes are all very bitter and hard to swallow. The cost is $100.00 per scoop. When purchased it will be presented to you in a Large beautiful cone, but then the ice cream is taken away and given to the person in line behind you. You are left with an empty wallet and no change, holding an empty cone with no hope of getting any ice cream.

Are you stimulated?

First Comes Love, Then Comes... Motherhood?

According to research released yesterday by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), America is rapidly becoming a nation of unwed parents. While the social shift has been underway for years, few could have predicted just how quickly it would sweep the country's households. In 2002, 1.4 million babies were born to unmarried women--doubling the number from 1980. Five years later, the data spiked to 1.7 million babies born to unwed moms in their 20s and 30s. To put things in perspective, four of every 10 babies are now born to single mothers.

In the blink of an eye, the United States has gone from a relatively gradual uptick in unwed births to being completely Europeanized. Experts cite plenty of reasons for the surge, but the de-emphasis of marriage and family is by far the largest. As more men retreat from responsibility, women are delaying marriage or foregoing it altogether. That's bad news for children and for anyone hoping for a return to limited government. As the foundation of our homes splinter, Washington will look for new ways to fill in the cracks. Most liberals, like those presently in control of government, believe that Washington can do a better job supporting families and raising children. Instead of policies that strengthen families, the White House will look for ways to bolster the government's role in them.

Of course, a lot of fiscal conservatives ignore marriage as a policy issue because they think of it as a cultural or religious institution. What they fail to realize is that it's also an economic institution that has enormous implications for the role of the federal government. Every year, state and federal governments fork over $280 billion in welfare, food stamps, and other anti-poverty programs just to keep these broken families afloat. That means that in one decade, the decline of marriage has taken $3 trillion dollars out of taxpayers' pockets.

As Dr. Pat Fagan writes, "This system is a massive injustice. Married people are the source of a massive transfer of payments to broken families. Those who stay together are also paying for those adults who do not." If the federal government could reduce family breakdown by a single percent, taxpayers would save around $3 billion dollars a year. And those are just the fiscal benefits. Having a happy, two-parent home to grow up? That's priceless.

Irresponsible Funding for Irresponsible Behavior

In keeping with the administration's lack of restraint, Washington is preparing to send a message to America's teens that sexual restraint is also unnecessary. One of the few places that President Obama has shown a stingy side is by cutting programs for teens that have made a meaningful impact on public health. Of course, it's not really a spending cut since the money is being redirected to new pro-contraceptive programs for teens.

In fiscal year (FY) 2009 the Community-Based Abstinence Education (CBAE) fund was $94.7 million. Today the administration is proposing that of the $114.5 allotted for FY 2010, no less than $75 million would go to teen pregnancy prevention programs that include contraception promotion--not abstinence education. While another $25 million could be used for abstinence education, there is no guarantee that it will be since the proposal calls for "new strategies" with this money.

Abstinence funding in Title X Adolescent and Family Life funds is getting a similar cut. Instead of $13 million going to abstinence education, programs that advocate abstinence would have to compete for $3.28 million earmarked as "new strategies" for prevention, but as with CBAE there's no guarantee that the abstinence projects would be funded. The administration defends the abstinence cuts by pointing to studies, many of which are linked to Planned Parenthood, that question the effectiveness of abstinence programs.

The truth is, abstinence education goes beyond pregnancy prevention to promoting holistic change in teenagers. Studies show that in addition to preventing pregnancy and disease, teens who practice abstinence are better off emotionally and are much more likely to experience marital fidelity and satisfaction. The same cannot be said of the comprehensive sex education. In a review of 119 studies, comprehensive sex education has produced no compelling evidence of sustaining a meaningful effect on protective behaviors in a school-based setting, even after three decades of implementation and evaluation.