My First National Review Article!!!

Obviously I'm extremely excited!!! This piece was originally published on National Review Online (minus the pictures)

Junior High Goes Condom Crazy
The nationwide push to give contraceptives to younger and younger kids.

This month a rural Oregon school district announced its decision to offer condoms to children as young as 11. The new policy was adopted in part because, according to a memo from the superintendent, “every few years, a middle school student either becomes pregnant or is associated with a pregnancy.” The rationale is flimsy, but it speaks to the wider trend of pushing the envelope when it comes to giving kids contraception in school.

Statistics on the availability of condoms nationally in secondary education, particularly in middle schools, are hard to come by. In 1998, Advocates for Youth reported that 418 schools gave out condoms. More recently, in 2006, the CDC said it was 5 percent of high schools. But city-wide programs in places like Chicago are growing and anecdotal evidence suggests that schools serving as free condom dispensatories is becoming old hat by now.

In Boston this spring there was a controversy over condom distribution in the school system. Not over the fact that condoms were being given out to students, but over the design of the wrapper. City schools received condoms from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health to hand out to high schoolers that were emblazoned with provocative phrases like “one lucky lady,” “hump one,” and “tasty one.”

Somehow this scandalized parents who were otherwise supportive of their kids’ collecting condoms on the way to class. One mother told the Boston Globe, “I was horrified. As a mother of three teenagers, there was no way I wanted my kids to be given condoms with those wrappers.” Try to wrap your head around that logic.

Speaking of interesting wrappers, New York Daily News reported that city students were welcomed back to school last fall with a vast assortment of condoms from which to choose. Not content to provide condoms for simple utilitarian use, fun features such as “Rough Rider Studded,” “King XL,” “Extra Strength,” “Ultra Sensitive,” “Ultra Thin,” “Ribbed” and even “Assorted Flavors,” were on offer to minors. Far from the professed purpose of safety, these types of condoms sure seem to cross the line into encouraging more sex and experimentation. Homework assignment, kids: figure out the difference between “Ultra Sensitive” and “Ultra Thin!”

Sensibly, the mother of a 12-year-old girl told the paper, “As far as varieties, it’s ridiculous.” Shockingly, she continued, “But I guess they need to know whether it will fit them. These young kids are very mature, and sex is just a norm now.”

According to the Daily News, during the 2011-12 school year the district went through 800,000 condoms. With roughly 240,000 high school students in the New York City public school system, that equates to more than 3 condoms per student.

Also during the 2011-12 school year, the New York Post separately reported that 40 New York school-based health clinics gave 12,721 doses of the morning-after pill, 10,462 packets of birth control pills, 2,117 injections of Depo-Provera and an unspecified number of insertions of IUDs to girls under their care – far higher than the city had previously reported and all without requiring parental notification.

One parent was outraged, “I’m in shock. What gives [then-Mayor Bloomberg] the right to decide, without adequate notice, to give our children drugs that will impact their bodies and their psyches? He has purposely kept the public and parents in the dark with his agenda.”

All these drugs and devices carry risks of side effects and complications associated with administering hormones and performing minimally invasive procedures on minors. Yet the schools keep pushing the boundary.

It’s been a long time since schools were all about reading, ‘riting, and ‘rithmetic. But now they’re adding reproduction to the three R’s, as school administrators find more and more outrageous ways to push contraception on younger and younger kids.

14 Years in the Making ...

I will never forget the first time I heard about National Review. I was 16 years old, working in our basement office, listening to radio coverage of the 2000 election recount, when I heard the host read the article, The Gore Lies. I wrote down the name of the magazine and headed to the library. I read the latest issue cover to cover, came home, handed my mom a subscription card and said, "This is what I want for Christmas!"

National Review has been my conservative Bible over the years. It truly helped me build a solid conservative foundation and understanding of my beliefs and led me to study politics in college and work in it ever since.

It was also in National Review that I saw an ad for the high school Young America's Foundation conference which I attended the following summer and then the college conferences in subsequent years. (I was quoted in Time magazine in 2004 as saying, "I'm a conservative because I'm antiestablishment" at that year's YAF conference!) I also credit YAF as being instrumental in my early development of conservative ideas.

When I was in college applying for internships, and then later jobs, when I would be asked, where do you envision yourself in 10 or 15 years or what is your dream job? I would respond: Stay at home mom and freelance writer for National Review. Flash forward 14 years and I'm a work from home wife and freelance writer for National Review!

Today I had my first article published on National Review! This is truly a career dream come true! You should be able to find all my articles here.

I guess now I need a new career goal. Hmmm... Maybe I'll make it to write a book in the next 10-15 years.

Mitt Romney the Bad Ass

National Review writer Jim Geraghty has a piece out today that focuses on 6 stories from Mitt Romney's past that he says he would highlight if he were running the campaign.  These tidbits about his history may surprise you or at least remind you of the truth of the man beyond Obama's attack ads.  The truth is, Mitt Romney is actually exciting and kind of a bad ass!

Read on to learn more, it will pump you up to fight for this man in November.
(Geraghty's headings are in bold, the words below them are mine)

Taking on epic mismanagement and incompetence in Massachusetts state government as governor

Geraghty highlights when Romney physically confronted the head of the Mass Turnpike Authority in the wake of the death of a motorist from a falling piece of concrete in a Big Dig tunnel.  Now, the Big Dig was a huge, decades long construction project to completely overhaul the highway system in Boston.  It was a boondoggle bloated with waste, incompetence, corrupt government contracts, delays, and safety issues.  I'm from Boston and I can tell you what a headache the Big Dig was and how cynically it was viewed at the time.  No one was particularly shocked that bad craftsmanship had led to a fatal disaster, many felt it was only a matter of time, but it was nice to see someone finally take on the corrupt MTA and hold them accountable.  As an article on the incident said, “Immediately, Romney became a commanding and reassuring presence.”  Finally, an adult took over to manage the out of control project! 

A focus on spending priorities that saved the Salt Lake City Olympics

Romney came in to manage an Olympic games that was almost $400 million in the hole.  He cut wasteful projects like a youth camp, wetlands restoration, and decorations.  He even charged the Olympic Committee for food and drinks to raise money.  The Olympic COO at the time recalled: “Every line item in the budget was classified as ‘must’ or ‘nice to have,’ ” Mr. Bullock said, and “nice to have” was chopped.

Giving away his inheritance

Geraghty quotes Romney saying, "I did get a check from my dad when he passed away. I shouldn’t say a check, but I did inherit some funds from my dad. But I turned and gave that away to charity. In this case I gave it to a school which Brigham Young University established in his honor."  Romney is a self-made man, it wasn't his father's money that made him successful.

Romney and his sons, heroic lifesavers

This one's a great story about Romney and his sons saving a family on a lake whose boat was quickly sinking.  Mitt Romney saves lives!!!  That's the story that he should be associated with, not the stupid dog one.

I'll get to this story a little later, but the quote from a man whose daughter Romney helped find when she went missing is particularly apropos and one to keep in mind when thinking about Romney, his character and how he'd be as a president:

So, here’s my epiphany: Mitt Romney simply can’t help himself. He sees a problem, and his mind immediately sets to work solving it, sometimes consciously, and sometimes not-so-consciously. He doesn’t do it for self-aggrandizement or for personal gain. He does it because that’s just how he’s wired.

Now contrast that with Obama ... nuff said.

A focus on helping others, reflected in lifelong generosity to charitable foundations   

Mitt Romney has given back at least $18 million to charity.  Obama always talks about the rich giving back and paying their fair share but he means that in the forms of taxes paying for more wasteful government programs.  Romney doesn't need the government to mandate he give back even more, he already does, by his own volition, with the power to choose what his money goes towards.  And private charities are better at doing things than the government.  They tend to be more localized, focused and can be held more accountable than a massive, faceless government bureaucracy.  Plus, if the charity is not doing what it is supposed to, people can choose not to give them their money.  I sure wish we could do that with the government!


Young Mitt Romney, barefoot street-brawling vigilante

This is a funny story about Romney running out barefoot in the snow to defend some female Mormon missionaries from a group of thugs while in France.  Bad ass!

One additional story that Geraghty does not include but needs to be told is the one I mentioned earlier about Romney helping to save a Bain partner's missing teenage daughter.  PolitiFact relates the story:

"In July 1996, the 14-year-old daughter of Robert Gay, a partner at Bain Capital, had disappeared," the story reads. "She had attended a rave party in New York City and gotten high on ecstasy. Three days later, her distraught father had no idea where she was. Romney took immediate action. He closed down the entire firm and asked all 30 partners and employees to fly to New York to help find Gay’s daughter. Romney set up a command center at the LaGuardia Marriott and hired a private detective firm to assist with the search. He established a toll-free number for tips, coordinating the effort with the NYPD, and went through his Rolodex and called everyone Bain did business with in New York and asked them to help find his friend’s missing daughter. Romney’s accountants at Price Waterhouse Cooper put up posters on street poles, while cashiers at a pharmacy owned by Bain put fliers in the bag of every shopper. Romney and the other Bain employees scoured every part of New York and talked with everyone they could – prostitutes, drug addicts – anyone."

The quote from Mr. Gay about Romney that I cited earlier deserves to be repeated: "He sees a problem, and his mind immediately sets to work solving it...He does it because that’s just how he’s wired."

I say these stories reveal Romney the Bad Ass.  He is often portrayed as a milquetoast, unapproachable, greedy businessman but these aspects of his history show him to be an exciting, smart, accomplished man with a heart for using his wealth and power to help others.

Mitt Romney is a businessman, a doer.  Barack Obama is a professor, a thinker.  Romney deals in the real world, he sees a problem and he fixes it.  Obama lives in Fantasyland, he sees a problem and he finds someone else to blame for it - or proposes a solution that makes things 10x worse yet still declares it a success.  

"He sees a problem, and his mind immediately sets to work solving it."  At a time of high unemployment, record deficits and debt, and an economy on the brink, this is the kind of mind our nation needs.  We need Mitt Romney as president.

Obama Irony: So Far, Worse Than Bush

Great piece By Victor Davis Hanson:
The Audacity of Irony

Some choice excerpts:

But unlike the Bush administration, which took 15 months to prepare the country for a real war in Iraq, the Obama administration gave the public only a few hours to read the final draft of the legislation before it was made into law. Where the polarizing partisan George Bush managed to obtain the vote of majorities in both parties to remove Saddam Hussein, the healing bipartisan Barack Obama lacked the support of even a single Republican in the House and won over a mere three Republicans in the Senate.

Liberals who once screamed that congressional opponents of the Iraq war were being unfairly tagged as unpatriotic by the Bush administration now yelled louder that the opponents of the Obama debt program were, in fact, unpatriotic.

Bush was pilloried for supposedly hyping al-Qaeda in order to create a security state. Obama trumped that by proclaiming that the present recession is a catastrophe, a disaster, a Great Depression. He ceased his scare-mongering only when he had exhausted the vocabulary of doom. “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste,” bragged Rahm Emanuel, reminding us that the envisioned Obama socialism could take root only if a climate of fear was created.

...Obama can end his irony only when he accepts that he and his supporters were never saints, and his predecessor not a notable sinner, and then accepts that history will judge him on what he does rather than what he says he might do.

I also enjoy how Obama keeps saying that he inherited the economic crisis, deficit, and debt while proceeding to make the crisis worse, double the deficit, and skyrocket the debt.
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Special 'All Hope and Change' Post!

The latest print version of National Review arrived at our office today and it has a spectacular cover! Love the top: "Special 'All Hope and Change' Issue"! Excellent play on the Obama logo combined with the Obama Snob photo. Obama truly is an "enigma" wrapped inside a riddle. Who really knows who Obama is and what he thinks? Does he even know?

In case you can't read the bottom, there are articles "on his radical past," "on his Chicago way," and "The evidence of Dreams."

Can't wait to read it; should hit newsstands on Monday.