Signs and Wonders 04.02

Frankly speaking. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Trent Franks, R-Ariz., thinks hauling young girls across state lines for abortions without their parents' knowledge or consent is a bad idea. So he's worked hard to pass CIANA, the Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act, to make this behavior a crime. The legislation finally passed out of his committee last week, with a bipartisan vote of 20-13. But Rep. Linda Sanchez, D-Calif., couldn't resist calling Franks' leadership on this issue "arrogant." Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., piled on, saying abortions didn't kill children because "we're not dealing with human beings at this point." Polls show that even those who favor abortion support parental involvement when a minor is involved, so this bill is likely to pass-at least in the House.

Cap and trade rises again. The Environmental Protection Agency took a major step toward implementing a cap-and-trade scheme last week when it announced new regulations designed to limit emissions from new coal plants. This new approach attempts to implement by regulation what the Obama administration couldn't bring about through legislation. According to Gary Bauer, "Obama's cap-and-trade scheme was so radical it could not pass the Democrat-dominated Senate in 2009 and 2010 when Harry Reid controlled a super-majority." The regulations may be moot. Coal accounts for about 50 percent of U.S. electricity supply, but that percentage is falling. New natural gas technologies will likely reduce dependence on coal even more in the decade ahead. No less an authority than Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers said he didn't expect a new coal plant to be built for at least a decade. Nonetheless, conservatives have fought cap and trade, which they call "cap and tax" because it creates a new class of regulation and a new federal government bureaucracy to manage the process.

Trojan horses? Steven W. Mosher, president of the Population Research Institute and a renowned China expert, testified before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs last week on the subject of "Confucius Institutes" being set up on college campuses across America. Confucius Institutes are billed as cultural exchanges, but Mosher said they are "Trojan horses intended to indoctrinate young Americans into thinking that the Chinese Party-State is not a threat to its own people or to the world at large. Neither of these things is true." The Institutes are funded by China, with matching funds coming from a host college. More than 300 of them exist worldwide, with a high concentration in the United States, Japan, and South Korea. Mosher said they "represent a significant threat to U.S. national security and an attempt to enhance China's 'soft power' globally." He added, "The Chinese Party-State does not share our democratic institutions nor our commitment to open markets, nor our understanding of human rights. Its political and economic agenda is diametrically opposed to ours. Should we really be allowing a cruel, tyrannical, and repressive regime to educate our young people?"

A look back, a look ahead. Today is the first business day of the second quarter, and some of the early numbers for the first quarter are in. The Standard & Poor's 500 had its best first quarter in 14 years. The NASDAQ had its best first quarter since 1991. Lots of analysts are predicting some sort of a correction, in part because the S&P is up nearly 30 percent from its October low. On the jobs front: Economists polled by Reuters are looking for an addition of 201,000 jobs in March. Despite this progress, they also expect the U.S. unemployment rate to remain unchanged at 8.3 percent.