Trying to garner attention in an election dominated by Democratic shenanigans, Sen. John McCain spoke on judiciary policy Tuesday, calling it “one of the defining issues of this presidential election.” Yet, God-o-Meter says conservatives will be concerned by the themes that were noticeably absent in McCain’s address – Roe v. Wade, abortion, religious liberty, gay marriage – and will still worry about McCain’s seeming “lack of passion for hot button social issues.”

In the speech delivered at Wake Forest University, the presumptive Republican nominee sounded tones traditionally popular among conservatives, taking a hard-line Constitutionalist stance that criticized judicial activism and the unfair treatment of court nominees. McCain blamed the preemption of our checks-and-balances Federal system on the “common and systematic abuse of our federal courts by the people we entrust with judicial power.”

McCain used this theme to distance himself from Democratic candidates Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton, assuring his audience that, “My two prospective opponents and I have very different ideas about the nature and proper exercise of judicial power. We would nominate judges of a different kind, a different caliber, a different understanding of judicial authority and its limits.”

Yet, exactly what the words “of a different caliber” mean to McCain remains vague. Some conservatives are eager to interpret his critique of judicial activism as an almost-definite promise to appoint pro-life nominees. Others note, however, that he has said no such thing.

McCain’s call for “strict constitutionality” in the courts may not be enough to ensure his judges will be pro-life, pro-marriage, or even pro-constitution. Daily Kos says McCain is equating judicial constitutionality with judicial cooperation with the Executive branch. In the American Spectator, Quin Hillyer complains that there was nothing in his recent speech “to evince an understanding that a good judge should be deferential not primarily to the elected branches, but to the Constitution.”

If this is the case, McCain’s position on hot button social issues is far from irrelevant to the type of judges he will nominate, and this statement is far more ominous: ”I have my own standards of judicial ability, experience, philosophy, and temperament.”

Lab technicians in Texas are sorting the DNA of 437 children removed from their polygamous families earlier this month, but bloodlines are not the only lines blurred in the case. It’s also raising questions about the government’s power over religious belief.

The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) face the charge of blending religious belief with child abuse. Investigators are determining whether the children from the Yearning for Zion (YFZ) ranch - including 41 with broken bones or previous fractures - exhibit evidence of mistreatment.

Those testifying in the case have already employed strong language against the FLDS sect, saying it is an abusive belief system in which girls marry young because they are “ruthlessly indoctrinated from birth to believe disobedience will lead to their damnation.”

It is because of this ruthless indoctrination that some claim the authoritarian teachings of the FLDS church are abusive in and of themselves. One Child Protective Services investigator explained her view to the Texas district judge saying, “This is a population of women who appear to have a problem making a decision on their own.”

Such blanket statements have raised fears among religious watchdog groups that – amid a rightful campaign against child abuse – we’re setting a dangerous precedent against religious freedom. Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberties Commission, says that the very real need to protect children “does not give government officials a blank check to use children’s “welfare” as a subterfuge to justify governmental intrusion or to disrupt any practice it finds vaguely weird.”

Some fear the FLDS case presages a time when children will be removed from their homes – not on proof of abuse – but because of their parents’ staunchly religious views. According to Land, however, the mixed blessing of the recent scandal in Texas is that the actions taken there were well-founded: “The potential for governmental abuse of religious freedom is just that — potential. The evidence for sexual abuse of children in this case is substantial.”

Advocates of Arizona school choice continue to fight in a decade-long controversy surrounding the state’s scholarship-tax-credit laws. Last week, the 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld laws that aid almost 25,000 children in Arizona private schools through the tax-deductible donations of private and corporate donors. [Correction: The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments last week after the district court upheld the law.]

Since 1997, taxpayers have received tax credit - up to $1,000 per married couple and $500 per individual - for making donations to School-Tuition-Organizations (STOs). These non-profit groups grant tuition funds to individual students, retaining only ten percent for administrative costs.

Last year, Arizona’s 56 STOs received some $51 million in tax-donations and distributed $ 41 million in scholarships to 357 private schools. Because many STOs are religiously affiliated, critics cite these same statistics as proof that the tax-credit program is an unconstitutional establishment of religion.

Supporters of the tax credit defend the program’s legality and point to the advances made in Arizona’s education system through broadening parents’ choices. Dr. Thomas Askew is headmaster of Tucson’s Cornerstone Christian Academy and member of the selection committee for the state’s largest, evangelical Christian STO. Askew told WoW, “The exponential growth of charter schools and the incremental growth of private schools due to tax credits has really made the average Arizona taxpayer-consumer much more savvy about the choices available to their children.”

Askew credits the program for his own school’s increase in enrollment and diversity. When he became headmaster in 2001, 34 percent of 133 students received scholarships. Now, 74 percent of 178 students at the academy receive aid.

Despite encouraging data from his school and others like it, Askew says that after ten years of opposition, the courts will make the final decision: “We’ll never get past the local challenges until the Supreme Court rules that it’s constitutional.”

As Communist authorities in China make new efforts to enforce old laws, they call fresh attention to long-standing questions about the value of human life in their country of 1.3 billion people.

Since 1979, a “one-child” policy has restricted Chinese families to one child each in urban areas or at most two children in rural areas. Officials estimate some 400 million births have been obviated, but also say the sometimes-haphazard enforcement of these laws has “undermined social equality.” Wealthy citizens are often willing to pay heavy fines to have “extra” children.

Last year, 93,084 people in the Hubei province alone had more children than the law allowed. The government recently fined 1,678 of these people, stripped them of their government posts, or expelled them from the party.

Steven Mosher, President of the Population Research Institute told WoW that because the Chinese cultural ideal promotes “late marriage, few children, and quality children,” population restrictions create intense social pressure to breed “a better man and a better Chinese woman.” The dark nature of these idealizations manifests itself in late-term abortions, infanticide, and forced sterilization of the handicapped and mentally disabled. To Mosher, “Eugenics policy is part and parcel of the one-child policy.”

But with parents willing to pay a premium for more kids, Mosher blames the Chinese political structure for setting the price of life so cheaply: “There may be a lot of hostility on the lowest levels, but the policy is put in place by the highest and can only be undone by the highest levels.”

Mosher said undoing the policy isn’t likely: “The Chinese political party has so much political capital invested in this policy they are almost afraid to back off. It would undermine the legitimacy of the party.”

Christians worldwide begin 2008 with eyes on their brothers and sisters in Pakistan, taking sides on the controversy surrounding Benazir Bhutto. Some say her assassination is a serious setback to religious freedom, while others believe her candidacy was irrelevant to the real needs of the persecuted church in Pakistan.

Christians are a marked minority in the hard-nosed Islamic country, making up 2.5 percent of the 165 million, mostly-Muslim population. Sections of the Pakistan Penal Code condemn non-Muslim “blasphemers” to imprisonment and death.

Nasir Saeed, United Kingdom coordinator for the Centre of Legal Aid Assurance and Settlement (CLAAS), hoped Bhutto’s leadership in the non-Muslim Pakistani People Party (PPP) would allay intense religious persecution in Pakistan: “She was the most enlightened and moderate politician and struggled hard to bring real democracy to the country. The Christian minority in Pakistan has suffered a great loss and now fear that they will never be able to replace Ms. Bhutto of whom they held great hopes for an end to fundamentalism and persecution.”

Critics like Imaduddin Ahmed counter that it’s false to idealize Bhutto as a promoter of free democracy. Ahmed argues that Bhutto’s participation in Pakistan’s “affected elections” aligned her with the country’s infamously oppressive government and “yanked the rug from under the feet of those who pushed for a semblance of democracy.”

Some Christians doubt that a scandal-ridden political figure like Bhutto can address the true needs of the Pakistani church. Kevin Kimball, 23, a Washington native who recently returned from four months in the city of Peshawar in Pakistan’s Northwestern province, told WoW that Christians and Muslims alike seemed “disappointed with government in general”.

Kimball, who spent time teaching English to Muslim students, said Pakistani youth are hungry for leaders: “If the next generation doesn’t have any one to teach them there just won’t be any progress.”

Although the efforts of individuals do not garner as much attention as the spotlight campaign of a political figure like Bhutto, Kimball believes they are ultimately more effective: “The real solution is to give courage back to Christians.”

While naysayers may call Facebook.com a distraction for college students, researchers are forging the popular online social network into a new arena for an old question: How do people connect?

By studying the online networking patterns of 1,700 college juniors at an East Coast school (unidentified to preserve the integrity of the project), researchers from Harvard and the University of California, Los Angeles, are testing the connection between personal taste and friendship choices. Harvard researcher and associate professor of sociology Jason Kaufman asks, “Do birds of a feather flock together, or do you become more like your friends?”

For researchers, Facebook is a microcosm of larger patterns in human relationships, particularly among young people. This microcosm - with 58 million active users – is currently the sixth-most visited site on the web and continues to grow.

Harvard and UCLA researchers are just one example of many recent academic forages into an otherwise un-academic virtual world. Facebook-oriented research has been conducted or is currently ongoing at institutions like University of Indiana, Northwestern, University of Texas, PennState, and Michigan State University.

This research raises questions about student privacy as well as issues of what is or is not a suitable arena for academic research. Some stricter schools such as Indiana University will not approve research until scholars obtain permission from individuals or the social networking organization itself.

Stephen Salyers, assistant professor of communication at The Kings College and a two-year member of Facebook, told WoW the online community can make the lines between professor and student “a little blurry.” Salyers sees both pros and cons in Facebook research, but emphasizes the inherent problems of trying to clinically dissect a social medium: “It’s completely dependent on what a person offers or creates for their electronic image. … You have to read it in a very sophisticated way.”