Charlottesville

Following the media's brouhaha around President Trump's apparent decision not to specifically call out and condemn the white supremacists and neo-Nazis who gathered in Charlottesville this weekend, The White House has issued a statement confirmingthat the president "does not condone violence, bigotry, and hatred... from any extremist groups."

As The Hill reports, Trump took bipartisan heat on Saturday for not directly calling out hate groups in his remarks, and for blaming "many sides" for the violence.

Update: A state of emergency has been declared for Charlottesville due to the "chaos" at the rally. As CBS reports, Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe declared a state of emergency in the city to aid in the local response. He earlier said the Virginia National Guard will be "standing by to respond if needed." The city and county issued a declaration of local emergency for Charlottesville city and county, when the scene turned violent well before the "Unite the Right" rally, scheduled for noon, officially began.

In Charlottesville, I found myself having a lunch conversation one day with some folks who are involved in Christian education at the elementary and secondary level. They were talking about the challenges they face today. One of the biggest is the ubiquity of smartphones in the hands of kids. Parents think nothing of giving them to their children, the educators said, and many kids have virtually unlimited access to the Internet. There’s the “older brother porn problem” in which younger kids get turned on to porn by watching it on an older sibling’s smartphone.