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As we celebrate dear old Dad today, let's remember why dependable dads are so important -- for our families and for our future as a nation.

If the experience of the past 50 years tells us anything, it is that the consequences of weakening the institution of marriage are tragic for society at large -- and especially for the children involved.

The American family has gone though a difficult time. The number of never-married young adults has grown dramatically. Half of all new marriages now end in divorce. The number of cohabiting couples has grown tenfold since 1970, now more than 5 million. And though the birth rate for married couples has been cut almost in half since 1960, the number of out-of-wedlock births increased almost tenfold in 50 years and has soared to one-third of all births in the United States.

For the first time in our history, a large number of children have grown up without a father present in the household. That sad fact allows us to contrast outcomes for those children with their peers in intact families with a mom and a dad.

By every conceivable measure, children with fathers present in the household fare significantly better on average than their peers without a dad around. According to the Heritage Foundation, these children tend to fare better in cognitive achievement, exhibit fewer behavioral problems, have better psychological well-being, are less likely to engage in delinquency and substance abuse, are less likely to be incarcerated, and achieve higher levels of educational attainment.

It is not every day that I find myself running down U.S. 40 in the heart of Ohio more than 1,000 miles away from Wichita, but the situation I am in can hardly be described as normal.

I have spent the past two weeks literally running across the country to Washington, D.C., with eight other Kansas teens to raise awareness of the genocide in Darfur and to raise money to ease the conditions of Darfuri refugees. This started out as a crazy idea but has turned into a learning experience unparalleled by anything I've learned in school.

During our brief overnight stay in Columbus, Ohio, we had the opportunity to listen to three Darfuri refugees recount their experiences. Their stories were heart-wrenching and so personal that I did not take out the video camera to record them.

Two were husband and wife. They recounted the story of their escape from Sudan to the country of Ghana after the janjaweed militia slaughtered eight people in their village. Both were holding back tears as they revealed that they still have four children stuck in refugee camps.

The third refugee had only arrived in America within the past two weeks. He fled to Egypt after the killing started and co-founded a group there to lobby the Egyptian government and the United Nations to send the Darfuri refugees to safety.

"The whole state doesn't like it."

-- Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., on proposals to move the Guantanamo Bay prisoners to Fort Leavenworth

"They seem to think it was a one-shot turkey hunt."

-- House Speaker Melvin Neufeld, R-Ingalls, on the impatience of health care reformers

"You devote five months time to it, yet the pay is laughable."

This column will probably get Barack Obama in trouble, but that's not my problem. I cannot tell a lie: Many Egyptians and other Arab Muslims really like him and hope that he wins the presidency.

I have had a chance to observe several U.S. elections from abroad, but it was unusually revealing to be in Egypt as Barack Obama became the Democrats' nominee for president of the United States.

While Obama, who is a Christian, is constantly assuring Americans that he is not a Muslim, Egyptians are amazed, excited and agog that America might elect a black man whose father's family was of Muslim heritage. They don't really understand Obama's family tree, but what they do know is that if America -- despite being attacked by Muslim militants on Sept. 11 -- were to elect as its president some guy with the middle name "Hussein," it would mark a sea change in America-Muslim world relations.

Every interview in Egypt seemed to end with the person I was interviewing asking me: "Now, can I ask you a question? Obama? Do you think they will let him win?" (It's always "let him win," not just "win.")

It would not be an exaggeration to say that the Democrats' nomination of Obama as their candidate for president has done more to improve America's image abroad -- an image dented by the Iraq war, President Bush's invocation of a post-Sept. 11 "crusade," Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay and the xenophobic opposition to Dubai Ports World managing U.S. harbors -- than the entire Bush public diplomacy effort for seven years.

Did President Bush and his administration lead us into the Iraq war under false pretenses?

Absolutely, they did. The documented evidence is overwhelming. Nonetheless, some of those who initially backed Bush's decision to invade Iraq continue to claim otherwise, arguing that the president -- and they themselves -- were up-front with the American people in laying out the invasion case.

For example, Washington Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt recently described the "Bush lied, people died" thesis as a fiction ("How exactly did Bush lie?" June 10 Opinion). He cited a new report issued by the Senate Intelligence Committee, chaired by Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va. To Rockefeller, the report documents "the absolute cynical manipulation -- deliberately cynical manipulation, to shape American public opinion," and he said he too had been fooled into supporting the war.

But to Hiatt, the Rockefeller report actually absolves Bush of the charge of deception. As he pointed out, the report confirms that prewar statements concerning Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs were "generally substantiated by intelligence information." Unfortunately, that information just turned out to be "tragically, catastrophically wrong," Hiatt wrote.

In other words, how were the Bush administration and other war advocates -- including Hiatt himself -- supposed to have known that before the war?