Eat it Chopra!

It's always fun to watch a relativist hoisted on his own petard.

Hope and Change on Healthcare

Do you still have the candidate you'd hoped for? Or did things change?

Obama's Hypocrisy on Censorship

President Obama began his visit to China with an exhortation to free up censorship and allow the citizenry to question and criticize their government without fear of reprisal.

President Barack Obama pointedly nudged China on Monday to stop censoring Internet access, offering an animated defense of the tool that helped him win the White House and suggesting Beijing need not fear a little criticism.

Yeah. Ask Fox News how well Obama takes a little criticism. Anita Dunn, the White House communications director, was interviewed last month and said: “We’re going to treat them the way we would treat an opponent. As they are undertaking a war against Barack Obama and the White House, we don’t need to pretend that this is the way that legitimate news organizations behave.” (Source: NYT)

It was a delicately balanced message and Obama couched his admonitions with words calling for cooperation, heavy with praise and American humility.

Our country needs to apologize to China? When did that happen? We've stood up for their freedom for 70 years! And our economies energize each other, raising the standard of living for both countries.

"I think that the more freely information flows, the stronger the society becomes, because then citizens of countries around the world can hold their own governments accountable," Obama told students during his first-ever trip to China. "They can begin to think for themselves."

I'm in a conundrum. I have no idea which government snitch line I should report this to. - should I report this quote to fishy@whitehouse.gov or flag@whitehouse.gov? I just can't decide which one best holds the populace accountable to the government. OOOPS! I meant that the government is accountable to the people.

Bush I investigated for speaking to students

When Bush spoke to students, Democrats investigated, held hearings

By: Byron York
Chief Political Correspondent
09/08/09 7:11 AM EDT

The controversy over President Obama's speech to the nation's schoolchildren will likely be over shortly after Obama speaks today at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia. But when President George H.W. Bush delivered a similar speech on October 1, 1991, from Alice Deal Junior High School in Washington DC, the controversy was just beginning. Democrats, then the majority party in Congress, not only denounced Bush's speech -- they also ordered the General Accounting Office to investigate its production and later summoned top Bush administration officials to Capitol Hill for an extensive hearing on the issue.

Unlike the Obama speech, in 1991 most of the controversy came after, not before, the president's school appearance. The day after Bush spoke, the Washington Post published a front-page story suggesting the speech was carefully staged for the president's political benefit. "The White House turned a Northwest Washington junior high classroom into a television studio and its students into props," the Post reported.

With the Post article in hand, Democrats pounced. "The Department of Education should not be producing paid political advertising for the president, it should be helping us to produce smarter students," said Richard Gephardt, then the House Majority Leader. "And the president should be doing more about education than saying, 'Lights, camera, action.'"

Democrats did not stop with words. Rep. William Ford, then chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, ordered the General Accounting Office to investigate the cost and legality of Bush's appearance. On October 17, 1991, Ford summoned then-Education Secretary Lamar Alexander and other top Bush administration officials to testify at a hearing devoted to the speech. "The hearing this morning is to really examine the expenditure of $26,750 of the Department of Education funds to produce and televise an appearance by President Bush at Alice Deal Junior High School in Washington, DC," Ford began. "As the chairman of the committee charged with the authorization and implementation of education programs, I am very much interested in the justification, rationale for giving the White House scarce education funds to produce a media event."

Unfortunately for Ford, the General Accounting Office concluded that the Bush administration had not acted improperly. "The speech itself and the use of the department's funds to support it, including the cost of the production contract, appear to be legal," the GAO wrote in a letter to Chairman Ford. "The speech also does not appear to have violated the restrictions on the use of appropriations for publicity and propaganda."

That didn't stop Democratic allies from taking their own shots at Bush. The National Education Association denounced the speech, saying it "cannot endorse a president who spends $26,000 of taxpayers' money on a staged media event at Alice Deal Junior High School in Washington, D.C. -- while cutting school lunch funds for our neediest youngsters."

Lost in all the denouncing and investigating was the fact that Bush's speech itself, like Obama's today, was entirely unremarkable. "Block out the kids who think it's not cool to be smart," the president told students. "If someone goofs off today, are they cool? Are they still cool years from now, when they're stuck in a dead end job. Don't let peer pressure stand between you and your dreams.

R/T from Washington Examiner

Why Should I Not Kill You?

Cruel Logic – short film from Brian Godawa on Vimeo.

Ray and Kirk are right...appeal to the conscience, and the facade of postmodern ethics crumbles.

Looks like Al Gore is campaigning again

Where's American's United when you really need them?

Hawaii's state senate has declared September 24, 2009 "ISLAM DAY." You know...for tolerance's sake.


Why they didn't choose a Friday (I hear September 11th was open), I don't know.

What else I don't know is where are the indignant letters from "the Rev. Barry W. Lynn of Americans United for Separation of Church and State."

Maybe his arms are just too tired from giving President Obama bear hugs for snubbing the National Day of Prayer.

Nah...he's just against Christianity having a public footprint. Kinda reminds me of these guys.

Way to go, numpty Mr. Lynn.

Stick to lawyering and leave the "reverend-ing" to those of us who bend both knees to Jesus alone.

Ben Braxton Buyout or Social Just-us

Ben Braxton, best known as a passionate seeker of social justice and New Testament exegete. (His work on Philemon and Philippians is phenomenal, btw.) He's recently been called to serve at New York City's historic Riverside Church.

So why the grim face?

Well, it's not his garish outfit. (Though it should be...Emory has a knock-out PhD gown and I have no idea why he wears that magenta monster when he could be true blue, but I digress.)

No, I don't think it's his massive wardrobe wack-job. It's probably the economy. Times like this, people need to cut back and remember the little guy. It may be because he's so upset at the corporate executive compensation fueled by Wall Street Bail-out money. Something like this:

• $250,000 in salary.
• $11,500 monthly housing allowance ($138K/yr).
  
• Private school tuition for their children.
• A full-time maid.
• "Entertainment," travel and professional development allowances.
• Pension and life insurance benefits.
• An equity allowance for the future purchase of a home.

Yeah...he'd probably cry about the injustice of a $600,000 package like that...if it weren't him that's getting it.

Many of his parishioners agree that - in light of the former pastor, the eminent preacher Dr. James Forbes - only had around $300K in compensation (and that was after nearly two decades of service). They were so upset that they took their case all the way up to the Manhattan Supreme Court! (Somewhere the irony of William Sloane Coffin preaching more on protest procedures than on Matthew 18 and 1 Corinthians 6 is dripping off the wall.) The Wall Street-like package, the dissidents say, is outrageous for a man of the cloth - especially when you consider Riverside's long history of advocating social justice.

Did I mention he's also hired on a new associate of his choosing with another $300K in salary & compensation?

It looks like some of the parishioners are catching on to this con-scheme's true nature, more properly termed "social just-us."

The Next Red Scare

You might have seen the political hit piece that is passing as the DHS's report on "Right Wing Extremism." If not, Michelle Malkin is commenting on it with great acumen. All I have to say is this:

McCarthyism is McCarthyism - no matter which side is doing it.


Just be ready for the new Red State Scare.

Speak your mind or mind your speech?

From the Church Times:

The liberties we enjoy in a demo­cracy are inseparable from freedom of expression. The exercise of that freedom makes demands on us all. Nowhere are those demands more highly charged than where religious groupings believe their faith has been insulted.

Those sections of society that are unable to tease out the relationship between freedom of expression and self-restraint, or to understand that, when offence is given, challenge — rather than violence or prohibition — should be the response, pose a threat to the fabric of a democratic state.

FREEDOM of expression is a dearly bought and cherished attribute of democracy. Respect and consideration for the sensi­bilities of others should be equally valued. The freedom to hold an opinion does not confer the right to express it regardless of context. Neither does personal or collective offence necessarily license pro­hibi­tion of offending material.

There is no right to be protected from offence, but there is a right — even a duty — to engage in debate, and thus to challenge the giver of offence. It is through debate that we learn what may be tolerated and what must be proscribed. Violence of speech or action short-circuits this civilised usage, and gives rise to oppression, fear, and resentment.

Prohibition has reinforced the idea that violent protest is the only response to false­hood....defamation must be met with dialogue. Neither tolerance nor self-restraint is learned under the rule of the censor.

Prohibition of free speech isn't as far as you think. In seminary, a friend was called into the dean's office for using biblical language about God - because some people found it offensive. You can't imagine the opprobrium - the violent political moves and abuses of professorial power - that is heaped on anyone who would limit feminine universals in language...but masculinity is ruled right out. It's tragic because in losing God's masculinity we lose God's transcendence...and we are placed on the road to paganism and panentheism.

Food and Sex

This is from today's AP:

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. – The West Michigan Whitecaps say they have no plans to put a warning label on an enormous new hamburger they're selling this season — despite a vegan advocacy group's request to do just that.

Susan Levin, a staff dietitian for the Washington-based Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, sent a letter to the Grand Rapids minor-league team on Tuesday. She's asking that the 4,800-calorie burger be labeled a "dietary disaster" that increases the risk of cancer and heart disease.

The 4-pound, $20 burger features five beef patties, five slices of cheese, nearly a cup of chili and liberal doses of salsa and corn chips — all on an 8-inch bun.

Whitecaps spokesman Mickey Graham says the burger is a gimmick that's being promoted as a very unhealthy menu item.

Here's the warning I suggest:

WARNING: May cause people who think that women have a right to kill a baby to say that you don't have a right to know how heart-stoppingly delicious this burger tastes.

What kills me is that we've turned food into the new sex. Can you imagine the outrage they would have if we asked for warnings on miniskirts? Oh the moral indignity they have when we "puritanical prudes" take offense at the sexualization of our daughters when we complain about the toys they make and the clothes they produce. (BTW, modesty is never really out of fashion.)

(Click on that pic to enlarge - or just take my word for it: they are marketing this as appropriate clothing for a 12-18M and 18-24M old girl. And that's not even the "thongs" I've seen in WalMart!)

Think about it. When was the last time you were accosted for a consumer choice (whether it be a car, an item of food, a television from your local big-box chain store, your pharmaceuticals)? Or maybe not accosted, but scolded by the news reports?

Now...when was the last time you heard people being scolded for having serial sex partners? I remember watching Oprah and Jerry Springer one day. On Oprah, Amy Dacyczyn a.k.a. the Frugal Zealot was talking about wearing second-hand bras and socks and shoes. The audience was totally grossed out - gasping at the disgustitude of this woman. Meanwhile, on Jerry Springer, you have a guy who is sleeping with his girlfriend, his girlfriend's sister, and her cousin. Plus he'd just been caught with the neighbor. And nobody found that "gross." (Oh yeah...he was also jobless, but the men in the audience were hooting him up as though he were somehow a male idol. American idle is more like it.)

We're forging a new set of purity laws in this country that will turn us into Pharisees - hypocrites who make a big deal about paying your mint and dill and cumin tithe, but ignoring the weightier matters of the law. Paul - who had been rescued from hypocritical pharisaism - saw the danger and warned Timothy that in the later times, people will devote "themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons" and "forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth."

(Those who are undermining the intimate ties between sex and family life - marriage and procreation of children - are making marriage a burden, and thus forbidding it.)

Priorities are shifting...but this is nothing that we - the Christian Church - have not faced before. Perhaps we are in the last days of the American Empire. So be it. Read St. Augustine's City of God where he talks about what it means to live as the church apart from the Roman Empire. We'll figure it out...and maybe even see a new era of Christendom from our missionary activities.

Leader of our great Hypocrisy

Our first black president (sorry, Bill) is also the first sitting president to appear on a late night tv show. There he was - the most powerful human being in the world - in the same seat occupied by such luminaries as Britney Spears, Carrot Top, and so many more, when he made a really good joke:

Leno: Now, are they going to put a basketball — I imagine the bowling alley has been just burned and closed down.

President Obama: No, no. I have been practicing all — (laughter.)

Leno: Really? Really?

President Obama: I bowled a 129. (Laughter and applause.)

Leno: No, that’s very good. Yes. That’s very good, Mr. President.

President Obama: It’s like — it was like Special Olympics, or something. (Laughter.)

It was a really funny joke, and anybody who complains about it is just a dour stick in the mud who hates the idea of a black president.

Which is of course why he immediately apologized:

Obama called Special Olympics Chairman Timothy Shriver after the show to apologize and to express his admiration for the organization. Shriver accepted the apology and later said he hoped the gaffe would serve as an opportunity to knock down myths about people with disabilities.

The most popular president in recent history (at least the past 6 years) goes in front of a national audience and makes a forgettable joke that really shouldn’t have offended anybody, but he shows just how noble and sensitive he is by promptly apologizing.

Like the media, we should all accept his heartfelt apology without question.

And apparently without holding him to his own standards.

Does anybody remember the Don Imus controversy? Here's what Junior Senator Obama had to say about that:

“I understand MSNBC has suspended Mr. Imus,” Obama told ABC News, “but I would also say that there’s nobody on my staff who would still be working for me if they made a comment like that about anybody of any ethnic group. And I would hope that NBC ends up having that same attitude…”

“He didn’t just cross the line,” Obama said. “He fed into some of the worst stereotypes that my two young daughters are having to deal with today in America. The notions that as young African-American women — who I hope will be athletes — that that somehow makes them less beautiful or less important. It was a degrading comment. It’s one that I’m not interested in supporting.”

Though every major presidential candidate has decried the racist remarks, Obama is the first one to say Imus should lose his job for them.

I'm just trying to keep this straight - it's okay to make fun of the differently abled because you're hoping that your abortion policies will keep them from every being a political reality...is that it? After all, we all know how sensitive the Left is to the issue of Trisomy 21.

What's that, Mr. President? I can't hear you over your derisive sneer and voting record.

Starry Eyed on Tax Relief

So the new transparency that Obama promised is starting to look a lot like that same old mendacity we got under the previous administrations.

On the radio, I heard about a new website set up to help the tax-paying populace (all 46% of us) keep an eye on where our money is going. (You have to provide the flushing sounds yourself.)

Mr. Obama has been trying to sell us a bill of goods about how he is taking the same steps that Kennedy, Reagan, and even Bush II took to spur a sagging economy: TAX RELIEF. Now, tax relief does work. We've seen that. But what he's proposing isn't tax relief at all.

First, as in my post last Friday, giving non-taxpayers money channeled through the IRS and calling it a rebate isn't tax relief. It's welfare at best, Marxist redistribution of wealth in the middle, and outright vote-buying.

But then going on to lie about what counts as tax relief by throwing in all sorts of stuff not even covered under any rubric of tax or IRS is just outright deceitful. Let's take a look at RECOVERY.GOV to see where it says all that money is going.

Ooh!!! $288Billion in tax relief! I'm so relieved! I thought this was just going to be a big spending bill where the government decides what to do with my money. I'm so thankful they're going to entrust me with more of what I earned... and... uh....

....wait a second. What's that asterisk doing there? I'd better check the fine print and footnotes.

* Tax Relief - includes $15 B for Infrastructure and Science, $61 B for Protecting the Vulnerable, $25 B for Education and Training and $22 B for Energy, so total funds are $126 B for Infrastructure and Science, $142 B for Protecting the Vulnerable, $78 B for Education and Training, and $65 B for Energy.

Lemme get this straight - since you're being all transparent and accountable: $123 Billion of this "tax relief" is really just more of the other stuff you've got listed there. Am I reading that right? So really it's only $165 Billion is in tax relief. And a good bit of that is really just going to be shuffling money to people that didn't pay any taxes to begin with?

So much for HOPE and CHANGE in the politics of deception.

Take these provisions with a grain of salt? YES WE CAN!

I think I liked the cowboy diplomacy better than the cowboy economics.

Rendering to Caesar

Archbishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Denver, the Most Rev'd Charles J. Chaput, had some strong words for how to navigate the current political situation. In an age when the powers of the state - especially the federal government - are expanding and encroaching on various parts of our social and economic lives, he offers a sane critique that is distinctly Christian, catholic, and American. That it comes from the lips of the second Native American to be granted episcopal rank should lend credit to his words. In dealing with Caesar, this man carries the historical memory of his office through the gift of apostolic succession and the DNA-bound memory of a people who were robbed of their land by promises of phony goods and assurances of protected status.

The speech is in promotion of his new book, Render Unto Caesar. This isn't the first time the man has spoken with clarity and conviction on the issues of how Christian citizens are to behave in a republic. He's provided consistent leadership in the election, and I pray the whole house of Roman Catholic bishops in the US - as well as bishops in other judicatories - listen to this man who is made a chief shepherd in the flock of God. Below are some snippets:

We need to remember that tolerance is not a Christian virtue. Charity, justice, mercy, prudence, honesty – these are Christian virtues. And obviously, in a diverse community, tolerance is an important working principle. But it’s never an end itself. In fact, tolerating grave evil within a society is itself a form of serious evil. Likewise, democratic pluralism does not mean that Catholics should be quiet in public about serious moral issues because of some misguided sense of good manners. A healthy democracy requires vigorous moral debate to survive. Real pluralism demands that people of strong beliefs will advance their convictions in the public square – peacefully, legally and respectfully, but energetically and without embarrassment. Anything less is bad citizenship and a form of theft from the public conversation.

Caesar does have rights. We owe civil authority our respect and appropriate obedience. But that obedience is limited by what belongs to God. Caesar is not God. Only God is God, and the state is subordinate and accountable to God for its treatment of human persons, all of whom were created by God. Our job as believers is to figure out what things belong to Caesar, and what things belong to God -- and then put those things in right order in our own lives, and in our relations with others.

[As Christians] we have a duty to be politically engaged. Why? Because politics is the exercise of power, and the use of power always has moral content and human consequences.

The “separation of Church and state” does not mean – and it can never mean – separating our Catholic faith from our public witness, our political choices and our political actions. That kind of separation would require Christians to deny who we are; to repudiate Jesus when he commands us to be “leaven in the world” and to “make disciples of all nations.” That kind of radical separation steals the moral content of a society. It’s the equivalent of telling a married man that he can’t act married in public. Of course, he can certainly do that, but he won’t stay married for long.

“To suggest -- as some Catholics do -- that Senator Obama is this year’s ‘real’ prolife candidate requires a peculiar kind of self-hypnosis, or moral confusion, or worse. To portray the 2008 Democratic Party presidential ticket as the preferred ‘prolife’ option is to subvert what the word ‘prolife’ means.”

I like clarity, and there’s a reason why. I think modern life, including life in the Church, suffers from a phony unwillingness to offend that poses as prudence and good manners, but too often turns out to be cowardice. Human beings owe each other respect and appropriate courtesy. But we also owe each other the truth -- which means candor.

President Obama is a man of intelligence and some remarkable gifts. He has a great ability to inspire, as we saw from his very popular visit to Canada just this past week. But whatever his strengths, there’s no way to reinvent his record on abortion and related issues with rosy marketing about unity, hope and change.

I think Catholics – and I mean here mainly American Catholics – need to remember four simple things in the months ahead.

First, all political leaders draw their authority from God. We owe no leader any submission or cooperation in the pursuit of grave evil. In fact, we have the duty to change bad laws and resist grave evil in our public life, both by our words and our non-violent actions. The truest respect we can show to civil authority is the witness of our Catholic faith and our moral convictions, without excuses or apologies.

Second, in democracies, we elect public servants, not messiahs. It’s worth recalling that despite two ugly wars, an unpopular Republican president, a fractured Republican party, the support of most of the American news media and massively out-spending his opponent, our new president actually trailed in the election polls the week before the economic meltdown. This subtracts nothing from the legitimacy of his office. It also takes nothing away from our obligation to respect the president’s leadership.

But it does place some of today’s talk about a “new American mandate” in perspective. Americans, including many Catholics, elected a gifted man to fix an economic crisis. That’s the mandate. They gave nobody a mandate to retool American culture on the issues of marriage and the family, sexuality, bioethics, religion in public life and abortion. That retooling could easily happen, and it clearly will happen -- but only if Catholics and other religious believers allow it. It’s instructive to note that the one lesson many activists on the American cultural left learned from their loss in the 2004 election -- and then applied in 2008 -- was how to use a religious vocabulary while ignoring some of the key beliefs and values that religious people actually hold dear.

Every new election cycle I hear from unhappy, self-described Catholics who complain that abortion is too much of a litmus test. But isn’t that exactly what it should be? One of the defining things that set early Christians apart from the pagan culture around them was their respect for human life; and specifically their rejection of abortion and infanticide. We can’t be Catholic and be evasive or indulgent about the killing of unborn life. We can’t claim to be “Catholic” and “pro-choice” at the same time without owning the responsibility for where the choice leads – to a dead unborn child. We can’t talk piously about programs to reduce the abortion body count without also working vigorously to change the laws that make the killing possible. If we’re Catholic, then we believe in the sanctity of developing human life. And if we don’t really believe in the humanity of the unborn child from the moment life begins, then we should stop lying to ourselves and others, and even to God, by claiming we’re something we’re not.

Catholic social teaching goes well beyond abortion. In America we have many urgent issues that beg for our attention, from immigration reform to health care to poverty to homelessness. The Church in Denver and throughout the United States is committed to all these issues. We need to do a much better job of helping women who face problem pregnancies, and American bishops have been pressing our public leaders for that for more than 30 years. But we don’t “help” anyone by allowing or funding an intimate, lethal act of violence. We can’t build a just society with the blood of unborn children. The right to life is the foundation of every other human right -- and if we ignore it, sooner or later every other right becomes politically contingent.

...for Christians, hope is a virtue, not an emotional crutch or a political slogan. Virtus, the Latin root of virtue, means strength or courage. Real hope is unsentimental. It has nothing to do with the cheesy optimism of election campaigns. Hope assumes and demands a spine in believers. And that’s why – at least for a Christian -- hope sustains us when the real answer to the problems or hard choices in life is “no, we can’t,” instead of “yes, we can.”

The word “hope” on a campaign poster may give us a little thrill of righteousness, but the world will still be a wreck when the drug wears off. We can only attain hope through truth. And what that means is this: From the moment Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life,” the most important political statement anyone can make is “Jesus Christ is Lord.”

Read the rest here.

H is for Hypocrisy

On Wednesdays, I try to blog on a worship topic. However, my seminary has decided that the worship of perverse sexual acts and child rape is appropriate, so I'm interrupting my regular schedule.

(Sort-of...they promote it with the title V is for Venite. And venite is a legitimate liturgical topic which I'll need to return to at some point.)

Q is for Questionable Judgment

Here's the link to their site discussing the upcoming campus-sponsored production of Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues.

R is for Risible

Here's my response (which may or may not be on the site...they moderate, and I was censored in public discourse throughout parts of my seminary career):

I'm personally saddened to see the Women's Center sponsoring this play. In a notorious section, "The Little Coochi Snorcher that Could," a woman recounts how as a 13 yr old girl she is given alcohol and then seduced by a 24 yr old woman. In the original form (which has been unsatisfactorily redacted to omit it and change the age from 13 to 16), she dismisses the substance abuse and statutory violation by saying: "Now people say it was a kind of rape.... Well, I say if it was rape, it was a good rape...." In another segment, a six year old is queried about her genitalia (smells, names, etc.). As the father of beautiful little girl, I would be hard pressed to stay in my seat through such a performance.

The rest of the play wavers between diatribes against men and male-female sex as inherently violent, or about sexual practices that really deserve to stay in the bedroom. How this play actually addresses violence against women (especially when it is celebrated in the above scene), or opens frank conversations about the role men - and women - have in the sexualization of children and women (objectification is a prologue to rape and oppression) is perhaps beyond the scope of Wimminwise to answer. But it would be helpful to reflect on why this play at this seminary - of all the venues and content available - is appropriate and effective.

O is for Objection

Beyond the politicization of a day that Christians should remember for martyrs, they overturn a divinely-ordained institution (heterosexual marriage). Worse, marriage is meant to be a mysterious - almost sacramental - expression of the union of Christ and His Church. What are we to make of this from a seminary?

B is for Bias

Why is homosexual rape given a pass by an event promoted as anti-violence-against-women?

H is for Hypocrisy

We have a mandate to reform the culture to the Scriptural norm (the norming norm), not let culture corrupt the message of the Scriptures.

E is for End!!!

U is for Update: They posted my response. It was the same old "You don't know what you're talking about." However, I have it from an eyewitness that the attendance at these events has been blissfully low. As some one once termed roughly 1/3 of the campus population: "middle-aged bitter divorcees and their dogs."

Sad, really. Men need to be molded by their interactions with the pain of women....this just stops with scolding.

Obama's ProLife Gaff

President Obama just spoke at the first Washington Prayer Breakfast of his presidency. It was a soaring speech filled with the high-flying oratory that got him elected. Really excellent coverage of it is available at USA Today, where they cataloged highlights minute by minute and posted a full transcript in PDF format. Please note what he said in his opening remark:

“We know there is no God who condones the killing of an innocent human being.”

Really? Do you really believe that or are you just blowing smoke?

Please, Mr. President...live up to that rhetoric and turn away from FOCA and other life-destroying policies before it's too late. End violence in the womb and focus on the peace-bringer who defeated the tomb.

It's our last hope...our only hope for change.

Wolves in Sheepdog Clothing

Is your pastor leading you? Or just watching the show?



You should know what you believe, why you believe it, and why it makes a difference.

h/t ReverendFun

Congratulations Mr. Obama

Thank you for proving that the Declaration of Independence actually means something.

All people created equal? ...Check!

Endowed with unalienable rights? ....Check!

Liberty and pursuit of happiness? .....Check!

What more could you ask for? Oh wait....

Mr. President, build up a wall of protection around the unborn and make LIFE - essential to equality, liberty, and pursuing happiness - an unalienable right for everybody.

AU's Audacity of Dopes

The atheists [erm...] freedom-preserving faithful at Americans United (against Churches oops, I keep doing that!) have issued a call to SC to ban an "I Believe" license plate.

[A] retired United Methodist minister served as lead plaintiff in Americans United’s lawsuit, Summers v. Adams, which asked the court to halt South Carolina from producing an auto tag favoring one religious group over others.

This plate, unlike those requested by private groups and organizations, originated in the South Carolina legislature and was passed by statute. The plate features a cross, a stained-glass window and the words “I Believe.” No other faith group has been offered a similar plate, let alone those who want a plate stating, “I Do Not Believe.”

Let's take a look at this link to SC DMV plates.

Secular Humanists of the Low Country Plate

Although Secular Humanist of the Low Country is a membership based organization the “In Reason We Trust” plate is available to all SC residents. The fee for the plate is $30.00 every two years in additional to the regular registration fee. As a non-profit organization, the Secular Humanists of the Low Country do not receive any portion of the funds generated from the license plate sales.

Call me crazy, but for the life of me that looks just like an “I Do Not Believe” license plate.

Plates promoting Fishing, Wildlife Conservation, Golf, NASCAR, Education, Home Ownership and even [gasp] the national motto of In God We Trust - all of these are okay. Same with any number of voluntary organizations like colleges, schools, Freemasons, etc. Heck...they even have one for squardancing and the Carolina Shag, the states official dance. Just don't have anything to do with the church.

They're also up in a dander about the Choose Life plate. (Doesn't that go hand in hand with the shag plate anyway?)

If the DMV chooses to appeal the decision, AU will be ready. The state already failed in its appeal defending a law allowing a “Choose Life” plate back in 2006. It’s astonishing, and a waste of taxpayer funds, that state officials would want to continue pushing this when it is clearly a violation of church-state separation, Khan said.

Absolutely right. It's a horrendous waste of taxpayer money to present a plate that raises money from voluntary contributors. (Willikers! Obama is going to make sure you can use that money to fund more abortions...sounds like a win to you dweebs.)

Let's get something straight. THE RIGHT TO LIFE IS A PROTECTION GRANTED BY NATURAL LAW AND GUARANTEED BY THE CONSTITUTION. Civilized countries know this. It's not a church-state issue.

“I wish our legislators would read the Constitution as avidly as they read public opinion polls,” Jones, a Unitarian minister, wrote in a column for The State, South Carolina’s largest newspaper (See “Illicit License.”)

Yeah, me too. Vide supra!

Summers and Knight, both Christian leaders, also saw the legislators’ decision to approve this plate as demeaning to the faith they cherish.

“They are taking a Christian symbol and using it for marketing and advertising purposes,” Summers said. “This is an abuse and misuse of the Christian cross.”

Okay, Summers. What should we do with people that take the Christian ministry and use that for agitating and political purposes?

False Gods and False Devils - The War on Christmas

G. K. Chesterton said "Idolatry is committed, not merely by setting up false gods, but by setting up false devils; by making men afraid of war or alcohol or economic law, when they should be afraid of spiritual corruption and cowardice." Building upon Chesterton’s epigram, there are two forms of moral blindness, blindness to actual evil and seeing evil where none exists.

The bias in the mainstream media about Islamic Supremacist terror (calling it "unrest" or "freedom fighters") is an example of moral blindness to an existing evil. The statement by Nelson Mandela that America wants a world holocaust is an example of false devils - seeing an evil where none exists. A young leftist on TV claimed that the CIA destroyed the twin towers in New York. Conspiracy theorists of this sort have a double moral blindness - blindness to an actual evil combined with delusional perceptions of false devils.

One false devil that needs to be slain is the whole "war on Christmas." I'm sure you've heard about it, so I needn't go into any great lengths describing it. Don't get me wrong: I love the traditions we've received in this country that are used to hallow the Feast of our Saviour's Birth. Christmas trees from Germany (through Victorian England), Caroling from the French (again, through England), Santa Claus from the Dutch, etc. These have become such a part of the fabric of our national life that it seems impossible to remove them.

However, if people call them "holiday trees" and play "holiday music," what is it to me? They were pre-existing cultural expressions that were taken up in the service of the culture's interest. From the Middle Ages to the late Modern Era, the culture's interest was tied to Christianity (in the West, at least). That is no longer the case. So these cultural artifacts go back to doing what they've always done: reflect the culture. (And serving the crumbling gods of this age: Mammon.)

But Christians (or at least churchy-folk) get so tied up in who's not displaying a nativity scene, or who is giving equal time to other religious winter-time traditions, that we have no time to deal with the real evil: the war on Christ's Mass. We demand that the stores have ol' Saint Nick (though we do not even recognize him as the sainted Bishop of Myra), play Christmas Carols (preferably in muzak so we needn't be haunted by the words), and say "Merry Christmas!"

But most of these Christmas Commandos (in America, at least) neglect the holy preparation of Advent. Many churches aren't even open on Christmas Day for services! Remember what happened in 2005, when Christmas was actually on a Sunday? ("It'd be such a burden when we have all the family in." Wait, didn't Jesus say something about family values?)

And then the season of Christmas is abruptly over on 12/26 (National Return-the-crap-you-got-for-that-XBoxGame/Sweater-you-really-wanted Day). Where is Holy Innocents (c'mon, Prolifers!!!)? Where is Holy Family? Where is Epiphany? Where is Candlemas?

If anybody has been waging a war on Christmas, it's the Christians...the people who cram so much secular stuff into our commemoration of Christ's Nativity that we fail to leave room to prepare our hearts, our families, and - dare I say it - our churches and communities to welcome the birth of the King who comes in humility. And the atheists know it.

Which brings me to my second point. Plato said that courage is a combination of knowing what not to fear, combined with perseverance in opposition to that which is harmful and evil. This is where our insistence on playing the game of the Christmas War has really cost the church a great deal. In November, video game sales increased 10% (nearly $3 BILLION dollars, adding to the previous $19BILLION spent in the preceding months).

Let's put that in perspective. While we're swilling away our eggnog and CokeZero, over 1.1 billion people on the planet (17% of the earth's human inhabitants) can't even drink the water they have locally. Every 8 seconds a child dies from a water-borne disease. Did you know that for less than $10 billion dollars, the entire world could be given safe, clean drinking water? Thank God some people still know what to do with our national largess.

You've still got a week. Make this Christmas count.