The White House has announced plans to expand its Office of Faith-Based Initiatives.  In an address to the National Prayer Breakfast, President Barack Obama said the office would reach out to nonprofit organizations and “help them determine how to make a bigger impact…and learn their obligations under the law.”  From a number of things said […]

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Who among us has not had their faith challenged? What are we to tell the person who, for whatever reason, has lost faith in God? Teacher of the Year: The Mystery and Legacy of Edwin Barlow examines how a young boy destined for the clergy became a soldier in WWII. After killing numerous […]

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Would Jesus pack heat?
An easy question you say, since Jesus told his followers to “turn the other cheek”, and this quote is often quoted by those opposing all war or violence of any sort…mainly by those living in safe suburbs and working in tenured academic jobs.
Yet this article states that some pastors in the Detroit […]

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I was startled to find this important editorial in the NYTimes:

A Final Verdict on the Presidential Salute

After a couple of paragraphs explaining the writer’s expertise in saluting, and another couple of paragraphs on the history of presidential salutes, we come to the conclusion:
(President Obama’s) salute, it struck me, was impeccable in every way.
Huh?
It’s true that […]

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It is as if the entire Washington press corps has forgotten everything any of them knew in 2001 and early 2002 and have no perspective on what is going on in Afghanistan now.
In late September of 2002 newspapers were flooded with glorious tales about the Northern Alliance – and the NA deserved every bit of […]

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The early 21st century stands as a period of profound moral confusion.  On the one hand, mothers and doctors are permitted to crack open the skulls and suck out the brains of nearly-born babies with government sanction under the banner of partial birth abortion.  Should these very same people hike into the woods and crack […]

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Ah, Halloween is here, and the TV channels are full of stories of witches and ghosts and goblins of all sorts.
Most of it is harmless fun: art and literature helps mankind be able to confront the evils around them in a way that strengthens their ability to hope that confronting the more real evils around […]

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Ah, a British paper just pooh poohed the British victory at the Battle of Agincourt, saying that Prince Hal was not outnumbered 4 to 1, merely outnumbered 2 to 1.
Actually, the author misses the point, which is that the elite knights of France got slowed down by the mud and were massacred by ordinary British […]

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Between all the stories of terror, selfishness, and violence, we sometimes need to read about a person who just tries to help in a small way.
So in today’s Atlanta Journal Constitution, there is a story about a retired woman, Margaret Freeman,  who helps children thrown away by their parents.
Those who are still alive, she helps […]

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The latest kerfuffle on the Health Care bill is that the Obama church has leashed the Am Cath types against the Catholic bishops.
For those of you who are not Catholic, much of the church bureaucracy is full of those who claim Vatican II to justify changing the Catholic church into a Episcopalian wanna be church.
Luckily, […]

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One of the more bizarre headlines in the news is a report that two people died in a “sweat lodge” and quite a few more people who were there required hospital treatment.
Any physician hearing of this will suspect the deaths were from one of two causes: One carbon monoxide (which reportedly has been ruled out) […]

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This year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner would not receive at the White House the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, who is on a visit this week to Washington. President Obama apparently wanted to avoid upsetting Chinese communist leaders before his official trip to China.
Unwelcome at the White House […]

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I was delighted to hear that Mother Angelica and Deacon Bill Steltemeier have been awarded a medal by the Vatican. She deserves it. Mother Angelica is the founder of EWTN, a Catholic network that is found on many cable systems all over the world.
On the surface it sounds like a proper award.

But her story […]

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 One of the things that adherents of the world’s religions have in common, certainly followers of the three great monotheist religions, is their certainty that theirs is the true faith. It couldn’t really be otherwise if you think about it. If you are a Christian then you believe in whatever branch of Christianity it is […]

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Artist: Kirk Whalum
CD:  “The Gospel According to Jazz, Chapter III”
Label: Rendezvous
Release Date: November 17, 2009
 
As an art form Gospel Jazz is still in its infant stage, but with Kirk Whalum as one of the fathers of Gospel Jazz this is proof that it takes a village to raise a child. On his third […]

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Using a slight of hand and having his propaganda mill obscure what has been done, the Democrats and the Obama administration are planning to fund abortion in their health care bill.
The original “compromise” on abortion was a slight of hand that would force people to pay for abortion coverage themselves, similar to the way you […]

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The characteristic that most divides Man from the rest of the animal kingdom is cognitive thought. The power to reason, combined with sophisticated powers of communication, make Homo Sapiens the king of any jungle on earth.  Our brains, unlike the brains of all other species, are sufficiently advanced that we have powers of deduction that […]

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Ah, the yearly collection for the Catholic campaign for human development is going on, and Catholics are once again asked to put their money into a fund that is essentially run by the left of center ideologues at the Catholic Bishop’s Conference.
What’s wrong with this picture?
Well,  for one thing, few people know where the money […]

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The father of the “green revolution”, Norman Borlaug, has died.
Some of use are old enough to remember when famines in Asia were common, and when the “Population bomb” types were predicting mass starvation of millions of poor people.
The famines didn’t happen, because Borlaug, and other agricultural scientists, developed high yield wheat and grains, along with […]

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Reportedly, when Thomas Beckett, a “born again” Christian, turned against his former friend Henry II to defend the rights of the church from a state takeover, Henry was heard to say the above phrase, and promptly several of his henchmen went out and killed the meddlesome bishop.
Nothing new there.
One of the dangerous things about priests […]

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I have seen a growing number of liberal articles being printed which attempt to paint conservative Christians as hippocrites for opposing the healthcare reform bill. Let me first say that I am overjoyed that modern day liberals could take the time out of their busy day to find and crack open a bible, but am […]

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If I were to be asked why I am leery of the President’s Health Care bill, I Could tell you in one phrase:
It’s the bioethics, stupid.
You see, few lay people read bioethics journals, and so the public is blissfully unaware how many philosophers in academia are busy writing  “quality of life” formulas that will decide […]

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There isn’t a lot in the local (Philippine) papers about the details of the US Health Care bill, but one article in our local newspaper mentioned that the President was getting out his own “activist base” to counter the grass roots protests at the town hall meetings.
WASHINGTON, August 18, 2009 (AFP) - President Barack Obama […]

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Does Huntsman’s Road Through Beijing Lead To The Obama White House?
When President Barack Obama rang up Utah’s moderate Republican Governor Jon Huntsman a while back to feel him out about joining a Democratic administration, insiders say the first question out of his mouth went something like this: “So, are you going to run against me […]

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Try as the atheist might to manipulate objective data to fit their hypothesis with some evolutionists going so far as to invoke the law in order to suppress perspectives conflicting with their origins account, the assumptions of atheism fail to square with the facts of nature and with the revelation of nature’s God.  At one […]

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Not only have the French gotten their knickers in a knot about Muslim girls wearing modest costumes to public swimming pools, but now an Italian city plans to ban it completely.
Women wearing the garment made up of a veil, a tunic and loose leggings face a fine of 500 euros ($850) if spotted at swimming […]

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The headlines are not helpful. This one is from CBS News:
“Mutant Polio Virus Spreads in Nigeria
124 Children Afflicted This Year By Paralyzing Disease, Believed To Be Caused By Same Vaccine Used To Fight It
And other new sources print the same story with even more frightening headlines…
Reality check please.
Let’s talk about Polio. I’m old enough to […]

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Jimmy Root Jr., has served as an ordained minister with the Assemblies of God since 1982, including service in Nebraska, Missouri, and a seven year term as a missionary in Colombia, South America. He is also the lead Pastor of Family Worship Center of Smithville, a growing suburb of Kansas City, Missouri. 
His writings, both in […]

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If you are wondering about Puffball Palin’s comments about the so called “death” panels, you should be aware that there have been calculations proposed by many “bioethicists” to limit care according to one’s quality of life.
Here is how the UK does it:

The basic idea of a QALY is straightforward. It takes one year of perfect […]

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If one reads Drudge, it sounds like things are getting nasty in the US about the push to quickly pass an unread Health Care bill before Fall.
Well, at least I finally found a copy of the bill on line, all 1000 plus pages of it, full of bureaucratic gobbledygook and corrections, via a blog on […]

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