Pajamas Media | by Jamie Glazov | Feb. 5, 2010

The tortures included laying a man naked on a freezing cement floor, forcing his legs apart, and then an interrogator stepping on his testicles, applying increasing pressure until the confession surfaced. Imagine the consequences of no surfacing confession. Indeed, many people refused to confess to a crime they did not commit.

Daughters and sons were raped in front of their fathers and mothers — for the sake of extracting “confessions.” more »

American Thinker | by James Lewis | Feb. 7, 2010

Two seemingly unrelated stories this week came together in my mind: “Howard Zinn is dead” and
“Horizontal fracking” will produce much larger-than-expected amounts of clean, inexpensive natural gas over the coming decades.

What do those headlines mean? Well, Howard Zinn was the mendacious professor whose Marxist People’s History of the United States is now a principal indoctrination tool of the college Left — our “progressives” — in order to turn out the likes of Barack Hussein Obama and other people who think the United States is a malign force that should go around apologizing for itself. more »

AOI | Feb. 5, 2010

Russian Orthodox Church leaders called on Christians on Thursday to be firm in defending traditional marriage and lamented the family crisis in the country.

According to some estimates, over half of the marriages in Russia end in divorce. Women in the 140-million-strong country undergo some 1.5 million abortions annually.“We, Christians of different denominations, should profess the inviolability of the evangelic norms on the holy matrimony between man and woman,” Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia said in a welcome message to participants of an inter-Christian forum for former Soviet republics held in Moscow. more »

“We are spending more money than we have ever spent before, and it does not work. After eight years we have just as much unemployment as when we started, and an enormous debt to boot.” FDR’s Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, 1939

Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

American Thinker | by Marc Sheppard | Feb. 4, 2010

Unquestionably the world’s final authority on the subject, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s findings and recommendations have formed the bedrock of literally every climate-related initiative worldwide for more than a decade. Likewise, virtually all such future endeavors — be they Kyoto II, domestic cap-and-tax, or EPA carbon regulation, would inexorably be built upon the credibility of the same U.N. panel’s “expert” counsel. But a glut of ongoing recent discoveries of systemic fraud has rocked that foundation, and the entire man-made global warming house of cards is now teetering on the verge of complete collapse. more »

Wall Street Journal | Feb. 1, 2010

The federal budget deficit has long since graduated from nuisance to headache to pressing national concern. Now, however, it has become so large and persistent that it is time to start thinking of it as something else entirely: a national-security threat.

The budget plan released Monday by the Obama administration illustrates why this escalation is warranted. The numbers are mind-numbing: a $1.6 trillion deficit this year, $1.3 trillion next year, $8.5 trillion for the next 10 years combined—and that assumes Congress enacts President Barack Obama’s proposals to start bringing it down, and that the proposals work. more »

American Thinker | by Bob Weir | Jan. 31, 2010

University of Florida quarterback Tim Tebow hasn’t even made it to the NFL yet, but he is going to be a star of the Super Bowl. The Heisman Trophy-winning passer for the Florida Gators is the first college football player to both rush and pass for twenty touchdowns in a season, and he is the first sophomore to win the highly coveted trophy. Nevertheless, his recent fame comes from an ad that will be placed among dozens of others during one of the most popular televised events of the year.

Even though the ad won’t be run until Super Bowl Sunday on February 7, Mr. Tebow is already becoming a household name. His premature celebrity comes not from his athletic ability on the gridiron, but from the mere fact that he’s alive. You see, during the thirty-second spot, his mother Pam reportedly will be talking about the fact that she became ill while pregnant with her fifth son during a mission in the Philippines. Ms. Tebow repudiated her doctor’s advice to abort the child, and she gave birth to Tim. Ordinarily, this would rank up there with many other heart-warming success stories that celebrate life. more »

Orthodox Forum | by Cathy Tatusko | Jan. 28, 2010

I write in support of two Orthodox priests, Fr. Patrick Reardon and Fr. Mark Hodges, for their principled and public stance on the decision by St. Vladimir’s Seminary to invite Rowan Williams to deliver the Schmemann lecture and to confer upon him an honorary Doctorate of Divinity. As Fathers Reardon and Hodges so accurately and forcefully state, these actions are scandalous not only to many of the faithful Orthodox Christians in this country whose priests have been schooled and formed at this seminary, but also to the many Anglicans and other Protestants who may have been contemplating a move to the Orthodox Church to escape the immoral practices within their own communion with respect to homosexuality. more »

Washington Post | by Michael Gerson | Jan. 27, 2010

President Obama’s primary problem is not rhetorical — though, about an hour into the State of the Union address, I gave up hoping that it might eventually build toward something remotely interesting. (For much of the speech Obama sounded like a commerce secretary at a professional conference on a particularly uninspired day.) Obama’s problem is not primarily political — though he seems in complete denial about the political dangers he faces. (He amazingly blamed his health-care failure on “not explaining it more clearly.”) Obama’s problem is not a vice president behind his right shoulder who can’t stop his distracting, sycophantic nodding — though it was certainly annoying.

Obama has a reality problem. more »

American Thinker | by James Lewis | Jan. 28, 2010

You don’t pick brain surgeons by the color of their skin. You pick them by competence only. Same thing with airplane pilots. But we have allowed the profoundly irrational liberal media to persuade the American public that we are supposed to pick a U.S. president by affirmative action. Obama was elected to universal Hosannas because he is black. It wasn’t a secret. That’s why the Left around the world went into ecstasies when Obama ran and got elected. more »

Many innocent lives may be lost because of the massive incompetence of this administration and their idiotic mishandling of a foreign terrorist with ties to Al Qaeda. The terrorist was provided with legal counsel and Mirandized before we could extract critical information about other threats to America. This is criminal negligence!

NRO | by Rich Lowry | Jan. 26, 2010

Intending to die in the act of destroying a jetliner, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab instead landed alive in Detroit as a kind of message in a bottle from al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. He knew more about its recruiting, training, and operations than anyone who is ever likely to fall into our arms babbling like a scared 23-year-old.

But the Obama administration shut him down. It didn’t go so far as to tell the Customs and Border Protection officers to cover their ears and try not to listen when Abdulmutallab made incriminating statements on the initial ride to the hospital, but it came close. It had an FBI team inform Abdulmutallab of his right to remain silent, after which he predictably remained silent. more »

BreakPoint | by Chuck Colson | Jan. 26, 2010

People often ask me if I believe in miracles. Of course I do! I see them every day. Because a changed heart is nothing short of a miracle.

If your conscience required it, could you turn your back on the job you’d dedicated your entire adult life to?

That’s what Abby Johnson did. After nine years as director of the Planned Parenthood clinic in Bryan, Texas, Johnson left in October to join the Coalition for Life, a group that holds prayer rallies outside that same clinic—and a group of which she had once been a vocal critic. more »

American Thinker | by Pamela Geller | Jan. 26, 2010

A new documentary, Oral Sex Is the New Goodnight Kiss, chronicles America’s moral decay. Sharlene Azam, a Canadian filmmaker, says, “If you talk to teens [about oral sex], they’ll tell you it’s not a big deal. In fact, they don’t consider it sex. They don’t consider a lot of things sex.” In the documentary, teenage girls talk casually about their sexual experiences and even their forays into prostitution.

One girl sums up the new attitudes: “Five minutes and I got $100. If I’m going to sleep with them anyway because they’re good-looking, might as well get paid for it, right?” more »

BreakPoint | by Chuck Colson | Jan. 22, 2010

One of my all-time favorite movies reminds me that it often takes a bold act to awaken the conscience of a nation. It’s one of the most dramatic scenes in a really great movie. The movie is Amazing Grace. The scene is the House of Commons in the latter years of the eighteenth century. William Wilberforce stuns his parliamentary colleagues by unrolling an enormous scroll down the aisle. On the scroll were the signatures of 390,000 Englishmen, demanding that Parliament abolish the slave trade—the greatest moral issue of the day. more »

American Thinker | by Marc Sheppard | Jan. 22, 2010

Not surprisingly, the blatant corruption exposed at Britain’s premiere climate institute was not contained within the nation’s borders. Just months after the Climategate scandal broke, a new study has uncovered compelling evidence that our government’s principal climate centers have also been manipulating worldwide temperature data in order to fraudulently advance the global warming political agenda.

Not only does the preliminary report indict a broader network of conspirators, but it also challenges the very mechanism by which global temperatures are measured, published, and historically ranked. more »

Speaking the Truth in Love | Fr. Thomas Hopko | Jan 21, 2010

What is the relationship between the concepts of natural selection and Christian theology? Fr. Tom begins a series of reflections on Charles Darwin and what he has learned in his research may surprise you!

Darwin and Christianity – Part 1 – 1/21/2010

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more »

Human Events | by Herbert London | Jan. 21, 2010

As George Orwell noted the first duty of intelligent people is “the restatement of the obvious.” It is obvious or should be obvious that the goal of terrorists is terrorism. What that means precisely is not clear based on recent news accounts.

According to reports the United States escaped an enormous tragedy when a Nigerian, Umar Abdulmutallab, was apprehended when he attempted to blow up a KLM flight from Africa to America via Amsterdam. Alas, that is accurate as far as it goes. Overlooked in this calculus is that a terrorist who gains access to a commercial flight has already achieved his goal, i.e. promote the fear of terrorism. more »

American Thinker | by James Simpson | Jan. 20, 2010

Scott Brown’s stunning electoral victory in Massachusetts yesterday confirms to the world what we have known all along: patriotism and common sense are alive and well. Real Americans remain a majority in this country, and the massively-funded, corrupt Democrat machine, engorged with our tax dollars, radical billionaire money and lock-step union support, cannot buy elections, even in hardcore Democrat states, once the sleeping giant has awoken.

And make no mistake about it: we are wide awake! more »

American Thinker | by James Lewis | Jan. 19, 2010

The name “liberalism” has now drifted so far from its moorings that it has turned into a lie. Anybody who uses “liberal” these days is trying to put one over on you. It’s like Florida swampland peddlers talking about their “beautiful lakeshore.” You can stop listening at that point, because nothing you’re going to hear is true. Liberalism used to mean something. Today it’s pure Florida swampland, complete with snapping alligators. more »

OrthodoxyToday | by Fr. Patrick Henry Reardon | Dec. 20, 2009

Just as interesting as the recent Manhattan Declaration, perhaps, is the variety of responses the document elicited among those conservative Christians who declined to endorse it.

Commenting on this subject not long ago, I was reluctant to ascribe motives to such individuals, beyond the reasons they explicitly offered. I had my suspicions, nonetheless, as I hinted by mentioning their refusal to “associate with the other signers.” That is to say, I suspected that the identity of some of the signers was taken, in certain cases, as a reason for not signing. more »