American Thinker | James Lewis | Apr. 30, 2009

The Left rules by constant fear, but none of its predicted catastrophes come true. Ever notice that? Instead, we do have real things to worry about, all right — but half of them are the results of the Media Pandemonium Machine itself. Like one third of the little kids in our world who are now convinced — by cynical or deluded adults — that they won’t live long enough to enjoy a healthy adulthood. That is a terrible burden imposed on little children by the Left, in its never-ending grab for power. Continue Reading »

American Thinker | Jeff Lukens | Apr. 29, 2009

The contradictions between Obama’s words and actions are many. He opposes big government, and then he vastly expands it. He says he favors bipartisanship, but doesn’t practice it. He says he is against earmarks, and then signs the largest pork package in history. And that is just to name a few.

Such inconsistencies are contributing to a lack of confidence in Obama and his economic policies. The budget deficits he proposes are staggering. The trillions of dollars he wants to spend are incomprehensible. There is no evidence that stimulative government spending even works. Obama is apparently racing to remake America in a socialist mold before public sentiment turns against him. One wonders whether his political capital will run out before financial capital of the country runs out. Continue Reading »

This cat gets an A for persistence, A for technical difficulty, A for artistic impression, and A for creativity.

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The Guardian | Laura Spinney | Apr. 23, 2009

The sun’s activity is winding down, triggering fevered debate among scientists about how low it will go, and what it means for Earth’s climate. Nasa recorded no sunspots on 266 days in 2008 – a level of inactivity not seen since 1913 – and 2009 looks set to be even quieter. Solar wind pressure is at a 50-year low and our local star is ever so slightly dimmer than it was 10 years ago.

Sunspots are the most visible sign of an active sun – islands of magnetism on the sun’s surface where convection is inhibited, making the gas cooler and darker when seen from Earth – and the fact that they’re vanishing means we’re heading into a period of solar lethargy. Continue Reading »

FrontPageMagazine.com | Dennis Prager | Apr. 28, 2009

Any human being with a functioning conscience or a decent heart loathes torture. Its exercise has been a blight on humanity. With this in mind, those who oppose what the Bush administration did to some terror suspects may be justified. But in order to ascertain whether they are, they need to respond to some questions:

1. Given how much you rightly hate torture, why did you oppose the removal of Saddam Hussein, whose prisons engaged in far more hideous tortures, on thousands of times more people, than America did — all of whom, moreover, were individuals and families who either did nothing or simply opposed tyranny? One assumes, furthermore, that all those Iraqi innocents Saddam had put into shredding machines or whose tongues were cut out and other hideous tortures would have begged to be waterboarded. Continue Reading »

Human Events | James R. Edwards, Jr. | Apr. 27, 2009

It’s official: The Obama administration plans to push a mass amnesty. It became official even before the New York Times reported the president’s plan to look “for a path for illegal immigrants to become legal,” said “a senior administration official.”

The White House website says that the president supports a plan to, “Bring People Out of the Shadows,” which it describes as “…a system that allows undocumented immigrants who are in good standing to pay a fine, learn English, and go to the back of the line for the opportunity to become citizens.” Continue Reading »

BreakPoint | Rev. Robert Lynn | Mar 27, 2009

Our life together in Christ isn’t simply about deciding what we’re against, what we won’t do and what we won’t allow. It’s also about deciding what we’re for.

Please don’t misunderstand. The Bible is against many things. Why? Because God created men and women in his image to live with Him and one another in a way that gives rise to human flourishing. God isn’t against things simply to prove He’s big enough to make rules and powerful enough to enforce them. He’s against the things that undermine or destroy the well-being of those who bear His image. As someone once said, if you live against the grain of the universe, you’re sure to get splinters. The Ten Commandments, for example, teach us how to live with the grain of the universe so that we might experience the fullness of what it means to be truly human. God is against certain things because He is for other things. Continue Reading »

AFR – The Illumined Heart | Kevin Allen | Apr 17, 2009

Writer, attorney, and university professor Chris Banescu discusses the economic, moral and spiritual issues surrounding the “capitalist” economic model and whether it serves the best interests of Christians living the life of the Beatitudes, in this interview with Kevin Allen host of The Illumined Heart podcast on Ancient Faith Radio.

Orthodox Christianity And Capitalism: Are They Compatible? – 4/17/09

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AOI | Fr. Johannes Jacobse | Apr 19, 2009

Only the Gospel of Christ, the proclamation that Christ is risen from the dead, reveals that death is an enemy destroyed and exposes the nihilistic embrace of death as a lie. The grand schemes of the social engineers who are intoxicated by their own pride and contemptuous of what is good and true, will one day come to nothing. Babel will fall. But until it does, destruction and suffering prevail by their hands.

How does evil flourish? Edmund Burke answered the question this way: When good men do nothing. God enters the world through a word. The Gospel of Christ, when preached with authority and by the Spirit of God, tears down strong places. “We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers in the heavenly places,” writes the Apostle Paul. Truth, spoken into the world of space and time, draws from and reveals Him who is True, and tears down the towers that men build to reach God. Continue Reading »

Christ is risen from the dead, Trampling

down death by death, And upon those in

the tombs bestowing life!

“Come, all you faithful, let us venerate the holy Resurrection of Christ. For behold, through the Cross joy has come to all the world. Ever praising the Lord, let us praise His Resurrection. For by enduring the Cross for us, He has destroyed death by death!” - Easter Sunday Resurrection Service

OrthodoxyToday.org | Fr. George Morelli | Mar 28, 2009

Is there any doubt that the Cross of Jesus Christ is a scandal, a shame and embarrassment to anyone who chooses not to respond to God’s grace? Look at Jesus from a Jewish perspective in the time of Christ. They were awaiting a messiah, the anointed one of God — a deliverer who would reign in glory with the power and adornment of a king.

But who was Jesus? He was the son of a carpenter who came from a place of no stature or notice — “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” (Jn. 1:46). He was an itinerant, poor preacher and would be condemned as a criminal, scourged, buffeted, spat upon and be crucified in total ignominy. Continue Reading »

Big Hollywood | Gary Graham | Apr. 14, 2009

The simple catch-phrase slogans bandied about for the past year were the thing of pop culture legend. Hope. Change We Need. Change We Can Believe In. Yes We Can.

Pabulum to the ‘downtrodden’… manna to the Constitutional deconstructionists… and justification to history revisionists everywhere. But prior to the election these euphemistic phrases were long on emotional incitement and glaringly short on substance. If words can be taken to mean anything…ultimately, they mean nothing. Or so we thought.

Five months after the election we are starting to see that President Obama meant something very specific with these slogans that helped garner him the election. It just wasn’t quite what any of us Americans thought he meant. Continue Reading »

AmericanThinker | Kyle-Anne Shiver | Apr. 14, 2009

The Rasmussen folks last week revealed a poll wherein American young people are just about evenly divided on whether they prefer capitalism to socialism. Among our under-30 crowd, 37% prefer capitalism, 33% socialism, and 30% are undecided.

Sucking at the teat of the state has never looked so good, apparently. Well, this certainly helps explain Obamamania. Continue Reading »

Daily Mail | Apr. 11, 2009

Pope Benedict XVI last night attacked the rise of aggressive secularism in Western societies, warning them that they risked drifting into a ‘desert of godlessness’.

He used his Good Friday meditations to compare deliberate attempts to remove religion from public life to the mockery of Jesus Christ by the mob as he was led out to be crucified. Continue Reading »

AmericanThinker | James Lewis | Apr. 11, 2009

Thank heavens for the pirates! Why? Because we must know as soon as possible if the Obamanites are as incompetent and foolish as they proudly claim to be — or whether they can summon up the guts to try to rescue the captain. We have plenty of special ops forces who are trained for hostage rescue. The West has forty years of experience in knocking over hostage takers, as Israelis did in Entebbe. But similar methods have been perfected by now, as shown most recently in Colombia, where US forces advised the Colombian government how to deal with another hostage situation.

It always comes with real risk, both to our own troops and to the hostages. And yes, Mr. Obama, we may have to knock some pirates’ heads as well. Continue Reading »