by John Jalsevac -
Christmas isn’t quite what it used to be, is it? And I’m not referring the usual laundry list of grievances that makes us religious fundamentalist extremists (i.e. Christians) seriously ponder setting up a utopian commune on a deserted Mediterranean island: the war on Christmas, the kitschy music, the consumerist madness, the widespread ignorance about even the most basic facts behind the feast.

Forget about all that for now. All I mean is, if you’re old enough to be reading this, somehow Christmas has lost much of the effortless magic with which it was surrounded years ago…in your childhood.

You know what I mean. As a child, it seemed so easy to get swept up into the rich mystery of Christmas: the presents, the smells, the music, the lights glistening on the snow, the tinsel on the tree, the strange guests, the parties, the good food. All these things spoke to you, and without thinking about it you gave yourself into the power of their enchantment. Continue Reading »

by Rev. Robert A. Sirico -
In a Christmas season filled with noble sentiments such as “peace on earth and goodwill to men,” the remembrance of the joys and sanctity of the family, and the deep human desire for tranquility of heart, how is it that this is arguably the period of deepest tension, family strife and exhaustion?

Although I don’t have hard data to prove it, from both personal and pastoral experience I can safely assert that from roughly the last week of November to the first week of January we experience more stress, arguments within families, and grief, than at any other time of the year.

Much of this is no doubt of our own doing: the expectations we have of ourselves to write every card and attend every party and prepare every dish possible. We go too soon from the joyful welcoming of the “meaning of the season’ into crushing obligations the meaning of which we find ourselves simply too tired to contemplate. Continue Reading »

by Mark D. Tooley –
The multiculturalist Left wants to dilute Christmas into a vacuous, stern celebration of Winter, divorced from culture and religion. Not content with banning crèches, trees and carols, anti-Christmas zealots are often even threatened by Santa Claus. The transcendent authority behind Christmas, even in its commercialized form, is an unwanted challenge to the Left’s preference for all authority vested in the state and its secular clerisy.

Fox News has delighted in lampooning the ongoing absurdities of the “War on Christmas,” which sometimes even include banning green and red from classrooms. The American Family Association, a para-church group, has also challenged the anti-Christmas campaign by affirming companies that affirm Christmas.

Naturally the Religious Left is troubled by this defense of Christmas, especially by Fox News or conservative Christians, both of whom it despises. So the Religious Left has decided that the cultural defenders of Christmas are instead betraying Christmas by actually promoting commercialism. Continue Reading »

by David Chilton –
Every year about this time, there rises a hue and cry about the “commercialization” of Christmas, accompanied by impassioned pleas to get back to the “real meaning” of the celebration. Too much time and money, we hear, are spent on the public side of the holiday — the hustle and bustle of shopping, the lavish decorations, and the often insincere displays of seasonal piety. Meanwhile, the true spirit of Christmas gets left behind. Some even argue that all public displays of Christmas are inappropriate.

Every Christmas season seems to spawn a new series of lawsuits charging that the First Amendment is imperiled by the appearance of manger scenes on civic property, or by the singing of carols by the local high school choir. I recall hearing a spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union claim that the very message of Christmas itself was being violated by any public recognition of its existence. What we need, he said, is to remove Christmas from public life completely, and allow it to become once again a private, personal expression of religious sentiment and family values. Continue Reading »

by Mark Steyn -
Christmas in America is a season of time-honored traditions – the sacred performance of the annual ACLU lawsuit over the presence of an insufficiently secular “holiday” tree; the ritual provocations of the atheist displays licensed by pitifully appeasing municipalities to sit between the menorah and the giant Frosty the Snowman; the familiar strains of every hack columnist’s “war on Christmas” column rolling off the keyboard as easily as Richard Clayderman playing “Winter Wonderland”…

This year has been a choice year. A crucified skeleton Santa Claus was erected as part of the “holiday” display outside the Loudoun County courthouse in Virginia – because, let’s face it, nothing cheers the hearts of moppets in the Old Dominion like telling them, “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus – and he’s hanging lifeless in the town square.” Alas, a week ago, some local burghers failed to get into the ecumenical spirit and decapitated him. Who are these killjoys? Continue Reading »

by Chuck Colson -
In the quest for divine truth, how do we know when we’ve found it? Are there markers along the way to guide us — a kind of spiritual GPS?

British bishop N. T. Wright says there are such markers; he calls them “Echoes of a Voice.” He says, “I’m talking about voices that I believe virtually all human beings, in virtually all cultures, listen for and know, but are puzzled by.”

Wright shared his views at a New York City gathering called Socrates in the City — arranged by my friend and colleague Eric Metaxas, author of the amazing biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Metaxas put the Socrates in the City meetings together to help sophisticated New Yorkers think about the bigger questions of life. I’ve spoken there twice, and they’re great.

Referring to C. S. Lewis, Bishop Wright says the first “echo of a voice” has to do with an understanding of justice. Even the youngest child is aware of this — which is why, if you spend any time on a playground, you’ll hear cries of “That’s not fair!” Continue Reading »

by Mark Tapscott -

Looks like the PC police have threatened members of the House of Representatives against wishing constituents a “Merry Christmas,” if they want to do so in a mailing paid for with tax dollars.

Members who submit official mailings for review by the congressional franking commission that reviews all congressional mail to determine if it can be “franked,” or paid for with tax dollars, are being told that no holiday greetings, including “Merry Christmas,” can be sent in official mail.

“I called the commission to ask for clarification and was told no ‘Merry Christmas.’ Also told cannot say ‘Happy New Year’ but can say ‘have a happy new year’ – referencing the time period of a new year, but not the holiday,” said a Hill staffer who requested anonymity.

Another Hill staffer told The Washington Examiner that “we were given that advice after submitting” a draft mailing. Continue Reading »

by Mark Tapson -
More and more, Hollywood has alienated audiences with its messages of moral equivalence and its clichéd insistence on casting corporate capitalists, the CIA, and Christian hypocrites as the bad guys in thrillers, action movies, and even horror flicks. It seems that the only genres in which fed-up moviegoers can still find old-fashioned faceoffs of good versus evil are some comic book adaptations like Captain America: The First Avenger and sword-and-sandal epics like Gladiator and 300.

That timeless confrontation of light and darkness is the explicit theme of the recent stylish, spectacular 3-D action adventure Immortals, from the unique dreamscape imagination of Tarsem Singh. Singh is a former director of music videos, best-known for his video of the REM song “Losing My Religion” and the nightmarishly surreal Jennifer Lopez film The Cell .

Immortals is set more than a thousand years before Christ in a mythic Greece overseen by Zeus and the other gods from their perch on Mt. Olympus. On earth below, the power-mad butcher King Hyperion, played by Academy Award nominee Mickey Rourke (The Wrestler) leads his dark army on a rampage across the land in search of the Virgin Oracle (Freida Pinto of Oscar winner Slumdog Millionaire). Continue Reading »

by Victor Volsky -
For the life of me, I can’t figure out why conservative pundits, even such stalwarts as Rush Limbaugh, when discussing the virtually inexhaustible supply of liberal follies and blunders, hasten to express their confidence that the perpetrators are “well-intentioned.” Why do conservatives hew mindlessly to the conventional line that far-left radicals are necessarily high-minded and motivated by the best of intentions? Why aren’t liberals challenged when they generously absolve themselves of any wrongdoing on the grounds of their good intentions?

“Good intentions cannot compensate for evil works,” advises the Torah (Hebrew Matthew 3:1); “[b]y their fruits ye shall know them,” avers Scripture (Matt. 7:16). St. Francis de Sales warned that “Hell is full of good intentions or desires.” Shakespeare wrote, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” Sir Jonathan Sacks, chief rabbi of Great Britain, in his writings discusses “the tragedy of good intentions.” Continue Reading »

by Peter Ferrara -
His mother was an unabashed hippie from 1960s central casting. His father was an openly avowed Communist from Kenya. While his father wasn’t around much, his devoutly progressive grandparents arranged for him to be mentored during his adolescent years by a dues paying member of the U.S. Communist Party, Frank Marshall Davis.

When he went to college, he was attracted to the Marxist professors and student activists, according to his own published memoirs. When he graduated, he moved to Chicago and became an instructor for the left-wing extremist organization ACORN in the social manipulation methods of radical Marxist agitator Saul Alinsky. He attended for close to two decades the Trinity United Church of Christ, which practiced neo-Marxist Black Liberation Theology. That church was headed during those years by the openly socialist Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who declared that the 9/11 terrorist attack on America was “America’s chickens coming home to roost.” He also famously preached from his pulpit, “Not God bless America, God damn America….” Continue Reading »

by Catholic Online -
A vaccine that can shrink tumors is being hailed as a breakthrough against the deadliest cancers. The vaccine targets specific cancer cells, killing them, which is something scientists have tried to do for decades.

Tested on breast, bowel, ovarian and pancreatic cancers, the recent findings have enormous implications for thousands of patients struck down by these afflictions, which have among the lowest survival rates.

Scientists will begin the first human trials by 2013, and if successful, the vaccine could be available in as soon as five years.

According to accepted medical knowledge, when cells become cancerous, sugars on their surface undergo distinct changes that set them apart from healthy cells. The cancer vaccine works by conforming the body’s immune system to recognize these sugary proteins called MUC1 in cancer cells. The vaccine leaves healthy cells alone. MUC1 is found on more than 70 per cent of deadly cancers. Continue Reading »

by Ralph R. Reiland -
Pushing his agenda for higher taxes on “the rich,” President Obama kicked off his December 6 speech in Kansas by saying his Kansas grandparents “shared the optimism of a nation that triumphed over the Great Depression.”

In fact, the 1929 stock market crash turned into the long-running Great Depression because the counterproductive soak-the-rich policies of the federal government hadn’t “triumphed” in reversing the downturn.

Franklin Roosevelt’s forceful expansion of federal regulations and confiscatory taxation, his intimidation of “the rich,” encouragement of labor strikes, and half-baked policy experiments discouraged employers from hiring workers and provided strong disincentives to new business investment.

“From 1929 to 1940, from Hoover to Roosevelt, government intervention helped make the Depression Great,” writes Amity Shlaes in The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression. “The trouble, however, was not merely the new policies that were implemented but also the threat of additional, unknown, policies. Fear froze the economy, but that uncertainty itself might have a cost was something the young experimenters simply did not consider.” Continue Reading »

by Bruce Walker -

The latest Gallup Poll confirms what most of us had suspected all along:  the rich — that top one percent, the folks whom radical leftists like OWS rail against — are not as conservative as the rest of us.  The greater conservatism of the 99% rest of us is slight — one percentage point — but it does bring home the fact that many of those with wealth are rather happy with the struggling middle class keeping to its place.

Wealth is not income.  The income of the middle class comes from hardworking folks; often husband and wife both hold full-time jobs, trying to reach a level of security, comfort, and leisure which people like leftist Senator Jay Rockefeller or Senator John Kerry have always taken for granted.  These leftists do not need to earn money.  They simply preserve their acquired wealth. Continue Reading »

by Jason McNew -
Ron Paul, a physician, has earned himself the name “Dr. No” by refusing to vote for any bill which assumes powers other than those given in Article I, Section VIII of the Constitution. When one takes a sober look at our country today, it’s easy to see why Dr. Paul would behave this way.

Take note that there is no authority in the Constitution for the setting of interest rates (as the Federal Reserve does) — interference which led directly to the housing bubble (which Ron Paul predicted). Despite U.S. participation in several sizable wars, Congress has not bothered itself with actually declaring war since 1942 (on Romania). There is no authority to bail out banks, intervene in labor disputes, subsidize farming, regulate health insurance, or set educational policies. Every one of these unauthorized activities drives costs up (or drives prosperity down) and ultimately hurts average Americans. Americans are realizing that most of our social and economic ills can be traced to a failure to follow our own Constitution. Ron Paul has always been a strict, unapologetic Constitutionalist. How Ron Paul would govern as president can be envisioned by simply reading Article II of the Constitution (The Executive Branch.) Continue Reading »

by Dn. Paul Zaharas -
Over the past several decades the external pressures and challenges associated with parenting teenagers have been varied.

Whether it was the introduction of rock and roll music, the “social scourge” of the 1950’s, or the pervasiveness of today’s social networking explosion, parents have faced the challenge of helping their children bridge the chasm that stands between childhood and adulthood. As Christian parents we recognize the importance of raising Godly-minded children and we must take appropriate steps to help them in their journey toward Him. Society today, through media, peer influence, and accepted norms, can convey ideas that do not coincide with the teachings of Orthodox Christianity. In fact, oftentimes, the messages that our teen children receive from the world are in direct contradiction to the saving message of Jesus Christ. Continue Reading »