WorldNetDaily: Terri's death: Was it 'God's will' or 'murder'?

That's Terri Schindler Schiavo. Remember her? I certainly do. And Michael Schiavo hasn't changed. He's still the lying, murdering jerk who offed his wife so that he could be with his Sweet Patootie. And now he's lying about Robert Schindler, Sr. (saying that Terri's father drove her to bulimia when the ME said that she never suffered from that) and about anyone and everyone who opposed him. (Schiavo did in fact marry Jodi Centonze--and the Catholic diocese of St. Petersburg is royally roiled about that.)

Rival books are out, of course. The author of this piece wrote one of the good ones; the Schindlers wrote another.

OpinionJournal - Immigration and the GOP

Make that "immigration and The Wall $treet Journal." Even a fine old reliable paper goes goofy when something comes up that they feel strongly about. Nathaniel Branden once said,

How low in their priorities is the issue of truth for most people when matters are involved about which they have strong feelings.

And so it is with The Wall Street Journal. Their lies are legion: that the country needs new workers (no, it doesn't; it just needs to modernize and mechanize more), and that anyone who opposes their open-borders policy is racist (when if anyone is racist, it's the illegal immigrants themselves, they and their assertions that we somehow stole the American Southwest, and they think they're going to take it back).

So The Wall Street Journal wants a solution? Representative Dana Rohrbacher has one: send prison work gangs into our orchards, if the operators of those orchards "can't get anybody to pick fruit." I have another: don't assume, as every employer seems to, that a job applicant is all washed up at forty-five or fifty.

The Journal also seems to think that without new immigrants, we're going to die out as a country. The problem: with all these immigrants, who have not only shown contempt for the law but have also declared war against this country, the United States won't be the United States anymore. It will instead be some kind of Republica del Norte having the same corruption and violence for which Latin America has been infamous since the heady days of Santa Ana and the successors to Simon Bolivar.

Agape Press: Abdul Rahman in Italy

After his judges dismissed his case, on the grounds that he was "mentally incompetent to stand trial," Abdul Rahman skipped out of Afghanistan and is now applying for political asylum in Italy. Christian Freedom International points out that his case is only one of thousands of such cases in which Muslim clerics seek the deaths of converts to Christianity.

And this is a religion of peace???

OpinionJournal - The Last Helicopter

That's what an Iranian war-college professor is waiting for--the last helicopter to fly out of Iraq, just as every US President beginning with Ford has ended up ordering a last helicopter to fly out of some war zone or another--Ford out of Saigon, Carter out of Iran itself, Reagan out of Lebanon, Bush Senior out of Iraq, and Clinton out of Somalia.

Trouble is, because we suffered an attack on our own soil, no one outside of some crazy Congressman wants to see a repeat of that anymore. So if they're trying to "wait Bush out", they'll wait forever--or only until the next bomb falls on top of them.

WorldNetDaily: Marchers say gringos, not illegals, have to go

Oh, yeah??? Well, we'll see about that! (And about the posters showing Rep. James Sensenbrenner, chairman at Judiciary, wearing what looks like a Luftwaffe uniform.) Never mind the historical jumble--whether it's about the early history of the Americas, or about WWII.

Remember when I said that in one generation, we might be involved in a shooting war? If the attitude of some of those protesters in Los Angeles is any indicator, some of them are ready to start a shooting war right now.

What Was CPT Doing in Iraq? - Christianity Today Magazine

Wasting their time and their lives on a thoroughly un-Biblical quest, is the only conclusion I can draw from this interview with the founder of that Quaker/Mennonite group that lost one member, then had three others rescued, and only one of them said, "Thank you," and two days late at that.

The Bible says, "He who bears the sword does not bear it in vain." [Romans 3:1-7] The Bible has never advocated pacifism. The only thing that the Bible forswears is the use of physical force to spread the Gospel or to regulate someone's behavior in a context other than that of violent crime. But when kingdom rises up against kingdom, a forceful response is not only appropriate, but necessary.

The pacifism of the so-called Christian Peacemaker Teams would be a reckless and irresponsible policy for any nation-state to adopt. Add to it their utter, abject failure to discern the threat that Islam poses.

WorldNetDaily: Doomsday for Islam?

Remember our friend Bob Pfriender, who is trying to convince the government to let him build three floating islands, twenty-five miles offshore, for deep-water scanning for radiation and chemical and germ traces? He's back. But now, after talking about the awful consequences to US society from a nuclear explosion in port, he is discussing the even more awful consequences to Islamic society of the inevitable--and not likely to be questioned--American retaliation.

Imagine this if you will. Teheran, Damascus, and Tripoli, all turned into ghost cities with "neutron bombs" designed to enhance radiation while minimizing light, heat, and blast. Bombs like these kill people but leave the buildings standing. Now imagine Mecca and Medina turned into radioactive glaze. (Mr. Pfriender suggests that Hebron would be on that list, but I'd sooner expect the President--or the martial-law commander--to sign an emergency pact with Israel clearing, and urging, the Israel Defense Force to capture Hebron and clean it out--again, no questions asked.) Imagine Qom and Najaf also turned into radioactive glaze.

Now imagine that part of the retaliation that Mr. Pfriender does not discuss. The United States never did tear down the Nisei resettlement camps from World War Two. Furthermore, in 1984 the USA military embarked on its "Readiness Exercise" in preparation for a massive influx of immigrants that dwarfs anything we have yet seen (as massive as that is already). The plan for REx-84 was to toss them into detention camps on existing US posts--including 45,000 at Fort A. P. Hill on the Blue Star Highway (US 301) in Virginia. Those camps still exist, because the US government never tears anything down. Staffing and sweeping them would be a very simple matter.

But don't whet your appetite too high for a scenario like this. This could be the War of the Second Horseman of the Apocalypse. In sharp contrast to C. S. Lewis and other Christian thinkers, I have never considered that Islam would be "The Beast" of Revelation 13 (the word used, Therion, means a hideous, ravening, and downright manic creature that destroys everything in its path for the sake of destroying.) Rather, Islam would be the foil for the appearance of the actual Beast, and his successor, the False Prophet (the one pretending to be the returning Jesus, and forcing everybody to get "marked" for identification). The awful war that Mr. Pfriender describes, coupled with a re-activation of all those detention facilities, would be entirely in keeping with the Beast's M.O. And you don't want to be around for that!

OpinionJournal - For People and Planet

The two-man team that wrote this piece includes Al Gore. Buried toward the end of this piece is an acknowledgment that voluntary "markets" in pollution control are emerging. So one must ask: What is Al Gore complaining about? And why is he still plumping for a regulatory elite? The only explanation is the law of inertia. "A body in motion remains in motion..."

Alec Baldwin v. Sean Hannity in Radio Donnybrook

Read the exchange, courtesy of NewsMax.com. You'll be rolling on the floor laughing.

WorldNetDaily: Father of LaFave's boy toy: Debra should have got jail

I sympathize--up to a point. But what was the State to do, if his son wouldn't testify against Ms. LaFave? The father wants "guidelines" and "protections" made part of the rules of the court in such cases. Such measures will go only so far, and might produce more acquittals than convictions--and such convictions as the State might obtain, might be subject to reversal on appeal, on the grounds that the defendant did not have her full right to face her accuser in court.

If it were my son, well, I would pray that he would never get involved with his teacher, and that he would come to me at once if she ever made a move to start such a relationship. And now that it's done, I'd tell him that part of being a man is accepting responsibility for his own actions. In this case, that means testifying against the woman openly in open court. And if it means facing ridicule, that's another price of growing up.

And while I'm on the subject: I think the appropriate sentence for child molestation should be exile for life. That's right, exile. Let the Navy or the Air Force build a Camp Sierra Echo X-ray on one of their bases on some remote location, such as an island in the Aleutian chain. Let all the States send their convicted sex offenders to this camp--or maybe two camps, one for each gender. And make them work, too. "Consensual"? That shouldn't matter--though if the other party, once he or she reaches adulthood, is infatuated enough to petition the government for "recall" of the convict, then State or federal Boards of Pardons and Reprieves can add that to their caseload of other petitions for pardons and reprieves.

But more to the point, our fellow travelers need to understand that sexual relationships are not the "harmless fun" that too many people seem to think they are.

WorldNetDaily: Charges dropped against Christian

You read that right. Case dismissed for lack of evidence.

Lack of evidence? That's right--evidently the court held that the prosecutors had not satisfied the court that Abdul Rahman was mentally competent to stand trial.

As I said before, this wouldn't be the first instance in recorded history of a court of law essentially dismissing a case against a follower of Christ after his judges found him insane. Remember that insane is a legal term meaning "not answerable for one's actions because of diminished mental capacity." To find someone not even mentally competent to stand trial is the equivalent of summarily dismissing his case on grounds of insanity.

Recall also that the Bible says that if you're a Christian, non-Christians are going to think you're crazy. From their light, you have to be crazy to believe in a God like the one I serve (and, I assume, Mr. Rahman now serves).

The Afghani officials still haven't decided what to do. They could release him, or not, while they continue their investigation. They could drop the whole thing right now. Or they could eventually throw him out of the country. And even if they sentence him to death, Mr. Rahman reiterates that he'd be happy with that. (Yes, I know--now you think he really is crazy. You wouldn't if you understood how the Bible clearly shows that he would go to a better place--with stronger guarantees than the Koran has ever given.)

By the way: a judge of the Afghani Supreme Court has already said that the West has no place to criticize the Afghani judiciary, seeing that they allow same-sex marriage. So you can readily see how the United States and especially other countries in Europe have ruined their witness by allowing this practice. To all advocates of this practice, I now ask: What have you now to say for yourselves? And what would you have to say, had that court not dismissed that case?

U.S. Hiring Hong Kong Co. to Scan Nukes - Yahoo! News

Mark Levin, on his radio program, pointed out that this article is slightly misleading. In fact, the Bahamians are the ones doing the hiring, but naturally the USA has to pass on it. Under this deal, cargo ships will stop at the Bahamian port city of Freeport and have their containers scanned, in-port, for radiation. The company that will now handle the scanning is Hutchison-Whampoa, the infamous Hong Kong firm that was involved in the Long Beach port fiasco. (In case you missed it, Hong Kong is now part of the People's Republic of China.)

Two things wrong with this deal:

1. You don't scan for a nuclear device in port! You scan for that at sea, if you don't want the device to go off in the port and take out the city with it.
2. Here we go again, trusting a foreign company to handle a security matter--and this time it's the ChiComs!

I have already alerted frequent readers about an American firm, Allied International Development, that proposes to build three floating islands, twenty-five nautical miles offshore, where crews will scan all containers and all ships for radiation and for signs of chemical or biological contraband. That is the most sensible solution that anyone has invented. Why, then, is the Bush administration signing off on a deal with Hutchison-Whampoa? And to do the inspection in port?

Surprisingly, WorldNetDaily missed this. I tip my hat to Mark Levin for mentioning it first. (He doesn't seem to know about Mr. Pfriender and his floating-islands proposal.) And, like Mark Levin, I'm already waiting to hear the excuses.

WorldNetDaily: Afghan prosecutors: Christian may be 'mad'

The notion here is that "anyone who converts from Islam to Christianity must be insane." And again, when I say insane I mean not legally responsible for one's actions because of not being mentally composed. In fact, the prosecutors have said that they want doctors to examine Abdul Rahman, and if they find him mentally ill, they'll drop the case!

Well, that prosecutor isn't the first to call a Christian mad. Recall that one Porcius Festus, Roman procurator of Judea, once blurted out to St. Paul that he, Paul, was a crazy man, and that his "book learning" had driven him over the edge. Scripture says that belief in God will seem like madness to unbelievers. So this would be all of a piece with that. Indeed, consider the prosecutor's very words:

We think he could be mad. He is not a normal person. He doesn't talk like a normal person.

Procurator Festus didn't say it any better than that.

Of course we Christians don't talk like normal people! That's hardly an insult. And if they'll drop the case, then having the officials regard him as insane would be a small price for Mr. Rahman to pay. And it will still bear more than adequate witness against a tyrannical law--while avoiding the Biblically untenable position of resistance to the government itself.

WorldNetDaily: Cops go to hotel bars to arrest drunk guests

You know it's a slow news day when WorldNetDaily posts a story like this, and then makes it their poll question of the day.

At issue: cops going directly into public establishments that serve intoxicating liquor, and hauling people down to the drunk tank after they've had a few too many. Unhappily, the story manages to confuse the issue with their treatment of hotel bars. If a hotel runs a bar, then that bar might have two kinds of patrons:

1. Someone from the outside, who therefore would have to leave and might try to drive home.
2. A registered guest of the hotel, who therefore would have a room to go back to, to sleep it off.

A few observations:

1. Ideally, a hotel shouldn't run a bar. A truly family-friendly place wouldn't serve intoxicating liquor--ever. Why any hotelier wants to bother with the hassle of obtaining and maintaining a liquor license is beyond my comprehension. Is intoxicating liquor really that much of an attraction? (For the record, whenever I travel, which isn't often anymore, I try to find budget hotels that don't even run their own restaurants, much less bars.)
2. Whatever happened to that old movie standby, the "house dick"? In other words: Where is hotel security, that they would even allow a guest to have a few too many? Don't they realize that they are placing themselves at serious legal risk? In New Jersey, for example, if you serve intoxicating liquor to a guest on your property (and yes, it applies even to someone throwing a party in his own home), and that guest drives away and has a smash-up, you may be involved in a lawsuit. That is a driver's-license written test question. (I know: I took the test.)
3. Now about those cops hauling people down to the drunk tank: If they're not registered guests of the hotel, the cops have to act. A drunk is a positive menace to himself and everyone else on the road. We all know that. The only difference is whether that person is a registered guest. If he is, then if hotel security were worthy of its name, the cops could then "release" the guest "into the custody" of the hotel security force, which would then escort the guest to his room and confine him there under guard all night--and then perhaps give him several servings of tomato juice in the morning, compliments of the management. But hotel security is not worthy of its name. So what's a cop to do? As long as the law says that you can't get drunk in public, the cops have to enforce it. Period.

"Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities." Romans 13:1 and following.

WorldNetDaily: U.S. cautiously backs Afghan Christian

While Italy is threatening to pull its troops out if Abdul Rahman, 42, is executed for his newfound faith, the US State Department says only that it is "monitoring" the situation. In other words, talk.

Talk is cheap, and in this instance cannot and will not do any good. The State Department ought to know this.

If that man dies, then he will be a witness (for that is what the transliterated ancient Greek word "martyr" means) against his society, for executing him, and America, for allowing this to happen. He will also be a witness against our anti-war press, who won't even discuss his case--for where else but WorldNetDaily, Fox, and CNN has anyone else seen any coverage of it? (Oh, yes, it's also on Radio Free Europe. Good for them. But why no one else?)

My recommendation: offer him political asylum. I say offer because he might prefer death to exile. (The case of St. Stephen, Acts 6-7, springs to mind.)

One possible reason why the Fishwrap Axis won't cover this case: the rhetoric of the prosecution. (Interesting word, "rhetoric." It comes from the Greek word rhetor, which means "lawyer.") I quote from the WorldNetDaily piece:

He is known as a microbe in society, and he should be cut off and removed from the rest of Muslim society and should be killed.

Hmmm. I could say that about a lot of people in our own society--purveyors of pornography spring to mind. But what would you all think of me then? I won't say that, of course, because the Bible tells me not to. ("The weapons of our warfare are not carnal.") Here is another difference between Christianity and Islam: the Koran says to kill, while the Bible merely says not to associate. The Koran would doubtless say to blow up the movie house (while it was packed full of people, to score an even greater body count in the name of Allah); Biblical precepts prompt us to quit going to the movie houses until they stop offering trash as entertainment. Which do you find more constructive and "enlightened"?

CBNNews-Focus-Ivy League Campuses Experience Spiritual Awakening

I certainly hope that CBN is not engaging in wishful thinking.

One of two things had to happen eventually:

1. Christians would simply stop applying to Ivy League schools.
2. Christians would lay aside their fears of ostracism and ridicule, and "witness" to their Ivy League schoolmates anyway.

This article describes Christians who are doing the latter course. They hear the mockery, and perhaps they realize that Paul endured worse (including having a provincial governor tell him that his "book learning" had driven him crazy, and a skeptical puppet king ask him whether he, Paul, really expected to convert the puppet king in one day!).

The article also asserts that more and more Christians are applying to Ivy League schools than ever before. That might reflect the growth of the evangelical movement as such. I'm not sure that one can assert that the Ivy League schools have been going out of their way to recruit evangelicals. I should expect them to do the opposite.

And by the way, when a member of the faculty says that he is a Christian, he has to deal with his own share of men like Marcus Porcius ("Paul, you're crazy!") Festus and Herod ("Almost thou persuadest me") Agrippa II.

Maybe a few pastors are doing something right, to produce people with the stand-up boldness of St. Paul.

WorldNetDaily: 'Terror-supporting movie' tops in weekend box office

The site BoxOfficeMojo.com confirms this, by the way--this although most critics consider it a great crashing bore. And these are the secularist critics! The Christian critics call this film what it is: a movie that supports terrorism as a legitimate political policy.

Reuters: Israel confirms H5N1, culls poultry

With a thousand birds dead, Israel quite sensibly put its containment measures in place.

Well, we learned from Israel about how to keep an airline secure. Now we shall learn from them how to contain the avian flu.

Meanwhile, on the Jihad Watch, a Palestinian cleric offered a rather disgusting "prayer" during Friday services. I quote:

Praise Allah the bird flu has hit the Jews. It came because of their sins against the Palestinians; because they are the most cruel enemy of humanity; because they are themselves the enemy of humanity; because they don't believe in Allah; because they falsify the book of Allah; because they cheated the prophet Muhammed; and because they cheated Allah and even their own prophet, Moses.

This bird flu will be the beginning of diseases which will hit the nonbelievers. Please Allah keep hitting the enemy with more diseases. This is no doubt the beginning of the end of the Israelis. Like [late Hamas spiritual leader] Sheikh Yassin said, 2025 will be the end of Jews. This [bird flu] is the sign.

All these quotes come from WorldNetDaily, who got it from someone who was at the service. (The Sheikh Yassin referred to in the quote was someone who calculated the end of the Jews by 2025, using Koranic references--similar to someone trying to set a date for a biblical prophecy.)

Now I ask you: how would the world react to a Christian who called such a doom on a Muslim population? Well, we know how they would react. But I predict that these quotes will be exclusive to WorldNetDaily, and perhaps to Sean Hannity and John Batchelor's radio programs. I especially will be curious to see whether anyone will quote that cleric praying that Allah "dry out the sexual organs of the Jews with a disease so they won't be able to reproduce anymore."

WorldNetDaily: 2 more women die after abortion pill

The pill involved is Mifeprex (mifrepristone/Danco), otherwise known as Roussel-UCLAF Lot 486. Details on these deaths are sketchy--but Planned Parenthood's abortion practitioners have been known to give the drug per vaginam instead of per orem, an "off-label use." PP has ordered its clinics to stop the off-label administration, and the FDA has issued some warnings to doctors.

You will find, in the article, that the deaths are not the only problems that doctors have reported.

Play with fire; get burned. It's that simple.

Curt Weldon: Bin Laden Is Dead

Could it be? Well, Representative Curt Weldon (R-PA) is no Internet blowhard. He broke the "Able Danger" story. Now he says that he has heard from people who ought to know that Osama bin Laden has been hiding in Iran all this time, and now he's dead.

Might that explain Iran's new aggressive attitude--carrying the torch, perhaps, or seizing the initiative from Sunnis? The Iranians, don't forget, are Shi'ites. They believe that a five-year-old kid will lead them in the last battle. Sunnis don't try to identify their Last Great General. Perhaps Osama believed that he would be that general. If Osama is no more, then we might know why Mahmoud Abadinejad, President of Iran, suddenly grew more confident, and cocky.

Or else we'll soon get another tape out of Osama, saying in Arabic a message to the effect "Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated."

Curt Weldon: Bin Laden Is Dead

Could it be? Well, Representative Curt Weldon (R-PA) is no Internet blowhard. He broke the "Able Danger" story. Now he says that he has heard from people who ought to know that Osama bin Laden has been hiding in Iran all this time, and now he's dead.

Might that explain Iran's new aggressive attitude--carrying the torch, perhaps, or seizing the initiative from Sunnis? The Iranians, don't forget, are Shi'ites. They believe that a five-year-old kid will lead them in the last battle. Sunnis don't try to identify their Last Great General. Perhaps Osama believed that he would be that general. If Osama is no more, then we might know why Mahmoud Abadinejad, President of Iran, suddenly grew more confident, and cocky.

Or else we'll soon get another tape out of Osama, saying in Arabic a message to the effect "Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated."

Curt Weldon: Bin Laden Is Dead

Could it be? Well, Representative Curt Weldon (R-PA) is no Internet blowhard. He broke the "Able Danger" story. Now he says that he has heard from people who ought to know that Osama bin Laden has been hiding in Iran all this time, and now he's dead.

Might that explain Iran's new aggressive attitude--carrying the torch, perhaps, or seizing the initiative from Sunnis? The Iranians, don't forget, are Shi'ites. They believe that a five-year-old kid will lead them in the last battle. Sunnis don't try to identify their Last Great General. Perhaps Osama believed that he would be that general. If Osama is no more, then we might know why Mahmoud Abadinejad, President of Iran, suddenly grew more confident, and cocky.

Or else we'll soon get another tape out of Osama, saying in Arabic a message to the effect "Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated."

WorldNetDaily: Wafa wows the West (but not Muslims and media)

Dr. Wafa Sultan surprises me. I didn't think she had it in her to question every part of what it means to be a Muslim. But in a recent appearance on an Al-Jazeera TV show, she absolutely did. I quote:

When you recite to a child still in his early years the verse: "They will be killed or crucified, or have their hands and feet on alternate sides cut off," ... you have made the first step towards creating a great terrorist.

Absolutely correct--and accurate, too.

On the clash of civilizations, again I quote:

The Muslims are the ones who began using this expression. The Muslims are the ones who began the clash of civilizations. The Prophet of Islam said: "I was ordered to fight the people until they believe in Allah and His Messenger." When the Muslims divided people into Muslims and non-Muslims, and called to fight the others until they believe in what they themselves believe, they started this clash, and began this war. In order to [stop] this war, they must re-examine their Islamic books and curricula, which are full of calls for takfir and fighting the infidels.

And she later said that she was "questioning every single teaching" in the Koran.

Bravo.

Now where would I get the idea that Dr. Sultan was not questioning the Koran directly? I admit--I didn't do due diligence. I accepted this kind of comment, quoted in The New York Times:

Dr. Sultan bitterly criticized the Muslim clerics, holy warriors and political leaders who she believes have distorted the teachings of Muhammad and the Quran for 14 centuries.

Not true--not if the quotes from MEMRI-TV and Al-Jazeera are at all accurate. And certainly not when she said this:

The Jews have come from the tragedy [of the Holocaust], and forced the world to respect them, with their knowledge, not with their terror, with their work, not their crying and yelling. Humanity owes most of the discoveries and science of the 19th and 20th centuries to Jewish scientists. Fifteen million people, scattered throughout the world, united and won their rights through work and knowledge. We have not seen a single Jew blow himself up in a German restaurant. We have not seen a single Jew destroy a church. We have not seen a single Jew protest by killing people. The Muslims must ask themselves what they can do for humankind, before they demand that humankind respect them.

All historically correct. But as for what Muslims must ask themselves, I would suggest this: They must ask themselves what kind of god they believe in, and whether their entire belief system is a lie.

Gay rights group criticizes Christian conference for allowing 'ex-gay' speaker: South Florida Sun-Sentinel

I quote:

Giving a speaking opportunity to anyone from the ex-gay movement is wrong. It needs to be repudiated at every step, not given a pulpit.

That from Matt Foreman of the Gay and Lesbian Task Force.

All right, just so I have this straight:

1. Mr. Foreman's opponents are not entitled to freedom of speech.
2. Those who renounce homosexuality are guilty of an offense tantamount to treason.

Absent these premises, Mr. Foreman's comments make zero sense.

At issue: Alan Chambers, head of Exodus International, is due to speak at the annual Reclaiming America conference. Mr. Foreman seems to think that Mr. Chambers' group promulgates practices that hurt people. Don't believe that for a microsecond. The only people who get hurt when a person renounces homosexuality are people like Mr. Foreman, who "lost another vote to God," like that hilarious pitchman who "lost another loan to DiTech."

WorldNetDaily: Newly released document links Saddam to al-Qaida

So Saddam Hussein had no link to Al-Qaida, huh?

He wasn't providing any logistical or ops support to them, huh?

He didn't have a hand in any terrorists hits in this country, huh?

This document, the translation of which appears in its entirety on WorldNetDaily, is my latest specialty-of-the-house crow dinner! Bon appetit, all you anti-war liberals!

WorldNetDaily: Newly released document links Saddam to al-Qaida

So Saddam Hussein had no link to Al-Qaida, huh?

He wasn't providing any logistical or ops support to them, huh?

He didn't have a hand in any terrorists hits in this country, huh?

This document, the translation of which appears in its entirety on WorldNetDaily, is my latest specialty-of-the-house crow dinner! Bon appetit, all you anti-war liberals!

OpinionJournal - Will They Ever Rebuild Ground Zero?

Larry Silverstein, the primary leaseholder of the site, continues to battle the Port Authority over rebuilding plans. No one seems to know what to do. Sadly, Mr. Silverstein made an embarrassing lapse, as this article describes. So what's going to happen? Again, no one knows.

I predict that the city will end up turning the whole site into a park, with three thousand empty chairs in it, like the 168 empty chairs on the site of the now-vanished Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

Though maybe Mr. Silverstein will get the primary leasehold of a new city in Iraq, say about fifty-five-odd miles south of Baghdad (Revelation chh. 17-18).

OpinionJournal - 'Temporarily Relieved'

Remember the Yale Law School alumni fundraising director who called someone "retarded" for criticizing the decision to admit a Taliban spokesman to Yale? Well, that person is now "temporarily relieved of his duties." As he should be; you do not insult people publicly if you expect them--or anyone else--to give to your school.

But that still doesn't explain Yale's initial decision to admit that Taliban mouthpiece to their student body. John Fund describes many others who still want explanations for that.

WorldNetDaily: 'Blame-the-Jews' official endorses Gore

The official involved is Representative Jim Moran (D-VA), who earlier made this rant against American Jews, somehow blaming them for our going into Iraq. Even Nancy Pelosi couldn't stomach that.

Al, you've got some 'splainin' to do. You are known by the company you keep. Do you really want to keep this kind of company?

Panama Canal: Hillary Clinton Wrong on Chinese Control

Hillary's mistake: assuming that the deal with a Chinese port-ops firm included control of the Canal itself. Not so. That Chinese firm operates port terminals on both ends of the Canal, and not repeat not the Canal proper.

That's a mistake a lot of us might have made. That goes to show that you can't believe everything you read in a newspaper--or a Senatorial press release.

Poll: Lynn Swann Tied in Pa. Race

And I do mean tied--44 to 44 percent, with 2 percent undecided (margin of error: 3 percent points). Not a bad showing against a sitting governor! Ed Rendell is in trouble, and he almost certainly knows it.

Go for it, Lynn!

BREITBART.COM - 'Brokeback' Author Peeved About Oscar Loss

And you can read the full text of her rant here, courtesy of The Guardian (London)--though guardian of what, I'm sure I don't know. And get a load of her picture from the BreitBart.com site:

No, that's no man in that picture--that's Annie Proulx.

Let's have a pity party for Annie Proulx!

One!

Two!

Three!

Awwwwwwwwwwwwww!

In all the history of organized contests, this is the worst bowl of sour grapes I have ever tasted. She's an even sorer loser than Al Gore was. And don't think she doesn't know that people will see her rant for what it is. I quote:

For those who call this little piece a Sour Grapes Rant, play it as it lays.

Any of you out there who can explain that saying, please leave a comment.

Let me reply to a few choice sentences:

We should have known conservative heffalump academy voters would have rather different ideas of what was stirring contemporary culture.

I can think of many, many words to describe the voters at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. ":Conservative" is not a word I would have chosen. And "heffalump"? I had to look that up--it's something out of Winnie the Pooh. Miss Proulx might think herself very clever to come out with an esoteric reference--which is a fancy Greek way of saying, "I wonder where Miss Insider came up with that!" News flash, Miss Proulx! How do you expect people to read anything you write if we can't understand you? Besides, if you're going to call someone a name, make sure they know what the name means, if you don't want the gesture to fall flat.

On second thought--oh, I get it. So now you're accusing the Academy voters of voting Republican? I am ninety-five-percent confident that this will strike them as a rude surprise.

Roughly 6,000 film industry voters, most in the Los Angeles area, many living cloistered lives behind wrought-iron gates or in deluxe rest-homes, out of touch not only with the shifting larger culture and the yeasty ferment that is America these days, but also out of touch with their own segregated city, decide which films are good.

Great--so now the Academy is too right-wing. Some people are never satisfied. Miss Proulx, if anyone is out of touch, you are--you and your fancy insider lingo.

Rumour has it that Lions Gate inundated the academy voters with DVD copies of Trash - excuse me - Crash a few weeks before the ballot deadline.

I wouldn't know about that. But here's a fact: the media were mau-mauing everyone with Brokeback Mountain fever during the lead-up to the vote. Maybe that had something to do with the Academy rejecting it--did you ever think of that? Huh? Huh?

Next year we can look to the awards for controversial themes on the punishment of adulterers with a branding iron in the shape of the letter A, runaway slaves, and the debate over free silver.

Well, I doubt that anyone knows what "free silver" once meant to American politics. But we've already had movies about the other themes she mentions, all intended to make the civilized man feel guilty. It hasn't worked until now, and it won't work anymore.

There was a kind of provincial flavour to the proceedings reminiscent of a small-town talent-show night. Clapping wildly for bad stuff enhances this.

Where have you been, Miss Proulx? The Academy has been doing this for years. And I never read a peep of complaint from you until now, you hypocrite.

which takes more skill, acting a person who strolled the boulevard a few decades ago and who left behind tapes, film, photographs, voice recordings and friends with strong memories, or the construction of characters from imagination and a few cold words on the page?

Careful, Miss Proulx. You're now admitting that you provided much less source material than the makers of Capote had. Somehow I don't think you meant to insult yourself.

Keep it up. Keep it up. And see how popular you remain.

WorldNetDaily: Muslim: I attacked 'out of love for Allah'

Not only that, but Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar quotes the Koran to justify his act.

Now since he tells outright and easily detectable lies about US policy in the Middle East and elsewhere, one might legitimately ask whether he is lying about the Koran as well. Sadly, he is not. I have checked it out. Everything he says about the Koran commanding deeds such as his, is correct.

Don't just take my word, or his, for it. Check it out for yourselves.

Predictably, Ibrahim Hooper of the Council on American-Islamic Relations denies that Mr. Taheri-azar has any basis for his claims:

Islamic scholars have clearly and repeatedly stated that attacks on innocent civilians of any kind are prohibited by Islam and should be repudiated

Tell me this, Mr. Hooper (and aren't you the same man who said that a Muslim flag would be flying over the White House in 2010?): what constitutes an innocent civilian in the Koran? Don't you think I would know that it all depends on what your definition of the words innocent and civilian is?

Hooper goes on:

There are people who have strange views about any number of faiths and they shouldn't be taken as representative of those faiths. The people who kill abortion doctors claim they are doing it in the name of Christianity and we all know it is a distortion of Christian beliefs.

Yes, we do--because I point to my Bible for guidance on this matter. It tells me:

1. The righting of wrongs is not my business as a Christian. It is God's. "Vengeance is Mine, saith the Lord; I will repay." Or put another way from the literal Greek: Justice is My affair, says the Lord; I will take care of setting things straight.
2. Government has its place, and the church has another. Romans 13:1-7 clearly states that governments--institutions of controlled force--serve a God-ordained purpose, and we are not to interfere with it--nor take the civil law into our own hands. (Paul wrote that at a time when the Roman government was downright hostile to Christianity.)
3. The Kingdom of Heaven is not an earthly kingdom, and we do not fight its battles with earthly weapons.

In sharp (pardon the pun) contrast to these clearly conciliatory words, the Koran clearly commands its followers to be champions of Mohammed's idea of justice, to resist and subvert any government save one that operates under Shari'a law, and to fight a physical war with all who do not believe.

But from a security expert comes the best line in the whole piece:

The only thing that makes this not look like a terrorist act is that he did a lousy job of it.

I'll say. He didn't kill anyone, and at first the headlines implied that his rented SUV acted with a mind of its own--the standard way that the fishwrap media report any accidents involving SUV's. (Hat tip: Rush Limbaugh with his "SUV Updates.") And when he claimed responsibility, he called 911 rather than CNN. But in every other way, this was indeed a terrorist act.

Sudden Jihad Syndrome (in North Carolina) - article by Daniel Pipes

Daniel Pipes said it within days of the Manhattan Incident of September 11, 2001 (22 Jumada t'Tania 1422 AH). And he's saying it again:

Individual Islamists may appear law-abiding and reasonable, but they are part of a totalitarian movement, and as such, all must be considered potential killers.

Such was the case with Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar, who rented a four-wheel-drive vehicle and used it to run over people at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.

Pipes goes on:

This is what I have dubbed the Sudden Jihad Syndrome, whereby normal-appearing Muslims abruptly become violent. It has the awful but legitimate consequence of casting suspicion on all Muslims. Who knows whence the next jihadi? How can one be confident a law-abiding Muslim will not suddenly erupt in a homicidal rage? Yes, of course, their numbers are very small, but they are disproportionately much higher than among non-Muslims.

This syndrome helps explain the fear of Islam and mistrust of Muslims that polls have shown on the rise since September 11, 2001.

I have more than my observations of apparently law-abiding residents suddenly performing acts of terrorism, whether as "lone wolves" or in direct concert with, and receiving logistical support from, that shadowy network that calls itself "The Base." I have my studies of the Koran, which studies I began directly after the Manhattan Incident. I sought to discover whether those who accused the hashshasheen in the Manhattan Incident of hijacking the religion of Islam had any basis for their statements.

Their basis, such as it is, is merely that most Muslims don't even know what their own holy book says. They recite it in the original Arabic and don't understand a word of it. But those who do understand it, now have a choice to make: either live up to those words, or drop the whole thing. And they're choosing to live up to those words.

The trouble is: those words are fighting words. "Fight and slay the infidels wheresoever ye find them"--it couldn't be any clearer.

Pipes offers this remedy:

The Muslim response of denouncing these views as bias, as the "new anti-Semitism," or "Islamophobia" is as baseless as accusing anti-Nazis of "Germanophobia" or anti-Communists of "Russophobia." Instead of presenting themselves as victims, Muslims should address this fear by developing a moderate, modern, and good-neighborly version of Islam that rejects radical Islam, jihad, and the subordination of "infidels."

That remedy might be beyond their power. They'll have to take scissors and snip out whole segments of the Koran, probably by saying that everything that Muhammad said beyond his skedaddling to Medina is false and misleading, because he was insane (a legal term meaning "not responsible for one's actions by reason of loss of mental and moral faculties") when he wrote it. At least one Muslim cleric in Italy has announced that very position. But it won't work.

And so our society will have to make a hard choice. Unhappily, our own history is not promising.

Sudden Jihad Syndrome (in North Carolina) - article by Daniel Pipes

Daniel Pipes said it within days of the Manhattan Incident of September 11, 2001 (22 Jumada t'Tania 1422 AH). And he's saying it again:

Individual Islamists may appear law-abiding and reasonable, but they are part of a totalitarian movement, and as such, all must be considered potential killers.

Such was the case with Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar, who rented a four-wheel-drive vehicle and used it to run over people at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.

Pipes goes on:

This is what I have dubbed the Sudden Jihad Syndrome, whereby normal-appearing Muslims abruptly become violent. It has the awful but legitimate consequence of casting suspicion on all Muslims. Who knows whence the next jihadi? How can one be confident a law-abiding Muslim will not suddenly erupt in a homicidal rage? Yes, of course, their numbers are very small, but they are disproportionately much higher than among non-Muslims.

This syndrome helps explain the fear of Islam and mistrust of Muslims that polls have shown on the rise since September 11, 2001.

I have more than my observations of apparently law-abiding residents suddenly performing acts of terrorism, whether as "lone wolves" or in direct concert with, and receiving logistical support from, that shadowy network that calls itself "The Base." I have my studies of the Koran, which studies I began directly after the Manhattan Incident. I sought to discover whether those who accused the hashshasheen in the Manhattan Incident of hijacking the religion of Islam had any basis for their statements.

Their basis, such as it is, is merely that most Muslims don't even know what their own holy book says. They recite it in the original Arabic and don't understand a word of it. But those who do understand it, now have a choice to make: either live up to those words, or drop the whole thing. And they're choosing to live up to those words.

The trouble is: those words are fighting words. "Fight and slay the infidels wheresoever ye find them"--it couldn't be any clearer.

Pipes offers this remedy:

The Muslim response of denouncing these views as bias, as the "new anti-Semitism," or "Islamophobia" is as baseless as accusing anti-Nazis of "Germanophobia" or anti-Communists of "Russophobia." Instead of presenting themselves as victims, Muslims should address this fear by developing a moderate, modern, and good-neighborly version of Islam that rejects radical Islam, jihad, and the subordination of "infidels."

That remedy might be beyond their power. They'll have to take scissors and snip out whole segments of the Koran, probably by saying that everything that Muhammad said beyond his skedaddling to Medina is false and misleading, because he was insane (a legal term meaning "not responsible for one's actions by reason of loss of mental and moral faculties") when he wrote it. At least one Muslim cleric in Italy has announced that very position. But it won't work.

And so our society will have to make a hard choice. Unhappily, our own history is not promising.

WorldNetDaily: Explaining Jews, part 4: All the types of Jews

According to Dennis Prager, these include:

• Non-Jewish Jews: those who, though they have Jewish parentage, do not practice the Jewish religion, neither do they identify in any way with the Jewish community as such. (They don't identify with any other community, either.)
• Secular Jews: they do identify with the Jewish community but do not practice the Jewish religion at all.
• Reform Jews: they might as well be secular, for though they claim to be religious, they disclaim the Divine authority of Scripture and suggest that all laws are changeable.
• Conservative Jews: they believe that rabbis can change religious laws, but that laws were made to be observed.
• Orthodox Jews: they affirm the Divine authority of Scripture and hold that religious laws are not subject to change. They are some of the most consistent religious observers in all of Jewry.
• Messianic Jews: these have converted to Christianity but still identify with the Jewish community. You will find them observing the original "feasts" listed in Exodus, and probably the Feast of Lights as well (well, to be fair, Jesus Himself kept the Feast of Lights, also known as the Feast of Dedication.) Their juxtaposition of Passover and Resurrection Day ("Easter") often becomes a very moving experience. (And why not? Jesus was a Passover Lamb for all of us. He said He would be, on the occasion of Passover itself.)
• Hebrew Christians. They are those, born Jews originally, who converted to Christianity and severed their ties to the Jewish community.

Mr. Prager goes on to state what ought to be obvious: that one cannot speak of "Jewish control" of the media, or international banking, or anything else, because you have many different kinds of Jews, each following their own agenda, and some not even willing to identify themselves as Jews at all.

Mr. Prager also suggests that a religious revival among Jews (or at least, among all the self-identifying types) would best serve the interests of Jews and everyone else in the world. That will happen all right--but it will have to wait until the Tribulation occurs. During that time, the Jews will see the coming of a false hope, called the False Prophet (literally, the Lying Prophet) by John the Revelator. This person will bring to the Jews the most bitter tyranny they have ever faced, or likely will ever face. (Daniel 12:2) Happily, the Hebrew Christians and the Messianic Jews won't be around to see any of that. But everyone else, Jewish and gentile alike, will have to "choose [that] day whom he shall serve."

WorldNetDaily: Judge rules civil union invalid out-of-state

At issue in the case of Miller v. Jenkins are two women, both female homosexuals at the time, who once lived in Virginia but traveled to Vermont to obtain a "civil union." Ms. Miller later gave birth to a daughter through artificial insemination.

Then Ms. Miller found Christ, and got out of the homosexual relationship.

And now Jenkins wants "visitation rights" with respect to the child.

A Vermont court said yes, but a Virginia court said no--because Virginia has a defense-of-marriage law. Subsequently, Ms. Jenkins moved to have the Vermont trial court order "registered" in Virginia. That registration was the grounds for an appeal.

The appellate court held that the "registration" was in error because "civil unions" do not exist in Virginia.

A few words of explanation:

1. The Parental Kidnapping Prevention Act provides that a child-custody order issued in one State is "registrable" in another State, so that the second State would have to recognize and enforce the child-custody orders given in the first State. This is to remove an incentive for one parent to snatch a child out-of-State and get a competing custody award--so long as the snatching parent remains in the other State. But, says the Virginia Court of Appeals, the fly in the buttermilk is that no court in Virginia would ever grant custody of a child to one who is not a biological nor an adoptive parent, and certainly not in a same-sex relationship--and therefore one cannot register in Virginia the sort of order, issued in another State, that no court in Virginia would even be allowed to issue.
2. Adoption is not at issue because Ms. Jenkins did not pursue adoption. But the spectacle of same-sex couples adopting childrn is going to create more such tangles unless and until someone says, "Stop this insanity!"

The federal Defense of Marriage Act is, at present, the only thing that instructs the Virginia Court of Appeals to act as it did. But now you have two courts in two States issuing two different kinds of orders--a situation that seems bound to head to the Supreme Court of the United States for review. What the Court will do in a case like that, I cannot predict--because Justices John Roberts and Samuel J. Alito promised judicial clarity, not any particular kind of judicial result. (And not only is that as it should be, but also the Court has handed down three unanimous decisions in less than as many weeks, a possible sign that Chief Justice Roberts has actually persuaded his fellow Justices to see the law and the Constitution as clearly as he does.) I can readily imagine Chief Justice Roberts deciding either way between the two competing courts, concluding, however ruefully, that the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the US Constitution leaves him no leeway. (The alternative might be the spectacle of two people of the opposite genders being regarded as married in one State but not being regarded as married in another State.)

The alternatives will take time to enact. First prize would be a uniform definition of marriage according to the heterosexual standard. Second prize would be a clarification of the Full Faith and Credit Clause stating that no State need recognize a marriage in another State that does not meet its own standards. Would such a weakening of the FF&C clause create a bigger problem than it attempted to solve? Unhappily, CJ Roberts might not be allowed to opine on that question.

Clooney: Democrats Too Timid on Iraq War

Here's a sample of George Clooney's slightly unhinged commentary:

In 2003, a lot of us were saying, 'Where is the link between Saddam and bin Laden? What does Iraq have to do with 9/11?'

News flash, George. The link is an ideological one--they were both on the same side--and a practical and logistical one, in that right now an Al-Qaida cell operating in Iraq directs the insurrection that is trying to restore Saddam. And while I'm on the subject, we know what happened to the weapons of mass destructions, and no, Saddam didn't destroy them; he had the Russians move them to Syria.

But I'll join Sean Hannity in observing that at least you're honest--which those Democrats you're now criticizing have not been.

New Iraqi Documents Show Bush Didn't 'Lie'

Crow dinners, my specialty, all you anti-war Democrats!!! Specifically: not only did Saddam have weapons of mass destruction and have them removed just before we invaded, but he also was indeed trying to obtain uranium ore from Africa. This intel just hit NewsMax.com less than an hour ago.

Russ Feingold: Censure, Possibly Impeach, Bush

Of all the ridiculous ways for a United States Senator to behave, this is the worst. Does he really think that any impeachment proceeding will even pass the House?

Thanks, Russ! As Rush Limbaugh is saying as I type this, you've just handed the Republicans a rallying cry: Vote Republican if you don't want the House of Representatives to make an institutional fool of itself by passing articles of impeachment that wouldn't have a prayer of passing the Senate. And with John Roberts presiding? This I almost would have to see--except that this country hasn't this kind of time to waste.

WorldNetDaily: 24 homosexual-rights activists arrested at Falwell university

The group involved is Soulforce, about which I have already spoken. They appear to have gone to Liberty University, their proposed first stop, this although Jerry Falwell had already said that they would not be welcome. And now twenty-four of them are cooling their heels in the jail at Lynchburg, Virginia.

Let me reply to one statement that an "Equality Rider" made:

We have a right to be here, because this school teaches that being gay is being sick and sinful. We have a right to question and to show how we are children of God.

Children of God you are, but homosexuality is still a sin--literally a missing-of-the-mark (from the Greek hamartia, likely from the roots a- without and martureo I bear witness). It also is an illness, the causes of which are poorly understood and perhaps deliberately obscured.

As I said earlier: not every school has decided to bar the group from campus. Some schools have decided to bear direct witness to them, and part of that has included putting them up in a hotel, or even inviting them into their homes. Let us all pray for some soul winning on future stops.

WorldNetDaily: The day a nuke hit our port

This is the direct commentary from Robert Pfriender, head of Allied International Development, Limited, that I promised you would appear in WorldNetDaily today.

Mr. Pfriender remains as reluctant as ever to provide details of his Offshore Super-Security Inspection program--except that he could build a twenty-file-mile-out floating inspection platform, together with all its robotic radiation, chemical, and biological sensors, for $5.5 billion US. That's $16.5 billion altogether. An anti-missile defense would cost $55 billion, to put matters into perspective.

Most of his article is designed to make people think, really hard, about how easily a terrorist could build a nuclear device into a typical shipping container, and about the awful consequences of allowing that container to get any closer to our coast than twenty-five miles--let alone let a ship carrying it come into port! Included is an anecdote about how a case of depleted uranium, whose radiation signature would have been quite similar to that of a fission bomb, passed through the current manifest check without arousing suspicion.

Obviously someone--someone trustworthy--needs to ask Mr. Pfriender how he can claim that requiring every ship to stop at one of his facilities wouldn't appreciably slow shipping times. But the article contains many excellent links, some to PDF files from the government itself, essentially backing up his other claims that the current "virtual inspection" regime is not sufficient.

FOXNews.com - U.S. & World News - Colorado Teacher in Bush-Hitler Flap Reinstated

To sum up: the teacher goes back to his old stand, which seems to be bending young minds, and Sean Allen, the student who exposed him, has to transfer to another school because a number of his classmates have threatened him. And this is justice?

Strange Culture: How the 5 Academy Award Fun-nesses Turned Out

A fellow blogger gives us his take on the Academy Awards.

A mediocre year? Worse than that, RC. The movies are getting worse all the time--bad enough that I might not go to a single movie in the 2006 movie season. Now maybe the motion picture industry doesn't care about the tickets that I didn't buy. But they'll care a lot more when everyone stops buying overpriced tickets, to get popcorn that you can make yourself at home with easily-acquired equipment, to watch unmitigated trash.

WorldNetDaily: MySpace gets Christian competitor

MySpace.com (to which I decline to link) is, of course, the Web hosting service for teen-agers that has gotten a lot of press lately, much of it bad. Indeed the latest article has this to say:

It's the availability of personal information that law enforcement officials warn against, saying teens are disclosing way too much data for their own good.

In just one city, Middletown, Conn., police suspect that in the past few months, seven girls under 16 have been sexually assaulted by men they met on MySpace. In most cases, the men who lured the girls said online they were younger than they really were.

In the face of this ugly fact, a teacher at Calvary Chapel Bible College on Maui decided that teen-agers everywhere needed an alternative.

This alternative is called Ditty Talk. Check it out--it looks much more wholesome than MySpace seems to have been. It's a Christian site, and that mainly means that all content must pass a Christian or Christ-honoring standard. I'm not sure that this means that all content must be Bible-oriented. I do know that it must never be sin-oriented. It is more heavily moderated, and furthermore, the owner encourages accountholders to report violations.

This I can approve of: build a safer space, where no unclean thing may enter in.

WorldNetDaily: New photo resparks 'Noah's Ark mania'

It's a 2003 satellite photo of Mount Ararat, and specifically of a much-photographed "anomaly" that strongly suggests a vessel of the dimensions given in the Bible (Genesis 6).

God by the numbers - Christianity Today Magazine

Here is an excellent article that discusses the delicate balance of the four elementary forces (gravity, electromagnetism, and the weak and strong nuclear forces), the actual time required for evolution to have a chance of success (hint: far older even than the 20 billion years that conventional astronomers allow), and the positive elegance of a relation among five incredibly disparate mathematical constants. If you're conversant with higher mathematics, and think that God and math don't mix, you must check this out.

WorldNetDaily: Dubai company quits ports fight

Here is a full treatment of the announcement made earlier today.

FOXNews.com - Science News - Liquid Water Spotted on Saturnian Moon

Specifically, the NASA-ESA robot ship Cassini has sent back photographs showing what appears to be liquid water, water vapor, and chunks of water ice spewing forth from geysers on Enciladus, one of Saturn's many moons.

Geysers imply subsurface water--that's what forms geysers here on earth. This raises another question: how did that water get there? To answer that question, we need to know more about how Enciladus formed to begin with.

The key to this finding is that Enciladus is "geologically active." That means a hot core, heated perhaps by tidal friction. And as to the water--erosion channels are one thing. They could mean water dumped on the surface from above, perhaps in the Great Flood. But geysers? They imply that Enciladus has "fountains of the deep," same as the earth once had, and still has, though to a far lesser extent than was the case before the Flood.

The real cause of the excitement is, of course--life in outer space. Well, sure--the Flood ejected a lot of mud into space, and if some of that mud splattered on Enciladus, we now know that it could very well have survived. Earth itself is host to a large number of germs called extremophiles that survive in environments that would kill any other kinds of germs. Could Mars or another body in the solar system be playing host to such germs left over from the Flood event? Most certainly.

But the geysers do present another puzzle--and raise the possibility that God made a lot of bodies in our solar system with liquid water on them. Including, perhaps, Mars itself.

Reuters: Dubai Ports World confirms U.S. ports transfer plan

Senator John Warner (R-VA) delivered a statement on the floor of the United States Senate to this effect:

Dubai Ports World will transfer fully all US port operations to a US entity.

Dubai Ports World has just confirmed Senator Warner's statement.

Thus the original deal is of no moment.

While I'm on the subject, let me remind everyone again that a company called Allied International Development has invented the ideal inspection solution: three offshore front-line ports, each a floating island, will radiologically survey every container on every inbound ship. You can read Joseph L. Farah's commentary here--and wait for Bob Pfriender's direct commentary this Saturday.

Gay Rights Group Targets Christian Colleges - Christianity Today Magazine

With what, you ask? No, nothing violent--at least that's not the impression I get. Rather, a group calling itself "Soulforce" is going to drive around by bus to a number of Christian colleges, two military academies, and the Texas Aggie ROTC program.

I understand that different colleges will respond differently to these visits. One college (Union University, Jackson, TN) will be out on spring break, anyway. Jerry Falwell's Liberty University, Lynchburg, VA, will not allow the group to visit. Lee University, Cleveland, TN, will let them visit but will not provide them a platform. Other colleges will offer them events, and even hosting.

Now I can imagine any of a number of Biblical ways to respond to such a group. Much depends on how they are willing to behave. If they abuse the hospitality extended to them, then all courtesies to them should end at that point. Anyone should understand that.

Beyond that--well, sure, one could host them--but only if one is prepared to give them the full lowdown from the Bible on sexual matters, and not necessarily limited to homosexuality. This is a job for seniors and not repeat not freshmen. It is probably the most difficult witness that any Christian can make in this mixed-up world. It requires almost as much skill as does pastoring, and thus is not a job for rank amateurs (or, to use a metaphor that St. Paul would use, those who haven't graduated from a milk diet to a solid-food diet).

To the colleges, I would never advise giving Soulforce or any other such group a platform to present their views only. I might invite them to debate the issues, if they were willing to agree on any semblance of the fundamentals of the faith. From what I understand, they have a long way to go.

But any reception of this group ought to come with the clear understanding that they are badly in need of genuine Christian witness, and ought to be prepared to accept it, and not abuse any hospitality that comes with it. Because a Christian can no more "bend" on the sexual issues that Soulforce intends to press, than he can agree that two plus two equals "five, or three, or seven, or five-and-twenty, as the case demands." (See here, here, and here for detailed Gilbert and Sullivan source quotes.)

OpinionJournal - Boy in a Bubble

That's Peggy Noonan's word for George Clooney, who won the Academy Award for "Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role" for his appearance in the movie Syriana. She wasn't so much criticizing his performance, or even the movie that he appeared in (though that movie is typical Hollywood revisionist trash, but that's another topic). Rather, she was criticizing him for being "proud" to be out-of-touch with America. News flash, George! This is your audience. As Ms. Noonan cleverly demonstrates, Orson Welles would never have shown such disrespect for the person standing in line at the box office. And, says Ms. Noonan, those Hollywood people wonder why no one wants to go to the movies anymore, and why nine percent fewer people even bothered to tune in to the Oscars show this year.

I quote:

The Clooney generation in Hollywood is not writing and directing movies about life as if they've experienced it, with all its mysteries and complexity and variety. In an odd way they haven't experienced life; they've experienced media. Their films seem more an elaboration and meditation on media than an elaboration and meditation on life. This is how he could take such an unnuanced, unsophisticated, unknowing gloss on the 1950s and the McCarthy era. He just absorbed media about it. And that media itself came from certain assumptions and understandings, and myths.

Such as, that Communism was not bad at all, and that no one had any legitimate grounds to fear it, and that was why McCarthy was a bad person--not because he was trying to chase down a conspiracy of evil men without confronting their ideas, but because--in the "expert" opinion of George Clooney--McCarthy was "accusing" people of doing that of which they ought to be proud, and for which America ought to be grateful!

I do, however, have this quarrel with Ms. Noonan. In her last paragraph, she says:

Most Americans aren't leading media, they're leading lives. It would be nice to see a new respect in Hollywood for the lives they live. It would be nice to see them start to understand that rediscovering the work of, say, C.S. Lewis, and making a Narnia film, is not "giving in" to the audience but serving it. It isn't bad to look for and present good material that is known to have a following. It's a smart thing to do.

The trouble, as this history of the Hays Code makes clear, is that the motion picture producers of the Sixties were giving a new, wilder movie audience exactly what it was then asking for. If Ms. Noonan criticizes the movies today because all we're getting is what the actors and directors think we ought to see (because that's what they want to see themselves), she misses the point. Would a movie like Brokeback Mountain be any more acceptable if homosexual practice rates got back up to fifty percent, as was the case in ancient Greece? Not by my Bible!

We need to judge any form of art, literature, or music by an absolute standard. My standard is, "What is pleasing to, or glorifying of, God?" And increasingly we need to judge our art galleries, booksellers, libraries, concert halls--and yes, theaters, both stage and cinematic--by the quality and acceptability of the works that their owners and operators display, show, or sell therein. That's why I didn't tune in the Oscars. That's why I said long ago that if Richard the Lionhearted had left any direct descendants, I would encourage them to sue the Academy in a class action for defamation of character--in this case, the character of the Crusaders, in that the Academy awards statuettes of Crusader knights holding their broadswords to "artists" who produce the sort of work of which no Crusader would ever approve. (And that's why I still say that a real gas of a short subject would have all those Crusader statuettes suddenly animate themselves, raise their swords, and chase all those monkey-suited people off the stage.)

WorldNetDaily: 'Mom,' 'dad' to be axed from school textbooks?

If California Senate Bill 1437 becomes law, that could happen. At issue is a bill to remove all references to different genders from public schools.

Trust an avowed female homosexual (Senator Sheila Kuehl, D-LA, whom you might remember as "Zelda" in the television show The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis) to introduce a bill like this.

But isn't this inevitable? That's what you get with public schools. And that's what you get in the Great Western Blue Parenthesis of the country.

All the more reason to take your children out of the public schools.

News - The Academy Awards: "Out of Touch" and Proud of It - Center for Reclaiming America

Dr. Gary Cass writes his own take on the just-completed Academy Awards show. Because he watched the show, I didn't have to--and I'm glad I didn't. Read it for yourselves.

I do have one comment about his conclusion, however. He speaks of "active defense" of self and family against the anti-redemptive messages that are the current staple on film today. But surely the best "active defense" is not to go. Gather your copies of the movies that Hollywood turned out in the Hays Code days (see also this Wikipedia treatment), and also during World War Two and for about ten or fifteen years thereafter--and then say, "So long; it was good to know you when the fellowship was worth it." Get the occasional good title on a home disk, and forget about the commercial cinema--and the Academy.

When the Nuke Comes to Port--an Update

On March 2, I posted this about a new company named Allied International Development, Ltd., who have developed a new method to build a "port" twenty-five miles off-shore where robots would board a ship and scan or othewise inspect every single container while the containers were still on board.

The head of Allied International Development, Robert Pfriendler, left a comment on that post. I have exchanged e-mails with him. I am satisfied that his company does exist, and that his proposal is everything he says it is. Here is an excerpt from his last communication:

While I appreciate your interest is gaining further insight into our project and its technologies, unfortunately we cannot release any additional information about the system capabilities, tactics or planned usage for obvious reasons.

He also said that WorldNetDaily would have another report on his new offshore inspection proposal. Watch for it! I will.

In the meantime, if you haven't yet called your Senators and Representative, please do so now. Tell them to hold this Dubai Ports World deal until we get the answers we need. And while you're at it, ask them why the Allied proposal did not get the attention it deserves.

Living with Tares - Christianity Today Magazine

An Episcpal "stay-inner" expounds on his reasons for staying in the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States of America, while many of his fellow bishops, priests, and "deacons" have thrown down their robes and walked out.

(N.B.: in Anglican, Episcopal, and Roman Catholic parlance, a "deacon" is a clergyman ranking below a priest. In Baptist parlance, a deacon is a layman who assists his pastor with various church activities that would come under the heading of "waiting on tables."--from the ancient Greek word diakonos, which means a table waiter. The Anglican and Episcopal equivalent of a deacon is given the title vestryman, and the leaders of the vestry are called the senior and junior wardens.)

To return to the subject: This stay-inner, the Right Reverend Edward S. Little II, Bishop of Northern Indiana, cites chapter 17 of the Gospel According to John as his primary justification. He also quotes several other supporters of his position as saying that "breaking communion"--that is, breaking fellowship--is worse than the divisive ideas that impel a person to break fellowship.

Now then: I am not a clergyman, nor even a deacon in the Baptist sense (see above). But I am one who walked out of a church when I determined that it was not diligently upholding the Gospel, and was neglecting doctrine in several key areas that go to how a Christian ought to live. No, the issue was not homosexuality in the clergy or even in the laity. The issue was, rather, letting the culture dictate the fashion statement a woman made, or the direction of a man's gaze. When that church's interim pastor asked me to develop and teach a course in Christian discipleship, I wrote one--hitting hard on this issue of the frankly pornographic influence of the culture and how every Christian ought to resist it and re-examine certain attitudes and behaviors that he or she might have passed off as "normal." This didn't go over very well. Accordingly, I left. I was blessed to find a church that did things right in this area--but I would urge anyone facing similar opposition to go out and plant a new church.

Now according to Bishop Little, I acted wrongly. According to Bishop Little, I broke fellowship and thus created a worse problem than the risque fashion statements and the roving-eye problems were creating. According to Bishop Little, I am trying to represent myself as somehow more holy than someone else.

Wrong, Mr. Little. Dead wrong.

St. Paul, in his Second Letter to the Corinthians, clearly ordered any Christian in such a situation to get out. "Be ye not unequally yoked with unbelievers," he said. He further commanded his readers to be separate--separate from the culture, and separate from the stay-inners.

Indeed, Mr. Little, I remind you sharply, and wonder why you didn't hear of this in seminary: Lot, nephew of Abraham, was the first stay-inner in Bible history. Lot didn't want to get out of Egypt, so he sought to re-create the Egypt experience. Lot's herdsmen got into fights with Abraham's herdsmen, so Abraham gave him a choice of where to go. Lot chose the Valley of Siddim--since filled in by the Dead Sea--where lay the twin cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. And indeed the two angels sent to evacuate Lot from Sodom found him "sitting in the town gate"--that is to say, a city councillor. And yet when the crunch came, the people of Sodom received his "moderate" stands very violently and threatened to kill him themselves.

And that's what I see happening to you, Mr. Little. Maybe not literally--mostly because modern, or rather postmodern, people don't seem willing to fight for anything. But one of these days, push will come to shove. On that day, you will have to choose Whom you shall serve.

And in the meantime, I'll thank you not to advise me to "stay in." I'll thank you not to accuse me, or anyone acting as I do, of doing the church more damage than the original heretical ideas.

Do you honestly believe that "in the midst of this painful discontinuity, [the Lord] may do a work that none of us can foresee"? No, Mr. Little. That's not the way God does things, as you of all people should know. Instead, He saves out a remnant of believers and leaves the rest of the society to stew in its own juice. We saw this in the Division of the two Israeli Kingdoms Northern and Southern, we saw it again with the Reformation, and we will continue to see it until the Tribulation.

BreakPoint | A Peculiar People

Specifically, Colson addresses a new term in the political lexicon: "crunchy conservative." That's crunchy as in granola, as in trail mix. Crunchy conservatism is a new kind of political package. It includes respect for certain rights (and with them the responsibilities) that are essential to the functioning of a free republic. This includes homeschooling and the right to keep and bear arms. But it also includes an explicit rejection of many material trappings. You will find such people willing to support certain techniques of farming, and certain schedules, that appear to sacrifice efficiency, but make life a much more family-oriented enterprise.

What, then, sets them apart from conventional conservatives? Simply this: conventional conservatives seek to maximize economic efficiency. With that comes an emphasis on mass production, and a distaste for regulation of large businesses.

In contrast, a "crunchy con" will insist on doing things himself that he would otherwise hire someone else to do. Or rather: he will assign such tasks as household chores that the whole family will do. These include many things that we outsource today but used to do as chores--things like mowing the lawn, raking leaves, and preparing meals in the home rather than buying prepackaged civilian-style MRE rations (which is a fancy way of saying that today's Army eats TV dinners), or--the cardinal sin--eating out.

Colson locks in on two features of this new movement. One, they tend to home-school. Two, most of them are Christians--and my kind of Christians, from what I can tell.

By far the best look at "crunchy cons" is this new blog on National Review Online.

So tear open a bag of trail mix and knock yourself out.

WorldNetDaily: Democrat for Senate: Kill practicing 'gays'

Only someone with no political experience, running as a Democrat only because that's the way he voted the last time (and evidently he hasn't voted in quite awhile), would come up with a position like this.

For the record, I condemn this pointless and counterproductive attempt to prescribe the penalty of death for homosexual behavior. First, society shouldn't execute anyone for any crime short of murder. Second, "immoral conduct" ought to be a crime only when it affects other people, directly or indirectly--and homosexuality, as abominable as it is, does not rise to a legitimate level of concern by the government. (The Bible clearly states that the government has one sphere of duty, and the church another.)

Tragically, many of his other positions are correct--except that I don't call for prayer in public schools but rather for the abolition of public schools. I say tragic because he ruins an otherwise good platform with a position no Christian could support. (A Muslim might, but that's another topic.)

Predictably, Democratic bloggers are suggesting that he's a Republican plant in the Democratic primary. But I doubt that the Republicans would pull a stunt quite this stupid. I'd be surprised if he got more than a single vote--his own.

Oscars Experience Ratings 'Crash'

This is a definitive treatment of just how many people actually watched the Oscars last night. The answer: not many, and in fact ten percent fewer this year than last.

For the record: I haven't watched the Oscars for years--and I haven't gone to more than one or two movies a year for the last five years. Why not? Because they're trash, that's why not. Except for such gems as The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and the Lord of the Rings series--why, you could count the number of really good movies on the fingers of one hand.

And while I'm at it, let me remind everyone why several Christian commentators have declared that going to the movies--that is, going to a public cinematic exhibition hall--is sin. Even if a non-sinful title (like The Lion and the Witch) is in wide release, if you go to a public exhibition hall, you're supporting an establishment that, at other times and on other screens, shows flat-out eye poison. These commentators draw this analogy: you would not go into a tavern if all you were drinking was ginger ale--because you can drink ginger ale in a setting where liquor is not allowed, and that is where you should partake of it.

Now we all know that if you're at the movies, you're in a room where all you perceive is the particular title for which you bought a ticket. As a result, you are not supporting the other, less edifying titles that the theater is showing. That's true, but you are supporting the exhibitor, who always gets his cut of the box office--and many Christians want to make a statement to that exhibitor that they either limit themselves to family-friendly fare, or they can count their families out of their customer base.

And given that most of what Hollywood churns out these days is junk, I can't blame them--especially when not going to a public cinema might mean only that you have to wait awhile to see your gem of a title, when the studio releases it to home video. And if the Internet cranks up to the point of offering movies on demand--well, that might just kill the local movie house anyway.

I don't have an answer to the larger question of "shall we refuse to patronize the local movie house even when they show the good stuff?" But I have this much of an answer: if Hollywood is going to keep on churning out raw sewage, then I couldn't care less what they think is award-worthy. I just won't go. You'll find me in church, listening to, and making, good music, rather than allowing anyone to manipulate my emotions as shamelessly as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and its member producers, directors, and "stars" (as in falling and fallen), routinely try to do.

WorldNetDaily: Bill to kill 'Roe' signed into law

No, no one is proposing to kill Norma McCorvey. Rather, this bill is designed to draw a constitutionality challenge and force a re-examination of the Roe v. Wade precedent.

Some say that this isn't the time to do anything this drastic. But if the Governor of South Dakota is at all correct, the actual challenge won't happen for years--during which time we might get to make another Supreme Court pick. Given that the liberals now have a Court member who falls asleep when she is supposed to be judging a case, I'd say that future Court picks between now and the time when a cert petition would work its way up the chain is highly likely.

My Dirty Little Former Secret - Christianity Today Magazine

The author has presented an excellent article on the movie Brokeback Mountain and what it represents. His take is personal--he had his own "Brokeback Moment," and he could vouch for all the emotions of all the characters depicted in that film.

He also discusses one thing that I didn't mention before: at the end, the Heath Ledger character finds himself totally alone and isolated, his wife divorced from him, himself unable to return a woman's love, and finally his homosexual lover killed in a freak accident. (I can't understand that accident--as if someone was still using multi-piece wheel rims in this day and age. But I digress.) Now I'm sure that the filmmakers and Director Ang Lee wanted to say, "See? If those two shepherds had been allowed to marry, none of that would have happened!" But the actual message is, "See what happens when you lie to those closest to you, and dabble in something unnatural? Where does it get you? All alone, that's where."

That aside--if that movie could help anyone break free of that lifestyle once for all, then it's done some good. But that still didn't make it worthy of a nomination for Best Picture of the Year (which, as I've mentioned before, it didn't win).

WRAL.com - News - Students To Protest UNC's Reluctance To Label Pit Incident Terrorism

And why not? What else do you call it when a suspect deliberately runs into nine people in his car (well, the car he was driving, anyway) and then fairly boasts that he did it to avenge his faith? Indeed he is doing exactly as the Koran commands.

Speaking of which, I register my protest that the United States Senate will not think to empanel a Select Committee on Religious Ideals and their Consequences, and call the perpetrator of this vile act as a hostile witness.

BreakPoint | Athletes Behaving Badly

Unhappily, we're talking about the United States Olympic Team, many of whose athletes broke training, showboated during their events, and otherwise acted like spoiled brats. In my day, they never would have made it to the Olympics without learning discipline, sportsmanship, team spirit, and so on.

And as Chuck Colson makes clear, this is in the as-ye-sow-so-shall-ye-reap department. If the school coaches don't teach these concepts, then they won't display them in competition.

BREITBART.COM - Complete List of 78th Annual Oscar Winners

Surprise, surprise, surprise. Brokeback Mountain did not win as Best Picture of the year. Ang Lee won as Best Director, and the movie took the honors for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Original Score. But that was it. No "sweep" of the Oscars here--and certainly not in the major categories (which also include Best Actor/Actress (Leading) and Best Supporting Actor/Actress).

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe accomplished one feat: it took the Oscar away from Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. The category: Best Makeup.

Of course, the majors still went to films that, for the most part, no one ever saw--though Crash, the actual Best Picture winner, did have the highest box-office take of the nominees. But that's not saying much. Narnia took in more box-office receipts in its opening weekend than most of those other movies took in after two and a half months of wide release. But that doesn't count for anything anymore.

The Academy has gone berserk--and I still say that maybe one fine day those Crusader statuettes they hand out should animate themselves, raise their broadswords, and sweep those monkey-suited ne'er-do-wells off the stage.

Halliburton Eyed for Dubai Ports Deal

That's right: Halliburton. And you know what? Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) has already blessed it! As NewsMax quotes:

I'd take Halliburton over U.A.E. at this point, if I had to take a choice right now.

That's what Charles Schumer actually said on February 20, on national television.

Be careful what you wish for, Senator. You might just wind up with it. How do you like it?

Actually, I'd feel better with Allied International Development--if they exist--building their off-shore robotic physical inspection facility that could scan every container for radiation while still on a ship at sea. But I, too, would take Halliburton, which at least is an American firm, over a firm from any other country.

Carter Seeks Vote in U.N. Against U.S. - March 3, 2006 - The New York Sun - NY News

You read that right: he wants the UN Security Council to outvote the United States on the composition of the Human Rights Commission.

He also questioned whether Bush is a Christian. Excuse me, Mister Carter, but you're a find man to be telling another that he is not a Christian. You don't know the first thing about it. "I worship the Prince of Peace, not of pre-emptive war," he says. I wonder--has he ever read any part of the Gospels? How about the part where Jesus says that He comes not to bring peace, but a sword? Or how about Paul's letter to the Romans, where he says that the armed force of the government isn't armed for nothing?

I don't know what game Mr. Carter is playing. But where I come from, what he's doing is treason.

Foreign Policy: The Return of Patriarchy

(Hat Tip: OpinionJournal.com's Best of the Web, by James Taranto.)

The premise of this article in Foreign Policy is simple, though Philip Longman irrelevantly and mistakenly derives it from evolution. As societies become prosperous, people don't want to bother themselves with children. But that doesn't apply to all the people. Those who value children will continue to have them; those that don't, won't. And in a generation--two at the outside--the kind of people who value children the most will outnumber, outvote, and outfight the other kind.

Longman clearly impresses me as holding his nose and saying to his fellow secularists, "I don't like it any better than you do, but facts are facts!" But I'll say this for him; he's honest. He even spares a few paragraphs, toward the end, to tell his fellow liberals not to count on another Sixties Generation to save the secular revolution.

Now as those of you who have read this blog for a long time will remember, I see signs that we're on the last cycle--that the restoration of Israel, and the renewal of the strife between Isaac and Ishmael (Genesis 25), presages the Tribulation to come, and the Second Coming of Christ that will end it. If that happens in this generation, then everything that Mr. Longman has said will be moot.

But I have no definitive proof that this will result. And if it does not, then my fellow Christians need a little advice about how not to squander this opportunity.

Because Christians aren't the only ones who are outbreeding the secularists. Muslims are, too. And so the great war of civilization will come anyway, with a bunch of broken-down secularists vainly crying out, "No!" and "Stop!" from the sidelines. (If the Muslims don't kill them first.)

The immediate question will arise: who is likely to win? That question is not quite settled. Our side has the advanced technology, of both agriculture and weaponry. Sadly, their side appears to have the dedication. Whether that appearance of dedication comes from a loud and deadly minority or from a majority biding their time for the right moment is not a settled question, either. That settlement will probably take a Senate hearing--not on whether to let the United Arab Emirates run our container terminals (they shouldn't, and we should stop talking about it and vote, "No!"), but on whether we ought to be as respectful of Islam as we are of Christianity. Religious ideals have consequences, as do any other words--and the words of the Koran are fighting words. Our current President doesn't understand this, or doesn't want to understand.

Nor does Islam represent the greatest threat. We deal also with a separatist movement in the American Southwest, about which few people have a clue. The adherents of this view are fast breeders, too.

All told, I'd give us one generation before a shooting war breaks out. Before that happens, we need to redouble our efforts in education and missions. It can work--but it will be a near thing.

Again, maybe God will cut the whole show short and snatch us all away, thus paving the way for the wars and oppressions that we call the Tribulation. Or maybe we'll have another big slug-fest that, while not approaching the awful scope of the Tribulation, will still dwarf the Second World War both in severity and importance. Either way, we'll all have to choose on that day whom we shall serve.