Book Club of the Christian Authors Network

re: "Ever wish you could "test drive" a book before buying it? CAN's new online book club, "You've Got Books!" lets you do just that!/ Here's how this free service works. Once you subscribe to the CAN book club, you will receive a two minute sample of a book by great Christian authors via email each weekday. By the end of the week, you'll have read a chapter or two of the book. By then you should have a pretty good idea if you'll enjoy the rest..."...

We CAN! promote our books

re: a Christian Authors Network blog on book promotion...

Amazing Grace-land: God's Money-Back Guarantee?

re: looking past 'Prosperity Theology' for what the Gospel actually says, and pondering what it means to trust God...

Betsy's Page: I thought secret ballots were a good thing for democracy

re: "Thomas Bray highlights one of the top legislative goals that Big Labor has this year. They want to get a federal bill allowing unions to hold votes on whether a business be unionized through a card checkoff system and to repeal the law now in place that mandates a secret ballot vote about unionizing..."...

Joust The Facts: The Wisdom Of Gerald Ford

re: excerpts from Gerald Ford speeches, and what he really said about the Iraq War...

A Gracious Home » Christmas at the Frederik Meijer Gardens

re: visiting a world class garden park decked out for Christmas with a 'Christmas trees from around the world' display...

VOA News - Former US President Ford Remembered as Political Healer

re: a look at Gerald Ford's presidency...

Gerald Ford funeral begins with simple ceremony at family church - USATODAY.com

re: "PALM DESERT, Calif. (AP) — Military pallbearers carried the flag-drapped casket of Gerald R. Ford past his widow and children Friday afternoon and into the church where the late president had attended services for years and had his own "President's Pew."/Former first lady Betty Ford, 88, stood at the top of the steps of St. Margaret's Episcopal Church to receive the casket, then followed it inside as a Marine Corps band played "Ruffles and Flourishes" and the hymn "O God Our Help in Ages Past."..."...

Buyer's Remorse - Acton Institute PowerBlog

re: a climatologist wonders if ramping up the rhetoric on global warming hasn't created a monster...

Article - Opinion - The gift

re: Fr. Robert Sirico discusses gift giving (and day-to-day exchange)...

hat tip: Acton Institute for the Study of Religion & Liberty

Betsy's Page: A victory for freedom of speech

re: A federal appeals court found in favor of Wisconsin Right to Life, which ran issue ads in 2004 which the FEC tried to quash/regulate as election ads...

Betsy's Page: The truth about small farmers

re: "The Washington Post takes a look at farm subsidies and reports that government subsidies are actually driving small farmers out of the business. The arguments for farm subsidies are often based on the need to protect the small farmer. Somehow, we still seem to have a Jeffersonian admiration for the small yeoman farmer and to envision our country being fed by millions of such noble family farmers. However, now farming is big business and government subsidies to the supposedly small farmer are part of that transformation by driving up the price of farmland and pricing the family farmer out of the market..."

The Scotsman - Business - It's ane end of ane auld sang and the times they are a-changing

re: Fordyce Maxwell looks at some changes in 40+ years of farming in Scotland...

The Scotsman - Business - Man with a mission has ambitions for Scotland

re: CBI Scotland chairman Melfort Campbell, OBE, former "school dunce," rises above dyslexia, insecurity, to become high-profile business leader in Scotland...

OpinionJournal - Taste: The Gifts of the Season

re: "...There are centuries of literature on the moral way to practice philanthropy, but too many modern moralists ignore it. Mr. Brooks says their belief is that "charity is merely evidence of a failure of government." And to the extent that charity interests them in itself, they want it to be an admission of guilt, as if Westerners are obliged to assuage their consciences by helping orphans in Africa. But charity need not be so narcissistic. The basic human impulse to do good may properly lead many to help those in need, especially those nearby./ Timothy Ogden, an officer at Geneva Global, a consulting firm that advises wealthy donors about how to spend their charitable dollars most effectively, says that the best giving "doesn't come from guilt, but from honest desire." Mr. Ogden observes that many clients come to him suffering "not from donor fatigue, but from donor futility. It's not that they are tired of giving. They're tired of giving and not accomplishing anything."..."...

OpinionJournal - Wonder Land: Dogma Without God

re: Daniel Henninger essay, "...Atheists and the unchurched undervalue the extent to which they are getting a free ride on the social strength that religious-based virtue provides. It's one thing to write in a book that we don't need them. But I'd rather not run the real-world experiment of navigating without them. And this is why this weekend so many will spend an hour with virtue's originalists..."...

The Question Of Christmas - Prison Fellowship

re: from Alan Sears, "...Interestingly, even those disinclined to defer to the divinity of Jesus Christ concede that He was a remarkable man—that his teachings were unusually profound and that His life personified those teachings more consistently than anyone else ever has. So what’s wrong with recognizing His birthday as His birthday? /Either Jesus truly is the Son of God, and Savior of the world—in which case we surely should celebrate His advent. Or else He was not. In which case, what harm is there in honoring such a magnificent life? Surely if we’ve cause to commemorate the national impact of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Martin Luther King, Jr., we have more than ample reason to celebrate the international import of the greatest teacher and philosopher the world has ever known. /
Put another way: to what aspects of Jesus’ character and teachings—brotherly love, personal sacrifice, self-denial, kindness, generosity, concern for the poor, courage in the face of death, etc., etc.—do groups like the American Civil Liberties Union so vigorously object?..."...

Dec15ChurchPrisonMinistry (Dec 15 Church Prison Ministry Case)

re: from Liberty Legal Institute, "Plano, TX- The Texas Supreme Court announced it will hear the case, Pastor Rick Barr & Philemon Homes, Inc. v. City of Sinton, the first case at the high court interpreting the Texas Religious Freedoms Restoration Act (RFRA)..."...

hat tip: The Alliance Alert

Dallas Morning News | News for Dallas, Texas | News: Education

re: Several Catholic schools in Texas will be closed Feb. 7 to allow teachers and students the chance to attend a rally in favor of school vouchers...

Townhall.com::Jellyfish of the year::By Jonah Goldberg

re: Time magazine wimping out on its Person of the Year award this year...

Townhall.com::School Assignment: Prepare a Christmas Ornament Without a Christmas Reference::By Jay Sekulow

re: another absurb school policy, permitting anything but Christianity for Christmas...

Cheat Seeking Missiles: The Fish Guys And The Bear Guys

re: "...Humans so grossly and egotistically over-dramatize their impact on critters, and this egotism spawns regulations that impose extreme restrictions on our activities..."...

hat tip: The Paragraph Farmer

AgapePress : Virginia Churches Commended for Leaving ECUSA

re: "(AgapePress) - Evangelical activists are voicing their support for the Episcopal churches in Virginia who, over the weekend, voted strongly in favor of leaving the American branch of the worldwide Anglican Communion. And even though the combined average attendance of the eight churches exceeds that of many entire Episcopal dioceses, the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church USA says the congregations' departure doesn't threaten the denomination's survival..."...

AgapePress :Are Pastors to Blame for the Divorce Epidemic?

re:Matt Friedeman notes, "...We pastors, and the churches we represent, are not to be "blessing machines" -- throwing out words and sacraments willy-nilly to anyone who asks. For in the end, by adopting a low view of the Church, of the institution of marriage and of the pastoral office, we haven't really blessed but most assuredly have cursed the people we intended to help."...

Aliens Cause Global Warming

re: Michael Crichton lecture from 2003, in which he traces the slide of science from 1960 and SETI down to current bad science getting intertwined with policy, and in which he makes some suggestions for restoring science's reputation and standing...

hat tip: Rush Limbaugh

OpinionJournal - John Fund on the Trail

re: Why Barack Obama may not run for President this next election...

Betsy's Page: France and the Middle East

re: Mark Steyn review of David Pryce-Jones' book Betrayal: France, Arabs and the Jews...

Brandywine Books: Evil in Fiction and Ukraine

re: links to article about insights into evil in Lord of the Rings, and to a BBC article which covers allegations of healthy newborns being snatched and killed in Ukraine, which styles itself the stem cell capital of the world...

BBC link: Ukraine babies in stem cell probe (Matthew Hill, BBC Health Correspondent, Dec. 12, 2006)

A fox-y hazard on golf course

re: video of a fox that steals golf balls...

KRT Wire | 12/18/2006 | Richard Carlson, author of `Don't Sweat' books, dies at 45

re: author dies on book tour for "Don't Get Scrooged"...

Oregon State Defense Force History

re: the state militia from pre-statehood to the present day...

Phi Beta Cons: "And I Thought I'd Seen it All"

re: David French finds Michigan State's Student Accountability in Community Seminar (SAC) to be very Orwellian, not to mention unconstitutional...

OpinionJournal - Best of the Web Today

re: more "responding to Rangel" messages. Includes one letter from a man named Michael Reeseman, which states (in part), "...I thought my window of opportunity for military service was forever closed with my final discharge from the Army Reserve in 1999. After 2001, like so many others I tried to find a way back in despite a lengthy list of medical disqualifiers. If I've learned anything about the government, it's that there's always a loophole. Eventually I found it in the State Defense Forces. /Over half of the states have State Defense Forces, which are duly authorized uniformed services under Title 32 of the U.S. Code. All states can have them, but only 26 (plus Puerto Rico) have set them up. These military units serve entirely within their home state, cannot be federalized, and answer to the governor (usually through the office of the adjutant general). Since they cannot serve overseas, these units do not train for combat but to prepare to aid civil authorities and back up the National Guard. In practice this usually takes the form of emergency response, logistics and security duties. I am given to understand that there are also quite a few specialty units such as JAGs, medics and chaplains..."...

OpinionJournal - Taste: Harvard Loses Its Edge

re: John Schmalzbauer of the Religious Studies Department at Missouri State University notes that many universities (but not Harvard) have been seeing a renewed interest in religious scholarship and spirituality courses in recent years (although he doesn't specify if they are orthodox, or not, etc.)...

My Vacation Letter to President Bush

re: in an undated letter, talk show host Lars Larson asks President Bush to arrange for the President of Mexico to give the Larson family the equivalent benefits in Mexico that Mexicans get when they come illegally to the U.S....

The Scotsman - Business - Biofuels: a new dawn or business as usual?

re: "AFTER more than a decade of falling prices, declining margins and shrinking investment, there is a growing optimism in agriculture that we are entering a new era of rising demand and better prices, driven by biofuels./ Are these predictions likely to be true? Or will we find that we are entering just another commodity market where price pressures will soon return?..."...

The Scotsman - Business - HSBC targets firms that need no branch

re: in Scotland, the competition is on for business customers who don't need/want bank branches to do their banking (i.e., such as so-called knowledge-based businesses that don't involve a lot of cash transactions)...

Fernnook Farmgirl: Daily Lit

re: a site that will email you a portion of a book every day (classics, it sounds like)...

Vatican refuses to sign U.N. landmark convention over right of disabled unborn to life - Catholic Online

re: "UNITED NATIONS (Catholic Online) – The Vatican has refused to sign the just-adopted United Nations landmark treaty to promote and protect the rights of the world’s 650 million disabled people over a clause that may be used to deny the right to life of disabled unborn persons./ In Dec. 13 remarks to the U.N. General Assembly on the occasion of the adoption of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities that took five years to shape, Archbishop Celestino Migliore, apostolic nuncio of the Holy See’s permanent mission to the U.N., stressed that the protection of “the rights, dignity and worth of persons with disabilities remains a major concern for the Holy See.”..."...

Advent and the Christian Year

re: Presbyterian minister Mark D. Roberts has several posts on Advent, a season he has come to love...

Human Life of Washington

re: Washington state pro-life organization, with several affilitates...

Get The Award Ready III « Expat Yank

re: second part of this post notes Somaliland has established itself as a thriving anomoly in Africa without foreign aid...

Telegraph | News | Full text of Blair's multiculturalism speech

re: Tony Blair takes on the idiocy of PC multiculturalism; demands that people who move to UK adopt British values...

hat tip: Rush Limbaugh

Hobo spider

re: brief overview and photo of hobo spider...

NWCN.com | Christmas trees return to Sea-Tac

re: Rabbi Elazar Bogomilsky decides to not play grinch after all. Says won't sue Sea-Tac airport, whether they put up his giant menorah or not. Airport officials, rather than deal with his threats, had taken Christmas decorations down. Employees had countered by bringing in small trees of their own...

Update: Captain Ed over at Captain's Quarters has a bit more background, which makes the rabbi look less like a grinch than earlier news accounts.

FIRST THINGS: On the Square

re: a tribute to Jeane Kirkpatrick by Michael Novak...

The Conservative Oregon Blog Network

re: site for conservatives in Oregon...

RedState Blog Project | Redstate

re: "...right of center bloggers that focus on the politics of a particular state or location within a state. Not all local bloggers have been listed here. We've only listed the ones we have reviewed and found to be regularly updated, focused on politics, and right of center..."...

Constitutionally Correct : Congratulations! Your Baby is Handicapped!

re: these days, some mothers have the lab cook them up an embryo with a specific disability, like dwarfism or deafness...

American Thinker Blog: Baker Commish gives Dems cover for sanity

re: James Lewis has a different take on the Baker-Hamilton Iraq report, saying it gives Dems political cover to move away from the fringe Left...

American Thinker: Whither Bolton?

re: Ed Lasky dreams of John Bolton going to work for Rudy Giuliani (and along the way notes some of the accomplishes of both men)...

America and malaria | Finally clearing the air | Economist.com

re: finally asking for accountability, looking for better ways, rediscovering DDT...

TKS on National Review Online : Will Decency - and taking a shot at Daily Kos - help Barack Obama?

re: Jim Geraghty notes that Barack Obama isn't catering to the fringe Left, and he seems to making inroads with some evangelicals, particularly Rick Warren's crowd...

And Another Thing . . . on National Review Online

Mark Levin links to Go Right Ahead – Tread On Us, an editorial at Investor's Business Daily.

The Corner: The Black Watch

re: Scottish snatch team grabs terrorist godfather and some of his henchmen in Iraq...

Brandywine Books: Romper Room wonks

re: Lars Walker on adults who are still mentally back in grade school, trying to impress the teacher by giving him his favorite answers on what to do about current events...

Brandywine Books: The quest for Grandma's Donuts

re: Lars Walker on his brother, trying to create donuts like his Grandmother used to make, and surviving after a feminist walked out to go do her own thing...

ADF: ADF allied attorneys contact nearly 11,500 school districts regarding Christmas expression - Alliance Defense Fund - Defending Our First Liberty

re: pushing back against the disinformation campaign that has people/schools/cities needlessly afraid to celebrate Christmas publicly (the law is on the side of Christmas)...

Townhall.com::Reflections on the prospect - reality? - of a third great awakening::By Ross Mackenzie

re: Ross Mackenzie wonders if the schisms in 'mainstream' (my scare quotes) Protestant denominations are triggering a Third Great Awakening in America. He provides historical background...

Let's Say Thanks

re: Xerox-sponsored site to send free printed postcard to someone serving in the U.S. military overseas...

FIRST THINGS: On the Square

re: William Saletan, author of Bearing Right: How Conservatives Won the Abortion War, is calling on Democrats to capture values voters, i.e., to go back to being 'the party of responsibility,' but Elizabeth Powers has her doubts...

Here in the Bonny Glen: Hanna and Me

re: the story behind her book Hanna's Christmas, now out of print...

Stones Cry Out: Ten Ways Media Leaders Can Keep Media Ethics from Becoming an Oxymoron

re: suggestions for ways the national media could restore its reputation...

Power Line: The ISG Report: Still A Mystery

re: wondering why Syria and Iran would change their policies in line with what the Iraq Study Group wants...

Betsy's Page: How an advisory commission should have been conducted

re: "Eliot Cohen, who wrote a superb book on civilian leadership in wartime, Supreme Command, puts his finger on exactly what was wrong with the Iraq Study Group..."...

Phi Beta Cons on National Review Online

re: David French on the University of Georgia trying (unsuccessfully) to shut down a Christian religious fraternity...

...In reality, universities are not interested in protecting students from religious discrimination (if they were, they would seek to protect the hundreds and sometimes thousands of Christian students who belong to Christian organizations from the disruption and harm of derecognizing their groups). Instead, they are striking at the heart of what these Christian groups teach and believe. The universities want to “protect” their student bodies from dissent — especially on matters of personal morality. And it is so much easier to silence dissent when that speech and the groups that support that speech are branded as “discriminators.”

Tornado hits London

re: A twister roared through north-west London streets...

Get Involved in the Conservative Movement by Nathan Tabor

re: suggestions for websites to visit, groups to join...

At A Hen's Pace: Virtual Prayer Books

re: online Christian resources...

Charis Connection: Ask the Authors: Wednesday

re: "Do you have a special process for naming your characters?"...

Strand Magazine:: Interview with Michael Bond

re: undated interview. "Since 1983 mystery fans have enjoyed Michael Bond's series of detective comedies featuring retired Sûreté member Monsieur Pamplemousse and his dog Pommes Frites, and since 1958 children have been delighting in Bond's books chronicling the very funny adventures of Paddington Bear—one of the most beloved children's characters of all time./ The Monsieur Pamplemousse series is a unique blend of comedy and mystery. As an inspector for the prestigious restaurant rating directory Le Guide, Monsieur Pamplemousse (along with Pommes Frites) travels around the country sampling the finest cuisine and wines at the best restaurants in France, while stumbling into one hilarious mystery after another. Mr. Bond has recently completed another novel, Monsieur Pamplemousse on Probation. He spoke to us about his early writing career, the inspiration behind his two most famous characters, and the state of writing in general..."...

HUGE Anti-Chavez Rally In Venezuela « Daily Inklings

re: November 26 post showing crowds as far as the eye can see...

Books & Culture Corner: Mr. Wilson's Bookshelf - Books & Culture Magazine

re: "The Top Ten Books of 2006 and the Book of the Year"... John Wilson's list... "Still, it's worth saying that these are simply the titles that came most readily and insistently to mind over the last couple of weeks as I thought about the books I've read this year..."...[snip..."And now to the Book of the Year: Crisis of Doubt: Honest Faith in Nineteenth-Century England, by Timothy Larsen (Oxford Univ. Press). You know the familiar story, according to which virtually every thinking person in late-Victorian England either lost his faith or maintained a pale simulacrum of genuine belief. While Timothy Larsen acknowledges that there were of course plenty of instances of deconversion, in his new book he draws attention to a counternarrative that has been widely overlooked, embodied in the experience of men and women who moved from doubt or resolute skepticism to Christian faith. In chapter after chapter of brilliantly condensed biography, he tells the stories of individuals whose lives followed this second course. This is a book that will force honest scholars to reconsider what they thought they knew."...

NWCN.com | Amazon adds new presses for on-demand books

re: will use HP Indigo presses at fulfillment centers and BookSurge to improve quality in POD offerings...

NWCN.com | Oregon sailor pleads guilty to espionage charges

re: Salem man has pleaded guilty to several charges related to passing classified information to a foreign government...

FLW Outdoors - Leader in bass, walleye, redfish, kingfish and striped bass tournament fishing.

re: July 20, 2006 press release "Wal-Mart FLW Series forms divisions, eight $1 million televised events for 2007"...

FLW Outdoors - Leader in bass, walleye, redfish, kingfish and striped bass tournament fishing.

re: a history of the Wal-Mart FLW Tour, through the lead-in to the 2005 professional bass fishing season...

Kids don't get building blocks of learning from high-tech play - The Boston Globe

re: interaction builds social skills - and compassion - so don't swamp the wee ones with electronic toys...

NWCN.com | Story of survival shared in Boise

re: Aron Ralston, the man who cut off his own arm with a pocket knife after being pinned by a boulder in a remote area of Utah, now gives inspirational speeches around the country. He recently spoke at a fundraiser for the Idaho Youth Ranch...

Top Stories | NWCN.com | Family missing on return from Seattle trip

re: family of four last seen Nov. 25, last heard from when they told a Gold Beach motel they'd be arriving late and asked for key to be left for them...

Top Stories | NWCN.com | Drug bust nabs 26 in Skagit County

re: Mexican based drug ring run mostly by Mexican nationals in the U.S. illegally...

The Dynamo and the Jeweler by Stefan Kanfer, City Journal Autumn 2006

re: George and Ira Gershwin, Fred and Adele Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Danny Kaye, music, theater, movies...

CNN.com - The Marquee: Why DO we care?

re: the fascination with celebrities, etc. "...But there's also the matter of what writer Maureen Orth calls the "celebrity-industrial complex," the endless machine made up of the news media, entertainment companies, performers, handlers, advisers and consultants (and, yes, consumers) that's dependent upon such stories for its daily fuel -- and, like any capitalistic enterprise, only exists as long as interest continues. Which means there's a great deal at stake to keep the machine running..."

Includes recommendations for these books: "The Image" by Daniel Boorstin, "Amusing Ourselves to Death" by Neil Postman, and "Life: The Movie" by Neal Gabler.

hat tip: Kay S. Hymowitz/ CJ in the News/ City Journal

OpinionJournal - Taste: Single Mothers, Many Problems

re: unwed motherhood and unstable families, with a nod to the book "Marriage and Caste in America: Separate and Unequal Families in a Post-Marital Age" by Kay Hymowitz ...

OpinionJournal - Taste: The Limits of Tolerance

re: Naomi Schaefer Riley on a talk given by liberal priest Andrew M. Greeley, in which he let a few things slip in the Q & A: "...Then a middle-aged woman in the back of the room asked Father Greeley about the changing face of the Catholic Church. The greatest growth in the world-wide Catholic population, she noted, has been coming for some years from new believers in South America and Africa, and the trend shows no signs of abating. What effect would this have on the church? / "We will depend on them for vitality," Father Greeley predicted. "But they will continue to depend on us for the ideas."...

List of Classics

re: book list for people who want to understand conservatism...

Iraq is Dems’ tar-baby

re: David A. Keene has been watching Democrats come to grips with the fact that now that they've got a majority, they'll be held responsible for what they do about Iraq, etc...

hat tip: Best of the Web Today

After surprisingly dull hurricane season, experts debate why they were wrong | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle

re: forecasters didn't come close on predicting this year's mild hurricane season, and they didn't see El Nino coming either...

A Different Kind of Christmas Poem « A Rose By Any Other Name

re: a soldier's gift...