Nazarene Communications Network - PLNU leads effort to build cost-effective homes in Armenia

re: "A structurally sound house made out of styrofoam? Sounds like a pipe dream, not a cost-effective model for building homes in developing nations. However, Point Loma Nazarene University (PLNU) recently led a construction effort in Armenia to build a residence primarily out of innovative polystyrene blocks, which is the same substance as Styrofoam coffee cups. / Intrigued by the approach, Habitat For Humanity has plans to use the PLNU model to build 20 to 30 more homes in Armenia using the concrete-filled blocks. In addition, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is interested in utilizing the blocks for storage sheds for farmers...[snip]...There are a number of different kinds of polystyrene blocks used in various construction models. The blocks used by the PLNU team are made by Keeva—a company that produces the blocks in Tijuana—and represent the most simple and easy-to-use design, requiring very low technology to manufacture and build. / In order to create a possible sustainable solution for affordable housing in developing nations, PLNU's partners in Armenia are in negotiations with a company in Iran to produce the blocks at a lower price. A Trade and Technology Center is planned that will train Armenians on how to build these homes throughout the country and surrounding region..."...

Nazarene Communications Network - Family Life Ministries' marriage initiative goes global

re: "...Anita Tzib, wife of Belize District Superintendent John Tzib, attended a marriage workshop at the 2005 Church of the Nazarene General Assembly. She came away believing God wanted her to bring marriage enrichment to Belize..."...

Nazarene Communications Network - Arson blamed for fire that destroyed makeshift New Mexico church

re: "Fire investigators near Albuquerque, New Mexico have determined a fire that destroyed the Pajarito Mesa Community Church of the Nazarene late Wednesday evening, June 27, was intentionally set.Fire investigators near Albuquerque, New Mexico have determined a fire that destroyed the Pajarito Mesa Community Church of the Nazarene late Wednesday evening, June 27, was intentionally set..."...

Pop Goes the Library: Grown-Ups on Facebook: Bad Idea Jeans?

re: "...I think what it comes down to is that often in libraryland, some of us who are into technology (and I am most certainly including myself in this category) suffer from what Marcus calls "Oooh, shiny!" Syndrome -- we are like magpies, hunting down and hoarding up anything new that we think we can use to better connect with our patrons. This is not intrinsically bad, but when we adopt a technology without thinking through how we're going to use it, or how much time it will take to make it yield the results we're hoping for, we are setting ourselves up to look really stupid. /I'm not arguing against experimentation, or trying things out, and certainly not against chucking our field-wide terror of Not Doing Things The Right Way. I'm just saying that just as "Oooh, shiny!"-itis is not intrinsically bad, neither are all of the nifty little (and not-so-little) technological innovations intrinsically useful for us..."

hat tip: Liz B

Missing the forest; missing the trees « Bookworm Room

re: "...I got sidetracked from my original idea for a Fairness Doctrine post, however, when I followed a Matt Drudge link entitled “Pelosi ’solidly’ behind getting Fairness Doctrine back…” That link took me to this post at a website called Seeing the Forest : A web magazine investigating how the Right is beating the Dems. The website is written from the liberal perspective (one of the authors identifies himself as “a left-wing Democrat with a strong aversion for conservative trolls”), so it must be understood as a serious effort to advance liberal political beliefs and counter what it sees as the conservative ideology’s perplexing refusal to go away and die in quiet. /After I read the specific post to which Drudge directed me, a post that summarizes a chat liberal bloggers had with Nancy Pelosi, it struck me that Liberals may be suffering from Purloined Letter syndrome, in that, even though it’s right in front of them, they don’t see the answer to their own question. The problem isn’t that conservatives have such good ideas; it’s that Democrats have such bad ideas. To demonstrate that point, I’ve selected portions of the Pelosi interview, and interlineated my comments about why liberals might not be winning as many friends and influencing as many people as they believe they ought..."...

Touchstone Magazine - Mere Comments: Never Reverse?

re: Wilfred McClay, "...Well, the decision was certainly correct, but count me completely uninspired by such reasoning. Suppose that the student had raised a banner using rank four-letter obscenities to argue against drug abuse. Would that have been OK? Would the principal have been any less right in demanding that they take it down? Would the Court then have to deliberate on the subject, and produce yet another narrowly tailored opinion justifying the obvious? /In short, it's a rather disappointing decision, which dutifully respects wrongheaded or mushily stated precedents (notably the 1969 Tinker decision), while failing to recognize that the real issue at stake here is whether public schools can possibly do their job when those tasked with running them have been divested of all vestiges of institutional, legal, and moral authority. "School principals," the opinion rightly concludes, "have a difficult job." You can say that again. And the courts have done a great deal to make it more so...."...

Matthews Criticizes Catholic Church for Applying Doctrine to Politicians | NewsBusters.org

re: Mark Finkelstein, on Chris Matthews saying, in effect, that the Catholic Church shouldn't apply its rules to politicians like it does to other adherents...

hat tip: The Alliance Alert

Townhall.com::Britain Was Once Great Britain::By Dennis Prager

re: from April 10, 2007, "It is painful to see the decline of Great Britain. /Greatness in individuals is rare; in countries it is almost unique. And Great Britain was great. / It used to be said that "The sun never sets on the British empire." That is how vast Britain's influence was. And that influence, on balance, was far more positive than negative. Ask the Indians -- or the Americans, for that matter. The British colonies learned about individual rights, parliamentary government, civil service and courts of justice, to name of few of the benefits that the British brought with them. Were it not for British involvement, India might still have sati (burning wives on the funeral pyre of their husband), would have no unifying language, and probably no parliamentary democracy or other institutions and values that have made that country a democratic giant, now on its way to becoming an economic one as well. But today, the sun not only literally sets on an extinct British empire; it is figuratively setting on Britain itself. /Two recent examples provide evidence..."...

Townhall.com::Imam Bush strikes again::By Diana West

re: "...He began this way: 'For those who seek a true understanding of our country, they need to look no farther than here.' /No -- not the mosque itself, but down the street it occupies. 'This Muslim center sits quietly down the road from a synagogue, a Lutheran church, a Catholic parish, a Greek Orthodox chapel, a Buddhist temple -- each with faithful followers who practice their deeply held beliefs and live side by side in peace,' the president explained, standing in his Islamically observant stocking feet before a cool Muslim audience. 'This is what freedom offers: societies where people can live and worship as they choose without intimidation, without suspicion, without a knock on the door from the secret police.' /As one who has attended a bar mitzvah at that synagogue down the road, I have news for the president: Freedom, American-style, has changed. To enter, I passed an armed guard holding an automatic weapon manning the door. Armed guards like him man many such doors in many such cities. In fact, so common is it for religious worship to require armed protection today that we miss the implications: the degree to which freedom to worship without fear in America has been curtailed by the open-ended threat of Buddhist violence. /Whoops, sorry. I mean, curtailed by the open-ended threat of Greek Orthodox violence. Or was that Catholic or Lutheran violence? "..."...

Townhall.com::The News::London Police Foil Major Terror Plot

re: "Police thwarted a devastating terrorist plot on Friday, discovering two Mercedes loaded with nails packed around canisters of propane and gasoline set to detonate and kill possibly hundreds in London's crowded theater and nightclub district. /The plot, coming only two days after Gordon Brown took over as prime minister, raised the specter of the attacks in July 2005 when the London Underground and an iconic double-decker bus were targeted by a group of homegrown terrorists who killed 52 people."...[snip]...But Londoners _ with long experience in dealing with bombs and terrorism _ were not in hiding and the West End was bustling again by nightfall Friday..."...

Townhall.com::(Free) Speech Disorder::By Jonah Goldberg

re: "There are few areas where I think common sense is more sorely lacking than in our public debates over free speech, and there's no better proof than two recent Supreme Court decisions. /But before we go there, let me state plainly where I'm coming from..."...

A Woman who Fears the Lord: The Thinking Blogger Award

re: more blogs to check out...

BrothersJudd Blog: LUCKILY, IT'S A CARTOON...:

re: "......so you can get away with explicit conservatism...." (commentary on the movie “Ratatouille”)

Beliefnet: Blogalogue : Are Mormons Christian?

re: online debate between Albert Mohler and Orson Scott Card...

WorldWatch - June 3, 2007 - Learning from History - The Ornery American

re: Orson Scott Card on World War II and what we can learn from it. Recommends Lynne Olson's Troublesome Young Men: the Rebels Who Brought Churchill to Power and Helped Save England, and Bevin Alexander's How Hitler Could Have Won World War II: The Fatal Errors That Led to Nazi Defeat.

Enchantment by Orson Scott Card at Semicolon

re: "Last year, on the the recommendation of some of my blog friends, I read Orson Scott Card’s sci-fi materpiece, Ender’s Game. Although I thought the ending was bit weak, I enjoyed the book very much. Now I’ve read my second book by Card, and it’s quite different from Ender’s Game, but also delightful..."...

The Common Room: The Reading Gap

re: "We all know that the poor and underprivileged just don't read to their children, right? At least not as much or as often as the middle class. Right? Everybody knows that. There've been studies and everything. /Like this one: //Children from low-income households average just 25 hours of shared reading time with their parents before starting school, compared with 1,000 to 1,700 hours for their counterparts from middle-income homes. /These oft-repeated numbers originate in a 1990 book by Marilyn Jager Adams titled, "Beginning to Read: Thinking And Learning About Print." Ms. Adams got the 25-hours estimate from a study of 24 children in 22 low-income families. For the middle-income figures, she extrapolated from the experience of a single child: her then-4-year-old son, John. // How did that one study have so much influence in common knowledge, seeping down into something we all just know? Advocacy groups picked it up, worked it down to a soundbyte or two, and began trading the same piece of information back and forth with each other through the media. Carl Bialik, The Numbers Guy, explains..."...

C.S. Lewis Quotes: The C.S. Lewis Society of California

re: various Lewis quotes, grouped by source

Townhall.com::Blog: Crash and burn

re: "Posted by: Jonathan Garthwaite at 11:24 AM /Apparently the Senate's phone system has crashed from all the calls from angry citizens. And the immigration bill will too shortly. /UPDATE: At 11:23 the immigration bill failed on a cloture vote with only 46 votes -- 53 against. I can't help but believe that Sen Voinovich's performance on Sean Hannity's show yesterday was the final nail in the bill's coffin. It's an especially odd call since he ended up voting against the bill in the end."

Townhall.com::Don’t Trust Washington ::By Michael Reagan

re: "When my father Ronald Reagan said one of his mottos was “trust but verify,” he was talking about dealing with the Soviet Union. If he was talking about present-day Washington I think he’d simply say, “Don’t trust – ever.” /He’d have good reason. Some of the people running things today would steal the pennies off a dead man’s eyes, and then claim they needed it to make everybody’s life better. /Look at the current furor over the (fortunately) now-dead Comprehensive Immigration Reform bill, sold so deceptively it would shock the worst snake-oil salesman."..."...

Townhall.com::Blog: Cloture Fails! Bill Dead! 53 No Votes!

re: Dean Barnett takes a look at the defeat of the immigration bill...

Townhall.com::The Jessie Davis case and dangers of out-of-wedlock parenthood::By Michael Medved

re: "...Unlike these other media obsessions, however, this horrifying story conveys some significant messages and should help to refocus attention on the nation’s most significant and menacing social problem: the unchecked epidemic and unquestioning acceptance of out of wedlock birth..."...

Meditating Like a Dog | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction

re: "Eugene Peterson on the discipline of spiritual reading"/ an excerpt from Eat This Book.

The Spirit of Faithfulness | Christianity Today

re: from May 2, 2007, by Debbie Dortzbach, "...The Boston Globe blared the news that Randall Tobias, one of America's most respected leaders in HIV/AIDS prevention, had blown it...[snip]...Tobias represented all that was good about President Bush's war against HIV/AIDS, promoting abstinence, faithfulness, and faith-based participation in the grassroots struggle against the disease in Africa and around the world. He was America's ambassador for AIDS—commissioned to demonstrate the drive for life, not death; the commitment to prevention, not persistent infection; and the generosity of the American government and people to countries crushed by poverty, conflict, and disease....[snip]....Today, my heart is angry and my spirit crushed by the insult of yet another abstinence and faithfulness message ruined by the exposure of improper behavior, whether explicit or peripheral. Once again, the guilty party is a high-profile person, an ambassador to the world to spread the message that sex is protected and fulfilled only in the context of marriage. Our critics waste no time in pointing out what they call our ostrich-in-the-sand thinking. How many times did I hear at the International AIDS Conference in Toronto in July 2006 that "abstinence and faithfulness just don't work!" /When a failure in faithfulness results in AIDS, the harm done goes beyond pain, according to my colleague, Dr. Meredith Long, co-author of our book, The AIDS Crisis: What We Can Do. "AIDS is an insult to our creator," he says "It not only destroys his creation but chooses as its most frequent pathway the gift of our sexuality—God's precious gift of relationship that should be the highest celebration of the life He gave us and the act by which we participate with him in the creation of new life. For the highest celebration of life to be the messenger of death goes beyond destruction—it is a desecration of God's image."..."...

CANADA'S POLICY ON IMMIGRANTS BRINGS BACKLOG | Daily Policy Digest | NCPA

re: "Canada's immigration system favors highly skilled foreigners by assigning points for education and work experience, and accepting those who earn high scores. It offers a cautionary tale for the United States, says the New York Times. /The point system has helped Canada compete with the United States and other Western powers for highly educated workers, the most coveted immigrants in high-tech and other cutting-edge industries. But in recent years, immigration lawyers and labor market analysts say, the Canadian system has become an immovable beast, with a backlog of more than 800,000 applications and waits of four years or more..."...

SHOULD BIG CHILL BE A BIGGER WORRY? | Daily Policy Digest | NCPA

re: "Reputable scientists now say the long-term threat to climate is severe cooling, not warming -- the result of varying solar output, says Investor's Business Daily. /According to R. Timothy Patterson, professor of geology and director of the Ottawa-Carleton Geoscience Centre of Canada's Carleton University, solar output can vary as much as 0.1 percent over regular 11-year sunspot cycles known as "Schwabe" cycles. These variations correlate well with the fossil record. Some of the earlier solar-driven changes are even more dramatic than an Al Gore movie: /As recently as 6,000 years ago, it was six degrees Celsius warmer than now. /Ten thousand years ago, as the world was coming out of a cold period, temperatures rose as much as six degrees in a decade, 100 times faster than the past century. /
There have been many ice ages in earth's past, followed by warming periods like the one we're in now. / Further, according to Patterson, "Solar scientists predict that, by 2020, the sun will be starting into its weakest Schwabe cycle of the past two centuries, likely leading to unusually cool conditions on earth. "Solar activity has overpowered any effect that CO2 has had before, and it most likely will again. If we're to have even a medium-sized solar minimum, we could be looking at a lot more bad effects than 'global warming' would have had." /Source: Editorial, "Should Big Chill Be A Bigger Worry?" Investor's Business Daily, June 27, 2007..."

OpinionJournal - Outside the Box: Security First

re: Pete du Pont (Tuesday, June 26, 2007): "The immigration bill may be back on the Senate floor this week, and the policies that are adopted will have a significant impact on the sovereignty, security, economic growth and opportunity of America in the coming decades. /America's modern immigration trend began in 1986 when President Reagan's bill granted amnesty to some three million illegal immigrants yet failed to improve border security. That amnesty sent a message to people across the border: If you slip into America you will be able to work and live here, and nothing negative will happen to you. Almost 20 years went by before any serious effort was undertaken to secure our borders, so that three million 1986 illegal immigrants have turned into 12 million today. About eight million people have entered the U.S. during the current Bush administration, half or more illegally, and according to the Washington Post, undocumented workers now make up "about 5 percent of all employees nationally." / The Secure Fence Act of 2006 authorized 750 miles of fence to be built along our border with Mexico, where almost all of our illegal immigrants enter--over 80% of them come from Mexico and Latin American countries--but only about 150 miles of that border fence will have been built by the end of this year. / With this growing influx of illegal entrants into America, there are five essential actions the Senate should take next week..."...

Charming the Birds from the Trees: Finishing School: Personal Presentation...

re: write-ups on elegance and charm, and a 1950 video on better posture...

Shabbos in Vietnam - Shabbat with Aish

re: from the book "Loyal Soldier," the story of Hank Webb: "...When I woke up on Shabbos morning, I had to make one of the most important decisions of my life. I could go to work as usual, or I could risk a court martial for "disobeying a lawful order of a superior officer" -- in a time of war! I felt that I was standing at a crossroads, and I didn't know which road to take. True, it was a time of war. But even so, there had been a lull for weeks, except for one major firefight. It was really a time of relative peace and quiet. /In the end, I resolutely decided to observe this Shabbos, come what may. At the time, I couldn't say from where that incredible resolve stemmed. In retrospect, I believe God gave me the special strength I needed. I became determined to stand firm and not yield to the wishes of the colonel. /"I came here to fight for freedom," I thought to myself, "including the freedom of religion. Well, I have rights, too, and shouldn't I be able to practice my own religion? If not, then what am I putting my life at risk for?"..."...

Challah: The Divine Dough - Shabbat with Aish

re: Rebbetzin Tzipporah Heller, "There is something about making dough that can only be described with the old cliche, "real." I find that the rhythm of kneading and the fragrance of the loaves is as close as one can get to "experiencing" music. In homes where Shabbat is the soul of the week, bread-making becomes something more, something part and parcel of the way Shabbat bonds the two worlds -- spiritual and physical -- in which we all live..."...

The Selfish Shabbat

re: Sarah Zeldman: "...I began to observe Shabbat for only one reason. I was selfish. /I looked around me and saw friends and family who never knew when to stop working. They never stopped pursuing the American Dream. I saw friends who were depressed and wondering, "Is this what life is all about?" But they suppressed the question in various ways because they did not know where to go for answers. /I saw families come apart at the seams, partly due to a commitment to the "pursuit of happiness" (read: financial wealth) at the expense of a commitment to family life and spiritual growth. I saw a country that more and more tragically reflected the consequence of these decisions. /So I began to observe Shabbat, because I wanted a better life..."...but...

With a Whole Heart: Ethics of the Fathers, 3:13

re: "Rabbi Chanina used to say: If one is found pleasing by his fellows, then he is pleasing to the Almighty; but if one is not pleasing to his fellows, then he is not pleasing to the Almighty..."...

The Tahoe Fire & the Spotted Owl

re: Rush Limbaugh: "RUSH: I want to talk about this fire out at Lake Tahoe, because it's fascinating. There are two schools of thought on who's to blame. One school of thought is global warming. The other school of thought is environmentalists...[snip]...the people that live out there say it's the environmentalists. "They won't let us thin out these forests. They make this stuff remain as it is. It's a fireplace, it's a tinderbox." The Tahoe Regional Planning Agency said that they were angry at bureaucrats and environmentalists who made cutting trees and clearing of land difficult. There was always too much red tape, they say. Now it was too late. "I hate to get political..." This is the guy from the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency. "...but environmentalists wouldn't let us cut down the dead trees." People in the Bay Area, however, were led to believe the fires are all due to overdevelopment in Tahoe. The media's favorite culprit for every problem on the planet of course is global warming...[snip]...So global warming is responsible for everything, but the truth of the matter is, the environmentalist wackos in this country are the instigators of more of these kinds of problems than people want to admit, and they're afraid, people are afraid to fight 'em...[snip]...RUSH: Speaking of this Tahoe fire, I forgot to mention this. They have a restriction out there that you can only cut timber, I think it's ten or 12 feet from your house. I'm not sure about the number. But, this guy broke the law. He said to hell with it, and he cut it 50 to 70 feet away from his house. His house is the one standing. His house is standing! A lot of his neighbors who followed these regulations houses have burned to the ground. Fire department people out there, fire experts have been warning not just in Tahoe, but in the El Dorado Forest, "You guys are sitting on a powder keg out here." But, you know, Dianne Feinstein and some other people introduced legislation to thin out some of these forests. The Sierra Club's been appealing it for ten years and holding it up. There are countless illustrations. It's just another illustration of all this do-gooderism,.."...

FOXNews.com - Home Depot, Forced to Provide Day Labor Facilities in Some Cities, Seeks Federal Shield Law

re: "The Home Depot is tired of being forced by local governments to accommodate the day laborers who turn up in its store parking lots seeking construction work. So the Georgia-based company turned to Congress for help. /The Senate could respond this week by attaching language to the immigration bill that would prohibit city councils from requiring home improvement stores to pay for shelters or other services to help maintain orderly day labor sites. /The amendment, sponsored by Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., is designed to curtail a practice in the California communities of Mountain View and Burbank, where city councils recently have forced Home Depot to build facilities for day laborers onsite or elsewhere, hire security staff and offer bathrooms in order to get the permits necessary for its operations. /Local governments in Los Angeles, San Francisco and other cities, including in Illinois and Washington, D.C., have imposed or are considering similar measures..."...

hat tip: Rush Limbaugh

Betsy's Page: Keep your hands off our media

re: "The Washington Examiner expresses my feelings exactly about the Democratic movement to bring back the Fairness Doctrine..."...

More Strong Winds Could Fuel Tahoe Fire | World Latest | Guardian Unlimited

re: "SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. (AP) - Racing the weather, hundreds of firefighters on Wednesday tried to tame a blaze near this resort area on two fronts, facing the prospect of losing hundreds more homes if they failed to hold both of them. /With afternoon forecasts calling for gusty winds, the challenge was to keep the wildfire from consuming more buildings near the small town of Meyers where it started, and from reaching several densely populated subdivisions near where one flank of the blaze jumped a containment line. The fire has destroyed 200 homes since it emerged over the weekend..."...

Blair Faces Challenges As Mideast Envoy | World Latest | Guardian Unlimited

re: "LONDON (AP) - Among the biggest challenges Tony Blair will face in his new role as Middle East envoy is Arab anger over the wars in Iraq and Lebanon, and perceptions that he speaks for President Bush. /Blair overcame his last hurdle to clinching the job Wednesday when Russia dropped objections and joined the rest of the ``Quartet'' of peace mediators in announcing his appointment. The Quartet also includes the United States, the European Union and the U.N. /``Even our moderate Arab allies say that Mr. Blair's credibility in the region is in pieces'' and that he ``merely parrots the U.S. line while privately wringing his hands,'' The Daily Mirror wrote in an editorial Wednesday. /It added that former President Clinton would have been a more sensible choice. /Throughout his 10 years as Britain's prime minister, Blair was an interventionist, with largely positive results in Kosovo and Libya. Perhaps his most remarkable diplomatic achievement was helping bring peace and democratic self-rule to Northern Ireland, a dispute that had confounded many other British leaders. /But leading the push for peace between Israel and the Palestinians is a challenge of a different magnitude, especially because his reputation is tainted in Arab eyes by his unflinching support for invading Iraq..."...

Stopping "Therapeutic Abortion" :: ProLifeBlogs

re: "Abortion is a crime in Peru, as in all Latin American countries except Cuba and Puerto Rico. Unborn babies are protected from the moment of conception by the constitutions of all these countries, as well as the American Convention of Human Rights, also known as the Pact of San Jose. Pro-abortion legislation has repeatedly failed to pass the region's congresses. The people of Latin America, no less than their elected representatives, are overwhelmingly pro-life. Faced with this level of popular opposition, the pro-abortion movement has long sought a backdoor way to "legalize" abortion. /One of their favorite tactics has been to claim that any abortion that goes unpunished is a "legal" abortion. Since the law in some Latin American countries does not always impose a penalty for abortion, this claim has succeeded in confusing the issue to some degree. /Using this pretext, they have begun to pressure ministries of health to approve "protocols of emergency gynecological attention."..."...

Secondhand Smoke: Brave New Britain: Here Comes Health Care Rationing

re: "...Well, now there's a slippery slope. What some might say is a bad quality of life, others might say is perfectly acceptable, thank you very much for your opinion. Moreover, in the end, such approaches reward the politically powerful with complete coverage while denying those on the outskirts. We saw this in Oregon when it created its Medicaid rationing scheme that omits some life-sustaining or curative approaches for the terminally ill. The thing is: When first conceived, late stage AIDS patients were to be listed among those rationed out. But the politically potent AIDS community engaged and that exclusion was, shall we say, remedied. / I don't blame AIDS activists, but other disease communities didn't have the same clout, the point being that if you want to increase the politicization of medicine and turn MS patients against cancer patients, against people with profound cognitive or developmental disabilities, against people with Alzheimer's--health care rationing based on quality of life is the way to do it. / Let's learn from the UK and find a better way."

What's the Rush? :: Euthanasia :: ProLifeBlogs

re: "That's the question Bobby Schindler asked in the case involving Jesse Ramirez, the Arizona man whose case paralleled that of Schindler's sister, Terri Schiavo, until Ramirez woke up. The Arizona Republic reports..."...

Short Stories by W. S. Gilbert

re: "It is well known that Gilbert contributed a large number of comic verses to the magazine Fun and others under the pen name "Bab" which subsequently became known as The Bab Ballads. It is, perhaps, less well known that he also wrote a number of short stories. /Many of the short stories which appeared in Fun were unsigned but were identified as Gilbert's in "W.S. Gilbert's Contributions to Fun, 1865-1874" by John Bush Jones, published in the Bulletin of the New York Public Library, vol 73 (April 1969), pp253-266. This is a comprehensive list of Gilbert's contributions as marked up in the"Proprietor's Copy" of Fun. /Thanks to Adam Cuerden for seeking out these pieces of prose by Gilbert and to Anthony Porter for help with preparing the electronic versions..."...

Grants.gov

re: "Grants.gov is your source to FIND and APPLY for Federal government grants. There are over 1,000 grant programs offered by all Federal grant making agencies. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is proud to be the managing partner for Grants.gov, an initiative that is having an unparalleled impact on the grant community. Grants.gov allows organizations to electronically find and apply for more than $400 billion in Federal grants. /To find out if you are eligible for grant opportunities offered on this site, click here. /PLEASE NOTE: If you are in need of personal financial assistance such as Social Security/Supplemental Security Income, Medicaid or State Social Services, you can find help at www.GovBenefits.gov. This type of individual assistance is not available on this website. If you are interested in student loans, please go to www.Studentaid.ed.gov. If you are a small business looking for a loan, please visit the Small Business Administration."

Martinez: More than $555,000 awarded to Florida State University's College of Information

re: "June 19, 2007 - Washington - U.S. Senator Mel Martinez (R-FL) today announced that Florida State University’s (FSU) College of Information will receive a $559,872 grant to support and enhance programs related to preparing students for a career in library science. The grant is being made available by the Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program. / "With the Internet and other technological advancements, the field of library science is changing rapidly. The study and pursuit of this field is important to the enhancement of our communities, as well as the preservation of knowledge,” said Martinez. "I am pleased that FSU's College of Information is receiving this grant to further these specialized and important careers.” / With this grant, FSU's College of Information will partner with Broward County Library, Miami-Dade Public Library, Southeast Florida Library Information Network, and the State Library and Archives of Florida to provide a master's scholarship program for the next generation of librarians and managers who will work in underserved populations in Southeast Florida public libraries."

Muslim Council Agrees to Drop Hate-Speech Suit against Aussie Pastors After BF Wins Appeal

re: "The Islamic Council of Victoria yesterday ended its five-year legal battle against Pastors Daniel Scot and Danny Nalliah by agreeing to drop its suit seeking to punish the pastors for critically comparing Islam and Christianity in a public sermon in 2002./ Far from incendiary, the pastor’s remarks were thoughtful Christian reflections on Islam and are part of the ongoing dialogue between Christians and Muslims. While the pastors made clear that they disagreed with Islamic theology as being incompatible with Christian belief, they stressed that Christians were still called to love and not hate Muslims. Despite this, in 2004 the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal found that the pastors’ preaching violated Victoria’s Racial and Religious Tolerance Act because it “vilified Islam,” was “offensive,” and espoused “unreasonable” interpretations of Christian and Islamic teaching. This decision, however, was vacated upon appeal in December 2006 by the Supreme Court of Victoria which noted that the Tribunal had no business “attempt[ing] to assess the theological propriety of what was asserted at the Seminar.” The court ordered that the Islamic Council pay half of the Pastor's legal fees for the appeal..."...

hat tip: The Alliance Alert

Alas, poor Britain. The best name for it is Absurdistan -Times Online

re: Gerard Baker: "...In its funny little way the news this week that the Advertising Standards Authority had banned reruns of the 1950s egg advertisements that featured Tony Hancock was more compelling evidence on the state of modern Britain than even Marr’s obiter dicta. /“Go to Work on an Egg” was unacceptable, we were told, because it encouraged an unhealthy lifestyle. I had no idea that we had a government body that still operated on Stalinist principles but there it is. How long will it be before it is not just the free speech of advertising that is curtailed but the evil practice it promotes, and we ban egg consumption along with smoking? Goodbye England. Welcome to Absurdistan. /At root of this nonsense is, of course, the sheer scale of government. The reason you can’t be allowed to eat an egg is that, because of the lack of real choice in healthcare provision, you’re no longer responsible for the financial consequences of your own actions. If you get heart disease from too much cholesterol, the State, collectively known as the NHS, will have to treat you; and that costs the State more and more money so the State will have to stop you from doing it in the first place. /This is the self-perpetuating logic behind the unstoppable momentum of the expanding State. The bigger it grows, the more it intrudes into our lives, and the more it intrudes into our lives, the more dependent we become on it..."...

Of course the Russians did it. They’re the experts -Times Online

re: "...None of this is to speak too harshly of the efforts of MI5, MI6 or the CIA. It is merely a reflection of the asymmetric struggle between intelligence agencies in democratic and totalitarian societies. Penetrating regimes that are run on a premise of domestic terror requires really painstaking and risk-laden effort. Finding out what goes on in open democracies? Not so much. /The Lugovoy-Litvinenko saga underscores the fact that this basic imbalance has not changed in the 16 years since we won the Cold War. We remain, paradoxically, the victim of our own freedoms, which they exploit ruthlessly – including, as yesterday, leading along a fabulously credulous media. They remain, paradoxically, secure in their own paranoia and insecurity. /It’s partly why I think Vladimir Putin is so nostalgic for another Cold War. He worked for the KGB, remember, and in hard intelligence terms those were heady days for their side..."...

Why is Hollywood Afraid of Abortion?

re: "...Hollywood is a citadel of pro-choice activism -- a fountain of fundraising for the pro-abortion movement. Furthermore, a good many of Hollywood's own have had abortions, and have boasted of the fact. So, why the absence of abortion on the big screen? /Baker considers one suggested theory and then offers a theory of his own...

Clueless in Seattle -- Can You Be Both a Christian and a Muslim?

re: "...As if that were not sufficient to fret the faithful, along comes the Rev. Ann Holmes Redding of Seattle. Sunday's edition of The Seattle Times featured a major article on Rev. Redding and her claim to be both an Episcopal priest and a practicing Muslim. She is serious, of course, which is what makes the story so interesting...[snip]...The case of the Rev. Ann Holmes Redding makes any sane person long for Aristotle and his law of non-contradiction. As Aristotle famously argued, two contradictory propositions cannot be simultaneously true. Nevertheless, the outright denial of the principle of non-contradiction is one of the hallmarks of the postmodern age. Postmoderns gladly embrace contradictions and refuse any responsibility to resolve them. This tactic, we might observe, works better on some issues than on others. Their denial of non-contradiction abruptly ends when it no longer serves their purposes...[snip]...The real shame in all this is that Rev. Redding is getting away with this while continuing to be an Episcopal priest in good standing. Adding insult to injury, her bishop, the Rt. Reverend Vincent Warner of Seattle, says that Rev. Redding's declaration that she is both a Christian and a Muslim to be exciting in terms of interfaith understanding..."...

The Holsinger Question -- A New Religious Test for the Surgeon General?

re: "Have we reached the point that a Christian who affirms traditional church teachings cannot be appointed to public office?..."...

The Center Blog: The Pro-Life Pharmacist Eradication Bill of 2007

re: "This would be a better title for the recently introduced "Access to Birth Control Act." The bill would create a federal law for the purpose of punishing pharmacies for their moral objection to dispensing the "morning after pill" or "Plan B." Detailing all of the distortions, misconceptions, and terrible policy ideas in this bill would make for a very lengthy post for a Friday afternoon, so I'll just highlight two for now. /1. The Most Likely Effect of the Bill, Should it Become Law, Would be to DECREASE Access to Birth Control..."...

hat tip: The Alliance Alert

Mennonite's Lawsuit Prompts Pa. Officials To Admit Error

re: (AP) "HARRISBURG, Pa. - The state Agriculture Department acknowledged Friday that it erroneously advised Pennsylvania poultry farmers they were required to enroll in a voluntary federal farm-registration program in order to participate in the state's avian-influenza monitoring program this year. /Spokesman Christopher Ryder said officials realized the error only after the department was sued by a conservative Mennonite farmer who claimed he would suffer ``eternal damnation'' if he complied with the rule and got a federal registration number to continue to sell his ducks. /``Apparently, they changed their mind at the last moment,'' said James Landis, the Lebanon County farmer who filed the lawsuit. /Landis said he and other members of the Eastern Pennsylvania Mennonite Church believe the Bible's book of Revelation warns that numbering systems that require participation as a requirement for doing business are the work of the Antichrist. /The deadline for enrolling in this year's monitoring program is June 30. Ryder said department officials expect to reach an accommodation with Landis and will contact other farmers to ensure that they know that participation in the federal program is not mandatory. Ryder said he did not know how many farmers received the incorrect notices..."...

hat tip: The Alliance Alert

Canadian Anglicans Will Not Be Excluded from World-Wide Communion Because of Same Sex Blessings

re: "...Kenneth Kearon, secretary general of the Anglican Communion told CanWest News, "There's no question the Anglican Church of Canada is a valued member of the Anglican Communion. There's never been a scenario considered that would lead to the exclusion of the Anglican Church of Canada." /A privilege of the office of the Archbishop of Canterbury in the Anglican Church is to decide who may attend the Lambeth Conferences every ten years in London. Invitation to Lambeth is considered a mark of full membership in the Anglican Communion. Rowan Williams has already announced that he will exclude Gene Robinson from the next Lambeth meeting in 2008...[snip]...Many, if not all, supporters of same-sex unions in the Anglican Church are agnostic on some basic questions of Christian teaching. Significantly, Michael Ingham, the country's leading Anglican episcopal supporter of same-sex blessings and openly homosexual clergy, is also a leading member of the United Religions Initiative (URI), a project to create a unified world religion that rejects Christian dogmatic theology."

Australian PM Addresses Aboriginal Societal Collapse

re: "SYDNEY, Austrlia, June 22, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - For decades now Australian officials have become increasingly aware of what has been termed a devastating societal breakdown within Australia's aboriginal communities. /Earlier this month, a report came out entitled Little Children are Sacred that documented the evidence for the continuing collapse of the aboriginal communities, including widespread and ever increasing alcohol and other substance abuse, gambling and violence, amongst other things. Most disturbingly, however, the report exposed a society in which young children are frequently..."

Planet Gore: I’ll Skip The Obvious Sopranos Jokes

re: Jim Manzi: "As a proud product of New Jersey, I’ve learned to live with constant embarrassment while remaining quite statriotic...[snip]...My favorite piece of propaganda is from one of the sponsors of the bill: "This legislation would save New Jersey families and businesses billions of dollars by reducing reliance on fossil fuels and increasing investment in strategies and businesses that develop cleaner energy.” / Yes, we always need to pass laws to force businesses to make decisions that are more profitable..."...

Thomas More

re: Oregon State University website on Thomas More, author of Utopia...

Media Blog (NRO): So Much for the Supposed Secrecy of the Bush Administration

re: Peter Suderman: "An interview with White House reporter Wendell Goler brings us this clip: //During the Reagan administration, he would go days, sometimes weeks, without making contact with the media. But the current President Bush talks to us on almost a daily basis because he knows if he doesn't, he loses influence. He certainly talks to us more than his father did, even more than President Bill Clinton did. // Wait a minute — wasn't this supposed to be the most double-super secretive, press-shy administration in history? Hmmm..."

The Campaign Spot (NRO):A Thought on Lott, Goats, and Fences To Head Into the Weekend On

re: Jim Geraghty: "Few e-mails from readers have made me laugh like this one from Joe: /Trent Lott: "If the answer is 'build a fence' I've got two goats on my place in Mississippi. There ain't no fence big enough, high enough, strong enough, that you can keep those goats in that fence." / Right, senator. Fences don't work. That's why no ranches use barbed wire, why no prisons are surrounded by high walls, why pricey residential communities never have security gates, and why there aren't traffic barricades to protect government buildings from car and truck bombs. Because fences don't work. Goats can find a way around them.That's why China was converted to a barbarian state by invaders instead of..."...

Westminster Bookstore blog partnerships

re: Reformed Christian bookstore offering "Blog Partner Rewards" to bloggers who link to their site, which provides gift certificates based on click-throughs. In trial phase...

ABCNews.com's Upside-Down View of Marriage | NewsBusters.org

re: "...ABC's Web site carried this headline: Gay Marriage Safe in Massachusetts: A Vote to Redefine Marriage as a Union Between a Man and a Woman Was Defeated..."...

hat tip: The Alliance Alert

Edmund A. Opitz (1914-2006)

re: "...A significant portion of Opitz’s work was produced in the midst of the cultural and social confusion of the 1960s, which would eventually lead to the production of his erudite book outlining both the reasons and the importance of such an integration in Religion and Capitalism: Allies, not Enemies. Although theologized forms of Marxism were only just coming into vogue, Opitz was able to spot the trajectory of such philosophical seeds in their nascent form, and while it would be excessive to say that the writing of Opitz caused the shift in religious thinking away from socialist paradigms, it would not be inaccurate to say that the moral premises and arguments he employed are at the root of such shifts. Presently, the manifest economic and moral failure of economic collectivism is laid bare for all to see. But when Opitz first began making his case for the free society most were skeptical..."...

rosetta stone: Stay or go?

re: "...But step into my world - the military world. Here, almost exclusively, is where the sacrifices are being made. And here you will find just as active a debate about "what to do" in Iraq and Monday morning quarterbacking about whether or not we should have gone in and whether or not it is a just war or not. But here you will find very few people who want to get out right now. Despite the risks, the costs, the hardships, very few people think quitting is a good idea..."...

MercatorNet - Family at war by Jennifer Roback Morse

re: "The title of Patricia Morgan’s new book, The War Between the State and the Family, is fighting talk. But the British sociologist has a lot of evidence on her side when she alleges that modern governments are engaged in “systematic discrimination against (married) couples in the tax and benefit system.” (62) In the words of her subtitle, she aims to show "How Government Divides and Impoverishes" the family. /She chalks this ill-conceived policy up to an ideological cocktail of feminism, neo-Marxism and radical individualism. The fiscal result throughout the Anglophone world is an expansion of the welfare state and an increase in the overall tax burden. The human result is an increase in unmarried mothers and the marginalisation of men from the family..."...

hat tip: The Alliance Alert

The Cafeteria Is Closed: Illegal aliens, smugglers set fires at the border

re: "More from the "Build a bloody wall" department..."...

Nazarene Communications Network - Trevecca initiates doctoral program in clinical counseling

re: "...We wanted students to have the option to pursue graduate training in counseling in a Christian environment and from a Christian perspective. And we wanted to give students opportunities for advanced training and development in specialty areas.”..."...

Nazarene Communications Network - Project Caleb has Latin-American faith revisiting its European roots

re: Lisa Koster, "The vision began with a Kingdom question in 2004. / The late Bruno Radi, then regional director for South America, and Gustavo Crocker, regional director for Eurasia, met in Italy that summer where Radi raised the question, “How can we channel the movement of God, who is calling hundreds of young Latin Americans for missionary work but who do not have opportunities for service?” The question, said Crocker, “is matched by the reality that there are fields in Eurasia where gifted young volunteers from Latin America could come and reach the countries that, centuries ago, sent the gospel to their land.” / The discussion resulted in The Caleb Project, developed by the Eurasia Region and presented to Radi and Christian Sarmiento (both former regional directors in South America and Mexico/Central America), who embraced and supported it. The idea was to mobilize Latin American young adults so they could serve as volunteers in places like Italy, Spain, and Portugal—the lands of their ancestors. The church in southwestern Europe, where most of Latin American young adults can trace their origins, is experiencing considerable decline while the church in Latin America is in the midst of a widespread revival. / The Caleb Project also provides a way for South and Central America to send missionaries through a new paradigm that will increase the ability of the Church to reach its goal of making every country a sending country..."...

Nazarene Communications Network - New study-abroad language institute designed for Nazarene university students

re: "The North Andean Field, partnering with Olivet Nazarene University, is launching an accredited language institute in Quito, Ecuador, beginning Fall 2007. The Nazarene International Language Institute (NILI) is a 15-week cross-cultural program located on the campus of Seminario Teológico Nazareno Sudamericano. The program can be taken for credit or without credit..."...

Nazarene Communications Network - Lamb's Church pastor appointed to Princeton post

re: "Gabriel Salguero, pastor of the Lamb’s Manhattan Church of the Nazarene on the Metro New York District, was appointed by Iain Torrence, president of Princeton Theological Seminary, as director of the seminary’s Hispanic/Latino(a) Leadership Program..."...

Nazarene Communications Network - MySpace, Facebook … NazBoard

re: "...what started as a simple alumni site eventually became NazBoard, "The Ultimate Nazarene Community.”/ On NazBoard, registered users have their own profile page similar to MySpace where they can host their own photo gallery, blog, and offer a guestbook. They can also become "NazBoard Buddies" with other members and leave messages for one another online..."...

Nazarene Communications Network - PLNU receives $2.4 million donation for new science facility

re: "During the celebration of its annual commencement, Point Loma Nazarene University (PLNU) President Bob Brower announced a $2.4 million initial gift for a new state-of-the-art science facility...[snip]...The capital campaign for the science complex will be officially kicked off and announced in the fall. The university is currently evaluating design and specification options in order to determine costs, which is estimated at $30 million. / The new science complex is the next step forward in advancing PLNU’s successful science program. Since 1989, PLNU science graduates who have applied to medical school have been accepted at a rate of more than 80 percent—about twice the national average. PLNU alumni have also had consistently high acceptance rates into dental, master’s degree, and doctoral programs (about 95 percent). In addition, to date, students have co-authored more than 80 articles that have appeared in peer-reviewed professional journals..."...

The Corner: In the Words of Our Enemies

re: Jonah Goldberg, "I just got in the mail the other day a new book by Jed Babbin, the new editor of Human Events. It's a collection of the bad things our enemies have said in recent years. It's such a good and obvious idea for a book, I'm amazed no one thought of it sooner..."...

Southern Baptists set policy on warming, identity | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle

re: AP: "SAN ANTONIO — Southern Baptists approved a resolution on global warming Wednesday that questions the prevailing scientific belief that humans are largely to blame for the phenomenon and also warns that increased regulation of greenhouse gases will hurt the poor..."...

hat tip: Jim Manzi

Interview on Camelot and the Cultural Revolution on National Review Online

re: "The shooting of JFK didn’t just kill a president — it devastated a political movement, argues James Piereson in his new book, Camelot and the Cultural Revolution: How the Assassination of John F. Kennedy Shattered American Liberalism. Piereson is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, president of the William E. Simon Foundation, and former executive director and trustee of the John M. Olin Foundation. He recently spoke to National Review’s John J. Miller about JFK, liberals and conservatives, the Rolling Stones, and the grassy knoll..."...

OpinionJournal - The Great American Pants Suit

re: Walter Olson reports, "When attorney Roy Pearson filed suit demanding $67 million from the Chung family, whose Washington dry cleaners had mishandled his pair of trousers, he must have felt he was sitting pretty. Menacing a merchant who's annoyed you with terrifyingly high legal penalties--that's the way to show who wears the pants, right? /Mr. Pearson probably had no idea that his Great American Pants Suit--the trial of which just wound up in a Washington courtroom last week, with a verdict expected this week--would stir commentary around the world and come to symbolize the extent to which lawsuits in America can serve as a hobby for the spiteful and a weapon for the rapacious..."...

OpinionJournal - The Decline of the Sabbath

re: Mollie Ziegler Hemingway, "...And yet the Sabbath is now marked more by its neglect than its keeping. Or so says Christopher Ringwald in his new book "A Day Apart."...[snip]...Not that Christians later fell into easy agreement about Sabbath conduct. In another new book, "Sunday: A History of the First Day From Babylonia to the Super Bowl," Craig Harline shows how all sorts of complicated rules governing work, travel, sex and leisure grew up around the Sabbath in medieval Europe, creating a tangle of proscriptions that had overwhelmed the day by the 14th century. One genre of church mural at the time, known as the "Sunday Christ," showed Jesus surrounded by tools of the fishing, carpentry and farming trades. Each ax, rake and fishing hook inflicted a fresh wound on the crucified Christ. The message was not lost on worshipers: Work on the Sabbath only added to Jesus' suffering. /Reformation leader Martin Luther resisted such Sabbath guilt, saying that the commandment was kept by daily worship and high regard for God's Word, not strict rules governing behavior. Discussing the Sabbath, he highlighted Paul's relief at being free from the demands of Jewish law. And yet from the 16th century to the modern era, a Sabbath consensus emerged. Christians were to keep Sunday as a day of rest and worship, and their governments supported this pious notion. The day of rest did not become secularized until very recently..."...

OpinionJournal - A College Education

re: "Any number of colleges and universities seem to be having PR travails these days, but this may be a case where the turmoil is healthy. The school year that is now ending has turned out to be something of a banner year for academic reform...[snip]...The merits of these disputes seem less important than the fact that there is now earnest and public discussion about the performance of college administrators, who, like career government bureaucrats, are usually adept at avoiding accountability. Stakeholders are suddenly feeling empowered...[snip]...Does it seem uncouth that students and alumni are pouring their criticisms into press releases? It shouldn't. Colleges and universities have largely brought this stakeholder activism on themselves--when they decided to become instruments of fashionable politics instead of repositories of knowledge."...

OpinionJournal - It's Not Enough to Be 'Wanted'

re: (subhead: Illegitimacy has risen despite--indeed, because of--legal abortion) John R. Lott, Jr., "The abortion debate usually centers on the morality of the act itself. But liberalizing abortion rules from 1969 to 1973 ignited vast social changes in America. With the perennial political debate over abortion again consuming the presidential campaign and the Supreme Court, it might be time to evaluate what Roe v. Wade has meant in practical terms..."...

OpinionJournal - Five Best: The Decade That Roared

re: "These works are essential to appreciating American literature of the 1920s..."...

Suitably Flip: NY Fed Doing Kim Jong Il's Laundry

re: "The Wall Street Journal's Real Time Economics blog points out this Bloomberg opinion piece by Kevin Hassett examining a curious and apparently unprecedented transaction that took place last week. /Last week the New York Federal Reserve made what may go down as the most misguided move in the history of the Federal Reserve system. They laundered money for North Korea. /A painful flurry of hearings may soon be on the horizon. Last week a group of influential Republicans, including the ranking member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, asked the Government Accountability Office to investigate whether anti-laundering and counterfeit laws were broken. They may well have been..."...

OpinionJournal - Taste: Compliments Out of Context

re: Kyle Smith, "...Since virtually every publishing house, theater producer and movie studio rips quotations out of context, one wonders whether even the EU can generate enough bureaucrats to handle the potential caseload. What standards will apply? If I am generally ecstatic about a film but detect one or two small problems, will a 20-word blurb be required to set aside five words for my quibbles? Will four words suffice? A new specialist in parsing such distinctions will arise: the blurbocrat. /Selective communication, though, is not only the brick and mortar of arts-and-leisure--it's built into our lives. You have been as guilty as the studio that made "Next" on many occasions: when discussing bad dates ("she said she had a really interesting time with you at the Hustler Club") or life's greatest miracle ("She's going to grow up to be as beautiful as her mother"). Politicians do it too, of course. The perpetual amusement of spot-the-loophole would wither if pols started saying things like, "I have never broken the laws of my country, but I smoked more pot than Crosby, Stills and Nash combined when I was at Oxford."..."...

Planned Parenthood - Books & Culture

re: "...Near the end of Governing China's Population: From Leninist to Neoliberal Biopolitics—one of two new academic histories of population control under the Middle Kingdom's Marxist Dynasty—Susan Greenhalgh and Edwin A. Winckler note the omission of China's one-child policy from the usual litany of Communism's crimes, and wonder about the reason for it. Perhaps, they suggest, there just wasn't enough killing involved—abortions aside, of course. Unlike the Great Leap Forward, say, "whose trauma can be measured in lives lost," the human suffering associated with coercive population control is hard to quantify. You can count corpses, but how do you tally up "the trauma experienced by millions of peasants being coercively sterilized as though they were 'pigs being spayed?'" /This seems like a reasonable answer, but both the Greenhalgh-Winckler study and Tyrene White's China's Longest Campaign: Birth Planning in the People's Republic, 1949-2005 hint at another, more troubling explanation as well. However horrifying forced abortions and compulsory sterilization may be to the sensitivities of the liberal West, such policies aren't as intimately connected to Communist ideology as was, say, the ruinous collectivization of agriculture under Mao and Stalin, or the mass murder of supposed bourgeois sympathizers under Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge. The one-child campaign's means were totalitarian, certainly, but they weren't designed to midwife a Marxist utopia; instead, the campaign took its cues from a characteristically Western idea of progress, in which rising standards of living are the only proper benchmarks of a society's success. Whereas other Communist crimes were committed in the hopes of burying the West, Beijing embarked on its brutal one-child campaign in the hopes of emulating us...[snip]...Such numbers only skim the surface of the larger human tragedy, of course, but the one-child policy still awaits its Robert Conquest, or its Solzhenitsyn. These two histories have their virtues, but they're bone-dry and groaning with jargon, and when they shock it's with charts and tables rather than with anecdote and incident. Instead of personal drama, the reader is left with unforgiving tabulations..."...

Religion Clause: US Removes Religious Texts From Prison Chapel Libraries

re: "...The Associated Press reported yesterday that the change[s] stem from a 2004 review of how prisons choose Muslim religious service providers. That review grew out of concerns that Muslim inmates were being radicalized. The review led the Bureau of Prisons to conclude that prison chapel libraries were not being adequately supervised, and radical religious books might fall into the hands of violent inmates. The rules now limit prison libraries to between 100 and 150 titles for each religion. Many books previously in the libraries were removed-- Otisville inmates say 600 titles were withdrawn. The number of permitted religious books will be expanded when a new list is drawn up..."...

hat tip: The Alliance Alert

OpinionJournal - Global View: No Pyrrhic Victory

re: "Most of the conventional wisdom about the Six Day War is wrong..."...

Pharmacists to be Punished $500,000 For Acting on Their Conscience - Christian Newswire

re: "WASHINGTON, June 7 /Christian Newswire/ -- Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-New York) and Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-New Jersey) have introduced legislation deliberately attacking pharmacists who exercise professional moral judgment. The Access to Birth Control (ABC) Act repeals a pharmacist’s fundamental right to make ethical decisions. /This bill would force pharmacists to distribute the controversial morning-after pill (MAP), trampling on any professional or ethical concerns. /Wendy Wright, President of Concerned Women for America, said, "Pharmacists are professionals, not vending machines. The FDA has been known to make mistakes in approving drugs, and doctors have made mistakes in prescribing. Pharmacists provide a line of defense to ensure that patients' lives and health are protected and can make patients aware of ethical concerns. Yet this bill would punish pharmacists up to $500,000 for acting on their ethical duty." /"This punitive bill would bankrupt pharmacists for doing what they believe protects people from harm. We need pharmacists with strong convictions about protecting life and health, but this bill would drive people with such convictions out of the pharmaceutical profession -- which would be detrimental to all patients." /"This bill is promoted by ardent abortion activists yet it would criminalize 'Freedom of choice' by forcing people to act against their beliefs."..."...

The Scotsman - Business - City plays down OPEC's biofuel warning - but markets are rattled

re: Martin Flanagan writes, "CITY oil analysts yesterday played down OPEC's shock warning on Tuesday that if the West accelerated its move to biofuels to combat climate change it could send the price of oil "through the roof". /The OPEC warning that it might respond by cutting investment in oil production if it felt its western consumers were stepping up their reliance on biofuels was a contributory factor in a 110-point fall in the FTSE 100 to 6,522.7. / The interest rate rise in the eurozone yesterday and the possibility of another rise in Britain today were also said to be big factors. /Despite OPEC's comments, BP fell 7p to 559p and Shell dropped 14p to 1,917p, as the oil price moved above $70 a barrel again. /The warning was seen as deliberately timed to have most impact ahead of yesterday's start of the G8 summit, where Russia's increasingly nationalistic energy policy is likely to come up for discussion..."...

The Scotsman - Business - OPEC threat is mistimed

re: Martin Flanagan writes, "OPEC's warning that if the West accelerates its efforts to develop biofuels as an alternative energy source it may send the price of oil "through the roof" is good scimitar-rattling stuff. /But OPEC's claim that it might rein in investment in its oilwells in retaliation to the changing demands of its customers in the west, who are seeking to use biofuels to combat climate change, also looks a bit of a busted flush as things stand. / There is a credibility gap. Despite nascent efforts by OPEC members to diversify their economies away from over-dependence on oil wealth, they are nowhere near achieving this yet. /Cutting back on investment in the medium-term because of biofuel rivals would be cutting off their noses to spite their faces...[snip]...Global production of biofuels only amounted to 1 per cent of all road transport fuel in 2005. If there is a threat to oil there it is a long, long way down the road. /The reason the warning has created headlines, however, is that many believe the oil price has gone through the roof already, without OPEC exacerbating the situation..."...

Betsy's Page: The summer of love ended 40 years ago

re: "Apparently, for some Haight Asbury is the eternal magnet for strung out youths seeking to get high without having to work for a living. They're still hanging out in the area, panhandling for money to buy drugs and sleeping it off in Golden Gate Park...[snip]...One difference today is that the property owners in the Haight, former hippies themselves, have just about had it with today's generaltion of gutter punks..."...

Christian Patriotism - Prison Fellowship

re: Chuck Colson: "...Here in the U.S., Christians are sometimes confused about where to draw the line between the demands of the state and the demands of God. Is civil disobedience ever justified? And if so, how do we know? /As I write in my new book, God & Government, Scripture makes clear that civil disobedience is justified when government attempts to usurp the role of the Church or our allegiance due only to God. Then the Christian has not just the right but the duty to resist..."...

RI Catholic: Without a Doubt: MY R.S.V.P to Rudy Giuliani

re: Bishop Thomas J. Tobin: "...Okay, let’s ask Mayor Giuliani to think about his position for a minute. / Hey Rudy, you say that you believe abortion is morally wrong. Why do you say that, Rudy; why do you believe that abortion is wrong? Is abortion the killing of an innocent child? Is it an offense against human dignity? Is it a cruel and violent act? Does it harm the woman who has the abortion? And if your answer to any of these questions is yes, Rudy, why would you permit people to . . . kill an innocent child, offend human dignity, commit a cruel and violent act or do harm to the mother? This is in the name of choice? Huh? / Rudy’s preposterous position is compounded by the fact that he professes to be a Catholic. As Catholics, we are called, indeed required, to be pro-life, to cherish and protect human life as a precious gift of God from the moment of conception until the time of natural death. As a leader, as a public official, Rudy Giuliani has a special obligation in that regard. /In The Gospel of Life, Pope John Paul made the obligation to defend human life very explicit..."...

hat tip: The Alliance Alert

Considerettes - Dems Demonstrate Why Smaller Government Is Needed

re: Dems are sidestepping the "earmark" rules they put in place when they took power in the House...

From The Word Go: That Christian Jihad Thing

re: "...Terrorist Christians would not get sympathy from other Christians. Unlike Muslim terrorists, Christian terrorists would not benefit from world-wide excuse making, fund raising, and network forming. Can Christians produce one-off nut jobs who do terrible things? Of course. But that's all it will ever be. To paraphrase Mao, there's no sea for the Christian terrorist fish to swim in..."...

hat tip: The Paragraph Farmer

Adam's Blog - Getting Cross About ACLU Supporter Nonsense

re: "Batten down the hatches. The Canyon County, Idaho seal is creating a controversy...Now, if you squint, you'll notice that a church with a cross on top depicted on the seal of one of Idaho's most religious counties. If you can't see the cross, get out a magnifying glass..."...

hat tip: The Paragraph Farmer

The Paragraph Farmer: The warrin' o' the green

re: numerous 'global warming' links, with brief commentary...