Brown Pelican Society of Louisiana

One of the most surprising developments in the political world over the past three months has been the rise of Oshkosh businessman Ron Johnson (R) in his race against Sen. Russ Feingold (D) . . . Capitalizing on a discontent with Washington and a rising unpopularity with the national Democratic party, Johnson has cast himself as the ultimate outsider — co-opting the same message that Feingold used to win the seat in 1992…………..

READ MORE: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/senate/ron-johnson-outsider.html?wprss=thefix

SOURCE:  Kyle-Anne Shiver, Pajamas Media, September 21, 2010

….On the home front, Democrats fought every Republican effort to clean up the impending Fannie-Freddie catastrophe with their standard class-warfare rhetoric and racist sliming. The Democrats had a field day fighting off Republican attempts to reform Fannie-Freddie before it brought the mortgage business to full-blown crisis. Then, when the whole thing exploded in all our faces — bringing the cascading collapse to banks and every other industry in America — the Democrats turned right around in the blink of an eye and wagged their dirty little fingers at Republicans as though none of the citizenry would be the wiser. The Democrats weren’t worried. They presumed that once they got control of the Congress, they could bury their own malfeasance and incompetence under the rug of majority rule. And that is precisely what they have done. No investigations. No hearings.  Democrat rulers think the public is still in the dark ages — before the internet . . . What a bunch of puffed-up ninnies these Democrat rulers are.

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/are-you-better-off-now-than-you-were-four-years-ago/?singlepage=true

ENTIRE ARTICLE BELOW

Republicans, take a lesson from Ronald Reagan: just plaster the country with the question, “Are you better off than you were four years ago, when the Democrats took control of Congress?” (And don’t miss Roger Kimball’s “The Magical Thinking of Barack Obama.”)

I’ll never forget that campaign slogan: “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” As a presidential candidate, Ronald Reagan first employed that phrase against Jimmy Carter during the 1980 debates to devastating effect, as US News & World Report notes, albeit somewhat grudgingly:

Coming just one week before the election, the encounter gave Carter little time to recover from a stumble. That night, Carter displayed a mastery of detail, Reagan a mastery of stagecraft. He dismissed Carter’s critique of his views on Medicare with a mocking “There you go again.” In his final statement, Reagan delivered a knockout punch: “Are you better off than you were four years ago? Is there more or less unemployment … than there was four years ago?” Reagan’s rhetorical questions, carefully rehearsed but delivered with his characteristic power, pierced Carter’s presidency and helped cement Reagan’s legacy as the Great Communicator. “Certainly no one remembers what the hell Carter said that night,” says Rick Shenkman, a presidential historian at George Mason University. “It was Reagan’s debate.” A week later, it was Reagan’s election.

Having talked the talk, by 1984, President Reagan could walk the walk, as they say. In that short time, America had returned from groveling-in-the-dirt, Democrat-induced “malaise” to the land of prosperity and the promise of more to come.

That simple question reached right into my heart of hearts and transformed me from a poppycock-believing, hippie liberal to patriotic conservative in one fell swoop.

Reagan’s oh-so-easy-to-answer question had that effect on such a vast swath of Americans that he won reelection in one of the biggest landslides in U.S. history.  His Democratic opponent, Walter Mondale, took only the District of Columbia and his home state of Minnesota, which gave Reagan 525 electoral votes, the highest any candidate has ever received — before or since.

So if I were a Republican candidate right now, I would start putting that same slogan on every billboard and on every post in every town square in America. I would print millions of those “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” posters for folks to put in their front yards. I would make a gazillion bumper stickers and T-shirts and coffee mugs and I would open every single speech on the campaign trail with that question.

Because as we sadly know well, the only people in America who will answer that they are better off now than they were four years ago are the fat-cat, tax-cheating, lying Democrat corruptocrats, who took over control of the U.S. Congress the same four years ago.

They’ll be joined by their small, favored circle of oligarchs from big business and the hedge fund operators. Running alongside them with open-hands frenzy will be the tiny cadre of thieving thugs running the labor unions, the ones living in the lap of luxury while their members bleed jobs and depend on pensions that wreck the economies of the very cities where they live. But every single Main Street voter — the vast majority of Americans — will answer with a deafening: “No! We’re not better off!”

Democrats, under the directorship of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, took majority control of Congress in 2006.

They spent the first year declaring the Iraq war a lost cause, even though the vast majority of those Democrats in office in 2003 had willingly voted to send our men and women to war there. The Democrats spent millions and millions of dollars holding witch-hunt hearings against our generals and accusing our valiant military of callous murder. Then Senators Obama and Clinton accused General Petraeus of lying under oath, especially when he said there was a strong al-Qaeda operation in Iraq. Democrat Pete Stark stood on the once-august floor of the U.S. House of Representatives and claimed that Republicans had sent America’s bravest to fight in Iraq and “get their heads blown off for the president’s amusement.”  Harry Reid stood on the front steps of the Capitol — while hundreds of thousands of our finest youth were in harm’s way — and declared, “This war is lost,” in a clear and unprovoked comfort to our own enemy. Well, our bravest did win in Iraq and now the Democrats are in full-swing retreat as Iran prepares to turn that hard-won victory into its own military satellite. Iraq is quickly becoming like the South Vietnam Democrats deserted nearly 40 years ago.

Americans don’t like to go to war; that’s a fact. But if we do, then we want to win and we don’t want lily-livered politicians using our flesh-and-blood soldiers for political cannon fodder.

On the home front, Democrats fought every Republican effort to clean up the impending Fannie-Freddie catastrophe with their standard class-warfare rhetoric and racist sliming. The Democrats had a field day fighting off Republican attempts to reform Fannie-Freddie before it brought the mortgage business to full-blown crisis. Then, when the whole thing exploded in all our faces — bringing the cascading collapse to banks and every other industry in America — the Democrats turned right around in the blink of an eye and wagged their dirty little fingers at Republicans as though none of the citizenry would be the wiser. The Democrats weren’t worried. They presumed that once they got control of the Congress, they could bury their own malfeasance and incompetence under the rug of majority rule. And that is precisely what they have done. No investigations. No hearings.  Democrat rulers think the public is still in the dark ages — before the internet.

What a bunch of puffed-up ninnies these Democrat rulers are.

They have used their majority status to ram through mountains of anti-business, regulatory legalese that literally shackles the recovery they disingenuously proclaim. Even as Democrats have run around the country all summer like a bunch of chickens with their heads cut off, yelling “Recovery!” at the top of their little lungs, the recovery isn’t happening on Main Street and they are the very reason why it isn’t. They won election with their crass gospel of envy, bashing the job creators at every turn and then shake their heads with wonder at why these same small businesses have the life too scared out of them to hire people.

These Democrats openly admit they haven’t even read the bills they’ve passed and then ponder why the citizenry is upset with them. They act as though the U.S. Constitution is nothing more than a doormat that they can step upon as they enter the halls of taxpayer-funded, personal enrichment. They’ve turned the words “public servant” into a synonym for lying thief.

Ever since wresting control of Congress, the Democrat rulers have done all in their power to finagle their way to bureaucratic tyranny, all the while blaming the out-of-power Republicans for having the temerity to say “No,” as strongly as their puny numbers will allow them.

With an unemployment rate still hovering just below double digits, Democrats have the unprecedented arrogance to go around the country blaming everyone but themselves. As an old Mom, I recognize this con job with piercing acuity. It’s the kid caught with his hand in your cookie jar, willing to look you square in the face and tell you his brother did it.

And believe me, it does not take a degree from Harvard for any Mom in this position to know she is being had by an incorrigible, too-big-for-his-breeches brat. Which is precisely what these Democrats have become. Incorrigible brats.

So, Republicans, take a lesson from a seasoned mom and her hero, Ronald Reagan. Just plaster the country with the question:

Are you better off than you were four years ago — when the Democrats took control of Congress?

Say, on a billboard, perhaps:

And on Election Day, all of us common-sense moms and dads, Main Street dwellers from coast to coast and everywhere in between, will hand you a landslide the likes of which haven’t been seen since 1984.

Kyle-Anne Shiver is an independent journalist and a frequent contributor to American Thinker. She welcomes your comments at www.kyleanneshiver.com.

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/are-you-better-off-now-than-you-were-four-years-ago/?singlepage=true

Barack Obama threw his mom under the parish van on Tuesday, describing her as formlessly “spiritual” while casting himself as the self-made convert. “I am a Christian by choice,” he said at a campaign event in New Mexico this week. In 2007, he said the opposite: that he became a Christian through his mother. “My mother was a Christian from Kansas…I was raised by my mother. So, I’ve always been a Christian,” he told a voter who had inquired about his Islamic background.

The woman at the campaign stop in New Mexico on Tuesday asked him to explain why he is a Christian and coupled it with another one about his support for abortion rights. The sequence of questions proved awkward, with the answer to the latter question rendering his answer to the first one meaningless.

“[The] precepts of Jesus Christ spoke to me in terms of the kind of life that I would want to lead—being my brothers’ and sisters’ keeper, treating others as they would treat me,” he said. He threw in a few more vague-sounding clichés and a paean to religious relativism for good measure, and reassured the lady that “I think my public service is part of that effort to express my Christian faith.”

But moments later, he said that abortion is none of his business. He is not NARAL’s keeper. Bald violations of the Golden Rule are a purely private matter of no relevance to his public life, though he does personally think killing one’s neighbor should be “safe, legal, and rare.”

Obama, nevertheless, seemed to welcome the first part of the question. Like his recent Sunday stroll to church with photographers in tow, it gave him the chance to try and dispel the public’s hunch that his Christian faith is phony. Perhaps Clinton will lend Obama his well-thumbed Bible, which was often seen peeking out of the pocket of Bill’s winter coat after the Lewinsky scandal broke.

While one strains to find evidence that Christianity guides Obama’s politics, it is true that politics guides his Christianity, particularly during campaign season.

Obama still believes in the separation of Church and state, but he is not in favor of the separation of religious rhetoric from winning. The “Christian by choice” is more like a Christian by campaigning. The doctrines of Christianity are of no interest to him unless they happen to coincide with a political point he needs to make at a given moment, and even at those times his treatment of them is highly manipulative.

Obama always sounds more comfortable and enthusiastic when talking about other people’s faiths than his own, which he frequently implies is an embarrassment in need of serious revision. He speaks of his great reverence for the Koran, for example, but thinks the Bible deserves an interpretational overhaul, to expunge all those silly parts that condemn feticide and sodomy. Islam is a “great religion,” he says, but Christianity could use serious reform under the light of modern “progress.”

In The Audacity of Hope, Obama presents the platform of the Democratic Party as far more inerrant than the Bible. His discussion of religion in the book is that of the cocky college sophomore, who holds without proof that religion is a private if endearing superstition while the secularist assumptions underlying “democratic pluralism” are infallible truths that should determine public life for all.

One would think a pol who stands at best idle and at worst supportive while abortionists hold scalpels over the heads of unborn children would refrain from using the story of Abraham and Isaac to marginalize the Bible. But Obama plowed ahead anyways in his second book, using the Old Testament story to argue that the Bible is subjectively meaningful but publicly dangerous.

“If God has spoken, then followers are expected to live up to God’s edicts, regardless of the consequences. To base one’s life on such uncompromising commitments may be sublime; to base our policy making on such commitments would be a dangerous thing,” Obama writes. Abraham, he continues, had his subjective “experience” with God, which may have been “true” for him, but from the standpoint of democratic pluralism his behavior made him a very bad citizen indeed: “it is fair to say that if any of us saw a twenty-first-century Abraham raising the knife on the roof of his apartment building, we would call the police; we would wrestle him down; even if we saw him lower the knife at the last minute, we would expect the Department of Children and Family Services to take Isaac away and charge Abraham with child abuse.”

Obama sums up this ludicrous sermon on the “reason” of secularism and the scary caprice of religion by saying that the “best we can do is act in accordance with those things that are possible for all of us to know.” Of what that lowest-common-denominator wisdom exactly consists, he leaves vague, but the grim consequences of this triumphant exercise of “reason” are all around us. One of its not-to-be-questioned truths is that plunging knives into the necks of unborn children is a “matter between a woman and her doctor.”

In the end, Abraham didn’t kill Isaac. The same can’t be said for multitudes of unborn children under Obama, whose friends at Planned Parenthood lift the knife while he uses our tax dollars to pay for it. Abraham rejected infanticide; Obama’s “reason” as a state senator in Illinois led him to waffle on banning it.

Finally, if Obama were truly a “Christian by choice,” who believed that God the Father allowed God the Son to be crucified as a sacrifice for man’s sins, he would never talk with such secularist crassness about Abraham’s prefiguration of it.

http://spectator.org/archives/2010/09/30/obamas-campaign-season-christi

THIS WEEK: OBAMA SAID:  “[The] precepts of Jesus Christ spoke to me in terms of the kind of life that I would want to lead—being my brothers’ and sisters’ keeper, treating others as they would treat me”

“Above My Pay Grade”

Through many dangers, toils and snares
I have already come;
‘Tis Grace that brought me safe thus far
and Grace will lead me home.

SOURCE:  The Chuck Colson Center

William Wilberforce was England’s greatest social reformer of the first half of the 19th century. A devout Christian, he chose a career in politics as the best way to fulfill his sense of calling from the Lord. He took as his goal in life the realization of two grand objectives: The elimination of the slave trade and the reform of manners in England.

For twenty years Wilberforce wrote, campaigned, organized, and offered legislation to bring to an end the hideous trafficking in human flesh on the back of which the English economy had been built. He was opposed by people of influence, but persevered. Joining forces with other anti-slavery groups, he forged a movement that blanketed England with the horrors of the slave trade, ultimately achieving Wilberforce’s goal of halting that trade in 1807. It would be another 26 years before slavery was abolished completely, and the news of that reached Wilberforce on his death bed.

At the same time, Wilberforce worked tirelessly to improve social conditions in England, laying the groundwork, through writing, organizing, speaking, and other hands-on efforts, for the era of Victorian social reforms. Wilberforce learned from John Wesley the importance of forging alliances, mounting pressure through training and literature, exemplifying the life of godliness, and proclaiming the Gospel of the Kingdom as the center and key to all individual and social renewal.

Wilberforce’s example provides the impetus and vision for the effort at Kingdom renewal which is The Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview.

http://www.colsoncenter.org/the-center/the-chuck-colson-center/about-william-wilberforce

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“No Matter How Loud You Shout, You Will NOT DROWN Out the Voice of the People”

Movie Trailer: Amazing Grace

… If there is no commitment to win, or no understanding of what “win” even means, then you are wasting human lives for no purpose. And as Caspar Weinberger and I agreed talking that night, that is profoundly immoral….

By Charles Colson, Catholic Exchange, September 30, 2010

OBAMA TOLD ON ABORTION: CHANGE YOUR MIND BECAUSE UNBORN CHILDREN FEEL PAIN
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) – Yesterday, pro-abortion President Barack Obama relied on the language Bill Clinton used to try to moderate his radical image on abortion. But a pro-life senator and organization are pushing back on comment he made saying he wants abortions to be “safe, legal, and rare.”

AFTER 10 YEARS, RU 486 ABORTION DRUG HASN’T HELPED WOMEN AS PROMISED
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) – Two women have written editorials about the tenth anniversary of the RU 486 abortion drug, which has been responsible for the deaths of dozens of women and injuring thousands more across the globe. They say the abortion pill was supposed to help women but can’t find any evidence of that.

OBAMA ADVISOR ADMITS ABORTION WILL PLAY A ROLE IN 2010 ELECTION CONTESTS
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) – The mainstream media likes to downplay the issue of abortion in terms of its importance as a voting issue during national elections. But one of pro-abortion President Barack Obama’s top advisors says the debate over abortion “will certainly be an issue” when voters head to the polls in November.

FACILITY CLOSES IN MARYLAND RUN BY MAN WHO KILLED WOMAN IN BOTCHED ABORTION
Severna Park, MD (LifeNews.com) – It’s official. The Gynecare Center run by embattled abortion practitioner Romeo A. Ferrer, who has been under fire involving a case of a woman he killed in a failed abortion, has closed. Two pro-life groups have confirmed that a replacement abortion practitioner will not do abortions in Ferrer’s stead.

POLL: AMERICANS CONTINUE TO DISTRUST PRO-ABORTION MAINSTREAM MEDIA OUTLETS
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) – Americans continue to distrust the mainstream media, whose reports on abortion and other pro-life issues continue the bias and misinformation that led to the creation of LifeNews.com more than seven years ago. A Gallup poll found Americans, for the fourth straight year, they have little or no trust in the mass media to report the news fully, accurately, and fairly.

MAINSTREAM MEDIA MISREPORT STEM CELL RESEARCH, COURT RULING ON OBAMA’S FUNDING
by Tom Blumer
It is truly remarkable to observe how press outlets continue to misreport and misinform the public in the area of stem cell research. One of the latest examples came yesterday at the Associated Press. In a report covering a court ruling on government funding of embryonic stem cell research (ESCR), the AP’s Nedra Pickler completely failed to acknowledge that there are any other kinds of stem cells.

….Production notes given to film critics state that “Eight years into No Child Left Behind, the U.S. has four years left to reach the landmark education act’s goal of 100 percent proficiency in math and reading. Most states currently hover around 20 or 30 percent proficiency. Seventy percent (70%) of 8th graders in the U.S. cannot read at grade level.”….

By Sr. Rose Pacatte, Catholic Exchange, September 30, 2010

The Los Angeles Times‘ observant and opinionated journalist Steve Lopez is often irritating but always honest about life in the city of angels. In Sunday’s paper Lopez recounts his visit ^[1] last Friday to A.J. Duffy, president of United Teachers Los Angeles. Duffy reacted negatively, as would be expected, to the L.A. Times recent investigation and values-added formula analysis ^[2] of teachers. Los Angeles Times published on its website a database of names and grades of teachers in the L.A. Unified School District , the largest in the nation in terms of students. Duffy organized a march by union members at the Los Angeles Times building and even canceled his subscription to the Times in protest.

The Social Doctrine of the Catholic Church is the key to building a new culture of life

By Deacon Keith A. Fournier, 9/30/2010, Catholic Online

Some have begun to use the phrase “Social Justice” in a disparaging manner. They want to expose the error committed by some who stolen the term “Social Justice” to hide a “leftist” political agenda. There are others who use it but reject the existence of objective moral truths meant to govern our life together. However, some words and phrases must be rescued when they are stolen. Social Justice is such a term. It lies at the heart of the Social Doctrine of the Catholic Church and, properly understood, is key to building a new culture of life.

“Ignorance of the scriptures is ignorance of Christ.”

Saint Jerome created the Latin Vulgate translation of the Bible.

This program is from RealCatholicTV.com

Some Catholics are flying high these days.  And the view is pretty clear from up there.

VIEW ONLINE: http://www.youtube.com/user/RealCatholicTV?feature=mhum#p/a/u/0/M9fwnE2PW60

This program is from RealCatholicTV.com

Chronicle, Patriot Post, September 29, 2010

The Demo-gogues

Obama gives voters a lecture

With friends like these… “People need to shake off this lethargy. People need to buck up. … If people now want to take their ball and go home, that tells me folks weren’t serious in the first place. … It is inexcusable for any Democrat or progressive right now to stand on the sidelines in this midterm election. … The idea that we’ve got a lack of enthusiasm in the Democratic base, that people are sitting on their hands complaining, is just irresponsible.” –Barack Obama hammering his own base in an interview with Rolling Stone

“[I want to] remind our base constituency to stop whining and get out there and look at the alternatives. This president has done an incredible job. He’s kept his promises.” –Joe Biden on the same talking points

“And so those who don’t get — didn’t get everything they wanted, it’s time to just buck up here, understand that we can make things better, continue to move forward and — but not yield the playing field to those folks who are against everything that we stand for in terms of the initiatives we put forward.“ –Joe Biden

“We have an electorate that doesn’t always pay that much attention to what’s going on so people are influenced by a simple slogan rather than the facts or the truth or what’s happening.” –Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), another snotty elitist lecturing voters

The GOP’s best friend: “[I]f we allow this to be a referendum on whether people are happy where they are now, we’ll lose.” –Joe Biden

But on the other hand: “I guarantee you we’re going to have a majority in the House and a majority in the Senate. I absolutely believe that.” –Biden

Patronizing: “There are strains in the Tea Party that are troubled by what they saw as a series of instances in which the middle-class and working-class people have been abused or hurt by special interests and Washington, but their anger is misdirected.” –Barack Obama

“[Fox News has] a point of view that I disagree with. It’s a point of view that I think is ultimately destructive for the long-term growth of a country that has a vibrant middle class and is competitive in the world.” –Obama in the Rolling Stone interview

On fiscal responsibility: “What I’m seeing out of the Republican leadership over the last several years has been a set of policies that are just irresponsible, and we saw in their Pledge to America a similar set of irresponsible policies. … [Although GOP leaders] say they want to balance the budget, they propose $4 trillion worth of tax cuts and $16 billion in spending cuts, and then they say we’re going to somehow magically balance the budget. That’s not a serious approach.” –Barack Obama, who must consider Republicans amateurs when it comes to blowing money

http://patriotpost.us/edition/2010/09/29/chronicle/

Hope and Change… Isn’t this all just a page from Jimmy Carter’s playbook?

By Ben Shapiro, Human Events, Sept. 30, 2010

Across the political spectrum, commentators and voters are beginning to realize that the Obama Administration doesn’t merely seem familiar — it reeks of deja vu. Obama’s tendency toward self-canonization, his control freak tendencies, and his utter administrative incompetence don’t seem like a Lady Gaga-esque tribute to Jimmy Carter — they seem like a direct rip from the Carter Playbook. Whether it’s mishandling an environmental catastrophe (Three Mile Island/Gulf oil spill), kowtowing to Iranian dictators (Ayatollah Khomeini/Mahmoud Ahmadinejad), destroying the economy (stagflation/stagflation), or simply spouting hope and change, Carter and Obama are mirror images of one another.

Don’t believe me? Check this out:

Mr. Shapiro is a lawyer in Los Angeles. He is the author of author of “Project President: Bad Hair and Botox on the Road to the White House”, “Porn Generation: How Social Liberalism Is Corrupting Our Future”, and “Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctinate America’s Youth.”

…current polls suggest that these clueless and unappreciative Americans apparently believe that an elite education does not ensure their officials can balance a budget, pay their own taxes or speak candidly….

Victor Davis Hanson, Townhall, Sept. 30, 2010

DRUDGE HEADLINE: THEY COULDN’T EVEN PASS A BUDGET!

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By  Jerry Holbert

By Kathleen Gilbert, September 29, 2010, LifeSiteNews.com

ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico – Following reports of widespread skepticism over his professed Christianity, President Obama on Tuesday invoked the teachings of Jesus Christ as the inspiration for his public agenda, which he called part of an “effort to express my Christian faith” – and in his next breath defended the legalized killing of unborn children.

When a teacher’s assistant asked him why he was a Christian during a townhall Q&A in Albuquerque, the president answered, “I’m a Christian by choice.”

The president admitted that his parents “weren’t folks who went to church every week” and that his mother “didn’t raise me in the church.” “I came to my Christian faith later in life, and it was because the precepts of Jesus Christ spoke to me in terms of the kind of life that I would want to lead – being my brothers’ and sisters’ keeper, treating others as they would treat me,” he said.

Obama continued: “And I think also understanding that Jesus Christ dying for my sins spoke to the humility we all have to have as human beings, that we’re sinful and we’re flawed and we make mistakes, and that we achieve salvation through the grace of God.  But what we can do, as flawed as we are, is still see God in other people and do our best to help them find their own grace.

“That’s what I strive to do.  That’s what I pray to do every day.  I think my public service is part of that effort to express my Christian faith,” he said.

But the president then jumped to defend the legal killing of unborn children when the same woman asked about regulating the procedure.

“Now, with respect to the abortion issue, I actually think – I mean, there are laws both federal, state and constitutional that are in place,” he said. “And I think that this is an area where I think Bill Clinton had the right formulation a couple of decades ago, which is abortion should be safe, legal, and rare.”

Obama exhorted the audience to “recognize” killing unborn children as “a difficult, oftentimes tragic situation that families are wrestling with.” “I think the families and the women involved are the ones who should make the decisions, not the government,” he said, adding: “I do think actually that there are a whole host of laws on the books that after a certain period, the interests shift such that you can have some restrictions, for example, on late-term abortions, and appropriately so.”

As an Illinois and U.S. senator, Obama never once voted in favor of an abortion restriction, supporting even the gruesome partial-birth abortion procedure and voting against a state law to protect infants born alive during an abortion.

Since ascending to the White House, he has solidified his 100% pro-abortion record by pursuing greater funding for abortion groups both overseas and at home. In crafting the federal health care reform, Obama’s administration worked closely with abortion giant Planned Parenthood, whom he promised in 2007 that reproductive health would be “at the center, the heart” of his health care plans.

Obama’s devotion to abortion is not the only aspect of a public agenda in plain conflict with the Christian worldview.

Obama has taken an increasingly aggressive stance against Christian values on marriage and the family by courting the homosexualist lobby, and has pushed for an end to the federal Defense of Marriage Act, the repeal of the U.S. military’s ban on open homosexuality, and gay adoption. Obama also successfully championed the inclusion of “sexual orientation” as a federally protected trait alongside race and religion in federal “hate crimes” legislation.

A survey by the Pew Research Center in August found that nearly one in five Americans believe Obama is a Muslim, and only one in three believe he is an adherent of the faith he claims; 43 percent said they were unsure. The White House shot back at the polls, claiming that right-wing “misinformation campaigns” had produced the results.

Yet skeptics likely remained unmoved when, after the Pew results were collected, Obama vouched for a proposed Islamic community center and mosque near the site of the 9/11 terrorist attack in New York City. The president announced his support at a White House dinner celebrating the Muslim fast of Ramadan.

Christian leaders have expressed frustration at Obama’s claim to Christianity despite failing to attend church services regularly since winning the 2008 presidential election, including Christmas Day 2008 and 2009.

http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/sep/10092907.html

“The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.”

–Thomas Jefferson, letter to E. Carrington, 1788

September 30, 2010
Memorial of Saint Jerome, priest and doctor of the Church
Father Edward McIlmail, LC

Luke 10: 1-12

Jesus appointed seventy-two other disciples whom he sent ahead of him in pairs to every town and place he intended to visit. He said to them, “The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few; so ask the master of the harvest to send out laborers for his harvest. Go on your way; behold, I am sending you like lambs among wolves. Carry no money bag, no sack, no sandals; and greet no one along the way. Into whatever house you enter, first say, ´Peace to this household.´ If a peaceful person lives there, your peace will rest on him; but if not, it will return to you. Stay in the same house and eat and drink what is offered to you, for the laborer deserves his payment. Do not move about from one house to another. Whatever town you enter and they welcome you, eat what is set before you, cure the sick in it and say to them, ´The Kingdom of God is at hand for you.´ Whatever town you enter and they do not receive you, go out into the streets and say, ´The dust of your town that clings to our feet, even that we shake off against you.´ Yet know this: the Kingdom of God is at hand. I tell you, it will be more tolerable for Sodom on that day than for that town.”

Introductory Prayer: Good Jesus, thank you for this opportunity to speak with you again and to listen to you. I know that you have longed for this moment we will spend together. You silently wait for hours in the tabernacle, hoping that one of your friends will come to make a visit. You always have something to say when we finally turn to you, so I willingly set aside all distractions and give you my undivided attention.

Petition: Grant me, Lord, the grace to accept your instructions with a great spirit of simplicity.

1. The Harvest The Holy Spirit works constantly to stir up souls and prompt them to turn their lives toward God. He nudges them when they listen to Scripture or a homily. He speaks to them in the little events of day-to-day life. But there is often one other ingredient he uses to reach souls: He uses us. He uses our example, our words, our drawing close to others. This is why Our Lord speaks of a crop waiting to be harvested. Harvesting is all about toil and timing. Crops not brought in quickly rot in the field. What harvest of souls might Our Lord be asking me to help with? It might be an engaged couple who need to be helped in their faith. It might be a sick relative who needs to prepare spiritually for death. It might be a troubled teen who needs guidance to keep on the right path. All these could be souls who need help now. Will I respond?

2. Full-time Laborers Besides the work that all of us are called to do by our baptism, there is also a need for people who dedicate their entire lives to the mission of evangelization. Priests especially are needed, to confect the Eucharist and to grant absolution within the sacrament of reconciliation. The principle outlined in the first point of this meditation applies here as well: The Holy Spirit inspires new vocations, and frequently he depends on others to promote this work. Do I join in this crucial work for the Church? Do I encourage vocations? Do I speak well of priests and religious? Am I willing to let a son or daughter, a brother or sister, pursue a vocation? Do I see that the vocation I encourage today might be the vocation that helps save the soul of a child or grandchildren in the future?

3. Details Matter Jesus´ precise instructions to his disciples show that details matter to him. Our Lord doesn´t leave anything to chance. He has a system for how to evangelize, and it is crucial that the disciples follow his orders precisely. This reminds us that work of evangelization and building the Kingdom is Jesus´, and as such he makes the rules. Free-lance evangelization doesn´t substitute for what Christ wants. This principle applies to all walks of life. Hence, there are rules that regulate conduct within marriage and before marriage. There are guidelines as to what lawmakers can and cannot support, and how businesspeople should and should not treat their employees and customers. Might I think that I´m exempt from Christ´s rules? Might I be living my faith on my terms, rather than on Christ´s?

Conversation with Christ: Lord, help me avoid fooling myself that I´m doing your will, when in fact I might be following my own whims. Let me appreciate that there is a teamwork aspect to the Christian life that helps me grow in patience and humility.

Resolution: I will pray or offer up a sacrifice for vocations, or speak of vocations to at least one person, either by word or by e-mail.

http://www.regnumchristi.org/english/articulos/articulo.phtml?se=363&ca=975&te=735&id=20302

CATHOLIC NEWS AGENCY, SEPTEMBER 30, 2010

…Mr. Obama graciously implied that a small subset of the (tea party) movement is simply motivated by bigotry . . . Obama told Rolling Stone that he is presiding over “the most successful administration in a generation in moving progressive agendas forward.”…

WALL STREET JOURNAL, SEPTEMBER 29, 2010

Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, who prefers sailing vessels to vans by the river, recently tried out the Farley method. Said Mr. Kerry, “We have an electorate that doesn’t always pay that much attention to what’s going on so people are influenced by a simple slogan rather than the facts or the truth or what’s happening.” Bay State voters are surely thrilled to be represented by a man so respectful of their concerns.

This week President Obama chimed in with another uplifting message about the American electorate. Mr. Obama told Rolling Stone that the tea party movement is financed and directed by “powerful, special-interest lobbies.” But this doesn’t mean that tea party groups are composed entirely of corporate puppets. Mr. Obama graciously implied that a small subset of the movement is simply motivated by bigotry.

Associated Press–President Barack Obama, accompanied by Vice President Joe Biden

The President said “there are probably some aspects of the Tea Party that are a little darker, that have to do with anti-immigrant sentiment or are troubled by what I represent as the President.” The tea party is now supported by a third of the country in some polls.

Perhaps advocates for smaller government shouldn’t take Mr. Obama’s comments personally. In the new Democratic attacks on the voting public, not even Democrats are spared. Vice President Joe Biden recently urged the party’s base to “stop whining” and “buck up,” a message echoed by Mr. Obama in his Rolling Stone interview. The President demanded that his supporters “shake off this lethargy,” warning that it would be “inexcusable” for liberals to stay home on Election Day.

Mr. Obama added that “if people now want to take their ball and go home, that tells me folks weren’t serious in the first place.” Making the case for left-wing voters to show up in November, Mr. Obama told Rolling Stone that he is presiding over “the most successful administration in a generation in moving progressive agendas forward.”

We’d agree, but his problem is that most Americans don’t like that agenda and millions of voters in both parties wanted him to oversee an economic expansion instead. Blaming the voters is not unheard of among politicians, but usually they wait until after an election.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703882404575520044037709702.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

…A president who seems to go out of his way to consistently side with 30 to 40 percent of the American public on key issues shouldn’t be surprised when his poll numbers descend to that range as well…

By Victor Davis Hanson September 27, 2010

I think Barack Obama will soon dip below a 40% approval rating. He’s nearing there now.

Why? A mixture of both the personal and political. Here are five good reasons:

1) A bad agenda. Nearly every issue the president embraces polls against him, often at a 3-1 margin. Cap and trade, amnesty, state-run health care, more bailouts, takeovers, deficits, taxes, and the national debt. His vision is the same as that of the EU circa 1990 — one that even Europe now rejects as a failure.

The answer to every challenge is to found a new program, borrow billions to run it, hire millions more loyal to the progressive gospel of public employment, and demagogue any who oppose it. The public is starting to see that the president’s ideology is really a mixture of the Ivy League, the left-wing of the Democratic Party, the tired canards of the black caucus, extremist residuals from Rev. Wright and Bill Ayers, and twenty years of university multicultural, utopian pacifist, and moral equivalent indoctrination. His Democratic Party is not one with half the House Democrats and does not appeal to liberal independents. He’s the sort of progressive professor whom the proverbial new student comes home at Thanksgiving to quote to a shocked parent..

Obama can no more adopt a centrist identity that Rev Wright could become a Billy Graham, or Jimmy Carter could pivot like Bill Clinton. Most House Democrats grasp that unwelcome truth and so mightily fear his presence in their districts.

2) Anything, anytime. The president does not conduct himself in a sober and judicious manner and neither do those around him. On any given day he can slur Arizonans as wanting to round up innocents on the way to ice cream. He can slander police as stupidly acting stereotypers. The attorney general can call us cowards and swear without reading a bill that it profiles the innocent. Legitimate worry over a Ground Zero mosque translates into anti-constitutional efforts to stifle freedom of worship. Those with money — defined by an arbitrary annual income level of $250,000 — owe the rest of us their ill-gotten gains. Surgeons transmogrify into tonsil-loppers, insurers are greedy, investors are put back at the end of the creditor line; all are worthy of a boot on their necks and a kick in the ass.

The first lady can likewise say anything at anytime that would earn about a 10% approval rating. “Deign to run,” “raise the bar,” “never been proud before,” “downright mean country,” and all that have gone somnolent only because of a fleeting January 2009 70% approval rating. When polls hits 40% , expect the 2008 tropes to return. The result won’t be pretty. Bush was stoic and philosophical at 38% after six years; the aggrieved Obamas will not be after two.

3) There is no eloquence, period. Part is the fault of the worst speech-writing team in modern presidential memory. They make the most elemental of errors, whether turning Cordoba into a beacon of Islamic tolerance during the Inquisition or claiming “Mexicans” were here in North America before Americans, well before the idea of the nation of Mexico existed.

The president himself suffers from three rhetorical liabilities. He simply cannot leave the teleprompter — even for a second. To do so means that “like a dog” petulance immediate spews forth. Second, the divergence from his sort of nerdy Harvard Law Review wonk-talk and his Rev. Wright black-church preaching is simply too wide to suggest that he is just modulating Hillary-like for audiences. Instead, the Dr. Jekyl/Mr. Hyde deliveries infer not just patronizing, but something far more disturbing: Mr. Obama does not seem to know himself quite who he is. Third, he cannot leave the campaign mode. So all his lectures are rehashes of hope-and-change, Bush did it, I, I, I, me, me, me, my, my, my — spiced with the now tedious “Let Me Be Perfectly Clear” and “Make No Mistake About It,” as if we are inattentive school children and he the headmaster at the front of the room clamoring for our attention. The result? He is overexposed to the point that eyes roll and backs turn when he drops his g’s and starts in on “they” and “them.”

4) His team is imploding. We heard all this fluff last year about “Team of Rivals” as if our new Lincoln was going to collect brilliant and ambitious contrarians, and by sheer force of brilliance brew administrative excellence. He never read anything other than Ms. Doris Kearns Goodwin apparently. Lincoln finally had to fire the duplicitous Chase and Cameron. Stanton was a loose cannon who slurred the Union hero Sherman. Half the Lincoln cabinet was trying to do him in during the dark days of August 1864, as Lincoln himself dumped his VP Hamlin and in desperation tried to find a military icon before settling on the so-so Johnson. Lincoln succeeded despite his errors in selecting such a witch’s brew, not because of it. Take away Sherman inside Atlanta in early September 1864, and have him end up instead bogged down in Georgia like Grant in Virginia — a wrecked army and no capture of a key enemy city — and Lincoln would have lost to McClellan.

Orszag, Summers, and Romer are going or have gone. Geithner will leave too. Emanuel will be out — and leak to the world that his pragmatic “genius” was rejected. The so-called centrists like Gates and Jones will leave soon, before the reckoning of a Carter 1979 year comes due. I doubt Hillary will stay unless there is a rebound back over 50%. The more Bill bites his lip in praise of Obama, the more we know what’s coming. All presidential teams implode at some point; few at so early a juncture and fewer with an entire economic team leaving in the midst of the chaos they helped to further.

5. Obama has been lucky but it won’t last. You say, “No, wait a minute! After all he inherited two wars and a near depression!” Not quite. His bad war he campaigned against is essentially over in Iraq, and was by the time he entered office. The good war he wanted at in Afghanistan heated up when we turned our proverbial eye to it, largely because the president made it clear he did not wish to meet Stanley McChrystal for months, imposed artificial deadlines of withdrawal, and divided up responsibility between a feuding Gen. McChrystal, Amb. Eikenberry, and Richard Holbrook who apparently hated each other as much as they did the enemy.

The financial panic of September 15 was largely calm at the end of 120 days, and before Obama took office. The recession officially ended in June 2009. What then happened is that we took a deep downturn and turned it into something akin to European stasis by borrowing trillions more dollars and investing in redistributive schemes that destroyed incentives while terrifying entrepreneurs. In other words, had Obama done nothing, we would have been far better off as the natural cycles of recovery kicked in. But threaten business with higher taxes, more regulations, new health care mandates, energy surcharges, all the while conducting a psychological campaign against the morality of private enterprise, and you get the present push-back as banks, corporations, small businesses, and investors sit on trillions in cash, neither hiring nor spending until this Brussels bureaucrat leaves.

The point? The usual narrative that Obama is a victim of circumstance is unfortunately not true. Aside from the fact that all presidents make their own destinies (Reagan’s inheritance from Carter was not good; nor were FDR’s, Truman’s, Eisenhower’s, Nixon’s, or Bush’s), Obama has had it about as bad or good as had others who entered the presidency. A recession and 9/11 were not easy in 2001. And 18% interest, 18% inflation, 7% unemployment, and gas lines by 1981 greeted Reagan. Truman took over with a war, a supposed friend Stalin turned enemy, allies soon to be enemies in Russia and China, and enemies in Japan and Germany soon to be rebuilt and rehabilitated — amid a wrecked Asia and Europe, a groundswell of communism, a climate of panic at home, and a soon to be nuclear Soviet Union under the genocidal murdering Stalin, capped off soon by a war in Korea.

What’s ahead? I am afraid a reckoning in world tensions: China-Japan, North-South Korea, Iran and its neighbors, another Mideast war, Russian expansionism, a crack-up in the EU — to be fair, not just because of Obama, but in part accelerated by the sense that Obama either does not care or tends to be more sympathetic to those who voice grievances such as his own against the U.S. than to our allies who traditionally give us the benefit of the doubt. There will be a lot of jostling as nations seek to make readjustments in the new climate of anything goes.

One-eyed Jack?

So, yes, Obama really can hit 40%. To preclude that I predict the most vicious midterm election in memory and some sort of October surprise abroad. Both will fail to arrest the decline.

The one-eyed Jack has been flipped over.

http://pajamasmedia.com/victordavishanson/president-4060/

NewsMax, 28 Sep 2010

Sen. Tom Coburn tells Newsmax that Delaware Republican Senate nominee Christine O’Donnell would “bring a lot to the table” to combat the “stupidity that goes on in Washington.”

The Oklahoma Republican, who considers himself a friend of President Barack Obama, also says Obama is a partisan president who is still on “the campaign trail,” but can use all the help he can get from Republicans in running the country.

In an exclusive interview with Newsmax.TV, Coburn was asked why the Democrats are stalling on bringing an extension of the Bush-era tax cuts to a vote.

“I think the reason they don’t want to vote on them is because they know the American people want them extended,” says Coburn, who was elected in 2004.

“Nobody should be raising taxes in a soft economy like we have now.

“We should concentrate on what the real problem is, which is not revenue, it’s spending — [including] $350 billion a year in fraud, abuse, and duplication. And you haven’t seen anything passed in Congress that would actually go after some of that.

“Nobody would agree that now is the time to limit capital investment and job creation, and in fact that’s what we’ll be doing if we raise taxes in this soft economy.”

Coburn believes no one can “reliably predict” if the GOP will take control of the House and Senate after the November elections. But he says it’s clear “the American people are now engaged. They’ve seen the waste. They’ve seen the stupidity. They’ve seen the lack of common sense coming out of Washington. They’re having to make hard choices themselves, but they’ve seen none of that happening in Washington.

“One of the reasons our economy is in trouble is that people don’t have much confidence in the future. So they’re looking for real leadership that will take on this nasty behemoth known as the federal government and start trimming it down.

“I think the elections are going to turn on who can best put forward what the American people really want. They’re afraid for the future and they want some grownups up here to start making the hard decisions, even though some of those hard decisions might have a small negative impact on them.”

Despite some early reluctance, Republicans are now fully supporting Christine O’Donnell’s run for the Senate in Delaware, says Coburn, who is backing O’Donnell and has offered to campaign for her.

“She’s not a career politician, and Washington is loaded with them,” he tells Newsmax.

“We have this sense of entitlement that we can decide who’s a good nominee and who’s not. The people of Delaware chose their nominee and our job is to back them.

“I think she’ll bring a lot to the table in terms of the common sense, everyday thinking of Americans about the stupidity that goes on in Washington.

“So I’m excited that she’s in the race, and my hope is that she will win and we’ll have another voice up here that’s based on common sense and not growing the government but rather shrinking it.

Coburn, who is a medical doctor, has been a sharp critic of Obamacare. But he doubts that Republicans can repeal the healthcare reform legislation “because the president would probably veto any bill that would repeal it.

“I don’t think we can totally repeal this until we have a different president.”

Asked about the impending departures of Rahm Emanuel, David Axelrod, Lawrence Summers and others from the Obama team, Coburn observes that it is “not unusual” for White House insiders to leave after two years of an administration.

But he adds: “The real problem the president has is he has very few people with real world experience in the economy and our country advising him. That’s why the policies have been such a failure.

“I think there are a lot of competent individuals that can take those individuals’ place and probably do a far better job.”

Obama described Coburn as “one of my Republican friends” when they served together in the Senate, and they remain friends today, Coburn says.

“I do consider him a friend. I adamantly disagree with his policies.

“In this world that we’re living in, with the threats to our country and our freedom and our future, what we need is people talking, not talking bad about each other but talking about the issues.

“My hope is that I can maintain a friendship with him so that I can at least give him my input and I can hear his. And I think he can use all the help he can get from Republicans in terms of running the country.

“I think the biggest problem has been he’s not ever come off the campaign trail, and he’s been a more partisan president in his words. We ought to put the partisanship aside and talk about the real issues.”

Healthcare was a “fundamental debate” in this country, yet it was “carried out in a very partisan manner that did not allow good input from our side,” says Coburn. “We didn’t develop consensus, we developed partisanship.”

Coburn was elected to the U.S. House in 1994 but kept a campaign vow and left office after serving three terms. He favors term limits for all members of Congress.

“We need term limits,” he declares. “We need to limit the amount of time people serve up here, and we need people with real experience, real world exposure, to come here and make a difference.

“We’re going to get some of that this year, I think, and hopefully in 2012 we’re going to get more real Americans who aren’t career politicians coming up to serve this country.”

http://www.newsmax.com/Headline/TomCoburnDelawareRepublican/2010/09/28/id/371853

Monsignor Gaenswein spoke about the “warm” side, the “simplicity” of the Holy Father and the courage that marks this pontificate: “He calls by name the defects and errors of the West, criticizes the violence that attempts to have a religious justification.” He noted that Benedict XVI “does not cease to remind us that with relativism and hedonism and by imposing religion through threats and violence one turns one’s back on God.”

9/29/2010, Zenit News Agency (www.zenit.org)

The Holy Father’s private secretary affirmed that this Pontiff, whom he described as the ‘Pope of the word,’ puts all his interest in reaffirming ‘the nucleus of the Christian faith: God’s love of man.’

…“We are paying a fortune for something that is not giving our children the hope and the faith and the trust that their tomorrow can be better than their today,” Christie said….

Reporting Marcia Kramer, CBS 2, September 28, 2010

OLD BRIDGE, N.J. — Determined to turn New Jersey’s education system on its head, Gov. Chris Christie on Tuesday unveiled a tough-love reform package that will make classroom achievement — not seniority or tenure — the basis for pay hikes and career advancement in Garden State public schools.

Christie is turning his take-no-prisoner’s style to the classroom, demanding a top to bottom overhaul of how New Jersey students learn and teachers teach. And that means undoing tenure, seniority and other union work rules.

“We cannot wait. Your children are sitting in these classrooms today. We cannot wait to make it better,” Christie told CBS 2’s Marcia Kramer.

Unqualified teachers will feel the lash. The governor is demanding that teachers in kindergarten through fifth grade actually pass tests in reading and math in order to be certified.

“It might lead to the firing of lousy teachers and bad principals who hurt our children,” Christie said.

The governor wants to turn the old seniority system inside out and put quality teaching ahead of lack-luster performance. He will:

* Prohibit salary scales based on seniority

* Grant raises based on classroom performance

* Give tenure based on classroom performance

“We are paying a fortune for something that is not giving our children the hope and the faith and the trust that their tomorrow can be better than their today,” Christie said.

The governor said he would appoint a task force to come up with standards to measure teacher achievement.

Educational experts applauded the governor’s actions.

“He is with excellence in education for everyone by prioritizing teachers — their brilliance, their art and their skills. We will dramatically improve the quality of education of our kids in New Jersey, particularly our neediest ones,” said Derrell Bradford, director of Excellent Education for Everyone.

The governor needs the state Legislature to approve the changes to seniority and tenure. The rest of the things he did by signing executive orders.

A spokesman for the New Jersey Education Association attacked the governor’s plan saying that once again he was “trying to implement education reform without any input from educators.”

http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2010/09/28/christie-announces-sweeping-n-j-education-reform/

Steve Breen

This Lame Duck’s Got Lots of Bills

No wonder Congress is taking it easy these last few days.  Based on the latest news from Capitol Hill, Democrats plan to pack more into the six weeks following the election than they’ve managed in the last two years! As many as 20 pieces of legislation could be stuffed into the leadership’s final days, including hugely controversial policies on illegal immigration, gays in the military, taxpayer-funded abortion, education, energy, taxes, Medicare reimbursements, and more. After propping their feet up this week, liberals plan to make up for these lazy September days with a wild push in November.  While most of Congress heads for the exits, Democrats are activating their army.  The lame duck strategy, which one congressional aide scoffed in August as “straight out of the black helicopter wing of GOP thinking,” is suddenly more than a theory.   Fast-forward to last Sunday, when House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) took a turn on Chris Wallace’s “Fox News Sunday.”

WALLACE: If your party loses control of the House, will you promise not to hold a lame duck session…?

HOYER: Of course I’m not going to promise that, Chris.  That would be an irrational promise to make…

WALLACE: Do you think it’s right to have… members of Congress who have just lost come back and decide taxes and spending against the will of the Americans who have just voted?

HOYER: I don’t think we’re going to make any decisions against the will of the American public... [M]embers of Congress are elected for 24 months, not for 21 months, not for 22 months–for 24 months.

Perhaps someone should have reminded them of that this month, as leaders breezily ran out the clock without so much as passing a formal budget!  Now suddenly they’re slaving away with America’s best interest at heart?  Meanwhile, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) is trying to head off the Left’s plan at the pass.  Last night, he promised to shut down any legislation that had not been cleared by his office before close of business tonight.  Under Senate rules, there has to be unanimous consent to begin or end debate on a bill.  If all 100 senators aren’t on board, the minority can force up to 60 hours of debate on the issue.  With just weeks left until leaders hand over the keys to the 112^th Congress, the GOP could use this rule to stick a fork in some of Sen. Reid’s agenda.  You can help.  Click over to FRC Action and sign our petition telling Congress not to be a lame duck!  (We all know what happens to lame ducks… right, Dale?)

Decade of Death

Today marks a dark 10-year anniversary.  On September 28, 2000 , the Food and Drug Administration approved Mifepristone, popularly know as RU-486, the one FDA-approved drug in the U.S. specifically for abortion.   At the time, the approval process of RU-486 was politicized, rushed, and flawed. Sadly, women’s health has suffered as a consequence.  For an in-depth review of the FDA approval of RU-486, don’t miss Dr. Chris Gacek’s pamphlet, Politicized Science. Over the course of the last 10 years, thousands of babies and at least eight women have lost their lives to RU-486.  While originally hailed as medical progress, the reality is that the FDA received over a thousand adverse event reports related to the drug, many involving blood transfusions, hospitalizations, and deaths. For information about the debate, check out Jeanne Monahan’s op-ed, “RU-486: Ten Years After,” published today in Human Events.

Chino Hills Sees the Writing on the Wall-and Puts up Some of Its Own!

In Chino Hills, California, they put their trust in God.  And if you don’t like it, they’ll see you in court!  This week, the city council voted 4-0 to put the words “In God We Trust” on a wall in city hall. According to Mayor Bill Krugar, if someone wants to complain, “Let them file suit!”  He recounted the story to OneNewsNow.com.  “I just went to the city manager and I said, ‘Look, it’s time to get back to what America is.’“  Mayor Krugar had the backing of just about every corner of the community, including a key member of FRC’s Pastors’ Council, Calvary Chapel Chino Hills Pastor Jack Hibbs.  “We’re going to [fight for religious freedom],” Krugar said, “so let’s get on with it.”  This is what happens when one church decides to influence the community.  Imagine the impact if every town had a congregation that was willing to engage the culture as salt and light!  To learn how your church can be exactly that, log on to FRC’s Church Ministries page–and get involved!

http://www.frc.org/get.cfm?i=WU10I16&f=PG07J01