1.23.2008
Samuel's Spina Bifida Surgery In Utero
Samuel's Spina Bifida Surgery In Utero: "As a veteran photojournalist in Nashville, Tennessee, I was hired by USA Today newspaper to photograph a spina bifida corrective surgical procedure. It was to be performed on a twenty-one week old fetus in utero at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. At that time, in 1999, twenty-one weeks in utero was the earliest that the surgical team would consider for surgery. The worst possible outcome would be that the surgery would cause premature delivery, and no child born earlier than twenty-three weeks had survived."
Bill Clinton: 'Screw It, I'm Running For President' | The Onion - America's Finest News Source
Bill Clinton: 'Screw It, I'm Running For President' | The Onion - America's Finest News Source: "CHARLESTON, SC—After spending two months accompanying his wife, Hillary, on the campaign trail, former president Bill Clinton announced Monday that he is joining the 2008 presidential race, saying he 'could no longer resist the urge.'"
1.11.2008
The issue of life should never be on the back burner.
Polls consistently show either immigration or the war on terror as the most important issue in surveys of conservatives. The argument seems to go that if terrorists destroy the country, we will not have the luxury of debating the morality of abortion.
I would argue that regardless of the other issues, any civilized nation that allows infants to be killed for the sake of convenience is in deep trouble. How can we say to the Islamofascist, you won't kill our babies-only we can do that?
I would argue that regardless of the other issues, any civilized nation that allows infants to be killed for the sake of convenience is in deep trouble. How can we say to the Islamofascist, you won't kill our babies-only we can do that?
1.09.2008
Obama is the Most Pro-Abortion Candidate Ever
KRLA 870 AM Intelligent. Conservative. Talk Radio: "Barack Obama is the most pro-abortion presidential candidate ever.
He is so pro-abortion he refused as an Illinois state senator to support legislation to protect babies who survived late-term abortions because he did not want to concede -- as he explained in a cold-blooded speech on the Illinois Senate floor -- that these babies, fully outside their mothers' wombs, with their hearts beating and lungs heaving, were in fact 'persons.'"
He is so pro-abortion he refused as an Illinois state senator to support legislation to protect babies who survived late-term abortions because he did not want to concede -- as he explained in a cold-blooded speech on the Illinois Senate floor -- that these babies, fully outside their mothers' wombs, with their hearts beating and lungs heaving, were in fact 'persons.'"
1.04.2008
Democrats and religion - - The Washington Times, America's Newspaper
Democrats and religion - - The Washington Times, America's Newspaper: "Pop Quiz: Which presidential candidate opened a recent event in South Carolina with: 'Giving all praise and honor to God. Look at the day that the Lord has made.' Former Baptist Minister Mike Huckabee? Nope. Former Mormon Bishop Mitt Romney? Nah. Catholic school-educated Rudy Giuliani? Not even close."
1.03.2008
McRomianihuckson
I've decided to create my own presidential candidate for the GOP. He is a hybrid of the current field incorporating the best features of each: Ron McRomianihuckson.
He has some of the libertarian leanings of Ron Paul but none of the geekiness and antiwar views; he has the bona fides of John McCain but none of his silliness regarding campaign finance reform; he has the smoothness and business sense of Mitt Romney; he has the no-nonsense style of Rudy Giuliani; the charisma and social conservatism of Mike Huckabee without the anti-Bush foreign-policy nonsense; and the "hands down" approach to global warming of Fred Thompson.
The question is will "McRomianihuckson" fit on a bumper sticker?
12.26.2007
12.22.2007
12.21.2007
KRLA 870 AM Intelligent. Conservative. Talk Radio
The comic absurdity of the hysteria surrounding Gov. Mike Huckabee’s supposed “floating cross” TV commercial this week reminded me of a scene in one of my favorite movies of all time, “Absence of Malice.” The movie is great because it delves into the complicated world of newspaper ethics and features some great performances by Paul Newman and Sally Field.
KRLA 870 AM Intelligent. Conservative. Talk Radio
KRLA 870 AM Intelligent. Conservative. Talk Radio
12.18.2007
12.13.2007
Politicians with a prayer - - The Washington Times, America's Newspaper
The surfacing of the “religion question” in the Republican presidential primary campaigns of both Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee has raised important issues and exposed much public confusion about the intersection of religion and politics.
Politicians with a prayer - - The Washington Times, America's Newspaper
Politicians with a prayer - - The Washington Times, America's Newspaper
12.11.2007
12.03.2007
Ryan T. Anderson on Abstinence on National Review Online#more
Virginia governor Timothy M. Kaine (D.) announced this November that he was rejecting a $275,000 grant from the federal government for abstinence education as he eliminated the state’s abstinence education program altogether. He couldn’t have picked a worse time to make his announcement.
Ryan T. Anderson on Abstinence on National Review Online#more
Ryan T. Anderson on Abstinence on National Review Online#more
11.23.2007
11.09.2007
Senate Panel Probes 6 Top Televangelists, Sen. Charles Grassley Asks Ministries To Turn Over Financial Records Within One Month - CBS News
The six ministries identified as being under investigation by the committee are led by: Paula White, Joyce Meyer, Creflo Dollar, Eddie Long, Kenneth Copeland and Benny Hinn. Three of the six - Benny Hinn, Kenneth Copeland and Creflo Dollar - also sit on the Board of Regents for the Oral Roberts University.CBS News
10.18.2007
Family Manager - Control Central
You’re juggling many jobs—running a household, nurturing children, making a living. Many of you are caring for aging parents, finishing degrees, and volunteering in the community. You’re striving to maintain physical, emotional, and spiritual balance, and find time for personal development and fun.
Family Manager - Control Central
Family Manager - Control Central
10.16.2007
The Rise of the Religious Left
By STEVEN MALANGA
October 16, 2007; Page A21, WSJ
Everyone knows the potent force of the Christian right in American politics. But since the mid-1990s, an increasingly influential religious movement has arisen on the left, mostly escaping the national press's notice.
This new religious left does not expend its political energies on the cultural concerns that primarily motivate conservative evangelicals. Instead, working mostly at the state and local level, and often in lockstep with unions, its ministers, priests, rabbis, and laity exert a major, sometimes decisive, influence in campaigns to enforce a "living wage," to help unions organize, and to block the expansion of nonunionized businesses like Wal-Mart.
The new religious left is in one sense not new at all. It draws its inspiration in part from the Protestant "social gospel" movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, especially Baptist Minister Walter Rauschenbusch, who believed that the best way to uplift the downtrodden was to redistribute wealth and forge an egalitarian society. Rauschenbusch called for the creation of a kingdom of heaven here on earth -- just as presidential candidate Barack Obama did last week at a church in South Carolina.
The popular Catholic writer John Ryan also advocated that government enact pro-union legislation, steep taxes on wealth, and more stringent business regulation. When FDR adopted several of Ryan's ideas, the priest was given the sobriquet "the Right Reverend New Dealer." His popularity reflected the tightening alliance between America's mainstream churches and organized labor. That alliance disintegrated during the 1960s, when clerics like the notorious rebel priests the Berrigan brothers began to agitate for a wider range of radical causes -- above all, a swift end to the Vietnam War. The more culturally conservative blue-collar workers who formed the union movement's core wanted no part of this.
The alliance has been revitalized thanks in large part to savvy labor bosses such as John Sweeney, who grew up in a prototypical Catholic pro-union household. When Mr. Sweeney took over the AFL-CIO in 1996, union membership was shrinking -- from 24% of the work force 30 years ago to 14.5% in 1996 (and just 12% today). He told church leaders that "unions need aggressive participation by the Church in our organizing campaigns."
The AFL-CIO launched "Labor in the Pulpits," a program that encouraged churches and synagogues to invite union leaders to preach the virtues of organized labor and tout its political agenda. Nearly 1,000 congregations in 100 cities nationwide now take part annually. Mr. Sweeney himself has preached from the pulpit of Washington, D.C.'s National Cathedral, urging congregants to join anti-globalization protests in the capital.
Under the auspices of Labor in the Pulpits, Catholic, Lutheran, Methodist and Presbyterian clerics have composed guidelines for union-friendly sermons and litanies, as well as inserts for church bulletins that promote union legislation. One insert asked congregants to pray for a federal minimum-wage hike and also -- if the prayers didn't work, presumably -- to contact their congressional representatives. Another urged congregants to lobby Congress to pass the Employee Free Choice Act -- controversial legislation that would let unions organize firms merely by getting workers to sign authorizing cards, rather than by conducting secret ballots, as is currently required.
The Chicago-based, union-supported Interfaith Worker Justice (IWJ) arranges for seminarians to spend the summer months working with union locals. Some 200 seminarians have helped unionize Mississippi poultry workers, aided the Service Employees International Union in organizing Georgia public-sector employees, and bolstered campaigns for living-wage legislation in California municipalities.
Working with IWJ, the labor movement has spawned some 60 new religious left groups, ranging from the Massachusetts Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice to the Chicago Interfaith Committee on Worker Issues to the Los Angeles-based Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice (Clue). In Los Angeles, Clue clergy helped crush several 2005 statewide ballot initiatives that unions opposed, including one that gave union workers the option of not paying dues that would fund union political activities.
In Memphis, clergy fought relentlessly -- via newspaper op-eds, public fasts, and preaching -- for the passage of living-wage bills that since 2004 have forced local businesses to hike wages well above the federal minimum. Labor-religious coalitions have worked spectacularly well: Some 125 municipalities have passed living-wage laws.
More than 100 religious organizations support IWJ financially, including the National Council of Churches of the USA (NCC), an umbrella organization of nearly 40 mainstream Christian denominations. The Presbyterian Church (USA), the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and the Episcopal Church are particularly active. The alliance between labor and the religious left also enjoys the powerful backing of the Catholic Church, whose American hierarchy, though often conservative on social issues, is firmly left-wing in its economic views.
Despite decades of economic progress that have reduced unemployment levels to record lows and made America a magnet for opportunity-seeking immigrants, leading clergy of the religious left depict the free market as a vast exploitative force, controlled by a small group of godless power brokers. Clergy describe Wal-Mart, for example, in terms that its thousands of suppliers, millions of employees, and tens of millions of customers would hardly recognize. The Reverend Jarvis Johnson, an IWJ board member, has urged congregants to invite the "hurting, blind and crippled" to a metaphorical banquet. Who are these poor, abused souls? "They are Wal-Mart associates who have to wait six months to a year to qualify for a health-care plan," Mr. Johnson explained.
Religious left leaders blindly refuse to acknowledge the considerable academic research showing that mandated wage hikes often eliminate the jobs of low-skilled workers -- the very people whom it seeks to help. David Neumark, for example -- a researcher at the University of California at Berkeley's Institute of Business and Economics Research and one of the world's foremost authorities on wage laws -- has found that while living-wage laws do boost the income of some low-wage workers, they also have "strong negative employment effects." That is, they vaporize jobs. In one study, Mr. Neumark noted that a 50% boost in the living wage produced a decline in employment for the lowest-skilled workers of between 6% and 8%.
Religious left clerics also ignore the evidence that much poverty in prosperous, opportunity-rich America results from dysfunctional -- dare one call it "sinful"? -- behavior. Around two-thirds of poor families today are single-parent households, largely dependent on government subsidies and headed by women with little education. The entry-level, low-wage work for which these mothers are qualified makes it hard to support large families. And the time they must devote to raising their kids makes it hard to climb the economic ladder. Poverty is increasingly about the irresponsible decision to have children out of wedlock. In many inner city communities where poverty is entrenched, 75% of all children are now born out of wedlock.
In any event, the religious left's sympathies do not seem to be those of churchgoers. While the NCC and its member churches pursue a variety of left-wing causes -- even partnering with the activist organization MoveOn.org and featuring speakers like Michael Moore at events -- a Pew poll found that 54% of white, mainline Protestants and 50% of Catholics voted Republican in the 2004 presidential elections. Those who attended church regularly voted Republican even more heavily -- at nearly the same rate as evangelical Christians, in fact.
For four decades, as the leadership of America's mainline churches has moved steadily leftward, those churches' memberships declined as a percentage of the U.S. population while the number of Christian evangelicals exploded. Left-wing clerics may be buying greater political influence with their alliance through organized labor, but the price may be further alienating their shrinking flock.
Mr. Malanga is senior editor at the Manhattan Institute's City Journal, from whose autumn issue this is adapted.
October 16, 2007; Page A21, WSJ
Everyone knows the potent force of the Christian right in American politics. But since the mid-1990s, an increasingly influential religious movement has arisen on the left, mostly escaping the national press's notice.
This new religious left does not expend its political energies on the cultural concerns that primarily motivate conservative evangelicals. Instead, working mostly at the state and local level, and often in lockstep with unions, its ministers, priests, rabbis, and laity exert a major, sometimes decisive, influence in campaigns to enforce a "living wage," to help unions organize, and to block the expansion of nonunionized businesses like Wal-Mart.
The new religious left is in one sense not new at all. It draws its inspiration in part from the Protestant "social gospel" movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, especially Baptist Minister Walter Rauschenbusch, who believed that the best way to uplift the downtrodden was to redistribute wealth and forge an egalitarian society. Rauschenbusch called for the creation of a kingdom of heaven here on earth -- just as presidential candidate Barack Obama did last week at a church in South Carolina.
The popular Catholic writer John Ryan also advocated that government enact pro-union legislation, steep taxes on wealth, and more stringent business regulation. When FDR adopted several of Ryan's ideas, the priest was given the sobriquet "the Right Reverend New Dealer." His popularity reflected the tightening alliance between America's mainstream churches and organized labor. That alliance disintegrated during the 1960s, when clerics like the notorious rebel priests the Berrigan brothers began to agitate for a wider range of radical causes -- above all, a swift end to the Vietnam War. The more culturally conservative blue-collar workers who formed the union movement's core wanted no part of this.
The alliance has been revitalized thanks in large part to savvy labor bosses such as John Sweeney, who grew up in a prototypical Catholic pro-union household. When Mr. Sweeney took over the AFL-CIO in 1996, union membership was shrinking -- from 24% of the work force 30 years ago to 14.5% in 1996 (and just 12% today). He told church leaders that "unions need aggressive participation by the Church in our organizing campaigns."
The AFL-CIO launched "Labor in the Pulpits," a program that encouraged churches and synagogues to invite union leaders to preach the virtues of organized labor and tout its political agenda. Nearly 1,000 congregations in 100 cities nationwide now take part annually. Mr. Sweeney himself has preached from the pulpit of Washington, D.C.'s National Cathedral, urging congregants to join anti-globalization protests in the capital.
Under the auspices of Labor in the Pulpits, Catholic, Lutheran, Methodist and Presbyterian clerics have composed guidelines for union-friendly sermons and litanies, as well as inserts for church bulletins that promote union legislation. One insert asked congregants to pray for a federal minimum-wage hike and also -- if the prayers didn't work, presumably -- to contact their congressional representatives. Another urged congregants to lobby Congress to pass the Employee Free Choice Act -- controversial legislation that would let unions organize firms merely by getting workers to sign authorizing cards, rather than by conducting secret ballots, as is currently required.
The Chicago-based, union-supported Interfaith Worker Justice (IWJ) arranges for seminarians to spend the summer months working with union locals. Some 200 seminarians have helped unionize Mississippi poultry workers, aided the Service Employees International Union in organizing Georgia public-sector employees, and bolstered campaigns for living-wage legislation in California municipalities.
Working with IWJ, the labor movement has spawned some 60 new religious left groups, ranging from the Massachusetts Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice to the Chicago Interfaith Committee on Worker Issues to the Los Angeles-based Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice (Clue). In Los Angeles, Clue clergy helped crush several 2005 statewide ballot initiatives that unions opposed, including one that gave union workers the option of not paying dues that would fund union political activities.
In Memphis, clergy fought relentlessly -- via newspaper op-eds, public fasts, and preaching -- for the passage of living-wage bills that since 2004 have forced local businesses to hike wages well above the federal minimum. Labor-religious coalitions have worked spectacularly well: Some 125 municipalities have passed living-wage laws.
More than 100 religious organizations support IWJ financially, including the National Council of Churches of the USA (NCC), an umbrella organization of nearly 40 mainstream Christian denominations. The Presbyterian Church (USA), the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and the Episcopal Church are particularly active. The alliance between labor and the religious left also enjoys the powerful backing of the Catholic Church, whose American hierarchy, though often conservative on social issues, is firmly left-wing in its economic views.
Despite decades of economic progress that have reduced unemployment levels to record lows and made America a magnet for opportunity-seeking immigrants, leading clergy of the religious left depict the free market as a vast exploitative force, controlled by a small group of godless power brokers. Clergy describe Wal-Mart, for example, in terms that its thousands of suppliers, millions of employees, and tens of millions of customers would hardly recognize. The Reverend Jarvis Johnson, an IWJ board member, has urged congregants to invite the "hurting, blind and crippled" to a metaphorical banquet. Who are these poor, abused souls? "They are Wal-Mart associates who have to wait six months to a year to qualify for a health-care plan," Mr. Johnson explained.
Religious left leaders blindly refuse to acknowledge the considerable academic research showing that mandated wage hikes often eliminate the jobs of low-skilled workers -- the very people whom it seeks to help. David Neumark, for example -- a researcher at the University of California at Berkeley's Institute of Business and Economics Research and one of the world's foremost authorities on wage laws -- has found that while living-wage laws do boost the income of some low-wage workers, they also have "strong negative employment effects." That is, they vaporize jobs. In one study, Mr. Neumark noted that a 50% boost in the living wage produced a decline in employment for the lowest-skilled workers of between 6% and 8%.
Religious left clerics also ignore the evidence that much poverty in prosperous, opportunity-rich America results from dysfunctional -- dare one call it "sinful"? -- behavior. Around two-thirds of poor families today are single-parent households, largely dependent on government subsidies and headed by women with little education. The entry-level, low-wage work for which these mothers are qualified makes it hard to support large families. And the time they must devote to raising their kids makes it hard to climb the economic ladder. Poverty is increasingly about the irresponsible decision to have children out of wedlock. In many inner city communities where poverty is entrenched, 75% of all children are now born out of wedlock.
In any event, the religious left's sympathies do not seem to be those of churchgoers. While the NCC and its member churches pursue a variety of left-wing causes -- even partnering with the activist organization MoveOn.org and featuring speakers like Michael Moore at events -- a Pew poll found that 54% of white, mainline Protestants and 50% of Catholics voted Republican in the 2004 presidential elections. Those who attended church regularly voted Republican even more heavily -- at nearly the same rate as evangelical Christians, in fact.
For four decades, as the leadership of America's mainline churches has moved steadily leftward, those churches' memberships declined as a percentage of the U.S. population while the number of Christian evangelicals exploded. Left-wing clerics may be buying greater political influence with their alliance through organized labor, but the price may be further alienating their shrinking flock.
Mr. Malanga is senior editor at the Manhattan Institute's City Journal, from whose autumn issue this is adapted.
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