A reminder of the treasure and blessings we have been entrusted with.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gj4pUphDitA
Orthodox Editors
Life is not a Defined Benefit
Human Events | Star Parker | Nov. 2, 2007
The U.S Comptroller General and head of the GAO, Government Accountability Office, has described the entitlements crisis facing this country as a “tsunami” that approaches while we continue to party on the beach.
What GAO head David Walker is talking about are the massive upcoming obligations under Social Security and Medicare that we have no funds to meet. Tens of trillions of dollars of supposed commitments, promises made to us by our government, that today we have no clue how we’ll pay.
Twin Survives Multiple Abortion Attempts, Refuses to Die
Miracles happen all around us, we just have to stop and pay attention.
Daily Mail UK | Lucy Laing | Nov. 3, 2007
They say twins share a strong bond – but the one between Gabriel and Ieuan Jones was unbreakable. When doctors found that Gabriel was weaker than his brother, with an enlarged heart,and believed he was going to die in the womb, his mother Rebecca Jones had to make a heartbreaking decision.
Doctors told her his death could cause his twin brother to die too before they were born, and that it would be better to end Gabriel’s suffering sooner rather than later. Mrs Jones decided to let doctors operate to terminate Gabriel’s life.
Firstly they tried to sever his umbilical cord to cut off his blood supply, but the cord was too strong. They then cut Mrs Jones’s placenta in half so that when Gabriel died, it would not affect his twin brother.
Majority of San Diego Burn Patients are Illegal Immigrants
Union-Tribune | Cheryl Clark & Leslie Berestein | Oct. 31, 2007
The fact that 11 of the 18 wildfire victims lying in UCSD Medical Center’s burn unit are illegal immigrants with no apparent health coverage highlights the daunting financial challenge hospitals face in providing long-term, intensive care for all those who need it.
“These are the most expensive kinds of cases, but we don’t look at these patients and say, oh, because they aren’t legal residents, we’ll stop providing care or stop changing their bandages,” said Dr. Thomas McAfee, UCSD’s physician-in-chief. “It’s part of our ethic to continue to provide this care no matter what.”
Hillary Clinton Contradicts Herself in Debates, Lacks Vision
So much for “let your yes be yes, and your no be no.” If this is what’s in store for the future of this country we’re in serious trouble.
Politico.com | Roger Simon | Oct. 31, 2007
PHILADELPHIA — We now know something that we did not know before: When Hillary Clinton has a bad night, she really has a bad night. In a debate against six Democratic opponents at Drexel University here Tuesday, Clinton gave the worst performance of her entire campaign. (….)
John Edwards immediately went for the jugular. “Unless I missed something,” he said, “Sen. Clinton said two different things in the course of about two minutes. America is looking for a president who will say the same thing, who will be consistent, who will be straight with them.”
Are the Poor Getting Poorer?
Human Events | Walter E. Williams | Oct. 30, 2007
For the most part, long-term poverty today is self-inflicted. To see this, let’s examine some numbers from the Census Bureau’s 2004 Current Population Survey. There’s one segment of the black population that suffers only a 9.9 percent poverty rate, and only 13.7 percent of their under-5-year-olds are poor. There’s another segment of the black population that suffers a 39.5 percent poverty rate, and 58.1 percent of its under-5-year-olds are poor.
Among whites, one population segment suffers a 6 percent poverty rate, and only 9.9 percent of its under-5-year-olds are poor. Another segment of the white population suffers a 26.4 percent poverty rate, and 52 percent of its under-5-year-olds are poor.
What do you think distinguishes the high and low poverty populations? The only statistical distinction between both the black and white populations is marriage. There is far less poverty in married-couple families, where presumably at least one of the spouses is employed. Fully 85 percent of black children living in poverty reside in a female-headed household.
The Task of Orthodox Theology in America Today
OrthodoxNet.com | Fr. Alexander Schmemann | September 26, 1966
WHAT DO WE MEAN when we speak of the Orthodox theological task in America today? It is proper to begin with this question because the title of my paper may seem to suggest a theological orientation of which Orthodoxy is suspicious, but which seems to predominate in the West today. It is the reduction of theology to a given “situation” or “age,” a stress on “relevance” understood almost exclusively as a dependence of theology, its task, method and language on the “modern man” and his specifically modern “needs.”
From the beginning, therefore, we must emphasize that Orthodoxy rejects such a reduction of theology, whose first and eternal tasks is to search for Truth, not for relevance, for words “adequate to God” (theoprepeis logoi), not to man. Theology is truly relevant because it is truly Christian when it remains a scandal for the Jews, foolishness for the Greeks and is at odds with this world and its passing “cultures” and “modernities.”
A Dangerous Precedent Abuilding in California
Free Congress Foundation | Paul M. Weyrich | October 25, 2007
There is terrible news from California. On October 12, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law three bills which, the opposition argues, introduce the radical homosexual agenda into educational institutions. Unquestionably the traditional purpose of public education is to teach reading, writing, mathematics and other fundamentals necessary for well-rounded intellectual development. Instead, these institutions apparently will become miniature laboratories for redefining nature, implementing “gender theory” and experimenting with the effects of sexual lifestyles.
Colorado State University Shames Itself
TownHall | Dennis Prager | October 9, 2007
On Sept. 21, 2007, the editorial board of the Colorado State University student newspaper decided to publish a four-word editorial. Apparently finding the traditional mode of expressing ideas — arguing a case in a few hundred words — too demanding, they instead wrote four words: “Taser this … F— Bush.” Needless to say, they spelled out the F word.
The “Taser” referred to the police using a stun gun on a student at the University of Florida who refused to relinquish the microphone to other students at a speech at the university given by Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass. (How George Bush is connected to the use of a Taser on a left-wing student interrupting a speech by a left-wing anti-Bush senator was never explained by the editor.)
When universities were governed by people — either liberals or conservatives — who valued civilization i.e., before the contemporary left took over the universities, such an “editorial” was inconceivable. It would have been regarded as the work of moral and intellectual idiots whose political philosophy, to the extent that they had any, was anarchism.