Obama’s War on Fox News and Half the Country

American Thinker | by Allan Erickson | Oct. 22, 2009

On the one hand, we should celebrate the war between Fox News and the White House.

It is a good thing President Obama & Co. are angry with Fox. It means Fox is doing its job, you know, holding the Executive Branch accountable, like a real news organization. This is good news. Traditionally in America, the Fourth Estate’s role has been to challenge those in power, challenge the assumptions, examine the assertions, and check for accuracy, all the while carrying both sides of the story. [Read more…]

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The Internet Is Altering Our Brains, in a Good Way

Fox News | UCLA Study | Oct. 19, 2009

Adults with little Internet experience show changes in their brain activity after just one week online, a new study finds.

The results suggest Internet training can stimulate neural activation patterns and could potentially enhance brain function and cognition in older adults.

As the brain ages, a number of structural and functional changes occur, including atrophy, or decay, reductions in cell activity and increases in complex things like deposits of amyloid plaques and tau tangles, which can impact cognitive function.

Research has shown that mental stimulation similar to the stimulation that occurs in individuals who frequently use the Internet may affect the efficiency of cognitive processing and alter the way the brain encodes new information. [Read more…]

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Queering Our Schools

More dangerous ideas from Obama’s ‘safe schools czar’
The Washington Times | Oct. 16, 2009

Fifty-three Republican congressmen yesterday demanded that President Obama fire his embattled “safe schools czar,” Kevin Jennings. Mr. Jennings’ bizarre sexual agenda for American grade schools is one reason the president should dump this dangerous radical.

Mr. Jennings wrote the foreword to a 1998 book titled, “Queering Elementary Education.” The book he endorsed was a collection of essays by different authors who supported teaching young children about homosexuality. Mr. Jennings’ foreword explains why he thinks it is important to start educating children about homosexuality as early as activist-educators can get away with doing so. “Ask any elementary-school teachers you know and – if they’re honest – they’ll tell you they start hearing [anti-homosexual prejudice] as soon as kindergarten.” And “As one third-grader put it plainly when asked by her teacher what ‘gay’ meant: ‘I don’t know. It’s just a bad thing.’ ” [Read more…]

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That The Bishops Be Blameless

Notes on Arab Orthodoxy | by Metropolitan Georges Khodr | Oct. 17, 2009

One who sees himself as nothing becomes something when spiritual men say it to him. No one approaches the divine glory by his own power. The divine glory pulls him in and if a person approaches it, he feels that he is nothing and he remains effaced in his own eyes until the Day of Reckoning. Indeed, each one of us needs to know his own talents because in this is a recognition of God’s gift. But one is lost if he thinks that his talents are his own possession. They only exist on account of God’s favor, which He takes back when He so wishes.

Thus in the Church of God we accept each responsibility as a gift. This is the meaning of service and service comes down to you from above. If you are entrusted with it, don’t allow yourself to feel that you deserve it. [Read more…]

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Everyone Stop Breathing

BreakPoint | by Chuck Colson | Oct. 16, 2009

OK, global warming is no laughing matter. But it is also not a scientific fact, as the new movie Not Evil Just Wrong makes clear. But that’s not stopping leaders in wealthy Western nations from pushing radical “solutions” to this dubious problem.

Not Evil Just Wrong does a great job of clearing the air over some contentious issues. Take the hysteria over CO2 emissions, for example. CO2 is not a pollutant. It’s an odorless gas that every living being gives off when he or she exhales. As Patrick Moore, once a founder of Greenpeace, says in the film, “Anybody who knows anything about biology knows that carbon dioxide is the most important nutrient of all of life. It is the currency of life.” [Read more…]

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Welcome to the School of Social Engineering

Center for a Just Society | by Ken Connor | Oct. 16, 2009

In the wake of the controversial dismissal of Green Jobs Czar Van Jones, another of the President’s men has been attracting negative attention.

The President has chosen teacher and GLBT activist Kevin Jennings for advice and guidance on how best to foster a safe and drug-free environment for America’s school children. Much has already been written about Jennings’s controversial background, his troubling associations, his questionable ethics, and his obvious lack of qualification and suitability for the job of Safe Schools Czar. Given Obama’s need to stay in the public’s good graces in order to advance the cause of health care reform, it would hardly be surprising to see Kevin Jennings gently shoved off the President’s roster of advisors if this criticism continues. [Read more…]

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Signature in the Cell


Spectrum Magazine | by Ken Peterson | Sep. 23, 2009

This year marks the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin. The book set off what has been at times a ferocious argument concerning the validity and scope of his theories. A new book by Stephen C. Meyer, Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design, is not about the transmutation of species over time. Rather, it is about a much older controversy that has extended for thousands of years concerning the origin of life, something that Darwin did not really address in his book. This old controversy has often been between two essential poles: materialistic naturalism (time plus random, undirected chance) or God.

For example, we can see elements of this controversy played out in the Bible over the centuries of its development. For the sake of brevity I will only note Genesis 1:1 (“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”) and Psalms 14:1 (“The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God.”) In the 150 years since 1859 the dominant scientific establishment has, it is fair to say, fully embraced the “materialistic naturalism” model generally and specifically as applied to origins. [Read more…]

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