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RUSH: Cookie is working on a couple of audio sound bites and Drive-By Media reaction to the Messiah's speech in Germany. I have an idea what she's going to send. I never know what she's going to send unless I specifically asked for it. But Cookie is so good I seldom have to ask for it. I get what I want anyway. Now, one thing about this speech. I'll wait until we get the bites and see if what I'm expecting in these, citizen of the world stuff. When he started talking about that, that's when the red flags went...

Halima Bashir The village seemed to be strangely quiet, almost as if it were holding its breath, awaiting something. I was discussing supplies we needed for the clinic when I heard a distant commotion. There were faint cries and the pounding of running feet. I wondered, fearfully, if it was an attack. Suddenly, I caught sight of a crowd of people surging out of the marketplace. Among them were figures carrying heavy burdens in their arms. As the crowd drew closer, I realised what they were carrying: it was the girls from the village school. I could see heads lolling...

Those who put a high value on words may recoil at the title of Jonah Goldberg's new book, "Liberal Fascism." As a result, they may refuse to read it, which will be their loss -- and a major loss. Those who value substance over words, however, will find in this book a wealth of challenging insights, backed up by thorough research and brilliant analysis. This is the sort of book that challenges the fundamental assumptions of its time -- and which, for that reason, is likely to be shunned rather than criticized.

Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled. Matthew 5:6

  Senior Fellow  John R. Bolton   "The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated," once wrote Mark Twain. "Greatly exaggerated" also described the repeated, periodic predictions of American decline. Indeed, from the very moment of Independence, there have been those predicting America's demise, decline or irrelevance. The only variation is whether the eclipse of the United States will be produced by its own shortcomings or the unmatchable superiority of those doing the eclipsing. Betting against the United States--a sport even many Americans engage in--may be popular, but is has never proven profitable. Nor will it as long...

WASHINGTON, D.C., JULY 23, 2008 (Zenit.org).- The chairman of the U.S. bishops pro-life committee says an issue is being discussed by members of Congress that should be a matter of agreement between "pro-lifers" and "pro-choicers": respect of conscience. Cardinal Justin Rigali of Philadelphia, chairman of the bishops' Committee for Pro-Life Activities, affirmed this in a letter Friday to members of Congress. The cardinal's letter responded to a debate that arose when the New York Times reported on July 15 that it had a draft of proposed federal regulations on the conscience rights of health care providers. According to the Times...

BUT WILL THEY RESPECT HIM IN THE MORNING?July 23, 2008 Back before the Republican Party was saddled with John McCain as its nominee, The New York Times called him "the only Republican who promises to end the George Bush style of governing from and on behalf of a small, angry fringe." The paper praised him for "working across the aisle to develop sound bipartisan legislation" and predicted that he would appeal to "a broader range of Americans than the rest of the Republican field." At the same time, the Times denounced "the real" Rudy Giuliani as "a narrow, obsessively secretive,...

'The View' host Sherri Shepherd covers the latest issue of 'Precious Times' magazine. In an eight-page feature story in the Christian women's lifestyle publication, the 41-year-old comedienne shares candid revelations about her faith, including her conversion from being a Jehovah's Witness to Christianity. "Before I converted to Christianity, I was a Jehovah's Witness. In 1993, my mother was dying from diabetic complications. My sister was heavy into drugs, and we would have to go and get her from crack houses. I was in a very physically abusive relationship. I was sleeping with a lot of guys and had more abortions...

In a desolate public park in Columbus, Ohio, a man responded to the advances of a topless woman. She asked him to "show me yours." When he did, police officers arrested him. Columbus law says her being topless is OK; exposing his genitalia is not. Why did cops hide in the shadows to arrest a man no one but they could see? On last week's "20/20", Dr. Marty Klein pointed out that the police weren't protecting children. "There were no children anywhere in sight. In fact, there were no adults anywhere in sight." Klein says it's part of "America's War...

When Senator Barack Obama steps onto the stage on Thursday, next to Berlin’s Victory column, the world will be expecting a momentous speech. The bar is high because, as even his detractors concede, Mr Obama is a remarkable speaker. He first shot to prominence when he moved many at the 2004 Democratic convention to tears. He announced he would run for president last year with a beautifully-crafted address in Abraham Lincoln’s home town of Springfield, Illinois. A pivotal moment of his epic primary battle with Hillary Clinton was his Philadelphia speech about race after the incendiary utterances of his former...

A stray cat had kittens in our yard. My wife attempted to barricade the kittens in a contained area to protect them from predators. Short of caging them, this proved impossible. The rambunctious kittens escaped my wife's protection to explore, wrestle and play. With every fall, their climbing skills improved. Mama cat taught “gecko catching 101”. Soon the kittens were supplementing their breast milk with gecko snacks. Had my wife been successful in her intrusive attempts to protect them, the kittens' growth would have been stunted leaving them ill equipped to survive. The kittens scenario illustrates the superiority and compassion...

RUSH: Grab audio sound bite number 26 first, Mike. I didn't know we'd get to this this early. I asked Cookie to put together a little montage here of all the stuttering around that Obama did in his press conference today and I want you to hear this because -- and we didn't repeat anything here. It goes 46 seconds, and we're doing this because we hear constantly, "What a great orator and a great communicator! Ohhhh, this man is smooth!" Just listen. This is a great illustration here of what happened when you take the teleprompter and your prepared...

On the front page of Sunday’s Times, Gretchen Morgenson described Diane McLeod’s spiral into indebtedness, and now a debate has erupted over who is to blame. Some people emphasize the predatory lenders who seduced her with too-good-to-be-true credit lines and incomprehensible mortgage offers. Here was a single mother made vulnerable by health problems and divorce. Working two jobs and stressed, she found herself barraged by credit card companies offering easy access to money. Mortgage lenders offered her credit on the basis of the supposedly rising value of her house. These lenders had little interest in whether she could pay off...

Who was Tony Snow? His four profound contributions to conservatism. This past year has been a saddening one for many conservatives, who lost William F. Buckley, Jr. in February and then United States Senator Jesse Helms earlier this month, on Independence Day. The former was, in many respects, the founder of modern conservatism and its most articulate voice for over four decades. The latter was conservatives' most reliable leader in the United States Senate for just about as long, never afraid to fight the battles that needed to be fought to hold liberal initiatives at bay, including ending the Senate's...

To those for whom Obama is an almost religious icon, the thought of him soiling himself by compromising his stances and breaking his promises, is a letdown of almost Biblical proportions. Poor Barack Obama. In the space of a few short weeks, he has gone from liberal savior with a 15-point lead over John McCain, to a mere mortal in a dead heat in the polls. He has alienated some of his base by flip-flopping on issues like the FISA vote, partial-birth abortion and most importantly, stating that he will continue to “refine” his Iraq War policy. In addition to...

SYDNEY (AFP) - - Pope Benedict XVI on Sunday urged hundreds of thousands of young Catholics to beat back a "spiritual desert" spreading through the modern world as he closed Catholic World Youth Day in Australia. The pope celebrated an open-air mass in Sydney that organisers said drew 400,000 worshippers in the climax of a week of prayer and pop concerts during which the pontiff made a historic apology for child sex abuse by clergy. In his final mass, the pope said the worshippers' youthful energy helped reinvigorate the church and urged them to become "messengers of love" to counter...

On 1st November 2007, Professor Antony Flew’s new book There is a God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed his Mind was published by HarperOne. Professor Flew has been called ‘the world's most influential philosophical atheist’, as well as ‘one of the most renowned atheists of the 20th Century’ (see Peter S. Williams’ bethinking.org article “A change of mind for Antony Flew”). In his book, Professor Flew recounts how he has come to believe in a Creator God as a result of the scientific evidence and philosophical argument. Not surprisingly, his book caused quite a stir – as can...

Address on behalf of Senator Barry Goldwater Rendezvous with Destiny October 27, 1964 This speech is a verbatim transcript of "The Speech" given as a portion of a pre-recorded, nationwide televised program sponsored by Goldwater-Miller on behalf of Barry Goldwater, Republican candidate for the presidency whom Ronald Reagan actively supported. 4,626 words Thank you very much. Thank you and good evening. The sponsor has been identified, but unlike most television programs, the performer hasn't been provided with a script. As a matter of fact, I have been permitted to choose my own ideas regarding the choice that we face...

Next time you step on a glob of tar on a beach in Santa Barbara County, you can thank the oil companies that it isn't a bigger glob.

Exclusive: US rocker Ted Nugent's outrageous rant on UK knife crime By Jody Thompson, 17/07/2008 (What's this?)American rock star Ted Nugent has followed in Lily Allen's footsteps to be the latest celebrity to comment on the UK's knife crime problem. However, unlike Lily, he's set to spark controversy with his outrageous views. An advocate of hunting and gun-ownership rights, Nugent currently serves on the Board of Directors of the National Rifle Association and thinks the problem would stop if Britons were allowed to arm themselves with guns. Talking mid-set during his gig at London's Indigo venue in the 02 Arena...

The roughest way to learn to swim is to be thrown in the deep end of the pool, and have to dog-paddle your way to the side if you want to keep breathing. My parents never did that to me, I know only one person who actually experienced that. But, metaphorically? Now that’s another matter. This column is about Clarence Thomas, Paul Carre, the University of Detroit, and the Boy Scout Motto. Begin with Clarence Thomas. I have just finished reading his autobiography, My Grandfather’s Son: A Memoir. It is a gripping tale that would be utterly unbelievable, except that...

Sydney has never seen anything like it since the Olympics. Not even that event, however, could match the spectacle of a papal ‘boatacade’ gliding past the bridge and the opera house to deliver Pope Benedict into the cheering embrace of 150,000 young people from around the world. The Pope’s arrival at World Youth Day had a theatrical quality worthy of the media world in which today’s young people live. By contrast, his message to them was delivered in a self-effacing, direct manner, making clear that the Pope refuses to cast himself as a rock star; he is a teacher and...

This page reflects the ongoing Levi/DRJ debate on Barack Obama and Rev. Wright. (The background, rules, and relative positions are all set forth in this post.) When I have time, I’ll simply cut and paste their arguments so that they can be followed without having to wade through all the comments. Thanks to Dana for the suggestion.

LONDON: A group of scientists, including one of Indian origin, has discovered "world's first bird" that lived 235 million years ago. In the landmark study, published by the Paleontological Association, experts unveiled an extraordinary prehistoric lizard-like "flying" reptile which lived 235 million years ago. The scientific community believes that birds descended from reptiles 50 million years later making the kuehneosaurs the world's first "bird". The long-extinct species, which inhabited the warm late Triassic period from 235 to 200 million years ago, was first discovered in the UK. According to experts, the kuehneosaurs, which grew up to 2 feet, used extensions...

FOR months, our political punditry foresaw one, and only one, prospective gender contest looming in the general election: between the first serious female presidential candidate and the Republican male “warrior.” But those who were dreading a plebiscite on sexual politics shouldn’t celebrate just yet. Hillary Clinton may be out of the race, but a Barack Obama versus John McCain match-up still has the makings of an epic American gender showdown. The reason is a gender ethic that has guided American politics since the age of Andrew Jackson. The sentiment was succinctly expressed in a massive marble statue that stood on...

In a speech yesterday here in Washington, Al Gore challenged the United States to "produce every kilowatt of electricity through wind, sun, and other Earth-friendly energy sources within 10 years. This goal is achievable, affordable, and transformative." (Well, the goal is at least one of those things.) Gore compared the zero-carbon effort to the Apollo program. And the comparison would be economically apt if, rather than putting a man on the moon—which costs about $100 billion in today's dollars—President Kennedy's goal had been to build a massive lunar colony, complete with a casino where the Rat Pack could perform. Gore's...

July 17, 2008 Late last week, I attended a Capitol Hill briefing about an obscure United Nations resolution on "defamation of religions" that some call the "soft jihad." Lined up in front of a hearing room in the Rayburn House Office Building were six panelists including David Harris, a Canadian who was sued for libel in 2004 by the Canadian branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) for remarks he made on a radio show. The chief topic of discussion was a U.N. Commission on Human Rights resolution, backed by the Organization of the Islamic Conference, that addresses "the...

<p>WARREN, Michigan (CNN) – John McCain on Thursday described Barack Obama’s Senate record as “more to the left” than Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont — an independent who caucuses with Democrats but has described himself as an “independent Democratic socialist.”</p>

Let's suppose that people do decide to "buy local" with the goal of saving the world and reducing their carbon footprint. This will increase the demand for locally grown foods, but it will also have an unintended and likely deleterious consequence; it will increase the demand for farm implements and labor. Since the decision to buy locally is essentially the decision to forsake comparative advantage, every unit of agricultural output will be more resource intensive than it would be under specialization, division of labor, and trade. In other words, each additional unit of output will require more resources than it...

What can you say about a people who welcome a child murderer as a hero? Most Americans are familiar with the brutal murder of wheelchair-bound Leon Klinghoffer on the cruise ship Achille Lauro in 1985. Terrorists led by Abu Abbas (who was later given safe haven in Baghdad by Saddam Hussein) took the ship captive and threw Klinghoffer overboard. But few recall that the ship was seized to bargain for the release of, among others, Samir Kuntar from an Israeli prison. Kuntar had taken part in an earlier terror attack. In 1979, as a 16-year-old, he and four others had...

No one knows how life began, but so-called theories of evolution are continually being announced. This book, The Altenberg 16: Will the Real Theory of Evolution Please Stand Up? exposes the rivalry in science today surrounding attempts to discover that elusive mechanism of evolution, as rethinking evolution is pushed to the political front burner in hopes that "survival of the fittest" ideology can be replaced with a more humane explanation for our existence and stave off further wars, economic crises and destruction of the Earth. Evolutionary science is as much about the posturing, salesmanship, stonewalling and bullying that goes on...

Free Congress Foundation frequently is asked for a recommendation for good institutions of higher learning. Paul T. Yarbrough agreed to undertake a review of the best institutions in this country. He spent months acquiring catalogues, reviewing materials and asking questions. What follows is his exclusive report. We hope this will be an annual exercise. [SNIP] For our survival as a nation, to advance the cause of liberty and preserve what is left of our Judeo-Christian culture, faith and reason must infuse the life of an American college. There is no other way to achieve excellence. Do any institutions in our...

What else is there to do on Thursdays besides FReep and listen to TSN?! C'mon, eat, drink, breathe SAVAGE?Savage’s websiteLOTS of links to listen to the Savage radio show here!!!

Smoking ban leads to new religion Wednesday 16 July 2008Café owners in the Netherlands are joining religious movement known as the One and Universal Smokers Church of God, the Telegraaf reports on Wednesday.‘We stand firmly behind the church’s teachings and that is smoking,’ Cor Busch, owner of the former Lindeboom café in Alkmaar told the paper. ‘Smokers are being discriminated against… but a beer and a cigarette belong together.’ Smoking has been banned in Dutch bars since July 1. Several dozen bars have joined the movement which claims the Dutch constitution and European rules give it legitimacy under the...

Summer 2008 Falling Upwards: Declinism, The Box Set Robert J. Lieber Is America finished? Respected public intellectuals, think tank theorists, and members of the media elite seem to think so. The scare headline in a recent New York Times Magazine cover story by Parag Khanna titled “Waving Goodbye to Hegemony” asks, “Who Shrunk the Superpower?” Almost daily, learned authors proclaim The End of the American Era, as the title of a 2002 book by Charles Kupchan put it, and instruct us that the rise of China and India, the reawakening of Putin’s Russia, and the expansion of the European Union...

There is a belief abroad in many conservative circles that the U.S. is "a Christian nation". This belief is found in perhaps its most extreme form in the Mormon doctrine that the Constitution of the United States is a divinely inspired document. Less extreme versions hold that Christian piety was an shaping influence on the thinking and writing of the Founding Fathers, and Christianity therefore has (or ought to have) a privileged position in the political and cultural life of the U.S. The Mormon doctrine is unfalsifiable. But claims about the beliefs and intentions of the Founding Fathers are not,...

A 2500 year old Persian treasure dubbed the world's 'first bill of human rights' has been branded a piece of shameless 'propaganda' by German historians. The Cyrus cylinder, which is held by the British Museum, is a legacy of Cyrus the Great - the Persian emperor famed for freeing the Jews of ancient Babylon after conquering the city in 539 BC. A copy of the cylinder, which is covered in cuneiform script supposed to detail the ancient charter of rights, also hangs next to the Security Council Chamber in the United Nations headquarters in New York, where it is held...

THIS IS NOT A DRILLJuly 16, 2008 Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, or as she is called on the Big Dogs blog, "the worst speaker in the history of Congress," explained the cause of high oil prices back in 2006: "We have two oilmen in the White House. The logical follow-up from that is $3-a-gallon gasoline. It is no accident. It is a cause and effect. A cause and effect." Yes, that would explain why the price of oral sex, cigars and Hustler magazine skyrocketed during the Clinton years. Also, I note that Speaker Pelosi is a hotelier ......

A woman has settled her lawsuit against Los Angeles County involving the disposal of her infant daughter as "bio-waste" after she had an abortion. 36-year-old Yolanda Garnett filed the negligence lawsuit September 25, 2007 in Los Angeles Superior Court. The lawsuit stated Garnett had asked the Coroner's office to return her daughter's body for burial after an autopsy was performed but was told the aborted fetus was deemed bio-waste and thrown out.

Which shows us all exactly what we need to do with regard to defeating him. Repeat it like a chant. Show it in every way possible. Barack Obama is just another politician. He is no different than a John Kerry or an Al Gore. He will manipulate. He will say what is needed to get elected. He will go negative and attack. He will buy the election if it is possible for him to do so. His past shows him to be nothing extraordinary and quite ordinary. Even if every single one of these points is made and lands in...

Pauline Kael & trash cinema Will Smith's films are the endgame of a critic's take on Bonnie and Clyde Robert Fulford, National Post Published: Tuesday, July 15, 2008 Happy as a clam, rich as a minor Rockefeller, Will Smith turned up recently on a 60 Minutes update of an item from last December. He was there to promote his current movie, Hancock, but his main theme was his huge success and the way he's engineered it. He left me thinking sad and rueful thoughts about, of all people, the late Pauline Kael, the most passionate, stimulating and argument-starting critic in...

Barack Obama has proposed increasing every major Federal tax. He supports increasing individual income tax rates, allowing the Bush tax cuts, which cut rates for all income levels, to expire. He has proposed almost doubling the capital gains tax rate, from 15% today to 28%. He supports more than doubling the tax on dividends, from 15% to as high as 39%. He has proposed numerous corporate tax increases. He supports increasing the death tax back to the stratospheric levels that applied before President Bush. He supports increasing the payroll tax on higher income earners. In other words, if you run...

I got married last week. Hence my absence from this space for the first time in seven years. It was a beautiful wedding in Acre, Israel, overlooking the ocean at sunset. My father wrote the music for the processional, which brought everyone to tears. My bride looked stunning, of course. We broke the glass, we danced, we ate and we celebrated until deep into the night. Outside the wedding hall stood a guard. Every wedding in Israel requires an armed guard to prevent terrorist attacks. Only the armed guards prevent the infliction of mass casualties at joyous events; only the...

Dr. Wilson was not picking a fight when he published “Sociobiology” in 1975, a synthesis of ideas about the evolution of social behavior. He asserted that many human behaviors had a genetic basis, an idea then disputed by many social scientists and by Marxists intent on remaking humanity. Dr. Wilson was amazed at what ensued, which he describes as a long campaign of verbal assault and harassment with a distinctly Marxist flavor led by two Harvard colleagues, Richard C. Lewontin and Stephen Jay Gould. The new fight is one Dr. Wilson has picked. It concerns a central feature of evolution,...

YOU'D think that by now we'd have a firm grip on the trajectory of the solar system's most worrisome chunk of rock. In fact we have only a hazy understanding of how likely the asteroid Apophis is to strike Earth. What's more, budget cuts may shut down the telescope that could clarify the situation. Since Apophis was discovered in 2004, asteroid-watchers have known that it has a slim chance of hitting Earth in 2036. At 270 metres wide, it is too small to rival the object that wiped out the dinosaurs, but it could cause devastating tsunamis were it to...

Return to the Article July 15, 2008Memory and the LeftBy J.R. Dunn It's difficult to avoid exasperation over the left's absolute refusal to acknowledge the new realities of the Iraq war. The surge, the Anbar awakening, the collapse of the militias (particularly that belonging to everybody's favorite would-be caliph, Moqtada al-Sadr) -- it's as if none of it ever happened, as if one the most impressive turnabouts in modern military annals never took place. The left, including its Democratic political wing and placeholders in the media, continue on with the same defeatist drone that we've heard since 2003, concentrating...

THROUGH A GLASS, DARKLY Through the travail of the ages, Midst the pomp and toil of war, Have I fought and strove and perished Countless times upon this star. In the form of many people In all panoplies of time Have I seen the luring vision Of the Victory Maid, sublime. I have battled for fresh mammoth, I have warred for pastures new, I have listed to the whispers When the race trek instinct grew. I have known the call to battle In each changeless changing shape From the high souled voice of conscience To the beastly lust for rape....

SACRAMENTO -- An alliance of insurance companies and environmentalists wants to bring a new kind of mileage-based auto insurance to California and charge motorists only for the number of miles actually driven. Called pay as you drive, the option is available from a few insurers in 34 states -- but not California -- as well as Canada, Japan and Europe. One company, GMAC Insurance Group, says its customers -- whose mileage is tracked by General Motors Corp.'s OnStar system -- have reduced the premiums they pay by 13% to 54%. And California drivers could expect to get similar savings if...

The most effective of all morality-based arguments for same-sex marriage, the one that persuades more people than any other argument, is the one that equates opposition to same-sex marriage with the old opposition to interracial marriage. The argument, repeated so often that it sounds incontestable, is this: Just as parts of American society once had immoral laws that forbade whites and blacks from marrying, so, today, society continues to have immoral laws forbidding men from marrying men and women from marrying women. And just as decent people overthrew the former, decent people must overthrow the latter. Thanks in large part...

A ghostly figure, supposedly the spirit of a dead soldier from a key battle in the English Civil War, has been captured on film by a group of paranormal enthusiasts. The spirit of a dead soldier from the Battle of Naseby has supposedly been captured on film by a group of paranormal enthusiasts The Northampton Paranormal Group caught the figure on camera during a visit to the site of the Battle of Naseby, a field between the villages of Clipston and Naseby in Northamptonshire, last month. The visit coincided with the 363rd Anniversary of the Battle of Naseby. Members said...