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<...excerpted, the first half of the article is at the link>... Which brings me, at long last, to Eagle Eye. We went because we like Shia LaBeouf. Period. No other reason. And he came through for us – the same earnest everyman quality that made Nicolas Cage and Tom Hanks such beloved stars. The same combination of kindness and goofiness that makes us care when they are in danger – LaBeouf is the best thing to emerge from the Disney stable since Sean Connery. (Are you forgetting Darby O'Gill?) Director D.J. Caruso, whose work I had seen none of, is...

You know that rule about how teenagers aren't supposed to date until they're 16? Does anyone remember how old that rule is? I'm 57. That rule was already in place when I got to dating age in 1967. It never affected me much. It's not like girls were clinging to their phones, hoping I'd call. Plus, I didn't get a driver's license till I was 23. That really crimps a guy's style. In our ward in Greensboro, N.C., that rule seems to be universally respected. Including the often-ignored stipulations that even at 16, they should be group dates, so that...

<p>Sometimes it seems like this election is one big pillow fight. The air is now so full of floating feathers that it's hard to see the furniture, and the media isn't helping, as they blow the fluff around.</p> <p>But there are solid issues in this election, and how we vote will have lasting effect on our future.</p>

Would the Last Honest Reporter Please Turn On the Lights? By Orson Scott Card Editor's note: Orson Scott Card is a Democrat and a newspaper columnist, and in this opinion piece he takes on both while lamenting the current state of journalism. An open letter to the local daily paper — almost every local daily paper in America: I remember reading All the President's Men and thinking: That's journalism. You do what it takes to get the truth and you lay it before the public, because the public has a right to know. This housing crisis didn't come out of...

An open letter to the local daily paper – almost every local daily paper in America: I remember reading All the President's Men and thinking: That's journalism. You do what it takes to get the truth and you lay it before the public, because the public has a right to know. This housing crisis didn't come out of nowhere. It was not a vague emanation of the evil Bush administration. It was a direct result of the political decision, back in the late 1990s, to loosen the rules of lending so that home loans would be more accessible to poor...

We don't need a president who hasn't the courage to admit that his previous policy failed and openly change his mind -- the way President Bush did when he determined to change strategy and execute the surge. We saw your true colors when you sneered at white middle-class voters who cling to guns and religion because they're bitter, as if an entire class of "those people" can be analyzed and dismissed in a sentence. McCain was not my choice for President at the beginning of the campaign a couple of years ago, Mr. Obama. You were. I rooted for you....

They were right. Starting at the moment of his famous address at Harvard in 1978 (see http://snipurl.com/harvardspeech), Solzhenitsyn became, in effect, mute. Why? Because the cultural elite of the West is just as unhappy to hear itself criticized as the political elite of the Soviet Nomenklatura. How dare Solzehenitsyn fail to recognize that the American intellectual establishment was not in possession of Truth! How dare he point out that in our arrogance, we of the West were as blind to our own doom as the Communists? Let me quote just one passage from Solzhenitsyn's speech: "A decline in courage may...

The first and greatest threat from court decisions in California and Massachusetts, giving legal recognition to "gay marriage," is that it marks the end of democracy in America. These judges are making new law without any democratic process; in fact, their decisions are striking down laws enacted by majority vote. The pretext is that state constitutions require it -- but it is absurd to claim that these constitutions require marriage to be defined in ways that were unthinkable through all of human history until the past 15 years. And it is offensive to expect us to believe this obvious...

In all the flap about Obama's reckless comments about Iran, Cuba, and Venezuela not posing a threat to the U.S. because they're small and spend less on their military than we do, one statement he made has gone virtually unnoticed. Yes, it's important to realize that we have a presidential candidate who actually believes that the Soviet Union once told the U.S. "We're going to wipe you off the planet" (they never did). Is it as important as Gerald Ford's gaffe when he declared that Poland was a free country -- back when it was under Russian domination? Let's not...

It would have been so simple for Obama to handle this like a statesman instead of a whiner. President Bush went to Israel to affirm America's ironclad support of Israel's survival as a nation. While there are Americans who don't agree with it, this has been the policy of the United States from the foundation of Israel on. President Bush didn't invent the policy, but he affirms it more vigorously and intelligently than most presidents have done. President Bush said, "Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade...

In a world where a snob like Michael Moore and a smug manipulator like Al Gore can win Oscars for "documentaries" that play fast and loose with the truth, it's ironic that Ben Stein's Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, which makes a serious effort to tell the truth about a problem that's seriously damaging our civilization, not only won't get nominated for an Oscar but will certainly be attacked as anti-scientific. This is the opposite of the truth, or very nearly so. Ben Stein's film project was to expose the way rigid insistence on Darwinist dogma is expelling not only brilliant...

Excerpt - WASHINGTON -- Federal Bureau of Investigation agents raided the Office of Special Counsel here, seizing computers and documents belonging to the agency chief Scott Bloch and staff. More than a dozen FBI agents served grand jury subpoenas shortly after 10 a.m., shutting down the agency's computer network and searching its offices, as well as Mr. Bloch's home. Employees said the searches appeared focused on alleged obstruction of justice by Mr. Bloch during the course of an 2006 inquiry into his conduct in office. ~ snip ~

WorldWatchFirst appeared in print in The Rhinoceros Times, Greensboro, NC By Orson Scott Card February 3, 2008 The Insanity of Parties I'm writing this as the Super Tuesday results are starting to come in, and you know what? I'm going to be miserable no matter who wins. And do you know why? Because there's not one candidate who comes close to representing my positions on all the issues I care about. Love McCain's position on the war. Happy with his position on illegal aliens, at least as it used to be. Loathe his position on almost everything else. Hate the...

IT WAS THE last Sunday of 2007, and I was preparing to substitute for our gospel doctrine teacher, who had just had her second child. The text of the lesson was the book of Revelation, chapters 5, 6 and 19 through 22. I read of the "golden vials full of odours, which are the prayers of saints" (5:8), and I thought: Wouldn't it be much more convenient if all the images in this book could come with a nice little explanation like that? And then it dawned on me: Maybe the explanation was given only where the meaning would not...

In the News & Record last Sunday, Lewis Beale of Newsday wrote about how "War films can be hard for Hollywood to peddle." It seems that "of the four flms released in the past six months dealing with the current world situation -- all with big-name stars and the full Hollywood studio push -- none earned a profit in its initial theatrical release." Stephen Bochco explains the failure of these war films (as of his own TV series on the war, Over There) by saying, "It's a hugely unpopular war, and there's a staggering amount of depressing coverage.... I don't...

      |     WorldWatchFirst appeared in print in The Rhinoceros Times, Greensboro, NC By Orson Scott Card December 1, 2007 A Stand-up President I keep hearing how Ronald Reagan was such a great president because he always stood up for what he believed and did the right thing no matter what. Funny -- that's not the Ronald Reagan I saw. I watched Ronald Reagan start us down the long ugly road of capitulating to Muslim terrorists. Maybe there was no choice but to withdraw the Marines after the barracks was bombed in Lebanon in 1983. Certainly...

In the News & Record last Sunday, Lewis Beale of Newsday wrote about how "War films can be hard for Hollywood to peddle." It seems that "of the four flms released in the past six months dealing with the current world situation -- all with big-name stars and the full Hollywood studio push -- none earned a profit in its initial theatrical release." Stephen Bochco explains the failure of these war films (as of his own TV series on the war, Over There) by saying, "It's a hugely unpopular war, and there's a staggering amount of depressing coverage.... I don't...

On Monday I got a letter from a friend of mine who is a sergeant in the US Army. With permission of his commanding officer (he does not reveal any classified information), I'm sharing it with you. He writes: I've been on the ground in Iraq for a few weeks now, and thought I'd chime in with a grunt's-eye view. In Sadr Al-Yusifiyah, an area to the East of Anbar province (just across the Euphrates from Anbar, actually), things are moving in a very interesting and hopeful direction. About six months ago, something happened that the Americans are calling "The...

There are those who would like to tell you that no religion is civilized, but these tend to be people whose ignorance of history is so profound as to appear deliberate. Human beings sometimes do terrible things, and when they do, they invariably find reasons to invoke their belief system, whatever it is, to excuse their bad behavior. Thus Communists have committed their barbarities in the name of "the good of the people," just as Christians and Muslims and practically everybody else, when they decided certain people needed killing or oppressing, found a way to excuse themselves in the name...

So Al Gore gets the Nobel Peace Prize, and my wife says to me, "Wow. First time they ever gave the peace prize for religion." So true. And so sad. What has Al Gore done for the world? Ran loaded hearings in the Senate to promote the idea of global warming with no evidence worth a bucket of ... whatever it was John Nance Garner said was in such a bucket. Then he was President Clinton's pet veep, treated with genial contempt, which he earned by his incompetence at running even an inconsequential office like that. Then he tried to...

It was quite a spectacle. Democratic Congressmen and Senators standing there denouncing Rush Limbaugh for attacking American soldiers by calling them "phony." We already know how much they hate Limbaugh and other conservative radio talk show personalities. Talk radio is the only part of the American media that the Left does not already control, one way or another; that's why they're trying to reintroduce the "fairness" doctrine (equal time for all points of view) only for talk radio, while the media the Left controls remains "unfair." But if they can make Rush Limbaugh look unAmerican, unpatriotic, well -- then all...

It was quite a spectacle. Democratic congressmen and senators standing there denouncing Rush Limbaugh for attacking American soldiers by calling them "phony." We already know how much they hate Limbaugh and other conservative radio talk show personalities. Talk radio is the only part of the American media that the Left does not already control, one way or another; that's why they're trying to reintroduce the "fairness" doctrine (equal time for all points of view) only for talk radio, while the media the Left controls remains "unfair." But if they can make Rush Limbaugh look unAmerican, unpatriotic, well – then all...

Each time a group of Christians comes up with an unfamiliar way of understanding the scriptures and our relationship with God, there are other Christians who are quick to insist that anyone who believes like that can’t really be Christian. Much blood has been shed over these doctrinal differences; wars have been fought, boundaries have been changed, and people have gone into exile. Whether it was the often bloody struggle between Arians and Athanasians, between Lutherans and Catholics, between the Church of England and the Puritans, people have been willing, it seems, to die, to kill, and to deprive others...

History does repeat itself. Never exactly – there are always enough differences in the details that people who are determined not to learn anything from the past can find an excuse. But history shows patterns precisely because human beings don't change. After the First World War (then called the Great War), Britain and France were exhausted. They had triumphed – barely – but they had left more than a million dead soldiers on the battlefields.

      |     Civilization WatchFirst appeared in print in The Rhinoceros Times, Greensboro, NC By Orson Scott Card April 29, 2007 Don't You Dare Ask for Proof! In last Sunday's News and Record, columnist Andrew Brod heaped ridicule on those who dare to contest the religion of global warming. What is his proof? He doesn't think he needs any. In fact, he's against proof. He likes it when governments make massive changes without any evidence that those changes are necessary. He spends his whole column citing political documents like the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on...

Warning: don't get hung up on a few disagreements with a democrat Orson Scott Card - we have overwhelmingly more points of agreement. If you disagree with me, see my tagline    :^)Duty. Honor. Country. Once these words could inspire the hearts of patriots. Now, in our benighted era, the elite in our nation sneer at the words and at those who still believe in them. ::: But there is such a thing as honor, and whether we name it by its right name or not, we depend on it. Honor is akin to the word "honest." We say a person...

It's not going to be the best movie you see this year, but it might be the most important. Amazing Grace is the story of William Wilberforce, the man who was most responsible (though he certainly did not work alone) for abolishing the slave trade and, ultimately, slavery itself, beginning with the British Empire, but ultimately around the world. The trouble with a story like this is that while Wilberforce's effort was heroic, fighting in what seemed to be a losing cause — yet one that could not, morally, be abandoned — the great moments consisted of speeches and...

All in a Good Cause Here's a story you haven't heard, and you should have. An intelligence source, working for a government agency. He's not a spy, he's an analyst. He uses computers to crunch numbers and at the end of his work, out pops the truth that was hiding in the original data. Let's call him "Mann." The trouble with Mann is, he has an ideology. He knows what he wants his results to be. And the original numbers aren't giving him that data. So the agency he works for won't be able to persuade people to fight the...

What Is Driving Global Climate? Science isn't done by consensus. It's done by rigorous testing. When a hypothesis -- or a computer model -- fails to correspond to the actual real-world data, you throw it out. That's what the real climate scientists are doing. They have found, in recent years, a very close correspondence between global climate and variations in the amount of radiation the Earth receives from the Sun. The light and heat we get varies depending on the distance and position of the Earth and the amount of radiation the Sun puts out. The Earth's distance and position...

Here's a story you haven't heard, and you should have. An intelligence source, working for a government agency. He's not a spy, he's an analyst. He uses computers to crunch numbers and at the end of his work, out pops the truth that was hiding in the original data. Let's call him "Mann." The trouble with Mann is, he has an ideology. He knows what he wants his results to be. And the original numbers aren't giving him that data. So the agency he works for won't be able to persuade people to fight the war he wants to...

Let me tell you about an audiobook that I hated. I didn't hate it because it was badly written – it was mediocre in the way that mediocre thrillers usually are, and that means it would ordinarily have been tolerable. No, the reason I stopped listening to Steve Berry's The Alexandria Link is that this book is evil. I don't mean it's about evil. I don't even mean that it is evil-porn, like those horror books whose authors are pervertedly devoted to thinking up cool ways to torture and kill people. I mean that this book, to the degree that...

President Bush is a genuinely awful speaker. Wouldn't it be a shame if we lost a war for the survival of western civilization because we had a President who reads his speeches in a dispassionate drone? It's been interesting to watch the media respond to the speech. Not that many months ago, the media was reporting on the speeches of Democrats and other critics of the war, talking about how Bush's plan in Iraq had failed because we always needed "more boots on the ground." None of them -- not even the generals who hated defense secretary Rumsfeld with such...

Keeping Things CivilAfterword to the novel Empireby Orson Scott Card The originating premise of this novel did not come from me. Donald Mustard and his partners in Chair Enterainment had the idea for an entertainment franchise called Empire about a near-future American civil war. When I joined the project to create a work of fiction based on that premise, my first order of business was to come up with a plausible way that such an event might come about. It was, sadly enough, all too easy. Because we haven't had a civil war in the past fourteen decades, people think...

Here's how it happens: America stupidly and immorally withdraws from the War on Terror, withdrawing prematurely from Iraq and leaving it in chaos. Emboldened, either Muslims unite against the West (unlikely) or collapse in a huge war between Shiites and Sunnis (already beginning). It almost doesn't matter, because in the process the oil will stop flowing. And when the oil stops flowing, Europe and Japan and Taiwan and Singapore and South Korea all crash economically; Europe then has to face the demands of its West-hating Muslim "minority" without money and without the ruthlessness or will to survive that would allow...

Civilization WatchFirst appeared in print in The Rhinoceros Times, Greensboro, NC By Orson Scott Card December 17, 2006 Honoring Those Who Died I was on my way home from speaking to officers at an air base, so when, during a brief layover, I saw a young man in uniform waiting for the same flight as me, I thought nothing of it -- I was used to uniforms. It happened that during boarding, we were nearly alone at the back of the plane for a few minutes. We struck up a conversation. This young man was nearing the end of his...

Producer Joel Silver's Silver Pictures has optioned Empire, an upcoming book from bestselling sci-fi author Orson Scott Card, for a big-screen adaptation. The novel is currently slated to hit bookshelves on November 28. According to the Card's official Web site, here is the story of Empire: The American Empire has grown too fast, and the fault lines at home are stressed to the breaking point. The war of words between Right and Left has collapsed into a shooting war, though most people just want to be left alone. The battle rages between the high-technology weapons on one side and militia...

Does anybody here remember when Doonesbury was funny? Never mind. It was funny this past Sunday, in a bitter, ironic kind of way. The comic strip, by Garry Trudeau, shows a professor teaching a class, in which he compares two presidents -- Bush and Clinton. Of Bush he says, "The first president initiates a bloody, costly, unending war on false premises ... and approves covert policies of illegal detentions, kangaroo courts, extraordinary renditions, torture, and warrantless wiretapping of thousands of Americans." Of Clinton, he says, "The second president lies about hooking up with an intern. Question: Which one should be...

I believe in two-party government. I especially believe in it when it prevents Congress from doing anything – because that prevents them from doing stupid things. Of course, the Republicans were already doing a fine job of keeping even one-party government in a permanent logjam. Plus, the Republicans were also proving themselves just as unable to remain worthy of power while holding it as the Democrats did during their decades of dominance from 1954 to 1994.This election proves only that the monolithically leftwing mainstream media can make the public believe we are losing a war that we are winning. As...

There is only one issue in this election that will matter five or ten years from now, and that's the War on Terror. And the success of the War on Terror now teeters on the fulcrum of this election. If control of the House passes into Democratic hands, there are enough withdraw-on-a-timetable Democrats in positions of prominence that it will not only seem to be a victory for our enemies, it will be one. Unfortunately, the opposite is not the case -- if the Republican Party remains in control of both houses of Congress there is no guarantee that the...

Civilization WatchFirst appeared in print in The Rhinoceros Times, Greensboro, NC By Orson Scott Card September 17, 2006 Homework, Part I The Worst Job in the World What if you had a really lousy job? You're only employed for seven hours a day, but you have to ride the bus for half an hour each way. While you're there, they only let you go to the bathroom at certain times. You only have ten minutes to get from one work station to another, and somehow you also have to use the toilet and get your new work materials from a...

A new book by David Horowitz and Richard Poe has enraged the Left and alarmed many conservatives. It exposes the machinations of a radical clique working at the highest levels of government and finance to undermine American power. That book is The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton and Sixties Radicals Seized Control of the Democratic Party. It hit the New York Times bestseller list in its first week in print. Here to tell us about The Shadow Partyis co-author Richard Poe, our esteemed colleague at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, where he serves as director of research. Mr....

August 26, 2006... Operation Street Corner Action Report! Boots on the Ground for the soldiers in the fieldOSC goes to the Great Patriot PA Biker Event!– A hot day outside of Monaca, PA –Aug. 26, 2006, Monaca, PA... Vets for the Truth / Boot Murtha took its traveling OSC displays to the Rolling Thunder (PA Chapter 4) Great Patriot Biker Event. The event was held just outside Monaca on a great strip of land right along Route 18 at the Midway Bar & Grill. We were able to meet multitudes of great people and American patriots and discussed issues one-on-one with our...

I think it's about time we remembered that words are supposed to have meanings. It's sort of a quiet agreement among all the speakers of a particular language, that you try to use a word according to its agreed-upon meaning. For instance, I recently heard a Democratic congressman refer to the War on Terror -- specifically, the Iraq campaign -- as "catastrophic." He seemed to be a reasonably educated guy. I think if a doctor told him, "What you have is a catastrophic illness," he would understand what the word meant and prepare for death or permanent disability. Or if...

OSC Show on the Road!- Beautiful Day in Johnstown – August 22nd found 12th District OSC Director Nikki Sheppick and her Second-in-Command, District Assistant Laura Hough (pronounced "Huff," for those who are wondering), traveling to Johnstown for one of their traveling Operation Street Corner display events.  The day was beautiful, and Johnstown has a very nice Central Park with large beautiful shade trees.  We were in the nicest of environments. Two of our Johnstown colleagues, Harry & Tony, volunteered to accompany us during our 10:00 AM to 3:00 PM event.  Incidentally, the Johnstown City Manager was most cooperative in giving us permission...

July 29, 2006... Rain Day Festival in PA: first planned Vets For The Truth / Boot Murtha & Operation Street Corner (OSC) activity by OSC District 12 Exec. Director Nikki A.C. Sheppick We enjoyed ourselves immensely that this special Annual Greene County event, which has been taking place here in Pennsylvania since 1874. The day was cloudy with the threat of rain - but it never did - at least in Waynesburg, PA, during the Rain Day festivities.  The VFTT - OSC was blessed with a nice corner space and the town officials were not in any way non-supportive of...

      |     World WatchFirst appeared in print in The Rhinoceros Times, Greensboro, NC By Orson Scott Card July 16, 2006 Know Thy Enemy I do hope that the readers of this column already know that no decent person could ever advocate that Israel negotiate with Hamas and Hezbollah or give in to their demands in the slightest in order to get their kidnapped soldiers back. The slightest concession would only guarantee that more and more Israelis would be kidnapped in the future. The only way to extinguish kidnapping is to make sure that it never,...

When our young men (and women) volunteer to serve in our military, it is usually with an eye to serving their country, even at the risk of their own lives. In the process of their service, they will take orders, constantly. Sometimes those orders will come from people they respect – even love. Sometimes, though, the orders will come from people they dislike, or disdain, or fear or hate. Yet the ones who last in the military learn to submerge their own will and keep silent, except when some truly outrageous or dangerous or illegal order is given – whereupon...

Poor Abdul Rahman. He lived in Germany, where there is freedom of religion. He forgot that freedom of religion only applies to non-Muslims who convert to other faiths. Muslims aren't allowed to follow their individual consciences. If you're born a Muslim, then in your entire life you will never, never have a choice about what religion to belong to. Because if you convert from Islam to another faith, good Muslims have a right -- no, a duty -- to kill you. Oh, wait. How can I say that? I keep forgetting -- we've been assured ten thousand times since 9/11...

WorldWatchFirst appeared in print in The Rhinoceros Times, Greensboro, NC By Orson Scott Card February 12, 2006 Three Books That Name Names Bernard Goldberg, 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America (And Al Franken is #37). Kate O'Beirne, Women Who Make the World Worse: and How Their Radical Feminist Assault Is Ruining Our Schools, Families, Military, and Sports David Horowitz, The Professors: the 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America We Americans have been through massive cultural and social revolutions in the past two generations. We've drastically revised the way we marry, the way we have sex, the way we educate...

I keep wondering why I'm getting flashbacks to the 1960s. I never took any hallucinogenic drugs. And yet I keep hearing people on TV saying we need to bring the troops home now. Of course, back in the 60s, the people saying that were all wearing long hair and, if they were of the guy persuasion, beards; now it's people in suits. So it occurred to me that maybe they're the ones having the flashbacks. They really think this war is Vietnam. Having romanticized the anti-war movement of the 1960s, they think they're wrapping themselves in the mantle of heroes....