The Point

• "The Establishment's Palin Panic"
• "Korea's population crisis"
• "Letter to John Calvin"
• "Chinese baby girls sold for adoption"

What is this?

• "For 'Modern Gals,' Religion as Off-the-Rack Therapy"
• "Reverse discrimination ruling leaves confusion"
• "Evangelical concern for Jon and Kate"
• "Partnership rights in place for gay couples by end of year [in Ireland]"
• "Review of India's gay-sex laws"
• "The Woman in the Picture"
• "When Love Turns to Scandal"
• "Obama reaffirms support for gay-rights activism"
• "Pride Parades, Mark Sanford and 'Fear and Ignorance'"
• "Jackson, Sanford and weirdness"
• "How God Converted an Atheist"

What is this?

• "Gov. Sanford admits to extramarital affair"
• "Giving the green light to suicide"
• "Huckabee and Stewart on abortion"
• "Tenn. Planned Parenthood loses gov't funding"
• "I Would Die for You: Life and death of a 15-year-old missionary"
• "Selflessness Amid Tragedy Offers Solace"
• "Ideas Online, Yes, but Some Not So Presidential"
• "The uninsured: A bogus excuse for trillions in new welfare spending"

What is this?

• "Blessed"
• "Dad feels cheated on Father's Day"
• "The Invisible Hand of Population Control"

What is this?

I've been following the events in Iran with fascination, all the more because a friend of mine just returned from a mission trip there. As she pointed out, with such a minuscule percentage of the Iranian population professing Christ (0.2%, according to Wikipedia), the young people who are risking their lives for the sake of freedom are, in most cases, risking much, much more--their eternal destiny and a life apart from God. Pray for the Iranians to know the true freedom of the Gospel.

One of the reasons we know so much about what has been happening in Iran this last week is technology. The kinds of things that become useless time wasters for us (who cares what Ashton Kutcher ate for lunch?) are the very things that have allowed news of the post-election chaos in Iran to make it past government censors and a foreign media ban. NBC Nightly News ran a piece last night on several Iranian youth who are attending school here in the U.S. and are working hard to keep their peers back home online despite government bans.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

At the same time, over at the State Department, a leftover from the Bush administration has been the driving force behind keeping Twitter online and working with cell phone providers to develop technology that would allow people to access Twitter without Internet service.

I guess this Time piece on geeks inheriting the earth has finally come true. If nothing else, they may help to make the earth a more hospitable place for the people of Iran. We can all hope.

What is this?

• "Iran: Election Aftermath and World Reaction"
• "America's 'Bermuda solution' angers Britain"
• "Obama Admin Hearts DOMA (For Now). Do Gays Still Heart Obama?"
• "Is My Marriage Gay?"
• "U.S. Births Hint at Bias for Boys in Some Asians"

What is this?

• "Is Pain a Moral Good?"
• "Yes I Can"
• "Stop, in the Name of Love"
• "Sonia Sotomayor and bootstraps"
• "Classic"
• "Clinton Invites Controversial Muslim Leader on Conference Call"
• "People Choose News that Fits Their Views"
• "Megan Fox: Another Nail in the 'Movie Star' Coffin" (some vulgarity in comments)

What is this?

• "4 teens charged as adults in locker room sexual assault case" (disturbing descriptions)
• "Marriage in the 2009 Legislative Sessions"
• "Johnny Cash: Fade to Black"
• "Saving Milwaukee's Best"

What is this?

Lanny Davis is about as enthusiastic a Democrat as one can find. An effective communicator and lawyer, he may be best remembered as one of Bill Clinton's chief defenders during the Lewinsky scandal.

But he found in his diametrical political opposite, the late Jack Kemp, a good friend, one who could vigorously disagree with him on issues while still enjoying him and caring for him as a person. This article by Davis shows wonderfully that the feeling was mutual.

John Wesley once encouraged his followers to note how even a cow will look up over the fence in front of it to see what is beyond it, if only out of curiosity. He encouraged his followers to hold fast to their cherished faith and beliefs while being secure enough in them to investigate what might be worthwhile in another person.  

Lanny Davis and Jack Kemp were able to find common ground on several issues, despite their different vantage points--all because they saw in each other something more than just an opponent.

(Image courtesy of the Washington Times)

What is this?

• "Presidential Proclamation: LGBT Pride Month"
• "Obama Says U.S. Could Be Seen As a Muslim Country, Too" (via The Corner)
• "Starvation by Court Order"
• "Susan Boyle and the celebrity machine -- when will we learn?"
• "Brazil Finds More Wreckage from Jetliner Crash"

What is this?

• "Accommodations I"
• "That old devil race, &c."
• "The Gospel and the Gosselins"
• "As the Myths Abound, So Does Islamic Outreach"

What is this?

• "Couple: County Trying to Stop Home Bible Studies" (via Some Have Hats)
• "On Sotomayor, Some Abortion Rights Backers Are Uneasy"
• "Review: Up"
• "Beat the Dealer"

What is this?

• "U.S. to Expand Immigration Checks to All Local Jails"
• "Is Hollywood Finally Promoting Traditional Values?"

Posting will be light Monday because of Memorial Day.

What is this?

• "A New Trend in Motherhood"
• "Why journalists deserve low pay"
• "Vancouver sex trade workers to be offered media training prior to Olympics"
• "Parents Find New Math Book Ineffective; Schools Sticking with It"

What is this?

This week has been designated Foster Care Prayer Week by several Christian organizations, including our friends at Show Hope. More than half a million kids are in foster care in the U.S. on any given day.  Many are there because their homes were unsafe for them to remain in, while others wind up in foster care because their parents have been arrested and there were no relatives available to care for them.

I do hope you'll pray for kids in foster care this week, but there are other ways you can help these children. Becoming a foster parent is the obvious way. Kids in crisis need a stable, safe place to live, and if they can do this in the presence of a family that loves God and models His love to those children, what an impact that could have.

There's another way. I'm in training right now to be a volunteer Guardian ad Litem for kids in foster care, part of the nationwide effort to have an advocate assigned to every child in foster care in this country. You can read more about this effort at the web site for the National CASA ("Court Appointed Special Advocates") program. 

The web site for this year's Prayer Vigil is loaded with other ideas and resources, including a section on why this issue and these kids matter to God. Go check it out--and while you're praying for kids in foster care, pray about how you might get involved in helping them.

(Image © Cry of the Orphan)

What is this?

• "Atheists: No God, no reason, just whining"
• "Coal Dust and Foot-Washing"
• "Bringing Up Baby in the Big House"
• "Let Them Eat Arugula"
• "'Me So Holy' App Too Much for Apple"
• "My Personal Credit Crisis"

What is this?

An interesting feature of President Obama's commencement speech at Notre Dame yesterday (transcript here, video here):

The president spoke of the need "to reconcile our ever-shrinking world with its ever-growing diversity -- diversity of thought, diversity of culture, and diversity of belief . . . [to] find a way to live together as one human family." On some subjects, he spoke as though this need to cooperate -- to find "common ground," as he said elsewhere in the speech -- were the highest goal:

The soldier and the lawyer may both love this country with equal passion, and yet reach very different conclusions on the specific steps needed to protect us from harm. The gay activist and the evangelical pastor may both deplore the ravages of HIV/AIDS, but find themselves unable to bridge the cultural divide that might unite their efforts. Those who speak out against stem cell research may be rooted in an admirable conviction about the sacredness of life, but so are the parents of a child with juvenile diabetes who are convinced that their son's or daughter's hardships can be relieved.

But on other subjects, he spoke as if the highest goal were for right to win and wrong to be defeated:

After all, I stand here today, as President and as an African American, on the 55th anniversary of the day that the Supreme Court handed down the decision in Brown v. Board of Education. Now, Brown was of course the first major step in dismantling the "separate but equal" doctrine, but it would take a number of years and a nationwide movement to fully realize the dream of civil rights for all of God's children. There were freedom rides and lunch counters and Billy clubs, and there was also a Civil Rights Commission appointed by President Eisenhower. It was the 12 resolutions recommended by this commission that would ultimately become law in the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Under which category does abortion fall? In the president's mind, it appeared to fall under the first: "When we open up our hearts and our minds to those who may not think precisely like we do or believe precisely what we believe -- that's when we discover at least the possibility of common ground. . . . That's when we begin to say, 'Maybe we won't agree on abortion, but we can still agree that this heart-wrenching decision for any woman is not made casually, it has both moral and spiritual dimensions.'" This isn't how he spoke about the freedom rides and the lunch counters and the Billy clubs.

Considering that, at this moment, the tide of popular opinion -- perhaps even the tide of history -- appears to be shifting against Obama and his view of abortion, he may want to rethink that position.

(Image © Nancy Stone for the Chicago Tribune)

What is this?

• "Two Practical Politicians, Obama and Barry, Draw the Line at Same-Sex Marriage"
• "Top Senator: Obama's Pro-Abortion Legal Counsel Pick Dawn Johnsen Lack[s] Votes"
• "'Can I Vomit Right Now?': MSNBC Anchor Slams Trump Decision on Miss CA USA"

What is this?

• "Christians in Gaza Make Their Appeal to the Pope"
• "The best critique yet of Dan Brown's 'Angels and Demons'..."
• "Going Up"
• "Same-sex marriage pits blacks against gays in test of liberal 'tolerance'"

What is this?

• "God is Back: How Ned Flanders won the evangelical crusade"
• "'China' Stuns with Power & the Pity"
• "The beauty pageant where looks don't matter but respect for parents does: Welcome to Saudi's 'Miss Beautiful Morals' contest"
• "Today's tykes: Secure kids or rudest in history?"
• "Our Father, Who Art in Flagrante: Passion Pics Bestir Celibacy Debate"
• "'Outrage' Drags Politics' Conservative Wingtips out of the Closet"

What is this?

Chuck Colson has been asked to deliver the eulogy for his friend Jack Kemp at the National Cathedral on Friday. But he's already offering a tribute in today's BreakPoint commentary.

Jack might well have been President—and would have been a great one—were it not for two things: He would never compromise his convictions, nor would he attack his opponents. Sadly, it’s hard to resist those things and still get to the White House.

His courage was on display to the very end. During the times I visited him over the last months of his life, I was taken by how he kept his spirit up even as the cancer devastated his body.

Jack was a giant in our midst. He had a heart for the same kind of people Prison Fellowship serves—the poor, the oppressed, and the downtrodden. His wife, Joanne, has been a board member at Prison Fellowship for many years.

He also shared our Christian commitment to human life, telling the New York Times how a personal tragedy made him “more aware of the sanctity of human life, [and] how precious every child is.”

This and more is why Jack’s death is such a great loss to me personally. Joanne and his four beautiful children—all Christians—are in my prayers. How proud of them Jack was. This family’s Christian witness has touched countless lives.

Read more.

(Image © Prison Fellowship Ministries)

What is this?

Dave,

Here's what comes to mind:

1. On the one hand, we seem to be determined to follow Western Europe's lead, no matter how badly and obviously we see those cultures and states weaken before our eyes. Given the greater European appreciation for the cigarette, and given the current American governmental appetite for buying $timulu$ with taxpayer dollars, one could almost imagine something as hilariously pathetic as required cigarette consumption. "Drag deep, men, and silently thank Saint Keynes for giving us his Magic Multiplier."
2. On the other hand, there's too much Clinton-era precedent for directing the full power of the state against Evil Big Tobacco. And you've got liberal Meddlers In Chief like Mayor Bloomberg who believe it their job to save the ignorant hoi polloi from their precious vices. So it's hard to see us going pro-cig in our policy.
3. Then again, the anti-smoking lobby believed the 1998 Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement between Big Tobacco and the states' attorneys general constituted a perverse incentive for smoking. So ... maybe our policy precedent is a tad unclear.
4. Last thought: For now, we thankfully lack China's coming population implosion. Math is the harshest of taskmasters, and it does not bode well for the retirement of China's older generations, given the comparatively tiny financial base upon which those retirees will rely. So ... you know ... maybe the Chinese government is trying to hook the older workers on devil tobaccy to, er, whittle away at those retiree numbers!

I humbly submit all of these decidedly subpar thoughts for your consideration.

Allen

What is this?

• "Friends, Foes of Same-Sex Marriage Monitor District's Legislative Moves"
• "That Familiar Ring"
• "Princess Like Me: Questions Raised by Disney's 'Princess and the Frog'"
• "Presidential prayers"
• "Going Dutch? No Thanks"
• "DENIED: Biogtry of the Obamatrons"

What is this?

What's happening? Call it the Europe syndrome. Last April I had occasion to speak in Zurich, where I made some of these same points. After the speech, a few of the twenty-something members of the audience approached and said plainly that the phrase "a life well-lived" did not have meaning for them. They were having a great time with their current sex partner and new BMW and the vacation home in Majorca, and saw no voids in their lives that needed filling.

~ Charles Murray, The 2009 Irving Kristol Lecture, March 12, 2009

Author and political scientist Charles Murray recently delivered the address at the American Enterprise Institute's annual dinner. His talk was entitled "The Happiness of the People" and is posted on AEI's website.

Murray's lecture is a great worldview read. What he calls the "Europe Syndrome" is a way of thinking ... in other words, a worldview. Though Murray admires Europe in some ways, he unpacks some of the core beliefs of the modern worldview that has shaped Western Europe -- a worldview that is spreading like the swine flu among many of America's elites and current leaders. Murray describes a core belief of this worldview in the following way.

Human beings are a collection of chemicals that activate and, after a period of time, deactivate. The purpose of life is to while away the intervening time as pleasantly as possible.

If that's the purpose of life, then work is not a vocation, but something that interferes with the higher good of leisure. If that's the purpose of life, why have a child, when children are so much trouble--and, after all, what good are they, really? If that's the purpose of life, why spend it worrying about neighbors? If that's the purpose of life, what could possibly be the attraction of a religion that says otherwise?

Government's job, therefore, is to minimize unpleasantness so that we can while away the intervening time between our activation and deactivation. European-style social democracies are quite successful toward this end. This line of thinking also explains current European trends such as below-replacement birthrates, increased leisure time, fewer hours spent working, and lots of beautiful but empty cathedrals and churches.

What is this?

• "Declining Notre Dame: A Letter from Mary Ann Glendon" (via Mere Comments)
• "How Iowa Happened"  
• "The Celebration of Life and the Culture of Death" 
• "Say Yes. What Are You Waiting For?"
• "Cardinal Backs Pregnant Women Support Act"  
• "Congress, Carbon, and the Poor: Why Wealthier Is Healthier"  
• "Comedian's Daughter Bites Back on Malaria"  

What is this?

• "Why Is Hollywood Silent on Roxana Saberi?"
• "Shame Is Fleeting" 
• "Generation Me" 
• "A Hundred Anxious Days" 
• "Searching for the Spirit" 
• "Raising Katie" 
• "Haydn Go Seek"

What is this?

• "Happy Earth Day"
• "Same-Sex Marriage and Religious Liberty Issues in Connecticut" (via The Corner)
• "The Crappiest Generation" (mild profanity/vulgarity)
• "In time of victory, why is the left so angry?"

What is this?

• "De-Baptism Gains a Following in Britain"
• "National Bully Day"  
• "Teens locked up for life without a second chance" 
• "Bush-era interrogation memo: No torture without 'severe pain' intent"  
• "Obama derangement syndrome" 
• "Genius locus: Autism and extraordinary ability"  

What is this?

• "Planned Parenthood Matters"
• "UCSF team closer to creating safe embryonic-like stem cells" 
• "Demographic winter heralds same-sex marriage spring" 
• "Conscience vs. Conscience" 
• "A Mother's Day Request from the Sisters of Life" (via The Corner) 

What is this?

• "Young Iranian Christians Held in Notorious Prison without Charge"
• "Every Who Down in Whoville"  
• "Q&A: Rick Warren" 
• "'Our Father'"  
• "A Resilient Christianity"  
• "This I Believe"  
• "The New Blacklist" (sexual content and profanity) 
• "Are Gay Activists Too Wedded to the Cause?"  
• "Ex-POW McCain Returns to 'Hanoi Hilton' Prison"  
• "Kicking at the darkness" 

What is this?

Immigration, as an issue, reminds me a lot of capital punishment. There's a number of poor, sentimental arguments on either side, and a few genuinely good arguments on both sides.

Oddly or not, the best immigration arguments seem to exist in the space where free market economics and Christian love intersect. In general, I think that increased immigration is a good thing, so long as (1) we control our borders, (2) we encourage a Melting Pot more than the Cultural Mosaic (including strict enforcement to address gang problems), and (3) we take a minimalist approach to entitlements. Of course, we quite unfortunately do none of those things today, except perhaps address the gang problems.

Anyhow, this NRO post -- in which Richard Nadler takes on John Derbyshire (and his third degree blackbelt in TaeKwonEeyore) -- is one of the better commentaries I've read on the topic in a while.

What is this?

...where "n" equals current number of couples worldwide and "z" equals an unspecified but somehow measurable "amount" of environmental quality.

From Chuck Colson's BreakPoint on Friday:

In February, Jonathan Porritt, the chairman of the UK’s Sustainable Development Commission, said that couples with more than two children were placing an “‘irresponsible’ burden of the environment.”

...[S]ix weeks later, he upped the ante: he declared that the UK must cut its population from its current 61 million to 30 million “if it is to build a sustainable society.”

Really? It's that simple? Huh, who knew? It sounds so certain and data-based, doesn't it?

What is this?

As the resident "birth dearth" guy, I wasn't prepared for my reaction to this NPR story. As a Catholic who has written a lot about the impact of falling birth rates (if you are so inclined, Google "Roberto Rivera" and "birth dearth" or "empty cradle" to see just how much), you would expect that I would applaud a story about my evangelical brethren eschewing birth control and having big families.

Instead, I felt kind of creepy. It obviously wasn't the subject matter and it wasn't the families featured in the report -- I liked them a lot.

It wasn't the quality of the reporting, either. While, as my friend Terry Mattingly will tell you, the press doesn't "get religion," NPR does. This is especially true of Barbara Bradley Hagerty. And it certainly wasn't anything that Kathryn Joyce, the author of Quiverfull: Inside The Christian Patriarchy Movement, had to say. I tune out terms like "Patriarchy movement" and those who speak them.

No, what creeped me was what Nancy Campbell, "a leader of the Quiverfull movement," told NPR:

"The womb is such a powerful weapon; it's a weapon against the enemy . . . I think, help! Imagine if we had had more of these children! . . . My greatest impact is through my children. The more children I have, the more ability I have to impact the world for God."

Sigh. Stuff like this strengthens my growing conviction that translating the scriptures into the vernacular was, on balance, a bad idea. While I guess that I should be grateful that Campbell doesn't think that children are literally projectiles (although you never know), calling them "weapons" is the kind of thing that if we were Jewish would be called a shanda fur die goyim (a shame before the Gentiles), something that brings us all into disrepute before the world by confirming some of the worst suspicions about us.

What is this?

Recently we ran Glenn Loury's "A Nation of Jailers" in the Daily Roundup. James Q. Wilson of the American Enterprise Institute has now written a rebuttal. An excerpt:

Glenn Loury rightly directs our attention to the troubling fact that we have put into prison a large fraction of our citizens, especially African American men. No one can be happy with this state of affairs. It is difficult to create and sustain a decent society when many of its members are former convicts.

Worrisome as this may be, Loury says little about why this happened other than to say we are a nation of "racist jailers" who operate a "greed-driven economy" and have created a "so-called underclass" that reflects the "moral deviance" of all of us. He looks askance at those who speak about the "purported net benefits to 'society' of greater incarceration."

I am one of those, and I do not feel inclined to apologize. Loury does not refer to the scholarly work of those social scientists who have worked hard to understand why we imprison so many people and with what results. Let me summarize what Daniel Nagin, David Farrington, Patrick Langan, Steven Levitt, and William Spelman have shown. Other things being equal, a higher risk of punishment reduces crime rates.

Read more. Which writer do you think has a better grasp of the problem and the solutions?

What is this?

• "Britain's Naked Public Square"
• "A Vaccine Debate Once Focused on Sex Shifts as Boys Join the Target Market" 
• "Stem Cell Wrestling" 
• "Is Obama Worth a Mass?" 
• "Good enough for the church. (Or God's Love Letter to Artists)" 
• "Headed toward extinction?" 
• "Hellhole" 
• "How USA Today used me (and I let it)" 
• "Abortion chain owner's family died in MT cemetery plane crash -- near Tomb of the Unborn" 
• "Historian Helped Blaze a Civil Rights Path" 

What is this?

• "A Nation of Jailers"
• "Crime fiction satisfying for the knowledge a mystery can disclose" 
• "A Cause for the First Lady" 
• "Stepping out of the way"
• "No more R-rated Superhero/Tentpole films for Warner Brothers" (mild profanity)  
• "Nicholas Hughes, Sylvia Plath's son commits suicide" 

What is this?

• "More U.S. babies born in 2007 than any other year"
• "Desperate Japanese head to 'suicide forest'"
• "The Evangelical Left's Abortion Conundrum" 
• "A Recession Only Steinbeck Could Love" 

What is this?

• "Baptist Ministers React to Church Shooting"
• "The Fetus As Organ Factory -- the Next Moral Frontier?"
• "9 things the media messed up about the Obama stem cell story"
• "Stupid, feckless, greedy" (contains profanity)
• "54% Say Media Hype Global Warming Dangers"
• "Lucy on display with controversy"
• "Ignatius"
• "Beheadings shake W. Mexico town" (via The Corner)
• "Not All Retail Is Tanking in This Recession"

What is this?

• "As Indian Growth Soars, Child Hunger Persists"
• "The Brokest Generation" (via Some Have Hats)
• "United States of Happiness"

What is this?

If you followed the links in Gina's post, you may have decided that MIchael Spencer’s predictions are overly apocalyptic -- like this:

Within two generations, evangelicalism will be a house deserted of half its occupants...This collapse will herald the arrival of an anti-Christian chapter of the post-Christian West. Intolerance of Christianity will rise to levels many of us have not believed possible in our lifetimes, and public policy will become hostile toward evangelical Christianity, seeing it as the opponent of the common good. Millions of Evangelicals will quit. Thousands of ministries will end. Christian media will be reduced, if not eliminated. Many Christian schools will go into rapid decline. I'm convinced the grace and mission of God will reach to the ends of the earth. But the end of evangelicalism as we know it is close.

But if current trends hold, there are, no doubt, troubling times ahead for Christians (but haven't there always been!).

According to a recent survey referenced here (CNN has more), the percentage of Americans who identify themselves as Christians is 75 percent, down from 86 percent in 1990. Perhaps more disturbing is that the only result found consistent from state to state is “an increase in the number of people expressing no religious affiliation.” With the increased social acceptability of “having no religion,” this is a trend that will prove challenging to reverse.

Spencer lists seven things foreshadowing the coming evangelical breakdown, the most significant, in my mind, being, “We Evangelicals have failed to pass on to our young people an orthodox form of faith that can take root and survive the secular onslaught. Ironically, the billions of dollars we've spent on youth ministers, Christian music, publishing, and media has produced a culture of young Christians who know next to nothing about their own faith except how they feel about it. Our young people have deep beliefs about the culture war, but do not know why they should obey scripture, the essentials of theology, or the experience of spiritual discipline and community. Coming generations of Christians are going to be monumentally ignorant and unprepared for culture-wide pressures.”

What is this?

The next time the kids in your church ask you to help send them on a mission trip to, say, France, or to some obscure country you never heard of, tell them you'll write a check for them to go to Vermont, instead. According to the American Religious Identification Survey (also referenced in a recent roundup), more than a third of all Vermonters say they have no religious beliefs--the highest number in the country.    

The study has not even been officially released yet, and I've already heard commentators on TV criticizing the methodology. But even if the authors are off a bit, I've become more and more convinced over the last few years that mission-minded kids (and adults) ought to volunteer to go, not overseas, but into the nearest U.S. inner city to help the poor in some constructive, life-changing way (i.e., not just give them another handout), or into more secular states to plant churches, or volunteer with youth sports teams, or open their homes to college students who have had enough of life in dorm brothels.   

Those who read to the end of the article will see that the only reason the U.S. is not more secular than it is is because of millions of immigrants, who bring their religious beliefs (mainly Catholic) with them. As for native-born Americans--clearly we have our work cut out for us.

What is this?

• "Picking Possible Narratives"
• "Making News in Connecticut"
• "Outrage in Connecticut -- Committee Hearing on Bill to Dictate Catholic Church Operations"
• "Accuser, Exonerated Man Are Friends"
• "Diagnosing Virginity"
• "Comcast, DirecTV to Allow Porn Promotion"
• "What about those octuplets?"
• "Saudi court sentences 75-year-old woman to lashes" (via The Corner)
• "It's a Comedy Bit...I think...It does sound familiar..." (contains profanity)  

What is this?

I've heard of some distasteful holidays, but this takes the cake. (Profanity in comments. H/T The Corner.)

What is this?

Terry Mattingly at GetReligion.org is pondering the direction of the conservative Christian movement. In a recent blog entry, Mattingly examines the graying of many of the "religious right's" elder statesmen, and wonders who the next "alpha males" might be to take the baton from their predecessors. He notes the recently announced retirement of Dr. James Dobson from the chairmanship of Focus on the Family, the passing of prominent Christian conservatives such as Richard John Neuhaus and Jerry Falwell, and the advancing age of many of those who remain active in the arena (including a certain "alpha male" known and loved in these parts).

"The crucial point," says Mattingly, "is that these Alphas are leaders of religious movements that, in defending their doctrines and beliefs, end up taking stands in the public square. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, these leaders possessed unique talents that inspired their own troops. Those movements are all facing painful transitions and the clock is ticking, ticking, ticking."

So what say you? Who are the young evangelicals who are poised to fill the gap being left by these men?

(Image © The White House)

What is this?

• "Number of households with kids hits new low"
• "It Is about Family"
• "Out of 'Milk,' Perhaps a Little Human Kindness toward Gay Rights"
• "Right, and Left Out"
• "Homeowners' rallying cry: Produce the note"
• "Dumb Money"

What is this?

• "Deconstructing the Quiver"
• "North Dakota Lawmakers Say Fertilized Egg Is Person"
• "Clinton: Chinese human rights can't interfere with other crises"
• "The Global Crisis: Lessons from the Middle Ages"
• "The Real Bill Moyers"
• "Virtual pleasures"
• "Collective Religious Rituals, Not Religious Devotion, Spur Support for Suicide Attacks"
• "The Real Roots of the 'Slumdog' Protests"

What is this?

(Image © Scott Adams, Inc.)

What is this?

• "The Five Year Ban: Because a Billion Less People Is a Great Place to Start" (via NewsBusters)
• "An Inconvenient Truth"
• "Work That Tiara, Boy!"

What is this?

• "The Good, the Bad, and William Henry Harrison"
• "Obama Won't End the Culture Wars"
• "Headless Body in Gutless Press" (disturbing themes)
• "Hollywood slowly opening door to gay drama"
• "Miep Gies, Helper of Anne Frank's Family, Turns 100"
• "'Strike while the iron is hot' -- GMA Calls for Moral Renewal"
• "Watching Republicans grieve"

What is this?

...At least that's how I feel after reading this fascinating Judy Shelton column in the WSJ.

I'm providing this excerpt...

So we must first establish a sound foundation for capitalism by permitting people to use a form of money they trust. ... A study by two economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, Arthur Rolnick and Warren Weber, concluded that gold and silver standards consistently outperform fiat standards. Analyzing data over many decades for a large sample of countries, they found that "every country in our sample experienced a higher rate of inflation in the period during which it was operating under a fiat standard than in the period during which it was operating under a commodity standard."

...and this excerpt...

What is this?