National - links
Defend innocent life
By Sam Brownback January 22, 2007 Each January from all corners of the nation, hundreds of thousands descend upon the nation’s capital. They come — often in freezing conditions — for a most significant march on Washington. They come for the March for Life on the anniversary of the tragic Supreme Court decisions in Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton that made abortion legal during all nine months of pregnancy.Jan 24, 2007
Topic: Family, Children, Elderly, Life, Abortion, Citizenship, National, Social Issues
BARNA : Who Qualifies As An Evangelical?
January 18, 2007
(Ventura, CA) – The media and social commentators frequently refer to surveys that describe the opinions and behavior of “evangelicals.” However, those analyses are based on surveys that ask adults whether or not they consider themselves to be an evangelical. For two decades, The Barna Group has been measuring the social, political, religious and behavioral characteristics of evangelicals as well – but using a substantially different set of criteria. The Barna Group’s nine questions pertaining to the spiritual beliefs of people have reported on a very different – and much smaller – group of people. To distinguish them from the self-described evangelicals, Barna has named the segment based on its answers to nine theological factors the “9-point evangelicals.”
Jan 22, 2007
Topic: Faith, Citizenship, Christian Citizenship, National
Pelosi Targets Grassroots Freedom of Speech
Human Events
Pelosi Targets Grassroots Freedom of Speech
by Amanda B. Carpenter
Posted Dec 18, 2006
House Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi (D.-Calif.) has pledged to take up a lobbying reform proposal that would impose new regulations on speech by grassroots organizations, while providing a loophole in the rules for large corporations and labor unions.
The legislation would make changes to the legal definition of “grassroots lobbying” and require any organization that encourages 500 or more members of the general public to contact their elected representatives to file a report with detailed information about their organization to the government on a quarterly basis.
The report would include identifying the organization’s expenditures, the issues focused on and the members of Congress and other federal officials who are the subject of the advocacy efforts. A separate report would be required for each policy issue the group is active on.
Dec 18, 2006
Topic: Citizenship, Church and State, Legislation, National, Religious Liberty
WSJ - Freedom Man
Wall Street Journal
BY THOMAS SOWELL
Saturday, November 18, 2006
Milton Friedman was one of the very few intellectuals with both genius and common sense. He could express himself at the highest analytical levels to his fellow economists in academic publications and still write popular books such as “Capitalism and Freedom” and “Free to Choose” that could be understood by people who knew nothing about economics. Indeed, his television series, “Free to Choose,” was readily understandable even by people who don’t read books.
Dec 12, 2006
Topic: Family, Living, Finances, Citizenship, Hunger/Homelessness, National, Social Issues
Iraq Nearly Had A-Bomb?
by Jonathan Gurwitz
Web Posted: 11/14/2006 07:05 PM CST
San Antonio Express-News
“Among the dozens of documents in English were Iraqi reports written in the 1990s and in 2002 for United Nations inspectors in charge of making sure Iraq had abandoned its unconventional weapons programs after the Persian Gulf War. Experts say that at the time, Mr. Hussein’s scientists were on the verge of building an atom bomb, as little as a year away.”
New York Times, Nov. 3
Pardon me — what was that?
It looked like another case of the New York Times trying to catch the Bush administration with its intelligence briefs down.
The headline blared: “U.S. Web archive is said to reveal a nuclear primer.” The story, less than two weeks before the midterm election, described the Operation Iraqi Freedom Document Portal, a controversial government Web site created last March at the behest of congressional Republicans to make public declassified documents seized after the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Nov 14, 2006
Topic: Citizenship, National, War
The Roberts Court Takes on Abortion
The arguments the Supreme Court will hear on Wednesday on the constitutionality of the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act promise much more than a resumption of a familiar debate over a method of terminating a pregnancy.
Nov 6, 2006
Topic: Life, Abortion, Citizenship, National
Watchdog Group Accuses Churches of Political Action
A nonprofit group has filed a complaint asking the Internal Revenue Service to investigate the role that two churches may have played in the re-election campaign of Kansas’ attorney general.
Oct 26, 2006
Topic: Faith, Citizenship, Church and State, National
Reagan’s 1986 Election
Conservatives have bounced back from electoral setbacks before.
WSJ Opinion Journal
BY JEFFREY LORD
Tuesday, October 17, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT
As Ronald Reagan was thanking me I was both depressed and embarrassed.
It was November, 1986. After a solid two years of effort, the Congressional elections in the sixth year of the Reagan presidency had gone badly.
The 1980 Reagan landslide over Jimmy Carter had produced twelve new Republican Senate seats, giving the GOP a Senate majority for the first time since 1954. It made the Senate a critical ally for Reagan as he set about rebuilding the nation’s military, getting forward-looking young conservatives onto the federal bench and passing the landmark tax cuts needed to revitalize an almost crippled economy. The House was more problematical. A bastion of liberal Democrats with a mindset still stuck somewhere between1935 and 1965 on economics. Its more outspoken members loved reliving their glory days opposing the Vietnam War and Richard Nixon.
Oct 17, 2006
Topic: Citizenship, Christian Citizenship, Legislation, National, Social Issues, Issues
To Be Married Means to Be Outnumbered
Married couples, whose numbers have been declining for decades as a proportion of American households, have finally slipped into a minority, according to an analysis of new census figures by The New York Times.
Oct 17, 2006
Topic: Family, Marriage, Pop Culture, Citizenship, National
In Final Weeks, G.O.P. Focuses on Best Bets
Senior Republican leaders have concluded that Senator Mike DeWine of Ohio, a pivotal state in this year’s fierce midterm election battles, is likely to be heading for defeat and are moving to reduce financial support for his race and divert party money to other embattled Republican senators, party officials said.
Oct 16, 2006
Topic: Citizenship, Legislation, National