Kathryn Jean Lopez has a fine column on just what constitutes a "pro-life Democrat" in the minds of the Party's convention organizers...and in the minds of a fawning press corps. Good stuff here..
The Heritage Foundation's Helle C. Dale and Oliver L. Horn have written a compelling article, substantial excerpts of which I print below, dealing with the sad (and unnecessary) decline of the Voice of America's presence in Eastern Europe.
It is a very important matter, especially as it suggests the basic steps required to remedy this grave problem. Therefore, I'm forwarding it to my Congressman, Senators, and others with the request that they make a priority the restoration of the VoA's influence in Eastern Europe. There must be an increase in funding, a strengthening of purpose, and a radical reformation of the organization's governing board -- and very soon. I hope you will do the same.
Last week, an exhausted, retreating Georgian soldier was overheard asking, "Where are our friends?" Given that only days before the conflict--and for the first time in over 60 years of broadcasting--the Voice of America's (VOA) Russian-language radio programming fell silent, this was a legitimate question...
In recent years, the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) has slashed funding for programming in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia in favor of broadcasts in the Middle East and Asia. It has also outsourced broadcasting to semi-private entities with dubious track records. Additionally, the Russian government has pursued a campaign to eliminate U.S. broadcasts by intimidating and harassing VOA's local, private-sector partners. Consequently, America has--literally and figuratively--lost its voice in the region at a critical moment...
...funding for VOA broadcasts in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia has either flat-lined or declined. Take into account the massive devaluation of the dollar abroad (over 30 percent against some currencies) and there is little wonder why VOA is bleeding programs and personnel at a staggering pace. Over the past several years, VOA has ceased virtually all English broadcasts and cut programs in 21 other languages (mostly in the three aforementioned regions). This was after more than a third of VOA's employees signed a petition in 2004 protesting the "dismantling" of the agency.
Last month, Congress attempted to stop even more cuts. Citing concerns for the region's freedom of speech, the Senate Appropriations Committee condemned the BBG's latest budget request that would not only eliminate VOA Russian language programs, but also terminate broadcasts in Ukraine and significantly cut back those in Georgia, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan. The committee subsequently approved legislation explicitly funding programs in each of these countries. Yet without any public announcements, and on the eve of conflict between Russia and Georgia, the BBG ceased VOA's Russian-language programs anyway.
In its stead, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), a semi-private entity operating in the former Soviet Union, has been tasked with continuing radio broadcasts in Russian. While RFE/RL has a much better track record than Radio Sawa or Al-Hurra, the organization has proven uniquely vulnerable to the Kremlin's crackdown on independent media...
This environment has proven disastrous for RFE/RL, which depends on local partners to broadcast its programming. Citing license violations and unauthorized changes in programming format, Kremlin regulators have forced most of its local partners to stop broadcasts. One Russian station manager commented, "It's sad because the programs were very popular. ... The owners decided that they would rather have their license, because if they kept the programming they would have been in trouble." As a result, three-quarters of the radio outlets provided by private companies have terminated their partnership with U.S. broadcasting over the past two years alone...
Though the Washington Post's ombudsman Deborah Howell tries to excuse the preferential treatment her newspaper has given Barack Obama, she's never quite able to escape the damaging admission she makes in her opening sentence.
Democrat Barack Obama has had about a 3 to 1 advantage over Republican John McCain in Post Page 1 stories since Obama became his party's presumptive nominee June 4. Obama has generated a lot of news by being the first African American nominee, and he is less well known than McCain -- and therefore there's more to report on. But the disparity is so wide that it doesn't look good...
Later in the piece, Ms. Howell confesses that the Post's unbalanced coverage is just one of many.
This is not just a Post phenomenon. The Project for Excellence in Journalism has been monitoring campaign coverage at an assortment of large and medium-circulation newspapers, broadcast evening and morning news shows, five news Web sites, three major cable news networks, and public radio and other radio outlets. Its latest report, for the week of Aug. 4-10, shows that for the eighth time in nine weeks, Obama received significantly more coverage than McCain...
Sharon Slater, President of Family Watch International, gives a few examples of television commercials that she's seen while watching the Olympics. They are commercials for various products: a vehicle, fast food, a bank card, another TV program. But what they have in common is what prompted Sharon to conclude:
These commercials are disturbing on two levels. They graphically illustrate how desensitized U.S. society has become to what a generation ago would have been completely unacceptable. But they are also an example of one of the mechanisms of desensitization which will facilitate the deterioration of societal values. Advertisers are conditioning us and our children to laugh at promiscuity and infidelity and to think of them as common occurrences that are no big deal.
These commercials cause me to wonder how low we can go. Parents, you may need to screen commercials and not just TV shows in order to protect your children from both the subliminal and the blatant messages that are constantly barraging them.
Again, you can read the whole column here.
Sharon's column reminded me of an anecdote Claire tells about being in the John Cavanaugh O'Keefe home many years ago. Claire was in the D.C. area to participate in a pro-life press conference and was watching over the O'Keefe kids while their parents were running errands in preparation for the conference. The parents had told Claire the kids could watch an hour of television but only particular programs.
Fine. Claire was reading, the kids were watching TV, and things were pretty peaceful when the eldest boy startled Claire by suddenly jumping up and dashing across the room to the TV set. When he got there, he turned the sound down and dramatically stood spread-eagle in front of the screen, effectively blocking the picture from the rest of the kids.
Claire's wonderment must have shown on her face as the boy noticed her, smiled and calmly said, "My Mom and Dad don't want us to watch commercials."
Television, by its very nature, has made us spectators rather than actors involved in the dramas of real life. And through commercials (the reason TV exists), we are refashioned further into consuming spectators. The O'Keefe's understood this and therefore, were rightly concerned about limiting this "double-negative" of TV's influence.
Sharon Slater would wholeheartedly agree.
Did you catch this LifeNews.com report about the wicked counsel about abortion recently coming from British "advice columnists" from The Sun and Daily Mail? If not, read it.
And after you're through shuddering, launch up a prayer for these dangerous women and for the poor dunces who might actually be influenced by them. And then, before you forget, zip over a couple of e-mails (Steven Ertelt gives you the contact info at the end of the article) giving the columnists some of your own...advice!
With so many of us tied into the new communicative technologies of the internet, it is justifiable to be concerned about how ideological bias, censorship, unfair competition practices, etc. could be employed to limit its usefulness. Here, for example, is a story from the International Herald Tribune that explores the potential for abuse by such extremely powerful players as Google.
...While Knol is only three weeks old and still relatively obscure, it has already rekindled fears among some media companies that Google is increasingly becoming a competitor. They foresee Google's becoming a powerful rival that not only owns a growing number of content properties, including YouTube, the top online video site, and Blogger, a leading blogging service, but also holds the keys to directing users around the Web.
"If in fact a Google property is taking money away from Google's partners, that is a real problem," said Wenda Harris Millard, the co-chief executive of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia.
Money, of course, is very much at issue. The lower a site ranks in search results, the less traffic it receives from search engines. With a smaller audience, the site earns less money from advertising...
Critics say each new Google initiative in this area casts more doubt on the company's claims that it is not a media company.
"Google can say they are not in the content business, but if they are paying people and distributing and archiving their work, it is getting harder to make that case," said Jason Calacanis, the chief executive of Mahalo, a search engine that relies on editors to create pages on a variety of subjects. "They are competing for talent, for advertisers and for users" with content sites, he said.
Knol has been called a potential rival to Wikipedia and other sites whose content spans a broad range of topics, including Mahalo and About.com, a property of The New York Times Company that uses experts it calls "guides" to write articles on a variety of topics...
As this brief story from The Hollywood Reporter explains, the Nightline interview in which John Edwards confessed his extramarital affair and its subsequent coverup "was able to hold its audience against the Olympics opening ceremony on NBC." Wow -- that's no small potatoes and by any fair standard would have to be reported as a ratings success, right? Indeed, the program drew its regular number of viewers whereas other TV programs suffered big drops.
The news story also tells us that the Nightline interview "beat CBS' 'Late Show with David Letterman' by 30% in households and 100% in the demo." That's also pretty impressive.
Given these observations from within the story itself, can you come up with any idea why it ended up with this headline -- Edwards 'Nightline' Interview a Ratings Bust?
Me neither.
Not being a late night TV viewer, I was unaware that there's a bit of a breakthrough taking place -- people are beginning to laugh at Barack Obama. Here's just a couple of my favorites listed by the Telegraph in this article.
Jimmy Kimmel -- "They really love Barack Obama in Germany. He's like a rock star over there. Impressive until you realise that David Hasselhoff is also like a rock star over there."
Jay Leno: "Of course, Obama's supporters got him his usual birthday gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh."
Jay Leno: "See Barack Obama on the news? He's becoming a workout fanatic. He's at the gym, like, twice a day, sometimes three times a day at the gym, yeah, according to his staff. Well, he has to stay in shape to do those flip-flops."
Granted, these guys are still making a lot more jokes about John McCain than they are about The Anointed One. But every little bit helps. And, who knows, once the laughter starts on a fellow as pretentious, as inconsistent, and as gaffe-prone as Barack Obama, it may be hard to stop.
One of the most compelling tributes to Alexander Solzhenitsyn that I've read in recent days is one that not only honors how Solzhenitsyn's personal life and writings exposed the unjust barbarism of Communism in Russia, but also hopes that it will set an example to do the same for Latin America. Below are excerpts from Carlos Alberto Montaner's brief commentary in the Miami Herald. Very good stuff.
...Prison cleaned and cured Solzhenitzyn of communism. All his important works revolve around that experience: A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, The Cancer Ward, The First Circle, and, of course, his monumental The Gulag Archipelago. Prison turned him into a great man forged by his and other people's pain and into a renowned writer...
Of all the documents written against the Communist madness, the most demolishing is TheGulag Archipelago. It is not a great literary work. Because it is very long, it can even be tedious, but that enormous catalog of atrocities inflicted upon prisoners for so long, written down with notarial cold-bloodedness, wipes out any vestige of sympathy that a sensible and reasonable person might have for Marxism-Leninism.
Some months ago, someone wisely suggested that a group of historians write The Black Book of Latin American Communism. It would be a country-by-country account of the crimes and misdeeds committed in the name of Marxism by the gunmen who were seduced by that ideology. All of us democrats know about and repudiate the monstrous excesses of the right-wing dictatorships on the continent -- Somoza, Pinochet, the Argentine generals and a repugnant etcetera -- but what's needed is an orderly and detailed catalog of the barbarities committed by this frenzied sect of the rabid Left.
All the barbarities: from Trotsky's murder in Mexico, the genocide of the Misquitos in Nicaragua, the Cuban firing squads and the stories about the FARC narcoterrorists' cruelty, to the odious assassinations and kidnappings committed by the ERP in Argentina and the Tupamaros in Uruguay.
When the project was proposed, someone asked to whom the book should be dedicated. No question about it: to Alexander Solzhenitzyn. He pointed the way.
If you didn't see Nightline's interview with John Edwards, here it is. I think you'll find it, as I did, quite unsatisfactory as a confession. After all, it is incomplete, contradictory, and has plenty of self-serving misdirection as when he brings up John McCain or his several references to that contemptible "supermarket tabloid" that caught him.
His tracing for Bob Woodruff how a sense of invincibility and narcissm was thrust upon him because he was so talented (thank the Lord, he didn't say pretty) was really strange. I can't imagine Americans buying that. And that bit about him telling his entire family "the details" about his "mistake in judgment?" That was a faux pas sure to creep out a lot more viewers than just me.
John Edwards actually managed to make this tragic admission into a bitterly comic event, given the high moral tone he takes in the interview about character, trustworthiness, his love for his wife and family, his cause, even honesty -- all in what is supposed to be a confession (after being caught, of course) about an ongoing course of sexual infidelity, an ongoing course of covering it up with lies and angry denunciations, and an ongoing course of unmitigated hypocrisy.
And that's not even mentioning how little "the cause" must mean to a fellow who is willing to throw it away for a sexual fling.
Edwards must have thought that a muted confession (remember that the words "sex," "sin," "adultery," or "hypocrisy" are never mentioned nor is lying itself ever treated as anything but the most natural, reasonable path to "protect one's family") was the best thing he could do at this stage. But it probably won't be enough. Indeed, even certain players in the MSM, embarrassed at their double standard being so brazenly exposed, will probably keep pursuing the matters of paternity, hush money, the origins of the affair (1 and 2) and even the impact that the coverup had on the election process.
Another issue, the most important for the culture certainly, is the bigger problem of media bias. John Tabin, in his fine commentary for the American Spectator, examines this a bit.
...The mainstream press, shamefully, had totally ignored the story, to the point that this is as much a media scandal as a sex scandal. The New York Times was happy to run vague innuendo about John McCain on its front page in February (the week before Hunter's baby was born) but fastidiously avoided looking into the Edwards affair, which was first reported by the Enquirer in October 2007.
A McCain spokesman declined to comment when I asked him on Friday whether there's a partisan double-standard in how the media handles adultery rumors. Readers can draw their own conclusion...
Here's a couple of important stories about Barack Obama from someone who knows him well, Illinois pro-life activist and popular blogger, Jill Stanek. Both stories present Obama in a much different light than which has come from the fawning press corps.
The first article reveals Barack Obama as a coldly calculating politician -- one who served the interests of the pro-abortion feminists in an extremely rude and obscurantist way.
The second and most recent article concerns not only Obama's actions against the “Born-Alive Infants Protection Act,” but about his misrepresenting (that's what lying is called in political circles) the reasons why he did such a callous and mean-spirited thing.
It's not unusual for those who have to deal with the effects of alcoholism, broken families, violent crime, drunk drivers, sexual assault and so on to voice concerns about the ways in which youth are targeted by alcohol advertising.
But when over a hundred college coaches (not to mention 59 college presidents and 239 athletic directors) appeal to NCAA President Myles Brand to eliminate alcohol advertising in telecasts of college sports, then you've got some heavy news.
The coaches wrote that they are “troubled by the prominence of alcohol advertising in televised college sports” and asked Brand to consider phasing out alcohol ads altogether. “We strongly urge you to take actions against all alcohol advertising—including beer advertising—on NCAA sports telecasts.”
Here's more.
Sherry Jones, a correspondent for the Bureau of National Affairs, was all set to receive the first copy of her new book from Random House. Entitled The Jewel of Medina, the novel takes as its protagonist A'isha, the child bride of Mohammad. But Jones insists, the novel is not a "bodice-ripper." Indeed, there are no sex scenes at all. Says, Jones, "I have deliberately and consciously written respectfully about Islam and Mohammad...I envisioned that my book would be a bridge-builder."
But then she learned that her publishers at Random House finally remembered that there's one religious group that no one messes with nowadays. Even "deliberately, consciously, respectfully" messes with.
And they pulled the publication.
Random House deputy publisher Thomas Perry said in a statement the company received "cautionary advice not only that the publication of this book might be offensive to some in the Muslim community, but also that it could incite acts of violence by a small, radical segment. In this instance we decided, after much deliberation, to postpone publication for the safety of the author, employees of Random House, booksellers and anyone else who would be involved in distribution and sale of the novel."
Now unless this is a clever enough publicity stunt (and that's certainly possible -- generate a lot of controversial, but free, publicity and then publish the novel a bit later on), the Random House execs have shown not only an inexcusable naiveté about Muslim intolerance but an unconscionably weak dedication to the freedoms of thought and speech they have always claimed to champion.
Does Sherry Jones' The Jewel of Medina deserve to be published? I don't know. It certainly doesn't sound like anything I'd ever have an interest in reading. In fact, maybe the world of letters will be better off for not having it clutter up the shelves.
But not for this reason.
Even the most encouraging legal advisors didn't hold out much hope for Eileen Smith in her efforts to have abortionist Rapin Osathanondh indicted for his criminal actions in the death of Eileen's daughter, Laura. But the medical board stepped up, an employee of the abortion clinic came forward, and God answered Eileen's prayer.
Justice has a second chance.
Here, in this compelling 8-minute audio interview with Concerned Women for America's Martha Kleder, Eileen tells the whole story, one that she believes has special significance for Christians.
In an unusually bold and forthright manner (and isn't that a nice change from the timid, parsing, indecisive character which marks most modern conversation?), David Klinghoffer answers the questions of National Review's Kathryn Jean Lopez. Klinghoffer, by the way, is a Senior Fellow of the Discovery Institute and an outspoken advocate of intelligent design. Klinghoffer is the author of several books including The Lord Will Gather Me In: My Journey to Jewish Orthodoxy, Why the Jews Rejected Jesus: The Turning Point in Western History, Shattered Tablets: Why America Ignores the Ten Commandments at Its Peril, and the book he specifically speaks to Lopez about, How Would God Vote?: Why the Bible Commands You to Be a Conservative.
...Kathryn Jean Lopez: So does God get a vote? And how did you get out of him what it would be? Is there Gallup in Heaven? Perhaps a Catholic might next poll the Communion of Saints on the presidential election?
David Klinghoffer: God gets a vote if citizen Kathryn Lopez gives him one. And I know that in November, you will. It’s like the old pre-women’s suffrage rationale for letting only men vole. The idea was, a husband would vote on behalf of the entire family. If I’m an enlightened husband, I consult my wife and take her views seriously, thereby voting for both of us. In this analogy, my wife is God. When we vote, we have the choice of either consulting God - as it were - or not. No, I don’t have in mind using an Ouija board. (V-O-T-E-F-O-R-M-C-C-A-I-N.) Instead, Christians and Jews used to agree that the Bible conveys a picture of reality, of how the world works, from which practical guidance can be drawn on private and public matters. That would naturally include the 20 hot-button issues that I deal with in my book, from poverty, taxes and health care to climate change, drug legalization and Islamic terror. It turns out that, when read sensitively and holistically, the Bible advocates views that are deeply conservative. Not on every issue but on most.
Lopez: Are you actually arguing that the Bible argues for the election of John McCain over Barack Obama? That voting for Obama is to vote against God?
Klinghoffer: It would probably violate federal tax laws if I told you the Bible endorses a particular candidate. I work at a think tank, after all, a 501(c)(3) organization. But even if I didn’t, I wrote this book not to inflate anyone’s election chances but to give readers and voters the tools to read the Bible as a guide to thinking about a range of issues. If on that basis, you concluded that a Biblical worldview was at odds with Obama on most issues, or on certain key litmus test issues, yet you went ahead and voted for him anyway, that would be a vote against giving God a voice in our public affairs. It would be a vote to silence God’s influence in that area, as far as it’s in your power to do so. In a real sense it would be a vote against God.
Lopez: So is God a Republican? Did the country vote against God when they elected Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton? And what about JFK?
Klinghoffer: God doesn’t have a party. He has wisdom. A party can reflect that wisdom to a greater or lesser extent. In recent decades, the Republican party has been open to granting some degree of influence to Biblical wisdom, at a time when God’s role in public life has been under attack from secularists. The conflict is more severe than ever. In elections of the past, the clash of worldviews wasn’t as blatant. You could say that of Kennedy versus Nixon. In the years since Roe v. Wade, though, we’ve seen the rise of an ideological grouping that is formed pretty clearly around an opposition to giving God a voice in public affairs. The tragedy of McCain is that while his biography gives evidence of spiritual sensitivity, he’s too allergic to public religious expression to make that clear to voters who long for a leader who “gets” it. Many in Republican leadership seem deaf to this...
Here's the whole article.
Good news out of Iraq is becoming almost a daily event: In just the past week, we learned that U.S. combat fatalities (five) dropped in July to a low for the war, that key leaders of al Qaeda in Iraq have fled to the Pakistani hinterland, that troop deployments will soon be cut to 12 months from 15, and that Washington and Baghdad are close to concluding a status-of-forces agreement.
Now this: Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr plans to announce Friday that he will disarm his Mahdi Army, which was raining mortars on Baghdad's Green Zone as recently as April. Coupled with the near-total defeat of al Qaeda in Iraq, this means the U.S. no longer faces any significant organized military foe in the country. It also marks a major setback for Iran, which had used the Mahdi Army as one of its primary vehicles for extending its influence in Iraq...
Thus the Wall Street Journal opens up its latest report on the state of the Iraqi war. Lucianne.com, in its lovely, understated way, comments "Story too big to make the New York Times."
Liberal activist Lee Stranahan, the producer of several videos which ridicule Republicans, has himself come clean about the John Edwards sex scandal. And he's writing about it on the anything-but-conservative Huffington Post. His reasoning is interesting to follow, illustrating as it does the grossly irresponsible double standards of the MSM.
Also very illuminating are the obscurantist, arrogant and mean-spirited reactions that his post is generating from fellow liberals.
I print excerpts of Mr. Stranahan's article below but you can read the whole thing right here.
Before I dive in, let me get the 'objectivity' thing out of the way. As a citizen journalist whose main claim to fame is producing satirical comedy, I can be upfront about my political leanings. I'm a recovering libertarian and currently I'm a registered Democrat who is excited to be voting for Barack Obama in November. I like John Edwards and up until a few days ago, he would have been my first choice for Vice President on an Obama ticket. I'm far from Puritan -- anything two or more consenting adults want to do is fine by me. I also think it's obvious a person's sexual life doesn't keeps them from being an effective politician.
I'm judging this situation using two standards; 1) what's the truth? 2) how's it going to play out in the media?...
Let's go with the assumption that Edwards is innocent for a moment; he didn't have the affair so the baby isn't his. If he didn't do anything wrong then it seems like he'd have good reasons to stop the rumors. A DNA test months ago would have ended all speculation about the paternity of the baby. Isn't that a better, less suspicious move than pulling down all the videos that Rielle Hunter helped produce about him for his campaign? And if there are rumors and you're innocent, WHY go visit the subject of those rumors at a hotel and leave at 2:45 in the morning? Why hide in the bathroom when reporters catch you leaving? These actions don't make any more sense to me than Craig's 'wide stance/dropped my toilet paper' defense did.
How's it going to play out? It seems to me that this is going to be a tsunami-sized scandal for the Democratic Party and right now the coming typhoon of press coverage is close to breaking. We're at the point of calm before the big waves hit but there are signs of the impending deluge. Jay Leno is making jokes about it. Perez Hilton is on the story. The mainstream media is fairly quiet but the most ominous silence right now is from the progressive blogosphere...
Despite what some people are going to say, this is news. A former Senator and Vice Presidential candidate who was running for President less than six months ago and is now on the short list for Vice President has an long affair during the campaign and fathers a child, covers it up, and then is caught at a hotel with the mother of the child. News! Oh -- and his wife made regular appearances on the campaign trail and has been diagnosed with cancer. If it were Mitt Romney, you'd be hearing peels of laughter and the satisfying smacking sound of Merlot and Starbucks fueled high fives coming from the nearest blue state. Would it have made the progressive blogs? C'mon, of course it would...with funny pictures and as many self-satisfied comments as you can shake a Macbook Air at....
"Liberal media bias" - here's the big one. Republicans have had a lot of embarrassing, juicy sex scandals of their own lately and boy, do they want some payback. It doesn't look good that the Los Angeles Times banned bloggers from discussing the story. Where's the Times investigation -- seems like the story is in their backyard. And that silence you hear from the mainstream press right now? The GOP is going to "play the refs" and jump all over the media for not reporting or investigating this story. The media will eventually break down and do what they do - saturate us with the story they missed just to prove how unbiased they really are...
Update: Seems like I've touched a third rail here. I cross-posted this piece at Daily Kos and it got over 400 comments. Unfortunately, a large number of the comments were nothing but insults. One person suggested seriously that all the videos I've made lampooning Republicans (including my Mike Huckabee video that Kos himself called the 'best political parody of 2007) were just a ruse so I could weasel my way into the progressive blogosphere, apparently in anticipation of John Edwards being caught at hotel.
(Oh, by the way, if this matter interests you enough to read further, check out Mickey Kaus's ongoing comments over on Slate. Very, very provocative stuff.)
I find it hard to believe that there has been so little reaction to the death of Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Aside from some brief comments from world leaders and a few obligatory press reports buried deep in the news, the passing of one of the world's greatest literary figures (not to mention, one of the most significant, inspiring heroes of the Cold War) has hardly made a stir.
But, of course, our modern world cherishes celebrity over character, popularity over principle, and political-correctness over truth. Thus, the MSM will give extensive headline coverage when an actor or reporter dies yet dramatically underplay the life and legacy of one of the most important freedom fighters of our time.
Solzhenitsyn wouldn't have been surprised. Nor would he have much cared. His wasn't a personality that craved attention. He simply, faithfully did his work and left the results up to God.
And, despite the scant attention given to his passing or even the grudging, often griping attention given to his work during his lifetime, the results of Solzhenitsyn's courage, sacrifice, vision and that prodigious, remarkably skilled pen did change the world -- for the better and for ever.
Below I print, as my own tribute to this great writer, a couple of short pieces originally posted on The Book Den in 2006 and 2005. For a few more, simply type in "Solzhenitsyn" in the Search Blog feature of The Book Den, located at the upper left of the opening template.
When John McCain makes mistakes, the media tries to portray him as senile. But Obama makes dumber mistakes than George Bush, more mistakes than Dan Quayle, and that's despite the fact that he spends far less time talking to the press than McCain.
So, what's his excuse for thinking that we have more than 57 states, claiming America's "fallen heroes" were in the audience listening to him, and his claim that "'10,000 people died' in the Kansas tornadoes when the death toll was really only 12?" Dan Quayle’s notorious potato(e) error, which was used to forever portray him as a drooling moron, wouldn’t even qualify as one of Obama’s top five mistakes.
The above is just one of John Hawkins' "Top Ten Flaws That Will Cost Him in November." Read the rest right here.
* Roy Spencer celebrates 2o years of Rush Limbaugh in this National Review Online article.
* Linda Chavez suggests that a high regard for President Bush will eventually be secured not only by the success in Iraq but because of his record of "compassionate conservatism" regarding Africa, education and homelessness.
* Investor's Business Daily examines Barack Obama's strange, alarming and definitely Orwellian plan to "force volunteerism" onto the American people.
* One of the leading liberals in the "Emergent Church" movement, Brian McLaren has not only joined the Matthew 25 Network and its campaign to put Barack Obama in the White House, he's found other frightening ways to dis the Lord he claims to serve. Read more here.
