The Top 5 Plus (September 27)

1) “Why the right is flocking to Christianity” (Joanna Williams, spiked!)

From the article --  A week earlier, I walked with similarly huge crowds of people on the Unite the Kingdom march in London. The same combination of politics and religion was also a feature of that event. Unlike any other demonstration I have attended, this rally kicked off with gospel singers and an evangelical preacher. Some of those marching carried cardboard crucifixes along with English flags. Chants of ‘Christ is King’ could be heard.

On both sides of the Atlantic, there is talk of a Christian revival as lapsed or non-believers find faith in God, leading some to ask if America is undergoing another ‘Great Awakening’. I suspect not everyone brandishing a ‘Turn Back to God’ placard at the Unite the Kingdom rally turned up at church the following morning. However, research for the Bible Society suggests that church attendance in Britain is indeed on the increase, particularly among Gen Z men.

Among cosplayers and believers alike, there is something distinctive about the form of Christianity that is being embraced today. If a revival is underway, it is as far from cross-legged, guitar-strumming, ‘Kumbaya’ Christianity as it is possible to be. Notably, the Bible Society reports that the increase in church attendance in Britain has not benefitted Anglican communities. Young converts are looking to Pentecostal or Catholic denominations. In the UK, as in America, the type of Christianity that seems to be in demand today combines traditional values with evangelical fervour.

2) “No Matter What People Call It, The Land Never Was And Never Will Be ‘Palestine’” (Olivier Melnick, Harbinger's Daily)

From the article -- 

This year marks the 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly, and while there are many parts of the world that could benefit from a genuine global organization that claims to be “the one place on Earth where all the world’s nations can gather together, discuss common problems, and find shared solutions that benefit all of humanity” the United Nations are obsessed with demonizing and delegitimizing Israel. So much so, that since 2015, it has passed 301 resolutions against Israel and 192 against the rest of the world, including some countries such as North Korea, Iran, Sudan, Russia, China, Syria, and others. The double standards are so obvious, but nobody seems to care. The bias and one-sidedness are sickening!

Officially, the Palestinian Liberation Organization declared the establishment of the State of Palestine in 1988. This happened under the leadership of Yasser Arafat, who, incidentally, was born in 1929 in Cairo, Egypt, not “Palestine.” Ever since, more countries have officially recognized Palestine as a bona fide state. 151 out of the 193 nations part of the United Nations have now taken sides against Israel by recognizing Palestine. This year, the UK, France, Belgium, Portugal, Australia, Malta, and Canada will join ranks.

3) “Something Stirs in Post-Christendom” (Mark Steyn, Steyn Online)

From the article --  Last week I observed that there was a critical difference between recent events in the New World and Old:

"In Europe, the people who want you dead are the imported barbarians - the rapists and beheaders loosed upon the land by madmen like Merkel and Johnson. In the US, as we have learned this past week, the people who want you dead are your fellow Americans controlling the commanding heights of your society - the schools, the hospitals, the mainline churches..."

What they share in common, however, is that both threats are pseudo-religious in nature. Islam is a hideously false religion, which is why, where e'r it goes violence follows and calm comes only when Mohammed is king on a field of corpses. There is little contemplation of the divine: In accord with its founder's earthly inclinations, paradise is a brothel staffed only by virgins. Practically speaking, it is a political project masquerading as a religion, which is mighty convenient because, if you submit a municipal planning application for a new mosque, you're treated as if you wish to build a Congregational church.

But the psychotrannies and other American predators have their pseudo-religions too. Some worship Gaia, some repurpose "the world's oldest hatred" as unbounded love for fashionable victim groups: On Saturday night in my own state of New Hampshire, several hours south of me on the Massachusetts border, a man went to dinner at a "country club" in Nashua and was gunned down in front of his mother, wife and daughter by a killer entirely unknown to him but who yelled as he did the deed "Free Palestine!" That's a very un-Granite State kind of murder. The deceased wasn't Charlie Kirk; he was just a guy who installed heating and air conditioning, and lived in a state with a very low homicide rate. But in the New America he's dead because he went out for dinner on a Saturday night.

4) “Cut Tucker Loose” (Scott Johnson, Power Line)

From the article -- 

The point is that Carlson is not fooling anyone anymore—not those on his side and not those on ours. But without the sponsorship of senior figures in the administration, he would be a lone crank podcasting into the void. Thus far, Carlson’s sponsors have been content to ignore his relentless attacks on their colleagues, their policies, their boss, and large swathes of their base. We suspect they hope that Carlson will spontaneously come to his senses, and that the problem will somehow solve itself without them having to do anything uncomfortable.

It won’t. Indeed, all evidence thus far suggests the opposite: that the more Carlson gets away with, the worse he gets. His sponsors can own that—and everything that comes with allying with an anti-Trump subversive whose stock-in-trade is using conspiracies about the Jews to foment civil war on the right—or they can cut him loose. There are no options beyond those two. And it is Carlson, not his critics, who is forcing them to choose.

Also see related article: “Netanyahu Responds Directly to Tucker Carlson, Says He Defends America’s ‘Worst Enemies’” (Alex Griffing, Mediaite)

5) “Leftist Violence Stems from a Hatred of God-Given Reality” (S.A. McCarthy, Washington Stand)

From the article -- The inescapable truth is that leftists do not see you as human. You may have the face of a man and the arms and legs and beating heart of a man, you may walk and talk like a man, but you have made yourself sub-human in their eyes. The reason for this is a failure or refusal to adhere to reality, and the tell-tale signs are the labels leftists use.

Reality is ordained and sustained by God and rooted in Him. Leftism, as a branch of naturalism, seeks to usurp the throne of God and subjugate reality not to His will but to one’s own will. It is the sin of Satan, the sin of Adam and Eve, and the root of nearly all sin ever since, both great and small, it is a rejection of the imitation of Christ and a direct inversion of His example. Where Christ poured out His own blood, the leftist sheds the blood of others. Where Christ prayed, “Not as I will, but as You will,” the leftist declares, “As I will, not as You will.” The animating spirit of leftism is a desire to reorder reality, to subjugate reality beneath the leftist’s feet, and to become God.

This naturalist animating spirit can be seen in leftism’s social and political aims: abortion reorders the procreative reality of sex by killing the child; homosexuality also reorders the procreative reality of sex by removing the possibility of procreation; transgenderism reorders the reality of biology through the use of dangerous drugs and horrifying mutilative surgeries. Of course, none of these things actually alters reality: a mother who kills her unborn child is still a mother, but she is now one who has killed her own child; a marriage is still a union between one man and one woman, no matter how many lawsuits a homosexual-identifying individual files; and a biological man is still a man even though he slices off his own sex organs and replaces them with reshaped forearm flesh. It is all to no avail.

Also see related articles: “While Media Denied Leftist Violence After Kirk Murder, Three More Left-Wing Attacks Happened” (Breccan F. Thies, Federalist)...”Charlie Kirk and the Left’s Memory Police” (Mark Judge, Hot Air)

Other excellent reads from the week:

* “Jabber About Jabs: The Vaccine Debate” (Francis Turner, Substack)

* “Hero at 11: The Boy Who Stopped a School Shooting - and Got Expelled for It” (Eli Shepherd, Red State)

* “UK Gets a Muslim Terrorist Counterterrorism Minister”

(Daniel Greenfield, Gatestone Institute)

* “The United States Has Spent $110 Billion on AIDS Prevention. 

Less Than Half of the Money Went to Medical Supplies and Health Workers, 

a State Department Audit Found.” (Adam Kredo, Washington Free Beacon)

* “Trump Promises American Global Leadership: 7 Themes from His UN Speech” (Joshua Arnold, Washington Stand) 

* “Why Do So Many European Leaders Now Seem Proud To Side With Hamas?” (Mick Hume, The European Conservative)

* “The Scandalous Case of Cardinal Cupich and Senator Durbin” 

(Jayd Henricks, Catholic World Report)

 * “God’s Character And Unchanging Word Dismantle 

The Lie Of Replacement Theology” (Josh Davis, Harbinger's Daily)

* “You Can’t Make This Up: The Insane Reasons Criminal 

Migrants Stay in the UK” (Niklas Hallén, The European Conservative)

* "The Possessed: Assassination mysteries and the dynamics of political murder." (Lloyd Billingsley, Front Page Magazine)

The Top 5 (September 14)

* "Candidate, Moderate Thyself: Conservatives are right to complain about the blatant bias of ABC’s debate moderators, but the bigger problem was Donald Trump’s undisciplined performance." (Heather Mac Donald, City Journal)

From the article -- Yes, the moderators of ABC’s debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris were egregiously biased in favor of Harris. Yes, Harris recycled patent lies about Trump without the slightest pushback from the referees—that Trump has embraced the supposedly infamous Project 2025, that he supports a national abortion ban, that he called the anti-Semitic and racist demonstrators in Charlottesville in 2019 “fine people,” that he refused leases to black would-be renters. (The New York Times lauded the ABC team as a “model for real-time fact-checking.”)

But a low-information voter who, incredibly, still has not made up her mind about the election could easily decide for Harris on the basis of Tuesday’s debate. Trump put all his worst traits on display—his narcissism, his gratuitous nastiness, and above all, his penchant for using hyperbole as a substitute for argument.

* "Kamala Harris: ‘My Values’ Say Pro-Life Laws Are ‘Immoral’" (Ben Johnson, Washington Stand)

From the article -- Harris, who boasted she “brings values” to the White House, then repeated one of the many shopworn phrases she said during the debate: “One does not have to abandon their faith or deeply held beliefs to agree the government, and Donald Trump certainly, should not be telling a woman what to do with her body.” Christians have held that abortion violates their faith, and should be illegal, for 2,000 years. Orthodox Jews also say they hold a pro-life faith. The Satanic Temple regards abortion as a sacrament.

As she has throughout the campaign, Harris promised to impose abortion on all 50 states by force. “I pledge to you when Congress passes a bill to put back in place the protections of Roe v. Wade as president of the United States, I will proudly sign it into law,” she said. “But, understand, if Donald Trump were to be re-elected, he will sign a national abortion ban. Understand, in his Project 2025, there would be a national abortion ban.”

The Biden-Harris administration has endorsed a bill that goes beyond Roe, allowing abortion until birth nationwide. The Democratic Party platform also supports taxpayer-funded abortions in the United States and around the world.

* "The Truth About World War II" (Victor Davis Hanson, The Free Press)

From the article -- In a recent and now widely seen Tucker Carlson interview, a guest historian named Darryl Cooper casually presented a surprising number of flawed theories about World War II. He focused his misstatements on the respective roles of Winston Churchill’s Britain and Adolf Hitler’s Germany—especially in matters of the treatment and fate of Russian prisoners, the Holocaust, the systematic slaughtering of Jews, strategic bombing, and the nature of Winston Churchill. 

Because of the size of the audience Carlson introduced him to, and because of the gravity of Cooper’s falsehoods, his assertions deserve a response. 

* "The Uniparty Turns Literal" (Mark Steyn)

From the article -- I thought Cheney was an homme sérieux. But, in the end, he wasn't. The Bush years have to be accounted a terrible failure, in which the leadership of the then dominant superpower was unable to grasp the simplest of truths - not least about the need for strategic clarity. Under Cheney, America launched wars with no war aims, in which it deluded itself that "smart bombs" counted for more than will. Meanwhile, on the home front, the rate of Muslim immigration to America doubled ...because it was more important to show the world how nice we are than to consider the cultural consequences of demographic transformation. So the west spent twenty years fighting over the most barren and worthless sod on the planet, while surrendering Malmö and Marseille, Rotterdam and Nottingham, and Lewiston-Auburn, Maine. This is what happens when you have a political class almost entirely disconnected from the rhythms of real life in real countries.

So Trump has performed a great service in driving the likes of Cheney to vote Kamala. The feeble charade of TweedleDem vs TweedleRep is designed to obscure the central fact of end-stage western "democracy" - that, on anything that really matters, nothing can be permitted to change. Thus, having Dick Cheney and Ilhan Omar formally on the same team is very helpful. Trump has driven the "respectable" political class to make the Uniparty literal, and its consolidation has freed up space for an actual second party.

* "Migrants flooding NYC’s justice system -- making up ‘75% of arrests in Midtown’ -- as ‘pathetic’ sanctuary city laws handcuff cops." (New York Post)

From the article -- The problem is made much worse by sanctuary city laws that mean New York cops aren’t allowed to work with ICE on cases in which they believe suspects are in the country illegally. Additionally, the NYPD says it is barred from tracking the immigration status of offenders. This makes it almost impossible for authorities to get their arms around the problem, experts and sources on the ground say.

“New York City eliminated a tool to get rid of violent criminals. What a mess,” Jim Quinn, a veteran former prosecutor at the Queens District Attorney’s Office, told The Post. “The sanctuary city law is pathetic. It’s disgusting. It’s crazy.” Making matters worse, police sources say, word has gotten out in the shelters about the city’s lax bail guidelines — meaning migrants know they’re going to get kicked back onto the street quickly after they’re nabbed.

Bonus picks for this week? Yes, here's a couple:

* "Why America’s Soaring Debt Is Biggest Threat to US Dollar" (Daniel Lacalle, Daily Signal)

* "The Return of Anti-History: Podcasts are not reviving history, as is often claimed these days. They are mostly drowning it in a tidal wave of blather, at best sloppy, at worst mendacious." (Niall Ferguson, The Free Press)

Are Journalistic Ethics & Relevance Forever Gone?

Well, I'm pleased to say that there are still a few honest, skilled, and relevant journalists out there. And they are writing articles you need to be aware of. Like this list...

* "Our Increasingly Unrecognizable Civilization" (Mark Steyn, Imprimis)

* "Identity crisis: how the politics of race will wreck America" (Charles Murray, The Spectator)

* "The Definition of Courage Has Shifted Since Normandy" (Ben Shapiro, Daily Signal)

* "Biden vs. the Pentagon" (Byron York, Washington Examiner)

* "Disney+ Hosting LGBTQ Pride Concert Aimed at Children, Starring Drag Queen Nina West" (Dvid Ng, Breitbart)

* "Hulu’s ‘Love, Victor’ Shows Catholic Mom Evolve from Rebuking Gay Teen Sex to Rebuking Priest" (Warner Todd Houston, Breitbart)

* "Nellis Air Force Base Hosts First-Ever Drag Queen Show: ‘Essential to the Morale, Readiness’" (Kristina Wong, Breitbart)

The Best of... (Part 3 of 3)

To help with the ongoing problem of information overload, here's 6 of the latest articles, chosen from the very best, the very brightest, and the most relevant to the culture wars.

* "How Five Media Lies Won Biden the White House" (Larry O'Connor, Town Hall)

* "How Ending Freedom Of Expression Gives Up Your Right To A Private Life" (Stella Morabito, Federalist)

* "Our Increasingly Unrecognizable Civilization" (Mark Steyn, Imprimis)

* "The Woke Takeover of the U.S. Military Endangers Us All" (Dakota Wood and Mike Gonzalez, Heritage Foundation)

* "Guatemalan President Blasts Biden's Border Policies for Enabling Criminal Human Smugglers" (Katie Pavlich, Town Hall)

* "The ‘kill whites’ psychiatrist and the high price of wokeness in medicine" (Kurt Mahlburg, Mercator)

The Right Stuff: The Latest Compilation Post

* “Tinker, Tailor, Clapper, Carter, Downer, Halper, Spy” (Mark Steyn, Steyn Online)

* “7 Ways Spy-in-Chief Barack Obama Spied on Donald Trump” (John Nolte, Breitbart)

* “Scenes of surrender against public drug use” (Editors, New York Post)

* “In Ireland, St. Patrick weeps” (Monica Showalter, American Thinker)

* “From Russia With Love” (Walter Williams, Daily Wire)

* “President Trump at Annapolis” (Paul Mirengoff, Power Line)

* “Trump has secured release of 17 American hostages already and here’s what’s coming” (Samantha Chang, BPR)

* “Shirt of shame: Britain dishes out £62 million in foreign aid to Rwandan dictator who splurges £30 million on sponsorship for his beloved Arsenal Football Club” (Nick Craven, Daily Mail)

VIP: Very Important Perceptions

Among the most important of the articles I've come across recently are these gems. Check 'em out. They are very good.

* “A Total Failure of the State” (Mark Steyn, Steyn Online)

* “Broward’s Cowards” (The Editors of National Review)

* “The Left Is Reaping the Whirlwind of the Culture They Made” (Andrew Klavan, PJ Media)

* “Trump Has Been Tough on Russia (Except Rhetorically)” (Jonah Goldberg, National Review)

* “Conservatives Are Being Destroyed by Facebook, Twitter and Google Without Even Realizing It” (John Hawkins, Town Hall)

* “Why Don’t We Care About the Slaughter of Nigerian Christians?” (Michael Brown, The Stream)

* “Ohio Supreme Court Revokes Abortion Center’s License For Failing Safety Standards” (Grace Carr, Daily Caller)

* “Judgment Day for Public Unions: What’s at stake in the Supreme Court’s Janus case” (Daniel DiSalvo, City Journal)

Turn Off the Old Guard Media...and Read These Instead

* “Refusing To Serve Customers You Don’t Agree With Is Suddenly Cool Again” (Mary Katharine Ham, Federalist)

* “Advice for the Loyal Opposition” (Mark Steyn, Steyn Online)

* “Literally Shaking” (Ann Coulter)

* “Transgender Conformity” (Katherine Kersten, First Things)

* “Media Malpractice? Media Bias And The 2016 Election” (Editors, Investor’s Business Daily)

* “Keep crying wolf about Trump, and no one will listen when there’s a real crisis” (Kyle Smith, New York Post)

* “Barbra Streisand urges Obama to bypass Senate, appoint Supreme Court justice unilaterally” (Valerie Richardson, Washington Times)

* “Google’s Eric Schmidt Wore ‘Staff’ Badge at Hillary Clinton Election Night Party” (Joe Schoffstall, Washington Free Beacon)

* “ESPN’s Public Editor Agrees With Viewers That Network ‘Has Moved Leftward’” (Clay Waters, MRC News Busters)

Don't Miss These "Must Reads"

* “How Obama’s Made Sure to Leave Every Part of the World More Dangerous than He Found It” (Robert Ehrlich, National Review)

* “Catholic University Investigated for Offending Muslims by Having Too Many Crosses” (John Hayward, Breitbart)

* “US to award Iran $11.9 billion through end of nuke talks” (Adam Kredo, Fox News)

* “The 7 Steps the Next President Should Take to Boost Our Economy” (James Carafano, The Daily Signal)

* “Christian schools will have no choice about gay marriage” (Michael Farris, USA Today)

* “Conservative Nebraska Legislature tackles liberal issues” (Anna Gronewold, Associated Press)

* “Stay Quiet and You'll Be Okay” (Mark Steyn, Steyn Online)

* “Bigot Peter Singer: Don’t Pay to Treat Disabled Babies” (Wesley J. Smith, National Review)

Catching Up

Having been busy with the sessions at the L'Abri Conference up in Rochester, Minnesota the last few days, I submit the following as particularly important reads I've since come across.

* “Obamacare and Abortion: Americans are often forced to pay for abortion coverage they do not want.” (Genevieve C. Plaster & Arina O. Grossu, NRO)

* “The Morning After” (Mark Steyn, Steyn Online)

* “Obama’s so selfie absorbed” (Michael Goodwin, New York Post)

* “Dissident savagely attacked by Castro thugs” (Carlos Eire, Babalu)

* “Over 65 Cuban Dissidents Arrested Today” (Capitol Hill Cubans)

* “Standing By His Woman, Killing His Career” (Katie Kieffer, Town Hall)

* “HHS Pushes Church Talking Points, Bulletins to Promote Obamacare” (Jerly Bier, Weekly Standard) There are times when the President likes churches; that is, when they can be used for his political ends.

Does Culture Trump Politics?

Liberals expend tremendous effort changing the culture. Conservatives expend tremendous effort changing elected officials every other November — and then are surprised that it doesn’t make much difference. Culture trumps politics — which is why, once the question’s been settled culturally, conservatives are reduced to playing catch-up... 

In 1986, in a concurrence to a majority opinion, the chief justice of the United States declared that “there is no such thing as a fundamental right to commit homosexual sodomy.” A blink of an eye, and his successors are discovering fundamental rights to commit homosexual marriage.

What happened in between? Jurisprudentially, nothing: Everything Chief Justice Warren Burger said back in the ’80s — about Common Law, Blackstone’s “crime against nature,” “the legislative authority of the State” — still applies. Except it doesn’t. Because the culture — from school guidance counselors to sitcom characters to Oscar hosts — moved on, and so even America’s Regency of Jurists was obliged to get with the beat... 

If the culture’s liberal, if the schools are liberal, if the churches are liberal, if the hip, groovy business elite is liberal, if the guys who make the movies and the pop songs are liberal, then electing a guy with an “R” after his name isn’t going to make a lot of difference...

Read the rest of Mark Steyn’s compelling article, “Why the real battle for America is over culture, not elections,” in the New York Post.

Kind of a Drag: The U.S. Air Force's Diversity Day Entertainment

Want an idea of just how far the morality, priorities and policies of the U.S. military have devolved? Then read this National Review column from Mark Steyn, "Fly Boys."

In my column on Major Hasan, I quote the response to his killing spree by General Casey, the Army’s then Chief of Staff: "What happened at Fort Hood was a tragedy, but I believe it would be an even greater tragedy if our diversity becomes a casualty."

Not to be outdone, on Thursday the United States Air Force celebrated “Diversity Day" --

"The U.S. Air Force said that a well-known drag queen group was invited to perform on base during a “Diversity Day” celebration because drag is a “symbol of gay pride and unity…”

Drag acts have had an honorable role in military entertainment (see Gloria in the BBC sitcom “It Ain’t Half Hot, Mum”, or the “Honey Bun” number in South Pacific), but it is the peculiar genius of today’s plonkingly turgid diversity enforcers to make drag acts a real drag. Here’s the USAF’s official spokesperson:

“Drag acts to this day represent the struggle for freedom and equality of the LGBT community, while at the same time providing a deep-rooted historical form of entertainment for the LGBT culture,” said Peggy Hodge, a spokesperson for the Office of Public Affairs…“Drag queen acts are historically one of the main forms of entertainment in the LGBT culture, having its roots in the earliest of days of the gay rights movement.”

Things seem to have gone downhill from there:

"In addition to the drag queens, there were performances by an Irish dance troupe, a Polynesia entertainment group, Japanese drummers, Native American dancers, Hispanic folk music, and cloggers."

As the Duke of Wellington said on the eve of Waterloo, “I don’t know what effect they’ll have on the enemy, but by God they frighten me.”

Post Toasties

What about that sale of the Washington Post to Amazon's mega-billionaire Jeff Bezos? Here's a couple of NR responses you should note.

* "The Last Post" by Mark Steyn (National Review)

Re Jeff Bezos buying The Washington Post for $250 million, I mentioned here yesterday that in 1999 The Worcester Telegram & Gazette (that’s in Massachusetts) sold for $295 million.

Fourteen years later, one of the media’s A-list titles – the establishment paper of the capital city, the one that took down a president and made Woodward, Bernstein and Ben Bradlee the Holy Trinity of American journalism’s First Church of Itself – can barely command 80 per cent of that price.

No other industry’s management is in quite such poignant inversion to its self-regard.  

* "Fish Don’t Know They’re Wet" by Mark Krikorian (National Review)

The Post story on its sale to Jeff Bezos notes toward the end that the owner of Amazon “has given little indication of his ideological leanings over the years.” It then goes on to say that “he and his wife have regularly donated to the campaign of Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash)” and that he is in “the top ranks of financial backers of gay rights in the country.” 

I think that gives a pretty clear indication of his ideological leanings. 

His leftism is no surprise, given the political inclinations of our elites, but it’s hilarious that the reporter, Paul Farhi, and his editors could list those data points and then not draw the obvious conclusion. I don’t think it was disingenuous — they just see liberalism as the natural state of thinking people, and not as any kind of ideological leaning. 

And that’s why, despite Bezos’s business acumen, the Post will likely continue down the path of clueless, parochial liberalism, and keep hemorrhaging readers.

Judging Zimmerman (Do Facts Matter At All Anymore?)

Has there ever been a clearer case of race baiting, irresponsible journalism, and a calculated strategy for social division than what we have seen with the news and commentary on the George Zimmerman trial?

Well, the trial is finally over and despite outlandish behavior by the prosecuting attorneys, enabling help to the prosecution by the judge, and the surrounding media circus that deliberately ignored the facts of the case in their zeal to have George Zimmerman burned, the defendant was cleared of all charges.

Following the verdict, there have been violent and destructive riots, arson, preachers "honoring" Trayvon Martin by preaching in hoodies, and death threats to Zimmerman, members of the jury and policemen. President Obama, as usual, has ignored the facts of the case and delivered comments which further divide the nation, encourage the protests, and push one of his pet projects, the counter-productive fiasco of government gun control.

Is there no shame left in America? No desire for a rational, unbiased examination of facts before making sweeping judgments -- judgments that are so bold as to include another's mind and motivations?

Say goodnight, Gracie.

But, before you do, you might want to check out these illuminating articles on the matter:

* "State never proved its case, legal analysts say" (David Ovalle, Miami Herald)

* "Guilty Until Proven Innocent: How the Press Prosecuted Zimmerman While Stoking Racial Tensions" (John Nolte, Breitbart)

* "A Dagger at the Heart of Justice" (Mark Steyn, National Review)

* "FBI records: agents found no evidence that Zimmerman was racist" (Frances Robles and Scott Hiaason, Miami Herald)

* "The Zimmerman Verdict" (Wall Street Journal editorial)

* "Answering 7 Key Questions About The George Zimmerman Trial" (John Hawkins, Town Hall)

* "Injudicious Criminal Justice in Florida" (John Fund, National Review)

Today's Posts

Ever Gullible: Church Folks Still Falling for Global Warming

Alice Walker's Radical Feminism...As Viewed by Her Rejected Daughter

Catching Up

Mark Steyn: Big Brother Knows Everything...Except What's Most Important

Catching Up

Here are four excellent articles you definitely shouldn't miss.

* "Big Politically Correct Brother: The bozo leviathan sees everything . . . and nothing." by Mark Steyn (NRO)

* "Rush Limbaugh: Abortion at The Root of U.S. Cultural Decay" by Dr. Susan Berry (Breitbart)

* "The Consequences of Liberalism" by Christopher Chantrill (American Thinker)

* "Why the IRS IG Stopped with an Audit" by Gerald Walpin (NRO)

Mark Steyn: Big Brother Knows Everything...Except What's Most Important

...Your Granny’s phone calls, your teenager’s Flickr stream, and your Telecharge tickets for two on the aisle at Mamma Mia! for your wife’s birthday, and the MasterCard bill for dinner with your mistress three days later are all fair game, but since October 2011 mosques have been off-limits to the security state.

If the FBI guy who got the tip-off from Moscow about young Tamerlan had been sufficiently intrigued to want to visit the Boston mosque where he is said to have made pro-terrorism statements during worship, the agent would have been unable to do so without seeking approval from something called the Sensitive Operations Review Committee high up in Eric Holder’s Department of Justice.

The Sensitive Operations Review Committee is so sensitive nobody knows who’s on it. You might get approved, or you might get sentenced to extra sensitivity training for the next three months. Even after the bombing, the cops forbore to set foot in the lads’ mosque for four days. Three hundred million Americans are standing naked in the NSA digital scanner, but the all-seeing security state has agreed that not just their womenfolk but Islam itself can be fully veiled from head to toe...

(From "Big Politically Correct Brother: The bozo leviathan sees everything . . . and nothing." Mark Steyn's weekend NRO column.)

Ignorance Is "In" at the White House

Speaking at Ohio State University earlier this month, Barack Obama urged students to pay no attention to those paranoid types who “incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity.”

Oddly enough, in recent days the most compelling testimony for this view of government has come from the president himself, who insists with a straight face that he had no idea that the Internal Revenue Service had spent two years targeting his political enemies until he “learned about it from the same news reports that I think most people learned about this.”

Like you, all he knows is what he reads in the papers.

Which is odd, because his Justice Department is bugging those same papers, so you’d think he’d at least get a bit of a heads-up.

But no doubt the fact that he’s wiretapping the Associated Press was also entirely unknown to him until he read about it in the Associated Press.

There is a “president of the United States” and a “government of the United States,” but, despite a certain superficial similarity in their names, they are entirely unrelated...

Mark Steyn is at his best when the opposition gives him something to work with…and, boy oh boy, has Team Obama done that in recent days!

No kidding, don't miss reading the rest of Steyn's weekend column for National Review.

Next Up for the Sexual Revolution? Polygamy.

A few years ago, when the gay-marriage bandwagon got rolling, some of us argued that “if the sex of the participants is no longer relevant, why should the number be?” The same-sex-marriage crowd swatted the polygamy shtick aside as utterly irrelevant, even though there are far more takers for polygamy than there will ever be for gay marriage, and it is, de facto, already recognized to one degree or another by multiculti types in the British Government pensions department and the French welfare system.

So here we are in 2012, and the Toronto District School Board has a new poster called “Love Has No Gender“, full of happy couples but also happy triples. This poster is in every Toronto grade school...

(Mark Steyn, "Two’s Company, Three’s a Positive Role Model," National Review)

So It Ain't Exactly True. As Long As the Politics Are Left.

Is there any doubt that Mark Steyn is the most inventive, most effective conservative writer of our generation? I read him and not only get the political and cultural ideas he presents but I also get teasing echoes of Tom Wolfe, James Thurber, Bill Buckley, Malcolm Muggeridge, Bob Novak, Evelyn Waugh, G.K. Chesterton, even Stan Freeberg and the writers of the 1960s-era Mad Magazine.

Want a brief example? Here's the first section of a recent column exploring the new biography of our President, "Obama the First Invented-American President." It's choice.

Courtesy of David Maraniss' new book, we now know that yet another key prop of Barack Obama's identity is false: His Kenyan grandfather was not brutally tortured or even non-brutally detained by his British colonial masters. The composite gram'pa joins an ever-swelling cast of characters from Barack's "memoir" who, to put it discreetly, differ somewhat in reality from their bit parts in the grand Obama narrative. The best friend at school portrayed in Obama's autobiography as "a symbol of young blackness" was, in fact, half Japanese, and not a close friend. The white girlfriend he took to an off-Broadway play that prompted an angry post-show exchange about race never saw the play, dated Obama in an entirely different time zone, and had no such world-historically significant conversation with him. His Indonesian step-grandfather, supposedly killed by Dutch soldiers during his people's valiant struggle against colonialism, met his actual demise when he "fell off a chair at his home while trying to hang drapes."

David Maraniss is no right-winger, and can't understand why boorish nonliterary types have seized on his book as evidence that the president of the United States is a Grade A phony. "It is a legitimate question about where the line is in memoir," he told Soledad O'Brien on CNN. My Oxford dictionary defines "memoir" as "an historical account or biography written from personal knowledge." And if Obama doesn't have "personal knowledge" of his tortured grandfather, war-hero step-grandfather and racially obsessed theater-buff girlfriend, who does? But in recent years, the Left has turned the fake memoir into one of the most prestigious literary genres: Oprah's Book Club recommended James Frey's "A Million Little Pieces," hailed by Bret Easton Ellis as a "heartbreaking memoir" of "poetic honesty," but subsequently revealed to be heavy on the "poetic" and rather light on the "honesty." The "heartbreaking memoir" of a drug-addled street punk who got tossed in the slammer after brawling with cops while high on crack with his narco-hooker girlfriend proved to be the work of some suburban Pat Boone type with a couple of parking tickets. (I exaggerate, but not as much as he did.)

Oprah was also smitten by "The Education of Little Tree," the heartwarmingly honest memoir of a Cherokee childhood which turned out to be concocted by a former Klansman whose only previous notable literary work was George Wallace's "Segregation Forever" speech. "Fragments: Memories of a Wartime Childhood" is a heartbreakingly honest, poetically searing, searingly painful, painfully honest, etc., account of Binjamin Wilkomirski's unimaginably horrific boyhood in the Jewish ghetto of Riga and the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz. After his memoir won America's respected National Jewish Book Award, Mr. Wilkomirski was inevitably discovered to have been born in Switzerland and spent the war in a prosperous neighborhood of Zurich being raised by a nice middle-class couple. He certainly had a deprived childhood, at least from the point of view of a literary agent pitching a memoir to a major publisher. But the "unimaginable" horror of his book turned out to be all too easily imagined. Fake memoirs have won the Nobel Peace Prize and are taught at Ivy League schools to the scions of middle-class families who take on six-figure debts for the privilege ("I, Rigoberta Menchu"). They're handed out by the Pentagon to senior officers embarking on a tour of Afghanistan (Greg Mortenson's "Three Cups of Tea") on the entirely reasonable grounds that a complete fantasy could hardly be less credible than current NATO strategy.

In such a world, it was surely only a matter of time before a fake memoirist got elected as president of the United States. Indeed, the aforementioned Rigoberta Menchu ran as a candidate in the 2007 and 2011 presidential elections in Guatemala, although she got knocked out in the first round – Guatemalans evidently being disinclined to elect someone to the highest office in the land with no accomplishment whatsoever apart from a lousy fake memoir. Which just goes to show what a bunch of unsophisticated rubes they are…

Steyn isn't done. Read the rest of the column here.

Other Important Reads to Start Your Week

* First of all, don't miss this gem from Mark Steyn. "Earthly woes mount as Obama's rhetoric soars." You'll be very glad you read this one.

* "ObamaCare's Secret History: How a Pfizer CEO and Big Pharma colluded with the White House at the public's expense." Wall Street Journal.

* "What Happens When Adults Fail to Protect Children?" A challenging essay by Barb Malek published in her blog, Erase the Need.

* "Media’s moral morass: Liberal press digs deep in competition for weirdest musing" by Robert Knight in the Washington Times.

* "The folly of Obamacare" by Robert J. Samuelson in the Washington Post.