Google Evens the Playing Field a Bit

Mike Judge of the Christian Institute sent me an e-mail from Wilberforce House in Newcastle upon Tyne this morning alerting me to some very good news; namely, that Google has given in to the Institute's requests for an even playing field in the matter of abortion-related advertisements.

Yes, it took a lawsuit by the Christian Institute to awaken the sensibilities of the internet mega-giant, Google. But the policy has changed and Google promises, it will change immediately.

The Christian Institute had launched its legal action in April after a pro-life ad was refused by Google, the company arguing that it wouldn't run the ad because Google's policy disallowed the advertising of sites that mixed “abortion and religion-related content”.

Hmmm. If you were a secularist, atheist or just your average greedy abortionist, then you could advertise on Google. But, if you were a Christian pregnancy center, you were refused. Hardly fair. Hardly rational.

But somehow the lawsuit turned on the light for Google officials and they've decided to revise their policy.

The Christian Institute's press release stated, “We are delighted to confirm that our legal proceedings against Google for blocking our abortion ad have been settled on amicable terms. As a result of the court action and other representations made to Google in recent months, Google has reviewed its AdWords policy to enable The Christian Institute and other religious associations to place ads on the subject of abortion in a factual and campaigning way.

“The new policy will apply world-wide with immediate effect. This is an important issue of free speech and religious liberty and we are pleased with Google’s constructive response to this matter.”

Wow.

The challenge involved here was a very large and daunting one, to be sure, but the Christians of the CI dared to take it on. They therefore well deserve congratulations from pro-lifers everywhere -- indeed, from all advocates of free speech -- for a crucial task well performed.

Here's the story from CI itself and here's a quick video clip outlining the whole matter.

Reporters Again Helping Obama, This Time By Undercutting the Reliability of Gianna Jessen

The facts are clear and well-established. Author, speaker, musician and pro-life advocate Gianna Jessen, is motivated to defend the sanctity of life not only because she is a Christian but because she herself is an abortion survivor.

Gianna survived a botched saline abortion performed by the notorious Edward C. Allred on April 6, 1977 in Los Angeles.

And though pro-abortion enthusiasts hate it when Gianna comes to their town because she is so winsome and effective an apologist for the pro-life cause, no one has ever been so silly as to suggest her story is bogus.

That is, not until she appeared in an ad underscoring the abortion extremism of of Barack Obama.

Then suddenly, members of the same press corps that have carefully avoided reporting on Obama's votes against even infants who survive abortion, decided to undercut Gianna's reputation with sly suggestions that her story is exaggerated. Rather than deal with the substance of the ad itself (Obama's callous opposition to the Born Alive Infant's Protection Act), ABC's Jake Tapper and Politico's Jonathan Martin concentrated on Gianna who "claims" to have survived an abortion, "says she" survived a failed abortion, and who is a "self-proclaimed abortion-survivor."

Incredible.

Again the facts are there and it's the responsibility of these reporters job to report them. (Jill Stanek easily dug them up.) But their bias has gotten in the way of their jobs. First in not reporting the relevant news about Obama's record and now in snidely helping to spin their candidate away from an issue that they know hurts him very badly with voters.

Here's more from LifeNews.com and over here at Gateway Pundit is a link (that worked) to the Gianna Jessen ad itself. The ad, by the way, was created by Born Alive Truth. Good work, guys.

I suggest you forward this post to friends. Let's make sure we do our part to get this important ad seen by as many Americans as possible.

Today's Posts

New Book Den Entries

Why Do They Hate Sarah So?

Fighting the Ongoing Slave Trade

Mark Udall: Crying Peace While Supporting the War Against the Unborn

When Measuring the Quality of One's Political Experience, Sarah Palin's Got It

Wall Street's Bursting Bubble

New Book Den Entries

Just a quick note to alert you that there are several new posts to be found over on The Book Den. I'm sure you'll find them an interesting and eclectic mix of topics ranging from G.K. Chesterton...to a review of Jessamyn West’s The Friendly Persuasion...to a personal reminiscence involving a couple of 1960's Donovan songs (complete with video clips)...to a very provocative article about how the celebrated American playwright Arthur Miller completely (and callously) deleted from his life his Down's syndrome son.

Why Do They Hate Sarah So?

Jeffrey Lord's American Spectator article, "Bashing God by Dissing Sarah," provides a helpful (though certainly infuriating) review of just a few of the attacks being weathered by John McCain's choice for VP.

And, no; Lord's list doesn't even include the wildest and worst of those attacks.

But he then goes on to explain why these vociferous volleys are aimed towards Sarah Palin. In a word, it's Palin's Christianity and the severe threat it poses to the "relentlessly secular" powers that be. Because a philosophy that denies God (or marginalizes Him out of the way) has no logic, no virtue, no life, and even no basis whatsoever for meaning, any clear expression of Christianity cannot be refuted. Therefore, it must be ridiculed, shouted down, or otherwise removed from consideration.

Just to have a successful, winsome, obviously happy Christian woman in the public eye is an extreme danger to secularists. But the possibility that such a person could be in a place of great influence and political power has driven these God-haters absolutely bonkers.

Fighting the Ongoing Slave Trade

The slave trade in human beings commonly referred to as "human trafficking" is not a matter of history. No, it remains very much with us. Various methods of coercion, deception, abduction, and use of force are dragging persons into hard labor and sexual exploitation for somebody else's profits.

And the human cost is staggering -- millions of people are being denied their basic human rights every year. Whether they are being used up in mines or sweatshops, plantations or military service, brothels or being sold as "brides," the horrors being unleashed on innocent people are legion.

But these injustices can be effectively fought.

The International Weekend of Prayer for Sex Trafficking Victims is September 26-28 and it presents a great opportunity for local churches to inform and mobilize their congregations to prayerfully fight back for foundational principles of justice. Won't you help your church to get involved?

There's a lot of information to be found at this Salvation Army-sponsored website including pdf files of excellent brochures and booklets that can be printed off. There's also a lot more that's available from the Beverly LaHaye Institute right here.

Mark Udall: Crying Peace While Supporting the War Against the Unborn

Colorado Congressman Mark Udall (now running for the U.S. Senate) gives out with the same tired clichés about abortion as do most other Democrats (making abortion "safe, legal and rare", "finding common ground" with pro-life advocates, etc.) but his actual record reveals he then acts (as do most other Democrats) to promote abortion profiteers every chance he gets.

Still, it might be a surprise to Colorado voters to learn that Udall's abortion positions are...literally...as extreme as they can get. He has an absolute zero on the ratings established by the National Right to Life Committee and a full 100% from the National Abortion Rights Action League.

These scores not only reflect Udall's support FOR partial birth abortions, embryonic stem cell research, human cloning, providing U.S. tax monies for international abortion organizations and Planned Parenthood; Udall has gone so far as to vote NO on making it a crime to harm a fetus during another crime and to vote NO on restricting interstate transport of minors to get abortions.

This guy is bad news.

Ironically, this same Mark Udall who supports, defends and finances the abortionists who brutally murder preborn babies tries to present himself as a man of peace. He is one of the fellows, for instance, working to spend at least $8 billion dollars of taxpayer money to establish a Department of Peace.

Mother Teresa once said, "Abortion is the killer of peace in the world." She was right. But Mark Udall doesn't bother with either logic or morality. He merely wants the posture of peace...while all the while helping to inspire and enable the most barbaric thugs around.

Oh yes, before you leave, check out these humorous (and effective) video clips about Udall's outrageous Peace Department. This one emphasizing Udall's "Boulder liberal" credentials and this really funny one created by Freedoms Watch. Then forward this post to all your Colorado friends. They need to learn just how deeply dedicated Udall is to the abortion establishment.

When Measuring the Quality of One's Political Experience, Sarah Palin's Got It

Popular author and Director of Eternal Perspectives Ministries, Randy Alcorn, brings some sage, well-balanced advice to the "experience issue" regarding Sarah Palin's fitness to be Vice-President.

Here's one of my favorite recent quotes: “I'm still having trouble expressing the depth of my anger about McCain's choice of a running mate.” Cecile Richards, President, Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

You can see here the full fundraising letter from Planned Parenthood, and some interesting comments.

If you believe what I believe about Planned Parenthood (see these blogs I've posted), you simply could not ask for a more powerful endorsement of Sarah Palin than that the president of Planned Parenthood is deeply angry about the possibility that she could be our vice president!...

Is she experienced enough to be Vice President? Well, there are different kinds of experience, and they aren't limited to political prominence in big cities.

For instance, many politicians have decades of experience in denying the rights of unborn children to live. They are long experienced in ignoring and even endorsing the shedding of innocent blood. Sarah Palin has not had that kind of experience. Last spring she gave birth to a child she knew had Down Syndrome, a child who according to the statistics, 80% of the American public, and presumably at least 80% of politicians, would have killed by abortion.

Her experience was to give the child life. That kind of experience means a lot to me.

That experience, especially as compared to the experience of using one's power to facilitate the shedding of innocent blood, is one I value far more than a longer history of making speeches and casting votes and meeting dignitaries at dinner tables.

Now, the limits of the experience of being a small town mayor, then governor of Alaska could be a factor in my decision if she were running against candidates who were comparable in their moral viewpoints concerning babies. But she's not.

True, character isn't everything. Willingness to sacrifice for the weak and powerless isn't everything. But I'll take it any day over decades of political experience. Political experience doesn't trump basic human morality. It is moral to defend the right of children to live. It is immoral not to...

Wall Street's Bursting Bubble

Well, what do you know. Despite the depressing activity over on Wall Street yesterday, the sun came up this morning after all.

And here's today's Wall Street Journal editorial, the page of this venerable newspaper most deserving of one's trust, with some helpful commentary on what happened, why and where we go from here.

Please keep in mind, however, that the solons of the WSJ refer only to the financial affairs of this temporary realm. Their remarks are certainly of value but hardly comparable to the more profound, more comprehensive perspective of...say, Jesus."But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal." (Matthew 6:20. NASB)

Anyhow, here's the opening of the editorial...

We're happy to report that the world didn't end yesterday, though sometimes it was hard to tell. A major Wall Street banking house filed for bankruptcy, the taxpayers didn't come to the rescue, and financial markets lurched but didn't crash. Amid the current panic, this is a salutary lesson that our fate is in our own hands and that a deeper downturn is far from inevitable.

The immediate priority is to calm markets and prevent a crash, and to do so it helps to recall how we got here. We are not living through some "crisis of capitalism," unless policy blunders make it so. Nor is this largely the fault of the Bush Administration, as Barack Obama claims, or of some lack of regulation, as John McCain asserts. These politically convenient riffs do nothing to reassure the public.

The current panic is the ugly aftermath of the credit mania that took flight in the middle years of this decade. As students of economic historian Charles Kindleberger know ("Panics, Manias, and Crashes"), financial manias throughout history have shared one trait: the excessive expansion of credit. This bubble was no different...

Today's Posts

Democrat Cheapskates

I've Heard of Hate Speech...But Hate Photography?

Todd's Union Dues Being Used to Fight Sarah's Candidacy

"Emergent Church" Leaders Go in the Tank for Abortion Enthusiastic Democrats

Sharia Law Being Enforced in Britain

Just How Much Does Barack Obama Owe Bill Ayers?

I've Heard of Hate Speech...But Hate Photography?

Here's a maddening little story about just how mean-spirited, manipulative and underhanded liberals like celebrity photographer Jill Greenberg can get...and how irresponsible such "mainstream" magazines like The Atlantic can be in defending them.

Todd's Union Dues Being Used to Fight Sarah's Candidacy

Dear Mr. Palin,

Congratulations on the selection of your wife as the Republican candidate for Vice-President of the United States.

We understand you are a member of the United Steelworkers of America union. While I'm sure you're excited by your wife's candidacy for high office, you may be discouraged to learn that the union dues you pay are already being used to defeat her.

When USW union bosses endorsed Barack Obama in June, they pledged to support his campaign using funds collected from union members. Steelworker dues will pay for a variety of political activities throughout the electoral season, and a significant portion of those activities will be aimed at defeating the McCain-Palin ticket.

In fact, at the USW's 2008 convention, union officials adopted a resolution "vowing to play a key role in electing Obama," thus pledging workers' dues to the effort to defeat your wife's candidacy. Moreover, a top USW official whose paycheck you help fund is viciously ridiculing your wife's candidacy on the Steelworkers' website, calling Governor Palin's selection "cynical" and claiming that by choosing your wife "McCain has clearly shown he lacks the judgment to be president..."

Read the rest of this enlightening open letter sent to Todd Palin from National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix.

"Emergent Church" Leaders Go in the Tank for Abortion Enthusiastic Democrats

"I think the jury is still out on young evangelicals," said Cameron Strang, editor of Relevant magazine, an influential publication for this group. "Both parties have the opportunity to address issues of deep concern for this voting bloc."

Strang, 32, has been courted by Democrat Barack Obama's campaign. He accepted an invitation to speak on a panel at the Democratic National Convention about the faith vote and attended Obama's acceptance speech.

Yet Strang said he's "more undecided than ever." He said he was encouraged by Democratic pledges to reduce the number of abortions, but now worries the party is using abortion as a wedge issue by running ads sharply contrasting Palin and Obama on abortion rights.

If this AP story is accurate in its description, then Strang turns out to be just another sad example of how weak, compromising and unfaithful is the "emergent church" movement. After all, the Bible is clear and unequivocal about the monstrous sin which is abortion. And Barack Obama and the Democrat party are (through their actions) equally clear and unequivocal about supporting and promoting abortion, even going so far as opposing informed consent laws, parental consent laws, abstinence-based education, pro-life pregnancy centers, sidewalk counseling, conscience laws, and so on.

But Strang can't make up his mind?

No, if these guys were really serious about matching their rhetoric with their actions, they'd take their vaunted claims of Christian idealism and create a third party. But they don't. They'd rather play patsy for the party of abortion. Disgusting. And deeply disappointing.

Is it because they're too lazy? Too devoid of real ideas? Is it because they're perpetual adolescents, quick to whine and posture and blame but oh-so-slow to take responsibility? Is it just because they crave being hip (according to People magazine, David Letterman or their leftist college sociology prof) more than they are intent on being holy (according to the simple teachings of Holy Writ)?

Whatever the motives, the cowardly sell-out of "neo-evangelicals" like Strang to the abortion enthusiasts who run the Democrat party is an audacious (and spiritually dangerous) act, one which reveals more than anything else that the "emergent church" movement is nothing new at all. It is merely the same old liberalism that has sought to corrupt the Church for centuries, questioning the worth of the Scriptures while holding out forbidden fruits that promise worldly power, enlightenment and independence.

It was a bad trade then. It's a bad trade now.

Let's hope Mr. Strang (to whom I'm sending a copy of this post) soon repents his casual dismissal of the holocaust of abortion and makes up his mind, allowing the Word of God to finally be foremost in his political deliberations.

Sharia Law Being Enforced in Britain

Abul Taher reports for the Times (U.K.) that the public's perception that Islamic law might someday be enforced in Great Britain is incorrect. It is already being enforced!

Here at Vital Signs, we have highlighted this matter several times before including this post from back in February which even then explained that sharia law was underway. But yesterday's story gives more recent details about how the system is working out, including the "legal" acceptance of Muslim exploitation and suppression of women.

What the story only hints at, however, is a problem even more far-reaching -- the grievous error of Western civilization relinquishing to a backward and intolerant few her most precious virtues: freedom, justice, representative government, and national sovereignty.

Just How Much Does Barack Obama Owe Bill Ayers?

One of the "Must-Reads of the Day" suggested by Lucianne.com is actually this 3 and 1/2 minute video clip dealing with just how much Barack Obama owes to Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright.

That's right -- it's not just a matter of his being friends with these guys. He owes them.

And he says so in his own words.

Check it out.

Today's Posts

Obama and Biden Score Badly on Earmark Spending; McCain Earns "Hero" Status.

Leftist Religionists Join in the Attack on Sarah Palin

Persecution with an Economic Hammer: Kazakhstan Christians Face Severe Trials

For Christians Considering Barack Obama

Buyer's Remorse Among the Democrats

26 and Counting. The Catholic Bishops Correct Nancy Pelosi.

Looking for a Provocative, Punchy Primer on Stem Cell Issues?

Obama and Biden Score Badly on Earmark Spending; McCain Earns "Hero" Status.

The Council for Citizens Against Government Waste has come out with its latest rankings on earmark spending by Washington politicians. Fox News reports on the findings but I'll slip in a few of the salient points right here:

John McCain: He received a 100% rating for his votes resisting earmarks in the Senate last year. He's currently at a lifetime score of 88%. That's high enough to earn McCain "hero” status to the CAGW, a nonpartisan, nonprofit group which keeps a keen eye on government spending.

Joseph Biden: Scored 0% last year. His overall score is 22%. Yes, Joe Biden loves to spend taxpayer money.

Barack Obama: He earned a 10% rating score last year. His lifetime score (yeah, he's only been there a short while) stands at 18%. Uh huh; he's a big spender too.

Leftist Religionists Join in the Attack on Sarah Palin

As just one example of the many that could be cited of the intolerant, paranoid and distorted attacks on Sarah Palin, I give you Wendy Doniger, the Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Religions at the University of Chicago’s Divinity School. Her remarks were published at the overwhelmingly liberal website On Faith, "an interactive conversation on religion" produced jointly (don't you know) by Newsweek and the Washington Post. (For that matter, the site is full of anti-Palin...really, anti-Christian...material.)

You'll note that Professor Doniger doesn't worry about getting the facts straight. Indeed, she cites the most outrageous lies headlined by liberal reporters even though they've already been carefully and repeatedly refuted. And neither does the professor's rant bother to move along strict logical lines. After all, such things just get in the way of a blazing, self-righteous tantrum, don't they?

Anyhow, read portions of Professor Doniger's screed and then pray. Pray for her, for Governor Palin...and most fervently of all, pray for the poor souls who are studying "theology" under such a sad and irrational gal.

...Belief in god, like getting pregnant, is a private matter between consenting adults (or one consenting adult and one or more deities) and is no one else's business. I am on record in this blog (and have not budged an inch) as not objecting to any candidate's religious views.

But I object strongly when anyone (and especially anyone with political power) tries to take their theology out in public, to inflict those private religious (or sexual) views on other people. In both sex and religion (which combine in the debates about abortion), Sarah Palin's views make me fear that the Republican party has finally lost its mind.

As for sex, the hypocrisy of her outing her pregnant daughter in front of millions of people, hard on the heels of her concealing her own pregnancy (her faith in abstinence applying, apparently, only to non-Palins), is nicely balanced by her hypocrisy in gushing with loving support of her teenage daughter after using a line-item veto to cut funding for a transitional home for teenage mothers in Alaska.

Her greatest hypocrisy is in her pretense that she is a woman. The Republican party's cynical calculation that because she has a womb and makes lots and lots of babies (and drives them to school! wow!) she speaks for the women of America, and will capture their hearts and their votes, has driven thousands of real women to take to their computers in outrage. She does not speak for women; she has no sympathy for the problems of other women, particularly working class women.

And as for religion, I'd love to know precisely how the Good Lord conveyed to her so clearly his intention to destroy the environment (global warming, she thinks, is not the work of human hands, so it must be the work of You Know Who), the lives of untold thousands of soldiers and innocent bystanders (He is apparently rooting for this, too, she says), and, incidentally, a lot of polar bears and wolves, not to mention all the people who will be shot with the guns that she thinks other people ought to have. An even wider and more sinister will to impose her religious views on other people surfaced in her determination to legislate against abortion even in cases of rape and in her attempts to ban books, including books on evolution, and to fire the librarian who stood against her.

In dramatic contrast, Barack Obama was right to remark (of the teenage pregnancy) that you should back off from peoples' families, a remark directed ostensibly to press coverage but one that could also, I think, be thrown back at Palin herself: don't humiliate members of your family in order to get elected to public office. And he was right to remark (of the religious implications of abortion), "I don't presume to be able to answer these kinds of theological questions." Of course, it would be hard for Palin to follow this excellent policy, since it's evident that almost her only qualification in the minds of McCain & co.is her family. Moreover, it's hard to square Palin's attitudes to both family privacy and abortion with the shifting policies of McCain himself, who, in 2000, said that any question of his own daughter's pregnancy and/or abortion "would be a private decision that we would share within our family and not with anyone else," and who, though describing himself as a "pro-life" candidate, said he would not ban abortion in the case of rape, incest or to protect the life of the mother, nor would he reverse Roe v. Wade.

Joe Biden's views are most relevant to the question at hand, since, as a Catholic, he shares much of Palin's embryological theology: he believes life begins at conception. But he has gone out of his way to insist that he would not impose his personal views on others, and has indeed voted against curtailing abortion rights and against criminalizing abortion. That is the right answer. It's in the Constitution. It's not in the Bible, or the Qu'ran, or the Bhagavad Gita. It's in the mother-lovin' Constitution.

Persecution with an Economic Hammer: Kazakhstan Christians Face Severe Trials

Kazakhstan Baptists who do not wish to receive state registration continue to be punished for meeting for worship without legal status, Forum 18 News Service has learned. Three local administration officials and a police officer raided the Sunday worship service of a small congregation in Ayagoz in East Kazakhstan Region in July. Church member Pavel Leonov was later fined 100 times the minimum monthly wage after refusing to register the congregation.

On 3 September the Regional Court rejected his appeal, court officials told Forum 18. In Pavlodar Region, Oleg Voropaev was fined ten months' minimum wages for leading his Baptist congregation.

"The state's compulsion of the community to register violates the rights to freedom of conscience and religion guaranteed by the Constitution," Voropaev told the court.

Both Leonov and Voropaev have been fined in earlier years for their peaceful religious activity. Baptists have described the state's actions against them as an "economic war".

For Christians Considering Barack Obama

A friend and fellow sidewalk counselor alerted me to a new blog he's created -- 10 Reasons Christians Shouldn't Vote for Obama. It's a straightforward and documented list, forgoing matters of economics, foreign policy, and energy to concentrate only on the key moral issues of sanctity of life and marriage.

There's some very good stuff here. Good to read and remember. Good to use in your letters to editors. Good to pass on to friends, family and co-workers.