The Nature of Sin

..."There is no greater tyranny than one who forces me to pay for something that I do not want and do not need because they think that it is good for me".
......Robert Heinlein

Hope 'n' Change

Culture
Hope 'n' Change: ObamaCare's Assault on Religious Liberty
The Obama administration's disregard for religious freedom is well documented, so it should come as no surprise that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is, via ObamaCare, ramming abortion down the throats of religious people. Last August, Sebelius offered for public comment an "interim final rule" that would require private health care companies to provide certain "preventive services" without a deductible or co-pay. These services include sterilization and contraceptive drugs, such as Plan B and Ella. This may not seem a big deal to some companies, but to religious entities, it is a major affront.

Proponents of the rule claim that these entities would be exempt. However, while this may be technically true, the term defines "religious institution" so narrowly that it would not apply to most faith-based schools, hospitals or charities. These institutions now face the prospect of forced provision for services that contradict their beliefs. To add insult to injury, those that do fit into the religious institution exemption must refer their insureds to other places (e.g., Planned Parenthood) for contraceptive and sterilization services.

Although several religious leaders are bringing suit, Sebelius has refused to broaden the definition. Instead, she gave them an extra year -- until August 2013 -- to "adapt." This is a slap in the face, but again, it's nothing new. All we can do is hope that by that time we will have a new administration, one that seeks to rebuild and maintain this country's institutions instead of tearing them down.

algore and global warming from PatriotPost

And Last...
One moment Al Gore and the climate gorons are warning breathlessly about melting polar ice caps and drowning polar bears due to global warming due to your SUV. The next moment, it's the opposite. Either way, Gore laments, "Not a single question was asked about climate in any of the numerous, multitudinous debates that these candidates have had." He added that neglecting the issue means the future of civilization is "at risk." Substitute "my profits" for "civilization," and he's right.
As for the latest, Cambridge University researchers have concluded in a study that carbon dioxide emissions are actually helping stave off the next ice age. The BBC reports, "Researchers used data on the Earth's orbit and other things to find the historical warm interglacial period that looks most like the current one. In the journal Nature Geoscience, they write that the next Ice Age would begin within 1,500 years -- but emissions have been so high that it will not." Whew, that's a relief! We guess it's back to the attic with that extra mammoth pelt.

Culture is synonomous with World System

Culture
"On its website, the American Psychological Association brags, 'Since 1975, the American Psychological Association has called on psychologists to take the lead in removing the stigma of mental illness that has long been associated with lesbian, gay, and bisexual orientations.' It once considered such behavior otherwise and while even most conservatives no longer regard homosexuality as a mental illness, many still regard it as sinful. That theological diagnosis, too, has been discarded in our increasingly secular and anomalous society where everything is to be tolerated except those people who assert that, according to a standard higher than opinion polls, some things remain intolerable. ... What we tolerate and promote we get more of and what we discourage and reject we get less of. ... The message at Penn State was that we live in a culture that forbids almost nothing. ... In the last verse of the Old Testament's book of Judges, there is this: 'In those days Israel had no king; everyone did what was right in his own eyes.' That could have been the motto at Penn State. Increasingly, it appears to describe contemporary America as well." --columnist Cal Thomas

Abortion Advertised!

Mass. sex ed site touts ease of getting abortions to kids

It's like totally easier than you think to get an abortion! So says a state funded sex education website in Massachusetts anyway. The site stands by their advice to kids that encourages them to not tell mom and dad about getting an abortion (just go to Planned Parenthood, and they'll hook you up with a good lawyer) - but even more horrifying, the site paints getting an abortion as no big deal while warning that adoption can cause severe problems. Get the full story from The Blaze.

A Question of Eligibility

Setting Media Matters straight
Posted: April 18, 2011
1:00 am Eastern
By Joseph Farah
© 2011

Generally speaking, I tend to ignore what the George Soros "Media Matters" smear machine publishes.

Refuting their lies about me and my company would be a full-time job.

But, knowing the news media's propensity for shallow research into the eligibility issue, I thought it was important for someone to challenge Media Matters' recent "Myths and Falsehoods: Birther Edition."

* Barack Obama has released his birth certificate: An easy way to prove that would be to simply show it. Instead, what Media Matters does is to hype the digital short-form document we've all seen – the "Certification of Live Birth," which would likely not have been sufficient proof to get the young Obama signed up in Little League, if he had been living in Hawaii rather than Indonesia at the time of his eligibility for competitive sports. This is a document that Hawaii has routinely handed out to register births occurring elsewhere, even out of the country, on the basis of an affidavit filed by a parent or grandparent. If this is "the original birth certificate," as claimed by FactCheck.org, Obama has more eligibility problems than most people realize. It is hardly the contemporaneous eyewitness document one would expect to prove constitutional eligibility for the highest office in America. Media Matters then quotes former Hawaii health department Director Chiyome Fukino as asserting she has seen the original "vital records" and proclaiming Obama to be a "natural-born American citizen," despite her lack of bona fides as a constitutional authority.

* Obama's grandmother never said Obama was born in Kenya: In a recorded interview Oct. 16, 2008, Sarah Hussein Obama does indeed seem to suggest he was. While it is true her translators insist repeatedly that she was mistaken, insisting he was born in Hawaii, the grandmother herself is clearly heard to say "Mombasa." It's hardly conclusive evidence of anything, but it is of some interest given the highly unlikely scenario that the grandmother traveled to Hawaii to witness the birth of a grandson to an American woman, when her financially struggling son, Barack Hussein Obama Sr., had already produced offspring with a Kenyan wife.

* Newspaper birth announcements prove Obama was born in Hawaii: Actually they suggest only that indeed Obama's birth was "registered" in Hawaii, probably producing the "vital records" Fukino referenced. Hawaii made it very easy for parents or grandparents to register births that took place out of state or out of the country by simply filling out an affidavit.

* Kenyan birth certificates are fraudulent: Media Matters insists WND proclaimed an apparently fraudulent Kenyan birth certificate was real. To the contrary, WND was the first news agency to proclaim the alleged Kenyan birth certificate produced by Orly Taitz as "probably not authentic." Media Matters, interestingly, mentions but does not refute a WND report that Kenyan officials on the floor of the National Assembly made statements proclaiming Obama as a Kenyan the day after he was elected.

* Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie was able to find Obama's birth certificate: Immediately following his election, Abercrombie pledged to several major news agencies in the U.S. that one of his highest priorities was producing the birth certificate. However, he conceded weeks later he was unable to find it – and, if he could, helpless under the law to produce it. Instead, he assured the press that there is a "recording of the birth": "It was actually written I am told, this is what our investigation is showing. It actually exists in the archives, written down …" Again, this claim by the governor still does not deal with the particulars of what that document or registration might say – or, if it is any different than the certification of live birth we've all seen.

* If Obama was born in Hawaii, he is constitutionally eligible to serve as president: Media Matters cites one constitutional authority to make this case. But if his father was a Kenyan visiting student, as Obama claims, and his mother was Stanley Ann Dunham, it's doubtful either of his parents were in a position to confer even run-of-the-mill U.S. citizenship on their son – he because of foreign citizenship and she because of her age.

In other words, isn't it about time Obama produce the one essential document necessary to evaluate whether he is, indeed, constitutionally eligible to serve?

Is this the best you can do, Media Matters?

Read more: Setting Media Matters straight http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=288301#ixzz1JvDUtOt9

Global Warming

Research to Date on Forecasting for the Manmade Global Warming Alarm (Scott Armstrong, Kesten Green, and Willie Soon; Environment & Climate News)
“The validity of the man-made global warming alarm requires the support of scientific forecasts of (1) a substantive long-term rise in global mean temperatures in the absence of regulations, (2) serious net harmful effects due to global warming, and (3) cost-effective regulations that would produce net beneficial effects versus alternatives such as doing nothing. …” Evidence-based forecasting principles audits found (1) violated 81% of 89 relevant forecasting principles and (3) violated 85% of 90 relevant principles. “… We conducted a validation test of the IPCC forecasts based on the assumption that there would be no interventions. This test found that the errors for IPCC model long-term forecasts (91 to 100 years in the future) were 12.6 times larger than those from an evidence-based ‘no change’ model. Based on our analyses, we concluded that the global warming alarm is an anti-scientific political movement. We then turned to the ‘structured analogies’ method to forecast the likely outcomes of this movement. In this ongoing study, we have, to date, identified 26 historical alarmist movements. None of the forecasts for the analogous alarms proved correct. In the 25 alarms that called for government intervention, the government impos[ed] regulations in 23. None of the 23 interventions was effective and harm was caused by 20 of them. Our findings on the scientific evidence related to global warming forecasts lead to the following recommendations:
1. End government funding for climate change research
2. End government funding for research predicated on global warming (e.g., alternative energy; CO2 reduction; habitat loss)
3. End government programs and repeal regulations predicated on global warming
4. End government support for organizations that lobby or campaign predicated on global warming.”
www.CornwallAlliance.org.