Mike Huckabee's Sunday Morning Sermon... (updated)

Mike Huckabee on rights and responsibilities:

Update: Mike Huckabee on the Fair Tax:


Also, the Fair Tax came up at the recent ABC News Republican Debate from Iowa. Mike Huckabee responds:


More on the Fair Tax:

Are we France?

"Moral paralysis" is a term ... that may be painfully relevant to our own times."

Thomas Sowell is one of my biggest influencers and heroes. If you only have time to follow a few columnists each week, follow him.

His latest is a history lesson, with a frightening exit question: Are we France? Are we morally paralyzed, perhaps fatally?:

... Back in the 1930s, the governments of the democratic countries knew what Hitler was doing -- and they knew that they had enough military superiority at that point to stop his military buildup in its tracks. But they did nothing to stop him.

Instead, they turned to what is still the magic mantra today -- "negotiations."

No leader of a democratic nation was ever more popular than British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain -- wildly cheered in the House of Commons by opposition parties as well as his own -- when he returned from negotiations in Munich in 1938, waving an agreement and declaring that it meant "peace in our time."

We know now how short that time was. Less than a year later, World War II began in Europe and spread across the planet, killing tens of millions of people and reducing many cities to rubble in Europe and Asia. ...

Read it all and make up your own mind.

The best interest of the child...

The great Phyllis Schafly on why Children's Rights Should Include Life With Both Parents:

Debates about same-sex marriage and gay adoptions always include the argument that a child has the right to both a father and a mother. If that is true, why is a child usually deprived of that right when heterosexual couples divorce?

It would seem that maintaining the father's love and authority would be crucial when a child's life is turned upside down by divorce. Yet, family courts routinely deprive children of one parent, usually the father, restricting his time with his child to about six days a month.

The courts pompously assert they are invoking "the best interest of the child," but how can it be in the best interest of children to make them forfeit one parent?

We hear many pious comments about the need for fathers to be involved in the upbringing of their children. This need should be even more important in times of emotional stress, such as divorce, than the need for fathers to play ball with their kids in an intact family.

Some states are considering legislation that establishes a presumption of shared parenting whereby divorced parents divide equally both time and authority over the children. This enables children to maintain strong ties to both parents.

When primary or sole custody is given to the mother, the father becomes merely a visitor in the child's life (that's why it's called "visitation"), whose only value is to mail a paycheck and be an occasional baby sitter. The father loses his parental authority and fades out of his own child's life. ...

Read the rest.

Related resources:
All Pro Dad
John Eldredge - Wild at Heart and Way of the Wild Heart
The Fatherhood Coalition
Heartbreaking fatherhood stats

Hate crime legislation is not really about hate, but politics....

Greg Koukl's conclusion in Why Hate Shouldn't Be a Crime:

... Hate crime legislation is not the answer. It turns the government into thought police, and turns the law into a club to enforce political correctness. Those felled by its blow will be Christians and others like them.

Instead, existing laws should be enforced to give equal protection to all classes of people, punishing the crime and not the frame of mind.

For Believers, though, there is a frame of mind that needs attention.Made in His Image

Christians have an impulse to distance themselves from people like Matthew Shepard. Though his assault was lamentable, some have reasoned, he was, after all, a homosexual—evil and an abomination to God. Sporting signs with slogans like "Aids Cures Fags," they go public with their crusade by disrupting graveside ceremonies. This makes me want to weep.

There is no question in my mind that homosexuality is an egregious evil. Christians need to be reminded, however, that no matter how far we try to distance ourselves, we are more similar to Matthew Shepard than we are different from him.

There are at least two things each of us share with Matthew, maybe three. First, like us, Matthew Shepard is a human being made in the image of God. His value transcends whatever evil he may have been guilty of. This makes the brutal crime against him unconscionable.

Second, Matthew Shepard is fallen, as we are. We stand beside him in the dock, guilty of our own crimes against our Creator. Paul asks, "Are we better than they? Not at all, for we have already charged that both Jews and Greeks are all under sin."

Finally, for the homosexual that turns to Christ for forgiveness, we share the same Savior. Christ's blood was shed for us equally: "For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."

For these reasons all Christians should be grieved and angered at the injustice done against homosexuals, just as they should the any victim of a crime. They should condemn without qualification the brutalizing of Matthew Shepard and others, a human being who is, in all the important ways, just like us.

Check out all of Greg's columns at Townhall here.

Greg is brilliant and is the founder of Stand to Reason. Check it out!

The night Mitch McConnell became the leader of the Republican Party... and Kennedy implodes

Hugh Hewitt:

A remarkable thing happened in the United States Senate earlier this evening, and it occurred over a rather unremarkable piece of legislation that was being debated. Conservatives, frustrated at the lack of a genuine leader of their party, may have finally found one in Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell.

After Democratic leader Harry Reid’s MoveOn.org all-night session Tuesday night, a move that resulted only in helping unify the weak-kneed Republicans who were peeling away from continued support of the Petraeus surge in Iraq, McConnell, the Republican leader, served notice to anyone watching C-SPAN that he now runs the Senate.

The Senate spent much of the day discussing the merits, or demerits, of HR 2669, the Student Loans and Grants Act. Maybe it was the culmination of a long week already, or maybe it was the upper chamber being lulled off guard by the increasingly senile senior Senator from West Virginia, Robert Byrd, who spent 25 minutes decrying the plight of the helpless fight dog in response to the weird Michael Vick story in the news, but tonight, McConnell and the Republicans decided to take control of the Senate. The Republicans offered amendment after amendment to the bill, catching the Democrats flat-footed. In case you want to hear about the plight of the fight dog, here’s Robert Byrd’s Senate floor address [audio].

(Oh Lord, please let this man retire...soon!)

After a couple of Republican amendments failed, Mitch McConnell took to the floor and offered his own amendment, which was a Sense of the Senate that Guantanamo detainees not be allowed released or moved to U.S. soil. To conservatives, this obviously makes sense. To liberals, especially California’s Dianne Feinstein, one of the chief proponents of the effort to close the detention center at Gitmo and relocate these detainees into the American justice system, especially when tagged onto a student loan and grant bill, you’d think this measure would go down in flames. Except a funny thing happened. The bill was titled in a way that you had to vote yes to vote no, and no to vote yes. The final vote was 94-3, officially putting the Senate on record as saying terrorist detainees shouldn’t be moved to the U.S. Before the Democrats, who clearly hadn’t read the amendment, realized they screwed up, the vote was recorded.

Jim DeMint of South Carolina was the author of the next amendment in line, had just gotten the consent of Bernie Sanders, the presiding officer, to order the yeas and nays. Up stepped Massachusetts senior Senator Ted Kennedy, now obviously aware that he and his colleagues just got bamboozled, and went on a full-throated rant, with reckless disregard to obvious hypocrisy, and blasted DeMint and the Republicans for slowing down the works in the Senate. The rant is worth hearing, so here it is [audio].

(I repeat Lord, please also let this man retire...and soon!)
Thanks to the guys at Beyond the News for the videos, and Allah for the tips.

Billy Currington - Unofficial video for "Good Directions"

Who’s the sleaziest candidate for president in 2008?

This post from Allah reminds me that a post about the Silky Pony / Breck Girl is long overdue.

For now I'll just say that I agree with Bryan Preston:

I toyed with running a poll here the other day, question: “Who’s the sleaziest candidate for president in 2008?” But the answer is so obvious I didn’t bother. Of all the candidates in the running, only one is such an obvious hypocrite, such a lackluster huckster, and has so little actual rationale for his candidacy. John Edwards was a one-term senator who has built his entire political career on his hair on his accent. He looks purty and sounds Southern but he is an empty suit who has morphed into a limousine liberal with San Francisco values, if he has any values at all beyond ambulance-chasing and channeling dead kids to fool juries. He’s a coward who ran away from Fox News and sent his wife out to defend him, a cynical choice that pit a cancer survivor and sufferer against a woman that so many use to practice their daily Two Minutes Hate (though they stretch that to 24/7). He is everything Ann Coulter accuses him of being, and this spat that the Edwards camp has created with her is almost entirely about the fund-raising. And it’s working. It’s secondarily about casting Coulter as a practicioner of “hate speech,” thereby putting more and more criticism of people like Edwards out of bounds, and that’s probably working too, making the resurrection of the Orwellian “Fairness Doctrine” a little bit more possible with each passing day. So Edwards deserves whatever criticisms Coulter has leveled at him, to include accusing him of using the death of his son to promote his political career. No less a right-wing harridan than Bob Shrum has leveled that exact same accusation at him, but the Edwards camp is ignoring that entirely to focus on one of the nutroots’ favorite monsters. They’re cynical sleazebags. They should have won that poll I would have posted by acclamation. ...


...Edwards lives in a ginormous McMansion so large that it probably creates its own weather patterns, yet talks about “the poor” and plays up the “my daddy worked in a mill” schtick like he’s a man of the people. He gives $50,000 speeches to the poor about the poor, meanwhile he gets haircuts that cost as much as the new TV that “the poor” buy at Circuit City, and when criticized about the latter he turns that into a fundraising opportunity. His cynicism is only exceeded by his creepiness.

This guy wants to be president and go toe-to-toe with the likes of Putin and Ahmadinejad, but runs like a schoolgirl from Fox interviews (apologies to schoolgirls everywhere, I might add). There is no rationale for his candidacy beyond the lust for power and because he has nothing better to do. ...


...[W]hat we see in him is perhaps a first in history: The living incarnation of cynicism. He is 100% cynicism in human form. He makes Bill Clinton look sincere and he makes Dollar Bill Jefferson look ethical. There’s enough cynicism and in rank hypocrisy in John Edwards to shame and embarass Heidi Fleiss.

Here's all the John Edwards coverage over at NewsBusters.

Here's the latest from Michelle Malkin.

Here's an interesting look at John Edwards and Thomas Sowell on the 'have and have nots'.

And from BTN, a look at Poverty being key theme for Democrats in '08:

Note to the Associated Press and Boston Globe: Most millionaires in the United States are self made. Many grew up very poor.

There is no such thing as “entrenched poverty.” Not in the United States . Everyone has the opportunity to get out and it’s not that tough.

The implication is that these people are such losers they are incapable and need help from Rich Pretty Boy Edwards.

Also from BTN Silky Tells Matthews That Being Poor Is Not Being able To Eat At Restaurants:


Update: And the tables are turned, from His Silkiness...


Update: Yup, he's also a phony.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali interview on the Dennis Prager show..

The former Dutch member of Parliament and now a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute defends America on a CBC news program. Her defense, calm and devastating, left the interviewer nearly speechless.

Click here (or the image to the right) to listen.

Update: Allah covers it also, and Beyond the News has the original interview video here.

Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) is a disgrace...

Keeping it short... read Robert Spencer here.

Then watch the video here.

And the latest Jihad Watch on Keith Ellison’s Reichstag Rag here.

Context:
Spencer's Jihad Watch columns here.
His latest Jihad Watch episodes here.

The point of liberal Christianity, to which Sen. Clinton subscribes

Cal Thomas on Hillary on Her Faith:

... Liberal faith, which is to say a faith that discounts the authority of Scripture in favor of a constantly evolving, poll-tested relevancy to modern concerns - such as the environment, what kind of SUV Jesus would drive, larger government programs and other "do-good" pursuits - ultimately morphs into societal and self-improvement efforts and jettisons the life-changing message of salvation, forgiveness of sins and a transformed life.

If the newspaper story is accurate, this is where Mrs. Clinton is on her faith: "In a brief quiz about her theological views, Mrs. Clinton said she believed in the resurrection of Jesus, though she described herself as less sure of the doctrine that being a Christian is the only way to salvation." ...

Please pay attention to Michael Yon and his reports from Iraq...

Important Iraq updates from Michael Yon:

In Baqubah Update 05-July-2007, I included an anecdotal report from an Iraqi official here in Baqubah about al Qaeda baking boys and serving them to their families. I made no further comment as to the veracity of the report, which readers will see had very few specifics.

However, in the context of al Qaeda savagery, the evidence of which is seen daily as our soldiers clear Baqubah and other areas of Al Qaeda, the report is not surprising.

I write these words only about 3.5 miles from a mass gravesite I recently visited where the remains of decapitated children were buried along with the bodies of women and men. That grim discovery was the focus of "Bless the Beasts and Children."

Since that time, the news and debate has spread around the world. For instance, the radio mega-heavyweight Rush Limbaugh read part of the Baqubah Update dispatch to American listeners yesterday.

Each retelling of the story adds flourish and personal commentary to the simple words I wrote from here in Baqubah. Please refer back to my source document for the truth of the original reporting.

Whether the story of al Qaeda baking children is true or not, I do not know. However, I do know that since the attack on al Qaeda in Baqubah on 19 June, the citizens of Baqubah are very happy, markets are opening, and there has been practically zero fighting in the last couple of weeks. For the latest, please read "Second Chances".

Appreciating Independence Day

From Rush Limbaugh's father: The Americans Who Risked Everything...

My father, Rush H. Limbaugh, Jr., delivered this oft-requested address locally a number of times, but it had never before appeared in print until it appeared in The Limbaugh Letter. My dad was renowned for his oratory skills and for his original mind; this speech is, I think, a superb demonstration of both. I will always be grateful to him for instilling in me a passion for the ideas and lives of America's Founders, as well as a deep appreciation for the inspirational power of words which you will see evidenced here.

Great stuff!

Much more on the founders at the Patriot Post. Read the Declaration of Independence for yourself.

Why the Kennedy-McCain-Bush Immigration Reform Bill deserved to die...

Glenn Beck and Lou Dobbs speak for me:

Also, Michelle Malkin asks who believes Chertoff anyway in her latest vent. She also writes about the diminished credibility of the Dept. of Homeland Insecurity on her blog. Great stuff.

AllahPundit chimes in on Chertoff too.

Star Parker: Immigration fiasco shows crisis in leadership

Allan Wall: Why the Amnesty Bill’s Defeat is an Opportunity for Mexico

ACU: See Who Voted For Amnesty

CMI: Libs Long for ‘Fairness’ Daze

Also, Glenn on the unfairness doctrine:



The solution is so obvious: Build a moat.

A new photo dispatch from Iraq...

Michael Yon has a new dispatch waiting, called Bless the Beasts and Children. There are some gruesome details and photos, but please read for yourself.

... Captain Clayton Combs has been fighting hard in Diyala for about ten months, much of it side-by-side with Iraqi soldiers from the 5th Division. Each time I’ve come into contact with the 5th, they seem far better than most. American officers and sergeants who work with the 5th have good things to report about them, saying that although the 5th still has far to go, and cannot sustain itself logistically, it can fight.

Captain Combs said this particular Iraqi unit, the 3-25, has never run away from combat, and never refused to close on the enemy. Combs said, “I’ve fought with 3-25 for 10 months in Diyala and they have always come when I am in trouble. They always go on patrols when I ask. They never back down.” ...

Read the comments too. Michael has a lot of military readers and their comments are always enlightening.

Thank you Michael.