The harsh realities of military chaplaincy. This is the work that killed Oswald Chambers.

A new blog that just appeared on the radar. Looks good.

The Evangelical Outpost on the global war against baby girls.

VOM, Indonesia:

More than 40 Christian leaders were arrested after a video recording of them praying for Muslims was leaked to Islamic organizations. Muslims claim the Christians blasphemed the Koran by placing it on the floor and praying for millions of people that had been deceived by it. The Islamic organizations consider the video's content abusive and have released the video to the media. Among the imprisoned were parents of young children. According to sources in Indonesia, some imprisoned women and the elderly have been released. The Voice of the Martyrs is working to assist families. Pray for those in prison and their families. Ask God to give them boldness and wisdom as they face these difficult challenges.

It seems incongruous to take a video you consider blasphemous to your faith and release it to the media. Does this action not blatantly reveal the true motive behind this attack?

Disastrous disaster relief:

Federal disaster relief denies people the opportunity to live cheaply in exchange for living dangerously. That opportunity is particularly valuable to the poor.

To put this another way, federal disaster relief essentially forces people — most of them poor people --- to buy insurance they'd rather not have. The premiums are hidden in their housing prices, but they are none the less real...

Poor people, more than most, value cheap housing. A policy of disaster relief makes cheap housing hard to find. Therefore a policy of disaster relief is likely to impose a particular burden on the poor. If you want to help poor people, eliminating federal disaster relief is a good place to start.

(Instapundit)

This is truly disgusting. (WMB)

The unraveling continues.

Another dispatch from Michael Yon:

Gunshots ring out at three in the morning as I write these first sentences.
Gunshots, providing muse and meter for this dispatch home to America.
Gunshots, three of them. The war is close.

Looks as if Giuliani is already playing hardball.

Exposing North Korea's hushed and ignored policies of mass starvation. (PJM)

In 1999, while children were starving, Mr. Kim's government treated itself to 40 MiG-21 warplanes purchased from Kazakhstan.

Wikipedia has some skeletal information. Reading between the lines, it looks like the floods simultaneously accentuated and provided cover for gross Government mismanagement.

Maybe it's just me, but it seems sort of counter-productive to throw away a billion perfectly good light bulbs in the name of saving energy.

Reviewing The Children of Hurin. (A&LD)

LVMI warns against subsidized health-care:

I am convinced that deregulation of healthcare would only improve the system. Break the healthcare guilds that exist all the way from medical education through licensing, reduce government interventions, and watch the healthcare system improve at Intel speed. Please do not advocate for a government-run healthcare system, or even its predecessor, universal coverage. Think Walter Reed or the Soviets before going that route.

On August 28th:

489 - Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths defeats Odoacer at the Battle of Isonzo, forcing his way into Italy.
1609 - Henry Hudson discovers Delaware Bay.
1884 - First known photograph of a tornado is made.
1937 - Toyota Motors becomes an independent company.
1974 - Geir Hallgrímsson became Prime Minister of Iceland
2007 - Caedmon's Call releases new album: "Overdressed"

KP of The Christian Mind quotes Luther and N.T. Wright on Death and Resurrection.

Luther's remedy for this [...] temptation is to contemplate death all the more, but to do so at the right time—which is not the time of death. Instead, he exhorts us to "invite death into our presence when it is still at a distance and not on the move"—that is, in our daily lives long before death threatens us. Conversely, Luther counsels Christians to banish thoughts of death at the final hour and to use that time to meditate on life.

MercatorNet interviews a Polish film producer about the spiritual climate of Europe.

Asking yourself about the meaning of life, of the world and of history is what ennobles art. Without these questions, art is just an ephemeral expression of our sensations. I do not believe in art with a capital A which lacks a metaphysical dimension.

Ron Paul interview excerpts. (HT: Instapundit)

VOM, Ethiopia:

• JIMMA - On March 22, two Bible school students were imprisoned on the accusation of attempting to kill an imam. They were released one week later with after paying a fine. A court hearing was scheduled for April 2, 2007.
• BAMBASSE - April 2, the home of evangelist Tolosa Megersa was raided by local Muslims. Six of his cattle and sheep were killed. Five days later, the home of Full Gospel Church leader Lemmu Abdissa, was also raided. All of his property was destroyed, including 4,000 kilograms of grain.

Thank God for the release of the two students. Pray those who have lost property will be encouraged and rest in knowing they have "better and lasting possessions." Hebrews 10: 34-37

The right battle, on the wrong battlefield: Supreme Court upholds Congressional ban on Partial-Birth Abortion.

AU weighs in.

Ron Paul on foreign policy. Yes, I want the book.

It is time for Americans to rethink the interventionist foreign policy that is accepted without question in Washington. It is time to understand the obvious harm that results from our being dragged time and time again into intractable and endless Middle East conflicts, whether in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, or Palestine. It is definitely time to ask ourselves whether further American lives and tax dollars should be lost trying to remake the Middle East in our image.

Instapundit on taxpayer-funded vacations for congressmen:

Actually, I'd rather we did this about 51 weeks out of the year. It's bound to work out cheaper in the end. . . .

David St. Lawrence reports on the latest storm in Virginia, and shares a bit of rural wisdom:

Country life is far more comfortable when you can apply a bit of technology in the right places.

Peter passed his driving test today. Nice job, bro.

Instapundit has a roundup on the Virginia Tech shooting. And Pajamas Media (with a roundup of their own) links to some cell-phone footage from a student.

I'm scratching my head regarding why the crackdown didn't occur at 7:15, when the first call came in.

UPDATE: VA Tech not the deadliest school disaster in U.S. history after all.

UPDATE II: PJM keeps rounding it up. More here.

Finally: some clear, if secular, thinking on Iraq.

It's going to be a very consistent flow of sequential problems. What the Bush administration basically did by going into Iraq was - the best rationale is really to lay the big bang on the Middle East and set that part of the world down some pathway of change.

And they certainly accomplished that. And the cynic in me says basically the worse Iraq goes, sort of, the better the big bang goes because it's more realistic that Iraq was going to go badly as opposed to well in terms of our expectations and the breakup of Iraq really forces the fights that need to occur in the Middle East now that Saddam is gone and those fights are all going to be tricky. They're going to be overlapping, and there's not going to be an obvious conclusion to it.

Instead, it's going to be a long-drawn out evolutionary process where our sense of winning or losing really hinders our sense of imagination, and in many ways, it retards the dialogue we need to have in this country about what comes next.

(HT: Northern Gleaner)

The discussion continues: Gene Redlin has another post about war and heroics, and I have another comment.

UPDATE: And Garrett has a comment on my comment.

Here's a classic example of the ultimate undoing of evil and darkness - the "kingdom-divided" problem: sectarianism is eating away the Iraqi Insurgency from within.

The good news is that the bad guys are all busy killing each other.

(PJM)

Homeschooling under fire in Germany. (LVMI)

Evolutionary science is getting more entertaining all the time. Upon finding protein within a dinosaur femur, we have this striking conclusion:

As far as the hypothesis that protein would not survive more than a million years... we have obviously proven that to be false.

Wise fool.


(HT: PJM)

VOM, Pakistan:

Five Christians have been charged with blasphemy under Pakistan's blasphemy laws 295-A and 295-C, in Toba Tek Singh, Pakistan. Daniel, an 11-year-old Christian boy, refused to play with his Muslim friends, resulting in them beating him. When Daniel's family confronted the attackers, the Muslims called the police and made a false report saying they had blasphemed the name of the Holy Prophet. Now Daniel's family-Rashid Masih, Salamat Masih, Sahba Masih Motta, Bao Masih and Sheela Masih-is living under threat of attack by Muslim extremists. The Muslim family told other Muslims at a religious gathering that the Christians had disgraced the Holy Prophet, tore a holy sticker and beat it with a shoe. This has led to tension in the city. Christians in the area fear Muslim extremists will attack the family. There was fear there would be attacks during celebrations leading up to Easter Sunday. If convicted under blasphemy laws 295-A and 295-C, the family faces three years imprisonment, a fine and the death penalty, or life imprisonment and a fine. Pray God protects these believers and provides a way of escape for them.

Ireland's Protestant and Catholic leaders resolve a long-standing political/religious conflict.

In Ireland we are all winners -– because it is over -– and we are all losers because it should never have started in the first place.

What happens when you take a world renowned classical musician and have him play for nickels and dimes in a D.C. Metro station during rush hour?

Sadly, not much. There's video.

This is a wrenching glimpse into our culture's tragic betrayal of beauty. Read with a heavy heart, and mutter a prayer for this brave, brave world.

(HT: evangelical outpost)

Ron is backing away from Theocracy:

The more that I think about it, the clearer it becomes that theocracy is not a good word for describing the Kingdom of God...

Just as there is no fear or force in heaven, there is no room for fear or force in his Kingdom. This means that any word that ends with “ocracy” does not fit with the kingdom of God.

I only question the reference to capital punishment.

Harrison Scott Key of WORLD is agonizing over how to relate the Christian to the State, using the philosophy of Pat Robertson's Regent University as the sulfur for the match.

Are we to be sectarian separatists, compromising realists, or triumphaslistic dominionists?

Whoever can answer that question – in speech form, book form, whatever – will have done a great service to us all. I'm reading (or have read) everything from Russell Kirk to Neuhaus to Schaeffer to Shelby Foote (for crying out loud) trying to figure it out.

I would love to write a book on this. Perhaps. In time.

For now, read this one.

Pajamas Media is hot on the Asgari trail, though the trail itself seems a bit cold and cryptic.

At the reception desk, a short slim woman with brass nameplate I can’t read, says they have no record of Asgari. Naturally. He could check in under any name.

Here's a link back to my roundup to date.

C.S. Lewis on Good Friday:

Does not every movement in the Passion write large some common element in the sufferings of our race? First, the prayer of anguish; not granted. Then he turns to His friends. They are asleep - as ours, or we, are so often, or busy, or away, or preoccupied. Then He faces the Church; the very Church that He brought into existence. It condemns Him. This also is characteristic. In every Church, in every institution, there is something which sooner or later works against the very purpose for which it came into existence. But there seems to be another chance.
There is the State; in this case, the Roman state. Its pretensions are far lower than those of the Jewish church, but for that very reason it may be free from local fanaticisms. It claims to be just on a rough, worldly level. Yes, but only so far as is consistent with political expediency and raison d'etat. One becomes a counter in a complicated game. But even now all is not lost. There is still an appeal to the People - the poor and simple whom He had blessed, whom He had healed and fed and taught, to whom He Himself belongs. But they have become overnight (it is nothing unusual) a murderous rabble shouting for His blood. There is, then, nothing left but God. And to God, God's last words are "Why hast thou forsaken me?"
You see how characteristic, how representative, it all is. The human situation writ large. These are among the things it means to be a man. Every rope breaks when you seize it. Every door is slammed shut as your reach it. To be like the fox at the end of the run; the earths all staked.

Good cause, dangerous precedent - a classic enigma with no immediately apparent right answer:

The Palmetto Family Council [is] a pro-life group in Columbia, S.C. that is marshalling support for a bill that would require a woman to view an ultrasound image of her unborn child before having an abortion....

I wonder here about the long arm of the state: Should the government be able, in the context of a private and legal medical consultation, to compel a person to receive certain information? The state can require doctors to provide the information, but that is not the same as requiring the patient to receive it.

I say no.

Let's hope it doesn't come to this.

Ron has a post up about which -cracy makes for the best government. (He prefers theo- over demo-.)

My response:

The church is a spiritual theocracy. I do not believe that God intends to establish a civil theocracy in the New Covenant age - at least I can't find such a thing in scripture.

Low on charisma and high on common sense, Republican candidate Ron Paul looks to be about our best shot at getting a wise man in the White house in 2008. Paul seems by far the most libertarian and Constitutionally honest of the serious candidates, and should be supported by all who object to the idea of running a Government like a kindergarten.

LVMI has a tribute to Ron that outlines his positions and political record and includes a long list of outstanding quotes from Paul himself.

In a free society, government is restrained--and therefore political power is less important. I believe the proper role for government in America is to provide national defense, a court system for civil disputes, a criminal justice system for acts of force and fraud, and little else.

Michael Thomas is also following the Ron Paul campaign closely.

Pajamas Media has a roundup on Iran's release of the British servicemen who were captured/kidnapped a couple weeks ago.

Public education missing the point. Again.

VOM, Nigeria:

On March 21, 2007, Christianah Oluwasesin, a teacher at a secondary school in Northern Nigeria was beaten, stoned and burned by Muslim students over claims she desecrated the Quran. According to a Compass Direct News report, Oluwasesin was supervising a final examination on Islamic religious knowledge when she collected papers, books and bags from the all-girls class and in accordance with school procedure and dropped them in front of the class to prevent cheating. According to another teacher, soon after Oluwasesin dropped the bags in front of the class, one of the girls began to cry. She told her classmates she had a copy of the Quran in her bag, that Oluwasesin touched the bag and by doing so had desecrated the Quran, since she was a Christian. This led to a riot which was joined by Muslim extremists, resulting in Oluwasesin being beaten to death. They brought old mats to where her body was, placed dirt on her corpse and then burned it. The Voice of the Martyrs has met with her husband and is supporting her family. Pray God will comfort Oluwasesin's family and for her testimony to those that killed her, that it will bring them into the knowledge of Jesus Christ.

Perhaps the "Freedom and Unity" motto has proved a little too idealistic: disillusioned with the state of the "Union," Vermont wants its money back. (LVMI)

Al Mohler discusses the work and worldview of David McCollough - that guy who writes those big books about presidents.

No harm's done to history by making it something someone would want to read.

Hark! - a new release from Derek Webb.

I still think his solo career has been a bit shaky, although I do like this disc. We'll see what he's come up with this time - it's certainly not looking any tamer, but hey, what do you expect; it's Derek, after all.

Quite a match-up: Rick Warren (The Purpose Driven Life) and Sam Harris (Letter to a Christian Nation) debate the existence of God.

HARRIS: Any scientist must concede that we don't fully understand the universe. But neither the Bible nor the Qur'an represents our best understanding of the universe. That is exquisitely clear.

WARREN: To you.

HT: The Christian Mind

David St. Lawrence examines a novel new social phenomenon: the complaint choir.

Ten of the best-ever stunts pulled in honor of the notorious April 1st; probably one of the last full-blooded informal holidays in America. (HT: PJM)

Burger King, another American fast-food chain, published a full-page advertisement in USA Today in 1998 announcing the introduction of the "Left-Handed Whopper," specially designed for the 32 million left-handed Americans. According to the advertisement, the new burger included the same ingredients as the original, but the condiments were rotated 180 degrees. The chain said it received thousands of requests for the new burger, as well as orders for the original "right-handed" version.

UPDATE: Google doesn't want to be left out of the festivities.