LEADING ATHEIST GETS IT!!

"Hitchens then explained that he finds it “extraordinarily objectionable” to exclude the “occupant of the womb” from the human family."

Thousands attend Boulder debate on atheism and religion

CatholicNewsAgency ^ | Boulder, CO, Jan 28, 2009
Posted on January 29, 2009 8:35:29 AM MST by GonzoII

Boulder, CO, Jan 28, 2009 / 12:05 am (CNA).- Writers Dinesh D’Souza and Christopher Hitchens brought their polemics on religion and atheism to a debate Monday evening at the University of Colorado at Boulder before a sold-out crowd of 2,050 in the campus’ Macky Auditorium.

D’Souza, a Catholic and author of the book “What’s So Great about Christianity,” argued that Christianity is the foundation for many common values such as scientific inquiry and respect for the individual. Additionally, he asserted that Christianity proposes the best answer for bridging the chasm between man and God.

(Excerpt) Read more at catholicnewsagency.com

At Capitol, abortion likened to slavery

By Jean Torkelson, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)
Published January 23, 2009 at 12:05 a.m.


Photo by Barry Gutierrez / The Rocky

Mariette McGrath joins others in prayer Thursday on the west steps of the state Capitol, where 400 abortion foes turned out for the annual Colorado Right to Life rally.

Abortion is the slavery issue of our time, author Eric Metaxas told about 400 people at the annual Colorado Right to Life rally Thursday on the steps of the Capitol.

"God is the one who calls you to the battle," Metaxas said to the crowd, an eclectic mix that included families with baby strollers and protesters waving signs and abortion- photo posters.

They came to mourn the 36th anniversary of the Roe vs. Wade decision, which legalized abortion, and to be inspired to fight for the idea that the unborn are persons with an inalienable right to life.

Like slavery, the abortion fight may not end quickly, but it will be stopped - ultimately by educating one's opponents, not demonizing them, said Metaxas.

He wrote Amazing Grace, which explores how British abolitionist William Wilberforce - known as a "crazy fanatic" in his time - painstakingly overcame his 18th-century culture's entrenched acceptance of slavery.

Education was what got Shari Hutchings involved, said the 44-year-old mother of four, who took part in a march down the 16th Street Mall after the rally.

"In college we were never educated, we never learned the horror of abortion," Hutchings said. When two of her children were born prematurely, "I learned that babies were being aborted at the same age as my children - these precious babies. Now I have a passion about life," Hutchings said.

OUCH!!!

Thursday, January 22, 2009

Remember when being a 'Christian' meant something?

Exclusive: Mark Crutcher cites 'porn king' as example of church's worldview perversion

Posted: January 22, 2009
1:00 am Eastern

When Bill Clinton was elected president, I made the argument that the problem wasn't Bill Clinton but the millions of people who voted for him. And the same thing is true about Barack Obama. I can assure you that there have always been people who wanted to be president whose morals were no better than those of Clinton or Obama. The difference was that, back when America was still a Christian nation, the voters had better morals than to knowingly elect these kind of people to public office. That's because we were able to assume that there was a connection between what people claimed to believe and how they conducted themselves. For example, in those days, when someone said they were a Christian, that meant something.

Unfortunately, that is no longer the case, and the abortion issue provides a perfect example of this phenomenon.

All across America, there are those who claim that it is possible for them to be pro-choice – or vote for a supporter of legalized abortion – without abandoning their Christian principles. They get away with this despite the fact that, from a theological standpoint, what they are saying is clearly demonstrable hogwash.

Two fundamental doctrines of Christianity are that God is the author of life and that He is incapable of making mistakes. Obviously, the only logical conclusion that can be drawn from those concepts is that when life exists in the womb it is God's will that it be there. Since the obvious goal of abortion is to deny that will, support for its legality is, by definition, incompatible with Christianity.

(Column continues below)

UNITED STATES OF DISINFORMATION!!

HE REALLY THINKS HE'S LINCOLN?

Study up, President Elect!

Roe v Wade - 7 to 2
Dred Scott v Sanford - 7 to 2

America's two greatest SCOTUS travesties.

SO WE NEED A NEW DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE?

According to Fox News, president elect Obama (unless the Supreme Court does its job) has proclaimed the need for a new
Declaration of Independence.

"What is required is a new declaration of independence, not just in our nation, but in our own lives -- from ideology and small thinking, prejudice and bigotry -- an appeal not to our easy instincts but to our better angels," he said to a cheering crowd at 30th Street train station.



Do you suppose the words of the founders who wrote, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. " which clearly uphold the right to life of the pre-born are just a bit too forthright for our "Dear Leader"?

COLORADO PERSONHOOD COORDINATOR TAKES
MESSAGE TO DOMINICAN REPUBLIC

Dominican Republic Gets Help From Pro-Life Advocates to Keep Abortion Ban

by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
January 15, 2009


Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic (LifeNews.com) -- The Dominican Republic, a Caribbean island nation, is getting help from three American pro-life groups in defending its abortion ban. The nation is facing an outpouring of resources from U.S.-based pro-abortion groups who are helping local abortion advocates topple the ban.

The abortion debate follows a move by President Leonel Antonio Fernández to introduce a new Constitution for the nation. The document includes an Amendment to protect all human life from conception.

In an ironic move, the Dominican Republic's Legislative Committee assigned to oversee the new Constitution will meet on January 22, the day Americans mourn the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision.

The panel will meet to discuss this new Constitution and potentially approve it.

The pro-life advocates will help local pro-life groups lobby members of the panel to keep the pro-life Amendment in place and approve the Constitution with it. They will also undertake public education programs by distributing materials with a message of life.

The abortion advocates want to remove the pro-life Amendment from the document and allow for abortions in cases of rape or incest as a first step towards eventually legalizing abortions entirely.

Keith Mason, of Personhood USA, talked with LifeNews.com about the efforts.

"As American citizens, we have seen the danger of legalizing abortion for just cases of rape," he said. "Decriminalizing any abortion is a slippery slope, and every child is precious and has a right to live, regardless of who his father is or what he has done."

"We have witnessed firsthand the grievous slaughter of innocent children in America, and we are committed to helping our friends in the Dominican Republic to avoid the same mistakes," he said.

The coalition will hold a press conference on January 22nd to raise awareness in the Dominican Republic of the 54 million abortions that have taken place in the United States.

The group includes members of Faithful Soldier School of Evangelism, Live Action Films, and Personhood USA.

They have already scheduled many appointments with the local media as well as educational outreaches and meetings with local pastors and officials.
Buzz up!


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Forced abortions - America's secret epidemic

Charlie Butts - OneNewsNow - 1/11/2009 4:00:00 AM

The Elliot Institute has released a report that exposes America's forced abortion epidemic.

Elliot Institute spokesperson Amy Solby tells OneNewsNow that one study found 64 percent of women who had abortions reported they felt pressured to abort by others. "Something like 80 percent of them said that they didn't get the counseling they needed to make a good decision, that often they were not given counseling at all, or that the counseling they had was inadequate," she explains.

Solby also mentions forced abortions, which are not widely discussed in the U.S. An article released from the Institute cites two cases in 2006 in which teenage girls were violently persuaded to have abortions. In Maine, a couple abducted their 19-year-old daughter, bound and gagged her, and drove her to New York for an abortion. However, she escaped from her parents in the parking lot of a store and called police from her cell phone.

That same year, a Georgia mother forced her pregnant 16-year-old daughter to drink turpentine in hopes of aborting her baby. She was later arrested for criminal abortion after her daughter told the school counselor about the incident. The Institute has studied other cases where women are commonly threatened, pressured, or subjected to violence for refusing to abort.

"There's not any necessarily real hard numbers on violent [coercion] but, if you consider that homicide is the leading killer of pregnant women according to several studies, and then the fact that a large number of them have to do with the fact that the woman was killed or assaulted...because she refused to have an abortion or in an attempt to force her to abort," Solby concludes.

The Elliot Institute is trying to convince states to pass laws forcing abortion facilities to screen women for coercion and not to do an abortion where coercion is involved. Solby believes women then could be helped with whatever situation they are facing.

COLORADO'S JANUARY 22, 2009 MARCH FOR LIFE
STATE CAPITOL 12:00 p.m.

Come hear Tony Funderburk sing his wonderful
song about Personhood and listen to Eric Metaxas,
author of Amazing Grace, explain the parallels between abolishing slavery and abortion!!

PERSONHOOD

You should thank your Mom cause she thought of you as a person. From the very start she was calling you her daughter or her son. And though life isn’t easy; our Moms still believed we would make it. Now some call life a choice, but it’s still a precious life. 
We can’t take it.

We can’t forsake it!

Give an unborn baby personhood
There’s nothing more important we can do!
Give an unborn baby personhood.
50 Million persons beg us to...they beg us to!

We can read all the judgements, and continue to build our big plans.
But there are lives in the balance, and the choice is right in our hands.
So do we sit idle? Or is there a way we can stand tall?
Can’t we stand for life? Or do we really stand for nothing at all?
And let the innocent fall?

~ Chorus ~

If human life is just sown by chance, then
Nothing we know could be bad or be good.
If we’re just embryonic particulate matter,
Then we could know there is no personhood...
But we hope and we pray
And we live for the day,
When our love becomes broad
In the image of God...

~ Chorus ~

© Copyright Tony Funderburk 2007

HOW LONG, LORD? HOW LONG???
Obama Makes Lawyer for Terri Schiavo's Husband Third-Ranking Justice Official

by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
January 6, 2009



Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- Barack Obama has named the lawyer who represented Terri Schiavo’s husband Michael in his efforts to kill his disabled wife as the third highest attorney in the Justice Department. Thomas Perrelli, who won an award for representing Schiavo's former husband, had served on Obama's transition team.

The incoming president made Perrelli an associate attorney general and his appointment is generating scorn from pro-life advocates.

Perrelli provided Michael Schiavo with legal advice during his response to the Congressional bill that President Bush signed allowing the Schindler family to take their lawsuit seeking to prevent Terri’s euthanasia death from state to federal courts.

He led the legal team that developed the legal briefs for Michael opposing appeals and he ultimately received the Albert E. Jenner, Jr. Pro Bono Award in October 2006 for representing Terri’s former husband at no cost.

Andrea Lafferty, executive director of the Traditional Values Coalition, told the Washington Times Tuesday that Obama's appointment of Perrelli is "just another death-peddler Obama has added to his list of nominees."

Tom McClusky, vice president for government affairs at the Family Research Council, also told the Times that any number of end-of-life issues could involve the Justice Department and having Perrelli involved would be detrimental.

"If the Justice Department isn't going to do anything about it, the states, what's to stop them from cases like Schiavo and even worse cases," he said.
On Michael’s legal team, Perrelli worked with infamous pro-euthanasia attorney George Felos as well as lawyers from the Florida chapter of the ACLU.

Obama’s selection of Perrelli as a top Justice Department attorney is no surprise given his comments on Terri’s painful 13-day starvation and dehydration death during the presidential campaign.

During his debate with Hillary Clinton in the Democratic presidential primary, Obama said his biggest mistake was voting with a unanimous Senate to help save Terri.

In March 2005, just weeks before Terri died, Congress approved legislation allowing her family to take its case from state courts to federal courts in an effort to stop the euthanasia from proceeding.

Terri was not on any artificial breathing apparatus and only required a feeding tube to eat and drink. Her family had filed a lawsuit against her former husband to allow them to care for her and give her proper medical and rehabilitative care.

The Senate unanimously approved a compromise bill, which the House eventually supported on a lopsided bipartisan vote and President Bush signed, to help the disabled woman.

Obama said he should have stood up against the life-saving legislation.

“It wasn't something I was comfortable with, but it was not something that I stood on the floor and stopped,” Obama said.

“And I think that was a mistake, and I think the American people understood that was a mistake. And as a constitutional law professor, I knew better,” he added.

That wasn't the first time Obama said he regretted supporting the bill to protect the disabled woman.



During an April 2007 debate, Obama said, "I think professionally the biggest mistake that I made was when I first arrived in the Senate. There was a debate about Terri Schiavo, and a lot of us, including me, left the Senate with a bill that allowed Congress to intrude where it shouldn't have.”

"And I think I should have stayed in the Senate and fought more for making sure [Terri's parents couldn't take their case to federal court to save her life]," he explained.

Since Terri’s death, the Schindler family has established a foundation to help disabled and elderly patients obtain proper medical care and legal and other assistance when they are denied it.

Related web sites:
Terri Schindler Schiavo Foundation - http://www.terrisfight.org
Buzz up!


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Copyright © 2003-2006 LifeNews.com. All rights reserved.

STILLBORN NOT PERSONS IN NEW JERSEY

Garbage Dump Searched for Baby's RemainsHospital spokeswoman Barbara Davy said the baby was stillborn on Dec. 21

Updated 2:51 PM EST, Tue, Jan 6, 2009



Kalynn Moore's attorney, Michael Anise, says a nurse cleaned up the baby, dressed him in a hat and blanket and gave the baby to the mom to hold.


Police are searching garbage dumps in New Jersey and Pennsylvania for the body of a baby that was apparently thrown out with the trash at Jersey City's Christ Hospital.


Investigators are saying a dead baby's remains were accidently tossed in the trash in New Jersey.

Dead Baby's Remains Thrown in Hospital Trash


Hospital spokeswoman Barbara Davy said the baby was stillborn on Dec. 21 and the body was placed in the hospital morgue. The body was gone when a funeral home employee came to pick it up on Jan. 2.

The baby's mother said he was born alive and died after doctors worked to stabilize him for 20 minutes.

Kalynn Moore's attorney, Michael Anise, said a nurse cleaned up the baby, dressed him in a hat and blanket and gave the baby to the mom to hold.

Moore named her son Bashere Davon Moyd Jr.

Whether the child was born is important because Hudson County's prosecutor said a stillborn is not considered a person under New Jersey law.

Also on NBCNewYork.com:

Find this article at:
http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/Garbage-Dump-Searched-for-Babys-Remains.html

© NBC Universal, Inc. | All Rights Reserved.

WORLD MAGAZINE ON KOMEN FUNDING EVIL PLANNED PARENTHOOD

Life or death?


ABORTION PRESENT: Group that fights breast cancer maintains troubling ties to Planned Parenthood | Alisa Harris
AP Photo - Lauren Victoria Burke

Eve Sanchez Silver had her first abortion at age 16 and her second at age 21. In 1998 she started fighting her first of two bouts with breast cancer, undergoing a lumpectomy, mastectomy, and breast reconstruction. Silver has come to believe that her abortions increased her breast cancer risk, so when she discovered she was active in an organization—Susan G. Komen for the Cure—that gives grants to Planned Parenthood, she thought it was "really horrific."

Silver, director of Cinta Latina Research, helped found a minority advisory council for Komen, served on a review board, and spoke on its behalf until she resigned in 2004. "They were supposed to be a life-affirming organization and this other organization was killing people," Silver said. "I resigned because I felt that they were being duplicitous and that they were not supporting the very women they claimed they were supporting."

Other pro-life activists—Karen Malec with the Coalition for Abortion/Breast Cancer, and Leslie Hanks, vice president of Colorado Right to Life, among others—have drawn attention to the grants for years. Komen counters that the money goes to breast cancer screening, not abortions, and says that newer research disproves any abortion-breast cancer link.
Local Komen affiliates, not the national organization, give local Planned Parenthoods grants marked "breast cancer screening, education and treatment." In 2008, 22 Komen affiliates gave grants to Planned Parenthood organizations or programs connected with Planned Parenthood. The dollar amount for 2008 is not yet available, but in the 2006-2007 fiscal year, Komen gave Planned Parenthood approximately $100,000 in grants.

For women in remote areas, "oftentimes these Planned Parenthood programs are really the only option," said John Hammarley, news bureau chief for Komen. Komen's Southern Nevada affiliate funds a Mammovan that parks at both local churches and Planned Parenthood offices, providing free screening and diagnostic mammograms. But most of the 2008 programs serve urban, not isolated, populations. Komen affiliates have always funded multiple organizations from the same geographical area, so in these cases Planned Parenthood isn't the only option.

Hammarley said the grants receive the usual oversight: Local affiliates audit annually to make sure the money is going to the proper place. But Planned Parenthood has a history of shuffling money around, said both Malec and Hanks. In Colorado, for instance, Planned Parenthood split into two groups so that one group could receive state funds for contraceptives and cancer screening without violating the rule against state funding for abortions. In 2001, an independent audit found that the group receiving state funds was subsidizing the rent of the group doing abortions, so the state ceased the grants. (Planned Parenthood said it was unfairly targeted because it passed an earlier state audit.)

"They're not known for their honesty," Hanks said, and money is fungible—meaning that it can be shifted from one place to another. But in this case, both Hanks and Malec said they have no proof that Komen money goes to anything but breast cancer screening. (Planned Parenthood did not answer requests for an interview.)

Some pro-life groups have argued that there is a link between abortion and breast cancer. According to Angela Lanfranchi, a breast cancer surgeon, women who have a full-term birth have reduced breast cancer risk, so abortion removes this protection. Most doctors agree. But Lanfranchi would add that abortions, both spontaneous and induced, create cancer-vulnerable breast tissue—an assertion other doctors dispute but one she says has its basis in the basic textbook physiology of the breast. A 1989 New York study looked at fetal death certificates and then looked for the mothers in breast cancer registries, finding higher odds for cancer in women under 40 who had either a spontaneous or induced abortion.
Komen says newer evidence contradicts this. In 2003, 100 experts from the National Cancer Institute concluded there was no link between breast cancer and either miscarriages or induced abortions. Harvard University and Oxford University have found similar results in the past two years.

With the possible link between abortion and breast cancer and reason to distrust Planned Parenthood, Malec called the grants unnecessary: "They do not have to give funds to Planned Parenthood for breast cancer screenings. There are many other organizations that can receive those funds, and I think by giving them these funds it whitewashes what Planned Parenthood does."

Copyright © 2009 WORLD Magazine
January 17, 2009, Vol. 24, No. 1

STILL HONEST JOURNALISTS, DESPITE DEARTH


As a Potential Victim of Abortion, I Didn't Vote for Barack Obama for President

by Gregory Kane
January 5, 2009

LifeNews.com Note:
Gregory Kane is a columnist for the Baltimore Sun and this article originally appeared in the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle newspaper. As with all editorial columns appearing on LifeNews.com, we may not necessarily endorse the views of the author.



I'll turn 57 today. . What does that have to do with why I didn't vote for President-elect Barack Obama on Nov. 4, 2008? That requires a little back-story.

Sometime between late March and early May of 1951 a 28-year-old black woman in Baltimore, Md. realized she was pregnant. She already had two infant daughters --- one 32 months and the other not even a year old --- and knew that her salary working in a sub-minimum wage job at a laundry would make feeding and rearing a third child difficult. She made arrangements with a woman she knew for what was then called a "back-alley abortion."

The appointment was set and she was prepared to meet the abortionist. She was waiting for the woman who made the arrangements to pick her up when, at the last minute and for reasons she couldn't quite understand, she called the whole thing off. She decided she would have the baby after all.

I'm darned lucky she did. That woman was my mother. She's told me this story several times since I've been an adult. And if she thought telling it would make me vote for a pro-choice candidate, running for any office in any election, she realizes now she was sadly mistaken.

My devout Roman Catholic mother voted for Obama on Nov. 4. Two weeks later my brother Mike told me she was upset with both of her considerably less devout Roman Catholic sons because we DIDN'T vote for Obama.

"If she thought we'd vote for him because nearly every other black person was going to for him, then she doesn't know her sons very well," I told Mike.

I don't know Mike's reasons for not voting for Obama, but I sure as heck know mine. I have several. One is that I like for my presidents to have had some military experience. I guess I'm just funny that way, but if a man or woman wants to be commander-in-chief of our armed forces, then that man or woman should not pass on military service.

Another is Obama's answer to the question about education put to him and Sen. John McCain in their last televised debate. Moderator Bob Schieffer told both candidates that America spends more per capita on education than other developed countries but our students don't do as well on standardized tests. Obama peered straight into the camera and in essence said yes, that's true, but he still intends to spend more federal dollars on something that federal dollars have been shown not to improve.

It's hard to vote for a guy who, in essence, says he plans to waste even more of my tax money.

But it was the abortion issue that did it most for me. I have problems with the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.

Obama and his pro-choice compadres seem to think the Roe decision is God's 11th commandment.

In a speech to Planned Parenthood in July of 2007, Obama even linked the Roe decision to women's liberation, and then pulled a demagogic stunt in criticizing the Supreme Court Gonzales v. Carhart decision.

"We know that five men don't know better than women or their doctors what's best for women's health," Obama declared.

But we do know that seven men voted to strike down laws outlawing abortion on Jan. 22, 1973. And we know that on Jan. 23, 1973, tomcatting men across the land rejoiced because seven justices had handed them a "knock-her-up-and-get-out-of-the-consequences" card.

The abortion debate is about more than a "right to choose" or a "right to privacy." It's about consequences, responsibility and a right to life. It's about all those things my mother no doubt struggled with 57 years ago, when she decided that my right to life trumped her right to choose.

That's why I'm around to celebrate my 57th birthday, and to vote against any candidate who can't see why a right to life trumps a right to choose.
Buzz up!


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TEN MORE YEARS, LORD!!




January 5, 2009

DENVER AND THE WEST
Adventures in hope for one missionary woman
She has spent decades helping those around the world who need it most. And, at 85, she says she's not close to finishing her work.

By Karen Auge
The Denver Post

Updated: 01/05/2009 06:33:52 AM MST


Katherine Locke says that when she turned 80 five years ago, "my special prayer request was that he (God) would give me another 10 years to serve him in foreign lands." She loves the photo below of her with Marines in Iraq in 1992. (Karl Gehring, The Denver Post )

Katherine Locke isn't much for storing up treasures on earth. But there is one material possession she cherishes and can't resist showing off. It's a photo of her in Iraqi Kurdistan, wearing an Army-issue camouflage hat, sitting in a dirt-brown Jeep surrounded by four smiling GIs — and hoisting an M-16 that couldn't weigh a whole lot less than she does.

"They proclaimed me officially one of them," she said. Even now, the episode makes her grin.
That was back in 1992 when Locke was a mere 69. She spent eight years in Iraq, nursing Kurdish refugees who had been favorite targets for Saddam Hussein's butchery. Now that she's 85, Locke has had to slow down a bit and cut back on that sort of adventure.


Katherine Locke says this is one of her favorite souvenir photos. It was made in April 1991 on the Iraqi-Turkish border where she was working with the Kurds in northern Iraq. (Photo courtesy of Katherine Locke)
That's why, when she went to Iraq last month, she stayed only 10 days.

From her home base, a tiny Denver apartment, Locke plans her travels — a blue suitcase, already packed for this month's jaunt to Cambodia, stands in a corner — and writes a monthly newsletter that keeps supporters up to date.
It also reminds readers why she does it.

That reason is her faith, Locke says. Faith that has led her literally around the world and kept her looking ahead at an age when many might be content to reflect on the past. "After I met the Lord, I had hope," Locke said.
That hope is what she wants to share with the refugees, the orphans, the mistreated and abused across the world. Her faith propels her, but she takes with her more than spiritual conviction and good intentions. She's a trained nurse.

"When I was 56, I went back to school and got my R.N.," she said.
And her work with a variety of missionary organizations is always accompanied by more than a dash of practical assistance, in the form of medical care, buildings that don't leak, water that is drinkable.
She has been to 55 countries, most of them more likely to make their way onto the State Department's don't-go-there list than onto glossy travel brochures.

She recalls walking through an orphanage literally built of straw, atop a swamp, and seeing the water through what passed for the floor. "We built them a new one," with real floors, she said.
Starting out all alone.

More . . . .