Candidate attracts 'people who think mass murderers are romantic revolutionaries'
Fox News' image of Texas Obama volunteers with Che Guevara flag
The Fox TV affiliate in Houston has captured images of a volunteer in a campaign office for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama working in front of a flag featuring the image of Che Guevara, the South American revolutionary who became Fidel Castro's executioner after the communist takeover in Cuba.
And while the Obama campaign has issued a statement placing a modest distance between the campaign and its "volunteers," the issue of such an image on display in an office operating on behalf of a man hoping to be commander in chief of the world's last remaining superpower is raising alarms.
Even Obama supporters have been forced into corners because of the issue, with one likening the Texas state Republican Party to Guevara, to whom have been attributed hundreds of executions of anti-Castro leaders.
Under the heading "Barack Guevara," Investor's Business Daily raised some of the more pointed questions, to which the campaign responded only with a statement: "The office featured in this video is funded by volunteers of the Barack Obama Campaign and is not an official headquarters for ...   more »

by Daniel Pipes
Beneath the deceptively placid surface of everyday life, the British population is engaged in a momentous encounter with Islam. Three developments of the past week, each of them culminating years' long trends – and not just some odd occurrence – exemplify changes now underway. 
Home Secretary Jacqui Smith describes terrorism as "anti-Islamic."
First, the UK government has decided that terrorism by Muslims in the name of Islam is actually unrelated to Islam, or is even anti-Islamic. This notion took root in 2006 when the Foreign Office, afraid that the term "war on terror" would inflame British Muslims, sought language that upholds "shared values as a means to counter terrorists." By early 2007, the European Union issued a classified handbook that banned jihad, Islamic, and fundamentalist in reference to terrorism, offering instead some "non-offensive" phrases. Last summer, Prime Minister Gordon Brown prohibited his ministers from using the word Muslim in connection with terrorism. In January, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith went further, actually describing terrorism as "anti-Islamic." And last week the Home Office completed the obfuscation by issuing a counter-terrorism phrasebook that instructs civil servants to refer only to violent extremism and criminal murderers, not Islamist extremism and jihadi-fundamentalists....   more »

'Students to endure gender-bending education unless parents rescue them'
If you care about your children, then you should homeschool, find a Christian school, participate in a homeschool co-op, pay the tuition, drive an older car, or do whatever is necessary to keep them out of California's public school system. That's the message from a new campaign, assembled under the Rescue Your Child slogan.
And it's all because the California Legislature and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger worked together to establish Senate Bill 777 and Assembly Bill 394 as law, plans that institutionalize the promotion of homosexuality, bisexuality, transgenderism and other alternative lifestyle choices.
"First, [California] law allowed public schools to voluntarily promote homosexuality, bisexuality and transsexuality. Then, the law required public schools to accept homosexual, bisexual and transsexual teachers as role models for impressionable children. Now, the law has been changed to effectively require the positive portrayal of homosexuality, bisexuality and transsexuality to 6 million children in California government-controlled schools," said Randy Thomasson, chief of the Campaign for Children and Families and a leader in the movement to withdraw what supporters pray will be up to 600,000 children from public districts in the state.
At a Los Angeles news conference, Thomasson's organization ...   more »

I, personally, don't believe it needs to be, but Robert Schuller and friends spent a few days in late January planning how to do it. On my February 9 radio program, "Understanding the Times," Roger Oakland reported on the event as he was able to attend a portion of it. He stated that the prominent view from most in attendance was that Christianity as we have known it has run its course and must change. It must be re-invented or it won't survive. Really?
As Oakland said, focusing on a relationship and not religiosity is what is important; however, true Christianity has survived just about everything including mass slaughter in Sudan. But the faith isn't being made stronger by such events as Schuller's "Re-Think" last month. Christianity and the church need not "re-think" and compromise their God-given biblical doctrines to accommodate the world and churches with "straying" theology.
The Schuller "Re-Think" event was co-hosted by Emergent leader Erwin McManus. Many Christian and secular leaders were invited, and it begs the question, Why are secular people speaking about "re-inventing Christianity?"
Perhaps it cannot be determined if all in attendance or invited were in agreement with this event. Roger Oakland reported that ...   more »