Judge Rules In Favor Of Prayer Ban For School Officials

A federal judge on Friday approved a consent decree that calls for Santa Rosa County School District officials to stop promoting their religious beliefs in schools.

School officials now are prohibited from promoting or endorsing prayers during school functions and from organizing school functions at religious venues. The consent decree must be distributed to all employees.

“The court has ensured that decisions about religion will be left in the hands of families and faith communities and not public school officials,” said Benjamin Stevenson, an American Civil Liberties Union of Florida attorney based in Pensacola.

The ACLU and ACLU of Florida sued the district in August on behalf of two unnamed Pace High School students. The students claimed school officials regularly promoted religion and led prayers at school events.

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If You Think the Dollar Is Doomed, Read This

Warren Buffett has been called a sage, an oracle, and a genius. So when he says something as startling as the following, your ears should perk up: “In the future, I would predict that the U.S. dollar will decline. … Force-feeding the rest of the world $2 billion a day is inconsistent with a stable dollar.”

This is scary stuff. Except one thing: Buffett made that statement at the beginning of 2008, before (1) the U.S. dollar went on to have a pretty good year versus most other currencies, (2) the U.S. government announced the $800 billion bailout and $789 billion stimulus that will force-feed the world billions of additional dollars of U.S. debt, and (3) China’s central government proposed replacing the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency.

Passing on the buck

Now, we’re not policy wonks, Ph.D. economists, or long-winded talk-radio hosts, so we’ll leave the politics aside and focus on the implications for your bank account instead. By adding to our massive federal deficit, the TARP and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 could have a devastating effect on the

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George Barna: America Is Being Destroyed Inside Out

Christian pollster George Barna made a controversial argument Wednesday night that Americans are to blame for the destruction of their country and it is up to faith groups to restore it.

George Barna, founder of The Barna Group, shares ideas presented in his latest book, 7 Faith Tribes, on the opening night of the Evangelical Press Association/Associated Church Press Convention in Indianapolis, Indiana on Wednesday, May 6, 2009.

The once great United States is decaying, declared Barna to a crowd of hundreds of Christian journalists on the opening night of the Evangelical Press Association/Associated Church Press Convention.

America’s divorce, abortion, sexually transmitted disease, spousal abuse and crime rates are the highest or among the highest compared to other developed nations. And the percentage of students graduating from high school on time has not changed in 32 years.

“The enemy of America today is not Iraq. It is not Afghanistan or communism. It is not Somalian pirates. It’s the moral degradation and spiritual complacency of Americans,” contended Barna, founder of the research firm The Barna Group. “In essence it is the willingness of Americans to become victims of the imposition of values and objectives that defy our common good.”

Many factors have led to America’s deterioration, he said, including moving from mass production to mass consumption, moving from common values to now radical individualism with personal values, and competition among faith groups rather than cooperation.

“Just think about the shift in mottos that characterize our nation,” Barna noted. “We talked about one nation under God, but today really we are one nation under self, sometimes aided by one or more gods.”

“We shifted from a nation that said ‘In God We Trust’ to reality and self we trust,” he said. “We transitioned from being a land of the free and the home of the brave, to now we are the land of the indebted and the home of the self-indulgent. We also shifted from a land that believes you can be all you can be to now it’s get all you can get.”

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Obama Could Address Muslims From Top Mosque

The grand mufti of Egypt has invited President Obama to address Muslims around the globe from one of the most important mosques in the Islamic world.

The invitation to speak from Egypt’s Al Azhar mosque follows an announcement over this past weekend that Obama will travel to Egypt next month to deliver his promised address to the Muslim world.

According to Al-Masri Al-Yawm, a state-run Egyptian newspaper, Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa and other scholars from Egypt’s Al Azhar University invited Obama to use the mosque as venue for the president’s upcoming visit, explaining it would promote a culture of dialogue between Islam and the West.

Al AZhar University is the most respected Sunni Islamic learning center in the world and is the second oldest degree-granting school in the world. Clerics at the university’s attendant mosque decide Islamic sharia law matters for Sunni Muslims internationally.

via Obama could address Muslims from top mosque.

Pope Stresses Deep Respect For Islam

Pope Benedict XVI underlined his “deep respect” for Islam on Friday in Jordan, on his first trip as pontiff to an Arab state, and stressed that religious freedom is a fundamental human right.

He also called the church a spiritual force that could contribute to progress in bringing about peace in the Middle East.

Speaking after a red carpet welcome from Abdullah II and Queen Rania at Queen Alia Airport as he began his eight-day tour of the Holy Land amid strict security, the pope said he came to Jordan “as a pilgrim.”

He said his visit “gives me a welcome opportunity to speak of my deep respect for the Muslim community, and to pay tribute to the leadership shown by His Majesty the King in promoting a better understanding of the virtues proclaimed by Islam.”

The pope also called religious freedom “a fundamental human right.”

“It is my fervent hope and prayer that respect for the inalienable rights and dignity of every man and woman will come to be increasingly affirmed and defended, not only throughout the Middle East, but in every part of the world,” he said.

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Student Wins Classroom Creationism Case

A federal judge ruled that a public high school history teacher violated the First Amendment when he called creationism “superstitious nonsense” during a classroom lecture.

[...]

Farnan sued in U.S. District Court in 2007, alleging that Corbett violated the establishment clause of the First Amendment by making repeated comments in class that were hostile to Christian beliefs.

The lawsuit cited more than 20 statements made by Corbett during one day of class, all of which were recorded by Farnan, to support allegations of a broader teaching method that “favors irreligion over religion” and made Christian students feel uncomfortable.

[...]

But Selna ruled Friday that one comment, where Corbett referred to creationism as “religious, superstitious nonsense,” did violate Farnan’s constitutional rights.

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Peres Wants To Yield Sacred Sites To Vatican

President Shimon Peres is willing to hand over Israeli sovereignty of key Christian holy sites to the Vatican, a proposition that is reportedly opposed by Interior Minister Eli Yishai and that has ruffled feathers among other senior government officials, Army Radio reported on Monday.

Local Catholic community prepares for Papal visit

Beit Hanassi could not be reached for comment on Monday, as it does not issue statements to the press while the president is abroad.

According to the radio report, the president is exerting pressure on the government to give up sovereignty over six sites, including the Church of the Annunciation in Nazareth, the Coenaculum on Mount Zion, Gethsemane on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem, and the Church of the Multiplication on the Kinneret.

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Is This The End of America?

Helicopter Ben Bernanke’s Federal Reserve is dropping trillions of fresh paper dollars on the world economy, the President of the United States is cracking jokes on late night comedy shows, his energy minister is threatening a trade war over carbon emissions, his treasury secretary is dithering over a banking reform program amid rising concerns over his competence and a monumentally dysfunctional U.S. Congress is launching another public jihad against corporations and bankers.

As an aghast world — from China to Chicago and Chihuahua — watches, the circus-like U.S. political system seems to be declining into near chaos. Through it all, stock and financial markets are paralyzed. The more the policy regime does, the worse the outlook gets. The multi-ringed spectacle raises a disturbing question in many minds: Is this the end of America?

Probably not, if only because there are good reasons for optimism. The U.S. economy has pulled out of self-destructive political spirals in the past, spurred on by its business class and corporate leaders, the profit-making and market-creating people who rose above the political turmoil to once again lift the world out of financial crisis. It’s happened many times before, except for once, when it took 20 years to rise out of the Great Depression.

Past success, however, is no guarantee of future recovery, especially now when there are daily disasters and new indicators of political breakdown. All developments are not disasters in themselves. The AIG bonus firestorm is a diversion from real issues , but it puts the ghastly political classes who make U.S. law on display for what they are: ageing self-serving demagogues who have spent decades warping the U.S. political system for their own ends. We see the system up close, law-making that is riddled with slapdash, incompetence and gamesmanship.

One test of whether we are witnessing the end of America is how many more times Americans put up with congressional show trials of individual business people and their employees, slandering and vilifying them for their actions and motives. And for how long will they tolerate a President who berates business and corporations as dens of crime and malfeasance? If the majority of Americans come to accept the caricatures of business as true, then America is closer to the end of its life as a global leader, as a champion of markets and individualism.

But America is at risk in other ways, especially in the technical business of setting and executing policy. The presidency of Barack Obama has set out on a course that has no precedent in U.S. history. Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose New Deal transformed the U.S. economy during the Great Depression, pushed America off on a sharply different political and ideological course. The Obama administration is different in many ways, not least in its supreme self-confidence in its methods and objectives.

Reform of health care, environmental policy, education, energy, banking, regulation — every nook and cranny of the U.S. economy has been put on alert for major change. Expansion of government spending, plunging the U.S. into unprecedented deficits, is without parallel. In economic policy, through regulation and control of energy output, financial services and monetary expansion, the U.S. government has embarked on a fundamental reshaping of America. It is designed, in short, to bring on the end of America.

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America What Have You Done

President Obama has had, by general consent, a torrid First Fortnight. To put it another way, it has taken precisely two weeks for the illusion that brought him to power to be exposed for the nonsense that it so obviously was. The transformational candidate who was going to sweep away pork-barrel politics, lobbyists and corruption has been up to his neck in sleaze, as eviscerated here by Charles Krauthammer. Despite the fact that he came to power promising to ‘ban all earmarks’, his ‘stimulus’ bill represents billions of dollars of special-interest tax breaks, giveaways and protections — which have nothing to do with kick-starting the economy and everything to do with favouring pet Democrat causes.

He has been appointing one tax dodger, lobbyist and wheeler-dealer after another. After appointing one official,Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who had unaccountably forgotten to pay his taxes, he then watched his designated Health Secretary Tom Daschle fall on his sword because he too had taken a tax holiday. Daschle was furthermore a prominent actor in the world of lobbying and influence-peddling. Leon Panetta, Obama’s nominee for Director of the CIA has also, according to the Wall Street Journal, consulted for prominent companies and sat on the board of a public affairs firm that lobbies Congress. The Weekly Standard reports that Secretary of Labour nominee Hilda Solis was not only involved with a private organization lobbying her fellow legislators on a bill that she helped sponsor, but she apparently kept her involvement secret and failed to reveal a clear conflict of interest.

via The Spectator.

Is The US Heading For A Depression?

This drop was led by a 22% drop in spending on durable goods like automobiles and washing machines.

The decline in motor vehicle production was so great that it alone contributed 2% to the fall in GDP.

Businesses hit

Businesses as well as consumers have been hit hard by the slowdown.

Exports, which had helped boost GDP earlier in the year, fell sharply, by 19.7%, as foreign markets for US products were hit by their own recessions.

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Pledge of Allegiance Becomes Pledge to Obama

A parent in the Clark County School District of Las Vegas, Henderson area reported January 27th that his son, who is in 1st grade, came home yesterday saying that he didn’t want to go back to school anymore.

When asked why, the boy said that during the Pledge of Allegiance the teacher put up a large image of Obama next to the flag.

Thinking that the boy might be exaggerating, the man asked his son if he was sure, and suggested that by “large” he might mean an 8×10 photo of the president. The boy apparently said “No, it is a large picture of Obama and when we are done, the teacher turns off the image.”

The same thing was not done for President Bush last year.

After investigating this morning, the other parent reported that what the boy said was true.

At least three of the five classrooms have an overhead projector and as the children stand to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, the teacher turns on the classroom overhead and a full body image of Obama, with six U.S. flags behind him, comes up about 4 feet away from the flag that hangs on the wall. The screen is apparently around five feet by six feet.

In the image, President Obama appears to be staring straight out with no facial expression, just a serious look. All of the kids in each class faced the President, instead of the flag that hangs in the corner.

Local parents are up in arms over this situation. Teachers clearly do not realize the gravity of what they are doing.

via Source

Adviser Describes Worst Case Scenarios

What’s the worst that could happen?

That’s a question that James Rickards spends a lot of time pondering these days, as he sifts through the national security implications of the financial crisis facing the United States.

Rickards will lay out his worst case scenarios in a lecture sponsored by the Navy and the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Policy tonight. And his forecasts aren’t for the faint of heart.

Rickards calls it the “A to Z” problem: What are the threats that could make the U.S. economy look less like America and more like Zimbabwe? He sees them everywhere – in the Chinese ownership of vast amounts of American debt, in Russia’s increased centralization of its economy, in Al Qaeda’s long-established fascination with damaging the U.S. economy.

In many ways, Rickards is the ultimate bear. He’s not just thinking about whether the stock market will decline, but whether or not the stock market will survive.

All that puts Rickards decidedly outside mainstream economic and political thinking in America. But he does have an influential audience: the United States intelligence and defense communities.

Rickards is a regular adviser on financial issues to the office of the Director of National Intelligence, and he lends his financial advice to the national security community.

His lecture comes as part of an annual “Rethinking Seminar” produced by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. Rickards argues that government is not doing nearly enough to prepare for the worst. “Here’s the policy problem for the United States,” he said in an interview. “We have experts in defense and intelligence, and huge depth in capital markets experience at the Fed and at Treasury. But they’re separated by the Potomac River. And they’re not talking to each other.”

Rickards came by his economic experience the hard way. He was the general counsel at Long Term Capital Management, the hedge fund that collapsed in spectacular fashion in the late 1990s and nearly took the global economy along with it. That near-economic death experience gave him a healthy appreciation for risk. Today, he’s the senior managing director for research at Omnis, an applied research firm.

Four of the scenarios keep him up at night:

via Read More

America – Defender of Western Values

A political scientist and retired military officer believes three world systems are currently competing against each other to determine who is going to dominate the planet late in this century.

Dangerous Illusions bookDr. Robert Chandler holds a doctorate in political science, is a retired colonel in the U.S. Air Force, and has served at the highest levels of the Defense Department. He contends the United States holds the key to beat back threats to Western civilization.

Chandler recently published Dangerous Illusions-Shadow World, which warns Americans about the struggle of civilizations that is currently waging in the world.

“It’s a strategic analysis that looks at three parts of the world that are competing against each other. One would be a cell led by Russia and its strategic allies. The other is the capitalist West, and the third is militant Islam,” he notes. “Those three groups are competing globally for who is going to control the planet sometime late in this century.”

The author admits he is not sure the Western capitalist system is going to ultimately win. “I’ll tell you right now, it’s a choice between autocracy, democracy, or theocracy — and I don’t know who the winner is going to be right now,” he adds. “I think it is wide open to what we do in the United States. We’re the ones that [have] to stand up for the Western world because no one else will.”

If Americans do not heed his warnings, Chandler believes America may look like a far different place 50-to-100 years from now.

via America – defender of Western values (OneNewsNow.com).

Report: US To Decline – World To Become A Much More Dangerous Place

U.S. economic and political clout will decline over the next two decades and the world will be more dangerous, with food and water scarce and advanced weapons plentiful, U.S. spy agencies projected on Thursday.

The National Intelligence Council analysis “Global Trends 2025″ also said the current financial crisis on Wall Street is just the first phase of a global economic reordering.

The U.S. dollar’s role as the world’s major currency would weaken to become a “first among equals,” the report said.

The outlook is intended to inform U.S. President-elect Barack Obama of factors that will influence global events. It is based on a year-long global survey of experts and trends by U.S. intelligence analysts.

“The next 20 years of transition to a new system are fraught with risks,” said the report, which was more pessimistic about U.S. influence and the potential for conflict than the last outlook for 2020.

Thomas Fingar, chairman of the intelligence council and deputy national director of intelligence for analysis, said harmful outcomes were not inevitable.

“It is not beyond the mind of human beings, or political systems, (or) in some cases (the) working of market mechanisms to address and alleviate if not solve these problems,” Fingar told reporters. “We could have a better world in 2025.”

China and India, following a “state capitalism” economic model, were likely to join the United States atop a multipolar world and compete for influence, the report said.

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