Treason's First Cousin

Insight magazine has a detailed article on a story that seems to have dropped off the media radar screen, but shouldn't have.

It is still not known exactly who created the infamous memo that Insight calls a "plan for Democrats to abuse the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) as a stealth weapon to undermine and discredit President George W. Bush and the U.S. war effort in Iraq." Georgia Democratic Senator Zell Miller said of the plan, "If what has happened here is not treason, it is its first cousin. The ones responsible - be they staff or elected or both - should be dealt with quickly and severely, sending a lesson to all that this kind of action will not be tolerated, ignored or excused."

Some key excerpts from the article:

The plot, authored by aides to Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), vice chairman of the committee, has poisoned the working atmosphere of a crucial legislative panel in a time of war, Senate sources say. It centered on duping the panel's Republican chairman, Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas, into approving probes that in actuality would be fishing expeditions inside the State Department and Pentagon. The authors hoped to dig up and hype "improper or questionable conduct by administration officials." According to a staff memo, the committee then would release the information during the course of the "investigation," with Democrats providing their "additional views" that would, "among other things, castigate the majority [Republicans] for seeking to limit the scope of the inquiry."

In other words, they would manufacture and denounce a cover-up where none existed. The Democrats then would drag the issue through the 2004 presidential campaign by creating an independent commission to investigate, according to the memo.

. . . Asked whether [Democrat staff chief on the Senate intelligence panel Christopher] Mellon wrote the plan, Rockefeller's spokeswoman Wendy Morigi did not attempt to exonerate the staff director. "The senator has not stated who the author of that memo is," Morigi said, "and I don't think he intends to." She spoke with Rockefeller and then called Insight again to say Sen. Rockefeller would not comment.

. . .Rockefeller defended his staff and the outrageous document itself, calling it a "private memo that nobody saw except me and the staff people that wrote it for me." He rebuffed calls from Frist, Miller and others that the staffers responsible be exposed, let alone fired, and instead accused Republicans of stealing the document from his aides' computers. "Mr. Rockefeller refuses to denounce the memo, which he says was unauthorized and written by staffers. If that's the case, at the very least some heads ought to roll," declared the Wall Street Journal in an editorial. Firing Mellon as the staff director for the culprits, the Journal said, would be "a good place to start."

An uncompromised intelligence effort is crucial in any war, but it has never been more crucial than it is now, in an age of barbarians with nuclear weapons who will not hesitate to use them within our borders. Use this link to demand Senator Rockefeller fire staff director Mellon, and expose and fire those who originated this incredibly cynical plot. Use our Take Action page to copy your representatives and the President and encourage them to pressure the Democratic party and Rockefeller on this issue. If we allow issues like this one to die, our country's death may be next.

(If you find this site useful and would like to help make political devotions a mass movement, please tell others about PoliticalDevotions.com or place a link to it on your website. Then when you've done so, be sure to e-mail me so I can thank you personally! - Tim.)

Pull The Plug on Taxpayer-Funded Bias

On the November 8, 2002 edition of PBS's "Now," Bill Moyers gave the following commentary:

The entire federal government -- the Congress, the executive, the courts -- is united behind a right-wing agenda for which George W. Bush believes he now has a mandate. That agenda includes the power of the state to force pregnant women to surrender control over their own lives. It includes using the taxing power to transfer wealth from working people to the rich. It includes giving corporations a free hand to eviscerate the environment and control the regulatory agencies meant to hold them accountable. And it includes secrecy on a scale you cannot imagine.

Above all, it means judges with a political agenda appointed for life. If you like the Supreme Court that put George W. Bush in the White House, you will swoon over what's coming. And if you like God in government, get ready for the Rapture...

So it's a heady time in Washington, a heady time for piety, profits and military power, all joined at the hip by ideology and money. Don't forget the money... Republicans out-raised Democrats by $184 million and they came up with the big prize: monopoly control of the American government and the power of the state to turn their radical ideology into the law of the land. Quite a bargain at any price.

Did you enjoy that tirade? I hope so. You paid for it.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds PBS and NPR, in 2003 received a $363 million federal appropriation, representing a whopping 45% increase in federal funding in just four years. In return for this largess, taxpayers have received, among other choice moments: obnoxious and biased screeds like the one from Moyers, a TV special that even the ultra-liberal New York Times called an "Islamic infomercial," NPR's blacklisting of premier Islamic terror expert Steven Emerson, and reporter Nina Totenberg's expressed wish that Jesse Helms' grandchildren would get AIDS. Charming.

Even if CPB's outlets had no bias, it would be superfluous. A National Taxpayers Union article puts it well:

When CPB was created in 1967 -- before the Internet, before satellite television, before VCRs or DVDs, before cable TV with hundreds of channels -- a stronger case could be made that there was a public benefit to subsidize other voices and programming. Now, with the media explosion of the past quarter century, there is little justification left for public subsidies.

Why continue to underwrite Julia Child and Emeril Lagasse when viewers can watch the Food Network (where the latter often appears)? Why subsidize history programming on PBS when viewers have the History Channel or can rent history documentaries at their local video store? Along with all the stations on free radio, listeners can tune in over the Internet to hundreds of stations all over the world. And for less than $10 a month, listeners can receive the 100 channels of XM Radio in their cars and homes.

It's time to stop feeding this left-wing dinosaur. Use our Take Action page to ask your representatives to remove all taxpayer funding from CPB and let it prove itself in the free marketplace of ideas, where dinosaurs tend to become quickly extinct.

(If you find this site useful and would like to help make political devotions a mass movement, please tell others about PoliticalDevotions.com or place a link to it on your website. Then when you've done so, be sure to e-mail me so I can thank you personally! - Tim.)

Cleaning The Public Square

If you're fed up with the increasing use of foul language on prime time broadcast TV, Focus on the Family's website features a page where you can contact all five FCC commissioners to demand stricter enforcement of broadcast indecency laws. Amazingly, the FCC's enforcement bureau has never fined a televison network or station for violating these laws, and the FCC has ruled expletives such as the infamous F-word are acceptable on public airwaves in certain contexts.

If this were a matter of objectionable content on some cable station, I'd say let the free market work -- viewers should use their TV's channel delete and V-chip features, and notify their cable company and the offending stations that they have done so. But stations that use the public airwaves, which are a public trust and a finite resource, should be subject to regulation. For all the reasons we would not want obscenity in the town square, we should not want it on the public airwaves.

(If you find this site useful and would like to help make political devotions a mass movement, please tell others about PoliticalDevotions.com or place a link to it on your website. Then when you've done so, be sure to e-mail me so I can thank you personally! - Tim.)

"Who Do You Say I Am, Howard?"

In a recent interview in the Boston Globe, Howard Dean, the presidential nomination frontrunner in the highly secularized democratic party, described himself as "a committed believer in Jesus Christ" and said he expects to include more references to Jesus and God in speeches while campaigning in the south. He offered that. . .

Christ was someone who sought out people who were disenfranchised, people who were left behind. . . . He fought against self-righteousness of people who had everything. . . . He was a person who set an extraordinary example that has lasted 2000 years, which is pretty inspiring when you think about it.

Dean's statement, if transcribed accurately, is conspicuously free of references to Christ's divinity -- something a "committed believer" would be rather likely to work into any public statement of his faith, don't ya think?

As James Taranto observed in his Best of the Web column, "To hear Howard Dean tell it, Jesus Christ was just a socially conscious celebrity, like Princess Diana only less glamorous."

Not that a non-Christian could not do a fine job as president. Off the top of my head, I can think of several prominent Jews with a thousand times the moral sense of our "Christian" former chief executive Jimmy Carter, who by appeasing our enemies put us on the road to a war on Islamic terror. But I digress.

Use this link to ask Howard Dean to -- as a "committed believer" and in the interest of full disclosure to a few tens of millions of Evangelicals who might care about such things -- make a public statement clarifying his beliefs concerning whether Jesus Christ is God. Better yet, use our Take Action page to also e-mail President Bush and request that he put the question face-to-face in the presidential election debates, should Dean succeed in securing the nomination. Now that's must-see TV.

(If you find this site useful and would like to help make political devotions a mass movement, please tell others about PoliticalDevotions.com or place a link to it on your website. Then when you've done so, be sure to e-mail me so I can thank you personally! - Tim.)

Librarian Decency Overdue

The same American Library Association that opposes Internet filtering to keep pornography and hate sites from the eyes of children now refuses to condemn Fidel Castro for imprisoning, for terms of up to 28 years, ten independent Cuban librarians who were rounded up along with 75 independent journalists, union organizers, economists, human rights workers and other dissidents in last April's crackdown on free speech.

The librarians' sole "crime" was resisting Castro's censorship of ideas, yet ALA policy-making governing council member Mark Rosenzweig smugly pronounces that "we cannot presume that all countries are capable of the same level of intellectual freedom that we have in the U.S. Cuba is caught in an extremely sharp conflict with the U.S. . . . I don't think [Cuba] is a dictatorship. It's a republic" [Emphasis mine]. Some of the directorate and some rank-and-file members agree with the Castro regime that the librarians are guilty as "agents of the US government," hence the ALA refusal to condemn the imprisonments.

At its Midwinter Meeting from Jan. 9 to Jan. 14 in San Diego, the ALA will have an opportunity to reverse its position of silence on this issue, but don't hold your breath. The organization's positions run comfortably in line with far left dogma, prompting one periodical to dub the ALA "Castro's favorite librarians."

Nevertheless, you can express your disgust to the ALA at this link, and use our Take Action page to let your representatives know you oppose the ALA position and support long overdue regime change in that small, enslaved nation just 90 miles from our shore.

(If you find this site useful and would like to help make political devotions a mass movement, please tell others about PoliticalDevotions.com or place a link to it on your website. Then when you've done so, be sure to e-mail me so I can thank you personally! - Tim.)

Middle East History

For anyone who wants a good understanding of the Middle East and why Israel is an important front in the war on Islamic terror, here are links to two concise and articulate analyses by Empower America and David Horowitz.

Twenty Facts About Israel and the Middle East

The world's attention has been focused on the Middle East. We are confronted daily with scenes of carnage and destruction. Can we understand such violence? Yes, but only if we come to the situation with a solid grounding in the facts of the matter-facts that too often are forgotten, if ever they were learned.

...In sum, a fair and balanced portrayal of the Middle East will reveal that one nation stands far above the others in its commitment to human rights and democracy as well as in its commitment to peace and mutual security. That nation is Israel.

A Middle East History Primer

What is the crime of the Jews that they should not have been welcomed into this unpromising desert -- a tiny sliver of the Turkish Empire -- from the very beginning? What is the crime of the Jews that their infant state should have been attacked by five Arab armies on the day of its creation? What is the crime of the Jews that these Arab states should have continued their war for fifty years without a peace in sight? What is the crime of the Jews that these Arabs should make Jewish women and children the targets of their suicide bombers, and that their leader should call for millions of "martyrs" to plow into the heart of the Jewish sliver to blow up its inhabitants once and for all?

Their crime is that they are Jews....

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Tax Subsidized Hate

The Wall Street Journal editorial page reports that Iowa Republican Senator Chuck Grassley, in response to a Jewish Telegraphic Agency series detailing the Ford Foundation's support for Palestinian NGOs crusading against Israel, has announced that the Senate Finance Committee will review the matter. The Wall Street Journal hopes this will raise the question of how U.S. tax laws intended to encourage charity have "had the unintended effect of spawning a foundation priesthood funded into perpetuity and insulated from public accountability." WSJ concludes,

We hope Senator Grassley goes through with hearings, not only to find out where all that Ford money ended up in the Middle East but also to raise the larger public issue of whether the tax code is being used to subsidize attacks on American interests. Foundations are a growing part of U.S. life and are playing an ever larger role in political debate. Under current law they are also tax subsidized for eternity. Congress hasn't revisited that policy since 1981, and it's about time it did.

Contact Senator Grassley through this link and encourage him to move forward with hearings on this matter. Use our Take Action page to copy your own representatives and express your opposition to tax subsidized organizations funding anti-Semitic and anti-American groups. You can also express your opinions to the Ford Foundation through this link.

Click here to receive each day's political devotions entry by e-mail. What could be simpler?

(If you find this site useful and would like to help make political devotions a mass movement, please tell others about PoliticalDevotions.com or place a link to it on your website. Then when you've done so, be sure to e-mail me so I can thank you personally! - Tim.)

Attention Congress: Let Us Pray

Emboldened by the recent Fourth US Circuit Court of Appeals' order that the Virginia Military Institute cancel its supper prayer, the ACLU is now targeting the Naval Academy's voluntary lunchtime prayer.

That a voluntary prayer in no way constitutes an establishment of religion should be apparent on its face, but to activist courts that see the Constitution as a "living document" and therefore a malleable instrument for forcing their social agenda upon the populace, this fact is not so obvious.

The Constitution empowers Congress to establish the lower federal courts and says the appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court shall be set "with such exceptions, and under such regulations as the Congress shall make." Its framers intended that the supreme and lower courts would be under Congress' regulation, and such regulation is long overdue.

Use our Take Action page to express your support for Congress' use of its powers under US Constitution Article III, Section 1 to remove all federal courts' jurisdiction over public prayer, religious practice and acknowledgment of God.

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(If you find this site useful and would like to help make political devotions a mass movement, please tell others about PoliticalDevotions.com or place a link to it on your website. Then when you've done so, be sure to e-mail me so I can thank you personally! - Tim.)

Comfort and Joy

Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God.
Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem;
And cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished,
That her iniquity is pardoned,
For she hath received of the Lord's hand double for all her sins.

The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness,
Prepare ye the way of the Lord.
Make straight in the desert a highway for our God.

Every valley shall be exalted,
And every mountain and hill shall be made low;
And the crooked shall be made straight,
And the rough places plain;

And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,
And all flesh shall see it together;
For the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.

Isaiah 40:1-5

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Saving Christmas

If you've had enough of hearing salesclerks wish you a "happy holiday," if you're exasperated that our country now celebrates with a Capitol "Holiday" Tree, GrinchList.com will give you some relief. Here's its mission statement:

The GrinchList.com is a response to the growing censorship and revisionist policies and practices concerning Christmas that is evident in retail stores, public schools, government offices, businesses, and the media. Our mission is to compile an ongoing list of businesses and organizations that engage in egregious cultural revisionism and expose them to the millions of consumers whose heritage is being expunged from the public cultural arena.

There's a good list of the worst offenders and their contact information, but also be sure to visit the "Grow the Grinch's Heart" section, where you can reward organizations and businesses that support use of that oh so offensive term "Christmas."

Click here to receive each day's political devotions entry by e-mail. What could be simpler?

(If you find this site useful and would like to help make political devotions a mass movement, please tell others about PoliticalDevotions.com or place a link to it on your website. Then when you've done so, be sure to e-mail me so I can thank you personally! - Tim.)

Good Fences...

While only less than a third complete, the Israeli security fence has thwarted more than 20 Palestinian suicide bomb attacks, including a planned attack on a school, the country's domestic intelligence chief reported.

This begs the question, why is there no such fence on the US borders? Would the terror threat have been raised to "high" recently if it were not the case that pretty much anyone can cross our borders undetected, perhaps with a nuclear weapon hidden in a shipment of cocaine?

In a perfect world there would be no fences. But this is a fallen world, and we are at war.

Use our Take Action page to express to the President and your representatives support both for the Israeli security fence and the construction of a similar fence on the US borders.

Click here to receive each day's political devotions entry by e-mail. What could be simpler?

(If you find this site useful and would like to help make political devotions a mass movement, please tell others about PoliticalDevotions.com or place a link to it on your website. Then when you've done so, be sure to e-mail me so I can thank you personally! - Tim.)

Administer the Liberal Test

From DennisPrager.com:

Are You a Liberal?

It is my belief that about half of the Americans who call themselves liberal do not hold the great majority of positions held by mainstream liberal institutions such as the New York Times editorial page, People for the American Way, and the liberal wing of the Democratic Party. So here is a test of this thesis to be given to anyone who believes he or she is a liberal. If you feel I have omitted a liberal position or have unfairly characterized any of them here, please email me. This is still a work in progress.

Dennis might be a little optimistic in his estimate that half of Americans who call themselves liberal do not hold most liberal positions. My suspicion is that there is a formidable Oprah-said-it-I-believe-it-That-settles-it contingent out there, bent on allegiance to a personality with no real thought given to ideology.

But if you have a liberal friend or acquaintance whom you think is sufficiently sincere to take a hard look at his beliefs, take a few minutes to e-mail him the link to Dennis Prager's test, and offer to discuss the results. Most people grow out of their liberalism. Maybe today you can accelerate the process for one person.

Click here to receive each day's political devotions entry by e-mail. What could be simpler?

(If you find this site useful and would like to help make political devotions a mass movement, please tell others about PoliticalDevotions.com or place a link to it on your website. Then when you've done so, be sure to e-mail me so I can thank you personally! - Tim.)

Oy, Canada

If you live in the US, reading this brief Seattle Times piece will give you an instant gratitude infusion.

Living in Canada made me feel like a barn animal in George Orwell's "Animal Farm." My only worry is that someday the United States will resemble Canada. Sort of like one giant Seattle. That would be my nightmare.

Use our Take Action page to express your opposition to US adoption of Canadian-style "reforms" such as official bilingualism, socialized medicine and high taxes. Then thank God that you live in the US.

UPDATE: To be fair, Canada does have a really swell national anthem.

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(If you find this site useful and would like to help make political devotions a mass movement, please tell others about PoliticalDevotions.com or place a link to it on your website. Then when you've done so, be sure to e-mail me so I can thank you personally! - Tim.)

Lessons From Saddam's Capture

A superb piece from Dennis Prager on Ten Lessons From Saddam Hussein's Capture:

...No Muslim or Arab country lifted a finger to help the Iraqi people. This is because the Muslim and Arab worlds do not divide the world between good and evil, but between Muslim and non-Muslim and Arab and non-Arab. Since Saddam was a fellow Muslim and Arab, the fact that he tortured and murdered so many was as irrelevant to the Muslim and Arab worlds as the Islamic regime's genocide in Sudan and the subjugation of women in Taliban Afghanistan.

...There are many who respect goodness above all else. But humanity as a whole has far more respect for power, and takes powerful societies more seriously than good ones. That is why China is respected despite its being a dictatorship and its brutal crushing of Tibet. China is powerful. The stronger America is, the more people will take it and its values seriously. As an unprecedented combination of power and goodness, America could reshape the world.

Use this link to send your thanks to our troops for their efforts in the liberation of Iraq and the capture of Saddam.

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(If you find this site useful and would like to help make political devotions a mass movement, please tell others about PoliticalDevotions.com or place a link to it on your website. Then when you've done so, be sure to e-mail me so I can thank you personally! - Tim.)

Judicial Tyranny Aids the Fifth Column

Two judges on the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals have ordered the Pentagon to release enemy combatant Abdullah Al-Muhajir (Jose Padilla) from military custody. Upon Al-Muhajir's arrest, Attorney General John Ashcroft explained that:

On several occasions in 2001, [Al-Muhajir] met with senior al Qaeda officials. While in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Al Muhajir trained with the enemy, including studying how to wire explosive devices and researching radiological dispersion devices. Al Qaeda officials knew that . . . as a citizen of the United States holding a valid U.S. passport, Al Muhajir would be able to travel freely in the U.S. without drawing attention to himself. . . .

In apprehending Al Muhajir as he sought entry into the United States, we have disrupted an unfolding terrorist plot to attack the United States by exploding a radioactive "dirty bomb."

In the his 12/18 Best of the Web column, James Taranto observes:

[The three-judge panel's decision held that] "clear congressional authorization is required for detentions of American citizens on American soil," and that the September 2001 declaration of war does not constitute such authorization.

One can expect the government to appeal the ruling, either to the full Second Circuit or to the Supreme Court. But perhaps it's also worth asking Congress to take up this issue. Some lawmakers, notably Sen. John Edwards, a presidential candidate, have been championing the civil liberties of would-be terrorists, as if setting off a dirty bomb in an American city were a matter of no more gravity than an ordinary mugging or embezzlement. Why not force all members of Congress to go on record for or against this proposition?

Why not indeed. Use our Take Action page to ask Congress to enact clear authorization for detentions of American citizens with ties to the enemy.

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(If you find this site useful and would like to help make political devotions a mass movement, please tell others about PoliticalDevotions.com or place a link to it on your website. Then when you've done so, be sure to e-mail me so I can thank you personally! - Tim.)

Non-Evangelicals?

Lest we think the only moral idiots are at the Vatican:

Worldmagblog reports (see the 12/12 and 12/9 entries) Fuller Theological Seminary has received a federal Department of Justice grant of $1 million to develop an interfaith code of ethics that would "prohibit proselytizing for two years and ask Christians and Muslims not to say things that would offend each other." Apparently the grant was instigated by Democratic representative Adam Schiff and was tagged for use in a "conflict resolution program."

World Magazine's reporter is still investigating, but in the meantime Worldmagblog asks these very poignant questions:

Why are government funds going to create religious codes? Why is an evangelical seminary pushing for Christians not to proselytize? Why is a new code needed, anyway? Last May the Institute for Religion and Democracy, a broad Christian group, published Guidelines for Christian-Muslim Dialogue: The guidelines emphasize rights of evangelism that some evangelicals are apparently willing to concede.

A million dollars for a speech code against criticizing Islam and sharing one's faith. Your tax dollars at work.

This is a developing story, but while we are awaiting more facts, you can use our Take Action page to bring this grant to your representative's attention and ask for answers to Worldmagblog's questions. The response should be ... interesting.

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(If you find this site useful and would like to help make political devotions a mass movement, please tell others about PoliticalDevotions.com or place a link to it on your website. Then when you've done so, be sure to e-mail me so I can thank you personally! - Tim.)

Homeland Insecurity
Topic: Nuclear Terrorism

Immediately after 9-11, most of us believed we would be living in a different nation, one awakened to the threat of Islamic terrorism -- a nation more like Israel, where domestic security is a high priority on the policy agenda. Few imagined that more than two years later our country would still have open borders, lax immigration enforcement, inadequate airport security, and have taken no steps to reduce the bioterror threat, not to mention the nuclear threat.

Shouldn't we be seeing nuclear sniffing devices on every street corner by now? Shouldn't there be an Israeli-style fence on our borders? Wouldn't a reasonable person expect to see deported every non-US citizen from the terror-sponsoring states, at least for the duration of the war? Who would have imagined racial and ethnic profiling would not only be omitted from airport security screening, but would be illegal?

Will it take a nuclear terror attack, with the constituent loss of possibly millions of lives, before such steps are taken?

Today Michelle Malkin opines on a recent, little-noticed report by the federal homeland security commission which cautioned that anti-terrorism "momentum appears to have waned" and efforts are often hampered by "the lack of a clear, articulated vision from the federal level." She wisely observes that it is of little use to send American soldiers to defend other countries' borders if we will not defend our own.

Her excellent piece from September 2003, Spitting on the Graves of the 9-11 Dead, is a must-read on this topic.

Use our Take Action page to express your support for increased homeland security measures, including racial and ethnic profiling in transportation security, a security fence on the US borders, strict immigration controls, and serious and effective measures to discover nuclear, chemical and biological materials smuggled into the country.

Click here to receive each day's political devotions entry by e-mail. What could be simpler?

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Moral Idiocy in High Places

In a risible speech for the "World Day of Peace," Pope John Paul II attributed terrorism to "injustice" (not evil values or cultures), and put forth this howler:

...he appealed to terrorists, telling them that violence was not only unacceptable but compromises "the very cause for which you are fighting."

That'll show `em. Nothing persuades terrorists like a heartfelt appeal (or a daisy cutter).

A top cardinal Tuesday expressed "pity and compassion" for Saddam. One could conceivably attribute the pope's irrationality to illness but, to my knowledge, this cardinal is disease-free - - well, physically anyway. Pity and compassion for someone who had children tortured in front of their parents. Someone's miter is on too tight.

And on Monday U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Saddam must not receive the death penalty. Sure, he put thousands of others in mass graves. But he shouldn't die. That wouldn't be fair.

In a recent article, Dennis Prager made a fine argument on the consequences of allowing murderers to live. By executing them, we not only punish murderers but we protect the world from their further evil influence. (When was the last time you heard anything about Timothy McVeigh?) When Saddam dies, so will his influence in the Arab and Moslem world. There are many reasons why the death penalty is moral, but in this case, that is reason enough. For a more in-depth exploration of the death penalty issue, see Dennis Prager's book "Think a Second Time" on our Recommended Books page.

To express your support for the death penalty for Saddam and all first-degree murderers, visit our Take Action page.

(If you find this site useful and would like to help make political devotions a mass movement, please tell others about PoliticalDevotions.com or place a link to it on your website. Then when you've done so, be sure to e-mail me so I can thank you personally! - Tim.)

It Will Happen There. It Can Happen Here

In today's Telegraph, Kevin Meyers observes that Islam is Now the Rising Church of England. Moslems now exceed ten percent of the population in several European countries, and with continued liberal immigration policies and a superior birth rate, they are poised to become a dominant force on that continent by 2050.

Meyers notes:

...I'd be interested to know what proportion of the Muslim population of Bradford or Blackburn, Paris or Marseilles, are "moderate" in the way I understand the word, or how many European Muslims genuinely yearn for the foundation of the khilafa, a single Islamic world run on religious lines.

It is a mistake to put our faith in the Islamic "moderates." The prevailing reaction of "moderate" Islam after 9-11 has been silence or warnings (some would say threats) of action against anti-Islamic bigotry. As Charles Krauthammer observed in November 2001:

...After Sept. 11, where were the Muslim theologians and clergy, the imams and mullahs, rising around the world to declare that Sept. 11 was a crime against Islam? Where were the fatwas against Osama bin Laden? The voices of high religious authority have been scandalously still.

Yes, there were generic denunciations of the 9-11 abomination, but nothing like the mass grief and apology we would see from Christian or Jewish leaders if Christian or Jewish terrorists had perpetrated such a revolting crime. (And if you know of a prominent moderate Moslem who has spoken out against murder-suicide bombings against Israeli civilians, please e-mail me.)

There may be no stopping the reality that our grandchildren will have to deal with what could easily become a militant Moslem superpower in Europe. But as American citizens we can act to prevent such a negative cultural shift here. Use our Take Action page to express your support for strict immigration policies, particularly as to countries on the State Department's list of rogue nations. In addition, you can support your church's missionary efforts to Moslems, both in the US and abroad.

(If you find this site useful and would like to help make political devotions a mass movement, please tell others about PoliticalDevotions.com or place a link to it on your website. Then when you've done so, be sure to e-mail me so I can thank you personally! - Tim.)

"Ladies and Gentlemen, We Got Him"

Yanked out of his rathole, looking like Satanic Santa and noticeably "incoherent," on Saturday the Butcher of Bagdad finally encountered the US Military. (And I thought Al Gore had bad hair.)

Reuters describes the Arab world's emotions as "divided." Divided? Apparently there is a "tinge of regret" that a "symbol of Arab defiance" is behind bars. The Jerusalem Post describes the Palestinians as "pained" by Saddam's capture.

One thing is certain. The decent Arabs cheered. President Bush believes their numbers are sufficient to one day create a democratic Middle East, and I sincerely hope he is correct.

Presidential candidate and barking lunatic Howard Dean used the capture to remind America that it must submit to United Nations rule in this matter and bring our boys home.

Last week, Victor Davis Hanson brilliantly observed that the war on terror had reached a critical turning point:

...The reason that states are not rushing to install imams as rulers or open their borders to al Qaeda training camps is not that they like democracy, but rather that they are just now beginning to fear the dire consequences of such action

...We are beginning the third year of this multi-theater conflict, and it resembles the Punic War after the Carthaginian defeat at the Metaurus in 207 B.C., the year of decision of 1863, or the autumn leading to Alamein and Stalingrad. Ever so slowly the momentum is building. If we stay resolute and tighten the noose around the Baathists, the days of the extremists in Iraq will be numbered even as the rest of the country begins to prosper. And the final victory will only embolden us and discourage our enemies. The war itself cannot be won in the Sunni Triangle, but it might well have been lost there.

...In the last two years our enemies have lacked not the will but the power to defeat us; we in contrast had more than enough power but not enough will. But all that is changing as we ever so slowly become angrier while they get weaker.

So we are witnessing right now the war's critical turning point in these the most historic of times. What has been amazing about the war so far is not that we have been winning, but that we have been doing so -- quite unlike our increasingly exhausted enemies -- without the full mobilization of our vast economic, political, material, and human resources.

The capture of Saddam is huge. But World War IV is not over. Use our Take Action page to express your support for full mobilization and bringing the war, if necessary, to other terrorist-sponsoring states like Syria and Iran.

(If you find this site useful and would like to help make political devotions a mass movement, please tell others about PoliticalDevotions.com or place a link to it on your website. Then when you've done so, be sure to e-mail me so I can thank you personally! - Tim.)