Another Amnesty

In recent columns, Michelle Malkin and Phyllis Schlafly deal with President Bush's misguided proposal to grant legal status and removal of the threat of deportation to millions of illegal immigrants. Malkin notes the proposal would turn the ailing Social Security system into "an international relief fund for illegal alien workers who used counterfeit Social Security cards and stolen numbers to secure illegal jobs." She continues:

Reporter Joel Mowbray, who first exposed this treachery a year ago, noted that this raw deal may well cost overburdened U.S. taxpayers $345 billion over the next 20 years. Probably much more. As we know from experience, Social Security projections are notoriously off the mark.

The bureaucrats call this scheme "totalization." Try total prostration. The proposed agreement is nothing more than a transfer of wealth from those who play by the rules to those who willingly and knowingly mock our own immigration and tax laws. What are we doing promising lifetime Social Security paychecks to day laborers in Juarez when we can't even guarantee those benefits to workers here at home?

Unbelievably, the White House is trying to convince us to embrace this global ripoff because it "rewards work." No, it rewards criminal behavior. The plan will siphon off the hard-earned tax dollars of American workers who may never see a dime of their confiscated earnings and fork it over to foreigners guilty of at least four acts of federal law-breaking: crossing the border illegally, working illegally, engaging in tax fraud and using bogus documents.

Schlafly points to the debacle caused by the prior "one-time" amnesty:

In 1986, the United States granted what was promised to be a one- time legalization - then honestly called amnesty. That sent a message to others to enter illegally and wait for the next amnesty.

The administrations of Presidents Bush I, Clinton and Bush II have flagrantly failed to use our resources "to cope with" those who afterward violated the "process of entry." And so the illegal-alien problem quadrupled.

Not only did the 1986 amnesty transform millions of illegal aliens into lawful permanent residents, but after they became U.S. citizens they could import their relatives. Congress never investigated how many additional millions entered the United States or the massive document fraud that was involved in the process.

Let's put aside for a moment the issue of unfairness to legal immigrants in allowing someone else to jump in ahead of the waiting line, and let's also put aside the obvious national security implications of a policy encouraging illegal border crossings through Mexico by people who could be seeking anything from farm employment to an opportunity to detonate nuclear devices in ten US cities in order to finally bring the Great Satan under the rule of Allah.

There are those on both the left and right who, to serve their special interests, advocate open borders. Those of us who have lived our entire lives in California know the reality of open borders. I urge anyone who lived in the San Fernando Valley 35 years ago to take a drive through it today then try to claim with a straight face that it has benefitted from swelling illegal immigration. US immigration policy has done nothing to improve the lot of Mexico, and has only served to extend its Third World culture across US borders.

As Congress debates the new proposal, let them know you are among the two-thirds of Americans who, according to a Zogby International poll, believe those residing illegally in the US should not be allowed to stay.

(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.)

Redefining Poverty

Here's some excerpts from the executive summary of a revealing new report on American poverty by the Heritage Foundation:

The average "poor" person, as defined by the government, has a living standard far higher than the public imagines. The following are facts about persons defined as "poor" by the Census Bureau, taken from various government reports:

Forty-six percent of all poor households actually own their own homes. The average home owned by persons classified as poor by the Census Bureau is a three-bedroom house with one-and-a-half baths, a garage, and a porch or patio.

Seventy-six percent of poor households have air conditioning. By contrast, 30 years ago, only 36 percent of the entire U.S. population enjoyed air conditioning.

Only 6 percent of poor households are overcrowded. More than two-thirds have more than two rooms per person.

The typical poor American has more living space than the average individual living in Paris, London, Vienna, Athens, and other cities throughout Europe. (These comparisons are to the average citizens in foreign countries, not to those classified as poor.)

Nearly three-quarters of poor households own a car; 30 percent own two or more cars.

Ninety-seven percent of poor households have a color television; over half own two or more color televisions.

Seventy-eight percent have a VCR or DVD player; 62 percent have cable or satellite TV reception.

Seventy-three percent own microwave ovens, more than half have a stereo, and a third have an automatic dishwasher.

[Ed. note: So someone like me who owns no DVD player or working dishwasher is what, sub-poor?]

Overall, the typical American defined as poor by the government has a car, air conditioning, a refrigerator, a stove, a clothes washer and dryer, and a microwave. He has two color televisions, cable or satellite TV reception, a VCR or DVD player, and a stereo. He is able to obtain medical care. His home is in good repair and is not overcrowded. By his own report, his family is not hungry, and he had sufficient funds in the past year to meet his family's essential needs. While this individual's life is not opulent, it is equally far from the popular images of dire poverty conveyed by the press, liberal activists, and politicians.

. . .The good news is that the poverty that does exist in the United States can readily be reduced, particularly among children. There are two main reasons that American children are poor: Their parents don't work much, and their fathers are absent from the home.

One point the executive summary does not mention is what an insult such a redefinition of the term "poverty" is to those who are truly poor around the world. We in the pampered West have real problems understanding concepts like "poverty" and "evil," but those who have actually lived with them, like the "New Europe" nations formerly under Soviet domination, know what these terms mean, in a way that we, without the same experience, cannot.

The summary concludes:

Yet, although work and marriage are reliable ladders out of poverty, the welfare system perversely remains hostile to both. Major programs such as food stamps, public housing, and Medicaid continue to reward idleness and penalize marriage. If welfare could be turned around to encourage work and marriage, the nation's remaining poverty would quickly be reduced.

Use our Take Action page to ask your representatives to support the completion of welfare reform by enacting laws that encourage recipients to use those "reliable ladders out of poverty" - work and marriage.

Bonus Links:

This week brings another spot-on Dennis Prager column - Jimmy Carter: "Compassion for Mordor".

And for those of us who were wondering. . . "Pat Robertson: God Says Bush Will Win in 2004." Whew, that's a relief.

And finally...

Newsweek's Howard Fineman: "Do you see Jesus Christ as the son of God and believe in him as the route to salvation and eternal life?"

Howard Dean: "I certainly see him as the son of God. I think whether I'm saved or not is not gonna be up to me."

Huh??

(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.)

Corporate Thought Police

Christianity Today's January 2004 issue alerts us to a disturbing new corporate trend:

Albert A. Buonanno of Denver had worked at AT&T Broadband for two years. But in a 2001 reorganization, the company directed employees to sign a "certificate of understanding." The document said employees must "fully recognize, respect, and value the differences among all of us," including "sexual orientation."

Buonanno, who attends a Baptist General Conference church, told his supervisor in a letter that he wouldn't discriminate against or harass homosexuals. But he also said he couldn't sign the statement because it contradicted the Bible. Buonanno's supervisor fired him the next day.

The Rutherford Institute, a religious liberties organization based in Charlottesville, Virginia, is representing Buonanno, 47, and a handful of others. They all lost their jobs for refusing to condone employment policies they found biblically immoral.

The culture war over homosexuality in America has moved to a new front--the workplace. Christian observers say millions of employees are being commanded not just to tolerate homosexual behavior but also to respect and even promote it.

This story is a prime example of a new and insidious use of "definition creep" in liberal politics. Historically, "tolerance" was defined as "Allowing without prohibiting or opposing. Permitting." The third edition of the American Heritage Dictionary now lists as its only relevant definition, "The capacity for or the practice of recognizing and respecting the beliefs or practices of others" [emphasis mine].

Of course in a free nation religious believers certainly should be expected to refrain from persecuting homosexuals, but compulsory oaths such as those referenced in the Christianity Today article clearly cross the line from what has been historically defined as "tolerance" of a behavior to what can only be honestly defined as "forced acceptance and celebration."

Use our Take Action page to express to your representatives your opposition to corporate codes that violate employee civil rights by going beyond tolerance to coerced acceptance and celebration of behaviors historically deemed sinful in Judeo-Christian traditions.

You can also give your financial support and encouragement to the Rutherford Institute at this link.

(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.)

The Education Monopoly, Part 2

The battle for school privatization is proving to be one of the toughest in the cultural civil war. Its objective is wresting money and power from entrenched bureaucrats and one of the most powerful unions in the nation, entities that will not give up without a vicious fight. Moreover, they have the judicial tyrants overwhelmingly on their side, trial lawyers as their foot soldiers and the Democrat party in thrall. And yet in her recent column, Mona Charen sees reasons for hope, and offers some very interesting data:

The Cato Institute looked at prices of private schools in a number of cities around the country and compared their tuitions with what the government spends on education. In the District of Columbia, for example, the government spends $11,009 per pupil. Forty-five of the District's private schools charged less than that per year, and 39 charged $5,000 or less.

In Houston, annual per-pupil spending by the city and state is $7,098. But 119 of the area's 144 private schools charge less, and 90 percent charged $5,000 or less. In Denver, the government spends $9,919 to educate each pupil per year. Only six of the city's 91 private elementary schools charge that much. The median private tuition is $3,528.

Would that the problem were only obscene amounts of cash being expended in a failed attempt to educate.

In public school, your child will learn a few lessons. They include that sex is no more than a pleasurable bodily function; that nature and the environment should be worshiped; that all cultures are equal, except Western civilization, which is the evil product of a succession of slave-owning white males; that animals should have human rights but fetuses should not; and that religion is benighted mythology, except for Islam, which in California schools your kid will be forced to practice . . . the list is endless.

Use our Take Action page to express to your representatives your support for school vouchers and the ultimate privatization of public education from pre-school to university. (And if you are considering home schooling your child, read this and contemplate the possibilities.)

(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.)

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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(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.)

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.

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.)

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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(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.)

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.

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.)

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.

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.)

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.

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.)