Scrolling around...April 4, 2013

Saudi Arabia declares destruction of all churches in region
Todd Nettleton, a spokesman for the Voice of the Martyrs USA, says, "The Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia--the top Islamic official in the country of Saudi Arabia--has declared that it is "necessary to destroy all the churches of the region.'" Nettleton goes on to note that the report hasn't surfaced anywhere except on the Council on Foreign Relations Web site, which was then picked up by The Atlantic...

Schools push a curriculum of propaganda
...Higher education, from which much of such diversity and sensitivity nonsense trickles down, cries poverty while spending lavishly on administrative overhead irrelevant to its teaching and research missions...

New bird flu strain causes fourth death in China
...It is not known how people are becoming sick with the virus, and health officials and scientists caution that there are no indications it can be transmitted from one person to another. Scientists who have studied the virus's genetic sequence said this week that the virus may have mutated, spreading more easily to other animals and potentially posing a bigger threat to humans....

Get Ready for Obamacare Premium Defaults Exchanges coerce families living paycheck to paycheck to enroll in unaffordable plans...

The Most Dangerous Countries for Tourists, in Maps
The recent assaults in Brazil and India have raised questions about those countries' safety records. Here are the places where travelers should actually be wary...

Falling Fertility Rates Jonathan Last's recent book, What to Expect When Nobody's Expecting: America's Coming Demographic Disaster, notes that increasing college attendance, the delay of marriage, the birth control pill, religious participation, the rise of the thousand-dollar stroller and Social Security are some reasons fertility is falling, says Michael Rosen of the American...

America’s poverty rate is now at its highest level in two generations. Contrary to the American Dream of broad-based upward mobility, the United States ranks 10th out 12 OECD countries in social mobility. In addition, our country has the highest proportion of low-wage workers of any developed country — people who work hard but earn less than $10.50 an hour and are barely able to make ends meet...

Peggy Noonan Interrupts Blackout as Networks Continue to Ignore Abortionist's Trial  The Big Three networks' morning and evening newscasts still haven't covered the murder trial of Dr. Kermit Gosnell as of Monday morning. ABC, CBS, and NBC have maintained their coverage blackout despite the graphic witness testimony and the in-your-face courtroom antics of Dr. Gosnell's defense attorney during the first two weeks of the proceedings. The Philadelphia physician is charged with murdering seven newborn children at his decrepit abortion facility.

This glaring omission by the broadcast networks would have continued, if Peggy Noonan hadn't provided the first mention of the murder trial on Sunday's Meet the Press on NBC. The Wall Street Journal columnist spotlighted the "haunting and disturbing story of this doctor", and pointed out how coverage has been "hard to find."...

"Christianity is the most persecuted religion in the world." So asserted German Chancellor Angela Merkel late last year, causing a stir. Merkel echoed a concern expressed by then-French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who warned in a 2011 speech that Christians face a "particularly wicked program of cleansing in the Middle East, religious cleansing."

Raping Women in the Name of Islam ...While jihadis in Syria are importing girls from Tunisia to satisfy their sexual needs, their colleagues in Libya are kidnapping and raping women.

Last week, the father of two British women of Pakistani origin said that his daughters were gang raped in front of him by Muslim fundamentalists in Libya's eastern city of Benghazi... 
New Fatwa Permits Rape of Non-Sunni Women in Syria

Tens of Thousands Baptized Catholics on Easter Sunday in Mainland China

A 'gray divorce' boom  ...The rise in "gray divorce" is a product of dramatic changes in the meaning of marriage in America over the last half-century. Today, we live in an era of individualized marriage, in which those who wed have high expectations for marital success. Americans expect marriage to provide them not simply with stability and security but also with self-fulfillment and personal satisfaction. Roles are flexible; the traditional breadwinner-homemaker model is no longer the status quo. Good spouses engage in open communication and are best friends. This is a high bar for many to achieve, let alone maintain over decades while juggling work and child-rearing...

The Alpha Course: British Christianity’s Biggest Success Story
...Having said that, most of the article is surprisingly positive, about the Alpha Course itself, and the man mainly associated with it, Rev. Nicky Gumbel. “Alpha males (!) … may not all clap happily and speak in tongues, but they are all part of an evangelical tide; a global Anglican phenomenon.” Now practiced in 169 countries, the Alpha Course is in the news because one of its alumni, Justin Welby, was recently consecrated as Archbishop of Canterbury...

Albert Mohler: Bracketing Morality—The Marginalization of Moral Argument in the Same-Sex Marriage Debate   ...The “seismic shift” on the issue of homosexuality is a profound moral revolution as well.

And yet, what makes this moral revolution so vast in consequences and importance is this: the moral dimension has virtually disappeared from the cultural conversation. This is true, we must note, even among the defenders of heterosexual marriage.

This is not to say that those who now defend the natural and venerable definition of marriage deny the existence of a moral argument, nor to imply that they are anything less than fully in agreement with the historic and scriptural assessment of the Christian church that homosexual acts and relationships are sinful. We must, however, note that the current intellectual environment has forced them to leave the moral issue behind — far behind...

Pedophilia Is A Sexual Orientation Under CA Bill
California Congresswoman, Rep. Jackie Speier CA (D), wants to federalize a state law to prohibit counseling to change a person’s sexual orientation. That doesn’t sound that extreme, but pedophilia is a sexual orientation according to this bill as well.

Under the bill’s language, a mental health counselor could be sanctioned if there was an attempt to get a pedophile or gay individual to change his behavior or speak negatively about their behavior as it relates to sexuality...