Re-creating Campus Ministry; Yale Episcopal Chaplain Resigns...more

Obama Admin Sends $500,000 to Planned Parenthood Abortion Biz to Promote Obamacare  When Democrats in Congress railroaded Obamacare through the House and Senate, pro-life groups warned that the government takeover of health care would result in taxpayer funding of abortions and the abortion industry. The Obama administration has already sent large sums of taxpayer monies to Planned Parenthood and new reports show that is continuing...

The Islamic State's global reach
...The following is a partial list of reported or suspected ISIS/Islamic State activity outside Iraq and Syria since Jan. 1, 2013. It does not include many reports that referred only to "an Islamist group"; authorities in a number of countries have been reluctant to specify the nature and extent of extremist activity within their borders. The list below, organized by continent and then alphabetically by country, is not exhaustive. Nonetheless, its extensiveness indicates the global reach of the IS, even if the reported activity does not consist of spectacular attacks...

Yale Episcopal Chaplain Resigns After Anti-Jewish Comments The chaplain of the Episcopal Church at Yale has resigned from his post this week after his letter to the editor of the New York Times sparked controversy. In the letter, Rev. Bruce Shipman seemed to imply that the blame for anti-Semitic violence ought to lie with Israel.

When an Emory professor of Jewish studies Deborah Lipstadt wrote about the recent rise in European anti-Semitic violence, Shipman wrote in to complain that she hadn’t focused enough on Israel. “The trend to which she alludes parallels the carnage in Gaza over the last five years, not to mention the perpetually stalled peace talks and the continuing occupation of the West Bank. As hope for a two-state solution fades and Palestinian casualties continue to mount, the best antidote to anti-Semitism would be for Israel’s patrons abroad to press the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for final-status resolution to the Palestinian question.”

Critics, particularly those in the Jewish communities, attacked the letter almost immediately. They pointed out that by linking anti-Semitic violence with Israel’s actions, Shipman shifted the blame for the violence from the actual perpetrators to the Jewish state. “Next on Rev. Shipman’s bucket list,” snarked Jewish-American blogger David Bernstein, “blaming women who dress provocatively for rape, blaming blacks for racism because of high crime rates, and blaming gays for homophobia for being “flamboyant.” The author of the original article denounced Shipman’s comments as “beyond contempt.”...

Re-creating Campus Ministry
The California State University (CSU) system has issued a nondiscrimination policy that requires InterVarsity to allow non-Christians to be chapter leaders. InterVarsity has always required chapter leaders to agree to our Doctrinal Basis, a summary of basic, historic Christian beliefs. While InterVarsity invites and welcomes all students as participants, we believe a Christian group should have the right to expect and even require their leaders to be Christian—just as any student group, club or Greek organization should be able to require their leaders to be like-minded.

InterVarsity Christian Fellowship is now developing a new style of campus ministry on CSU campuses where we have been banned from participating in campus life as a recognized student organization. In order to maintain a ministry presence with 23 chapters on 19 CSU campuses, InterVarsity is introducing creative new ways to connect with students and share the gospel message—though doing so as an “unrecognized” student group will prove considerably more costly.

Because we are no longer allowed to participate in campus organization fairs, InterVarsity will make contact with students by deploying new tools such as mobile banner stands, interactive displays, social media, and other techniques that don’t rely on established campus structures...

U.S. threatened massive fine to force Yahoo to release data The U.S. government threatened to fine Yahoo $250,000 a day in 2008 if it failed to comply with a broad demand to hand over user communications — a request the company believed was unconstitutional — according to court documents unsealed Thursday that illuminate how federal officials forced American tech companies to participate in the National Security Agency’s controversial PRISM program.

The documents, roughly 1,500 pages worth, outline a secret and ultimately unsuccessful legal battle by Yahoo to resist the government’s demands. The company’s loss required Yahoo to become one of the first to begin providing information to PRISM, a program that gave the NSA extensive access to records of online com­munications by users of Yahoo and other U.S.-based technology firms...