ConservativeChristianRepublican-Report - 20100216

ConservativeChristianRepublican-Report - 20100216
Motivational-Inspirational-Historical-Educational-Political-Enjoyable

Promoting "God's Holy Values and American Freedoms"!



"Daily Motivations"

There are high spots in all of our lives and most of them have come about through encouragement from someone else. I don't care how great, how famous or successful a man or woman may be, each hungers for applause. -- George M. Adams

"I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear." -- Nelson Mandela

Keep true, never be ashamed of doing right, decide on what you think is right and stick to it. -- George Eliot



"Daily Devotions" (KJV and/or NLT)

Then a poor widow came and dropped in two pennies. (Mark 12:42)

Deborah was a missionary serving overseas. Not long after her arrival back in the United States, she learned that one of her neighbor's sons had been seriously injured. The family had no insurance and was suffering financially.

Concerned about the situation, Deborah went into her bedroom to pray. "Lord," she asked, "what would you have me do?" She sensed a nudge from the Lord to give her neighbors some money. Checking her bank account, she realized that her balance was a mere $200.

"Lord, how about $25?" she prayed. With $175 left over, she thought she could survive the rest of the month. Quietly waiting on the Lord, however, she felt Him say, "No, I want you to give $100."

"I choked a bit," she says. "That was half of what I had. As I continued to question the Lord, I had no peace about anything less than $100."

Finally, she wrote out a check, breathing a prayer. "Now I've done what You said, so You'll have to take care of my needs."

With a sense of joy and expectancy, Deborah took the check across the street. Two days later a check for $100 came in the mail. Three days later a woman dropped by her home with a check for $200---something she had wanted to do for some time, she told Deborah.

"Within five days of writing my check, I received from unexpected sources a total of $500," Deborah says. "I stood in awe of God and His ways."

Your View of God Really Matters …

Have you discovered the joy of trusting God with your finances? Do you tithe as God commands? Do you ask Him where He wants you to give? Today, give God an opportunity to show you that He is faithful. Trust Him.



"The Patriot Post"

“Men must be governed by God or they will be ruled by tyrants” -- William Penn

"There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." -- James Madison, speech to the Virginia Ratifying Convention, 1788

"The duty imposed upon him to take care, that the laws be faithfully executed, follows out the strong injunctions of his oath of office, that he will 'preserve, protect, and defend the constitution.' The great object of the executive department is to accomplish this purpose; and without it, be the form of government whatever it may, it will be utterly worthless for offence, or defence; for the redress of grievances, or the protection of rights; for the happiness, or good order, or safety of the people." -- Justice Joseph Story

"The public cannot be too curious concerning the characters of public men." --Samuel Adams, letter to James Warren, 1775



The Web"

Uncivilized Tactics at UC Irvine (Rough Cut)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7w96UR79TBw&feature=player_embedded#



ClimateGate's Phil 'Hide the Decline' Jones Admits Manipulating Data

By Noel Sheppard

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2010/02/13/climategate-scientist-says-g-warming-debate-not-over-discusses-hide-d

The British scientist in the middle of November's ClimateGate scandal says that contrary to what Al Gore and many in the media claim, the debate concerning manmade global warming is not over.

"There is still much that needs to be undertaken to reduce uncertainties, not just for the future, but for the instrumental (and especially the palaeoclimatic) past as well," Phil Jones, the former head of Britain's Climatic Research Unit told the BBC.

In a lengthy Q&A published at BBC.com Saturday, Jones also said: the recent warming trend that began in 1975 is not at all different than two other planetary warming phases since 1850; there has been no statistically significant warming since 1995, and; it is possible the Medieval Warm Period was indeed a global phenomenon thereby making the temperatures seen in the latter part of the 20th century by no means unprecedented.

Maybe most important, Jones explained what "hide the decline" in ClimateGate e-mail messages meant confirming they manipulated data (questions in bold, h/t Sonic Frog via Glenn Reynolds):

Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2010/02/13/climategate-scientist-says-g-warming-debate-not-over-discusses-hide-d#ixzz0fcBqdnyF

A - Do you agree that according to the global temperature record used by the IPCC, the rates of global warming from 1860-1880, 1910-1940 and 1975-1998 were identical? [...]

[T]he warming rates for all 4 periods are similar and not statistically significantly different from each other. [...]

B - Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming

Yes, but only just. [...]
G - There is a debate over whether the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) was global or not. If it were to be conclusively shown that it was a global phenomenon, would you accept that this would undermine the premise that mean surface atmospheric temperatures during the latter part of the 20th Century were unprecedented?

There is much debate over whether the Medieval Warm Period was global in extent or not. The MWP is most clearly expressed in parts of North America, the North Atlantic and Europe and parts of Asia. For it to be global in extent the MWP would need to be seen clearly in more records from the tropical regions and the Southern Hemisphere. There are very few palaeoclimatic records for these latter two regions.

Of course, if the MWP was shown to be global in extent and as warm or warmer than today (based on an equivalent coverage over the NH and SH) then obviously the late-20th century warmth would not be unprecedented. On the other hand, if the MWP was global, but was less warm that today, then current warmth would be unprecedented.

We know from the instrumental temperature record that the two hemispheres do not always follow one another. We cannot, therefore, make the assumption that temperatures in the global average will be similar to those in the northern hemisphere.

Now comes the part of the Q&A many will find most interesting:

K - How much faith do you have - and should we have - in the Yamal tree ring data from Siberia? Should we trust the science behind the palaeoclimate record?

First, we would all accept that palaeoclimatic data are considerably less certain than the instrumental data. However, we must use what data are available in order to look at the last 1,000 years.

I believe that our current interpretation of the Yamal tree-ring data in Siberia is sound. Yamal is just one series that enters some of the millennial long reconstructions that are available.

The current interpretation of the tree-ring data is "sound." Yet, Jones earlier said (emphasis added), "There is still much that needs to be undertaken to reduce uncertainties, not just for the future, but for the instrumental (and especially the palaeoclimatic) past as well."

This seems especially important given how the "decline" Jones wanted his colleagues to "hide" came from this paleoclimatic data:
Q - Let's talk about the e-mails now: In the e-mails you refer to a "trick" which your critics say suggests you conspired to trick the public? You also mentioned "hiding the decline" (in temperatures). Why did you say these things?

This remark has nothing to do with any "decline" in observed instrumental temperatures. The remark referred to a well-known observation, in a particular set of tree-ring data, that I had used in a figure to represent large-scale summer temperature changes over the last 600 years.

The phrase 'hide the decline' was shorthand for providing a composite representation of long-term temperature changes made up of recent instrumental data and earlier tree-ring based evidence, where it was absolutely necessary to remove the incorrect impression given by the tree rings that temperatures between about 1960 and 1999 (when the email was written) were not rising, as our instrumental data clearly showed they were.

This "divergence" is well known in the tree-ring literature and "trick" did not refer to any intention to deceive - but rather "a convenient way of achieving something", in this case joining the earlier valid part of the tree-ring record with the recent, more reliable instrumental record.

I was justified in curtailing the tree-ring reconstruction in the mid-20th Century because these particular data were not valid after that time - an issue which was later directly discussed in the 2007 IPCC AR4 Report.

This is important, for most people still don't understand what the decline they were trying to hide was.

As Marc Sheppard wrote in December, "[T]he decline Jones so urgently sought to hide was not one of measured temperatures at all, but rather figures infinitely more important to climate alarmists -- those determined by proxy reconstructions." He continued:

Jones was working on a cover chart for a forthcoming World Meteorological Organization report [PDF], "WMO Statement on the Status of the Global Climate in 1990," when he wrote the e-mail. As the graph would incorporate one reconstruction of his own plus one each from Michael Mann and Keith Briffa, Jones was informing them that he had used the trick on Mann's series at the same 1980 cutoff as MBH98, but found it necessary to use 1960 as the cutoff on the Briffa series.

Now, Jones has admitted this to the BBC: "[It] was absolutely necessary to remove the incorrect impression given by the tree rings that temperatures between about 1960 and 1999 (when the email was written) were not rising, as our instrumental data clearly showed they were."

In simple terms, Briffa's tree-ring data showed a decline in temperatures between 1960 and 1999 that weather stations around the world disagreed with. So, Jones spliced into Briffa's data set the real "instrumental" numbers for that period thereby hiding the decline.

This should raise eyebrows for a number of reasons. First, Jones and Company gave no notification to folks receiving this data -- including the Intergovernmental Panel and Climate Change -- that Briffa's numbers included instrumental data.

But more importantly, as the tree-ring numbers deviated so demonstrably from the observed temperature data between 1960 and 1999, why should anyone believe they're accurate for any periods in the past that can't be confirmed with instrumentation?

The entire global warming myth depends on tree-ring data that was grossly errant for forty years in the last century. This makes the decline ClimateGate scientists were trying to hide FAR MORE serious than most people believe.

Moving backward in the Q&A, there was another issue addressed by the BBC readers will find interesting:

N - When scientists say "the debate on climate change is over", what exactly do they mean - and what don't they mean?

It would be supposition on my behalf to know whether all scientists who say the debate is over are saying that for the same reason. I don't believe the vast majority of climate scientists think this. This is not my view. There is still much that needs to be undertaken to reduce uncertainties, not just for the future, but for the instrumental (and especially the palaeoclimatic) past as well.

So, the scientist at the heart of the ClimateGate scandal doesn't think the debate is over.

Given what he's now confirmed about significant flaws in the tree-ring data, the only thing surprising is that he'd admit it.

Are you listening Mr. Gore?

—Noel Sheppard is the Associate Editor of NewsBusters.



Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits: There has been no global warming since 1995

By Jonathan Petre

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1250872/Climategate-U-turn-Astonishment-scientist-centre-global-warming-email-row-admits-data-organised.html

Data for vital 'hockey stick graph' has gone missing. There has been no global warming since 1995. Warming periods have happened before - but NOT due to man-made changes.

Data: Professor Phil Jones admitted his record keeping is 'not as good as it should be'

The academic at the centre of the ‘Climategate’ affair, whose raw data is crucial to the theory of climate change, has admitted that he has trouble ‘keeping track’ of the information.

Colleagues say that the reason Professor Phil Jones has refused Freedom of Information requests is that he may have actually lost the relevant papers.

Professor Jones told the BBC yesterday there was truth in the observations of colleagues that he lacked organisational skills, that his office was swamped with piles of paper and that his record keeping is ‘not as good as it should be’.

The data is crucial to the famous ‘hockey stick graph’ used by climate change advocates to support the theory.

Professor Jones also conceded the possibility that the world was warmer in medieval times than now – suggesting global warming may not be a man-made phenomenon.

And he said that for the past 15 years there has been no ‘statistically significant’ warming.

The admissions will be seized on by sceptics as fresh evidence that there are serious flaws at the heart of the science of climate change and the orthodoxy that recent rises in temperature are largely man-made.

Professor Jones has been in the spotlight since he stepped down as director of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit after the leaking of emails that sceptics claim show scientists were manipulating data.

The raw data, collected from hundreds of weather stations around the world and analysed by his unit, has been used for years to bolster efforts by the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to press governments to cut carbon dioxide emissions.

Following the leak of the emails, Professor Jones has been accused of ‘scientific fraud’ for allegedly deliberately suppressing information and refusing to share vital data with critics.
Discussing the interview, the BBC’s environmental analyst Roger Harrabin said he had spoken to colleagues of Professor Jones who had told him that his strengths included integrity and doggedness but not record-keeping and office tidying.

Mr Harrabin, who conducted the interview for the BBC’s website, said the professor had been collating tens of thousands of pieces of data from around the world to produce a coherent record of temperature change.

That material has been used to produce the ‘hockey stick graph’ which is relatively flat for centuries before rising steeply in recent decades.

According to Mr Harrabin, colleagues of Professor Jones said ‘his office is piled high with paper, fragments from over the years, tens of thousands of pieces of paper, and they suspect what happened was he took in the raw data to a central database and then let the pieces of paper go because he never realised that 20 years later he would be held to account over them’.

Asked by Mr Harrabin about these issues, Professor Jones admitted the lack of organisation in the system had contributed to his reluctance to share data with critics, which he regretted.

But he denied he had cheated over the data or unfairly influenced the scientific process, and said he still believed recent temperature rises were predominantly man-made.

Asked about whether he lost track of data, Professor Jones said: ‘There is some truth in that. We do have a trail of where the weather stations have come from but it’s probably not as good as it should be.

‘There’s a continual updating of the dataset. Keeping track of everything is difficult. Some countries will do lots of checking on their data then issue improved data, so it can be very difficult. We have improved but we have to improve more.’

He also agreed that there had been two periods which experienced similar warming, from 1910 to 1940 and from 1975 to 1998, but said these could be explained by natural phenomena whereas more recent warming could not.

He further admitted that in the last 15 years there had been no ‘statistically significant’ warming, although he argued this was a blip rather than the long-term trend.

And he said that the debate over whether the world could have been even warmer than now during the medieval period, when there is evidence of high temperatures in northern countries, was far from settled.

Sceptics believe there is strong evidence that the world was warmer between about 800 and 1300 AD than now because of evidence of high temperatures in northern countries.

But climate change advocates have dismissed this as false or only applying to the northern part of the world.

Professor Jones departed from this consensus when he said: ‘There is much debate over whether the Medieval Warm Period was global in extent or not. The MWP is most clearly expressed in parts of North America, the North Atlantic and Europe and parts of Asia.

‘For it to be global in extent, the MWP would need to be seen clearly in more records from the tropical regions and the Southern hemisphere. There are very few palaeoclimatic records for these latter two regions.

‘Of course, if the MWP was shown to be global in extent and as warm or warmer than today, then obviously the late 20th Century warmth would not be unprecedented. On the other hand, if the MWP was global, but was less warm than today, then the current warmth would be unprecedented.’

Sceptics said this was the first time a senior scientist working with the IPCC had admitted to the possibility that the Medieval Warming Period could have been global, and therefore the world could have been hotter then than now.

Professor Jones criticised those who complained he had not shared his data with them, saying they could always collate their own from publicly available material in the US. And he said the climate had not cooled ‘until recently – and then barely at all. The trend is a warming trend’.

Mr Harrabin told Radio 4’s Today programme that, despite the controversies, there still appeared to be no fundamental flaws in the majority scientific view that climate change was largely man-made.

But Dr Benny Pieser, director of the sceptical Global Warming Policy Foundation, said Professor Jones’s ‘excuses’ for his failure to share data were hollow as he had shared it with colleagues and ‘mates’.

He said that until all the data was released, sceptics could not test it to see if it supported the conclusions claimed by climate change advocates.

He added that the professor’s concessions over medieval warming were ‘significant’ because they were his first public admission that the science was not settled.



Obama’s New OIC Envoy Defended Activist Who Aided Terrorist Group

By Patrick Goodenough, International Editor

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/61324

On Saturday, Feb. 13, 2010, President Obama named 31-year-old Rashad Hussain as his envoy to the OIC, the 57-member bloc of Islamic states. (Photo from the Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans)

(CNSNews.com) – President Obama’s newly appointed envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference was quoted in 2004 as saying an American who aided a Palestinian terrorist group was the victim of “politically motivated persecutions” who was being used “to squash dissent.”

Rashad Hussain was quoted as telling a Muslim students’ event in Chicago that if U.S. Muslims did not speak out against the injustices taking place in America, then everyone’s rights would be in jeopardy.

The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (WRMEA) cited Hussain as making the remarks in connection with Sami al-Arian, a university professor and activist sentenced in 2006 to more than four years in prison (including time already spent in custody) after he had pleaded guilty to conspiring to aid the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).

The U.S. government designated the PIJ as a foreign terrorist organization in 1997, and in 2003, then Attorney-General John Ashcroft described it as “one of the most violent terrorist organizations in the world.”

Palestinian Islamic Jihad has killed more than 100 Israelis in suicide bombings and other attacks. Its victims include American citizens Alisa Flatow, a 20-year-old New Jersey college student killed in a 1995 suicide bombing in Gaza, and 16-year-old Shoshana Ben-Ishai, shot dead in a bus in Jerusalem in 2001.

In sentencing al-Arian, Judge James Moody of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida described him as a “leader of the PIJ” and a “master manipulator.”

Al-Arian remains under home detention in Virginia pending contempt of court charges relating to his refusal to testify in an unrelated case involving an Islamic think tank. Sympathizers view him as a victim of post-9/11 law enforcement zeal and anti-Muslim prejudice. (The WRMEA article described him as “an innocent man targeted for free-speech activities, whose rights were stripped thanks in part to the PATRIOT Act.”)

Among those sympathizers, evidently, was Rashad Hussain, who at the time of the cited remarks was a Yale Law School student and an editor, from 2003-2005, of the Yale Law Journal. He went on to serve as a Department of Justice trial attorney and in January 2009 was appointed White House deputy associate counsel.

On Saturday, Obama named the Texas-born, 31-year-old Indian-American as his envoy to the OIC, the 57-member bloc of Islamic states. The appointment is in line with the president’s goal, expressed in his speech in Cairo last June, to reach out to the Islamic world.

Obama made the announcement in a video address at a U.S.-Islamic World Forum meeting in Qatar, which Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Hussain attended over the weekend.

“Rashad has played a key role in developing the partnerships I called for in Cairo,” Obama told the gathering in the video message. “And as a hafiz of the Koran, he is a respected member of the American Muslim community, and I thank him for carrying forward this important work.” (A hafiz is someone who has memorized the Islamic text.)

Article edited

Around three years after the WRMEA article quoting Hussain first appeared, it was edited to remove all references to him.

A copy of the original 2004 article, retrieved via the Nexis news database, includes the following sentences:

Al-Arian’s situation is one of many “politically motivated persecutions,” claimed Rashad Hussain, a Yale law student. Such persecution, he stated, must be fought through hope, faith, and the Muslim vote (…) Along with many others, said Yale’s Hussain, Dr. Sami Al-Arian has been “used politically to squash dissent.” The Muslim community must speak out against the injustices taking place in America, he emphasized. Otherwise, everyone’s rights will be in jeopardy.

But in the version of the same story currently available on the WRMEA Web site those sentences – and only those sentences – have disappeared. An Internet archive search indicates that the edits were made sometime after October 2007.

Contacted by email on Sunday, the writer of the original article expressed surprise but said she no longer worked at WRMEA and could not explain the edit. Queries sent to WRMEA editors brought no response. They were asked whether either Hussain, or anyone else, had asked for the archived story to be altered (see the revised pages).

How to combat terrorism

Some of Hussain’s views on how the U.S. should deal with terrorism and extremism can be found in his writings.

A lengthy 2007 article in the Texas Journal on Civil Liberties & Civil Rights examined anti-terrorism initiatives in the U.S. in the post-9/11 era, such as a requirement that nonimmigrant visitors from specified countries register for fingerprinting and questioning. Of 25 countries identified, all but North Korea were Islamic, and 17 were Arab.

“Some policies appear to be based on the notion that certain characteristics make one more likely to be a terrorist: e.g., membership in a particular religious group, having a particular national origin, and membership in a particular racial group,” Hussain wrote.

Not only was selective enforcement unconstitutional, but it might also be
“counter-productive from a national security perspective,” he argued, noting for instance that aliens from non-Muslim nations where al-Qaeda had an active presence, such as Britain and Spain, were not targeted.

Hussain concluded: “Federal law should adopt a standard that protects national security while forbidding the targeting of non-citizens solely on the basis of their racial, religious, or ethnic backgrounds.”

In another article, published by the Brookings Institution in 2008, Hussain and co-author Al-Husein N. Madhany explored the role of Islam in U.S. counterterrorism policy.

They said policymakers should understand that people attracted to terrorist ideology would be less persuaded by calls to Western-style freedom and democracy than by “calls to Islam.”

“[B]ecause the vast majority of Muslims view Islam as fundamentally opposed to terror and many Muslims associate American freedom and democracy with immorality and impermissible secularism, does it make sense to advertise our efforts as anti-‘Islamic terrorism,’ ‘pro-freedom,’ and ‘pro-democracy?’” Hussain and Madhany asked. “Or, might it be more effective, to focus on the notion that terrorism is antithetical to the teachings of Islam?”

Hussain will be the second U.S. envoy to the OIC; President Bush first appointed one in 2008, naming Pakistan-born Texas businessman Sada Cumber to the post.

Headquartered in Saudi Arabia, the 40-year-old OIC has become increasingly visible in recent years, thanks to its activism at the U.N., where it continues to promote a campaign against the “defamation” of Islam.

The Islamic bloc says there is a need to combat “Islamophobia” that has reared its head since 9/11; critics of the campaign include free speech groups and religious freedom advocates, who call it an attempt to shield Islam and Islamic practices from legitimate scrutiny.



Islamic scholars issue fatwa forbidding Muslim-Americans from using full-body airport scanners

BY Neil Nagraj

DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2010/02/12/2010-02-12_islamic_scholars_issue_fatwa_forbidding_muslimamericans_from_using_fullbody_airp.html

Getty/TSA - Muslim-American scholars say the body scanners violate the Islam's teachings on modesty.

Add Muslim-American groups to the chorus of voices slamming full-body airport scanners.

A body of North American Islamic scholars has issued a fatwa, or religious decree, forbidding Muslims from passing through the devices, the Detroit -Free Press reports, saying they violate the faith's teachings on modesty.

"It is a violation of clear Islamic teachings that men or women be seen naked by other men and women," the ruling, issued by The Fiqh Council of North America, states.

"Islam highly emphasizes haya (modesty) and considers it part of faith. The Quran has commanded the believers, both men and women, to cover their private parts."

Another Muslim group, The Council on American-Islamic Relations, backed the proclamation.

"We support the Fiqh Council’s statement on full-body scanners and believe that the religious and privacy rights of passengers can be respected while maintaining safety and security," Nihad Awad, national executive director of CAIR, told the Detroit Free Press.

The machines at issue render a detailed outline of the scanned individual's body that the Transportation Security Administration says is immediately destroyed.

The TSA says going through the scanners is "optional to all passengers." Individuals can refuse the screening, the newspaper reports, and instead be patted down by a TSA guard.

The employment of full-body scanners has come under fire from civil libertarians, who say the devices are analogous to a strip search.



Senate Moves to Bolster Freedom in Iran

http://blog.heritage.org/2010/02/13/senate-moves-to-bolster-freedom-in-iran/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell

Congress has become increasingly restive about the Obama Administration’s lack of leadership on supporting opposition forces that seek to advance freedom and human rights in Iran. On Thursday Senators John Cornyn (R-TX) and Sam Brownback (R-KS) sought to make up for the administration’s lack of initiative by introducing the “Iran Democratic Transition Act of 2010.”

The bill details the Iranian regime’s human rights abuses, cites Iran as the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism and notes Iran’s troublesome pursuit of nuclear weapons. It states that U.S. policy should be to support the Iranian people in their efforts to oppose and remove the current regime and replace it with a freely elected democratic government in Iran. The bill provides four primary means towards these policy ends:

It would authorize support for democratic opposition groups by providing them non-military assistance, as well as humanitarian assistance to victims of the current regime.

It would create a Special Envoy for Democracy and Human Rights in Iran with the rank of ambassador to coordinate the U.S. government’s efforts.

It proposes that the Obama Administration should explore the concept of a regional framework on human rights, modeled on the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the Helsinki process.

And it would require two reports to Congress from the White House: 1) a clear plan for implementation of this act, and 2) once a transitional government is in place, a comprehensive plan for U.S. support of the Iranian people as they move towards democracy.

Congress has limited latitude in pushing for a specific foreign policy if the White House does not share the same priorities. But there can be no more important a cause than to show unflagging commitment to political and individual freedoms, which will certainly win more hearts and minds in Iran than the Obama Administration’s out stretched hand to Iran’s oppressive rulers.

The long term success of Iran’s “Green Movement” opposition could well depend on the support it is given from aboard. In the case of both Ukraine’s Orange Revolution and Lebanon’s Cedar Revolution, action by the United States and its allies was critical to ensure open elections. Last year the United States again had the opportunity to support a freedom and democracy movement supported by millions of Iranians, but the Obama Administration failed the test.

Congress appears to be increasingly motivated to undertake principled leadership on Iran that the Obama Administration has neglected to provide. Both the Senate and the House have voted to impose new sanctions on Iran’s dictators in the last two months over the objections of the White House.

If Iran’s Green Movement is ever to join the ranks of the successful “color revolutions”, it may have to look to the U.S. Congress, not the White House.

This post was co-authored by James Philips



"The e-mail Bag"

Dear Lord,

I pray for Wisdom to understand my man; Love to forgive him; and Patience for his moods. Because, Lord, if I pray for Strength, I'll beat him to death.

AMEN



A couple is lying in bed. The man says, I am going to make you the happiest woman in the world.'

The woman replies, 'I'll miss you...'