This is Thursday…I’m mixed up on my days.

We’re on our way to the weekend, but there will be another trackback party tomorrow!

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There’s a great editorial today is at Investor’s Business Daily regarding slick Willy and his recent wild claims about being ‘against’ our invading Iraq versus his signing the Iraq Liberation Act in 1998. It’s not like voters are exposed to the truth, and the truth about Iraq and Clinton is what the article points out.

More on Clinton, Iraq and the weapons inspectors, here.

Al Gore is about historical revisionism, too.

Listening to liberals on the war is the equivalent of reading Mike Whitney, the terrorist sympathizing ACLU-affiliated lawyer who writes for Al Jazeera and Uruknet (the Ba’athist online publication) and claimed in the past that Americans were harvesting organs from dead Iraqis.

We can go back to Richard Miniter’s article at Pajamas Media for the truth of the matter…

Unfortunately, a lot of people aren’t readers and get their news (and even historical references) from propaganda-laden sound bytes.

Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, Blog @ MoreWhat.com, The Virtuous Republic, Perri Nelson’s Website, Rosemary’s Thoughts, guerrilla radio, Right Truth, Adam’s Blog, Leaning Straight Up, The Bullwinkle Blog, Big Dog’s Weblog, The Amboy Times, Chuck Adkins, Conservative Cat, Pursuing Holiness, Allie is Wired, third world county, The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns, The World According to Carl, Pirate’s Cove, Blue Star Chronicles, The Pink Flamingo, Republican National Convention Blog, Dumb Ox Daily News, High Desert Wanderer, Right Voices, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Mary Bomar’s fraudulent investigation

In April 2006, Park Service Director Mary Bomar ordered an internal investigation into claims that the planned Flight 93 Memorial is actually a terrorist memorial mosque, built around a giant Mecca-oriented crescent. Bomar’s investigation was a total fraud, concluding, for instance, that it isn’t possible to calculate the orientation of the crescent because the site-plan has not been geo-referenced. (Page 2, PP2 of September 2006 summary report. Page 1 here.)

In fact, the original Crescent of Embrace site-plan was drawn on a topo map that the Memorial Project provided to all participants in the design competition. A topo map is the epitome of a geo-referenced map. North marked on a topo map is true north, which is the only piece of information needed to calculate the orientation of the crescent. Just connect the tips of the crescent, form the perpendicular bisector, and calculate how many degrees it points from north (53.4).

Also known are the crash-site coordinates, which is all that is needed to calculate the direction to Mecca (55.2° clockwise from north). All of this is trivially easy to verify. Just use the Mecca-direction calculator at Islam.com to get a graphic of the direction to Mecca from the crash site and place it over the crescent site plan:

Somerset PA is ten miles from the crash-site. The “qibla” is the direction to Mecca. Red lines show the orientation of the crescent. The crescent points 1.8° north of Mecca. (Click for larger image.)

A request for oversight

Because it is the director’s office that has been covering up the Mecca-orientation of the crescent, oversight can only come from Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne himself. Several people sent letters to Secretary Kempthorne two weeks ago, showing how the giant Mecca-oriented crescent remains completely intact in the so called redesign. But Mr. Kempthorne also needs to know that he is getting bad information from his subordinates in the Park Service. Thus a request for all readers of this post: if you have a minute, please copy and paste this entire post into an email for Secretary Kempthorne.

We don’t need for the secretary to understand all the terrorist memorializing features in the design, or the numerous proofs of intent that architect Paul Murdoch included so that his accomplishment will be undeniable once it is a fait accompli. It is enough that he be concerned about features that can be readily interpreted as terrorist memorializing, whether they are intended or not. As Congressman Tancredo put it: we need “a new design that will not make the memorial a flashpoint for this kind of controversy and criticism.”

But even getting to the most basic facts about what is in the present design requires getting past Mary Bomar’s fraudulent report, which tries to pretend that there is nothing that can even be interpreted as untoward.

Mary Bomar’s intellectually dishonest “experts”

In addition to claiming that topo maps are not geo referenced, Mary Bomar’s internal investigation cites a small number of academic experts, all of whom spout nothing but the most absurd non sequiturs. One is Dr. Daniel Griffith, professor of “geo-spatial information” at the University of Texas. About Alec Rawls’ analysis of the Mecca orientation of the giant crescent, Dr. Griffith writes:

… Mr. Rawls’s arithmetic calculations appear to be correct … [but] … just because calculations are correct does not make the resulting numbers meaningful.

Dr. Griffith’s point, it seems, is that the mere fact of Mecca orientation does not imply intent. Who said it did? The way Murdoch proves intent is by repeating his Mecca orientations (scroll down to the last section here). But intent is not the only thing that matters. Even without terrorist memorializing intent, it is inappropriate to plant a giant Mecca oriented crescent on the crash site.

The Memorial Project knows this, but it is committed to defending the crescent design, so it keeps using its doubts about intent as an excuse for denying the facts. Dr. Griffith, for instance, is telling every reporter who will listen that there is no such thing as the direction to Mecca. “Anything can point toward Mecca,” he told the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, “because the earth is round.” One billion Muslims face Mecca five times a day to pray, and Griffith pretends there is no such thing as facing Mecca!

Of course he knows better. The first thing that Griffith’s report does is calculate the direction to Mecca:

I computed an azimuth value from the Flight 93 crater site to Mecca of roughly 55.20°.

Bomar expert #2

Dr. Kevin Jaques, specialist in Islamic sharia law from the University of Indiana, acknowledges that the Mecca-oriented crescent is similar to the mihrab around which every mosque is built, but says:

…just because something is ’similar to’ something else does not make it the ’same’.

Yes, well, similar–very, very similar–is exactly the problem.

Like Daniel Griffith, Mr. Jaques is trying to make hay of the fact that Mecca orientation does not by itself imply intent. So what? Intentional or not, it is unacceptable for the central feature of the Flight 93 memorial to be a geometric match for the central feature of a mosque. Jaques is pretending that the questions he raises about intent somehow make the facts irrelevant.

Professor Jaques also dismisses the likeness between the Mecca-oriented crescent and a traditional Islamic mihrab by noting that lots of religious structures have prayer-direction indicators, not just mosques:

The biggest hole in [Rawls’] argument is that all of the elements he points to are common architectural features that one would find in a church or synagogue. The mihrab originated in pre-Islamic buildings and can be found in temples, churches, and synagogues around the Mediterranean.

This is logic? Because Christian churches are often oriented to the east, that somehow makes it okay to build the Flight 93 memorial around a half-mile wide Mecca oriented crescent? If this is “the biggest hole in [Rawls’] argument,” then there are no holes in Rawls’ argument.

Project spokesmen know the truth, and are lying about it

Memorial Project spokesmen have followed the lead of these academic frauds, using doubts about intent as a pretext for denying the facts. Asked about Rawls’ Mecca orientation claim, Patrick White, vice president of Families of Flight 93, denied it:

Rawls’ claims are untrue and “preposterous,” according to Patrick White, Families of Flight 93 vice president. “We went through in detail all his original claims and came away with nothing.”

In fact, Patrick White is fully aware of the Mecca orientation of the giant crescent. At the Memorial Project’s public meeting in July he argued that the almost-exact Mecca orientation of the giant crescent cannot be intended as a tribute to Islam because the inexactness of it would be “disrespectful to Islam.”

Joanne Hanley has done the same:

“Alec Rawls bases all of his conclusions on faulty assumptions,” said Joanne Hanley, the superintendent of the Flight 93 National Memorial. “In addition, the facts are twisted and people are misquoted, all to serve his intended purpose.”

But she too has admitted the Mecca-orientation of the giant crescent, telling Mr. Rawls in a 2006 conference call that she wasn’t concerned about the almost-exact Mecca orientation of the crescent because: “It isn’t exact. That’s one we talked about. It has to be exact.” (Crescent of Betrayal, download 3, page 145.)

These are your subordinates Mr. Kempthorne. Please do not let them get away with this fraud. Congressman Tancredo is demanding answers from Director Bomar and many of us are hoping that you will do the same. There is not much time. Construction on Paul Murdoch’s terrorist memorial mosque is about to begin.

Sincerely,

[Your name]

Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, Blog @ MoreWhat.com, The Virtuous Republic, Perri Nelson’s Website, Rosemary’s Thoughts, guerrilla radio, Right Truth, Adam’s Blog, Leaning Straight Up, The Bullwinkle Blog, Big Dog’s Weblog, The Amboy Times, Chuck Adkins, Conservative Cat, Pursuing Holiness, Allie is Wired, third world county, The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns, The World According to Carl, Pirate’s Cove, Blue Star Chronicles, The Pink Flamingo, Republican National Convention Blog, Dumb Ox Daily News, High Desert Wanderer, Right Voices, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

And why conspiracy theories linger. Richard Miniter debunks the conspiracy theorists.

Jacob Laskin reviews Brian DePalma’s “Redacted” at Frontpage. He points out in a much gentler way than I did when I said we’re turning our soldiers into a bunch of social workers - “our soldiers aren’t ruthless, they’re not ruthless enough.”

He illustrates many examples, including Scott Beachamp’s claims and Jimmy Massey’s claims and how they’re so well-received outside the U.S. And then he talks about reality - the reality of our boys having their hands tied to the detriment of the fight, and oftentimes which costs more lives. It’s a frightening situation.

“When I went to Iraq in 2004, before entering Fallujah we were given a pep talk. We were told, ‘Kill the rattlesnake before it strikes.’ But when I went back in 2006 as a reporter, I heard [officers] telling those kids things like, ‘If you make a mistake, we’ll come after you.’ I thought to myself, ‘That’s the pep talk you’re giving them?’”

Yeah. Some pep talk.

Trackposted to Is It Just Me?, The Virtuous Republic, Perri Nelson’s Website, Rosemary’s Thoughts, Stix Blog, Right Truth, Stuck On Stupid, Leaning Straight Up, The Amboy Times, Chuck Adkins, Adeline and Hazel, Pursuing Holiness, The Uncooperative Radio Show!, DragonLady’s World, Pirate’s Cove, The Pink Flamingo, CommonSenseAmerica, Stageleft, Right Voices, 123beta, Adam’s Blog, The Bullwinkle Blog, Big Dog’s Weblog, Phastidio.net, Conservative Cat, , Faultline USA, The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns, The World According to Carl, Blue Star Chronicles, CORSARI D’ITALIA, and High Desert Wanderer, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

i’ve had the machete out and i’ve been using it in the blogosphere jungle for a while, conjuring up images of uma thurman in “kill bill”. but that wasn’t a machete. hehehehe. this is all theoretical blogosphere talk….but it makes me feel like i’m ‘putting on the full armor of god’ when i fight back. sometimes when i’m doing battle in the sphere, i can actually hear singing swords…or maybe i’m just hearing my husband watching “the last samarai”.

There are two things I’m interested in managing here: splogs and bots or crawlers/spiders.

The splogs that are stealing my content need to have a monkey wrench thrown into their cake. So far, I’ve found it to be working, which is so delightful!

I’ve added some weapons to my arsenal, and here are the ones for the splogs.

Plugins for wordpress to battle splogs:

Angsuman’s Feed Copyrighter

Maxpower.ca’s Digital Fingerprint

AntiLeech

Another annoying entity crawling the blogs are spiders. In order to prevent them from injecting malicious code into your posts, or even your SQL, what you need is Bot Tracker. It has an amazing admin panel that shows up on your dashboard where you can look at statistics, visits, and attacks. You can set it to block attacks, too, so I’m just beginning to realize the benefits of having it installed.

Make sure you have plenty of concentration time because that thing has a lot of files to upload to your back end.

Within a very short time, it had already caught a googlebot trying to inject some code, and a few other bots - one from China, and another from the Russian Federation.

Happy hacking.

Update: You might also want to put this list into your .htaccess file.

Trackposted to Is It Just Me?, The Virtuous Republic, Perri Nelson’s Website, Rosemary’s Thoughts, Stix Blog, Right Truth, Stuck On Stupid, Leaning Straight Up, The Amboy Times, Chuck Adkins, Adeline and Hazel, Pursuing Holiness, The Uncooperative Radio Show!, DragonLady’s World, Pirate’s Cove, The Pink Flamingo, CommonSenseAmerica, Stageleft, Right Voices, 123beta, Adam’s Blog, The Bullwinkle Blog, Big Dog’s Weblog, Phastidio.net, Conservative Cat, , Faultline USA, The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns, The World According to Carl, Blue Star Chronicles, CORSARI D’ITALIA, and High Desert Wanderer, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

I was reading this last night at “Carried by Christ”, and thought it was a worthwhile read.

What rang true for was the phrase “A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Therefore by their fruits you will know them.”

Which is from Matthew 7:16-20.

Christ’s sacrifice is an incredible free gift, all we need to do is accept it. But along with that acceptance, comes a change.

Once such a commitment is made, the battle with sin is not over. In fact, it is then that the battle is just beginning. Our fruits do not earn us placement with our Heavenly Father, but our fruits do reflect our faith and our walk with the Lord. The relationship with the Lord, when in the proper context, will produce good fruit.

One hopes that happens, because if it doesn’t, we will never move past the ‘child in Christ’ stage. Doug refers to the ‘lukewarm Christian’ who is inadvertently doing the bidding of the enemy. Christianity isn’t just a set of beliefs. It isn’t about going to church or doing good deeds to get brownie points. It is, as David Treybig puts it,

a way of thinking, a way of responding to God, a way of dealing with others, a way of putting material things in proper perspective, a way of life.

I pray today that I am not “lukewarm”; and that I truly am walking the walk.

Being a Christian involves a lot more than playing empty lip service to a belief system. It’s a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Mark Copeland outlines the three stages in a Christian’s life, which are the ‘babe in Christ’ or infancy stage, youth, and then maturity.

Theoretically, a person could live an entire lifetime in Christ as a spiritual infant and never progress.

Trackposted to Is It Just Me?, The Virtuous Republic, Perri Nelson’s Website, Rosemary’s Thoughts, Stix Blog, Right Truth, Stuck On Stupid, Leaning Straight Up, The Amboy Times, Chuck Adkins, Adeline and Hazel, Pursuing Holiness, The Uncooperative Radio Show!, DragonLady’s World, Pirate’s Cove, The Pink Flamingo, CommonSenseAmerica, Stageleft, Right Voices, 123beta, Adam’s Blog, The Bullwinkle Blog, Big Dog’s Weblog, Phastidio.net, Conservative Cat, , Faultline USA, The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns, The World According to Carl, Blue Star Chronicles, CORSARI D’ITALIA, and High Desert Wanderer, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Saw this at Robin’s and I just had to share.

It’s horrible what they’ve had to endure, what they and their families have been put through - because of leftists who want to hold hands with terrorists and blame our boys for everything under the son, not realizing what kind of decent people they are. Or even caring about it.

Thanksgiving is No Time of Joy for Families of Marines Charged With Crimes

…Four Marines, two officers and two enlisted Marines are the last untreated casualties of the attack. Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani, 44, soon to be the father of six children, Staff Sergeant Frank Wuterich, 27, the father of three little girls, Lt. Andrew Grayson, 26, a feisty Ohioan denied a Bronze Star for his alleged role in covering up the incident, and Lance Corporal Stephen Tatum, 26, a quiet Marine from Oklahoma who distinguished himself repeatedly during two combat tours in Iraq, all face prison time, huge legal expenses, and emotional scars that may never completely heal.

These four men need our help.

Murtha has of yet to apologize for accusing these boys of killing Iraqis in cold blood before the investigations were even finished.

Lance Corporal Justin Sharratt, from Pennsylvania, Captain Lucas McConnell, a rugged Annapolis grad and brilliant company commander, Captain Randy Stone, a promising Marine Corps lawyer personally recognized by President George W. Bush for his exemplary service, and Sergeant Sanick Dela Cruz, a Marine who felt turned on his brothers, have been either exonerated or had their charges dismissed.

But that means little to a guy who is recognized by Code Pink marxists as being a great man. I could do without that kind of “great”.

Now, after two years of accusations, denials, legal motions, unchecked human emotion, and endless drama, the costs are mounting to unimaginable heights while the public generosity that paid much of the defendant’s endless expenses is waning.

The article calls Murtha the “king of Pork” for a reason:

Secretary of the Navy Winter, author of letters of censure to three Haditha Marine commanders, has no military background. Instead, Winter was a corporate vice president at Northrup Grumman and, like every defense contractor, executives’ personal fortunes rise and fall based on Murtha’s distribution of appropriations. In brief, Murtha is the hand that feeds the same individuals persecuting the Marines.

Nice.

But of course, these days, it’s not about dignity, honesty, or any of the upstanding honorable and moral Marine Corps values which were once valued in this country. Today, money and power is everything. Murtha has influence. And he doesn’t have to pay for HIS attorneys because he’s a Congressman. This not only makes me sick, it makes me fighting mad.

This should not stand. The links to donate are here:

Staff Sergeant Frank Wuterich
Lt. Col Jeffrey Chessani
LCpl Stephen Tatum
Lt. Andrew Grayson

Stay up to date with the story by visiting DefendOurMarines.

And thanks to Robin for the heads up. Chickenhawk Express is mentioned in the article.

Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, Perri Nelson’s Website, Is It Just Me?, The Virtuous Republic, Rosemary’s Thoughts, Three Forces Of Evil, Stix Blog, Right Truth, Shadowscope, Stuck On Stupid, Leaning Straight Up, Chuck Adkins, Adeline and Hazel, Woman Honor Thyself, The Uncooperative Radio Show!, Pirate’s Cove, The Pink Flamingo, Dumb Ox Daily News, Stageleft, Right Voices, Blog @ MoreWhat.com, 123beta, Adam’s Blog, Big Dog’s Weblog, Phastidio.net, The Bullwinkle Blog, Conservative Cat, Nuke’s, , Faultline USA, The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns, The World According to Carl, Walls of the City, Global American Discourse, CORSARI D’ITALIA, High Desert Wanderer, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

clipped from wnd.com JERUSALEM – In exchange for Saudi Arabia attending this week’s U.S.-sponsored Israeli-Palestinian conference in Annapolis, the Israeli government agreed to recognize the importance of a Saudi-sponsored “peace initiative” in which the Jewish state is called upon to evacuate the strategic Golan Heights, the entire West Bank and eastern sections of Jerusalem, including the Temple Mount, WND has learned.

Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, Perri Nelson’s Website, Is It Just Me?, Rosemary’s Thoughts, Three Forces Of Evil, Right Truth, Stix Blog, Shadowscope, Stuck On Stupid, Leaning Straight Up, Chuck Adkins, Adeline and Hazel, Woman Honor Thyself, The Uncooperative Radio Show!, Pirate’s Cove, The Pink Flamingo, Dumb Ox Daily News, Right Voices, Stageleft, Blog @ MoreWhat.com, 123beta, Big Dog’s Weblog, Phastidio.net, The Bullwinkle Blog, Conservative Cat, Nuke’s, Faultline USA, The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns, Walls of the City, Global American Discourse, CORSARI D’ITALIA, High Desert Wanderer, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

A prayer for Jack Idema from Fahim:

You fought for the people who were left so behind..You fought for the women who were treated like slaves…You fought for the children who were sexually attacked….You fought for a country and freed it as well…You fought for America to stop the terror…I will pray for you Jack, with my every breath…You are a hero and will be always.

It is customary on Sundays for me to offer up a prayer for Jack and Brent and that they’re both able to return home to the United States safely and without repurcussions from our government for doing the job they were sent to do…

If they’re not appreciated by our own government, it is good to know that Afghanistanis appreciate them for what they did and how they sacrificed for the people and women of Afghanistan.

Trackback with one of your posts that you think deserves some special attention from this past week.

Watch for Open Trackbacks here on Fridays, Sundays and Wednesdays.

Here is the trackback link to this post:

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To trackback to any post just use the post slug or “permalink” and add trackback/ to the end of it.

One other thing.

I will be deleting trackbacks when the posts don’t show that you’ve linked here. Make sure you do as I did, below–either saying thanks to Cao’s blog and linking to this post, or mention that I have a trackback party, and link to this post. Otherwise the trackback will be deleted.

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Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, Perri Nelson’s Website, Is It Just Me?, Rosemary’s Thoughts, Three Forces Of Evil, Right Truth, Stix Blog, Shadowscope, Stuck On Stupid, Leaning Straight Up, Chuck Adkins, Adeline and Hazel, Woman Honor Thyself, The Uncooperative Radio Show!, Pirate’s Cove, The Pink Flamingo, Dumb Ox Daily News, Right Voices, Stageleft, Blog @ MoreWhat.com, 123beta, Big Dog’s Weblog, Phastidio.net, The Bullwinkle Blog, Conservative Cat, Nuke’s, Faultline USA, The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns, Walls of the City, Global American Discourse, CORSARI D’ITALIA, High Desert Wanderer, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

I’m in favor of this, partly because the Bible was a text book in our schools until the 1960’s. It’s not a new idea.

Although weirdly - Allahpundit at Hot Air is repeating that “separation of church and state’ hooey that the ACLU and liberals repeat. It doesn’t appear anywhere in our founding documents, so I don’t know where that comes from on a site that is supposed to espouse conservative thought and principles.

If he were to object to teaching religion in schools, maybe he ought to talk about how some schools are teaching children about the Koran and how to wage a jihad.

Here are some of the founders on the Bible as a text book in schools from the National Council on Bible curriculum in Public Schools:

• The Bible is a book worth more than all the other books that were ever printed.”
  Patrick Henry
• “It is impossible to enslave mentally or socially a Bible reading people. The principles of the Bible are the groundwork of human freedom.”~Horace Greely
• “I have always said, and will always say, that studious perusal of the sacred volume will make us better citizens.”~Thomas Jefferson

But there is a longer list than that, that just touches the tip of the iceberg.

The Bible: Foundation of Liberty

If you want to live in a secular society, go to Russia where the words ’separation of church and state’ are actually written into their constitution and it’s illegal to teach anyone about religion until they’re over 18.

Religion is never a purely private affair. Those who tell you your religion should be “private” are attempting to make their religion the basis for public and political power over you.

There are compelling social reasons for making Christianity the foundation of everything that is taught in school, and the Framers of the Constitution understood these reasons.

• The Founding Fathers correctly believed that “religion, morality and knowledge” should be taught in public schools.
• They believed that morality could not be taught without religion, and that without morality, our nation would crumble.
• The U.S. Supreme Court (1844) declared that morality could not be taught in government-operated schools without the New Testament.
• Our entire system of government was based on religion and morality
• Or as the Founders often spoke of them, “piety and virtue.”

There is not a single Signer of the Constitution who would have agreed that the Constitution he was signing was intended to give the federal government the power to order municipal schools to remove The Ten Commandments and the Bible. The Founders’ opinion of the Bible, and of its use in schools, was clear:

The great enemy of the salvation of man, in my opinion, never invented a more effectual means of extirpating [extinguishing] Christianity from the world than by persuading mankind that it was improper to read the Bible at schools.[54] [T]he Bible, when not read in schools, is seldom read in any subsequent period of life. . . . [It] should be read in our schools in preference to all other books from its containing the greatest portion of that kind of knowledge which is calculated to produce private and public temporal happiness.[55]
BENJAMIN RUSH, SIGNER OF THE DECLARATION

[Why] should not the Bible regain the place it once held as a school book? Its morals are pure, its examples captivating and noble. The reverence for the Sacred Book that is thus early impressed lasts long; and probably if not impressed in infancy, never takes firm hold of the mind.[56]
FISHER AMES, AUTHOR OF THE HOUSE LANGUAGE FOR THE FIRST AMENDMENT

Suppose a nation in some distant region should take the Bible for their only law book and every member should regulate his conduct by the precepts there exhibited…. What a Eutopia, what a Paradise would this region be.[57] I have examined all [religions]… and the result is that the Bible is the best Book in the world. It contains more of my little philosophy than all the libraries I have seen.[58]
JOHN ADAMS

[T]he Bible…. [is] a book containing the history of all men and of all nations and… [is] a necessary part of a polite education.[59]
HENRY LAURENS, PRESIDENT OF CONTINENTAL CONGRESS; U.S. DIPLOMAT; SELECTED AS DELEGATE TO THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION

The Bible itself [is] the common inheritance, not merely of Christendom, but of the world. [60]
JOSEPH STORY, U.S. SUPREME COURT JUSTICE; FATHER OF AMERICAN JURISPRUDENCE

To a man of liberal education, the study of history is not only useful, and important, but altogether indispensable, and with regard to the history contained in the Bible . . . “it is not so much praiseworthy to be acquainted with as it is shameful to be ignorant of it.”[61]
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS

The reflection and experience of many years have led me to consider the holy writings not only as the most authentic and instructive in themselves, but as the clue to all other history. They tell us what man is, and they alone tell us why he is what he is: a contradictory creature that seeing and approving of what is good, pursues and performs what is evil. All of private and of public life is there displayed…. From the same pure fountain of wisdom we learn that vice destroys freedom; that arbitrary power is founded on public immorality.[62]
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS, PENMAN AND SIGNER OF THE CONSTITUTION

[The Bible] is a book worth more than all the other books that were ever printed.[63]
PATRICK HENRY

[T]o the free and universal reading of the Bible in that age, men were much indebted for right views of civil liberty. The Bible is . . . a book which teaches man his own individual responsibility, his own dignity, and his equality with his fellow man.[64]
DANIEL WEBSTER

The Bible is the best of all books, for it is the word of God and teaches us the way to be happy in this world and in the next Continue therefore to read it and to regulate your life by its precepts.[65]
JOHN JAY, ORIGINAL CHIEF-JUSTICE OF THE U S. SUPREME COURT

The Bible is the chief moral cause of all that is good and the best corrector of all that is evil in human society; the best book for regulating the temporal [secular] concerns of men.[66]
NOAH WEBSTER

Bibles are strong entrenchments. Where they abound, men cannot pursue wicked courses.[67]
JAMES MCHENRY, SIGNER OF THE CONSTITUTION

I don’t think one is the same as the other. On the one hand, we’re fighting that ideology, on the other, we’re forcing people to learn revisionist history like ‘there was no holocaust’ the same line the Palestinian homocide bombing terrorists use.

They are not the same. The Ten Commandments were posted outside and inside of courthouses for a reason; because our laws were based on Mosaic law.

55. Benjamin Rush, Essays, pp. 94, 100, “A Defence of the Use of the Bible as a School Book.”

56. Fisher Ames, Works of Fisher Ames (Boston: T. B. Wait & Co, 1809), pp. 134-135.

57. John Adams, Works, Vol. II, pp. 6-7, diary entry for February 22, 1756.

58. John Adams, Works, Vol. X, p. 85, to Thomas Jefferson on December 25, 1813.

59. Henry Laurens, The Papers of Henry Laurens, George C. Rogers, Jr., and David R. Chesnutt, editors (Columbia, S. C.: University of South Carolina Press, 1980), Vol. VIII, pp. 426-427, to James Lawrenson on August 19, 1772.

60. Joseph Story, A Familiar Exposition of the Constitution of the United States (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1854), p. 259, §446.

61. John Quincy Adams, Letters of John Quincy Adams to His Son on the Bible and Its Teachings (Auburn: James M. Alden, 1850), p. 34.

62. Collections of the New York Historical Society for the Year 1821 (New York: E. Bliss and E. White, 1821), p. 30, from “An Inaugural Discourse Delivered Before the New York Historical Society by the Honorable Gouverneur Morris on September 4, 1816.”

63. William Wirt, Sketches of the Life and Character of Patrick Henry (Philadelphia: James Webster, 1818), p. 402. See also George Morgan, Patrick Henry (Philadelphia & London: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1929), p. 403.

64. Daniel Webster, Address Delivered at Bunker Hill, June 17, 1843, on the Completion of the Monument (Boston: T. R. Marvin, 1843), p. 31. See also W. P. Strickland, History of the American Bible Society from its Organization to the Present Time (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1849), p. 18.

65. John Jay, John Jay: The Winning of the Peace. Unpublished Papers 1780-1784, Richard B. Morris, editor (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1980), Vol. II, p. 709, to Peter Augustus Jay on April 8, 1784.

66. Noah Webster, The Holy Bible . . . With Amendments of the Language (New Haven: Durrie & Peck, 1833), p. v.

67. Bernard C. Steiner, One Hundred and Ten Years of Bible Society Work in Maryland (Baltimore: Maryland Bible Society, 1921), p. 14.

More documentation on this subject can be found here.

I just hope this man and his family are all right. This is from back in October, 2007.

Islamic laywers supported the Egyptian government in the court hearing of Mohammed Ahmed Hegazy, a Muslim convert to Christianity. Mohammed is suing Egypt to change the religion on his identification papers to Christianity, which of course, caused a national uproar. Islamist lawyers associated with radical cleric Youssef al-Badry went to the October hearing in Cairo and legally joined the case on the government’s side. Hegazy’s lawyers confirmed that Magdy al-Anany and at least three other fundamentalist Muslim attorneys filed papers to support the government.

Al-Badry was one of several clerics who called for Hegazy’s death in Egypt’s national media, following the announcement of this case in August. Al-Badry also filed charges of inciting sectarian strife against Hegazy’s original lawyer, Mamdouh Nakhla.

I may be mistaken, but I think he {Hegazy} is a Coptic Christian. The reason he wants to do this is so that his children can have on their papers that they are Christians. It is a noble sacrifice he is making. Unfortunately, the Coptic church is siding with the government, in a dhimmi type move that is very disappointing. There is a small percentage of Coptic Christians in Egypt, but they are still the largest Christian population in the Middle East.

Here’s an interesting story at Worldnet Daily about a woman whose father converted to Islam 45 years ago in 1962, and then went back to Christianity and reconciled with his wife. According to Egyptian law (and the laws of Islam), once you’ve converted to Islam, there is no going back…so under the law, because he converted when his daughter, Shadia Nagui Ibrahim, now 47, was only 2 years old, she is today considered a muslim by the Egyptian government.

Children of muslim men automatically take their father’s religion.

Her papers, however, say she’s Christian.

Of course, if you leave Islam you’re considered an apostate, which is punishable by death.

Shadia Nagui Ibrahim is serving 3 years for stating th