Joyful Noise

April 16, 2006

What’s the best sound in the world? For me that’s an easy answer. I looking forward to hearing it every morning. Every time I’m away from home. I look forward to hearing Brandon’s laughter and singing. Is there anything greater then hearing your child filled with joy?

You probably think I have a distinguishable annoying laugh. And I don’t even want to know what you think about my singing. However, I know with God delights in me when my spirit’s filled with joy just as I am delighted in Brandon.

Happy Easter Everyone

Filed Under Family Life

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Butz

April 15, 2006

Today I’m ashamed to live in the state of Illinois, home of the private school Northwestern University. Professor Arthur R. Butz, a complete waste of skin, in recent interviews with the Iranian press, Butz “congratulated” the Iranian president and his views on the Holocaust. Views that say the Holocaust NEVER HAPPENED!

What a nut case!

Butz teaches at one of the highest regarded academic university’s in the US. Northwestern refuses to remove the professor on the basis of free speech and tenure.

This is just one example of why universities should do away with tenure. Since when does accountability not matter once you’ve served enough time? When’s the last time our tenured university professors have done anything significant with their tenured status to advance society?

Source

Filed Under Politics

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Separation of Church and State

April 14, 2006

The phrase “separation of church and state” does not appear in the Constitution, but rather derives from a letter written by Thomas Jefferson to a group identifying themselves as the Danbury Baptists. In that letter, Jefferson referred to a “wall of separation between church and state.”

The Danbury Baptist Association wrote President Jefferson in an attempt to persuade him to use his Executive Powers as President to intervene in their behalf. In his letter of reply to the Danbury Baptist Association, Jefferson argued that the U.S. Constitution forbade any interference from the Federal government with a Connecticutt law which required membership in a particular church in order to hold public office.

Jefferson’s point in the letter was that the Federal government had no Constitutional mandate for taking any interest in or notice of any discrimination on religious grounds, perceived or otherwise, at the State level. Jefferson refused their plea on the grounds cited in his letter. Thus, with the adoption of the Jeffersonian phrase ‘…wall of separation between church and state…’, by those who seek to use Federal power to remove from the public square any religiousity of any sort, the inversion of the meaning intended by Jefferson as he wrote it.

James Madison, the father of the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights, wrote in the early 1800s, “Strongly guarded . . . is the separation between religion and government in the Constitution of the United States.” Ulysses S. Grant also called for Americans to “Keep the church and state forever separate.”

When someone says “The separation of Church & state is protected under the constitution or the Church has no place in government because it’s “unconstitutional”” they really don’t know the constitution.

“Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim tribute to patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness—these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. . . . reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principles.”
– George Washington
Source

“God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that His justice cannot sleep forever.”
–Thomas Jefferson
Source

“It is religion and morality alone which can establish the principles upon which freedom can securely stand. The only foundation of a free constitution is pure virtue, and if this cannot be inspired into our People in a greater Measure, than they have it now, they may change their Rulers and the forms of Government, but they will not obtain a lasting liberty.”
– John Adams
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“…The longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth, that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid? We have been assured, Sir, in the Sacred Writings, that ‘except the Lord build the House, they labor in vain that build it.’ ”
– Benjamin Franklin
Source

“And whereas it is the duty of nations as well as of men, to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sins and transgressions, in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon; and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord.”
– Abraham Lincoln
Source

“Let us look forward to the time when we can take the flag of our country and nail it below the Cross, and there let it wave as it waved in the olden times, and let us gather around it and inscribed for our motto: ‘Liberty and Union, one and inseparable, now and forever,’ and exclaim, ‘Christ first, our country next!’ ”
– Andrew Johnson
Source: John Savage, The Life and Public Services of Andrew Johnson

“We cannot read the history of our rise and development as a nation, without reckoning with the place the Bible has occupied in shaping the advances of the Republic. Where we have been the truest and most consistent in obeying its precepts, we have attained the greatest measure of contentment and prosperity.”
– Franklin Roosevelt
Source: 1935 Radio Broadcast, Gabriel Sivan, The Bible and Civilization (New York: Quadrangle/The New York Times Book Co.)

“Without God, there is no virtue, because there’s no prompting of the conscience. Without God, we’re mired in the material, that flat world that tells us only what the senses perceive. Without God, there is a coarsening of the society. And without God, democracy will not and cannot long endure. If we ever forget that we’re one nation under God, then we will be a nation gone under.”
– Ronald Reagan
Source

Filed Under Faith, Politics

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US Poverty a Race Issue?

April 13, 2006

• Countless studies show that fatherlessness, not race, is by far the most accurate predictor that a child will end up in poverty or in prison. And today, about 70 percent of black children are born into fatherless homes compared to 25 percent of white children.
• 85 percent of all black children living in poverty are raised in single-parent homes.
• The incomes of fatherless black families are only about one-fourth as high as the incomes of two-parent black families. A similar disparity exists among white one- and two-parent families.
• Ever since 1981, black families with two college-educated, working adults have earned more than similar white families in every age group and in every region of the United States. As early as 1970, black two-parent families outside of the South were already earning more than comparable white families.
• Black full-time workers today earn slightly more than white workers of the same age, sex, and I.Q.
• Because of affirmative action, black applicants are much more likely than white applicants to be admitted to the college of their choice, even though whites score about 200 points higher on the Scholastic Aptitude Test.

Source

Many argue that blacks have higher rates of child poverty because they are victims of racial discrimination. However, the fact that black children do not have higher poverty rates than whites raised in similar circumstances argues against that view. The reality that poverty rates are the same for black and white children raised in similar circumstances suggests that society treats both groups equally and that discrimination has no direct impact on poverty differences. While complex the destruction of poverty starts with men, moreso black men, making stronger efforts to sustain the family unit.

Filed Under Politics

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HIS “Presents”

April 12, 2006

Our second son, Nathan was born 12/29/05. Our first morning home from the hospital, I got up with Nathan for a 6am feeding. This appeared in the sky as I looked out into our backyard. It only lasted for just a couple minutes as the sun was starting to rise.

Welcome home little one!
Picture is not enhanced in anyway.
Taken 1/1/2006 at 6:45am

Posted By: Anastasia