"A Swedish tabloid reported on Saturday that an arrest warrant has been issued for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on suspicion of rape, and officials said they could confirm 'media reports'," according to AFP.

"Assange addressed the report on WikiLeaks Twitter page, saying 'the charges are without basis and their issue at this moment is deeply disturbing'," AFP reports.

"The speaker of the House wants to know how opponents of the Ground Zero mosque are being funded," states an editorial in Investors Business Daily. "When Americans can be investigated for their opinions, our republic has arrived at a dangerous place."

Every day brings yet another example of why American who respect both our national and creaturely identities must resist and overcome the growing authoritarianism entrenched in Washington, D.C.

That's how David Freddoso at Beltway Confidential reads the new Democrat PR angle on the unconstitutional Obamacare fiasco ("'Improve' Healthcare, Don't Talk Cost").

"The full results of a national study that favors abstinence education is being withheld from researchers and the public," OneNewsNow reports.

"The taxpayer-supported survey from 2008 found that around 70 percent of parents and their teenagers believed that teens should wait until marriage to have sex," according to OneNewsNow.

"Despite release of the study's summary and its highlight at two major public health conferences last year, the Department of Health and Human Services is withholding the full results, according to Valerie Huber, executive director of the National Abstinence Education Foundation."

True believers in Barack Hussein Obama do not question whether the evidence supports certain basic articles of faith, including, let us suggest, the doctrine that the current occupant of the Oval Office possesses an IQ "that is off the charts," as historian Michael Beschloss once infamously, confidently, and blindly proclaimed to Don Imus of radio fame.

When Imus on Nov. 10, 2008, in the context of an interview of effusive praise for Obama, asked Beschloss a followup question, "What is his IQ?," Beschloss at first tried to talk through Imus's question. But Imus persisted and the historian eventually admitted, "I don't know."

Free-thinkers take a more noble path.

Having been endowed by our Creator with "certain unalienable rights" and responsibilities, among them the right and responsibility to question authority, including political authority, regular people are thereby liberated as holistic human beings to ask questions and discover amazing truths. 

This kind of critical distance and discovery, despised in certain circles, especially among secularized people of secularized faith, is a key element of representative, Constitutional government. Liberated minds precede free societies.

Victor Volsky at American Thinker maintains such a distance, and he asks a question ("Just how smart is Obama?") that may trouble those who are comforted by, and who place their trust in, Obama. Yes, Barackian sychophants on campus, in Hollywood, in politics, and in the formerly mainstream media may not be pleased with the answer suggested by the evidence.

But those who understand that resistance to foolishness goes to the heart of our calling as Americans and as human beings rejoice.

Here is audio of the Imus-Beschloss interview. The historian's blind, nonsupported but gushing praise of Obama's supposedly high IQ occurs near the end of the interview.

When it comes to Nancy's new book Saving Leonardo, you can literally "check it out" at the Kenton County Public Library in Kenton County, KY, located in the Greater Cincinnati area.

Kenton County is named after Simon Kenton, a longtime friend of frontiersman Daniel Boone.

It seems fitting to note the appearance of Saving Leonardo in Kenton County. Just as the county's namesake helped blaze a trail through the Kentucky wilderness, the new book blazes a trail through the secular wasteland. 

The Kentucky wilderness reminds us of pristine beauty, whereas the secular wasteland is a departure in so many ways from the wonder of the Creator's handiwork and from a nation Declared free under God. Two contrasting environments, but a similar call to courage and creativity in the face of a challenging situation. 

Contemporary trailblazers seeking more information on the Kenton County Public Library should turn in here. The official launch date of Saving Leonardo is September 1.

What can churches do to stem the tide of young people walking out their doors? Sadly, many have responded by simply mirroring the pop culture that youngsters are already immersed in.

We once visited a church where the teen Sunday school class welcomed our son with a row of video arcade games. In younger years he attended Vacation Bible School where he was bombarded with loud pop music, silly skits, and slapstick games. Lots of paintball and whipped cream. 

That's a misguided approach, says Brett McCracken in a recent Wall Street Journal article. McCracken, who has just published a book titled Hipster Christianity: Where Church and Cool Collide, offers his own examples of churches trying desperately to prove to kids that they can be cool. And he concludes:

As a twentysomething, I can say with confidence that when it comes to church, we don't want cool as much as we want real.

If we are interested in Christianity in any sort of serious way, it is not because it's easy or trendy or popular. . . . It's because the world we inhabit is utterly phony, ephemeral, narcissistic, image-obsessed and sex-drenched -- and we want an alternative. It's not because we want more of the same. 

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with offering young people simple fun and social time. But the force of sheer experience will not equip them to address the secular worldviews they will encounter when they leave home and face the world on their own.

Young people whose commitment is mostly emotional are likely to retain it only as long as it is making them feel good. As soon as a difficult crisis comes along, it will evaporate.

Churches that have lasting impact in the lives of young people are those that teach them to develop reasonable biblical answers to the secular worldviews permeating American society today. That’s the case I make in Saving Leonardo. And the empirical evidence backs it up: A recent Fuller study found that among students who retain their Christian convictions in college, one factor plays the largest role -- and it’s not what most church leaders would expect: The most significant factor is whether young people have a safe place to wrestle with their doubts and questions before leaving home.

The study concluded, "The more college students felt that they had the opportunity to express their doubt while they were in high school, the higher [their] levels of faith maturity and spiritual maturity."

In other words, the best way for teens to become "prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks" (1 Pet. 3:15) is by wrestling with the questions themselves. Churches should teach teens what the major secular worldviews claim, and how to evaluate them.

Saving Leonardo is a good place to get started.

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At a townhall event this weekend, Rep. Melissa Bean (D-Ill.) seemed to have everything in order, but then a guy with a video camera showed up.

He was asking questions and everything. Like he thinks he's got some kind of power. Like he thinks he's an illegal alien or something.

This guy even asked whether the Obamacare healthcare mandate "is constitutional."

"You have a good night," the congresswoman explained. As she jumped into her getaway car.

Good thing Ms. Melissa had a thug on hand to make sure the federal government continues to run smoothly. 

Meanwhile, the Thug Community must be wondering: Whatawegonnado with all these Tea Party plants?

"Hey, Jimbo Thunderbrain. Where'd you put that race card?"

Well, here's video. More at Gateway Pundit.

Hat tip: Beltway Confidential

Commenting on the "ruling by Judge Vaughn Walker to strike down Proposition 8," bestselling author and Pearcey Report editor at large Nancy Pearcey reveals in her latest column how "the law is being used to impose a secular liberal worldview that dismisses physical anatomy as insignificant, inconsequential and completely irrelevant to gender identity."

As Nancy has shown in Saving Leonardo, this secular theory of the person "represents a devastatingly disrespectful view of the physical body. It alienates people from their own bodies, treating anatomy as having no intrinsic dignity. No dignity is accorded to the unique capabilities inherent in being male or female."

Nancy concludes: "Today's liberal elites such as Judge Walker may pose as enlightened liberators, but in fact they are secular Gnostics, treating physical anatomy as having no intrinsic dignity or purpose."

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Today at American Thinker you can read Nancy's article titled, "Fact," "Values," and the Redefinition of "Marriage."

Here's the first paragraph: 

The ruling that overturned California's Proposition 8 last week is a significant step in America's descent into secularism. The decision builds a case for same-sex marriage by pitting objective "facts" against "private values," then dismissing values as a basis for law -- a favorite strategy in the secularist playbook.

From her conclusion: 

It has become a truism that politics is downstream from culture, and this case is a stunning example. It writes into law a secularized view of truth -- an epistemology, to use a technical term. No matter what happens legally, the judge's reasoning will be influential in the further secularization of American law and policy.

Those who wish to have a healthy political impact must understand the underlying ideas that drive politics. When the fragmented secular view of truth is taught in the universities and law schools, it will eventually be imposed upon the entire society with the bang of a gavel. And that is a fact.

In her new book Saving Leonardo, Nancy exposes the historic and ongoing destructive impact of secularism upon modern thought and society, including how it affects for ill our daily lives. And she builds a case for a humane and holistic resistance that affirms, by the way, what I would argue is the essential mainstream of the American experiment in human freedom and dignity. 

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Saving Leonardo "may be Nancy's best book yet -- AND THAT'S SAYING SOMETHING," columnist and author David Limbaugh writes on Facebook. "More on this subject later," he says.

"A New Hampshire candidate for the state house is taking heat from the state Republican Party after he wrote on a Facebook thread that he wishes former Alaska governor Sarah Palin and the father of her grandson were in the plane crash that killed former Sen. Ted Stevens in Alaska on Monday," writes Alex Pappas at The Daily Caller.

Pappas continues: 

“Just wish Sarah and Levy (sic) were on board,” wrote Keith Halloran, a Democratic candidate for Cheshire County House District 7, referencing Palin and Levi Johnston, the on-again, off-again boyfriend of her daughter.

One of the reasons we have checks and balances in the U.S. Constitution is that the Founders took seriously the Creator's realism about human beings. You too may have noticed: Humanity is great, but not always are pure as the wind-driven snow.

It is because of the imperfect condition of humanity, due to our own choices, that we who respect freedom must take care not to allow others to gain unlimited power in governance. 

Take a hint: There's a reason dictators and other "messiahs" love the consolidation and centralization of power.

Most would no doubt agree that no government at any level should be occupied by people of hate who "just wish Sarah and Levy (sic) were on board."

But if a hater of humanity does win an election, in a system of checks and balances, the damage that such a person can wreak upon others, and upon societal institutions, can be more or less minimimized.

Of course, the opposite is true. If suddenly you have an unlimited "living" Constitution, of the kind preached by secularists such as Barack Obama, the damage that can be imposed by those in office high or low is significant indeed. 

The more utopian, popular, and powerful the latest and greatest messiah, the more hellish life on earth becomes. Lose the Founder's realism based on information from the Creator and you are well down the road to losing your republic.

Watch the news tonight and you'll see what I mean.

"Harry Reid has never heard of Marco Rubio," states the headline above comments by W. James Antle III at American Spectator.

I suppose this means the two have never met. Well, they ought to, if only to fill in a few gaps in Reid's education and life experience.

Antle's comments speak, of course, to Reid's instantly infamous utterance that he just doesn't know how anyone of "Hispanic heritage could be a Republican." This, from a grown man. A U.S. senator. The utterance is an embarrassment.

Well, Harry needs to meet Marco, who is -- as many people seem to know -- the GOP candidate for the U.S. Senate, from Florida. A son of Cuban immigrants. 

To help things along, here's Marco's website, which Harry may not know about. It's on the internet, another item about which Harry not know of or heard of.

I'm doing my best as a community facilitator to help Reid understand how Rubio could be Republicanio.

Now I've never met Senior Rubio, and I wouldn't ever want to profile, but he sure does look like a human being of "Hispanic heritage." My unscientific guess is that about 99% of my soccer-playing amigos share a somewhat similar background.

I might add that I do see how a person of Hispanic heritage could be a Republican (something along the lines of perferring the liberating Constitution over against the enfebbling divide-and-conquer racism and groupism that now animates, apparently, the like of Harry Reid and the Democrat Party).  

I might also add that maybe a person of Hispanic heritage could be tired of Obama reaching into brown Hispanic wallets, making it all-that-much harder for the "little guy" to run a small business. That, at least, is what my auto mechanic from Puerto Rico tells me. 

Here's a wild prediction: Marco Rubio, Republican, of Hispanic heritage, will vote Republican in the November elections! And he will vote specifically for himself, Republican!

It really is time that Harry met Marco (on a plane, maybe, as in When Harry Met Sally). In any case, a lot of Americans have met this son of Cuban exiles. Americans of all sorts of heritages. And they seem to like the guy and the Republic for which he stands.

"Republic." I wonder if Reid has ever heard of that.

"The alarm continues to be a raised over a private internal memo from the U.S. Customs and Immigration Service that indicates President Obama has an amnesty plan in the works for many illegal immigrants," reports OneNewsNow.

"The memo was drafted by four officials at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service to the director of the department, Alejandro N. Mayorkas," the report continues.

"Jan LaRue, senior legal analyst with the American Civil Rights Union (ACRU), believes the memo serves as evidence the Obama Administration intends to go around Congress in its attempt to acquire amnesty for illegal immigrants."

I just noticed that the "Search Inside" function for Saving Leonardo: A Call to Resist the Secular Assault on Mind, Morals, & Meaning is now available on its Amazon page.

Click here, for example, to get a close-up of the book's terrific cover.

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And a million anti-Prop 8 homosexual San Francisco judges saying otherwise won't change that ethical fact of life. Here's Bill Murchison on "The 'Gay Marriage' Fantasy" at Townhall.

"Hyper-partisan" White House press secretary Robert Gibbs says the 71% thrashing that Allied Forces in Missouri gave to Obama "healthcare" invaders was a "vote of no legal significance," writes John Gizzi ("Gizmondo") at Human Events.

Meanwhile, Gizmondo reports, Missouri's challenge to Obamacare is going national. And "if Gibbs really believes what he said, then he's in for a rude awakening soon," says Republican State Rep. John Diehl, one of the ringleaders for healthcare freedom in Missouri.

And Kids Don't Need Fathers, Either, Don't You Know: That's the politically correct wisdom of the moment, according to federal judge Vaughn R. Walker, "who ruled last week that a voter-approved amendment to California’s constitution that limited marriage to the union of one man and one woman violated the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution," writes Terry Jeffrey, editor in chief of CNSNews.com.

Michael Shermer, executive director of the Skeptics Society and publisher of Skeptic magazine, typically shoots from the hip. Which explains why he often misses the target. In a recent column, he blames Christianity for -- of all things -- the latest New Age craze.

The column is a critique of Deepak Chopra, the well-known New Age leader. Chopra used to be a top assistant to the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (of Beatles fame). Time dubbed him the New Age Supersage. In spite of these facts, astonishingly, Shermer reinvents Chopra as a medieval theologian. In his words, Chopra’s theology is “essentially an updating” of medieval scholasticism. 

You would think that means Chopra appeals to medieval thinkers like Anselm and Aquinas. But you would be mistaken. Chopra’s goal is to forge a link between New Age thought and 20th-century quantum physics.

New Age interpretations of quantum theory were popularized a few years ago in the movie What the Bleep Do We Know? Before that, they circulated in books like Fritjof Capra’s The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism and Gary Zukav’sThe Dancing Wu Li Masters. These books claim that the view of reality suggested by quantum theory correlates with the teachings of Hinduism and Buddhism. The Dalai Lama, a recent visitor to the Obama White House, frequently makes similar claims.

What does any of this have to do with medieval theology? Answer: Nothing. 

So why doesn’t Shermer link New Age physics to its real source in Hindu and Buddhist theology? He ignores the obvious connection to Eastern mysticism and instead wants us to believe that Chopra’s New Age preaching is an “effort to update medieval theology.”

This is so utterly contrary to the facts, it suggests that the “skeptic” Shermer -- like so many secularized academics, reporters, entertainers, and politicians -- is determined to make Christianity the target for virtually everything he disagrees with. 

Chopra’s New Age physics is only one of many interpretations -- and misinterpretations -- that quantum theory has inspired, as I show in Saving Leonardo: A Call to Resist the Secular Assault on Mind, Morals, & Meaning. For example, it was also enormously influential in the rise of postmodernism because it appeared to undercut classical physics, along with the entire Enlightenment worldview. 

That’s why even non-scientists need to understand its impact -- if for no other reason than to answer those who misuse it to support their own favorite religious or philosophical views. 

And to debunk zealots who are determined to make Christianity a target, even in contradiction to the facts. Truly free thinkers need to be skeptical of those who call themselves “skeptics.”

Saving Leonardo can be pre-ordered here.

I Know It's a Longshot, But: If you've heard that there are no black human beings in the Tea Party movement, or that the Tea Party movement is a front for the KKK, Nazi Party, or Aryan Nashun, this news conference held at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., may provide a helpful corrective.

I note the August 4 press gathering on the possibility that video of this newsworthy event may not see much air time on the formerly mainstream media. Call it a hunch.

And here's a slide show of the Tea Party Express News conference, featured on the website of the National Press Club.  

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Why? Because we agree, with the Creator, who is the defining mainstream and center of gravity for American freedom (see the Declaration of Independence), that marriage is between a man and a woman.

Please note, federal judge Vaughn Walker is an out and out homosexual. And now this extremist has imposed his private feelings upon the rest of America. In addition, please note that his opinon entails the conclusion that the verifiable Creator, who is a public figure, is also a bigot.

There is another possibility, however, and that is this San Franciso judge is a fool who says in his heart that when it comes to public policy the Creator does not exist. 

Americans who respect the Creator will resist the anti-marriage rulings of imperious judges.

And Americans who respect the "blessings of liberty" that arise when we take seriously information from the Creator will resist the anti-family rulings of hegemonic homosexuals. 

Human beings are magnificent beings created to live in community with God and man; to resist evil, death, and decay; and to welcome life, health, and wholeness.  

This is good news for any who embrace reason, fact, love, and verifiable information from our Creator. It is not so good news for others.

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The formerly mainstream media is consistently anti-Declaration (as written), anti-Constitution (as written), anti-Creator, anti-Christian, anti-life, anti-family, anti-individual, anti-success, anti-excellence, and anti-freedom.

To the formely mainstream media, whatever denigrates these things is "good," and whatever places them in their deserved positive light is "bad."

By way of contrast, a real press true to its journalistic calling questions authority, searches out the evidence, examines the facts, and then follows the evidence wherever it might lead.

Instead of giving in to political passions and ideological hatreds, a real journalism asks, seeks, and finds. It demands answers and comes back for more. No matter who is in power.

Real journalism it is not yet dead in America. But it may well die if we do not return as a nation to Constitutional content and Declarational norms. And it will die if it seeks life in liberalism.

As cancer is to the body, so is liberalism to reporting. The body functions for a while. But then cometh the night.

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"ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts skipped the bad news for President Obama -- yet all found time to celebrate his 49th birthday," writes Brent Baker at Newsbusters.  

Have you noticed? When it comes parties and political party lines, the good times for Team Obama and its friendlies in the formerly mainstream media never seem to end.

OK. Let them eat their birthday cake. The bread of American revolution is in the oven.

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The summer issue of the American Spectator features a cover story that is garnering a lot of attention.  (The magazine notes that it was highlighted "in a big, big way by Rush Limbaugh.")  The article dovetails nicely with themes from my soon-to-be published book, Saving Leonardo. The author, Angelo Codevilla, professor emeritus at Boston University, says the secular elites in America have become a ruling class. And he explains the strategy they use to discredit opposition and hold on to power:

Let [anyone] object to anything the ruling class says or does, and likely as not their objection will be characterized as "religious," that is to say irrational, that is to say not to be considered on a par with the "science" of which the ruling class is the sole legitimate interpreter.

That is precisely the strategy explained in greater detail in Saving Leonardo. Because secularism gives no basis for objective morality, secularists dismiss moral objections as mere private feelings and preferences. Then they tell opponents they have no right to apply their private preferences in the public square -- whether in politics or business or education or healthcare.

Of course, this clears the way for secularists to impose their own views in the public square. Codevilla explains the only way the secularist strategy can be resisted:

Because aggressive, intolerant secularism is the moral and intellectual basis of the ruling class's claim to rule, resistance to that rule . . . must deal with secularism's intellectual and moral core. This lies beyond the boundaries of politics as the term is commonly understood.

Just so. Because "ruling class" politics is shaped by secular worldviews, a political response alone is not enough. It is imperative to deal with the "intellectual and moral core" of those worldviews. That is why Saving Leonardo issues, as the subtitle puts it, "a call to resist" secular worldviews and to affirm a verifiable biblical worldview that provides the basis for a free society. 

Saving Leonardo can be pre-ordered here.

Added Friday, August 6: For more on resistance in our moment in history, please see "How the New Resistance Can Win the Culture War."

At Youtube:

At 1:14: Making fun of Track's name: "Where the h--- do they get these . . . "

At 1:54: Making fun of Palin's parents: "Can't make this up . . ."

At 4:26: Making fun of how to pronounce Palin's hometown of Wasilla, Alaska: "Terry, is it "Whysilay'?"

"Clearly, she is a JournOlist lurker at minimum," says one commenter at YouTube. "Isn't it funny how a former cheerleader and marginal new [sic] reader can criticize a former governor, beauty contest winner etc?" 

Hat tip: Drudge

"On Sunday, Prince William County police [in Virginia] arrested Carlos A. Martinelly Montano, 23, after he slammed head-on into a car in which three Benedictine nuns were traveling. Sister Denise Mosier was killed instantly, her two companions were taken by helicopter to the hospital where they both remain in critical condition," Dave Gibson writes at Examiner.com.

"Montano was charged with DUI and involuntary manslaughter," Gibson continues. "This is actually Montano’s third DUI arrest in Prince William County over the last five years. At the time of the crash, the illegal alien was free on bond while awaiting deportation proceedings."

Lesson: "This case is a tragic example of how the federal government has abandoned their duty to all of us," Gibson says. "How many more innocent Americans have to die before either the feds do their job and enforce immigration laws, or the states ignore Obama’s meddling and do it for themselves?"

Who Is Responsible? "Barack Obama and Janet Napolitano are just as responsible, through their inaction, for the death of Sister Denise Mosier as is the illegal alien who smashed into her," Gibson concludes.

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"The border situation, at its core, is not an economic issue, a cultural issue, or a race issue. It's a national security issue," writes Norah Peterson at American Thinker.

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