Kirsten Andersen reports at LifeSiteNews:

Senator Rand Paul told ABC News on Wednesday that he agreed with the Supreme Court decision striking down a key portion of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) on the grounds that he believes marriage should be regulated by states, not the federal government. He praised the author of the decision, Justice Anthony Kennedy, for trying to "keep up with opinion" on the issue and said that members of the Republican Party would have to "agree to disagree" on the definition of marriage.

Paul, who is widely expected to be a top contender for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, said that he felt Justice Kennedy's majority opinion "tried to strike a balance" and praised Kennedy as "someone who doesn’t just want to be in front of opinion but wants government to keep up with opinion. . . .

"As a country, we can agree to disagree," said Paul.

Sen. Paul’s spokesman, Doug Stafford told LifeSiteNews.com on Thursday that, while Paul personally believes in "traditional marriage between one man and one woman," he also "believes the issue is a state issue and not a federal one."

Rand Paul is wrong on this. Marriage is not a personal issue about which one may disagree or about which the nation can agree to disagree.

Rather, the verifiable Creator has given objective publicly actionable information regarding the pre-government ontic status of marriage, and neither Rand Paul, the individual states, nor the federal government has the authority to alter this unalienable institution of society, which is also an ontic fact of life. This I assert not religiously as a matter of private belief (which is the false secular dumbed-down notion of "faith") but rather humanly and Biblically as a matter of fact grounded in the real world, just as the avant-garde Founders moved forward on the basis of the publicly actionable verifiable truth communicated by the Creator (see, for example, the Declaration of Independence).

Of course, through sheer power, human beings can try to redefine marriage. But the reality of marriage per se does not change just because arrogant human beings ascribe to themselves the authority of Deity or the power to alter the liberating constants of the universe.

Societies indeed can transform themselves by "reimagining" the definition of marriage. But then those societies are ripe for social disintegration and massive governmental control to avoid total collapse. Slavery seems a high price to buy the extremist line about "marriage equality."

When I liberate a plant from soil, it dies. A nation liberated from the soil of freedom can look alive for a while, but it dies, too. Of course, extremists can agitate for such "liberation" in the name of any number of issues, including "marriage equality," but the trajectory and unfortunate outcome remain the same.

Rand Paul has harmed his chances to win the 2016 GOP nomination for president. Americans who desire a full-bodied advance on the basis of the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights would do well to press Paul on this matter -- and simultaneously to look elsewhere for more sure champions of human freedom and dignity.

Related
Memo to Conservatives: Accepting Homosex "Marriage" Opens Door to "Unlimited Statism"
Pro-Same-Sex "Marriage" Lesbian: "Institution of Marriage Should Not Exist"

From Investor's Business Daily:

President Obama is being lauded for his plans to restrict carbon dioxide emissions. But the scheme looks more like the last refuge of a desperate movement, because the speech he gave in its defense was full of lies.

Al Gore called Obama's Tuesday presentation at Georgetown University a "terrific and historic speech." It was not an honest message, though.

His text was laden with myths, fables, distortions and outright lies. Here are the top five:

1. "The planet is warming." . . .

2. "Human activity is contributing to it." . . .

3. "The overwhelming judgment of science -- of chemistry and physics and millions of measurements — has put all that (doubt) to rest." . . .

4. "Ninety-seven percent of scientists, including, by the way, some who originally disputed the data, have now put that (doubt) to rest." . . .

5. "Americans across the country are already paying the price of inaction in insurance premiums, state and local taxes, and the costs of rebuilding and disaster relief."
. . .

Related
Global Warming Theory Challenged by Top UK Scientific Body 
Oxford Debate: Climate Realism Beats Warming at Campus Showdown

Tony Lee reports at Breitbart:

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who has the most influence among conservative voters in Republican primaries, told Breitbart News on Tuesday that Sens. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) should be primaried for their support of the Senate's immigration bill.

“Conservatives are getting ready for the 2014 and 2016 primaries. We have long memories, and there will be consequences for those who break campaign promises and vote for this amnesty bill," Palin told Breitbart News. . . .

Palin responded to Breitbart News's request for comment about an interview she did earlier on Tuesday with John Gibson on Fox News radio in which she said Rubio and Ayotte "turned their back" on voters and should be primaried to be held accountable. Rubio and Ayotte will be up for reelection in 2016.

"Palin said Rubio had promised that 'border security would come first,' and he would not support 'legalization of illegal immigrants' and 'amnesty' before border security while running in the Florida Republican Senate primary against Charlie Crist in 2010," Breitbart reports.

Palin also said Ayotte, "whom she endorsed, had on her campaign website in 2010 that there were 'no excuses' not to secure the border and also said she would not support amnesty," according to Breitbart.

Related 
False Sense of Border Security
Coulter: Beware of Amnesty Liberals in Evangelical Clothing
"Amnesty" Memo Reflects "Dictatorial Executive Branch"

Ryan Mauro writes at Frontpagemag.com:

The Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entity, is hard at work developing interfaith political alliances. Of these partnerships, Baptist leaders have proven to be among the tightest.

In its latest newsletter, ISNA promotes an article by Rev. Brent Walker, Executive Director of the Baptist Joint Committee on Religious Liberty. Walker boasts of how his organization stood with ISNA against "misguided congressional investigations of terrorism focused only on Islam."

The ISNA official that Walker specifically references as a friend is Sayyid Syeed, former ISNA Secretary-General and current director of its Office for Interfaith and Community Alliances. In 2006, he was recorded stating, "Our job is to change the constitution of America."

"This comment is less surprising when you consider ISNA’s background," Mauro writes. "A 1991 U.S. Muslim Brotherhood memo identifies it as one of its fronts for its “kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within."

Related
Florida Megachurch Pastor's Ties to Islamists 
Big Brotherhood: Egypt's Morsi Takes Dictatorial Powers 
Franklin Graham: World's Christians in Grave Danger

John Nolte at Breitbart writes about an attempted setup in Amarillo:

ABC News displays its own kind of bigotry by setting up their hidden cameras at a famous steakhouse in Amarillo, Texas, to hunt for homophobes.

Three child actors dressed as Boy Scouts sit at a community table. One comes out to his friends as gay, and ABC News is there to capture the Southern-fried bigotry. . . .

"If anchor John Quinones had even a hint of moral courage, he would turn that hidden camera on his colleagues who work in the powerful world of media. Wouldn’t it be interesting to see what the media would do in certain situations involving conservatives, Christianity, Barack Obama, oh, and Southerners?," Nolte observes. "But Quinones isn't about afflicting the comfortable; he is a bullying cultural enforcer targeting the powerless."

Related
Revolt of Intelligence Against "Marriage Equality"
Memo to Supreme Court: Who Respects the Human Body? Not Homosexuals 
Memo to Conservatives: Accepting Homosex "Marriage" Opens Door to "Unlimited Statism"
Pro-Same-Sex "Marriage" Lesbian: "Institution of Marriage Should Not Exist"
Exxon Says No to Homosexualist Aggression

The U.K. Telegraph reports:

The Church of England is trying to recruit pagans and spiritual believers as part of a drive to retain congregation numbers.

The church is training ministers to create "a pagan church where Christianity [is] very much in the centre" to attract spiritual believers.

Ministers are being trained to create new forms of Anglicanism suitable for people of alternative beliefs as part of a Church of England drive to retain congregation numbers.

Reverend Steve Hollinghurst, a researcher and adviser in new religious movements told the BBC: "I would be looking to formulate an exploration of the Christian faith that would be at home in their culture."

He said it would be "almost to create a pagan church where Christianity was very much in the centre."

"The Church Mission Society, which is training ministers to 'break new ground,' hopes to see a number of spiritual people align themselves with Christianity," according to the Telegraph.

Also, "the new move could see famous druids such as druid leader Arthur Pendragon move to Anglicanism," the Telegraph reports.

Related
David Cameron: Great Britain Is a "Christian Country"

David Snoke writes at The Christian Scientific Society: 

When I first saw that the new book by Steve Meyer, Darwin’s Doubt, centered on the Cambrian Explosion, I was loathe to read it. I had been led to believe over the years that everything that could be said about the Cambrian Explosion has already been said. I was quite happy to believe that the only real discontinuities in the story of life occurred at the origin of life and at the origin of human consciousness.

I should have known better; science marches onward, and old arguments get reexamined as new data arises. Steve Meyer’s book is a wonderful, comprehensive case that the origin of the major types of animals, namely the phyla, is just as strikingly discontinuous as the the origin of life. . . ."

Snoke's review includes a good discussion of the problem of information in living things. He writes:

After posing the problem, Meyer discusses some of the non-orthodox, semi-Darwinian proposals floated in the last few decades, such as Gould’s punctuated equilibrium and epigenetic neo-Lamarkianism. All of these are built on a surprising amount of hand-waving, invoking new terms but brushing over the actual physical mechanisms.

One section I was quite happy about was the section on “self-organization,” promoted by Kaufmann, Prigogene, and others. This area has had a strong following in the physics world for three decades, but I have always thought it was sterile, for the reasons that Meyer cites. Essentially, getting "order" from natural self-organizing process and getting "information" are two totally different things.

"Order" is easy -- all you need is a natural length scale to arise in a system and "spontaneous symmetry breaking" will lead to orderly patterns on this length scale. This is true of atomic crystals at low temperature and rows of clouds in the sky.

But the very nature of information, whether in DNA or human writing, precludes natural forces from generating it. DNA can hold information precisely because there is no natural force demanding the nucleic acids be in one location or another. All information requires this type of "contingency," that is, openness to many possible choices; a system which is driven to one required state holds no information.  

Stephen Meyer holds a Ph.D. in philosophy of science from Cambridge University. David Snoke, Ph.D., is professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Pittsburgh, as well as president of the Christian Scientific Society.

Related
Free Thought on Darwin at Union-Tribune
Dawkins: Nazi Eugenics "May Not Be Bad"?

Arnold Ahlert writes at Frontpagemag.com:

On Thursday, the Senate reached a tentative deal on border security aimed at encouraging more Republicans to support so-called comprehensive immigration reform.

Senators Bob Corker (R-TN) and John Hoeven (R-ND) put together a deal with the "Gang of Eight" that calls for 700 miles of new fencing along the Mexican border, a near doubling of Border Patrol agents, and the purchase of aerial drones for additional border policing.

Breitbart’s Matthew Boyle accurately describes the real objective behind this effort. "The so-called 'compromise' on border security . . . is a sham meant to give political cover to Republicans who want to vote for amnesty but cannot be seen opposing border security."

Related
Coulter: Beware of Amnesty Liberals in Evangelical Clothing
"Amnesty" Memo Reflects "Dictatorial Executive Branch"

"The Mainstream Valedictorian vs. Hysterical Atheists" appears on this page.

Allie Bidwell reports at USNews & World Report: 

Continuing a decades-long downward trend, fewer than one-fourth of Americans have confidence in newspapers, according to a recent Gallup poll.

The percentage of Americans saying they have "a great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in newspapers dropped to 23 percent this year from 25 percent last year, according to a report on the poll, which was released Monday. . . .

Confidence in television news has also been slipping -- it's tied with newspapers this year at 23 percent, which is slightly up from last year's all-time low of 21 percent.

Related
CBS Anchor: "We Are Getting Big Stories Wrong, Over and Over Again"
Ted Turner's Son: CNN So Far Left I Mostly Watch Fox 
CNN Star Caught Reading Liberal Blog on Air
Report: MSNBC Host Touré Founded "Militant Anti-White Student Newspaper"
MSNBC: No Negative Obama Stories -- and No Positive Romney Stories -- Last Week of Campaign
"Objective" Journalism and the Formerly Mainstream Media

Josh Peterson reports at The Daily Caller: 

Domestic spying capabilities used by the National Security Agency to collect massive amounts of data on American citizens could soon be available to the Department of Homeland Security -- a bureaucracy with the power to arrest citizens that is not subject to limitations imposed on the NSA.

Unlike the DHS, the NSA is an intelligence agency, not a domestic law enforcement agency. It cannot arrest those suspected of wrongdoing. That power of the federal government lies with agencies under the jurisdiction of the Justice Department, the Treasury, Homeland Security and other law enforcement agencies.

Related
Homeland Security Buys 2,717 Armored Vehicles 
Is "Homeland" Ammo for Obama's "National Security Force"?

Paul Bedard reports at the Washington Examiner:

A new 253-page Obamacare rule issued late Friday requires state, federal and local agencies as well as health insurers to swap the protected personal health information of anybody seeking to join the new health care program that will be enforced by the Internal Revenue Service.

Personal health information, or PHI, is highly protected under federal law, but the latest ruling from the Department of Health and Human Services allows agencies to trade the information to verify that Obamacare applicants are getting the minimum amount of health insurance coverage they need from the health "exchanges."

"The ruling, explained on pages 72-73 of the book-thick guidance, does not mention any requirement that applicants first OK the release of their PHI," Bedard reports.

Related
Obamacare Revolt: Doctors Find Ways to Offer High Quality Care at Much Lower Prices 
Wisconsin Legislators: Arrest Federals Trying to Implement Obamacare

My column "Pushing the Envelope: Mainstream Valedictorian Defies Secular Extremism" is published here.

Here's a key passage:

Roy Costner was supposed to follow a script pre-approved by imperious functionaries of a secular state.

But their extremism is at odds not only with the American mainstream but also with the transgenerational mainstream of free thought and of free humanity created in the image of God and not in the image of the state, the particles of an impersonal cosmos, or the results of agenda-driven polls.

Costner chose instead a humane resistance of love and truth on behalf of God and man. This "defiance" may confuse some observers today, but it should be of little surprise to those who affirm the content of the Lord’s Prayer. For included in that communication is publicly actionable information regarding an enduring and liberating mandate of human existence: the challenge to do God’s will "on earth, as it is in heaven."

That liberation can mean feeding the poor, rescuing 12-year-old girls from sex-trafficking, creating magnificent art, inaugurating the scientific enterprise, or sharing the Good News about a resistance movement launched from heaven. It might even mean bright young men and women rocking secular boats at public events in South Carolina and elsewhere -- maybe even "unto the end of the earth," as the Ringleader puts it (Acts 1). He and his people do have a knack for pushing the envelope.

This column is also published at The Pearcey Report.

Susan Jones reports at CNSNews.com:

By law, it is now okay to say "Merry Christmas" or "Happy Hanukkah" in Texas public schools.

Gov. Rick Perry signed House Bill 308 on Thursday, allowing public school students and staff to use traditional holiday greetings and display religious scenes and symbols on school property.

"I'm proud we are standing up for religious freedom in our state," CNS quotes Gov. Perry as saying.

"Freedom of religion doesn't mean freedom from religion, and people of faith often feel like they can't express that faith publicly," the governor continued.

"HB 308 works to address that by ensuring that people of all faiths are free to use traditional holiday greetings, and display religious scenes and symbols, even on school property. It ensures freedom of expression where, for many students, teachers and administrators, it's most important."

Related
Mainstream Valedictorian Upsets Atheist Hardliners
Oregon Panel OKs Bill Requiring Daily Pledge of Allegiance in Schools 
Massachusetts Forces Schools to Let "Transgender" Boys Use Girls' Restrooms, Lockers

Margaret Hartmann reports at NYMagazine:

The latest school assignment infuriating New York parents comes from Jessica Barrish, a new English teacher at York Prep, who had students as young as 14 write suicide notes from the perspective of a character in The Secret Life of Bees last month.

Related
Student Reprimanded for Defending Classmate Against Knife-Wielding Bully 
Texas High School Student Suspended for Saying Homosexuality Is Wrong

From Investor's Busness Daily:

As long as we're talking about leaks that should be prosecuted, let's consider the leaking by the Environmental Protection Agency of the personal data about farmers to their environmentalist opponents. . . .

. . . A letter from a group of 24 senators to Acting EPA Administrator Perciasepe claims that the EPA has "released farm information for 80,000 livestock facilities in 30 states as the result of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from national environmental organizations."

"It is our understanding," the senators say, "that the initial release of data contained personal information that was not required by the FOIA request for 10 states including Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio and Utah. This release included names and personal addresses."

"Not long ago Nebraska's congressional delegation sent an angry letter to then-EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson complaining that the EPA had exceeded its legislative and constitutional authority by conducting drone surveillance flights over Nebraska and Iowa farms looking for violations of the Clean Water Act," IBD states.

"It's no wonder Jackson used secret email accounts to conduct her business, even to the point of creating a fake identity, 'Richard Windsor,' to hide what she needed to keep hidden and evade open-records laws," IBD continues.

Conclusion: "Drones, fake identities and now the EPA releasing personal data to activists' political enemies. Big Brother is really watching us. Will anyone be prosecuted? Can this administration be trusted?"

Related
Big Question: What Should Be Banned -- Asthma Inhalers or the EPA? 
Senator: EPA Regulations Violate Constitutional Rights 
Czech Prez: What Climate Activists Really Want

Sydney Volanski writes at LifeSiteNews:

Tell me who you hang out with and I’ll tell you who you are.

Anna Maria Chávez, CEO of Girl Scouts USA (GSUSA), offers this pithy saying as her favorite quote. In order to figure out who the Girl Scouts are, I suppose we must follow Ms. Chávez’ logic and look at the organizations that GSUSA associates with.

A good place to start would be the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts (WAGGGS). WAGGGS has member organizations across the globe, the largest of which is GSUSA, contributing approximately a quarter of the ten million members that belong to WAGGGS.

GSUSA is a co-founder of WAGGS and one of WAGGGS’ largest financial supporters, paying over $1 million each year in membership fees which are triggered by each girl and adult member’s annual GSUSA registration.

The global organization is a well-known advocate for sexual and reproductive rights, including abortion, for youth, and claims to speak for all of its 10 million members.

"In May 2013, WAGGGS participated in Women Deliver, a global conference with the purpose of 'call[ing] for action to improve the health and well-being of girls and women'," Volanski writes.

"The conference featured speakers such as late-term abortionist LeRoy Carhart, philosopher Peter Singer, who supports infanticide and euthanasia, and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius," Volanski continues.

"Some of the breakout sessions were entitled 'Outing and Addressing Abortion Stigma' and 'Why I Perform Abortions'," according to Volanski. "Exhibitors included many abortion and population control advocates such as Amnesty International, Guttmacher Institute, International Planned Parenthood Federation, Marie Stopes International, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, United Nations Population Fund, and WAGGGS."

Related
15-Year-Old on Girl Scouts: "We Were So Deceived" 
Radical Rules for Girl Scouts' Birthday
Girl Scouts "Give Thanks" for Membership in Worldwide Pro-Abortion Organization 

A bully with a knife had a classmate in a headlock and could slit his throat at any moment.

Seventh-grader Briar MacLean of Calgary intervened and protected the boy from this immediate threat. 

But "instead of getting a pat on the back for his bravery, Briar was made to feel as if he had done something terribly wrong. The police were called, the teen filed a statement and his locker was searched," Jen Gerson reports at the National Post.

Briar's mother was "politely informed" by the vice principal that the school "did not 'condone heroics'" and that her son Brian "should have found a teacher to handle the situation."

The mother asked the vice principal, "In the time it would have taken him to go get a teacher, could that kid’s throat have been slit?"

The vice principal "said yes, but that’s beside the point," the Post reports. We "don’t condone heroics in this school."

Related
Public Schools Turning Teens Into Relativists
Texas High School Student Suspended for Saying Homosexuality Is Wrong
Mandated Curriculum: "Everything I Love About Teaching Is Extinct" 

The Atlantic has an excellent report on a survey asking why young people are leaving the Christian church. The survey was conducted by Larry Alex Taunton of Fixed Point Foundation, and the college students surveyed included members of Secular Student Alliances or Freethought Societies. Most of the students had been raised in Christian churches and families.

Bob Beckel on Fox News' The Five had this to say yesterday, in response to a NYTimes editorial titled, "President Obama's Dragnet":

I think it is one of the most outrageous examples of the stepping on the Constitution that I’ve heard. They have no right to phone records. These phone records, they get both sides. They monitor how long the phone converstation takes place. People who have no . . . they're not on record for anything.

This is the government getting into our business that it ought to be out. It is illegal, it is unconstitutional, and it is deplorable. I didn’t like it when they did it in the Bush administration and I don’t like when they’re doing it now. . . .

They're taking my phone records. Get your hands off my phone records! . . . The government has no right.

They have taken this Patriot Act, which I think was the most dangerous act passed, and they have taken it and they have abused it. . . . 

You talk about fascism. You’re getting d--- close to it.

Related 
Fascism Is Back
Francis Schaeffer: "Revolution Is Coming and Is Here"
Mark Levin on Obama Gun Action: "This Is 1930s Stuff"
Video: Immigrant to Conn. Gun Panel -- "Few saw the 3rd Reich coming until it was too late"

Chelsea Schilling reports at WND:

In unapologetic defiance of a South Carolina school district’s ban on prayer at graduation ceremonies, valedictorian Roy Costner IV shredded his approved speech and rocked the crowd at his high-school commencement -- with a reading of the "Lord’s Prayer." 

The audience went wild June 1 when Costner surprised attendees of the Liberty High School graduation at Clemson’s Littlejohn Colliseum with his tribute to the Almighty.

Immediately after he took the stage, Costner explained to the crowd that his original graduation speech had been pre-approved by the administration -- but he didn’t proceed as they had planned.

"Those that we look up to, they have helped carve and mold us into the young adults that we are today," Costner said.

"I’m so glad that both of my parents led me to the Lord at a young age," the Valedictorian continued.

"And I think most of you will understand when I say, 'Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done: on Earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us for our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever and ever. Amen.'"

As this YouTube video demonstrates and WND reports, "The crowd roared with support."

Well done, Roy Costner IV.

Related 
Atheists Try to Stop Prayers Before Football Games
Pentagon May Court-Martial Soldiers Who Share the Gospel 
Cal Thomas v. Star Parker: Should Ben Carson Apologize to Obama for Prayer Breakfast Remarks? 
Survey: Pervasive Anti-Religious Hostility in U.S. Irrefutable

LifeSiteNews.com reports:

Bioethicist Peter Singer compared women and children to cows overgrazing a field and said that women’s reproductive rights may one day have to be sacrificed for the environment. He made the remarks at the global Women Deliver Conference last week, hailed as the most important meeting to focus on women and girls’ human rights in a decade.

The controversial Princeton University professor, known for championing infanticide and bestiality, was a featured panelist on Thursday at the three-day Women Deliver conference attended by Melinda Gates and more than 4,000 abortion and contraception activists in Kuala Lumpur.

"The right to graze as many cows as you like on the common was not an absolute right," Singer is quoted as saying.

"Obviously this is what I think we ought to be saying even about how many children we have . . . I hope we don’t get to a point where we do have to override it . . . but I don’t think we ought to shrink away from considering that as a possibility," Singer said, according to LifeSiteNews.

Related
Why Pro-Abortion Is Anti-Science
Human-Hating Roots of the Green Movement

HBU announces in a press release:

Houston Baptist University has recruited atheist-turned-Christian Lee Strobel, the former award-winning legal editor of The Chicago Tribune and New York Times best-selling author of more than 20 books, to join the faculty of the Department of Apologetics in the University’s School of Christian Thought.

Described in the Washington Post as "one of the evangelical community’s most popular apologists," Strobel became a Christian in 1981 after a nearly two-year investigation of the evidence for Jesus. Beginning in 1987, he served on the staffs of Willow Creek Church in South Barrington, Ill., and Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., before shifting his focus to writing.

In 2005, Strobel shared the Christian Book of the Year award for a curriculum he co-authored with Garry Poole about the movie The Passion of the Christ. He also won Gold Medallions for his books The Case for Christ, The Case for Faith and The Case for a Creator, all of which have been made into documentaries distributed by Lionsgate.

Strobel, who holds a Bachelor of Journalism from the University of Missouri and a Master of Studies in Law from Yale Law School, also is co-author of the Becoming a Contagious Christian course, which has trained more than a million Christians to naturally and effectively talk with others about Jesus. His articles have been published in a variety of magazines, and he has been interviewed on numerous national radio and TV programs.

"As one of the most well-known apologists of the last two decades, Lee Strobel has spoken to audiences both young and old, including tens of thousands of university students," said Dr. Robert B. Sloan Jr., HBU president. "He is an engaging advocate for the historical and truthful character of the Christian faith, and his personal testimony is compelling. We believe having him join our already outstanding group of nationally and internationally known apologists will be a blessing both to the University and to all who are courageous enough to hear the case for Christ and are willing to be challenged and encouraged by the truthfulness of the Christian faith."

The recruitment of Strobel is just the latest in a string of recent hires designed to strengthen the School of Christian Thought at HBU, which also includes Nancy Pearcey, who The Economist has called "America’s pre-eminent evangelical Protestant female intellectual," and Jerry Walls, author of more than a dozen books, including Good God: The Theistic Foundations of Morality, which won the 2012 Christianity Today Book Award in the Apologetics/Evangelism category. HBU is also home to three of the best known scholars in C.S. Lewis studies, including Dr. Michael Ward, who was hired recently to direct the University’s new C.S. Lewis Centre in Oxford, England.

For adding these and other acclaimed Christian scholars to its faculty and launching new graduate programs in philosophy and apologetics, the University was ranked fourth on a list of the "Top 15 Colleges for Studying the Bible" compiled earlier this year by the editors of thebestschools.org.

Related
Edith Schaeffer and the Apologetics of Beauty 
Christmas Spirit in Space and Time

Andy Kessler at the Wall Street Journal highlights a major move toward online education:

[Georgia Tech] is making major waves in business and higher education with its May 14 announcement that the college will offer the first online master's degree in computer science -- and that the degree can be had for a quarter of the cost of a typical on-campus degree.

"Many other universities are experimenting with open online courses, or MOOCs, but Georgia Tech's move raises the bar significantly by offering full credit in a graduate program," Kessler writes.

"Sadly," Kessler continues, this experiment is "not without controversy."

Ken Klukowski writes at Breitbart.com:

One month ago the Pentagon assured the public it was not being advised by anti-Christian extremist Mikey Weinstein [photo].

Yet [three] days ago Weinstein called the Pentagon demanding that a Christian painting be removed from a dining hall in an Idaho Air Force base, and the Pentagon complied with his demand -- in less than one hour.

"Mikey Weinstein has been meeting with top Pentagon officials during the Obama administration since 2009," Klukowski writes. "He continues to communicate with them at will, and they immediately respond to his demands. He is therefore an unpaid advisor to the Obama-Hagel Pentagon, with considerable influence."

Klukowski notes that "it’s been more than two weeks since roughly 100 congressmen demanded answers from Hagel, but have not heard a word in response. Yet this anti-Christian extremist brags about how the Pentagon leaps into action when he makes a demand, removing Christian artwork in less than an hour."

Klukowski concludes: "Lawmakers are likely to intensify their efforts to find out what’s going on here, and what they can do to stop this assault on Christians in the military."

Related
Pentagon May Court-Martial Soldiers Who Share the Gospel 
Extremism In, Extremism Out: Obama's Soldiers for Secularism 
What Is "Mainstream" America?

Thaddeus Balinski reports at LifeSiteNews.com:

At its annual shareholder meeting this week, the world's largest oil company, ExxonMobil, rejected a proposal demanding changes to its Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) policy that would have granted special rights to homosexual employees.

The proposal, voted down by 81 percent of ExxonMobil's shareholders on May 30 read, "The Shareholders request that ExxonMobil amend its written equal employment opportunity policy to explicitly prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity and to substantially implement the policy."

"This vote marks the 14th year in a row that the company has refused to cave in to the demands of gay activists for special rights for homosexuals," LifeSiteNews reports. "ExxonMobil said it already prohibits 'all forms of discrimination' and 'believes the proposal is unnecessary'."

In point of fact, saying "no" to homosexualist aggression against the verifiable Creator's liberating and protective norms for human sexuality and married life is not discrimination, but rather, sanity and a mark of intelligence.

In addition, civil rights that are real civil rights are rooted in the same Creator who is the source of unalienable human rights, a source that the defining mainstream of American form and freedom has long respected (see the Declaration of Independence).  

Any "civil right" that is alienated from the Author of unalienable human rights is actually an attack on human freedom and human dignity. Such attacks may use the language of rights, but they in fact reject the true basis of those rights. The result is relativism and statism, not human freedom and dignity. 

Exxon is to be commended for wanting to be a good corporate citizen -- and to do so, it needs intentionally to base its practice of good corporate citizenship upon the only known adequate foundation for human rights and human dignity. That happens to be the Creator (who is verifable and not a matter of blind faith) and not the state or any particular activist group or agenda that depises and discriminates against that self-same Creator and against those who respect a life of love and truth in community with God and man.

Related
Revolt of Intelligence Against "Marriage Equality"
Memo to Conservatives: Accepting Homosex "Marriage" Opens Door to "Unlimited Statism"
Memo to Supreme Court: Who Respects the Human Body? Not Homosexuals
Pro-Same-Sex "Marriage" Lesbian: "Institution of Marriage Should Not Exist"