Homobonide twaddle, the cause of Robert Gates’ frustration By UWE SIEMON-NETTO Who is to blame for Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ frustration with NATO? In one word: Homobonides. You don’t know what Homobonides are? Not to worry. I have just made up this term, translating the sardonic German expression, Gutmenschen, into English with a little help from Latin. So what are Gutmenschen? Not really “good people,” as you might falsely assume after splitting this composite word into its two component parts.... Read more

Chuck Missler A year ago, The Telegraph reported that the city of Amsterdam had taken to dressing up undercover cops as Jews in order to discourage physical and verbal attacks on the Jewish population. According to local reports, “Jews in at least six Amsterdam neighbourhoods often cannot cross the street wearing a skullcap without being insulted, spat at or even attacked.” http://www.bibleprophecyblog.com/2011/06/hitlers-anti-semitism-still-alive-and.html Read more

God and the Atlantic: America, Europe, and the Religious Divide. By Thomas Albert Howard. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011, p. 256) Book review in THE CRESSET Those Americans who believe in American religious exceptionalism—that America’s experiment in voluntary religion has been a great blessing to America and the world—are in for a cold shower when they read Thomas Albert Howard’s new book from Oxford. Howard recounts the opinions of a myriad of European writers of the Left and Right... Read more

Matthew J Franck A sage older colleague of mine is fond of saying that integrity is something you can have just by deciding to have it. But you do have to decide. It’s that easy, and that hard. But those who would sacrifice ethics and the integrity of our institutions to the victory of a political cause must be sharply rebuked by fair-minded conservatives and liberals alike. http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2011/04/3213 Read more

Friends: Please don’t pass along yesterday’s blog entry about Cuba. I have removed it from the blog. The excellent missionary who brought us down there wrote to say that this could jeopardize years of careful work there, if it gets out on the Internet and to the wrong eyes. I regret sending it out, and pray it does not hurt anyone. Gerry Read more

It is as if a Sunbelt megachurch had been transplanted to Kiev, birthplace of Slavic Orthodoxy, land of onion-domed cathedrals and incense-shrouded icons. But the preacher at the podium has little if any connection to the United States. Could there be a more unlikely success story in the former Soviet Union than the Rev. Sunday Adelaja, an immigrant from Nigeria who has developed an ardent — and enormous — following across Ukraine? http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/23/world/europe/23kiev.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp Read more

Aside from a small circle of students and admirers, Rabbi Yehuda Ashlag was an unknown figure at his death in 1954. Today, religious schools and New Age “educational centers” around the world are actively spreading his ideas, and his writings are being analyzed by professors and graduate students. After spending an hour in the rabbi’s stone mausoleum, the pop-diva Madonna emerged with tears in her eyes. Who was this person to whom scores of pious (and impious) Jews and non-Jews... Read more

Associated Press That’s a much lower figure than the 3 to 5 percent that has been the conventional wisdom in the last two decades, based on other isolated studies and attempts to discredit Kinsey. http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gMalA70bwj-kM-a8yy13MTSESdoQ?docId=186e417a96794d5f8f54a71c5e051d7f Read more

Matthew J. Franck In the contemporary debate on the future of marriage, there appears to be, amid many uncertainties, one sure thing. Those who publicly defend traditional marriage can count on being denounced as haters, bigots, or irrational theocrats—and perhaps all of these at once. http://www.firstthings.com/article/2011/05/religion-reason-and-same-sex-marriage Read more

New York Times That might sound like a kids-these-days lament, but all evidence suggests that student disengagement is at its worst in Dr. Mason’s domain: undergraduate business education. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/education/edlife/edl-17business-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1 Read more