More on health care, and a specifically Christian perspective on it, later today.<\/p>\n
2.\u00a0 Apparently<\/a> the Senate version of the health care bill \u201cgives the Health and Human Services secretary the authority to develop \u2018standards of measuring gender\u2019 \u2014 as opposed to using the traditional \u201cmale\u201d and \u201cfemale\u201d categories \u2014 in a database of all who apply or participate in government-run or government-supported health care plans.\u201d\u00a0 The echoes of the academic war on gender binaries will be heard more in the halls of this White House than the last one.<\/p>\n 3.\u00a0 A case study<\/a> in good philanthropic intentions, paying top dollar for top \u201ctalent,\u201d and getting very little results when idealism meets reality.\u00a0 This is not reason, of course, to give up on philanthropic ventures.\u00a0 Bill Gates should be praised for the philanthropic turn in his life, and encouraged to give more of his billions.\u00a0 Yet the story of Avahan and its AIDS-prevention efforts in India is full of lessons, including the often-limited effect of throwing money at a problem.<\/p>\n 4.\u00a0 Thankfully, \u201cBr\u00fcno,\u201d after a boffo opening day, has completely tanked at the box office.\u00a0 Sascha Baron Cohen was lauded as a comic genius after his \u201cBorat\u201d film (although I thought his \u201cAli G\u201d show was funnier), and the crudeness of so much of the humor, and the more-than-questionable morality of duping people with false representations of their interviews and appearances, was blithely waved away.\u00a0 The Christian Film and Television Commission is pressing for communities to ban the movie from their theaters, but Sonny Bunch of the Washington Times advises against it.<\/p>\n It looks as if \u201cBr\u00fcno\u201d finally has shown just how far Hollywood can push audiences and the boundaries of taste before moviegoers push back. The cultural watchdogs on the right would do well to let this movie self-immolate instead of turning \u201cBruno\u201d and Mr. Baron Cohen into free-speech martyrs.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Sounds like good advice to me.<\/p>\n 5.\u00a0 This is not the kind of headline<\/a> you want to see if you\u2019re Obama: \u201cGreat Hopes for Obama Fade to Reality.\u201d\u00a0 This is one problem with the soaring rhetoric Obama has often used: people expect you actually to deliver on your promises.\u00a0 Compared to the previous twelve administrations, Obama ranks 10th in popularity at this point in his presidency.\u00a0 (Check out this<\/a> fascinating interactive feature on Presidential approval ratings.)\u00a0 This is not an especially meaningful barometer, but in some ways this may be a good development for the Obama administration.\u00a0 While Obama remains popular personally, many of his policies are not favored (as shown by various polls) by the American electorate.\u00a0 Once he reached the general election he campaigned as a post-partisan, post-racial unifier, someone who would take the best ideas from both sides and forge solutions which enjoyed support from a broad swath of America\u2019s political spectrum; yet since taking office he\u2019s claimed a mandate that is further to the left, more akin to the version of Obama he presented in the primary.\u00a0 It could be that Obama will be guided back toward pragmatic compromises, and perhaps to a more stable presidency that benefits the nation (and thus his legacy) more over the long term, by an increasing consciousness of the need to include moderates in his agenda.<\/p>\n Neither side of the aisle has a monopoly on good ideas and good intentions.\u00a0 Obama would be well-served to stop pretending that it\u2019s either his solutions or doing nothing, as though Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats are not offering their own bills.\u00a0 They are offering alternatives, but those get drowned out in the cacaphonous rhetoric against those imaginary opponents who \u201cwant to do nothing.\u201d\u00a0 The caricatures, the straw men, the false dichotomies, are beginning to become apparent to the American people, and they do not serve the interests of rational social discourse and reasonable solutions.<\/p>\n 6.\u00a0 Codex Sinaiticus is fully available online<\/a>.\u00a0 Codex Sinaiticus includes the earliest complete version of the New Testament, and stands among the most important documents in the history of the Christian church.<\/p>\n \u201cParchment and Pen\u201d has an excellent entry<\/a> on the codex and the rampant misreporting in the popular media.\u00a0 Is it any wonder evangelicals get frustrated with poor religion reporting?<\/p>\n 7.\u00a0 Interesting information<\/a> on Judge Sotomayor and current abortion law.\u00a0 It is a common misconception, the author writes, that states can criminalize late-stage abortion.\u00a0 Although it remains a rare practice, one can, in any state, as a matter of the Supreme Court\u2019s interpretation of the Constitution, terminate a 38-week (or 40-week, for that matter) unborn child for any reason.\u00a0 When the unborn child is viable, why does removing the child from the mother constitute a transition from \u201cnot a human life\u201d (and therefore an abortable \u201cfetus\u201d) to a human life that is constitutionally protected?<\/p>\n 8.\u00a0 Finally, yesterday\u2019s Morning Report referenced<\/a> religious and political persecution in North Korea\u2019s labor camps.\u00a0 omorrow (Thursday) is the 10-year anniversary<\/a> of China\u2019s torture and suppression of Falun Gong.\u00a0 I remember well, when I was in China in 1996, reading one of the first books of Li Hongzhi, the founder of Falun Gong.\u00a0 The book talked about meditation masters who could fly from mountaintop to mountaintop, pass through walls, and see to the astral plane.\u00a0 Apparently Falun Gong has changed a great deal over the years, partly in response to pressure from the Communist Party in China.\u00a0 In any case, all people of faith should protest when any person is persecuted because of his or her faith.\u00a0 One wishes that the persecution of Christians in China received as much coverage, but I am glad that the Chinese government should be pressured on its treatment of the religious.<\/p>\n Some of the awful details:<\/p>\n The group says 3,200 of its members, at a minimum, have been tortured to death by the Chinese government. It cites Wang Lixuan, who had to watch her 7-month-old son die in front of her after he was hung upside down. Then police broke her neck and crushed her skull.<\/p>\n Then there are the forced organ transplants, one of the things Miss Wenyi was protesting. Just before her White House visit, this newspaper interviewed a Chinese journalist who uncovered a secret detention center in northern China that was used to harvest human organs for sale to domestic and international buyers. (The Chinese, of course, denied such a place exists.) The journalist estimated 6,000 Falun Gong prisoners were being mined for body parts. The U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture, which chronicled the practice in March 2007, said the harvesting began in 2001.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.codexsinaiticus.org\/media\/images\/main_image.jpg\")
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