Sir Kenneth Clark's "Civilisation: Protest and Communication"

In this sixth episode of Lord Clark's classic documentary, "Civilisation," he examines the effect of the Reformation in 16th century Europe.

Ministry Says God, Not Obama, Is Answer to Schools Crisis

There is a simple response to the question "Why are our so many of our schools, and the students in them, in trouble?" The answer: God has been removed from the equation.

When our children and teens are faced with drugs, teen pregnancy, suicide, violence, abuse, and so much more, they often turn to their teachers for answers. Sadly, their teachers don't have permission to say, "Try it God's way." Need Him Ministries has taken the opportunity to address this very issue.

President Barack Obama is slated to give an address to the nation's school children on September 8. Later in the day, the 30-minute "Get Schooled: You Have the Right" documentary will air at 8:00 PM ET. The program, sponsored by The Gates Foundation, features President Barack Obama, Kelly Clarkson, and LeBron James. The "Get Schooled" program addresses the challenges facing US public schools.

At 7:59 and 8:31 PM ET, and during a mid-program break, viewers will see "Something's Not Right" the latest evangelism commercial by Need Him Ministries, an evangelism ministry based in Dallas. The commercial features a series of statements including "I'm failing; screwed up; alone; fear is killing me." It is simple and profound. Using real people, not actors, this effective television commercial relays a very direct message. "Like all of our Gospel spots for radio and television, we wanted to push the edge a bit," said Drew Dickens, Need Him Ministries' Executive Director, "and it was important to us to secure the time before and after this program to offer an eternal solution to the problems facing our country today."

"Today in America, far too many young people enter adulthood unprepared for college, career, and life," said Allan Golston, president of The Gates Foundation's U.S. Program. Dickens agrees and believes that "part of the problem is that we have removed prayer and the Ten Commandments from our schools and curriculum."

The message of Jesus Christ and the importance of having a personal relationship with God will reach more than one-million homes on DISH and DirectTV. The documentary special will be aired in the first programming "roadblock" of any kind across all Viacom networks, including BET, MTV, VH1, CMT, Comedy Central, Spike TV, TV Land, and Nickelodeon.

Edinburgh Military Tattoo 2009

School Speech Backlash Builds

From Politico
By Nia Malika Henderson

School districts from Maryland to Texas are fielding angry complaints from parents opposed to President Barack Obama’s back-to-school address Tuesday – forcing districts to find ways to shield students from the speech as conservative opposition to Obama spills into the nation’s classrooms.

The White House says Obama’s address is a sort of pep talk for the nation’s schoolchildren. But conservative commentators have criticized Obama for trying to “indoctrinate” students to his liberal beliefs, and some parents call it an improper mix of politics and education.

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Voter Referenda on Same-Sex "Marriage" on Nov. Ballot in Washington and Maine

Washington Gay activists attempting to obtain full details of referendum list to threaten, intimidate signers

From LifeSiteNews
By Peter J. Smith

Voters in the states of Washington and Maine will get the opportunity this November to decide the fate of same-sex "marriage" in their respective states, now that two measures have been certified to appear on the November ballot.

Maine election officials announced Wednesday that pro-family advocates had gathered more than enough signatures - nearly twice the number required - to effect a referendum on the same-sex "marriage" law passed by the Maine legislature. The referendum means Maine voters have the chance to exercise a "People's Veto" of the law, which if successful would then reduce the number of states legalizing same-sex "marriage" to five.

Democratic Gov. John Baldacci, who supports same-sex "marriage," yesterday signed the proclamation that puts the "Act To End Discrimination in Civil Marriage and Affirm Religious Freedom" on the ballot for November 3.

The Stand for Marriage Maine coalition collected just over 100,000 signatures, well over the required 55,087 validated signatures to bring the referendum to a vote. Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap's office stopped counting signatures at 60,391 before certifying the measure.

This leaves a two month time frame for pro-family advocates to make their case to the majority of Maine voters. Pro-family advocates in the Stand for Marriage Maine/Yes on 1 coalition count the Knights of Columbus, National Organization for Marriage, and the Portland Catholic Archdiocese as among their active supporters.

Meanwhile on the West Coast, the Secretary of State for Washington has approved R-71, a voter referendum that would overturn a law (SB 5688) passed by the legislature in April that gives homosexual couples all the rights and benefits of marriage, but stops short of giving same-sex unions the title of "marriage."

Pro-family advocates sponsoring R-71 under the banner of Protect Marriage Washington, however, say the law attacks the "historical understanding and definition of marriage" as the lifelong union of a man and a woman, and invites litigation that would lead to state courts legalizing same-sex "marriage."

Protect Marriage Washington submitted nearly 138,000 signatures by the July 25 deadline in order to get R-71 on the November ballot. However state elections officials threw out thousands of signatures, recognizing 121,617 signatures as the final tally. According to the Washington Secretary of State, just 120,557 were required to secure approval for the Referendum.

However the situation in Washington is far more precarious than in Maine, as homosexual activists plan to file a lawsuit on Thursday arguing that Secretary of State Sam Reed certified thousands of invalid signatures, which would then disqualify R-71 from the November ballot.

Yet the Protect Marriage Washington coalition is also fighting attempts by two homosexual activist groups to make the identities public of all Referendum 71 signers. The groups WhoSigned.org and KnowThyNeighbor.org have vowed to create searchable databases of the signers' names, along with the amount they gave and their place of employment. It is unclear whether their home addresses will also be published.

Pro-family advocates charge that the activists are using public disclosure laws to create an environment ripe for voter intimidation, harassment, and violence no different from what happened to Proposition 8 supporters in California. (see coverage here and here)

The Los Angeles Times reported in November that the El Coyote restaurant came under siege by hundreds of protesters, because one such website exposed the private $100 "Yes on 8" contribution of the owner's daughter, Marjorie Christoffersen. The rioting became so out of control at one point that the L.A. Police Department was forced to quell the disturbance in riot gear.

Christoffersen met with protesters and even broke down in tears, but the picketers were not satisfied, and continued their protest both in front of the store and online, where they deluged the restaurant with bad reviews.

U.S. District Court Judge Benjamin Settle has issued a temporary order blocking the release of petitioners' names and will hear arguments today from Protect Marriage Washington before making a decision.

Does Obama Hate Hispanics?

Hat Tip to Notes on the Culture Wars

From Townhall.com
By Ben Shapiro

Obama's Failure to Help May Spring from Racism

Welcome to Mendota, Calif. Its population is 10,000. Most of its families work in farming; the town used to be called the "cantaloupe capital of the world." Today, unemployment hovers around 41 percent. The town is now known as "the food-line capital," says Mendota's mayor, Robert Silva. This is the Dust Bowl, circa 2009.

Mendota is located in Fresno County, where July unemployment stood at 15 percent. And even that staggering number is artificially low because of all the temporary employees hired to pick the seasonal vegetables like squash, carrots, tomatoes and peppers.

Why are the communities of Fresno County suffering so deeply? Because in December 2008, the federal government decided that Fresno County, a farming-rich area which provides half of America's vegetables, no longer needed water. The farmers whose ancestors built the canals to irrigate the Central Valley have been totally cut off from their water supply, even though they're still paying bills for it. Hundreds of acres of prime farming land lie fallow, crops withered and dead.

All because the federal government thinks that smelt -- tiny 5- to 7-centimeter fish -- are more important than human beings. It seems that these annoying little creatures have been filleted by the water pumping systems necessary to make irrigation possible. They are now endangered. As the Fish and Wildlife Service put it, "it is the Service's biological opinion that the coordinated operations of the Central Valley Project and State Water Project, as proposed, are likely to jeopardize the continued existence of the delta smelt." In other words, all water supply must be shut down, lest the world lose the incomparably valuable smelt.

President Obama has two choices here. First, he can call off his dogs at the Fish and Wildlife Service -- after all, the Department of the Interior is answerable to the president. Second, he can declare Fresno County a disaster area and provide federal aid.

So far, he has done nothing.

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Controversial U.K. Mayor Cuts Gay Pride Funding, Pledges End to Political Correctness in Government

"His agenda, against all the tenets of consensual British politics, consists of doing what the public wants."

From LifeSiteNews
By Hilary White

The recently elected mayor of Doncaster, in South Yorkshire, has infuriated Britain's politically powerful homosexualist lobby by attempting to withhold local funding for this year's Gay Pride celebrations. The funding for this year's event in June went through, but Mayor Peter Davies, a member of the English Democrat party and the father of Tory MP Philip Davies, has scrapped all future funding for the annual Gay Pride event.

"I'm not a homophobe," he said, "but I don't see why council taxpayers should pay to celebrate anyone's sexuality."

Davies is only the second mayor of Doncaster to have been elected directly by a popular vote rather than by council members. He campaigned on a popular platform, that has reportedly alarmed the political classes on both the Labour and Tory sides of the House, in which he pledged to "stamp out political correctness" in every area of Doncaster's local government.

To accomplish this, Davies has recruited the group Campaign Against Political Correctness (CAPC) to consult on his planned reforms. A spokesman for the CAPC, John Midgley, said that "people are crying out" for an end to the wave of politically correct policies in Britain. "We commissioned a survey by ICM," Midgley said, "that said 80 per cent of people are fed up to the back teeth with it."

Davies promised to end council funding for "politically correct initiatives" and to "scrap politically correct non-jobs" such as "community cohesion officers" and "encourage the former employees to seek meaningful employment."

In his first week in office, Davies fulfilled his promises by cutting his own salary from £73,000 to £30,000; reducing the number of councillors from 63 to 21, saving the town £800,000 a year. He immediately announced plans to reduce council tax by 3 per cent and got rid of the mayoral limousine. He ended a "twinning" arrangement with five towns around the world, which he described as "just for people to fly off and have a binge at the council's expense."

While campaigning earlier this year, and in the midst of a national pandemic of violent youth crime, Davies, who is a retired school teacher, called for harsher punishments for "young thugs." As a founding member of the Campaign for Real Education, Davies has pressed for restoration of traditional methods in schools that he says will reduce crime and restore Britain's once-legendary public order.

He also called on the government to withdraw Britain from the European Union "in order to save billions of pounds each year and return control of the country's affairs to our own parliament."

Calling him the UK's "most gloriously un-PC" mayor, the Daily Mail's Robert Hardman asked, "Who should be most worried about his success: Labour or the Tories? Because his message threatens both."

Hardman commented, "To the shock and dismay of many local councillors and MPs, most of Westminster and the entire Government, the assiduously straight-talking Mr. Davies has just become one of the most powerful politicians in Britain."

Columnist and pundit Gerald Warner, writing for the Daily Telegraph's blog, called Davies's tenure "the beginning of the end for political correctness" and a sign that "the counter-revolution has begun." His agenda, Warner wrote, "against all the tenets of consensual British politics, consists of doing what the public wants."