Volunteer chaplains in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department
have been banned from using Jesus’ name during prayers that are uttered
during public events.
Rather than serving as a discriminatory practice, the new policy is
intended — at least according to Major John Diggs who oversees the
chaplain program — as an effort to respect people of all faiths.
“[It's a] matter of respecting that people may have different faiths
and that it is not aimed at any one religion or denomination,” Diggs told WSOC-TV.
But while Diggs claims that the decision is rooted in not offending
non-Christians and that it is not geared toward any particular
denomination, some are voicing their disapproval. Take, for instance,
Pastor Terry Sartain, who is the senior faith leader at Horizon Christian Fellowship and who has been a chaplain with the police department for seven years.
Sartain was scheduled to speak recently at a government event where
he planned, as per usual, to use Jesus’ name in his invocation. Just
before the event, he received a phone call informing him of the
new-found ban. Naturally, he was saddened and made the decision not to
attend the event.
“When I heard this I was sad,” he explained. ”I asked if I could withdraw, because Jesus is the only thing I have to bless people with.”
In the end, the pastor was told that his decision not to attend and
pray at the event will hurt his standing as a chaplain. Despite this
incident, Sartain pledges to stay with the ministry, as he believes his
work with the police officers is important. That being said, he has
asked to have his name removed from the roster of individuals who would
offer up public prayers at local events.
Read More From The Blaze
Thursday, June 21, 2012
Adults Heckle NYC Schoolchildren While They Sing ‘God Bless the USA’
We already told you about the New York City public school principal who banned
“God Bless the USA” from a kindergarten graduation program. Now, the
same schoolchildren who were forbidden from singing the song at P.S. 90
in Brooklyn were heckled by adults when they performed the song at a
protest event held in a nearby park.
(Related: Update: Principal Pulls Bieber Song From Graduation Line-Up, Still Doesn‘t Reinstate ’God Bless the USA’)
Parents, outraged by Principal Greta Hawkins’ decision to ban the song, organized the protest and invited Rep. Bob Turner (R-NY) to attend (he’s running against Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand). But the event, which was assembled to allow the children and families to make their opposition to Hawkins’ stance known, went terribly wrong when some adults chose to shout over the children in protest.
Video of the incident shows boys and girls waving flags and singing Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA.” As they performed, though, some angry adults began swarming and shouting. Turner confirmed that these events unfolded in an interview with Fox News Radio, calling the actions “really bad form.”
“You Republicans come go to a Republican area and do that, we don’t do that here,” proclaimed one of the counter protesters. “This is ridiculous, this is sad. This is so crazy. This is sad.”
As Fox’s Todd Starnes notes, one of the staffers told the protesters to stop intervening and to let the kids sing. To that request, one of them responded, claiming that the spectacle was “ridiculous” and that those orchestrating the event were going to “burn in hell.”
“The kids don’t even know what they’re singing. They got something you tell them to say. It’s ridiculous,” he said. “It’s sad, sad, sad. You all are going to burn in hell. You all burn in hell. Shame on you. Shame on you.”
In an attempt to drown the protesters out, the children began chanting “USA, USA, USA!“ One of the kids even told the most vocal of the detractors to ”get out of here.”
Read More from The Blaze
(Related: Update: Principal Pulls Bieber Song From Graduation Line-Up, Still Doesn‘t Reinstate ’God Bless the USA’)
Parents, outraged by Principal Greta Hawkins’ decision to ban the song, organized the protest and invited Rep. Bob Turner (R-NY) to attend (he’s running against Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand). But the event, which was assembled to allow the children and families to make their opposition to Hawkins’ stance known, went terribly wrong when some adults chose to shout over the children in protest.
Video of the incident shows boys and girls waving flags and singing Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA.” As they performed, though, some angry adults began swarming and shouting. Turner confirmed that these events unfolded in an interview with Fox News Radio, calling the actions “really bad form.”
One of the hecklers yelling at children and adults during their "God Bless the USA" performance
“You Republicans come go to a Republican area and do that, we don’t do that here,” proclaimed one of the counter protesters. “This is ridiculous, this is sad. This is so crazy. This is sad.”
As Fox’s Todd Starnes notes, one of the staffers told the protesters to stop intervening and to let the kids sing. To that request, one of them responded, claiming that the spectacle was “ridiculous” and that those orchestrating the event were going to “burn in hell.”
“The kids don’t even know what they’re singing. They got something you tell them to say. It’s ridiculous,” he said. “It’s sad, sad, sad. You all are going to burn in hell. You all burn in hell. Shame on you. Shame on you.”
In an attempt to drown the protesters out, the children began chanting “USA, USA, USA!“ One of the kids even told the most vocal of the detractors to ”get out of here.”
Read More from The Blaze
Swarms of cyborg insect drones are the future of military surveillance
The kinds of drones making the
headlines daily are the heavily armed CIA and U.S. Army vehicles which
routinely strike targets in Pakistan - killing terrorists and innocents
alike.But the real high-tech story of surveillance drones is going on at a much smaller level, as tiny remote controlled vehicles based on insects are already likely being deployed.
Over recent years a range of miniature drones, or micro air vehicles (MAVs), based on the same physics used by flying insects, have been presented to the public.
The fear kicked off in 2007 when reports of bizarre flying objects hovering above anti-war protests sparked accusations that the U.S. government was accused of secretly developing robotic insect spies.
Official denials and suggestions from entomologists that they were actually dragonflies failed to quell speculation, and Tom Ehrhard, a retired Air Force colonel and expert on unmanned aerial craft, told the Daily Telegraph at the time that 'America can be pretty sneaky.'
Around the same time the Air Force also unveiled what it called 'lethal mini-drones' based on Leonardo da Vinci's blueprints for his Ornithopter flying machine, and claimed they would be ready for roll out by 2015.
That announcement was five years ago and, since the U.S. military is usually pretty cagey about its technological capabilities, it raises the question as to what it is keeping under wraps.
The University of Pennsylvania GRASP Lab recently showed off drones that swarm, a network of 20 nano quadrotors flying in synchronized formations.
The SWARMS goal is to combine swarm technology with bio-inspired drones to operate 'with little or no direct human supervision' in 'dynamic, resource-constrained, adversarial environments.'
However, it is most likely the future of hard-to-detect drone surveillance will mimic nature.
Research suggests that the mechanics of insects can be reverse-engineered to design midget machines to scout battlefields and search for victims trapped in rubble.
Scientists have taken their inspiration from animals which have evolved over millennia to the perfect conditions for flight.
Nano-biomimicry MAV design has long been studied by DARPA, and in 2008 the U.S. government's military research agency conducted a symposium discussing 'bugs, bots, borgs and bio-weapons.'
Researchers have now developed bio-inspired drones with bug eyes, bat ears, bird wings, and even honeybee-like hairs to sense biological, chemical and nuclear weapons.
Judge Rules That Prostitution Site Run By College Professors Is Legal
A website that authorities say two aging professors used to run a
multistate prostitution ring is legal, a state judge has ruled,
highlighting the difficulties that prosecutors face in using decades-old
laws to combat a modern phenomenon.
The ruling comes as prosecutors were scheduled to present to a grand jury their case against former University of New Mexico President F. Chris Garcia, who is accused of helping a physics professor from New Jersey oversee a prostitution website called "Southwest Companions."
State District Judge Stan Whitaker ruled that the website, an online message board and Garcia's computer account did not constitute a "house of prostitution," the Albuquerque Journal reported.
Whitaker also said the website wasn't "a place where prostitution is practiced, encouraged or allowed."
The ruling means that prosecutors will now have to decide how to proceed with a case involving Garcia, retired Fairleigh Dickinson University physics professor David C. Flory and others.
They were arrested last June on a criminal complaint charging them with promoting prostitution. Flory, a retired physics professor at the New Jersey school and has a home in Santa Fe, is accused of buying the site in 2009.
Garcia's attorney, Robert Gorence, said Garcia was satisfied with the judge's decision and felt vindicated. A woman who answered the phone at Flory's Santa Fe residence said he had no comment.
Investigators said the prostitution ring had a membership of 14,000, including 200 prostitutes. Members paid anywhere from $200 for a sex act to $1,000 for a full hour. Prostitutes were paid with cash, not through the website, according to police.
But the ruling also showed the difficulty that prosecutors have in trying prosecute owners of websites that promote or facilitate prostitution because of laws created long before the Internet age, experts say.
"Most state laws only address street walkers and brothels and are so narrowly written that it's hard to prosecute these new cases," said Scott Cunningham, a Baylor University economics professor who has written about technology and prostitution.
For example, Cunningham said, Craigslist withstood lawsuits and challenges by law enforcement agencies and district attorneys' offices to shut down its erotic services section and only closed them later for publicity reason.
To change laws, Cunningham said, some states will have to pass laws that outline step-by-step regulations on websites.
Read More From ABC News
The ruling comes as prosecutors were scheduled to present to a grand jury their case against former University of New Mexico President F. Chris Garcia, who is accused of helping a physics professor from New Jersey oversee a prostitution website called "Southwest Companions."
State District Judge Stan Whitaker ruled that the website, an online message board and Garcia's computer account did not constitute a "house of prostitution," the Albuquerque Journal reported.
Whitaker also said the website wasn't "a place where prostitution is practiced, encouraged or allowed."
The ruling means that prosecutors will now have to decide how to proceed with a case involving Garcia, retired Fairleigh Dickinson University physics professor David C. Flory and others.
They were arrested last June on a criminal complaint charging them with promoting prostitution. Flory, a retired physics professor at the New Jersey school and has a home in Santa Fe, is accused of buying the site in 2009.
Garcia's attorney, Robert Gorence, said Garcia was satisfied with the judge's decision and felt vindicated. A woman who answered the phone at Flory's Santa Fe residence said he had no comment.
Investigators said the prostitution ring had a membership of 14,000, including 200 prostitutes. Members paid anywhere from $200 for a sex act to $1,000 for a full hour. Prostitutes were paid with cash, not through the website, according to police.
But the ruling also showed the difficulty that prosecutors have in trying prosecute owners of websites that promote or facilitate prostitution because of laws created long before the Internet age, experts say.
"Most state laws only address street walkers and brothels and are so narrowly written that it's hard to prosecute these new cases," said Scott Cunningham, a Baylor University economics professor who has written about technology and prostitution.
For example, Cunningham said, Craigslist withstood lawsuits and challenges by law enforcement agencies and district attorneys' offices to shut down its erotic services section and only closed them later for publicity reason.
To change laws, Cunningham said, some states will have to pass laws that outline step-by-step regulations on websites.
Read More From ABC News
Tuesday, June 19, 2012
UNDER ATTACK: Marion County, Fla PRAYERS ARE TOO CHRISTIAN.
Marion County, Fla., commissioners are now considering their response to an Americans United for the Separation of Church and State complaint that their prayers opening commission meetings are tooChristian.
According to a report in the Star-Banner of Ocala, Fla., Americans United said it was acting on a complaint from an unidentified source and that it had reviewed video from eight regular commission sessions since the beginning of the year. They claimed that on five occasions the name of Jesus Christ was specifically mentioned during the opening prayer. It was the mentioning of the name of Jesus Christ to which the legal group was protesting.
The group’s lawyer, Ian Smith, requested that the board of commissioners bring its “prayer practice” into compliance by using a “nonsectarian” invocation or by abandoning the practice of prayer altogether.
According to the Star-Banner, Smith suggested that the board switch to a more inclusive moment of silence, make the prayers nonsectarian or invite members of the community and “prayer-givers” from varying faiths to present the invocations.
“The Commission’s prayer practice,” Smith said, “unconstitutionally affiliates the county with Christianity.”
But Pastor Carl Gallups, author of the Amazon No. 1 Bestseller “The Magic Man in the Sky: Effectively Defending the Christian Faith,” says the United States is affiliated with Christianity, a fact he says even Americans United could embrace if they understood its significance.
“Here is a classic example of the collision of two worldviews,” Gallups told WND. “I have an entire chapter in my book devoted to this phenomenon. The chapter is titled, ‘When Two Worlds Collide.’ The collision is the clash between the completely unique and distinctive message of the Christian faith with the secular worldview that there is no God. Or, conversely, it is a clash with the universalism message that ‘all religious views hold equal value and consideration.’”
“When was the last time that you heard of a lawsuit in America dealing with a public prayer that was ‘too Muslim’ or ‘too Hindu’ or ‘too secular in nature?’” asked Gallups.
Gallups continued, “There is such an emphasis on political correctness in our culture that I am afraid we have gone mad in our assessment of what is reality. The truth is that our nation has its definitive and indisputable roots in the Judeo-Christian heritage. We were not founded upon the principles of atheism, or Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism or secularism. We were founded as a constitutional republic with a distinctly Christian underpinning.
“From the earliest history of our nation,” Gallups continued, “our Founding Fathers opened meetings, conventions and Congress with distinctly Christian prayers. Often what made these prayers distinctly Christian was that they were made in the name of Jesus Christ. The Constitution itself ends with the words ‘In The Year of our Lord.’ Those words, in that period of time, in the early United States of America, were indisputably referring to ‘Our Lord Jesus Christ.’ Every one of the signers of the Constitution penned their names under that declaration.”
Quiz finds many Christians neglect Bible, prayer
An online quiz shows that an increasing number of people who claim to be Christians are not living out the principles of the faith.
The Quiz, which is being conducted by a ministry called Changing the Face of Christianity, has helped evaluate the face of Christianity as well as lead people through a self-assessment. Brad White, a spokesman for the ministry. discusses the The Quiz with OneNewsNow.
"Not enough people are reading the Bible consistently," he explains. "Not enough people are, in fact, reading it at all. I think even less so, people often don't have sort of a daily quiet time where they're actually in a relationship with Jesus Christ. I think a lot of times, even when people are in Bible studies, it is a little bit more of an intellectual type of thing as opposed to a seeking and a desire to know God."
Australia Christian Leader Unite Against Gay Marriage
Some of Australia's most prominent Christian leaders are expected to read out and distribute anti-gay marriage letters at their Sunday services tomorrow.
Statements from Anglican, Catholic and Greek Orthodox leaders have been coordinated ahead of further debate on gay marriage in Parliament next week.
Churchgoers will be urged to contact their Federal MPs to register their opposition to gay marriage.
The head of the Greek Orthodox Church has written to his congregation saying that altering the traditional form of marriage is, in his view, against the sacredness of marriage and of the family as taught by the Christian faith.
The Anglican Archbishop of Sydney, Peter Jensen, has written a letter to all his parishioners saying that for the good of society, the definition of marriage should not be changed.
Archbishop Jensen told Saturday AM he decided to act after the Catholic church told him it would be circulating anti-gay marriage material on Sunday.
"We ought not to feel that the whole matter is being inevitably going in one direction but that we ought to make our voices known so that we make it clear that the Christian faith opposes this for the good of all," he said.
In his letter, Archbishop Jensen says it is beyond the power of parliament to change the definition of marriage.
He says legalising gay marriage would have a "bad impact" on society.
"If for example the Federal Parliament were to change the definition of marriage in the Marriage Act, it would be a symbolic victory for those who think that it is possible for two men or two women to be actually married," he said.
ADIDAS CANCELS ‘SHACKLE SHOES’ WITH AN APOLOGY
Following a massive public outcry, Adidas has canceled its line of JS Roundhouse Mids “shackle shoes.” Originally debuted on Facebook, the shoes have been deemed “ignorant,“ ”racist,“ and ”repulsive” for their connotation with slavery and prison inmates.
CNN explains:
The high-top sneakers, dubbed the JS Roundhouse Mids, were expected to be released in August, according to the Adidas Originals Facebook page. “Got a sneaker game so hot you lock your kicks to your ankles?” a caption below a photo of the sneakers read.The June 14 post prompted plenty of criticism from around the Web, with many of those commenting saying they felt the shackle invoked the painful image of slavery.“Wow obviously there was no one of color in the room when the marketing/product team ok’d this,” said a commenter, identifying herself as MsRodwell on nicekicks.com.“I literally froze up when I saw a new design from Adidas set to hit stores in August,” Dr. Boyce Watkins said in a post for the website Your Black World.Though dismissing the criticism in a written statement by defending the sneaker’s designer, Jeremy Scott, as having a “quirky” and “lighthearted” style, Adidas nonetheless said Monday that it planned to cancel the shoe’s release.
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ATHEIST BLOGGER Leah Libresco Converts to Christianity
Atheist blogger Leah Libresco shocked the secular community this week when she announced on her Patheos blog that she has converted to Christianity. Her article, entitled, “This is my last post for the Patheos Atheist Portal,” explained her conversion to Catholicism, which has sent shock-waves through the atheist blogosphere.
In her post, Libresco details her personal struggles with understanding the root of moral law. Obviously, non-believers don’t see morality as coming from a central source. Instead, they see humanity as living on its own, disconnected from any fertile source of knowledge and goodness. For Libresco, this ideal has come full-circle, as she inevitably arrived at an understanding that aligns with a Christ-centered world-view.
Debate after debate and discussion after discussion, the non-believing blogger details how she found herself constantly exploring this paradigm — that is, until she finally accepted the notion that truth and moral goodness come from God. She explains:
I believed that the Moral Law wasn’t just a Platonic truth, abstract and distant. It turns out I actually believed it was some kind of Person, as well as Truth. And there was one religion that seemed like the most promising way to reach back to that living Truth. I asked my friend what he suggest we do now, and we prayed the night office of the Liturgy of the Hours together (I’ve kept up with that since). Then I suggested hugs and playing Mumford and Sons really, really loudly.
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