Al Kresta's Blog, page 329

Outrageous Statement of the Day

Obama's Pastor for Easter Service Compared Rush, Fox News to KKK in Speech. "Jim Crow has now become James Crow, Esquire... he doesn't have to wear white robes anymore... he can get a regular news program on Fox"

Cartoon of the Day

Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week: From the Entrance Into Jerusalem To The Resurrection

Today on Kresta - April 25, 2011

Talking about the "things that matter most" on April 25

4:00 – The Case for the Resurrection
Gary Habermas is here on Easter Monday to offer a comprehensive and far-reaching argument for the historical veracity of Christ's resurrection. He marshals historical, theological, archaeological, biomedical and literary data to support their belief in the resurrection.

4:20 – The Christian Code: Ancient Christian Symbols Speak to the Here and Now
Most Christian symbols recur throughout the Christian centuries, going back to the earliest churches and cemeteries and the most common items of everyday life. They are urgent messages sent from long ago, and we, the Christians of the future, are the intended recipients. We talk with Mike Aquilina about The Christian Code: Ancient Christian Symbols Speak to the Here and Now.

4:40 – The Most Human Human: What Talking with Computers Teaches Us About What It Means to Be Alive
Computers playing chess. Computers playing Jeopardy! What does this technology teach us about what it means to be alive? In a fast-paced, witty, and thoroughly winning style, Brian Christian documents his experience in the 2009 Turing Test, a competition in which judges engage in five-minute instant-message conversations with unidentified partners, and must then decide whether each interlocutor was a human or a machine. The program receiving the most "human" votes is dubbed the "most human computer," while the person receiving the most votes earns the title of "most human human." Ranging from philosophy through the construction of pickup lines to poetry, Christian examines what it means to be human and how we interact with one another, and with computers as equals.

5:00 – The Case for the Historical Resurrection
A resurrected body. Glorified. Fully God and fully man. When the alternatives have all spent themselves in fruitless clamor for our attention, it's the old Christian story that still persuades. Catholic writer, speaker and apologist Mark Shea is here to offer his argument for the historical veracity of Christ's resurrection. We look at evidentiary claims that support a historic belief in the resurrection.

Oklahoma Becomes 4th State to Protect Pain-Capable Unborn Children

Today, Oklahoma became the fourth state to enact legislation that protects from abortion unborn children who are capable of feeling pain.. Oklahoma joins Kansas and Idaho this year, and Nebraska last year. Meanwhile, an Alabama Senate committee held a hearing today on a similar measure that has already passed that state's House of Representatives.

"Modern medical science provides substantial compelling evidence that unborn children recoil from painful stimuli, that their stress hormones increase when they are subjected to any painful stimuli, and that they require anesthesia for fetal surgery," said Mary Spaulding Balch, J.D., director of state legislation for the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC). "Therefore, the states have a compelling interest in protecting unborn children who are capable of feeling pain from abortion. Oklahoma is the fourth state to recognize this obligation by enacting the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act."

At a bill-signing ceremony today, Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin signed into law two pro-life bills – HB 1888, the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, and SB 547, the Abortion-Is-Not-Health-Care bill .

SB 547 prohibits coverage for elective abortions under health-insurance plans in Oklahoma, affirms the principle that abortion is not health care, and protects the conscience rights of pro-life premium payers so they're not complicit in the killing of unborn children.

The Oklahoma House, led by Representative Pam Peterson, passed the Pain-Capable Unborn Protection bill with a vote of 85-7. Oklahoma's Senate, led by Senator Clark Jolley, passed the bill by a vote of 38-8.

As drafted by National Right to Life's state legislation department, the model Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act protects from abortion unborn children who are capable of feeling pain except when the mother "has a condition which so complicates her medical condition as to necessitate the abortion of her pregnancy to avert death or to avert serious risk of substantial or irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function or...it is necessary to preserve the life of an unborn child."

Further documentation and links to the scientific studies can be found at: http://www.doctorsonfetalpain.com./

Victory for Georgia School Kids

U.S. Supreme Court rightly rejected bogus challenge to a valuable school choice program

By Randy Hicks

Earlier this month thousands of Georgia school kids barely averted what could have been a major blow to their educational futures. Thankfully, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled correctly in a case that protects their education and their parent's ability to choose how and where they get it.

The case before the nation's highest court was a challenge to a student scholarship program in Arizona, which is very similar to one that is benefitting thousands of kids in Georgia. The program provides an income tax credit for donations to nonprofit tuition scholarship organizations. These nonprofits then give scholarships to kids so they can afford to transfer from a public to a private school.

Here in Georgia, it's called the Tuition Tax Credit Scholarship. It was approved by the General Assembly in 2008 and is serving nearly 8,000 students in hundreds of schools across the state.

In Georgia, Arizona and several others states, this scholarship program is giving families the ability to choose where their kids get educated. Georgia Family Council, where I work, strongly advocated for the law at the General Assembly as a way to give middle and lower income families access to an education that is better suited to their children's needs. The program has proven to be of particular benefit to families whose children are stuck in poor performing schools.

But not everyone sees it that way. Enter the ACLU.

The ACLU in Arizona filed a lawsuit on behalf of a group of taxpayers challenging the program as a violation of the establishment clause. They claimed that because tax credits were being given for donations to scholarships that might be used toward tuition at religious schools, it amounted to a government endorsement of religion. Did you follow that logic?

Here's the problem with the ACLU's position. The program is completely neutral. It does not endorse any religious behavior or practice. Families who receive a scholarship choose where the money goes, not the government. Moms and dads decide whether to use the funds at a secular or religious private school. The constitution requires that the government remain neutral, not the families using the program.

The ACLU made another curious claim. They reasoned that the tax credit provided by the state amounted to the government handing over money to scholarship organizations. But this assumes the money donated toward scholarships belongs to the government, not private citizens. In reality money never reaches the government at all, under the program. The Court dismissed this crazy claim saying, "When Arizona taxpayers choose to contribute to STO's (scholarship organizations), they spend their own money, not money the State has collected from respondents or from other taxpayers…. Private bank accounts cannot be equated with the Arizona State Treasury."

Apparently, ACLU attorneys wake up every day worrying that some children might be praying in a school that's received money that could have been the government's. That's right. We're not talking about money that is the government's, we're talking about money that could have been taxed and raked into government coffers. By that logic, not one single cent of anyone's private financial resources can be spent on anything of a religious nature because there's nothing that can't be taxed.

The U.S. Supreme Court rightly rejected the claims of the lawsuit – finding that those who brought the suit lacked the legal standing to do so. The Court also rejected the claim that money donated to the program amounted to the government handing over money to a scholarship organization or that an establishment of religion claim could be made.

The tuition tax credit scholarship won out in the end. It was a win for private financial choices, it was a win for a sensible scholarship program, it was a win for families' ability to choose for themselves where their child should attend school. But more than anything else, it was a win for thousands of school children who get up each morning and attend a better school because their family could make that choice.

Randy Hicks is the president of the Georgia Family Council, a non-profit research and education organization committed to fostering conditions in which individuals, families and communities thrive.

The Signing of Jackie Robinson: How Faith Helped Racial Healing

By Dr. Warren Throckmorton

For many Americans, April 15 marked Tax Day. But it also marked an event much more redeeming. On April 15, 1947, Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in major league baseball. The executive who signed the talented athlete was Branch Rickey, President of the Brooklyn Dodgers. Recently, CNN reported that Branch Rickey's faith was a strong motivation for his decision to sign Robinson. Now that's an angle that rarely gets acknowledged, but should, especially this week that many of us celebrate as the most holy in our faith.

Prior to signing Robinson, Rickey anguished over the decision. According to an account just discovered by CNN, Rickey entered Brooklyn's Plymouth Church of the Pilgrims to reflect on the matter. He approached the minister, Wendell Fifield. According to Fifield's wife, June, Rickey paced the floor in silent contemplation for 45 minutes before coming to a conclusion. CNN's Jamie Crawford retells the eureka moment:

Finally, Rickey didn't just break the silence, he shattered it.


"I've got it," Rickey yelled emphatically as he banged his fist on the desk.


"Got what, Branch?" Fifield asked. "Wendell," Rickey said, "I've decided to sign Jackie Robinson!"


June Fifield wrote that as Rickey regained his composure he sank into a chair and told her husband, "This was a decision so complex, so far-reaching, fraught with so many pitfalls but filled with so much good, if it was right, that I just had to work it out in this room with you. I had to talk to God about it and be sure what he wanted me to do. I hope you don't mind."

Rev. Fifield did not mind. He did, however, keep the story such a good secret that only his wife knew of the event, and that revelation came years later. In 1966, June Fifield wrote about it for the church bulletin, but the account went untold to Robinson, his widow, and even to Rickey's children.
During the CNN segment, reporter Ed Henry said that he told President Obama about the story involving Robinson and Rickey. Obama commented that the Rickey-Robinson breakthrough had an impact on every part of American society, including his election as the first African-American president.

I share a hometown with Branch Rickey -- Portsmouth, Ohio -- and was always reminded of his legacy because I played my high-school baseball in Branch Rickey Park.

To me, Branch Rickey's role in this story is sweet irony. Race relations were tense in my hometown, at times erupting into violence. For most of my life there, African-Americans were segregated into neighborhoods surrounding a large public housing project. There was tangible prejudice and discrimination, even among Christians. I can recall times when my African-American friends were denied services. And yet, from this milieu, Branch Rickey emerged as a key player in a drama which has had a profoundly positive effect on American racial attitudes, far beyond the playing field.

This paragraph is a fitting close to the CNN piece:

When a well-known journalist of the era told the Dodgers general manager that he thought "all hell would break loose" the next day with Robinson due to take the field for the first time as a Brooklyn Dodger, Rickey disagreed. "My grandfather immediately responded to him, 'I believe tomorrow all heaven will rejoice,'" the younger Rickey said.

I feel sure that heaven rejoiced, and continues to. And here on earth, even though the nation and the church have a long way to go, this Portsmouth boy is smiling, too.

Dr. Warren Throckmorton is an associate professor of psychology and fellow for psychology and public policy with the Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College. He can be contacted through his blog at www.wthrockmorton.com.

Majority of Catholic senators voted to fund Planned Parenthood

The United States Senate voted 58-42 on April 14 to reject a House resolution that would have denied funding to the Planned Parenthood Federation of America and its affiliates. The measure had passed the House by a 241-185 margin.

Voting to continue federal government funding of Planned Parenthood were 17 Catholic senators: Mark Begich (D-AK), Maria Cantwell (D-WA), Robert Casey (D-PA), Susan Collins (R-ME), Richard Durbin (D-IL), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Tom Harkin (D-IA), John Kerry (D-MA), Mary Landrieu (D-LA), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Joe Manchin (D-WV), Claire McCaskill (D-MO), Robert Menendez (D-NJ), Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Patty Murray (D-WA), and Jack Reed (D-RI).

Voting to defund the nation's largest abortion provider were the other seven Catholic senators: Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), John Hoeven (R-ND), Mike Johanns (R-NE), Jim Risch (R-ID), Marco Rubio (R-FL), Pat Toomey (R-LA), and David Vitter (R-LA).

Pope's advice for Holy Week

Cartoon of the Day - Libya and NATO protection