Islam is "offended"? What about us!

We're really offended by you, too....don't feel all left out and such.

I am not offended by you just, disappointed... That goes to show just who has the true character here.

Yep, you're a true character all right. :wink:

i love you deb

As opposed to a false character? I guess I will say, "thanks" then.

Comment: This is my life's creed.

Philippians 4:8 Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.

Peace with God.

Related to this thread. RR


About 40 Christians were kidnapped February 27 by anti-Christian radicals in Himachal Pradesh, India. The extremists reportedly took the Christians to a religious temple and are trying to force them to renounce Christ and return to the country's dominant faith.

Initial reports from the area indicate that some of those kidnapped are part of a Gospel for Asia-related church in the village where the kidnapping occurred.

GFA leaders in Himachal Pradesh ask for prayer for those who were captured, that they will stand firm in their faith, even in this difficult time. They also ask for prayer for the overall situation for Christians in this northwest Indian state.

An anti-Christian political party controls Himachal Pradesh, and it is possible that the group who kidnapped these Christians is affiliated with the political party. One of this party's goals is to convert Christians to India's predominant religion. It is not unusual for these extremists to kidnap believers and force them to bow before the statues that represent the country's traditional gods. If the Christians refuse to bow to the statues, they risk being ostracized from society, which brings much shame in the Asian culture in which they live.

The extremist ruling party believes that keeping people in the traditional religion brings unity to the state, and ultimately to the entire country. Since Christianity is so radically different than the other religions, a person's decision to follow Christ creates friction in families and sometimes entire villages.

Gospel for Asia
www.gfa.org

that and vengeance, force, power, retribution... we've read plenty of your 'creeds'.

i find preaching to others, self-absorbed conviction that "i know best" what's right or wrong, also highly offensive.

Ahh so you prefer the walk all over me, suicidal, powerless, kill me and I won't even defend myself, family or country, anything goes creed? I understand quite well now. Thanks for clarifying that for me.

Also you seem to have a fair bit of venom yourself, preach tolerance but don't tolerate yourself! But let a Christian defend their creed and then look who is the first to spit poison? I am not preaching wimpism, but you are… You are trying to force that on others (mostly revealingly Christians…) as you are the biggest critic yourself. Only truth is attacked so vehemently.

The old double standard, speak your mind and criticize others for doing the same! It is hard to see that you are any more than a hypocrite.

Really.

Democrats Have Suicidal Bent

Monday, March 3, 2008 10:34 AM

By: Ronald Kessler


In more ways than one, Democrats are exhibiting suicidal tendencies.

The latest example is House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's decision to let the House go on vacation rather than take a vote on extending the Protect America Act. The act updates surveillance laws to take into account technological changes and give telecommunication companies immunity from lawsuits over their cooperation with the government.

The result of the House's inaction is that if the National Security Agency (NSA) needs to monitor a new terrorist group, it will not be able to do so immediately. Even using the 72-hour emergency provision of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), monitoring is delayed for a day or two while facts can be lined up to ensure that a permanent warrant can be obtained.

"You can't go back and ask for a FISA for a conversation that's already occurring," Arthur M. "Art" Cummings, who heads national security investigations at the FBI, told me for my book "The Terrorist Watch: Inside the Desperate Race to Stop the Next Attack."

That is "the fundamental issue," Cummings says. "When they pick up on a U.S. conversation, they can't tell these two guys who are talking: ?'Hey, hold on a minute while we go get a FISA.' A conversation is a conversation; it happens, and then it's lost."

Because of the uncertainty caused by the House Democratic leadership about whether they would be protected from lawsuits, at least one telecommunications company temporarily balked at cooperating. The result was that intelligence was lost.

If a missed telephone conversation or email intercept contained clues to a plot to detonate nuclear devices in Manhattan and Washington ?- al Qaida's No. 1 goal ?- the government would have no way of knowing before both cities were wiped out.

That is the roulette game the Democrats are playing with our safety. In fact, the Senate has already passed an extension of the Protect America Act, and there are enough votes in the House to pass it as well, but the Democratic leadership of the House is blocking a vote.

The same irresponsibility extends to a range of other measures that are aimed at protecting America. Aside from banning waterboarding, which the CIA has not used in five years, the Democrats are pushing to require the CIA to follow the Army Field Manual when interrogating terrorists. The information the CIA seeks is far more critical to our safety than tactical intelligence that may be extracted from captured soldiers.

If that proposed legislation passes, when trying to find out if a nuclear weapon is about to be detonated, CIA interrogators could not subject suspects to freezing temperatures or standing for hours on end ?- measures banned by Army interrogation regulations.

As CIA Director Michael Hayden has said, "The manual meets the needs of the American military and is sufficient for their purposes, but no one can claim that it exhausts the universe of lawful techniques available to the republic to defend itself?-techniques not useful or not suited to the Army's circumstances but fully consistent with the Geneva Convention and with current U.S. law."

If Congress passes the legislation, it will "have a direct impact on our ability to gather intelligence and to detect and prevent future attacks," Hayden says.

Even more extreme, Barack Obama, who has said he would not use nuclear weapons against terrorists, last August voted to give Osama bin Laden and other terrorists in effect the same rights as Americans have when their communications are intercepted. If his vote had prevailed, FISA warrants would have been required for each terrorist before monitoring his conversations and email messages. Obtaining enough information about each of tens of thousands of potential terrorist targets to justify warrants would have brought the entire system for obtaining clues to terrorist attacks and connecting the dots to a halt.

The Democrats' rationale for gutting surveillance laws and returning to pre-911 thinking is that they are protecting Americans' rights. Yet since 9/11, not one abuse ?- meaning an illegal action taken for political reasons?-has been uncovered in all of the Bush administration's anti-terrorism measures.

What is really behind their opposition is fear of alienating the trial lawyers. According to press reports, the 66 lawyers who have filed lawsuits against telecommunications companies that aided the government in hunting down terrorists made a total of $1.5 million in campaign contributions to congressional Democrats.

Rather than infringing on rights, the Bush anti-terrorism measures and the hard work of the FBI, CIA, and military have been responsible for the fact that we have not had another terrorist attack in more than six years.

"The Democrats are politicizing America's safety," says Brad Blakeman, CEO of Freedom's Watch, a conservative group. "By weakening FISA and not protecting the telecommunications companies, the Democrats are making us vulnerable. If the companies pitched in to keep America safe, they deserve the same kinds of protections as the government affords. But the trial lawyers don't like that."

The Democrats' blindness to the need to protect our national security is suicidal: On the one hand, Democrats don't seem to recognize that Congress itself is an obvious target of another terrorist attack. The hijacked airplane that crashed in Pennsylvania was headed for Capitol Hill. On the other hand, Democrats are giving Republicans powerful ammunition for successfully opposing them in the 2008 election.

Freedom's Watch, for one, will be running tens of millions of dollars in ads pointing to the Democrats' actions in undermining efforts to protect us.

"In the coming election, the American people will look at who is making us safe and who is taking actions to weaken us and tie our hands behind our backs in this fight for our lives," Blakeman says.

As Sen. Joe Lieberman has told me, he is "disappointed" because "my colleagues for various reasons ?- some ideological, some political ?- are missing this threat to us."

The first responsibility of government, the Connecticut Democrat turned independent says, is to "provide for the security of the country, the common defense. This is our constitutional responsibility. And without it we enjoy none of the other blessings of liberty that the country provides and that all of us, including most Democrats, want to help deliver."

Jewish Backlash Against Obama

Monday, March 3, 2008 10:55 AM

By: Newsmax Staff

Jewish voters in New York State ?- including Democrats ?- could support Republican John McCain in the November election if Barack Obama wins his party's nomination, according to Fredric U. Dicker's "Inside Albany" column in the New York Post.

Dov Hikind, a Democrat who backed Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984, is an assemblyman whose Brooklyn district includes the largest concentration of Hasidic Jews in the U.S.

He said many of his constituents oppose Obama for his "half-hearted" support of Israel and his membership in the church of Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., who has repeatedly praised anti-Semitic Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.

"There are a lot of Jews who are concerned about these issues, and they go way beyond Hasidic and Orthodox Jews, people I describe as conservative Reagan/Giuliani Democrats," said Hikind, who has not yet endorsed a presidential candidate.

Jewish concerns about Obama have been widely reported among top New York Democrats, according to Dicker.

"There is anxiety, there is concern, on the part of a lot of important Jewish Democrats in New York," one prominent Democratic activist told the Post.

But Hikind said last week's controversy over Obama's visit to Kenya, where he was photographed in Somali garb, would have no impact on Jewish voters.