Hobby Lobby could be the next Chick-Fil-A. “Hobby Lobby Sues over HHS Mandate”

Reverend William Owens from the Coalition Of African American Pastors in an interview with John Hawkins: “Again that’s the reason I took such a stand against President Obama. In every election, in every campaign where the marriage amendment has been on the ballot, blacks in large numbers have been against it and Americans have been against it. But he’s not interested in what the people want. He’s interested in what a few people who can give him big money want.”

I don’t usually link to Sojourner’s “God’s Politics” blog for good examples of political opinion, but their non-political item — a discussion on the recent “Gospel of Jesus’ Wife” discovery — is quite good. “Five Important Questions About That ‘Jesus Wife’ Discovery”

“Antarctic sea ice set another record this past week, with the most amount of ice ever recorded on day 256 of the calendar year (September 12 of this leap year).” I blame global warming.

UN Secretary General George Orwell Ban Ki Moon: “Freedoms of expression should be and must be guaranteed and protected, when they are used for common justice, common purpose,” Ban told a news conference. “When some people use this freedom of expression to provoke or humiliate some others’ values and beliefs, then this cannot be protected in such a way.”

Bullying works. “The Christian-rooted fast food restaurant [Chick-filA] agreed to stop funding groups such as Focus on the Family that oppose same-sex marriage in a meeting with the Chicago politician who had been blocking the company’s move there.”

And finally, competing mottos (from Chuck Asay, click for a larger version):

Hat tip to Clayton Cramer, who links to a video of noted Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias. If you are having qualms about voting for a Mormon because of your Christian beliefs, this is a very good (short) video from one of the greatest Christian thinkers of our day.

Also, the AP is reporting that some black pastors are telling their congregations to sit this election out.

Some black clergy see no good presidential choice between a Mormon candidate and one who supports gay marriage, so they are telling their flocks to stay home on Election Day. That’s a worrisome message for the nation’s first African-American president, who can’t afford to lose any voters from his base in a tight race.

The pastors say their congregants are asking how a true Christian could back same-sex marriage, as President Barack Obama did in May. As for Republican Mitt Romney, the first Mormon nominee from a major party, congregants are questioning the theology of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its former ban on men of African descent in the priesthood.

I’ll say what I’ve said in previous elections. While I think a person’s value, informed by their religion, are something to consider when voting, I’m not voting for a national pastor; I’m voting for a national political leader. I think if these pastors could watch this video and get over their concern that Romney happens to be Mormon, this could really change the playing field.

(And by "Obama’s budget", I mean the one unanimously rejected even by his own party.)

What are those "draconian cuts" that Paul Ryan has proposed in his budget? Is he really going to throw Granny off the cliff with his changes to Medicare?

The Independent Voter Network has an interactive graph where you can see the spending over the next 9 years with the two different budgets. You can also choose a specific area (Medicare, Social Security, interest on the debt, security, etc.) to see how that particular area is affected.

What you’ll see is that, under the Ryan budget, spending increases every year. The "cuts" that Democrats and the media keep referring to use the typical DC definition. "If you don’t raise spending on X as much as I want to, you are therefore "cutting" spending to X."

The one exception is Medicaid, where spending dips slightly early on, but over the 9 year span does indeed increase slightly.

Point your friends at this page when they start believing the Democratic talking points. We simply cannot have a rational discussion on the debt problem facing us if we demagogue what amounts to a tepid response to the problem.

Cancelled, due to lack of interest.

That’s the title of an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal about the results of a new study on how school vouchers affect their recipients.

President Barack Obama last month signed an executive order promising to "improve outcomes and advance educational opportunities for African Americans." The order instructs federal agencies to "promote, encourage, and undertake efforts" to increase "college access, college persistence and college attainment for African American students." Unfortunately, his administration remains opposed to the Opportunity Scholarship program in Washington, D.C., which lets students—mostly low-income and African-American—use a voucher to attend a private school.

Perhaps Mr. Obama will reconsider his position on vouchers now that we have for the first time tracked the impact of a voucher program all the way from kindergarten (in 1997) to college enrollment (in 2011). Our study compared students who won a voucher lottery with students who didn’t—the only difference between the groups was the luck of the draw, the gold standard in research design.

The study shows that an African-American student who was able to use a voucher to attend a private school was 24% more likely to enroll in college than an African-American student who didn’t win a voucher lottery.

Some take issue with voucher programs because the parents might actually spend the money on >gasp< religious schools (as noted in the article).

And given the money involved, they got better results for a lower cost.

These impacts are especially striking given the modest costs of the intervention: only $4,200 per pupil over a three-year period. This implies that the government would actually save money if it introduced a similar voucher program, as private-school costs are lower than public-school costs. To get a similar (19%) increase in college enrollment among African-Americans from a class-size reduction effort in Tennessee in the late 1980s, the public-school system had to spend $9,400 per pupil (in 1998 dollars).

But one of the barriers to this successful program is…politics, of course.

President Obama is certainly correct to identify the particularly steep educational barriers that African-American students must surmount if they are to become college-ready. And he seems to have nothing against private school per se, as he has long sent his own daughters to private schools. Yet—apparently thanks to opposition to vouchers from powerful teachers unions—the president still hasn’t taken the next step and helped open private-school doors for low-income children as well.

One more reason to consider when stepping into the voting booth this November.

A couple months ago I started a new project; a political and cultural opinion podcast where I say what I’m going to say in 10 minutes or less. It doesn’t require as much a time commitment from you to listen in, and I want to hear back and make it more of a conversation than a monologue.

Today I hit a milestone; the 10th episode. There’s something of a psychological part of this as well. Folks who keep track of such things say that if you get (on average) past episode 7, that seems to be a tipping point. Podcasts that get past that generally continue on. So here I am at 10, and hopefully we’ll just roll along, with your input.

My topics are usually varied, but this episode focuses on the Paul Ryan VP pick. Let me know what you think of that choice by either commenting on the show notes, on Twitter, Facebook, or Google+. You can even use that tried and true method; E-mail.

Does Andrea Mitchell of NBC really thing that’s in the Constitution, or is an inalienable right from the Creator? From yesterday evening’s NBC Nighty News:

MITCHELL: Playing a starring role for the first time in the campaign, Sandra Fluke, the former law student who became a lightning rod after Rush Limbaugh denounced her for supporting contraception rights.

I don’t think that phrase means what you think it means. I don’t really believe that it even exists.

Every time the Left wants you to pay for something, it reframes it as a "right". Don’t be fooled.

The main topic in today’s podcast is a column by Michael Fumento about why he broke from “the extreme Right”. His experience is a cautionary tale for any hyper-partisan, on either side of the aisle.

I also look at New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg’s proposals for micromanaging residents’ food intake, and wonder, if this isn’t a slippery slope, then where would the end of the line be? If you can’t draw it, it doesn’t exist.

Click here to play the (again, 10-minute) episode, and to find show notes, how to contact me, and how to subscribe to the podcast.

I say "uncool" only so that I don’t get accused of racism by the Congressional Black Caucus.

Angela Rye, Executive Director of the Congressional Black Caucus, argued that President Obama has struggled during his first term due to racially-motivated opposition from conservatives who dislike having a black president.

"This is probably the toughest presidential term in my lifetime," Rye said during CSPAN’s Q&A yesterday. "I think that a lot of what the president has experienced is because he’s black. You know, whether it’s questioning his intellect or whether or not he’s Ivy League. It’s always either he’s not educated enough or he’s too educated; or he’s too black or he’s not black enough; he’s too Christian or not Christian enough. There are all these things where he has to walk this very fine line to even be successful."

She said that "a lot" of conservative opposition is racially-charged, citing the use of the word "cool" in an attack ad launched by Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS superPAC.

"There’s an ad, talking about [how] the president is too cool, [asking] is he too cool? And there’s this music that reminds me of, you know, some of the blaxploitation films from the 70s playing in the background, him with his sunglasses," Rye said. "And to me it was just very racially-charged. They weren’t asking if Bush was too cool, but, yet, people say that that’s the number one person they’d love to have a beer with. So, if that’s not cool I dont know what is.

She added that "even ‘cool,’ the term ‘cool,’ could in some ways be deemed racial [in this instance]."

The definition of what is racist just keeps changing too fast for me to keep up. Doesn’t Ms. Rye remember how Bill Clinton was called a "rock star"? Would calling Obama that also be racist? I’m honestly asking, because I have no idea what is and isn’t permissible these days.

This is just another example of every, single disagreement with the President being turned into a racial incident.

“I would not have you exchange the gold of individual Christianity for the base metal of Christian Socialism.” – Charles Spurgeon. He had quite a bit to say on economic and political issues of the day, applicable to that day and this.

For those still blaming Bush for our economic situation, Paul Mirengoff reminds us that the housing  market collapse was the main cause of it, and the Bush administration tried to keep it from happening. Democrats would have none of that.

"The New York Police Department, the mayor and the city’s top prosecutors on Monday endorsed a proposal to decriminalize the open possession of small amounts of marijuana…." But the real scourge, Big Gulps, will not be tolerated.

A cautionary tale about hyper-partisanship.

Remember those advertisers that left the Limbaugh show after his remarks about Sandra Fluke? One big one tried to come crawling back, and Limbaugh just said No.

The Obama administration is against voter ID laws, but Michelle Obama herself required IDs to get a book signed. Irony. Meter. Pegging.

Austerity works, when it’s actually implemented. Just ask the European country who’s economy outpaced the average growth in the euro-zone by 500%, and has the only budget surplus there.

Obama actually was a member of a socialist political party while in Chicago. Stanley Kurtz of National Review has the documentation. Where was the mainstream media on this 4 years ago?

In case you heard otherwise, no, the Boy Scouts are not changing their policy on gay scouts and scout leaders.