From the United Press International website:

WASHINGTON, Dec. 30 (UPI)—The Bush administration is preparing its NATO allies for a possible military strike against suspected nuclear sites in Iran in the New Year, according to German media reports, reinforcing similar earlier suggestions in the Turkish media.

The Berlin daily Der Tagesspiegel this week quoted “NATO intelligence sources” who claimed that the NATO allies had been informed that the United States is currently investigating all possibilities of bringing the mullah-led regime into line, including military options. This “all options are open” line has been President George W Bush’s publicly stated policy throughout the past 18 months.

But the respected German weekly Der Spiegel notes “What is new here is that Washington appears to be dispatching high-level officials to prepare its allies for a possible attack rather than merely implying the possibility as it has repeatedly done during the past year.”

You can read the rest of the article here.

Not sure how accurate this is, but after seeing what happened with Iraq, I have no trouble believing that we will now be taking serious military action against Iran as well.

Tom Piatak has written a nice article at VDARE.com that provides a fairly thorough overview of the “war on Christmas” in 2005.

You can check out Piatak’s article here.

I had the opportunity to watch both King Kong and The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe this past week—the two movies that have, incidentally, been duking it out at the box office.

Most blogs in this part of the blogosphere have showered the Narnia movie with a lot of praise, including Boy Scout Blogger, Smart Homeschool, and others. While King Kong has also experienced a lot of success at the box office, it has been largely ignored for the most part, perhaps overshadowed by the release of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (TLWW).

After seeing both movies, I have to confess that I don’t think the Narnia movie is all it has been made out to be by others. King Kong, while not as family-friendly as TLWW, is a much better film in this writer’s mind.

Don’t get me wrong. TLWW was a good film, but it felt like a watered-down spin-off (in some cases, rip-off) of The Lord of the Rings movies. The movie didn’t have much of an epic feel to it, and there were no truly gripping scenes or thrilling moments or awe-inspiring shots. I only clearly remember one or two scenes from the movie, and when I walked out of the theatre I realized that the film never really captured either my attention or my interest.

After watching King Kong, I have to wonder what TLWW would have been like if Peter Jackson had been directing it. King Kong is, simply put, a much more compelling movie than TLWW even though it’s a re-make of a re-make. King Kong has “Peter Jackson” written all over every aspect of it, and yet, the movie feels nothing at all like LotR. Having never seen the original or the remake, I walked into King Kong not knowing what to expect, but I left the theatre impressed and eager to see the movie again.

I won’t get into too much detail about King Kong since a review of the movie will be appearing in the next issue of Virtue Magazine, but suffice to say, in this writer’s opinion, the acting in King Kong is superb, the CGI is quite good, the story draws the viewer in, and over the top scenes like a huge gorilla perched at the top of the Empire State building with a beautiful young woman are made perfectly believable.

In TLWW, on the other hand, we didn’t see a believable transition in Peter and Edmund—one moment the two are children, the next moment they are armed with swords, leading their army into battle, and engaging in combat with the greatest of ease. King Kong had equally far-out ideas in it, but Jackson did a much better job of making everything believable.

In short, TLWW felt like a “kiddie” film and King Kong like an epic film. There isn’t anything wrong with kiddie films, but TLWW had the potential to be so much more. And it simply didn’t fulfill that potential.

It’s worth noting that the federal judge who recently ruled against the inclusion of intelligent design in public school biology classes was appointed to his position by President Bush in 2002:

“Our conclusion today is that it is unconstitutional to teach ID (intelligent design) as an alternative to evolution in a public school science classroom,” Judge Jones, appointed in 2002 by President Bush, wrote in his 139-page opinion.

(See this Washington Times article.)

One of the reasons Bush supporters used to browbeat other people into voting for Bush was because of the courts. Bush would appoint good justices and move the courts back toward the right direction, remember?

You only need to ask intelligent design supporters how things are going to see what’s wrong with this picture.

We would like to wish all our readers a blessed and happy Christmas, filled with joy and peace. And while obviously family and friends and gifts and food play a big part of this holiday, we hope that none of us lose sight of what we are truly celebrating Christmas for!

Luke 2:8-11:

And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord.”

Merry Christmas everyone!

In yet another disturbing example of what is happening to our friends in Britain, a retired Christian couple was told by police that their (religious) beliefs regarding homosexuality were close to a “hate crime”:

Police questioned a retired couple for 80 minutes about their “homophobic” views after they asked their local council if they could display their Christian literature next to gay rights leaflets, it was reported last night.

Joe and Helen Roberts said that police officers warned them that their actions “were close to a hate crime” after they complained to Wyre Borough Council about its gay rights policies.

The couple claimed that the police told them they were “walking on eggshells”.

Mr Roberts, from Fleetwood, Lancashire, said he had been offended because of the council’s distribution of the gay rights leaflets and its promotion of its theatre as a venue for civil partnership ceremonies.

He said he complained to Paul Deacon, the council officer responsible for Wyre’s part in the Navajo Charter Mark campaign being run by several local authorities to offer assistance to gay and lesbian people.

Mr Roberts, 73, told the Daily Mail: “I told him I was offended. I asked him if I could put Christian literature on display alongside the gay material. He said I couldn’t because it would offend gay people.

“I said we had no objection to gay people, but we thought that homosexual practice was wrong and we were offended by the gay culture which the council is promoting.

“They warned me that being discriminatory and homophobic is in line with hate crime. The phrase they used was that we were ‘walking on eggshells’. I asked the officer, if I phoned the police with a complaint that the council were discriminating against Christians would he go to interview them?”

You can read the rest of the article here.

Peter Glover at Wires from the Bunker has some interesting thoughts, as does Michael Iliff at Turkey Farm Tales.

A new list is out, titled “The Dirty Dozen: America’s Most Bizarre and Politically Correct College Courses.”

Some of the college courses that make the list:

The Unbearable Whiteness of Barbie: Race and Popular Culture in the United States at Occidental College in California explores ways “which scientific racism has been put to use in the making of Barbie [and] to an interpretation of the film The Matrix as a Marxist critique of capitalism.”

Occidental College—making the Dirty Dozen list twice—offers a course in Stupidity, which compares the American presidency to Beavis and Butthead.

Students at the University of California—Los Angeles need not wonder what it means to be a lesbian. The Psychology of the Lesbian Experience reviews “various aspects of lesbian experience” including the “impact of heterosexism/stigma, gender role socialization, minority status of women and lesbians, identity development within a multicultural society, changes in psychological theories about lesbians in sociohistorical context.”

You can check out the entire list here.

In other news, Spunky Homeschool has posted a funny but all too true spoof of “’Twas the Night Before Christmas” that is definitely worth reading.

The AP is reporting that a “lovers dispute over a cell phone” resulted in the woman swallowing the cell phone!

Police said they received a call at 4:52 a.m. Friday from a Blue Springs man who said his girlfriend was having trouble breathing. When they arrived at the house they found the 24-year-old woman had a cell phone lodged in her throat.

“He wanted the phone and she wouldn’t give it to him, so she attempted to swallow it,” Detective Sgt. Steve Decker of the Blue Springs Police Department. “She just put the entire phone in her mouth so he couldn’t get it.”

I’m not sure what was going through the woman’s head at the time, but trying to put an object in your mouth and swallow it does not strike me as being a particularly good way of ending a “lovers’ dispute.” Especially when the object is a cell phone!

If all goes according to plan, this Saturday we will be publishing Issue No. 24 of Virtue Magazine, so make sure you check it out when you have time! Saturday happens to be Christmas Eve Day, so it is appropiate that much of our content in this Christmas issue deals with heavier topics that both directly and indirectly involve religion.

New staff writer Sarah M. examines the disturbing war on Christmas being waged by anti-Christian movements, while Theresa Moss takes a look at recent trends in television advertising.

Bradley B. and Travis H. both take a look at the recent court ruling that teaching intelligent design in public schools is “unconstitutional,” and examine the issue of creation and evolution itself.

Samuel Ashwood wraps up his series examining World War I, and Casey Coolidge ponders the differences between freedom and equality.

Issue No. 24 will also feature a book review or two, a possible movie review of King Kong, a look at what Santa Claus must think about the “war on Christmas,” and more!

A new study by a UCLA political scientist has concluded that—surprise, surprise!—the mass media is largely biased, and biased to the left.

The study is being described as the “first successful attempt at objectively quantifying bias in a range of media outlets and ranking them accordingly.”

While the general conclusion of the study (“almost all major media outlets tilt to the left”) isn’t exactly news to those of us who live in the real world, some of the specific information is quite interesting and even surprising. For example, the study concludes that despite the moderate conservative leanings of The Wall Street Journal editorial page, the newspaper’s news pages show more liberal bias than even, believe it or not, The New York Times!

Of the 20 major media outlets studied, 18 scored left of center, with CBS’ “Evening News,” The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times ranking second, third and fourth most liberal behind the news pages of The Wall Street Journal.

Only Fox News’ “Special Report With Brit Hume” and The Washington Times scored right of the average U.S. voter.

The most centrist outlet proved to be the “NewsHour With Jim Lehrer.” CNN’s “NewsNight With Aaron Brown” and ABC’s “Good Morning America” were a close second and third.

...

Since Groseclose and Milyo were more concerned with bias in news reporting than opinion pieces, which are designed to stake a political position, they omitted editorials and Op‑Eds from their tallies. This is one reason their study finds The Wall Street Journal more liberal than conventional wisdom asserts.