In 2004, after narrowly defeating John Kerry, President Bush boasted he had earned political capital and he intended to spend it.

What political capital, then, have Democrats just earned?

The dust has settled, most of the results are now in, and for Republicans, the results are not good. Democrats have taken solid control of the House, capturing 27 Republican-held seats and leading in two other races. They are on the verge of taking the Senate as well, with Democratic wins in Virginia and Montana likely, although not yet certain.

Ultimately, one can point to two things that cost Republicans this election: Mark Foley and Iraq. Exit polls indicated many voters were unhappy with Bush, with the war in Iraq, and with what they perceived to be corruption in Congress.

The jury is still out on the corruption—that issue will undoubtedly come up again and again in the not so distant future—but clearly Iraq is not going to go away anytime soon. To paraphrase an old saying: Republicans made their own bed on that one, and now they have to lie in it.

The “good” news for conservatives? We’ve essentially been operating with a Democratic-controlled Congress since Bush became president. Republicans technically controlled Congress, but the result was out of control government spending and big government policies. Maybe now that they’re no longer the party in power, Republicans will make some sort of attempt to return to their fiscally conservative roots.

Today President Bush signed legislation legalizing 700 miles of new fencing along the porous Mexican border to complement the meager 90 miles of fencing already present. The bill also authorizes an additional 1500 border patrol troops.

At the bill signing, the President urged Congress to find a solution for illegal aliens already in the country, namely by pushing his guestworker plan. “We must reduce pressure on our border by creating a temporary worker plan,” Bush remarked. “Willing workers ought to be matched with willing employers to do jobs Americans are not doing.”

Back home, citizens along the Texas border aren’t sure what to think yet. Large sections of the fencing will cut through residential and agricultural areas, cutting off access to the Rio Grande River, which farmers depend on. “It’s not going to work in Texas,” says ranch-owner Michael Vickers. “Who wants to close off the river to Mexico? The river is the lifeblood for a lot of cities.”

Cost estimates range from $2 billion to $9 billion over the next several years. The entire Homeland Security budget for this year was only $1.2 billion, which means Congress will have to appropriate more and more funds as the project progresses.

They’re Christian. They follow the Quaker faith. And they have something against clothes.

The Natura Christian Fellowship has 36,000 members so far and, according to an advisor of the fellowship, attracts Christians who want to live a “naturist” lifestyle. The advisor also said that their group has seen naturalist facilities that turned into sex facilities, and that their group is different—“We’re very family oriented,” he said.

The Quaker church has had nudist camps for 65 years, basing their practice off the book of Isaiah, and suggesting three years of nudity in order to convert others. But although the original group was Quaker, they have attracted many Catholics, Southern Baptists, Lutherans, Methodists, Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses and more.

Opponents of the nudist community have concerns about Natura Christian Fellowship’s newest plan to build a 103.83-acre community of homes, townhouses, and a campground next to the city of Belton, South Carolina. Although the fellowship has insisted that they will keep the community’s common areas “clothed” and the “nude” areas hidden from non-members, the city council is trying to come up with ways to prevent the community from being built.

While some are hoping to collect signatures to try to change the zoning in the area, other members of the city council have some more…practical suggestions, such as importing yellow jackets and poison ivy. One man living in the county where the community may be built said it was hard enough having so many people today wear skimpy clothes. “You have to lead by example,” he said. “We’re supposed to be modest.”

Republicans are between a rock and a hard place right now. No one can defend Foley’s actions of course, but it would also be hard to defend the actions of any politician who knew what Foley was up to and failed to do his utmost to stop it. It’s also hard to defend the initial reaction to the Foley scandal (documented above), and that initial reaction itself now undermines Republican efforts to counteract frenzied Democratic attacks.

That’s one paragraph from my article “A Democrat’s Dream,” which appears in the latest issue of Civilized Revolt. The article deals with, perhaps obviously, the recent Mark Foley scandal and how Republicans should handle it.

Other articles include:

If I Were A White House Press Secretary by Jarret Mock
Accepting the Giants by Noah Stansbury
God-In-A-Box by Darcy Ingraham

So head on over and check it out. In addition, remember that a new issue of Virtue Magazine will be coming out next week!

“If you thought comedy was dead, you should have been in Britain after the pope cited the opinion of a Byzantine emperor who died 600 years ago.”

That’s how Taki Theodoracopulos (yes, that is his real name) began his column in the latest edition of The America Conservative. Apparently a 49-year-old man named Ronnie Hutton was jailed in Britain after, get this, he was accused of “revving his car in a racist manner.”

As Taki puts it, tongue delightfully in cheek: “Yes, in these politically correct times, engines too can be racists, especially if revved up.”

Maybe Hutton really was trying to intimidate the Libyan couple who were in tradional Arab dress and walking nearby. (He says he was trying to solve an engine problem by revving it, as the article linked to above eventually notes.) And we’re not defending his two-word response to a retired police officer who intervened. But the idea of getting in any sort of trouble for supposedly revving an engine in a “racist manner” still strikes us as ridiculous.

Recently, something happened that changed the way most people view the universe—Pluto was demoted from its status as the last of the nine planets to a “dwarf planet.” My view of the world and the fallibility of the things that I learned at school were once more brought to mind as I mourned the loss of my favorite planet. It seems that not a day goes by where basic tenets that we hold to be true are challenged by the public eye and sometimes it can cause one to doubt. However, there are a couple of things that one must keep in mind as they ponder recent events.

God governs the affairs of men, as Benjamin Franklin stated so eloquently many years ago. This was true when the founding fathers wrote the Constitution and it is true today. In the world we live in today it is not at all uncommon for humans to declare themselves infallible. However, it is simply not true. Shocked? Well, I have got some news for you—only God knows the ways of the universe, because He created it and He knows every intimate detail about the stars, planets, comets, and anything else that is out there. Therefore, He is the only one that we can always trust to be infallible.

Yesterday a Brooklyn man was arrested on charges of conspiring to support a terrorist group. Javed Iqbal allegedly provided Hezbollah’s sattelite channel, al-Manar, in the U.S. via his sattelite company.

The U.S. Treasury Department in March designated al-Manar a “global terrorist entity” and a media arm of the Hezbollah terrorist network. The designation froze al-Manar’s assets in the United States and prohibited any transactions between Americans and al-Manar.

...

Mark Dubowitz of the Coalition Against Terrorist Media (CATM), which is composed of Jewish, Christian, Muslim and secular organizations, said yesterday he is “saddened” that a U.S. resident was allegedly facilitating the transmission of al-Manar “but pleased that the U.S. is taking the necessary steps to ensure al-Manar’s incitement to violence is stopped.”

Mr. Iqbal, who owns and operates the sattelite company from his home, has been arraigned in federal court, and bail set at $250,000.

A group of archeologists from Texas believe they have found the remains of Noah’s Ark in a mountain range north of Tehran. From CompuServe News:

“I can’t imagine what it could be if it is not the Ark,” Arch Bonnema of the Christian-based Bible Archaeology Search and Exploration (Base) Institute, told ABC News. The black wood thought to be the remains of Noah’s Ark sticks out in stark contrast to the rest of the mountain.

The team found the object nestled on the side of a hill, but at first they didn’t think it was the Ark. Still, they wondered—and hoped. “We found something that has my heart skipping a beat,” archaeologist and team leader Robert Cornuke told ABC. “It wasn’t impressive at first. Certainly didn’t think it to be Noah’s Ark. But when we got close, we were amazed. It looked similar to wood.” On the downside, it wasn’t all that distinctive since it looked very much like the deck of a modern boat.

Click here to see photos of the site at ArkFever.com.

More on what exactly the researchers found:

What they found is about 400 feet long and consists of rocks that look remarkably like blackened wood beams while other rock in the area is distinctively brown, according to a news release issued by the Base Institute. One visible piece is “cut” at a 90-degree angle. Even more intriguing, some of the wood-like rocks were tested just this week and actually proved to be petrified wood. Go to the Bible and you’ll read that Noah sealed his ark with pitch, which is a black substance. Upon being cut open, one of these “rocks” also divulged a marine fossil that could have only originated undersea.

From the ArkFever website:

The unusual object is perched on a slope 13,120 feet above sea level. After studying the discovery site, Bonnema observed, “These beams not only look like petrified wood, they are so impressive that they look like real wood—this is an amazing discovery that may be the oldest shipwreck in recorded history.”

Reg Lyle, oil and gas geologist said “the object appears to be a basalt dike, however, it is absolutely uncanny that the object looks like hand hewn timbers, even the grain and color look just like petrified wood….I really need to keep an open mind about this.”

The team returned to the U.S. from rugged mountains in Iran with astonishing video footage of a monstrous black formation which looks like rock but bears the amazing image of hundreds of massive, wooden, hand-hewn beams. Could it be the lost ark on which two of every animal once sailed with their human rescuer?

David Ketter is keeping a running “Noah’s Ark Roundup” for those interested in following the story.

There’s an interesting discussion at AgentTimOnline over Agent Tim’s latest post, in which he discusses the Bible and illegal immigration. He opens his post with a link to an article that claims to show that “The Bible is unabashedly pro-immigrant.”

Unfortunately, the article, which you can read here, is guilty of the logical fallacy we call a “red herring,” or diversion.

The author of the article apparently can only find one Bible passage to support his view that the Bible is “explicit[ly]” and “unabashedly” pro immigrant:

Immigration is different: The Bible is explicit. In the Torah, Moses commanded, “Do not mistreat an alien or oppress him, for you were aliens in Egypt.” The Bible is unabashedly pro-immigrant.

The author continues:

The argument is simple: You were immigrants in Egypt, and you didn’t like being mistreated, so now that you have your own country, you should treat immigrants compassionately. Compassionate treatment of immigrants is basically an early version of the Golden Rule: Treat people the way you used to want to be treated when you were in Egypt.

That’s all fine and dandy, except he is arguing for a conclusion that isn’t at issue. No Christian “hard-line conservative,” as this author refers to those who want to put a stop to illegal immigration, thinks that immigrants should be mistreated. The real issue at hand is illegal immigration, and whether a nation has the duty to punish those who break the law by illegally entering this country.

Are we “mistreating” or “oppressing” immigrants by deporting them after they broke the law by entering our country illegally? Or are we instead upholding orderly conduct, the rule of law, and respect for our nation’s borders?

Later on the author claims, without a shred of evidence, that Jesus and his parents “crossed the border to Egypt illegally” for fear of persecution from Herod. The Bible does not state that they did so illegally, and if there is historical evidence that they did so illegally, he does not provide it. Ultimately though, he can only cite one passage from the Bible while claiming that the Bible is “explicit” and “unabashedly pro-immigrant”—and the one Bible passage has nothing to do with the real issue at hand.

The title of AgentTim’s latest post is misleading, because there really is no “Biblical worldview on immigration.” Immigration is not a religious issue—it’s a political one. Having said that, there are many Bible passages that speak of obedience to a nation’s government, including:

1 Peter 2:13: “Be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, or to governors sent by him to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good.”

Romans 13:1-2: “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities . . . those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incure judgment.”

Subjecting oneself to the governing authorities also means subjecting oneself to the laws of that country. It is clear from this that the Bible leaves no room for illegal immigration—rather, such an act is wrong and should be punished.

Found this via Albert Mohler’s blog:

MADRID (Reuters) – Spain’s parliament is to declare support for rights to life and freedom for great apes on Wednesday, apparently the first time any national legislature will have recognized such rights for non-humans.

Parliament is to ask the government to adhere to the Great Ape Project, which would mean recognizing that our closest genetic relatives should be part of a “community of equals” with humans, supporters of the resolution said.

The move in a country better known for bull-fighting would follow a string of social reforms which have converted Spain from one of Europe’s most conservative nations into a liberal trailblazer.

Backers of the resolution expect support from the Socialist Party of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, whose government has legalized gay marriage and reduced the influence of the Catholic Church in education.

“With this, Spain will make itself a world leader in protection of the great apes,” said Pedro Pozas, general secretary of the Great Ape Project’s Spanish branch.

The resolution, presented by a Green Party parliamentarian, prompted criticism and some ridicule at first.

Spanish media quoted the Catholic Archbishop of Pamplona as saying it was ludicrous to grant apes rights not enjoyed by unborn children, in a reference to Spanish abortion laws.