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The top ten conservative colleges or universities in the United states are:
Hillsdale College, Hillsdale, Michigan
Grove City College
Franciscan University
Indiana Wesleyan University
Thomas Aquinas College
College of the Ozarks
Liberty University
Patrick Henry College
Christendom College
Harding University
Honorable Mention

Does Victory in Iraq Help Obama?

Interesting recent poll from Rasmussen:

Nearly half of Americans (48%) now believe the United States and its allies are winning the War on Terror, as opposed to 20% who give the nod to the terrorists, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national survey. These figures reflect a dramatic improvement from a year ago—in July 2007, only 36% thought the U.S. and its allies were winning. An equal number thought the terrorists held the advantage.

The 28-point difference is the most favorable margin recorded by Rasmussen Reports since tracking began in January 2004 and seems to reflect a growing confidence among adults that the tide is turning in Iraq and in the war on terror in general. The previous high was established on September 6, 2004 when 52% thought the U.S. and its allies were winning but 26% thought the terrorists were winning at that time for a 26-point favorable margin.

Thirty-seven percent (37%) now think the situation in Iraq will get better over the coming six months while only 25% expect it to get worse. A year ago, the assessment was far more pessimistic—just 23% said that things would get better while 49% offered the more pessimistic response. Another recent poll showed that 40% now believe it is possible for the U.S. to win the War in Iraq.

The new findings also show 45% now believe the United States is safer today than it was before the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, while 37% believe otherwise. Those figures are also the most optimistic on record.

The standard line about the end of the Cold War is that by putting the fear of nuclear war to bed, it allowed for a foreign policy lightweight - Bill Clinton- to win the White House. Its a great theory, but it forgets that 57% of the American people voted against Bill Clinton in 1992…hardly a ringing endorsement of Clinton’s policy prescriptions. But, today, the same idea is alive and well - heck, over at NRO’s The Corner some people seem to think that the mis-reported story of Maliki on Obama’s Iraq plan has pretty much wrecked McCain’s chances for November. The word is out - the American people really, really want to vote for a Democrat in November and McCain’s only shot was to convince the American people that with a war going on, placing our bets on the inexperienced Obama was too dangerous. And now that victory is breaking out in Iraq, that line is gone for good.

While there are a couple of third party candidates out there on the left and the right, my view is that for Obama to win he’s going to have to do something that no Democrat has managed in 32 years - score an outright majority of the vote in November. He can do it, but thus far the polling shows him consistently falling short and never showing any movement which would indicate he’s on his way to a majority. McCain seems stuck in the electoral doldrums, too - hardly ever breaking 45% in polling (though Rasmussen has recently showed Obama and McCain tied at 46%). What it seems to me is that while Obama has wowed his base, he’s not doing much with anyone else - meanwhile, McCain is doing remarkably well amongst independent voters, but has yet to enthuse the GOP base for November. Key to victory for McCain is energising the base, key for Obama is appealing outside the left.

In this McCain has an advantage. Obama is pretty much locked in to very leftwing positions - he’s tried to triangulate himself out of them, but he can’t stray too far towards the center lest he alienate too much of his base. McCain, on the other hand, has plenty of chances to make the argument to the GOP base that they’d better get excited about him - on taxes, spending, judges and the war, McCain is just what the GOP doctor ordered. McCain has two ways to do his job - propose conservative ideas, and point out Obama’s ultra liberal ideas, and what they’ll mean for America. In both cases, McCain can make a strong pitch for enthused GOP support.

So, while Obama and his Democrats might be thinking that the victory in Iraq gets them off the hook and they can just say “Afghanistan” from time to time and allow domestic issues to carry them to victory, in my view the victory in Iraq gives McCain the chance to force Obama on the defensive initially on just war issues, but eventually on the worthiness of his whole program. A man who can be so wrong about Iraq can also be wrong about other things - like whether or not he’ll be able to stick it out in Afghanistan; whether or not his health care plan is good for America; whether or not his energy policy has what it takes…on issue after issue, Obama’s manifestly bad judgement on Iraq can be used to question his fitness on other issues. And while doing this, McCain can continually point out his correctness on Iraq and how this courageous and right decision lays the groundwork for him to have the courage and wisdom to tackle judicial issues, Afghanistan, taxation, government waste, etc, etc, etc.

If attitudes about the war are improving as Rasmussen’s survey shows, then there may soon come a time when McCain’s pro-victory stance from 2007 switches from liability to asset, while Obama’s 2007 defeatism (already being shoved down the memory hole as far as Obama can manage it) will show through more and more as the foolhardy opinion of a man who hasn’t the knowledge, guts or wisdom to be President.

McCain the Sexist?

So says Kate Sheppard over at In These Times, by reason of McCain’s pro-life stance - calling a it “war on women”:

McCain’s campaign has been making a clear play for women voters in recent weeks, hosting conference calls with Republican women and touting that his policies on national security, the economy and healthcare appeal to women voters.

But the suggestion that women — and feminist women, at that — will be lining up behind him is a fairytale. At least, it should be. McCain’s record and policies on issues of importance to women are neither moderate nor maverick.

In The Nation, Katha Pollitt put it simply: “[T]o vote for McCain, a feminist would have to be insane.”…

…the number of progressive or even moderate voters who would seriously consider voting for McCain is much smaller than the media would have you believe. Unfortunately, McCain’s propaganda seems to be working, at least on those who aren’t aware of his record on issues of concern to women voters.

A February Planned Parenthood poll of 1,205 women voters in 16 battleground states found that 50 percent of women voters don’t know McCain’s position on abortion, and that 49 percent of women who backed McCain were pro-choice. Forty-six percent of women supporting McCain said they’d like to see Roe v. Wade upheld — though McCain says he supports overturning the decision. When they learned of his position on Roe, 36 percent of women who identified as both pro-choice and likely McCain voters said they would be less likely to vote for him.

These moderate, often suburban, middle-class women could be critical swing voters this election. At the time of the Planned Parenthood poll, Obama held only a 5 percentage-point margin over McCain with its swing-state demographic, 41 percent to 36 percent.

Planned Parenthood concludes that these findings suggest “that just filling in McCain’s actual voting record and his publicly stated positions on a handful of key issues has the potential to diminish his total vote share among battleground women voters by about 17 to 20 percentage points.”

All of that predicated on a theory that women are so in love with abortion that the mere fact of McCain’s opposition will doom him - such theory being a standard on the left every election cycle with the only flaw being that it never comes out that way. We GOPers are always warned that our pro-life stance will destroy us at the polls and yet we manage to win from time to time (like 7 out of the last 10 times - and the times we lost it wasn’t because we’re pro-life). Be that as it may, does McCain’s pro-life view make him a sexist at war with women?

If you’re a leftist, it does - because for the left, abortion has become a sacrament in the Church of Secularism. As a Catholic views Annointing of the Sick (”last rites” for you non-Catholics out there), so the leftist views abortion - a thing not done all the time, but vital to the overall health of the organism. To be opposed to abortion on the left is akin to being opposed to forgiveness of sins in Christianity - it just isn’t done. So entrenched is this view that even someone as kooky as Kucinich was forced to drop a lifetime of pro-life views when he made his quixotic run for the White House. Calling McCain a “sexist” is just liberal-speak for saying “he disagrees with us on abortion”.

And thus the real battle is joined - in the end, Iraq, Afghanistan, oil prices, inflation and the rest are all secondary: the dividing line in America is over the issue of Life. The Culture of Life battles the Culture of Death, and eventually America will become all one thing or all the other. That is, all Life or all Death.

The particular issue, abortion, won’t be on the ballot - but the mindset which allows abortion and the mindset which seeks its end will be, and in this year of 2008 the stakes are very crucial as the judges who will either overturn or uphold Roe for another generation are likely to be appointed by the next President. It will be one battle in a long war, but for those of us who fight for Life, the stakes couldn’t be higher.

Professor Obama Says He’d Be President for 8-10 Years

probably in 57 states too.

Today on CBS’s Face the Nation, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., in Afghanistan, told the paparazzi-pursued correspondent Lara Logan that “the objective of this trip was to have substantive discussions with people like President Karzai or Prime Minister Maliki or President Sarkozy or others who I expect to be dealing with over the next eight to 10 years.

“And it’s important for me to have a relationship with them early, that I start listening to them now, getting a sense of what their interests and concerns are.”

That’s the same Barack Obama, the former constitutional law professor, who apparently doesn’t know the length of a presidential term.

Let’s give the professor a little crash course… from The Constitution, Article II, Section 1:

The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his Office during the Term of four Years, and, together with the Vice President, chosen for the same Term, be elected […]

Maybe Obama should review it before he continues his campaign, before he gets something else wrong.

New York Times Helps Obama Hide

This counts as “What Media Bias? Part 117?.

The New York Times rejects a McCain Op-Ed responding to Obama - the offending document, via Drudge:

In January 2007, when General David Petraeus took command in Iraq, he called the situation “hard” but not “hopeless.” Today, 18 months later, violence has fallen by up to 80% to the lowest levels in four years, and Sunni and Shiite terrorists are reeling from a string of defeats. The situation now is full of hope, but considerable hard work remains to consolidate our fragile gains.

Progress has been due primarily to an increase in the number of troops and a change in their strategy. I was an early advocate of the surge at a time when it had few supporters in Washington. Senator Barack Obama was an equally vocal opponent. “I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there,” he said on January 10, 2007. “In fact, I think it will do the reverse.”

Now Senator Obama has been forced to acknowledge that “our troops have performed brilliantly in lowering the level of violence.” But he still denies that any political progress has resulted.

Perhaps he is unaware that the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad has recently certified that, as one news article put it, “Iraq has met all but three of 18 original benchmarks set by Congress last year to measure security, political and economic progress.” Even more heartening has been progress that’s not measured by the benchmarks. More than 90,000 Iraqis, many of them Sunnis who once fought against the government, have signed up as Sons of Iraq to fight against the terrorists. Nor do they measure Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki’s new-found willingness to crack down on Shiite extremists in Basra and Sadr City—actions that have done much to dispel suspicions of sectarianism.

The success of the surge has not changed Senator Obama’s determination to pull out all of our combat troops. All that has changed is his rationale. In a New York Times op-ed and a speech this week, he offered his “plan for Iraq” in advance of his first “fact finding” trip to that country in more than three years. It consisted of the same old proposal to pull all of our troops out within 16 months. In 2007 he wanted to withdraw because he thought the war was lost. If we had taken his advice, it would have been. Now he wants to withdraw because he thinks Iraqis no longer need our assistance…

…Senator Obama has said that he would consult our commanders on the ground and Iraqi leaders, but he did no such thing before releasing his “plan for Iraq.” Perhaps that’s because he doesn’t want to hear what they have to say. During the course of eight visits to Iraq, I have heard many times from our troops what Major General Jeffrey Hammond, commander of coalition forces in Baghdad, recently said: that leaving based on a timetable would be “very dangerous.”

The danger is that extremists supported by Al Qaeda and Iran could stage a comeback, as they have in the past when we’ve had too few troops in Iraq. Senator Obama seems to have learned nothing from recent history. I find it ironic that he is emulating the worst mistake of the Bush administration by waving the “Mission Accomplished” banner prematurely.

I am also dismayed that he never talks about winning the war—only of ending it. But if we don’t win the war, our enemies will. A triumph for the terrorists would be a disaster for us. That is something I will not allow to happen as president. Instead I will continue implementing a proven counterinsurgency strategy not only in Iraq but also in Afghanistan with the goal of creating stable, secure, self-sustaining democratic allies.

The Iraq issue will be, I think, key for McCain - not in the sense that a majority will vote based just on that issue, but that it is the easiest issue for McCain to question Obama’s judgement and further question Obama’s fitness to carry Afghanistan to victory. Obama is staking his foreign/military policy meme on a “get out of Iraq, win in Afghanistan” proposal - the narrative will be that Obama will “end” the war in Iraq so that we can, finally, win in Afghanistan and thus repair all the damage President Bush has done and McCain proposes to continue. But this is a two-edged sword Obama is wielding - McCain can point out that Obama’s defeatism when the going got tough in Iraq indicates that Obama will also flunk the test when things get rough in Afghanistan. Obama ran up the white flag once entirely un-necessarily, what can he say to demonstrate to us that he won’t surrender, again, in Afghanistan?

Obama is nothing but a story - a fraud wrapped up in an illusion. As long as no one points out the nakedness of this would-be Emperor, he’ll be fine. McCain’s job is to force people to see what Obama really is - an ambitious non-entity with no requisite experience justifying installing him in the most powerful position in the world. If the election revolves around which man has the better story, then Obama will be our next President - if the election revolves around who is best able to be President, McCain will be sworn in on January 20th. We’ll have to see if Obama can hide in plain sight until November, or if McCain will force him, naked, into the public view. -Blogs for Victory

Judge sides with North Dakota ranch
Jeff Johnson

A federal judge has rejected the attempts of an atheist group to prevent the North Dakota Boys and Girls Ranch from providing secular social services to at-risk children.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation sued the State of North Dakota, on behalf of five local taxpayers, to stop government funding for the church-affiliated ranch that helps troubled youth. The Boys and Girls Ranch is a ministry of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod.

Joel Oster, senior counsel with the Alliance Defense Fund, says the lawsuit had only one goal. "This is an organization that helps at-risk children and has been very successful in helping these kids," he points out. "And the Freedom From Religion Foundation, essentially, wanted to shut this organization down from providing this very important service to these children in North Dakota."

The Foundation argued that, because the organizations that run the ranch are religious, giving them taxpayers' money frees up private money to promote religion. That, they argued, is a violation of the First Amendment prohibition on establishing a state religion. But Oster claims the Supreme Court has rejected similar arguments.

"The bottom line is, can the state do what it is doing?" he questions. "And in this case, what the North Dakota legislature did was appropriate money to be used for helping at-risk kids....that is a very good goal and it is laudable and there is nothing wrong with that."

Oster says the court's order essentially agrees that the North Dakota legislature can help at-risk kids in this way. U.S. District Judge Dan Hovland did not rule on the substance of the case. He merely determined that the Foundation did not have the right to sue simply because some taxpayers objected to how the government was spending their tax dollars.

'Truth truck' prevents abortions in St. Louis
Charlie Butts

Operation Rescue's "Truth Truck," which sports large photos of aborted babies on its sides, was trapped in a situation in St. Louis that turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

Truck driver Mark Gietzen pulled the truck onto the parking lot of a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic. Operation Rescue's spokesperson Cheryl Sullinger picks up the story.

"Things went into complete bedlam, actually, at the abortion clinic," Sullinger shares. "The guards ran over and shut the gates. They called the police and...actually, by shutting the gates, prevented patients from entering the abortion clinic for a considerable amount of time."

Police pointed out there was no signage restricting the parking lot to abortion clinic staff and patients only. "After a little discussion, they opened the gates and released the Truth Truck, and everyone on the street cheered because they thought that was an amazing thing," Sullinger notes.

According to Sullinger, the reality is that in trapping the truck behind a closed gate, more people saw it than otherwise would have, giving Gietzen additional time to minister to people entering the clinic.

"He was able to stay in the parking lot longer than he would have been able to, and women who were actually entering the clinic for abortions were checking the truck out and seeing the truth about what was going to happen to their babies in there," Sullinger explains. "And so, what [Planned Parenthood] meant for bad ended up being a good thing -- and so we're happy about that."

After police pointed out the driver had done nothing illegal, the gate was opened and the truck exited, only to be greeted by a rousing cheer from pro-life demonstrators.

Rick Warren on his upcoming presidential forum
Jim Brown

Evangelical pastor and noted author Rick Warren says he's hoping an upcoming presidential forum at his church next month will give American voters a more thorough understanding of the "faith, values, character, competence, leadership convictions and worldview" of presumptive presidential nominees Barack Obama and John McCain.

Both Senators Obama and McCain will be appearing August 16 at Saddleback Church in California to take part in a "Civil Forum on Leadership and Compassion" moderated by Pastor Warren, who says he also will be addressing what he calls "pressing issues that are bridging divides in our nation, such as poverty, HIV/AIDS, climate, and human rights."

The two-hour forum is co-sponsored by Warren's Saddleback Church and the liberal social justice group Faith in Public Life, whose board president is Meg Riley, a Unitarian Universalist minister who previously ran the denomination's homosexual advocacy office. The group's board members include other theological liberals, among them a pro-abortion Muslim leader and a Jewish rabbi.

Warren says he is not troubled that a left-wing advocacy group will be co-sponsoring the forum at his California church. "Really we just are...co-hosting [the event]," says the pastor. "[T]hey came up with the original idea, but...actually we're in total control of the format, the program, the questions. It's at our church; and so it's not their event, it's our event."

The author of The Purpose Driven Life says he does not believe the biblical gospel is compromised when he teams up with non-Christians in efforts to promote the "common good."

"Now, I don't happen to agree with Muslims and I don't happen to agree with Jewish people," states Warren, "and I don't even agree with all of the things Catholics believe. But I...can work with them on doing something like stopping AIDS because we all believe sex is for marriage only."

Warren says although he believes in the separation of church and state, he is not uncomfortable hosting the presidential forum because he does not believe in the separation of church and politics.

Explaining the format for the upcoming forum, Warren notes both the Obama and McCain camps requested that there be no questions from a panel or the audience, but rather from him only. Warren says he plans to focus on issues that political reporters often ignore, including how the candidates view the Constitution. He suggests questions on that topic: "Is it a quote 'living document' that can be changed, that can be reinterpreted with each generation as things change? Or is it a truth written in granite that is a standard by which we evaluate everything else, and you don't change it unless we amend it?"

Unlike the Faith in Public Life-sponsored "Compassion Forum" that aired exclusively on CNN in April, Saddleback Church will provide a live feed to all television networks who wish to cover the August forum.

Interfaith meeting
In conjunction with the presidential forum, Warren plans to convene an interfaith meeting at the church for approximately 30 Christian, Jewish, and Muslim leaders to "discuss cooperation in projects for the common good of all Americans." Members of Warren's P.E.A.C.E. Coalition will be flying in to attend the events.

Evangelical pastor Bob DeWaay is author of the book Redefining Christianity and founder of the apologetics ministry Critical Issues Commentary. He says Warren wants the ear and influence of any world leader he can get to back his P.E.A.C.E. plan. (Listen to audio report)

"Some years ago he was already saying that this P.E.A.C.E. plan didn't need Christians necessarily to work, that Muslims could be part of it, or anybody else -- and then he calls the P.E.A.C.E. plan a 'reformation.' So how are you going to have a reformation based on working with all the world religions?" DeWaay asks.

"What does that got to do with the Great Commission, or the real Reformation, the authority of Scripture – all of the things that are important to us as evangelical Christians? I don't see how you can make a reformation based on cooperating world religions."

DeWaay says Warren is operating under the mistaken notion that uniting all religions to fight problems like AIDS and poverty will "warm people up" to Christianity. According to DeWaay, that is not the gospel God called Christians to preach. However, he admits many Evangelicals still have a strong affinity for Pastor Warren -- even though he wants to "reform" the church to focus on social action rather than gospel preaching.

"He's a very likeable guy on the surface, and I think pastors and Christians think, 'Well, look at this, if he can get all these people on board and he can build a big church and he's popular, and maybe if we get on board with that, some of that will rub off. Maybe we'll learn how to have a bigger church and how to be popular,'" DeWaay contends. "And I've been [telling people that] Jesus told us that the world would hate us. Okay, so something's seriously wrong if we do achieve popularity with the world.'" -OneNewsNow

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