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Former IDF commandos secretly entered a Palestinian Authority village on Monday and rescued an American woman and her 2 1/2-year-old son from her Muslim husband, who had beaten and and held her captive for three years. The woman and child flew to the United States Wednesday night and are en route to her family’s home in Ohio. The Arab met the woman during a visit to the United States and enticed her to return with him to Israel and to the house where he lives with his first wife and several children, according to Voice of Israel government radio. “She...

Is There Good in Temptation? "No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man . . ." —1 Corinthians 10:13 The word temptation has come to mean something bad to us today, but we tend to use the word in the wrong way. Temptation itself is not sin; it is something we are bound to face simply by virtue of being human. Not to be tempted would mean that we were already so shameful that we would be beneath contempt. Yet many of us suffer from temptations we should never have to suffer, simply because we...

The canary is dead. Massachusetts, the model for the ObamaCare universal insurance plan, is the canary in the health care coal mine. Yesterday, its obit appeared on the front page of both The Wall Street Journal and The Boston Globe-Democrat. Both papers reported that our Commonwealth Care reform isn’t working as planned. A new law that was supposed to control costs and drive prices down (sound familiar?) has instead sent costs soaring. Under the “beta” version of ObamaCare here in Massachusetts, premiums have jumped 7 to 12 percent just this year. That’s about twice the national average - and it’s...

Families who fail to get health insurance could be fined up to $3,800 under a health care reform plan proposed

GATE CITY — A prayer delivered prior to a high school football game last week resulted in Gate City High School receiving a letter Tuesday from the Virginia chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. In the letter, the ACLU informed the school that it believed a prayer said during a student-led memorial service prior to Gate City’s Sept. 11 home game against Sullivan South High School was unconstitutional. It also asked for the practice to cease immediately. “We heard from someone who attends these football games ... that the game last Friday was opened with a prayer and that...

Forty years ago, a term was coined to describe the voices of ordinary, patriotic, religious Americans who sought to live their lives in peace: the "Silent Majority." In November 1969, almost four decades ago, Vice President Agnew made the first direct assault on the leftist media in his Des Moines speech, which noted that almost everything that Americans knew of politics and current events was filtered through the newsrooms of the three television networks. An excerpt from that famous speech describes the leftist prison of those who govern our news: "We can deduce that these men read the same newspapers....

Spurgeon's Morning & Evening - September 17 -------------------------------- Morning Devotional "Bring him unto me." - Mark 9:19 Despairingly the poor disappointed father turned away from the disciples to their Master. His son was in the worst possible condition, and all means had failed, but the miserable child was soon delivered from the evil one when the parent in faith obeyed the Lord Jesus' word, "Bring him unto me." Children are a precious gift from God, but much anxiety comes with them. They may be a great joy or a great bitterness to their parents; they may be filled with the...

What does it say when John Stewart covers a story before Katie, Brian, and Charlie? ACORN suspended operations yesterday, calling the actions of their employees at four separate locations indefensible. This was after ACORN Bertha Lewis called the BigGovernment videos a scam, that ACORN employees were just "playing along", which came right after they claimed they were suing FoxNews for making ACORN their Willie Horton for 2009, which wasn't too long after they called this an isolated incident. Next up? Bertha Lewis saying "we would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn't for you meddling kids"? Zoinks! Read...

TOKYO — U.S. and Japanese officials have discussed the possibility of withdrawing U.S. fighter jets from Japan, U.S. military officials confirmed Monday. But officials from both countries declined to provide further details, saying the conversation was part of ongoing discussions between the two nations about a variety of issues. "At this point, there’s not much to say on it," said U.S. Forces Japan spokesman Maj. Joseph Macri. "It’s a discussion." Macri and David Marks, a spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo, referred questions to the Pentagon. "We, the U.S. government, we talk to them on a wide variety of...

"My heart rejoices in the LORD; My horn is exalted in the LORD. I smile at my enemies, Because I rejoice in Your salvation. There is none holy like the LORD, For there is none besides You, Nor is there any rock like our God." I Samuel 2:1-2

SEOUL — Col. Robert Givens assumed command Tuesday of Kunsan Air Base’s 8th Fighter Wing, which includes 15 squadrons and 2,600 airmen. Givens is a graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy and served as commander of Kunsan’s 35th Fighter Squadron from 2003 to 2004. An F-16 command pilot, he has flown more than 100 combat sorties in operations Desert Storm, Southern Watch and Iraqi Freedom. He has been awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross with one oak leaf cluster and valor device for his service in Iraq. He takes over for Col. Jerry Harris, who became commander in November 2008....

National Harbor, Md. — Defense Secretary Roberts Gates gave a sweeping review of the Air Force on Wednesday in a speech peppered with a few favor-culling announcements and yet another defense of his most controversial budgetary decisions. From the rise of unmanned aerial vehicles to the future size and safety of the U.S. nuclear arsenal, Gates promoted the programs and weapons systems he is asking Congress to approve this fall. Addressing the Air Force Association national convention, just outside of Washington, the secretary praised the service’s air and ground efforts in Afghanistan and pushed back criticism that his new way...

As we've all heard President Barack Obama will appear on an unprecedented five Sunday shows as well as others in the coming week in his hard push to sell ObamaCare to the masses. The move reeks of desperation but one other attempt has many scratching their heads. It was just announced that Obama will be a very special guest star on "Dora the Explorer" this week. These are some excerpts: Dora y Obama are faced with a very ill Boots, a blue monkey who is a friend of Dora's, who they need to get to Healthcare City or he'll be...

For years, I've been wishing for another Ross Perot -- a leader who would awaken the American people to the dangers of living beyond our national means through huge federal budget deficits. Now, at last, we have that leader. His name is Barack Obama. Perot ran for president in 1992 as a third-party candidate, and an unlikely Pied Piper he was -- a short, crew-cut scold with a thick twang and a cranky manner who proposed to raise taxes. But his complaints about Washington's chronic overspending struck a chord with the public. A few months before the election, he was...

In order that we might all raise the level of discourse and expand our language abilities, here is the daily post of "Word for the Day".logorrhea \law-guh-REE-uh\, noun1. Pathologically incoherent, repetitious speech.2. Incessant or compulsive talkativeness; wearisome volubility. Example sentences: By his own measure, he is a man of many contradictions, beginning with the fact that he is famous as a listener but suffers from "a touch of logorrhea." He is so voluble that one wonders how his subjects get a word in edgewise.-- Mel Gussow, "Listener, Talker, Now Literary Lion: It's Official.", New York Times, June 17, 1997...

I submit that every human, with few exceptions, intrinsically understands the world is not what it is supposed to be. For those of us with a Judeo-Christian perspective, the explanation for the world being “off” is sin, a state of separation from the will and presence of God. However, even if one rejects this theological explanation, they will still acknowledge what it attempts to explain. We have this keen sense that the world is meant to be a certain way, and the way it is falls grossly short of that ideal. Most of us also sense this condition applies, not...

Ultraviolet AndromedaExplanation: Taken by a telescope onboard NASA's Swift satellite, this stunning vista represents the highest resolution image ever made of the Andromeda Galaxy (aka M31) - at ultraviolet wavelengths. The mosaic is composed of 330 individual images covering a region 200,000 light-years wide. It shows about 20,000 sources, dominated by hot, young stars and dense star clusters that radiate strongly in energetic ultraviolet light. Of course, the Andromeda Galaxy is the closest large spiral galaxy to our own Milky Way, at a distance of some 2.5 million light-years. To compare this gorgeous island universe's appearance in optical light with...

Forward Operating Base Shank, Afghanistan - The soldiers in his New York-based combat unit call Staff Sgt. Brandon Camacho the "Bullet Magnet." Camacho - either the luckiest or unluckiest soldier in Afghanistan - is on his second tour here with the Fort Drum-based 10th Mountain Division's 3rd Brigade Combat Team. The reason for the nickname: He's just earned his fifth Purple Heart after being shot in the left knee in a firefight 100 miles south of Kabul, military officials said. "One of my friends said, 'You're the luckiest unlucky person I know,'" said Camacho, 24, who grew up in Saipan...

An innocent, five-year-old girl is shot in the face Wednesday night is recovering at an area hospital.Jordayna Barret's jaw is shattered. She had a bullet lodged in her left cheek bone and underwent successful surgery on Thursday to remove it. 30-year-old Keyon Timmons, a convicted murder, was out on parole. Now, he's back behind bars after witnesses say he shot his girlfriend's niece in the face. "Soon as a I heard the gunshot, I cam running out of the house and I (saw) the feller running to his car. Got in, took off, slowed... and then the guy that was...

Dawn Johnson, on the docket for the position of Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Council, is another Obama nominee with the potential to change the shape of American politics. Johnson is currently a professor at the Maurer School of Law at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, and has a long history in the Washington legal scene. She served as former President Clinton’s acting assistant attorney general and as a deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel. Her installation in Obama’s Office of Legal Counsel puts her in a decision making capacity for...