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Pray For the Peace of Jerusalem Character Studies From The Bible Abraham New International Version (NIV) 16 When the men got up to leave, they looked down toward Sodom, and Abraham walked along with them to see them on their way. 17 Then the Lord said, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do? 18 Abraham will surely become a great and powerful nation, and all nations on earth will be blessed through him. 19 For I have chosen him, so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by...

Word For The Day, Wednesday, December 17, 2014-- higgledy-piggledy ; 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". [hig-uh l-dee-pig-uh l-dee]hear it pronounced adverb in a jumbled, confused, or disorderly manner; helter-skelter. adjective confused; jumbled, chaotic, messy Origin: "confusedly, hurriedly," 1590s, a "vocal gesture" [OED] probably formed from pig and the animal's suggestions of mess and disorder. Reduplications in the h-/p- pattern are common (e.g. hanky-panky, hocus-pocus, hinch(y)-pinch(y), an obsolete children's game, attested from c.1600). Rules: Everyone must leave a post using...

WASHINGTON — The Senate confirmed three Texans Tuesday night for lifetime judicial appointments, capping an effort to fill vacancies in the state that have languished for years. The nominees — U.S. Attorney Robert Pitman of San Antonio, Texarkana lawyer Robert Schroeder III and Sherman Magistrate Judge Amos Mazzant III — were approved by a voice vote on Congress’ final night this year. Pitman, the first openly gay U.S. attorney in Texas history, will be the state’s first openly gay federal judge.

December 17, 2014, 08:15 am Obamas say they're no strangers to racism By Justin Sink The president and the first lady chronicled a series experiences in People magazine that they say demonstrated some of the latent racism that blacks in America continue to face. "There's no black male my age, who's a professional, who hasn't come out of a restaurant and is waiting for their car and somebody didn't hand them their car keys," the president said. The first lady said someone had asked her husband to get them coffee because he was wearing a tuxedo at a black-tie dinner,...

The new Republican-controlled Senate's first act in January will be approval of the Keystone XL pipeline, Republican leader Mitch McConnell said on Tuesday. McConnell told reporters that the bill would be based on a measure that failed in the Senate last month that was co-sponsored by North Dakota Republican John Hoeven and Louisiana Democrat Mary Landrieu. "It'll be open for amendment," McConnell said. "I will hope that senators on both sides will offer energy-related amendments but there'll be no effort to try to micromanage the amendment process." Landrieu pushed for a Keystone vote in November in a last-ditch effort to...

Michigan State University trustees approved a salary increase from $520,000 to $750,000 for President Lou Anna Simon. The 44 percent base income raise, which also includes an annual $100,000 "retention bonus," came over her objections. “This is not what I requested,” Simon said, according to MLive. “Trustee (Joel) Ferguson and other members of the board were very clear that they were my bosses in this regard and this is something that would be done at their request.” ForTheRecord says: Trustees praised Simon for her “leadership and dedication” and said she “continues to excel on the board-established performance criteria (of her...

If you listen to the Obama administration you might believe the economy is roaring. On some level jobs are being created. The problem of course is that they’re barely keeping up with population growth. Millions of jobs were lost when the recession took place in late 2008-2009. Very few of those jobs have been recovered, leaving millions in long term unemployment. The real unemployment rate, the Federal government’s U-6 number, is 11%. U-6 unemployment counts both the long term unemployed, which the official unemployment rate doesn’t do, as well as those who are underemployed. U-6 used to be the way...

My phone, email, and social media accounts instantly start blowing up Tuesday in response to the news Jeb Bush was going to “actively explore” a 2016 presidential run. Except the near-orgasmic response wasn’t from whom you might think. It didn’t come from conservatives, but from the mainstream (liberal) media. Twelve hours later, a Google search for “Jeb Bush actively explore” returned over 3.8 million results, and the first page of entries was almost entirely comprised of mainstream media hits. Herein lies one of the primary reasons why Jeb Bush is never going to be elected President of these United States....

With a win against the estate of late Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle behind him, former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura now has his sights on HarperCollins, the publisher of the bestselling memoir "American Sniper." Ventura filed a lawsuit Monday against the New York publisher, alleging the publicity generated by the book with a "false and defamatory" segment "substantially increased sales of 'American Sniper,' thereby generating millions of dollars in revenues and profits for Harper Collins." HarperCollins does not comment on pending litigation, a spokesperson said Tuesday. A federal jury in St. Paul found in July that a segment of the...

Well that didn’t take long. The election is over and the House Republicans have deposed John Boehner (R-OH) as Speaker. Meet Speaker Barack Obama. "The Republicans responded to Speaker Obama’s requests. Violating quickly, briskly and exactly every last word of their campaign promises to defund Obamacare and to fight amnesty. The fix was in.” Speaker Obama and his loyal number two, Joe Biden, spent last week rounding up the votes to get their Republican colleagues in the House to fund Obamacare and amnesty plus all manner of spending programs. The Republicans responded to Speaker Obama’s requests. Violating quickly, briskly and...

ALEXANDRIA, Va.— Seven hundred and sixty-three. No, that’s not how much the national debt is ticking upwards per second, or how much you’ll pay annually for premiums under Obamacare. It’s the total number of applications that 49 states — every state except Hawaii — have sent petitioning the U.S. Congress to call for a controversial Article V convention of states to propose amendments to the U.S. Constitution and rein in the federal government. The concept of a convention to bring power back to the states may not be widely known, but it’s an idea that’s slowly gaining steam as Americans...

When a unit of North Carolina’s Curtiss-Wright Corp. won a roughly $300 million deal in 2007 to supply components for new reactors in China, industry officials trumpeted China’s nuclear boom as good for U.S. business. Today, Chinese companies are competing for that business—and foreign companies risk getting left out. Meanwhile, Curtiss-Wright’s contract is caught up in a legal dispute, while Chinese authorities blame the company in part for the delay of a landmark nuclear project. U.S. and other foreign companies are now struggling to keep their hold in China, the industry’s biggest growth market and a rare bright spot more...

Retired Air Force Col. Rob Maness has launched Gator PAC, a political action committee which the group says “will work to inspire and recruit conservative activists and citizen leaders who are committed to accountability in government, constitutional principles, certainty and prosperity.” "Running for office was never about me, and it never will be - it's about us, our country and becoming an active voice for conservative solutions," Maness said in the release about the launch of the PAC, provided to Breitbart News ahead of its public release. "The reality is Washington D.C. is a swamp, career politicians are the Gators...

The UK's highest court has told two Catholic midwives they do not have the right to avoid supervising other nurses involved in abortion procedures. The Supreme Court in London ruled that Mary Doogan and Connie Wood should have to support staff who are caring for patients having terminations. Ms Doogan, from Garrowhill in Glasgow, and Mrs Wood, from Clarkston in East Renfrewshire, were employed as labour ward co-ordinators at the Southern General Hospital in Glasgow. Gillian Smith, RCM director for Scotland, said: "This ruling is sensible and both women and midwives will welcome it. "The ruling gives extensive definition to...

Last week, Robby wrote here about how "students are so coddled by the feelings-protection regime at university campuses that they now believe disheartening national news developments—such as the grand jury decisions in the Michael Brown and Eric Garner cases—entitle them to final exam extensions." Columbia Law School delayed final exams for students who felt unable to take them in the wake these developments. Students at Harvard and Georgetown began demanding their universities follow suit.One might think that Oberlin College, known for it's ultra-crunchy reputation, would be all about this. At least one professor at Oberlin, however, is having none of...

Sony Hack: Activists to Drop 'Interview' DVDs Over North Korea Via Balloon by Paul Bond 12/16/2014 4:03pm PDT This story also appears in the Jan. 9 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Whether or not North Korea is behind the Sony hack, Kim Jong Un better brace himself because The Interview is headed to his country. Human rights activists are planning to airlift DVDs of the Seth Rogen comedy into the country via hydrogen balloons. Fighters for a Free North Korea, run by Park Sang Hak, a former government propagandist who escaped to South Korea, has for years used balloons...

Mike Bird December 17, 2014 After a brutal sell-off Tuesday, the ruble shot up in early trading Wednesday morning, rising by nearly 7%, from 68 to the dollar to 63.16 at 8:09 a.m. GMT. The rise came as the Russian finance ministry intervened in the currency market, according to Bloomberg. That means it's selling off a chunk of its dollar reserves to buy rubles, driving the currency's value up. By 9 a.m., though, the exchange rate fell back to where it started, and the ruble is falling again: down 0.68% at 68.51 as of 10:15 a.m. GMT. Here's how the...

Torture is one of those topics that often overwhelm sober reason with lurid emotion. Even people who usually are clear-eyed and rational sink into sloppy thinking and incoherent argument when it comes to torture. Peggy Noonan’s recent Wall Street Journal column about the Senate report on the CIA’s interrogation techniques illustrates this phenomenon perfectly. Noonan is usually an astute analyst, but her column on the report is riddled with received wisdom and unexamined assumptions. For Noonan, the “important lesson” of the report is not that progressives, as usual, are shameful hypocrites and partisan hacks who will damage their country’s interests...

When students at Columbia and other law schools around the country demanded that exams be postponed because they were traumatized by the Michael Brown and Eric Garner cases, we and many others responded with ridicule. In today’s National Law Journal, a third-year law student at Harvard named William Desmond says that we got it all wrong: the request for extra time for exams was a sign of the students’ strength. For entertainment value, you should read the whole thing, but here are some excerpts: [O]pponents of exam extensions have declared that to grant these requests would be a disservice to...

JNS.org - European Parliament members on Tuesday declined to propose an initially planned motion that would have urged the European Union’s (EU) 28 member nations to recognize a unilaterally established Palestinian state. Instead, the EU Parliament’s lawmakers proposed a resolution asking for the continuation of peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. Negotiators for the European People’s Party and the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe, parties that together hold a majority of the EU Parliament seats, issued a resolution stating that the EU Parliament “supports in principle recognition of Palestinian statehood and the two-state solution, and believes these...