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Pray For the Peace of Jerusalem Character Studies From The Bible Paul (Paul's First Letter to The Corinthians) 18 For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 19 For it is written: "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise;the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate." 20 Where is the wise person? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21 For since in...

Let me say up front that I know this will be unpopular. But I can't help the uneasiness that I feel toward law enforcement lately...and I have some good reasons. Gone are the days of Officer Friendly, the neighborhood cop who knows everyone and is looking out for the community's best interest. It seems that lately, police officers end up terrorizing those they are supposed to be serving and protecting. Clearly, not all police are acting this way, but it sure seems the police state is ramping up. I have a high respect for police officers who respect the law....

...there’s no basis for the common claim Obama won through a superb, unprecedented, supremely effective get-out-the-vote effort by the Democrats. Even downcast Republicans have hailed the opposition’s turnout operation as magnificent, but they fail to note that it resulted in far fewer voters showing up for President Obama. - The president drew 7.6 million fewer votes than he did in the hope-and-change election of 2008. - Exit polls showed that Obama got a slightly smaller percentage of the black vote than last time and that turnout was sharply down, delivering at least 1.5 million fewer African-American ballots for the Democrats....

It’s official: the blizzard of ‘16 is historic. Like so many other things in the age of Obama.Of course history isn’t what it used to be. Historical revisionism, also known as “negationism” and  “historiography” in the old USSR, makes it easier to get your message out. For example, who could forget BHO’s “bio-bombing” of presidential history: In a June 28, 1985 speech Reagan called for a fairer tax code, one where a multi-millionaire did not have a lower tax rate than his secretary. Today, President Obama is calling for the same with the Buffett Rule. – Reason.com Butt as long...

Is The Donald starting to play it safe in New Hampshire? While New Hampshire polls differ at the margins, they align in one area. All of them put the totals favoring one candidate or another at about 90 percent, with 10 percent undecided. My impression is that this is mistaken. I haven't phoned random samples of 600 voters, but I make an effort to speak to six or eight people at every event I go to, those waiting in line, those sitting or standing near me. And from that (a sample of maybe 50 people so far) I would figure...

"I'm really good at killing people," Barack Obama once allegedly said. The origin of the quote is the 2013 book "Double Down" by veteran political journalists Mark Halperin and John Heilemann, who cite unnamed Obama aides as their source. The two reporters have journalistic credits even a liberal would respect--The New Yorker, The Economist, and MSNBC, to name a few. Some people choose not to give the quote credence because its source is anonymous and it wasn't caught on tape. Skepticism surrounding anonymous quotes is of course understandable though I surmise that most doubters have political motives. People who are...

There was once a group of Catholic nuns called Hawthorne Sisters, led by an African-American woman who starved to death. They would teach young Black children all day, run a laundry at night, the sister worked herself to death sacrificing even the small amount of food the other sisters were allotted. Mother Theresa told of taking a bag of rice to the mother of a starving Hindu family, the woman could hardly get the words of thanks out her mouth as she poured half the rice into another bag, excused herself, took the second bag next door to a Muslim...

The FBI is investigating whether members of Hillary Clinton’s inner circle "cut and pasted" material from the government's classified network so that it could be sent to her private e-mail address, former State Department security officials say. [Snip] "It takes a very conscious effort to move a classified e-mail or cable from the classified systems over to the unsecured open system and then send it to Hillary Clinton's personal e-mail account," said Raymond Fournier, a veteran Diplomatic Security Service special agent. "That's no less than a two-conscious-step process." He says it's clear from some of the classified e-mails made public...

... Germany's Maghreb community has come under a harsh spotlight after hundreds of women were groped and robbed by mainly North African suspects on New Year's Eve outside Cologne's main train station. Only one suspect -- an Algerian asylum seeker -- has been arrested so far over the sex crimes and 25 Moroccans and Algerians count among the 30 suspects under investigation, police said. [...] Even before the full scale of the Cologne rampage emerged, Berlin had already been watching with concern at a sudden jump in the number of Moroccan and Algerian asylum seekers in December. ...

Explanation: In the center of star-forming region 30 Doradus lies a huge cluster containing some of the largest, hottest, and most massive stars known. These stars, known collectively as star cluster R136, were captured in the featured image in visible light by the Wide Field Camera 3 in 2009 peering through the Hubble Space Telescope. Gas and dust clouds in 30 Doradus, also known as the Tarantula Nebula, have been sculpted into elongated shapes by powerful winds and ultraviolet radiation from these hot cluster stars. The 30 Doradus Nebula lies within a neighboring galaxy known as the Large Magellanic Cloud...

"Common Core will be raising good little socialists, who are in tune with their feelings, not so much their critical thinking skills."-Author unknown "Common sense of the common people is more important for the health of the nation than the ideas of the philosophical elites."-Wayne Brasler The best documentary on the National Common Core Standards, Building the Machine, was directed by Ian A. Reid, who set out to illuminate the sixty-two percent of Americans who had not heard of Common Core in 2013. Common Core, the brainchild and work of 30 individuals under the aegis of the Governors' Association and...

A little over three months ago, National Review endorsed Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) for Speaker of the House. In doing so, National Review helped place a man with a two-decade history of pushing open borders immigration policies in charge of the Republican Party’s entire legislative agenda. Ten weeks after that endorsement helped Paul Ryan secure the Speakership, Ryan proceeded to swiftly pass an omnibus spending bill that funded and expanded President Obama’s immigration agenda.

A little over three months ago, National Review endorsed Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) for Speaker of the House. In doing so, National Review helped place a man with a two-decade history of pushing open borders immigration policies in charge of the Republican Party’s entire legislative agenda. Ten weeks after that endorsement helped Paul Ryan secure the Speakership, Ryan proceeded to swiftly pass an omnibus spending bill that funded and expanded President Obama’s immigration agenda.

President Barack Obama resolved earlier this month, much to the surprise of Washington insiders, to open a third anti-terror front in Libya to eradicate the Islamic Front’s tightening grip on the country. This top-secret decision was first revealed by DEBKA Weekly 692 on Jan. 1. --snip-- At the peak of the assault, large-scale US, British and French marines will land on shore for an operation first billed as the largest allied war landing since the 1952 Korean War. The attachment of Russian forces was negotiated later. According to this scenario, one group will be dropped ashore from the Gulf of...

With just over a week until the first 2016 election contest, Donald Trump takes the lead in Iowa -- and maintains his big advantage in New Hampshire. That’s according to the latest round of Fox News state polls on the Republican presidential nomination contest. Trump bests Ted Cruz in Iowa and now receives 34 percent support among Republican caucus-goers. Cruz is second with 23 percent -- down a touch from 27 percent. Marco Rubio comes in third with 12 percent, down from 15 percent. No others garner double-digit support.

Controversial anti-Israel politician and London Mayoral candidate George Galloway has been accused of "fascism," after refusing a man entry to his events because he is pro-Israel. Jewish activist Ben Gross of the Israel Advocacy Movement had attempted to enter a public talk by Galloway last week, but was rejected and physically blocked from entering. If Gross was under any doubt as to why he was turned away, Galloway himself quickly made it clear to his audience that it was his pro-Israel sympathies which made him a persona non grata. ...

As the Iowa Caucuses near and the Republican presidential field enters cage-match mode, there has been some movement in "the three lanes" within the party. To recap, those three lanes are the social conservative lane, the establishment lane and the Donald Trump lane. In short, the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll suggests that the establishment lane is narrowing and Mr. Trump is the biggest beneficiary. The lanes in the GOP that we have discussed are not solid, stable groupings. They are made up of voters that hold mixed and sometimes contradictory views. There are, for instance, supporters of establishment...

With polls showing a surge by Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump in early-voting states, billionaire Michael Bloomberg is weighing a presidential bid as an independent, third-party candidate, the New York Times reported Saturday. Bloomberg, the popular former mayor of New York City, has sent up trial balloons before. But this time he seems concerned enough about the rise of candidates on the fringes of both parties - and Hillary Clinton's weakness in Iowa and New Hampshire - to assemble advisers and set down plans. In fact, Bloomberg is reportedly even studying up on past third-party runs by H. Ross Perot...

We don't know their names and don't know their story. We don't know why they scheduled an abortion and apparently changed their mind at the last minute and chose life for their baby. But it doesn't matter because anyone who is pro-life can simply celebrate this young couple, their sign, and their beautiful baby.There will be thousands and thousands of pro-life signs at the March for Life tomorrow. This may very well be the best one we see. Thanks to Lila Rose for posting this on Twitter and allowing millions of people to rejoice right along with this young couple....

Democrats in the Arizona Legislature want a law that requires judges to give preferences to married heterosexual couples in adoption stricken from the books. The legislation introduced in both the Senate and House removes current language giving preferences to a husband and wife over others in adoptions. Backers say the U.S. Supreme Court's decision last year legalizing same-sex marriage bans laws giving preferences to heterosexual couple over gay couples. Sen. Steve Farley, D-Tucson, also said single parents shouldn't be given second-tier status on adoptions so the proposal completely eliminates preferences for married couples. He said single parents are just as...