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Pray For the Peace of Jerusalem (Music in The Bible) Psalm 84 Psalm 84[a] For the director of music. According to gittith.[b] Of the Sons of Korah. A psalm. 1 How lovely is your dwelling place,     Lord Almighty! 2 My soul yearns, even faints,     for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh cry out     for the living God. 3 Even the sparrow has found a home,     and the swallow a nest for herself,     where she may have her young— a place near your altar,     Lord Almighty, my King and my God. 4 Blessed are those who dwell in your house;...

David Kris served as Assistant Attorney General for the Department of Justice under President Obama and Attorney General Holder. He drew on his prestige as a former senior official in the Department of Justice to disparage Rep. Devin Nunes in his exposure of the FBI’s misconduct in the Russia haox and assure anyone who would listen to him that all was in order. He is an apologist for FBI misconduct who gives the Department of Justice Inspector General report on the FBI’s FISA misconduct the stupidly credulous reading that absolves the FBI of political bias in the matter. Who better...

Tafida Raqeeb has been in a coma since Feb. 9, 2019, after she suffered an arteriovenous malformation which resulted in a burst blood vessel in her brain.VATICAN CITY — A five-year-old British girl, whose parents won a legal battle to take her to Italy for medical treatment, has been moved out of intensive care, and into a rehabilitative unit for children with incurable illnesses. Her parents say they hope to have more good news about their daughter’s condition in the months to come. Tafida Raqeeb was transferred to the Galini Children’s Hospital in Genoa from the Royal London Hospital, where...

French architects want the roof of the fire-ravaged Notre-Dame Cathedral to be rebuilt in wood and not in metal or concrete. Advertising One of the heads of the country’s biggest architects’ body said reconstructing the roof in anything other than the original wood would be a mistake. The intervention by Eric Wirth of the Guild of French Architects comes amid controversy over French President Emmanuel Macron’s wish for the spire of the 13th-century monument to be given a “contemporary” touch. “The most modern and ecological material today is wood,” Wirth said Wednesday, which, as well as being more fire-resistant than...

With the new year and decade off to a chaotic start, here are four “Godly exercises” that can help reduce stress but don’t require working out. Instead, you exercise your mind and soul with thinking beyond yourself — beyond the world, into the heavenly realm, and back down again with a new perspective. Now, let’s get real. Any talk of “God” can be threatening, especially if you are not a churchgoer — and part of a growing trend. According to the Pew Research Center, church attendance and Christianity is on the decline in the U.S — especially among the largest...

If you remember The Wizard of Oz you will recall that Toto, Dorothy’s dog, pulled back the curtain, revealing that the wizard was just a little guy working a panel of sound and light gimmicks to fool people into thinking he was more omnipotent than he really was. In the same way, the President’s killing of Qassem Soleimani and the aftermath reveals the four-decades-long treatment of Iranian terrorism and Israel by the foreign-policy establishment -- our presidents from Jimmy Carter up to now and Congress -- was based on myths. The brilliant Caroline Glick makes the case. For the past...

Cardinal Cañizares' warning came ahead of the installation of a radically secularist new governmentSpanish church leaders voiced concern for their country’s future after the government pledged to legalize euthanasia, secularize education and strip the church of “improper assets.” “Spain faces a critical situation, a true emergency for our future,” Cardinal Antonio Cañizares Llovera of Valencia told Catholics in a pastoral letter. He asked that special prayers and Masses be said in Spain “as long as this uncertain future remains unclarified.” The letter, dated January 4, was circulated just before Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez formally took office at the head of...

The Ontario government erroneously sent out a mass alert telling of an “incident” at Pickering Nuclear Generating Station, the local fire chief says, sending people across the region into a panic as they sent a retraction notice approximately 106 minutes later. At about 7:25 a.m. Sunday, the province said an incident was reported at the station, located off of Montgomery Park Road in Pickering, “There has been NO abnormal release of radioactivity from the station,” the alert read. “People near the Pickering Nuclear Generating Station DO NOT need to take any protective actions at this time.”

To the leaders of Iran - DO NOT KILL YOUR PROTESTERS. Thousands have already been killed or imprisoned by you, and the World is watching. More importantly, the USA is watching. Turn your internet back on and let reporters roam free! Stop the killing of your great Iranian people!

The new year is getting off to a roaring start. Consider some of the developments in just the last few days. At the Golden Globes, a liberal comic spoke truth to the arrogant, liberal elites in Hollywood. With a few well-chosen lines, he delivered some much needed reality therapy. They gasped. Middle America cheered. Speaking of jokes, the childish Schiff-Pelosi impeachment game of hide and seek is winding down. Even some of their cheerleaders begged them to move or move on. The Senate is demanding that Mr. Schiff come forward and present his case…such as it is. Senators Cruz, Graham...

This guy has got to go. – Some folks just need firing, and FBI Director Christopher Wray is the poster child for that reality. The FBI was a raging dumpster fire under James Comey, and nothing has changed under the worthless apparatchik who was appointed by President Trump on the advice of Rod Rosenstein and Jeff Sessions to succeed him. If anything, Wray appears to want to just keep stoking the flames of that dumpster fire to higher levels, which he managed to succeed at doing with two moves late this past week. First, Wray filed an inexcusable response to...

We're still just days into 2020. Now is the perfect time for President Donald Trump to drive the Democrats (aka radical socialists) crazy with rage by announcing these executive orders. Remember, I was the columnist who urged the president to declare a national security emergency at the border and then use funds from the military budget to pay for the border wall. Just days ago, a federal court ruled in Trump's favor, freeing $3.6 billion for border wall construction. That's called #winning. I have more crucial executive orders for President Trump. As I've said all along, the president should...

“The thoughts of the righteous are right: but the counsels of the wicked are deceit" (Proverbs 12:5).

THE INFANTILIZATION OF POPULAR CULTURE

Background: My family has an email list where we share articles and opinions. Someone recently circulated this opinion piece from the New York Times, and I am offering my response hoping for comments from my FRiends. Who Killed the Knapp Family? YAMHILL, Ore. — Chaos reigned daily on the No. 6 school bus, with working-class boys and girls flirting and gossiping and dreaming, brimming with mischief, bravado and optimism. Nick rode it every day in the 1970s with neighbors here in rural Oregon, neighbors like Farlan, Zealan, Rogena, Nathan and Keylan Knapp. They were bright, rambunctious, upwardly mobile youngsters whose...

Our gospel tune today is Hillbilly Heaven by Wesley Tuttle (1952). THE WESTERNER https://thewesterner.blogspot.com/

Skeptics and atheists insist that belief in God is irrational.  All too many believers in God, due to the same theological illiteracy affecting the non-believers and unbelievers, lend credence to this charge by way of their inability and/or unwillingness to defend their belief in God. Thankfully, there has been no short supply of men of genius over the centuries who have shown that there is nothing at all irrational about theism.  In fact, some, like the 12th century theologian and philosopher Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109), were at pains to establish that it is atheism that’s irrational.By way of the “ontological...

As 2019 wound down, well-known press figures sounded alarms about the “erosion of truth.” MSNBC’s Chuck Todd spoke to our own Peter Wade about the “epidemic” of “disinformation.” Washington Post editor Marty Baron and New York Times editor Dean Baquet joined Todd on Meet The Press to talk about how the Internet and Donald Trump and Russia are all combining to create an era in which “crazy conspiracy theories” and “absolute falsehoods and lies” can proliferate. This isn’t a new idea. Since 2016 especially, a wide array of American politicians and think-tanks have been hammering the idea that the free...

Michael Bloomberg By Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America – CC BY-SA 2.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=81561515 Comments by President Donald Trump and Candidate Michael Bloomberg, made shortly after the heroic actions of Jack Wilson, in the West Freeway Church of Christ, in White Settlement, Texas, show a stark difference in their attitude toward the Second Amendment and the wisdom of having the right to bear arms protected in the United States Constitution. First, the reaction of President Donald Trump, as put forward in one of his famous tweets: The tweet by President Trump is consistent with his support for...

The Swedish public has voted that climate change spending has been the biggest waste of taxpayer money in 2019, according to a poll by the Swedish Taxpayers’ Association. The Taxpayers’ Association released the results of their annual wasteful spending poll earlier this week, declaring that climate policy had been the biggest waste of money, largely due to the fact that despite the spending, emissions in Sweden had actually slightly increased. In 2014, the Swedish national government spent 5.2 billion Swedish krona (£419 million/$547 million), a number that has more than doubled to 12.6 billion krona (£1 billion/$1.3 billion) for the...