Fox News: "Maryland public school students are free to thank anyone they want while learning about the 17th century celebration of Thanksgiving—as long as it's not God. And that is how it should be, administrators say. Young students across the state read stories about the Pilgrims and Native Americans, simulate Mayflower voyages, hold mock feasts and learn about the famous meal that temporarily allied two very different groups. But what teachers don't mention when they describe the feast is that the Pilgrims not only thanked the Native Americans for their peaceful three-day indulgence, but repeatedly thanked God. 'We teach about Thanksgiving from a purely historical perspective, not from a religious perspective,' said Charles Ridgell, St. Mary's County Public Schools curriculum and instruction director."

Marc Morano, CNSNews: "'Do you believe in global warming? That is a religious question. So is the second part: Are you a skeptic or a believer?' said Massachu-setts Institute of Technology professor Richard Lindzen, in a speech...in Washington, D.C. 'Essentially if what-ever you are told is alleged to be supported by "all scientists," you don't have to understand [the issue] anymore. You simply go back to treating it as a matter of religious belief,' Lindzen said. ...Lindzen is a pro-fessor at MIT's Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences. ...'But science is not primarily a source of authority. It is a particularly effective approach of inquiry and analysis. Skepticism is essential to science -- consensus is foreign,' Lindzen said."

Guardian: "if the secularists are winning all the bat-tles, many experts fear they may yet lose the war, not least because of the growing influence in the EU of the new east European states, inoculated by communism against too much church bashing. Even the Czech Republic, which can lay claim to being the least reli-gious country in Europe, wanted God in the EU const-itution. ...'For Poland,' says Aleksander Smolar, head of a Warsaw thinktank, 'this extreme secularism dom-inating life in the EU is completely indefensible.' ... deputy head of the main Hungarian opposition party reacted bitterly to the [rejection of an Italian nominee for commissioner because of his Catholic views]. 'Why is it that a Catholic man can't become an EU commis-sioner, while a former communist can?' he asked."

Telegraph, UK: "Refusing to accept a secular 'fait accompli' from Brussels, a Christian coalition is de-manding that each EU state publish its version of the constitution's preamble, with references to God if de-sired. Already armed with 1,149,000 signatures and with thousands more pouring in from Holland since the murder of the film-maker Theo van Gogh, the group claims that most states want some reference to Chris-tianity but were blocked by France. The move is keenly backed by Pope John Paul II, who has repeatedly con-demned the 'moral drift' of Brussels. 'One does not cut the roots to one's birthright,' he told pilgrims this summer."

Kentucky.com: "As church bells chime in the back-ground, a burly bouncer guards the velvet ropes at the church entrance. 'No, step aside, please,' he tells two men holding hands. 'I don't think so,' he says to a young black girl, blocking her entrance. A Hispanic man and a person in a wheelchair are also denied entry. The scene fades to black and a message: 'Jesus didn't turn people away. Neither do we.' Hoping to boost the numbers of a dwindling denomination, the United Church of Christ launched a nationwide television ad campaign Wednesday, banking on this 30-second spot to let all viewers know they are welcome in the pews. But two major networks have declined to air the ad, deeming it 'too controversial' because it champions one side of the public debate on gay relationships."

Belfast Telegraph: "Yevgeny was murdered by Chec-hen rebels...during Russia's first Chechen war. It was his 19th birthday and he had been held captive with three other Russian border guards in a damp cellar for 100 days of torture, beatings and starvation.... Thous-ands of Russians have died at the hands of Chechen fighters since 1994...but Yevgeny's death was differ-ent. His mother, Lyubov Vassilyevna Rodionova, says Yevgeny was given a chance to live if he converted to Islam and took up arms against Russian federal forces. Symbolically, she says all he had to do was to take off a small silver cross he had worn around his neck since the age of 11 and embrace the faith of his tormentors. Yevgeny refused and chose death instead."  

News 14 Carolina: "'Merry Christmas!' 'Happy Hanu-kah!' 'Happy Kwanza!' What do you say this time of year? Sydney Scherr, a Jewish merchant, said, 'I think "happy holidays," and this is strictly for me, is the best thing to say because it includes everyone.' Members of the Upper Room Church of God in Christ say ‘happy holidays’ doesn't include everyone. They challenged all Christians to only shop at businesses that include the greeting ‘Merry Christmas’ in their advertising. Pastor of Upper Room, Patrick Wooden said, 'Merry Christmas is actu-ally being dropped and being phased out. We're just saying we're not going to let you take this from us. If businesses want the gold, frankincense, and myrrh from the Christian community, they ought to at least acknowledge the birth of the Christ child.'"

Christianity Today blog: "'A Catholic, Scalia was invi-ted to speak to the St. Thomas More Society, where he said the 'wise' and 'sophisticated' of the world consider faith foolish. According to the Chicago Tribune, 'The "wise" consider Christian fundamentalists to be "simple-minded" and irrational because they believe in miracles and the resurrection of Jesus Christ,' he said. 'But it is more irrational to reject the possibility of both,' he said. Later, Scalia spoke to the oldest Jewish community in the U.S. in New York. He told the crowd, 'There is something wrong with the principle of neutrality.' Neu-trality as envisioned by the founding fathers 'is not neutrality between religiousness and nonreligiousness; it is between denominations of religion.'"

Gulf Daily News: "Freedom of religion is being threat-ened in Europe by an aggressive secularism which has made the mention of God 'almost indecent,' a top ad-viser to Pope John Paul said in an interview.... 'We have gone from a Christian culture to an aggressive secular-ism with intolerant traits,' Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger told la Repubblica daily. 'It has started to become an ideology which imposes itself through politics and does not cede public space to the Catholic and Christian vision,' said the powerful head of the Vatican depart-ment in charge of safeguarding and interpreting doc-trine. 'A struggle exists and we must defend the freedom of religion against the imposition of an ideology that presents itself as the only voice of reason....'"

Reuters: "A California teacher has been barred by his school from giving students documents from American history that refer to God—including the Declaration of Independence. Steven Williams, a fifth-grade teacher at Stevens Creek School in the San Francisco Bay area suburb of Cupertino, sued for discrimination on Monday, claiming he had been singled out for censorship by principal Patricia Vidmar because he is a Christian. 'It's a fact of American history that our founders were religious men, and to hide this fact from young fifth-graders in the name of political correctness is outrag-eous and shameful,' said Williams' attorney, Terry Thompson."

LifeSiteNews.com: "'We're so afraid to talk about sex in our society that we really give carte blanche to the people who are producing this kind of material,' pornography researcher from Virginia Tech, professor James B. Weaver said, as reported by the Associated Press. Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kan) organized the meeting, which revealed that internet pornography is destroying families and harming children. Unsolicited e-mails and inadvertent links to sexually explicit materials on the internet are the norm. University of Pennsylvania sexual trauma program co-director Mary Anne Layden said pornography addiction has similar effects on the brain as heroin or crack cocaine addiction."

AsiaNews: "Speaking to AsiaNews, Prof Augusto Pes-sina Pessina, vice-president of the Italian Cellular Cul-tures Association and a member of the European Tis-sue Culture Society, said: 'It’s just too horrible to con-template.' Behind the debate over cloning lies human-ity’s desire to 'master human life.' Like some golem, the headless human is but an example of this titanic will to power....[A]ccording to Professor Pessina...
'[c]loning for reproduction and medical treatment are one and the same. I know what I am talking about,' he said, 'because I deal with embryos and cells every day in the lab. Cloning to heal always means manipulating human life' because 'an embryo is a psychically whole organism.'"

Christianity Today: "The problem began in the 1960s when a bishop of the Episcopal Church (ECUSA), James Pike, began publicly doubting doctrines like the Trinity. His fellow bishops, afraid that church discipline would seem medieval to the rest of America, only mildly rebuked him and dropped the issue. This failure of nerve gradually opened a hole in the church that truckloads of aberrant clerics have since driven through. They have endorsed everything from premarital sex...to homosexual sex (beginning in the 1970s) to the worship of pagan dei-ties (a service...was posted briefly on the church's national website in late October)—not to mention the regular and sundry denials of key church doctrines (like the resurrection and the deity of Christ) by such bishops as Jack Spong and Charles Bennison."

AP via ABC News: "'Protection of marriage' is now the watchword for many activists fighting to prevent gays and lesbians from marrying. Some conservatives, however, say marriage in America began unraveling long before the latest gay-rights push and are pleading for a fresh, soul-searching look at the institution.... Bryce Christensen, a Southern Utah University pro-fessor who writes frequently about family issues.... doesn't oppose the campaign to enact state and fed-eral bans on gay marriage, [but] worries it's distracting from immediate threats to marriage's place in society. 'If...we don't address cohabitation and casual divorce and deliberate childlessness then I think [such campaigns are] futile and will be brushed aside.'"

Crosswalk: "A spokesman for the world's largest vet-erans organization is calling on the Secretary of De-fense to not cave in to what he calls the 'legal terrorists' of the ACLU in its desire to punish the Boy Scouts of America. In a negotiated settlement earlier this month, the Department of Defense agreed to cease direct spon-sorship of Boy Scout units on military installations. The settlement is the result of a lawsuit filed by the Ameri-can Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, which claimed that the government has improperly supported a group that requires members to believe in God....The settle-ment does not prevent service members from leading Scout troops unofficially on their own time. And Scouts will still be able to meet on military bases where civilian groups are permitted to hold events."

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