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Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Links to Your World, Tuesday August 19

Should Christians get tattoos or does Scripture prohibit body art?


The way the “Real Man Olympics” is keeping score, Ukraine is first and the USA is 10th in Beijing so far.


“How many of us actually live in the idealized Austin that we market to the rest of the world? How often do we spend time there? How much do we sequester ourselves in our own, far-flung ZIP codes?” My favorite Statesman reporter, Eileen Flynn, tackles these questions in a front-page story last Thursday.


Son of Hamas Leader Turns Back on Islam and Embraces Christianity” (HT: Aimee). You’ll also find more in this excellent piece by Avi Issacharoff in Haaretz.


“Pastor Rick Warren's Saddleback Civil Forum on the Presidency was expected to be a sideshow. McCain and Obama would make their specialized appeals to evangelicals as if they were an interest group such as organized labor or the National Rifle Association. Evangelicals would demonstrate, in turn, that they are not rubes and know-nothings. And Americans would turn en masse to watch the Olympics. What took place instead under Warren's precise and revealing questioning was the most important event so far of the 2008 campaign.” (You should read Michael Gerson’s take on the Saddleback Forum; it’s exactly how I would have reviewed the weekend event. If you missed the forum, you can watch it here.)



At the Saddleback Civil Forum this past Saturday, Obama said that, though he was pro-choice, his policies would actually reduce abortions better than efforts under President Bush, who, Obama claimed, left the abortion rate unchanged during his terms of office. Not correct, according to Planned Parenthood’s own research agency, the Guttmacher Institute. Abortions are actually at their lowest rate since 1975 and dropped nine percent between 2000 and 2005. Still, I’m grateful for the changes that Obama and the Democrats have made to their platform, proposing steps that would (presumably) reduce abortions.


“The received wisdom is that President Bush has been a foreign policy disaster, and that America is threatened by the rise of Asia. Both claims are wrong--Bush has successfully rolled back jihadism, and the US will benefit from Asian growth.” Read this excellent cover story, “A Truman for Our Times,” from the UK publication, Prospect.


Caucasians Not Majority By 2042.


Are your devotionals like this? (HT: Think Christian)

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