According to this report, the alcohol flows freely on congressional junkets and taxpayers are footing the in-flight bar tab.

The retiree thought he was taking ceramics class, but it turns out he had signed up, inadvertently, for Political Correctness 101.

When he tried to make a cross in his ceramics class at a local community college, he was told that it wouldn’t be allowed. And if he defied orders and made one anyway? Well, he wouldn’t be allowed to fire it in the community college’s kiln.

Sounds like somebody needs to notify the State Department’s U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. It turns out there’s little religious tolerance, at least for Christians, in Turkey. Tajikistan. Texas.

Now, if he’d defiled the cross, or created it out of elephant dung, I’m guessing it would have received a better reception in Moscow. Mesquite.

(To read more, click here.

The ban on cross-making was lifted, but only after lawyers intervened.

In America, we have thought police trying to stamp out too many ideas that I always assumed were protected by the First Amendment. And all too often, these agents of intolerants are educators, which makes it all the more ironic. The targets are often evangelicals, and my hunch is that we’ll see more of this as American society becomes increasingly secular.

I don’t know about you, but I find this kind of mortifying…

By NICOLE WINFIELD
Associated Press Writer
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope John Paul II whipped himself with a belt, even on vacation, and slept on the floor as acts of penitence and to bring him closer to Christian perfection, according to a new book by the Polish prelate spearheading his sainthood case.
(more…)

Drinking water in Russia — of both the holy and unholy varieties — is often contaminated, according to this news report.

This poll was done for the Knights of Columbus, an anti-abortion pro-Catholic group. The findings are consistent with other polls. What is interesting, to me, is the generational differences. Senior citizens and young Americans are more likely to say abortion is morally wrong than baby boomers.

ONE NOTE: This poll does not show that most Americans want to ban abortion, only that they find it to be immoral. That’s a big difference.
(more…)

A really fascinating story about Wheaton College, the Harvard of evangelical Christian colleges, was set to run in Books & Culture, but got killed at the last minute.

The bad news: You won’t be able to read it in the January/February 2010 issue (which retails for $4.95). The good news: You can read it for free here.

This is a weird, weird, weird one, folks.

A Michigan company is printing Bible citations onto high-powered rifle sights that it sells to the U.S. military, ABC News reports.

Some folks are up in arms because they say it blurs the line between separation of church and state and because it injects religion into America’s Jihad against Radical Islam War on Terrorism.

But let me ask a question that the story doesn’t address. Is it blasphemous to quote the Prince of Peace on a piece of military equipment. Is it sacrilegious to stamp New Testament scripture references onto a deadly weapon?

And finally, if Jesus were stamping scripture references onto military weapons, which quotes would he pick?

Love your enemies?
He that lives by the sword will die by the sword?
Father, forgive them for they know not what they do?

The Washington Post describes the desperation there.

This e-mail was forwarded to me by the El Dorado, Ark.-based Haiti Education Foundation. It comes from a journalist in a village known as Leogane in the hills beyond Port-au-Prince.

Dear ONES
Thank you for sharing your simpathy with us. This is really terrible in Haiti. We have no words or expressions to describe that. Hopefully there are some survivors. In Leogane no help is coming yet. People are constantly dying. Some yell from the debris and can’t be gotten out. We can’t walk through the streets in Leogane, because the dead are stinking and can’t be gotten out of the debris. Almost all the houses are destroyed in Leogane too, and we have no assistance so far. Anything you do to help or share this email to others that can help will be nice.
Best regards
Jean Francois Dujour

(more…)

NEW YORK (The Borowitz Report) – In the wake of his comments about the earthquake in Haiti, televangelist Pat Robertson has become a “public relations nightmare” and a “gynormous embarrassment to me, personally,” God said today. (more…)

From their perches in the United States, safe, comfortable, well-paid Pharisees are questioning whether it’s appropriate for Jesus to heal on the Sabbath. (scroll down to verse 10).

Oops. Wrong century. Wrong continent. Wrong group of naysayers. Actually, in this instance, it’s journalism Pharisees. And they’re right here in 2010. And they’re knocking CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta. Gupta’s sin? He’s healing Haitian earthquake victims live on cable news.

Gupta can’t be a reporter and a doctor, they sniff. Why? Well, one of the Fundamental Truths of the Church of Journalism is that journalists should cover news, not make news. Objectivity. Neutrality. Detachment. Etc.

This principle works great in most instances. It works fine when you’re covering a story with two sides. Left vs. right. Conservative vs. liberal. Republican vs. Democrat. Rich vs. Poor.

But this isn’t the right approach for responding to a natural disaster because there aren’t two sides to a disaster. In these instances, inaction, impassivity, neutrality aren’t just bad journalism. They are, potentially, evil.

Let the experts, safe in the United States, grumble. Let the naysayers, who don’t smell the stench of death second guess. Let the know-it-alls, with full refrigerators and warm beds, criticize.

Sanjay Gupta should follow his conscience and the Hippocratic Oath while he’s in Haiti.

After the ethicists in the United States are finished critiquing the good doctor, perhaps they’ll be able to tell us how many journalists can dance on the head of a pin…

The head of the United Methodist Committee on Relief was in Port-au-Prince when the earthquake hit. He has a leg injury, I’m told, but has survived the tremor. He and two colleagues had not been heard from in the hours following the 7.0 tremor, church officials said. All are now accounted for.

1.) Who is to blame for the 7.0 earthquake in Haiti, according to protein shake salesman Pat Robertson?

a.) gays
b.) abortion activists
c.) liberal elites
d.) Fat Tuesday revelers
e.) Haiti’s devil-worshipping, French-hating founding fathers
(more…)

The Catholic prelate was killed by Tuesday’s 7.0 magnitude earthquake, according to Fox News, which cites Vatican Radio.

The Boston Globe’s Michael Paulson was, I would argue, the best religion reporter at any newspaper in the country. He is leaving the beat to become city editor, he reports on his blog. Paulson’s coverage cast light in one of the darkest corners on our planet — the Archdiocese of Boston, circa 2002.

Meanwhile, Eric Gorski, the best wire service religion reporter in the U.S., is also leaving his beat, according to www.getreligion.org. Gorski made his mark at newspapers in Colorado Springs and Denver before becoming a religion reporter for the Associated Press. In Colorado, his coverage of Focus on the Family and Ted Haggard was extraordinary.

So many of the leading religion reporters in the U.S. have left their beats since the start of the Great Recession and it’s dispiriting.