A Powerful Movie
by Thomas Sowell
August 22, 2012
Years, and sometimes decades, pass between my visits to movie theaters. But I drove 30 miles to see the movie "2016," based on Dinesh D'Souza's best-selling book, "The Roots of Obama's Rage." Where I live is so politically correct that such a movie would not even be mentioned, much less shown.
Every seat in the theater was filled, even though there had been an earlier showing that day, and more showings were scheduled for the rest of the afternoon and evening. I had to sit on a staircase in the balcony, but it was worth it.
The audience was riveted. You could barely hear a sound from them, or detect a movement, and certainly not smell popcorn. Yet the movie had no bombast, no violence, no sex and no spectacular visual effects.
The documentary itself was fascinating, as Dinesh D'Souza presented the story of Barack Obama's life and view of the world, in a very conversational sort of way, illustrating it with visits to people and places around the world that played a role in the way Obama's ideas and beliefs evolved.
It was refreshing to see how addressing adults as adults could be effective, in an age when so many parts of the media address the public as if they were children who need a constant whirlwind of sounds and movements to keep them interested.
Dinesh D'Souza's own perspective, as someone born in India who came to America and became an American, provided a special insight into the way people from the Third World often perceive or misperceive the United States and the Western world.
That Third World perspective is Obama's perspective, D'Souza demonstrates in this documentary, as in his book -- and it is a perspective that is very foreign to that of most Americans, which may be why some believe that Obama was born elsewhere.
D'Souza is convinced that the president was born in Hawaii, as he claims, but argues that not only Obama's time living in Indonesia and his emotionally charged visits to his father's home in Africa, have had a deep and impassioned effect on his thinking.
The story of Barack Obama, however, is not just the story of how one man came to be the way he is. It is a much larger story about how millions of Americans came to vote for, and some to idolize, a man whose fundamental beliefs and values are so different from their own.
Read more: http://goo.gl/nTnlg
Baptists vs. Sebelius
by Katheryn Lopez
August 22, 2012
Last week, the Obama administration did it again. In a new bulletin, the Department of Health and Human Services implied that there are more faith-based entities who can apply for a “safe harbor” from its controversial “contraception” mandate.
“Every time the administration opens its mouth it changes its rules to attack religious freedom in a different way,” Matt Bowman, a lawyer with Alliance Defending Freedom says of the bulletin. “Washington bureaucrats have no business continually picking and choosing what faith is and who is allowed to practice faith,” he continues.
The revised safe harbor does nothing for businesses — such as the Hercules HVAC company in Denver, which won an injunction in late July, or the Seneca Hardwood Lumber Company in Pennsylvania – with regard to conscience objections to the mandate.
The one-year delay may be the most insulting part of the mandate. All it does, as both Catholic Timothy Cardinal Dolan and Presbyterian Philip Ryken, the president of the evangelical Wheaton College, have noted, is to tell faith-based entities — many of them providers of social services — that they have a year to figure out how to violate their consciences. (Expect more on the Wheaton College case shortly — there is a D.C. federal court hearing on Thursday.)
The new bulletin came days after yet another school, Louisiana College, a Baptist school in Pineville, La., filed a lawsuit over the mandate. “Our choice to exclude abortion pills from our coverage doesn’t prevent anyone from making the choice to use those drugs,” the school’s president, Joe Aguillard, tells National Review Online’s Kathryn Jean Lopez.
KATHRYN JEAN LOPEZ: Why, and when, did you decide to sue the federal government?
JOE AGUILLARD: We knew it was time to stand up and resist the moment we realized that the Obama administration meant to usurp our God-given religious freedoms and our time-honored Baptist heritage .
LOPEZ: How do you face “imminent hardship”?
AGUILLARD: Washington politicians and bureaucrats cannot force Americans to surrender their freedom. Louisiana College has been given a choice that is not really a choice at all — to give up our belief that every child’s life deserves to be protected or to face punishments that could very well force us to close our doors. With that kind of threat so close on the horizon, we needed to act immediately to make sure the government’s attack on freedom is stopped in its tracks — not only for Louisiana College, but for every American.
LOPEZ: Surely members of the board had misgivings about a high-profile lawsuit against the federal government in an election year?
AGUILLARD: The board at Louisiana College is as dedicated as I am to protecting the fundamental freedoms that every American is promised. Preserving freedom requires vigilance in every season, and in this season, the Obama administration has chosen to attack our most cherished freedoms. It was really an easy decision to team up with Alliance Defending Freedom to wipe this totalitarian mandate off the books.
Read more: http://goo.gl/XYGn1
Best Places for Job Growth Largely Red States
by William Bigalow
August 22, 2012
Texas is a great place to move if you’re looking for work.
Duh.
Of course it is; Texas is a red state. And one example is Fort Bend County, which once was famous for farming, but now attracts company after company looking for a business-friendly environment. Texas doesn’t kill businesses with taxes, the county has a strong school system, and it’s close to Houston, so corporations are flocking to Fort Bend. Among them are a Fluor Enterprises, an engineering firm that is purchasing land for a plant that will add 2,000 jobs; oil services firm Schlumberger, which has a 240-acre campus; CVR Energy, whose headquarters reside there; and Team Industrial Services, which intends to relocate its headquarters and 100 jobs to Fort Bend.
It’s not just Texas; in this era of rampant unemployment, guess which color states had the lowest unemployment in July? The top four were red: North Dakota, at 3.0%, Nebraska, 4.0%, South Dakota, 4,4%, and Oklahoma, 4.9%.
And the elites on the coasts think they’re so much smarter.
Read more: http://goo.gl/wChtn
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