San Fran's next step: Legalized prostitution? City to vote on ballot measure D.A. calls 'welcome mat for prostitutes and pimps'

Petitioners have succeeded in moving a measure that would effectively decriminalize prostitution in the city of San Francisco to the Nov. 4 ballot.

While prostitution is unlawful under the California Penal Code, the measure – if passed by voters – would ban the San Francisco Police Department from allocating any financial resources for the investigation and prosecution of sex workers on prostitution charges.

Section four of the ballot measure – under the heading "Prostitution Shall Be Decriminalized" – further states that the city, county, and district attorney "shall not subject sex-workers to life long economic discrimination associated with having a criminal record."

San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris criticized the measure, unofficially titled "Enforcement of Laws Related to Prostitution and Sex Workers." Harris told the San Francisco Chronicle, "This measure is nothing more than a welcome mat for prostitutes and pimps to come and hang out in San Francisco."

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State Dept. promotes 'Mosques in America' - Publishes '09 calendar featuring worship sites for only 1 religion

This now available from the U.S. State Department: "2009 Mosques of America Wall Calendar: Limited Edition for Ramadan."

"Yep, you read that correctly. It's 'perfect for Muslim outreach efforts," according to a commentary at the Gates of Vienna blog. "Where's the ACLU on this one?"

The product was being advertised by "Global Publishing Solutions," a division of the U.S. State Department, until bloggers started talking about it.

Officials then apparently hid the page behind the security of a password-protected wall. However, the page is still viewable in a Google cache of the website.

This item is on sale until August 1st, 2008 in shrink-wrapped packs of 20 pieces.

"Remember," said the Internet commentator, "This was on an official State Department (state.gov) web page. GPS describes itself this way: 'The Global Publishing Solutions, manages this site as a gateway to information and transactions for their U.S. State Department clients."

More from WorldNetDaily

Movie Warns of Pending Economic Crisis

A film that warns Americans of an impending economic crisis due to exponentially increasing national debt will be shown to delegates at both political conventions and debuts nationwide in August in selected theaters.

The film, entitled “I.O.U.S.A.,” is part of a grassroots campaign sponsored by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation to engage young people and the business sector and mobilize them to take action.

The foundation claims that America is currently burdened with $53 trillion in obligations -- $175,000 per American -- due to an addiction to debt, near-zero national and personal savings, and the rising costs for social programs like Social Security and Medicare.

The film, which was screened for members of Congress and others in D.C.’s policy establishment Wednesday night, focuses on what it calls America’s “four key deficits” – budget, savings, balance of payments/trade, and leadership.

“America is getting mired in more and more debt and unsustainable promises at both the national and personal levels,” Peterson said in a news release announcing the project. “This is a vicious cycle that must be broken, before it breaks us.”

More from cnsnews.com

Analysts say more U.S. banks will fail - Maybe Dozens?

As home prices continue to decline and loan defaults mount, U.S. regulators are bracing for dozens of American banks to fail over the next year.

But after a large mortgage lender in California collapsed late Friday, Wall Street analysts began posing two crucial questions: Just how many banks might falter? And, more urgently, which one could be next?

The nation's banks are in far less danger than they were in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when more than 1,000 federally insured institutions went under during the savings-and-loan crisis. The debacle, the greatest collapse of American financial institutions since the Depression, prompted a government bailout that cost taxpayers about $125 billion.

But the troubles are growing so rapidly at some small and midsize banks that as many as 150 out of the 7,500 banks nationwide could fail over the next 12 to 18 months, analysts say. Other lenders are likely to shut branches or seek mergers.

More from iht.com

When Human Rights Extend to Nonhumans

The environment committee of the Spanish Parliament last month voted to grant limited rights to the great apes — chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and orangutans.

The committee would bind Spain to the principles of the Great Ape Project, which points to apes’ human qualities, including the ability to feel fear and happiness, create tools, use languages, remember the past and plan the future. The project’s directors, Peter Singer, the Princeton ethicist, and Paola Cavalieri, an Italian philosopher, regard apes as part of a “community of equals” with humans.

If the bill passes — the news agency Reuters predicts it will — it would become illegal in Spain to kill apes except in self-defense. Torture, including in medical experiments, and arbitrary imprisonment, including for circuses or films, would be forbidden.

The 300 apes in Spanish zoos would not be freed, but better conditions would be mandated.

More monkey buisness from The New York Times

Pastor among suspects in illegal snake bust

The pastor of a Kentucky church that handles snakes in religious rites was among 10 people arrested by wildlife officers in a crackdown on the venomous snake trade. More than 100 snakes, many of them deadly, were confiscated in the undercover sting after Thursday's arrests, said Col. Bob Milligan, director of law enforcement for Kentucky Fish and Wildlife.

Most were taken from the Middlesboro home of Gregory James Coots, including 42 copperheads, 11 timber rattlesnakes, three cottonmouth water moccasins, a western diamondback rattlesnake, two cobras and a puff adder.

The snakes, plus one alligator, were turned over to the nonprofit Kentucky Reptile Zoo in Slade. Most appeared to have been captured from the wild, with some imported from Asia and Africa.

Zoo Director Jim Harrison said some of the animals would likely have become exotic pets had they not been seized.

"You can purchase anything off the Internet except common sense," Harrison said. "A venomous snake isn't a pet. You don't play with it. If you do, you're an idiot."

More at Yahoo News

Narcotics Sold Online, No Rx Needed - Study Shows Some Web Site Lack Controls to Keep Kids From Buying Drugs

Scores of web sites do not require a prescription to buy narcotics, stimulants, and other controlled substances -- and none of those sites has controls to prevent children from making such purchases, a study shows.

A report released today by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University reveals that 85% of web sites selling potent prescription drugs such as OxyContin, Valium, and Ritalin do not ask Internet users for a proper prescription from a doctor. Many explicitly state that no prescription is needed.

"Anyone of any age can obtain dangerous and addictive prescription drugs with the click of a mouse," Joseph A. Califano Jr., chairman and president of the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse and former U.S. secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, says in a news release. "This problem is not going away."

The report, titled "'You've Got Drugs!' V: Prescription Drug Pushers on the Internet," details the advertising and selling of controlled substances online. It is the fifth annual report on the subject. The report tracks the availability of prescription opioids such as OxyContin and Vicodin, depressants such as Valium and Xanax, and stimulants such as Ritalin and Adderall.

More at WebMD

U.N. scheme to make Christians criminals Sharia-following Islamic nations demanding anti-'defamation' law

Dozens of nations dominated by Islam are pressing the United Nations to adopt an anti-"defamation" plan that would make Christians criminals under international law, according to a United States organization that has launched a campaign to defend freedom of religion worldwide.

"Around the world, Christians are being increasingly targeted, and even persecuted, for their religious beliefs. Now, one of the largest organizations in the United Nations is pushing to make a bad situation even worse by promoting anti-Christian bigotry," the American Center for Law & Justice said yesterday in announcing its petition drive.

The discrimination is "wrapped in the guise of a U.N. resolution called 'Combating Defamation of Religions,'" the announcement said. "We must put an immediate end to this most recent, dangerous attack on faith that attempts to criminalize Christianity."

More at WorldNetDaily

Iranians consider mandatory execution for apostasy - Christians being interrogated on suspicion of crime of leaving Islam

A plan is being discussed by lawmakers in Iran that would require the death penalty for anyone who leaves Islam for Christianity or someone who promotes such a conversion even on the Internet, according to a new report from Compass Direct News.

Those discussions of a penal code that was drafted earlier this year bring urgency to situations such as the two men arrested recently and under interrogation for that very crime, the report said.

Under the existing sharia laws in Iran, the death penalty is available for the crime of apostasy, but not required.

The proposal, however, would change that.

"If passed, the penal code drafted last January would require execution of any Muslim who converts to Christianity," Compass said. Such punishments could not be "changed, reduced or annulled."

More from WorldNetDaily

Nearly Half of Nonsmokers Still Breathing Cigarette Fumes

Nearly half of nonsmoking Americans are still breathing in cigarette fumes, but the percentage has declined dramatically since the early 1990s, according to a government study released Thursday.

The new study found about 46 percent of nonsmokers had signs of nicotine in their blood in tests done from 1999 through 2004. That was a steep drop from 84 percent when similar tests were done in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

But health officials stopped short of celebrating.

"It's still high," said Cinzia Marano, one of the study's authors. "There is no safe level of exposure."

Cigarettes cause lung cancer and other deadly illnesses not only in smokers, but also in nonsmokers who breathe in smoke, studies have shown.

For nonsmoking adults, secondhand smoke increases their lung cancer risk by at least 20 percent and their heart disease risk by at least 25 percent. Children exposed to secondhand smoke are at increased risk of asthma attacks, ear problems, acute respiratory infections and sudden infant death syndrome, health officials say.

More from Fox News

'Gay' man sues Bible publishers $70 million for emotional distress because homosexuality cast as sin

A homosexual man who has a blog on Sen. Barack Obama's campaign website is suing two major Christian publishers for violating his constitutional rights and causing emotional pain, because the Bible versions they publish refer to homosexuality as a sin.

Bradley LaShawn Fowler, 39, of Canton, Mich., is seeking $60 million from Zondervan and another $10 million from Thomas Nelson Publishing in lawsuits filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, the Grand Rapids Press reported.

Fowler filed his claim against Grand Rapids-based Zondervan Monday, alleging its Bibles' references to homosexuality as a sin have made him an outcast from his family and contributed to physical discomfort and periods of "demoralization, chaos and bewilderment," the paper said.

He filed suit against Tennessee publisher Thomas Nelson in June.

Zondervan says that even if Fowler's claim is credible, he's suing the wrong party. A company spokesman told WOOD-TV in Grand Rapids that Zondervan doesn't translate the Bible or own the copyright for any of the translations but relies, instead, on the "scholarly judgment of credible translation committees."

Just assuming he could actually win, which is very unlikely, what good for him or anyone else to gain millions, or even the whole world and then loose their soul? And how can you sue a man or a company if you are in disagreement with God? It is His word after all.

More from WorldNetDaily

Al Qaeda Expanding Recruitment Of Children

Al Qaeda has successfully established a network for recruiting boys as young as 12 from across central Asia as it seeks new volunteers to enlarge its team of prospective suicide bombers and militants fighters, senior security officials from the Middle East have revealed to CBS News.

News of al Qaeda venturing into the former Soviet central Asian republics with a population that has a largely Muslim heritage marks a significant addition to reports earlier this year that the hardline group had recruited young boys in the Pak-Afghan border region.

Last May, a senior Pakistani security official showed a rare video clip to CBS News documenting a boy, barely 12 years old, using a machete to severe the head of a middle-aged man whom militants probably suspected as being a spy for the U.S.

In an execution which typified the Taliban brand of quick justice, that boy severed the head of his victim who was completely tied up and thrown on the ground as a crowd of hundreds of spectators cheered.

More from CBS News

Will the World End in 2012? - Thousands Worldwide Prepare for the Apocalypse, Expected in 2012

Two years ago, Patrick Geryl, then 51, quit his job as a laboratory worker for a French oil company. He'd saved up just enough money to last him until December 2012. After that, he thought, he wouldn't need it anyway.

Instead, Geryl, a soft-spoken man who had studied chemistry in his younger years, started preparing for the apocalypse. He founded a "survival group" for likeminded men and women, aimed at living through the catastrophe he knew was coming.

He started gathering materials necessary to survive — water purifiers, wheelbarrows (with spare tires), dust masks and vegetable seeds. His list of survival goods runs 11 pages long.

That's because Geryl believes the world as we know it will end in 2012. He points to the ancient Maya cyclical calendars, the longest of which last renewed itself approximately 5,125 years ago and is set to end again, supposedly with catastrophic consequences, in 2012. He speaks of the ancient Egyptians, who, he claims, saw 2012 as a year of great change too. And he points to science: NASA predicts a sharp increase in the number of sunspots and sun flares for 2012, he said, sure to cause electrical failures and satellite disruptions.

These may sound like the ravings of a madman, or perhaps the head of a small apocalyptic sect. But Geryl is not the only one who believes in the apocalypse. Thousands of people worldwide seem to be preparing, in one way or another, for the end of days in 2012. Survival groups exist in Europe, Canada and the United States. A simple Google search for "2012" and "the end of the world" brings up nearly 300,000 hits. And the video-sharing Web site YouTube hosts more than 65,000 clips informing and warning viewers about their fate in 2012.

More from ABC News

At $100 for Tank of Gas, Some Choke on ‘Fill It’

With gasoline prices high and rising, a new financial milestone has arrived: the $100 tank of gas. Bryan Carisone, a heating and air-conditioning contractor in Raritan, N.J., “absolutely loves” his new GMC Denali XL, an extra-large sport utility vehicle with televisions built into the leather seats. But in June, one week after he bought it, he pulled into a station on a near-empty tank and watched the total climb higher and higher — to $109.

“It just about killed me,” Mr. Carisone said.

For decades, the $100 barrel stood as a hypothetical outlier in doom-and-gloom conversations about future oil prices. And nobody could even imagine an American family paying $100 to fill the tank.

From The New York Times

Group Asks for Divine Intervention to Ease Oil Prices

As the price of oil continues to rise, some are turning to God and prayer for an answer to their financial troubles.

The Pray at the Pump Movement, founded by Rocky Twyman, has been holding prayer vigils at gas stations across the country. On Monday, Twyman decided to take his movement from Exxon and Shell stations straight to the steps of the Embassy of Saudi Arabia in Washington, D.C., hoping to encourage the oil-rich country to raise the amount of barrels they release each day from 200,000 to 1.2 million.

Twyman, who is a member of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, spent the afternoon outside of the embassy praying and asking passersby to sign his petition for the release of more oil, which he hopes to deliver to the Saudi oil minister.

"Our people are really suffering through this crisis," Twyman told Cybercast News Service. "We need the Saudis to release at least 1.2 [million] barrels of oil per day for about the next six months until we can get everything settled in America ... (I)f they can just do that for us, than this will help us get through this crisis."

More from CNS

Change of plans for July 4 - gas too pricey

Many Americans will watch fireworks at home instead of hitting the road this July 4, according to a new poll released Wednesday, as record gasoline prices force people to make major changes in their daily lives.

According to a CNN/Opinion Research poll, 31% of Americans have canceled or shortened their planned holiday weekend vacation because of the recent increase in the price of gas.

"When consumers talk about their thinning wallets, high fuel expenses is the reason they would point to first," said Wachovia economist Tim Quinlan.

The average price of a gallon of gas rose to an all-time high above $4.09 a gallon Wednesday, according to a survey from motorist group AAA. Gas prices are now about 3% higher than last month and 38.5% higher than year-ago levels.

Of the more than 1,000 Americans surveyed from June 26 to 29, 72% said record gas prices have caused them to make changes in their daily lives, and 30% said those changes were major ones.

More from CNN

Presbyterians move to allow gay clergy, but fight remains

The nation's largest Presbyterian denomination on Friday (June 27) cracked open the door to ordaining non-celibate gay and lesbian clergy, though the decades-old fight is far from over.

Delegates at the Presbyterian Church (USA) meeting here voted 54 percent to 46 percent to remove a clause in their constitution that requires clergy to be either married and faithful or single and chaste.

In a related move, delegates approved an "authoritative interpretation" of church rules on gay clergy, a move that was meant to piece back together a delicate compromise forged two years ago that was rejected by the church's highest court. Under the new interpretation, gay and lesbian clergy would be allowed to declare a conscientious objection to rules that would otherwise prohibit them. Local bodies could then choose to ordain them, or deny them access to the pulpit.

"I think the word that best describes what we feel is grief," said Terry Schlossberg of Presbyterian Coalition, a group that sought to preserve the ordination standards. "We think the implications are very serious and will do a great deal of harm to the church." In the proposal that now heads out to local presbyteries, delegates voted to replace language in the church's Book of Order that required ordination candidates to live "in fidelity within the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman or chastity in singleness."

It's getting bad when the Clergy don't even read their Bible or worse when they choose to ignore what is in it.

More from The Pew Forum

9 in 10 see rising gas prices causing family hardship

Like a plague that does not discriminate by economic class, race or age, soaring gas prices are inflicting pain throughout the U.S. Nine in 10 are expecting the ballooning costs to squeeze them financially over the next half year, an Associated Press-Yahoo! News poll said Monday.

Nearly half think that hardship will be serious. To cope, most are driving less, easing off the air conditioning and heating at home and cutting corners elsewhere. Half are curtailing vacation plans; nearly as many are considering buying cars that burn less gas.

As the price has spiraled upward so, too, has the public's ire.

Two-thirds consider gas prices an extremely important issue, edging the economy and outpacing health care and Iraq as the country's most distressing problem. In November, when gas cost about $1 a gallon less than today, just under half rated it extremely important.

More from Yahoo News

Democratic Party official accused in satanic rape, kidnap

Joy Johnson

A Democratic Party official and her husband are facing charges in connection with alleged satanic rituals involving the kidnap, rape and starvation of another couple in North Carolina.

Joy Johnson, 30, a vice-chairwoman of the Durham County Democratic Party and vice chairwoman of the Young Democrats, made an appearance in court yesterday after she and her spouse, Joseph Craig, were arrested Friday.

Craig, 25, is charged with second-degree rape, second-degree kidnapping and two counts of assault with a deadly weapon for an incident in January and another in May. Johnson is charged with two counts of aiding and abetting.

According to published and broadcast reports, prosecutors said a man and a woman met Craig through a shared interest in Satan worship, although the couple never consented to any physical abuse.

Joseph Craig

Craig allegedly shackled his victims to beds, kept them in dog cages and starved them inside his home. Police say he beat the man with a cane and a cord, and raped the woman.

More from WorldNetDaily

US leads world in substance abuse, WHO finds

The United States leads the world in rates of experimenting with marijuana and cocaine despite strict drug laws, World Health Organization researchers said on Tuesday.

Countries with looser drug laws have lower rates of abuse, the researchers report in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS Medicine.

The survey of 54,000 people in 17 countries found that 16 percent of people in the United States had used cocaine in their lifetimes -- far higher than the next highest rate, found in New Zealand, where 4.3 percent of people reported having used cocaine.

More than 42 percent of Americans admitted to having tried cannabis, closely followed by 41 percent in New Zealand, Dr. Louisa Degenhardt of the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia and an international team of colleagues found.

Americans were also the most likely to have smoked, with 74 percent saying they used tobacco at some time in their lives, although current smoking rates are far lower at 21 percent.

More from Reuters

Auto sales plunge - Buyers flee SUVs and pickups but can't find the cars they want, resulting in steep declines at most automakers.

June auto sales plunged, according to reports from the nation's major automakers, as Americans shunned pickups and SUVs in the face of record gas prices.

General Motors (GM, Fortune 500) reported that its U.S. sales fell 18% in June versus a year ago. Sales of GM's light trucks, which includes pickups, SUVs and so-called crossovers, tumbled 16%. GM's car sales dropped 21% in the month.

Still, the results were better than forecasts of an overall 25% decline in sales. And it was good enough for GM to hang onto the title of the No. 1 automaker in terms of U.S. sales.

Toyota Motor (TM) reported a 21% drop in U.S. sales in June from a year ago, far worse than the forecast from Edmunds.com of only a 12% drop in sales. It was the biggest year-over-year decline in U.S. sales in 10 years for Toyota.

Ford Motor (F, Fortune 500), the No. 3 automaker in terms of U.S. sales, posted a 28% decline in sales -- steeper than Edmunds.com's forecasts of a 25% drop. Ford saw demand for its SUVs plunge by more than half and for pickups and other trucks fall more than a third.

More from CNN Money

Barclays warns of a financial storm as Federal Reserve's credibility crumbles

US central bank accused of unleashing an inflation shock that will rock financial markets, reports Ambrose Evans-Pritchard Barclays Capital has advised clients to batten down the hatches for a worldwide financial storm, warning that the US Federal Reserve has allowed the inflation genie out of the bottle and let its credibility fall "below zero".

"We're in a nasty environment," said Tim Bond, the bank's chief equity strategist. "There is an inflation shock underway. This is going to be very negative for financial assets. We are going into tortoise mood and are retreating into our shell. Investors will do well if they can preserve their wealth."

The grim verdict on Ben Bernanke's Fed was underscored by the markets yesterday as the dollar fell against the euro following the bank's dovish policy statement on Wednesday.

More from The Telegraph

Truckers to Washington: Drill for oil! - 'What we need is to develop what we have offshore, in Alaska, and from shale'

Truckers are telling Washington to do something about the high prices of fuel and quit blaming the oil companies and OPEC.

"The temporary solutions aren't any good," David Kilcoin, a truck owner-operator from Phoenix, Ariz., told WND at the Great West Truck Show going on now at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

"We don't need a quick fix; what we need is to develop what we have offshore, in Alaska and from oil shale," he said.

With fuel prices for gasoline for passenger vehicles hovering at $4 a gallon and diesel for the big rigs higher, he said those in Washington, including the president, the presidential candidates and Congress, have "spent far too much time focusing on getting rich quick themselves."

Truckers face fuel expenses as the largest single part of their operating expenses, often with bills that run 25 percent of their budget.

More from WorldNetDaily

Unable to Pay for Fill-Up, German Man Torches His BMW in Protest

A German man doused his BMW with gasoline and torched it on Friday in protest at skyrocketing fuel costs, police said. The unemployed 30-year-old man drove the black 1995 BMW 3-series sedan onto the lawn outside Frankfurt's convention center grounds at about 7:30 a.m., police spokesman Karlheinz Wagner said.

He then jumped out, emptied a canister of gas over the vehicle, and set fire to it, Wagner said.

By the time the fire department got to the scene, the car was entirely burned out.

The Bavarian man, whose name was being withheld because he has not been charged with a crime, told police that gas prices were so high he could no longer afford to drive the vehicle.

As in many countries, gasoline prices have risen steadily in Germany; a liter of regular gasoline now costs about $9.40 per gallon.

Police were investigating whether the man could be charged with violating German environmental laws with the stunt, Wagner said. Penalties range from fines to five years in prison.

From Fox News

Sex OK at 9, says Saudi cleric 'Muhammad is model we follow. - He took 'Aisha to be his wife when she was 6'

Age, or lack thereof, is no hindrance to marriage under Islam, according to Ahmad Al-Mu'bi, an officiant for marriages from Saudi Arabia who says sex at 9 is fine.

According to a video of the Saudi official recorded and translated by MEMRI, the Middle East Media Research Institute, Al-Mu'bi has confirmed that marriage contracts are appropriate for girls as young as age 1.

And he said the model for marriage continues to be Muhammad, who married one of his wives when she was but 6.

The video comes from a broadcast on LBC Television on June 19, according to the MEMRI report.

He confirmed, "The Prophet Muhammad is the model we follow. He took 'Aisha to be his wife when she was 6, but he had sex with her only when she was 9."

More from WorldNetDaily

Many Teens Getting Free Alcohol From Adults

More than half of American teens say they've consumed alcohol, and more than 40 percent of those children say they sometimes get their alcohol free from an adult, a new federal survey found.

Among the country's estimated 10.8 million underage drinkers, more than 40 percent said they got alcohol free from an adult during the past month. One in four said they got the alcohol from an unrelated adult, one in 16 got it from a parent or guardian, and one in 12 got the alcohol from a family member, according to the survey.

"There are a relatively large number of persons aged 12 to 20 who consume alcohol," said James Colliver, a statistician with the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). "A number of them are likely to get alcohol from a parent or another family member or other adult.

Underage drinking is responsible for more than 5,000 deaths of people under 21 each year in the United States, according to the report.

More from The Washington Post

Dobson accuses Obama of 'distorting' Bible

As Barack Obama broadens his outreach to evangelical voters, one of the movement's biggest names, James Dobson, accuses the likely Democratic presidential nominee of distorting the Bible and pushing a "fruitcake interpretation" of the Constitution.

Dobson took aim at examples Obama cited in asking which Biblical passages should guide public policy - chapters like Leviticus, which Obama said suggests slavery is OK and eating shellfish is an abomination, or Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, "a passage that is so radical that it's doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application."

"Folks haven't been reading their Bibles," Obama said.

Dobson and Minnery accused Obama of wrongly equating Old Testament texts and dietary codes that no longer apply to Jesus' teachings in the New Testament.

"I think he's deliberately distorting the traditional understanding of the Bible to fit his own worldview, his own confused theology," Dobson said.

"... He is dragging biblical understanding through the gutter."

More at MyWay

Also - Unstamped certificate suggests Obama may not be "natural born" US citizen - From IsrealInsider - This is a really interesting read!

Diabetes Cases Increase 15 Percent in 2 Years

The number of Americans with diabetes increased by 15 percent in two years to 24 million, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 8 percent of the population now has the disease, mainly Type 2 diabetes, which is linked to obesity and sedentary living, the agency said in a report using data from 2007. A quarter of people ages 60 and older had diabetes, the agency said. The number of people worldwide with diabetes will double to 366 million by 2030, according to the World Health Organization, which calls the disease an epidemic. Most people with diabetes have resistance to insulin, which the body uses to convert blood sugar to energy. The C.D.C. report was its first update of the prevalence of diabetes since 2005, when it reported that about 21 million Americans had the disease.

From The New York Times

Obama: America is 'no longer Christian' - Democrat says nation also for Muslims, nonbelievers

Some have been taking issue with largely unnoticed comments made last year by Sen. Barack Obama declaring the U.S. is "no longer a Christian nation" but is also a nation of others, including Muslims and nonbelievers.

The comments have been recently recirculating on Internet blogs.

"Whatever we once were, we're no longer a Christian nation. At least not just. We are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, and a Buddhist nation, and a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers," Obama said during a June 2007 speech available on YouTube.

At the speech, Obama also seemingly blasted the "Christian Right" for hijacking religion and using it to divide the nation:

"Somehow, somewhere along the way, faith stopped being used to bring us together and started being used to drive us apart. It got hijacked. Part of it's because of the so-called leaders of the Christian Right, who've been all too eager to exploit what divides us," he said.

More from WorldNetDaily

Also - Bin Laden top man sprung in deal with terrorists? - From WorldNetDaily

Fuel Costs May Force Some Kids To Walk

Here's how rising fuel prices affect an organization with a fleet of 1,273 school buses: The Montgomery County school board today will consider giving Superintendent Jerry D. Weast

emergency powers to make students walk farther to school, if need be, in the coming academic year.

The school system's diesel costs have more than doubled in four years, from $3.6 million in fiscal 2005 to a projected $7.9 million for fiscal 2009, which begins next month. It's a hardship shared by the Fairfax County school system, with more than 1,500 buses; the Prince George's County system, with 1,285 buses; and other area systems that transport tens of thousands of students daily and are paying more for fuel than the average parent at an Exxon pump on Rockville Pike.

More at the Washington Post