Sunday, October 07, 2007
Redd Remembers Years In Sidney, Discusses NCTC Role
(Sidney) -- It was a rememorable weekend of one of Sidney's favorite sons. Dedication ceremonies were held Friday for the Admiral John "Scott" Redd Highway--otherwise know as the Highway 2 bypass project winding its way around Sidney. Redd tells KMA News the naming of the highway in his honor brings his career full circle--from growing up in Southwest Iowa, to his career with the U-S Navy. In addition to the dedication ceremonies, Redd also spoke to Sidney's seventh through 12th grade students Friday afternoon. Redd's main message involves something he calls the "VECTOR" principles--vision, excellence, character, being a team player, understanding your organization, and respecting others. Presently, Redd serves as director of the National Counterterrorism Center. Redd's responsibilities are two-fold. First, he coordinates all intelligence activities regarding counterterrorism activities. Secondly, Redd is in charge of strategic operation planning involving all elements of the national war on terror. Redd believes the U-S has made progress in the war on terror, in that the U-S hasn't been attacked in the six years since 9/11. In addition, Redd says the nation is better prepared to guard against terrorism. Redd, however, says terrorists are dangerous, determined and patient. Redd warns the existing war on terror will continue for many years--he hopes it's over by the time his grandchildren become adults.
Thursday, October 04, 2007
Tuesday, October 02, 2007
Clarence Thomas: The Justice Nobody Knows
60 Minutes interview transcript
Rush Limbaugh
Rush Limbaugh
After 16 years of relative silence on the subject, Justice Clarence Thomas is publishing an autobiography that addresses what he has called a "high-tech" lynching -- the confirmation process that followed his nomination to the Supreme Court by President George Herbert Walker Bush.
ABC Supreme Court correspondent Jan Crawford Greenburg conducted a series of wide-ranging interviews with Justice Thomas and his wife, Virginia.
Click on the links below for Greenburg's in-depth report on her interviews with the justice.
Part I: My Grandfather's Son
"These people who claim to be progressive … have been far more vicious to me than any southerner," Thomas says, "and it is purely ideological."
Part II: The Integrator
He is part of another great generation -- a generation of blacks who integrated a racist society, whose entry into those hostile white worlds was, in many ways, no less courageous than the bravery of the men who stormed the beaches of Normandy.
Part III: Going North
"I didn't have this view that I was going to go North. Ideologically, I wanted to be like the Northern kids who were no longer submissive. They were fighting back on the racial issues," Thomas says. "But I didn't want to go North. That was not a part of it. But it was the only option I had after I got kicked out of the house."
Part IV: A Conservative in Washington -- and the Personal Struggles
"I drank more heavily than ever before, and though I was careful not to let my drinking interfere with my work, I knew I was on the road to trouble," Thomas writes.
Part V: Finding Peace
"I sometimes wonder how I got through the summer of 1983 without falling apart," he wrote. "I was lower than a snake's belly ... and the mad thought of taking my own life fleetingly crossed my mind."
Part VI: Becoming a Judge
"That's a job for old people," Thomas wrote that he replied. "I can't see myself spending the rest of my life as a judge."
Part VII: 'Traitorous' Adversaries: Anita Hill and the Senate Democrats
Thomas wrote that he paced around the house "like a caged animal," not knowing what to expect but fearing the worst.
Part VIII: Rebuilding a Life
"Thanks to God's direct intervention, I had risen phoenix-like from the ashes of self-pity and despair, and though my wounds were still raw, I trusted that in time they, too, would heal," he wrote.
Video Highlights
Click on the links below to watch highlights from Greenburg's series of interviews with Thomas.
Monday, October 01, 2007
Sunday, September 30, 2007
The Supremacy of Christ and Joy in a Postmodern World
In a postmodern society where “absolute truth” is a foreign concept and religion is without morals, Christians often wonder, “How can I share the love, joy, and truth of Christ with a hurting world?”
Six of today’s leading pastor-theologians—John Piper, Voddie Baucham, D. A. Carson, Tim Keller, Mark Driscoll, and David Wells—joined together at the 2006 Desiring God Conference to offer Christians a practical, biblical vision of Christ’s supremacy so that they will be better prepared to present the undeniable truth to a searching society. After grounding listeners in the important truths of Christ’s deity and the gospel, The Supremacy of Christ in a Postmodern World strives to help believers understand how to share these truths in a postmodern society.Onward Christian Scholars
EVERY FRIDAY AFTERNOON in Moscow, Idaho, a strange commotion overruns Main Street. A stream of young men and women parade down the sidewalk, wearing black academic gowns that billow and flap as they walk. Some pore over Latin textbooks or thumb flashcards of ancient Greek vocabulary, nearly tripping at the curb. They are students at New St. Andrews College on their way to disputatio, a weekly assembly held in a movie theater downtown. The college itself has no room large enough to accommodate all 150 students at once: it occupies a single unassuming brick building a few blocks away, one that a stranger might mistake for the refurbished husk of an old savings and loan. Passers-by on their way to the Pita Pit or Hodgins Drug barely give the students a second glance. Not a few residents, however, have fought hard to keep them out of downtown. Founded in 1994 by the elders of a fast-growing and radically conservative church, New St. Andrews represents a new philosophy of evangelical education — one that has inspired a national movement and makes local liberals nervous.
The students and teachers call what they are doing “classical Christian education.” They believe it’s much more than memorizing Latin declensions and Aristotle’s principles of rhetoric, though they do plenty of that. Doug Wilson, 54, the pastor who spearheaded New St. Andrews’ founding, puts the college’s purpose simply: “We are trying to save civilization.”Friday, September 28, 2007
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Suffering and the Sovereignty of God
Table of Contents
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Saturday, September 22, 2007
A Conversation With Derek Webb
Derek Webb's new CD, The Ringing Bell, takes on the concept of peace. Derek talks to us about the title and the concept.
Derek Webb has written some great music, first with Caedmon's Call and then on his own. I had the pleasure of chatting with Derek about his latest album, songwriting and old friends.
In this first part of the interview, Derek talks about title of his new album and the concept of the album.
Suite: The title of your new CD, The Ringing Bell, is from lyrics in the song “The End”, but is there some meaning beyond that context?
Derek: The, title really, for me, goes a handful of different directions. It’s interesting, but with every one of my records, except this one, I’ve had a really obvious title. Most of my records I’ve known what the title was going to be before I even wrote the first song, it’s really weird. I’ll conceptualize something I’ll have a really strong idea about, a sound or a concept, something I want to go after and the title comes just really naturally, really early.
And with this record we were down to the absolute wire. There was no obvious title anywhere on this record. I didn’t really know what to call it and The Ringing Bell kind of came at me from a few different directions. And for that reason it doesn’t really mean one thing to me. In that context of the lyric it references to Pavlov and the way that people have typical responses with the things they’ve seen before. It doesn’t exactly mean that.
There’s also an urgency for me to the concept of a record like this, mostly about the idea of peace, if you can live peaceably with people. Just the urgency of that idea. And “the ringing bell” just carries the urgency of that idea. There’s a handful of different images that can attain that meaning and for me that made the concept stick.
Suite: When you were putting this together did you have a concept for the album or was it a pool of songs that you pulled from?
Derek: No it definitely was a pretty strong idea from the beginning of what I felt like I wanted to do. I’ve got a lot of my friends that are artists in the way that they write all the time. They’re always writing so that they have a lot of songs to choose from when they make records. And they’ll have some that they don’t record and they’ll record for other things where they always have songs laying around.
I’m not like that at all. I literally write 11, 12 songs a year and I record every one of them. I never have one spare and I have to use every single one and it’s always been that way. Even back in the Caedmon’s days it was like that. When it came time to make the record, I had exactly the songs I needed. Not 1 more not 1 less.
This record was no different. The songs started to come, and they came really late in the game, it was just maybe a couple of months before I was scheduled to start recording the record that the songs really started to show up.
I did have a strong idea I knew that I wanted to write a bit on the peace tradition of the church and otherwise and I was really concerned more on that particular issue because I touched on it on Mockingbird a little bit. It felt like there was more discussion to be had, maybe some further views to get into in terms of that idea and another record's worth of songs just to focus on that. So I did know I was going to go in that direction. I was meditating in that direction.
Derek Webb Interview Part Two: Derek talks about peace and pacifism.
Derek Webb Interview Part Three: Derek expands on pacifism and tells us about his graphic novel.
Derek Webb Interview Part Four: Derek talks about using different mediums to communicate a concept.
Derek Webb Interview Part Five: Derek talks about his courtship and having fun.
Derek Webb Interview Part Six: Derek talks about reuniting with his friends in Caedmon's Call
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