In the liberal views of Global Warming, Christians are often attacked for not caring about the planet they live on, well we have a very different view on this. I think this article from the Ohio Apostolic News gives a very good view to our side of the story.


GLOBAL WARMING
BRIAN HOLLAWAY



In recent months, the news has been filled with the discussion of ?Global Warming.? ?Global Warming? is a phrase that describes the conclusion of a significant number of scientists who have interpreted a recent upswing in the earth?s average surface temperatures as an indication that increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has produced a ?greenhouse? effect. The long term effects of such a greenhouse effect is variously reported to include increased ocean levels that would swallow low-lying cities, increased cataclysmic weather events such as hurricanes, and structural changes to the climate of many parts of the earth. As Christians who love truth, Oneness Pentecostals should have no qualms with the science of observable changes to the world?s climate. If our climate is truly changing due to human activity, it is not unreasonable to attempt to avoid the possible destruction that climate change could produce. However, the priorities of those who would attempt to preserve the earth?s present condition seem to be in stark contrast to the Biblical description of the inevitable destruction of the earth during the end times. For example, Peter preached on the day of Pentecost that the sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood at some point in the future, and the Apostle John, in the book of Revelation, points out the various judgments of God that will be poured out upon the inhabitants of the earth before the present earth passes away. Furthermore, Peter?s second epistle tells us that the earth will melt with fervent heat, and Jesus himself mentioned that heaven and earth will pass away, yet the Word of God will never perish. In fact, one of the brightest hopes of the Christian walk is the promise that our life will be preserved beyond our time on earth. Paul the Apostle told the Thessalonians that, in the last days, the saints who are still on the earth will be taken off of the earth to meet the Lord and to be with Him in heaven for the rest of eternity. Instead of proposing a plan to save the earth, the Bible implores us to plan to save ourselves from a world that will not exist forever. The problem, then, with the ?Global Warming? movement is that it has moved beyond the realm of science and into a crusade to preserve our earthly environment. To ?save the earth? has now become a religion, where ?unbelievers? are mocked for their ?immorality? concerning their inattention to the dire effects of ?Global Warming.? The underlying assumption is a
humanistic teaching that humankind can avoid any and all impending danger without regard for God.
The Biblical record, on the other hand, seems to imply that future judgment is inevitable, and therefore our highest priority should be to make our relationship with God whole. Efforts to save the earth, while often well intentioned, should not be allowed to rise above the Church?s number one priority: to prepare ourselves and the rest of humanity for eternity. If anything, the Church?s response to ?Global Warming? should be to redouble our efforts to alarm the world of impending judgment. In fact, since every person?s time on earth is limited, let our prayers include a petition that a ?Global Warming? to the
Spirit of God would develop in these last days in a great spirit of revival!
Brian Hollaway holds a Master?s Degree of Theological Studies from the Urshan Graduate School of Theology, and serves
as Assistant Pastor at the First Apostolic Church of Dublin (pastor Richard Collins.)

After that last post, you may need to read this over on The Thinklings--and some of the comments are as funny as the post. 

That's a much better way to start your weekend.

I hear a pretty constant stream of a specific kind of personal attack by leftists against conservatives, including to my face.  And honestly, I'm sick of it.  The basic idea they're convinced of is that deep down, we have secret, selfish motives for everything, and/or that we're downright evil.  You can see how this leads to fine, rational conversations about policy with us. 

 

Here's an excerpt from the latest example of the vile, civilized-political-discourse-destroying, irrational assumption that conservatives (and in this particular case, the President) have only evil motives (even if good leftists can't always uncover them) spewed by Peter Mehlman on the Huffington Post.  (If they take it down, you'll be able to find the whole thing here.)  And frankly, this isn't an unusual opinion, in my experience:

 

So now we're six and a half years into Bush and everyone from Helen Thomas on down is declaring him the worst president ever. What no one is saying is the one overarching reason he's the worst: the Bush administration is the first that doesn't even mean well.

 

With the possible exception of immigration reform -- and who knows what grotesque financial incentive underlies that -- try to pinpoint even one policy motivated by the desire to lessen human suffering, to improve the life of citizens. Nothing. There is nothing....

 

It's been the ultimate frustration to consider the people who don't see Bush's malevolence....You could argue that even the world's worst fascist dictators at least meant well. They honestly thought were doing good things for their countries by suppressing blacks/eliminating Jews/eradicating free enterprise/repressing individual thought/killing off rivals/invading neighbors, etc. Only the Saudi royal family is driven by the same motives as Bush, but they were already entrenched. Bush set a new precedent. He came into office with the attitude of "I'm so tired of the public good. What about my good? What about my rich friends' good?"

 

How can anyone not see it? It's not that their policies have been misguided or haven't played out right. They. Don't. Even. Mean. Well.

 

There you go, folks.  I'm so disgusted by this that I have no commentary--at least, none without expletives, and this is a family show.

 

If you're interested in reading a more level-headed response to this phenomenon that I wrote back when I still naively believed I could reason with leftists about conservative ideas--before I had banged my head against the wall of "secret evil motives" so often that I lost the motivation to interact, read this. 

Jim Brown
OneNewsNow.com
June 29, 2007

One of the senators who led a successful effort to block the so-called "comprehensive immigration reform" bill is welcoming the measure's second death. John Cornyn says for the second time, the American people did not believe claims that the legislation would help secure the country's borders

The Senate has failed to invoke cloture on President Bush's plan to grant amnesty to millions of illegal aliens living in the U.S. The bill's supporters fell 14 votes shy of the 60 needed to limit debate and clear the way for final passage of the legislation.
Following the vote, Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas) took to the floor and said claims from the bill's proponents were too hard for most Americans to believe. Addressing the president, Cornyn said: "The American people are pretty smart."
"When people said 'the only way you're going to get border security is if you agree to a path to citizenship for twelve-million people' ... they can see through that," the senator asserted, "and they know there's no obvious linkage between border security and a path to citizenship for twelve-million people. They know that if we really were serious about border security we would have already done it."
Cornyn said pro-amnesty Senators should have listened to the American people instead of trying to push the bill through without a transparent process. As he put it: "[T]he American people, [including] my constituents in Texas, are profoundly skeptical of big government solutions with a lot of moving parts based on big, grandiose promises when our history has been one of not delivering consistent with what we promised."
President Bush says he's "sorry" Congress did not reach an agreement on the bill, noting, "Legal immigration is one of the top concerns of the American people, and Congress's failure to act on it is a disappointment."
The immigration bill may possibly come up for consideration again in the Senate because the measure has not been permanently killed. However, on the House side, Republicans overwhelmingly oppose the measure, and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) has said she would not bring up the bill without 70 GOP votes.

Do you ever get those spam emails that have a short advertisement at the top (the real point of the email) and then fill up the rest of the space with bits of text gathered throughout the internet to create a semi-coherent message designed to get said spam past the junk mail gatekeeper?

 

Well, they must somehow do word searches on blogs and then create the text disguise accordingly, sending targeted emails to the connected addresses, because this is an excerpt from the one I got last Monday:

 

The Bush administration blew their chance with lies, bad faith and monstrous incompetence, and the majority of conservatives I know feel betrayed. It must have been in much the same condition in Joseph Smith's day when fragments of it were glued haphazardly to other totally unrelated papyri. Although his horrible actions are nothing to be admired, his skill at forgery and his ability to fool even the best experts for years was an impressive feat. It would be an understatement to say I loved my mission. Even Mormon scholars agree that.

 

She refused to believe me. He would charge people a nominal fee to let them view the papyri and mummies. So he was willing, based on what we knew at the time, to let Sadam [sic] retain WMD and work with terrorists, that is a very strong defense position?

 

I brought this email out several times this week to relive the chuckle.  Then finally, today I got curious about where some of the pieced-together fragments used for this spam came from, so I picked a sentence and Googled it.  It brought me directly to my friend Rob Sivulka's site at Mormoninfo.org. 

 

Either it's a very small world, or their technology is scary out of control.

Jim Brown
OneNewsNow.com
June 14, 2007

A leading Christian apologist says he's not at all surprised by the results of a new Gallup poll that finds most Democrats and Independents believe Darwin's theory of evolution is true, but Republicans disbelieve it by a more than 2-to-1 margin. Church attendance, according to the poll, plays a role in those findings.

The poll found that those who go to church on a regular basis reject evolution more than those who do not. Frank Newport, editor-in-chief of the Gallup Poll, also says Republicans are likelier than Democrats or Independents to attend church services.
Dr. Ken Ham is the president of Answers in Genesis (AIG), a Christian ministry that recently unveiled the new high-tech Creation Museum in northern Kentucky. Ham does not find it surprising to find that people who would be considered on the more conservative end of the spectrum would believe that God created the heavens and the earth and its inhabitants.
"Because after all, if there is no God and there's no absolute authority, who does decide right and wrong? Who does decide good and bad?" he asks. "Those on the other end of the spectrum who believe in moral relativism, of course, wouldn't want to be accountable to God and would want to believe that everything evolved by natural processes. So you'd more suspect that those people would say they believe in evolution ...."
Ham also believes that the education system fosters this belief in evolution. "What's being taught in the public education system is that life can only be explained by natural processes," the Christian apologist laments. "That is totally atheistic, the religion of naturalism, and that's not where the majority of Americans are at."
"But if you bring a whole generation [or generations] through an education system like that -- [a system that tells them] life is a result of natural processes and God has nothing to do with it -- then that's very much going to affect how they view morality and how they view themselves," Ham claims.
Ham says "creation versus evolution" has been a hot topic in the recent presidential debates because the biblical creation movement has been able to get a lot of information out into the culture, and more and more college students are starting to question their professors concerning the issue of origins.
In addition, he believes the opening of AIG's Creation Museum last month created an international media buzz that has brought the issue to light.

In Genesis 9:6, God commands, "Whoever sheds man's blood, by man his blood shall be shed, for in the image of God He made man."  Because he bears the image of God, the value of a man is so great that there is only one punishment worthy of the unjust taking of his life.  The ultimate crime against the innocent demands the ultimate penalty for the guilty.  This is not only just, it's also a way to protect the innocent.  According to the article "Studies say death penalty deters crime," anywhere between 3 and 18 (depending on the study) lives are saved when a murderer is executed.

"Science does really draw a conclusion. It did. There is no question about it," said Naci Mocan, an economics professor at the University of Colorado at Denver. "The conclusion is there is a deterrent effect."

A 2003 study he co-authored, and a 2006 study that re-examined the data, found that each execution results in five fewer homicides, and commuting a death sentence means five more homicides. "The results are robust, they don't really go away," he said. "I oppose the death penalty. But my results show that the death penalty (deters) -- what am I going to do, hide them?"

 

Another professor responded:

"Abolitionists or others, like me, who are skeptical about the death penalty haven't given adequate consideration to the possibility that innocent life is saved by the death penalty."

 

If the findings are correct, they pose a real dilemma for those who oppose the death penalty:  Is it right to keep a murderer alive if it means as many as 18 innocent people will die? 

I came across an incredible article, "Death of a Guru" about a man named Rabi Maharaj who left the comforts of being worshipped within his Hindu religion for something even more enticing. He had become increasingly unsettled as he came to realize that his view of the divine didn't match what he knew to be true about goodness and reality.  Ultimately, he left the emptiness and inevitable losing of oneself that happens through meditation (a process he had witnessed in his father) and embraced the One outside of himself who is real and good and solid.

 

A condensed version of the story:

 

For eight long years [my father] uttered not a word. The trancelike condition he had achieved is called in the East a state of higher consciousness and can be attained only through deep meditation....  "Why is Father that way?" I would ask my mother, still too young to understand. "He is someone very special--the greatest man you could have for a father," she would reply. "He is seeking the true Self that lies within us all, the One Being, of which there is no other. And that's what you are too, Rabi...."

 

I was obviously [according to the astrologers and palm readers] a chosen vessel, destined for early success in the search for union with Brahman (the One). The forces that had guided my father were now guiding me....

 

It was encouraging to learn that the lines on my palms and the planets and stars, according to those who interpreted them, all agreed I would become a great Hindu leader....  How I loved religious ceremonies--especially private ones in our own home or those of others, where friends and relatives would crowd in. There I would be the center of attention, admired by all. I loved to move through the audience, sprinkling holy water on worshipers or marking foreheads with the sacred white sandalwood paste. I also loved how the worshipers, after the ceremony, bowed low before me to leave their offerings at my feet....

 

During my third year in high school I experienced an increasingly deep inner conflict. My growing awareness of God as the Creator, separate and distinct from the universe He had made, contradicted the Hindu concept that god was everything, that the Creator and the Creation were one and the same. If there was only One Reality, then Brahman was evil as well as good, death as well as life, hatred as well as love. That made everything meaningless, life an absurdity. It was not easy to maintain both one's sanity and the view that good and evil, love and hate, life and death were One Reality....

 

Before I finished [my prayer to Jesus for forgiveness], I knew that Jesus wasn't just another one of several million gods. He was the God for whom I had hungered. He Himself was the Creator. Yet, He loved me enough to become a man and die for my sins. With that realization, tons of darkness seemed to lift and a brilliant light flooded my soul.

 

Read the full story here.

Chad Groening
OneNewsNow.com
June 11, 2007

A Middle East expert and best-selling author hopes a new DVD he has produced will make people aware of the dangerous relationship developing between Iran and Russia

Last year Joel Rosenberg released his book Epicenter: Why The Current Rumblings In The Middle East Will Change Your Future. Now the best-selling book is being released as a DVD featuring interviews with Israeli leaders like former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the crisis in the Middle East.
Rosenberg says the release of the was timed to correspond with the 40th anniversary of the 1967 Six-Day War in which the Jewish state won a huge victory over its Arab enemies. The author explains that the DVD focuses on the huge threat now posed by Iran.
"The president of Iran [Mahmoud Ahmadinejad] is vowing to wipe Israel off the map -- and it is a situation very similar to what Israel faced in 1967," he says. "Forty years ago the enemies of Israel were threatening to throw the Jews into the sea and they were building up their forces armed, supplied, and encouraged by Russia."
Rosenberg says 40 years later, Moscow is once again playing a central menacing role. "Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, seems to be leading his country away from friendship with the West and toward an alliance with radical Islamic regimes such as in Iran," he says.
The Russian president, he points out, has become very cozy with Ahmadinejad. "Putin is now talking about changing the constitution and extending the term of the presidency from four years to as many as seven years," says Rosenberg. "At the same moment ... Ahmadinejad said that the countdown to Israel's destruction has begun.
"So it's exactly this Iranian-Russian alliance that's emerging that has me concerned -- and that's really the focus of the documentary film that we have just released."
Rosenberg says Epicenter is a must for evangelical Christians who understand the biblical significance of Israel in end-times events.

From John 9:2-3:

 

And His disciples asked Him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he would be born blind?"  Jesus answered, "It was neither that this man sinned, nor his parents; but it was so that the works of God might be displayed in him." 

 

I was reminded again as I read this last night that everything is about God.  This man had endured blindness for who knows how many years, but it wasn't for nothing; it was for the noblest of all causes--to display the glory and power of God.  How much easier it is to endure everything when we remember that it's the glory of God that matters most (more than our comfort or even our lives), and that our sufferings for His glory are worth it because of what they accomplish for His plan!  When seen this way, we can embrace them as our duty and willing service and submit to them "for the joy set before us" both now and in the end.

From Nancy Pelosi's speech on Thursday in favor of the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act of 2007:

 

Science is a gift of God to all of us and science has taken us to a place that is biblical in its power to cure and that is the embryonic stem cell research....  Yet, with his cruel veto pen, President Bush dashed the hopes of many for the healing potential of stem cell research.

 

First, though she says ESCR is "biblical in its power to cure," embryonic stem cell research has produced no usable results. 

 

Second, has she ever heard of private funding?  Has the president locked all the scientists in a dungeon?  No.  President Bush, with his "cruel pen," protected my will that I not fund ESCR.  Meanwhile, not only did he fund other types of stem cell research, but anyone is free to invest in ESCR if he wishes. 

 

Third, if anyone is thinking, "Well there aren't enough interested investors out there, so the government has to fund it," then I say, all the more reason for the government not to waste our money.  If there were any certainty about this supposedly huge potential in embryonic stem cell research, you can bet that all sorts of individuals and corporations would be clambering over each other to invest.  The fact is, other areas of stem cell research are far more promising in practice (rather than theory), with already-achieved results.

 

So why push so hard for this when breakthroughs like this one are already happening that involve no ethical concerns whatsoever?  Why this obsession with destroying embryos?  Why shouldn't we, as a nation, fund the stem cell research that everyone can endorse and leave the funding of ESCR to those who aren't opposed to it and who actually see within it some tangible promise?

 

She then says, "If we have a scientific opportunity to treat and cure disease, we have a moral responsibility to support it."

 

The principle she espouses here is ridiculous.  We have a moral responsibility to support whatever gives us scientific knowledge that might help people?  The Tuskegee Study, conducted from 1932 to 1972 was very helpful in teaching scientists about Syphilis and its effects.  Never mind that African-American men were denied available treatment so that the study could continue.  It's our moral responsibility to support it, right? 

 

That example shows how flawed her principle is.  There are loads of things you could do to gain more scientific knowledge for cures, but there is clearly only a moral responsibility to pursue scientific knowledge to help others if the pursuit itself does not cause moral harm.  And if it does cause moral harm, we have the responsibility to not pursue it.

 

Therefore the debate over the moral harm of ESCR must be at least addressed before one can claim we have a moral responsibility to pursue it.  Pelosi can't just dismiss without explanation or defense the idea that ESCR causes moral harm and skip to the cure part.

 

Thank God for that cruel veto pen.

From SPIEGEL Online International:

"For God's Sake, Please Stop the Aid!"

The Kenyan economics expert James Shikwati, 35, says that aid to Africa does more harm than good. The avid proponent of globalization spoke with SPIEGEL about the disastrous effects of Western development policy in Africa, corrupt rulers, and the tendency to overstate the AIDS problem.

SPIEGEL:

Mr. Shikwati, the G8 summit at Gleneagles is about to beef up the development aid for Africa...

Shikwati: ... for God's sake, please just stop.

SPIEGEL: Stop? The industrialized nations of the West want to eliminate hunger and poverty.

Shikwati: Such intentions have been damaging our continent for the past 40 years. If the industrial nations really want to help the Africans, they should finally terminate this awful aid. The countries that have collected the most development aid are also the ones that are in the worst shape. Despite the billions that have poured in to Africa, the continent remains poor.

To continue reading the interview, go here.

There's something to that old proverb: "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." When it comes to fighting poverty simply throwing money at the situation can do more harm than good. We see this in Africa with generic "aid" and the loads of money being spent on "AIDS." Instead of creating a higher standard of living, these programs are creating a society split between a corrupt upper class and a deeply impoverished and dependent lower class.

Here in America, we're on the same track with welfare and food stamps. These programs were intended to be temporarily help people get back on their feet. But today they are abused by people who think they have a right to receive support for doing nothing. And our government is more than willing to offer that support, even increase it.

Recently 4 lawmakers took a "Food Stamp Challenge." They were to live for a week off the $21 the government gives to those who participate in the food stamp program. Not surprisingly, that budget afforded only a little unhealthy food. So what should be done about this problem? According to Rep. Jan Schakowsky, we need to increase the amount of money each family receives. Watch her recent interview on the Colbert Report.

The answer should be to help people get off of food stamps and support themselves. If anything, the government should be in the business of empowering people to be independent and self-sufficient. People who spend their lives depending on what's given to them have no opportunity to better their lives. The only way that can happen is if more stuff is given to them (usually at the expense of people who actually earned what they have). Individuals who work for their livings develop opportunities to better their lives, not to mention virtuous qualities such as discipline and respect.

Most of the aid and welfare systems in place are actually systems of oppression, systems that relegate people to lives of poverty. If we truly want to help the poor, "For God's Sake, Please Stop the Aid!" Instead, teach them to fish.

What's better than books?  Free books!  At Christianaudio.com, you can download a different free audio book each month (either WMA or MP3 format), and this month they're featuring The Best of Jonathan Edwards Sermons.

Here's the description:

The Jonathan Edwards trilogy includes three of the most important sermons ever preached on American soil. Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God is maybe the most important and well-known sermon of his, but also included is A Divine and Supernatural Light describing and illuminating what Edwards describes as a supernatural light imparted by God. His farewell sermon was given in June of 1750 and is a commendation to those who are in the Lord's service, a plea to maintain unity, avoid dissension and false doctrine, and a call to devote themselves to prayer.

Be sure to bookmark this site and check back every month.

In yesterday's debate, Hitchens brought up an oft-cited argument against Christianity, saying that we would need an extraordinary amount of evidence before we could believe that an event as exceedingly improbable as the resurrection actually occurred.

 

I did a quick search on the internet and brought up a short debate (only 38 pages) between William Lane Craig and Bart D. Ehrman titled Is There Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus? that addresses this very issue.

 

Craig first presents four uncontested facts and clarifies the issue:

 

For now, I want to sketch briefly how a historical case for Jesus' resurrection might look.  In constructing a case for Jesus' resurrection, it's important to distinguish between the evidence and the best explanation of that evidence.  This distinction is important because in this case the evidence is relatively uncontroversial.  As we'll see, it's agreed to by most scholars.  On the other hand, the explanation of that evidence is controversial.  That the resurrection is the best explanation is a matter of controversy.  Now although Dr. Ehrman says that there cannot be any historical evidence for the resurrection, we'll see that what he really means is that the resurrection cannot be the best explanation of that evidence, not that there is no evidence.  (pp. 3-4, emphasis mine)

 

Ehrman dismisses the facts presented by Craig as irrelevant since he has already ruled out the possibility of interpreting them as describing a miracle:

 

[M]iracles are so highly improbable that they're the least possible occurrence in any given instance....  I wish we could establish miracles, but we can't.  It's no one's fault.  It's simply that the cannons of historical research do not allow for the possibility of establishing as probable the least probable of all occurrences.  For that reason, Bill's four pieces of evidence are completely irrelevant.  There cannot be historical probability for an event that defies probability, even if the event did happen.  (p. 12) 

 

Therefore, in this debate, Ehrman's position that there is no historical evidence for the resurrection is based on a philosophical objection, not on a lack of available facts.

 

Since the objection prevents Ehrman (and many people) from ever considering the actual evidence, Craig then confronts the charge that a miracle, by definition, will always defy probability despite any and all evidence.  He argues that we must take into account not only the intrinsic probability of the resurrection in light of our general knowledge about the natural world, but also in light of the specific evidence for the resurrection (I would argue that this should also include our evidence for the existence of God as well as any other background factors that make the resurrection more probable).  One also has to place the explanatory power of the counter-hypothesis that there was no resurrection into the equation.  He then proceeds to give a mathematical formula that will statistically account for all these factors, explaining where Ehrman's mistake lies:

 

Specifically, Dr. Ehrman just ignores the crucial factors of the probability of the naturalistic alternatives to the resurrection....  If these are sufficiently low, they outbalance any intrinsic improbability of the resurrection hypothesis." (p. 16)

 

I won't recreate the formula here since it would probably cause many of us to run screaming from our computers.  But if you're mathematically or statistically minded, take a look.  I heard Richard Swinburne speak about this formula once, and he came up with a probability of .97 for the resurrection (Craig notes this in the Q&A section at the end of the debate).

 

All three hours of Hugh Hewitt's radio show this afternoon will be devoted to "The Great God Debate" between Christopher Hitchens (author of God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything) and Mark D. Roberts.

 

You can listen live here from 3:05pm to 6:00pm (PST) or download each of the three hours here anytime after they have posted.

 

[Update:  The transcript is now available here.]

from the Plain Dealer
Posted by Sabrina Eaton June 04, 2007 12:46PM
Cleveland Democratic Rep. Dennis Kucinich spent the weekend campaigning for president in New Hampshire, where he participated in a Sunday night debate among Democratic candidates at St. Anselm's College and addressed a state Democratic Party convention.

Kucinich set himself apart from the other candidates during the nationally televised debate when moderator Wolf Blitzer of CNN asked whether Kucinich would launch a missile strike against Osama bin Laden if he knew the terrorist leader would be at a target in Pakistan for 20 minutes and that innocent civilians would also be killed.

"I don't think that a president of the United States who believes in peace and who wants to create peace in the world is going to be using assassination as a tool, because when you do that, it comes back at your country," said Kucinich, adding that bin Laden should be tried for his crimes in an international court. A video of the exchange has been posted on YouTube.

Illinois Sen. Barack Obama lacked such reservations.

"I don't believe in assassinations, but Osama bin Laden has declared war on us, killed 3,000 people, and under existing law, including international law, when you've got a military target like bin Laden, you take him out," he said.

All the other candidates raised their hands when asked whether they'd authorize a missile strike under those circumstances, although some offered qualifications.

"That is very difficult to answer in the abstract," said New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, who noted that a missile strike authorized by her husband, former President Bill Clinton, failed to kill bin Laden. "If we could do it without a tremendous amount of collateral damage, I think maybe with one or two exceptions, we would give the order to do it, knowing what a weighty responsibility that is."

Kucinich's presidential campaign posted highlights of his Saturday speech before New Hampshire's Democratic party on YouTube. An account of the event in the Concord Monitor newspaper reported that Kucinich, despite his low poll numbers, "perhaps rallied the most enthusiasm, drawing several sustained ovations from the crowd."

After that speech, an enthusiastic Kucinich gave a video interview to BuckeyeStateBlog, where he discussed his Ohio campaign operation. Saying that he has "a very strong base in Ohio," Kucinich said the issues he'll pursue in the state include opposing NAFTA and protecting the state's industrial base.

"There is no other candidate running for president who has the understanding of Ohio that I have, and frankly there might not be many that have the understanding of New Hampshire that I have, which is why I got the response I got," Kucinich told the blog.

Columbus -- Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher gave the wife of a powerful political ally a $70,000-a-year state job without a clear job description and without interviewing anyone else.

During her first weeks at the Ohio Department of Development, Frankie Coleman -- wife of Columbus Mayor Michael Coleman -- told co-workers that she wasn't sure what her job would be or even what title she should put on her business cards.

Fisher is director of development. His hiring of Coleman and questions about whether she cheated on payroll timesheets have ignited accusations of political favoritism and a state investigation in the early months of the administration of Demo cratic Gov. Ted Strickland, who has vowed to rid state government of corruption.

The timesheet issue was raised by Glenda Williamson, Coleman's supervisor and a holdover from the previous Republican administration. Fisher fired Williamson two days after she confronted Coleman.

Fisher said Williamson's termination was based on his wish to bring in his own leadership team and was not related to her complaints about Coleman.

For years, Michael Coleman has been important to Fisher and Strickland.

He signed on in 1998 as a running mate in Fisher's unsuccessful campaign for governor and more recently helping Strickland - a former congressman from Appalachia - connect with urban and black voters.

Mayor Coleman was the Democratic gubernatorial front-runner in late 2005 before his campaign imploded, clearing the way for Strickland to win the party's nomination.

His wife's drunken-driving crash and arrest in October 2005 was among Coleman's campaign setbacks. When Frankie Coleman was arrested, her blood-alcohol level was more than three times the state's legal limit.

Michael Coleman stayed in the background for months but emerged last June to publicly back Strickland. After winning the governorship, Strickland appointed Mayor Coleman to head his transition team.

 

see entire article--http://www.cleveland.com/open/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/news/1180859505294500.xml&coll=2