School is Overrated

Listen up! I want to make sure that you understand me correctly because you may have to re-read this next sentence more than once. The grades your children get in school are virtually meaningless. Yup. That's what I said. I don't think the grades your children get in school mount up to a hill of beans. School is way too overrated! I'm sure I'll get letters if anyone from the teacher's union reads this article, but to those of you who are parents and you are sick and tired of staying up all night helping your child do homework so that they can get an A, B, C or even D, forget about it! I am not trying to play a joke on you. I am not playing on words. I really truly believe that school is overrated.

Let me explain. Does your child need to be educated? Yes. Does your child need to learn math, science, history, literature, etc.? Yes. If you don't read any further and pull your children out of school, will they become criminals? Likely. So let me tell you what I am saying. Our schools today (and in particular public schools) are not equipping our children for life. School work today consists of revised history, science projects, art projects, physical education, sex education, study hall, and whatever other waste of time topic our schools can think of doing. In an article written by the President of Bard College for the New York Times (of all places), Leon Botstein states, "In the last four years of American schooling — high school — pupils study the core subjects of mathematics, science, history, the national language and literature for less than half the time French and Japanese students do. Only 41 percent of the American high school day is spent this way." The title of his article is "We Waste Our Children's Time." Of course we do. Other studies show that our children today spend almost 7 hours a day in school - not counting homework. Twenty years ago, children were only spending 5 hours a day in school. In addition, the amount of time American students spend on homework each week is at an all-time high. In 1981, 9-year-olds to 11-year-olds spent an average of 2 hours and 49 minutes on homework each week. By 1997, kids that age were doing more than 3 1⁄2 hours of homework a week. Kids from 6 to 8 years old had an even bigger increase, from 44 minutes a week to more than 2 hours!

Personally, I think those numbers are conservative. How many of you who have children aged 6 to 11 only spend 30 minutes a night on homework? Not many I would suspect. When you add up the daily homework assignments, special projects, and studying for tests, I would imagine most of you are doing at least one hour a day if not closer to 2 hours a day on homework. We live in an education-obsessed society. And these numbers, in my mind, justify that statement. Why should a seven-year-old child spend almost 40 hours a week in school and on homework? Do they not have the right to just be a child anymore? Where's the playtime in all of that? Where is the family time? When you figure in that the average child watches 13 hours of television a week, when do they just go outside and play? When do they get to use their imagination? When do they dream?

But that isn't even my biggest issue with school. I could almost be convinced to let my children spend 40 hours a week on school if they actually learned something. Going back to the study I listed earlier where children only spend 41 percent of their school time on the core subjects, that's where I have my bone to pick. Who gave our schools the right to take our children away from their families for 7 hours a day and waste 4 hours of that time doing nothing? Our children spend at most 3 hours of their school day on math, science, history and literature. And they still don't learn anything! Ask your average college student who Joseph Stalin was? He doesn't know! They are so exhausted from sitting in a classroom for 7 hours a day that even if they did learn about Stalin they wouldn't remember it! In an article published by Walter Williams, he stated the following, "A 1990 Gallup survey for the National Endowment of the Humanities, given to a representative sample of 700 college seniors, found that 25 percent did not know that Columbus landed in the Western Hemisphere before the year 1500, 42 percent could not place the Civil War in the correct half-century, and 31 percent thought Reconstruction came after World War II.

"In 1993, a Department of Education survey found that, among college graduates, 50 percent of whites and more than 80 percent of blacks couldn't state in writing the argument made in a newspaper column or use a bus schedule to get on the right bus, 56 percent could not calculate the right tip, 57 percent could not figure out how much change they should get back after putting down $3 to pay for a 60-cent bowl of soup and a $1.95 sandwich, and over 90 percent could not use a calculator to find the cost of carpeting a room. But not to worry. The American Council of Trustees and Alumni's 1999 survey of seniors at the nation's top 55 liberal arts colleges and universities found that 98 percent could identify rap artist Snoop Doggy Dogg and Beavis and Butt-Head, but only 34 percent knew George Washington was the general at the battle of Yorktown."

Do you understand what I am saying? Your children go to school for 7 hours a day, waste 4 hours, study virtually no history (certainly not accurate history), struggle with math, learn a few spelling words that should've been learned two years ago, and then come home and grow a plant outside and one inside, put it on a poster board with construction paper and call it a science project! And then to top it all off, we pay $20,000 a year to send them to a university with 95% liberal professors that are going to tell them that everything they learned up until now was wrong! Why shouldn't they lose their faith and become alcoholics there? They don't know which way is up much less right from wrong. What are we doing! Is this the life we are going to pass down to our children?

What can we do? Get involved! I don't mean asking your kids when they come home how their day was and helping them finish their homework. I mean get in the face of the school administrators. Tell them that you expect better for you children and ask them what they are going to do to help your child learn. Tell them to quit wasting your child's time with meaningless assignments and busywork. And if they don't respond, put your child in a better school or teach them at home.

It's time we set some priorities in our lives. Sit down and make a list of life priorities in your life. What are your priorities? Are your children high on your list? What about them? Do you want them to be influenced by you? Do you want them to grow up with good moral values? Do you want them to know the true history of our country? Do you want them to be at the dinner table with the rest of your family every night? Make a list. Seriously, make a list of the most important things that you want to accomplish in life. Then look at your list. Really look at it. Are you willing to make the sacrifices that come with that list? Are you willing to quit working so much or quit working all together to make sure your children grow up with the knowledge and values you want them to have? You might make less money. You might live in a smaller house. You might not have cable TV or a TV at all. But what is more important? And if you are not willing to make those sacrifices, make a different list because your list is wrong. What you spend your time doing is your true priority. If living in a nice house or driving a nice car are not worth giving up to see that your children grow up the way you want them to grow up, then the house and car should be higher on your list. But just remember, you are the only one responsible for the way your children turn out. No one else.

adopted. by God.

The lesson
series I am beginning on December 2nd takes a look at adoption. The title of the series is simply adopted. by God. This is a significant study to me because as you may know we arrived home from China in July with our newly adopted daughter Zoe. We adopted Zoe into our now family of seven. We have been blessed by God thus far with four biological children of our own and Zoe is our fifth (and last if I haven't mentioned that yet). So why in the world would we need a fifth child and even more so why would we adopt when we are obviously capable of producing our own children? In short, because that is the Biblical story. By adopting Zoe into our family, we give the people we know and meet a tangible picture of what God has done for us. The Bible is very clear that when we accept Jesus as our savior, God adopts us into his family. God then becomes our Father and Jesus our brother. But what does that mean?

Our adoption into God's family gives us the full rights of sons. Galatians 4 verses 4 and 5 say, "But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law, to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full rights of sons." When we adopted Zoe, she went from being a fatherless child to a child that not only has a father, but she now also has the same rights as our other four children. When Paul speaks of adoption, he uses the word huiosthesia. The word huios means "a son" and the word thesis means "a placing." Put together, the word exactly means "to place as a son." Better stated, it is the place given to one to whom it does not belong. Zoe did not belong to me. She had no right to be called my child. But once I adopted her, she was granted the full rights that being my child affords her even though she did nothing to deserve it. When God adopts us into his family, we too are granted the same rights as his natural born child Jesus. We now have the right to the Father's name, the Father's love, the Father's relationship, the Father's access, the Father's provision, the Father's family, and the Father's estate. We became the same child to Him as Jesus. All the rights that Jesus has are also now ours even though we did absolutely nothing to deserve it! What amazing grace!

America must have morals

It never ceases to amaze me that the liberal left thinks that the Christian right shouldn't have a voice in politics. Sometimes I wonder if they think the Christian right shouldn't have a public voice at all. The long-known liberal media bias has finally been exposed and that has made way for "new media" such as talk radio and the blogosphere to be the outlet for the Christian right. The old-school media tried to shut down the blogs by calling them "unprofessional" and "unreliable" but those claims have been proven false. Recently, legislation has been proposed to give "equal time" on the radio waves since it is largely dominated by conservative talk shows. This is just another ploy to silence the Christian right by taking air-time away.

I say all this to get to one point. Without the Christian right and the morals that come with it, this country would not exist as it does today. If you are on the left, you are probably thinking that I'm right. But you think it would be better off today if the Christians were gone. However, you are sadly mistaken. If the Christian right decided today to remove itself from our society in all facets of life, America would look like Europe. And have you looked at Europe lately? Frech riots are burning over 100 cars every day. European unemployment rates are pushing 10 percent with some regions exceeding 30 percent. More people are emigrating from Germany than are immigrating to it. Europe's reproductive rates are alarmingly low and it threatens to dismantle the whole economy. It is literally a mess over there and that is the model the liberal left would like America to emulate.

But I will tell you this: Without Christian morality as the backbone of our country, America will begin to spiral downhill in all facets of society. Our morality, economy, education ... you name it. Without Christians in the public arena forming the backbone of our culture, America will lose its title as the great "city on a hill."

Our founding fathers knew that America needed Christian morals in order to thrive.

In his “Farewell Address,” George Washington reminded the nation:

Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness. . . . The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them.

John Adams reminds us:

[W]e have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. . . . Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

John Adams also stated just two weeks before signing teh Declaration of Independence:

I]t is religion and morality alone which can establish the principles upon which freedom can securely stand. The only foundation of a free constitution is pure virtue.

Fisher Ames, framer of the First Amendment, said:

Our liberty depends on our education, our laws, and habits . . . it is founded on morals and religion, whose authority reigns in the heart, and on the influence all these produce on public opinion before that opinion governs rulers.

Benjamin Franklin said:

[O]nly a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.

Franklin also stated in his appeal to open every session of Congress with prayer:

I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth, that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid? We have been assured, Sir, in the Sacred Writings, that "except the Lord build the House, they labor in vain that build it." I firmly believe this; and I also believe that without His concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building no better, than the Builders of Babel: We shall be divided by our partial local interests; our projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall become a reproach and bye word down to future ages. And what is worse, mankind may hereafter from this unfortunate instance, despair of establishing governments by human wisdom and leave it to chance, war and conquest.

Benjamin Rush, signer of the Declaration of Independence, said:

The only foundation for a useful education in a republic is to be laid in religion. Without this there can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no liberty, and liberty is the object and life of all republican governments.

And finally, my favorite quote, from Robert Winthrop, former speaker of the House of Representatives:

Men, in a word, must necessarily be controlled either by a power within them or by a power without them; either by the Word of God or by the strong arm of man; either by the Bible or by the bayonet.

Our founders were very concerned that our great nation would one day remove God, and specifically Christianity, from all of public life. They feared that if that day ever came, there would be no more liberty, no more peace, no more prosperity, and no more freedom. I hope that day never comes as we Christians fight to preserve our freedoms. It really is a shame that those people who profess to be proponents of tolerance, are so intolerant to Christianity.

Commitment to finish the job in Iraq

Before I get started, have you seen this picture?



I want to speak for a moment about the war in Iraq. There is a consensus this November that the elections are a referendum on Iraq. People will vote Democrat because they think Iraq was a mistake and that will show President Bush that he was wrong. First of all, voting for a Democrat in a House or Senate or even Gubernatorial race won't change anything in Iraq. The President has sole Constitutional authority to do as he sees fit concerning the war in Iraq. Even if we had a super majority of Democrats in both the House and Senate, all they could do is defund the war effort. They can't force a troop withdrawal by voting for it. That's the President's decision.

But that's not what I want to focus on here. I would like to focus on the word "commitment." Do we Americans even know what the word "commitment" means anymore? Contracts are a form of commitment. When is the last time you saw a professional athlete refuse to show up for practice at the beginning of the year because he wants a better contract? Regardless of the fact that the athlete is still under contract with the team, he feels that he deserves better and thus he shouldn't have to honor the current terms. Or what about coaches who get fired in the middle of their contract? Most times the team has to pay the salary of the coach for all future years even though he is no longer the coach in order to fulfill his contract. But currently the New York Knicks are in court to try to get out of paying Larry Brown the rest of his contract because they wanted to fire him.

Then look at society. The best example is marriage. Marriages are failing at a rate of 50% or better because of the lack of commitment by one or both of the partners. All of us who are married signed a marriage contract to be committed to our spouse for better or worse until death. So why do 50% of marriages break the commitment. Was marriage harder than they thought it would be? Maybe. Did they not find true love in the marriage? Maybe. Did they just get tired of the other person? Maybe. Did it involve too much personal sacrifice? Maybe.

Can you see where I am going with this. Regardless of why we as a country went into Iraq, we have made a commitment to the innocent civilians of Iraq to protect them until they can protect themselves. Even if I were to agree with the Democrats (which I don't) that the war was a mistake, that we didn't find WMDs, and that there is no link to Al Queda, it doesn't matter at this point. We are there now. There are now floods of terrorists coming into Iraq to get a shot at the great USA to see if they can break our will. If we leave Iraq now, the terrorist may follow us home and they may not. But they will definitely stay in Iraq and the innocent citizens of that country will become the biggest casualties of this war and only we will be to blame.

We now have an obligation to those people to finish what we started. It's what America does. It's what we stand for. We have a moral obligation to fulfill the commitment that we made to the Iraqi people to protect them until they can protect themselves. We now must show the world that we do what we say. We believe as Americans that our commitment is our bond. Don't we? So if you want to vote for a Democrat this year, come up with a better reason than because the war was a mistake. Vote for them because they're going to raise taxes or support more abortions. At least those are issues that they can change when they get to DC.

Food for Thought

Our next topic in Ambassadors ABF will be all about food. Food plays a very large role in the Bible as well as our everyday lives. The main question is, "Can we control our desire for food?" Our secondary question that we will spend the most time on is: "Why did God give us food as a requirement to survive and also make it a sin at the same time?" For instance, why did God tell Adam and Eve that they could eat any plant they wanted, but not from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil? Why did he tell Adam that they couldn't eat other animals? Why did Esau give his birthright to Jacob over food? Why did God give such strict laws to Moses about what food the Israelites could and couldn't eat? Why did Daniel earn the favor of the king just by eating better? Why did Jesus fast? Why did Jesus feed the 5000? Why will there be a wedding feast in heaven when Jesus returns? What is it about God and food?

Back to the lack of self-control question. Read part of this article by Cathleen Falsani:

"America is becoming known as a nation of gluttony and obesity, and churches are a feeding ground for this problem," says Ken Ferraro, a Purdue sociology professor who studied more than 2,500 adults over a span of eight years looking at the correlation between their religious behavior and their body mass index.

"If religious leaders and organizations neglect this issue, they will contribute to an epidemic that will cost the health-care system millions of dollars and reduce the quality of life for many parishioners," he says.

Ferraro's most recent study, published in the June issue of the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, is a follow-up to a study he published in 1998, where he found there were more obese people in states with larger populations of folks claiming a religious affiliation than elsewhere -- particularly in states with the most Baptists.

So it's not surprising that Ferraro's latest study found that about 27 percent of Baptists, including Southern Baptists, North American Baptists, and Fundamentalist Baptist, were obese.

Surely there are several contributing factors to such a phenomenon, but when Ferraro accounted for geography (southern cooking is generally more high-caloric), race and even whether overweight folks were attracted to churches for moral support, the statistics still seem to indicate that some churches dispense love handles as well as the love of the Lord.

Ferraro's study also found that about 20 percent of "Fundamentalist Protestants," (Church of Christ, Pentecostal, Assemblies of God and Church of God); about 18 percent of "Pietistic Protestants," (Methodist, Christian Church and African Methodist Episcopal), and about 17 percent of Catholics were obese.

By contrast, about 1 percent of the Jewish population and less than 1 percent of other non-Christians, including Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and others), were tipping the scales with commensurate gusto.

What's up with that? Aren't we supposed to be different than the world? Aren't we supposed to treat our body as God's temple? Why do Christians struggle with too much food? I have some answers. This is going to be a fun time. Stay tuned.

Defending Our Rights

In our current Life On the Vine series in Ambassadors ABF this weekend, we discussed how our culture encourages us to defend our rights as individuals as opposed to living with a more outward view that places others first. I find it interesting that the author of our book, Philip Kenneson, takes the stance that "the assumption behind 'rights' language is that we need to be protected from one another" and that creates "a culture that thrives on adversarial relationships." He argues that this manifests itself in an "obsession with lawsuits" and "cultivates habits of noninvolvement" for fear of lawsuits.

While I understand his frustration with everyone looking out for number one, I believe that his placing blame on the system is a bit overboard as even he admits that the "language of rights is likely essential in a soceity like ours." I would say that it is more than likely essential - it's absolutely necessary. However, we humans have corrupted the system. Our system of rights, when created by our founding fathers, looked nothing like it does today. As they wrote in the Declaration of Independence, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." What does this phrase mean - in particular the phrase "pursuit of Happiness?"

We have the right to life. Yes, most people link this phrase with the anti-abortion movement today. However, the signers of the Declaration were simply restating Biblical law. Stated in the negative, "King George, You do not have the right to take my life without a fair and just cause." You see, listed in the Declaration are 27 injustices that the signers listed as reasons for declaring their independence. Number 15 states, "For protecting them (British soldiers), by a mock Trial, from Punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States." Number 18 states, "For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury." Number 19 states, "For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences." Number 24 states, "He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the Lives of our People."
Number 25 states, "He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation." And number 27 states, "He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions." What did the signers mean by the right to life? They meant that their king did not have the authority on this earth to take their lives from them. Their life was given to them by a Creator and only He could determine, through the Bible, who was and wasn't worthy of life.

We have the right to liberty. This word liberty, in my opinion, is the most preserved word of the Declaration in that it's meaning hasn't really changed in the last 250 years. The signers wanted freedom from the British government. Plain and simple. The British army was increasing its presence in the colonies. The king believed that he had unlimited power over the colonies and if the colonies wouldn't willfully obey the opressive laws and taxation that had been placed on them, the British army would bring them into obedience by force. The signers believed that our liberty was a right given to all men by God and any king or ruler that infringed upon that right was not a king that had to be obeyed. Thus, the war cry that was carried by the Committee for Intercolonial Correspondence during the Revolution was "No King but King Jesus!" Likewise, the men of Marlborough, MA unanimously proclaimed in January 1773 that "Death is more eligible than slavery. A free-born people are not required by the religion of Jesus Christ to submit to tyranny." And in March of 1775, Patrick Henry gave his speech before Congress in which he concluded with the words, "I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"

Lastly, we have the right to the pursuit of Happiness. Did our founding fathers really believe that we had the right to pursue happiness? Happiness seems to be such a subjective word. How could the framers believe that Almighty God gave us the right to be happy? The Bible doesn't say anything about being happy. How many Christians have you met lately that seem to have it as a life-goal to remain unhappy and bring you down with them with all of their rules that make life boring and dull? It does seem that our society today has taken this right and run with it. "I have the right to pursue happiness as I see fit and you can't stop me." That's how we deal with every issue isn't it? The right for a mother to choose, the right to marry the same sex, or the right to not have to look at the 10 commandments. All these arguments essentially come down to legislating the things that make people happy. I will be happier if I get an abortion. I will be happier if I can marry my partner. I will be happier if my government doesn't show preference for one religion or another. So we legislate happiness.

But that's not what our founders intended and they spoke very clearly on this issue. First, you must understand that our founders were for the most part Christians. They had a very strong belief in a Creator God and they believed that He revealed himself to man through the Bible. The Bible contains the 10 Commandments, among other things, which they founders beleived are the simplest statements of God's laws of right and wrong. Thus when they framed our Bill of Rights, many of our rights can be summed up with one of God's commandments. For example, the right to life is protected by the commandment against murder. The right to property is protected by the commandments against theft and covetousness. Our founders believed that the last six commandments of God's law exist to protect man's rights.

Second, you must understand that our founding fathers were all very aware of the writings of Sir William Blackstone. Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England grew out of his lectures as a professor at Oxford, and were published in four volumes from 1765-1769. Blackstone's commentary was virtually the only law book in the colonies at the time of the Declaration. In short, Blackstone believed that obeying God's "eternal immutable principles of good and evil" is what leads to our "own true and substantial happiness." Blackstone wrote extensively on man's right to the Pursuit of Happiness. So what the founders were saying when they gave us the right to the Pursuit of Happiness is that we have the right to be free from a government that forbids us from doing what God commands or a governement that commands even allows what God forbids. If our government forbids us from doing what God commands, it would be blocking our path to true happiness which is following God's will. Or if our government allowed us to do what God's law forbids, it would be allowing someone else's rights to be violated. Thus the Declaration of Independence establishes that God's moral rules are the true source of human rights. And the purpose of our government - or any government - is to enforce God's rules so that our rights are protected.

All that being said, it is not fair for Philip Kenneson to place blame on our system of "rights" because he feels that it leads everyone down the path of looking out for number one and being inwardly focused. God is the one that set up our system of human rights. It's simply our government's obligation to protect those rights. If we humans have taken God's laws which are outwardly focused and turned them around so that they are self-serving, then blame the humans not the laws.

Liberia gets no media coverage

The first ever woman to be elected to lead an African nation spoke before a joint meeting of the United States Congress on Wednesday, March 15, 2006. Her name is Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. I'll bet you never heard of her and I'll bet you don't know much about Liberia. After all, why should you? The media hasn't spoken a word about this tremendous story.

Let me ask you, did you know that:

• Liberia means "Land of the Free"?
• Liberia was founded by freed slaves from the United States in 1820?
• Liberia's capital, Monrovia, was named after U.S. president James Monroe?
• Liberia's government and constitution were fashioned on that of the United States?
• Liberia's flag has a striking resemblance to our flag?
• Liberia was largely peaceful until 1980 when civil war almost destroyed it until 2003?

A lot of people ask the question, "If we're in Iraq because a tyrant was killing his own people, why don't we invade every country that needs help?" or something to that effect. President Bush and his foreign policies are not only directed at Iraq, they are directed toward every country in the world. He is making a huge difference across the globe and Liberia is just one small example of that. But did you know that?

Here is a portion of President Sirleaf's speech to Congress on Wednesday. If you would like to read the entire speech, go to http://allafrica.com/stories/200603150786.html. She said:

"The national motto of Liberia - founded, as you know, by freed American slaves - is "The Love of Liberty Brought us here." We became the first independent Republic in Africa. Our capital, Monrovia, is named for your president James Monroe. Our flag is a star in a blue field and red and white stripes - its one star makes us the lone star state in Africa. Our constitution and our laws were based upon yours. The U.S. dollar was long our legal tender and still is used alongside the Liberian dollar today.
But our ties greatly exceed the historical connection. I stand before you today, as the first woman elected to lead an African nation, thanks to the grace of Almighty God; thanks to the courage of the Liberian people, who chose their future over fear; thanks to the people of west Africa and of Africa generally, who continued to give hope to my people. Thanks also to President Bush whose strong resolve and public condemnation and appropriate action forced a tyrant into exile and thanks to you - the members of this august body - who spurred the international effort that brought blessed peace to our nation.
It was the leadership of the 108th Congress, more than two years ago, that paved the way for a United Nations force that secured our peace and guaranteed free and fair elections. It was your 445 million dollar addition to a supplemental appropriation that attracted additional commitments from international donors. With those funds, we have laid the foundation for a durable peace, not only in Liberia, but in the whole West African sub-region. Special appreciation goes to this 109th Congress for the effort, in recent weeks, to meet Liberia's development needs.
Honorable ladies and gentlemen of this Congress, I want to thank you. The Liberian people have sent me here to thank you - thank you for your vision. Our triumph over evil is also your triumph."

Ladies and gentlemen, this country would still be in the middle of a civil war that has claimed over 250,000 lives in a country with a population of only 3 million people if the United States of America and President Bush had decided to do nothing about it. She concluded her speech with this:

"The people of Liberia know that government cannot save the country - only their own strength, their determination, their creativity, resilience and their faith can do that. But they have the right to expect the essentials that only a government can provide.
They have the right to a government that is honest and that respects the sanctity of human life. They need and they deserve an economic environment in which their efforts can succeed. They need infrastructure and they need security. Above all, they need peace.
That is the task of my administration. To meet that challenge, to do what is right, I ask for the continuing support of this Congress and the American people.
Honorable Ladies and Gentlemen, my appeal comes with the recognition of all that you have already done. In addition to the financial assistance to disarm our fighters, to feed and house our displaced, the artful diplomacy of the United States was central to ending our long conflict. We thank you with all our hearts."

The United States of America is the most blessed and prosperous country that this planet has ever seen. It is our duty as children of God to love our neighbor and give to those in need. How much money do you really think an African country of 3 million people needs to get back on their feet?

I know many of you do not like sending our troops into harms way just to help people from other countries like Liberia, Afghanistan and Iraq. But I bet the citizens of Liberia, Afghanistan and Iraq have a different opinion. Thank you President Bush for doing what is right regardless what our media says and won't say about you.

Selection Sunday

Today is Sunday - Selection Sunday to be exact. This is the day the basketball world stands still for a few minutes as the NCAA tournament brackets are revealed. There will be much crying from Dick Vitale screaming, "It's not fair!" when a "lesser" team gets in the tournament over a more deserving team. There will be jubilation from teams all around the country realizing that they've been given the gift of all gifts when they move off the "bubble" into the tournament. There will also be much less work getting done around the office this week as everyone fills out their brakets for the office pool spending unproductive hours at the water cooler speculating on this year's final four.

But doesn't it seem right in some sick sort of way. In today's world of war in Iraq, church burnings by teenage Satanists, UAE port-phobia and the VP's hunting accidents, we deserve a break! Shouldn't we get to forget about all those things for a few weeks and watch kids play the game of basketball as hard as they can? It's the season for last second shots and big-time upsets. It's not the 3-month painstaking ordeal of 4 rounds of best of seven games that the NBA puts us through every year. It's you lose and you're out! What pressure! It's almost as much suspense as watching the presidential election results! So even if you're not a basketball fan, take a few minutes to relax! This time only comes around once a year and we deserve a break from CNN!