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al-Qaeda working on toxic Ricin bombs

Why Not English?

What About The 51% Who Pay No Taxes?

Obama Exempting Schools From Testing Mandate

by Donna Gordon Blankinship

(AP) - State and local education officials have been begging the federal government for relief from student testing mandates in the federal No Child Left Behind law, but school starts soon and Congress still hasn't answered the call.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan says he will announce a new waiver system Monday to give schools a break.

The plan to offer waivers to all 50 states, as long as they meet other school reform requirements, comes at the request of President Barack Obama, Duncan said. More details on the waivers will come in September, he said.

The goal of the No Child Left Behind law is to have every student proficient in math and reading by 2014. States have been required to bring more students up to the math and reading standards each year, based on tests that usually take place each spring. The step-by-step ramping up of the 9-year-old law has caused heartburn in states and most school districts, because more and more schools are labeled as failures as too few of their students meet testing goals.

Critics say the benchmarks are unrealistic and brands schools as failures even if they make progress. Schools and districts where too few kids pass the tests for several years are subject to sanctions that can include firing teachers or closing the school entirely.

Through the waivers, schools will get some relief from looming deadlines to meet testing goals as long as they agree to embrace other kinds of education reforms such as raising standards, helping teachers and principals improve, and focusing on fixing the lowest performing schools.

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Melanie Phillips – Islam in Europe

Click here for your free copy of Sharia Law For The Non Muslim...

Defending the Faith Part 10: The “Suicide” Tactic

by Greg Koukl

Now that we have the Columbo tactic down, let’s learn another tactical tool. I call it the “Suicide” tactic. The Suicide tactic makes capital of the tendency many erroneous points of view have to self-destruct when given the opportunity. These self-destructive views are commonly called self-refuting statements. They commit suicide on their own, and all you need to do is point that out.

For example, consider the dialogue in a Peanuts cartoon.

Sally: “No!” That’s my new philosophy. I don’t care what anyone says, the answer is “No!”
Charlie Brown: That’s your new philosophy, huh?
Sally: Yes! I mean, No! [pause] You’ve ruined my new philosophy.

Statements that commit suicide have within them the seeds of their own destruction:

“My brother is an only child” cannot be true because “brother” entails the concept of siblings.
“I cannot speak a word in English” is self-refuting when spoken in English.
“There are no sentences more than five words in length” is a sentence that has more than five words.
“You can’t know anything for sure” is a truth skeptics are pretty sure about.

Philosopher J.P. Moreland points out that every statement is about something. For example, the sentence “Dogs have fleas” is about dogs. Sometimes statements include themselves in what they refer to. The statement “All English sentences are short” is about all English sentences, including itself. When a statement fails to satisfy its own criteria of validity, it is self-refuting. It can’t possibly be a true statement.

Suicidal statements have within them the seeds of their own destruction. They cannot satisfy their own standard. This is why the minute you utter them, they become false. Even when such statements initially appear true, they’re still false.

This holds true for all self-refuting statements. If the exact same reasons used against your view also defeat the reasons themselves, then the view is self-defeating; it commits suicide. The person using such arguments can’t even recommend his own advice. For example, when someone says “You shouldn’t make moral judgments,” he is making a moral judgment.

Sometimes people don’t see contradictions staring them in the face. When that happens, we simply point them out. Other times they miss a contradiction because they don’t have the information they need. For example, someone may not see the problem with pluralism because they don’t know Jesus claimed to be the only true way to the Father (John 14:6). In these cases, you'll have to give them the correct information before they’ll see the problem.

Even God Himself can’t make self-refuting statements true. These kinds of statements are irrational, and since rationality is part of God’s essential character, he cannot violate His nature and make contradictory statements true. This is not a limitation on God’s power in any way because power is not the relevant factor here: No amount of raw power can make a contradictory statement true. Suicidal ideas, therefore, are false of necessity. They can’t be true in any possible world.

Next time: Why the "Suicide" Tactic Works

For more extensive tactics training go to www.str.org and look for Tactics in Defending the Faith Mentoring Series or STRi DVD interactive training in our online store or call Stand to Reason at 1-800-2-REASON.

Special Interests...EXPOSED!!!

Hezbollah on the Mexican Border

Fort Hood Targeted for Second Terrorist Attack

by IPT News

Naser Jason Abdo made an initial court appearance in Waco, Tex. Friday, where he was charged with possessing an unregistered weapon.

Press reports indicate that Abdo defiantly invoked the name of 2009 Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan as he was taken out of the courtroom. "Nidal Hasan Fort Hood 2009," spectators heard him shout.

Hasan is charged with killing 13 people during a shooting spree at a readiness center at Fort Hood in November 2009. Hasan had been in contact with American-born al-Qaida cleric Anwar al-Awlaki before the attack, and Awlaki hailed Hasan as a hero after the shooting.

Investigators have not found evidence that Abdo had similar communication with terrorists, but he did have a copy of an article from al-Qaida's English-language magazine, Inspire, with instructions on home-made bombs. Abdo, who had been granted conscientious objector status, claimed he could not kill fellow Muslims if deployed to Afghanistan.

His target and his shouting of Hasan's name indicate he felt no hesitation killing his fellow soldiers.

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Full Civic Literacy Exam

Are you more knowledgeable than the average citizen? The average score for all 2,508 Americans taking the following test was 49%; college educators scored 55%. Can you do better? Questions were drawn from past ISI surveys, as well as other nationally recognized exams.

Click Here to test your knowledge!

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Defending the Faith Part 9: The Art of Asking Questions

by Greg Koukl

Christians find themselves in many different situations where they want to influence people for the greater good, or defend their faith. When defending the faith, one of the most important tactics that we can use in conversation is the asking of questions (Columbo). Like other tactics, asking good questions and asking the right number of questions is a skill that takes practice. In his book, In But Not Of, Hugh Hewitt, gives us some practical advice as to how to do this: Ask at least a half-dozen questions in every conversation

This skill at inquiry will immediately mark you as different and attractive. . . . When you ask questions, you are displaying interest in the person asked and in most settings this is a great boon to the pride and self-worth of the person being asked. Most people are not queried on many, if any, subjects. Their opinions are not solicited. To ask them is to be remembered fondly as a very interesting and gracious person in your own right.

Once developed, the habit of asking questions will inevitably give you advantages in every setting. You will obviously leave most situations with more information (and friends) than when you arrived, and being an asker allows you control of situations that statement makers rarely achieve. Once you learn how to guide a conversation, you have also learned how to control it. You can express your own opinions as questions, and every human emotion can be conveyed this way.

An alert questioner can judge when someone grows uneasy. But don't stop. Just change directions.

Asking questions and marking yourself as fair minded and interested in others will do a lot to keep the conversations civil and you in control of your message rather than having to defend assertions that you have made. Questions disarm people and lower their defenses so that a conversation can be a useful exchange of ideas rather than a battle of wills.

Next time: The Suicide Tactic - when an arguments holds the seeds of it's own demise

For more extensive tactics training go to www.str.org and look for Tactics in Defending the Faith Mentoring Series or STRi DVD interactive training in our online store or call Stand to Reason at 1-800-2-REASON.

Disapproval Rate for Congress at Record 82% After Debt Talks

by Michael Cooper and Megan Thee-Brenan

The debate over raising the debt ceiling, which brought the nation to the brink of default, has sent disapproval of Congress to its highest level on record and left most Americans saying that creating jobs should now take priority over cutting spending, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll.

A record 82 percent of Americans now disapprove of the way Congress is handling its job — the most since The Times first began asking the question in 1977, and even more than after another political stalemate led to a shutdown of the federal government in 1995.

More than four out of five people surveyed said that the recent debt-ceiling debate was more about gaining political advantage than about doing what is best for the country. Nearly three-quarters said that the debate had harmed the image of the United States in the world.

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Secret Service Secrets

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U.S. Government Bureaucracy

All You Need To Know About U.S. Government Bureaucracy:

Pythagorean theorem................................................24 words.

Lord's prayer..............................................................66 words.

Archimedes' Principle................................................67 words.

10 Commandments...................................................179 words.

Gettysburg address...................................................286 words.

Declaration of Independence....................................1,300 words.

US Constitution with all 27 Amendments..................7,818 words.

US Government regulations on sale of cabbage......26,911 words.

I guess cabbage must really be complicated....

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GE Moves Healthcare X-Ray Unit Headquarters To China

by Mamta Badkar

General Electric's health-care unit is moving the headquarters of its x-ray business from Waukesha, Wisconsin to Beijing to gain from Chinese growth, according to Bloomberg.

The company said only a few of its top managers would move to China, and that it expects no job losses at its Wisconsin office, that has 120 employees. GE Healthcare will however hire 65 new engineers and other staff at the new Chengdu facility.

This is part of the parent-company's broader plan to invest $2 billion in China. General Electric expects its health-care revenue in China to rise 20% annually through 2015.

Earlier this year GE Healthcare launched a three-year "Spring Wind" initiative that aims to helps the Chinese government by developing affordable healthcare products, boost medical distribution network across China and offer training for Chinese healthcare professionals. In 2010, GE Healthcare also committed to sending 500 members into rural China to help grassroot medical institutions.

While the company reported no job losses in the U.S. stemming from the move, President Obama and Jeffrey Immelt are likely to face flak, since Obama appointed Immelt the top outside economic adviser and charged him with running a jobs-focused panel to help bring the U.S. economy back on track.

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Abortion Drug Kills 14 Women, Injures 2,200

by Steven Ertelt

The Food and Drug Administration has quietly released a new report about the deaths of and injuries to women from the dangerous RU 486 abortion drug and the Obama administration has done nothing to make the information available to women.

Following its approval during the Clinton administration, the FDA released a report in 2006 that received widespread attention for showing more than 1,100 women had been subjected to “adverse effects” resulting from their taking the abortion drug mifepristone, commonly known a RU 486. Pro-life advocates have waited five years for the FDA to come out with a new report of problems associated with the drug — despite mounting evidence that the abortion drug continues to kill and injure women across the globe.

The FDA, with no fanfare, has released a new report, dated April 30, 2011. The report indicates 14 women in the United States alone have died from using the mifepristone abortion drug and 2,207 women have been injured by it.

Of the women experiencing medical and physical problems resulting from the abortion drug, 612 women required hospitalizations, 339 experienced blood loss significant enough to require a transfusion, 256 experienced infections and 48 women experienced what the FDA labeled as “severe infections.” Given that the RU 486 abortion drug caused sepsis, a potentially lethal infection that resulted in the deaths of women from around the world, the “serious infections” were very likely life-threatening situations.

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U.S. Gov. Ends Chrysler Investment With $1.3 Billion Loss

by FoxNews.com

The U.S government has sold its shares in Chrysler LLC at a likely loss of $1.3 billion in taxpayer money, the Treasury Department said Thursday, announcing the end of a controversial investment that resurrected the troubled auto company.

Italian automaker Fiat SpA, which has run the company since it emerged from bankruptcy protection in June 2009, purchased the U.S. government's remaining 98,000 shares in the auto company for $560 million.

The financial loss irritated Republican lawmakers.

"I am deeply disturbed to learn that the Obama administration left $1.3 billion taxpayer dollars on the table in resolving its bailout of Chrysler," said Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

"The administration has sold out an American icon to a foreign company using TARP funds underwritten by taxpayers. Now they are essentially give that same company $1.3 billion of taxpayer money," he said.

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