Today the Supreme Court ruled, in a 5-4 split vote, that the death penalty for raping a child was cruel and unusual punishment.  Justice Anthony Kennedy said "the death penalty is not a proportional punishment for the rape of a child".  He's right in a way, only the certain eternity of burning in a lake of fire is a proportional punishment for harming a child.

Jesus says in Matthew 18:7-8:

"Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to sin, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were drowned in the depth of the sea.  Woe to the world because of offenses!  For offenses must come, but woe to that man by whom the offense comes!"

But are we to wait around, feeding, housing, and clothing the man for thirty years until the woe of the Lord comes?  Are there men whose acts are so heinous that we should immediately serve them up to the Lord for his ultimate judgment?  Here is an excerpt from the court case against child rapist Patrick Kennedy, convicted for the rape of his 8-year-old stepdaughter:

"It was not disputed that the victim was brutally raped.  On the morning of March 2, 1998, the victim was transported by ambulance to Children’s Hospital where she was examined in the emergency room.  The victim’s predominate injury was vaginal with profuse bleeding.  Her entire perineum was torn and her rectum protruded into her vagina.  Dr. Scott Benton of Children’s Hospital testified as an expert in pediatric forensic medicine that the victim’s injuries were the most serious he had seen, within his four years of practice, that resulted from a sexual assault.  A pediatric surgeon was called in to repair the damage, which was repaired successfully."

(Here I will say that, if you are not weeping for this child after reading that account, I care not for your opinions concerning the death penalty.)

Today the Supreme Court of the United States thwarted the will of the people of the State of Louisiana. It was the will of the people that such horrendously violent and evil acts should be punished in the severest way possible, death.  "Woe to that man by whom the offense comes!"

No one is saying that the death penalty should be applied in all cases of rape; Louisiana has only sentenced two such child rapists to death.  But, even those who are opposed to the death penalty generally will agree that it is warranted in extreme cases. 

The next President will certainly get an opportunity to appoint one or more Supreme Court Justices.  This brings us to presidential candidate Barack Obama, a man that voted in support of partial birth abortion.  On that basis alone, we can see the agenda of the radical left will trump any sympathy he might have for protecting children.

But what kind of Supreme Court Justice would Barack Obama appoint?  Barack Obama has already praised Stephen G. Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and David H. Souter -- all of whom just voted to protect child rapists from cruel and unusual punishment.

So what can Christians do to stop Barack Obama?  First, let's get John McCain to select a devout believer in the Gospel of Jesus Christ as his Vice President, such as Mike Huckabee. 

Then, let's get McCain/Huckabee elected in a way that only the community of believers can do it -- by organizing our churches to support, campaign for, and vote for McCain/Huckabee en mass.  This, I believe, is the only way that Barack Obama will be stopped.  And, by flexing the power of the community of believers we will ensure that no more mistakes are made by Republican Presidents in appointing Supreme Court Justices

You have worked hard to raise-up your children and teach them the admonitions of the Lord.  Perhaps you have even raised-up a future Legislator, Governor, or Senator.  Do you really want your children ruled over by the judicial tyranny of leftist old men on a Supreme Court appointed by Barack Obama?

If you really want change, let's change the Supreme Court.  Hopefully the likes of Ruth Bader Ginsburg will repent and come to the Lord (or more likely she will continue to wither and die as it appears God has hardened her heart).  Until then, we must do everything we can to prevent anymore Ginsburgs from being appointed; our children and the will of the people need protection, not child rapists.

From Considering Homeschooling.

What's a 16-year-old public school girl supposed to do to find love?  That's right, get a 24-year-old homeless guy to impregnate you.  Well, everyone is doing it!

Evidently, everyone is doing it at Gloucester High School in Massachusetts.  Sixteen girls have confessed to making a pact to get pregnant and succeeded.

The local liberals want to distribute contraceptives at the high school without parental consent, to stem the tide of the four fold increase in teen pregnancy.  This is a ridiculous reaction, of course, considering the nature of the increase.

One teen parent put it succinctly, "they're so excited to finally have someone to love them unconditionally."

Does anyone really think this type of nonsense would occur if these girls had been loved enough by their parents?  Seen the gospel of Jesus Christ lived out in the lives of the adults around them?  Protected from the absurdities of popular culture driven peer group influences by being homeschooled?

Here is the article from Time:

As summer vacation begins, 17 girls at Gloucester High School are expecting babies—more than four times the number of pregnancies the 1,200-student school had last year. Some adults dismissed the statistic as a blip. Others blamed hit movies like Juno and Knocked Up for glamorizing young unwed mothers. But principal Joseph Sullivan knows at least part of the reason there's been such a spike in teen pregnancies in this Massachusetts fishing town. School officials started looking into the matter as early as October after an unusual number of girls began filing into the school clinic to find out if they were pregnant. By May, several students had returned multiple times to get pregnancy tests, and on hearing the results, "some girls seemed more upset when they weren't pregnant than when they were," Sullivan says. All it took was a few simple questions before nearly half the expecting students, none older than 16, confessed to making a pact to get pregnant and raise their babies together. Then the story got worse. "We found out one of the fathers is a 24-year-old homeless guy," the principal says, shaking his head.

The question of what to do next has divided this fiercely Catholic enclave. Even with national data showing a 3% rise in teen pregnancies in 2006—the first increase in 15 years—Gloucester isn't sure it wants to provide easier access to birth control. In any case, many residents worry that the problem goes much deeper. The past decade has been difficult for this mostly white, mostly blue-collar city (pop. 30,000). In Gloucester, perched on scenic Cape Ann, the economy has always depended on a strong fishing industry. But in recent years, such jobs have all but disappeared overseas, and with them much of the community's wherewithal. "Families are broken," says school superintendent Christopher Farmer. "Many of our young people are growing up directionless."

The girls who made the pregnancy pact—some of whom, according to Sullivan, reacted to the news that they were expecting with high fives and plans for baby showers—declined to be interviewed. So did their parents. But Amanda Ireland, who graduated from Gloucester High on June 8, thinks she knows why these girls wanted to get pregnant. Ireland, 18, gave birth her freshman year and says some of her now pregnant schoolmates regularly approached her in the hall, remarking how lucky she was to have a baby. "They're so excited to finally have someone to love them unconditionally," Ireland says. "I try to explain it's hard to feel loved when an infant is screaming to be fed at 3 a.m."

The high school has done perhaps too good a job of embracing young mothers. Sex-ed classes end freshman year at Gloucester, where teen parents are encouraged to take their children to a free on-site day-care center. Strollers mingle seamlessly in school hallways among cheerleaders and junior ROTC. "We're proud to help the mothers stay in school," says Sue Todd, CEO of Pathways for Children, which runs the day-care center.

But by May, after nurse practitioner Kim Daly had administered some 150 pregnancy tests at Gloucester High's student clinic, she and the clinic's medical director, Dr. Brian Orr, a local pediatrician, began to advocate prescribing contraceptives regardless of parental consent, a practice at about 15 public high schools in Massachusetts. Currently Gloucester teens must travel about 20 miles (30 km) to reach the nearest women's health clinic; younger girls have to get a ride or take the train and walk. But the notion of a school handing out birth control pills has met with hostility. Says Mayor Carolyn Kirk: "Dr. Orr and Ms. Daly have no right to decide this for our children." The pair resigned in protest on May 30.

Gloucester's elected school committee plans to vote later this summer on whether to provide contraceptives. But that won't do much to solve the issue of teens wanting to get pregnant. Says rising junior Kacia Lowe, who is a classmate of the pactmakers': "No one's offered them a better option." And better options may be a tall order in a city so uncertain of its future.

From Considering Homeschooling.

My husband and I were blessed to see the new Ben Stein move, Expelled, this week.  The part of the movie that moved me the most was when a few professors described how they became evolutionists and how any belief in God was simultaneously extinguished in their lives.  As one professor detailed, it happened when his biology teacher turned him on to evolution and by the end of the course, he was both an atheist and evolutionist. 

I have heard this same story over and over again in the lives of everyday Christian parents.  For example, I used to tutor this very smart boy who took several honors classes – honors physics, honors English, etc.  But I told his Christian mother that I was worried that she was going to send him to a liberal ivy league college as he already had been exposed to so much secular humanism in this public school high school and he had little grasp of a Christian worldview.
 
She dismissed such thoughts, telling me he was the head of the children’s ministry in their church and was active in other church work.  Sure enough, after one semester of college biology in which the professor bulldozed Darwinism into the students, this ignorant and unprepared teen declared to his shocked parents that he was now an atheist. 

You need to homeschool to make sure your children understand Dawinism thoroughly before encountering it from the elites in academia.  And they need to study the vast evidence for God as the creator, the infinitely intelligent designer of the universe. Otherwise, a child weakened by a public school education will likely be seduced by the fantasy of evolution and overwhelmed by the peer pressure to adopt an atheist view of the world.

Proverbs 24:11 says "rescue those being led away to death; hold back those staggering toward slaughter."

If you are considering homeschooling or already educating your children at home, I want to challenge you to observe the 35th anniversary of the infamous Roe v. Wade decision this week by trying to save a life of a baby.  Make it a family project – get some literature from the nearest pro-life group or pro-life pregnancy center and hand it out as a family while you stand on the sidewalk outside the local abortion clinic.

Or have your family prayer time there.  And why not practice reading out loud by reading the Word of God as a family on the sidewalk outside the local Planned Parenthood, the largest baby killing machine in the country? 

In fact, why not make it a homeschool "assignment" for your family to try to save the life of at least one unborn child in 2008?  I know that so many mothers of young children have a past – a past that includes one or more abortions.  Now that you are walking with Jesus Christ, now that He has given you a chance to instruct the next generation, why not train your children to be "life savers"?  Homeschooling them does not guarantee they won’t get an abortion; they need to know what God says about hurting the innocent and they need to be part of His life saving work. 

If you really want pro-life children, I mean children who not only will protect your future grandkids from abortion, but also vote pro-life and work to end abortion in the land, get them involved in peacefully praying, saving lives and witnessing on the sidewalk of an abortion clinic.  It was, in fact, the many homeschool families I met in pro-life that convinced me homeschooling was the way to go ( my husband was convinced a long time ago to homeschool by having gone to public school) .

Seeing the homeschooled children fearlessly standing for the least of these really touched my heart in a way I will never forget.  It is so cool to be a homeschool mom now and see my kids being part of that legacy. 

Having been a pro-life sidewalk counselor for 21 years, I can tell you sidewalk counseling is easier to do than most people think.  My husband and I have trained sidewalk counselors in the past and we can tell you that it is not really what you say that counts as much as how much you pray.  Some of the most effective sidewalk counselors quietly pray, and just politely hand out the literature to the women entering the abortion mill.

If you need information on sidewalk counseling, check out the resources at www.sidewalkcounseling.com and if you live in Southern California, they will be having a sidewalk counseling training session on March 1 with the theme "Save a Life in 2008".

The Herald Tribune is reporting that "Aqua Dots" Chinese-made children's toys contain the 'date rape' drug.

Scientists say a chemical coating on the beads, when ingested, metabolizes into the so-called date rape drug gamma hydroxy butyrate. When eaten, the compound — made from common and easily available ingredients — can induce unconsciousness, seizures, drowsiness, coma and death.

Could this Chinese toy thing get any stranger?  Lead, asbestos, gamma hydroxy butyrate... could they try any harder to make this look like a sinister communist plot to kill American children?

We have long boycotted Chinese made products -- yes, it is possible.  It takes more time shopping and sometimes we go home empty handed.  But, like most Americans, who needs more stuff?  As someone who loves toys, those three little words - Made in China - sure help us save a lot of money.  Try it; just put the stuff back on the shelf.

Our little family is like a chorus going through a toy store: "Made in China", "Made in China", "Made in China".  I believe those are the first words most of our children learned to read -- dad's homeschool of consumer awareness. 

Our little boycott started, not because of consumer safety reasons, but because the communists represent real evil in this world.  Christians are persecuted in China.  Political freedom is suppressed.  Individual expression is punished.  Information is controlled by the state.  Every industry profits from slave labor (through forced labor of political prisoners in energy and mining).  And, women are forced to have abortions.

Also, a portion of every dollar that goes to China gets invested into the PLA (Peoples Liberation Army), China's military, which is engaged in a great strategic expansion in anticipation of the coming conflict with the United States.  Historically, China views the United States as an enemy.  All of their military build-up is targeted at countering the United States -- anti-satellite weapons to target our communications, blue water navy and submarines to counter our aircraft carriers, hacking to disrupt our information infrastructure, anti-surface missiles to counter our navy, short and medium range missiles to target Taiwan and US bases in Asia, ICBM's to target American cities.

Please pray that this coming conflict does not come to pass.  Pray that the communist government of China would be destroyed and freedom would come to the Chinese people.  Too long have they suffered under the suppression of totalitarian government (at key historical points reinforced by western powers). 

In 1989 brave individuals stood up for political reform in China, the result was death and prison for thousands.  The west largely ignored these tyrannical acts and expanded trade relations with China.  Trade has done little since then to give the Chinese people political freedom.  Instead, the power of the communist dictators has been reinforced and strengthened by the influx of western cash.

Please stop giving your cash to China; instead give them your prayers and determination to see them free to worship Christ as you do.  Don't you think that is a better lesson for your children then that plastic (and perhaps lead painted) toy?