This just landed in my Inbox from CBA Industry Brief and I thought I’d share. I guess next Friday is movie night. ; )

Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, starring Ben Stein, is set to open in nearly 1,000 theaters nationwide this Friday, April 18. The film follows Stein as he discovers that students, educators, and scientists are being ridiculed and even fired for merely believing that there’s evidence of “Design” in Creation (God), and that perhaps life isn’t just the result of accidental, random chance. He confronts the world’s leading atheists and Darwinists in a humorous yet serious battle of world views, a quest for freedom, and a frightening look at the dire consequences this culture war could have.

While Darwinists and atheists are fervently opposing the film, faith and family organizations like Focus on the Family, American Family Assoc., Young Life, Family Research Council, Concerned Women for America, and many others have endorsed the movie.

Visit www.GetExpelled.com for more information and free resources.

Governor Mike Huckabee posted this message on his web site this weekend. I was deeply touched and inspired. Hope you are too!

The story of Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection has deep meaning to Christians for a variety of reasons. First and foremost, it is the defining moment of the Christian faith. But for the resurrection, Christianity would be nothing more than a legend, not unlike the stories from Greek or Roman mythology. As the Apostle Paul notes in I Corinthians 15:17-18, “And if Christ be not raised, your faith is in vain; ye are yet in your sins. Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished.” Indeed, our very hope of eternal life depends upon the resurrection of Christ!

Beyond this, however, the resurrection is the supreme reminder that the biggest victories can come from the greatest defeats.

You may be going through a difficult time right now. Maybe you have lost your home, or perhaps your loved one is serving our country proudly in a war zone. You may not be able to see the light at the end of the tunnel. If so, just remember that God knows right where you are. If you will only trust Him, He will lead you through this time of testing and deliver you from evil. Like a woman in childbirth, the heartache and pain you experience today will precede the greatest happiness you will ever know. Just believe.

Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee concluded his 2008 bid for the Republican nomination for President tonight, calling upon his supporters to embrace the candidacy of U.S. Senator John McCain (AZ).

Huckabee, a champion of conservative values, said: “I extend my congratulations - and my commitment to John McCain and the Party - to do everything possible to unite our party and our nation, to be the best country we can be, not for ourselves, but for future generations. I am grateful that Senator McCain has led an honorable campaign because he is an honorable man.”

“It’s now important that we turn our attention, not to what could have been or what we wanted to have been, but what to now must be, and that is a united party,” Huckabee stated in his speech to supporters gathered in Texas tonight.

Huckabee said, “Not only have we fought the good fight and finished the race but more importantly, we have kept the faith. I would rather lose an election than lose the principles that got me into politics in the first place.”

“While many in the establishment never really believed I belonged, there were many in the country that did,” he said. “Thanks to their sacrifices, I had a voice - and I only pray that I have been able to give them a voice.”

Huckabee said he represented average Americans who work two jobs to meet ends meet; conservatives who want less - but more efficient - government with less corruption; people who believe we should overhaul our tax system, implement the Fair Tax ad and get rid of the IRS; the Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines, who keep us free; those who cherish life and those who have yet to be born.

Huckabee, who ran an extremely small but cost-effective campaign, concluded his remarks by stating, “Our battle was never about us. It was about our country and its liberty. Now, we join with Senator McCain in the rest of that battle, not for who gets elected, but for what we can do when we get elected.”

Huckabee finishes the race with delegates from his victory in eight primaries and caucuses. He won caucuses in Iowa, West Virginia, and Kansas. Huckabee also won primaries in Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, Louisiana, and his home state of Arkansas.

http://www.mikehuckabee.com/?FuseAction=Newsroom.PressRelease&ID=658

Janet Folger made some excellent observations in her column for Wolrd Net Daily today. You can read it here:

http://worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=P … geId=57958

One of my favorite bloggers, Joe Carter at The Evangelical Outpost, had some excellent insight on why it’s so important that we elect a pro-life President.  You can read his thoughts below.

Why Pro-Life Presidents Matter

What if I told you the only significant influence the President has on the economy is in selecting the Chairman of the Federal Reserve?

While the role of the president in “managing the economy” is often overstated, most serious voters would rightly dismiss such a narrow claim as absurd. Yet how often do we hear the similarly daft assertion that the only significant role the president plays in advancing the pro-life agenda is nominating Supreme Court justices?

The fact is that the president has a limited but substantial and broad-based role in protecting life and defending the most vulnerable in society. Here are five examples of why it matters that the president is pro-life:

1. Preserving the Pro-Life Riders — Each year pro-life provisions or “riders” are attached to the annual appropriations bills which prevent public funds from supporting abortions, abortion providers, or abortion promoters. The pro-life riders are attached to funding legislation and typically come up in the appropriations process or Department of Defense reauthorizations. As AdvanceUSA notes, under President Ronald Reagan and the first President Bush, federal regulations were clearly written to prevent recipients of Title X funds from referring for abortions or combining family planning services with abortion services (ex: working at the same location).

Examples of pro-life riders include:

• The Dickey-Wicker provision which prohibits federal funding for research that harms or destroys human embryos.
• The Kemp-Kasten Amendment which prevents funding from going to those who support or participate in a program of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization.
• The Hyde-Weldon provision which offers conscience protections for health care entities that refuse to provide or encourage abortions. It requires federal funds to be withheld from any state that discriminates against a hospital, insurance provider, or individual doctors and nurses for refusing to participate in abortion.
• The Mexico City Policy, first enacted by Ronald Reagan and later reinstituted by George W. Bush, which prohibits USAID (foreign aid) money from going to any organizations that promote or perform abortions.
• Other provisions that are more specific include bans on funding for: abortions for federal prisoners, abortion in the District of Columbia, abortions through the Federal Employee Health Benefits program, abortions through Peace Corp, and abortion through the international HIV/AIDS bill.

A pro-life president can threaten to use the veto–as Bush has often done–to prevent the removal of such riders. A pro-choice resident, however, would almost certainly veto any legislation that included these pro-life provisions.

2. Filing of amicus briefs in cases before the judiciary — Where a case may have broader implications, amicus curiae briefs are a way to introduce those concerns, so that the possibly broad legal effects of court decisions will not depend solely on the parties directly involved in the case. Both John Roberts, as a Special Assistant to U.S. Attorney General, and Samuel Alito, as Assistant to the Solicitor General, submitted briefs defending the pro-life cause. Reagan’s Solicitor General Charles Fried also called for Roe to be reversed in a brief. While the briefs themselves rarely decide the outcome of a particular case, they are useful in limiting the scope of a particular legal change or interpretation

3. Issuance of executive orders — Executive orders help direct the operation of officers within the executive branch. They also have the force of law when made in pursuance of certain Acts of Congress, when those acts give the President discretionary powers. For example, on the 4th day of the Clinton presidency, Jan. 23, the 20th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, Bill Clinton signed, in a televised Oval Office ceremony, a series of executive orders undoing the pro-life policies of the Reagan-Bush era. The orders repealed the Mexico City policy, repealed prohibition on federally-funded clinics referring for abortion, lifted the ban on military abortions, and lifted the ban on fetal tissue research.

As Carl Bernstein wrote in his book, A Woman in Charge,

“Hillary had pushed unequivocally for the orders, but Bill’s pollster argued that she was dead wrong on the timing of such a hot-button issue; by acting on abortion policy as one of the administration’s first pieces of business, the president and, worse, Hillary, would be perceived as governing from the left. But Hillary regarded the prohibitions in question as a powerful symbol of Reagan-era policies, and an opportunity to declare boldly that the Clinton era had begun. There was an additional appeal: it was fiscally neutral, monetarily cost-free, and not subject to a drawn-out legislative process.” (p. 256)

4. Selection of political appointments — The President fills many political appointments that have a direct and significant impact on the pro-life cause. Examples include Health and Human Services (responsible for enforcing the Hyde Amendment, etc.), the FDA (e.g., approval and regulation of abortifacients), and the State Department (which sends multiple delegates to UN conferences like CEDAW and Population and Development, where the international battle for human dignity is waged).

The Justice Department is another agency that has a key role, specifically in deciding how to defend law cases involving US statutes. For example, Clinton’s Attorney General Janet Reno cleared the way for the nation’s first assisted suicide law by deciding that physicians may provide lethal doses of medicine to terminally ill patients without losing their licenses to write prescriptions. She did so by overturning the position taken by the head of one of her own agencies, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), which had said that doctors who prescribe drugs under Oregon’s assisted-suicide law could face severe sanctions.

5. Using the “bully pulpit” — The term “bully pulpit” comes from President Theodore Roosevelt’s reference to the White House as a “bully pulpit,” meaning a wonderful platform (Roosevelt often used the word “bully” as an adjective meaning superb) from which to persuasively advocate an agenda. As Reagan showed, there is simply no better single platform for advocating the pro-life cause than from within the Oval Office.

°°°°°°Christians have an obligation to the most vulnerable members of our society to elect politicians who have both a robust view of human dignity and the temerity to govern accordingly. We betray this duty when we downplay the role the executive branch in advancing the pro-life cause. Judges and legislators matter; but presidents matter too.

Read about who the media are calling “Esser the Supressor” (as in supressing votes) here. 

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=5683.

Then call or email the GOP at the national and local level. Wow…

Conservative Icon Paul Weyrich Endorses Huckabee

I believe that the voters in this Republican nomination contest—here in Virginia and across the country—deserve a real choice. And Governor Huckabee is clearly the conservative alternative. He is the best choice, and he is my choice. So I am voting for him on Tuesday, here in Virginia.

I don’t buy the idea that John McCain is a true conservative. Nor do I buy the idea that Mike Huckabee should get out of this contest. The people in the Potomac area—Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia. In addition, we have many important states coming up, including my home state of Wisconsin. Folks in all those states deserve a choice a real choice.

I had been a supporter of Mitt Romney, but now I am very glad that Governor Huckabee has decided to stay in the race. I appreciate that he is staying in, just as I appreciate that Governor Huckabee and Senator McCain are not going at each other’s throats—a vigorous debate about important issues is the healthiest thing possible for the Republican Party.

Governor Huckabee has articulated some very clear differences with Senator McCain: on immigration, on McCain Feingold, and also on the McCain Lieberman global warming scheme. Mike Huckabee is much more solid on the social issues, including right to life. Yes, Senator McCain says that he has a right to life record, but he can’t be supportive of embryonic stem cell research and have a clear right to life record, because the right to lifers, including me, want to protect all life, from conception of natural death.

Governor Huckabee is also good on marriage, insisting that it be limited to one man and one woman. Unfortunately, Senator McCain refused to vote for the marriage amendment.

These are important differences.

By voting for Governor Huckabee, people will be telling Senator McCain and the Republican Party establishment that they better accommodate these conservatives and their heartfelt beliefs, or else they the GOP will not be able to win the general election this November. Like Governor Huckabee, I have great respect for Senator McCain, but he and his Republican Party backers have to make sure that they accommodate the base of the Republican Party.

If they don’t, Senator McCain may find that the conservative grassroots won’t turn out to vote this November. I know my fellow conservatives. I have been active in the conservative movement since 1960. I was an early supporter of Barry Goldwater, and I was a delegate for Ronald Reagan in 1976 and 1980. And so I remind all the Washington DC-oriented political strategists that outside-the-beltway conservatives don’t have to vote for every candidate if they don’t want to. They can stay home, or they can skip over some candidates. That is a very real possibility this year. I have had hundreds of people that have contacted me, telling me, “I can’t vote for McCain.” I hope that Senator McCain will accommodate those people, for the sake of the conservative movement, as well as the Republican Party. But to repeat: I am voting for Governor Huckabee.

The Republican Party must reach out to social conservatives, like me, and so Mike Huckabee is solid. But Mike Huckabee also appeals to working people. The Republican Party by and large ignores the concerns of these people, especially when they are hurting. Governor Huckabee is the only candidate who has consistently reached out, during this campaign, to those who are hurting. It’s great for the GOP hierarchy to say that the fundamentals of the economy are sound. But it’s even more important to concentrate on real people, and to look for sound conservative solutions. Mike Huckabee is one of them by his own background, and so naturally he listens to them. By voting for him, millions of ordinary Americans will make their voice heard, loud and clear.

I call upon all my fellow conservatives to get out and support Governor Huckabee. A big vote for him is the best way to send a message to Senator McCain and the Republican Establishment that this is an election, not a coronation.

###

Paul Weyrich is the Chairman and CEO of the Free Congress Foundation. The opinions expressed here are his own.

The pundits saying that it is mathmatically impossible for Huckabee to win the GOP nomination. 

They are obviously a bit lacking in the math department.

Check out the REAL math here… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCFrCIt1aas 

A summary…

Doug Wead is one of my favorite commentators. His analysis is always informative, well-written and SPOT-ON.

If you would like to know why Huckabee is staying in, you GOTTA READ THIS… http://dougwead.wordpress.com/2008/02/07/why-huck-fights-on/

According to media reports, Mike Huckabee “Electrified” the  crowd during his speech this weekend at the Conservative Political Action Conference, the annual gathering of conservatives in the Nation’s Capitol.

You can see why by listening to the speech here: http://www.hucksarmy.com/videos/HuckCPAC2008.html