New Xanga

8:15 p.m…Steve read today that the CBS show The Unit might not come back.  If you like that show, please email them. Go to cbs.com and scroll down to “feedback.” It’s one of the few intelligent shows on tv, which may be why they are thinking of dropping it. Viewers want things like Big Brother and The Amazing Race.

I’d like to know who in the world teaches mindless teenage girls to dress these days. I was at Walmart a little while ago. As I was getting in the car, a car pulled up right across from me, and out stepped a girl, probably about 13 or 14 years old….in her bikini! Did I mention it was at Walmart and not at the beach? She had a cover-up over it, but you could see right through it, so I don’t know what the point was in wearing it. It didn’t cover anything.

Please go by and welcome our friend, Debbie . She goes to church with us, and she just started her Xanga. She also has a MySpace.

I woke up often last night, and every time I did, I had the lyrics to Beth’s song, Closer to You, running through my head. I don’t know why.

From CitizenLink:

Good News: Pentagon Uses Adult Stem-Cell Research to Help Soldiers 

Family News in Focus

Patients’ own stem cells can be used to stop scarring, rebuild tendons and grow bones.

The Pentagon is investing a quarter-billion dollars into adult stem-cell research to help servicemembers injured on the battlefield.

“These young men and young women give a very important part of their lives,” said Col. Bob Vandre of the Army’s Medical Research & Materiel Command. “They give their bodies, essentially, and are wounded protecting our country.”

Vandre launched the five-year initiative, which will use patients’ stem cells to stop scarring, rebuild tendons and grow bones. Vandre said that’s only the beginning. 

“I think regenerative medicine is going to change the world,” he said. “I can see (it) increasing quality of lives, and becoming a huge technology that’ll completely change the way we do medicine throughout the country.”

Dr. David Prentice, senior fellow for life sciences at the Family Research Council, said adult stem-cell research has a proven track record, unlike embryonic research.

“There’s such an obsession in the U.S. with embryonic stem cells,” he said. “About all embryonic stem cells have done is make tumors in rats.”

Hurricane Expert May Lose Funding Over Global-Warming Criticism 

A pioneering expert on hurricane forecasting said he may soon lose funding due to his skepticism about man-made global warming, according to a report in the Houston Chronicle.

Dr. William Gray said Colorado State University will no longer promote his yearly North Atlantic hurricane forecasts due to his controversial views, Fox News reported.

School officials denied that Gray’s stand on global warming was an issue, and said they are cutting back on media support for his forecasts due to the strain it places on the school’s lone media staffer.

“If Dr. Gray is right about the university’s reasoning, then it’s a prime example of why people rarely get to hear from top scientists who are skeptical of global-warming alarmism,” said Stuart Shepard, a spokesman for Focus on the Family and a meteorologist. “Researchers who don’t toe the environmental-extremist line have lost positions, lost grant money and had an uphill fight in getting papers published. Such an environment is not good science; it’s just plain old hardball politics.
 
“Dr. Gray is a world-class hurricane expert who has not only been vocal in his opposition to the alarmism, he’s also producing credible research that throws into question some of the claims about future warming. There are high-placed activists in the scientific community who don’t want that kind of assertion to ever get reported.”

FBI Director: Government is Losing the Fight Against Child Porn 

Family News in Focus

Feds refuse to tackle a large segment of the problem — adult obscenity.

The popularity of the Internet and the advent of digital photos have boosted child pornography into a $20 billion-a-year black-market business. Now the FBI and the Department of Justice have come under congressional scrutiny over the handling of child pornography and exploitation.

Last week, FBI Director Robert Mueller told a House committee that the government is losing the fight against child porn.

“I’m not sure that anywhere around the globe have we conquered this problem,” FBI spokesman Paul Bresson said. “We see a fair amount of activity on the Internet involving exploitation of children.

“We have police representatives from 21 countries that work with us to help solve this problem.”

Mueller told the House Committee the FBI has nearly 300 agents working on the Innocent Images Program. 

Daniel Weiss, senior analyst for media and sexuality at Focus on the Family Action, said the FBI needs to attack the root of the problem.

“The Justice Department and the FBI can’t claim that they’re doing all they can when they refuse to tackle a large segment of the problem, which is adult obscenity,” he said. “There are increasing reports of people who are getting into child exploitation because they’ve run the gamut on adult pornography.” 

Swiss Government Grants Rights to Animals and Plants 

The same country that violates human dignity with legalized physician-assisted suicide and abortion is now granting rights and protection to animals and plants. Under a new law passed by the Swiss parliament last week, dog owners will be required to complete a canine treatment course, anglers must take classes on humane fishing and goldfish may no longer be flushed down the toilet.

The Swiss government’s ethics committee also is considering “plant dignity” rights to protect plant life.

Wesley Smith, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, said this is what happens when people lose their understanding of the sanctity of human life.

“Children die of malaria in Africa, genocide rages in the Sudan, and Switzerland is giving rights to plants and extending the concept of the proper care and treatment of animals to surrealistic proportions to the point that it may harm humans from thriving and prospering,” he wrote on his blog.

“This is the same country that has a constitutional right to assisted suicide for the mentally ill. Where is the ‘creature dignity’ in that?”