Dispel the Illusion

White women voters are deserting the Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama because of the sudden emergence on the Republican ticket of Sarah Palin, according to a poll yesterday. An ABC/Washington Post survey recorded that an eight-point lead Obama held over his Republican rival John McCain before the arrival of Palin had turned into a 12% lead for McCain. The trend is in line with other polls since McCain's vice-presidential running mate ignited the Republican convention with a speech last week espousing social conservative values and presenting herself as a small-town mother taking on the cosmopolitan media.

A new national poll released this morning suggests that Republican Sarah Palin would beat Democrat Joe Biden -- yet another sign of the popularity of John McCain's high-risk veep choice. While the same CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey found Barack Obama and McCain statistically tied -- Obama with 49 percent, McCain with 48 percent -- Palin leads Democrat Joe Biden 53 percent to 44 percent. The first-term Alaska governor's favorability rating is also higher than the veteran Delaware senator's -- Palin's is 57 percent favorable, 27 percent unfavorable, while Biden's is 51 percent favorable, 28 percent unfavorable.

We've been flooded for the past few days with queries about dubious Internet postings and mass e-mail messages making claims about McCain's running mate, Gov. Palin. We find that many are completely false, or misleading. Palin did not cut funding for special needs education in Alaska by 62 percent. She didn't cut it at all. In fact, she tripled per-pupil funding over just three years. She did not demand that books be banned from the Wasilla library. Some of the books on a widely circulated list were not even in print at the time. The librarian has said Palin asked a "What if?" question, but the librarian continued in her job through most of Palin's first term ...

President Nicolas Sarkozy faced an embarrassing split in his Cabinet today over a computer system that a new French internal intelligence service will use to spy on the private lives of millions of law-abiding citizens. Hervé Morin, the Defence Minister, broke government ranks to side with a growing revolt against Edvige, an acronym for a police database that will store personal details including opinions, the social circle and even sexual preferences of more or less anyone who interests the State.

While gay men tend to vote Liberal and lesbians back the NDP, Canada's homosexual population is united in its opposition to the Conservatives, according to a new report. A study conducted by the Laurier Institute for the Study of Public Opinion and Policy (LISPOP) found just 7.3% of homosexual men and 10.4% of gay women supported the Conservatives in the 2006 election. By comparison, 40.7% of straight men and 32.4% of straight women voted for the Conservatives.

Despite brutal and horrifying persecution that has left countless dead and an estimated 50,000 homeless, Christians in India's Orissa state are determined that God will have the victory in their violence-torn homeland. Since the assassination of anti-Christian Hindu leader Swami Laxamanananda Saraswat on Aug. 22, mobs of Hindu fanatics that blame Christians for the leader's death have been roving the Orissa state on the eastern shore of India, torching churches and homes, brutalizing Christians and burning the bodies of those they kill.

Seven years after the Sept. 11 attacks, there is no consensus outside the United States that Islamist militants from al Qaeda were responsible, according to an international poll published Wednesday. The survey of 16,063 people in 17 nations found majorities in only nine countries believe al Qaeda was behind the attacks on New York and Washington that killed about 3,000 people in 2001.

Widespread anti-Christian bias in the media means that groups like The Christian Institute face an “uphill struggle” for fair coverage, says a Sky News journalist. Journalists select the information they wish to report based on a largely anti-Christian ideology, says David Blevins, a former Washington correspondent for Sky News ... "Their ideology could be loosely defined as ‘progress will one day meet our needs.’ So as with other forms of thought that deviate from that ideological view, evangelical Christianity is either dismissed out of hand or reported in a manner that serves to reinforce the ideology! 'Religion’ is viewed as obscure, life-denying and regressive."

A popular house church leader and his wife were released from government custody in China recently, but that good news was overshadowed by the fact that countless other Chinese Christians still are imprisoned, including bookstore owner Shi Weihan who has been described as "unrecognizable" following his poor treatment in detention.

A woman was transported by ambulance to a local hospital last Thursday after having suffered a botched abortion at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Lincoln, Nebraska. The exact nature of the abortion complication is unknown. The woman was loaded into an ambulance outside Planned Parenthood while pro-lifer Pam McCabe of Lincoln Right to Life snapped photos. The injured woman was transported to Bryan LGH East Medical Center at 10:45 a.m. Abortionist C.J. La Benz followed the ambulance to the hospital.

I’m also glad whenever I’m lectured about “professional consensus” by queer preachers from West Virginia. Those who actually read my “Fat Lesbians on Crack” piece remember that it was about a counselor who was fired from her job because of her objections to homosexuality. That is exactly how this “consensus” that homosexuality is not a mental illness is emerging in the counseling profession. Radical homosexual activists are simply having all the people who hold a contrary view fired. Read the next line of the queer preacher’s email for a good example: A counselor who objects to homosexuality per se is an unqualified counselor, one dominated by irrational biases and certain to cause greater harm.

Just when you thought the Da Vinci Code controversy was wearing off, several more high-profile Hollywood projects are reportedly in the works that will once again challenge some basic Christian precepts ... Unlike films that showcase values that are often contrary to Christian teachings, some of the releases in this new batch of movies coming out of Hollywood are in direct opposition to the foundations of what Christians believe. Recently, movies like The Da Vinci Code, the Harry Potter franchise and Brokeback Mountain, have drawn protests from Christians for what has been perceived as their anti-Christian themes.

Sen. Barack Obama's foes seized Sunday upon a brief slip of the tongue, when the Democratic presidential nominee was outlining his Christianity but accidentally said, "my Muslim faith." The three words -- immediately corrected -- were during an exchange with ABC's George Stephanopoulos on "This Week," when he was trying to criticize the quiet smear campaign suggesting he is a Muslim.