Dispel the Illusion

Tomorrow, our Governor General will preside at a ceremony in which Henry Morgentaler will formally be received into the Order of Canada. This is a sad moment in Canadian history ... He is being received into the Order of Canada despite the opposition of hundreds of thousands of Canadians. This action divides our country. It does not unite.

Thousands of men, women, and children dragged from churches and slashed. This has been India's reality for the last four weeks. The genocide of the Christian minority in the country once called the world's greatest democracy has been as much brutal as neglected by the international community. Hinduism is believed to be one of the most tolerant religions in the world. But stirred in nationalism and traditionalism, it could produce an explosive mixture, similar to one that has so far claimed over 100,000 Christian lives in India.

The head of Chicago's school system has proposed the creation of a "gay-friendly" high school to counter the high bullying, depression and drop-out rates among homosexual pupils. The Pride Campus of Social Justice High School would be open to all students in the city, and would probably end up being "majority straight", said Arne Duncan, the head of Chicago Public Schools.

Despite pledges by President George W. Bush and American intelligence officials to the contrary, hundreds of US citizens overseas have been eavesdropped on as they called friends and family back home, according to two former military intercept operators who worked at the giant National Security Agency (NSA) center in Fort Gordon, Georgia. The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), called the allegations "extremely disturbing" and said the committee has begun its own examination.

Psychotherapist Jonathan Alpert reports a jump in sex-addicted men at his Manhattan practice in the past six months. "Since early spring, maybe late winter, there's just been an increase, and I believe it might have something to do with the economy," he says. "A lot of the Wall Streeters use sex as a way to cope with stress. Bankers do tend to rely on pretty unhealthy ways of coping with stress - drugs, sex.

Proposition 8 is an anomaly. It's attracting tens of millions of dollars in contributions large and small from those who are motivated not by money but by their personal beliefs on same-sex marriage ... The initiative has drawn 30,785 contributions totaling more than $50 million, according to the California secretary of state late yesterday. Of those, 25,622 donations amounting to $36 million came from within the state.

Child protection experts last night condemned a teachers' leader for saying that staff who have affairs with pupils over 16 should escape prosecution. Chris Keates, general secretary of the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers, said teachers should not face jail for having sex with pupils who are over the age of consent. Her comments, due to be broadcast tonight, have outraged child protection and parenting experts who accused her of disregarding the protection of children.

In a market that sells high heels for babies and thongs for tweens, it doesn't take a genius to see that sex, if not porn, has invaded our lives. Whether we welcome it or not, television brings it into our living rooms and the Web brings it into our bedrooms. According to a 2007 study from the University of Alberta, as many as 90 percent of boys and 70 percent of girls aged 13 to 14 have accessed sexually explicit content at least once.

A gay chef murdered his lover, cut out part of his leg, seasoned it with herbs and fried it, a court has heard. Anthony Morley, 35, chewed one of the pieces before throwing it into his kitchen bin. Morley, a former holder of the Mr Gay UK title, then walked to a nearby takeaway restaurant and told horrified staff: 'I have killed someone, call the police'.

Ministers are considering spending up to £12 billion on a database to monitor and store the internet browsing habits, e-mail and telephone records of everyone in Britain. GCHQ, the government’s eavesdropping centre, has already been given up to £1 billion to finance the first stage of the project. Hundreds of clandestine probes will be installed to monitor customers live on two of the country’s biggest internet and mobile phone providers - thought to be BT and Vodafone. BT has nearly 5m internet customers.

You can almost picture the Hollywood studio execs scratching their heads. A film that was made for $500,000, relied more on word of mouth than television and print ads, and is headlined by an actor best known for a 1980s television show, opens at No. 4 in the country and rakes in $6.8 million in ticket sales. "Where did this come from? We didn't see this on the radar," actor Kirk Cameron imagined the execs saying. "What is 'Fireproof?'" After this week, few will be left wondering.

Religulous is filled with lies, half-truths, false assumptions, logical contradictions, distortions, intolerance, bigotry, arrogance, ignorance, and hypocrisy. It’s a pathetic propaganda piece that’s poorly researched. For example, Maher falsely claims the Bible never teaches original sin. He obviously hasn’t read Genesis 8:21 or Romans 3:9-18. At the end, it is Bill Maher himself who becomes judgmental, arrogant and full of certainty. His comments are themselves contradictory, illogical, irrational, hypocritical, and abhorrent.

A conservative media watchdog says he can't understand why Republicans continue to bow to the demands of Democrats and allow only liberals to moderate the presidential debates. At the first presidential debate at the University of Mississippi Jim Lehrer of PBS was the moderator. In last week's VP matchup, his colleague Gwen Ifill delivered the questions at Washington University in St. Louis. Ifill remained the moderator there despite controversy over what has been described as a pro-Barack Obama book she is scheduled to release early next year. Tom Brokaw of NBC and Bob Schieffer of CBS are scheduled to moderate the final two 2008 presidential debates.

Stone hopes that W. – a $30 million project funded partly with Chinese money because no big Hollywood studio would touch it – will salvage a career that has been taking on water for more than a decade.

Pro-life activists are calling for another state investigation of George Tiller and his Wichita, Kan., late-term abortion clinic following a week in which two emergency situations erupted for women treated there. Operation Rescue leaders in Wichita say they have submitted a complaint to the Kansas Board of Healing Arts, which governs physicians and clinics in the state, after another patient at Tiller's business was taken to a hospital to be treated for sepsis. Then just days later, activists who monitor the clinic reported a woman being taken to a hospital in an ambulance.

Believing in God makes people nicer, a major study has concluded. After analysing three decades of research, scientists say religion encourages individuals to be more helpful, honest and generous ... Dr Ara Norenzayan, a psychologist at the University of British Columbia, Canada, said the debate over whether religion improves behaviour has too often been driven by opinion and anecdote. 'We wanted to look at the hard scientific evidence,' he said.