1. On Sunday, Paul Barnes, founding pastor of the 2,100-member Grace Chapel in this Denver suburb, told his evangelical congregation in a videotaped message he had had sexual relations with other men and was stepping down. “I have struggled with homosexuality since I was a 5-year-old boy…I can’t tell you the number of nights I have cried myself to sleep, begging God to take this away.” Barnes, 54, led Grace Chapel for 28 years. He and his wife have two adult children.
deadissue: The church is reaching out to John Ashcroft for advice on what to do about this, and he’s suggested covering the crucified Christ in loincloth statue or start making updated ones where he’s dressed business casual. Limit the temptation for his body and the “kinky desires” that naturally get tied up together from years and years and years of getting down on his knees in front of this snuff statue and feeling happy, safe, warm, loved…
2. Phillip Carter – What about the Grunts?: “For all of the time they spent learning about America’s war in Iraq, the Iraq Study Group failed to study the war at its most critical level: that of the grunts. Nothing makes this clearer than the report’s appendix, which lists scores of men and women interviewed for the report, but none below the rank of lieutenant colonel…Forget about its technological sophistication or vaunted all-volunteer force—today’s American military is the largest and most lethargic bureaucracy in world history. Its job in Iraq has been made tougher by the grafting of numerous civilian headquarters onto its existing Hydra-headed command—first the Pentagon’s Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, then the Coalition Provisional Authority, then a U.S. Embassy, and now a U.S. diplomatic mission and a nascent Iraqi government. The Iraq Study Group, the Pentagon, and the U.S. headquarters in Baghdad have all displayed an almost pathological inability to listen to and learn from their own people.”
3. Robert Tait in Tehran – Students protest against Ahmadinejad: “Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, faced an unprecedented outburst of public opposition yesterday from student demonstrators who burned his picture and chanted “Death to the dictator”…This year, Mr Ahmadinejad demanded a purge of “secular and liberal” lecturers, whom he accused of having been a fifth column for western values and colonialism in Iran for the past 150 years. Under his presidency, a hardline cleric was appointed chancellor of Tehran university for the first time.”