In the opinion of some, yes:

London, Jul. 21, 2008 (CWNews.com) – A decorated British police officer has filed a complaint before a local employment tribunal, charging that he has been harassed by his superiors because of his Christian beliefs.

Officer Graham Cogman,a 15-year veteran of the Norfolk police force, says that he has been subjected to complaints and investigations because he strongly resisted a campaign to encourage support for Gay History Month among the members of that force. Cogman has already been forced to pay a fine of £1,200 for alleged violations of department regulations, because he encouraged colleagues to resist the department’s pro-homosexual campaign. He now faces further disciplinary hearings on charges that he has promoted “homophobic” viewpoints.

At particular issue was an official e mail encouraging Norfolk officers to wear a pink ribbon on their uniform during gay history month (whatever that is, exactly) – Cogman refused and sent a response e mail quoting biblical passages regarding the sinfulness of homosexual acts. I don’t know what denomination Cogman is, but the basic thrust of officialdom here seems to be that pointing out dissent from reigning liberal orthodoxy is wrong – it isn’t differentiated in the news report, but it would seem that whether you use the gentle Catholic remonstrance against gay sex or the more in-your-face views of Evangelicals it is considered out of bounds to dissent from liberalism on gay issues.. My guess is that Cogman would have been fine had he kept his opinions to himself, though we don’t know what sorts of official pressure might have been indirectly placed on Cogman to toe the secularist, PC line. By daring to go behond passive resistence to what amounts to moral indoctrination (officers wearing pink ribbons on their uniform amounts to government propaganda in favor of the homosexual rights agenda), Cogman got himself in trouble.

It is said that one way to look at the conflicts of the world is to think in terms of there is the Church, and Her enemies. It is well established that any denomination which follows Christian teaching will hold that homosexual acts are disordered and never to be approved – this isn’t central to Christian faith (that would be the cross and events related to it), but it is an important point to be held because alone amongst the religions of the world, Christianity (and its base, Judaism) understand the true worth and use of sexual activity. Over centuries a set of rules were developed in order to regularise sexual activity and turn it more and more towards the act of self-donation it is supposed to be – recently, however, there has been a strong effort to disorder sexual activity and turn it more and more into an act of self-gratification. As part of a genuine respect for the body, love, marriage, sex and a true freedom in these things, Christianity hedged sex about with careful strictures…along comes the secularist to toss that all aside willy-nilly and then the leftist comes up not with the idea of toleration for people’s sins, but an insistence that the sin be called a virtule and that anyone who says otherwise must be punished.

Christianity, of course, can’t become what is wrong – the Church, that is, can’t declare wrong to be right. And so Christianity – as truly understood – will never agree to gay marriages or, indeed, any act which delays the propect of the person in question having a conversion. So to call Christinaity homophobic is to essentially call Christ’s Church an evil upon the face of the earth.

What do you think?

Interesting recent poll from Rasmussen:

Nearly half of Americans (48%) now believe the United States and its allies are winning the War on Terror, as opposed to 20% who give the nod to the terrorists, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national survey. These figures reflect a dramatic improvement from a year ago—in July 2007, only 36% thought the U.S. and its allies were winning. An equal number thought the terrorists held the advantage.

The 28-point difference is the most favorable margin recorded by Rasmussen Reports since tracking began in January 2004 and seems to reflect a growing confidence among adults that the tide is turning in Iraq and in the war on terror in general. The previous high was established on September 6, 2004 when 52% thought the U.S. and its allies were winning but 26% thought the terrorists were winning at that time for a 26-point favorable margin.

Thirty-seven percent (37%) now think the situation in Iraq will get better over the coming six months while only 25% expect it to get worse. A year ago, the assessment was far more pessimistic—just 23% said that things would get better while 49% offered the more pessimistic response. Another recent poll showed that 40% now believe it is possible for the U.S. to win the War in Iraq.

The new findings also show 45% now believe the United States is safer today than it was before the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, while 37% believe otherwise. Those figures are also the most optimistic on record.

The standard line about the end of the Cold War is that by putting the fear of nuclear war to bed, it allowed for a foreign policy lightweight – Bill Clinton- to win the White House. Its a great theory, but it forgets that 57% of the American people voted against Bill Clinton in 1992…hardly a ringing endorsement of Clinton’s policy prescriptions. But, today, the same idea is alive and well – heck, over at NRO’s The Corner some people seem to think that the mis-reported story of Maliki on Obama’s Iraq plan has pretty much wrecked McCain’s chances for November. The word is out – the American people really, really want to vote for a Democrat in November and McCain’s only shot was to convince the American people that with a war going on, placing our bets on the inexperienced Obama was too dangerous. And now that victory is breaking out in Iraq, that line is gone for good.

While there are a couple of third party candidates out there on the left and the right, my view is that for Obama to win he’s going to have to do something that no Democrat has managed in 32 years – score an outright majority of the vote in November. He can do it, but thus far the polling shows him consistently falling short and never showing any movement which would indicate he’s on his way to a majority. McCain seems stuck in the electoral doldrums, too – hardly ever breaking 45% in polling (though Rasmussen has recently showed Obama and McCain tied at 46%). What it seems to me is that while Obama has wowed his base, he’s not doing much with anyone else – meanwhile, McCain is doing remarkably well amongst independent voters, but has yet to enthuse the GOP base for November. Key to victory for McCain is energising the base, key for Obama is appealing outside the left.

In this McCain has an advantage. Obama is pretty much locked in to very leftwing positions – he’s tried to triangulate himself out of them, but he can’t stray too far towards the center lest he alienate too much of his base. McCain, on the other hand, has plenty of chances to make the argument to the GOP base that they’d better get excited about him – on taxes, spending, judges and the war, McCain is just what the GOP doctor ordered. McCain has two ways to do his job – propose conservative ideas, and point out Obama’s ultra liberal ideas, and what they’ll mean for America. In both cases, McCain can make a strong pitch for enthused GOP support.

So, while Obama and his Democrats might be thinking that the victory in Iraq gets them off the hook and they can just say “Afghanistan” from time to time and allow domestic issues to carry them to victory, in my view the victory in Iraq gives McCain the chance to force Obama on the defensive initially on just war issues, but eventually on the worthiness of his whole program. A man who can be so wrong about Iraq can also be wrong about other things – like whether or not he’ll be able to stick it out in Afghanistan; whether or not his health care plan is good for America; whether or not his energy policy has what it takes…on issue after issue, Obama’s manifestly bad judgement on Iraq can be used to question his fitness on other issues. And while doing this, McCain can continually point out his correctness on Iraq and how this courageous and right decision lays the groundwork for him to have the courage and wisdom to tackle judicial issues, Afghanistan, taxation, government waste, etc, etc, etc.

If attitudes about the war are improving as Rasmussen’s survey shows, then there may soon come a time when McCain’s pro-victory stance from 2007 switches from liability to asset, while Obama’s 2007 defeatism (already being shoved down the memory hole as far as Obama can manage it) will show through more and more as the foolhardy opinion of a man who hasn’t the knowledge, guts or wisdom to be President.

So says Kate Sheppard over at In These Times, by reason of McCain’s pro-life stance – calling a it “war on women”:

McCain’s campaign has been making a clear play for women voters in recent weeks, hosting conference calls with Republican women and touting that his policies on national security, the economy and healthcare appeal to women voters.

But the suggestion that women — and feminist women, at that — will be lining up behind him is a fairytale. At least, it should be. McCain’s record and policies on issues of importance to women are neither moderate nor maverick.

In The Nation, Katha Pollitt put it simply: “[T]o vote for McCain, a feminist would have to be insane.”…

…the number of progressive or even moderate voters who would seriously consider voting for McCain is much smaller than the media would have you believe. Unfortunately, McCain’s propaganda seems to be working, at least on those who aren’t aware of his record on issues of concern to women voters.

A February Planned Parenthood poll of 1,205 women voters in 16 battleground states found that 50 percent of women voters don’t know McCain’s position on abortion, and that 49 percent of women who backed McCain were pro-choice. Forty-six percent of women supporting McCain said they’d like to see Roe v. Wade upheld — though McCain says he supports overturning the decision. When they learned of his position on Roe, 36 percent of women who identified as both pro-choice and likely McCain voters said they would be less likely to vote for him.

These moderate, often suburban, middle-class women could be critical swing voters this election. At the time of the Planned Parenthood poll, Obama held only a 5 percentage-point margin over McCain with its swing-state demographic, 41 percent to 36 percent.

Planned Parenthood concludes that these findings suggest “that just filling in McCain’s actual voting record and his publicly stated positions on a handful of key issues has the potential to diminish his total vote share among battleground women voters by about 17 to 20 percentage points.”

All of that predicated on a theory that women are so in love with abortion that the mere fact of McCain’s opposition will doom him – such theory being a standard on the left every election cycle with the only flaw being that it never comes out that way. We GOPers are always warned that our pro-life stance will destroy us at the polls and yet we manage to win from time to time (like 7 out of the last 10 times – and the times we lost it wasn’t because we’re pro-life). Be that as it may, does McCain’s pro-life view make him a sexist at war with women?

If you’re a leftist, it does – because for the left, abortion has become a sacrament in the Church of Secularism. As a Catholic views Annointing of the Sick (“last rites” for you non-Catholics out there), so the leftist views abortion – a thing not done all the time, but vital to the overall health of the organism. To be opposed to abortion on the left is akin to being opposed to forgiveness of sins in Christianity – it just isn’t done. So entrenched is this view that even someone as kooky as Kucinich was forced to drop a lifetime of pro-life views when he made his quixotic run for the White House. Calling McCain a “sexist” is just liberal-speak for saying “he disagrees with us on abortion”.

And thus the real battle is joined – in the end, Iraq, Afghanistan, oil prices, inflation and the rest are all secondary: the dividing line in America is over the issue of Life. The Culture of Life battles the Culture of Death, and eventually America will become all one thing or all the other. That is, all Life or all Death.

The particular issue, abortion, won’t be on the ballot – but the mindset which allows abortion and the mindset which seeks its end will be, and in this year of 2008 the stakes are very crucial as the judges who will either overturn or uphold Roe for another generation are likely to be appointed by the next President. It will be one battle in a long war, but for those of us who fight for Life, the stakes couldn’t be higher.

… probably in 57 states too.

Today on CBS’s Face the Nation, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., in Afghanistan, told the paparazzi-pursued correspondent Lara Logan that “the objective of this trip was to have substantive discussions with people like President Karzai or Prime Minister Maliki or President Sarkozy or others who I expect to be dealing with over the next eight to 10 years.

“And it’s important for me to have a relationship with them early, that I start listening to them now, getting a sense of what their interests and concerns are.”

That’s the same Barack Obama, the former constitutional law professor, who apparently doesn’t know the length of a presidential term.

Let’s give the professor a little crash course… from The Constitution, Article II, Section 1:

The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his Office during the Term of four Years, and, together with the Vice President, chosen for the same Term, be elected […]

Maybe Obama should review it before he continues his campaign, before he gets something else wrong.

This counts as “What Media Bias? Part 117”.

The New York Times rejects a McCain Op-Ed responding to Obama – the offending document, via Drudge:

In January 2007, when General David Petraeus took command in Iraq, he called the situation “hard” but not “hopeless.” Today, 18 months later, violence has fallen by up to 80% to the lowest levels in four years, and Sunni and Shiite terrorists are reeling from a string of defeats. The situation now is full of hope, but considerable hard work remains to consolidate our fragile gains.

Progress has been due primarily to an increase in the number of troops and a change in their strategy. I was an early advocate of the surge at a time when it had few supporters in Washington. Senator Barack Obama was an equally vocal opponent. “I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there,” he said on January 10, 2007. “In fact, I think it will do the reverse.”

Now Senator Obama has been forced to acknowledge that “our troops have performed brilliantly in lowering the level of violence.” But he still denies that any political progress has resulted.

Perhaps he is unaware that the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad has recently certified that, as one news article put it, “Iraq has met all but three of 18 original benchmarks set by Congress last year to measure security, political and economic progress.” Even more heartening has been progress that’s not measured by the benchmarks. More than 90,000 Iraqis, many of them Sunnis who once fought against the government, have signed up as Sons of Iraq to fight against the terrorists. Nor do they measure Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki’s new-found willingness to crack down on Shiite extremists in Basra and Sadr City—actions that have done much to dispel suspicions of sectarianism.

The success of the surge has not changed Senator Obama’s determination to pull out all of our combat troops. All that has changed is his rationale. In a New York Times op-ed and a speech this week, he offered his “plan for Iraq” in advance of his first “fact finding” trip to that country in more than three years. It consisted of the same old proposal to pull all of our troops out within 16 months. In 2007 he wanted to withdraw because he thought the war was lost. If we had taken his advice, it would have been. Now he wants to withdraw because he thinks Iraqis no longer need our assistance…

…Senator Obama has said that he would consult our commanders on the ground and Iraqi leaders, but he did no such thing before releasing his “plan for Iraq.” Perhaps that’s because he doesn’t want to hear what they have to say. During the course of eight visits to Iraq, I have heard many times from our troops what Major General Jeffrey Hammond, commander of coalition forces in Baghdad, recently said: that leaving based on a timetable would be “very dangerous.”

The danger is that extremists supported by Al Qaeda and Iran could stage a comeback, as they have in the past when we’ve had too few troops in Iraq. Senator Obama seems to have learned nothing from recent history. I find it ironic that he is emulating the worst mistake of the Bush administration by waving the “Mission Accomplished” banner prematurely.

I am also dismayed that he never talks about winning the war—only of ending it. But if we don’t win the war, our enemies will. A triumph for the terrorists would be a disaster for us. That is something I will not allow to happen as president. Instead I will continue implementing a proven counterinsurgency strategy not only in Iraq but also in Afghanistan with the goal of creating stable, secure, self-sustaining democratic allies.

The Iraq issue will be, I think, key for McCain – not in the sense that a majority will vote based just on that issue, but that it is the easiest issue for McCain to question Obama’s judgement and further question Obama’s fitness to carry Afghanistan to victory. Obama is staking his foreign/military policy meme on a “get out of Iraq, win in Afghanistan” proposal – the narrative will be that Obama will “end” the war in Iraq so that we can, finally, win in Afghanistan and thus repair all the damage President Bush has done and McCain proposes to continue. But this is a two-edged sword Obama is wielding – McCain can point out that Obama’s defeatism when the going got tough in Iraq indicates that Obama will also flunk the test when things get rough in Afghanistan. Obama ran up the white flag once entirely un-necessarily, what can he say to demonstrate to us that he won’t surrender, again, in Afghanistan?

Obama is nothing but a story – a fraud wrapped up in an illusion. As long as no one points out the nakedness of this would-be Emperor, he’ll be fine. McCain’s job is to force people to see what Obama really is – an ambitious non-entity with no requisite experience justifying installing him in the most powerful position in the world. If the election revolves around which man has the better story, then Obama will be our next President – if the election revolves around who is best able to be President, McCain will be sworn in on January 20th. We’ll have to see if Obama can hide in plain sight until November, or if McCain will force him, naked, into the public view.

Bob Novak says the decision is coming this week:

Sources close to Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign are suggesting he will reveal the name of his vice presidential selection this week while Sen. Barack Obama is getting the headlines on his foreign trip. The name of McCain’s running mate has not been disclosed, but Mitt Romney has led the speculation recently.

I don’t know if he will, but this certainly gives us a new chance to discuss VP pick speculation.

McCain’s new ad, “Pump” on gas prices and oil drilling. A strong statement against Obama and in favor of McCain.

While I’ve admired President Bush for many reasons, what I could never understand was the President’s reluctance to answer the many unfounded, over-the-top criticisms and out-and-out attacks that were foisted upon him by the left of this nation.

Paul Kengor addresses this in a must-read piece at the American Thinker. For all of the Bush Administration’s successes, most notably his success via perseverance of his Iraq war policy, President Bush’s “new tone” policy set the stage for the relentless, unanswered barrages of assaults by the leftists of this nation and around the world.

The “feel-good” language espoused by many democrats regarding “getting along” and their supposed pining to end the “politics of personal destruction,” in the end, of course, was so much political puffery. On the other hand, George Bush’s “new tone” was not only a buzzword, but S.O.P. for his administration. As with nearly every aspect of his administration (and what those on the left could never fathom nor abide), Bush actually meant what he said and said what he meant when he proclaimed that he would establish “a new tone” in Washington.

Paul Kengor asserts that Bush’s “new tone” was a spinoff of his adherence to his evangelical Christian roots; specifically with regard to the principle of “turning the other cheek (Luke 6:29).”

While a president’s abiding by principle is certainly to be lauded, the application of this principle to Bush’s leftist detractors during his administration yielded disastrous, and yes, even dangerous results. Turning the other cheek allowed the leftists to set the agenda for debate, and allowed them relatively free rein in their efforts to dangerously damage the morale of this country with carte-blanche levels of seditious rhetoric and out-and-out falsehoods. Bush’s “new tone” allowed the leftist elements of this country to give licentious aid and comfort to America’s enemies during a time when our sons and daughters were in harm’s way, giving our enemies encouragement to climb out of their caves and kill another day. Bush’s “new tone” has made it much easier for democrats and other leftist elements to continue relatively unabated on a roll of propaganda based on contrivances that continues to this day, on every issue from energy to foreign policy.

Unfortunately, the Bush Administration’s failure to utilize the bully pulpit to answer unjust criticism and attacks from detractors has left those of us on the right side of the aisle to do all the heavy lifting; which was all well and good, but not enough.

President Bush has many legislative and policy accomplishments for which to be proud. But public opinion and debate in the arena of ideas are also matters of import.

It is my opinion that President Bush’s “new tone” policy is a virtual handbook of how not to play the game.

The ACLU is screaming that there are a million names on it and that we all must tremble in fear for our liberties due to the very existence of this list. John Stephenson at Pajamas Media notes the few good points the ACLU makes (notably that the list needs to be better managed – something, of course, the government freely acknowledges), and then goes on to indicate why the leftwing fear-mongering over this is a bit strained, to say the least:

I have given the ACLU credit on this issue; now I will give reasons to be skeptical. The claim that there are one million individuals on the terror watch list is a myth created through the exaggerated “estimations” of the ACLU. The truth is there are less than 400,000 individuals on the consolidated terrorist watch list, and less than 50,000 on the no-fly and selectee lists.

Assumptions by the ACLU were probably based on a 2007 report claiming the estimate of 700,000 possible records on the watch list and growing by an average of 20,000 per month. Apparently, they didn’t take into account that the numbers do not necessarily represent actual individuals. A new “record” is created for every alias, date-of-birth, passport, spelling variations, and other identifying information for watch listed suspects. Furthermore, they did not take into account the name-by-name scrub that took place in 2007. Notably, 95 percent of those on the consolidated watch list are not American citizens and the majority are not even in the U.S. The shocking numbers the ACLU is broadcasting are simply inflated and dishonest figures.

Which conclusion anyone who thinks about it would come to – the operational word here being “think”, and thus we can see why the ACLU and the larger left is up in arms over this. The last time a lefty had a thought he was writing the Communist Manifesto at the British Museum…its been all downhill since then.

The tremors of fear the left tries to generate with this story is just part and parcel with the leftwing fairytale about President Bush – given that the left is living in an Alternate Universe where facts are subordinate to intentions, it is no surprise that each and every action of the Executive branch – no matter how routine – is cast in the darkest terms possible. Its also part of the leftist’s personal worldview – they see themselves as the pure-hearted battlers for truth, and as they are fighting for truth, anyone who opposes them must be fightig for lies…and liars, of course, will do anything to win, including spying on some obscure leftwing writer because he tells “the truth” about President Bush.

Just for fun, someone at DHS should slip into the list the names of a few liberal bloggers…so they can be found and really scare the bejabbers out of these professional hand-wringers. Heck, they believe a massive, nefarious, PNCA/Likud conspiracy is afoot, lets not disabuse them of the notion. We can have some fun with this, ya know?