Eugene Jarecki, the award winning film maker of Why We Fight and author of The American Way of War: Guided Missiles, Misguided Men, and a Republic in Peril talks about his experience with John McCain’s office shortly after his film came out.

Now I’m not one to kick a man when he’s down, nor even to hit him when he’s wobbly. But
watching John McCain’s poll numbers stay strangely resilient despite the virtual disintegration of his campaign, I feel compelled to share a cautionary tale of my own firsthand experience with the Straight-Talk Express. That hell-bent freight train rolled over me a couple years ago and I haven’t felt the same since. Back then, I was something of a McCain admirer. Today, I have a different story to tell -

Dennis Guending has a very sensible piece up on the differences of Canadian and US political expressions of faith. Obama, McCain and Canadian religious politics. It occurred to me reading it I know more about US religious/political expression than I do about my own country.

The Canadian Federal Cabinet was sworn in at Rideau Hall yesterday, and it’s a typical portrait except for a not so minor detail. I saw this story on unrepentant hippie last week - the mural behind the federal family portrait put Charles McVety into a meltdown recently. I’m not versed on art,  McVety’s screed got me curious. The mural by Norval Morrisseau (1932-2007) was installed in the Hall in September. It’s entitled Androgeny. The artist donated it to the Canadian people in 1983.

McVety chose not to address Morrisseau’s spiritual journey, talent, influence, illnesses or life. Instead the title of the piece and it’s installation in Rideau Hall sent him into a strange fundamentalist sex-obsessed world, causing him to declare:

Some would suggest that “Androgyny” is only a mural. However, when you consider that the Governor General will officially invest governmental power in the Prime Minister and Cabinet Ministers in the shaddow [sic] of this homosexual background, the only conclusion is that Canada is “officially” a homosexual country.

I saw a comment from a man about a year ago who had reason to be at Canada Christian College from time to time. He lamented the run down state of the building which houses several Canadian/US ministries. I think before McVety decides to regal us as art critic, he could take some of the money he seems to rake in and provide a safe clean environment for ministries he rents to. McVety’s little comment about Jung/Hitler in his screed tells us more about his state of mind than the art and the artist. He couldn’t even bring himself to use Morrisseau’s name. That isn’t about political correctness, it’s just plain rude.

For more on Norval Morrisseau, you can start at wiki.

Gospel.com has been sold to Zondervan. This online site was a pioneer, and BlogRodent isn’t the only one who has had great respect for the people behind the site. Zondervan (a division of Harper/Collins) bought BibleGateway, one of the most visited sites online and the main website of Gospel Communications.
While there have been several knock offs such as Crossroads, ThinkChristian etc., the people behind Gospelcom put their guests they hosted first. It just got too expensive to run as a donor supported site. Bible Gateway was started in 1993, and rumour has it Zondervan/Harper Collins is going to throw their money behind it to upgrade and expand it with studies and commentaries from Zondervans catalogue.

Gospel Communications online sold
BibleGateway - wiki

Good for Ian Melgrew of The Vancouver Sun. When a police officer faces drunk driving charges (impaired driving causing death) he or she gets to be publicly named like anyone else.
21 year old Orion Hutchinson is dead.
Robert Dziekanski is dead.

RCMP Corporal Benjamin Robinson has been implicated in two deaths in a year - he gets his day in court.
The 38 year old Mountie was the supervisor on site at the Vancouver Airport when Robert Dziekanski was tasered and died October 14, 2007, according to the CBC.
He was arrested and released Saturday when 21 year old Orion Hutchinson died in a collision in his home town. Robinson has been suspended with pay and will appear in court in January.

I don’t think believe the intent here is to venerate or worship, but it comes across that way and this prayer display comes across as foolish. Most people would look at people laying hands on a statue and think of the bible story of the golden calf.
This is a group of neo-pentecostal ‘third wave’ folk laying hands on the bronze Charging Bull by artist Arturo Di Modica, (commonly known as the Wall Street Bull) and praying thusly:

In January of this year, Cindy Jacobs was in a worship service when the Lord spoke to her, “Cindy, the strongman over America doesn’t live in Washington, DC – the strongman lives in New York City! Call My people to pray for the economy.”

“We are going to intercede at the site of the statue of the bull on Wall Street to ask God to begin a shift from the bull and bear markets to what we feel will be the ‘Lion’s Market,’ or God’s control over the economic systems,” she said. CBN

There are times for public prayer and times for private prayer. This was about show and they got their 15 minutes of fame. There is the assumption they are commanding God and want the rest of us to know it. And therein lies foolishness and idolatry. Matthew Henry’s Concise Commentary - Matthew 6:5-8 “It is taken for granted that all who are disciples of Christ pray. You may as soon find a living man that does not breathe, as a living Christian that does not pray. If prayerless, then graceless. The Scribes and Pharisees were guilty of two great faults in prayer, vain-glory and vain repetitions. Verily they have their reward; if in so great a matter as is between us and God, when we are at prayer, we can look to so poor a thing as the praise of men, it is just that it should be all our reward. Yet there is not a secret, sudden breathing after God, but he observes it. It is called a reward, but it is of grace, not of debt; what merit can there be in begging? If he does not give his people what they ask, it is because he knows they do not need it, and that it is not for their good. So far is God from being wrought upon by the length or words of our prayers, that the most powerful intercessions are those which are made with groanings that cannot be uttered. Let us well study what is shown of the frame of mind in which our prayers should be offered, and learn daily from Christ how to pray.”