Techcordance

Health Bill

ABC News’ Jake Tapper, Ann Compton and Sunlen Miller report:

Speaking volumes about how the votes are not yet there for health care reform, President Obama has decided to delay his trip to Asia. The president was due to leave for a trip to Guam, Indonesia and Australia on Thursday, March 18th, and return to Washington, D.C., on March 24th. The White House confirmed this morning that the trip will be delayed by three days. The president will now leave Sunday, March 21st, and return to Washington on Friday, March 26th.
White House officials and congressional Democratic sources say that while they believe ultimately the compromise House –Senate legislation will pass, as of now House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., does not have the votes.
She needs 216 votes — a majority of the House which currently has 431 members — to pass the Senate bill and changes to the Senate bill. Anti abortion democrats led by Rep. Bart Stupak, D- Mich., have said they will not support the Senate bill since it has less restrictive language on abortion than the House bill.
Democratic congressional leaders had asked the president to delay his trip until the health care reform vote is over so as to personally appeal to House Democrats to vote for the bill that has consumed so much of his presidency.

Chinese Church
An official from the Land Resources Bureau of Yaodu District in Linfen, China recently announced that a mega-church serving 50,000 Christians is to be torn down by the government.
The six-story main building of the Golden Lampstand Church towers over Linfen City where church leaders say the underground church is strong.
The $1.5 million facility has been the central location of an unregistered church network that is spread throughout the territory.
The military has been keeping people out of the building since the Chinese government seized it last year. Its confiscation came on the heels of the bloody attack and destruction of Fushan Church in September of 2009. Ten of Linfen City’s pastors have since been tried and sentenced to jail.
Now church members are calling on the global church to pray for their leaders and to protest the destruction of their church.

* digital_Truth Commentary
* Obama Delays Asian Trip
* Mega Church Demolished
* Gore Feels the Heat
* Dems Target Talk Radio
* Arson in Texas
* Bloom Box
* Stimulus

Athiest Delusions

Upon seeing the title Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies (Yale University Press), I confess to having suspected it would follow the formula of other debunkings of the “Bright brigade,” decrying the illogic and inaccuracy of the New Atheists’ arguments. Instead, I found someone (in this case, theologian David Bentley Hart) taking a step back from the carnage of the current (pop) culture war to ask bigger questions about how we ended up here in the first place.
Hart, a visiting professor of theology at Providence College, begins by looking at the New Atheist phenomenon, lambasting Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Daniel Dennett et al. for their carelessness with and rhetorical manipulation of philosophy, theology, and history. But that is quickly left behind; in the book’s second half, we begin to see the Orthodox theologian’s real intent: to offer a counter-narrative of religion’s role in human history.

Apple

Will the iPad flourish or fail? On the eve of the tablet’s release, consider Apple’s fallen fruit before making up your mind.  See the slide show…

Disarray

Scott Brown’s shot heard ’round the political world left congressional Democrats stunned and befuddled about what to do next in the yearlong push to overhaul the country’s health care system.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and his top lieutenants emerged from a Wednesday morning strategy session with no clear path to proceed in the health care fight, while Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) could only repeat her well-worn promise that Congress “will move forward.”
“People just have different feelings about this,” said Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.). “This was obviously not a good day for us. To be honest, you have to sit back and reassess and move forward.”

Advisory Council

President Obama has named to his faith-based advisory council a self-professed Christian who holds that the New Testament’s teaching that homosexual behavior is unnatural and wrong–which is found in St. Paul’s letter to the Romans–“is not true.”
The appointee, Harry Knox, has also said that Obama’s decision to invite the Rev. Rick Warren to say a prayer at the Inauguration “tainted” the ceremony and that Pope Benedict XVI is a “discredited leader.”
Harry Knox, a professed gay Christian who is director of the religion and faith program at the Human Rights Campaign, a homosexual rights group, was named to President Obama’s Advisory Council on Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships on Monday. The advisory council gives federal grants to faith-based organizations.