Ed Stoffel

This is a view of Washington from the Pentagon, after 9/11.

On September 26th, I called DirecTV to upgrade our living room service to HDTV. They came to the house 2 weeks later on Friday the 13th of October, to replace one of our standard DVRs with an HD-DVR. They also had to replace our existing DirecTV dish antenna with their larger HDTV Slimline model. The new dish antenna incorporates 5 LNBs (in 3 lnb housings), and was mounted near the ground, on the side of my deck. The receiver is an HD-DVR, the HR20-100S model. The HDTV picture looks great... during those moments when it comes in clearly. Unfortunately, the picture keeps breaking up, exhibiting pixelation, a form of digital error.

A bunch of columns appear this week on Christianity and Culture. Cal Thomas reacts on the heels of President Bush's comments that we all worship the same, universal God...

In an official transcript released by the White House, the president said, "I believe in an almighty God, and I believe that all the world, whether they be Muslim, Christian, or any other religion, prays to the same God." Later in the interview, the president repeated his statement: "I believe there is a universal God. I believe the God that the Muslim prays to is the same God that I pray to. After all, we all came from Abraham. I believe in that universality." It is one thing to try to reach out to moderate and sincerely peaceful Muslims. It is quite another to say the claims of your own faith are of no greater importance than the often contradictory claims of another faith.
 The Same God?, Cal Thomas

David Limbaugh finds that we're all quite confused these days about things that should matter to us...

...it is hard to understand how people, even our Christian president, can think that those who don't believe in the Triune God of the Bible or the deity of Jesus Christ worship the same God as Christians do. The idea flatly contradicts Christ's assertion, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me," and removes any incentive to evangelize. No matter what our sterile demographic statistics might tell us, it's difficult to believe that Christian ideas and values are dominant in this nation anymore.
 Confusion Everywhere, David Limbaugh

And Paul Edwards finds that our current culture's measure of a church favors quantity over quality...

Outreach Magazine is out with its list of the 100 Largest U.S. Churches for 2007. Of course, no such list appears anywhere in scripture. While it certainly could be argued that numbers mattered to the New Testament church, churches in the New Testament are nowhere ranked in terms of their numbers. Can you imagine any of the inspired writers of the New Testament ranking the church at Ephesus above the church at Philippi, and Philippi above the church at Thessalonica based solely on how many people were showing up each week?
 Who Makes Christians?, Paul Edwards

After failing to condemn MoveOn for their slander against General Petraeus, some in Congress thought they could deflect the heat by blaming Rush Limbaugh for something he said. In a recent show, Limbaugh recounted the story of Jesse MacBeth, a boot-camp dropout who claimed he witnessed atrocities in Iraq, and received wide media coverage of his comments. It was later learned and reported by ABC News that MacBeth was never in Iraq, couldn't have witnessed such things, and was a liar. Limbaugh called him a "phony soldier".

Democrats in Congress ran to the floors of the House and Senate to denounce Rush and offer resolutions of condemnation. Hillary Clinton saw no irony in her failure to denounce Rush while she defended MoveOn.org's attack against Petraeus. Richest of all, however, was Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) denouncing Rush from the floor of the Senate and accusing Rush of being under the influence of narcotics. Harkin, of course, saw his hopes for the Presidency sink in 1992, when it was revealed he had lied about his own war record. If the Democrats really though Republicans would run away from Rush Limbaugh, they were sorely mistaken.

Limbaugh has replayed his original comments, also making the audio and transcript available on his website. Those who take the time to see what he actually said know it's much ado about nothing.