Of course I am not going to defend John McCain's affair, but it is not comparable to John Edwards's. First off, McCain's affair has been vetted and discussed for many years now. In the interim he's proved himself to be a reliable family man once again. When he discovered he was in love with another woman (Cindy) he rightfully asked his first wife for a divorce and they departed on, reportedly, amicable terms. It's not perfect, or ideal, but it's nothing like John Edwards who lied about cheating on his wife as a presidential candidate, made his staff lie for him, may have paid his mistress "hush money" and worst of all, could be denying his daughter of her rightful father.

McCain also doesn't make himself out to be the moral crusader Edwards proclaimed to be. I think that makes a difference, too. And, I agree with Hannity's point. McCain's affair began after he returned from war and it's a sad fact that war changes people. Once again, it doesn't excuse the affair, but it does make McCain's love life more complicated than John Edwards.

Those are the things I wanted to say if I was able to answer the question Colmes asked me. Many of the lefty bloggers writing about this have accused me of "dodging the question." Not true. I was just trying to be a good guest and wait for my turn to speak and avoid the clamor of people talking over each other. I think that's frustrated to watch.  I guess that's what I get for trying to be polite and courteous. Sigh.

Thanks for letting me get that off my chest. 

After Israel unified Jerusalem in the Six Day War of 1967, the government foolishly granted Islamic authorities—the Waqf—exclusive control of the Temple Mount . This means that when Jewish or Christian visitors want to connect with the holiest spot of Jewish history, where both Temples once stood, they must submit to the rules of radical Islam.

When my listener tour recently toured the Temple Mount , “minders” from the Waqf followed our every move, confiscating hymnals, Bibles, even notebooks, and warning visitors of potential arrest if they dared to pray or recite scriptural verses.

It’s possible to visit Christian cathedrals and offer prayers from other traditions, or enter Jewish synagogues and pray or meditate according to your conscience. Only Islamic authorities, even at a Jewish holy site, feel profoundly threatened even by quiet prayers they don’t control.

Appalled by frightening rates of teen pregnancy, abortion, and sexually transmitted diseases, in 1993 a Nashville-based ministry of the Southern Baptist Convention launched an ambitious new program called “True Love Waits.” Participating youngsters took a public pledge, and signed a card, making “a commitment to God, myself, my family, my friends, my future mate and my future children to a lifetime of purity including sexual abstinence from this day until the day I enter a biblical marriage relationship.” Within a year, more than a hundred thousand young people took the pledge, often in ecstatic and joyful public gatherings. A 2008 study by the RAND Corporation published in the Journal of Adolescent Health showed that those adolescents who joined the TLW program, or committed themselves to similar virginity pledges, “were less likely to be sexually active over the three-year study period than other youth who were similar to them, but who did not make a virginity pledge.” While other researchers questioned the efficacy of such public commitments, the author of the RAND study, psychologist Steven Martino, said that his research showed the impact of pledges: “If it’s your intention as a teen to not have sex, it’s perhaps a good idea to make a pledge because you’re more likely to delay sex if you do so and not more likely to engage in other sexual behaviors as a substitute.”  The report in the Journal of Adolescent Health suggested a surprisingly significant percentage of adolescents had taken virginity pledges: among all Americans between the ages of 12 and 17, an impressive 23% of females and 16% of males made public commitments to avoid sex before marriage.  

"Believing that true love waits, I make a commitment to God, myself, my family, my friends, my future mate, and my future children to a lifetime of purity including sexual abstinence from this day until the day I enter a biblical marriage relationship."

The “Townhall of Fame” department in the August issue of Townhall Magazine features John Croyle, founder of Big Oak Ranch, a home comprised of two separate boys’ and girls’ ranches for neglected and abused children. Croyle’s caring spirit roused him to begin the Ranch that so many call home and he does it all without any government funding. Croyle keeps the Ranch going with donations and refuses to be indebted to the feds. Now, that’s a man to respect!

Read more about Big Oak Ranch’s mission in Townhall by subscribing today! Click here to get your 12-month subscription and a free copy of Over a Barrel by Raymond J. Learsy and discover Croyle’s story as well as other’s in the pages on Townhall every month!

Do you know someone like Croyle who deserves recognition for putting their conservative beliefs into action? E-mail feedback@townhall.com to nominate someone you know!

American culture likes to celebrate the petulant outcast, the smart-aleck with the contempt for everything and faith in nothing. Snarky mavericks. The problem is these guys are losers. They have signed up for an impossible mission. Because they’ve decided they’re going to create all the meaning in their lives. They’ve either decided that no moral law exists or they will be the creator, the author of those laws. Now one road leads to complete and total anarchy. Life is solitary, nasty, brutish and short. The other is to insanity, since it requires playing God. We know in our hearts, intuitively, from our first years as children, that the universe unfolds with a discernable order and that moral laws, far from being convenient social conventions, are firm and unalterable. They predate us, they will survive us.

Ronald Reagan, "What the Fourth of July Means to Me"

July Fourth is the birthday of our nation. I believed as a boy, and believe even more today, that it is the birthday of the greatest nation on earth.

The day of our nation's birth in that little hall in Philadelphia, [was] a day on which debate had raged for hours. The men gathered there were honorable men hard-pressed by a king who had flouted the very laws they were willing to obey. Even so, to sign the Declaration of Independence was such an irretrievable act that the walls resounded with the words "treason, the gallows, the headsman's axe," and the issue remained in doubt.
. . . 

In recent years . . . I've come to think of [Independence Day] as more than just the birthday of a nation.

It also commemorates the only true philosophical revolution in all history.

Oh, there have been revolutions before and since ours. But those revolutions simply exchanged one set of rules for another. Ours was a revolution that changed the very concept of government.

Let the Fourth of July always be a reminder that here in this land, for the first time, it was decided that man is born with certain God-given rights; that government is only a convenience created and managed by the people, with no powers of its own except those voluntarily granted to it by the people.

Thank you, troops, for preserving our freedom; thank you, heroes and heroines of all stripes who have led this country wisely and well -- and most of all, thanks to the Creator who has blessed us with a country so generous, and free, and fair.  Happy Fourth of July!

First off, Happy Independence Day to all of the Townhall readers out there. I know many of you, like me, spend the holiday with friends and family enjoying apple pie and fireworks.  This is also a time for us to celebrate the bravery of our men and women in the Armed Forces, and their courage to keep us free.  My wife introduced me to this new campaign to show our support for the troops.  It’s very easy, but meaningful at the same time.

http://www.gratitudecampaign.org/fullmovie.php

It’s shocking how many times I have approached a soldier to thank him, and to see that he is embarrassed by it.  I’m sure most of it is due to their humble nature, but I can’t stop thinking that in this day and age, when cynicism and indifference seem to be laudable character traits, that maybe they’re just not used to the positive attention.  Either way, it’s best to shake their hand and give them a sincere “thank you” but this is a terrific gesture just the same. 

Have a happy, and safe Independence Day.

This is the text of a speech I have delivered on many occasions to many groups, usually around Independence Day.  I know this is a bit long for a blog post, but I hope you will enjoy it and pass the message along.
----------------------------

“For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill, the eyes of all people are upon us, so that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken and so cause him to withdraw his present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword through the world…

We shall shame the faces of many… and cause their prayers to be turned into curses upon us till we be consumed out of the good land whither we are going.”

The words of the Pilgrim John Winthrop.

The image of the “city on a hill,” of course, comes from the Gospel of Matthew — the words of Jesus Christ in the Sermon on the Mount.

The “work [the Pilgrims] had undertaken” was a new life in a new world, free from persecution.

And the “present help” he referred to was the chance to reach the destination toward which his people were sailing when he delivered that sermon aboard the ship Arbella in the Spring of 1630, somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean en route to the New World.

This is not Christian revisionism — this is American history. 

From the earliest days of American civilization, the inhabitants of this continent have understood that the abundant wealth of resources and opportunity found in the New World is not man-made nor an accident of nature — but the generosity of our Heavenly Father.

In other words, not only was America a shining city on a hill, but Americans knew from the first that they were not the ones who screwed in the light bulb.

America is not an accident.


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