My campaign is moving along at a pretty good clip, especially my campaign race car. Sounds like some of other candidates have their foot to the floorboard as well. Geesh. You know what I'm talking about…Kristi Noem is out front with twenty traffic violations and Scott Heidepriem (in the only race he's actually competitive) is right behind her with seventeen traffic violations.

It would seem like a pretty good week for Mrs. Sandlin in terms of her negative campaigning helping her catch up to Noem's notable and increasing lead. However, Mrs. Sandlin's smack talk about what this reveals about Noem's character might come back to haunt her now that Kevin Wooster is reporting Herseth's father Lars also has 17 tickets and two failures to appear. About that Pat Powers quips "Those who live in glass houses should not cast stones." [[I disagree with Mercer, this IS relevant to the race: since Sandlin is so quick to equate speeding tickets with flawed character, it is only a politically opportunistic comment unless Sandlin is willing to say "AND THAT INCLUDES MY DAD and MR HEIDEPRIEM and my CHIEF of STAFF." Until she says that, her self-righteous and pious comments will fall on deaf ears and be seen for what they are.]]

Mrs. Sandlin only having one ticket seems to reinforce the perception in South Dakota that she's been chauffeured since she was seventeen and left the state to live in Georgetown. The cartoonists in our state are having fun depicting Noem as speed racer. If I didn't have better things to do right now I'd take the time to do a cartoon of Mrs. Sandlin in the back of her limo, all aghast at the news of Noem's driving record, boasting through the little window to her driver how she doesn't have any traffic violations.

Here's what I think… Everyone needs to slow down, November will come soon enough.

Everyone needs to slow down and obey all the laws because, as we are seeing, it'll turn around and hurt the greater cause we represent. If we are going to be entrusted with much we need to be faithful with the little things. The Christian has a duty to obey all laws (unless they are immoral). There is no excuse, wiggle room or rationalizations and with the number of violations we are talking about here it's indefensible.  And that's why Kristi said… "Obviously, I'm not proud of my driving record but I been working hard to be a better example to young kids and young drivers out there." Many many people on both sides of the aisle have no room to talk. 

As a police chaplain here, I can tell you the law enforcement community isn't thinking this is funny. It's not. My dad was killed near his farm near Freeman, SD a few years ago by a driver going 67 mph in a 55 - he didn't see my dad standing in the road on one leg —the other leg was badly broken in a different accident just a few seconds earlier. So, you can see why I'm happy to tell people to obey the road laws, but Christians especially. Even more, with the whole Janklow thing in recent memory, respect for traffic laws and public safety is a very legitimate issue. And, now that it's out there, voters can sort it out how serious habitual speeding is to them and how much law breaking is tolerable to them.

A commenter named "Duh" on Dakota War College wrote today about some statistic that "the average person violates 5 laws per day" and that made me think everyone needs to be careful to cast the first stone…

This is stupid.  Speeding tickets yeah.  I know.  One shouldn't speed. 

I unfortunately have over 20 from different states.  Did I deserve them, most.  …Nonetheless, I broke the law and paid the fine.  Have I ever had a warrant out?  Yeah, forgot to pay the fine.  I forgot.  It's not the same as willful defiance of the law. I forgot.  Kristi probably forgot too you pinheads….

…Statistics state that the average person violates 5 laws per day.  Don't believe me?  Tomorrow, check our your jaywalking, spitting on the sidewalk, throwing cigarettes, wrappers out the window, passing traffic on the right on the interstate, speeding, illegal parking, shooting varmints in town, putting paint cans and chemical containers in your garbage, not coming to a full stop, changing lanes without signally, not shoveling your walks in time, Having one too many at a party, parking in the handicap spot, having a light out on your car, double parking, driving too fast for conditions, letting fido run loose, not fixing your mutts, licensing your mutts, riding your bike where you're not supposed to, it goes on and on.

Unless Mrs. Sandlin wants to draw her father and Mr. Heidpriem even more into this, I forecast she calls off the dogs. If she doesn't it's because she's that desperate. I'm pretty sure she doesn't want to go down the road of having the rap sheet of everyone around her make headlines.

In case you are curious, if memory serves me correctly I think I have three tickets in 20 years, two on the same day on the same road in SW Minnesota. The other was a speed trap (in early 2000's) on east 26th here in Sioux Falls where I was going six over. I'm curious how many Blake Curd has and Chris Nelson. Anyone know?

---

UPDATE: Looks like this will continue. Now we learn that Mrs. Sandlin's chief of staff was likely leaving Sandlin's house a couple days before the June 2010 primary way too drunk to drive. This from the new Noem v. Herseth-Sandlin website…

Does the Congresswoman want to come clean with the citizens of South Dakota and tell us whether her Chief of Staff was leaving the Herseth-Sandlin residence drunk on Saturday June 6…just days before the primary?  Did the Congresswoman know that her Chief of Staff was driving on the roadways under the influence?…

…Congresswoman Herseth-Sandlin: you should make just as a big a deal about your Chief of Staff endangering families by driving drunk on the roadways as you did about your opponent's minor speeding infractions.  It's unacceptable to employ a person in a position of great importance and trust who drives drunk on South Dakota's roads. 

You had the opportunity to show South Dakotans that you are serious about how drivers drive on the road and not just another political opportunist…unfortunately you failed us…your failure to hold your Chief of Staff to a high-level of conduct with serious consequences for dangerous activity shows South Dakotans that you are more political opportunist and less a person who gives a damn about safe roadways.

 

Seventy-seven days until Election Day.  Here are a few things from my campaign I thought might interest you. Gotta love this race car that is burning up the Hartford Speedway every Friday night.

Next, I'll mention that a little national press came my way with this politico.com article.  Nationwide, apparently I'm one of twenty bloggers running for office this fall.

The group of 20 candidates includes 15 who are running for state House or Senate and four seeking municipal office. Only Slate’s Mickey Kaus, who mounted a primary challenge to California Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer, sought a post in the federal government. Steve Hickey, a South Dakota pastor and blogger, entered his state’s race for an at-large congressional district seat before withdrawing in February to run for a state House seat. Also on the list: 10 Democrats, seven Republicans, two independents and one candidate who is competing in a nonpartisan school board election.

I told the Politico reporter I've never used my blog here to solicit funds for my campaign. That was true. But now I will do that very thing.  If you have appreciated my commentary over the years here on Voices Carry, I would really appreciate you making a donation to help me get my message out and win in November. It's time to buy yard signs - would you consider sponsoring 5, 10 or 25 ($4.50 each)?? As this venue has been dedicated to the plight of the unborn, I especially want to reach out to the pro-life readers here at Voices Carry and ask that you continue the fight by helping me get elected. If you can give more please do, it's needed. You can donate directly on my campaign website… www.stevehickeyforstatehouse.com  Thanks!!

On ballot order I notice the Secretary of State has done the random drawing. I'm second on the ballot which is better than fifth. Five people are running in District 9 for two House seats. A campaign academy I went to quoted a study of state elections that showed candidates in the first and second positions gain 1-3 percentage points over third, fourth and fifth position candidates. Obviously I'm not going to bank on that but hey, every bit helps.

And, if you haven't seen it yet, here is my spot on South Dakota Public Broadcastings Meet the Candidates program which will air a few times this fall.

When I moved here in '94 Money Magazine had just listed Sioux Falls as America's most livable city or something like that.  Now, they rate us at 77.  It's still pretty good considering there are upwards to 30,000 incorporated cities in the nation. Eden Prairie, MN is #1 this year.  I've lived in four of the cities in the top 100 list - the three others are in the Kansas City area.

Here's the map of the top 100. How is it North Dakota has three cities in the top 100 to our one?  Bismark is #74, Fargo is #86 and Grand Forks is #97.

And way to go Lincoln County, SD (south Sioux Falls) for being NUMBER ONE in fastest job growth (67%)!

I'll be among many who gather with friends and family to celebrate America's 234th birthday tomorrow AFTERNOON!  And I want to extend my kudos to the South Dakota communities who are celebrating the fourth here on Saturday the third, or on Monday the fifth or at least in the afternoon/evening of Sunday the fourth.

Tomorrow marks the thirty-third time in the history of our nation when July 4th, Independence Day, falls on a Sunday. The last time was 2004 and the next time will be 2016. The first time the Fourth of July fell on a Sunday was in 1779 when our nation was just three years old. Out of respect for Sunday being the Sabbath, the Lord’s Day, Congress ordered all celebrations for the holiday be held on Monday July 5th.

I know many municipalities all over America have scheduled their parades for Monday, July 5. And, some communities are opting for later celebrations Sunday afternoon or evening. I noticed Sioux Falls new Mayor Mike Huether is starting our city’s celebration at eleven o'clock Sunday morning.  It's called "Mayor Mike Huether's 4th of July Family Parade and Picnic."

Of course I commend him for a family event. Yet, how hard would it have been for the Mayor start things up at 2 P.M. and encourage people of all faiths to devote the morning to thanking God for our freedoms and seeking heaven's help for the enormous problems facing our nation?

People don’t even really squawk about stuff on Sunday anymore. I guess we figure we lost the battle or it really doesn’t matter. Neither is true. In our case, we've canceled two of our three services tomorrow and are only offering one at 10:30 AM.. Maybe we should have gone with our earlier service instead so people could participate in the festivities in our city. Of course, many will be heading to church Saturday PM or early Sunday and then over to Falls Park in the early afternoon. Bummer that the rest of us will be too late to enjoy the parade.

On a related note, I see the (what I call) "Keep America Out of Church" voices are making hay about the appropriateness of flags in church and the baptism of patriotism (see… Be careful what you worship on July 4th). There's never been any confusion about who we worship at Church at the Gate. Tomorrow we are joining tens of thousands of other Call2Fall churches nationwide in kneeling before God on behalf of our nation.  I'll be speaking on the topic of Josiah and National Reformation and yes, I will tackle head-on these "Keep America Out of Church" voices.  If you want to hear that, show up at 10:30 AM.

God Bless America. Happy Fourth of July to everyone!

Lots of bloggers are doing "quick shots" to draw attention to things in the news. It's not something I've done here, but maybe I will start as there seems no shortage of material these days.

• Japanese households are being urged to go to bed one hour earlier than normal in order to help tackle climate change. If you couple that news item with this one where they want Japanese companies to let workers off an hour early so they can pro-create, doesn't that mean an hour earlier in bed might actually heat the world up even more? Thankfully more and more scientists are conceding the Al Gore global warming alarmism is a enormous hoax and that the depopulation of the world and a demographic winter is the real looming crisis of epic proportion. But talking about that isn't politically correct as the solutions are to stop aborting and start upholding traditional marriage so fertilility rates rise again.
• Speaking of Al Gore, apparently he and his former boss have more in common than we thought. He's accused of being a "crazed sex poodle" and the lady apparently has body-fluid soaked garments to prove it. Déjà vu anyone? The gal describes Gore "as a tipsy, handsy predator who forced her to drink Grand Marnier, pinned her to a bed, and forcibly French kissed her."  It's not hard to imagine that forced kiss. Will any feminists decry this womanizing Alpha Male Democrat ? Don't hold your breath. She also described Gore as a "giggling sex crazed poodle" and as a man with a "violent temper as well as extremely dictatorial commanding attitude besides his Mr. Smiley Global Warming concern persona."
• And where are all these global warming devotees in relation to the oil spill crisis? They don't seem to care that BP is burning sea turtles alive right now. I'll tell you where they are… they are quietly waiting for Obama to exploit this crisis to ram cap and tax down our throats. He follows the Saul Alinsky/Rahm Emanuel manual closely and hits his agenda gas peddle in a crisis not the brakes. From the Oval Office he told us his plan to handle this crisis is lawyers, litigation and legislation. Did anyone else notice that in Obama's Oval Office address the other night he made four points and none of them had anything to do with actually plugging the leak?

I couldn't agree more with actor Jon Voight's open letter to Obama which appears in the Washington Post today.  Here it is:

An open letter from actor Jon Voight to President Obama:

June 22, 2010

President Obama:

You will be the first American president that lied to the Jewish people, and the American people as well, when you said that you would defend Israel, the only Democratic state in the Middle East, against all their enemies. You have done just the opposite. You have propagandized Israel, until they look like they are everyone's enemy — and it has resonated throughout the world. You are putting Israel in harm's way, and you have promoted anti-Semitism throughout the world.

You have brought this to a people who have given the world the Ten Commandments and most laws we live by today. The Jewish people have given the world our greatest scientists and philosophers, and the cures for many diseases, and now you play a very dangerous game so you can look like a true martyr to what you see and say are the underdogs. But the underdogs you defend are murderers and criminals who want Israel eradicated.

You have brought to Arizona a civil war, once again defending the criminals and illegals, creating a meltdown for good, loyal, law-abiding citizens. Your destruction of this country may never be remedied, and we may never recover. I pray to God you stop, and I hope the people in this great country realize your agenda is not for the betterment of mankind, but for the betterment of your politics.

With heartfelt and deep concern for America and Israel,

Jon Voight

No doubt those who don't want to hear it weary when folks reference the striking parallel's between the rise of Hitler and the Obama regime. Even so, in his Investor's Business Daily editorial today Thomas Sowell reminds us:

When Adolf Hitler was building up the Nazi movement in the 1920s, leading up to his taking power in the 1930s, he deliberately sought to activate people who did not normally pay much attention to politics. Such people were a valuable addition to his political base, since they were particularly susceptible to Hitler's rhetoric and had far less basis for questioning his assumptions or his conclusions. "Useful idiots" was the term supposedly coined by V.I. Lenin to describe similarly unthinking supporters of his dictatorship in the Soviet Union.

If it hasn't been said somewhere already I'll say it here… Rep. Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin really has only one hope this November and that is to garnish a lot of Native American votes.  And so it's no surprise the Dem's are now in full swing this week courting the reservations of our state hoping that once again natives will be "particularly susceptible to [their] rhetoric." Kevin Woster of the Rapid City Journal writes;

Cecilia Fire Thunder and Matt McGovern seem pleased at the idea of more Native Americans taking an active role in state politics, as Democrats.

Cecilia Fire Thunder likes the number a lot: 111,000.  That’s the rough count of the Native American population in the nine tribes in the state, she said.  The potential clout in a state with a population of about 800,000 is pretty obvious. And the South Dakota Democratic Party was working Sunday on its project to encourage more Natives to get involved as Democratic candidates and voters. “We’ve got a lot of Indians out there untapped to be Democrats,” Fire Thunder, a former chairwoman of the Oglala Tribe, said Sunday evening in Rapid City.

“In four years, I want one Indian from every reservation in South Dakota to be in the Statehouse,” she said. “And if we get two Indians from every reservation in the state in South Dakota, we can change South Dakota - you bet.”

You'll recall Cecilia Fire Thunder is the former Oglala Sioux Tribal President who was impeached by her peers for trying to bring more death to our state's native population. My native friends tried to counter her efforts pointing out there is no D/Lakota word for "abortion" because natives have a long tradition of love and respect for life in all it's forms. But Fire Thunder quickly rose to hero status in the Party of Death.

On this one thing Cecilia Fire Thunder and I agree - "In four years," I too would love to see "one Indian from every reservation in South Dakota in the Statehouse."  However, what Fire Thunder isn't talking about is that natives in South Dakota are waking up to how they've been exploited by the Democratic Party for years and it's been empty promises all over again. 

Democrats disenfranchise natives and use them year after year after year. Flashback to 2004 - there were reasons Tim Giago, publisher of the Lakota Journal, entered the Senate race as an Independant. Sen. Tom Daschle scrambled to meet with Giago and urged him to drop out of the race making empty promises.  As in the past, he later broke his "word of honor."

As the white woman savior rides again toward re-election this fall, let's be on the lookout for the Democratic machine to again be paying $3-per-head bounties for voter-registration cards and the host of other fraudulent tricks to up the native vote.  And, know that Conservative American Indian Republicans are alive and well.

Previously I've made waves with state Republicans because I'm very inclined toward native concerns. Republicans, in my view, for different reasons than Democrats, have also fallen short on native issues. The general attitude has been- don't bother and just concede rez votes as lost votes. One of my contributions, even tonight at a State Republican Party platform meeting, will be to make sure native issues are on the radar and key native leaders are at the table.

Perhaps a follow-up post to this one is in order.  Maybe I'll title it "Note to Republicans: SD Natives are conservative at heart. Have a conversation with them."

How this article came about…

Last month I spoke at a 9.12 Project meeting here in Sioux Falls and decided to bail on the usual stump talking points and just talk straight with the people about one issue - a Christian view of the problem of illegal immigration. Later I was told people loved it and want me back to do the same with other issues. This is one of the things I regretted about pulling out of the US House race, I had a thirty-eight week plan to hit one issue a week and lead the conversation rather than run a campaign of reactionary press releases with sound bites aimed at the opposing candidate's latest screw up. Immigration was one of the thirty-eight topics I had planned to address and that is what I will do here and in a follow up post or two.

First, a few random but related thoughts on the matter…

Those of us who've driven through Mexico will tell you stories like how we got stopped at twenty checkpoints in a thousand miles. While those who look "local" are waved through, the rest of us are told to exit the vehicle and, nervous and with papers in hand, we are questioned while our stuff is inspected. That's only the tip of the iceberg with regard to how Mexico treats it's aliens making it outrageous that Mexican President Felipe Calderón could stand on the White House lawn and decry the Arizona immigration law.  Arizona is merely doing Obama's job for him.

One of the reasons I strongly advocate for the FairTax is that, as a consumption tax, everyone who buys anything in America pays it– including 12+ million illegals. It's fair, those who spend more pay more in tax, those who spend less pay less taxes. It is not an unChristian point of view to make illegals render unto Caesar. As is, those who do obey the law are made to pay for the social support systems (schools, roads, police, medical care, etc) of those who don't obey the law.

Is there a "Christian" response to this political hot potato?

Conveniently disregarding any previous concern she's had for the so-called separation of church and state, Nancy Pelosi has asked priests and pastors to play a major role in opening the doors to illegals and start talking about the issue of immigration with their congregations. She's erroneously assuming the Bible is okay with amnesty for illegals. If you read on you'll see the opposite it true.

A couple months ago I spoke on this topic for fifty minutes– you can hear that message here. I encourage you to listen to it as I talk about how God is using globalization to bring the world toward the coming day when every tongue, every tribe, every people will bow their knee before the King of Kings (Is. 45:23, Rom. 14:11).  I talk about how God is an adopter, how Jesus was the Logos (the Word) and how it is God-like to take steps to communicate with those he's trying to reach (i.e. learn their language).  I talk about how "sanctuary cities" today borrow a Biblical concept but misapply it completely.  I talk about Muslim demographics, Europe's pension time bomb, and the 14th Amendment as it relates to birth tourism in the US and more. I steer people away from fear and admonish Patriots to not even give a courtesy chuckle to a racial slur uttered in their earshot. I express my concerns that our enemies are using our open doors to overtake us. In that case I'm not talking about hispanics who are coming over our border, I'm talking about those from Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Sudan, Egypt, Pakistan, and even Iran WALKING ACROSS OUR SOUTHERN BORDER.

You can see there is more to say than I'm going to post here. What follows is the part where I get to the core of the confusion about what the Christian view is on this matter. I know that many people in our state care what the Bible says about this and other issues and therefore I submit this to aid those who are wrestling with a "Christian" response to this political hot potato.

Adam and Eve were immigrants!

Immigration is not a new or recent issue. Immigration and the migrations of people have been going on since God expelled Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden and they ventured off to settle and start over east of Eden. When Cain murdered Abel, he feared someone would kill him and so he immigrated to the land of Nod (Heb. wandering).  All of early Genesis is about migrations and relocations of families, clans, and tribes to foreign lands.

God called Abraham to - go to the land I will show you (Gen. 12:1). All of Biblical and human history is a story of migrations.  And most of the time it is in the context of a crisis - a famine, a war, oppression, a promise of a better future.  These are some of the push/pull factors that cause people to move around.  And so, with regard to immigration, at least Scripturally speaking, it's every bit as much of an opportunity as it is a crisis as God uses migrations as he Providentially moves people around.  America is a spectacular example of God's heart to include and engraft people into his family - as in Ellis Island…"give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breath free; the wretched refuse of your teeming shore, send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!..."

Citing that you might think I'm about to conclude that God could not possibly have an issue with illegal immigration. A book I'm recommending these days to help people speak intelligently on this issue from a Scriptural perspective is "The Immigration Crisis: Immigrant, Aliens and the Bible" by James K. Hoffmeier.  Hoffmeier is the Old Testament and Ancient Near Eastern History and Archaeology professor at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School where I got some of my theological training (though Hoffmeier was at Wheaton College the years I took classes at TEDS).  Today he's a leading Egyptologist and expert in the Semitic languages.  As a kid he fled Egypt during the 1967 War and he and his family lived in tents in a mountain camp in Cyrus for months.  He's married to a Chinese American. I share all this to say there is no one more qualified to talk about this issue from a Biblical perspective.

No justification in the Bible for amnesty for those breaking the law (a.k.a. illegals)

People today are using the Bible to both support and oppose giving amnesty to illegal immigrants in our country.  Hoffmeier clears up the confusion explaining how there are three Hebrew words that we translate "foreigner"- zar, nekhar and ger.  Zar and nekhar refer to visitors from foreign countries who are just passing through.  Ger refers to foreign residents who live in another land WITH THE PERMISSION OF THE HOST NATION making them legal aliens/or immigrants.  Joseph asked Pharaoh's permission for his family to live in Egypt during the famine (Gen. 45:16-18).

The Bible talks in 160 places about how the Ger is not to be oppressed but to receive equal justice and have full access to the social support system of ancient Israel. There is also provision for religious inclusion.  But the Ger were OBLIGATED TO LIVE IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE LAWS of Israelite society.  According to Jewish law, the zar and nekhar do not have the benefits extended to the Ger, the legal alien.

Quit with the "Deport Jesus" rhetoric!

The mistake many well-meaning Christians make is to extend the Biblical laws for the Ger to illegal aliens in America even though they don't fit the legal and social definition.  It is true that God is an adopter, but he's also a respecter of law, borders and national soveriegnty. It's not hard to find passages where we are commanded to welcome the stranger, passages about God engrafting foreigners into the family of faith.  But what I'm hearing these days is a total distortion of all of this, as if laws don't matter.

President Obama's religious affairs advisor Shaun Casey said;

Jesus was an illegal alien… the disciples were displaced people.  That Jesus was an illegal ought to shape how we engage the current debate… in the current debate over immigration policy it distresses me to no end that so many of my fellow church goers ignore this fundamental tenet that should be central to our identity.

And you'll hear these folks go on to quote this verse to make their point that Jesus can identify with illegal's… "Foxes have holes in the ground, birds of the air have nets but the Son of Man has no where to lay his head."  And so the point there is we grant amnesty to twelve million illegal aliens so we aren't just like those who turned pregnant Mary and Joseph away from the inn.

How do you respond to that?  Here's how… point out it's all patently false.  Jesus broke no law, he wasn't an illegal, neither were his disciples. Jesus' parents didn't violate Egyptian law when they crossed the border and lived there legally for two years.  Both nations were regions within the Roman Empire and Joseph and Mary were legally there.

Treat illegals with respect and dignity, but subject them to law

When the Bible tells us to treat well and not turn away the foreigner (Lev. 19:33-34) - it's talking about Ger (legal immigrants).  With regard to illegal immigrants the only passages we have to go on are general passages about showing mercy and compassion to all people.  Those are not passages that can be stretched to mean people can live illegally wherever they want, not pay taxes, and yet receive all the benefits granted the Ger, the legal alien. Romans 13:1 says "everyone must submit himself to governing authorities."

Churches that engage in civil disobedience by providing sanctuary for illegals in their facilities, though appearing compassionate, have no Biblical justification. For those who are illegal, churches CAN help make sure their human rights are protected and that people are treated with dignity and respect - they can pay legal fees to make sure illegal immigrants are given a fair hearing. There are ways to assist the undocumented alien without breaking the law.  For those in the Sioux Falls area I encourage you to support a new ministry my friend Pastor Carl Bruxvoort recently started called New Roots which exists to support our community's growing international population and their families.

Hopefully I've said enough to provoke you to further study.  It's a very complex issue - one of the biggest tangled knots I've struggled with as a Christian trying to sort all this out is how current immigration policy splits up families - legal's and illegals. Also, the church must rise up and decry American Greed which manifests in paying illegals less so we can make more.

Today, Sunday June 20, the government of Louisiana has called a Day of Prayer encouraging people of all faiths to cry out for Divine Intervention in the Oil Spill Crisis and the lives affected by it. Louisiana State Senator Sen. Robert Adley got a unanimous resolution on Wednesday to declare today a Day of Prayer. Sen. Adley told CNN… "Thus far efforts made by mortals to try to solve the crisis have been to no avail. It is clearly time for a miracle for us."

Historically, I'm not even sure when was the last time this nation faced something so devasting that our governing officials issued an official plea for Divine Intervention.

Feel free to join my friend Pastor Dino Rizzo of Healing Place Church in Baton Rouge and many thousands of others for online prayer for the oil spill at 7 PM central, tonight, Sunday June 20. We have one more service yet today here at Church at the Gate in Sioux Falls and we will be joining them in prayer. We actually started a few weeks ago as I noted here on this blog.  Here's what I said in that post:

We are praying fervently that God would have mercy on us in relation to the BP oil spill in the Gulf; specifically that he'd release wisdom to plug the leak and creative technologies to clean it up, and that he'd expose what he needs to expose right now in our hearts and especially in our corporate and national leaders.

Meanwhile, Obama goes golfing, again. BTW, did you know one of the judgments God brings on the nation that continually rejects him is that he… "will make mere lads their princes"? (Isaiah 3:4) America is being governed by a novice because we deserve it.  This Lord's Day Obama ought to be the first to the altar crying out for God's help in resolving this disaster of Biblical proportions.

The LA Times is calling 2010 The Year of the Conservative Woman. I agree with the American Thinker that it's important to note "it is really the year of the conservative, not the Republican women" as RINO women are losing elections while conservative women are winning. In any case, my point in this post is to underscore how 2010 is quickly turning into the Year of Sexually Harrassed Conservative Women. We need look no further than here in South Dakota and in our neighboring Minnesota.

Today Badlands Blue calls her "Snooki Noem." A few weeks back they could only comment on her hair and looks.  Bob Ellis quips "I must have missed the post where they talked about Democrat Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin’s hair and looks." He's right, any mention of these things regarding a liberal woman and one can expect a firestorm. However, as expected, not a peep from Dakota Women telling the steamed up boys at Badlands Blue to back off.

And so it only escalates as we see in this flyer circulating the Twin Cities today. Newsbusters writes how the GOP elephant is "pooping blood."

No. Here we have either a depiction of the blood of menstration or the blood of sexual violence, and considering the word beneath, it's most likely the latter. In any case, the silence from the feminists is deafening, and of course no mention in the MSM.  Imagine a similar "F–K Michele Obama" poster. Obama himself would shut down the internets! 

The issue of sexism will be interesting to monitor in the Kristi v. Stephanie US House race here in South Dakota this fall. What say you?