President-elect Barack Obama continues to round out his cabinet. Although The New York Times reports that Hillary Clinton has accepted the secretary of state position, a spokesman for the New York senator denies it’s a done deal. Other likely nominations: Timothy Geithner, president of the New York Federal Reserve, as Treasury secretary; New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson as Commerce secretary; and former Clinton Justice Department aide Eric Holder as attorney general.

No public school for the Obama girls in Washington, D.C. The choice for Malia and Sasha: Sidwell Friends School, a private Quaker school that Chelsea Clinton attended when she lived in the White House.

In his column last week, Cal Thomas wrote:

[T]he Obamas have the ability to make a choice for their children, a choice the president-elect would deny to every other American who cannot afford to pay private school tuition. This is not the vaunted fairness for which Obama campaigned. This is not spreading the educational and intellectual wealth around.

During the campaign, Obama praised D.C. School Superintendent Michelle Rhee for her commendable attempts to improve the Washington public school system, but the schools still have a long way to go and continue to underperform the rest of the country. Surely the Obamas care more about their daughters than the teachers unions and will place them in private schools.

Parents who put their children first are to be admired and emulated. Politicians who are parents and who have the power to let others make the choices they can make, but refuse to do so, are inconsistent at best and hypocrites at worst.

The Pew Forum tells us how the news media covered religion in the 2008 campaign.

• Religion stories accounted for 4% of the news coverage.
• 53% of the religion stories were about Obama. Palin got 19% of the religion-focused stories, and John McCain got only 9%.
• Biggest religion story—rumors that Obama is a Muslim (30%). Then Palin and her family life, Rick Warren and his Saddleback Forum, and abortion. Clergy (Jeremiah Wright, Michael Pfleger and John Hagee) took up 11% of the religion coverage. James Dobson took 5%.
• Culture war issues didn’t get a lot of attention. Social issues like abortion, gay marriage and stem cell research comprised 9% of religious-focused news and only 1% of all news coverage.

Read the entire report here.

Bob Jones University put a statement about race on its website, apologizing for the institution’s segregationist policies of barring African-American students until 1971, and barring interracial dating until 2000.

We conformed to the culture rather than provide a clear Christian counterpoint to it. In so doing, we failed to accurately represent the Lord and to fulfill the commandment to love others as ourselves. For these failures we are profoundly sorry.

The Associated Press reports that university President Stephen Jones decided to issue the statement because of the questions the school still receives about its views on race.

Does Barack Obama plan to govern from the center, or is he just avoiding making Bill Clinton’s mistakes? As I report in this week’s issue of WORLD, some analysts view Obama’s hiring a plethora of former Clinton officials as a sign that the new prez may not be a stealth radical after all, but rather a New Democrat — moderate on fiscal and foreign policy, and liberal on social issues. (Not all analysts think that, BTW.)

Now comes news that Obama does not plan to move quickly on his campaign promise to lift the ban on gays in the military, possibly delaying such a push even until 2010. The Washington Times reports:

Mr. Obama’s gay-ban pledge was not a major campaign issue. However, he provided a policy statement to the Human Rights Campaign, the largest U.S. gay rights group, pledging to repeal the exclusion and to invite back service members discharged under the law. He also said that he wants the Pentagon to school military people on how to treat gays.

“The eradication of this policy will require more than just eliminating one statute,” he told the group, in a statement posted on their Web site. “It will require the implementation of anti-harassment policies and protocols for dealing with abusive or discriminatory behavior as we transition our armed forces away from a policy of discrimination. The military must be our active partners in developing those policies and protocols.”

The law states that open homosexuality in the ranks would be detrimental to combat unit readiness.

Delaying the congressional vote a year would give those in favor of lifting the ban time to build support, but it would also let their opposition organize and possibly sway public opinion, as they did in 1993, when Bill Clinton tried to lift the ban but wound up having to compromise with “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

SCEPTER ALERT: This thread is closed to arguments about homosexuality, per se. Comments not directly related to the plusses and minuses of allowing gays to serve openly in the military are not allowed on this thread.

SCEPTER ALERT II: Please keep this thread reasoned and scrupulously scrubbed of personal attacks. That’s an order.

A new report by the CIA’s inspector general says the agency lied about the circumstances surrounding the shoot-down of a plane carrying American missionaries over Peru in 2001.

The Peru Air Force shot down the plane using CIA surveillance, killing missionary Veronica Bowers and her baby, and injuring the other members of the family on board. The intelligence agency worked with the Peru Air Force ostensibly to identify suspect drug trafficking planes and shoot them down.

The partially declassified report says,

In many cases, suspect aircraft were shot down within two to three minutes of being sighted by the Peruvian fighter — without being properly identified, without being given the required warnings to land, and without being given time to respond.

The program was suspended in 2001, but CIA officials characterized the shoot-down as a one-time mistake in an otherwise successful program. The probe says,

In fact, this was not the case.

The CIA program showed a “routine disregard of the required intercept procedures.” Besides lying to Congress, the report adds that top agency officials withheld information from National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice and would not respond her direct questions.

WORLD has launched the First Job Fund, a fund-raising effort designed to help us expand our news-reporting resources through the hiring and mentoring of young journalists. In his column in the latest issue of WORLD (just released online this morning), our publisher Nick Eicher writes:

[R]eporting is WORLD’s calling. Because we believe that objective truth is discoverable, we are passionate about the power of good journalism to shape worldview. Here is where passion meets opportunity: While large corporate publishers close news bureaus, I see opportunity for independent, nonprofit publishers such as WORLD to build them. As corporate publishers scale back newsrooms, I see opportunity for us to expand them. As corporate publishers lay off reporters, I see opportunity for us to hire them.

It takes vision but it also takes modesty and patience, as well as resources. So I’m asking: Would you prayerfully consider supporting WORLD’s plans for expansion?

I encourage you to read Nick’s entire column here. I also encourage you to read our founder Joel Belz’s latest column on this subject, as well.

To make a tax-deductible donation, click here. We are grateful for whatever size gift you can send our way to help us reach our goal. Thank you for your prayerful consideration. Be sure to follow our progress in the box at the bottom of the page.

Speaking of film, rumors of the death of the author are greatly exaggerated.  Ever since Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author and Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, scholars and theorists have been suggesting the postmodernism is here and the author, along with the general concept of authority, is passé.  This is all very complicated and has no bearing on reality.  Just a bit of graduate school nostalgia. 

But it is true that in the last 100 years, people have been fiddling with the concept of the story, wanting to get rid of it, wanting to get away from petty beginnings, middles, and endings of narrative like Marxists wanting to get away from the free market.  If you ever had to read a short story that made no sense, or go see a play that started at the end and ended somewhere in the middle, you’re familiar with the more unfortunate experiments in this area.  Of course, some of these experiments did yield some pretty cool innovations in storytelling.  The flashback scene, for one, is mostly an innovation of the 20^th century.  The jumping around in time and chronology is another one.  These days, these things are as normal to us in a story as having a protagonist. 

But methinks the outworn, outmoded flow of narrative can’t be fiddled with too, too much.  Some things are meant to get better, like medicine and fuel efficiency.  Some things are meant to stay the same, like the tilt of the earth and stories that make sense.  God made stories to function in generally three acts: the beginning (meet the world, meet the hero), the middle (meet the problem, meet the trouble), and the end (meet the solution, or at least the resolution).  This is the story of human history (creation, fall, redemption), and it’s also the story of Joseph Campbell’s “hero’s journey” (normal world, dangerous journey, new world).  But that won’t stop some people from suggesting that the state of the story can be improved, like these folks from, of all places, MIT.  But innovations, like the lovely flashback, are always welcome.

It’s easy to pick on Thomas Kinkade, Painter of Light.  When you think art should rise above sheer sentimentality, it can be a family drama to see pictures like this adorning the walls and desks and calendars of your loved ones. 

Yet, Kinkade is a painter of soft, warm feelings, and people buy his stuff.  It is the two-dimensional rendering of the Lifetime Channel movie.  But now, it’s actually a movie!  Enter Thomas Kinkade’s Christmas Cottage:

There you have it, on the poster, Oscar-lauded Peter O’Toole, Lawrence of Arabia himself.  Impressive, Mr. Kinkade.  Most impressive.  Vanity Fair lampoons poor, successful Kinkade by describing him as “a postmodern Norman Rockwell for the evangelist set.”  At least he didn’t say evangelical, although I’m sure that’s what he means. 

In the article, they mock a list of “16 guidelines” created by Kinkade on creating “The Thomas Kinkade Look” for the actual movie.  Read the memo in its entirety.  My favorites are #1, #15, and especially #16.

• “1) Dodge corners or create darkening towards edge of image for ‘cozy’ look. This may only apply to still imagery, but is useful where applicable.”
• “15) Nostalgia. My paintings routinely blend timeframes. This is not only okay, but tends to create a more timeless look. Vintage cars (30’s, 40’s, 50’s, 60’s etc) can be featured along with 70’s era cars. Older buildings are favorable. Avoid anything that looks contemporary — shopping centers, contemporary storefronts, etc. Also, I prefer to avoid anything that is shiny.”
• “16) Most important concept of all — THE CONCEPT OF LOVE. Perhaps we could make large posters that simply say ‘Love this movie’ and post them about.”

I can’t wait to see the movie!

Yesterday Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin granted the traditional Thanksgiving pardon to a lucky turkey in Wasilla, Alaska.

The relieved turkey stood behind Palin as the media interviewed her at the turkey farm, but cameras caught workers slaughtering other less fortunate turkeys just a couple feet away. Poor Tom. It’s not your fault you’re so delicious.