I think President Bush's proposed funding increase for the NEA is symbolic, as the NEA itself is symbolic. 20-million can't be anything but symbolic in an overall federal budget that runs around a trillion. Question is, What is it symbolic of? I suggest it's meant to show that Mr. Bush is indeed as advertised, a centrist coming from the right. Bush is not a revolutionary and has never portrayed himself as one. He is, in fact, a war fighter, and any triangulation he's working in this and other areas is as much for the sake of the successful prosecution of a long-term conflict as for his reelection. Frankly, unity for the sake of national survival trumps all other considerations. That's the political component of the proposal.

Assuming some of the increase gets through the opposition, largely from further right than Mr. Bush (the remnants of the old Gingrich defund-the-NEA Congress), its effect will be to enhance programs that, like the NEA Shakespeare road show alighting in locales far from Tinseltown and Broadway, are meant to bring the arts -- and artists -- to the taxpayer.

The Christian pollster George Barna put together a list of biblical teachings that presumably Christians of every denomination or theological tradition could affirm: There is absolute moral truth based on the Bible; biblical teaching is accurate; Jesus was without sin; Satan literally exists; God is omnipotent and omniscient; salvation is by grace alone; Christians have a personal responsibility to evangelize.

This is a bare-bones list. It says nothing about the Trinity or the Deity of Christ or other important teachings that are essential for salvation. The list has to do not so much with theology as with the assumptions that are behind one's theology; that is, with worldview. Any minister of whatever denomination, especially a Protestant one, should be able to agree on these basics. But only 51 percent do.

Ted Kennedy and Levin began their "questions" with the equivalent of courtroom indictments of the Bush administration. They charged that it deliberately misled the country into falsely believing Iraq posed an imminent threat.

Kay answered by saying he spoke to many analysts who prepared the intelligence and "not in a single case was the explanation that I was pressured to this."

Instead, Kay stressed the danger posed by Saddam and said that Iraqi documents, physical evidence and interviews with Iraqi scientists revealed that Iraq was engaged in weapons programs prohibited by U.N. resolutions.

Why so few young voters? Part of it, of course, is that younger adults tend not to show up at the polls. But part of it as well, as we noted last week, is that they tend not to exist. That's right, Dean once again has fallen victim to the Roe effect. Not that Dean would have won the election had more young voters shown up at the polls, but Kerry would not have dealt him such a trouncing.

It is not hard to see how we got to this point, amazing as the point would have seemed four or five decades ago. Marriage, which logically and generally precedes family, is the central human institution. It nourishes belief; it forms and shapes behavior. On marriage all social undertakings rest. Does marriage concern or interest government? If it doesn't, nothing does.

It becomes hard to resist the idea of gay marriage when marriage, the institution, becomes just a convenient arrangement for two people who enjoy each other enough to share bed and board for a time. The churches themselves have helped society define marriage that way with their growing laxness about divorce and premarital relations.

Would we be talking now about a federal marriage amendment -- a public policy response to a perceived crisis in public policy -- if the relevant private institutions hadn't so frequently gone AWOL when challenged to show why marriage was rightly a sacred proposition?

I believe that pro-choice feminists became fans of abortion for just the reason that they felt that abortion (in general and also in many particular cases) was in fact an indispensable guarantor of an adult female life capable of reaching either an acceptable level of satisfaction and fulfillment or, at a minimum, equality with men.

In the sexual confusion of postmodern America, teenage girls are now looking for alternative ideas of sexual expression. Some are trying on sexual lifestyles like the latest fashions, with obvious disregard for traditional sexual morality. Indeed, some may be experimenting because they are frustrated with teenage boys....

Oddly enough, the hard-line gay rights activists aren't pleased with this development at all. Old-school lesbians see this new idea of "heteroflexibility" as far too soft for their liking. Homosexual men are not sure what to do with this trend either. This phenomenon of girls kissing girls on high school campuses is not matched by a similar proportion of boys kissing boys. This is a lesbian phenomenon, very different from what we have seen before.

A United Kingdom government adviser on genetics says he doesn't see any distinction between aborting a fully grown unborn baby and killing a child after it is born.

I agree.

And that's precisely why it is wrong to abort babies.

Bush said he had no misgivings about going to war against Iraq but he refrained from saying -- as he once did -- that weapons of mass destruction would be discovered. "There is no doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein (search) was a gathering threat to America and others. That's what we know."

Of course there have been also counterfeits of marriage for centuries, chiefly cohabitation and polygamy. But no successful political movement has ever proposed elevating heterosexual cohabitation to marriage (Why bother, really?) and Americans rejected polygamy, firmly and even violently, in the late 19th century.

Friends of traditional marriage had hoped the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), passed by Congress and signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1996, would provide sufficient protection for traditional marriage. It has not. Courts still hammer at the boundaries of DOMA, and some apparently won't stop short of a demolition.

Back before he had to worry about competing with one Howard Brush Dean, Kerry was positively delighted by the Patriot Act. "It reflects," he said on the Senate floor, "an enormous amount of hard work by the members of the Senate Banking Committee and the Senate Judiciary Committee. I congratulate them and thank them for that work." While supportive of "sunset" provisions in the bill, Kerry pronounced himself "pleased at the compromise we have reached on the anti-terrorism legislation." These are not the words of a man about to help inaugurate an era of brown-shirt law enforcement.

Is there a Christian perspective on the exploration of outer space? What about the questions that drive our imaginations -- the possibility of life on other planets -- even to consider going there? What about other questions involving our comprehension of the immensity of the universe and humanity's tiny place in it? Will the scientific knowledge gained by space exploration undermine the Christian faith? Or might we instead by considering the heavens bring glory to God?

"In orbit you view Earth and the vastness of space," said Col. [Jeffrey] Williams, and see that "we are an infinitesimal speck in light of the Creator Himself." This is profoundly humbling, but the vastness of the creation is a testimony to the infinite power and majesty of the One who called it into being. This sense of our smallness and God's unlimited glory is important for self-centered, self-absorbed human beings to realize. "One of the problems inside the church, said Col. Williams, "is that we forget this."

During the past three decades, the consensus behind this wondrously effective social program has collapsed. The result has harmed countless American children for whom there is no disaster quite like being born out of wedlock and growing up in a single-parent household.

Almost two-thirds of the nation's poor children are in single-parent households. A child raised in a never-married household is roughly seven times more likely to be in poverty and five times more likely to be welfare-dependent. He is at greater risk to have emotional problems, fail academically, abuse drugs -- and experience everything else you hope a child would be spared.

In past eras, if parents were very imperfect or even corrupt, their children still had a reasonable chance of "growing up straight," since the rest of society still more or less reflected Judeo-Christian values. The youngster could bond to a teacher, minister, mentor or organization that could provide some healthy direction and stability.

But today, because of the near-ubiquitous corruption "out there," if parents fail to properly guide and protect their children, the kids get swallowed whole by the child-molesting monster we call culture.

The institution of marriage has been weakened to the point that a proposal to safeguard it legally could not be dismissed as redundant or superfluous. Indeed, given the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision legitimizing sodomy and the Massachusetts Supreme Court's ruling sanctifying gay marriage, a pro-active approach to rescue traditional marriage is essential.

I don't buy the argument that marriage has eroded as part of an inevitable evolution of our moral fabric. Countercultural warriors have been waging a war against traditional values as part of a deliberate and sustained effort. Their success, despite their small numbers, is proof that activism and persistence work.

No other aspect of their faith is as important to conservative Protestants as worship: prayer, visible and frequent, is what attracts them to church. But worship in conservative Protestant America rarely involves introspective efforts to honour a supreme being whose concerns are other-worldly. "Lord, give me a clean X-ray when I go for a mammogram next week" or "God, help the search committee find a new pastor for the church," are some of the forms taken by prayer at one Baptist church in New Jersey. At an evangelical church women's group in the suburbs of New York City, each participant has a chance to ask God to respond to her concerns, and, as she does, others take notes so that they can pray for their friends during the week. Those concerns, moreover, are anything but other-worldly: most involve health, money, and real estate, along with issues facing the church. We should not doubt the meaning that worship has for conservative Christians. But nor should we ignore the fact that, judging by how many believers express themselves in prayer, these are people who believe that God helps those who focus on themselves.

To be sure, millions of youths are in the grip of something destructive, but the corporate aspect is just the visible part. Behind both the corporate manipulators and the youths caught in their selfish and shameful influence lurks another, much more formidable and all-pervasive "marketing campaign" -- a malevolent dimension that has no one's best interests at heart, and which is programmed to devour all in its path, from the highest to the lowest.

Space haters often get it wrong. In 1926, British scientist, A. W. Bickerton, noting how much power it would take to escape Earth's gravity, assured us that space travel was impossible. Days before Apollo 11 carried the first men to the moon, demonstrators decried the waste of money. Still, there's something troubling about the space lovers' use of analogies for answers.

Yes, we conquered inhospitable Everest, "because it's there." But there are no Everest condos, and lots of climbers died. Is Mars California, or Everest? It makes a difference. Whaling ships carried repair equipment, but that was cost effective because whalers brought back whale oil. Will a moon base lead to profitable mining, or will it always be an expensive outpost? And don't forget how many whalers went down.

Space lovers take it for granted that space conquest can be understood on the model of earthly exploration. But while terrestrial analogies may illuminate, they prove nothing. If Mars is like Everest, we'll get glory -- but little practical benefit, much expense, and great danger. If Mars is more like the American frontier, we'll get a fundamental transformation of the human environment, massive practical benefits -- and great danger. Space lovers look up and see California. I see something between Pasadena and Mt. Everest -- but ultimately, a great deal closer to Everest.

Speaking as a person who has watched from the sidewalk as the Gay Pride parade made its way down Manhattan's Fifth Avenue one balmy summer's day, I have no confidence at all -- not a jot, tittle, nor smidgeon of confidence, sorry -- that opening up marriage to homosexuals will raise the general level of seriousness and respect which the institution enjoys in our society. The contrary effect seems to me infinitely more probable.

Be all that as it may, I don't think it can be denied that the Britney-wedding fiasco is an embarrassment not just to the people involved, but in some way to the rest of us too.

Gay marriage is a big idea that deserves national debate. Nonetheless, social conservatives who blow their stacks over homosexual matrimony's supposed threat to traditional marriage tomorrow should focus on the far greater damage that heterosexuals are wreaking on that venerable institution today.

The sacrament of marriage is under attack like never before. Our popular culture is reducing marriage from eternal love to a temporary business merger, an elongated slumber party, with adults playacting at junior-high style "going steady." When the going gets tough, no one hangs tough. Marriage is no longer a commitment. It is merely the legalization of infatuation, which when followed almost immediately by irreconcilable differences, can be voided.

Bush argues that his proposal would strengthen America's borders. I fail to see the logic in this either. Are we going to have any less of a problem with illegal entry into this country merely because we grant legal status to millions of people, even if we are thereby better able to track them?

The president says that his plan is compassionate because it would guarantee the rights and legitimacy of illegal workers. I think there are wiser and more compelling needs worthy of our compassion. We shouldn't undermine the rule of law in the name of compassion.

The public is beginning to see the danger that gay marriage will be brought to them without a vote. A New York Times poll in December found that 55 percent of Americans favor a constitutional amendment to define marriage in the traditional way. That is not a large enough number to ensure passage, but it is a strong one given how new the amendment is in the political debate.

Even among supporters of an amendment, however, there has been considerable disagreement about what precise form it should take. We have defended an amendment that would accomplish three things. First, it would reserve the word "marriage" for the union of one man and one woman: No court or legislature would be able to create "gay marriage."

Second, it would ban the federal or state governments -- again, whether directed by a court or a legislature -- from granting benefits that are conditioned on non-marital sexual relationships.

Third, the amendment would block the courts, at both the federal and state levels, from second-guessing a legislature's decision to reserve a benefit for married couples....

Somehow played down is the fact that the search for "life" on Mars -- proof, as the enthusiasts have it, that we are "not alone" in the universe -- is not a search for sentient beings but rather a search for evidence that billions of years ago there might possibly have been a few microbes. It's hard to see how that sort of information is going to heal our cosmic loneliness, let alone lead to the construction of condo units on Mars.

None of which is to say that it isn't interesting or important for NASA to send robotic probes to other planets. It's interesting in the way that the exploration of the bottom of the Pacific Ocean is interesting, or important in the way that the study of obscure dead languages is important. Like space exploration, these are inspiring human pursuits. Like space exploration, they nevertheless have very few practical applications.

The retired four-star general said he will discern a prospective judge's position on abortion not with a litmus test, but by reading his previous decisions to ensure that the judge has never upset existing judicial precedent.

"I don't believe people whose ideological agenda is to burn the law or remake the law or reshape it should be appointed whether they are from either side," he said during an interview with editors and a reporter.

The spiritual decline has only accelerated in the 25 years since. We live in a political/economic nexus that not only permits but actually protects those who practice evil. In the slavish and mindless pursuit of liberty, we've ended up with a system that guards the rights of pornographers to commodify sex, of advertisers to entice people to hedonism, of executives to pursue a life of greed, of abortionists to kill innocent human life.

This is not a godly system, though it is a system under God -- or, more precisely, under God's judgment. The prophetic words spoken against Israel long ago are tragically timely: "Ah, sinful nation, people laden with iniquity, offspring who do evil, children who deal corruptly, who have forsaken the Lord...The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot even to the head, there is no soundness in it, but bruises and sores and bleeding wounds" (Isa. 1).

Retaining the phrase "under God" is not going to protect "Christian America" from functional secularism. That earthquake has already shaken our nation. But the phrase will continue to signal the source of our liberties, and to whom we stand accountable for the misuse of liberty.

A majority of the public thinks traditional marriage is important enough to preserve as an ideal, no matter how many may fall short of it....Surrounded by bad television, worse movies, anti-religious attitudes of judges and certain liberal activist groups, a pervasive sense that "anything goes," most of those responding to the New York Times/CBS News Poll apparently find a constitutional amendment in support of marriage a much-needed line in the sand. They think we have already gone too far, too fast on too many things.

[We] don't have a position on it, but I'd just tell you personally, whenever anybody starts "monkeying" with the Constitution it makes me very nervous, they better really have thought through and know what they're doing. I know there is a Defense of Marriage law out there that I've heard about. And it would seem like that may be the better mechanism -- to see how that works and give it a chance.

"I think George Bush is going to win in a walk," Robertson said on his "700 Club" program on the Virginia Beach-based Christian Broadcasting Network, which he founded. "I really believe I'm hearing from the Lord it's going to be like a blowout election in 2004. It's shaping up that way."

Hundreds of millions of Muslims -- Arab and non-Arab, Sunni and Shi'a -- hate Israel more than they love life. Leaders of the Palestinian terror organization Hamas repeatedly state, "We love death more than the Jews love life." And now, Iran announces that it is better for a Muslim to asphyxiate under the earth than be rescued by a Jew from Israel.