The statement "One nation under God" is a statement of political philosophy, a shorthand rendering of what it said in the Declaration of Independence: "That we are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights," and that governments are established to secure those rights. Just because the God-word is in it doesn't render it religious, or devotional, or ritualistic, or anything. Therefore, it is not even an Establishment Clause issue at all.

For a court to say that this phrase "under God" is like reciting the Lord's Prayer or some religious ritual is...bending the common-sense concept as well as ignoring 200 to 300 years of American history where these kinds of statements were routinely made by government officials, and were not viewed as devotional acts but were viewed as appropriate public displays of the principles of what government the United States.

How long is it before some Islamic leader gets the message that America is not serious about enforcing its marriage norms? If marriage is an individual civil right, it cannot be a social norm. A norm guides and shapes individual behavior, to produce a common good. An individual right is a license for each individual to decide for himself what good to seek. How can an individual right to marriage exclude Muslims who want more than one wife? Or bisexual women who would like to share a husband?

What will happen if we fail to affirm a national definition of marriage? Sex, love, and intimacy are private things. Marriage is a public act. A person who marries undergoes a change in status that others must acknowledge. That's why the advocates of single-sex marriage won't settle for civil unions. They hope and intend for their vision of marriage to become the new norm. If the marriages of same-sex couples are to be publicly acknowledged as the full equivalent of marriages uniting husband and wife, everyone's ideas about marriage will have to change.

Shortly before the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration was debating how to force bin Laden out of Afghanistan. At a Sept. 10, 2001, meeting of second-tier Cabinet officials, officials settled on a three-phase strategy. The first step called for dispatching an envoy to talk to the Taliban. If this failed, diplomatic pressure would be applied and covert funding and support for anti-Taliban fighters would be increased.

Legal commentators may think the court is poised to resolve some of these controversies. Ho, ho, ho. We the people will somehow have to resolve them for ourselves. We really don't know what we believe anymore -- I mean, as a nation.

The staid religiosity of our forbears compels and persuades less powerfully than of old. Nor, in my view, could we restore it simply by overturning the jurisprudence of the past four decades, starting with the decision to outlaw formal prayer in public schools.

We would first have to work out our disparate views on spiritual independence -- on our fast-evolving commitment to avoid community standards of belief and action. Where in the past we might have deferred (generally) to authority, now we say, chirpily, "Over to you..." Whatever you think. Follow your bliss. Your truths, my truths. If it feels good, do it....

How the high court will negotiate this matter -- are we "one nation under God" or not? -- God alone can say.

This is the way terrorism must be fought. It needs to be decapitated. It needs to be discouraged with overwhelming force. It needs to be met with greater terror.

I know this is not politically correct. I know we're all supposed to give lip service to the "peace process." I know it is not considered kosher to encourage Israel to take out its terrorist enemies the way the U.S. takes out its own.

I don't care.

Three cheers for the death of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.

Who was Yassin?

He was a terrorist clothed in the garb of a holy man. He repeatedly said the land of Israel is "consecrated for future Muslim generations until Judgment Day." Well, Judgment is here -- at least for Yassin.

Within a few short years, a major dividing line has become evident -- with those churches endorsing homosexuality on one side, and those stubbornly resisting the cultural tide on the other.

The homosexual rights movement understands that the evangelical church is one of the last resistance movements committed to a biblical morality. Because of this, the movement has adopted a strategy of isolating Christian opposition, and forcing change by political action and cultural pressure. Can we count on evangelicals to remain steadfastly biblical on this issue?

Not hardly. Scientific surveys and informal observation reveal that we have experienced a significant loss of conviction among youth and young adults. No moral revolution can succeed without shaping and changing the minds of young people and children. Inevitably, the schools have become crucial battlegrounds for the culture war. The Christian worldview has been undermined by pervasive curricula that teach moral relativism, reduce moral commandments to personal values, and promote homosexuality as a legitimate and attractive lifestyle option.

It was the ultimate campaign stunt: The president, clad in a navy uniform and white gloves, at sea on a sunny morning, standing on the deck of a giant titanium-hulled ballistic-missile submarine. He looked on smartly as the military began a weeklong exercise to unleash its triad of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), submarine-launched ballistic missiles and strategic bombers in the biggest nuclear doomsday drill since the coldest days of the Cold War....

An American president well could have been run out of office for personally commanding and celebrating such political theater. The commander in chief in this case, however, was Russian President Vladimir Putin. The date was Feb. 17, less than a month before the March 14 elections that everyone expected him to win. Bezopastnost-2004, as the strategic command and staff exercise was called, was a mock nuclear attack on the United States, the largest since Communist Party boss Leonid Brezhnev ruled from the Kremlin in 1982.