Welcome to your weekend! I’m writing to you from Mackinac Island Michigan, where a major GOP event is about to get underway this weekend. There’s a Presidential Straw Poll this weekend and some of the campaigns are working a little too hard for votes. Refill your coffee and kick back for some weekend reading…oh, ALSO…I’ll just note that this week most of my stories come from the Wall Street Journal. If you get paywalls then I apologize, it just so happened that most of my reading was from that source this week.

Since I mentioned it already, let me begin with the Presidential – it’s on my mind, after all. During this week’s debate there was a really silly question from Jake Tapper about what secret service code name you’d like to have if they were elected President. This elicited some funny moments and some really dumb answers. But WaPo has had some fun with it, and created their own Code Name Generator for us commoners! (I am affectionately known now as ‘Double Eagle’!!!).

Who was the biggest loser of the debate? Probably CNN…but maybe Bush…

Since I’ve been traveling this week, there were two opinion pieces I didn’t get to read but wish I did. They are both from the Wall Street Journal. First is a story on the racial disparity in abortions, and the second was a piece about women in the infantry (written by a female West Point grad).

A few weeks ago my former colleague Lanhee Chen wrote a terrific Op-Ed piece for the WSJ about undoing President Obama’s unilateral presidency. Worth the read!

On a more serious note, video number 10 was released by the undercover group working to expose Planned Parenthood. This sent more shockwaves throughout the media, and even influenced the GOP debate this week.

And if you’re following the Dem nomination contest, then you’ll note that Socialist Bernie Sanders now has a double digit lead over HRC in New Hampshire. But what is the deal with this guy?  Who is he? Well he spoke at the (seemingly) uber-political Liberty University, a Christian school where social conservatives send their kids, and if you start adding up all the programs he’s proposing the total comes to about $18T – that “T” stands for TRILLION. That’s the first thing you should know. Google will take you from there…

Now you might get the impression that all I read are news articles – not so!  I take in a steady diet of the Bible (how else am I going to wash away all this nonsense!? haha).  And I’m always interested in new Bible reading plans. Well, here is one that coincides with Jim Hamilton’s book God’s Glory in Salvation Through Judgment (about 600 pages of fine Biblical Theology that is worth the read!). Very interesting to pair a Bible reading plan to a theology book like this…

SPEAKING OF BOOKS:  Kate could tell you they are a big part of my life, so I’m always reading books, and I get occasional emails asking about what I’m reading. Well I just finished this funny fourth installation of William Shakespeare’s Star Wars (yes you read that correctly). Well worth the read for any Star Wars Junkie.  I’m two weeks away from finishing that Hamilton book I mentioned, and about the same for a great book by Steve Lawson.  Recently I also finished up a book by N.T. Wright called ‘The Challenge of Jesus’, which was interesting but not very convincing, and frankly a little annoying. I finished reading the kids The Silver Chair, James and the Giant Peach (which was awesome) and we’re in the middle of The Bronze Bow right now – which is pretty interesting, definitely well written.

There was a story that Al Mohler linked to this week (also from the WSJ) about how Photos change us, our culture, and our history – pretty good. He also linked to a disturbing piece from the Telegraph about how sociologists are saying that homophobia is linked to other “undesirable psychological traits” – another ripple in the tide of the new discrimination.

Speaking of social ills, my friend Dave Harvey had an encouraging and thoughtful piece on how the Gospel of Jesus Christ confronts and repairs the damage done by sin – specifically in the context of the Ashley Madison disaster.  He isn’t just commenting, he’s prescribing here, which is both practical and helpful.

A month or so ago, one of my buddies from college lost his 1 year old baby boy. Through the sadness, he and his wife have been great examples to their friends and the wider watching world. This video gives you an idea of how they’re dealing with the loss in a way most couldn’t have imagined. 

Finally, on a lighter note, the Telegraph had a funny series of pictures on Vladimir Putin this week titled ‘Man of Action’ (i.e. gangster, corrupt pig, etc). Check out number 1, so funny.

That is it!  Enjoy your weekend!

PJW