Welcome to your Labor Day edition of the Weekend Reading!  I’ll be on the road in an hour from now driving to fun destinations with the family, and I’m sure many of you will as well.  So today there’s a concise gaggle of my favorite articles, movies, and more from the week.

Let’s start out on a not so good note – it looks like the President has enough votes in the Senate to override a veto of his terrible deal with Iran. Iran’s reaction is best characterized by a Fox News headline, ‘Iran thumbs nose at US even as Obama rallies support for nuke deal.’ Here’s the key quote from a top Iranian general:

U.S. officials make boastful remarks and imagine that they can impose anything on the Iranian nation because they lack a proper knowledge of the Iranian nation.

Tom Brady beat the NFL in his deflate-gate case. This has to be the silliest waste of taxpayer dollars on a judicial matter that I’ve seen in a while.

Prepare to be shocked…Hillary Clinton had more classified emails on her personal email server ***GASP!***  so ya, no surprises there.  The only surprise to me is that there hasn’t been any speculation as to whether she’ll go to jail over all this. It seems like its a pretty huge deal to have classified information in your personal possession without anyone knowing it – maybe the intent isn’t like E. Snowden, but its still in that general category of things you just don’t do.

The Independent over in the UK had an interesting story this week (though its much too long) about how Wikipedia is being infiltrated by scammers…

Lots of social media buzz about this over the past week: looks like Planned Parenthood (along with other orgs) has received several million dollars in grant money from the feds under Obamacare. This isn’t really shocking to me, because one has to realize that bureaucrats don’t stop spending your money on a dime. These particular PP sites had been “approved” for while now. The country doesn’t turn on a dime – its still important to let your voice be heard to members of Congress who don’t think this is important enough to spend political capital.  

This week Donald Trump completely fumbled a question on whether he could match the names of terrorist leaders with their orgs. And he promised to rename Mt. McKinley back to its Ohioan moniker. Yes! Now we’re getting somewhere on the important issues of the day!

There’s been a lot of hubbub about Kim Davis being ordered to jail for not issuing marriage licenses to anyone in her county in Kentucky.  Some are demagoguing the issue saying that it proves that Christianity will be at odds with the law of the land from this point on, and I think they are right about that technically, but I think in this instance Erickson is right on the money. She was probably right to not issue marriage licenses to gay couples if that was her belief, and what the state of Kentucky had already voted on. However, when she stopped issuing licenses to everyone, she just refused to do the job voters put her there to do – basically elevating herself above the voters of the land (sort of like what the Supreme Ct. did a few months back, one might say). That wasn’t the wisest move in my opinion.

More presidential context news – one of my favorite Congressmen, Gregg Harper from Mississippi, endorsed Gov. Kasich this week. Cong. Harper is a man of integrity, and a good Christian guy, so it was cool to see him getting a little spotlight this week. You might ask: why does this matter? Well, with the new primary calendar (still in flux), many southern states will be very early in the process (GA, MS, TN, AL etc.). So endorsements from those states now make an outsized impact from what they used to mean the last few cycles.

Speaking of the Presidential: the Hill issued new rankings that are worth checking out. 

Interesting read on why Asians where surgical masks in public. I read this a long time ago, and forgot to push it out. Such an odd thing…

Tim Challies posted this fascinating Huffpost article on some things you probably didn’t know were at Yale. 

Because I’m the father of two wonderful girls, I pre-ordered Cinderella (Sept. 15) this week on iTunes. Kate and I really enjoyed it in the theatre. Check it out. 

Over at the ministry of Ravi Zacharias, Margaret Manning Shull posted an insightful blog called ‘Among the Exiles’ that you might want to check out. I don’t know Shull’s work, but this was pretty good.

Finally, the song of the week: Our Only Hope is You, by Sovereign Grace (this is a very nice acoustic version, enjoy!).

And the quote of the week…

The dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. There are no ordinary people…it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit – immortal horrors or everlasting splendours. – C.S. Lewis