Good morning!  Welcome to the weekend, and your Weekend Reading. Weekend reading is a list of my favorite news stories, blogs, videos, and other fun matter from throughout the week.

Let’s start with the Presidential Race. The Dems debated, and afterwards a New Hampshire poll showed Socialist Bernie Sanders virtually tied with Corruption Party Hillary Clinton. Meanwhile, Cilliza wrote ‘Why Bernie Sanders isn’t going to be President’ in WaPo, and Donald Trump griped that he ought to have Secret Service protection, while someone over at Quartz did some math on how much it would cost to erect the Trump border fence.

Let’s look at a few people who received extra attention this week: Ben Carson and Ivanka Trump.  Carson was said to have a double-digit lead in a new national poll over Clinton, but it also came to light that he only recently joined the Republican Party…meanwhile there was an interesting Politico profile puff piece on Ivanka, and here is a short piece on her response to her dad’s Megyn Kelley feud.

In other news, Ligonier Ministries did a Google Hangout with Rosario Butterfield on Friday (which I didn’t get to see, but I’m sure is fantastic). Check that out here. 

And Crossway released a preview video of an upcoming documentary on the life of J.I. Packer. 

Geek Watch: Tickets for Star Wars go on sale Monday…or should I say Sunday at Midnight! 

John Piper wrote this week that ‘You are not enslaved to your past’ – best line, “My plea is that you resist fatalism with all your might. No, with all God’s might. Change is possible. Pursue it until you are perfected at the coming of Christ.” Speaking of Piper – his book ‘This Momentary Marriage’ is on sale at ChristianAudio.com.

Tech Watch: Someone finally built some worthwhile drones... here’s another one of the Millenium Falcon…yes you read that right. 

Back to things of consequence…there’s a HUGE crisis brewing for Pope Francis. Most important excerpt: The seniority of the signatories shows how close the church is to civil war. Cardinal Gerhard Müller, Prefect of the Congregation of the Faith – the Church’s doctrinal watchdog – is on the list. So is Cardinal George Pell, head of the Vatican’s finances, and Cardinal Robert Sarah, in charge of the Church’s worship.

And this has to be the link of the week: Christopher Walken reading Poe’s ‘Raven’! (h/t my Kate)

GAVEL WATCH: In other political-type news, last week Rep. Kevin McCarthy pulled out of the race for Speaker of the House. One of the reasons was his inept comments about Benghazi investigation committee (led by Trey Gowdy) and how it hurt Hillary Clinton politically. Well….this article from the Wall Street Journal sets the record straight. Very informative here about all the lengths Gowdy has done to in order to keep this investigation NOT political. 

Speaking of great articles from WSJ…Forget Flying Commercial: The Personal Airplane is Taking off!

Speaking of “taking off”, some bug pop-culture news this week was that Playboy mag models wouldn’t be taking anything off anymore.  Dr. Al Mohler comments on how this is ‘Bad News, Indeed’

Freaky and Odd – IJ Review did a mash up video of Ann Romney revealing how to be a ‘freakin’ awesome grandma’  – having met Mrs. Romney, I know how great a lady she is. Their whole family is wonderful. But this…well, judge for yourself. haha

Finally, Keith Mathison over at Ligonier posted about how influential J.C. Ryle’s book ‘Holiness’ has been in his life. He gives a short profile of the book (which is about 150 years old), and encourages modern readers to give it a shot. I can testify that it is a great book – very practical, and easy to read. Well worth checking into!

That’s it!  No go enjoy your beautiful (and chilly) Fall weekend!

PJW

Good morning from Washington D.C., and welcome to your weekend reading! I only have a few stories for you to read this week before you go enjoy a classic fall weekend. My abbreviated reading list is as follows…

Derek Thomas writes from South Carolina, where he pastors a congregation that has seen their homes absolutely devastated by the recent flooding: “In the darkness of a Sunday morning, the “raging waters” threatened to engulf them, and though their lives were spared, their belongings were not.”

Rep. Kevin McCarthy, seen be many as the next Speaker of the House, has dropped his bid for the Gavel. Politico’s take here, the Washington Post here.  There are now a plethora of potential candidates for the position which is constitutionally third in the succession line to the President.  During my time on Capitol Hill yesterday, I wouldn’t describe the situation as “panic”, but there’s definitely no clear way forward for GOP leadership – unless Paul Ryan changes his mind. 

This morning I read that the White House was sacking its $500m training program of Syrian rebels, which reminded me of another story earlier in the week which described how the Russians were firing Cruise Missiles into the area (VIDEO). 

In the race for President, the only news was some fundraising totals (Carson raised $20m but has a VERY high burn rate, Marco and Rand both have ridiculous burn rates, and Ted Cruz raise over $12m in hard cash…more totals being released soon I’m sure).  But there was a story about how a second cloud storage/computing company has turned over Hillary Clinton emails to the FBI. 

The most tragic story of the week was the American airstrike that hit a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Afghanistan, killing several and wounding more. It was a horrific and incompetent mistake, which the President took responsibility for. It’s these kinds of things that remind you of the need to pray for people you don’t know, half a world away.

Al Mohler posted ‘Some Thoughts on the Reading of Books’ – he occasionally tweaks and reposts this column from time to time, and I enjoy his perspective on how, what, and why to read books.

There was yet another Planned Parenthood video released this week. 

Tim Challies posted this rather funny blog about church music called ‘A Songwriting Rant’ – I don’t agree 100% with everything this guy says, but he’s right on with so much that its worth reading. For example, “…there are also some lyrics which, even after having sung dozens of times and given a fair bit of thought to, I genuinely cannot fathom. Nothing else could take your place to feel the warmth of your embrace. Wait: what? If someone else was in your place, they would feel the warmth of your own embrace? How does that work? You spoke the earth into motion, my soul now to stand. I give my life to follow everything I believe in. I’ll walk upon salvation. What on earth do they mean?”

And two funny stories about Chick-fil-a this week.  First, on how they out perform MANY other fast food chains in terms of shear revenue, and second (and much more silly) what happens to your body an hour after eating food from Chick-fil-a…

Interestingly, Time Mag had a list of the 10 richest people of all time, and many (most!) of these people I’d never even heard of…

Finally, Challies released a nifty test on the Trinity – see how well you know about the Triune God!

That’s it!  Go enjoy your weekend, and feel free to pass along any good reading that you’ve done in the coming week!

PJW

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

Welcome to the weekend!  I’m writing today from sunny coastal N. Carolina. So while I’ve been on vacation, I’ve not had my normal diet of articles and blogs, but here are a few good ones I read during the week. Enjoy – and take a few minutes to remember the fallen heroes from 14 years ago.

The next Presidential debate (GOP) is coming right up. Here are the folks who made the stage.  Also, there was a really funny story in WaPo about one not-so-intense Presidential campaign. 

Maybe some of you saw this, but Tim Challies put together an infographic on what he’s termed ‘heaven tourism’ that’s pretty interesting and a little off the wall.

The article of the week: Frank Bruni at the New York Times on how quantity time is more important than so-called quality time.  

Apple revealed their new Apple TV, iPhone, and iPad – new A9 chips for these devices. Here’s a hands-on demo of the new (huge) iPad (h/t Parris P.)

Blog of the Week: When Garrett Gilkey, a guard for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, went down with a painful injury last week, he decided to write about his experience and his hope. Fantastic that he could write this so soon after such a painful injury.

So, for you foodies, nutritionalists, and all organic types (I guess I fit in here somewhere), you might be interested to know that Starbucks has some known cancer causing ingredients in their pumpkin spice this that and the other thing.

The (sort of) big news of the week was that Kim Davis was freed from jail. Who knows how long that will last…

And my friend James Genovese wrote up a heart warming article about a black cop, a white speedster, and how some Christ-inspired kindness went viral. 

If you’re a golf fan, you may have heard that CBS isn’t renewing David Feherty’s contract. So here are some Feherty-isms that will certainly make you chuckle (h/t Alex W.).

The folks at the Federalist are wondering if this email scandal surrounding Hillary Clinton will finally be the scandal that sinks the Clintons…

Finally, Michael Gerson has a strongly worded column on Syria and the Obama Administration’s complete and utter failure to prevent genocide over there. 

That’s it!  Enjoy your weekend and grab another cup of coffee for me!

PJW

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

Well it’s a beautiful day and looks like for a lot of the country it will be an equally beautiful weekend. So as you’re sipping on coffee, driving the kids around, or whatever you’re doing, pull up the weekend reading and catch up on the week’s most important and interesting stories (from my vantage point, of course!).

Let’s begin with the Presidential race. Charles Barkley is looking at supporting Gov. Kasich (is this a good thing for Kasich??), and Hillary Clinton ran into some more email secrecy issues. She tried to brush it off by acting stupid as if she didn’t know what “wiping a server” really meant, which prompted Republicans to start selling these handy items: Secret Server Wipes!  Then we learned that HRC didn’t even use a State Dept. issued Blackberry – she just used whatever she wanted, her own device, because hey, why not? And…it looks like the Blackberries of her two top aides have been destroyed (“wipe” that shocked look off your face!). Best line of the story:

“If the State Department was not providing secure email devices to Mrs. Clinton, who was? Best Buy? Target? Mrs. Clinton clearly did whatever she wanted, without regard to national security or federal records keeping laws,” Mr. Fitton said.

She must think we’re stupid, stupid, stupid…

In other super important Presidential news, Marco Rubio accidentally nailed some poor kid in the head with a football.  Best Tweet after: “WHY TRUMP COULD WIN: Rubio will apologize to the kid. The Donald would tell him he should develop better hands”.

And if you like Dr. Ben Carson, you might be interested in this in-depth article about his key advisors. 

Probably the biggest story of the week internationally was that the U.N., in all of their glorious wisdom and righteousness, has made a secret (well, now not so much) deal with Iran to allow them to inspect their own nuclear sites.………………..yes you read the correctly.

One of the most interesting Wall Street Journal articles of the week was on ‘The Rise of Phone Reading’ – mostly explaining how kindles are in decline as more people are reading books on their cell phones. This was further confirmed for me yesterday during a conversation with friend Olivia who steals away moments to read books on her cell phone.

If you’re in the Columbus Ohio area then chances are you have eaten at a Cameron Mitchell restaurant (unless you’re living under a rock). This week there was a neat little write up on his entrepreneurial endeavors (h/t my Kate).

And this has to be the coolest video I’ve seen in a while: What happens to your checked luggage? (h/t Tim Challies)

Tomorrow a large nationwide protest has been organized against Planned Parenthood. Organizational website is here. Blog from Kuyperian folks on the day can be found here. 

Hilarious post from Foreign Policy Mag about Chinese misconceptions about Europe. They basically took all the silly Chinese stereotypes of European nations and mapped them! 

And I don’t even know what to think of this, but the New York Times has a story confirming that Warren Harding wasn’t America’s first black President…

I thought this was sort of interesting…Amazon now has a Siri-like product…for your home. I didn’t get a chance to finish reading about it, but there’s also an article in the WSJ about how the newest Corvette has integrated Apple apps for podcasting, maps, iTunes and more, check it out.

If you’re looking for encouragement this week, check out John Piper’s old sermon series ‘The Pleasures of God’ – I listened to this again a few weeks ago and it really gets your mind engaged and your heart reset.  Speaking of Piper, the latest on their upcoming national conference (now at Bethlehem Seminary) was announced this week. 

Another missive from the political world…Boehner goes on fishing trip. This was interesting because its more from the perspective of the local fishing guide, which I found intriguing.

Some of the best news saved for last: Jason Day won the PGA Championship last Sunday! I like Jason, although I was rooting for Jordan Spieth. Both are great golfers and great examples to onlooking kids.

Finally, there was a very powerful Op-Ed written by an Oregon Doctor about doctor assisted suicide, why its creating a climate of fear in Oregon, and why it needs to stop. It is made all the more powerful by the fact that this man’s own wife battled and eventually succumbed to cancer a few years ago. Don’t miss reading this one.

That’s it!  Enjoy your weekend, and happy reading!

PJW

Welcome to another edition of Weekend Reading. I took the week off last week, so I have several older articles that still might interest you as you head into the weekend.

In the wake of the Republican Presidential debate last week, there’s been a number of interesting articles. Politico has one that is one long list of outrageous comments Donald Trump has said over the course of the last few decades. The Wall Street Journal wrote about the top 5 most plausible candidates (Cruz, Walker, Bush, Kasich, Rubio). The LA Times did a piece on how Brett Baier preps for each debate (including a mention of his 10 min of prayer prior to hitting the stage). And apparently (I think pre-debate) someone at Gawker leaked Trump’s cell phone to the public, but he turned it into an advertising opportunity. 

Get this: the federal government is threatening Alabama by saying that they may withhold Medicaid funding because Alabama has voted to defund/not fund any contracts from their state’s dollars that go to Planned Parenthood. In other words, the federal government is standing on the side of a private contractor which has been caught in multiple acts of selling the body parts of children for profit. If that doesn’t anger you (in a righteous way) than I don’t know what will. Tim Challies has an article on how to best respond to the Planned Parenthood scandal.

Speaking of corruption. Here is a story and here is a story about the latest revelations on Hillary’s email scandal. She had extremely top secret emails – including satellite images – in her private email server.

And while we’re on the topic of lawlessness, the WSJ decried the lawlessness of our President once again – this time its over the National Labor Relations Board. They also have story on why minimum wage hikes kill jobs, using Wendy’s as the latest example, and one on how the Iranian deal with line the pockets of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, and how there are a ton of secret side deals as part of this deal that even Congress hasn’t been able to get to the bottom of. 

If you’d like a bit of encouragement, check out this link to my notes on Luke 15 (this is the chapter with the prodigal son). Hopefully it is edifying to you!

I’m sorry to post another WSJ article, but if you don’t have a subscription you’re missing out!  Here’s an awesome (and more positive) story about electric skateboards. This is as close as we’re going to get to hoverboards in my lifetime!  I’m saving up for one of these babies!

You’ve doubtless heard all the kerfuffle over the dentist who killed some supposedly prized African lion, right?  All a bunch of nonsense if you ask me. Well here is a very interesting column from The Hill that explains why hunting parties actually help fund the preservation of these animals, and keep the biped population safe at the same time!

On a lighter note, there’s a new Star Wars trailer out, and unless I missed something…its only in Korean!?

On a sad note, the gal who played the role of Laura Ingles Wilder on that old show Little House on the Prarie is running for office – as a Democrat. However, she probably won’t get too far as it seems she owes a tidy sum of money to the IRS (didn’t her Pa bring her up better than that???)

I don’t know if anyone else saw this, but the New York Daily News had a story about how more scientists are saying that cell phones could cause cancer long term. 

Very interesting video about a master penman (ya, there is such a thing) and how he does his craft. Definitely interesting enough to check out.

My brother sent me this cool insiders scoop on what a PGA golfer’s life is like…some of it I buy, but I’m not feeling sorry for them.

Finally, thanks to Marc Wilson for also posting some crazy silly video on Facebook…this one was pretty funny. 

That’s it!  Enjoy your weekend!

PJW