From Marti's Musings, A Pastor's Prayer for Our New President, a call to conservatives to head the biblical injunction to pray for our leaders. Marti links to Internetmonk, who makes a great argument in his blog post, but most of the commenters completely creep me out. I am completely baffled how one can be so anti-abortion and against pro-choice Obama but be completely pro-Geo. W. Bush's given his pre-emptive slaughter of innocents in Iraq... So, preserving the (white) unborn is pro-life, but not-perserving the (brown) born is patriotic?

I really wish John Wimber was still alive, as something tells me that he would be gently and lovingly encouraging Christians to get their own house in order.

And last but not least, speaking of getting one's house in order, From HuffPo: You Are Being Lied to About Pirates:

The words of one pirate from that lost age - a young British man called William Scott - should echo into this new age of piracy. Just before he was hanged in Charleston, South Carolina, he said: "What I did was to keep me from perishing. I was forced to go a-pirating to live." In 1991, the government of Somalia - in the Horn of Africa - collapsed. Its nine million people have been teetering on starvation ever since - and many of the ugliest forces in the Western world have seen this as a great opportunity to steal the country's food supply and dump our nuclear waste in their seas.

Yes: nuclear waste. As soon as the government was gone, mysterious European ships started appearing off the coast of Somalia, dumping vast barrels into the ocean. The coastal population began to sicken. At first they suffered strange rashes, nausea and malformed babies. Then, after the 2005 tsunami, hundreds of the dumped and leaking barrels washed up on shore. People began to suffer from radiation sickness, and more than 300 died. Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the UN envoy to Somalia, tells me: "Somebody is dumping nuclear material here. There is also lead, and heavy metals such as cadmium and mercury - you name it." Much of it can be traced back to European hospitals and factories, who seem to be passing it on to the Italian mafia to "dispose" of cheaply. When I asked Ould-Abdallah what European governments were doing about it, he said with a sigh: "Nothing. There has been no clean-up, no compensation, and no prevention."

For every action there is a reaction. I don't condone piracy, but illegally dumping waste and fishing off the coast of a failed state that can't defend its waters is just wrong. How about a joint resolution to help lift Somalia up and out of its collapsed state?