Techcordance

Mosque

NEW YORK, N.Y. — The construction of a mosque has been approved near Ground Zero that has many people, especially family members of 9/11 victims, upset.Critics say it’s not so much the mosque itself they find objectionable, but the location.
Eight and a half years after September 11, 2001, people still come to pay their respects and remember the nearly 3,000 lives that were lost when radical Muslims flew two hijacked American airliners into the World Trade Center towers. It was the worst terrorist attack ever on American soil. Today the Cordoba Institute’s Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf is pushing forward with a new mosque and community center near Ground Zero which he says will help bridge the gap and bring healing between Muslims and non-Muslims.

Privacy


Let us be perfectly clear: While Facebook has received a lot of criticism lately about its new privacy policies and Open Graph concept, which allows them to partner with other sites which will also have access to some Facebook user data, Facebook isn’t explicitly keeping secrets from you. But some security professionals and users continually knock the site for what they say are less-than-clear explanations about where your data is going, and how secure the site really is.
Joey Tyson, a social media security expert who maintains the site Social Hacking, says there are important data security and privacy issues happening under the radar of the Facebook experience. This is what Facebook isn’t saying outright to members.
Facebook’s privacy policies have evolved dramatically in the last few years since the site launched–see the Electronic Freedom Foundation’s timeline of Facebook’s privacy policies. At Facebook’s inception, privacy was tightly controlled by the users. Today, there are some parts of the profile that the user cannot make private. Other parts can be made private, but not without a lot of work figuring it out. Changing your privacy settings on Facebook has recently been called “today’s version of programming the VCR,” by some security professionals.

Prayer

(CNSNews.com) – Two top evangelical leaders sounded a defiant tone on the eve of National Day of Prayer — warning that the American right to freedom of religion “is being eroded every day†and may be lost in an onslaught of secularism unless Americans “have the guts to stand up.â€
The Rev. Franklin Graham, who last month was officially “dis-invited†by the Army to speak at a National Day of Prayer ceremony at the Pentagon for statements he made about Islam, said he will not back down in preaching the Gospel as he sees it.
“We’re living in a time where we cannot compromise, we cannot back up, we cannot retreat,†Graham said Wednesday during a live Webcast from the Washington, D.C. offices of the Family Research Council.
“The Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ is to be preached to the ends of the Earth – that’s what He’s called us to do,†he said.
Graham, the honorary chairman of this year’s National Day of Prayer, made his comments in a sermon to an audience of leaders making final preparations for Thursday’s National Day of Prayer.

Lawsuit

A Florida school district is being sued for “persistent and widespread†restrictions on religious expression. Liberty Counsel, a legal group often representing Christians in religious freedom and family cases, filed a lawsuit Tuesday on behalf of two dozen individuals against the Santa Rosa County School District and its Superintendent, Timothy Wyrosdick, for violations of First Amendment rights.
The plaintiffs – which include teachers, students, former students, parents, volunteers and local members of the community – complain that they have been censored, intimidated or harassed by the school district and its partner, the American Civil Liberties Union. Last year, the school district agreed to a Consent Decree drafted by the ACLU that restricts the practice or promotion of religious expression and activities by students. The decree was adopted after the ACLU sued Santa Rosa schools over the same issue – the right to pray and express religious beliefs in school.

Privacy

When a piece of software is automatically installed on your computer without your knowledge, it’s called malware. But what do you call it when Facebook apps are added to your profile without your knowledge? We discovered Wednesday that this is actually happening, and stopping it isn’t as easy as checking a box in your privacy settings. If you visit certain sites while logged in to Facebook, an app for those sites will be quietly added to your Facebook profile. You don’t have to have a Facebook window open, you don’t need to be signed in to these sites for the apps to appear, there’s no notification, and there doesn’t appear to be an option to opt-out anywhere in Facebook’s byzantine privacy settings.The apps appear to be related to Facebook’s latest sharing features and tools. The sites currently leaving this trail all have Facebook integration, and the list includes heavyweights such as the Gawker network of blogs, the Washington Post, TechCrunch, CNET, New York Magazine, and formspring.me.

NARAL

By R. Albert Mohler, Jr.

Nancy Keenan is worried. The current president of NARAL, Keenan detects a loss of fervor in support of abortion rights among younger women, and she talked openly to Newsweek about her concern. Are we witnessing a major shift of momentum on the issue of abortion? Keenan’s group is officially known as NARAL Pro-Choice America. It was founded in 1969 as the National Association for Repeal of Abortion Laws and NARAL is the oldest abortion-rights advocacy group in the United States. The group may have changed its name after Roe v. Wade, but it hasn’t changed its agenda – NARAL is committed to an all-out defense of abortion rights. All this comes to light in a report by Sarah Kliff of Newsweek. In the magazine’s April 26, 2010 edition Kliff outlines the challenges facing the abortion rights movement. In the aftermath of the health care reform signed into law by President Obama, abortion rights groups are licking their political wounds. As Kliff explains, the movement woke up to the fact that a significant number of Democrats in both the House and the Senate are pro-life. Even as the executive order signed by President Obama offered some limited and tenuous protections for the unborn, the pro-abortion movement was far more alarmed by the fact that the House of Representatives had earlier passed the so-called “Stupak amendment†that would have represented the most significant modification of abortion law since Roe v. Wade.

Perspective

Mexican President Felipe Calderon has accused Arizona of opening the door “to intolerance, hate, discrimination and abuse in law enforcement.” But Arizona has nothing on Mexico when it comes to cracking down on illegal aliens. While open-borders activists decry new enforcement measures signed into law in “Nazi-zona” last week, they remain deaf, dumb or willfully blind to the unapologetically restrictionist policies of our neighbors to the south.The Arizona law bans sanctuary cities that refuse to enforce immigration laws, stiffens penalties against illegal alien day laborers and their employers, makes it a misdemeanor for immigrants to fail to complete and carry an alien registration document, and allows the police to arrest immigrants unable to show documents proving they are in the U.S. legally. If those rules constitute the racist, fascist, xenophobic, inhumane regime that the National Council of La Raza, Al Sharpton, Catholic bishops and their grievance-mongering followers claim, then what about these regulations and restrictions imposed on foreigners?
- The Mexican government will bar foreigners if they upset “the equilibrium of the national demographics.” How’s that for racial and ethnic profiling?
- If outsiders do not enhance the country’s “economic or national interests” or are “not found to be physically or mentally healthy,” they are not welcome. Neither are those who show “contempt against national sovereignty or security.” They must not be economic burdens on society and must have clean criminal histories. Those seeking to obtain Mexican citizenship must show a birth certificate, provide a bank statement proving economic independence, pass an exam and prove they can provide their own healthcare.  (See Perspective link for more)

Google TV

Google Inc. is planning to introduce Android-based television software to developers at an event in May, according to people familiar with the matter.The technology—designed to open set-top boxes, TVs and other devices to more content from the Internet—is attracting interest from partners that include SonyIntel Corp. and Logitech International SA, which are expected to offer products that support the software, these people said. None have so far discussed the efforts publicly.The decision to address developers suggests that the Internet giant may be hoping to kick-start a race to build applications for its TV platform, much in the same way that Google, Apple Inc. and others have courted developers for smartphones. Corp.,

Franklin Graham

Last Sunday the president of the United States came to visit my 91-year-old father, Billy Graham, and me at my father’s home in North Carolina. If either of us wanted to visit the president at his home or even just to speak with him on the phone, we would have to navigate one or more telephone operators, receptionists or executive assistants–and still might not be successful in reaching him.
This morning, and numerous times throughout the day, I spoke directly to the God of this universe–no switchboard, secretaries, call screeners or voice mail. What an amazing thing! Even more amazing, God was waiting on my call and anxious to hear from me and talk to me, no matter how many times I called. Prayer–talking to God–is a vibrant and vital personal practice; but it is also a very real part of our national history.
In 1775 George Washington and the Continental Congress requested the colonies to pray for wisdom in a war for independence. Nearly 100 years later, President Abraham Lincoln offered a proclamation of a day of “humiliation, fasting and prayer.” Almost a century later, in 1952, President Harry Truman signed a joint resolution of Congress declaring an annual, national day of prayer. President Ronald Reagan, in 1988 amended the law, permanently establishing the first Thursday of May as the National Day of Prayer, a tradition every president, Republican and Democrat alike, has honored by signing a proclamation encouraging all Americans to pray on this day…