News and Notes from the
World of Al Menconi

By Patrick J. Buchanan, Published in Human Events Wednesday - April 27, 2016 In a recent column Dennis Prager made an acute observation. The vast majority of leading conservative writers ... have a secular outlook on life. ... They are unaware of the disaster that godlessness in the West has led to." These secular conservatives may think that "America can survive the death of God and religion," writes Prager, but they are wrong. And, indeed, the last half-century seems to bear him out. A people's religion, their faith, creates their culture, and their culture creates their civilization. And when faith dies, the culture dies, the civilization dies, and the people begin to die. Is this not the recent history of the West? Today, no great Western nation has a birthrate that will prevent the extinction of its native-born. By century's end, other peoples and other cultures will have largely repopulated the Old Continent. European Man seems destined to

I just finished reading a book that all Americans – especially Christians – should read.     Say the title out loud – I am N . -- and you’ll understand why I had to explain the title every time I told someone what I was reading.   It's a tongue twister but worth you time.    N in the title is the Arabic symbol for Nazarene, which represents all Christians to the radical Islamic terrorists.   If the Muslims paint the symbol for Nazarene on your home, it means that you are marked to be killed, raped, and/or taken as a slave.   Some have the option to leave before they are killed.   Others don’t have that opportunity.     I am N is an accumulation of nearly fifty stories of Christians who are being tortured, raped, kidnapped and killed by Muslims in Muslim countries around the world.   This is a book of present day Christian martyrs. I am N gives the details of the tribulations these Christian people have endured. It reads like a news report that presents the who, wha

I just returned from viewing Miracles From Heaven, starring Jennifer Garner.   You probably saw the TV commercial for it – a little girl gets an incurable illness, then falls from a tree and miraculously gets well.   Before watching the movie, I thought the producers made a big mistake by telling the “whole story” in the commercial trailer.   Frankly, I was expecting the typical “religious” film: maudlin, trite, and corny, with actors who barely had their lines memorized. Boy, was I wrong! Before I go any further, I want to be the first to say that Jennifer Garner deserves an Academy Award for acting.   She showed us exactly what a mother in crisis looks like and feels.   When she was pleading with a reluctant doctor to examine her daughter there wasn’t a dry eye in the theater.   My wife remarked that one could tell that Garner is a mother in real life; she couldn’t be so convincing if she wasn’t.   She used every ounce of her motherhood experience to demonstrate that sh

I have read emails from my readers who are frustrated with our political choices for president. My question to everyone is this: Why are you surprised?  Please read Romans 13:1 to 4. Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God. 2 Therefore whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves. 3 For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to evil. Do you want to be unafraid of the authority? Do what is good, and you will have praise from the same. 4 For he is God’s minister to you for good. Read that passage again.  Paul is speaking to Christians living under ROMAN rule!  And he called the leader of the land “God’s minister for good.”  Why?  Because God will direct us through the leader He has put over us.  No matter how bad we believe our choices are, they are a heck of a lot better than Nero.  I definitel