As president, Ronald Reagan issued a National Day of Prayer Proclamation every year of his eight years in the Oval Office and in 1988, he signed into law the designation of the first Thursday in May as the annual observance of the National Day of Prayer. During this, Reagan's centennial year, we should remember what this day meant to one of America's greatest presidents and why he took such pride in officially recognizing its observance.
A federal appeals court Thursday threw out a ruling that would have prohibited the president from declaring a National Day of Prayer, in a decision that cheered social conservatives and occasioned much wailing and gnashing of teeth by groups advocating a strict separation of church and state.
Nearly two years ago on a cold February day, President Obama stood for the first time before a joint session of Congress and spoke of a national day of reckoning. It was time not just to stabilize the shaken economy, he declared, but to reach for lasting prosperity. As the president prepares to stand before Congress once again on Tuesday, he will size up a changed State of the Union.
Pf-f-f-t. There goes all that newfound civility in press and politics.
Yoko Ono and her son, Sean Lennon, are joining a national oral history project that urges people to take time the day after Thanksgiving for a National Day of Listening with their friends and loved ones.
Thousands of people stampeded during a festival in the Cambodian capital Monday night, leaving at least 339 dead and hundreds injured in what the prime minister called the country's biggest tragedy since the 1970s reign of terror by the Khmer Rouge.
On Sept. 11, 2001, radical Islamic terrorists committed the most deadly and destructive foreign attack on U.S. soil. Nine years later, the American people are being told that the country overreacted to the whole thing. President Obama last year declared that Sept. 11 is to be a "national day of service." Others in the administration seem to think that means it is a day upon which Americans should rise up to protect the Koran.
China warned travelers over travel to the Philippines and demanded answers Tuesday over how eight Hong Kong tourists were killed in a hostage stand-off in Manila following a day of botched negotiations.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Sunday inaugurated the country's first domestically built unmanned bomber aircraft, calling it an "ambassador of death" to Iran's enemies.
