From The New Yorker:
Hunting Grounds
“No Country for Old Men” and “Lions for Lambs.”
by Anthony Lane
November 12, 2007

Javier Bardem and Tommy Lee Jones in a new movie from the Coen brothers.

The new Coen brothers movie, “No Country for Old Men,” is set in Texas, with a foray over the border into Mexico. The cinematography is by Roger Deakins, a trusted collaborator of the Coens’, who holds the wide, camel-brown sweep of the Texas scrubland steady in the frame, as if he were filming the Serengeti. When a hunter named Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) perches on a crag and trains his binoculars, or the telescopic sight of his rifle, on a herd on the plains below, we expect to see lions, not antelope. His shot misses, and the antelope leap away, but the next group in Moss’s vision lies still: a litter of abandoned vehicles and, scattered among them, human bodies. How Moss reacts to the carnage—or, to be exact, how intensely he underreacts—determines the rest of the film. Where you or I would throw up and call the cops, he bides his time, checks the surroundings, then wanders down to the scene. A drug deal has gone viciously wrong; one man is still breathing, and he whispers for water, but Moss walks away, with something better in mind. He finds it—a black case packed with two million dollars. Not bad for a day’s hunting.

What follows is an extended chase, with a number of interested parties joining the fray. There is Sheriff Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), whose eyes have seen everything in this corner of the world, and who wants the law to reach Moss before something less merciful finds him. Later, there is Carson Wells (Woody Harrelson), a hired hand, who prides himself on tracking down the most elusive prey. More stubborn than either of them is Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem). If you think the name is hard to place, try the rest of him. He is smiling, courteous, but essentially shorn of humor; his movements, though as careful and unhurried as a surgeon’s, are bent not on the relief of pain but on its violent imposition; and his idea of fun is to weigh a man’s life—should he perish, should he survive—on the toss of a coin. It is difficult to define what Chigurh wants from his own life. All we can say for sure is that he wants those two million bucks.

The film is adapted from Cormac McCarthy’s novel of the same name, which in turn took its title from Yeats: “That is no country for old men. The young / In one another’s arms, birds in the trees.” No such vivacity—what Yeats calls the “sensual music” of the lusting world—haunts either the book or the film. True, there is a querulous speech by one of Bell’s fellow-sheriffs from another county, railing against today’s kids, “with green hair, bones through their noses,” but the Texas that looms up through the movie is no country for young men, either. There is barely any music, sensual or otherwise, and Carter Burwell’s score is little more than a fitful murmur. The story takes place in 1980, but cut out the cars and the drugs and we could be in 1880—look at Bell and his deputy, saddling up to scour the crime scene. (“You can’t help but compare yourself against the old timers,” Bell confides to us, in voice-over.) Indeed, the characters’ rapport with the soil is more reliable, in its grounded primitivism, than their relations with one another, and the Coens certainly honor the novelist’s abiding preference for the mythical over the modern. The most urgent pursuit comes not on a highway but down a rushing river, with a man being sought by a remorseless dog, as if by a hound from Hell.

So what do we end up with? Well, as a thriller, “No Country for Old Men” is tight, pointed, and immune to the temptations of speed. I found myself in the same predicament with the film as with the book—approaching both in a state of rare excitement, yet willing myself, all too soon, to be more engaged than I actually was. If I want wry lawmen and smart, calculating fugitives, I’ll get them from Elmore Leonard; and, if I want Leonard, I’ll take him neat, rather than slow-filtered, drop by drop, through a layer of Faulkner, then laced with the Book of Jeremiah. That is how the novel sounded to me, at any rate, and McCarthy’s bent for the apocalyptic—most naked in “The Road” (2006), a greater work by far—suffers a curious transformation in the hands of the Coens. It shrinks into a fatalistic fetishism: screws turned by knives, a cold bottle of milk still sweating from the fridge, dust tracks at the bottom of a ventilation shaft, and countless slowly spreading pools of blood.

Needless to say, you could call every one of those details as a witness to the Coens’ powers of suspense, and “No Country for Old Men” is beyond question a return to the dark, simmering days of their best work, in “Blood Simple” and “Miller’s Crossing.” The travesty of recent years (how much would you pay not to watch “Intolerable Cruelty” or “The Ladykillers” again?) is all but wiped out by the new film, although, as with those two fumbles at comedy, there remains a nagging sense that the Coens are not so much investing their emotions in a cinematic genre—in this case, the Western revenge drama—as picking it up, inspecting it, and then setting themselves the task of constructing a perfect copy. Acts of monstrosity are coolly perpetrated throughout, but the resulting film strays beyond cool to the verge of the passionless; if Deakins’s camera leans in close to gaze on damaged flesh (we focus on Chigurh’s leg as he swabs and stitches a gunshot wound), that is not because the Coens harbor any tenderness or pity, still less an urge to lament the legacy of violence. They simply retain a juvenile weakness for gore, challenging us to match their sang-froid and saluting Chigurh himself for showing the way.

There is no denying that Javier Bardem cuts a singular figure. For one thing, he currently has the biggest, noblest, and most sculpted head of anyone in movies (previous titleholders include John Huston), and I can never quite suppress the thought, watching him onscreen, that he must have flown straight to the set from Easter Island. So why burden him, for this film, with a helmetlike hair style that makes him look like the fifth Monkee? The answer is that Chigurh is less a person than a conceit: an angel of death, stalking the landscape like a plague. As with his weapon of choice—a stun gun, powered by compressed gas, of the type normally used in the slaughter of cattle—the hair is a design quirk, filling in for a character trait. The movie charts no moral shift in Chigurh, or indeed in the men around him; all of them are set in stone from the beginning (Sheriff Bell appears to be made from stone), and we gradually realize that “No Country for Old Men” is not telling a tale—the plot remains open-ended—but reinforcing the legend of a place, like a poem adding to an oral tradition. Texas is presented as a state of being, where good and evil circle doggedly around each other, and it just doesn’t occur to Moss that he could take his black bag, catch a flight, and seek a world elsewhere. I was awed by the control of the movie, which seems as pressurized as Chigurh’s murder machine, but after an hour and a quarter I felt that it had made its point and done all the damage it could. In the event, it crawls past the two-hour mark, and you sense that the Coens, like their unkillable villain, are prepared to go on forever.

We were promised a spate of intelligent, probing films about America’s wars abroad, and about the implications for life back home, but results so far have been ragged. To be fair, directors face a heavy task. How can you explore the policy debate over Afghanistan, say, without having your movie sound like a policy debate? To judge by “Lions for Lambs,” the answer is: You can’t.

Robert Redford’s film, written by Matthew Michael Carnahan, is braided from three strands, like a rope. First, an eager young senator in Washington (Tom Cruise) reveals a new military initiative to a skeptical reporter (Meryl Streep). Second, we watch that initiative in practice, as a pair of front-line troops (Derek Luke and Michael Peña) are left wounded on an Afghan mountain in the snow, with the Taliban closing in. Third, we listen to a professor (Robert Redford) who taught the two soldiers at college, where they were close friends, while he tells a fun-loving student (Andrew Garfield) to get off his backside and engage with the world.

The three stories are intercut through-out the film, to lend it at least the illusion of momentum. Sadly, unless you are Jean-Luc Godard, the sight of your characters discussing the political ethics of their own actions is unlikely to ravish the eye, and “Lions for Lambs” is most charitably described as Ibsen with helicopters. It winces with liberal self-chastisement: Redford is surely smart enough to realize, as the professor turns his ire on those who merely chatter while Rome burns, that his movie is itself no better, or more morally effective, than high-concept Hollywood fiddling. He may even spare a smile for the harshest irony of all: the one scorching performance here, cheerfully laying waste to the niggles of the peacemakers, is that of Tom Cruise, who does for Republican warmongering what he did for the rampant libido in “Magnolia.” In person, he is reportedly a Democrat, but the G.O.P. should poach him anyway; why settle for crusty old Fred Thompson when you could have young Top Gun himself?

Photo from NoMaas.org

From WasWatching.com:
Torre To Tell All In New Book?

From the Canadian Press -

Joe Torre, named last week as manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers after ending a 12-year reign with the New York Yankees, is working on a memoir.

The book, currently untitled, will be co-authored by Sports Illustrated's Tom Verducci and will include Torre's memories of the Yankees, with whom he won four World Series championships, and general thoughts on the game.

Doubleday, an imprint of Random House Inc., will publish the book in the spring of 2009.

"Baseball has changed dramatically since I began my tenure with the Yankees," Torre said in a statement issued Thursday by Doubleday. "It was a wonderful 12 years and I look forward to sharing my thoughts and perspective on how the game has evolved."

According to Doubleday, Torre will explain his "decision to walk way from the job of manager of the Yankees, but only as the endgame in explaining in unprecedented detail what history will record as the 'Torre Era."'

"In addition to sharing Torre's knowledge of the game, the authors will examine the rapidly changing baseball landscape, explaining how developments such as revenue sharing and the rise of statistical analysis have made the future existence of dynasties virtually impossible," the statement reads.

...the authors will examine the rapidly changing baseball landscape, explaining how developments such as revenue sharing and the rise of statistical analysis have made the future existence of dynasties virtually impossible...

Translation: It's going to be "Torre's Big Book of Excuses."

Yeah, it was revenue sharing and statistical analysis who brought in a stone-cold Jeff Weaver into the 2003 World Series and who didn't take his team off the field when the bugs showed up in Cleveland this October...

...man, if they're looking for a title to this book, they should call it "The Teflon Torre."

Posted by Steve Lombardi at November 8, 2007 04:40 PM

From The Daily Mail:
Hillary Clinton faces sensational claims
from another woman in Bill's past

Last updated at 10:12am on 7th November 2007

Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign faced damaging allegations yesterday from one of the women who claim to have been groped by former president Bill.

Kathleen Willey suggests in a new book that the former First Couple could have been involved in her husband Ed's death.

Willey, a former White House aide, alleges a campaign of slander and intimidation has been waged against her by Hillary since she made the sex assault allegations.

Scandal?: Hillary Clinton said recently she was glad she had stood by Bill

Her book "Target: Caught in the Crosshairs of Bill and Hillary Clinton" details what she says are the threats made against her by the Clintons and their allies.

The most damaging allegation concerns the apparent suicide of her husband Ed in 1993.

He died from a gunshot wound to the head on the day Willey claimed she was sexually assaulted by Clinton in the Oval Office.

Willey insists her husband's death was murder and not suicide.

In an interview published on a US news website to coincide with the book's publication she says she has "suspicions" the Clintons were involved.

Asked by a reporter from World Net Daily if the Clintons were involved in her husband's death she replied: "I do have my suspicions. Yes."

A spokesman for Mrs Clinton's Democratic campaign refused to make any comment last night on the allegations.

Scroll down for more ...

Claims: The cover for Kathleen Willey's book

Willey also claims the Clintons were behind a burglary at her home in Virginia four months ago when she says thieves tried to steal the manuscript of the book after excerpts were serialised in a magazine.

Willey, 57, was working as a volunteer in the White House when she said Clinton assaulted her.

According to Willey, during a meeting in the private study off the Oval Office, Clinton embraced her, kissed her on the mouth and fondled her breast. She also claimed he placed her hand on his crotch.

Clinton denied ever assaulting Willey in the incident which allegedly took place five years before the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

Willey never gave evidence to a Clinton's impeachment trial after some members of the House and Senate refused to allow her to testify.

On the same night the alleged assault took place in November 1993, Willey's husband Ed died from a single gunshot wound.

The Virginia lawyer was over £300,000 in debt and had embezzled money from a client.

He left a suicide note in which he apologised for running up the debts, and also a $100 lottery ticket for his wife.

Willey claims in her book that the autopsy on her husband failed to show it was suicide.

She says the coroner told her he died from a shot fired by a right-handed person, while her husband was left-handed.

Willey also claims her husband's death bore striking similarities to that of Vince Foster.

He was a deputy White House counsel and close friend of Hillary who committed suicide in 1993.

Willey says she wrote the book because of misunderstanding about what had happened. She said: "There is so much misinformation out there. I now have the opportunity to set the record straight."

From Ann Arbor News:

Springsteen delivers more than just a concert
BY DOUG PULLEN
Ann Arbor News Bureau

Tuesday, November 06, 2007

AUBURN HILLS - I call them Springsteen Moments. They're those fleeting,
turn-on-a-dime points in a Bruce Springsteen concert that can elevate it
from just a show to a near religious experience.

Last night at The Palace of Auburn Hills, that moment came in the form
of a little boy, no more than 6 or 7, perched atop, presumably, his
father's shoulders on the floor, which was standing-room-only and
general admission.

Springsteen, 58, and his exalted E Street Band had just finished the
first song of an encore that provided a lighter contrast to the heavy
earnestness that had preceded it for nearly two hours.

Springsteen had seen the boy earlier in the show and asked him what had
happened to the sign he'd been brandishing. He stepped down on the
catwalk in front of the stage, politely took the sign from the little
boy, said something to him, then returned to the microphone and held up
the sign for all to see.

"Ramrod Please,'' it said simply.

"Haven't played it in five years,'' Springsteen said of the obscurity
from 1980's "The River,'' before firing off its driving six-string intro
and calling to guitarist Little Steven Van Zandt to follow suit.

The band steamrolled through the sexually suggestive song, and suddenly
a concert that had been so somber with its old and new songs about the
American condition turned into a celebration of its people, culture,
cars and, of course, its women.

The last half-hour of the concert had suddenly become a celebration on a
grand scale.

Prior to that five-song finale, the performance before a
less-than-capacity crowd of about 16,000 had a far more intense and
serious tone to it.

"Dee-troit, is there anybody alive out there,'' Springsteen shouted
before ripping into "Radio Nowhere,'' one of nine songs from his
dark-yet-accessible new album "Magic,'' one that's about finding a
connection in an increasingly disconnected world.

The 17 songs that followed were delivered in rapid-fire succession, with
little introduction. They weaved together a tapestry of songs about love
(Bruce's duet with wife Patti Scialfa on "Tunnel of Love,'' was
particularly touching), oppression (the rarely performed "Jackson
Cage,''), post-9/11 resurrection (a powerful "The Rising''),
determination amidthe darkness (a swamp-boogie version of "Reason to
Believe'' with Springsteen on harmonica) and belief in a better life
("Promised Land'').

When positioned alongside some of the nine songs he included from the
new "Magic'' album, those older songs take on newer, timelier shadings.
As an added bonus, the new songs fit very well with the old ones.

Springsteen's all about making a connection. That's the foundation on
which his relationship with his devoted fans is all about.

But it wasn't until that little boy cracked the Boss' hard veneer that a
true connection was made and what could have been an impressive but
overly serious show turned into a celebration in one moment of
spontaneity.

From The New Statesman:
Holy fools
Jeff Sharlet

Published 25 October 2007

In the 1960s, hippies, rock stars and progressives flocked to Francis Schaeffer's
Christian retreat, L'Abri - but his ideas laid the ground for America's religious right.

When, in 1997, Christianity Today, the flagship magazine of American evangelicalism, decided to pay tribute to the late Francis Schaeffer, the theologian and popular writer must have seemed like an odd choice to those not familiar with the twists and turns of the evangelical world. Most of Schaeffer's work and life was at sharp odds with American-style evangelicalism.

Raised in Pennsylvania, Schaeffer lived much of his life as an expatriate in a Swiss chalet. His early books in the 1960s struck out against American evangelicalism's know-nothingism. When he lectured in the US, he would discuss the films of Bergman and Fellini on Christian campuses that wouldn't allow screenings of Bambi. He welcomed seekers from all faiths at his Swiss retreat, and didn't worry about the baggage they brought with them. "Backpacking private pharmacies," as Frank Schaeffer, son of Francis, characterises his father's disciples. L'Abri (or "the shelter"), as his father called the home they opened to all-comers, was in the 1960s and 1970s - the height of Schaeffer's intellectual production - a place of blasting music at all hours, drugs, sex and rock'n'roll. When a young Frank Schaeffer happened to meet Jimmy Page in 1969, Led Zeppelin's guitarist pulled a copy of one of Schaeffer Sr's early books, Escape From Reason, from his pocket and declared it "very cool". He said Clapton had given it to him.

And yet here Schaeffer was, filling pages in Christianity Today. To make the case for his relevance, the magazine noted the heirs to his legacy, the men who had carried his counter cultural theology into the world: among them Jerry Falwell; Pat Robertson; Randall Terry, founder of the militant anti-abortion crusade Operation Rescue; and Tim LaHaye, founder of the ultra-right Council for National Policy and co-author of the Left Behind series of apocalyptic novels that have sold 65 million copies around the world. These men claimed Schaeffer not just as a major influence, but as one of the most important thinkers of conservative evangelicalism of the 20th century. Indeed, one of its only "thinkers": Christian right leaders have long been aware of their movement's relative lack of gravitas. "From the mid-1970s until he died," recalls Frank, "Dad was drafted . . . by the Missouri Synod Lutherans, Southern Baptists and other conservative denominations as a kind of intellectual heavy-gun-for-hire."

What happened? How did Francis Schaeffer's work go from Jimmy Page's back pocket to the hate-filled pulp of LaHaye, the spittle of Falwell? In 1969, Eric Clapton recorded a song called "Do What You Like" with a band called Blind Faith; almost three decades later, another Schaeffer fan, James Kopp, with Schaeffer's ideas swirling around his head in a toxic stew of bad theology, shot an abortion provider, Dr Barnett Slepian, to death. Who got Schaeffer wrong? The hippies who flocked to L'Abri, or Falwell? Clapton, or Kopp?

That question haunts Frank Schaeffer's new memoir of being Francis Schaeffer's son, Crazy for God: How I Grew Up As One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back. (My pre-publication copy sports a blunter subtitle: How I Helped Found the Religious Right and Ruin America.) It's a brilliant book, a portrait of fun damentalism painted in broad strokes with streaks of nuance, the twinned coming-of-age story of Frank and the Christian right. But this story moves in more than one direction: both coming-of-age narratives are pulled against the current by the tragedy of Francis Schaeffer, a man who let his children, biological and ideo logical, guide him down a path from which he'd spent his whole life struggling to get off.

"Fran" Schaeffer grew up working-class in Germantown, Pennsylvania, a short, muscular boy abandoned by his father at age 12, berated by his mother his whole life, and born again in a tent revival at age 17. Schaeffer was a fighter in spirit as well as in fact, and he quickly took to the most belligerent expressions of his new faith. He met his wife, Edith, when he impressed her by standing up in a church to challenge a preacher who didn't hew to the doctrine of absolute biblical inerrancy. It was Edith who persuaded Fran to apprentice himself to J Gresham Machen, one of the early theorists of modern fundamentalism - a choice that would thereafter direct Fran's considerable intellectual talents toward the defence of a faith at war with itself, as American Protestantism split into warring camps, not just fun damentalist and liberal, but endless varieties of fundamentalism, each sniping at the other.

"My father's theology was formed in a particularly bitter moment," writes Frank, "and never evolved with the rest of his thinking. The theological battles of the 1920s and 1930s shaped Dad in the same way that political battles would shape the Vietnam generation in the 1960s." And yet, if Francis Schaeffer's theology did not grow, his "world-view", as he called it, certainly expanded. He read widely across philosophy, literature and history, hungered for new music and old, and, most of all, fell in love with art.

"Dad had one big idea: God has revealed himself to us through the Bible. And he spent a lifetime trying to fit everything into that one idea, and explain away anything that didn't fit." Schaeffer tried to convince himself that his love of art was in service to this one big idea. "Instead of spouting Bible verses," Frank writes, explaining his father's appeal to hippies, freaks and would-be intellectuals allergic to old-school fundamentalism, "Dad talked about philosophy, art and culture. Only when he had gained his listener's interest would he slip in a more traditional 'Jesus Saves' message."

The impact of this technique on American religion - and, consequently, the politics of the US and thus the world - can hardly be overestimated. Evangelicals were savvy to marketing long before Francis Schaeffer came along, but he taught a generation of evangelical leaders to engage "the culture" - it's a singular beast, in their imaginations - as fully as possible, the better to conquer it. Schaeffer was writing at a time when a different branch of elite evangelicals were self-consciously emulating what they understood of communist revolutionary techniques, "boring from within", "infiltrating" Establishment power. Schaeffer's approach was the subtler and, ultimately, more successful, heir - though he wouldn't like to think it - to the syncretic religion promoted by Roman Catholic missionaries, who around the world merged their saints with local systems of belief so seamlessly that conquest by the sword wasn't necessary. Schaeffer's similar strategy of cultural engagement explains why, after the age of Falwell and the collapse of George W Bush, evangelicalism remains influential, even if its old Republican patrons do not; one need only review the God-talk of the new Democratic candidates for president to hear echoes of Schaeffer's philosophy: the call for a "spiritual" solution to "material" problems, the acknowledgement of capitalism's awful limits unaccompanied by any systemic challenge to its predations.

The tragedy of Francis Schaeffer is that, at some deep inner level, he knew what he preached was a con. In 1967, he took his son Frank to Italy to share with him the art that he loved. "In theory, Dad was opposed to the 'humanism of the Renaissance' and was a champion of 'Northern European Reformation art', the works of the good Protestants. But in practice, it was the art of the Italian Renaissance that we spent much more time soaking up . . . In his L'Abri lectures, and later in his books, Dad would explain and even lament all this 'humanistic art' that placed 'man, not God, at the centre of the universe'. But when he was looking at the art with me, all we talked about was how beautiful it was, how remarkable." Standing before The Birth of Venus or Giotto's bell tower, Frank writes: "I saw Dad as he might have been, free of the crushing belief that God had 'called' him to save the world."

And yet it was Frank who reignited that belief in the mid-1970s, just as his father seemed finally to be shedding his fundamentalist leaves altogether. In 1972, a political evangelist named Billy Zeoli showed up at L'Abri to persuade Francis that with Zeoli's backer - the ultra-right Amway chieftain Richard DeVos - Francis could project his message far beyond L'Abri. Frank was even more tempted than his father; Zeoli was talking of movie-making, and the 20-year-old wanted in.

The result? Two series of films directed by Frank, How Should We Then Live? and Whatever Happened to the Human Race?, that are still shown in church basements to this day. Osten sibly created to allow Francis to connect his love of art with the fundamentalist gospel for a wide audience, the films became sacred texts of the anti-abortion movement. That was Frank's doing - Francis at first considered abortion a "Catholic issue", but his son persuaded him that it merited an all-out culture war, a battle Frank would fight for years before realising that, just because his fury over the issue was personal, it didn't have to be political. Yet long before then, his father had slipped so completely back to his fundamentalist roots that in 1981 he published the bestselling Christian Manifesto, a central text for the modern movement that trumpeted the belligerent Christian nationalism that Francis had once disdained.

And the art? The most succinct illustration of the clash between the Schaefferism that could have been, and the fundamentalism that instead fed and grew on his work, occurred when Billy Zeoli told the Schaeffers they had to cut some footage from How Should We Then Live?. Frank had put his father on some scaffolding next to Michelangelo's David to give a sense of scale, and the senior Schaeffer, high above the ground, close to the art he loved, had been transported into a distinctly unfundamentalist rhapsody. But that wasn't Zeoli's problem. He wasn't concerned with ideas. It was David's exposed genitals. American evangelicals, he said, just weren't ready for that.

Frank pointed out that they'd included footage of Mary's breast in depictions of the Virgin and the Baby Jesus. "One holy tit is OK," Zeoli responded. "But churches don't do cock!"

The senior Schaeffer gave in, muttering his dissent: "We're working with fools."

Jeff Sharlet is a contributing editor of Rolling Stone magazine. His book The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power will be published by HarperCollins in April 2008.

Crazy for God: How I Grew Up As One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back, Frank Schaeffer, Da Capo Press, 304pp, £15.99

From AssociatedContent.com:
Oral Roberts' Richard Roberts
Fights Back Against Lawsuit
By Adam Willard

Every passing week in the Oral Roberts University scandal that began over a month ago seems to bring fresh controversy and potentially more damaging light on its current President, Richard Roberts and his attempts at avoiding the lawsuit's accusations.

The public side of the ORU scandal began on October 2^nd when several former professors from Oral Roberts University's history and government department filed a lawsuit against ORU's President, Richard Roberts, and several other high-ranking members of the school's administration. The lawsuit alleges that the professors were wrongfully terminated for resisting illegal political maneuvering and for presenting a document (a "Scandal Vulnerability Assessment" prepared by Richard Roberts sister-in-law) to the school's Board of Regents.

The Oral Roberts University lawsuit has attracted national attention because the "Scandal Vulnerability Assessment" included in the lawsuit refers to numerous claims and pieces of evidence that the Roberts family have misused and abused ORU funds for personal use and that Lindsay Roberts might have had inappropriate sexual relations with an underage male.

Initially, Richard Roberts denied all wrongdoing and refused requests to step down, even temporarily, from his office as President of Oral Roberts University. Nonetheless, as national attention increased and the full "Scandal Vulnerability Assessment" was released (which included the more salacious reports of Lindsay Roberts inappropriate involvement with the underage male), Richard Roberts took a leave of absence from his post at the university.

Since then, Victory Christian Center pastor Billy Joe Daugherty (recently re-instated as a member of the Board of Regents after he stepped down due to a falling-out with Richard Roberts earlier in the summer) has taken the position of President of the University for the duration of Richard Roberts' absence. Founder of the university, Oral Roberts, has also returned to Tulsa from his home in California to "help" lead the school and to assure the public that Richard Roberts would be completely absolved and returned to his position as President. However, George Pearsons, chair of the school's Board of Regents, says they will do whatever is necessary when the investigation is complete, even if it means permanently removing Richard Roberts against Chancellor Oral Roberts' wishes.

In the meantime, Richard Roberts has been continuing to work at his TV ministry as a part of Oral Roberts Ministries. An employee of the TV studio there has informed me that Richard Roberts has held a meeting with staff and has commented on the situation. According to this source, Richard Roberts has said, "some of the accusations are false, and some are true, but have been twisted." He is also reported as saying, "through this situation, God has shown [us] mistakes that need to be corrected, and [we] are going to correct them."

However, Richard Roberts' statements in public are decidedly different from what he has told some of his employees. In a recent legal motion filed by Richard Roberts, it is stated that "Dr. Roberts denies each and every allegation or inference of wrongful conduct related to the plaintiff's claims involving wrongful termination." Quite different from "some are true" or that there are "mistakes that need to be corrected", he has again publicly denied "each and every allegation or inference of wrongful conduct."

In this same legal action, filed October 26^th, Richard Roberts seeks a gag order against the Professors' right to speak publicly concerning the lawsuit, saying the publicity received has been "especially damaging" to them and that it might hurt their chances of receiving a fair trial. In another legal action filed that same day by Roberts' lawyers, it is stated that the "Scandal Vulnerability Assessment," prepared by Richard Roberts' sister-in-law, was included in the document to "harass and injure Dr. Roberts and his family" and that it demonstrates "the dishonorable motivations behind plaintiffs' lawsuit." The day after the professors' original lawsuit was filed on Oct. 2^nd, Richard Roberts also stated in the University's school-wide public chapel service that, "This lawsuit... is about intimidation, blackmail and extortion."

Although Richard Roberts doesn't want the professors to have the ability to speak publicly about the lawsuit, Richard Roberts has spoken publicly about it numerous times, including an appearance on Larry King Live's national television show. Several times he has stated that the professors' personal intentions with the lawsuit were dishonorable (even calling it "blackmail") and Richard Roberts' recent legal actions describe the professors' lawsuit as a scheme that they've devised for "a quick, lucrative settlement." However, the professors themselves have only spoken about the lawsuit and their wrongful termination, not about Richard Roberts' personal intentions or the factuality of the document prepared by Roberts' sister-in-law.

The same day that Richard Roberts' attorneys sought the gag order against the professors, they also filed legal actions attempting to have the first and second revision of the lawsuit thrown out and "treated as if it was never filed." The legal action claims that the professors' lawsuit was not properly formatted and resembled a "fictional short story."

More recently, on Friday, November 2^nd, Richard Roberts' attorneys filed another legal action requesting that the professors' attorney, Gary Richardson, be disqualified from representing the professors in the lawsuit. The new filing also asked the court to force the professors to participate in mediation in lieu of an actual court trial.

The legal action states that Gary Richardson's representation of the professors constitutes a "conflict of interest" by stating that the author of the "Scandal Vulnerability Assessment", Stephanie Cantees, Richard Roberts' sister-in-law, is a "long-term" client of Gary Richardson's. However, Gary Richardson says that Stephanie Cantees sought his services for several lawsuits in which he ultimately declined to represent her. Richardson's law firm was in charge of Cantees' divorce settlement, but he states that he has never personally been her attorney.

Richard Roberts' newest legal action also presents Cantees' first statements about the situation. In it, Cantees states that she spoke to Gary Richardson about the "stolen" document and how to "recover" it after she learned that Brooker (one of the professors filing the lawsuit) had a copy of it. Gary Richardson states "that Stephanie Cantees has never discussed any of the matters pertaining to the lawsuit with me." It can be assumed that Richardson is referring specifically to the termination of the professors, the primary allegation in the lawsuit, since the "Scandal Vulnerability Assessment" was just provided as the document which supposedly got the professors fired. If Richardson has not been specifically consulted or retained by both opposing parties regarding the current lawsuit, as he claims, then there is technically nothing to constitute a "conflict of interest" or any other reason to prevent him from representing the professors.

On top of this, Roberts' most recent legal action requests that the court force the professors to engage in mediation outside of court. Previously, the professors have stated that they tried to engage in mediation with Roberts and the Board of Regents concerning the illegal political involvement and the "Scandal Vulnerability Assessment," but that they were threatened instead. Now that Richards' attorneys have been seeking mediation with the professors for the last few weeks, they have refused, stating that they will not engage in mediation until the Roberts stop "telling the public that they've done nothing wrong."

Roberts' first legal action, October 26^th, asked for a court hearing to happen soon in order to "avoid further prejudice to defendants." On October 31^st, a court hearing for the lawsuit was set for December 11^th in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Now, in Roberts' most recent legal action, filed November 2^nd, he attempts to have the professors' lawyer removed and force the professors to engage in mediation outside of court.

It seems that if Richard Roberts would just state publicly what he told TV studio employees, that "some facts are true" and that "there are mistakes that need to be corrected," he may have his wish of mediation with the professors. However, his recent legal actions seem to demonstrate that he is not willing to publicly follow through with what he has said in private. Instead, it seems that Richard Roberts is again engaged in attempts to shush any mention of wrongful conduct on his part, this time attempting to use the court of law to keep the professors quiet.

For those of us concerned with the current state and future of Oral Roberts University, we can only hope that a distorted use of law won't prevent whoever is at fault here from being brought to justice. I completely believe that an open and honest presentation of the facts in a court of law is the best hope for justice to be served.

From the Los Angeles Times: Brilliant piece.
Picking up after failed war on terror
Bush's campaign to wipe out terrorism is a costly mess.
Here are five steps to move on.
By Andrew J. Bacevich

November 6, 2007

Don't expect to hear this from the White House any time soon, but the global war on terrorism conceived in the wake of 9/11 has effectively ended. As President Bush travels from one military post to the next giving pep talks to soldiers, he manfully sustains the pretense that V-T Day is just around the corner. Yet events have shredded the strategy that his administration was counting on to produce its victory over terrorism.

War requires adherence to principles. Once a conflict becomes an exercise in improvisation, it ceases to be meaningful. It becomes the antithesis of war -- killing without political purpose or moral justification.

The Bush administration is no longer engaged in a principled effort to address the threat posed by violent Islamic radicalism. In lieu of principles, the administration now engages in crisis management, reacting to problems as they pop up. Last week, it was Turkey's threat to invade Iraqi Kurdistan. This week, it's Pervez Musharraf, key ally and beneficiary of $10 billion in U.S. aid since 2001, imposing naked military rule on Pakistan. Next week, who knows what surprises await?

This much we can say with certainty: Bush is as much in the dark as you are.

It wasn't always this way. During the heady run-up to the invasion of Iraq, the president was boldly promising that the United States, drawing on its "unparalleled military strength and great economic and political influence," would not only "defend the peace by fighting terrorists and tyrants" but also "extend the benefits of freedom across the globe."

Stripped of its hyperbole, this meant that the Bush administration intended to nudge, cajole, bribe or bludgeon regimes across the Islamic world into embracing modernity so that they would no longer breed, harbor or otherwise support terrorists. Condoleezza Rice put it this way: Because the United States "has always been, and will always be, not a status quo power but a revolutionary power," the Bush administration was going to engineer a democratic revolution, thereby creating what Rice called a "new Middle East."

This revolution has demonstrably failed. In such places as Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, it never got off the ground. In the West Bank and Gaza, free and fair elections delivered power into the hands of Hamas. In Lebanon, the people voted in droves for Hezbollah. In each case, the United States refused to accept the outcome, opening itself to charges of hypocrisy.

In Afghanistan, the promotion of democracy has yielded record opium crops and a resurgence of the Taliban. Then there is Iraq. The "liberation" that deposed a dictator gave rise to civil war, created a vacuum that Al Qaeda was quick to fill and has benefited no one apart from the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Policymakers such as Rice, who once disdained mere stability, are now frantically trying to prevent the greater Middle East from sliding into chaos. As the clock runs down on the Bush era, the administration preoccupies itself with damage control.

Given that Bush's version of global war has proved such a costly flop, what ought to replace it? Answering that question requires a new set of principles to guide U.S. policy. Here are five:

* Rather than squandering American power, husband it. As Iraq has shown, U.S. military strength is finite. The nation's economic reserves and diplomatic clout also are limited. They badly need replenishment.

* Align ends with means. Although Bush's penchant for Wilsonian rhetoric may warm the cockles of neoconservative hearts, it raises expectations that cannot be met. Promise only the achievable.

* Let Islam be Islam. The United States possesses neither the capacity nor the wisdom required to liberate the world's 1.4 billion Muslims, who just might entertain their own ideas about what genuine freedom entails. Islam will eventually accommodate itself to the modern world, but Muslims will have to work out the terms.

* Reinvent containment. The process of negotiating that accommodation will produce unwelcome fallout: anger, alienation, scapegoating and violence. In collaboration with its allies, the United States must insulate itself against Islamic radicalism. The imperative is not to wage global war, whether real or metaphorical, but to erect effective defenses, as the West did during the Cold War.

* Exemplify the ideals we profess. Rather than telling others how to live, Americans should devote themselves to repairing their own institutions. Our enfeebled democracy just might offer the place to start.

The essence of these principles can be expressed in a single word: realism, which implies seeing ourselves as we really are and the world as it actually is.

Andrew J. Bacevich is a professor of history and international relations at Boston University.

From VDare.com:
Say It Isn’t So!
Bruce Springsteen Is An Open Borders Advocate!
By Joe Guzzardi

This is a column I didn’t want to write.

But when it comes to mass immigration, we at VDARE.COM treat all who support it equally—we come crashing down on them.

So it is, with disappointment, that I expose Bruce Springsteen as a blatant open borders and illegal immigration supporter.

What makes my depiction tough is that, through his music and high-energy concerts, Springsteen has provided millions like me with great pleasure.

The irony is that the "Boss" is an artist who, since his rock and roll beginnings thirty years ago in Asbury Park, New Jersey, has represented himself as an advocate for the American underdog.

Adding to the irony is that Springsteen is, I believe, sincere in his concern about the little guy and deeply disdainful of the federal government bureaucrats who serve themselves without regard for its citizens. Bruce never fails to plug the local food banks that have tables set up inside the arena where he is performing.

Yet what Springsteen misses—oh, so painfully—is the obvious connection between illegal immigration and the demise of the suffering middle-class.

Let me back up to 1984 in Tacoma, Washington when I saw my first Bruce concert.

On the scheduled day of the show, Springsteen came up ill. And about 5:00 p.m., only hours before the starting time, radio stations throughout Seattle, announced: "No Bruce Springsteen tonight! The show has been postponed until tomorrow."

Everyone’s plans were fouled up. Many who could make it on the original day, couldn’t make it the next.

The following night when Bruce walked onto the stage, aware of the inconvenience he had inadvertently caused, he said: "I’ll make it up to you. We’ll be rocking all night long."

For the next four hours, to his fans’ delight, Bruce played non-stop. The Tacoma Dome literally shook.

As everyone learned, when you go to a Springsteen concert, you get your money’s worth.

Since Tacoma, where Springsteen sang songs from his Born in the U.S.A. album (I had no idea at the time how much that phrase would eventually mean to me), I’ve seen Springsteen several times including his recent stop in Oakland (read the review here) where he promoted his new album, Magic.

Springsteen is the same old Bruce—no opening act, no intermission—just his best music from 15 studio albums.

A Springsteen concert is—or should be—a welcome relief from the National Question’s overwhelming weight.

And everything was fine until the finale, American Land, a Springsteen original based on a Pete Seeger song and added as a bonus track to the special edition release of his 2006 album, We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions.

The American Land lyrics were displayed on large overhead projectors. So there was no possible misunderstanding. (Read them here.)

The romanticized, upbeat tune about why people journey to America started innocently enough:

"I docked at Ellis Island in a city of light and spire
I wandered to the valley of red-hot steel and fire
We made the steel that built the cities with the sweat of our two hands
And I made my home in the American land

There's diamonds in the sidewalk, there's gutters lined in song
Dear, I hear that beer flows through the faucets all night long
There's treasure for the taking, for any hard-working man
Who will make his home in the American land

The McNichols, the Posalskis, the Smiths, Zerillis too
The Blacks, the Irish, the Italians, the Germans and the Jews.”

My Italian grandparents and Springsteen’s grandmother ("Zerilli") "docked at Ellis Island," made their "home in the American land"—so far, so good.

But then came the crusher:

"The Puerto Ricans, illegals, the Asians, Arabs miles from home
Come across the water with a fire down below

“They died building the railroads, worked to bones and skin
They died in the fields and factories, names scattered in the wind
They died to get here a hundred years ago, they're dyin' now
The hands that built the country we're all trying to keep down."

In the blink of an eye, my night off from immigration came to an abrupt end. I was suddenly "on-duty".

Except for the chorus, those words that misrepresented what immigration reform is about—"The hands that built the country we're all trying to keep down"—were the last Bruce sang that night.

I left the obnoxiously named Oracle Arena angry—furious at Bruce for his song, and mad at myself for being angry, if you can follow that.

After all, I had anted up big money for the tickets, fought the traffic for two hours, paid the equivalent of a week’s worth of groceries to park only to end up listening to Springsteen’s ode to illegal immigration.

And I was irked at myself because, in reality, I may have been the only person who picked up on Springsteen’s message. As I exited the venue, I didn’t hear anyone say: "Wow, Bruce wants more illegal immigration and lots more immigrants from Arab countries! Let’s do all we can to help further his cause."

For all I know, Springsteen’s lyric may just have been words that worked in his song. But for a talent like Bruce, I can’t imagine that it would have taken much effort to write something else.

When I returned home, my curiosity piqued, I discovered that American Land is not Bruce’s only foray into immigration advocacy.

Another cut from Magic is a song based on Springsteen’s New Jersey youth, Long Walk Home and inspired by the gospel classic, "Rank Strangers (To Me)"

Like American Land, it offers an insightful beginning:

"In town I passed Sal's grocery
The barbershop on South Street
I looked in their faces
They were all rank strangers to me

“My father said Son, we're lucky in this town,
It's a beautiful place to be born.
It just wraps its arms around you,
Nobody crowds you and nobody goes it alone".

Hard to believe as it is, these words describe the Los Angeles of my own early years: "a beautiful place to be born…nobody crowds you…" We were "lucky" to have been born there.

Then Springsteen’s tone shifted:

"You know that flag flying over the courthouse
Means certain things are set in stone
Who we are, what we'll do and what we won't."

In case you miss Bruce’s meaning, see his YouTube.com video (watch it here) where, when those words are sung at about the three minute mark, (3:12) the camera flashes to a young Hispanic man staring through a chain link fence.

Here’s what Springsteen told New York Times critic, A. O. Scott about "Long Walk Home":

"In that particular song a guy comes back to his town and recognizes nothing and is recognized by nothing. The singer in Long Walk Home, that's his experience. His world has changed. The things that he thought he knew, the people who he thought he knew, whose ideals he had something in common with, are like strangers. The world that he knew feels totally alien. I think that's what's happened in this country in the past six years." [In Love With Pop, Uneasy With the World, By A. O. Scott, New York Times, September 21, 2007]

Springsteen’s analysis describes exactly my feelings when I return to Los Angeles.

What Springsteen failed to acknowledge is the "people he thought he knew" have most likely left his hometown of Long Branch (now 20 percent Hispanic) pushed out by immigration.

And his old neighbors whose "ideals he thought he had something in common with" are probably vehemently opposed to mass, particularly immigration.

Springsteen is so close to getting it! But his liberal leanings (he once lived in Beverly Hills) just don’t allow him to follow his instincts to their logical conclusion—legal and illegal immigration plays a major role in changing the world he grew up in and loved.

That’s a pity. Although I don’t believe that Springsteen’s advocacy matters—American sentiment has shifted against him dramatically—if he were to speak out on immigration’s obvious impact, Bruce could help us take another big step forward.

I don’t expect any pro-immigration enforcement songs from Bruce. Writing a catchy tune about border enforcement might be tough. [VDARE.COM NOTE: Country Singer W.C Edgar did—you can hear him sing "Red, White and Black" at this link—his website is here.]

But a few well placed words, like to the Times’ Scott [email him], would be a pleasant relief from the standard Hollywood patter.

Who knows? Perhaps other elites would follow.

And then maybe I could finally get a night off.

Joe Guzzardi [e-mail him] is the Editor of VDARE.COM Letters to the Editor. In addition, he is an English teacher at the Lodi Adult School and has been writing a weekly newspaper column since 1988. This column is exclusive to VDARE.COM.

LIBERTAS Review: American Gangster

There’s a moment late in American Gangster when the great Bobby Womack’s empowerment, anti-drug classic, Across 110th Street blares over the soundtrack as the camera swoops through the streets of early-70s Harlem moving the story through montage:

I was the third brother of five,
Doing whatever I had to do to survive.
I’m not saying what I did was alright,
Trying to break out of the ghetto was a day to day fight.
Been down so long, getting up didn’t cross my mind,
I knew there was a better way of life that I was just trying to find.
You don’t know what you’ll do until you’re put under pressure,
Across 110th Street is a hell of a tester.

This is a confident director using that song and daring many of us to remember the little known but much beloved 1972 film of the same name; a film like Gangster about the cauldron of race, drugs, black hustlers, Italian mobsters, and corrupt cops boiling between 110th and 165th street during an era when America seemed to have lost her way.

But Director Ridley Scott sure knows his way and like the use of the song, every move in his thematically-rich and detailed, near-masterpiece, brims with confidence and style to burn in a fact-based tale detailing the methodical step-by-step process that brought two non-conformists working on opposite sides of the law together one early Sunday morning.

It was Ellsworth “Bumpy” Johnson (the still formidable Clarence Williams III), who ran Harlem, but after his death it was his driver and protege Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington) who made it his own. Spotting a market need for a better quality of heroin at a cheaper price, Frank personally arranges for a limitless supply of pure heroin from Vietnam through an ingenious smuggling technique that soon has the Italian mob working for him.

Frank isn’t above lighting someone on fire to retain his power, but he’s also smart enough to keep a low-profile by insulating himself with his five brothers and dressing like the CEO of a Fortune 500 company instead of a street hustler. The tens-of-millions he makes is used for tastefully furnished high-rise Manhattan penthouses and to buy his mother (Ruby Dee) a big country family home with custom-made furniture to replace what was lost to bill collectors during his impoverished youth.

But Frank’s love of family is also his weak spot. He lets his new wife convince him to wear a chinchilla fur coat and hat to the Ali-Frazier fight at Madison Square Garden and that’s what catches an ever watchful Richie Roberts’ (Russell Crowe) eye.

Richie got into some career-trouble after finding nearly a million dollars in unmarked bills and turning every penny in instead of spreading the wealth around to his fellow police officers. With no one willing to work with him any longer, he’s assigned to lead a special federal narcotics operation and assemble a team of untouchables to stop the flow of “blue magic,” Frank’s wildly popular new heroin, which Richie and his team assume is a mob product.

Other than their collision course, Richie and Frank have one other thing in common and that’s Detective Trupo (Josh Brolin), a sleazy cop with his own gang of sleazy cops who wants a big fat envelope from Frank every week and for Richie not to stop that delivery with a pesky arrest. Director Scott expertly stirs these disparate characters for a full two-hours until something gives, and gives in a way you wouldn’t have expected.

Comparisons are inevitable: Serpico’s honest-to-a-fault cop unable to handle any kind of home life; The French Connection’s flashy drug-lord taken down on the dirty streets of New York by a relentless working class detective following a lucky break to the ends of the earth; The Godfather’s epic look at “family.” But Ridley Scott makes it his own and rather than ape Lumet, Friedkin, and Coppola, he joins them with a worthy entry/hybrid into a well-worn genre.

With two powerhouses like Crowe and Washington, Gangster thankfully doesn’t become an actor contest as we’ve seen in many of these hyped situations where “icons meet.” Even in their very few scenes together, the two men are restrained and in character letting one terrific script by Steve Zallian do the work for them.

Beautifully filmed with a perfect eye for time and place, Gangster’s lovely to look at but would’ve benefitted from a leaner running time and the loss an unnecessary subplot with Cuba Gooding Jr. But that’s a small complaint for such a rich and smartly crafted story, beautifully acted from top to bottom, and told maturely through theme and character.

From The Tulsa World:
Debt weighs down ORU
by: ZIVA BRANSTETTER World Projects Editor
11/4/2007

It's grappled with shortfall for many years

Oral Roberts University's total liabilities more than doubled and its expenses outpaced revenues by $73 million during a 14-year period studied by the Tulsa World.

The World reviewed financial records and other documents for the fiscal years 1993 through 2006, the most recent tax year available.

ORU refused a request last week by the Tulsa World to release several financial documents posted in a password-protected area of its Web site.

The documents were part of ORU's preparation for a visit, scheduled to begin Monday, by the Higher Learning Commission, which accredits higher education institutions in 19 states. It has accredited ORU since 1971.

Internal documents obtained by the Tulsa World show that university officials were concerned in 2002 about the impact ORU's debt would have on its accreditation.

In a Powerpoint presentation on its finances, ORU explored formulas that the Higher Learning Commission uses to monitor the financial health of institutions it accredits.

One slide, titled "Capacity to operate within revenues," states: "The University is not able to operate within available resources and must identify initiatives to reverse this trend. . . . It appears the university must fund affiliates."

Public disclosure forms filed with the IRS, known as 990 forms, show that ORU has three affiliated nonprofit organizations: the Oral Roberts Evangelistic Association, Oral Roberts Educational Fellowship and University Village Inc. It also has eight taxable subsidiaries that handle investments, promotions, property management and the university's television station.

Another Powerpoint slide, titled "resources to cover debt," says ORU fell below the ratio of a "strong credit worthy institution." The presentation states: "For 2001 and 2002, this ratio points out the University would have the ability to cover about 6-1/2 months of expenses.

"The ratio shows an inability to raise funds from outside sources. The ratio also points to an inability to react to adverse conditions."

The Higher Learning Commission has apparently had long-standing concerns about ORU's finances. A document titled "Self-Study Report" that is posted on ORU's Web site states that the commission's evaluation team gave ORU five challenges during its 1997 visit.

"The five challenges . . . were all directly or indirectly related to finances," the ORU report states.

The self-study refers to several financial reports ORU submitted to the commission, including "ORU's Progress Report on Financial Stability," which it submitted last year. The university denied a Tulsa World request for copies of the reports.

Officials of the Higher Learning Commission referred questions about ORU to the university.

In a 1997 Tulsa World story, ORU President Richard Roberts said the school had cut its debt in half since 1994 and that its operating deficit had been eliminated. But the university's tax records show that total liabilities increased by $20 million during that time and the deficit in 1997 was $2.3 million.

Roberts told the World in 2001 that ORU was making progress in its effort to dig itself out of a $56 million deficit that he had inherited when he took over the school in 1993. Roberts said then that ORU had paid off $29 million of the deficit in eight years, leaving the school only $27 million in debt.

Records, however, show that ORU's total liabilities increased from $34 million to $74 million during that time.

The 2002 Powerpoint presentation lists total revenues, expenses and debt between 1993 and 2002. When data from the most recent tax forms available for ORU are added, figures show that the university's total liabilities increased to $83 million from $38.2 million in the fiscal year that ended in 2006.

Most of the university's liabilities in 2006 came in the form of $53 million in mortgages and other notes payable, records show. The remainder consists of $16 million in refundable student loans, capital leases and payments to affiliates.

During the 14 years, the university spent $73 million more than it brought in. It recorded only two years with a positive balance when expenses are subtracted from revenues: 1993 and 1995.

ORU's losses ranged from nearly $29 million in 1994 to $2 million in 2004, records show.

The university has a substantial financial cushion, although its reserve has declined in recent years. ORU's unrestricted net assets -- investments and holdings it can use to stay afloat — totaled $29 million in 2006.

That figure is a decrease from 2000, when the university reported $63 million in unrestricted net assets.

Overall, the university reported $165 million in total assets, nearly all in land, buildings and equipment. It reported about $4.8 million in cash and savings on hand.

---

ORU affiliates’ activities varied

Oral Roberts University and its ministry arm, the Oral Roberts Evangelistic Association, have a network of related for-profit and nonprofit entities, several of them largely inactive and some worth millions of dollars. Here is available information about the largest of those entities, taken from tax forms:

ORAL ROBERTS EVANGELISTIC ASSOCIATION

Status: Nonprofit

Function: Produces religious television and radio programs, magazines, books, tapes and other materials. Also operates a mail ministry, crusades and seminars, a home ministry and a telephone ministry.

2006 revenue: $12.7 million

2006 expenses: $14.3 million

MARCH DEVELOPMENT CO.

Status: For-profit

Function: Investments

2006 income: 0

2006 end-of-year assets: $4.4 million

TRACO ADVERTISING INC.

Status: For-profit

Function: Advertising for OREA

2006 income: $3 million

2006 end-of-year assets: $683,648

UNIVERSITY BROADCASTING INC.

Status: For-profit

Function: TV broadcasting

2006 income: $655,550

2006 end-of-year assets: $6.9 million

GOLDEN EAGLE COMMUNICATIONS INC.

Status: For-profit

Function: Provides satellite and cable television programs, including shows featuring Richard and Lindsay Roberts and numerous other evangelists.

2006 revenue: $970,766

2006 end-of-year assets: $797,617

ORAL ROBERTS UNIVERSITY ALUMNI FOUNDATION INC.

Status: Nonprofit

Function: Produces magazines and newsletters for alumni events. Also spends funds for university improvements and renovations.

2006 revenue: $777,723

2006 expenses: $835,154

ORAL ROBERTS UNIVERSITY EDUCATIONAL FELLOWSHIP

Status: Nonprofit

Function: Pays for workshops and seminars for students and teachers.

2006 revenue: $385,096

2006 expenses: $381,938

Other entities: 8181 Management Co., 8181 Travel Co., Christian Healing Fellowship, City of Faith Inc., Oral Roberts Evangelistic Assn. of Canada, Prism Enterprises LTD, University Village Inc.

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Ziva Branstetter 581-8378
ziva.branstetter@tulsaworld.com

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