What covers 600 acres, requires 600 portable toilets and is powered by 160,000 watts? It's Creation 2007:

More than 50,000 people gathered here for the nation's largest Christian music event, as the four-day Creation Festival began yesterday with performances by recording artists including Switchfoot.

The festival will feature more than 70 groups performing on two stages before concluding Saturday night with the Newsboys, an Australia-based Christian pop band. ...

Tens of thousands camp out all four days of the festival at Agape Farm here in southwestern Pennsylvania, many arriving Tuesday night in campers and RVs, with thousands more pitching tents on a site that sprawls over 600 acres. ...

In addition to the Christian rock groups, amplified by a 160,000-watt sound system on the main stage, festivalgoers will hear messages from 20 evangelists and other speakers, including Joshua Harris, senior pastor of Covenant Life Church in Gaithersburg.

Wednesday night's performance was interrupted by a thunderstorm that sent concertgoers scurrying for shelter, but helped cool down the sweltering weather.

-- Robert Stacy McCain, assistant national editor, The Washington Times

ISI's Collegiate Network had a reception Thursday at the University Club, after which the crowd adjourned to Fado.

It so happened that I had just finished editing Ralph Hallow's article for Friday's paper about efforts of conservative movement leaders to find the "next wave" of young leadership. Mr. Hallow quoted a remark by David Keene of the American Conservative Union:

Mr. Keene said the problem in finding young leadership is that "the so-called conservative movement of today consists of many young people attracted to politics by one or another politician but without a lot of thought about the philosophical underpinnings that united previous generations of conservatives."

Are young conservatives really so lacking in "philosophical underpinnings"? Mr. Sheahan answered by telling about meeting with conservative students at one campus who wanted to form a club. Mr. Sheahan said he suggested calling the club the Friedrich Hayek Society or the Milton Friedman Society.

The reaction? Blank stares. "They had no idea who they were," Mr. Sheahan said.

Perhaps Mr. Keene is onto something ....

--Robert Stacy McCain, assistant national editor, The Washington Times

ISI's Collegiate Network had a reception Thursday at the University Club, after which the crowd adjourned to Fado.

It so happened that I had just finished editing Ralph Hallow's article for Friday's paper about efforts of conservative movement leaders to find the "next wave" of young leadership. Mr. Hallow quoted a remark by David Keene of the American Conservative Union:

Mr. Keene said the problem in finding young leadership is that "the so-called conservative movement of today consists of many young people attracted to politics by one or another politician but without a lot of thought about the philosophical underpinnings that united previous generations of conservatives."

Are young conservatives really so lacking in "philosophical underpinnings"? Mr. Sheahan answered by telling about meeting with conservative students at one campus who wanted to form a club. Mr. Sheahan said he suggested calling the club the Friedrich Hayek Society or the Milton Friedman Society.

The reaction? Blank stares. "They had no idea who they were," Mr. Sheahan said.

Perhaps Mr. Keene is onto something ....

--Robert Stacy McCain, assistant national editor, The Washington Times

ISI's Collegiate Network had a reception Thursday at the University Club, after which the crowd adjourned to Fado.

It so happened that I had just finished editing Ralph Hallow's article for Friday's paper about efforts of conservative movement leaders to find the "next wave" of young leadership. Mr. Hallow quoted a remark by David Keene of the American Conservative Union:

Mr. Keene said the problem in finding young leadership is that "the so-called conservative movement of today consists of many young people attracted to politics by one or another politician but without a lot of thought about the philosophical underpinnings that united previous generations of conservatives."

Are young conservatives really so lacking in "philosophical underpinnings"? Mr. Sheahan answered by telling about meeting with conservative students at one campus who wanted to form a club. Mr. Sheahan said he suggested calling the club the Friedrich Hayek Society or the Milton Friedman Society.

The reaction? Blank stares. "They had no idea who they were," Mr. Sheahan said.

Perhaps Mr. Keene is onto something ....

--Robert Stacy McCain, assistant national editor, The Washington Times

At this writing, Fox News Channel is doing an aerial pursuit of Paris Hilton, who has been ordered back to jail:

Screaming and crying, Paris Hilton was escorted out of a courtroom and back to jail Friday after a judge ruled that she must serve out her entire 45-day sentence behind bars rather than in her Hollywood Hills home.

"It's not right!" shouted the weeping Hilton, who violated her parole in a reckless driving case. "Mom!" she called out to her mother in the audience.

The obsessive cable-news coverage of Paris Hilton (and other dangerous blondes like Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan) was discussed Wednesday when the Culture and Media Institute released its report, "The Media Assault on American Values," which observed:

"The more a person watches television, the less likely he will be to accept responsibility for his own life and for his obligations to the people around him."

CNN's viewers are unloading on them for the wall-to-wall coverage of this [nonsense]. The anchors sonorously agree, then go back to covering it.

--Robert Stacy McCain, assistant national editor, The Washington Times

UPDATE 4:40 p.m.: Paris is defended by left-wing lawyer Jeralyn Merritt and ... Tommy Chong? More Hilton blogging at Pirate's Cove, TMZ and My Vast Right Wing Conspiracy. And the inimitable Ace of Spades observes:

I'm looking forward to seeing the sheriff that let her go investigated.

I watched a black civil rights guy screaming about different standards of justice for the rich and poor in LA and could not believe the words "Preach it, brother!" escaped my lips. ... It's a weird time. Those in positions of public trust (this guy, McCain-Kennedy-Bush-etc., Nifong) somehow keep managing to unite the left and right against their blatant abuses.

"The media are undermining America's sense of personal responsibility," the Culture and Media Institute reported Wednesday in its study, "The Media Assault on American Values" (online in PDF format). "The more a person watches television, the less likely he will be to accept responsibility for his own life and for his obligations to the people around him."

The study found that, for example, 64 percent of "heavy" TV viewers (those who reported watching 4 or more hours per day) should be responsible for their own retirement, compared to 43 percent of "light" TV viewers (an hour or less per day). The CMI study also found a similar pattern in charitable giving and volunteering, with "heavy" viewers reporting lower levels of involvement than "light" viewers.

The study is based on CMI's National Cultural Values Survey, which Cheryl Wetzstein reported on in March.

Speaking at Wednesday's panel discussion of the new report were CMI Director Robert H. Knight, Robert Lichter of the Center for Media and Public Affairs, L. Brent Bozell III of the Media Research Center, and author/columnist/talk-radio host Michael Medved.

Discussing the correlations found by the CMI study, Mr. Lichter emphasized that researchers should "not go beyond your evidence," noted the inverse relationship between TV viewing and socio-economic status (the higher your status, the less TV you watch), and said that the study presents some "chicken-and-egg" questions.

Mr. Medved talked about the nature of television, making several comments that elicited laughter from the audience of nearly 100. Mr. Medved noted that the new film "Knocked Up," is based on the premise that an unattractive dopehead loser could be romantically paired with the stunning Katherine Heigl: "In this sense, it's a science fiction film."

Television promotes three basic values -- negativity, impatience and superficial emotionality -- Mr. Medved said. He noted that TV news favors a "crisis of the month" approach, and said the bias toward bad news is "not ideological." As to TV's fostering of impatience, Mr. Medved said, "The remote control could be one of the most invidious devices in human history," whereas the "visual immediacy" of TV lends itself to an emotion-driving "follow your heart" message.

Mr. Medved also noted that TV may be destructive of "moral values" in a very direct way, since high levels of TV viewing are correlated with high divorce rates. "TV is the enemy of relationships," he said.

In listening to the discussion, I could not help thinking of a movie I recently saw on DVD, Mike Judge's "Idiocracy," which postulates in a dumbed-down, TV-saturated future: "It's got the electrolytes plants crave!"

-- Robert Stacy McCain, assistant national editor, The Washington Times