Laura Esquivel's blog

Earlier this week a coalition of Religious Right leaders emerged with the goal of influencing immigration policymaking. The organizer of this coalition, Manuel Miranda, is a former member of Sen. Bill Frist’s staff who lost his position after accessing and reading internal Democratic staff documents and went on to become a one-man army fighting for confirmation of President Bush’s judicial nominees. Now that President Bush appears reluctant to keep sending controversial nominees to Congress, Miranda undoubtedly has a lot of time on his hands and has decided to branch out into immigration.  He claims that his new Families First on Immigration coalition is offering “real compromise” on the issue that should appeal to all sides by proposing a combination of increased border security, legalization for undocumented immigrants who are already in the country and, most importantly, an end to birthright citizenship guaranteed by the 14th Amendment.  

Judging by this WorldNetDaily column by Jane Chastain, the Families First on Immigration’s “compromise” proposal looks as if it is appealing to some on the Right who have traditionally been among the most militantly anti-immigration. Why the change of heart?  Even the most extreme anti-immigrant advocates understand the message voters sent to Congress – by not electing or in some cases not re-electing many GOPers who had strong anti-immigrant positions. They see the writing on the wall and from their weakened position are now cynically attempting to leverage their “support”  for something that already has strong bi-artisan support and is likely to happen anyway, in order to get something else extreme that they have always wanted – doing away with birthright citizenship.

In one fell swoop Chastain impugns the motives of all who support comprehensive immigration reform while simultaneously insulting hard-working immigrants:  

The motives of Democrats and President Bush are clear: The former expects to lead these new, largely impoverished, uneducated voters around by the nose; the latter wants to satisfy his business supporters who feel they are "entitled" to cheap labor to manufacture their products, mow their lawns and clean their toilets.

Chastain’s primary reason for “hope” is that this proposal pushes to eliminate so-called “anchor babies.”  Chastain’s animosity to “anchor babies” is long-standing and so it should come as no surprise that she would support the Families First plan to change the Constitution to eliminate this provision.  In 2004, Chastain suggested that any temporary guest-worker program should also require sterilization of applicants:  

Therefore, the only way to assure the American people that this "temporary" status truly is temporary is to seal up the wombs – sterilize – those who apply for guest-worker status. Or else change the law that grants citizenship to anyone who is born here regardless of the status of his or her parents.

After staying out of last year’s contentious immigration debate that drove a wedge among the GOP, mainstays of the Religious Right have now joined the debate saying they will support legalization of those already in this country – but only in exchange for doing away with the guarantee of birthright citizenship granted under the 14th Amendment. As CBN reported on Friday, Manuel Miranda, one of the chief activists organizing the Right in support of Bush’s extreme judicial nominees, has now put together a coalition of Religious Right leaders to influence immigration policymaking. In an attempt to supplant the anti-immigrant rhetoric that dominated discussions last year which analysts agree resulted in damaging the image of the GOP among Latino voters and decreased support for GOP candidates, Miranda claims “This new coalition is bigger and broader than the Secure Border Coalition that dominated the debate on the right in the last go round.”

Headline members include Paul Weyrich, one of the founders of “movement conservatism,” Donald Wildmon of American Family Association, Gary Bauer, American Conservative Union President David Keene, and Lou Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition.

Today The Washington Times gives some details of the “grand compromise” sought by Families First on Immigration.  

In letters sent today and obtained by The Washington Times, Families First on Immigration urges President Bush and leaders of the new Democratic Congress to adopt a grand compromise on the divisive issue that includes strong border security, an amnesty for illegals already here who are relatives of citizens and an end to birthright citizenship. ...

[In addition,] Families First tells Mr. Bush -- who was supported by most of the members of the new coalition -- to abandon his proposal for a guest-worker program until the rest of the issues such as birthright citizenship and border security are resolved.

While legalization of undocumented immigrants is anathema to the anti-immigrant activists of last year, the group has taken up one unusual item of the anti-immigrant Right’s agenda: the effort to eradicate so-called “anchor babies.” Under the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, anyone born in the United States is a citizen. The Right has proposed skirting this constitutional mandate through a dicey regulatory change.

In another indication that the religious right is often at odds with the economic right, the coalition also wants President Bush and others to drop their strong support for guest workers. While allowing for some legalization, Families First on Immigration is borrowing the “enforcement first” stand of right-wing House members such as former Rep. J.D. Hayworth (R-Arizona), who was defeated in November’s mid-term election.

The new coalition’s position would lend support to presidential candidate Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kansas), who has billed himself as the “full scale conservative” in the race but supported the Senate’s comprehensive immigration reform bill, much to the dismay of many on the far Right.

The group hopes to draw support from fellow religious conservatives in Congress such as Sen. Sam Brownback, Kansas Republican.

Mr. Brownback caused deep consternation in conservative circles last year when he enthusiastically embraced the Senate immigration bill, which was reviled by most conservatives because it would grant citizenship rights to most illegals. A member of the Judiciary Committee, Mr. Brownback argued that it was his Christian duty to support a bill that would help illegal aliens who came here in search of a new home away from the tyranny and squalor from which they came.

Support from Families First on Immigration would bolster Brownback’s already-strong credibility on the Right.

Jim Rutz lives in Colorado Springs where he makes his living as an “author, columnist, teacher, pioneer thinker, chronicler of the miraculous, and spokesman for the worldwide house community” which includes selling evangelical books to promote what he refers to as the Open Church. Rutz has also served as convicted Watergate felon Chuck Colson’s communications manager and has a guest bio and article on Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcast Network (CBN.com).  

Rutz, author of the now infamous “Soy is Making Kids Gay” article, seems excited by all the attention his rather hyperbolic claim has garnered for him and his theories on the dangers of soy - claiming he got hundreds of emails and dozens of media requests.  Rutz responds to these inquiries by laying out more of his theories about what eating soy does to human beings – conceding “Not being a physician, I can only pass along information.”  

Perhaps fewer than 10 percent of us are aware that soybeans are a hotly debated topic in medical circles today. Soy products – eaten, drunk and slipped into thousands of commercial products – are rightly being blamed for a horrendous variety of medical conditions, several of them nearing epidemic status and a few of them irreversible. Pediatricians and other doctors are starting to see a growing parade of patients suffering from serious symptoms that were quite rare just a generation ago.

Rutz begins this second column with answering what he says was the most commonly asked question of him: "If soy is so harmful as to potentially alter sexual physiology and behavior, why haven't the Chinese and Japanese all died off or become homosexual centuries ago?"

One reason is “that Orientals simply do not eat as much soy as Westerners think.”  Rutz claims that the “The highest intake of soy in Japan is among monks, who eat it to turn off sexual desire” warning readers to “think about that the next time you're in the grocery store.”

You have to wonder if seeing soy as the root of all sexual ills (for men anyway) also makes one seem, well, just a little odd.  However, there may be another reason for finding this claim unbelievable: Rutz acknowledges his initial column fell just a teeny bit short in the substantiating-his-claims category and promises to now remedy that by addressing all of what he sees as the “problems with soy” in “a scientific, footnoted format” by tucking “footnotes and excess text” into future columns. Rutz writes titillatingly that he will address what soy is doing to male “sex organs” and will describe its impact on “sexual orientation” if we but only “tune in next week” because the story “gets worse.”

Could the story really get any worse?  Not a big chance we’ll be reading his future columns closely to find out.

Amid allegations that Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, had a three-year relationship with a gay male prostitute, James Dobson did what he has taken to doing frequently since the media began investigating reports of increasing voter disenchantment with the GOP even among the most conservative voters - and that is to blame the media for trying to keep so-called “values voters” from the polls next week.

"It is unconscionable that the legitimate news media would report a rumor like this based on nothing but one man's accusation. Ted Haggard is a friend of mine and it appears someone is trying to damage his reputation as a way of influencing the outcome of Tuesday's election -- especially the vote on Colorado's marriage-protection amendment -- which Ted strongly supports.”

Ever since the Mark Foley scandal broke, Dobson has been on a mission to blame every piece of news that might harm Republican turn-out at the polls as part of a conspiracy by the liberal media:

"What Mark Foley did was unconscionable. It was terrible," Dobson said. "... Thankfully he's gone. But tell me -- now that he's gone, why is it still with us? Why are they still talking about it? Why are they trying to blame somebody for it? It is because they are using that to suppress the values voters."

Dobson hammered away at this supposed conspiracy again just the other day on this radio program, according to FOF’s own “CitizenLink” news service

It is imperative, he said, for conservatives to be alert to what's at stake. Dobson asked [Gary] Bauer whether he's ever seen the media more biased and more determined to suppress conservative turnout. "I thought I had seen it all," Bauer said. "This has been unbelievable. It's not even camouflaged. Big, liberal media has been engaging in an all-out war on the Christian vote -- to suppress that vote, to discourage faith-based voters, to make them think through distorted polls that the election is already over."

Haggard was named in a TIME magazine cover story as one of the most influential evangelicals in the U.S. He was recently on the big screen in the highly acclaimed indie documentary “Jesus Camp” although he complained about the way he was “portrayed in the movie.” The film’s directors responded to Haggard’s complaints: saying

Perhaps Pastor Ted regrets how he comes off in the film and is expressing it by criticizing us, Becky, and the children in the film. What he calls “negative” and not “normative” we see as simply true and accurate.

Watch the clip here of Haggard in "Jesus Camp" joking

“I think I know what you did last night. If you give me a thousand dollars, I won’t tell your wife.”

UPDATE: A spokesperson for Haggard's church has acknowledged that "some of the accusations were true."

The acting senior pastor at New Life, Ross Parsley, told KKTV-TV of Colorado Springs that Haggard admitted that some of the accusations were true. "I just know that there has been some admission of indiscretion, not admission to all of the material that has been discussed but there is an admission of some guilt," Parsley told the station. He did not elaborate, and a telephone number for Parsley could not be found late Thursday.

Pat Robertson doesn’t go quite as far as some on the right who have said Michael J. Fox was “pathetic,”  “lying,” or saying things that were “untrue” in the recent embryonic stem-cell research ad featuring Fox, who suffers from Parkinson’s disease.  

Robertson did however say in a segment about the upcoming Senate race in Missouri that Rush Limbaugh was pointing out that Fox “seemed a bit over the top.”

Robertson scientifically bolstered his skepticism adding:

“[Fox] plays a role in a show called ‘Boston Legal’ and he doesn’t do all that gyrating back and forth and that. Whatever disease his Parkinson’s is showing he doesn’t have all that problem. Now is that too much meds or not enough?”

At least a few people at CBN seemed to have learned to avoid compounding Robertson’s (to put it mildly) insensitive faux pas.  Christian Broadcasting Network’s political correspondent David Brody didn’t bite, and instead of answering Robertson’s question about whether or not Fox had taken “too much or not enough” medication launched into his story about the impact of the ads on Missouri voters saying it was hard to tell what impact the commercial was having in Missouri as most of the people he had asked about it still seemed confused over the issues.

[View the video highlight: Broadband or Dial-Up.]

Kevin McCullough offers to WorldNetDaily readers his paradoxical argument that same-sex couples seeking to marry actually “despise” marriage and are “seeking to destroy” it. McCullough’s radio talk show, called the “MuscleHead Revolution,” airs for two hours each day on WMCA, a Christian AM station in New York City owned by the Salem chain. He is the author of a book on “overcoming liberalism” and his online columns are featured on TownHall.com and WorldNetDaily.

According to McCullough, "Radical homosexual activists hate marriage because fundamentally they hate God, and the guilt of both drives them to extremes."

… Despite all that their angry-mob front groups argue in front of television cameras to the contrary, radical homosexual activists despise the institution, and more importantly the sanctity, of marriage. That is the fundamental reason why they are seeking to destroy the institution.

Why do loving, committed same-sex couples seek legal recognition of their unions? In McCullough’s altered universe “the answer is simple.”                                                 

No longer satisfied with practicing the unspeakable perverse sexual pleasures that their hearts seek in private bedrooms, they wish to be able to do so in public. They are also suffering from such immense guilt over their sexual behaviors, because they know inherently that the actions they perform are in fact unhealthy, that they will go to any means necessary to try and shut down the voices in their heads that tell them it is wrong.

... There are attributes of marriage that same-sex couples will never achieve. But in the minds of radical activists, getting the label and a piece of paper saying so will be close enough.

For instance, a woman who engages in lesbianism will never know the joy of lovemaking that creates within her the product of that union – an actual human life. She will never know the security of a true man protecting her from the dragons of the world and providing for her an environment where she can nurture and give love to that little life once it arrives, or the stamp of approval that God puts on such an experience. And because she and her partner know this, they must defy reason, biology and sexual function to create children and experiences that serve as faulty substitutes for that God-ordained picture.

So don't believe the angry spokespeople. Radical homosexual activists hate marriage because fundamentally they hate God, and the guilt of both drives them to extremes. 

Frankly, the only “dragons of the world” lesbians may need protection from are the like of McCullough --- who seems to know a lot about hate.

On October 3rd, The Greely Tribune in Colorado published this tragic story

In the small white and brown house on 5th Street, it's quiet. The Bustillos family hasn't been here much in the past day, rushing from one hospital to another, preparing to bury two sons, making sure their other children will make it.

Monday afternoon, when 17-year-old Tania Bustillos was driving her two brothers and her daughter home from school, she ran a stop sign on a county road north of Greeley. The horrifying crash sent all of them to hospitals. Enrique Bustillos, 15, died at a Denver hospital late Monday. Twelve-year-old Miguel died Tuesday at Children's Hospital in Denver.

Tania is recovering at North Colorado Medical Center, but family members said they would probably disconnect her daughter, 3-month-old Destiny, from life support at Children's Hospital in Denver.

It is probably safe to assume that most people would grieve for this family’s loss and most likely wouldn’t write a letter to the paper demanding to know if those killed were in the country legally.  

Republican Representative Dave Schultheis would not be among them

Just finished reading your article today "Greeley Family Copes..."This is a horrible tragedy.

My questions to you are: Was the driver properly licensed? Was the vehicle properly registered, and insured? Why aren't these facts part of your published article?

Was this person the child of parents in the U.S illegally? Or was she here illegally?

I am extremely concerned with the dramatic rise in crime caused by those illegally in this country over the past 10 - 15 years or so.

Why is it that the investigative reports we read in the papers and see on T.V. do not point out the fact that these accidents and the resulting cost to taxpayers (hospitalization, etc.) are a direct result of our lax immigration policies and enforcement?

Representative Dave Schultheis, HD 14
Schultheis for Senate Dist. 9
Colorado Springs, CO. 80919
719-532-0546
www.daveschultheis.com

Needless to say, the family was outraged by Schultheis’s attempt to score political points off of their loss, but Schultheis was unapologetic

Last week, Schultheis was quoted as saying he regretted the timing of his questions. Blaming the Tribune for blindsiding him, the representative said he did not know that the accident had just occurred and that the baby had died the day he sent his e-mail on behalf of a constituent.

Bryant Adams, spokesman for the Colorado Republican Party, said Thursday that Schultheis continues to lament his timing.

"Immigration is an important issue to people all over Colorado that will not go away, but Representative Schultheis chose a poor time to bring it up," Adams said. "I know he's apologetic that he brought it up then."

Schultheis claimed he read the article in question - it was what he was responding to, after all – so now saying that he “did not know that the accident had just occurred” doesn’t pass the smell test.  Blaming the paper and regretting only the “timing” of the letter was not a satisfactory response – especially since the “timing” was entirely of his own doing – so now the Bustillos Family is openly asking for an apology  

Mr. Schultheis, we pray that God provide some sensitivity upon your soul. As a public official, you could have decided to wait for the completion of an investigation yet you chose to make inquiries on the same day that one of our children was being taken off life support. To shift responsibility of your words and actions to a newspaper is unbecoming of an elected official.

Mr. Schultheis, the Bustillos Family asks you:

1. How many other times have you asked these specific questions concerning accidents throughout the entire state?

2. Why not wait until an investigation was completed before making inquiries?

3. Did you verify the legal status of the "constituent" that contacted you regarding this accident?

4. More importantly, what information did you and your "constituent" use as a base to inquire about our deceased children’s status in this Country?

5. Is it your position that all Latinos should be assumed "illegal aliens" unless proven otherwise?

To answer your questions, yes — the car was properly registered and insured. Tania followed the required State of Colorado protocol to obtain a driving permit. ALL THE CHILDREN INVOLVED IN THIS ACCIDENT ARE AMERICAN CITIZENS with the same rights as you and your constituent (if the inquiring person is an American citizen). Their mother, Grasiela, is also an AMERICAN CITIZEN. Their father is a LEGAL RESIDENT.

Mr. Schultheis, with this letter we seek answers and a public apology from you. We wish to avoid further grief upon other families during tragic times.

Here are the answers you seek. Mr. Schultheis, we await your prompt reply to our questions. God bless you.

THE BUSTILLOS FAMILY

Note to Schultheis: Writing an accusatory letter to the paper immediately after reading an article reporting the loss of three lives is not a smart idea, but apologizing as soon as possible certainly is.

In the wake of recent school shootings, a candidate for Oklahoma state superintendent of education has announced a bold new proposal to keep kids safe without spending more on school security. Republican Bill Crozier suggests that students can defend themselves from school shooters by using textbooks to stop bullets fired at them. “If elected” he promises that thick used textbooks will be placed at the ready under every school desk. Crozier recently tested his theory by doing what millions of students only wish they could do: fire round after round into a Calculus and science textbook with an assault rifle and handguns. Even better, he made a home video of his experiment and provided an unedited copy to a local Oklahoma City television station.

You can watch the experiment unfold as Crozier and his "staff" shoot up textbooks and measure how deep the bullets penetrate. The scientific method has never had it better! Be on alert for questionable gun safety and unintentionally hilarious asides. Click here to watch the video via KOCO TV in Oklahoma City. Interestingly, just earlier this year right-wing activists in Oklahoma attempted to place an initiative on the November ballot -- the so-called "65% Solution" -- that would have required public schools to dramatically cut funding for non-classroom expenses, including school security. The state’s highest court removed the initiative from this year’s ballot, but Republican leaders have vowed to continue their push to implement the scheme. At least now they have a plan for filling the security gap.

Reacting to the swearing-in of openly gay Mark Dybul as the nation's new Global AIDS Coordinator by Condeleeza Rice, some from the powerful religious right-wing base of the Republican party expressed “disgust” with the administration’s pick and with comments Rice made at the swearing in ceremony.

Peter Sprigg, vice president for policy at the Family Research Council, says the secretary's comments were "profoundly offensive" and fly in the face of the Bush administration's endorsement of a federal marriage protection amendment, though that backing be [sic] less than enthusiastic.

…

"We have to face the fact that putting a homosexual in charge of AIDS policy is a bit like putting the fox in charge of the henhouse," says Sprigg. "But even beyond that, the deferential treatment that was given not only to him but his partner and his partner's family by the Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is very distressing."

What were the “disgusting" comments by Rice? 

“I am truly honored and delighted to have the opportunity to swear in Mark Dybul as our next Global AIDS Coordinator,” Rice said. “I am pleased to do that in the presence of Mark’s parents, Claire and Richard, his partner, Jason, and his mother-in-law, Marilyn,” she said.

“You have a wonderful family to support you, Mark, and I know that’s always important to us. Welcome,” Rice said.

The Family Research Council is now demanding an explanation from Rice about why she used the term “mother-in-law.” Suggesting it somehow adds insult to injury, FRC wants to know specifically why Rice used the term in front of the First Lady.  

If Laura Bush was offended in any way it was hard to tell.  

In remarks following the swearing-in, Laura Bush noted that Dybul will oversee President Bush’s $15 billion Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, a widely acclaimed program backed by AIDS activists and approved by Congress as part of an aggressive U.S. effort to fight AIDS in developing countries.

“I know you’ll bring great skill and enthusiasm to the fight against AIDS,” Laura Bush said. “Congratulations, ambassador.”

The Bush-nominated Dybul was confirmed by unanimous Senate vote on Aug. 3.  The swearing-in ceremony which produced the nation’s third openly gay ambassador was held in the Benjamin Franklin room at the State Department where Dybul reportedly placed his hand on a Bible held by his domestic partner, Jason Claire.

What’s Foley got to do with it?

Sprigg says in light of the Foley scandal, "it's inexplicable that a conservative administration would do such things."

The religious right have clearly seized upon the Foley scandal as carte blanche to say in the mainstream media what they usually reserve for their own audiences. And that is what they really think about gay Americans - dropping the pretense of using more innocuous sounding anti-gay code phrases such as “preserving traditional marriage” or marriage is “between one man and one woman.”   

And in yet one more example of right-wing’s willingness to scapegoat and demonize gay Americans, they have now turned their misguided homophobic rhetoric upon gay Republicans.

As the USA Today report notes, the Rice statement comes in the midst of news stories dealing with the Mark Foley scandal, many of which have talked about the number of homosexual staffers on the Republican payroll. Some pro-family people are starting to wonder if this homosexual influence within the GOP may account for the party's lack of action on social conservative issues. FRC's Tony Perkins says that among the questions that need to be asked are: "Has the social agenda of the GOP been stalled by homosexual members or staffers?"

In a typical display of right wing message discipline, today yet another FRC spokesperson said:

"The big-tent strategy could ultimately spell doom for the Republican Party," said Tom McClusky, chief lobbyist for the Family Research Council, a Christian advocacy group. "All a big-tent strategy seems to be doing is attracting a bunch of clowns."

The Agape Press story concludes:  

[T]he USA Today account of the swearing-in ceremony concedes that the Foley investigation may be exposing what it calls a "politically awkward" fact of life in the world of national politics. That is, some leaders in the Republican Party "practice a more tolerant brand of politics" in office hiring than others in the party have conveyed on the campaign trail.

Politically awkward.  Ya’ think??

Cliff Kincaid of right-wing financed Accuracy in Media is determined to push his Mark Foley-scandal “explanations” as far as they will go – as long as it is nowhere near the truth.

When the scandal first broke, Kincaid said Republicans had only themselves to blame for being so darn gullible for allowing gays into the GOP in the first place:

House leaders permitted homosexuals to infiltrate and manipulate the party apparatus while they publicly postured as friends of family values and traditional marriage.

But since then, Kincaid has advanced beyond that sort of rudimentary blame-game in favor of a much more elaborate conspiracy theory:  gay Republicans are really undercover Democratic operatives!!  Who knew?  

The complex nature of the "dirty trick" against the Republicans over the Mark Foley scandal is beginning to emerge. It doesn't involve a George Soros-funded group or emails that had been in the possession of the media or shopped around by Democratic operatives. Instead, the GOP has played a trick on itself. The party brought so-called gay Republicans into positions of power in Congress only to realize that the confidential information they held about a secret gay network was political dynamite that could backfire.

… 

If you are getting the idea that gay Republicans may be closeted Democrats, then you are beginning to understand how the Mark Foley scandal could have been a Democratic Party dirty trick. 

So if the gay Republicans are not really Republicans, what are they? One veteran observer of this network told AIM that the Foley scandal should make it crystal clear that the gay Republicans are in reality "liberal activists" who want to use the party to advance the same homosexual agenda embraced by the Democrats.

In Kincaid’s view, the GOP has been infiltrated by “liberal activists” posing as gay Republicans in an intricate and convoluted plan to advance the Democratic Party’s agenda which, thanks to the Foley scandal, Kincaid alone has now managed to uncover.   

Should the November elections go the way more pollsters and pundits are predicting – resulting in previously unexpected losses for Republicans – no doubt Kincaid and his compadres will find it easier to continue blaming gays instead of dealing with the truth about the Grand Old Party.  

They are losing voters the honest way. Voters are tired of 1) being manipulated with talk of “values” 2) Bush’s popularity is way down 3) public and even congressional support for the war in Iraq continues to slip and 4) influence buying scandals in Washington are all a lot more powerful than the “secret gay network” that exists only in the fertile imagination of a right-wing in denial.

On today’s broadcast of the 700 Club, religious right icon Pat Robertson commented on the growing scandal over Congressman Foley’s email and instant message exchanges with congressional pages. Robertson, sporting his trademark squint and grin, telecast his best advice to GOP leadership on how not to lose votes over the unfolding scandal:

“Republicans have formed a circular firing squad and they’re firing away” said Robertson. He called the internal furor in the GOP “insane” and added that the best thing they could do would be to say “well, this man’s gay; he does what gay people do and so don’t worry about it.” Robertson also claimed that the scandal would not cost Republicans votes because “the church people understand forgiveness, they understand sin.”

Watch the Video: Broadband or Dial-Up

A far right Catholic group that thinks Bill Gates and Warren Buffet should be reviled for their humanitarian work (saying “they have money, we have God”),  objects to a vaccine to inoculate women against cervical cancer, and thinks that Mel Gibson’s ‘apology’ after his “unfortunate relapse in his fight with alcohol,” and “some imprudent comments made while in that state” is enough to say “case closed, move on,” has this to say about the Mark Foley revelations that he was abused by a member of his clergy:  

“If his claim that he was the victim of sexual molestation by a clergyman, it only further proves that known homosexuals should not be admitted to the priesthood. Foley's actions were that of homosexual predator, not a pedophile. Homosexuals reproduce sexually by molesting children. This creates a cycle of violence and disordered behavior that creates future generations of abusers and predators.”

The group, Human Life International, claims to have 59 satellite offices in 51 countries and describes itself as "the largest international, pro-life, pro-family, pro-woman organization in the world.”

When Ken Mehlman, Chair of the Republican National Committee said “We will hold nothing back” in the fight to win seats in this November’s election, apparently that even included using racist and offensive imagery in ads targeting Democratic incumbents even if they are “highly offensive” to the Hispanic community.

In a letter sent today to Republican National Committee Chair Ken Mehlman, Janet Murguía, President and CEO of the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), the largest national Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization in the U.S., asked for the removal of a new website, www.muchagraciasdebbie.com, which was unveiled this week by the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

The letter states that “the website of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (www.muchasgraciasdebbie.com) features Democratic Senator Debbie Stabenow in a sombrero with a Muchas Gracias, Debbie banner. Clicking on the image takes you to a page featuring bilingual text which badly misrepresents some key policy debates to the tune of the “Mexican Hat Dance.’”

NCLR asks that this website be removed immediately.

The round-up of the formally named “Washington Briefing” put on by the Family Research Council’s C4 entity, Focus on the Family Action, described an “impressive A-list of conservative leaders and public officials [who] packed the schedule from early morning till late in the evening”  who spoke to the 1700 attendees about “pressing family issues” as they sought “energy and encouragement.”  And in keeping with the gathering’s goal of energizing its religious right base with strategic messaging, a new emphasis on terrorism was on display beginning with Dobson opening the two-day conference calling it a “family issue.”

Dobson shared his view of the War on Islamo-fascism by looking at the big-picture numbers. He made clear he does not believe all Muslims are terrorists, but a small percentage obviously are. With an estimated 1.2 billion Muslims in the world, Dobson said, a small percentage adds up to a lot of trouble.

He said the estimates are that 10 to 15 percent do buy into the notion that jihad calls for the killing of infidels.

"Let's say that's grossly overstated, and it may be," Dobson said. "What if it's 4 percent worldwide? What if 4 percent want to take us down and are willing to give their lives for it? When the point of negotiation is that the other person wants to kill you, there's not a whole lot to talk about. So, what if it's 4 percent? That's 48 million people in this world who want to kill us. What if it's one tenth of 1 percent? It's 12 million people that want to kill us.

"We're in a war and it's time that we recognized it."

Dobson said he sees the effort to stop terrorists as having a place among family issues.

"Because if we don't have security for ourselves, our children, for future generations," he said, "there is no future for the family."

No doubt Dobson has read the same exit polls as we have showing that 86% of voters in 2004 who thought that terrorism was the most important issue were Bush voters, and 73% of voters who thought the Iraq war was the most important were Kerry voters.   Religious right voters can now expect to hear their leaders joining Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Tony Snow and others in the right-wing echo chamber putting a pro-Bush, “pro-family” spin on the war on terror by adding it to their growing roster of dubious “pressing“ family issues.