Texas

Right Wing Round-Up

Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on Thursday, 6/2/2011 5:52 pm

Perry: Economic Crisis Will Bring Us Back To Biblical Principles & Free Us From Slavery

Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on Thursday, 6/2/2011 1:45 pm

After seeing Tony Perkins appear on James Robison's "Life Today" television program earlier this week, we went back through the archives to see if anyone else of interest had appeared on the program recently and discovered that Texas Governor Rick Perry appeared with Robison in early May.

The program was more or less a mutual love-fest between Perry and Robison, with Perry declaring that our current economic problems are happening for a purpose: so that the nation will return to biblical principles and free us from our slavery to the government:

James Robison: God's Hit Man And Mike Huckabee's Mentor

Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on Friday, 5/27/2011 11:16 am

In 1976, Mike Huckabee dropped out of seminary school so that he could go to work for James Robison:

In 1976, after college, Huckabee was enrolled at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, in Texas, when he came into contact with the televangelist James Robison. It was Robison who famously declared that he was “sick and tired of hearing about all of the radicals and the perverts and the liberals and the leftists and the Communists coming out of the closet,” and was ready “for God’s people to come out of the closet” and take back the nation. Despite Huckabee’s inclination toward a forgiving Christianity, Robison’s passion drew him in. He dropped out of seminary after one year to take a job as Robison’s director of communications.

Back in the early days of the Religious Right, Robison was a key player and one who, even today, admits that he made the likes of Jerry Falwell and Bob Jones seem downright liberal. 

Robison eventually dropped out of the movement, but has made a reappearance over the last year or so, which explains why he was the featured speaker at last night's Watchmen on the Wall conference where he demonstrated how he got the nickname "God's Hit Man" thanks to his ability to "give 'em so much Hell nobody will ever want to go there":

Demoted Liberty U. Professor Heads to Fundamentalist Texas College

Submitted by Peter Montgomery on Friday, 5/20/2011 10:30 am

Ergun Caner, the former head of Liberty University’s seminary, was demoted last year after media attention, including an article I wrote for AlterNet, forced Liberty officials to investigate glaring discrepancies in the “Jihad to Jesus” life story Caner had peddled after 9-11 to raise his profile in the evangelical world. Caner told some audiences that he had been raised in Turkey to be a jihadist and learned about America from watching television. In fact, he was born in Sweden (to a Turkish father) and raised in Ohio.

Caner, an engaging speaker and one-time rising star of the Religious Right, is headed to Texas, where Arlington Baptist College has hired him as its provost and vice president.   Arlington Baptist College was founded by J. Frank Norris, an anti-evolution crusader who Caner describes as “one of Christianity’s most courageous voices.” Here’s how the Associated Baptist Press describes Norris:
Norris, founder of both Arlington Baptist College and the World Baptist Fellowship, was a fundamentalist Baptist leader in Texas in the first half of the 20th century. The one-time editor of the Baptist Standard and longtime pastor of First Baptist Church in Forth Worth was nicknamed the “Texas Tornado” during a long-running feud with the Southern Baptists.
 
Once loyal to the Southern Baptist Convention, Norris became alienated by the Seventy-Five Million Campaign, forerunner to today’s Cooperative Program of unified budget support of both state and national Baptist conventions. He spent the rest of his days seeking to undermine the SBC, accusing Baptist schools of teaching evolution and tolerating “modernist” theories of Bible study.
 
After his exclusion from his local association, state convention and the Southern Baptist Convention, Norris founded his own independent fundamentalist group, originally called the Premillennial Baptist Missionary Fellowship but renamed the World Baptist Fellowship after a split over his authoritarian leadership.
 

 

Constitutional Historian Rebuts David Barton On The Daily Show

Submitted by Brian Tashman on Thursday, 5/19/2011 1:58 pm

University of Pennsylvania historian Richard Beeman was yesterday’s guest on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart following an appearance by pseudo-historian David Barton. Beeman, like other real historians, notes that Barton greatly embellishes the religious views of the Founding Fathers and misrepresented the Constitution.

“The Constitution is federally devoid of any mention of religion except for one provision which says there shall be no test for public office or any position of public trust, so the only mention of religion is keep religion out of our government,” Beeman says, and “the debate in the [constitutional] Convention is virtually devoid” of religious references. Barton, on the other hand, made this pathetic case that the Constitution incorporates the Bible.

Right Wing Watch looked into Barton’s many fabrications, falsehoods, obfuscations, revisionist history, as well as his total neglect of the Fourteenth Amendment’s incorporation of the First Amendment to the states and his warped view of constitutional jurisprudence while he was on The Daily Show.

During part II of the interview with Beeman, Stewart noted that while Barton told him that he was OK with Sharia law in the US, he would likely make the opposite case to his conservative supporters.

In fact, that is exactly what happened, as Barton dedicated an entire radio program to denying what he plainly told Stewart about Sharia.

Such dishonest actions reflect the fact that Barton is a political activist, not a historian -- he even was paid by the Republican National Committee to mobilize church groups to support President Bush’s reelection and Republican candidates. As Kyle notes, even his documentary on African American history is brazenly partisan.

As Beeman and other credentialed historians make clear, Barton is simply distorting history for his own political purposes.

Newt: Worst Campaign Promise Ever?

Submitted by Peter Montgomery on Tuesday, 5/17/2011 1:42 pm

“I know how to get the whole country to resemble Texas.”  

      Newt Gingrich on Sean Hannity, May 11, 2011
 
In his presidential campaign announcement on Sean Hannity’s Fox News Channel show, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich praised job creation in Texas and said he’d been talking to Texas governor Rick Perry and knows “how to get the whole country to resemble Texas.” That could go down as the worst campaign promise ever. 
 
“I dearly love the state of Texas,” the late Texan and progressive icon Molly Ivins wrote, “but I consider that a harmless perversion on my part, and discuss it only with consenting adults.” Noting that Texas was a state that provided relatively few services to its residents, she once wrote, “The only depressing part is that, unlike Mississippi, we can afford to do better. We just don’t.”  Maybe that should be the motto for Newt Gingrich and his fellow anti-government demagogues.
 
The impact of that governing philosophy is spreading a lot of pain in Texas right now. Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote earlier this year:  
 
Texas is where the modern conservative theory of budgeting — the belief that you should never raise taxes under any circumstances, that you can always balance the budget by cutting wasteful spending — has been implemented most completely. If the theory can’t make it there, it can’t make it anywhere.
 
In fact, Texas lawmakers have been struggling all year to figure out how to deal with a massive budget deficit.  An AP story from March, headlined “Texas’ economic miracle beginning to tarnish,” noted that the state’s budget shortfall was “among the worst in the nation.” A temporary budget deal in March involving more than $1 billion in spending cuts still left the state $23 billion short over the next two years by one estimate. Proposed cuts could result in layoffs for 100,000 school employees and 60,000 nursing home workers and eliminate 9,600 state jobs this year. Just this week lawmakers struggled to reach agreement on a deal to close a $4 billion deficit in the current year, which ends in August.  
 
It is possible that entire crisis may have been manufactured by Perry and other anti-government Republicans to give lawmakers a justification for further slashing government and basic human services.
 
Does Newt think we really want the whole country to look like Texas, which ranks:
 
 50th in percentage of population without health insurance (2010)
 
50th  in percentage of children insured (2009)
 
50th  in percentage of women receiving early prenatal care (2010)
 
45th  in rate of infectious diseases (2010)
 
44th  in percentage of children in poverty (2010)
 
42nd  in per capita health care funding (2010)
 
40th  in overall health (2010)
 
36th  in high school graduation rate (2010)
 
35th  in crime (2010)
 
35th  in percentage of children immunized (2010)
 
34th  in rate of occupational fatalities (2010)
 
30th in percentage of people with college degree (2008)
 
Texas also ranks:
 
1st  in amount of recognized carcinogens released into the air (2002)
 
4th highest  in release of toxic chemicals into the environment (2002)
 
8th highest  in percentage of people below poverty level (2008)
 
13th highest  in obesity (2010)
 
“I know how to get the whole country to resemble Texas.”   Uh, thanks, Newt, but no thanks.
 

Porter: Tornadoes Due To Legal Abortion, Israel Policy

Submitted by Brian Tashman on Friday, 5/13/2011 4:39 pm

Janet Porter believes that the recent tornadoes that left hundreds dead in the South were a consequence of America’s acceptance of legal abortion and “sexual sin,” along with the supposed mistreatment of Israel. In addition to wildfires in Oklahoma and Texas, Porter claims that Americans gave “God reason to at least partially lift His protective Hand from America.” Porter isn’t the only Religious Right leader who said that the tornadoes signaled that America trigged God’s wrath: Calvin Beisner of the Cornwall Alliance said the tornadoes were “early warning signals” and “little tastes” of God’s judgment. Porter warns that America continues to risk “God’s wrath against us” until Americans “give their undivided attention to God.”

Is God trying to get our attention?

The worst tornado outbreak in American history has left hundreds dead. Mississippi flooding has not been this bad in 80 years. Wildfires have swept through millions of acres in Texas and Oklahoma.

There are a number of things that could give God reason to at least partially lift His protective Hand from America, including the millions of abortions done here each year, the flaunting of sexual sin, and our recent treatment of Israel.

Any support that the U.S. provides for dividing the Holy Land risks God’s wrath against us. Rabbi Aryeh Spero says that a division could displace 400,000 Jews from their homes and more Christian holy sites would fall under Muslim control.

Pray that this will not happen and that many Americans will give their undivided attention to God.

Focus On The Family Wants To Turn Abby Johnson's (Doubtful) Story Into A Movie

Submitted by Brian Tashman on Thursday, 5/12/2011 4:41 pm

Jim Daly, the president of Focus on the Family, thinks that the Hallmark Channel should make a movie about Abby Johnson, the Planned Parenthood clinic worker turned anti-choice leader. Johnson, who now works with Lila Rose’s Live Action, has received plaudits (and earnings) from Religious Right activists for her book deal and speaking tour. At the center of Johnson’s experience is a purported account where she saw a fetus on the ultrasound machine move away from the doctor during an abortion, and she abruptly quit and joined a 40 Days for Life protest outside the clinic.

While Daly says that nobody “has ever questioned her haunting description,” it is quite likely that the event never happened.

Nate Blakeslee Texas Monthly found out that on the day Johnson claims to have assisted the doctor with an abortion, the “physician on duty told the organization that he did not use an ultrasound that day, nor did Johnson assist on any abortion procedure.” The only time he used an ultrasound that month was two weeks prior.

The exposé also discovered that the details of Johnson’s story simply don’t add up with the official records the clinic presented to the state of Texas’s Health Services Department: “Johnson has consistently said that the patient in question was thirteen weeks pregnant, which is plausible, since thirteen weeks is right at the cusp of when physicians will consider using an ultrasound to assist with the procedure. Yet none of the patients listed on the report for that day were thirteen weeks pregnant; in fact, none were beyond ten weeks.”

Johnson claims that the woman undergoing the abortion was black, but the only black woman who had an abortion at Planned Parenthood that day “was in the sixth week of her pregnancy. There would be no medical reason for a doctor to use an ultrasound to guide an abortion performed on a woman at such an early stage. Even if one was used, it’s hard to imagine how Johnson, who said she has seen hundreds of ultrasound pictures in her career, could mistake a one-quarter-inch-long embryo for a three-inch, thirteen-week fetus.”

But while Johnson appears to have manufactured her conversion story, Daly believes that Johnson can motivate other Planned Parenthood clinic employees to quit their jobs:

If the producers of Hallmark Hall of Fame were looking for a thoughtful script that both inspires and convicts, they needn’t look any further than the story of Abby Johnson.

…

Abby’s decision was met with scorn and suspicion from abortion activists, with some even accusing her of a “cover-up” to conceal the real reason behind her resignation and orchestrating a campaign of half-truths to embarrass her former employer.

Nobody, however, has ever questioned her haunting description of a baby’s reaction when he or she is about to be aborted.

…

As such, please join me in praying that more Planned Parenthood workers will, like Abby, come forward and publicly resign from their positions. We will continue to utilize every legal means at our disposal to help overturn Roe vs. Wade, as we continue to work to change hearts and minds about abortion. At the same time, can you imagine the magnitude of the practical impact should more Planned Parenthood employees turn from supporting death to promoting life?

Eagle Forum: UN Is Using Environmentalism To Remove God And Take Over The World

Submitted by Brian Tashman on Thursday, 5/12/2011 2:37 pm

After she was forced out as head of the Texas GOP, Cathie Adams became Eagle Forum’s International Issues Chairman. Adams, who as president of Eagle Forum’s Texas chapter denied that Obama is a Christian and insisted that scientists will soon start cloning humans for the purposes of “injecting them with diseases and studying them, then killing them,” is now arguing that the United Nations is using environmentalism to destroy Christianity in American youth.

Joining the many Religious Right leaders who have derided environmentalism an anti-Christian movement, Adams warns that to “protect our children, we must educate ourselves about the UN’s insidious agenda to subvert our children’s faith in God by elevating its earth-centered zealotry that would grant the UN dominion over the earth.”

Adams points to climate change science, sustainable development efforts, and a school children’s song “Earthlings Unite” (which she describes as “classroom abuse”) as proof that the UN wants to “supplant God’s directive to man to care for the earth with government dominion”:

Have you wondered why your children lecture you about the environment and where they get their misinformation? The answer is critical to fulfilling your parental responsibility to rightly educate your children and to protect them from a cruel scheme.

You need look no further than the United Nations as the source of fanatic environmental views using labels like "sustainable development" and "global warming/climate change" in treaties and action plans that trickle down into every classroom and into every level of government — national, state and local.

Under the guise of protecting the environment through "sustainable development," the UN is leading the world's regression to primitive reverence of the earth, even capitalizing the first letter of the word: Earth. This same earth-centeredness prevailed before Abram was called from the Ur of the Chaldees, until the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob proved His superiority over nature. Our Western Civilization is based upon this Judeo-Christian worldview that sets man apart from bugs and trees, and gives him the responsibility to care for the earth.

The proposed UN treaty to give rights to "Mother Earth" as well as other environmental treaties are fatally flawed because they equate God with nature, and aim to supplant God's directive to man to care for the earth with government dominion.

…

To protect our children, we must educate ourselves about the UN's insidious agenda to subvert our children's faith in God by elevating its earth-centered zealotry that would grant the UN dominion over the earth.

Adams also includes this video which she describes as “classroom abuse”:

Newt Gingrich And The Dominionists

Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on Thursday, 5/12/2011 10:49 am

The Los Angeles Times reports that Newt Gingrich intends to make appealing to the Religious Right a key part of his presidential campaign ... and while that is not particularly surprising, the article did contain one piece of information of which we weren't aware - that David Barton sits on the board of Gingrich's "Renewing American Leadership" group:

[I]n recent years, the former speaker has made gains among evangelical leaders — the result of aggressively cultivating relationships with influential national figures and local pastors in key nominating states.

Gingrich, who was raised a Lutheran and became a Southern Baptist when he entered politics, converted two years ago to the Roman Catholic faith of his third wife, Callista — an experience that he said shaped his new focus on faith. Since then, he created a nonprofit organization aimed at religious conservatives, called Renewing American Leadership, or ReAL, appointing to the board evangelical leaders such as Jim Garlow of Skyline Church in La Mesa, Calif., and David Barton of the Texas-based WallBuilders.

And indeed he does:

That means that that two key ReAL board members - Barton and Chairman Jim Garlow - openly espouse Dominionist 7 Mountains theology ... as does Lou Engle who, as we noted yesterday, prayed over Gingrich just a few years back:

As we have noted before, the purpose of 7 Mountains theology is to create a "virtual theocracy" here on Earth ... and the people who are advocating for that sure do seem to love Newt Gingrich.

LC Outraged That Bus Drivers Have To "Deliver Clients Wherever They Want To Be Dropped"

Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on Tuesday, 5/10/2011 11:34 am

We have written several posts about Edwin Graning, a Texas bus driver who refused to transport a passenger to a Planned Parenthood facility in Austin because he believed she was going to get an abortion.

Of course, Graning has absolutely no justification for making such a decision and was subsequently fired.  And so, with the support of the American Center for Law and Justice, he claimed he was being discriminated against because of his religion and sued ... and was awarded a $21,000 settlement when the bus service decided it would be cheaper to pay him than to fight it out in court.

As part of the settlement, Graning was barred from working for the bus system, which is now making it clear that all drivers are required to take passengers to their destinations ... which is very upsetting to Mat Staver and Shawn Akers of Liberty Counsel, who are claiming that Graning was vindicated (which he wasn't) while the bus service's new policy means that "if someone wants to rob a bank and they need a ride, that our bus system has to take them there":  

Can I just point out that these two men are responsible for teaching the law to students at Liberty University's law school?

National Day Of Prayer Speaker Declares "Homosexual Agenda" The "Greatest Threat To America"

Submitted by Brian Tashman on Friday, 5/6/2011 3:58 pm

Radio talk show host and Religious Right activist Penna Dexter was the keynote speaker at the National Day of Prayer event yesterday in Rapid City, South Dakota. Dexter, a member of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, last year blamed a gay California youth who was murdered by another student for his own death. According to the Rapid City Journal, Dexter lamented that while Osama bin Laden is dead, the “the advancing homosexual agenda” continues to flourish:

A smaller than expected crowd of about 350 people, including at least two out of four mayoral candidates, turned out for Rapid City's National Day of Prayer event Thursday at Rushmore Plaza Civic Center to hear Christian political commentator Penna Dexter encourage Americans to offer "fervent prayer" for a government she believes is in trouble.

"Despite the sense of satisfaction in our country now because our guys just got a really bad guy, there's still a feeling that the ship of state is sinking," Dexter said, referring to the recent killing of Osama bin Laden by the U.S. military.

The Texas radio personality credited the Obama administration with defending the observance of the first Thursday in May as an annual National Day of Prayer. Dexter then moved on to what she called social, financial and moral problems with the current government, including abortion rights, the homosexual rights agenda and the growth of government entitlement programs.

"It's not politically correct to say so, but the greatest threat to America ... today is the advancing homosexual agenda," she said. She called on Americans like herself who are concerned about "so many attempts to silence God's word" to pave the way for political action with "fervent prayer."

David Barton OKs Sharia Law in the U.S.

Submitted by Miranda Blue on Thursday, 5/5/2011 3:41 pm

Here’s a clip to file away for future reference: in his fast-talking, low-fact interview with Jon Stewart last night, David Barton was cornered into giving his blessing to majority-Muslim communities in the United States implementing Sharia law:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Exclusive - David Barton Extended Interview Pt. 3
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog The Daily Show on Facebook

Stewart: Do you feel like the majority in a locality should be able to determine…
Barton: Yes, yes, and here in New York City, there’s schools that are 100 percent Hasidic Jewish, and I think they should be allowed to have Hasidic Jewish practices there because all 100 percent kids are…
Stewart: So you would allow, like, let’s say Dearborn, Michigan was majority Muslim…
Barton: And it is.
Stewart: Are you all right with Sharia law and the whole business…
Barton: Sure, sure.
Stewart: Well, that’s consistent.
Barton: But for somebody from the outside to come in and say “I don’t like this, you can’t do it” that’s what I have trouble with.

This might come as a surprise to the right-wingers who are on high Sharia-alert. Barton in the past has been less than sympathetic to Muslim Americans even practicing their religion in the United States, much less imposing Muslim theocracies. For instance, when Rep. Keith Ellison became the first Muslim member of Congress, Barton objected to Ellison being sworn into office using Thomas Jefferson’s Koran, implying that Ellison’s expression of faith was somehow un-American:

Keith Ellison may be the one to break this pattern and start something new with Islam, but in the meantime, he should not be surprised that there is widespread concern over his decision to publicly flaunt American tradition and values and replace them with Islamic ones.

Barton, in his work rewriting American history for Texas’s school board, also made sure to cast as bad a light as possible on Muslims. Washington Monthly reported:

On the global front, Barton and company want textbooks to play up clashes with Islamic cultures, particularly where Muslims were the aggressors, and to paint them as part of an ongoing battle between the West and Muslim extremists. Barton argues, for instance, that the Barbary wars, a string of skirmishes over piracy that pitted America against Ottoman vassal states in the 1800s, were the “original war against Islamic Terrorism.”

Barton unsurprisingly objected to the planned Islamic community center in Lower Manhattan last summer, saying, ”When they’re claiming it’s a freedom of religion issue, and that’s all they’re talking about, that’s great proof that’s not the issue.”

Then there was the time he claimed that an appeals court decision allowing California schools to teach children about different religions, was in fact authorizing a “three-week indoctrination to the Islamic faith.”

Which all makes it seem somewhat suspect that Barton would suddenly embrace the idea of Sharia law being implemented in any American communities.

But even if he’s serious, there’s no need to worry about Barton’s new embrace of Sharia taking hold. Dearborn, Michigan, for one, has already made it very clear that it has absolutely no inclination to run its government with anything but the United States’ secular legal code.

Fact Checking Barton Part I: Texas Textbooks

Submitted by Brian Tashman on Thursday, 5/5/2011 12:14 pm

With no academic credentials as a historian, David Barton toldThe Daily Show host Jon Stewart that his involvement in editing textbooks around the country was proof that he is a respected and esteemed historian. However, his work with textbooks if anything reveals his blatant partisanship and pseudo-scholarship.

As Mariah Blake writes in The Washington Monthly, Barton’s Christian nation mythology was indeed just one aspect of his role shaping the Texas textbooks as a consultant for the Texas School Board. Barton wanted to give a positive spin to Joseph McCarthy’s anti-communist politics and “purge the standards of key figures of the civil rights era, such as César Chávez and Thurgood Marshall.” As Blake writes, Barton tried to diminish the work of civil rights leaders like Martin Luther Ling Jr. by arguing “that they shouldn’t be given credit for advancing the rights of minorities. As Barton put it, ‘Only majorities can expand political rights in America’s constitutional society.’ Ergo, any rights people of color have were handed to them by whites—in his view, mostly white Republican men.”

Barton, who was once vice-chair of the Texas GOP and a paid surrogate of the Republican National Committee, tirelessly works to convince black audiences that they should vote for Republicans and oppose the Democratic Party because the GOP is responsible for black civil rights.

But Barton’s claims that he writes about more than just America as a “Christian nation” shouldn’t distract from the reason Texas School Board members invited Barton to edit their textbooks in the first place. In fact, then-Texas School Board member Cynthia Dunbar admitted that it was the board’s goal to promote religion through the state’s textbooks to counteract “a Biblically illiterate society,” and another ex-member Don McLeroy said that it was his job at the School Board to fight “secular humanists” because “we are a Christian nation founded on Christian principles” and “the way I evaluate history textbooks is first I see how they cover Christianity and Israel.”

Barton also told Jon Stewart that he was used to help write textbooks in other states, namely California. However, this is quite an exaggeration. Rob Boston writes that while Barton was invited by a conservative to advise California in its development of textbooks, his proposals went nowhere:

In 1998, a conservative member of the California Academic Standards Commission appointed Barton to an advisory position, asking the Texan to critique proposed social studies/history standards. From that perch, Barton attacked the portion of the standards that discussed the development of religious freedom, trying to remove every reference to separation of church and state.

He almost pulled it off. Commission members, unfamiliar with Barton’s agenda, seemed open to adopting his suggestions. They changed course only after intervention by Americans United’s Sacramento Chapter, AU’s national office and others.

Chris Rodda of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation notes that this isn’t the only time Barton embellished his work with other states, as he also worked with Michele Bachmann when she was a Minnesota state legislator to ensure that schools display the Declaration of Independence.

Such a record of exaggeration demonstrates why real historians, including Christian historians, who have followed David Barton have repeatedly criticized and dismissed his faulty “scholarship.”

Right Wing Round-Up

Submitted by Brian Tashman on Wednesday, 5/4/2011 5:55 pm
  • PFAW: House Moves to Deny Women’s Constitutionally-Protected Rights.
  • Bold Faith Type: Setting The Record Straight on The 'No Taxpayer Funding For Abortion Act.'
  • RH Reality Check: Texas Legislature: If Planned Parenthood Sues We’ll Take Everyone’s Family Planning Money.
  • Salon: The Fox News-ification of Donald Trump.
  • Colmes: Limbaugh: Obama Should Apologize For Taking So Long To Get Bin Laden.
  • Wired: Blackwater’s New Ethics Chief: John Ashcroft.

Right Wing Leftovers

Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on Thursday, 4/21/2011 5:32 pm
  • Texas Governor Rick Perry has issued a proclamation urging residents to pray for rain.

  • Read through this and tell me exactly where Ralph Reed "takes on the liberal media."

  • FRC is mobilizing activists to urge the Supreme Court to accept the case of Davenport v. American Atheists.

  • Speaking of FRC, Peter Sprigg is upset with proposed curriculum in Maryland that doesn't show gays as perverted miserable freaks.

  • Know how the Religious Right is always going on about European countries are shutting down the rights of Christians?

  • Finally, the quote of the day from Ken Hutcherson: "The Babylonian empire failed, the Persian Empire failed, the Greek Empire failed, and the Roman Empire was dispersed when the people failed to remember what made them great. The common denominator for the failure of all these world powers was the breakdown of the family." Really?  I'd really like to see some documentation for this claim.

Right Wing Round-Up

Submitted by Brian Tashman on Friday, 4/15/2011 6:02 pm
  • JoeMyGod: MassResistance On The Day Of Silence.
  • Good As You: Pass the Bar(ber) exam: Judges must get appeal of opposite-sex coitus to understand Equal Protection.
  • Think Progress: Kyl Aide: My ‘Not Intended To Be A Factual Statement’ Statement Was Not Intended To Be A Factual Statement.

Barton's Deepening Dominionism

Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on Wednesday, 4/13/2011 12:28 pm

As we noted last week, David Barton has deep ties to the Seven Mountains Dominionist/New Apostolic Reformation movement.  In fact, at this very moment, Barton and Jim Garlow are participating in a "Government Transformation Summit For Visionary Leaders" summit [PDF] in Texas with one of the movement's key leaders, Ed Silvoso.

And today I just stumbled across this video posted on YouTube that Barton apparently recorded for something called the "Convergence Conference" which, based on the info posted on the YouTube page, seems to be a series of events behind put on by a group called The Federation of Ministers and Churches International:

The presence of Dutch Sheets and Hope Taylor of International Leadership Embassy on the FMCI's "Apostolic Leadership Team," along with all the talk of "releasing imprecatory prayers against the enemies of the Gospel" and the "commissioning of Kingdom leaders" suggests that this organization is deeply involved in NAR Dominionism ... as does this ten point declaration posted on the organization's website:

1. We are an apostolic family seeking the new wineskins of the 21st century Church and pursuing transformation of society and culture.

2. We are a prophetic army enlisted to contend with the spiritual forces in the earth who oppose the implementation of our Father’s will in history.

3. We are kingdom-envisioned people who cannot settle into the status quo of old wineskin organized religion.

4. We are a radical remnant that does not fit in with the popular religious culture and who cannot restrain ourselves in seeker friendly churches.

5. We are a transgenerational ministry that is breaking the spirit of fatherlessness and abortion in the land and loosing the inheritance of the sons of the Kingdom.

6. We are a commercial and economic force that is coming into coordination and wisdom so that the wealth of the wicked can be transferred to righteous covenant keepers.

7. We are an International Nation (the true UN) birthed in the power of Pentecost that has the strategies to bring the blessing of Abraham to all the nations and to hold the civil governments of the earth accountable to the One Who ordained their ministry.

8. We are a labor-force that is anointed to rebuild and reconstruct broken cities and nations according to the covenant law of the King of the Mountain.

9. We are Holy Ghost optimists: Though surrounded and hounded by pessimists who believe for the worst to happen in the world, we declare a hopeful and victorious future for the purposes and people of God.

10. We are a cause oriented, challenge oriented, mission oriented, dominion oriented company: we are Davids, Deborahs, Esthers, Daniels, Nehemiahs, Josephs, and Pauls.

Something to keep in mind the next time possible Republican presidential candidates like Mike Huckabee say everyone should be forced to listen to Barton at guinpoint and Newt Gingrich promises that Barton will play a key role in his presidential campaign.

Cynthia Dunbar: Using TX School Standards To Offset "Biblically Illiterate Society"

Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on Monday, 4/11/2011 1:38 pm

During the "Religious Liberty and the LGBT Agenda" panel at The Awakening 2011 that Brian mentioned in the last post, former Texas State Board of Education member Cynthia Dunbar admitted that the right-wing activists on the Board used the recent update to the state's social studies curriculum as an opportunity to counter the fact that "we have a Biblically illiterate society."

As she explained, they included in the new curriculum a requirement that students must learn about "the law's of nature and nature's God" so that they will be taught that "the 'laws of nature' is the will of our maker and because of the fallen state of man, we have to have the 'laws of nature's God' revealed through the Holy Scripture":

GOP Congressmen Line-Up To Attend Ralph Reed's Conference

Submitted by Brian Tashman on Friday, 4/8/2011 5:11 pm

Leading Republicans have signed up to address the conference led by disgraced Religious Right activist Ralph Reed this summer in Washington. Following commitments by potential presidential candidates Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) and Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), numerous Republican congressmen are now confirmed to speak to Reed’s 2011 Conference and Strategy Briefing.

Reed, who also plans to speak alongside presidential candidate Herman Cain and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) in Florida next week, has just announced a new list of speakers: Rep. Allen West (R-FL); Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-MO); Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX); Rep. Daniel Webster (R-FL); Rep. Tom Price (R-GA); Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX); Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA); Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA), and Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-SC).

The freshmen Congressmen slated to speak are strongly tied to the Religious Right: West’s anti-gay and anti-Muslim rhetoric has made him a darling of leaders like Pat Robertson; Hartzler has consistently fought against gay rights in both Congress and Missouri, and even wrote a book about tips for Religious Right activists running for office; Webster is a Christian Reconstructionist and close to David Barton and Phyllis Schlafly, and Mulvaney was a legislative leader of the far-right Palmetto Family Council.

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